Keary Taylor
EDEN
For my dad,
with whom I watched many, many science fiction movies and TV shows, making me always wonder “what if”.
ONE
“Good-bye, my friend,” Avian whispered, closing his eyes with silent words of regret that echoed through the rest of us.
We all shut our eyes as Avian pressed the device to Tye’s arm, unable to watch the death of the man who had been our family member and protector since the formation of Eden. The sounds reverberated in my brain, the hum of thousands of volts of electricity racing through Tye’s infected system. The back of my throat tightened as I heard the sharp hiss of the nanites under his skin short out and die. Agonizing seconds later, he took his last gasping breath.
Avian set down the one piece of electronic technology that existed in Eden on the wooden table. I finally opened my eyes again when I heard his suppressed sob. Bill and Graye bowed out of the medical tent silently, unable to deal with Avian’s grief in the moment of their own. I could only stand there and hug my sides, trying to keep myself from falling apart. It felt like everything inside of me had cracked.
My eyes couldn’t keep away from Tye’s body.
His lifeless form lay limp on the table, one of his legs about to slip off. His left arm rested at his side, the skin shredded and torn where he had tried to rip it off. The dirtied, bloodied wires shone from under the torn skin. His head had lolled to one side, staring emptily at me with one still human eye and one metallic cybernetic one.
I wished Avian would stop sobbing. I knew I should try to comfort him, but what do you say to the man who had just had to kill his own cousin? His tears seemed like too much of an invitation to let my own fall. But that wasn’t me; Eve didn’t cry. Ever.
Avian looked up at me from where he stood, braced with his hands on the table next to the body. “Thank you for bringing him back, Eve.”
I bit my lower lip and could only manage one small nod. He held my eyes with his own for a long moment, each of us knowing what the other was thinking. We both knew we would never hear Tye’s hesitant laughter again, never urge him to take a break from his watchful post to eat a few bites. He would never hunt through the woods or go on a raid again. Our beloved protector and brother had been taken away from us forever.
“Let me help you,” I offered as Avian started picking up the body. He graciously accepted, his entire frame trembling as we carried what was left of Tye to the furnace. We couldn’t even bury our fellow men and women in the ground after they were infected, couldn’t visit their graves. Even the destroyed cybernetics were too dangerous to keep around. They were melted down and transported away.
Avian collapsed to the ground as we slid the heavy door closed. Another round of tears consumed him as I lit the fire beneath it. I sank to the ground next to him, hugging my knees as I watched the flames grow in intensity and consume our friend.
I knew I was going to have to speak to Graye again. With how few of us there were left, you couldn’t ignore anyone. Maybe in a few days I would be able to look him in the eye but for now he was nothing but the man who had gotten Tye infected.
All it had taken was one brief touch from the Hunter. Tye had tried ripping his own arm off before the infection could spread any further. The attempt had been useless. Less than an hour later, Tye’s eye started changing. He’d turned on us within three hours and tried to return to the city. It had taken the entire unit to drag him back to Avian. Bill had had to knock him unconscious so he wouldn’t try to kill us all.
If it had taken us any longer, we would have had to shoot him in the forest and leave his infected, untouchable body for the wolves.
“Why don’t you go to bed?” I said quietly as I stared at the flames. “I will take care of things.”
“No,” he said as he shook his head, wiping a few tears away with the back of his hand. “I can handle it.”
“You don’t have to,” I tried to argue, but only half-heartedly. Saying good-bye to our friend was as hard on me as it was everyone else.
“Go home, Eve. You’ve done your job.”
Without another word, I stood and walked out of the tent, never looking back.
Small fires glowed in the darkness, scattered about in the village of tents. No one looked up at me as I walked by on my way to my own. They knew I wasn’t the reason Tye had been killed but they all expected more out of me. I was the one who always got everyone out, no matter how close it had come. Tonight I had finally failed.
I pulled the flap of my tent aside and stepped into the darkness. My worn out cot felt more uncomfortable than ever as I collapsed onto it. I stared up at the blackness above me, my arms resting above my head. The sound of Sarah’s breathing a few feet away let me know she was still awake.
We lay in silence for endless minutes, an unspoken conversation flowing. Tye’s death would be as hard on Sarah as it was on Avian, brother and sister in painful loss.
“How’s Avian?” she finally spoke.
“I helped him with the furnace but he sent me back,” I forced the words out of my mouth. All I wanted to do now was sleep. I just wanted this day to be over.
Sarah was silent again and I knew there would be tears rolling down her flawless, pale cheeks. I understood why she had not come to the farewell. It killed a little piece of us all whenever we attended one. Sarah was too tender, she couldn’t handle watching that happen to anyone, much less her own cousin.
I faintly heard her roll away from me before I fell off the cliff of consciousness into the dark.
TWO
My eyes slid open to meet the darkness above, fear and relief seeping through my system at the same time. We all occasionally screamed in our sleep, every one of us still haunted by the nightmares. Each of us was tormented by images of cybernetic infested friends, feelings of having your cells harden and turn you against everything that made you who you were.
I pulled myself up, listening for sounds of movement outside. It was early, the sun still struggling to make its way above the mountain tops. Everything was silent.
Wearing the same clothes I had worn yesterday on the raid, Tye’s blood still dried on them, I grabbed my pack from off the floor, slid my pistol into my belt, and stepped outside, leaving Sarah sleeping. The fires had been reduced to smoldering embers, the camp left with the feeling of being empty and abandoned. I headed for the tree line.
My boots darkened, dampened by the heavy morning dew. I let my fingers trail on the tall grass as I walked down an unseen path. My ears strained for any sounds that didn’t belong, searching for any warning hums of an ATV or the faint chop of a helicopter. The morning was quiet, but that did not mean I dropped my guard against constant danger. Dropping your guard meant getting killed, or worse.
Waking so early gave me a chance to have the quiet to myself. Though I doubted anyone would ask about what had happened the previous day, everyone would be thinking the unspoken, wondering how and why I had finally failed to bring someone home. I may have only been seventeen but they certainly didn’t treat me like a child.
The trees dropped away in an abrupt line, giving way to the ten foot tall wire fence. Five acres of garden lay before me. The piece of earth that kept Eden from starving. Everyone had a duty to perform in the gardens. We were each required to work a minimum of two, five-hour shifts per week. We were all responsible for keeping Eden alive in a way.
I quickly went to the storage shed that was camouflaged at the tree line and geared up with a pair of worn gloves and a religiously cared for hoe. I pushed back my dirtied sleeves and fastened my pack tighter to my back. It never left my back, other than to sleep. To be separated from it could mean the difference between life and death. In it I had everything I needed to survive in the wilderness for nearly a month.