I had never seen the soldier side of Avian before.
I then had a vision of Avian in a camouflage uniform, a gun in his hands, running through a bomb blasted field. I had forgotten that Avian had been in the Army when the world had started to fall apart.
Avian was probably better trained than I was to survive in our new world.
It’s curious how a person’s value is placed. We needed soldiers. We needed people who could protect us, who knew what they were doing. But we had also needed someone who could take care of us, stitch us back together. Even with the limited amount of training Avian had, he was more valuable to us as a make-do doctor than as the best trained soldier we had.
Remembering this made the pull inside my chest all the stronger.
“So what do you think it will be like?” West’s voice jarred me back to my senses. “When we get to our new location?”
“Uh,” I stuttered, trying to refocus my attention from Avian to West. “Warm? I don’t know.”
He chuckled, adjusting his grip on his rifle. “I hope wherever we end up it’s near the ocean. I remember as a kid going to the ocean with my father a few times.”
“What was it like?” I asked. The ocean. It was a term I barely understood.
“Big,” he breathed. “It never ended. It was really beautiful. And scary.”
“How could a body of water be scary?” I said, my voice mocking.
“All that water is a lot bigger than you,” he said as he glanced over at me. “You think you could control the violence of the ocean?”
I was quiet after that, trying to imagine what the ocean would look like. It was hard to imagine it as a threat. “I’d like to see the ocean someday.”
West looked over at me with another smile, bumping his shoulder against mine.
For the briefest moment, it felt like my heart jumped into my throat. But the strange part was that for just a second, my vision went completely black.
I tripped over the stones under my feet, throwing my hands out to catch myself before I fell.
“Whoa!” West said, obvious concern in his voice. “You okay?”
“Of course,” I tried to recover, brushing the dirt off my knees. I noticed Avian had glanced back at me, a probing look in his eyes. I shook my head and he turned his attention back front.
I didn’t think I had ever tripped before. Ever.
“And I hope it never snows,” West continued, brushing my incident off. “After last winter I wouldn’t mind if I never saw snow again.”
“Agreed,” I said distractedly.
We were both quiet for a few minutes as we kept pace with the rest of the group. “Do you think we’ll ever be able to stop running from them?” West suddenly asked.
I thought about my response before I spoke. “I guess if we could hide ourselves good enough. Push far enough into the country. If they can’t find us, they can’t infect us.”
West kept his eyes glued to the rocks at our feet. “I’m so sick of running from them,” he said quietly.
“Me too.”
We continued for another hour before we got to the base of the mountain and out of the canyon. We would be stopping here until dark. Those who knew how to cook set to prepping lunch, others lounged around, unused to not having much of anything to do. We would wait here until dark, when it would be safer to travel. We had only traveled the last few hours in daylight because it was too dangerous to come down the mountain in the dark. We all would have killed ourselves on the rocks and cliffs. We would take shifts, some would sleep while others would keep watch.
I’d be staying up all night, as usual.
“Avian,” I said as I walked to his side. “I’m going to get a few minutes of sleep before nightfall.”
“I think I’d better do that too,” he said as he looked around at those who were traveling with us. “I think it would be best if I stayed up at night since my rifle has a night vision scope. Koby,” he suddenly said to a man as he walked past us. He was roughly the same age as Avian. “I’m checking out for a while. Keep an eye on things, will you?”
He nodded, securing his handgun. “West,” I called as I spotted him. “Keep watch for a while?”
“Sure,” he said with a nod and automatically turned his eyes to our perimeters.
Avian and I walked towards a tree, each greedy for the shade it would provide. We settled on the wild grass that grew at its base, side-by-side in the coolness.
“I’ve never seen the soldier side of you before,” I said as my eyes slid closed.
“There hasn’t been much opportunity,” he said as he gave a sigh as he relaxed. “It feels weird being back in that mode. It was drilled into me constantly for over two years and it kept me alive for another six months. Then it got pushed to the back of my mind.”
“Eden has been lucky to have you,” I said quietly as I shifted around to get more comfortable, sleep already creeping in to take me over.
“I could say the same about you,” he said, his voice drifting away.
A few moments later I joined him.
TWENTY-FIVE
My heart thumped in my chest as I tried to press my back further into the corner. My vision blurred, the dark shadows before me blending together.
“She’s never been this aggressive before,” a voice said. It felt like someone was screaming into my ear. I pressed my hands over the sides of my head, trying to block it all out.
“She’s afraid,” a lighter voice said.
I couldn’t make out anything anymore as I opened and closed my eyes, trying to clear my vision. My head felt fuzzy and clouded.
The next second all I could make out was the scent of steel under me. And that my head felt so cold.
Then I heard it. The sound of a drill.
My eyes slid open, blinking immediately closed against the dimming but still bright light of the evening sun. I turned my head to the side, raising my hand to block it from my face. At the same moment my pillow moved and I opened my eyes to find myself nose to nose with Avian.
“You were having a nightmare,” he said quietly as he pushed a few stray hairs out of my face. I realized then that I was lying in his arms, him as my pillow, still under the same tree. After I glanced around at our caravan and knew things were still safe I relaxed again, resting my head against his chest.
“Yeah,” I said quietly, trying to push the memory of it away. “Did you sleep much?”
“For a while.”
I lay there for a little longer, listening as Avian breathed, the sound of everything that was still okay in the world. A part of me wanted to never have to move again, to lay here until the sun died and time ceased to exist or matter anymore.
“We should probably get going,” Avian said, always right about everything. I nodded, pulling myself up to my feet, then helping Avian to his own. He went to take a step back toward the group but before he could, I slipped my hand into his. I had been wanting to do that for so long, but starving myself of it.
Avian looked down at me, his eyes open and intense at the same time. I brought our hands up to my cheek then briefly pressed my lips into the back of his hand. Then I let go and walked back to the group.
The sun died below the horizon in the west, the temperature immediately dropping. I watched as Avian stacked some rocks at the base of another tree where it would be obvious to see, the note he had written tucked securely under the largest stone. We all loaded onto the trailer and for the first time, Tuck set out on level ground.