Emergence (Eden's Root Trilogy Book 3)

by Rachel Fisher

  “Look, I’m not an expert. I just…listen.”

  Sean managed a genuine smile at this, warmed by the kiss of familiarity: the little lovers’ quirks that are cherished like keepsakes. She does listen, he thought, with pride. It was one of the things about her that he’d noticed first…besides the obvious. Of course she was a complete knockout, but then, he hadn’t met many girls that hot who were also quiet. At first he’d thought she was shy, but in time he noticed that when others talked, she listened.

  When he asked her why, she’d looked at him like he was crazy. “Because it’s so interesting, Sean, isn’t it? The way that other people think?”

  Just then Sara touched his arm, rousing him from his memories. Despite her fatigue, her expression was calm and strong. Something in her had changed since she’d delivered Luke. He could still feel the rage, but there was also a quiet resolve shining in her eyes that he’d never seen. Perhaps he shouldn’t underestimate what they could do together.

  “Sean.” Fi slid back into wakefulness. “Don’t leave without saying goodbye.”

  “Of course not.” He embraced her. She felt like a bird in his arms and his throat tightened. He couldn’t remember the last time that he’d been seized by the need to protect Fi. She hadn’t needed it for so long. But now she did. Now she was past her limits and it was up to him to fix it. He grabbed her hand. “We’re going to find her, Fi.”

  Sara leaned in to kiss Fi’s forehead. “ We’re going to find all of them,” she added. “ We promise.”

  Fi nodded, tears hovering in her hollow eyes.

  Sean stopped to give Asher a quick hug goodbye. “Stay safe,” he urged.

  “You too,” Asher murmured, remaining quiet for the benefit of the sleeping bundle in his arms. Sean and Sara pulled on their winter gear and packs. “Sean!” Asher whispered fiercely. “ Please tell us what you find right away. Even if…”

  He didn’t finish his thought, but he didn’t have to.

  “I will.” Sean understood. The not knowing was killing them all.

  ------------Darryl------------

  “Up, Liars!”

  Darryl’s eyes flew open as a boot shoved him in the back. Pain shot through his mouth and he tasted copper. He pried open his eyes, crusted with the tears that he couldn’t seem to stop. They streamed from his eyes at all hours in this arctic air. He spat into the snow and grunted, unsurprised to see the bright spot of red. He must have bitten his tongue when they kicked him.

  Something soft brushed his face and he shook his head, clearing his vision and registering the white feathers floating from above. The snowflakes were so fat that some were the size of a man’s palm. They landed without sound. In fact, each one that landed seemed to suck sound from the world, turning down the volume one flake at a time until his own thoughts were louder than the world around him.

  Crap. His heart sank. This heavy a snow would definitely cover their tracks. And after being trucked down the river to the crossing as far as they were, they were going to have to pray that the Seeders were not only on their trail, but had found the breadcrumbs they’d left.

  Around him people groaned as the “Angels” continued the rounds, rousing them. The sky was a soft dove color with stars still twinkling between the clouds. The “Angels” always insisted on moving from first light to last. The only upside to that, he thought, shivering as he peeled himself away from the human pile in which he’d been sleeping, was that moving was warmer than not moving.

  Now, he had to find the latrine and collect the rations. But first, he managed a smile, despite his throbbing tongue, first he had to start his day.

  Since they’d been marching he and Georgie had upped the ante on their relationship. Not in the way most people would have thought. In his case it meant the little things: the getting rations for one another and each saving the last sip of water for the other, the knowing glances and intertwined fingers tucked inside a single mitten at night, the shoulder and foot massages. It was one hundred ways that people say “I love you” without saying a word.

  And then, there were his favorite words. Every morning (because he was the lighter sleeper and nearly always rose first) he would shake her gently awake and say, “Good morning, Georgie. The day is waiting just for you.” It never failed to bring a smile. He turned where he sat to rouse her and stifled a cry.

  One of their captors was crouched over her, his eyes darting around him as he reached for her. Georgina slumbered still, her ears muffled by the long scarf wrapped around her head. Darryl’s hand jerked forward and grabbed the creep’s wrist just before it reached her neck. “Don’t.”

  He’d meant for his voice to carry a warning, but it trembled as he stared into those blank eyes. They narrowed as the man ripped his wrist away. Georgina awoke, her eyes bulging as she scrambled backward, pulling Kiara with her.

  “You just made a mistake, Liar.” The man drew back his fist.

  Darryl cringed, but, as if life were on some psychotic repeat, a hand reached out and grabbed the man’s wrist just before it connected with his face.

  “Stop it, Cecil.” The giant the colonists dubbed “The Ghost” gripped Darryl’s would-be attacker, eliciting a yelp. “Quiet, you moron!” The larger man shoved Cecil. “How many times do I have to tell you? Be fast, be quiet, and keep your hands to yourself.”

  “But, Silas…” Cecil stopped, silenced by Silas’ glare. He nodded, his jaw twitching. “Got it.”

  “You’d better,” Silas said. “Because if you disobey a direct order again, I’ll be the one to decide your fate, not Father, you get me?”

  Darryl had been crawling backward slowly but now he paused, stunned. Father? They didn’t mean Lawson, did they? He called himself “Father?” That disgusting, horrifying, piece of crap. Bile raced up his throat and he jumped to his feet. “And who decides our fate, Silas? Do you decide that too?”

  The Ghost turned to him, the ice blue eyes slicing through him like needles. This time there was no one to stop the blow. The world exploded as The Ghost’s fist connected with his temple.

  “Darryl!”

  It was a woman’s scream. Georgie’s? His brain tried to process but his thoughts kept going wah-wah-wah like someone had left the alarm on.

  “No stop, please! Stop!” The voice came in waves behind the wah-wah-wah.

  Another sledgehammer slammed into his gut and he buckled. The ground rushed up to meet him. His head bounced on the frozen ground and his lip split. More bright red splotches in the snow, Darryl thought, delirious. Silas pressed his boot to Darryl’s head, pressing down, smashing his face into the snow-caked mud.

  “No, no, please stop, stop please, stop it!” Georgina was sobbing, clutching a terrified Kiara. “He was just trying to protect me.”

  “Stop, Georgie,” he wanted to say, but his mouth wouldn’t work. He wanted to warn her to stop. She was being too loud. They were going to hurt her.

  Silas’ foot pressed harder against his temple until Darryl was sure his head would split open. “Yes, I do decide your fate out here, you piece of shit.” He released Darryl’s head and crouched to look him in the eye. “And don’t you ever forget it.”

  No Rest for the Weary

  -------------- Fi --------------

  The dream was always the same.

  She was running across a Dead Zone, the wind whipping the dirt into her face and stinging her eyes. She was searching and the urgency of the search burned in her blood. Something was missing, something important. She’d forgotten it, or left it behind. She kept running, her head swiveling as she searched. Suddenly she saw something on the horizon, a dark shape against the shimmering heat.

  She turned toward it and ran harder, the shape growing and then breaking into multiple shapes as she drew near. They were scattered in all directions — small, dark bundles lying still in the dust. When she reached the first, her heart began to pound as she recognized the outline of a shoe.

  Within another two steps she realized that
it was a body. Her stomach turned and she spun, taking in all the shapes as she ran to the next. This one was smaller — a woman, her dark hair fanned out from her head, her eyes staring blankly at the sun. Pressed into the center of her chest was a red handprint.

  Fi recognized this woman. It was a scientist from the lab where she worked in Eden. Startled, she backed away and then whirled as she tripped over another body: a man she also recognized, the same red handprint dried on his shirt. No, no no. Fi stared in horror at all the bodies. No…

  As she backed away, the ground rose and she saw that the bodies formed a shape — a symbol — the circle with the upturned palm, and in the center, the capital “T.” Rivulets of black blood ran from the bodies into the center where a small, lone body lay, pink and broken.

  “No!” Fi raced forward, stumbling. Anguish coursed through her as she reached Kiara’s body and saw her throat gaping open, the frozen river of blood mixed with her blue-black hair. Fi scooped her up and she was cold and stiff, like kindling in her arms. “No, no, nooooooooooo,” she keened, rocking her little sister’s lifeless body.

  “Why, Fi?” A voice from above startled her and she looked up, but saw nothing. Her body wracked with sobs and her face was hot and soaked with tears. “Why?” The voice repeated itself and she felt her heart turn to ice. “You promised me, Fi.” Her father’s voice was raw. “You promised me that you wouldn’t leave her.”

  “No!” Fi screamed and sat straight up in bed, panting. Someone grabbed her wrists and she struggled, kicking her feet beneath the blankets. “No!”

  “Fi, stop it!” A man’s voice urged. “Stop it! It’s me, Asher,” he said, and she slowed her fight. “It’s me.”

  She met his gaze and recognized the cornflower blue eyes of her husband, his brow creased. She stopped struggling and started to cry, though her cheeks were already wet with the tears she’d shed while dreaming. He folded her into his arms and held her while she sobbed.

  “The same dream?” he said, and she nodded and hiccupped. He kissed her neck and held her tighter while her sobs subsided. Once she’d run out of tears she lay back down, exhausted. “How long did I sleep this time?” she asked.

  Asher bit his lip. “Forty minutes.”

  She sighed. It was never much longer than that. She hadn’t had a real night’s sleep since Eden’s radio station had gone silent, and now she was getting even less. She didn’t even know if what sleep she was getting counted, because it always brought the excruciating dream. She turned her face into the thrashed, soaking pillowcase and stared at the wall, too terrified to relinquish herself to sleep again so soon.

  It only took minutes for the “nothing” to settle over her again. She could feel its familiar tendrils wind their way around her, encasing her. Ever since Luke was born she’d felt it there, separating her from her surroundings. It was like being trapped behind glass. When she’d carried the burdens of her Family’s survival, she’d half expected to die of feeling too much. Now she wondered if it was possible to die of feeling nothing.

  Luke cried and she tried to rouse herself. She knew that Asher would get him for her. At times she realized that he’d been screaming for a while before Squeak or Asher rushed in to bring him to her. They’d assumed that she’d heard him, and she had, sort of.

  But when they would run into the room they’d see her there, curled up, facing the wall. It wasn’t that she was ignoring him; it was that she could barely sense anything at all. The only thing that penetrated the “nothing” was the pain of Luke at her breast, but she knew that he was getting less and less milk with each passing day that she struggled to eat.

  Somewhere, beyond the “nothing,” on the other side of the glass, she knew that she needed to try harder. She needed to eat. She should fight to sleep. She should be happy to have her baby, happy to feel Asher’s comfort. But she didn’t, she couldn’t. She couldn’t find a way to push past the “nothing” and she wasn’t sure that she wanted to anyway. If the world was going to take Kiara from her after all that she’d done to protect her…then maybe this world wasn’t for her.

  ----------------- Sean ----------------

  They raced through the forest in silence, following the wide swath cut by the marching colonists and their captors. On the one hand, Sean was grateful that the hundreds of feet left such obvious marks on the landscape, but on the other he worried about how the colonists could survive this march through the icy depths of winter. Despite Squeak’s assurances that the Truthers had made the colonists bring winter gear, few of them were prepared for this type of exposure. They had to hurry.

  Of course, perhaps many of them were warmed by their rage, as he was now. He could feel it pulsing in his neck, flowing through his extremities, grinding his teeth together. He knew that Sara felt the same, that the only thing she could think of was her family, and especially her little sister, Lily. These days he often caught Sara fingering the new scar on her cheek: a gift from a Lobo who’d been working for the Truthers. Sara didn’t have reason to believe that Lobos and teen girls were a good mix. He exhaled, pushing hard, riding the energy of his anger.

  It had been four weeks since they’d left Eden, and they’d begun to see signs that they were catching up. Instead of mere footprints they’d found the remnants of camps: hastily dug latrines, dead fire pits, and the occasional lost hat or mitten. The march was heading south, always south, toward…well, he didn’t know yet, but so far it seemed like they were heading toward areas the Seeders had covered in their first summer Seed.

  “Sean, look!” He followed Sara’s gaze to the small, red scarf dangling from a leafless bramble. This was their fourth bit of lost clothing in the past thirty miles. “Do you think they’re doing it on purpose?”

  “Leaving a trail, you mean? Maybe. They’re pretty smart, and they must know that we would come after them.”

  “We’ve got to go faster then.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to actually see them if we get to a Dead Zone?”

  “I really hope so, Sar.”

  They pushed harder, ignoring their exhaustion in hopes of getting the colonists in sight. The sun climbed into the icy sky and sweat ran down Sean’s back inside his jacket. There was no option to stop and rest or eat, not so long as they were this close.

  For a few blessed miles they were able to follow a highway that had clearly been traversed by the colonists as well. The steady ground made it seem like the miles were flying away beneath their feet. When the trail veered off back into the woods, they downshifted from a gait designed for speed to one designed for agility. The difference was subtle, until you did a face-plant because you didn’t lift your feet and they’d caught on a root.

  They clambered up a steep ridge, grunting and straining as their feet slipped on icy leaves. Gasping, Sean crested the ridge with Sara just behind him and then he froze, throwing his arm out to bar her.

  “Shit!” he gasped, staring down in shock. They were inches from a cliff. Below them rushed a wide grey river, pounding with mid-winter melt.

  “Holy cow!” Sara panted.

  Sean squinted, scanning the opposite riverbank, but the trail didn’t appear to pick up across from them. His heart sank.

  Sara threw up her hands. “Great! Now what do we do?” She grabbed a rock and chucked it out over the water with a grunt.

  It was the first sign he’d seen of her cracking under the pressure, and he felt the echoing thump of frustration in his own chest. “We’ve got to see if we can find a good place to cross and search the opposite side. Even if they managed to somehow transport them by boats, they’d have to get out somewhere.”

  He whipped out their binoculars, searching as far as he could in both directions, begging for another dangle of red or tuft of yellow waving from a branch, but there was nothing. Nothing but naked, wet trees, all plastered on one side with the latest snowstorm, like spackle. He wanted to say something reassuring, but he was as worried as Sara. They didn’t know whether to follow the
river east or west, and who knew how many miles they’d have to go to find a suitable crossing?

  “Dammit! We were so close!” Sara wasn’t ready to be reassured.

  Sean gritted his teeth. For the first time since they set out, he worried that they might not find their families. He swallowed, holding back his fear as literally as he could as it crept up his throat, and focused on the task.

  Find a crossing…

  Slipping Away

  ------------ Fi ------------

  Fi’s consciousness floated in a nether world between waking and sleep. It had been four weeks since Luke’s birth and she’d barely slept for more than an hour at a time. At least, she thought that was the case, but she’d begun to lose track. She knew that Asher turned the lights off and on for her to try to give her a sense of time, but each new day without news was a bad one. She almost preferred the endless dark of night. At least then she could pretend that time wasn’t passing…or that she was already dead and her life was just a dream…just the memory of a soul long gone.

  She knew that Asher and Squeak were worried about her, but she didn’t think that they should be. She was fine. She would be fine. As soon as she could get some sleep. Of course, these days she fought sleep as hard as she could. She’d woken up screaming enough for one lifetime. Someday though, she thought. Someday she’d be so tired that the dream wouldn’t come…couldn’t come.

  She rolled over and opened her eyes. Asher was sitting in his chair with Luke asleep in his arms. He looked like he was trying to read something on his tablet, but she could see that his eyes did not look down as his finger flicked through the pages. She sighed. He’d been by her side in that chair all day long for weeks. Of course, he couldn’t spend the night with her as long as every night turned into screaming. Besides, she didn’t want him to touch her anyway. Whenever he comforted her it just intensified her fear. It wasn’t going to be ok, she thought angrily. Nothing would be ok again.