Eden's Legacy (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 3)

by Andrew Cunningham

  "Now that we are facing him, what do you think?" Sean whispered to Ben.

  "Other than his group, I don't think he's seen another soul in seventeen years. He looks at us as if he can't believe he's looking at other humans. Up until now, as a group, they haven't traveled far from their home in the mountains. If they had, they wouldn't look like that. They would have raided stores for clothes and boots and glasses."

  "They have guns and ammo."

  "That's one of the answers we have to try to pry out of him."

  They tried for fifteen minutes, utilizing every strategy, from intimidation to friendship.

  He stared at the ground.

  "Well, I’m done for now," said Aaron, getting up. "I've had enough of the stench."

  "I'm trying to get used to it so I can get closer to him to talk without throwing up," said Ben.

  "You're a better man than I … or just plain stupid." He got up, with Sean following, leaving Ben sitting there alone.

  Ben looked at the prisoner and decided to give it one more try.

  "Do you have any idea how badly you stink?"

  No response.

  "That's why nobody wants to be near you. When was the last time you took a bath?"

  No response.

  Ben sighed.

  "So here's what I think, and correct me if I'm wrong. You haven't seen anyone else since the event that killed almost everyone on the planet." The man cocked his head to the side ever so slightly. "So up until the time you killed the young man near your home, you didn't even know any other humans existed. Did you think you were the only people left on earth?"

  The man looked directly at him. Ben saw that as progress.

  "Did you think we were aliens or something?"

  "Some did."

  He spoke!

  "I suppose I can understand that. It tells me that you have no idea what happened. Would you like me to tell you?"

  "How do you know?" It was said with a mixture of sullenness and fear. He wanted to know, but he didn't want to trust Ben.

  "Because I was there when the man who caused all of this died. It was our own president, the President of the United States." The man opened his eyes wide. "If he hadn't died on his own, I would have killed him."

  Ben proceeded to tell the man a shortened version of the story of his journey south with Lila so many years before, and how he was "drafted" by the president to help rebuild Washington, in the process hearing the story of how the president was responsible for setting off a powerful nuclear weapon that had had unexpected and devastating results. Just telling the story brought Ben back to those early days and how long ago it now seemed.

  "Our own president?"

  Ben nodded. "I know he didn't plan for this to happen, but his own greed and desire for power caused it. As a result, there are very few people left alive. There are a few dozen communities across the country with survivors. It was hard at first, and there was a lot of distrust and violence, but over time things settled down. Now most of the communities are thriving and people are trying to build the country again."

  "The rest of the world?" Ben knew that he had him now. His curiosity had overcome his fear.

  "The same. Those people we stopped you from killing were from Europe. They had come over here to see what had happened to America. Until they came, we had no idea what had happened to the rest of the world. If you had killed them, we'd still never know. Now we know that they suffered the same fate as us. Like us, they are trying to rebuild. They actually have a source for electricity, something we don't have here." As he said it, Ben had pangs of guilt, thinking about what he had done in Paradise.

  "Look," he continued. "I understand that this must all be a shock to you, seeing other people. You're scared. I get that. You've become someone you probably weren't seventeen years ago."

  "It's been that long?"

  "Yes. And in seventeen years, I've seen everything. I've seen people help each other and I've seen people kill each other. We've all been afraid. None of us knew what happened. As a result, a lot of bad things happened between people. But that's over now. No one is judging you. But you have to understand that we have ten of our children out there and we don't know where they are. We want to find them. You've got to talk to me. We're not going to kill you and we're not going to hurt you."

  "I want you to."

  "To what?"

  "Kill me. I'm tired. I just want to die. Many times I've thought about jumping off a cliff or shooting myself, but I never did. I'm tired of living like this."

  "Did you have children back when all this happened?" asked Ben gently.

  He nodded and tears filled his eyes.

  "And grandchildren. So long ago. They died I guess. They didn't live nearby. Two daughters and two new babies I had never seen. My wife was dead when I got back to the house. Peaceful, like she just went to sleep."

  "Please tell me your story."

  The man looked at him and sighed. Ben wasn't exactly sure what the sigh indicated—hurt? Despair?—but he knew the man was ready to talk.

  *****

  "We're all miners," the man began. "Or, we were. We worked at a big silver mine. There were 120 of us underground when it happened. Suddenly, the lights went out. That's how we knew something had happened. But we weren't worried. The lights went out on a regular basis. We just waited for the backup system to kick in, but it never did. We tried radioing the top to find out what was happening, but nobody answered. We had our flashlights and other portable lamps and we knew where everyone was working. It took a few hours, but eventually we were all accounted for and we started making our way to the top. Unlike some mines, we didn't have to rely on an elevator. There was a road. There would usually have been one of the transport vehicles to take us up, but both of them were up top. So we walked."

  It was bringing back some painful memories, so Ben didn't hurry him.

  "We made it to the top and that's when we found everyone dead—all of our co-workers and all of our families. It was a terrible day. There was no sign of how they died, so everyone had a theory. It was the Russians; it was the Chinese; it was the North Koreans; it was a gas leak, sun spots, chemical spill; you name it. The radios we had with us underground still worked, but nothing up top worked. We tried to contact people, but nobody answered. We talked about traveling out of the valley and finding someone alive to help us, or at least provide some information. It was soon after that that an earthquake hit. It collapsed the mine and destroyed the road to the nearest town. It took us a couple of days to walk the ten miles. When we arrived, we found the whole town destroyed and everyone dead."

  Now that he was talking, the story poured out.

  "We were scared before, but now we were terrified. We searched through the wreckage and took everything we could find, including clothes and food. There was a gun store, so we cleaned it out. We were facing an enemy, but we didn't know who it was. We had to be ready for anything." He made a face. "That's when one of the guys came up with the alien theory. It was stupid, but a lot of the guys believed it. They said it was the only explanation for why we hadn't seen any planes and why the military hadn't come to help."

  As much as Ben hated the man for what they did to Clete and for attacking the Europeans, he was beginning to feel sorry for him.

  "Whether it was aliens or the Russians, we knew we hadn't been discovered, so we decided it would be best for us to stay where we were, rather than to leave and risk getting caught and killed or tortured, or be tested on by the aliens."

  Ben looked at him incredulously.

  "Hey, you've gotta understand. We were just a bunch of miners. Most of us had been doing it our whole lives. The only people with any kind of education were the bosses, and they were all up top when it happened. I had two years of college, which made me one of the smarter ones down there. What does that tell you? Anyway," he continued, "we stayed all this time. We never left, except once. People were missing alcohol, and then someone remembered that Butte City wasn'
t too many miles away and they had a bar of sorts, so a bunch of them went. I thought it was stupid to risk everything for alcohol, but they did it anyway. They came back with cases of whiskey and other stuff. They carried it by hand over the mountain. Stupid. But it didn't stop me from getting drunk with the others. We stayed drunk for days."

  He looked at the ground. When he looked up, he actually had tears in his eyes.

  "That was the beginning of the end for the women."

  Chapter 24

  Ben looked up in surprise. "What women?"

  The man shook his head sadly.

  "Three of the miners were women. It's not a business that attracts a lot of women, but they were as good as any of the men down there. Anyway, you get over a hundred men and three women, and then you add a lot of whiskey, and what do you think you get? Those women didn't stand a chance … not a fucking chance. They were nice, too. They didn't deserve it. They got passed around like … well, you get the idea."

  "What happened?"

  "One killed herself. She just couldn't take it. I don't blame her. Another was beaten to death by one of the guys when she put up a fight. He was immediately killed by some of the others for doing that. The third? Well, she lasted a while, then just kinda wore out. Someone found her dead one morning. She just died."

  Ben couldn't say anything. It brought him back to the early days after the event and some of the atrocities that he and Lila had seen.

  Finally he said, "So what made you leave your valley after seventeen years?"

  "I guess the chance to find women. By then, there were only fifty-eight of us left. Over the years, guys died of lots of different things—pneumonia, probably cancer, accidents, and fights. As a group we had become not much more than animals. It was pretty bad. I'd wanted to kill myself for a while, but just didn't. Anyway, some of the guys were out hunting one day when they ran across that boy from your group. You've gotta understand, we hadn't seen another human in all those years and a lot of the guys still thought aliens were out there somewhere. When they found your boy, the first thing they did was to take off a finger to see if he bled like a human. That's when he told them about your town in Yellowstone. After all those years, they finally stopped believing it was aliens."

  "Did you set the fire?"

  "Not me. I didn't want nothing to do with it. I stayed back in the valley. Your boy told them that there were a lot of women there. He also told us that there were a couple of thousand people living there. So they thought if they started a fire, it would drive you people out and they could pluck the women out when everyone ran. Then they'd bring them back to the valley. Stupid plan, but after all those years, the idea of having women was just too much for them to pass up. It didn't work out. I'm told the fire changed direction and came back quickly. We lost one of our people. They came back to the valley and eventually we all decided it was time to leave, now that we knew there were other people out there. Even I was ready to leave by then. The plan was to watch you people and steal some of the women and try to find a new place to live."

  "Why did you torture him and cut him to pieces?"

  "Not me. I wasn't there. I don't know why they did it, other than to make sure no one came to our valley. I told you that by now we aren't much more than animals. We've gone crazy, the whole lot of us, me included. The best thing that can happen is you kill us all. Those other three you got, by the way, you’d be best to kill them now. They’re the worst of the bunch. They were the worst even when we were human."

  "How do you get around?" Ben asked.

  "We walk." The man lifted a disgusting foot to show Ben the callouses. "We can go as fast as any horses over this broken ground. Anyway, we were coming back to Yellowstone when we saw all those kids leaving. There were five girls in the group. Young girls. That was too much for my people … " He stopped for a moment. "… even for me, to resist. So we followed them."

  "And that's why you are after them?"

  He nodded. "For the girls."

  Ben found it hard to conceive of anyone reaching the depths of human behavior that the man described, but here it was in front of him.

  "Where are the kids?"

  "Split up. One of the boys was killed, but the rest went in different directions."

  Ben felt sick. "What then?" It was hard to talk, but he managed to get it out.

  "Some of us stayed here. The others went after a group of four."

  "Where?"

  "They went east across the desert."

  “Did you see this group?”

  “From a distance.”

  “Can you describe them?”

  “Not really. Two guys, two girls. One of the guys was black and both of the girls had shiny black hair. That’s all I can tell you.”

  Cat and Yuki! It had to be. And one of the boys was Wade. So the other had to be Simon.

  “How long will your people follow until they turn back?”

  “They won’t turn back. They see what they want, they’ll keep going until they get it. They have nothing to lose.”

  “Those kids are experienced in the wild.”

  “And those guys are excellent trackers. We spent a lot of years hunting in the hills around us. They can pick up any kind of track.”

  Ben was silent as he digested everything. It had been three weeks since the kids escaped.

  “You don’t get it,” the man continued. “There are almost thirty guys following them and they’ve been gone a while. The boys are probably dead by now, and the girls … well …”

  Ben jumped up and attacked the man with all the fury that a father could have. He began pounding on the man, punching him in the face, the neck, and the head. He didn’t even feel Aaron and Sean pull him off the man.

  The miner was doubled over in pain, his face a sheet of blood. He looked back at Ben through slits in his puffy eyes.

  “Finish the job,” he said, choking on his own blood. “Just kill me.”

  “I’d love to,” said Ben with venom in his tone. “Nothing I’d like better. Not only for my daughter, but for Clete and Morgan. What gave you the right to take their lives?” He walked to the edge of the clearing to calm down.

  The man was silent, blood still streaming from his wounds. He rose unsteadily to his feet, picking up a fist-sized rock, and charged toward Ben, who was now across the clearing, thirty feet away. The man howled as he approached.

  With one swift action, Aaron pulled out his pistol and put two bullets into the man, dropping him to the ground. Sean went to the man and felt his pulse.

  “Dead. He got his wish.”

  “Is that why he attacked?” asked Ben.

  “Of course. He knew we were going to kill him. He just wanted his miserable life over and he knew this would be the fastest way. You have to feel bad for him, but under the circumstances, I would have done the same thing.”

  “What do we do with the others?

  Sean glanced at Aaron. “They killed two of our people,” he said. “We can’t take them with us. What would we do with prisoners? We can’t let them go. If they ran across one of our kids, or just some unsuspecting traveler, who knows what they’d do to them? That would be on us. The problem is, we don’t execute people.”

  “They’re no longer people,” said Ben, “and that guy said they were three of the worst of them, even before.”

  “Ah hell,” said Aaron, pulling his gun out of its holster and turning in the direction the prisoners had been taken. “We know what we have to do. We have no choice.”

  Ben put his hand on his brother’s arm. “No, let me. It’s my job. Besides, I had to do this once before. I didn’t feel guilt then and I won’t now. It’s just something that has to be done. Besides, if he’s right, we might have a lot more of them to deal with.”

  Aaron nodded his head and put his gun away, while Ben retreated into the darkness. A few minutes later, Aaron heard three single shots.

  *****

  The next morning, they gave Dan and Angus directions to
the town in Yellowstone and let them know that the townspeople could provide them with information on the other communities across the country.

  Ben and Lila embraced their old friend, knowing they probably would never see him again once he returned to Scotland. They watched as the caravan headed north, most of the people on horseback, with the line of silent electric tractors with their trailers full of solar equipment trailing behind.

  Ben was subdued as his group pulled out and headed south to the spot where Harry had indicated the kids were attacked. Lila knew to leave Ben alone to deal with his demons. Once again, their peaceful life had been interrupted by violence. This time, it had been totally unexpected, since the world had known peace for so many years.

  The next day they reached the area on Harry’s map. They spent hours searching for the exact spot of the attack, and had almost given up when they heard a voice from the trees.

  “Mom? Dad?”

  Emma came running from the woods, followed immediately by Diana and John. They rushed into their parents’ waiting arms. Tears and long hugs followed.

  When the reunion was finished, Ben and Lila asked the teens to explain what happened. Diana described the attack and the death of Morgan.

  “We hid deep in the woods and watched and waited for the men to leave. A big group of them went east, which is where we think Cat, Simon, Wade, and Yuki went. The rest of them hung around here. After a couple of days, they headed back north. We waited a whole day in the woods until we were sure they were gone. Then we came out and buried Morgan.”