The Bane (The Eden Trilogy)

by Keary Taylor

  I nodded once and walked to the side of the store, checking to make sure it was clear. I snuck back around to the front of the store, still clear. My nerves tight, I crept up to the glass front door and peaked inside. It had been raided and the shelves were mostly barren.

  I continued to pace the perimeter of the building the entire ten minutes or so that it took Avian to pump the truck full of gas. When he finished he asked me to wait with the truck while he ran inside to look for something.

  Less than two minutes later Avian jogged back towards us, five blue bottles in his hands.

  “What’s that?” I asked, eyeing it warily.

  “It cleans the fuel,” he whispered as he set three of them in the back of the truck and set to pouring the other two of the bottles in with the gas. “I don’t know if any of it is still good, the fuel or the cleaner, but I figure if it has a chance of helping we’ve got to try it.”

  I nodded. When Avian was finished, he set the empty bottles on the ground. He motioned for the three of us to get back inside. A few people stirred as the truck was started back up but they were asleep by the time we pulled back on the road and continued down it.

  “We should be good for another three hundred miles or so,” Avian said quietly. “Depending on what kind of mileage this thing still gets. And if it keeps running.”

  I nodded again, watching the darkness around us. It was frustrating that I couldn’t see anything. I took a little comfort in the fact that Avian could though. He kept looking through his night vision scope every few minutes.

  West eased his head back up onto my thigh, a soft snore letting me know just how asleep he really was. I tried to ignore him, remembering what had happened earlier when we had just brushed shoulders. My vision was already black, I didn’t need my brain going black as well.

  “Is it harder now?” I asked Avian quietly. My fingers felt for the wings around my throat. “To keep going now that they’re all gone? Now that you’ve lost all your family?”

  “I still have you,” he said very quietly. “As long as you’re still around I’ve got something to keep fighting for. And them as well,” he said as he observed those sleeping around us. “They’re my family too.”

  That swelling in my chest started up again. I both craved it and didn’t want it. It made me say stupid things.

  “Are you in love with Victoria?”

  Avian’s eyebrows knitted together. “What?”

  “Are you?” My face suddenly felt hot.

  “Victoria is a smart woman and she is beautiful, but… Why would you think that?” I was surprised to see that Avian’s face looked almost hurt.

  I suddenly wished I had never said anything. What had been the point of this conversation? “I just… I didn’t…” I couldn’t find words that wouldn’t make me want to jump off this trailer and hide myself in a hole in the ground from humiliation.

  “You’re jealous,” Avian said with dawning in his voice. A bit of a smile tugged on his lips.

  “Jealous,” I said, meaning to form it as a question. That was what Sarah had said I was feeling.

  “It’s not a fun emotion, is it?” he said as his face grew more serious, though a tight lipped smile formed. As he said it, he glanced down at West.

  “No, it’s not,” I said quietly, my eyes falling down to West’s sleeping form.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I felt too exposed, too open. I suddenly missed the mountains, the trees. They protected us. Now in the open desert, I wanted to get out from under the wide sky and distant horizons as fast as possible.

  The sun was blinding as it gleamed against the sand. Amazing how the Earth could change so fast, in just the eight hours we had driven, going from forest to stark desert. We had pulled off the road for the day into a patch of rocks and a plant Tuck had told me was called cactus. There wasn’t anything else to hide us from being seen. It was poor camouflage but it was all we were going to get.

  Breakfast was prepared, canned pears and bread left over from the day before. I now understood why Avian had been so insistent on storing so much water. With every bite I took I felt like my tongue was sticking to the top of my mouth. I would have guzzled down an entire gallon if I didn’t know how precious our supplies were.

  “I kind of like this heat,” West said as we scouted the perimeter. It looked like waves were rising off the hot clay. “There’s something, I don’t know, comforting about it.”

  “You mean suffocating, right?”

  “No,” he smiled. “I don’t know. I just kind of like it. I wouldn’t want to deal with it all the time but it’s kind of a nice change. Dry. Not like how it’s felt so humid all the time lately.”

  “I guess,” I said as I glanced back at the caravan. Everything looked blurred from this far away, like it was engulfed in water. Maybe we would be better hidden than I had thought. They just looked like an extension of the rock outcropping and cactus.

  West sat on a large boulder, patting the space beside him. I took one more look around before I joined him. We sat together in awkward silence for almost a full minute.

  There was something on West’s mind, I could feel it.

  “What?” I simply asked.

  He took a breath to speak then stopped. His eyes glanced up once before falling back down to his weapon in his hands. “You’re going to make a choice someday, aren’t you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, even though I already knew exactly what he was asking.

  West didn’t say anything for a while. He just held my eyes.

  “Never mind,” he finally said.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, shaking my head. Heat was rising in my blood. “You don’t just get to say something like that and then say ‘never mind.’ You can’t take something like that back.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this, forget I said anything,” he said shaking his head and breaking eye contact. “I can’t think straight. My head is in all the wrong places these days.”

  I just watched him for a bit. He looked so sad. “I’m sorry, that’s probably my fault.” My eyes fell, looking down at our hands where they rested side by side. I slipped my fingers into his.

  The world flickered black for a moment. And then suddenly everything went dark.

  I opened my eyes to the washed out color of canvas. Two faces leaned over my field of vision, both filled with concern and another emotion that surprised me: fear.

  “What happened?” I asked as I pulled myself up into a sitting position, shaking what felt like fog from my brain.

  West and Avian glanced at each other. “What happened?” I demanded again.

  “You… passed out,” West said. I noticed the sweat that suddenly beaded on his forehead. I glanced at Avian who couldn’t meet my eyes.

  “It’s over one-hundred degrees out there,” West said as he sat back on his heels. “You’re not used to the heat.”

  “And you are?” I scoffed. I didn’t believe West. I hadn’t passed out from the heat. He was lying and Avian knew it.

  “You’re obviously fine now,” West said as he pulled himself to his feet and left the tent.

  That night, once everyone was asleep on the trailer again, I couldn’t hold it back any longer.

  “What really happened to me earlier?” I asked quietly. “I didn’t really pass out, did I?”

  “I didn’t see it happen,” Avian finally said after a long, thoughtful pause. “West walked you back to the group. You were awake, but you weren’t there. Your eyes were totally blank and you wouldn’t respond. He said you two had been talking when you suddenly just…froze up.”

  “Froze up?” I asked. Even as I did, I knew what he was talking about. The way I had blanked and then tripped the day before. The way I had felt like I was suddenly gone when I had nearly choked West.

  “You weren’t there for a while,” Avian said, his voice cool. “It was like you were empty all of the sudden. Hollow.”

  I swallowed hard, not because of the dry
ness or the heat this time. “Am I going to turn into one of them?” my voice sounded hoarse.

  “I think if you were going to you would have already.” Avian’s voice was tight. “There’s been plenty of time for you to change, plenty of opportunity for you to be infected. I think this is something different.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  As pressure built in the air I felt uneasy. It reminded me of the night the Bane burned the gardens. The stars disappeared, plunging the night into a darkness I had never known.

  One good thing about traveling through the desert was that there were few towns that we had to skirt around. It slowed us down a great deal having to drive around a city. There was always the risk that we would find Bane on the outskirts.

  “Pull over here,” Avian said in a harsh whisper as we approached the next gas station. “Kill the lights.” Tuck did as he said immediately.

  Avian jumped off the trailer, his rifle held at eye level. I jumped off at the same time, my own shotgun held firmly in hand. His eyes never left the glass front of the store as he stalked slowly towards it. I released my safety, gauging how many extra shells I had in my pocket that I could easily grab if needed.

  “There’s two of them inside,” Avian whispered. I saw the gleam of their metallic parts. Their eyes stared back out at us, empty orbs.

  “Should we go to a different gas station?” I breathed.

  Avian shook his head. “We most likely wouldn’t make it to another.”

  “Together?” I said quietly.

  “On my count,” Avian breathed. “Three… two… one.”

  The glass exploded into a billion shards, followed by screams from those who were sleeping unsuspecting on the trailer. The next second, the two Bane leapt through the remains of the glass, barreling straight towards us.

  Countless shots were fired but only the one charging at me dropped. By the time I had realized what had happened it was too late to load again.

  “No!” I screamed as I sprinted toward the Bane who was barreling straight at Avian. I leapt between the two of them, slamming my body in it.

  We hit the ground in a tangled mess of arms, each trying to destroy the other. It’s steel cold hand wrapped around my throat, cutting off my air supply.

  “Dis… dis…” I gasped for air. “Disengage!” I screamed out. It stopped moving immediately.

  I clawed its hand away from my throat, realizing then that as I had jumped to get between the Bane and Avian my handgun had fallen out of its holster. Instead, my hands beat at the frame that covered its neck and lower face, exposing the gears and wires beneath. I lost it, ripping and shredding everything I could get my fingers around. I didn’t even care when the volts of electricity the infected body produced shocked me over and over again.

  I sat back, straddling the now still body, my breaths coming in shaking, gasping swallows. I glanced back over at Avian only to see him surrounded by the rest of the group. Their faces were a mix of shock, awe, and fear.

  They all finally knew my secret.

  I looked back down at the Bane, my hand rising to my throat, and took a hard swallow. In its blank eyes, I saw everything I hated about myself. All the things that were wrong with me, all the things I couldn’t remember but knew the truth about.

  I spit in its face and stood to walk back to the others.

  “Let’s gas up and get going,” I said.

  No one said anything as Tuck and Avian pulled the truck around to the hand pump and filled it. They all got back on the trailer but I felt their eyes on me as I stood at one corner of the building, pretending to be watching the perimeter, even though I couldn’t see much of anything.

  Avian and Gabriel had worked all these years to keep my true nature a secret. It had only taken a few moments to undo all that effort.

  “Are you okay?” West asked quietly from behind me.

  “I’m fine,” I said, my voice rough.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered.

  “I’m fine!” I said harshly. “You lied to me again.”

  “Lied?” he asked, his eyebrows furrowing.

  “I didn’t pass out earlier,” I said quietly. “It was like I was suddenly one of them, wasn’t it?”

  West swallowed hard, his eyes guarded as he looked back at me. “It was the same way you looked when you tried to choke me.”

  “And why does it only seem to happen when I’m around you?”

  West looked back at me, hurt plain on his face.

  “You know,” he said. “You used to be so much easier to deal with. You didn’t used to freak out over every little thing.”

  He turned and walked back to the group.

  Avian left a message and a cairn at the gas station, warning the second group to take extra caution.

  The pressure in the sky kept building, turning the air muggy and heavy. We stopped two hours after we had gassed up, hiding ourselves in a cluster of sickly looking trees. Tents were set up, five of them, as a precaution to the saturated sky.

  Not five minutes after we had everything staked and secured, the sky finally broke.

  I’d never seen rain like that.

  I kept the perimeter, Tuck volunteering to keep watch with me. I was soaked through almost instantly and it was difficult to see far. Small wisps of steam rose from the sunbaked ground, heat and cool colliding.

  The world was doused in a hazy color of gray as the sun fought to break through the heavy clouds above us. The rain continued to pour, soaking us in more rain than I had ever seen fall at one time. Small streams started tracing lines in the desert, running to unseen rivers. We set out our empty water containers to refill from the heavens.

  A few hours into my scouting Avian walked out, using a raincoat that had been smartly packed to keep his head dry. He walked over to me, and covered my head. He handed me two carrots.

  “I doubt we’re going to see any of them in this,” Avian said, having to speak louder than normal to talk over the noise of the rain pounding above our heads. “They don’t like the water too much.”

  “I’m not taking any risks,” I said as I bit the end of one of the carrots off. “And what was that back there? At the gas station. You know I can take care of myself.”

  “I know,” he said as his eyes fell to the ground. “Just instinct, I guess.”

  He stood there with me for a while, our eyes watching the rain as it fell, our feet getting soaked as it did.

  “Did you say something to West?” he asked. “He’s acting kind of…put out.”

  I swallowed my bite before answering. “I told him that I knew he had lied to me earlier. I also pointed out the fact that I only have these blackouts when I’m around him.”

  “Really?”

  I nodded. “The first time was when I choked him. It was like I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “And then when you tripped,” Avian said, his eyes staring out over the desert. “You two had been talking. I’ve never seen you stumble before.”

  I nodded again. “And then yesterday.”

  “Why do you think that is?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said as I shook my head.

  “If being around him makes you lose control of yourself, it’s a danger to us all. We can’t afford to have you gone, to have you check-out, even if you don’t mean to. And we can’t afford to have you turn on us.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” I defended as I glared at him.

  “I know you wouldn’t,” Avian said as he looked at me. “But what if you don’t have a choice? I mean, you didn’t want to strangle West, did you?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “I mean I was mad at him but I would never actually do that.”

  “That’s what I mean. If you don’t have control over this it’s dangerous for us all for you to be around him.”

  I mumbled something, hoping it would pass as acknowledgement.

  “I wanted to ask you…”
he started.

  “Stop right there!” I shouted as I took five steps forward into the rain, my shotgun level to my eyes.

  Thirty yards away, two figures stopped in their tracks, their hands held up.

  “Please,” a female voice called through the torrent. “We just need something to eat. We’ve been lost in this desert for days.”

  I walked toward them, gun in hand, Avian following me, his own handgun held steady. As the figures became clearer, I saw it was a man and a woman, looking to be in their late thirties.

  “Please,” the man said. “We mean you no harm. We just need something to eat. If you can spare anything.”

  “Where’d you come from?” Avian demanded, his gun pointed right at the man’s chest.

  “The southeast,” the man said. “We’ve been running for almost a year now.”

  “Come with us,” Avian said.

  We walked behind them, their hands held behind their backs where we could see them. I looked down at their feet. Their shoes were held together with strips of material and lengths of rope. Their clothes were torn and ragged looking.

  We led them to one of the tents. Morgan and Eli were inside resting and jumped at the sight of the strangers. “Who are they?” Eli demanded as he put himself between the newcomers and his wife.

  “We’re about to find out,” Avian said as he walked back to the truck while I kept an eye on them. A minute later Avian walked back in, the CDU in hand.

  “What are you going to do with that?” the woman asked, eyeing it warily.

  “Just make sure you’re really human,” I said.

  Avian made one swipe down the woman’s bare arm, water rolling off of her to the floor of the tent.

  “What are you doing?” she jumped, huddling back into the man.

  “This puts out an electrical current. Being this soaked will make it much more intense,” Avian explained as he met their eyes. With hesitancy, she let him wipe her arm more. The man tried drying his own arm.

  They didn’t fight us as Avian touched the device to their still damp skin. Organic.

  “What are you doing out here?” Avian asked.