EDEN

by Dean Crawford

  ‘…. the bear attacked Bobby afterward,’ Jake finished his sentence. ‘Those remains you buried, of your brother, caused Bobby’s death.’

  Cody could feel the eyes of countless people upon him; the judge, the jury. The executioner.

  ‘You’re a murderer,’ Charlotte uttered from her cage.

  ‘He was a drug addict!’ Cody gasped. ‘He threatened my wife and my daughter. I had no choice.’

  ‘No choice!’ Sawyer snapped. ‘Yet you parade your high-and-mighty crap to all about how they should preserve our humanity, work together, clap our hands and sing happy songs?’ He jabbed the sabre up toward Cody’s face. ‘We had no choice either, Ryan! None of us had a goddamned choice!’

  Cody stared at Sawyer for a long moment, saw the same anguish in his eyes that coursed through Cody’s body, a laborious pain and regret that ached through the veins and throbbed inside the heart.

  ‘What happened to you, Sawyer?’ he asked.

  Sawyer gestured to his men with his pistol. ‘Get him out of here,’ he snapped.

  ‘What about the rest of them?’ Patrick asked, eager to please Sawyer.

  Sawyer glanced at the nearby cages. ‘Take the women from them and keep them apart, and that woman there, the young one. Put her on the fences.’

  Cody turned in horror as Patrick lumbered into the cage and dragged Lena to her knees.

  ‘No,’ Cody gasped. ‘Don’t do it!’

  Maria cried out as Lena was dragged away through the amphitheatre. Cody, with Maria held in his arms, was prodded out of the amphitheatre as he heard Bethany and Charlotte being yanked forcibly from their cages.

  ‘You’re a killer, Cody!’ Charlotte screamed after him as they were led away. ‘You’re a goddamned psychopath!’

  Her voice echoed up into the hall around them, chasing Cody as he walked. He heard Maria’s voice in his ear.

  ‘Did you hurt somebody, daddy?’

  Cody squeezed her tight, unable to meet her gaze as they walked. ‘Somebody who was going to hurt you, honey,’ he whispered.

  Sawyer led them up the grand staircase and along the hall to what Cody figured were the senate executive offices, grandly decorated rooms with broad windows looking out over the darkened city. Sawyer led them into one such room and fell rather than sat into a large leather chair in front of a polished mahogany desk.

  He gestured loosely to a seat opposite as two guards stood by the office entrance. Cody sat down, Maria on his lap but still clutching to his jacket as she stared silently at Sawyer.

  ‘What do you want?’ Cody asked.

  Sawyer looked at Cody and a small smile curled from one corner of his lips as he studied him. ‘You fascinate me, Ryan,’ he said finally. ‘A family man, an academic, and yet you killed your own brother, smuggled bits of him up into the Arctic and buried them in a snow drift. You know, according to the article the police only found the torso and limbs after a dog-walker’s pet stumbled on blood and bone chips in the woods. The cops got DNA from them, identified your brother from his army records and would have sent you down for twenty to life on your wife’s testimony.’

  Cody swallowed. ‘It didn’t go down like that.’

  ‘I’m sure it didn’t,’ Sawyer agreed, ‘but that doesn’t matter much to me. See, to have left that much mess and to have gotten his hands and head or whatever out of the country you must have sawed him up, no?’

  Cody tried to remain silent and still but his expression betrayed him.

  ‘You did,’ Sawyer grinned as though admonishing a wayward schoolboy. ‘Why? Why did you do that?’

  Months of anguish, of sleepless nights poisoned with regret coursing through his veins seemed to swell up like an un-lanced abscess in Cody’s chest. For reasons he could not adequately explain to himself, he started talking.

  ‘To protect my wife and I from prison,’ Cody replied. The tension wracking his chest fell away as he spoke. ‘My brother was once a hero, my hero, but drugs turned him into something horrible, a leech, a poison that kept our folks awake at night with worry. When he tried to raid our house, he threatened my family.’ Cody breathed easily as his anxiety spilled from his lungs like a noxious gas and vanished into thin air. ‘Like I said, we had no choice.’

  ‘No choice,’ Sawyer echoed again. ‘We always have a choice, Ryan, and you made yours.’

  Cody knew that he could deflect the accusation, tell him that his wife had struck the blows, but he didn’t feel like giving Sawyer the satisfaction of watching him try to wriggle his way out of complicity to homicide.

  ‘Your wife sold out,’ Sawyer said. ‘Couldn’t live with the knowledge of what you had done. You got lucky, Ryan.’

  ‘You call this lucky?’ Cody flicked his head back briefly to indicate the two guards by the door. ‘These people follow you, Sawyer. They have the right to know who they’re following don’t they? The right to know that you’ll keep them alive?’

  The thug’s innate human nature made them curious and they glanced at Sawyer.

  ‘They know who I am,’ Sawyer spat back. ‘They all know that I keep them alive, every day.’

  ‘Because they couldn’t save themselves? Do you think they’re idiots or something?’

  ‘Don’t even bother,’ Sawyer smirked at him. ‘They’re not going to suddenly get all turn-coat because of anything you say.’

  ‘It’s not what I say that matters,’ Cody replied, keeping his voice even. ‘It’s what you do that counts.’

  ‘And what the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Sawyer snapped back.

  ‘You murdered one of your best men,’ Cody replied. ‘You call me a murderer but I killed in self-defence. You killed Cyrus in cold blood, shot him in the back. That’s who you are, Sawyer. You really think that any of these people, whether inside cages or outside of them, is going to watch that and think they can trust you as far as they could throw you?’

  ‘I provide them with everything they want.’

  Cody nodded. ‘But nothing that they need. Where is Captain Mears?’

  ‘Otherwise indisposed,’ Sawyer muttered as he reached up and touched the crucifix now dangling from his throat. ‘We had a disagreement.’

  ‘You act like human life has no meaning,’ Cody said, ‘and it’s your downfall. Hank was the only person with the skills to sail us out of here and the charts to find Eden.’

  ‘I said he was otherwise indisposed,’ Sawyer snapped, ‘not dead. You think me an idiot?’

  ‘What happened to your face, Sawyer?’

  Sawyer turned away and fiddled with the handle of his sabre. ‘I understand that you have something for us, Doctor Ryan. Coordinates, I believe,’ Sawyer added. ‘You’ll share them with us, now.’

  ‘Was it your family?’ Cody asked.

  Sawyer slid the bright metal sabre from its sheath and casually levelled it across the table at Cody and Maria, who flinched away from the wicked blade.

  ‘Coordinates,’ he repeated, ‘but I’ll give you a sweetener. You tell me and I’ll make sure you come with us, you and your daughter here.’

  Cody’s heart skipped a beat. A mental image of his companions back in the cages flashed through his mind. Sawyer clairvoyantly sensed his conflicted emotions.

  ‘They hate you, Ryan, just like they hate me,’ he said. ‘They’d abandon you in a heartbeat and your daughter too, just to get revenge. You caused the death of one of your own, hiding your crimes. You’re like me, Ryan, we’re the same. Horrible things have happened to us and we’ve had to adapt, survive and evolve to stay alive in this world of ours. It’s not pretty, is it? And it’s not pleasant, but we’re alive and others are not because they could not do what we have done. Have you ever read Homer’s Iliad?’

  Cody nodded vacantly, unable to meet Sawyer’s eye as he spoke.

  ‘A most revealing insight into the human condition,’ Sawyer went on, ‘of love, of hate, of betrayal and revenge. My favourite line is that of Achilles’ lament to King Priam: “We men are wretched t
hings, and the gods, who have no cares themselves, have woven sorrow into the very pattern of our lives.”.’

  Cody stared into the distance, but then his eyes focused back on Sawyer once more as the mythical warrior’s later words flickered into existence in his mind.

  ‘“You must endure and not be broken hearted, lamenting for your son will do no good at all.”‘

  Sawyer’s expression slipped and he swallowed.

  ‘See, you wouldn’t have got those wounds from an accident I don’t think,’ Cody said quietly. ‘The scar tissue is on the side of your head but also on the front of your chest, so you must have been burned and turned your head away from the heat. Your hands are also scarred but I’m guessing your legs are not. I figure you weren’t trapped, Sawyer. You were trying to reach somebody, weren’t you, through flames?’

  Sawyer glared catatonically at Cody, the sabre quivering as he held it.

  ‘Family,’ Cody whispered. ‘You lost them, in a fire, couldn’t reach them. Got burned trying. Your son, perhaps? Is it that which really makes you think of King Priam?’

  Sawyer edged the sabre toward Maria, who turned her head away and buried it in Cody’s neck. ‘Coordinates, or I’ll take your little girl and hang her from the fences outside.’

  Cody felt anguish surge through his veins, unable to choose between rage and grief.

  ‘She’s a child,’ he snapped. ‘Is that who you are? A child killer?’

  ‘I’ll have her working the land when she’s old enough,’ Sawyer replied. ‘You should thank me for looking after her. That can change.’

  ‘You’re no psychopath Sawyer,’ Cody rasped. ‘You’ve just lost the will to trust people, to believe that there’s a decent reason for living, for carrying on. It allows you to threaten little children but only if there’s a pair of thugs in the room to back you up.’

  Sawyer’s thin lips creased into a tight grin, a thin veil to whatever storms were raging inside his mind.

  ‘Last chance, Ryan.’

  Cody let the new anguish go, resigned to the fact that he could not change the man sitting before him.

  ‘The coordinates are in my diary,’ he said, ‘aboard the Phoenix. They’re tucked inside.’

  Sawyer held the blade in place for a moment longer before slowly withdrawing it and sliding it into its sheath. He clapped his hands, the sound echoing around the room.

  ‘There, see? That wasn’t so tough.’

  Cody held his daughter close to him and closed his eyes, not willing to let Sawyer’s joy contaminate his own at holding her again. Sawyer gestured to the guards, who lumbered over.

  ‘Take Ryan back to his cage,’ Sawyer said. ‘The girl goes downstairs. Keep her under guard.’

  Cody looked up at Sawyer. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘Insurance,’ Sawyer snapped. ‘I don’t want you running around in your cage like a demented chimp rallying my workers into rebellion. So you’ll be nice and quiet, like a good boy, understood?’

  Cody held Maria tightly.

  ‘Don’t you harm her,’ he hissed. ‘Don’t let happen to her whatever happened to your family.’

  Sheet lightning danced behind Sawyer’s eyes as he clicked his fingers at the guards.

  Something heavy clubbed into the back of Cody’s neck and his vision starred as he slumped forward in the chair. He heard Maria’s cries as she was snatched from his grasp, felt himself dragged off the chair, but his limbs would not respond as his mind filled with darkness.

  ***

  35

  The boat bumped up against the quay as Reece guided it in and leaped up onto the boardwalk to tie it off.

  Saunders managed to haul himself upright, a thick dressing tied around the wound in his leg and his jeans soaked with blood. Reece watched anxiously as the old sailor dragged himself up onto the quay, sweat beading on his skin.

  ‘Take it easy,’ Reece said, gripping Saunders’ hand to help him up.

  ‘Now you tell me.’

  Reece glanced up at the soaring city skyline, the skyscrapers looming dark against the ominous clouds. He had rowed them across the mouth of Fort Point Channel to a mooring on Harbour Walk, right on the edge of the city where the team had gone ashore. Boston Common was barely a mile away across town but he could see already that some of the streets were flooded and the thick odour of raw sewage spilled from the silent depths of the city.

  ‘Beacon Street’s not that far,’ Reece said, ‘but you’d best stay here.’

  Saunders chuckled as he turned a twinkling eye in Reece’s direction. ‘Ain’t no way that’s happening kid.’

  ‘You’ll slow me down,’ Reece insisted. ‘If we have to leave in a hurry how the hell are you going to run with your leg in that state?’

  Saunders bit his lip as he looked down at his jeans. The dressing was holding for now but blood soaked his thigh. Exhausted and hungry, Reece knew damned well that any exertion would be enough to put Saunders out like a light.

  ‘Stay here,’ he ordered the old man, ‘be ready to cast the lines if we show up.’

  Saunders sat on the quay and looked Reece up and down for a brief moment.

  ‘You’ve sure come on a ways since we picked you up,’ he said.

  ‘A lot’s happened.’

  Saunders reached around to his belt, pulled his pistol from it and handed it to Reece. ‘I get into trouble I can row myself out of range. You’ll need the ammunition.’

  Reece hefted the pistol in his hand for a moment and realised that there was no good reason not to take it with him.

  ‘You know where Long Wharf is?’ Saunders asked. Reece shook his head and the old man gestured over his shoulder. ‘Maybe three hundred yards north, around the headland. If I have to move, that’s where I’ll head.’

  Reece nodded and stuffed the pistol into his jeans.

  ‘Good luck,’ Saunders said.

  Reece turned and hurried off the quay. He crossed Atlantic Avenue, the broad asphalt visible beneath a haze of green shoots and mosses. An occasional abandoned vehicle showing the first signs of rust blocked his way, but within a couple of minutes he was walking down what had once been Pearl Street, soaring buildings either side of him as he dodged pools of filthy, stagnant water.

  It took him twenty minutes to cross the city’s financial district and reach the edge of Boston Common. The eerie silence and darkened buildings seemed to pursue him as he walked. He looked over his shoulder frequently, as though hordes of zombies might suddenly pour from the abandoned buildings, hungry for his flesh.

  The silence and the desolation was at once both intoxicating and frightening. The bizarre elation at being alone and utterly free in the huge city began to fade as Reece realised the true extent of mankind’s suffering and loss. It wasn’t just the bodies he saw rotting in doorways or the abandoned and bloodstained vehicles in the streets, but the pervasive silence. Reece began to realise that the city had become a monument to what mankind had once achieved but would never manage again. The cities would never again be filled with light and life, the hustle and bustle of mankind flowing like blood through its arterial streets.

  Reece slowed and for a few moments stood at the corner of Hamilton Place and just listened. There was almost no noise but for the small sounds of birds nested in the trees of the common across the street, calling for the dawn. Reece felt new fear inside of him as the last of his excitement at coming ashore vanished like the last voices from these very streets. Mankind had fallen.

  It was truly over.

  ‘Jesus,’ he uttered.

  Visions of family, of friends from school and clubs, the countless faces from his life known both well and briefly flashed through his mind in a rush of realisation and dread as he realised that they were all gone. Long dead. He had spent much of his life shunning human contact, and now there was nobody left. Reece leaned against a street lamp and rubbed his face, as though he were dreaming and would suddenly wake up and see cars and people and trucks and hear the city’s noise a
ll around him.

  Instead, he heard only the birds. Above, clouds blustered by above the buildings, bruised dark grey as though pummelled by the blows from winds that had not yet penetrated the dense city streets.

  Movement caught his eye and in the pale light he saw somebody walking up near the State House. Reece ducked across the street and into the shelter of trees at the edge of the common. He hurried forward until he could see the State House before him on Beacon Hill.

  The stench of decaying bodies hit him quickly, as did the feeble murmuring of men and women chained to the fences outside. A pair of guards patrolled with bored steps just inside the fence, one of them leaving a trail of blue cigarette smoke as he puffed away.

  Trees lined either side of the main gardens, which were flanked by secondary entrances. The light was still low, the gloomy dawn still holding shadows as though reluctant to shed light on the sombre scene below. Reece moved west through the shelter of the common’s trees and crossed Beacon Street further down and out of sight of the state house before moving back up the street and clambering over a fence into the state house’s west grounds.

  He crept up a long flight of broad steps that led toward the west wing, staying low enough to avoid being spotted by the gate guards to his right, and then moved along past a mounted statue to a smaller set of doors set back into the west wing of the house. He tested the handle as quietly as he could, but the doors were firmly locked. Reece quickly pulled off his jacket and bundled it across the surface of the window. Then, he clicked his pistol’s safety catch off and fired a single shot into the jacket. The muffled crack of the gunshot was mostly swallowed by the jacket, but the noise was amplified by the surrounding walls of the wing.

  Reece heard a voice coming from the direction of the main gate, questions followed by a brisk response. He pulled his jacket away from the window and ran in a crouch along the wall of the main gardens to peek through the decorative foliage across the lawns toward the gate.

  One of the guards was crossing the lawn toward him, a rifle held ready.