Eden Green

by Fiona van Dahl

  “Jesus, you’ve got a crush on him! I know I joke that next time, you’ll meet Ted Bundy at — heh, Tedrin Bundy! — at an anime club meeting and want to move in with him, but I was joking!”

  “Yes, I’ve made some bad choices in the past.” She takes my hands and goes into Earnest Best Friend mode. “Please, stop holding them against me.”

  “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. Dude killed Alien Bambi.”

  “They’re not all Bambi,” she snarls, dropping my hands. “There are real monsters out there, and he and I want to protect this city from them. If you had seen them, you’d understand!”

  All at once, I’m so done with this. I put my face in my hands for a moment, then heave a sigh. “I’m going back to the car. You can go home with him to whatever hole he lives in — he probably has a shrine to Dana Carvey covered in the fingers of women he’s killed — or you can come with me.”

  She gives me a hurt look. “You want me to choose between you and him? Don’t make me do that. That’s not what friends do.”

  “Suit yourself.” I start back down the long row of warehouses. There are streetlamps shining along the outer road; it’ll be nice to have some light besides my phone.

  Ron’s calling my name every few seconds, and she sounds worried. I steadfastly ignore her.

  A few streetlamps go out, then come back on, all in a wave. For a precious few seconds, distracted as I am by Ron, I think it must be a weird electrical problem.

  Now Ron is screaming my name. Well that’s melodramatic.

  And then my brain realizes what’s happening. Something has just moved very quickly across the road in front of me, blocking out lights as it went. Now it’s gone.

  I’m frozen to the spot, right out in the open, ears pricked all the way up, and have no idea what it was or where it is now.

  Against the shadows of the distant street, I can suddenly make out a spot of utter blackness the size of a car. It’s on my side of the chain link fence, and it’s getting bigger very fast—

  I hold up my light and there’s a tube of blackness shooting toward me, and at the center is a pitch-black maw gaping wide, ringed with inward-pointing hooks, like a lamprey. My mouth pops open in a little ‘O’.

  Something rams into me from the right and scoops me up, and I’m being carried so quickly that my weight is slammed first one way, then the other. Whoever has me, I wrap my arms around them and cling for dear life.

  We come to a sudden stop and Tedrin sets me down on my feet. His hands are human, grabbing my shoulders to hold me steady. “You alright?” His voice is too calm, too casual.

  I make a panicked ‘uh buh whuh?’ noise and try to figure out where I am. There are warehouses, and the road, but I’ve lost track of north and south, and where the car is.

  He spins me around and points me down an alley between warehouses. “Find something to hide behind,” he orders, and I hear him disappear.

  I stumble to the mouth of the alley and lean against the wall. I’m terrifically dizzy, as if Tedrin was spinning me around and around while carrying me. I suck in deep breaths and blow them out as hard as I can, and the vertigo begins to settle.

  A screeching roar splits the air, and I slam my hands over my ears. That’s what made me dizzy, I realize; whatever just attacked me, it has a scream that could break glass. It’s not point-blank this time, so I’m not thrown into a whirl like before. I feel a headache coming on, though.

  When I look back toward the warehouse road, I can dimly make out the shape of what’s attacking us. Its body is a tube the size of a car, lifted up about five feet off the ground by four stick-legs. From one end emerges a neck like a hose, as long as its body but small enough around that I could probably encircle it with my hands. The end of the hose is a lamprey mouth that widens and narrows as I watch.

  All I can think to compare it to is a giraffe. The shapes are completely different, and yet I just can’t shake the image from my mind. I recognize Tedrin’s doodle in the dirt; this is the kind of thing that ‘killed’ Ron.

  Ron. I can’t see Ron.

  Tedrin stands in the center of the road, facing off with the giraffe. It was roaring at him, I realize; I see him in profile from thirty feet away, and he doesn’t seem affected. In fact, he’s shouting something into one of the alleys, maybe instructing Ron.

  Then he dashes at it, and I gulp at his speed. His feet dig into the dirt and launch him forward; hidden under those ragged jeans are the muscles of an Olympic sprinter. He zig-zags toward it, moving his hands in strange patterns to distract the monster. It rears up on two back legs as he reaches it, and—

  He makes a miscalculation. He jukes right, but it stabs right with one of its front legs.

  It impales him. He becomes a mortally-injured ragdoll.

  I slap a hand over my mouth to hold back a scream. I want to say that my instinct is to improvise a weapon and run out, cover him while he escapes. But truly, my instinct is to be as quiet and invisible as possible.

  The giraffe lifts him up with its leg through his chest, like the last morsel on a shish-kabob. He’s struggling weakly, both hands on the leg, but can’t seem to pull himself free. I picture backward-swept spines digging into his flesh to keep him immobilized, and there’s more bile in the back of my mouth.

  Its snout approaches him and gapes wide. He lets go of the leg and grabs up handfuls of its hooked mouth. With an agonized scream, he wrenches himself sideways, using his weight and the considerable strength of his arms to rip its mouth open.

  It screeches again, this time in pain, and whips its leg sideways. Tedrin comes off with the sound of tearing flesh and goes flying down the road; he slams into a concrete wall and then falls fifteen feet to the dust. I watch him as hard as I can, but he doesn’t move.

  Ron appears out of nowhere with a sheet of corrugated metal, and she’s ripping off strips to use as spears. The bleeding monster roars at her; she roars right back, and hefts a handful of her found weapons.

  I give myself a few seconds to just panic. I keep looking back and forth between Veronica: Warrior Princess and Tedrin’s unmoving body. He was a creep, but I sure as hell didn’t want him dead, dammit. This has gone south so fast. Do we call the cops? Do we hide his body? Oh geez, oh damn, oh sh—

  I suck in a deep breath and fight down everything but the will to survive. I can finish panicking when this is over.

  While Ron is distracting the giraffe, I peer down the warehouse road and figure out that the car is to my left. Hugging the warehouse fronts, I head that way, hating being out in the open but dead-set on getting to the car. By the time it occurs to me that there might be more monsters lurking, I’m at the tear in the fence.

  Nothing molests me between there and the car. I pull open the back seat door, climb in, and peel back a section of scrap carpet.

  I think of myself as a very reasonable, pragmatic person, the one everyone in my life comes to for advice and stability. But there is one very reckless, stupid, pointless thing I keep hidden in my car whenever I’m out and about with Ron.

  I reach under the carpet and my hand closes around metal. I wrench upward and, scraping against the tight hidden compartment, my Remington 870 shotgun slides out. It’s sleek and black, nearly the length of the backseat. The barrel is very cold, and I realize that my hands are shaking.

  I sit down in the back seat with the door hanging open, confirm that the shotgun’s safety is on, and reach down into the back-of-the-seat pouch where they used to keep a road atlas before GPS was invented. I pull out a half-full box of ammunition.

  I can hear Ron screaming my name in the distance; a bolt of terror flies through me. Is she trying to find me, or is she hurt? I force myself to go through safety checks, confirming the chamber is empty and the gun is unloaded, and then I start feeding in rounds. One, two, three, four, five, pump, six. I shove a few more rounds into my pockets — though I doubt I’ll need them, if six can’t save me — then get out and slam the door behind
me. I set my phone in my bra, light facing outward, so I can hold the shotgun with both hands. As I move, the light swings a little but illuminates enough for me to walk.

  I clamber through the tear in the fence and start down the warehouse road at a jog, gun pointed at the ground, safety on. The monster is up ahead, lying on its side, and I can hear it screaming weakly. Its legs are wriggling in the air in the most horrible way, and anything that gets close is bound to get skewered. I can’t see its head.

  There’s someone standing between me and the monster, and it’s much too tall to be Ron. I stop about ten feet from it, twenty feet from the groaning giraffe, and call out, “Hey!”

  Tedrin turns and stares at me, and his eyes are pinpricks lost in white. The front of his shirt is ripped to shreds, and I see at least five horrific wounds. I can actually see through him in one spot, under the sternum. And I’d expected his blood to be black ichor, but in the light of my phone, it’s shining candy red on his shirt, his chest, his lips and chin.

  Without even thinking, I bring the shotgun up and level it at his chest. My hands are shaking so badly that the barrel only points at him about half the time.

  We stare at each other like that for a painfully long time. My fingertip is on the safety, ready to switch it off and fire in one semi-practiced motion. My shoulders already ache from holding up seven pounds of metal.

  He looks at the gun like he’s not sure what it is, and then he goes back to staring into my soul. Slowly, his pupils increase in size until he looks human again, and very tired. He raises a hand, making me jump in fear, but he just presses it against his chest and sighs.

  “How are you still alive?” I demand, voice shaking. “How much can those needles heal?”

  He smiles, then winces, then pulls his hand away from his chest. He holds it out to me, palm-up, offering. His fingertips drip his blood into the dirt at our feet. “Do you want to know what it’s like to die?” His teeth and tongue are bright red behind his lips. “The hardest part is waking up after.”

  Keep him talking. Jesus, his eyes when dilated are almost as bad as when constricted. “We just met, Tedrin, and we don’t seem to like each other. Why offer something like that to me?”

  He chuckles wetly, and more blood comes down his chin. “I gave this to Veronica because I wanted to save her. But you . . . You have the potential to understand.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll observe you two and try to keep Ron out of trouble, but I’m not interested in your weird needle-plague. Besides, I’d have to die in order for it to activate, right? I forgot to put ‘dying’ on my calendar for the week.”

  He watches me calmly, still smiling.

  Ron screams my name from somewhere nearby, and I snap back to reality. I lower the gun and call out, “Ron?”

  Following her voice, I take a wide path around Tedrin and head toward the dying giraffe. Its three remaining legs swing back and forth across the ground, still sharp and coated in what I assume is Tedrin’s blood. Ron is standing near its head, her foot on its neck, holding its severed fourth leg like a spear. She’s breathing hard but looks unhurt.

  “Is Ted okay?” she demands.

  “Uh, I think so. He’s over that-a-way, bleeding a lot.”

  “He’ll heal.”

  “Heh.”

  “What?” she snaps.

  “Er, rhyme. ‘He’ll heal’. It was funny.”

  She gives me a ‘dude-ur-so-retarded’ look, then turns her attention to the creature at her feet. She stabs the spear into its neck over and over near the base, then reaches down with her free hand and pulls apart its flesh. At last, its neck is severed, and we stand back.

  But the legs still move.

  Tedrin appears beside me and coughs blood into his palm. “Its brain is in its main body,” he tells us tiredly, pointing at a spot near the base of its neck. “I’m going to go lie down in the car.”

  “You are not putting your bleeding ass in my car!” I snap, but he’s already meandering that way.

  Ron heaves a sigh. “Just kill it. I don’t want to dig around in its body.” When I hesitate, she gives me a withering look. “You’re the one who’s always saying, don’t bring out a gun unless you’re prepared to use it.”

  I raise the shotgun, switch off the safety, and take aim. “Cover your ears,” I tell her, and she obeys.

  BLAM

  The gun kicks hard against my shoulder, and my world becomes a ringing roar. For a few seconds, all I can do is stand with my eyes closed, point the gun at the ground, and wince. Then I switch the safety back on.

  When I look up, there’s a big hole in the monster, and it’s gone very still. Then, before my eyes, it begins to fall apart. First the legs fall off, and then its flesh dissolves into billions of tiny black needles. They slide down with a soft sssssssssssssssssssssssssss, eventually collapsing into a heap. There’s a light breeze, and a few begin to blow away.

  I swallow, which helps my ears pop. “Hope those don’t get into the drinking water.”

  Ron is already walking away, toward the car. “They’re harmless like that. You have to get the ichor into your bloodstream directly.”

  “And you learned this through rigorous experimentation.”

  “Tedrin has been running around the city for a long time. If it could spread that easily, there’d be thousands of infected.”

  I pick up the gun and follow her, habitually checking the safety. “Are you okay?”

  “Ted took the worst of it.” She shoots me an accusing look. “After all the things you said about him, you saw how he protected you.”

  I hadn’t thought about that, but as I do, the reason occurs to me. “Jesus, Ron, he’s trying to get into your pants, so he’s being nice to your best friend.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Well, after what he just went through to save your dumb ass, consider my pants open for business.”

  “Look, Ron, I’m sorry I didn’t believe you before. There’s a lot more going on here than I understand.”

  She looks a little mollified. “Weird to hear you admit you were wrong.”

  “Only because I’m so rarely wrong.”

  “About Ted, too?”

  I look down at the shotgun, remember pointing it at his chest, remember how tempting it was to pump round after round into him until those creepy eyes went away. “I don’t trust him. And no, not just because you’re the one who met him and you have awful taste. He’s bad news.”

  “Our city being attacked by monsters is bad news.”

  I grit my teeth and blow out a breath through them. “Just promise you’ll keep him at arm’s length for now, until we can find out more.”

  “What, you think I was going to— Tch. Never mind.”

  “You just said your pants are open for—”

  “I make one joke and now I’m a slut?”

  I hold down the ‘unload’ switch on the shotgun and pump the remaining four rounds into the palm of my hand, half to relieve the stress of carrying a loaded gun, and half to assure Ron that I don’t intend to blow a hole in her newest boyfriend.

  We find Tedrin sitting on the ground on the far side of the chain-link fence, his hands pressed to his wounds. He looks up at us, and his face is calm. His eyes dart to my gun and a little smile curls his lips.

  “Healed up yet?” Ron asks perkily.

  With her help, he slowly gets to his feet. He nods dazedly, hugging his chest. “I just need to clean off the blood and get a clean shirt.” He bares a few sharp teeth in a lop-sided grin. “Hungry, too, and we need to stay hydrated.”

  She rubs his shoulder affectionately. “There’s a Burger King a few blocks away. Come to think of it, they probably heard the shot.”

  “We should get going before the cops show up,” I put in, nervously hiding my shotgun behind my back.

  Ron rolls her eyes. “Oh, yeah. ‘We heard gunshots coming from the abandoned part of town, after dark’. I’m sure the cops will be right over.”

  Tedrin smiles at me. �
��Would you like to continue the hunt with us — first for some burgers, and then another monster or two?”

  I look from him to Ron. “You two aren’t calling it quits after that mess?” I rub my forehead. “That’s enough weirdness for one night, and I have work in the morning. I’m clocking out.” I pause, then add, “I can drop you two off at BK.”

  We pile back into the car; Tedrin calls ‘shotgun’. Speaking of which, I pass my gun and spare rounds back to Ron for her to hide under the carpet. We spend the ride rehashing the events of the past twenty minutes — I can hardly believe our adventure flew by that quickly, but the radio clock doesn’t lie.

  As I pull into the parking lot, Tedrin turns to me. “It was very good that you brought a gun. I had you pegged as the type who can’t fight for herself, but I was wrong. You’re a valuable team member.”

  Ron and I stare at him, then at each other, and she starts snickering. “See?” she demands, pointing at him. “I told you!”

  I’m not sure what statement she could be referring to, but it doesn’t matter; I’m blown away. “Well, I mean, I was too late to really help.”

  “Maybe next time you can bring the gun along at the start.”

  “I’m not completely sure there’ll be a next time.”

  He nods a little, then looks back at Ron. “Could I have a private word with Eden?”

  She looks to me; I shrug and nod. “I’ll be right inside,” she says quietly, and gets out.

  We sit watching her saunter into the Burger King. I wonder if I should be scared, but surely Tedrin wouldn’t be stupid enough to attack me here, where there are security cameras and potential witnesses coming and going.

  When I glance at him, he’s smiling at me. “You and I will never get along,” he sighs.

  “Probably got that right,” I mumble.

  “I think we can work together, though. I meant what I said. I wish you would stop trying to drive a wedge between Veronica and I.”

  “What’s the deal with you two, anyway? Are you teaching her, or fighting beside her, or trying to get into her pants?”