Then maybe West could move on.
But that was insane. Winter was at our door, food would be scarce. Temperatures would make it difficult to survive.
And what about Gabriel? Royce? Victoria, and Brady, and Lin, and Tuck?
And West?
I couldn’t leave.
Home was wherever the people I cared about were. Home wasn’t a dot on the map.
The soft crunch of sand behind me let me know Avian had stepped out of the tent. I took a few quick, deep breaths in attempt to calm myself down. I was getting worked up, my emotions too close to the surface.
Avian stopped at my side, his hands stuffed into his pockets. He didn’t say anything, just stared out over the dark waters with his ever serious eyes.
I was grateful for Avian’s silence. From the way he stood, the way he angled himself towards me just slightly, the way he kept pressing his lips together, I knew he could tell this adjustment had been too much. But he also had the sense to know when I just needed him there, even if he didn’t say anything.
“What’s on the other side?” I asked quietly, squeezing myself tighter as the temperature dropped a few more degrees. “What’s across the water?”
“A whole lot of ocean, for a long ways,” he said as he watched the lightning that started out far from the coast. “You’ll start to see the curve of the Earth before you get to land. There are some scattered islands, but they’re small. Then eventually you’ll run into the Asian continent, Australia if you veer south.”
“Do you think the Bane have gotten as bad in those places as they are here?” I asked.
“It’s hard to imagine they haven’t,” he answered, his voice heavy and sad. “TorBane took hold worldwide within a few weeks.”
I nodded. The wind started to pick up, fanning my hair behind me, making my breath catch in my throat.
“Maybe there’s a place out there,” I said, my eyes glazing over. Everything went blurry as my focus turned internal. “A place where the infection didn’t travel to. One of those islands in a warm place. There’d be trees and sand, animals for hunting. It’d be safe.”
Avian’s arms wrapped around me from behind, his warmth sending a wave of goosebumps flashing across my skin.
“There is,” he said, his lips close to my ear as he rested his chin on my shoulder. “That place is in each of us. It’s what’s kept us all going the last six years.”
Something stung at the back of my eyes and I hated my human side for being weak. I couldn’t vocalize that for the last few weeks I had felt like that place was disappearing for me.
As soon as I thought it, I knew how terrible and selfish that was. We’d won here in New Eden. We’d defeated the Bane and we’d found safety. At least for now. I had no right to complain or to be unhappy. I was alive and so were the people I cared about.
A flash of light let us know that the storm was moving closer to land and the clap of thunder followed just one second later.
Avian took my hand in his and led me back to the tent.
SEVEN
I inhaled slowly, leveling my eyes along the sight. And exhaling, I squeezed the trigger.
The old cup lid I’d tacked up on the outside wall of the long forgotten about house exploded as I hit it dead center. I was having a good time with Avian’s gift.
“Perfect,” Avian said. I glanced over at him to find a wide smile on his face. He’d started smiling so much more since the Pulse went off. “Not that I’d expect anything less from you.”
“Weapons and shooting are easy,” I said as I refilled the magazine. “It’s people that are difficult. This is just calculation and a good eye.”
A can that lay discarded on the ground down the road jumped into the air as I hit it.
“I wonder if we could make an arrow with an explosive head,” I said as I watched Avian take aim with his new bow. “An arrow alone might not be enough to take down a Bane, but you make it explosive, and if you can embed it in their chest or something, and you’d take them out for sure.”
“Sounds like an afternoon of fun for Royce,” Avian said as he released the arrow.
It would be. There might not be any Bane around at the moment, but that didn’t keep Royce from making all kinds of new toys of mass destruction. As a former weapons specialist, he had the deranged creativity to create anything, if he could only get his hands on the resources.
“You hungry?” Avian asked, embedding yet another perfect shot. I still wasn’t used to seeing him handle weapons, and even more so, use them so accurately. Avian was a better shot than I was with a bow.
“Ugh,” I groaned. “I need to go hunting. I can’t stand any more of this canned and last-forever food they have here.”
Avian chuckled. “Yeah, I’ll admit, I miss our gardens so much it hurts some days. What I wouldn’t do for a few fresh tomatoes or a handful of strawberries.”
“Don’t remind me,” I growled, placing my Desert Eagle in the holster at my hip. “That’s cruel.”
Shouldering his bow, Avian took my hand in his and we slowly made our way back to the beach.
The wind had finally died out after raging all night. The tent had flapped and whipped around, the stakes were yanked out of the ground. The only thing that kept it from blowing away was the weight of our bodies.
Neither of us had gotten much sleep that night. But at least we weren’t caged up in the hospital.
By morning I was feeling better, or at least I didn’t feel like I was getting overwhelmed by everything going on inside of me.
Avian set to building a fire to cook our meager meal and I stashed our weapons beneath our cots. It was an impressive hoard of firepower I’d been building. I had another stockpile in the closest house that looked out over the water. The Bane were gone, for now, but that didn’t mean I let my guard down.
I stepped back outside and watched as Avian started cooking our meal.
“You were pretty aggressive with West yesterday,” I said, not wanting to talk about the event, but knowing it had to be addressed.
Avian grunted, but didn’t look up from the fire. His expression darkened.
“Want to tell me what that was about?” I asked. “I’ve never seen you like that.”
He sighed, placing a pan over the fire and dumping some kind of substance into it. When he was finished he stayed where he was, kneeling on one knee.
“I keep losing people,” he said, finally meeting my eye. “I lost all my commanding officers, my fellow soldiers. Then I had to shoot my own parents to save Sarah. Then Tye got infected. Given that one was my own fault.”
I shook my head, about to argue that he couldn’t have known Tye would get infected because of a request he made, but Avian plowed on. “And then Sarah dies of something I can’t cure.”
He ran a hand over his short hair, his mouth pulling downward in a frown. He shook his head and I noticed then that he was trembling just slightly. I crossed to kneel by him in the sand. I put a hand on either side of his face, drawing his eyes to mine.
“You’re all I have left, Eve,” he said, his voice husky and low. “I will do anything—anything—to keep something from happening to you. I’m tired of being the calm one who always fixes things. I’m not going to sit back and watch West hurt you.”
“I know,” I said quietly, searching his eyes. There was regret in them. I knew he wasn’t proud of what he’d done. But there was also desperation. I felt it too.
I pressed my lips to his. All the hurt and pain and confusion slowly melted away as his hand came up to my hair, pulling me closer.
“Avian, Eve,” a familiar voice called from up by the road. I turned to see Tuck walking up on the beach, an unfamiliar electric car parked on the road at the edge of the sand.