Eden, p.14
Eden, page 14
For a while, Dylan had felt that he had been left behind, stuck in place at the moment Kat had gone, floundering. He continued his expeditions, sometimes with Jenn and the team and sometimes without, but however far he travelled he felt frozen in place in his personal life. Then recently he and Selina had started growing closer, and whatever it was between them—a deep affection for sure, something fresh that was perhaps maturing into love—helped him keep step with life once again. He was starting to feel that he had moved on as well. He still carried love for Kat, but it was old and stale like a monochrome memory, not vital and alive.
They headed into that third day filled with nervous energy. As the going became more complex and technical, with some slow climbing and scrambling up and down to negotiate a series of deep ravines, Dylan began to feel that their true journey was just beginning. The first couple of days had constituted a settling-in, adapting to their surroundings and letting Eden become more familiar to them, as they became known to Eden. The clothing in the trees, the sense of being watched, the old dried-up body, they were all vital to that adaptation. He felt that Eden was now a part of them all. Although he did not believe they were part of Eden. That would never happen.
As noon approached and the going became easier, it was Dylan who heard something moving through the forest close to them.
“Wait up,” he said, and the others came to a halt. For several seconds the sounds he’d heard continued. Branches swished and snapped, something crashed through undergrowth, and a hundred metres away a scatter of birds were startled aloft. Then the noise drifted away, carried as whispers through the tree canopy.
The others watched and listened.
“Thought I saw something in that direction a few minutes ago,” Cove said, pointing.
“And said nothing?” Lucy snapped.
“An animal,” Cove said. “Or just an echo of our movements.”
“Nothing out there now,” Gee said.
Dylan thought they were wrong.
He was beginning to think Lucy might have been right.
They moved into the early afternoon, and just as Dylan began to think about stopping for a drink and some food, Cove and Aaron skidded to a halt down the slope ahead of him. After a pause Cove turned to look back up at the others, and Dylan’s first thought was, He’s found Kat lying there dead.
It was not Kat. It was not anyone. The camp they’d found was deserted.
The forest seemed silent now, and nothing kept pace with them. There was no secretive pause of movement and sound when they stopped. Whatever else was in Eden with them had left them to discover this place alone. Dylan blinked, and a shocking image flashed into his mind—exposed teeth in the shadows beneath distant trees, grinning as their owners uttered soundless laughter. He blinked again but the teeth and laughter were gone.
The river was to their right. He’d been consciously following it again for the past couple of hours, taking advantage of the relatively flat flood plain. The deserted camp was at the junction of the river and a smaller tributary running into it, and the constant whisper of the slow-moving water was the only sound. He might have chosen to camp here too.
“Stuff looks good quality.” Cove led the way into the camp. “Who’d leave kit like this behind?”
“No one,” Aaron said. “Not on purpose.”
Dylan was scanning the place for anything he might recognise. It felt foolish, but maybe Kat still wore her bright green waterproof on expeditions, or carried the rucksack he’d bought her in Canada, blue with grey side pockets. He saw neither.
Poke had said that the previous expedition came into Eden carrying much more equipment than them. And guns. Dylan had thought that strange to begin with. Why would Kat burden herself with heavy and unnecessary kit? And she hated guns.
“She never meant to leave,” Jenn said. She was close beside him, not quite touching. They had still not told the others about Kat’s illness, and he wondered if Aaron knew. Probably. That made him jealous, but also grateful that his daughter loved someone enough that she could confide in him.
“But where’s everyone else?” Dylan asked.
There were two small pop-up tents still erected, though both had tears in their fabric and broken poles. The rips reminded him of the tattered clothing they had found up on those trees. Knife holes, or maybe claws, Aaron had said.
“Hello!” Selina called. Her voice winged into the forest around them and out across the river.
“Been pushed into a dead end,” Aaron said.
“Nothing’s pushed us,” Dylan said. “I’ve navigated us here.”
“Really?” Aaron asked. “Those noises in the forest didn’t edge you—”
“There’s nothing out there now,” he said, suddenly angry. “And it doesn’t matter. What matters is this.” He walked past the first of the tents and into the camp.
“If something came at us, we’d have to swim,” Aaron said, quieter. No one responded. Either they thought he was panicking, or they were too unnerved to consider the possibility.
Dylan wandered through the camp, desperate to see something familiar and also hoping he would not. The tents might have been attacked, or perhaps the camp had been here so long that the elements had done their worst. Equipment was strewn at random, caught on bushes and blown against a large tangle of old branches washed onto the shore by the river in flood. A bivvy bag, colours faded by exposure to sun and rain. A torn roll mat. A plastic bag of dehydrated food, still sealed.
At some distance from the tents, nearer the junction of river and tributary, a fire pit still displayed scorched stones. A metal tripod hung over it, but there was no pot or pan. Ashes from the fire had long since blown away or been soaked into the ground.
Dylan kicked around in the pit, uncovering a scattering of splintered, blackened bones.
“Been a while,” Cove said. He ducked into one of the tents, rooted around, and came out with a couple of sports tops.
“Any names in them?” Dylan asked.
“Nothing.” He sniffed the tops, dropped them. It was a strange gesture. “No one would have left a camp like this.”
“Certainly not Kat,” Selina said.
“Unless they had to,” Lucy said. She was looking out across the river, as if expecting to see a soaked and bedraggled group hauling themselves onto the far bank.
“Poke said they came in a couple of months ago,” Aaron said. “This place is several weeks old, at least. Whoever camped here is long gone.”
“Hopefully,” Dylan said. He couldn’t help thinking of that old body in the tree, probably years old rather than months. He blinked. Saw grinning teeth in the shadows once more, Eden laughing at them all.
“Doesn’t look like they were racing,” Cove said. Tattered as it was, the camp didn’t look like a brief stopping point. Dylan and his team carried two micro-tents, but they’d only use them if the weather grew too terrible even for waterproof clothing, and they’d rarely stop for more than three or four hours at a time. This camp even had an excavated fire pit.
She didn’t come here to race, he thought, and he caught Jenn’s eye. They were both thinking the same thing. Maybe she didn’t leave this place at all. The river could have carried away anything, or anyone.
“Got a bag here,” Gee said. He was along the tributary bank, kicking through high grass a few metres from the water. He held up a rucksack. It was red, water bladder pipe curving from its top like exposed gut. The others closed in as he undid the cover clasp and opened it. He held the bag down and away from his body and peered inside, as if afraid it might contain scorpions or spiders.
Dylan stepped closer. Gee nodded, and Dylan reached into the bag. He brought out a waterproof top, a handful of energy bars and gels, and a penknife.
“Phone?” Lucy asked.
“Hang on,” he said. He dropped the contents by his feet as he brought them out—a first aid kit, opened and partly used; a notebook, swollen with moisture; a baseball cap. “That’s it.” He examined the cap closely, flipped through the notebook. It was blank. He didn’t find a pen.
“No name? Nothing else?” Cove asked.
“Nothing.”
“Someone left it behind,” Gee said, dropping the rucksack on top of its contents.
Or someone didn’t leave at all, Dylan thought. He couldn’t understand why Kat’s team would have left their equipment like this. Even if they’d come in with her intending to race, and she’d grown sick and died, they would have probably buried her in Eden and then hiked out. No need to leave the camp half-formed and equipment still bagged up.
He looked at the first aid kit again. It had been opened and contained no bandages, no sterile dressings. He pocketed the penknife.
“There’s nothing to keep us here,” Lucy said. She looked at Jenn. “Looks like you might find your mother yet.” Dylan saw a flicker of hope in his daughter’s eyes.
“We should eat now that we’ve stopped for a bit,” Selina said. She was eyeing the water rushes growing along the banks of the river, and Dylan could tell she wanted to sketch. But he agreed with Lucy.
“We’ll move on and eat somewhere else,” he said. “Another hour, maybe.”
“Why?” Selina asked, and he felt a flush of anger at her. Because my wife might have been here! he wanted to say, but that was unfair on her, and on himself. Kat wasn’t his wife anymore, and if she had been here she was gone now, one way or another.
They had found nothing that resembled a grave.
“I just don’t want to stay here,” he said.
They checked around the camp for anything useful. Cove slipped into the tents again and spent some time searching inside. Finding nothing of interest, he began scratching around outside the tents.
“Cove?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just looking.”
“For what?”
Cove shrugged.
Dylan debated packing everything away and burying it all. The Zones were meant to be left pristine and untouched, not strewn with abandoned belongings and refuse that might take decades or more to degrade and break down. In the end they decided to leave it as it was. It wasn’t their responsibility, and they all agreed that making haste was a priority.
None of them voiced what Dylan felt—that they wanted to leave the camp because it left them deeply troubled.
20
“Total recorded worldwide statistics as follows (it has been assumed that unrecorded statistics are substantial, but no reasonable estimate is available):
Zone infiltrations (groups consisting of 3 or more individuals): 173
Infiltrators captured: 435
Known infiltrators not accounted for: 443 (this statistic also refers to known infiltrators not caught in the months or years following infiltration of specific Zones)
Infiltrators killed (during contact with Zone Protection Forces): 44”
Leaked document from United Zone Council 2nd Annual General Meeting
They worked upstream along the tributary until they found a place to cross. It was ten metres wide and shallow, and there was a scattering of rocks protruding above the surface. If they were careful they might be able to jump from rock to rock and avoid getting wet feet.
Gee went first, light and nimble as ever, and the others followed.
“Jesus Christ!” Gee shouted. Dylan looked up in time to see him slipping from one of the larger rocks and into the water. He splashed onto his side and kicked away, pushing back with his feet against the flow, unconcerned with the soaking he was getting and focussed only on what he’d seen between the rocks.
“What is it?” Dylan shouted. The others were splashing out towards Gee, Lucy grabbing him beneath the arm and hauling him upright. He leaned into her and edged back a bit more.
“Fuck,” Lucy said.
By the time Dylan and Jenn reached them the others were all standing in the stream close to the rocks, water parting and splashing around their knees. He took a deep breath and followed their gaze.
The body was wedged low between two rocks, feet facing upstream, head tilted back far enough to face downstream. Its arms were held up against the rocks that were pressed against its ribcage and upper chest. Hands were clenched. The right arm swayed back and forth against the stone, shifted by the water, a dead wave.
The man was naked, his skin a soft pearly white. A tattoo on his right pectoral was a startling splash of colour just beneath the surface, like an exotic creature attached to his chest.
“Just what the fucking hell…?” Cove breathed.
Water pulsed from the man in spurts. His empty eye sockets, ears, open mouth, all formed jets that splashed behind his head and past the rocks, like a decorative fountain. Dylan looked at his exposed legs, groin and stomach, searching for the place where water might enter and power up and through his body. The stream’s surface was too disturbed to see, and he didn’t want to look closer. He didn’t want to touch.
“How long has he been there?” Jenn asked.
“Can’t have been long,” Selina said. “A few days of that and he’d…”
“Come apart,” Lucy said. “But even after days, I don’t know how that could happen. It’s like the river’s made him part of it. It’s holding him here.”
“The rocks are holding him,” Aaron said.
“And the river’s flowing through him,” Lucy said.
“We should get him out of there,” Dylan said, but no one made a move towards the body. He couldn’t blame them. He took the first step, and as he reached for the man’s arms the right hand waved again, elbow bending slightly, straightening. Urging him closer.
Dylan’s heart hammered. He focussed on the man’s tattooed chest, trying to make out the design as he reached out and closed his hand around the left forearm. The flesh was as soft as foam and his fingers sank in, pink-tinged water seeping out around his hand. He cried out and stepped back, squatting to dip his hands into the stream and let the water swill the fluid away. The mark he’d made in the man’s arm remained, the squeezed flesh slowly, slowly regaining its former shape.
“It’s waterlogged,” Dylan said.
“That doesn’t happen,” Lucy said. “Not like that.” She stepped forward and Cove went with her, reaching at the same time, each taking one of the dead man’s arms. They pulled. The limb Cove held shifted too much but the body didn’t move, and he let go and stumbled back, eyes wide, slipping on slick rocks. Aaron grabbed him, saving him from a full soaking.
The arm slumped down across the man’s chest, rocking there as water rolled it back and forth.
“We leave him,” Dylan said. “It’s not fresh, but not that old either.” He turned to Jenn. “Recognise him from any of your mother’s photos?”
“I… don’t know,” Jenn said. “His face is…” She trailed off.
“Must be one of her team,” he said.
“So now we go and find Kat,” Selina said. “Something’s very wrong here. Something went bad, and they had to leave their camp and run like—”
“What did that to him?” Aaron asked.
“He might have fallen in upstream, maybe dead already, and been washed down,” Selina said. “Water ripped off his clothing.”
“But the water flowing through him like that.”
Selina shrugged.
“We go on,” Dylan said. “Maybe the others are in trouble somewhere, holed up. Cove found a clip but not weapons, so maybe they’re still armed, defending themselves.”
“Against what?” Lucy asked. “Those things following me?”
“There was nothing following you!” Cove said.
“What, now you don’t believe me?”
“You’re seeing things, hearing things,” he said.
“Come on,” Dylan said. “We’re doing ourselves no favours staying here. Doing him no favours either.” He wished he could lift the body, commit the tattoo to memory, because this was someone’s husband or son. But he didn’t want to touch the corpse again. He could still feel its cold, soft flesh against his fingertips.
They moved off, careful to pass the rocks and trapped body upstream.
“There’s no smell,” Jenn said. “Even the parts of him that are exposed don’t seem to have decayed.”
“Could be he’s only been dead a day or two,” Lucy said.
“Yeah, he’s nowhere near as old as that body in the tree,” Cove said.
“Maybe,” Jenn said. “Or maybe the river’s keeping him fresh.”
Dylan felt an urgency dawning inside him, a desperate need to move forward and search for Kat. Something bad must have happened here, and whatever time her illness had left her must have been running out. Maybe her text to Jenn had been an unconscious invitation for her and him to find Kat before she died. He could no longer save their relationship or fix what had happened, but it suddenly seemed important to see her one last time. Being apart from her was bad enough. Knowing he would never see her ever again… he wasn’t sure he could handle that.
His sense of urgency was increased by finding the body. If what he and Jenn suspected was correct, Kat had come here to die on her own terms. Not to be killed.
Twenty minutes after leaving the body behind they snacked quickly to refuel, then followed the river, edging west when the waterway disappeared into a sheer canyon and a ridge of land blocked their route. They could have climbed, but it would have taken too long, and any technical climb was dangerous, however prepared and proficient they were.
Dylan’s elevated heartbeat refused to settle, and it was only partly down to exertion. The group was silent from the weight of what they had found. They moved closer together than usual, less than twenty metres between Lucy on point and Gee bringing up the rear. Dylan took comfort from proximity. They were friends, people he could trust, people he loved. He heard their breathing and felt their warmth, and he experienced a sudden rush of optimism. We can weather anything, he thought.
