Eden, p.18
Eden, page 18
They headed east along the ridgeline, and every minute brought more light, pushing shadows back into the deeper places of the world, forcing them beneath rocks and into the copses of trees speckling the high ridge. To the north the whitecapped mountains were ablaze again, the snow reflecting the pinks and reds of the dawn. As though Eden was bleeding.
It had drawn blood into its soil. Aaron’s scream had convinced them all of that.
Dylan blamed himself for what had happened. He was the team leader, and he had brought them here. Every decision was his, and those decisions had led them to camping in the canyon, building the fire—being attacked.
He could have taken more notice of their feelings of being watched. He should have turned around and gone back when Jenn had told him about Kat’s illness, or when they’d found the first bodies. Everything about Eden had felt wrong, but he had let his eagerness to succeed, and his desire to find Kat, blind him to that.
Poke told them that Eden would chew them up and spit them out. It had taken its first bite.
“Dad!”
Dylan let out a gasp, almost a sob, when he saw Gee and Jenn running towards them. They met and he and Jenn crushed each other into a hug. He felt her terror, her loss. She was warm and shivering. He kissed the side of her face and tasted tears and blood.
“You’re hurt,” Lucy said, and Dylan held Jenn’s shoulders and stood back, looking her up and down.
“No,” Jenn said. She stared at her father. “It’s not mine.”
He saw the mess down her legs then. Her running tights were torn on the left side, and speckled with blood and other matter.
“Aaron’s dead,” Gee said.
“What happened to…?” Cove asked, nodding to his arm.
“Shoved it down the thing’s throat. Don’t suppose you’ve got a spare?”
“You saw him?” Dylan asked. “You’re sure?”
Jenn only stared at him, unblinking.
“We need to get the fuck out of here, Dylan,” Gee said.
“We’ve lost our kit,” Dylan said. “The camp fire spread, burned it. We’ve got some food in Selina’s pack, a bit of water and some purification tabs.”
“Spread?” Gee asked.
“Something did it,” Selina said.
“So which way?” Lucy asked.
“We lost the map, too,” Dylan said. “But I think back up the ridge towards the hills, then south. It’s not the way we came, so maybe that’ll throw them off our scent.”
“Whatever attacked us can find us whenever it wants,” Selina said. “Big cat, wolf, whatever, it’s faster than us, better suited to the terrain. Superior in every way.”
“We’ve got endurance on our side,” Cove said.
“Right,” Gee said. “We keep running, those things get tired. Right, Selina?”
“It’s true of some carnivores. They’re suited for the short, sharp hunt and kill.”
Her final word hung in the air. Jenn exhaled and leaned into Dylan, resting her forehead on his shoulder. He put his arm around her, wishing he could truly protect her.
“I’m so sorry,” Selina whispered.
“I can’t believe…” Lucy said, but she could find no adequate words. “Not Aaron.” She came to them, touching the back of Jenn’s neck as if to draw out the awfulness of what had happened.
“So let’s go,” Cove said. “All of us close together means safety in numbers. Last night they were at an advantage. In daylight we’ll be more even.”
“So are we just ignoring everything that’s so wrong about this?” Selina asked. “The fact that animals like that don’t attack groups of people? Don’t burn their belongings?”
“Not ignoring it, no,” Dylan said. “But it happened, and dwelling on it won’t help us. We’re ready now, we’re sticking together.” And I’ve got my daughter back, he thought. The relief was a sweet, rich thing, even though the fear remained deep, the grief over Aaron’s death hot as blood. He hefted his stick. “This is what we’re good at. It’s thirty miles or more, but it’s not even seven yet. If we pick our routes well, maybe we’ll even reach the border with one good long day of running. There by nightfall.”
“With no food or water,” Selina said.
“We’ll make do. The land provides.”
“Not this land,” Jenn whispered, and no one responded to that.
The idea of making thirty miles across such terrain in one day, without adequate food and with only basic equipment, was daunting. But the prospect of spending another night in Eden chilled him, and he could see the same thoughts mirrored in everyone’s eyes. That, and shock at Aaron’s violent death.
They had to maintain some level of hope.
Lucy remained close, hand still resting on the back of Jenn’s neck, forehead resting against hers. He heard Lucy’s whispers, couldn’t hear what she said, didn’t need to. The others watched, awkward and silent.
After a minute Jenn pulled away. She stood tall and wiped her eyes. “Come on. I’ll lead us out.” She started running. They all followed, and Dylan felt a rush of pride in his daughter.
“Thanks for going after them, Gee,” he said as the two men ran together.
“You needed to stay with the team,” Gee said. “And anyway, Jenn knows I’m tougher than you.”
Dylan smiled. So did Gee.
“You thinking about having to tell Aaron’s family?” Gee asked.
Dylan shook his head. “Christ, I hadn’t even got to that. He has a brother back in Israel, I think. But no, I was wondering what I’d have done if Jenn…” He trailed off. Gee knew what he was talking about.
“Yeah. I’d happily have lost my other hand, both legs and my eyes, rather than lose Philip.” It wasn’t often Gee talked about the crash that had taken his husband and left hand a decade ago, three years before he and Dylan met. It was a private, personal tragedy, spoken occasionally, and only amongst good friends.
“Thank you, Gee,” Dylan said again, and Gee grabbed his arm and squeezed; he took immense comfort from the contact.
* * *
“It must be other humans,” Cove said.
“The fire?” Dylan asked.
“No animal would have done that. Took calculation, forward thinking. Whoever did it is trying to wear us down, prevent us from going on.”
“And why would they do that?”
“Protecting something.” Cove had slipped back to jog close to Dylan. He kept his voice low, but Dylan guessed that Selina could still hear. She was so close behind that he could hear her breathing.
“And?” Dylan asked. He could tell that Cove had more to say. He’d never class Cove as one of his closest friends, but they’d known each other for over ten years. During that time, when they were together planning or undertaking races and expeditions, Dylan had got to know him well. The big man was almost transparent.
“I’ve already told Jenn,” he said. “I’m looking for the ghost orchid.”
Dylan looked at Cove to make sure he wasn’t joking. “You’re shitting me.”
“Why would I?”
“That’s just a story.”
“I don’t think so.”
“So what’s it got to do with this? With Aaron?”
“I’m not sure,” Cove said. “I just feel it does.”
“You don’t seem like the sort to believe in something like that.”
“Maybe, maybe not. But if it does exist, it’s worth a fortune.”
“You want it for what it’s worth?” Dylan spoke louder, and the others glanced back at them. Jenn caught his eye. She knew what they were talking about, but she didn’t seem to care. He wasn’t sure she cared about much right then.
“I don’t care about the money,” he said. “I care about what I’m doing, all this, and I want to keep doing it. The ghost orchid might be a way to enable me to do that.”
“But you know it’s bullshit, right?” Dylan asked. “And dangerous bullshit, at that.” He glanced at Cove as they ran together. Cove looked down at the ground before them, face set. “All those stories about a wonder plant that cures cancer and makes humanity happy again. It’s make-believe.”
“There’s got to be an element of truth,” Cove said. “It’s a drug, a treasure, priceless… all those stories come from somewhere. Lots of people know about it, and I think that’s what’s happening here. I think someone might have found it, or is close to finding it, and they’re protecting their claim.”
“By attacking us with rabid animals,” Dylan said. “Makes sense.”
“Maybe it’s Eden protecting the orchid.”
“Jesus, Cove.”
“I don’t pretend to understand—”
“Enough! Don’t put any more of your bullshit between this group and its survival!” At the sound of his raised voice, they all stopped running. He faced up to Cove, inches from the taller man. “Whatever shit you believe in, you keep to yourself. Our priority is getting out of here without losing anyone else.” He glanced at Jenn. She was watching, blank-faced. Her eyes were red. He thought she might still be in shock.
“I’d never put any of you in danger,” Cove said. “Not for a fucking moment.”
“Then focus,” Dylan said. He took a step back. “We’ve all got to focus.” It was then that he realised they were looking at him the same way they were looking at Jenn—with pity in their eyes. He had lost someone too.
Kat and her team had been taken down by whatever had attacked them. They just hadn’t found her corpse.
KAT
Kat is aware of herself and her memories are intact, but her world has changed. Her old world belongs to something else, a sentience that she is growing to understand is something out of Eden. It has no real personality, nor any presence she can comprehend in any logical way.
She calls it Lilith.
Lilith walks in her body. It controls her. It holds her down without effort, containing everything she was and still is. Lilith is inhuman, and looking into its alien mind is like looking into the mind of an octopus, or a lizard, or an animal still unknown. It invites madness.
If Kat pulls back, though, and allows herself to move and flow with Lilith… then her senses are freed.
She sees through the eyes of a lynx as it scrambles up a rocky slope, its big paws padding softly from rock to rock, the view low and sharp. The lynx stops often to sniff at the ground and look up the slope, then back down the way it has come. It is cautious but confident. She sees that in the way it moves. It knows these rocks, knows this cliff, and its footing is sure.
She smells with the nose of a wolf, sitting somewhere high up and testing the air with short, deep sniffs. The blood is still obvious. Its olfactory abilities are staggering, and it sets aside the scent of blood, filtering through countless other smells—a small rodent ten metres away, the whiff of decay from somewhere to the east, a fungus releasing its spores, bark fallen from a tree, mating squirrels—as it searches for the people.
She flinches back. It’s searching for my people. She wishes she could distract the wolf as it smells, the lynx as it stalks, but she has no control. That is all in Lilith’s hands.
She tastes fresh meat in the mouth of an eagle, and with that meat is a hint of torn cloth and deodorant. She hears with a coyote’s ears—a whispering breeze, singing birds, a soft, warning growl.
Despite all this, her history is still there. Kat retains her personality, although it is a disembodied thing now, adrift from the body she once owned. She remembers Dylan, the man she once loved. Jenn, the girl she still does.
With every part of herself, Kat wishes she could fight against Lilith as it and its animal familiars chase them down.
25
“‘There’re ghosts out there. Dead people walking on all-fours. Plants that’ll eat you alive. That place isn’t here anymore. It’s gone. It’s there. Leave me alone. Help me. Kill me.’ The ravings of Scott Mann, who emerged from the Husky Plains on his own, naked and with severe frostbite to limbs, face and genitals. He raved for three days and nights, and then bit off and choked on his own tongue. We buried him in an unmarked grave with the rest of them.”
Extract stolen from a Husky Plains border guard’s log
With every step she took, Jenn wanted to turn around and run back the way they’d come. Along the ridge, down the cliff face into the canyon, across the boulder-strewn floor and between trees and bushes, over the stream, and somewhere there she would find what was left of Aaron. She would hug him to her chest, find part of him she still recognised and had kissed and loved before—an outside part, not one from inside. He had often joked that she was so much a part of him that she ran right through him, and that if she opened him up and snapped off a rib she would find herself like a name inside a stick of rock. She’d found it sweet at the time, and romantic, and endearingly weird. It wasn’t sweet anymore. Eden had opened him up, and now her name was on view for all to see.
Jenn had brought him here. She had brought them all, and a sick, wretched guilt threatened to suffocate her. She strove to fight it off, because she knew guilt would distract her. Consume her. Aaron would not want her to die the way he had.
Her leg and running tights felt stiff with the hardening dregs of him. She wished she could stop and wash it off, but she also relished the touch. If she could keep his blood warm against her skin, maybe he would remain with her for a little while longer.
Knowing that she must not turn around and go back, she ran faster. Her loss was raw but numbing, and she felt shock still buffering her against the full impact of Aaron’s gruesome and horrific death. Knowing that did not lessen the effect, and for that she was glad. But running so fast would get her into trouble. She needed to conserve energy, because it was going to be a long day, and they had lost a large proportion of their supplies.
They could look for berries to eat, but she was no longer sure she trusted Eden enough to consume its plants.
Behind Aaron’s loss was the certainty that her mother was also dead. They had found the bodies of her team, so hers was doubtless out there too, rotting in a ravine or tangled in tree roots providing food for beetles and worms. The thought made Jenn sick, a heavy emptiness in her stomach that somehow resembled the vast depths of her nightmares. It was as if she had a black hole of grief at her core, and only running would prevent her from being sucked in and reduced to nothing.
Her mother’s last words to her had been “Eden is my last”, and now it felt like a curse.
“We need to ease up,” Gee said gently, jogging up beside her. If any of the others had suggested that, she’d have ignored them and sprinted on ahead. But Gee had been with her when they found what was left of Aaron. He had saved her life.
She slowed a little, catching her breath and realising how hard she’d been running. Her lungs burned and her legs ached, and with the sun rising behind them her slender shadow looked ready to snap.
The landscape here was more barren than they had seen, rocky and uneven, with signs of recent rockfalls from the steep hills ahead of them. Soon the ravine to their left ended and they crossed the stream, leaping from rock to rock and managing to keep themselves dry. On the other side her father called a halt. While Gee filled Selina’s water bottles from the stream, she handed out some of her rations—a handful of nuts and an energy gel for each of them.
“Look at that,” her dad said, pointing across the hillside. Jenn had assumed they were trees, but now she saw more regular spacing.
“Telegraph poles,” Lucy said. “So?”
“So we follow the road. Easier going.”
“What road?” Selina asked.
“It’s there, even if we can’t see it anymore. It’ll follow the easiest route across the hills, and there’ll be cuttings and bridges if the landscape gets more severe.”
“Fallen bridges, maybe,” Cove said.
“I’m pretty sure there’s a dam up in these hills,” her dad said. “It’s away from the routes I’d planned, but I remember seeing it on the map. The road crosses it, and eventually winds back down towards Naxford.”
Jenn listened, but she couldn’t concentrate. She felt hungover, drunk, her mind a haze.
“Oh, Jesus,” Lucy said. “Back there. Look.”
Jenn followed Lucy’s gaze back down the hillside they had just climbed. Something moved, low to the ground. It was quite a distance away, too far to make out properly, but somehow the movement seemed malevolent. It was trying to not be seen.
“Keep in close,” her dad said, brandishing his stick. He’d tied the penknife he’d taken from one of the bodies to the end, two knotted shoe laces holding it tight. It was the best weapon they had. It was pitiful.
“Might be a coyote,” Selina said, shielding her eyes against the low sun.
“Only one?” Cove asked.
“Don’t know.”
“Maybe it’s still got my hand,” Gee said.
They moved off, and this time Jenn hung back and ran with her father. Kicking through the damp grass and feeling morning dew soaking into her shoes, she experienced a startling flash of memory that offered a brief moment of unexpected respite—she and her father running together, hitting the trails in the Scottish mountains where they hardly ever saw anyone else. Sometimes they’d run for hours without talking, and she had never felt so comfortable with anyone else, not even Aaron. The landscape welcomed them. The air was heavy and warm, the grass whispering beneath their feet, and the wildness of the place was home.
There was nothing threatening there.
“Another one!” Gee said, pointing down the slope to their left. A series of rocky mounds gave way to a woodland a few hundred metres away, and a pale creature was bounding along just above the tree line. “Selina?”
“I don’t have bionic eyes.”
“No, but you’re a know-it-all,” Gee said.
“Wolf,” Jenn said, and her blood was cold. Aaron’s blood on her leg felt warm, as if he was still there trying to protect her from the chill.
“You sure?” Lucy asked.
“It’s what we saw,” she said. She glanced at Gee and he looked frightened.
