Eden, p.25
Eden, page 25
He had to trust Jenn to keep herself alive. He had to believe that he would see her again. No other outcome was thinkable. Every step he took towards Naxford, every breath of Eden’s pristine, alien air, was a step towards their reunion.
“Wolf, above us again,” Gee said. Grasping Jenn’s short screw-driver weapon, he swung his arms as he moved, endeavouring to put less weight on his most severely injured leg.
“I see him,” Dylan said. “Cove, you okay?”
“I’m good.”
“Why not ask if I’m okay?” Lucy asked.
“’Cause you’re sitting there looking pretty while I carry you,” Cove said. “Go to sleep. Have a rest.”
“Condescending shit.”
“There,” Dylan said, pointing down a slope towards a woodland filling a small depression in the land. Beyond, he hoped they would find themselves on the approach into Naxford. There was no sign that Jenn had come this way. She had only left them ten minutes before, but already it felt like she had never been here at all.
They headed down the slope, Cove and Lucy in the lead. Gee gasped with every step. Whenever Dylan caught a glimpse of the back of his legs, he saw fresh blood leaking around the makeshift bandage Jenn had put in place. There was no way he should still be on his feet. Sheer bloody determination kept him going, because the alternative did not bear thinking about.
The wolf kept level up the slope from them, moving fluidly, one moment visible, the next disappearing behind a rocky outcropping or stand of trees or undergrowth. It was watching them. The white streak on its head was a raised eyebrow saying, I have you already, I’m just playing with you. Dylan felt his gaze locking with the wolf’s. It bore a terrible intelligence.
As they entered the woodland, the coyote sprang at them from shadows beneath the trees.
Cove staggered and lashed out with his spear, catching the creature with a clumsy blow across its flank.
Dylan went to leap in front of Gee, bringing his spear up to protect himself, but the animal was faster. It ducked beneath the spear and barrelled into him, taking his legs out, growling, biting at his left leg, but missing as Dylan twisted in the air and hit the ground hard. The wind was knocked from him and the spear jarred from his hand.
The coyote rolled and leapt up, turning and coming at him again before he could even catch his breath. He could smell its dank animal scent, could almost taste it on the air, and its viciousness was shocking, its hatred for him a cool, hard fist inside his gut.
With Lucy still hanging onto him, Cove swung his spear around and down, slamming across the coyote’s back and knocking it to the ground. It rolled again and stood, turning and hissing at its assailant.
“Cove!” Dylan shouted, because he saw movement past him and knew what was to come.
As Cove turned to swing Lucy away from the incoming wolf, the coyote came for Dylan once again. He was ready this time, plucking up the spear, getting up onto his knees, jabbing. The weapon sliced across the animal’s shoulder but it didn’t seem to notice or care, weaving past the spear’s sharpened point and opening its mouth.
Dylan brought his arm up to protect his face. Instinct drove him now, the same instinct that would make him hold out his hands if a train was coming towards him at a hundred miles per hour.
The coyote never hit him. Gee knocked it aside and fell on top of it, his shortened left arm tightening around its throat, right hand rising and falling as he stabbed with the screwdriver. He squirmed astride its back, using his weight to pin it down and keep its gnashing mouth from his face. He stabbed again, some strikes piercing its hide, others skimming off as the creature thrashed and struggled.
Dylan edged forward, spear at the ready. The coyote squirmed beneath Gee, held down by his greater weight but never still, never submissive. Dylan couldn’t find a good angle to stab at it.
“Bastard!” Cove shouted, his voice deep and loud, and for a second the wolf paused in its attack, ears flat against its head, head lowered. It looked uncertain, perhaps confused by this roaring creature with another attached to its back.
“Now!” Lucy said. Instead of retreating from the wolf, Cove charged at it, still roaring. Lucy added her voice, and the startled beast leapt back and away from them.
“Gee, hold it still!” Dylan said. He was poised with the spear, yet fearful of striking Gee by mistake.
“I’ll roll to the left!” Gee said. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Gee tensed, muscles coiled and ready. The coyote relaxed and grew still, panting. Dylan held his breath, surprised by its momentary stillness.
It twisted beneath Gee, threw him off balance, turned its head up and back and bit into his right thigh.
Gee shouted and punched the animal in the back of the head. The movement only drove it harder against his leg, and it started gnawing, twisting its head from side to side, and Dylan was sure he heard the deep vibration of teeth against bone. Gee’s shout rose into a roar.
The wolf noticed, slinking around them and then leaping at Gee.
Dylan jabbed with the spear and caught the wolf in mid-air, slashing its side but not affecting its trajectory in the slightest. Cove came at it from the other side, prodding his spear and losing balance, Lucy’s weight pulling him down.
Gee pummelled the coyote with his stump, jabbing the screwdriver at its eyes, his own eyes wide with pain and terror.
The wolf hit him beneath his shorter arm, teeth clamping into the side of his chest and trapping his limb, raised and even more useless than before.
He screamed and dropped the short weapon. Dylan had never heard him scream. He’d seen him in pain, witnessed controlled fear when the smaller man had saved his life on their first race in Bolivia, but he’d never seen Gee not in control. The pain was obvious, a scent on the air of blood and wet dog and something sweet and more primal. The terror was fresh and stark. Gee’s eyes were wide.
Dylan darted towards his friend and the attacking canines, but Gee’s shout brought him up short. “Go!” he shouted. Then he let go of the coyote chewing the flesh of his thigh and gripped the wolf’s left ear, twisting, turning, rolling sideways onto the animal and shaking as the beast bit deeper. He curled his legs around the coyote and squeezed tight.
“No, Gee, we can—”
Gee’s shout cut him off. Half scream, half bellow, it was accompanied by a splash of blood that painted the air red and fell in an arc across the ground. The shout ended in a gurgling, bubbling sound, and blood foamed at his mouth.
He caught Dylan’s eye, hand still full of the wolf’s ear.
The wolf gnawed and burrowed. The coyote fought free and came in again, biting at Gee’s stomach, exposed now that his tee shirt was torn from his torso. Cove was on his feet, Lucy holding onto him and standing on one leg. They stared in horror at their friend being eaten alive.
I can’t leave him, Dylan thought, but then he remembered Jenn running away from him, risking herself to help them all because she knew she was fastest, knew she could get to the old town and find somewhere safe. Gee was making a greater sacrifice. He knew that he was finished, even if they did manage to fight off the wolf and coyote attacking him. His wounds were too bad. He would slow them down too much.
“Fucking go!” Gee shouted again, louder and higher pitched, and it was a scream wet with blood that misted the air and spattered down across the coyote’s back. The animals were shaking him now, and somehow he’d managed to snatch up the screwdriver, drive it down into the wolf’s shoulder. The animal growled but did not let go. Instead it ground down with its powerful jaws, and they all heard bones cracking.
Gee’s head lolled back, his eyes wide and sightless. His legs locked around the coyote. His hand clasped the screwdriver handle, point buried in the wolf’s shoulder.
Dylan turned away. It was another worst moment of his life. If he’d heard Gee shout, or cry, or scream again, he might have gone back and fought the beasts to his own inevitable end. But as they fled the scene, if Gee managed to fight on in silence, he did so with relief, not despair.
Cove moved as quickly as he could with Lucy hopping beside him, one arm slung across his shoulder, useless foot flapping. Dylan took her other arm and she was slung between them, all three of them in close contact as they made their way into the cover of trees. It was cooler in there, quieter. The trees swallowed the sounds from behind them.
None of them spoke. They saved their breath, and Dylan thought the decision they had made was killing them all. Even if they survived Eden, their deaths were already approaching. Gee’s sacrifice was a poison of guilt and horror in their veins.
Trampling through undergrowth and across old fallen leaves, he listened for a final shout or scream, but heard nothing. His old friend was quiet to the end.
* * *
If Selina had been with them, she might have told them enough about how wolves and coyotes hunted alone to keep the group alive.
But Selina was dead, and these creatures weren’t hunting naturally at all.
Nothing about this is normal, he thought. And now I see Kat’s touch in every move they make, feel her eyes on me when they look, smell her when they attack.
They emerged from thick woodland on the outskirts of Naxford, Dylan and Cove still carrying Lucy between them. They could hear each other’s heavy breathing, smell each other’s body odour and breath, feel clothing rubbing against skin, yet the space between them felt immense. Dylan did his best not to catch Lucy or Cove’s eyes, petrified that his own sickening guilt over Gee would be reflected there. He had never judged himself a cowardly man. He wasn’t certain how he should view what had just happened.
I left a friend to die, he thought. But if we’d stayed to fight and died as well, his sacrifice would have been for nothing.
Sometimes he ran to clear his head but this staggering run into Naxford cleared nothing. With every footstep his perception of what had happened changed, and in Lucy and Cove’s grunts and sighs he thought he heard the same feelings.
The edge of the old town was marked with a series of depressions in the ground that reminded him of surface mining, necessitating a slowing of speed and caution as they negotiated the dips and ridges. Most holes were overflowing with low, thick ferns, and now and then they slowed to a virtual walk so that they could probe forward to see the lie of the land. An old building to their left had fallen into ruin and become home to several large trees, three of them holding aloft the skeletal remains of part of the roof, like victors holding up the corpse of a vanquished foe. If they fell into a hole, something might be waiting in there to rip them apart. If they moved too close to the fallen building, creatures might leap out at them sharp in tooth and claw, or perhaps Kat would be lying in wait somewhere, Selina’s skin and blood drying beneath her long fingernails.
Still none of them spoke. Lucy must have been exhausted, but she did not complain. I don’t know what to say, Dylan thought. They’d left Gee behind ten minutes before, maybe fifteen, and the longer their silence persisted, the harder it was to break.
They emerged into open space, punctuated here and there with banks of undergrowth and swathes of waist-high ferns. It pushed the horizon out and made it easier to make out the lie of the land—the plant-smothered skeletons of cranes and the river to the east, hills rising to the south. They’d descended those hills only a couple of days ago, fresh and excited, unsettled perhaps by the strange feel of this Virgin Zone, but determined to make a good attempt at an unassailable crossing time.
Kat had been on his mind, a vague shadow somewhere close by that might shine a light on what was then the most uncomfortable moment of his past. Now, her shadow loomed over all the bad moments that had passed.
“Dad!” Jenn’s voice, quiet and urgent. She appeared beneath a tree to their left, standing in front of what might have once been a wall. “Mum’s already here. And there’s a bear. Come with me.” She must have noticed that Gee was no longer with them, but she said nothing.
With the silence broken, Dylan glanced at Lucy and Cove as they headed for Jenn.
“We have to survive,” he said. “For Gee.”
Lucy nodded. Cove looked away.
“Hurry!” Jenn said, and now she sounded scared. “I’ve found somewhere.”
KAT
Her consciousness resides in a mind that has gone truly, comprehensively wild, and yet with a level of control and purpose that is chilling.
The thing inside her, Lilith, is nature. Kat has never believed in spirit or soul, but she has to believe in the elemental that has possessed her body. It is pure spirit of nature, pure soul of the wild.
She tastes blood, smells fresh meat, feels the slick warmth of insides turned out. Bones grind and splinter between her teeth. Hair strokes across her face as skin tears. She hears a gurgling cry, a gasped breath, a scream. No pleas, no begging. She is grateful for that, at least.
She tries to see, but the eyes she looks through are not human. Vision is blurred with hunger and rage, splashed with blood. She cannot make out who has come apart beneath the creatures’ assault.
Please not her, she thinks, remembering her daughter’s sweet voice and the smell of her as a child, baby warmth and sweet breath. Please not him, and she feels a soft, warm hand against her hip, a word of love whispered against her neck.
It might be either of them. She can’t tell. And if it isn’t now, it will be soon, because Lilith’s intentions are obvious.
It is pushing out with its own alien senses—those Kat can recognise, and some she cannot—and insinuating itself into other creatures. She feels that it is an extreme effort on Lilith’s part, that it is still young and not yet fully formed. Its strength is still limited. But it has a reason to project itself and control these other animals. They provide their own strength and power, which she can steer.
And Lilith will not let things stand as they are. Not while the invaders are still alive.
Not her, Kat thinks. Not him. There is no reaction from Lilith, though she is certain that it can hear and even understand her thoughts. It does not mock. Cruelty is a human conceit.
35
“It’s said that if you stand on the eastern border of the Scott Preserve, and it’s a still day, and the air quality is just right, you can hear the cries and roars of creatures unknown to humanity from the ice floes across the bay. It’s a haunting idea, but more an example of the way we have come to view these wild places than a valid scientific observation. Although in truth… who knows?”
Extract from National Geographic: Virgin Zones: The New World
“Where is she?” her dad asked. He looked different. Cove and Lucy did, too. They looked haunted.
“Down by the river,” Jenn said. “At least, I’m pretty sure it was her. A person, walking through the trees. There’s no one else it could be.”
“And the bear?”
“It followed me down into the old town, then I lost sight of it. It was huge, but it didn’t run at me. Maybe it’s just a normal bear.”
“You think this is the safest place?” Cove asked.
“For now,” Jenn said. “I went down towards the river, saw Mum, doubled back. I looked in a few other places, but I think we can hide here for a while. And make a stand if we need to.”
“What about a boat?” Lucy asked. “That was the idea, wasn’t it?”
Jenn shrugged. “My mother was there.”
“Your mother,” Lucy said.
“Kat would never do anything to hurt us,” her father said. “So whatever’s happened, that thing’s not her.” But he didn’t sound confident, and Jenn wasn’t sure either. Everything was confused.
“Tell that to Selina,” Lucy said.
Jenn tensed. Her dad drew in a sharp breath, but he didn’t respond.
“Gee,” Jenn said. She thought she already knew the answer.
“Let’s get somewhere safer,” Cove said without meeting her eyes. He was still carrying Lucy, her arm slung over his shoulder. They were exhausted, and Lucy was looking down at the ground as if to disown what she’d just said.
“There’s a basement,” Jenn said.
“It’s called a crypt, and it’s full of dead people,” Lucy said.
“It’s isolated, cut off, and there are a couple of other ways in and out,” Jenn said. “Narrow ways a bear couldn’t access. It’ll do for now.”
She went in front. They’d seen the ruined church from a different angle when they’d entered Naxford a couple of days before. Coming upon it a second time, she’d been drawn by walls still upright, banks of bushes and heavy trees, and it was only while standing directly behind it that she’d seen the stained-glass window held aloft in the arms of a young oak.
“Gee?” she asked again.
“They might follow us here,” Cove said to Dylan.
“The wolf and coyote?” Jenn asked.
Her father nodded.
“He made us go,” Lucy said. “Held onto them while they were…”
“He was dead,” Cove said. “Dead, but still able to help us.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jenn said.
“He’s no help here,” Lucy said. They were within the embrace of what was once the church, but now the roof was gone and so were most of the walls, other than a few remnants here and there, smothered in plant growth. Trees were their temple now.
“Follow me down,” Jenn said.
She led them to the route she had found into the old church’s basement. She didn’t know if it was a crypt or not, but right then it was somewhere to hide, tend their wounds and plan what to do next. She couldn’t help feeling that the creatures had been steering them up to now, edging them this way and that, herding them towards whatever her mother wanted for them.
That’s not my mother, she thought. Her father was right. She wouldn’t have hurt any of them, not if she had a choice. Which means she has no choice. And that means we really might have to kill her.
She pulled aside a heavy swathe of climbing ivy and other tangled plants and pushed through the gap between it and an old, crumbling wall. Her father and the others followed. She ducked down and crawled beneath a tumbled stone column, then turned to guide Lucy through after her. They headed down a set of stone steps, the stairwell clogged with old plant growth. Pale stems were crumbly to the touch, and there was newer growth that almost hid the stairs from view. She had to press tight to one wall to force her way down.
