Eden, p.8
Eden, page 8
Aaron knelt and cleaned the wound with a water pouch from his belt. The others were running on ahead, and Jenn almost called out to them to wait. But something held her back. A flush of excitement and danger, a rush of something electric and cool through her veins, a sudden burst of enthusiasm about what they were doing. It chased away troubled thoughts. She was with the two most important people in her life, surrounded by friends, and doing her very favourite thing.
She wouldn’t let anything ruin that enjoyment.
“Come on!” she said, pushing past Aaron. “Race you!”
She caught his concerned frown but shook it off. If this place was teasing or playing with them, she’d give it something to see.
Sprinting as fast as she could, she ignored the pain in her knee. Blood dripped from her wound and nourished Eden’s wild soil. There was pain, but it didn’t hinder her running. She relished it. It was a sign of her being here, and she knew that by the time they’d finished their traverse, she would have amassed a whole collection of aches and pains.
By the time she caught up with her father, he and Selina were at a standstill. “What is it?” Jenn asked. Aaron came to a stop beside them, and then she saw.
Lucy had come to a halt further on, closer to the river. Gee was with her, pointing out across the violent waters. He turned and waved them on.
“Bridge?” her father asked.
“Let’s see,” Aaron said. “No way we’re getting across that otherwise. The further upstream we run, the rougher it’ll be.” They went to join Lucy and Gee beside the fast-flowing river.
“Well, that’s what’s left of it,” Gee said. He didn’t sound his usual chirpy self.
The objects were little more than white-topped churnings in the water, splashes where the river parted around several shapes only just breaking the surface.
“That’s our way over,” Cove said.
“It’s just a rock,” Lucy said.
“No, there’s something else further across,” Cove insisted. “And look at the water, the smoother way it’s flowing. It’s shallower. There’s something there.”
Dylan consulted his map, and Jenn and Aaron stood close. She was panting from her burst of speed, and she knew she’d suffer for it. Endurance running was about conserving energy, not wasting it, and this was only day one. But she felt energised, and her heartbeat throbbed behind her eyes, in her ankles, across her chest, strobing the late afternoon sunlight and giving Eden a pulse.
“It’s in the wrong place, but I think you’re right,” her father said. “It must have collapsed.” Jenn could see it now, a lighter sheen beneath the water’s surface where the bridge had sunk down. Perhaps it had been a single-span structure, and its feet had been swept away when the bridge deck dropped into the water.
“Earthquake?” she asked.
“Might explain some of the map discrepancies,” Selina said. “Right, Dylan?”
Her father only shrugged, looking from the map to their surroundings and back again.
“At least it’s still there,” Cove said. “Tie me in, I’ll get across first. Then I’ll guide you all over.”
“And when you slip?” Lucy asked.
“If I slip, I’ll be tied on and you can haul me to shore.”
“We’ve got to get across,” Selina said.
“We can double back,” Gee said. “It’s too fast-moving here. We’ve been inside a matter of hours, we can’t afford any injuries this early.”
Jenn felt the throbbing in her knee and the cool kiss of air on wet blood. She would have to clean and dress the wound properly, but not yet. Not until they were across the river. She stood side-on to the others. Admitting she already had an injury, however slight, felt like a failure. She was in enough trouble with them.
“Okay,” her father said. “We’ll try. But if you slip and we have to pull you back in, that’s it. No second attempts.”
Cove grinned. “No second attempt required.”
10
“You know that story about when the first atomic bomb was ever tested? About how no one involved could predict exactly what would happen, and that there was one theory that the chain reaction would continue and eat up all the atmosphere and destroy the world, but they took the chance anyway? Yeah. That.”
Anon, United Zone Council
Gasping as the cool water washed around him, Cove set out along the sunken road, legs braced against the river’s fast flow. Jenn and her dad fed out the fine climbing rope secured around his waist. The water rose from his knees to his thighs, then higher, and he had to lean against the water and shuffle slowly to prevent his feet from being taken out from beneath him. Jenn made sure they kept the line tight, but not so tight that it hampered him. She felt his weight through the rope, its coils scraping against her hand, his movements transmitted as ripples and vibrations. Lucy and Gee were already moving back along the bank, matching the distance he’d made from shore and ready to haul him out if he slipped.
Jenn’s heart beat faster, her senses were heightened, and sweat dribbled down her sides. It was alertness, strength and control, not fear. This was what they were all about.
Cove made the other side within fifteen minutes, and as he forced his way through undergrowth and up onto the opposite bank, Jenn let out a sigh of relief. Her father glanced at her and raised his eyebrows.
“Brave bastard,” he muttered.
“Or stupid?” In their expeditions, there was often a fine line between the two.
Cove tied his end of the rope to a strong tree then waved to them. “It’s slippery but not too bad!” he shouted, hands cupping his mouth. “Bit in the middle is badly broken up, but the water’s clear enough to see. Just take your time!”
Selina tied the rope off on their side of the river, using a thick chunk of wood as a screw to twist and bind it tight. There would always be some slack and give with a rope strung out over that length, but by tightening it as much as possible they could make it tense enough to hold onto.
Jenn went next. She clipped on with a carabiner and a three-metre length of rope. It was short enough to arrest a fall, but still long enough to allow enough slack to descend the bank, edge around obstacles, and follow where the bridge’s road surface still held together beneath the river. The water was a cold shock around her feet and lower legs, and she took a dozen shallow breaths, but there was no sense of panic. She was used to the cold. Discomfort was her friend. The smell of the river was strange, a metallic tang like rain on a sunny day, sweeping away all the scents of the forest that she only acknowledged now that they were gone—the warm sweetness of pine, the dankness of wet mud, mixed perfumes from flowers. And deeper, there were smells she did not recognise.
To begin with she walked along the sunken road, left hand loose around the rope and pushing the carabiner along. Soon the submerged road surface went suddenly deeper, the water’s flow greater, and she paused for a few seconds to acclimatise more fully. Moving on, she propped her legs wider apart, left leg solid against the battering flow, and edged her feet along in smaller increments. If she attempted to take a full step the water would shove her legs out from beneath her. The rope would prevent her from being swept along the river, but she had no desire for a soaking.
The river’s roar drowned out everything else. She was aware of her dad, Aaron and the others watching her go, but she focussed on the water’s surface, and where the flow remained uninterrupted she could see her trail shoes and the broken road. The total concentration provided an almost meditative experience. Holding the rope in both hands she shifted both feet along in turn, edging towards the far side of the river. Away from safety, and deeper into Eden. Away from a world that was familiar and closer to this strange place that no one really knew. Not anymore. Other Zones she had traversed had felt like places one step removed from the rest of the world, but Eden felt so very different, as if it was not of the world at all. It was a sobering thought, but exciting. For decades it had been claimed that there was nowhere left on the surface of the planet to explore, and all her life Jenn had sought remote, amazing places to prove that idea wrong. Today more than ever she felt like an explorer treading where no one had ever been.
Apart from my mother.
Something smacked into her right thigh.
Jenn shouted and kicked her leg to the side, slipping on the slick surface. She gripped the rope and held herself upright. The water around her leg turned white as something thrashed beneath the surface.
She heard voices from both banks, but could not make out the words.
The thing hit her leg again and again, dull impacts that she knew could be deep, fatal wounds that the freezing water would numb until she reached shore.
I’ve only got a knife! she thought. That was the nearest thing to a weapon they had brought into this wild place. Hers was folded and tucked into a pocket on her belt.
Heart hammering, taking a deep breath to control her rising panic, she let go with her right hand and withdrew the knife. She unfolded it with her teeth and reached down, sweeping her hand back and forth to try and shove aside whatever was hitting her. At any moment she expected the frothing water to turn red with her own gushing blood.
She felt something slick and twisted her hand to trap it between her hand and knife. She waited for the sharp pain of teeth, but it did not come. Jenn lifted her hand from the water, making sure she brought up whatever it was away from her face.
It was a broken tree branch. Nubs of smaller limbs protruded along its length. She gasped, not realising she’d been holding her breath, and threw it downstream. She watched the branch get carried away and took a few seconds to compose herself before looking to the far bank.
Cove was a few metres into the river, holding onto the rope and coming for her.
“I’m fine!” she shouted. “Branch hit my leg.” She waved him back.
Shit, she was jumpy. Breathing deeply, trying to calm her pounding heart, she concentrated on the rest of the crossing until Cove grabbed her arm and pulled her up onto the riverbank.
“Cold,” she said.
“Yeah.” He waved at the others, and Jenn saw past him to where Selina began working her way across.
“You fire up the stove and make a brew,” Jenn said. “I’ll watch out for them.”
“Sure?” Cove asked.
“I’m sure!”
Cove raised his eyebrows but said nothing, and Jenn was glad when he pushed his way through the undergrowth close to the bank and slipped off his rucksack. She smelled the faint tang of gas as he lit the small stove.
Jumpy. Too jumpy. Calm down, Jenn.
Half an hour later, by the time Aaron had reeled in the rope and made it across with her holding the line, she was feeling almost normal again.
They drank coffee, and Jenn quietly attended to her cut knee with a couple of Steri-Strips. Afterwards, as they prepared to move out into the evening towards their first camp, Jenn saw her father standing aside from the group looking at the folded map.
“What?” she asked, sidling up to him. She always knew when something was wrong. He went quiet, withdrawn. He’d never been one to share his problems, and she sometimes wondered whether that was why her mother had left. He kept everything bottled up inside.
“Weird,” he said.
“What’s weird?”
“Something’s changed. About this place. It’s the oldest Zone, more than half a century, but this map should still be pretty accurate.”
“But it isn’t?”
He shrugged.
“So the river bridge collapsed,” Jenn said. “Maybe the map was wrong when it was printed. Maybe an earthquake has changed the landscape enough so that reading the map’s not so easy.”
He looked up at the hillside to the west, and then north towards snowcapped mountains in the far distance.
“Maybe.” And that was all he said.
It would soon be dark, and they were several miles from where her father wanted to make camp for the first night. Day one, and they were already behind schedule.
11
“Of course we’ve seen stuff. Weird shit. But if we talked about it, we’d be betraying the reason we race. We don’t go into those places to tell the world about what we see, hear, find. It’s none of the world’s business.”
Patrick Slater (pseudonym), British extreme sports enthusiast
“This place used to be Naxford,” Dylan said. “It was a fishing village before the war, but for a while it became a munitions distribution point, serving some big factories further inland. Then afterwards, they used it for freight transport upriver and down towards the estuary. Docks, warehouses, offices, and a couple of hundred homes.”
“Long way from the sea,” Lucy said.
“The estuary’s wide, highly tidal, so the coast down closer to the sea is changeable and liable to frequent flooding. And long before it was a fishing village—must be couple of centuries ago—it was used to ship furs, pelts and other goods from inland.”
“You’ve done your homework,” Lucy said.
“Someone’s got to look after you people.”
“That’s all fine, but is McDonald’s open?” Gee said. Lucy chuckled, but no one else said anything. In the west, dusk painted the ridged hilltops. The slope they’d just climbed ended on a bare, rocky plateau. It had a few trees scattered here and there, but much of it was open, affording them a wide view along the valley they were following. A steady breeze blew from the east, cooling but not cold. It carried no hint of the sea that lay in that direction. The mountains many miles to the north caught the fading sunlight like burning brands.
Down at the river’s edge, perhaps a mile distant, was the remains of a small settlement. From this far away it was visible only as textures—the hints of straight edges, the suggestion of blocky buildings, as if someone had laid a heavy green blanket over the whole landscape, dulling the ordered and regular impact of humanity, blunting its sharp edges. Several tall structures sprouted along the river, with gaps in between where others might once have stood company. They might have been giant trees. It was a hazy memory of what the town had once been.
Dylan wanted to be past Naxford by the time they stopped for a break and some sleep. It was doubtful there would be any habitable buildings, and it would be far safer camping in the wild. Even after less than six hours in Eden, the idea of spending more than a short time amongst evidence of humankind felt wrong. They didn’t call what they did adventure racing for nothing, and in Dylan’s eyes, there was nothing adventurous about spending time within four walls, however old and dilapidated they might be. He wanted the wilderness around him, a tree canopy over his head, and stars above that.
“We could skirt around it,” Selina said. Dylan looked at his old map. Though he’d been given cause to mistrust it, the location of Naxford appeared accurate. The river was in the correct place, and the larger surrounding geographical features matched what he could see from the low ridge.
“It’d take some time,” he said. “Tough ground west of the settlement, with steep hills, ravines.” He pointed at the wooded slopes. They presented a challenge they would all relish, but right now they were also an obstacle between them and rest. The quicker they passed the old town and reached somewhere suitable to take a break, the more time they’d have to eat and ease down for a while. Recharging their batteries sufficiently was as important to their effort as spending time on their feet.
“Get some light working down there, Gee?” Aaron asked. “Maybe there’s a cinema.” After leaving the police force Gee had become an electrician back in the real world, working for a small company that took contracts all across western Canada, earning enough to feed his real love.
Gee looked around at the stunning views, the striking sunset. “You need a cinema?”
“So we go through,” Cove said. “Come on. It’ll be interesting.”
“Interesting,” Lucy said. “Sure.”
* * *
They descended the hillside and followed the river into Naxford.
Selina and Dylan went first, moving at a steady jog. His muscles were warmed, his limbs light, his body adapting well to the efforts he was putting it through. There would come a time when he’d have to reduce the strains he forced upon it, but that wouldn’t be for a good long while yet. He was used to such hardships, and marked by them. He often thought about the first time he and Selina had slept together, and how she’d spent half an hour afterwards tracing the map-lines of scars across his torso and limbs.
“A scree slope in Snowdonia, North Wales,” he said as she turned his left leg back and forth, admiring the knotted mass of his calf. “I was young and ignorant, didn’t know what I was doing; tried to walk down it when I should have run. It was one of those cold days where you can see your memories frozen in the air around you. Beautifully still. The world had stopped turning and I was the only moving thing, you know? Yeah, you know. So when the scree started slipping around me, and the mountain began to hiss, I froze instead of following its movement. Ankle and lower leg broke in two places. I crawled down and was found seven hours later by a group of kids doing their Duke of Edinburgh Award. They gave me first aid. I hope I helped them pass.”
She trailed her fingertips across his lower stomach. “Cliff face in Belarus. We were climbing about thirty miles from the Deep Red Zone. There was me, Jenn, Kat, couple of other friends I haven’t seen in a while. It was a training climb before infiltrating the Zone. It would have been Jenn’s first, but we never got there. Must have been a couple of months before you joined up with us, and about a year before Kat left. Things between us were already difficult. Distant. My concentration was off, for sure, and my fitness was far from what it should have been. I was roped on to a guy called Kelvin, and when he slipped on a climb I should have held him easily. Instead, he pulled me from the cliff face and I slid down for a few metres before finding purchase. He kicked off and just had a few grazes, but I was lacerated across the stomach, thighs. Even the old fella needed seven stitches.”
