Seeking Eden Read online

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  Copyright

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  About the Author

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  Seeking Eden

  Megan Hart

  Chaos Edition, published March 2012

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  Copyright 2003 Megan Hart

  Chaos Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’

  re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  -1-

  “There was no apocalypse. Just a slowing down.”

  The peddler’s words rang in Tobin Winter’s head as he walked his bike slowly through the rubble. What he knew of the apocalypse he'd gathered from old television shows and movies he'd watched on Old Pa's ancient eTablet before the batteries had finally died, leaving nothing but a frowning icon struck through by a lightning bolt and a blank screen. From reading books he'd found in the library's science-fiction section. From stories Old Pa and Old Ma had told him about how things "used to be."

  This expanse of cracked pavement with its rusting hulks of cars and trucks still parked in neat rows, along with the weeds growing up in their wheel-wells, sure looked like an apocalypse to him. Like some giant hand had reached down and taken up all the people, leaving only inanimate objects behind.

  This was different than Eastport, which had been as empty as this wide stretch of buckled concrete but had never felt as abandoned. Nor had any of the empty towns he'd passed through along the way. All of them had shown evidence of human occupation at one point or another, even if it was something as simple as a ring of charred wood showing where a fire had burned, or the cleared-out shop windows proving that people had picked them clean.

  It was different, too, than the tiny communities through which he'd edged, uncertain enough to be cautious and with Old Pa's warnings about other folks ringing in his memories. People could be conversation, they could be trade, they could be lots of things. They could be danger, too. They must've thought the same about him, because fires winked out and doors closed the few times he'd ventured into a small town, searching for any sort of supplies to supplement what he'd taken with him. He’d taken the hint. If he wanted company, and he did, he wasn’t going to find it there.

  He’d spent two weeks on the road, one full week picking his way along battered and sometimes completely overgrown local roads before reaching the nearest entrance to the Transcontinental Highway. A full day climbing the crumbling ramp, hauling his bike and gear along with him. Another week since then traveling along the road that had once connected Maine to Delaware.

  He’d seen other big buildings from the Transcon, but they’d all been broken down and mostly destroyed, either by time or human interference or both. Nothing to attract him from leaving the high-rising concrete highway that bypassed everything below it. But then he’d spied this place, white walls shining in the late spring sunshine. Curiosity, if nothing else, had made him turn the tape-patched handlebars of his ancient and rusting bike toward it. A convenient exit ramp, curving and full of potholes but still sound enough to take his weight, had led him straight to it. Faded letters on the building's side said WAREHOUSE. It easily stretched several miles in each direction. The asphalt lot surrounding it looked bigger than Moose Island and all of Eastport’s buildings put together. The immense structure looming up in front of him now was definitely abandoned but showed no evidence of destruction other than normal wear and tear from the elements.

  Tobin shivered, not from the cool breeze, but in anticipation. He’d been avoiding buildings, wary of what might be inside them or of structural damage that could make them dangerous. He should probably head back up the ramp, get back on the Transcon. Keep going. He had enough food and water to last him another few days, and by then he might find another town or a rest stop that hadn’t been fully plundered.

  Or, he might not.

  Tobin studied the parking lot again. No sign of movement. No sign of life, not human life anyway. The big glass doors in the front were stuck open. Grass grew in their tracks.

  He stepped through them and into paradise.

  There was more stuff in that building than Tobin had ever seen in his entire life. Furniture, most of it springing stuffing but some of it intact. Glass cases, many still unbroken, filled with jewelry and eyeglasses. Televisions and computers, their monitors forever blank. Batteries still in their plastic wrapping lined shelves reaching all the way to the ceiling.

  Skylights let in enough sun for him to see the length of the store, and back there was more of the same. And food! Glorious cans and jars and boxes of it. Some were opened, crumbs and fluids leaking out to stain the concrete floor, but most of it, an incredible amount of it, looked untouched. He ran toward it like a child, incautious.

  If he believed in a god, Tobin would’ve fallen to his knees right there and offered thanks. As it was he fell to his knees and began scooping up armfuls of packages. He checked only haphazardly for signs of spoilage, dents or bulges, mold. Years of lessons about food poisoning flew out of his head, and he gorged himself until he was fuller than he’d ever been. He ate things he'd privately thought to be as much fiction as the stories in which they’d appeared. Things with names like Oreo and Hershey’s, cookies and candies of indescribable sweetness. Old Ma had spoken longingly of white sugar, soft white flour, sweet butter and something she called pizza delivery. All things of the past, gone for many years when nobody was left to cross the causeway to Moose Island and bring them to Eastport, or to make them at all.

  Tobin ate until sickness forced him to stop. Then, again ignoring every safety rule Old Pa had ever taught him, he passed out in a pile of torn paper and gutted cans. He slept hard and woke, stomach still bulging, teeth and tongue coated with sticky sweetness. After resting for a while, he explored some more. He found an aisle marked “camping goods” and stopped, mouth hanging open. It was only when he tasted salt, the flavor bitter after so much sweetness, that he realized he was crying.

  He’d started his journey on a battered bike with a faded quilt rolled up and tied with fishing line on his back, his last pair of socks on his feet, and a loaf of bread and a hunk of smelly goat cheese bound in a square of fabric. Before reaching the Transcon he’d spent hours peddling along roads in various stages of disrepair, some so bad he’d had to get off the bike and walk it around rusting ca