Seeking Eden Read online

  Then the wagon had passed, heading toward the creek and the soldiers. Without its shadow to protect them, Elanna felt horribly exposed. Surely the men in green could see right through their sad hiding place! In any moment, they’d reach in and pull them out, maybe shoot them with the guns, or maybe worse. Her eyes, wide and staring, burned, and yet she was too afraid to close them.

  Minutes passed, slow and dragging. Each strangled breath, an eternity. Waiting. She had to blink and didn’t want to, knowing that in the second she was blind they would be there.

  Nothing happened. She heard shouting. Tobin seemed to relax beside her. Could they be safe?

  “Hey, Maranian! Shift your skinny ass and get this shit over to the tank!”

  “Fuck you!” Maranian yelled back. The high voice broke into a cough, then a sneeze. “I think I’m getting fucking sick!”

  “Serves you the fuck right,” Lovett yelled back. “Dumb ass!”

  Elanna pressed her hands to her ears, wanting to block out the language. She’d heard the words before, though never so frequently. Strangely, though, the more they said them, the less offensive the language became. She was struck again at how childish their behavior was, with the posturing and name-calling.

  “No sign of the intruders anywhere, Major.” This was the one they called Lieutenant. He’d moved away from their hiding place, but Elanna knew that one small sound or movement from her or Tobin and they’d be discovered. “I checked the tree row, and there’s nothing. A piece of material that might have been theirs. Maybe they went that way.”

  Major Kodak snorted. Sickly, Elanna realized the man had not moved away from them, but instead had been standing so silently as to make her think he had. At the thought she might have moved, or breathed, while thinking nobody was near, her stomach lurched.

  “They won’t get far. Not if they’re wounded.”

  Kodak snorted again. “I want to know who they were. Where’d they get a car and the batteries to run it? What about all the stuff in it? They’re too valuable to forget, Lieutenant. Search again.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Lovett! Maranian! Shift your asses!”

  Elanna heard the thump, thump, thump of boot steps again, this time returning. A breeze kicked up, swaying the grass that hid them. Several of the strands parted and stayed open.

  She could see out. And if she could see out, they could see in. Tobin’s hand stopped her from reaching out to rearrange the grass. A quick glance told her that he didn’t see the opening. He didn’t know they were in danger.

  “Major, you should see all the shit we found!”

  This was Maranian, then, the wet one. Water puddled from his dripping pants and around his boots. A tiny rivulet formed, moving along the pavement to the roadside. It entered the dirt in front of Elanna. She watched in silent horror as it moved toward her, a thin silver line against the brown earth. It touched her arm, cold.

  “Clothes! Food! Cans and stuff, you won’t believe it!” Lovett squealed.

  “Jesus, Lovett, calm down,” Major Kodak said. “We don’t need a hissy fit.”

  The breeze tickled the grass again and Elanna prayed it would close the gap. It didn’t. The men didn’t seem to notice, perhaps because they stood so close. Elanna could have reached out and touched their boots, had she been insane enough to want to.

  Maranian broke into another sneezing fit. Coughing followed, short, barking gasps that nearly doubled him over. Then some more sneezes, until Major Kodak muttered in disgust.

  “Jee-sus H., Maranian! What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

  “Permission to de-mask, Sir,” Maranian responded in a voice clearly filled with phlegm.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Major said. “Desnot yourself for Christ’s sake, so we can get out of here. The rest of you might as well de-mask, too.”

  With another quick sneeze, Maranian reached up and pulled off the helmet. With it came the black netting that had covered his face from view. As he did so, Elanna bit back a gasp of shock.

  He wasn’t a man at all. Maranian was a young woman, no more than a teener really. And so were all the others.

  −

  31-

  Elanna stiffened beside him, but Tobin didn’t know why. The tall weeds that hid them from view still blocked his sight. Without moving anything but his eyes, Tobin strained to see what had startled her.

  That’s when he noticed the break in the undergrowth right in front of her. He tried to measure quickly by sight, but couldn’t convince himself they were too far back to be seen. Then he realized that whatever had caused Elanna’s reaction was not fear of being caught. Something else had caught her attention.

  With his cheek mashed into the ground, he couldn’t do more than roll his eyes. And if he moved….Thankfully, he didn’t have to. The breeze that had parted the grass in front of Elanna now closed it, opening a gap in front of him. It was small, too small to expose him. He thought. He didn’t know. His stomach swooped like a gull. He wanted to inch backward, into the brush, but didn’t dare.

  He rolled his eyes up as far as they would go, though he expected to see little more than boots and legs. Fate had blessed him with more than that. And then he saw what had made Elanna go rigid beside him.

  The one they called Maranian, the one still dripping, had long blonde hair and the face of a cherub. They were all sweet-faced, even the tall one he guessed was the one they called Major Kodak. His mouth dropped open until he made a conscious effort to close it. These foul-mouthed soldiers were girls?

  And young girls, he noted, as the one he guessed was Lovett again giggled and teased Maranian for falling in the water. Now, upon closer inspection, he could spot the tell-tale bumps on their chests that marked their womanhood, but bumps were all they were. How old could they be, really?

  Well, no matter how old they were, or what their gender, they still had guns. And they weren’t afraid to use them, he remembered, thinking of the crazy ride away from the roadblock. They were just as dangerous now as they’d been before, even if his mind wanted to refuse to believe it.

  “C’mon. Let’s get the fuck outta here.” This was Lieutenant, a tall girl with black hair that fell past her shoulders. Bits of dirt and leaves clung among the dark strands, and the hair gleamed with grease. Sweet-faced, maybe, but not too clean. “Hey, Stolzfus! You and that brat done loading that shit into the tank?”

  Incredibly, within a few seconds, they’d gone. Marched away in their heavy boots. Tobin’s entire body seemed to relax at once; he was a boneless and limp as a rag doll. He hadn’t realized how tensely he’d been holding himself until that moment.

  He risked discovery by scooting forward to watch the girls head back across the creek. This time, none of them fell. The six or so who’d stayed behind had not all taken off their helmets and masks, but the ones who had looked as feminine as the four who’d just rejoined them. He couldn’t see so clearly from this distance, but they all looked just as young and unkempt.

  With a shout, Lieutenant jumped back up on the side of the tank. Pulling her helmet and mask back over her face, she pounded on the vehicle’s metal side. With a roar that didn’t sound half so frightening now, the huge tank lurched into motion.

  It sputtered and jerked, heaving forward and grinding up the creek side dirt into a thick mud that splattered upward, hitting many of the riders. He heard hoots and whoops, but no cries of disgust. Once it got started, the tank moved pretty quickly. It swung back onto the cracked road and soon was out of sight, though the sound of it lingered in the air long after it had disappeared.

  “They’re girls,” Elanna said in a strangled voice. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Girls, Tobin!”

  “I saw.”

  Elanna started to laugh. He turned to look at her, sprawling on the ground and shaking with hysterical laughter. Tears began pouring from her eyes, and she didn’t even pause to wipe them away.

  A few nervous chuckles escaped from his mouth too. He recognized her r