Seeking Eden Read online

  The voice from the throne was unmistakably male, though nothing else about the dark and hulking figure was clear. It shifted, one arm lifting and a hand pointing, but at what Elanna couldn’t tell. At once, blinding light filled the room and burned her eyes.

  With a sharp cry, Elanna threw up her hands to shield her face. The light was pure white, so bright and harsh it seemed tinged with purple around the edges. Beneath it her hands looked sickly green. With tearing eyes Elanna looked for the source, and saw it came from a series of long, rectangular boxes set into the ceiling.

  “How’s that?” Came the cold voice. “All the better to see you with, and all that shit?”

  Blinking painfully, Elanna looked around her. The room was the largest she’d ever seen, even larger than the storerooms at home. Floor-to-ceiling shelving units divided it roughly in half. Boxes filled every shelf, so that she could see nothing that might be on the other side. Her side of the room was empty except for a raised platform of sort. On it was a chair unlike any she’d ever seen, and on the throne sat the man she thought must be the General.

  “My, my,” he said. “You are a pretty thing, aren’t you?”

  Elanna’s eyes no longer hurt, but the light was still too bright. It outlined everything in sharp detail, down to the dirty cracks on the floor and the frayed laces in the General’s boots. Even from this distance she could see the lines around his eyes.

  “Cat got your tongue?” He looked bored. He beckoned her with one finger. “Come here.”

  She didn’t have a choice, not really. Elanna did as he asked, glad to see that though the floor glittered damply in places there was nothing but water there. She stood in front of him, not daring to step up on the platform.

  The General looked down at her from the throne. It had a high back, higher even than his head, and was covered in a smooth and gleaming sort of fabric that looked to her like the hide of some animal. Bright bullets of metal speckled the material, maybe to tack it to the wooden frame underneath. The arms were high, and the entire chair was on a circular base that rocked and swiveled as the General moved.

  The chair was impressive, but the man sitting on it was even more so. Tobin had been the tallest man she’d seen, but this man, even seated, looked even taller. He sat with one long leg crossed nonchalantly over the other, leaning back in the chair, one arm crossed over his chest and the opposite hand supporting his chin. His finger, also long and finely formed, tapped a mouth that seemed made for smiling.

  He wasn’t smiling. He was staring, eyes narrowed and brow furrowed. She couldn’t see the color of his eyes, but they glittered in the harsh light from above. His hair was the same color as the delicious stuff the Plain People called butter.

  He could have been any age from eighteen to sixty, but Elanna guessed he was probably closer to forty. He wore the same green uniform as the other Gappers, but his was pressed and clean, and it fit him perfectly. A shiny row of medals marched across his broad chest, stopping at the gap in his jacket that showed a tight fitting tee shirt underneath.

  He wasn’t handsome; his skin was too lined and his face too grim for that. But he was compelling, she thought with a shiver of distaste. Power oozed from him like a dank cloud.

  “Like what you see?”

  The question startled her. Elanna realized she’d been gaping. “I’m not sure.”

  He quirked his eyebrow at her, leaning forward. “Really.”

  Elanna swallowed, aware that any move she made and anything she said might go horribly wrong. She was walking on chipped concrete. Any step could be false, and she wouldn’t know it until she fell.

  “Why did you bring me here?” She ventured, bravely she thought.

  “Ah.” The General sat back in his chair and crossed his arms again. His finger tap-tapped on his mouth as he continued staring at her. “Well. Let’s see. Because you tried to breech our lines?”

  “We didn’t!” Elanna protested.

  He held up a hand, silencing her. “Because you came in a car loaded with stuff I’d like more of?”

  “You can have it,” Elanna said. “You already do. Those teener girls took all of it.”

  The General favored her with a smirk. “But there must be more.”

  Tobin had told her this was what they wanted. For the first time, Elanna understood how he must have felt when Reb Ephraim asked him how to get to the warehouse. It hadn’t seemed wrong or bad when it benefited the Tribe, but it did now.

  “I can tell you how to get there,” Elanna said. “And you can let me go. And Tobin, too.”

  “Tobin? Is that his name?”

  Elanna nodded. The General snorted. He uncrossed his legs and began to rock the chair slowly, back and forth. The motion began to annoy her.

  “Pansy ass name, I’d say,” the General said, as though speaking to himself. “Pansy ass man, too. Though I must say our Kodak is quite a bruiser.”

  A bloodcurdling scream interrupted his words. Elanna jumped, heart pounding. The General’s rich mouth thinned and he slammed both feet solidly to the floor, stopping the rocking.

  “Shitdamnpissfucktits,” he swore softly. His hands clenched the arms of the chair.

  Elanna noticed that his not-handsome face had gone white. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  The scream came again, punctuated this time by short, sobbing breaths. Elanna wanted to cover her ears against the pain in the sound. She looked behind the chair, along the wall, and saw a door. The screaming was coming from in there.

  “It doesn’t sound like nothing,” she said.

  The screams continued, rising into a seemingly impossible crescendo. Elanna thought whoever was making the noise would surely have to stop, but the sound went on and on until she thought she might scream herself.

  And yet, wasn’t there something familiar about the sound? She’d heard it before, hadn’t she? She’d made that same sound herself, many times.

  “Get it out!” Came the cry, and Elanna knew what was happening.

  “Someone’s having a baby,” she said, pointing to the door. “In there.”

  The General put his head in his hands. “Shit. Yeah. I guess she is.”

  “You guess?” Elanna asked, wincing each time one of the screams leaked out from the door. “You don’t know?”

  “How could I know?” The General asked her, looking up with wet and weary eyes. “She didn’t tell me she was pregnant.

  ”

  -42-

  Samuel looked up at the sky, which had finally grown dark. “Time for you to go, naw vunst, ain’t?”

  Tobin nodded. “Yeah. It’s time.”

  “Directions, you have?”

  “Yes.”

  “Food? Water?”

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Samuel sighed heavily. “Ill luck I never wished you, Tobin Vinter.”

  “I know that, Samuel,” Tobin said, though until the old man said it he would have guessed otherwise. “I’m sorry we brought trouble to your people.”

  Samuel snorted and waved his hand. “Go, naw. Get going. Elanna to save you must.”

  Tobin bent and picked up the knapsack Rachel had packed for him and the lightweight water jug. He slung both over his back, waiting for the weight to cause him pain and pleased when it didn’t. At least not too much.

  He’d changed back into his own jeans and shirt and the sneakers he’d found what seemed like years ago in the warehouse. Enoch had found an old baseball cap for him in the basement, instead of the straw one, and Tobin pulled it on his head. He turned back once as he left the yard, seeing the house behind him that had sheltered him for a while. The windows in the kitchen were alight, and several dark silhouettes stood shadowed there. Rachel and Enoch, with Samuel outlined in the doorway.

  He raised a hand at them, and they returned the wave. Tobin stepped out through the neatly trimmed grass and in a few minutes reached the cracked and pitted pavement of the road. He didn’t turn back again.

&