Seeking Eden Read online

  Imperfect or not, she’

  d love her child, even if it could only be hers for a year. An entire year without appointments! A year to nurse and care for her child, watching it grow. A year to love it, and the rest of her life to mourn when they took it away.

  −3-

  Buildings taller than any Tobin had ever seen towered over him, their blank window spaces like glowering eyes. Many of them were half-destroyed, the upper floors missing or exposed to the elements. Weeds and shrubs grew up there with crazy abandon, and he knew he hadn’t imagined the glimmer of eyes watching him from the foliage.

  He’d spent four days of hard riding and another two figuring how to get off the Transcon in order to reach the city. Apparently the Transcon had been built to bypass New York City like it did everything else, and though its exit ramps were well-marked most of them had become unnavigable due to damage. A lot of it looked purposeful, as though some time ago someone or some groups of someone had decided to cut off all access from the highway to the city beneath. Tobin had been able, finally, to pick his way down one rubble-strewn ramp, fearing at any moment it might collapse. After that it had been another day’s travel across a swinging footbridge that had obviously been newer-built, though it looked as abandoned as everything else.

  “So much for finding people here.”

  The sound of his voice rang through the dirty streets and echoed in the alleyways. It embarrassed him. In Eastport he hadn’t heard any voice but his own for over a year before the peddler came. Here in the city, among the garbage and the buildings, the clear sound of his own words flew back at him as startlingly as a slap in the face.

  It wasn't the first time since leaving home that he wondered if he'd been right to follow the advice of a stranger. This city was ugly. Probably dangerous, too.

  Tobin pushed his bike a few more feet, picking his way carefully around the detritus that threatened to maim him or the bike if he didn’t watch his step. Shards of glass and other junk littered everything. He saw an old tire, charred and sprouting wires from its core. A doll’s head, one eye poked out and replaced with a pencil stub. Paper. Unidentifiable pieces of metal.

  A gust of wind rattled the garbage and made the hair stand up on Tobin’s neck. He pulled his coat closer around his chin against the chill. He strained to look up, up again, wondering if he’d ever get used to the sight. Eastport’s tallest building had been the church, and the bell tower had blown off that during a winter squall three years ago. Although he knew logically that they were man-made of mortar, steel, brick and stone, Tobin couldn’t help feeling these immense structures had sprung from the earth full-blown, like mountains. Now he knew why they were called skyscrapers.

  His stomach goinged. It had been half a day since he’d last eaten. He could stop and open his pack, scrounge around for the last of the bread and cheese he’d brought from home or open a few of the cans he’d brought from the warehouse club, but Tobin thought he’d wait. The sun was dipping too rapidly behind these monoliths for his comfort. Dark would fall in the city sooner than he’d expected. He needed to find shelter.

  An empty space yawned at him from the ground floor of the skyscraper closest to him. Apparently it had been a storefront with a big glass showcase window. The glass was long gone. The sign still swung on rusted hinges, creaking.

  “Schenk’s.” Below the letters were some other scribbles, words in a language he didn’t recognize. “Kosher delicatessen.”

  The wind kicked up again, and the sign creaked back and forth with a sound like a kitten crying. It might have been a sad sound, or even a scary sound, but Eastport had many old shops with signs that creaked in the wind. The difference was most of those stores still had glass panes in them, if they hadn’t been removed to use in something else. Even if they’d broken, the glass was never left to lie around on the ground.

  “It’s all we’ve got,” Old Ma had always told him. “You can ask why we care, Tobin, when it’s only us here, but that’s what I’ll tell you. It’s all we’ve got.”

  When Old Ma and Old Pa had gotten on in years, too old to repair and tidy the town they’d lived in all their lives, Tobin had continued keeping things nice. Old Ma had died in her sleep, peacefully, two years ago. Old Pa had followed not long after, leaving Tobin alone until the peddler came.

  He’d been the first in perhaps seven years or more, a wizened old man with hair the color and consistency of summer clouds. Unlike many of the peddlers who had visited Eastport over the years, he pushed no cart. Everything he had to trade came from his pack or from out of his mouth. Canned goods and stories.

  Tobin had been happy to give up some eggs and smelly cheese in exchange for the canned goods, but the stories were worth more than anything he had to trade.

  “There used to be billions of people,” the peddler told him while they sat together at Tobin’s scarred kitchen table. “Like the stars in the sky at night.”

  Tobin wanted to scoff, but couldn’t. What the peddler told him sparked a longing he hadn’t realized he had. He was lonely. A place filled with people, brimming with different faces and voices, called to him like some sweet but somehow illicit fantasy.

  The old man slugged back a shot of Old Pa’s liquor, the last in the bottle. “But then something happened. What, I can’t rightly say. For a while it must’ve seemed like the world was full to bursting, and people didn’t want to keep having kids. Then time passed and people started seeing that nobody was having babies no more. Even those that wanted them couldn’t have ‘em.”

  “Do you remember that?”

  The peddler shot him a look of disdain. “I’m old, but I ain’t as old as all that. No, son, I just hear stories. Tell the tales. That’s all. People stopped having babies, and then there were no children to grow up and take the place of those who died. They had all those batteries to make their cars go and keep their lights on, power their cell phones, but nobody to drive the cars or turn on the lights or answer their calls. Nobody left to do much of anything.”

  Tobin tried to imagine a world overflowing with people. “That was a long time ago.”

  The peddler rubbed his eyes. “Not so long as you might think. A couple generations, maybe three, four...There was no storm of fire, like the God-pushers predicted. There was no apocalypse. Just a slowing down. Tell you what, son. Why not come with me? Hit the open road? I can’t promise you we’ll always have food in our bellies or a roof for our heads, but it’ll be a lot more adventure than you’re likely to find here. And I’m not bad comp’ny, if I do say so.”

  Tobin had never left the island, never crossed the causeway. Being alone had been sort of a way of life for him, though for the past year it had been more excessively lonely than it had ever been. He’d mourned his grandparents long enough. Maybe it was time for him to light out.

  Before he could answer, the peddler laughed. “You don’t have to look so excited. I get it. I’m an old man, and a stranger. You’re likely looking for someone a little younger. A little more…feminine, maybe? Can’t say as I blame you, son, though I’ll say my interest in such things has long passed me by. I can tell you where to go, son. California. I’ve been up and down this coast a hundred times, Tobin, and I’ve heard the same stories over and over from travelers who come from the West.” The old man leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially. “There are babies being born in California. Lots of babies.”

  They parted the next morning with Tobin still undecided. It might be one thing to go along with a peddler and another to head for a place Tobin half-believed was just another fairy-tale. The peddler didn’t press him, just got back in the patched and leaking rowboat he’d used to cross the sunken causeway.

  “Things’ve changed a mite since I was here last. Been about twenty-nine years or so, I’d say, since I last crossed this water. I recall your mother. She was a pretty thing. Hair just like yours.” The peddler had grinned and waved good bye. “Wish I’d come across sooner, but there’s no helping it now. Glad to s