Seeking Eden Read online

  The three of them froze as they heard pounding footsteps from the corridor outside. The frenzied shrieking had stopped, replaced by the sound of many voices yelling. Doors slammed.

  Sophie led them through the maze of dusty, sagging shelves. The thin light from the lanterns didn’t reach back here, but she led them confidently. The aisles were wide and free of debris, so they had no fear of tripping. Within moments they’d reached a small door set so inconspicuously into the wall that Elanna had to strain to see it.

  “Here,” Sophie said. “I used to use this to sneak out of training.”

  She pushed open the door and they stepped out into the night. Not night for so much longer, Elanna noted, seeing the first pink touches of light in the sky. The sun would be up soon.

  The night was not silent. Tobin pulled them back against the wall as several doors slammed and a group of Gappers ran across the yard. They moved with purpose, already dressed in their uniforms.

  “They’re dressed for drill,” Sophie said puzzledly. “But it’s not drill day.”

  Her confusion cleared in a moment. Kodak’s voice, strained but still recognizable, rang through the yard.

  “Move, you cunts! I want you ready to fly before the sunrise! I want to slaughter those Plain fucks in their beds! We’ll find those strangers, and I want to pull them apart piece by motherfucking piece with my teeth, goddammit! They killed the General, those fucking dicklickers, and I want them dead!”

  “No,” Elanna breathed. She turned to Tobin. “Toby, she found the General. She’s going after our friends!”

  “We have to get there first,” Tobin said grimly, watching the flurry of activity. “We have to warn them. We have to get them to fight.”

  −

  49-

  Kodak had to physically restrain herself to keep from leaping over the hood of the truck and strangling that dumb fuck Wilson. The other girl fiddled with the electrical line, trying to get the truck to fire up, but she was taking too damn long. Kodak snapped her fingers rapidly, first one hand and then the other, and rocked on the balls of her feet. Finally she couldn’t stand it any more.

  “What the fuck is wrong with it?” She pushed Wilson aside to stare into the guts of the machine.

  “It’s old,” Wilson said flatly. Her eyes were dry but haunted. She’d been in the room with Lansing until she died. Wilson jerked her hand toward the row of dark garages. “Like the rest of them. I might not be able to get it started.”

  Kodak didn’t lose her temper. Well, not much. “You get it started,” she said and fixed Wilson with a look that made her step back. “Or I fuck you up. Bad. Worse than the General ever did.”

  Kodak didn’t give a flying fuck about how the rest of them grumbled. She was in charge now, because she was the best. The strongest and the best, and she’d take over where the General had left off. But better, she thought. He’d gotten sloppy lately, even lazy.

  “A new order,” she said aloud, just to hear the words. “A new fucking order!”

  “Sir!”

  “Yes, Thomas, go ahead.”

  “We only have three working weapons, Sir!”

  Kodak sighed, reigning in the desire to slap Thomas to the dirt and make her eat it, just because she didn’t like the way she looked today. Instead, she forced a smile to her face, noticing that the other girl recoiled from the expression as though she’d bared her teeth to bite instead of grin. Good. That was just fine. She didn’t need friends, she needed soldiers.

  “What’s wrong with the others?” She meant the ones that had been working for the past few months, not the ones that had been sent to the junk pile already.

  “Sir, they’re just jammed up.”

  “Clean them!” Kodak barked, turning back to the truck to talk to Wilson. Thomas, however, didn’t leave. She stood there, shifting stupidly from foot to foot with an embarrassed, shifty look on her face that made Kodak’s blood boil. “What? What’s fucking wrong with you? Didn’t you hear me?”

  “Sir, they’re clean.”

  “Fuck!” Kodak screamed, wishing there were something else she could say. Something stronger. Fuck just didn’t do it for her anymore. “Jesus motherlicking humped up dicksucker!”

  Thomas winced against the onslaught of obscenity but stood her ground. “They’re jammed up, Sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry!” Kodak yelled. “Sorry won’t buy a twat rag to wipe your sorry cunt with! Sorry doesn’t do diddlyfuck for me! You go clean those fathersucking weapons and get them working or else I’ll wipe my ass with your face!”

  And still Thomas didn’t flee before her. “Sir, I beg your pardon Sir, but we’ve cleaned them all. And even if we got them working again, we don’t have enough ammo --”

  For one horrid moment Kodak thought she might have burst a vein in her head. Her eyes actually pulsed in time with her heartbeat, throbbing, while red bursts clouded her vision. She stumbled forward, leaning against the truck.

  “Sir! Are you all right?” That was Wilson, putting her hand on Kodak’s shoulder.

  “Wilson,” Kodak gritted out, “if you ever fucking touch me again without permission I’ll cut your hand off and make you eat it.”

  “Yes, Sir!”

  She shook her head until she could see again, and straightened. She didn’t miss the look Thomas and Wilson exchanged, but she’d deal with that later. Right now she just wanted to get this bitchly buttreaming mission into gear. She wanted blood.

  “Find Dallas,” Kodak said. “She knows where all that shit is. Then load the weapons, get this fucking truck running and let’s load it up, for Christ’s sake!”

  Thomas snapped off a salute that would have made the General choke, but Kodak let it go. The other girl ran back toward the barracks. There’d be time to whip these pansies back into shape, after they slaughtered those fucks in town. After she fucked up that pussy Tobin and made his bitch watch.

  “Get back to work, Wilson!”

  “Yes, Sir,” Wilson said without enthusiasm.

  “You don’t even care, do you,” Kodak stated. She watched Wilson’s face carefully. “Why don’t you care, Wilson?”

  “I care, Sir,” Wilson said, turning back to the truck.

  “No, you don’t,” Kodak said. “They killed the General, Wilson. Doesn’t that make you mad?”

  Wilson turned, her fingertips dark with smoke and soil from the stubborn engine. “No, Kodak. It doesn’t.”

  Kodak couldn’t believe what she heard. “They killed him, Wilson. Blew his head to bits with his own gun! And that doesn’t piss you off?”

  Wilson shook her head silently. Then she bent back to work under the hood, twisting the scraps and strands of wire that connected the battery packs to the starter cables. One fell, slipping through her fingers and getting lost.

  “Well, that about fucks that up,” she said.

  Kodak was still in shock over Wilson’s total lack of anger. “What, you’re done? You can’t do any more?”

  “What do you want me to do?” Wilson flared. “I’ve got shit to work with! All this shit is falling apart, Kodak! It’s all I can do to keep any of it together, much less operating!”

  Kodak reached out and grabbed the other girl’s throat. “Fix it, Wilson, or I swear on the General’s name I will fuck you up. I will fucking kill you.”

  She let Wilson slide from her grip. The other girl fell heavily against the truck, crying out in pain as she cracked her head. Kodak spit on the ground beside her. Wilson got to her feet and started working with the wires again.

  Fear, Kodak thought with satisfaction, was a wonderful motivator.

  −

  50-

  “Can you run six miles?” Tobin asked Elanna. “Or more?”

  She didn’t even know if she could walk that far, but she nodded anyway. She’d try. “Do you think we can get there before them?”

  Sophie paused to look back at them. “If we go through the fields and the woods, and if we go fast. We might be able to get