Seeking Eden Read online

Sophie shook her head. “Not with Kodak in charge. She’s wanted to come down here and kick ass for years.”

  “What about the others?” Tobin asked. “Will they follow her?”

  Sophie looked at him blankly. “Well, yeah. It’s what we’re supposed to do.”

  “You didn’t.” Elanna spoke the words gently. Sophie continued to hold the backpack steady while Elanna worked the tiny boy free of his blankets. “You helped us.”

  Sophie blushed. “You were nice to me. Kodak’s never nice to me.”

  So loyalty was as easy as that, Elanna thought. She opened the baby’s diaper and began cleaning him. He fussed a little, waving his feet and fists. Sophie watched with big eyes.

  “That’s Lansing’s baby, huh? The one that grew in her belly?”

  Elanna nodded. Enoch and Abe exchanged glances again, this time including Samuel. Elanna wrapped the boy in some spare cloths and held him out to Sophie. “You want to hold him?”

  “This baby a Gapper’s is?” Samuel asked. “And a boy child, at last?”

  Elanna nodded again, avoiding their gaze. She settled the infant in Sophie’s arms and showed her how to prop the baby’s head. Sophie’s smile was precious.

  “His mother died in birth,” Elanna said. “They…they were going to kill him. He’s mine now.” Now she looked up, determined. “He’s mine.”

  “And a better life with you he will have,” Abe said.

  Samuel grunted. “And after him they will come.”

  “No,” Elanna said. “They don’t want him. I do.”

  “Other people’s bread tastes better,” Samuel said. “They will want that child back.”

  Sophie raised her face. “They don’t want him, just like Elanna said. They hate babies. They hate him for killing Lansing. Nobody there likes babies. They don’t love them, or play with them, or hold them at night when they’re scared! They don’t care if they’re too little and they fall behind in drill and scrape their knees! They call them mistakes…”

  The girl was sobbing. In a few sentences she’d managed to paint a picture of how life had been for her, growing up. Elanna saw that the men had the good grace to look ashamed.

  “Shh,” Elanna soothed. “It’s all right, Sophie. You’re with us now.”

  “The women and children we have to make safe,” Samuel said roughly. “Quickly. Before they come.”

  Tears glistened in the old man’s eyes, but whether he was crying for poor abused Sophie or for the terror that was coming, she didn’t know. She bent back to the crying girl in her arms, feeling her tears wet the front of Elanna’s shirt. The baby, squeezed between them, miraculously was silent. Elanna held them tightly, loving both children as best she could though they weren’t her own.

  “Faster than that,” Tobin said from the barn’s doorway. He turned to look back at them, face bleak. “I hear the trucks. They’re almost here.”

  −

  51-

  They didn’t have time to hide the women and the children. They didn’t have time even to warn them. Kodak led her soldiers with swift and lethal efficiency. The two trucks hadn’t even stopped rolling before the Gappers swung down from them, brandishing their weapons and hollering like demons.

  “Line ‘em up!” Kodak barked out. “Get them out here and line them up!”

  The women left their washing and their scrubbing; the children dropped their toys and left them in the dirt to obey. The men who’d already begun the day’s work in the fields began making their way back. They all began to form the lines that must have become so familiar after the years of abuse from the Gappers. They didn’t know, Tobin thought with sick horror as he watched from the barn, that this time it would be different.

  “We can’t let them do it,” Elanna whispered. “She’s going to slaughter them!”

  Tobin restrained her from leaping out through the door. “If we take them by surprise we might have a chance.”

  Elanna leaned against him, trembling, for only a moment before pulling away. Worry lined her face, and he bent to kiss her quickly. She clutched at him, hard, and he squeezed her in return. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this might be the last time he’d ever have the chance to hold her.

  The men huddled, muttering, searching the barn for the weapons Sophie had pointed out. Tobin smiled at Elanna, who returned it, before joining Abe, Enoch and Samuel. The old man shook his head slowly from side to side. Not in refusal, Tobin thought. In shame at what they had to do.

  “I’m ready,” Sophie said, joining them. She’d relinquished the baby to Elanna, who tucked him back into the backpack.

  Surprised, Tobin put his hand on her shoulder. “No, Sophie. We can’t ask you to do this.”

  She scowled, her young face becoming old in an instant. “I can fight better than you. I know what to do.”

  A sharp cry rose from outside the barn, turning his stomach over. They didn’t have time for arguing. He couldn’t send this girl, this child, out to fight for them. Not against her own people! But what choice did they have? Sophie was right. She’d been trained. They hadn’t.

  “This is what we’ll do.” The girl bent to draw a line in the barn’s dirt floor. “Their trucks are here. They’ll be lining them up, just like they always do, but then Kodak will give the order. They only have three guns that work. I hid the ammunition so they only have what was already in the weapons.”

  Tobin’s blood turned to ice at Sophie’s cold description. “They’re going to murder them all. Just like that?”

  “Once the shooting starts, some may run,” Sophie’s voice shook, and he was glad to hear it. It meant she was human. “They’ll be chased by the others. The ones who don’t have guns will use their knives.”

  “Adonai help us,” Elanna said. The color had drained from her cheeks. “What can we do?”

  “We don’t have much time.” Sophie looked up at Elanna. “I’ll take you. I’ll tell Kodak I chased you here, and the General wounded Tobin, and we left him to die in the field. When Kodak comes over to us, you,” she pointed to the four men, “will jump on her and kill her. Without Kodak, the others may stop. But if they don’t, you’ll have to fight them. Without a leader they probably won’t keep on. Kodak’s the only one with a taste for blood.”

  Sophie blinked, her eyes going blank for a moment. “It’s been ten years since any of us has been to war. I think Kodak’s the only one who really remembers how.”

  Enoch held up the large pitchfork. “We will behind you be, child.”

  “What about him?” Elanna asked, holding up the baby.

  “Put him the hay into,” Samuel said gruffly. He was rubbing his hands as though they pained him. He took the long metal bar Abe held out to him, and hefted its weight. “The cows out in the field are. He safe will be.”

  Elanna looked stricken but kissed the sleeping baby and went to the back of the barn to tuck him away there. Tobin grabbed a deadly looking farming tool from the hook on the wall. It was time. Before Kodak had a chance to start her slaughter.

  “Just one more thing.” Sophie paused, her voice wobbling. She swallowed heavily and lifted her chin. “You might get the others to quit, but not Kodak. Don’t stop until she’s dead.”

  -*-

  Though Sophie only reached her shoulder, the girl was strong. Sophie shoved Elanna through the door so hard she went to her knees, shredding the skin. She didn’t have to fake her cry of pain.

  “The fuck is this?” Kodak said, turning. “Dallas? The fuck you doing here?”

  “I brought the prisoner, Sir!” Sophie said, snapping her hand against her head in that gesture they used. She forced Elanna to her feet. “Followed her here from base, Sir!”

  Elanna didn’t imagine the gleam of pleasure in Kodak’s eyes. The older girl actually smiled. The grin made Elanna shudder.

  “So you’re not a total loss after all,” Kodak said. “Bring her here.”

  Elanna let Sophie push her toward Kodak, her resistance real. “Just let me go, Ko