Keary Taylor - Eden

The suburbs eventually gave way to the rise of apartment buildings and offices.

We crouched behind a long abandoned car, the world foreignly silent. After I checked to make sure nothing was watching, I signaled to West, and we darted across the street to the pharmacy. Hugging the wall, we made our way around to the back of the building. As we stepped inside, I heard the whooshing of helicopter blades off in the distance. Gray color started to creep into the city.

The door had been busted in by Bill a few years ago. We’d cleared out the things we needed, things to reduce fevers, things to clean out wounds. I just hoped I would recognize the syringes Avian needed.

“Hurry,” I whispered as I looked around the building to make sure there wasn’t any sleeping Fallen inside.

“What are we looking for?” he asked as he hopped over the counter and started searching through shelves. I hopped over as well and started searching with him.

“The adrenaline was in a syringe,” I said as I headed to look toward the back. I noticed the fridges and opened one. It seemed a miracle that the electricity still ran in the building. The fridge was still cold. Row after row of vials and syringes greeted me. “Got it!”

We both scoured the labels, searching for any indicator of what we needed. I didn’t even understand what most of it was supposed to be. I felt my heart start pounding faster as the room lightened. They would all be waking soon.

“This is it!” West suddenly gave an excited hiss. “There’s… one, two, two of them.”

“That’s all?” I asked, feeling my stomach sink into my knees.

“Ya, I’m pretty sure,” he said as he checked again.

I grabbed the syringes from him and wrapped them in the cleanest shirt I had, packed exactly for that purpose. “Check for aspirin, anything that looks like we could use it. And hurry, we haven’t got much time.”

We picked our way through everything. I wished I could load up one of those long forgotten about cars outside and just dump the entire store into it. Even if everything was expired by several years, it could still help us.

“Come on,” West said as we double checked to be sure there was nothing left we might need.

We slipped out the back door. As we did, I picked up on the sound of the chopper blades again, this time sounding further away than earlier. They were heading out to scan the outskirts of the city.

The other pharmacy was five blocks to the east, all city with nothing but abandoned cars for cover.

I bit my lip, scanning the road for any signs of activity. I glanced at West, only becoming scared when I saw how white his face was.

“Let’s go,” I said before either of us panicked and did something stupid.

I bolted toward a bus that was sitting half in the middle of the road. West’s footsteps pounded softly behind me. My own adrenaline raced in my system, propelling me all the faster as I peeked around the bus, saw that the coast was clear and sprinted along the side of a skyscraper.

“You okay?” I asked as I stole a brief glance at West as we pressed against the side of the building.

He only nodded as he stared wide-eyed back at me.

I looked around the corner, keeping my body pressed to the cool surface of the side of the building. I caught sight of a woman walking in the opposite direction of us. Only half her head was covered with red hair that trailed to her waist. The other half of her head was shiny metal. I noticed her left hand had no flesh, only a cybernetic skeletal frame of fingers poked out of her long sleeved shirt.

I glanced at West, pressed a finger to my lips, then motioned for him to follow me. We both sprinted silently across the street.

There was only one block to go. I could see the pharmacy when something inside the bottom floor of a sky scraper caught my eye. I froze with stunned horror.

They were there, just as West told me they would be. Rows of Fallen inside the building, facing the windows, watching with inactive eyes. There were children with cybernetic legs, women with half faces, men with bare metallic chests. And they were just standing there inside. Waiting.

“Eve, come on,” a voice said urgently as it tugged on my arm. I had been pulled ten steps away before I managed to take my eyes off of them.

“Why are they like that?” I asked, panic filling my voice. How had I not ever noticed them like that before? “What are they waiting for?”

“Let’s not find out,” he said as he checked to make sure we were clear before we crossed the street. He grabbed my wrist and dragged me across.

I finally snapped out of it as we stepped through the large broken window. We went to the fridge first this time. The electricity was still working in this building as well.

“Here we go,” West said. “Four… five… six. There’s six of them here.”

“Great,” I said as I wrapped them with the others. I stuffed the shirt back in my bag and set it down on the ground as I went to scour the shelves. “That’s got to be enough. I don’t think we’ll have to go to the other pharmacy. We probably couldn’t make it anyway with it getting this light. It’s across the city. Six or seven miles.”

There were bottles and bottles of aspirin, cases of allergy medication I hoped would help Sarah. There was probably something here for seizures as well, but I wouldn’t know what it was.

“Does it smell funny in here to you?” I asked as I followed the source of the strange scent.

“Just like an old abandoned building with breaking down chemicals,” he said as he stuffed his pack full of life-saving medication.

I wandered to the back of the building, into a utility room. A rusty looking water heater dominated the cramped space. Electric cables and lines ran in different directions, disappearing into the wall. This was where the smell was coming from.

A movement caught my eye outside the small window to my left. By then it was too late.

The glass shattered as the Hunter outside fired. The bullet brushed past my left shoulder, embedding itself into the thick metal side of the water heater. The spark of metal was small, and it wasn’t a heavy gas leak, but it was enough to cause the explosion.

“West!” I screamed as I ducked as the flames billowed out at me. “Get out of here!”

I could feel the oxygen being quickly sucked out of the building as the flames ate it up. I scrambled along the floor toward my pack. I couldn’t leave it here. It was the whole reason we had come.

“Eve?!” I heard his screaming toward the front of the building.

“Run!” I screamed as I came to his side, grabbed his hand in mine, and bolted out the door.

By this time the sun had broken over the buildings and the morning rays were charging the enemy. I heard the rev of an engine come from behind the building and the screeching of tires against asphalt.

We were only two blocks away from where the forest butted up against the city but we weren’t as fast as an ATV.

The hunter shot across the street behind us, the sound of the engine the only thing I could concentrate on as we ran for our lives.

The pile of metal that slammed into me from the side and knocked me to my back wasn’t the one I expected.

Neither of us had noticed the other Hunter hiding in the shadows of another building. He had launched himself at me, tackling me to the asphalt, choking the life out of me with one bare flesh hand and another cybernetic one.

As I stared into his metallic eyes, I couldn’t believe this was how my end was finally going to come.

The Fallen who had slammed into me suddenly jerked to the side as a metal rod dented its head in. It collapsed with a hiss of dying electric sounds. I looked up to see West holding a five foot long broken street sign, looking quite pleased with himself, a half smile tugging at his lips despite the terror in his eyes.