Eden Lost (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  With the morning light, Ben rowed back to shore. Lila and Katie were awake, surveying the devastation around them.

  “It looks so different,” was Katie’s observation. “Will we have to leave?” Although Katie hadn’t yet cried over the loss of her home, Ben could tell that the tears were always on the verge of erupting. She was trying to be brave and grown-up.

  “We will, honey,” answered Lila.

  “Where will we go?”

  Lila looked at Ben. He had no answers.

  “We’ll find an awesome place to live,” Ben said. “Something different, but just as good.”

  That sounded lame, he thought.

  They set up a tent on the beach and took stock of their belongings. If they left Fontana Lake, most of what they saved from the cabin would have to remain behind.

  “You know,” said Ben, looking out across the lake. “Not all of the forest was destroyed. There’s a whole section untouched. We could always move over there and look for another cabin.”

  Lila just shook her head.

  Katie was down the beach exploring with Ralph. A mix of many breeds, predominantly Lab, Ralph was almost as tall as Katie.

  “We need to find someplace with people,” Lila said quietly.

  “But you’ve always loved the fact that we weren’t around people,” answered Ben.

  Lila looked at Ben with a misty eye. “Katie needs other children in her life and it doesn’t look like I’ll be able to provide that for her. It’s great that she is so in tune with nature, but she needs more. We can’t live here anymore.”

  “Where do you want to go? We have no idea where we’ll find other children.”

  “Back when we were coming here, some people were going further south—to Florida. Maybe there? Or maybe to Washington. Your friend, President Jeffries, was trying to rebuild.”

  Lila didn’t want to do either of those things. Ben could tell. She was really struggling. But she had a point. Maybe it was time for Katie to be with other children. Were they depriving her somehow? If they were still living alone in the woods when Katie hit her teenage years, would it be unfair to her to not be able to experience love. Would it be too late at that point? She needed to start interacting with others before then.

  It wasn’t that he was afraid to venture out. After all, he and Lila had shared an amazing adventure together getting there. But he had gotten used to his home by the lake, and things were different now. They had Katie. They couldn’t take the chances they once took.

  And were they prepared? Ben hadn’t had to fire his guns in almost two years. They didn’t like the noise in their little paradise. All of their hunting had been with the crossbow. Could they defend themselves the way they once did? But Lila had a point.

  “You’re right,” Ben finally admitted. “I hadn’t really thought about Katie as a teenager and how this life might actually stunt her in some ways.”

  “It’s been in the back of my mind for a while,” said Lila, “but I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving here. The decision was made for us. We always thought we’d eventually do some more traveling. I guess that time has come.”

  Ben’s fears about how Lila would respond to the fire had been put to rest. She was definitely the Lila of old—clear-thinking and optimistic.

  “We’re going to have to walk, at least until we find some gas—and a car that will run.” He reflected for a moment, then shook his head. “Not that a car would be of any use.”

  The electro-magnetic pulse—EMP—had affected anything that had a circuit board, and most electrical systems in general, so they had found early on that the only vehicles that worked were old, pre-computer cars. Some of the older outboard engines were usable, and were a great help on the lake. But the available gas eventually ran out. Gas pumps didn’t work, and Ben lacked the knowledge to access the gas stored in the tanks below the ground. For a long time, he had siphoned gas from other cars, but even that was no longer viable. Many of the cars had rusted, their tanks leaking out all the gas, and in most of those that were still intact, the gas had fouled—full of dirt, rust, or water. Ben had finally given up looking. They had everything they needed by the lake—until now.

  The other problem was the landscape. The earthquake had drastically rearranged the land. Roads had become canyons or small mountains. Maneuvering around the broken ground was time-consuming at best, treacherous at worst. Over time, by trial and error, Ben had learned how to get to nearby towns, but, as he recalled his trip from Washington, DC to Fontana Lake, and the time it took him to travel 500 miles, trial and error wouldn’t work for long trips. For the same reason, even bicycles were of no use. No, wherever they decided to go, they’d have to walk.

  They were in no rush. Time had long ago ceased to be important to them. The only factor was the weather. Depending on their destination, winter might become a stumbling block in the scenario.

  They spent the next few days planning. They caught fish for food, saving some of their more portable food for the trip. Lila had also swooped through and picked some vegetables at the last minute before the fire. Food wasn’t an immediate problem.

  A more pressing issue was Lila’s comfort level with using her left eye for shooting. They had a lot of ammunition—more than they could ever take with them—so target practice for both of them became a priority. Ben was never the marksman with guns that Lila had become. His expertise was with his crossbow. The practice with the guns would do him good.

  For Lila, it was school all over again. Her skill at shooting a rifle from the right side was history. It felt to her as if she was handling a rifle for the first time. The pistols weren’t too much of a problem with her left hand, as she had always practiced with both hands, but the rifle was another story.

  Her first attempt at shooting was a disaster. She spent an hour sighting and dry-firing the rifle before using ammunition. They used a large piece of blackened plywood as a target, and set it up fifty feet away. She aimed and shot. The board didn’t move.

  She lowered the rifle and looked at Ben. “Where did it go?”

  “Beats the heck out of me,” answered Ben.

  Lila started laughing and Ben breathed a sigh of relief, happy that Lila’s sense of humor had returned. It seemed to him that she had already moved beyond the destruction of their home.

  “Good thing we have a lot of ammunition,” said Lila. “I’m going to need it.”

  Lila spent the rest of the day practicing. It was obvious that it was going to take some time, though.

  There was a determination to Lila that I hadn’t seen in a very long time. It was as if she was trying to exorcise the demons that had consumed her for so long, almost as if she knew she had wasted months of her life wallowing in her misery and now had to prove her worth. Whether she was trying to prove it to me or to herself didn’t matter. She wouldn’t quit until she had regained the shooting skill she had once been so proud of.

  A few days later, Lila finally reached a point of comfort with her rifle, and Ben could tell she was anxious to get on the road.

  He wasn’t as ready as Lila, though. They hadn’t seen anyone else in a long time. What had the world outside become. Had the electricity come back? Were people kinder to each other? Were they working together. Was there some order in the world?

  He wanted to stay positive, but Ben couldn’t help the dark thoughts from coming through. What if things had only gotten worse?

  Chapter 3

  Decisions had to be made. They could only carry so much, and much of it had to be ammunition, which was heavy. It had been six years since they had been anywhere further than the towns in the general vicinity of Fontana Dam, and a few years since they had seen another human.

  We had no idea what to expect. Had towns become populated again? I was pretty sure they weren’t, but what about stores? Had everything been cleaned out over the years? During our journey right after the event, supplies—including ammunition—were readily available. We couldn’t be guaranteed
of that anymore.

  They knew they could live off the land, so using valuable space in their packs for food wasn’t necessary. Instead, in addition to the ammunition, they loaded them with clothes and camping gear. Even Katie had her own pack.

  I was blown-away by how well Katie was handling the whole situation. Back when I was a kid, I would have been whining at every juncture—the work, the discomfort, the uprooting, and even the acrid smell, the aftermath of the fire, still hanging in the air. Not Katie. That wasn’t to say she wasn’t sad about leaving the only home she ever knew, but living in the woods her whole life had made her adaptable. The violent weather could change plans quickly, as could the unexpected appearance of a bear or a cougar. No, what bothered Katie the most was the disappearance of the animals. Whether they escaped the fire or perished in it, they were gone. We had no worries about Katie. Maybe she could even teach us a thing or two about adaptability.

  They stayed on the beach in front of their burned-out cabin for another three days before they felt ready to embark on their move to … to where? They had many discussions about their future and had finally decided to head southwest toward the Gulf of Mexico. If someone had asked them why they chose that area, they weren’t sure they could tell them. It was more a process of elimination. Washington wasn’t an option. As much as the new government might have been able to create a viable society there, the thought of living in a city after all this time was just too depressing for them. Florida was a similar situation. They wanted to live near the water, but most of the Florida coastline had been built-up. Again, too much city.

  They considered going back from where they had originally come—to New England—but it would be too cold. The accelerated climate change had brought more cold weather to their home in the Smokies, so they could only imagine what it was like up north. The southwest seemed the logical choice. Neither one of them had been to the panhandle of Florida or the Mississippi, Louisiana, or Texas coast. There had to be some communities there. If not, they could venture into New Mexico or Arizona. While those areas wouldn’t have the ocean, they would be new and different. Their old friends Nick and Jason had told them that the west had been devastated by the earthquakes, but maybe somehow the earthquakes created as much as they destroyed—new vistas or new land masses. All they could do was to start walking. But as they discovered on their first trip years earlier, sometimes decisions were made for them.

  *****

  They picked a sunny day for their departure. The sky was a dark blue with almost no clouds. They had noticed over the last couple of years how brilliant the sky had become. Man-made pollution had come to a screeching halt, and the planet seemed to be healing itself. Or maybe it was just their imagination. Could the planet heal so quickly?

  As they cast off the boat and headed to the center of Fontana Lake, they looked back at their former home in silence, each of them—even Katie—deep in thought. They were leaving a lot of memories. Ben was nervous for the trip. He recalled feeling some of the same fear when he and Lila first left their home in Massachusetts—two teenagers with no clue of what the future would bring and scared out of their minds. At least this time they had the skills and the experience to do what needed to be done. But still, the unknown was a scary place.

  They docked at the dam and made their way up to the parking lot. Ben looked with fondness at his old truck, now rusting away from inactivity. So much of their first couple of years there had been spent collecting needed supplies and transporting them in the truck. Ben wasn’t sad when he’d had to retire it due to lack of gas. They had reached a point where it was no longer necessary to stock up in the towns. They had all they needed at the cabin. He was sad now though, as if he was saying goodbye to an old friend.

  The Appalachian Trail, their route for most of their trip south, was no longer of use to them. They needed to head more southwest, and decided to take whatever small roads would eventually lead them to the Cherohala Skyway through the mountains of Tennessee. From the map, it seemed a logical choice, but Ben knew from experience that the road might not even exist anymore. Everything about this trip was going to be on the fly, but they weren’t worried. They had no schedule to keep, and it wasn’t like they were taking Katie out of her element. She grew up in the woods. It was where she was most comfortable.

  The first couple of days of their journey were uneventful. They hiked through the forests—some areas were untouched by the earthquake, and in others the landscape had totally shifted—and occasionally they found roads that were still relatively intact. The fire hadn’t spread in that direction, so they were able to find animals and plants for food. The second night, they camped by the shores of a lake and dined on fish.

  Ben and Lila were both impressed by Katie’s fortitude. She rarely complained, even though her backpack—small as it was—must have been heavy for her. It was Ben and Lila who were having the most trouble getting used to the walk. Their packs were heavy, and it had been a few years since they had last had to hike with packs.

  At one point, Ben looked over at Lila. She was wiping away sweat from around her eye patch. Her limp was noticeable.

  “Like old times?”

  She laughed. “Sure. Except for the one eye, the aching ankle, the child, and the dog.” She adjusted her rifle attached to her backpack. “Everything else feels all too familiar.”

  Their third day, they came upon a town. Katie stared in wonder. She hadn’t been in a town since she was very young, and didn’t remember it, so it was all new to her. After marveling at the buildings, many of them burned out, and the rusty abandoned cars, she pointed to one of the dozens of skeletons on the sidewalks. “Why are there so many?” she asked.

  When Ben and Lila had made their journey, bodies were still decomposing. It had been a gruesome sight and flies were everywhere. After seven years, all that remained were the bones and clothes fragments.

  “Do you remember us talking about what happened to the world?” Ben asked. Katie nodded. “These are some of the people who died. We are going to see a lot of them, so don’t let it scare you.”

  “I’m not scared.” And Ben knew she wasn’t. She was more curious. She had seen a lot of animal bones in her life. In some way, this wasn’t too different. The impact of the skeletons was felt more strongly by Ben and Lila. In their little corner of the world in the cabin by the lake, they had escaped all of this. Once they had ended their trips to towns, the obscenity caused by those in power could be forgotten. No longer.

  I think we both felt more emotion than we thought we would. It wasn’t a sadness for the individuals lying there in the streets. Maybe it should have been. I don’t know. It was more of a sadness for mankind in general. How could we have done this to ourselves? We had societies that took centuries to form. They weren’t perfect. Far from it. They were dysfunctional, and even dying in some respects, but they were who we were. There were brilliant aspects to our societies and there were parts that displayed our sheer stupidity. Good or bad, it was what we had created. And in one quick second it was gone. I could look at individual piles of bones and wonder: who were they, where were they going when it all ended, and would they have done anything differently with their lives if they had known what was coming? But those were just curiosities. No, the sadness took on a larger dimension. Maybe it was the result of one misguided man, but in reality, we were all to blame. We all helped bring down our planet, and most people had paid the ultimate price.

  Ben was having second thoughts about their move. Would they have been better off finding something in another part of the forest? Did they really want to see what had become of the world? He looked at Lila, who glanced back. Ben could tell she was having similar thoughts. They were in the mountains now and knew they would run across just the occasional town. What would happen when they emerged from all of that and reached suburbia and cities? Could they face it? Even when they were on their first journey, they stuck to the Appalachian Trail, so nature had been a major part of their lif
e together from the very beginning.

  What kinds of people—if any—would they encounter? And then he had the thought that Katie had never seen another human being. When she was very young, their friends Nick and Jason had shown up and stayed with them for a month, but she would never remember that.

  Ben was just about to mention that to Lila, when, two blocks away a man appeared. He was pulling a cart of some kind, and he was walking toward them.

  Chapter 4

  He saw them, but kept on coming without a break in his stride. He had a pronounced limp.

  “Is limping the new fad?” asked Lila, trying to inject some humor into a tense situation.

  Katie slowly moved behind Lila, holding onto her leg. It was the first sign of timidity Ben had ever seen in Katie, but this was a completely new experience for her. Ben knew it wouldn’t take her long to see that there was nothing to be afraid of … he hoped, anyway.

  As they approached each other, now less than a block away, Ben could hear the man singing. He couldn’t make out the words, but it was a gentle song, a song you might sing to someone who was frightened. Was it for their benefit?

  Taking nothing for granted, Ben and Lila both undid the straps on their holsters, freeing up their pistols.

  When they were about fifty feet apart, they all stopped. Metal was clanging lightly in his now motionless wagon. It was nothing more than a garden-style wagon with extra-large wheels. Ben had sometimes seen similar things while on vacation at the beach on Cape Cod. The man had fashioned a cover that was reminiscent of a covered wagon from the old west.

  “Howdy,” he said. He was probably in his late-50s, a little stooped over, but with muscular arms and legs. His skin was leathery, with a dark tan, the result of years spent outdoors. He had a gray mustache that hung over his upper lip, and a scraggly beard that stopped below his Adam’s Apple. Balding on top, what hair he did have was various shades of gray and secured in a ponytail down to his shoulder blades. He turned his head and spat a stream of brown juice on the road, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. A light breeze was blowing a ripe odor from him their way. Ben glanced down at Katie and saw her holding her nose.