Free Eden by Keary Taylor Page A

out of
sight of any Fallen that day and made camp far back in a cave that
night.  Not much was said and I silently wondered if West was
regretting his decision to come with me.  He was finally
understanding just how dangerous this really was.
    I doubted either of us
slept that night, each thinking too much about what was to come
tomorrow.  We left before we could even really see at
all.  It was a widely speculated theory that the Fallen were
stronger during the daytime.  We would get there before the
sun came up and woke the ranks. 
    It was always haunting,
walking among the houses, feeling the pavement underfoot. 
This may as well have been an alien world to me.  I think I
still would have preferred my canvas tent to the brick walls. 
They seemed too much like a prison. 
    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