The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (77 page)

             
“It is nice up he
re on the high road, James.” I told him over my shoulder. I heard him laugh as he rushed forward to wrap me in his arms from behind. He kissed my cheek and for some reason, I found myself giggling girlishly again. We were currently enjoying rare alone time
that we had not been gifted with since meeting up with Alice and Quinn. We both knew that we had a task at hand and that romance would have to wait. But that does not mean that both of us were not thinking about it…

             
When I broke free of his arms and walk
ed ahead of him, he reached out, grabbed my hand, spun me around and pulled me back to him. The maneuver was as graceful as a classic dance move yet I still yelped in surprise. Just as the sound escaped me, I felt his mouth on mine and his arms locked arou
nd me once again. We walked further away from the water ditch; there was nothing that would kill the
mood faster than rolling down the steep embankment and slamming onto the hardened earth.

             
We fell into a soft mossy patch. I started to undo his belt as hi
s lips trailed down my neck and chest smoothly. I tilted my head back, relishing in the feeling of his kisses on my sensitive skin. When  I felt his mouth moving slowly and sensuously down my stomach and his hands pulling my pants down feverishly, I strugg
led to draw in a steady breath but once I had, I managed to moan his name only once. Then, I could only draw in deep, heaving breaths.

             
His lips were trailing up my inner thigh in an almost cruel tease. The places where his hands or lips touched my skin ti
ngled deliciously before sending a scintillating rush of heat to the place where soon his mouth would be.

             
When that happened finally, it was an almost sinful relief. Instantly, my eyes were closed and I was running my hands through his hair, crying out hi
s name loudly.

             
It was while I was clawing the ground beside me and breathing heavily that I began to feel dead eyes watching us. Somehow, the heavy feeling of that eerie presence interrupted the mind-numbing pleasure that James was inflicting on me.

             
Whe
n I opened my eyes, my furiously beating heart lurched upwards. Before I could even process what was before me, my arousal completely evaporated and I could only feel a sharply painful surprise that streamed through my veins to every part of my body. That
surprise dissolved into icy shock and then, to a horror that almost pulled a scream from deep in my stomach.

             
“James!” I whacked him harder than I intended on the back. When he did not respond fast enough, I yanked his head up by his hair that was still cl
utched in my hand.

             
“Ow! What?!” He asked. But after looking up, his eyes immediately fell on what I was seeing. He jumped up and pulled me with him so that I was cradled in his arms. I allowed myself just one second where I squeezed my eyes shut and burro
wed my face into his neck.

             
“Alright, we're going to go. It's okay, baby.”

             
I rolled out of his grasp and landed on my feet. The sight before us paralyzed me; all I could do was stare in utter terror and repulsion. Vaguely, I felt James pulling my pants up
again.

             
“Honey, I want to go.” My voice betrayed my fear as did the way my entire body shook. “James, I don’t want to stay here.”

             
Rows upon rows of bodies were hanging from the trees, their eyes and mouths opened wide in a silent scream that would never
be heard. I held James’s hand to my chest, stopping him from walking forward when he went to observe the bodies more closely.

             
“It wasn’t being hung that killed them. That’s just for show. Look…” He pointed at the body that was closest to us.

             
I had been s
o distracted by the morbid way the woman's head was rested sideways on her shoulder that I had not noticed the contents of her stomach hanging from a gaping, still-dripping wound. My body lurched forward abruptly. If I were to vomit, it would simply be the
physical, tangible manifestation of the scream I was refusing to give life to.

             
James had not realized that I was going to be so thoroughly sickened by the sight of that woman’s mangled body. I had handled everything else so efficiently, with not even a h
int of any kind of discomfort. After calling my attention to the true atrocity of what we were witnessing, he knew that he had inadvertently frightened me.

             
“Baby, I’m sorry.”

             
I shook my head and closed my eyes, struggling to suppress the nausea churning
my stomach in sickening gyrations. He rested both of his hands on my face and kissed my forehead.

             
“There are so many of them...” I whispered in a quivering voice, “James...”

             
“I know. Come on, we'll go. You're alright. We're both alright. Can you walk, sw
eetheart?”

             
I nodded vigorously but clutched him tighter when he released his grip on me slightly.

             
“I have to start taking care of myself again, James.” I muttered with my eyes still closed. I needed to change the subject in order to keep the angrily bubb
ling bile down where it belonged. “You
are spoiling me with your attentiveness and your care.”

             
“This is spoiling you?” He cupped my chin, raised my head and pressed his forehead to mine. “This is what you consider spoiling?”
             
“Indeed. It is an amazing alb
eit unfamiliar gift. You are the only one that has ever gotten this close to me.”

             
“Well, I’m not going anywhere.” He assured me for perhaps the hundredth time. It did not matter how many times he said it. Every time was a new reminder, a new breath of lif
e to resuscitate a slowly dying idea. “I know very well that you’ve spent your entire life taking care of yourself. But you need to understand and accept that it’s alright to let someone else carry your weight for you. Don’t tell yourself that you need to
start pulling away. Don’t do that again, Brynna.”
             

             
His words held a soft plea that I had not heard before. He had teased me on my never-ending urge to run from him and all he represented. He had been both infuriated by that tendency and profoundly hurt by
it, as well. Now, he was expressing indirectly that he could not stand for us to be apart again. I looked up at him and put both of my hands on his face now.

             
“I do not want to leave you, honey. The fact that I have made it this far is astounding. Trust m
e, you should be patting yourself on the back for hanging in this long. We have been through the worst things that any living beings can experience and we have gotten through them together. Do you agree?”

             
“Of course I do. I never would have been able to g
et through this without you. And I even count your condescending, pain-in-the-ass side, because that got me through, too.”

             
I smiled and stroked the stubble on one side of his face with my thumb.

             
“Only because you were picturing all the quiet places on th
e ship or on this planet where you could possibly kill me?”

             
“Not kill you, no.” He replied with a teasing grin, “But definitely bang your head against the wall a couple of times.”

             
I laughed before hitting him lightly in the chest. After standing on my ti
ptoes to wrap my arms around his neck, I turned my face to him and breathed in his delicious scent. Our bathing options were limited. In fact, they were nonexistent on most days. Still, James smelled as seductively wonderful as ever.

             
“Can we go?” I asked,
“I feel like they just watched this entire conversation.”
             
“You’re afraid of dead people hearing you confess that you have feelings, too?” He replied.

             
“I am afraid of dead people, period.”

             
We turned to walk away, abandoning our search for the building f
rom which the irrigation system stemmed. Nothing threw off a hunt for shelter like finding bodies hung up and slashed open in the trees. Just as we began to walk away with our hands clasped together, we jumped at the sound of a loud bang behind us. Immedia
tely, we whipped around, our eyes white in cautionary alarm. We were ready for a fight.

             
We were never given a chance because when we turned, a spotlight that illuminated the darkness of the forest blinded us. I covered my eyes, only to feel two pairs of h
ands grabbing me.

             
“No!” I threw my body forward and flipped one of the assailants over my shoulder. The other let go and backed away as he realized that I was rounding on him to attack.

             
I stopped before the fight even began, though. I recognized the face
of the man who had grabbed me.

             
“James, stop.” I looked over to see him repeatedly punching another man in the face. He released his iron grip on that one's throat and watched him crumple to the ground. Then, he walked back over to me.

             
“Are you with Don
Abba?” I asked the boy. He was trembling terribly and holding up his hands in surrender. “Do not stand like that. You have not seen half of what we are capable of. You are betraying your weakness.”

             
The boy immediately put his hands down.

             
“You’re his
daughter, aren’t you?”

             
“No. My father is the obnoxiously power-starved  man with the gray hair who believed that he  was fit to be ruler of the campsite.”

             
“That's who I meant. You're Olivier's daughter.”

             
“I suppose you could call me that as it is
factually accurate. It's accurate biologically, anyway. In terms of sentimentality, though...”

             
“Brynn...” James said behind me and I shook my head slightly, rerouting my mental course until it was back on track.

             
“You are human, aren’t you? Your thoughts
clearly show human tendencies.” I was speaking gently, noting that he was carrying a double barrel shotgun. If I frightened him too severely, I would be shot and no level of superior powers would heal a wound from a gun that size.

             
“How do you know…”

             
“Jus
t relax.” James instructed him calmly. “We're all on the same side here, okay? You startled us. That’s why we attacked your friends.”

             
“We saw you from inside. We thought you were from here.”

             
“You thought we were Pangean?” I asked and he didn’t respond. T
he poor young man was shaking so severely that if he was not talking clearly, I would fear that he was succumbing to a seizure.

             
“You don’t want to go in there, Ms. Olivier. They’re not friends of yours in there. They don’t like you because you’re his kid.
”

             
“Well, I do not like
him
. I am as disgusted by him as the rest of you are. Just take me to Don. I will explain the situation.”

             
“No, you don’t understand. He’s… he’s…” The boy trailed off, turning white as the threat of losing consciousness became evide
nt to him.

             
“You have nothing to be afraid of, sweetheart.” I assured him as gently as I could.

             
I felt great sympathy for that poor boy. He was younger than Violet and yet he was sent out with a gun to dispatch a threat. I wondered how many of those unfor
tunate souls hanging in the trees were killed by that young man who was clearly in over his head.

             
“What is your name?”

             
“Andy.” He answered and I watched as tears welled in his eyes. “I don’t want to do this…”

             
The conversation we were having should have
been all the warning James and I needed to hear in order to convince us that we should turn back. But our need for community was driven by our survival instinct. We could not responsibly continue to trek along on our own, not after Penny had been taken. Ou
r fellow survivors were our only chance.