Reawakening Eden Read Online Free PDF Page B

ever been on a base was a few months back when she’d broken into Fort Richardson to commandeer the Hummer.
    Connor poked the fire with a stick, and the logs shifted and settled until they didn’t look like they might tumble toward where the kids slept. “Where’re you coming from?”
    The question startled her, and for a moment she didn’t want to answer, afraid of sharing too much, giving him too many clues that would lead back to Seattle. After the silence stretched uncomfortably long, Connor nodded. He was able to say a lot with that gesture, Eden was coming to realize. This one acknowledged her reluctance and withdrew the question, taking a step back, putting distance between them again.
    But she didn’t want to step back. She suddenly hated that distance.
    “Alaska. We’re from Alaska.”
    His head came up at that. She’d managed to pull his gaze from the fire. “Seriously?”
    She smiled, enjoying the common reaction more than usual. “Seriously.”
    “Were there many survivors up there?”
    “Not as many as some places. It was still winter when we lost power and heat, but there’re about sixty that we know of in Anchorage. They’ve banded together.” Her shoulders unknotted, tension eased by the familiarity of the conversation. This she knew. Sharing tales of survival, passing along news of who lived and how things were up and down the roads.
    “Why’d you leave?”
    Eden shrugged. “It’s not really a place that’s easy to survive long term without modern conveniences.” And she’d thought there might be other children farther south. A more normal way of life in places where the climate wasn’t quite so harsh. “We drove out as soon as the roads cleared in the spring.” In the stolen Hummer, packed to the roof with food, camping gear and extra gallons of gasoline.
    “Just the three of you?”
    “Just us.”
    He jerked his chin toward the pile of children on the opposite side of the fire. “They yours?”
    “Yes.” It wasn’t a lie. Biologically a fib, but they were still hers in every way that mattered. And the resemblance was strong enough that no one questioned it. Hannah Rose’s hair was more platinum than her own sandy blonde and Lucas’s a little darker, but they could easily have been hers.
    “Unusual.”
    Not much of a talker, this Connor Reed. Most people composed odes to the children’s survival. But there was something to be said for strong and silent. “We were lucky.”
    For some reason that pulled his gaze away from the flickering flames. “Mm.” He looked toward the kids for a moment, and then turned back to her with a stare forceful enough to have her squirming. “Now would be a good time to tell me what that guy wanted from you, don’t you think?” His low voice carried only as far as her ears, but was icy and unavoidable enough to have goose bumps jumping up across her arms.
    A fleeting cowardly urge tempted her to lie, but Connor deserved to know what he was helping them escape from. Eden swallowed around the thickness in her throat and began.
    “We arrived in Seattle around the beginning of June. During the drive we’d seen groups of survivors—ten, twenty, almost fifty in Whitehorse—but in Seattle there were thousands. It was a gathering place for survivors from all across the Northwest. A real community. We tried to blend in quietly, under the radar, but the kids… So far they’re the only surviving children anyone has seen and they draw attention.
    “It wasn’t until later that I realized the Seattle group was already fixated on children. They’d started a sort of repopulation plan. Their leader, a guy named Jonah Carter, kept preaching about security coming to them when children played among them again. He called it the birth of the New Eden . When I showed up—a new Eden, strolling into town with a pair of kids—everyone took it as a sign, especially Jonah. I went along with it at first because the children’s presence seemed to give people