by Tracey Ward
It’s raining. It started drizzling when the girl was on the roof but it’s a full downpour now. I’m soaked to the bone with the cold creeping deep down into my marrow. I should go home and sleep. Ryan is safe for the night. I can come back in the morning and make sure they get out of the building okay. His blood is on the ground, meaning Risen will sniff it out sooner or later, but with the rain coming down like it is, it might wash away before they swarm. Then again, it might not. Ryan and the girl might be trapped in there for the next few days.
It’s another judgement call, like deciding whether or not to step in when Ryan was facing off with the wolf. Or when he was planning on fighting in the Arena. I keep following him, being a silent safety net for him, and I wonder for the first time who I’m really doing it for. Is it for him or is it for me? Is it because I need to know he’s alive? Because I need to know he’s not going to leave me like his brother did.
Maybe Ryan isn’t the only one struggling to get over Kevin’s death.
Through the rain and the window, I see the movie come to an end. The screen goes dark, taking the room with it.
Risen are coming. I can hear them groaning down the street. They’ll be here soon, circling around Ryan’s blood. They’ll stay for as long as it takes to find something to feed on or until they’re distracted by something better. Moving meat with a heartbeat and a warm, pulsing brain. That could be me. I could lure them away. I could secretly save the day for Ryan and the girl, taking one more step to ensure they stay alive and kicking.
But I don’t because I doubt they need it. They’re both strong and intelligent, and they’re embarking on a journey I can’t take with them. I saw it when Ryan smiled at her – he likes her. And judging by the way she keeps being pulled back into his presence despite her anxiety, she likes him too.
As much as I like to watch people interact, this feels different than a day at the Market. It feels intimate and delicate. It’s a chapter of Ryan’s life that he doesn’t need my help to write. He doesn’t need Kevin’s help either. What he needs now is the night and the girl and the sound of the rain on the rooftop over their heads. That’s how he’s telling his story now.
The girl walks to the window.
The boy stands close behind her.
The man on the rooftop packs his sodden bag and walks home in the rain.
Alone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VIN
We lost the MOHAI. Technically, we never had it, but it doesn’t matter because it’s gone now. Chapman lost that along with his life, all in the same breath. Word is he took a beating trying to defend it, flew the white flag, called his surrender, and took a bullet to the eye. Boom. Man down. MOHAI fallen. Again.
It’s been five weeks and the Colony has been busy. They rebuilt their generators and their defenses, bringing in old shipping containers stacked two high around the perimeter. Sharpshooters watch the water around the clock. There’s no getting in again. And, from the look of it, there’s no getting out either. They repopulated the thing in record time. Roundups have become a common annoyance, almost as common as Risen attacks. Two hundred of the rotted out things flooded the city when the MOHAI fell, and the weirdest thing about them is how fresh they are. It’s messed up. It’s like it was in the beginning. They look almost human. It pulls at some sensitive part of people, giving them doubts. Am I killing a monster or am I killing a person possessed?
I’ve never struggled with that distinction. Not even on day one.
If Marlow seemed like a surly douchewhore before, he’s worse now. Trade with the Colonies has come to a screeching halt. Lights from the camp on Vashon Island burn in the distance, mocking him with their numbers. They’re probably well over three hundred strong by now. They could overtake us easily if they wanted to, a fact that sent Marlow into a violent rage when Hector confirmed it last month. He’s losing control, but not of the Hive. Not yet. He’s losing control of himself. He’s still the cold, calculating jerk he’s always been, but his moods are starting to swing. Something ugly is brewing, something big, and I’m worried for the first time that I might not be on the right side of it. Marlow is pushing too hard too fast, and we’re all going to pay for it. It makes me so angry I can hardly sleep at night.
“You look it,” Nats tells me with a smile. She wraps her arms around herself, hugging her own body for warmth. Her voice trembles with a shiver when she adds, “You look tired. And old.”
“Do I look as old as you?”
“Older.”
“Damn.”
“You’re grouchy,” Breanne complains.
“I’m not grouchy,” I tell her with thinly worn patience. “I’m surly. It’s sexy.”
“It’s not,” Nats counters.
“You’re not the target audience.”
“Oh yeah? And who is, Vin? Elise?”
I groan as I stuff my hands in my pockets forcefully. My fingers are freezing. This is my third walk today and I’m ready to get inside and stay there, but the girls need exercise and fresh air, something Chapman and Bennett never bothered themselves with because it’s kind of a hassle. I have to go with them to keep them safe and I can’t take more than two at a time. In a Stable that’s up to seven women again, that means four walks a day. My last one will be alone with Elise. That was not intentional on my part, but the way she’s made herself scarce the last few times I’ve gone looking for the girls sure makes it feel like it was for her.
“Don’t get me started on that girl,” I warn mildly.
“She’s got a thing for you.”
“You think I don’t know when a girl wants to hit this? I have eyes. I see it.”
“Are you going to do it?” Breanne asks.
“No.”
“It’s free sex. Why would you turn that down?”
“Because I don’t need her catching feelings for me, that’s why.”
Nats laughs. “Too late, honey.”
“Damn,” I repeat.
We walk in silence, our steps in perfect sync. I’m flanked by the girls but I’m watching. Waiting. I’m aware of our surroundings, always listening for the sound of shuffling feet or a miserable grown echoing down an alley, but there’s nothing. Not a feral cat crossing our path or a bird in the sky. No gang members running through the streets like idiots. It’s quiet.
Too quiet.
“Vin,” Nats says nervously.
“I know.”
I put a hand on each of their arms, bringing them up short. I hold my breath to keep the fog from my eyes as I scan the buildings around us. I check every window, doorway, and rooftop. There’s nothing. There’s no one. Living or dead.
“What’s happening?” Breanne whispers shakily.
I squeeze her arm hard. “Shut up.”
“But I—”
I squeeze harder. She whimpers but she shuts her mouth.
Nats bends over slowly to reach for her boot. She pulls a long, slender blade from inside, rising slowly with eyes sharp as needles searching for the threat we can’t see. But it’s there. I feel it. It’s in the air and the silence. In the ringing in my ears that strain to hear something, anything. It’s in the cold sweat trickling slow down my spine.
“Should we run?” Nats breathes.
I shake my head. “I don’t run.”
“We can’t stay here forever.”
“I know. I just…” I turn slowly, checking every direction. “I don’t know which way it is.”
“We don’t even know what it is.”
She’s right. We don’t. I can’t see it or hear it, but I feel it. It’s close. And it’s nasty.
Breanne clings to my arm. “Let’s go home,” she pleads weakly.
“For once, I agree with Breanne,” Nats mumbles. “We should go. Now.”
“Yeah, maybe—”
My words are drowned out by the sharp clang of metal against metal. It comes from our right, farther up the street. I push the girls behind me, pulling my blade low and ready. Another, s
maller crash breaks through the silence, muffled and echoing. But it’s close. So close. Where the hell is it coming from?
Nats yanks at my arm. “There. Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“The storm drain.”
Up the street about ten yards is an exposed storm drain, rusted and ugly but surprisingly clear of grass and debris. It’s unclogged, unlike most of the drains in the city. It’s black inside. Damp and forbidding and blinking at us with two dark eyes. Three ghostly white fingers reach out to take hold of the metal caging it. It pushes roughly, popping it free with a sharp shriek of metal against metal. It sounds like a woman screaming.
“Run,” I tell them, pushing the girls back the way we came. “Get back to the Hive. Now. Run!”
“What is that?!” Nats shouts with disgust.
“Run!”
They run. I hear their footsteps sprinting down the street, Breanne whimpering in her high, cutting voice. Nats scolds her sharply, shutting her up.
Or is her voice just lost in the commotion? The quiet rumble of a truck rolling over the uneven street?
I whip around just as the truck tears down the cross street. It comes to a halt in front of the girls, bringing them to a sudden stop.
Colonists.
I look back at the grate, but it’s empty. No eyes. No fingers. Up the street on the next block, another truck barrels into view. It stops the same way the other did; middle of the intersection, it’s exterior dirty, beaten, and peppered brown with rust. With time. In the cab are two bodies. At its rear are two more. They’re all men dressed in warm gear, guns on their hips and a hardness in their eyes that tells me they want trouble.
Lucky for them, they found it.
“Vin?” Nats asks, her voice surprisingly firm.
“I’ll try to give you an opening!” I shout back.
“Are they gonna take us?” Breanne weeps.
A man’s voice replies behind me, beyond her; low and soothing. “No, sweetheart. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re here to save you.”
“From the thing in the sewer?”
“From the what?”
“From me, Breanne!” I bark irritably. I’m eyeing the guys walking toward me. Their guns stay on their hips but they have police batons in their hands. Their orders are to take us alive but it looks like they’re allowed to rough us up if we fight back. And I fully intend to fight back. “They wanna get you away from me!”
“It doesn’t have to get ugly,” the dude on my right tells me. He’s tall, probably an inch or so more than I am, but he’s skinny. I can handle him, easy, so long as he doesn’t pull that gun. I can fight like a lion but I’m not Superman. I can’t dodge a bullet.
I flex my fingers around my knife. “You’re right. We can do this nice and pretty. You guys hit the road, keep hunting, and you leave us alone.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“We’re from the Hive,” Breanne reasons. “You can’t take us!”
I close my eyes briefly, breathing deep and even. I promise myself I won’t kill her the second I get a chance.
“That doesn’t mean what it used to, Bree,” Nats tells her sadly.
Her voice is getting closer. The other Colonists are backing them up to me. They’ll surround us, attack as a team, and as much as I want to think Natalie can handle herself with that knife, I know she can’t. She was an engineer or something in another life. A brain. She’s tough on the inside but her outside never got the memo. She can’t fight and Breanne would never try. Her natural instinct is to fall down crying and wait for someone to come save her.
That someone is going to have to be me.
I dart toward the guy on my right, bringing him sharply to attention. The guy on my left lunges toward me to protect his buddy, but he’s misread everything. I was drawing him out, getting him off his footing, and now that he’s in motion, he’s an easier target. I launch off my right foot, heading straight for him. I see the surprise in his eyes when I come at him. He stumbles, falling back a step, but it’s clumsy. He falls to the ground. With panic in his eyes, he reaches for his gun.
The guy on my right is recovering, coming at me fast. I’ve got one shot at this. One chance to even the playing field a little, but as I dive the tip of my blade toward his chest, I know it’s a lost cause. There are three more on foot, two in each truck, and I have Breanne and Nats in tow. No way we’ll all make it out of here. Definitely not together.
Instead of skewering the guy’s heart, I slip around behind him, crouching down low for cover. My blade sits steady at his neck, sharp and deadly.
“Stop,” I demand, my eyes hard on the other dude’s.
He brings himself to a halt only five feet away. “Easy, brother.”
“I’m not your brother and I’ll go real rough if you don’t back up. Now.”
He holds his hands up in surrender. He takes a tentative step back.
“Keep going.”
“How far?” he asks like I’m being unreasonable.
“Back to your nest would be a good start.”
“I’m not leaving without him.”
“And I’m not leaving without them.” I nod toward the girls standing in the middle of the showdown. They’re about fifteen yards away. The other Colonists are another twelve or so. The door to the truck behind them opens, one of the men inside dropping down to the asphalt.
My body armor shifts nervously under my knife. “Please,” he gasps. “Please don’t kill me.”
“Tell your boys to get out of here.”
“Go! Get lost!”
They don’t move. I can feel the guy’s heart beating hard in his chest, thrumming against mine that beats like a metronome.
“Doesn’t look like they’re listening,” I console him.
He swallows hard. His throat presses dangerously against the blade. “Please, guys. Back up. Go.”
“If you kill him, we’ll kill you,” his partner warns me.
“I know.”
Stretch doesn’t know what to do with that. He glances anxiously at his buddies. They give him nothing. But they do move closer to the girls.
I press harder on the guy’s neck. He hisses sharply as a thin line of red stains his skin.
“How about this,” I suggest calmly. “How about you let the girls run back home and I’ll stay here with you? We’ll sort this out like gentlemen.”
“How about we just take all of you?”
“How ‘bout you see what the inside of your buddy’s throat looks like?”
Stretch licks his lips nervously. Despite the cold, a sheen of sweat has formed on his upper lip.
“Nats!” I shout, startling my hostage. “Take Breanne. Head on home.”
She hesitates. “What about you?”
“I’ll see you there,” I lie.
She doesn’t buy it but she doesn’t fight it either. She whispers something to Breanne, takes her hand, and leads her to the side of the road. She’s giving the Colonists a wide berth, ready for anything. But being ready doesn’t mean you can handle what’s coming, and when one of the Colonists inevitably makes a rush for her, she slashes at him wildly. He dodges the knife like it’s nothing, and just like that, in a matter of seconds, they have hold of both the girls.
Stretch takes a brave step toward me. “What are you going to do now, huh? You have one of ours but we have two of yours. Maybe it’s time to put the knife away.”
“You won’t kill them. You need them.”
“Yeah, but we don’t need you. To be honest, I think you’d be more trouble than you’re worth.”
“You have no idea.”
“So we leave you here. We take the women, you let Curtis go, and we never see you again. And you never see us.”
I pause, debating. I could get away. If it was just me, I could ditch these guys so easy. Even outnumbered. Even if they have guns. They don’t know these streets like I do. I could vanish in a heartbeat. Without the girls to worry about, it�
�d be no problem. Without the women, a lot of my life would be easier. Almost all of it.
But when I look at Breanne, I see that baby. I see all their babies, born and unborn. I see their blood and their tears, and I feel this insane compulsion to keep them safe. Even if it’s pointless and they all end up dead just like Sin and Seven because I’m terrible at protecting them. I care when I shouldn’t and I fail them when it matters the most. It’s the story of my life. I’m cursed, I can feel it. Completely incapable of saving anyone. And even though I know that, even though I know I’ll watch these women die at some point, I can’t leave them. I can never win but I can’t quit either. They’re in my blood as deep as the Devil.
I pull my knife, shoving the guy roughly away from me. He collapses on the pavement as Stretch steps forward, his gun suddenly in his hand. He makes sure to keep a safe distance. He’s looking to subdue me, not arm me.
“That’s a smart choice,” he tells me, obviously relieved. “You’ll see. Things are better in the Colony.”
“You dick,” my hostage shouts roughly, his hand held to the papercut on his throat.
“Easy, Curtis.”
“Easy?! He almost killed me!”
“If that’s the closest you’ve come to death,” I chuckle, nodding to the girls, “than you’re more of a bitch than they are.”
“Real nice, V,” Nats drones.
“I’m just making conversation, babe.”
Stretch motions for me to drop my knife. Reluctantly, I do because I’m not looking to get shot today. When I’m disarmed, he gestures to me again, telling me to stand. They make me turn around.
