by Tracey Ward
Via ingestion. What a lovely, clinical way to say they gnawed on a person’s living, kicking, screaming body until they died one of the most horrible deaths the world has ever known.
I feel bile burning the back of my throat.
“I understand how it’s an act of love,” Ryan says, “because you did it for your children, but how is it respect?”
Elijah sighs. Whatever he’s going to say, he knows we aren’t going to like it. “We eat our dead,” he tells us gently.
I sit forward and put my face in my hands, breathing deeply. I can’t. I can’t deal with this place and these people. They are so far beyond insane that they can’t even see crazy anymore. It’s a pale light beyond the horizon. A star still burning in the sky eons after its last ember has died out.
“Why?” Ryan asks, his voice tight.
“To ingest them is to take them with us. To carry them on in our lives as part of us. They maintain us. They keep us alive and we keep them close to us forever. It’s done very ceremoniously. It’s not much different than taking communion. Jesus himself said that his body was the bread and his blood the wine. He encouraged people to ingest him into their bodies as a religious rite.”
“It’s not the same thing at all,” I say, my face still in my hands, my voice muffled against my palms.
“It’s exactly the same.”
“I see Joss’ point,” Ryan agrees, carefully remaining neutral. “With communion a person ate a Ritz cracker and drank some grape juice. It was symbolic. What you’re talking about is… it’s pretty different.”
“It’s sick,” I groan. I lift my face, dragging my hands down it roughly. “You’re telling me that if a kid’s parent dies, you make them eat them?”
“No,” Elijah says firmly. “Children are not allowed to participate in the burial ceremony until they’re eighteen, and then it’s their choice. No one is required or forced to do it.”
“Burial ceremony,” I chuckle to myself. I feel like I’m losing my mind in this place.
“Joss,” Trent begins.
“No, uh-uh. Don’t tell me to shut up again. I listened. I heard their side and you know what I’m taking away from all of this? They bury their dead in their bowels.” I stand abruptly, unable to sit in this room with them anymore. “School is over. I’m done. I’d like to leave now.”
“And where will you go?” Elijah asks, his voice hard. “Who will you look for help from now? Will you try to save your friends in the northern Colony or will you give up and try to forget about them? If that’s your plan, you should be asking yourself who the real monster is in this room.”
I stare at the floor. I stare at the floor and I try to remember to breathe, but I feel trapped. Trapped by the truth, by these walls, by the cage I’ve built for myself with my promises and high hopes for a world we all gave up on years ago. That filthy word that lights the way and draws me like a moth to a flame, to my doom, but I can’t look away and I can’t ignore it. I can’t ignore him.
I look at Ryan to find him already watching me and I feel it swell in my chest—hope. The rest of the men in the room are watching us and I feel the weight of the world on my body, crushing me down into powder on the floor. I could stay there. I could become part of the dust and the earth under their feet to never be bothered again. Never be burdened. Never be expected to be something I’m not.
Or I could finish what I started. I could try. I could become something more than the sum of my broken, fragmented parts, and maybe it will never be perfect or beautiful, but it will be me. And it will be strong, because I don’t know any other way to be.
I swallow hard as I take a reluctant step forward. “What’s the plan?”
Trent slips past me, going to stand next to Andy as though the guy had not just told us that he eats his cousins for Easter dinner.
“We haven’t decided yet how exactly we’re going to go in,” Andy tells us.
“By water?” Ryan suggests.
“It’s too obvious,” Trent disagrees. “They’ll be watching the water for sure. We have to go for something less conspicuous.”
“We can’t go in on the roads,” I tell him. “They have that zombie swarm trapped around their front gates. We’d never get through without being noticed. Or being eaten.”
Trent raises his eyebrows. “You made it through.”
“Barely,” I remind him, holding up my injured arm.
“So if we can’t go in by land or sea…” Ryan says suggestively, looking to Elijah.
He nods. “Underground. We don’t know that area, but if the tunnels aren’t caved in we should be able to make it. We can come in from under the building.”
I scowl at the map they’re all looking at. It means nothing to me. “What are we going to do? Pop up in a toilet?”
“I know I said you were too skinny,” Trent tells me, “but you’re not that skinny.”
“Why is it that it sounded like an insult when you said I was skinny but it still sounds like an insult when you say I’m not?”
“I’m gifted.”
“You’re insulting.”
“I told you, if you want compliments go to Ryan. I’m no good at them.”
“You’re not even trying.”
Trent shrugs. “It’s probably why I’m not good at them.”
“You don’t want to see him try,” Ryan warns me. “It’s unnerving.”
“When have you seen it?” I ask, surprised.
“Market day.”
“A whore, Trent? Really? First of all, gross. Second, you don’t have to flirt with them. You just hand them money.”
Trent shrugs. “I was shopping for a discount. If you don’t haggle you may as well stay home.”
“How will we get in from underground?” Ryan asks Elijah.
“A building like that will have a basement. We’ll find a way in there. We may have to dig our way in, or we may get lucky and find a large drainage tunnel. We won’t know until we get there.”
“Then what? Once we’re in, where do we go from there?”
All eyes shift to me. I hate the spotlight but I sigh deeply and try to remember the layout. “From the utility room in the basement we have to go upstairs. It opens up into a back hallway full of storage and a mass shower room that they use for cleaning the newbies.”
“That’s where they took you when you first got there?” Ryan asks, his voice unusually hushed. Controlled.
“Yeah. I was showered, stripped of my weapons, and given very basic, very thin clothing to wear. They used the threat of the cold and the zombies outside to stop us from running.”
“But you did anyway,” Elijah says. I can’t be sure because I don’t know him, but I think there’s a small amount of respect in his tone.
I avoid his eyes. “I didn’t have a choice.”
“Why not?”
“How did you manage to escape?” Andy asks harshly.
Him I have no problem looking at. Glaring at. “What does it matter?”
“However you got out, maybe that’s a way we can get in.”
“It’s not. You can’t reverse engineer what I did to get out.”
“And why not?”
“Because you’re not a necromancer,” Trent tells him coolly.
Andy smirks slightly. He knows I killed to get out. Psycho thinks we’re even now.
“Who’d you kill?” he asks.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Was it someone who trusted you?”
“No, she never liked me.”
“Surprise, surprise,” Andy sings dryly.
I feel my blood boil. “Why are you asking me this anyway? You know how I got out. You were there in that room when I told Marlow all about it.”
“I heard what you told Marlow, but who knows if that’s the truth. I’m still having a hard time believing Vin willingly handed over that ring to you, or that he had any plans of coming out of that place and going for help. My thinking is, Vin would have gotten out and went home
. He would have forgotten about all of you by lunch time.”
“That was my thinking too. And his.”
“Is that why you killed him?”
“I didn’t kill him,” I say emphatically. My palms are sweating. I’m itching to come at him with my fists to explain to his face what he obviously doesn’t understand.
“And we all believe you,” Andy tells me calmly, obviously not believing anything about me.
The feeling is mutual.
“I’ll send a scout team out immediately,” Elijah says, taking control of the room again. “They’ll check the tunnels, see what we can do about getting in through the basement. Once they report back we’ll have a better idea of when we can make our move. Until then, I recommend we all rest. Andy, you need to return to The Hive before sunrise. Joss, Ryan, Trent, we’ll put you up for the night. I don’t think it wise you go above ground.”
“Is that a suggestion,” Ryan asks cautiously, “or a demand?”
“You’re not prisoners here,” Elijah assures him.
“In that case, I’d like to leave,” I say. “I won’t sleep here.”
“Joss, I think he’s right,” Ryan warns.
“No.”
“I’ll walk her there,” Trent offers.
“We should stick together.”
“Then come home,” I beg Ryan. My tone surprises us both.
I can feel my face flushing and my heart racing even though I’m not really sure why. But when Ryan steps forward and takes my hand, I know it’s about him.
“All right. We’ll go home.”
“It’s your choice,” Elijah says reluctantly. He turns to Andy. “Lead them out through the tunnels. Get them past the stadiums.” He eyes us warily. “Will you come back tomorrow night?”
“When?”
“At sunset.”
“We’ll be here,” Ryan promises, stepping forward and offering Elijah the hand that had just held mine.
Elijah shakes it firmly, a small smile on his lips. “Excellent.”
Chapter Five
After dragging us through a long labyrinth of tunnels, some I’m pretty sure we doubled back on to confuse us, Andy brings us above ground just outside the stadiums. He did what Elijah told him to do, he got us past them, but he didn’t give us much of a buffer. I don’t really care. The farther he is from my home, the better. I don’t need this guy or anyone from the cannibals or The Hive knowing where I live. Trent and Ryan knowing is enough. Probably more than.
“Well, good luck,” Andy tells us, already moving to leave us behind.
Then he stops mid-step, listening. It only takes a second before I hear what stopped him. The shuffling. The groaning.
Ryan and I wordlessly whip around to face the crowd moving in behind us. Happy to have my ASP back (I made a point of getting it from the same guy who took it), I whip it out to its full, deadly length. They’re coming from up the street, emerging from the shadows by degrees. Writhing black rising from nothing.
“How many?” I ask Trent and his eerie eyes.
“No more than seven.”
I nod confidently. “We can handle this.”
“Are you leaving or staying?” Trent asks Andy.
He looks down the street, maybe to confirm Trent’s count or to buy time, but for what I don’t know. It’s an easy question.
“I can’t be seen with you,” he says tightly.
“Then go.”
“I never run from a fight.”
“We don’t need you,” I tell him sharply.
I flex my hand on my weak arm. It hurts less than it did before. I’m starting to wonder if I can use it.
“I should go.”
“Then go!” I snap, casting an angry glance over my shoulder.
My eyes meet his and I can see the frustration in them. If he leaves I’ll count him a coward even though I understand why he can’t stay. He’s right—he can’t be seen working with us. Especially since Marlow has it out for us right now. I still judge him when he turns to go, though.
“You should lay off him,” Ryan tells me.
“Are you serious?”
“We need to work with him.”
“It doesn’t mean I have to like him.”
The first of the zombies is on us. Ryan steps up. I see a flash in the moonlight across his knuckles, lightning quick. The zombie goes down.
Ryan has his Death Punch on.
“You don’t have to hate him every second either,” he says, shaking his hand out.
I lash out with my ASP, swinging wide and connecting with the skull of what looks like a woman. She drops to the ground but continues to moan: I didn’t hit her hard enough.
“I’m not,” I grunt out as I smash down on the woman’s head, “good—at hiding—my feelings!”
Ryan smoothly sidesteps a zombie before driving home his spiked fist into the base of its skull. I’m green with envy when it drops instantly. I’m sweating from killing one and he’s managed two with barely any effort. I love my ASP, but I’m wondering if I don’t maybe need a Death Punch too.
“She doesn’t like him because he’s a liar,” Trent says. His voice is coming from the dark farther down the street. I see a blur of movement, a flash of metal, hear a distinct thump. I don’t know when he moved into the thick of the fight, but he’s thinning it quickly. “She doesn’t trust him.”
“Okay, I get that,” Ryan agrees. “But she should take it easy. We don’t know who he’s lying to.”
“That’s my point!” I cry. “Is he a spy for the cannibals or The Hive? Or both? Is he playing everybody? I don’t like liars.”
“It’s because you’re not good at doing it,” Trent says.
He’s emerging from the darkness where the zombies had been hiding, only he’s alone. I glance around anxiously, looking for the rest of the Risen, but there are none. When I do the math, I’m a little nervous.
“Did you just take down four by yourself in the time it took me to finish one?” I ask him incredulously.
His shadow shrugs at me. “You’re injured.”
“I’m almost healed.”
“You were talking. You were distracted.”
“Stop making excuses for me. You’re a killing machine, you freak.”
“This is why he can’t fight in the Arena anymore,” Ryan says.
“He’s not allowed to?”
“It’s not financially beneficial to Marlow, so no,” Trent explains. “I’m not invited to.”
“Why? Because you’re too crazy good?”
“Too efficient,” Ryan corrects. “The fight’s over before it starts. People go there to see a show. Trent doesn’t give it to them.”
Trent comes to stand in front of us. Whatever weapon he used is stowed now. Maybe it was just his fists, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised.
“They tell me to kill zombies, I kill zombies. I don’t know how else to do it.”
“People want to be afraid you’ll die.”
“I’m not going to die.”
“Someday,” I tell him. “We all will someday.”
Trent grins down at me. “Sometimes I forget.”
“We should get moving,” Ryan reminds us.
We make our way through the dark streets that are growing lighter every minute. Even though it hasn’t been the longest night of my life, not by far, it has been one of the strangest. The closer we get to my building, the more anxious I am to get inside. I want to lie down on my bed and fall asleep in the familiar smells, sounds, and feels of my own home. I try to figure out how long it’s been since I slept there, but the best I can remember is that it’s been days. Too many days with too much time spent surrounded by people I can’t stand. In the last month I’ve been exposed to almost the entire wild, to every person I spent the last six years hiding from and a few I didn’t even know about, and my little reclusive heart can’t take it. Ryan promised we’d go back to the cannibals’ tomorrow night and I know we have to, but a big part of me wants to
tell them to suck it. We’ll find another way. Only there is no other way and I know that.
When my building looms gray in the distance against the lightening sky, I run to it. I can’t help it. Without a word I break into a sprint, leaving the boys behind. They’ll be fine. They don’t need me. No one ever has.
I’m surprised when I hear their footsteps pounding close behind me.
We burst through the doors, up the stairs, and they’re on my heels now. I can both hear them and feel them. Ryan laughs loudly, his voice bouncing around the walls and against my face until I’m smiling as I run, breathless and crazy, bounding up the stairs two at a time. I hear them scuffle behind me. They’re fighting. Racing. And I’m winning.
When I stumble through the door to my loft, panting for breath and nearly giggling, I don’t know myself anymore. I don’t know this girl with the breathy laugh and the Lost Boys behind her. I don’t know her at all, but I think I like her.
“Trent, you can—”
“I’m sleeping on the roof,” he interrupts. He’s barely out of breath. Robot freak! “Do you have a spare blanket?”
I point to my pile of cloth on the floor, the one I pretend is a bed. Since sleeping on a real mattress, I’m a little ashamed of the lie I tell myself every night. I wonder if I’m spoiled now. Maybe I’m the princess Taylor accused me of being, but if I am it’s his fault. Real mattresses with real clean sheets? It’s just mean.
“So no,” Trent says. “That’s fine. I’ll be all right. Goodnight.”
“Wait, you can take one! I have a couple sleeping bags!” I call after him.
He’s already heading toward the roof hatch.
I turn to Ryan for help. “He doesn’t have to sleep up there.”
“He likes it.”
“No.”
“I do,” Trent’s disembodied voice calls from the hatch.
It snaps sharply shut behind him.
“He does it all the time in the Hyperion,” Ryan explains. “He seriously does like it. He doesn’t like walls. He gets cagey. He also doesn’t get cold much, so don’t sweat the blanket for him—but I’ll take one.”
“You get cold easily?”
“I’m a dainty flower. Also, it’s drafty by the door.”
