by Tracey Ward
Trent pushes against my lower back firmly. I stumble forward a little but I turn the trip into a jog. It only takes a second before I’m walking beside Ryan again.
“—dark in the basement. We couldn’t make out much through the crack in the wall,” the young cannibal is telling Ryan.
“Is that why you decided we couldn’t go in that way?”
“That and the walls were too thick. Making that one crack to look through took forever and it was way louder than we planned. Once we could see in, we couldn’t see enough. Couldn’t get a read on how many were working down there.”
“Two,” I tell him.
He looks me up and down quickly, seeming surprised to see me show up all of a sudden. “You know that for sure?”
“I know that’s how many used to be working in that room. Now I don’t know for sure.”
“They could have strengthened the watch on the place since you left,” Ryan tells me. “I know I would have.”
“So you’re the one who got out?” the kid asks me.
He’s shorter than Ryan—younger, too—with the cannibal pale skin and gleaming eyes they all have. His dark black hair looks glossy like ink in the torchlight.
“Yeah, that’s me,” I admit, feeling weird.
For a hermit, I’ve got a lot of notoriety going on. I liked it better when I was a ghost.
“You’re lucky. My sister was taken. She never came out.”
“I’m sorry, man,” Ryan tells him.
The words come from his mouth so easily, so earnestly. Even if I’d said the exact same thing, I doubt it would have sounded half as genuine as Ryan. Not because I don’t mean it, because I really am sorry. That sucks, there’s no doubt about it. It’s because I’m awkward as hell and it taints everything I do. Trent is right about me: I don’t like liars because I’m no good at lying. I don’t understand how to do it, so how can I ever hope to spot it when other people do it?
“I’m sorry,” I mutter.
“Thanks, but we’ve all lost someone, right?” the kid replies nonchalantly. “At least I know she’s probably alive. That’s better than most people get.”
“Quiet,” someone whispers from up ahead.
Everyone stops to listen. My hand flexes around my ASP and I become painfully aware of the bodies around me. If zombies are in these tunnels, I don’t think I have the eyesight to tell the difference between a living and a dead—not in the split second you get to make that kind of choice. Plus, I don’t care for how close the tall creeper is. It feels like he’s hovering.
Once the water noises are dead and the only thing I hear inside the tunnels is the gentle sound of living people breathing, I can hear the outside. There’s a manhole not far ahead of us. Dripping down in through the small holes punched through the weathered steel are the moans and groans of a true horde. Suddenly it all comes flooding back to me—the night I escaped. The night I ran through their ranks, blind and freezing in the disorienting dark. My heart starts to hammer but I keep my breathing even. I make sure no one knows.
It’s been over a year for most of us since we heard that sound. Lately the zombie pop has been dwindled down so far you don’t come across large groups anymore. Just stragglers. Loners like me. But out here, close to the MOHAI where they’ve herded the dead, you can get a reminder of the old days. It’s the new nostalgia. No more ‘Remember when we had hot meals every night?’ or ‘Warm showers with soap and water every day? Crazy!’ No, now remembering is horrifying. ‘Remember when you couldn’t walk down the street without being swarmed? Remember when you saw someone die violently every single day? When people were screaming in the dark? Remember when the streets were red with blood and even the Seattle rain couldn’t wash it away?’
Those days are coming back again. I would trade every hot meal, every warm shower I’ve ever had or even dreamed of, to keep those days away.
“It’s the barrier around the gate,” I whisper. “We’re close.”
A few heads bob in agreement. We’re about to go inside the walls. It won’t be long until we’re at the building, and it suddenly bothers me more than I’d like to admit that I’m not going in all the way with them. I don’t know what their version of taking control of the building looks like, but I worry it’s more violent than it needs to be. They don’t know what it’s like in there, how many of the people inside aren’t actual Colonist supporters. That doesn’t mean they won’t fight to save their lives if an unknown enemy bursts inside in the dead of night, though.
The group starts to move again.
“Wait,” I say, stepping forward and talking too loudly.
Everyone looks at me sharply.
“Keep your voice down,” a woman tells me.
“You can’t kill anyone.”
“What are you talking about?”
“This isn’t a 7-Eleven. You can’t go in there and start snacking on everyone. No one dies.”
The woman looks at me in disgust, and that is so messed up it’s almost funny to me—because yeah, I’m the disgusting one.
“They’re Colonists,” she spits out.
“They’re prisoners. They’re victims of the roundups. Most of them don’t want to be here. They’ve been separated from their families and I guarantee that you are some of those families.”
“Our orders are to take the Colony.”
“And we’ll do that. Peacefully.”
“You can’t be serious,” a guy says incredulously. “Nothing is done ‘peacefully’ anymore.”
“And that’s why we’re almost extinct. No killing, and he,” I say emphatically, pointing to my creeper still staring at me, “doesn’t even go inside.”
“Bryan?” the guys asks. “Why? He’s one of our best fighters—that’s why he’s here.”
“I don’t like him. He doesn’t go in.”
“He goes in. We need him.”
“As much as you need me?”
The guy gives an exaggerated sigh before he exchanges a quick look with the woman. “What do you think, Macy?”
“I don’t know,” she says uncertainly. She looks angry, but in the end she shakes her head tightly.
“Fine,” the guy says reluctantly, turning back to me. “Bryan will watch the tunnel.”
“And no killing.”
“If they attack us—”
“If one person dies, I’m out. I’m on their side.”
Macy throws her hands up in frustration. “This is ridiculous, Kyle.”
“This is how it is,” I tell her. “Take it or leave it.”
“Maybe we’ll take this place and leave you behind.”
I start to back away slowly, putting my hands up in a gesture of ‘go ahead.’
“Stop,” Kyle tells Macy and I irritably. “We’ve come this far. We’re not turning back and we need her. At least for a little while longer.”
“Let me know when we’re done with her,” Macy says darkly.
“Deal.”
“You’ll have to get in line,” I tell her with a smile. “Andy has called dibs on killing me.”
“He gets to have all the fun.”
“Not too late to back out on this,” Ryan warns me quietly, watching the pair openly threatening my life.
“You heard them,” I tell him, spinning my closed ASP in my hand. “We’ve come too far to turn back now.”
It’s actually comforting to know pretty much everyone wants to kill me. It’s what I’m used to. Picking and choosing between my enemies and my friends—that’s exhausting. One miscalculation can get me killed with my guard down like an idiot. But this, knowing everyone wants to see me die, that’s an equation I can understand.
It’s easily half an hour later when we finally stop. The cannibals are a well-oiled machine, leaping into action without a single word or sound. They form a three-person human ladder to get underneath a large drain—one I can only assume is the drain in the center of the shower room. The rock around it in the ceiling of the tunnel has been roughly
chipped away, leaving jagged edges around the gaping hole. I watch in amazement as the person on top of the people ladder, the young guy Ryan and I had been talking to, makes quick work of the drain. I hear it pop up and clatter quietly to the floor in under a minute.
After hoisting himself inside, the young kid leans over the hole and helps pull me up with him. Once I’m in, I’m sick to my stomach. It’s damp in here. They used this room tonight. Whether it was on newbies or the weekly member showers, I don’t know.
Ryan and Trent come up next, followed by the rest of the cannibals. Everyone but Bryan. Even with the cement floor between us, I still feel like that dude is too close.
I play the obedient princess when Kyle and Macy give me stern eyes and signal us to wait in the showers. Ryan and Trent fall in beside me and I feel even weirder with them standing like knights at my side. When did I get valuable? Since when do I matter so much to so many people?
We watch as the cannibals slip out of the room, silent as the shadow of nothing and gliding on air. They think they’re not fighters, and maybe in the beginning they weren’t, but they’re pretty freaking ninja now.
There’s nothing but silence for a long time. I count it out, listening to my heart, and I think it’s about twenty minutes before one of the boys breaks the silence.
“This place is big,” Ryan mutters beside me. His eyes are roaming over the room, taking in the shelving with the clean towels and the closed cupboards that I know are stocked full of the best soap I’ve seen in ages, the ones you don’t get to touch until after your ‘cleanse.’
“You’ve only seen one room.”
“And it’s big. What about the rest of the place?”
I shift on my feet. “It’s big.”
“Called it.”
“There’s an airplane inside. A fake tree. A foot car.”
“What’s a foot car?”
I shrug. “It’s a pink car shaped like a foot. They told me it’s a toe truck, then they laughed. I didn’t get it.”
“I don’t either.”
We both look at Trent. He’s not listening.
“How long are we waiting?” he asks, staring at the darkened doorway.
“Until they come get us. That’s the plan.”
“Are we sticking to that?”
I glance down at the hole in the center of the room and I wonder if Bryan can hear us. I’m guessing yes. Yes, he can.
“I don’t want to,” I admit.
“Then why are we doing it?”
“Just because I don’t want to do something, it doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.”
“It usually means it is the right thing,” Ryan says.
I look at him sharply. “What does that mean?”
“I didn’t mean it about you specifically. I meant in general—screw it, you’ll be mad no matter what. Let’s just move on.”
“With me mad?”
“I’m learning to live with it.”
“I personally like it,” Trent tells me with a smile.
“Lucky you,” Ryan grumbles.
I fully turn on him. “And what does that mean?”
“It means we’re wasting time. What’s the plan?”
“We wait here.”
“That’s their plan. What’s our plan?”
“We don’t have a plan. We never do. We just kind of do things and see where that takes us. So far, it’s made us more enemies than I can count and landed us almost dead a few times, so maybe we should follow their plan and wait here.”
There’s a commotion from upstairs. A crash, a shout, the sound of furniture being shoved across the floor. The cannibals could be fighting the Team Leaders—the Melanies and the Carolines that I didn’t kill—and that would be good. That would be what they’re here for.
Or they could be fighting the innocents. The women from the sewing room. The guys from the barns. The girls from the greenhouse. The kitchen crew. The workers. The stolen. Nats. Vin.
I break into a sprint, tearing through the doorway toward the stairs. It’s dark in here—too dark, more so than I’ve ever seen it, but I’m used to the dark. I hear Trent and Ryan behind me just like they were when we ran to my building. When we were laughing and I had fun and felt so free.
I bound up the back stairs to head straight for the dining area, where I’m pretty sure the noise is coming from. As we get closer, I hear plastic clatter to the floor and then another shout rings out. It’s a woman. I run harder, bursting through the door and running right into someone’s back.
We both go down. I hit the cement floor on my shoulder, my body weight landing on my injured arm. Suddenly I’m seeing stars. I think I even cry out. I don’t know who I ran into but they’re up off the ground instantly and towering over me as I clutch my throbbing arm. They raise their own arm, a long, dark thickness extending off of it that could be a bat or a rolling pin. Either way, they’re planning to bring it down on my face. I use my legs to sweep theirs; it’s easy on this slick floor. They go down again and this time they stay there for a second, groaning. I don’t give them a chance to recover. Quickly, I rise up on my knees and come down on their face with my fist.
A warm spurt of liquid on my hand tells me I’ve broken their nose. Their pained scream tells me they’re not getting back up right now.
Ryan and Trent run in, do a quick survey of the situation, then jump over me and my fallen enemy to go deeper into the room where the fight is still going on. I roll up onto my knees just in time to see a fistfight come to an end. Ryan pulls one figure off another, spins him around, and drops him to the ground on his stomach. I hear an “oof,” the rushing of air leaving their lungs, then coughing. Trent has taken hold of the other figure and pinned his arm behind him until he dropped to his knees. I can hear him groaning against the pain he must be feeling in his shoulder. I’m praying Trent doesn’t dislocate the guy’s arm, because I’m not good with joint injuries. If I hear that distinct pop, I might vomit.
Instead, I hear a snap from the hallway. I spin around, my hand forgetting that it’s hurt and gripping my knife secured to my hip. My other hand clenches around my ASP, still coiled and small against my body, begging to come out and play.
Bright, unnatural light pours in from the hallway, highlighting three tall figures standing there. They don’t move for the longest time—too long to be comfortable. No one speaks. I barely breathe. I’m bathed in the light, blinded by the glare, and I can feel it from the tension in the air that the person looking at me knows me. But whether that’s good or bad is still up for debate. If this is one of Caroline’s friends, I’m dead and I know it.
When one of the figures moves, I’m wound so tightly I almost weep. He steps into the doorway, light spilling in from behind him, blotting out his features. There’s no way to tell who it is. No way to recognize him beyond his build and the way he moves, but that’s all I need. I know it in an instant. I know it in the way my stomach bottoms out, my heart screams in my chest, and the greatest sense of relief I’ve felt since Ryan opened his eyes in the water under that boat courses through my veins.
When he speaks, his voice deep, vibrant, and alive, I can’t hide the smile on my face.
“‘Bout fuckin’ time, Kitten.”
Chapter Seven
“Vin.”
“Where the hell have you been, huh?”
My smile drops into a scowl. “What do you mean ‘where have I been’? I’ve been out in the wild busting my butt to bring back help!”
“Took you long enough to come back.”
“At least I came back,” I snap hotly. “You’d be sitting in The Hive right now laughing it up with Marlow and pretending this place never existed.”
“Which is what you should be doing. Did you even go to Marlow? Who are these people you brought into my house?”
I stand up sharply. “Your house?! Have you gone native?”
I see the shadow of Vin shake his head in frustration. He gestures to one of the figures still
hovering in the doorway. “Hit the rest of the lights, would you?”
The dining room lights snap on, making me blink rapidly, trying to adjust. The room is a mess, with tables knocked over, chairs shoved across the room, plastic plates scattered everywhere. But there’s no blood. Well, yeah, okay, there’s a little blood from where I broke someone’s face, but there’s no mortal wound amount of blood and that’s what matters. I don’t recognize the guy that Trent is holding onto, but Ryan has taken down one of the cannibals that came in with us. The person on the ground at my feet, however, is very familiar. So is the busted up shape of her face.
“Hey, Lexy,” I tell her wryly. “Long time no see.”
She presses the back of her hand to her bleeding nose. “Good to see you’re still a bitch.”
“Good to see you still can’t fight.”
I turn back to Vin, surprised to find him with short hair again. It had almost grown out the last time I saw him. He almost looked like a Lost Boy. Now he looks like a… well, a Colonist.
“What’s going on with you? What do you mean, ‘your house’?”
“I run this place.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
He grins. “Yes. What happened with Caroline kicked off a fight. By the end of that night everyone had heard that she was dead and I was as good as. Things were tense after that. Three days later someone snuck in. They tried to kill me.”
“Who?”
“The Leaders, who else?”
“No, who specifically tried to kill you?”
His eyes go cold, dark. “Breanne.”
I nod slowly. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
“She knew better.”
“She should have, yeah.”
“All right, I answered you, now you answer me. These people aren’t Hive, so who are they? Pikes?”
“No. They’re cannibals.”
I’m surprised when he laughs long and hard. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I reply hesitantly.
“Wow, Kitten. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that.”
“Did they hurt anyone?”
