by Tracey Ward
All around us the pyres still burn as more bodies are thrown on them. I hear people shouting, fighting, struggling. We should help them. We should stand and fight against the onslaught of zombies that will never end. But if they’ll always be there, then they can wait. We can take one moment in this stupid, thieving world and make it ours. Just his and mine, alone in the crowd and the chaos.
“Ryan!”
With Trent.
I groan, letting my head drop back until I’m staring up at the distorted sky.
“Hey, man,” Ryan chuckles. He squeezes me to him tightly one last time before letting me go.
I’ve never been so annoyed with him. Or Trent. Or the world.
“Good to see you’re still alive.”
I nearly die when Trent hugs him. Trent, my Robo-Boy, my unfeeling machine of a strange, bizarro man, hugs another human being. And he does it like he means it.
“I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Andy,” Ryan admits when Trent lets him go.
“Did you come out through the tunnels?”
“No, we didn’t have time. We had to light a short fuse and if we’d gone into the tunnels, they’d have collapsed on us before we got far enough away. We snuck out of the showers just after we lit it and headed for the back. When the explosion happened it shook everyone up. The lights went out, the walls started crumbling. No one knew where it was coming from or if the building was going down. It was nuts. Andy hid us in a dark corner until the coast was clear, then we ran out the back toward the water.”
“But you can’t swim,” I protest.
Ryan blushes, embarrassed. “Yeah, I know. Andy was mad. He had to swim us both out. I laid there like a log and let him float me away.” He chuckles nervously. “I was panicking the whole time.”
He’s trying to play it off like it’s nothing, but I can tell from his body language that it was hard for him. Maybe even a little horrifying. But he hates that weakness and I get that so I let it go unnoticed.
“Once we were out, we headed for The Hive,” he continues. “Andy knew it’d be nearly deserted with most of Marlow’s men still up at the Colony. He said we had some recruiting to do.”
“People were willing to defect?” Trent asks.
“Oh yeah. Andy wasn’t kidding when he said there were some angry people over there. Seventeen people left with us.”
“Can they fight?”
“A good portion, yeah.” Ryan searches the people around us. The crowd is thinning as the fight dies down. Not nearly as many zombies followed Ryan and the others here as followed Trent. I know part of that is the fires; they don’t like the scent of their own. “Where’s Vin?” Ryan asks suddenly.
I blink, surprised he cares. “He’s here somewhere. Probably with his flock.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“Why?”
“Because we have a few to add to that flock.”
Ryan gathers together the newly arrived Hive members. Including Andy, looking cleaner than the last time I saw him, he’s right—there are seventeen. A lot of them are women and I realize when I see Freedom and a put-out-looking Elise, the girl who tried to mount Ryan the last time I saw her, that these women are from the stables. It makes me nervous whether they’ll really be happy to see Vin or not. If they’re angry enough at The Hive to run away given the chance, then I think they’re probably angry at Vin too.
“Vin!” Freedom shouts happily when she sees him.
Then again, what the hell do I know?
“You crazy bitch, who let you out?” Vin shouts back, opening up his arms.
Freedom runs into them, followed by Elise and four other women. They take him to the ground, all of them giggling and laughing, Vin being the loudest.
“I do not understand this at all,” I mutter.
“Really?” Trent asks, sounding genuinely surprised. “You just did this to Ryan.”
“Not like this.”
“No, you’re right. It was way more intimate what you did.”
“Why were you watching?” I groan, turning red.
He grins. “Because it was beautiful.”
***
An hour later I’m back in the central tent with Ryan, Vin, Trent, Ali, Sam, Alvarez, and a few other Vashons that I don’t know or recognize. I ask Sam why Taylor isn’t here and he looks at me like I’m crazy.
“Someone has to stay behind and watch the fort,” he replies.
I notice that Sam sticks close to Ali. He’s always with her and I wonder what that’s all about. I wonder if Taylor put him on guard duty—but if she’s so valuable, why is she here?
“We’ll attack at the gates, but we’ll go in over the walls,” Alvarez tells the room. “Crenshaw and the Hyperion boys will detonate the flash grenades at each gate of both stadiums, causing a distraction and panic. While they run to the gates to defend them, Teams One through Eight will go over the fences. Remember,” he says sternly, catching everyone’s eye, “we are going for containment. Use lethal force only if you absolutely have to.”
“You won’t have to,” Vin says clearly from his corner. He’s standing with his back against a support post, his eyes on the room, but his body language is clearly removed from the group. “It’s easier than you think to overthrow one of these things. Most of the people inside don’t want to be there.”
“Even so, they don’t know why we’re there. They will defend themselves, so be prepared. And capture who you can. We want their Leaders. We need information.”
“We want Westbrook,” Ali says.
Her voice is quiet but it carries through the tent to every corner. I watch each Vashon nod in agreement.
I hate the Colonies as a whole, as an idea and a threat, but the Vashons are obviously working on a whole other level.
The group is disbanded after that. We all have our orders of where we’re supposed to be. It’s hard to believe that this is really happening. We’ve made an attempt on a Colony once already, but it was waiting for us. The work was done. This is different. This will be a true fight.
“Sam,” I call as I see him passing through the room. He hesitates for a second, his eyes going to Ali then back to me. She stops to talk one of the other Vashons and I get the feeling it’s for Sam’s sake to give him time.
“Hey, Joss,” he says easily, stepping toward Ryan, Trent, and I. He does that weird handshake/embrace thing guys do before stepping back. “What’s up?”
“Are you Ali’s bodyguard or something?”
His face goes immediately blank. “Yeah. Why?”
“Why does she need one?”
“For protection.”
“From who? The Colonists?”
“Westbrook?” Ryan guesses.
Sam shakes his head. “Nah, nothing like that. They should be scared of her.” He chuckles. “Them I won’t protect.”
“Then who are you protecting her from?”
“From herself,” he says plainly.
I frown. “You’re protecting her from herself?”
“Kind of all of us. Look, she’s moving so I need to go. Stay safe out there, all right? Watch each other’s backs.”
Sam takes off after Ali, no other words of explanation given. I’m more confused now than I was before I talked to him.
“What is a sixteen-year-old kid protecting a grown woman from?” Ryan muses.
“I don’t know, but your crew is about to leave without you.”
Ryan and Trent follow my eyes to the growing crowd around Crenshaw. They all have backpacks, dark clothing, and the most cautiously excited expressions on their faces I’ve ever seen. This team is purely for distraction. All these guys have to do is follow Crenshaw’s instructions to the letter to light off a series of highly visual, nearly powerless explosions around the gates. They’re giving the illusion of a breach. It’s the truest magic I’ve ever seen Crenshaw wield.
I turn to Ryan, feeling anxiety in every fiber of my body. He’s going to leave me again. He’ll go with Crenshaw, I�
��m going over the fence, and it’s too much too soon but I’ll never say it.
“How many fingers you got?” I ask him curtly.
He grins as he holds them all up and wiggles them at me. “Ten. Five on each hand.”
“Two hands, two arms, two eyes.”
“Two legs, two feet, ten toes.”
“One liver, two kidneys,” Trent lists off. “One appendix, but you could lose it and be fine. Two lungs, one heart, one gall bladder—”
“Yes, okay,” I snap. “You know organs. Thank you.”
He smiles at my annoyance. “You’re welcome.”
“Two hearts,” Ryan corrects, tapping my chest lightly.
I roll my eyes at the sweetness of the gesture, unable to handle it the way a normal person with real feelings that they can understand would.
“Just bring it all back with you,” I tell him. “Leave no appendage behind.”
“You got it. Be careful in there, Joss.”
I grin. “It’ll be easy.”
He kisses me. It’s quick and firm and right in front of everyone. The most amazing part about it—I like it. Out in the open and everything. I really, really like it.
“Trent.”
Trent nods distractedly, securing his backpack. “Bring him back in one piece. I know.”
“No. Well, yeah, please do that, but I was going to say ‘take care of yourself.’”
He blinks at me, a system error crashing his processor. Finally he blinks again, his eyes clearing. “You too,” he says quietly.
“Thanks.”
And just like that, my Lost Boys are gone again.
***
“Line up,” our commander whispers harshly.
Eight other people and I in Team Three are in position on the outside of the baseball stadium. We line up quickly with our backs against the wall. Then we wait.
I shift the fake gun they gave me around in my hands, unsure how to hold it. It’s carved from wood and stained black, an illusion that will hopefully fool people in the dark chaos we’re about to create inside this Pod. I got a quick rundown on handguns from a Vashon named Todd before we left the forest. Basically I was told I wasn’t trusted to have a real one and I do not blame them one bit. I wouldn’t know what to do with the thing.
As Todd showed me how to use it as a melee weapon, he explained that since their island was founded by a group that was mostly military, the Vashons still have guns and a decent supply of ammo. In fact, he was military once, back before the big collapse and the cure that kicked it off. He was stationed just outside the gates of Ali’s old home, Warm Springs.
Apparently when they helped the farmers of the original Vashon Island clear it of zombies, they mostly used brute force or through ‘strategic strikes,’ whatever that means. I think it boils down to cracking skulls. Bullets, they decided, were better saved for humans. And they were right. With the near extinction of guns these days, the sight of one is pretty horrifying—like seeing a dragon or Bigfoot.
An explosion rips through the night. It flares up, black smoke billowing around it as a sound like thunder cracks through the still air. As quickly as it appeared, it’s gone, leaving my eyes momentarily stunned. Another explosion follows that one, then another. There’s shouting from inside the stadium. I hear cries of terror, some sounding like children. The foreign sound of a baby crying wafts over the walls and blends with the cracks and bangs of Crenshaw’s magic.
Men and women shout muffled commands. We hear them in the momentary return to silence as Crenshaw and his crew wait. They’re drawing the Colonists to them, then they’ll give the sig—
Boom!
There it is. Our commander doesn’t say a word. With the sound of the second round of explosions, he and another member of our team climb like monkeys up the tall fence. We hand up a heavy roll of the thickest fabric I’ve ever seen, which they toss across the layers of razor wire at the top of the fence. The heavy material weighs the metal coils down to make it easier for us to clear them while also keeping us relatively safe from the sharp edges just dying to slice us open.
More explosions are going off in the distance at the other gates, at the other stadium. We’re attacking all at once in a mad rush to confuse and panic them. From the sounds of it, it’s working.
I wait my turn anxiously, then climb over the fence. As I swing my legs over, I get one stuck on a stray piece of metal and take a slice down my leg. I hiss in surprise but quickly pull my leg free and scurry down the other side to the ground. Our commander is waiting there, a man from Vashon Island who I’ve seen only once before in the large tent with Alvarez. He doesn’t ask me if I’m okay. He doesn’t offer me a helping hand because I’m a girl. As I hit the ground he shoves me forward to catch up with the others and get out of the way of the next climber. I was pretty neutral to him before, but I think I’m in love with him now.
I run quickly behind the others as we sprint across the neglected, dusty ground between the outer chain-link fence and the interior concrete walls. According to the plan, these inner walls have doors in them—ones that will lead us into tunnels inside the stadium under the open-air seating. I hope the plan is right, because when I glance up at the dark gray mass beside me, I’m thinking there’s no way of climbing that thing. Without an entrance, we’d have to fly to get in—and I’m all out of fairy dust.
The line I’m following comes to a sudden halt. Our commander goes rushing past me to the front and disappears into the shadows at the base of the wall. I wait anxiously, uncomfortable with the bodies pressed so close at my front and back, not to mention the sound of explosions still going off and shouts echoing from nearby.
Finally the line moves again and we’re racing forward. I follow blindly until I’m passing through a thick doorway into a dark tunnel that makes me cringe. It’s dry in here. There are really low wattage lights spaced out across the ceiling, but it has that boxed-in feeling of the tunnels—the ones where Vin and I fought for our lives and took one in return. The one where I was sure I’d lost Ryan forever.
I take a breath, shake it off, and suck it up. If there’s one thing in this world I can count on, it’s the fact that it’s haunted. Everything has a memory. Everything will remind me of something horrible if I let it.
The tunnel is curving and rising, taking us up and around. We follow them until we see light pouring in from the center of their world: the heart of the Colony.
My first impression when we exit the tunnel and I can see it clearly?
Place is a shit-hole.
I’m stunned by it. It’s nothing like the Pod in the north. Nothing. What used to be a sports field covered in unnaturally green grass is all brown earth farmed to within an inch of its life. There are pens filled nearly to bursting with animals of all different kinds, all mixed in together. Tents and badly constructed, tiny buildings are built into the stairs and seats. Hundreds of them. Small fires burn at regular intervals around the base of the seating, just outside the reach of the overused fields. They have power but it looks like none of it is being used on the inside. All of it is being spent on the huge, barely working spotlights that were meant to light night games but have now been redirected to watch the perimeter. If a large portion of their guard wasn’t up north fighting the cannibals, we never would have made it as far as we have tonight—they would have seen us coming a mile away—but as I look around I wonder what they would have done about it. The Vashons had trebuchets and God knows what else to defend themselves. As far as I can tell, these people have chickens. Mangy ones.
“Fan out!” our commander shouts. “Weapons up! Form a line around the field!”
Other teams have shown up through the tunnel entrances around the field. They start to spread out just like we do until we all link together, forming a circle around the field. Every weapon, even fake ones like mine, are drawn and pointed up at the seating where the Colonists are scurrying to hide inside their shacks. Not a single one is putting up a fight. They’re all too terr
ified.
Somewhere down in the street, Alvarez and a few other teams will take the Colony guards down. If they’re anything like these people here on the inside, they won’t fight them too hard.
This all feels too easy. Almost unfair. I want to lower my ‘gun’ because I’m starting to feel guilty lying to them with it.
“Hold steady!” Todd, my gun coach, shouts.
So that’s what we do: we point our mix of real and fake weapons at the cowering, hiding Colonists and we wait.
Somewhere from the utter silence behind me, a cow moos mournfully.
Chapter Eighteen
“What do you mean you’re staying here?!”
Vin pretends to wince at my shouting. “Kitten, please. My ears. You’re shrieking.”
“You’re being a coward!”
“I’m being an opportunist.”
“Selfish.”
“A little, yeah.”
I collapse in a chair across from him inside the large tent.
We’re early to our next strategy meeting with the Vashons. I don’t know why we’re meeting again so soon—everyone knows what we’re going to do: move on to the next Colony, the one in the south against the water. The people we’ve taken in so far have been eager to talk. Once Alvarez showed up in the middle of that field and announced what his intentions were, the people began to slowly come out of their hiding places. Turns out not all of them live in the tents and shacks out in the open. A big portion of the Pod lives inside the structure where there are offices turned into dorm rooms, kitchens, showers, bathrooms, even nurseries and play areas. It’s not at as bad down there as it is up top, but they’re so overcrowded they’ve spilled out to live with the animals and crops. Word from the other teams is that the football stadium is just as bad. It’s no wonder the Colonists rushed up north to save the MOHAI from the Hive—they can’t afford to lose all that space.
Now Vin is telling me he isn’t leaving. His flock isn’t leaving, either, and I’m thinking the crowded Colonies are about to get worse before we can make them better.
