by Tracey Ward
“No,” Ryan replies darkly.
I roll my eyes. “Can we talk about something else?”
“I think there are almonds in this bread,” Trent states affably.
“What happened to your dad?” I ask Vin.
“Maybe pecans?”
He doesn’t have to say anything—I can feel Ryan’s annoyance rolling off him in waves that crash over me again and again. But I don’t care if I’m being too blunt. Vin is the rudest person I know. I don’t owe him any attempt at etiquette.
Vin eyes me shrewdly. “He died.”
“No kidding. How, though? Marlow did it, didn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he lied to him.”
“About what?”
“About everything.”
“Nats said you were an orphan before the fall. How did your mom die?”
Ryan nudges my arm. I scoot away from him.
Vin shrugs. “I don’t know. I never knew her. She ran when I was born.”
“Why didn’t your dad raise you?”
“He did. He was a drunk and a druggie. As soon as I was old enough to run away, I did.” Vin sets his food down and leans across the table, giving me his full attention. When he speaks, his voice is flat. Dead. “I lived on the streets and I took care of myself. When the illness came and everyone started dying, I thought it was great. I thought that finally all of the worthless, lazy deadbeats out there would be gone and all that would be left were people like me. Smart and fast. Tough. So I went back to my dad’s house a few months after it started. I wanted to see his fat corpse banging around inside his tiny, filthy apartment. I wanted to be the one to bash his head in. But you know what I found instead of a zombie? That SOB was still alive. He’d stolen food and drugs, probably killed living people to get it, and he was still alive. He attached himself to me after that. I couldn’t shake him and for some stupid reason, I couldn’t kill him. I prayed for him to get bitten, but it never happened. Eventually we took up with Marlow when he was just getting started. Dad sold Honey for him, but he took more of the drug than he sold. He got into trouble and Marlow put him down. Tossed his body in the Sound while I watched. He let me keep his ring, though.”
“Why do you keep it if you hated him so much?” I ask quietly, stunned by this amount of information from Vin.
He holds his hand up, showing me the ring. “Marlow said to wear it and remember what happens to traitors. It kept me in line. Now I wear it so I’ll always remember not to be stupid like my dad was. Stupid and weak won’t get you anywhere but dead. It’s the only thing that loser was ever able to teach me.”
He slams his hand down on the table, the ring making a sharp sound against the metal of his battered plate.
“Anything else you want to ask me, Kitten?” he asks calmly.
I shake my head stiffly. “No, I’m good.”
“Great. I gotta hit the head.”
Vin stands abruptly, his legs knocking the table and spilling my cup of water. The liquid runs over the uneven surface, chasing the path of least resistance until it finds the edge and begins to drip down onto my leg.
“Maybe don’t go digging around in people’s pasts anymore,” Trent recommends before taking a bite of apple.
“Trent, I don’t say this as often as I should,” I reply, feeling exhausted and stupid, “but I think you’re absolutely right.”
Chapter Nineteen
I don’t see Vin again after that. He leaves to go get his castle and he doesn’t find me to say goodbye. I don’t know much about people, but I know I messed up. I know he’s mad at me and fair enough. I would rage out on him if he did the same thing to me. Especially in front of other people. I thought I was being blunt and calloused the way he always is, but now I’m not so sure. I think I might have just been a jerk again.
Not long after Vin leaves with his small army, we head south in the largest gathering of human beings I’ve seen in years. Once you take everyone out of their tents and away from the trees, you can see how many there really are—a buttload. We picked up more people willing to fight from the stadiums. I think the count I heard was around one hundred, but when you consider the number we lost to Vin heading north, we’re about where we were before. He even took the girls from the stables with him. I’m not surprised in the least that Freedom knows how to fight. Her temporary pimp Dante even came out of The Hive with them, leaving me amazed at the amount of loyalty that’s built into that place. Their sense of family is a lot like the cannibals’: it’s everything to them.
I’m already nervous about marching across the city to an area I’ve never been to before, but what makes it worse is that we have company.
There’s a horde of zombies following us. A big one. The Vashons actually gathered it together! They hunted these things down from all over the city and drew them to the park. I thought it was insane, but they weren’t worried. I guess this is part of what they did when clearing their island. You get as many together as you can in a contained area and destroy them as a group with fire, explosives, whatever. I guess it uses less physical effort and lowers your level of one-on-one contact with them. It makes you far less likely to be bitten because you never get that close. The only real danger is the herding—you have to give them something to follow, and once you do, you better hope it knows how to run.
And what are we leading these zombies toward? What’s our endgame?
They’re a gift for the southern Colony.
“A guest should never arrive empty-handed,” Alvarez had explained with a wink.
The majority of us left camp well ahead of the herd to make sure we had a buffer, but we still come across random strays on the way. There’s a circling group of Vashon soldiers constantly jogging by, up and down our caravan, keeping up a patrol. Even if a Z does show up, none of us has to deal with it. I feel weird about that. About being taken care of. It’s something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to.
“Good to see you found him again,” Ali says, showing up beside me out of nowhere. I jolt, wondering if she’s been taking shadow lessons from Cren.
“Good to see you with us again. Were you sick?”
Ali falls silent. It drags out for a long time, making me worry. And wonder.
“Yeah,” she finally says, her voice low.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Almost.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Ryan subtly nudges my arm with his. I look up to find him shaking his head at me faintly.
“What?” I ask.
“Just leave it.”
“Leave what?”
On the other side of me Ali chuckles.
“She doesn’t know she’s being rude,” Ryan tells her. “Sorry.”
“I’m not being rude!” I protest. “And don’t talk about me like I’m not here. I was trying to be nice asking how she’s feeling.”
“I’m fine now,” she assures me, still grinning.
“Good,” I grumble, feeling stupid and annoyed with the whole conversation. And yet for some stupid reason, I keep talking. “I grew up alone. I haven’t spent time with people in years. I’m not good at it.”
“Yeah, me either,” she says lightly.
“You’re better than me.”
“I have more practice. It’ll come to you.”
“If everyone doesn’t run screaming from me first.”
She looks at me sideways, her eyes flitting to Trent and Ryan next to me. “Certain people never will.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do. My moods are pretty touch and go. I have good days and I have bad days.”
“And you have really bad days,” Sam chimes in.
I look behind us to find him walking a few paces back. Always close to Ali.
She gives him a severe look that’s ruined by the grin tugging at her lips. He smiles sweetly at her.
“I do,” she admits. “I have really bad days. But
people like Sam are still with me.”
“And Jordan.”
Ali nods, pursing her lips thoughtfully. “Yup, Jordan has never run screaming. Not even when I told him to.”
“Why would you tell him to?” I ask.
“Because I love him and I feel like he deserves better than me.”
Yeah, I know the feeling.
I want to know what’s making Ali sick even though I’ll never ask about it again. I told Ryan he’s my social compass and if he tells me to leave it, I’m going to leave it. No matter how much it haunts me. I have a couple of theories, but none of them really make sense. Leading contender based on bad moods that make her dangerous?
She’s the Incredible Hulk.
***
Alvarez wasn’t kidding—this Pod is completely different.
The Colony up north is nice compared to how I live, how Ryan lives, and definitely how the stadiums live: it’s clean, there’s power, it’s not overly crowded. But this… this is different.
I can’t say I like it more, even though I get why a lot of people would. Especially the people living in the stadiums. Show this place to them and they won’t be cowering anymore. They’ll be ready to fight. Some would probably be ready to kill.
I can see it through Trent’s binoculars where it sits across the water. The peninsula reaches out and juts north to run parallel with the shore road we took to get here. We did it so openly it makes me nervous. I’m still getting used to being seen by a few people in the same room as me. Parading around for hundreds of people to see? That’s disturbing.
We rolled down the street right up against the bay, showing them that we were coming. They can see the majority of us, they can see the trebuchet. They’re watching us set up shop dangerously close to their gates at the entrance to their Pod and I take a little satisfaction in watching them scurry and scramble. They’re freaked and it shows.
There’s an outer fence beside the gate—one nearly identical to the fence I climbed to get into the stadiums, razor wire and all. After that there’s a gate that connects to a wall. They’ve built a decent perimeter around the island. Alvarez said there are houses all over the place along with a warehouse, but I can’t see much other than trees and the odd patch of roof peeking through.
“Why don’t the Vashons have a wall like that?” I muse.
“They’re in deeper water. It’s a natural barrier against the zombies,” Trent replies instantly. “They’re also on an island. This is a peninsula. There’s land access to block.”
“That makes sense.”
“Also they’re paranoid nutjobs.”
I chuckle, sneaking a glance at him. He’s smiling.
“How long do you think we have before our shadows get here?” I ask, gesturing over my shoulder.
Trent studies the crowd of monsters making their way steadily toward us. I imagine he’s using the feel of the wind, the direction of the sun, the height of the building—all of it together in his massive brain to come to a scary accurate prediction.
He shrugs. “Eventually.”
“That’s it?” I asked, surprised by the simplicity.
“Assuming they don’t get distracted, yeah. They’ll be here when they get here.”
“Distracted as in get ahold of the Vashons leading them and stop to eat?”
“Yes. Meaning that.”
“That’s pretty vague.”
“If you want a more accurate ETA, you’ll have to go ask the zombies.”
I scrunch my up my nose with distaste. “Pass.”
Instead of running to my doom, I lean over the edge of the building to see around two hundred worker bees moving in the streets below me. Alvarez has ordered almost everyone to build barricades in the streets near our camp. Old cars, old furniture scrounged from inside homes, random debris from the streets—it’s nothing like the barricades the MOHAI had built up to keep the zombies in, but it should be enough to keep any stragglers from getting lost along the way to the Colony’s gate.
None of us will be going anywhere near it. Well, no one but the unlucky few who have to guide the zombies there. The rest of us are either coming in underground with the cannibals, creating diversions to confuse and distract, or hanging back with the trebuchet to help Crenshaw cast his spells. The cannibal crew will come up inside the walls, place more explosives to weaken them from the inside, then run like hell back to the tunnels and back to base. From there, we’ll sit back and let the zombies do the dirty work, flushing people out of the bombed-out Colony and running panicked into the night. Then it’s ours. Easy.
It sounds like a brilliant plan on paper, but something about it doesn’t sit right in my gut. I have an anxious, sick feeling that just won’t go away.
“Do you see the docks?”
“No,” I mumble, searching the shoreline.
“That’s because there aren’t any on this side. They must have their docks on the other side, the one closest to Mercer Island.”
I lower the binoculars sharply. “Then why did you ask me if I saw them from here?”
“I was testing you.”
“Testing me on what? Whether or not I know what a dock is?”
“You didn’t know where Tokyo was.”
I roll my eyes, lifting the binoculars again. “Let it go.”
“I’m looking for a baseline on your knowledge. I’ll know from there where to start with your education.”
“Dude, that was a joke. You’re not actually teaching me.”
“Why don’t you want to know things?” he asks, sounding disappointed.
“I do know things,” I snap.
“Why don’t you want to know more things? You should always be looking to learn. That’s why I read.”
“He is right, Athena.”
Crenshaw. He snuck up behind us with his crazy light tread, but I wonder if Trent didn’t hear him coming.
I lower the binoculars again but stow the sigh building in my throat. “He’s always right.”
Cren comes to stand beside me and take in the sights. The view is actually really pretty with the setting sun glistening off the water that’s rolling gently in and out against the sandy shore. It’d be beautiful, maybe even peaceful, if you only removed the slavers shouting from inside their walls.
“Are there inconsistencies in your education?”
“Glaring ones,” Trent confirms.
I smack his arm. “Not glaring ones. I’m not dumb.”
“A lack of knowledge does not indicate meager intelligence,” Crenshaw scolds. “I have no doubt of your capacity to absorb knowledge, child. You need only to be presented with it. If the boy has offered it to you freely, you’d be a fool to deny it.”
“You just told me I’m not dumb but then you called me a fool in the same breath. You see that, right?”
“I said you would be a fool to deny it.” Crenshaw looks over my head at Trent. “Perhaps English should be your first lesson.”
“I speak English!”
“Yet you do not always comprehend it.”
“Did you come up here to be mean to me?”
Cren looks perplexed. “Who is being mean to you?”
“She’s very sensitive,” Trent comments, jumping up to sit on the wall going around the edge of the roof.
He’s precise as a cat on Ritalin, but the move still makes me sweat.
“I’m sensitive because you guys are mean to me. I’m too fat, I’m too skinny, I’m rude, I’m a fool. Lay off me.”
“I did not seek you out to be cruel to you,” Crenshaw says, his tone softening. “I came to speak to you about something very important. Something regarding the Hornet. I wish—”
“Cren, you don’t have to worry about him,” I say quickly, knowing where this is going. I’m headed toward a lecture about the company I keep. “He’s not Hive anymore. He was, he was very deep in it, but he’s not now. He’s not a good guy, but he’s not a devil. I promise.”
He doesn’t answer me. When I tur
n to look up at him, he’s looking at me heavily.
“Perhaps your first lesson should not be English, but rather social etiquette.”
Uh oh.
“That’s probably a good idea,” I reply slowly. Cautiously.
“You have a very bad habit of interrupting. And assuming. You would do well to listen a little more and speak a little less.”
“Okay,” I mumble, looking away. I have been sufficiently shamed.
Again, he doesn’t respond. Seconds slip by and I begin to understand that we’re all waiting on me. Reluctantly, I look up at him.
He quirks a waiting eyebrow.
No, I think glumly, this is the shaming.
“I’m sorry, Crenshaw.”
“Thank you.”
“What would you like to discuss about the Hornet?”
“I wish to speak to him.” He takes a deep breath. I watch his hands clench on his staff, the knuckles going momentarily white. “I would ask after my daughter.”
He’s right, I assume too much. I did not see that coming. This conversation just got a whole lot of awkward and I’m suddenly wondering where Ryan is. Trent and I are not the right people for this.
“Um, okay. Yeah,” I stumble. “He’s gone now. He went to the northern Colony to take it back.”
“I know that.”
“Oh.”
“I should have spoken to him before he left, but I was hesitant. I waited too long. Now I worry.”
“About your daughter?”
“About time.” He pauses to take another slow breath. When he speaks again, he doesn’t sound exactly like Crazy Crenshaw. He’s that weird mix I get now and then when reality creeps in and you can see the hairline cracks in his world. “I’m an old man. I have seen so many things in my life. I’ve had the great honor to be loved by a beautiful creature of grace and brilliance. She gave her life to give me the greatest gift a man can receive from a woman: a child. But then I lost her too. She was taken from me or she went, it doesn’t matter. She’s gone. Now with the world as it is, with the fighting and the upheaval, who knows if I will ever find her again? I should not have waited. I should have found her ages ago. I should have spoken to the Hornet when I had the chance.”
