by Tracey Ward
“Crenshaw!”
I can’t say exactly why I’m so worried, but something inside me is terrified. It’s the same cold feeling I had when I looked at Ryan and he smiled back at me. It’s that ominous sickness in my gut I’ve had all day. It’s some part of me that knows the world better than I ever could that’s screaming at me to pay attention. To see the signs.
“Crenshaw!”
“Guys!”
“What is it, Bray?” Ryan snaps.
“We’re missing explosives. A lot of them.”
I lock eyes with Ryan.
“He wouldn’t,” I whisper.
“Wouldn’t he?” he challenges.
I wait two beats—two measures in my heart that scream in my ears loud and clear.
Go! Now!
Ryan is half a step behind me when I take off at a sprint toward the gate. He’s fast, faster than Vin is, but he’s not as fast as me. Nothing is as fast as me.
Nothing but fate.
Once we’re away from the camp, I can’t see anything. The lights ahead at the gate are burning bright but they’re not focused out this far. I’m running in a dead zone of darkness where the sound of the crowd behind me is fading and the chorus of zombies rolling down the road right beside us is deafening. We’re stupid if we think the Colonists can’t hear this. They know what’s coming.
But it will never get there if that gate stays standing.
Not far ahead, where the water meets the fence line, I see a spark—once, then twice, in the familiar motion of someone striking flint.
I want to shout again to tell him to stop, to wait, to see how dangerous it is to be this close to the gate, this close to the zombies barreling down on it. Cren isn’t a fighter; he never has been. He doesn’t even like killing animals to eat them. If this herd of Risen reaches him, he’s done for. Ryan and I probably are too. Who knows? We might already be dead.
Another spark and then something catches. It buzzes with orange life in the darkness and I can see the outline of Crenshaw and his bathrobe billowing in the wind.
Before he can throw it, the night erupts in a series of explosions from inside the Pod. The ground shakes underneath me, making me feel unsteady on my sprinting feet. I try not to stumble just as flames blow into the sky in pillars that devour trees as they climb. There’s screaming drowned out by a few smaller explosions.
The cannibals have done their job, which means we’re late doing ours.
“Throw it!” I scream to Crenshaw.
He’s hesitated, the burning fuse still eating its way down to the explosives in his hand. He’s running out of time.
Luckily he hears me. He reaches back then launches the bomb forward, straight at the gate. It lands just shy of it, bouncing and rolling over the ground until it comes to a stop a few feet away.
“Get down!” Ryan shouts at me.
I throw myself to the ground just as it explodes. There’s more fire, more dirt and debris falling from the sky, along with the very satisfying sound of metal groaning in angry protest.
When I look up, I find Ryan on the ground next to me and an inferno burning at the gate. It’s still standing, but it’s taken a good hit.
Before I can catch my breath or stand, there’s another spark. I bury my head in my arms, preparing for another blast.
When it happens, it’s big.
Too big.
There’s the initial burst that sounds exactly like the first: boom, rain, groan. But then almost immediately there’s another one. And another. And another. They keep coming in rapid fire until I stop counting them and the sky feels like it’s falling down on top of me. Large chunks of dirt and rock pelt my back and legs. I feel like I’m deaf or underwater, the way I was in the tunnel. It’s too loud and disorienting. It also doesn’t make any sense.
When the rain finally stops, I hesitantly look up. The gate is gone. It is completely and utterly destroyed, and just in time too. The zombie herd, not even the least bit worried about the explosions ahead of them, are wandering directly toward it. They’ll walk right in, make themselves at home, sleep in their beds. Snack on their brains.
The part that’s crazy, though, is how it happened. I’m not an expert on explosives. I actually don’t know jack-all about them, but I know it’s weird that one bomb did minor damage while one just like it threatened to crack the earth in half.
I sit up, glancing at Ryan to find him on his knees, staring in amazement at the devastation surrounding the Pod.
“Ryan.”
He looks back at me with his face still intact, not a drop of blood to be seen, and I sigh with relief.
Then I nearly scream when I see his expression.
“Joss, it—” He chokes on his words.
I die a little when I hear his voice. It’s off. It’s the wrong key played in the middle of your favorite song. It’s someone changing the lyrics on you and it all stumbles to an awkward halt as you look around dizzily, wondering what went wrong. But when I see his eyes, I know what it is. It’s fresh pine and twinkle lights. It’s Jingle Bells played backwards. It’s blood on the stockings and lower intestines on the hardwood.
It’s a bloody bathrobe bobbing in the water.
Chapter Twenty One
Ali has the body. What’s left of it. The explosion tore through everything. Metal. Stone. Flesh and bone. I don’t want to see it. I already did. I saw enough. I’m not sure why Ryan takes me to see it again, but I don’t ask and I don’t fight.
I don’t care.
I follow him and I watch him. I look at him the way Trent told me to—trying to understand how he works. Not simply accepting that he does, but wondering why. How. I’m looking at the complicated mechanics of his muscles moving his bones and his lungs filling with air and his blood somehow staying inside his body, warming his skin from the inside out. It’s impressive how he does it when everyone else keeps springing leaks.
It was the Colonists. Not directly, but it was their explosives that killed Crenshaw. He launched a second bomb at the gate, one that did the job and sent pieces of it flying everywhere. Right into the field of landmines they had set up against their wall. The falling debris triggered them all, setting off a daisy chain of explosions that tore through the earth, heading straight toward us—right through Crenshaw. It was the shrapnel that did him in. The blast kicked him back into the water, but not before shards of cement and steel ripped through his flesh. According to Ryan, he was dead before he landed. The only reason Ryan and I are still alive is because we were already on the ground when it happened.
“Ali has him in this tent by the water,” Ryan explains, though I don’t know why. I didn’t ask. “She said Crenshaw used to love the water, back before the gangs and the Colonies took over the bay.”
I can see the tent just ahead of us. The sun is rising behind it, the first rays of light scorching the city, setting the tent on fire and making it glow with an eerie light.
He holds open the flap for me. I go in without hesitation and I walk directly to the tables where the body is laid. Blankets have been pulled over it to hide the mess, but blood is seeping through. It’s destroyed. It’s nothing. It may as well be a zombie for how alive it is. Some would say that he’s better off because he died as himself. He was never a mindless meatsuit for some unthinkable freak show.
I say that’s bullshit. Dead is dead.
“Where’s Ali?” I ask Ryan.
“Sam took her away. She needed to sleep.”
“Why am I here?”
He pauses. “I don’t know. To say goodbye?”
“Is that why you’re here?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you need me for that?”
More silence.
“No,” he says quietly, but his voice is hard.
I turn on my heel, carefully avoiding his eyes as I leave. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
I burst out of the tent into the sunlight, leaving him behind, feeling like I’ll vomit.
And I know.
No one needs to tell me, because I already know: I’m being awful. I’m pushing him away, I’m acting like a coward, I’m ruining everything. I see it crystal clear. Don’t think for a second I’m not aware of it. Don’t think it doesn’t kill me to do it.
Here’s what it boils down to—instinct. This is my survival. Being alone is what I know and I tried something different and that’s great—yea, me!—but it didn’t work out because as nice as the ride is, the destination is always the same. Simple truth is everybody dies. I can’t stop that and neither can they. I also can’t handle it. My instincts are telling me to run away from Ryan as fast as I can, the same way they told me to run away from the fireball. It doesn’t matter that I understand running away from it will get me killed. If it happened again, I’d still go the wrong way. Just like I’m running the wrong way right now.
I spend the rest of the day sleeping. It’s my only chance to get clear of everyone. People know me now. They all knew Crenshaw and they’ve heard we were close, so now everyone wants to console the wild girl suffering a loss. It’s a miracle I’m still here. I don’t know how many times I look longingly through the throng of people surrounding me and dream of running through the streets. I want to go home, lock my door, and never think about this day again. I want to stow the crazy old man in the vault with the rest of them—the others, whose names I’ve managed to forget. The faces that are a blur, then a scream, then nothing.
So I sleep. I hibernate through the day and come out long after dinnertime. Long after I was supposed to meet up with Ryan.
“It’s time.”
I jerk my head up, surprised to find Alvarez standing in front of me. I hadn’t realized I was parked on a cot in a tent, staring into nothing. I stretch my aching back, shaking my head to clear it.
“Time for what?” I ask groggily. How am I still tired after sleeping all day long?
“The burial.”
I stand abruptly. “Nope.”
His eyebrows form a deep V of disapproval. “Excuse me?”
“No,” I tell him, swaying slightly. I feel lightheaded. Dizzy. “I’m not doing that.”
“No, but the rest of us are and you’re attending.”
“No, I’m not.”
“When did it sound like I was asking?”
“You can’t bully me into saying goodbye to him.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Then what’s the point?”
He steps in close, crowding me. “The point is we’re honoring a man’s life. I don’t care how sad you are—”
“I’m not sad.”
“Or how unaffected you’re pretending to be. He was a great man, he treated you kindly, and you will show the proper respect for his passing. Now you will walk out of this tent tall, proud, and strong like the warrior he swore to me you were, or so help me God, I will send you on to meet him.”
I believe him. There’s a fire in his eyes that has never gone out, no matter what this world has shown him, and he’s directing it straight at me. Right into my skin until it burns with anger and embarrassment. And shame.
I step around him because he doesn’t give me an inch, then I walk slowly out of the tent. I do it tall, I do it proudly, but I feel anything but strong.
He follows me out, then leads me forward. We walk silently toward the shore where the sun is setting and the Colony is still burning and the zombies are still dining. And the sickness in my stomach gets worse.
Across the water is a madhouse. After the gate was blown and the Zs made their way inside to do their business and ours, the Vashons sealed it. They moved the street barricades and locked the survivors in with the infected. It’s part of the plan that was never openly talked about before. It’s a brutal move that I didn’t see coming and I’m still working out how I feel about it. I can’t tell if the horror and the hallow I feel inside is all from losing Crenshaw or if some of it has to do with the situation going on across the water.
I want to hate them. I want to think they’re getting what they deserve for all the years of slavery, sitting in their comfy compounds while the rest of us struggled and died trying to clear the world of the plague they preach about cleansing. But then I have to hate the Vashons a little for that too. For cleaning their own house and leaving the rest of us to die outside. They were hiding from the Colonies like the rest of us, sure, but they still closed their doors in people’s desperate faces.
Either way, I don’t think anyone is a hero here.
Standing near the water I spot Ali and Sam. Ryan and Trent are not far away from them. I see several familiar faces, several people I could easily go stand beside and wait out this ceremony that I don’t understand. That I feel too raw and scared to be part of.
I hang back, staying on the outside of the gathering.
“We’re ready,” Alvarez announces.
There’s a raft on the shore that’s covered in oily dark cloth. The body is there. The empty shell of nothing with Crenshaw’s beard and staff. Several Vashons, men and women both, wade into the water with it. Guiding it. They go up to their waists before letting it go. Then they cast it off, shoving it out toward the wide mouth of Lake Washington just outside the peninsula.
No one says anything. There’s not a sound aside from the water and the fire burning nearby.
When the raft is far out into the lake, Ali moves. She takes a bow from Sam, who lights the tip of an arrow for her. I watch her launch it, watch as it flies over the darkening sky before finding its home on the raft where it ignites immediately, the entire vessel going up in brilliant flames.
That’s it. That’s the end. Most people leave after that. What else is there to be done? These days you’re lucky if anyone remembers you, let alone buries you in any way. As far as the apocalypse goes, this was a very moving service.
Ryan and the boys leave eventually, all of them carefully pretending not to see me. It’s not long before everyone is gone.
Everyone but Ali and I.
I want to go but I can’t. I can’t take my eyes off the fire on the water. My feet are rooted to the ground, the same ground where miles from here rests a forest. A quiet place with a small earthen hut kept hidden from the wild like a mirage in the desert. I never realized how beautiful that spot really was until now. I never knew how truly magical Crenshaw had been, not until he was gone and he took his magic with him. He took his words and his wisdom and I’ll have to make it through this world without them. I’ll have to make do with what he taught me, with all the things he gave me. Things like my name.
Persephone and I stand by the shore together but separate. We wait until the night comes in completely, until the last ember slips silently under the surface.
We stay with him and we send him on the wind and the water to the next world because it’s our job.
We’re his warriors. His Valkyries.
His family.
Chapter Twenty Two
We’re back in the big tent. It’s the center of our circus and we’re coming to the last act. It’s the Grand Finale. The moment we’ve all been waiting for.
“Westbrook is across the lake. He’s in a mansion with several of his followers. It’s isolated. It’s not heavily guarded. They prepared for zombie attacks. Never an uprising.”
“What’s the plan?”
“We’re going to kill him.”
“Good plan.”
I watch blankly as Alvarez and Todd hash out the details. We’ll go in by boat, the same one the Vashons came over on that they’ve stored up north, out of sight. Only fifty of us will go. We’ll storm the building in teams. We’ll take it by force. No magic, no illusions, no lies.
We leave at dawn.
The room clears out. I stay behind, staring at the walls flapping lightly in the breeze. I don’t know how long I’m there alone, but I don’t have any desire to leave. I don’t have anywhere to go. Eventually it starts to rain.
“Do you live here now?”
I turn to see Trent standing in the
doorway, his hair laying flat and wet against his head. It makes him look different. More human.
“Maybe,” I mutter, turning away.
He stays in the doorway behind me but I know he’s there. I can feel him because he wants me to feel him. He wants me to know he’s waiting.
“What?” I ask irritably.
“You tell me.”
“Tell you what, Trent?”
“What’s on your mind.”
I chuckle dryly. “Shouldn’t Ryan be doing this? He’s our ambassador, right?”
“He already tried. You shut him down.”
My stomach clenches with guilt.
“He says you need space,” Trent continues.
“He’s right. Bye.”
“I told him he’s wrong. I told him you need to talk to someone.”
“And you thought the right person for the job would be you?”
“I killed my dad.”
I spin around in my seat, my mouth falling open. “Why would you just blurt that out like that?!”
“To get your attention,” he replies calmly. He grins slightly. “Did it work?”
“You’re sick.”
“But you’re listening now, aren’t you?”
I face forward, leaning back in my seat. “Come sit down. I’ll strain my neck trying to look at you like that.”
He moves silently through the room, sitting down next to me like a ghost. We both face forward, staring at the wall of the tent. The ceiling is dripping a little in the corners where the water has managed to pool, but otherwise we’re safe and sound from the rain and wind outside.
“Did you really kill your dad?” I ask, my voice hushed.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he was a zombie,” Trent answers as a matter-of-fact. “I saw him be bitten, I saw him die, then I saw him rise again, so I put a bullet between his eyes.”
“Whoa.”
He looks over at me curiously. “Did you kill your dad?”
“N-no,” I stutter, shocked by how easily he asks the question. “I didn’t. I was eight and they were eaten. And I didn’t have a gun. You know…because I was eight.”
