by Tracey Ward
“We don’t choose who we love, love chooses us,” Trent tells me.
I turn fully around to face him. “What is with you?”
“Nothing. Are we not discussing this?”
“Discussing what?”
“Love.”
“No,” I reply quickly, not sure why I feel embarrassed by the word.
“We’re talking about the movie,” Ryan tells Trent pointedly.
“That’s what I was talking about,” Trent insists.
“No,” I tell him, shaking my head. “You were talking about real life and I’m beginning to wonder just what kind of nautical adventures you’re reading? Are they the type with half naked women falling over the arm of a shirtless pirate kind of ‘adventure’?”
“You mean lady porn?”
“No!”
“That’s what you were describing,” Ryan says.
“No, it’s not.”
“Do you read lady porn?” Trent asks calmly.
I pause to cool down, to collect myself and not give anything away. To get angrier is to be too adamant in my denials and they’ll never believe me. And they’ll know that, yes, I do have lady porn. Sue me!
“Anyway,” I say tightly, “I get annoyed with Pretty in Pink because her best friend is in love with her but she brushes him off to date some rich guy who then brushes her off for his friends because they’re snobs and they look down on her because she’s all poor and crap.”
Ryan frowns. “That’s the whole movie? Sixteen Candles was way better.”
“Of course it was, but that’s not the end of the movie. The guy comes groveling back, apologizing for sucking and her best friend forgives her even though he still loves her and everyone lives happily ever after. Everyone but the friend. It’s stupid. She chose the wrong guy.”
Ryan nods thoughtfully. “Can I just hate it with you instead of committing two hours of my life to watching it?”
“No, it’s all or nothing. You have to feel the anger, Ryan. You have to live it with me to really appreciate the hate. You have to yell at the screen and tell her she’s dumb.”
“You can’t hate by proxy,” Trent agrees. “That’s lazy.”
“Can’t we watch Sixteen Candles again?” Ryan pleads.
I shake my head. “Not until you live the hate.”
“Lame.”
“No, you know what’s lame? Watching you cage fight three Risen blindfolded.”
That right there, that’s a mic drop. That’s an end of discussion because there’s no coming back from that and smart guy that he is, Ryan knows it.
After almost an hour of sailing, we see light in the distance. Nothing direct, just the yellow haze of civilization spread out and thriving. It’s the burn of electric life humming in the perfect darkness of a world gone dead. It’s strange. Eerie. And we’re headed right for it. I feel anxious. Like we’re headed somewhere I used to know but forgot about. Somewhere I’m not so sure I want to go again.
I glance at the Lost Boy ahead of me, then at the one behind me as the tall white sail snaps in the cold air above us. I want to tell them to turn the ship around, to take me back to Neverland.
I want to tell them I’m not ready for this.
“This is weird,” Ryan whispers.
“I don’t like it,” I agree.
Something floating in the water smacks the hull of the boat, startling us all. We fly past it, fast on the wind, but I look back to see a large, round object floating in the water. It’s painted hot pink.
“What was that?” I ask.
“Buoy,” Trent answers, his eyes fixed steadily forward. “Fair warning, there are more coming.”
He’s not kidding. We pass by another not long after. This one is bright green. Then a yellow. A blue. A white.
“What are they marking?”
“Water depth?” Ryan suggests.
“Maybe,” Trent says, not sounding convinced.
If he plans on telling us what he thinks they are marking, he never gets the chance. We’re nearing the shore. I can see it building in front of us, a black mass against the dark sky. The lights glow from far inside the island, but out here there’s nothing. Nothing but the strange buoys, the sound of the water lapping against the shore and the group of men standing submerged up to their knees in it with weapons in hand.
They appear out of nowhere. Shadows in black stepping out of the night, waiting patiently with clubs, spears and machetes held confidently. These weapons haven’t seen the constant use ours do in the city, but it doesn’t mean they don’t know how to use them. You can see it in the way they hold them. These are still hunters. Killers, as we all now have to be because we no longer have the luxury of someone else doing the dirty work for us. Military, police, hunters, farmers. Everyone who took lives for our safety and comfort are dead and gone. Or they’re us now. I wonder what I’d classify as, other than scared.
This is a huge unknown, sitting in this Hive boat in front of a group of mysterious men on an island I’ve never heard of. One that Marlow was way too interested in yet unwilling to approach himself. One that Crenshaw helped build once upon a time. One that he calls Elysium, Heaven, but that right now feels more like something sinister and better left forgotten.
Trent drops our sails. I’m surprised how quickly we lose momentum. I’m thrown forward, right into Ryan’s back. He doesn’t look back but he reaches for me subtly, keeping his movements hidden in the hull of the boat. I weave my fingers through his until our hands are loosely tangled together. I’m shocked by how much that small contact actually helps. How steadier I feel.
“You’re lost,” a man calls out calmly.
“Is this Vashon island?” Trent calls in reply.
“It was.”
“What is it now?” I ask.
I can feel eyes on me. It’s my voice. It just told them I’m a girl and I wonder what that changes for them. If it puts me in more danger or less.
“Nothing for you. Turn this boat around and go back the way you came.”
“We came looking for help.”
“You came to the wrong place.”
“That’s not what Crenshaw said,” I say clearly, playing the only card we have and hoping it lands.
“I don’t know what a crenshaw is and I don’t care,” he says, his voice turning cold. “Turn it around. Leave.”
“No.”
He takes a step closer, his machete cutting through the water as he approaches. I can see him better now. He’s stocky. Strong. Probably about 30 or so but he looks young enough, healthy enough, to be a problem for me with my messed up arm and an exhausted Ryan with an injured shoulder. I realize as I watch him approach that it was a big mistake coming here like this. In the dead of night in a boat full of injured people with no clear idea of how we’ll convince them to help us. Everything with The Hive happened so fast, we didn’t take time to think this through. To plan. But we’re in it now and there’s no going back.
I swing my feet out of the boat, slipping off the side to land in the water. I stifle the gasp that begs to explode out of me when my body registers the cold. I’m only in it up to my thighs, but it’s enough to make me want out. Cold and wet means sick and dead in my mind.
“They’ll leave, but I’m staying,” I tell him, working to keep the tightness out of my voice. “We need help. I want to talk to your leader.”
“Joss, we’re not leaving you here,” Ryan insists angrily.
“He’s right, because you’re all leaving,” the guy agrees.
I hold out my hands, pressing my wrists together firmly. “I’m not. You’re taking me with you back to your camp or whatever it is you have here. You can bind my hands and search me if you want, but you’re taking me back with you. Either that or I’m walking out of this water onto that beach and you’ll have to kill me to stop me.”
The guy looks at my wrists pressed together. He smirks. “I didn’t bring my handcuffs with me. Sorry.”
“You’re also not complet
ely stupid. You don’t leave the house without a weapon, a piece of flint and a rope of some kind.”
His smirk becomes a scowl. “We don’t live like that anymore. I’d like to keep it that way, which is why you’re leaving.”
I step toward him. “Not until I talk to someone.”
He glares at him, his eyes shining hard in the faint moonlight. I’m beginning to shiver from the cold. From the wet, and I don’t know when or where I’ll get a chance to dry off and warm up. That scares me more than anything.
“Please,” I say softly, my eyes imploring.
I see it when he sighs. When he decides to help me. I wonder if it’s because I’m a girl or if it’s because he remembers what it was like to be me out in the crazy or if it’s just because he’s cold too and wants to get back inside. I don’t know and I don’t care. What matters is that he nods reluctantly, gestures for some of his boys to come to the boat to secure my boys and leads me up to shore.
“Do you have any weapons on you?” he asks, sounding bored and annoyed.
I nod, seeing no point in lying. I’ll be searched anyway. It’s then that it dawns on me that I was never searched going inside The Hive. Even to speak to Marlow. I remind myself to ask Ryan about it later.
“An ASP,” I tell the guy, “and a knife.”
“Take ‘em out. Toss ‘em on the ground over there.”
I do as he says. I can hear Trent and Ryan being asked to do the same with whatever they have. Farther up on the shore, three men with crossbows watch us all patiently, their weapons raised and ready.
“Is that it? Nothing else you want to tell me about?”
I shake my head. “That’s it.”
“I’m going to frisk you now. If I find any surprises, you’re getting your knife back in your chest. Got it?”
“Got it.”
He searches me carefully. It’s not the obscenely thorough inspection I got from the Colonists, but it’s for real. He’s quick. He never lingers inappropriately anywhere, but his hands touch me in places that no guy has ever touched me before. I’m tense, having to remind myself over and over again not to punch him in the throat. Finally, when I’m blushing and shaking from more than the cold, he steps away. When I meet his eyes, they’re tight but apologetic. Good to know he feels as weird about what just happened as I do.
He picks up my weapons then gestures for me to walk up the bank. I hear him fall in step behind me a few paces back. He’s giving himself space between us. Breathing room in case I try anything.
“That way,” a guy with a crossbow tells me, gesturing with his weapon.
I follow his directions, cutting left to walk along the shore. I hear them all walking loudly at my back and it makes me sick to my stomach but I don’t turn around. I don’t make any unnecessary moves. First, it’s dark and I can’t really see where I’m going. Second, I don’t want to get shot.
Eventually they guide us inland on a well-worn path that drops us in a parking lot. There are several abandoned cars, all parked with such orderly precision in the faded white lines that it makes me anxious. Chaos I can understand. This is just weird.
We walk for quite awhile in perfect silence, the sound of our feet on the dirt packed earth the only break. That and the crickets. It sounds like they’re everywhere, something that freaks me out. I can’t listen for the sound of approaching Risen in the brush over the noise of theses bugs and the constant crunch of so many men’s feet behind me. But then I guess there might not be any Risen here. That, like the straight lines in the parking lot, makes me anxious and angry.
Eventually we walk along an old driveway until we meet a fence. One of the guys goes up to it, speaks into a gray box and a few seconds later the black iron creaks, groans and swings open slowly. Once we’re ushered inside, I look over my shoulder to watch the gate clang shut behind us. It’s tall and imposing, but push come to shove, I’m pretty sure I could climb it. I will absolutely not be held captive again.
This area is all open field. There are trees scattered around the edges of the property, but for as far as I can see there are fences. There’s also the dark shape of a building looming in the distance, a scattering of lights on in each floor. I start to sweat thinking of all the people probably bustling inside. How many are sleeping in a huge room full of beds? How many will swarm us the second we walk in the door? How many voices and bodies will bombard me for the next few hours or days that I’m stuck here trying to do the impossible?
By the time we reach the front door of the large brown house, I’m ready to turn and run. To try my luck on scaling that fence and head for the water. When the door swings open and light spills out onto the porch, shining in my eyes like the sun, I hesitate. I don’t want to do this again. It’s different, sure, but a lot of it is the same. I don’t know what to expect in here. I don’t know anything about these people at all. Maybe they’re like the cannibals out there in the wild, feasting on other healthy, living humans. Hunting them for the sport of it. Maybe I’ll end up dinner or maybe we’ll become science experiments.
What happens is we’re greeted with silence. A large empty entrance hall with tall ceilings, a huge staircase and absolutely no people. I’m nudged from behind to get me moving and the amazing thing is that I go without protest. It’s warm, light and quiet. It’s dry. It’s empty. It has pictures on the walls, a decent rug over the hard floor. It smells like hot food.
It feels like a real home.
I glance back at Ryan to see him looking around in awe, his face saying everything I’m thinking. This is unreal. This is a step back in time to before the beginning. Before the bad days. Before we lost everything and everyone. He meets my eyes for the briefest of moments before we’re ushered farther inside and his expression reflects my own – it’s terrifying.
“In here,” the stocky guy tells me. “You’re going into quarantine in the back.”
“All of us together?” I ask, feeling my pulse quicken.
If their cleansing practices are anything like the Colonies, I can’t handle having Trent and Ryan in the same room seeing that. Maybe these people are bigger animals than I took them for.
“Yeah, of course. Sorry we don’t have separate rooms but your modesty will just have to survive it, princess.”
I bristle at being called princess, reminded of the first time I met Ryan when he called me the same thing. I sleep on a pile of rags on the floor like Cinder-freaking-rella. How exactly am I princess here?
We’re led down the hall to the back of the house. I hear movement inside as we go. Hurried footsteps on the floor above us, a door shutting quickly. Somewhere in a kitchen nearby a pot or pan is banged against another. I’m trying to get a count on how many people are here but I’m sure I’m not getting all of them. I wonder if this is their main house where most of the people live or if we’re being held somewhere completely isolated. Judging by the open fields around the house, I’m thinking isolated.
“Inside,” Stocky tells me, opening a door to a dark room.
I glare at him as I walk past, not flinching at walking into an unknown, unlit room. I’ve been through worse and I want him to know it. To know that I’m no princess. That I’ve got backbone for miles.
When he flicks on the light, I’m shocked. This house keeps doing that to me. These people keep doing that. It’s a library, full of books on nearly every single wall but it’s really surprise attraction is the cage. It’s built against one of the walls, the bars going nearly to the ceiling. It’s something I’m thinking they stole from a police station. Something they carefully tore down and built up back here in this house. Inside there’s a single twin bed with sheets on a real mattress and a comforter. They don’t match but I’m not judging.
I look at Stocky to find him impatiently gesturing me forward, toward the cage.
“Seriously?” I ask him in amazement. “You’re just going to lock us in there? No showers? No scrubbing? No lice shampoo?”
He scowls at me. “No, no showers.
No steam treatments either. The hotel spa is closed at the moment but if the accommodations are not up to your standards I can look into getting you moved to another wing. Do you want me to see if the Presidential Suite is available? Do you need turn down service? Perhaps a shoe shine.”
I scowl right back. “I don’t know what any of that means.”
“It means this is the quarantine room, get inside,” he says gruffly. “I know there’s only one bed but we’ll bring two more mattresses down. We aren’t exactly used to having guests. I’m so sorry.”
“Okay, the sarcasm I understand.”
“Great. I’m fluent in it. Now for the last time, get in the cage or get out. My dinner is getting colder the longer I’m standing here gabbing with you.”
“Come on, Joss,” Ryan says, stepping between Stocky and I.
I follow him into the cage, feeling Trent close on my heels. They clang the metal door shut behind us and that’s that. We’re locked in. Prisoners. But for how long? And why doesn’t it feel the same? Why doesn’t it make me ill the way the Colony did? I’m more locked down here than I ever was there but it doesn’t make me stir crazy.
I’m about to ask how long our quarantine will last when Stocky gives us the rundown.
“Listen up, here’s the deal,” he says, sounding bored. “This is the quarantine area. This will be your home for the next two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” I exclaim.
Stocky holds up his hand. “Please hold all questions until the end of the tour. You are not prisoners here. If at any time you want to leave, you are free to go. I would actually prefer it if you left so give it some serious thought. If you choose to stay, you will remain in quarantine for the two week period. After that, if you do not turn into flesh eating zombies, you will be released from quarantine and brought before a council. This council will decide what to do with you. Getting through the quarantine does not guarantee you anything. In two weeks the council may decide to deport you immediately at which time you will be put right back on your little boat and sent on your way with a reminder to never come back. This is the most likely scenario, so I ask you again to consider saving both you and I a whole lot of time and hassle and leave immediately. No pressure. Speaking of pressure, through that door behind you is the bathroom. I assume you’ve seen one before. Maybe even operated a toilet or two in your day, but I don’t have high hopes. Please do not defecate on the floor. Use the toilet. I wish I didn’t have to say this, but experience has taught me otherwise.” He looks directly at me. “There is a shower with soap and hot water, clean towels, but sadly no facial masks, exfoliants or cucumber slices for your weary eyes. My sincerest apologies.”