by Tracey Ward
I narrow my eyes at him. “I asked if you were going to scrub us down like the Colonies, I didn’t exactly ask for a massage.”
He pauses, sizing me up, seeming to take in my clothing and appearance in detail for the first time. “How exactly do you know what the Colony does to new members?”
I freeze, realizing my mistake. I worried insanely that Ryan and Trent would think I was a Colonist spy, that I hadn’t escaped but that I’d been a member all along. To these people that don’t know me at all, that worry doesn’t seem so insane.
“I’ve heard stories,” I tell him.
He continues to watch me silently. I stare back, desperate not to look guilty of anything but I just flat out lied so I’m feeling pretty boldly guilty at the moment.
“I’m going to eat my dinner,” he finally says, his voice turning low and serious. He’s no longer the bored, sarcastic tour guide anymore. He’s very alert. Very aware of me. “You’ll get yours soon enough. The extra mattresses too. In the meantime, don’t get too comfortable.”
With that he’s gone, he and his entire entourage. It’s just me, Ryan and Trent in the cage in the library in the building in the wild on an island emptied of Risen.
Chapter Fourteen
“Is prison supposed to be nicer than home?” Trent asks, glancing over the book spines on the shelves.
“Didn’t you hear?” Ryan asks drolly. “It’s not a prison.”
“Awful lot of bars for ‘not a prison,’” I mutter.
“Joss, you take the bed. I don’t know if they’ll make good on the promise of other mattresses but even if they don’t Trent and I will be fine on the floor.”
“I can sleep on the floor.”
“We all can sleep on the floor,” Trent says. “No one is saying you can’t. But it’s not very chivalrous for either of us to take the bed with a girl in the mix.”
“So you’re saying we’re all equal, but I’m a girl so I get the bed?”
“Doesn’t make any sense, does it?” He shrugs. “Maybe that’s why chivalry is dead. It’s dumb.”
“It’s not dead and it’s not dumb,” Ryan protests sounding tired and annoyed. “She’s taking the bed. Can we not make it an issue? Can you just say ‘thank you’ and lay down?”
“Can I go to the bathroom first?” I ask quietly, surprised by his sharp tone.
“Ryan, you sound exhausted. You should take a nap,” Trent suggests. He snaps his fingers like he just had a brilliant idea. “The bed! Why don’t you take it? Lie down? Joss, you don’t mind, right?”
Ryan runs his hands over his face, groaning. “Not now. Seriously so much, not now, dude.”
Trent frowns at the bed. “There’s no mint on this pillow.”
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I mumble, leaving them to work it out.
Inside the small room behind the library is a gleaming white, sterile as balls bathroom that makes me afraid to touch anything. This is familiar. This feels like the Colonies. Everything wiped down, everything in its place, the faint hint of anal retentive douchebaggery hanging in the air. And Stocky didn’t lie. There’s a shower that has steaming hot running water with clean towels that smell like soap and something else. Something flowery that I don’t like but it’s not mildew so I’ll roll with it. There’s soap in the shower as well. Something a lot like the Colony soap but with a slightly different scent. More of the flowers, I think. It’s smoother too. More like a lotion. It’s nice.
It’s then that I realize I’m naked in the shower under the hot water, my dirty, wet clothes a sodden pile on the perfect white floor. I honestly don’t know how I ended up in here covered in lavender scented lather. There was no conscious decision to do it, it just… happened. Too late to turn back now.
I stay in for ten minutes, washing my hair and body once per minute. I would stay in and do it all again if I wasn’t worried about letting the guys have a go at it. I’m trying not to be selfish, to think of others every now and then, but it’s hard because I desperately want it all for myself. As I climb reluctantly out the warm shower into the chilled air, I decide that being civilized sucks.
Dressed in my cold wet clothes again, I head back out to the cage. I’m surprised to find the boys’ mattresses have arrived and we’re not alone. A cot has been set up on the far side of the room near the door where a blond haired guy about my age is covering it in a blanket. It’s another comforter. Another genuine blanket that looks clean. Like it would smell of the lavender soap.
He glances up when I come out, giving me a sharp nod. “’Sup?”
I glance at Ryan, unsure.
“This is Sam. He’s our guard for the night,” Ryan explains.
He’s sitting on the floor on his mattress looking like he’s ready to tip over. I don’t know why he doesn’t just go to sleep already.
“I thought we weren’t in a prison. Why do we need a guard?”
“In case you decide you want to leave,” Sam says, sitting down on his bed with his back against the wall of books. “Taylor is all about you having easy access to the exit at all times.”
“Taylor is the stocky guy?”
“Yeah. He’s head of security. Whenever we have visitors, which lately is never, he’s in charge of making sure they don’t cause any problems.” Sam smiles at me. “You’re messing up his routine right now. He hates you.”
“Great.”
Our chances of getting to talk to someone important here seem slim to none. I’m not exactly anxious to wait out this two week period just for the chance to talk to a council, but it might be our only option.
I sit down heavily beside Ryan, getting so close that our sides touch. He glances over at me and smiles weakly, dark crescents forming under his tired eyes.
“You need to sleep,” I whisper to him.
He shakes his head, his smile fading. He turns to Sam. “So you’re part of security?”
“Yep.”
“You seem kind of young for that.”
Sam snorts. “What are you? Like a year older than me? You seem kind of young too. Or is it because you grew up on the outside so you think you’re tougher than I am?”
“Mostly that.”
“Whatever,” Sam says, sounding angry. “I grew up in it too. We weren’t always this safe. I was in the first quarantine zone when it first started going down.”
“So was I. Woodburn, Oregon. You?”
Sam eyes him shrewdly. I’m sure he’s wondering if he can believe him.
“Albany.”
“Longview, Washington,” Trent says absently. He’s sitting in the corner in a chair with a book in his hands, his head hovering over it. He’s barely listening to us but that’s probably still more focus than the average person.
“Seattle,” I say softly.
“You were outside it when it started,” Sam says. He’s not asking. He knows. We all know. We all remember, even all these years later, exactly where the lines were drawn. The cities that they encompassed that mean nothing now. That are dead and buried. Forgotten.
“Yeah,” I admit, feeling a little like an outsider. Like somehow even though I lost everything just like they did, I didn’t suffer as much because I was spared a few more months of normal. I got one more summer of being a kid, of being carefree and happy. Of swimming pools, popsicles and bike rides. I was given more time, no matter how meager that time feels now. “It didn’t reach us until December, back when the secondary quarantines broke down as they started testing the cure.”
“The cure,” Sam mutters with disgust. “What a load.”
“They never fully tested it,” Trent says, turning a page. “They made one small breakthrough, announced it as the end of the disease, expanded the quarantine to give it a go and lost control when it turned out it didn’t cure anything. It just delayed it. But it wasn’t their fault.”
“Then whose fault was it?” Ryan asks.
“The people on the outside.”
“Excuse me?” I ask hotly.
/> “Yeah, like you,” Trent says, finally looking up from his book. “You and your parents.”
“My dead parents? That’s who you blame for the fake cure?!”
“Not them specifically,” he replies calmly, “but everyone on the outside played a part. They were demanding a cure be found. They were terrified the sickness would get out and kill everyone else on the planet. It was either find a cure or firebomb the entire quarantine zone, something they had started to do. They tried it out to see how the public, how you and your parents, responded to it.”
“Portland,” Ryan says darkly.
I don’t dare look at him. I can feel the anger rolling off him as he thinks about this, as he talks about a time I don’t even like to remember let alone speak of. I’m worried some of that anger he’s feeling is directed at me, as though I as an eight year old girl contributed to the hell he went through during those first few months.
“You can’t blame the people on the outside,” I tell Trent defensively. “We were just as clueless as you.”
“I didn’t say it was entirely your fault, but the pressure the world was putting on the doctors and scientists to get that cure was unreal. It was too much. They rushed it and we all paid for it. Luckily, those of us already on the inside knew how to survive it. Didn’t really change our world too much other than the gates were flung open and we were free to roam.”
“Only it was better not to,” Sam says, “so we were still trapped.”
“Were you in one of the Safe Zones?” Ryan asks him.
Sam nods. “Warm Springs down in eastern Oregon. That’s where most of us here are from.”
“How many people are here?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Almost 3,000 I think. When Warm Springs fell apart most of us came here and some others joined us later, but a lot of people bailed. Followed the psycho.”
I frown. “Who are you talking about?”
Sam looks at me like he thinks I’m messing with him. I glance at Ryan and Trent to see if they know something I don’t, but they look as confused as I feel.
“You guys really don’t know, do you?”
I shake my head, see the boys do the same.
“Wow, maybe you really aren’t Colonists.”
“We’re not,” I insist angrily.
“Taylor says you know stuff, though. Insider stuff.”
“Yeah, because I was inside a Colony as a prisoner,” I blurt out, deciding to go for the truth since my lie was weak anyway.
“And you got out?” Sam asks skeptically.
“Barely. The people inside, they feel just as trapped as I did. They helped me escape so I could get help and come back to free them too.”
“Please,” Sam spits, scowling at me, “they love it in there. They’d follow their Messiah to the ends of the earth and back.”
“What Messiah?” Trent asks, suddenly very interested in us.
“The psycho.”
“Who are you talking about?” Ryan demands.
Sam looks at me. “You say you were on the inside, how do you not know this? He’s the leader of the Colonies. He founded them. The people, they practically worship him and all his crap about keeping everyone clean and pure, about how the Fever was retribution from God for all of the evil in the world and only the righteous will survive. That’s why they lock themselves inside so tightly, it’s why they cruise the streets saving people.”
“Who is this guy? Who are you talking about?” Ryan asks again.
“Dr. Westbrook.”
“Who is Dr. Westbrook?” I ask. “Should that name mean something to me?”
“Probably not, no. You weren’t at Warm Springs. He was a doctor there,” Sam says bitterly. “A dentist, actually. He sucked. Anyway, when the second quarantine failed and the Fever started turning the entire world into zombies, Dr. Westbrook started going on and on about how it was right, how God had planned it. How the pure should be kept pure and the wicked would get theirs. He said because we were inside the Safe Zone when it broke the second time that we had been chosen. That no one else should be let in. That they should all be left to die because that’s what God wanted. He really went nuts. I heard him talking a few times as a kid and even then I knew it was creepy. But a lot of people agreed with him, which I don’t get at all.”
“They were afraid,” Trent says quietly. “They didn’t know what to do, what to believe. The government had failed to protect them so they turned to another higher power. They turned to God. This doctor was promising them that God had chosen them to survive and it gave them hope so they ran with it.” He shakes his head sadly. “They just ran a little too far.”
Sam nods in agreement, his anger fading. “Eventually everyone that was creeped out by the psycho got out. We formed a separate group and started looking for a new place to live. We needed a new Safe Zone. This island fit the bill.”
“Weren’t there people already here?” I ask.
“Yeah, lots. Luckily a lot of them were farmers that had been living and working here already. We came in, made a deal that we would help them clear it of the zombies if they helped us learn to live here.”
“You people keep saying that,” I interrupt.
Sam frowns. “Saying what?”
“’Zombies’. That’s an old word isn’t it? From horror movies and mythology. I mean, I use it sometimes but almost everyone on the outside in the wild calls them Risen.”
Sam chuckles. “Don’t let Taylor hear you say that. He already thinks you’re a Colonist and that’s their word. Westbrook came up with it. It’s biblical. Some kind of reference to Lazarus who was actually a good guy so I don’t get how it works, but that’s what the Colonists all call them. Risen.”
Ryan glances at me. “What does Crenshaw call them? Devils?”
“He makes me call them Wraiths.”
He grins. “Nice. I like it.”
Trent leans back in his seat, putting his book on a nearby table. “So your people came in and wiped out the zombies then that was it? You were just allowed to stay and live fat off the farmers work after that?”
“No,” Sam replies, sounding offended. “We had a lot of really smart people with us in our group from Warm Springs. A lot of military from one of the outposts too. People who knew how to use water to make power and all that. People who knew how to fight. The farmers were happy to have us.”
“Better you than the Colonists,” I say, trying to smooth over the feathers Trent ruffled.
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “Those people were glad to see us go. They thought that if we were willing to leave the Safe Zone, then we were just as damned as everyone else. They even tried to kill a few people before we got out. People that Westbrook said were tainted.”
The door swings open, startling everyone. Stocky, or Taylor as Sam calls him, comes in with three plates carefully balanced in his arms. He nods to Sam.
“You wanna open the door for me so I can pass them their dinner?”
Sam jumps up. “You got it.”
“It’s nothing special. Mashed potatoes, some pot roast, carrots,” he rattles off, looking right at me. “Couldn’t find filet mignon, sorry. And the house wine is water. You’ll find it on tap in the bathroom. Or the toilet, whichever you prefer.”
“We’ll just have to make due, I suppose,” I tell him bitingly. “Hopefully the desert will make up for the dinner.”
“I’ll see what I can find special, just for you.”
“Joss,” Trent calls to me, “if he brings you anything chocolate, don’t eat it.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Trent.”
“You’re welcome.”
After that, after we eat and Taylor leaves us alone with Sam again with strict orders for quiet and lights out, we go to bed. Ryan pulls his mattress up close to the bed, positioning himself on the floor between me and the cage door. I don’t say anything when he does it. If it helps him sleep better, I want him to do it even if I don’t think I need protecting.
Even if I don’t want to need it. I wait, lying perfectly still and silent, until I hear Ryan start to snore. It doesn’t take long. He’s had a long day. One I’m going to try my hardest to forget because despite what an impressive fighter he is, watching him in that arena was gruesome, morbid and terrifying. My heart has stopped and run faster than it ever should more times tonight than I want to think about. I also don’t want to think about what that means. That it’s all for him. That my heartbeats are tied to his, carried away and brought to a standstill by his actions. By his wellbeing. By his smiles.
Chapter Fifteen
“Joss,” Ryan whispers sharply.
Gentle hands shake me roughly.
“Joss, wake up.”
I pry my tired eyes open, trying to bring them to focus. To make sense of the Ryan shaped shadow forcing me awake.
“Wh-what’s happening? What’s wrong?”
“You were talking in your sleep.”
“She was moaning in her sleep,” Trent says, his voice muffled and distant.
“I got this,” Ryan tells him. “Go back to sleep.”
“Gladly.”
I run my hand over my eyes. My fingers come away wet.
“I was moaning?”
“And whimpering,” Sam calls from across the room.
Ryan drops his forehead against my shoulder. “I said I got it, man.”
“Only trying to help.”
“I’m sorry, guys,” I whisper, feeling horrified. Ryan is sugar coating it. I was crying in my sleep.
“Don’t be,” Sam says.