Backs Against the Wall (Survival Series)

by Tracey Ward

  She stares at me for a long time saying nothing. Not even moving. I can feel Trent staring at me too and I wonder if Ryan heard my rant. I try not to picture him right now, though.

  “Those are some lofty goals,” she tells me quietly. “You’ll need a lot of help for that. Help we won’t give you.”

  My heart plummets. “Why not?”

  “Because as much as we hate the Colonies, we have something of a truce with them. They leave us alone, we leave them alone. Trust me, I’d like nothing more than to tear their buildings down on their heads with my bare hands, but I have a bigger picture to think about. Something bigger than my need for revenge.”

  “What did they do to you?”

  Her eyes and mouth tighten at the corners. She’s angry. “They tried to kill my husband. They said he was tainted. Dirty. Half dead like the monsters outside. Then they started saying the same thing about my daughter. They said I had laid with the damned and only evil could come from that. I put an arrow in a man’s eye when he broke into my home to murder my family. To cleanse us. That was the last straw. We got out after that. We ran. We couldn’t fight them, which is why I know you’ll need a lot of help to do what you’re planning. More help than The Hive can give you.”

  My blood runs cold. “Who said anything about The Hive?”

  She looks at me hard. “They sent you here, didn’t they?”

  “How do you know that?” I whisper.

  “Your boat has the name U.S.S. Sweet Honey written on the side of it with a small hornet painted on the rudder.”

  I close my eyes against what idiots we’ve been. How ill thought out and impulsive this entire thing has turned out to be. “I hate Marlow so much.”

  “Most people do,” she agrees. “He’s an idiot, though. Hornets don’t even make honey. They eat insects, including each other.”

  “Like the cannibals.”

  “And the zombies, yeah. So you’re part of The Hive?”

  “No,” I say firmly. “Absolutely not. We just went to them for help and they sent us here. They told us if we could get your people to join up, then they’d join us too. I know it’s a lie, but we don’t have a lot of options. We had to try.”

  “What’s your plan?” the nurse asks, sitting down and leaning back, crossing her arms over her chest as she watches me.

  I blink, surprised. “What?”

  “Your plan. What was the pitch you gave to The Hive? Give it to me now. Sell it to me.”

  I glance at Trent who simply watches me as well, no indication of what he thinks I should say or do. So I figure what can it hurt?

  I tell her everything. I start at the beginning with the day I was taken by the Colonists. I tell her about Vin, Nats and Breanne. About the Colony in the north in the MOHAI. About the crazy happy people running the show and the guard duty walking the wall, watching the interior to keep people in instead of keeping zombies out. I tell her about the kitchen crew, about the sewing room, about the maintenance room where Nats works. I tell her about the night I got jumped and she smiles when I tell her about the child’s t-shirt and my failures as a seamstress. I tell her about the rebellion, the people desperately wanting out. Then I tell her about Caroline and her face changes. She’s sad but she also looks understanding, the way Ryan looked at me when I told him. Like someone who knows. When I tell her about my jump and my fall, she nods in understanding as my broken bone suddenly makes sense. Then, when I’m done talking and Ryan is in the room with us again and no one is making a sound, she simply stares at me. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I definitely don’t know if she believes me but as I look back at her, I really want her to.

  “That’s quite a story,” she tells me.

  But she doesn’t.

  She stands slowly, gathers her things and leaves the room without another word. I shake my head as I run my hands over my hair, pulling at it in frustration.

  “No one is ever going to help us, are they? The Colonies will never stop. The roundups won’t stop. The fear— dammit!”

  “We could leave,” Trent suggests. “Leave Seattle entirely. Live somewhere else where there are no Colonies.”

  “How do we know they aren’t everywhere?” I ask him harshly.

  “We don’t know. Not until we look.”

  “No,” I tell him, shaking my head again. “I can’t just walk away. I can’t leave them in there.”

  “We’ll keep trying, Joss,” Ryan tells me, but he sounds tired. Beat down like I feel. “We’ll find a way to go back for them. I promise.”

  “Thanks,” I mumble, but I don’t believe him.

  I don’t think he does either.

  ***

  “Still here, huh?” Taylor asks, flipping on the light.

  I open my eyes slowly, making sure to take my time waking up. I’ve been working on that. On not freaking out and bashing Ryan in the face if I’m startled awake, something that happens more often than I’d like to admit. I’m like a skittish little deer and it sounds sweet, but not when you’re the deer. Then it’s just scary, humiliating and annoying. Ryan doesn’t say anything about my new restrained demeanor, but I think every morning he wakes up without a fat lip or bloodied nose he counts it as a win. He could sleep somewhere else, somewhere away from me and my violent tendencies, but he never does. Some things, I think, are worth a little pain. I guess for him, sleeping beside me is one of them.

  “Have we spoken to your council yet?” I mumble.

  I open one eye to glare at him, not bothering to get up. It annoys Taylor when we sleep in so I do it as often as I can.

  “Not yet, Princess.”

  “Then yep, still here. I’d be happy to go away if you’d let us talk to them.”

  “Not enjoying the accommodations?”

  I sit up to stare at him, my face carefully blank. “It’s a little Colonial for my taste.”

  Taylor shakes his head, a crooked grin forming on his face. “Watch what you say. I’ll start to think you’re one of them again.”

  I frown, surprised. “Meaning you don’t think that now?”

  “Meaning I have my doubts.”

  “Why is that?” Ryan asks.

  Taylor folds his arms across his barrel chest, looking down at Ryan where he sits beside me. He glances over at Trent who stares back vacantly, his butt already perched in his favorite chair. When Taylor meets Ryan’s eyes again, he looks far less annoyed than usual. Almost casual.

  “You don’t say grace.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “A lot. The Colonists, the true to the bone followers, they’re very religious. Devout.”

  “Overzealous,” I mutter, thinking of Crenshaw.

  Taylor nods. “Exactly that. They don’t take a meal without saying grace or hit the sack without evening prayers. I’m not saying all religious people are Colonists just like I’m not saying all Colonists are religious. But I’ve seen you three dig into your food without washing your hands or thanking Jesus and to a genuine Colony follower, that wouldn’t fly. So either you’re just not one of the true followers, which makes it unlikely you’d be trusted to come in here to gather intel, or you’re not with them at all.”

  “We’re not with them at all,” I insist.

  Taylor shrugs. “Maybe you are or maybe you aren’t, but Sam seems to think you’re on the level so I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “You trust Sam’s judgment that much?” Ryan asks dubiously.

  “That kid is an excellent judge of character. Why do you think I have him in training with the guard? He’ll have my job one day.”

  “Probably tomorrow,” Sam mumbles from his cot, his face turned toward the wall.

  “Chow is out,” Taylor tells him.

  Sam is up and out the door before any of us can say goodbye.

  “If you don’t believe we’re spies,” I say to Taylor, “then why won’t you let us see your council yet?”

  “Because that’s not h
ow it’s done,” he says simply. “Never has been, never will be.”

  “We only want to talk to them. They could come here and—“

  “It’s not how it’s done,” Taylor repeats, this time more forcefully. “Look, here’s the deal. The people on the council are important. President of the World important only with fewer sex scandals and racial discrimination. They absolutely will not be brought anywhere near you, any of you, until you’ve passed quarantine. Because I’m guarding you, I’m not allowed near any of them until the quarantine is over just as a precaution and that is messing up my game something awful.”

  “Your game?”

  “He’s boning one of the people on the council,” Trent tells me.

  I scrunch up my nose, grossed out by his phrasing. “I doubt he’s ‘boning’ one of them.”

  “Trying to!” Taylor objects.

  “Ugh,” I groan.

  “Get over it,” he tells me, sitting down hard in a chair just outside our cage. It’s the closest he’s gotten to us without a tray of food since we got here. “The world has ended but life goes on and a big part of that for a man is a beautiful woman. Don’t think for a second that your boy here likes sleeping curled up next to you because he’s attracted to your soul and a morning punch in the mouth. He does it because you’re soft and no matter how dirty you get, your hair smells like strawberries. It’s a mystery of nature, but a fact nevertheless, one he’d like to get up close to and research further. More in depth, if you know what I mean.”

  “Speaking of messing up people’s game,” Ryan growls from behind me.

  I look back to see him shooting daggers at Taylor, his hand making a cutting motion across his neck.

  Taylor chuckles. “Own it, kid. She needs to know and trust me, she won’t mind. Badass as she wants to be, she’s still a woman and even the toughest woman has times when she wants to feel like just that – a woman. Let me guess, Princess. Despite that rough exterior, you secretly like the fact that his hands are so much larger than yours. That they make yours feel delicate by comparison.”

  I’m calling it now – Taylor is a witch. A mind reading, secret spilling, smug SOB of the absolute highest order. He’s also dead on. Ryan’s broad shoulders, his large hands, the fact that he towers over me when he stands close; it all messes me up inside. It flips a switch I don’t know how to turn off but maybe that’s because I’m not trying hard enough. Or at all, really. I’m not trying because I like it. Because I want to swim around in it feeling fluid and free. Feeling like he’s the wall between the rest of the world and me. Like I can lean on him. Count on him.

  “Yeah,” Taylor drawls, sounding satisfied as he watches me. “That’s what I thought. Don’t be embarrassed by it. Nothing makes a man feel more like a man than giving you that feeling and he makes you go all Go-Gurt inside, doesn’t he?”

  “What the hell is Go-Gurt?” I ask, evading the question.

  “Sorry, that’s probably before you’re time. Sometimes I forget what younger people missed out on. Basically it’s sweet flavored mush in a tube and that’s you. Pure, sweet mush inside.”

  I want to tell him that he’s an idiot and he’s wrong, but he’s not. He’s right and I’m pissed. I’m mad because I’m no longer a Jawbreaker. I’m more of a Gummy Bear or a friggin’ Laffy Taffy. What am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to survive on the outside out in the wilds of Neverland with every Lost Boy and zombie in the world barreling down on me and I’m busted and cornered like Tinkerbell with a broken wing. They’ll get me eventually, one of them will. I’ll be put back in a cage that looks like a dream but you’re never allowed to wake up. I’ll go insane inside and eventually the mush will leak out and drown me in myself until I can’t remember what it felt like to run. Until I’m one of those animals in Ryan’s nightmare zoo, laying down for the last time and wondering where the world went.

  “Joss,” Ryan says, his voice cautious. It’s the tone he takes when he knows I’m spooked. When I look like I feel – trapped.

  “If you’re done teaching sex ed, do you mind telling us how it started?” I ask hotly, desperate to change the subject but also wondering why we haven’t asked them this yet.

  Here’s the thing. On the outside, out in the wild, no one knows. Even back when it was contained in Oregon, no one knew how the outbreak began. Or if they knew they sure as hell weren’t telling. Reporters and wackos came up with wild theories about biological weapons, military experiments to create Super Soldiers that wouldn’t die, some even said it came back to stem cell research gone wrong. Very few people believed it was just an illness that bloomed into being and wiped out the planet. Most were convinced someone was to blame. We just never found out who.

  Taylor looks at me surprised. “How would I know?”

  “Sam said you have military here,” Ryan begins.

  “Ex-military,” Taylor clarifies.

  “Either way, they were with the government when it went down. If anyone would know anything about it, it’s them.”

  Taylor shakes his head. “They don’t. They didn’t then and they still don’t.”

  Trent chuckles from his corner.

  “What’s funny?” I ask.

  “Of course they don’t know,” he says coolly. “They were all soldiers, I imagine. No one very high up. They wouldn’t have been given vital information like that.”

  “The government fell when you were just a kid,” Taylor says incredulously. “How are you so jaded about it?”

  “I read. And my father always hated the government.”

  “Trent grew up living off the grid,” Ryan explains, probably because he knows Mr. Roboto never will. “He and his dad lived on a self-sufficient farm up in the mountains. His dad always expected a social collapse. It’s why Trent is so… comfortable with the way the world is.”

  “He wasn’t exactly prepped for zombies. That took him a little by surprise. He died in the first wave. I’ve never seen him so angry.”

  “Dying will do that to you,” Taylor agrees.

  “I’m sure he’d be proud of how far you’ve made it,” Ryan tells him.

  Trent shrugs. “He wasn’t the sentimental type.”

  “Must be where you get your warmth and people skills,” I tell him.

  He grins. “That’s from my mother’s side.”

  “So no one knows how it started?” I ask in amazement. “No one knows why we have to live like this? That’s crap!”

  “Would it matter?” Taylor asks. “What would it change?”

  “Nothing,” Ryan says darkly.

  I can tell he’s annoyed by this too. I know it wouldn’t change anything but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to understand. Honestly, I think I just want someone to blame. Some dipshit scientists or a government branch or all of it or no one. I don’t know. I just want to know. I want a reason for why I’ve lived on the run and in hiding for the majority of my life. Why I’m jacked three ways from Sunday and can’t even enjoy the little stupid things I want to enjoy. Little things like large hands and earnest eyes.

  ***

  Two nights later, I’m called out as being a liar.

  “You’re lying, you have to be,” Sam says, sitting back hard in his chair.

  “I’m not!” I exclaim. “I’m dead serious, I don’t get it.”

  Ryan groans, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “Joss, we’ve explained it so many times.”

  “Just write it down. Let me have a cheat sheet.”

  “So because you’re bad at it, we should let you cheat?” Trent asks, shuffling the cards.

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “That’s exactly what you’re saying,” Ryan disagrees.

  “I’m not cheating!”

  “No,” Sam says, “because if you were cheating, you’d be winning. I just think you’re lying.”

  “I’m not!” I shout again, laughing. “I honestly do not get it.”

  “It’s poker. It’s not nuclear physics.�
�

  I roll my eyes. “I’m not stupid.”

  “No one said you were,” Ryan tells me.

  “We just said you’re a liar,” Sam adds.

  “Ugh!” I shout, throwing poker chips at him.

  “You’re only making me richer,” he laughs as he deftly catches every chip.

  “Okay, explain the blind to me one more time. Then the river, I don’t get the river.”

  “We’re not explaining it again,” Trent says.

  “Then play without me, ‘cause I don’t understand half of what’s happening here,” I tell them, tossing my remaining few chips onto the center of the table.

  Ryan shoves them back at me. “No way. You’re in. Poker with only three people is pointless.”

  “We’re basically playing with only three people now,” Sam mutters under his breath.

  Ryan and Trent chuckle, the traitorous bastards.

  I’m about to lay into Sam, to insist that I’m in this game (or hand? Round? Cycle? I don’t know) and I’ll kick his ass this time, which I don’t even know how to do but I want it, when the door flies open. It bangs hard against the wall, startling everyone. I jump up along with the boys, our legs knocking the table and sending chips and cards rolling and fluttering to the floor. Sam stands on the outside of the cage where he’d been playing poker with us through the bars, his surprised face fixed on the door.

  There stands the brunette nurse, her normally calm face pinched in rage. She stalks toward us in the cage, her eyes fixed hard on me. I nearly cower under that stare but I’ve lived too long in the wild to flinch so easily. When she whips out a gun, though, something I haven’t seen in years, I blink rapidly. I can’t believe my eyes. I can’t believe she still has one and I want to doubt she has any bullets left for it, but the look on her face tells me that she absolutely, positively does. And one of them has my name on it.

  “No, Ali, what are you doing?” Sam exclaims, coming to stand beside her.

  She cast him a quick look that tells him to back off. He does slowly, his hands raised.