by Tracey Ward
“How about you stop wasting brain cells on being mouthy and start working on how you’re going to get us out of this?” Nats insists.
I eye the van down the road. It’s closing in on us. It’ll take us away, back to the Colonies, but are we the only ones? They’ve taken Hornets before, so where are they? Can I find them? Can I get them to kill for me the way Marlow has always been so afraid I might?
“Don’t worry, Nats,” I assure her calmly, the tip of Stretch’s knife digging deep into my back. “I’m already on it.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Trent
Ryan is happy. That’s his narrative right now. I almost forgot what that looked like. Ever since Kevin died, he’s been a shadow of himself. Even during the brief window of acceptance after his botched plan to kill Chapman, he was better, but not great. Not himself. But the guy that walked into the Hyperion the morning after he met the girl is not the Ryan that walked out the night before. He’s brighter. Lighter. He’s smiling and laughing, sleeping through the night. He’s engaged in a way I wasn’t sure he knew how to be anymore. And after five solid weeks, I haven’t heard word one about the wolf. I doubt he’s forgotten it, but he doesn’t want it like he used to. He wants something else now. Something wilder than the wolf.
He still sneaks out but it’s not like it used to be. It’s more dangerous than before with the Colonies cruising the streets almost daily and the Risen population blown up to numbers we haven’t seen in years, but his intent is new. It’s better. It’s the girl. He goes back to her neighborhood every week. As far as I know, they rarely see each other, but they’re writing messages. I read them like a novel. Like the comics Gussy brought home that the guys freaked out over. There are gaps here too, chapters I miss, but with what I do see I’m confident I know where this story is headed.
I’m scared of spiders. I scream like a girl.
I’m scared of clowns. I’m glad they’re all dead.
What about a crawler clown?
You’re the devil. I’ll have nightmares for months.
I could come stay with you. Keep the clowns away…
Stay away from me, dipshit. I have spiders and I know how to use them.
I’m the King of the Dipshits!
It’s nothing profound. It’s definitely not Jane Austen. In fact, most of it is impressively idiotic, but it makes them both happy. I can see it in her almost as clearly as I see it in Ryan. She doesn’t move out of her hiding place even though he knows where she lives. She detours to their wall to check for messages almost every single day. She smiles when she finds them, her eyes immediately searching for the right kind of stone to chalk out her reply.
I feel a small measure of shame reading their messages, but I can’t help myself. I can’t look away because what’s happening between them is something I’ve never seen before. It’s the kind of thing that doesn’t happen. Not anymore, because how could it? It doesn’t seem likely. It doesn’t feel possible, but there it is. A connection forged between two painfully lonely people. Two fractured halves pulling together, dangerously close to making them whole.
“What’s the word on the Market this month?”
Dylan sighs, leaning back in his chair to consider Gussy’s question. It’s lunchtime. It’s changing of the guard in the Hyperion, meaning most of us are present and accounted for, stuffing our faces with what food we can get our hands on. Heading into winter like we are, rations are taken very seriously. Breakfast is big, dinner is substantial, but lunch is little more than a snack. We’ve all learned to live off less and be happy about it, but in a building full of growing guys, it can get a little intense when food is scarce. We have emergency stores of nuts for those moments when people start going a little off the rails. Bray likes to tell everyone to grab a Snickers, something most of the gang laughs at. I don’t because I don’t get it, meaning it’s probably a pop culture reference.
“Most gangs aren’t going,” Dylan answers Gussy reluctantly.
“What about us? Are we going?”
“No.”
Gussy drops his fork loudly, slamming back in his seat. “For real?”
“For real. It’s too dangerous right now. Hopefully we can go again soon, but not this time.”
“Colonists,” Nico spits out angrily. “We had the wild almost emptied of Risen and they go and mess it all up.”
Bray grimaces. “We don’t know for sure it was them. The stadiums still have people in them.”
“The dead are coming from the north,” Gussy agrees.
Nico shakes his head. “It was them. They had another hold somewhere. And they let it collapse right on top of us.”
“Who else is hanging back?” Ryan presses Dylan.
“The Westies I know for sure aren’t going. I heard a rumor that the Hive is out too, but I can’t believe it.”
“They’ve never missed a Market.”
“They invented it,” I remind the room.
Dylan nods pensively. “Yep, it doesn’t seem likely, but that’s the word going around. But, no matter what anyone else is doing, I feel like it’s too much of a risk to go. I’m worried the Risen pop is too high and the Colonists are nearly a constant on the streets now. I’m asking you all to respect that and stay away from the Market this round.”
There’s tension in the air around Dylan. He’s the oldest member of the gang, our de facto leader, but he rarely imposes any power over us. He set up the rotating schedules, assigned everyone their jobs based on their strengths, but more than anything he’s a figurehead. I can feel it as the room wonders whether they have to listen to him or not. No one knows what happens if you disobey Dylan because no one has ever done it before. It sends a ripple of unease over every face in the room. All but Ryan’s.
“Of course we will,” he tells Dylan amicably. “You have our word. We’ll sit this one out.”
“Yeah, no problem,” Bray immediately agrees.
The other guys mutter their accord. They fall easily in line behind Ryan.
Dylan smiles at him gratefully. “I appreciate it,” he tells us all.
Ryan nods before quickly turning back to his lunch.
It’s peanut butter and jelly. Crunchy peanut butter.
It’s disgusting.
After lunch, Ryan, Bray, and I hit the streets. Officially, we’re foraging. Basically for anything. Discarded goods from other gangs that could be useful to us. Food that hasn’t been picked over by the animals. Mushrooms. Nuts. Berries. But it’s too cold for anything to grow anymore and we rarely find anything of value not being sold at the Market, so this ‘foraging’ trip is really just an excuse to get out and stretch our legs. Winters are hard on a man. It’d be better if we could hibernate like bears, sleeping through the worst of the cold months when you can barely go outside and there are next to no reasons to do it in the first place. But the desire is still there. Sometimes you just have to see the sky, if only to remind yourself it’s real. That’s what we do today taking a walk through our turf – we drink in the sky and the wind and a light teasing of rain that’s next to nothing but it’s more than you’ll get inside.
“Risen,” I tell them.
Ryan and Bray stop, drawing their weapons. Bray pulls a length of pipe with a worn leather handle. Ryan slips on his brother’s spiked knuckles, his eyes alert and darting.
“Where?” he whispers.
I nod to the north. “There. Four of them coming up the alleyway.”
The moment Ryan spots them, his shoulders rise high, tensing for the fight. Bray stands at the ready next to him with his pipe held between both hands and his feet planted firmly. They’re eager and thirsty for the kill.
“I’ve got the one on the far left,” Ryan tells Bray when the dead shamble in close.
I smell them on the air; sweet like burnt sugar.
Bray nods stiffly. “I got the guy on the far right. Trent?”
“You two can handle it,” I tell him.
“What?” He shoots me a look o
ver his shoulder, his brows drawn down sharply. “Are you serious? You’re not gonna help?”
“Why would I?”
“Uh, because we could die.”
“There are only four of them.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Heads up.”
Bray turns his eyes back to the Risen closing in on him fast. Ryan has already launched forward to punch the spike on his fist through a woman’s eye. She’s young. Tall. Dead. She sloughs off Ryan’s fist with a wet slurp sound before crumping to the ground at his feet. Bray swings his pipe against the face of his Risen; a guy in a green track suit with shockingly clean, white shoes. Definitely a fresh Z from the fallen Colony. You don’t find shoes like that on the outside anymore.
I wonder what size they are.
It takes a few more hits to the face for Bray to find the temple and turn the guy’s brain to pudding, but he gets there eventually. But not before he splatters gray matter all over the guy’s clothes and sneakers.
“How’s your shoulder feeling, Bray?” I ask him curiously, watching him take a swing at the next Risen lunging for him. It gets a hand on his wrist. He grunts, twisting out of the hold the way I taught him in the Marena.
“Not a good time, man!” he yells at me.
“You’re stiff.”
“You could help!”
“You’re not that stiff,” I mutter.
Ryan is having trouble finding an opening on the fourth Risen. He’s circling it, drawing it away from Bray and the zombie who keeps clawing at him. Finally, Ryan gets the Z to lower its hands far enough that he can throw a right hook directly into its ear, skewering its brain and dropping it to the ground with the others.
He pants lightly, watching Bray. “You want help, B?”
Bray doesn’t answer. He’s struggling, his shoulder giving him trouble. It’s getting tired or hurting him more than he can handle because he refuses to swing at full strength. He can’t crack a skull like that. Not anytime this century.
I step briskly past him to kick the Risen in the kneecap. It cracks before it gives under his weight, dropping him to the other knee. As it reaches for me, I kick it to the ground. I make sure it lands on its chest, face down so I can put my foot firmly on its back, pinning it to the asphalt where it thrashes and growls angrily.
I nod to Bray. “Now try.”
He frowns at me. “Dude, just take the kill.”
“It’s yours. End it.”
Bray sighs, raising the pipe over his head with both hands. He grunts quietly. I can see the pain in his eyes as he brings the pipe down hard on the Risen’s head. One more agonizing hit and the thing goes limp under my foot.
I stand back, looking him square in the eye. “Never go out if you’re not full strength.”
“I know,” he replies sheepishly.
“It looks like you don’t.”
“I do. I know. I thought I was better.”
“You’re not.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
“Your shoulder is still bothering you?” Ryan asks Bray. “You told me you were solid.”
“He lied,” I inform him.
Bray glares at me. “I didn’t lie. I just didn’t want to whine, alright? Can we go already?”
Ryan watches him walk away, noting the way he carries himself. Bray is favoring his left side. He doesn’t let the arm swing freely the way he allows the right.
“It’s strained?” Ryan asks, walking briskly to catch up with his friend.
“Yeah. I think so. It hurts to raise it above my head.”
“I bet it happened on that Risen at the watering hole.”
Bray rolls his eyes. “I remember, trust me. I haven’t slept right since.”
Ryan nods, thinking. His eyes wander to the east and I know what he’s thinking about. The old crazy man in the park.
Bray kicks at a piece of rubble in the street. It skitters ahead of us, pinging sharply off the black panel on an old food truck. Gyros and Churros. It’s a weird pairing.
“I can give you something for the pain,” Ryan tells Bray hesitantly. “Something to help you sleep.”
Bray stops short, forcing Ryan and I to turn and face him. “You’re not talking about Honey, are you?”
“No, dude, of course not!”
“Dylan would kill you if you brought that stuff inside the den.”
“Like I don’t know that. Come on, Bray. I’m smarter than that.”
Bray nods slowly, falling in step with us again. “Okay.”
“Okay what? Like, okay you want the medicine?”
“Is that what it is? Medicine?”
“It’s an extract,” Ryan explains, his voice gaining confidence. “You drink it.”
“What does it taste like?”
“Nothing good, but it’ll help your shoulder.”
“Just the pain?” I ask.
Ryan blinks at me, studying my face. He’s trying to read what I’m getting at. “Yeah, but there’s other stuff for swelling in the joint.”
“Such as?”
“A rub.”
“What does the rub taste like?” Bray asks.
“You don’t eat it,” Ryan laughs. “You rub it on your shoulder.”
“I know I don’t eat it!”
“Then why’d you ask what it tastes like?”
“I don’t know. I’m curious.”
“It smells like mint. Strong mint. Don’t eat it.”
“I won’t.”
The look Ryan gives Bray says he’s worried he might.
“Where’d you learn to make this medicine, anyway?”
“Kevin,” Ryan answers too quickly. “He taught me everything he knew.”
“He knew a lot.”
“Yeah. I guess he did.”
Bray lines up another piece of stone to kick. Ryan glances at me briefly, silently asking if I know he’s lying.
I act like I have no idea what’s happening.
“Colonists!”
The three of us freeze in the middle of the road. We’re alone but people are shouting in the distance. They’re raising the alarm in the east.
“Colonists!”
Ryan looks at me with anger in his eyes. “Roundups,” he growls.
“Get Bray back to the Hyperion,” I tell him, already turning to run in the direction of the Crow’s Nest.
“I’m not a cripple!” Bray shouts after me.
“You could have fooled me!”
I don’t look back to make sure they’re heading home. Ryan is smart. He’s tough and he’s a good fighter but he’s not going to go toe-to-toe with the Colonists. Not when they have wheels and guns and outnumber us at least fifty to one.
As I get closer to the Crow’s Nest, I hear more shouting. Men are running in the streets. Risen are being stirred up and sent into a frenzy. They stumble up and down the road trying to follow the sound of the living, but we’re moving too erratically. I’m into my building and sprinting up the steps before one can even get near me.
My body is breathless and burning by the time I get to the top. My hands are shaking. My vision flares. I push through the exhaustion to yank my binoculars from my bag and rush to the edge of the roof. My heart hammers in my ears as I scan the area, searching for the threat. It comes to a painful standstill when I see where it is.
The girl’s neighborhood. They’re closing in on the wall where she and Ryan write their messages to each other. She doesn’t see them coming. She’s too busy reading Ryan’s latest message, the one he scrawled on the wall for her just last night.
Mornin’, Beautiful.
I miss you.
How are you?
My hands grip the binoculars hard, anger racing through my veins. I could shout but she’d never hear me. I could run to her but I’d never reach her in time. There’s absolutely nothing I can do as I watch them cut off her easiest escape route. As they surround her. They grab her.
She knees her attacker in the groin. He releases her, doubling over w
ith pain I can feel in every sympathetic nerve in my body. She runs, her red hair flying behind her bright as fire in the sunlight. Her weapon, an ASP, extends at her side like lightening from her fingertips.
“You’ve got it,” I whisper encouragingly. “You’re faster than them. You can make it.”
Two more Colonists come to the other guy’s rescue, surprise on their faces. They didn’t expect this whisper of a girl to put up any fight, but that’s because they don’t know her like I do. I’ve seen her fight off Risen. I’ve seen her survive on more than one occasion. They shouldn’t have underestimated her.
She whips the ASP down on the arm of the first man to reach for her. I can’t hear his cry of agony but I can read it written on his face in vivid detail. She’s fractured the bone, easy as anything with that long steel rod of hers. In the surprise and confusion caused by her attack, she’s able to make a break for a nearby alley. There’s a fire escape there. If she can reach it, she has a chance.
Just as she’s entering the shadow of the building, another Colonist grabs the back of her jacket, yanking her backwards. Her small size works against her, making it easy for him to spin her around and slam her down face first onto the asphalt. She loses her ASP in the attack. It skitters into the darkness of the alley that was almost her salvation.
I sigh a curse, feeling defeated for her and for Ryan.
She’s pulled roughly to her feet, the men throwing her around like a ragdoll. Anger flares red hot in my gut, feeding into my veins. I watch with my jaw clenched tight as they shove her toward the truck where the backdoors are thrown open, waiting for her.
Suddenly, she shrugs out of her jacket, freeing herself from her captor. But the freedom is short lived. She has nowhere to go, and as she makes a break for the road beyond the truck, the guy she kicked in the crotch clotheslines her. She flies backward, her head cracking hard on the pavement.
I close my eyes, eating my anger. Sucking it into my lungs with the fire I’m breathing from my sprint up the stairs. My body aches, my fingers screaming as I clench the binoculars too tightly. I see red. Red like her hair and the blood that’s probably pouring from the back of her head. There are a lot of things in this world that I dislike, but this moment feels darker than most. It feels like a light leaving. A star blinking out. I feel the loss of her before she’s even gone. Before Ryan has even realized it.