Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  “Not a bad quality to look for in a woman these days,” Jordan agrees.

  Taylor glares at us briefly and then returns his attention to the perimeter.

  “Yeah, yeah. You hit the jackpot, jackass. Don’t rub it in.”

  “What jackpot?” I ask, talking around a large chunk of apple I’m gnawing on.

  I’ve spent the last two weeks almost exclusively in the company of men in the bowels of the zombie apocalypse and my civility is notably on the decline.

  “You know what I don’t like in a woman?” Taylor asks, leveling his gaze at me and ignoring my question.

  “I can think of so many things you might not like,” Jordan says, biting his cheese stick again.

  “You know that’s string cheese, right?” I ask him, unable to hold my tongue.

  He frowns at me and looks at the cheese stick. “Yeah, why?”

  “You’re biting it.”

  “So…”

  “So it’s string cheese. You’re supposed to pull it apart in strings. I feel like this should go without saying.”

  “Why would I pull it apart when I can bite it?” he asks, taking a large bite to emphasize his point.

  “Because it’s fun.”

  “Fun for who?”

  “You mean ‘whom’.”

  He narrows his eyes at me, sizing me up. “You’re messing with me, right?”

  “Hey!” Taylor cries, demanding our attention, and we both turn to look at him. “What I don’t like in a woman is a total lack of respect for a rifle.”

  “Here we go,” I mutter.

  “You threw it on the ground.”

  “It wouldn’t fire.”

  “Oh no? Or are you—“

  “We’ve got movement!” His walkie crackles alive. “East side!”

  Taylor and the rest of the guard run for the east side of the building while Jordan and I take up our bows and scan the west side, making sure it remains clear. Once the scare is over, it was an infected wandering the back alley, Jordan and I make our last quick goodbyes and head inside. Cal waits for us at the exit and makes one last attempt at getting us to stay, then another attempt at giving us packs before wishing us well.

  “You always have a place here,” he tells us briskly. “As long as we’re here, you’re welcome.”

  “Thank you,” I say with a warm grin.

  “Thanks,” Jordan says.

  And, with that, we’re gone. Out the door and leaving the settlement behind us. It occurs to me that I’m abandoning relative safety and running headlong into a gigantic unknown, but as we put first one block, then two between us and the building, I feel lighter and free. I suddenly feel a little more alive than I have in weeks and when I look at Jordan, I know he feels it too. We’re probably going to die out here, but at least it will be out in the air, under the sky and not boxed in a beige hallway under flickering, fluorescent lights. There’s something defiant and wild about running through the abandoned streets and heading for the river, leaving the fortress behind. I feel good and even though my leg is starting to hurt around my jagged scar, I run even faster. I want the shore, I want the river, and I want our stupid little white dinghy.

  There’s a surprisingly small number of infected in the area surrounding the store. We don’t start really seeing them again until about a mile out, and even then they are sparse. I ask Jordan what he thinks the reason is and he simply shrugs and runs us faster. By the time we’re reaching the turn toward the lake, my leg is killing me and I’m struggling to keep up with him. I know he’s aware I’m in pain, but he keeps us moving at our quick pace. Part of me understands and part of me wants to stab him in his leg with my hunting knife and see how fast he runs then. When we get to the turn that brings us to the lake and puts us directly behind the lot where our boathouse is located, we get a shock that makes my aching leg scream in frustration.

  Massing around the gates of one of the mansions about a block and a half down the street is a swarm of easily fifty zombies. They are groaning and moving as one grasping, pulling group trying to breach the heavy steel barrier. Even that many of them will never get through, they’ll never tear the gate down or have the force to overrun it. They could, however, easily smell us standing amazed upwind of them and break down the walls of our boathouse should they see us flee there. Jordan grabs my arm, and without a word, yanks me back up the street and out of sight. We cut through an unfenced yard, dodge an infected that appears suddenly from the poolside cabana, and make our way to our boathouse. The long way. On a bum leg. I don’t complain because, really, what good would it do, but it doesn’t mean I’m not seriously hurting.

  When we race down the slope of lawn from the main house and finally stand in the relative safety of the boathouse, I collapse onto my back and groan like an infected. Maybe this is why they’re groaning. Maybe they aren’t immune to pain as we seem to think, maybe they are moaning because everything hurts. Their atrophied muscles and their drooping, dead skin faces. Maybe they are poor souls trapped in the agony of a never ending torment because they are unable to die. I’ll remember this theory the next time I’m required to bash a skull in and feel a little twinge of remorse. It’s a public service, a kindness. A mercy.

  Freaking hell, my leg hurts!

  I thought that I was simply screaming this inside the safe confines of my head, but suddenly Jordan is upon me, his hand clapped over my mouth to silence me, and I realize I shouted it aloud. He’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind, and with the pain I’m feeling, I wonder if maybe I have a little. It actually felt better when I was still on it, when I was moving. Now that I’m lying here and all I can think about is how much it hurts, it feels like it’s on fire. I thought it had healed enough to do this, but then again I haven’t run really at all in the last two weeks so how would I know?

  “Sorry,” I mumble against Jordan’s hand still on my mouth.

  “Will you be quiet if I move my hand?” he whispers.

  I nod my head and his hand leaves my mouth as he sits back hard beside me. He leans an arm over my stomach and braces himself against it, looking down at me.

  “Are you going to be okay?” he whispers again.

  I feel hot tears sting my eyes, but I blink them back.

  “I don’t know. Jordan, it really, seriously hurts. I can’t run anymore, not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow. I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” he says dismissively. “I knew I was probably pushing you. It made me nervous, though, that there were hardly any infected around.”

  “Me too,” I agree as I try to stretch my leg out and find a comfortable position for it. “There must be someone in that building down the street.”

  “Quite a few someones.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s the biggest house in this cove. Fortified by the gate, lots of land between the house and the road, plenty of room for big equipment or vehicles…”

  “The truckers,” I say glumly.

  Jordan nods reluctantly. “I think so. I wasn’t kidding the other day when I said they were probably here on the water.”

  “Looks like you were right. If I see anyone pissing off a balcony, though, I will shoot them.”

  “I won’t stop you. Hey, seriously, are you alright?” he asks as I wince and move my leg again.

  “I don’t know,” I grumble and sigh heavily. “It hurts and I can’t find a way to lay that makes it hurt any less. No way am I getting any sleep with it this way. Do we have any Ibuprofen in either of our packs here? Any kind of anti-inflammatory?”

  “Let me check.” He grabs both of our packs and rifles through the medicines we have stored in Ziploc freezer bags. He finds what I need and I swallow four of the things with a quick swig of water. As he’s packing everything back in, he casually asks, “Did you take your other pill this morning.”

  I freeze and stare at him, surprised. I’m not annoyed he’s asking, not yet. Right now, I’m simply surprised.

  “Yes,” I
say quietly.

  “Okay. Good.”

  “Why are you asking?”

  “I worry about you, about what happens when they’re gone,” he says plainly.

  “I’ll tell you when they’re gone,” I say, carefully watching him. “Don’t treat me differently because of it.”

  He grins slightly and I cannot fathom why this is amusing.

  “Of course I’m going to treat you differently. If you found out I was diabetic and had a limited supply of insulin, you’d be asking after me, wouldn’t you? You’d be on the lookout for signs that I was crashing. You’d treat me a little differently.”

  I frown and pause because I’m annoyed that he’s right.

  “This is different,” I protest anyway.

  “Not to me it’s not,” he says calmly. “You should float, by the way.”

  “What?”

  He stands up, pulls a brightly colored life jacket off a hanger and checks the size on the inside. “Your leg would feel better if you floated in the water for a while. The water is crazy cold, so that’s gonna suck, but the cold will help the Ibuprofen bring the inflammation down and the weightlessness of being in the water might help the muscle ache.”

  “Anything you say, doctor.”

  I sound like a sarcastic jerk because I’m in pain and grumpy, but I am willing to try anything to get some level of relief. Even freeze to death.

  Ten minutes later, I’m bobbing in the water in my underwear and a life vest feeling a little ridiculous but also a million times better. Jordan is a genius. Or a pervert who just wanted to watch me strip down. In fairness, he turned his back without having to be asked, but he did have to help me into the water since I didn’t want to leap in and submerge my head, dooming myself to the frigid experience of cold, wet hair all night. Pneumonia would be hard to shake off. He sits beside the water, keeping me company. I don’t know what else he could really be doing, but I’m grateful just the same.

  “I feel like a survivor of the Titanic,” I say, my voice quivering as I shiver in the water.

  Jordan smirks at me. “Never would have happened. You and I would have been in Steerage Class and locked in a watery grave. Probably never would have made it topside, let alone to a lifeboat.”

  “That’s cheery. Thanks, Jordan.”

  “Now these people,” he says, ignoring me and pointing up toward the house on the small hill behind us. “They would have made it to the lifeboats. Them and their dogs.”

  “Little yappy things with sweaters on.”

  “Hm hmm,” he agrees. He looks up at the boats suspended from the lifts; one hanging directly above my head. “We should sleep up there tonight.”

  I look up as well, staring straight at the white, curved underbelly. “In the boat?”

  “Yeah, it’d be safer. And warmer. They have covers on them. If we crawl up inside them we’ll be hidden, there will be a gap of water between us and any infected that get in and under the cover our body heat would be trapped. You wouldn’t have to shiver all night.”

  “How long should I stay in here, anyway?”

  He shrugs, still looking up at the boat and planning.

  “Until you don’t feel like it anymore.”

  I scowl at him. “You’re a terrible doctor.”

  “Yeah.”

  He’s not even listening.

  Finally I grab his attention enough to get him to help me out of the water. As he’s taking the dripping, cold life vest from me and I’m bundling into a towel, we hear the sound of engines on the water. We both pause, standing motionless, and listening. The rhythmic whine tells me everything I need to know.

  “Jet skis,” I whisper. “Two of them.”

  “The truckers,” Jordan mutters, still staring at nothing. His eyes are unfocused as he listens. “They’re far off, I think. Maybe they’re patrolling?”

  “No,” I say with a smile. “They’re playing.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Listen to them. The engines rev up high then… there it is. You hear the change? They’re turning around, sharply. The engine cuts out for a second as they release the throttle a bit then gun it again.” I frown. “They’re doing it at almost the exact same time, that’s weird.”

  “Maybe they’re racing?”

  “Maybe. I’m looking out the window,” I say, and hobble over on my stiff, cold feet to the small window facing out on the water.

  It’s growing dark outside and Jordan was adamant about staying away from the windows in the daylight, just in case. He gives me a pass now though, and we both peer out, our noses on the glass.

  We watch as the two jet skis race away from each other then turn sharply. They pause for just a moment and then rush at each other. For a second I think the idiots are playing chicken, but then I see the long foam sticks, the kind of thing they used on American Gladiators back in the day to knock each other off the pillars.

  “They’re jousting,” Jordan says, and I swear I hear jealousy in his voice.

  The two men rush at each other at what sounds like top speed, and when they collide, one is sent flying off his mount and into the water. The engine cuts as his cord is pulled free and the winner stands up on his ride and shouts, holding his foam lance high over his head.

  I shiver and head back to the center of the room to continue drying off and getting back into my clothes while Jordan watches them set up and go again. This goes on for the better part of an hour, and when it’s finally over it’s fully dark outside.

  “They’re docking at that house. Almost all the lights in that place must be on. They certainly aren’t hiding the fact that they’re there.”

  I yawn and rub my tired eyes. “With fifty zombies outside, what’s the point?”

  “True. Tired?”

  “Extremely,” I admit reluctantly. I already feel like a load with my gimp leg that I swore up and down had healed, now I’m tired as soon as the sun goes down.

  “You ready to climb up?” he asks, gesturing toward the boat.

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”

  The boat’s not terribly high up, just high enough to keep the hull out of the water with a little extra clearance, but with my tired, shivering body and my sore leg, it looks like a mountain. Jordan pulls a plastic chair around for me to step up on and then he holds my waist, steadying me as I push aside the cover and attempt to hoist myself inside. My arms are shaky and tired from shivering for the last hour and I start to slip, but he gives my butt a firm shove and I topple gracelessly inside. He tosses a couple of towels in to use as blankets and then easily hoists himself in, swinging his legs over instead of entering with his face as I did. We lay life vests and seat cushions down in the center of the boat, and when I lie down on the lumpy makeshift bed, I can’t stop shivering.

  Jordan pulls the cover closed and lies beside me, his back to me as we did in the storeroom aisle. He must feel my shivering though, because after a few minutes he silently turns over, presses his chest to my back and wraps his arms loosely around me. He lays his face on my hair and presses his chin to my shoulder, his warm breath wafting across my bare neck. I pay close attention to the rhythm of his breath on my skin, and I don’t know how long it takes, but eventually the shivering subsides and I drift off to sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  When I wake up the following morning, I know immediately, even before I’ve opened my eyes, that we shifted during the night. I fell asleep with his front on my back, his body heat chasing the chills away, and this morning my front is pressed firmly to his. I can feel an arm draped across my hip and another one tucked under my head. Our legs are intertwined, one on top of the other, and I am acutely aware of his thigh pressed up high between my legs. When I finally open my eyes, I see one of my hands pressed against his chest and when I do an inventory of my limbs, I find the other hand on his back, my arm draped across his waist much as his is across my hip.

  “Um.”

&n
bsp; I’m not really sure where I’m going with that, but I feel like this one utterance fully encompasses my confusion. Don’t get me wrong; waking up in the arms of a good looking guy is not such a bad thing. The rise and fall of his chest under my palm, the weight of his arm on my body and the pressure of his chin on the top of my head as it cocoons me against him are all the single greatest feelings I’ve experienced in a long time. Even before the end of the world. So no, it’s not a bad thing to be here like this with him. It is, however, a very confusing thing.

  “Shhh,” he hushes me. “It’s still early. I heard them on the jet skis and they’re actually patrolling this time. Can’t go outside.” He yawns and his chest presses against me as it fills with air. “May as well go back to sleep.”

  “No more jousting?” I ask, and my voice sounds falsely jovial, even to me.

  “Not this morning.”

  “What was the final score?”

  I’m stalling, trying to think of a polite way to get out of this embrace we’ve twisted ourselves into. I don’t want to push away too quickly as though I’m freaked out. I’m worried he’ll think I’m assuming he’s taking advantage and I know he’s not. When I think about it, he’s exactly where he was when we fell asleep. I’m the one who rolled over and mounted him. I move to pull back slowly, taking my arm off him and curling it into myself. When I go to pull away completely, though, he grumbles and tightens his arm over me.

  “Where are you going? You’re warm.” His mouth is against my hair now and his warm breath tickling through the strands to my scalp makes me shiver slightly. “See,” he mumbles. “You’ll be cold if you leave.”

  “I’m not cold,” I whisper, and roll myself out of his embrace. He’s right, though, the distance immediately makes me cold.

  “Liar,” he smirks as he watches me wrap my arms around myself.

  “Do you have to know everything?” I ask, my voice slightly acidic.

  He raises a questioning eyebrow at me. “When did you get mean in the mornings?”

  “I’m always mean in the mornings.”

  “You never are. I’ve woken up with you every morning for over a week now and you never have been.”