Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

“My priorities are shifting,” he says softly when he pulls away.

  I frown slightly and I wish I hadn’t, but his comment bothers me.

  “I don’t want you to change your plans because of me. If you think it’s dangerous, we shouldn’t do it, no matter what might be easiest or pleasant for me.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m not gonna get us killed, but you’re a game changer. All of my plans and rules before were just about keeping myself alive if, and that’s a big if, this ever actually happened. I never believed it would, to be honest.”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell the other nerds.”

  “Thanks,” he says dryly. “It’s one thing to have theories and plans that you make up in the safety of your home or during a night of drinking with some friends, but it’s another to actually be doing it. Rules and plans have to be amended.”

  I take his hand and he squeezes it gently, making me smile and feel so glad that he’s here with me.

  Until ten minutes later, when I’m certain I’m going to lose him.

  We’re walking along the river, pushing through a particularly thick section of trees, when I hear him cry out and I lose sight of him. He’s disappeared in the brush and I can’t see exactly where he is, and when I call out, he doesn’t answer. Terrified he’s fallen into a hole or cracked his head on a log or rock, I tear through to the undergrowth looking for him. I continue to cry out for him, calling his name and thinking that if there are any infected nearby, I’m giving them a great beacon to follow to lunch. I can’t even begin to care. I’m too worried about Jordan, and when I search the area that I thought he was in a second time and still come up empty, I start to wonder if an animal got him or worse. One of the fast infected could have subdued him quickly, snapping his neck or covering his mouth. They have the reasoning skills, speed and strength to do it, and if there’s a fast one nearby, that means there are shamblers nearby as well. I stop my yelling, thinking that if Jordan is hurt and I call infected down on us, I might as well just finish us both off myself. I’m nearly crying as I search through the bushes and grass a third time, when suddenly I hear a sound.

  “Stop, stop, stop.”

  I hear the whisper from my left and when I stop and look around, I see Jordan lying on the ground hidden under a large bush and staring toward his feet.

  “Don’t move.”

  “What’s ha—“ I start to whisper back.

  “Shhhh,” he hushes me, and never takes his eyes off the area near his feet.

  I turn my head to look where he is and gasp. There’s a girl there, probably eleven years old, curled up tight in a ball beneath a tree. She’s staring at Jordan as he stares at her and I try very hard not to move or breathe. I know Jordan is sizing her up, waiting her out to see if she’s one of them. I can’t see her eyes in the shadows but her skin looks pale and she is a tight ball of wound up tension. It feels different than the coiled hunger emanating off the infected though, and I have to wonder if she’s simply scared.

  Time creeps by, I have no idea how much, and my muscles start to ache with the tension. The girl shows no signs of aggression and I begin to allow myself to relax. She has lovely blond hair that’s terribly tangled and ratted around her face. There are leaves in it and her face is dirty, along with her clothes. I have the awful thought that she’s been sleeping out here alone. There’s no blood though, none that I can see, so I sink to the ground gradually and her eyes dart to me, watching me carefully. I attempt a small grin and wave slowly at her.

  “Hi,” I say softly. “My name is Alissa. What’s yours?”

  She stares at me for the longest time, never blinking, and I’m beginning to think I’m engaging an infected, when suddenly tears fill her eyes and pour down her cheeks. She’s alive.

  “This guy over here,” I tell her, keeping my voice low and my eyes locked on hers. “Is my friend Jordan. Did he trip on you?”

  Her eyes flash from me to Jordan, then back again, and she nods at me ever so slightly.

  I smile wide and shake my head. “He is so clumsy. He didn’t hurt you, did you he?”

  She shakes her head again, a little more emphatically this time.

  “Good. Are you alright? Has anyone else hurt you?”

  Her eyes go wide and she pulls herself tighter into a ball.

  “It’s okay,” I say calmly, putting my hands up. “There’s none of them around right now. I promise. Did you and your family run from them?”

  She nods.

  “Where is your family, sweetie?”

  She simply stares at me, the tears still pouring down her face, and I don’t need her to answer the question.

  “Okay, it’s okay. I understand. Are you hungry? Can I give you something to eat?”

  She doesn’t answer me, but I pull a candy bar out of my bag anyway. I lift it up and show it to her, see her eyes dart to it then back to me, and I gently toss it toward her. It lands by her feet and she simply stares at it. I glance at Jordan, who hasn’t moved from his prone position under the bush, and he shrugs at me. I settle in, taking a more comfortable seat on the ground with my legs crossed in front of me and pull out my phone. I only have a few songs on here but they’re recent Billboard hits and I wonder if I can find something she might like.

  I look for something mellow but upbeat, something that can help me coax her out of her hiding place or even just calm her enough to eat the candy bar. I find a mellow mix and hit play, leaving the volume on low, but the sound carries lightly through the silent, sun dappled brush we’re sitting in and I know she can hear it. I watch her out of the corner of my eye as it plays, and about halfway through the first song I see her reach for the Snickers. I don’t look at her, I don’t want to startle her, but I subtly set the song for repeat and lean back against my hands. Jordan moves his foot slightly, nudging my knee, and when I look at him, his eyes are serious.

  You. Are. Amazing. he mouths.

  I know. I mouth back and smile as his shoulders shake with silent laughter.

  It takes the better part of an hour to get the girl out of the bushes. She eats the Snickers and I feel bad that I don’t have any water left to give her. I ask Jordan if she can drink the river water since it’s moving, but he says he’d rather we waited until we hit Newberg and can get water from a faucet. I ask her if that’s okay, if she can wait, but she doesn’t answer me. Just holds my hand tightly and stares straight ahead. We make slow progress after that, with me pulling her along occasionally. She seems to forget that she’s supposed to be moving and just stops and won’t take a step. I have to stand in front of her and catch her eye, smile and then back up slowly. This seems to pull her out of her daze and she eventually starts following me, her eyes locked on mine. Jordan stays silent, but I can tell by his body language, the tightness in his shoulders, that it is killing him. He wants his boat and back on the river, and waiting for this girl and I to slowly wander through the fields is torture. I tell him to go ahead of us, to make it to Newberg and find a boat if he can and we’ll catch up. We haven’t seen an infected all day and my guard is dropping, something Jordan scolds me about.

  “You have to stay vigilant,” he warns me. “Just because we don’t see any for a day, even two, doesn’t mean they can’t show up at any time.”

  “Okay, I will, I’m sorry. I just think that with the open fields we’re in, I’ll see them coming and I have my bow. She and I will be fine.”

  Jordan glances at the silent girl clinging to my hand and he looks worried.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  I understand what he’s saying. She hasn’t spoken a word and she’s so very out of it all the time, never focusing on anything but me. She doesn’t even want to go near Jordan, but what he doesn’t understand is that I’ve lived this. I’m sure this girl saw her family die, and I of all people can sympathize. After my mom killed herself, I shut down too. Uncle Syd started me in therapy because I wouldn’t talk to him or anyone else. What they found out once they got me talking w
as that I was having the hallucinations. I’d never really had them before. I’d heard things that turned out to not be there, but I’d never seen anything before. Not until my mom. The sounds, the voices, those I could handle, but the image of my mom following me around and talking to me; that’s what ruined me. When I see this girl looking off into the distance, staring intently, I wonder what she’s seeing that we can’t. Part of me doesn’t want to know.

  We reach Newberg and the bridge taking us from farm land into the southern tip of the city. As we cross, we come upon two infected wandering aimlessly. I’m hoping Newberg is a ghost town. It will make looting so much easier and even if we can’t find a boat maybe we can find another car and make it on the back roads down to Corvallis.

  My hand aches where the girl is now crushing it and I wince at Jordan.

  “I don’t think she’s letting go anytime soon. Why don’t you use your bow, take the shot.”

  He frowns at the death grip the girl has on me, but nods and notches his arrow. I find I’m standing there critiquing his form in my head but I don’t say anything about his drooping elbow. He needs the confidence to do this himself and when real infected are around and not store mannequins, I’d like to let him focus. His first arrow goes wide, skidding over the asphalt and coming to a halt in the middle of the road. I hear him curse as he grabs another arrow. He hits one of them in the neck with his next arrow, which doesn’t do any good and they are now advancing on us. Obviously frustrated, Jordan pulls out his bat and meets them halfway, cracking into the temple of the first one and dropping it in one hit, something I haven’t seen him do before. He takes a couple swings to bring the next one down, retrieves his arrow from its neck, and continues over the bridge to collect his other arrow without looking back at us.

  I pull the girl along even though she fights me hard and starts making shrieking noises in her throat when we pass the infected lying on the ground. I have to practically lift her off the ground to get her past, and when we finally make it and her feet hit the ground, she starts to run to put distance between us and them, and I’m being pulled along beside her. As we run forward, I see that Jordan had been jogging back to us to help me, but now we pass him and run for the end of the bridge.

  “Hurry up, slow poke!” I shout over my shoulder, smiling at him.

  It takes a second, but he grins and breaks into a run after us. He makes sure to give the girl plenty of room, fully aware she isn’t as in love with him as she is with me, and we race to the end of the bridge. Jordan wins, which is no surprise to me, even with the girl running as fast as she could. He’s barely breathing hard and she and I are about to collapse, which makes it easier to subdue her and keep her from running again. After a few minutes of regular paced walking, she seems to forget her terror on the bridge and goes placid and vacant again.

  “She’s quiet,” Jordan mentions. “I’ll give her that.”

  “I think she saw some pretty terrible things,” I say, and I feel like I’m defending her even though she hasn’t been attacked.

  Jordan nods, studying her with serious eyes. “Yeah, probably.” He looks up at me and his face softens. He looks unsure for a split second then asks gently, “How old were you?”

  I know what he’s talking about without having to ask. “Sixteen.”

  “You said you saw it happen.”

  “I did. Well, I saw the aftermath.” I swallow hard but I don’t look away from his eyes. “She killed herself. In our kitchen. Put a gun in her mouth and…boom. I was the one who found her.”

  “Damn, Ali.” His face is pinched in an emotion I can’t label. Pain, disgust, shock, anger. I can relate to all of those.

  “Yeah, it messed me up,” I say quickly, and look away.

  “That’s why you take the pills? Is it depression from that?”

  It would be so easy to say yes and move on because all of the puzzle pieces fit and he’d be satisfied with that answer, but I’ve been dodging this question since we met and I’m all out of fight on it.

  “No, not depression. I had a… pre-existing condition and my mom amplified it. Sent me into a spiral.” I take a deep breath and try to look at him, but I can’t. “I have schizoaffective disorder.”

  He’s silent for a long time and I almost hope we drop the topic, but I also want to talk about this with him. I want him to know and I want him to understand that I’m not broken. Not ruined.

  “Is that different from schizophrenia?”

  I scrunch my face up briefly. “Kind of. It’s a lesser version of it. I have some of the symptoms of schizophrenia, but not all of them. I also have symptoms of other things. Like depression.”

  “Is schizophrenia the disease where you can hear voices in your head?”

  “Yeah,” I say, and it’s so quiet, I almost don’t hear it.

  “Do you hear them?”

  I smile sadly. “Not right now.”

  He doesn’t laugh at my poor joke and I didn’t expect him to.

  “What other symptoms do you have?”

  “Um… I—it’s been a while since I’ve had them. I’ve been on meds for four years now. I used to… see things. Hallucinations. That didn’t start until after my mom. Be—before that I heard things. Not voices, but there were sounds that I thought I heard, but they weren’t there.”

  “You started to hear voices, though?”

  “Not multiple, no. Just the one. Hers. She would talk to me.”

  “Your mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  He doesn’t ask what she said to me and I almost faint with relief. I wouldn’t tell him. I’ve never told anyone and I’ve spent four years trying to forget.

  “Anything else? Any other symptoms?” He pauses. “Is it rude I’m asking?”

  “No, it’s fine. If we’re going to… well if we’re doing what we’re doing, then you should know.” I close my eyes briefly and take a breath. “Symptoms, um… Yeah. I had some depression. I lost a lot of weight, I didn’t want to do anything at all. I also dealt with some mania. It’s common in people who are bipolar. I was euphoric, like I was on a high and I wouldn’t sleep at all, but then I’d crash into the depression and sleep for days.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  During this entire conversation, his voice has been calm and even, exactly what I’d expect from him. And it helped. I wouldn’t have been able to tell him all of it if he was full of sympathy and “poor you” mess. I’ve gotten plenty of that, I don’t need that. I don’t need anything from anyone. When I’m on the pills, I’m completely fine and I’d like to be treated that way. Not like a freak show and not like fine china. I am not fragile.

  “So if you don’t have your meds, you’re a completely different person?”

  Christ, that question hurts. We don’t know each other well enough for him to find medicated me sufficiently endearing to put up with non-medicated me. That girl is a mess and I don’t blame him. I work my tail off making sure she doesn’t come around because she just messes everything up. I almost flunked classes in high school because of her. I lost all of my friends because of her. I’m about to lose Jordan because of her and she hasn’t even come around yet.

  “I’m me,” I tell him firmly. “Meds or no, I’m me. The girl you know is the girl I am. The only difference is that without the meds, I’m fighting a disease. There’s a lot of emotional stuff that will go down. It’s a stressful situation and I’ll act out of character at times, but at the end of the day, I’m still Alissa.”

  He’s frowning in concentration, thinking about what I’ve said, and my heart is skipping in my chest. He could walk right now and I wouldn’t blame him. Between Snickers and I, there’s a lot of baggage on this trip and he’s a young guy. He doesn’t need this hassle.

  At length, he sighs heavily. “Let’s keep you on those pills then.”

  We walk for miles, and eventually with Jordan ahead of us because Snickers freaks out and nearly dislocates my arm whenever an infected comes vag
uely near. I walk behind with her, holding hands and intentionally lagging. My hand is seriously sweating and I’d love to have her release it so I can wipe it on my pants, but I know that’s a lost cause. Sometimes she clutches it tightly for no apparent reason then let’s her grip go slack again. Missing the conversation I usually get with Jordan, I begin singing to her and I think she’s actually listening to me. Her hand stops clenching mine tightly and she even looks up at me a few times. There’s no expression on her face, but at least I know she’s aware of me. After an hour, maybe more, Jordan stops up ahead and waits for us.

  “There’s a house here,” he calls as we approach. “We should check it out. See what’s inside and hope it’s not a person with a gun.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I say, glancing at the mansion surrounded by acres of open land and flanked on one side by the river. What is it with rich people living by the water?

  Jordan falls into step beside me and we approach the house slowly and in plain sight.

  “Were you singing?”

  “Ha,” I chuckle, embarrassed. I had hoped he was far enough ahead that he couldn’t hear me. “Yeah, I was singing to Snickers. It calms her.”

  “Snickers?”

  “I named her,” I say, gesturing to the girl beside me.

  Jordan gives me a weird look and smiles at me. Just before we step out of the fields and onto the driveway to the house he reaches out and stops me by touching my arm. I turn to face him and find his eyes soft but his face serious.

  “Is this you?” he asks plainly. “Without the drugs, when you’re clear and the disease is dormant, is this you? The girl I know right now.”

  “Yes,” I say firmly. “This will be me a lot of the time, I promise you. Things will get intense, but it won’t always be like that.” I pause and swallow hard. “But if I run out and I start to see things, I’m leaving.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I don’t want to get confused and hurt you,” I whisper.

  He mutters a curse and runs his hand through his hair. He stares at the ground and shakes his head. “For your sake, not mine. We agreed on that.”