Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  Syd meets my eyes, then casts a meaningful look back at Alissa. “We’re low on water.”

  No, we’re not. Not even close. Not since we started camping out beside the river and filtering the water from it to drink. But I know what he’s saying and not saying. We need to find Alissa more of her meds and fast.

  “We’ll have to go farther out than normal.”

  He nods reluctantly. “A lot farther out.”

  “We aren’t coming back here tonight, are we?”

  Syd pulls out of our campsite, running over our makeshift fire pit as he goes. He doesn’t answer me.

  “We aren’t coming back here at all, are we?” I ask, feeling myself tense.

  “No.”

  “Son of—“ I bite my tongue. Hard. “Where the hell are we going exactly?”

  “In search of others. We need help.”

  “We don’t. We’re doing fine.”

  “We won’t be for long.”

  I take several deep breaths and start counting to 100. When I get there I’m no calmer than before so I try again, this time in Spanish. I have to fight to remember the right words and by the time I get to 60 my brain is too burnt out to be barking mad at the sheer lack of free will this arrangement is granting me.

  “I know you’re mad,” he suddenly says quietly.

  I don’t answer.

  “We have to do it for her.”

  I glance back at Alissa. She’s out cold, her mouth hanging slightly open like a little kid. She’s probably drooling on the pillow.

  “Does she know?” I ask Syd, turning to look at him. “Did you two decide this together without me last night?”

  “No. She thinks we’re looting. She probably knows we’re looking for her pills, she’s not stupid, but she doesn’t know we’re looking for people too.”

  “This is dangerous. Trying to join up with others right now, it’s really dangerous. People will have formed their families already and we’ll be outsiders. Unknowns that could pose huge risks. What would you do if a band of people came waltzing up to us and asked to join our camp?”

  “I’d tell them to hit the road,” he answers honestly.

  “With the barrel of your gun.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s going to happen to us. To Ali.”

  Syd shifts in his seat slightly but shakes his head. “We’ll be careful.”

  “Being careful is staying hidden.”

  “You really want to keep living like that?” he asks, his voice rising. “Cause it’s no way to live. We’ll all crack sooner or later. With Al’s meds disappearing, you and I will have to take up the slack in the guard duty. That’s 12 hours of sitting on your ass watching the woods, waiting for a zombie to break into camp. Or a human looking to kill us all for a bag of rice and some tuna. And what if one of us gets hurt or taken down by an infected? What then? We need help, kid.”

  I ignore him for two reasons. One, he called me kid. I friggin’ hate that. And two, he’s right. I don’t want to admit it, but he’s right. This is the same argument I had with Ali and I’m over it. It’s solidly two against one and if I’ve got a problem with that maybe I should take my toys and go play by myself.

  A lot of hours, miles and back country road later and the tall, green shade of the trees begins to give way to rocky landscape. The rocks morph from the rounded black of the rolling hills covered in green moss to sharp edged lava rock of a totally different world.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Eastern Oregon,” Syd answers curtly.

  “No joke,” I say sarcastically, pointing at the clearly visible compass on the dash. “Why are we leaving the mountains?”

  “Madras.”

  “What?”

  “We’re going to Madras. It’s a small city but it’s way out in the middle of nowhere here in eastern Oregon. There should be a pharmacy and since it’s so remote we might find it still somewhat stocked. If not, we’ll head south to Redmond. See what they’ve got. If they’re tapped, we’ll go to Bend. It’s bigger. It’s probably our best bet to find anything but it’s also going to have the largest population meaning more people, more spread of infection. Bigger shot of dying, so we’ll save it for last.”

  I stare out the window feeling a little stunned. “It’s a good plan.”

  “Thanks,” he replies dryly.

  “How much farther is it?”

  “Not far. This road is terrible but it will take us over the dam on the river then we’ll find the main highway. We’ll be there in no time.”

  It’s not long after that that his ‘good plan’ goes bad. That the inevitable happens.

  “No,” Syd mutters. He leans forward in his seat, squinting against the light to try and get a better view. “No, no, no, no.”

  “Oh man,” I mumble, running my hands over my face. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

  Syd doesn’t answer but he doesn’t have to. The second we saw it we both knew what it was. Several large vehicles, one I think is actually a tank, run for at least a quarter mile in both directions across the highway and into open fields. Behind it I can see what looks like a makeshift town made out of temporary buildings and packed with more vehicles and helicopters. Between us and them are several cement barricades on the road, a long stretch of asphalt, what looks like it used to be road before it was blown to rubble and then the dam. We’d have to drive into the dust and dirt off the road in order to pass the barricades and the ruined section of road. The big question becomes would you make it more than one wheel off the road before the waiting guards ahead blow out your tires? I’m inclined to think no. And not just because I’m some kind of brilliant, intuitive genius. It’s because I can read the sign sitting on the barricade in front of us. It has a lot of words on it and it reads very officially, but basically what it is says is, Turn Back Now Or Die In Fire. Your Choice.

  This is it.

  The quarantine.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “We have to turn around.”

  Syd shakes his head. “Where does it stop?”

  I look at him, worried by his tone. He sounds mystified, confused and annoyed. Disoriented angry is a bad way to be with guns no doubt leveled at your head.

  “It follows the river,” I tell him calmly.

  “What?”

  “The river. It’s like I said before, they’re using it as a natural barrier. I’m sure they blew out all the bridges along the quarantine zone when they blew all the hangars.”

  He swears, rubbing his eyes. “We’re trapped.”

  “Please tell me you’re not just figuring that out now.”

  “Of course not,” he snaps, glaring at me. “But it’s different now that I’ve seen it. It’s…”

  “Real?”

  “Yeah,” he answers, his voice softening. “It’s getting realer by the day.”

  “We’ve gotta try somewhere else. We have to keep moving.”

  He sits back in his seat hard, letting his head smack against the headrest. “Where? If it follows the river we’ll never make it to Redmond or Bend. I’m beginning to think even Sisters is too far south. There’s nothing else out here.”

  I lean forward to look out the windshield, to scan the horizon in hopes of seeing something, anything, that looks like civilization. Nothing. It’s all dead open fields and forgotten farmland. I eye the river, thinking of what it would take to swim across. Could we make it before they caught us? I’m pretty sure this border patrol takes their job very serious. I have a feeling we’re considered more of a threat than a few illegal immigrants. We’d be shot dead on sight, no question.

  “Where are we?” Alissa asks sleepily from the back.

  “The end of the rainbow,” Syd mutters.

  She comes to sit between us just as she did the first day we all set off together.

  “Is this the quarantine line?”

  “Yeah,” I tell her. “We were heading toward Madre—“

  “Madras,” Syd drones.

&n
bsp; “Right, Madras, but we can’t make it. We need a town to loot but there’s nowhere out here to go.”

  “Did you look at your map?” she asks.

  “Not yet. I hadn’t gotten it out. Syd seemed to know where he was going.”

  “What does the sign say?”

  “Get bent,” Syd says, still sounding dead inside and surprisingly British.

  “I doubt that,” Alissa mutters.

  “Close to it,” I disagree.

  “You can’t even read it from here!” she exclaims. “Not all of it. Look, there’s a little handwritten part.”

  Syd and I both jump out our skins with worry when she throws the side door open and hops out into the light of day.

  “What the hell is she doing?” he grumbles, jumping out after her.

  I’m close behind him, rounding the front of the vehicle on her heels.

  “Ali, they have guns. Many big guns. Get back in the car.”

  “I’m sure they do,” she replies calmly, making me believe she’s not as sure as she should be.

  What I’m sure of is that we all have laser sighted dots on our foreheads right now. I glance at Syd to check his face. No dot. Maybe they’ll simply use a rocket launcher, clear us and the RV out of the way in one shot.

  “They have a barricade up,” Alissa reasons. “Have I crossed the barricade?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Well, I don’t plan to and until I cross their line, which I’m not doing, they won’t shoot me.”

  “Al, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Syd warns, eyeing the distant vehicles. No movement so far.

  “Shut up. I’m reading. ‘If you are in need of help, proceed north to the city of Warm Springs. Serious survivors only, riffraff need not apply. Troublemakers will be thrown out on their ear. Any infected will be greeted with a buckshot to the face. Good luck and Godspeed.’”

  “Does it seriously say, ‘riffraff need not apply’ on there?” I ask, leaning in next to her to read the sign. “Huh. It’s like an apocalyptic Craigslist ad.” I turn to Syd, meeting his eyes coolly. “You’re going, aren’t you?”

  Alissa turns quickly to face me. “You mean ‘we’re’ going.”

  “No he doesn’t,” Syd replies softly.

  “You can’t seriously consider doing that,” she insists. “You’ll die out there alone, Jordan.”

  I take a deep breath, trying to stay calm. We worked our butts off to get out of a city and now she wants inside again? I’m pretty sure they blew Portland off the face of the earth because despite giving the radio a listen every now and then, we haven’t heard the looped message evacuating the city again. How long until this one becomes a problem and they clear it out as well? Maybe tomorrow, maybe never. Maybe someday soon they’ll burn and pave this entire area and there won’t be a need for a quarantine anymore because we’ll be nothing but a bad memory. A black mark on the history of the world to be forgotten or misunderstood by future generations.

  “Jordan,” Alissa says firmly, pulling me out of my thoughts, “just come and see. Give it a chance. It doesn’t exactly sound like they take you prisoner once you’re there. We can go in, find out what the deal is with this place and if it’s not something you feel good about we’ll tell them you’re a troublemaker and they’ll toss you out on your rear.”

  I grin. “Ear.”

  “I’m pretty sure it said ‘rear’.”

  “Ear.”

  “Whatever body part you want tossing out on,” she says with a smile. “Give it a look. Just a look. No commitment.”

  I groan. “It’s the walls all over again.”

  “I know. We have to compromise again. Checking it out, that’s the boathouse.”

  “I miss the boathouse.”

  “You hated the boathouse.”

  “It was better than this.”

  “Compromise,” she growls at me.

  I groan again, not looking at her.

  “The aisle in the sporting goods store was my favorite,” she tells me gently, bringing my eyes back to her. “I haven’t slept that well in years.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, rubbing my hand over my burning eyes. “I’m not sleeping so well now.”

  “I know.”

  I frown at her. “How do you know?”

  She steps forward, invading my space. “I can see it right here.” She gently touches the space between my eyebrows. “It pinches when you have the nightmare.”

  I stare down at her, my breathing going shallow. “I’ve been having it a lot lately.”

  “I know. You need to rest. Really rest. We all do. It doesn’t have to be forever, but let’s give it a shot at being just for now.”

  I roll my head back on my neck, stretching out my tense, exhausted muscles. I think of how nice it would be to get a break from everything. From Syd, the RV, even Alissa. We’re all together all day every day. I’d like them and myself more if we had some distance.

  “Alright,” I agree on a sigh. “Let’s check it out.”

  Alissa smiles brilliantly. “Do you think they’ll have working bathrooms?”

  I chuckle. “Fifty at least.”

  “Can you imagine all that running water? I bet it sounds like a symphony.”

  “Bach would be disappointed in the decline of our standards.”

  “Screw that guy. I bet he never had to pee behind a bush. Let him try that and see what true beauty is.”

  “Interior plumbing?”

  “Functioning interior plumbing, Jordan.”

  “If you two are done moonin’ at each other,” Syd says loudly, “I’d like to leave. We’re definitely being watched and trigger fingers might be getting sweaty.”

  “We’re going,” Alissa says.

  And that’s the truth. The horrifying, awful truth. We’re doing this. We’ve really come all this way, fought through all of these cities and run for our lives for weeks, just for this. To walk right back into a town teeming with people. With bodies. With teeth.

  When we get on the road again and head north, I’m nervous. My hands are sweating. My right leg is bouncing up and down, unable to sit still. This could either be very, very good or go very, very wrong. We won’t know which until we’re dead.

  It doesn’t take long before we hit the fence. It runs for what has to be miles straight out into nowhere. Beyond the perimeter, I can see a plateau with green trees at the base and what might be a few buildings mixed in. This is their town. This is Warm Springs. It’s tiny.

  “How do we get in?” Alissa asks, scanning the fence line from her perch between our seats.

  “I don’t know. Maybe drive around it? There has to be an opening,” I reply.

  Syd steers us west, pointing us back toward the mountains. We bounce along slowly over the rough terrain. It has me thinking about our tires again. We don’t have another spare so we can’t afford a flat. The spider web across the windshield stares at me, dusty and ill-defined but still very much present. It’s still a huge threat that hasn’t set well with me since it happened and it dawns on me then just how much I worry about every second of every day. Just because I’m not actively thinking about all of it at once doesn’t mean it’s not there eating away at me. The idea of forgetting all of it for a while, even for an hour, warms me to the idea of the town.

  Not ten minutes later we screech to a dusty halt. There in the fence is a very large, well chained and locked gate.

  “What do we do now?” Alissa asks. “Ring the doorbell?”

  Syd lays on the horn hard and long three times. No response. I literally and honestly see tumbleweed blow by.

  “Maybe it’ll open if we speak to it in Elvish,” I mutter.

  “What?” Syd asks.

  “Dwarf maybe?”

  “What?!”

  “Nothing,” Alissa tells Syd. “He’s a huge nerd, ignore it.”

  Syd shakes his head, looking away and muttering, “Your taste in men…”

  “Nerds are hot. Leave me alone. Besides, you like ‘em crazy
.”

  He glares at her. “Your mother was not—“

  “Yes, she was, but that’s not even who I’m talking about.”

  “Who then?”

  “Vicki.”

  Syd shifts in his seat. He glances up and down the fence line quickly, nervously.

  “We should keep moving. We can’t sit here like this out in the open.”

  “What was crazy about Vicki?” I ask, not interested in seeing him change the subject. Not now that I’ve seen him squirm. The sight is like adrenaline in my veins, lighting me up with so much happy.

  “She made him a quilt.”

  “Al.”

  “Out of her underwear.”

  “What?!” I cry, turning to face Alissa. She has my complete and undivided attention.

  Her face is pinched in disgust. “It was so gross. She thought it would be sexy. It was nasty. She gave it to him on Valentine’s Day.”

  “Wow.”

  “I only took her out three times,” Syd grumbles. “She got too serious too fast. It scared me off.”

  “That’s what scared you off?” Alissa asks. “Not the fact that she wanted to swaddle you in her used undies but that she wanted it too soon?”

  “That’s the kind of woman that gives you a doll made of her hair for Christmas,” I say.

  “Or a cameo of her face made of macaroni and toenail clippings.”

  “Someone’s coming,” Syd says suddenly.

  “Then they’ve got a sick sense of what’s sexy,” I chuckle.

  Alissa and I laugh until we see what Syd sees. Then we fall silent. To the north inside the perimeter is a trail of dust headed our way. When I squint I can make out two vehicles. Both look to be Jeeps.

  “We should get out,” Syd says quietly, turning off the engine and unbuckling his seatbelt.

  “Wait, no,” I protest, grabbing at his arm. “Why?”

  He pulls his arm out of my reach. “To show we’re unarmed, uninfected and no trouble.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for them to get here first? They’ll tell us if they want us out of the vehicle.”

  “Like cops,” Alissa says, eyeing the approaching cars.

  “Listen up,” Syd snaps at me, “you know zombies but I know people. The sooner you show that you’re not a threat, the better off you’ll be. Get out of the car.”