Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  “Yeah,” she says quietly, sounding almost shy. “Leah hooked me up. She has some of the other nurses training me.”

  “That’s…” I want to say it’s great because it sounds like it is. But is it really? Working in a hospital is a high stress job. Is that something she feels like she can handle? I don’t know and I can’t ask because to ask would be to imply that I don’t think she can and then I’m in trouble and a part of her confidence is shot. Nobody wins. So I go with what I know – Ali can take care of herself. If she thinks she can take it, then she can take it, so I smile and tell her, “That’s great.”

  “Have they said where they’re putting you?”

  “Not yet.” I make another attempt to hook some unnaturally orange cheesy goodness. “I’m sure all of the areas are clamoring to get the one handed ticking time bomb on their team.”

  “You could join my dad. He’d take you.”

  I look at her in surprise. “Seriously?”

  “You don’t want to work with him?”

  “Seriously?”

  “It was a suggestion.”

  “Seri—“

  “Shut up.”

  I grin at her at until she smiles back. “I may have to take you up on that. Dr. Finemen says there’s a lot of people scared of me.”

  “Is he worried?”

  I manage to get a heaping bite of pasta in my mouth.

  “Worried that I’ll still turn,” I ask her, rudely speaking around my food, “or worried that I’ll get killed somewhere in town for being dangerous?”

  “Both.”

  “Yes.”

  “To what?”

  “To both.”

  My next spoonful is a fighter. I watch it tumble off the utensil onto the plate.

  Splat.

  I toss the spoon aside, my appetite suddenly gone.

  “You okay?” Ali asks me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Frustrated?”

  I nod mutely.

  “You wanna talk about it?”

  I look at her blankly. “Are you asking if I want to talk about my feelings?”

  “Yes,” she replies with a grin. “Feel free to feel your feelings, Jordan. Let them roll out of you like a river over rocks in the forest, calm and sure. Confident in its purpose. You are to be heard, to be seen, enjoyed and cherished.”

  My stare turns from blank to confused. “What in the hell are you doing?”

  “Shrinking you,” she says, happily taking a bite of a cookie.

  “What does that mean? Like a psychiatrist? You’re giving me therapy?”

  “Is it not working?”

  “No.”

  “What about this? Have the sense to accept the things you can’t change, to change the things you can and have the wisdom to see the difference.”

  “That’s the serenity prayer for Alcoholics Anonymous.”

  “There’s no one I’d rather be than me?”

  “That’s Wreck-It Ralph,” I tell her, chuckling. “It’s a Disney movie.”

  She looks at me dubiously. “You watched Wreck-It Ralph?”

  “Ali,” I say heavily, “that movie is a love letter to gaming. I not only watched it, I bought the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack and brought it with me to college. Which means it’s now a melted mass of plastic somewhere in what used to be Portland, Oregon along with your mythical archery trophies.”

  “Don’t hate,” she warns me. “It’s unbecoming. Just because you were all thumbs as an archer doesn’t mean you have to get ugly about it. But speaking of Portland, I need to tell you something.”

  “What?” I ask warily.

  I’m suddenly sure this is going to be about Beth and my parents. About me contacting them to let them know one of their children is still alive. I’m not ready for that. I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment, a lot of adjusting to do, and I can’t handle this right now.

  “When they were taking my blood for a transfusion for you they asked a lot of questions. Where I’d grown up, where I’ve been living, tattoos from foreign countries. That kind of stuff.”

  “Do you have any?”

  “Yes. Three.”

  “Really?”

  “One for each voice in my head. I got them in El Salvador from a street artist who could see souls. It was very moving.”

  “So, no?”

  “No,” she says dryly.

  “Okay, so back to the blood.”

  She stares at me for a while before continuing. “Anyway, it came up that I was at Ground Zero for the Fever. I told them you were too and they freaked out. They’ve been collecting samples from anyone willing to give one up, looking for people like us. People who were right there when it happened and made it out.” Her brow furrows suddenly. Her voice grows tighter. “It looks like most of us never made it out alive.”

  “How many do they think made it?” I ask softly.

  She shakes her head. “Not many. We’re the first they’ve seen here. Most made it to Tacoma up in Washington but Lincoln City hasn’t seen any.”

  “What do they want from us?”

  “Blood and tissue samples.”

  I frown, feeling doubtful. “Do they have a lab here?”

  “No, but the village over the river does.” She looks me in the eyes then and I see hope glimmering in every inch of her face. It’s radiant and horrifying in its perfect fragility. “They’re looking for a cure, Jordan.”

  “Ali,” I begin cautiously, “we knew they’d look, remember? They want one for themselves in case any of us ever gets out.”

  “I know, but what if you’re wrong? What if they want to save us?”

  “They don’t.”

  “But they cou—“

  “Portland,” I say firmly, cutting her off. “Think about Portland. Think of all those people still there at Ground Zero that they could have taken samples from if they really wanted to. But instead they burned and paved the entire place. They wiped it off the map. Probably not long after they confirmed Tacoma was getting Ground Zero blood samples from survivors. And what about my situation here? I survived a bite but even people here who know the timeline that an infected follows are ready to chase me out with torches and pitch forks or put a bullet in my skull. The outside world would be no different with all of us who have lived in here with this. They’d consider us tainted for the rest of our lives.”

  She looks away, her lips tightly pressed together. I don’t know if it’s to keep from crying or screaming. It could go either way.

  “I still think they’ll try for us,” she whispers.

  “Maybe they will.”

  She chuckles sadly. “You don’t believe that.”

  “No,” I agree, “but you can believe it for me.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  A couple of days later I’m still jobless. I’m not homeless, though. I’m back inside the RV with Alissa and Syd, all of us sleeping on the same schedule for the first time ever. Ali is sleeping in the bed, I’m on the short awkward bench and Syd is sprawled out on the floor between us, sawing logs all night. I don’t get much sleep. We’re all day workers, though apparently that could easily change for Alissa once she’s trained properly by the nurses. Leah works the night shift and I know Ali would feel better working with her. They’ve become really tight since we got here, something Syd and I are both grateful for. She seems happier with another woman to talk to.

  Too bad that’s the only thing Syd and I agree on. We fight night and day which means Alissa and I are beginning to fight as well. It’s not as bad as it was because we’re all getting better sleep, we’ve spent time apart from each other during the day and even though I worry an outbreak will take this place down or that some paranoid psycho is going to bash my head in when I’m standing at the urinal, life is generally pretty good. I can’t remember the last time I thought that. But I know it can be better. I know I can’t stay in that RV with them indefinitely, not if we want to avoid it all going to crap again like out in the woods.


  For now, while I wait for a job assignment, I attend my physical therapy sessions for my missing hand. It’s a lot of practicing doing everyday things with my left hand instead of my right, something that is surprisingly difficult to retrain your brain to do. But a lot of what we do every day is muscle memory. Running your hand through your hair, scratching an itch on your nose, grabbing your sunglasses off the table. Your brain doesn’t think about how you’re going to do it, you just do it and it’s done exactly the same almost every time. Now I have to stop and think about everything.

  In my sessions there’s also weight training to build strength in my now dominant arm and to maintain strength in my weakened one. Working out in the gym of the town’s high school and knowing there’s a hot shower at the end of it, that’s heaven for me. I start making my sessions longer. I complete what Dr. Finemen assigns for me to do for the day and I add on my own assignments. I run laps and drills. I do weight lifting with my legs, shoulders, back; everything. Not just my arms. I spend hours in there. In the silence of the large empty building with nothing but the sounds of my own breathing. It’s a solitude I haven’t known in a while and I’m finding—

  “Do you spend all day in here?”

  “The fu—“I cry, turning swiftly and crouching down on one knee to minimize my strike surface. It’s harder to stab, shoot, bite or bludgeon me from this position, something I’ve learned now that I’m made to walk around weaponless. I miss my weapon like I miss my hand. I feel helpless as an infant without either.

  “Whoa,” the guy says as he steps back, his hands up.

  He’s about my age with short blond hair, tall and stocky. He’s built like a brick shit house reminding me of Taylor and I’m worried about the idea of fighting him. I glance around the gymnasium to all of the dark corners.

  “I’m alone,” he says, reading my body language. “I’m not looking for a fight.”

  I stand up slowly but I’m sure to keep distance between us. I eye him with suspicion, taking in his bright blue workout shorts and ratty, faded T-shirt.

  “You came to work out?”

  He nods. “Yeah. I got let off work early. Decided to come down here.”

  He takes a cautious step toward me, watching my eyes the entire time. Then he extends his hand to me. His right hand.

  “I’m Kyle.”

  I don’t respond as I stare at his hand, my arms hanging loosely at my sides.

  “Oh man, I’m sorry. That was a dick move. I didn’t—I—“ He curses as he quickly withdraws his hand, trading it for his left. When I look up to meet his eyes they’re earnest and pained. “Seriously, dude, I’m so sorry. I didn’t even think about it. I’m right handed, it was a reflex.”

  I take his hand in my left and shake it firmly. “Yeah, me too,” I mutter. “I’m Jordan.”

  “I know. You got here with the older guy and that girl Ali, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She’s cool,” he says neutrally. Not too complimentary, not too interested.

  I nod in agreement. “Yeah, she’s the best.”

  “You and her…?

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool. Got it,” he says with a quick nod. “So, seriously, are you in here all day, every day?”

  I shrug. “It’s only been a few days but yeah. I come in every day.”

  “No job yet?”

  “Nah.”

  “Is it because of the hand? Are you not cleared for work?”

  I’m stunned by his bluntness. “No, my arm is fine. I think they’re more worried about the rest of me.”

  He cracks a crooked grin. “Yeah, I get that. People are skittish.”

  “You’re not?”

  “I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen the change, same as almost anyone here. But they forgot, I guess. If you were going to become one of the infected, it would have happened by now.”

  “Yeah,” I mutter, not knowing if I believe that and wondering if he really does either.

  The doc and nurses have been taking my blood every single day and sending it off to the lab across the dam. They know about me over there. I don’t know what they think of me and sometimes I’m worried I’ll be taken over there to be studied, but hopefully that’s just the conspiracy theorist in me. A little slice of my father.

  “So,” Kyle says, pulling me out of my thoughts, “do you mind if I do my thing in here with you?”

  “No, yeah. Of course. Free country.”

  “You sure? I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. You seem… jumpy.”

  I shrug, feigning indifference. “Zombies do that to you.”

  “Yeah, but you’re from the outside,” he says, not buying the act. “You’ve been surrounded by them.”

  I glare at him. “Are you going to talk to me about my emotional state or are you going to get to work.”

  He grins again. “I’m here to work, man.”

  We end up working out together. He just jumps in with me when I start my run and I can’t think of a good reason to tell him not to. We go in circles around the gym side by side, never saying a word. All I hear is the pounding of our sneakered feet on the hard floor and our even, measured breathing. I don’t hate having him here. I don’t love it because I’m still waiting for him to suddenly stab me or a group of his buddies to pop out of the locker room to beat me to death, but with every lap that passes and I continue to live, I’m more okay with it.

  “Same time tomorrow?” he asks as he stretches out after the run.

  “Don’t you have to work?”

  He shrugs. “I can get away. You gonna be here?”

  “Yeah, I guess. I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

  He reaches out his hand, his left this time, and shakes mine. “I’ll see you then. Nice to meet you, Jordan.”

  “You too, Kyle.”

  ***

  “You made a friend, that’s great,” Alissa says at dinner that night.

  You have the option here of eating in the restaurant turned cafeteria from a buffet or you can use food ration coupons to exchange for uncooked food you can prepare yourself in your own kitchen. That’s a choice used only by those of us with RVs and the people living in true houses over in the city. Here at the resort, most people are living out of the teepees or the hotel rooms. None of them have a full kitchen, so the buffet is their only real choice. Some team up with RV families, having made friends at work or having children that are friends from the daycare/school area that’s run out of the convention hall of the hotel during the day.

  Syd’s an excellent cook when it comes to grilling and now that we have the luxury of all eating at the same time, that’s exactly what he does. We’re sitting outside in the surprisingly warm evening air listening to the river running by and soaking in the smoky smells of meat and veggies on a charcoal grill. There are spices to be used now. Butter, milk and other perishables on demand. We weren’t without them for long but it was long enough to miss them.

  I look around, watching as other families enjoy the night as well. Little kids are running around together, getting underfoot and scolded, laughing and playing.

  “I wouldn’t say he’s a friend exactly,” I tell Ali absently. “He’s just a guy who likes to run.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “What’s weird?”

  “To enjoy running. It’s freakish. This guy is a freak.”

  She has my attention now. “I like running.”

  “Well, good. You’re a freak too. The two of you can be freaks together.”

  This sounds like joking. It sounds like the banter that goes back and forth between us every day that never means a harmful thing. But it feels different. Her voice is all wrong. Her eyes are tight around the edges.

  “Ali, are y—“ I stop myself, knowing that asking if she’s okay is the worst thing I can do here. It will tell her I think she’s acting off, something she already knows, but it will stress her out even more. “You gonna walk with me to the hospital tomorrow?”

 
“No,” she replies quickly. “I’ll go with the Repair Crew.”

  “Okay.”

  “Let’s eat!” Syd calls from the picnic table.

  I follow Alissa as she slowly walks over.

  “Sorry,” she mutters.

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. I’m really sorry. I’m getting short tempered again.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I admit softly. “It was going to happen with all of us living together again.”

  “Yeah.”

  Later that night I take a walk by myself. It’s not something I do very often considering this place is less safe for me than the zombie apocalypse raging outside the fence, but I need some time away. I need the space from Syd and his ever present scowl. I feel like Alissa needs some distance as well.

  I walk around the RV area, careful to keep my ‘hands’ stuffed in the pockets of my hoodie to keep from being noticed. It’s too warm for the extra covering but when I hide my missing hand this way I fare better with strangers. They smile at me, waving and calling out greetings. I wave back with my left hand, trying to smile at them even though I know if they knew who I really was they’d ignore me or yank a log from the fire to shoo me away.

  Eventually I wander into the large common area/rec room, somewhere I’ve never visited. I’m instantly drawn to the far wall. There’s a giant TV hung there above a fireplace in front of three leather couches forming a U around it. The TV is on and Super Mario Bros. flashes across the screen, pulling me like a moth to a flame. It’s not until I’m standing behind the couch that I can see the young kid sitting there. He’s got a WII remote in his hand and he looks so small in this huge space, so normal, that I feel a panic rising inside me. It feels familiar but foreign, like something I remember from a dream that’s not supposed to be real.

  He glances over his shoulder at me quickly, his eyes unwilling to leave the screen.

  “Do you want to play?” he asks, not sounding at all like he wants me to say yes.