Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  “Thanks,” he mutters, taking a step back.

  I do the same. “Um, yeah, my parents died when I was eight. On Christmas Day.”

  He winces. “Ouch. Mine went just after Easter.”

  “When they were talking about a cure?”

  “Yeah. They thought it was gonna happen. Kind of let their guard down. Four days after Easter Sunday they were dead and Kevin and I were on our own.”

  I nod, not sure what to say. Sorry is a worthless word.

  “The holidays suck,” I finally tell him.

  He grins. “Yeah, they do.”

  Chapter Two

  The night fully arrives, plunging us in total darkness and letting me breathe a little easier. I prefer the night. More places to hide.

  I stand at the giant floor to ceiling windows, looking down on the street below. There’s not much to see. Clouds are moving in to cover the moon, which is good because it probably means rain, but it’s bad because I can’t see a thing. I need to know if the wolves have gone. If the Risen have shown up yet.

  “Are they down there?” Ryan asks quietly, his voice close to my ear.

  I suppress a jolt of surprise. He sneaks better than I gave him credit for.

  “I can’t tell yet. You left a lot of blood on the pavement. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “At least the wolves will probably take care of them. They won’t stay down there forever.”

  He’s got a point. Once a zombie catches on to human flesh in a location, it’s a dog with a bone. It will not give it up. If it were them down there at the gate where the wolves are we would have to count that exit as dead. They’d never leave. If they show up and the wolves are still around, though, there’s every chance the animals will kill them and eventually lose interest in us. They’ll move on. I have other exits, but that’s the safest one. The others involve the roof or windows that offer a jump down to a lower building. It’s doable but you risk breaking a bone or tweaking an ankle, two conditions you can’t afford out here.

  “We’ll have to wait it out,” I mumble.

  I hear him step back. When I look over, he’s watching me from a few paces away.

  “Are the other rooms here secured?”

  I frown, glancing around. “It’s a loft… there are no other rooms.”

  “No, I mean in the building. Have you secured any other rooms besides this one? Any other places where I could crash?”

  I look him over sharply. “Is that knife all you have?”

  “Yeah. I wasn’t thinking. I was—“

  “Emotional.”

  I say it like it’s a swear. Like a curse or disease because it is. It’s deadly and the longer he’s here, the longer I’m in someone else’s company, the more likely I am to catch it. I’ve spent the better part of a decade avoiding that particular plague. I’m not interested in being taken down by it now.

  “Yeah, I was. I still am,” he admits quietly.

  That couldn’t have been easy, especially for a Lost Boy. In the wild, your pride and bravado are as important to staying alive as your ability to hunt and avoid being hunted. He’s gonna die if he goes back out there. Problem solved for me, no one will know where I live, but if I let that happen then why did I step in in the first place? The logical choice is to let him leave and disappear forever. But now I’ve seen his face, I’ve named the puppy and I emotionally don’t like the idea of him dying.

  His disease is catching. It’s airborne. It’s in his voice. In his eyes.

  “You can stay here,” I tell him firmly. “In this room. With me. It’s fine.”

  He looks at me in shock, stunned by my offer.

  “I don’t want to intrude on what you’ve got here,” he says slowly, watching me.

  It’s a big deal these days to let anyone into your world. I can feel the weight of it in the way my heart is hammering in my chest, my skin prickling with… what? Fear? It must be. It feels like it. This feels like when a Risen is closing in on me, backing me into a corner and threatening to take everything. When Crazy Crenshaw let me stay with him while I was deliriously ill, that was the equivalent of in the old days letting someone wear your underwear or borrow your toothbrush. Inviting someone into your space is incredibly personal. It’s basically not done. Letting this guy know where I live is huge enough, but letting him crash here? It’s epic. For a recluse like myself it’s the apocalypse all over again.

  “I said it’s fine.” I mean to sound sure, solid, but I think I come off angry.

  It’s because it’s not fine. It’s terrifying and it’s going to be awful, but I can do this. Maybe I need to prove to myself that I can. That I can stay unattached and unemotional. Maybe I want to know I’m a decent human being who can help her fellow man when the chips are down. Or maybe I’m a girl, he’s a guy and he’s here, a seemingly simple aligning of the stars that has never happened before in my world. One that is unlikely to ever happen again. He’s a comet shooting across the sky, his course only bringing him along every hundred years and if I want to experience this once in a lifetime event, I better open my eyes.

  “You’re sure?” he asks skeptically.

  “Do you want me to change my mind?”

  “Are any other rooms in this building safe?”

  “Nope. Windows are blown out of just about all of them and all of the doors are kicked in.”

  “Then no, I don’t want you to change your mind.”

  I nod sharply as I turn away, heading deeper into the loft. Away from the window and the darkness outside. Away from him.

  “Hey,” he calls quietly.

  I stop but I don’t face him. “What?”

  “Thanks. For taking me in tonight and for stepping in with the wolf. I—I made a mistake.”

  I nod my head slowly, thinking of the mistakes I’ve seen made. The ones I’ve made in the past. The ones I’m making now.

  “We all do,” I say, glancing over my shoulder at him. “Eventually.”

  I run for the bathroom. I need a minute. I need space in this huge room. A place where I can’t see him and I can’t feel his eyes. Having someone else around is stranger than I thought it would be. It’s harder than I imagined but it’s addicting at the same time. I like the sound of his voice as it roams around the room. I like the way he smiles and the fact that despite his idiot move with the wolf he’s smart. He’s a survivor like me. The problem is my instincts are telling me to get him out of here. Listening for his footsteps, hearing his breathing, sensing his proximity in the room – it’s all too much to handle. I’m used to classifying every sound not made by me as a threat. His very existence has me on edge and it’s not exactly something I can turn off. I can’t tell my brain and body, hey don’t worry about it, he’s friendly and expect them to obey because I trained them for years to worry about everything. To see everyone as a threat. And who knows? Maybe he actually is.

  When I get myself pulled together I return to the main area to find him examining the bike again. He’s not touching it this time. Just looking.

  “How did you learn to do this?” he asks, glancing up at me from his crouched position.

  I shrug. “I know a guy.”

  “You know a guy?” he asks with a grin. “What are you, a mobster? You got connections?”

  “Maybe. How do you know about mobsters?”

  “I read. How do you know about them?”

  “Same. Books. Plus my dad and I used to watch old movies together. He liked old black and whites.”

  “Do you have any here?”

  “No. I don’t watch them anymore. I haven’t since—you know.”

  “Yeah, I do. What kind of movies do you have?” he asks, thankfully changing the subject. I don’t feel like playing the How Did You Lose Everything game tonight. Or ever.

  “Nothing you’d like,” I deflect, feeling suddenly embarrassed by my meager collection. All I have is a box set of old 80’s movies about kids in high school, something I never got to experience. Breakfast Club, F
ast Times at Ridgemont High, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink.

  “I haven’t seen a movie in years. I’ll like anything,” he insists.

  “No, I doubt it.”

  “What do you have that you’re hiding? Are they dirty?”

  I frown. “Dirty?”

  “Sex tapes. Porn. Skin flicks.”

  “What?! No!” I exclaim, feeling myself blush for what is probably the first time in my entire life. “They’re 80’s romantic comedies.”

  “Cool. Let’s watch one. But just for the record, I would have gladly watched a sex tape. No judgment.”

  “I don’t have sex tapes,” I grumble.

  “No judgment.”

  “I don’t—“

  “What’s in here now?” he interrupts, kneeling down in front of the small unit.

  “Um, Sixteen Candles, I think.”

  I don’t think, I know. Images of Jake Ryan dance through my mind as this Ryan invades my home.

  “Alright, I’ll drive.” He hops up on the bike and sits perched ready to go. “How fast do I go? What do I do?”

  Apparently this is happening. I’m torn. I feel a little (or a lot) suffocated by his presence. He’s so here. So actively in the world, in my world, it’s a little overwhelming for me.

  I take a step back.

  “I think I, um,” I begin, looking anywhere but at him.

  “Joss, are you okay?”

  My name. Hearing him speak my name is the last straw. It’s too much.

  “It’s going to rain and I need water. I have to go the roof for a bit. I’ll be back.”

  I’m already backing out of the room toward the roof hatch. I can’t get out of here fast enough.

  “I’ll help you.”

  I hold up my hands to stop him. To ward him off like a dangerous animal. “No, stay. Please stay. I don’t want help. Or company.”

  “Oh.” He sits back on the bike slowly, looking surprised.

  “Yeah, so stay here. Watch the movie. Just pedal at a regular pace, a steady rhythm you can keep up. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  I’m gone for an hour.

  I empty the contents of the bucket into a canister I can seal and easily bring downstairs with me, then I position the bucket in the center of the roof just as fat raindrops start to fall. I wish I had more containers here. It rained a couple days ago. I’m sure my rain catchers on the other roofs are doing well, if only I could get to them. I stand outside in the fresh, open air breathing deeply and enjoying the silence but for the rhythm of the rain. It’s calming, something I definitely need right now. I listen to the sound of the drops pinging off the bucket, the building, the rest of the world. It fills the gaping, empty spaces left behind by so many dead and if I close my eyes I can pretend they’re all still here. Still out there in the rain with their umbrellas and galoshes, hurrying to and from cars carrying groceries, briefcases and babies, going in and out of buildings that aren’t decaying or wreaking of rot and ruin.

  I drink it in until I can’t stand the cold anymore. Until I can’t stand my own lies.

  When I get back inside I hear the sound of the bike moving. It’s sort of surreal, almost a little spooky. Like seeing a ghost. I can also hear the movie, the one I love the most and know by heart. He hasn’t noticed me come back in, or else he isn’t letting on that he notices, so I sit in the dark as far away from him as I can and I listen.

  “When you don’t have anything, you don’t have anything to lose, right?”

  “That’s a cheerful thought.”

  I glance around the dark loft asking myself why I’m courting disaster by having anything that’s mine. Anything even vaguely worth defending. Worth fighting for. I also wonder what I’ll do with it all now. Now that he knows where I live and I have to leave. Should I try and move it to another building? Should I leave it all behind and start over? I’m exhausted and sad just thinking about it. And angry. At him.

  Suddenly Ryan laughs, startling me. The sound fills the large space, drowning out the movie and his pedaling. It reaches me in my far, dark corner, wrapping around me until I feel myself smiling as well. It’s stiff, unused for so long, but it’s there. For the next half hour I sit on the hard floor with a butt going numb as I listen to Ryan chuckle, laugh and snort at the dialogue. It’s a great movie, one about a world we’ll never know. Like a fairy tale we’ve heard a million times about kings, knights and dragons, only this one is about parties and driver’s licenses. Things we’ll never experience, never see, but want to believe in.

  “That’s just so my friends won’t think, you know, I’m a jerk.”

  “But they’re all pretty much jerks, though, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, but the thing is, I’m kinda like the leader, you know? Kinda like the King of the Dipshits.”

  “How are you not laughing?” Ryan asks, addressing me but not turning away from the small screen.

  “I am,” I say, my lie quietly defensive.

  “I haven’t heard you laugh once.”

  It’s because I don’t. I didn’t realize it until just now, but I don’t laugh, not even at this movie that I love and find so funny. I don’t know why. Maybe because it’s always been just me and it feels weird to laugh alone. Or maybe I don’t find things as funny as I think I do.

  “I’m stealthy,” I say softly.

  He snorts as he glances at me, or at least at the dark corner where I’m sitting.

  “You don’t like having me here, do you?”

  I take a deep breath then let it out slow. “No. Yes. I don’t know. I’m not used to it.”

  “To what?”

  “People.”

  “You’ve lived alone for a long time?”

  “The last six years.”

  “Whoa,” he says, sounding genuinely surprised.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why? Why didn’t you join the Colony or a gang?”

  I hesitate, hating my answer but knowing it’s true. “I got tired of watching people die.”

  He pedals in silence watching the movie but I don’t think he’s really paying attention.

  “I get that,” he finally says, his voice low. I remember that his brother just died. Yeah, he gets it for sure.

  “I can’t believe I gave my underpants to a geek.”

  “I heard that,” Ryan says.

  “Heard what?”

  “You chuckled.”

  I grin in the darkness. He’s right.

  “Come sit up here,” he calls. “You’re making me nervous being over there.”

  I slink out of the shadows. I go as quiet as I can but I know Ryan knows I’m moving. We’re both too hyperaware of the world for him not to know. I don’t sit close to him. I don’t even sit close enough to see the screen because I simply don’t need to. By the time the movie is coming to an end I have my eyes closed and I’m mouthing the words silently.

  “Thanks for getting my undies back.”

  “Thanks for coming over.”

  “Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “Happy birthday, Samantha. Make a wish.”

  “It already came true.”

  Cue the 80’s music and the kiss over the cake. Cue the candles and the table and the glowing world inside a warm, happy home. Cue the boy and the girl and the love. Cue the silence and the darkness and the guy on the bike watching me.

  Chapter Three

  An hour later we hear the groaning. It’s a sure sign that his blood on the road has been working like a dinner bell, calling in the dead to chow. We both hurry quietly to the windows to look down. The rain is still falling lightly, something I had hoped would wash away his blood and keep the zombies away. No such luck. Through the very thin amount of light peeking through the clouds we can see a small horde gathering outside. I wait for the wolves to take notice, but they never do. They’re already gone.

  “They probably left when the rain started,” Ryan whispers.

  I nod in agreement. “That sucks.”

  �
��They know there’s blood down there. They’ll never leave. Not unless another target comes along.”

  “We could try to lead them away.”

  “You mean use ourselves as bait?”

  “I was specifically thinking of you as bait, but yes.”

  “Wouldn’t be my first time,” he mutters.

  I glance at him, but I’m not surprised. I’ve done it too. We all have, I’m sure.

  He meets my eyes and shrugs. “Your home, your call.”

  “Do you know this neighborhood?”

  “A little,” he responds vaguely. “If I had to run I’d make it out. I’m pretty sure.”

  I nod, thinking. It’s tempting. But it’s also dangerous. Sure, he could lure the zombies away from my front door and I’d be safe for the night but who’s to say they wouldn’t lose him and come right back? Obviously the scent of blood and living flesh is strong enough here for them to be swarming. This rain might wash more of it away but how soon?

  “What would your gang do?”

  “We’d kill them. We always kill them when we can.”

  “Do you think we can?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I can’t count them. Maybe.”

  “You willing to work with a maybe?”

  He grins. “A maybe, one knife and a busted hand? How could it go wrong?”

  “We can do something about the knife.”

  “I almost want to stick with it just to see if I can do it.”

  “Yeah, well,” I begin, leading him toward the wall beside the door, “I’d rather you didn’t try to get me killed again.”

  There’s a large, discolored drop cloth hanging from the wall. I pull it aside to unveiling my collection. Ryan’s eyes light up as he whistles at the sight.

  “Joss, I’m gonna be honest with you.” He reverently runs his hand over each tool, all of them dented, dinged, mangled and well used. Well worn. Well wielded. “If you weren’t so hostile, I’d be in love with you by now.”