Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  I put the message out of my mind, get my head in the game and move on.

  Three hours later Crenshaw and I have lunch. It’s a mangy little rabbit that ran me all over hell and back but I got him in the end. Crenshaw, in a very rare show of friendship, asks me to stay and eat with him. He has a system for smoking the meat, making it not only delicious but also keeping a low profile while cooking. Even though I’m worried he’ll get a visit from one of the Lost Boys while I’m here I take the chance for a shot at a good, hot meal. Also, and I keep this to myself, I don’t mind the idea of the company so much either.

  “You look as a true warrior, Athena,” he says, pulling his robe more tightly around himself as he leans down to stoke the fire. It’s a real robe, like a bathrobe. There are sailboats on it. Blue ones.

  My hands and clothes are soaked in blood from killing and skinning the rabbit. I’m tired, scratched up from branches, bushes and bunny claws and I’m sure I look more nuts than anything else. Does that make me a warrior? I doubt it. I think I’d have to be afraid of a lot less to be classified as one.

  “Really? I was thinking I needed a bath.”

  He snorts at me. “Your generation is obsessed with cleanliness. Do you think even the Kings and Queens in medieval court were so thoroughly bathed? I assure you they were not.”

  “I don’t know, Cren,” I say doubtfully, looking down at myself. “I think I’ve gone beyond royalty filth and moved into cavewoman status.”

  “It’s good for you.”

  I smile as I take a seat at his table. “You’re the doctor.”

  He ignores me as he cooks. I enjoy the feeling of not being alone but being left alone. It’s a strangely wonderful sensation. It’s cozy here in this earth and mud hut that’s he built. It’s small, my leg is pressing against his cot tucked in the far corner, and it’s incredibly dark inside but it fits him. Outside this sparse living quarter is his real home; his garden. It’s all hidden deep in the brush and trees of the park but it’s expansive as well. If he asked me to go out and get him something from it I wouldn’t know where to begin. It all looks like a jungle to me but to him it’s perfectly clear.

  He brings me a plate with my smoked rabbit on it and sits across from me.

  “Have you seen your friend lately?” he asks casually.

  I stiffen. “I don’t have friends, remember?”

  “Athena.”

  I groan. “Don’t do that. Don’t scold me. I talked to him once. It’s no big deal and it’s not a friendship.”

  He chews thoughtfully. “If you speak to him again—“

  “I’m never going to see him again,” I interrupt. I immediately wish I hadn’t. Crenshaw stares down his nose at me. I cave. “I’m sorry, please continue.”

  He clears his throat. “If you speak to him again, be wary but cordial.”

  My rabbit slips through my fingers and plops on my plate. “Cordial? You want me to be nice to him? Since when?”

  “Since the wraiths outnumber us again.”

  “I don’t know that they outnumber us,” I say doubtfully.

  “Since the Colonists walk these woods.”

  I drop my meat again, this time intentionally. “They’ve been here? Near you?”

  He watches me calmly. “Not near enough to see but near enough for me to hear. Do not worry for me.”

  “Crenshaw—“

  “I said do no worry, Athena. I have shrouded my home. I will remain unseen.”

  “Shrouded it with what? A spell?”

  He frowns at me, looking at me like I’ve gone mad. “With camouflage.”

  “Right, sorry.”

  Sometimes I forget that Crenshaw’s crazy is selective. He’ll be telling me one minute to burn sage to ward off evil spirits and the next he’ll be asking if I remember the football Thanksgiving episode of Friends. It’s hit or miss. More often miss.

  Eventually I say goodbye to Master Gandalf and carefully pick my way out of his neck of the woods. I’m full of good food, sedated by whatever incense he was burning in that hut but my day is only half done. Now the hard part. I have to climb to the top of one of my buildings to get fresh water.

  This is dangerous for two—wait, no three… I guess actually four—it’s dangerous for a whole lot of reasons, let’s just go with that. Colonists, zombies, Lost Boys, bears. Yes! I have seen a bear before. I cannot tell you how scary that was. He was huge and hungry and fast. I only got away because I climb way better than he could. I ended up sleeping in an unfamiliar building out on the fire escape until he got bored or hungry and finally left.

  I decide to minimize my danger factor since I’m already tired from Elmer Fuddin’ it after that rabbit. I go to my closest water source. It’s five blocks away and to the south, the opposite direction of Ryan’s home. At least I know I’m walking away from one threat I’d like to hide from. The walk there shows me how flooded the world really is. It’s one thing to see it from up high and it’s another entirely to get down in it. Every corner I round seems to bring me nearly face to face with a Risen. I’m able to carefully avoid them, eventually going to the rooftops to do so, but that’s dangerous and kind of lazy on my part. I just want to get my water and go home when what I should be doing is putting them down and eliminating the problem for Future Joss. Making Future Joss’s life easier with less zombies to face on a daily basis. But that’s Future Joss’s issue and right now Present Joss isn’t feeling it.

  Selfishness, especially my own, is what makes this place so hard to survive.

  When I get to the building I have a choice to make. Go inside and take the stairs or climb the fire escape. The fire escape of course sounds like the better option because I won’t have to be inside a building that for all I know could be crawling with Risen. It’s the smart choice on paper. But when you look at the situation more closely, mainly at the bolts securing the fire escape to the building, you see the flaws in the plan. It’s been many moons, many winters, many rain storms since this thing was deemed safe by the local fire inspector and I know for a fact that it’s hanging on by a thread. As I stand here on the sidewalk examining it, feeling more exposed by the second, I see the structure shift in the wind. I’m not setting foot on that.

  Inside it is.

  My skin crawls at the thought. I have to take several deep breaths to psyche myself up for this. Once I’m inside, I’m all stealth and speed. I don’t need to be a hero here. I’m not looking to hunt zombies tonight and help decrease the surplus population, no matter how much Future Joss will be annoyed by it. What I need to do is get in and get out without contact – living or otherwise.

  But what I need, what I want and what I get have rarely lined up.

  That Cabbage Patch Doll with the blood in her blond hair? I wanted a brunette.

  I also wanted my parents to live past New Years.

  Do you see the pattern here?

  What I see is a Risen at the end of the hall by the door to the stairs. The only door to the stairs.

  “Great,” I mutter, pulling out the ASP with my left hand and unsheathing my knife with my right.

  I’m right handed and my preferred weapon here is the ASP. So why am I holding it in my weak hand? Because it doesn’t need me to be strong. Not really. It doesn’t need me to be accurate either. All it needs is a target and a little momentum and that thing will crush bone under its steel tip like it’s nothin’. Like cracking a walnut. Ryan was right to be jealous. This thing is amazing. I sleep with it like a toddler with a teddy bear.

  A brisk breeze flutters through the smashed door behind me and carries down the hall. Almost instantly the hunchback female with a serious skin condition is aware of me. She begins the slow shamble down the long hall toward me and I think about waiting for her, making her come to me and maybe even drawing her out into the street before engaging her. But the day is waning, light will be scarce soon and I’m not about to be caught out in the wild after hours.

  I move down the hall slowly, checking doors
as I go and keeping my eyes on her progress. When my beauty queen with the gray skin sloughing off her bones moans into range I kneel down and swing out, aiming for her shin. It cracks, breaking the bone and dropping her to the ground. Once she’s down I quickly kick her over on her side, making her temple more accessible. I could have hit her in the head when she was up but it wouldn’t have ended her. It would only have either made a mess of her face or been a waste of energy. The top of the human skull, the only section I have clean access to in this tight hallway, is incredibly strong. The temple and the face - not so much.

  She grabs at my leg, clawing at the denim and moaning. Her big dead eyes are looking right at me and it’s that more than anything else that gives me chills. How is she looking at me with those things? What does she even see?

  “Nothing,” I growl, growing angry at her constant moaning. At her greedy hands. “You don’t see anything.”

  I swing the ASP down hard, making contact with her cheek bone. It explodes in a rush of black and gray. A tooth pops out of her mouth and skitters across the floor behind me. I bring the baton down again, this time closer to her ear. I must catch the temple a little because she stops moving. I don’t. I keep swinging the baton because I can. Because I want her gone. I want all semblance of a human face to be beaten into the floor and stripped from this body because it’s not real anymore. It’s not human and it shouldn’t look like one. No one should come through here to find her finally, perfectly, wholly dead and think how sad it is.

  When my arm grows tired and I’m sufficiently grossed out by the softness of what I’m now beating, I stop. I’m breathing heavy. I’m tired. I’m tired of a lot of things. I need to get upstairs, get my water and get home. I’ll clean myself up and watch a movie, something I haven’t done in a week. Not since Ryan rode the bike. I don’t know why I haven’t but tonight for some reason I really desperately want to.

  I take off at a sprint, ignoring the rest of the doors in the hallway. I don’t have enough time, patience or daylight to mind them all. It’s risky but not as risky as being out at night. This building is only six stories. I’m rounding the corner on the stairs heading up to the fifth floor, breathing deep and even, searching for my calm again, when I trip. I fly forward, my momentum thrusting me up the stairs and onto the fifth floor landing. I watch with horrified interest as my ASP, my greatest, most loyal friend, flies down the hall without me.

  “Ah, hell,” I groan.

  There’s another groan behind me. I scurry quickly up the last two stairs. When I spin around to look behind me I want to scream. It’s a crawler. A no leg having, teeth at your toes, scare the bejeezus out of me crawler. I hate these things. I hate them for the very situation that I’m in right now – they come out of nowhere. Taking a zombie down on purpose in order to end them the way I just did, that’s one thing. But Risen like this guy who slither across the earth at your feet like a snake, that’s messed up.

  He’s coming for me now, reaching up and pulling himself with that incredible, undeterred by pain zombie strength that he has. He’s on the landing with me before I can think to move. Then his hand is on my ankle. I kick at his face with my free foot, making contact with his nose and breaking it violently. It makes a sick, satisfying crunch sound but it doesn’t stop him. I pull myself backwards, reaching for the ASP with desperate fingers. He’s climbing my leg. His hand is on my knee, bringing his face level with my foot. I have the terrifying thought that he’ll bite it through the worn material of my tennis shoe.

  I finally grip the base of the baton and bring it around, crashing it into his forearm. I repeat the process until he finally lets me go because he has to. The bone is broken. I crabwalk away from him without thinking and I end up in a room. It looks like it used to be an office of some kind. I back into a heavy metal desk that refuses to move, to give me room to escape. I’m trapped. And he’s coming, pulling himself into the room after me using his one functioning arm and groaning incessantly.

  I quickly lash out with my foot, swinging the heavy wood door closed on his face. He’s too far into the room, though. I only succeed in slamming it against his skull. It bounces back at me as he continues to groan. Feeling frustrated, angry and scared I kick again. The door smacks him in the skull, pinning his head between it and the frame. I kick again and again and again, beating his head between the two sections of wood. I’m kicking over and over, hoping it’s enough. That eventually I’ll hit that sweet spot on his temple just wrong, just hard enough to kill and he’ll go down for good.

  Kick, crunch! Kick, crunch! Kick, crunch!

  There’s a heavy, blessed crack. I know I’ve gotten my wish. I kick one last time and let the door swing back at me after it makes mushy contact with what’s left of his head. I don’t look at the mess I’ve made. It’s nothing I haven’t seen before but I do want to be able to eat later and actually enjoy it so I stand up slowly on shaking legs and step quickly over what’s left of the guy.

  Today, I have emphatically decided, is for suck.

  And it’s not over. This day is never ending. I still haven’t scored my water and I just worked up quite a thirst with my leg workout back there. I take a moment to calm down, to breathe easy and remind myself to be careful when what I really want to do is run through this building as fast as I can, get my water from the roof and run back out again. Time efficient, but deadly. So I don’t do it.

  Turns out I needn’t have worried. I make it to the roof without further incident but when I arrive my heart sinks. The door, which I normally keep latched firmly, is thrown wide open. Someone has been here. I pass through the opening slowly, scanning the open space and hoping against hope that I don’t run into the living.

  I luck out. There’s only a Risen. She’s wandering around aimlessly on the far side of the roof opposite my rain system. I’m tired and grumpy so I ignore her and her pencil skirt office attire for now. Maybe I won’t have to engage her at all.

  I move quickly to my rain barrels which are actually Rubbermaid rectangular storage containers, the kind people used to put holiday decorations in and shove in a dark corner of their garage 90% of the year. Now they sit attached to a series gutters I ripped off the sides of buildings and secured to each other so they run side by side, creating several long lines of water collection that feed down into a pasta strainers I fit in the lid of each tub. They keep leaves and other debris out, including frogs, but I’ll still have to boil it when I get home just to be sure there’s no bacteria. Or I would have to do that if there were any water in the tubs.

  They’ve cleaned me out. Whoever they were they took my entire water supply from this roof. I throw the lid off each tub even though I can tell from just nudging them with my foot that they’re empty. Every last one of them.

  “Dammit!”

  All of that for nothing. The zombie in the hall, the crawler in the door, this one coming at me now here on the roof. All of it. All for nothing. I risked everything and now I’m going home empty handed.

  I kick each tub across the roof and watch as one trips and tumbles over the edge. It stuns me for half a second, just long enough to think it’s a bad thing. Then I flip a switch and think it’s the best thing ever. I grab the gutter work and launch it over the edge as well, chuckling when I hear it clatter loudly to the ground. I’m breathing quickly and feeling crazy. I’m so angry, something I haven’t felt in forever. I got a taste of it when Ryan dropped into my world and blew it up but this is different. This is frustration and rage. It’s pent up for miles and I don’t know what to do with it. What I should do, healthy or not, is stow it. Now is not the time for this.

  I drop the other gutter fixture I was holding in my hand and let it fall carelessly to the rough rooftop. Watching the Risen girl come at me I can’t bring the numb. I can’t find the calm that I strove for on the way up here and barely managed. I need it to do this right, to make sure I survive and keep my head on straight, but it just won’t come. I back up as she stalks me slowly and clumsily
. I let her walk me to the brink. The backs of my legs hit the lip that rises above the edge by just a few feet, just enough to trip a person and send them tumbling down to their death. It’s a dangerous feature. I wonder how that ever made it in the pearly white, disinfected, overly sanitized safety net world that existed ten years ago.

  Look out! Coffee is hot!

  Knives are sharp!

  This End Up, numbnuts!

  This woman is older than me by at least twenty years and deader by about four. She didn’t make it. All of her warning labels were gone and the world was too much for her to figure out on her own.

  Beware: Zombies bite!

  I’m not ashamed to say I feel superior to this chick. She has years of experience on me but I survived and she didn’t. She may have had a 401K, a husband and an Audi, but at least I still have a heartbeat. One that’s thrumming wildly in my chest as my breath comes hot, hard and fast into my lungs.

  It’s all of these emotions, all these things I’ve forgotten and gotten on without that are now literally bursting through me, seeping from my pores and smothering me from the inside out. There’s so much, too much.

  And it’s gotta go somewhere.

  When Corporate Kelly makes her big move and lunges for me I drop down to the ground on my knees and spring forward. I tackled her at the thighs, standing up when I make contact and lifting her bony body onto my shoulder. Then I push on her knees and flip her forward, over my back and over the edge. I send her off the roof face first to kiss the pavement below. And I turn to watch it happen. I wait for the impact and when the smack! echoes back up to me, I throw my arms in the air to signal a touchdown.

  If that move doesn’t get me the Heisman then justice is dead.

  I’m still pissed about my water, or lack of, when I get back to my neighborhood. I’ve still got some rabbit, though, and some veggies that I can eat raw instead of boiling. And I still have a home to go back to, so that’s a plus. I haven’t been ratted out yet just as I dared to instill a little faith in humanity again. Of course that’s over now that humanity stole my stuff, mainly my life sustaining resource. But that’s okay because Ryan’s different and I actually choose to believe that.