by Tracey Ward
By the time we reach the front door of the large brown house, I’m ready to turn and run. To try my luck on scaling that fence and head for the water. When the door swings open and light spills out onto the porch, shining in my eyes like the sun, I hesitate. I don’t want to do this again. It’s different, sure, but a lot of it is the same. I don’t know what to expect in here. I don’t know anything about these people at all. Maybe they’re like the cannibals out there in the wild, feasting on other healthy, living humans. Hunting them for the sport of it. Maybe I’ll end up dinner or maybe we’ll become science experiments.
What happens is we’re greeted with silence. A large empty entrance hall with tall ceilings, a huge staircase and absolutely no people. I’m nudged from behind to get me moving and the amazing thing is that I go without protest. It’s warm, light and quiet. It’s dry. It’s empty. It has pictures on the walls, a decent rug over the hard floor. It smells like hot food.
It feels like a real home.
I glance back at Ryan to see him looking around in awe, his face saying everything I’m thinking. This is unreal. This is a step back in time to before the beginning. Before the bad days. Before we lost everything and everyone. He meets my eyes for the briefest of moments before we’re ushered farther inside and his expression reflects my own – it’s terrifying.
“In here,” the stocky guy tells me. “You’re going into quarantine in the back.”
“All of us together?” I ask, feeling my pulse quicken.
If their cleansing practices are anything like the Colonies, I can’t handle having Trent and Ryan in the same room seeing that. Maybe these people are bigger animals than I took them for.
“Yeah, of course. Sorry we don’t have separate rooms but your modesty will just have to survive it, princess.”
I bristle at being called princess, reminded of the first time I met Ryan when he called me the same thing. I sleep on a pile of rags on the floor like Cinder-freaking-rella. How exactly am I princess here?
We’re led down the hall to the back of the house. I hear movement inside as we go. Hurried footsteps on the floor above us, a door shutting quickly. Somewhere in a kitchen nearby a pot or pan is banged against another. I’m trying to get a count on how many people are here but I’m sure I’m not getting all of them. I wonder if this is their main house where most of the people live or if we’re being held somewhere completely isolated. Judging by the open fields around the house, I’m thinking isolated.
“Inside,” Stocky tells me, opening a door to a dark room.
I glare at him as I walk past, not flinching at walking into an unknown, unlit room. I’ve been through worse and I want him to know it. To know that I’m no princess. That I’ve got backbone for miles.
When he flicks on the light, I’m shocked. This house keeps doing that to me. These people keep doing that. It’s a library, full of books on nearly every single wall but it’s really surprise attraction is the cage. It’s built against one of the walls, the bars going nearly to the ceiling. It’s something I’m thinking they stole from a police station. Something they carefully tore down and built up back here in this house. Inside there’s a single twin bed with sheets on a real mattress and a comforter. They don’t match but I’m not judging.
I look at Stocky to find him impatiently gesturing me forward, toward the cage.
“Seriously?” I ask him in amazement. “You’re just going to lock us in there? No showers? No scrubbing? No lice shampoo?”
He scowls at me. “No, no showers. No steam treatments either. The hotel spa is closed at the moment but if the accommodations are not up to your standards I can look into getting you moved to another wing. Do you want me to see if the Presidential Suite is available? Do you need turn down service? Perhaps a shoe shine.”
I scowl right back. “I don’t know what any of that means.”
“It means this is the quarantine room, get inside,” he says gruffly. “I know there’s only one bed but we’ll bring two more mattresses down. We aren’t exactly used to having guests. I’m so sorry.”
“Okay, the sarcasm I understand.”
“Great. I’m fluent in it. Now for the last time, get in the cage or get out. My dinner is getting colder the longer I’m standing here gabbing with you.”
“Come on, Joss,” Ryan says, stepping between Stocky and I.
I follow him into the cage, feeling Trent close on my heels. They clang the metal door shut behind us and that’s that. We’re locked in. Prisoners. But for how long? And why doesn’t it feel the same? Why doesn’t it make me ill the way the Colony did? I’m more locked down here than I ever was there but it doesn’t make me stir crazy.
I’m about to ask how long our quarantine will last when Stocky gives us the rundown.
“Listen up, here’s the deal,” he says, sounding bored. “This is the quarantine area. This will be your home for the next two weeks.”
“Two weeks?” I exclaim.
Stocky holds up his hand. “Please hold all questions until the end of the tour. You are not prisoners here. If at any time you want to leave, you are free to go. I would actually prefer it if you left so give it some serious thought. If you choose to stay, you will remain in quarantine for the two week period. After that, if you do not turn into flesh eating zombies, you will be released from quarantine and brought before a council. This council will decide what to do with you. Getting through the quarantine does not guarantee you anything. In two weeks the council may decide to deport you immediately at which time you will be put right back on your little boat and sent on your way with a reminder to never come back. This is the most likely scenario, so I ask you again to consider saving both you and I a whole lot of time and hassle and leave immediately. No pressure. Speaking of pressure, through that door behind you is the bathroom. I assume you’ve seen one before. Maybe even operated a toilet or two in your day, but I don’t have high hopes. Please do not defecate on the floor. Use the toilet. I wish I didn’t have to say this, but experience has taught me otherwise.” He looks directly at me. “There is a shower with soap and hot water, clean towels, but sadly no facial masks, exfoliants or cucumber slices for your weary eyes. My sincerest apologies.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “I asked if you were going to scrub us down like the Colonies, I didn’t exactly ask for a massage.”
He pauses, sizing me up, seeming to take in my clothing and appearance in detail for the first time. “How exactly do you know what the Colony does to new members?”
I freeze, realizing my mistake. I worried insanely that Ryan and Trent would think I was a Colonist spy, that I hadn’t escaped but that I’d been a member all along. To these people that don’t know me at all, that worry doesn’t seem so insane.
“I’ve heard stories,” I tell him.
He continues to watch me silently. I stare back, desperate not to look guilty of anything but I just flat out lied so I’m feeling pretty boldly guilty at the moment.
“I’m going to eat my dinner,” he finally says, his voice turning low and serious. He’s no longer the bored, sarcastic tour guide anymore. He’s very alert. Very aware of me. “You’ll get yours soon enough. The extra mattresses too. In the meantime, don’t get too comfortable.”
With that he’s gone, he and his entire entourage. It’s just me, Ryan and Trent in the cage in the library in the building in the wild on an island emptied of Risen.
Chapter Fourteen
“Is prison supposed to be nicer than home?” Trent asks, glancing over the book spines on the shelves.
“Didn’t you hear?” Ryan asks drolly. “It’s not a prison.”
“Awful lot of bars for ‘not a prison,’” I mutter.
“Joss, you take the bed. I don’t know if they’ll make good on the promise of other mattresses but even if they don’t Trent and I will be fine on the floor.”
“I can sleep on the floor.”
“We all can sleep on the floor,” Trent says. “No one is saying you can’
t. But it’s not very chivalrous for either of us to take the bed with a girl in the mix.”
“So you’re saying we’re all equal, but I’m a girl so I get the bed?”
“Doesn’t make any sense, does it?” He shrugs. “Maybe that’s why chivalry is dead. It’s dumb.”
“It’s not dead and it’s not dumb,” Ryan protests sounding tired and annoyed. “She’s taking the bed. Can we not make it an issue? Can you just say ‘thank you’ and lay down?”
“Can I go to the bathroom first?” I ask quietly, surprised by his sharp tone.
“Ryan, you sound exhausted. You should take a nap,” Trent suggests. He snaps his fingers like he just had a brilliant idea. “The bed! Why don’t you take it? Lie down? Joss, you don’t mind, right?”
Ryan runs his hands over his face, groaning. “Not now. Seriously so much, not now, dude.”
Trent frowns at the bed. “There’s no mint on this pillow.”
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I mumble, leaving them to work it out.
Inside the small room behind the library is a gleaming white, sterile as balls bathroom that makes me afraid to touch anything. This is familiar. This feels like the Colonies. Everything wiped down, everything in its place, the faint hint of anal retentive douchebaggery hanging in the air. And Stocky didn’t lie. There’s a shower that has steaming hot running water with clean towels that smell like soap and something else. Something flowery that I don’t like but it’s not mildew so I’ll roll with it. There’s soap in the shower as well. Something a lot like the Colony soap but with a slightly different scent. More of the flowers, I think. It’s smoother too. More like a lotion. It’s nice.
It’s then that I realize I’m naked in the shower under the hot water, my dirty, wet clothes a sodden pile on the perfect white floor. I honestly don’t know how I ended up in here covered in lavender scented lather. There was no conscious decision to do it, it just… happened. Too late to turn back now.
I stay in for ten minutes, washing my hair and body once per minute. I would stay in and do it all again if I wasn’t worried about letting the guys have a go at it. I’m trying not to be selfish, to think of others every now and then, but it’s hard because I desperately want it all for myself. As I climb reluctantly out the warm shower into the chilled air, I decide that being civilized sucks.
Dressed in my cold wet clothes again, I head back out to the cage. I’m surprised to find the boys’ mattresses have arrived and we’re not alone. A cot has been set up on the far side of the room near the door where a blond haired guy about my age is covering it in a blanket. It’s another comforter. Another genuine blanket that looks clean. Like it would smell of the lavender soap.
He glances up when I come out, giving me a sharp nod. “’Sup?”
I glance at Ryan, unsure.
“This is Sam. He’s our guard for the night,” Ryan explains.
He’s sitting on the floor on his mattress looking like he’s ready to tip over. I don’t know why he doesn’t just go to sleep already.
“I thought we weren’t in a prison. Why do we need a guard?”
“In case you decide you want to leave,” Sam says, sitting down on his bed with his back against the wall of books. “Taylor is all about you having easy access to the exit at all times.”
“Taylor is the stocky guy?”
“Yeah. He’s head of security. Whenever we have visitors, which lately is never, he’s in charge of making sure they don’t cause any problems.” Sam smiles at me. “You’re messing up his routine right now. He hates you.”
“Great.”
Our chances of getting to talk to someone important here seem slim to none. I’m not exactly anxious to wait out this two week period just for the chance to talk to a council, but it might be our only option.
I sit down heavily beside Ryan, getting so close that our sides touch. He glances over at me and smiles weakly, dark crescents forming under his tired eyes.
“You need to sleep,” I whisper to him.
He shakes his head, his smile fading. He turns to Sam. “So you’re part of security?”
“Yep.”
“You seem kind of young for that.”
Sam snorts. “What are you? Like a year older than me? You seem kind of young too. Or is it because you grew up on the outside so you think you’re tougher than I am?”
“Mostly that.”
“Whatever,” Sam says, sounding angry. “I grew up in it too. We weren’t always this safe. I was in the first quarantine zone when it first started going down.”
“So was I. Woodburn, Oregon. You?”
Sam eyes him shrewdly. I’m sure he’s wondering if he can believe him.
“Albany.”
“Longview, Washington,” Trent says absently. He’s sitting in the corner in a chair with a book in his hands, his head hovering over it. He’s barely listening to us but that’s probably still more focus than the average person.
“Seattle,” I say softly.
“You were outside it when it started,” Sam says. He’s not asking. He knows. We all know. We all remember, even all these years later, exactly where the lines were drawn. The cities that they encompassed that mean nothing now. That are dead and buried. Forgotten.
“Yeah,” I admit, feeling a little like an outsider. Like somehow even though I lost everything just like they did, I didn’t suffer as much because I was spared a few more months of normal. I got one more summer of being a kid, of being carefree and happy. Of swimming pools, popsicles and bike rides. I was given more time, no matter how meager that time feels now. “It didn’t reach us until December, back when the secondary quarantines broke down as they started testing the cure.”
“The cure,” Sam mutters with disgust. “What a load.”
“They never fully tested it,” Trent says, turning a page. “They made one small breakthrough, announced it as the end of the disease, expanded the quarantine to give it a go and lost control when it turned out it didn’t cure anything. It just delayed it. But it wasn’t their fault.”
“Then whose fault was it?” Ryan asks.
“The people on the outside.”
“Excuse me?” I ask hotly.
“Yeah, like you,” Trent says, finally looking up from his book. “You and your parents.”
“My dead parents? That’s who you blame for the fake cure?!”
“Not them specifically,” he replies calmly, “but everyone on the outside played a part. They were demanding a cure be found. They were terrified the sickness would get out and kill everyone else on the planet. It was either find a cure or firebomb the entire quarantine zone, something they had started to do. They tried it out to see how the public, how you and your parents, responded to it.”
“Portland,” Ryan says darkly.
I don’t dare look at him. I can feel the anger rolling off him as he thinks about this, as he talks about a time I don’t even like to remember let alone speak of. I’m worried some of that anger he’s feeling is directed at me, as though I as an eight year old girl contributed to the hell he went through during those first few months.
“You can’t blame the people on the outside,” I tell Trent defensively. “We were just as clueless as you.”
“I didn’t say it was entirely your fault, but the pressure the world was putting on the doctors and scientists to get that cure was unreal. It was too much. They rushed it and we all paid for it. Luckily, those of us already on the inside knew how to survive it. Didn’t really change our world too much other than the gates were flung open and we were free to roam.”
“Only it was better not to,” Sam says, “so we were still trapped.”
“Were you in one of the Safe Zones?” Ryan asks him.
Sam nods. “Warm Springs down in eastern Oregon. That’s where most of us here are from.”
“How many people are here?” I ask.
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Almost 3,000 I think. When Warm Springs fell apart most of us came her
e and some others joined us later, but a lot of people bailed. Followed the psycho.”
I frown. “Who are you talking about?”
Sam looks at me like he thinks I’m messing with him. I glance at Ryan and Trent to see if they know something I don’t, but they look as confused as I feel.
“You guys really don’t know, do you?”
I shake my head, see the boys do the same.
“Wow, maybe you really aren’t Colonists.”
“We’re not,” I insist angrily.
“Taylor says you know stuff, though. Insider stuff.”
“Yeah, because I was inside a Colony as a prisoner,” I blurt out, deciding to go for the truth since my lie was weak anyway.
“And you got out?” Sam asks skeptically.
“Barely. The people inside, they feel just as trapped as I did. They helped me escape so I could get help and come back to free them too.”
“Please,” Sam spits, scowling at me, “they love it in there. They’d follow their Messiah to the ends of the earth and back.”
“What Messiah?” Trent asks, suddenly very interested in us.
“The psycho.”
“Who are you talking about?” Ryan demands.
Sam looks at me. “You say you were on the inside, how do you not know this? He’s the leader of the Colonies. He founded them. The people, they practically worship him and all his crap about keeping everyone clean and pure, about how the Fever was retribution from God for all of the evil in the world and only the righteous will survive. That’s why they lock themselves inside so tightly, it’s why they cruise the streets saving people.”
“Who is this guy? Who are you talking about?” Ryan asks again.
“Dr. Westbrook.”
“Who is Dr. Westbrook?” I ask. “Should that name mean something to me?”
“Probably not, no. You weren’t at Warm Springs. He was a doctor there,” Sam says bitterly. “A dentist, actually. He sucked. Anyway, when the second quarantine failed and the Fever started turning the entire world into zombies, Dr. Westbrook started going on and on about how it was right, how God had planned it. How the pure should be kept pure and the wicked would get theirs. He said because we were inside the Safe Zone when it broke the second time that we had been chosen. That no one else should be let in. That they should all be left to die because that’s what God wanted. He really went nuts. I heard him talking a few times as a kid and even then I knew it was creepy. But a lot of people agreed with him, which I don’t get at all.”