Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  Taylor looks at me surprised. “How would I know?”

  “Sam said you have military here,” Ryan begins.

  “Ex-military,” Taylor clarifies.

  “Either way, they were with the government when it went down. If anyone would know anything about it, it’s them.”

  Taylor shakes his head. “They don’t. They didn’t then and they still don’t.”

  Trent chuckles from his corner.

  “What’s funny?” I ask.

  “Of course they don’t know,” he says coolly. “They were all soldiers, I imagine. No one very high up. They wouldn’t have been given vital information like that.”

  “The government fell when you were just a kid,” Taylor says incredulously. “How are you so jaded about it?”

  “I read. And my father always hated the government.”

  “Trent grew up living off the grid,” Ryan explains, probably because he knows Mr. Roboto never will. “He and his dad lived on a self-sufficient farm up in the mountains. His dad always expected a social collapse. It’s why Trent is so… comfortable with the way the world is.”

  “He wasn’t exactly prepped for zombies. That took him a little by surprise. He died in the first wave. I’ve never seen him so angry.”

  “Dying will do that to you,” Taylor agrees.

  “I’m sure he’d be proud of how far you’ve made it,” Ryan tells him.

  Trent shrugs. “He wasn’t the sentimental type.”

  “Must be where you get your warmth and people skills,” I tell him.

  He grins. “That’s from my mother’s side.”

  “So no one knows how it started?” I ask in amazement. “No one knows why we have to live like this? That’s crap!”

  “Would it matter?” Taylor asks. “What would it change?”

  “Nothing,” Ryan says darkly.

  I can tell he’s annoyed by this too. I know it wouldn’t change anything but it doesn’t stop me from wanting to understand. Honestly, I think I just want someone to blame. Some dipshit scientists or a government branch or all of it or no one. I don’t know. I just want to know. I want a reason for why I’ve lived on the run and in hiding for the majority of my life. Why I’m jacked three ways from Sunday and can’t even enjoy the little stupid things I want to enjoy. Little things like large hands and earnest eyes.

  ***

  Two nights later, I’m called out as being a liar.

  “You’re lying, you have to be,” Sam says, sitting back hard in his chair.

  “I’m not!” I exclaim. “I’m dead serious, I don’t get it.”

  Ryan groans, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “Joss, we’ve explained it so many times.”

  “Just write it down. Let me have a cheat sheet.”

  “So because you’re bad at it, we should let you cheat?” Trent asks, shuffling the cards.

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “That’s exactly what you’re saying,” Ryan disagrees.

  “I’m not cheating!”

  “No,” Sam says, “because if you were cheating, you’d be winning. I just think you’re lying.”

  “I’m not!” I shout again, laughing. “I honestly do not get it.”

  “It’s poker. It’s not nuclear physics.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m not stupid.”

  “No one said you were,” Ryan tells me.

  “We just said you’re a liar,” Sam adds.

  “Ugh!” I shout, throwing poker chips at him.

  “You’re only making me richer,” he laughs as he deftly catches every chip.

  “Okay, explain the blind to me one more time. Then the river, I don’t get the river.”

  “We’re not explaining it again,” Trent says.

  “Then play without me, ‘cause I don’t understand half of what’s happening here,” I tell them, tossing my remaining few chips onto the center of the table.

  Ryan shoves them back at me. “No way. You’re in. Poker with only three people is pointless.”

  “We’re basically playing with only three people now,” Sam mutters under his breath.

  Ryan and Trent chuckle, the traitorous bastards.

  I’m about to lay into Sam, to insist that I’m in this game (or hand? Round? Cycle? I don’t know) and I’ll kick his ass this time, which I don’t even know how to do but I want it, when the door flies open. It bangs hard against the wall, startling everyone. I jump up along with the boys, our legs knocking the table and sending chips and cards rolling and fluttering to the floor. Sam stands on the outside of the cage where he’d been playing poker with us through the bars, his surprised face fixed on the door.

  There stands the brunette nurse, her normally calm face pinched in rage. She stalks toward us in the cage, her eyes fixed hard on me. I nearly cower under that stare but I’ve lived too long in the wild to flinch so easily. When she whips out a gun, though, something I haven’t seen in years, I blink rapidly. I can’t believe my eyes. I can’t believe she still has one and I want to doubt she has any bullets left for it, but the look on her face tells me that she absolutely, positively does. And one of them has my name on it.

  “No, Ali, what are you doing?” Sam exclaims, coming to stand beside her.

  She cast him a quick look that tells him to back off. He does slowly, his hands raised.

  “She’s cool, I swear,” Sam tells her. His voice is rising in pitch with his nerves. “She’s not a zombie.”

  Feet are rushing around the house. I hear the front door fly open, boots pounding on the tile floor of the hall and entryway. People are running upstairs above us. Someone is shouting but it’s too muffled to understand.

  The brunette, Ali, looks at me. Her hand holding the gun never wavers.

  “You’re going to answer my questions and then you’re going to die so you may as well be honest, do you understand me?”

  “Huckleberry!” Sam cries.

  Ryan, Trent and I all stare at him, confused as hell.

  “Huckleberry, Ali! I swear it! Don’t do this!”

  “Calm down, Sam,” she tells him evenly, never looking away from me. “I’m crystal clear. I know what’s what and these three are spies.”

  “What?” I exclaim, shocked. “No, no we’re not. I promise.”

  “Lies. You’re spies for the Colonists, which leads me to my first question. What were you supposed to accomplish once you were inside?”

  I shake my head, my breath coming hard in short, painful gasps. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re not working with the Colonists. Ask Sam. Ask Taylor!”

  She cocks the gun. Ryan steps closer to me but one look from Ali sends him right back where he was. She focuses her eyes on me again.

  “We haven’t had strangers on this island in years. Then suddenly you three show up in a Hive boat with insider knowledge about the Colonies. Now, just days later, Colony ships are creeping through the Sound heading our way in the dead of night, obviously planning an ambush. So I’ll ask you again, what were you meant to accomplish while you were here? What did they send you to do? Were you supposed to disable our power supply? What were you planning?”

  “All we wanted,” Ryan says calmly, trying to draw her attention away from me, “was to speak to someone in your council about getting help freeing our friends from a Colony. That’s all. Trent and I, we’re members of a gang on the outside but it’s not The Hive. It’s also too small to be of any help. So we went to The Hive and they sent us to you. That’s the entire truth.”

  Ali shakes her head, her mouth forming a perfect line on her face. It makes me sweat down to my toes.

  “Try again,” she whispers darkly.

  “Lower the gun and talk to us about this,” Ryan insists firmly.

  “No time for that. The ships are almost here and if they manage to overtake this island, I’m not about to leave you alive. So I’ll ask one more time, what were you meant to do here?”

  “We were meant to find Heaven,” I
tell her softly, thinking of Crenshaw. I’m so used to not mentioning him, never talking about him to keep him safe, that I suddenly realize I never mentioned him in my story to her. I only ever told Taylor about him and the name didn’t ring a bell so I never brought it up to Ali. That seems infinitely stupid to me now. It’s amazing what clarity a gun to the face can bring.

  “See, now we’re getting somewhere. God, Heaven and divine retribution – that’s all Colony talk.”

  “No, it’s Crenshaw. Except he called it Elysium.”

  She blinks and I nearly pass out. His name means something to her.

  “Crenshaw is the one who told us about you originally,” I continue, hoping to hit home again with his name. “He said we never should ask The Hive for anything. That they were liars and traitors and he was right. I should have listened to him. He showed us a map, told us he helped you plant a garden here and that he had an open invitation to join whenever he wanted but he won’t because he’s waiting.”

  Ali takes a deep breath. Her fingers flex slightly on the handle of the gun.

  “What is he waiting for?” she asks, her tone giving nothing away.

  “His daughter,” Ryan says softly. “The Hive has his daughter and he’ll never leave her.”

  Her eyes dart from me to Ryan, to Trent and back again. Finally, she lowers the gun.

  “What’s your name?” she asks me.

  “Joss.”

  She shakes her head minutely. “No, what’s your name?”

  I frown, suddenly unsure. “Jocelyn.”

  Whatever softness was building in her leaks away. The gun is back in my face in an instant.

  “Wrong answer.”

  Gun = clarity.

  “Athena!” I cry, finally understanding. “He calls me Athena. He said Joss was too mousy for—“

  “A warrior like you,” Ali finishes for me, the gun lowering again.

  I nod quickly, though it’s more like shaking. I gesture to Ryan. “That’s Helios.”

  Ali looks to Trent who shrugs, unconcerned.

  “We’re not that close,” he admits.

  Ali stares at each of us in turn. No one else moves. We stand statue still, all very aware of the gun hanging heavy and dark at her side. She stares at me the longest, her face blank. Then suddenly she nods curtly as though coming to an agreement with me, an agreement I know nothing about.

  “Sam,” she says, turning to face him, her entire demeanor changing. She suddenly seems tired. Her movements are slower. Sluggish. “Let them out. I’m not the only one who will be coming for them, I just got here first. Once they’re out, take them to their boat at the old pier. It’s tied up there.”

  “You’re letting us leave?” Ryan asks hopefully. “Alive?”

  Ali looks at him, a sad smile on her lips. “Any friend of Crenshaw’s…”

  She turns to leave as Sam is unlocking our door. Maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s tempting fate, but I call out to her.

  “Thank you.”

  She pauses in the doorway, her face cut in half by the light in the room and the shadow beyond it.

  “Don’t thank me yet. I doubt you’ll make it past the buoys.”

  “What’s the deal with the buoys?” Ryan asks.

  She ignores him. Her eyes are fastened on mine.

  “If you see Crenshaw again,” she says, her voice soft and affectionate, “tell him Persephone sends her love.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  When she’s gone, Sam swings the door to the cage open. Not waiting for us to get out, he runs across the room to a large cabinet and unlocks it quickly. Inside are our weapons. When I take hold of my ASP in my shaking hand, my brain and body still coming down from the gun in my face, I feel better. Less like wetting myself and more like kicking a little ass. Crushing skulls and forgetting names.

  “We’ll go out the back way,” Sam says, checking to see if the hall is clear.

  It sounds like most of the people have moved outside. There’s the sound of shouting wafting in through the door that’s been left open and I can see lights scattering around the huge front lawn. There are vehicles, flashlights and torches but mostly there’s bodies. Lots and lots of moving, running, frantic bodies, none of which I want to come in contact with right now.

  When the house is silent he runs us out of the library, down a long corridor that leads to the kitchen and out the back door. When we hit the backyard, I’m momentarily floored by the fact that there’s a swing set with a slide and sandbox out here. The little girl with the eyes and the doll must live here permanently. I can see her here, laughing and running with her dad nearby, her mom in the kitchen. Both of them with a gun on their hip and a knife in their shoe.

  Sam sprints us over the dark lawn toward the back of the property. There are other people out here running around, but they’re farther down on the other side of the house. No one pays us any mind. Eventually we reach bushes that we dive straight into. The branches claw at our clothes trying to hold us back. I hear a rip as I run through them and I know yet another coat of mine is torn. I’m suddenly wishing I’d paid more attention in sewing class.

  “Over here,” Sam calls quietly.

  I don’t know why he’s bothering with stealth. The world has gone insane around us. People are shouting, horns are blaring, lights flash in every direction.

  He leads us up to the fence, then without looking back to see if we’re following, climbs it like a crazed monkey. He’s up and over in only a few seconds, taking any thoughts I may have had about these people possibly going soft right over with him. I glance at the boys, feeling like it was a challenge. One I’m not sure we can rise to but I’m sure as hell gonna try.

  I take a couple of steps back, then launch myself at the fence. I tune it all out – the noises, the fear, the stress of the moment, all of it. I focus only on getting over the fence and to the other side without tearing my clothes any more than I already have and without landing on my face on the other side. I’m grinning ear to ear when I land firmly on my feet beside Sam, the water from the Sound lapping gently on the shore not far behind us.

  Ryan and Trent clear the fence, though I’m pleased to see Trent struggle a little bit. Mr. Roboto isn’t perfectly agile. It’s good to know.

  Once we’re all together again, Sam runs us to the west along the shore. It’s not long before I spot it – our ill-fated, ill painted Hive boat. I wish they’d burned it. I’m with Ryan on this one; Marlow isn’t getting that thing back in one piece.

  “There it is,” Sam breathes, halting not far from the pier. “Take it and go. Get clear of the buoys as quick as you can, but steer clear of the Colony ships too.”

  “What the hell are the buoys for?” Ryan asks, sounding annoyed that he’s yet to get an answer on that question.

  Then he gets one. Just as I’m pointing to the boats cutting through the water and closing in fast, the night explodes in light and sound. It comes from behind us inside the island, then it cuts across the sky like a comet ripping through the night. It’s huge, angry and it’s on fire. It lands near one of the boats, missing it by mere feet. Then another one launches not far behind it. This one arcs a little higher, crossing the water a little bit farther and then it connects solidly with the Colony boat. The boat erupts in flames. I hear screams coming across the water that’s growing choppier by the minute. They won’t put it out. Whatever that ball was made of, it exploded and it carried flames with every inch of it. The boat is now a floating funeral pyre.

  “That’s what they’re for,” Sam tells him. “Now go and stay away—“

  “From the buoys, yeah. Got it,” Ryan agrees. He puts out his hand to Sam who takes it and pulls him into a quick hug, both of them slapping the other on the back twice hard. “Thanks, man. Take care.”

  “Yeah, you too. Good luck out there.”

  When Sam is gone, running back up the shore toward his people shouting and preparing to fire another blazing ball of ugly, we run the short distance to the ol
d, broke down pier.

  “So, I don’t get it. What are the buoys exactly?” I ask, climbing in.

  Ryan helps Trent untie us then starts hoisting a sail. “They’re distance markers. They let the people firing know how far out the boats are so they shoot more accurately.”

  “What are they shooting? Cannons?”

  “Trebuchet,” Trent says, taking the rudder. We slowly begin moving across the water, his eyes watching the buoys and boats carefully. There are a lot of them in the way, in between us and open water. Safety. This is going to be tricky. “It’s like a catapult. It has a long sling arm with weight on the other end. When the weight drops, it shoots the arm up which drags the sling and flings whatever weapon you loaded in it toward your target.”

  “From the looks of it,” Ryan says eyeing the burning boat, “they’re using burning oil or tar.”

  “Maybe they figured out the secret to Greek Fire,” Trent whispers reverently.

  I look at him in surprise. “What’s Greek Fire?”

  He shrugs. “No one knows what it was exactly, but it burned on water. Scientists tried for ages to figure it out but they could never recreate it. Maybe returning to medieval methods of warfare has made people more resourceful than a curious scientist in a lab coat.”

  “Can’t be it,” Ryan says, sounding disappointed. “It’s going out when it hits the water.”

  “Damn,” Trent mutters.

  “Okay, but whatever it is,” I say, pulling them out of their fanboy funk, “we need to avoid it. I don’t think the people operating the treb… the things are going to be picky about hitting us.”

  “Trebuchet, and you’re right,” Ryan agrees. “Should we drop the sail? Float inconspicuous?”