Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  My lips curl back in disgust. “We have nothing to talk about with you.”

  The short guy flinches. His teeth flash, and it may be a trick of the light but they look shadowed and sharp.

  He steps toward me. The room shifts with him. Shadows build, growing too tall beside him, an army of darkness waiting to answer his call. A cavalry of devils.

  “Oh, my dear girl,” he says, his voice going hushed, taking the entire room with it. Everything is pinpointed down to this small man with the quiet voice and the dangerous gleam in his eyes. “I believe you’re wrong. We share the same dream.”

  “I really doubt that.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “What dream could we ever have in common?”

  He grins darkly. “Revolution.”

  Chapter Three

  I’m sitting down to dinner with a table full of cannibals.

  It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke—one that ends with something about passing the salt and then everybody laughs, only I’m not laughing. I’m also not eating, definitely not anything of the meaty, protein-packing variety. I wouldn’t even trust a glass of milk, and I. Love. Milk. Love it. The Colonists almost had me selling my soul to them for it. But with the Colonists, believe it or not, I trusted the source more than I do here.

  These people will eat your toes while you watch, so it doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility that the milk on this table came from a person, and while that’s fine for babies, there’s something very sickening about the thought of it now.

  “Please, dig in,” Shorty says from his seat at the head of the long rectangular dining table.

  Shorty’s name is Elijah. I should probably start thinking of him as that, but I feel like names humanize these lunatics and I don’t want to soften my image of them. They’re polite, more hospitable than my mom on Thanksgiving, but I don’t like it. It’s creepy. Creepier than if they came at me covered in living human blood with bits of warm tissue dribbling from their lips. This right here, this is like Halloween in reverse. This is monsters and ghouls dressed up as preachers and soccer moms.

  We’ve been joined by a couple of new people, but I can tell by the seating that the important ones are Andy and Elijah. Andy seems to have almost a celebrity status with the rest of the group. People smile at him, clap him on the shoulder; the few women I’ve seen look at him a little too long. He’s a decent enough looking guy from what I can tell in this light, but good looks and a charming smile can’t account for the reaction people have to him. It doesn’t explain why Elijah has him sitting directly to his right at the table.

  Elijah smiles patiently at us. “You’re not eating.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I tell him dryly.

  “You’re not hungry or you’re not hungry for what we have to offer?”

  “Does it matter?” Ryan asks from across the table.

  “Quite a bit.”

  I push my plate away slowly. “I’ve never been hungry enough for what you call food.”

  Elijah’s smile changes. He holds it steady but the tightness around his eyes makes it different. It makes it angry.

  “Waste not, want not,” he sings softly.

  I shiver down to my toes.

  “What did you mean by us sharing a dream?” Trent asks, his curiosity knowing no disturbing crimes-against-nature bounds.

  “We want what you want: freedom from the Colonies.”

  “How are the Colonies even a concern for you?” I ask.

  “They’re a concern for everyone.”

  “But they’re afraid of you.”

  “We’re afraid of the daylight,” he replies bitingly. “Imagine being a child and never playing in the sun. We’ve made monsters of ourselves, monsters trapped in the dark. It was our only defense. Our numbers have always been too small to fight with and we knew early on that the Colonies would be a problem. They were corrupt from the start.”

  “So we’ve heard,” I mumble, thinking of the Vashons.

  Elijah nods in understanding. “We aren’t the only ones who saw it coming. Some ran and hid, some found the numbers to defend themselves, and some made a deal with the devil.”

  “What deal did you make with him?”

  “Not us. The Hive.”

  It shouldn’t surprise me, but it does anyway. Marlow obviously hates the Colonies just like he hates the Vashons, and I think I get why: they’re bigger than he is. He thinks of himself as a king and it’s a huge blow to his bloated ego that there are people out there stronger than he is. He’ll never control the kind of numbers the Vashons and Colonies are working with, and it eats away at him. He hates them for it.

  I suddenly wonder if he hates them enough to pit them against each other.

  “Did Marlow tell the Colonists we were talking to the Vashons?”

  “Yes,” Andy answers. “He sent word to them immediately after Ryan won the Blind.”

  This is the first time Andy has spoken since he IDed us. As his voice cuts through the room, I notice how familiar it is.

  I narrow my eyes at him, trying to get a better look. “I know you, don’t I?”

  He smirks. “Ryan knows me better.”

  “He’s a guard in The Hive,” Ryan confirms with a small nod. “He’s one of Marlow’s closest men.”

  My eyes go wide with shock. “You’re the one who brought us in to see Marlow. The one who didn’t search us. I was carrying an ASP and a knife in that room.”

  “I figured,” Andy says easily. “I was hoping you’d use them.”

  “You want Marlow dead?”

  “I wouldn’t cry over it.”

  “So wait. Are you Hive or are you…” I trail off, not sure what to call them. I don’t know if ‘cannibal’ is an offensive term.

  “I’m a member of this tribe.”

  “Then you’re what? A spy? For how long?” I ask incredulously.

  “Seven years.”

  “Do you have spies in the Colonies?”

  “No.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?”

  “No.”

  “So you’re probably lying?”

  “Anything is possible.”

  Ryan sits forward, catching Andy’s eye. “What deal did The Hive make with the Colonists?”

  Andy glances silently at Elijah, an unspoken question passing between them. Elijah nods.

  “The Colonies have always been obsessed with two things,” Elijah explains. “Cleansing the world of the plague and recruiting more people into their flock. At first they talked about the plague as divine retribution. They said everyone infected and dying outside the walls they hid inside were getting what they deserved. They felt they’d been chosen to survive. But then not everyone agreed with them and their numbers started to shrink. That’s when they miraculously got word from God Himself that they were meant to save as many people as they could. When willing members dried up, they started the roundups. They used to be one meager group hiding inside a shopping mall, but they kept expanding—and as they did hey needed more bodies. More laborers. The Hive made a deal with them that they would give them people in exchange for goods. I don’t know what Marlow gets in every payment, but I would bet it’s mostly crops. They’re a group of gamblers, pimps, and thieves. They’re not known for their farming skills.”

  “Where is The Hive getting people? You can’t just make them out of thin air,” I complain.

  Trent snickers behind me. I turn to glare at him.

  “What?”

  “You’ve lived alone for too long.”

  “What are you laughing at?”

  He leans back in his seat, looking entirely too comfortable considering where we are. “Ryan, you want to field this one?”

  “Joss, think about it,” Ryan says patiently. “How would The Hive be creating people to sell?”

  I blush as it dawns on me. “The stables.”

  “Exactly.”

  “They’re selling babies?!”

  “Yes,” El
ijah answers bitterly, the disgust I feel written on his face. “There’s no contraception anymore. Pregnancies are a real risk, and with the women in the stables… working as often as they do, babies are going to happen. A lot.”

  “Are these women giving their children up willingly?”

  “Not all of them,” Andy tells me tightly. “I’ve seen them stripped from their arms just moments after they’re born. The women fall apart, the babies are screaming. It’s not easy to watch.”

  I glare at him. “But you still do it.”

  “I can’t stop it. I might be able to save one but then my cover is blown and years of work are lost. Wasted.”

  “So instead of saving one, you save none. That’s noble.”

  Andy’s eyes flash as his jaw clenches. “I saved your boy here after his show in the Blind. That crowd wanted to tear him apart and I got him out. I can’t save everyone but I do what I can.”

  “However you need to work the math to sleep at night,” I spit, but I wonder why I’m doing it. I actually understand and I’m grateful that he got Ryan out. I’m just appalled by the idea of selling children to the point that I can’t see straight. I’m angrier than I’ve been in a long, long time and I don’t have the real villain here to shout at so Andy will have to take the abuse.

  “Joss, calm down,” Ryan warns.

  “No way! Captain Hook is selling Lost Boys, Ryan! It’s jacked up!”

  Elijah frowns. “Captain Hook?”

  “She’s very into Peter Pan,” Trent explains casually. “It’s endearing.”

  “The point is, we have to do something about this,” I demand.

  “That is precisely the point, yes,” Elijah agrees. “From what Andy heard in your meeting with Marlow—”

  “Captain Hook,” Trent corrects.

  “Shush,” I whisper to him, exasperated.

  “Hey, it’s your thing. I’m only trying to help.”

  “Help by being quiet.”

  “You do realize that you’re Peter Pan in this scenario, right?”

  “What?” I cry, turning to face him. “No, I’m Tinkerbell.”

  “Hardly. She was a seductress. Spritely. You’re too manly for that.”

  I sigh. “I hate you sometimes.”

  “But you love me most of the time. That’s what matters.”

  “Andy heard us talking about the Colony in the north,” Ryan says, getting us back on track.

  Elijah nods. “He told us what you had planned, what you asked from The Hive. He also told me they had no intention of helping you, no matter what happened on your trip to Vashon Island.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “So we’d like to take you up on your offer.”

  “Our deal with Marlow was that we’d bring the Vashons in to fight with us,” Ryan reminds him. “We didn’t get their help. We barely made it off their island with our lives.”

  “They think we betrayed them to the Colonies,” I agree, feeling oddly sad at the thought of the Vashons hating us.

  They’re the closest thing to my kind of people that I’ve seen in a long time. After hearing Sam talk about it, I could see living there out in the open and the free. No zombies, no Colonists, no Hive. I could sleep soundly at night in a warm, dry place without worrying about waking up to find a Risen in my face or a Lost Boy in my bed. But that strange dream died when the Colonist boats rolled down the river and Ali put a gun to my head.

  “We aren’t worried about the Vashons,” Elijah assures us. “We’ll join our numbers with yours to fight back against the Colonies. To take back the surface.”

  “Our numbers are three,” I tell him, gesturing to Ryan and Trent.

  “For now, yes. But once you’ve taken down the Colony in the north you’ll have more.”

  “Not many more. Those aren’t fighters. Those are Colonists. Maybe not the die-hard, uber-religious crazy ones, but they’re still soft. The three of us, a few of you, and whoever we can get to put up a fight from the MOHAI aren’t going to be enough to take down one of the stadiums.”

  “And once one is down, the others have to fall quickly behind it like dominoes,” Ryan reminds us. “We can’t give them time to call for help from the other Colonies.”

  “Wherever the others are. No one knows.”

  “We do,” Elijah says simply.

  I blink, surprised. “You know where the other Colonies are?”

  “We know where one is. The one in the south, near the shore. They have boats there that they use regularly. We assume there’s another Colony across the water, but we don’t know exactly where.”

  “How many are there?” I whisper to myself, starting to feel hopeless.

  “There’s the one in the north where you were held,” Ryan says, counting, “the two stadiums, one in the south, and now one across the water. So five.”

  “That we know of.”

  “Yeah.”

  I start to panic a little inside. When all of this started I never intended to get involved beyond fulfilling my promise to the people in the MOHAI: I’d bring them help if I could and I’d get them free. From there I figured it would be between them and The Hive what happened next. I never planned on being part of it—the Colonies were their problem—but the deeper I sink into this mess, the more I see that the Colonies are everyone’s problem: the Hive’s, the Vashons’, the cannibals’, the Hyperions’ Crenshaw’s—even mine. Very, very much mine.

  So now here I am amassing an army of my enemies, exposing myself to all of the people I’ve lived in fear of for the larger part of my life, and I’m talking about taking down more Colonies than I ever knew existed. This is insane. It’s impossible.

  “We’ll need more people,” Trent says quietly. He’s still reclining, comfy and at ease, but his eyes are piercing. “We’ll need to talk to the others in the Hyperion to see if we can recruit more bodies. We’ll need to visit other gangs as well. The Elevens. The Pikes. You,” he says, looking directly at Andy, “will need to blow your cover. Start shopping for help.”

  Andy stares back at him impassively. There’s a tension passing between them, one that I don’t understand but I’m pretty freaked out by. The way Trent is eyeing Andy… it makes me happy Trent likes me.

  “This is what I was planted for,” Andy finally agrees. “I have some connections I can tap into. There are always people unhappy with the status quo.”

  “They’re going to need to be pretty angry if we want them to go against The Hive,” Ryan warns him.

  Andy grins knowingly. “Oh, they’re a very angry bunch. Trust me.”

  I don’t. I don’t trust this guy that has probably sat at a table full of Hive members just like he’s sitting with us now, smiled that same smile, and spoken those same words. He’s a traitor, and it doesn’t matter if he’s betraying the trust of a man I hate or not—he’s still willing to look people in the face and lie to them about absolutely everything. I don’t trust your average person even on a basic level, so this guy is setting off all kinds of alarms inside me.

  “How many people can you rally to make a move on the northern Colony?” Ryan asks Elijah.

  “At least twenty men and women from our guard.”

  “It’s not much.”

  “It’s more than none at all,” he says, carefully reminding us just how many people we’ve successfully recruited from The Hive and Vashon Island.

  Ryan nods in silent, grudging agreement.

  Elijah stands suddenly, gesturing for the rest of us to do the same. We do, though I’m not sure why, and the ease with which he commands the room bothers me. He leads Trent, Ryan, Andy, and I down one of their dark, strange hallways to the room where we first met him. Large white tubes have been brought in and propped up against the far wall. He and Andy immediately begin examining their tops.

  “Do we have that area?” I hear Elijah mutter thoughtfully.

  “We have everything,” Andy answers confidently. He looks over his shoulder at me. “Where exactly up north is
the Colony you were in?”

  “On the shore. In the old MOHAI building. It was a museum. The Museum of—”

  “History and Industry. Yeah, I know. Here it is.”

  He pops the cap on one of the tubes and pulls out a large scroll of paper. When he spreads it out on the table, the faded blue paper a mess of white writing that makes me dizzy, I nearly gag. More maps. It makes me think of Captain Hook and his whorehouse. It makes me oddly angry.

  “This is a map of the sewer systems and storm tunnels,” Elijah explains. “We have street maps too, but the best route for making a move against the Colony is by the underground. They’ll never see it coming.”

  “That area is swarming with zombies,” I warn.

  “Yes, everywhere is lately.”

  “Not like up there. They have barricades to lock most of them in as a natural defense.”

  Elijah looks at me pointedly. “We can handle the Risen.”

  I nod silently but inside I’m thinking he’s using a Colony word. Is he like me and it became part of his vocabulary as he adjusted to this life? He’s old enough to know where that word started, but does he remember?

  Or is he like Andy? Is he playing both sides?

  “We’ll move on the smallest Colony immediately,” he says.

  “How soon is immediately?” Ryan asks.

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “No,” I say firmly.

  He looks up at me with a mix of surprise and annoyance. “And why not?”

  “Because it’s impossible. Because we don’t have a solid plan yet. Because we don’t know how many people we’ll be able to gather from the gangs.” I look him hard in the eye. “Because I don’t know you. I don’t trust you. I don’t want to make deals with and fight alongside vicious, rabid animals.”

  Andy snaps up, his posture going rigidly straight. I ignore him. He worries me, but not right now. Not when I’ve got Ryan and Trent beside me. I’m still afraid—I should probably watch my back when I think I’m alone—but I don’t feel vulnerable right now. It’s a heady drug knowing the Boys have my back.

  “You don’t know a damn thing about us,” Andy seethes.

  “Lucky me.”

  “We don’t need her,” he tells Elijah. “We know where the northern Colony is now. Get her out of here.”