Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  I grin at him. “All you gotta do is show me the door.”

  “Right this way.”

  “Stop, both of you,” Elijah barks impatiently. “Andy, we need her because the location of the Colony isn’t enough. She’s connected to them. They know her. They won’t work with us—they’re terrified of us—but they’ll follow her.”

  “She’s nothing but a mouthy brat. She’ll get people killed. Our people.”

  “And you’ll have dinner for a week,” I tell him with disgust. “What are you complaining about?”

  He shakes his head, his mouth a tight line of compressed anger. “Get her out,” he snarls. “Get her out of my sight.”

  “She stays,” Elijah tells him, his voice quiet yet firm. “But I’ll make a deal with you.”

  “I get to kill her when it’s over?”

  I smirk at Andy even though my stomach is a tight knot of dread. I feel Ryan and Trent close ranks around me. It’s a half step each but it’s a warning—one I really hope Andy heeds.

  “No,” Elijah tells him. Then he looks at me and I see the anger Andy is so openly expressing buried deep inside this small man. The firelight is in his eyes where it burns hot, livid, and…happy? He smiles faintly. “You get to educate her.”

  Chapter Four

  My education is a true learning experience—I’m sitting at a desk and everything. It’s a reminder of something I barely got to experience back in life pre-apocalyptic wasteland, and if this is anything like the real deal, I’m not sorry I missed out on most of school.

  Trent and Ryan sit on either side of me. They’re also in old, broken down school desks that were probably jacked from an abandoned elementary school because they’re about three sizes too small for all of us. The room we’re in is a legit classroom with a blackboard, chalk, a tattered world map, the alphabet and numbers counting up to one hundred painted in brilliant colors on the plain walls. And bones. There are bones, clean and shockingly white, stacked up neatly in a corner underneath a chart with a picture of the human skeleton. Beside that is a very beautiful painting of a bunny in a meadow.

  It’s the weirdest room I’ve ever been in.

  “What you know about us, or rather what you think you know about us,” Elijah says patiently, standing at the head of the classroom, “is a lie.”

  Andy stands next to him, his body tense, his eyes hard on mine. I keep my face carefully blank as I stare back.

  “Do you or do you not eat human flesh?” I demand coldly.

  Elijah pauses. Andy’s jaw clenches tightly.

  “Yes,” Elijah admits.

  “Then you’re animals and there’s nothing else I need to know.”

  “There’s more to it than you realize.”

  I break my stare with Andy to shoot Elijah a bitter look. “I don’t care what else there is to it. You’re no better than the zombies outside. You’re insane. You’re inhuman.” I take a breath, knowing I shouldn’t say what I want to say, but self-control is not my thing lately. I’ve been through too much, I’m flying wild and loose with all this change, and I feel my heart in my throat as I spit out my next words. “You’re disgusting.”

  I feel Ryan tense next to me. He knows a fight is coming. I know it too. I’m insulting monsters inside their home and it’s a great way to get yourself killed; but we’re probably going to die anyway, so at least I’ll die honest.

  “Shut up, Joss.”

  My head swings to Trent. “What did y—”

  “I said shut up,” he repeats. He looks at me with complete calm. Complete irritating as hell calm. “I want to hear what they have to say.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like to understand things.”

  “What’s to understand? They eat people.”

  “But why do they eat people?”

  “I don’t care why!”

  “I do, so shut up.”

  “Quit telling me to shut up,” I growl.

  “I will when you quit talking.”

  I sit back in my chair hard, staring straight ahead and shaking my head angrily.

  “What about you do we misunderstand?” Trent asks Elijah.

  Elijah nods to Andy, his entire demeanor changing as he looks at Trent. He’s much more relaxed. He almost looks pleased.

  Personally, I’m pissed.

  “We do ingest human flesh,” Andy begins, his angry eyes still locked on mine, “but not for the reasons you think. We do it out of respect, and most importantly, we do it out of love.”

  I fight to stifle a snort of disbelief.

  “When the disease first took hold, the world was chaos. People were killing each other to stay alive. They abandoned each other, they turned deaf ears to pleas for help. It was humanity at its worst, but eventually things calmed down. People started to realize they needed each other to survive. Some realized they needed to work together, some realized they could enslave others.”

  “The Colonies and The Hive,” Ryan says grimly.

  “Yes. We realized the same thing the Vashons did: people like us—people willing to live together and help each other—needed to hide to stay free. But we didn’t have the numbers the Vashons did. They were better fighters. They had better resources.”

  “Why didn’t you join with them?” Trent asks.

  Andy’s mouth pinches tightly. “We weren’t invited.”

  “Can’t imagine why not,” I mutter.

  He ignores me entirely. “We were everyday people then, just looking to survive. But that was the problem. We were too average. We had nothing to contribute to their island, so they didn’t want us. They slammed the door in our faces.”

  Andy’s voice has grown more and more bitter until he’s spitting the words out like venom. Any anger he has toward me doesn’t hold a candle to the hostility he feels toward the Vashons.

  “We were locked out,” Elijah agrees calmly. “Forced to live here on the outside in the wild with the growing gangs and the Colonies running out of control.”

  “Why didn’t you join with the Colonies?” I ask. “If you were scared of everything else around you, why not willingly be locked inside their gates? At least you’d be safe.”

  “Why don’t you join with them?” he counters. “Why did you escape?”

  “Because I refuse to live as a prisoner.”

  “You were a slave. They all are. And we’re exactly like you—we refuse to live that way.”

  “When and why did you begin to eat people?” Trent asks.

  His tone amazes me. There’s no judgment. None at all. From the sound of it, he could be asking them when they first learned how to ride a bike instead of when they decided to go full Hannibal on their family and friends.

  “A couple of years after we were locked out of the Vashons’ palace,” Andy tells him. “We were threatened by other gangs and the Colonies with their roundups. We were made up of mostly families. We weren’t great fighters. We were parents—parents who would do anything it took to save their children. That’s why we moved underground. We hid from the Risen and the gangs, but they found us. We knew we had to do something to keep them away. We tried laying traps but they never worked. We were hiding in the sewers like rats and they still attacked us, still stole from us and killed our people. We were dwindling and dying out and all we could think was who would take care of the kids if we were gone? They’d be next to die. They’d starve or they’d be taken in by the Colonies and raised as slaves. Or worse—they’d be taken in by The Hive and the girls would…” He takes a deep breath, his eyes fixed far off on the empty wall behind us. When he speaks next his voice is soft. “We couldn’t stand it. We definitely couldn’t let it happen. That’s when we came up with a plan. We tapped into a defense we hadn’t considered before.”

  “Fear,” Ryan says quietly.

  Andy nods. “And what is everyone afraid of?”

  “The zombies.”

  “The Risen are monumentally stupid, something that makes it relatively easy to escape th
em if you know what you’re doing. They can’t strategize, they don’t have any thought—not beyond eating human flesh. But what if they did? What if they worked together? What if they could plan and plot? What if they were organized killers?”

  “They’d be horrifying. No one would be safe from them ever.”

  “So that’s what we became. It didn’t take much. We were seen killing an intruder via ingestion one time and the rumors flew. The warnings went out and the attacks slowed. A few more times to drive the point home and the attacks all but stopped. We were monsters but we were safe.”

  Via ingestion. What a lovely, clinical way to say they gnawed on a person’s living, kicking, screaming body until they died one of the most horrible deaths the world has ever known.

  I feel bile burning the back of my throat.

  “I understand how it’s an act of love,” Ryan says, “because you did it for your children, but how is it respect?”

  Elijah sighs. Whatever he’s going to say, he knows we aren’t going to like it. “We eat our dead,” he tells us gently.

  I sit forward and put my face in my hands, breathing deeply. I can’t. I can’t deal with this place and these people. They are so far beyond insane that they can’t even see crazy anymore. It’s a pale light beyond the horizon. A star still burning in the sky eons after its last ember has died out.

  “Why?” Ryan asks, his voice tight.

  “To ingest them is to take them with us. To carry them on in our lives as part of us. They maintain us. They keep us alive and we keep them close to us forever. It’s done very ceremoniously. It’s not much different than taking communion. Jesus himself said that his body was the bread and his blood the wine. He encouraged people to ingest him into their bodies as a religious rite.”

  “It’s not the same thing at all,” I say, my face still in my hands, my voice muffled against my palms.

  “It’s exactly the same.”

  “I see Joss’ point,” Ryan agrees, carefully remaining neutral. “With communion a person ate a Ritz cracker and drank some grape juice. It was symbolic. What you’re talking about is… it’s pretty different.”

  “It’s sick,” I groan. I lift my face, dragging my hands down it roughly. “You’re telling me that if a kid’s parent dies, you make them eat them?”

  “No,” Elijah says firmly. “Children are not allowed to participate in the burial ceremony until they’re eighteen, and then it’s their choice. No one is required or forced to do it.”

  “Burial ceremony,” I chuckle to myself. I feel like I’m losing my mind in this place.

  “Joss,” Trent begins.

  “No, uh-uh. Don’t tell me to shut up again. I listened. I heard their side and you know what I’m taking away from all of this? They bury their dead in their bowels.” I stand abruptly, unable to sit in this room with them anymore. “School is over. I’m done. I’d like to leave now.”

  “And where will you go?” Elijah asks, his voice hard. “Who will you look for help from now? Will you try to save your friends in the northern Colony or will you give up and try to forget about them? If that’s your plan, you should be asking yourself who the real monster is in this room.”

  I stare at the floor. I stare at the floor and I try to remember to breathe, but I feel trapped. Trapped by the truth, by these walls, by the cage I’ve built for myself with my promises and high hopes for a world we all gave up on years ago. That filthy word that lights the way and draws me like a moth to a flame, to my doom, but I can’t look away and I can’t ignore it. I can’t ignore him.

  I look at Ryan to find him already watching me and I feel it swell in my chest—hope. The rest of the men in the room are watching us and I feel the weight of the world on my body, crushing me down into powder on the floor. I could stay there. I could become part of the dust and the earth under their feet to never be bothered again. Never be burdened. Never be expected to be something I’m not.

  Or I could finish what I started. I could try. I could become something more than the sum of my broken, fragmented parts, and maybe it will never be perfect or beautiful, but it will be me. And it will be strong, because I don’t know any other way to be.

  I swallow hard as I take a reluctant step forward. “What’s the plan?”

  Trent slips past me, going to stand next to Andy as though the guy had not just told us that he eats his cousins for Easter dinner.

  “We haven’t decided yet how exactly we’re going to go in,” Andy tells us.

  “By water?” Ryan suggests.

  “It’s too obvious,” Trent disagrees. “They’ll be watching the water for sure. We have to go for something less conspicuous.”

  “We can’t go in on the roads,” I tell him. “They have that zombie swarm trapped around their front gates. We’d never get through without being noticed. Or being eaten.”

  Trent raises his eyebrows. “You made it through.”

  “Barely,” I remind him, holding up my injured arm.

  “So if we can’t go in by land or sea…” Ryan says suggestively, looking to Elijah.

  He nods. “Underground. We don’t know that area, but if the tunnels aren’t caved in we should be able to make it. We can come in from under the building.”

  I scowl at the map they’re all looking at. It means nothing to me. “What are we going to do? Pop up in a toilet?”

  “I know I said you were too skinny,” Trent tells me, “but you’re not that skinny.”

  “Why is it that it sounded like an insult when you said I was skinny but it still sounds like an insult when you say I’m not?”

  “I’m gifted.”

  “You’re insulting.”

  “I told you, if you want compliments go to Ryan. I’m no good at them.”

  “You’re not even trying.”

  Trent shrugs. “It’s probably why I’m not good at them.”

  “You don’t want to see him try,” Ryan warns me. “It’s unnerving.”

  “When have you seen it?” I ask, surprised.

  “Market day.”

  “A whore, Trent? Really? First of all, gross. Second, you don’t have to flirt with them. You just hand them money.”

  Trent shrugs. “I was shopping for a discount. If you don’t haggle you may as well stay home.”

  “How will we get in from underground?” Ryan asks Elijah.

  “A building like that will have a basement. We’ll find a way in there. We may have to dig our way in, or we may get lucky and find a large drainage tunnel. We won’t know until we get there.”

  “Then what? Once we’re in, where do we go from there?”

  All eyes shift to me. I hate the spotlight but I sigh deeply and try to remember the layout. “From the utility room in the basement we have to go upstairs. It opens up into a back hallway full of storage and a mass shower room that they use for cleaning the newbies.”

  “That’s where they took you when you first got there?” Ryan asks, his voice unusually hushed. Controlled.

  “Yeah. I was showered, stripped of my weapons, and given very basic, very thin clothing to wear. They used the threat of the cold and the zombies outside to stop us from running.”

  “But you did anyway,” Elijah says. I can’t be sure because I don’t know him, but I think there’s a small amount of respect in his tone.

  I avoid his eyes. “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Why not?”

  “How did you manage to escape?” Andy asks harshly.

  Him I have no problem looking at. Glaring at. “What does it matter?”

  “However you got out, maybe that’s a way we can get in.”

  “It’s not. You can’t reverse engineer what I did to get out.”

  “And why not?”

  “Because you’re not a necromancer,” Trent tells him coolly.

  Andy smirks slightly. He knows I killed to get out. Psycho thinks we’re even now.

  “Who’d you kill?” he asks.

  “It doesn’t matter
.”

  “Was it someone who trusted you?”

  “No, she never liked me.”

  “Surprise, surprise,” Andy sings dryly.

  I feel my blood boil. “Why are you asking me this anyway? You know how I got out. You were there in that room when I told Marlow all about it.”

  “I heard what you told Marlow, but who knows if that’s the truth. I’m still having a hard time believing Vin willingly handed over that ring to you, or that he had any plans of coming out of that place and going for help. My thinking is, Vin would have gotten out and went home. He would have forgotten about all of you by lunch time.”

  “That was my thinking too. And his.”

  “Is that why you killed him?”

  “I didn’t kill him,” I say emphatically. My palms are sweating. I’m itching to come at him with my fists to explain to his face what he obviously doesn’t understand.

  “And we all believe you,” Andy tells me calmly, obviously not believing anything about me.

  The feeling is mutual.

  “I’ll send a scout team out immediately,” Elijah says, taking control of the room again. “They’ll check the tunnels, see what we can do about getting in through the basement. Once they report back we’ll have a better idea of when we can make our move. Until then, I recommend we all rest. Andy, you need to return to The Hive before sunrise. Joss, Ryan, Trent, we’ll put you up for the night. I don’t think it wise you go above ground.”

  “Is that a suggestion,” Ryan asks cautiously, “or a demand?”

  “You’re not prisoners here,” Elijah assures him.

  “In that case, I’d like to leave,” I say. “I won’t sleep here.”

  “Joss, I think he’s right,” Ryan warns.

  “No.”

  “I’ll walk her there,” Trent offers.

  “We should stick together.”

  “Then come home,” I beg Ryan. My tone surprises us both.

  I can feel my face flushing and my heart racing even though I’m not really sure why. But when Ryan steps forward and takes my hand, I know it’s about him.

  “All right. We’ll go home.”

  “It’s your choice,” Elijah says reluctantly. He turns to Andy. “Lead them out through the tunnels. Get them past the stadiums.” He eyes us warily. “Will you come back tomorrow night?”