Within These Walls: Series Box Set

by Tracey Ward

  “When?”

  “At sunset.”

  “We’ll be here,” Ryan promises, stepping forward and offering Elijah the hand that had just held mine.

  Elijah shakes it firmly, a small smile on his lips. “Excellent.”

  Chapter Five

  After dragging us through a long labyrinth of tunnels, some I’m pretty sure we doubled back on to confuse us, Andy brings us above ground just outside the stadiums. He did what Elijah told him to do, he got us past them, but he didn’t give us much of a buffer. I don’t really care. The farther he is from my home, the better. I don’t need this guy or anyone from the cannibals or The Hive knowing where I live. Trent and Ryan knowing is enough. Probably more than.

  “Well, good luck,” Andy tells us, already moving to leave us behind.

  Then he stops mid-step, listening. It only takes a second before I hear what stopped him. The shuffling. The groaning.

  Ryan and I wordlessly whip around to face the crowd moving in behind us. Happy to have my ASP back (I made a point of getting it from the same guy who took it), I whip it out to its full, deadly length. They’re coming from up the street, emerging from the shadows by degrees. Writhing black rising from nothing.

  “How many?” I ask Trent and his eerie eyes.

  “No more than seven.”

  I nod confidently. “We can handle this.”

  “Are you leaving or staying?” Trent asks Andy.

  He looks down the street, maybe to confirm Trent’s count or to buy time, but for what I don’t know. It’s an easy question.

  “I can’t be seen with you,” he says tightly.

  “Then go.”

  “I never run from a fight.”

  “We don’t need you,” I tell him sharply.

  I flex my hand on my weak arm. It hurts less than it did before. I’m starting to wonder if I can use it.

  “I should go.”

  “Then go!” I snap, casting an angry glance over my shoulder.

  My eyes meet his and I can see the frustration in them. If he leaves I’ll count him a coward even though I understand why he can’t stay. He’s right—he can’t be seen working with us. Especially since Marlow has it out for us right now. I still judge him when he turns to go, though.

  “You should lay off him,” Ryan tells me.

  “Are you serious?”

  “We need to work with him.”

  “It doesn’t mean I have to like him.”

  The first of the zombies is on us. Ryan steps up. I see a flash in the moonlight across his knuckles, lightning quick. The zombie goes down.

  Ryan has his Death Punch on.

  “You don’t have to hate him every second either,” he says, shaking his hand out.

  I lash out with my ASP, swinging wide and connecting with the skull of what looks like a woman. She drops to the ground but continues to moan: I didn’t hit her hard enough.

  “I’m not,” I grunt out as I smash down on the woman’s head, “good—at hiding—my feelings!”

  Ryan smoothly sidesteps a zombie before driving home his spiked fist into the base of its skull. I’m green with envy when it drops instantly. I’m sweating from killing one and he’s managed two with barely any effort. I love my ASP, but I’m wondering if I don’t maybe need a Death Punch too.

  “She doesn’t like him because he’s a liar,” Trent says. His voice is coming from the dark farther down the street. I see a blur of movement, a flash of metal, hear a distinct thump. I don’t know when he moved into the thick of the fight, but he’s thinning it quickly. “She doesn’t trust him.”

  “Okay, I get that,” Ryan agrees. “But she should take it easy. We don’t know who he’s lying to.”

  “That’s my point!” I cry. “Is he a spy for the cannibals or The Hive? Or both? Is he playing everybody? I don’t like liars.”

  “It’s because you’re not good at doing it,” Trent says.

  He’s emerging from the darkness where the zombies had been hiding, only he’s alone. I glance around anxiously, looking for the rest of the Risen, but there are none. When I do the math, I’m a little nervous.

  “Did you just take down four by yourself in the time it took me to finish one?” I ask him incredulously.

  His shadow shrugs at me. “You’re injured.”

  “I’m almost healed.”

  “You were talking. You were distracted.”

  “Stop making excuses for me. You’re a killing machine, you freak.”

  “This is why he can’t fight in the Arena anymore,” Ryan says.

  “He’s not allowed to?”

  “It’s not financially beneficial to Marlow, so no,” Trent explains. “I’m not invited to.”

  “Why? Because you’re too crazy good?”

  “Too efficient,” Ryan corrects. “The fight’s over before it starts. People go there to see a show. Trent doesn’t give it to them.”

  Trent comes to stand in front of us. Whatever weapon he used is stowed now. Maybe it was just his fists, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised.

  “They tell me to kill zombies, I kill zombies. I don’t know how else to do it.”

  “People want to be afraid you’ll die.”

  “I’m not going to die.”

  “Someday,” I tell him. “We all will someday.”

  Trent grins down at me. “Sometimes I forget.”

  “We should get moving,” Ryan reminds us.

  We make our way through the dark streets that are growing lighter every minute. Even though it hasn’t been the longest night of my life, not by far, it has been one of the strangest. The closer we get to my building, the more anxious I am to get inside. I want to lie down on my bed and fall asleep in the familiar smells, sounds, and feels of my own home. I try to figure out how long it’s been since I slept there, but the best I can remember is that it’s been days. Too many days with too much time spent surrounded by people I can’t stand. In the last month I’ve been exposed to almost the entire wild, to every person I spent the last six years hiding from and a few I didn’t even know about, and my little reclusive heart can’t take it. Ryan promised we’d go back to the cannibals’ tomorrow night and I know we have to, but a big part of me wants to tell them to suck it. We’ll find another way. Only there is no other way and I know that.

  When my building looms gray in the distance against the lightening sky, I run to it. I can’t help it. Without a word I break into a sprint, leaving the boys behind. They’ll be fine. They don’t need me. No one ever has.

  I’m surprised when I hear their footsteps pounding close behind me.

  We burst through the doors, up the stairs, and they’re on my heels now. I can both hear them and feel them. Ryan laughs loudly, his voice bouncing around the walls and against my face until I’m smiling as I run, breathless and crazy, bounding up the stairs two at a time. I hear them scuffle behind me. They’re fighting. Racing. And I’m winning.

  When I stumble through the door to my loft, panting for breath and nearly giggling, I don’t know myself anymore. I don’t know this girl with the breathy laugh and the Lost Boys behind her. I don’t know her at all, but I think I like her.

  “Trent, you can—”

  “I’m sleeping on the roof,” he interrupts. He’s barely out of breath. Robot freak! “Do you have a spare blanket?”

  I point to my pile of cloth on the floor, the one I pretend is a bed. Since sleeping on a real mattress, I’m a little ashamed of the lie I tell myself every night. I wonder if I’m spoiled now. Maybe I’m the princess Taylor accused me of being, but if I am it’s his fault. Real mattresses with real clean sheets? It’s just mean.

  “So no,” Trent says. “That’s fine. I’ll be all right. Goodnight.”

  “Wait, you can take one! I have a couple sleeping bags!” I call after him.

  He’s already heading toward the roof hatch.

  I turn to Ryan for help. “He doesn’t have to sleep up there.”

  “He likes it.�
�

  “No.”

  “I do,” Trent’s disembodied voice calls from the hatch.

  It snaps sharply shut behind him.

  “He does it all the time in the Hyperion,” Ryan explains. “He seriously does like it. He doesn’t like walls. He gets cagey. He also doesn’t get cold much, so don’t sweat the blanket for him—but I’ll take one.”

  “You get cold easily?”

  “I’m a dainty flower. Also, it’s drafty by the door.”

  I watch him walk to my ‘bed’ and pick up a thin, threadbare blanket. It’s yellow. I don’t know why that makes it sadder to me, but it does.

  “You don’t have to sleep by the door,” I tell him faintly.

  He turns slowly, looking at me with his large, golden eyes that see too much. “Where would I sleep?”

  “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t make it harder for me than it already is.”

  He grins slightly, but then he nods. “Okay. Sorry. And yeah, if you’re okay with it, I’ll sleep next to you. I wasn’t sure you’d want to now that we’re here.”

  I smile. “You mean now that we’re out of prison?”

  “Is it weird that I don’t feel any freer now that we’re out?”

  “Is it weird that I felt better in the Vashons’ prison than I did as a guest at the cannibals’ table?”

  “You really hate them.”

  I roll my eyes. “And you don’t? They’re disgusting.”

  “They’re different,” he replies diplomatically.

  “The bad kind, not the interesting kind. Except to Trent. He seemed fascinated,” I say sarcastically.

  Ryan goes to the door to drop the security bar across it, locking us in for the night.

  “Better to act fascinated than disgusted if we’re going to work with them. I don’t like the way Andy was looking at you.”

  I nod in agreement. “He’ll kill me if he gets the chance.”

  “See, I don’t feel like that worries you as much as it should.”

  “Eh, I’ve made it this far. Trick is to never trust anyone. Never let your guard down.”

  He sits down by the bed and begins unlacing his shoes. “Are you going to sleep with your knife on your hip?”

  “I’d be stupid not to.”

  “Should I be worried I’ll wake up with it in my gut the way I woke up to your elbow in my face?”

  I wince, remembering the damage I did to him on Vashon Island. It’s reflex, I can’t control it! But I do feel bad about it.

  “Maybe,” I reply weakly.

  Ryan chuckles. “I’ll take my chances. I’ll keep my knife on me too, just so we’re even. Just in case you get handsy.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Not even a little? I’ll pretend not to notice.”

  “Maybe you should sleep by the door after all,” I grumble, heading for the bathroom.

  “Come on, I’m kidding!”

  I don’t answer. I do my business slowly, freaked out by the strange feeling of not being freaked out. Trent is on my roof and Ryan is in my bed, and that’s okay. I’m eerily fine with that. Not even just fine. I’m… happy.

  When I come back out I find Ryan lounging on my bed. He smiles up at me, golden brown from hair to eyes to skin, and there’s so much of that amber glow that it’s stupid. He’s ridiculously beautiful to the point of being annoying, but I still like it.

  I plop down across from him. “So we’re siding with the psychos, aren’t we?”

  He sits up slowly, his arms coming to rest on his legs and his hands held loosely together. “We don’t have another choice.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “No one does, and that’s your problem: you think because we’re willing to work with them that we like them. I don’t. They freak me out but we need their help, and if we were seriously willing to do business with The Hive, we’re desperate enough to do business with these guys.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “Joss,” he says emphatically, “we’re pretty freaking desperate here. Do you want to free your friends or not?”

  “They’re not really friends,” I reply weakly.

  “They were a few days ago.”

  “A lot has changed since then.”

  “Enough to make you change your mind about saving them?”

  I bite my lip, worrying it between my teeth as I stare at his face. “You died,” I say quietly.

  His expression softens. “Not completely.”

  “Close enough.’

  “It doesn’t change anything.”

  “It does for me.”

  His mouth tightens slightly. “What are you saying? You don’t want to try to save someone, basically everyone, because I got hurt?”

  His voice is becoming agitated. He’s annoyed with me.

  “How’s your shoulder?” I ask pointedly, feeling just as annoyed.

  I still worry about that injury on him. I still wonder if he’ll get a fever someday soon and I’ll have to end him. It’s another reason I avoided people for as long as I did: it wasn’t just because I got sick of watching them die—I got sick of being the one to beat down their reanimated corpses.

  “It’s fine. I’m always getting hurt, Joss. I got hurt before I met you and I’ll get hurt again in the future. So will Trent. So will you. Look at your arm. You think that doesn’t kill me to see every day? But you can’t let that stop you from doing what’s right. This isn’t just about the people in the MOHAI. This is about everyone. Everyone trapped in the Colonies, everyone living in the wild afraid of the roundups.”

  I clench my hands together tightly, feeling my chest pinch and my skin go clammy. “You’re wo—” I try, but the words die on my tongue. It’s just too… much. It’s all too much. I stare down at my hands, finding the words easier when I’m not looking at his face. “You’re worth more to me than everyone else on the earth combined.”

  He doesn’t answer. The room feels tight in the confines of pure silence. I keep my eyes fixed on the growing sunlight flickering over the skin on my hands, the scars and scrapes highlighted in deep shadows until my own flesh looks foreign and strange. I feel different. I feel afraid of my own body, unfamiliar in my own skin. I feel like I’m becoming something or someone I’m not sure I know how to be.

  Ryan moves. He’s on his knees in front of me, his face hovering over mine and his eyes filling my vision. He’s all I can see, all I can hear, and the room suddenly feels like it doesn’t exist. Nothing exists beyond his face and the places where his skin touches mine. His hands are warm and dry on my arms, my shoulders, my neck, my chin. He pulls me toward him until my lips meet his and my eyes fall closed. I forget how to breathe, so he breathes for me. In and out, slow and even with the beat of his heart. I can feel it under my hand where I’ve rested my palm on his chest.

  Thump-thump…thump-thump…thump-

  It skips a beat when I rise up on my knees in front of him, my body coming in line with his. He freezes, inside and out, just for a second. Then his heart is racing, taking mine with it, and his tongue brushes across my lips as his hands lower to my waist. He pulls me against him until I can’t feel his heartbeat under my hand anymore. I feel it everywhere—I feel him everywhere—and it’s so thrilling and so claustrophobic I want to scream. I want to pull him to me until it hurts and I want to push him away so I can run down the halls until I find stairs up and out, into the air where I can breathe. Where I can find the shadows to hide inside that will keep me safe from everything I’m so afraid of. I fight with myself to stay put, to hold onto him, to find out how much I can take, while my instincts are telling me to run—that there’s more to fear in this world than zombies, cannibals, Colonists, and gangs.

  Suddenly I’m under the boat again, with no breath and my heart in my throat. I’m in the water and he’s drowning. I can’t save him. He’s slipping from my fingers. I keep going under for him but I can’t get him free and Trent isn’t th
ere to help me and Ryan is fading. His heart is failing as I’m failing him. He’s dying. He’s gone. It’s so real I can hear the water lapping against the hull of the boat. I can see the bubbles against my eyelids as they get smaller, fewer. As they burst against the surface, his life leaving him in tiny increments that I’m powerless to stop.

  His pale face in the darkness. My heart slowing with his, confused and lost. Uncertain where to go without him. It aches in my chest and I know.

  I love him.

  I love him and I will lose him.

  I pull my mouth from his and clamp it shut tightly, worried he’ll hear the sob begging to escape. I hug him to me, clinging to him in a way I haven’t done since the night in The Hive when I was so relieved he was alive I lost my mind and threw my body against his. He holds onto me, his breath uneven in my ear and his hands splayed out on my back.

  “If I say it,” he whispers, “will you run away from me?”

  I know what he’s asking. I know what he’s thinking about saying because it’s exactly the same thing I’m thinking right now. It’s the same thing that’s scaring the crap out of me and making me an emotional mess that could fall apart at any second. It’s a dangerous thing to think or feel, but it’s even more toxic to say. It’s a truth that I can’t handle—not yet, maybe never. It’s one more thing that will change the way I look at the world and live my life and it could be the last thing—the big final thing—that gets me killed. Or worse: it could kill him.

  “Yes.”

  He sighs, his hands moving slowly up and down my back. “Joss, I—”

  “I said I’ll run,” I interrupt, my voice firm as my fingers clench his shirt in tight fistfuls of anxiety. “I will go full Olympic sprinter on you. Road Runner style. I will burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid Man to get away.”

  He chuckles. “Okay, okay. I wasn’t going to say it. Calm down.”

  “I can’t, Ryan. You can’t say it. Please don’t say it.”

  “I don’t need to say it because you obviously know it.”