by Tracey Ward
Trent leans forward to look at me around Ryan. His face is shocked.
“Totalitarian regime?” I ask him.
He nods.
“I heard Todd say it. It sounds better than oppressive dickbag.”
Trent smiles proudly at me.
Ding!
Seriously so very weird.
We pile out of the elevator and step into another hallway. Down here we find a massive swimming pool, a gym, a smaller kitchen, more bathrooms, and absolutely no people. By the end of it we aren’t creeping cautiously anymore. We’re walking around tossing open doors and shouting out what we find.
“Another play room!” Trent calls out.
“Showers!” Ryan shouts.
“I don’t know what this is,” I tell them, staring at the smallish room with all wood walls. “But there’s no one in here.”
The boys come to stand behind me.
“Sauna,” Trent tells me. “You sit in there and sweat your cares away.”
“Down in Fraggle Rock?”
Ryan claps twice.
“Well, that’s it for down here. This place is empty.”
“It can’t be,” Ryan argues, not sounding convinced by his own argument. “The survivors from the last Colony said he was here. They said he had a small group with him.”
“Maybe they’re hiding,” Trent suggests as we head back to the elevator. “It’s a big place. There could be secret areas.”
“They definitely saw us coming,” I agree glumly.
We load back into the potential deathtrap, this time Ryan getting to push the buttons. I want to punch him when he hits all of them.
“We’ll check the other floors,” he says defensively when I glare at him. “Maybe another team found something.”
“Shouldn’t we go ba—”
There’s a loud crash from somewhere in the house. It sounds like an explosion tearing through the walls and my knuckles go white around my ASP and knife as I picture the elevator giving out under us.
“Where’d it come from?” Ryan asks urgently.
“How do we know?! We’re in an elevator!” I shout.
He looks to Trent. “Up or down? Was it below or above us?”
“I’d say above,” Trent replies calmly, though his eyes are narrowed. He’s listening. “Someone’s shouting. Do you hear that?”
“Who can hear anything over this stupid music in this stupid elevator?”
Ryan frowns at me. “Joss, calm down.”
“You calm down! If there’s another explosion this thing could kill us all!”
Ding!
I run sideways through the doors before they finish opening, desperate to get out of there.
“Left!” Trent shouts to me.
I turn to the left and sprint down the hallway. We’re back on the floor we started on, but it looks completely different. There’s smoke in the air, meaning I was right—it was an explosion. I don’t know who set it off but it could have been any one of the ten or so men fighting against Vashons in the living room and entryway of the house.
Looks like someone did find something.
There are at least three bodies on the floor, none of them Vashons as far as I can tell, and when I see how the Vashons fight against the Colonists, I’m not surprised by the body count. In fact, I’m surprised it’s not higher. There’s a savage anger in the air that I haven’t felt since the day I watched Ryan fight in the Arena. It’s a nearly tangible thing, the bloodthirst.
A Colonist lunges toward me with a knife. I dodge it easily, bringing my ASP down on his arm with a hard crack that breaks his bone and leaves his knife useless on the ground. I kick it away, bring my ASP back up, then hit him in the shin. He goes down hard, alive but useless.
“Joss!” Ryan shouts.
“I see it!” I shout back. I swing my ASP around to hit a guy in the knee. He screams, falling to the ground in pain. “I’ve got it.”
“Joss,” he croaks.
I spin around, put on alert by his fading voice. He’s up against a wall with a Colonist pinning him there. Ryan is fighting him, but the guy is putting his body weight into the attack. I see red, literally.
He’s slowly sinking a knife into Ryan’s stomach.
I run toward them, raising my weapon high. I don’t hesitate and I definitely don’t hold back. I come down on the guy’s head with the force I would give a zombie. My arm aches from the resistance when it meets the hardest part of his skull, but he’s hurting way worse. He drops to the ground as the life slips out of him and I don’t know if he’s alive or dead, but he isn’t getting up anytime soon.
I rush to Ryan, taking his shoulders as he slumps forward. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he groans. “I’ll be okay. Hurts, though.”
“Getting stabbed usually does. Can you stand?”
He tries to stand up straight, but winces and crumbles before he can make it. “Maybe not right now.”
I growl in frustration, searching the men and women fighting around me. I spot Trent as he grabs a guy’s wrist and then spins him around. The guy screams before Trent lets him fall to the ground, the guy clutching his arm as it dangles uselessly from the socket.
Trent is the only familiar face I can find.
“Where’s Ali? You need a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine for now. Just don—Mmm,” he moans for a second, leaning harder against me. “Just don’t let anyone kill me, okay?”
“You got it.”
“Joss!”
I sigh with relief when I see Sam come running down the master staircase. Where Sam is, Ali can’t be far away.
“Sam, where’s Ali? Ryan needs her.”
He shakes his head, his eyes desperate. “I can’t find her. I was hoping you’d seen her.”
My heart plummets. “No. I haven’t seen her since the boat.”
Sam curses. “I screwed up. We were together going through the guest house when we saw people sneaking away over the hill. She freaked and ran off, chasing them. They ran back into the house, but I can’t find her. She was convinced she saw Westbrook.”
“Then what are you worried about? Let her kill him. It’s what she wants. It’s why we’re here!”
“I don’t think she really saw him.”
“Did it not look like him?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never seen him. But Ali can’t tell… She doesn’t…” Sam curses again, tearing at his hair. “She sees things that aren’t there.”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask incredulously.
He shakes his head. “Hears things too. Not all the time, but when she’s stressed it can get bad.”
“Like during a war?!” I shout angrily.
Why would they do this to her? Why bring her here?
“Or surrounded by zombies for the first time in years, yeah.”
“Or losing Crenshaw,” Ryan grunts. He’s starting to sweat. I need to get him out of here.
“Well, screw it,” I say gruffly. I wedge myself under Ryan’s arm so he’s leaning heavy on me and I start to walk him forward. “I’m getting Ryan out of here. Can you cover us?”
“Can I use your ASP?” Sam asks, a tiny grin on his face.
I roll my eyes as I hand it over to him. “Yeah, whatever.”
We make it two steps. Two labored, difficult steps until we’re stopped dead by the scariest sound I’ve heard in a long time. A sound so terrifying and strange it makes me scream loud and long.
A gunshot.
I throw Ryan to the ground, then throw myself on top of him. He shouts in pain and surprise as my body pins his roughly, but I don’t care. I know it hurts him and I’m sorry for that, but a bullet will hurt worse and that’s not happening to him. Not on my watch. Not while I’m still breathing.
Everyone else in the room reacts to the sound in almost exactly the same way. Most hit the deck, and those who don’t, jump back and cower. Even the Vashons.
“Enough!” Alvarez shouts into the newly silent room.<
br />
He’s standing in the doorway. There’s a fine mist of dust floating down on top of him like snow. He’s holding a pistol in the air pointed at the sky and I realize the dust is bits of the ceiling he just blew a hole in. He looks around the room, surveying the situation. There are now eight bodies on the ground. The majority are obviously dead. Only one looks to be a Vashon.
Ryan and I sit up slowly. I’m not eager to make any sudden moves and spook the gun, but I need to get off him and ease up on his wound.
“Where is he?” Alvarez asks the room quietly.
No one answers. He lowers his weapon, aiming it at one of only two Colonists left standing.
“Where… is… he?” he repeats slowly.
“Far from here,” one of the men says with a wicked smile. “So far you’ll never find him. He is chosen to survive. To lead. To purify what has been tain—”
Alvarez shoots him in the thigh.
He shifts the gun to the other Colonist before repeating, “Where is he?”
“We’ll never tell you,” the man replies defiantly, but his eyes are shifty. He’s scared.
I can’t say I blame him. I’m a little freaked right now myself.
“Is he here?” Alvarez asks the Vashon beside him.
The guy shakes his head. “I don’t know. I can’t tell.”
“Joss, the body there by you and Ryan. The build is about right. Is that him?”
“Wh—what does he look like?” I stammer, staring at the gun in Alvarez’s hand. “I don’t remember what you told us.”
“Glasses,” Ryan says breathlessly. “About sixty years old. Dark hair. Five foot ten.”
“Not anymore.”
There’s a whoosh from above us, then a sickening, wet smack. Everyone jumps, Ryan and I stumbling backwards to get away from the mass that’s just dropped down onto the gleaming floor in front of us. Red splatters and white specks shoot in every direction. I’m hit in the hand by something yellow, small, and hard. It’s a tooth. I stare at it completely confused until my eyes figure it out. I drag them to the mass in the middle of the floor. Then I start to gag.
It’s a severed human head.
“What the—” Ryan begins in amazement, his eyes rising to the landing one floor above us.
There stands Ali. She’s coated in blood, looking creepily like a cannibal, a long hatchet dangling loosely from her hand.
Her eyes black as coal, she grins crookedly. “I’d say he’s closer to five foot four now.”
Chapter Twenty Four
They’re attaching Westbrook’s head to a spike on the front of the boat. Ryan, Trent, and I are sitting on lounge chairs just off the dock, enjoying the warm afternoon sunshine, and watching one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen a human being ever do. Andy eating Marlow is solidly Number One, but this isn’t falling far behind.
“The southern Colony is still burning,” Trent observes casually.
He’s right—smoke is rising from across the water, where the Colony still burns and the zombies still roam. I doubt there’s a living person left in that place, and if there is, I imagine they wish they weren’t.
I think it’s all pretty depressing.
“I wish they’d finish it off already,” I say sourly.
“I wish they’d take that head down,” Ryan grumbles.
“I don’t want to get on that boat.”
“It’s the only way home.”
I grin at him. “We could swim.”
He chuckles, but it turns into a cough and I feel bad for making the joke. “Not even on a good day.”
Ali checked him out before putting the disgusting star on her Christmas tree. She said he’ll be fine. Infection is his only real concern and she found plenty of med supplies in the mansion. She patched him up and told him to rest, so that’s what we’re doing. Vashons are ransacking the mansion, taking everything that’s not nailed down, and anything that is will burn. They’re hell-bent on destroying this place and making sure another Westbrook doesn’t rise up to take this one’s place.
I may not agree with everything they’re doing, but that much I can get behind.
“They’re not bad people, Joss,” Ryan says quietly.
I zoned out staring at the boat, my face pinched with disgust.
“They look like bad people.”
“Good people can do bad things. No one is perfect.”
“I liked them,” I admit sadly. “When we first met them I really liked them. I liked them right up until they sealed the gate on the southern Colony.”
“I know.”
“Do you still like them?”
“Some of them.”
“Sam?”
“And Ali. And Alvarez.”
I shake my head in disbelief but I keep my mouth shut. I wish I still liked Ali.
“You’ll like them again someday,” Trent tells me.
I grin at him, not even mad he’s telling me my own feelings. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. They’re your kind of people. You just caught them on a bad day. If I judged you by your bad days, I wouldn’t like you.”
I snort. “Pretty bad day.”
“They’ll be more good than bad. Give it time.”
“I’ll never forget this, no matter how long I wait.”
“No, but someday you’ll forgive it. At the very least you’ll understand it.”
I look at him quizzically. “Do you still like them?”
He smiles. “Who said I ever did?”
***
We ride at the back of the boat as far away from the head mount as we can. We took the lounge chairs with us and I have to admit, I’m pretty excited about them. They are comfy! Despite the nightmare on the front of the boat, I’m pretty happy sitting back here in the breeze under the sun with Ryan and Trent. The Vashons are driving the boat up over the city, through an inlet, and out into the Sound. We’ll pass over the MOHAI and I wonder if Vin has taken it or if my friend is dead. Part of me is worried, but a bigger part—the part that knows him best—believes what I told Crenshaw: that man is too wicked to die.
We don’t dip down into the cul-de-sac the MOHAI sits in, but Trent helps me find it with the binoculars as we pass. I can’t see anyone on the outside, but the building is intact and they’re not flying a Hive flag, so I breathe a little easier.
When we pass by The Hive, a few men come out to stand on the dock and watch us go by. Their expressions are unreadable.
“And this is why they’re parading Westbrook’s head,” Ryan tells me from his spot on his chair. His eyes are closed against the sun. He looks so peaceful I almost worry about him.
“Why?”
“It’s a warning.”
“Hmm. They couldn’t have sent a letter?”
He smiles. “Who can afford postage these days?”
Next stop is the stadiums. That is a totally different experience than cruising by the empty MOHAI or the indifferent Hive. People come pouring out of the stadiums to swarm the shoreline. They scream and shout, clapping and waving to us like we’re heroes. And maybe to them we are. The Colonists here have been set free by the people on this boat. They’ve gotten their lives back and I’m glad I get to see this. It gives me hope that maybe this wasn’t all a mistake. I’ll never regret what we’ve done, but the sour taste I have in my mouth over what happened in the southern Colony is sweetened a little by the joy we see from the Colonists.
No, not Colonists. The people. The men and women re-released to the wild.
Trent shoves his binoculars against my chest roughly. “Don’t lose these.”
“Oh, okay,” I say, unsure why he’s brusquely pawning them off on me.
When I get my answer, I still don’t understand.
Trent goes back a few steps, crouches down, then sprints forward. He leaps into the air, up and over the side of the boat, and right down into the cold water of the Sound.
“Trent!” I shout, rushing forward to look over the edge.
I wait for
a few breathless seconds but he finally appears, his blond hair bright against the dark water. He takes long, powerful strokes away from the boat, swimming for the shore.
“Did he jump?” Ryan asks, sounding shocked.
I turn to face him, my mouth hanging open. “I—he—”
I lift the binoculars to follow Trent as he swims the distance to the shore. I’m nervous the entire time. When he finds land and begins to stride purposefully out of the water, I breathe a sigh of relief.
Then I gasp in shock.
“What?” Ryan demands. “Is he okay?”
Trent walks onto the shore, pushes through the crowd patting him on the back, and makes his way directly to a girl—a tall girl with chestnut brown hair and a sweet smile.
Then he straight-up kisses her.
“What’s happening?!” Ryan shouts at me, getting annoyed.
“Trent kissed a girl!”
“Very funny. Is he okay?”
I turn to Ryan, laughing. “Come here. I know it hurts to stand, but you have to see this! Trent is kissing a girl!”
Ryan moves quick for a guy with a stab wound. He takes the binoculars from me, finds where I’m pointing, and nearly drops them into the water.
“Holy shit,” he mutters numbly.
“Right?”
“Who is that?”
“Amber.”
“Who’s Amber?”
“My friend from the kitchens in the Colony. Trent has met her like one time! Maybe two.”
“I guess he liked what he saw.”
I snatch the binoculars back. “Quit hogging them. I want to see this.”
“Pervert.”
“Yes,” I whisper happily.
I watch Trent bend Amber over backwards, dipping her until she’s nearly horizontal. The best part about it? She’s holding onto him tightly. She’s kissing him back.
“Joss.”
“What?”
When he doesn’t answer me I lower the binoculars.
His warm eyes are glowing with excitement. “Let’s do it.”
“Do what? Jump overboard?”
“No,” he laughs, “the woods. The park. Let’s really do it. Let’s live there. Together.”
The air is too thin. It pinches in my lungs, getting lost down in my stomach and making it bubble nervously.