by Tracey Ward
I cautiously reach out with my free hand while keeping my knife steady in my right. I creep forward, feeling for legs. I’m hoping I’ll know Vin’s when I feel it—which means I’ll probably know it when I don’t feel it too. I need to find Bryan’s leg. I need to take him out.
Water splashes against my face. I’m wound so tight I nearly cry out, but then I hear a shout. It’s muffled and distant but it’s there, which means my hearing is coming back—just in time to hear Bryan’s teeth tear through my flesh.
I shake off the imagery steadily building against the blank canvas of my sight and I reach for the splash. I get hold of wet jeans just for a second before my left arm is kicked sharply. I eat the whimper of pain that shoots through my still healing arm, gagging on it as it lands bitter and salty in the back of my throat. Gritting my teeth, I reach out again and wrap my aching, angry fingers around ankle. It thrashes roughly to get rid of me, but I hang on. Quickly, I slide my hand up the leg to find the calf. It’s huge. It’s a hulking, rippling mass of muscle, and while Vin is an athletic guy, he’s not built this way. At least I definitely hope he’s not because if this is his leg, he’s going to be seriously pissed at me in a second.
I slash my knife across the back of the leg. Just at the back of the ankle.
Right across the tendon.
The man goes down immediately, his right leg made useless by my blade. I feel the spray of water as he hits it along with a loud cry of pain and surprise. It echoes through the tunnel and deep into my ears.
There’s a second spray, a second cry, a loud grunt, then a sharp crack. I know that last sound. That’s my ASP doing what it does best: laying the dead down.
There’s silence after that. I know I’m breathing harsh and rapid, but I can’t hear it. Or else it’s so loud and constant it’s a white noise and it’s all I hear. Either way, I’m waiting. I want him to speak, to tell me he’s alive. To reassure me I didn’t help kill the wrong man. That I’m not about to be next.
“Kitten.”
I leap for the sound. I stow my knife so I don’t slice him in my rush, but then I throw myself against him. His arms go around me and it’s the hug I wanted to give him when I first saw him back inside the Colony. It’s easier here in the dark with no one watching, no one wondering, no one assuming. When it’s just Vin and I, and we know what we are and what we aren’t. What we are right now is alive. Alive and very, very lucky.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice close to my ear.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“You’re shaking.”
He’s right—I’m trembling from head to toe and it’s not from the cold. It’s from reality. It comes from knowing Vin and I just killed again. We didn’t put a Risen down. We killed a person. Yeah, it was in self-defense, but you can tell yourself that all day long but in the end it is what it is: murder.
Vin insists I’ll get used to it. Ryan says I never will. Based on how I feel right now, I’m starting to side with Ryan.
“I’m fine,” I lie. “You?”
“I’ll be all right.”
I pull back to try to look at him. His voice is getting clearer, but also rougher. I can hear him better now and what I hear is pain.
“What did he do to you?”
Vin clears his throat. “He got ahold of me. Nearly choked me out. That boy was strong.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? I’m counting myself lucky he didn’t take a bite out of me.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“What the hell are you sorry for?”
“I don’t know. I never should have let him get his hands on you.”
Vin chuckles, his voice sounding strained. “I was thinking the same thing about you, Kitten. Don’t be sorry, you did plenty. How did you manage to take him down?”
“I cut his Achilles heel.”
“Damn,” he coughs.
“Yeah.”
“Wait, he and I were wrestling blind. How did you know you weren’t cutting my leg?”
I step away from him slowly.
He grabs my hand. “Kitten.”
“I was pretty sure I had his leg,” I admit.
“Pretty sure?”
I shake my hand free of his grasp. “Are you still standing? Did I cut your leg?”
“No. But—”
“Then calm down! We have to get out of here. He’s not the only wolf in these woods.”
I hear Vin’s feet splashing away from me in the water.
“Where are you going?” I cry, anxious and annoyed that he’s leaving me behind.
“I’m looking for the torch he had.”
“He tossed it in the water. It’s useless.”
“I doubt it.” I can hear him sloshing around, his hands probably dragging through the water. “These tunnels are full of moisture. They have to be burning something that can stand up to that.”
“What are you going to light it with if you find it?”
“I just found it. And we’re going to use whatever he has on him.”
“I’m not searching him,” I say immediately. “What if he isn’t dead?”
Vin chuckles again. “Oh, he’s dead. Here’s your ASP back, by the way. You might want to clean it while it’s still dark.”
I reach out, my fingers immediately connecting with his arm. I trace it down to my ASP which I snap out to length and swish around in the water at my feet.
“I’m not going anywhere near him.”
“One of us has to.”
“Be my guest,” I mutter, stowing my weapon.
“I just did all the work,” he snaps at me.
“Did you? Really? All of it?”
“Search him.”
“I have flint,” I snap back, reaching into my back pocket.
“Are you kidding me?”
“No. Who goes anywhere these days without it?”
“It’s everywhere you want to be,” Vin grumbles, pulling the flint from my hand.
“What?”
“Nothing. Before your time.”
“You’re not that much older than I am.”
The flint sparks, the torch instantly catching fire in a sputtering blaze between us. The light ignites Vin’s face, casting shadows over his skin, under his eyes, at the corners of his mouth. He looks it then—older than me. His skin has seen more sun, his mouth has formed more frowns. But it’s his eyes that show it the most. They’re hard like glass.
It makes me wonder what mine look like.
“I’ve got ten years and a lot of lives on you,” Vin tells me quietly, his voice still gruff from his fight with Bryan. “Even if we were the same age, I’d still be older than you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
He smiles wryly. “Just because you don’t get it doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense. Now come on. I want to get out of these tunnels.”
I follow closely behind him as he takes us back the way Bryan came. I hope it’s the way out. For all we know it could be leading us deeper inside this underground maze, maybe guiding us into Bryan’s secret lair where he kept snacks locked up just in case. I’m worried every time we round a bend that we’ll run smack into another cannibal or a cave of horrors, but I’m equally anxious to run into Ryan. I know he told me to run to Crenshaw, to leave him behind, but I don’t know if I can. He has to be down here. I refuse to believe he was taken by Marlow’s men. The explosion went off, he and Andy got the job done. But did they do it in time or was it a last resort—an effort made to save the rest of us that cost them both their lives?
It’s exactly the kind of self-sacrificial, heroic bullshit Ryan would pull.
“We’re out,” Vin says.
Up ahead there’s light shining down from a manhole. It’s faint—just a few pinpoints coming through the holes in the steel disc—but it means the outside world.
“Hopefully we can open it.”
Vin nods in the growing light. “They seal some of them.”
“It’s to ke
ep people like you out.”
“You mean people like us.”
“No, I mean you,” I correct him. “People like you and everyone in The Hive.”
“Sounding kind of judgmental there, Kitten. You got something you want to say?”
“Babies.”
Vin stops, taking my arm to stop me as well. When I meet his stare, it’s angry but controlled. “Do you know what it’s like for a kid to grow up in The Hive? Any clue?”
“No. But I know what it’s like to grow up without a mom,” I reply hotly.
He releases my arm, his face disgusted. “Oh boo hoo. We all know what that’s like. Trust me, it’s better to grow up without a mom in a Colony than it is to grow up with one in The Hive. If it’s a girl, she’ll end up right where her mom is. If it’s a boy, he’ll probably end up dead by the time he’s nine and either one of them could end up hooked on Honey, tweekin’ and itching for a fix all day every day. It’s an ugly place to live if you don’t know how to do it right so, yeah, I think those kids are better off getting out.”
“But no one is given a choice. You can’t take that from people like you own them.”
“Marlow does own them,” he replies coldly. “Or he did. Whoever takes his place will own them now and they like it that way. You know what comes with being given choices? You make bad ones. You make ones that get you killed. A lot of people can’t handle that pressure anymore. The stakes are too high. It used to be you made a bad choice and you ended up driving a Honda for six years wondering why you didn’t grow a pair and go for the Camaro. Screw the gas mileage, it made you feel alive! But now making bad choices gets you killed or worse—it could get your kid killed right in front of your eyes. People can’t handle that. They gladly hand over their rights and their choices so nothing is ever their fault.” He laughs harshly before it turns into a cough. “I wish you could be in the room when those babies are taken from their mothers.”
“I’d rather not,” I mumble, feeling sick.
“No, if you’re going to judge it you need to see it. Those women, they cry and they moan for a day or two but then they never talk about it again.”
“Maybe it’s too painful. Maybe they know it wouldn’t do any good.”
Vin nods grimly in agreement. “Because they know how to survive. Hold the torch. I’m going up to see if I can open this thing and get us out of here.”
I take the torch silently. Vin climbs the metal ladder to the top before pressing his neck and shoulder up into it. I hear him grunt, curse, then grunt again.
“Are any of them yours?” I blurt out.
I expect him to ignore me. Maybe even yell at me. He surprises me when he laughs.
“No,” he replies, taking a step down to look at me. “I can guarantee you that none of them are mine.”
“How can you know for sure?”
“Because I don’t dip my pen in the company ink.”
I frown. “What does that mean?”
“It means I’m not dumb. Look, can we talk about my sex life another time? I need help with this.”
“How am I supposed to help you?”
“Climb up here with me and help push.”
I look around for a dry spot on the ground. Of course, there is none. “What about the torch?”
“Drop it. We don’t need it.”
I don’t like the idea of going into the dark again, but he’s right—if we can get out through this hole, we don’t need the torch anymore. I take hold of the ladder before dropping our only light source. We’re instantly plunged into darkness and even the light from the holes in the cover seems faint for a minute. When I climb up the ladder I’m careful not to take hold of anything but steel. I don’t want to go grabbing anything and give Vin the wrong idea.
“You ready?” he asks when my face is level with his.
“Ready.”
“Push!”
We both grunt, curse, then grunt again, but this time we get results. The cover screeches loudly as we push it up out of its home to slide it over the pavement above. This has got to be one of the holes the cannibals use on a fairly regular basis. Otherwise it probably would have been rusted shut. The thought that they use it gives me hope that we’re close to home, though where exactly ‘home’ is for either of us at this point is pretty open to debate. For Vin I imagine it’s wherever his people from the Pod are. For me, I know who my home is. Now I just need to know where he is.
We both squint into the bright light of the afternoon sun. It’s painful compared to the darkness we’ve been living in for the last couple hours.
I stare back at the hole. I feel like a traitor leaving it.
“He’d want you to keep going,” Vin tells me quietly.
I nod my head numbly, knowing he’s right but unwilling to move from this spot. It feels like leaving Ryan. It feels like I’m giving up.
“Where are we?” I ask hoarsely before clearing my throat. I will not cry, not over nothing. I don’t know anything for sure yet so what’s the use in crying about it?
“We’re near the Elevens,” Vin whispers.
It surprises me that he bothers with the hushed tones. He’s the Stable Boy of The Hive. He’s a big deal in any territory.
“Why are you whispering?” I ask him at full volume.
He pulls me into an alley before clamping a hand down firmly over my mouth. I try to twist my head to get free but he holds me tightly.
“First of all,” he breathes harshly, “if I whisper, you do the same. If you have to question me, do it quietly. You got it?”
I glare at him, but I nod my head.
He releases my mouth. “Second, the reason I’m whispering is because some of these guys owe me money.”
“They owe you money,” I whisper obediently, “and you’re hiding from them?”
“I’m not exactly in the enforcing mood at the moment. If they see me, they’ll expect me to collect. I don’t have time for that right now.”
“What do they owe you for?”
“Gambling.”
“The Arena?”
“No. Poker.”
“I’m terrible at poker,” I mutter, glancing up and down the street.
“It’s because you’re a bad liar.”
My shoulders slump. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because it’s true. Lie to me right now.”
“No, that’s stupid. Whatever I say you’ll know I’m lying.”
“Doesn’t matter. I want to see you do it. Lie about something. Anything. Your age, color of the sky, whatever.”
I stare at him, my mind going blank. I open my mouth but nothing comes out.
He smiles with satisfaction. “Told you. You’re a terrible liar.”
“Some people might think that’s a good thing.”
“People like your Hyperion? Yeah, I’m sure that Boy Scout likes it.”
“Do you have a problem with Ryan?”
“Nope, but he has a problem with me.”
“It’s because you suck.”
Vin turns his smile to me, his eyes bright with amusement. “Story of my life.”
I don’t want to talk about Ryan with him anymore. I don’t want to keep saying his name. It feels like it gets weaker every time I use it.
“Shouldn’t we get out of here?”
“Yeah. Where would Trent have taken my people? The Hyperion?”
I shake my head firmly. “No, no way.”
“Your place?”
“No. He knows better.”
“Where then, Kitten? Where are we going?”
It’s a bad idea. I’m not even sure it’s where Trent would have taken them, but I know it’s where I want to go. It’s where he told me to go to find him.
“The woods,” I whisper. “We’re going to see the wizard.”
Chapter Fifteen
Who knew Vin the violent, usurping pimp was a Wizard of Oz fan?
I do. Now.
Ever since I whispered the word “wizar
d” twenty minutes ago the guy has been singing We’re Off to See the Wizard nonstop, over and over again. The real pain? He’s actually really talented.
“Are you done yet?” I ask irritably.
He grins. “Is it stuck in your head yet?”
“On repeat. Full volume.”
“Then yes, I’m done.”
“You’re the worst.”
“So I hear. Z at two o’clock.”
He’s right—there’s a shambling, moaning zombie heading our way just off to my right. I slip out my ASP, knowing it’s my turn. This has been constant since we came up out of that hole. I was surprised at first that we didn’t hear or see a sign of the Elevens this deep in their territory, but now that I see how many zombies are in this area it makes sense. Marlow killed the barriers holding in a swarm of easily a hundred zombies. Now they’re everywhere. Every gang is probably on lockdown waiting to find out how bad things get. I remember Bray telling Ryan they were doing this exact thing when the northern Colony fell for the first time. “This is just as bad as that day—if not worse. Those of us in the wild haven’t had time to clean house completely from that accident. Now there’s a new swarm on top of everything else. The world is slipping back into chaos. It’s reverting back to the first days.
I approach the Z quickly and swing my ASP wide. It comes around to connect solidly with the side of the zombie’s skull where it makes a disgusting thunk sound. Not a crack like it should, but the soft tissue noise of the metal sinking into the rotted out mush that is this guy’s face. I’ve probably damaged his brain, but I definitely haven’t destroyed it.
“Need help?” Vin asks, sounding bored.
He doesn’t sound like he’ll actually give help if I need it. It sounds more like a taunt than anything else. I ignore it and him.
I take a step back as the zombie stumbles toward me, then I bring the ASP toward him on a backhand. It hits him in the face, right in the eye, and the force of the blow snaps his head back. I take the opening to put my foot in his gut. He lands on his back on the ground, his broken, grappling fingers clawing at the air to find me. I quickly circle around to his head and bring my ASP down hard on his face twice, using the hard ground under him to solidify my blows.