by Tracey Ward
“Why did they do it like that? Why leave everyone alive in the stadiums but murder the entire southern Colony?”
“They weren’t slaves here. Plus, we’re getting closer to this Westbrook guy. You know how the Vashons feel about him. The closer we get, the angrier they get.”
“Remind me not to piss off the Vashons,” I muttered.
“Hmmm,” he grumbled in agreement. I could feel his voice vibrating deep against my cheek where it lay on his chest, making me grin. “Once this is over we’ll get some distance from them.”
My grin vanished as I felt a strange panic set in. “Where will we go?”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Home.”
“Your loft?”
“The city. Seattle. It’s home. I don’t want to leave it.”
I felt his fingers thread slowly through my hair, stroking it gently. My eyes rolled closed with the relaxing feeling. If I were a cat, I’d have been purring.
“What about the woods?”
“Crenshaw’s woods?”
“Yeah. We can add on to his house. Make it big enough for the two of us. I can keep up his gardens.”
“Do you know how?”
“He was teaching me for years. I can run that place exactly the way he did.”
“Will you wear a bathrobe and cook me smoked rabbit?”
He chuckled. “I’ll even talk down to you and call you Athena if you want me to.”
“No,” I said, wrapping my arm around him and hugging him tightly. “You’ll call me Joss. Always Joss.”
“Tinkerbell?”
“No.”
“Peter Pan?”
“No!”
“You sure you don’t want me to call you Kitten?”
I pinched his side, making him yelp. “No.”
“All right,” he conceded. His breath brushed hot across my head. His lips landed lightly in my hair. “I love you, Joss,” he whispered.
“I love you, Ryan.”
I will never in my life get tired of saying that.
Now we stand on the deck of the Vashon boat guiding us across Lake Washington toward Mercer Island. Garden Gate is there in the gray morning mist that hovers over the water. It looks like a freak show against its perfect black backdrop. There are no lights anywhere on that island except for this one house—this one weird glass-walled house that’s blazing with unnatural light.
“It’s totally self-sufficient,” Sam tells us as we stare at it in amazement. “It’s built into the side of a hill and uses the earth for a lot of its walls to keep it cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It’s covered in solar panels, it’s using the water in the lake to generate power, there’s a row of wind turbines up on the hill it’s built into. Totally gated in on the back to keep the zombies out, but it sounds like they cleared them off the island same as we did.”
“How do you know all of this?” Ryan asks him.
“Alvarez.”
“How does he know?”
Sam grimaces slightly. “Interrogations.”
“I don’t want to hear about that,” I warn him.
He shrugs. “I don’t want to think about it.”
“An interrogation is a formal line of questioning,” Trent informs us. “It doesn’t necessarily mean violence.”
“Based on what happened to the southern Colony, I’m assuming this interrogation was violent.”
“Safe assumption.”
I shiver against the thought and the cold.
“Is Ali on the boat?” I ask Sam, surprised he’s not with her.
Sam suddenly won’t meet my eyes.
“Yeah,” he says quietly, “she’s here.”
“Are you not guarding her anymore?” Ryan asks.
“No, I am. I’m on a break. She’s with Alvarez.” He shifts on his feet before muttering, “She shouldn’t be here.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s sick?” I ask, wondering if that’s rude. Ryan doesn’t nudge me so I figure I’m okay.
“Yeah. She’s kind of on the edge right now,” Sam says with irritating vagueness. “She…” He sighs heavily. He looks over his shoulder and stares at the back of the ship where I can see Alvarez and a long mass of dark hair whipping in the wind.
“Sam?”
His eyes snap to mine. He looks worried.
“Docking in five!” someone shouts.
We’re coming up on the shore outside Garden Gate. My heart begins to pound in my chest.
“Just watch out for her, okay?” Sam says urgently.
“Everyone to their stations!”
Ryan nods as he turns to leave, going to our assigned post. “Yeah, we’ll help you keep an eye on her.”
“No, I mean watch out for her,” he says emphatically.
The deck is swarming with people. A line runs between Sam and I, blocking him from sight.
“You mean like ‘watch your back’?” I shout to him.
He doesn’t answer and when the line of people is gone, so is he. Trent and Ryan have already moved on so I get my butt in gear and head to my post, but Sam’s words are still swimming in my head, confusing me. Worrying me.
We break the mist and there it is, clear and glowing against the hillside. Somewhere inside, Westbrook is milling around in his pajamas. He’s probably munching a donut and sipping tea. Maybe listening to music. He might be watching a movie. Or cartoons like a Saturday morning when we were kids and had homes and parents. And Saturdays.
“Hold!” Alvarez cries.
We all wait, dying to jump off this boat and head inside. It’s going to be brutal, and I remind myself to be ready for that. I don’t plan on killing anyone and I haven’t asked, but I doubt Ryan does either. I’m not afraid to break an arm or deal out concussions with my ASP, but I’d rather not have any more living, human blood on my hands than I already do. I wonder for a second if anyone should clarify that to Trent, but before I can there’s an explosion on the shore.
Several go off, dirt flying into the air and then raining down, pelting the side of the house and the water around us. Some lands on the boat but we all hold steady, waiting.
Alvarez’s team launches two more volleys of stones against the shore until he’s convinced every last one of the land mines waiting for us is dead. We learned our lesson back at the southern Colony; no one is falling for that trick again.
I wait anxiously in the silence that follows the last piece of dirt falling to the ground. It’s creepy quiet. No one is moving inside the house and there are no guards or soldiers rushing out to meet us. It’s completely calm and still. Almost like no one is home.
“Now!”
People spill off the boat, our feet pounding down the small ramp and onto the dock. We run in teams, each of us with our own orders of where to go. We’re fanning out over each floor of this place, going into the guest houses, the massive garage.
Everyone’s goal—find Westbrook.
We burst into the house and I do my best to not be distracted by it, but damn. It’s ridiculous. It’s unholy. It’s so freaking normal that it’s stupid.
Nicely upholstered chairs and couches, undented, unscratched tables, glass that hasn’t been shattered, lights that are glowing warm and strong. It’s completely ignorant to the world across the water. It’s everything that annoyed me about the MOHAI and so, so, so much more. It’s not just clean or nice—it’s luxurious.
It makes me sick.
I snap out my ASP. I clench my knife in my left hand. I breathe in steady, I breathe out even, I swallow back the angry bile, and I calm my heart.
“Joss!” Ryan calls over his shoulder.
I nod, quickening my steps to follow him. “I’m right behind you.”
We’re the team searching the lowest level. Trent and Ryan move cautiously through the hallways, trying to find us a door that will take us down. Trent guides us through a huge, gleaming kitchen, past pristine bathrooms, some kind of game room. Finally he comes to a stop i
n front of a glass enclosure with a sturdy metal frame.
“No way,” I mumble, staring at it like it’s a unicorn in a tuxedo.
Trent pushes a circular button beside it. It lights up, followed by a polite ding!
“Yes way,” he says in equal awe.
The doors to the elevator slide open silently in front of us. Soft classical music pours out into the hallway.
Ryan shocks me when he barks out a short, loud laugh.
“What’s funny?” I ask incredulously.
“I don’t know. When was the last time you rode an elevator?”
I shrug. “Not since I was kid. Are we taking this thing down?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” he asks me like I’m crazy.
“How do we know we can trust it?”
Trent steps inside and jumps up and down fearlessly. When he doesn’t plummet to his death, I sigh with relief.
“What if we get trapped in it?” I ask.
Trent shrugs. “Then we know it doesn’t work.”
Ryan steps inside, offering me his hand. “Are you coming?”
I don’t hesitate to take his hand, but when he pulls me inside I feel like I’m going to hyperventilate. I don’t trust this thing at all, but I trust Ryan and Trent so when the doors close behind me, I do my best not to scream and claw at the walls.
Trent pushes another button, a B this time, and we start to drop down smoothly.
“This is weird,” I whisper.
“But also kind of fun,” Ryan whispers back.
“We’re here to take down the evil head of a totalitarian regime. We’re not supposed to have fun.”
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.
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.