Tearing Down the Wall (17 page)

He stands tall
, glaring at all of us. Even Ali. “So Sam said.”

“
What do you want to do about them?”

“
Advise them to not to eat anyone.”

“
Seriously.”

“
I am serious. I don’t have time to deal with them and their dalliances. Tell ‘em to keep their hands and mouths to themselves. We have bigger fish to fry. Night will be coming soon.”

“
What happens tonight?” Vin asks the older man.

He eyes him again
, more thoroughly this time, before answering. “Tonight we attack.”

“
The stadiums?” I ask.

“
No, Tokyo.”

I frown.
“Where is Tokyo?”

“
He’s joking,” Ali tells me quietly. “Yes, the stadiums.”

“
You don’t know where Tokyo is?” Trent asks me.

My cheeks burn with embarrassment.
“Shut up! I was eight years old, okay? I didn’t make it through a lot of school.”

“
I’ll teach you.”

“
Wonderful. I can’t wait.”

“
Can anyone you brought us be of any use?” Alvarez asks Trent.

Trent points to
Vin. “He’s your man. I don’t have anything to do with them.”

“
They belong to The Hive?”

“
No,” Vin says firmly. “They belong to me.”

“
They belong to themselves,” I mutter.

“
You’re splitting hairs. They follow me.”

Alvarez nods.
“Then I’ll need you to calm them down. They’re creating chaos in my camp. We’ll find them all shelter. Maybe in a building nearby. We’ll protect them, but those who can fight will need to join us tonight.”

“
Agreed.”

“
Good. Now if you two,” Alvarez says, pointing to me and Trent, “don’t have anything else to do, I’m putting you to work. I assume you know Crenshaw?”

I nod.
“Yeah, of course.”

“
Good. You’ll be working with him and his assistant. We need all the hands over there that we can get.”

Alissa takes us back to Crenshaw
’s hut where we last saw him hunched over a table full of random. Vin goes with Alvarez, looking oddly at ease striding into the crowd next to the obvious head of the Vashons. It’s probably because of his ego, or maybe it’s because he was simply born to lead, but I’ve never seen Vin look so… right. This is bigger than The Hive. It’s bigger than the stables and being someone else’s servant, and as I watch him go I wonder if this isn’t where Vin was always meant to be.

He could be a great leader if he could stop stabbing everyone in the back.

“Bray!” Trent calls out happily, startling me.

A face I vaguely recognize looks up then smiles.
“Trent!”

The guy runs to Trent but stops short. I think he was going to hug him before he remembered who he was dealing with. In the end
, they awkwardly bump knuckles.

“
Where’s Ryan?”

Where
’s my sign?

“
Taking care of some things,” Trent lies easily. “What are you doing here?”

“
I was looking for you guys! You and Ryan straight up disappeared. No one knew where you were and no one was looking.”

“
You’re not supposed to.”

“
I know,” Bray says, not sounding the least bit sorry. “But I wandered in here, just to see. This park was where I found Ryan last time so I gave it a shot. I ended up hanging by my ankle from a tree.”

I grin.
“Crenshaw’s traps?”

“
Yeah,” he chuckles, looking embarrassed. “He caught me. I don’t know what he was going to do with me but I told him I was sorry for trespassing on his turf and that I was looking for Ryan. He said he knew where he was but that I couldn’t go there. Not right now. I asked him if I could wait here and he said no, but I could learn. So this is where I’ve been for the last few days.”

“
What’s he teaching you?” Trent asks.

Bray
’s eyes light up with excitement. “Everything.”

What he
’s been teaching him is explosives, which to a bored fifteen-year-old boy probably feels like everything.

“
How does Crenshaw know how to do this stuff?” I whisper to Ali.

We
’re standing at a table of our own where I’m helping her roll bandages. She’s set up shop beside Crenshaw for two reasons. One, she loves him; and two, with all kinds of bubbling, boiling concoctions, open flames, and sharp utensils in newbie hands, there are a lot of injuries at the explosives table.

“
He’s not a real wizard, don’t ever tell him I said that, but he is kind of a magician. He’s into all things nature and if you mix the right combination, nature knows how to go ‘boom.’ Big time.”

“
He must have taught Ryan,” I muse, thinking of the fight he had with Vin about the size of the clay.

“
He taught Jordan too.”

“
Your husband?”

Ali nods.

“Is that how he lost his hand?”

She freezes. In fact
, everyone in earshot does too, and when I stop to think about why we’re all ice sculptures, it dawns on me that that was stupid. It was thoughtless, tactless, and rude. But here’s the problem with me—I never know that until the damage is already done.

“
I’m sorry, I shou—”

“
He lost his hand to a zombie bite,” Ali answers, cutting off my apology. “He was bitten while fighting one and he didn’t even think about it. He wanted to live more than anything so he cut his hand off to stop the spread of the virus.”

“
Wow.”

“
Yeah. So we took him to a town, one that had put up fences and locked out the zombies. They let us in but they almost killed him because he’d been bitten. A nurse helped me save him, but a doctor tried to kill him.”

“
Westbrook?”

Ali nods
, flexing her jaw once quickly as though relieving tension. “Westbrook. Jordan survived but that guy wouldn’t let it go. When I got pregnant he couldn’t take it anymore. He called my baby a half-demon. Then he started sending people in to kill anyone who didn’t agree with him, so we ran. That was the last we heard from him and his Colonies for years, but the threat was always there. We always wondered if he’d run out of room and come after us again. And what do you know? He did.”

“
I’m sorry,” I say grudgingly, unable to look at her. “We screwed up. Because of us they think you were making a deal with Marlow to come at them. We didn’t know.”

She surprises me when she smiles at me faintly. She shocks me when she reaches out and tucks my hair behind my ear in a gesture so motherly it makes me cringe.
“You gave us a reason to finish this, once and for all. To put an end to the wondering and worrying of when he’ll come after us again. It’s a relief,” she laughs. “Thank you for that.”

I look away
, pulling my hair out of her reach. “I don’t think anyone should be thanking me for anything.”

“
Too late.”

I open my mouth to reply
, but I never get the chance. The sun is fading, evening is coming, and suddenly in the peaceful green glen where Crenshaw has made his home, a cry rings out.

“
Incoming!”

I look around anxiously
, trying to find the source of the shout.

“
What’s happening?”

Ali
’s face is tight, her hands clamping down on the rolled gauze in her hand so hard it dissolves into a mad mess of lazy loops through her fingers.

“
Zombies,” she tells me tensely, her eyes on the makeshift road. Men and women are running down it. They’re heading for the entrance to the park. “Probably people too. They made the same announcement when Trent and the herd showed up.”

Something in me aches. It clenches hard and holds that way. It hurts and I hate it
, but it’s good. I know what it is.

It
’s hope.

I move to fall in line with the people running down the road. Ali grabs my arm hard.

“No. We don’t go.”

“
Why not?”

“
Medics and explosives experts—we’re too valuable to risk losing. It’s why we’re hidden away in the middle of the woods.”

“
Not me.” I pull my arm away, shaking my head. “I’m a fighter. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”

I run for the road. If Ali calls after me
, I don’t hear it. All I hear is the pound of feet on packed dirt. It’s a steady rhythm that loosens the tightness in my chest. It’s a song I know in my veins. One beating in my blood louder and louder with every step. I’m running toward something I don’t understand, but still it’s familiar. Still I know it.

When we reach the clearing barricaded by fire still pouring black smoke into the air
, I don’t slow. The rest do, but I don’t. I run. I run toward the fire and the haze. I run into the darkness blotting out the sun. To the rancid air stinging in my lungs, the smoke burning my eyes. I can barely breathe, I can barely see, and all I can hear is the persistent pounding that’s beating against my body, begging to come in.

I search the ugly gray world until I find it. Silhouettes of black against the darkness. There are so many of them. So many that I don
’t know.

And there
’s one I’d know anywhere.

When I see him
, it’s in me: the beat of his heart – the one I’d follow to the ends of the earth – it’s in my blood. It’s not calling me, it’s pushing me. It’s willing me to him until I leap into his open arms and feel his warmth, his strength.

His relentless life.

“
I thought you were dead,” I whisper against his skin, my mouth pressed to his. “I thought I lost you.”

He doesn
’t answer me. He holds onto me, his mouth over mine and his hands in my hair. I don’t need words from him. I don’t even know what ones I’m saying to him, they simply spill out in an avalanche of everything I avoid and bury too deep to find. I don’t need to know where he was or what happened. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that I lost him, just like I always knew I would, but by some strange, insane, otherworldly twist of fate and luck, I have him back.

All around us the pyres still burn as more bodies are thrown on them. I hear people shouting
, fighting, struggling. We should help them. We should stand and fight against the onslaught of zombies that will never end. But if they’ll always be there, then they can wait. We can take one moment in this stupid, thieving world and make it ours. Just his and mine, alone in the crowd and the chaos.

“
Ryan!”

With Trent.

I groan, letting my head drop back until I’m staring up at the distorted sky.

“
Hey, man,” Ryan chuckles. He squeezes me to him tightly one last time before letting me go.

I
’ve never been so annoyed with him. Or Trent. Or the world.

“
Good to see you’re still alive.”

I nearly die when Trent hugs him. Trent
, my Robo-Boy, my unfeeling machine of a strange, bizarro man, hugs another human being. And he does it like he means it.

“
I wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Andy,” Ryan admits when Trent lets him go.

“
Did you come out through the tunnels?”

“
No, we didn’t have time. We had to light a short fuse and if we’d gone into the tunnels, they’d have collapsed on us before we got far enough away. We snuck out of the showers just after we lit it and headed for the back. When the explosion happened it shook everyone up. The lights went out, the walls started crumbling. No one knew where it was coming from or if the building was going down. It was nuts. Andy hid us in a dark corner until the coast was clear, then we ran out the back toward the water.”

“
But you can’t swim,” I protest.

Ryan blushes
, embarrassed. “Yeah, I know. Andy was mad. He had to swim us both out. I laid there like a log and let him float me away.” He chuckles nervously. “I was panicking the whole time.”

He
’s trying to play it off like it’s nothing, but I can tell from his body language that it was hard for him. Maybe even a little horrifying. But he hates that weakness and I get that so I let it go unnoticed.

“
Once we were out, we headed for The Hive,” he continues. “Andy knew it’d be nearly deserted with most of Marlow’s men still up at the Colony. He said we had some recruiting to do.”

“
People were willing to defect?” Trent asks.

“
Oh yeah. Andy wasn’t kidding when he said there were some angry people over there. Seventeen people left with us.”

“
Can they fight?”

“
A good portion, yeah.” Ryan searches the people around us. The crowd is thinning as the fight dies down. Not nearly as many zombies followed Ryan and the others here as followed Trent. I know part of that is the fires; they don’t like the scent of their own. “Where’s Vin?” Ryan asks suddenly.

I blink
, surprised he cares. “He’s here somewhere. Probably with his flock.”

“
I need to talk to him.”

“
Why?”

“
Because we have a few to add to that flock.”

Ryan gathers together the newly arrived Hive members. Including Andy
, looking cleaner than the last time I saw him, he’s right—there are seventeen. A lot of them are women and I realize when I see Freedom and a put-out-looking Elise, the girl who tried to mount Ryan the last time I saw her, that these women are from the stables. It makes me nervous whether they’ll really be happy to see Vin or not. If they’re angry enough at The Hive to run away given the chance, then I think they’re probably angry at Vin too.

“
Vin!” Freedom shouts happily when she sees him.

Then again
, what the hell do I know?

“
You crazy bitch, who let you out?” Vin shouts back, opening up his arms.

Freedom runs into them
, followed by Elise and four other women. They take him to the ground, all of them giggling and laughing, Vin being the loudest.

“
I do not understand this at all,” I mutter.

“
Really?” Trent asks, sounding genuinely surprised. “You just did this to Ryan.”

“
Not like this.”

“
No, you’re right. It was way more intimate what you did.”

“
Why were you watching?” I groan, turning red.

He grins.
“Because it was beautiful.”

***

An hour later I’m back in the central tent with Ryan, Vin, Trent, Ali, Sam, Alvarez, and a few other Vashons that I don’t know or recognize. I ask Sam why Taylor isn’t here and he looks at me like I’m crazy.

“
Someone has to stay behind and watch the fort,” he replies.

I notice that Sam sticks close to Ali. He
’s always with her and I wonder what that’s all about. I wonder if Taylor put him on guard duty—but if she’s so valuable, why is she here?

“
We’ll attack at the gates, but we’ll go in over the walls,” Alvarez tells the room. “Crenshaw and the Hyperion boys will detonate the flash grenades at each gate of both stadiums, causing a distraction and panic. While they run to the gates to defend them, Teams One through Eight will go over the fences. Remember,” he says sternly, catching everyone’s eye, “we are going for containment. Use lethal force only if you absolutely have to.”

“
You won’t have to,” Vin says clearly from his corner. He’s standing with his back against a support post, his eyes on the room, but his body language is clearly removed from the group. “It’s easier than you think to overthrow one of these things. Most of the people inside don’t want to be there.”

“
Even so, they don’t know why we’re there. They will defend themselves, so be prepared. And capture who you can. We want their Leaders. We need information.”

“
We want Westbrook,” Ali says.

Her voice is quiet but it carries through the tent to every corner. I watch each Vashon nod in agreement.

I hate the Colonies as a whole, as an idea and a threat, but the Vashons are obviously working on a whole other level.

The group is disbanded after that. We all have our orders of where we
’re supposed to be. It’s hard to believe that this is really happening. We’ve made an attempt on a Colony once already, but it was waiting for us. The work was done. This is different. This will be a true fight.

“
Sam,” I call as I see him passing through the room. He hesitates for a second, his eyes going to Ali then back to me. She stops to talk one of the other Vashons and I get the feeling it’s for Sam’s sake to give him time.

“
Hey, Joss,” he says easily, stepping toward Ryan, Trent, and I. He does that weird handshake/embrace thing guys do before stepping back. “What’s up?”

“
Are you Ali’s bodyguard or something?”

His face goes immediately blank.
“Yeah. Why?”

“
Why does she need one?”

“
For protection.”

“
From who? The Colonists?”

“
Westbrook?” Ryan guesses.

Sam shakes his head.
“Nah, nothing like that. They should be scared of her.” He chuckles. “Them I won’t protect.”

“
Then who are you protecting her from?”

“
From herself,” he says plainly.

I frown.
“You’re protecting her from herself?”

“
Kind of all of us. Look, she’s moving so I need to go. Stay safe out there, all right? Watch each other’s backs.”

Sam takes off after Ali
, no other words of explanation given. I’m more confused now than I was before I talked to him.

“
What is a sixteen-year-old kid protecting a grown woman from?” Ryan muses.

“
I don’t know, but your crew is about to leave without you.”

Ryan and Trent follow my eyes to the growing crowd around Crenshaw. They all have backpacks
, dark clothing, and the most cautiously excited expressions on their faces I’ve ever seen. This team is purely for distraction. All these guys have to do is follow Crenshaw’s instructions to the letter to light off a series of highly visual, nearly powerless explosions around the gates. They’re giving the illusion of a breach. It’s the truest magic I’ve ever seen Crenshaw wield.

I turn to Ryan
, feeling anxiety in every fiber of my body. He’s going to leave me again. He’ll go with Crenshaw, I’m going over the fence, and it’s too much too soon but I’ll never say it.

“
How many fingers you got?” I ask him curtly.

He grins as he holds them all up and wiggles them at me.
“Ten. Five on each hand.”

“
Two hands, two arms, two eyes.”

“
Two legs, two feet, ten toes.”

“
One liver, two kidneys,” Trent lists off. “One appendix, but you could lose it and be fine. Two lungs, one heart, one gall bladder—”

“
Yes, okay,” I snap. “You know organs. Thank you.”

He smiles at my annoyance.
“You’re welcome.”

“
Two hearts,” Ryan corrects, tapping my chest lightly.

I roll my eyes at the sweetness of the gesture
, unable to handle it the way a normal person with real feelings that they can understand would.

“
Just bring it all back with you,” I tell him. “Leave no appendage behind.”

“
You got it. Be careful in there, Joss.”

I grin.
“It’ll be easy.”

He kisses me. It
’s quick and firm and right in front of everyone. The most amazing part about it—I like it. Out in the open and everything. I really, really like it.

“
Trent.”

Trent nods distractedly
, securing his backpack. “Bring him back in one piece. I know.”

“
No. Well, yeah, please do that, but I was going to say ‘take care of yourself.’”

He blinks at me
, a system error crashing his processor. Finally he blinks again, his eyes clearing. “You too,” he says quietly.

“
Thanks.”

And just like that
, my Lost Boys are gone again.

***

“
Line up,” our commander whispers harshly.

Eight other people and I in Team Three
are in position on the outside of the baseball stadium. We line up quickly with our backs against the wall. Then we wait.

I shift the fake gun they gave me around in my hands
, unsure how to hold it. It’s carved from wood and stained black, an illusion that will hopefully fool people in the dark chaos we’re about to create inside this Pod. I got a quick rundown on handguns from a Vashon named Todd before we left the forest. Basically I was told I wasn’t trusted to have a real one and I do not blame them one bit. I wouldn’t know what to do with the thing.

As Todd showed me how to use it as a melee weapon
, he explained that since their island was founded by a group that was mostly military, the Vashons still have guns and a decent supply of ammo. In fact, he was military once, back before the big collapse and the cure that kicked it off. He was stationed just outside the gates of Ali’s old home, Warm Springs.

Apparently when they helped the farmers of the original Vashon Island clear it of zombies
, they mostly used brute force or through ‘strategic strikes,’ whatever that means. I think it boils down to cracking skulls. Bullets, they decided, were better saved for humans. And they were right. With the near extinction of guns these days, the sight of one is pretty horrifying—like seeing a dragon or Bigfoot.

An explosion rips through the night. It flares up
, black smoke billowing around it as a sound like thunder cracks through the still air. As quickly as it appeared, it’s gone, leaving my eyes momentarily stunned. Another explosion follows that one, then another. There’s shouting from inside the stadium. I hear cries of terror, some sounding like children. The foreign sound of a baby crying wafts over the walls and blends with the cracks and bangs of Crenshaw’s magic.