Tearing Down the Wall (3 page)

I
’m sitting down to dinner with a table full of cannibals.

It sounds lik
e the beginning of a bad joke—one that ends with something about passing the salt and then everybody laughs, only I’m not laughing. I’m also not eating, definitely not anything of the meaty, protein-packing variety. I wouldn’t even trust a glass of milk, and I. Love. Milk. Love it. The Colonists almost had me selling my soul to them for it. But with the Colonists, believe it or not, I trusted the source more than I do here.

These people will eat your toes while you watch
, so it doesn’t seem outside the realm of possibility that the milk on this table came from a person, and while that’s fine for babies, there’s something very sickening about the thought of it now.

“
Please, dig in,” Shorty says from his seat at the head of the long rectangular dining table.

Shorty
’s name is Elijah. I should probably start thinking of him as that, but I feel like names humanize these lunatics and I don’t want to soften my image of them. They’re polite, more hospitable than my mom on Thanksgiving, but I don’t like it. It’s creepy. Creepier than if they came at me covered in living human blood with bits of warm tissue dribbling from their lips. This right here, this is like Halloween in reverse. This is monsters and ghouls dressed up as preachers and soccer moms.

We
’ve been joined by a couple of new people, but I can tell by the seating that the important ones are Andy and Elijah. Andy seems to have almost a celebrity status with the rest of the group. People smile at him, clap him on the shoulder; the few women I’ve seen look at him a little too long. He’s a decent enough looking guy from what I can tell in this light, but good looks and a charming smile can’t account for the reaction people have to him. It doesn’t explain why Elijah has him sitting directly to his right at the table.

Elijah smiles patiently at us.
“You’re not eating.”

“
I’m not hungry,” I tell him dryly.

“
You’re not hungry or you’re not hungry for what we have to offer?”

“
Does it matter?” Ryan asks from across the table.

“
Quite a bit.”

I push my plate away slowly.
“I’ve never been hungry enough for what you call food.”

Elijah
’s smile changes. He holds it steady but the tightness around his eyes makes it different. It makes it angry.

“
Waste not, want not,” he sings softly.

I shiver down to my toes.

“What did you mean by us sharing a dream?” Trent asks, his curiosity knowing no disturbing crimes-against-nature bounds.

“
We want what you want: freedom from the Colonies.”

“
How are the Colonies even a concern for you?” I ask.

“
They’re a concern for everyone.”

“
But they’re afraid of you.”

“
We’re afraid of the daylight,” he replies bitingly. “Imagine being a child and never playing in the sun. We’ve made monsters of ourselves, monsters trapped in the dark. It was our only defense. Our numbers have always been too small to fight with and we knew early on that the Colonies would be a problem. They were corrupt from the start.”

“
So we’ve heard,” I mumble, thinking of the Vashons.

Elijah nods in understanding.
“We aren’t the only ones who saw it coming. Some ran and hid, some found the numbers to defend themselves, and some made a deal with the devil.”

“
What deal did you make with him?”

“
Not us. The Hive.”

It shouldn
’t surprise me, but it does anyway. Marlow obviously hates the Colonies just like he hates the Vashons, and I think I get why: they’re bigger than he is. He thinks of himself as a king and it’s a huge blow to his bloated ego that there are people out there stronger than he is. He’ll never control the kind of numbers the Vashons and Colonies are working with, and it eats away at him. He hates them for it.

I suddenly wonder if he hates them enough to pit them against each other.

“Did Marlow tell the Colonists we were talking to the Vashons?”

“
Yes,” Andy answers. “He sent word to them immediately after Ryan won the Blind.”

This is the first time Andy has spoken since he
IDed us. As his voice cuts through the room, I notice how familiar it is.

I narrow my eyes at him
, trying to get a better look. “I know you, don’t I?”

He smirks.
“Ryan knows me better.”

“
He’s a guard in The Hive,” Ryan confirms with a small nod. “He’s one of Marlow’s closest men.”

My eyes go wide with shock.
“You’re the one who brought us in to see Marlow. The one who didn’t search us. I was carrying an ASP and a knife in that room.”

“
I figured,” Andy says easily. “I was hoping you’d use them.”

“
You want Marlow dead?”

“
I wouldn’t cry over it.”

“
So wait. Are you Hive or are you…” I trail off, not sure what to call them. I don’t know if ‘cannibal’ is an offensive term.

“
I’m a member of this tribe.”

“
Then you’re what? A spy? For how long?” I ask incredulously.

“
Seven years.”

“
Do you have spies in the Colonies?”

“
No.”

“
Would you tell me if you did?”

“
No.”

“
So you’re probably lying?”

“
Anything is possible.”

Ryan sits forward
, catching Andy’s eye. “What deal did The Hive make with the Colonists?”

Andy glances silently at Elijah
, an unspoken question passing between them. Elijah nods.

“
The Colonies have always been obsessed with two things,” Elijah explains. “Cleansing the world of the plague and recruiting more people into their flock. At first they talked about the plague as divine retribution. They said everyone infected and dying outside the walls they hid inside were getting what they deserved. They felt they’d been chosen to survive. But then not everyone agreed with them and their numbers started to shrink. That’s when they miraculously got word from God Himself that they were meant to save as many people as they could. When willing members dried up, they started the roundups. They used to be one meager group hiding inside a shopping mall, but they kept expanding—and as they did hey needed more bodies. More laborers. The Hive made a deal with them that they would give them people in exchange for goods. I don’t know what Marlow gets in every payment, but I would bet it’s mostly crops. They’re a group of gamblers, pimps, and thieves. They’re not known for their farming skills.”

“
Where is The Hive getting people? You can’t just make them out of thin air,” I complain.

Trent snickers behind me. I turn to glare at him.

“What?”

“
You’ve lived alone for too long.”

“
What are you laughing at?”

He leans back in his seat
, looking entirely too comfortable considering where we are. “Ryan, you want to field this one?”

“
Joss, think about it,” Ryan says patiently. “How would The Hive be creating people to sell?”

I blush as it dawns on me.
“The stables.”

“
Exactly.”

“
They’re selling babies?!”

“
Yes,” Elijah answers bitterly, the disgust I feel written on his face. “There’s no contraception anymore. Pregnancies are a real risk, and with the women in the stables…
working
as often as they do, babies are going to happen. A lot.”

“
Are these women giving their children up willingly?”

“
Not all of them,” Andy tells me tightly. “I’ve seen them stripped from their arms just moments after they’re born. The women fall apart, the babies are screaming. It’s not easy to watch.”

I glare at him.
“But you still do it.”

“
I can’t stop it. I might be able to save one but then my cover is blown and years of work are lost. Wasted.”

“
So instead of saving one, you save none. That’s noble.”

Andy
’s eyes flash as his jaw clenches. “I saved your boy here after his show in the Blind. That crowd wanted to tear him apart and I got him out. I can’t save everyone but I do what I can.”

“
However you need to work the math to sleep at night,” I spit, but I wonder why I’m doing it. I actually understand and I’m grateful that he got Ryan out. I’m just appalled by the idea of selling children to the point that I can’t see straight. I’m angrier than I’ve been in a long, long time and I don’t have the real villain here to shout at so Andy will have to take the abuse.

“
Joss, calm down,” Ryan warns.

“
No way! Captain Hook is selling Lost Boys, Ryan! It’s jacked up!”

Elijah frowns.
“Captain Hook?”

“
She’s very into
Peter Pan
,” Trent explains casually. “It’s endearing.”

“
The point is, we have to do something about this,” I demand.

“
That is precisely the point, yes,” Elijah agrees. “From what Andy heard in your meeting with Marlow—”

“
Captain Hook,” Trent corrects.

“
Shush,” I whisper to him, exasperated.

“
Hey, it’s your thing. I’m only trying to help.”

“
Help by being quiet.”

“
You do realize that you’re Peter Pan in this scenario, right?”

“
What?” I cry, turning to face him. “No, I’m Tinkerbell.”

“
Hardly. She was a seductress. Spritely. You’re too manly for that.”

I sigh.
“I hate you sometimes.”

“
But you love me most of the time. That’s what matters.”

“
Andy heard us talking about the Colony in the north,” Ryan says, getting us back on track.

Elijah nods.
“He told us what you had planned, what you asked from The Hive. He also told me they had no intention of helping you, no matter what happened on your trip to Vashon Island.”

“
No surprise there.”

“
So we’d like to take you up on your offer.”

“
Our deal with Marlow was that we’d bring the Vashons in to fight with us,” Ryan reminds him. “We didn’t get their help. We barely made it off their island with our lives.”

“
They think we betrayed them to the Colonies,” I agree, feeling oddly sad at the thought of the Vashons hating us.

They
’re the closest thing to my kind of people that I’ve seen in a long time. After hearing Sam talk about it, I could see living there out in the open and the free. No zombies, no Colonists, no Hive. I could sleep soundly at night in a warm, dry place without worrying about waking up to find a Risen in my face or a Lost Boy in my bed. But that strange dream died when the Colonist boats rolled down the river and Ali put a gun to my head.

“
We aren’t worried about the Vashons,” Elijah assures us. “We’ll join our numbers with yours to fight back against the Colonies. To take back the surface.”

“
Our
numbers
are three,” I tell him, gesturing to Ryan and Trent.

“
For now, yes. But once you’ve taken down the Colony in the north you’ll have more.”

“
Not many more. Those aren’t fighters. Those are Colonists. Maybe not the die-hard, uber-religious crazy ones, but they’re still soft. The three of us, a few of you, and whoever we can get to put up a fight from the MOHAI aren’t going to be enough to take down one of the stadiums.”

“
And once one is down, the others have to fall quickly behind it like dominoes,” Ryan reminds us. “We can’t give them time to call for help from the other Colonies.”

“
Wherever the others are. No one knows.”

“
We do,” Elijah says simply.

I blink
, surprised. “You know where the other Colonies are?”

“
We know where one is. The one in the south, near the shore. They have boats there that they use regularly. We assume there’s another Colony across the water, but we don’t know exactly where.”