Текст книги "Backs Against the Wall"

Автор книги: Tracey Ward

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Текущая страница: 9 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

Chapter Fifteen

“Joss,” Ryan whispers sharply.

Gentle hands shake me roughly.

“Joss, wake up.”

I pry my tired eyes open, trying to bring them to focus. To make sense of the Ryan shaped shadow forcing me awake.

“Wh-what’s happening? What’s wrong?”

“You were talking in your sleep.”

“She was moaning in her sleep,” Trent says, his voice muffled and distant.

“I got this,” Ryan tells him. “Go back to sleep.”

“Gladly.”

I run my hand over my eyes. My fingers come away wet.

“I was moaning?”

“And whimpering,” Sam calls from across the room.

Ryan drops his forehead against my shoulder. “I said I got it, man.”

“Only trying to help.”

“I’m sorry, guys,” I whisper, feeling horrified. Ryan is sugar coating it. I was crying in my sleep.

“Don’t be,” Sam says.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Trent asks, his words almost indiscernible. I think his face is seriously planted in his pillow.

“Absolutely not, never, no, thank you.”

“Cool. Can I take this opportunity to say that I find it insulting that our guard is sleeping on the job?”

“Are you going to try to break out?” Sam asks him, already sounding like he’s falling back asleep.

“Not tonight.”

“Well then I’m going back to sleep. Let me know when you’re breaking out.”

“I don’t want to ruin the surprise.”

“Goodnight, guys,” Ryan says. It sounds like a warning.

Either they listen or they’re already asleep again. Doesn’t matter, they don’t respond.

“You okay?” Ryan whispers, his voice barely making a sound. It’s more of a stirring of his breath near my face.

I shake my head, feeling humiliated and small. “Apparently not.”

“What’s wrong?”

I close my eyes hard, pinching them shut until I see bursts of light against the backs of my eyelids. A tear slips from the corner of my eye and runs down the side of my face. I cringe when it lands in my ear.

“I don’t know. I think I had a dream.”

Ryan settles on the floor beside the bed, his arm draped over my stomach. His hand is tracing slow circles on my forearm.

“A nightmare? Was it about the Risen?”

I chuckle darkly. “You mean the zombies?”

“Infected?”

“Undead?”

“Humanly challenged?”

I sigh, amazed that I’m actually smiling through my tears. I open my eyes to find him grinning at me.

“I think it was about my dad,” I hear myself say.

I don’t tell him that it was about my dad on Christmas day. That it was the same dream I always have and always ignore. The one about the tree, the door, the lights, the neighbor, the doll, the screams, the blood, the keys, the car, the days, days and days of being alone with nothing but my pink Hello Kitty bag full of snacks and treats left over from our road trip to grandma’s house. That I never opened the door. That I peed in that car, in addition to other things. That I found my dad’s iPod in the center console and I clung to it, silently sang the songs I knew were on it, but I never plugged it in, never listened to it because I knew if I made a sound or shone a single small light they’d find me. I don’t tell him that they found me anyway. The Risen, the zombies, the infected, the undead, the sons of bitches that stole my light. My life.

I don’t tell him, but I know when he looks at me that he understands it. He gets it because he’s lived it. And because he sees me, like really sees me, and I want to hide from him but I don’t. I don’t because it’s not so bad being seen. Not when it’s by the right person.

“Joss, I’ll sit here with you until—“

“Can I sleep down there with you?”

He’s shocked. Me too, but I meant it. I mean it. I want it.

“Can I?” I press when he doesn’t answer, only stares.

“Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah,” he stammers, making me smile faintly.

I grab my blanket and pillow then slide down onto the floor, onto his narrow mattress beneath me. When I lay down on my side facing the cage door, I feel him hesitate. I think he’s scared. Scared of scaring me and I’m worried about it too but I want to know. I need to know if I can have him close like I think I want him to be and not freak out. Not break into a sweat or scream or run or punch him in the eye. I want to see if maybe it won’t be bad at all because I think, I hope, it will actually be better.

And it is. When he lies down beside me, the length of his body running from my feet to my head, I feel safe. Secure. Like I’m open and vulnerable but it’s okay because my back… my back is covered. It’s against the wall. Against him. So when his arm hesitantly drapes over my side, I grab his hand in both of mine, pull it up against my chest and hug him to me hard. He’s so close, so close. It’s suffocating but I push past it because it’s worth it and I want it. I want this. I want him. I want me when I’m with him, when I’m strong and I’m fighting and I’m trying for other people. When I’m alive and I’m hopeful and I’m not just surviving. I’m living, I’m laughing and I’m in lo—

***

“Wakey, wakey!”

I snap awake, my body jerking in every direction. My elbow hits a hard surface and I hear a shout behind me. I roll across the floor, look at where I’d been laying and see Ryan lying on his back with his hands clasped around his face.

“Jesus, Joss!” he cries.

I tentatively reach out to him, not sure what I plan to do to help. “Did I hit you?”

“Yes, you hit me. You elbowed me in the mouth. Who wakes up like that?”

I drop my hesitant hand and glare at him. “A girl who grew up in the wild, that’s who. You shouldn’t have been so close.”

He stares at me in shock over the top of his hands still clutching his face. “You were holding onto me!”

“Is anything broken? Are you missing a tooth? If I knocked out a tooth, don’t swallow it.”

“You are the worst,” he grumbles, sitting up.

“What do you want from me? I’m not a nurse and I’m not especially maternal.”

When he drops his hands I see his lip is swelling on the right side. I got him good and it makes me feel awful inside. Sick in the pit of my stomach.

“An apology would be nice,” he says.

“Ryan, I’m sorry I hit you beca—“

“Nope, that’s enough,” he interrupts, putting up his hand to stop me. “If you keep talking you’re going to turn it around on me and the apology will mean nothing. Let’s leave it at you’re sorry you elbowed me in the face.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“I am sorry.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I know you didn’t.”

“I overreacted. I was wrong.”

He grins. “Alright, Joss, don’t hurt yourself.”

“If you two are finished,” Taylor calls from the doorway, “I’d like to get started so we can get it over with and I can go do something else.”

“Like play Donkey Kong?” Sam asks, rubbing his eyes.

Taylor glares down at him. “Were you sleeping?”

“No.”

“Are you lying?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect. They could have gotten out. Killed us all in our sleep.”

“Nah, they’re cool,” Sam says, leaning back against the wall, completely unconcerned. He points to me. “That one is seriously damaged. No offense.”

“None taken,” I say through gritted teeth. He’s not wrong, but still…

Sam points to Ryan. “He’d never go anywhere without her and she’s here for something. Needs something. Neither of them is going anywhere. And him,” he says, pointing at Trent. “I’m pretty sure he could have gotten out whether I was here or not, awake or asleep or dead. If he wants out, he’ll get out.”

“Your job was to watch them, not sleep.”

“Are they still here? Then I did my job. I’m grabbing breakfast.” Sam jumps up, heading for the door. He stops to point at me again. “Princess has requested eggs over easy, by the way.”

With that Sam is gone and Taylor is shooting me daggers. I shrug.

“I mean, I wouldn’t turn them down.”

He shakes his head, leans into the hallway and shouts, “Bring in the med cart.”

Ryan leans against the bars of our cage, standing beside me. Trent comes to stand beside him.

“What’s the med cart?” Trent asks.

Taylor waves his hand. “Nothing major. We want to take some samples. Well, not we. The nurses and doc want samples. I want you gone.”

Three more guards come into the room, one pushing a large metal cart that creaks and bumps over the uneven tiled floor of the hallways.

“Samples for what?”

“Information. We’ll just take some measurements on you. Do a few tests, if you don’t mind.”

“And if we do?” Ryan asks brusquely, eyeing a large needle on the top of the cart.

Taylor shrugs. “Then you leave right now.”

He sounds broken hearted about the idea.

“Just like that?” Ryan asks.

“Just like that.”

I shake my head. I’m not leaving this place, not until I get to speak to the council or someone of some importance. Not until I’ve tried. They can bring in all the needles, knives and scary med equipment they want, I’m not being bullied out of this place.

“Do your tests,” I tell Taylor defiantly, staring him in the eye to let him know I understand what he’s trying to do. “We’re not infected. We have nothing to hide.”

He smirks. “Not that you know of. But the infection rate isn’t what it used to be, not since The Cure,” he says sarcastically. “Thanks to that little beauty of a failure, the last we checked incubation took over a week before a person fully turned, meaning you’ll be locked in here for more than two. Are you prepared for that?”

It’s nothing new. It’s nothing we don’t already know or haven’t heard from him before, but the time frame is daunting. We can’t be in here for two weeks. I’ve already been away from the Colony for too long as it is. People didn’t have a lot of faith in me as a person to begin with. I doubt they’ve held out any hope I’ll come back and that makes me so desperately sad inside. That I’m still trying but I know I’ve been written off because it’s what I would have done. I would have given up and gone numb weeks ago.

“We don’t want to move in,” Ryan groans. “We just need to speak to someone. Someone who makes decisions for the group.”

“How do you know you’re not talking to him? How do you know I’m not the Grand Poobah? The king of the island?”

We all freeze when we hear a disembodied giggle from somewhere in the room. It’s small and light, childish. Girly. I scan the room, trying to figure out where it’s coming from. If maybe we heard it trickle down through a vent or if there’s someone hiding somewhere in the room. Then one of the guards bends down, throws open the doors on the bottom half of the cart and there she is. A young girl with long dark hair and brilliant, shining blue eyes peering out at us. She blinks against the sudden light, then her eyes fix on us inside the cage, taking each of us in one by one. She can’t be more than ten years old. Probably closer to nine. To eight.

“Beth, what the hell?” Taylor asks, exasperated.

She frowns, looking away. “I’m sorry, Taylor.”

“What are you doing in there?”

“Playing hide and seek with daddy.”

“Does he know he’s playing this game with you?” Taylor asks suspiciously.

“No,” she mumbles reluctantly.

“Cheater. Get out of here. You’re not supposed to be in here, you know that. It’s dangerous.”

She goes to climb out of the cart but stumbles. One of the guards reaches down to help her out, to stand her up until she’s there in front of us, vibrant with flushed cheeks, a clean face and hair and a daddy out there somewhere looking for her.

My throat begins to close up, making it hard to breathe.

“My mom lets me in here all the time,” she whines.

“Yeah, when it’s empty and it’s just you and her. Seriously, sweetie, scram. Your dad will kill me—“

The doorway is filled with a tall man with brown hair, only one hand and brilliant blue eyes. Eyes the exact shade of the little girls.

It’s her dad and my eyes are on fire.

“Taylor, have you seen Beth?” he asks.

Taylor silently points one stern finger at her face.

The man sighs with relief. “Come on,” he tells her, his voice annoyed but affectionate. “Let’s go.”

She walks toward him reluctantly, taking her sweet time. “But I was going to help Taylor with the prisoners.”

“You’re eight years old, baby. Let’s worry more about taking your bath and less about becoming a warden.”

“Called it,” I breathe, watching her go.

“What?” Ryan whispers.

I ignore him. I keep my eyes glued on the girl. On her dad.

“Hey, brat,” Taylor calls after her, holding up a small, rustic doll that had been in the cart with her. It’s ratty from use. Kind of an ugly thing. “Don’t forget Little Miss, Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong here.”

The girl smiles brightly, giggling as she runs back to him to get her doll.

“Why do you call her that?”

“You don’t know that song?”

She shakes her head, hugging her doll.

Taylor looks at the dad sadly. “Come on, man. You aren’t even raising her right.”

“Blow me,” the dad deadpans.

“What does that mean?” the little girl asks Taylor.

“It means don’t repeat it. It also means Music Education in the rec room in an hour, you hear me?”

She smiles happily up at him. “Yes!”

“Alright, beat it.”

She goes to leave with her dad, but she casts one last look over her shoulder at us. I see Trent, a tall blond blur in the corner of my watery eyes, waving to her. She lifts her hand to wave back but then her eyes catch on me and she hesitates. She stares at me, her sweet little girl face searing into my brain as she clutches that ugly, creepy doll that she loves so much. As she takes her dad’s hand, his only hand, and walks out of the room.

“Joss, what’s wrong?” Ryan asks me, his hand on my back.

I shake my head mutely, unable to speak without falling apart. I know my limits. I know when I’ve hit a wall and I just slammed headlong into a big one. But it’s not the worst thing in the world. It’s actually kind of… beautiful. Almost comforting. Because somewhere out there, despite everything that’s happened, everything I’ve lost, there’s a little eight year old girl with a daddy and a doll and a smile.

Chapter Sixteen

After three days, we’ve developed a routine. Wake up, fight with Taylor about leaving, eat our breakfast, give blood and tissue samples to whichever nurse or doctor they have on duty at the time, hang out in our cage until lunch, fight with Taylor about leaving again, eat, stare at each other, eat our dinner, fight with Taylor about leaving one last time for the day, then hang with Sam until it’s lights out and we all go to sleep. We never talk about it, but I lay down next to Ryan every night, Trent snoozing just a few feet away. No one sleeps in the bed.

It’s when one of the nurses, a thirty-something dark haired woman, is taking a sample from me that my injured arm finally comes back to haunt me. She’s holding my hand, pulling on it lightly to keep me still as she looks for a vein. I’m not paying enough attention and she twists it, making me breathe in sharply.

Her eyes snap to mine. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

“Nothing,” I say tightly, waiting for the pain to subside. It’s not terrible, just intense and surprising.

“She broke it,” Trent tells the woman. He’s watching us closely from his favorite corner. “Badly.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“She threw up when she saw it. The bone was sti—“

“Okay, it was bad!” I snap at him, looking at him hard. “But it’s been healing.”

The woman is gently probing my arm now, all the way up to the elbow. When I jerk and hiss again, she frowns.

“This needs to be casted,” she tells me.

“What? Like a hard cast? Something I can’t take off?”

“Exactly. Your arm needs to be immobilized, probably all the way through the elbow.”

“Pass.”

She raises her eyebrows. “It’s not really a question.”

“You’re right, it’s not because it’s not happening,” I tell her evenly. “I can’t survive out there with a cast on my arm.”

“You can’t just leave it like this.”

“Ryan splinted it, we can splint it again.”

“I splinted it because it’s all I could do,” he calls from the bathroom, shouting through the shut door. “If I could have casted it, I would have.”

I glare at the closed door. “Just do your business and don’t worry about us out here, alright?”

“Do what you want, but you should let her cast it.”

I turn to the nurse. “That’s kind of creepy right? I don’t know much, but I feel like talking to someone on the toilet is creepy.”

She nods seriously. “It is, it’s weird. But he’s right. We need to do more than splint your arm.”

I shake my head. “Not happening.”

“Fine,” she says with a sigh. “I’ll splint it, then. But don’t come crying to me when it heals wrong and hurts when it rains.”

“Deal. Once I’m gone, I’ll never come back.”

“You just got here. You’re that eager to leave us?” she asks, going back to her business of looking for a vein. She’s taken hold of my other arm, leaving my injured one alone.

“Taylor is pretty clear that we’re not wanted here.”

The nurse smiles. “Yeah, he’s not subtle. But it’s not up to him. It’s up to the council. If you can be of use to us here, they’ll let you stay.”

“We don’t want to stay.”

“What do you want, then?”

“Help.”

She pauses, looking up at me. “Help with what?”

I swallow, not sure what to say exactly. Help fulfilling my promise? Help getting The Hive to agree to fight with us? Help freeing people from the Colony up north? Help taking down all of the Colonies? Help bringing down the Westbrook guy who’s running the circus? I don’t even know for sure. I’m not clear on how big of a part I’m meant to play in any of this. I haven’t really stopped to think about it, not until right now. What is it that I want? Not what does everyone else want me to do or what do I need to get done to free myself from this burden, but what do I want out of all of this for my life?

“Help taking down the Colonies,” I tell her adamantly, “ending the roundups and the kidnappings. Help making the resources the Colonies hoard and hide from us available to everyone willing to work and trade for them so the world isn’t so damn cutthroat and horrifying.”

She stares at me for a long time saying nothing. Not even moving. I can feel Trent staring at me too and I wonder if Ryan heard my rant. I try not to picture him right now, though.

“Those are some lofty goals,” she tells me quietly. “You’ll need a lot of help for that. Help we won’t give you.”

My heart plummets. “Why not?”

“Because as much as we hate the Colonies, we have something of a truce with them. They leave us alone, we leave them alone. Trust me, I’d like nothing more than to tear their buildings down on their heads with my bare hands, but I have a bigger picture to think about. Something bigger than my need for revenge.”

“What did they do to you?”

Her eyes and mouth tighten at the corners. She’s angry. “They tried to kill my husband. They said he was tainted. Dirty. Half dead like the monsters outside. Then they started saying the same thing about my daughter. They said I had laid with the damned and only evil could come from that. I put an arrow in a man’s eye when he broke into my home to murder my family. To cleanse us. That was the last straw. We got out after that. We ran. We couldn’t fight them, which is why I know you’ll need a lot of help to do what you’re planning. More help than The Hive can give you.”

My blood runs cold. “Who said anything about The Hive?”

She looks at me hard. “They sent you here, didn’t they?”

“How do you know that?” I whisper.

“Your boat has the name U.S.S. Sweet Honey written on the side of it with a small hornet painted on the rudder.”

I close my eyes against what idiots we’ve been. How ill thought out and impulsive this entire thing has turned out to be. “I hate Marlow so much.”

“Most people do,” she agrees. “He’s an idiot, though. Hornets don’t even make honey. They eat insects, including each other.”

“Like the cannibals.”

“And the zombies, yeah. So you’re part of The Hive?”

“No,” I say firmly. “Absolutely not. We just went to them for help and they sent us here. They told us if we could get your people to join up, then they’d join us too. I know it’s a lie, but we don’t have a lot of options. We had to try.”

“What’s your plan?” the nurse asks, sitting down and leaning back, crossing her arms over her chest as she watches me.

I blink, surprised. “What?”

“Your plan. What was the pitch you gave to The Hive? Give it to me now. Sell it to me.”

I glance at Trent who simply watches me as well, no indication of what he thinks I should say or do. So I figure what can it hurt?

I tell her everything. I start at the beginning with the day I was taken by the Colonists. I tell her about Vin, Nats and Breanne. About the Colony in the north in the MOHAI. About the crazy happy people running the show and the guard duty walking the wall, watching the interior to keep people in instead of keeping zombies out. I tell her about the kitchen crew, about the sewing room, about the maintenance room where Nats works. I tell her about the night I got jumped and she smiles when I tell her about the child’s t-shirt and my failures as a seamstress. I tell her about the rebellion, the people desperately wanting out. Then I tell her about Caroline and her face changes. She’s sad but she also looks understanding, the way Ryan looked at me when I told him. Like someone who knows. When I tell her about my jump and my fall, she nods in understanding as my broken bone suddenly makes sense. Then, when I’m done talking and Ryan is in the room with us again and no one is making a sound, she simply stares at me. I don’t know what she’s thinking. I definitely don’t know if she believes me but as I look back at her, I really want her to.

“That’s quite a story,” she tells me.

But she doesn’t.

She stands slowly, gathers her things and leaves the room without another word. I shake my head as I run my hands over my hair, pulling at it in frustration.

“No one is ever going to help us, are they? The Colonies will never stop. The roundups won’t stop. The fear– dammit!”

“We could leave,” Trent suggests. “Leave Seattle entirely. Live somewhere else where there are no Colonies.”

“How do we know they aren’t everywhere?” I ask him harshly.

“We don’t know. Not until we look.”

“No,” I tell him, shaking my head again. “I can’t just walk away. I can’t leave them in there.”

“We’ll keep trying, Joss,” Ryan tells me, but he sounds tired. Beat down like I feel. “We’ll find a way to go back for them. I promise.”

“Thanks,” I mumble, but I don’t believe him.

I don’t think he does either.

***

“Still here, huh?” Taylor asks, flipping on the light.

I open my eyes slowly, making sure to take my time waking up. I’ve been working on that. On not freaking out and bashing Ryan in the face if I’m startled awake, something that happens more often than I’d like to admit. I’m like a skittish little deer and it sounds sweet, but not when you’re the deer. Then it’s just scary, humiliating and annoying. Ryan doesn’t say anything about my new restrained demeanor, but I think every morning he wakes up without a fat lip or bloodied nose he counts it as a win. He could sleep somewhere else, somewhere away from me and my violent tendencies, but he never does. Some things, I think, are worth a little pain. I guess for him, sleeping beside me is one of them.

“Have we spoken to your council yet?” I mumble.

I open one eye to glare at him, not bothering to get up. It annoys Taylor when we sleep in so I do it as often as I can.

“Not yet, Princess.”

“Then yep, still here. I’d be happy to go away if you’d let us talk to them.”

“Not enjoying the accommodations?”

I sit up to stare at him, my face carefully blank. “It’s a little Colonial for my taste.”

Taylor shakes his head, a crooked grin forming on his face. “Watch what you say. I’ll start to think you’re one of them again.”

I frown, surprised. “Meaning you don’t think that now?”

“Meaning I have my doubts.”

“Why is that?” Ryan asks.

Taylor folds his arms across his barrel chest, looking down at Ryan where he sits beside me. He glances over at Trent who stares back vacantly, his butt already perched in his favorite chair. When Taylor meets Ryan’s eyes again, he looks far less annoyed than usual. Almost casual.

“You don’t say grace.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“A lot. The Colonists, the true to the bone followers, they’re very religious. Devout.”

“Overzealous,” I mutter, thinking of Crenshaw.

Taylor nods. “Exactly that. They don’t take a meal without saying grace or hit the sack without evening prayers. I’m not saying all religious people are Colonists just like I’m not saying all Colonists are religious. But I’ve seen you three dig into your food without washing your hands or thanking Jesus and to a genuine Colony follower, that wouldn’t fly. So either you’re just not one of the true followers, which makes it unlikely you’d be trusted to come in here to gather intel, or you’re not with them at all.”

“We’re not with them at all,” I insist.

Taylor shrugs. “Maybe you are or maybe you aren’t, but Sam seems to think you’re on the level so I’m inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.”

“You trust Sam’s judgment that much?” Ryan asks dubiously.

“That kid is an excellent judge of character. Why do you think I have him in training with the guard? He’ll have my job one day.”

“Probably tomorrow,” Sam mumbles from his cot, his face turned toward the wall.

“Chow is out,” Taylor tells him.

Sam is up and out the door before any of us can say goodbye.

“If you don’t believe we’re spies,” I say to Taylor, “then why won’t you let us see your council yet?”

“Because that’s not how it’s done,” he says simply. “Never has been, never will be.”

“We only want to talk to them. They could come here and—“

“It’s not how it’s done,” Taylor repeats, this time more forcefully. “Look, here’s the deal. The people on the council are important. President of the World important only with fewer sex scandals and racial discrimination. They absolutely will not be brought anywhere near you, any of you, until you’ve passed quarantine. Because I’m guarding you, I’m not allowed near any of them until the quarantine is over just as a precaution and that is messing up my game something awful.”

“Your game?”

“He’s boning one of the people on the council,” Trent tells me.

I scrunch up my nose, grossed out by his phrasing. “I doubt he’s ‘boning’ one of them.”

“Trying to!” Taylor objects.

“Ugh,” I groan.

“Get over it,” he tells me, sitting down hard in a chair just outside our cage. It’s the closest he’s gotten to us without a tray of food since we got here. “The world has ended but life goes on and a big part of that for a man is a beautiful woman. Don’t think for a second that your boy here likes sleeping curled up next to you because he’s attracted to your soul and a morning punch in the mouth. He does it because you’re soft and no matter how dirty you get, your hair smells like strawberries. It’s a mystery of nature, but a fact nevertheless, one he’d like to get up close to and research further. More in depth, if you know what I mean.”

“Speaking of messing up people’s game,” Ryan growls from behind me.

I look back to see him shooting daggers at Taylor, his hand making a cutting motion across his neck.

Taylor chuckles. “Own it, kid. She needs to know and trust me, she won’t mind. Badass as she wants to be, she’s still a woman and even the toughest woman has times when she wants to feel like just that – a woman. Let me guess, Princess. Despite that rough exterior, you secretly like the fact that his hands are so much larger than yours. That they make yours feel delicate by comparison.”

I’m calling it now – Taylor is a witch. A mind reading, secret spilling, smug SOB of the absolute highest order. He’s also dead on. Ryan’s broad shoulders, his large hands, the fact that he towers over me when he stands close; it all messes me up inside. It flips a switch I don’t know how to turn off but maybe that’s because I’m not trying hard enough. Or at all, really. I’m not trying because I like it. Because I want to swim around in it feeling fluid and free. Feeling like he’s the wall between the rest of the world and me. Like I can lean on him. Count on him.

“Yeah,” Taylor drawls, sounding satisfied as he watches me. “That’s what I thought. Don’t be embarrassed by it. Nothing makes a man feel more like a man than giving you that feeling and he makes you go all Go-Gurt inside, doesn’t he?”

“What the hell is Go-Gurt?” I ask, evading the question.

“Sorry, that’s probably before you’re time. Sometimes I forget what younger people missed out on. Basically it’s sweet flavored mush in a tube and that’s you. Pure, sweet mush inside.”

I want to tell him that he’s an idiot and he’s wrong, but he’s not. He’s right and I’m pissed. I’m mad because I’m no longer a Jawbreaker. I’m more of a Gummy Bear or a friggin’ Laffy Taffy. What am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to survive on the outside out in the wilds of Neverland with every Lost Boy and zombie in the world barreling down on me and I’m busted and cornered like Tinkerbell with a broken wing. They’ll get me eventually, one of them will. I’ll be put back in a cage that looks like a dream but you’re never allowed to wake up. I’ll go insane inside and eventually the mush will leak out and drown me in myself until I can’t remember what it felt like to run. Until I’m one of those animals in Ryan’s nightmare zoo, laying down for the last time and wondering where the world went.

“Joss,” Ryan says, his voice cautious. It’s the tone he takes when he knows I’m spooked. When I look like I feel – trapped.

“If you’re done teaching sex ed, do you mind telling us how it started?” I ask hotly, desperate to change the subject but also wondering why we haven’t asked them this yet.

Here’s the thing. On the outside, out in the wild, no one knows. Even back when it was contained in Oregon, no one knew how the outbreak began. Or if they knew they sure as hell weren’t telling. Reporters and wackos came up with wild theories about biological weapons, military experiments to create Super Soldiers that wouldn’t die, some even said it came back to stem cell research gone wrong. Very few people believed it was just an illness that bloomed into being and wiped out the planet. Most were convinced someone was to blame. We just never found out who.

Taylor looks at me surprised. “How would I know?”

“Sam said you have military here,” Ryan begins.

“Ex-military,” Taylor clarifies.

“Either way, they were with the government when it went down. If anyone would know anything about it, it’s them.”