Tracey Ward - Backs Against the Wall

There stands the brunette nurse, her normally calm face pinched in rage. She stalks toward us in the cage, her eyes fixed hard on me. I nearly cower under that stare but I’ve lived too long in the wild to flinch so easily. When she whips out a gun, though, something I haven’t seen in years, I blink rapidly. I can’t believe my eyes. I can’t believe she still has one and I want to doubt she has any bullets left for it, but the look on her face tells me that she absolutely, positively does. And one of them has my name on it.

“No, Ali, what are you doing?” Sam exclaims, coming to stand beside her.

She cast him a quick look that tells him to back off. He does slowly, his hands raised.

“She’s cool, I swear,” Sam tells her. His voice is rising in pitch with his nerves. “She’s not a zombie.”

Feet are rushing around the house. I hear the front door fly open, boots pounding on the tile floor of the hall and entryway. People are running upstairs above us. Someone is shouting but it’s too muffled to understand.

The brunette, Ali, looks at me. Her hand holding the gun never wavers.

“You’re going to answer my questions and then you’re going to die so you may as well be honest, do you understand me?”

“Huckleberry!” Sam cries.

Ryan, Trent and I all stare at him, confused as hell.

“Huckleberry, Ali! I swear it! Don’t do this!”

“Calm down, Sam,” she tells him evenly, never looking away from me. “I’m crystal clear. I know what’s what and these three are spies.”

“What?” I exclaim, shocked. “No, no we’re not. I promise.”

“Lies. You’re spies for the Colonists, which leads me to my first question. What were you supposed to accomplish once you were inside?”

I shake my head, my breath coming hard in short, painful gasps. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’re not working with the Colonists. Ask Sam. Ask Taylor!”

She cocks the gun. Ryan steps closer to me but one look from Ali sends him right back where he was. She focuses her eyes on me again.

“We haven’t had strangers on this island in years. Then suddenly you three show up in a Hive boat with insider knowledge about the Colonies. Now, just days later, Colony ships are creeping through the Sound heading our way in the dead of night, obviously planning an ambush. So I’ll ask you again, what were you meant to accomplish while you were here? What did they send you to do? Were you supposed to disable our power supply? What were you planning?”

“All we wanted,” Ryan says calmly, trying to draw her attention away from me, “was to speak to someone in your council about getting help freeing our friends from a Colony. That’s all. Trent and I, we’re members of a gang on the outside but it’s not The Hive. It’s also too small to be of any help. So we went to The Hive and they sent us to you. That’s the entire truth.”

Ali shakes her head, her mouth forming a perfect line on her face. It makes me sweat down to my toes.

“Try again,” she whispers darkly.

“Lower the gun and talk to us about this,” Ryan insists firmly.

“No time for that. The ships are almost here and if they manage to overtake this island, I’m not about to leave you alive. So I’ll ask one more time, what were you meant to do here?”

“We were meant to find Heaven,” I tell her softly, thinking of Crenshaw. I’m so used to not mentioning him, never talking about him to keep him safe, that I suddenly realize I never mentioned him in my story to her. I only ever told Taylor about him and the name didn’t ring a bell so I never brought it up to Ali. That seems infinitely stupid to me now. It’s amazing what clarity a gun to the face can bring.

“See, now we’re getting somewhere. God, Heaven and divine retribution – that’s all Colony talk.”

“No, it’s Crenshaw. Except he called it Elysium.”

She blinks and I nearly pass out. His name means something to her.

“Crenshaw is the one who told us about you originally,” I continue, hoping to hit home again with his name. “He said we never should ask The Hive for anything. That they were liars and traitors and he was right. I should have listened to him. He showed us a map, told us he helped you plant a garden here and that he had an open invitation to join whenever he wanted but he won’t because he’s waiting.”

Ali takes a deep breath. Her fingers flex slightly on the handle of the gun.

“What is he waiting for?” she asks, her tone giving nothing away.

“His daughter,” Ryan says softly. “The Hive has his daughter and he’ll never leave her.”

Her eyes dart from me to Ryan, to Trent and back again. Finally, she lowers the gun.

“What’s your name?” she asks me.

“Joss.”

She shakes her head minutely. “No, what’s your name?”

I frown, suddenly unsure. “Jocelyn.”

Whatever softness was building in her leaks away. The gun is back in my face in an instant.

“Wrong answer.”

Gun = clarity.

“Athena!” I cry, finally understanding. “He calls me Athena. He said Joss was too mousy for—“

“A warrior like you,” Ali finishes for me, the gun lowering again.

I nod quickly, though it’s more like shaking. I gesture to Ryan. “That’s Helios.”

Ali looks to Trent who shrugs, unconcerned.

“We’re not that close,” he admits.

Ali stares at each of us in turn. No one else moves. We stand statue still, all very aware of the gun hanging heavy and dark at her side. She stares at me the longest, her face blank. Then suddenly she nods curtly as though coming to an agreement with me, an agreement I know nothing about.

“Sam,” she says, turning to face him, her entire demeanor changing. She suddenly seems tired. Her movements are slower. Sluggish. “Let them out. I’m not the only one who will be coming for them, I just got here first. Once they’re out, take them to their boat at the old pier. It’s tied up there.”

“You’re letting us leave?” Ryan asks hopefully. “Alive?”

Ali looks at him, a sad smile on her lips. “Any friend of Crenshaw’s…”

She turns to leave as Sam is unlocking our door. Maybe it’s foolish, maybe it’s tempting fate, but I call out to her.

“Thank you.”

She pauses in the doorway, her face cut in half by the light in the room and the shadow beyond it.

“Don’t thank me yet. I doubt you’ll make it past the buoys.”

“What’s the deal with the buoys?” Ryan asks.

She ignores him. Her eyes are fastened on mine.

“If you see Crenshaw again,” she says, her voice soft and affectionate, “tell him Persephone sends her love.”

When she’s gone, Sam swings the door to the cage open. Not waiting for us to get out, he runs across the room to a large cabinet and unlocks it quickly. Inside are our weapons. When I take hold of my ASP in my shaking hand, my brain and body still coming down from the gun in my face, I feel better. Less like wetting myself and more like kicking a little ass. Crushing skulls and forgetting names.

“We’ll go out the back way,” Sam says, checking to see if the hall is clear.

It sounds like most of the people have moved outside. There’s the sound of shouting wafting in through the door that’s been left open and I can see lights scattering around the huge front lawn. There are vehicles, flashlights and torches but mostly there’s bodies. Lots and lots of moving, running, frantic bodies, none of which I want to come in contact with right now.

When the house is silent he runs us out of the library, down a long corridor that leads to the kitchen and out the back door. When we hit the backyard, I’m momentarily floored by the fact that there’s a swing set with a slide and sandbox out here. The little girl with the eyes and the doll must live here permanently. I can see her here, laughing and running with her dad nearby, her mom in the kitchen. Both of them with a gun on their hip and a knife in their shoe.