Tracey Ward - Writing on the Wall

“You should walk away.” I say, knowing it’s true.

“Yeah. I should forget all about all of you. But I don’t know if that’s what I want to do. I don’t know if it’s something I can do.”

“You’re not going to know until you try. That’s all any of us can ask of you anyway. We just need you to try.”

He looks at me then and it’s strange. He doesn’t look so much older than me anymore. He looks young and vulnerable, completely unsure.

“What do you think I’ll do?” he whispers. “Do you think I’ll do the right thing?”

“No.” I answer without hesitation.

I’m relieved when he laughs. “Thanks for that.”

“I have my doubts, just like you. But the fact that you’re torn gives me hope.”

“Ooh.” he says with a wince. “That is a dirty word, Kitten. You know that.”

I step closer to him and wrap my arms around him tightly, shocking him. He hesitates before hugging me back gently. I’m proud of him that his hands stay out of my danger zones.

“You’ll come back for us, Vin.” I whisper in his ear. “I know you will.”

I know no such thing, but I want it to be true and I can tell he does too so I tell him that it is. I lie to us both and I hope it makes it real.

Vin nods his head beside mine and buries his face in my shoulder. I do the same. We stand huddled together against the cold and the uncertainty of everything tomorrow will bring.

That’s why we never see it coming.

Vin is slammed harder against me, pressing me painfully into the wall. When I open my eyes I feel his breath rush out of him in one huge exhale. He groans as his head sags forward, his hands clenching hard against my skin. I’ll have bruises later. But that’s the least of our worries. I’m looking over his shoulder staring face to face with Caroline. Her eyes are wild and huge, staring straight at me as she leans against Vin’s back.

“Should have stayed away from him, whore.” she breathes at me.

I watch in shock as she steps back, leaving Vin sagging against me and pulling a long, bloody knife away with her. She’s stabbed him. I don’t know where and I don’t know if it’s fatal, but the knowledge shifts my gears. The shock wears off and the autopilot kicks on. When I look at her, I know she knows.

She’s made a terrible mistake.

I shove Vin to the side, letting him fall carelessly onto the frozen ground. Then I lunge at her. I don’t make contact, I only lunge. I’m testing her reflexes, seeing how she wields the knife. I need answers to a few questions right now and they’re all put to rest with that one movement. Her reaction tells me everything I need to know and the simple truth is this: Barbie doesn’t have what it takes.

When I lunge at her she jumps back quickly and slashes the knife in front of her. It’s a good move, it keeps me away from her. But a better move, one that a person accustomed to working with a weapon and letting it work for them would do, is to meet my lunge with her own and stab at me in close proximity. I can’t just take that knife from her, not if I want to keep my blood in my body, and if she’s quick and efficient enough she could kill me before I lay a hand on her.

Kind of like this. Watch.

I pull the trowel from my back pocket, holding it at waist level in my right hand. My strong hand. I miss my ASP and its long reach, but autopilot doesn’t care. All autopilot wants is to put down the threat and go to bed. So that’s what it does. It lunges forward again, backing Caroline up until she stumbles off the walkway and lands on the ground on her back. It watches as she slashes out wildly, hoping to force me back away from her. It waits patiently. Then it lunges again. It stomps on her arm holding the knife, pinning it down. Forcing it to be still. It moves forward, bringing the sharpened trowel down. It sinks it uncontested into Caroline’s throat. It watches her eyes go wide, then roll back in her head.

It slips out of the driver’s seat.

I shake as I watch her bleed into the ground.

Dead.

Dead at my hand.

As I feel the adrenaline leave me, I feel the cold sink in deeper. It sets root in my heart and freezes my blood until I can’t move, until my muscles atrophy. I’m paralyzed and eggshell fragile. I’m a statue. A porcelain figurine. A killer.

“Kitten.”

Vin’s weak voice calls to me from far off. I try to ignore it but he won’t shut up.

“Kitten.”

My eyes gain focus. I find myself staring at Caroline’s lifeless corpse. I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies in my day. A lot of them are actually ones I laid to their final rest. But they were all dead already, all on their way and lost in the confusing haze of being a Risen. I helped them find clarity. Finality.

This is different. This was a living, breathing, seething person until along came a spider who stabbed her in the neck and let her bleed out at her feet. This is ugly and hateful.

Is this me?

“Kitten!”

“What?!” I cry, turning to face him.

I’m actually surprised to find him still alive. I figured that despite the fact that Caroline was literally a backstabber, she was probably a finish the job kind of girl too. But there he lies, a pool of dark blood seeping out of his side. He’s breathing and cursing like any other day of the week.

“You okay?” I ask numbly.

He glares up at me. “Do I fucking look okay?!”

I fall to my knees beside him. “You’ve looked better.”

“What about you?” he wheezes, grasping his side and eyeing me. “Are you okay?”

“I fucking look okay?” I deadpan.

“Was it your first time?”

“Yeah.”

“It gets easier.”

I snort. “I doubt that.”

“Trust me, it does.”

“I don’t want it to.” I say weakly, my eyes stinging.

“It’s not really a choice.”

I move to glance over my shoulder. To look at Caroline. At my kill.

“Don’t.” Vin says firmly, gripping my hand with his blood smeared palm.

“What the hell happened?!” a voice cries from the doorway.

Vin and I both look over slowly to find Tim standing there in shock, looking from us to Caroline and back again.

“What?” is all he can muster.

“We ran into a little trouble with the plan.” Vin tells him with a grunt.

He keeps moving around. I assume he’s trying to ease the pain but it’s not going to happen. Not until he’s sewn together again. I grab his shirt at the front then yank hard. It rips down the center, tearing in two. I help him pull his arms out of it then ball it up and press it firmly against his wound.

“Vin needs a doctor.” I tell Tim. He’s staring at Caroline. “She doesn’t need anything. Not anymore.”

Tim looks at me for a long moment. His face is a mask and I wonder what he’s thinking. Can he see it on me that I did it? That I killed her? I feel like it’s marked on me somehow like a stink I’ll never be able to wash away.

“Here’s what happened.” he says quickly and quietly, moving to Caroline’s body. “Joss came out here for some fresh air. She saw Vin and Caroline… being intimate. She felt angry and jealous so she attacked Caroline with… what is this in her neck?”

“A trowel.” Vin and I say in unison monotone.

“Alright, Joss attacked her with a trowel. She killed Caroline and found the knife that she always kept on her for protection. Then she turned the knife on Vin, stabbed him, took Caroline’s keys to the fence and ran.”

“I’m leaving?” I ask, looking at him in surprise.

“Hell yes, you’re leaving.” He’s rooting around in Caroline’s pockets now, jostling her body back and forth. It flops lifelessly and I worry I’ll be sick. “Vin can’t go and you can’t stay here. You killed one of the leaders. And this is better than Vin escaping. That brings up questions of how and who helped and is there dissension in the ranks. This way it was a lover’s quarrel, something not uncommon in the Pods, though it usually ends in fist fights not…”