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When we step out of the bathroom, Ryan immediately heads for the door. He lays down slowly beside it, still being careful with his right leg.
“Goodnight,” he calls softly, settling in.
I hesitate, unsure. I don’t know what I want. Or what he wants. Or what I can handle.
“Ryan, you can—“
“No,” he says gently, turning his head to look at me. “I’m good here.”
I sigh, feeling relieved. “Do you want a blanket?”
“Do you have one to spare?”
“No, but I’ll give it to you anyway.”
He chuckles. “That’s alright, Joss. I’ve slept without one before. It won’t kill me.”
I pad across the room, carrying the blanket with me. Ryan looks up at me, watching me as I drape it over him.
I grin faintly. “And it won’t kill me to share.”
“You sure about that?”
I shrug. “Only one way to find out.”
Chapter Six
I do not die. I don’t exactly sleep, either. Ryan snores. I didn’t know this until now because the last time we had a slumber party I kicked him out before anyone fell asleep. He had to go. He was being a dick, asking questions and wanting answers. Who does that?
We expected to see Trent in the morning, but as it drags on into the afternoon, we get worried. Well, I get worried. Ryan says it’s no big deal. I suck at this, the worrying and not worrying. Knowing when it’s needed, when it’s expected and when it’s useless but you do it anyway. Exhausting. When it was just me, I didn’t have to deal with this crap. I have Ryan to thank for that and I remind myself to kick him in the shins again the next chance I get.
What we do for now is go hunting. I’m out of meat so I know Crenshaw must be too because I’m his sole supplier.
“What do you want to go for?” Ryan asks as we make our way toward the park.
“Shouldn’t we hunt somewhere else? Somewhere farther away from your home?”
He shakes his head, rolling his neck and shoulders. His back must be killing him from sleeping on the hard floor all night.
“Nah, there have been roundups around the other hunting grounds.”
My stomach flips at the thought of the Colonists. “Are they still swarming the watering holes too?”
“Not as much.”
“Have you seen them?”
He scans the roads, his face blank. “Yeah, I’ve seen them.”
I try to smile at him, to reassure him, I think? But I don’t really get why I’m doing it, so I stop.
“You okay?”
“I got out,” I say, trying to sound solid. Like with the smile, I fail. “I’m great.”
What I am is feeling guilty. It’s been too long since I made it out of the Colony. I’m sure at this point Vin and Nats think I either betrayed them or The Hive killed me on sight. Is it too jacked up to hope they think I’m dead?
“We’ll go back for them, Joss.”
I nod my head but I don’t say a word because that’s all it is. Words. None of it gets us anywhere. None of it brings us closer to where we need to be in order to free them. It’s all I can think about every day, even when I’m trying hard not to. When I’m laughing with Ryan and telling myself it’ll be okay, I can feel it gnawing at me that it’s not. That I’m failing. But I won’t sacrifice him for it either. I won’t ask him to fight for me.
“There has to be another way,” I mutter to myself.
“And we’ll find it. I promise.”
We’ve entered the woods and I stop, staring into the darkness beyond the trees. Part of me knew already but I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to break the rules any more than I already have, but I have to because he’s my last hope. My last chance at being better than I or Vin ever really were made to be.
“Gandalf.”
Ryan frowns at me, following my stare. “What?”
“Crenshaw,” I say, looking up at him. “We have to ask Crenshaw.”
“Ask him what? To help us?” he asks dubiously. “Unless he’s a real wizard and knows how to summon us a dragon, I don’t think he can do much for us.”
“But he knows things. He knows people. Maybe he knows someone who can help.”
“Someone other than The Hive,” Ryan agrees, looking into the woods again. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Let’s get a kill first, make sure we have meat to bring him. I worry about his diet.”
“People didn’t eat meat before the sickness came and they were just fine,” Ryan reminds me, falling in step beside me as we venture deeper into the woods.
“I know. I just… I worry about him. I don’t want him to get frail, I guess.”
Ryan nods in understanding. “He’s alone, like you. You want to make sure he’s strong enough to fend for himself.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I mutter.
I’m not sure if he’s right but I’m not sure if he’s wrong either. The basic fact is that I worry about Crenshaw. I always have. Even before Ryan, people were still with me. I hadn’t really noticed before because Crenshaw made it so simple. So black and white, easy to understand. I’ve always known what he wants from me and what I want from him. With Ryan, it’s so much gray. So much I don’t get and can’t categorize.
When we hunt for rabbit and squirrel, what we get are Risen. Lots of them. There are so many more in the woods than I remember seeing and it sends my stomach straight through to the ground. Ryan is less effected, telling me this is how it’s been since the Colony collapse. That it got worse after I left as more filtered down here into the heart of the city. As we close in on three of them, I worry about Ryan’s cuts, his aching leg, his stiff shoulders and my busted arm.
“Do you have your ASP?” he asks, flanking the Risen on the left and gesturing for me to do the same on the right.
“Yeah, of course. Thanks for that, by the way.”
He grins. “No problem. I’ll handle two, you take the third.”
“Got it.”
My Risen is a beauty. All gray tissue sagging slowly off the face like pizza dough in a hot room. The left eye socket is dropping down over the bone, exposing black muscle tissue that’s long past useful and the sagging skin over the top of the eye is probably the only thing holding the bulging eyeball in the socket. I have the morbid desire to lift that flesh and see if I’m right. To see if the eye slips out and dangles down, swinging like a pendulum.
When I hear a grunt from Ryan followed by the moist squish of his spike going into decomposed skin, I snap out of it. I get to work. I swing my right arm across my body, then snap it back out, basically backhanding the Risen in the face with the steel tip of my ASP. It makes a loud crunch, sending a spray of skin and black blood arching into the bushes. The head is snapped back hard and before it can try to right itself, I reverse my momentum and bring the ASP back the way it came. This time I make contact with the side of the skull, right in the sweet spot of the temple. The meatbag drops to the dirt - done.
I’ve hardly exerted myself, but when I look at Ryan, I’m breathing quickly and gri
“How messed up is it that I missed that?” I ask him, not even caring what his answer is.
My injured arm aches but there’s so much strength coursing through my veins, it doesn’t matter to me. This is so much better than sewing or baking. I’d give up all the pumpkin pie in the world for this feeling. To know I’m strong. Effective. Meaningful. I was nothing in there. Inside the Colony, I was just a body doing a duty. Washing dishes or making a bed. That’s not me.
I spin my ASP in my hand, loving the tensile power inside of it, power given to it by my hand. Without me, it’s just a piece of steel. Without it, I’m just a broken girl ru
Ryan smiles. “I don’t think it’s messed up at all.”
I nod to his knuckles. “What is that? Did you make it?”
He flexes his fingers, looking at the spike along his knuckles. “Kevin did. He made it for in the arena.”
“In the Underground?”