Backs Against the Wall

“You’re lost,” a man calls out calmly.

“Is this Vashon island?” Trent calls in reply.

“It was.”

“What is it now?” I ask.

I can feel eyes on me. It’s my voice. It just told them I’m a girl and I wonder what that changes for them. If it puts me in more danger or less.

“Nothing for you. Turn this boat around and go back the way you came.”

“We came looking for help.”

“You came to the wrong place.”

“That’s not what Crenshaw said,” I say clearly, playing the only card we have and hoping it lands.

“I don’t know what a crenshaw is and I don’t care,” he says, his voice turning cold. “Turn it around. Leave.”

“No.”

He takes a step closer, his machete cutting through the water as he approaches. I can see him better now. He’s stocky. Strong. Probably about 30 or so but he looks young enough, healthy enough, to be a problem for me with my messed up arm and an exhausted Ryan with an injured shoulder. I realize as I watch him approach that it was a big mistake coming here like this. In the dead of night in a boat full of injured people with no clear idea of how we’ll convince them to help us. Everything with The Hive happened so fast, we didn’t take time to think this through. To plan. But we’re in it now and there’s no going back.

I swing my feet out of the boat, slipping off the side to land in the water. I stifle the gasp that begs to explode out of me when my body registers the cold. I’m only in it up to my thighs, but it’s enough to make me want out. Cold and wet means sick and dead in my mind.

“They’ll leave, but I’m staying,” I tell him, working to keep the tightness out of my voice. “We need help. I want to talk to your leader.”

“Joss, we’re not leaving you here,” Ryan insists angrily.

“He’s right, because you’re all leaving,” the guy agrees.

I hold out my hands, pressing my wrists together firmly. “I’m not. You’re taking me with you back to your camp or whatever it is you have here. You can bind my hands and search me if you want, but you’re taking me back with you. Either that or I’m walking out of this water onto that beach and you’ll have to kill me to stop me.”

The guy looks at my wrists pressed together. He smirks. “I didn’t bring my handcuffs with me. Sorry.”

“You’re also not completely stupid. You don’t leave the house without a weapon, a piece of flint and a rope of some kind.”

His smirk becomes a scowl. “We don’t live like that anymore. I’d like to keep it that way, which is why you’re leaving.”

I step toward him. “Not until I talk to someone.”

He glares at him, his eyes shining hard in the faint moonlight. I’m begi

“Please,” I say softly, my eyes imploring.

I see it when he sighs. When he decides to help me. I wonder if it’s because I’m a girl or if it’s because he remembers what it was like to be me out in the crazy or if it’s just because he’s cold too and wants to get back inside. I don’t know and I don’t care. What matters is that he nods reluctantly, gestures for some of his boys to come to the boat to secure my boys and leads me up to shore.

“Do you have any weapons on you?” he asks, sounding bored and a

I nod, seeing no point in lying. I’ll be searched anyway. It’s then that it dawns on me that I was never searched going inside The Hive. Even to speak to Marlow. I remind myself to ask Ryan about it later.

“An ASP,” I tell the guy, “and a knife.”

“Take ‘em out. Toss ‘em on the ground over there.”

I do as he says. I can hear Trent and Ryan being asked to do the same with whatever they have. Farther up on the shore, three men with crossbows watch us all patiently, their weapons raised and ready.

“Is that it? Nothing else you want to tell me about?”

I shake my head. “That’s it.”

“I’m going to frisk you now. If I find any surprises, you’re getting your knife back in your chest. Got it?”

“Got it.”

He searches me carefully. It’s not the obscenely thorough inspection I got from the Colonists, but it’s for real. He’s quick. He never lingers inappropriately anywhere, but his hands touch me in places that no guy has ever touched me before. I’m tense, having to remind myself over and over again not to punch him in the throat. Finally, when I’m blushing and shaking from more than the cold, he steps away. When I meet his eyes, they’re tight but apologetic. Good to know he feels as weird about what just happened as I do.

He picks up my weapons then gestures for me to walk up the bank. I hear him fall in step behind me a few paces back. He’s giving himself space between us. Breathing room in case I try anything.

“That way,” a guy with a crossbow tells me, gesturing with his weapon.

I follow his directions, cutting left to walk along the shore. I hear them all walking loudly at my back and it makes me sick to my stomach but I don’t turn around. I don’t make any u

Eventually they guide us inland on a well-worn path that drops us in a parking lot. There are several abandoned cars, all parked with such orderly precision in the faded white lines that it makes me anxious. Chaos I can understand. This is just weird.

We walk for quite awhile in perfect silence, the sound of our feet on the dirt packed earth the only break. That and the crickets. It sounds like they’re everywhere, something that freaks me out. I can’t listen for the sound of approaching Risen in the brush over the noise of theses bugs and the constant crunch of so many men’s feet behind me. But then I guess there might not be any Risen here. That, like the straight lines in the parking lot, makes me anxious and angry.

Eventually we walk along an old driveway until we meet a fence. One of the guys goes up to it, speaks into a gray box and a few seconds later the black iron creaks, groans and swings open slowly. Once we’re ushered inside, I look over my shoulder to watch the gate clang shut behind us. It’s tall and imposing, but push come to shove, I’m pretty sure I could climb it. I will absolutely not be held captive again.

This area is all open field. There are trees scattered around the edges of the property, but for as far as I can see there are fences. There’s also the dark shape of a building looming in the distance, a scattering of lights on in each floor. I start to sweat thinking of all the people probably bustling inside. How many are sleeping in a huge room full of beds? How many will swarm us the second we walk in the door? How many voices and bodies will bombard me for the next few hours or days that I’m stuck here trying to do the impossible?

By the time we reach the front door of the large brown house, I’m ready to turn and run. To try my luck on scaling that fence and head for the water. When the door swings open and light spills out onto the porch, shining in my eyes like the sun, I hesitate. I don’t want to do this again. It’s different, sure, but a lot of it is the same. I don’t know what to expect in here. I don’t know anything about these people at all. Maybe they’re like the ca

What happens is we’re greeted with silence. A large empty entrance hall with tall ceilings, a huge staircase and absolutely no people. I’m nudged from behind to get me moving and the amazing thing is that I go without protest. It’s warm, light and quiet. It’s dry. It’s empty. It has pictures on the walls, a decent rug over the hard floor. It smells like hot food.

It feels like a real home.

I glance back at Ryan to see him looking around in awe, his face saying everything I’m thinking. This is unreal. This is a step back in time to before the begi