Backs Against the Wall

“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.”

Taylor shakes his head. “They don’t. They didn’t then and they still don’t.”

Trent chuckles from his corner.

“What’s fu

“Of course they don’t know,” he says coolly. “They were all soldiers, I imagine. No one very high up. They wouldn’t have been given vital information like that.”

“The government fell when you were just a kid,” Taylor says incredulously. “How are you so jaded about it?”

“I read. And my father always hated the government.”

“Trent grew up living off the grid,” Ryan explains, probably because he knows Mr. Roboto never will. “He and his dad lived on a self-sufficient farm up in the mountains. His dad always expected a social collapse. It’s why Trent is so… comfortable with the way the world is.”

“He wasn’t exactly prepped for zombies. That took him a little by surprise. He died in the first wave. I’ve never seen him so angry.”

“Dying will do that to you,” Taylor agrees.

“I’m sure he’d be proud of how far you’ve made it,” Ryan tells him.

Trent shrugs. “He wasn’t the sentimental type.”

“Must be where you get your warmth and people skills,” I tell him.

He grins. “That’s from my mother’s side.”

“So no one knows how it started?” I ask in amazement. “No one knows why we have to live like this? That’s crap!”

“Would it matter?” Taylor asks. “What would it change?”

“Nothing,” Ryan says darkly.

I can tell he’s a

***

Two nights later, I’m called out as being a liar.

“You’re lying, you have to be,” Sam says, sitting back hard in his chair.

“I’m not!” I exclaim. “I’m dead serious, I don’t get it.”

Ryan groans, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “Joss, we’ve explained it so many times.”

“Just write it down. Let me have a cheat sheet.”

“So because you’re bad at it, we should let you cheat?” Trent asks, shuffling the cards.

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.”

“That’s exactly what you’re saying,” Ryan disagrees.

“I’m not cheating!”

“No,” Sam says, “because if you were cheating, you’d be wi

“I’m not!” I shout again, laughing. “I honestly do not get it.”

“It’s poker. It’s not nuclear physics.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not stupid.”

“No one said you were,” Ryan tells me.

“We just said you’re a liar,” Sam adds.

“Ugh!” I shout, throwing poker chips at him.

“You’re only making me richer,” he laughs as he deftly catches every chip.

“Okay, explain the blind to me one more time. Then the river, I don’t get the river.”

“We’re not explaining it again,” Trent says.

“Then play without me, ‘cause I don’t understand half of what’s happening here,” I tell them, tossing my remaining few chips onto the center of the table.

Ryan shoves them back at me. “No way. You’re in. Poker with only three people is pointless.”

“We’re basically playing with only three people now,” Sam mutters under his breath.

Ryan and Trent chuckle, the traitorous bastards.

I’m about to lay into Sam, to insist that I’m in this game (or hand? Round? Cycle? I don’t know) and I’ll kick his ass this time, which I don’t even know how to do but I want it, when the door flies open. It bangs hard against the wall, startling everyone. I jump up along with the boys, our legs knocking the table and sending chips and cards rolling and fluttering to the floor. Sam stands on the outside of the cage where he’d been playing poker with us through the bars, his surprised face fixed on the door.