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Trent is the only familiar face I can find.
“Where’s Ali? You need a doctor.”
“I’ll be fine for now. Just don—Mmm,” he moans for a second, leaning harder against me. “Just don’t let anyone kill me, okay?”
“You got it.”
“Joss!”
I sigh with relief when I see Sam come ru
“Sam, where’s Ali? Ryan needs her.”
He shakes his head, his eyes desperate. “I can’t find her. I was hoping you’d seen her.”
My heart plummets. “No. I haven’t seen her since the boat.”
Sam curses. “I screwed up. We were together going through the guest house when we saw people sneaking away over the hill. She freaked and ran off, chasing them. They ran back into the house, but I can’t find her. She was convinced she saw Westbrook.”
“Then what are you worried about? Let her kill him. It’s what she wants. It’s why we’re here!”
“I don’t think she really saw him.”
“Did it not look like him?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never seen him. But Ali can’t tell… She doesn’t…” Sam curses again, tearing at his hair. “She sees things that aren’t there.”
“Are you kidding me?” I ask incredulously.
He shakes his head. “Hears things too. Not all the time, but when she’s stressed it can get bad.”
“Like during a war?!” I shout angrily.
Why would they do this to her? Why bring her here?
“Or surrounded by zombies for the first time in years, yeah.”
“Or losing Crenshaw,” Ryan grunts. He’s starting to sweat. I need to get him out of here.
“Well, screw it,” I say gruffly. I wedge myself under Ryan’s arm so he’s leaning heavy on me and I start to walk him forward. “I’m getting Ryan out of here. Can you cover us?”
“Can I use your ASP?” Sam asks, a tiny grin on his face.
I roll my eyes as I hand it over to him. “Yeah, whatever.”
We make it two steps. Two labored, difficult steps until we’re stopped dead by the scariest sound I’ve heard in a long time. A sound so terrifying and strange it makes me scream loud and long.
A gunshot.
I throw Ryan to the ground, then throw myself on top of him. He shouts in pain and surprise as my body pins his roughly, but I don’t care. I know it hurts him and I’m sorry for that, but a bullet will hurt worse and that’s not happening to him. Not on my watch. Not while I’m still breathing.
Everyone else in the room reacts to the sound in almost exactly the same way. Most hit the deck, and those who don’t, jump back and cower. Even the Vashons.
“Enough!” Alvarez shouts into the newly silent room.
He’s standing in the doorway. There’s a fine mist of dust floating down on top of him like snow. He’s holding a pistol in the air pointed at the sky and I realize the dust is bits of the ceiling he just blew a hole in. He looks around the room, surveying the situation. There are now eight bodies on the ground. The majority are obviously dead. Only one looks to be a Vashon.
Ryan and I sit up slowly. I’m not eager to make any sudden moves and spook the gun, but I need to get off him and ease up on his wound.
“Where is he?” Alvarez asks the room quietly.
No one answers. He lowers his weapon, aiming it at one of only two Colonists left standing.
“Where… is… he?” he repeats slowly.
“Far from here,” one of the men says with a wicked smile. “So far you’ll never find him. He is chosen to survive. To lead. To purify what has been tain—”
Alvarez shoots him in the thigh.
He shifts the gun to the other Colonist before repeating, “Where is he?”
“We’ll never tell you,” the man replies defiantly, but his eyes are shifty. He’s scared.
I can’t say I blame him. I’m a little freaked right now myself.
“Is he here?” Alvarez asks the Vashon beside him.
The guy shakes his head. “I don’t know. I can’t tell.”
“Joss, the body there by you and Ryan. The build is about right. Is that him?”
“Wh—what does he look like?” I stammer, staring at the gun in Alvarez’s hand. “I don’t remember what you told us.”
“Glasses,” Ryan says breathlessly. “About sixty years old. Dark hair. Five foot ten.”
“Not anymore.”
There’s a whoosh from above us, then a sickening, wet smack. Everyone jumps, Ryan and I stumbling backwards to get away from the mass that’s just dropped down onto the gleaming floor in front of us. Red splatters and white specks shoot in every direction. I’m hit in the hand by something yellow, small, and hard. It’s a tooth. I stare at it completely confused until my eyes figure it out. I drag them to the mass in the middle of the floor. Then I start to gag.
It’s a severed human head.
“What the—” Ryan begins in amazement, his eyes rising to the landing one floor above us.
There stands Ali. She’s coated in blood, looking creepily like a ca
Her eyes black as coal, she grins crookedly. “I’d say he’s closer to five foot four now.”
Chapter Twenty Four
They’re attaching Westbrook’s head to a spike on the front of the boat. Ryan, Trent, and I are sitting on lounge chairs just off the dock, enjoying the warm afternoon sunshine, and watching one of the most disturbing things I’ve seen a human being ever do. Andy eating Marlow is solidly Number One, but this isn’t falling far behind.
“The southern Colony is still burning,” Trent observes casually.
He’s right—smoke is rising from across the water, where the Colony still burns and the zombies still roam. I doubt there’s a living person left in that place, and if there is, I imagine they wish they weren’t.
I think it’s all pretty depressing.
“I wish they’d finish it off already,” I say sourly.
“I wish they’d take that head down,” Ryan grumbles.
“I don’t want to get on that boat.”
“It’s the only way home.”
I grin at him. “We could swim.”
He chuckles, but it turns into a cough and I feel bad for making the joke. “Not even on a good day.”
Ali checked him out before putting the disgusting star on her Christmas tree. She said he’ll be fine. Infection is his only real concern and she found plenty of med supplies in the mansion. She patched him up and told him to rest, so that’s what we’re doing. Vashons are ransacking the mansion, taking everything that’s not nailed down, and anything that is will burn. They’re hell-bent on destroying this place and making sure another Westbrook doesn’t rise up to take this one’s place.
I may not agree with everything they’re doing, but that much I can get behind.
“They’re not bad people, Joss,” Ryan says quietly.
I zoned out staring at the boat, my face pinched with disgust.
“They look like bad people.”
“Good people can do bad things. No one is perfect.”
“I liked them,” I admit sadly. “When we first met them I really liked them. I liked them right up until they sealed the gate on the southern Colony.”
“I know.”
“Do you still like them?”
“Some of them.”
“Sam?”
“And Ali. And Alvarez.”
I shake my head in disbelief but I keep my mouth shut. I wish I still liked Ali.
“You’ll like them again someday,” Trent tells me.
I grin at him, not even mad he’s telling me my own feelings. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. They’re your kind of people. You just caught them on a bad day. If I judged you by your bad days, I wouldn’t like you.”
I snort. “Pretty bad day.”
“They’ll be more good than bad. Give it time.”
“I’ll never forget this, no matter how long I wait.”
“No, but someday you’ll forgive it. At the very least you’ll understand it.”
I look at him quizzically. “Do you still like them?”
He smiles. “Who said I ever did?”
***
We ride at the back of the boat as far away from the head mount as we can. We took the lounge chairs with us and I have to admit, I’m pretty excited about them. They are comfy! Despite the nightmare on the front of the boat, I’m pretty happy sitting back here in the breeze under the sun with Ryan and Trent. The Vashons are driving the boat up over the city, through an inlet, and out into the Sound. We’ll pass over the MOHAI and I wonder if Vin has taken it or if my friend is dead. Part of me is worried, but a bigger part—the part that knows him best—believes what I told Crenshaw: that man is too wicked to die.