Backs Against the Wall (Survival Series) Read online

  “Or it’s always a good time and you think otherwise due to your perception.”

  “No, just stop. Joss, we need to do something about that arm. It looks rough.”

  I nod, fighting the urge to look at it again. If I puke, there’s nowhere to do it in this room where I won’t saturate something he owns. Something he uses on a regular basis and no matter how many times he washes it he’ll remember, always and forever, that this was the thing Joss vomited on.

  “I don’t know what can be done,” I tell him. I’m trying not to sound like I’m terrified of the idea of him touching it. Of anyone touching it or moving it, even breathing on it. Why can’t we all just pretend it isn’t there?

  Ryan comes closer, closing that meager gap between us. I’m aware of his smell and his heat, the same smell in the bed only stronger. Closer. Warmer.

  He frowns at my arm.

  “It needs to be set or it will never heal right. We should splint it too.”

  “What do you mean by ‘set’ it?” I ask. I know the answer and I know it’ll hurt like crazy, but I have to ask.

  He meets my eyes. They look sorry. He’s apologizing already for this thing he hasn’t even done yet. This things that’s going to make me cry again.

  I nod my head in understanding.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I lie. I’m angry at him that he’s going to do this to me. It’s not his fault, but I’m still angry.

  “I’m also sorry we can’t do it here.”

  “Why not?”

  “I doubt you’ll be able to keep quiet.”

  I take a deep, shuddering breath, but I don’t flinch and I don’t look away. “It’s going to be like that, huh?”

  He grins but it looks more like a grimace. “Yeah, it’s gonna be like that.”

  Chapter Three

  Trent has to go to work up in the Crow’s Nest overseeing the world, so it’s just Ryan and I leaving the building. We go the same way Trent and I came in. Ryan is efficient and agile leaving out the window, like he’s done it a hundred times, and I start to wonder if these guys even use the front door to this place.

  When we first start walking, Ryan puts his arm around my waist, pulling me in close to him to either support me, guide me or just remind himself I’m really there. Whatever his motives, it makes me nervous and a little scared. I feel trapped. Small and broken beside his strength. When I gently shake off his hold, he doesn’t say a word. In fact, we both stay silent the entire trip to my home.

  Although when two Risen cross our path I get a taste of how Ryan fights. I saw it once before, but it was brief. I was too busy doing my own thing to really worry about his. But now that I’m tucked away in a doorframe again, just as Trent did to me, I get a chance to really see him.

  It’s impressive.

  He has a weapon I’ve never seen before. It’s like brass knuckles with a spike coming out the middle. When he holds his hand up with all of his fingers curled into his palm around the handle, the spike stands up proudly over his middle finger. Like it’s flipping the entire world the bird. There are only a few spots on the body that this weapon can be used for an instant kill, but Ryan knows them all. He doesn’t hesitate, not one second. He dances around the Risen, looking for the opening he needs, then he strikes like a viper into the eye, the ear. Fast, accurate, brutal. He’s like Trent, quick and efficient, but there’s something so much more fluid about him and his fight. It’s almost like watching a dance.

  When he’s done, breathing heavily surrounded by a circle of rotted, mutated bodies, I give him a small round of applause. It’s faint and frail, the best I can do with the hands I have at the moment, but he smiles and bows theatrically. It’s an ugly scene; all death, blood, gore and everything macabre. But there in the middle is this boy. This vibrant, living, breathing, resilient, relentless boy – and he’s smiling. At me.

  I cannot help but smile back.

  When we finally reach my building, I nearly collapse with relief at being there. I hurry up the steps, jostling my arm painfully but unable to stop myself. I want to see if it’s okay. If all of my things have disappeared or been destroyed. I can’t imagine they’ve been left untouched. Not with Ryan and probably Trent knowing where I live. Something’s bound to have gone missing.

  I push inside quickly, Ryan close on my heels. What I see stops my heart. I gasp in shock, unable to understand.

  “What?” I whisper to myself.

  It’s nothing I expected.

  It’s perfect. Everything is in its place. From my bike to the water canister to the Hello Kitty bag I keep my veggies in. It’s all there. Even the blankets that I usually toss onto my makeshift bed are folded neatly. Like they’re waiting for me.

  “I came here almost every day,” Ryan says quietly from behind me. “I knew where you were, but I always hoped you’d be here when I came in. Or that one day I’d go to open the door and it’d be locked.”

  “How did you know where I was?” I ask, too scared of him and myself to turn around.

  “Trent said he saw a girl taken. A girl with long red hair. That would have been enough to convince me, but then he told me she fought like an animal. That she stabbed a guy and broke his nose.” I hear him chuckle softly. “After that, I knew it was you. And I knew that if anyone could get away, it was you.”

  “So you waited,” I whisper.

  “And I hoped.”

  I spin on my heels and I kiss him soundly. I press my body as close to his as my arm will allow and I sigh when his hands slide around me. He’ll never know what that means to me. How much it hurts me to hear him say he hoped I’d come back. That someone out there knew I was gone and wanted me back. It’s what I wanted while I was trapped; for him to remember me and carry me with him in the wild under the free open sky. I’ve been alone for too long, been running from those feelings for years and now here they are staring me in the face, straightening my world and waiting for me to come home. I hate it and I love it and when I think of what I wrote on the wall in the Colony, I whimper quietly in the back of my throat. I missed this. This kiss, these hands, this voice that knows my name, this heartbeat clamoring inside his chest, pushing against mine.

  Then I whimper in pain as my arm is crushed between us. Ryan releases me immediately, holding me at arm’s length.

  “I’m sorry, Joss,” he mutters, his breathing uneven. “I forgot about your arm. We need to deal with that right now.”

  I groan, letting my head hang back. “This is gonna suck so bad.”

  “Sorry,” he repeats.

  He heads for my bathroom. I’m not surprised when he comes back out with my bottle of vodka.

  “Here. Get to work on that. It’ll take the edge off. It’s still going to hurt, but it will hurt a lot less.”

  I sniff the open top of the bottle, my lips curling back in disgust. “I’ve never drank it before.”

  “I’m a little jealous.”

  “Good God, why? It smells like acid.”

  Ryan chuckles. “It’ll taste a lot better than the stuff at the markets. Drink too much of what they sell there and you’ll go blind.”

  I cringe at the thought of going to the markets. I’m going to have to, though. How else am I going to get an audience with The Hive? I can’t exactly walk up to the door and knock. I’ll be shot or shoved into their stables, no questions asked. It’s something I need to talk to Ryan about, but not yet. One painful thing at a time and right now my arm has soundly called dibs.

  I take a swig of the vodka. It’s not bad, not at first. Then the burn hits. I double over, coughing and grabbing at my chest where the heat is coursing through it into my stomach.

  “Why?” I gasp, not really sure what I’m asking. Why do people drink this stuff? Why does it hurt so bad? Why are my insides on fire?

  “You okay?”

  “Ugh!” I groan. I stand up straight, my face frozen in a tortured grimace as the burn just keeps on going. “This is terrible.”

&nb
sp; Ryan shakes his head. “That’s the good stuff. And you’ll need more of it than that. Better keep drinking before you lose your nerve.”

  I glare at him, thinking of the rooftop. The jump. The fall.

  “I never lose my nerve.”

  He silently makes a drinking motion with his hand before crossing his arms over his chest, watching me patiently.

  I take three more good, long pulls off the bottle before I hand it back to him. It was easier doing it all at once. I still want to die, though. Ryan stows the bottle back in the bathroom before coming to stand in front of me again. He doesn’t say anything, just watches me.

  “What?” I ask, feeling antsy being under the microscope.

  “Now we wait. It’ll hit you soon.”

  “What’s it going to feel like?”

  He smirks. “What does drunk feel like? Uh, good, I guess is the best way to describe it. You’ll be a little dizzy, feel a little flushed. You might vomit eventually.”

  I frown. “So it’s like being sick.”

  “Kinda, yeah. But in a good way. You’ll laugh more, which will be nice.”

  “Do you have a problem with my attitude?”

  “Asked the girl frowning at me,” he retorts, pointing at my furrowed brow. I try to relax it, but I don’t know if it works. Ryan grins. “Nah, I like you’re attitude, Joss. But I like your laugh too.”

  “You’ve barely heard it.”

  “Exactly. I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Why do you like me, Ryan?” I mumble quietly. “I’m not nice.”

  “Oh good,” he says, taking my shoulders, “it’s working.” He sits me down on my bed, pressing my back against the wall. I’m glad to be sitting because the room has started to tilt. “You haven’t eaten recently, have you?”

  “Not for hours and hours and hours.”

  “This will be fun,” he mutters.

  He leans in close. I think he’s going to kiss me, but his head passes by mine as his fingers get to work on the knot of my sling. When it releases, I’m not ready and the pain explodes through my entire body. I grit my teeth hard, willing myself not to make a sound. He sees it when he sits back.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Uh huh,” I grunt.

  “Joss, it’s okay to—“

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “Alright.”

  What happens next is a waking nightmare. Fixing the damage done to my body hurts worse than the damaging did. Tears stream down my face as Ryan methodically cleans, sets and splints my arm. Because the bone pushed through the skin, I’m in danger of getting an infection. I’m also in white hot agony because Ryan had to realign the bone before he splinted it to make sure it heals right.

  That. Hurt.

  I’ve never sworn so much in my life. I curse Ryan up and down, sideways, forward and backward, but he never flinches. Never hesitates. He’s calm and collected, completely methodical through the entire thing. He ignores the sweat pouring down my forehead, the shaking in my limbs, the tremble in my voice. At one point, I grab onto his shoulder with my good hand and clench down on it with all my strength, but he keeps right on working. I’ve bruised him, I know it, but he never complains.

  When it’s done, when I’m shaking with exhaustion, he finally looks up at me. I expect to find pity or sadness, but there’s nothing. He’s gone numb inside. To do what had to be done, to hurt me to help me, he’s tapped out entirely. Based on his skill at cleaning and splinting my arm, this isn’t his first time. He’s done this over and over again and in order to stay sane, he’s gotten good at not feeling it.

  I take a deep, shuddering breath then manage a meager grin.

  “Thanks,” I breathe.

  “Ha,” he laughs shortly, not sounding at all amused. “I don’t think that deserves gratitude.”

  “It wouldn’t heal right if you hadn’t done this,” I mutter, feeling suddenly too weary to live, “and I’d die without it.”

  He looks at me long and hard, his expression still carefully blank. I wait, wondering what he’s thinking. Eventually I can’t take it anymore.

  “You wanna take a hit of that vodka with me?”

  “Hell yeah,” he mutters, already heading for the bathroom.

  He sits down beside me, just a breath of space between us, but it’s enough. It’s enough so that I don’t feel overwhelmed with how close he is. That I don’t feel boxed in and afraid. It’s close enough that I know he’s there and the loft doesn’t feel so huge. So empty.

  He takes a hit off the bottle before handing it over to me. I take a drink as well, this time not minding the burn so much.

  “I need to go out and get you something for the infection,” he says, sounding as tired as I feel.

  “We don’t know I have one yet.”

  “You will,” he replies, taking the bottle back and downing another swig. “The world is dirty. Where did it happen?”

  “On a roof.”

  “Do I want to know how?”

  “I jumped. It was too far.”

  He nods silently beside me. We both stare into the distance, passing the bottle back and forth without a word. I look at the wall by the door, the one where he once wrote his address. I wiped it off not long after he did it. Not long after I decided I could stay. Not long after I memorized it.

  “How’d you get out?”

  It’s the million dollar question. It’s one I would have asked a long time ago, but Ryan is more patient than I am. It’s also a question I don’t want to answer because the answer is too ugly. Too real. But if anyone is going to understand it, it’s Ryan.

  My heart is in my throat, threatening to choke me, but I swallow past it.

  “I killed a woman,” I tell him hoarsely.

  He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t move. He barely breathes.

  “She tried to kill me,” I tell him quietly, because I feel compelled to explain. To make him understand. To make sure I understand. “She stabbed my friend. I’m not even sure he’s still alive. But then she came at me too and I knew she’d kill me if she got the chance. I knew she’d finish him off when I was gone, so I killed her.”

  I can hear my heartbeat in my ears, thumping loudly. Painfully. It hurts to breathe.

  “It was easy,” I whisper.

  Ryan clears his throat, then hands me the bottle. “You’ll never get over it.”

  I pause, the bottle at my lips. “Gee, thanks. That’s helpful.”

  “You won’t because you’re a good person. Because you know it’s messed up. That it’s wrong. It’s been over a year and I’m not over doing it. I know I never will be, but I live with it. Sometimes it even makes me feel better knowing that I can’t get over it.”

  I take a drink, hand the bottle back.

  “Why?” I wheeze against the burn.

  He takes a long drink. “Because if I hate it, I’m still human, you know? I’m not an animal yet. Not like some of the other people out there.”

  “I guess that makes sense.”

  Ryan shrugs, capping the bottle. “Whether it does or it doesn’t, it’s what works for me. Maybe it will work for you or maybe you’ll have to find something else.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, I’m not an expert.”

  “Maybe I should ask one,” I mumble, thinking of The Hive looming in my future and the many killers within its walls. I spin Vin’s ring absently, wondering if he’s still alive. The ring feels especially heavy on my finger, weighing down my already injured, aching arm.

  “What’s that?” Ryan asks, eyeing the ring.

  “A key.”

  “To what?”

  I sigh heavily. “Probably my own prison.”

  Chapter Four

  Ryan leaves to get me something for the infection he’s sure is coming. I don’t know where he’s going because I don’t ask, but I have a hunch. A hunch that’s been forming since I smelled the soap on his bed. When he comes back with familiar brown bottles, I know for sure.


  “How is he?” I ask, unable to stop myself.

  Ryan looks at me in surprise. I’m surprised myself because one thing we all know when dealing with Crenshaw is that you don’t go blabbing about it to other people. He doesn’t want to trade with everyone, doesn’t want to be known by everyone, so if you’re in his good graces you stay there by zipping your lips.

  I grin, feeling awkward breaking the rules. “Is he alright? I usually bring him meat because he refuses to hunt, but… I’ve been busy lately.”

  Ryan grins as well, his surprise turning to understanding. “He’s good. I’ll take him some meat tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you want me to tell him you’re home?”

  “No,” I say immediately. “Don’t mention me. I don’t want him to know I talked. Take him meat as payment for the medicine. I’ll go see him when I’m—I don’t know. Not so busy, I guess.”

  Ryan stops his work with the bottles but he doesn’t look at me.

  “Are you going back for him? For your friend?”

  “Yes,” I admit wearily. “I promised I’d come back for all of them.”

  He looks up, frowning at me. “All of who?”

  “My friends inside the Colony.”

  “You made friends inside the Colony?” he asks skeptically. “As in more than one?”

  “You say it like it’s impossible,” I snap at him.

  “Well, you’re not exactly…”

  “What? What aren’t I, Ryan?” I ask sharply, glaring at him.

  He grins. “Friendly.”

  “Oh shut up,” I grumble, knowing he’s right.

  He goes back to arranging my medicines, chuckling to himself. I take my disgusting herbal blends without complaint, promising to continue taking them at regular intervals. Ryan has brought me food to eat as well, and I swear old dry carrots have never tasted so good. They’re absolutely dripping with freedom.

  “I have to go,” Ryan admits reluctantly. “I don’t want them to come looking for me.”

  “Okay,” I reply evenly, feeling relieved and anxious at the same time.

  There’s nothing about Ryan that doesn’t bring out contradiction in me. I want him to stay but I don’t know how to be with him here. I want him to go but I’ll miss the feel of him nearby. I hated it the first night I met him, how he confused everything and filled the room nearly to bursting with just his laugh. But now… I don’t know for sure. Now I’ve learned I can be around people, and if I have to be around anyone, I’d rather it was him.