Tearing Down the Wall
Survival Series
Book Three
By Tracey Ward
Tearing Down the Wall
Survival Series
Book Three
By Tracey Ward
Text Copyright © 2014 Tracey Ward
Edited by Amy Jackson
All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in book review.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, events, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to places or incidents is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty One
Chapter Twenty Two
Chapter Twenty Three
Chapter Twenty Four
Prologue
Chapter One
About the Author
To die would be an awfully big adventure.
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Chapter One
“What do we do?” I ask Trent, my voice barely above a whisper.
In the flickering firelight his eyes watch me intently, but I know he’s somewhere else. His mind is outside the room, out on the streets, gauging the distance and weighing our options. We both listen to the crunch of feet on loose gravel, the scuff of shoes on asphalt. The drag of the blade over rough ground. When he finally sees me again, I know we’re in trouble.
“We wait,” he tells me, his voice too loud.
“Shhh!” I shush him violently, glancing nervously at the broken windows. So far they’re still pitch black. They may be coming, but they’re doing it in darkness.
“It doesn’t matter, Joss. They know we’re here.”
“So we’re just going to let them kill us? Eat us for dinner?” I demand. I sit up, going into a crouch and scanning the room for something, anything. “Screw that, Trent. If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.”
“If we don’t fight and we don’t run, we may be able to talk our way out of this.”
My eyes snap to his, shocked. “Are you serious?”
He nods slowly. The footsteps are coming closer. They’re almost here and my heart is ready to implode.
“I’ve seen it happen. I’ve seen people taken prisoner by them before.”
“Pft,” I scoff. “They were probably saved for a midnight snack. Kept warm with beating hearts and eaten later on.”
“Maybe,” Trent agrees with a shrug, “but what do we lose by trying?”
I chew on the inside of my lower lip as I debate this really stupid plan. But he’s right and I know he’s right; I’m just fighting it like crazy because I don’t want to be taken prisoner again. I also don’t want to die, and I really, really, really don’t want to be eaten.
“Okay, but you’re not doing the talking,” I finally tell him. “You’ll get us killed immediately.”
He raises a skeptical eyebrow, but just like I know he’s right, he knows I’m right. He doesn’t fight me.
“Agreed. But you won’t do any better. You’re not exactly Miss Congeniality.”
“No, I’m not,” I admit reluctantly. My eyes go immediately to Ryan. “But you know who is?”
“You better wake him fast. They’re here.”
I pounce on Ryan, shaking him violently until he grumbles and moans, his hands flailing weakly to make me stop. But I’m relentless because I’m terrified and I know he’s our only hope. I shake him harder only to be greeted with more grumbling.
“He’s out cold,” I say, exasperated.
“You’ll have to—”
“Knock, knock,” a voice sings from outside.
A pale face appears in the broken window, grinning when he sees me.
I nearly scream. As it is, I die a little inside—like Wesley in The Princess Bride, tethered to the machine stealing years off his life. That’s what this world is doing to me: killing me slowly one terror at a time until I’ll be the oldest seventeen-year-old ever to walk the earth. I’ll think I have years left to live if only I can keep my guard up, keep the monsters at bay, but then one morning I won’t wake up because my heart will have given out. And I won’t blame it one bit.
The face disappears from the window. The second it’s gone, I wish it was back because at least then I know where one of them is. I can hear more people milling around outside the walls. They run their hands along the exterior, tapping lightly as they move, until the entire building feels like it’s humming. The walls are closing in on me and I’m panicking hard. My breaths are coming in short, painful gasps and my skin is nothing but a drowning victim under the sweat breaking out over every inch of my body.
I’m scared of zombies. I’m scared of the Colonists. After the gun in my face, I’m a little scared of the Vashons. But I have never been so afraid of another living being as I am right now. I always knew I was disgusted by them, repulsed by their willingness to devour another human being like the monsters that stole everything from us all, but I never knew how deathly afraid of them I was. They’re human but inhumane. Living but dead inside. It’s a double-threat enemy I’d hoped to never face.
Yet here they are now in force.
“Trent,” I say urgently, not sure what I’m expecting from him. I think I want him to have all the answers and make this go away. I want him to know everything now. In fact, I encourage it. But what I get in response to my plea for God-knows-what surprises me.
Just as there’s an eerily polite knock on the door behind me, Trent pulls a stick from the fire and lays it on Ryan’s bare arm.
“What the f—” Ryan cries, jerking into a sitting position.
He blinks several times, trying to clear his eyes. He looks pissed and I don’t blame him. If Trent ever tries that with me, I’ll make him eat that hot poker.
“We have company,” Trent tells him.
Ryan freezes as he listens to the sounds around him: fingers tapping on the building. Faces start popping in and out of the windows, some just passing by, some stopping to smile grimly before moving on. There are women in the group; somehow that makes me sicker.