“Come with me,” she says briskly.
She walks away without waiting to see if we follow.
Turns out Ali isn’t in charge. I don’t know why I’m surprised by that. She’s a nurse or a doctor—I’m not sure which—but she’s not a soldier. Not like most of these guys wandering around the forest are. They’ve contained the swarm of zombies that followed Trent, the Colonists, and the cannibals here. They’re already making piles of the bodies and lighting fires. It’s a method of mass disposal I haven’t seen in years—not since I was a kid and it seemed like the entire world was always on fire. The sky was constantly choked with black and gray smoke, the sun peeking through to find the ground scorched black from the constant pyres. We burned most of the living that way too, partially to be safe and partially because no one had time for burials. As the acrid smoke hits my lungs, I’m reminded of an important fact - while the fires burn the same whether the fuel is human or zombie, the smell is very, very different.
We pass Crenshaw at a workbench surrounded by bowls, powders, and what looks like wire or twine. Ali asks him if he wants to join us, but he stays behind to ‘work,’ whatever that means. Ali takes us deeper into the forest to a massive tent swarming with people. They’re running in and out of it, disappearing inside or into the trees. I feel anxious just seeing that level of activity. It throws me when Ali walks us casually inside.
There are tables set up around the room with one massive one in the middle. Guns rest on the outer tables, but on the inside are a bunch of maps and papers and I wonder if that’s what everyone else gathered when the world felclass="underline" maps and Old English novels.
“Alvarez,” Ali calls out.
An older man with tan skin, wrinkles around his mouth and eyes, and dark, graying hair looks up sharply. “Bishop,” he replies, his voice deep and calm.
“Who is Bishop?” I ask Ali.
“Me. It’s my last name,” she mumbles quietly. “He calls my husband Bishop too. Confusing as hell.”
“Only to you,” Alvarez replies with a smirk. “I know exactly who I’m talking to. Who have you brought me?”
“These are the people who came to our island. The ones who decided to overthrow the Colonies.”
Alvarez looks us over, his eyes lingering momentarily on Vin and his neck. “A Hive member was on our island? I’ll have words with Taylor about that.”
“No, he wasn’t with us. It was someone else,” I tell him.
“And where is he?”
I sigh, wishing I could just wear a sign that says ‘I lost Ryan. I’m sorry.’
“He’s missing,” Ali says gently.
I can feel her looking at me. Feeling sorry for me.
I hate it.
“Maybe he’s in the throng of people that just flooded my camp,” Alvarez suggests gruffly.
“We need to talk about that. There are cannibals mixed in that group.”
He stands tall, glaring at all of us. Even Ali. “So Sam said.”
“What do you want to do about them?”
“Advise them to not to eat anyone.”
“Seriously.”
“I am serious. I don’t have time to deal with them and their dalliances. Tell ‘em to keep their hands and mouths to themselves. We have bigger fish to fry. Night will be coming soon.”
“What happens tonight?” Vin asks the older man.
He eyes him again, more thoroughly this time, before answering. “Tonight we attack.”
“The stadiums?” I ask.
“No, Tokyo.”
I frown. “Where is Tokyo?”
“He’s joking,” Ali tells me quietly. “Yes, the stadiums.”
“You don’t know where Tokyo is?” Trent asks me.
My cheeks burn with embarrassment. “Shut up! I was eight years old, okay? I didn’t make it through a lot of school.”
“I’ll teach you.”
“Wonderful. I can’t wait.”
“Can anyone you brought us be of any use?” Alvarez asks Trent.
Trent points to Vin. “He’s your man. I don’t have anything to do with them.”
“They belong to The Hive?”
“No,” Vin says firmly. “They belong to me.”
“They belong to themselves,” I mutter.
“You’re splitting hairs. They follow me.”
Alvarez nods. “Then I’ll need you to calm them down. They’re creating chaos in my camp. We’ll find them all shelter. Maybe in a building nearby. We’ll protect them, but those who can fight will need to join us tonight.”
“Agreed.”
“Good. Now if you two,” Alvarez says, pointing to me and Trent, “don’t have anything else to do, I’m putting you to work. I assume you know Crenshaw?”
I nod. “Yeah, of course.”
“Good. You’ll be working with him and his assistant. We need all the hands over there that we can get.”
Alissa takes us back to Crenshaw’s hut where we last saw him hunched over a table full of random. Vin goes with Alvarez, looking oddly at ease striding into the crowd next to the obvious head of the Vashons. It’s probably because of his ego, or maybe it’s because he was simply born to lead, but I’ve never seen Vin look so… right. This is bigger than The Hive. It’s bigger than the stables and being someone else’s servant, and as I watch him go I wonder if this isn’t where Vin was always meant to be.
He could be a great leader if he could stop stabbing everyone in the back.
“Bray!” Trent calls out happily, startling me.
A face I vaguely recognize looks up then smiles. “Trent!”
The guy runs to Trent but stops short. I think he was going to hug him before he remembered who he was dealing with. In the end, they awkwardly bump knuckles.
“Where’s Ryan?”
Where’s my sign?
“Taking care of some things,” Trent lies easily. “What are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you guys! You and Ryan straight up disappeared. No one knew where you were and no one was looking.”
“You’re not supposed to.”
“I know,” Bray says, not sounding the least bit sorry. “But I wandered in here, just to see. This park was where I found Ryan last time so I gave it a shot. I ended up hanging by my ankle from a tree.”
I grin. “Crenshaw’s traps?”
“Yeah,” he chuckles, looking embarrassed. “He caught me. I don’t know what he was going to do with me but I told him I was sorry for trespassing on his turf and that I was looking for Ryan. He said he knew where he was but that I couldn’t go there. Not right now. I asked him if I could wait here and he said no, but I could learn. So this is where I’ve been for the last few days.”
“What’s he teaching you?” Trent asks.
Bray’s eyes light up with excitement. “Everything.”
What he’s been teaching him is explosives, which to a bored fifteen-year-old boy probably feels like everything.
“How does Crenshaw know how to do this stuff?” I whisper to Ali.
We’re standing at a table of our own where I’m helping her roll bandages. She’s set up shop beside Crenshaw for two reasons. One, she loves him; and two, with all kinds of bubbling, boiling concoctions, open flames, and sharp utensils in newbie hands, there are a lot of injuries at the explosives table.
“He’s not a real wizard, don’t ever tell him I said that, but he is kind of a magician. He’s into all things nature and if you mix the right combination, nature knows how to go ‘boom.’ Big time.”
“He must have taught Ryan,” I muse, thinking of the fight he had with Vin about the size of the clay.
“He taught Jordan too.”
“Your husband?”
Ali nods.
“Is that how he lost his hand?”
She freezes. In fact, everyone in earshot does too, and when I stop to think about why we’re all ice sculptures, it dawns on me that that was stupid. It was thoughtless, tactless, and rude. But here’s the problem with me—I never know that until the damage is already done.
“I’m sorry, I shou—”
“He lost his hand to a zombie bite,” Ali answers, cutting off my apology. “He was bitten while fighting one and he didn’t even think about it. He wanted to live more than anything so he cut his hand off to stop the spread of the virus.”