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 cannibal, a long hatchet dangling loosely from her hand.
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.
We don’t dip down into the cul-de-sac the MOHAI sits in, but Trent helps me find it with the binoculars as we pass. I can’t see anyone on the outside, but the building is intact and they’re not flying a Hive flag, so I breathe a little easier.
When we pass by The Hive, a few men come out to stand on the dock and watch us go by. Their expressions are unreadable.
“And this is why they’re parading Westbrook’s head,” Ryan tells me from his spot on his chair. His eyes are closed against the sun. He looks so peaceful I almost worry about him.
“Why?”
“It’s a warning.”
“Hmm. They couldn’t have sent a letter?”
He smiles. “Who can afford postage these days?”
Next stop is the stadiums. That is a totally different experience than cruising by the empty MOHAI or the indifferent Hive. People come pouring out of the stadiums to swarm the shoreline. They scream and shout, clapping and waving to us like we’re heroes. And maybe to them we are. The Colonists here have been set free by the people on this boat. They’ve gotten their lives back and I’m glad I get to see this. It gives me hope that maybe this wasn’t all a mistake. I’ll never regret what we’ve done, but the sour taste I have in my mouth over what happened in the southern Colony is sweetened a little by the joy we see from the Colonists.
No, not Colonists. The people. The men and women re-released to the wild.
Trent shoves his binoculars against my chest roughly. “Don’t lose these.”
“Oh, okay,” I say, unsure why he’s brusquely pawning them off on me.
When I get my answer, I still don’t understand.
Trent goes back a few steps, crouches down, then sprints forward. He leaps into the air, up and over the side of the boat, and right down into the cold water of the Sound.
“Trent!” I shout, rushing forward to look over the edge.
I wait for a few breathless seconds but he finally appears, his blond hair bright against the dark water. He takes long, powerful strokes away from the boat, swimming for the shore.
“Did he jump?” Ryan asks, sounding shocked.
I turn to face him, my mouth hanging open. “I—he—”
I lift the binoculars to follow Trent as he swims the distance to the shore. I’m nervous the entire time. When he finds land and begins to stride purposefully out of the water, I breathe a sigh of relief.