Authors note: hey guys, sorry that I've been kind of inactive recently, I don't want to make excuses but I've had exams. However, those are all done now (woop woop) and so I have tons more time to write and I have big things planned. Anyway, to make up for it this chapter is ultra long- the longest yet. It also focuses a lot more on back story and character development. Please continue to review and tell me what you think/ what I can do to improve. Hope you are all having a fabulous summer :)
The water carries my hair around my head, teasing it like seaweed, tossing it to and fro in the current. I look around. The world is clearer under water. Everything is slower, sharper. Everything calm.
A man approaches me. He is tall, yet thin. His cheeks hollow and eyes sunken. He looks like the dead, not the kind that walks, but an actual corpse. He doesn't breathe, not under the sea; it reminds me that I do not breathe either. This fact does not alarm me, I am not scared. It feels natural to me like breathing is an unnatural thing to be doing.
As the man gets closer, the current starts to get stronger. And a once gentle tease is turned to a desperate tug. A whirlwind of water starts around me and I am the eye of a storm. The man reaches me, towers above me in fact, yet still I feel nothing. He reaches out a callused looking hand towards me and I watch it approach- physically incapable of looking away.
Suddenly he touches my arm and all of my repressed emotions finally hit me. Panic. Fear. Guilt. Pain. I have to get away from him, I have to. So I start to swim. Kicking my legs and thrashing at the water with my arms, I attempt to swim away. But I can't breathe. He clamps onto my foot, holding me back. The water steals my clasp of control, drowning me, holding me down. The water that once held me in its gentle current has turned against me; betrayed me.
I try to draw a breath and instead let the water in. My lungs fill, the treacherous water swirling inside me, ripping me apart from the inside out. The man smiles.
David and Larry, the two older farmhands, showed up in the morning and explained what we needed to do. First, and most important, is guarding the wall, the barrier that surrounds the compound and keeps the walkers at bay. Platforms and walkways have been constructed along the inside of the wall, making it easy to move around the perimeter, and giving the guards on patrol a good view of any incoming danger. Not only do the platforms need to manned, but the fires outside the wall need to be kept blazing.
Jace, izzy, Alec and I have been drafted to help with the night watch. The job initials standing pretty still for hours on end, staying at high alert and holding a heavy rifle. Considering my considerate lack of rest the last couple of nights, I am not looking forward to it. I would have slept well last night if it wasn't for the nightmare. I get these dreams almost every night now, and in everyone someone dies. Sometimes me, but usually someone else who is being killed by me, usually someone I care about. It has gotten to the point that I fear sleep, almost more than I fear the walking dead. My subconscious seems to have turned against me and it shows me as a monster; I refuse to see any similarities between myself and the hellish me in my dreams.
"Nice," Jace mutters, bringing me from my thoughts. He is gazing down at the barrel of the rifle just handed to him, swiping it over the fields below. We have taken the platform closest to the forest, where we had come out the other night, and Jace is kneeling with his elbows resting against the railing. "I used to have a rifle like this. Scoped too. It made shooting game a lot easier, till one day I was teaching Isabelle to hunt and it fell right out of the tree, breaking in 3 different ways." He grimaces and lowered the gun "Valentine… was not happy with me."
I wince in sympathy. "How long do you think we'll be here?" I ask, leaning against the railing, hoping the rickety planks will support my weight. "It's not like Valentine to stop for so long. Why is he even considering staying a few nights? Especially after receiving information about The Promised Land." After hearing that Luke is searching for the Utopia, this magical land that has no walkers, as well as us; I can't help but think it's weird. I have never actually believed that there is such a place but now I am starting to have doubts. Luke was… is a smart guy, he wouldn't go after something that is just a whim would he? But having said that, I haven't seen him in nearly 10 years and people change, perhaps he has gone crazy as Amatis seemed to have suggested.
"Valentine has told me that he wants to stay for a little while longer, just until he can get all the information he can. And then we are off." Jace replies. He looks down at me from his perch with the gun and smiles reassuringly, "if you are worried about Luke, don't be. If he's found the promised lands then we will find him."
I am about to ask him what would happen if Luke hadn't reached the Promised lands when a movement out in the field catches my attention. "Jace," I murmur, pointing towards the woods. "Walkers."
Jace straightens out, bringing up the rifle, while I watch the creatures creep closer, their awful rotten stench drifting over the breeze. There is three of them, pale and emaciated, moving across the field, straight towards the wall. They move slowly, sometimes hunched over, sometimes dead straight, however despite the movement in their bodies their heads keep dead still. Their eyes, which I can just see from this distance, are emotionless and dead. Looking at them makes my skin crawl. Two of them are completely naked, but one still wears the tattered remains of a floral dress, its colour faded and destroyed.
"Walkers!" Jace calls, his voice echoing through the compound. Instantly, David, Larry, Izzy and Alec jump down from their perches around us and sprint in our direction. They clamber up, the platform creaking under their weight and I scramble over to make room for them all. Jace drops to his knee and levels his gun at the walkers, but Larry holds up his hand.
"No, we don't waste ammo." He warns, eyes narrowed as he peers past the some and flames below. "They are too far out still, and it's nearly impossible to kill them cleanly from this distance. Let 'em come closer, they will just keep walking into the fires, and hopefully kill themselves. When they are down you can start firing at them. We might not need to waste any bullets at all."
The walkers keep coming, gazing at the wall with a blank, hungry expression. Jace and Izzy keep their guns trained on them as the walking dead gradually edge closer. Beside me, Jace makes a noise that is almost a growl. I stare at him in amazement. His shoulders are stiff, tense, and his eyes glitter with hatred. "Come on," he mutters, and the ice cold rage in his voice shocks me. "Come a little closer, just a few more steps."
"Easy, boy." Larry soothes. "Don't be too eager. We don't want to attract more of 'em in the commotion."
Jace doesn't answer, his entire focus is on the dead below. He seems different now; the smiling, easy-going boy I knew is gone. In his place stands a cold, ruthless stranger, with eyes of ice, his face frozen into a flinty mask. This boy glows with hatred and malice, not with gold like my Jace does. Watching him, I feel a stab of apprehension. In that moment he looks very much like Valentine.
The walkers have reached the fire, and keep walking. Even as the flames swallow them up. We all watch as their dilapidated skin begins to melt and burn. They smell bad ordinarily, but now I can taste them as they burn in the air around us. Their foulness seeps into my mouth, my nose, settles in my hair. Bust most chilling of all is that they just keep going. The walkers, with their skin alight, bodies ablaze, feel no pain, do not stop; that dead, hungry look remains in their eyes. Two of the walkers fall to the ground, knocked out by the fire that has swallowed hem whole. The last one still walks to the wall, and with a nod from Larry, Jace ends it with a clean shot straight through its head.
I watch the tension be released from my friends bodies, as we all straighten, lowering their guns.
"There will be more," Larry says, not weary or resigned. Just a statement, a simple fact. "There always is." He taps Alec's shoulder. "Come on, then, Alec was it? You and your sister better get back to your posts. Sometimes the buggers creep up on us from behind when we aren't lookin', sneaky bastards."
Alec and Izzy climb down from the platform and head off to their own with Larry and David quickly doing the same. Jace sets down the rifle and leans next to me on the railing, our shoulders barely touching as we gaze over the fields.
"They have a nice life here," he says, and his voice isn't mocking or sarcastic. It is almost wistful, envious. I snort and cross my arms, hiding the unease of a moment before.
"What, you mean with the wall and being penned in like sheep, and the constant threat of walker invasion?"
"They have a home here," Jace retorts, giving me a sideways look. "They have a family. They've carved out their own lives, and yeah, it might not be completely perfect or safe, but at least they have something that belongs to them." He sighs and rakes his fingers through his golden hair. "Not like us, constantly wondering around, never knowing what we'll find or what comes next. Not having a home to go back to."
The longing in his voice is palpable. I feel his shoulder against mine, our arms brushing together, the heat radiating from him like there is fire trapped beneath his skin. We don't look at each other, just keep gazing out at the looming forest. "What was home for you?" I ask softly, "Before all this, before you started looking for Eden. Where did you live?"
"A bunch of places," Jace says sounding distant. "I didn't really know my parents, they died in a house fire when I was 18 months old. And from then onwards I was always moving around, from orphanage to orphanage, care home to care home. I guess I must have been a difficult child to love because no one could stand to stay with me for longer than 6 months. My life went on like that until I was about 8; at which point I met Valentine.
He was working at the local church of my most recent orphanage, the care home was an awful place, run down and stingy, mould ridden and just poorly managed to be honest. One Christmas a group of carollers from the church came to sing for us kids, but unfortunately the pianist got cramp in their hands so couldn't continue to play. I knew the songs so I offered to step in for her. And that is how I met Valentine. We met up a few times after that and he soon filled out the legal work and adopted me officially."
I tried to picture Valentine going Christmas carolling, his cold heart melting when he saw the poor orphan boy playing the piano for them, even though they were supposed to be playing for him. The thought made me simultaneously despairing and joyous as I thought of Jace's little face looking up at the first man to ever choose him.
"And from then onwards home was a little yellow house, with a tire swing in the front yard and Valentine pushing me on it." He blinks, giving me an embarrassed look. "Sorry to bore you with my life story. It's pretty boring. Nothing special."
I give him a shocked expression. My whole life before the apocalypse had been plain, ordinary. Just me, my mum, Luke and my best friend Simon. I never met my dad, he died before I was born, but I'd always felt complete without him. I couldn't mourn a father I had never met; and besides I had Luke, who I had always considered my father even if we weren't blood related. But my mother still missed my dad. My REAL dad. She had a little silver box by her bed which I would occasionally catch her weeping silently over, the initials J.C. were carved into it. Inside the box was a small lock of platinum white/blonde hair. The same colour as the hair in the portrait of my father that my mother had painted for him.
It was strange to hear Jace talking about moving around because my home had always been in one place: a small apartment in Brooklyn which I lived in with my mum. Before the world turned to shit I couldn't have imagined a life without that place, those people. I guess that's one of the main things that the apocalypse has forced us to do; to live the unimaginable.
I look at Jace, finally properly appreciating what awful shit this beautiful boy has had to endure in his life. The thoughts of how unfair it all is almost make my cry and I have to bat my eyelids repetitively to stop my eyes from blurring anymore. "Tell me about your little yellow house with Valentine," I say.
He nods, pausing for a moment before he starts to talk, as if he is collecting his memories. "I don't remember much," he begins, gazing out into the darkness. "There was a community down in the hollow of the mountain range. It was fairly small, everyone knew each other. We were so isolated, we didn't even stress too much about the zombies or apocalypse and other things happening outside our bubble of a village. So when the walkers did come, no one was prepared for it. Except Valentine."
Jace stops and takes a quiet breath, his eyes far away and dark. "They came to our house first," he muses. "I remember them scratching at the windows, tearing down the walls to get in. Valentine hid me in a closet, and I listened to him plough down about twenty of them without getting a single injury." He shivers, but his voice is calm, as if this had happened to someone else, as if he is not the boy in the story.
"The next thing I remember is Valentine opening the door and standing before me, staring down at me. His body covered in blood."
"Is that town where the rest of your group comes from?"
"Mostly." Jace gave me a sideway glance. "There were more of us at first, and some like Jordan we picked up along the way. But, yes, the majority of us came from that town. After the zombie attack, people were scared. They didn't know what to do. So they started listening to Valentine, coming to him for help, pleading for his advice. In time, it became a weekly thing, where we would sit in church for an hour or so and listen to him talk. Valentine didn't want to be a preacher again, as he belives that god was here but has abandoned the world, and he told people this. And after a while, he sort of… gained a following."
"But… if Valentine believes God has abandoned the world, that He's not here anymore." I give Jace a puzzled look." Surely that theory didn't go down so well."
"You'd be surprised." Jace shrugs. "People were desperate for some sort of guidance, and it wasn't as bleak as you might think. Valentine believes that, even though God is no longer watching us, we have to keep fighting the evil while we are here. That we can't let ourselves become tainted by the demons. That it's the only way we have a shot at eternity when we die."
"How cheerful."
He smiles faintly. "He did have some rather strong opposition, but it didn't seem to bother him. Valentine was never really attached to the town, not like me. Now that I think about it, I don't think he ever meant to stay long. Not with what he was teaching me."
"What did he teach you?"
"Everything I know- how to shoot, how to fight. We would go out to the hills behind the town, in the daylight, of course, and he would show me how to survive in the wilderness. I shot my first rabbit at the age of 12. Cried the whole way through cleaning it." He shoots me an embarrassed smile.
"But," he continues, "that evening, our neighbour took that skinny carcass and made a stew out of it, and we sat around our kitchen table and ate it all. Valentine didn't show it, but I knew he was proud of me." Jace chuckles, self-conscious, and shakes his head. "That was home to me for a while, as crazy as it sounds. Not this endless wandering. Not a faceless city that we might never find." He sighs heavily, glancing back at the barn, and the burden on his face is almost overwhelming. "So anyway," he finishes, shaking his melancholy as he looks back to the woods, "that's why I think Amatis and her community have a good life here. Walkers and walls and fire and everything." He finally looks at me then, smirking and defiant. "So, go ahead- tell me I'm a sentimental idiot if you want, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it."
"You're not," I reply. "I think you are too hard on yourself, and that Valentine shouldn't expect you to keep everyone happy and alive and safe, but I don't think you're an idiot."
He smiles, a real one this time, though his voice is teasing. "So, what do you think I am?"
Brave I think at once brave, beautiful, selfless, incredible, heroic- and much too good for this world. It'll break you in the end, if you keep going like this. Good things never last.
I don't say any of these things, of course. I just shrug and mutter, "It doesn't matter what I think."
Jace's voice is soft, almost a whisper. "It matters to me."
I look at him. His eyes are a pool of gold in the moonlight, his hair a delicious blonde. His mouth is captured in a smirk and I can't stop staring at his face. Slowly, he lets go of the railing and leans in, reaching up to brush a strand of hair from my cheek.
His graceful fingers graze my skin, and warmth shoots through me like an electric jolt. I hear his breath coming hot and fast against my cheek. His smell is everywhere, overwhelming: heat and blood and life, and a distant, earthy smell that is uniquely him. I imagine kissing him, meeting my lips with his, trailing my fingers through his luscious golden hair, and finally tasting the fire within him.
"Jace!"
Isabelle's voice shatters the silence, jerking us apart and bringing me to my senses. Horrified, I rise and step to the edge of the platform, facing the wind. What the hell am I doing? What did I think kissing Jace was going to achieve other than pain and misery for us both? I mentally scold myself on my own stupidity. I can't let myself have feelings for him- love him, even. Maybe, if the world wasn't how it is, then just maybe we would have worked out but not like this. I can't allow myself to get close to him because the closer you get to someone, the more it will destroy you when they are inevitably gone.
I shudder and take a step away from him, stifling my desire to turn around, to go back to him, to finish what we started. I think back to our almost kiss and have to wonder: what would have happened, would we carry on like normal, or something more?
"Jace!" Isabelle calls again, oblivious to the scene up top, "Amatis wants me to remind you that the fire outside the wall needs to be fed. The woodpile is back behind the water cistern."
"I'll go," I say quickly as Jace leans over the railing to call back. He stops and gives me a puzzled look, but I turn away toward the ladder before he can say anything.
"Clary," Jace says softly behind me, stopping me. I glance up at him from the ladder, and find him looking at me with a sad, confused expression. "I'm sorry," he murmurs. "I shouldn't have… I thought…" he trails off with a sigh, raking a hand through his hair. "Don't go?" He asks giving me a hopeful smile. "I'll behave I promise."
I really want to stay, which is why I have to go. "I just need some room." I say to him, and continue to climb down the ladder. I walk past Isabelle who gives me a strange look as I pass her, but she doesn't say anything to me.
I look back to see if Jace is following me. I have to remind myself that it is a good thing when I see that he isn't.
