Love and Decay, Volume One

by Rachel Higginson

  “Today’s game ball goes to Adela,” Nelson declared. “Thanks for feeding us.”

  She quirked a dark eyebrow, “Game ball?”

  “MVP,” Harrison said less than helpfully. “You’re the hero.”

  She ducked her head shyly, “Not the hero. We are equal. You saved my life. Now I save yours.”

  Harrison stared at her for a while, seeming to consider her words. His bitterness towards her shifted into something different, something less hostile. I took a breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding and let myself relax just a bit more.

  I really did like her. I was working on the whole trust thing. But this helped.

  I sat there enjoying my cactus and admiring the wilderness in the setting sun. The low light painted the harsh earth red and endless. A few stars came out to twinkle, blinking at us in the darkening blue.

  We decided to sleep on a set of rocks. We could keep watch and huddle together and hopefully survive the night. The temperature had already dropped significantly. Without the heat of the desert sun to bake us, the nighttime temperatures could be deadly. Without a fire or cover, we would need each other’s body heat to make it until morning.

  One rock in the middle jutted out like a runway and I snuggled between Tyler and Page to keep warm. We flipped over on our backs and stared up at the star-filled sky.

  Hendrix and Harrison had been put in charge of the first watch. They had armed themselves with an arsenal of rocks. We had nothing else. It would be enough to keep animals away.

  Tyler and I told Page stories from before the infection. We told her about going to movies and going out for ice cream. She listened as her eyes started to droop and her breathing evened out. Tyler eventually fell asleep too. She curled into my warmth and snored softly.

  I turned away from her, not exactly keen on her snoring in my ear all night. I tucked my arm under my head and got as comfortable as I could be on the dirt ground, out in the open, during the Zombie Apocalypse.

  I didn’t fall asleep right away though. Hendrix had perched on a rock just a few feet from me. He tossed a rock in his hand, throwing it high and catching it low. Harrison sat at the other end of our rock peninsula whistling softly.

  I watched Hendrix for a long time. In the light of the moon I could just make out the curve of his jaw and angle of his strong nose. I stared at the shape of his shoulders, silhouetted against an endless sky. I studied him and allowed myself to miss him, to regret letting him go.

  Just like all of the other times when I allowed myself to truly feel the aching loss of Hendrix, thoughts of Kane filtered in with the intense sorrow. I missed Kane. I hated that he had left me the way that he had. And I couldn’t stand never seeing him again.

  But another part of me, another secret part of me, knew that if Kane hadn’t died, I would never have been able to repair my relationship with Hendrix as much as I had. Slowly I felt my heart shift back into place, my soul repair the fractures that had split it so completely. With each day that passed, I felt myself relax around Hendrix and remember the girl I used to be, before all the chaos the Allen family brought into my life.

  I would never be able to go back to the beginning and I would forever be changed from the events that happened last fall. But I didn’t think that was a bad thing.

  I had matured since then. I had opened my eyes completely to the world around me. And I had realized acutely what I could have lost forever.

  I still cared for Hendrix. I could admit that. I cared for him deeply.

  And I couldn’t imagine losing him too.

  “Willow,” he murmured in a low voice. “You’re giving me a complex. Do I have cactus stuck between my teeth?”

  His deep rumble of a voice made me jump in place and then laugh. “Yes,” I told him. “A great big piece of it, right between your two front teeth.”

  He tried very hard not to move. I watched his shoulders tense and his fists still at his sides, but eventually he gave in. He just couldn’t help himself.

  Picking at his teeth, he said, “That’s not nice.”

  “But it’s very funny.”

  He swiveled toward me and dropped his hand again. “You’ve been staring at me for an hour. What’s up?”

  My face flamed in the darkness, embarrassed that he had been so aware of me and hadn’t said anything until now. I wanted to flip over and pretend to fall instantly asleep.

  “I wasn’t just staring at you.” My voice shook nervously. I tried to swallow my anxiety.

  He gave me a look that I could interpret through the dark, “What’s on your mind?”

  “Cannibals,” I told him immediately. “Cannibals are on my mind.”

  He made a sound in the back of his throat and ran a hand through his tangled hair. “Reagan, I’m sorry, okay?”

  “You’re sorry?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t know if you even heard me back there, but I hadn’t meant to come off like a… a dictator.”

  “A dictator.”

  “It was bad enough that I had to face the reality that Vaughan was going to lay down like a buffet, but then you… I just… I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t watch them carry you out of that room, knowing what they planned to do to you. It is not in me to not put up a fight for you.”

  I tried to swallow again, but truly struggled. “I wasn’t thinking about that,” I whispered stupidly.

  Luckily, I didn’t think he heard me. “You saved us, I think. I should have said this earlier, whenever Vaughan brought up game balls. But I think it was really you that saved us back there.”

  “How do you figure that?” My mind spun as I tried to reconcile his words from earlier so I pushed the conversation not for compliments, but to stall for time.

  “Your determination. I have never seen anyone struggle like that. I thought you were going to cut your hand clean off in order to get those ties off.”

  I chuckled lightly, “I thought the same thing at one point. I kept having these nightmares of the leather going straight through my bone, just popping my hand right off.”

  He smiled at me, his teeth glinting in the moonlight. “I had been fighting them too, trying my damnedest to get my wrists free, when all of a sudden yours popped apart. I’m not sure I had ever felt such sudden, sharp relief before. You gave me the strength to rip mine apart. I had nearly given up.”

  Something tugged at my heart and heard myself whisper, “You can’t give up, Hendrix. Never. Not ever. You can’t ever give up.”

  He leaned forward until his elbows rested on his kneecaps. “Will you keep reminding me of that? It’s alarmingly easy to forget.”

  “As long as I’m with you.”

  “Then always stay with me.”

  My breath hitched and my fingers tingled. “Hendrix…”

  “Reagan, come here.” He shook his head and added, “It will be easier to talk if you’re over here.”

  “You want to keep talking?”

  “I have something I want to say.”

  I had no idea what that meant. Part of me was too afraid to find out. The other part of me didn’t hesitate to get my ass in gear. I stood up and carefully stepped over bodies to reach him.

  He patted the ledge he sat on and I hopped up on it, anxious to hear what he had to say. He looked at me slyly and then bumped his shoulder into mine.

  “Hey,” he said softly.

  I bumped him back, “Hey.”

  “I should probably let you go to sleep.”

  I looked up into his eyes and lost myself to the vastness of his gaze. “I’d rather talk to you.”

  His lips parted and then he smiled at me. His expression settled into the man I knew before Kane came between us. He wasn’t a relaxed and easygoing kind of person, but he was more like himself than I had seen in the past several months.

  We looked at each other for a long time, neither of us knowing where to start or what to say. I didn’t feel uncomfortable, but I was anxious to hear what he had pulled me over here fo
r.

  “Did you want to talk to me about something specific?” I asked gently. “Or just talk to me because you’re bored.”

  His eyes twinkled with amusement. “A little of both?” Butterflies took flight in my stomach, flapping with a vengeance of pent up longing. “Earlier you blamed yourself for taking us from our home. I just wanted you to know that you’re wrong. We hadn’t planned to stay there much longer anyway. That was only a temporary place for us. And Zombies would have found us regardless of your arrival because that’s what happens during a Zombie Apocalypse. There’s no way to stay safe. You should know that better than anyone.”

  I swallowed back an argument, deciding that maybe he was right. He nudged me with his shoulder and kept going, “And you haven’t ruined our lives. Not in any way. If anything you have added to them tremendously. You’ve giving us something to care for and protect. You’ve given my brother Haley and their baby. You’ve given Page sisters and a woman’s influence. You’ve given me the opportunity to love outside of my family and find a bigger purpose in life. You haven’t ruined anything. We would all fight for you… die for you. Reagan, I would follow you to the gates of hell just as quickly as I followed you here.”

  “Hendrix.” His name was a prayer on my lips.

  “Reagan, I still-”

  A wretched screeching pierced through the still night and I decided it would probably be best if I set the entire country of Mexico on fire.

  Are you kidding me?

  Hendrix’s hand fell to my knee and gripped me tightly. “Feeder.”

  “More than one,” I declared as more shrieks echoed through the night.

  “Wake up,” Hendrix ordered his family. “Now!”

  Vaughan stirred first. He jumped to his feet and catapulted into action. I wondered if he had ever really been asleep to begin with.

  I slid down the rock and landed on my feet, anxious to get moving. I jumped over bodies and ended in a crouch next to Page. I shook her gently but forcefully, encouraging her to get moving quickly.

  We took off running into the night, desperate to get away from the howling Feeders.

  There had been no camp to pick up or possessions to worry about. For once, I could appreciate our free hands and backs.

  I had no idea what direction we took off in. I couldn’t have told you where the road was or if we were headed north, south, east or west.

  I couldn’t see the ground well enough to avoid holes or lumpy grass. I tripped and stumbled my way into keeping up with the bulk of the group. I had one objective and one objective only and that was to get away from the Zombies.

  It turned out that I should have been a little more open minded.

  It wasn’t the Zombies I needed to outrun, but the humans.

  A Jeep tore over the next hill before I had time to register the purring engine. Spotlights had been tied to the crossbars and shone directly on us. We all skidded to a halt with angry arms raised in front of our faces to block the blinding light.

  Vaughan spun around first and shouted orders to head for the rockier areas where the Jeep couldn’t follow. Just as soon as we’d turned another Jeep popped up in front of us, blinding us for a second time.

  A scream of frustration ripped through me.

  By the time the third Jeep appeared with an equally dazzling light strapped to the roof, I was somewhere beyond enraged and just before so angry I would pass out.

  A man swung up to stand on the step outside of the open driver’s side door and with an obnoxiously loud megaphone shouted at us in rapid Spanish.

  We didn’t move and Adela didn’t attempt to translate. After a few seconds without response, the man yelled again in the same foreign language and I caught not one single word of what he said.

  He started shouting the same word over and over again and still not one of us, save for a petrified looking Adela, could interpret it. It didn’t help that the megaphone muffled his consonants and left his words fuzzy and ringing through my panic.

  The man, impatient and tired of our lack of obedience, lifted a huge-barreled handgun into the night sky and fired. This prompted a scream from Adela and Tyler. He yelled at us again through the megaphone.

  Finally, Vaughan spoke up and told him the truth, “No hablo Español! We don’t understand Spanish!”

  The men around us quieted. I could feel them absorb this new information and silently decide what to do with it.

  “Understand this,” the man grinned at us, a sudden giddy mood turning his mouth up into a sadistic smile, “get in the vehicles before I shoot every last one of you and feed you to my Dead!”

  We moved into action. They didn’t tell us who should go where, so we split up into our normal pairs and moved in three different directions.

  We were oddly compliant, more so than we had ever been. I hated being separated like this, but we went without complaint.

  And as Adela stuck close to my side and whispered, “Raphael. Slavers,” I knew it was because we had all been expecting this.

  Since we walked out of the copper mine, this had been the trajectory the cannibals set us on. Our lives had started to resemble patterns. As unpredictable as this world could be, our mutual existence seemed to head in one repetitive direction.

  If there was trouble to run into, we would eventually find it.

  I squished in the back of the Jeep with Hendrix on one side of me and Adela on the other. Harrison had followed us, always the third wheel to Hendrix and my pair. King stayed with Haley and Nelson. Miller and Page stuck close to Tyler and Vaughan.

  Guns were pointed and trained on our heads as the Jeeps bounced and sped through the wilderness until they found the road again.

  The Feeders howled in the night, their guttural moaning chasing us down the open highway.

  Hendrix’s hand reached out to squeeze mine. They hadn’t checked us for weapons, but we hadn’t tried to fight them either. If we had been carrying guns, we would have fired them already.

  A beautiful Spanish-style estate came into view after at least an hour of riding. My eyes widened as I took in a working fountain in the middle of a circular drive and lights on in the warm, sprawling main house. I could see two children running through the main room and a woman setting food on the table, both providing the picture of domestic bliss in such a trying time. My heart surged with unexpected hope.

  But it crashed immediately when Adela squeezed closer to me, and whispered, “Welcome to infierno. We’ll be lucky to live through the night.”

  Since we were lucky to live through the night last night, I could only imagine what this newest version of hell had in store for us.

  Just as long as they didn’t try to eat us.

  Episode Four

  Chapter One

  1070 Days after initial infection

  Haley

  In the back of my junior yearbook, my classmates voted me Most Likely to Get Out of Iowa and Do Something With Her Life.

  Quite the prestigious title.

  Especially for small town Iowa.

  But then the world fell apart and I didn’t even graduate from high school. So, I buried-ish my dad, teamed up with my best friend and went on a three-year killing spree.

  Although, to be fair, I did get out of Iowa.

  As far as doing something with my life?

  This morning I woke up in a puddle that I was positive was not water. I smelled like livestock that had been rubbed down with rotten eggs. And instead of going to college, I got knocked up. Oh, and I had recently become a slave.

  Back then… back when I wrote Stay Cool and Friends Foreva underneath thumbnail-sized photos of my friends wearing too much makeup, this life I led now was the very opposite of anything I could have imagined. I was so naïve back then… so painfully sheltered.

  We all were.

  How could anyone have predicted the way the world would fall? Or the way humanity would turn?

  Not I.

  The hardest thing to wrap my head around though…
the most impossible thing to have happened to me in my entire life was not Zombies or slavers or cannibals or even Matthias Allen and his Colony for the Crazy. Oh, no. The most insane thing to ever happen to me was getting pregnant.

  Seriously, who would have ever thought that I would be a mother?

  In all of my pre-Zombie years and the years in which I had been firmly submerged in everything undead, I had never once pictured myself as maternal.

  Maybe I had absent-mother issues or maybe it was that I had always been too selfish to picture prioritizing another living being over my own needs and wants.

  Or maybe it was because I had never been much of a planner. Before the eighth day, when God created Zombies, I had been pretty much a here-and-now-er. I hadn’t been able to see far enough ahead to pick a college, let alone think of myself as a Mrs. with a gaggle of children to feed and take care of.

  My hands drifted over my swollen belly. And yet here we are, little guy.

  I knew I was having a boy.

  In fact, it was one of the first things I had known about the child.

  My periods were off from not eating regularly and this general lifestyle, so when I missed a couple months, I hadn’t been concerned.

  But then the dreams started. I kept dreaming about babies. My babies in particular. I would see myself holding the smallest infant, no bigger than my hand, wrapped in blue. Sometimes I would name him in my sleep. Sometimes Zombies would be after us and I would have to figure out a way to hide him. And sometimes I would hand him to Nelson while I scoured the wilderness in search of food for him.

  Usually, we were in dire circumstances and I had to fight for his survival. I would wake up clutching my stomach, unable to catch a full breath. I had never felt that kind of panic before: raw, consuming and utterly debilitating.

  And trust me when I say, I’ve had my fair share of hysterical moments over the last three years.

  Nelson was the first to suggest that maybe there was more to my dreams than just a subconscious desire to fight for innocent things, which had been my suggestion. He said, “Hales, is it possible you’re pregnant?”