His low chuckle sent warmth building through me. “I know that’s not true.”
I pulled back so I could see his eyes. “Do you want to go instead? Maybe you should be the one to check out the town first?”
He quickly shook his head. “No, it’s fine. Maybe it would be different if you were going to actually spy on Matthias. But I’d rather not see the aftermath of his reign. Just take good mental notes and be ready to fill us all in.”
“I can definitely do that,” I smiled. But I wasn’t convinced that he didn’t want to go. “Seriously though, Miller, you can go if you want to. I just volunteered first because I didn’t think anyone else would want to go. Besides, I want Luke to know we’re here to work with him. Every step of the way.”
Miller turned his head to scan the wide open space. “That’s another reason you should go. He doesn’t trust any of us.”
“That’s not true.”
Miller continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “But he needs us. And we probably need him.”
“We do need him.”
Miller’s gaze found mine again. “I’m not completely convinced of that.”
I smiled because I couldn’t help it. Miller was always just so… Miller. So self-assured. Confident. Manly. Of course, he didn’t think we needed help from strangers.
But he was wrong about that. We would have already been caught and killed by now if it hadn’t been for a random meeting with one of Luke’s people.
“Just don’t cause any problems while I’m gone. I need you to get along with these people.” His dark expression made me laugh. “Fine. I can’t ask you to get along with them. But at least ignore them! Don’t start any problems.”
His hands dropped to my waist and pulled me against him. “When have you ever known me to start problems?”
I loved the teasing in his voice, the low rumbling that made butterflies take flight and my heart rate pick up pace. “You are a problem, Miller Allen. You’re nothing but one, great big problem.”
His fingers dug into my sides in just the worst way and I tried to scramble away from him as I laughed hysterically at his tickling. “Stop!” I gasped. “Ah!”
“Is this a problem, Page?” he taunted.
“Yes!”
In the next second his mouth was on mine, taking it in a heated kiss. My laughter died out immediately in the wake of passion and fire and something so delicious I forgot that we were in a room full of people and family and strangers.
His teeth nipped at my bottom lip. His hands slipped under my shirt and held me tightly against him. His tongue moved against mine and I lost all reason and thought and logic.
“Don’t forget about me,” he whispered in between searing kisses.
I arched my back into him and replied breathlessly, “Like that is even possible.”
Another mind-blowing kiss chased his deep laugh and I wanted to forget about the mission completely. I wanted to give up on Matthias Allen and the Colony and the entire Zombie Apocalypse and just kiss this man for the rest of my life.
A throat cleared behind us, followed by a terse, “Page.”
My cheeks blazed with embarrassment and the realization of our surroundings came crashing back down on me. Miller let out a heavy sigh and pulled back, without removing his hands.
I had expected Hendrix or Nelson to be standing behind me so I was more than surprised when I found Luke waiting instead. A fresh wave of humiliation washed over me and I contemplated spontaneous combustion as a legitimate escape route.
“Er, Luke. I, uh… Hmm?”
Miller’s chest pressed against my arm. He had broken the kiss, but not his hold on me. I wanted to wiggle away, but I wasn’t an idiot.
That would have been a disaster.
Luke stared at me without even acknowledging Miller. “Our plans have changed,” he explained. “We need to leave now. If you’re not ready you’ll have to stay. I don’t have time to-”
“I’m ready!” I turned around, partially disentangling myself from Miller. “Seriously, I’m ready to go.”
Luke’s gaze moved over me in cold assessment. “You’re armed?”
I nodded quickly. “Always.”
“You haven’t slept.” His statement sounded like an accusation.
I raised an eyebrow. “Neither have you.”
He made a face and I could feel the sigh he was holding back as it sat in the air between us. “Are you sure you’re ready for this. You don’t have to rush into anythi-”
“She said she’s ready,” Miller barked from behind me. “And I thought you were in a hurry?”
Luke never looked at Miller, but he did seem to listen to him. “Let’s go then.”
I turned back and landed a superfast kiss on Miller’s cheek. He let me go and I scurried after Luke, ready for my first real glimpse of the Colony.
Chapter Four
We took the “quietest” car to within five miles of Allentown, where we stashed it away, out of sight. It was junky enough and rusted enough that anyone that happened upon it would assume it was one of the thousands of cars left abandoned over the last twelve years.
Or at least that was the hope.
Luke’s team included Trish and a man called Crash. Where Luke was muscled and militaristic, Crash was long gangly arms and wild afro. On the ride over, I tried to ask him if that was his real name, but his answer only confused me. Apparently Crash preferred to be ambiguous.
Ambiguous but fast.
Crash led the way to the walled city with a fast clip and expert knowledge of the area. Fortunately for us, Allentown was surrounded by overgrown fields. The overgrowth reached above our heads, successfully hiding us from plain sight. But I would have gotten lost on my own.
The branches from wild bushes and tall grass tangled together and created a maze of twisted confusion. Luke and his people or someone from the city had cut a path through the wild overgrowth, but you had to know what you were looking for to find it. And I could never find out what exactly I was looking for.
Eventually the brush gave way to housing, which eventually gave way to buildings. We moved through the abandoned parts of the city unnoticed. Occasionally we would catch sight of a patrol, but we were able to duck into an alley or jump into a darkened shell of a building to stay out of sight.
Luke had explained that the majority of the guards would be stationed on the wall to protect the city and keep an eye on the people. But Allentown itself was only a small portion of what had once been a much larger metropolis.
Trees, bushes and grasses had moved into the sections of city that people could no longer inhabit. We moved past grocery stores and shops, restaurants and a trailer park all choked by the aggressive forestry.
The city had become completely uninhabitable. Most of what we could see had been ransacked and ravaged. The glass had all been broken out of windows and doors and the shelves of any kind of grocer or gas station had been looted completely.
Occasionally we would see a house that sat untouched, as if in their haste to destroy everything, the apocalypse survivors ran right by it without noticing.
We had just dodged another patrol when I saw the wall.
Luke had taken us to the fourth floor of an office building of some sort. As we stood in the middle of an expansive floor, I finally got a panoramic view of the city.
With windows bashed out in every direction, I stood on the only remaining upright desk to see what lay ahead.
The wall was manmade after the infection. Whoever built it had used all kinds of mismatching city debris to piece it together. I could see spots where they’d used the siding of a house and in others, they actually built pieces made from brick or stone. There were billboards next to restaurant signs and places where people actually knew what they were doing and crafted with care and precision.
On the top of the wall, I could see from their chest up men walking around with weapons in hand. A platform or walkway attached to the wall protected the men against enemy fir
e and Feeders.
Guard towers were positioned systematically around the wall, connecting the hodgepodge pieces and making them credible. For as interesting as the wall looked, it was just as intimidating.
“How are you going to get through the wall?” I asked Luke.
He and his friends stood back and looked at me. They stopped their quiet chatter and digested my question. “We have a contact,” Luke said. Again. “I told you that already.”
“That doesn’t explain how we’re going to get in.”
Luke ignored me. “Come on. We need to keep moving.”
Once we hit the ground again things got enormously more complicated. Keeping the patrols from seeing us and moving forward, towards the wall, took time and effort.
I could sense the tension rising as we struggled to make ground. Luke looked especially impatient and agitated.
Knowing this was a high risk mission, I understood why his concerns were skyrocketing. But there seemed to be something else too.
There was some other reason that he wasn’t sharing.
We moved sideways around the wall for a long time until the wall brushed up against more overgrowth. Luke led us to an abandoned house on a street dotted with a hundred other houses just like it. But Luke seemed to pick this one specifically.
When he pointed at the wall with two fingers and then held up his entire palm, flashing five fingers, I realized this house had been chosen for the garage. The garage faced the wall perfectly. We squeezed our bodies between a spider-web covered wall and a beat up old truck that was covered in about two inches of dust and dirt.
We could see the guards walking around the wall perimeter, but they hadn’t spotted us yet. Luke looked at his watch more than once and at the setting sun. He whispered something growly at Trish and she agreed in that same tone.
Nobody shared any pertinent information with me. If I’d had to guess, I would have suspected they were trying to pretend I didn’t exist. Which was beyond annoying.
My brothers didn’t do it often, but every once in a while they would get into this brotherly groove that made me feel like the obnoxious little sister tagging along.
That’s how I felt right now. I knew they didn’t want me here.
I knew they didn’t think I was capable of holding my own or not getting us killed.
I knew they wanted nothing else than to leave me here so they could get on with their business and go about pretending I didn’t exist again.
But that was not going to happen.
I was here, damn it. And I was bound and determined to pull my own weight.
My feet were set and my body was ready, so that when Luke finally gave the signal to run for the wall, I jumped into action.
We took off in the quickly dimming sky, racing for the tiniest section of wall that we could squeeze through. We ran as hard as we could. I pushed myself to my limits while eyeing the ground so I could navigate the unfamiliar territory and jump over anything in my path.
Crash, unsurprisingly beat us all. His legs moved like they were set to super speed and his arms pumped alongside him naturally.
Luke was a close second. He also ran with incredible speed. Both of them could probably outrun Feeders.
Or at least keep up with them.
I knew it wasn’t a competition. Luke had never said out loud that running to the wall was a race. …But, I grew up with five brothers. I had never not had something be a competition.
So this run to the wall was everything I needed to prove myself. I might not have beaten Luke or Crash, but I sure as hell beat Trish.
Smoked her.
We didn’t have time to catch our breath before Luke lifted a thin metal slab and slipped through to the other side.
I followed quickly as Luke kept a good pace around the city. Again, he seemed to know exactly where he was going.
I looked around wildly, trying to absorb every little detail. I knew it probably wouldn’t help in the end, but I had to try. I had to take something back for my family.
We stopped near a tall building with people leaning out over their balconies above. Luke led us around back and through a sketchy looking doorway. We climbed six flights of stairs before we came to another door that had been bashed in and splintered beyond repair.
“Shit,” Trish hissed. “They found out.”
“What is this place?” My voice was a whisper, but the question screamed through the charged atmosphere.
Luke turned away from me and stared out the narrow window. A baby cried overhead. A woman opened their door, saw us, and slammed the thing just as quickly.
“We gotta go,” Crash whispered.
Luke nodded and we ran back down the stairs, out into the open air again. We pushed against the shadow of the building and worked our way around.
Just at the edge of this building, Luke stopped and faced me. I had finally gotten into their routine and how they jumped from shadow to shadow so easily. But his sudden stop startled me into paying more attention to him.
“We’re going to the square,” he panted. “If you haven’t figured it out yet, our contact was taken. We’re going to see what’s going to happen to him and if there’s a rescue attempt possible. If we can save him, we will. But as the seconds tick by, his chances of survival dwindle.”
“I understand,” I said simply.
His eyebrow quirked. “I thought you were talky.”
I shrugged and stared across the street, “This isn’t my first time.”
He leaned in so his voice wouldn’t carry. “You keep saying that. Maybe it’s time I start believing you.”
I wanted to smile but that would have ruined everything I’d worked so hard to achieve- which was obviously looking cool.
The Zombie Apocalypse happened, but that hadn’t changed how teenagers wanted to be perceived. Sure, I hated how Zombies wanted to eat my brains and skin me alive. I just didn’t want anybody else to know how much I hated it.
It was all about perception.
I finally settled on, “Did you want me to say something else? Or should we just wait until they catch us first.”
His lips twitched with the barest hint of a smile, but then he was off. He plunged ahead and crisscrossed through the walled part of this mostly neglected city until he found a public square surrounded by armed men.
“There he is!” Luke whispered.
Crash and Trish halted in their steps. I was the last to join because this part of the city was slapped together out of necessity and overpopulation, making it difficult to judge and navigate.
We’d taken cover in an open alley and could see the center of the square clearly. Posts had been pushed into cracked cement. People gathered at the edges of the crowd and guards patrolled the posts and overhead.
A man had been placed on one of the end posts, tied with his hands behind his back and one of his legs strapped to the post so he couldn’t sit on the ground. His face was tipped toward the sun and he was wailing while two guards took turns beating him with their fists and short, stubby batons. One would punch him in the face and the other would whack him with one of those rounded sticks in the gut. They were relentless.
They were brutal.
And he was breaking in front of my eyes.
I had to look away for a long moment to deal with the gore. The man’s entire torso was painted with black and blue bruises and thick lacerations across his abdomen and arms. Every time one of the guards hit him, I thought the man would finally die.
But the man didn’t die.
And the guards didn’t stop beating him.
“That’s our contact,” Luke whispered right in my ear.
Which one?” I asked in sheer hope that it wasn’t the man being beaten to death.
Luke leaned closer, “The one getting the shit kicked out of him.”
“How are we going to save him?” My question was instinctual. Immediate. I didn’t even have to think about it. I just needed to answer it.
I felt Luk
e’s stare as I watched the horrific scene play out in front of me. The guards looked deranged… almost giddy. My stomach churned at the sick look on their faces and the way they relish their jobs.
The crowded plaza did nothing to save him or stop the madness. Most watched on in terrified silence. A few children cried, but no adult spoke up. Except for those enjoying the spectacle.
Luke’s voice cut through my nauseous haze. “We can’t save him, Page. They would kill us too. Before we even reached him.”
That might be true, but there had to be a way. “What do they use for light here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like for light. How do people see at nighttime?”
Luke’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Electricity.”
“You have electricity here? Are you serious?” Well, this was an unexpected luxury.
“For limited amounts of time,” he clarified. “It’s not always reliable. But it works most of the time.”
I crossed my arms and tapped my toes. I had wanted him to say fire and candles and things that could burn. “I need a fire,” I murmured out loud.
“What?!”
I turned to face Luke, needing him to get this right now. “I need a fire. A big one. I need to start something on fire that pulls all of the attention off this man and towards their burning town. My guess is that most of the people are here. In this square. And that if we set one of these buildings on fire, everyone would go rushing to put it out and we could untie your man and take him back with us.”
“No,” Luke answered immediately. “That’s crazy.”
“And watching an innocent man die isn’t?”
He shook his head in disbelief. “This won’t work. They’re going to catch us.”
“Then be fast.”
“You want me to start the fire?” he laughed, but it wasn’t because he thought I was hilarious. He really couldn’t believe the words I was saying.
“Take Trish,” I told him. “Crash and I will wait here while you set up the diversion. We’ll meet you back at the car.”
“I can’t do this, Page. If something happens to you, your brothers will kill me. Besides, what will be the point? You came all this way to die on the first day?”
Love and Decay Page 18