And the decision was made.
Chapter Three
We took off through the warehouse, picking up guns and ammo where we could find it. Nelson swung Page up and onto his back and I second-guessed our game plan. I knew we had to get Miller. I knew it without a shadow of a doubt.
And I also knew the importance of sticking together. There were just too many variables when we split up.
However… There were way too many variables when we stuck together too.
Like Zombies for instance. Or Matthias. Or any of Matthias’s men.
Holy shit. What were we going to do? How could we get out of this?
What had started out as a simple mission to escape, had evolved into something so much worse. Not thirty minutes ago, I’d thought we had a chance to live through this and now I’d lost all hope. How could we possibly survive this? How could we kill Matthias, fight off his men and save Miller without any of us dying?
It did not seem possible.
But what was the alternative? We didn’t have any other options. And not one of us was willing to abandon a little boy to the Zombies or his monster of a father.
“How many Feeders do you think there are?” I asked Kane when we paused at the warehouse door that would lead to the back courtyard.
He paused for a moment and seemed to look… embarrassed. “A lot,” he finally said while rubbing the back of his neck.
“How many is a lot?” I pressed. “How busy will your father and his men be?”
Another awkward pause. “Very.”
“Why are you acting weird?” I took a step closer to him and put my hands on his biceps. He looked down at me from behind those glasses I had such a thing for and nearly smiled.
“I, er, they’re here for a reason. I kind of… sent out an invitation.”
“An invitation?” Tyler demanded before I could spit the words out.
He nodded but didn’t look away from me. “Last night. I lined the property with… incentive.”
“Explain, please?” I blinked at him, waiting for something more. I could only think of a few ways to lure Zombies anywhere and not any of the methods scored Kane any kind of humanitarian points.
“It’s really morbid,” he admitted, confirming some of my earlier suspicions. “I’d rather not.”
“You didn’t…? Did you kill someone?” I whispered. I could feel my eyes widen as if his actions last night were any different from what we were about to do or what he’d already done today. But somehow premeditated murder seemed heavier.
He chuckled at my reaction and trailed a finger over my cheek. “Worse,” he said. “I found a family of deer last night. I killed them. And I did horrible things to their bodies in order to attract as many Feeders as possible.”
“Why is that worse?”
“Because killing someone in that compound would have been justice. Killing deer and not using their meat to feed us is an unforgivable waste.”
I laughed, surprised by his answer and leaned up and kissed him before I could think about my audience. When I pulled back, I forced myself to hold his gaze and not look away. I felt my cheeks heat with embarrassment and some shame. I didn’t want to feel it. I didn’t want to feel anything, but butterflies and warm feelings when I kissed Kane. But I didn’t know that I would ever get over the feeling that everyone was judging me.
It was easier though, when I let myself fall into those gray depths. Kane looked at me with such warmth and adoration that it was hard to remember why I felt embarrassed or why I should feel like this was wrong. He was worshipping me again, loving me with every single piece of him.
Haley eventually cleared her throat and turned our attention to the next phase of our journey. I shot her a sheepish smile and she smiled back. Of course, her eyes were wide with wonder and she looked more than a little bewildered, but she did smile.
As I turned my attention back towards the courtyard, I happened to catch Page’s too-smart gaze from where she sat perched on Nelson’s back. She looked up at me with something like approval. I didn’t think that could be right though. She was a Parker through and through and Hendrix was often her favorite brother.
Although not all the time. She usually rotated them so they wouldn’t have their poor masculine feelings hurt.
On the way to the door, I made a point to sidle next to her and ask, “What was that look for?”
She smiled at me with those wise-beyond-her-years-big-blue-eyes and said, “I just like to see you happy again.”
I smiled back. “Am I happy again?” Was I happy again?
“Looks like it to me!” she giggled. “But if I die, you will be very, very sad, so make sure you don’t let me die.”
“Noted.” Oh my goodness. That child.
Vaughan turned with his back to the courtyard door and gave us one last lecture in a hushed voice. “This is going to be crazy,” he said. “Don’t get hurt. Don’t die. And if anyone gets separated, we’ll meet at Gage’s uncle’s cabin. We will wait until dawn tomorrow. If you are not there by then, we will assume you are dead. So don’t get separated. Understood?” We all nodded. I was happy he threw in a meeting place. The odds of us all making it out of this alive were not good, but it seemed possible when we had a place to go.
“Contingency plan?” Hendrix asked quietly.
“Always,” Vaughan answered. There was a weighted pause in which I imagined Vaughan silently telling Hendrix to do whatever it took to make sure the contingency plan wasn’t necessary. “One,” he counted in typical Vaughan style. “Two.”
Haley squeezed in next to me and grasped my hand. Hendrix stood at my other side and Kane took his post behind me. I had never felt more protected in my life. If only I could feel like this forever. If only I could find a way not to walk out those doors and put my loved ones at risk again.
“Three,” Vaughan finished.
The door opened and we took off through the courtyard and out the back entrance into the woods.
Gunfire could be heard in every direction mingled with the typical sounds of Feeders. Grown men screamed in agony or in horror, Zombies moaned and shrieked with their ungodly two-toned pitches and the pop-pop-pop of firearms chased them both.
Over the last few days, I had noticed that Matthias had brought about forty men with him from the Colony headquarters. That would have been plenty to take over a compound of people just barely ready to defend themselves and looking for a leader anyway. But the majority of Matthias’s army was made up of men from Gage’s compound.
We had been in the process of training them, so I knew what some of them looked like with a gun in their hand. There was a reason that these people had sought shelter from Gage as quickly as they had and lived behind a stone wall. They rarely left the safety of their building and before we stumbled upon them, had relied heavily on Matthias to provide them with supplies and food.
Although there were instances, they did well. Like when Kane and I had been trapped in the bunker last spring. They’d helped the Parkers and Matthias and his men rescue us from a massive horde of Feeders.
I wondered how they were holding up today.
And hoped they weren’t.
Those traitor bastards.
We had run for about five minutes before we came upon anyone. The three Feeders were elbow deep in two guys and barely lifted their heads when we burst into the clearing. The wet sounds of their chewing and the occasional crack of bones in their teeth was enough to make my stomach churn. Hendrix and Vaughan took out the three carnivores without a second of hesitation. We scooped up the abandoned guns and kept moving.
The stench of Zombie rot infected the entire forest. It floated on the breeze and hung all around me when the cool fall wind died down. Despite the bright sun overhead, the forest was cold and unwelcoming. Most of the leaves had long since fallen and the bare branches waved like arms, warning us away from this place.
We should have listened.
The next group of living creatures we stum
bled upon was Matthias’s men. They looked confused when they took us in, like they couldn’t quite figure out how we got here.
Kane shot the first one in the forehead before a question or demand could be made. The dead man crumbled to the ground, lifeless and limp.
“Where’s Matthias?” he demanded.
The other two men looked back and forth between each other and took off sprinting in the other direction. Kane shot the runner closest to him and Hendrix took out the other.
It was the weirdest moment of teamwork I’d ever seen.
My heart sputtered and shifted at the sight of the killings. I’d been over and over and over this in my head, but the sight would never be easy for me. I would never feel good about another life lost.
It just wasn’t in me.
And I hoped it never was.
We paused for a few minutes and rested, gathering our strength before we moved on.
I could feel that we weren’t as fast as usual. The Parkers and Haley were half-starved and beaten. Tyler was in just as bad of shape as they were. She hobbled along and tried not to wince.
Kane and I were probably in the best shape, but both Tyler and Haley seemed to be doing better with the whole watching-people-die thing. That was holding me up.
Sensing my distress, Hendrix turned to me and said, “Reagan-”
But before he could finish his thought, Kane leaned down and pressed his lips against my ear. “It has to happen, Reagan. It has to. It’s us or them. I know you don’t like it, but you have to put your conscience away for right now.”
I nodded and leaned into him for strength. I looked over at Hendrix, but he was turned around now. I wanted to explain that I didn’t think Kane knew Hendrix was going to say something to me. Kane just knew me extremely well and he knew I would have a problem with all the death.
But obviously that would have been a stupid idea right now. As if Hendrix’s feelings really mattered at all in light of everything else going on. Or as if he couldn’t man up and still tell me whatever he wanted to. Kane didn’t own exclusive rights to talk to me.
Hendrix was welcome to speak to me anytime.
I didn’t want space. And I didn’t want separation. I just wanted Hendrix and what we had. I just wanted him more than anything else in the entire world- including Kane. But for some stupid reason, he couldn’t see that.
We started our pursuit again. This time we tracked the direction the two men had run in. Along the way, I caught sight of several sliced up deer pieces. A bloody hoof dangled from a tree branch. Or some part of the animal I couldn’t even identify was tied around a thin tree trunk. The hide was completely drenched in blood and the meat looked sliced as roughly as possible.
“Where did you find deer?” I asked Kane when Vaughan suddenly jerked right.
“I got lucky,” Kane told me. “I had been trying to figure out a plan for a while. I’d had a couple variations of this one, but when I stumbled onto the deer last night, I knew how to carry it out.”
“It’s genius,” I told him in genuine awe. “You’re a genius.”
He brushed me off and answered without being out of breath at all, “I just want you safe. That’s all I care about.”
The Feeders started to thicken as we moved toward Matthias- or where we hoped Matthias would be. They had been few and far between so far, but now they sprinted through the trees with their unnatural grace and speed. Their blood-red eyes would blink at us from between barren branches just before they attacked.
Our gunfire mingled with Matthias’s now, while we fought our common enemy for entirely different reasons.
A Feeder lunged at me from behind a tree. Its filthy nails managed to catch the sleeve of my shirt and rip it upwards. I let out a shocked screech and whirled to shoot at it. Hendrix beat me to it and before I could even aim my weapon, the vile creature was felled.
We pushed through the trees. They would grow thick and twisted together and then open up into a clearing where men died and Feeders fed. The humans seemed to be losing this battle and for the first time ever, I was Team Zombie.
Just as long as they didn’t try to eat my friends.
Eventually, after we were worn and bloodied from Zombie gore, we fought our way to Matthias. We could see him through our tree cover. He stood in the middle of a clearing with men all around him. I hated to admit that the man could shoot, but honestly he could.
I didn’t expect him to be bad with weapons though.
Feeders attacked from every side except the angle we had just cleared. They seemed never ending. I couldn’t figure out why they’d converged to this spot. I thought maybe it was because Matthias wasn’t moving. They’d set up camp right here and made themselves easy targets for all the nearby Zombies.
I didn’t know if this was by accident or by design. But both sides seemed determined to win today.
I searched through the clustered men until I found Miller’s feet sticking out from between a set of legs. His feet didn’t so much as twitch, despite the loud gunfire all around him. I worried Matthias had killed him.
Or at the very least, punched him into a coma.
I heard Tyler’s audible gasp when she also figured out where he lay. Before Vaughan could get out another order, she started firing and screaming obscenities at her father. He glanced over at us as we emerged from the woods and had the audacity to roll his eyes.
“Think about your next move, Reagan,” he shouted at me like I was in charge of this group. Apparently he’d never had a real conversation with a Parker. He would have learned very quickly I held little to no authority over this group of guys. They told me where to stand and I stood there.
Most of the time.
Okay, sometimes I didn’t do what they asked at all. But those times were for their own good.
Obviously.
“Think carefully,” Matthias continued. “Am I really the enemy you want to make?”
He had to shout over the Feeders and gunfire and to answer I had to do the same. I advanced forward, pushing Kane’s arm away from my waist. “See, what you don’t understand is that you’ve been my enemy for a long time now.” I checked my gun’s vitals and aimed it at his big, fat head. He was too preoccupied taking out Feeders to take me seriously. “You should have asked yourself that question a long, long time ago.”
“And what question is that?” Matthias practically laughed.
Feeling brave, I taunted, “Am I really the enemy you want to make?”
He flashed me a grin and pulled the trigger at the same time I did. I ducked out of the way instinctively and noted, with a whole lot of thanks that everyone else did too. Most dove back into the trees and I would have followed if the gunfire hadn’t become too much to walk through.
From my spot on the forest floor, I looked up to find Matthias but he wasn’t there. I wanted so badly to be the one that killed him. After all my emotional issues and hang-ups with the sheer volume of human lives ending tonight, I had no problem pulling the trigger on Matthias.
But I missed. Or mostly missed. I heard his ungodly scream from across the clearing and his feet flopped around next to Miller’s still ones.
From behind us, the telltale stench of more Feeders washed over us and I cringed, knowing we were sandwiched between two great evils.
I stayed flat on the ground and inched my way back. Hendrix lay immediately to my right and together we kept our firing tight and controlled, but we had to get back into the tree cover. I did finally give in completely to the need to survive. This time when my gun fired, I didn’t try to simply wound or maim. I shot to kill anything I could. If they were going to shoot at me or try to trap us, then their lives were over.
I would take them and crush them.
It was one thing to have principles when my life wasn’t in immediate danger; it was another thing entirely to be in the thick of survival-at-whatever-cost.
“Reagan, get up!” Kane yelled at me.
The bullets came faster. One landed
in the ground just a foot in front of my face and sprayed gritty dirt all over me. I pushed up into a crouched squat and leaped backward into the cover of trees. I landed in an awkward heap on the ground and rolled over onto my back, just in time to catch a Feeder make a flying leap for me.
I raised my gun and started firing, then I rolled again and the ugly beast landed on my back. I tensed and waited for it to start eating me but apparently my aim had been true because no bite came. In another second, right before I started seriously freaking out, someone lifted the disgusting corpse off me, and this time when I pulled myself to my feet, I actually made it.
I immediately looked for Hendrix, despite the attack happening from two directions and was very, very happy to find him at my side. Then I remembered Kane and looked for him too.
He was not at my side. He was behind another tree and over a bit. While some of us shot at the Feeders attacking from behind, Kane and a few others shot at Matthias and his crew.
There were so many freaking Feeders though! I could not believe that deer carcass pulled this many out of the woodworks. Especially when Matthias and his people had been working over the last week to clean up these woods.
But like most things with Matthias, I should have known better. Had he really been cleaning them up? Or using them as scare tactics for the people of the compound? If that were the case, he’d need them around to prove a point.
“Where are they coming from?” I asked out of pure frustration. I was seriously getting pissed off. I was close to being out of ammo and there was no end to this battle in sight.
“Look up,” Kane told me.
I quickly did. And what I saw didn’t make sense to me. So I looked up again and took in the deer parts hanging way up in the branches overhead. They were thick with flies and caked blood. They were small enough to move with the breeze in gentle ways that would send their deliciously fleshy scent far and wide. They were perfect siren calls to any Feeder in sniffing distance.
We pushed out from our tight circle when the Feeders began to get too close. I was covered in Zombie ooze and gore and I wanted to gag on their stench. Hendrix stayed very close to my side. I could feel his body heat, and smell him- although since he didn’t exactly smell good right now, it wasn’t that hard.
Love and Decay, Season Two Omnibus: Episodes 1-12 Page 66