Love and Decay (Season 1): Episodes 1-6

by Higginson, Rachel

  His hand slid from my chest to the top of my shoulder, where his thumb rubbed at the hollow of my throat. “I won’t let them get that close again.”

  “It’s the nature of this world,” I argued, knowing he wouldn’t be able to protect me from everything. And I didn’t want him to. I could take care of myself. I had to take care of myself. Each and every one of us was in constant danger, if I didn’t take initiative in my own survival I’d never make it. “You can’t protect me from everything, Babe. You’ve got enough responsibility on those shoulders.”

  The shoulders in question stiffened at my flippant attitude. Something darkened Vaughan’s eyes at my words even while his lips turned into a deceiving smirk. “Babe?” he laughed, but it was forced.

  I shrugged, allowing the subject change. In a moment of super sleuthing on my part, I was guessing Vaughan, always the authority, leader-of-the-rebel-alliance Vaughan, didn’t like to be told to let go because some things were out of his control. Or maybe he just didn’t like the idea that he couldn’t always protect me….

  “I like nicknames, and it turns out you all have terrible names that cannot be shortened.” That was true, calling Hendrix, “Hen,” or Nelson, “Nel,” didn’t really work out. And literally there was no way to shorten Vaughan without making it sound like I had something lodged in my throat.

  “I’m going to pretend to understand that.” His eyes softened a little and some of his natural even-temperedness eased back into his body.

  “I like to shorten names, it’s like my thing. But I can’t do that with any of you. Not even Page,” I pouted and splashed a little water at him like it was his fault.

  “So I’m Babe?”

  “You’re Babe,” I smiled. “It’s from years of cheer. I went to this really small high school in Iowa. We all grew up together, and were on the same team for years. So we had all these nicknames for each other. It became habit.”

  “Ah,” he nodded. “So you were in high school when the infection happened?”

  “Three weeks from graduating,” I confirmed. “You?”

  “Same, but from college. I had just about earned a bachelor’s in sports medicine.” He crossed his arms and turned so that we were side by side looking out at his siblings and Haley. They were all laughing and splashing. Despite how they were also shivering and lips had started to turn a little blue, they were having fun- real fun. It was amazing.

  “Ambitious,” I teased. “Let me guess, you were also a college athlete?”

  He nudged me with his shoulder and I almost lost my footing on the uneven rocky bottom. “Smart ass. I was not a college athlete, unless you count intramural soccer.”

  “I don’t,” I cut in quickly and tossed him a playful smile.

  “You know for a cheerleader, you’re awfully judgmental.”

  I laughed out loud, “Hey, all that means is that I know how to recognize a real sport. Babe.”

  “That’s it, cheerleader, I’ve had it with your bad attitude,” Vaughan growled and turned on me.

  I took a step back, my hands raised in the air. “I was just kidding! I’m sure your recreational games felt intense. I’m sure you took those cheap trophies very seriously.” I was giggling, taking careful steps back as he stalked toward me, all kinds of mischief dancing in his eyes.

  “Oh, really? They felt intense?” He barked out a laugh. “And for your information, we didn’t have trophies.” His chest rumbled with laughter and his hands inched towards me through the surface of the water.

  “Oh, good. That’s better.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You know, so you didn’t actually think your games counted for anything important.”

  I let out a startled scream when he swooped me up in his large hands and held me suspended over his head. One hand splayed across my upper back, somehow balancing me in a firm grasp and the other gripped my upper thigh. I wiggled, trying to break free while laughing uncontrollably.

  “Vaughan!” I threatened. “Vaughan, don’t!”

  “You asked for this, babe!”

  And then he chucked me forward into the frigid water. I flailed and splashed trying to get my footing; when I resurfaced I felt like a drowned rat. My limp hair tangled in front of my face and my shoulders shook with shivers.

  I heard everyone laugh at my expense, but somehow I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face. I probably did deserve that.

  “You’re such a brat.” I shook my head at Vaughan when I’d smoothed my hair back and could see again.

  “Brat?” He put a hand to his chest like he was offended. “What happened to Babe?”

  “You lost ‘Babe,’” I warned. “Your ‘Babe’ privileges have been stripped.”

  “Such a sore loser.” He shook his head at me; a slow smile tilted his full lips. His laughter died away when he looked up at the position of the sun in the sky and his eyes settled back on his siblings- especially Page. “Ready to go?” he asked me quietly.

  I nodded, knowing it was time. This had been a nice vacation from reality, but it was time to face facts. We had no idea what was ahead, or where we were going to stay. Our guns and ammo were dwindling down to nothing and our options for dinner tonight were beef jerky or a jar of salted peanuts. We definitely needed to keep moving.

  “Alright, let’s pack it up,” Vaughan called out to the group at large. “Nelson, King and Haley, you’re with me. We’ll get dressed first, while the rest of you keep a look out, then we’ll switch.”

  We followed directions without any argument. While the others dried off and got dressed in fresh clothes from their pack, Harrison, Hendrix and I stood guard with loaded guns. Then we swapped. Since we were doing this whole dressing thing collectively, my jeans slipped over my wet underwear and I pulled on a sweatshirt so I could change out my bra and tank top as discreetly as possible. This was a trick I’d learned from watching Flashdance too many times and spending years riding home from football games in the back of the bus.

  I helped Page get fresh clothes on as well; then we packed up our wet clothes in saved plastic bags from the last gas station. These were necessities on the road and few and far between. My mom used to save all her grocery bags before the infection in an effort to Reuse, Recycle, Renew or whatever that global warming crap was. Now I was carrying on the same tradition but for entirely different reasons.

  Global warming could very well be eating the ozone layer and melting polar ice caps, but that was no longer my key concern. In fact, at this point, maybe a real end of the world scenario might solve a few of my problems- mainly the whole Zombie thing.

  Once we were finally ready, wet hair drying in the slightly more aggressive breeze and fingers deliciously wrinkled from all the time we spent in the water, we headed back to the highway and turned south.

  Peru seemed forever away and not just in that whiney “are we there yet” way. It literally seemed a lifetime away from wandering around the Bible Belt of America. Since we’d lost our transportation, the majority of our guns and practically all of our food, I didn’t know what chance we had against the elemental cruelties of this world, but we were trying. And we made it this far.

  “We should probably find a place to stay for the night,” Hendrix spoke up once we were huddled into our closed in traveling formation.

  It was probably only one or two in the afternoon, but finding sleeping arrangements had been difficult the last several nights. And we hadn’t truly felt safe since we were forced to leave the department store at the beginning of this crazy journey.

  Our shoes made quiet padding sounds as we walked the smooth pavement down a four lane highway. Abandoned cars, either crashed or out of gas, littered the ditches. We also spotted a random suitcase or article of clothing. Occasionally we would stop to pick through it, but mostly we wanted to keep walking and needed to find a place to bunker into for the night.

  This part of the country seemed utterly abandoned. While Haley and I journeyed down to this part of the south the
re had been several times when we would pass long stretches without coming into any kind of contact with humanity. It made me wonder where they all went. It wasn’t like a plague had broken out and decimated the population, well, other than the whole Zombie thing.

  But entire cities seemed deserted, entire counties evacuated. How much of the population would have had to turn or be killed in order to make state capitals into ghost towns? I felt nauseous at the thought; that was a lot of people dead or turned.

  “It’s kind of quiet, yeah?” Nelson asked in a whisper, taking the thought right out of my head.

  “It has been since Gary’s settlement of universal soldiers,” Hendrix remarked angrily. “What did he do with all the people?”

  “You honestly think this is Gary?” I whispered, almost afraid to say his name out loud in case it magically made him appear.

  We left his camp of bizarro over a week ago and still our one night stay at his B & B has haunted me. I thought about all the people that tried to come this way and ran into his “trap” or “initiation,” all those cars pushed to the sides of that stretch of highway, all the families that died at the hands of those super- Zombies. What kind of man watched other human beings die just because he was weeding out the weaklings from his army of hillbillies? I didn’t even want to know that answer.

  “It’s hard to say,” Vaughan finally responded. “But something cleared the humans out of this area. I haven’t seen a single soul since we left the Hummer.”

  We fell silent again after that observation. In the last several days we survived the elements, the occasional Zombie and somehow found a relatively safe place to crash for the night. But after the lightness of the afternoon spent playing in the creek, the atmosphere around us felt heavy, oppressive even.

  The sky started to darken overhead, adding to the ominous feeling surrounding us. When a crackle of lightning flashed in the distance, I was more convinced than ever that things were about to go from bad to worse. Call it a woman’s intuition, but I was already afraid of the night ahead of us.

  Hendrix and Vaughan shared a concerned look and I realized I wasn’t the only one feeling the bad vibes.

  The puffy white clouds that had helped heat the day turned gray and heavy. The sun slipped behind one and didn’t reappear. The temperature dropped considerably and I felt it in every wet tendril of hair.

  I looked down at Page just as she shivered roughly. “Pull out your hat, Kiddo.” I laid a hand on the back of her wet head. “It will keep you warm.”

  She obeyed without questioning or slowing us down; she was such a good kid. Haley and I followed suit by pulling up the hoods on our sweatshirts. The boys were comfortable now, since even though they didn’t have exactly short hair, it was still short enough to dry quickly.

  “Blow dryer and straightener,” Haley declared, breaking up our intense silence.

  “Fluffy towels,” I countered.

  “New socks,” Page added.

  “Good one,” Haley snorted. “But I have new socks for you. Remind me when we stop tonight; you can have them.”

  “Really?” Page squealed.

  “I think that makes you our very first winner,” I grinned down at her.

  “Sweet!”

  “Is that a game?” Nelson asked while pulling his gun up higher.

  “No.” Haley said at the same time Page exclaimed, “Yes!”

  “I want to play,” Nelson demanded. He didn’t sound in the game playing mood…. But then again, it might have just been a distraction attempt.

  “You’ll have to play later,” Hendrix growled out. “We need to find shelter. Now.”

  A big fat rain drop landed on my forehead at that moment. And then another on my shoulder. A crack of thunder and burst of lightning joined the now open skies and we bolted into action.

  We were surrounded by Arkansas farmland, big cotton trees and nothing else. Not even a fence to break up the side of the road from someone’s property.

  However, in the distance sat a dilapidated barn, half-caved in on one side, but with a roof. It probably wouldn’t protect us much from the pounding rain, and there would be no blockading doors or windows against other threats, but right now that was the best we could do.

  Vaughan picked up our pace until we were running through muddy fields and sharp remains of dead cotton crops. I jogged behind Page, catching her when she tripped until Hendrix lunged down and flung her on his back. She held on with her tiny arms around his neck but shot me a wide smile over her shoulder.

  The rain was now falling in heavy drops that pelted our skin and splashed the ground around us. By the time we reached the abandoned barn, the sky was black with storm; the lightning and thunder were constant.

  The door frame was slanted severely sideways; really the whole barn was slanted sideways. This was a structure that had long been abandoned, even before there were Zombies. The wood was stripped and rotted and the roof hardly held together. This was shelter from the storm, but barely.

  Somehow Vaughan kicked in the door, without splintering it to pieces and Nelson pushed his way in first, past debris and the tangles of cobwebs.

  It was so dirty inside, untouched by humanity and Zombies alike. But it was dry- dry-ish. We filed in through the crooked entryway and huddled together among the broken debris.

  Nelson and Vaughan immediately forced the door back into place; we were encased in near darkness. There was one window, somehow with glass still intact but so coated in dust and dirt that the dim light seeping through hardly broke up the darkness at all. Out of the depths of someone’s pack a battery operated camping lantern appeared and was turned on. Collectively we stepped closer to the light and stood silently in the soft glow of light for a few moments.

  Thunder boomed above us, rattling the shingled roof and what was left of the glass in the filthy window. Lightning flashed and crackled outside, lighting up our faces in an eerie glow. And the wind that was light and airy only hours ago now howled and groaned as it whipped around our delicate structure.

  “This will be a fun night,” Nelson laughed humorlessly.

  And as if in response to his words a loud, unearthly moan sounded in the distance.

  Chapter Two

  The high keening sounded again and we all took one more step toward each other. Poor Page was sandwiched in the middle of all of us as we formed a protective circle around her. I clutched Haley’s hand and pulled her against my side.

  That sound, whatever it was, was not human. Wild animal? Possibly. Zombie? Probably.

  But I’d never heard one sound like that before- ever. Sure, their low groaning and moaning was practically constant. But that was more low-budget, terribly gone wrong porn than whatever was screeching over the hillside.

  “Put the lantern out,” Vaughan ordered King, who immediately obeyed.

  We were doused in near darkness as soon as the light went out, which caused us to take another small step into each other. I felt a strong hand on my lower back and had to assume it was Hendrix. I wanted to feel annoyed at the protective gesture, but his touch was comforting in this black place of uncertainty we’d found ourselves in. I leaned into his body, craving the warmth and strength that rolled off him in comforting waves.

  The sound pierced the already noisy night air and seemed to bleed into every space inside our barn. Ungodly, horrifying and threatening were the words I would use to describe it. It was high-pitched at the same time deep and growling, loud at the same time restrained. I didn’t understand what it could belong to, or why it was standing out in the pelting rain just screaming.

  “Let’s talk about it,” Nelson demanded. His voice was a whisper, but I cringed at the breakup of silence between us. “Yes, that’s scary, but it’s not like we aren’t prepared for a fight. And yes, it’s raining, but that doesn’t mean our guns won’t work.”

  Vaughan spoke up next, eager to retain authority, but in a helpful way that made us feel protected and safe. In the silence our control seemed t
o be slipping from us as we spiraled into the unknown. But now, with Vaughan and Nelson reminding us of their leadership, I felt like anything was possible, even survival.

  “Nelson’s right, we’re capable and armed. Whatever is out there will meet a fight- a damn good fight. Plus, we aren’t exactly out in the elements. We found shelter, we have food, and we even got a bath today. We will be fine,” he commanded firmly.

  And I believed him.

  I didn’t have a choice but to believe him.

  “Now, let’s sit down, have some dinner and take inventory of what we have,” Vaughan seemed to blow out a steady breath and sat down. In the hazy light from the one rattling window, I chose a spot to settle into, too. The ground was gritty with years of dirt and unuse. I couldn’t even think about the creepy crawly things I was positive lurked in every nook and cranny, probably skulking over my pants and shoes and-

  “Come here,” Hendrix ordered. That was the second time he’d said that to me today. “What’s wrong?”

  I allowed him to find my hand in the dark and pull me next to him. I hadn’t noticed my panicked, sharp intakes of breath or the slippery slide to hysteria I’d started on.

  “Are you scared,” he whispered against my ear.

  Our shoulders pressed into each other and his hand stayed wrapped around mine. I felt calmer here, more in control. I let a stuttering breath escape before I tried to answer.

  “This place kind of freaks me out,” I whispered back, careful not to let my voice carry.

  “Zombies?” His breath tickled my ear and his lips floated over my skin. I forgot all about my mild case of arachnophobia and let the excitement sparking inside distract me from the real danger I was currently surrounded by.

  “Um, bugs,” I admitted.

  Hendrix let out a surprised chuckle, his chest rumbling against me. “Geez, Reagan, you’re such a girl.”