My breathing became shallow as I felt the distant pang of butterflies attack my stomach. Hendrix turned back around in his seat, his shoulders back, his posture commanding and dominant, even while he sat down.
Haley grabbed my knee and squeezed tightly at the same time she dropped her head to hide a smile. Looking up at me from under her still messy hair, she shot me a mischievous wink. It was overdramatic enough that I finally cracked a smile and let out a whoosh of air.
That was until I glanced back up and caught Vaughan’s angry stare in the review mirror. The rising sun provided just enough light that I could see his attention was firmly fixed on me, his emotions roiling behind his dark blue eyes.
His expression made me rethink every bit of relief I’d just felt. With a more confident voice than I felt, I argued, “Really, you don’t have to change your entire life plans for us. Haley and I can make it. And you have Page to think about.”
Vaughan and Hendrix both shot forward in their seats, ready to argue with me, but it was Nelson’s calm voice of reason that brought the final decision to a head. “Reagan, we’d already decided to stick with you girls before the Zombie’s attacked tonight. We’re safer with numbers, especially knowing that you ladies can actually use those guns you cradle around. There are not that many decent living beings left on this planet, probably best we stick together when we find each other.”
“And you’re not going to try to convince us to go north?” I asked carefully, ready for the other shoe to drop.
“Not yet,” Hendrix replied. “We didn’t know anybody up there with a firsthand account; we were just reaching at straws. With that phone call you had with your dad’s cousin you have more than we ever had.”
“Alright,” I breathed out slowly.
“Alright,” Vaughan echoed.
“Alright,” Haley snickered, apparently still amused with Hendrix.
“At least it will be exciting,” Harrison spoke for the first time since I’d met him.
We all let out a charged laugh. The atmosphere in the Hummer relaxed a little, even while all our eyes stayed sharply focused on the horizon and every other direction. The morning sun was rising in the east and we had at least a few more miles of clear road ahead of us. We survived the night, made new friends and our weapon’s store, although admittedly depleted after our Battle Royall, was greatly improved since the night before.
We survived another night.
And with any luck we would survive another one.
Harrison was right, this would be exciting.
Along with a whole hell of a lot of other things in this world of decay.
I looked down at Page, who had released her tight grip on me and finally fallen asleep, and then over at my best friend in the whole world who had miraculously survived with me this far.
Okay, things would be exciting in this world of love and decay.
Episode Two
Chapter One
653 Days after initial infection
“It’s the hard knock life for us,” King started out slowly, drudgingly- like a funeral march.
Harrison joined in and hit the high notes in a screeching falsetto, “It’s the hard knock life for us!”
“Steada treated,” Nelson continued, “We got tricked.”
“Steada kisses,” now all together in unison, “We got kicked.”
“It’s the hard knock life,” King took it back out on a solo.
“Oh, my god,” Haley grumbled. “I’m in a Zombie musical.”
I snickered from the back seat. “How do you guys even know that song?” I asked, wondering where their knowledge of show tunes could have possibly come from. “What’s next? The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow?”
“Is that a Jay-Z song?” Harrison asked in all honesty.
Haley and I shared a look then she smacked him on the back of the head. “You’re young, so I will forgive you for that.”
“For what?” he asked in his squeaky, barely-pubescent voice.
“For thinking Jay-Z didn’t rip that song off a classic movie about little Orphan Annie and Sandy, the loyal but filthy dog that stole all of our hearts,” Haley lectured with a stern voice full of conviction.
“I didn’t understand any of that,” King admitted, shaking his head slowly back and forth.
“Neither did I,” Nelson laughed.
Haley spun around in her seat to send him the evil eye but he only grinned in response. He slid forward and jabbed her in the back with his long knees and she jerked forward. Her eyebrows shot up in surprise before she recovered and did the whole “I’m watching you” two-fingered point back and forth between them.
“Haley?” Page interrupted their adorableness, tugging on her shirt sleeve. “Will you tell me about Jazzy and the orphan dog?”
“Nope,” Haley looked down at Page, who sat in between her and Harrison in the middle seat. Page’s face fell, but she tried to hide it as best she could. Haley smiled at her lovingly and relented, “But I will tell you about the Orphan Annie and her dog Sandy.”
Page bounced in her seat, excited all over again. “And J-“
“No, I will not tell you about Jay-Z, ever. And thanks to the Apocalypse you might never, ever have to hear about that entire genre of music for your entire life.” Haley shook her head. “But you may ask me about any of the following, Coldplay, Kings of Leon, Mumford and Sons and Simon and Garfunkel.”
“Simon and Garfunkel?” Vaughan and Nelson spit out in unison.
“I’m eclectic,” Haley shrugged.
Nelson snorted. “You’re a music snob. There’s nothing wrong with Jay-Z. He owned an empire before the infection.”
“Ha!” Haley laughed. “Going by your pre-Apocalypse standards, the same could be said for P. Diddy.”
Nelson opened his mouth to vehemently argue that point but Hendrix beat him to it, “Diddy.”
Haley turned her angered attention on him, “Excuse me?”
“Uh, Diddy. He just goes by Diddy now. Or then. Or…. before.”
“Haley, tell me about Orphan Annie! I want to know about Orphan Annie!” Page’s eyes were big with exasperation and I could easily sympathize with her.
“Alright,” Haley gave in. “Once upon a time, there was a little girl who didn’t have any parents.”
“Did they get eaten by Zombies?” Page interrupted.
That gave us all pause and everyone in the Hummer looked back and forth, avoiding the innocently curious eyes of our baby girl- I said our, because in the week we’d spent making excruciatingly slow progress through Missouri, Haley and I had fallen irrevocably in love with this little girl and claimed equal siblinghood with her.
Hendrix cut in, adding to the story and surprising us all, or at least me. “No, Pagey, this was before all the Zombies. Her mommy and daddy didn’t even know what a Feeder was.”
“Oh, they were so lucky!” she grinned at Haley, taking Hendrix at his word.
“They sure were, Sweetness,” Haley said through a watery smile. “Okay, now no more interrupting my story, alright? Save all your questions till the end.”
Page nodded and off Haley went with tales of Miss Hannigan and Daddy Warbucks. I yawned, feeling lulled by the melodic tone of Haley’s voice. I glanced over at King who sat in between Nelson and me in the back row; he had started to doze, too. The good thing about driving during the day was that it was okay to fall asleep. We’d been making progress heading south, but it was very slow travel.
We all agreed that traveling during the day was safest. Nobody wanted to face the darkness with only headlights to illuminate the way. And even though Feeders weren’t bothered by the daylight, they seemed to prefer the night. Or, at least it seemed that way, but it might have been the brightness of the light that attracted them. We lived in this world without electricity, the streetlights were shut off, no houses or buildings created anything to break up the blackness, so when a car was barreling through the night with its headlights on bright, it was basically a “W
e Make a Delicious Snack” infomercial.
So we spent our days driving as far as we could before the early afternoon, at which we would stop, preferably in a town, where we could at least pretend to look for supplies, even though most stores and resources had already been picked through. Once we’d find a good, easily protectable place, we would spend the remaining daylight hours turning it into a safe haven, aka a Zombie-free zone.
Vaughan, Hendrix and their brothers were very good at securing a location somewhere easily defendable and protected from Feeders. It was almost scary how mobilized and precise they were. Like they had been prepared for this, even groomed for it. The GI Joes of the end of the world.
Nelson slid forward and jammed his knees into the back of Haley’s seat again. She was jostled forward and let loose with a curse under her breath. When she shot Nelson a dirty look without pausing her story, his grin grew bigger, more devilish.
I watched the entire exchange in a kind of horrified surprise. There were a million reasons this was a bad idea, but I was shocked Nelson hadn’t come up with them by himself.
I glared at him until he gave me his attention then I mouthed, “Stop flirting!”
The planes of Nelson’s face heated red, but he tried to shrug it off. “What?” he mouthed back.
“Stop flirting!” I demanded again, narrowing my eyes on him. We were like really angry mimes.
“You first,” he accused silently and jabbed a finger toward the front seat.
My eyes flickered forward and met Hendrix’s immediately. He was turned around, talking quietly with Harrison, but his eyes were on me. My heart jump-started and slammed into my chest as his dark blue eyes held mine. He didn’t smile, didn’t move, and didn’t turn away. He just captured my gaze and paralyzed me.
“I don’t think we’re flirting,” I mumbled, tearing my eyes away from Hendrix and forcing them to my hands on my lap.
“Oh, I didn’t mean with him,” Nelson mumbled sounding smug. “He wouldn’t know how to flirt with a hooker.”
I shot Nelson a nasty look and felt my face flush with embarrassment. He was talking about Vaughan, which made my assumption that it was Hendrix really bad.
After five days on the road with these guys, I didn’t really know what to think about them, or how to think about them. But I did know there couldn’t have been more of a difference between Vaughan and Hendrix. Even though they were only a year apart, they were night and day different when it came to personalities. Vaughan was fun and hilarious; he always found a way to lighten the mood while still keeping control of every situation.
Hendrix….. Hendrix was the exact opposite. He kind of sucked the fun right out of the room and had a way of making every one of my emotions feel serious and dramatic.
Vaughan definitely flirted with me, but I wondered if that was only because I was the lone girl around to play with. He was equally attentive to Haley, but somehow Nelson, third brother down the line and only fifteen months younger than Hendrix, already claimed her, which made me really nervous.
Didn’t Haley get a say in which brother she wanted, if she even wanted a brother? We weren’t here to hook up with these guys. We were trying to survive.
This was not an episode of Bachelor Zombie Island. This was our lives, and I wasn’t even convinced the Parker brothers were going to stick with us all the way to our destination. They had Page to think about, and Harrison and King were barely out of middle school. It wasn’t like they could gamble with their safety, which was made obvious by our slow journey.
According to my road map of the US and Mexico I’d salvaged from the Escalade before Haley and I abandoned it back in Iowa, we were still in Missouri for goodness sake. This was like the never-ending road trip, literally from hell. And even though gunfire had been minimal, we’d been able to keep everyone safe so far but nerves were high and tension was tight.
There were just too many people for us to statistically make it all the way to Peru. I’d seen plenty of horror/end-of-the-world-movies to know that we were in deep shit. Luckily, Hales and I still had our v-cards. That would boost our staying-alive credibility by at least three extra lives.
Yep, I’d just combined video games with movies and somehow converted it into my survival guide. Somehow this made logical sense to me. I was just going to go with it.
Vaughan slamming on the brakes yanked me out of my thoughts and my arm swung protectively in front of King. He shot me a WTF look and I shrugged my shoulder, dropping my arm into my lap.
“Sorry, uh, I don’t know where that came from.”
The fifteen year old in the prime of puberty rolled his eyes at me and snorted, “Thanks, Mom. I feel so super safe now.”
“Smartass,” I mumbled. “God, the end of the world has made you so cynical.”
We shared a smirk, all my misplaced maternal instincts hopefully forgotten, and turned our attention to the road block in front of us. Then the smirks quickly disappeared when Jaba the Zombie stood before us, grunting and drooling like a giant-sized slobbery dog. He was a massive individual; at least eight feet tall, giant club-like hands and razor sharp teeth that dripped with previously consumed brains. Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a tiny bit, but not by much. There weren’t actually brains stuck in his teeth- that I could see from here.
The scariest part of all was his bright red eyes that seemed to pulse with his manic hunger. I hated the red eyes. They seemed like overkill in the We’re Here to Give You Nightmares Department.
Page started trembling in the seat in front of us and Haley pulled her into her arms.
“Why’d you stop, Vaughan?” Nelson called from our row. “Just drive around him and let’s leave fat ass in our dusty wake.”
Dusty wake? Sometimes Nelson seemed like a genius with how he talked. Not that dusty wake was anything profound, but there were times he spoke like a college professor; then there were times when he thought tormenting Haley with his knees in her back was enough to woo her.
Dear grown men everywhere, your elementary school bully tactics pissed us off back then, why are you still convinced they will ever work? Piece of advice, while you were pulling our hair and tripping us, we were giving our first kisses away to the boys that brought us flowers and candy.
Take lessons from the smart, non-violent men; those strategies still work.
“Because,” Vaughan sighed sounding extremely tired. “He has backup.”
Nelson and I saw the other gathered Feeders at the same time and let out twin gasps of shock and fear.
We were on a stretch of highway that was mostly clear. A few times in the last couple days, the boys would have to get out and physically remove cars from the road while Haley and I provided backup from the roof of the Hummer. Page stayed tucked away inside with either Harrison or King keeping her company. This particular patch of pavement had already been cleared, abandoned cars shoved and hauled to the side of the road by some other travelers at some other time.
The end result however, had created a line of cars, trucks, one city bus and a few sporadic motorcycles along the highway in what made a kind of wall on both sides of us. While the Oprah-Special-of-a-Zombie created a roadblock down the center, his Death and Decay Gang stood on the roofs of the vehicles, eyeing us just as hungrily but also seeming to wait for a command.
“What the fu-“ Nelson murmured but caught himself with a cough.
“Cuss jar,” Page whispered in a quaking voice.
The rest of us just kept staring at the problem beyond the hood of the Hummer.
“Do you think they want us to pay a toll?” Harrison asked dryly.
I let out a bubble of nervous laughter. “Obviously, that’s why they’re blocking the road. Let me see if I have some spare change.”
“Reagan, get the duffle,” Vaughan instructed.
Reluctantly, I tore my eyes away from the threat in front of me and bent over my seat so I could dig around in the trunk. I moved as quickly as I could, hating that my back was facing an en
tire line of Feeders. Keeping them in sight at all times was a hard-learned lesson that I was not about to forget anytime soon. But weapons were important at the moment, so I gave them priority.
I heaved the heavy bag over the seat with some help from King and Nelson and we immediately started passing guns and ammo forward. The soothing sound of magazines clicking into place filled the silence of the interior as the scent of decomposing, rancid flesh began to fill the cab.
King shuddered next to me, “They smell extra hungry.”
“That they do,” Hendrix agreed. Then he turned to face us, his eyes read Lecture Time and his serious mouth said, “I am not one with which you f.” “Vaughan and I will take lead. Nelson, Harrison you’re behind us. King stay in the van with Page.” His eyes flicked to mine and I lost the ability to breathe. They’d somehow softened at the same time they deepened in color. He was so protective of me for some reason, so possessive and it didn’t make sense to me at all. “Reagan and Haley, I want you to climb through the sunroof and use the vantage like a sniper. We’re going to move as fast as we can forward, but we’re not going to be able to hit everyone. You pick up the stragglers. How’s your range?”
“Fine,” I said quickly, even though I didn’t really know. It hadn’t mattered before if I could hit at long distances. If I missed, I always got a second chance because the Feeders never stopped coming after Haley, who was always right beside me, or me. But if I missed this time, they wouldn’t need to come after me. They could swarm any of the guys instead. I shivered with the queasy feeling of how much responsibility now rested on my shoulders.
“We’re great at long distance,” Haley assured Hendrix, but she wasn’t very convincing.
Hendrix’s eyes crinkled in the corners and he shot Haley a look. “I need you to do this,” he ordered, his eyes finding me again.
“I just don’t….” I cleared my throat, “I just don’t accidentally want to shoot one of you.”
“You won’t,” Hendrix promised. “You’ll be able to tell us apart. It will be easy.”
Love & Decay (Season 1): Episodes 1-6 Page 7