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

by Rachel Higginson

  The last two years have been intense, to put it mildly. And I think mental stamina was wearing thin on both of us.

  There’s only so much two girls can take of the killing, the hunting, the foraging, and the not-dying. It was a lot.

  And it wasn’t like someone prepared us to go through this. Our parents died, the same week all our friends died, or worse, and we went on the homeless-vagabond-murdering-anything-in-our-paths run.

  Not ideally how twenty-year-old girls typically spend their time.

  Well, twenty-year-old girls before the infection. Now, it was the norm, and if not that norm then the norm that included feasting on flesh or being feasted upon.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  I pushed a hand to my temple and stifled a wince. This pain in my brain was not physical per se, but it still hurt and drove me crazy with constant irritation. It was like a perpetual migraine without the bodily symptoms, which made no sense to anyone, except me.

  I needed music.

  How could anyone live in a world without music? This was like my private hell, a purgatory specialized in throwing every personalized, worst-case scenario my way. There wasn’t a radio, electricity for my iPod, or even instruments for people to serenade me with. There was just… silence.

  The silence was broken only by an occasional dog bark, the distant squawking of unhappy birds or the unsettling sound of Zombie moans as they tried to eat my face. This was the soundtrack to my life… and it was miserable.

  I needed to occupy my brain, or as my dad used to say, exercise it. If he were alive today, he would be absolutely crazy with the stagnancy of his mind. Of course, if my dad were alive, he would have already found some kind of safe faction for us to live with and developed a cure for the whole thing. Maybe that was assigning his genius too much credit; but he was dead, so I was allowed to put him on a pedestal.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  I bounced high in my seat when Vaughan couldn’t avoid a pothole and slid into Nelson. I had no idea how he ended up next to me in the back of the van, but here he was. And now I was in his lap.

  “Finally,” Harrison groaned and filled in the space I had previously occupied.

  “Hey!” I complained. I scrambled to a crouched half-standing position, as far from Nelson’s lap as possible.

  “Nope,” Harrison crossed his arms and shook his head. His long, gangly legs spread out widely in front of him and his shoulders seemed to bulk up and expand in the less confining space. He was seventeen going on Hulk Hogan, which seemed impossible since our last meal consisted of two cans of creamed corn that we shared.

  Nelson’s warm, strong hands gripped my waist and pulled me back down to him. “Let him have some room. You’re fine here.”

  A flash of warmth burned in my stomach and just as quickly it was gone, leaving me somehow confused and suddenly hot. God, Nelson. I didn’t even know what to do with him. He was so…. caveman.

  He was lighthearted and at times hilarious, always the laid-back brother. Except with me. For whatever reason, I brought his alpha male dominant gene to the forefront, club and all. He was ready to start this whole thing with me and I was still trying to figure out his favorite color and if he had a deviant sexual past.

  Harrison stretched out next to me, sticking his legs far up the aisle, and resting his incredibly long arms along the back of the seat. He did look happier.

  “Fine,” I agreed, wiggling just a bit to drive Nelson a little crazy. The grip on my hips intensified, his fingers digging beneath the hem of my tight long sleeved tee. “But in ten minutes we’re switching and you get to sit on Nelson’s lap.” I raised my eyebrows, daring him to defy me.

  Which he did. Not a second later.

  He burst into riotous laughter and shook his head. For a seventeen-year-old, he was kind of rude. “Like I would go near that, after you’ve been bouncing around on top of him.” He pointed in the direction of Nelson’s… uh… fly.

  I blushed the deepest red. Ugh. Nelson chuckled from beneath me, his chest rumbling against my back. These boys were always doing that to me!

  And then we went over a stretch of rocky pavement and the issue in question moved.

  Gah!

  My flush intensified to the color of a strangled eggplant and that same powerful ache bloomed in the lower part of my tummy again.

  Here’s the thing… It had been two years since I was even around boys in any consistent environment. I had seen boys since the infection broke out, but that was literally the extent of our interactions. And before that I wasn’t exactly the most relational creature.

  Sure, I loved a hot and heavy make out as much as the next semi-slutty cheerleader. But, I never let anyone get close enough to make something monogamous out of me. I had issues- brain issues. And I liked to keep my weirdness as far down on the down low as possible.

  That meant keeping everyone at a distance.

  Except for Reagan, of course.

  The ticking of my internal time-bomb brain hazed into background music with Nelson so close to me, with his body practically vibrating with heat and want. That was unheard of for me. Nothing had ever worked to ease the insistent pounding, except music. Now I had Nelson, and I didn’t know what to do with him. But he relieved my racing mind; I could at least be grateful for that.

  Up until now, everything between us had been light flirting with a tendency to get awkward whenever he looked at me; so, it got awkward often. Well, awkward for me; I had no idea how it felt for him but sometimes the heat behind his eyes gave me a little insight. I pretended to be oblivious to all his advances thus far and I couldn’t tell if it was wearing on him or not.

  Mostly because I avoided looking at him.

  It was harder to ignore now though, with his body touching almost every inch of me, his hands clutched against my hips, his breath fanning out across my nape. I shivered. It couldn’t be helped.

  Reagan glanced back at me from one of the captain’s chairs in our wood-paneled, dated Chrysler Town and Country and gave me an “are you okay” look. I tried to smile at her, but my body was shaking with nervous energy and I knew I looked pathetically unnerved.

  Page was sleeping across her lap, sprawled out and heavy with exhaustion, but Reagan wiggled her arm around the back of the chair and took my hand. I relaxed a touch.

  We were in this together, joined at the soul. We were Zombie Apocalypse sorority sisters; there was no one who had my trust or my respect more than that raven-haired vixen.

  The van was relatively quiet as we traveled through rural Arkansas. The last several days had been taxing on all of us.

  After a couple run-ins with the locals, who tended to set up shop, aka settlements, along the highway; we opted for the more scenic route south. But it hadn’t exactly been peaceful and Zombie-free. Reagan had a relatively detailed map of the lower US and Mexico, so we were navigating our way utilizing paper methods. Travel had been slow and bloody, and with all the carnage, it was easy to keep our eyes focused on a Feeder-free goal. Even if the utopia we searched for didn’t really exist, our sanity lay in the hope and promise of a better life to come.

  I still kept my old smart phone with me as a souvenir of where we came from- like as a society, not literally what town I was from. It was my homage to the age of technology before technology died a fast, agonizing death. Plus, it had all of my pictures from the last two years of my thriving, youthful existence before the infection. Not to mention, my coveted iPod app. So if there was ever consistent electricity again…

  Sometimes my fingers itched to pull it out and Google our location or look up the closest Chick-Fil-A, or turn on my music and fade away in the blissful sound. I kept waiting for the sensation to fade, for my habit of using the entire universe of information to stop kicking in every single time I wanted to know something. But the inclination stayed, no matter how much time had passed since I’d actually surfed the web. My fingers remained restless and my brain remained unfed.

  One of
Nelson’s hands slid from my hip to splay out across my stomach, hidden beneath my shirt. His hand radiated heat against my bare skin and my heartbeat kicked into overdrive with a panicked rhythm. I jerked from the sensation, not at all sure what to do with the overwhelming feel of him.

  I hadn’t been touched intimately in two years, four days, not since the underwhelming night of senior prom, when my date, Taven Meyers, booked us a hotel room, made out with me for four minutes, thirty-eight seconds, got himself all the way to second base and threw up in my hair. It was a night to be remembered…

  I didn’t even understand why he’d gotten so plastered. I was the one giving up my v-card! I should have been the one reaching for liquid courage.

  The only thing that trumped vodka-puke in prom hair was Zombie remains, but barely.

  Nelson’s nose made a gentle trail across my neck, coming to rest against the top of my shoulder. He was seconds away from placing a kiss there, I was positive. And even though there was fabric between my skin and his lips, I had the intuitive foresight that I would feel that kiss to the deepest part of my spine.

  I whipped my head around, more afraid of that feeling than anything I’d faced yet, and glared at him. “You’re awfully brave, Nelson Parker. Did you forget my gun is loaded?”

  He smirked, that know-it-all, cocky grin of his at me. I had never even seen him look remotely smug around anyone else. I couldn’t tell if I brought out the worst in him or the best. It was much too early to tell.

  And I would know, I would know everything, before I ever gave him a real shot. It wasn’t like I had a backup plan if we turned out to be toxic for each other. And I so did not want to be one of those couples that threatened to feed each other to Zombies every waking moment because they couldn’t get along, but stayed together because there were no other viable options for them to procreate with.

  “I think his is too,” Harrison goaded.

  Back to being an overly ripe tomato.

  “Omg, you are such a pervert! You so belong in high school.” I punched him in the arm, but my weak fist just bounced right off his superhumanly strong bicep. “Ow! How are you so strong for a child?”

  He grinned at me, pulling up his shirt sleeve and flexing a muscle no boy his age should have developed yet; hello, side-effects of a hard life.

  “Oooh,” I cooed, slipping a hand around it to squeeze. Anything to distract me from the hand I hadn’t seemed able to remove from under my shirt yet. I squeezed Harrison’s bulging muscle again, “Oooh, baby!”

  Nelson pulled his hand out from under my shirt and removed my fingers from Harrison’s bicep by threading his fingers through mine and bringing both our hands back to my lap. “Alright, he gets it. You think he’s strong.”

  He sounded so jealous and territorial that I almost laughed out loud. But I couldn’t, because even now tingles of exhilaration spread out from the center of my chest to the tips of my fingers and toes. My vision seemed to fade in and out and my breathing picked up with the excitement.

  I didn’t know if I wanted Nelson yet. But I certainly didn’t not want him.

  “Jealous, big brother?” Harrison chuckled. “Don’t be resentful because all the ladies want me.”

  “Yep, all the ladies,” Reagan laughed.

  “Please, no fighting,” Harrison gestured back and forth between us. “There’s plenty to go around.”

  King snorted from the other captain’s chair and Nelson brought me closer to him, settling me deeper against his chest. He shifted my voluminous, thanks to the lack of available hair product, wavy blond hair with his nose so he could whisper in my ear.

  His lips danced across my earlobe, pushing me further into his net of heart-entrapment. “He’s not the Parker you want, Haley. I promise you that.”

  With as much bravado as I could muster I nodded my head, scraping the line of my jaw against the stubble on his chin. “I know that. I’ve been able to narrow it down to the other three.”

  “Other?” he asked in a flat voice.

  “Yes, your other three brothers,” I agreed as seriously as I could manage. “Harrison lost in the most recent elimination. And you were out of the game a long, long time ago.”

  “You’re such a smartass.” He began tickling me, like the terrible kind, when you can’t breathe, and it almost hurts, there’s so much sensation, and you’re afraid you’re going to pee your pants. Tears formed in my eyes and I thrashed wildly on his lap; he still gave no sign of stopping, despite my pleading/screaming.

  “Holy shit! Take your seat back!” Harrison cried a bit desperately when I accidently kicked him in the shin. “For the love of God, take your seat back!”

  Nelson stopped immediately and wrapped his arms around my middle. His chin rested on my shoulder, his scruff gently abrading the skin along my throat. Words failed at how amazing that familiar gesture felt.

  “We’ll be good,” Nelson promised, tightening his arms around my waist. “Promise. We’ll be good.”

  I tried to look down at him, but he was holding me too tightly. I couldn’t quite see his face. But the serious tone in his voice unsettled me; it was too intense, too possessive.

  I didn’t argue. I knew better. Nelson was not going to give up this fight and I didn’t want to cause a scene in front of everyone. Besides, the intimacy, the protective shield he formed around me, it all felt… amazing.

  So in order to save my brain from overanalyzing every single detail about what was happening, and in an attempt to avoid memorizing his breathing pattern, I turned my attention out the window.

  I wasn’t ticking anymore, but I used the technique that came in handy for when I was. I observed.

  I was very, very observant, like Sherlock Holmes observant. I always had been. It was a skill that had helped keep Reagan and me alive the last few years. Well, maybe it was my powers of perception and her unshakable aim.

  It wasn’t something I could turn off or ignore. It just happened to me. My brain was on, constantly. There was no shutting down, no relaxing, no unwinding. My mind worked at full power, every waking moment, and some sleeping ones too.

  It used to be hell to walk into familiar places, because the minute details were already memorized so my brain would search out everything new and different and wrong. It was like playing “Eye Spy” with those big books that had pages full of jumbled scenery and setups, only it happened every single minute, of every single day.

  I would walk in the house after a long day of school and immediately know that my dad had left the coffee pot on all day. He’d remembered to rinse out the pot, but the numerous hours of dripping had burnt the bottom anyway. The right side of the couch was getting more attention than the left side; the cushions were more worn and depressed causing it to sag just a little on that side. The last time he walked into the house, he opened the door too hard; there was a mark on the drywall. The upstairs bathroom sink dripped.

  Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.

  Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  I was mostly likely a genius, although I’d never let him test me. My dad actually was a genius- like a legit one. He was a professor of chemical science at Drake University and worked in their research labs as well. He was crazy smart.

  And probably so was I.

  But the thought of being sent away to a different school, or the idea of living my life with that title plastered above my head in glaring neon lights didn’t really work for me. I didn’t like labels and I didn’t want to live my life with a certain set of expectations. I just wanted to be me.

  And normal.

  So I kept it all a secret, hidden and buried under my over-active brain and way-beyond-average memory. I worked not to learn things; I tried really hard to just be… average.

  And for the most part it worked. There wasn’t a whole lot of difference between my dad and someone else’s non-genius dad. He just retained knowledge better and because of the demand his mind had on his body, he had a thirst to learn as much as he could. Maybe he had a more
intellectually-demanding job than other dads, but he still arrived home tired, still fought office politics, still complained about his projects. We all ticked.

  But my dad and I just ticked faster and louder than others. And maybe our ticking was more demanding than most. We were forced to consume as much information as we could before our minds spiraled into insanity. There was a very slim line between functioning genius and raving lunatic.

  I had learned to control mine for the most part, without becoming a super computer. But it was harder now that there wasn’t anything to fill the hungry, demanding spaces of brain matter.

  Music used to be the only thing that could calm my racing thoughts. It would make the ticking stop completely and I would fade away into peaceful sound. But now, there was no music to occupy my waking moments.

  Only silence.

  And silence was a problem.

  “Solar panels,” I whispered first. Excitement and hope sprinted through me, racing with the promise of a night filled with electricity and sound. I bounced up and down, forgetting Nelson was underneath me. “Solar panels!”

  “What?” Reagan was the first to catch on that I was saying something life changing. “Where?”

  “Over there. That farm house. I see them all over the roof!” They weren’t super obvious to the average eye, but I had noticed the sun reflecting at an odd angle off a mostly-hidden farmhouse. Then the closer we drove the more noticeable they became.

  “Solar panels,” Nelson agreed, sounding both awed and anxious.

  I didn’t blame him. This could either be really good.

  Or really bad.

  “You really want to check it out?” Vaughan asked hesitantly from the front seat.

  “I haven’t seen any kind of civilization or settlement in a full day,” Hendrix put in.

  A full day was roughly six hours of driving, maybe a little less. Between the terrible road systems this far off the highway, the lack of readily available gas, and having to stop and set up somewhere safe-ish each night, we weren’t able to travel very far each day.