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

by Rachel Higginson

  I thought about the Parker brothers and how that was true for them now. I would not let them go if I had the choice. But it was different too. There was a point when I could have walked away. And I would never force someone to be with me, especially in this way.

  “I’m not perfect,” I said instead, afraid to incite his anger, or reveal more about the Parkers.

  “Perfect for me,” he insisted.

  “You’re delusional,” I hissed. And I meant it. He was, in fact, bonkers.

  “I’m your future, Reagan,” he promised in a low, stony voice. “The sooner you come to terms with that, the sooner you will be able to move forward.”

  He walked over to the front door and closed it. Pulling a padlock off a decorative table, he locked the door from the inside and pocketed the key attached to his large key ring.

  The handcuff key burned against my breast as I realized that handcuffs were not going to be my only obstacle tonight. If I could escape those, I still had to break out of this house and make it all the way back to the football field. If Hendrix, Nelson and Vaughan were able to get free, we still had to make it all the way back to the farmhouse and get Page and everyone else. There would be no way to warn them ahead of time, no way to tell them to be ready to go.

  Nausea assaulted my stomach at the seemingly impossible task ahead of us. But what choice did we have? We had to get out of this place.

  I had to get out of this place.

  And while I willed my panic and fear under control, my heartbeat seemed to take a new rhythm; it beat steadily in my chest, whispering a promise of hope, beating a melody of determination. Hendrix. Hendrix. Hendrix.

  If I could just get back to him, everything would be alright.

  Chapter Four

  Darkness. Every window had been checked, double checked and blackout drapes pulled. The doors had all been padlocked from the inside and my bedroom door had been padlocked from the outside.

  At least I was alone.

  I had no idea what time it was, or if it was close to midnight, but I hadn’t heard Kane moving around in a while. I hoped that meant he was asleep. Just like Tyler warned, my hands were cuffed to the metal bedframe above my head. Kane offered to pull the blanket up, but surprisingly I declined.

  Okay, not so surprisingly.

  As I focused on trying to get the handcuff key out of bra, I thought back to the day and what it would be like to be imprisoned here forever.

  After Tyler left us, Kane gave me a tour of his house, highlighting all the areas I was allowed to make myself at home in and brushing past the doors he didn’t want me exploring. I would be free to roam around the town, house, and school or wherever I wanted during the day, but at night I was to return to him.

  So much freedom seemed easy enough to abuse, but the militant style of the guards around this place was insane.

  I wondered how long Tyler and Miller had been plotting to escape, because obviously, this was no easy task.

  After Kane promised to have more clothes brought over in my size and we had a fast lunch of homemade bread and salted meats, he showed me more of the town.

  It was like Children of the Corn. Only instead of just the kids being brainwashed and crazy, it was like every, single human being here had been injected with the insanity. They worshipped Matthias Allen and treated his beliefs like religion. There were signs posted all over the place with wacky political jargon and reminders of how to live communally.

  People lived in relative peace, with complaints or issues brought in front of Matthias first thing in the morning, which was why Kane took us directly to the school building. The school building didn’t have any residential dorms or anything, but remained kind of a jail/meeting-place/office for Matthias. The gym and fields were also used to train their guards and if I had to make an educated guess, I would have said that’s where they also kept their food supplies and weaponry.

  Kane never said that, even after I asked him specifically, but if I was planning this place, that’s where I would put it.

  I was even taken to the two entrances to the town by road, one north of town and one south. I watched as a middle-aged man and wife seemed to stumble upon the guards. With feet bare and bloody, they were obviously malnourished. The guards looked them over and made them strip in the middle of the road. After they examined them for bites or infection marks at gunpoint, they handed them simple black outfits that reminded me of nurses’ scrubs or convicts’ jumpsuits. They were handcuffed behind the back, just like we were, then led off by another set of guards toward the school building. They could barely walk and their faces screamed for mercy and water, but they managed.

  “What will happen to them?” I asked Kane quietly as we stood leaning against one of the building fronts on the main street.

  “They’ll be asked to sign a loyalty contract and then sent to the medical facilities.” He shrugged, bored with the explanation.

  “And then?” I pressed.

  “They’ll be put on a six-month mandatory probation where they live in community dorms and are watched twenty-four seven. At that time they can choose their job and they go to work.”

  “And if they’re good little boys and girls?” I asked dryly.

  “Then the constant surveillance ends and the next six months are spent in relaxed probation.” Kane turned to look at me, drinking in my features with an increasingly hungry gaze.

  I ignored the simultaneous chills and beading of sweat that raced across my body while I struggled not to gag in revulsion then asked my next question, “What is relaxed probation?”

  “They are given a residence but are susceptible to random searches and interrogations. Their job performance is monitored very carefully and their living stipend just barely covers their needs.”

  “And after that?”

  “Then they become voting members of society.” He smiled slowly at me. “It’s really very humane. You have it in your head that we’re monsters, but we’re simply trying to protect a town full of people.”

  “Humiliating them by making them stand naked in the middle of the road is not exactly respectable behavior.” I shouldn’t argue with him, I shouldn’t press his buttons, but he drove me crazy with his whacked-out ideals. He would indoctrinate me if he could, turn me into one of the Stepford wives of the Zombie Apocalypse if he could. Why couldn’t I do the same thing?

  “And if we let them in and they have the infection? If they start biting and feeding and killing before we even realize there’s a threat?” His gray eyes darkened with righteous passion and he met my gaze, daring me to contradict him.

  “There has to be a better way to find out if they’ve been infected. Why can’t you just ask them?” I was getting worked up, my hands clenched at my sides and my jaw set and firm.

  “And trust them to tell us the truth?” He asked incredulously. “You of all people should know better than that.”

  “Fine,” I conceded bitterly. “Humanity is less than….. reliable currently, but you’re not exactly promoting a circle of trust here, are you?”

  He shrugged and took a step toward me, “There are some people I’d like to trust me.” His fingers brushed a path down my jaw and I willed myself to be still against that disgusting touch.

  I shook my head and pushed away from the building. I knocked into his shoulder in my attempt to escape him and his low laughter followed me down the sidewalk.

  He put me to work after that. I was assigned to the laundry room and forced to work with two middle-aged women that loved their job, literally loved it. They were born to do f-ing laundry, I guessed, because their constant smiles and happy humming could mean nothing else. Thank God for their sakes the whole Zombie thing happened. Otherwise who knew how they’d be wasting their talents in normal society. They’d probably be like CEO’s of international businesses, or fighting world poverty or something meaningless like that.

  Was I being cynical? Hell, yes. These people were insane.

  I ignored them as
I lost myself in the menial task of folding hundreds and hundreds of shirts. Then I realized why they were crazy. This job would literally make anyone lose their mind. It was too monotonous. Too boring.

  I was going to be a voting member of their ironically utopian society before the day was over. It was like a laundry induced lobotomy.

  Or maybe I just wasn’t used to this kind of peace and security. Maybe the run and hunt were the real reasons I was losing my mind. Survival was a constant activity, where my brain was always engaged. This made my brain feel useless.

  And so I put it to work. I visualized my escape, over and over and over, until I had every path, every exit memorized. I pictured the main street and how the buildings were set up, how I would sneak between them and hide in the shadows. I imagined my sprint across the open fields and the swiftness of my feet as I fled this place.

  At the end of the day the women led the way to a community dinner. In the gymnasium of the school, the entire town congregated to share a meal. We ate roasted chicken, roasted potatoes and canned corn. It was a relative feast.

  I was placed at the head table between Kane and Tyler. Miller sat with us too, but he never once lifted his bloodied and beaten eyes from his plate. Matthias and Linley sat across from me, smiling at Kane and I like we were a real couple and this was true happiness.

  This was an f-ing nightmare- in the real sense of the word. I had the feeling from this day forward I would wake up screaming and shaking from the memory of this family and their oppressive reach into my life.

  How could these people be so disillusioned? How could humanity have slipped to these depths so fast?

  We just fell apart.

  And that’s exactly how I felt at that table- like I was falling apart.

  The conversation was surprisingly very normal everyday family stuff until Matthias looked at me and asked, “So Reagan, what do you think of our little community?”

  I lifted my eyes, meeting his emotionless, aloof gray gaze and shrugged. Nothing I could come up with was going to make him happy.

  “It can be overwhelming at first, I realize this,” Matthias offered generously. “Especially since you’ve been by yourself for so long.”

  “I haven’t been by myself,” I argued. “I’m by myself right now, while you keep my friends locked up at gun point.”

  Tyler kicked me under the table, warning me to shut my mouth. She tried to pull the attention off me, “Speaking of, I better get them dinner.”

  She stood up and walked over to the buffet line, grabbing a little girl on her way so she could help carry the plates of food. I relaxed a little knowing they would get a good meal; and because if she was feeding them then they were still alive.

  “Kane says you don’t approve of our wall decorations,” Matthias pressed, gesturing with his hands toward the rest of the school.

  I immediately lost my appetite, remembering how Feeders lined the walls in those cramped locker spaces, how their boney arms reached out into the hallway, brokenly trying to stretch for me, how their horrific moaning sounds filled the air and clawed and scraped inside my head. No, I did not approve.

  “They should be shot,” I answered simply. “They’re disgusting reminders of the peril we’re in, it’s cruel and dangerous for you and your people.

  “My people know better than to get near them,” Matthias pointed out. “A small child would know better than to get near them. And what is so cruel about their treatment? Their minds and souls have vanished. The only thing they are capable of living for is their addiction to human flesh. Even in their wasted states where they can’t hold their own body weight up without the help of those steel bars, still they reach and hunger for flesh. It has consumed them until they are less than human, less than even animal, until they are a species of terrifying creatures all their own.”

  “So put them out of their misery!” I argued with enthusiasm. “They were once humans. They were once someone’s father or mother, son or daughter. They were brothers and sisters and neighbors and bosses and employees. They had purpose in life, they had happiness and love. You are degrading them and decimating their memory! And their minds might be dead, but what about their souls? Their hearts still beat, their blood still pumps. How can you judge someone’s soul when he is technically still alive?”

  Silence met me, heavy and meaningful. I had been holding Matthias’s intimidating gaze while I made my speech but while his fury rolled off him in waves I shot Kane a quick glance to gauge his reaction. I expected his anger to match his father’s, but instead I found surprise and…. something like admiration.

  “Well, hells bells y’all,” Matthias finally declared and his face broke out with a huge grin. His eyes were still ice and accusation though, when he finished in good-humor, “I do believe we have a free thinker on our hands.”

  “Matthias,” Linley chided.

  “Kane, you are one lucky man, Son,” Matthias smiled affectionately at him. “Best to hold on to her, break that spirit as quick as you can.”

  Miller snorted a laugh, making it his first contribution to the table. He actually looked amused at that. Little bastard.

  I sat in a kind of stunned disbelief at Matthias’s outright rejection of different thoughts and ideas, but was gathering momentum quickly. I was like a building storm of wrath. I felt my emotions center and spike until I saw only red and felt only anger.

  And then the strangest thing happened.

  Kane put a hand on my shoulder.

  The soft, simple gesture broke me from my spell and I turned in confusion to watch him address his father. “I’m not interested in a broken woman, father. I like Reagan’s spirit. I’m drawn to her spunk and defiance. She’s like the life that’s missing in this dead world, the fight that has depleted and rusted away. I would never take that away from her.”

  His thumb was rubbing a path back and forth across my shoulder blade and his smile was warm and familiar. His gray eyes were like silver with their intensity and his strong, cleanly-shaven jaw relaxed for the first time all day. He was the weirdest person I’d ever met.

  And after knowing Hendrix, that was a feat he should win an award for.

  I really, truly felt this intense disgust for him. But in this moment he seemed to transcend that somehow. Yes, I hated Kane. But I also didn’t hate him in this moment.

  But in this moment only.

  There was something more than hate, something like awe, but only because he perplexed me and I didn’t know how to read him or what to expect from him.

  “How cavalier,” Matthias laughed. “My son, the gentleman.”

  After the meal, the entire assembly- of more than a hundred civilians and an equal number of guards helped clean up and finish the day’s chores. By the time Kane walked me back to his house, it was dark outside. The moon was bright in the sky tonight, illuminating our path as we walked slowly along the sidewalks.

  I was anxious to get back to his house so that I could start my escape, but I matched his pace and strolled leisurely through the empty streets.

  When his elbow brushed against my arm I jumped, just stifling a squeak of panic.

  He misinterpreted my reaction and reassured an idled fear since we entered this part of Arkansas. “There’s no danger of Feeders here, Reagan. We cleared out all the land surrounding us and there are enough men walking the borders that no Zombie can get through.”

  “You’ve never had a Zombie attack?” I asked cynically.

  “Not since the beginning,” he promised. “It’s a science for us.”

  He led me up the porch stairs and through the painted red door into his big house. It seemed too big for two people. I could only imagine what it was like for him by himself. For a second, I felt sorry for him. I understood his need for companionship, to fill his house with any other sound than his own breathing. I didn’t agree with it, but I understood it.

  He walked me upstairs and gave me a toothbrush and toothpaste. Using bottled water I brushed and rinsed
my teeth and used his comb to brush through my hair and put it back into a ponytail. I needed a shower, but that was a different problem for a different day.

  He offered some of his clothes to sleep in, but I insisted on keeping my own- which prompted some obvious suspicion from him.

  In an effort to placate him, I said, “You cannot possibly expect me to give up my freedom so easily and accept this…. this imprisonment, can you?”

  He broke out into that charming smile again and shook his head. “I guess not.” He stepped past me into the bathroom and pulled out his own toothbrush. “Wait for me?”

  I shrugged because I felt like I didn’t have a choice, but the atmosphere in the small bathroom became intimate as he brushed his teeth thoroughly. I sat down on the useless toilet and watched him get ready for bed.

  I shouldn’t have noticed the way he took care of his white teeth, or how his corded neck rippled and strained as he worked the toothbrush around each tooth carefully, but…. there was nothing else to watch. When his teeth were cleaned, he pulled his t-shirt over his head and I was given a full show of his sculpted chest and back.

  Holy hell, this guy was like the Incredible Hulk. And while steroid-strength had never really peeked my interest before, I found myself fascinated by each of his movements.

  Holy shit, in the past twelve hours I’d come down with Stockholm syndrome. What the hell was wrong with me?

  Okay, no wait… On closer inspection of my feelings, I still maintained the good old revulsion and derision I always felt for him. I couldn’t help it that he was nice to look at.

  I shook my head and tried to look away but then he was taking out his contacts and… if he wasn’t such an asshole it would have been endearing.

  Once the task was completed, he looked down at me with his black framed glasses on and I couldn’t stop the smile. This was Clark Kent to his Superman.

  “What?” his mouth mimicked my soft expression.

  “The glasses,” I laughed. “They’re just not very intimidating.”

  He held his hand out to me and I took it automatically. Pulling me to my feet he promised, “I’m not trying to intimidate you, Reagan.”