Love and Decay: Revolution, Episode Nine Read online

  Love and Decay: Revolution

  Episode Nine

  By Rachel Higginson

  Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2017

  This publication is protected under the US Copyright Act of 1976 and all other applicable international, federal, state and local laws, and all rights are reserved, including resale rights: you are not allowed to give, copy, scan, distribute or sell this book to anyone else.

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  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copy Editing by Amy Donnelly of Alchemy and Words

  Cover Design by Caedus Design Co.

  Other Books Now Available by Rachel Higginson:

  Love and Decay

  Love and Decay, Season One

  Love and Decay, Season Two

  Love and Decay, Season Three

  The Star-Crossed Series

  Reckless Magic

  Hopeless Magic

  Fearless Magic

  Endless Magic

  The Reluctant King

  The Relentless Warrior

  Breathless Magic

  Fateful Magic

  The Redeemable Prince

  The Starbright Series

  Heir of Skies

  Heir of Darkness

  Heir of Secrets

  The Siren Series

  The Rush

  The Fall

  The Heart

  The Five Stages of Falling in Love, an Adult Contemporary Romance

  Every Wrong Reason, an Adult Contemporary Romance

  The Opposite of You, an Adult Contemporary Romance

  Bet on Love Series

  Bet on Us

  Bet on Me

  Magic and Decay, a Rachel Higginson Mashup

  The Forged in Fire Series

  Striking

  Brazing

  To my readers,

  Because you are kind and patient,

  And so very gracious with me.

  And because I know you would kick

  Serious zombie ass if you needed to!

  Chapter One

  Page Parker

  Just so we’re clear—getting bitten by a Zombie was the absolute worst thing that could ever happen to me.

  The. Worst.

  It hurt like a son of a bitch. My body experienced a fever that made me feel as hot as the fires of hell, and I felt everything. Everything. My bones burned. My blood boiled. My internal organs felt eaten by something like acid and lava and all the other super-heated things.

  I was convinced I would burst into flames at any moment. But that was the easiest phase. I would’ve been happy to hold onto the burning because what came next was infinitely worse.

  After the burning came the hallucinations. A lucid coma where I dreamed of eating brains and craving human flesh, and I couldn’t tell what was real or if I was real or if anything happening to me was real.

  The taste of blood and raw meat coated my tongue. My stomach churned with memories of sinking my now sharp teeth into human flesh. And my body ached with the desire for more. More blood, more skin, more bone, more brain. Just more.

  A craving so sharp I wished for death just to end it, just to stop the hunger pains that gnawed relentlessly at my insides and clawed beneath my skin—my sanity stolen, all thoughts were replaced with savage need.

  I knew death would come next. It was my only option. I couldn’t survive this. I didn’t want to survive this. I just wanted to die.

  But before I could find death, the fire started all over again. Deeper this time, somehow impossibly more intense. My brain couldn’t make sense of the pain or where it came from or why I hurt. In my unconscious state, I was both starving and bloated. I was both lost to insanity and conscious of everything I thought and felt and wanted.

  Hundreds of knives seemed to stab at my stomach, tearing it apart with jagged blades, but all I wanted to do was eat and eat and eat. Desperate hunger fueled my insanity. Consuming all my thoughts and feelings and reality.

  It was absolute agony.

  It was worth than death.

  Worse than hell.

  Or maybe it was the very definition of it.

  Eventually, the pain and need for flesh ended.

  Only after that senseless hunger, after I fought through the starvation and the fire and the insanity, did I awake on the other side human again.

  It had happened to me once when I was a child. But I hadn’t been smart enough or mature enough to identify the different stages. Back then my young mind couldn’t handle the cravings or coherent hallucinations, and I had spent most of the illness in a hole of black confusion.

  This time I woke up knowing exactly what happened. I had to become a Zombie to survive as a human.

  The irony was not lost on me.

  When I woke from the infection this time, I had no idea where I was. I blinked up at the unfamiliar ceiling and gingerly tested my sore muscles.

  Everything ached. Even my blood felt wrong in my veins. The roots of my hair hurt. My throat still burned, desperate for blood to quench the unending thirst.

  But hope bloomed with the opening of my eyes. A bed, I realized. I was in a real bed.

  The sheets beneath me tangled with my legs, sweat-soaked and smelly. I didn’t recognize the clothes I wore, but the baggy t-shirt and shorts would be burned anyway.

  I reached up to touch my head, expecting monstrous tangles that would need to be cut out, but I found braids instead. Someone had been taking care of me. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

  There was no way to tell how long I had been out or how deadly the disease had been this time. I was still alive, so they must have believed I would survive it.

  I blinked at the ceiling thinking about how stupid that was of them.

  They should have killed me.

  My mouth tasted like copper and felt like sandpaper. I moved my tongue over my teeth and gagged. I rolled to the side, expecting to vomit, but I had nothing in my stomach to expel.

  “You need an IV,” someone scolded nearby. They hadn’t raised their voice, but they might as well have screamed at me.

  I flinched, curling my body in on itself. Shay moved over me, her cool hand resting on my forehead for only a second before she pulled it away.

  “Then get me an IV.” The sound of my voice scraped through the air, gravelly and rough from underuse. Or maybe from screaming. In my hazy, convoluted memory I had screamed a lot. But it was hard to tell if that was real or only my imagination.

  She rolled her eyes at me, and even though I felt like utter shit, I caught the twitch of her lips. “And where would I find one of those?”

  “Shay,” I groaned.

  She took a seat on a funny looking chair, and I watched, fascinated as she pushed with her toes, gliding toward me.

  “Your chair has wheels.”

  She frowned. “Have you never seen a rolling chair before?”

  I flopped back on the pillow and closed my eyes, sifting through my memories for a chair like that. Flashes from my fever f
lickered through my head. Blood and gore and flesh.

  And I wanted to taste them all.

  Eat them.

  Devour them.

  Feast on them.

  My eyes snapped open, and I jerked my head once. “I don’t remember.”

  Shay’s worried face appeared over me, her usual accented voice dropping to a whisper. “Understanding your circumstances and what you’ve just been through, Page, I have to ask a silly question. Are you all right?”

  I met her gaze. “No.”

  Her eyes widened, true fear flickering through them. She backed up a step, her hand slipping discretely into the pocket of her white lab coat where I instinctively knew she hid a weapon. I sunk my teeth into my bottom lip to keep from sinking them into her.

  Commotion on the other side of the room ended our conversation before she could ask anymore questions. Or before I could do something homicidal.

  My family arrived abruptly, pushing into the room in a flood of brothers and sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews.

  I searched for Miller, but he wasn’t with them.

  “Page,” Reagan exclaimed, rushing to my side. She sat down on the edge of the mattress, forcing a grunt from my battered body. “Sorry,” she hiccupped. A tear slid down her cheek, and I watched its progress, not sure what to say.

  Hendrix hovered over me. “We’ve all been waiting for you to wake up.” When I didn’t say anything, he asked, “Are you awake?”

  “She’s still out of it,” Shay explained. “She might be this way for a couple of hours or even the next few days.”

  Reagan reached for my hand and squeezed it. Haley sat down at my feet and warmed them with her body heat. The kids pressed in around me, telling me how much they missed me and how happy they were that I was okay.

  I listened to them, not knowing how to respond to their kindness or how to reassure them that I was okay. I didn’t feel okay.

  I didn’t feel anything close to okay.

  They continued to speak to me, asking questions about how I was feeling, but my mind couldn’t keep up with the conversation. Their voices blended. They became a faceless blur as they spit out words that had no meaning to me.

  I felt detached, completely disconnected from the people around me. They were my family, but they felt like strangers.

  I loved them, I told myself.

  But I didn’t feel love.

  They saved my life, I reminded myself.

  But I didn’t feel thankful.

  In fact, I felt nothing. Nothing but fear and disgust and hunger.

  “Page?” I looked up at Nelson. His eyebrows furrowed together and his mouth pressed into a grim frown. “Did you hear me?”

  Had he said something? “No,” I whispered.

  He spun around and held out his arms, pushing the family back. “Let’s give her some space. She’s been through hell, and we don’t want to push her.”

  “Yeah, well, we haven’t exactly been in paradise,” Harrison muttered. Nelson stared at him, silently warning him to shut up. “Fine. Space. Page can have space.” He stepped back and whistled through his teeth. “Minions, you’re with me.”

  King and Joss helped him corral the kids, and they lead them out of the room. Santi stuck his head through the door, but Harrison’s hand reached back and yanked him out of the room. I watched him disappear with the nagging sense that I should explain to him what had happened.

  Or apologize.

  Santi had always known the truth about my immunity, but I wondered if he had ever believed me.

  Now he would.

  My blood sizzled beneath my skin and my stomach clenched with hunger. I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth against the pain.

  I was immune.

  I was.

  These side effects would wear off, and I would be back to normal soon. Maybe even by tomorrow.

  I turned my head so I could stare at the ceiling again. Maybe I would never be normal again?

  Maybe this was only the beginning?

  “Page, you’re scaring me,” Reagan whispered. I took a slow breath, unable to look at her. “Can we do something for you?”

  The words had left my mouth before I considered them. “You can go away.”

  Reagan made a sound of disapproval in the back of her throat, and Haley’s hand stilled on my foot from where she rubbed back and forth gently. Guilt trickled into my thoughts, but the only thing I could comprehend was that at least I felt guilt.

  At least I had that one emotion.

  Rolling to my side, I pulled my knees to my chest and faced the wall.

  “We can come back,” Hendrix suggested in a low voice. “She needs some time to wake up and get back to herself.” He cleared his voice before he asked, “Right, Shay?”

  There was a long pause before she agreed. “Yeah, yeah. She just needs some time.”

  Hands touched my shoulder and knee as the rest of my family showed me their support before quietly disappearing out the door.

  I continued to stare at the gray brick wall. I tried to make sense of everything happening inside me and everything that had happened to me during the infection. I tried to sort through my thoughts and murky memory.

  Reality and hallucination twisted together in a tangle of unfinished threads. I couldn’t find the real moments. I couldn’t find memories that weren’t tainted with blood or broken bones or bits of flesh.

  I closed my eyes again, desperate to escape those visions. Hot tears leaked from the corners of my eyes and spilled down my cheeks.

  What if those thoughts, those desires, never went away?

  What if I never came back to myself?

  Eventually, I found sleep. Despite having slept for days, I couldn’t fight it any longer. My eyes grew heavy, even while my heart started pounding harder.

  I didn’t want to be reminded of the disease or what the disease wanted or how I felt irrevocably changed from the Feeder bite still bruising my skin.

  But I couldn’t stop it from happening. None of it. Not the sleep or the nightmares or the hunger.

  Feeders chased me in my dreams only for me to turn around and chase them back. I pictured all the places we had been since the infection started. I saw my parent’s broken bodies lost in graveyards filled with half-eaten corpses. The rotting bodies stretched on and on in every direction, bleached bone and ragged sinew, horrified faces ripped apart by teeth and claw.

  I saw my enemies there too. Arturo and the Rat King.

  Linley Allen half buried in the hard earth, her body and face still whole. The only wound she bore was the single bullet hole that I was responsible for. But I couldn’t think about that now. All I could feel was hunger, addiction to flesh and blood, and need.

  I threw myself on her, my claws ripping through her paper-thin skin, my teeth sinking into her heart. Her body started to waste away, even while my fangs were still in her. She began to decay beneath me, tattered skin over dried, gritty muscle. I licked my lips, angry that there was not more flesh to consume.

  I was still hungry.

  And then there was Vaughan. The bodies disappeared and the hunger faded. He was alive, healthy and unaffected by the bite that killed him. His hand reached for mine, but he was too far away. He could save me. I knew it. He could make this better because he always made everything better.

  I couldn’t reach him. There was a puddle in between us, and I was afraid to walk through it, afraid of what filthy secrets might lay at its bottom. I moved to my left, and the puddle turned into a placid lake. Vaughan called my name from across the unmoving surface, and a wind blew between us. The wind created waves that crashed, and the waters stretched and spread turning into a rushing river. The river turned into a violent ocean that swept him away. His hands grasped for purchase while the rest of him submerged beneath the tumultuous surface. I heard his muffled cries beneath the water even as the sky raged around us and the waves roared, claiming his life.

  “No!” I screamed. “Come back! I need you! Come b
ack!”

  I raced after him, throwing my body into the sea, desperate to save my brother so that in return, he could save me.

  The foamy waves crashed over my head, pushing me down into the black depths. I opened my eyes, bracing myself against the sharp sting of salty water pelting me. Vaughan was gone, lost to the water.

  Despair slithered through me, wrapping around my heart and squeezing with a crushing grip. My lungs started to burn from lack of oxygen, and despite my emotional agony I swam for the surface once again.

  Only I couldn’t break the surface. The harder I swam, the further out of reach the surface moved. And then something grabbed my ankle, yanking me deeper into this watery grave.

  I kicked and fought, desperate for air.

  Another hand grabbed my knee, and another my hand. Panicked and desperate, I looked down at my attackers and found the dead. Feeders snapping their blackened teeth swam like hungry sharks at my feet. Their jagged fingernails cut into my skin. Those decayed hands connected to arms bearing shredded muscles that held onto me with solid strength.

  The last of my oxygen bubbled out of me, and I began to sink.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the Zombies to attack, knowing they would, knowing I was their next meal.

  But nothing happened.

  I opened my eyes to find that I was swimming with them. I had joined their ranks. I was one of them.

  I released a gut-wrenching scream as water filled my mouth and suffused my lungs. I started choking, gagging, suffocating… and then—

  I sat up in bed and opened my eyes for real.

  My throat burned and my stiff fingers ached from where I’d clenched the sheets tightly. Shay was in front of my face, and she was pressing a stethoscope against my racing heart. The pain and horror in her eyes gave away her thoughts about my behavior.

  “I was dreaming,” I panted. I needed to say the words. I needed to believe them.

  “You were dreaming,” she confirmed. A small flashlight flickered on and blinded me for a second. “Let me see,” she demanded.