Love and Decay: Revolution: Episode Eleven Read online

  Love & Decay

  Revolution : Episode 11

  Rachel Higginson

  Contents

  Also by Rachel Higginson

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  About the Author

  Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2019

  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.

  Any trademarks, service marks, product names or named features are assumed to be the property of their respective owners and are used only for reference. There is no implied endorsement if we use one of these terms.

  Any people or places are strictly fictional and not based on anything else, fictional or non-fictional.

  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.

  Created with Vellum

  Also by Rachel Higginson

  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

  Opposites Attract Series

  The Opposite of You

  The Difference Between Us

  The Problem with Him

  The Something about Her

  Confidence Men Series

  Constant

  Consequence

  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!

  One

  “I can fix them.” A little bit louder now. “I can fix them.” A little bit softer now. “I can fix them.” A little bit crazier now. “I can fix them. I can fix them. I can fix them,” he went on and on and on.

  I stared at the man in the cell next to mine and hummed a song my mom sang to me when I was little. I hadn’t even remembered the tune until it popped into my head on a loop. My mom’s voice singing to me in the darkness was the only way I could stay sane down here—the black abyss of Matthias’s Napoleon complex.

  Thank you, Reagan and Haley, for the stellar education.

  It wasn’t lost on me that listening to the voice of a dead woman all day and all night was my only tether to reality. Yet, there it was. My mom and me, fighting through hell with the Isley Brothers.

  After losing my oldest brother, surviving two Feeder bites and traveling to and from Colombia during an apocalypse, I could safely say that rotting in Matthias’s dungeon wasn’t the hardest thing I’d ever been through. And it wasn’t the first time an Allen had held me hostage.

  However, it was the first time my sanity had been so severely tested. It wasn’t just the oppressive darkness of the dungeon or the sporadic, but sparse meals. It wasn’t the loss of any sense of time or the days that I had been trapped down here. It wasn’t the undead instinct still bubbling beneath my skin, the gaping hunger that sometimes reared its ravenous head for something other than stale bread and oatmeal. It wasn’t even that Miller kept being dragged upstairs to meet with his dad, beaten to a bloody pulp and then tossed back down here with the rest of us criminals, left to rot in our cells. It wasn’t even the frustrating distance between Miller and me, how badly I wanted to go to him, cradle his head in my lap and stroke his hair until I mentally willed him back to health.

  No, the reason my sanity was on the brink of failure was because of my neighbor—prisoner #Infinity in cell block Forgotten About. My weak, dying, crazy ass neighbor that kept mumbling and whining and all in all, making this incarceration a terrible experience.

  “I can fix them,” he whined in his scratchy voice, rocking back and forth in the fetal position. “I can fix them. I can fix them. I can fix them.”

  Pulling my knees tighter to my chest, I rested my forehead on them and groaned. He’d started this strain of chanting earlier and hadn’t given up on it yet. He had several different obsessive iterations, but this one was new. Usually he spouted numerical patterns or a mixture of letters and numbers. Sometimes he recited a recipe. Other times he screamed and shouted at invisible people. More than once he banged his head against the bars until the guards used a Taser to subdue him.

  Clearly, whatever Matthias had done to him had made him lose his mind completely. And because of that I tried not to get too irritated with him. He was a victim. He was a prisoner. He was maybe a premonition of what was coming for Miller and me.

  Sometimes I tried to talk to him, help break the cycle of babbling or wake him up from his living nightmares—it never worked. He never acknowledged my presence or broke his stride. When he was like this there was no turning him off.

  I’d also done my best to ignore him, pretending I couldn’t hear him. Other times I talked at him, voicing my own crumbling sanity and using him as a silent sounding board.

  And now I was singing along. Maybe Matthias had broken me sooner than either of us expected.

  Letting out a sharp hiss, I jumped to my feet and paced the border of my small cell. Micah was across the aisle, on some kind of suicide mission to make us even Steven. Every time I tried to communicate with him, the guards would stalk over and whip out the Taser.

  Not many things terrified me in this post-civilized world. But damn, that Taser did the trick.

  For Micah too.

  We’d resorted to silent hand signals lately and the softest of whispers to exchange information. I’d learned that my family was safe. Nobody else had been picked up by the Colony. And that he planned to save my life. Which I was okay with.

  Hopefully, I’d get rescued sooner than later because I would go crazy down here if someone didn’t intervene ASAP.

  My mind spun with other possibilities. What if my family couldn’t get to me? What if Miller didn’t come back one of these times? What if Matthias forgot about me? What if I was left to decay down here, my bones, skin, and brain rotting and rotting and rotting…?

  A darkness shuddered beneath my skin, waking. My fingers curled into claws. My skin prickled with the painful sensation o
f the cold, damp air touching it. My gut twitched, hungry. Hungry. Hungry.

  “I grew up here,” I heard my confession to the insane man prone on the ground in the cell next to me. He was rustling on the other side of the thick, rusting bars. I had to talk to somebody. I had to get out of my own head. “Well, not here-here. But in America. I’m an American.” The words tasted strange on my tongue, unused and not quite right. The man continued to wheeze and stutter in the cell next to mine, so I continued speaking, pouring out a hundred thoughts I’d never told anyone. “We left when I was a kid. My brothers and me. And all the people we’d collected along the way. They knew we wouldn’t be safe here. Not with the big man upstairs running the show. And back then, he wasn’t even a big deal. Not like he is today. He ran one town. One measly, little nowhere town. And yet he nearly killed all of us.” My breath caught in my throat. “He did kill some of us.”

  “I can fix them,” the man replied.

  “We’re even in that area though. The death toll, I mean. He killed some of ours. We killed some of his. It was war back then and it will be war now. Even if he doesn’t realize it yet. If something happens to me, my brothers will avenge me. Without a doubt, they will come for this place with the hammer of freaking Thor and raze it to the ground. And they will probably all die in the process.” There. My worst fear. Out in the open air.

  A chill slithered down my spine as the confession bounced around the small space of my cell, trying to land on my skin, trying to crawl back into my blood and hide itself among my other secret and scary thoughts.

  I squatted, my butt brushing the dirt floor. “It’s strange, don’t you think? I can survive a Feeder bite, but Matthias could put a bullet in my head today and none of it would matter.” The man’s mumbling stopped, but I hardly noticed. “Twice. I’ve been bitten twice, but I’m the very opposite of invincible. This is by far the dumbest—”

  “What d-d-d-did you s-say?”

  Blinking back to reality, I whispered a terrified, “Ah!” sound and promptly fell back on my butt. The man had crawled halfway up the bars, gripping them with gnarled, bloody fingers.

  “Wh-wh-what did y-y-y-you j-just say?”

  He didn’t look so insane anymore. His eyes were clearer. His expression less… droopy. He was nearly sitting up, for God’s sake. Had the insanity been a trick?

  “I said…” What had I said? I was mostly rambling. Going on and on about my brothers and how they were going to come kill every single person in this town until they found me. “Oh, don’t worry,” I told him quickly. “I don’t think my brothers will hurt you. They’ll see that you’re one of us. A prisoner, I mean. They’ll leave you alone.”

  What I had intended to comfort him only seemed to frustrate him more. He gripped the bars tighter, shaking his frail body as if he could split them apart and skulk into my cell.

  My rampant thoughts spun faster as I tried to search for the answer he was looking for. He shook his head, demanding more from me.

  But what exactly did he want me to say?

  Good grief, I could use a drink of water right now. My lips were on fire, cracked and dried out completely. For as much as I hated the underground bunker Luke had hidden his people in, at least they’d had a seemingly endless storehouse of supplies.

  Thinking about that place, immediately brought all my loved ones to mind. It was hard to reconcile the thoughts in my head with the raving lunatic in front of me. They were safe. Even if I wasn’t… they were.

  Frustrated with my inability to answer him, he pulled himself up until we were eye level. “Are you immune?” he asked with more clarity.

  Had I told him that? Oops.

  My eyes narrowed. This wasn’t something I shared with people. But especially fellow prisoners in Matthias’s basement dungeon who needed leverage to get them out.

  “Wh-what?” Now I was stuttering.

  “Did you say you’ve been b-bitten?” he demanded. “T-twice?”

  Paranoia twisted in my gut and I struggled with what to tell him.

  “Page…” Micah warned from across the way. “Better back up.”

  “I can help,” he rasped, bloody spittle flying from his cracked lips. “Before I was… taken…” The word fell from his lips like a vile curse, hatred flashing like a bright light in his dark eyes. “I w-was working on a cure.” He struggled to swallow while I watched him will himself stronger, like his weakness was very suddenly intolerable. “He heard of my efforts. He stopped me before I could finish. He… he doesn’t want them gone.”

  Immediately l knew he meant Matthias. It was what we had suspected since we arrived back in America. Maybe even before that. Matthias didn’t want to eradicate the Feeders. He wanted them to control his subjects. They were his most effective weapon.

  “I’m immune,” I whispered, knowing this confession could cost my life. “I was bitten as a child and also just recently. I’m… fine.” Mostly.

  At least I wasn’t eating brains for supper. He didn’t need to know every little detail.

  “How are you still alive?” he croaked, his eyes wider and softer.

  “I might not be for much longer.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” he whispered, taking me in again with new insight.

  The upstairs door wrenched open with a loud screech and boots pounded the wooden staircase as Matthias’s henchmen descended the staircase. The crazy man, who maybe wasn’t so crazy, glanced fearfully between my face and the guards that walked quickly toward us.

  “No,” I confessed. “I’m here for something else.”

  Two guards stopped at Miller’s cell. My knotted stomach squeezed tighter. They were going to take him again. And I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand to see him hurt more. I couldn’t just sit here while they tortured and abused him.

  Ignoring the man next to me, now face down in the dirt like he was unconscious, I scrambled to my feet and gripped the bars that caged me in.

  “Page!” Micha hissed. He hated when I did this.

  “Hey!” I pounded the metal with my open fist. “Hey, assholes!” The entire prison swiveled to face me. Snickers and echoes of “assholes” rumbling down the line. I ignored them, not intending to incite a riot, but prepared to use one if I needed to. “Don’t touch him!”

  The guards smirked at me in tandem, like they were robot minions of the great Matthias and couldn’t think for themselves. “Yeah? And what are you going to do about it, little girl?” one of them asked, totally amused by my impotent fury.

  Another one nudged the first one. “Is that her?”

  Someone else laughed. “Yeah, that’s her. The angry kitten.”

  I was going to gut these men. Sternum to entrails.

  They opened the cell and pulled Miller’s limp body out. Two of them began dragging him up the stairs while two more made their way toward me.

  The man next to me coughed and wheezed. I barely gave him a glance as my entire body braced to fight these idiots who clearly underestimated me. But when unintelligible words trailed after his fit, I realized he was trying to tell me something.

  Squatting next to him for a second time, I kept my focus fixed on the approaching guards. “What?”

  “Be smart,” he hissed. “You’re the key to everything.”

  His words rocked through my body like a bullet. There wasn’t time to process before the cell door was being ripped open and men were entering my cell while I took cautious steps backward, my hands raised and ready to fight.

  You’re the key to everything.

  His point stuck to the inside of my skull. I shook my head, barely acknowledging the guards prowling toward me, trying to knock the profound statement loose. But the words wouldn’t go anywhere.

  Be smart.

  I looked down at my hands. Was I really going to fight my way out of this place? Matthias had a town of people on his side. This house alone was teaming with his henchmen.

  Without a blade I was all but useless. Besides, what about M
iller? Could I find him? Could I fight these guys off and the guys who had Miller and then somehow drag him out of the city? He was twice the size of me, packed with muscle and dense body weight.

  What was my exact plan here?

  You’re the key to everything.

  Shit.

  One of them reached for me and I slapped his hand away. His partner snickered at his wide-eyed reaction.

  Okay, so maybe my fight instinct wasn’t so easily turned off. But it would be better to walk through this house fully conscious than dragged through it blacked out.

  “Should we tase her?” the handsy asshole asked.

  My hands clenched into ready fists. Don’t let them knock you out, I ordered myself. I’d seen my neighbor get this treatment too many times to test it out for myself.

  “Look, Dan, she’s afraid.”

  Hardly.

  Okay, maybe a little.

  “What do you want?” I asked, voice unwavering but soft.

  Dan was quick to answer. “The boss wants to talk to you. You’re to come upstairs with us.”

  “We’ll use force if we have to,” the other guy added. He flourished the Taser. I clenched my teeth together, every muscle in my body tensing in anticipation.

  I dropped my arms and hands and shrugged, feigning nonchalance. “I’ll go. I want to talk to him as well.”

  They snickered again. It was all fun and games at the Matthias camp today. Walking past them, I resisted an eye roll and another glance at the still prostrate man in the cell next to mine.