Love and Decay, Episode Nine Read online

  I smiled before I could stop myself. “My, my, Kane. Aren’t you the philosopher?”

  He leaned in again, pushing our noses to within an inch of each other. “Are you impressed?”

  “I’m something more like concerned.”

  “Reagan!” Hendrix barked from the front seat, loud enough so I jumped. “We’re in the middle of a situation here.”

  I swung my head back to face Hendrix and felt a surge of shame and guilt spike in my chest. “I know.” I sounded a little pathetic and I wasn’t even sure he could hear me over the incessant banging. But I did know. I knew we were in a situation. I was paying attention.

  Kane slumped back against the seat and I scooted away from him to the very edge of mine. I hadn’t exactly been distracted by him before…. I knew we were under attack.

  But fear was slower this time.

  The panic and terror didn’t immediately hit like usual, even while the van was surrounded and their rotten flesh beat against the glass.

  Maybe I had become desensitized after all this time.

  Or maybe I was over it.

  I felt so sick and tired of the constant threat, the endless killing and running. I just dealt with this bullshit this morning and only a couple hours later I was stuck in a Feeder-made coliseum waiting for the beasts to attack.

  I just wanted a couple days off. I needed a vacation from this!

  Was that so much to ask?

  Just one solid night’s sleep or a bathroom break that I could take by myself and without being armed to the teeth.

  The whole reason for the adventure south was to get through this mess and then get away from it. But we’d been traveling in a straight line for weeks now and not any closer to our goal.

  Maybe I had the whole thing wrong. Maybe south wasn’t the answer. Maybe we needed a faster solution. Something like Kane’s colony- only without the craziness and evil overlord vibe.

  I didn’t really know what to do.

  I just knew I needed to do something, because we couldn’t keep going on like this.

  If we lived through our current situation, and let’s face it, that was a big if, then we had to figure something else out. We needed a break.

  We needed a better plan.

  Hendrix turned around to address us. Vaughan was still trying to push the van through the crowd, but he didn’t have enough momentum and the force of the Feeders pressing in on us made it impossible for him to go anywhere. The engine merely revved hard against the press of bodies, but that was all it could do- make a lot of noise and waste gas.

  “Nelson’s going to roll down his window and start shooting until there is a break in this space,” Hendrix began. His addressed our group looking anywhere but at me and I found that mildly annoying.

  Ok, not mildly…. Incredibly annoying.

  “Harrison is going to come up here, and once he’s given us a gap, Nelson and I are going to crawl up on the roof and set up shop. Harrison will cover us. King, you’re up here too. I want you covering Harrison and to be ready to hand us more guns and ammo.”

  “You’re not going up there,” I stood up. Well, I stood up as best as I could in the confined space and pointed my finger at my idiot boyfriend. “That’s insane. That’s suicide!”

  “It’s the only way,” he matched my angry tone. “We have to get out of here!”

  “I know we have to get out of here!” I shouted back. “But you sacrificing yourself for the greater good isn’t going to get us very far, Hendrix. Come up with a better plan.”

  “That’s the best plan we have.”

  “It’s a stupid plan,” I hissed. “Come up with a better one.”

  “It’s the plan we’re going with, Reagan. Get used to the idea because it’s happening in about thirty seconds. Now go back to your patient.”

  I stared him down, daring him to continue with his suicidal plan, but he didn’t even hold my gaze. He immediately went to work packing a small backpack that could hold extra guns and clips. My head injury pain intensified with this stress and my ears pounded with a headache.

  Honestly, did he really think the Feeders were going to give him a chance to dig through his pack and find the right ammo or weapon?

  Idiot.

  When he started loading his pockets and body with weapons as well, a little piece of my mind stopped thinking rationally. I threw my body back against the springy seat and let fly a cursing tirade that would have made me blush if someone else had used those words.

  “For the record,” Kane murmured close to my ear. I’d forgotten he was there for a second. Just a second though because soon enough he was trying to stir up his cauldron of trouble. “I agree with you. That is a very stupid plan.”

  “Shut up, Kane!” I growled at him. I wasn’t in the mood for his overdramatic bullshit. I just wanted to keep Hendrix safe. And I couldn’t do that if he was hanging off a moving roof with all of his guns inaccessibly tucked into the backpack on his back.

  I crouched down and walked my way to the front of the van. I tossed my useless gun onto an empty seat as I passed and then squeezed onto the front bench seat next to Harrison and Haley. I grabbed the collar of Hendrix’s t-shirt in two hands- apparently he’d thrown one on while I conversed with Kane- and pulled him close to me. I pressed my lips against his in a fierce but quick kiss and whispered against his mouth when it was finished.

  “Be careful.”

  “I will be,” he promised with a gentler voice.

  I kissed him again; I was so reluctant to give him up like this, to just let him walk away. I should be with him. If something were to ever happen to him…. to any of these guys…

  But seriously, if something every happened to Hendrix a million people would die at my bare, bloodied hands. The wrath of Reagan would reach to every corner of the Earth.

  Hendrix’s hand snaked around my neck and then held the back of my head firmly in his palm. “You be careful too,” he commanded.

  “Always,” I smirked.

  “Not always.” His eyes drifted back to Kane and I cringed, waiting for his angry reaction. “We’re not just fighting Feeders,” he rumbled in a low voice. “We’re fighting to stay together too, Reagan. Do not let him became an unnecessary obstacle.”

  Then he kissed my forehead hard and released me. I slunk back against the seat and leaned into Haley stunned and a little bit alight with something only Hendrix could ignite inside me.

  Vaughan counted them off and then they began Operation Get Us Out Alive. Vaughan could actually control Nelson’s window, so while he rolled down the glass, Nelson started shooting with shocking precision. He was using one of the automatic assault rifles we’d found in one of the many gun shops we looted in Tulsa. He pressed down on the trigger and body after body fell in his unrelenting spray of bullets.

  While the Feeders converged on Nelson’s fresh-flesh hanging out the window, he continued to take them out. But they were coming from every direction- nonplussed by their fellow undead lying now unmoving at their feet. Diseased, rancid bodies pressed together in a melee of death and decay. They stepped on their fallen, trampled over their bodies uncaring that the pile in front of them slowed them down. They had one goal, one objective.

  And that was to get to Nelson.

  Their deteriorating arms reached out for his body, but he was too fast, his aim to accurate. Their addiction to eating brains was no competition to the love Nelson felt for his family- to the love any of these boys felt for their family. Nelson’s determination to protect us outweighed the sheer mass of the Feeder’s desperation to eat us.

  It always would.

  Harrison crawled up to the front seat and took over the assault rifle. As soon as Harrison was able to cover the window, Nelson flung his body out of the car and using his brother’s back as a stepping-stool he jumped to the roof, carrying his other guns with him.

  We heard his body slide and shift on top of the metal vehicle while he cleared it of the Feeders already up there. The roof gr
oaned and dented in under his weight, but we couldn’t worry about that now. Once the last Feeder fell to the ground, he stomped once on the top of the car and Hendrix followed him up.

  Haley and I grabbed at each other’s hands, squeezing until it was painful. But nothing hurt more than the ache in my chest, and the fear of what could happen to Hendrix and his brother. I felt insane with worry- out of my mind completely.

  Gone were the cavalier feelings from moments before and in their place was raw, consuming terror that practically blinded me. I felt like I was watching everything happen through a tunnel. My vision narrowed to pinpricks and my lungs felt incased in quicksand as I struggled to breathe.

  Two sets of feet stamped around over our heads and the loud sounds of bullets popping constantly were the only soundtrack to the nightmare playing out in front of us.

  The putrid stench of Zombies both dead and alive wafted through the open window, choking us in its pungency. Blood red eyes stared at us from every single direction. And while they slavered for us in their desperate hunger, their white, sticky drool dripped from their jagged, black teeth and deteriorated mouths down the fronts of their ragged clothing.

  The pounding on the window finally culminated in cracked glass on almost every side. Hendrix, Nelson and Harrison worked hard to pick off the most immediate threats, but as soon as they were gone, someone other Feeder filled in for them. Their threat to our lives seemed never-ending.

  This was the end of the world. This was it. In all its deathly, gruesome glory. This was nightmares come to life- biggest fears, unthinkable dangers, the chilling, grisly menace of trying to survive the Zombie Apocalypse.

  And one thought kept running through my head. What if this wasn’t the end of the world? What if this was only the beginning.

  After two years of suffering through homelessness, bad hygiene and killing daily, the thought that this was how I would live out the rest of my depressing existence exhausted me.

  There had to be more to this life. I had to believe that there was. I had to hold out for some kind of miniscule hope that we wouldn’t just survive this life but we’d come to thrive in it. Humanity was stronger than hordes of undead that wanted to eat us. We settled a primitive world. We invented the light bulb, the internet, freaking toilet paper. We walked on the moon. Found cures for some of the deadliest diseases. And did incredible, humanitarian, generous things on a daily basis.

  We weren’t perfect- far from it. And probably as many good things as there were, there was equally as many bad things and bad people. But there was somewhat of a balance.

  I had to believe that we could find that balance again.

  I had to hope that there was more to life than death. More to living than not dying.

  Frustrated tears pricked at my eyes and the pain in my chest intensified. It was time to do more than fight to survive.

  It was time to fight for life- the real kind of living.

  Just as these thoughts were coming to a ringing clarity in my mind Vaughan shouted out the window. “Get down! I’m going to start moving!”

  The ground in front of us had been somewhat cleared by the guns and Harrison hanging out the window. The Feeders were more intent to get to him than encircle us.

  Nelson and Hendrix dropped to their stomachs above us- or that was what it sounded like anyway- and then continued to shoot round after round into the crowd closing in.

  There had to be a hundred Feeders surrounding us- still alive. I hoped we had enough ammo for all of them, because it did not look like we were going to make a clean getaway here. There were just too many of them and not enough of us. They were every size, shape, age, gender and ethnicity. How they all came to be here was still a mystery, unless this death trap had been working as a way to recruit new members into the cult of the undead.

  I shuddered at the thought of becoming like them.

  No way.

  Not ever.

  Vaughan punched the gas but the engine revved and we barely moved. There were bodies littering the ground in front of us. Vaughan needed some momentum to get the van moving.

  “Hold on!” Vaughan shouted. He threw the van into reverse and didn’t wait for Hendrix or Nelson to reply. He jolted us backward, hitting any Feeder that was standing too close.

  Just as quickly as he’d backed the van up, he hit the gear shift into drive and took off again, this time with enough momentum to make it over all the dead bodies.

  A muffled thud on the back bumper had us all turning around to watch horrified as a Feeder caught on the luggage rack with an arm so deteriorated his white bone stuck out of bloody, mangled flesh. He hefted his body up to the roof with surprising agility just as Vaughan found a clear path of road.

  “Vaughan!” King shouted.

  I reached for a pack of guns and ammo in front of me that Harrison had been pulling from and armed myself with blind panic. Gun shots could be heard from the roof but we couldn’t freaking see anything.

  Vaughan screeched to a halt and immediately the Feeder’s footsteps were joined by Hendrix and Nelson. The rest of the Zombie horde followed after us, ready to surround us again.

  Agonizing seconds ticked by where no one knew what was happening and gun shots were a loud but confusing way to follow the chain of events. I was a moment from flinging myself out of the car when a body flew off the back of the van and hit the ground in a bloody mess.

  The Feeder.

  The dead Feeder.

  Thank, God.

  “Go, Vaughan!” Hendrix shouted from up above.

  And then the worst thing ever happened. Vaughan slammed his foot down on the gas and we took off with a jolt. I was still staring out the back window- along with everyone else- waiting for the Feeders to catch up. Just as we started moving again a Feeder rushed the van, jostling us heavily. Hendrix toppled off the top of the van and landed in a crumpled heap at the feet of Zombies.

  Time seemed to stop completely. Silence hung in the air from both our van and the pack of Feeders as they took in the gift of human flesh lying just meters from their hungry mouths. My heart stopped beating, my lungs stopped accepting oxygen, my eyes stopped seeing. And then all at once the world came rushing back in a violent breath of painful reality.

  I let out a soul-deep scream and Vaughan once again slammed on the breaks.

  “Goddammit!” he bellowed.

  I was already in motion. “Keep driving, Vaughan, or they’ll surround you again. Come back for us.”

  I ripped open the side door, taking only enough time to close it again before I had a semi-automatic rifle in my hands and pointed at a threat that would not win today.

  Hendrix was just scrambling to his feet while still shooting at what he could. I raced over to him and held out a hand for him to grab. He launched himself to his feet and then whirled around so we were back to back. Both of us had guns but limited ammo now and as we stood protectively next to each other, the horde surrounded us and poised for attack.

  Chapter Four

  “Do not step away from me,” Hendrix hollered over the incessant groaning.

  “Like I would ever!” I shouted back. Was he out of his mind? We were about to die. I wasn’t going to leave him.

  “I’ll remember that!” And the crazy boy sounded like he was grinning.

  Tires squealed and out of my periphery I watched the van take off. Hendrix and I started moving in a circle as we shot at the worst threats. Our backs were pressed firmly into each other, so that if I moved out of the way quickly, he would topple backwards. But it was comforting to have him so close, to use him like this for support, even while his backpack of guns cut into my back.

  Those too were comforting, but in a different way, obviously.

  “I’m hoping they’re coming back!” he said dryly.

  “Me too,” I mumbled- although I knew they would.

  The popping of bullets was no longer a dim sound, but loud and deafening in my ears. My gun was fast and accurate. I rested the butt of my
rifle against my shoulder and took a deep steadying breath to center myself. My vision had tunneled in a different way than before. When I was in the van I had felt very out-of-body and I blamed that on the panic.

  Now, in the face of real death, I was no longer losing it. My senses cleared, my vision narrowed in a determined, hell-bent kind of way and I became the killing machine I loathed in my more lucid moments.

  It was hard to say what my life would have looked like had the Zombies not taken it over, but I could have probably been safe to assume I would not have gone into the military, or law enforcement or CIA. So where did these skills come from? What separated me from Tyler? Why could I pick up a gun and see the quarter-size spot right between the eyebrows clearer than I’d seen my eye exam when I got my driver’s license?

  I didn’t have an answer. Other than, I was unwavering in my resolve to live, steadfast to protect those I loved.

  I would kill until I didn’t have to anymore.

  My parents would be so proud.

  Although, in light of these grim circumstances, I actually believed they would be.

  The Feeders continued to close in around us. And while picking them off one by one, we were able to keep them somewhat at bay. But we wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long.

  The van had for real disappeared. I knew in the core of my being that Vaughan would never leave us, but he sure as hell was taking forever to get back to us.

  “Is this the right time to tell you I love you?” Hendrix boomed and the sound went straight to the center of my heart. I felt his words in my toes, in my fingertips, in my brain stem!

  But what was I supposed to do with them now?

  “No, it’s not the right time!” I reprimanded him. “This is like a deathbed confession and I’m not accepting it!” My heartbeat had kicked into an even higher gear than before- which concerned me. This could mean heart attack, since I was already at freaking capacity of nerves and adrenaline.