Love and Decay, Vol. Four

by Rachel Higginson

  Or would someone else take over? Someone just as dangerous and sadistically inclined?

  There were still Zombies to deal with after all. Matthias was only a small portion of the problems this world faced.

  “Oh!” Hendrix grinned at me. “Diego is still alive. He made it through the night. Joy cleaned him up and got his infection under control. He actually might live through this.”

  “I’m not sure I’m happy about that,” I laughed lightly. It was a lie though. I was happy about that. Diego wasn’t exactly a friend, but we’d bonded through this whole deal in a strange way. I didn’t necessarily want him to live… but I didn’t want him to die either.

  Hendrix lifted his gaze, distracted by something behind me. When he looked back down I could see the lightness that surrounded him. Hendrix had shed something dark and heavy since last night. His smile came easier. His eyes brightened with hope.

  We were different people now that we weren’t being hunted. Now that there wasn’t a death sentence following us around.

  Zombies were our only threat these days and after surviving the last year, even they didn’t seem so bad.

  “Are you ready for some visitors?” he asked gently. “There are some people that would like to see you.”

  I smiled at him, even though it hurt. “Please.”

  He leaned in again, careful to avoid my injuries, and tenderly trailed his lips over my jaw. “Make me a promise first?”

  “What’s that?” I asked breathlessly. Even injured and out of commission, Hendrix’s nearness ignited something warm and fluttery in me. He distracted my body from its constant scream of pain and my mind from the cluttered thoughts that needed to be sorted through. He made me focus on him and only him. He made it just easier to breathe.

  “Promise not to make any more enemies? I don’t think my heart can survive another day like yesterday.” I saw the conviction in his blue gaze, felt the power of his words. This man cared about me… loved me… wanted to keep me safe above everything else.

  “You have my word,” I told him. “From this moment on I’m a complete pacifist. I won’t engage in conflict of any kind.”

  “Let’s not get crazy,” he murmured. “Just no more archenemies. Or nemeses. Or men willing to hunt you across continents. Let’s stick to killing Zombies from here on out.”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” I smiled innocently at him.

  “I’m trying to believe you,” he murmured as if it were the hardest thing in the world.

  I needed to distract him before he locked me up somewhere. “Didn’t you say I had visitors?”

  “I’m going to get you something to eat,” he relented. To the person behind me, he ordered, “Be gentle with her.”

  Page bounded around the corner of the couch.

  “Was he talking to you?” I asked her.

  “I think so,” she said. “He thinks if I touch you, you’ll break.”

  I tried to look less miserable. “I won’t,” I promised her. “He’s just being overprotective.”

  “Aren’t they good at that?” she smiled sweetly at me.

  I was pretty sure she had heard me say “protective” instead of “overprotective,” but the little girl was blinded with love for her brothers so I decided not to argue.

  “They are the very best,” I told her. “How are you feeling? You okay?”

  She glanced over to where the bed was. I had a feeling Luke was over there and that was who she was looking at. “I’m okay.” Her voice trembled and tears filled her eyes.

  I sucked in a deep breath and reached for her hand. Moving any part of my body proved challenging, but holding on to Page erased all of the pain and replaced it with something more important. “Luke is strong, Page. He’s stronger than what happened to him, yeah? He’ll be all right.”

  She nodded with a trembling chin. “It’s not just him. I’m worried about you too.”

  “Me?” I tried to laugh. “I’ve never been better!”

  She burst into tears. Apparently that was the wrong thing to say.

  With my good hand I pulled her forward and urged her to bend down so I could hug her. She buried her face in my neck and sniffled. I patted her shaking shoulders and let her see that I was okay.

  That I was still alive.

  “Page, I’m okay,” I whispered to her. “These are just a few bumps. I’ll be better in no time.”

  “I didn’t think I would ever see you again!” she wailed. “I-I-I was so afraid!”

  “Me too, baby girl.” I found myself crying right along with her. “Me too.”

  “Is it over? Forever?”

  I squeezed her as tightly as I could. “Yes,” I whispered. “It’s over forever. We’re safe now. Well, as safe as we can be with Zombies running all over the place.”

  She pulled back and met my teary gaze and with a maturity that surpassed her nine years, she said, “Hendrix keeps you safe, but you keep us safe too. Thank you.”

  More tears spilled over. I was too choked up to respond.

  Hendrix returned with some hardened, homemade tortillas that I could chew on like crackers and some warm tea. He helped me get situated before he disappeared again to help Vaughan with something outside.

  Page sat down next to me and started telling me about how she waited in the van with Adela and took care of baby Lennon. She was pretty proud of herself for being in charge of him and I couldn’t help but feel proud of her too.

  Haley and Tyler walked over to join us and sat on the floor in front of me. Lennon lay in Haley’s arms as tiny as anything I had ever seen. His eyes were closed, thick lashes spread over his rosy cheeks. His dark head of hair curled adorably and his perfect baby lips wiggled while he slept.

  He was beautiful.

  “That was brave of you to leave him,” I told Haley.

  She shifted on the floor. She just gave birth a few days ago. The girl was a freaking trooper. “I had to make sure he was dead,” she said solemnly. “That my son would not be touched.”

  I understood exactly what she meant. Lennon wasn’t my baby, but I felt as protective of him as I had anything else in my life. If Haley wouldn’t have helped take out Matthias’s men, Lennon would have been dead anyway. We had needed every gun we could get.

  “Besides, he had Nelson.” Pain transformed Haley’s expression and I related with her in every way. I had been there. I had felt the terror of having the man I loved threatened in a deadly way. After a minute where she was lost to her thoughts, her lips twitched and her shoulders relaxed. “I’m paying for it today though,” she groaned. “Let me tell you what it’s like to give birth and then go on a killing spree a few days later… Pretty sure my body hates me right now.”

  I laughed, but it quickly turned to a wince. “I know what you mean,” I whimpered. “My body isn’t my biggest fan either right now.”

  “But he’s dead,” Haley whispered to her son. She kissed the top of his head. “He’s really dead.”

  I looked to Tyler. She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She didn’t look at either of us and I knew that she was going through something we couldn’t understand.

  “Tyler?” I asked.

  Her sad eyes stared at the floor and she shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not sad because he’s dead,” she explained immediately. “I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad… I’m glad he can’t hurt me anymore.” Haley shifted the baby in her lap and wrapped an arm around Tyler’s shoulder. Tears rolled down Tyler’s cheeks and she wiped them away with the back of her hands. When she continued, her voice was tattered, “I’m just… I’m sad that he wasn’t a better person, you know? I just wish that I never had to want him to die or that I wasn’t so happy he’s finally gone. I guess I’m mourning the relationship we never had and the man that he never was.” She finally looked at us. “Does that make sense?”

  Haley and I nodded. It did make sense. I wished those things for her too.

  On a selfish note, how differen
t would my life have turned out if Tyler, Miller and Kane had had a decent father? Or if Matthias Allen had been a decent human?

  “Do you want to hold him?” Haley asked.

  I nodded. “Gimme gimme gimme.”

  She laughed and gracefully moved to her knees. Lennon didn’t even notice. “Don’t get blood on him,” she warned.

  I rolled my eyes, but let her tuck him into the crook of my good arm. As he nestled into me, I felt warm and wonderful. His soft skin was so perfectly smooth compared to my rough, calloused or burned skin. He made a little grunting noise and craned his neck. I wanted to cry again. He was just so sweet.

  I leaned down and kissed his head, thinking that kissing this baby might be addictive.

  Something infinitely sweet settled over us as we sat there admiring new life and feeling the relief of Matthias’s death. We hadn’t been this at ease with each other in a very long time. I wasn’t sure that Tyler had ever felt this much freedom.

  A new chapter of life lay ahead of us, a new beginning. We had new hope and new goals.

  Our lives were more than simply survival. There was life in our lives too. Important pieces of each other that we shared and treasured.

  I kissed Lennon again and let my heart swell with the possibilities. The days and years ahead of us wouldn’t be easy, but they would be ours. We no longer had to run from sadistic monsters and hope they never caught us. Our chains had been cut.

  Our names cleared.

  Zombies didn’t hold grudges. And that was something that I would always be grateful for.

  ----

  A week later, I sat in the same spot on the couch and decided I was going to cut my leg off.

  That was the only solution I could find to stop the itching. It itched and it ached. Simultaneously. And together the sensation was enough to drive me crazy.

  Joy had done a stellar job keeping my wound cleaned, elevated and wrapped. Without her to care for me, I knew I would have died. She had given me enough antibiotics to keep me healthy, but she’d had to divide them up with Diego and Luke too. We were all lucky to have survived the last seven days.

  The three gunshot victims.

  When Luke had finally started to improve, they moved him into the living room with Diego and me. Joy could easily manage us this way and we found creative ways to pass the time.

  Mostly that included keeping an eye out for Joy whenever one of us had an itch that we could not ignore.

  I had been through a lot of crap in my twenty-one years of life, but I had never known misery like this.

  It was the worst.

  My special treatment and twenty-four hour nurse care was about to end though. Luke was finally stable enough to move, so Joy and Andy were headed to America. They were antsy to get going because they wanted to beat anyone back from Matthias’s entourage.

  Some of Matthias’s men had escaped the epic showdown. When bullets started flying, a few cowards had turned tail and ran.

  For Andy’s sake, we had wanted to kill all of Matthias’s men. Andy and Joy wanted to help rebuild a fair and balanced leadership in the former US and with Matthias’s men out of the way, that seemed possible.

  But they couldn’t endanger their son’s life when he was so injured.

  Now they didn’t know what to expect. Their biggest concern was that the united Colony would be loyal to Matthias even in death. They were willing to start from scratch, but they didn’t necessarily want to.

  I couldn’t blame them. They were much better people than me to even consider going back there. I said my goodbyes. It was time for me and my house to move on.

  Diego was also headed home. The town he protected had fled to Diego’s estate during the Matthias conflict. From what Adela told me, apparently Diego had a massive mansion not too far away that he’d procured during his drug running, pre-apocalypse days. It was plenty big enough to house the village while they rebuilt the town.

  I asked him why he would bother with the town. He’d gone back to look at it a few days ago and most of it had been burned to ash. When he came back, his face had been drawn and his shoulders slumped. He had explained that was his family’s home and nothing, not even fire or Matthias, could make them leave.

  We’d also recently learned that Diego now controlled the northern part of Mexico. Until someone challenged him, and he was very confident that nobody would, he ran everything from the US border to Mexico City.

  This was thanks in part to our arrival, Matthias’s promises and Diego’s aggression; the territory wars we had gotten mixed up in decimated this entire region. A lot of men had died over the last few weeks.

  Diego was confident they would name this war after him.

  Especially now that he was the most powerful man in Mexico.

  Men from all regions had started to show up and pledge their loyalty to him. Whatever sadness he’d felt over the burning of his village had been replaced with something like happiness. He was still the proud, arrogant man I knew and only kind of liked, but purpose and a people group to keep alive had given him something deeper.

  This was something worth living for.

  Adela still planned to leave with us.

  Two days ago, Andy had held a ceremony for all of the dead from every side of this conflict. We were the only people participating that hadn’t lost anyone.

  Except that wasn’t entirely true.

  As Andy, Diego, Adela and a few other Mexicans in attendance spoke the names of the dead we could remember, I thought of Gage and Kane. I whispered their names with eyes shut tight and for the first time felt justice for them.

  They were free now too.

  Joy spent the last week preparing us to live without her. We’d come to heavily rely on her cooking and nursing. I hadn’t known her that long, but I really didn’t want to leave without her. She came in handy when I was hungry or bleeding or dying.

  She was also one of the sweetest women I had ever known.

  She spent a lot of time with Tyler though and I could see Tyler’s confidence improve. She’d always been our go-to girl when it came to injuries, not because she knew a lot, but because she knew more than the rest of us.

  Now she knew a lot. Joy had also given her an easy-to-read medical handbook that she said all missionaries were known to own. We were in capable hands moving forward.

  Haley had also been the recipient of hours of Joy’s wisdom. Joy taught Haley how to eat from the land and cook on basically any surface. She’d gone over care for Lennon and how to take care of fevers, ear aches and other minor problems that could easily become huge issues for the little guy. She wrote lots of instructions in a journal that she gave to Haley, hoping to ease the burden of motherhood in our scary world.

  Andy had been gracious enough to share his weapon stores with us. We had also salvaged quite a lot from Matthias’s dead men and the vehicles they left behind.

  The last time we had been armed with this much weaponry was with Gage at the compound. It reminded me of the first day Haley and I had met the Parkers and they had been so prepared.

  And that’s what we were today. We were prepared.

  We were ready to move on and move forward.

  The only thing that bothered me was that we never found Matthias’s body. The building that he’d died in had been completely destroyed by the time the Parkers, Andy and Diego had gone back. But they had expected to find something from him. At least a belt buckle or something.

  But then again, maybe he didn’t wear belts.

  Diego moved around the living room and took a seat on the coffee table in front of me. His arm was in a sling, but the color had returned to his face and he looked healthy again.

  “Will you miss me?” he asked, a playful smile tilting his lips.

  “As much as I’ll miss this bullet wound,” I grinned at him.

  He threw his head back and barked out a laugh. “Come now,” he coaxed. “We have been made friends. I killed your Matthias like I promised.”

 
; I narrowed my eyes on him, “You lay there and tried not to die.”

  His finger wagged in my face, “Ah, but it worked. Si?”

  I just shook my head at him. “Be a good leader,” I said. “Protect your people. Give them freedom.”

  His smile turned more affectionate, “This is something I learned from my American friends. Freedom is importante, yes? You value your freedom.”

  “We do,” I said with a soft, earnest voice. “And your people will too. They will be even more loyal to you because you gave them the choice.”

  “So no shooting in the streets?”

  I knew he was teasing me, but I also knew that had been a part of his past. “No shooting in the streets. Only shoot the bad guys.”

  “No more bad guys.” His eyes darkened. “My people will be safe. We will rebuild.”

  “And the Zombies?” Over the last week, there had been Zombies roaming the desert, sometimes stumbling upon our bungalow. There had been a considerable debate about what to do with them. Diego wanted to catch them and save them for his future Zombie army and the Parkers wanted to shoot to kill. There had been a lot of discussion over the humane treatment of Zombies and the ethics involved.

  It was still bizarre to me that I had to defend Zombie killing, like I was the bad guy.

  “I have not yet decided,” he admitted honestly. “My enemies will not listen to your reasoning, Reagan. I will have to think of my people first, Zombies second.”

  I couldn’t argue with that logic. “Take care of yourself,” I said instead.

  He nodded once. “And you take care of her, si?” His eyes tracked to Adela.

  “Si,” I promised him.

  When he looked back to me, it was with a gravity that took my breath away. “Gracias, Reagan. I mean that. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for helping me.”

  I shrugged a shoulder, embarrassed by his sentiment. “I don’t know if we’ll ever come back through here, but it was nice knowing you, Diego.”

  He leaned forward and pressed one last piece of advice on me. “I have said this to your men, but listen carefully. Mexico City will be…” he seemed to search for the English word before settling on, “mayhem. There is no order there. Everyone fights everyone. And the Dead, they run free. Look for a man named Tomás. He is my cousin. He will help you if you tell him that you know me.” He met my gaze; concern flickered in his dark eyes. “He will get you through the city. Then we will be even.”