Love and Decay

by Rachel Higginson

  Light flashed down at us a second later, reaching all the way into the hole. I blinked up at darkened shadows hidden behind big flashlights.

  “There’s more down here!” One of them shouted.

  More flashlights shone down at us, blinding us. I held the children closer to me and lifted a hand so that I could see who stood over us. But it was too dark. I could make out three shadowy figures, but I couldn’t see faces.

  Courage burst to life in my chest though. We’d just fought off a horde of Zombies. We’d survived the trip from Colombia. These assholes didn’t know what they were up against. Even if we were temporarily at a disadvantage.

  Until one of them spoke. “We’re going to get you out of there,” he said with a deep, commanding voice. “We have your friends at gunpoint. If you fight us, we’ll start shooting.”

  Chapter Four

  They pulled us from the hole with little trouble. Clearly they had done this before.

  I had hoped for a better look at them once I wasn’t buried underground, but they hid behind their bright flashlights. Three big trucks had pulled up too, each shining blinding headlights on the bloody battle that had happened here only minutes before.

  I looked around in awe of my family. I thought four Feeders had been a good number considering our limited space and obstacles. But my family and friends had taken out at least twenty Zombies.

  That was pretty good considering we hadn’t been in an actual Feeder fight since before Diego’s Territories. I was especially impressed with Reagan and Haley. When we were back in Colombia, they had rarely made it out to the field. And since we started our journey across continents, they had always stayed with their children and out of the fighting- for obvious reasons.

  Once a badass Zombie killer. Always a badass Zombie killer.

  Miller stayed close to me, but we were still holding onto children, since their parents were currently being held by gunpoint.

  One of our captors laughed as he took us all in. “Where the hell did y’all come from?”

  We remained silent.

  “You should know better than crossing this land,” another of them warned. “You should have known we would catch you.”

  The third guy leaned into the second. “I haven’t heard anything about an escape. Nothing has come over the radio.”

  The second guy fell silent, seeming to mull this over. “Did you escape?” he finally asked. “Or are you from somewhere else?”

  We still remained silent. A flashlight zoned in on Adela. “Mexican,” whoever stood behind it decided. “You should know better.”

  Shit.

  Adela tensed next to me. She was Mexican. And she was proud to be Mexican. And we were all proud of her for being Mexican. But in this very specific scenario, her ethnicity was going to get us caught. Or killed.

  “I’m Hispanic,” she declared with the most deadpan American accent I had ever heard. I held a straight face, even though I wanted to stare at her. She cleared her throat and nodded toward Diego. “My husband and I were born here. I was trying to help my friends get to Mexico. I have family there.”

  They didn’t say anything for a very long time, so it was impossible to tell if they believed her or not. At last, one of them said, “Load ‘em up. We’ll figure this out back at the station.”

  The sound of guns clicking and shifting in hands echoed through the night. Few scenarios dampened my resolve to fight. But they had guns and we had knives.

  My brothers sometimes said, “Don’t bring a knife to a gun show.” That seemed to fit perfectly right about now.

  I picked up Jagger and Adela picked up Halen. We kept all of the kids close to us as we shuffled around dead Zombies and through tangled terrain until we reached the rumbling trucks.

  I shared looks with my entire family, but the guns pointed at our backs kept us moving. “Split ‘em up!” someone yelled behind us. The other men jumped in to obey.

  We outnumbered them. I counted eleven of them, maybe twelve. And there were twenty-seven of us. But five of those were children.

  And… they had those guns.

  Part of me wondered if they had bullets in them. We had run out so long ago, I couldn’t imagine that they had anything left in theirs.

  At the same time, it wasn’t exactly a theory I wanted to test.

  We stood behind pickup trucks that puttered black exhaust and smelled like burning diesel. They were covered so once we were loaded inside, we wouldn’t be able to see each other and that was the most terrifying thing of all.

  I had the kids with me and I knew Reagan and Haley were going crazy. I hope they trusted me, but I knew none of us trusted the people that had captured us. Jagger and Halen started screaming for their mamas the second they realized we weren’t going to be with them. I tried to shush them, but they didn’t care what I had to say.

  “Hey, shut those kids up,” someone growled from behind me.

  “Shh, Jagger. We’ll see mama soon.” He squirmed in my arms, desperate and willing to do anything to get to his mom. Just barely three, he couldn’t possibly understand the danger we were in. “Jagger, please be quiet,” I begged. He was hysterical. He jerked in my arms and pushed against me.

  “Mama!” he screamed. “I want mama!”

  Halen was just as loud. Adela couldn’t hold on to him and Miller caught him just before he took off running. I banded my arms around Jagger, willing him to calm down. Reagan and Haley stood stock still trying to reason with our captors to let them have their children. But the guards weren’t being reasonable.

  Stevie started crying next to me, too. She tried to keep it quiet, but couldn’t keep her sniffles a secret. “Mama!” Jagger and Halen screamed together.

  Something hit my shoulder, hard. “I said to shut them up,” the same guy growled.

  “They want their moms,” I hissed at him. “Let me walk them over. They’ll quiet down if they get what they want.”

  I could hear the grin in his voice when he said, “You really aren’t from around here are you? Ain’t nobody gets what they want here.”

  I had to count to ten to keep from punching him in the face. This scenario was only escalating.

  “Get him into the truck,” Miller murmured low enough that he couldn’t be heard over the screams of the toddlers. “We’ll calm them down once we’re inside.”

  I looked down at my oldest nephews. “Lennon, Vaughan, get into the truck. We’re going to hand you the toddlers and you have to promise to hold onto them as tightly as you can until we get in with you. You can’t let them go. Do you understand?”

  They tried to be brave, but I saw their glossy eyes despite the darkness. Adela could help them of course, but I knew they’d do better with their older brothers. “You get up there too, Stevie,” Miller said.

  With one arm constraining Halen as the little boy fought with all that he had, Miller helped Stevie into the truck while the guards got increasingly impatient behind us.

  The boys scrambled up into the truck. The space was too small even for them to stand up, so they sat cross-legged with their arms held out to their siblings.

  I passed Jagger off to Vaughan and made sure Vaughan had a good hold before I quickly scrambled into the high truck bed. Miller did the same thing. The toddlers kicked and fought their own brothers, but we managed to get everyone loaded in our truck without losing a little one.

  I took Jagger back from Vaughan as soon as I was situated. The back of the truck slammed with a resounding crash and Jagger screamed louder in protest.

  I held him tightly to my chest, hating that he had to go through this. I hated that he had to face any of this terrible world.

  Miller scooted next to me and forced Halen to press against his chest. We whispered soothing things to them, but they were beyond exhausted, completely traumatized from our time in the pit and now they’d been ripped from their parents. I understood their frustrations.

  But they also stressed me out.

  Stevie crawled b
etween Miller and me, settling herself tightly against both of us. Vaughan pressed against my other side and Lennon sat next to Adela on the other side of the truck bed. We were smaller than the other two groups and so we could spread our legs out.

  I had no idea where they were taking us or what would happen to us once we got there, but I knew we wouldn’t live long once they figured out who we were.

  If they figured out who we were.

  It didn’t help that we had Diego, the famed warlord with us. Or that my brothers could be easily recognized by Matthias if he happened to be around. Not to mention his own children…

  Shit.

  I hit my head against the wall. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  “We’ll figure this out,” Miller promised.

  I looked at him. “How?”

  He held my gaze, but I could see that he didn’t know. “We have figured out everything thus far,” he reminded me. “That’s a pretty good record, considering.”

  I turned away from him. He was right. But maybe he was also wrong. What if we couldn’t figure this one out?

  What if this was the final straw?

  My stomach clenched and I pressed Jagger tighter against me. Not for his sake, but for mine.

  He settled down some. His screaming cries died down into whimpers. He’d worn himself out and I suspected some baby instinct inside him had finally kicked in. Halen too.

  Soon, both toddlers were sleeping against us while the truck roared over bumpy highway. We bounced and swayed in the back, not able to make out anything in the near complete darkness of the truck bed. A few cracks allowed light to slip in, signaling that dawn was close. But without windows or a view of the outside, I couldn’t be sure.

  My own eyelids started to droop. It had been a grueling day and night… lifetime. With nothing dangerous facing me at this exact moment, I couldn’t help but give into the exhaustion. Plus, with so many kids to cuddle with I was warm and relatively comfortable… considering.

  “Sleep,” Miller encouraged me, noticing my struggle. “I’ll keep an eye out.”

  I looked across the truck bed to see that Adela and Lennon had already fallen asleep. I decided to give in. I didn’t know how long we had left in this truck and I knew I would need strength for wherever we ended up.

  But just when I’d finally closed my eyes, the truck started swerving uncontrollably. I sat up fast, keeping Jagger against my chest. I wrapped an arm around Vaughan, too, and Miller did the same to Stevie.

  The tires screamed against the road while the driver jerked from side to side. I struggled to stay upright as we were tossed around in the back. Poor Lennon and Adela had been unable to prepare and were slammed against the floor.

  Adela’s sharp Spanish curses punctuated the squealing tires. The driver drove over something and one of the tires exploded beneath us. The truck spun out, turning circle after circle before crashing with a violent jolt.

  When we finally came to a stop, Jagger was beneath me, crying again. I’d protected him the best I could with my body, but that had been an insane ride.

  My head filled with cobwebs for the second time tonight and I tried to shake them free while making sure the kids weren’t hurt too badly.

  As we struggled to get upright, the back door flung open and light spilled in the darkness. I blinked against the brightness, but my fuzzy head couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing.

  It wasn’t until Halen shouted, “Mama!” that I finally recognized Haley and Reagan standing just outside.

  The kids scrambled to their moms while we crawled out behind them. Hendrix and Nelson were right there too, scooping up their kids and holding them tight.

  “Thank you for watching over them,” Hendrix told us. “For keeping them safe.”

  I nodded quickly but had to look away. I couldn’t stand to see my brothers, any of them, with tears in their eyes. It made me instantly weepy. And right now, I would burst into tears if I looked at either Hendrix or Nelson.

  “What happened?” I asked no one in particular.

  King had his arm wrapped around Joss, holding her to his chest. He pointed at the road, where the first two trucks had crashed. They were a ways down the road, but their engines were smoking and nobody was moving near them.

  Our own truck had crashed into a tree on the side of the road. The driver lay slumped over the steering wheel, blood dripping from his temple.

  The passenger side door was open, but I couldn’t see any of our other captors around. And when I looked back at the road we’d just traveled, long silver mats lay scattered over the road, each covered in small spikes.

  They reminded me a lot of the hole we’d just escaped. Only these were meant for car tires, not humans or Feeders.

  Dawn had broken. The sun sat low on the horizon. The sky above glowed pink with streaks of purple clouds, a beautiful contrast to the confusion and ugliness on the ground.

  “So what happened?” I asked. I hadn’t gotten any answers from my visual investigation. Only more questions.

  Harrison shook his head, seeming just as confused. “We’re not sure. We crashed and everything went upside down. Then one of the guards opened our door and told us to free our friends and get the hell out of here. Then he turned around and ran off. We heard gunfire for a while, but it stopped.”

  Hendrix stepped forward, Vaughan tight at his side. The nine-year-old had completely dropped the tough guy act now that he had his parents.

  “I think we need to take the advice though. Let’s get out of here.”

  Diego stepped in to add, “How? Are we going to take off running through the woods so they can find us again?”

  “Do you think there’s a spare?” Nelson asked.

  I didn’t know what that meant but Hendrix, Harrison and King jumped right on the idea. They ran around to the trunk of the truck I’d just escaped and started searching for something.

  I leaned into Miller, “What’s a spare?”

  “Tire.”

  Oh. Since Miller didn’t rush to help my brothers, I had to assume this was because the Apocalypse had happened when he was nine. He’d never had a chance to drive a real car.

  “We found one!” Harrison declared. “And by one, I mean it’s a donut. But he thinks it will work!”

  Diego looked at Reagan. “What is a donut? He cannot mean the food.”

  “It’s a small tire,” she explained. “They’re going to change the flat one and use this truck to get us out of here.”

  Diego’s eyebrows raised but he seemed to get it. He moved over to watch my brothers change the tire. His men followed, commenting on the work in Spanish.

  The Colombians joined too. Then Oliver and Fang. Pretty soon, Nelson and Miller walked over as well, leaving all of the women behind.

  I glanced at Tyler, who was standing next to me after she’d walked over to make sure her brother was okay. “Aren’t they just changing the tire?”

  “This is what men do, Page. They watch each other do manly things.”

  “Changing a tire is a manly thing?”

  Her lips twitched, but she kept a straight face when she asked, “Well, could you change a tire?”

  “On a bike,” I said defensively.

  “Not the same thing.”

  I could see that. But I didn’t want to admit that she was right. “It’s still weird.”

  She nodded. “It is indeed.”

  The tire took a while to change. Something about rust and lug nuts and not having done this in a while. The females stood watch while the men stayed entranced with the tire.

  It was eerily silent. No wildlife flitted around the trees that lined the highway. No hungry Feeders ambled out of the woods to eat us. No men with guns chased us down.

  “Where did they go?” Adela asked softly. “They couldn’t have run far.”

  “Maybe there’s something worse in the woods,” Reagan added helpfully. “Maybe we’re about to get eaten by the smoke monster.”

  Haley snorted, “Was tha
t a Lost joke?”

  “Damn right,” Reagan grinned. “I think it’s totally relevant.”

  Haley giggled. “God, I miss Netflix.”

  “What’s Netflix?” I asked. “What’s a smoke monster?”

  Instead of answering, Reagan shook her head and said, “Page, you had the worst childhood. I feel sorry for you.”

  I wanted to argue with her… but she maybe was right.

  “Done!” Hendrix exclaimed. He dropped something on the pavement and it clanked around at his feet while he grinned at us, hands covered in black grease. “I am amazing.”

  “Sure you are, Babe,” Reagan assured him. “Amazing.”

  He ignored her sarcasm. “Okay, everybody pile in. We’re going to have to make it work back there. Harrison, King, Diego you can ride up front with me. But the rest of you are going to have to squish.”

  I glanced in the back. “There’s no way we’re all going to fit. We’re going to have to sit on top of each other.”

  “So be it,” Hendrix answered. “We have to get out of here now. There’s no time to check out the other trucks. We’re going to have to make it work.”

  Everybody groaned, but survival was more important than comfort, so we obeyed. Haley and Reagan got in back first and we handed them their kids so they could squish near the back. The scientists went next, then the Colombians. Just when Adela was about to board, we heard the telltale snapping of twigs in the trees.

  I pulled my blades from my back holster. The men that captured us had never bothered to take them from me. I realized then that they had to have had real bullets. Otherwise they would have disarmed me right away.

  I turned around just in time to see one of the men that had held the flashlights stumble from the woods. He had a large gash down the side of his face, starting at his forehead, slashing over his temple and disappearing into his hairline. Blood mingled with sweat and dripped down his face. He was dressed in black like the other men had been, but he was younger than them. I could see that right away.

  “Good,” he panted, “you’re still here.”

  Everyone had their blades ready, but the kid didn’t seem worried.