Love and Decay

by Rachel Higginson

  “Do you have a first name?”

  He shrugged one shoulder and it reached all the way to his ear. “Sure. But everyone calls me Mertz.”

  “Okay, Mertz, what are you doing here?”

  “You don’t know the area.”

  I stared at him.

  “I’m going to show you the area.”

  I held up a hand. “Thanks, but no thanks. We’ve got this covered.”

  He ran a hand over his closely shaved head. “That’s what the last team said and they never came back.”

  He had a point. “Fair enough.”

  “I’m good at what I do,” he insisted.

  “And what’s that?”

  “Killing things.”

  My mouth lifted in a surprised smile. “Well, Mertz, we have that in common. Sit up front with me and tell me where the hell I’m going.”

  He nodded and pushed past me toward the passenger seat of the open bed truck we’d decided on. It would roar like a son of a bitch down the highway, but at this point my main concern was not discretion.

  I turned back to Adela. “I don’t want you to go.”

  She shrugged and caught her bottom lip in her teeth for just long enough to remind me how goddamn sexy she could be. “I know.”

  “But you don’t care, do you?”

  She brushed by me, letting her body sway against mine for just a tantalizing second before she was gone again. “I do. More than I’ll ever tell you.”

  “Adela,” I groaned. My insides twisted with agony. She made me feel like two different people. One side of me hated her like she was peanut butter on the only remaining piece of bread in the entire world. And the other couldn’t stay away… couldn’t keep from torturing myself.

  “I love your sister,” she said soberly. “I’m going. Try to stop me.”

  I turned to face her, meeting those deadly brown eyes straight on. “I’ve been trying to stop you. You won’t listen to me.”

  Realizing I was talking about something else entirely she looked away, ashamed and embarrassed.

  Good.

  She needed to know.

  “You guys, alright?” King asked as he sidled up to the truck bed with Joss in tow.

  “We’re fine,” I answered automatically. Adela and I had been trading insults and remarks for ten years. Sometimes they were more than insults. Sometimes we tore each other apart and left lasting scars. Sometimes we healed each other.

  Sometimes she was the best damn thing that had ever happened to me.

  And sometimes… sometimes we were this.

  My family only knew about a third of what went on with us. And usually they blamed me for being the jackass.

  Maybe they were right.

  “I’m coming with,” she told King with a stubborn lift to her chin. “You can’t stop me.”

  King tried to hide his smile. “Okay.”

  “I’m serious, King Parker.”

  I muffled my laugh at his sideways glance. “I believe you,” he told her. “Nobody’s going to stop you.”

  She nodded and climbed into the back of the truck while King turned to me with raised eyebrows. “This is your doing?” he mouthed.

  I rolled my eyes. “I have no idea what this is.”

  “Seems like you had something to do with it.”

  “Just get in the damn truck so we can be on our way.”

  He saluted me. Because he was a jackass. And then turned to help Joss in the truck. Not that she needed help, but King liked to pretend that chivalry was still a thing.

  I liked to pretend that by being surly and standoffish, I would magically attract all the things I wanted in life.

  We’d see which one of us got what we wanted first.

  I had a good feeling it was going to be me.

  And by good feeling, I meant, delusional feelings.

  Miller ambled out next, strapped to the nines with weaponry.

  “Holy shit, dude. You preparing for war?”

  “Damn right,” he answered. “You better be, too, because I am done with this shit, Harrison. We need to find her. Now.”

  “I’m with you, buddy.”

  “Good.”

  “You riding with me and Mertz? Or in the back?”

  Miller’s expression darkened. “Who the hell is Mertz?”

  “Navigation,” I explained quickly. Before he started killing first and asking questions second. “He knows the area.”

  “He better.”

  I cleared my throat and suggested, “Why don’t you ride in the back? There’s more room back there.”

  He growled something excessively foul but took my advice.

  Thank God.

  I did not have the patience for Miller’s Hulk-out right now. I had my own shit to deal with.

  Once everyone was loaded, I climbed up into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The engine jerked and banged and I rolled my eyes at the unstable puttering.

  “How reliable is this thing?” I asked Mertz. “Am I going to regret this decision?”

  “She’ll be fine,” he insisted. “Sounds worse than she is.”

  “Sure, that’s usually a good sign. Whenever somebody says that it always ends well.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?”

  I put the truck in drive and ignored Mertz.

  Earlier when we’d been out and about, we’d driven straight to the town- or as close to it as we dared to go. We’d taken careful inventory of the area, but I hadn’t seen any sign of Page or the group she was with. I hadn’t been able to find the car they’d taken either.

  And that was what I was looking for now.

  I doubted they’d driven straight into town. My guess was they’d stashed their ride somewhere and hiked in a back way.

  Whether or not they’d gotten out of town was still a mystery, but I wanted to find the car.

  I wanted to recreate as much of this as I could.

  “What’s the deal with these missions?” I asked Mertz. I had a good sense of direction so I knew I was headed in the right direction, but I need more information from my new co-pilot.

  He rubbed at his stubby nose. “What do you mean?”

  “Is there some sort of protocol you guys always follow? I’m guessing they dropped the car off somewhere before they hit up town. Where would they have done that? How close to town would they have risked getting?”

  “About three miles. And yeah, there are a few spots we use for the cars, but they’re generally the same. Of course, there’s no guarantee of that either. Luke does what he thinks is best. So he could have used an entirely new spot for all I know.”

  “Well, since we can’t check spots we don’t know about, let’s start with the ones we do know about. Mmmkay?”

  He glanced sideways at me but started announcing directions to the first place. I tried to give this guy the benefit of the doubt, but experience had taught me not to trust anyone. Ever. So, I studied Mertz, looking for signs of betrayal or suspicious behavior.

  Mostly, he was just kind of weird.

  But his directions were clear and succinct so that didn’t really matter.

  If anything, I figured he didn’t trust me either and that’s why he wanted to tag along. From his perspective, I possessed the power to blow his entire operation.

  And I would if it took that to get my sister back.

  We checked out the first spot. No car.

  We moved onto the second.

  “So what other little helpful tips can you give me about this mission? After they dropped the car, then what?”

  He pointed to the right and I turned the wheel and went right.

  “So they would have dropped off the car, then ran to Allentown. We have, er had, a spot near the back of the wall that we knew we could get through. There were always guards, but this one blind spot you could make, if you knew what you were doing.”

  “And you had a contact inside?” I followed another finger point.

  “Yeah, a guy named Micah.”
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  “How did you meet this Micah?”

  “Sometimes we pass out food and supplies,” Mertz explained. “If we know the people can keep it quiet, we’ll drop off what we can. Sometimes the people that pick up our supplies become allies. Sometimes they just take our food or whatever and pretend like we don’t exist.”

  “And if they become allies?”

  “Then they spy for us. They keep us updated on what’s happening inside the wall and with the Colony. They’re invaluable.”

  “So what happened yesterday?”

  Mertz shifted in his seat and pointed to another right. “We got word that our contact had been compromised.”

  Goddamn, this guy would make me pull every single thing out of him. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that most likely he would die. He would have been beaten to death in front of the town’s people.”

  Shit.

  “And Luke went to rescue him?”

  “No,” Mertz answered immediately. “Luke went to confirm that it was true.”

  Oh, shit.

  “So Luke would have just let him get beaten? To death?”

  “What else could he have done?”

  “I bet you a thousand dollars my sister figured out what else he could do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, my sister isn’t the kind of human that just sits back and watches innocent men die.”

  Mertz started laughing until he realized I was serious. “You’re kidding. You don’t really think… You don’t really think she would have tried to save him? That’s insane. They would have… They probably… I mean, there is no way that they could have gotten away with…”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “That’s insane,” he repeated.

  “It explains how the city burned down.”

  I could see his wide-eyed gaze from the corner of my eye. “Hey-o!” I pointed to an abandoned car with the hood popped open hanging out on the side of the road. It sat ugly and beat up and would have fit in with all the other gas-drained, abandoned cars speckling American highways everywhere, except that I recognized it from yesterday. “Isn’t that the car?”

  “Holy shit, it is!” Mertz exclaimed.

  It was the most emotion I’d seen from him. I slapped his back. Hard. And when he turned to glare at me, I grinned at him. Maybe Mertz wasn’t so bad.

  A little weird. Sure.

  But everybody was at least a little weird.

  In life you got two choices: Be weird or be boring.

  Even at the end of the world I preferred weird.

  I pulled up behind the abandoned car and put the truck in park. The engine heaved and moaned, threatening to explode, so I dropped my voice and spoke to her in soothing tones.

  “You’re alright, baby. Just hang out here for a little while and I’ll be right back to make sure you get home safe.”

  “Are you talking to the truck?”

  “You’re the one that called her a she.” I grinned and started petting the dash. “If you don’t tell her how will she know you love her?”

  He stared at me. “Maybe your whole family’s insane.”

  I stuck out my bottom lip and thought about it. “It’s likely. Actually, it’s highly likely.”

  By the time I jumped down from the cab, King, Joss and Miller were already inspecting the car.

  “Is this the one?” King asked.

  “Yep.”

  Miller dove inside to examine it more thoroughly and King and Joss started circling it. I focused on the surrounding area. There had to be a clue here.

  Somewhere.

  Smoke still billowed in the distance. The fire that razed Allentown had to be intense. There were no people around us, but they were somewhere.

  When we’d driven by in the middle of the night, we’d seen plenty of dead Feeders and even some humans.

  Last night had been scary for a lot of people. I just hoped it wasn’t that way for my sister.

  “What do you think?”

  I looked down to see Adela standing next to me. She was the shortest of all the girls I knew. I towered over her.

  “I think she ran that way,” I pointed toward the smoke. “But what happened after she got there?”

  Adela sucked in her bottom lip again, nibbling on it hard enough to drive me to distraction. “What do you think happened to the city?”

  “I think my little sister burned it to the ground.”

  King and Miller looked my way. “What makes you think it was her?” King asked.

  “Mertz told me the Colony was probably beating a resistance sympathizer to death. That’s what Luke went to check on. He wanted to confirm his contact was indeed caught and dying.”

  “What do you mean confirm?” Miller barked. “It wasn’t a rescue mission?”

  Mertz stepped in, unafraid of Miller- which was a new and entertaining development.

  Entertaining for me, that is.

  Miller was probably going to smash this guy into tiny little Mertz pieces that we would use for Mertz confetti during the next birthday party.

  “We can’t rescue every single person that gets in trouble with the Colony,” Mertz explained. “There are too many of them. We’d all be dead by now.”

  Miller’s entire frame seemed to shake with barely restrained rage. “Oh, so instead, you let them die? That’s better? They risk their lives to help you people and then when it comes to them needing your help, you bail?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Mertz argued. “Our people aren’t replaceable. We can’t just risk lives every time something like this happens.”

  Joss made a sound of disgust in her throat. “Clearly you can. You’ve just prioritized the lives you’re willing to risk. It’s disgusting.”

  “That’s not what we’re doing,” Mertz insisted.

  We’d already turned away from him, though. Our focus had moved on to better things because clearly we weren’t going to get anything useful from him.

  And just when I had started to kind of like the guy.

  Wah. Wah. Wah…

  “I think I figured out what happened to Page,” King murmured.

  “No way was she going to stand for that shit,” Miller agreed. It was the same conclusion I’d come to not minutes before. “Son of a bitch,” he growled. He turned to me. “So now what? You think they have her?”

  “I don’t know.” I ran a hand over my face.

  Another engine rumbled in the distance. We turned in unison to see it coming. The outline of it wavered in the distance, but it was clearly another truck.

  Since we knew it wasn’t anyone from our team trying to catch up with us and Luke’s car was right here, it could only be one other faction.

  And it wasn’t the good guys.

  Or Feeders that had suddenly developed the ability to drive again.

  “Get in the truck,” I ordered. I caught Adela’s hand before she could dart away. I dropped my head, suddenly filled with the need to tell her a thousand unsaid things. Instead, I leaned in and ordered, “Get inside the cab and stay low.”

  She shook her head. “I can fight.”

  I mimicked her head movement and allowed myself the brief freedom to place my palm along her jaw. “But I can’t watch you fight. I’ll go crazy.”

  “Harrison…”

  “Get in the backseat,” I ordered again. “It’s tight, but you’ll be able to fit.” When she still didn’t move, I rubbed my thumb over her cheek and tried a technique I’d never used before, “For me? Please?”

  She rolled her eyes but finally moved. Thank, God.

  Note to self: Girls will answer to please.

  Second not to self: Start using the word “please.”

  Joss, King and Miller had already climbed in the bed of the truck, so Mertz was the only one left to deal with.

  “Get in your seat, Mertz.”

  “Wh-what are you going to do?”

  “I’ll find out where my sister is,” I said matter of factly. �
��But they might have guns, so I’d suggest waiting in the car. I’ll be sure to tell you if they say anything interesting.”

  “They’re going to kill you,” he declared.

  “Not if I kill them first.” I jumped into the driver’s seat, just in case they started shooting. I wanted at least something between me and all those bullets. Even if it was a door the strength of a tin can.

  Mertz ran off to get in the cab. I was starting to realize these resistance people were all talk. They talked a big game like they were these badass warriors, but every time the Colony came around, they ran and hid.

  No wonder they hadn’t made any progress.

  They treated the Colony like they were superhuman or something. But these were men. They bled. They got sick. They died. They did all the same things we did.

  Only we didn’t complain about it.

  The truck saw us around the same time we’d noticed it. It started slowing down as soon as it was in gunfire range and eventually rolled to a stop in the middle of the road. A Colony henchmen pulled himself out of the window.

  They had a similar set up to ours with the open bed full of gunners. The only major difference was that they had guns. And we had knives.

  The guy motioned for me to roll down the windows and I followed instructions. “What are you doing?” he asked.

  I looked down at the steering wheel for a second and decided how to answer that inane question. “We’re having a little car trouble,” I told him. “I saw this beauty,” my head jerked toward the other car. “I thought I could find the part I need in her.”

  “Where are you from?” the same man asked. He had long stringy hair, matted against his face and he was missing his two canine teeth.

  “East,” I lied. “On our way west.”

  “West you say?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’re not from around here?” he pressed.

  “Nope. Like I said, I’m from east. I just want to go west.”

  “You’re sure you’re not from around here?”

  “Positive.”

  “You look familiar,” the guy added. He turned to his crew. “Doesn’t he look familiar?”

  They nodded like the good little robots they were. “I just have one of those faces, I guess.”

  The guy’s attention turned to King. “You look familiar too.”

  King snapped his fingers like he’d just thought of something, “Oh, it’s because of that thing.”