Miller took off into the woods. We followed behind him at an even clip. I stayed by Adela’s side because that was what I did.
She wasn’t the best fighter. I hated that she was with us, but I also knew I would do whatever it took to keep her safe.
We didn’t know where we were headed, but we followed the sounds of Feeders screaming and moaning.
The forest blotted out the early light and we had to pick our way over fallen branches and natural debris. Our footsteps crunched in the leaves as we pushed forward. Thin-trunked trees would reach out with their spindly branches and snag our clothes or catch us on the chin and cheeks.
A fun morning calisthenics routine it was not, but it didn’t matter.
We weren’t out here for cardio.
Instinct prickled my spine and I turned around just in time to meet a Feeder with my blade. It had sneaked up on us without making a sound or we’d made too much sound to hear it.
My blade sunk into its throat spurting blood everywhere. I used muscle and the butt of the blade to lift it in the air and flip it over. It landed with my knife still lodged in its neck.
While it scratched and clawed at me, I knelt down high on its chest, retracted my blade and plunged it through the eye socket.
It didn’t take long to finish it off.
Which was a good thing because when I looked up again, there were more Feeders to fight.
Roughly eight of them surrounded us in the woods. They stared at their dead friend and licked blackened, pussing lips with greed and hunger. They remained silent as they waited for the command to attack and I realized just how deadly this new breed of Feeders was.
If I hadn’t turned around at just that moment, I’d have been a Feeder buffet by now.
Harrison Parker, the Golden Corral of humans.
I was a nightly feast of prime rib and all you can eat imitation Maine lobster.
These Feeders had to work for my delicious morsels. I didn’t just give that shit away for free.
They attacked at once, as if they had a hive mind. Only six of us, we were outnumbered, but we had been down this road before.
A huge, burly fellow lunged for me with nails at least an inch and a half long. He brought thick, dried blood and gore and who knew what else.
I sprung away as he swiped for me again. I brought my knife down hard this time and sliced his hand off. He wobbled off balance, but righted himself quickly enough so he could use his other hand to catch me.
He didn’t even acknowledge that he’d just lost a hand.
He was too addicted to flesh to even register the pain.
I got caught on defense, since this creature was an aggressive one. I lunged out of the way but tried to bring my blade down on the top of his head; he was too massive for that.
He swiped again and this time he caught me on the neck. His fingers came away bloody and it sent him into a frenzied craze for brains. “Oh, you slimy bastard,” I growled. “You’re going to pay for that.”
He charged again and I ducked, then weaved, then thrust my blade into his temple.
Boom.
Dead.
And that ladies and gentlemen is how it’s done.
Fear for Adela and Page spawned a machine in me. I stabbed, sliced and speared anything I could reach. The rest of the horde didn’t take long to finish off. My hands and forearms were covered in Feeder blood by the time we’d cleared this nest.
I wiped my blade on my bloody pants leg and noticed it barely made a difference.
“There’s more,” Miller panted. “We must keep moving.”
I turned to Adela. “You okay?”
Black blood streaked across her chest and splattered her face. Her long dark hair had been pulled into a ponytail, but a few tendrils stuck to her temples and framed her face. “Stop worrying about me, Harrison. I’m fine.”
“Never,” I promised her.
She stepped toward me. “I think you have a concussion.” Her fingers glanced over my temple and I flinched from the unexpected pain.
“Why do you say that?” I asked with a smile.
Her tone baffled me. “Because you’re never this nice to me.”
“Wrong,” I argued. “You’re not nice to me. I’m afraid of you.”
She rolled her eyes, but Miller yelled at us to keep up, so the conversation was over for now. Besides, she would tell me she didn’t believe me and I didn’t want to hear it.
I was afraid of her.
She didn’t even comprehend the kind of power she had over me.
She didn’t know how badly she could hurt me or how long-term her scars would last.
The only thing Adela got was what she wanted.
And she’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want me.
That she wanted nothing to do with me.
I let her run in front of me; in fact, I let everyone run in front of me, voluntarily taking up the rear just in case we had any more surprise attacks.
Our pace picked up until we were running as hard as we could. We didn’t encounter any more Feeders until the moment we saw them all. At least fifteen of them.
They clawed at a hunting shed, desperately working to rip it to pieces. Their mouths hung agape, drooling and slavering for whatever was inside. The door hung off its hinges and more than one of the windows had been bashed in.
Sounds from inside the shed resonated through the woods. Someone was in there. And they were fighting back. Brutally. Savagely.
With every effort to win this battle they waged, outnumbered and boxed in.
It was a tiny place, well weathered and obviously forgotten until today. At our approach, some of the Feeders turned and licked their bloody chops.
I remembered my gouged neck and readied myself for this fight.
“Is there anyone in there?” King called out over the roar of Feeder screams.
A bloody human on the inside would be the only explanation for the circling frenzy of starving Zombies. A pain lanced across my chest as I waited for the answer from within.
“King!” Page’s voice rang clear through the woods. “King is that you?”
“Page!” I shouted with Miller and King.
Her head poked out of the broken window for just a second before she went back to fighting Feeders. “You’re here!” she squealed.
“Page,” I breathed. “Thank God.”
That was the last thing I managed to say before war broke out and the raging Feeders turned on us. Intense relief propelled me, urging me to meet them midway.
I gripped two lethal blades in closed fists and braced my body against the onslaught of Zombies. They came one after the next, never letting up, never slowing down.
My knives moved through the air with precise direction. I slashed one across the cranium, temple to opposite jawline. The soft bones and gelatin-like flesh made cutting through easy enough. The Feeder fell at my feet, dead… unmoving… finally at peace against the disease that had so completely destroyed it.
I stepped over it and met the next one. This one fought harder. Its black eyes dripped with puss and its mouth chomped with mindless hunger. It smelled the way they all did, rotting, corpse-like and putrid.
The smell never ceased to affect me. Right in the back of the throat. Nothing brought my gag reflex to life like getting elbows deep in some good old Zombie gore.
I stabbed at its arm, then its neck, just barely managing to keep it from getting a chunk of me. Finally, I got a shot to plunge my blade through its eye socket. Once in position, I twisted. It twitched in response.
I yanked my blade back and kicked it in the chest as hard as I could. The thing flew back, tripping over useless feet and landed with a thud in the bed of leaves and branches. I jumped on it in the next second and stabbed at its brains again.
Eventually it ceased moving and I felt satisfied that I’d ridded the Apocalypse of one less Zombie.
People of the world, you’re welcome.
My face was in the dirt befor
e I could register that something had jumped on my back. The gory dead-undead lay beneath me and my face pressed into the soft, bloody earth. I gagged again.
Ugh, this was the worst.
I bucked, trying to dislodge my attacker, but its teeth had clamped onto my holster. Panic infused the pumping adrenaline; in another half second it would realize leather didn’t quite compare to the delicacy of my prime flesh.
I’d lost my knife in the fall, but barely. I stretched, reaching forward for the blade just beyond my fingertips. I touched the butt with my middle finger, the breath squeezing out of me with the pressure on my back.
I… almost… had…
I got it!
Flicking the handle into a firm grip I blindly thrust my arm back and stabbed as hard as I could, sending up a short prayer that I would actually hit Feeder and not stab myself in the back.
How ironic would that be?
I got lucky. The Feeder squealed as the knife sunk into some part of it I couldn’t see. It flailed and deepened its cry to a guttural demon shriek that made my ears ring.
But finally I had enough momentum to toss the Zombie off me. I didn’t hesitate; I didn’t even think about it, I just let instinct take over. I jumped to my knees and threw myself forward, landing my blade right between his eyes.
I pinned him to the ground like a dead insect on a bug board. He lay there with dripping black eyes staring at nothing.
I took a second to survey the area. More Feeders had shown up. The sickening thought dawned on me that we might never be finished. They might just keep coming.
Fresh fear and steely determination flooded my rushing blood. The same mantra that always filled my head in situations like these pounded through me.
This would not be the end for us.
We were stronger than any number of Zombies.
We were more determined to live than anyone or anything on this planet.
We were Parkers.
And damn it, we would survive this.
Adela was underneath a Feeder and whatever fear I’d felt dissipated as quickly as it had come, was replaced with potent and clear-cut fortitude. I jumped to my feet and launched myself at the infected creature.
Our bodies smacked together like two freight trains colliding. My forward propulsion pushed creature off Adela and we rolled together. Leaves and dirt stuck to my bloody skin and clothes. The Feeder snapped at me, its blackened teeth clipping the air around my face.
I forced it back with all my strength. I still gripped my blade, but pointed it uselessly upwards. I couldn’t let go of his shoulder or it would get the better of me.
I felt its bones giving in to the pressure of my hands. Its weakened body began to crunch beneath my strength. I blasted an aggressive shout and squeezed its shoulders tighter, forcing the bones beneath its putrefied skin to give way.
My fingernails sunk into rotten flesh and dried blood. The Feeder pushed into me, adding to my strength. But it was so desperate to sink its teeth into me, it didn’t notice its body breaking with its effort.
We were locked in a stalemate, me pushing against him, him pushing into me. Then suddenly he threw his forehead into mine, nailing me in the head with way too much power.
Pain split across my skull and I saw stars. My elbows bent, weakening for just a second. But it was enough.
The Feeder’s force pushed us back on the ground, him on top of me.
I tried to scramble for my wits, lift my blade to its head, but I was still disoriented and I couldn’t quite…
The Feeder’s head pulled back and its mouth opened wide. The bite was imminent.
Not that I was scared of the actual bite. History had taught me that I was likely immune to the infection. Sure, the fever would suck and potentially kill me like it did Vaughan.
But I was just cocky enough to believe I’d be okay.
Something flew over me, taking the pressure off my chest. Something else hit my head.
A boot.
I lay there trying to blink away the darkness again and when I could finally see, I picked myself up and leaned over on one elbow.
Mertz had the Feeder speared through the face.
Honestly, I had forgotten about the kid.
Good thing he hadn’t forgotten about me.
He stood up and held a hand out.
I took it, stumbling to my feet. “Thanks for that.”
“I think I kicked you in the face,” he said. “Your eye…”
“Don’t worry about it,” I shrugged. “You saved my life. We’ll call it even.”
He nodded and we got back to fighting.
I moved closer to Adela. She wasn’t made for this kind of close combat. She was too little. Her muscles had never developed like Tyler and Page’s.
She was too soft. Too afraid.
She was too helpless; she should never have been out here.
But then she would surprise me by kicking a Feeder in the chest and following after it with her knife, only to hit her mark in the next second.
I tried to step in and get her behind me, but she pushed my shoulder away with her free hand. “Don’t irritate me, Harrison,” she ordered in her thick, sexy-as-hell accent. “I can take care of myself.”
“You’ve never taken care of yourself!” I argued back.
Her black eyes met mine for a brief moment and I felt that fire that flamed inside her. It consumed me. My entire body blazed with those flames in that second we shared.
This was the woman that she was. This was the woman she was meant to be.
She had let Diego make her a victim all those years ago. She had let him run her life and crush her spirit and it had messed with her mind. She didn’t know how to get free from this.
I had been fighting with her for ten years to get over this… to get out of this protective shell she’d crawled into and start living again.
I wanted her to stop being this victim. To stop being Diego’s war prize. To stop living in fear that she would slip back into the willing oppression that she’d lived in for so long.
But I hadn’t convinced her. I only got rare glimpses of this. I only managed to pull this out of her on the sporadic occasion that she would give into fighting with me, sparring with me, letting go of that careful paranoia that defined her and give into this fire that was dying to get out of her… to make her glow from the inside out.
This was the Adela I would fight for.
This was the girl I had spent ten years trying to get over.
This was the woman that had bewitched me from the first moment I saw her.
“Fight with me then,” I dared her. “I won’t get in your way. Not unless you need me to.”
She shook her head, confused.
“You get my back and I’ll get yours.”
I turned my back to her and held her gaze over my shoulder. She finally understood. She let out the kind of deep breath that lifted her shoulders and moved over her entire body. But she pressed her back to mine.
And then we fought.
We fought back-to-back, taking care of each other, keeping each other alive. It happened so fast that I couldn’t remember not fighting like this.
We were seamless.
We were lethal.
We were finally fulfilling some great destiny inside ourselves.
This was how it was always supposed to be. I realized that now. We had been fighting for years. Pulling and pushing against each other so often that we didn’t know any differently.
But this was right.
We were supposed to pull together.
Push together.
Live in tandem and harmony and with this blazing fire consuming us both.
Feeder after Feeder fell at our feet. We started to make progress and Zombies stopped flooding the woods.
I kept an eye on my brother and Miller, even Mertz, but they were handling their own like I knew they would. Joss and King fought similarly to Adela and me and that gave me ridiculous hope.
It w
asn’t even rational hope.
It was unreasonable and totally unfounded, but I felt like this was a corner for us.
This was how it was meant to be with us.
We’d finally figured out the way we were supposed to exist.
Her and me. Working together.
Being together.
My short, ludicrous bliss was cut short by the scream that filled the woods and echoed through the world.
My sister.
“Page!” I shouted.
She screamed again. And I knew exactly what it meant. I felt the bite in my own flesh. I felt the sinking of teeth and the weight of the Feeder.
“No!” Miller shouted. He murdered three Feeders on his way to the shed. He’d been struggling to reach Page since we got here. But there had been a chasm filled with Zombies and death between us.
Now that didn’t matter.
Nothing could stop him.
King and I were close on his heels, just a half second behind him. He ripped the shed door open and it slammed against the wall.
I surveyed the scene inside, ready to behead the Feeder.
But it was already dead. Luke had killed the thing that he’d failed to stop.
Irrational anger burned through me. If he couldn’t protect my sister, then he didn’t deserve to murder the beast that bit her.
She looked up and met Miller’s eyes. “This is going to suck,” she whispered.
I knew she was immune. I had seen it before. She’d survived before.
But still, there was this part of me that doubted she could live through two bites.
Her odds of surviving just didn’t add up. It defied the very world we lived in.
This Apocalypse was nothing but chaos and death, but there were a set of rules that governed our end of the world existence.
1. You got bit by a Feeder, you died.
2. Or, you got bit by a Feeder, you became a Feeder.
3. If you got bit by a Feeder and didn’t get eaten or become a Feeder, then you died from the fever.
4. If you got bit by a Feeder and didn’t get eaten or become a Feeder or die from the fever, the next time you got bit by a Feeder, you died.
You had to.
The infection that ravaged this world did not forgive… did not make allowances… did not smite some and smile at others.
Love and Decay Page 24
