Love and Decay

by Rachel Higginson

  It took. And took. And would not stop taking until every last living thing on this planet turned to death.

  The girl called Trish leaned over Page, knife in hand, intent in her eyes.

  “Stop!” Miller shouted. He shoved Trish out of the way and into the wall and then to the ground.

  “You can’t save her!” Trish yelled back. “She’s going to turn and kill us all!”

  “She’s not,” I argued, readying myself to do whatever it took to save my sister.

  Trish jumped to her feet and pointed at me with her outstretched blade. “Don’t be a fool! You should know better than anyone what happens to-”

  “She’s immune, goddamnit!” I struggled to get enough oxygen. I couldn’t fix this. Page had been bitten for a second time and there was nothing I could do. “She’s immune,” I repeated. “She’s been bitten before.”

  The shed fell silent. The Zombies were all dead by this point. It was only us now. And Luke’s people were gobsmacked.

  “She is,” King insisted. “She won’t turn.”

  “Show them,” Luke urged.

  Miller turned her body in his arms and lifted the back of her shirt to reveal the rough scar in the shape of teeth marks.

  “That’s not possible,” the guy with the fro argued. I couldn’t remember his name. Crush? Rush? Smash?

  “So she’s going to be fine?” Trish asked.

  Panic boiled inside me. What if she wasn’t?

  Not my little sister.

  Not Page.

  A hand landed on my shoulder and peace immediately swelled inside, matching the panic step for step. Adela leaned over me and looked at Page. “She will be fine,” she said to the room. “She will be fine because we won’t let her be anything else.”

  Chapter Four

  In the wake of our Zombie massacre, we left the forest without burning a single body. Blood and gore painted the trees and the leaf-covered ground, streaked across the broken hunting shed and turned everything into muddled splotches of death and decay.

  Miller carried my sister in his arms as we sprinted through the forest the way we’d come. We didn’t have a compass or an exact way out and it took us twice as long to find the road as it had the hunting shed.

  We emerged half a mile down the road, the truck a saving beacon in the distance.

  Page was fevered by the time we reached the truck, sweating and whimpering and deep in the throes of fighting the infection.

  I felt sick. I could have thrown up if I let myself.

  I blamed myself for not searching earlier. Not searching harder. Not finding her sooner. After we found Allentown burning early this morning, I should never have let them talk me into going back to the safe house.

  I should never have given up.

  And yet rationally, if we hadn’t been able to follow those Feeders, I knew we would never have found her.

  And if we wouldn’t have found her… what would have happened then?

  Would Luke have been able to kill the Zombie that bit her if his hands had been full with the rest of them?

  Or would they all have been bitten by now?

  Eaten?

  Killed?

  Gone forever?

  Adela’s hand slipped into mine and I closed my eyes from the intensity of feeling that buzzed up my arm like an electric jolt.

  This was what I needed right now- something to anchor me to reality… someone to hold me together while my insides tried to rip my body apart at the seams.

  I helped Miller load Page into the back. King held her until Miller could climb in the back and take her back. But even after Miller settled her on his lap, King stayed close.

  I looked down at Adela’s tiny hand swallowed up by mine. My gaze traveled up her blood-soaked clothes to her wide, frightened eyes. “You’re with me,” I told her. “Get in the front.”

  She didn’t argue. She nodded and let go of my hand. I missed her touch already, but I promised myself this emptiness would only last a minute. I could have her touch again. In just a minute.

  “What happened last night?” I asked Luke. He had stepped up to the back of the truck to help his contact in. I knew it was his contact because the guy looked as bad as the Feeders we’d just put down.

  His face had been bruised on every part. He squinted out of swollen, battered eyes. His cheeks were black, blue and streaked with yellow. He wiped crooked fingers over cut up, bloodied lips. His bruises spread down his neck and fanned across his chest. More purplish, painful-looking bruises poked out from his ripped and dirtied shirt and appeared to cover the majority of his body.

  It was amazing this guy had been able to keep up with us.

  Luke ran a hand over his face and blew out a breath. His eyes stayed on Page. “I just wanted to check on the town,” he said. “She… your sister wanted to save Micah. And so that’s what we did.”

  “But you couldn’t get back to the car?” I guessed.

  “Not even close. I don’t even know where the car is from here. Micah could barely walk. Colony soldiers surrounded us. We were lucky to find that shed. But it only lasted so long before the Feeders found us.”

  “The Colony never did?”

  “If they did it was after the Feeders showed up. We’ve been fighting them off for hours. The Colony would have assumed we were dead. Or going to be shortly.”

  “Well, you’re not.”

  Luke narrowed his gaze at Page. “Let’s hope not.” He opened his mouth again, then closed it. Finally, he let out a deep sigh and admitted, “She got bit protecting Micah. She saved his life twice. She doesn’t even know him.”

  “That sounds like Page.” I looked over Micah again and hoped he was damn well worth all this. “Get in,” I ordered. “We have to move.” I slammed the back gate once everyone was settled. It was definitely more crowded back there this time and tighter with two of them laid out. Before I moved to the front, I told those in the back, “Keep an eye out and stay down as best as you can. We ran into trouble a while back and if the Colony catches up to us, they have guns.”

  Everybody nodded and I hurried to the driver’s seat.

  Mertz was there, standing in my way. “Let me drive,” he suggested.

  “No way.”

  He pointed at my hands. “Your hands are trembling. You look like you got run over by a semi. I think you have a concussion. Just let me drive.”

  My stomach rolled and I knew he was right. Being stubborn about this could mean I wouldn’t get us back to the safe house.

  Pulling the keys from my pockets, I realized that I was, in fact, shaking. My hands and arms trembled and my stomach kept flipping, threatening to add puke to the Zombie chunks covering me.

  I handed the keys to Mertz and regretted it instantly. I was used to being in charge. And if I wasn’t in charge, then I only had to listen to my brothers.

  But handing over something as important as getting us securely to the safe house to a kid I knew nothing about, made me question every single thing.

  He seemed to sense the internal battle waging inside me because he stepped back, giving me more of a space to walk through, and said, “Let’s go, man. Time’s ticking.”

  “Right.”

  I forced my feet to move. I hurried around the truck and jumped into the passenger’s seat. As soon as I sat down I felt the weight of today. It pressed down on my shoulders and legs, pushing me deeper and deeper into the worn seat fabric.

  I hadn’t slept last night and now that I was sitting, the adrenaline drained from my body in a cruel depletion of energy. Sleeping wasn’t an option, but even my bones were tired.

  I felt the exhaustion in my soul. To the very core of me.

  Adela’s hand reached for mine again and that same rush of intensity filled me, spreading out from the small contact where our fingers were entwined.

  I rolled my head to look at her. Her eyes were fixed on the highway, her body language prim and proper, even with all the blood.

  I read it all o
ver her face. She was willing to comfort me, give me what I needed, but she didn’t want to talk about it or acknowledge it or give me hope in a hopeless situation.

  But I was tired of playing this game with her.

  I was tired of measuring myself to Diego, when I knew I was a better man than him. Without a doubt.

  And not only that, but I was a real man.

  The majority of her obsessive connection to Diego was based in memory and their past. Well, she’d only just joined up with him again and now she could see for herself that he hadn’t changed in all these years.

  He was the same druglord turned warlord.

  The same heartless dictator that ruled the Mexican territories with as much fear and oppression as Matthias Allen controlled the Colony.

  She should know better by now, but she didn’t.

  And I had let her get away with it before.

  But no more.

  We were done with this game. She needed a wakeup call and a reality check and a reminder that she was in charge of her future… of her destiny. She was the only person that could tell her what to do.

  Mertz started the truck and gunned the gas. For a moment I could do nothing but lean back as we propelled down the empty highway.

  But I kept my eyes on her. I stared at her until she squirmed and shifted uncomfortably. Finally, she looked at me.

  She couldn’t help it.

  She was as drawn to me as I was to her.

  “I see you,” I told her.

  Her brows drew down over her cute nose. “What?”

  “I see you,” I repeated. “You try to hide your substance. You try to stay out of sight, away from where people will think you’re worth something… that you mean something. But you can’t hide that from me. I see you. I have always seen you.”

  Mertz cleared his throat and fidgeted in the driver’s seat. I realized this was super awkward for him, but it didn’t matter because I’d said what I wanted to say.

  Adela didn’t say anything.

  Five minutes into the trip back, we ran into more Colony patrols. There were three vehicles headed in the opposite direction from us.

  We saw them far enough off that Mertz swung a U-turn and sped off in the opposite direction.

  But the thing about the end of the world was that there just wasn’t enough traffic to conceal us. So a big white truck doing a U-turn in the middle of the highway was obviously suspicious.

  Mertz gunned the gas and sped on. I turned in my seat with my arms across the back of Adela and watched as the other vehicles picked up speed in pursuit.

  If I were the Colony I would have been searching for us anyway and we were just the unlucky bastards that happened to run into them.

  Twice.

  We had a pretty good head start, but Mertz pushed our lead to the limits. He sped through old, abandoned towns and took corners like a pro.

  But the bastards kept up with us.

  Every time I thought we’d lost them, they’d reappear in the rearview mirror racing after us like demons from hell.

  “How are we going to get rid of them?” I shouted over the roaring engine.

  Mertz checked the gages and the review and then shrugged. “I don’t think we are. We’re going to run out of gas first.”

  I sputtered a breath. “Do you know where we are?”

  “Sorta.”

  “Sorta,” I mumbled.

  “But like I said, it doesn’t matter because once we run out of gas, that’s it. It won’t matter where we are.”

  “Mertz, I’m counting on…you need to get my family somewhere safe.”

  His glare did not move from the road. “I’m trying. Can’t you see that I’m trying?”

  “Well stop trying,” I barked. “And do it.”

  He huffed a breath, but didn’t say another word. His foot slammed on the gas harder and the engine revved with new life.

  We drove through another town. The sign read, Welcome to Marietta.

  Marietta had been a cute little town once upon a time. Now houses were empty with black holes where windows should be. The main drag of town was a ghost town. There was nothing left for even the Feeders to pick on.

  Mertz knew the area better than all the other ones. He anticipated the turns and drove the backroads like a racecar driver.

  The truck sped in and out of neighborhoods until Mertz found the house he had apparently been looking for.

  The garage was open and Mertz sped straight inside. Someone from the back jumped up and yanked the garage door down with the pull string.

  All light disappeared and as soon as Mertz shut the truck off, we were submerged in dark silence. Glancing back, I saw that light did sneak through the garage in places where bullet holes had penetrated. My eyes adjusted more and I could make out an old riding lawnmower tucked away in the corner and a wall filled with hooks where shovels and rakes and whatever other kind of tools could be hung.

  It was empty now.

  Shovels and rakes made excellent weapons in a pinch.

  “Where are we?” I whispered, afraid to break the stillness, but unable to hold back my curiosity.

  “My house.” Mertz shifted in his seat. “Well, my old one.”

  “This is yours?” Adela gasped.

  I pictured the faded yellow paint. The small ranch style with vines all but covering the front porch. This yard that was practically dirt.

  This house had been a home once.

  “You’ve used this place before?” Fear made me angry. If he’d driven us to a place the Colony knew about so they could find us I would murder this man.

  “Shh,” he whispered.

  The growl of trucks could be heard a ways away. Gunshots rang through the town. I wrapped my arm around Adela and caged her against my body.

  I would fight them if they found us.

  I would kill every last one of them.

  But they didn’t turn down this street. They sped through town, assuming we had stayed on the highway because we had through so many other towns.

  We sat there for a long time. It was impossible to keep track of time, trapped in the darkness like that, but I imagined hours went by.

  Nobody spoke. The truck barely fit the tiny, one-car garage. At first the engine made some tinkling sounds but eventually quieted. For that whole time the only thing that could be heard was Page’s soft whimpers and everyone else’s tensed breathing.

  “They don’t realize we have to go back,” Mertz murmured after a long while. “They think we kept heading north.”

  My voice stayed low, but I’d been working up to some pretty good paranoia over the last couple hours. “Your house is a pretty convenient hiding spot, Mertz.”

  I couldn’t make out his features in the darkness, but he turned to face me and I felt his irritation. “Yeah, well how do you think I got hooked up with Luke to begin with? I was part of Allentown for too long. When I left, I came here. I didn’t know about Luke or that he existed. I just had to get the hell out of that town. This was the only other place in the world I could think to go. On the way, I ran into some of Luke’s men and assumed they were Colony. When I told them to just go ahead and kill me, we figured some things out. We’ve been using this house ever since. But we’ve never been caught here and we will never be caught here. This was a forgotten neighborhood long before the infection happened.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “Anyway, we have a network of these from Texas to North Dakota. You’ve got to know where you’re going in this place or you’ll run straight into the Colony. Remember that.”

  Sufficiently pacified, I stared ahead again until my sister’s whimpers made my chest hurt and my blood ignite with fire.

  I couldn’t get comfortable either. Not that I was used to being comfortable. But my body grew restless and fidgety. I had a serious case of the jimmy legs and all I could think about was getting out of this garage-size coffin and back to the rest of our family.

  They would know what to do with Page. How to help her.


  Tyler had walked her through this once before.

  “We have to get her somewhere.” My words were pulled from a dry throat. I realized that I was starved, thirsty and in pain everywhere. But I hardly registered my own suffering over my sister’s.

  It did make me think of Adela though. “Are you okay?”

  She turned to look up at me and the top of her head brushed against my jawline. Both of us jerked from the contact. “I’m fine,” she whispered. “You?”

  “Fine too.”

  Her finger glanced over my cheek and I closed my eyes, praying she couldn’t see how deeply affected I was by her touch. “You hit your head too many times today.”

  I loved her accent. I always had.

  It was one of the reasons I sat up and paid attention to her ten years ago. I remembered thinking that her voice was the one beautiful thing I wanted to take with me to the end of my life.

  It had been a ludicrous thought at the time.

  But I’d never been able to change my mind. Her voice. The way she said her words. The way she spit Spanish and lilted over English. The way she said my name…

  It changed me.

  Her voice made me want to be a better man.

  Her voice made me want to forget all the bullshit between us and go back to how we fought today: side by side, back to back, her protecting me and me protecting her for the rest of our lives.

  Forever.

  Forget Zombies and the Colony and Diego and just be us.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated. “I’m more worried about getting Page home and you somewhere safe.”

  She nodded and mumbled something in Spanish. Something like, “There’s no such thing.”

  Miller’s voice boomed through the garage. “Enough of this shit. Get us to my sister.”

  Mertz jumped and spun around. “We have to be smart about this. I don’t have another secret hiding place if we run into trouble again.”

  Miller’s voice dropped low and dangerous, “If we run into trouble again, I’ll rip their heads off with my bare hands. Do not doubt me on that.”

  Mertz looked to me and even in the lack of light I could see his exasperation.

  A smile lifted the corners of my mouth. “I don’t doubt him, Mertz. Do you?”