Love and Decay, Season Two Omnibus: Episodes 1-12

by Higginson, Rachel

  I had to stay aware of where Hendrix and Vaughan moved because they seemed to forget I was a branch higher than them and could easily put a bullet in the top of their skulls if we weren’t careful.

  Shutting one eye, I narrowed my field of vision and focused on the tops of the Feeders’ heads. They would leap at the trunk of the tree and clutch on with inhuman strength. As soon as they were beneath me, I would find the top of their head and pull the trigger. This made killing easy, but they weren’t exactly still or orderly about it. Many times they would get pushed down when a stronger, faster Feeder would try to climb over them. It was like being shuffled to the bottom of the deck. They would fight their way out of our rising body count and the fun would begin all over again.

  Their screeching moans crawled beneath my skin and warred with their dying yelps of last second pain. They were disgusting and haunting. They were everything that should not be real. And when they looked at me with those deadly, blood-red eyes, I wondered if we even stood a chance against such an ominous enemy.

  Was this it?

  Was this how I would live out every day forward until I either ended up like them or succumbed to be their next meal?

  Did it matter? One end was as gruesome as the other.

  Okay, enough with the existential crisis, I had Zombies to kill.

  I looked down at a skull that had only thin strands of matted hair, thickly clotted with some kind of oozing puss that dripped from his pasty skin. His fingers dug into the rough bark and he looked up at me with a foaming mouth and desperate hunger. His large, booted feet slid against the bodies beneath him while he struggled to find a foothold. He made these growling, snarling noises that made the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up. A mucousy line of bloody something dripped from the corner of his mouth and ran down his chin.

  I swallowed down the rising bile and took aim. At the last second he ducked his head to the side and my bullet found purchase in his shoulder. He didn’t even notice the ripping wound. And why would he? His focus was on my brains, not his should-be mortal wound and spurting blood. I readied my gun again and fired a second time. This time the chamber clicked empty and nothing happened.

  I fought the panic that wanted to scream through my body and make me fumble my next step. If I didn’t know better I would have sworn a sinister smile flashed across the Feeder’s face as he watched my eyes register panic.

  I ignored the foreboding feeling that punched me in the kidneys and dug around in my pockets for the right bullets. I had two sets with me so I could refill either gun; plus, I was carrying three different hunting knives. I couldn’t remember which pocket these bullets were in, though, and it took me much longer than it should have. My fingers trembled; my vision struggled to see through the blind panic and in the light of the moon that had moved behind thick clouds.

  “Reagan?” Hendrix called from in between shots. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m working on it!” I hollered back.

  Click, click, click, in went the bullets. I snapped the clip back into place and flicked off the safety again. The same bald guy was still on his way up to me. He must have gotten pushed down the pile while I was busy, because I was sure Hendrix or Vaughan would have taken him out by now.

  I aimed my weapon again at his big, bulbous head but as I was getting ready to pull the trigger, something flew up and hit me in the shoulder. I flailed backwards, barely grabbing the bark with my fingertips. My nails slammed against the wood, and splinters dug beneath my short nails. Tears flooded my eyes at the obnoxious pain. But I didn’t have time to worry about that; the bark was pulling away from the tree with my weight forcing it back. I grabbed the tree with both arms and righted myself again. My shoulder throbbed from where I had been hit. I rubbed at it dumbly, trying to figure out what hit me.

  I looked around, but only saw the pack of savage Feeders beneath me. The smiling Feeder had somehow managed to climb higher. I pointed my gun at his head for the third time and determined to end him. And when I went to pull the trigger, another something hit me smack dab in my temple.

  And it hit me freaking hard.

  I was knocked off balance again and when I threw my body against the tree to keep from falling backwards, I slammed the other side of my head into the unforgiving bark- not my brightest moment.

  The scratching surface scraped across my temple and cheek, all the way to the side of my nose. I dug my fingers in again and more splinters embedded beneath my nails.

  I felt like crying from frustration. How hard was it to kill someone?

  And what kept hitting me?

  My head throbbed on both sides from where I’d been hit and where I’d slammed my own head into the tree. When liquid dripped into the corner of my eye, I lifted my fingers to find that whatever hit me last time had sliced open my skin. Blood ran from a small gash down the side of my head and into my eye, blurring my vision and stinging like a son of a bitch.

  “Damn it,” I hissed.

  “What’s wrong, Reagan?” Hendrix bit out, sounding uncharacteristically panicked.

  And when I looked down, I could see why. Although we had laid waste to several Feeders, there was no end in sight and they clambered and fought with each other to get to us.

  “Take out that big guy, Hendrix! Do it now!” I yelled at him. I didn’t even want to attempt to shoot again until I could find out where all these injuries were coming from. But that guy was making more progress than anyone else and we couldn’t afford to let that happen.

  A gust of wind blew against my face and I felt the hot blood cool in the chilly temperature. I had a moment of hysteria before the Zombies below ignited in a wild frenzy of bloodlust. Fear and despair clawed at the back of my throat and I tried to still the hyperventilating in my chest.

  “What the hell?” Vaughan shouted.

  “I’m bleeding!” I told him.

  “What?” Hendrix glanced up at me for a moment. “How?”

  “I’m not sure-” Just as the words came out of my mouth, her bright red eyes flashed through the heavy branches.

  The leader. The one who had spoken their Feeder language.

  She perched in a tree directly across from me, crouched low like an animal. She balanced effortlessly on the branches, with her knees spread wide and her hands poised like a feline. Her eerie eyes watched me intently and her yellowed teeth shined between the dark leaves.

  A chill slithered down my spine. My first thought was that this crazy bitch was going to kill me.

  She lifted her arm and chucked something at me. I ducked in time for the fist-size rock to pelt the bark over my head and send splinters of wood showering down on me. I covered my head with my arms out of instinct for a second. I hadn’t meant to take my eyes off her, but my body had reacted before my mind could force me into a different action.

  It took maybe three seconds for all of that to happen. I opened my eyes as soon as my brain registered what a stupid thing I had done and I swiveled back to face her. I raised my weapon with two hands. My foot was planted in that wedge; my toes were numb by now. No matter how many times I was knocked around up here, my foot, lodged in that small space, had kept me anchored.

  But none of that mattered.

  Before I could even focus on her placement in the other tree, she let out a violent scream of ill-intention and launched herself through the branches and across the space between us. No human could have made that jump.

  No human would have even tried.

  But she wasn’t human.

  And she wasn’t bound by fear or insecurity.

  Her powerful legs propelled her forward and she came at me faster than I could blink. In my head, I watched the scene unfold in agonizingly slow motion. My arms felt like they weighed a thousand pounds and I couldn’t aim at her. I couldn’t even turn my body. My bones slowly snapped into rigid stiffness, like the rolling aftershock of an earthquake. My heart thumped once, twice… three times so hard I thought it would punch straight through my
chest.

  Her crazed, knotted hair flew violently around her face. Her crimson eyes were trained on my neck and her claws were bared like a rabid animal.

  She was the single, most terrifying creature I had ever seen.

  There was no time for fight or flight reactions or game plans or contingency plans. There was only her, coming at me with her chomping teeth salivating for my flesh.

  She hit me hard and fast. I didn’t have time to pull my foot out of its wedge or aim my gun at her. The force of her landing on top of me, slammed the back of my head into my old friend the goddamn tree; but she hit it too- forehead first. I emptied three bullets into her gut, where my hands were now imprisoned between our two bodies. Thick, curdled blood dripped in smattering plops on my shoes and the branch I was still stuck in. Her nails dug deep into my arms, through my jacket and shirt, all the way to tender flesh.

  But all the while I pushed her away with my arms. Somehow I managed to keep her mouth from grazing my skin, but it was only a matter of time. With a primal shriek of desperation, I pushed her back with the barrel of my gun and got a shot off in her chest. The momentum of the wound rocked her back and her feet lost what little footing she had.

  Her arms flailed in a surprisingly human gesture and for a third of a second, I saw the woman she used to be. I raised my arms and just as she began to fall backwards I nailed her with a shot right in the center of her forehead. Her bloody eyes were huge with shock as she fell back. Her nails tore through my skin while her body succumbed to gravity.

  If only, my trouble could have ended there.

  Her nails pulled my arms with her heaviness. Her feet tangled in mine. My desperation to get my shot off had left me unbalanced and unprepared for the kickback. I wobbled. My shoe stayed lodged in the branch, long enough for me to flip over and slam into Hendrix’s back.

  I knew that I pushed him off balance, but before I could think of how to keep him from falling, my foot slipped out of my tennis shoe and I was on my way down again… into the pile of dead Feeders and live ones.

  In the last two years, I had felt panic and fear. I had felt them strongly and acutely. I had felt them so powerfully that I thought I would die from those feelings alone.

  In the early days, before Haley and I really knew how to load a gun, the fear had been so strong that I believed my heart was permanently damaged from those do-or-die experiences.

  Since then, I had witnessed my loved ones face unthinkable danger; I had looked death in the eye several times and witnessed other people ripped to shreds by a horde like this.

  I could honestly say that whatever I felt before paled in comparison to the utter hysteria and terror that punished my adrenaline-riddled body at that moment.

  I hit the ground so hard all of my bones rattled with the impact. My head slammed back against the hard ground, wounding an already injured sore spot. I had managed to avoid a pile of dead bodies, but I wondered if a mound of deceased Feeders wouldn’t have been softer. The breath whooshed from my lungs and my throat seemed to completely close up. My chest started to make choked, gasping noises before my brain could catch up and settle myself into rational thinking.

  By the time a full breath had reentered my lungs, my chest burned and my stomach roiled with queasiness. My vision dotted with black spots and blurred so that the world didn’t make sense in front of me. I was sure I had a concussion.

  Another one.

  I wondered how many of these I could come down with before some higher power permanently took me out of the game- meaning Gage took me out of the watch rotation because I was like a lame horse that needed to be put to pasture.

  Or I just died right then and there.

  I compelled my body into action by remembering the people I loved, still alive and fighting for their lives. I rolled away just as a Feeder, trapped beneath the growing-pile of bodies, lashed out for me with a meaty claw.

  I had dropped my gun sometime in the fall and my addled brain couldn’t remember if it was before I fell or after. I scrambled to my feet and waddled around drunkenly as I tried to squint through the black spots dancing in my vision. My focus was too distorted, and the night too dark for me to find a gun amidst the black grass and fallen leaves that littered the ground.

  Panic shouted at me to pay attention and find my weapon, but the excruciating pain roared inside my head and muddled every thought.

  I did have enough sense to pull out one hunting knife. For a couple seconds I stared at the tree, wondering how I would climb it again; but that only lasted as long as it took the next Feeder to break away from his same mission.

  He turned his insatiable thirst for flesh on me and the exposed plate of his skull winked at me in the dim moonlight. He lurched at me and I noticed a huge chunk of one of his legs was missing. From mid-shin downward something had ripped that appendage clear off.

  My stomach lurched at the gruesome sight and I forced my arm to raise the knife. Vaughan and Hendrix were close by and I should have counted on them to help me, but I was too confused to put all those variables together.

  I couldn’t back into the woods and flee, even though I probably could out run this gimpy guy. But I didn’t want to get separated from Hendrix and I was coherent enough to know that my head wound was pretty bad. I would be leaking blood and stranded without a weapon.

  That meant certain death.

  Better to fight it out here with the hope of backup than lead the Feeders into the dark, scary forest all by myself.

  I swiped crazily at the lumbering giant. His limp was so extreme because of the difference in his legs that I wondered how he stayed upright. His normal foot versus the bloody stump of his other leg dueled between long steps and short ones. I wanted to believe I could take him, but then my stomach roiled with nausea from my head trauma and I staggered back, only to throw up every last thing in my stomach.

  This is how I was going to die. This was it. Not in a blaze of glory, or in the middle of some heroic feat of supernatural power.

  Oh, no. I, Reagan Catherine Willow, was going to be eaten to death while I upchucked on my shoes. Er, scratch that, my one shoe and one sock. Puke squished between my toes, and despite my terrifying circumstances the disgusting feeling made me dry heave some more.

  Panic convinced me that I could feel the Feeder’s breath on my neck, but my eyes were squinched shut while I lost it over and over again. Every time my stomach heaved, my head would spin with a sharp aching pain forcing me to be sick again. It was a vicious circle that was seconds away from getting me killed.

  Over the sounds of my retching, the gunfire increased. I could at least focus on that. Hendrix was fighting to get to me; I could feel that he was.

  Through one giant effort of willpower, I raised myself up, held the rest of the nausea at bay and slashed out with my hunting knife. I started high, so when my blade connected with something hard and unforgiving, I wasn’t surprised to find that it had been the lumbering giant’s face. Making my eyes focus, I dodged a swipe of his gnarled hand and retraced my knife before plunging it home in the side of his head.

  Bone wasn’t easy to stab, and under these circumstances, there was no way I could have pushed my knife through his skull to the hilt; but I had the advantage of his weakened bone structure and so the knife went in easily.

  I shoved him back with two hands so that his dying body would land away from me and not trap me beneath him on the ground. I would lose my mind completely if I ever got trapped under one of those things again. It had happened once before when I wasn’t even sure if I’d been bitten or not.

  Never. Again.

  I stood there swaying stupidly before I realized I wasn’t out of danger yet. The ogre from before hadn’t managed to die yet and now, with both legs intact, was sprinting towards me.

  A pathetic wince fell out of my mouth before I dug out my second hunting knife. This one wasn’t quite as big and I hated the idea of getting close to this guy. Where were my guns? I glanced around wildly with onl
y a few seconds before he was on me.

  When he was three steps away he jumped at me, flying like a four-hundred-pound rocket with the ability to change my diet forever.

  I managed to dive out of the way, but my reflexes were slower than normal. He hit my shoulder with his as we hit the ground going opposite directions. His huge body jostled me ferociously and I lost the grip on my knife. It fell from my hands in a pathetic lump of defeat. Tears fell from my eyes as I sought to right myself, but couldn’t get my equilibrium right.

  I pushed myself to my knees, only to fall back to my elbow. I scrambled to all fours, only to tip forward. Damn it, I was so a goner.

  I heard the fat bastard leap to his feet just as my fingers closed around the handle to my… Glock! The tears continued to fall, but this time from gratitude. I decided to give up the fight with my wacked sense of gravity and flipped over onto my back. As he opened his mouth and threw his body on me, I clicked the safety off and let my trigger finger be happy.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Dear Jesus, please let one of those have hit him in the head.

  He hit me at my waist, more blood oozing out onto my pants and hoodie. His crimson eyes stared up at me but this time without any signs of life, not even the undead signs.

  My legs were still trapped beneath him, though, and the other gunshots whizzing through the air forced me to realize this fight wasn’t over.

  I looked up and squinted toward the tree where three Feeders surrounded Hendrix. It took several seconds of focusing before that horrifying picture registered correctly in my brain. But when it did, superhuman strength enveloped me and I managed to push the dead Feeder off and scramble to my feet.

  I stumbled my way over to Hendrix, holding back my gunfire since I didn’t want to accidentally hit him. The wind gusted across my face again and the attacking Feeders turned at the same time. They could smell all my fresh blood and were helpless against the pull.