Love and Decay (Season 1): Episodes 1-6

by Higginson, Rachel

  I mean honestly, who let a Zombie version of Hulk Hogan during his glory years attack innocent travelers, just to weed out the weak?

  The entire thing was disgusting to me and I felt like treating Gary exactly how I’d treated his “infestation.”

  Rat bastard.

  “The women typically stay over there.” Tweedle Dee pointed to an isolated set of barracks where two women sat on the front step. One was in a sun dress that was desperately trying to meet in the middle of her body like it was confused and thought it was a belt. The other one was in a t-shirt that had been cut to reveal her entire stomach and men’s jeans that hung too low on her waist. I really thought after Zombie’s destroyed my home and killed everyone I loved that I would never have to use the term “whale tale” again.

  I was wrong.

  And now I needed to wash my eyes out with bleach.

  “All the women stay together?” I asked in a weak voice.

  “We don’t exactly go off and marry them, now do we?” Tweedle Dumb laughed.

  The rest of us wisely stayed quiet. I glanced over at the women again. A guy approached them with a rifle slung over his shoulder. He held out a couple cigarettes to them; they lit up and laughed at whatever he was saying to them.

  I shivered against the violent feeling of nausea churning my stomach. A hundred different scenarios for how I could save those women started forming in my head, but I doubted there was really anything I could do. My highest priority at this moment was to not become one of them, and that meant leaving this alternate reality with the Parker brothers alive and well.

  “Here it is,” Tweedle Dee grunted in front of an obviously unused house. “There isn’t a generator hooked up to this one, because most of us prefer the barracks. Gary will negotiate a price for one though if you decide to stay.” His eyes traveled the length of Haley in the way I would look at a fresh, hot pizza. I was seconds away from taking my pocket knife and removing whatever organs made Haley look like a delicious meal to this creeper.

  “We’ll be fine,” Vaughan said calmly instead.

  “Supper’s in the mess hall in an hour. If you’re late, you don’t eat. Don’t be late,” Tweedle Dumb instructed as the two of them walked away.

  “Welcome to Pervert Island,” Haley mumbled when they were out of hearing distance.

  Vaughan grunted, turned around and opened the unlocked door. We piled in behind him and took a look around.

  The inside was dusty and stuffy, but there was furniture set up neatly and windows that would open up. Vaughan set out to opening all the shades and getting the windows open to let some light in the dark space. I walked to the back of the house where the bedrooms were, counting three plus a bathroom.

  Not that the bathroom was going to work, but it was comforting that it was here.

  I walked into the farthest room, intending to claim it for Haley and me when I felt a presence behind me. I turned around from inspecting the musty bed and saw Hendrix leaning against the wall just on the inside of the door.

  His hands were behind his back, and he was watching me carefully. His longish dark blonde hair was a little wild, his scruffy jaw just a big longer than it was yesterday and his deep blue eyes so severe they made my heart jump.

  “You alright?” he asked gently.

  I walked toward him, unable to stop myself. “Are you alright?”

  He shrugged, nodded and smirked at the same time. It was like the trifecta of sexiness. Damn him.

  “Kind of scary though, right?” I asked, still walking toward him, unable to stay away from him. Although I moved slowly, that was the extent of my self-control.

  “Are you trying to tell me, you were scared for me?”

  I finally made myself stop directly in front of him, but mostly because if I kept walking, I’d run him over or wrap myself around him… one or the other. He looked down at me with a kind of emotion I was convinced I couldn’t describe. It was too serious, too deep and yet gentle enough to make me feel safe all at the same time; those kinds of emotions just didn’t exist in the world we lived in anymore.

  “I am not trying to tell you that,” I argued. “I just didn’t want you to be traumatized or anything. We need everyone on the top of their game. We can’t have you turning into a weepy girl just because some big bad men took your guns away.”

  “You’re a girl,” he pointed out needlessly.

  “Very good, Hendrix,” I teased, feeling my own lips turning into a smile. “You’re smarter than you look.”

  I earned the same momentary scowl I got every time I tried to joke with him. But then he said, “You seem to do just fine as a girl.”

  “It’s a figure of speech,” I whispered on a croak since he had taken my hand into his and tugged me forward just a little. My free hand rested on his beating heart as if I held it in my hand.

  “We’re going to get out of here, Reagan,” Hendrix promised. “And when you’re done playing Vaughan’s wife, we can go back to whatever we were doing before.”

  I cleared my throat and licked my lips before asking obtusely, “Is that a figure of speech, too?”

  His eyes twinkled at my response and he dipped his head just an inch towards mine.

  “Reagan, get ready for dinner. We’re leaving in a half hour,” Harrison called from the doorway.

  Hendrix and I jumped apart. I felt my cheeks blush but there was nothing I could do about it at this point. Hendrix was determined to give me a heart attack and the universe was determined to make us abide by the textbook rule- the one where at middle school dances you had to keep the length of a textbook between you.

  “Harrison, we’re in the middle of something,” Hendrix growled.

  “Oh, hey, Hendrix,” Harrison greeted sounding genuinely surprised. “It’s nice that you didn’t die earlier.”

  My mouth dropped open. That’s how we were going to be from now on? We were that cavalier?

  “Get out of here,” Hendrix pushed his little brother into the hall and stared at him until he’d disappeared into another room.

  He turned around with a half-smile on his face and even though it was extremely adorable and turned my heart into a big puddle of goo, he seemed to want to jump right back into… whatever we were doing, or ahem, about to do.

  Which seriously freaked me out.

  So I did the only thing a girl in my position would do, I put my hands on his shoulders and shoved him out of the room so I could slam and lock the door behind him.

  “Goodbye, Hendrix,” I called to him while he stood there perplexed and alone. “I think it’s nice you didn’t die earlier, too.”

  He shot me his middle finger playfully just before I got the door closed. Dinner suddenly didn’t seem so bad. Dealing with the Parker brothers was way more dangerous than going to dinner with a bunch of bizarre militia type men that could potentially force Haley and me to live in their prostitute housing performing unthinkable services in exchange for cigarettes.

  Chapter Three

  “What are you doing?” I gasped after Vaughan leaned in and gave me a soft kiss on the cheek.

  “Sorry,” Vaughan breathed out nervously. “Uh, I was just doing the husband thing, staking my claim. I was tired of all these men looking at you like you were their next course.”

  “Oh, right,” I cleared my throat and smiled a kind of clown smile that belonged in horror movies; but it was a smile. “I just wasn’t expecting it.”

  “Please, relax,” Vaughan pleaded under his breath. He slid his arm around my shoulder and laid a strong hand on my bicep.

  “This isn’t exactly an environment I feel comfortable relaxing in,” I whimpered quietly. “I feel like I have a twitch, I keep reaching for a gun that’s not there.”

  “I know what you mean,” Vaughan sympathized. “These guys are what nightmares are made of. We’re going to get out of here. I promise, Reagan. So far they haven’t made any overtly intimidating threats to keep us here. I think they’re just trying to figure out a
system since everything else failed them. Their actions are dictated by fear. We just have to make sure we don’t make them feel afraid.”

  I nodded, agreeing with his wisdom. “I get that. I mean, most of my actions are dictated by fear, too.”

  Vaughan turned to face me; his blue eyes, almost identical to his younger brother’s, read me, analyzed me with so much intelligence I wanted to shrink away from the power of his gaze. “You’re not controlled by fear, Reagan, not even a little bit. Maybe the instinct to survive, the desire to protect and a goal you feel compelled to reach. But there is so much more to you than fear. That is what separates you from the women over there.” Vaughan indicated a table in the far corner filled with women in all sorts of disarray and depression. You could tell by their vacant eyes, their skittish behavior. It wasn’t just the life they’d resorted to; it was something that rolled off them like perfume. You could smell how terrified they were, how they believed this was all there was left in life. The one thing I could say about Gary was that I didn’t think he’d kidnapped these women or forced them into whatever kind of half-lives they were living. This was their choice when they didn’t see any other. Women held against their will did not act…. resigned.

  “What about you, Vaughan?” I tore my eyes away from those women that truly ripped out my heart and looked for the honesty in his expression. “What motivates you?”

  “Love,” he said simply. “I love my family. I would do anything for them, anything to keep them safe.”

  “And do you think we have enough? Your love and my obsession with surviving?”

  A small smile tilted his lips and he leaned in closer like he was telling me a secret, “Love is the strongest motivator of all, Reagan. Stronger than fear, stronger than hate, stronger than whatever else is out there. Love is more than enough to survive with; it’s enough to live with.”

  His words felt like a punch in the chest hitting me with so much power. Tears prickled the corner of my eyes and I forced them back, pushed them where they wouldn’t threaten to show a weakness again. “What about me?”

  “Survival’s enough for now, Reagan. And when it isn’t, you’ll learn to love again. I know that, I believe that about you.”

  I shuddered from a heat so ferocious and consuming as it moved from my chest to my limbs down to the bottoms of my fingers and toes. “You know that?”

  “You’re capable of anything, Reagan. Why not love? You might have to learn trust and hope first, but love is in there. I see it.” He shot me a wide, breath-taking smile and turned back to his dinner.

  I sat there stunned with my mouth open. Where had these boys come from? And why did they mean so much for my survival?

  Haley and I lasted for two years without them and in the one week we’d known them they’d come into our lives and taken over. Now I couldn’t imagine life without them, without their protection or without caring about what happened to them.

  There were so many different people we could have run into, people like Gary and his merry band of weirdos. Instead, we meet men who knew how to love and value each other and us, who spent their lives protecting each other so they didn’t just survive through this end of the world bullshit, but they lived through it too.

  “How’s the food?” Gary asked, plopping down across the table from us. He had spent his dinner at some kind of honored position that looked out at the large Army-style mess hall. There were a group of men with him that seemed to have leadership roles and a few choice women that hung around and waited on them.

  “Very good,” Vaughan answered. And that was true. We ate chicken- as in actual meat. I’d never been more excited to see white meat in my life.

  Truthfully, at this point, I would have taken some McNuggets I found in a trashcan. Come on, it’s only been roughly two years; we know those things haven’t even begun to grow mold on them yet. Don’t they have like a solid ten year life span? But this was so much better than even that.

  Hendrix, sitting on the other side of Vaughan, asked, “Where did you find poultry?”

  “We raise it,” Gary answered proudly, clearly hoping to impress us. “A couple of our guys were farmers, brought their stock with them when they came. We’ve got a chicken coop, some sheep left and a couple dairy cows.

  “That’s impressive,” Vaughan whistled and I couldn’t tell if he was actually impressed or just playing along. “We’re lucky to share some jerky.”

  Gary laughed out loud, long and boisterous, as if that were the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “Shit, you guys are lucky you found us. How long you think you could go on living like that?”

  “For as long as we have to,” Vaughan was more serious now.

  “You really aren’t thinking about staying here? After all we have to offer? Protection, electricity, meat, milk. You’ve got a growing boy over there. You think he can survive on jerky?” He gestured toward Page who had successfully kept her hat in place and her head down.

  “Actually, before the infection outbreak, studies were showing that cow’s milk wasn’t all that healthy for you. Our bodies can’t even digest that kind of calcium-“

  “Anyway, as I was saying,” Gary cut me off, but okay, I didn’t exactly blame him. “We are offering you a place to set up for a long time. You could get off the road, take a break. Surely your women would appreciate a permanent home.”

  “What is the benefit for you if we stay?” Hendrix asked smoothly. “From how I see it, we’ll eat your food, use what’s left of your electricity, take up space and keep our women to ourselves. We would suck up your resources and give you what in return?”

  Gary’s eyes narrowed on Hendrix with a scrutiny that sent shivers trailing down my spine. “Your loyalty. And when there’re problems, your willingness to take care of those problems.”

  “Zombie problems?” Vaughan pressed.

  “Among others,” Gary answered cryptically. “And as far as your women go,” he cleared his throat. “Not all of you are…. tied down. Unless y’all share-“

  “We don’t share,” Hendrix ground out, his eyes flashing with his strong temper.

  Gary put his hands up, “I didn’t mean nothing by it.”

  “Thank you for the offer,” Vaughan took over again. “But we promised my wife’s family we would come for them. And if there’s even a small chance they made it, they will be waiting for us. We can’t let them down.”

  “That’s good of you. Loyal,” Gary nodded, but his eyes called bullshit on Vaughan’s excuses. “How far south did you say they were?”

  “Very,” Vaughan coughed out. “They’re very south.”

  “You know the southern states are bad, don’t you? What started in Mexico has invaded up here. It starts in Arkansas and they’re spreading out everywhere. You ain’t going to get far down there without some help. How ‘bout this. You go on and get your family, I’ll even send some help with you. You could leave your boy here, your women too, if they want. Then when you find them, or what remains of them, you can bring them back here and all stay together. That’s what I would do for you.”

  Silence dredged among us for long, painful moments before Vaughan formulated a response. “That is a very generous offer. One I would be a fool to decline, but I can’t leave my family behind. After everything that’s happened I’m just not exactly anxious to let anyone out of my sight. You can understand that, I’m sure you lost people too.”

  “That I did,” Gary answered slowly. “I suppose you don’t want my men either?”

  “If it’s as bad as you say, I feel guilty risking any more lives than I need to.”

  Vaughan Parker, master negotiator.

  I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling triumphantly. I wouldn’t have had the patience to deal with Gary politely. There probably would have been some bitch slapping and toe stomping had the conversation been left up to me. Vaughan was earning my respect not just as a human being but as a leader too. Something I thought I would never give away again.

&
nbsp; “Alright then, Vaughan. Do what you need to do. We’ll take care of your vehicle tonight and y’all can be off whenever you want tomorrow.”

  “Thank you again, Gary,” Vaughan stuck his hand out to shake the other mans. “You’re hospitality has meant a lot to us. We appreciate this more than we can show you.”

  “Like I said, you took care of a problem for us. This is a fair trade. We don’t owe you, you don’t owe us. Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” Vaughan nodded.

  Gary got up and retreated back to his table where a girl not much older than me immediately draped herself across his lap. I repressed the urge to vomit and turned back to Hendrix and Vaughan.

  “Good work, oh, Captain, my Captain,” Haley grinned from across the table. “Solid skills. I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  I snorted. “You couldn’t have done it at all. You’re a terrible liar.” I mouthed liar, so that it wouldn’t be overheard in the noisy room.

  “That is not true,” Haley rolled her eyes, trying to be overly convincing.

  “Case in point,” I smirked.

  Haley stuck her tongue out at me.

  “I’m going to have to remember this,” Nelson laughed at us. “This is enlightening.”

  Haley turned bright red and looked down at her broken nails.

  “We’re leaving first thing in the morning,” Vaughan instructed, ignoring what was happening between his brother and my friend. “Let’s get back, get to bed and forget about this entire twenty-four hour foray into the decline of civilization.”

  “Vaughan, we fight Zombies on a daily basis,” Harrison piped up. “I think we’ve already seen the decline of civilization.”

  Vaughan hit him with a stone, somber look, his voice gravely serious, “This place is worse than anywhere we’ve been yet, Harry. You need to remember that.”

  Harrison looked around with his still vaguely innocent eyes and shrugged his shoulders. “If you say so, brother.”

  Hendrix stood up and we all followed. We took our empty trays and handed them off to a few men designated with dish duty. They had two large tubs of water that they were using to clean and rinse the trays and there was a small pile for leftover food or bones. They didn’t seem to be throwing anything away, which made sense since there weren’t exactly garbage trucks or services around anymore. But I also had to wonder what they were going to do with those bones.