Love & Decay, Episode 11

by Higginson, Rachel

  “His minions are the Zombies in this scenario,” Nelson explained helpfully. “And I believe you are the damsel. Although, I might be wrong. Maybe Kane’s the damsel? I’m not exactly-“

  “Shush!” Haley elbowed Nelson in the side. “Reagan is obviously the damsel. Why would Kane be the damsel?”

  “Because of the distress?” Nelson was only sounding more confused. “Because he was the one imprisoned?”

  Haley growled at her boyfriend, while I tried to soothe her anger. “I knew what you meant, Hales.” I crossed my arms and gave Hendrix a pleading glance. Apparently he thought I deserved this because he only winked at me.

  “She knew what I meant,” Haley snarled. Her fierce gaze returned to mine and she continued with her rant, “Just so we’re clear I plan on removing his balls with a chainsaw and force-feeding them to him when he gets back here. So if you’re brainwashed into the Allen Cult of Keeping Feeders as our Houseplants then you should speak up now because it might be painful for you to watch. But obviously necessary.”

  “Geez, Haley, remind me never to get on your bad side,” Harrison winced.

  “You’re already there!” she barked back.

  I suppressed a smile when Harrison covered his crotch like men tended to do in basketball games during a pick and roll. She was out of control. Although I couldn’t blame her. If the tables were reversed I would have been out of my mind with concern for her.

  “Hales, I agree that Kane Allen is the antichrist, but you should probably let him keep his balls,” I stated nobly. “There was no brainwashing, no raping or pillaging, in fact, there wasn’t even a bath. I mean, there was a bath. But I had very little to do with it. I let him take care of all that. I’ll admit I should never have been out there in the first place with him, but I wasn’t a complete moron about it, alright?”

  “Oh,” Haley deflated a little bit. “Did he at least try to brainwash you?”

  “Are you honestly disappointed that he didn’t?” I shook my head at her, trying to understand.

  “I wanted a reason to unman him,” she shrugged.

  Vaughan jumped in, “You are a scary, scary woman.”

  “Ack!” Harrison gagged. “What’s that smell?”

  “Feeders,” Hendrix explained, moving back to my side. “They’re burning the bodies. We should go inside.”

  “Plus, Page wants to kick your ass next.” Haley looked at me meaningfully.

  “I doubt that,” I groaned.

  “Those were her exact words,” Haley promised.

  “Really?” Hendrix, Vaughan and Nelson all demanded at the same time.

  Haley rolled her eyes, “No! But you know she’s going to let Reagan the Idiot have it. Where were you by the way? How’d you survive? Was it Gage’s bunker?”

  “Yeah, Gage’s bunker, some good luck and some better aim.” I shrugged it off like I was in life and death situations every day. Oh, wait.

  “Gage and Tyler guessed you’d make it to the bunker. Thank God for that,” Haley declared sincerely and then her eyes narrowed and she was back to being mad at me. “That’s your new name by the way. Reagan the Idiot. Get used to it!”

  “If you keep calling me that I’m going to let myself become brainwashed.” I dropped back and let Nelson pull Haley along ahead of us. Hendrix pulled me to his side with a possessive hand around my waist. He could not stop touching me. And I was falling in love with him more and more by the second.

  Haley was shouting something obscene at me, but the only voice I heard was Hendrix’s low and rumbly in my ear. “Over my dead body.”

  I turned toward him, forcing him to stop in the shade of the building. The door was just a few feet from us and the rest of the Parkers and Haley had disappeared into the loading dock area.

  “Don’t even whisper those words,” I demanded. I laid a hand against the rough stubble of his short beard.

  He nodded and pulled me tighter. “Tell me what happened before the Feeders came.”

  This was not an investigatory question of a smart, capable man trying to get to the bottom of a mystery.

  This was a vulnerable man trying to ease his jealous heart. This was the fragile part of the man that I loved trying to absolve the woman he cared about from the something that would rip his heart in two.

  And I would do anything to save that heart from experiencing anymore tragedy or ache. “We walked down to the river. I helped him with his socks and then I cut his zip tie free so he could wash himself. In hindsight, not wanting to touch Kane was probably what saved our lives. His hands were free so when the Feeders swarmed, he was able to fight.”

  “And he never asked you to touch him?”

  Ugh, how to say this? “He wouldn’t have said no if I would have offered. But I didn’t. There was no inappropriate touching the entire time we were together. There weren’t even really inappropriate words. Kane was perfectly distant.” A pang of guilt punched me in the stomach and I felt like puking. The thing was though, I was telling the truth. Kane hadn’t been overly anything. He had stayed on his side of the room until I was the one that needed him close. He hadn’t pressed the bathing thing once and I had been telling the truth about being alive because his hands weren’t free. He hadn’t acted in any way that was inappropriate.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I had lied to Hendrix- that something boundary-crossing did happen.

  If only I knew what it was.

  “I still hate him,” Hendrix swore.

  “I still hate him, too,” I promised right back.

  At that exact moment Kane, his dad and Gage walked through the back gate followed by a mixture of Matthias’s men and the men from here. They were tensed and relaxed at the same time so I had to assume they were discussing politics- hating each other but putting a good face on for everyone else. Their voices were low murmurs hidden beneath all the sounds of movement and activity in the courtyard area.

  “It’s time to go in now,” Hendrix declared shortly.

  Kane looked over and saw me standing with Hendrix. I watched his expression narrow and harden even from over here and stood astounded for a minute that I really had escaped that entire fiasco without getting hurt or losing something to me that was very valuable- like my pride and integrity.

  “I think so too,” I agreed quickly.

  We turned our back on Gage and his “meeting” and walked into the coolness of the building.

  “Ten bucks says Page really does kick your ass for leaving,” Hendrix chuckled.

  I didn’t say anything. How could I make that bet? I knew I was going to lose.

  Chapter Three

  Page hadn’t exactly kicked my ass but she might as well have when she looked up at me with those puppy dog eyes that accused me of abandoning her.

  And here I thought everyone had been sitting around worried about me!

  It felt more like I was being blamed for all this being my fault- even though I knew their anger stemmed from worry and concern.

  We were still set up in the activity room since there hadn’t been time to move to our new quarters yet. King had been hanging out with Page and although he didn’t exactly say he was happy to see me, he did smile at me when I walked in the room. So, there was that.

  “We need to talk,” Vaughan declared after Page had finished lecturing me on never leaving Vaughan or Hendrix’s side again. Even the eight year old was smarter than me. “We’re in a little bit of hot water.”

  We gathered around Vaughan in the corner of the sparse room and stayed quiet so Vaughan could keep his voice down and not be overheard by people walking by in the hallway. Hendrix hadn’t taken his hands off me since Kane reappeared and Nelson and Haley were the same way. Haley reached out and grabbed my hand too, while Page pressed her body so tight against my thigh I thought I would fall over.

  So, they had been a little bit angry with me.

  But now I felt loved- so loved my heart was bursting from their affection.

  Not even fo
ur months ago Haley and I had nobody but ourselves. And now I was so surrounded by love I wasn’t sure what to do with it all except hold on and never, ever let go.

  Hendrix pushed my hair to the side and pressed a gentle kiss to the nape of my neck. He took a deep breath and his arms tightened around me. We were both dirty, exhausted and he was covered in blood, but there was no place I’d rather been than in his arms.

  “We’re going to have to face Matthias Allen tonight. And I have no idea what to expect of him. Gage and I only had a few minutes to talk during the mission, but he told me Matthias would like those of us that were imprisoned at the Colony back. He would also like Reagan back in his custody since she technically was imprisoned as well. Gage has already told him that’s impossible and plans to protect us no matter what, but Matthias is insistent.”

  “He doesn’t have any actual authority,” Harrison reminded us with a passionate voice that broke a little, making him blush. “He can’t make you go back there.”

  “You’re right,” Vaughan agreed. “But Gage has to play this right. The Colony is better equipped with weapons and their men are actually trained. If they wanted to attack this complex imagine all the people that will die.”

  “Can’t Gage just throw around some legal terms to make Matthias feel better?” Haley asked. “Like amnesty and jurisdiction. He could say we came here seeking sanctuary and he granted it before he knew whom we were seeking it from.”

  We all stared at Haley for a moment until Nelson declared, “God, you’re sexy.”

  “Cuss jar.” Page wiggled her little hand as if Nelson could produce his dollar on the spot.

  “What for?” He tugged Haley closer to his chest and pouted like a child over her shoulder.

  “For the ‘s’ word,’ Page explained very seriously.

  “The ‘s’ word?” Nelson mumbled but we were all thinking over what she could be talking about.

  Haley was the first one to get it, “Oh, sexy.” And then she held her hands up in surrender so Page wouldn’t call her out too.

  “That’s not a cuss word!” Nelson all but bellowed.

  “Yes, it is!” Haley argued. “To an eight year old that is a terrible cuss word. You owe her a dollar.”

  “Traitor.” Nelson went back to pouting.

  “Anyway,” Vaughan drawled. “Back to the more pressing matter of getting extradited…”

  “Nice,” Haley couldn’t help herself.

  Vaughan ignored her. “We obviously need to keep a firm stance. Which should go something like, we left because we didn’t feel the Colony was right for us. We are trying to reach family down south. It wasn’t personal, but we are not ready to settle down. Keep any comments directed away from the inherent beliefs of the Allen’s or the Colony. Don’t mention their mistreatment of Feeders. And whatever you do, don’t mention Tyler or Miller. The official story is we split in Tulsa after we raided our first gun store. If you have to provide an explanation, give them the goriness in detail of what happened and then tell the truth, Tyler was scared out of her mind and wanted Miller with her and away from us.” Vaughan paused for questions, but we were pretty used to his way of organizing and leading so we just accepted the information and let our brains absorb everything important. “Oh, and one more thing,” Vaughan paused to meet us all in the eyes but I could have sworn he stayed on mine for several more seconds than everyone else. And then I was even more sure when he said, “And no, absolutely no martyrs. Nobody is leaving here without the rest of us. There is no scenario in which you are better off with Matthias Allen than you are with us. And furthermore there is no scenario in which we are safer with one of us gone. We stick together. We stay together. And the whole goddamn Allen family can go to hell if they think differently.”

  When he finished we all just stared at him. I mean, he was right- glaringly right and entitled to make that speech. But it was also a little shocking that he had to make the speech in the first place.

  However, this family was all about the sacrificial love thing, so maybe it was important he remind us not to hand our free will over to a sadistic family of control freaks.

  “Why doesn’t Vaughan get called out for the cuss jar, Pagey?” Nelson demanded when the surprise and shock wore off.

  “Because he used a cuss word appropriately,” Page said in a too mature tone with her cute little button nose lifted haughtily in the air.

  “One more thing.” Vaughan redirected our attention back to him- again. “I talked to Gage about retrieving some of our stuff from the van we abandoned. Sounds like, if we’re up to going after it ourselves then we have permission to use weapons and a vehicle. We just have to face the bowl again.”

  “Bowl?” Harrison asked.

  “The highway with all the cars pushed together, blocking the road and creating a death trap for us and a buffet for the Feeders hiding out there. You know, the place Hendrix fell off the roof and almost died.”

  “For the record, I didn’t almost die,” Hendrix cut in sounding wounded. “I had everything under control.”

  “Sure you did,” Harrison snorted. “Because your girlfriend jumped out of the van and saved your

  sorry ass.”

  “Cuss jar!” Page squeaked.

  “That’s not what happened…” Hendrix tried but Vaughan cut him off.

  “Anyway,” Vaughan said sternly. “Gage and his people call that The Bowl. Because it’s shaped

  like one, or uh, half of one.”

  “Ah,” Harrison sounded insanely relieved. “I thought it was because of how it functioned. You know? You trap humans in ‘the bowl’ and gobble them up like a ‘bowl’ of cereal.”

  “Creative….” Vaughan mumbled. “Anyway, obviously we can’t make definite plans until the Allen’s and their henchmen leave. But I think that’s something we would all like to purse. Yeah? We could get our stuff back, our guns, our ammo, maybe some of our food supplies. We might actually be able to help this place out instead of just taking from Gage and his people.” We all nodded enthusiastically. Getting our stuff back sounded awesome. I missed my eyeliner. Vaughan had one last point to make, “In conclusion, Hendrix, Reagan totally saved your a- butt.”

  Hendrix opened his mouth to respond, not caring that I stood right next to him harboring all kinds of potential feelings to get hurt. This argument went beyond me. Probably it didn’t have anything to do with me. This was about brothers, pissing contests and pride. I just let it play out.

  Nelson spoke up before Hendrix could make a solid argument, “You fell off the top of the van! Who does that? You had one job, and that was to not fall off the top of the van!”

  “I had more than one job,” Hendrix finally got a word in. “If you remember correctly, I was up there to kill….”

  “And then you just landed at their feet like a moron,” Harrison continued. “Seriously, what was the game plan? Do you have any idea what the rest of us went through while you were playing Captain America?”

  “Please help me out here!” Hendrix turned to me, begging for me to intervene.

  I bit back a smile and said, “Sure, as long as you admit that I saved you from imminent death first.”

  He glared down at me, realizing he had been trapped. “Traitor,” he growled. I leaned up and kissed his twitching lips.

  “Does anyone have an issue with reclaiming all of our supplies and packs? We might not be able to get it all, but if the van is still parked where we left it, I don’t think it will be that difficult. We could scout it out first before we made any concrete decisions.”

  “I’m all for going back. The clothes here are fine, but they’re a little low on the underwear situation.” King put in.

  “No kidding,” Harrison complained. “And honestly, you can only go commando so long before everything starts to chafe.”

  The rest of the boys groaned in commissary. I felt my eyebrows skyrocket toward my hairline.

  “What starts to chafe?” Haley asked slowly, horror dawning all
over her face.

  “Everything,” Harrison winced. “Especially if you get a bad pair of jeans.”

  “Good lord,” Haley laughed darkly. She shot me a look that said, “Apparently, girls don’t have

  that problem.”

  King brought us back to topic when he announced, “Plus, I haven’t gotten to kill anything in a while. It will be good for me to go.”

  I wasn’t actually sure that was true, but I was too tired to argue.

  “That reminds me,” Vaughan once again drew the conversation away from Parker weirdness to what was most important. “Reagan and Haley, Gage thinks a school would be fantastic. He said there’s about twenty kids that could use an education. You can use this room and we would talk about your patrol duties lessening if you were putting in time at the school.”

  “Awesome!” Haley grinned.

  I didn’t have the effort to respond. I wanted the kids I cared about to continue to learn, but I didn’t want to have to learn to care about new kids. Ugh. My heart couldn’t take the stress for anyone else. Maybe that was selfish. But I’d just nearly died…. again. The chances of Haley and I pulling together a graduating class sometime in the future had pathetically slim chances.

  Plus, there was the fact that patrol and killing Zombies seemed much easier than educating today’s youth without text books, or even a college education ourselves and we had very limited supplies. But it was probably more important to teach them the basics of reading, writing and math than delve into the details of AP classes or standardized testing anyway.

  We just needed to give them a chance at using their brain for things other than battle strategies and quick kill scenarios. And I knew that not a lot of the kids around here had been as fortunate as Harrison and King. Even Page knew how to shoot a gun. We could teach them survival skills, too, that would help them live if their comfortable refuge were ever taken away from them. They all at least needed to know how to load and fire a gun.