Love and Decay, Volume Seven (Episodes 5-8, Season Three)

by Higginson, Rachel

  New pain bloomed across my shoulder blade, hitting me directly in my bones. It punched out to my elbow and kept going until it included my wrist and sprinted up to my collarbone again.

  God, that hurt.

  I bucked beneath him again, but I couldn’t dislodge him. He was too heavy. He held my wrist in place over my head, while his knees pressed against both of my biceps, pinning my arms against the ground. His free hand wrapped around my throat and applied enough pressure that I thought my eyes would pop right out of my head.

  The sounds of fighting all around me faded into a high-pitched ringing sound. I couldn’t breathe with this oaf sitting on top of me, but with his hand choking the oxygen right out of me, it was impossible to find enough air to keep me conscious.

  If I could get a hand free, I had another handgun digging into my waist, tucked neatly into my pocket. I just had to reach it and this guy was a dead man.

  I decided I would feel less remorse over this bozo since I had strong proof he planned to kill me.

  “Not her,” Salvador shouted. The breath wheezed out of him. He sounded so winded. Hendrix must not be going easy on him.

  Good.

  I sputtered a cough and tried desperately to gasp in some oxygen, but instead his filthy palm covered half of my face and kept me from crying out. I accidentally got a taste of the grime covering his hand and wished I could take back that moment.

  Disgusted thoughts were quickly pushed to the side as I continued to struggle to breathe.

  If it had been left up to me, I would have died. Right then. Right there.

  Not because I wanted to, but because that seemed to be the track my life had taken recently.

  I only had so many tricks to pull out of my hat. And I had a sneaking suspicion that my time was up. I had survived more times than I could count from situations just as deadly as this one or so much worse.

  I couldn’t really expect the powers that be to keep saving my ass.

  It wasn’t like I was a model of good behavior…

  I wasn’t even a candidate for repopulating the earth with people that weren’t power hungry and murderous.

  It was hard to repopulate anything when you were still a virgin.

  Focus, Reagan…

  But the best thing about working on a team was not being responsible for every little detail. When Nelson bowled into us and knocked the guy off my chest, giving me free reign to breathe again, I took full advantage of it.

  I pulled myself to my knees, which was not easy in my current state, and dug out a gun.

  I yelled at Nelson to move and then I did what I do best: I shot the asshole right between the eyes.

  Killshot.

  I fell backwards in a heap of relief. My throat burned and my neck felt miserably tender. I rubbed a hand under my jaw and tried not to cry.

  That had been a close call.

  I looked up in time to meet Nelson’s concerned gaze. “Thank you,” I croaked.

  He shrugged a shoulder. “Good shot.”

  Hendrix’s long, lean body slammed into the ground a few feet away when Salvador tackled him. The impact forced me to jump from the jarring sound so loud and final, I thought for sure Hendrix would have broken a bone.

  Or his skull.

  But he continued to fight as if he hadn’t even been scratched.

  More gunshots fired around us as we grappled back control. We needed to finish this up and either kill all of the rest of them or start building our own Zombie cages.

  Only ours would hold all of the murderous warlords trying to kill us.

  The cages would fill up fast.

  “Damn it!” Harrison shouted louder than anything. I looked up just in time to see him tip over.

  “What’s wrong with Harrison?” I asked Nelson immediately.

  Nelson’s head whipped around to check on his little brother. Nelson didn’t bother to answer me; he took off sprinting for the other side of the yard without turning back.

  I chased after him. King had knelt down beside him and I feared the worst. I couldn’t see straight as I tripped over bodies and random debris. My heart ached as I passed by the garden and the demolition that occurred, but I couldn’t dwell on that right now.

  It was better to be alive than have a garden these days. Joy would understand.

  She would have to.

  I fell to my knees at the top of Harrison and scooped up his shaggy head to place it in my lap. Blood covered his shirt all over, but on his right side, there was a wet, deeper red stain that spread and continued to spread while we watched.

  “Did he get shot?” I gasped, unable to process the idea of losing one of the Parkers.

  “I think he did.” Nelson tried to disguise the fear in his voice, but I heard the tremble… the slight quiver.

  The final gunshot rang through the night and everything turned still and quiet. The bang sounded extra loud because it was the last one. After it ended, silence filled the void. Not just any silence, but the kind that seemed to scream with its intensity. The kind that hurt my ears and grated over my skin.

  I wanted noise again. I wanted anything that would keep this moment from being real.

  I felt myself freeze up with fear. I couldn’t look back. I couldn’t make myself see what happened to Hendrix because I was too afraid.

  If he didn’t win, if Salvador had somehow managed to get the upper hand…

  “Reagan, what happened?” Hendrix’s low voice hit me with enough force to make me tip to the side. His arms were there to catch me. He had dropped to his knees right beside me and as his hands settled on the outside of my biceps to hold me steady. I finally felt the smallest semblance of hope.

  If we had survived this night, surely Harrison could survive this wound.

  Surely. Hopefully…

  Please. Please. Please.

  “We should get him into the house,” Vaughan suggested. None of us made a move.

  This moment felt too profound to witness, too intense in its despair to push through.

  “I’ll check it first,” Nelson suggested. “Just to make sure it’s safe to move him.”

  Harrison’s head was dead weight in my arms. I cuddled it close, pressing a kiss next to the corner of his eye. Tears pricked at my own. Wake up, Harrison.

  His chest still moved though. That was my only consolation. I watched the steady rise and fall of his chest and promised myself that he would be okay.

  He had to be okay.

  Nelson leaned forward and carefully lifted Harrison’s shirt. Sure enough blood pooled over his skin. With so much blood in the way, it was impossible to see how bad the wound was.

  “I’ll get some water,” King declared. He ran off, disappearing into the house. It only took him a minute to come back with a bottle of clean water.

  Nelson took it from him, both of the brothers showing shaking hands. Slowly, Nelson leaned over again and poured the water on the wound. I held my breath until I saw the true damage.

  A graze. Harrison had only been grazed.

  The wound was clean and really more of a surface injury than anything.

  The cold water jolted his system and produced a gasp from Harrison as he jerked awake. His hand immediately flew to where the bullet had scraped him as he tried to staunch the flow of blood. King produced a clean towel and handed it to me.

  “How bad is it?” Harrison croaked.

  “Very bad,” Nelson told him. Clearly Nelson’s mood had changed with the good news.

  I sat back too, fresh relief rolling over me. What a night.

  “Very bad?” Harrison squeaked. “Am I going to die?”

  “Probably,” Nelson confirmed. “And it’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

  “Can Joy fix it?” Harrison asked desperately. “Or can you? Start sewing! I’ll be still!”

  This question had been directed at me. “What makes you think I know what to do? Or know how to sew?”

  “Because you’re a woman, Reagan! If you don’t know how
to sew, how can I possibly get better? I’m going to die! And you could have saved me!”

  “The bullet grazed you,” I snapped at him. I ignored the vindictive tone to my voice. “You’re barely bleeding.

  Harrison looked down at his hand and for the first time he realized how not-shot he was. “But I passed out!”

  I still couldn’t let his sexism off the hook, even if he had been joking. “You fainted, Harrison. There’s a huge difference.”

  “I didn’t faint,” he argued.

  Nelson let out a chuckle, slow at first, but it built speed into a full-blown laugh. “You definitely fainted, dude. You saw blood and you knocked yourself out. I get it though… blood can be scary when you’re a kid. I wish I had a Band-Aid to give you.”

  “I hate you all,” Harrison grumbled, getting up slowly to his feet. “I’m going inside for a second opinion.”

  “The consensus will be the same,” Vaughan called after him. “Harrison Parker faints at the sight of a little blood!”

  Harrison threw the middle finger our way and scurried into the house.

  “We’re going to make fun of him forever about that, right?” King asked with a devious smile.

  “Obviously,” Vaughan agreed. “We can’t let him get away with fainting. That would mean we’ve failed him as his family.”

  I turned in search of Andy, needing instructions for what to do with all of these dead bodies. We would probably have to burn them. I caught the back of him as he slipped into the house. I had to assume he was searching out his family.

  And that reminded me… “How did you get out, Nelson? How did you manage to kill them all?”

  Nelson glanced up at the house before turning his eyes back to me. “Luke let off the road flare as soon as he saw them heading our way. We had one minute to hide before they burst in the back door. I had hid beneath the bed, hoping I would find the right time to strike.”

  “Smart move,” I offered encouragingly.

  “Wrong,” he bit out. “It was the wrong move. They could have easily killed everyone in the room before I crawled out of there. Or they could have beaten the girls up. Haley and… Haley and the baby could have been… god knows what.”

  “Stop beating yourself up about it,” I soothed. “You did the right thing. You saved all of our lives today, not just Haley’s. Or the peanut.”

  He gave me a shaky smile that I tried to return.

  “You must have found the right opportunity,” Vaughan prompted.

  “I did,” Nelson agreed. “Just as soon as they decided they wanted to touch Haley. I could not let that happen.”

  I didn’t blame him for that. I would probably have gone berserk too if I had to listen to men discussing how they were going to touch my best friend.

  Yeah, Nelson had every right to protect his girl from these monsters.

  And I didn’t just mean Zombies.

  Strong hands settled on my shoulders, wrapping around my neck and bringing me home again.

  Hendrix.

  We had survived yet again, with only minor injuries. But how much longer could our good luck last? We had yet to face Matthias.

  I couldn’t help but feel like our time together as one big, happy family was running out.

  “Thanks for checking up on me,” he whispered into my ear. I tried to hide my shiver despite his sarcasm.

  “I knew you’d be okay,” I tossed over my shoulder.

  “And how did you know that?” he asked with amusement.

  “Because you can’t stay away,” I whispered. “And I know what that feels like.”

  His hands slid over my shoulders, down my arms and wrapped around my chest. He buried his lips in my hair and pressed a gentle kiss to the top of my head.

  “We should talk,” he murmured against my skin.

  I didn’t want to talk. I wanted the make-up session that he promised earlier. But as I lifted my eyes to the backyard, I saw the crazy amount of dead people lying all around. We had so much to clean up.

  But as soon as it was over, I planned to fall into Hendrix’s arms and never leave them again.

  “I think we need to clean this up first.”

  Hendrix let out a weary sigh, “You’re probably right. There are a lot of dead bodies around here.”

  The back door banged open and I glanced over my shoulder to see who it could be. Tyler stood there, panting and gasping for breath.

  “Tyler, what’s wrong?” I demanded, waiting for the rest of the bad news to hit us.

  “Haley,” she breathed. “Haley’s in labor.”

  Nelson pushed up from the ground and sprinted inside. He didn’t look back as he raced for Haley. My respect for him grew up all over again in that moment. He was going to be a great dad and an even better man for my best friend.

  As long as that baby survived.

  Hendrix hopped up behind me and offered me his hand. I took it gratefully and let him help me hobble into the house.

  “The ankle is that bad?” he asked with concerned eyes. The house was in complete turmoil. We side-stepped Adela who was picking up shattered dishes and tossing them into a trash can.

  “I think it’s sprained. I had a few bad ankle injuries in high school and by the size of my swelling and how it feels, I just know it’s that.”

  He threw his arm around me and pressed me against his side, “I’ll take care of you. We’ll have you better in no time.”

  Just as we walked inside of the house, Haley’s agonized scream shook the windows. My heart clenched in empathy.

  She was in so much pain; I could hear it in her scream. I wanted to take this from her. I wanted to offer her something that would make it go away. But we had none of that.

  She would have to do this the old fashioned way, as scary as that sounded. I had full confidence that Joy would help her through the process, but at the end of the day, Haley was the one pushing… nobody else could help her with that.

  Haley huddled in the corner. She was fully dressed in guy jeans that had been rolled over to accommodate her growing belly and boots. She was nearly bent in two, but the bed was busy while Luke and Joy hurried to change the sheets.

  Joy glanced up at me, noticing Hendrix and me frozen in the doorway. “One of those men got blood on the last set of sheets,” she explained. “And since we’re about to have a baby, I thought fresh ones would be the way to go.”

  “You really think she’s in labor?” I asked in a dropped voice. Haley was gritting her teeth and holding her stomach, so she wasn’t paying attention.

  “This is it,” Joy confirmed. “It started just after you all took off. I think it was the stress. Her body has been so fragile over the last few days, and the Zombie attack was the final straw. She was a trooper while those men were here, never once giving away the fact that she was in labor and probably also in a lot of pain.”

  I let out a shaky breath and asked the question I had wanted to ask since I stepped foot inside the house. “You’re sure you can handle it?”

  Joy gave me a stern look. “I can deliver this baby, Reagan. I don’t doubt my skill one bit. But you need to know it’s your job to protect this baby. So why don’t you start by cleaning up my back yard and salvaging what you can from the garden. Then clean up so you can hold this baby when it’s all said and done.”

  She spun away from me and moved back to the bed. She helped Haley lay down and fluffed the pillows around her head and upper body before helping her take off her boots.

  Haley probably wanted privacy for this anyway. I knew I would.

  Hendrix tugged on my hand and led me outside again.

  “I think I just got kicked out,” I complained. “I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “You know what you mean to her,” he reminded me. “It probably has more to do with the fact that you’re covered in blood than her not wanting you in there.”

  “You’re right,” I sighed. “And Joy is right. This does need to be cleaned up.

  “Mmm,” Hendrix r
umbled. “Let’s clean it up quickly, then we’ll clean you up.”

  “We?” I whispered.

  He laughed and pressed his lips to my earlobe. “It’s part of making up.”

  Oh.

  Chapter Four

  Hours later, the sun was high in the sky, beating down on us with the heat of the day. The huge fire we’d built to take care of the dead added to the scorching temperature and made me reach for a bottle of boiled water to guzzle.

  I stepped back from where I had been working in the garden to salvage whatever had survived and stared at the tall flames licking the sky.

  Earlier this morning, Andy had us all gather around. Before we lit the pile of bodies on fire, he’d said very touching words about the people that had died last night. He had forgiven them for their actions and blessed their passing. I had been surprised to find tears stinging my eyes.

  Andy had known how to build the pyre, which made me wonder if he had been through this before. The fire was contained and efficient and as long as I didn’t look at it or think about it, I could delay my guilty conscience from throwing me into a black hole of despair.

  I let out a long breath and set the basket I was holding down. I turned to face the back of the bungalow and willed someone to come outside and tell me what was going on. Haley had been in there for hours. There had been no word on the baby yet, not even an update to let us know everything was going okay.

  Most of our group had been kicked outside. Only Joy, Tyler and Adela had been allowed to stay. I probably could have gotten an invite, but I was covered head to toe with blood and dirt and I felt better with my hands doing something I knew how to do. I would be a nervous wreck inside the house. Nelson had only been readmitted once he’d showered off and changed clothes. Joy was quite the warden.

  Page ran around with Luke and Miller, playing tag or something along those lines. Her laughter lit up an otherwise tense morning and soothed some of the pain and heartbreak from last night.

  I didn’t think I would ever get used to people trying to kill me or sell me to Matthias.

  I should probably be used to it by now, but something in my spirit refused to allow this to become my reality. I was a person. A human being. My value could not be measured against material things and my life was worth more than any alliance.