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

by Rachel Higginson

  “Yeah, we’ll be the ones not trying to eat each other. And they will be the ones trying to make sandwiches out of us,” Vaughan bit out.

  Harrison groaned. “Sandwiches. I haven’t had a sandwich in forever.”

  I shook my head at his casual attitude went back to digging in the giant black duffle bag for the right kind of long distance weapon. I pulled out two automatic rifles and passed them both to Haley, before pulling out two more.

  We hadn’t taken much from the original safe house, but the Hummer was already packed and loaded, ready to go. I needed to find the opportunity to ask them where all the guns and ammo came from. It was on the top of my list. Right after, how did you get so good at this stuff? Are you part of a secret government program that knew the Zombies were coming and started raising children in order to fight them off- kind of like 21 Jump Street? Only instead of drug dealers in high schools, they prepared you for the Zombie Apocalypse? Also, how do I get Hendrix to stop looking at me like that…?

  So, just looking for the right time…

  “Reagan,” Hendrix said my name in his deep voice and instantly had my attention- it was obnoxious how he could do that. “Do not start shooting ‘til we take the big one down, alright?”

  “And if they attack you all at once?” I whispered, hating that Page had to hear all these details.

  “Then pick them off, outside to inside,” he instructed. “And if you don’t trust yourself, aim to wound, aim to slow them down, instead of going for a headshot that could miss and hit one of us instead.”

  I nodded and saw Haley agree out of the corner of my eye. Vaughan clicked his last magazine into place and let out a slow breath that we all echoed. He punched the sunroof button and its whirring sound filled the silence for a few seconds. Once the fresh, rotting, gag-worthy smell filled the car we all put our game faces on and flicked off our respective safeties.

  “I should take out the big guy before you guys get out of the car,” I offered, realizing how ridiculous it would be for us to wait for their apparent leader to fall.

  These Feeders seemed so organized, so patient. So far this was unheard of: A structured attack… Zombies waiting for us to make the first move. It did not sit well with me. We were watching an active evolution happen in front of us. I’d much prefer them to de-evolve into puddles of slime or Jell-O or something.

  Instead, here we were, watching Feeders unite themselves into military-esque units. They were playing defense, forcing us to make the first move. Also, apparently all that cheerleading finally paid off- basketball taught me something useful. Go team.

  My game plan seemed simple and effective: pick off the leader, let the rest fall into the chaos where they belonged, take out the rest with precise, practiced shots; that sounded logical to me.

  “Not a chance. Sorry, Reagan, we’ll deal with him. You get the stragglers,” Vaughan commanded from the front seat.

  Well, that just didn’t sit right to me. Once upon a time, in suburbia Middle America, I might have let the boys take care of the dirty work and kept my hands clean and perfectly manicured. But this feminist enlightenment had been forged in the Zombie fires and fine-tuned in good old bitterness and depression.

  You couldn’t teach people this level of angry, they learned it the hard way- experience and two-full years of disappointment.

  Starting with freaking Quarterback Chris.

  “What’s our deal, Reagan?” Hendrix echoed his brother’s order.

  I glared at him, unable to stop myself. He wanted me to stay behind him, as in after him, as in let him do my job while I cowered in the corner. Not going to happen.

  “Then you’d better hurry,” I warned and pulled myself up through the sunroof in a fast, fluid move I was pretty proud of. I didn’t even get tangled in my guns, because that had definitely happened before.

  I heard the curses from the boys below, but I was too focused to be bothered by their outrage. Haley scrambled up to join me, and Vaughan and Hendrix were already through their doors.

  I let out a steady breath at the same time the Feeders moved as one aggressive component to attack. When my warm, living flesh appeared on top of the huge car, their slavering reached an uncontrollable point of no return.

  Sorry big guy, it looks like some of them do all that non-thinking all by themselves.

  I raised my rifle, cradling it against my shoulder and aimed at the beast-man barreling down on us. A few times in the past week, Hendrix and Vaughan had worked with Haley and me on how to shoot this particular weapon. We were plenty adept with the smaller ones, but something as large and powerful as an automatic rifle was an entirely different instrument. And while I had yet to shoot one, the entire process had been explained enough to me that I hoped I got the concept, because this former Prom Queen Runner Up was going to kick some serious Zombie ass.

  I closed one eye and narrowed the other so I could see clearly through the sight. I exhaled a quivering breath and forced my shaking hands to steady. Vaughan and Hendrix had been immediately engaged as soon as they set foot on the pavement and Harrison and Nelson were still trying to scramble out of the car.

  Once I had the big guy’s forehead in focus, I squeezed the trigger and prepared for the kickback. I met the impact just like I was supposed to, lifted my gaze, and saw that I’d only taken a chunk out of his head- that filthy SOB. He was still on the way, and moving faster than anyone his size should be capable of moving. So I repeated my actions- bullet to the face.

  It took two more gory, well-placed hits before I got my kill shot. He fell to his knees first and swayed forward onto what was left of his face, just like in the movies, but without the slow motion. I wanted to celebrate, but there were plenty more from where he came and a hurkie off the top of the Hummer seemed a little excessive.

  By now, Haley stood next to me on the roof and together we picked off the outside circle of stragglers. There were about twenty-five all together, each in a different state of decay, but all with red eyes and rotten teeth. Their grunts and growls filled the air, along with the disgusting smell.

  Bam. Bam. Bam. I fired shot after shot- sometimes missing, sometimes hitting. When my first rifle emptied, I swung the second one I’d strapped around my shoulder and began firing that. Haley did the same thing.

  Hendrix and his brothers held their ground in front of the Hummer for as long as they could, then started making a path forward, trying to end this before one of us became a casualty or we drew more attention from other nearby Feeders.

  Sometimes I felt bad for them, especially after I killed one; I called it the Post-Slay-Guilt. They used to be human; they used to be neighbors, brothers, sisters, parents, and children. Now they were just these savaged, mindless killers; it made me really sad. But then they would do something super grotesque, like pause in the middle of all this gunfire and drop down to eat one of their own dead. And after that all my guilt and shame would magically disappear and I would take the opportunity of their distraction and pop them right between the eyes- boom goes the dynamite.

  I kept my victims to the farthest edges of where the Parker brothers were making progress, but eventually that wasn’t possible anymore. There were still more Feeders than us, but they’d closed their ranks just like Vaughan had closed his.

  “I’m out,” I said evenly to Haley.

  She shot three more times, taking down one more Feeder on her side and nodded. “Me, too.”

  “Should we let them clean up this mess all by themselves?” I asked, while I pulled out the two handguns I kept with me at all times.

  “We could,” she shrugged. “But why let them have all the fun?”

  “My thoughts exactly,” I smiled quickly, and then put my game face on.

  The two of us hopped from the roof to the hood and to the ground in stealthy movements like we’d been plucked from the set of an action movie and ran forward with guns ready. Our scent caught the attention of more than a few Feeders and as soon as they turned to face us, we sta
rted shooting.

  Out of my peripheral I saw Hendrix glance back at us; in that moment he let out a battle cry of fury. Returning to his fight, he started taking them out faster than anything I had ever seen. He cleaned up what was left of the battle in less than a minute. His body moved lithely through the crowd, quickly and agilely. He never missed, never took a bad shot; each pull of the trigger met successful results and by the time he finished, the rest of us were left wondering what the hell just happened.

  Vaughan recovered first, ignoring his brother’s superhero like transformation. “Get back in the car before anymore show up. We’ll just, uh, drive over these. We don’t have time to clean up this mess.”

  We all obeyed immediately. Nobody was really covered in blood, but I felt disgusting and dirty, so I was very anxious to get out of here. Besides, Zombie stench was a lot like cigarette smoke, it clung in the air and dug its way to the fibers of every piece of clothing you were wearing. I didn’t want my hair smelling like foul death for the next two days.

  I reached out my hand to open the Hummer door when it was abruptly snatched up by Hendrix. He whipped me around and pulled me to the backside of the vehicle. He was livid with me; that much was obvious from his hard-like-steel eyes and tense shoulders.

  He pushed me back so I was pinned against the trunk and he towered above me, obviously trying to intimidate me.

  Too bad for him…. okay it was totally working.

  “That was stupid, Reagan,” he growled out, slamming his hand on the window above my head.

  Digging deep for more courage than it took to fight Zombies, I bit out, “But it was my decision to make, Hendrix. If I want to do something stupid, that’s my call. If I want you to follow me, that’s my call too.”

  Hendrix’s gaze dropped to my lips for half a moment before they met my eyes again. Deep blue and concentrated, they startled me with their intensity. “I’m already following you, Reagan. You already made that call. The difference between you and me, I listened.”

  My skin was suddenly all tingly and shivery. My breathing became erratic and I swore I could feel the heat from his body wrapping itself around me and seeping into my skin, past my blood and deep, deep down in my bones.

  Obviously, I was incapable of speech at this point, so Hendrix continued, “I’m not trying to play some ownership card here. I’m trying to keep us safe- all of us safe. This isn’t just about you and Haley anymore, you joined a family and we protect each other. Next time either Vaughan or I give an order, you follow it. Got it?”

  I nodded reluctantly, because he was right. I was realizing now how much easier Haley and I had it when it was just the two of us. Well, easier in some ways; there were plenty of ways life was much, much harder, like the never having weapons ways.

  “Thank you,” Hendrix breathed, sounding so relieved that my eyes flashed up to meet his.

  We fell into each other’s intensity and I thought I would drown. He looked down at me, tilting his face toward mine. My hands started shaking and I pressed my lips together to contain the emotion bubbling up inside of me.

  This wasn’t like an almost kiss moment, or even like a surge of lust or anything like that. The emotions swirling back and forth between us were so much more than physical attraction, I couldn’t even put words to them; I couldn’t explain them, not even to myself.

  Hendrix and I didn’t necessarily get along, but it was mostly my fault because I usually avoided him all together. I’d managed to slip away or find an excuse to leave whenever we ended up being alone, save for the few moments when it was just the Zombies and us. I tended to stick around during those moments. But I never let him have his talk with me, the one in which he wanted to remind me we would always be sticking together. I didn’t want to hear his reasons for changing his mind about going south. I didn’t want to get to know him better, or find out about his past or who he was before he became a Zombie Killing Machine.

  I just wanted to survive. And I wanted to do that while also keeping alive all the people I loved and cared about. At this moment, that list included two people: Haley and Page. And I intended to keep that list short. The statistical probability of keeping everyone I cherished alive shrunk if that list grew. So I was determined to keep it short, very, very short.

  Sorry Hendrix, you need to find some other non-infected, relatively young and healthy, still-capable-of-bearing-children woman to repopulate the Earth with. I was so not interested.

  Still, even after all that, I was trapped in this emotional moment with him and I didn’t know how to break myself free.

  “Hendrix, get up here,” Vaughan ordered from the front of the car.

  Hendrix let out a long breath of release and dropped his forehead so that it rested against mine. His arms encircled me in a hug as he pulled me tightly against his chest. His scruffy beard tickled my forehead when he rested his chin against the top of my head. And while I kept my hands firmly planted on his chest, I felt his heartbeat slow down, settling back into a rhythmic beat.

  Just as I was about to return the hug, deciding that it felt nice and comforting, he dropped me, let me go. I stumbled back against the trunk and plopped down into sitting on the bumper. Out of the hundreds of emotions Hendrix just put me through, the one that rang the most clearly was confusion.

  Freaking Hendrix.

  I grumbled a curse and sucked in a quick breath, holding it so I could listen to the rumble of engines that approached. I sprang up and sprinted around the car to watch the caravan of three SUV’s come to a stop directly in our path with the pile of dead Zombies laid between us.

  Shit- other humans. This might be just as much of a bloodbath as the Zombies we took out.

  Chapter Two

  Eying the caravan of other non-flesh-eating humans, Hendrix held his hand up and I slipped behind him, this time knowing clearly it was for the best. I glanced in the window to my left and saw Haley already down on the ground, covering Page with her body. Nelson, Harrison and King all hovered around them, fresh guns loaded and ready in their hands.

  Out of the lead SUV, a bald middle-aged man built like Bruce Willis in the last Die Hard stepped out so that he hung over the open door, and stared down at us. He wore dark aviator glasses, so we couldn’t see his eyes. I might have been the only one, but for some reason his sunglasses bothered me. I got it; we all had our vices, I wanted eyeliner and matching underwear sets and this guy was raiding Sun Glass Huts. But honestly, nobody had time for sunglasses these days and believe me I was just as worried about wrinkle lines as the next former popular girl.

  A lit cigarette dangled from his thin lips. In the f-ed up world I lived in, that signified wealth and possessions, as did the shiny black vehicles that must have been filled with gas since they all sat idling in front of us.

  Our Hummer had been left running to, but that was based on a contingency plan. If Hendrix, Nelson, Vaughan and Harrison had all died, we were to turn around and make a run for it. We did not leave the car running because we had extra gasoline to spare; in fact we were dangerously close to empty.

  Bruce Willis’s stunt double looked us over with interest for a few more moments before saying anything. Even though I couldn’t see his eyes, I could feel them on me and I repressed the urge to shudder.

  “These yours?” The man shouted, indicating the body count in the middle of the road.

  “Yes, Sir,” Vaughan called out politely. “Are we in your way? We were just about to be on ours and we’d gladly move our vehicle out of the road so you can pass.”

  I let out a breath of relief when Vaughan seemed to be as wary of other humans as Haley and I had always been. There was no one left to trust.

  Well, except for the Parker brothers.

  BW, that was how I was forever referring to the stranger, smirked down at Vaughan, the cigarette shifting in his mouth. “Nah, we’re not passing through. Just stopped by to check out the new talent.” His smirk grew into a grin.

  Nobody on our side said a thing i
n response to that.

  After a few awkward moments of silence, BW continued, “We’ve got an outpost. You can resupply there. Get your vehicle gassed up.”

  “No, thank you,” Vaughan replied immediately, authoritatively. “We’re good on everything. Thanks for the offer, but we’ll be on our way.”

  “You don’t want help?” the man asked in a threatening voice.

  “We’re good, but thanks,” Hendrix answered sounding equally as dangerous.

  “Fine, then I’m not so much offering as I am telling.” He pounded the top of his SUV and men from every vehicle, on every side of the car popped out with guns pointed at us. The sounds of safeties clicking over and clips sliding into place filled our awed silence. The man continued, “We do not offer our help lightly. This here,” he indicated to the Zombies, “has been a problem for us for a while. You solved it, now we want to solve a problem of yours. You will follow us back to our settlement.”

  “Fine,” Vaughan bit out. “We can do that. We’ll be grateful for some help.”

  “Good,” BW grinned again. “Just to be sure, we’ll swap one of ours for one of yours.” He motioned his hand back and forth between us. “And we’ll take her.” He pointed at me.

  I rolled my eyes. I should have started following orders by following Vaughan’s command to get in the Hummer. I could have kicked myself.

  “We’re going with you in faith,” Vaughan countered quickly. “If you take her, we will have no reason to trust you. We’ve got our own guns, so don’t think we won’t protect what is ours.”

  Just to prove his point, Hendrix lifted his semi-automatic machine gun and Nelson and Harrison popped up through the sun roof with their own weaponry. Just because I felt bad ass with all this knight and shining armor-ness surrounding me, I slung a rifle around my shoulder- they didn’t know it was empty- and pointed it in the direction of the caravan, too.

  BW chuckled at our efforts like we were adorable children. “Alright, fair enough.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Hendrix volunteered before another word could be spoken.