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

by Rachel Higginson

  I was doing both.

  And probably so was everyone else.

  Finally satisfied with trusting each other and not hearing another Zombie nearby, the guy with the ponytail said, “Well, let’s roll.”

  “Our van isn’t rolling anywhere,” Hendrix admitted.

  “Ah, the old girl quit on you?” Ponytail asked. “I wondered why y’all showed up with a knife to a gunfight.”

  “It wasn’t intentional,” Hendrix agreed.

  “Well, it’s just over that hill. We’ll cover you if you want to make the walk over.”

  So we did. We gathered Haley, Page, Tyler and Miller from the van and grabbed our backpacks and a few of the extra bags filled with supplies we had been collecting. Page was too frightened to even stand up, so Vaughan carried her while Miller and Tyler clung to each other.

  We walked past the group standing around the nice Suburbans with their guns still raised. The nice cars reminded me of the Hummer we had once upon a time and how Gary the douche bag took it away from us.

  The thought made me instantly mistrust these people. Not since the Parkers had I met a decent human being. And before them it had been even longer.

  It was like all of humanity was infected with the same disease. Sometimes they turned into Zombies, sometimes they turned into low life scum that were only capable of dominating and hurting.

  The world before the infection wasn’t even close to perfect, there was still war, still hunger, still disease. But there had also been community and generosity and a sense of banding together simply because we were human and struggling through the same rough life.

  Where did that go?

  How did things get so bad, so quickly?

  True to his word, while we walked along the highway and over the bridge, the Suburbans followed at a crawl behind us. I felt safe with so many guns nearby and not just amateur stuff, the real-deal heavy artillery.

  Still, I was uneasy just because they were people- and in this day and age people meant bad things.

  Our group was perfectly silent on the way over; apparently we were all having Stranger Danger thoughts. Without waiting for them to catch up we walked down the embankment and started rinsing in the creek. The water was cold but refreshing.

  It smelled like a river, but it was still cleaner than me.

  We spread out in the shin high water so that we weren’t washing our own bodies with someone else’s disgusting run offs and got to work. And it wasn’t just those of us that had gotten bloody; we all took the opportunity to get as clean as possible with our clothes on.

  Which meant no shaving… But it had been about a week and a half anyway, the razor probably would have snapped off when I tried to run it through the jungle growing on my leg.

  I rolled up my jeans and slipped my shoes and socks off. I’d already lost my shirt, so I just needed to grab my bar of soap and washcloth and set to work. When it was time for my hair I walked over to Haley and Page and we took turns working out the blood from mine.

  “You were just like Mel Gibson, Reags,” Haley gushed. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Mel Gibson?” I laughed.

  She laughed too, “I meant, Braveheart. You were all covered in blood and stabbing people. For real, I expected you to stand on the top of the van and yell, ‘But they will never take our freedom!’”

  We laughed some more and then I asked, “Dead, Undead or filming more movies?”

  This was another game we would play; whenever we remembered a movie or a famous person, we would try to decide how the infection played out in his life.

  “Definitely undead, but still filming more movies,” Haley confirmed.

  “Who’s Mel Gibson?” Page asked sweetly.

  “Another one of those crazy men that you will never have to know about, sweets.” Haley promised.

  It was amazing the difference an hour made. Just a little while ago I was positive we were all going to die, that those were my last moments on Earth. And now, we were joking around about Mel Gibson.

  “Like Jazzy?” Page asked sweetly. Some color had returned to her skin after her cold bath and she looked radiant with her shining wet hair and clean face.

  “Like Jazzy.”

  “When y’all are done down there, we got some food up here,” the man with the ponytail shouted down at us.

  I looked over at Hendrix and Vaughan and watched them have a conversation with only their eyes. It looked like we were going to trust them, even while my instincts screamed to be careful. But they had come to our rescue. It would seriously piss them off if we turned away from their hospitality after all that. Plus, they seemed to have plenty of women around, which usually staved off the worst of the male behavior.

  We gathered our things and walked barefoot to the top of the steep incline and back to the main road. This was a tiny little town in eastern Oklahoma, but at one point it could have been cute and sweet.

  Obviously, not now when there were piles of dead Zombies littering the streets, but once upon a time.

  “I’m Johnny, and this is my wife, Trish,” Johnny, man with the ponytail, said. His wife Trish looked just as hard and worn out as he did. She had thick, reddish brown hair that hung in frizzy waves that weren’t all that flattering. This was a woman who needed hair product in her life.

  Oh, the injustices of living during a Zombie Apocalypse.

  She wore a leather vest, and only a leather vest, on top. Her fake boobs were pushed up into the tight v and her low-riding jeans allowed for a solid four inches of stomach to show. She had tattoos covering random places all over her arms, boobs and neck that ranged from something as sweet as a heart to something as bizarre as a giant snake being beheaded by a girl with boobs bigger than her own and a huge, impossibly-large sword. It was hard to make out these people’s ages. They could have been as young as early thirties or possibly retirement age. I had no idea.

  “And this is the gang,” Trish hooked a thumb over her shoulder.

  “Hi gang,” I waved with as much charm as I could muster.

  Haley snorted and dropped her head to her chest to avoid looking at them and laughing. She reached for my waving hand and pulled it tightly to her side. Okay, I was being a smart ass, but I didn’t trust them!

  “Well, sit down,” Trish fussed and tried to smile. She really gave it a good effort; there just wasn’t that natural ability for her lips to move in a happy direction.

  Vaughan was the first one to obey and the rest of us followed. Johnny had made a small fire while we bathed, and there was some kind of meat roasting over it; there were baked beans in a steel camping pot and even plastic, re-sealable bags with something like dried bananas in it.

  I hadn’t had fruit in so long. That really needed to be dried bananas.

  The lunch was actually really good and I avoided nailing down the specifics of finding out exactly what kind of meat we were having. But when Tyler noticed something was different about it and asked me what I thought it was, I immediately told her it was chicken. Everything tasted like chicken.

  She accepted my answer, but I was pretty sure this was one of those moments where ignorance was bliss for her.

  Johnny asked us about what we had seen and we all let Vaughan, Hendrix and Nelson do most of the talking. Johnny and Trish told us how they were coming over from New Mexico and had heard about a town where there weren’t any Zombies. They rounded up as many survivors that were still left in their desert town and decided to find out for themselves. They actually seemed nice enough and didn’t appear to have any motivation to kidnap us or force us to join their crew.

  The day wore on as Vaughan and Johnny swapped stories. I got the impression Vaughan was being polite and didn’t want to piss the guy off. And Johnny was obviously in no hurry to leave. Although the group as a whole had so many weapons, plus those reliable vehicles, they probably didn’t need to be if they were only traveling a few more hours to Arkansas.

  None of us said anything about having already
been there or what it was like. We needed to stay completely off the radar and not give Kane or his dad Matthias a lead to follow, just in case they happened to run into each other. I still highly doubted either of them was that interested in finding us, but better safe than sorry. And we were harboring Miller and Tyler.

  Finally, it was time to split up and Johnny laid out a very generous offer, “We stayed in a place last night. It’s about ten minutes from here. It was like a shoe store or something, but the building’s made out of concrete and we cleaned any Feeders out last night. We could drive you over there if y’all want. I know you have a late start on your day and you don’t have a vehicle or nothing.”

  Vaughan gave Hendrix a look across the fire and gauged his reaction. “That would be awesome. Thanks, man.”

  “Not a problem,” Johnny smiled wide, his gold teeth flashing in the afternoon light. “It’s the least I can do. And honestly, I wish I could do more. You’ve got so many little ones with you, it don’t seem right to leave you stranded without transport or ammo. Are you sure you don’t want to ride with us into Arkansas. It could be a great opportunity for you and your people.”

  “We appreciate the offer, but we’re headed to find some family.” When Johnny laughed loud and long at that, Vaughan continued, “We know it’s a long shot, but we have to try. You understand that, right?”

  Johnny sobered some and bopped his head up and down, “Now that I can understand.”

  We said goodbye to Johnny and Trish and were all surprised when Johnny handed over two handguns and some more ammo to Vaughan. It wasn’t much but it would at least get us through the night. Unless we were attacked again, but then only one of their machine guns or an act of God could save us from that.

  They cleared out one of their Suburbans so we could file in and held onto the gifted guns until we were dropped off in front of an old Payless. There wouldn’t be any food in here, so no bad smells or insects and animals. And on the plus side, we could go shoe shopping. A Payless was a fantastic place to spend the night.

  The driver of the Suburban waved to us and headed back to his friends. I tried, really tried to process that act of kindness and almost couldn’t. Was I so jaded after the last militia camp and Kane’s Twilight Zone Colony that I couldn’t even trust a generous act after it was done? I hung my head and searched around inside my soul for anything left of goodness, innocence or purity.

  And then I realized that there wasn’t any.

  I was as diseased as the rest of humanity.

  I looked up, ready to make camp inside the Payless when I caught Hendrix’s eyes from across our group. He was looking at me with deep concern etched into his face and I tried to smile at him but it fell flat. My chin quivered and I pressed my lips together in an effort not to cry, but I was overwhelmed from the last twenty-four hours and it was only a matter of seconds before everything caught up with me.

  “Reagan and I are taking a walk,” Hendrix declared to the crowd.

  Everyone stared at us like we were crazy, except for Vaughan. He tossed his brother a gun and demanded that we be careful. He led Haley, Tyler, Miller and the rest of his family inside the boarded up swinging door.

  Hendrix walked over to me slowly, pocketed the gun and held his hand out to me. I took it, reveling in the warmth of his fingers as they wrapped around mine, in the sensitive touch of his palm as he pressed it into mine, in just the feel of him and how he seemed to make everything better by just being him.

  We walked around to the back of the building where we were rewarded with stretching fields that rolled over shallow hills. The sun was low on the western horizon and warm on our faces. The spring breeze tickled our noses. Along the back of the building bloomed a garden of early roses.

  My breath caught in my throat as I took in the beauty of the crimson-colored flowers. Their petals were soft perfection and a beautiful contrast not just between the gray of the brick they were planted against, but between all of the death and decay we had suffered in today.

  After a day spent killing, covered in blood and near death, these roses didn’t just represent the living, they represented life where it shouldn’t be, vibrancy where there should be only viciousness, color in a world of black and white.

  For the second time today a tear tracked down my cheek and I couldn’t stop myself from holding out my fingers and touching the soft silkiness of the delicate petals.

  “I haven’t seen flowers in a really long time,” I whispered, kneeling down in front of them. The moment was reverent and awesome as we worshiped the sight of something so purely innocent.

  Hendrix reached forward too, seeming just as moved as me, and let his fingers trail over the tops of them. “Pretty incredible,” he whispered.

  “Tell me we’re going to make it,” I pleaded in a vulnerable voice I hardly recognized as my own.

  Hendrix heard my cry for help and turned to face me on his knees. I turned too, and we knelt just inches apart from each other next to a rose bush and the Oklahoma wilderness with our hearts bleeding out.

  He tucked a stray piece of dark hair behind my ear and met my gaze with his ever-steady deep blue one. “We’re going to make it,” he promised.

  And I believed him.

  I would always believe him.

  “All of us?” I pressed.

  “All of us,” he confirmed.

  His fingers trailed down the line of my jaw and the column of my throat. I felt each gentle touch as he moved them along the outline of my body until they intertwined with my fingers. The sunlight played across his tanned features, glinting in his scruffy beard and making his eyes sparkle with life.

  “Reagan,” he breathed and my chest swelled from the pure devotion of my name on his lips. I waited for him to say more but for a while he was just silent and serious. Finally, a small smirk played at the corners of his lips and in a lighter tone, he said, “It was close today, though, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  He seemed to gather confidence and said impishly, “Makes you realize what you could have lost.” I nodded but didn’t speak- I had been thinking that for hours now. “Makes you realize that you have things to do before you die.”

  I laughed a little at that. I had given up all those dreams a long time ago, and I was surprised Hendrix hadn’t too. “Like what? Go sky-diving?”

  Without missing a beat, without taking his eyes off me, or changing his reverent tone he said, “Like kiss you.”

  And his soft lips were on mine and I stopped breathing. Sensation and desire flooded me as his mouth moved over mine- consuming me, breaking me, making me whole again. His beard scratched and tickled my face but I reveled in the feel of his body moving against mine.

  His tongue swept across my bottom lip and I opened my mouth on instinct. His lips were so perfect they were otherworldly, they didn’t even belong in the dark world we lived in. Nothing this amazing did. And yet here he was.

  With me.

  He deepened the kiss and I felt him everywhere. I felt his hands as they clutched my waist and dragged me against his firm, unyielding body. I felt his body heat as he drew me into him and wrapped his arms around me. I felt his tongue, the hot wetness of his mouth, his beard as it abraded my skin. I felt his happiness call to mine, his soul drink mine in, his essence consume me until I was entirely captivated by him and his kiss.

  We continued to kiss forever, for eternity, for I don’t know how long, but I would never quit. Someone would have to pry me from him, because until this moment, until I felt the absolute rightness of his desire and want and his need for me, I had stopped believing happiness like this existed.

  “Reagan,” he whispered again as he pulled back to rest his forehead against mine.

  I reached up and rested my hands against his frantically beating heart. He kissed my forehead again and I melted into him. He was just… he was everything I could ever want and somehow I’d found him in this ugly world and he made it beautiful again.

  H
e made me beautiful again.

  Eventually, he pulled back and stood up. He took my hands and helped me to my feet. With a satisfied grin on his face he promised, “There’s a lot more of that in your future, Reagan. I hope you’re ready for what you just started.”

  “What I just started?” I gasped, honestly shocked that he was blaming me.

  “Woman, you’ve been begging me to kiss you since the day you fell at my feet.”

  “Oh my gosh! I didn’t fall at your feet, I fell through the door…. that you opened!”

  “Regardless,” he pulled me next to him, into the lean of his body and wrapped his arm around me. “There’s no going back now.”

  Now to that I agreed.

  We picked a few of the roses and carried them back inside, giving one to Tyler, Page and Haley. Then we sat down on the floor of the storeroom, with the door locked and our camping lanterns illuminating the small space. We spent the rest of the night laughing about our close calls earlier in the day and admiring the gorgeous roses. Even Tyler couldn’t stop the huge smile from lighting her face.

  We were happy and safe tonight. And pressed against the strength of Hendrix’s body I felt more than all of that, I felt content.

  There were things about this world, this life that we lived, that were horrible and disgusting, things that should be reserved for hell alone. But then there were other things, things that were so achingly beautiful and righteously innocent that didn’t just balance the bad things out, but superseded their place. Those were the things worth living for, worth staying alive for.

  And I had somehow found them. I had found an abundance of them.

  I could survive this world of decay with these good things surrounding me.

  I would live through this death and disease with Hendrix next to me.

  The rest of Season One is now available for Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks and Kobo.

  Season Two is also available.

  If you enjoyed Volume One, find out how Reagan and friends battle through the rest of the Zombie Apocalypse in Season One, Volume Two.