Love and Decay, Boy Meets Girl

by Rachel Higginson

and I felt a little dazed. Hopefully, Vaughan would just play along because I didn’t have the mental capacity to take the lead on this one.

  I walked past the two girls and Nelson so I could knock on the door. Nelson probably thought I had lost my mind cutting him off like that but I needed some breathing room.

  Harrison opened the door with gun raised, but the girls hardly noticed as they blinked against the light, putting hands up to shield their faces. We ushered them inside and took them to stand in front of Vaughan. Page stayed hidden, as was protocol. We had to keep her safe above all else.

  While the girls adjusted to the light, I adjusted to them- or rather her.

  Reagan was shockingly pretty. And I was so unused to loveliness and beauty that it felt like she could easily be the last of the beautiful things on this planet. Her eyes were dark, deep brown- so rich in color they were like chocolate diamonds. And probably just as rare. Her lashes were thick and smudgy, her cheekbones high, her lips full and soft looking. Her body was perfectly toned, even if she was a little skinny and my eyes immediately fell to her slender neck and…. lower. She didn’t belong here- not with us mere mortals, not in a world ripe with Zombies and not in any place that would swallow her up and digest her in the bowels of rotten, putrid, decaying humanity.

  I shook my head out and moved to stand near my brothers. We were a united front, practice and instinct had turned us into a fluid, fighting machine.

  Vaughan was sitting down on the couch, looking relaxed and in charge. I hid my smile, because I knew this looked a whole lot more threatening than it was. We would protect our family if we had to, but we were not bad guys. And we didn’t lash out unless we had to.

  Vaughan was very amused by this whole thing. I could tell. His eyes were drinking in Reagan and her friend like he had been deprived of water for his whole life. I knew the feeling.

  “What did you find, Hendrix?” he asked me.

  “Girls,” I all but growled. “They were shopping.”

  Reagan didn’t take that very well. She snorted and then bit out, “We were stocking up on supplies.”

  “Makeup?” I taunted, expecting some kind of fierce denial or sarcastic insult.

  But even I was surprised when Reagan admitted, “Just a little eyeliner.”

  This surprised me more than anything else. This wasn’t exactly the appropriate era of history to struggle with vanity. It should have been annoying- it should have been a huge turn off. But damn it to hell, it was intriguing. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d met someone that still cared about their looks. Even me and my brothers had resorted to beards and shaggy hair and we were supposed to be this great, last vestige of all things humane and civilized.

  We were letting ourselves de-evolve back into apes and cavemen while these girls actually put effort into what remained of their lives. It wasn’t exactly an admirable pursuit, but calling them vain seemed a little bit harsh.

  Still, I couldn’t help myself. I mean, it was exceedingly frivolous, especially after they nearly died restocking their lipstick. Now the other girls’ gun was empty and who knew what Reagan had on her as far as weapons went. They walked right into our trap and if it hadn’t have been us, it would have been somebody else. And then they’d either be dead by now, or…. worse.

  They were lucky we found them.

  Clearly they were ill prepared for this whole Apocalypse thing.

  How could they be so irresponsible? Actually, it kind of made me angry. And being angry naturally turned me into a jackass.

  “Yeah? Is that eyeliner going to help you stop bleeding?” I challenged her.

  She was fast with her comeback, “No, but you could.”

  I started to say something, although I wasn’t exactly sure what, when Vaughan cut me off. “She’s right. Help her get clean before the Feeders get a scent of her fresh blood.”

  I thought that might have already happened and was about to tell Vaughan when her smug look distracted me completely. I couldn’t look away, although I didn’t try very hard. And why would I? She was everything in my life that I was missing, and I hadn’t even realized it until this very moment.

  A huge, gaping hole oozed emptiness and loneliness in my chest, eating up space in my life with every useless moment that passed. And then there was her- Reagan. She was both the magnifying glass that enhanced all the colorless, wretched feelings of loss and aimlessness and the cure, the life-saving antidote that could remedy my mundane, isolated existence.

  I walked toward her like a bug on its helpless way to a zapper; a meteor pulled in by her unavoidable gravitational pull- on fire, blazing out of control, committed to this path of either destruction or salvation. She was light. She was life. She captivated me and somehow I found myself sucked into her magnetic field of exquisiteness.

  And she didn’t even seem aware of her effect on me.

  Because for some reason she was less than happy to have to deal with me. In fact, her adorably cocky expression turned into a frustrated scowl that irked me.

  Suddenly, I was extremely self-conscious. Which was crazy talk. Before Zombies, I had been one of the captains for the Northwestern swim team. I’d never, not once, had an issue getting a girl’s attention. And I’d never had them get annoyed with me. Girls, loved me. They loved the broodiness, the quiet, understated temperament. They loved everything about me.

  Or they used to.

  I motioned for Reagan to sit down on a bar stool in the corner of our large space. I planned on saying something to ease the tension between us, but her attention was on her friend. I looked over, too, and watched her wave happily in our direction. Reagan seemed to relax after that.

  I took a quick breath and went for it. Grabbing her hand without warning, I started to pull the larger pieces of glass out as carefully as I could. She would live, but these seemed painful.

  She sucked in a sharp breath and blinked away tears. My chest tightened and I slowed down my effort, being as gentle as humanly possible with her.

  “That’s some defense system you got down there,” she winced through the pull of glass.

  I removed the worst of it, so I took the alcohol and rubbed it on her slightly bleeding wounds. She made a high-pitched squeak and her eyes slammed shut. I applied a little pressure to her palm, hoping to ease away the sting. When she relaxed under my attention, I relaxed too.

  And felt a little bit like Superman.

  “Most people that come through that door are invited.” I sounded like a dick again, but I couldn’t seem to remember how to be charming. I was out of practice talking to any other girls besides Page.

  “Are they also being chased by Feeders?” she asked, sounding so snotty I wanted to cringe.

  “Hold this,” I pressed her fingertips against the towel I had been using and ignored her sarcasm. I grabbed another bar stool so I could sit down at her level and reach all her wounds easily. I looked over the rest of her, wondering which place would be the most prudent place to start with.

  I decided to continue with her other palm because in order to get to her knees, she was going to have to take off her pants. This fact hit me like a punch in the face. I cleared my throat and demanded that my mind focus.

  But holy hell.

  Legs.

  I hadn’t seen a nice pair of legs in a pathetically long time.

  And then I wasn’t just going to get any legs, I was getting to see these legs.

  Some deep, internal, masculine instinct promised they would be legs worth all this trouble, that these were the kind of legs that changed lives and altered destinies.

  I suddenly felt thirteen again and a little concerned that King had better stamina than me by this point.

  Shit.

  “These are bad,” I mentioned as a way to distract my wayward thoughts.

  “I know,” she groaned.

  I wanted to smile reassuringly at her, but instead said, “Bruce Lee.”
r />   “What?” She had no idea what I was talking about.

  “You looked like Bruce Lee with your foot flying through the door.”

  She laughed like she was surprised she was laughing. And then accused me with, “You could have warned me you were going to open the door.”

  “I didn’t know if you were a friend or an enemy,” I told her. I knew that was true, but it also didn’t feel true. I might have been playing it safe, but I always knew she wasn’t my enemy. I took my eyes off her palm and met her dark gaze. She held my stare with a cool confidence I admired.

  She blushed while we stared at each other, her creamy skin heating with a sweet redness. “Fair enough,” she breathed.

  I didn’t know what else to say after that so I went back to work on her wounds. For the first time that I could remember, she threw me way off my game. And I didn’t know if it was because I was out of practice or if it was her.

  Since I’d never worried about this before now, I had to assume it was her. Something in the way she held herself, emanating courage and resiliency; the way she watched me with an intuition that was unnerving, the way she kept glancing at her friend just to make sure she was alright. She wasn’t from the world I lived in. She was ethereal… incorporeal… she was the meaning in a life that had none.

  Was that too deep too soon?

  Hell, yes. There was something so wrong with me.

  She broke the silence first, “This is quite the set up you have here.”

  Still feeling unnerved I came back brilliantly with, “Yep.

  “Have you been here since the beginning?”

  “Nope.” Well, that was better….

  “So how long then? You have a serious utopia up here; I’m surprised there aren’t more of you.”

  “We don’t trust outsiders,” I explained shortly. Although, I wondered if that was still true. She was here.

  “Oh, like me?” She rolled her eyes at me. “That works out great since I don’t trust you either.”

  “You shouldn’t,” I warned her.

  “Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel welcome.” She was growing increasingly uncomfortable next to me, but I was almost glad. I couldn’t let this girl in, and I really couldn’t continue to have these insane thoughts. She needed to be reminded as strongly as I did. We weren’t friends. I couldn’t take on another person to watch out for and she wouldn’t want to be a part of our group anyway.

  Although, all those arguments felt so weak compared to the tornado of convictions she’d been stirring up since her arrival.

  I was in so much trouble.

  I needed to get my head and my body back under my control.

  “It doesn’t matter; you’ll be gone in a few hours anyway.” I stared at her wounds, paying extra attention to everything I did. That warning was true, but it was more for my benefit than hers, if I were honest with myself.

  “Like, you’re going to kill us?”

  “What?” I growled at her. How did she get to that conclusion? “We’re not going to kill you. We’re going to send you on your way. We don’t want you here. I already told you, we don’t trust outsiders.”

  Now she looked offended. Confusing woman.

  “But I’m a woman,” she said.

  Like I needed to be reminded of that.

  “Yep.”

  “Aren’t you going to rape me?” And she actually sounded disappointed.

  “What?” I practically choked on her question. “Do you want me to rape you?”

  “Obviously not, it’s just….” she trailed off and I said a silent prayer of thanks. What in the world? And then she asked, “So how did you guys meet?”

  I was already annoyed that she had expected me to rape her and surprised that she didn’t catch on to the fact that we were brothers. I mean, we all looked alike. To be a jackass, I answered, “Online dating.”

  To my horror, she nodded her head like she completely understood. “Oh, like before?” she asked. “That makes sense then. It’s actually kind of sweet you still have each other through all this craziness.”

  “I was kidding.” Holy hell, King and Harrison were like thirteen and fifteen when this thing started. What was wrong with her worldview? Not that men couldn’t be gay in middle school, but hopefully they hadn’t jumped into online dating before they finished puberty.

  “I’m not judging you,” she answered sincerely. “I think it’s great. Seriously!”

  As if she had to convince me of this.

  “We’re not gay,” I bit out defensively. “We’re brothers.”

  She snorted a surprised laugh and then continued on until she had to drop her head and tears pooled in her eyes, making them glossy and bright.

  “Don’t ever try to be a comedian,” she panted in between gasps of laughter. “In fact, maybe don’t ever attempt a joke again.”

  I just looked at her. I didn’t know what to say, or how to take this conversation back into territory where she didn’t assume I was gay and I made her nervous. I’d been living in the Zombie Apocalypse for two years and this was by far the most horrifying moment so far.

  Well, maybe not. But it definitely made top ten.

  I finished the dressing on her left hand and then we tackled her shirt.

  “I’m wearing a tank top underneath; I can just take this off.” She gestured at her long sleeved shirt and I forgot how to swallow. “Uh, do you have a knife? You could just cut it off,” she prompted.

  Some brain activity returned to my head but the only thing that came out was an irritated question. “You trust a stranger with a knife?” Because it irritated me that she did trust me. What if had wanted to rape her? Or hurt her? I hated that she would put herself in danger like this willingly. She needed someone to protect her; she needed someone to fight these unseen battles for her.

  “You’ve had plenty of opportunity to do what you want to me,” she reasoned knowingly. “I trust a stranger that knows how to take care of open wounds.”

  She had a point so I went to work. I pulled a knife from my pocket and set about cutting off her shirt. I was careful not to come too close to her skin, or near the tight tank top underneath.

  My blood seemed to heat hotter and hotter with every slice of the knife and inch of skin I exposed. The whole experience was starting to feel strangely erotic and I didn’t exactly know how to handle this.

  That’s right, twenty-three years old and a girl in her tank top was more than enough to make me embarrass myself. I shifted on my barstool and worked to focus on the clinical, medical aspect of my task.

  But, my god, her skin- perfect, milky and a little pale. Her arms were well-defined, her collarbones so elegantly arched across her chest. Her neck stretched in a long, slender line. Her tank top was tight to her perfect body and low cut over a swelling of perfect breasts.

  And it had been a very, very long time since I’d seen a girl this beautiful so undressed.

  My entire body felt on fire from her nearness. And it wasn’t just my male instincts stuttering to life. It was her- everything about her that called to some buried, hidden part of me.

  Until an hour ago, I hadn’t realized what a state of undead I’d fallen into. Sure, I fought daily to kill real Zombies; but somewhere along the way I’d become one myself.

  Reagan had awoken that decaying part of me and brought me back to life. I’d been a corpse rotting away in the crypt of my life and she breathed life into me, raised me from the dead, reminded me that I was not just a person trying to protect his family, but that I was a man trying to live in a world that wanted me to die.

  Somehow able to think all of this through and muddle through the task of cleaning her numerous wounds, I reached for a clean towel and poured some bottled water on it. I pressed the wet cloth to her forearm, intending to scrub away the dried blood when she shivered. I looked up and caught her gaze- as deep and intense as anything I’d ever been a part of-
and waited. She nodded her permission and I let my itching fingers go to work.

  I treated her with the utmost respect, forcing my increasingly hungry body into submission. She was precious, fragile… feminine. And I wanted to treat her like that. My mission in life was to protect and I would give her that, too. Even if I had to protect her from myself.

  Once I was finished, I looked her over and let my gaze fall to her jeans. Self-control. I was a master at self-control.

  “Uh, maybe we should cut those off too?” I suggested because I couldn’t see another option to get at her still-bleeding knees.

  “Yeah, that’s fine,” she agreed. “They were going in the trash anyway.”

  “Do you have other clothes?” I asked out of true concern. I didn’t want to cut apart her only clothes. Although I was sure we could find her something around here if she was desperate.

  “Sure thing.” She grinned devilishly at me. “From our shopping spree.”

  I was too nervous about the cutting her jeans apart portion of the evening to respond to her snide comment, although I did find her amusing. I liked that- a sense of humor.

  “Alright, I’m going to cut around your thigh, and then I’ll deal with your knees. Do they feel as bad as your palms?”

  She shook her head, “No, actually. I think my jeans protected them to some extent.”

  I toyed with the knife in my hand for a minute before working up the courage to attack her pants. I worked methodically and efficiently, but I couldn’t ignore the feel of her warm thigh beneath my fingertips. Finally, after agonizing moments the majority of her jeans were gone and her wounded knees were ready for my ministrations.

  I looked up to take in her face and decide if she could tell what she was doing to me; but instead of horror and rage, she blushed bright red, staring at her legs in an undiluted terror. I glanced down, too, and bit back a smile at the admirable length of hair growing from ankle to where her thighs disappeared in the part of her jeans not discarded.

  She had no idea how fascinating she was just then. She stared at her legs with embarrassment, that same peculiar vanity jumping to light. But all I could think was that the unshaven mess only made her more attractive.

  Because now she was real.

  Only moments ago she was an otherworldly creature that descended upon Earth to torture me, to haunt my dreams from this day forward and occupy my lonely thoughts. No real girl was this beautiful. No real girl this laid back… this witty…. this sexy.

  But she was real. Maybe the last of her kind.

  And she was sitting right in front of me.

  Her head dropped to her hands so she didn’t have to face me, and I resisted against one of the strongest urges I’d ever had in my life- to slowly peel her hands away from that lovely face and kiss her senseless.

  “It’s not that bad,” I promised her in a voice that practically cracked from all my surging desire and confusion

  “It’s really bad,” she groaned. She peeked out from behind a wall of fingers and I couldn’t help but smile while I examined the remaining shards of glass in her knees.

  “It could be worse,” I shrugged a