Love and Decay, Vol. Two

by Rachel Higginson

  They didn’t bother running down their slope, they simply took the distance with a bounding leap and landed on their feet. I heard bones snap and shatter from the ones with more advanced infections, but that didn’t seem to slow them down. They didn’t feel pain.

  They only felt hunger.

  There were so many more of them this time. The second wave was an obviously instructed attack. Whoever had decided to go after us tonight was not an idiot.

  Which was kind of annoying.

  I’d much rather deal with a stupid villain than a smart one.

  I looked around frantically, desperate for some cover or a way to regain the advantage. There was nothing. We had managed to find ourselves in a shallow valley with nothing but sloping rock all around us. The Feeders didn’t surround us, but they might as well have. We were trapped and not one of us was fast enough to outrun them without a significant head start.

  Son of a bitch.

  They prowled toward us, their movements jerky but slow. A stillness settled over all of us, as if we were momentarily frozen.

  I felt my breaths thicken in my chest; they filled my ears and seemed to echo through the night. My gun was steady in my hand, even though my bones felt like jelly and my knees threatened to start knocking together.

  One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

  Nothing happened. We eyed each other, both recognizing the enemy in the other. I felt resolve and survival curl around my bones and reinforce my instinct to kill. My instinct to survive.

  I breathed in their rancid odor and let it fuel my murderous intentions. I surveyed their pasty, peeling skin, their exposed bone and dried blood caked over their bodies from head to toe and let the sight of them burn with the angry fire I continually kept alive in the pit of my soul.

  Yes, I had a lot of enemies. Yes, a lot of men wanted to kill me or at least see me dead.

  But these were the catalysts for it all.

  These were the creatures that set this entire series of life-threatening events into motion. And I wanted each and every one of them to pay for what they did to me.

  If I couldn’t punish the disease itself, then I would make the ones that carried and spread it pay. I would make them the sacrifices on the pyre of the retribution I deserved.

  To the restitution that was rightfully mine.

  Just as I had decided to rain down my wrath, everything moved into motion. They sprung forward as one war-wielding machine. Their groaning reeked with the cry for battle. They wanted death.

  And we would give it to them.

  I started shooting, taking out as many Feeders as I could. My vision was painted with red, marking the fury I felt pumping through my body and the blood I spilt on the ground around me. Hendrix and Vaughan flanked me and their own fierce need to survive and keep their family together rippled over my skin, charging the air with a sharp electrical current.

  I ran out of bullets and announced that to anyone that wanted to listen. While I changed out the magazine again, Hendrix covered me until he ran out of ammo and we switched. When it happened to Vaughan, I knew I could trust King to help push the ferocious line of Zombies back.

  Harrison stood at the very end though and Andy on the opposite side. Their positions were the most vulnerable.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw three Feeders gang up on Andy. They rushed him at the same time. He was fast and clearly capable of taking care of himself, but this was too much.

  He might have been able to take all three of them out if he had been paying attention to them. Instead his focus had been attached to the first Feeder we had seen on the ridge. It was massive compared to the rest. Its muscles seemed to bulge from its thick frame. It didn’t show any of the protruding bones or peeling skin that I was used to seeing with Zombies. Other than the constant stream of black drool pouring from its open mouth, it actually looked more human than Zombie.

  Okay, maybe not human… but something that was once human.

  Before it fell into a puddle of radioactive slime and transformed into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Zombie.

  With Andy momentarily distracted, he didn’t turn fast enough to meet the threesome headed his way. By the time he pulled the trigger, there wasn’t enough time to kill them all.

  I broke out of my established place, diving behind the line of Parkers to help Andy. I sprinted to him as he got one shot off, then another. The middle Feeder dropped to the dirt, dead for real. The other two converged to the space the dead one left behind. Their hands swiped the air in front of them and their feet carried them swiftly over the uneven ground.

  I started shooting before I should have. I was too far away and Andy could have easily stepped in my path. But I also felt like I didn't have a choice. If I had waited, I wouldn’t have gotten there in time.

  Even shooting prematurely, I still almost didn’t make it.

  I closed the distance as quickly as I could. I brushed by Hendrix, my shoulder grazing his back. I felt his hand reach out and briefly grab mine, before I pulled it away to fire my gun.

  I hit one of them in the shoulder, knocking him back, but not stopping him. He growled and moaned and in general made disgusting sounds while blackish spittle flew from his mouth.

  In three more steps I was close enough to aim true. This time I didn’t miss. Andy managed to take out the other one and it dropped within inches of his feet.

  That had been too close.

  I swallowed through the fear-induced nausea and turned back to face the rest of the horde.

  I wasn’t in a comfortable position any more. I was on the end, flanking Andy. I wanted to be back by Hendrix, surrounded by his fierce commitment to protect me.

  I didn’t think Andy would leave me hanging or anything, but I didn’t have the trust in him that I did for Hendrix or Vaughan or any of the Parkers.

  Andy grunted his thanks and we continued to fight off the army. Our guns went off systematically. We were quick and efficient, taking out as many Feeders with our first shot as was possible.

  But it wasn’t enough. They inched closer to us.

  While the ones we were facing here weren’t as stupidly oblivious as the Feeders back home, they were still easy enough to kill. They were just too smart. They dodged bullets and waited to move forward until they had the right opening.

  My natural instinct was to move closer to them. I wanted to step forward and narrow my aim. I wanted to get as close as possible so that I knew I couldn’t miss. I forced my body to stay back, to stay out of reach.

  Nerves seared through me, making me hot and cold all at once. I hardly noticed my hurt ankle or the cold night air. Every one of my senses had tuned into the deadly chaos in front of me.

  Someone shouted something profane down the line pulling my attention. I looked over to see King’s arms fly over his head before his body dropped to the ground.

  Vaughan turned in the next second and unloaded his gun on whatever had grabbed King. I held my breath until King jumped again.

  The Zombies were closer than ever. They weren’t scared of our guns. I didn’t know if this was because they didn’t know enough to be afraid or if they had managed to find fearlessness in their altered state.

  “Reagan!” Hendrix bit out. “In front!”

  Oh, shit! I started shooting again and the breath returned to my lungs.

  “This isn’t right,” Andy growled next to me.

  I could barely speak, too concerned with trying to stay alive. But I managed to ask, “What?”

  “These Zombies,” Andy explained. “They’re an army of sorts, but where is their leader? Something is wrong.”

  I looked through the clustered Zombies, searching for some sign of humanity. There wasn’t any. “Maybe they escaped?”

  “And stumbled onto us?” Andy chuckled darkly. “What are the chances of that?”

  Good, I wanted to tell him. With my luck and our history, chances of a Zombie army finding us were very good. But he seemed stuck on his conspiracy theory and
I had to concede that Andy’s theory was also a good possibility.

  “Where is everyone else then?”

  Andy glanced back in the direction of his house, even though the ridge blocked our view. New nausea rolled through me at the possibility of something there… something attacking a home that was nearly left unprotected.

  “We need to wrap this up,” he said.

  I looked back to the remaining dozen Feeders. “Sure, give us ten more minutes.”

  No sooner had I gotten the words out than something rocketed through the air, it sounded like a missile launching into space. It pulled my attention, forcing me to glance over my shoulder just in time to watch a flare of red light up the section of the sky where I imagined Andy’s house might sit just beneath it.

  Andy jolted next to me and nearly dropped his gun. “They surrounded us.”

  His words echoed through me. They surrounded us. They surrounded us. They surrounded us.

  Was it already too late?

  Oh, God.

  Haley. Page. The baby.

  No!

  I turned back around and got to work. I couldn’t save my friends by bringing more Zombies back to the house.

  I’d never be able to outrun this horde anyway.

  Those thoughts propelled me into action. This time I did move forward, heedless of common sense. I needed to finish this. I needed to be halfway to the house by now.

  I stayed far enough to the left that I hopefully didn’t have to worry about wayward bullets. I took out one Feeder and then another. I kept my aim true and steady. When my bullets ran out, I replaced them with a quickness I hadn’t thought possible.

  My anxiety shot up as I tried to think through the rest of my arsenal. I had more guns, but would it be enough when I got back to the house?

  “Hendrix, end this,” I shouted. “We have to get back to them.”

  He knew exactly who I meant. “On it,” he hollered back. I could hear the cynical smile in his voice. But I was unsurprised when he followed through.

  Hendrix went to work, motivated by the flare or my voice, I wasn’t sure. His aim became perfect, his precision incomparable.

  He took out Zombie after Zombie while the rest of us provided backup. The Feeder army never really stood a chance when I looked back at the odds.

  Sure, they wanted to eat us. Sure, they were addicted to our brains and lived only for the purpose of hunting and consuming them. But we wanted to live. We wanted to survive. And we would always, always want to survive more than they craved flesh.

  We had become just as addicted to living as they had to taking lives.

  But we wanted it more.

  The last Zombie standing was the beast that had led this army. He glanced frantically from one side of the valley to the other. I wondered if he realized just how hopeless his situation was or if he was even capable of processing that kind of information.

  He had been standing at the back of his horde, letting the smaller guys take the bullets for him. But now he had nowhere to go. There was no one else to throw in front of him.

  Hendrix shot first, but soon we all joined in. He wasn’t easy to take down. His skin seemed thicker than the others, too leathery for the bullets to penetrate.

  We drew closer, in a hurry to be done with him and move on to help our friends and family. His head tipped back and he bellowed at the moon.

  I took the opportunity to pull the trigger. My bullet zipped through the air and caught him right in the jugular.

  Okay, actually, it only grazed him, but I planned to reenact it in the future as if it had killed him instantly. His jugular would explode and I would explain with just the right amount of dramatic flair that blood had spurted everywhere as he fell to his knees in defeat.

  What really happened was that I pissed him off just enough to pull his attention from Hendrix. The huge Zombie looked straight at me and promised all kinds of brutal deaths.

  Hendrix stepped forward again and buried three bullets in the Zombie-beast’s head. The creature swayed roughly before collapsing for good.

  We didn’t take time to do inventory or start a burn pile. We had to get back. We all knew it.

  We could all feel the threat over the bungalow and what that could possibly mean for our dear friends.

  By the time I turned around, only Hendrix had waited for me. The rest were scrambling up the incline.

  He reached out his hand.

  And I took it.

  Something settled inside of me in that moment. Something that had been missing for a very long time.

  In the midst of this chaos and in the center of my painful fear, I felt him bring me back to myself.

  I felt him bring me home.

  I stared down at our connected hands and braved a look up into his eyes. They were a mystery in this darkness. I had the color memorized, but I could not see it tonight. The emotion swirling near the surface was enough though. I saw more in this moment than I had for months.

  Maybe more than I ever had.

  My heart thumped again, only this time it wasn’t because I was afraid.

  He pulled me closer to him. “I can’t stay away.”

  “I can’t either.”

  His brows furrowed with confusion as if it had taken until this moment for him, too. “I don’t want to let go.”

  “Then don’t,” I whispered.

  We didn’t kiss. We didn’t have time. But there was more between us than physical attraction or touch. I wanted to kiss him, but I wanted to kiss him every day forward. I didn’t want to waste this precious moment on something that could get us both killed.

  He nodded once. His eyes cleared of the uncertainty and settled with that familiar intensity that curled my toes and anchored me in place.

  There were still things in my past that confused me… that made me question my motives and my decisions. But this one thing I knew for sure.

  I knew I loved Hendrix.

  And I knew I would never love anyone as much as I loved this man.

  He was my forever. I didn’t know how long that would last. We could die in the next five minutes. That was a real possibility.

  But that didn’t matter either. I could live for another minute or for the next eighty years and I would never stop loving him. He had become reason for my cluttered mind, hope for my hopeless spirit and the motive to keep my heart beating.

  That was all I needed to know.

  “Ready for this?” He inclined his head toward the waiting battle.

  “Yes,” I whispered. With his hand clutched to mine, I really was ready.

  “Then let’s go.”

  We hurried up the steep incline. I stretched my sore ankle as I went. Once we reached the top, we raced across the distance, desperate to catch up to his family. I could feel my ankle swelling and I could feel it slowing us down, but Hendrix never complained.

  He kept firm hold of my hand and led me to the danger that waited for us.

  The front of the bungalow was eerily silent. The house was dark, not even a candle light flickered through the closed curtains.

  But around back, real action took place. I could hear men screaming and shouting. Not just Zombies, but men.

  Panting heavily, I glanced at Hendrix and raised my eyebrows. He shrugged his shoulder and raised his weapons.

  He pushed me against the house, cloaking us in the shadows. Both of us chanced a look around the side of the house. Moonlight illuminated the backyard, shining soft, milky light that contrasted drastically with the war waging.

  I winced when I took in Joy’s smashed garden. Men had trampled whatever had grown, leaving leafy plants to bleed out and die on the unforgiving earth.

  That was just unfair.

  Sending Zombies after us was one thing, but destroying Joy’s hard work and beautiful, life-sustaining vegetation was a whole new level of sin.

  I hated them all over again.

  There were more of them than there were of us. I squinted through the darkness, searchi
ng for anyone I recognized.

  The Parkers had spread out across the edges of the yard. By the positioning of the fight, I could tell that we snuck up behind whoever this enemy was.

  Which was ironic, because that’s what they tried to do to us.

  I searched quickly for Page or Haley, Joy or Adela. I didn’t find them out here.

  In fact, the only reason I made out the Parkers brothers was because their guns kept going off, spotlighting their positioning.

  “Who is it?” I whispered to Hendrix.

  We must have come around the opposite side of the house from the other brothers. They had circled around to the left so they could take up positioning behind the fire pit, a woodshed and something that looked like it had once been a horse trough, that Joy had turned into a planter.

  Hendrix and I had come around the right side. The only thing for us to hide behind was a metal windmill that didn’t offer much in the way of cover.

  At least we had them surrounded.

  Hendrix peeked around the side of the house and watched the gunfight take place for a minute.

  “See for yourself,” he whispered.

  I leaned in front of him and checked out the situation. Near the backdoor, half-hidden by the placement of the house, stood Arturo. He had guns in both hands and a chewed up cigar dangling from his giant catfish lips. He looked at ease, even in the middle of all of this destruction. He didn’t bother fighting anyone. He had men for that.

  And Feeders.

  His lazy nonchalance grated on every one of my nerves. I wanted to kill him, turn him into a Feeder and kill him again.

  The Zombies were obviously the most aggressive, but Vaughan and the others seemed capable of fending them off. These Feeders back here weren’t as plentiful as those we’d already fought, so the real danger was in the men.

  A sick feeling turned my stomach and sweat dotted my lower back. I had never been in a true gunfight with other humans. I had fought them and I had even killed, but not on a massive scale.

  And that’s what tonight felt like.

  It felt like I was betraying myself.

  I wasn’t a killer. I was a survivor.

  Dream Matthias had been right. I hadn’t killed enough men to be comfortable with killing. I hadn’t belittled humanity enough to even entertain the idea of fighting other humans.