“Look to the sides,” Hendrix answered evenly.
And sure enough, from each car to the trees that lined the highway not far from the shoulder, multiple strips of barbed wire had been tied. And if that weren’t enough, big, thick pieces of broken glass littered the ground.
Holy shit, these people were not playing around.
“Who is doing this?” Maya screamed.
Haley and I shared a look but didn’t say anything. How do you explain that wormhole? It wasn’t like Maya didn’t know about the conflict with Matthias and The Colony, but she didn’t know everything that went down. Gage had wisely kept the majority of those details top secret. So while the compound new that Gage and Matthias had a falling out and that we were somehow involved, they did not know how deeply we were involved. And they didn’t know that Miller had been kidnapped and didn’t leave of his own free will.
Gage had plenty of reasons for keeping those facts on the down low and I had agreed with him up until this point. Up until Matthias and his hatred for us endangered innocent lives.
Vaughan, Hendrix and brothers also agreed with Gage. And while they would never leave the compound to fend for itself, they also recognized the fact that the mob of people living there, whether wise or not, could force us to leave if they somehow viewed us as a threat to their peaceful safety.
Which we clearly were.
The problem was that we didn’t know if we were helping or hurting? We were the reason we happened to be sandwiched between burning cars and a fast-approaching horde of Zombies. But we were also the reason that there were supplies to take back to Gage and that over half of the inhabitants of the compound now knew how to aim and fire a weapon.
The Feeders kept moving closer, and Hendrix kept staring at the roadblock in front of us. I was used to his calm, collected way of leading. He didn’t react irrationally or jump feet first into situations he didn’t already see a way out of. All of the Parkers, but especially him, worked a scary scenario with precision, logic and instinct. I trusted Hendrix with my life over and over again, and this time would be no different.
So why the hell wasn’t he moving?
“What’s the plan, Hendrix?” Nelson demanded. Apparently we’d been thinking similar thoughts.
Hendrix glanced over his shoulder just as Haley shot off her first round. The Feeders were still far enough away that the bullet didn’t do any damage, but it wouldn’t be long before our bullets had to do damage or the Feeders would.
“Haley, Maya and Reagan,” Hendrix started with a rough, sandpapery voice that gave me chills, “You need to buckle up.”
A moment passed where none of us moved. The click of Nelson’s seatbelt propelled us into action then, and Haley and I scrambled over the seat. We clicked the safeties on our weapons and buckled up immediately. I tucked my precious handgun into the calf-pocket of my cargo pants and gripped Haley’s hand for moral support.
I couldn’t see Hendrix’s face. He didn’t turn around to meet my eye or even debate his course of action with the group as a whole. From the rearview mirror, I could see the firm resolve set in his hard eyes, and I could easily imagine the press of his lips into a determined frown.
He was going to get us through this.
“Hold on,” he ordered.
I sucked in a sharp breath and held it tightly in my chest as Hendrix gunned the gas and took off with as much momentum as he could muster.
The front of the Suburban rammed into the two separate vehicles blocking the road. The impact was hard, jarring us forward and whiplashing our necks. Kent flew off his seat and face-planted onto the floor. He came abruptly awake with the impact and let out a deafening roar of pain.
Hendrix was already backing the Suburban up, disentangling us from the mangled, blazing metal heaps in our way.
Logically, I knew that cars didn’t start on fire like that for any reason. They had to be doused in gasoline or some other flammable chemical. A fire that size had to be coaxed to life. Metal didn’t just randomly combust, and our Suburban wouldn’t magically catch it either.
Still, the thought of ramming into a blazing inferno and then driving through it was a little bit scary.
“You’re going to have to cover us, Reagan,” Hendrix called back at me. His eyes flicked up in the review mirror to meet mine for a brief second telling me exactly what I needed to know.
He would get me out of this. He would do whatever it took to keep this group and me safe.
I swiveled in my seat, keeping the seatbelt on and around the backs of my thighs and back as I knelt and hugged the headrest. Clicking the safety off once again, I fired three shots at the closest Feeder. I hit him first in the chest and knocked him back a step, once in the neck making thick, mucous-filled blood spurt everywhere, but my final shot hit him in the cheek. He was sufficiently close so that the bullet exploded with enough force to make it to his brain and he dropped on the spot.
I let out a slow breath and clenched my fingers to stop them from shaking so violently.
“Hold on!” Hendrix shouted.
I kept my gun in hand and hugged the headrest tightly with both arms. Hendrix stomped on the gas again, and the car lurched forward before ramming into the two cars a second time. The impact was stronger than me, and I flew out of my seat, doing this kind of backwards clothes-line thing on the back of my neck before I slipped under the top half of the seatbelt and smacked my head on the seat in front of me. I was a little annoyed that the airbags had been obviously disabled in this thing.
Ouch! That one hurt.
Kent bounced off the ground and then hit it again with an enraged shriek that rivaled the high-pitched keening of the Zombie horde.
This time, the Suburban was able to dislodge the two inflamed cars about a foot apart. Now we could see a strip of wire tying them together. Possibly the SUV could break them apart anyway. But who knew how tightly they were connected? And the Feeders were just behind the car. We were going to have to seriously engage.
“I could cut that,” Nelson offered. “Give me five minutes.”
“No,” Hendrix answered immediately. “Nobody is leaving this car.”
Nelson didn’t argue because he knew there was no point. There were seventeen Zombies encircling us now. Five minutes to cut a wire might as well have been three hours. Nobody would survive that.
Kent crawled up so that his elbows rested on the seat, and his head hung down into his hands. He trembled noticeably, his whole body vibrating with shock. When he finally looked up his face was ghostly white and his eyes a sickly bloodshot that reminded me of the Feeders. He did not look well. We had to get him back this instant.
I couldn’t imagine things getting worse for him.
Hendrix started to back up again, to give himself room to ram the roadblock, but by the time he’d taken us back a few feet, the Feeders surrounded us on three sides. Haley and I were back to our position in the trunk in no time and took out as many Feeders as we could. Maya and Nelson had rolled down their windows on opposite sides of the vehicle and were also shooting at anything and everything.
I did not have enough bullets for this.
Taking time to reload would cost us precious seconds, and I’d emptied my semi-automatic in the convenient store. There were more guns in the other seats, but I couldn’t afford the time unless I absolutely had to.
“Hold on!” Hendrix shouted over the melee of gunfire, screeching Zombies, crying Kent and our own panic as it crept over our bodies and locked us in its deathly grip of blinding fear.
None of us could actually follow that order though until Hendrix stepped on the gas. Then we grabbed what we could despite the forward trajectory Hendrix’s jerky movements sent us on.
The impact of the Suburban into the two connected cars was so painful this time that I cried out. But the two cars separated even further with a deafening scraping sound of metal on metal. The Suburban crunched against the hit and the heat of the fire leapt into the car from every side.
>
We’d made significant progress this time through, but it wasn’t enough.
We needed one more solid run at least to get these vehicles far enough apart so that we could drive through. The metal tie was breaking, or stretching in some way, but we had to do more.
Hendrix tried to reverse back, but the tires spun, and the engine made a funny whirring sound. I crawled back into my position and started firing again, thankful that my gun hadn’t accidently misfired when I was getting tossed around.
Tension climbed up my back, digging its sharp talons along every inch of my spine. My shots became deadly accurate as I tried to keep the Feeders far enough away so that we had room to back up- if we could back up. But it wasn’t like these were skittish creatures, or that the fact their comrades were lying in pools of death and blood at their feet meant anything to them.
No, they just kept coming. And didn’t stop.
Finally, from some fancy maneuvering on Hendrix’s part- of which there was a lot of back and forth, and it was very hard to keep my balance- we were free of the fiery carnage and able to reverse.
This put us even closer to the Feeders. Eventually, my clip ran empty, like I knew it would. I ducked down and grappled the last replacement out of my pocket.
My fingers felt numb and useless as I tried to change the empty for a full clip in record time.
“Come on, Reagan, these guys don’t just want to play with me,” Haley begged. I could hear the thick fear in her voice that only sent my nerves ratcheting into the atmosphere like a space shuttle launch.
Hendrix continued to reverse, and I had to kill plenty of Feeders from half an inch away from my face. My heart hammered in my chest, and my blood rushed in my ears.
This wasn’t just retaliation on Matthias’s part. This was murder.
He had declared war, and while my escape from The Colony’s clutches had been brutal, I hadn’t expected this level of vengeance.
And maybe that was where they’d been able to get ahead. Because while I was back at Gage’s compound forcing myself not to think about Kane and pretending like that whole fiasco with Matthias didn’t happen; Matthias had been plotting a meticulously, thought-out retribution for us.
Not only had they somehow managed to follow us today, but they’d followed our scouts yesterday. They knew we were coming here because they’d watched Clara check it out.
That or they had a spy… It would have to be someone super close to Gage, though. And I couldn’t think of someone other than one of Clara or us. Instinct told me that it wasn’t her.
Although what good was my instinct anyway? It nudged me to trust Kane once upon a time, too.
That hadn’t exactly worked out well for me.
“I can’t,” Hendrix started but stopped sounding utterly defeated. “I need more space. I need more momentum to get us through.”
A putrid claw swiped at me from overhead, and I let out a shrill shriek. Throwing myself out of the way, Haley adjusted her aim and caught the attacking Feeder directly between the eyes.
“Get us out of here, Hendrix!” she shouted at him.
But it was too late. The Feeders had latched onto the Suburban and were scratching and clawing at the metal. One banged on Hendrix’s window with a forceful punch I was terrified would break the glass but didn’t.
We were all shouting and screaming, firing our weapons and aiming to kill, but we were out-numbered and our ammo was quickly depleting.
The passenger side door tore open and a scream ripped from my throat made out of pure, raw fear. The door came completely off the hinges before being tossed aside to allow room for a bigger-than-a-mother Feeder. His pasty, scaly arms swung inside the vehicle with the dexterity of an ogre, but his sharpened claws cut through the fabric of the seats with little effort. Nelson ducked down in time to avoid getting sliced by one, but the Zombie’s attention wasn’t on the front seat.
Maya was on the opposite side of Kent and even though she turned immediately to protect him; she wasn’t fast enough. Kent was practically lethargic from his pain, so when the Feeder leapt forward and sunk his slimy teeth into Kent’s shoulder, the injured man put up very little fight.
We all sat stunned for a half-second as we watched the gory tragedy take place in front of our eyes. A stunned whimper fell past my lips and tears followed.
Kent had more awareness than I did though. He looked up at Maya with the first lucid clearness I’d seen since he slipped in the chemical bath and asked her one, haunting request. “End me. Don’t let them turn me.”
Maya sat frozen in dumbfounded, horrified silence.
The Feeder pulled out of the SUV with Kent still dangling from his inhuman jaw. Blood dripped down Kent’s back and now from his shoulder as well. His eyes were pleading as he begged Maya to shoot him- to not give him a chance to be turned.
I didn’t blame Maya for not moving. I couldn’t move either. Paralyzed by the horror of this moment, time seemed to stand still except for Kent as he was dragged away from us.
In reality, only a second went by before we were back to protecting our own bodies from that ghastly fate. And then I couldn’t fire at Kent because I had a legion of Feeders to fend off.
Maya seemed completely incapable of rejoining the fight though, and I started to get nervous she would be next.
Before I could shout at her to move her ass, two things happened. The first was that Nelson put his priorities in order and found the sweet spot between Kent’s eyes. He ended Kent’s life before the Zombies could prolong it in the worst way possible. Nelson’s gunshot seemed to echo louder than all the rest and put a cataclysmic finality on this lethal battle.
The second thing to happen was that the Feeders frenzied around Kent’s dead body like a pack of lions around an injured gazelle. They cleared out enough to give us room to move.
This time when Hendrix accelerated, the Suburban broke through the line of burning cars and pushed our way to the highway beyond. The bumper detached partway with our effort to cut through the metal and we blew out a tire.
Heat licked at us from every side as we burst through the deadly flames and came out the other side, injured, traumatized, worse for wear, but still alive.
Hendrix stomped down on the gas once we were free, and even with the corner of the bumper dragging in front of us and the lame tire now rolling on just the rim, we were able to get to a speed that put ample space between the Feeders and us.
After a few miles, Nelson suggested we pull over and detach the bumper, but Hendrix didn’t respond; he just kept driving with single-minded determination.
I stared out the back window, too exhausted to move and too emotionally traumatized to tear my eyes away from the carnage we left behind.
Hendrix’s stern, authoritative voice finally cut through our silence and the whipping wind and jarred us all back into reality. “Nelson, switch seats with Reagan,” he commanded.
I half-turned, feeling confused and more than a little overcome. Nelson apparently wasn’t doing any better because he didn’t make a move to get out of his seat. Which was fine with me. I loved Hendrix, but Hendrix had made it out of there alive. Hendrix was fine. It was Kent that hadn’t survived.
Kent had become the latest victim of the unfairness of a simple vaccine gone terribly wrong.
“Nelson, switch seats with Reagan!” Hendrix boomed. I jumped in place, more shocked at Hendrix’s loss of control than anything else.
“All right, Brother,” Nelson answered softly, as if soothing a frightened animal.
Nelson crawled over the center console and into the middle seat. He gave me an apologetic shrug, but I shook my head. Hendrix needed me by him, and I was more than willing to give him that.
I wanted to be near him too. I wanted to be as close to him as I could get.
I reached out and squeezed Haley’s knee before making the awkward crawl to the front. I paused by Maya and tried to think of something to say to her, but the right words seemed impossibly out of reac
h.
When Hendrix barked out, “Reagan, later. I need you now.” I gave up trying to comfort her.
Besides, she looked like she was in shock anyway. Not that I completely lacked in sympathy, but until she calmed down, nothing I said was going to help her.
Nelson patted me on the back as I moved past him and then pulled Haley into a crushing hug when she hurdled the seat right after me.
I finally made it to the front passenger’s seat and sunk into it with the weight of the world pressing on my shoulders.
Hendrix didn’t look at me, didn’t even acknowledge me other than his hand reached out and grasped mine in a devastating grip. The moment our palms touched, a shiver of relief tremored through Hendrix, and his shoulders visibly sagged with relief.
In a hoarse, tortured voice, he rasped out, “By me, Reagan. Please, always stay by me.”
I nodded because his desperate “please” had broken me. He’d never once asked me so sweetly, never once made this constant request sound so vital to his survival. He’d done his best in our short history, made his strongest effort to convey how important it was to have me near him. But never had his voice sounded so pleading, nor had his emotion been so vividly transparent.
“Yes,” I finally croaked. “By you, Hendrix.”
No one spoke another word the entire trip. Eventually, we pulled into the walled safety of the compound and the engine all but died on the spot.
It was hard to believe in God when the world around me resembled hell so strongly. But then there were moments like this. There were situations I survived when I shouldn’t have. There were minutes added to my life that should not exist. There were miraculous drives home in which a vehicle this beat up should not have made it, but it did. And I did. I continued to breathe, to think, to live. I continued to survive despite this decay, despite this horrid death that crept into every part of my existence but my life and the lives of those people I loved most.
We stumbled from the Suburban in exhausted, traumatized heaps. I probably would have collapsed to the ground if it weren’t for Hendrix. He caught me before I could fall and pulled me tightly to his chest, holding me against him.