Love and Decay
A Novella series
Season Three
Volume Eight
Episodes Nine-Twelve
Rachel Higginson
Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2015
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Copy Editing by Carolyn Moon
Cover Design by Caedus Design Co.
Other books by Rachel Higginson currently available:
Love and Decay
Love and Decay, Season One, Episodes One-Twelve
Love and Decay, Season Two, Episodes One-Twelve
Love and Decay, Season Three, Episodes One-Twelve
Love and Decay, Season Four, Coming December, 2015
The Star-Crossed Series
Reckless Magic
Hopeless Magic
Fearless Magic
Endless Magic
The Reluctant King
The Relentless Warrior
Breathless Magic
Fateful Magic
The Redeemable Prince
The Starbright Series
Heir of Skies
Heir of Darkness
Heir of Secrets
The Siren Series
The Rush
The Fall
The Heart
Bet on Us
The Five Stages of Falling in Love
Every Wrong Reason
To the Readers,
I hope you all have your own Parker.
Episode Nine
Chapter One
1076 Days after initial infection
Question: How does one survive the night when one’s worst nightmare has come true?
Answer: By imagining how to kill said nightmare over and over and over.
Matthias Allen paced in front of my cell like he was the caged prisoner and I was the one announcing the death sentence. His face cringed with fury, his dark eyes glittering black in his raged out state. He looked more insane than ever.
And all of that fury, or most of it, was directed at me.
It was odd to have someone hate me this much. I had never been the recipient of this many negative feelings.
Not that I didn’t deserve Matthias’s bad mojo, it was just bizarre.
Before the Zombie Apocalypse, in those carefree days that seemed more and more ridiculous compared to my new reality, everyone liked me. I had been a likeable person.
I didn’t enjoy conflict, so I didn’t cause big scenes or drama with my friends. I didn’t even stand up to Quarterback Chris when he acted like a total douche. I just went with the flow, happy to have a ripple-free life.
But now my entire existence rippled. No, not rippled. That was too tame of a word. I rocked. And crashed. And wrecked every single thing I touched.
I was an ocean in the midst of a perfect storm. My waves crashed with deadly ferocity, pulling everything around me under before tossing them to the surface again.
I was an earthquake. The earth trembled beneath my feet. The ground opened up where I stepped and threatened to swallow whole everything I held dear.
I was a volcano. I was a tsunami.
I was a tornado that razed everything in my path, destroying everything in my wake.
And that destruction had come to Matthias and annihilated his carefully controlled life. No matter how often I justified my actions or accepted Kane’s sacrifice, I took everything that Matthias loved.
And killed it.
Yes, he was an evil dictator bent on controlling everything and every person he could get his hands on. Yes, he was a sadistic lunatic that would strangle the life out of me at his first chance.
Yes, he planned to torture me until I screamed my submission and paid for my sins.
But he was also a man that had been upended by the force of me. While I didn’t exactly feel repentant for my actions, I did have to adjust to this new version of me.
I wasn’t Reagan Catherine Willow, good daughter, good friend, good girlfriend, good-ish student. I didn’t have a promising future laid out before me. I didn’t float mindlessly through the day, believing everything would be wonderful because I was happy and nothing could take away that happiness. I didn’t have good chances for survival.
I was now, Reagan Catherine Willow, Zombie hunter, dismantler of evil regimes and savior to freedom. I was a rebel. I was a zealot. I was a fighter that would never give up.
I made enemies wherever I went. More people hated me than liked me.
I could die today or in fifty years, but I would not die a shallow, fickle child that stood for nothing and fell for everything.
I would die a woman. A woman with convictions and principals. I knew what I believed, without doubts and without fear. I knew the difference between good and evil and that sometimes they bled together, but there was always right. I knew I had a purpose. I knew I would always need a purpose.
And I knew what it was like to care more about other lives than my own.
The Zombie Apocalypse had changed me in a lot of ways. But not all of those changes were bad.
They were just bad enough to smudge the edges of my moral compass. But I still believed in freedom. In justice. I still stood for liberty. I still held convictions that defined who I was and who I would always be.
I just had enough life experience to make murder a gray area.
Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to let the quality of life get in the way of ending Matthias Allen.
Hendrix’s strong hand wrapped around mine and squeezed. I dropped my head to his shoulder, feeling the heavy exhaustion from too many sleepless nights.
“We’re going to get out of here, Reagan,” he whispered into my dirty hair. His lips brushed the top of my head and I closed my eyes against the intensity of his sweetness. “I swear it.”
“I believe you,” I whispered back. I believed him because I couldn’t face not believing him. “We’re going to get out of here, but not before I wring every last drop of blood from his lifeless body.” I purposefully raised my voice so everyone could hear my threat.
Matthias’s big head swung my direction, the expression that he wore promised a world of pain. “If only y’all could put your money where your mouth is.”
“Let me out and I’ll do my best,” I returned with a smile. Hendrix’s hand squeezed tight. He hated how I antagonized Matthias. He’d much rather I waited until the right opportunity and then let my gun do my talking for me.
If only I had that self-control.
A slow smile spread across Matthias’s face. “Haven’t we done this before? Your best just is not good enough.” He rubbed at his side, arrogance and victory blasting off him.
I had tried to kill him before and didn’t succeed. Although I did wound him.
That had to count for something, right? It wasn’t exactly a bull’s eye, but I hit the outer rings.
Fifty Points to me.
The door opened and one of his men rushed inside. The dusty wind chased him in, whistling through the narrow crack to the outside. Something that looked like ash drifted over his head and I sniffed the air, wondering what it could be.
The man stomped his feet and shook out his head the moment the door was closed. He brought the stench of rotting Zombies and embers with him.
“It’s nasty out there,” he growled, spitting dirt with each word. “I didn’t know they had weather like this down here. You can barely see the hand in front of your face ‘cuz of all the dirt and the wind’s blowing so hard it ‘bout knocked me sideways.”
“You scared of a little dust?” Matthias taunted. The rest of the men snickered. “We’ve got bigger problems to worry about than the forecast.”
The man took a step back and turned to the side. “It makes hunting down children difficult, is all I’m sayin’.” He shook his head again. “And the fire is picking up. The boys are having trouble keeping it contained.”
Matthias cursed under his breath before grabbing two of his men by the backs of their collars and shoving them toward the door. “If you want to get anything done right, you have to do it yourself. Let’s go.” They pushed through the door, into conditions that looked, from my vantage point, more dangerous than a little bit of dust, and disappeared into the shocking darkness of early afternoon. The usually glaring sun was blotted out by churning clouds that flashed the whitest lightning.
The Mexican man that had stayed with Diego, who had told us his name was Javi, started laughing animatedly and pointing toward the door. His eyebrows pushed into his hairline while he spoke rapid Spanish. I had no idea what he said, but I guessed he didn’t see weather like this very often. He laughed under his breath and rubbed his rough, dirty hands over his scruffy chin.
I looked at Hendrix and raised my eyebrows. “Do you think your brothers got out okay?” I whispered, hoping nobody else would hear me.
“They did.” I read his lips because his voice hadn’t made enough sound. “They’ll know how to stay alive.”
I hoped the same was true for us.
I looked around at the rest of our cell. Vaughan and Tyler sat huddled together, their arms wrapped around each other. Tyler looked more relaxed than usual, even though we were locked up and her father had promised to kill us.
I hadn’t noticed the turmoil in her expression or rigidness in her manner until it disappeared. It was something she had always carried with her, an impenetrable armor that had protected her wounded heart. But today that armor had been stripped away and replaced with something that looked a lot like peace.
I could relate. I dealt with the same prickly exterior until a few days ago when Hendrix and I worked things out. Now the stone and mortar I’d used to erect walls around my heart and soul had crumbled to nothing but ash. It didn’t imprison me or keep me out of reach. I was wide open to Hendrix and everything our relationship brought with it. Even if that was scary. Even if I had never felt more vulnerable.
More fragile.
I had a love that surpassed this world and made everything in this world worth it. I had the love of a man I did not deserve and the hope of an unshakable future that could be something like greatness if we both survived long enough to get there.
And that made me strong. And brave.
That made me the opposite of fragile.
Now I could hate Matthias and wish him the worst kind of death, but still know who I was as a person, still know that at my center goodness remained… loyalty, love and hope remained.
I was happy for Tyler. And I was even happier that in the pits of hell, both of us had found our way. We were not lost.
Diego shifted abruptly in his sleep and the pain of the movement jerked him awake. He sucked in a gasping breath, like it was the first he’d ever taken, but it quickly turned into violent coughing. I winced for him because I knew that had to hurt like a son of a bitch.
His eyes scrunched shut and he started to make the ugliest wincing sounds. Javi dropped to a squat and tried to adjust him so the pain would ebb. It didn’t for a long time.
Finally, when he was conscious but still, his head swung to the side and he absorbed where he was and who was with him. Whispered Spanish obscenities fell from his cracked lips before he blinked me into focus.
“Reagan,” he wheezed with his horrible pronunciation.
“Diego.”
“This can’t be a good thing,” he remarked dryly. His hands were curled against his stomach as if he needed them to hold his insides in. When he spoke he tried to lift one hand to gesture at his body, but only his fingers managed to respond.
“This is not a good thing,” I confirmed. “Matthias killed most of your men and your entire Zombie horde. Then he took over your village. We’re waiting for him to pack us up and drag us back to America.” I thought about that for a second and added, “I think I mean that literally.”
Diego’s head flopped back to center and he closed his eyes. “Arrogant,” he murmured. “I was too arrogant.”
Hendrix let out a slow breath, “That seems to be the moral of this entire saga.”
“He will kill me before he leaves,” Diego gritted through a croaking whisper. “If my wound does not finish the task first.”
I didn’t say anything to that. I couldn’t exactly reassure him that everything would be okay when we both knew that it would most definitely not be okay.
His soldier bent down and spoke fast Spanish again. Occasionally Diego nodded along, but mostly he listened with a disgusted look spread across his face.
“I am dead,” Diego announced after a while. “I am a dead man. The infection smells. I can feel the life draining from my body. Time is against me. Everyone is against me.” He crooked a finger from his abdomen and I took it to mean that he wanted me to come closer.
Without thinking too much about my decision, I pushed off the wall behind me and moved to kneel next to Diego’s bed.
“Nobody likes a pity party,” I told him, attempting to lighten the situation.
I wasn’t sure if he understood me or even heard me. He shook his head with his eyes still closed. Sweat beaded on his forehead and slicked his thick hair to his head. His skin had lost the rich, copper tone and faded to a sickly pale. His infection did stink, really bad. I could see that the blood still oozed. This was what a dying man looked like up close and personal.
Not that I hadn’t seen one before. But I could never quite get used to the look of death.
It was too personal. Too near. Too… final.
“I have nothing left, Reagan, except her. Do you understand?”
I nodded, before I realized he couldn’t see me. “Adela.”
His hand slid up his filthy, bloodied shirt and landed on his chest. He tapped at his heart with a weak finger. “She is my heart. Mi corazón. I have loved her since I saw her silky hair and whispered her name for the first time. Her father tried to keep her from me, but I promised him a long time ago that she would be mine.” He paused to suck in a rasping breath. “For a while, she was.”
I shifted, settling in for story time. “She’s not property, Diego. You cannot own her.”
He nodded listlessly. “She owns me.”
Somewhat shocked at his confession, I leaned forward and tried to read his expression. Was he serious? He loved her that much? His forehead smoothed out and his mouth stopped frowning.
“Then why did you let her go? If she means so much to you, why did you give her up?” My heart pounded in my chest and I couldn’t help but feel like Diego was about to reveal all of himself, to show me good, worthy pieces of his soul I assumed had been erased a long time ago.
“I didn’t want to cage her,” he rasped. “I wanted to keep her safe. Now she is safe. From her father… from my enemies… from me.”
“Does she love you?”
I whispered, shocked by his words.
The hint of a smile played on his lips, “Of course… But she is afraid of me too.” His head dropped to the side. For a moment I thought he had died, but when I put my fingers to his wrist, I felt his pulse beat with my own and watched the ragged movement of his chest.
I fell backwards, in a daze. I had no idea who Diego really was. He was as much of a mystery today as he had been the first time I met him.
Watching him in his fitful sleep, I realized something: This was the human condition. Right here.
For all of our murderous, power-hungry ways, for all of our desperation to survive and keep surviving, for all of the evil things we did in the name of good or in the honesty of evil, we were nothing without love.
It was what separated us from the Feeders.
We could be good or bad, nice or vicious, but each of us was capable of something so far beyond ourselves that often it didn’t make sense.
Even Matthias had loved Linley and his children, in whatever sick, twisted way he could. Love had transformed Kane into something better, something that deserved better. Love had shattered Tyler’s hard shell and given Haley something infinitely beautiful. Love had redeemed even Diego, had given him a purpose beyond his own greed and ambition.
Love had rocked my world entirely. It had drastically changed the person that I was and evolved my heart into something I never thought it could be. All of us lived for a purpose, whether we wanted complete world domination or we just wanted to survive until tomorrow.
Something drove us.
But love made us. Love cushioned our failures and righted our wrongs. It gave us hope when there was none and determination when everything else had been stripped away.