Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes 9-12, Season Three) (11 page)

“I’m starting to feel that way about my
entire life,” Tyler mumbled. Vaughan shot her a look and she
grinned at him.

I would have smiled too, if I hadn’t been so
afraid. I picked up my gun from off the floor. I had been resting
it between my feet, because I found that trying to keep it tucked
into some piece of clothing while we drove for hours at a time was
uncomfortable. I had a bag of other weapons down there as well.
Andy had made sure we were stocked and ready to go before we
separated ways.

I checked my gun and made sure it was ready
to deliver. I had no doubt things were about to get bloody. Then I
steeled my nerves for the killing that would come.

“Vaughan, are you going to try to go forward
or back out of here?” Hendrix asked in a low, measured voice.

Vaughan glanced in the review mirror. I
wished I wouldn’t have watched his shoulders jump from surprise. If
I hadn’t seen him visibly react, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to
turn around and check it out for myself. I wouldn’t have turned
around and witnessed the horde of Zombies filling the street on
every side, wading through the river of sewage or jumping from roof
to tin roof with their beady red eyes trained on the van.

I would have been able to pretend we had some
kind of option for escape.

I would have been able to believe we had some
kind of freaking chance.

“I’ll, uh, go forward,” Vaughan decided
weakly. “Forward seems like our best option at the moment.”

“
Holy shit
!” Harrison shouted. “Where
did they come from?”

“Oh, my god,” Tyler echoed. “What… How…?
We’re so going to die.”

Haley tensed next to me. Her eyes squeezed
shut and she clutched Lennon to her chest while tears squeezed from
the corners of her eyes. She pressed her lips to his soft head and
whispered a prayer that was thick with desperation and
bargaining.

I didn’t know how to comfort her or tell her
things would be all right.

I wasn’t sure they would be.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” King asked with
more curiosity than I felt.

I didn’t care why they weren’t attacking. I
was too wrapped up in what would happen once they did. I couldn’t
take my eyes off them as I watched their numbers increase. They
leaked out of buildings and jumped from higher rooftops. They
abandoned their suppers for our fresh meat. They became a seething
mass of black, gunky decay and sharp white bone. Their red eyes
glowed in the darkness, never blinking or turning away.

They became one, a specter of gloom,
following us to our death.

And we could do nothing to stop them.

Vaughan tried to speed up, but the road was
dangerously torn up and too narrow. The Feeders, with their
superhuman speed, had no trouble keeping up with us.

“Does it feel like they’re herding us
somewhere?” Nelson asked in answer to King’s question.

“
What
?” Tyler groaned. “No. No…”

That’s not possible
. “That’s not
possible,” I whispered. “Right?
Right
?”

A side road opened up to our left. Vaughan
started to take it when a cluster of Zombies stepped from the
darkness and clawed at the van. He quickly readjusted our course,
smashing the van against the corner of the building in the process.
We lost a side mirror, but left the Feeders howling after us.

“They
are
herding us,” Vaughan
decided. “This can’t be good.”

Hendrix slid forward in his seat and slapped
a hand on my knee. He squeezed tightly and let out a shaky breath.
“We need to fight them.”

“I’m sorry what? Did you not see how many
there were? We don’t stand a chance!” Vaughan shook his head and
kept his eyes firmly on the road.

Hendrix insisted, “They’re pushing us
somewhere bad. I don’t know exactly where, but I’m pretty sure we
can all agree that we do not want to go there.”

I nodded. That was true. I did not want to go
where they wanted me to go.

“So let’s kill them before we get there,”
Hendrix encouraged. “Stop the van and let’s fight on
our
terms.”

Vaughan shook his head. He knew the risk. He
knew we didn’t stand a chance. “Hendrix-”

“Vaughan, they kill us now or they take us
back to their hive and kill us there. At least we can try. At least
we’re not where they want us yet.” Hendrix’s fingers dug into my
thigh. His voice was tethered by the thinnest tendons. He didn’t
know if he believed his plan yet, I could read it all over him.

“Make sure you’re prepared for this,” Vaughan
demanded, speaking to the entire car. “This isn’t going to be
pretty.”

“We’re really going to fight this horde?”
Miller asked incredulously. “You really expect any of us to
survive?”

“Yep!” Vaughan shouted backward for the
entire van to hear. “We survive or we die. Those are our only
options.”

“What the hell!” Miller yelled back, just as
the first crack to our back window fissured through the smooth
glass.

“It’s started.” Hendrix slid his arm up my
leg and threw it around my shoulders. “Stay alive,” he whispered to
me.

“What happened to
stay by your side
?”
I asked, even as I spun around and knelt on the bench.

“Stay alive,” he amended. “So you can stay by
my side.”

The second rock shattered the back window and
hell exploded into my reality.

Chapter Two

“The road ends,” Vaughan shouted. Something
landed on top of the van with a crunching thump. “The road
ends!”

My next breath wheezed in my lungs. By now, I
should have been used to the blind panic that screamed through me
whenever we found ourselves in this kind of situation.

But I couldn’t get used to this. I didn’t
think I ever would. Zombies would attack and I would reel with
hysterical mania. I couldn’t find my center. I couldn’t see through
the madness that closed in around me. It wrapped its thick fingers
around my throat and squeezed until I knew I would die from
fear.

Until I just knew my heart would stop and my
brain would explode.

“We have to go!” Hendrix urged in my ear.
“Now, Reagan!”

I opened my eyes to see everything in motion.
Guns blazing, Zombies screaming. Vaughan gave instructions while I
prepared to die.

Damn, adrenaline. Sometimes it worked for
you. Sometimes… not so much.

“
Reagan
,” Hendrix demanded.

Something flipped inside me. I went from the
helpless victim to the deranged killer in less than a second. I
gripped my gun, grabbed my messenger bag filled with more weapons.
Ignoring my freshly healed injuries that still ached and stung, I
followed Hendrix into the night.

Tyler, Vaughan, Harrison and King kept the
creatures back while the rest of us closed in around Haley, Lennon,
Page and Adela.

I refused to look at Haley. I couldn’t watch
her hold that baby to her chest and know that this could be the end
of his very short life. He was too precious for the ugliness of
this world. Too innocent.

Instead, I focused on killing as many moving
things as I could. I mentally kept track of my death toll, pushing
myself to reach new, macabre heights with each kill shot.

I had a personal best of twenty-three Zombies
in one fight. Something sick and competitive compelled me to beat
that record.

Tonight seemed like the perfect
opportunity.

Through the chaos, I surveyed the road. A
roughly fashioned metal gate blocked it off. It looked like people
had dragged the siding off the closest shanties and welded them
together. It had been bound together with a rusted metal chain that
padlocked on the other side. It might have been strong enough to
keep our van out, but I doubted it could keep Feeders out.

Especially these. They scaled the rundown
housing around us like monkeys climbing trees, using their freakish
strength and lack of fear to propel them from the ground to the
roof in seconds. They vaulted from rooftop to rooftop with mangled
ease, landing on already-broken ankles or crushed feet.

I took aim at the ones on the roofs closest
to me and tried to hit their darkened silhouettes. The only real
marker I had when they moved this fast was their unblinking red
eyes that glowed in the bright moonlight.

One. Two. Miss. Miss. Three.

Hendrix stood at my side, his shoulder
pressed into mine. He could see better in the dark than I could and
his victims fell fast. They dropped from the rooftops, splashing
the sewage in thick, coagulated streaks on the muddy banks.

I swallowed back bile from the putrid
smell.

“We have to move,” Hendrix huffed next to me.
“They’re never going to stop coming.”

What if that’s what they want us to
do?
I kept that thought to myself. Staying put wasn’t an option
either.

“King and Harrison, grab what you can!”
Vaughan ordered over the sound of our gunfire and the Zombies
screeching. “Then we leave.”

My heart lurched. I didn’t want to leave
another vehicle behind. This one had gotten us so far. It was
reliable. It was familiar. It was supposed to get us out of
Mexico.

Hendrix cursed under his breath and pressed
closer to me. He didn’t want to leave the van either.

I aimed at a Feeder, readying to jump at our
circle. One shot was all I had to kill it or it was going to kill
me. I met its reflective red eyes and felt my hands shake with fear
and determination. Letting out a settling breath I pulled the
trigger.

The monster didn’t have time to react before
the bullet punched through its forehead and exited the other side
of its head. The malicious light dimmed from its face and it
toppled headfirst onto the ground below, only to be pounced on by
another Feeder.

The baby’s screams penetrated my focus and I
felt sick with unease.
We had to move.

When Harrison and King reemerged from the
van, laden with supplies and bags, Vaughan led the way. We inched
along in a tight circle toward a narrow alley. It was the only
thing not blocked off, which made me especially nervous.

Something landed near my feet while I was
preoccupied with my surroundings. I jumped back just as jagged
fingernails swiped at my ankle. I panicked and shot before I aimed
properly. My bullet hit the ground next to the Feeder’s hip,
useless and wasted.

I adjusted my hands as it rocked back to a
crouch and coiled to spring. When it leapt into the air, I lifted
my hands and pulled the trigger. Blood and brain matter showered
down on me, but the Feeder landed dead on the ground.

I used my forearm to wipe at my face. My eyes
burned with the contaminated blood and I could feel the squishy
pieces of brain and sharp shreds of bone all over my face. I wanted
to be sick, but I managed to keep it down by focusing on killing
something else. I tried to swallow through my roiling nausea.

On foot, we could get lost in this city for
weeks. Maybe months.

Maybe forever.

My thigh screamed with pain where it still
healed. The bullet wound had done a serious number on me and
sometimes I wondered if I would ever be back to normal. My legs
started shaking from the pain and I started to get nervous.

My weakened leg tripped over squishy debris.
Just as I started to flail, Hendrix’s arm wrapped around my waist
and caught me. As I disentangled my feet from a plastic bag filled
with something squishy and wet, I tried not to vomit. I kicked up a
terrible smell that mingled with the suffocating scent of Feeders
and sewage.

My mouth salivated until I had to constantly
swallow to keep down my meager meal from earlier.

Tyler couldn’t handle it. She leaned forward
and puked up her supper. Vaughan stood guard over her heaving back.
Page puked next and I felt something splash the backs of my
ankles.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
Don’t think about it.

I never thought scent could be dangerous, but
everything around us was dead or rotting. The cloying decay drowned
our senses and turned our stomachs. It was hard to keep my eyes
open against the force of it.

I gagged and tried to cover my nose and mouth
with my bicep while I continued to shoot at the swarming
Feeders.

“Don’t do it, Reagan,” Hendrix shouted at me.
“If you puke, I will too.
Keep it in!
”

I gagged again, but fought desperately to
swallow the rising bile. Hendrix could not be taken out of this
fight. Not one of the Parker brothers could. If we all started
vomiting, we stood no chance against this horde.

Lennon’s shrill screams helped me keep it
together. He was inconsolable at the moment. I wondered if the
smell bothered him as much or if his face was buried deep enough in
Haley’s chest that he could only sense his mama.

I hoped that was the case. I hoped he didn’t
have to suffer through this like the rest of us.

My eyes watered, but I blinked away the
moisture and focused on the rooftops. One of the Feeders I intended
to shoot jumped from a higher building to a lower one near the dead
end. The roof was slick with something he hadn’t anticipated and he
lost his footing. His long nails scratched at the metal roof, but
it was too late, he slipped over the edge of the building and
disappeared into the unknown.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Hendrix. I took
aim at a Feeder and managed to shoot it in the shoulder. When it
jerked back, I readjusted and nailed it in the temple.

“Hear what?” he shouted at me to be
heard.

“The gunshots!”

“What gunshots? All I hear are gunshots!”

It hurt my lungs to talk because I had to
inhale the toxic air and it burned in my chest and antagonized my
already queasy stomach.

I wanted another Feeder to fall over the edge
of that building so I could test a theory, but noticed none of them
got close to it. In fact, now that I paid attention, I realized
that we had managed to put our backs to the locked gate and were
only fighting Feeders on three sides. Nothing came from behind
us.