Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes 9-12, Season Three) (28 page)

“Maybe we should give up?” My voice shook as
I addressed the crowd. “Maybe it’s not worth it. We’ve made it this
far and we’ve found a city that isn’t overrun with Feeders. We
could make a life here. We could rebuild without risking anything
more.”

They nodded with me and sat in pensive
silence while my words settled in. I was the one that brought them
here, but at the same time I wasn’t willing to lose another person
I cared about.

Adela added, “I asked them why they don’t
live in houses and they said that the
houses
smell bad. It’s better outside. But I don’t think
they know how to clean. We do. We could have our pick of the city
and turn it into something habitable.”

I started to like this idea more and more.
“We could find weapons again, real ones. We could find something
big enough for all of us and arm ourselves. We wouldn’t have to
worry about constant survival then. We could learn to garden and
hunt like
the kids do. Maybe not
dogs… but maybe there are other animals around here that we could
eat.”

Hendrix slid forward and sat up straight.
“It’s possible,” he agreed. “This way we wouldn’t have to dance
around other humans. They could just as easily take advantage of us
as anyone else. Maybe more so because we are offering them pieces
of us. I know we want to help, but at what cost? Would we be forced
to give up more than we can afford? What if we…” He looked at his
little sister curled up on Nelson’s lap. His voice was barely
audible when he finally scratched out, “What if we lost someone
else?”

Nobody said anything. The reality of
Hendrix’s words punched us all in the gut and we had to emotionally
adjust before we could move on.

I had just decided that our new plan was the
best plan when Page spoke up. “No,” she said
simply
. She jumped off Nelson’s lap and stood in
the middle of us. “No,” she repeated.

Nelson chuckled at his little sister’s
uncharacteristic defiance, “What do you mean no?”

“We’re not this… this selfish,” she answered.
“We don’t give up and we don’t walk away from a challenge.” She
turned in a circle, meeting each of us with a fierce gaze. The fire
blazed behind her, illuminating her blonde hair with an orange
glow, lighting her blue eyes with pure, white light. “We’ve come
this far. We lost Vaughan. We’re not going to give up now and walk
away. People need us. These people could use us to solve this
problem, to make sure nobody has to die from a Feeder bite again.
We can’t quit now.
I
can’t quit now. I have to do this.”

Hendrix stood up too. He towered over his
young sister, showing her who was in charge. “Page, you don’t know
what you’re talking about. You don’t understand that we could lose
more than Vaughan. They could take everything from us. They could
take
you
from us.”

She tilted her head and lifted an eyebrow.
“You would never let them take me from you.” She waited for him to
disagree. When he didn’t, she pushed on through a thick, wobbly
voice. “I trust you, Hendrix. I trust all of you. And I don’t just
trust you to keep me safe, I trust you to save the world. You are
my heroes. You have kept me safe and saved my life every single day
for as long as I can remember. You can’t stop now. The world needs
you.
I
need you.”

“Nothing like having your ass handed to you
by a
five-year-old
,” Harrison
muttered.

Page whirled on him. “I’m nine. And cuss
jar.”

I laughed before I could help it. She was
right. And so was Harrison. We just got our asses handed to us by a
little girl who knew more than she should about
a world
that shouldn’t exist.

Tears wet my lashes again, but this time they
were from pride. I was so proud of this girl and the person she was
becoming. Everything that could go wrong went wrong for us and yet
she remained wholesome and innocent. She somehow remained
good
, despite being surrounded by
so much bad.

“Then it’s settled,” Hendrix announced.
“We’ll continue on as planned. Page has promised to protect us.”
She spun around and looked helpless and terrified until Hendrix
winked at her to let her know he was teasing.

The smile that lit up her face was one of the
most beautiful things I had ever seen.

“They can light fires and skin and cook dogs,
but they don’t know how to clean?” King addressed the crowd.
“Bullshit. They don’t want to clean.”

We followed his focus to watch the kids
expertly skewer dog meat over the open flame. The flesh crackled in
the heat, letting off a unique odor that I wasn’t sure about.

“You okay with this?” Hendrix asked Nelson
across the fire.

Nelson nodded, “We’re in.” He thought about
it for a minute and added, “If they touch my child, I’ll kill them
all.”

Hendrix sucked in a deep breath, “You are not
alone in that.” He turned to Tyler and repeated the question, “Are
you okay with this, Ty?”

She didn’t turn away from staring at the
fire. “I don’t care what we do.”

I felt Hendrix’s unease as it shifted
through
his body. “Tyler, you
might not care now, but you will someday. I need you on board or
we’ll do something different.”

Tears tracked down her cheeks. She never took
her eyes off the fire. “I’m okay with it then. Whatever it takes to
eradicate these bastards.”

Hendrix made eye contact with Harrison, then
King, then Miller and finally Adela. They all nodded their consent.
We were in agreement.

“Santi will take us whenever we’re ready,”
Adela assured us.

“We’re ready,” Hendrix decided.

“We’re almost ready,” Harrison interjected.
“Just as soon as I’m not willing to gnaw my own arm off. I need to
eat.” He took a piece of meat when it was offered to him and
immediately chewed off a large bite. After a moment, he said, “Not
too bad, for you know… dog.”

Two hours later, he had a different
opinion.

“It hurts so bad,” Harrison wheezed. “Why did
I need to eat?” He bent over and clutched his stomach. “Why did I
think that was a good idea?”

I had my own stomach issues to deal with,
although I hadn’t eaten nearly as much as King and Harrison. God,
dog
did not agree with me. Not in
any way. “I think this is going to kill me. Nobody can survive
this.”

“I should have eaten my own arm,” Harrison
whimpered. “It would have been easier to digest.”

“Enough,” Hendrix commanded. I looked over to
find sweat beaded across his forehead and his shoulders jerking
with pain. This had hit us all hard.

I doubled over in pain. Cramps sieged my
insides and threatened to tear me apart. I had never felt like this
before. We had eaten some
awful
food during our last year on the run, but I’d never experienced
anything quite this aggressive.

Bile
pushed
up my throat and for a few glorious seconds I thought I could puke
this poison out of me. The feeling passed and I whimpered with
frustration.

King groaned and clutched his stomach. “They
did this on purpose,” he accused. “This is how they trap their
victims.”

Hendrix gave him a hard look, but King didn’t
apologize. We were all too miserable to take orders. The dog had
decided to eat us from the inside out.

“This is how the pioneers died,” Nelson added
unhelpfully. “They shit themselves to death. Just like this.”

“Cuss jar,” Page gasped.

“Sorry,” Nelson muttered.

“That’s not true,” Harrison argued, but it
sounded more like a plea than anything else.

“What do you think dysentery is, dude?”
Nelson
grunted
. “People die of
that shit.” King snorted a laugh and Page shot him a dirty look.
“Sorry,” he said again. “Cuss jar. Got it.”

Adela patted my back. She had declined the
dog,
but hadn’t bothered to warn
any of us.
Consequently,
her
stomach was still intact and we had decided to accuse her of being
in cahoots with Santi and his gang of murderous children.

“Santi says we’re almost there,” she said
soothingly. “It’s just at the top of this hill.”

I moaned something in response, feeling half
delirious with the pain. She took my hand and pulled me toward the
top of a steep hill. The pavement was surprisingly smooth and I was
thankful that I could shuffle along without fear of tripping. If I
fell, at this point, I might not ever get up again.

We stumbled our way up the rest of the
distance and came to a stop in front of a stone wall that stretched
high over our heads. I took a slow breath and forced my body into
standing. The knife in my hands slipped to my fingertips as I put
all of my strength into straightening my back.

For a second, I forgot my agony as I faced
the imposing building protected by the massive wall that would keep
almost everything else out. Thick barbwire ran along the top of it,
three levels high, and in front of the barbwire, long spikes poked
skyward every two inches
. The
message was clear.

Keep out.

An iron gate stood in the middle of the wall,
shut tight and locked with heavy chains. On the wall, near the
hinges, sat a video monitor with a fuzzy screen. A red light
blinked in the corner.

I squinted at the electricity and tried to
reconcile the phenomenon with what I had seen of the rest of the
city… and the country… and the continent… and the world.

It didn’t fit.

Intense curiosity moved me forward until I
stood before the buzzing screen. A blue button nestled next to the
blinking light, daring me to push it and find out if anyone lived
here.

“The research station?” Hendrix asked in a
low voice next to me.

Another cramp attacked my gut and I leaned
forward, resting my head on the
cold
iron. I breathed through it and waited for the pain
to pass. It took another minute before I could stand again.

“I think so,” I gritted out to Hendrix.
“There’s only one way to find out.” My finger hovered over the blue
button while I waited for Hendrix to stop me or talk some sense
into me or do anything but leave this up to me.

“They might have a cure for liquid diarrhea,”
he mumbled instead.

I laughed, surprised by his sense of humor.
“Then this whole trip has been worth it.”

He elbowed me gently, “Go on,” he coaxed.
“Let’s see if anyone’s home.”

With a shaking
finger,
I pressed down on the blue button and waited.
Then waited some more.

I wondered how shocked the people inside the
station were to get visitors. It was clear that the children wanted
nothing to do with them, but I didn’t know how many people roamed
these city streets. They could be barraged with visitors and
individuals
seeking their help and
medical expertise.

Or they could be an isolated culture that
thought they were hidden away from the rest of the world.

“Who are you?” a voice barked at me through a
scratchy speaker.

I was too surprised by the question to censor
my response. “Who are
you
?” I demanded.

There was silence for a full minute before
anyone responded. I had just started to realize I had made a
colossal mistake when a tightly accented British voice said, “Since
you’re knocking on my door, I expect you already know who I
am.”

I frowned. I didn’t know exactly who it was
on the other end of this speaker, but I had an idea of what he was
up to in there. I looked at Hendrix and waited for a piece of
wisdom to fall from his lips.

His brows furrowed and he shrugged his
shoulders. So much for that piece of wisdom.

“If you’d let us in, you might find that you
know who we are too,” I said cryptically into the speaker.

More drawn-out silence before he came back
with, “I highly doubt that. We don’t get much news this way.”

I pressed my lips together. I was used to our
reputation preceding us. It had never worked in our favor before,
but I was hoping this would be different.

Then again, how I expected them to know about
us all this way from Apocalyptic-civilization was beyond me. It
wasn’t like they got the
End of the World Times
or
Zombie
TMZ
. We had finally traveled beyond our notorious reputation
and found people completely unaware of the havoc and chaos we
brought everywhere with us.

Hendrix leaned forward, taking over the blue
button and filling in explanations I was too addled to come up
with. “We’re people that can help,” he explained. “We’ve heard what
you’re up to and we think we can add to your research.”

The British response was quicker this time,
“And what kind of research do you think we’re up to here?”

Hendrix wiped at the sweat on his brow and I
could tell he was fighting to stay standing. “You’re looking for a
cure.”

“A cure to what?” the voice shot back.

“To the infection,” Hendrix answered just as
quickly.

“And how do you think you can help with
that?” the crisp voice demanded.

Hendrix held my gaze and with a straight face
and conviction I didn’t know he had, he announced, “We’re
immune.”

I could hear the shock as it rippled through
the airwaves between us and the building. Finally the mystery voice
asked in a rasping voice, “Immune to what?”

“To becoming Zombies,” I finished. “We’re
immune to Zombie bites.”

“That’s not possible,” the voice argued.
“We’ve tested it on hundreds of-”

“We are,” Hendrix cut them off. “You can see
for yourself. We’re immune.”

“But how did you… how did you find us?”

Hendrix and I shared a small smile. They were
starting to believe us. I hadn’t expected it would be easy for them
to trust us, but I hoped that our experiences and the Parker blood
would hold some weight over whether or not they decided to work
with us.