Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes 9-12, Season Three) (29 page)

Besides, it wasn’t like they had a line of
volunteers lined up around the block.

“We ran into some of your associates,” I
explained. “Bobbi Jo? We met them in the States.”

His breath of relief whooshed through the
air, causing the static in the speaker to spike. “So they made it?”
The hope in his voice hurt me in ways I didn’t expect. I had major
ill feelings for Bobbi Jo and her band of betraying bastards. But
they had been this guy’s friends. They had been on a mission to fix
humanity.

They’d just messed with the wrong people.

That was something I could relate to.

“They made it to the States,” Hendrix
confirmed grimly.

The guy must have heard the change in
Hendrix’s tone, because his British accent came back more
desperately, “But they won’t be coming back?” He asked a question,
but it wasn’t one. He knew the answer before the words ever left
his mouth.

“We’ll tell you about them, about what
happened. We’ll show you that we’re immune to the infection and
could
possibly
help you find your
cure or vaccine or whatever else you’re trying to do. We came here
to help. And we
came
a very, very
long way. We just need you to let us in.”

Silence answered Hendrix’s plea. I started to
lose hope. We’d made it. We finally stood in front of the finish
line. Our goal had been reached. Our mission completed… almost. We
just needed these gates to open and our feet to cross the
threshold.

I flat out refused to go back with Santi. I
could not take another night of eating dog and having this happen
to my insides.

I could not do it.

It would kill me.

In fact, I was pretty sure Santi and his
friends had evolved into some form of super humans since they
seemed completely unbothered by the razor blades now scraping
through my intestines.

Lennon screamed behind me. I wasn’t sure that
Haley had eaten enough to nourish him and now she was in just as
much pain as the rest of us. Page started crying too and King made
a noise that sounded
suspiciously
like a pre-puke.

Hendrix pushed the blue button again and
dropped his head in desperation. “Please,” he begged. “We’ve come a
very long way. We’ve sacrificed a lot to get here. We just need… we
need help. But we promise that whatever you give us or do for us…
we promise that we can repay you. We will
assist
you in whatever way we can. We’ll help you cure
this goddamn disease and fix this world. That’s all we want to
do.”

“That’s all we want to do, too.” The sharp
British accent spoke just two feet away from us, on the other side
of the gate.

I jumped, not expecting someone to be there
or so close. My hands clutched my stomach and I forced myself to
stay standing as I took in the disheveled but clean appearance of
the mystery voice.

A lithely muscled man with dark hair and
tanned skin watched us from his side of the wall. He had the hard
look of a frustrated person, but I was encouraged to see that his
body was filled out and his defined muscles had meat on them. He
wasn’t starving. He was taken care of. He might be out of his mind
with unanswered questions, but he had somehow preserved a
sustainable life behind his walls.

I wanted that life. I wanted to stop worrying
about where my next meal was coming from and whether or not I would
survive the night.

“You look like
you’ve seen
a ghost,” the man pointed out. His cunning
eyes swept over our sickly group with obvious disapproval.

“We came a long way,” Hendrix explained, “and
we didn’t know if this place was real or not. It’s really nice to
see that people live here.”

“Not many people,” the man replied.

“We want to change that,” I said with a
smile… or something that was supposed to resemble a smile. Just at
that moment,
pain
cut through my
lower belly so sharply, I flinched and stumbled. I would have
fallen over if Hendrix hadn’t caught me.

The British guy took a step back. “You’re all
sick.”

“We’ve been poisoned,” Harrison groaned.
“Food-poisoned.”

Adela stepped forward. “They ate a dog,” she
explained. “They’re not doing well. But it’s nothing
contagious.”

“I can’t know that for sure,” the man said,
taking another step back.

“It’s just food poisoning,” I gasped out.
“We’re not sick in any other way.”

He shook his head, ignoring me, “We can’t
take that chance. I’m sorry you came all this way.”

“No, wait,” Hendrix barked. “See for
yourself. My sister was bitten and survived. My brother was bitten
and even though he died, he didn’t turn into a Zombie. We have…
there’s something in our blood.” He turned around and with heavy
breaths ordered, “Page, show him your scar. Show him where you were
bitten.”

Page stepped forward immediately. Her face
was pale and sweaty. She shivered and bent over awkwardly, but she
turned around and pulled up the back of her ginormous t-shirt.

The man took a step forward again to
investigate, but I heard the resignation in his voice when he said,
“That could be a bite from anything. I can’t know that was a Zombie
and I can’t know she survived an attack.”

“Then check her blood!” Hendrix shouted.
“You’ll see that it’s different!”

“Do you understand how any of that works?”
the man scoffed. “I can’t just put her blood under a microscope and
see answers we’ve been searching for for years. That’s not how it
works. I’m sorry, but we can’t risk our safe-”

Hendrix lunged forward until his hands
gripped the metal gate and his knuckles turned white. “It took us
months to get here.
Months
. We fought our way through the
Mexican territories and an actual Mexican war. We escaped
cannibals. We survived Mexico City. We are starved, we are
exhausted and we buried my brother. You don’t have to trust us, but
you need to know what we’ve sacrificed to get here. To get right
here. To get to you so that you could do something. So that you
could find a goddamn solution to this infection. We have given up
everything to be here and you will look at us. You will let us help
you. You will let us in and let us work with you. Because that’s
the only thing that’s getting me through each day. That’s the only
reason we’re still alive. And believe me when I say that we’re just
barely alive
. We came to help you and by God, you’re going
to let us.”

I had the small pleasure of seeing the guy
genuinely surprised at Hendrix’s speech. I wanted to cheer him on
and stand up to the pretentious scientist on the other side of the
gate. But more cramps pummeled my insides and I bent further
over.

We’d made it all this way and now I was going
to meet my untimely end at the hands of
bad
dog meat.

This could not be how it ended for me. I
refused to be the victim of food poisoning.

I had survived too much and come too far to
let this kill me.

I tried to stand up out of sheer defiance to
the pain, but more cramps racked my stomach and my sudden movement
worked against me. With a high-pitched hiss, I doubled over and
tried to swallow against the
immediate
need to puke.

I didn’t mind vomiting, but I needed to wait
until the guy let us in the gates. I couldn’t start throwing up in
the middle of our negotiations. I was pretty sure that sent the
opposite message of what we were trying to convey.

“Reagan?” Hendrix’s voice sounded concerned…
distantly concerned.

I opened my mouth to tell him I was fine. But
instead everything went black.

Chapter Three

“Hey there.” The warm voice floated over me
and heated something
profound
and
tingly inside of me.

I pressed my face deeper into something
fluffy and clean-smelling and let the hallucination take a deeper
hold of me.

A heavy hand rested on my back and slowly
rubbed up and down my spine. I smiled beneath the
cool
feel of sheets and the heat from the hand.
I loved the contrast between the two temperatures. I
loved
the familiarity of the hand and the
softness of cotton against my naked skin.

That was how I knew I was hallucinating. I
could count how many times I’d been fully naked in the last three
years on one finger.

Granted that time had been exceptional…
albeit sandwiched between agony and grief.

This was a different event than that time
though. This mattress was clean and soft. These sheets smelled like
soap and felt incredible. This hand wasn’t shaking with concern for
his brother or exhaustion from a hard life. This hand was confident
and
strong
.

This hand had stepped back from the cliffs of
despair and found some room to breathe.

I stretched my legs, flexing my feet and
digging my bare toes into the bedding. Mmm… maybe I could upgrade
this hallucination to a fantasy.

Bare feet had never felt so
good
.

“Reagan,” he murmured next to my ear. His
scruffy beard tickled my cheek and I squirmed, unwilling to leave
this nirvana to find the sad reality that waited for me.

And the stomach pain.

I would sleep for the rest of my life to
avoid the stomach pain that knocked me out to begin with.

His deep chuckle brought me to life in ways
that only he could. I smiled wider and bit my bottom lip to keep
from laughing.

“Don’t wake me up,” I pleaded sleepily. “I
like this dream.”

Hendrix’s body stretched out beside me and
his
heat
pressed against my
length, even though he remained on top of the sheets.

The sheets.

That didn’t disappear even though I’d woken
up completely.

I turned to face him and peeked out from
behind a curtain of heavy, dark hair. “This isn’t a dream?”

“It’s not,” he confirmed. His fingers trailed
over my back, continuing their soothing rubdown.

I pushed up on my elbows and surveyed the
room… the room that was real. Immediately I saw that we had
privacy. Our room had no windows and was relatively small, but it
was all useful space. We lay on a double bed made up with white
sheets and two pillows. Dim lights ran on a track
overhead
but were turned on, fueled by
electricity I didn’t understand.

A door had been left open across the room and
revealed pieces of a bathroom. I could make out the corner of a
shower, the base of a toilet and a
full-length
mirror mounted on that door. A dresser and
armoire stood side by side on another wall. And a small loveseat
took up the space next to a second door. I presumed that was the
way out.

The air smelled fresh and clean. I had
already decided the sheets were clean. The walls
were solidly metal
and reminded me of something
out of a military base or bunker or something.

How was this possible?

“Is this the research station?” I asked
in
a terrified whisper… terrified
because I needed it to be. I needed so strongly for it to be that
my bones ached with hope and tears pricked at my eyes.

“It is,” he repeated. “In fact, this has been
designated as our room inside the research station. Ours, Reagan.
We have our own space. We have our own permanent space.”

I gave into the tears when I heard the relief
in his voice. I had never heard him sound like this. I had never
known Hendrix when there wasn’t perpetual fear running through
him
or when he didn’t have to be
constantly and consistently on alert for his family and the safety
of others. This was a side of him I had never known before.

And frankly, I couldn’t wait to explore
it.

“What happened?” I demanded breathlessly.
“How did I get here? And how did I end up naked?”

He smiled mischievously at me. “I might have
taken some matrimonial liberties with that last part.”

I shook my head in wonder at this man… my
husband. “Matrimonial liberties?”

“You were dirty,” he pointed out.

“And you helped me get… clean?”

He leaned in and dropped a sweet kiss to the
tip of my nose. “Only so I can help you get dirty again.”

I ducked my head and hoped to hide my blush.
I wasn’t used to this part yet, but I couldn’t wait until it was
normal. Until it was our normal.

I just hoped we got the opportunity to make
it that way.

“Later,” he promised in a rumbly voice. He
leaned in for a savoring kiss, sealing his promise with a heady
show of his intentions. When he pulled
back,
I was breathless and buzzing with his desire. “You
fainted.”

I shook my head in an effort to
clear
it of the lust, “What?”

“You fainted.” He ran his hands through my
tangled hair and pushed it back from my face. “Then Harrison nearly
shit his pants. Everything kind of fell apart after that. To be
honest, it was rock bottom for me. We were out of options. That
little bastard abandoned us and Oliver wanted to leave us there
too.”

“Oliver?” I interrupted. “The little
bastard?”

“Oliver is the lead scientist here. The one
on the intercom that came out to meet us. The little rat bastard is
Santi. He slipped quietly into the night and left us stranded at
the top of the hill after he fed us
dog
.”

“Ah.”

He smiled at me. “Ah.” He sucked in a deep
breath and continued. “So, there we were. Lennon was screaming at
the top of his lungs, Page started crying too. My brothers were
sick, Tyler was… is… catatonic and you fainted. I think it was at
that point Oliver stopped believing we were trying to steal the
research facility from them. Since we were all basically
incapacitated, it didn’t make sense for us to attack them then. He
stopped waiting for us to pull out guns and listened to us. I
finally convinced him that we needed his help, but that we could
help him too.”