Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes 9-12, Season Three) (8 page)

“Is it over? Forever?”

I squeezed her as tightly as I could. “Yes,”
I whispered. “It’s over forever. We’re safe now. Well, as safe as
we can be with Zombies running all over the place.”

She pulled back and met my teary gaze and
with a maturity that surpassed her nine years, she said, “Hendrix
keeps you safe, but you keep us safe too. Thank you.”

More tears spilled over. I was too choked up
to respond.

Hendrix returned with some hardened, homemade
tortillas that I could chew on like crackers and some warm tea. He
helped me get situated before he disappeared again to help Vaughan
with something outside.

Page sat down next to me and started telling
me about how she waited in the van with Adela and took care of baby
Lennon. She was pretty proud of herself for being in charge of him
and I couldn’t help but feel proud of her too.

Haley and Tyler walked over to join us and
sat on the floor in front of me. Lennon lay in Haley’s arms as tiny
as anything I had ever seen. His eyes were closed, thick lashes
spread over his rosy cheeks. His dark head of hair curled adorably
and his perfect baby lips wiggled while he slept.

He was beautiful.

“That was brave of you to leave him,” I told
Haley.

She shifted on the floor. She just gave birth
a few days ago. The girl was a freaking trooper. “I had to make
sure he was dead,” she said solemnly. “That my son would not be
touched.”

I understood exactly what she meant. Lennon
wasn’t my baby, but I felt as protective of him as I had anything
else in my life. If Haley wouldn’t have helped take out Matthias’s
men, Lennon would have been dead anyway. We had needed every gun we
could get.

“Besides, he had Nelson.” Pain transformed
Haley’s expression and I related with her in every way. I had been
there. I had felt the terror of having the man I loved threatened
in a deadly way. After a minute where she was lost to her thoughts,
her lips twitched and her shoulders relaxed. “I’m paying for it
today though,” she groaned. “Let me tell you what it’s like to give
birth and then go on a killing spree a few days later… Pretty sure
my body hates me right now.”

I laughed, but it quickly turned to a wince.
“I know what you mean,” I whimpered. “My body isn’t my biggest fan
either right now.”

“But he’s dead,” Haley whispered to her son.
She kissed the top of his head. “He’s really dead.”

I looked to Tyler. She pulled her knees to
her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She didn’t look at
either of us and I knew that she was going through something we
couldn’t understand.

“Tyler?” I asked.

Her sad eyes stared at the floor and she
shrugged one shoulder. “I’m not sad because he’s dead,” she
explained immediately. “I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad… I’m glad he
can’t hurt me anymore.” Haley shifted the baby in her lap and
wrapped an arm around Tyler’s shoulder. Tears rolled down Tyler’s
cheeks and she wiped them away with the back of her hands. When she
continued, her voice was tattered, “I’m just… I’m sad that he
wasn’t a better person, you know? I just wish that I never had to
want him to die or that I wasn’t so happy he’s finally gone. I
guess I’m mourning the relationship we never had and the man that
he never was.” She finally looked at us. “Does that make
sense?”

Haley and I nodded. It did make sense. I
wished those things for her too.

On a selfish note, how different would my
life have turned out if Tyler, Miller and Kane had had a decent
father? Or if Matthias Allen had been a decent human?

“Do you want to hold him?” Haley asked.

I nodded. “
Gimme gimme gimme
.”

She laughed and gracefully moved to her
knees. Lennon didn’t even notice. “Don’t get blood on him,” she
warned.

I rolled my eyes, but let her tuck him into
the crook of my good arm. As he nestled into me, I felt warm and
wonderful. His soft skin was so perfectly smooth compared to my
rough, calloused or burned skin. He made a little grunting noise
and craned his neck. I wanted to cry again. He was just so
sweet.

I leaned down and kissed his head, thinking
that kissing this baby might be addictive.

Something infinitely sweet settled over us as
we sat there admiring new life and feeling the relief of Matthias’s
death. We hadn’t been this at ease with each other in a very long
time. I wasn’t sure that Tyler had ever felt this much freedom.

A new chapter of life lay ahead of us, a new
beginning. We had new hope and new goals.

Our lives were more than simply survival.
There was life in our lives too. Important pieces of each other
that we shared and treasured.

I kissed Lennon again and let my heart swell
with the possibilities. The days and years ahead of us wouldn’t be
easy, but they would be ours. We no longer had to run from sadistic
monsters and hope they never caught us. Our chains had been
cut.

Our names cleared.

Zombies didn’t hold grudges. And that was
something that I would always be grateful for.

----

A week later, I sat in the same spot on the
couch and decided I was going to cut my leg off.

That was the only solution I could find to
stop the itching. It itched and it ached. Simultaneously. And
together the sensation was enough to drive me
crazy
.

Joy had done a stellar job keeping my wound
cleaned, elevated and wrapped. Without her to care for me, I knew I
would have died. She had given me enough antibiotics to keep me
healthy, but she’d had to divide them up with Diego and Luke too.
We were all lucky to have survived the last seven days.

The three gunshot victims.

When Luke had finally started to improve,
they moved him into the living room with Diego and me. Joy could
easily manage us this way and we found creative ways to pass the
time.

Mostly that included keeping an eye out for
Joy whenever one of us had an itch that we could not ignore.

I had been through a lot of crap in my
twenty-one years of life, but I had never known misery like
this.

It was
the worst
.

My special treatment and twenty-four hour
nurse care was about to end though. Luke was finally stable enough
to move, so Joy and Andy were headed to America. They were antsy to
get going because they wanted to beat anyone back from Matthias’s
entourage.

Some of Matthias’s men had escaped the epic
showdown. When bullets started flying, a few cowards had turned
tail and ran.

For Andy’s sake, we had wanted to kill all of
Matthias’s men. Andy and Joy wanted to help rebuild a fair and
balanced leadership in the former US and with Matthias’s men out of
the way, that seemed possible.

But they couldn’t endanger their son’s life
when he was so injured.

Now they didn’t know what to expect. Their
biggest concern was that the united Colony would be loyal to
Matthias even in death. They were willing to start from scratch,
but they didn’t necessarily want to.

I couldn’t blame them. They were much better
people than me to even consider going back there. I said my
goodbyes. It was time for me and my house to move on.

Diego was also headed home. The town he
protected had fled to Diego’s estate during the Matthias conflict.
From what Adela told me, apparently Diego had a massive mansion not
too far away that he’d procured during his drug running,
pre-apocalypse days. It was plenty big enough to house the village
while they rebuilt the town.

I asked him why he would bother with the
town. He’d gone back to look at it a few days ago and most of it
had been burned to ash. When he came back, his face had been drawn
and his shoulders slumped. He had explained that was his family’s
home and nothing, not even fire or Matthias, could make them
leave.

We’d also recently learned that Diego now
controlled the northern part of Mexico. Until someone challenged
him, and he was very confident that nobody would, he ran everything
from the US border to Mexico City.

This was thanks in part to our arrival,
Matthias’s promises and Diego’s aggression; the territory wars we
had gotten mixed up in decimated this entire region. A lot of men
had died over the last few weeks.

Diego was confident they would name this war
after him.

Especially now that he was the most powerful
man in Mexico.

Men from all regions had started to show up
and pledge their loyalty to him. Whatever sadness he’d felt over
the burning of his village had been replaced with something like
happiness. He was still the proud, arrogant man I knew and only
kind of liked, but purpose and a people group to keep alive had
given him something deeper.

This was something worth living for.

Adela still planned to leave with us.

Two days ago, Andy had held a ceremony for
all of the dead from every side of this conflict. We were the only
people participating that hadn’t lost anyone.

Except that wasn’t entirely true.

As Andy, Diego, Adela and a few other
Mexicans in attendance spoke the names of the dead we could
remember, I thought of Gage and Kane. I whispered their names with
eyes shut tight and for the first time felt justice for them.

They were free now too.

Joy spent the last week preparing us to live
without her. We’d come to heavily rely on her cooking and nursing.
I hadn’t known her that long, but I really didn’t want to leave
without her. She came in handy when I was hungry or bleeding or
dying.

She was also one of the sweetest women I had
ever known.

She spent a lot of time with Tyler though and
I could see Tyler’s confidence improve. She’d always been our go-to
girl when it came to injuries, not because she knew a lot, but
because she knew more than the rest of us.

Now she knew a lot. Joy had also given her an
easy-to-read medical handbook that she said all missionaries were
known to own. We were in capable hands moving forward.

Haley had also been the recipient of hours of
Joy’s wisdom. Joy taught Haley how to eat from the land and cook on
basically any surface. She’d gone over care for Lennon and how to
take care of fevers, ear aches and other minor problems that could
easily become huge issues for the little guy. She wrote lots of
instructions in a journal that she gave to Haley, hoping to ease
the burden of motherhood in our scary world.

Andy had been gracious enough to share his
weapon stores with us. We had also salvaged quite a lot from
Matthias’s dead men and the vehicles they left behind.

The last time we had been armed with this
much weaponry was with Gage at the compound. It reminded me of the
first day Haley and I had met the Parkers and they had been so
prepared.

And that’s what we were today. We were
prepared.

We were ready to move on and move
forward.

The only thing that bothered me was that we
never found Matthias’s body. The building that he’d died in had
been completely destroyed by the time the Parkers, Andy and Diego
had gone back. But they had expected to find something from him. At
least a belt buckle or something.

But then again, maybe he didn’t wear
belts.

Diego moved around the living room and took a
seat on the coffee table in front of me. His arm was in a sling,
but the color had returned to his face and he looked healthy
again.

“Will you miss me?” he asked, a playful smile
tilting his lips.

“As much as I’ll miss this bullet wound,” I
grinned at him.

He threw his head back and barked out a
laugh. “Come now,” he coaxed. “We have been made friends. I killed
your Matthias like I promised.”

I narrowed my eyes on him, “You lay there and
tried not to die.”

His finger wagged in my face, “Ah, but it
worked.
Si
?”

I just shook my head at him. “Be a good
leader,” I said. “Protect your people. Give them freedom.”

His smile turned more affectionate, “This is
something I learned from my American friends. Freedom is
importante
, yes? You value your freedom.”

“We do,” I said with a soft, earnest voice.
“And your people will too. They will be even more loyal to you
because you gave them the choice.”

“So no shooting in the streets?”

I knew he was teasing me, but I also knew
that had been a part of his past. “No shooting in the streets. Only
shoot the bad guys.”

“No more bad guys.” His eyes darkened. “My
people will be safe. We will rebuild.”

“And the Zombies?” Over the last week, there
had been Zombies roaming the desert, sometimes stumbling upon our
bungalow. There had been a considerable debate about what to do
with them. Diego wanted to catch them and save them for his future
Zombie army and the Parkers wanted to shoot to kill. There had been
a lot of discussion over the humane treatment of Zombies and the
ethics involved.

It was still bizarre to me that I had to
defend Zombie killing, like I was the bad guy.

“I have not yet decided,” he admitted
honestly. “My enemies will not listen to your reasoning, Reagan. I
will have to think of my people first, Zombies second.”

I couldn’t argue with that logic. “Take care
of yourself,” I said instead.

He nodded once. “And you take care of her,
si
?” His eyes tracked to Adela.

“
Si
,” I promised him.

When he looked back to me, it was with a
gravity that took my breath away. “
Gracias
, Reagan. I mean
that. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for helping me.”

I shrugged a shoulder, embarrassed by his
sentiment. “I don’t know if we’ll ever come back through here, but
it was nice knowing you, Diego.”

He leaned forward and pressed one last piece
of advice on me. “I have said this to your men, but listen
carefully. Mexico City will be…” he seemed to search for the
English word before settling on, “mayhem. There is no order there.
Everyone fights everyone. And the Dead, they run free. Look for a
man named Tomás. He is my cousin. He will help you if you tell him
that you know me.” He met my gaze; concern flickered in his dark
eyes. “He will get you through the city. Then we will be even.”