Love and Decay (6 page)

I cut through the Feeder’s arm effortlessly,
leaving it without claws to scratch or grab. I couldn’t see what
color its eyes were, so I had no way to tell how far advanced his
infection was, but I had stabbed him through the head before it
mattered.

As soon as he dropped to my feet, I moved to
the next one. This one was female, shorter but so much faster. She
ducked beneath the swipe of my blade and scratched at my thigh. I
felt the pressure of her claws, but her nails didn’t penetrate my
practical leather.

I swung at her again, catching her on the
side of the neck. I felt my blade sink into her skin and deeply
wound her, but her addiction kept her from feeling pain. Instead,
she turned rabid, choking on coagulated blood dripping into her
mouth. Her head lolled to the side, but she wasn’t dead yet.

Lunging forward, I hoped to get her right
between the eyes, but my worn boots slid on the gravelly ground and
I missed her entirely. Something sharp hit my shoulder blade and I
tripped forward.

I could have caught myself, but I didn’t want
to waste the time. Instead, I gave into the fall, rolled to my back
and waited for her to fall on me with my blade raised.

She didn’t disappoint. My aim was true as she
fell face first into it.

Thick, blackish blood spilled over me as I
struggled to get her off me. She was heavier than she looked, but I
was desperate to get her rotten corpse off me.

Finally, I managed to roll away from her.

Straight into a waiting Feeder.

My long blade was still trapped in the
woman’s face, so I had no choice but to use my smaller one. I
sliced at his legs in front of me. He didn’t slow down or even
notice the deep gashes I left in his decaying shin.

He caught the back of my head with his claws
and I cried out in pain. He’d managed to hit the sore spot
perfectly.

I was going to have to murder him for
that.

Afraid to try to stand up while he swatted
for me from overhead, I lunged forward and caught him around the
legs. My momentum knocked him off balance and he tripped backwards.
He landed with a clunk while the wind was knocked from my chest.
Unwilling to give him a second chance at eating me, I pushed up and
forward, bringing my small knife down straight between his
eyes.

When I managed to push the knife through his
forehead and finally end him, I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t
expected to win that one.

I used the relatively clean side of my
forearm to wipe the sweat from my brow. But it was too soon to
relax.

Something heavy and hungry fell against my
back. I felt teeth nip at my harness and hair, trying to find skin
to tear into. My head whipped back as it grabbed hold of my hair.
My body remained out of reach however and it wasn’t until the
creature disappeared and I was able to turn around that I realized
Miller had been holding onto it.

It now lay in a pool of its own blood where
Miller ended the pathetic life.

Miller’s hand shot out to mine and I took it
without hesitation. He yanked me to my feet and we spun around
until our backs were to each other’s, protecting ourselves…
protecting each other.

Keeping an alert eye out, I had my first
chance to check out Diego’s soldiers in action. I was shocked to
see that they weren’t fighting the Feeders or killing them.
Instead, they were trying to round them up and herd them back into
the cage.

As equally bizarre, the Feeders weren’t
trying to attack Diego’s men. They seemed to be happy to kill
Miller or me, but they clearly feared Diego and his men.

“I’ll never get used to this,” Miller
announced, apparently taking in the same thought as me. “It’s not
normal.”

“Since when has life been normal?”

He didn’t say anything. I hadn’t expected him
to. Miller’s idea of normal was pretty scary and he had worried me
enough tonight.

“There!” I squeaked. On top of the hill I
made out a human before it disappeared behind a large rock. I
wouldn’t have noticed him at all, had he not dove for the cover of
his hiding place.

“What?” Miller demanded. He was facing the
other direction from me so he didn’t see what I saw.

“Colony scouts,” I answered. The truth was, I
didn’t know if it had been a Colony scout or not. It could have
been the cannibals for all I knew, but I wasn’t going to take a
chance and let it go.

Ignoring my aches and pains and the fresh
Feeder blood coating the front of me, I took off running. I moved
among Diego’s men easily, bypassing Feeders that reached out to
grab me and soldiers that thought I was running away from
Diego.

I was fast. I had always been fast. And this
world that I lived in maintained my need to remain fast. Plus, I
was small and the men all stood far enough apart so I could easily
weave through them.

Miller didn’t have as much luck as I did,
plus he already had the disadvantage of being second. I didn’t know
if he’d had to stop and explain what we were doing to Diego or if
he’d had to fight off a Zombie.

And right now it didn’t matter. I had to
catch up to that scout or this would all be for nothing.

Plus, the battle had wound me up and made me
more bloodthirsty than normal.

I skidded down one hill, my boots no match
for the sliding gravel and the momentum I’d picked up along the
way. My arms flailed and I let out an embarrassing yelp as I nearly
crashed face first into a gigantic cactus.

Once I hit the short valley between hill
rises, I dug my toes into the ground and ran as fast as I could to
the top. By the time I reached it, I was wheezing and frustratingly
dizzy.

I should have been expecting an attack, but
my mind had switched to one mode and I couldn’t manage rational
thought. I had been so focused on finding the spy and capturing him
so Diego could have his way with him, that I forgot the scout might
also be interested in capturing me.

The tackle came out of nowhere. Muscled arms
wrapped around my arms and torso and wrestled me to the ground. The
blow knocked the wind out of me and when we landed in a tangled
heap, my head hit another rock, sending a splitting headache
screaming through me.

My attacker landed with an oof, but his hold
never loosened. Fear and instinct washed over me and I kicked out
without needing to think about it. I hit his shins first and breath
hissed through his teeth.

I knew that hurt, so I kept kicking at him. I
didn’t always hit my mark, but I would be damned if he captured
me.

Kicking and struggling did little more than
wear me out. All he had to do was hold on and I was the one
exerting the energy in my pathetic escape attempt.

I’d lost my blades along the way and I
couldn’t reach my holster at this point. If this asshole managed to
subdue me, he would take my weapons from me and either keep them
for himself or disperse them among Matthias’s men.

Neither one of those options was a great
one.

So I continued to fight, even though I
couldn’t catch my breath, even though my head swam and my stomach
felt close to heaving. I fought and I fought and I fought until I
heard him hiss, “Goddamn it, hold still already!”

His American accent surprised me enough that
I froze. Of course, I remembered what one sounded like. My family
all had them. Miller and Tyler too. We’d just picked up Joss and
she had an American accent.

But this man was a complete stranger. And
chances were he still lived in my home country.

After everything I’d been through to get
here, after the last decade of my life I’d used to prepare for this
moment, after endless Zombie hordes and Mexico City and struggling
daily just to survive… I was unprepared to meet someone from the
Colony so soon.

“You work for Matthias Allen?” I asked on a
wheeze.

He loosened his grip and leaned back to look
at me. “Don’t you?”

“What do you mean?”

“We saw you earlier in the trucks. What are
you doing with the Mexican?”

“The Mexican?” Oh. “Diego?”

For the first time since we left Bogotá,
invoking Diego’s name had been a very bad idea. The man leapt into
action, jumping on top of me, pinning my arms beneath his knees and
pressing a knife to my throat.

“You work with Diego?” he growled at me. His
face was clearer from this position. He looked like I would have
imagined Matthias’s men to look. His clothes weren’t ragged, but
they weren’t new either. They were dirty from the road, just like
his skin, tanned and weathered from the sun and our life.

It was impossible to tell how old he was, but
I would have guessed near Diego’s age. His face had deep wrinkles
spider-webbing across it and his eyes were hard and
compassionless.

He leaned forward and nicked my neck with his
blade. “Answer me, girl. Do you work with Diego?”

I decided honesty was probably the best
policy. “I don’t work with Diego.” The man leaned back a little,
releasing some of the pressure of his blade against my skin

“Then what are you doing here? Why did his
Feeders attack you but not his men?”

These were harder questions to answer. “Why
didn’t the Feeders attack you?” I demanded. “Are
you
working
with Diego?”

The corners of his mouth lifted in a smug
smile. “The Feeders learned to fear me a long time ago. And the
funny thing about being the scarier predator is that all other
predators learn to leave you the hell alone.”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Miller deadpanned.
Silver glinted in the night air and the man on top of me popped up
his hands when a blade pressed against his throat.

“You set me up,” the man growled at me. He
tried to bring his knife down, but Miller grabbed it with his free
hand and used his body to knock the guy off me.

By the time I could prop myself up with one
elbow, Miller had him pinned to the ground shoving the guy’s face
into the dirt.

Miller leaned in and spoke low in the guy’s
ear. “My Mexican friends tell me you work with Matthias. Is that
true?”

“What do you think?” the guy answered. His
face was muffled by the ground and dirt.

“I think he sent you on a mission to spy on
Diego and his people. I think maybe Matthias wanted you to cause
some trouble, stir things up a bit.” The guy’s silence spoke for
him. Miller’s brutal laugh rang out of place in the middle of our
interrogation. “Instead, you did no real damage, didn’t manage to
hurt anybody and then got caught.” More silence. “Sounds like
you’re having a pretty tough time of it, friend.”

Finally he growled into the dirt, “I’m not
your friend.”

“No shit.” Miller picked up the guy’s head by
grabbing a fistful of hair and slammed it back on the ground. I
cringed at the hard smacking sound that seemed to echo through the
night, even though I believed this guy deserved it.

“I-if you don’t work for Matthias, who do you
work for?” the spy had lost his tenacity. I watched him wilt under
Miller’s dominance.

Miller leaned in again, enjoying the
dramatics. “Don’t you recognize me?” It was a silly question since
the guy couldn’t even see Miller from his face-first position on
the ground. “I look just like him.”

“Wh-who?”

I couldn’t believe Miller was giving away our
element of surprise! I pushed to my knees and reached for his
shirt, tugging on it to let him know I was still there. He couldn’t
just do whatever he wanted or say whatever he wanted. We had a
plan.

I had a plan!

And like all the best plans in history, it
hinged on the element of surprise.

Zombie groans filled the air as Diego’s men
corralled them back into their cage. Spanish shouts echoed over the
Feeder sounds as they called out to each other. The man pleaded for
his life under Miller’s savage grip. But my heartbeat pounded above
it all.

“Who a-are you?” the man asked again. His
voice had shriveled, just like his courage. My nose wrinkled in
disgust for the pathetic creature he’d turned into.

“Please don’t,” I whispered. I didn’t even
know if Miller could hear me. He seemed blind with rage, deaf with
dark intention. He hadn’t looked at me once since he’d pinned the
guy down.

Miller leaned in at the same time he yanked
the spy’s head up by his hair. “You’re lucky she doesn’t want you
to know,” he growled. “You’re lucky she’s here at all.”

I swallowed down a gulp of relief. I never
knew what to make of Miller. I could never predict his actions or
responses. I never expected him to listen to me or do what I
asked.

And yet he did. At least tonight.

Miller dropped the guy’s head with a forceful
shove and sat back, keeping him pinned under him. My erratic
heartbeat started to slow down.

“Well?” Miller turned to me, a hint of
something strange pulling at the corners of his eyes. “What do you
want me to do with him?”

“Diego can deal with him,” I suggested. “I
think they have something planned.”

We both turned and squinted into the night.
Diego’s men were still busy with the Feeders. We would have to stay
with the spy until they were ready.

“It was clever of you to unlock the cage,”
Miller noted. “You almost made it out of here alive.”

“It wasn’t clever,” the man argued. “It’s
insane how they keep the Feeders locked up like pets. These men are
savages. Just as bad as the Feeders they keep imprisoned.”

Miller snorted. “Yeah, they’re so different
than your supreme leader.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” the spy
demanded. He sounded a little more like the man I’d first met. His
voice turned to steel. His shoulders straightened, losing that
defeated pose he’d had since Miller tackled him.

“It means,” Miller explained with an obvious
struggle for patience, “that Matthias has also been known for
keeping Feeders locked up. Only he didn’t feed them or use them to
fight his enemies. No, he displayed them. Like trophies. He kept
them right where his people could see them so they didn’t get any
funny ideas about the way he was running things. He used them to
intimidate his own people. Unlike Diego over there that uses them
to
protect
his people.”