Love and Decay, Episode 10 (2 page)

Vaughan and Tyler stared each other down. Vaughan with a devilish smile twisting his lips and his dark blue eyes sparkling with cockiness and Tyler, the Ice Queen, giving him her best laser-beam eyes. Either she was about to kiss him or punch him in the nose.

My money was on Tyler turning into Mike Tyson. She wasn’t exactly the sexual-tension kind of girl.

The strain on the room was finally broken when Harrison coughed, “That’s what she said.”

“Oh, my gosh,” Haley groaned.

“I just don’t understand why you don’t want to be a part of this?” I choked on my laugh. I couldn’t let Harrison think I thought that juvenile joke was hilarious or that I was about ready to dissolve into laughter, or that I had the humor of a thirteen year old boy!
Must. Stay. Strong.

But then Haley ruined my resolve when she about swallowed her tongue trying not to laugh. Harrison’s brothers just stared at him with a mixture of awe and repulsion plastered on their handsome faces. And Page and Miller didn’t even pretend to get the joke.

“I’m struggling to find my reasons, too,” Tyler drawled shooting Harrison a slightly less scary version of her scowl.

“What?” Harrison shrugged. He over-pronounced each of his words when he explained, “It’s like you all really expect me to be mature. Haven’t we learned our lesson by now?”

“He makes a good point,” Hendrix sighed.

“Can we move back to the point?” Nelson stepped in, gaining some composure. “Tyler, what are you thinking? Really? Do you think your dad will track you here and if so, what do you think he will do? Can he make you go back there?”

“He can’t
make
us do anything,” Miller put in stubbornly.

Tyler winced. She knew better.

“What do you want to do, Ty?” I pressured.

She looked around at us with cool, calculating eyes. I could tell how uncomfortable she was with the attention, how unnerving our affection for her felt. She jumped on the Parker train-to-safety thinking we would be a quick fix to an ugly problem. She had no idea what she signed up for and no intentions to stick around.

To be fair, Haley and I hadn’t really known what we were getting into either. But we understood we were better off with these boys and their beautiful little sister than without. Tyler still teetered on the fence, not quite ready to commit to a Parker-family life sentence, not quite ready to face a Zombie-infested world all by her pretty self.

Kane was right. This girl was a runner.

Her gaze fell to Vaughan and stayed there. I watched a hailstorm of emotion pass between the two. It was hard to say what was going on between them. But it was also impossible to deny there wasn’t something there.

Vaughan had been interested in me not that long ago. I watched him have feelings for me. With me, he was sweet, assertive, but reserved. He gave me space at the same time he made his objectives clear. I could read Vaughan with his sincere looks, a tilt of his full lips or the amusement that often danced in his eyes.

He was almost the exact opposite with Tyler. But for some reason, I didn’t feel convinced that meant he didn’t want anything to do with her. Actually, it seemed more like the opposite.

And Tyler was something else entirely. She still loved her dead boyfriend. Vaughan lived in completely untouchable territory. And I didn’t really believe she had feelings for him. But I knew she respected him. And they were kind of thrown together just because Hendrix and Nelson were already taken.

Right now, as Tyler held Vaughan’s gaze a hundred different emotions flickered across her face. From uncertainty, to fear, to horror to something like determination and then finally settled on trust. Her grayish silver eyes hardened until her entire body radiated with challenge.

“Fine,” she eventually agreed out loud. “We can stay. I’m not going to put a time limit on how long or how permanent this is. But you have my permission to set up house.”

Vaughan visibly relaxed back into his chair and smiled. “Thank you, your Grace.”

“Knock it off,” she hissed back.

Vaughan chuckled and then turned to the rest of us. “We’ll stay until we’re all ready to go. Gage said this could be as permanent as we’d like and that he will assign us rooms. I will hammer out the details with him and let him know what we’ve decided.” Remembering something important, Vaughan turned to the youngest Allen. “Miller, are you alright with this? You get a say, too.”

Miller looked from Vaughan to Tyler and then back to Vaughan. He nodded with the gravity of a man trapped in Justin Beiber’s body- young, scared, unpredictable and more than a little bit angry. “I trust my sister. If she wants to stay here, then she knows best.”

Vaughan nodded and the rest of us smiled at Miller encouragingly.

“Alright, then it’s settled,” Hendrix clapped his hands together and then stretched them over his head revealing a delicious line of taut stomach. “We’re staying.”

“We’re staying,” I echoed in a soft voice. I stared at my hands for a few moments, trying to make sense of this. I hadn’t “stayed” anywhere in the past two years. Every night, or every few nights had been a one night stand with whatever semi-secured place Haley and I could find. And now we had a permanent-ish residence?

Maybe all my mail would catch up to me.

“I’ll go talk to Gage.” Vaughan stood up and grinned at us. I think the idea of setting up house appealed to Vaughan’s weighty sense of responsibility. It was easier to protect his tribe if there were solid walls surrounding us and most of our needs were taken care of. “He should have room assignments for us soon, and he’ll put us into a permanent guard rotation.”

“We’re coming too,” Hendrix announced. He took my hand and pulled me to my feet.

“We are?” Confusion made my brow pull together.

“We’re going to talk to him about Kane. I want him gone. Gage is going to make that happen.”

I gulped. I didn’t know exactly what Hendrix meant. Was this like a mob thing? Was Hendrix putting a hit out on Kane?

Was that even how you used that term?

I shook my head, “Gone as in….”

“Released into the wild, babe,” Hendrix explained. “I need him out of here.”

I let out a breath of relief, “Me too.” I felt one hundred percent fine with Kane removing himself from my life completely- in any way other than actually killing him. I drew the line there.

At least for now.

I hadn’t seen much of him lately, as we were staying in a larger storage facility that usually served as a community activity room. Gage kept Kane locked up in a different unit. He had no privacy, his hands were bound with plastic ties and armed men kept watch over him twenty-four-seven.

I felt a little unnerved with the level of paranoia Gage felt concerning Kane. Gage’s precautions and extreme measure made me think I had severely underestimated my stalker. Sure, I was afraid of him and knew I needed to keep him at a distance.

But I hadn’t exactly done that.

I’d more or less done the opposite of that.

“And you’re coming too,” I asked Tyler.

“What? No,” she shook her head, seeming a bit distracted.

“I thought Gage wanted you to find him?” I pressed, hoping she just needed to be reminded.

“Oh, right.” She let out a nervous laugh. She seemed a little out of it.

“So you’re coming?” I pressed.

“I guess,” she shrugged and turned around to find Miller. “Mill, stay with Page. I’ll be back soon.”

Miller looked over at Page and then back to Tyler, eyes full of concern. “I can come with you.”

“No, it’s fine,” she assured him. “There’s enough of us going as it is. You stay. I’ll be right back.”

“Don’t go see Kane without me,” Miller asserted.

“I wouldn’t,” Tyler immediately agreed.

She was lying. I could see it all over her guilty face. Although, I didn’t blame her. I wanted Miller absolutely nowhere near that sociopath either.

“Haley and Nelson are in charge, children,” Vaughan called out his final order. “Stay together. We may feel safe here, but that doesn’t mean you can go running off by yourself.”

“Vaughan, seriously,” King complained. “We don’t need a babysitter!”

“Seriously, Vaughan,” Nelson was quick to echo. “They don’t need a babysitter.” Clearly, this man was at the end of his rope for some alone time.

We all were.

“Nelson, come on, give me a break,” Vaughan groaned. “We only feel safe. But we are not safe. It takes one breech, one mistake and this is gone. You saw what the van ran into. We’re nowhere near being out of the woods yet. We stick together. We protect each other.”

Nelson let out an exhausted sigh and finally agreed with a simple, “Even in here.”

“Even in here,” Vaughan repeated firmly.

Nelson pulled Haley into an affectionate hug and whispered something in her ear that made her giggle. She buried her face in his chest and wrapped her arms around his neck. I needed to help them. Not right now of course. I had to deal with Kane first. But Nelson and Haley deserved to spend some time together away from Zombies and little kids and…. anybody else.

I caught Hendrix’s eyes and saw the fire lit behind his hooded gaze. He was thinking the same thing. We needed alone time too.

I wasn’t exactly insecure about my feelings for Hendrix- I mean, he’d almost uttered the L word only a week ago.

But I needed him. I needed him to reassure me. I needed him away from the responsibilities of his family, away from the military-slash-soldier version of his personality. I needed him with his arms wrapped around mine and his lips urging my reservations into oblivion. And even with my realistic outlook on a world in which only death prospered and decay thrived, I desperately needed to hear about love and promises of a beautiful future that would survive the choking tangles of disease and depression.

“I’ll catch up with you in a bit, Hales,” I called over my shoulder and she lifted her head to acknowledge me.

“Reagan, what we talked about, yeah?” she called out cryptically.

“For life, babe,” I grinned at her.

“Well….” she blushed a little and then cleared her throat. “Not for life.”

I laughed and turned around, realizing I agreed with her.

“What was that about?” Tyler asked when we started climbing the staircase to Gage’s office. It was on the second floor of the four floor complex and actually an office. The staircase, just like the rest of the building was lit with candles spaced evenly apart that hung from makeshift lanterns. Gage had outfitted this place to surprising functionality and despite needing to be careful you didn’t run right into one of the low hanging lights, made this upgraded-garage rather comfortable.

I heard rumors that there were solar-paneled generators that they sometimes used for electricity too, but so far I’d never seen anyone use them.

“Haley and I sharing a room,” I replied in a low voice. “You’re welcome to join us.”

“Oh,” she paused midstride and then caught back up to me although we started to lag behind the boys. “You’re not moving in with Hendrix?” she whispered and our echoing footsteps hopefully covered the question from Vaughan’s super-hearing and Hendrix’s curious ears.

I shook my head, “Not yet.”

“Huh,” she grunted resignedly.

“Ty, we’ve known them for like three months.”

“Yeah, but that’s like….” she paused to calculate in her head, “that’s like a decade in Zombie Apocalypse years.”

I snorted a laugh. “Not quite.”

“Hey, you’re both still alive, you can’t keep your horny hands to yourselves, and you still have all your body parts. If this isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.”

I just shook my head at her. “I’ll start having that conversation with you when you tell me what’s up with you and…”

“There is nothing going on with Vaughan!” she hissed.

I pressed my lips into a straight line to keep from smiling. I was not at all expecting that from her. And even though I found it mildly amusing, I didn’t really know what to make of her non-feelings for Vaughan.

I cleared my throat and tried again, “I was going to say Gage.”

“Oh.” Even in the dim light I could see her face flame with embarrassment. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” I shrugged. “He kind of…. he just seems interested in you, that’s all.”

“No, he’s not,” she answered immediately. “He just, he knows me. That’s all. We grew up together. He knows what a psychopath my father is. He’s probably just making sure I’m Ok.”

“He can see that you’re alright,” I pointed out. “And he can see that you’re not with your father anymore. There’s something else to it.”

“He hated Logan,” she confessed in a rush of words since Gage’s office was just down the hall. Hendrix and Vaughan were already engaged in conversation with him.

“What?” I asked when she didn’t offer any more of an explanation.

She glanced over at me and repeated herself, “He
hated
Logan. Hated him. They were rivals all through childhood and high school.”