Love and Decay, Episode 10 (7 page)

“Anywhere but here,” I whispered. He stepped toward me and I rushed to justify my lie. “You can’t expect me to stay, Kane. There is nothing between us. And we have to get Miller and Tyler out of here before your dad shows up. This was never permanent. We weren’t keeping you for a pet. You were always going back home.”

“Reagan, I never planned to stay with you and your merry band of misfits. I always planned to go back home.” He stepped out of the water and ran a thin towel quickly over his body before I had a chance to look away.

Ok, I probably had a chance or two to look away. Ahem.

He was yanking on his clothes again before I could dress his wounds. “Wait, I need to put something on your injuries!”

“Forget it,” he growled with a muffled voice while he hunted for the opening of his long sleeved gray Polo. “I’ll be home in two days where I can get real medical attention. I’ll be fine.”

“You won’t be…”

“Reagan, stop. I don’t want to talk about my injuries right now.” He finally figured out his shirt and yanked it on. His jeans were next and he hopped into them while trying to keep his muddy feet from ruining them. I watched him, rapt with his frustrated, jerky movements and angry scowl. He was kind of…. adorable- in that scary, serial killer way. He pulled up the legs of his jeans and then went about re-washing his feet, drying them one at a time and dressing them carefully with socks and his bloody black boots.

Finally, he stood back up and faced me.

His pants were still undone.

Seriously?

But before I could point that out, he was angrily working at the five-button fly and then thrusting his hand at me.

“What?” I couldn’t imagine what he wanted from me like this.

“My glasses,” he demanded.

Oh, those.

I placed them in his hand and then watched as he put them on and then worked the deodorant, brush and toothbrush via fresh water stream. He shoved everything back into the backpack and put it on without thinking.

“You knew this was coming,” I huffed irrationally. “You always knew I would leave you.”

“Oh, did I?” He sounded so petulant I could hardly take him seriously.

Except that he was really pissing me off!

“Yes!” I argued. “You have got to get over me! I’m not some…”

But before I could make my point, he had slapped a hand over my mouth and slammed me against his chest.

Panic immediately infused every cell in my body and I began fighting blindly against him. He rasped a harsh “Shh” against my ear and then pointed to what held his attention.

Feeders. Two of them. Stumbling through the forest blindly and without much coordination. I reached for my gun and clicked off the safety. Kane let me go, so I could lift my shooting arm and point it in the direction of the approaching threat.

One of the guards saw them first and through the sight of his high-tech rifle, aimed, fired, killed. I let out the breath I’d been holding and then watched everything I thought I knew about Feeders crumble and disintegrate in front of me.

The second Zombie let out a shrill, superhuman shriek of either warning or mourning, I couldn’t tell. But it happened as soon as his friend hit the earth now lifeless and empty. The scream pierced through the quiet air as loud as any siren I had ever heard. The hellish sound didn’t go on for long though when a second guard pulled the trigger and put the miserable creature out of its painful existence. It too, dropped to the ground with an empty thud.

And then from everywhere the shrill shriek that had been cut short was
answered
. In every direction echoing cries resounded in the air, sending birds over the entire state of Oklahoma skyrocketing out of their nests and into the air in search of safer homes.

I doubled over and covered my ears against the sharpness of sound. Against instinct, my eyes slammed shut and I tried not to whimper from the ferocity of what had to be at least fifty Feeders, if not more. And they were all close by.

When the banshee screams finally died down another sound filled their place- this one not quite as ear-piercing, but if anything a million times more terrifying.
Rustling.

Rustling so loud from the rushing movement it rivaled the shrieks. At the same time I figured out what the rustling was from- the movement of all those Feeders rushing toward us at a full sprint- Kane started shouting at me to run.

“We can’t leave the guards!” I yelled back, glancing desperately around for the men that had been with us just moments before.

Whatever hope had miraculously survived the last two years of hell in my life died out the moment I spotted them. I would have crumpled to the floor in defeat if it hadn’t been for Kane’s strong hands catching me under my arms. He hefted me to my feet and shook me out just as the first guard met two Feeders he couldn’t hit. They attacked him with a desperate hunger, tackling him to the ground in less than a second. They’d bit into him before I could take my next breath.

The second guard didn’t even bother to stick around. He took off for the safety of the complex walls as fast as he could. I distantly wondered if he was going for help or just trying to get out of here alive. It didn’t matter- none of us would live through this.

The third guard had better luck and was able to put two of them down before they started to close in on him. He was shouting something at us, waving his arms for us to run, but I was too paralyzed by shock and disillusionment to listen to him.

This couldn’t be happening.

This didn’t happen to me.

I was stronger than this.

I was supposed to live.

I was supposed to survive.

Kane was done watching the horror film happen in front of us and he was really over waiting for me to pull it together. He swooped me up into his arms and took off running in the opposite direction than the complex.

Finally, some sense came back to me and I started panicking all over again. “What are you doing? Kane we have to go back! We have to help that guy! We have to get back to the complex!”

“Reagan,” he explained rather patiently considering the circumstances. “Saving that guy is a suicide mission and the complex is completely blocked by about seventy Feeders. This is the
only
option for us right now.”

“No,” I argued stubbornly as I bounced along in his arms. “I can’t go with you, Kane; even if you are trying to save our lives. I have to get back there; I have to get back to Hendrix.”

He let out a feral curse and adjusted me roughly in his arms. “It’s more important that Hendrix doesn’t have to shoot you in the head when you get back to him than proving a point right now, Reagan. Get over yourself for five goddamn seconds and understand that we are really in trouble here.”

I happened to look behind him just at that moment and noticed for the first time we were being pursued.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

There were only a bazillion Feeders behind us and zero places for us to go if we kept running further into the freaking forest. Where was my handheld video camera to capture this magic?
Blair Witch Project
was so old news after I filmed Kane and me getting our faces eaten off by the fastest, most rabid pack of Zombies I’d ever seen before.

“Put me down!” I demanded.

“No,” Kane panted stubbornly.

But that was the thing. I wasn’t being stubborn. For once, when it came to Kane, I was being generous. I knew I was slowing him down.

“Put me down, I promise I’ll stay with you,” I bargained quickly. He hesitated so I threw out, “They’re going to catch up, Kane! I will stay with you no matter what, but I need you to trust me.”

He ground out a few more curse words, but did drop me to my feet with no warning. When I started to stumble, Kane caught me easily and then pulled me with him as we moved straight into a run.

There were small rock structures up ahead and I hoped I’d been right when I assumed that this was what Gage was referring to when he described the cliff walls, the cave and the bug-out bunker.

Please. Please. Please let this be the right direction!

Because if it wasn’t I was so going to die today and Hendrix wasn’t even going to be able to find my body. There would be nobody to tell him I’d become Zombie food in the middle of an Oklahoma forest! No funeral in memory of my short, non-important. I wasn’t even going to get to hear the L word from a boy I actually felt the same about!

This sucked!

I raced toward the bluffs, hoping against all hope I could find the bunker Gage told us about just an hour ago. Then all I had to do was hold out until Hendrix came looking for me.

“Where are you going, Reagan?” Kane demanded as he adjusted his course to keep up with me.

“To safety,” I threw out casually.

“And where’s that?”

“That way!” I shouted back with an outstretched arm. “There’s a bunker, uh, somewhere back there.”

“How do you know?” he demanded tersely while I pushed my body harder to stay ahead of the Zombies and keep up with his long legs. .

“I saw it,” I struggled to lie while running. “From back there!”

“You’re such a liar.” He called my bluff.

“No more questions!” I shouted over the sound of moaning and clumsy but quick feet chasing us. “Just trust me!”

“And what are we going to if this place really does exist?” He questioned while grabbing my arm to steady me just as I tripped over an above-ground root.

“Stay there until someone comes to find us.” I became absolutely serious- that was our only

option at this point. I had one gun with one clip that held ten bullets, a hunting knife and a pocket knife. And Kane had
nothing
. To say we were ill-prepared didn’t even begin to cover the spectrum of just how under-armed we truly were. Hiding out with Kane didn’t exactly make this the best day of my life, but not dying helped improve my perspective.

“And if help doesn’t come?”

I winced, because it was a valid question, “Then at least we have each other.”

Total sarcasm on my part, but by Kane’s determined nod of approval I realized the blatant

cynicism was completely lost on him.

Chapter Four

So far, Oklahoma equaled a
lot
of running. But if I had to choose, I’d pick smooth highway over uneven forest any day. Last week we’d run from a horde of Zombies but managed to out run them thanks to flat ground and armed guards waiting for us.

Kane and I had neither of those things- plus he was still limping from his thigh injury, he struggled to breathe because of bruised or cracked ribs and he had no weapons.

Still he was faster than me.

The bastard.

And he seemed to have better balance than me since I kept tripping over branches littering the forest floor or roots protruding from the soft ground. The trees were tall here, bare on their wide trunks until the high canopy of leaves that blocked out the heat of the sun.

The trees were planted close together, making our high-octane run very dangerous. Squeezing between them at a sprinter’s pace was not exactly easy; and all I could imagine was bouncing off a tree trunk straight into the open arms of a Feeder.

I swear I could feel them breathing down my neck. I had no idea how many there were, or if they simply needed to reach out to touch me; but it didn’t matter because I was not about to die like this.

I refused.

And I wasn’t going to let Kane die like this either.

I gripped my gun tighter, finding some comfort in the weight and feel of the weapon in my capable hands. It felt more natural to run while holding a gun than it had a week ago. I supposed necessity and repetitive circumstances had something to do with that. The metal warmed against my hot palm, and my finger nervously slipped over the safety just to double check and then to the trigger where it rubbed back and forth anxiously waiting to use it.

I let out a hysterical scream when seven Feeders stepped out of from behind the trees in front of us and moaned. Kane and I skidded to an abrupt halt and spun desperately around, checking the threat from every direction.

The gun trembled in my hand for a second before I pulled myself together and let the pounding adrenaline take over.

Thinking quicker than me, Kane ducked down and came back up with a long, sturdy stick. I started shooting before I could form any kind of plan and Kane didn’t hold back. He launched himself at the Feeders in front of us without reserve or fear.

I gasped at his brutality, the way he went after their heads with a savage grace that I was both thankful for and unnerved by. He shouted out a wild, irate growl and bashed in the first head he came to. I screamed from as much shock as it was from horror.

Tearing my gaze from Kane’s massacre I unloaded my clip as quickly and accurately as I could. But these were smart Feeders. Their eyes were blood red and dripping a kind of black gunk that I had never seen before. Their skin glistened a papery, translucent white and where it wasn’t peeled away exposing flesh and bone, it was sticky with blood or grime. Their mouths foamed with sticky goop and pus and their rotten teeth dripped the same mucous-like fluid.