“I don’t mind getting married here,” I said. “But I’m pretty sure we can’t also consummate the union. It just feels… so wrong.”
Tyler shuddered. “Okay, you’re right. That would be weird.”
Haley dropped her voice, “Plus, I think it’s like a communal sleeping situation.”
“Okay then! One thing at a time. Let’s just focus on the vows today. I’ll worry about the deflowering later.”
We dragged Page and Adela with us into a quiet alcove where we could have some privacy. We laughed and cried, we talked seriously and made ridiculous jokes. We spent our time together in a happiness that was unprecedented.
My joy was only amplified by how happy my friend was. I couldn’t believe how far we’d come. We had started this journey together with nothing but each other. We had lived through the scariest moments of our lives and survived impossible situations.
Haley had been my rock, my only constant until Hendrix walked into my life. It was pretty amazing that we’d found brothers to love and that loved us in return.
There were times in our past when I thought we would live the rest of our lives miserable and afraid. But we had managed to find happiness. And not just happiness, but love too. We’d built a family out of our friendship.
And we got to share every moment with each other.
“Can you believe it, Haley? We used to talk about this in junior high. Remember?” We had spent an hour getting ready and trying to do something with our clothes and hair. We’d managed some pretty braids, but we were makeup-less and in the same clothes we’d put on after our shower by the time the guys were ready.
“Oh, my gosh,” she laughed. “Our double wedding dream is actually coming true.”
“I wouldn’t share this day with anybody but you, Hales. It’s hard to believe this is actually happening.”
“It’s hard to believe we didn’t die back in Iowa,” she said honestly. “Reagan, I don’t know how we made it this far, but I couldn’t have gotten here without you.”
I let out a shaky breath. “I feel the same way. And just because you’re going to be a married woman, doesn’t mean you can abandon me either. We’re in this together. Always.”
She nodded, tears glossing her sparkling eyes. “Always.”
We met the guys in a chapel off the main sanctuary. There were a few people loitering about, but we decided to take it over and make it our own.
The small space was lit with candlelight and made the occasion feel intimate and special. We stood in front of a golden altar adorned with fat cherubs and statues of Christ and the Virgin Mary.
Hendrix took my hands and held on to me tightly, as if he were afraid I would walk away. Or maybe he was afraid that this was a dream and he would wake up and I wouldn’t be here.
Because that was how I felt about him. This was too good to be true. This was too beautiful compared to the ugly world we lived in.
We didn’t make it into a ceremony and there was no priest or pastor presiding over us. We simply held hands and whispered vows we promised to keep forever.
“I love you, Hendrix Parker,” I confessed to him. “I give my heart and my life to this marriage. I commit to stay with you, to honor and cherish you. I promise to love you today and from this day forward. I promise to love you forever. When things get hard, when life becomes impossible, you are my lighthouse leading me home. You’re my strength and my hope. You have made this life an adventure and I cannot wait to live the rest of my days exploring it together.”
He smiled bigger than I had ever seen him. His blue eyes lit with adoration and something warmer. When he spoke, I let his words sink into my skin and tattoo my soul.
“I told you once that I couldn’t wait to get to know all of the pieces of you I didn’t know yet. You say this life is an adventure, but Reagan, you are my adventure, my greatest journey. I have fallen in love with every piece of you I’ve gotten to know and I will always look forward to discovering what else there is about you. I never anticipated finding someone to love this much, someone to pull me out of the despair of our world and give me a reason to live again. I love you. I promise to always love you. I promise to work at everything that comes up. And I promise to fight for you. To always fight for you. I will fight against this darkness and I will fight for a marriage that is worthy of you. You are my wife, Reagan Willow. From this day forward, you are my wife and I am your husband. And to me, this is the greatest thing that’s happened to me.”
Tears spilled over my lashes and wet my cheeks. There had never been more beautiful vows. Haley and Nelson went next and while their words to each other were sweet, they couldn’t compare to the promises Hendrix and I made to each other.
I felt those vows rush through my blood and become something permanent and lasting inside of me. I felt them tether me to life, to love… to Hendrix, my husband. I felt them create an unbreakable bond between us, something I couldn’t and wouldn’t let go of.
I was a married woman. Married to a man I loved with every beat of my heart and breath in my lungs.
We stood in front of our friends, these witnesses, and promised each other forever.
When Hendrix leaned down to kiss me, it was different than all of our kisses before. We were more to each other now than we had been a few hours ago. We didn’t kiss as boyfriend and girlfriend or lovers or whatever else we could come up with.
We kissed as husband and wife.
We kissed with eternal vows and lifelong promises.
We kissed like no one had ever kissed before and tasted the sweetness of marriage and eternity.
This world was ugly. This world of decay and despair sucked the life from my lungs and threatened to end me at every turn.
But the horrible things did not outweigh the lovely things. I had reasons to be happy, reasons to hope and to survive.
The world I lived in was filled with love and beauty. No matter what we faced or what we encountered, I had something greater.
I had Hendrix.
Episode Eleven
Chapter One
1108 Days after initial infection
Safe.
I’d been searching for that word for three long years. I had risked my life, my sanity and my happiness to have it.
I had lost loved ones. I had lost nearly everything.
I had nearly lost myself.
All for that simple concept.
I wanted to be safe. I wanted to feel safe. I wanted my friends and loved ones to be and feel safe. And yet at every turn, safe escaped us.
Even now, in this ostentatious cathedral, locked behind heavy doors and thick walls, while we were probably the safest we had been in a very long time, we still weren’t safe.
Zombies pounded at our doors and attacked the city around us relentlessly. Tomás had learned that the western part of the city had been engaged in brutal warfare for days and the number of undead had grown exponentially as the Feeders picked at the wounded and those left behind.
We had water and food here, but for how long? Our supplies were limited and eventually Tomás and his people would have to venture out of their sanctuary and scour the city for sustenance.
We were safer than usual, but so far from the actual definition of the word it physically hurt me. I felt the ache in my bones and the panic rise and fall in my chest like an ocean’s tide.
I had spent the last four days recovering from years of trauma and life-threatening danger. I had been bathed and cleaned and married, but I still didn’t feel safe. I had been allowed to sleep peacefully, yet still I didn’t feel safe.
I might not ever feel safe again.
And somehow I had yet to come to terms with this reality.
It shouldn’t have been this difficult. I should have been able to logically assess the world I lived in and bring my brain to obvious conclusions about the standard of living. But I couldn’t.
There was something in me that wouldn’t drop this desire. There was some unrelenting hope that r
efused to die out.
I couldn’t stop myself from fighting for safety.
I couldn’t make myself quit.
No matter how hard I tried.
Maybe it was some dormant American-dream-philosophy that had been ingrained in me since childhood. I could make my circumstances better if I believed strongly enough… if I never quit and never backed down. The power was at my fingertips, I just had to give my hundred and ten percent.
Maybe it had something to do with human nature. If I finally succumbed to the reality that safe living was an absolute impossibility, I would give up all hope and have nothing left to live for. If I could never be safe, what was the point in living? Why not throw in the towel and give myself over to the evil of this world?
Surely my afterlife was better than this place.
It had to be.
Or maybe it was just me.
Maybe there was something errantly wrong with me. Maybe I didn’t have the ability to function in reality. Maybe the idea of a place to live where Feeders couldn’t touch us and warlords didn’t try to sell us, where evil tyrants didn’t hunt us and cannibals didn’t try to eat us, was too sweet to pass up. Maybe I was too lazy and naïve to let my childish dreams go. Maybe I still believed in love in this world of decay and happiness in a place that was rotting from the inside out.
Maybe I still believed in happily ever after.
I looked at Hendrix. My husband.
He sat next to me on one of the wooden pews that would have been uncomfortable if I weren’t so grateful for them and this place.
Hendrix’s eyes were closed as he sat in silent contemplation. I knew he wasn’t sleeping, but I didn’t think he was praying either. No matter how appropriate those prayers would have been with the golden statue of Jesus hanging over us.
His beard was neatly trimmed and his hair had been cut shorter in the last few days. But he looked more haggard than I had ever seen him. His Adam’s apple bobbed with difficulty and his fingers curled around mine and squeezed until I couldn’t feel my hand anymore.
He smelled like soap. His clothes were fresh. His family was gathered around him and we weren’t fighting off Zombies.
We were clean. We were relatively well rested. We were safe.
We were supposed to be safe.
That word again.
Unfortunately, safety didn’t mean simply a roof over our heads and a Feeder-free existence. My blissful, utopic ideas of safety included more than food, water and protection. I needed more than survival.
I wanted safety.
I wanted my friends tucked away from danger, well-fed and happy. I wanted my loved ones to get full nights of sleep with their shoes off and their weapons put away. I wanted our hearts to heal and our minds to rest.
I wanted us to be healthy in every way.
And right now, we weren’t any of those things.
Right now, we faced one of our scariest moments and not one of us knew what to do about it.
Vaughan had been bitten.
His arm had been grazed by a Feeder in the fight that brought us to this place.
It was a tiny nick on the inside of his forearm. There had hardly been blood when the skin broke. He hadn’t turned immediately into a Feeder. He had barely shown signs of discomfort that first night.
I had stupidly thought there was nothing to worry about.
I had been wrong.
Even inside this fortress, even with enough food and water to sustain us, even with my commitment to Hendrix… We were still in danger.
The outside world had followed us inside these sacred walls and threatened to tear us apart.
Again. For the millionth time.
I leaned forward and looked at Vaughan’s sleeping form. Tyler had ordered that he be stretched out on a pew. The one in front of him had been turned around to make a bed of sorts. She had layered both pews with enough cushions for him to be comfortable or as comfortable as he could be in the fitful throes of his high fever.
Sweat soaked his hair and chest. His skin had turned a sickly pallid color that I could make out even in the dim candlelight. His fingers clutched at his legs and stomach. They had left long cuts in his skin, until Tyler had them bandaged to keep him from hurting himself.
He hadn’t been awake in two days.
The fear I felt for him became a living, breathing monster inside me. I could barely breathe through this nightmare. I wanted to take this from him and put it in me. That’s how desperately I wanted him to heal. I couldn’t bear the idea of him not making it through this. I couldn’t stomach it.
He was our fearless leader. He was the glue that held us all together. He was the voice of reason and the wise advice we all ran to. He was Vaughan Parker.
He was supposed to be invincible.
Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes, but I quickly brushed them away.
For the first time since I met them, the Parkers were broken, lost boys that needed someone to be strong for them. I had taken on that role since Tyler was as inconsolable as they were and Haley had to deal with the baby and her own husband.
There was nobody left to take this burden but me. And I was the last person that wanted it.
But I would do this for them. I would be strong for them because they had been strong for me every day since they found me.
Page sat at her eldest brother’s feet, curled into a tiny ball with her knees hugged to her chest. She sniffled steadily and watched him with an unwavering gaze. She wouldn’t eat unless I forced her to or Miller physically fed her something. She wouldn’t talk. She wouldn’t even acknowledge the rest of us.
Harrison and King had pulled up a pew on the other side of Vaughan’s makeshift bed and were just as distraught. They watched Vaughan with horrified surprise. They hadn’t thought he was capable of sickness either. He was their leader, their substitute dad. He was their hero. He was the only thing that was holding their world together.
And now they were forced to watch him fight the only thing that had come close to killing him in the last three years.
Nelson clung to Haley and Lennon. He had a baby and wife to take care of and that seemed to stave off some of the despair that had rocked everyone else. But he was not in a good place. He was the only one of the Parkers I had seen openly cry so far. It wasn’t like he’d wept loudly, but every once in a while I would catch him wiping away tears that had escaped. He held Lennon closer. He didn’t let Haley out of his sight. He couldn’t speak without his chin trembling and his eyes flashing with fear.
But Hendrix was the worst. Maybe it was because of the bond we shared, because I knew him so much better than any other person. Maybe it was intuition because our souls were connected in an unending way. Or maybe it was because he truly looked like a lost little boy.
My grief was doubled as I worried about Vaughan and Hendrix. One of them was enough to kick me in the gut and send me reeling with anxiety. But both were too much.
They couldn’t both break my heart.
Hendrix’s eyes fluttered open and I watched him take a moment to come back to me. He didn’t look at me right away, his gaze went directly to his brother, to Vaughan’s chest to watch it rise and fall with staggered breaths. Hendrix squeezed my hand tighter in a gesture that was both needy and grateful.
My free hand landed on his thigh and I ran my fingers tenderly over the tight muscle. I wanted to tell him everything was going to be okay. I wanted to promise him that since Vaughan hadn’t turned, his chances for survival were great! I wanted to point at his little sister and remind him that she had been bit and she survived.
But I couldn’t make any of those words leave my throat.
I didn’t know if any of them were true.
Tomás stepped into view and jerked his chin to the side in a gesture that said he needed to speak with me.
I leaned over and whispered in Hendrix’s ear, “Tomás wants to talk.”
His grip tightened on my hand. He didn’t want to let me go. With
Vaughan out of commission and the rest of the Parkers in the state they were, Tomás had come to rely on me as the spokeswoman for our group. It helped that I had so many Diego stories. Tomás trusted me more, knowing that his cousin had also trusted me for a time.
“I’ll be right back,” I promised Hendrix with a kiss on his cheek. “Promise.”
He finally turned to look at me and the bleakness in his eyes gutted me all over again. “Don’t be long,” he pleaded with a scratchy, underused voice.
His possessive words used to come as sexy demands, but over the past few days they’d dissolved into desperate requests and heartbroken pleas. The change in his demeanor did nothing but make me fall deeper in love with him.
This solid, capable man wasn’t beyond brokenness. He needed me as desperately as I needed him. He loved intensely. He loved completely; not just me, but his family too. Everything about this man was absolutely attractive, even in his grief. I just hated that he had to go through this.
I hated that we all had to go through this.
I gave him another gentle kiss, this one on the lips. I pulled my hand from his and met his shining eyes. “I won’t be. I’ll be right back.”
He nodded once before turning back to keep vigil on his brother. I crawled over the back of the pew because Miller was tucked in next to me and Miguel huddled in the corner of the pew with his face buried in his hands.
The newest member of our group was currently experiencing his own version of hell and none of us had the energy or the insight to help him through the loss of his two friends. Tomás had asked him if he wanted to return to his home, but he had shaken his head vehemently and blamed the Rat King for his friends’ death. Adela had explained that Miguel planned to learn from Tomás and eventually go back to the slums to kill the Rat.
Miguel wanted vengeance. He swore he would not be happy again until the Rat King was dead.
I thought that was a little extreme. The Rat King wasn’t the most upstanding citizen of all time, but Zombies had killed Miguel’s friends and those could have attacked anywhere, at any time.