Love & Decay
A Novella Series
Episode Seven
By Rachel Higginson
[email protected] Rachel Higginson 2013
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To Mandy iReadindie,
Zombies, epic love and kick ass heroines.
Is there anything else?
Chapter One
693 Days after initial infection
“Hands up, step away from the girl!” Haley shouted down the hallway with her best impression of a TV cop. “We’ve got you surrounded, so don’t try anything funny!”
I looked up at Hendrix and said very seriously, “They’ve got you surrounded.”
He stared into my eyes, holding me there for a few moments and agreed dryly, “I can see that.”
“Hendrix, don’t make us shoot you!” Page threatened. I glanced over at her precious face scrunched into a frown with her fingers pointed into a make-believe gun. She meant business.
“I think this would be worth getting shot for,” he grinned at me and then attacked my mouth again. I giggled through his overdramatic kiss and tried to push him away.
“Gross!” Haley and Page shouted at the same time.
“I’m really going to tear gas you if you don’t break this up!” Tyler was absolutely serious.
“I better go with them.” I stepped away from Hendrix and gave him a wicked smile. “I’ll see you later.”
“You should have just tear gassed me!” Hendrix shouted at our retreating backs. “That way I could at least explain the tears.”
We cackled at his sullen attitude but kept walking. We had procured a gift shop for the night. There wasn’t really anything of use here except mostly broken knickknacks and some gourmet chocolate- which I was all about. But it was situated on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma and in a solid brick building with only front windows which had been boarded up by some well-meaning shopkeeper long ago. So, it was relatively safe.
There were plenty of Zombies milling around the outside, but a few days ago we had procured one of those sixteen passenger vans that was full of gas. Well, by procured I meant we stole it…. from a church. But, it was making our lives just a little bit easier, so the trip into hell and damnation was definitely worth it. Except that it wasn’t exactly fuel efficient. But we had made it into the gift shop without incident.
We were feeling pretty lucky so far.
Especially after our three days in hell from last week. After we left the Payless, we spent the next two days walking.
Over the past two years, I had walked a lot of miles and in a lot of dangerous places. But it was different down here. There were just more Feeders and they were smarter than up north. I had to admit that- they were much smarter.
I decided it was the warmer weather. Since this far south didn’t get the heavy snows to kill them off, Feeders seemed to flourish down here. Which was bad news for us.
It kind of made me rethink our entire plan.
So the three days walking from that Payless to the church where we found the van were the worst, tensest days of my life so far. We had to start getting creative in our killing methods because our one gun with bullets ran out quickly.
We avoided towns where there was either the chance of running into a settlement of humans or clusters of Zombies that lived in packs. We found hodge-podge places to sleep and rest, but none of them were even remotely safe and only a couple of us were able to sleep at a time since the others were tasked with guarding. And our food was running low.
Again.
Forget weapons. We had nothing but big sticks, one lead pipe and a tire iron. And there was more of us. With the addition of Tyler and Miller our numbers felt doubled- especially considering how much a twelve year old boy needed to eat.
I thought King and Harrison were bad. The three of them together were a like a horde of locusts.
Those three days were bleak for all of us. And Page’s healing was slow.
When we found the van, Haley actually cried. We spent the night in a rather untouched church- although it was literally in the middle of the country, so that could have had something to do with its vacantness. The keys for the van were in the church office.
We also helped ourselves to the communion crackers and grape juice. It was kind of a feast.
And then we picked up a first aid kit, toilet paper, paper towels, pens, printer paper and a few Bibles. The last of those things I had big plans for. I was determined to enlist Haley and make some kind of school happen for the children.
Since then we’ve been headed toward Tulsa.
We needed weapons.
Tomorrow’s plan included looting until we came up with guns and something substantial for dinner.
Or substantial-ish.
The gift shop we were staying in tonight had a large front and then three rooms in the back and one bathroom, separated by a hallway. The bathroom was clean- which was a small miracle in itself. There was an office, a conference room or break room or something along those lines and then a crafting room. Because the shop itself was so small it was surprising to see such a large, functional office area, but each door was made out of metal and there was plenty of space to spread out so I wasn’t going to complain.
I followed Tyler, Haley and Page into the office where Haley shut and locked the door behind us and then turned around to grinned.
“What’s with the secret meeting?” I asked while I slid onto the cluttered, dusty desk. I looked from Haley to Tyler, but they were both wearing mischievous smiles that weren’t giving anything away.
“We’re improvising girl’s night out,” Haley smirked at me.
I scowled and Tyler quickly added, “Don’t worry, it’s life changing.”
“It better be life changing!” I huffed. “I was so close to being epically ravished before you three barged in!”
“What does that mean?” Page asked in a bemused voice.
We ignored her.
“Trust us, this is so much better,” Tyler promised. And then she held up three small bottles in three different colors- cherry red, hot pink and royal blue.
“Nail polish?” I gasped. I hopped off the desk and bounded toward her. Looking at the little treasures in awe I couldn’t help but smile. “This is better than making out.”
“What’s making out?” Page asked innocently.
“Reagan meant making up,” Haley covered smoothly. “Hendrix and her were…. fighting…. again and then needed to make up.”
“Hendrix and Reagan fight a lot,” Page confirmed.
“They make up a lot too,” Tyler said dryly.
“Anyway.” I cleared my throat and tried to cover the bright blush staining my face
. It wasn’t even true- we didn’t make “up” a lot, because we never had any privacy. But it was still embarrassing! And it was weird. It felt strange to be part of a couple after so many years of not even being around boys. Add on the fact that we were constantly together and surrounded by his entire family…. it was just, well, weird.
“At least now you can make up with pretty pigs,” Tyler smiled a beauty queen smile and waved the bottles around again.
“Pigs?” Page seemed to be swimming with us older girls, but I knew she loved spending time with us.
“Toe nails, baby girl,” Tyler explained with forced patience.
Page beamed up at her, clearly sold on the painted nails thing.
“Alright, Reagan, would you like Bubblegum Crush, Sassy Sapphire or Kissable Sunday?”
“What color is Kissable Sunday?” I laughed. Tyler held up the red. “I’ll take Bubblegum Crush.”
“Do you think it smells like bubblegum?” Page wrinkled her nose up and looked between us all. “My mom used to give me bubblegum all the time before…. before-“
“I used to chew bubblegum all the time too!” Haley cut Page off before the little girl’s mood took a nose dive into the seriously sad. Poor thing. “And now I’m craving it.”
“We’ll keep an eye out, Page,” I promised her. Truthfully bubblegum sounded amazing. Chewing something just to chew- that had no real purpose or lasting effect…. that sounded amazing. “There might even be some in this store. We’ll look later.”
Page grinned at me. “I like that you guys are staying with us.” She looked at all of us, even Tyler and was sincere enough to break my heart just a little bit. Her brothers thought the absolute world of her, we could all see that, but it must have been rough without any other girls around. “I asked Hendrix for some one time but he said that it wasn’t life or death. Will he say the same thing to you, Reagan?” Page’s sweet little voice sounded so sincere and concerned that we all broke into smiles.
“If he does, she’ll just make-up it out of him. Don’t worry, babe,” Haley promised.
My face flushed bright red again and I decided I would ignore that and start painting Pages toes. “Hop up, Page, we can be matching Bubblegum Crush twins.”
Tyler and Haley looked each other over until Tyler finally said, “I’m taking Kissable Sunday and unless you want to fight me for it you’ll have to wait your turn.”
Haley laughed. “I’m good with Sapphire… what? I’m good with the blue one.”
Tyler tossed it over and we spread out as best as we could and slipped off our shoes and socks. Haley retrieved a toenail clipper she’d had the foresight to take from the very first Walgreens we ever tried to loot and we passed that around. And then we got to work.
The strong smell of nail polish filled the room and my cold, cynical heart melted just a little bit. This was amazing. I felt pampered and girly, I felt…. feminine. And after days of killing, being covered in goo and then having to shower with my clothes on and in a tiny creek that was mostly dirty water, feeling feminine was nothing short of a miracle.
I painted Page’s toenails carefully and she watched me, wholly enamored with the process.
“Did your mom every paint your nails…. before?” I asked carefully.
“I think she did,” Page answered softly. “Maybe once. I can’t really remember everything. But I kind of, I think I remember her doing this.”
“It’s fun isn’t it?” I smiled up at her. “Before Zombies, Haley and I used to get our nails painted before our dates.”
“I used to get my nails done every week,” Tyler sighed.
“Every week?” Page echoed in disbelief. “Wow.”
I tried to suppress a smile, because it was kind of amusing in that really depressing kind of way.
“Oh yes,” Tyler agreed. “And I used to pay people to do it for me. It was…. heaven.”
“What did you pay them with?” Page was still captivated with Tyler’s former life.
I had enough trouble understanding the world we lived in, but what about Page or the other children? What would it be like to grow up without a concept of money or luxury things? I suddenly felt this overwhelming exhaustion. It was bone deep and made my entire body lag with a heaviness I couldn’t explain.
I had to change this. Somehow I had to be part of a solution- not just survival. There had to be a way to eradicate this disease and return the world to normal.
Or was I just living in disappointing denial?
Ugh. Probably that.
“I paid them with money, sugar,” Tyler laughed.
“That’s weird, isn’t it?” Haley remarked thoughtfully. “It’s weird that money means nothing to us. Do you think that’s how it is all over the world?”
We were silent as that sunk in. It was hard to say. We had lost contact with the rest of the world even before Haley and I left home.
“I’d rather we not have currency again,” Tyler finally sighed.
“Why not?” Haley asked on a disbelieving laugh.
And I joined in. I mean, it seemed a little strange that a person would prefer to live bartering and looting their way through surviving. But then again, Tyler was a little strange.
“Because it will be my father’s face on it if he gets his way and I’d rather not deal with that. Or have him staring at me every time I go to buy something.”
“You don’t really believe your dad can unite the country again, Tyler?” I needed her to say no. I really, really needed her to say that she didn’t believe that, that she was just kidding or something. “Or even if he could, do you really think it’s possible to restore us to some kind of normalcy?”
“Have y’all ever seen a settlement like my father’s? Have you seen people living like that or working like that? I mean, other than this family right here, have you seen it anywhere else in what’s left of this country?” She wasn’t being snotty or arrogant for once. She was being sincere, asking our honest opinion- but I had a feeling she already knew our answer.
“No,” I replied because Haley hadn’t actually seen “The Colony” in action. “Honestly, that was a first. But what does that mean? Your dad found an alternative to killing each other in cold blood. It doesn’t mean he can create a civilized society out of the wreckage we’ve become.”
“Those people that helped us last week, the ones with all the nice cars and guns. Do you remember where they said they were headed?” Her sweet southern accent made her revelation sound pleasant, but her words were the exact opposite.
“Arkansas,” I repeated dumbly.
“Word is spreading, Reagan. Probably faster than either you or me realizes. My father had this whole philosophy about hope- that what people really wanted in this backward time was hope. And he has it in multitudes. Now he charges a price for it- loyalty, blind commitment, your free will. But look at that town. And contrast that with how we live- and we’re some of the lucky ones. Just imagine what people worse off than us would be willing to give up for a good night’s sleep and three solid meals every single day.”
She was right. I had seen women at Gary’s settlement give up their freedom and so much more- just for protection, for comfort and safety. The Colony had so much more than that to offer. And maybe it wasn’t so bad for a lot of people.
But it sure as hell was not right for me.
“There’s no communication though,” I argued for arguments sake- because I needed to feel better. “How can word spread when nothing spreads except the infection these days?”
“Riders,” she answered simply. “My father has been sending out scouts since he first established peace. They’ve been hitting as many settlements as they can, telling the story about a Feeder-free town where there’s always food and clean water. There has always been a steady stream of people, but it picked up lately. And it will only continue to grow. I know this, I know that my father’s right. I’ve seen it. All people want is security. They want faith in a time where there is nothing to put fai
th in and hope when everything else seems hopeless. They will easily give their loyalty to a cause they don’t fully understand and their free will to a man with a nice smile- all in the name of safety.”
“I know why we left, why we had to leave,” I emphasized. “But why did you and Miller escape? Under different circumstances and had I been allowed to do as pleased, live where I wanted, be with who I wanted, I might not have found the town so…. repulsive. What secrets does your dad keep from the rest of the good citizens of The Colony?”
“Power,” she answered simply. “That’s all my father wants, that’s all he cares about. He wants control and he’s desperately greedy for absolute authority. Before all this, he was a pig farmer. Can you believe it? But it was like…. it was like he was born for this world. All of a sudden there are Zombies and my father is leading a cause that people actually follow- adamantly. And he organized that town faster than anything I have ever seen. I can’t deny that he makes a strong leader, but I just, I don’t think he makes a good leader.” She paused with the brush hovering over her toe before she clarified, “I mean that in the moral sense. He is not a good person. I’ve seen…. I’ve just, the man that you met is not my daddy. He is an entirely different creature that quite frankly, terrifies me.”
“And your brother?” I asked on a whisper.
“Baby girl,” she looked up at me and her dark gray eyes captured mine with true sincerity. “Kane is a different kind of man but not at the same time. He has the same ambitions, the same tactics to getting what he wants, but I’m almost afraid he wants even more than my father does. Together, they make up some bad men. And I had to get Miller away from that as fast as I could. I would just die if he ever turned into one of them. I would die.”
Haley and I were silent as we thought over all those words. It wasn’t like I hadn’t picked up on all that in the short time I was there, but to hear it from someone who lived it for two years, who was related to those men…. I just felt very uneasy now. It was one thing to live with the threat of Zombies looming around every corner and turn, but now to worry about a country that as far as I was concerned had dissolved into a big pile of dysfunction and individual parts was infinitely worse. For some bizarre reason, I felt oddly patriotic. This used to be a great country, a country where we took care of each other, stood side by side in brotherhood and all that. Not that we weren’t without problems- especially right before the whole Zombie thing- but we were still a people united in an overall belief in mankind and individual liberty. It made me angry to think that even now that was threatened.