Love and Decay, Episode One

  Hey, when all else fails….

  “Good grief, Reagan, alright,” Kane muttered. He reached back and started tugging gently on Tyler’s duct tape. She whimpered and slid foreword with his pull, so that it wouldn’t tear at her skin. He mumbled curses at her, but she just kept scooting with him until her hip was pressed into my thigh, and Kane had better access.

  Tyler wiggled next to me while Kane worked at not hurting her, which I thought was a little strange. She could have scooted over. I didn’t think her ramming her booty into my leg was very comforting, but then again, who was I to judge? This was a scary situation.

  I had just decided to put up with her when she scratched me. I stared down at her hand offensively, glaring daggers into her bizarre behavior. She stabbed me again with her rough nail and then continued to jab my leg over and over and over.

  Oh.

  She was trying to tell me something.

  Finally, I pushed my leg into her, hoping that would convey the message that I was listening.

  Her finger crooked and she pointed in the general vicinity of everywhere.

  She faked a huge sneeze, cocking her head back and then throwing it forward while she huffed out, “Mmm-moooooo.” Then she did it again. Another great, big, over the top sneeze, while Kane pulled his hands back completely disgusted by his sisters bodily functions. “Mmmm-mooooooooo,” Tyler sneezed again.

  “Bless you,” I mumbled out loud while in my head I was chanting her muffled vowel sounds a thousand times per minute, trying to make sense of it.

  Mmm-moo.

  Mmm-moooooo.

  Gah.

  And then she started jabbing me again with her fingernail.

  Clearly one of two things was going to happen in the next thirty seconds. One, I was going to figure a way out of these ties, strangle Tyler with them and then hold a very special funeral because I felt so guilty for ending her young life. It was a crime of passion!

  Or two, I was going to figure out what she was trying to tell me.

  I really needed to go with option two, otherwise I would end up doing option one. That probably wasn’t a good thing.

  “What are you two up to?” One of the thugs in the back asked. I felt his presence slide forward on the smooth leather seat and out of the corner of my eye I could see his gun dangling over the back of the seat.

  Kane pulled back, eyeing us with new suspicion. His searching gaze floated from Tyler’s tear-stained face to mine. I didn’t even know how to look at him. Were we up to something? Yes. Did I have any kind of clue to what it could be? Escape. But that’s as far as my mind let me go.

  Because it seemed impossible. Because escaping this vehicle wasn’t our only battle. Because Feeders lurked in every available space between the storage facility and where we were now and there were all these fast SUV’s to hunt us down. That was if the Feeders didn’t get to us first.

  We still had to try though. We still had to make an attempt. Or die trying.

  At least Tyler and I were on the same page.

  Kane stilled in his turned-around position and met my eyes again. “I will not let you go again, Reagan.”

  His words were so final, so believable, I shivered on cue. A nauseous feeling assaulted my body, sick, dizzying, ominous. It wasn’t that he was threatening me. It was that he believed his words so severely.

  I calmed in a way that clarified everything around me- like an alien invaded my body and commanded my emotions into submission. I felt controlled by something greater than me, honed into the perfect soldier I’d been striving for, working toward.

  My watery eyes dried, my vision cleared, my lungs breathed easier, the pain in my shoulders, my wrists and the back of my head vanished and my body became the weapon I had been training it to be.

  I met Kane’s stare with pride and purpose. “It’s not up to you, Kane,” I said evenly. “It’s never been up to you.”

  “Reagan, take in your predicament carefully and say that again.” His eyes narrowed on me behind his black, thick-framed glasses. His full lips pursed together and he leaned into the seat so that we were closer than ever- although Tyler still hovered between us.

  “You can’t own me, Kane,” I promised. In my peripheral vision I watched Tyler toe off one of her shoes. I dared not look down, but I knew this was so vitally important. Shoes were everything in this world. We hunted for them, slept in them and hoarded them like gold. If her shoe was coming off, there was a very important reason. “I’ll never go willingly with you. Especially not now. You can’t shoot my boyfriend and expect compliance.”

  “Oh, now he’s your boyfriend?” Kane’s lips tilted in just enough of a smile to send the rage and desperation thrashing anew through my blood. “I thought that was juvenile.”

  “So is kidnapping a girl to get your way.” I watched him work to smile against the truth of those words. It was the first time I’d ever seen the hint of doubt in his decisions. For a nanosecond my resolve for him flared. Did he regret this? Did he just not understand how to let go? Or that there were other ways to pursue a woman? Was this the something deeper that sometimes flared to life in his cold, robotic demeanor? “Take the tape off Tyler’s mouth.”

  “Or what?” Kane challenged.

  “Or I’ll start relaying every single intimate detail of the hours Hendrix and I spent alone today.” Kane’s smile vanished. Of course I was bluffing. Even in life or death situations, I wasn’t the kind of girl to kiss and tell.

  Besides, how awkward would that be?

  “And if I just tape your mouth shut, too?” Kane asked with a steely, malicious voice.

  “Take the tape off her mouth!” I shouted- losing my calm momentarily.

  “Then you’re quiet,” he growled back. “Then you sit back there and stay quiet.”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t promising that.

  Kane’s vision shifted to his sister and I chanced a glance down at her discarded shoe. Silver glinted back at me, thin and miraculous. A pocket knife- familiar Swiss Army. The knife blade was closed, tucked tightly into the plethora of other small, survival tools. But it would be enough.

  Now to get to it.

  If I ever doubted Tyler before now, I needed to take it all back. This girl had thought way beyond my stuttering thoughts.

  Kane reached forward and worked slowly at the sticky tape across Tyler’s mouth. His slender fingers operated carefully against Tyler’s skin and I couldn’t help but feel surprised. Of course, not more surprised than I was seconds later when enough of Tyler’s mouth was exposed she turned into a savage animal.

  Even I jumped when Tyler launched herself at her brother’s hand, clamping down her teeth and biting him with vicious enthusiasm. Kane hollered in outrage and pain, frantically trying to fling his sister off him. Blood squirted out of the corner of her mouth in a surprising break of his skin- like an orange when the top layer is punctured and the flesh is pierced. Blood spurted first and then ran down Kane’s hand in thick, crimson rivers. Still, Tyler never let go.

  She was a wild dog, a savage tigress… she was surviving.

  The entire vehicle jumped into motion. Kane tried to pull his arm back and accidentally hit the driver in the head, who swerved from the contact. I threw my body to the floor, letting the momentum take me. I landed on my back on top of Tyler’s feet and shoe. The men in the back seat, lunged forward to pull Tyler off Kane, but she showed surprising strength and will power.

  One of them hit her across the back of the head, in order to dislodge her teeth from Kane’s hand, but she refused to let go. I wiggled around, taking full advantage of the distraction until the tips of my fingers brushed against the inside of Tyler’s shoe.

  This was awkward and painful, my shoulders not quite fitting between the seats and my legs, scrunched up to my chest. I couldn’t breathe in this position and my mind raced with panic and purpose.

  The click of a gun stilled me for just a moment until Kane yelled out, “Don’t shoot her! My father will murder
you if you touch her! Just get her off me!” His voice was strangled with pain, but that only spurred me on to complete the task.

  A man from behind lurched forward trying to get a good hold on Tyler and she flung her head back, connecting the back of her head with the front of his. More blood now exploded around me, landing on my face and chest. Ack! Gross!

  I wiggled forward, my fingers just barely picking out the small knife from Tyler’s shoe. I pulled it into my grasp and started opening the slender metal pieces, frantically trying to find the knife. My fingers were hysterical and clumsy, my eyesight blurry with fear and someone else’s blood. The zip-ties bit into my wrists, my back ached from this position and I had to gasp and pant for breath.

  The Suburban continued to swerve while Kane and Tyler thrashed around. The guy behind us moaned and the other guy took over, finally grabbing hold of Tyler’s shoulders to settle her.

  Kane’s free hand grasped hold of Tyler’s throat, clenching tightly with rage. “Let go, Tyler,” he snarled with a voice so full of rage and pain it scraped against my ears like rusted nails. When she didn’t, he tightened his grip, his forearm muscles bulging over my head.

  She complied, but only because she didn’t have a choice with him squeezing her neck so hard. Kane pulled his hand back to his chest immediately and flung Tyler away from him like a rag doll.

  His gaze fell down to me at the exact moment I found the knife piece. I flicked it open and it dug across my palm, slicing it open with the dull blade. I ignored the pain and managed to saw it back and forth through my bonds while Kane’s eyes took me in, slowly processing what was happening behind my back.

  My hands snapped free at the exact time he threw his upper body over the seat to restrain me. I re-gripped the knife and swung out with numb, stiff arms, using every ounce of will power I had to put force behind my movements.

  “Oh, shit!” One of the guys behind me shouted.

  I plunged my pocket knife into the top of Kane’s shoulder and he howled an ungodly sound of fury. He flew over the seat and I scrambled to my knees, using the door to push my body up. The three men all wrestled to get to me, but the seats and each other kept their attack from fully succeeding.

  Tyler swung around, kicking at the men with the strength of a bull. They lurched left and right with each of her impacts and then split while Kane tried to wrestle with me, and the other two men went after Tyler.

  “Do not shoot them!” Kane reiterated at the sound of another clicking gun.

  Kane wrapped his hands around my bicep and wrestled me still while I kneeled on the seat next to him. The pocket knife stuck out of his shoulder like a dinosaur spike, and blood trickled from the wound, angry and crimson.

  “Stop,” he rasped. “You have nowhere to go. You’re only making this harder on yourself.”

  I didn’t respond verbally, but I did take a page out of Tyler’s book. I cocked my head back and snapped it forward with every ounce of strength I had. Our foreheads connected with a crack of skulls that vibrated through my body in a sickening rush until it hit my toes and bounced back up, repeating the process.

  My head pounded, my vision blurred. I would be sick at any moment. I’d probably done irreversible damage to my skull and brain between the probable concussion on the back and now this on the front. A headache descended on me fast, and consuming, splitting what was left of cognitive thought and willpower wide open.

  Kane reeled back, blood trickling down his face, over his aristocratic nose and in the corners of his mysterious gray eyes.

  I shoved the pain, confusion and dizziness down- way, way, way down and launched my body into the front seat. My legs kicked back to keep Kane from following me and I dove for the floor with just my upper body.

  My head dipping low, sent violent sickness roaring through me again, but I swallowed it back. The driver grabbed at my waist with one hand, swerving the car violently with his attempt to restrain me.

  I wrestled for my weapons rebounding back and forth with the movement of the Suburban. Kane landed on top of me, reaching for my arms to restrain me.

  Three seconds slowed into crawling eternity as I finally grabbed my loaded handgun with one hand and my serrated hunting knife with the other.

  In one fluid movement I flipped off the safety, and twisted around so that the barrel of my gun pressed into Kane’s temple.

  We were an inch apart, his breathing fanned hot and fast over my face. His body was completely on top of mine, so that the different parts of the front seat pressed painfully into my already sore upper body.

  “You won’t shoot me,” he said.

  He was wrong.

  I pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Four

  Click.

  Click. Click. Click.

  I kept pulling and pulling the trigger, but nothing freaking happened.

  A wrathful scowl broke out across Kane’s face and he narrowed his eyes at me. “You really think I would leave bullets in that thing.”

  Click. Click. Click.

  If I kept pulling the trigger something was bound to come out of this stupid thing!

  “You were really going to kill me? I thought you had more respect for humanity than that,” he hissed. His hand clamped down around my wrist and he pulled the gun away from his head. “Reagan, you’ve made me very mad.”

  A battle cry of something inhuman and venomous escaped my lips and I plunged my hunting knife into Kane’s bicep and pulled down. The sharp blade met little resistance as it went into Kane’s flesh, but did not get very far when I tried to yank it down and split him open from shoulder to wrist.

  He slid off me in an attempt to get away from my weapon. The driver tried to grab for me again, slamming his foot on the break. We all lurched forward and I fell on top of the pile of weapons on the floor.

  I scrambled to pick up something useful and only found a butterfly knife. There were guns down here but the ammo was elsewhere and I didn’t trust any of the other handguns to be loaded.

  The driver threw the Suburban into park and launched himself at me. I could hear Tyler’s screams in the back seat, Kane’s furious roaring. I felt the shadow of another Suburban pull up beside us, but only one action carved through the melee of my brain and called to my full attention.

  And that was what I did with my hand.

  In a move I had never practiced before… in an action I didn’t know I was capable of committing…. I popped open the murderously sharp blade of the knife and swung out.

  My legs were tangled on the armrest and my torso was slunk and pushed down onto the floor. The driver came flying at me, and my arm flung out wielding the weapon. As if I had done this a thousand times before, the blade sliced across the man’s throat, tearing through his jugular. Blood sprayed everywhere, in sick, horror-movie-esque streams.

  I sob clogged itself in my throat as the man slumped forward with desperate hands clutching at his wound. His body went limp over my legs, taking up the entire front seat and blood continued to pool onto the leather until it dripped down the side and onto my clothes.

  I was horrified.

  Traumatized.

  Practically catatonic.

  But this fight for my life wasn’t over just yet.

  Slowly the life seeped out of him and eventually the air around me seemed clouded and hazy with his lifelessness. He stopped struggling and his body became eerily still. I leaned forward and snatched the handgun from the back of dead guy’s pants before anyone else could. I clicked off the safety and held it straight and forward as I untangled my feet from their awkward position.

  I pulled myself onto my knees; sharing the bloody seat with the man I’d just killed.

  Not a Zombie- the human being I just murdered.

  A shudder of self-revulsion tripped through my body and I swallowed back the bile that had lodged itself in my throat.

  I waved the gun at the back seat. “Don’t move,” I whispered. But I didn’t need to be louder than that. Everyone was list
ening now.

  I trained my gun at Kane’s forehead and stared him straight in the eye for four whole seconds before looking back at the other two men who were restraining Tyler awkwardly over the backseat.

  “Let her go,” I demanded.

  “Don’t,” Kane countered. “She won’t shoot me. Don’t let my sister go.”

  “I pulled the trigger not seconds ago,” I reminded him. He flinched but barely. “I have bullets this time.”

  The men listened to my logic and put their hands in the air, backing away from Tyler.

  There were too many things that needed to happen. My pounding head blurred with the fuzzy details of what I had to say.

  My body revolted violently against the tension and adrenaline coursing through me. The urge to close my eyes and sway nearly overwhelmed me, but I held strong. I had to, or this was over before it began.

  Kane slumped back in his seat, allowing me to keep the gun trained on his head. He was covered in blood, his arm useless at his side, his opposite shoulder bent forward. Sweat beaded on his forehead, trickling down his temples. His face paled to a sickly white and his mouth pressed together in either frustration or pain.

  My heart kicked against my chest at the sight of him so helpless and tortured. I didn’t have feelings for him- not anymore. He shot Hendrix. He had me knocked unconscious. And then he had me kidnapped- something I really thought he had given up on.

  But I had also just killed someone- for the first time in my life, survival had meant more than fending off Zombies. A man had to die so I could live.