Episode Three
Chapter One
856 days after initial infection
Stars twinkled above my head, blinking down at me from places untouched by the death of this world. A million diamonds in the sky… pure, bright… alive. The cool autumn air wrapped around my skin and made goose bumps rise on my forearms. I could smell the lingering fire from dinner. The sharp, smoky scent reminded me of bonfires from high school pep rallies. The stillness of the night rang out eerily beautiful in my soul. I felt both grateful for these moments outside and anxious for what other creatures could be lurking in the shadows.
This was the problem with the Zombie Apocalypse. Something as simple as a shift on the nighttime watch could become a near death experience.
Or worse.
But it could also be a breath of fresh air that saved my humanity. My life seemed to be this never-ending tightrope that stretched out into eternity. I had no choice but to walk the wire, the thin, fickle thread of sanity, while death, despair and decay waited hungrily for me to slip.
Moments like this outside, when nothing was chasing me and there wasn’t an endless list of chores to be completed in record-setting time, helped make the tightrope seem a little wider, my feet a little more certain. I could balance a while longer… I could walk a bit further.
“What are you thinking about?” Hendrix asked in a low voice.
I pulled my focus from the vast, untouched sky overhead and met his attentive gaze. His figure blurred in the darkness, softening his edges, smudging his sharp lines and rough angles. I reached out and ran my fingers through his hair and leaned forward and pressed my lips to his.
He was gentle and yielding, the soft touch of his lips contrasted with the hardness of every other part of his body. His tongue swept across my lower lip and he deepened the kiss on my sigh of pleasure. He pushed my back against the cold stone wall and pressed his body into mine.
His mouth moved against mine, gentle at first and then more demanding. He tasted like spearmint and his short beard abraded my face as we moved against each other. I nipped at his bottom lip, loving the fullness of it between my teeth. My tongue followed the small bite immediately and tangled with his again.
A branch snapped somewhere over the fence and Hendrix immediately pulled back. We both worked to even out our breathing while we listened for some telltale sign to follow the sound. Hendrix rested his hand above my head and lowered his forehead to mine.
Eventually we relaxed when no other sound was made. An animal maybe? Nature at some kind of work beyond our line of sight.
“Now is probably not a good time to make a run for second base,” he admitted in a humorless tone.
A giggle bubbled out of me before I could stifle the sound. My laugh echoed off the wall behind me and floated away on the breeze.
“Is that where you were headed? Second base?”
His head jerked up and I saw the fire ignite in his eyes as if I’d flicked the switch to a gas fireplace. “I didn’t realize there were bases open beyond second.”
“You could always make a play to steal,” I teased.
He made a strangled groaning sound and tugged me into a tight hug. “God, I love it when you talk sports.”
That only made me giggle more. “I didn’t cheer for six years and learn nothing.”
“Reagan,” he growled, “stop before you get us killed.”
I pulled back and looked up at his heated gaze. “How am I going to do that?”
“First you talk dirty baseball. And now all I can picture is you in that cheerleading uniform… short skirt… tight top… colored-underwear thingies…”
“Spankies,” I provided helpfully.
He choked on a laugh, or maybe a groan, and pushed me back into the wall. “I’m not a strong enough man to ignore this.” He kissed my neck, his tongue hot on my chilled skin. His teeth grazed the hollow of my throat and his hands dug into my hips, rocking me against him.
“Maybe it will help if I told you I haven’t shaved my legs in a good three weeks.”
Hendrix chuckled against my collarbone and sent rumbling vibrations zinging through my body. “Not even close to helping,” he told me. “It reminds me of the first time we met.”
I opened my mouth to gush over his adorableness when someone else beat me to the punch.
“That’s so sweet,” Vaughan commented dryly. “What do my hairy legs remind you of?”
“I hate my family,” Hendrix grumbled in the way that only a person that adored his family could complain.
“No seriously,” Vaughan pressed. “What do my hairy legs remind you of? Our childhood? Holding hands at sunset? That time we nearly froze to death and had to cuddle to stay warm?”
“We swore never to speak of that.” Hendrix pushed away from me at the exact same moment my ears perked up.
“Wait,” I held up my hand. “I’m going to need more details. A lot more details.”
Vaughan shook his head at me, the moonlight highlighting his blonde hair. “Don’t be a pervert, Reagan.”
I was so not going to be deterred. “Come on,” I goaded. “If you tell me, I’ll tell you what Haley and I did to stay alive last winter.”
Both boys gaped at me.
“What?” I asked innocently.
“He was joking.” Hendrix looked at me like he couldn’t believe what had just come out of my mouth.
“Oh,” I said. “Then, so was I.”
They gawked some more.
“Did you need something, Vaughan?” Someone needed to move this conversation along.
“Are you guys almost finished out here?”
I blushed, but Hendrix soldiered on. “We haven’t done the walk-around yet.” He was referring to the routine the night guards were supposed to perform. We’d already checked the front gate and made sure everything was locked up tight. But that’s when we got distracted.
“Page woke up asking for you, Hendrix,” Vaughan explained. “She’s worried about you on patrol. Neither Haley nor I can get her to calm down. If I finish this with Reagan, would you mind showing her you’re fine?”
Hendrix let out a sigh and looked at me.
“I’ll be fine,” I promised. “Vaughan will keep me safe. Go check on your sister.”
“You’re armed?” Hendrix asked his brother.
“To the teeth,” Vaughan replied.
Hendrix bent down and brushed another sweet kiss across my lips. “I’ll be right back. Don’t try to be a hero.”
“Well, um, you know I’m going to go somewhere, right? We’re going to walk around the wall.”
“I meant, don’t go anywhere, go anywhere. Don’t hop the fence and run off on some kind of suicidal, vigilante mission, trying to get yourself killed. And don’t follow Kane to some abandoned place because you feel a misplaced sense of obligation to save the day.”
Clearly, we were still working through our issues.
“I’m not going to do that.” I crossed my arms. Why would he think I would do something like that? He had no reason to think I would do that.
Apparently, he had lots of reasons to think I would do that because he did not look convinced that I would listen. “Stay out of trouble.” He pointed a stern finger at me and walked away.
I felt like a chastised child. So I decided to pout like one.
“Trouble finds me,” I announced to Vaughan the minute Hendrix had disappeared back inside the building. “You should know I never intentionally look for it. It always seems to know exactly where I am at all times.”
“It’s weird to see my brother so in love,” he told me seriously, completely ignoring my protest. I immediately lost my sense of humor and decided to treasure those words. Of course, it would be strange for Vaughan to see his brother like this. Especially, when Hendrix had never dated seriously or showed this kind of affection to another girl. I hadn’t even known the pre-Apocalyptic Hendrix and found his intensity with me off-putting at times. Good off-putting. Like, he sizzl
ed my insides and made my body come completely alive off-putting.
Not like Kane’s-wacked-out-stalker-I’ll-keep-you-forever off-putting.
“It’s kind of nice too, though,” I smiled at him.
He crinkled his nose at me. “You two are disgusting. You’re worse than Zombies.”
I laughed because I knew he had to be teasing. We weren’t worse than Zombies. We were adorable.
We fell quiet as we moved slowly around the wall, listening for anything moving beyond the stone and our safe place. Our weapons were drawn and ready as well as more ammo and various other instruments of killing strategically placed all over our bodies.
Once we’d rounded the corner, Vaughan cast me a sideways glance and said, “Page was worried about you, too.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t really thought about. Obviously she would be worried about her brother. I hadn’t thought anything weird about her not including me in her middle-of-the-night terror.
Vaughan felt like more needed to be explained, though, “She actually worries about you more. She knows two of the times that you’ve been taken and she panics sometimes if you’re not there. But she asks for Hendrix because she knows he won’t let you go again. It’s kind of sweet. If you’re into that whole mushy thing.”
“Which you, clearly, are not.” I nudged him with my elbow because for a second there he had started to sound wistful.
“Clearly,” he confirmed. “I’m just saying she worries about you. A lot.”
“Thank you for telling me that. She owns at least my whole heart, if not more. I love that little girl.”
Vaughan fell into thoughtful silence again and it was after we’d turned another corner before he spoke up. “Do you ever think about heading south these days?”
I drifted in my own silence, letting my thoughts follow a journey to Peru. I imagined what it would have been like for us to stay on the road and fight our way through Mexico- a place where there were rumored to be armies of Feeders, capable of cognitive thinking. I tried to fight through my limited geographical knowledge and picture what it would be like for us to walk across countries and continents. What it would be like to fight Feeder after Feeder until we were safely ensconced high in the Andes Mountains.
“Sometimes,” I told him truthfully. “I know it was a dangerous journey, but sometimes I miss the road. Sometimes I miss the freedom.”
He nodded like he understood. “Do you think you’ll try again? I mean, after everything with Matthias and Kane settles down?”
“You mean, try to go south?” He nodded and suddenly I felt very insecure. “Why are you asking, Vaughan? Are you trying to get rid of me?”
A soft chuckle came out of him and he ducked his head and stared at his moving feet. “I’m wondering if you’re going to want to get rid of us.”
“Is this about Hendrix? Or Haley and Nelson? Do you think we’re going to break up and cause problems in your family?”
“Reagan, I don’t doubt that my brothers have begun something they both intend to see to the end. I don’t think you and Hendrix will break up and I’ll be left to deal with the fallout because I don’t believe Hendrix will ever let that happen. And the same is true for Nelson. If you want the truth, then I’m asking if you feel the same way or if you are going to leave us. If things get hard for you and Hendrix or if you can’t handle the responsibilities of being with a large family, will you bolt? Will you take Haley and run?”
“Have I ever given you the impression that I would?” My blood spiked with irritation and anger. Vaughan should know me better than this.
He stopped walking and leaned back against the wall. We were on the backside of the compound. The door that led to the forest behind us was only a few feet away. Vaughan looked at it pensively before he returned his attention to me. “I have the highest respect for you, Reagan Willow. I have since the first day I met you. And for Haley. Not many girls could have survived the way you and Haley did. And even fewer could have made my brothers fall so deeply in love with them. I invited you into my family because I knew from day one that you belonged with us. And I have never regretted my decision. Not even when we were on the road and every day felt do-or-die. And not since then when we’ve faced Kane and the shit storm he brings with him. But I’m about to ask you something that cannot be taken lightly or forgotten. I want you to take this seriously. And if you say yes, I want you to swear with your life you will keep your promise.”
“Vaughan, you’re scaring me.”
He gave me a crooked smile. “It’s not all that bad. I'm a little dramatic, but I want you to take this seriously.” I decided to ignore the building anxiety that felt like a forest fire in my chest and nodded for him to continue. “The nature of this world that we live in could mean that…” He trailed off as if he couldn’t bring himself to say the words he wanted to. His focus returned to the door and his quiet only made my nerves skyrocket. I clutched the precious necklace Page gave me and willed him to go on. All at once his attention snapped back to me and his blue eyes that were black in the moonlight glistened with an emotion that sucked all the breath out of my lungs in one fast pull. “Since the infection, every, single day has been a gamble. I know you understand that. Survival is not guaranteed. And if anything, our odds at living another day continue to shrink. The Feeders are getting smarter and now we have Matthias Allen to contend with. Every day our goal to survive together seems more impossible. And on top of that, I have to believe that Hendrix is or will be targeted specifically.”
“What are you saying, Vaughan.”
“I’m asking you to stay.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Reagan, if something happens to Hendrix, I don’t imagine that he will be alone. And if it’s the Colony that’s attacking, then I also believe you’ll be spared.”
“You’re saying, that you think Kane is going to try to kill Hendrix.”
“I will never willingly let that happen,” Vaughan swore. “Nelson won’t either. Hell, not one of my brothers would allow that to happen. But King and Harrison have the advantage that I won’t put them on another watch rotation.”
“So you’re telling me that you think something could happen to Hendrix and if it does, then you or Nelson or both of you are going down with him.” My blood turned to ice in my veins and my organs sludge. How the hell did he expect me to process that?
“Reagan, I don’t think that. I know that.”
I forced out an awkward laugh. “Vaughan,” I gritted out. “Nothing is going to happen to Hendrix, and nothing is going to happen to you. That’s why we have each other. That’s why we go everywhere together. We have a plan. We stick to the plan.”
His smile was sad but the tension in his shoulders lifted some. “This is why I knew you were right for us.”
“What do you mean?”
“You get it. You get the plan.” His small smile grew to a mischievous grin. I rolled my eyes. He was so sappy sometimes.
“Yeah, yeah. I get you.”
“That’s not the point of this conversation.” He was immediately sober again.
“Then what is the freaking point? All you’ve done so far is scare the hell out of me, you suicidal bastard!”
“In the worst of the worst case scenario… because let’s be honest, we’ve both been in a hell of a lot of worst-case scenarios already. So imagine the very worst of those, imagine something happens to Hendrix and me; I would like you to stay with the little ones. I want you to be their guardian. I want you to take them wherever you go. If you go south afterwards, that’s fine, just please keep them with you. You’re family to them now. They expect this to last forever.”
After a charged moment of silence in which I tried to wrap my head around everything he asked of me, I said, “I expect this to last forever, too. I would never leave them.”
His expression didn’t soften. He took a step forward and said, “Even if King and Harrison are grown men. Even if Page is a grown woman. Please don’t leave them.”
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nbsp; “I won’t.” My voice broke over the promise. Sometimes Hendrix and I felt more solid than anything else in this world. Sometimes my soul felt bonded to his, my heart tied tightly with his. But sometimes, I was a regular female that was forced to grow up too quickly and was plagued with reoccurring nightmares. Sometimes, I was an insecure twenty year old that fought to survive in a Zombie Apocalypse. In those moments, Hendrix and I seemed as impossible as living through the day. Regardless of my insecurities about our relationship, though, the Parker family owned my future. One way or another, I would stay with them until this whole world burned to the ground.
Finally, Vaughan relaxed some and squeezed my hand with. “You’ve taken this huge weight off me. You have no idea.”
I nodded because, honestly, I didn’t know. He had already lost his parents and every day he lived with the nightmare-possibility of losing one of his siblings. Sure, I had lost my parents too, but since then, I’d mostly had to look out for myself or for Haley and she was capable of taking care of herself. I didn’t have younger siblings to worry about. I didn’t have a huge family to keep close to me. And what I had never realized until now was that dying first and leaving them behind was a living nightmare for him.
“Vaughan, you know I’m not going to let anything happen to you, right?”
He smiled at me. “I know you’ll do everything in your power to keep us together. That’s why I know you’ll keep my family together if something happens to me.”
I threw my arms around his neck and hid my overwhelmed tears in the collar of his shirt. His arms wrapped around my waist in a tight hug and he lifted my feet off the ground. We stood there for a few moments in an emotional, sibling-like hug before we pulled away.
A whistle from across the courtyard caught our attention and we turned at the same time. Hendrix walked toward us and even from here I could feel the tension rolling off him. His gait was predatory and intense. His focus managed to pierce through the distance and hit me directly in the chest.
I didn’t understand how he could do that. I didn’t understand how his unshakable attention made my body come to life and my insides electrify. The depth of his feelings for me was almost unfathomable, yet I ran toward him as if those feelings could be my sanctuary when I had no security and my future when there was no hope. His soul spoke to mine as if they’d always known each other. His heart whispered soothing promises to mine that healed my broken spirit. He gave this world light. He gave my world purpose.