“Duck, Hendrix,” I shouted, my words slightly slurring.
He didn’t argue, just dropped to the ground and I let my gunfire fly.
For the most part, I wasn’t even close and I held back panicked tears that I wasn’t going to be able to stop this, or that I had probably already hit Hendrix.
Finally one of my bullets found the sweet spot in the closest Zombie’s head and he dropped. I turned my gun on the second Feeder and hit him once in the chest, once in the neck and finally in the cheek. Still, it wasn’t enough to put him down.
I readjusted my aim, knowing full well that I was almost out of bullets. I willed the gun to have a few more blessed bits of ammo and landed my final shot right in the middle of his ugly forehead.
This time when my gun clicked empty, I wasn’t surprised. I fumbled for my last knife, but it was trapped in the complicated button-system of my cargo pants. I wasn’t about to give up, though.
If I made it this far, I could finish this.
As I yanked the knife from my terrible storage pocket, a gunshot hit the sprinting Feeder right in the back of his head. He lunged forward while the blood spray from the entry wound misted my outstretched arms.
I looked up to see Hendrix turning away from me and finishing off the last of the Feeders. His kill shot had been perfect. Vaughan rounded the back side of the tree, being chased by another Zombie. This had to be the last of them.
They were coming straight for me and the Feeder quickly left his pursuit of Vaughan in favor of all my tempting blood. I lifted my knife and held it ready. This time when the Feeder threw himself at me with all my fresh gore, I twisted my body at the hip, built some fast momentum and swung back with a strong, powerful arc.
My knife landed much in the same place as the other Feeder I stabbed, but this time I had been both prepared and anxious for it. My arm swung with the knife now firmly rooted in the guy’s skull and it was my turn to land on top of him.
However I was so slick with blood and other Zombie-like fluids that I slid right off him, back to the ground again.
Hendrix was at my side before I could roll over. His strong, familiar arms wrapped around me and pulled me to my feet. His warmth covered me; his strength seeped into my skin and concern wrapped around my heart.
I was too relieved to do anything but sway in his arms.
“Whoa,” he murmured. “You alright?”
I shook my head no, which only bounced the pain around and sent nausea clawing up my throat again.
“That was quite the finish, Killer,” Vaughan teased.
His voice faded in and out along with my vision.
“Reagan,” Hendrix’s voice was firm. “Reagan, don’t pass out yet.”
“Why not?” I whimpered.
My vision cleared long enough to watch Hendrix and Vaughan share a look.
Hendrix turned back to me and said, “Because we’re not done yet. There’s more coming.”
And that’s when I promptly blacked out.
Chapter Three
My head was in a vacuum.
A painful vacuum.
That was the only explanation I could come up with. White noise rushed in my ears while something beat my head on every side. My stomach churned and I thought I was going to be sick, but my body felt too heavy to move.
Sounds cut through the haze of my mind, but I was too disorientated to figure out what they meant or where they were coming from. My bed felt funny beneath me; it was damp for some reason and I was freezing. Usually the storage facility was unnaturally hot with all the candles burning to light the place. It had the cold chill of a concrete building, yet the temperature always ran warmly.
But now it was just cold. Cool air rushed over my cheeks and caused a burning sensation all along my nose, cheek and temple. I groaned and my lips tasted like dirt.
Ok… I was clearly not at home.
But where was I?
Slowly the pieces of the night started to fit back together and with it the rest of the world came rushing at me. I jumped to sitting, instantly regretting my movement.
The sounds I couldn’t identify before were gunshots mingled with the welcoming sound of Feeder moaning. I wasn’t in my bed; I was on the ground. And I had inhaled a mouth full of dirt.
I blinked up at the melee happening over the top of my head and rationally thought, Hendrix better not try to kiss me anytime soon. Between the dirt, the puking and the blood, I could possibly have the worst breath known to mankind at the moment.
I blinked some more and the proper amount of panic began to settle on the back of my neck. I felt around for a weapon, hoping one of the boys had thought to lay one by me. My fingers groped through the leafy ground slowly and with little coordination. I couldn’t find anything except dirt that stung as it scraped across the splinters under my nails. My vision darkened again with intense pain, but I fought through it.
Finally, my fingers brushed over the cold metal of a knife. I picked it up quickly and tried to examine it in the moonlight. I felt drugged; my body would not work like I wanted it to and my mind seemed slow to catch up. A part of me was so frustrated with my lack of coordination that it screamed at all the nonfunctioning parts of my brain and body to get my shit together.
But apparently, I didn’t want to listen.
After long, senseless moments I could finally identify the weapon in my hand. It was a smaller switchblade that was more of a last-resort weapon than anything substantial. But it would have to do.
I pushed myself to my knees first and then to my feet. I breathed deeply and tried to make sense of the scene in front of me.
Hendrix and Vaughan had us backed against a rock wall in a small clearing. They were expertly taking out a different horde of Feeders. Only nine of them were left standing and they advanced on us at once.
Bang. Hendrix dropped another one.
Bang. Bang. Vaughan ended the one on the farthest right.
Just like that down the line. But they were closing in fast.
I watched as if I were still dreaming. My mind felt so clouded that this hardly felt like reality, even while that small, rational part of my brain screamed that this was actually happening.
Five left.
Hendrix got another one in the neck, and on the underside of his chin when his head snapped back from the impact of the first shot. The bullet went straight to the back of the head at that angle and he flew backwards, knocking another Feeder off balance.
Vaughan clipped two right in a row. Bang- in the nose, blowing out the woman’s face. Bang- right between the eyes. Blood erupted everywhere in chunky streams of gore.
Two to go. They both took aim and fired. Vaughan missed the first time, but made up for it by getting him the second time. Hendrix pulled the trigger and click.
Click. Click. Click.
Empty chamber.
I swore those empty shots rang out louder than any other sound of the night. Hendrix threw his gun down and reached for a knife. At the same time the Feeder launched himself forward and took an impossible jump at us.
Or, I should say me.
I couldn’t really blame the guy; he looked like he was a teenage boy once upon a time. I was after all, basically dripping blood from my head on every side. I probably looked like a delicious midnight snack.
My fuzzy mind snapped to attention after he flew over Hendrix and came straight at me. My body moved into motion instantly. He landed a foot in front of me and lurched out while I dove to the side. I pressed the button on my knife and the blade popped out, ready to go.
His momentum took him straight into the cliff wall and he smashed his face on the rock. I lurched at him, with my knife swinging and tried to stab him in the back of the head. He turned at the same time I swung out and gnashed his teeth at me. I pulled my arm back and stumbled out of the way as he jumped at me again.
Hendrix bull-rushed the Feeder from the side, smashing the young Zombie back into the hard rock. The Feeder’s teeth immediately st
arted biting rabidly, trying to get at any piece of Hendrix he could.
Hendrix pulled back and slammed the Feeder to the ground. Not hesitating for a second, I dove after them and thrust my knife into the flailing creature’s forehead. He looked up at me with bloody eyes and an insatiable thirst for blood that I hoped never to experience. In the next moment, his life was gone for good but his deadly, red eyes kept me as their focus.
I had a strong urge to shut his eyelids for him, but that gesture would have been out of respect. And no matter what kind of human being this guy was before, after he tried to eat my face, he no longer deserved my veneration.
Hendrix let the disgusting animal go as soon as he was certain he wouldn’t jump back up and bite us. He staggered backwards and then forward as he pulled me into another tight hug. I wasn’t ready for the loss of equilibrium though and quickly shoved him away so I could puke next to his feet.
This time when he jumped back, it was because of the second coming of tonight’s supper.
“Reagan, you are not looking so hot,” Vaughan told me.
I flipped him off and dry heaved again.
I hated concussions.
They were the worst.
I wiped my mouth on my bloody sleeve and spit again before I stood up and faced them. “If you tell me there are more coming, I’m going to offer myself to them as some kind of a virgin sacrifice. I’m out of weapons. I’m out of energy. And my head hurts so badly that I’m almost positive pieces of my skull have broken off and stabbed my brain.”
Hendrix and Vaughan stared at me.
And then Vaughan said, “I didn’t realize you were such a whiner.”
When I took a step forward in order to murder him, Hendrix pulled me into his arms and swung me up so he could carry me like a baby.
“This goes against everything I fundamentally believe in,” I grumbled, even while I wrapped my arms around his neck and snuggled my filthy face into the crook of his neck.
“And what do you fundamentally believe in?” Hendrix murmured in a soft voice.
“That I’m not a damsel in distress that needs to be rescued.”
“Babe,” he murmured. “I’m pretty sure you have a severe concussion, you fell out of a tree, you stabbed two Zombies prior to this last one and yet you still managed to rescue me. That was all on top of your usual bad-assedness. I have never once thought of you as a damsel in distress.”
I smiled before I thought about the consequences for my poor, throbbing head. “Just as long as we’re clear.”
He kissed me on the top of my head and chuckled. “We are definitely clear, Kujo.”
He carried me somehow effortlessly all the way back to the compound, although, we weren’t actually that far from it. Vaughn and Hendrix must have been trying to reach it before they were forced to stop and fend off those last Feeders. Still, Hendrix had the same kind of night as me, minus the concussion, and still managed to lug my deadweight around. Those were the kind of muscles I decided I wanted in my life.
Not on myself, obviously. But on him, so I could look at them… touch them… lick them…
Ok, maybe that was a little weird.
This concussion was doing weird things to my brain.
Oh, no! What if this was a permanently weird thing?
“Hendrix, if all these head wounds make me stupid, will you still love me?”
Vaughan was unlocking the gate, so there was a creaking that covered the sound, but I felt Hendrix’s chest rumble with a laugh.
“Reagan,” he murmured against my temple. “I’ll still love you even if I have to spoon feed you all your meals.”
And somehow, after a bloody, gory battle in which I bashed my head on three different sides, killed at least eight Zombies, three of them in hand-to-hand combat, and had my hope for a stable future seriously shaken with the witnessing of the whole Feeders-communicating thing, Hendrix still managed to melt my heart and remind me that there were lovely, beautiful things even at the end of the world.
He was my beautiful thing.
He was my lovely.
And I meant that in a totally masculine, sexiest-male-of-the-Zombie-Apocalypse kind of way.
We stumbled into the courtyard, all of us ridiculously exhausted and dirty from head to toe. Gage was waiting for us on the other side. His hands were on his narrow hips and his foot tapped furiously. He was pissed. Even in the darkness I could see his angry glare.
“And where the hell have y’all been?” Gage demanded with his thick southern accent especially pronounced.
I snorted a laugh and whined, “But we’re only ten minutes late for curfew, dad!”
Hendrix almost dropped me he was so surprised by my ill-timed joke. “Don’t mind her,” he told Gage. “She’s concussed.”
That’s when I broke out into hysterical laughter. Something about the word “concussed.” Although that sliver of smarter-human-being that was lost in the shuffle of all the brain bleeding knew this was another symptom for my descent into madness.
“Seriously, what happened?” Gage demanded.
There were a few other people standing behind Gage, other regulars on the watch that had no doubt come out to form a task team.
Vaughan looked between Gage and the other men and said quietly, “Gage, we should find another place to talk about this.”
Gage stared at Vaughan for a few poignant seconds before nodding. Vaughan finished locking the gate behind us and then we followed Gage into the building silently.
Gage told the other people to finish out the night watch and asked us to follow him to his office. There were a lot of places to talk throughout the storage facility but Gage’s office somehow seemed more secure than everywhere else, especially with the possibility of Kane lurking in every dark corner.
Gage shut his door behind us and Hendrix carefully set me down in one of the chairs. I tipped to the side and had to lean forward because I thought I was going to throw up for a few seconds… but, hey! Look at that, I was sitting all by myself.
“Alright, I want details. And I want them now.” Gage loomed over his desk with that still-hard expression. “You’re on watch and you abandon your post to go Zombie-hunting in the middle of the night? Without telling anyone? I know y’all are used to a more exciting lifestyle, but I didn’t realize you’re also out of your goddamn minds!”
This felt very much like a parental lecture and I did my best to hold in my giggles…
I did. I tried my best.
“Maybe you’d like to explain, Reagan?” Gage’s eyebrows lifted and his forehead wrinkled with annoyance.
So basically he just made things worse for me.
“Are you high?” he asked incredulously. And then to the Parkers, “Is she high?”
“No!” Hendrix was quick to defend me. “She’s not high. I told you, she hit her head. Several times. We had a bit of a bad time tonight.”
“Could that have been because there were only three of you?” Gage’s anger was not dissipating.
So ever the collected one, Vaughan stepped in, “Here’s what happened…” He went on to explain to Gage in detail about the wandering Feeder, the communicating horde and the effort it took to get back home.
Gage’s comments were expected. We were stupid to go off by ourselves. We were foolish not to have at least warned someone we were leaving. We could have died. We could have been bitten. We could have led them all back here.
We nodded and didn’t argue, because honestly, what could we say? He was right. On every account.
But we’d learned valuable information tonight. Info that could save our lives because knowledge meant the difference between understanding our enemy and not being prepared for the coming war.
“Feeders that can communicate?” Gage sank into his chair. In the last few minutes he’d gone from looking like a marble statue to utter defeat. “How can we fight hordes that can speak to each other?”
“It was very primitive,” Vaughan assured him. “I’m not sur
e if they were words spoken or if it was the intent she made clear.” Vaughan ran his hand over his beard before confessing, “We’ve seen more and more of this since we came south. I’m not sure if the harsh winters up north keep the Feeders from staying alive long enough to develop into this depth of infection or what, but the Feeders down here are significantly smarter than what we’ve dealt with before.”
“You’ve seen this?” Gage sat forward in his chair and rested his hands on his desk.
“Yes,” Vaughan confirmed.
I thought back to the “bowl” and even farther back to the rundown barn we stayed in once during a storm. Those Feeders had communicated, too. We had even speculated before that only one of them had picked up on our scent and called the rest of the Zombies to join her.
But it was hard to look at those instances and see their evolution. They happened too fast or I was too embedded in the moment. When we looked back at the bigger picture, though, there was definitely a theme happening. A theme of them organizing and plotting attacks. A theme of them becoming more intelligent and thinking beyond their hunger for human flesh.
And I was not a fan.
“So what was he dragging back to their… camp?” Gage asked after he listened to everything.
“A deer,” Vaughan told him. I sat there stunned. I hadn’t even thought to look once we stumbled into their nest.
Gage stared at Vaughan like he was speaking a different language. “I’ve always wondered if they would eat more than people. Now I know.”
Hendrix made a grunting sound. “Now you know.”
“Do you guys remember those commercials that were like, ‘The more you know…’” I thought I was helpful, but they just looked at me. “You know, the commercials on TV.” More blank stares. “Do you guys remember what TV is? Oh my gosh, you guys, it wasn’t that long ago!”
Gage turned to Hendrix and ignored me completely.
Rude.
“Should she be here right now? She looks like she’s in bad shape, Hendrix.”
Hendrix put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I’m a little concerned about letting her fall asleep.”
“Psht.” I waved my hand in front of me. I slumped to the side when the movement made me feel off-balance again. I tried to hide a big yawn into my hand but it stretched and scrunched my whole face and made me shiver. “I’m fine,” I told them. “I do this all the time.”