I fell silent for the rest of the trip. I didn’t know how to talk to Kane or interact with him with his parents so close.
He let me stay quiet, and we drove in relative peace until the compound was in sight. Okay, it wasn’t exactly peace, more like mutual silence. Matthias gloated in the front seat while Linley licked her wounds. Miller lay unconscious in the back of the SUV and Kane kept me tightly to his side. I didn’t have anything to say, at least that wouldn’t get me smacked around a little bit, and I wanted to keep my strength.
I would need it later.
Unlike when Gage ran things, the compound walls were swarming with men. They balanced along the thick cement ledge with annoying ease. Their guns blinked at me in the afternoon sunlight, and their faces crinkled with barely restrained disgust. They knew the cargo these vehicles carried, and they were not our fans.
Once inside the gates, Matthias parked the older SUV in a long line with other cars and trucks and instructed us to get out. He barked orders at his men and had the Parkers and Haley marched away to their holding cell.
Kane kept me prisoner inside our vehicle, so I was forced to watch everyone I love march away without being able to say or convey anything to them. They looked back for me, and I watched a few expressions- especially Haley’s- darken when they couldn’t find me. I hated that they left. I hated that I had to stay with Kane. I didn’t know what to think anymore. I didn’t know if Kane was truly still bad or if this was part of the plan.
And I hated not knowing more than I hated anything else.
Eventually, the courtyard cleared out, and Kane allowed me to exit the SUV. We followed Matthias into the lobby where he stopped and spun around to face me. Linley wandered off to get cleaned up. One of their henchmen carried Miller behind her. He still hadn’t woken up yet.
“Your home is under new management,” he smiled.
“I can see that.”
“Your friends are going to pay for the headache they’ve caused me.”
I stayed silent. Nothing I had to say would help them at this point. I would just piss him off even more. Kane seemed to sense that and stepped up behind me. His chest pressed into my back, and his hands rested on my shoulders.
I hated to admit that his presence did calm me. He made me feel safer. He made me feel protected.
“You will be spared some of their punishment, Reagan. You have my son to thank for that.” Matthias motioned to one of his men and they disappeared into the main body of the storage facility. I tensed in horrified anticipation. I could tell the man had gone to retrieve something… to bring something back. If it was one of my friends… if Matthias intended to “punish” one of the Parkers or Haley right now, right in front of me, I would lose my mind. I would literally lose my mind.
I knew there would be no salvaging whatever was left of me at that point.
“Thank him,” Matthias growled when I didn’t respond to his verbal command.
But in my defense, I’d thought he was being rhetorical.
I turned to Kane and met those steely grays one more time. “Thank you.”
He drew his middle finger over the curve of my jaw and across my bottom lip. “You’re welcome.”
I swallowed thickly and returned my attention to Matthias. “You are not to leave Kane’s side. He is your only protection here. Should you find it in your rebellious heart to disobey me, you will notice that this is not like my Colony. This is a small space with giant walls to keep what I want inside and what I don’t want outside. My men will be instructed to gun you down immediately should you be found without Kane at your side.”
“What if he doesn’t want me around him? What if he’s the reason I’m alone?” My hands had started to tremble and I was seconds from throwing up. I really needed to pull myself together, but the uncertainty and fear were too much.
I wasn’t strong enough.
I could survive two years of Zombie hell, but I wouldn’t survive a day here. I wasn’t meant to be captured, I wasn’t meant to be imprisoned.
I was too wild.
I was too savage.
“Kane won’t leave your side,” Matthias said simply, like it was the most obvious truth in the world. “And if he needs to, he has access to my guards and can post them outside your… room. For now anyway, until you relocate. I’m not talking about ‘what ifs’ though, Reagan. I’m talking real life with real circumstances. Don’t be caught out and about without Kane. It will not end well for you.”
“Alright,” I heard myself say, but couldn’t remember forming the words or putting a voice behind them.
Matthias’s man returned, pushing the scientist from earlier to the ground in front of me. I glared at the middle-aged man with a balding head and a face full of acne scars. His shoulders were rounded and stooped over from a lifetime at a computer that had given him nothing but back pain and a reason to betray innocent people.
“This man wants the little girl,” Matthias announced happily. “I think I’m going to give her to him. I think I should give her to him.”
Oh, god. Was I about to get the forecast for upcoming schemes? Of the evil villain variety?
Dear Zombie gods, shoot me now. Please. For the love of all that is cannibal and brain dead.
“That’s a great idea.” I smiled sweetly and took the biggest gamble of my life. “Then he can cure Zombieism and we can get this whole mess cleaned up. That’s what you want right? You want to cure the infection and develop a vaccine so we don’t have to worry about this threat anymore, right?”
His eyes narrowed and he raised his hand as if to backhand me. I leaned back against Kane and his arms wrapped around my stomach. He squeezed me to him and rested his chin on my shoulder. The gesture was clear. I was under Kane’s protection. And no matter how much Matthias hated me, he believed Kane was still on his side and I was the prize that his son had won.
I hoped he was wrong about Kane’s loyalties.
But either way, I would take Kane’s protection at this moment. I saw how hard he hit Miller earlier. I’d rather avoid that.
At least for as long as I could.
Matthias’s angry gaze swung to the hunched over scientist. I thought his name was Jim, but I couldn’t remember exactly.
“You didn’t tell me about all that,” Matthias accused him while sounding thoroughly interested.
Jim, who looked extremely disheveled and dirty, far dirtier than he’d ever been when he stayed with us, ducked his head and stared at the ground. A weak whimper shuddered through his chest and he shook his head. “We can’t do that with one child. That’s impossible.”
Matthias did not look convinced. I smiled. Jim might not have been lying. In fact, unless he was a very skilled pathological liar, his words came out genuine and honest. Bobbie Jo had explained a little bit of how they would use Page, but she’d never told us exactly what they could do with Page’s blood to develop any of those things. Maybe Jim was telling the truth. Maybe Bobbi Jo had been stabbing at the dark, hoping to catch a break, some miracle cure that would need a miracle to create. Either way, Matthias’s paranoia and greed for power made him easy to manipulate.
I would do anything I could to protect Page. I couldn’t let Matthias hand her off to some back-stabbing scientists that couldn’t take care of themselves. By herself, Page wasn’t a threat to anything. It was her immunity in the hands of the right people that posed a threat to Matthias’s agenda. It wasn’t like she could just walk around healing people. As long as Page was in Matthias’s custody, she was absolutely no threat to him.
I realized I might have just condemned a man to die. I might have been the nail in this scientist’s coffin, but his plot to take Page from me was just as evil and unforgivable as anything Matthias had planned for us. And he had sold us out to the Colony, which was a death sentence in its own right.
Eye for an eye.
“You lied to me,” Matthias growled.
“We didn’t,” Jim pleaded. “We told you the truth. We
want the little girl for experiments. We want to take her away from here!”
Matthias pulled a gun from the back of his pants and shoved it into the nape of the stooped scientist’s neck. “Nobody lies to me.”
“Wait!” I gasped with a last-second desperation. “Why did you betray us? Why didn’t you listen when we told you this way was dangerous? Why did you just steal our car and leave? You’re going to die now and it was all for nothing. Don’t you get it? You died for nothing because you were selfish!”
“What would you have had me to do?” the man demanded. He still stared at the ground while his whole body shook with fear. “They stopped us. Page was our only hope for survival. She was all we had to barter.”
“But you didn’t have her!” I shouted at him. “She wasn’t yours to bargain with! You should have stayed with us. You should have tried to fight!”
He finally lifted his head and glared at me. His pale blue eyes shot daggers my direction as if they could kill me from there. His body started shaking from rage now, not fear. “We’re not like you! We can’t just throw guns around and get our way! We’re not freedom fighters. We are intellectuals. Our war is waged through research! Research that can’t be carried out unless we’re alive to study it. We need to live. We have to live. If we die a meaningless death because we run into people that can’t understand the importance of our work then what will happen to this world? Our goal is bigger than you stupid power-hungry peons. We’re trying to save civilization! We’re trying to rescue humanity! You’re just trying to save your skin. You can’t even understand the consequences of keeping us from our work. Nor can you see the full repercussions in giving us a meaningless death.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me anymore or not. His speech seemed to have shifted to another audience. But he was on a roll right now, and I didn’t want to interrupt. Not when he was doing such a good job of digging his own grave.
Rule number one to handling a psychotic sociopath like Matthias Allen: Never belittle his agenda by praising your own. He does not like to play second fiddle to someone else’s world domination plot. If you want to be allies with Matthias, then you have to learn to play by his pecking order.
Rule number two: Probably don’t tell him you want to eradicate the earth of Feeders by using someone in his custody. Matthias Allen had no intention of destroying the infection or the Feeders. They were what gave him so much power. He would never allow that incontestable authority to be taken from him.
At least not by choice.
I looked at the scientist and let my pity show. “Just remember, we tried to help you. This was not what we wanted for you.”
Matthias snorted and pushed his long-barreled handgun roughly into the back of Jim’s neck until he bent forward on a grunt of pain. Matthias casually checked over the bowed man while the scientist started to freak the hell out. I had known what was coming for him the moment I saw they’d turned themselves over to the Colony. I felt bad for him that he was just now catching up.
“Why?” Jim pleaded desperately. “Why would you kill me? It doesn’t make any sense!”
Matthias cocked his head to the side and examined his victim with cold indifference. “You want something of mine, but you don’t have anything of worth to trade me for it.”
“We told you about your son and wife and where to find them! We handed these people over to you!”
Matthias chuckled. “No.” He dragged the word out in a singsong voice and almost smiled. “They came right to me. I barely had to lift a finger.”
Jim’s face drained of color and his entire body started to convulse. “You can’t hurt us! We’re the only hope this planet has! We can save you! We can save your people!”
“I doubt you’re the only hope this planet has. I’m sure there are others. Others that are still breathing.” Matthias pulled his gun back and the scientist lifted his head. It didn’t take another second before Matthias pressed the gun right in between Jim’s eyebrows. I turned into Kane and buried my face in his chest. I didn’t want to watch this. Matthias continued, “I’d like to ease your pain as you leave this world. You asked me a question. Why would I kill you? The answer is simple. You don’t have anything to offer me. But you want to take from me anyway. That’s the reason. That’s why I’m going to kill you. Nobody takes from me. And nobody makes a bad deal with me.”
“Please!” the scientist screamed. “Think about what you’re doing! This is murder!”
Matthias let out an unnaturally amused laugh and Kane’s arm wrapped around my head and pressed me into him so I could hardly breathe. There was a moment of heavy, weighted silence before the gunshot blasted through our quiet space.
My scream ripped through the air on the tails of the bullet. I screamed again when the body slumped lifelessly to the ground and I could hear the body hit the tile. Kane held me tighter, crushed me against his chest as if his essence could shield me from the horror of this moment.
“Kurt will show you to your room.” I felt Matthias’s presence but kept my head buried in Kane’s chest. I couldn’t let go of him. Not even for a second or I would crumble to the ground and fall to pieces. “I’m glad to have you back, Son. I’m glad to see you succeeded so impressively.”
I shivered at his words, even while I wondered if they were true.
“I’m glad to be back,” Kane told him again. “I’m glad everything worked out nicely. Tell mom I’ll find her later. I was pretty rude to her over the last few days; I just want her to know that-”
Matthias interrupted him before he could say anything else. “She knows, Kane. She’s been through this before. She knows it’s an act. She knows it’s a means to an end. Don’t worry about her. You just get you and your companion settled and we’ll figure the rest out later.”
“Yes, sir,” Kane answered obediently.
“Oh, and Reagan?” Matthias’s voice registered authority and I knew what he wanted… What he wanted to do or teach or prove, but I couldn’t make myself look at him.
“Yes?” I kept my head buried in Hendrix’s chest and mentally prepared myself for what came next.
“Look at me,” came his sharp reply.
I clutched Kane’s t-shirt in my shaking hands and pressed my face to his chest.
“Look at me,” Matthias demanded.
When I didn’t immediately comply, Kane took a step back and turned me bodily. “Look at him,” he ordered me in a firm, cold tone.
I swallowed and steeled my courage. I still couldn’t figure out if Kane were playing a part or revealing his true self. I didn’t know how hard to push my luck, but with Kane physically placing me in front of Matthias, I didn’t have much of a choice except to obey.
Plus, standing there with my eyes shut tight and my fingers stuck in my ears probably wasn’t the best way to establish my bad-ass legitimacy.
I talked myself into opening my eyes and stared at Matthias. He stood just to the right of the dead body slumped over, utterly unmoving and lifeless. I couldn’t help but notice it on the ground, too still, too awkward. I couldn’t help but notice the spray of blood on the wall behind it or the pooling crimson as it crawled along the tiled floor.
When Matthias had my attention, he spoke again. “Ah, there she is.” I stared into those cold, dead eyes and felt part of my soul get sucked up into a great unknown beyond. It was like the good parts of me, the wholesome, pure, innocent parts of me, took one look at this monster in front of me, packed up their shit and ran.
Don’t abandon me now, guys!
I wanted to go with them. I wanted to turn on my heel and get the hell out of Dodge. I wanted to never look back at this place or think about these cruel, heartless monsters ever again.
Instead, I had to stand here and pretend not to be terrified for my life, for my friends’ lives, for the lives of every living human being left on this continent. I had to pretend I was strong and brave and resilient. And I had to pretend that I didn’t want to take Kane’s manhood and s
lice it off with a dull razor and feed it to a Zombie for making me go through this.
That was probably the hardest part.
Acting or not, I hated him all over again for going along with his father’s commands.
“What lesson did we learn?” Matthias asked me.
Oh, how I wished that question was rhetorical. I really did. I really did not want to answer him.
No such luck. He stared at me expectantly and I got an impatient elbow in my back from Kane. Granted, it was a soft, subtle elbow. Still, it did not bode well for his twig and berries.
I cleared my throat. “Not to expect kindness from you?”
Matthias smiled at me, amused by my boldness. Or maybe it was my stupidity that impressed him.
“And what else?”
“He shouldn’t have tried to take something from you.”
Matthias nodded and I felt Kane relax behind me, as if some of the tension-tightened air around us released and spread out.
“We also learned that I only keep around those people that I need, the people that can give me something. He was neither of those people.” There was a charged silence in which I could feel Matthias weigh me, decide which side of the scale I sat on and whether it tipped in my favor or in his. His gaze flashed to his son for a long moment before returning to me. “You, little girl, are one of the lucky ones that I have decided I need.”
Prompted by some survival instinct that I seriously hated, I forced myself to say, “Thank you.”
Those two simple words made the arrogant smirk on Matthias’s face spread to a sick, twisted, victorious grin. He laughed outright and I tried not to flinch from the sound coming from such a perverse, psychotic man.
“Well, I’ll be damned, Kane! Now if that ain’t something to be proud of.” He sobered just a little bit when he told me, “The moment you become someone I don’t need, I’m going to blow your goddamn head off. And if you so much as step out of line once, I’ll make sure it’s one of your friends that suffer. And that they suffer good. Maybe I’ll even start with the child, the key to civilization and what not. Just give me one excuse to put her down. Just once. I won’t waste it. I promise.”