“Kane!” I screamed. “Come back! I love you! Please, come back! Please!”
Hendrix caught me around the waist before I could run after Kane. I fought against Hendrix’s hold while my eyes stayed glued to Kane and his stupid, idiotic decision.
I watched in horror as Kane ran forward, into the middle of the two separate hordes. He took out the hunting knife and sliced it over his chest, then down his left arm from shoulder to forearm. Then, as if that wasn’t enough blood to draw all the Feeders in the area, he plunged it straight into his gut.
“No!” I screamed. “No! No! Please don’t! Please don’t do this!”
Kane lost his strength and fell to his knees. At the same moment, I felt my own strength leave my body. I collapsed against Hendrix and watched with blurry vision as Kane’s huge frame slumped to the ground.
With great effort, he rolled over and offered his body as a sacrifice to my safety.
I continued to scream and cry, even as the Feeders caught the scent of his fresh blood. I kicked weakly against Hendrix, but it was too late. Kane had made sure he was beyond saving.
“No!” I continued to scream. “You can’t! You can’t leave me now!”
“We have to go, Reagan,” Hendrix growled. “That’s not going to last forever. He gave a little bit of time. That’s all.”
“No, we have to try,” I begged.
“Please,” Hendrix pleaded in turn. “Help me save Page. Help me save Miller.” His voice broke on the emotional request and stirred a soul I knew was now broken and shattered.
I nodded, unable to tear my eyes away from Kane as the first Feeder jumped on him. He let out a scream of agony as the Zombie buried his mangy face in Kane’s blood-soaked chest.
My chest hurt with the force of my tears and my limbs felt too heavy to move. I was useless. I knew Hendrix needed me, but I’d lost every ounce of will to fight or survive.
“Please, Reagan,” Hendrix begged. “I need you. Page and Miller need you. Don’t waste Kane’s death. Please, Babe. We have got to go.”
I nodded again, but this time I moved. I picked up my legs and stood on my own. Hendrix was right. This death… This sacrifice… This man… I couldn’t waste what he had given me.
“I can’t carry Miller,” I told Hendrix.
“Take Page.” He handed her to me and I put her on my back.
Hendrix picked up Miller and threw him over his shoulder. We took off running again and it took every single thing I had in me to stay focused on our goal and not turn around and watch Kane.
I could hear his agonized shouts, even as I could tell that he was trying to hold them back. I heard the sound of the Feeders eating him and it nearly destroyed me.
I had no idea how I managed to stay on my feet or make it to the bunker door. I had no idea how I forced myself to leave Kane behind and get the rest of our group to safety. I didn’t think I would ever know. It was one of those supernatural instances that would never make sense to me.
Feeders took up pursuit of us again, but this time we had a decent head start. We made it to the bunker door and Hendrix yanked it open.
I braced myself to meet the rest of our loved ones, but only silence greeted us.
They weren’t here.
And I’d left Kane outside to die. I couldn’t even shoot him or put him out of his misery. I’d just left him. I’d let him sacrifice himself and done nothing to stop him.
Oh, god.
What had I done?
Page jumped off my back and I collapsed to the ground. I tried to pull my knees to my chest, but my backpack was still on my front and very much in the way. I tore it off me and threw it. I screamed at it. I growled at it.
I completely lost myself in Kane’s unfortunate death. I shrunk into myself and let out years of frustration, anger and grief. And that’s exactly what I had become, a solid entity of grief.
I grieved Kane and the man that he’d become. I grieved our tumultuous relationship and the pain he’d caused me and the danger he’d put me in. I grieved my frustration, my hatred, my anger, and the slow journey he took me on into loving him. I grieved the man he used to be and the man I could trust and rely on. I grieved the horrific life we had lived and the circumstances we’d been thrown into. I grieved his broken life and the abuse he’d suffered since birth. I grieved the man he could have been if he hadn’t been born into a family with Matthias at the head and Linley at his right side. I grieved the man he could have become if Zombies hadn’t infected our already struggling world. I grieved the love I just started to feel and the emotion that kept me so tightly locked to him this entire time.
I sobbed, and my chest heaved and rattled as the entire force of whom I was poured out of me. I made sounds uglier than any Feeder ever had and became so lost in my sorrow that I wasn’t aware of anything else for a very long time.
Eventually, the pain subsided into a numbing haze. I looked up to see that Hendrix had me on his lap and his arms were firmly around me. Both Miller and Page lay on the bed, fast asleep. I wondered how they slept over my frantic tears, but then again, after the day we had… after the life we lived, maybe it wasn’t so hard.
I looked up at Hendrix with puffy, swollen eyes and couldn’t think of anything to say. There was too much inside me. I couldn’t narrow my chaotic thoughts into a single word or sentence.
Hendrix looked down at me, his eyes soft and his mouth in a sad frown. He looked terrible. His own eyes were red-rimmed, both bloodshot from his time at the Colony and wet from tears he’d shed. I doubted they were for Kane specifically, but maybe for my pain? Perhaps for the majority of his family still missing?
It had to be dark by now and Vaughan and Haley still hadn’t showed up. I couldn’t imagine where they were right now. My mind couldn’t absorb any of the possibilities. And frankly, I didn’t have the energy to try. My body and mind were in survival mode. Thinking about Haley, lost in a Feeder-infested forest or back at the compound with Matthias was simply too much for my fragile emotional state.
I had to believe they would still make it to us. I had to.
“You’re going to be okay,” Hendrix told me.
“I don’t think that I am.”
His arms tightened around my waist and he pressed me to his firm chest. His chin rubbed a soothing trail over the top of my head. We were sticky with grime and blood and smelled like Zombie rot. I wanted nothing more than a steaming hot shower, a cup of hot chocolate and flannel pajamas, but I would get none of that. I felt chilled to the bone, inside and out, every piece and particle inside of me.
“I hate him,” Hendrix admitted in a low voice that gave me shivers. “I think I hate him more now than ever.”
Tears started pouring out of my eyes again. I knew he had every right to hate Kane. I knew that if he didn’t hate Kane that his feelings for me could never have been real. But Hendrix’s feelings only cemented in the guilt that I already felt. If my feelings for Hendrix were real, how could I feel this way about Kane? It didn’t make sense to me. And so the guilt piled on. It played havoc on my emotions and called me names that I didn’t want to deserve.
“I’m glad he’s dead,” Hendrix continued. “I’m glad he’s out of your life.”
“He changed.”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Why did you save him then?” I pulled away from him but didn’t leave his lap. I needed his warmth and comfort, even if he was starting to seriously piss me off. “When he was with Matthias, why did you help him?”
Hendrix’s expression turned fierce. “Because I didn’t want you to lose someone you cared about.”
His words stunned me silent. I consciously kept my mouth closed so it wouldn’t drop open and gape at him. My hands skimmed up his stomach and came to rest on his chest. I wanted to clutch his shirt and shake him. I wanted to slap him. I wanted to blame him for everything that had happened and demand he explain every single thought and word to me. But instead I just looked at my dirty hands, resting on his equall
y dirty t-shirt and tried to grasp how we’d gotten to this place, both physically and emotionally.
“There has to be more,” I finally gritted out.
His eyes narrowed like he was frustrated with me and huffed an impatient sound. “Sure, there’s more. Of course, there’s more! He had Miller, and Vaughan would not leave this godforsaken compound until Tyler had Miller. Plus, I owed him. He helped us escape. He kept you safe. I owed him something, so I gave it to him.”
“And once you saved his life, your debt to him was paid? Then you could let him go kill himself because you were over your obligation to him?”
“I didn’t let him kill himself. He decided to do that all on his own and made pretty damn sure no one could save him. I didn’t do that to him. He did it to himself. For you. To save you and his little brother and the little girl he almost killed with his selfishness. We were out of options, Reagan. Kane did what he did in order to open up an opportunity for survival. And I wish he hadn’t. I wish he had given me another goddamn minute to figure something out. But he didn’t. And now here we are. And if you’re going to blame someone for his death, it sure as hell better not be me, because there’s a whole list of people that could go first.”
“Like me? You’re saying that I’m to blame?” I knew I wasn’t thinking rationally. I could feel the crazy inside of me take over and lash out at Hendrix. Truthfully, I didn’t even blame Hendrix. I just wanted to blame someone or something and he happened to be right here in front of me. I was destroyed by grief and I needed to fight with something. I needed to get some of the darkness and fury out of me. I needed to empty some of this insanity and find at least a tiny part of who I used to be.
He looked away and let out a frustrated growl before he turned back and hit me with the full force of his intense blue eyes. “No, Reagan, I’m not blaming you. I’m blaming his psycho parents or the Zombie Apocalypse or the fact that he was a loose cannon to begin with. I’m not who killed Kane, despite every instinct inside me. I wanted to. I won’t lie about that. Of course, I wanted to. But I didn’t. And I didn’t do it because of you. He killed himself and now I have to live with the fallout. So the least you could do is not blame me for his death that saved your life.”
“Geez, Hendrix, why don’t you act like Kane saving your life is a little inconvenient for you!”
His eyes had flashed hot before he shouted, “Of course it’s inconvenient for me! He took you from me! More than once! He convinced you that he wasn’t the deranged psychopath that he really was. He kidnapped my little sister and let her get attacked by Feeders. She almost died. He wedged his way into your life and poisoned you. And he somehow managed to convince you that you love him. So now, instead of getting to hate him like I want to, instead of being able to kill him myself or at the very least beat him to a bloody pulp, I have to hold you while you grieve him. I have to let you believe he was some kind of saint for his sacrifice, that he was this person worthy of your love when he was not. He was definitely not. And it makes me hate him more than anything in this world. More than the Feeders and this perilous life. I hate him more than I hate his father. He is poisoning my life even after he’s gone and I don’t know how to fight that or fix it. So yes, his death is goddamn inconvenient for me. And now most of my family is missing and I don’t know where they are or how to find them. I’m sorry if my anger offends you.”
He looked away again while his words settled into me. God, I could be a serious bitch.
I threw my arms around his neck and shifted so my knees straddled his hips. I buried my face in his neck and pressed my body against him.
I could be so selfish. Hendrix was in pain too. This wasn’t just about me. We had all been through hell. We were all hurting. And while what he said would take a while to absorb and understand, I could take care of our immediate needs now. We both needed comfort. We both needed each other.
Hendrix’s arms wrapped around my waist and he crushed me to him. His cheek pressed against my head and I felt his chest heave with emotion. His body shuddered underneath mine. He wasn’t crying, but it was like a heavy release of emotion.
Would we ever be healthy again? Would we ever be able to heal from these deep wounds?
I didn’t know. I figured we had about as much of a chance of getting through our constant grief and pain as the world did of eradicating the Zombie infestation.
So… it wasn’t looking good for us.
“God, you feel so good,” he murmured against my hair. “I haven’t held you in so long.”
My belly tightened. I didn’t know what to do with that, so I let it be. He didn’t do anything else but hold me and I was content with that. Both of our lives were in spiraling turmoil and we found solace with each other. I didn’t know what I would have done without Hendrix at that moment. If he hadn’t been there to hold me through the night, I would have crumbled, disintegrated into a million pieces and scattered to the wind.
He held me together. He was the center of my raging storm, the peace in my crushing upheaval.
“Tell me Haley is going to be okay,” I demanded after a long time of silence between us.
He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he picked me up and lay down with me on the couch. I kept hold of his neck and let him hold me face to face. Our legs automatically intertwined, a habit from when I called him mine. His arms pulled me tight again and squeezed, reminding me that he was holding me as close to his body as possible.
“They’ll be here in the morning,” he promised. “They found some safe place to spend the night and they’ll meet us here before dawn.”
“Do you really believe that?” I asked in a shaky whisper.
Another heavy pause before he said, “It’s the only thing I can believe.”
I knew exactly what he meant, so I let his words wash over me and soothe my aching soul. My mind was in chaos, my body physically pushed beyond its limits. I didn’t know what to think or how to feel anymore.
Kane had saved us today. He’d sacrificed his life so that we could keep ours. Just as I’d let myself fall in love with him, just as I’d seen him change into the better man I knew he was capable of… Now he was gone. And he’d left for me.
But Hendrix was right about everything. He’d done terrible things to me and terrible things to the people I loved. He’d lied, stolen, kidnapped, manipulated, killed and more, for me. To get to me.
In the end, his efforts had been worth it. I did love him. I did mourn him. And I would always miss him.
But I would also carry the massive weight of knowing I shouldn’t have those feelings. And I would never know exactly what to do with them.
What I felt for Kane did not even compare to what I felt for Hendrix, but Hendrix was off the table now and so was Kane. I fell for Hendrix because I couldn’t help it, because he was a man worthy of my love and my heart had been helpless against the depth of emotion he demanded from me.
Kane was different. My feelings for him were more like a concession of emotion. I fought for as long as I could, but in the end, I recognized something in him that echoed my own soul. Maybe it was unhealthy. Maybe it was wrong. But it was there anyway and I was tired of denying it.
But what did that matter now?
My choices had been taken away from me as abruptly as Kane’s life.
But even through my unending, soul-shattering grief, as I lay here in Hendrix’s arms, with his body touching every part of me so absolutely, something broken inside me clicked back into place. While everything around me felt upended and wrong, this felt right. I found one of those lost pieces of myself in his arms. And my poor, battered heart took a much-needed breath of relief.
This feeling might only last the night, might only last until the dawn when the true gravity of our situation was revealed, but I had this tonight. And I would take it. I would use it to make it through the long night, to survive just a little bit longer. I would use Hendrix and his warmth and his comfort to keep going on and on and on because I had no
other choice. Because in this end of the world filled with death and loss, decay and rotten things, the only thing I had left was love. Love would heal me. Love would save me.
Even if it was for a boy who didn’t deserve it, but had given his life so that he could have it anyway.
Even if it was for a boy who didn’t want it anymore, who was as hurt by me as I was by him.
Even if it was simply for my life-long best friend, or a little girl that demanded it, or brothers that had become my brothers or a broken girl and her abused little brother. Love was what saved the day. Love was what saved me.
Love would be what saved this world.
Episode Twelve
Chapter One
878 days after initial infection
Dawn broke with as much poignancy as could be expected after the night we had. We couldn’t see anything outside so the exact moment the sun rose the morning after Kane’s death was lost behind our thick walls of protection. However, I didn’t need to see the rising sun in order to feel it.
Or at least I had convinced myself that was true.
It was so important to meet this day with some kind of foolproof escape plan that I’d hardly thought of anything else through the long hours of the night.
Or, I’d forced myself to dwell on the escape plan and save my sanity from the abyss of grief and heartache I wanted to sink into.
I could cry later. I could mourn Kane later.
First I had to get the people I loved, the people that were still alive, to anywhere but here.
My chest ached with a constant agony I knew would never leave me. I could feel it burrowing deep in the cavities of my heart and setting up permanent residency to haunt me for all my remaining days- however few those might be. My throat was raw from sobbing and my entire body felt weak and shaky.
And on top of the physical trauma that sobbing for hours put my body through, I was already in enough pain to warrant a heavy dose of Vicodin. I swore every single muscle in my entire body ached after our survival run through the forest yesterday. Every muscle. My arms, legs and face were scratched up from the branches I had consistently run into, even though I hadn’t noticed at the time. And my left ankle had definitely been twisted, possibly sprained. My entire leg felt stiff and sore and my ankle and foot were extremely swollen. My toes looked like those little sausages my mom used to cook in barbecue sauce.