The hand on my shoulder slid to my throat where Matthias clamped his grip down and squeezed painfully. His lips pressed into the shell of my ear and he demanded, “Where is Kane?”
I dug deep and gathered every ounce of courage I could find.
“Dead,” I croaked. “He’s dead.” Hot tears slipped unbidden down my cheeks, but Matthias wouldn’t know that they were any different than the drops of rain pelting me in the face.
“How?” He could have asked or demanded a hundred different questions and answers, but it was that one that left the most room for me to explain.
“Zombies,” I whispered loud enough for him to hear. “He sacrificed himself to the Feeders, so I could live.”
In the future, when I looked back at that moment, I would never understand if I felt that I deserved Matthias’s version of justice after Kane sacrificed himself for me, or if I had wanted to hurt Matthias Allen as much as I could. Both answers seemed possible.
But at that moment I didn’t think about it. I just prepared myself for what I knew would happen after I shared the news of his firstborn son’s death.
Because there was only one thing left to happen after news like that… And that would be for all hell to break loose.
Chapter Three
Matthias’s grip on my neck tightened until I couldn’t breathe under the force of it. He side-stepped my body and threw me as hard as he could on the ground at his feet.
I had been ready for violence, but maybe not that specific action. My head cracked against the hard ground and black spots immediately danced in my vision. I felt like gagging again but swallowed the sensation down.
Before I could recover or blink away the stars, Matthias turned on me and kicked me as hard as he could in the stomach.
That time I did dry-heave. I couldn’t help it. I’d already lost everything I had for breakfast when I threw up after nearly drowning. The second time his foot connected with my stomach, I lost my breath completely.
I gasped dragging breaths of air in, but couldn’t seem to get enough substantial oxygen. I had turned my face into the ground in an attempt to protect my body; mud stung my eyes and coated my cheek. I tasted the gritty clay in my mouth, coating my tongue.
A gunshot went off and the kicking stopped.
I tried to regain my bearings while more guns fired and a man joined me on the ground. Someone above me started shouting in a crazed, furious voice. And other men answered him, but I was too deep into the last dregs of my self-preservation to figure anything out.
At least the kicking stopped.
The gunfire ceased and I rolled to my back and blinked up at the black barrel of a gun. Well, this wasn’t any better.
Matthias pointed his firearm at me and I had to assume that’s why the shooting stopped. A quick lift of my head showed Harrison still holding Linley at gunpoint too. We were back to where we started.
“Give me my family back!” Matthias screamed rabidly.
I had to keep blinking while the sky dumped buckets of precipitation on me. My entire body ached from the force of Matthias’s retaliation. The mud sucked me deeply into it, covering my skin and weighing down my clothes. I was filthy from head to toe and about three seconds away from Matthias getting what he wanted for a long time- me dead.
While Matthias rivaled the thunder for volume control, I slipped my hand into my pocket and worked on removing my hunting knife as surreptitiously as possible.
“I should have killed your lot the first time I ever laid eyes on you!” Matthias continued to scream. “Look what you’ve cost me! You’ve taken my family from me! Kane! Kane is gone! You deserve to die! Each and every one of you!”
“You brought this on yourself!” Vaughan shouted back at him. “You shouldn’t have followed us! Or tried to keep us here in the first place! We did nothing to you and yet you’ve tried to take everything from us!”
Matthias shook his head violently. “You took Kane the second this bitch set foot on my land. And you stole Miller and Tyler that same night. I did nothing but try to protect my family and my people by keeping them safe from you. I didn’t harm you. I didn’t threaten you. I kept you locked up to protect the people that count on me, nothing more.”
Well, wasn’t that a pleasant way to rewrite history.
“And Gage? What about Gage?” Vaughan asked more levelly.
“He declared war on me, if you remember. Last spring. Everything I have done has been in an effort to keep my people safe from Feeders and people like you.”
I would have snorted if I weren't already practically choking on the rain water and mud. I tried to sit up, but more guns waved in front of my face from the men surrounding me and so I decided it was probably wiser to stay where I was at.
“You can sugarcoat this however you want, Allen, but we’re not the same ignorant minions you so easily manipulate,” Hendrix growled. “We know what happened, just as well as you do. We’re done with this shit. And we’re done with you. Give us Reagan so we can be on our way.”
“Give me my family,” Matthias’s voice dropped to a low, steely tone. He sounded hoarse after all his yelling, but his raspy voice did nothing to soften the pure hate lacing his words.
“You can have your wife, when we have Reagan,” Vaughan explained again.
Matthias bit off a bitter laugh. “And my son and daughter.”
“They don’t want to stay with you,” Hendrix said slowly, as if he were speaking to a small child.
“They’re not leaving this place, Parker. Count on that. I’ve already lost one child, I will not lose another.”
Suddenly, the air split in half with the screams of Feeders at our backs. The thunder boomed, the lightning streaked across the black sky and Zombies pounded at the door to our only-semi-safe sanctuary.
I jumped from my place on the ground. I had almost forgotten the Feeders were still a threat. I had a hard enough time trying to figure out what we were going to do about Matthias Allen and the rest of the compound.
And let’s say we did make the trade successfully, how the hell were we going to get out of here when Zombies surrounded the walls?
I wanted to give up.
Actually, I had never wanted to give up more than that moment.
It was just too hard. I was so tired of fighting, so tired of risking my life every second of every day just so I could survive another night and start all over again the next morning.
I was exhausted… physically, emotionally and mentally.
I’d all but lost my will to continue on. I slammed my head back into the mud with a squishing sound. I closed my eyes and let the rain wash over me.
I couldn’t keep this up. If the Zombies didn’t kill me, if Matthias didn’t kill me, then it would be the stress that ended me.
I took the entire moment in. With the bad weather, we wouldn’t be able to run anywhere and even if we got a decent distance away, the chances of one or more of us getting sick or succumbing to the elements was extremely high. The Feeders didn’t plan on letting us get ten feet past the front gates, so when I looked at it like that, the weather didn’t really matter. And unless, Vaughan and everyone did a major overhaul of the Allen weapon supply, we wouldn’t have enough ammo to last us longer than ten feet anyway.
And there was the Colony holding us up and pointing guns at us. They were as deadly as the Feeders with actual motive to kill us. The Zombies could at least wait until we left the compound; Matthias and company weren’t going to be that generous.
So, how the hell were we going to get out of this?
The urge to give up, to throw in the towel and just do whatever Matthias wanted was heavy on my chest. It suffocated me and urged me to give in. It wrapped around my willpower and my dwindling spirit and sucked at my life force like a deadly undertow in the ocean. It had grabbed my foot before I knew it was there and pulled me under. Deeper and deeper I sunk until there was nothing but black, desperate ocean and no oxygen to help me survive.
An
d I was fine with that.
Or I would have been if it was just me.
But it wasn’t just me.
People I loved faced danger. I cared about them and I swore to protect them.
This was not the end. This was a speed bump on our way to a safer place.
My hand slipped around the hilt of the knife in my pocket and I made a decision.
I wasn’t suicidal, but I would do what it took to get these people to safety.
Whatever it took.
I opened my eyes and squinted against the unrelenting water. The damn rain. I didn’t think every little detail through, but I got far enough to know my plan would work.
It had to.
I lifted my head and met Hendrix’s eyes. He was already staring at me, watching me with that intensity that was so quintessentially him.
Vaughan and Matthias continued to shout their negotiations across the courtyard at each other, but both sides of this war understood by this point that they weren’t going to get anywhere. Hendrix knew that too, and that’s why he watched me… waited for me to make the move he apparently knew I would make before I did.
His eyebrows lifted and he tilted his chin in subtle acknowledgment.
I bit down on my dirty lip and let out a steady breath. I had to take into account pulling the knife out of my wet pocket, unsheathing it and how quickly I could pull myself out of this suctioning clay that was a prison in its own way.
My gaze traveled discreetly to Hendrix’s hands which were wrapped around a very impressive handgun. His finger twitched over the trigger and I knew I would have immediate cover.
One more nod from him and it was go time.
I flicked the snap that kept the blade covered in my pocket and yanked the deadly knife out at the exact time I peeled myself off the ground. I was exhausted, I was sore and broken, bloodied and beaten; I was half-buried in the coagulated clay, but nothing could have stopped the jolt of adrenaline that zapped through my body or the sheer determination to save those that I loved.
I was off the ground and on Matthias before anyone could think to pull the trigger on their gun. Later, I would thank Vaughan’s sense of awareness and his ability to distract Matthias and his men with conversation. But at the time, I couldn’t register what any of them was saying, so I had no idea I could count on him.
I threw myself at Matthias with my knife raised. His hand flailed to get a shot off on me, but our bodies collided and his shot flew high. My knife, however, hit its target.
The blade sunk into his right pectoral. There was a lot of bone and flesh in that part of his body and I probably wouldn’t have found as much success if I hadn’t had so much adrenaline-added strength. There was a sick, wet crunching sound that accompanied my stab.
He stumbled back with wide eyes and an open mouth. We crashed back to the ground, me on top of him. We struggled around for a while. I would never have normally been able to take him. He was this huge man with insane muscles compared to my starved, emaciated ones. But he was weakened from the knife to the chest and he luckily lost his gun when we crashed to the ground.
He tried to push me off him, but I pulled the knife from his chest instead. He shouted out in agony and tried to wrestle my hands away. I held on with everything inside me and managed to extract the blade, only to plunge it into his gut in the next second.
He bucked and hollered and clawed at my face. This time, he did knock me off him. I tumbled into the mud and rolled away from him.
Gunfire went off overhead and men from both sides of this conflict had converged together in fistfights and wrestling matches. I heard every Parker shouting orders and trying to organize us in this chaos, but there was too much happening to make sense of any of it.
Matthias managed to pull the knife out himself this time and glared at me from a few feet away with obvious intent. How he was still able to think murderous thoughts right now was beyond me, but now was so not the time to question my instinct to run.
I pushed up to a crouch and my foot knocked into something. Looking down quickly, I found the gun Matthias dropped. I grabbed for it with slick hands. The hilt had an excellent grip on it, but it was half-covered in mud and I nearly dropped it before I got a firm hold on it.
I looked up just in time to see Matthias lunge at me. I threw myself back on my ass and kicked my way back a few more feet. Matthias grabbed for my ankles and got hold of one. I kicked his forehead while I fumbled to get the gun set again. His head sprung back, but he didn’t lose his clutch on me.
I kept kicking at him and finally got the gun right in my hands. I pointed at him and moved my foot out of the way. His eyes grew huge when he realized what was about to happen.
Just as I pulled the trigger, something hit my shoulder with enough power to knock my arms out of place. The gun discharged, but the bullet went wild, nowhere near Matthias’s head or any part of his body.
I didn’t have time to be disappointed as my body was under attack. A fist came at my face and sharp claws dragged back across my nose and cheek. I screamed out at the savagery, but that did nothing to stop the second set of claws from tearing over my throat. One hand yanked at my hair so hard, I knew I lost an entire handful of hair while the other hand clawed, scratched and tore away at the flesh on my face and throat.
It took a couple seconds, but I finally turned and started to fight back. My vision wasn’t just blinded by rain and a hard hit to the head, now there was blood to mix with everything else. Still, as soon as I turned my head I could see Linley Allen through all the distortion like an abstract version of herself.
I didn’t have time to wonder how she’d escaped Harrison’s captivity, or what happened to Matthias and why he’d given up on killing me for now. And honestly, none of that mattered. I needed to kill this crazed skank so I would look at this like a gift.
I’d lost the gun when she knocked me over, but honestly, I didn’t need it right away. First, I wanted to inflict some seriously painful damage.
I made a fist and punched her in the side of the head as hard as I could. She made a silent, gasping face and tried to strangle me. Her thin, dainty hands wrapped around my neck with the fierceness of a boa constrictor. I immediately started choking and gasping for air. Again. My throat was already sore from everything else I’d been through so far, otherwise I might have been able to maintain some rational thinking and plan a way out of this.
Instead, I made two vicious claws and attacked Linley’s throat.
My hands met her wet skin and I squeezed as tightly as I could. And god, it felt good. This woman was a psychopath, responsible for ruining people’s lives, including my own. Including Tyler’s and Miller’s. Including Kane’s. A slow death at my hands still felt like mercy for what this witch deserved.
I managed to take the advantage and throw her to the ground. Her hands released their murderous grasp on my throat and I immediately started sucking in more air. I pounced on top of her and put my hands back where I wanted them.
Her neck was slender and thin. My two hands wrapped around it comfortably. Her eyes bugged out and her mouth worked for air but she couldn’t get any, not with my hands so tightly around her. She started swatting at my wrists and forearms; her body bucked beneath me. I sat straddled on her chest and knew if I kept my hands right where they were, I could end her life in another minute.
But did I want to do that?
Holy shit.
Guilt hit me like a punch in the chest. Was I really about to strangle someone to death?
Whom had I turned into?
The thought terrified me. A gun would have been better; at least it would have been quick. At least I could have claimed self-defense.
Not that this wasn’t a sort of self-defense, but it was the sick pleasure I felt that really bothered me. It was the joy and satisfaction I felt in killing Linley, making her suffer and taking her life slowly that really disturbed me.
I released her neck and scrambled back. I hit the mud again with a slosh
and slap of my hands. I sunk back into the thick clay, but this time I thought I might stay there. I was so ashamed. I crab-crawled back and stared at Linley like she was a nightmare, my nightmare- the worst version of myself.
She was my personal demon manifested before me.
She sat up slowly, coughing at first and rubbing her red, bruised neck. A malicious expression settled on her face and a cruel smirk twisted her lips.
“You should have killed me,” she taunted.
A quick glance to my right and I saw the rest of the battle around me. Hendrix wrestled around with Matthias a few feet away; that was why he stopped attacking me and left his wife to finish the job. Mostly everyone had been reduced to hand-to-hand combat. Somehow, Page and Miller had found their way back out here and Haley and Nelson were doing their best to keep them safe. Gunfire had been going off consistently up until this moment.
Apparently everyone was out of ammo.
Hendrix and I had more in our packs, but we couldn’t exactly take a timeout to get to them right now. And Matthias’s men hadn’t been inside the compound since yesterday. After almost twenty-four hours of fighting Zombies, I wasn’t surprised that they were tapped.
Actually, I was more surprised that they had any left for us at all.
Speaking of Feeders… the pounding on the back door had grown to ear-splitting levels. And it wasn’t just the door. The undead monsters pounded their fists on the stone wall and screeched with their simultaneously high and low guttural sounds. They were outraged and slobbering for our freshly spilled blood and our fleshy feast.
I glanced at the back door and contemplated letting the Feeders in. They could take care of the Allens in no time. Plus, then we might have a chance of escape.
Or we’d get sucked into the attack and half of us would turn into Zombies while the other half ended up as snacks.
Shit.
I was out of options and nearly out of time.
“I’m going to end you, Reagan,” Linley’s cruel voice drew me back to our more personal conflict. “I never want to worry about you hurting my son ever again. He can bury you in the ground where you belong and move on with his life.”