Haley reappeared at my back and slipped her hands under my arms. She tried to pull me into the Suburban, but I weighed too much. A second set of hands, I thought belonged to Tyler, started pulling too. And the whole time I kept my eyes on Hendrix, who lay unmoving on the ground in front of me.
I felt despair. I felt hopelessness. This was it. Not only were we not going to make it to safety, but I was going to be forced to lose both Hendrix and Kane within a two-day period.
Vaughan and Harrison tried to fight to us, but they couldn’t get free. We had no weapons on us, only the Suburban and there was no way in hell we would leave without everyone in that damn vehicle.
I tried to help the girls. I tried to find my footing and push to standing, but I was too weak and too injured.
It was time to throw in the towel. Give up and pray for a quick, sudden end.
But then the craziest thing happened.
Well, maybe not craziest. But our allies came in the most unexpected place.
Zombies rushed the courtyard from around the corner and the battle set off again. Vaughan, Nelson and Harrison had been held by two men each. When the Feeders appeared, they went for the closest flesh they could find. It wasn’t Vaughan, Nelson or Harrison they got to first, but the men holding them.
The Parker brothers quickly fought free and closed the distance between us while the men that had been beating them tried to save their now Zombie-food friends. They barely paused in retrieving Hendrix. The three brothers seemed to just scoop him up and toss him carelessly into the Suburban. I went next and Haley filed in right behind me.
I sunk back into the leather seat and immediately shot forward, hissing between my teeth.
“Let me see it,” Tyler demanded.
I turned around with my last stores of energy and knelt on the seat so I stared out the back window. Vaughan jumped into the driver’s seat and started the car. It sputtered just once before he got the engine roaring. He threw it in gear and stomped on the gas.
I couldn’t hold on as he crashed through the gates that led to the highway. I was positive we weren’t going to make it all the way through. I just knew we’d smash into them and they wouldn’t budge, but by another miracle, or premeditated planning on Vaughan’s end, the gates flew open and the car bounced and swerved until we were on the highway leading away from the storage facility. Zombies popped up everywhere in the first fifty feet, but Vaughan swerved around them. They were mostly concentrated on the bodies waiting for them at the storage facility.
I righted myself once the car stabilized and gave Tyler my back. The group of us was tangled together in the backseat while Hendrix lay unconscious and everyone else worked to find a seat and extract themselves from our knot of arms and legs.
“How much gas do we have?” I called over my shoulder. I needed something to distract my mind from Tyler’s fingers ripping away the fabric caught in my bleeding wound.
“Full tank,” Vaughan yelled back. “We made sure of it last night.”
“Someday you’re going to have to tell me how you managed to secure the compound, Vaughan. I’m truly impressed.” And I was. I had never been more grateful for anything. Vaughan’s cautious planning and foresight saved our lives today.
“That means a lot coming from the girl who took down Linley and Matthias Allen all in one day.” I could hear the smile in his voice, the pride and awe that accompanied his thought.
Tyler’s fingers slipped on my back and I offered her a comforting smile over my shoulder. She shrugged it off and went back to work. I couldn’t imagine her mix of emotions right now, but I knew I’d done the right thing.
I knew I did what I had to in order to survive and to keep my loved ones alive.
Except… When I turned back around and faced the compound once more, a hulking figure appeared on the road. Matthias Allen’s familiar frame stood hunched but imposing, even distorted through the rain. One hand held his neck, while the other kept a gun pointed on us.
We were too far for him to shoot at now, but I had no doubt he desperately wanted to.
I’d taken everything from him. The children that hated him, his firstborn son and now his devoted wife.
If I had my own grievances against Matthias, they were nothing compared to what he could now hold against me.
I swallowed against foreboding fear. “Do you think they’ll come after us?” My voice sounded incredibly small, even to my own ears.
Harrison snorted, only it sounded different since his nose had been punched several times. “They can’t come after us without cars,” he grunted in a nasal pitch. I looked at him in the backseat where he’d crawled next to King, Nelson and Page. A victorious smile tugged his swollen mouth into a bloodied grin. “We slashed all the tires and took the sparkplugs of every remaining vehicle. They’re trapped with the Feeders.”
I stared back at Matthias and wondered if that was true. Could they survive that battle? Could they find a way to fight off the Zombies without weapons and manpower? What would they do now that they didn’t have their luxurious vehicles to get around in? The colony was a significant distance away, they couldn’t just walk there without an effort.
Plus, Matthias had put himself in charge of the compound. There were hundreds of people to keep safe and protect.
And now he would have to do it alone.
I didn’t feel victory like I thought I would. I didn’t feel the tingles of success or swell of ego. I just felt corroding sadness.
All of this could have been avoided if Matthias had acted like a decent human being for five minutes. But he hadn’t. And instead of treating us with mutual respect, he’d set out to conquer us and all the people he could get his hands on.
He got what he deserved. Or maybe not even yet. I had hoped to end him for good, but he stood on that road looking perfectly capable of hunting me down and snapping my neck.
Or maybe those were just my personal fears manifesting themselves in my exhausted subconscious.
I felt the loss of blood severely now. My head swam and I shivered uncontrollably.
Woozy… I was so woozy.
I must have swayed because Tyler said, “Whoa, Reags, let’s get you lying down.”
I leaned forward and smashed my face into the leather seat. The rain had drenched me to the bone and mud coated every inch of my skin and hair. I slid to the side and kept going.
People must have moved out of the way because I found myself facedown on the seat with the top of my head smashed against the door.
“It’s alright to go to sleep, Reagan,” Tyler told me in a soothing voice. “We’re safe now.”
I closed my eyes because she was right.
The Colony was behind us. Matthias couldn’t catch us now. We wouldn’t let him. And Linley was gone for good.
For the first time in a very long time, I felt safe.
I felt the stirrings of peace.
----
“More?” King waggled his eyebrows at me while I contemplated eating one more pickle.
“If you don’t get that jar away from me, I’m going to vomit on your new shoes.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “At least we know you’re not pregnant.”
I choked on my own laughter. “I’m pretty sure there are more accurate tests you can give other than seeing which female lasts the longest on the world’s largest supply of pickles.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. But Haley doesn’t seem to be having a problem.”
I cut my gaze immediately to my best friend. Sure enough, she had an entire jar of pickles at her feet and didn’t seem to be bothered by them at all.
But King was out of his head if he thought she was pregnant. I mean… right?
“Hales, how’s dinner?” I called across the abandoned construction site where we set up camp for the night. There wasn’t a roof overhead, but the night was clear and all four walls around us were closed in.
“Delish,” she groaned. “How’s yours?”
I lo
oked down at my pickled okra and stale Ritz Bitz. “Super yummy.”
“You don’t sound very convinced,” Hendrix chuckled as he sat down next to me.
“Can you pass me the Skittles?” I batted my eyelashes at him exaggeratedly.
“You can’t have dessert until you’ve finished your veggies, little lady.”
“I’m injured!” I whined.
“That excuse is only going to get you so far with me.” His lips twitched. I watched with fascination as he reached for the jumbo bag of sour skittles and passed them to me.
He winked as he handed them over and I felt myself at a loss for words. He seemed so different lately, even from before when I first met him. Something had shifted inside him, or maybe something had been taken off him… like the weight of the world, for instance.
It had been two weeks since the epic battle at the compound. We’d driven all through that day and night, only stopping twice to refill the gas. There had been enough stored in the trunk to give us another half a tank and we happened upon some in a metropolis area abandoned by both humans and Feeders. Vaughan said the gas was pretty poor quality these days. Apparently it didn’t last forever. But it still worked and as long as it took us away from the Colony, then I didn’t really care about anything else.
We left Oklahoma behind and made it to the northern part of Texas. The Feeders were thick here, thicker than even Oklahoma and Arkansas, but so were the guns.
It had been relatively easy to stock up with ammo and weaponry again. Farms had been abandoned but not looted and guns were in generous supply.
Of course, my definition of easy might be different than someone else’s. We still had to fight Feeders nonstop and our lives were constantly in danger. But after dealing with the Colony and the double threat they posed alongside the Zombies, eliminating one of those enemies made our lives infinitely easier.
Not only that, but I could see our spirits pick up as well. I hated admitting that Kane’s absence did anything positive for our group, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t see it.
The Parker’s were obviously relieved and so much more laidback. We weren’t carting around prisoners that needed constant attention or deciding whether to stay or go. We didn’t have to protect people that would inevitably betray us or even deal with Page in the throes of death.
We were free again, on our own completely and nobody seemed to be chasing us.
Well, that we knew of.
The Suburban eventually ran out of gas and we hadn’t been able to find more to replenish our supply. We took off on foot after that and had stayed that way ever since.
On the drive down here, Vaughan had avoided the major highways. We didn’t want to give Matthias or his men an obvious path to follow and we also planned on avoiding any other settlement for the rest of our lives.
The back roads were probably more dangerous as far as Feeders went, but they weren’t as populated with the living and in our current state of mind, all of us would much rather take our chances with the undead.
At least that was an enemy we understood.
The other great thing about back roads was that houses and stores went untouched. There weren’t people around to loot or protect them and supplies and food were enough to keep us from getting too hungry or going too long without protection.
I’d spent the last two weeks healing. My back injury from Matthias’s knife was a pain in the ass, but it wasn’t fatal. The worst wounds done to my body from those cataclysmic two days were all emotional.
I grieved for Kane even if I was the only one. Every once in a while Haley would sit with me and we would talk about his good attributes. Tyler would sit by me silently on occasion. And Miller seemed to always be around when I needed a friend.
Those were the only people willing to tolerate my sorrow.
The Parkers were kind enough to at least stay silent. I knew they didn’t like how upset I was over someone they considered an enemy, but they gave me peace and they gave me space and I couldn’t have asked for more.
The rest of the group had healing of their own to work through. Hendrix had been the most severely beat up and it had taken almost a full week for him to walk and sit semi-comfortably again. His face was still swollen and his eyes still black and blue, but he could stand up on his own now and shoot a gun without five minutes of cursing afterward. Nelson, Vaughan and Harrison had also been beaten pretty badly, but they all came out in better shape than Hendrix or me. Miller had been in poor shape before our battle to escape even began and I noticed him still wince and grimace without thinking every time he moved. The rest of the group, King, Haley, Tyler and Page had fared pretty well in the physical abuse department, other than the starving and previous abuse from their captivity.
However, that didn’t mean they didn’t have their own healing to work through.
Tyler had lost both of her parents and her brother in two days. And all because of me. We never talked about resentful feelings she might have had for me but sometimes I wondered if they were there anyway. She hated all three of those people, but they were still her family and I wasn’t. I would get the courage to talk to her about it someday. Just not any day soon. I still couldn’t think about Kane without breaking down into tears; having a conversation about being the cause of his death would probably break me.
Or at least finish me off.
Page had it the roughest emotionally. She was as bad off as I was, only she was only eight and so it wasn’t fair that she had to go through the process of forgiving herself for the death of someone that deserved it. We spent many nights talking through the events leading up to Linley’s death. I would hold her and she would cry. Or she would wrap her arms around my waist and I would cry. It wasn’t fair that either of us had to work through that depth of pain, but at least we had each other.
And through the horror of that day and the nightmares we experienced almost nightly, we were closer than ever. I loved that little girl with a feral intensity. And I would make sure, no matter what, that she wasn’t permanently affected by Linley Allen or her death.
Haley and I had repaired whatever was broken between us. After weeks of feeling a growing divide in our lifelong friendship, things finally seemed settled again between us. I had my friend back. And I was starting to realize my life back as well.
Whatever I thought about the Zombie Apocalypse and where “home” was for me now, this was it.
And as hard as it was to lose Kane… and it was hard, I would carry that pain and grief with me for a very long time. But it was necessary too. I could see that now. Kane pulled me away from these people, these people that I loved more than myself.
I would do anything for Haley and this family and even Tyler and Miller. I had started to believe I could include Kane in this community and that even if things were slightly different for me it would be worth it. And it would have been. But now that Kane was gone, I felt the natural ease click back into place and watched us function with our old efficiency.
Kane never would have fit in here. The Parkers never would have accepted him. And in the end that would have torn me away from both sides.
Would it have been worth it?
I couldn’t say. But a small, selfish part of me was happy I would never have to find out.
There was so much work to go through in order for me to find myself again and heal from the trauma of the last few months. But I would get there. It might happen slowly and even painfully, but I was already on the journey back there.
Well, not completely back there. I couldn’t help but be molded and changed by the tragic events of the last couple months. But that wasn’t a bad thing either.
I had grown as a person. At the same time I felt like I’d lost some of who I was, I felt like I’d discovered who I was too. There was no faster way to get to the bottom of what you’re made of than to go through fire and come out on the other side refined.
And I just hoped that I had been refined.
I hoped I learn a
ll the lessons I was supposed to and grew in the best ways possible. I didn’t think I could go through something like that ever again. Next time I wouldn’t survive.
Except… this was the Zombie Apocalypse after all, so chances that my life would be lived out peacefully after today was about zero to none.
An elbow nudged me gently in the ribs. “I never got a chance to thank you,” Hendrix murmured a little shyly. His voice dropped to a lower octave and he leaned in so only I could hear him.
I looked up and scrunched my eyebrows together. “For what? Giving up my portion of pickles? Don’t mention it.” We’d stumbled onto a farm three days ago that had cellars and cellars of jarred vegetables and fruit. That storehouse and the gas station we looted the day after had been our primary food source lately.
Whoever had canned all the vegetables was probably some state fair blue ribbon winner because a lot of the flavor was spot on. However, there were not enough words to describe the horror that came along with eating pickled vegetables for every meal.
Rationing toilet paper or toilet paper substitutes had never been more of a serious issue for us.
But at least we weren’t starving.
Hendrix’s blue eyes warmed with gratitude and a soft smile transformed the hard lines of his face into friendly affection. “For saving my life. For stabbing Matthias. He would have killed me if you hadn’t intervened. You’re a good friend.”
My heart slammed into my chest and my smile faltered. Didn’t he know I would never let him die? I would never let someone else take his life? Didn’t he see the way I looked at him? Didn’t he hear my heart pounding whenever he was near? Or feel the ache in my chest whenever I wasn’t?
“You would have done the same thing for me.” I nudged him back. “Actually, you did do the same thing for me. More than once, I think.”
“Those were some f-ed up days.”
I nodded. “It’s all behind us now though.”
He had been staring out across the dark room but with my last statement his face turned to me so fast I jumped. His gaze went from soft and gentle to intense and piercing. His lips stopped playing with a smile and hardened in the way that only he had, the way that made sure you knew his entire focus was centered on you, that nothing else could distract him from you as the focal point of his vision.