“Do not abandon me.” I glared at him because I knew he wasn’t joking. Hendrix and Vaughan were the only parents the rest of their siblings had left. The older Parkers weren’t exactly maternal in their roles, and the younger Parkers had a very healthy fear of their older brothers. Usually, the fear was buried beneath sarcasm and a real concern for losing each other. There were few things that Hendrix and Vaughan cared about more than their family. Unfortunately for Harrison, both Vaughan and Hendrix thought of me as family, although, each in their own way.
“I need to,” Harrison complained. “And also, I need for you to tell Hendrix that you were the one on the ladder and that I had nothing to do with this.”
I knew that this was an accident, a very stupid accident, and it was not exactly Harrison’s fault. However, my shoulder hurt freaking badly. “Okay,” I wheezed. “I’ll tell Hendrix that you had nothing to do with this.”
He perked up immediately. “Really?”
I glowered at him some more. “Yes. But only so that I can kill you myself.”
He cocked his head back like he couldn’t believe I just said that. “Geez, Reagan! That’s not very nice.”
Oh, my gosh! I was going to throw him over the wall myself.
“Help me up,” I ordered him. “Take me to Tyler.”
He gaped at me, open-mouthed like a fish out of water. “Tyler? You really are going to die!”
“Shut it, and help me up!” I ground out. Laying here in a puddle of my blood while my shoulder throbbed with nauseating pain was not at all how I planned to spend my morning.
I was supposed to teach “school” in an hour. Haley and I shared the task of educating the youth of the storage facility. Sadly there were only eleven children in the entire compound, but we firmly believed that reading, writing and arithmetic were what was going to save this country.
One day the Zombie-threat would be eradicated. I believed that. But since the infection, humanity had taken such a turn for the ugly that I worried about what we would look like come the day we didn’t have to fear Feeders. I didn’t believe that mankind would suddenly remember their manners or that they couldn’t just steal, take or rape everything and anything they set their eyes on. We’d taken some dark turns since Feeders entered our world, and it would take a lot to pull us out of this shallow, but sinking grave.
I didn’t exactly believe multiplication tables were the answer to a better tomorrow… but education couldn’t hurt us.
We had to rebuild society somehow.
This was important.
Or so I told myself at the end of each day, after I’d spent hours arguing with children who didn’t see the point of learning to write legibly or how to spell correctly or remember the names of presidents for an abandoned government. And if the frustration and agony of it weren’t enough, I added insecurity and helplessness to the mix.
I wasn’t a teacher by any means.
I hadn’t even technically graduated from high school, although I was super close and not exactly taking any classes that were going to make a difference the spring semester of my senior year. But I could teach them as much as I knew and hopefully, someone else would show up that was better equipped and more comfortable with the entire weight of our future civilization pressing down on their shoulders.
Because, I sure as hell wasn’t.
So I tried not to think about it.
That technique had worked well with every other terrifying event that had happened in my life so far.
I had pure confidence in this secret talent of compartmentalizing.
“How bad are you bleeding?” Harrison asked skeptically. “Are you going to bring in Feeders?”
“You really want to die, don’t you?” I couldn’t believe he was contemplating not helping me!
“Alright, fine,” he grumbled and just when I felt an overwhelming urge to pull out my handgun and shoot him in the kneecap, his lips twitched in a playful smile and he bent over to scoop me up.
Harrison was by no means as built and muscled as his three older brothers, but the kid was a Parker after all and good genes went into the molecular structure that was Harrison Parker. His body might not be as developed as Vaughan, Hendrix or Nelson, but he had a solid core and was able to sweep me up into his gangly arms with absolutely no difficulty.
He carried me damsel-in-distress style and I didn’t complain. Now that I had a moment to assess my injuries, I realized my ankle was throbbing as well.
I must have rolled it when the ladder hit me.
What a dumb injury!
“Where is Tyler today?” Harrison asked as he used his shoulder to push through the warehouse door that led into the rest of the compound.
“Let’s try Gage first,” I suggested. “He might know. And I don’t want you to carry me around the whole facility trying to track her down.”
“You and me both.” He grunted and panted and made me feel like I weighed a thousand pounds. I slapped him on the back of the head and immediately regretted the sharp movement.
I winced, and he chuckled. The adorable bastard.
The hallways were dim and quiet this time of day. Candlelight lit our path, but most of the inhabitants of the compound were engaged in their daily activities by now. The children were headed to school, and the adults were patrolling, preparing meals for the day or training with Harrison’s older brothers. The compound had a routine that I found surprisingly comforting.
After years of living on the road in relative chaos and pandemonium, I liked the reliability of the mundane. And the stone walls.
I really loved the stone walls.
Not that they were enough. I hadn’t seen a Zombie that could scale tall buildings yet, but I knew from experience there was nothing that would prevent a Feeder from finding his food. Gage had been reluctant to wander into the forest surrounding the storage facility before we showed up, but since our arrival, Vaughan had talked him into eliminating any threat close to home.
I didn’t know if this was a Vaughan-original-thought or if he’d taken a page out of the Matthias Allen’s Guide to Survival, but it seemed prudent to keep our part of the world Feeder-free.
When we first arrived in this part of Oklahoma, we’d been ensnared in a Zombie trap. We had fought our way out of that particular disaster, but just barely. Hendrix had fallen off the top of our van and nearly turned himself into Zombie stew. Vaughan found the storage facility by sheer luck and ultimately saved our lives, even if they’d held guns to our heads at first.
I remembered feeling pretty nervous about living so close to such intelligent Zombies, ones that could plan attacks and set traps on unsuspecting humans. But, in one of those blessings-in-disguise moments, we’d been able to eradicate most of them as well, when Kane and I got trapped in a bunker during a separate near-death-disaster.
God, I so hated the Zombie Apocalypse.
Could I have any more near-death experiences?
Wait, don’t answer that. The outcome doesn’t look good.
When Hendrix and Vaughan went back to “the bowl,” as Gage’s men called it, to retrieve the belongings and supplies we’d left behind, it was a relatively easy haul. There were a few Feeders still hanging around, but most had been burned to death in the wake of Hendrix’s rescue-me-mission.
The boy had not let any single threat to my life live for very long.
Except Kane.
I quickly turned my mind away from those thoughts. Hendrix may have let him live in that moment when we were rescued from the bunker, but I shouldn’t have.
I’d made a lot of mistakes with Kane, and every one of them could be summed up with me letting him live.
Halfway up the stairwell, I insisted on walking. It was chivalrous of Harrison to carry me, but honestly, it was getting a little ridiculous. I felt like a big baby.
I felt like an even bigger idiot though, when I tried to put weight on my ankle. I immediately adjusted my body but then gritted my teeth when the burden fell to my shou
lder as I used my hand on the railing to hold up my body.
“This is so obnoxious,” I gritted through my teeth.
“I should have left you down there and brought help to you.” Harrison sounded regretful, but I wasn’t patient enough to sit there waiting for someone to rescue me. It was like a complex.
“It’s better this way,” I told him. “That way nobody will see me like this until after I’m all bandaged up.” And by nobody, I specifically meant Hendrix.
A pang of guilt punched me in the stomach. How much was I planning to keep from my boyfriend? This wasn’t the first secret I decided was better-left unsaid…
“Do you want me to carry you again?” Harrison offered while wisely suppressing his laughter.
“That is the very last thing I want you to do.”
He did offer a hand, though, and I was not too proud to accept that. He wrapped his lanky arm around my waist and helped support me as I hobbled up the stairs. We made slow progress to Gage’s office but eventually arrived.
Luckily, Gage was behind his desk.
What I wouldn’t give for the convenience of texting these days.
Harrison knocked lightly on the open door, and Gage tilted his head in acknowledgment. Harrison helped me into one of the office chairs while Gage’s pleasantly welcoming expression darkened into a concerned frown.
“What happened?” he demanded. Gage’s figure flickered in the low candlelight that cast shadows over his face. He looked harder and meaner than usual like this, with his jaw shaved clean and his biceps bulging out of a tight t-shirt.
“Remember how you wanted me to see if I could find some winter clothes?” Harrison started meekly. Gage nodded once. “I, er, found them.”
Gage’s eyes sliced to mine, and his frown deepened. I decided to fill in some of the blanks. “There was a little mishap in the warehouse. Don’t worry, I was the only one injured. And it’s honestly not that bad. We’re looking for Tyler.”
Gage let out a grunt of humorless laughter. “Not that bad? Reagan, you’re bleeding.”
“Just a bit.” I shrugged. And then winced. “I’ll be fine in a few days. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“Are you going to tell me how this happened?” Gage didn’t look convinced that I would heal soon, but at least he didn’t push the issue. And maybe he had the same attitude as I did about the whole thing: I would be fine in a few days because I had to be fine in a few days. Prolonged injuries got you killed in this world; there was no other way to say it.
Harrison fidgeted nervously next to me, so I saved him from having to answer. “I was careless. I was watching out for Harrison, and I forgot about myself.”
Harrison let out a slow breath of relief. He shouldn’t have been worried. Rule number one in the Zombie Apocalypse? Take care of yourself first. We were living in a perpetual airplane crash. The first step in survival was attaching your own oxygen mask before ever trying to secure someone else’s.
I hadn’t secured my own oxygen mask and stepped out of the way. Concerned for Harrison, I’d stood their dumbly watching him, while the ladder attacked me.
Gage didn’t immediately respond. I wasn’t sure he knew what to make of my confession. Obviously, I wasn’t telling him the whole truth, but Harrison and I were practically family; Gage couldn’t exactly call him out.
“Tyler’s with Vaughan in training today,” Gage finally said. He sounded as putout by this information as we felt.
Clearly, the older Parker brothers were going to find out about my injuries. That was unavoidable. But not one of us in this room felt eager to advertise my stupidity to them. They could be so… overprotective.
And barbaric.
And at times, unreasonable.
And most of the time, outrageously worried about the people they loved.
Harrison let out a long-suffering sigh and rubbed his hands over his face. “I’m so dead.”
Gage cracked a smile at that, and his body relaxed a bit. “You’d better go get her, Harry. Bring her back here. Reagan can wait with me.”
Harrison gave me a pleading pout, but I gestured at my shoulder. “If you go alone at least you can lie about why you need Tyler. If I go with you, it’s over for you and me both.”
He stood up mumbling under his breath, but I knew he saw my point. He patted me on the head like a little puppy and disappeared down the hall. Gage and I fell into silence for a few moments, but I wasn’t the kind of girl that could endure long bouts of not talking.
Usually, I felt like I had a lot to say.
And also that people liked to hear what I had to say.
Plus, I had been waiting for almost two weeks to find a moment alone with Gage. This had been surprisingly hard as I was very nearly never alone. There seemed to be a Parker or one of the girls always with me. And Gage and I weren’t exactly friends that would hang out together in our downtime.
So, capitalizing on this opportunity, I summoned my courage and revealed the deepest secret I had. One that I had been keeping since the last supply run I went on- the one that ended so dismally.
“I have something to tell you,” I confessed with a low voice. “Can you shut your door?”
Gage’s body stiffened again, and he didn’t move for a long time. “Am I the only one that’s going to know this?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s wise?” His face was unreadably stone, but I understood his misgivings. Vaughan and Hendrix were quickly becoming respected leaders at the compound. Not only that, but their relationship with Gage had become significant for all of them. If what I was about to spill damaged Gage’s relationship with Hendrix, there could be terrible consequences to the harmony of the storage facility.
Or worse.
“No,” I answered him. “But I’m going to tell you anyway.” I knew what I was doing was stupid. I knew that I should tell Hendrix and Vaughan, hell, the entire Parker family, plus Haley and Tyler.
Maybe especially Tyler.
But this was the first time I’d conjured the ability to say these words aloud. I needed to get them out in the open and unwrapped from around my throat.
“Alright,” Gage relented. He stood up and closed the door quietly before returning to his seat.
“I know that Hendrix already went over the supply-run with you.” He nodded, not needing any other explanation for what run I was talking about. That had been the last run anyone had gone out on. We were surviving now by our copious amounts of storage, even though we all knew we wouldn’t be able to last like this. We’d have to leave the compound again, or we would starve. “I know that we all believe that we were sabotaged by Matthias and the Colony.” Again, Gage nodded. “The run wasn’t the only present they left that day.” Gage quirked an alarmed eyebrow and so I soldiered on. “After I had got back, I cleaned up and what not, and I went to lie down. It had been an exhausting day, and I wanted to forget about everything for a while. Tyler and Vaughan had moved all our things while the rest of us were out, and so it was the first time I had been to our new room. When I went to get on my bed, there was something waiting for me… something someone else planted there.”
“Someone else as in not Hendrix or his brothers?” I shook my head negatively, and he sat forward.
“Not Haley or Tyler either,” I whispered. “It was the knife that I stabbed Kane with. And it was wrapped in the shirt he was wearing that day, and there was a note inside from Kane.”
Gage cupped his mouth with his hand and rubbed his lips roughly, clearly distressed. “Where is it now?”
“Safe.”
“Why haven’t you told Hendrix?”
I shrugged unsurely of the reason myself. I felt more threatened with that macabrely meaningful gift than I had ever before in my life. But at the same time, some piece of me wanted to protect it and myself from everything that it could mean.
I was equally relieved that I wasn’t a murderer as I was scared that I’d still have to become one.
And the emotions and feelings surrounding Kane and what he meant in my life were a black vortex of confusion and hatred. I loathed him. I detested him. I wanted him to die.
But at the same time, I wanted him to not die.
And a small, insignificant part of me felt sorry for him.
“You have to tell Hendrix,” Gage urged.
“Let’s talk about why I’m telling you.” I met his eyes, and he seemed to understand that it was not his place to interfere in my relationship with Hendrix. “Either Kane walked into your compound unseen and undetected or someone is working with him and managed to pick up the knife and shirt from him and put it on my bed without being seen. Tyler and Vaughan were moving our things that entire day. Except for the small lapse in time when Haley and I were cleaning up, and Tyler took Page to get dinner, our room was constantly occupied.”
“It wasn’t Tyler,” Gage argued needlessly.
“I know that it wasn’t Tyler.” I worked very hard to keep the nastiness out of my tone. I had never suspected her, not for one moment.
“We both know she’s desperate to get Miller back, but she would never do that to you. Especially after all you’ve done for her.”
“Gage, I know it wasn’t Tyler.”
“They would have had to have been watching the bay all morning. They would have watched for you to come back. And they would have needed an opportunity to sneak into your bay.” He steepled his fingers in front of him on the utilitarian desk and regarded me with a new kind of concern- the kind that made my insides turn to ice and my blood to slush. Gage did not believe I was safe; bone-deep fear and nauseating unease flashed across his face, and I couldn’t help but echo those emotions. “The logistics that went into placing it on your bed without being seen are devastating to me. And they would have had to have known that you might not have come back at all. Matthias did everything he could to make sure nobody in that party survived. That we only lost one is nothing short of a miracle.”