“What if it’s not better?”
He leaned into me with another smile, “Then you can help me make it better.”
My skin felt itchy again. I liked that idea. I liked the idea of helping Luke and making that ugly place nice again… like when I was younger.
Before I could tell him that, the door opened again and Reagan stepped outside. My stomach felt icky looking at her. Someone had beaten her up and scratched her face and arms. I bet Hendrix had killed them though and that’s why she didn’t seem mad about it.
Hendrix would kill anyone for Reagan. Haley said that’s because he loved her. I didn’t know about that, but I did know that he looked at her like my daddy used to look at my mommy. And that was important.
“Hey, little girl!” she yelled at me. “I’m going for a walk, want to come?”
“Yes!” I turned back to Luke. “I’m going to go with Reagan. Good luck taking over the Colony.”
“Thanks.” His smile grew so big I could see almost all of his teeth. “You really should come visit me when you’re older. I’ll show you the whole thing and how I made it better.”
I laughed at him. He seemed so sure, but I didn’t think it would be as easy as he made it sound. “Okay. I’ll come visit you.”
“Don’t bring Miller though.” He suddenly got serious. “He’s not invited.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever go anywhere without Miller,” I told him. “He says that we’ll never leave each other.”
“Then don’t tell him,” Luke whispered so Reagan couldn’t here.
I laughed at him because that was silly. Of course I would tell Miller. I would always tell Miller everything.
I ran off to catch up with Reagan. She smiled down at me and put her arm around my shoulders. It was different when she did it than when Miller did it. She felt like my family, like my sister.
Miller just made me feel safe, but not like my brothers did. I couldn’t explain it.
“What were you and Luke talking about?” she asked when we’d walked around the house.
“He said he’s going to take over the Colony,” I told her. “He’s going to change it. Make it better.”
“That’s the plan,” she said. “His dad doesn’t know what he’s getting into.”
“You don’t think they can do it?” I put my arm around Reagan’s waist and leaned into her. I was so happy to be back with my family, I could barely hold myself together. I just wanted to smile forever.
“I think they have a very long battle ahead of them. It’s not going to be easy. But it will help if we can kill Matthias first.”
“I think we can,” I said truthfully. “Tell Hendrix you want Matthias dead. Hendrix would kill anyone for you.”
Reagan started laughing. Her whole body shook next to me. Then she turned and started tickling me. I tried to wiggle away but she was faster than me.
“Stop!” I shouted through my laughter. “Please!”
She stopped tickling and threw her arms around me in a hug. “I’m glad you’re home, Sweets. I missed you like crazy.”
I hugged her back, “I missed you like crazy, too. I don’t ever want to leave again.”
“You won’t have to. We will keep you safe no matter what. We’ll keep you with us.”
“Even when I’m older?”
She pulled back so she could look at my face. “Of course when you’re older! Especially when you’re older. Why would you think we wouldn’t?”
I felt embarrassed and didn’t want to look at her. “I don’t know,” I mumbled. “Luke made it seem weird that I would stay with you guys when I got older.”
Reagan said something I didn’t understand, but then said, “Luke is the weird one. You can stay with us for as long as you want. Probably your brothers will never give you another choice.”
“Good. I would never want to leave them. Or you.” I thought about that for a bit before saying, “Miller would never let me go anyway. He doesn’t think I should ever go anywhere without him.”
Reagan nearly fell over before she crouched in front of me. I could look down at her like this because her head was lower than mine. She didn’t look happy. I didn’t know what I said wrong.
“Did Miller tell you that, Page?”
I nodded, “Yes.”
She frowned at me. “He’s just kidding. He doesn’t really mean that.”
“He sounds like he means it.” She had never heard him say it, so she couldn’t really know like I did.
She shook her head and her hair flew everywhere. “No, he’s just sad and hurting right now. He doesn’t mean to sound so… so… bossy with you. He’ll get over it in a little bit.”
“I don’t mind that he says it,” I told her honestly. “I don’t want to go anywhere without him either.”
She didn’t say anything for a really long time. She just looked at me like she didn’t understand something. “Will you tell me if he says anything else to you like that? I just want to make sure he’s okay.”
“Why wouldn’t he be okay?” My stomach felt icky again. I didn’t want anything to be wrong with Miller.
“Because he’s so sad,” she told me. “He might not be okay because he’s so sad.”
Oh, that was okay. I knew he was sad. But I also knew I could help him get better.
Reagan smiled at me, “You’ll tell me, right, Page? If he says anything else like that, you’ll tell me?”
“Yes,” I smiled back. “I’ll tell you.”
“And you’d tell me if anything weird happened while you were away?” Her eyes looked so serious that I didn’t know what to say at first.
“Nothing weird happened, Reagan. It was all just very bad.”
That was the first time I had ever lied to Reagan. I hoped it would be the only time.
“Good.” She stood back up again. “Let’s go back inside then. We have to figure out a way to kill a dictator or two.”
I let her lead the way into the house. I immediately found Miller sitting on the couch by himself. He tipped his head to the seat next to him and I ran over to sit down.
“Are you mad at me?” he whispered into my ear. The sound of his voice made my heart hurt again.
“No,” I told him right away. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you didn’t come with me. Because you stayed with Luke.”
“I’m with you now,” I promised him. “I won’t leave again.”
And I wouldn’t. That was a promise I would keep forever.
Episode Seven
Chapter One
1073 Days after initial infection
The gun felt heavy in my hands. The cold metal pressed against my raw palms, searing with the intensity of it.
I struggled to swallow. How had I gotten here?
The courtyard walls of the compound rose around me, pushing through hard, rocky dirt. They shot up from the ground, the earth and rock tumbled out of the way as they took their place in the landscape of this dark world.
My heart beat louder than any other sound, mingling with my heavy breaths until I thought it could do permanent damage to my ears.
The Feeders came next. I stood there by myself and then abruptly I wasn’t alone. They surrounded me, caged behind bars that would not hold them. Their acrid scent wafted over me, settling on my skin and in my lungs. I wondered if I would smell like them now. I wondered if I would carry their stench with me for the rest of my life.
“What are you waiting for?” The familiar voice echoed too closely.
I spun around to face him, afraid to give him my back for a second longer. “You.” I raised the gun and pointed it at Matthias Allen’s smiling face.
“But you’re not here to shoot me.” The twinkle in his dark eyes reminded me of Kane. I shook my head, desperate to erase the comparison.
He walked around me, chuckling lightly with each step. His hands landed on my shoulders and his mouth moved near my ear. “You need practice before you can take me out. You’re weak,
Reagan. You’re too green. You haven’t killed nearly enough men to face me yet.”
My body tensed in response to his taunting and the excess saliva in my mouth turned to vinegar. “I’ve killed plenty.”
“You’ve killed things that were already dead. You haven’t killed enough men. You haven’t killed men with beating hearts and thinking minds. You haven’t taken lives that could become something, that had time left to live. You’re not ready.”
“I am ready,” I argued. Instinct whispered that it was useless to argue with this man. He had made up his mind and he wasn’t the kind of person that could be persuaded to believe anything other than what he wanted to believe. But I felt like, for my pride’s sake, that I had to try. “I’ve wanted to kill you for a long time now,” I told him. “I’ve been waiting for my opportunity.”
“You already had your chance to kill me,” he growled. He didn’t sound the least bit human. He sounded animalistic and savaged. I wanted to run away from him, but his fingers dug into my shoulders like claws, holding me in place. The gun in my hands shackled me here to this spot, to this moment in a hazy time that I couldn’t break free from. “You wasted it. You squandered it. And now you must pay that price.”
My heart rate sped up, the beats so strong that they threatened to shatter me from the inside out. “I will kill you,” I swore to him. “I will find you. I will hunt you down. And I will destroy you.”
His laughter mocked me. “Isn’t that what I’m doing to you?”
Chills raced down my spine and I tried to move, tried to thaw my frozen feet. But I couldn’t. I was trapped here with this man that I wanted to kill so badly and yet I couldn’t make myself turn around and pull the trigger.
“You won’t be able to kill me,” he continued to sneer. “You’re too weak. Your conscience will always get in the way of what you should do. In order to kill a killer, you must be a killer.”
“Not true,” I retorted. “Justice is enough of a reason. My conscience wants me to kill you, not the other way around.”
“Maybe you should practice.”
“What?” My response was a strangled whisper.
“You should practice.” He adjusted me with a harsh tug, moving me like a pawn on his chessboard. I looked up to see Hendrix standing fifteen feet away.
I could feel his piercing blue eyes on me as if they had placed pressure on my skin. His hands hung at his sides unmoving and his chest barely moved, as if he were dead already.
“Shoot him,” Matthias coaxed. “See how it feels to kill a man.”
“No.”
Matthias’s grip lightened as he threw his head back and laughed. “My mistake. I forget how attached you are.” His words sounded like an insult, turning my stomach greasy with hatred and frustration. “How about him then?”
When I blinked, it wasn’t Hendrix standing in front of me, it was Kane. He looked as perfect and beautiful as he had when he was alive. His chest was strong and broad, chiseled with taut muscle. His skin held a healthy glow and his dark eyes watched me with that bewitching mystery that had drawn me into him in the first place.
“Do you remember that you couldn’t wait to kill him? Do you remember that you dreamed about it? That you tried? That you also failed? You failed to kill us both.” He paused, as if thinking about that for a second. “It’s your faulty moral compass again, isn’t it? You try so hard, but you can’t ever seem to finish simple tasks. It should be easy to kill me. It should have been easy to kill Kane. We took everything from you.”
“My compass isn’t faulty,” I growled. “I still believe in humanity. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Matthias burst into laughter behind me. “There is everything wrong with that! The end of the world didn’t just bring on the Zombie Apocalypse; it annihilated humankind in every way. The very idea of believing in it is faulty because it does not exist.”
I tried to shrug his hands off my shoulders, but they refused to move. “You’re wrong,” I told him. “You’re devoid of humanity. The rest of us are fighting for it.”
“Kill him then.” His words were harsh and grating against my ear.
I focused on Kane again and my stomach swished with acid. “He’s already dead.”
“Maybe you succeeded in killing him after all.”
As I watched, Kane’s body started to decompose in front of me. Blood leaked from his pours until his skin started to tear away. His eyes became haunted and agonized. I bit back tears while he kept his gaze trained on me. The Zombies around us started to go crazy with the fresh scent of blood. They banged against their frail bars and screamed with heads tipped toward a sunless sky.
“I’m going to kill you,” I told Matthias. I trembled with rage. I didn’t want to watch Kane die again. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing him again.
“You can try,” he taunted.
“I won’t miss this time.”
“The Colony will be waiting for you when you’re finished.”
His words surprised me. Kane disappeared and so did the Zombies. The compound took on a new form, closer to how I remembered it. A cool breeze drifted through the quiet grounds. I could hear laughter not far away.
“What do you mean?” I asked in a hopeful voice. Despite my raw hatred for this man, I realized something that I hadn’t thought about until this moment.
“If you kill me, this could all be yours.” His hand left my shoulder to sweep through the courtyard. “These people need someone to rule them. This country needs someone to rebuild it. Kill me and it could be you.”
“I don’t want to rule over people that should be free.”
He laughed again. “Fine, not rule. Lead. They need someone to lead them. When I’m out of the way, you will be free to go home.”
“Get up, Willow! What’s taking so long?”
I startled awake, grappling for my gun. Matthias was here.
Panic burned through me. My hands itched for the gun in my hands, but I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t see anything. I took a gasping breath, my mouth was buried against cotton.
And not just my mouth. My entire face was shoved into a pillow. I blinked my eyes open and tried to see through the dark room. I wasn’t in the compound after all. That was a dream.
Matthias wasn’t here. I hadn’t just watched Kane die again. Those were my very own subconscious thoughts.
I mumbled my relief and wiped away the drool pooled in the corner of my mouth. Something smacked my ass with a loud crack and I jerked upwards. “What? Huh?”
“Zombies, Woman! Getchya ass up!” Was that Harrison?
I should punch him! Although I was pretty grateful to have been woken up from that eerie nightmare.
When I’m out of the way, you’ll be free to go home.
Dream Matthias’s words echoed in my head. I tried to shake them out, but they stubbornly refused to leave.
I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I had never imagined this world without Matthias in it.
He had been a thorn in my side for so long that I had started to believe he always would be.
But what if we killed him? Would that change our plans? Would we still need to head south? Was there any kind of higher purpose for us in Colombia? Or should we turn around and try to salvage what was left of America?
We could work with Joy and Andy. We could turn the Colony’s unity into something good.
“Reagan, seriously,” Hendrix chuckled. “Are you going to get up or should I let you sleep through this one?”
“No, I’m up.” With a serious case of morning breath, I slid my tongue over my fuzzy front teeth and winced.
Did I have time to brush my teeth?
I rubbed my eyes, flipped my obnoxious hair out of the way and got to work tying my boots. They had been on my feet- because I wasn’t an idiot- but I had left them untied so my feet could breathe. It was hard to sleep with steel-toed monstrosities tangling with the blankets. I would give anything to sleep barefoot again, which was why I had trie
d to sleep with my boots untied.
Of course, that defeated the purpose of wearing them to begin with. I could hear the Zombies screeching in the distance. I cringed, imagining what could have happened if the Feeders were already to the bungalow. The worst way to die in the Zombie Apocalypse had to be tripping over my own shoelaces.
I would have died from embarrassment long before the Zombies finished me off.
By the time I jumped, er, sleepily jumped to my feet and found enough weapons to outfit a platoon of men, I realized half the room was still sleeping. The Feeder shrieking that signaled our midnight rendezvous sang through the night, but half of our team was out as hard as I had been.
I stumbled unsteadily on my feet and rubbed my eyes again through a deep yawn. I couldn’t remember being this tired in a long time. I could hear the threat to our safety and I still fought to get moving.
Had Joy drugged me by accident? Wow, was I tired.
“I think we’re all getting used to this place,” Vaughan grinned at me. “The girls haven’t even rolled over.” He pointed to where Haley, Page and Tyler were curled up on the bed together. They looked blissfully unaware of the oncoming attack. I hated that their sleep bliss couldn’t last.
I hated even more that I couldn’t be one of the people that got to sleep through this.
Three days at Andy and Joy’s and we were like, Zombies? What? Zombies?
What… military warlords that wanted to hunt us down and hand us over to Matthias?
We had enjoyed three utopic days of nobody trying to kill us, eat us or beat us. It was basically an unheard of scenario for me.
I’d been begging the powers that be for a vacation for a while now, but this felt more like nirvana.
“You’re going to have to wake them up,” I told Vaughan. “We can’t let them sleep through this. What if a Feeder finds them while we’re off canvassing the desert?”
“You’re right,” he grunted.
I spun around quickly and pretended I had something important to do.