I ignored her and said, “He said it was a mistake. He doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“He said that?”
I nodded. “He said he can’t trust my emotions.”
She winced on my behalf. “I’m sorry, Reags. Geez. I really thought… I don’ t know, I really thought he still had feelings for you.”
“He does.” I started crying again, a little hysterically this time. “Which is why he says he can’t be with me! He expects me to hurt him again.”
Her arm went around my shoulder and she laid her cheek on top of my head. “Men are stupid.”
I cried for a few minutes and cleansed my chest of the yucky hurt that seemed to stick to everything inside me. “I think he’s right. Not that I will change my mind again… but he has a right to feel that way. I was the dumb one before.”
She cleared her throat delicately and said, “I won’t argue with you about that. My brother was bad news. But it’s hard, too. I get it. In a way… in a way I think you helped Kane find redemption. And I will never hate you for that or think less of you. I know things ended badly with Hendrix, but my brother became a better person because of you. Do you know how big of a deal that is?”
I gave her a weak, watery smile and tried to breathe deeply. “But now what?”
“Now you prove to Hendrix that you’re not going to change your mind again. Prove to him that you do care about him… that no one else can come between you two again.”
I stopped sniffling and sat upright. The blanket fell back, but Tyler was there to catch it. “I don’t even think he knew I still cared for him until he kissed me.”
“You’re kidding,” she chuckled dryly. “Oh. Oh, you’re not kidding! Well, then see! If he’s gone this whole time thinking you didn’t care about him, then he probably is a little messed up over you! Show him that you do still have feelings for him!”
I gave her a sidelong glance. “What if it doesn’t work?”
She tucked in her chin and looked at me seriously, “What if it does?”
What if it does?
And what did I have to lose if it didn’t? I was already in complete misery. He had already shut me down and walked away from me. Could this get any worse?
Oh, wait. Forget that I asked that. In my world, it could always get worse.
But not by much.
The pain and agony I felt right now was as bad as anything I had been through yet. Was it even fair of me to just assume we could jump right back into things?
Probably not.
So, why couldn’t I prove to Hendrix that I really did care about him? Why couldn’t I show him that the love between us hadn’t died and wouldn’t die?
“You’re brilliant, Ty!” I threw my arms around her shoulders and squeezed her. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome! And if it doesn’t work, I’ll help you break his kneecaps.”
“Oh, my god, they don’t make friends better than you.”
“So true.” She jumped to her feet and held her arms out for me. I gathered the blanket and let her pull me up. “You’re really going to do this? You’re really going to try with Hendrix?”
“I am. I might not ever stop.”
“It’s going to work, Reagan. I know that it will. There is too much love between you to ignore it forever.”
“I hope you’re right,” I whispered. I was equal parts terrified and excited for this new plan. I couldn’t wait to see Hendrix again and at the same time it was the scariest thing I would ever do.
“What are you going to do first?”
We started walking back to the house. I wiped my tears with the backs of my hands, but didn’t hesitate to answer. “First, I’m going to help rescue Page. Then, I’m going to prove to Hendrix that I am the sexiest, most irresistible woman on the planet.”
Tyler laughed with me. “You just managed to make the Zombie Apocalypse fun again! That is something to be proud of.”
I elbowed her in the side, but couldn’t help but feel like maybe she was right. Hendrix had pursued me from day one and in lots of ways, I had always run from him. I didn’t want a relationship at first and then I fell into that thing with Kane and ran from him again.
He needed to know that I had stopped running. He needed to know that I would do whatever it took to be with him again and that I would work every single day to stay with him.
Page was my top priority, but as soon as we got her back, and I had to believe that we would, I would get to work on proving to Hendrix that I had never loved anyone more than him.
And that I would spend the rest of my life, no matter how long or how short, loving him with everything that I was.
Episode Six
Chapter One
1071 Days after initial infection
Well, this took a turn for crazy town.
And everything had started out so peacefully.
So shockingly and uncharacteristically peacefully.
With a gun pressed into the side of my neck and my own barrel shoved into the nose of a very dangerous man, I reminisced about the morning and tried to figure out where exactly everything went wrong.
In other words, how our tranquil negotiations blew the hell up.
The morning had started as I knew it would. After a fitful night of not sleeping, I popped out of bed ready to take on the day. I hadn’t slept well, but that was to be expected with Page in someone else’s care. My lack of sleep didn’t even have anything to do with Hendrix rejecting me so eternally.
Or that’s what I swore to myself.
I spent the dark hours of the night imagining all of the ways I knew to kill both man and Zombie alike. I would get that little girl back, I determined. I would get her back and I would keep her with me from then on out.
I had other things to worry about these days. We could not keep getting captured and nearly killed.
I was over it.
It was amazing how little sleep I needed now. After the trauma of Mexico, I had expected to sleep for days once I found safety. I had probably dozed throughout the night, but I had never found that coveted REM I needed so badly.
And yet, my hands were steady as I put pressure on the trigger beneath my pointer finger and my head felt clear and rational.
If I killed this man, it would not be because I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. He would deserve it.
He probably already did deserve it.
The barrel of my enemy’s gun bit into my skin, putting unwanted weight on my jugular. I swallowed around the tension and prayed that the guy looming over me wasn’t feeling extra trigger-happy.
Anyway, back to my relatively normal morning.
As soon as the first hint of sunlight lit the bungalow, I popped out of bed. Joy and Andy had been gracious enough to let us move in with them for the foreseeable future, so we’d gotten comfortable. Haley and Nelson won the bed, along with Harrison, King and Miller. Apparently the three younger boys had no problem crowding Haley and her very pregnant tummy.
Both of the couches tipped back into beds, so Joy and Andy shared one with Luke and Tyler and Vaughan shared the other futon-ish couch. Adela, Hendrix and I had been relegated to the floor. Hendrix and I chose places on opposite sides of the living room.
That was fine with me.
The floor was far more comfortable, with a bed of quilts beneath me and an actual pillow under my head, than the desert ground. And it was much easier to relax here than it had been when I had to watch out for men wanting some nonconsensual midnight companionship.
I thought I would sleep like a baby.
I did not.
So dawn came and I jumped to my feet, ready to take on all of Mexico in order to get Page back.
The Parkers joined me like a second later. Apparently nobody felt like sleeping in.
Not with Page out of sight.
Andy and Joy were forced awake by our commotion and we got things started. Our meager breakfast of leftover tortillas and fresh avocados, tasted like pu
re heaven.
I actually felt bad that I didn’t take the proper amount of time to appreciate how amazing the fresh, green softness tasted. Before the end of the world, I hadn’t been a huge fan of avocados. I didn’t like the texture.
Now, after a pretty constant diet of canned or dried food, the taste of something homegrown and ripe burst to life in my mouth and I nearly wept.
Joy’s garden was a miracle to me. I would stay here forever just to reap the benefits of her green thumb if I didn’t think eventually Matthias would catch up to us and have us slaughtered.
But if it weren’t for that one little detail, this would be my nirvana.
After a quick breakfast, we armed ourselves.
And I mean to the teeth.
Guns, knives, extra ammo, you name it, we packed it. Andy and Joy were very generous with their arsenal. I wondered how we would repay them for their kindness.
Giving them what they asked for wasn’t even a question anymore. Of course, we would tell them what they wanted to know. Of course we would help them as much as we could.
But what I really wanted to give them was an alternate plan. The only gift I could think of to repay them for everything they did for us was to talk them out of going back to the States.
I needed to convince them to leave Matthias alone.
But that wasn’t going to be easy. In the very short time I’d known the missionary couple, I’d learned one very important lesson: People who thought they were on a mission from God were very hard to persuade differently.
It was annoying.
Joy stayed with Luke back at the bungalow, while the rest of us loaded into the van and let Andy drive us to Arturo’s plantation.
Tyler had tried desperately to get Miller to stay with Joy, Luke and Adela. She had begged him to sit this one out. I felt her pain and concern. He didn’t belong in a highly volatile situation if we could help it.
If I were honest, I didn’t even want Tyler to go. She was useless with a gun and more of a liability than anything. But I couldn’t exactly ask her to stay behind either.
Besides, Miller seemed beyond crazed to get Page back. I could see how wound up he was, how utterly unpredictable and explosive he would be unless he came with us.
Even now… even at gunpoint, the kid looked ready to detonate.
Usually I trusted in the Parkers completely. They were so perfectly clever and savvy with survival. We had gotten into terrible situations before, but it was because of them we were able to live through all of the shit that got thrown at us.
But now… if things went south, er, south-er than they were at the moment, I would put a lot of money on Miller being the reason we got out of this alive.
He looked ready to destroy every single man in this room. His hands shook at his sides, his face flushed red and his eyes glinted with the deadly promise of vengeance.
Unlike the rest of us that had let our rage simmer and build slowly, Miller had been like this since yesterday.
When we’d arrived at Arturo’s plantation, I had been momentarily stunned by the beauty of it. It reminded me of something out of the pages of a magazine. This was why people vacationed to Mexico.
We drove down a long, nicely paved road that was lined with tall trees that had shrub-like bodies and flat tops that stretched out with gnarled, twining branches. The compound was completely walled in and we had to pass through a gate armed with men. Andy had talked with them as if they were old friends and the men had let us through without much delay. Andy parked the van in a circular drive complete with a fountain. This one was dry.
The sprawling house made a U-shape. The creamy stucco walls sat beneath Spanish tiled-roofing like the other houses we had been to in these parts. Only these were far superior to anywhere we’d been yet.
This was a mansion.
The front door was placed in the center of the U, complete with flanking columns and potted plants. Two men stood guard on either side, their heavy firearms resting in their meaty hands. They looked at us with undisguised malice.
White curtains floated through opened windows and some tired looking workers tended to a garden that dwarfed Joy’s. My bottom lip dropped open as I took in the sight of all that fresh produce and flowering plants.
This place was a thing of beauty, but I wondered what kind of ugliness the pretty façade hid.
As soon as the van doors opened, I could smell faint Feeder rot as it drifted toward us on the breeze. I could hear the scraping of claws on metal and the guttural groaning of Arturo’s army. I wondered how many other people he kept caged up, people that were still people and deserved freedom.
A shiver raced down my spine despite the heat of the morning. I had met enough Mexican territory leaders by now to know their numbers. Without even meeting this guy I knew he would be a psychopath. I knew he would be responsible for torturing and killing innocents.
And I knew he would not think twice about killing us if we crossed him.
Or if we didn’t kill him first.
We walked as a group toward the front door. The two guards stepped forward and raised their weapons. Andy immediately lifted his hands and pushed them down in quick succession. He spoke their language in a calming, pacifying tone and eventually the men seemed to relax.
All of us carried weapons, but none of us had pulled them out or waved them around. Andy had advised us to keep them out of our hands for as long as possible.
I didn’t believe anything could be solved peacefully these days, so his advice didn’t exactly sit well with me. I had told him as much, but he had been adamant that Arturo could be reasoned with.
After all, it was only one little girl that we wanted. She was hardly worth anything.
If only he knew.
If only he knew how valuable her immune system was.
One of the men had disappeared into the house to presumably speak with Arturo. Ten minutes later, after I had officially reached the limit of my patience, after a solid sweat had broken out across my forehead and lower back, after my burned skin had started to scream under this new day’s heat and after my fingers had begun to itch and tingle with the desperation to pull my weapons, the guard returned and beckoned us inside.
I jerked my head to the side to pop my neck and seriously considered waiting in the van until this was finished. I wasn’t going to be able to handle the strain of this meeting. I needed to see Page now. I needed to see that she was okay right this second.
If Arturo wanted to be a bastard and make us wait, I wouldn’t be able to help myself. I’d have to kill him. I really, really would.
The guard led us down an empty hallway with opened windows on either side. The cross breeze felt like heaven on my skin and the smell of lemons and oranges mingled with the decay of the Zombie army I knew Arturo kept close.
There were no people inside the house that I could see. I listened closely for voices or screaming, but nothing but our footsteps echoing off the polished marble floor could be heard.
Eventually we came to a closed set of pretty doors, with flowers and vines etched into the dark wood. They swung open beneath the pressure of the guard’s hand and we were admitted into Arturo’s office.
More of his men lined the room. They stood guard in front of bookshelves heavy with books and a large desk covered in more stacks. The back wall of the room was entirely made of glass and looked out onto an expansive estate. From my place, just inside the doors, I could see a tennis court, an empty swimming pool and too many cages to count quickly.
I looked frantically for Page in the mix of all of the Zombies, but it was impossible to see anything clearly from this distance. Nerves ricocheted around my body as I waited through Andy’s polite introductions.
Arturo was a large, bulky man that dressed as though life had not bothered to change for him during the Zombie Apocalypse. He wore a cream linen suit, complete with a silk ascot. His handlebar mustache stretched across red, bulbous cheeks and could not hide his fat lips. His belly beli
ed the dangers of the Apocalypse and spoke of wealth and prosperity.
He was the complete opposite of Diego and Raphael’s fit forms. They were men used to physical prowess.
Arturo was used to healthy meals and enough men to handle all of his dirty work.
Andy moved into conversation with him, but it was all in Spanish and I could only catch a few words. The guards shifted and fidgeted, swinging their guns casually in their hands. I couldn’t tell if it was meant to intimidate us, if they were growing anxious with the conversation or if they were simply bored.
I couldn’t decide which one of those options to feel either.
Andy glanced back at Vaughan and raised his eyebrows discretely. Vaughan shared a look with Hendrix and Nelson and all of their hands landed on their weapons. I followed suit.
Apparently this was not going as planned.
During a lull in the conversation, Andy let out an aggravated sigh before speaking to us in English.
“He won’t confirm that he has her,” he told us in a low voice. “We know that he does. He knows that we know he does. But he refuses to come right out and say it. You have a reputation that precedes you.”
“Did he know who Page was when he took her?” Vaughan demanded.
Andy shook his head quickly, “He says he didn’t know until we showed up just now. He promises he wouldn’t have taken her if he had known how much trouble she was attached to.”
Hendrix grunted, “I doubt that.”
“I doubt that too,” Andy agreed. “He’s hinting at a trade.”
“We don’t have anything to give him.” Vaughan struggled to hide the helplessness in his voice.
Andy’s eyes glinted with insight. “You do have something actually. Something that is of high value. But I cannot ask you to turn her over.”
When the Parkers continued to stare at him like they wanted to strangle him, I whispered, “Adela,” to appease their tempers.
The brothers visibly relaxed, but the tension mixed and blended inside of me until it was a cement block in my stomach.
“No,” I growled. “It’s not happening.”
Andy shushed me with a patient nod of his head. “I hope you all feel that way. I’m just giving you your options.”