“No,” she spit.
“Human traffickers? Black market thugs? Ex-cons?”
Her voice trembled when she declared, “Worse.”
“Who, Adela? Tell me?”
By this time, Vaughan and Hendrix had been stirred awake by our conversation. Slowly the rest of the group sat up, quiet and attentive.
In fact, when she finally told the truth, they were all alert enough to hear her perfectly.
“Cannibals,” she whispered. “They are cannibals.”
“This can’t be happening,” Hendrix bit out. “This cannot be happening.”
“Yes,” Adela assured him. “It is happening. They are cannibals. The very worst kind.”
“What do you mean the worst kind?” Vaughan demanded. “What other kind is there?”
“They will eat anything,” she told us. “Anything.”
“Zombies?” My voice was a whisper that seemed to scream through the room. She nodded frantically. “That’s why those Feeders were afraid to cross the shadow.”
She confirmed with another wild shake of her head. “I thought they were only rumors, meant to scare us into staying where we were. I thought Diego used… used their myth as another way to keep me hostage. But it is true.”
“I smell it,” Haley squeaked. “I smell the Zombies that were here before us.”
I did too.
“What have you heard them say?” Vaughan stumbled to his feet and glanced around desperately.
“They are pleased with how many there are,” Adela explained. “This is a very big group. We will feed them for a while.”
“Oh, my god.” This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be.
“I think I want my dad,” Miller declared.
“I think I’d rather deal with your dad too,” Nelson grunted.
Adela ignored us and went on with her explanation, “This is why they are so happy. They are celebrating. They are preparing their great feast.”
“With one of us?” King nearly shouted. His brothers all shushed him, but his horrified look said he would not be calming down anytime soon.
“With one of us,” Adela replied softly.
“Who?” Hendrix demanded. “Have they said who they wanted to eat first?” We collectively groaned at Hendrix’s choice of words.
Adela shook her head, “No. But I think I will get to live for a while. I think they will kill you first. And they will let Haley live.”
Our attention spun to Haley. “Why her?” Nelson demanded.
Adela’s voice shook as she explained, “They want the baby. It will be a special prize for them when the baby is born.”
Nobody said anything to that. We couldn’t. There were no words that could adequately explain our revulsion and hatred for something as despicable as eating a baby.
It was vile.
They were vile.
I wiggled around until I could sit on the ground with my legs crossed in front of me. “Mexico was such a stupid idea,” I winced. “My absolute worst idea.”
Nobody argued.
“I’m sorry, guys.”
Nobody offered forgiveness.
Shit.
I had to hope that before they took us to be roasted over the open flame, my friends would grant me absolution. I could not live or die with these many people pissed at me.
“This is a mess,” Hendrix laughed. “This is a goddamn mess.”
“And to top it off, I have the headache of the century,” Tyler stated.
Vaughan’s attention went back to Adela, “Did they knock us out at the same time?”
She nodded again, “They waited until you were all at the water. And when you sat up, they hit you.”
“But they did not hit you?” he pressed.
“No,” she whispered. “They wanted me to see what happened so that I could tell you.”
“They might be cannibals,” Haley teased, “But they’re thoughtful cannibals. You got to give them that.”
“I don’t,” Nelson growled. “I don’t have to give them anything. And you’re not going to either. We’re going to get out of here, Hales. I promise you that.” His head bent down to kiss the top of hers sweetly.
I silently agreed with him. No matter what.
We had to get out of this.
“No one comes here, right?” I asked Adela, racking my brain for a plan I didn’t have. “If the Zombies are scared, I bet any nearby territories are also scared.”
“Yes, that is correct,” Adela answered. “I should have realized it when I first saw that the Dead would not come near us. I should have told you about them before we left Diego.”
Harrison cut a look at her, “It’s probably better that you didn’t tell us actually. We might still be stuck with him if we hadn’t decided to walk across the width of Mexico.”
“What’s most shocking is that you speak English,” King directed at Adela. “Thanks for the heads up earlier.”
She tilted her chin and said, “I did not know if I could trust you.”
“It was smart,” Vaughan reassured her. “You should not trust anybody.”
“Not even for water,” I sighed.
Haley sat up and I felt her presence intensify, “Did we have another choice? We could have stayed out there and been eaten by Zombies instead. Would that have been better?”
“Yeah,” I grunted. “Kind of. At this point, Zombies are starting to feel like misbehaving pets that don’t know any better. These people know better. It should be human instinct not to eat other people. That should be at the very top of our In Case of Emergency, Do not Do lists. What is wrong with them?”
“It’s the wilderness,” Adela explained. “They have nothing else to eat. And now… now they are like the… the… Los Muertos.” She shook her head and said sadly, “Like the Zombies.” Her pronunciation was vastly different than ours. Her O stretched long and her B settled softly. I had begun to hate Mexico with a lava-like fury. The rage burned in my belly like acid and sulfur.
And then there was Adela- somehow separate from this great emotion. She was gentle where Mexico had been harsh. She was kind when everyone else had been murderous and evil. She was a guide to safety when every other place had been an outpost in a maze to hell.
I didn’t know what to think of her or if I could trust her, but she had managed to pick away at some of the armor around my heart.
I wouldn’t let her in, I decided. I wouldn’t feel compassion for her or regret if she died. I would move on. I couldn’t afford to care for anyone else, especially this stranger.
We would get out of this cannibalism situation somehow, but if she didn’t make it…
A joyous shout echoed down the corridor towards our prison. Another deep voice followed the first, then footsteps echoed loudly over the rocky ground. Vaughan started moving toward the door.
“What are you doing?” Hendrix bit out.
Vaughan chuckled darkly, “Making myself look yummy.”
“No.” The command came from half the room.
Vaughan’s teeth glinted in the streaks of light seeping in from the door, “Try to stop me.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Nelson muttered.
“Take a number.” Vaughan settled in next to the door. He would be the very first person the men stumbled upon when it opened. “This is my duty, folks. At least I know there’s not an undead afterlife in it for me.”
“Vaughan,” Tyler gasped, clearly beside herself.
Panic set in as the sound of footsteps grew closer.
“It should be me,” I shouted. “Everyone wants me dead! Just let me go first. That will solve so many problems for you all.”
“Reagan, I swear to God,” Hendrix ordered in the fiercest voice I had ever heard. “Sit down.”
Unfortunately for him, I was really good at ignoring him by now. I started scooting over on my butt towards Vaughan. I heard several people bite out curse words and Adela seemed to have started praying in Spanish.
Good luck, Herma
na. I had to have run out of lives by now anyway.
Hendrix’s foot slammed down over mine- his attempt at grabbing me without the use of his hands. “Reagan,” he begged. “Stop this.”
“What are our options?” I hissed at him. “Who should die instead of me? This is all my fault. All of it! I’m the reason we’re here. I’m the reason we’re in freaking Mexico! I’m the reason that Matthias is chasing us. I’m the reason that Kane died. I’m even the reason you had to leave your home! It’s all my fault. All of it. Let me do this!”
Hendrix jerked back, his leg limp and heavy over mine but not holding. “Our home?”
A sob caught in my chest, “When we first met you. I’m the reason the Zombies found you even back then. Think of everything you’ve given up for me. I’ve ruined your lives. And now you’re all going to die. Because of me.”
I watched Hendrix’s face, watched it flinch and pale. Of course, I couldn’t see it pale in this lighting, but I knew him well enough to recognize the shock and horror that turned his expression.
He knew that I was right. He probably should have realized it a long time ago, but he hadn’t. Clarity had finally found him after all this time and he saw the truth.
He saw how toxic I was.
A pandemic had destroyed the world in which we lived. Infection ran rampant and poisoned everything living that it could get its greedy hands on. But I was just as bad.
I left imprints of death on everything that I touched; marking them for an unseen reaper that followed me everywhere I went.
Both of us were plagues of Biblical proportions. The Feeders were the locusts that devoured the land, gnawing at flesh and bone until the ground had been razed by their sweeping conquest.
I was the firstborn death.
I flitted from family to family, taking meaningful life and destroying entire family lines. You could not hide from me. You could not protect yourself from me.
You could only wait for me to strike. To take. To kill.
“It should be me,” I told the room. “Me.”
The door swung open in the next moment. Two hulking men filled the frame and blocked the suddenly bright light. The door bumped against Vaughan’s toe until they pushed it by, scraping the rough wood across the dirt.
Their dark eyes surveyed the room, landing on Vaughan first and then me. I had not done my duty to get Vaughan out of their sight. Hendrix’s leg still lay over mine, but it did not even twitch while we waited for them to decide.
Someone would die tonight; you could see it in their wide grins. They could not wait to kill.
I sat up straighter and tilted my head towards them. Please let it be me. Please don’t let them take one of my friends. Please. Please. Please. Please.
Seconds ticked by, the weight of all time pressing down on us. My eyes closed without my permission; the intensity of this moment was too much to witness first hand.
Finally, they chose their feast.
It was not Vaughan. And it was not me.
Harrison and King were plucked from the room while we all watched in frozen horror.
“No!” I screamed when my body finally caught up to my mind. “No!”
The Parkers moved into action at once, attacking the feet of the two men that thought they had a chance at besting us. Harrison and King thrashed uncontrollably in their arms, but the men tossed them over their shoulders like they had been through this a hundred times already.
Vaughan threw his body through the doorway to keep them from locking us back in. Our quiet sanctuary bellowed with rage as we shouted, screamed and wrestled our constricted bodies to fight for those two boys.
They kicked at Vaughan’s head until he was forced back into the room and then the door slammed closed.
Chapter Three
Darkness enclosed us again. And silence.
Only this was not a thoughtful silence. Nor was it a calculating one.
This palpable stillness prickled my skin and set my bones into action. I worked at the leather tied around my wrists until I felt hot blood trickle to my fingertips. I ignored the burning, stinging rawness and continued working my hands.
The leather stretched, but just barely.
I scrambled to my knees with my wrists still working hard. I had never been this desperate before, never this frantic.
Maybe that wasn’t true.
I had fought this hard before.
But a thin line separated survival from desperation. I imagined myself at the edge of a cliff, with my toes balanced on the very brink, weighing my odds if I were to jump and taking into account all of the things I left at the top of the cliff if I decided to leave them. I would measure wind velocity and the position of the sun in the sky. I would count the seconds as they ticked by, adding them to my already endless amounts of data. I would breathe deeply and decide to breathe deeply again.
But then something would happen. A switch would be flipped or dangerous would become deadly and I would stop counting. I would stop thinking.
And I would jump.
That was the only way I could think to explain my survival desperation. One second I would be reluctant to believe this could really be the end and that something this terrible could really happen to one of us.
And the next second, I would become crazed with inhuman speed and strength.
I would become an entirely different creature.
I scrunched my eyes closed and pulled at my wrists so severely I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of my hands had snapped off. I knew I wasn’t the only one making the effort, but I was determined to be one of the successful ones.
My mind kept flashing back to the sheer terror plastered on both of the boys’ faces. I saw their haunted screams and their determination to get free.
And they were big guys. It wasn’t as if Page had been picked from the floor. Harrison especially had grown into a man over the last year. He wasn’t a scrawny teenager anymore. He was far from the kid I first met.
Sure, we had a little list of obstacles to overcome. Like exhaustion. And also starvation. The possibility was strong that we all had concussions after getting hit in the back of the head. Also, maybe the water wasn’t settling quite right. But still, Harrison had proven he could take care of himself over and over again.
So how did we fight our way out of this room and through a crowd of cave-dwelling body builders and hope to make it out of here alive?
It honestly didn’t matter.
I didn’t have time for the finer details. I needed to get the hell out of this room and figure out the next step when we got there.
With a satisfied growl, I ripped one of my hands from the leather tie. I held it up over my head victoriously and ignored the bloodied, gory skin around my wrist. I kept the leather tie on the other wrist and threw myself at the person directly next to me, which was Vaughan.
Hendrix’s arms snapped apart like he had turned into the Hulk and our eyes clashed across the few feet that separated us. We had moved apart while we wrestled to save Harrison and King. Now that distance felt as wide as a canyon.
His eyes glittered in the darkness, conveying something I could not hope to begin to read. “We go together.” His voice was unnaturally low and raspy. “Do not leave this room without the rest of us.” He ripped his gaze from mine without waiting for a reply and went to work on Nelson’s bonds.
“He thinks you’re on a suicide mission now,” Vaughan explained in a low voice.
“Oh, please,” I groaned. “That was so five minutes ago.”
His bonds were tighter than mine had been. I could feel how swollen and stiff his fingers were. They must have expected an escape attempt from him. I dug my fingers into the dirt, desperately searching for a sharp enough rock to cut these.
“Reagan,” Vaughan turned his head over his shoulder so I could hear him clearly, “If you so much as blink suspiciously, I’ll have Hendrix hit you over the head again and carry you out of here unconscious. Do you understand me?”
I leaned back on my heels and stared at him, “Vaughan, I will do whatever it takes to keep your family safe. Do not doubt me on that.”
“Well, since my family will do anything to keep you safe, whenever you think about sacrificing your life for the greater good, you put them in danger. So knock it off before I’m forced to do something drastic.”
“Like what?” I felt the dare in my voice and raised my eyebrows in challenge. I hated being ordered around. It wasn’t a good quality about me, but it was also something I couldn’t change. This Apocalypse had made me too wild to listen to reason. I was untamable, even by people that I cared about.
“I’ve been holding Hendrix back,” he growled at me. “If you want to be excessively difficult, I’ll stop.”
“What does that mean?”
“Kane’s death.”
“Vaughan, I don’t understand-”
“Move,” Hendrix growled.
I jumped out of the way just as he ripped Vaughan’s arms from me and went to work on ties I could not break. Staggered by both of those two macho idiots, I moved on to Miller’s hands.
His entire body shook as I worked the knot free. I put my hand on his shoulder to comfort him, once I’d wiggled his hands through the bonds. “We’re going to get them back,” I promised him.
“Why does everyone want to kill us?” His question held a well of bitterness.
I could relate, “I don’t know.”
He swiveled around and confided something in me that I knew he had not spoken aloud to another person. “It makes me want to kill everyone in return.”
Despite everything happening, a chill skittered down my spine. “We’re not killers, Miller. We’re fighters.”
“What’s the difference?”
“If we have to kill to survive, we do. But we don’t kill just to kill. That’s not our style.”
His voice dropped to a whisper, “What if it’s my style?”
“It’s not,” I promised him. “You’re angry. You’re really, really angry. But you’re also still good.” I pushed my hand against his heart. “You’re a good person.”
“I don’t think I am.”
My chest squeezed for this boy. I wanted to say the right thing to turn his dark thoughts around, but I didn’t know what to say. I had wrestled with these very thoughts. I had my own guilt to carry. How could I possibly offer something positive when our friends were about to be eaten by cannibals and his own dad was on a mission to kill us?