Love and Decay, Volume One

  What did a man like Diego do with slaves?

  “You took something of mine,” he growled at us. “And now that I find you in Raphael’s stalls, I have one guess to where she ended up.” He studied us for a long moment, “That is if she survived.” Again we said nothing. “Where is the rest of your group? Where is the girl? The Reagan?”

  I bit my lip to keep from saying something sarcastic.

  My best friend Reagan, the super star of the Zombie Apocalypse.

  Her yearbook prediction had been something about never leaving Atlantic and giving Chris enough babies for a reality show.

  Well, she showed them…

  “Reagan’s dead,” Nelson said from behind me. “Everyone in our party is dead.”

  Diego cocked his head and ran his thumb over the butt of his gun. “Why don’t I believe you?”

  “It doesn’t matter if you believe me or not. Truth is truth. Facts are facts.”

  “I think I’ll have a chat with Raphael,” Diego countered.

  I felt Nelson’s shrug on my back. “You do that.”

  Diego leaned in suddenly, his eyes as hard as stone. “I doubt Raphael would kill Adela since she is his… hija. Understand? His daughter.”

  Nelson shrugged again. “I didn’t say Raphael was the one that killed her.”

  Diego’s spine straightened and undisguised rage twisted his features. “I’ve decided to buy you,” he told us. “You’ll cost much,” he pointed at me. “Everyone will want the baby. But your Matthias is on his way here. I had planned to kill him. I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll give him you instead.”

  I bit my cheek until I tasted blood. I would not respond to that threat or even acknowledge it. Raw panic screamed through my body, but I would not give Diego the satisfaction of knowing that he had gotten to me.

  Reagan never talked about it, but we all knew she wasn’t the one that killed Linley Allen. All of us knew exactly who pulled the trigger.

  What we didn’t know was if Matthias knew. From the posters and everything we’d learned from the bounty hunters, it seemed Matthias primarily blamed Reagan.

  But what if he was also after Page?

  If Matthias even had an inkling that Reagan had help in taking down his wife, then Page would not be safe anywhere near that monster.

  Letting Diego use us was so not an option.

  Another fierce cramp tightened my stomach muscles into an iron knot. I clenched my teeth and tried to ignore the increasing pain and quickness of these cramps. I winced, unable to contain my agony, but over the roar of the crowd, I didn’t think anyone could hear me.

  The pain lasted an entire minute this time. I missed whatever conversation happened while I tried to stay conscious through the cramp. Finally it receded and I could stand up again.

  “I’m sure to see you later,” Diego grinned at us and then melted into the crowd.

  Miller turned around, “Was that bad English? I can’t tell.”

  I stared at him. Sometimes I had no idea what went through Miller’s head. Although, I honestly couldn’t tell with Diego either.

  “I’m going to get us out of here,” Nelson growled. “I swear it.”

  I rested my head against his chest, debating what to tell him about my cramping, and instead whispered, “I believe you.”

  A few minutes later Raphael jumped up to the platform and whistled loud enough to catch everyone’s attention. The shrill sound screamed over the crowd, shooting on the wind, piercing my ear drums with the finality of the moment. The assembly quieted almost immediately, except for the rustling of bodies that stood so close together. Their faces turned to Raphael in unison. They had done this before.

  Too many times.

  I looked around at all of these people that came for the purpose of buying another human being. There were too many of them and not nearly enough of us. They were land owners and territory owners, owners of Zombie armies and owners of people.

  They were not human, these monsters that would sacrifice life to the dead. They did not have souls or hearts or compassion or empathy or anything else that made up humanity.

  They had become evil, vile things that hunted as desperately as the Feeders. They had become soulless, heartless monsters that were as addicted to the destruction of humanity as the Zombies.

  We were not the same.

  The Zombie Apocalypse happened and they became infected, too. Their disease was hunger and greed, power and control. And just like the infection that ravished the undead, they would never recover from their self-imposed destruction.

  I watched the crowd with a studiousness I hadn’t used since long before I was pregnant. In fact, I felt kind of relieved that I could still study something as intently as this. Pregnancy had all but destroyed my intelligent brain cells. Some days I wondered if I could still read.

  The entire gathering was morbidly fascinating to me. These people were all supposedly enemies. Yet this one day united them while they civilly, or as civilly as possible, bid over human slaves.

  What kind of currency did they use?

  How did they monitor the newcomers?

  Adela had said they bartered tangible goods, but I couldn’t imagine someone bidding two milking cows or a goat for a male slave with a good set of teeth. This wasn’t ancient Egypt or the Roman Empire.

  This was Mexico in the middle of the twenty-first century.

  The bidding started and the atmosphere quickly escalated with the pulse of something dangerous and possessive.

  Slaves were dragged to the center of the podium where they were forced to stand in front of some of the scariest people I had ever seen. Raphael had them lined up in rows of four and five, showing off his spoils of a war that not one of us had agreed to be a part of.

  Our hands were left unbound because apparently buyers wanted to be sure all of our appendages worked and weren’t malformed. Men would shout back and forth with a flick of their hand or a tip of their hat, throwing out the price they were willing to pay, although I couldn’t understand anything what was said.

  I loathed Raphael for obvious reasons, but I was in awe of how he kept up with the bidding. He spoke faster than any Mexican I had met so far and he easily kept up with the chaos of the shouting crowd. His gaze darted around the square, picking up on the smallest movements. He rarely looked at the slaves being auctioned, except to occasionally gesture at them.

  I had been in bad situations before. I had seen women used as property and people mistreated by other people. I had seen people die. I had watched my own hands kill. But never in my life had I seen human life disregarded so completely. The slaves in this auction were not given any respect or acknowledgment. We were property to be sold or bought and nothing else. A sick feeling snaked through my body, slowly poisoning whatever was left of my hope and goodwill.

  Not for the first time, I wondered how this had happened.

  Were we really such an evil race? Was this the fall of mankind happening overnight? Zombies entered the world and all morality and mutual respect disintegrated in the wake of the chance for some power.

  This could not be allowed to last forever. Yes, it was more important that we survive the day than manage to take out evil dictators in two countries. But one day… one day we would fight back.

  Not just against Feeders and this unholy infection.

  But against all of the evil that controlled this world and all of the awful, greedy, power-hungry monstrosities that threatened innocent lives and beautiful things. We would fight back.

  And we would win.

  I looked for the Obi Won Kenobi look alike that had promised to rescue us, but I couldn’t find him through the endless sea of dark hair and tanned skin. He either blended into the crowd really well or he had been a figment of my imagination to begin with.

  I didn’t know which answer I preferred.

  The slaves on top of the platform stood perfectly still and stoic while the crowd shouted out prices. Other than Nelson and a few others,
this was clearly a group of people Raphael wanted to get rid of. Most of the other slaves were elderly or weak. Nobody else was pregnant, but it was easy to see why I had been picked for this team. It seemed as though Raphael had thrown in a few more cut-rate slaves, just to keep from raising suspicion. But generally, we weren’t worth anything to him or his farm.

  And then there were the kids. Page and Miller had come from cages filled with other children. They fit somewhere between the ages of six or seven through early puberty. They didn’t seem attached to any of the adults with us.

  I chewed on my cracked bottom lip, thinking about where they could have possibly come from.

  And where they were going to be sent today.

  I drew blood as my subtle nibble turned into savage chewing. Another cramp tore through me, leaving me gasping for breath and struggling to stand up.

  Had that one come sooner than the last one?

  Oh, god. This could not be happening!

  It was too soon. I didn’t have an exact count of when we’d conceived and how far along we were. Sure, there were only so many times I could blame, but they were spread out over two full months. It wasn’t as though we had unlimited alone time. That made for an almost impossible due date prediction.

  I clenched my eyes shut but it wasn’t enough to keep the tears from leaking out. They trickled down my cheeks, smearing my already filthy face.

  “Haley,” Nelson growled. “Tell me what is going on.”

  I waited through the… contraction. There- I said it. The contraction.

  Holy shit. The contraction.

  I waited through the contraction, forcing my body to stay upright and my empty stomach to settle. I looked up into Nelson’s blue eyes and nearly buckled from the intensity of his gaze. His strong jaw ticked with frustration and his expression dared me to defy him.

  He would not put up with my brush offs anymore.

  Besides, I had finally reached the point where I didn’t think I could keep brushing him off. This was happening whether I wanted to believe it or not.

  “I’m… I… I’m in labor.” Just as the words left my lips, someone yanked me backwards.

  I jerked when rough hands clamped down on my shoulders and hauled me out of the pen, dragging my body over the old wooden fence. The splintered pieces dug into my back, then my side and legs. I tried to find a grip to help my body over, hoping I could use my own strength to leverage my body off the painful posts, but whoever had their hands on me didn’t wait for me.

  Finally I stood on the other side, surrounded by three armed men. I had just enough time to glance back at Nelson, feeling as though my soul was being ripped in two.

  His jaw was slightly slack and his eyes had lost focus until they found mine. As soon as our gazes collided, his entire being jerked with fiery intent, like a bowstring pulled taut. His blue eyes blazed with promise and his strong jaw tightened with resolve.

  “I will come for you,” he mouthed.

  I closed my eyes and let those words settle over me like a prayer. Emotions erupted inside of me so explosively that I could not define them. There were too many. But I could feel the undercurrent. Fear punctuated each burst of anxiety and concern, each slap of despair and hopelessness, each rumble of rage and determination.

  Nelson would save us. Nelson would come for me. Nelson wouldn’t leave Miller or Page behind.

  The guards around me manhandled me to the center of the square and tossed me on stage. I scrambled to my feet and followed the barking foreign instructions. I moved to where they pointed, not having a single clue what they said.

  As I turned to face the crowd, I learned three very important truths about myself.

  One: I was strong enough to hold back tears that threatened to drown me. They pressed against my resolve and trembled with every breath. But I held them at bay. These people would not see my fear and my pain and my desolation. They would not see how much they terrified me.

  They would not see how desperately I wished to be anywhere else right now.

  They would not see me break.

  Two: I loved myself and I wanted to live. But there were people on this earth that I loved more than myself. And that was so much more of a motivator than a simple wish to keep living. My own survival instinct only gave me so much strength. My ferocious desire to make sure Nelson, Page, Miller and my baby survived was like nothing I had ever felt before.

  I stopped being human in that moment. I became something so much more. I was sharper, I was stronger. I had more willpower than anyone that had ever lived.

  Feral with my purpose, I would not give up even now. And I would not let this horrible, death-obsessed world rip me away from my loved ones.

  Three: There was something inside of me that refused to give up. I was about to be sold into slavery. I had no idea what that slavery entailed. The options ahead of me were bleak at best. And yet, I had never felt freer. I had never felt wilder.

  My bones were made of steel and grit. My soul was insulated with independence. My spirt soared above these people. I walked on a different plane of living. I would never become what they were. I would never lose myself so completely that I sunk in a sea of death and ugliness.

  They didn’t even realize they’d stopped breathing.

  And all I could do was inhale. My oxygen was pure and clean.

  They choked on their own bile.

  I tilted my chin and squared my shoulders. I would survive this day. We would survive this day.

  Those were my exact thoughts until they dragged Page on to the stage next to me. Then every one of those precious, life-saving thoughts disintegrated. I didn’t want to watch this. Her. I couldn’t watch these monsters bid on this lovely child.

  I glanced desperately into the crowd, searching for the American that had promised to win us. I ignored the hungry, gleaming eyes of creatures that could not be described as men; their soullessness was too much. Frantic to see if he had been real after all, my eyes jumped from head to head.

  There.

  He stepped forward and I caught his eye just at the same moment he looked at me. His hood was back up, but his chin had tilted at just the right moment.

  I swallowed a thousand doubts and fears. I did not trust humanity. I did not trust anyone that would show up at a slave auction, no matter what they claimed. But I couldn’t think about that now. I had to hope in something. I had to grapple for some kind of life raft.

  I tilted my head slightly toward Page. He nodded. He would bid on her.

  He would make sure we stayed together.

  I let out a slow breath of relief and just as I started to relax, a contraction hit me so hard I doubled over in pain, screaming through my clenched teeth.

  “Ah!” I panted, my vision turning an inky black. The world around me disappeared, my swirling thoughts of fear and worry melted into screams of agony. I couldn’t think about anything else except the pain, this all-consuming pain that swallowed me whole. It burned like a forest fire from my toes, up my legs, searing through my spine and landing like a plane crash in my head.

  This was wrong. So wrong.

  To be fair, I didn’t know from experience what labor should feel like. I’d obviously never been through it before.

  But this… this could not be right.

  My fists clenched on my thighs as I dropped my head and tried to breathe through the intensity of it. I had been in pain before. I had been beaten, starved and half-dead before. But not one of those times compared to this.

  Shouting bellowed around me with words and screams I could not understand. I felt the podium shake as someone landed next to me.

  I peeled one eye open, praying I would find Nelson next to me, but it wasn’t him. Page’s hands landed on my back, trembling with concern.

  “What is wrong with you?” an American voice demanded. “Quick! Answer them! They want to know what is wrong with you or they’re going to shoot you.”

  I sucked in a rasping voice and said, “I’m dying
.”

  Chapter Three

  The next few minutes didn’t exist for me. I blacked out.

  I woke up on my back. The heavy sun was blocked out by the heads of armed men standing over me. I recognized Raphael, two of the men that had let Nelson come with me and the American stranger. They spoke in rapid Spanish while I tried not to be sick.

  My head lolled to the side and I looked out into the crowd for Nelson. Somewhere in my head I was smart enough to know I was in the wrong position to see him, but I couldn’t stop my eyes from traveling across the disgusted, bored faces of the men that stood before me.

  I wanted to slice every one of their throats.

  That was not an exaggeration.

  I felt little fingers squeeze my ankles. I struggled to look toward my feet and found Page crouched by my shoes. Her face was white with fear and her lovely blue eyes huge.

  “Haley,” she quivered.

  I slowly shook my head back and forth. I wanted to assure her that I would be okay, that everything was going to be okay, but I didn’t think that was the message I conveyed.

  Silent tears slipped down her cheeks and she had to bite down on her bottom lip to keep it from trembling.

  I felt the buildup of another contraction and I started to panic. I willed myself to breathe evenly, to think about other things, to pray for relief, but I could do nothing but bear down through the pain.

  My knees jerked to my chest and I rolled into the fetal position. I heard my squeal of agony and was surprised by the miserable sound of it.

  The pain ripped through my abdomen, tightening, tightening, tightening until I could have sworn every last one of my stomach muscles had shredded to pieces. I pushed up onto my elbow, realizing that my body was about to betray me again. I heaved and nothing came. My stomach pumped and tried to empty itself, but there was nothing in it but bile.

  If I hadn’t been so desperately dehydrated I knew I would have peed my pants. The force of my vomiting was just too strong.

  The shouting overhead grew louder. The men screamed and screamed at each other. I waited for death.