Love and Decay, Episode Ten

  Which was probably another reason I was sent into the trenches.

  I took a breath and went for his pants, while averting my eyes to anywhere besides his washboard abs, bulging biceps or the part of his body I was currently undressing. I felt his hot stare on my profile as I counted rocks along the frothy shore of the creek.

  No matter what I tried to think about, my thoughts constantly rushed back to my task. First, his button popped open and then I quickly pulled down the zipper. I yanked my hands back as if they had been burned.

  I glanced up, embarrassed and insecure at the same time. “Can you wiggle them the rest of the way down now?”

  Kane did a little booty shake to show me he was trying, but it was no use. The jeans were sticky now and stuck to his thighs.

  “Alright,” I groaned. I squatted down- ignoring the compromising position- and grabbed the pockets in order to pull them down- hard. I stared at the ground, counting leaves this time, until his pants were at his ankles and he could step out of them on his own- which he did.

  “Would you grab my glasses out of my pocket?” he asked while he stood there in black boxer briefs that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

  Hendrix was going to be so beyond pissed when he walked into this nightmare.

  “Sure.” I picked up his jeans with as little contact as I could manage and dug around in the pockets until I found his black-rimmed glasses that were smudged and as filthy as him.

  “Would you mind cleaning them off?” his voice was gentle and pleading and I realized he hadn’t been wearing them for probably the entire week.

  “Do you still have your contacts in?” I asked quickly and a bit panicked.

  He smiled genuinely at me. “No, they’ve been out since we got here. But I didn’t want something to happen to my glasses. Besides I haven’t really needed to see anything since I’ve been sitting in the same chair for a week.”

  “Yeah, but,” I started to sympathize with him and then thought better of it. “Can you see me?” I asked instead.

  “Mostly,” he grinned at me. “And what I can’t see, I can remember.”

  And just like that he sent me spiraling back into “stranger danger” territory. “What about a headache?”

  “Yeah, I have a headache,” he answered shortly.

  Deciding to move on, I bent down to the creek and began cleaning his glasses. Kane stepped into the shoreline and let the cool, clean water lap at his ankles. He started at the bracingly cold temperature when he first put his feet in, but almost immediately started to adapt to the feel of the refreshing water against his bare skin. He closed his eyes and seemed to sink into a full-bodied peace while he waited patiently for me to finish with his glasses and start on him.

  While he was distracted I took stock of his body and his various injuries. The cut on his thigh was the deepest and the angriest looking, but it was still healing nicely. His bicep cut was still deep too, but not as bad. His ribs were still bruised and I couldn’t tell if they were getting better or worse. His face was mostly healed, but his eyes were still black and blue from lack of sleep and the facial gashes were all well on their way to scabbing and probably scarring.

  I set his glasses aside when they were cleaned and pulled out a washcloth to use on him. I set about the task as clinically and methodically as I could. This was so freaking awkward.

  My hands brushed over his firm, smooth skin of his chest and taut muscles with an awareness I wanted desperately to avoid. But I couldn’t.

  It was there and I needed to admit it so I could move on with my life.

  Kane was attractive, gorgeous even. And he had this whole aura of mystery that was a little bit enticing, if I was honest with myself. But that was it.

  On the inside he was a hollow, cruel person that lost his moral compass a while ago. The moments he was anything more were just that, moments… glimpses of a person that ceased to exist when Zombies became our reality.

  And that’s when I made an executive decision. I couldn’t wash him. I couldn’t cross that line with him. He might try to run, but I had no doubt these men would shoot him dead without question.

  Pulling out my hunting knife, I grasped his hands and held them steady while I carefully snipped the tight plastic with the tip of my sharp knife. Kane gaped at me while he shook out his hands, rubbing them at the wrists, struggling to get feeling back into them.

  I took a step back and my first real breath since I’d been with Kane in his cell. “I’m leaving this up to you,” I announced gesturing at the creek.

  The guards were far enough away that we weren’t exactly in ear shot, but all it would take was one fast scream from me and they would be here immediately.

  “You trust me?” he gaped.

  “No,” I answered honestly. “But I know you’d rather be here with me then out in those woods by yourself, without clothes and without a weapon.”

  His mouth broke into a boyish grin and he admitted, “You’re right about that.”

  “Besides, your dad will be here in two days to take you back home. You don’t want to miss out on that opportunity.”

  His smile faltered and his eyes flickered up to mine at the same time he walked deeper into the water. The creek came up to about mid-thigh on him and the first thing he did was sink down and submerge his entire body into the lolling current. He popped back out of the water, running a hand through his hair, that startling smile back in place on his chiseled face.

  “My dad is coming here?” he asked in true confusion.

  “I guess; Gage has some annual meeting with him?”

  “Oh, right,” Kane’s brow furrowed but he caught the small bottle of shampoo when I tossed it to him. He proceeded to wash his hair and face, running his hands over his chest and arms and…. lower. I averted my eyes and decided that watching the small white rapids rush over protruding rocks and branches along the shore was the single most interesting thing I’d ever seen. “What are you going to do when he comes?”

  Here was my chance to lie to him, to tell him exactly what we weren’t going to be doing. “Oh, we won’t be here.” I worked to sound as causal as possible. I felt the power of his gaze before I even chanced a look his direction.

  “Where will you be?” His words were hard stone and he stopped being gentle with his body.

  “Anywhere but here,” I whispered. He stepped toward me and I rushed to justify my lie. “You can’t expect me to stay, Kane. There is nothing between us. And we have to get Miller and Tyler out of here before your dad shows up. This was never permanent. We weren’t keeping you for a pet. You were always going back home.”

  “Reagan, I never planned to stay with you and your merry band of misfits. I always planned to go back home.” He stepped out of the water and ran a thin towel quickly over his body before I had a chance to look away.

  Ok, I probably had a chance or two to look away. Ahem.

  He was yanking on his clothes again before I could dress his wounds. “Wait, I need to put something on your injuries!”

  “Forget it,” he growled with a muffled voice while he hunted for the opening of his long sleeved gray Polo. “I’ll be home in two days where I can get real medical attention. I’ll be fine.”

  “You won’t be…”

  “Reagan, stop. I don’t want to talk about my injuries right now.” He finally figured out his shirt and yanked it on. His jeans were next and he hopped into them while trying to keep his muddy feet from ruining them. I watched him, rapt with his frustrated, jerky movements and angry scowl. He was kind of…. adorable- in that scary, serial killer way. He pulled up the legs of his jeans and then went about re-washing his feet, drying them one at a time and dressing them carefully with socks and his bloody black boots.

  Finally, he stood back up and faced me.

  His pants were still undone.

  Seriously?

  But before I could point that out, he was angrily working at the five-button fly and then thrusting his hand at m
e.

  “What?” I couldn’t imagine what he wanted from me like this.

  “My glasses,” he demanded.

  Oh, those.

  I placed them in his hand and then watched as he put them on and then worked the deodorant, brush and toothbrush via fresh water stream. He shoved everything back into the backpack and put it on without thinking.

  “You knew this was coming,” I huffed irrationally. “You always knew I would leave you.”

  “Oh, did I?” He sounded so petulant I could hardly take him seriously.

  Except that he was really pissing me off!

  “Yes!” I argued. “You have got to get over me! I’m not some…”

  But before I could make my point, he had slapped a hand over my mouth and slammed me against his chest.

  Panic immediately infused every cell in my body and I began fighting blindly against him. He rasped a harsh “Shh” against my ear and then pointed to what held his attention.

  Feeders. Two of them. Stumbling through the forest blindly and without much coordination. I reached for my gun and clicked off the safety. Kane let me go, so I could lift my shooting arm and point it in the direction of the approaching threat.

  One of the guards saw them first and through the sight of his high-tech rifle, aimed, fired, killed. I let out the breath I’d been holding and then watched everything I thought I knew about Feeders crumble and disintegrate in front of me.

  The second Zombie let out a shrill, superhuman shriek of either warning or mourning, I couldn’t tell. But it happened as soon as his friend hit the earth now lifeless and empty. The scream pierced through the quiet air as loud as any siren I had ever heard. The hellish sound didn’t go on for long though when a second guard pulled the trigger and put the miserable creature out of its painful existence. It too, dropped to the ground with an empty thud.

  And then from everywhere the shrill shriek that had been cut short was answered. In every direction echoing cries resounded in the air, sending birds over the entire state of Oklahoma skyrocketing out of their nests and into the air in search of safer homes.

  I doubled over and covered my ears against the sharpness of sound. Against instinct, my eyes slammed shut and I tried not to whimper from the ferocity of what had to be at least fifty Feeders, if not more. And they were all close by.

  When the banshee screams finally died down another sound filled their place- this one not quite as ear-piercing, but if anything a million times more terrifying. Rustling.

  Rustling so loud from the rushing movement it rivaled the shrieks. At the same time I figured out what the rustling was from- the movement of all those Feeders rushing toward us at a full sprint- Kane started shouting at me to run.

  “We can’t leave the guards!” I yelled back, glancing desperately around for the men that had been with us just moments before.

  Whatever hope had miraculously survived the last two years of hell in my life died out the moment I spotted them. I would have crumpled to the floor in defeat if it hadn’t been for Kane’s strong hands catching me under my arms. He hefted me to my feet and shook me out just as the first guard met two Feeders he couldn’t hit. They attacked him with a desperate hunger, tackling him to the ground in less than a second. They’d bit into him before I could take my next breath.

  The second guard didn’t even bother to stick around. He took off for the safety of the complex walls as fast as he could. I distantly wondered if he was going for help or just trying to get out of here alive. It didn’t matter- none of us would live through this.

  The third guard had better luck and was able to put two of them down before they started to close in on him. He was shouting something at us, waving his arms for us to run, but I was too paralyzed by shock and disillusionment to listen to him.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  This didn’t happen to me.

  I was stronger than this.

  I was supposed to live.

  I was supposed to survive.

  Kane was done watching the horror film happen in front of us and he was really over waiting for me to pull it together. He swooped me up into his arms and took off running in the opposite direction than the complex.

  Finally, some sense came back to me and I started panicking all over again. “What are you doing? Kane we have to go back! We have to help that guy! We have to get back to the complex!”

  “Reagan,” he explained rather patiently considering the circumstances. “Saving that guy is a suicide mission and the complex is completely blocked by about seventy Feeders. This is the only option for us right now.”

  “No,” I argued stubbornly as I bounced along in his arms. “I can’t go with you, Kane; even if you are trying to save our lives. I have to get back there; I have to get back to Hendrix.”

  He let out a feral curse and adjusted me roughly in his arms. “It’s more important that Hendrix doesn’t have to shoot you in the head when you get back to him than proving a point right now, Reagan. Get over yourself for five goddamn seconds and understand that we are really in trouble here.”

  I happened to look behind him just at that moment and noticed for the first time we were being pursued.

  Shit.

  Shit. Shit. Shit.

  There were only a bazillion Feeders behind us and zero places for us to go if we kept running further into the freaking forest. Where was my handheld video camera to capture this magic? Blair Witch Project was so old news after I filmed Kane and me getting our faces eaten off by the fastest, most rabid pack of Zombies I’d ever seen before.

  “Put me down!” I demanded.

  “No,” Kane panted stubbornly.

  But that was the thing. I wasn’t being stubborn. For once, when it came to Kane, I was being generous. I knew I was slowing him down.

  “Put me down, I promise I’ll stay with you,” I bargained quickly. He hesitated so I threw out, “They’re going to catch up, Kane! I will stay with you no matter what, but I need you to trust me.”

  He ground out a few more curse words, but did drop me to my feet with no warning. When I started to stumble, Kane caught me easily and then pulled me with him as we moved straight into a run.

  There were small rock structures up ahead and I hoped I’d been right when I assumed that this was what Gage was referring to when he described the cliff walls, the cave and the bug-out bunker.

  Please. Please. Please let this be the right direction!

  Because if it wasn’t I was so going to die today and Hendrix wasn’t even going to be able to find my body. There would be nobody to tell him I’d become Zombie food in the middle of an Oklahoma forest! No funeral in memory of my short, non-important. I wasn’t even going to get to hear the L word from a boy I actually felt the same about!

  This sucked!

  I raced toward the bluffs, hoping against all hope I could find the bunker Gage told us about just an hour ago. Then all I had to do was hold out until Hendrix came looking for me.

  “Where are you going, Reagan?” Kane demanded as he adjusted his course to keep up with me.

  “To safety,” I threw out casually.

  “And where’s that?”

  “That way!” I shouted back with an outstretched arm. “There’s a bunker, uh, somewhere back there.”

  “How do you know?” he demanded tersely while I pushed my body harder to stay ahead of the Zombies and keep up with his long legs. .

  “I saw it,” I struggled to lie while running. “From back there!”

  “You’re such a liar.” He called my bluff.

  “No more questions!” I shouted over the sound of moaning and clumsy but quick feet chasing us. “Just trust me!”

  “And what are we going to if this place really does exist?” He questioned while grabbing my arm to steady me just as I tripped over an above-ground root.

  “Stay there until someone comes to find us.” I became absolutely serious- that was our only

  option at this point. I had one gun with one cli
p that held ten bullets, a hunting knife and a pocket knife. And Kane had nothing. To say we were ill-prepared didn’t even begin to cover the spectrum of just how under-armed we truly were. Hiding out with Kane didn’t exactly make this the best day of my life, but not dying helped improve my perspective.

  “And if help doesn’t come?”

  I winced, because it was a valid question, “Then at least we have each other.”

  Total sarcasm on my part, but by Kane’s determined nod of approval I realized the blatant

  cynicism was completely lost on him.

  Chapter Four

  So far, Oklahoma equaled a lot of running. But if I had to choose, I’d pick smooth highway over uneven forest any day. Last week we’d run from a horde of Zombies but managed to out run them thanks to flat ground and armed guards waiting for us.

  Kane and I had neither of those things- plus he was still limping from his thigh injury, he struggled to breathe because of bruised or cracked ribs and he had no weapons.

  Still he was faster than me.

  The bastard.

  And he seemed to have better balance than me since I kept tripping over branches littering the forest floor or roots protruding from the soft ground. The trees were tall here, bare on their wide trunks until the high canopy of leaves that blocked out the heat of the sun.

  The trees were planted close together, making our high-octane run very dangerous. Squeezing between them at a sprinter’s pace was not exactly easy; and all I could imagine was bouncing off a tree trunk straight into the open arms of a Feeder.

  I swear I could feel them breathing down my neck. I had no idea how many there were, or if they simply needed to reach out to touch me; but it didn’t matter because I was not about to die like this.

  I refused.

  And I wasn’t going to let Kane die like this either.

  I gripped my gun tighter, finding some comfort in the weight and feel of the weapon in my capable hands. It felt more natural to run while holding a gun than it had a week ago. I supposed necessity and repetitive circumstances had something to do with that. The metal warmed against my hot palm, and my finger nervously slipped over the safety just to double check and then to the trigger where it rubbed back and forth anxiously waiting to use it.