Chapter Three

 

Kane’s face was shadowed in this light. I couldn’t make out his expression or his intentions. He was a mystery to me now more than ever before.

What I did understand perfectly clear, was the cold metal of his gun now pressed into my abdomen.

“That’s not even a nice place to shoot someone,” I scolded him. “It would take me forever to bleed out!”

He choked on something that sounded almost like a laugh. “I’m not trying to be nice!”

Okay this was escalating quickly. “How about instead of killing me, we talk this through. You don’t really want to kill me. I know that you don’t.”

“How do you know what I want?”

Well, this part was obvious. “Because, Kane, you’re just like me. We’re killers. We kill when it’s necessary. And we kill to stay alive. If you wanted me dead, you would have shot me the second you walked in this room.”

“Not true,” he argued. “I’m still debating whether this will work for me or against me.”

“Keeping me alive? For you. This will definitely work for you.”

He made a disbelieving sound in the back of his throat. “You really expect me to believe that if I let you live, you’re going to work with me to get Reagan to come live with me?”

“God, that’s so sexist.”

“Excuse me?”

“Why does she have to come live with you? Why can’t you give up your life to go live with her? Why is your life so much more important than hers? Huh? She’s got a lot of things going on too, okay. She runs a school now. Plus… other things. She’s got this whole life over there and you want her to uproot everything and come move into your freaky Children of the Corn village? No. Uh-uh. This might be the end of the world, but that’s where you’re missing the point. The end of the world, welcome to women’s liberation, bitch.”

He made no sound for a very long time. In fact, so long I wondered if my monologue had put him to sleep.

Eventually he cleared his throat and let out a low chuckle. The sound rumbled through his chest and made him sound like a completely different person. I had no good feelings for Kane whatsoever… like my feelings were worse than bad. They were worse than hatred and loathing and disgust. They were the very worst thing that anything could be. That’s how much I hated him. That being said… when he laughed like that, when he let himself relax a little and show whatever was left of his humanity… I got it. I understood the, er, big deal… Reagan’s deal.

But that was the last concession she was getting from me! This guy was so bonkers.

“If you’re finished, I’ll remind you that she has to come live with me because I shot Hendrix. I am having a hard time believing that you and your merry band of alpha assholes are going to welcome me with open arms.”

He had a point. “You may have a point.”

“Thank you.”

“You don’t stand a chance anyway. You have to know this. She loves Hendrix. They’re perfect for each other.”

I felt his entire demeanor change. He had started to relax around me but I put my foot in my mouth… big time.

Those might possibly be my dying words. Which sucked! I wanted the last thing I ever said to be about me, and the greatness that is me. Not Reagan! Of course, I loved the girl. And if she were here, I would be totally fine with like a last, “I love you, girl.” But sticking up for her relationship with Hendrix was not something to lose one’s life over.

Why didn’t I know when to keep my mouth shut?

It was like I had been born without the part of the brain that filtered thoughts for the purpose of survival.

“You know nothing about Reagan and me. You get your facts from her. You get your truth from her. And let me tell you how honest she is with you when I’m not around. She’s not. We have something between us. And she can lie to you and she can lie to Hendrix and whoever else she wants to goddamn lie to. But I know the truth. And I’m not delusional. I’m not crazy. Not about this.”

I had to fight not to believe him. His tone, his body language, the conviction that wrapped around each one of his words tried their hardest to persuade me to consider him. But I knew Reagan. I had known her almost my entire life. We had been through two years of living hell together. We had saved each other’s lives on numerous occasions. She was the very best friend a human being was capable of having. I knew that she didn’t feel for Kane what he felt for her.

I knew that.

But what if she felt something? Had she been leading him on? Had she been fueling his crazed desire for her and pushing him toward insane possession?

I wanted to say no. Except he was standing across from me telling me a different story, a story he believed with everything in him.

She had tried to kill him, though. She had stabbed him and shot him and pushed him out of a moving car.

That sent a pretty strong message, didn’t it?

Gosh, thank God, for Nelson. I couldn’t live with Reagan’s relational drama. Holy hell, this girl lived in a soap opera.

The Last Days of Our Lives.

General Apocalypse.

The Brains and the Beautiful.

All My Zombies.

One Life to Kill.

Had enough?

Okay, one more.

The Young and the Undead.

And that ladies and gentlemen are the soap operas of the Apocalypse. You’re welcome.

Kane stood there waiting for a reply. Oops.

“Okay, fine. I can admit that she maybe she hasn’t been entirely truthful with me. Possibly there are feelings involved that I neither see nor understand. However, kidnapping her and dragging her back to your cave is not the way to get her to declare her feelings for you! It’s probably the worst thing you can do for your, er, relationship with her.”

Kane absorbed that for a minute and said, “I guess we’ll find out.”

That sounded like something I should investigate, except right then a shadow fell over the half-window I’d used as an entrance and clouded us into complete darkness. A second later, an arm shoved through the window pane. The entire wooden frame pushed back on its hinges, dislodging it completely from its track.

Nelson followed the dangling window and managed to launch himself at Kane. He hit Kane right in the center of his chest and slammed him against the door with a resounding crash. Kane’s head slammed back into the wood and when he slid down the door a thick smear of blood followed him. His gun clattered to the tiled floor and slid under the shelving unit.

Nelson and Kane continued to wrestle around on the floor, knocking things over in their struggle and in general being loud as all hell. I attempted to shush them while also managing to stay out of the way of their flailing appendages.

I accomplished neither.

I pointed my gun at the general area of where I thought Kane’s head might be, but it was useless. They were too tangled for me to get a clear shot. I thought about shooting anyway… but probably Nelson would not be so understanding if I accidentally shot him.

No matter how much he loved me.

The sound of fist hitting flesh filled the spaces between their grunts of discomfort and outright cries of agony. Someone’s head slammed back against the hard floor and the sickening smack of skull against hard tile reverberated to my bones.

“Nelson?” I gasped, but of course he didn’t answer. He kept fighting though, so even if it was his head, he couldn’t be that hurt…

A shadow darkened the window again and I looked up in time to see half of Vaughan’s body appear. He gripped the window ledge with his super-strong hands and pulled himself in the building by sheer force of will.

Holy shit.

Where was Tyler? She should be watching this! He was like the freaking Hulk!

I watched him, wondering if I could help somehow? No. He had this. He definitely had this.

When he had pulled himself up far enough that his feet could get some leverage, he propelled his body through the small space. He literally landed on the floor and threw himself directly into the fray.

Kane had been holding his own against Nelson, but he didn’t stand a chance against two Parkers. Nelson went for his chest again and wrapped his arms around Kane’s. Nelson then body slammed him against the tiled floor. I heard Kane’s head whack against the floor once and Vaughan’s fist connect with the front of his face. It was the hardest, most powerful punch I had ever seen thrown in my life.

Kane fell limp in Nelson’s arms, completely unconscious.

Also, possibly in a coma.

But probably not. Kane was much like a cockroach. This wouldn’t be enough to put him out of commission.

Nelson and Vaughan jumped to their feet. Both of them were panting heavily and sweating. Nelson turned to face me. The broken window let in more light than before and the sunlight streaked across his face, only revealing his eyes.

They were practically glowing in the bright sunlight; their blue color brightened with all his exercise and the adrenaline that pumped through his blood at the speed of light.

He looked me over and walked slowly to me.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he accused.

“Why?”

He slid his arms around me as if I was a breakable thing and he had to treat me with care. His hands wrapped around my waist and drew me tightly against his chest. His nose drew a line down my face from my temple to my jaw.

“We had to hide for a few minutes and when we finally came back, we could hear you in here with him. I thought… I thought… I didn’t know what he was going to do to you.” His kiss on my lips was insistent and needy. His tongue played with mine, his teeth scraped against my bottom lip. He tasted me, savored me, and worshipped me just to make sure I was still with him. I didn’t remember how afraid I was for him too before Kane interrupted me until now.

I clung to him. I let him have his way with my mouth even though this was the very worst place to be making out.

By the time he pulled back, my breathing had accelerated and my pulse pounded frantically beneath my skin.

“Let’s get this over with and go home.” He kissed my nose and I thought there had never been a better idea.

“You’re a problem solver,” I told him.

“Okay, let’s go,” Vaughan ordered.

I looked down, over Nelson’s shoulder and found Kane all tied up and gagged to the folding chair with bright yellow rope that must have been sitting on the shelves.

When did that happen?

Oh, when Nelson and I were getting reacquainted with our base hormones.

I used the toe of my shoe to lift Kane’s foot by the tip of his boot and I let it flop back down. He didn’t react in any way. “He’s out for good, isn’t he?”

“You sound disappointed,” Vaughan accused me in disbelief.

“It’s just that right before you guys barged in the room and saved the day, he said something that didn’t sit right with me. I wanted to ask him about it.”

“You were going to ask him about it?” Nelson chuckled. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to be very forthcoming with information.”

It was my turn to laugh. “Well, I was going to give him an incentive to tell me the truth! Duh.”

“What kind of incentive?” Vaughan asked sounding mildly amused.

“I was going to promise not to shoot him in the balls.”

“Duh,” Nelson taunted Vaughan. “You’ll have to make him a eunuch another day, Hales. It’s time to go.”

I drew out my gun. “Doesn’t anybody else think we should kill him right now? Anybody? He’s all… just lying there and my gun is bored. I’m thinking it might be a good idea if we ended this craziness now before he does something that makes us regret not taking this opportunity.”

Vaughan groaned. “Believe me; he would be bleeding out right now if it was up to me.”

“Why isn’t it up to you?”

“Hendrix made us promise to leave Kane for him. He wants the honor,” Nelson explained.

I looked down at the tightly-tied Kane. “Hendrix is a lucky guy.”

“If he gets the opportunity,” Vaughan drawled. “Like you said, as long as Kane doesn’t make us regret this moment.”

We fell silent after that and Vaughan moved to the door. He turned the handle exactly like I’d been trying to, quietly, stealthily and successfully.

With weapons drawn and trigger fingers readied, we filed into the dim hallway.

This part of the school building was out of the way. We walked straight into an empty corridor with empty lockers. It wasn’t until we followed Tyler’s game plan down a hallway and around the corner that we ran into the trophy cases of Feeders lined up along either wall.

They had been moaning maybe a little absentmindedly until we rounded the corner, and our fresh, fleshy smell created a frenzy of Feeder activity. We stayed exactly in the middle of the wide hallway while their greedy, decomposing hands grabbed for us.

Reagan had been right; there was no smell.

And while mentally I had been prepared for that, it still seemed strange. But these weren’t normal Zombies either. Their arms were almost too heavy for their weakened states to lift. Their putrefying skin sagged off their exposed limbs in pasty, peeling flakes. Their stomachs were emaciated and hollow, pressed against the steel bars so tightly that most of them had broken their ribs in an attempt to get to their next meal.

They were disgusting on a good day.

This day made me want to take them all home with me and turn them into housebroken pets.

Or, more rationally, unload clip after clip into their rotting skulls so that they could have some deserved peace.

And that was the thing, they didn’t deserve this. Not even when they were the worst kind of creature on the planet. Not even because they could infect every last one of us until Earth was overpopulated with Zombies and meal plan consistently served brains.

They didn’t deserve this because we didn’t deserve this.

They were once people. They were once rational, thinking, intelligent human beings capable of kindness, goodness and love.

They deserved peace.

They deserved to leave this ugly world and the filthy, decomposing body they’d moldered into.

They deserved death.

And we should be able to give that to them. Not stoop to their brainless level and lock them away for showmanship.

Ugh.

They seemed to agree with my thoughts because as we moved by them they rattled their bars and snapped their slime-covered teeth at us.

Okay, maybe that wasn’t exactly a show of solidarity.

At any rate, the equally hell-bound humans that inhabited this third ring of hell were going to hear us coming if these Feeders didn’t shut up.

We turned the corner and the Feeders lining this corridor reacted in a wave of motion. The clamoring started close to us and woke up each segment of Zombies all the way to the end of the hall.

We waited at the corner for someone to appear or check out the disorderliness. We could see the doors to the band room from here. They were a few yards down the hallway.

After a few minutes and when the Zombies didn’t calm down someone stepped out of that room and waved a semi-automatic rifle around. The angry looking man, dressed in all black, watched the hallway for a minute, tilted his ear toward the other end of the corridor, cursed the Zombies and went back inside.

“We’re going to have to take out whoever is in the room,” Vaughan whispered.

“Do you think Tyler and Gage are in there?” I squinted down to the end of the hallway. A sliver of light split up the darkness but that was the only thing I could make out. There were lanterns along the way, but their radius of visibility didn’t reach far enough for me to discern anything. Other sounds mixed in with all the Zombie moaning. Human screaming perhaps?

It was too noisy. I couldn’t hear anything.

“She said she would keep them out of there.” Nelson sounded as if he were convincing himself as much as me.

Vaughan looked back at us. “It’s her one job. She’d better keep them out of there.”

I shrugged. He was right. She promised that she could. The whole plan hinged on whether or not she could keep most of these people at the front of the building. That didn’t disguise the obvious fact that Vaughan was very worried about her and covering it with his surly attitude.

“She thought maybe four or five would stay behind,” Vaughan continued. “Try not to kill them.”

His last words really hit me hard. This had been routine before. This had been… maybe a little more difficult than slaughtering a bunch of mindless Zombies, but we had a goal and we were working toward it.

With Vaughan’s reminders that these were still men, men that we might have to kill, lives we would have to end… the entire mission took on a new light.

I didn’t know if I could kill another human being. I didn’t know if I had the capacity to pull the trigger and end a life. I was barely morally aligned with killing Feeders and that was only because I thought I was doing them a favor.

My hands felt shaky and clumsy with the thought of it.

Nelson moved to the door and Vaughan counted off…

I guess I was about to find out.

The next few minutes happened in a blur of motion. I couldn’t quite grasp one clear picture; rather they all ran together in muted colors and pops of sound.

There were three armed men inside the tiered room and five civilians. Vaughan dove at the closest guy, tackling him back into a wooden desk in the corner. Behind the desk was one of the civilians who jumped on Vaughan as soon he landed.

Nelson flew in the opposite direction and went for the other guy’s legs. He managed to tackle him to the ground and the guy’s gun went flying. That left the third guy for me.

I raised my gun and pointed at his head.

He did the same.

There was no way I could overpower him by tackling him, or using any kind of physical force. The guy had at least seventy-five pounds on me. Even though the little weight I did carry was tightly packed with muscle, I needed to be rational over enthusiastic. I didn’t have much of an option other than this stand-off.

Out of my peripheral vision I could watch the rest of the action. All of the rapid movement and tension might freak other people out, but this was where my overactive brain came in handy. It absorbed everything, from the bystanders to the good punch Vaughan just gave his guy in the now-broken nose. I filed everything into appropriate categories and analyzed the next move each of us should make.

“Don’t take another step or I will shoot him in the jugular,” I threatened a seventy-something old man in worn overalls and a ratty, plaid button-down. His bald head shined in the glow of the many candles and the expression on his face told me everything I needed to know.

He jumped when he realized I noticed him, although how in the world he thought I could miss his trollish body was beyond me. “You’re not going to shoot nobody, Darling,” the toothless man crooned in a thick southern drawl.

I moved my gun up and down in a straight line along the chest path of the guy in front of me. “Do you believe I’m not going to shoot you?”

At that exact moment and as if to accentuate my point, Nelson hit his guy in the face so hard he pummeled back three feet. His body lay unmoving and limp.

Nelson hopped to his feet, pulled out his weapon and had it cocked and ready at the back of my guy’s head. “Answer the question. Do you believe she’s not going to shoot you?”

The guy held his gun steady. I held my gun steady. Nelson held his gun steady.

The old farmer… did not stay steady.

He jumped down the tiered band steps, flying farther than any man that size should be able to. Nelson jumped backwards but the old man caught his leg as he landed on his rotund belly. Nelson’s arms flailed in the air but he was going down, he couldn’t catch himself at that point.

I wanted to watch and make sure he held onto his gun but the man in front of me jerked his shoulder and knew that I couldn’t.

Nelson had managed to hit the bad guy I was in a stand-off with when he swung his arms wide and knocked the guy off balance. He was righted by now and pulling the trigger. I dropped to the floor on a very, very lucky guess that he was aiming for my chest or head and felt the air whoosh over my head.

Before the bullet could find purchase behind me or he could fire another shot, I pulled my trigger and hit him once in the knee cap. Bang.

The room was dimly lit with only candles and a lantern to provide light, but I still saw the bone, cartilage and muscle explode out of his jeans. He dropped to his other knee, unable to support his body weight anymore and lifted his gun for round-two.

He was a trooper.

I prepared myself mentally to go for his shoulder.

It turned out that I wasn’t ready to kill someone. Critically maim them, sure, no problem. But I couldn’t be directly responsible for their death.

My bullet never left my weapon though. Another shot rang out from behind him and blood and flesh ruptured from the back of his head. I crouched there, staring at the man who fell to the side completely devoid of life.

Blood splatter misted over my hands and clothes. My brain stopped processing things at super-speed, stopped the ability to make sense of things completely.

I slowly stood up as an eerie silence settled on the room. The gun shots had been loud, an eruption of blasting sound in my ears. Now there was just the silence after the storm.

Nelson crawled to his feet, away from the old man who clutched at his chest and wheezed short breaths in and out of his gaping mouth. We stared down at the old man, both of us unsure what to do or how to act.

He was an enemy that had tried to get us killed. But he was also a human being.

“Heart attack,” I said dumbly. “I mean, it looks like a heart attack.”

Vaughan had finally subdued his guy and the civilian; I didn’t know if either was by fist or by bullet. In my racing head I couldn’t remember if there had been more than those three gunshots. It seemed like maybe that was a possibility but all I could do now was thank God that it hadn’t been Vaughan.

“Does anyone know CPR?” I asked the stunned onlookers; three of them remained. Nobody replied. I had to shout my question over the increased roaring from the Feeders in the hall. Their bloodthirsty moaning had peaked to a shrieking volume with all this bloodshed in here and I knew we only had a minute before Matthias and his men came to investigate.

“Miller’s supposed to be back there,” I pointed to a hallway that led off the front of the room. Nelson looked back and forth between Vaughan and me helplessly. “Go with him,” I ordered. “And hurry. If no one’s back there then come back to me and let Vaughan handle it.”

Nelson nodded but his expression seemed a little concerned. Probably for good reason.

“None of you know CPR?” I threw my hands up helplessly. I knew the basics. It had been three years since I took a course, but I could probably figure it out. Except… I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to touch that guy. I didn’t want to offer him a second chance when he had been so willing to sabotage me.

A female hand rose timidly from a few rows up. A fragile creature walked down the elongated steps with as much fear as I felt. She couldn’t have been much older than me with light hair and big eyes. The finer details of her features were lost in the candlelight, but I knew that she was very pretty.

“I know CPR,” she repeated.

“Can you help him?”

She nodded once and slinked to her knees with her back facing the remaining civilians. Only two other men remained and they were as old as the man on the floor having a heart attack. They didn’t look in any hurry to try the same stunt he pulled.

She stretched out her arms and clasped them together with her fingers interlocked and her open palm pressing into the back of her other hand. I watched her ready herself while the dying man gasped for breath and cringed in pain.

She settled her hands over his mouth, squeezed his nose shut with two of her fingers and held tightly while he flopped around.

I squatted in front of her. I thought maybe she was confused.

That was the opposite of CPR.

“Um, Sweetie, that’s not how you save a life,” I spoke as low as I could over the din of raucous Feeders.

“I know that,” she panted when the effort to keep the man still took some strength on her part. Her haunted eyes flashed up to mine and I saw something I hoped to never experience in my life. “He owns me,” she explained. “He owns me. And he beats me. And he… No matter how hard I fight him, he…”

I put my hand on the top of her head, giving an awkward blessing. She didn’t have to say anything more. I got it.

“Won’t Matthias just give you to someone else?” My words were as gentle as they could be but the cruel truth of them still cut deep.

She flinched but kept her hands in place. The heart-attack victim settled, his jerking and thrashing stopped altogether. I kept my gun pointed at the other civilians.

Facts. These were facts.

I needed to focus on facts.

My head reeled and my spirit revolted at the idea of all this evil… all this death… at this poor girl who lived an abused and traumatic life. My very soul felt sick.

So I made everything into a statistic and filed it neatly away.

I would deal with the emotional distress later. Much, much later.

“You can come with us,” I promised her. “If you want out, you can come with us.”

“Do you live on the road?” A new fear lit her big eyes when she looked back at me; this one lived nearer to the surface. This was the fear that kept her here, kept her with a man three times her age that would rape her and beat her.

I shook my head quickly. “We have a compound. We’re safe.”

She looked uncertainly over her shoulder at the men watching us intently. “Clothes? This is all I have.”

“We have everything,” I promised. The sound of glass shattering ricocheted through the large room and shook my intentions a little. “But you need to know, that if you betray us… if you defect and come back here or sell information to Matthias or Kane ever again… we will kill you.”

She blanched but didn’t argue.

I couldn’t tell if I was actually saving her or if I was inviting trouble to the compound. So, I stood up and towered over her. In my meanest, most serious voice I repeated, “I meant that. We will kill you.”

“O-o-o-okay,” she stuttered.

Then I felt bad. So I did what any normal, unhinged, Batman-like girl would do, I smiled at her. “You’ll love it there. I promise no one will beat you. And we’ll teach you how to shoot a gun so you’ll be able to deal with your… other problems. Should they ever arise again.”

“Thank you,” she told me with glossy eyes.

Nelson and Vaughan emerged from the hallway carrying an unconscious and shirtless Miller. “Don’t thank me yet. We still have to get out of this place.”