Chapter One

862 days after initial infection

 

Page giggled and pointed at me. “Your butt landed first!”

“No way,” I argued. “That time I was completely flat. I felt it!”

She shook her head. “Nu-uh! Nothing but butt!”

I joined her infectious laughter. “Nothing but butt?” I poked her in the side. “Fine, you try it.”

Her face grew serious and she lifted her chin. “No problem!”

I saw her competitiveness come to life and couldn’t help but smile. “Oh, good grief. You are definitely a Parker.”

She grinned at me and then climbed up to the arm of the couch. She put her feet together and steadied out so that she didn’t wobble and fall before it was time. Her arms crossed over her chest and then she closed her eyes and fell back dramatically onto the couch. The cushions sagged beneath her before bouncing her wildly.

She opened her eyes and looked up at me through a curtain of wild hair. “Well? Did I fall back completely straight?”

I shook my head, pretending to be disappointed. “Not even close. Sorry, Babe.”

“Nothing but butt?” she smiled at me.

“Definitely, nothing but butt.”

She pulled herself up and scrambled to the couch arm again. We had been playing this game for at least an hour but neither of us was able to fall straight back.

It was oddly frustrating in that way when you have nothing else to think about or do and you obsess over the smallest things just before you have a nervous breakdown and lose your mind completely.

Well, that was where I was standing at the moment.

I really hoped Page’s mental state was a little more intact than mine.

I had never been more bored in my entire life. I suspected that Kane’s true intentions were more malicious than he originally let on.

He planned to kill me.

Death by staring at wood-paneled walls until my brain spontaneously exploded.

He was a criminal mastermind.

Page fell back and bounced right off the couch. Her elbow hit the coffee table on the way and she howled in pain.

I dropped down to my knees and tried not to laugh. “Are you alright?”

She groaned. “No, I think I died.”

This time I did laugh. “You didn’t die. Sorry, Sweets.”

She opened her eyes and laughed. “Darn.”

I pushed her knee playfully. “Yeah, right! If you go, it’s only a matter of days before I join you!” Her pretty brow line furrowed in confusion, so I helped her out. “Your brothers would murder me if something happened to you!”

She laughed some more and relaxed back onto the hardwood floor. “They love us a lot, don’t they?”

My heart felt melty and sticky in my chest and tears pooled along my lower lashes. “Yes, they do.”

The door to the outside opened and Kane walked inside. His body was strapped with a gun across his back, multiple knives in a belt around his waist and another AK in his hands. He looked like Rambo.

If Rambo had poor eyesight and stupidly sexy glasses.

He brought a plethora of smells with him; Zombie decay and smoke from a recent fire were the strongest, but I imagined sweat mingled with dead leaves and blood added to his end-of-the-world-cologne. His skin was painted with almost-black blood and his too-long hair was slick with sweat.

“Wouldn’t your dad be proud,” I taunted him viciously. “You finally killed something.”

His face split into a wide grin. “She’s bitter today.”

I pulled myself up and crossed my arms, so ready for this battle. “I haven’t done an official study on this, so don’t quote me, but recent research shows that when a female is kidnapped and held against her will she becomes very bitter. And hateful. And angry. And vengeful. And-”

“I get the picture,” he interrupted. He turned around and did up all the latches on the door, then walked through the living room to the kitchen.

I followed him. It was hard to love an ugly person, and I had decided somewhere in the last forty-eight hours that I could be as ugly as I needed to be for Kane’s obsession to fizzle out.

The last two years had been excruciatingly painful for me. I’d fought more obstacles and enemies than I knew were humanly possible to face and still maintain your sanity.

Maybe I didn’t even have that. Maybe I was just as crazy as Kane.

But as hard as I’d struggled to keep my soundness of mind, I’d fought equally hard to keep my humanity. Daily I battled bitterness, despair and anger. I didn’t have the luxury for the five stages of grief and when my parents died unfairly and unexpectedly, I’d been forced to move on and focus on the future. They weren’t my only heartache along the way either. With each new horror, with each new difficulty and nightmarish situation, I’d held onto my soul with every ounce of strength I could muster.

That didn’t mean those negative feelings didn’t stay with me, lurking just beneath the façade of goodness I kept up for those I loved.

Those feelings were there, burning with the heat of the sun, boiling lava building inside of me, an emotional fire so hot it would turn anything it touched to ash.

If Kane wanted to play these games, he could have it all.

He could have the worst of me.

Then we would see how determined he was to go through the work to keep me.

He walked to a cupboard and pulled out a bottle of water. “Thirsty?” He held one out to me and quirked a brow.

I shook my head and he shrugged. Untwisting the cap, he put the bottle to his lips and downed the entire contents in one long pull. His throat worked up and down as he swallowed gulp after gulp. A stray drop of water trickled from the corner of his mouth and ran down his now-clean-shaven face and along the bumps of his angled neck.

He sucked in a big breath of air when the bottle turned empty and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth in a final display of savagery.

It was the most barbaric I had ever seen him behave.

Which seemed strange at first. He abducted me. Twice. We had fought physically, and I’d seen him kill.

Yet still, he wasn’t this wild or uninhibited. He was collected. He was controlled.

This gesture seemed so out of character for him that I actually lost the entire speech I had prepared.

“My mom will start dinner soon,” he told me. Apparently, he didn’t find it strange that I was standing in the middle of the kitchen watching him drink water.

“I’m not helping her,” I declared.

“I didn’t ask you to.”

“Are you really so helpless that you need a woman around at all times to care for your most basic needs?”

He let out a bark of laughter and turned so that I could have his full attention. “Reagan, I can take care of myself. I can even take care of you, if you’d let me. But this situation is… complicated. And I benefit from having an extra pair of hands around. Imagine if it were just the three of us? Imagine if I had to cook dinner and keep an eye on Page and you? My mom is here to do the simple tasks so that I can give you the attention you deserve.”

Unable to think of any argument against his cold logic, I said, “Hendrix is going to kill you.”

He smiled at me. “You like to remind me of that. But Hendrix has to find me first.”

“Hendrix is with Miller and Tyler,” I reminded him. “This is your family’s hunting cabin. It’s only a matter of time.”

He walked toward me and put two hands on my shoulders, sliding them up until they cupped the nape of my neck and he could stare down into my eyes with all the gravity in the world. “Tyler hasn’t been up here since she was a little girl, Reagan. And the last time Miller was here, he was seven. That was years ago. He was just a kid. Are you really counting on them to save you?”

I struggled to swallow. “You can’t keep us here forever.”

“I’ll tell you this one more time so that you understand; I don’t intend to keep you here forever.”

“What’s your goal then?” My voice was a desperate plea.

He bent forward and kissed my forehead. His lips savored my skin and his entire body relaxed at the connection between us. He pulled back and smiled at me, completely unfazed by my piss-poor attitude. “I smell bad. I’m probably going to shower. The goal is to stop smelling bad.”

I wrinkled my nose. “You do smell bad.”

“There were five of them out there.” He sighed and stepped away from me. “They weren’t all together thankfully, but that was more than there were yesterday.”

“Kane, what’s the plan if they come at us in-horde?”

He looked back at me and with enough truth that I actually believed him, he said, “I have a plan, Reagan. You might not trust me. But you should know that I don’t want to die any more than you do. I’ve thought this through very carefully.”

I snorted. “I can see that.”

I stepped back and looked over at Page who was coloring on the coffee table in a notebook with pens and highlighters that were stashed in one of the bedrooms. She looked up at me and gave a small wave. I waved back and tried to look happy and tried to reassure her that everything was fine.

That we were fine.

“Where’s your mom?”

“Busy.”

I rolled my eyes. Linley had this habit of disappearing for hours at a time. Kane never announced her leave or her return. She came in and left whenever she pleased. But if Kane needed her, then she was immediately available.

I couldn’t find a pattern to her absences. I thought if she was on a schedule of some kind that I could find a way to use it to my advantage, but so far there was no rhyme or reason to her madness.

The same could be said about Kane. When he came into the house, he turned and immediately locked everything up. But when he had left for “patrol,” he hadn’t bothered to lock up behind him. I hadn’t made a move to escape earlier because I had seen the two Feeders that prompted him to go out there to begin with. They stumbled into the clearing in front of the house and I knew that now was not the time to run off into the woods with Page in tow and completely unarmed.

It had been like this for two full days.

I had to bide my time and figure out a way to get out of here that wouldn’t put us directly in the middle of who-knew-how-many Zombies. Besides, the best time to get away would be in the middle of the night, but that would be prime feeding time for them and I didn’t have a flashlight, a compass or even a direction to run for.

I let out a sigh of frustration. “Page and I are going crazy here. We need something to do. I’m going to die of boredom if you don’t find a way to entertain me.”

He turned to stare out the window. “Have you always been this uptight? Think of this like a vacation.”

“I’m always uptight when I’m held prisoner against my will. I’m just funny like that.”

“You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

I practically choked on my tongue. “Would you? Would you let it go if someone had you locked up?”

He looked at me over his shoulder, his gray eyes glittering with something secret. “Depends on who had the key?”

I pursed my lips and shook my head at him. “This is going to get old fast. The angsty banter just is not doing it for me. I think-”

He didn’t stick around to listen to me.

A Feeder appeared in front of the window over the kitchen sink and Kane took off to deal with it. He pushed past me and sprinted out the front door. I heard him struggle to unclick all the locks, but eventually the door whooshed open and I heard his heavy footsteps pound across the porch.

I watched from the kitchen window as he rounded the house and dealt with the Feeder. I couldn’t remember another time in the last two years where I’d had the opportunity to simply observe someone kill a Feeder without being emotionally invested or part of the act.

The window and house kept me entombed in relative safety and I honestly did not have a feeling for Kane’s safety. If I wanted to get psychoanalytical on myself, I could be honest and say that I didn’t have to struggle whether to worry about Kane’s life or not because I never believed he was in danger.

The thought that something else would end Kane besides Hendrix or me couldn’t even fit into my head. I just… I just would not believe that he would get off lucky with death-by-Zombie.

In fact, I didn’t even want to be the one to kill him anymore. I was too much of a girl about it. I knew I would struggle with my compassion all the way through, or I wouldn’t be able to stomach the cruelty I wished him.

Hendrix wouldn’t have those same issues.

He’d be a man about it.

He would get the job done as efficiently or, er, non-efficiently as possible.

Kane fired at the Feeder who had only just started to turn at the sound of human footsteps. This Feeder was relatively new, I thought. The clothes were worn and dirty, but with normal wear and tear that suggested care and washing in recent history.

The Zombies that had been around for a while hadn’t changed since they had been turned. Their clothes were nothing but rags by now, full of holes, bloody and sticky with their festering wounds and pussing skin.

This Feeder had light red eyes and the clothes were carefully intact. That meant he wasn’t as fast gone as he could be. His movements were still jerking and stilted as his brain learned to function without true cognitive-alertness.

Kane popped off two shots right as he turned. The first bullet hit the Zombie in the shoulder and the second in the chin. Blood, bone and flesh splattered the window and side of the house. The Feeder was forced back with the impact of the bullets but didn’t go down.

Kane fired again, but nothing happened.

His gun was empty.

I watched with detached curiosity as Kane pulled a knife from his belt and leapt at the resilient undead. He took steps like he was going in for a layup and raised his arm above his head. His momentum carried him the last few feet and he brought his knife down, straight into the sweet spot between the Feeder’s eyes.

The Feeder had reached out to grab Kane and even while every ounce of life drained from his prematurely decomposing body, his hands crushed Kane’s torso in his super-strong, inhuman grip. Kane flinched from the acute pain and as the Feeder dropped away, I saw the claw marks and open gashes the sickly, yellowed nails left as they dragged down Kane’s back.

I grabbed onto the counter, bit my fingers into the laminate surface, and slowly realized that I was staring out the window with more than detached anything.

I had been nervous for Kane.

I was still nervous for him.

My stomach churned violently and flipped twice; first because I couldn’t stop the concern that flooded my senses and fueled some displaced adrenaline, and second because I hated that I felt that way. Subconsciously and now even consciously, I didn’t want him to get hurt.

I shook my head violently and stared down at the stainless steel sink basin.

I could not lose myself here.

I could not let Kane have his way.

Fine, I could admit that I was attracted to him. But any straight girl would be. He was a very good-looking human being.

At least on the outside.

And that was the thing. I was stronger than good looks and bizarrely enthralling glasses. I was deeper than surface level.

Hendrix was hotter than anybody left alive and I had still made him work for our relationship. And he was basically Superman in the middle of a Zombie-infested Metropolis. The point was, no matter what kind of person he was on the surface, I still made myself get to know him before I allowed myself to feel anything substantial.

The same would definitely be true for Kane.

And the more I got to know him, the less I liked him.

He took one more stab at the Feeder on the ground and plunged the knife deep into his skull. He sat back on his heels and looked around for any other threat. I did the same and didn’t see anything so my false sense of security returned and I released my grip on the counter.

My fingertips ached with the fierceness I had been holding on with. My shoulders felt tight with the passing tension. Which didn’t make sense.

The more I got to know Kane, the more I realized how delusional he was. He was a sociopath that kidnapped women and children because he wanted his way. His father was a full-blown psychopath, yet Kane bent to his every whim. He allowed his brother to get beaten and tortured, abused and mistreated and the only time he stepped up was to clean Miller’s injuries so that it could happen all over again. Kane hadn’t asked me what I wanted once. From the moment I met him, he treated me like property and used any advantage to impose his will over me.

And still I had somehow developed some kind of feeling for him through all that.

It didn’t make sense.

Honestly, it terrified me.

What kind of person felt sympathy for a tyrant? What kind of girl cared about the fate of her kidnapper?

I played through the possibilities of Stockholm Syndrome, but I couldn’t honestly make an educated decision about it. I didn’t really know anything about it except for the surface definition of the hostages falling for their abductors. I didn’t even know if there were usually romantic feelings involved or if loyal but platonic feelings could be taken into account.

Was that what I had?

Kane dragged the body over to the fire pit that had a ring of slatted Adirondack chairs around it. He spread out the stones in the sand and dumped the body in the middle. Slowly he worked up a fire and made sure the Zombie caught it. It would take a while to burn the body and the stench would be nearly suffocating, but this was necessary so that we didn’t draw unnecessary attention.

The scent of smoke was better than the stench of skin.

He was efficient and careful. He did everything right. There was something vaguely sexy about that, too. About the way his movements were sure and utterly confident. His brow furrowed over his glasses and his hair tossed in the breeze. His ribs and back were bleeding through his torn t-shirt but he didn’t seem to notice or care.

I realized then that even if these unnamed feelings I had for Kane originated with a mental disorder- and let’s be honest, I wasn’t exactly in the greatest state of mind ever- they had grown into something more, something I couldn’t ignore or deny.

There was something between us. He was right about that.

I breathed out a long sigh. There was freedom in admitting that to myself. I had been tangled up in denial and self-doubt, but getting it off my chest felt liberating.

And because I could admit that to myself, I could also face the other facts. I felt attracted to Kane yes, but nothing as deep as what I felt for Hendrix.

In fact, I truly believed that if Kane and I had met in normal circumstances and he had given me a chance to get to know him in my own time, my feelings for him would be very similar to what I felt for Vaughan, a fond, adoring kind of friendship.

But Kane hadn’t behaved like Vaughan, so my relationship with Kane was infinitely more complicated. Plus, there was this whole element of danger to it that excited me in ways I was ashamed of.

Ashamed but not surprised.

My adrenaline-riddled life had turned me into an adventure junkie. I felt it even in the few days we’d spent in this cabin. I wasn’t capable of sitting still anymore. I was too used to fighting, to killing, and to feeling so ramped up with energy and excitement that my head felt close to exploding.

The days of living a normal, peaceful existence were behind me.

To a certain extent I craved the activity of the fight, the excitement and engagement.

It wasn’t a quality I liked about myself, or even felt tolerant of. But I couldn’t help it. These were emotions inside of me that I fought, but fought back just as hard.

And Kane gave me all of that in this sick, twisted game.

The realization made me sick to my stomach. I would never choose Kane over Hendrix. Never. I had darkness inside me, but I wouldn’t let it control me. I wouldn’t let it overcome me and make my decisions for me.

That was the inherent difference between Kane and me.

We both struggled with the evil side of our humanity. We were both capable of good and honor. We both lived in glowing moments of pure righteousness, but we also felt the depths of depravity- his from the world he lived in daily and mine from the constant taste of evil that seemed to taint everything I touched and experienced. We both warred with the ugliness, with the despair.

With the decay.

But he had given up and given in.

And I still fought against it. My war was so much deeper than with Zombies, with even Matthias. I battled a monster inside of me.

Kane had embraced his and let it define him.

But I would not do that.

And not just for the eternal soul I wanted to believe stood with the hope of an afterlife; but because I had more than just myself to think about.

Page in the other room. Haley, my sister, my soul sister. King, Harrison, Nelson, Vaughan, Tyler, Miller, even Gage… friends that had become family, people that had become dependents.

And most of all Hendrix.

These reasons made me fight tooth and nail to keep my sanity, to keep whatever innocence remained, to keep my head above the violent waves that threatened to pull me under and fill my lungs with their corruption.

So yes, for Kane, I felt sympathy, compassion, and stirrings in my chest that did not belong, but were there all the same. But I would never let myself fall for him. I would never give in to that malicious temptation because that would be my ruining.

He would destroy me.

Even if he didn’t mean to, it would happen. I couldn’t save him.

I wasn’t strong enough.

But easily, oh, so easily, he could ruin me.

Kane looked up from the fire he built and our gazes collided with that same heaviness that they always did. He didn’t smile; he didn’t do anything but stare at me.

I could see the emotion flickering behind his expression even from here. He was fighting with what to feel for killing again. I easily recognized his internal battle because it was something I went through daily. Eventually he tilted his chin in acknowledgment and went back to staring at the burning body in front of him. He pulled the collar of his t-shirt over his nose and sat back on his heels. His arms encircled his knees and he watched the flames with a resigned expression.

Necessary.

His kill had been necessary and he did not feel remorse.

And he probably shouldn’t.

But it was the complete acceptance of his deeds that unnerved me. It was that same way he dealt with Miller, with me… with anything. He decided something and his decision was infallible. The rest of us were expected to change for him.

To conform to him.

In that way, he was so much like his father I knew that nothing I felt for him was a true threat to me or to Hendrix.

I couldn’t ever love someone like that. I wouldn’t give my heart to someone who only cared enough that I did what he said, when he said it.

I wasn’t some tamed creature that belonged in a civilized society. I teetered on the edge of madness daily. I lived in the wilderness now.

I was wild. A savage beast that could not be caged.

And that was exactly what Kane had set out to do.

Hendrix never intended to keep me leashed, only nearby. That was why he would win. That was why my heart would always belong to him.

Kane would never understand me so he could never capture me like he wanted.

“Where’s Kane?” Linley asked from behind me.

I hadn’t heard her come in, so I jumped a little at the sound of her frigid, but polite voice. I nodded my head toward the window. “There was a Feeder out there. He took care of it.”

She walked over next to me and rested her folded hands on the counter. “He’s good at that,” she murmured. “He takes care of a lot of things.”

I had expected her to reference his killing skills, so she surprised me again. “Do you mean he’s really good at kidnapping? Because it doesn’t matter how good he is, it’s going to get him killed.”

She made a noise in her throat and folded her arms across her chest. “Your perspective of this world is infinitesimal.”

I tore my gaze from Kane and turned to face her. “Enlighten me.”

She continued to stare at Kane. “We are on the cusp of a new civilization, a new government, a new way of life. We are going to transform this country into an even better version than before the infection. And Kane is a part of that. He’s the right-hand man to what is going to be the most powerful authority in the world. And he wants you. He chose you to be a part of that with him. You should be grateful. You should be respectful for the opportunity he is giving you.”

“That’s just the thing,” I argued. “I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for any of this. He’s forcing me into his world, when I don’t want anything to do with any of your new world order.”

“You prefer the anarchy?”

“I prefer my freedom.” She finally turned to face me and so I promised her, “And so does everyone else I know. Complete subservience isn’t going to be as easy as you think. You’re delusional if you think you can just demand people start following you and expect that they will.”

“I’m not delusional because I watch it happen every day. I watch hundreds of people beg my husband for citizenship on a daily basis. I watch my son command armies and my husband lead people in safety and peace. I’m not delusional because everything my husband wants is happening before my very eyes. You are the delusional one for ignoring the truth, for turning a blind eye to what is unfolding right in front of you.”

I realized I couldn’t argue with her. Hundreds of people? Daily? She didn’t seem to be lying, and I didn’t have evidence to prove that she was.

“Even if that’s true, it doesn’t have anything to do with me. I still don’t want to join your world. I still don’t want to stay with Kane.”

I pushed off the counter, anxious to get out of her presence when she stopped me with her next words, “He loves you, Reagan. And my son has never loved anything in his entire life.”

“That’s not my problem.” My voice was a whisper of brokenness while hers was ripe with conviction.

“You’re right,” she said. “It’s not a problem, it’s a gift. My son is giving you a gift, the greatest gift he has to give.”

I left her then. I didn’t have a response and I didn’t even understand my own reaction.

All I knew was the waves of sadness that washed over me and crashed against my fragile chest. His love was a gift but I was the wrong person to accept it. And with those newly admitted feelings for him, this made me infinitely heartbroken. Kane thought I could save him, but he was wrong.

I was going to break him.

I was going to kill him.

I already knew that I would never come back from this. Kane had set a chain of events into motion that would forever haunt me and ultimately be his end.

Even now I couldn’t help but wish that he hadn’t done this, that he hadn’t dragged me into this.

But this time I didn’t wish it for my sake… but for his.