Chapter Three

The Feeders kept coming through the window as if our gun spray meant nothing. They stopped for no fallen comrade or out of fear of our precisely aimed bullets. I felt Linley at my back and this gave me some peace. Page’s hysterical cries had the opposite effect.

I shot with a frantic rage that I had never felt before. My body was strung tight with a feral anxiety that bit at my bones and twisted my muscles. My stomach churned violently but the mission in front of me demanded that I hold it together for a little while longer.

The rooms behind us rattled excruciatingly loud as the Feeders tried to break in through the other points of entry. The door cracked and split with every bang that assaulted it from the other side.

And still they were endless in this window.

“Backup!” Kane shouted over the gunfire. Screaming came from every species present; the Zombies with their unnatural screeching, Linley with each pop of a bullet, Page as she got sucked further and further into the madness and me from the violent inferno of fury inside of me. Kane continued his instructions. “We can close this door and lock it if we can get out!”

Linley immediately started backing up, apparently thinking that was an awesome idea. I couldn’t really argue with it. Locking this exit did sound great. Except I knew it wouldn’t last. Those metal shades were much more impenetrable than a wooden door, and they’d still gotten through. But it might buy us some time to get a plan of attack together.

Or for Page and I to officially switch teams.

Page was taking an unnaturally long time to change. I had seen humans with my own eyes transition from clear-minded homo sapiens into bloodthirsty Zombies in a matter of seconds after being bitten.

I wondered if Page was holding it together better because she was a Parker and born with an indomitable spirit or if maybe her age had something to do with it? I didn’t know. But I didn’t question it either.

Some sick, last-chance-of-compassion part of me wanted to get Kane and his mother into as much safety as I could gather. I should have wanted them to die.

I should have wanted them to face the Feeder horde that was here because of them.

I should have wanted them to get what was coming to them.

But I couldn’t make myself wish this end for any person.

Even Linley Allen.

Not at the mouths of Feeders. Not when my own mortality was in such volatile imbalance and I’d been forced to witness Page’s last few moments alive.

I didn’t even bother including Kane in that. I wouldn’t let him die this way.

At Hendrix’s hands, definitely. But Hendrix deserved the retribution.

These Feeders did not.

Just as I stepped into the doorframe, the front door exploded open. Splinters of wood shot across the room and ricocheted off every surface. I felt the sharp wood dig into my clothes all over and out of the corner of my eye I saw Linley cover Page with her body.

Okay, I hated her just a teensy bit less for that.

I swiveled around and opened fire on the incoming wave. Kane had generously outfitted me with a fully clipped Glock and a semi-automatic rifle that I’d swung around my back until I needed it.

I opened fire and shouted at the masses of hungry Zombies trying to get to their midnight snack. They were an especially nasty bunch, all decaying skin and dripping mucous and coagulated pus everywhere. White bone jutted out from joints or broken skin, large chunks of muscle flashed in a dark crimson red and their inhuman speed carried them directly to me.

I did not miss.

How could I?

If anyone got to bite me tonight, it was going to be Page. They would not take that from us.

Bam. In the forehead. Bam. Bam. In the eye socket. Bam. Bam. Bam. Mouth. Nose. Temple.

Kane’s back was against mine as tight as anything could press into me. He kept pushing me into the living room, while he trained his gun on the window. He was irritating.

“What are you doing?” I screamed at him while Linley cowered with Page behind the two of us.

“Get into the living room so we can at least lock these ones out! I’m not trying to push you into them; I just want to shut down one avenue!”

Okay, well that made a lot of sense.

This time when Kane pushed against me, I let him have his way. I continued to shoot at the door as an endless amount of Feeders rushed the door. The rattling on these windows had stopped for the time being, what with the open hole leading right into a four-course meal.

In reality, there wasn’t really an endless amount. It just felt like it. This was an entire horde and I had already put seven of them down. More sprinted through the door, stepping over their dead friends and the mess of debris now littering the living room. My bullets bounced around the room with deafening purpose. Kane’s rang out behind me as he attempted to keep that channel of Feeders locked in this room.

Finally we made progress and Kane left the support of my back to close the door behind him. He had to stop shooting in order to lock it properly and I experienced a new level of tension as I heard him fighting to get it shut while Zombie arms and legs clawed and kicked to get through.

I heard Kane cursing and grunting to get the door shut all the way, but there were too many in the way. I saw movement in my peripheral but my attention was wholly focused on everything in front of me.

The whack-whack sound that resounded behind me had me turning a curious glance over my shoulder though.

I couldn’t help myself.

And there she was… Page. She’d been kidnapped, attacked by a Feeder, bitten and still she jumped out of Linley’s hands, grabbed the closest thing- which was a lamp minus the shade- and was brave enough to hit at the decomposing appendages sticking through the door and preventing Kane from closing it all the way.

This girl.

No, I could not think about that now.

I could not.

I had to get us out of this mess first and then I would figure out what we were going to do about her… injury.

From now on, I would call it an injury.

Not a bite.

Not a freaking bite.

Page, in all her eight-year-old glory, managed to do some serious damage and eventually Kane squeezed the door shut all the way. Although it wasn’t exactly a clean close… The disgusting crunch and squish of flesh and bone made my spine tingle but then there was the click of the lock and Kane was back at my side again.

I imagined a pile of rotten fingers and hands at Kane’s feet as he snapped them off in his attempt to secure the door.

We took out the living room together. The house shook under the force of other, unseen Zombies still attacking from the outside. The door that had just been shut vibrated beneath a barrage of fists and aggression. I jumped with each pound and rattle.

This was bad.

“I blame you for this!” I shouted at Kane. “You should know that I blame you for all of this!”

I didn’t look at his face, or touch his body, or even hear the sound in his chest, but still I knew that he was laughing at me.

Bastard.

“I told you I had a plan if we were attacked!” He hollered back at me. “That wasn’t a lie! I do have a plan!”

“I hope this isn’t part of it!”

“Just a small part,” he leaned in so I could hear him properly.

“And Page? Do you have a goddamn plan for that?”

“Would you believe me if I said yes?”

“God, you’re an asshole!”

He didn’t respond and it was probably better that way. He had already nudged my anger and wrath up exponentially. My heart was a jackhammer in my chest, my blood a rushing volcano of activity.

A particularly large Feeder broke through the door and came right at me. I fired shot after shot at him, but he was freaking fast and always managed to take the hit anywhere but his head.

I started to panic when he jumped over the couch. His second foot caught on the back and he tripped forward. In typical Feeder fashion, he didn’t even try to recover. He dove at my legs, his mouth chomping and drooling with disgustingly smelly slime.

I kept shooting at him but I never managed to hit his head. His momentum carried him quickly forward, and my bullets stupidly lodged into his back, ass and calves.

Just as he slid to my feet, I gave up the idea of getting bitten by Page and resigned myself to letting it happen by this undead troll. I let my eyes flutter close and I tipped my head back.

This was it.

This was my last moment as me.

In a second I was going to be turned into a delicious snack, or I would have a sudden and irrevocable craving for brains.

The quick pop of bullets pulled me out of my Zen moment and I jumped unexpectedly. I felt Kane’s arm sweep back up and reopen fire on the doorway.

I looked down at the monstrous man and found him dead at my feet. Kane had gotten three shots into his bulbous head.

The fight to survive lit inside of me again and I raised my weapon.

A terrible crash sounded from the kitchen and Linley and Page’s screams were brought back to life. I spun around just in time to catch a once upon a time middle-aged woman in the last stages of Zombieism. She appeared in the opening to this room and grinned frighteningly at us.

I began firing immediately.

She didn’t get far before my bullets found purchase in her forehead. She fell back against another wave of Feeders.

They were coming in through the kitchen window now, but it didn’t look like they could do it quickly. The kitchen window was elevated further off the ground than the bedroom window and it was narrow. They must really be fighting to get in there.

I took careful aim and shielded Page and Linley between Kane and me. I was able to hold this new barrage off until I needed to reload. I swung the rifle around as quickly as I could but my fingers were slow with finding the unfamiliar safety and locking it into place against my shoulder. They were closer than I wanted them when I finally opened fire again.

Then I felt the swipe of sharp nails on my shoulder blade before Kane put that Feeder out of his misery. I glanced over at him but his attention was back at the crowded doorway.

I had no doubt that the only thing saving us right now was the greedy, hungry addiction that kept the Feeders from working together. They had to fight each other to get to us and this worked in our favor… slowed them down.

Plus, it was distracting for them.

Often times they would stop to nibble on one of their own.

It was so completely horrifying to watch, but I couldn’t say I was surprised by their behavior.

Kane nudged me again with his shoulder. We were back to back again but not making much progress in the way of moving.

“We need to get across the room!”

I glanced the way he suggested and felt like laughing. Upturned furniture and fifteen feet stood between us and the destination he had in mind.

Impossible.

At least right then.

“No way!”

“Reagan, if we don’t get over there we’re going to die!”

I hated it when he made sense. “Fine!”

We started inching along, keeping our gunfire continuous. Linley tucked Page against Kane and me and we shielded the two of them as best as we could.

Feeders were everywhere though, so it wasn’t exactly an easy task. And Page and Linley were frustratingly unarmed.

I might not have trusted Linley with a weapon of any kind. But I sure as hell trusted Page. I knew she could handle a weapon. At the very least she could get a shot off if anything got too close for comfort.

But then again… she’d already had that happen tonight.

Her injury was as fresh as anything.

If she got another… injury… What was the point? Did it even matter?”

I shook my head and forced my mind away from those dark thoughts. She still hadn’t tried to bite anybody yet. I didn’t know what that meant and I was too afraid and too wrapped up at this moment to analyze it further.

We had to step over furniture that had turned into dangerous debris and broken pieces of every single thing in the house. A pair of antlers had fallen in the way from the wall and I took care not to accidentally step on one of those.

I was willing to sacrifice myself for Page tonight but there was no way in hell I was going to let myself die of something stupid… like infection or blood loss by fallen antlers. I would not get stabbed in the leg and have a funky wound that slowly drained the life out of me.

My choice of poison for the afterlife was the Zombie cocktail. And Page could have all the honors.

The door Kane had just closed cracked in half, right down the center. Feeder hands appeared immediately in the thin space as they worked with insatiable determination to rip it apart. Linley let out another painful scream of terror and this time I joined in.

They were everywhere!

I know, I know… when weren’t they everywhere???

But seriously, this life or death stuff was just the absolute worst.

And also, how hard was it to cross one freaking room? This was taking forever!

A very skinny Feeder near the kitchen leapt from the pack at me. He couldn’t have been older than fifteen once upon a time. He was stick thin and his head was ridiculously small, like disproportionate to his already petite-sized body. If I had taken the time to give him a back-story, he would have been a computer-geek kind of kid that hated gym class and had years yet before he bloomed.

This kind of kid would have one day ruled the world via the next wave of iPads and some insane algorithm that could hack the Pentagon in less than thirty seconds. But instead, his small muscles had failed him in his fight to survive against the army of undead and now he had it out for my slightly above average, ACT-score-of-twenty-four brains.

Just as I took aim at his face, another girl broke through the horde. Great his band geek girlfriend was jealous. Guys, slow down, I’m taken.

Hey, I used to be a cheerleader. I was allowed to stereotype and assert my popularity wherever and whenever I saw fit.

Okay, just kidding. I had never been that kind of cheerleader.

Unless you counted shooting these two in the forehead as bullying, because then fine, I was officially guilty.

He ducked at the last minute and dove for my ankles. In some miraculous act of God, I still managed to get a round off and hit the girl right in her open mouth. Blood and bone splattered everywhere and I swear I got hit on the cheek with a blackened tooth.

No time to think about that now. My back hit the corner of an end table and I slid awkwardly to the ground. I pulled my leg out of World of Warcraft’s firm hold and shoved my foot in his face. He snapped and chomped at me like a rabid dog. Drool and mucous flowed from his yellow and black mouth and the stench of his decay was enough to make me gag. I pushed him back but his razor-sharp nails clawed at my jean-clad legs with a desperate hunger. His fiery red eyes seemed to weep over his face, dripping tears of blood and staining my jeans and the floor beneath us.

My foot slipped off the point of his face but I brought it back quickly and jammed it in his nose again. Soft bone crunched beneath the ball of my foot bursting forth more gelatinous blood. Linley picked up a glass bowl that sat on a buffet along the wall and threw it on his back. She had shoved Page behind her and did her best to help me but the attacking Feeder wasn’t even fazed.

If that wasn’t enough, I had to keep my attention on the rest of the incoming Zombies that weren’t slowed down even though I clearly had my hands full at the moment.

Come on, where was the common courtesy?

I kept my foot shoved into the Feeder’s face and took them out from my flat-on-my-back position. This was not ideal. I wasted way too many bullets trying to get them in their heads when my placement made it much easier to hit the rest of their bodies, not slowing them down at all.

“Move your foot on three, Reagan!” Kane shouted over his shoulder.

“No way!” I yelled back. That sounded risky.

Way too f-ing risky.

If it had been Hendrix calling the order, I would have obeyed without a second thought. But this was not Hendrix. This was Kane. And as soon as I moved my foot, the Feeder was going to fly at me. Hendrix would have no problem taking the shot.

But, let me just say this one more time, this wasn’t Hendrix!

“One…” Kane counted while still picking Feeders off on his end. His shots were so close together that I could barely hear his voice.

I hoped he could hear mine. “No!”

“Two…”

I renewed my efforts to push the Feeder off me which was basically a science to keep my foot balanced right in the center of his face while he gnawed at the rubber of my shoe and shot at the still-incoming horde.

“Reagan, I’m going to shoot you in the foot if you don’t move it!” Kane warned.

Shit. This was really happening.

“Three!”

I dropped my foot wide and to the side and the Feeder went right for my crotch. Holy crap! The first boy that was brave enough to enter that new, uncharted world and it was a Zombie! My sexual self-esteem was going to be forever ruined after today.

Bang. Bang.

Two shots directly into the top of his head. He fell limp and officially dead with his face buried into the V of my legs.

Oh, good lord.

I was suddenly very thankful for my period. I would take that every day of the month over having this guy bleed out all over my crotch.

I pushed him off me before the ocean of blood soaked through too much and scrambled to my feet just in time to jump right back into killing the rest of his buddies.

Kane’s shots had been messy. There was just not the way to have a clean shot from three feet away with an assault rifle. My arms, hands, torso and legs were covered in a fine mist of sticky blood and chunks of flesh. I wrinkled my nose and tried not to cry.

I could be as brave as humanly possible any day of the week. Give me Zombies, Matthias Allen and the Black Plague for all I cared, I would fight them all. But I didn’t care what anybody said, having globs of already-decomposing flesh splatter your entire body and land on places near your mouth was enough to bring the strongest of us to desperate tears.

Linley had scooped up Page again and she clung to Kane’s mom with quiet desperation. I pushed my focus away from her, though, as we continued to travel across the room. Probably twenty dead Feeders were strewn about the floor by now. Page’s old room had been overtaken with at least seven more of them if I correctly counted all the arms sticking through the split and clawing at us. My room had a window in it as well, so I knew it was just a matter of time before Feeders found that entrance.

Linley’s room was the only space in this entire house that did not have a window or another exit besides the door. Well, the small bathroom, too, but I knew we couldn’t all fit in there.

Finally, we made it across the room and just in time. The Feeders were closing in and my gun felt frightening light of bullets. Linley dashed into the room with Page in her arms and I made a move to follow but just as I did, three opportunistic Zombies saw the opening and went for Kane.

I got one before he closed in the space. Kane hit the second right in his face but the third launched himself at Kane’s torso.

Kane went down with the guy on top of him and shoved his gun sideways into the hungry Feeder’s mouth. I kept shooting at the wall of Feeders doing everything in their power to get to us. My heartbeat was so loud it resounded in my head and pushed out all other sounds of the struggle. I knew my breaths were wheezing in my chest and the adrenaline in my blood made me feel light-headed, but I couldn’t focus on anything except saving Kane and getting back to Page.

Kane thrust his arms straight with the gun still lodged in the Feeder’s mouth and I took a risky three seconds to swing my gun and shoot at the Feeder. I got lucky with a bull’s-eye right in between the eyes and he fell on top of Kane, gun still lodged in his mouth.

Kane didn’t waste time or energy to even stand up. He crouched low and sprinted into Linley’s room just as the door across from us burst open and more Feeders spilled into the room. Kane hooked me around the waist and yanked me back against his chest. He slammed the door directly behind me and locked it with one swift movement.

The windowless room felt like heaven or at least a haven from the gory storm; except I knew the rest of the Feeders would be knocking down this door in no time. Already, I could feel their fists pounding on the other side and their screams and guttural moans came muffled through the wood.

My back was to the door and Kane pressed against me with his hand still poised on the lock. For just a moment he dropped his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. He seemed to need some time to pull his shit together and honestly, I was in the same boat.

For probably thirty more seconds we stayed frozen like that, him leaning against me, me absorbing all of him. It was the shared air and spirit of traumatized camaraderie that pulled us back into survival-mode.

His eyes flashed open and he hit me with the magnitude of his gray depths. “That was close.”

I opened my mouth to argue with him and tell him it was more than close, it was way past close but he had already turned around and started shoving furniture out of the way. Linley put Page down to help Kane with whatever the hell he was doing. The bed got pushed against the door and I had to scramble out of the way or risk them trapping me in place.

Page ran over to me and clung to my legs. Her entire body trembled and shook. I quickly wrapped my arms around her shoulders and pressed her against me. Tears started to fall again and that same soul-sickness that drowned me earlier came back with renewed force.

I had been so lucky so far. Each day I managed to squeak by with fingers and toes attached, brains firmly in place and my humanity somehow still intact. Haley and I both had been through some really messed up shit and yet we’d always come out the other side unscathed. At least physically.

Okay, at least in the we-still-weren’t-Zombies physical way.

I didn’t know the reason I had survived thus far or if there was even a pattern to this thing. I just knew that I had been fortunate. I had been blessed so far and part of me believed that it would always be this way. Some arrogant, narcissistic side of me believed that I had just what it took to survive this world, that I somehow possessed an extra set of skills that kept me above all the rest of the death and destruction.

But not anymore.

Now, I realized that I had never been lucky. I had been the unluckiest of us all. How cruel, how twisted was it, that I had survived this long only to fall for a family that I truly loved more than myself? While others were killed off early or forced into human-specific-cannibalism, I had gone down the road to hell to get to know the Parkers, for falling so irrevocably in love with Hendrix. I felt tied to him at the core of my soul and I cared for his sister like she was my own flesh and blood. Page meant more to me than almost anything else on this earth. She was Page. She was the creed we had taken to protect. She was the reason we struggled so hard and fought to stay together. Everything we did was for her and I had let her down.

Me.

Me alone.

But I couldn’t face them. The Parkers. I wouldn’t face them after this unforgivable sin.

I knew what I had done. I felt the eternal consequences in every single bone and muscle in my body. My entire existence screamed out against the injustice of this little girl getting bitten but not me. Even after the epic fight still raged around me, I had once again come out unscathed.

I would not be the one to tell Hendrix what happened to his little sister and how Kane had put her out of her misery because I was too weak.

I would not.

I would go down with her. I would not make her do this alone.

And I would hold onto her until someone else pried us apart.

There were a lot of people I would have forced myself to let go of. There were a lot of people I would have shot myself just so they would not have endured any unnecessary suffering. Haley was one of them. I would have forever mourned my best friend, but I would have pushed on after her. I even believed I wouldn’t have been this sacrificial for Hendrix. We loved each other but the whole Romeo and Juliet scenario wasn’t romantic to us. I would have shot a lot of people I loved as soon as a set of Feeder teeth grazed their skin. But Page would never be one of them.

In fact, she might be the only person that I would have given up my fight for.

As I clung to her more tightly, both of us shook, and cried uncontrollably. Kane and his mom crawled around on the floor doing who knew what, but I didn’t have time for them right now.

I waited for Page to bite me. I knew it was coming.

Any moment her brain would stop registering logically and all she would be concerned about was eating flesh. I had been fortunate enough to never have witnessed a child Zombie before but I knew they existed.

I could only imagine how horrific it would be to shoot a child.

I wouldn’t find out though. And that was the part of me that wished she would just bite me and get this over with.

Suddenly, the floorboards popped open in a big square of a hidden door right in the center of the room. Linley immediately disappeared down into darkness. She called Page to follow her but neither Page nor I could let go.

Kane walked over and put his hands on my shoulders, careful not to squish Page. “Reagan, we’re almost through this. I need you to get your ass down there.”

“What’s the point?” I whisper-cried.

“Can you just obey? Just once? I promise not to ever expect you to do another thing I tell you to do ever again.” The slight twitch of his lips annoyed the ever-loving hell out of me and so I tilted my chin and pooled all my stubbornness into a palpable force field around me.

“Nope.”

Kane huffed out an impatient sigh and forcefully disentangled me from Page. She rushed after us as he callously tossed me down the hole at his mother. I landed in a painful thud on the dirt floor and screamed obscenities up at him.

Page quickly followed me down. On her own, without Kane’s help.

The pounding at the door amplified violently. I pulled myself from the aching heap of tangles I’d landed in and scooted until my back was against a single cot. Linley sat down heavily on the green army blanket and Page jumped into my lap.

I held her against me. I could feel the blood from her back wound as it seeped into my clothes. I had slipped into this willful denial of her fatal injury. She hadn’t shown signs of turning yet, so I had started to force myself to believe that the Feeder never made contact, that I’d imagined the entire thing or that my brain had projected the horrific chain of events but they’d never actually come true.

Some masochistic hallucination that f-ed with my reality.

The blood running over my hand and sinking into my clothes told a different story, a story that even while it confronted me face-to-face I couldn’t allow myself to believe it.

Kane fiddled around upstairs, taking his sweet time. I didn’t really think this hole was any better of an option than the room. The Feeders would find us no matter what. It was just a matter of time, just the difference of how long we wanted to drag this horrific end on. Kane seemed determined to make this last forever though, and I wasn’t in a position to argue with him. I could hear him moving all kinds of things around up there while the Feeders pounded their fists, clawed at the door and screeched those ungodly sounds.

The house seemed to tremble under the weight and force of them, but in this little hideout beneath it all, things were relatively peaceful. This was a bunker. A doomsday bunker clearly. It reminded me a lot of Gage’s uncle’s place where I’d once hidden out with Kane in a very similar scenario.

Linley had lit a dim camping lantern so I could make out the gist of this underground prison. There was a door in the back corner that I believed was a bathroom of some kind. Besides the cot we leaned against, there was another one across the room. A counter made up one entire wall with all kinds of cabinets surrounding a sink. A Bunsen burner kind of camping stove sat next to six camping lanterns lined up and three flats of bottled water. Along the other wall hung guns of every size and shape and a metal cabinet on wheels pushed into a corner, similar to the one that my dad used to have in our garage for his tools. I hoped to God it was full of ammo.

But there I went again… believing in some elongated survival. My brain would not process that this was the end. That these were my last moments.

Apparently I wasn’t wired to give up, even though that was exactly what I would be doing just as soon as Page got hungry.

I could tell Kane was up to something upstairs because the sounds he made were familiar; I was just too panicked to put them together. My brain had reached an unfamiliar place of whooshing air and fuzzy confusion. I knew there were things to think through but I could not make my brain process any of this. I just felt too hysterical.

Suddenly, Kane’s intentions all clicked quickly together when a hot blaze of light brightened our dark hole. Fire. Kane had lit a huge fire.

Once the flames were blazing, he dropped down into the hole after us. He closed the lid that I realized was wood on the topside but some kind of metal on the inside. He latched it closed, padlocked it, slid a lever into place and turned around with a satisfied grin. He looked at the space around us, nodded and then took Page and me into serious account.

“I need to look at her back, Reagan,” he said calmly. He said it so freaking calmly, like we hadn’t just been attacked and Page hadn’t just been bitten.

“No,” I growled at him.

“You can’t live in denial forever, Sweetheart. Show me her back or I will take her from you.”

Page looked up at me with clear eyes wet with tears. “It’s okay, Reagan. We need to know.”

More tears flooded my vision from her bravery. I nodded my consent and she turned around so Kane could lift the back of her shirt. He hissed out a breath and I immediately had her lay across my lap so I could see.

There it was. A huge, nasty bite that was red, angry and gruesome.

I couldn’t deny the evidence before me.

Page had become the next victim of the Zombie Apocalypse.