Chapter One

1153 Days after initial infection

 

We had been quiet for hours. There had been nothing to say until Harrison groaned, “Your foot looks delicious.”

“If you so much as lick me, I’m going to punch you in the face,” King growled in return.

“What happens if I like it?”

“Hendrix!” King whined.

I responded before Hendrix could open his mouth. “Oh, my god, shut up. Both of you.” I dropped my face into my hands and pressed my fingers against my temples in an effort to keep my head from exploding. Harrison and King had been after each other since Veracruz and I could not take it anymore.

“I can’t,” Harrison whimpered, sounding much younger than he was. “I’m too hungry. I’m not kidding. I would eat King’s stupid leg if I thought it could make my stomach stop hurting like this.”

King flung himself against the dingy couch he lounged on and puffed out a breath of air. “If I thought donating my leg would make you stop acting like a little girl, I would gladly give it to you.”

“It might,” Harrison pouted.

King rolled his eyes. “It won’t.”

“I resent that,” Page sighed.

Her brothers looked at her for a moment before turning their attention back to each other. Harrison opened his mouth to argue… some more… because he never shut up… when Hendrix stepped in between them.

“Enough,” he said simply. But it was enough to silence them. “Harrison, you can’t eat your brother. King, stop calling him a little girl.”

Neither brother had another response. They turned away from each other and got busy bothering other people.

Hendrix walked over to me and flopped down on the dirty mattress I’d claimed. It wasn’t much. And it wasn’t clean. Actually, it was the opposite of clean. I couldn’t decide if I was going to end up with an STD or Tetanus. Neither were good options for me. But it was better than the floor of this abandoned house we’d found at the edge of Bogotá, Colombia.

That’s right, Colombia.

We made it.

We made it to the country, and then a week later, we made it to the capitol.

I still couldn’t believe we were here.

That we made it.

That our happiness had been stolen, our sanity questioned, our foundations rocked to the core, but we were here.

Finally.

There had been continents in our way, countries we crossed and so many cities that I lost count. We had been through every kind of climate, temperature and terrain. We’d left mountains, driven alongside ocean front beaches; we’d seen rain forests and regular forests, abandoned towns and desolated ones, Zombies from all places and men who wanted to chop off our heads and stick them on top of spikes in the ground. We had bargained our way out of tight situations, gone days without seeing anyone, stolen maybe two hundred cars along the way and dealt with a bout of the flu.

It had been hell.

It had been hell, but it had been no worse than what we’d already faced. So we pushed forward, we made progress and somehow we made it to our final destination.

But we were running out of steam.

We’d rolled into town, or the edges of town, earlier this morning. Our latest ride, a monstrous, rusted El Camino from the nineties, painted bright pink at one time and sporting a fuzzy steering wheel cover and sheepskin seat covers, ran out of gas just as we passed the city line.

It was like a miracle.

Or a curse. Depending on your perspective.

Although it had lasted a few days for us, we were now trapped at the fringes, in a house that had been long abandoned, without food, water or anything else we could need or want.

While the last six weeks had been marginally better than getting trapped by cannibals, fighting off Matthias and watching someone we loved die… we were starving, dehydrated and completely exhausted.

We had fought the armies of hell to get here and the battle still wasn’t over.

Hendrix’s hand slid over my shoulder blades and wrapped around my shoulder. He tugged me against his side where I nuzzled up willingly and prayed he had the answers to all of our immediate problems.

“I guess I imagined they would roll out the red carpet when we arrived,” I admitted. “My only goal so far has been to get to this city. Now that we’re here, I have no idea what to do.”

Hendrix inhaled slowly and held it for a beat. “I’m not sure I believed we would ever make it here alive.”

So much for Hendrix and his trick bag of answers. “Me either,” I admitted.

“We should probably look for the research station, but first we need to make it through the night.” He squeezed my arm. I could tell he wasn’t in a hurry to get up and that worried me.

Without enough food, we were alarmingly without energy. The last week had been the worst. As we worked our way through the Colombian mountains, and closer to Bogotá, every possible place to find food or water had been ransacked.

Once populated and booming with life, the landscape was now filled with ghost towns and emptiness. We hadn’t seen a person or Zombie in over two weeks.

“We need to eat something,” I whispered. My throat burned from thirst and my stomach heated with hunger. I had never been so miserable in my life and the weight of Vaughan’s death only intensified my feelings of despair. We’d made it to our final destination, but I couldn’t celebrate our circumstances.

This might as well have been the gates of Hades.

Maybe it was.

Hendrix nodded slowly. His eyelids drooped and he slumped against me.

We really needed to eat something.

And maybe take a ten-year vacation from this forsaken world.

I glanced around the dim room and mourned the loss of light. We should have pushed further into the city, but we didn’t know what we would find and it was too late in the day to take chances. Now we were trapped in this crumbling shack and we were falling apart at the seams.

Lennon fussed across the room. Haley tried to feed him, but he fought her with a toss of his head. Soon his wails filled the dead space between us. He screamed out his frustration and hunger, demanding that his mother feed him.

He had been like this for days, almost inconsolable because of how hungry he was. His voice would go hoarse with his screams until eventually he would fall asleep for hours. His small chest would barely lift with his shallow breaths. I worried about him the most.

Hendrix groaned and dropped his face into his hand. “I can’t take much more of this,” he mumbled. “I have to do something. I have to fix this.”

My chest tightened. “We have to fix this,” I reassured him. “You’re not alone.”

His head turned until his deep blue eyes found mine. His lips were turned down and the light in his eyes had nearly disappeared. I had never seen him so anguished… so desolate. “I’m all they have, Reagan,” he rasped. “I might not be alone, but it’s up to me to figure this out.”

His words hit me like a physical blow, the breath rushing from my lungs. I swayed forward until I pressed my forehead against the bridge of his nose. “We’re in this together. We have always been in this together. Vaughan would never have let you take this on yourself. That’s not what he wanted.”

Hendrix pulled back and dropped a quick kiss to my forehead. “Maybe it’s not what he wanted, but it’s what he left me with.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but he stood up and walked away before I could. My heart squeezed again and I would have started crying had there been moisture to spare.

I tried to keep the anger at bay, but I felt abandoned and dismissed. I knew Hendrix was hurting, we were all hurting. I knew he was tired and hungry and thirsty. I knew he was disappointed with life and angry at God, but I hated that he took it out on me.

We were partners. We were in this together whether he wanted to accept my help or not.

My stomach churned with my emotions and I tried not to let this moment hurt too deeply. We were at our worst physically and emotionally. I tried to understand where he was coming from.

I jumped out of my seat when frantic barking put Lennon’s screams to shame. A pack of wild dogs raced down the street in front of our temporary shelter. They yipped and growled at something they chased.

My tired, abused heart started pounding in my chest. The dogs were running from something. I could hear the fear in their barks. I moved with the Parker brothers toward the front door. A picture window had been boarded up at one point, but we could peek through the slots and notches in the wood.

We couldn’t see anything at first through our limited visibility, but the snarling and barking grew steadily louder.

“What the hell?” Harrison mumbled next to me. He reached for the knife in his back pocket and brought it in front of him.

I pulled out my knife and pressed the flat side into my thigh, reassuring myself I had some protection. We ran out of firearms a few weeks back and hadn’t been able to find anything to replace our arsenal. We’d picked up an assortment of weapons along the way, but everything we had with us was hand-held and meant for hand-to-hand combat.

We weren’t the worst fighters alive, but it was always better to kill a Feeder from a distance.

In fact, that was my motto for life.

Footsteps pounded the pavement and joined the cacophony of animal sounds. My stomach twisted with more nerves. If we had to engage in a fight, it would get bloody.

I didn’t want to get bloody. I was filthy and smelly, but I wasn’t covered in Zombie carnage for once.

Shouting joined the footsteps. I couldn’t reconcile the voices with the world I lived in. They didn’t make sense.

I hunched over and tried to get a better view of the street. Everyone leaned in with me. I wasn’t the only one confused.

They ran in front of us and I stared with wide eyes at a pack of small boys and girls. Children. They were younger than the Rat King’s army and just as dirty as we were if not more so. Their faces were streaked with black marks and their black hair caked with dirt. The tangled clumps hung in matted curtains in front of their small faces. Their clothes were torn and tattered, barely hanging onto their small frames.

But they weren’t emaciated. They weren’t starved and barely hanging onto life.

Their short limbs were corded with strong muscle and their feet moved swiftly across the cobbled street. They were fast, faster than the pack of wild dogs chasing them.

The dogs gained on them while we watched. Their snouts dripped with drool and their eyes gleamed ferociously.

It struck me how strange it was to see animals, even if they were rabid. For the most part wildlife of all kinds had vanished when the infection swept the planet. Living things of every species disappeared into hiding.

In our worst moments, when the starvation had become too much over the last few years, I had often wondered what I would do if I came across something I could kill and eat. But there had never been an opportunity. We had never been given a chance to hunt something down and learn how to eat from the land.

The kids and dogs disappeared around a corner and we let out a collective sigh of relief. But even as I started to relax because they didn’t discover us, an uneasy feeling of disappointment started to creep in.

They were children, running from dogs that wanted to tear them to pieces.

I should do something.

I turned my head and met Harrison’s wide-eyed gaze unexpectedly. I had meant to find Hendrix, but when I saw the same turmoil mirrored in Harrison’s expression, I knew I wasn’t the only one struggling with this moral dilemma.

“We can’t help them,” Hendrix announced in a low voice.

I looked to him and saw him watching us carefully. “But-”

“We have our own people to protect, Reagan,” he reminded me gently. “We can’t save everyone.”

His words caught in my throat. That was the root of my unease. I wanted to save them. I wanted to save everyone. But it kept getting me into trouble. I kept getting us into trouble.

I nodded and tried to let the good reasons for staying out of this settle in me, but they wouldn’t. I knew there was Page to keep safe, Lennon to protect, that we were all at our worst and dangerously too exhausted to be sharp and quick enough.

“Reagan,” Hendrix murmured, stepping closer to me. His arm wrapped around my waist and drew me to his chest. “I’m sorry,” he whispered against my ear. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I was an asshole. But I’m not trying to be one now. I’m trying to keep us as safe as I can.”

I breathed in deeply and tried to agree with him. “I forgive you,” I said instead. Still those feelings of anxiety spun in my blood, prompting me to go after the kids. The dogs snarled and snapped in the distance and my chest fluttered with frustrated panic.

A child’s shout bellowed through the air. It sounded pained and tortured. I jumped in Hendrix’s embrace and I felt his body stiffen next to me. When another scream rent the air, I jerked again and looked up at the man I loved, the man that had been caring and compassionate and sacrificing up until his brother died a few weeks ago.

Harrison moved toward the door, “Hendrix,” he pleaded. “They’re kids.”

“Don’t,” Hendrix ordered.

“What if it were Page?” Harrison challenged. “Or Miller?”

The breath Hendrix pushed out of him was filled with bitterness and resignation. “Fine,” he finally allowed. “But if you die, that’s on you.”

“They’re dogs,” Harrison chuckled with an eye roll. “Pretty sure I can handle them.”

“Pretty sure they’d eat your face if they got the chance,” Hendrix retorted, but he moved toward the door, taking my hand as he went. “Nelson, stay with your wife. Page, Miller, Adela and Tyler, you stay too.”

Miller had been the only one moving with us toward the door. The rest of the group knew this fight wasn’t for them. Tyler hadn’t even bothered to get up to investigate the commotion. She still sat in the corner of the room with her knees pulled to her chest and her chin resting on top of them. She stared at her feet and didn’t acknowledge that any of us was leaving or that there was danger or that anything existed beyond her own pain.

I turned away from her, not able or willing to let her grief seep into my own emotions right now. I had a mission and a purpose and she would debilitate me if I let her.

I knew this because it happened so often. My grief for Vaughan was a beast inside of me. Hendrix’s grief for his brother fueled my painful thoughts and aching heartbreak. But it was Tyler’s utter desolation that shattered me. Tyler’s and Page’s.

Harrison led the way through the door. King and I followed him with Hendrix tight on our heels. The air was cool and thin in the mountains of Colombia. I was almost immediately out of breath as we crept along the side of the buildings, moving as quietly as we could toward the sound of blood-curdling screaming and ferocious dog sounds.

All four of us carried various styles of knives. The last several weeks had forced me to be proficient with this new weapon and learn how to be deadly.

I steeled my nerves and determined to kill heartlessly. It should have been easy to take the lives of animals after all of the killing I’d accomplished over the last three years, but it wasn’t. In fact, it went against everything inside of me.

I killed people because they deserved death or because they would kill me first if they got the chance. But animals were innocent in this world. They were victims of brutality and evil, just like me.

And they were rare.

I had just convinced myself that those feelings were beyond foolish when we turned the corner to an alley. I staggered to a stop and felt my mouth drop open from surprise.

“This can’t be real,” King muttered next to me. I barely heard him over the high-pitched whining of the dogs and the battle cries from the children.

I watched in horror as one of the children jumped on the back of a dog trying to run away and snap its neck with a fast twist of the child’s arms.

“No,” I hissed. I immediately brought my knife up and jabbed it at the child. “Stop!” I shouted before I could talk myself out of it. “Por favor, stop!”

Six pairs of black eyes lifted to meet mine. Their lips curled back from their yellowed teeth, their feral expressions darkening in defense. I took a step back, intimidated by them.

They were too young to be this threatening. And yet, I felt their savageness, their untamed aggression that could kill dogs and stand up to armed adults.

One of them had a dog in a chokehold. The animal whimpered and cried in fear. While the child looked at us, he took a pocket knife and slit the creature’s throat.

The whining stopped.

I felt sick to my stomach.

The same little boy stood up and the animal dropped to his feet. He opened his mouth and launched into Spanish. We couldn’t understand a word he said.

“English,” Hendrix said when the child took a breath. “We speak English.”

The children canted their heads at us, clearly not understanding Hendrix’s words. They looked disturbed like this. We had somehow stepped into a horror movie where these children ran the streets, murdering anyone they stumbled upon.

“No comprendo,” I tried. Adela had taught us lots of Spanish over the last few weeks, but at the moment that was the only thing I could remember. “No comprendemos.” We don’t understand.

The children moved toward us. I tensed and held my knife with a better grip. I didn’t know if I had it in me to kill a child, but I planned on being prepared. If these wild things attacked us, I would not give up my life so they could go on living theirs.

They moved slowly, with calculated steps. They didn’t trust us any more than we trusted them.

Hendrix showed them his knife; Harrison and King followed his example. The children didn’t seem to care though. They were more fascinated with our presence than our threat of danger.

The original child started speaking again and I gesturing at the animals. He had a different accent than Adela and while I could pick out some words, most of what he said flew over my head.

“We don’t understand,” Hendrix said louder. “No se. No comprendo.”

The boy turned to one of the little girls and spoke quickly, gesturing at the dog at her feet. She looked at him for a moment, deciding whether to listen, but finally bent down, crouching over the dog.

She mumbled something in Spanish before mimicking chomping noises. My brows furrowed and I tried not to laugh. What in the world? She picked up the dog’s leg and pretended to eat it.

Oh.

Oh.

“This is why they’re not starving,” King concluded.

The wheels in my head started turning as the puzzle that was these children and these poor, dead animals started to come together.

They killed the dogs and ate them. They ate the animals because they had to. They somehow goaded the dogs into chasing them, trapped them in this dead-end alley and killed them.

Their bodies told the story of a tough, hardened life, but these were not sickly, dying children. These little kids had learned survival.

Even if it made my heart hurt.

These children couldn’t have been older than eight or nine and yet they’d managed to do what we couldn’t.

And now my pride hurt.

The little boy pointed at Hendrix’s tummy and murmured, “Mmm…”

I pressed my lips together to keep from smiling. I still didn’t trust these kids, but they were less threatening now that I knew they weren’t killing the dogs for sport.

“Mamá?” Hendrix asked? “Donde está tu Papá?” Where is your father?

“No mamá,” The little boy said. “No papá.” He said more, but we couldn’t understand his language. He turned to his friends and said something that put them into motion. They swooped down and snatched the dogs they’d killed. The animals were mangy and bloody, but the children didn’t notice as they threw them around their necks to carry back to wherever they came from.

The little boy said something to us again and gestured for us to follow as they walked from the alley. I shared a shocked look with Hendrix.

“They want us to go with them?” I whispered.

“Yeah, to take us back to their den and murder us,” Harrison answered.

Hendrix ignored his younger brother. “I think they want to share their food with us.”

My stomach growled as if it sensed the upcoming meal.

“I’m not eating that,” King declared. “That’s disgusting.”

“It’s not like we can be picky,” I argued. “We have to eat. We can’t go on like this.”

“We haven’t even looked around,” King pointed out. “There could be a gas station with something or a grocery story. We could find mountains of food. We don’t know yet.”

“If there were mountains of food, I don’t think those kids would have learned how to kill dogs,” Hendrix said finally.

He had a point.

“We need to think about Page,” Hendrix continued. “And Lennon. We might be able to hold out for something more appetizing, but Lennon needs food now and Haley has nothing to give him. We need to do something.”

The leader of the kids stood at the edge of the alley and shouted something at us. I couldn’t be certain, but I was pretty sure he told us to hurry up.

“We need to go with them,” Hendrix said finally. “It’s not much, but it’s more than what we have now. We can’t give up when we’re this close.”

“You trust them?” King threw his hands in the air. “They just killed dogs, Hendrix. They killed dogs like they were born to kill dogs. They could attack us. They could kill us just as easily.”

Hendrix’s jaw ticked when he answered, “I didn’t say to put your weapon away, now did I? Stay smart. Stay alert. But we’re going with them. That’s final.”

“Vaughan wouldn’t have gone,” King finished petulantly. He crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his stubborn chin. “He wouldn’t have risked it.”

Hendrix took a step forward, shaking with rage. He’d jumped from zero to sixty in a second and my fear for King’s life shot up just as quickly. “Vaughan’s not here, King. So he doesn’t get to make the decision, I do. And I say we’re going with them. And we’re going to eat that goddamn dog until our strength is back and I can trust that we’ll survive the night. All of us. This isn’t up for discussion. This is what’s happening. Get on board or get lost.”

“You don’t mean that,” Harrison said quickly. He turned to King, “He doesn’t mean that.”

Hendrix didn’t say anything. He stood over King and waited for his little brother to get it.

The little boy shouted more forcefully. The kid had reached the end of his patience, but Hendrix didn’t back down from his brother.

“If something happens, it’s on you,” King finally said. “You’re responsible. I’m not carrying this shit if it goes south.”

Hendrix shrugged. “I’m aware, King. I carry this shit. I carry everything.”

I swallowed past a thick throat. I realized something at this moment. I should have seen it sooner. I should have realized how close Hendrix had gotten to breaking.

But this was what he believed. He thought everything was on him, that every mistake or tragedy was his fault or his responsibility. And now I could see how close to the edge he teetered.

Somehow since his brother died, Hendrix decided that he was the only one that could save us and the only one that could burn us.

And it was killing him inside. He was unraveling and I had been blinded by grief and exhaustion.

King seemed to realize this too because with a gentler voice and wisdom that didn’t seem to fit him, he said, “Okay, Hendrix. We’ll go with them. We’ll eat dog.”

Hendrix’s shoulders dropped an inch. “Keep your weapons out.” He took my hand and tugged me along after the little boy.

At the edge of the alley, Hendrix held up one finger in a gesture for the gang of dog killers to wait. We hurried back to the little house and knocked on the door. Nelson opened it, wielding a knife and a surly expression.

“We need to go,” Hendrix said quickly. “We found dinner.”

Nelson leaned over him and raised an eyebrow. “What exactly did you find?”

“Kids that kill dogs,” King muttered.

“We’re going with them,” Hendrix spoke over King. “We’re going to see where this goes.”

The people in the house moved quickly because that’s how we’d been conditioned to behave, but I could see that nobody trusted this situation or the children that were now streaked with blood and carrying what was once considered a household pet.

“What if they eat them raw?” King pressed. “Has anyone else thought about this? I’m not eating raw dog. I’ll just go ahead and die first.”

“Maybe they’ll know where the research station is,” Haley suggested with Lennon curled into her chest. He had stopped crying by now and had passed out from hunger.

Hendrix was right. This wasn’t the easy decision, but it had to be done. Lennon wouldn’t survive if Haley couldn’t feed him.

And that wasn’t an option.

The kids watched in wide-eyed fascination as the rest of the group filed out of the little house. They grew loud with their foreign conversation. They pointed at Lennon and laughed raucously. Some of the little boys also pointed at Page and said some things I didn’t catch.

Adela did though. She snapped at them in Spanish, giving them a piece of her mind. Whatever she said shut them up. They looked at her wide-eyed, clearly not expecting any of us to speak their language.

I couldn’t help a small smile. She glared at them until they cowered from her.

When she caught me staring, she gave me a small shrug. “They are ill-mannered,” she said simply.

“Do you think we can trust them not to try to kill us?” I asked softly, careful that Page didn’t overhear.

She nodded slowly. “They are surprised by us. They compare us to people on a hill. I’m not sure what that means, but I think they are speaking of adults. I don’t think they see many grownups. They speak very crudely. They haven’t had someone watching over them in a long time.”

I glanced over the rags and general filth of the small group and found myself feeling sorry for them. On one hand, it was incredible they’d managed to survive this long. On the other… I couldn’t imagine being their age and having to fend for myself. I kept picturing Page by herself in this world and how vulnerable she would be to all of the different evils that lurk around every corner.

I shuddered and tried to dispel the images of what would happen to her without us.

“Let’s go,” Hendrix announced. And then for my ears only, he said, “And hope we don’t all die.”