Chapter Two

 

Hendrix and I rushed to the right side. Vaughan and Tyler shot to the left.

The Zombies were staggered in their attack. They were freakishly fast, but their rotting appendages slowed some of them down. If they’d lost their foot or part of their foot, they just couldn’t run as fast as their friends.

So some led the attack and some trailed closely behind. Thank goodness too! Otherwise, we wouldn’t have needed to worry about the bet. We would have been Zombie food long before any of us could have called out a number.

I had never played baseball in my life, but the Parkers had spent a large amount of time teaching all of us how to swing a bat. And despite my malnourished state, I still had a good deal of muscle. We weren’t starving yet, just perpetually hungry. There was a big difference.

Or that’s what I told myself.

But I was able to keep muscle on my arms and get some force behind this home-run swing.

The key to killing a Feeder at close range was to swing before they could attack. Obviously this could get tricky.

The first Feeder that I ran into had a dislocated jaw that hung off its mouth at an odd angle. His jawbone flashed from ripped-apart flesh. He definitely did not have a full set of teeth, but enough to gnaw me to pieces if he wanted to. Probably slowly… but still. It could happen.

I sprinted to him and lunged forward at the same time I pulled my arms back and swung in a wide arc. I held my core strong and put everything into this counterattack.

Zombies weren’t smart enough to block blows, even the evolved ones. They had become pack animals of a sort, moving together, living together, and hunting together. But there were still motor skills that escaped their finite thinking, like protecting themselves. They were too single-minded in their addiction to flesh.

My bat connected with his head in a sickening crush of flesh and bone. I turned my head away and clamped my mouth shut as blood splatter and pieces of teeth, jaw and brain matter splashed all over me. I couldn’t stop the gag reflex, but I worked hard to keep my mouth shut tight.

Nobody wanted an accidental shot of Zombie guts in the mouth. Thanks, but no thanks.

I sensed the Zombie, now dead, fall at my feet and popped my eyes open. “One!” I shouted over the roar of Feeders screeching, gun shots and cheers from my friends.

I didn’t have time to gloat over the first kill of the night, though; I had a body count to rack up. “Two!” I hollered after another swing and hit.

“Four!” Hendrix yelled back. “Keep up, Willow!”

Bastard. This was important! Couldn’t he at least pretend not to be perfect at everything?

I stepped over a dead body and met my next victim. My bat became slick in my hands from the blood coating it. I quickly wiped my right hand on the front of my shirt and re-gripped my bat.

I glanced up at the road and realized there were more than ten Feeders. I couldn’t see them well in the darkness. But at least ten more stumbled toward us. I hoped that meant they were in worse shape than the first wave.

Worse shape physically, but hungrier. If they were at the back of the line, they didn’t get to eat very often. That meant they would be more vicious than ever.

I pulled my arms back to swing again, but the Feeder I went for lunged out of the way. I didn’t think it was on purpose, she kind of stumbled to the side. But when I swung at her, I missed. My bat grazed her head without doing any damage. The end of the bat came away with clumps of moist hair. I had a moment of horror at the sight of her stringy black hair, coated in syrupy blood, hanging from the end of my weapon before I jumped back into action.

She righted herself and came at me. I swung at her and hit her shoulder. I felt the bone give way to my swing, but even with a broken shoulder, she was still deadly. She bounced back and I used the end of my bat to shove her away. She snapped her teeth at me like a rabid dog. I jammed my bat into her mouth and hoped I broke a few teeth in the process. I pushed hard, but she grabbed the bat with her gnarled hands.

In a blind terror, I kicked out with my right foot and hit her in the stomach. Her mouth dislodged from the bat, but her hands held on tight. I jerked wildly when she yanked on it. I pulled back, but that only brought us closer together.

Her hands slid up the bat and her face was suddenly in mine. My first instinct was to punch her, but I didn’t want to give her a chance to bite me first. Fear clawed up my chest when I started to realize she was seconds away from getting the bat away from me and feasting on my face.

Panic bloomed into harsher panic. I felt sick. I shook the bat, hoping to dislodge her and only managed to piss her off. I just barely kept her from getting to me. Her sharp fingernails dug into my hands and I cried out in pain.

A gun went off. The hungry Feeder stopped digging her claws into my flesh and fell to the ground. I tugged my bat out of her corpse’s grip and met Tyler’s eyes.

“Five!” she shouted with a grin.

“Thank you,” I breathed.

She shrugged and went back to shooting Feeders. That’s when I realized, five? I needed to catch up!

I spun around and met the Zombie waiting for me. Or not really waiting for me, more like moving in to eat the back of my head.

Not good.

Because of my angle, I had to swing from the left side, even though I wasn’t left-handed. It wasn’t the strongest swing ever, but it did the job. I hit the bastard right in the forehead and his entire head deflated with the blow.

He dropped backward and stayed there. His blood-red eyes stared up at the night sky truly unseeing and his entire head looked like a cracked egg.

Gross. “Four,” I called out weakly. That was a truly disgusting sight.

I pulled my arms back and swung out at my next victim, only this time my grip slipped. There was too much wet blood on the aluminum. The bat went flying from my hands and clattered loudly on the highway some ways away, on the wrong side of this conflict.

Shit.

I whirled around and took off running toward… toward anywhere but here. I needed to find a weapon and fast.

I glanced at Haley and saw the wild hysteria in her eyes. She pointed to the side and screamed something instructional, but the blood rushing in my ears made it impossible for me to understand her. Nelson, King, Harrison and Miller were already engaged with their own Zombies. They couldn’t help me.

I looked around the road and the ditches while sprinting as quickly as I could. There was too much raw fear in my head; I couldn’t make out anything useful. I saw everything, but didn’t really see anything.

I felt the Feeder right on my heels. I felt my backpack get snagged in fingers before I lunged forward and ripped it away.

My breath rattled in my chest and my blood turned hot with the need to protect myself. The ditch to my left had a pile of heavy-looking rocks. It was the best I could do at the moment.

I dove for the pile. My shirt pulled up and my stomach grated against the harsh ground. My elbows hit hard and I felt the entire jarring impact vibrate through me. My fingers dug at the rock that was partially submerged in the dirt.

I dug frantically until it popped free. I rolled once, keeping the rock over my head and turned just in time to see him leap for me. I took a quick breath, said a fast prayer and brought the rock down as hard as I could.

By some miracle of timing, I managed to connect with the top of his head. The rock was heavy enough to do fatal damage. Blood and brain spurted from the new hole in the top of his head and his body fell on mine heavily.

I wheezed out a staggering breath as he crushed me beneath his dead weight.

There was so much inside of me that wanted to freak out and never stop freaking out. I was covered in Zombie goo. From brain matter to bits of chunky flesh to thick, coagulated, black blood that made me sticky from head to toe, plus all the dirt, gravel and general filth that added an extra layer of yuck. Now was obviously not the time to care about superficial things like showers, but how could I not when my clothes and skin were saturated with the most disgusting pieces of dead people.

I silently wondered if Zombies would even bother attacking me at this point. I smelled just like them. I probably looked just like them! Maybe they wouldn’t even notice I wasn’t one of them.

I tossed the rock to the side and wiggled out from underneath the dead Zombie. I just wanted him to stop oozing on me. Was that so much to ask?

I lay on the ground beside him for an extra beat and tried to pull myself together mentally. The sounds of battle had died down and the gunshots had stopped completely.

I propped myself up on my elbows and watched as Hendrix and Harrison finished cleaning up. I had run a ways away from everybody else and looking back at the road littered with dead, I couldn’t help but feel more than a little awe for our traveling circus.

The sky had started to lighten finally. The clouds above had faded from a black shroud to a soft gray. It would be morning soon. We had to find a better place to stay the night.

I finally pulled myself to my feet and stumbled toward the rest of our group. I wasn’t the only one that had a bath in Zombie guts. Anyone wielding a bat was equally soaked.

“You’re alive?” Hendrix greeted me first.

“I think so.”

“No bites?” he asked evenly.

I shook my head.

He nodded once. “Good thinking with the rock.” Then he moved by me and went to talk with Nelson.

I stared after him in a little bit of confusion. He’d seen that? How? I hadn’t noticed him once during the altercation. I’d been too busy saving my own ass.

It must be part of the Parker supergenes. They could apparently keep an eye on everyone whilst saving the world. It must be nice to be a Parker.

Haley stood up, walked over to me and promptly burst into tears. She wiped at her dirt and tear-streaked face and flapped her arms like she wanted to hug me but kept thinking better of it. Smart girl. I was not in a hugging mood.

Plus, all the blood.

And guts.

“Are you hurt?” she croaked.

I looked down and pulled up my shirt. Long bloody skid marks reached from the waistband of my jeans to the bottom of my bra. And once I actually paid attention to the scrapes, they started to burn like crazy. Damn. I should have just ignored them.

I hissed with the tip of my tongue pressed to the back of my teeth. “This hurts like a bitch.”

“We need to clean you up,” Tyler declared. “I just need to disinfect it.”

I didn’t even respond. Sure, clean it up. With the disinfectant, we didn’t have and the clean water we didn’t have. I should just go ahead and hop in the hot shower that we also didn’t have.

“How?”

She leaned forward and winked at me. “I’ve been saving some hydrogen peroxide for a special occasion. Aren’t you impressed?”

I shuddered through a breath and pieces of gravel fell out of my long road burns. “Super impressed.”

“We’ll just have to find clean water first.” Tyler frowned. “But I don’t think we won.”

Vaughan chuckled. “You didn’t.”

“You did,” Hendrix countered. “I’m switching sides. Tyler, count up thirteen with your total. That should be enough.” Vaughan looked at his brother and Hendrix shrugged casually. “Dude, I don’t care what it takes. I’m done smelling like this.”

“Fair enough,” Vaughan responded. “Alright, we can see now, so let’s head out. Be on the lookout for anything useful.”

I walked back to my bat, picking my way over dead and smelly Zombies. It had clattered to the side of the road and had a similar fate to mine. Dirt and gravel stuck to the blood that coated it from top to bottom. I picked it up and held it loosely in my hand. It wasn’t slippery anymore. Now that it was dry it was very, very sticky.

I wouldn’t lose it again. Even if I had to keep it coated in dried blood. What a stupid mistake to happen in the middle of a life-or-death moment.

I let out an exhausted breath and hurried to catch up to the rest. We spread out across the entire highway and had a stumbling cadence that reminded me of the horde we’d just massacred.

I was so thirsty. So very thirsty. I wiped at my sweaty brow and adjusted my jeans, shirt and backpack. My clothes were stretched out and filthy. They hung off my thin body in awkward ways that made it impossible to take three steps without needing to adjust something on me. My backpack was uncomfortably heavy with necessities that I had no choice but to lug everywhere with me.

There was at least one clean-ish pair of clothes in there wrapped in salvaged plastic and some shampoo. I had been saving those very precious items for when there was a legit opportunity to use them.

We walked for a long time without running into any trouble. The sun rose and the day turned hotter than hot. My throat burned and my stomach felt like it had been filled with dust.

Our entire group dragged along the highway, fueled only by the promise that we could take some time to get clean if we could just find water.

There had to be water somewhere.

There had to be.

At one point during our wandering, we found an abandoned gas station. But it had already been picked clean. All of the windows were bashed in and the shelves emptied. We didn’t stay long to search through it. It was important to find somewhere better for tonight.

By midday, we were exhausted and so hungry it was hard to think. When I first saw the outline of a town, I thought I was hallucinating. That’s how hungry and tired I was. I immediately discounted the town as a hallucination.

“Am I the only one that sees that?” Haley asked in a croaking but hopeful voice.

Whew, I thought. I have not lost my mind completely.

“It’s real,” King said. “It has to be real.”

Nobody else said anything because that pretty much summed it up. This place had better be real. It had to be or… or I couldn’t even think of “or.”

We were at that dangerous place of desperation where we needed something like a grand scale miracle or survival would become a limited possibility.

The highway went right through the tiny town. A random windmill in the center of the hodgepodge buildings flapped listlessly in the weak breeze.

Nothing moved as we walked through the center of town. People didn’t run out to stop us or check us for bites. Nobody attacked with weapons raised or ran in fear from the horrific sight of our gore-covered bodies.

The town seemed completely deserted. It didn’t mean that it was, but it seemed that way.

Those in our group that had guns raised them carefully to their sides. I adjusted the grip on my bat that I had been dragging alongside me.

As a whole, we didn’t trust people anymore. Not any people. They were as deadly and dangerous to us as the Feeders we killed without question.

We had been through enough with the Colony that we’d collectively decided not to ever take help from another human being unless we were one second from death. We trusted each other and that was enough for us. We wouldn’t put ourselves in another precarious position if we could help it.

Sure, there were lots of treacherous situations we couldn’t control. We couldn’t predict Zombie attacks or not being able to find food and water. We couldn’t predict where we would be forced to spend the night or if wild animals would attack us. There were lots of situations that were out of our control.

But human beings were an enemy we decided to put in our control. We would avoid them as much as possible. And when forced to deal with them, we would treat them as if they were planning to attack us at any second. They were the biggest threat to our survival and our community.

And we wouldn’t let them get near enough to hurt us or separate us again.

“What do you think?” Hendrix asked Vaughan in a low voice.

“I think we don’t have the luxury to go slowly. We need to find food and water quickly and move on.”

“Haley needs to sit down,” Nelson said sternly.

Vaughan looked around the small main street and pointed to a wood-sided building with a wide porch. A few pieces of outdoor furniture had been overturned on the broken wood boards.

“Over there.” He turned and faced Haley. “Rest for as long as you can, Hales. We’ll get you some water.” Then to the rest of the family he said, “Page, go with her. Miller and King, help Nelson keep an eye out.”

Everyone moved into action at the same time. Haley was our top protection priority. We sacrificed a ton to keep that baby safe and Haley healthy. And we sacrificed willingly. We’d raided a library in Texas and found books on pregnancy and birth. Not one of us felt confident enough to help Haley through having this child, but there wasn’t another option. We had to make sure the baby lived and that Haley lived.

We also wanted to make sure that we postponed her labor for as long as possible. As long as possible. This meant no pre-term labor because she was exhausted and dehydrated.

Easy, right? Psht.

We paired off in our usual fashion. Hendrix, Harrison and I took the right side of town and Vaughan and Tyler took the left. Harrison usually tagged along with the two of us. I had a suspicion Vaughan ordered him to stick close to us whenever there was a possibility of Hendrix and I being alone. Apparently he was our buffer?

Not that Hendrix and I needed any more of a buffer. We were pros at avoiding each other and keeping the conversation to polite, shallow topics.

At first I thought Vaughan sent Harrison with us because he didn’t trust me. He wanted another pair of eyes on me at all times. Or he didn’t think I could keep my cool with Hendrix. But lately I’d started to wonder if Harrison weren’t here for Hendrix’s benefit.

There were times that Hendrix looked at me and seemed on the verge of exploding. His expression would turn dark and his gaze would narrow. Or other times he would just stare at me as if he expected me to say something to him.

But I didn’t know what.

So more often than not, I was thankful for Harrison’s carefree personality to diffuse the building tension between Hendrix and me. I just wish I knew what the tension was building up to.

There was so much to blame me for; so much that my fault. I could just imagine all of the nasty things Hendrix wanted to unload on me. And one day I just knew I would provoke him unknowingly and I would hear it all. I would hear every last item on Hendrix’s long list of Reagan grievances.

I could hardly wait.

Hendrix led the way to a pharmacy, the kind that had been outdated before Zombies arrived. We had to slide through parked cars to get to the sidewalk and that gave me a huge burst of hope. If any of these cars were drivable, that could change our entire journey.

We would need gas. That would be the tricky part. We’d managed to find several vehicles after we left Gage’s compound, but any remaining gas was well past an expiration date. It burned fast and didn’t take us far.

Which was unfortunate.

Hendrix pushed open the door with his bat and it creaked loudly on its hinges. It hadn’t been locked or shut all the way, which made me nervous.

If people lived here, they would keep the door shut. Unless this was a trap. And if it was a trap, we planned to walk right into it.

We listened in the doorframe for any abnormal sounds. Nothing happened after a full minute and so we took that to mean it was safe to go in.

I coughed through stale air and waved at the thick clouds of dust in front of my face. Light filtered in through the dirty storefront windows and illuminated the dust as it danced through the air.

Harrison pushed the other door open and we propped them with the closest heavy things: a display stand for Mucinex and a humidifier that was currently on sale. We moved quietly throughout the small space. There were plenty of aisles to explore, but we had to be sharp and attentive to detail.

The thick dust over every surface told the story of neglect and abandonment, but we could never be too careful. I looked down to see the trails I’d made by my footsteps and took a small breath of relief. It was another sign that no people had been here recently.

Floorboards creaked beneath my weight and every time I picked something up off the shelves, I braced myself for the fallout.

Nothing happened though.

I managed to find some painkillers and Band-Aids and some more hydrogen peroxide for Tyler. I also found more shampoo and soap and toothpaste.

My outlook on the day drastically improved with those little pieces of gold.

I glanced up at Hendrix and caught his eye. He held up a box of untouched energy bars and waggled his eyebrows at me. Then he showed me a box of protein shakes. Chocolate.

Oh, yes, this day had gotten much, much better.

“Jackpot!” Harrison whistled.

Hendrix and I hurried over to him and found an entire corner of the store had been stocked with gallons of water. There was a water bubbler as well with even more water.

What in the world?

What happened to these people? Or were they lying in wait somewhere. Were they using the water to trap us?

I swallowed nervously and looked around. The lure of getting clean and hydrated battled with the desperation to stay careful and focused.

I never expected to find this much water anywhere.

“Harrison, go find Vaughan. Tell him what we found,” Hendrix ordered.

Harrison disappeared obediently and Hendrix and I just continued to stare at the water for a very long time.

“Is it real?” I whispered.

I felt Hendrix’s gaze when he turned to look at me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the water. “What do you suppose happened here?” he asked in a low voice.

“I have no idea.”

“Hmm.”

I finally lifted my eyes and met his deep blue gaze. “Is it too much to hope that this could all be ours?”

He watched me for a few long moments before slowly nodding. “Usually when things look or sound too good to be true, it’s because they are.”

There was a hoarseness in his tone that cut at me. I knew immediately that he was referring to our relationship and that I was the thing in his life that was too good to be true.

We had been so good for each other. We had been so… happy. And yet, we still didn’t work. Couldn’t work.

I turned back to the water. “I’m sorry, Hendrix. I didn’t mean for you-”

“Please don’t,” he interrupted. “Please don’t do this now.”

Undeserved anger flared under my skin and turned my blood hot. “Why not?” My voice was a whisper too and I still couldn’t look at him. I could probably guess his answer, but I wanted to hear it from his mouth.

“I can’t revisit us. I can’t reopen those wounds. I’m not even sure if they’re all healed yet. I just, I don’t want… I can’t hear what you have to say. I think it would not be good for me.”

I couldn’t think of something to say right away and when I finally did, it was a pathetic attempt at levity. But he wasn’t the only one that wasn’t ready to think about us or what we used to be. I felt an intense amount of guilt for what I did to Hendrix and how I lost Kane. But those two separate camps of blame seemed to cancel each other out. I couldn’t feel guilty for being the reason that Hendrix ended things with me because then I got to experience what I did with Kane. And now that Kane was gone, I treasured those few moments with him in the deepest, most secure places of my heart.

On the other hand, I couldn’t miss Kane this harshly without feeling guilty for how things imploded with Hendrix or how I betrayed him. What Hendrix and I had was so good. I had truly loved him. But I had truly loved Kane too.

My head and heart felt constantly at war with how to feel these days. And so usually, I found a way to push all of the thoughts of either boy into a locked box inside of me and ignore it completely.

I didn’t know how to sift through that box and come to terms with any of it. And so I didn’t. It might completely undo me one day, but it was the only coping mechanism I had right now.

And so I clung to it.

I had nothing and nobody else left to cling to anyway.

“I am, in general, not good for you, I think.” I flashed him a killer smile and quickly looked away.

His intense gaze stayed on me though, hard and penetrating. He always had this ability to see through me, see through whatever bullshit I tried to use as glamor. He had always known me in this way that was uniquely his.

I shifted uncomfortably and the floorboards squeaked loudly beneath my feet. The sound made me jump and quiet down. I wasn’t used to making unintentional noise quite that clumsily.

Hendrix stilled too, which was why the footsteps on the porch caught our attention.

Unfamiliar voices drifted in through the propped doors and the sounds of jingling, like keys or something, punctuated the fact that we did not know these people.

Hendrix and I dropped to a squat instantly. There was a door that led to a back room just to the right of the water that Hendrix pointed at. We scurried through it before we could be found.

The room opened to an office. I pressed against the wall behind the door and Hendrix flattened himself against the other wall, leaving the door open just a crack so he could hear.

We stood in complete darkness, with only the dim sliver of light from the cracked door to help us see. Hendrix looked at me across the small space and put a finger to his lips.

As if I needed to be reminded to be quiet.

My stomach clenched with nerves for Haley and Page. Those fears were quickly elevated when one of the strangers spoke.

“You think they came this way?” Stranger One asked in what sounded like the middle of the pharmacy.

“They would have had to,” Stranger Two answered.

Who were they talking about? Did these guys live here? Were we going to be shot for eyeing their water?

Nooo!

“That was their handiwork on the highway, wasn’t it?”

A prickle of nerves shot through me and Hendrix gave me a very concerned look.

“That many dead? Had to be. Matthias will be happy to know we’re on their trail again.”

Shit!

I held Hendrix’s eyes and pleaded with him to make those men go away. He stared at me with intent written all over his face. He looked furious. His entire body had turned to steel and his mouth pressed into a frown.

“You want to waste time riding back to camp or keep going? They can’t be that far ahead of us. Those bodies weren’t that old.”

“How could you tell? They all stink like they’ve been dead for days and the blood was good and dried.”

Their footsteps brought them closer to us and I held my breath lest my breathing give us away. I heard the distinct clicking of a gun safety and I squinted my eyes shut, afraid they were about to burst through the door and shoot us on the spot.

“If they’d been there for longer than a couple days other Feeders would have found them by now and eaten the rest of them. They’re freshly dead.”

The other stranger chuckled as if truly impressed by this logic. If only they were actually smart enough to realize how fresh those bodies were.

“Let’s stay on the road. He’ll be pissed if we gave up their scent just to tell him about it. But, if we manage to return with them, he’ll make us kings.”

The first stranger laughed. “He does have it out for them pretty bad.”

Any hope that they were talking about anybody but us was squashed when the second voice replied, “They killed his wife, Moron. You would have it out for them pretty bad too.”

The first guy grunted his reply and they started to move around the pharmacy. Too many fears ping-ponged around in my chest and I had to press my lips together to keep from whimpering. I had to believe that Vaughan had somehow noticed these guys before we did and had gotten everyone else to a safe place. And I also had to hope that these guys, clearly sent by Matthias, hadn’t noticed our fresh footsteps in the dust.

They walked even closer to us, their footsteps jingling with their car keys and louder-than-normal noises. One of them made an overdramatic spitting sound and then they both chuckled low and victoriously.

“Well, well,” the first guy gloated. “Look at all this.”

“There was that mass grave about a mile back. It wasn’t a warning, it was this town. They must have offed themselves communally before the Feeders got to them.”

A sick feeling rolled through me. Preemptive deaths? How very sad.

That’s why there was all this water too. If they had been planning to wait out the Apocalypse, something had changed their minds.

“We’ll load this up in the truck,” Bad Guy Number Two declared. “We’ll go back to Matthias with a trunk full of water and that bitch, and he’ll make us filthy rich. We’ll be set for life.”

I panicked at his words and jerked in my spot. I hadn’t meant to move, but those guys were talking specifically about me and that freaked me out! Another floorboard creaked unforgivably beneath me and I knew I’d just signed our death certificates. I couldn’t believe I was so stupid!

My eyes popped open and I met Hendrix’s steely gaze. I know I had to look terrified, but he appeared absolutely calm.

Calm and furious.

“What was that?” one of them asked quickly. “Did you hear that?”

“I did,” the second guy confirmed. “It came from right through here-”

The door started to open and I didn’t bother to stay quiet then. I screamed at the top of my lungs because Hendrix had jumped through the door and a gunshot rang out loud and clear.