Love and Decay (14 page)

We had some outdated information on one of
Luke’s safe houses where several vehicles were stashed away. We
just had to get to it. And then hope they were in some kind of
working order.

Oh, and that there was plenty of fuel stashed
away as well.

I mimicked Miller’s yawn and we smiled at
each other. Then Miller tripped because he wasn’t watching where he
was going and I started laughing. He caught himself before he fell
over, but just barely.

“Careful there,” he grinned at me.

I turned my eyes back to alternating between
the ground and the distance. The group fanned out around us. Miller
was in charge of the map and had the coveted compass we’d had with
us since Colombia. And together we led the group forward, keeping
the children and their parents tucked in the middle.

Our party was huge. I wondered what the
chance was of staying under the radar. My only hope was that even
though the Colony claimed this land, there weren’t enough of them
to keep it all patrolled. The human population had significantly
decreased after the infection and even worse in the last couple
years as people ran out of ammunition and sufficient ways to
protect themselves.

Red blinked at me in the distance.

But that couldn’t be right.

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It was
gone. Or I’d imagined it.

I pulled my braid over my shoulder and tugged
at the curled end. Doubts and fears creeped in, blurring my
confidence and courage.

I stared ahead, searching for that short
flash of red… Nothing.

I stumbled twice before I forced myself to
look back at the ground. Fears ricocheted through me as I fought a
mental battle to keep them at bay.

Unable to endure it a second longer, I looked
up. There it was again. Red. Two small dots of red blurring
together. I stared at them until I couldn’t help but blink; they
were gone.

“Did you see that?” I asked Miller.

He looked down at me, no doubt wondering
about my hushed tone and the fear lacing every word. “See
what?”

I waved ahead of us. “The red?”

“The red?” he chuckled. “No, I didn’t see any
red. What kind of red?”

“Two small dots of it,” I explained. “I saw
it twice.”

Miller tensed. Experience and instinct had
taught him to take me seriously. We both turned to scan the
distance.

I had convinced myself I’d imagined it when
two more popped up for a second, closer… lower to the ground.

I grabbed Miller’s forearm, ready to point it
out, when an ear-piercing crack split the world open and swallowed
us whole. My feet and arms flailed as I tried to figure out what
happened to the ground. In another second I hit something hard and
wet with a gasping grunt.

My mind spun as I tried to make sense of how
I’d gone down… and why my body screamed with pain. My arms hurt
where they’d hit something long and rough; my torso ached where I’d
landed on something equally hard. My legs hurt, my head hurt, I’d
jammed a finger and maybe sprained an ankle.

Everything freaking hurt.

“Goddamn,” Miller moaned next to me. Or maybe
he was under me.

Or maybe I was under him?

I tried to sit up, but we were too tangled
and I was too confused to figure out what limbs went where.

“Page?” Nelson hollered above me.

I tried to turn my head to look up at him,
but it throbbed and Miller’s arm was pinning my head down so I
couldn’t move.

“I’m…” I finally pulled my head free and
focused on saying words that made sense. “I’m fine, Nelson. Just a
little beat up.”

Miller sat up and helped disentangle the rest
of us. “What happened?” Miller asked my brothers, who were now all
peeking their heads over the fifteen foot drop.

“Looks like a trap,” Hendrix said evenly. I
was impressed with his calm collectedness.

Especially since I heard the word “trap” and
immediately started freaking the hell out. “A trap?” I squeaked. “A
trap for what?”

“What?” my brothers shouted in unison.

This was one impressive hole. Miller and I
hadn’t seen it coming. I mean, it took some skill to trick us. But
we’d literally walked right into this one. We’d been too distracted
by the…

By…

“Hendrix!” I hollered. “There’s something up
there! I saw red!”

Sounding equally as confused as Miller,
Hendrix shouted down, “You saw red?”

“As in red eyes!”

Hendrix’s head disappeared. Then one by one
my other brothers’ heads popped out of sight. Anxiety swirled in my
gut, warning me that things were about to go south.

Quickly.

I looked at Miller. “Are you okay? Anything
broken?”

He sat back on his hands and yanked his foot
from beneath me. “That hurt like a sonofabitch,” he groaned. “But I
don’t think anything’s broken.”

My breath whooshed out of me. “Or
pierced?”

“Huh?”

I nodded my head at a series of natural wood
spikes buried in the earth. As thick and long as my thigh, each one
looked dangerously sharp. Whoever had built this trap had spaced
them out around the bottom of the hole, making sure it was
impossible to miss one.

Somehow, by some miracle, Miller and I had
missed all of them.

“Holy shit,” he whispered.

My throat went dry. Or drier, since I’d just
inhaled enough dirt and grime for a lifetime. I’d made it out of
some close calls before, but none of them had painted such a vivid
picture.

“Where are we?” I whispered.

Miller stood up, popping joints and
stretching his back as he tried to work out the bumps and bruises
from our fall. He held a hand out to me while he looked around at
all of the spikes that were meant for us.

“Look, Page.” I took his hand and groaned
into standing. My neck was going to be sore for a while. Geez. I
stopped complaining the second I saw what Miller wanted me to see.
Across the hole, most of the pointed tips of the spikes had been
smashed and covered in something dark.

Oh.

Blood.

They had been covered in blood because
someone, or a lot of someones, had fallen and not been as lucky as
us.

“They’re closer together over there,” I told
Miller. “Look.”

It was true. On the other side of the wide
hole, the spikes had been buried closer together, making it
impossible to miss. On our side, it appeared they had run out or
something. They were spaced more sporadically.

“They aren’t expecting many people from that
side,” Miller pointed at where we’d fallen. “It’s for people
fleeing toward Mexico, not coming back.”

“This is the Colony’s?” I moved around,
pacing the fifteen foot length. Glancing up, I wondered where my
family had gone to. I couldn’t hear anybody up there.

“Probably?” Miller guessed. “We don’t have a
map of every Colony city, so it’s hard to tell. But I’m guessing if
there’re traps inside Colony territory they belong to the
Colony.”

“Welcome to America,” I muttered.

Something horrible screeched just outside our
underground prison. My head snapped in that direction. I tried
jumping as high as I could, but the nine and a half feet proved
more than I could handle.

Although I felt better when Miller tried,
too. Although he had almost a foot on me his attempt was futile. We
were trapped down here with the ghosts of the Colony’s victims and
the potential threat of Zombies waging war overhead.

A second screech joined the first. Deep and
low-pitched moaning rumbled around us.

Zombies for sure.

And more than one.

I pulled out one of my knives from my
holster. Miller did the same. We circled the hole, searching for a
way out. He stuck his knife into the dirt side, hoping to use it as
leverage to boost himself up, but the dirt was too loose and all he
managed to do was cut a big chunk out of it and cover himself in
grime.

He cursed under his breath and tried a
different section of wall with the same result. He lashed out with
his foot, kicking it once. “This is so dumb.”

The once quiet night filled with Feeder
screams and human shouts. My heart hammered in my chest. I felt
completely helpless. I wanted to be up there.
Now
.

Miller turned around and I stared at him
across the hole. “What are we going to do?”

He jerked his head, indicating that I should
go over to him. “I can lift you up. You can crawl out.”

“And what about you?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

I had just decided that was our only option
when Harrison poked his head over again. “It’s mayhem up here!” he
shouted. He disappeared again and rolled back over with Jagger
hanging on his neck. He coaxed Jagger to let go and held onto the
toddler’s arms while he explained, “We’re handing you the
kids.”

Miller reached up to grab Jagger. The
transition happened seamlessly and soon the little, crying boy was
as safe as he could be.

King appeared on the opposite side of the
hole. “Not that side!” I warned him quickly.

He saw the closely situated spikes and cried,
“What the hell!” he disappeared and reappeared near me. He lowered
Stevie down to me. “So obviously this isn’t a permanent solution,
but it’s the best we can do right now.”

“Let her go!” I told him once I had a secure
hold on her waist.

King looked up and barked orders at someone.
Adela’s butt appeared next as she slid over the side, kicking up
dirt and rocks as she intentionally fell into the hole with us.

King handed me the bigger kids, Lennon and
Vaughan, because their bodies were long enough for me to reach.
Miller grabbed Halen from Harrison and set him next to his crying
cousin.

“Go comfort them,” I ordered the older kids.
“And watch out for those.”

They carefully avoided the spikes while they
hurried over to the little ones.

“So you just want us to stay down here?” I
hollered up at King.

He rolled out of sight without saying
anything. I stared up at him, listening to the sounds of a battle I
couldn’t see. Frustration boiled inside me.

I hated this feeling of helplessness more
than anything on earth.

I was the one that had led all these people
into this and now I was safely tucked away while they fought my
battle.

Miller stared at Adela. “Are you not
armed?”

She clenched her jaw before saying, “Diego
all but threw me down here.” Miller’s expression revealed his
understanding. That sounded like something Diego would do. “And
besides,” Adela continued. “I figured you’d need help.”

“To babysit?” Miller scoffed.

I would have argued with him if I didn’t
empathize with his feelings of helplessness. The kids were more
important than anything else. As frustrated as I was, other people
had to fight for me, I also couldn’t deny that I would die
protecting this brood. This hole had caused major problems and
could have killed one or both of us. But it was a temporary safe
haven for the little ones.

For that I could be grateful.

“No,” Adela sneered. “Against other
visitors.”

Miller’s brow quirked in confusion. King
popped his head over the side again, nearly flinging himself
headfirst into the hole with us. He braced himself against the wall
and puffed out a breath of relief. Then he looked at us and said,
“We can’t hold them all back. You’re going to have incoming in like
thirty seconds.”

“Incoming?” It was my turn to be confused.
Adela squatted down to put her body in front of the children.

The first Feeder flew over the top of the
hole, dropping down at us with wild, flailing limbs. I had replaced
my knife in my holster when I helped the kids down, but now I
grappled for it, hoping to beat the Feeder before it could
recover.

By the time I had my blade out and ready, I
realized I was too late. The Feeder had fallen victim to the
spikes. It lay impaled halfway across the space.

The foul stench filled the hole, erasing the
cool, freshness of the night and mustiness of the dirt prison, just
like its presence had completely deleted the sense of peace and
hope I’d had only minutes ago.

“It’s not dead,” Adela exclaimed.

And in fact, it wasn’t. It had been stabbed
twice, once through the shoulder and once through the gut. Blackish
blood trickled from its open wounds and its lower body didn’t move,
as if it couldn’t. But still the creature’s good arm swiped through
the air, scratching its claws on the nearest post readying them for
us.

While we watched, the skin from its chest
began to tear open around the shoulder wound. The disease had
either rendered it too paper thin to hold together after such a
deep injury or the Feeder was pulling itself apart on purpose…

Its brain was fine. So its addiction to human
flesh would be too.

I watched in abject horror as Miller stepped
forward, careful to avoid its claws, and plunged his knife through
the top of the Feeder’s head.

It stopped moving almost immediately. The
head flopped back and it lay there, face up, truly dead. The
children screamed.

I didn’t blame them. It was really
disgusting.

Another Feeder flew over the top. It was like
it had learned from the mistake of the first one, though. This one
managed not to impale itself on the sharp spikes. The worst damage
was a long gash through its calf.

A
she
this time. Her ravaged dress and
long clumps of hair were thick with coagulated blood and slimy
puss. She hissed at us from across the hole. Her gaze flickered to
her dead companion and she screeched at the sky. Adela stood up,
poised with blades and fierce resolve.

I did the same. Miller moved slowly, trying
to get a better angle on her without setting her off. It was as
though she sensed the danger. She didn’t immediately attack us
instinctively. She waited, crouching low and baring her blackened
teeth. They winked in the moonlight, just like the bleached bone
that protruded from her arm and the exposed ribs along her
side.