Love and Decay (3 page)

He kept his eyes fixed on our new enemies.
“Just barely.”

Reconciling them with humanity proved hard.
They reminded me so much of Feeders. And yet their eyes were clear
and their limbs intact. They stood there, baring blackened, rotting
teeth. The looks on their faces terrified me more than anything.
They appeared like they wanted to devour us… like they were as
addicted to human flesh as any Feeder…

“No,” I hissed. “The cannibals?
Seriously?”

Miller’s body froze in place, signifying a
new level of rage and power. “Harrison!” he yelled. The booming
sound made the cannibals jump with surprise. Many of them seemed
off balance, flailing and tipping from side to side. They took a
step toward us. “Hide the children!” Miller continued to shout.
“We’ve got company!”

And then war erupted.

Miller and I didn’t have another chance to
think or talk or plan. They attacked us and we were forced into
battle. Sure, it wasn’t our usual kind, but the outcome would be
the same no matter what.

They would kill us and eat us.

Or we would kill them and earn the right to
live one more day in this godforsaken world.

They were armed with rocks and sticks. We had
blades. But there were more of them and they were rock experts.
They pelted them at us, aiming for our heads.

Miller and I had to duck out of the way and
use our arms to cover our heads. The rocks still found places to
land though, cutting at my bare skin and bruising me
everywhere.

Miller stepped in front of me, taking the
brunt of the abuse. His arms banded around my body, holding me
tightly against him. I felt sick with worry about him. If they
killed Miller with a rock, I was going to fillet every single one
of them. I couldn’t even wrap my head around the idea of losing
Miller. And especially not in this way… Not because of rocks and
stupid cannibals. Not when we were this close to our
destination.

“They’re going to run out of rocks,” I yelled
to him over the battle cries of fifteen depraved men. “Then we
attack.”

I felt his head bob against my back, agreeing
with me. His chest heaved and his arms flexed, turning human muscle
into supernatural steel.

These men ate people to survive. They were as
bad and dangerous as anything in this world.

And yet they had never met Miller.

They had never had to face someone so
dangerous… so determined to keep those he cared about safe.

They didn’t know he was a weapon, honed by
the apocalypse, sharpened by loss, grief and sheer, raw
determination.

They didn’t know they were about to pay for
their sins against me.

A single hesitation between rocks was all it
took for Miller to push off me, spin around and attack.

I followed him because… well because I
couldn’t let him get all the glory. Our blades were ready in our
hands and our will to survive had never been stronger.

No matter how many things I had killed over
the years, no matter how common place it should have been in my
life, it was not. And it was only made worse by having to kill
something still human.

Something that should know better.

I told myself that this was practice for the
Colony. I stood on the brink of war. I would have to get over this
sooner or later.

Or maybe I wouldn’t.

The cannibals were as savage as they came.
They didn’t speak to each other and for a second I feared they had
developed telepathy. They seemed to understand each other without
using words.

We attacked their front line, but they
quickly spread into a circle surrounding us. They reeked foul and
wrong. Their pungent scents drifted through the air and turned my
stomach. I wanted to reason with them, offer them life if they let
us keep ours.

But Miller didn’t believe in peaceful
negotiations.

He lunged forward, swinging his blade with
deadly accuracy. The cannibals pulled out thick, deadly clubs and
long sticks that were sharpened at the end. They didn’t hesitate or
cower from us. What they lacked in finesse, they made up for with
brute enthusiasm.

Our blades jabbed at tough wood, occasionally
catching a cannibal in the flesh. We were as anxious for blood as
they were. I wondered if they would drop down and start eating
their dead the same way Feeders did. Would they use their rotted
teeth to tear into fresh flesh too? Or would they wait to drag them
back to their caves and cook them first?

The thought sickened me, but finding
differences between these monsters and the normal, everyday kind I
usually fought was hard. Both were addicted to flesh. Neither
should exist. And yet this was my reality. My life.

The only one I’d ever known.

I acutely remembered the time when I was a
child and we’d wandered unknowingly into the cannibals’ caves. We
thought they meant to help us. We were wrong.

We’d just barely made it out of those caves
alive and now, the second we stepped back into the Mexican
Territories, we were face-to-face with this nightmare again.

I realized the fire had drawn them out and
signaled our arrival. We should have known better than to announce
our presence or trust our surroundings. But we’d all breathed a
sigh of relief when we’d made it back to friendly territory. We had
been expecting Diego, not these monstrosities.

Frustrated, I swung harder, faster. We hadn’t
even been worried about Feeders because we knew they were kept
locked up here. We should have known better.

Nothing was easy in this world.

Not even dinner.

As my blade cut through the gut of a man
ghostly white and ripe with red blood, I tried to keep from
flinching. His skin had yellowed and a fine sheen of something
gooey spread all over him. But he was still human. His brain should
still work. His conscience should still speak up.

Or maybe not.

Even before he fell to the ground, his eyes
stared blankly ahead. His drawn face remained expressionless and
unconscious to the pain.

My heart beat faster the longer I was exposed
to these unnatural anomalies. They closed in on us, tightening
their circle and working in unison to beat us with their clubs and
stick us with the pointy end of their handmade spears. We dodged
the blows as best we could and stabbed and cut whenever possible.
But we were outnumbered.

“Where the hell are your brothers?” Miller
shouted over the battle.

I was just about to answer him, when Harrison
spoke up from behind us. “We just wanted to see what you two were
made of,” he yelled.

Miller growled something creatively
profane.

King’s chuckle floated down to us. I glanced
up and saw him standing on a large boulder. “We were getting
reinforcements!” he explained.

Miller looked up just as a shadow fell on our
tight circle of death. A man appeared. His smooth face contrasted
with the rough beards on either side of the battle. His dark hair
was peppered with gray, but it didn’t make him look old. Instead,
he gave off a distinguished vibe.

I squinted at him. The sun set just over his
shoulder, blocking a clear view of his face and his identity.

But Miller somehow relaxed and grew more
alert simultaneously. He took a step back, hiding me from the man,
but his blades dropped to his side and his shoulders relaxed.

The man shouted something in Spanish and the
cannibals jolted to attention. They stepped back from us, lowering
their weapons and glancing around the clearing with cautious eyes.
The man shouted again, telling them to leave now.

I didn’t think they would listen. But they
did. I felt their eyes take us in for one long moment, mourning the
meal they had set their hopes on. Then they turned in unison and
ran off. They loped off together like a pack of wolves, lifting
their faces to the sky as if they could scent the air.

I turned to the man on the rock. “Thank
you.”

He stared at me. “Who is this?” He directed
his question at King.

I resented his question immediately. I could
answer for myself. “I’m Page Parker,” I told him with all the pride
that sentence demanded. “Who are
you
?”

Despite the shadows over his face and the
burning sun over his shoulder, his wide smile split his face and
flashed down at me. “The little girl?” He laughed as if that were
the funniest thing ever. “Well, child, you should remember who I am
then.” I raised an eyebrow at him. Waiting. “Diego,” he said. “And
I just saved your life. Again.”

Chapter Two

Diego was my most blurred memory of our time
in Mexico. I remembered Luke and his family with clarity. I had no
trouble recollecting my time with the slavers or the cannibals.
Both had been traumatic enough to imprint on me for life. I could
close my eyes and imagine every detail of my kidnapping.

But Diego? Apparently he’d been the least
threatening of all our Mexican adventures.

Although that wasn’t exactly true. He’d run
the Mexican Territories for a decade. With our help, he’d taken out
all of the other overlords and claimed this land for himself.
People feared him. Zombies obeyed him. Even the cannibals fled.

His rule was almost as legendary as
Matthias’s and my family’s friendship with him just as notorious.
My brothers had dropped his name all over South America and it had
worked. People listened to the threat of Diego. They quaked in
terror. And jumped to please us because we were associated with
him.

But they didn’t know what I knew.

What my family knew.

Diego had as much territory as he wanted.
Yes, he’d fought hard for northern Mexico and that hard work had
paid off in a big way.

But Diego wasn’t interested in expanding his
empire. He was content to control the small portion of the world he
already had.

Not that we would tell anyone that. We’d
guard his secret. And use it whenever it benefited us.

Diego jumped down from the boulder he’d used
as a platform and smiled at us. Harrison and King wandered over
with him and his men. I assumed the rest of my family had stayed
back to guard the children.

He walked over to Miller and me, assessing us
with dark, shrewd eyes. “You are not a child anymore,” he declared
as if I’d been waiting for his verdict.

“I know.”

His eyes flashed with humor. “You take after
her, don’t you? You have her fire.”

“Who?”

“The Reagan.” He pronounced Reagan with two
long
ee
s. “
Si
, she is like this. She is a… how do you
say… fireball.”

I thought he might have meant
firecracker
, but I didn’t correct him. Fireball worked too
when it came to Reagan.

He took another step toward me, but his eyes
shifted to Miller. “And you have grown too, I see. You look like
your father.”

I dropped my blade and wrapped my hand around
Miller’s forearm without thinking. Miller surprised me by not
moving. At the mention of Matthias, I had expected Miller to murder
Diego, which would have served nobody’s purpose.

Instead, Miller’s muscles flexed and rippled
beneath my hand, but he remained still and silent.

Diego looked him over as if weighing Miller’s
worth. I wanted to snap at Diego. I wanted to tell him every good
and worthy thing about Miller. But I held silent.

We had just entered the lair of a beast. And
maybe we were safe here. Maybe we’d conned the beast into believing
we had mutual interests and common enemies, but he was still a
beast. He could still kill. He could still maim.

He could feed us to his Zombie army without
any guilt or remorse.

And we needed this beast to get us through
the rest of Mexico.

Diego’s gaze darkened and his smug grin
turned into a dangerous frown. “Do you want my land too?” He leaned
into Miller, threatening Miller’s tentative hold on his patience.
“Do you want to take what’s mine? Do you want my world?”

“What do
you
want?” Miller countered,
dropping his voice low so my brothers couldn’t hear him. “Do you
want
my
land? The world that’s rightfully
mine
?”

Diego rocked back on his heels and something
like surprise lifted his eyebrows. “Rightfully yours?”

The corner of Miller’s lips twitched. “When
my father dies, I’m his rightful heir. The only one that has any
claim on that land.”

Breath left my lungs in a whoosh of surprise.
My fingernails dug into Miller’s forearm and I knew he felt my
reaction.

But he didn’t look at me. I could only see
his profile and I was puzzled by it. Was he just acting tough in
front of Diego?

Or did he really think of himself as
Matthias’s heir?

“You have a sister,” Diego countered.

“And she’s smart enough to know not to step
between me and something I want.”

Diego’s gaze flicked back to mine. “You align
yourself with him? Maybe you are not so much like your Reagan after
all.”

I started to argue or confess the truth or…
or say something, but Adela’s breathless call of “Diego,” pulled
all of his attention to the other side of the clearing.

He spun around and stilled. He didn’t move to
her or say a word. He simply tilted his chin and she ran to him.
She threw her arms around him and buried her face in his neck with
a happy sob. His arms wrapped around her like a steel band and he
lifted her off the ground, spinning her in a wide circle.

I jumped back before she could kick me and
reluctantly let go of Miller’s arm. I missed the contact. I missed
touching him. But more than that I was afraid after what he just
said, he would run away and I would never see him again.

Or if I did, he would be sitting at
Matthias’s right hand.

I shook my head, violently removing the
vision.

Besides, Miller didn’t run.