Love and Decay (32 page)

I took a second to survey the area. More
Feeders had shown up. The sickening thought dawned on me that we
might never be finished. They might just keep coming.

Fresh fear and steely determination flooded
my rushing blood. The same mantra that always filled my head in
situations like these pounded through me.

This would not be the end for us.

We were stronger than any number of
Zombies.

We were more determined to live than anyone
or anything on this planet.

We were Parkers.

And damn it, we would survive this.

Adela was underneath a Feeder and whatever
fear I’d felt dissipated as quickly as it had come, was replaced
with potent and clear-cut fortitude. I jumped to my feet and
launched myself at the infected creature.

Our bodies smacked together like two freight
trains colliding. My forward propulsion pushed creature off Adela
and we rolled together. Leaves and dirt stuck to my bloody skin and
clothes. The Feeder snapped at me, its blackened teeth clipping the
air around my face.

I forced it back with all my strength. I
still gripped my blade, but pointed it uselessly upwards. I
couldn’t let go of his shoulder or it would get the better of
me.

I felt its bones giving in to the pressure of
my hands. Its weakened body began to crunch beneath my strength. I
blasted an aggressive shout and squeezed its shoulders tighter,
forcing the bones beneath its putrefied skin to give way.

My fingernails sunk into rotten flesh and
dried blood. The Feeder pushed into me, adding to my strength. But
it was so desperate to sink its teeth into me, it didn’t notice its
body breaking with its effort.

We were locked in a stalemate, me pushing
against him, him pushing into me. Then suddenly he threw his
forehead into mine, nailing me in the head with way too much
power.

Pain split across my skull and I saw stars.
My elbows bent, weakening for just a second. But it was enough.

The Feeder’s force pushed us back on the
ground, him on top of me.

I tried to scramble for my wits, lift my
blade to its head, but I was still disoriented and I couldn’t
quite…

The Feeder’s head pulled back and its mouth
opened wide. The bite was imminent.

Not that I was scared of the actual bite.
History had taught me that I was likely immune to the infection.
Sure, the fever would suck and potentially kill me like it did
Vaughan.

But I was just cocky enough to believe I’d be
okay.

Something flew over me, taking the pressure
off my chest. Something else hit my head.

A boot.

I lay there trying to blink away the darkness
again and when I could finally see, I picked myself up and leaned
over on one elbow.

Mertz had the Feeder speared through the
face.

Honestly, I had forgotten about the kid.

Good thing he hadn’t forgotten about me.

He stood up and held a hand out.

I took it, stumbling to my feet. “Thanks for
that.”

“I think I kicked you in the face,” he said.
“Your eye…”

“Don’t worry about it,” I shrugged. “You
saved my life. We’ll call it even.”

He nodded and we got back to fighting.

I moved closer to Adela. She wasn’t made for
this kind of close combat. She was too little. Her muscles had
never developed like Tyler and Page’s.

She was too soft. Too afraid.

She was too helpless; she should never have
been out here.

But then she would surprise me by kicking a
Feeder in the chest and following after it with her knife, only to
hit her mark in the next second.

I tried to step in and get her behind me, but
she pushed my shoulder away with her free hand. “Don’t irritate me,
Harrison,” she ordered in her thick, sexy-as-hell accent. “I can
take care of myself.”

“You’ve never taken care of yourself!” I
argued back.

Her black eyes met mine for a brief moment
and I felt that fire that flamed inside her. It consumed me. My
entire body blazed with those flames in that second we shared.

This was the woman that she was. This was the
woman she was meant to be.

She had let Diego make her a victim all those
years ago. She had let him run her life and crush her spirit and it
had messed with her mind. She didn’t know how to get free from
this.

I had been fighting with her for ten years to
get over this… to get out of this protective shell she’d crawled
into and start living again.

I wanted her to stop being this victim. To
stop being Diego’s war prize. To stop living in fear that she would
slip back into the willing oppression that she’d lived in for so
long.

But I hadn’t convinced her. I only got rare
glimpses of this. I only managed to pull this out of her on the
sporadic occasion that she would give into fighting with me,
sparring with me, letting go of that careful paranoia that defined
her and give into this fire that was dying to get out of her… to
make her glow from the inside out.

This was the Adela I would fight for.

This was the girl I had spent ten years
trying to get over.

This was the woman that had bewitched me from
the first moment I saw her.

“Fight with me then,” I dared her. “I won’t
get in your way. Not unless you need me to.”

She shook her head, confused.

“You get my back and I’ll get yours.”

I turned my back to her and held her gaze
over my shoulder. She finally understood. She let out the kind of
deep breath that lifted her shoulders and moved over her entire
body. But she pressed her back to mine.

And then we fought.

We fought back-to-back, taking care of each
other, keeping each other alive. It happened so fast that I
couldn’t remember not fighting like this.

We were seamless.

We were lethal.

We were finally fulfilling some great destiny
inside ourselves.

This was how it was always supposed to be. I
realized that now. We had been fighting for years. Pulling and
pushing against each other so often that we didn’t know any
differently.

But this was right.

We were supposed to pull together.

Push together.

Live in tandem and harmony and with this
blazing fire consuming us both.

Feeder after Feeder fell at our feet. We
started to make progress and Zombies stopped flooding the
woods.

I kept an eye on my brother and Miller, even
Mertz, but they were handling their own like I knew they would.
Joss and King fought similarly to Adela and me and that gave me
ridiculous hope.

It wasn’t even rational hope.

It was unreasonable and totally unfounded,
but I felt like this was a corner for us.

This was how it was meant to be with us.

We’d finally figured out the way we were
supposed to exist.

Her and me. Working together.

Being together.

My short, ludicrous bliss was cut short by
the scream that filled the woods and echoed through the world.

My sister
.

“Page!” I shouted.

She screamed again. And I knew exactly what
it meant. I felt the bite in my own flesh. I felt the sinking of
teeth and the weight of the Feeder.

“No!” Miller shouted. He murdered three
Feeders on his way to the shed. He’d been struggling to reach Page
since we got here. But there had been a chasm filled with Zombies
and death between us.

Now that didn’t matter.

Nothing could stop him.

King and I were close on his heels, just a
half second behind him. He ripped the shed door open and it slammed
against the wall.

I surveyed the scene inside, ready to behead
the Feeder.

But it was already dead. Luke had killed the
thing that he’d failed to stop.

Irrational anger burned through me. If he
couldn’t protect my sister, then he didn’t deserve to murder the
beast that bit her.

She looked up and met Miller’s eyes. “This is
going to suck,” she whispered.

I knew she was immune. I had seen it before.
She’d survived before.

But still, there was this part of me that
doubted she could live through two bites.

Her odds of surviving just didn’t add up. It
defied the very world we lived in.

This Apocalypse was nothing but chaos and
death, but there were a set of rules that governed our end of the
world existence.

1. You got bit by a Feeder, you died.

2. Or, you got bit by a Feeder, you became a
Feeder.

3. If you got bit by a Feeder and didn’t get
eaten or become a Feeder, then you died from the fever.

4. If you got bit by a Feeder and didn’t get
eaten or become a Feeder or die from the fever, the next time you
got bit by a Feeder, you died.

You had to.

The infection that ravaged this world did not
forgive… did not make allowances… did not smite some and smile at
others.

It took. And took. And would not stop taking
until every last living thing on this planet turned to death.

The girl called Trish leaned over Page, knife
in hand, intent in her eyes.

“Stop!” Miller shouted. He shoved Trish out
of the way and into the wall and then to the ground.

“You can’t save her!” Trish yelled back.
“She’s going to turn and kill us all!”

“She’s not,” I argued, readying myself to do
whatever it took to save my sister.

Trish jumped to her feet and pointed at me
with her outstretched blade. “Don’t be a fool! You should know
better than anyone what happens to-”

“She’s immune, goddamnit!” I struggled to get
enough oxygen. I couldn’t fix this. Page had been bitten for a
second time and there was nothing I could do. “She’s immune,” I
repeated. “She’s been bitten before.”

The shed fell silent. The Zombies were all
dead by this point. It was only us now. And Luke’s people were
gobsmacked.

“She is,” King insisted. “She won’t
turn.”

“Show them,” Luke urged.

Miller turned her body in his arms and lifted
the back of her shirt to reveal the rough scar in the shape of
teeth marks.

“That’s not possible,” the guy with the fro
argued. I couldn’t remember his name. Crush? Rush? Smash?

“So she’s going to be fine?” Trish asked.

Panic boiled inside me. What if she
wasn’t?

Not my little sister.

Not Page.

A hand landed on my shoulder and peace
immediately swelled inside, matching the panic step for step. Adela
leaned over me and looked at Page. “She
will
be fine,” she
said to the room. “She will be fine because we won’t let her be
anything else.”

Chapter Four

In the wake of our Zombie massacre, we left
the forest without burning a single body. Blood and gore painted
the trees and the leaf-covered ground, streaked across the broken
hunting shed and turned everything into muddled splotches of death
and decay.

Miller carried my sister in his arms as we
sprinted through the forest the way we’d come. We didn’t have a
compass or an exact way out and it took us twice as long to find
the road as it had the hunting shed.

We emerged half a mile down the road, the
truck a saving beacon in the distance.

Page was fevered by the time we reached the
truck, sweating and whimpering and deep in the throes of fighting
the infection.

I felt sick. I could have thrown up if I let
myself.

I blamed myself for not searching earlier.
Not searching harder. Not finding her sooner. After we found
Allentown burning early this morning, I should never have let them
talk me into going back to the safe house.

I should never have given up.

And yet rationally, if we hadn’t been able to
follow those Feeders, I knew we would never have found her.

And if we wouldn’t have found her… what would
have happened then?

Would Luke have been able to kill the Zombie
that bit her if his hands had been full with the rest of them?

Or would they all have been bitten by
now?

Eaten?

Killed?

Gone forever?

Adela’s hand slipped into mine and I closed
my eyes from the intensity of feeling that buzzed up my arm like an
electric jolt.

This was what I needed right now- something
to anchor me to reality… someone to hold me together while my
insides tried to rip my body apart at the seams.

I helped Miller load Page into the back. King
held her until Miller could climb in the back and take her back.
But even after Miller settled her on his lap, King stayed
close.

I looked down at Adela’s tiny hand swallowed
up by mine. My gaze traveled up her blood-soaked clothes to her
wide, frightened eyes. “You’re with me,” I told her. “Get in the
front.”

She didn’t argue. She nodded and let go of my
hand. I missed her touch already, but I promised myself this
emptiness would only last a minute. I could have her touch again.
In just a minute.

“What happened last night?” I asked Luke. He
had stepped up to the back of the truck to help his contact in. I
knew it was his contact because the guy looked as bad as the
Feeders we’d just put down.

His face had been bruised on every part. He
squinted out of swollen, battered eyes. His cheeks were black, blue
and streaked with yellow. He wiped crooked fingers over cut up,
bloodied lips. His bruises spread down his neck and fanned across
his chest. More purplish, painful-looking bruises poked out from
his ripped and dirtied shirt and appeared to cover the majority of
his body.

It was amazing this guy had been able to keep
up with us.

Luke ran a hand over his face and blew out a
breath. His eyes stayed on Page. “I just wanted to check on the
town,” he said. “She… your sister wanted to save Micah. And so
that’s what we did.”

“But you couldn’t get back to the car?” I
guessed.