Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes 9-12, Season Three) (17 page)

There were times in our past when I thought
we would live the rest of our lives miserable and afraid. But we
had managed to find happiness. And not just happiness, but love
too. We’d built a family out of our friendship.

And we got to share every moment with each
other.

“Can you believe it, Haley? We used to talk
about this in junior high. Remember?” We had spent an hour getting
ready and trying to do something with our clothes and hair. We’d
managed some pretty braids, but we were makeup-less and in the same
clothes we’d put on after our shower by the time the guys were
ready.

“Oh, my gosh,” she laughed. “Our double
wedding dream is actually coming true.”

“I wouldn’t share this day with anybody but
you, Hales. It’s hard to believe this is actually happening.”

“It’s hard to believe we didn’t die back in
Iowa,” she said honestly. “Reagan, I don’t know how we made it this
far, but I couldn’t have gotten here without you.”

I let out a shaky breath. “I feel the same
way. And just because you’re going to be a married woman, doesn’t
mean you can abandon me either. We’re in this together.
Always.”

She nodded, tears glossing her sparkling
eyes. “Always.”

We met the guys in a chapel off the main
sanctuary. There were a few people loitering about, but we decided
to take it over and make it our own.

The small space was lit with candlelight and
made the occasion feel intimate and special. We stood in front of a
golden altar adorned with fat cherubs and statues of Christ and the
Virgin Mary.

Hendrix took my hands and held on to me
tightly, as if he were afraid I would walk away. Or maybe he was
afraid that this was a dream and he would wake up and I wouldn’t be
here.

Because that was how I felt about him. This
was too good to be true. This was too beautiful compared to the
ugly world we lived in.

We didn’t make it into a ceremony and there
was no priest or pastor presiding over us. We simply held hands and
whispered vows we promised to keep forever.

“I love you, Hendrix Parker,” I confessed to
him. “I give my heart and my life to this marriage. I commit to
stay with you, to honor and cherish you. I promise to love you
today and from this day forward. I promise to love you forever.
When things get hard, when life becomes impossible, you are my
lighthouse leading me home. You’re my strength and my hope. You
have made this life an adventure and I cannot wait to live the rest
of my days exploring it together.”

He smiled bigger than I had ever seen him.
His blue eyes lit with adoration and something warmer. When he
spoke, I let his words sink into my skin and tattoo my soul.

“I told you once that I couldn’t wait to get
to know all of the pieces of you I didn’t know yet. You say this
life is an adventure, but Reagan,
you
are my adventure, my
greatest journey. I have fallen in love with every piece of you
I’ve gotten to know and I will always look forward to discovering
what else there is about you. I never anticipated finding someone
to love this much, someone to pull me out of the despair of our
world and give me a reason to live again. I love you. I promise to
always love you. I promise to work at everything that comes up. And
I promise to fight for you. To always fight for you. I will fight
against this darkness and I will fight for a marriage that is
worthy of you. You are my wife, Reagan Willow. From this day
forward, you are my wife and I am your husband. And to me, this is
the greatest thing that’s happened to me.”

Tears spilled over my lashes and wet my
cheeks. There had never been more beautiful vows. Haley and Nelson
went next and while their words to each other were sweet, they
couldn’t compare to the promises Hendrix and I made to each
other.

I felt those vows rush through my blood and
become something permanent and lasting inside of me. I felt them
tether me to life, to love… to Hendrix, my husband. I felt them
create an unbreakable bond between us, something I couldn’t and
wouldn’t let go of.

I was a married woman. Married to a man I
loved with every beat of my heart and breath in my lungs.

We stood in front of our friends, these
witnesses, and promised each other forever.

When Hendrix leaned down to kiss me, it was
different than all of our kisses before. We were more to each other
now than we had been a few hours ago. We didn’t kiss as boyfriend
and girlfriend or lovers or whatever else we could come up
with.

We kissed as husband and wife.

We kissed with eternal vows and lifelong
promises.

We kissed like no one had ever kissed before
and tasted the sweetness of marriage and eternity.

This world was ugly. This world of decay and
despair sucked the life from my lungs and threatened to end me at
every turn.

But the horrible things did not outweigh the
lovely things. I had reasons to be happy, reasons to hope and to
survive.

The world I lived in was filled with love and
beauty. No matter what we faced or what we encountered, I had
something greater.

I had Hendrix.

Episode Eleven

Chapter One

1108 Days after initial infection

Safe
.

I’d been searching for that word for three
long years. I had risked my life, my sanity and my happiness to
have it.

I had lost loved ones. I had lost nearly
everything.

I had nearly lost myself.

All for that simple concept.

I wanted to be safe. I wanted to
feel
safe
. I wanted my friends and loved ones to be and feel safe.
And yet at every turn,
safe
escaped us.

Even now, in this ostentatious cathedral,
locked behind heavy doors and thick walls, while we were probably
the safest we had been in a very long time, we still weren’t
safe
.

Zombies pounded at our doors and attacked the
city around us relentlessly. Tomás had learned that the western
part of the city had been engaged in brutal warfare for days and
the number of undead had grown exponentially as the Feeders picked
at the wounded and those left behind.

We had water and food here, but for how long?
Our supplies were limited and eventually Tomás and his people would
have to venture out of their sanctuary and scour the city for
sustenance.

We were safer than usual, but so far from the
actual definition of the word it physically hurt me. I felt the
ache in my bones and the panic rise and fall in my chest like an
ocean’s tide.

I had spent the last four days recovering
from years of trauma and life-threatening danger. I had been bathed
and cleaned and married, but I still didn’t feel safe. I had been
allowed to sleep peacefully, yet still I didn’t feel safe.

I might not ever feel safe again.

And somehow I had yet to come to terms with
this reality.

It shouldn’t have been this difficult. I
should have been able to logically assess the world I lived in and
bring my brain to obvious conclusions about the standard of living.
But I couldn’t.

There was something in me that wouldn’t drop
this desire. There was some unrelenting hope that refused to die
out.

I couldn’t stop myself from fighting for
safety.

I couldn’t make myself quit.

No matter how hard I tried.

Maybe it was some dormant
American-dream-philosophy that had been ingrained in me since
childhood. I could make my circumstances better if I believed
strongly enough… if I never quit and never backed down. The power
was at my fingertips, I just had to give my hundred and ten
percent.

Maybe it had something to do with human
nature. If I finally succumbed to the reality that safe living was
an absolute impossibility, I would give up all hope and have
nothing left to live for. If I could never be safe, what was the
point in living? Why not throw in the towel and give myself over to
the evil of this world?

Surely my afterlife was better than this
place.

It had to be.

Or maybe it was just me.

Maybe there was something errantly wrong with
me. Maybe I didn’t have the ability to function in reality. Maybe
the idea of a place to live where Feeders couldn’t touch us and
warlords didn’t try to sell us, where evil tyrants didn’t hunt us
and cannibals didn’t try to eat us, was too sweet to pass up. Maybe
I was too lazy and naïve to let my childish dreams go. Maybe I
still believed in love in this world of decay and happiness in a
place that was rotting from the inside out.

Maybe I still believed in happily ever
after.

I looked at Hendrix. My husband.

He sat next to me on one of the wooden pews
that would have been uncomfortable if I weren’t so grateful for
them and this place.

Hendrix’s eyes were closed as he sat in
silent contemplation. I knew he wasn’t sleeping, but I didn’t think
he was praying either. No matter how appropriate those prayers
would have been with the golden statue of Jesus hanging over
us.

His beard was neatly trimmed and his hair had
been cut shorter in the last few days. But he looked more haggard
than I had ever seen him. His Adam’s apple bobbed with difficulty
and his fingers curled around mine and squeezed until I couldn’t
feel my hand anymore.

He smelled like soap. His clothes were fresh.
His family was gathered around him and we weren’t fighting off
Zombies.

We were clean. We were relatively well
rested. We were safe.

We were supposed to be safe.

That word again
.

Unfortunately, safety didn’t mean simply a
roof over our heads and a Feeder-free existence. My blissful,
utopic ideas of safety included more than food, water and
protection. I needed more than survival.

I wanted
safety
.

I wanted my friends tucked away from danger,
well-fed and happy. I wanted my loved ones to get full nights of
sleep with their shoes off and their weapons put away. I wanted our
hearts to heal and our minds to rest.

I wanted us to be healthy in every way.

And right now, we weren’t any of those
things.

Right now, we faced one of our scariest
moments and not one of us knew what to do about it.

Vaughan had been bitten.

His arm had been grazed by a Feeder in the
fight that brought us to this place.

It was a tiny nick on the inside of his
forearm. There had hardly been blood when the skin broke. He hadn’t
turned immediately into a Feeder. He had barely shown signs of
discomfort that first night.

I had stupidly thought there was nothing to
worry about.

I had been wrong.

Even inside this fortress, even with enough
food and water to sustain us, even with my commitment to Hendrix…
We were still in danger.

The outside world had followed us inside
these sacred walls and threatened to tear us apart.

Again. For the millionth time.

I leaned forward and looked at Vaughan’s
sleeping form. Tyler had ordered that he be stretched out on a pew.
The one in front of him had been turned around to make a bed of
sorts. She had layered both pews with enough cushions for him to be
comfortable or as comfortable as he could be in the fitful throes
of his high fever.

Sweat soaked his hair and chest. His skin had
turned a sickly pallid color that I could make out even in the dim
candlelight. His fingers clutched at his legs and stomach. They had
left long cuts in his skin, until Tyler had them bandaged to keep
him from hurting himself.

He hadn’t been awake in two days.

The fear I felt for him became a living,
breathing monster inside me. I could barely breathe through this
nightmare. I wanted to take this from him and put it in me. That’s
how desperately I wanted him to heal. I couldn’t bear the idea of
him not making it through this.
I couldn’t stomach it.

He was our fearless leader. He was the glue
that held us all together. He was the voice of reason and the wise
advice we all ran to. He was Vaughan Parker.

He was supposed to be invincible.

Tears slipped from the corners of my eyes,
but I quickly brushed them away.

For the first time since I met them, the
Parkers were broken, lost boys that needed someone to be strong for
them. I had taken on that role since Tyler was as inconsolable as
they were and Haley had to deal with the baby and her own
husband.

There was nobody left to take this burden but
me. And I was the last person that wanted it.

But I would do this for them. I would be
strong for them because they had been strong for me every day since
they found me.

Page sat at her eldest brother’s feet, curled
into a tiny ball with her knees hugged to her chest. She sniffled
steadily and watched him with an unwavering gaze. She wouldn’t eat
unless I forced her to or Miller physically fed her something. She
wouldn’t talk. She wouldn’t even acknowledge the rest of us.

Harrison and King had pulled up a pew on the
other side of Vaughan’s makeshift bed and were just as distraught.
They watched Vaughan with horrified surprise. They hadn’t thought
he was capable of sickness either. He was their leader, their
substitute dad. He was their hero. He was the only thing that was
holding their world together.

And now they were forced to watch him fight
the only thing that had come close to killing him in the last three
years.

Nelson clung to Haley and Lennon. He had a
baby and wife to take care of and that seemed to stave off some of
the despair that had rocked everyone else. But he was not in a good
place. He was the only one of the Parkers I had seen openly cry so
far. It wasn’t like he’d wept loudly, but every once in a while I
would catch him wiping away tears that had escaped. He held Lennon
closer. He didn’t let Haley out of his sight. He couldn’t speak
without his chin trembling and his eyes flashing with fear.