The Relentless Warrior (35 page)

About the Author

Rachel Higginson was born and raised in Nebraska, but spent her college years traveling
the world. She married her high school sweetheart and spends her days raising their
growing family. She is obsessed with bad reality TV and any and all Young Adult Fiction.

Look for more from Rachel in 2014.

Love and Decay is taking a two month break and will begin again in February, 2014.

Other books by Rachel to be released in 2014 are The Redeemable Prince, the seventh
book in The Star-Crossed Series and The Fall, the second book in the Siren Series.

Other Books Out Now by Rachel Higginson:

Love and Decay, Episode One

Love and Decay, Episode Two

Love and Decay, Episode Three

Love and Decay, Episode Four

Love and Decay, Episode Five

Love and Decay, Episode Six

Love and Decay, Episode Seven

Love and Decay, Episode Eight

Love and Decay, Episode Nine

Love and Decay, Episode Ten

Love and Decay, Episode Eleven

Love and Decay, Episode Twelve

Reckless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 1)

Hopeless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 2)

Fearless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 3)

Endless Magic (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 4)

The Reluctant King (The Star-Crossed Series, Book 5)

Starbright
(The
Starbright
Series, Book 1)

Sunburst (The
Starbright
Series, Book2)

The Rush (The Siren Series, Book 1)

Bet in the Dark (An NA Contemporary Romance)

Follow Rachel on her blog at:

www.rachelhigginson.com

Or on Twitter:

@
mywritesdntbite

Or on her Facebook page:

Rachel Higginson

Keep reading for a sneak peek at Rachel’s new Dystopian Serial about the Zombie Apocalypse.

Love and Decay

Chapter One

647 days after initial infection

Oh, god.

The smell was the worst. The absolute worst.

It wasn’t enough that I had to pick my way through dismembered and half eaten bodies,
or that at any moment one of them could spring up from the ground and make an afternoon
snack out of me.

It wasn’t enough that I hadn’t had a shower in over a year and a half, hadn’t worn
eye liner in even longer than that and my hair was somehow simultaneously disgustingly
greasy while frizzing into a perpetual fluff ball.

Oh no, that would never be enough. My ugly tan work boots were a size and a half too
small, I ripped my too big Grateful Dead t-shirt off a very, very dead man, and my
jeans…. or what was left of my jeans was the last of my stash from my once excessive
closet.

After all of that- and I mean, the shower alone should have been enough suffering
for any living being to suffer through- it was the smell that got to me.

Putrid, rotting flesh from both the dead that littered the ground around me and the
remnants of stench that lingered in the air when the Feeders were finished was what
triggered my gag reflex and watered my eyes. There weren’t enough words in the English
dictionary to describe my revulsion, or the way my empty stomach flipped with every
breath.

I probably would have puked if I had eaten anything in the last two days.

The best thing about the Zombie Apocalypse? I was no longer addicted to sugar and
caffeinated beverages.

I wiped my forearm across my sweaty forehead and then re-aimed my handgun in the general
area in front of me. This is the point of the story where I’m supposed to tell you
what kind of gun I’m carrying, but let’s be real…. Before the end of the world I was
a cheerleader at a small town school, where I was the debate team captain and student
council secretary. I lived for throwing parties when my parents went out of town,
making out with my football captain boyfriend and doing the occasional trip to the
homeless shelter where I would put in my monthly two hours of good deeds.

I’d never even held a gun, scratch that, I’d never even been in the same room as a
gun until the world went to shit. Who knew the cure for herpes would turn all those
sexual deviants into people-eating, brain-dead, infection-giving assholes?

Not me.

The whole phenomenon gave a girl a serious complex about safe sex.

Not that I was having sex. Or would be any time soon.

I hadn’t even seen an eligible bachelor in a good six months and it wasn’t like I
had exactly been interested when we passed each other with guns raised and a suspicious
glint in our eyes. Although there was a sort of mutual give and take between us that
could have been considered an instant connection, possibly love at first sight. I
let him loot the dead gentleman that had his head literally severed from his body
by Feeders, and he let me raid the vending machine with that literally only had a
bag of
Funions
that had been smashed into pathetic crumbs.

But then we both went our separate ways and I will never know if he got eaten, turned
or found the promised land of Zombie-free showers and espresso machines.

Plus, I was still pining over poor, deceased, Quarterback-Chris.

Just kidding! Quarterback-Chris had apparently been less than faithful to me during
our two year relationship and after things with the government, army and general world
went to hell, Quarterback-Chris tried to eat me!

So I did what any loving, devoted girlfriend that just found out she had been serially
cheated on by her now zombie boyfriend would do. I plunged a butcher knife into his
eye socket and when that didn’t effectively do the job, I drove over him with my mom’s
Escalade until his head detached from his body.

God, I was glad I held onto my v-card.

Could you imagine me as a zombie?

Ugh, it made me shudder just thinking about it.

A rustling to my left had me bring my gun up, pointed and steady at whatever was stupid
enough to make noise in a regular Feeder playground. I only had three bullets left,
so this kill would have to be spot on.

That was the thing about living in a world in which it was a very likely possibility
that you could end up as someone else’s meal before lunchtime, you got to be very
good at shooting, very quickly.

So even though the most I knew about my gun was that it was a Berretta from the label
on the handle, and the exact kind of bullets it took, .40 S&W- because those were
an absolute necessity and I was always on the lookout- I knew exactly how to use it.
I knew exactly how to get my bullet from my gun to the perfect dead zone right between
the eyes.

In fact, it was kind of freaky how good I was at killing things.

Well, killing already dead things.

It was like I was born for the Apocalypse. No, I couldn’t find a hot shower, figure
out how to make food last longer than twenty-four hours and effectively loot a Walgreens
that still had hair products available. But I could stay alive.

I had an innate ability to stay alive.

And in this day and age, ninety-two weeks after the first recovering STD victim bit
his doctor and the world fell apart, staying alive was very important.

Back to the rustling….

I slowed my breathing, stopped moving completely and waited for the sound to come
to me.

One of the first things I learned about survival was that there was absolutely no
need to go hunting down trouble. In the world I lived in, trouble would find you down
soon enough. It was better to cover your back, stay calm and have a loaded weapon
ready and waiting.

“Reagan, check this out!” Haley squealed in a loud whisper.

“Holy hell, Hales!” I whisper-shouted back, “I almost shot you in the f-ing head!”

She made a resigned grunting noise and I heard her mumble, “Too bad, I bet they have
showers in heaven.”

“We are so not convinced you’re going to heaven,” I whispered back while stepping
over a particularly decayed body.

Did I say the smell was the worst? I meant maggots.

The maggots were definitely the worst.

“It wouldn’t matter,” she countered with that distraught, depressed tone even the
best of us were known to fall into. “This might as well be hell.”

We were still whispering, there was no other option, since Feeders were drawn by sound.
And sight, and smell, and light and movement…. But since we were rummaging around
a dilapidated department store somewhere in what used to be southern Missouri, we
had a little bit of cover.

The floor was covered with dirt and grime, metal racks that had been looted a long
time ago were scattered and broken across the floor and we’ve already discussed the
body count problem. We were using what was left of the evening light streaming through
the broken window fronts to see and from the sounds of things we were alone, at least
on the first floor.

One of the best things about Feeders was their inability for stealth. They were heavy
mouth breathers and tended to stumble over anything in their way. It was like they
had their own warning bells.

Well, if you stayed alert, kept yourself surrounded by noisy debris and never fell
asleep.

“What is it?” I asked at the exact same moment my stomach growled.

Haley shot me a sympathetic look and shook her head, sending her dark blonde hair
bouncing around her shoulders. “Not that.”

I sighed, but continued to follow her down a dark hallway. Track lighting hung at
awkward angles, the glass long shattered, the bulbs broken probably since the beginning.
The once white walls were smeared with streaks of what I had to assume was blood and
dirt. But the stench was less overwhelming here, the air easier to breath.

“I hit the jackpot,” Haley said excitedly in almost a full volume voice. We rarely
spoke above a whisper so I was taken aback at first. I had almost forgotten what her
real voice sounded like.

“In?”

“Jeans!” She turned back to look at me over her shoulder, giving me a goofy smile
and waggling her eyebrows.

Now this was a jackpot.

We exited the hallway straight into the juniors section. The racks were less knocked
over in this part of the store and still stocked with clothes. Racks and racks of
fall fashions from almost two years ago filled the floor.
 
A discount shoe rack with boxes of clearance items sat in one corner and in the middle
of the department was a makeup counter.

An f-ing makeup counter.

Eyeliner!!!
 

At this point, you might be wondering who I could possibly want to look good for.
And that is a valid question. But it wasn’t like that.

In the last two years I had been forced to live as a homeless, basically starving
person, with shredded, usually-covered-in-blood clothes, no shampoo, let alone conditioner
and perpetually covered in dirt. I was tired of looking ugly.

Tired of it!

I just wanted a little bit of makeup; just something to make me feel like the world
hadn’t completely blown apart in the prime of my life and left me a wandering vagabond.

I had given up on finishing my education. I had given up on feeling guilty for killing
what once used to be human beings. I had given up on being happy again, living in
a house, having a hot shower and whatever dream I had imagined myself living out.
I had even given up on finding love.

Hell, I had given up on just finding sex.

I just wanted to look anything but tired, weary and worn out.

Was that so much to ask?

“Welcome to the promised land, my friend,” Haley whispered proudly before turning
to a rack of longs-sleeved t’s.

I had a theory about why this section of the department store was untouched and it
went something like this. In the beginning of the end, families were protecting their
young. If you were a teenager, you were home, holding down the fort. Especially if
you were a girl. The whole raping and pillaging thing didn’t apply to most kids that
still had parents around. And if you were young and stupid enough to try to make it
in a world where sane people spent their time looting, overthrowing local government
and shooting at any and every potential threat, chances were your inexperience and
still rose-colored-glasses-of-the-world made sure you ended up dead.

How Haley and I survived not only the Feeders, but the crazed militia, living on the
street and all the old man creepers that thought we would make fantastic sister wives
was a straight up miracle. We got lucky in the beginning by sheer location. Small
town, middle of nowhere Iowa finally paid off.

Well, except for the whole Quarterback-Chris thing.

But it wasn’t like we didn’t get Feeders in Atlantic, Iowa. Of course we did. Herpes
was a worldwide disease. Everybody got Feeders. Even remote islands in the middle
of Oceans. If there were people there, then there were people having sex. And that
meant STDs. Why? Because men would always be sluts. Always.

Was I a little bitter about Quarterback-Chris? Hell, yes.

 
 
 
 
 
Did I not mention he tried to eat me?

My parents were killed by Feeders. Hale’s dad was killed by a Feeder. I was almost
killed by a Feeder.

They were everywhere.

What we did have was an absence of a lot of people and an abundance of guns. Thank
you farmer Fred for your once unnecessary stash of ex-military contraband.

I hopped over the counter, sliding my butt across the filthy glass. My already grimy
jeans smeared a dust coated path the size of my hips. I landed on the pads of my feet
and my toes were smashed even worse in my small hiking boots, but it was a soundless
landing I was kind of proud of.

I had the reflexes of a cat, thanks to living every minute of my life expecting an
attack. If the world ever got its f-ing act together and cleaned up this mess, I imagined
they would make a movie of my life about the whole Zombie thing. I’d obviously be
played by that hot brunette from the Vampire Diaries in which I would run around in
a sexy Cat Woman suit, totally playing the super hero.

I opened the cabinets behind the makeup counter and slipped my backpack off my shoulder.
Inside my hiking pack everything was orderly and neatly packed for maximum space and
easy access. But I didn’t have time for that now. I would reorganize everything later.

I started swiping handfuls of products into my bag, not caring about color or usefulness.
This was what Haley and I called the Grab and Go- get as many supplies as we could
now, as fast as we could, then leave the scene before either Feeders or protective
townsfolk happened upon us and sort it out later. Without even having to discuss it
with Haley, I knew she was picking out shirts and jeans for me and she knew I would
cover her with whatever I could find.