Love and Decay, Boy Meets Girl Read online

  Love & Decay

  A Novella Series

  Episode One

  From the Point of View of Hendrix Parker

  By Rachel Higginson

  Copyright@ Rachel Higginson 2013

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  To Zach,

  This would not exist without you.

  Just like so many other things.

  And to Mandy,

  Who loves Hendrix,

  But might love Zombies more.

  Chapter One

  647 days after initial infection

  One, two, three, four, five. One, two, three, four, five.

  “You’re obsessing again,” Vaughan, my oldest brother and resident Confucius, noted dryly.

  I grunted. Mostly because I didn’t want to admit that he was right. I was obsessing- counting my brothers and sister over and over, as if their numbers would change from one second to the other.

  Only, the thing was…. they could change. In a heartbeat, another piece of my family could be ripped from me and then what?

  I couldn’t- wouldn’t- let that happen ever again.

  And there were just so many of them. How could I keep them all safe? How could I even begin to fathom how to keep them all alive? There were too many that needed my protection; too many important lives that could not fall to the greedy hands that would take them.

  Nelson, the carefree but responsibly low-key one of the family dropped off a couple bottles of water for Vaughan and me before scooping up Page and walking her into the kitchen where they would start throwing something together for our dinner.

  I watched them with a feral possession that honestly scared me. I had never known responsibility like this before. I’d never believed a weight this heavy would be put on my shoulders or gifts so precious and costly could be given to me to protect and keep safe. I didn’t have to go at it alone, we all shared this duty together. But that didn’t lessen the obligation in any way or take any pressure off my shoulders. I felt pulled in every direction, strung tight with a task I was ill-prepared for and pathetically under qualified.

  We’d survived almost two years now, getting by from the survival obsession my father had instilled in us and sheer luck and determination. For now we were safe, but how long would this last? We had already experienced more loss than we ever should have.

  And I would never go through that again- I would never give up those I loved to this world and the evil creatures that haunted it again.

  In another corner of the room, my younger brothers, Harrison and King, were having a free throw competition using a metal trashcan and crumpled up pieces of paper. They were laughing, acting like the immature idiots they were and ignoring the fact that we were trapped on the upper level of some hillbilly department store with a town of Feeders underneath us.

  I watched them for a moment, entertained by their carefree spirits and jealous of the easy way they approached this circle of hell we’d been assigned. They adapted to this purgatory better than I had, or even Vaughan and Nelson. They were resilient to the upheaval, the abrupt change in our lifestyles and quality of living. They’d even bounced back from the death of our parents better than the rest of us. Part of that had to do with their personalities, I knew that. But the other part stemmed from their age. We allowed them to be the teenagers they were, struggling to keep the heaviness of responsibility from them. Sure, we asked more of them than anybody should, but only because we had to, we had no other choice. And we only demanded the bare minimum of what we could survive with.

  Then there was Page. Our eight year old sister, so purely innocent and youthfully naïve, she was like the lone diamond in a mine full of coal. She was our saving grace, our pilgrimage to Mecca, she was the reason we fought, killed, survived. And she brought us light. In this world there seemed to only be darkness. When I knew I would drown in it, be pulled to the depths of an endless abyss, she shone bright enough for me to remember my path, she lit up my life until I could see the way again.

  I opened a bottle of water and took a healthy pull. It was important to stay hydrated and nourished. We had the resources now, so we were obligated to use them. And when we needed to, we would find more. We were mentally and skillfully equipped to survive the basic elements after the fall of civilization; it was the other factors- the roaming undead and demoralization of mankind- that made me fear for our longevity.

  “Hendrix,” Vaughan bit out in a low voice that made me think he had been trying to get my attention for a while.

  I half turned to him, keeping my hawk eyes on my little sister. She was sitting on the counter, laughing at Nelson while he tossed crackers in the air and caught them in his mouth. “Yeah?”

  “I’ve been trying to talk to you for the last five minutes. Where’d you go?”

  I turned to him fully, meeting his wise eyes. I met him steadily, conveying the path of my thoughts without saying them out loud.

  There was a time in my life when we weren’t this open with each other, when we had thoughts and plans we kept from each other. We were brothers after all and had always shared a competiveness that could be dangerous at times. But that was a luxury left behind in a different life.

  As the oldests in our family, the responsibility of keeping everyone together and alive fell to us. We had to keep communication open and honest or this family unit would implode. We were together constantly, without any break from each other or individual privacy. We had to make it work, we had to work hard for it to work, or the consequences were unthinkable.

  But we also couldn’t speak openly in front of the younger kids. So we’d learned to do a lot of our talking silently, almost telepathically.

  It worked- although sometimes it made me feel like a freak of nature.

  Vaughan nodded once he’d seen the gravity in my expression and let out an exasperated sigh. He looked like our dad just then, his eyes wrinkled heavily in the corners, his blondish hair seemed to gray while I watched and his mouth pulled into a tight frown. He felt this burden stronger than I did. But it was his own fault. I didn’t give myself the option of failure so my pressure laid in the realm of only victory. Vaughan thought everything through- what it would be like to live another day, what it would be like to die today and what it would be like if each of the siblings, including me, were taken away. He wore leadership, responsibility and grief like badges tattooed on his skin.

  And that was hard for him. I was naturally an asshole, I knew that. I was born naturally pissed off. Vaughan had never taken anything seriously, not even at college. He had it easy most of his life, just naturally good at everything he touched. He didn’t have to work hard to succeed and because of that he’d almost forgott
en how to work hard.

  Now things were different.

  Now, he held us together by his tenacity and quick-thinking. I knew I was just as essential to our survival as Vaughan, but the rest of my siblings looked to him as their leader and saw me as more of the muscle.

  And I was Ok with that.

  That meant they trusted me with their lives, and that was all I needed from them to keep them safe.

  Vaughan cut into my thoughts again, “I was asking how long you thought we should stay here? I know we have a good set up, I just worry about getting too comfortable. We need to stay vigilant.”

  “Vigilant,” I agreed. “But don’t they also need some kind of stability?”

  “Yes, dear.”

  I snapped my neck so I faced him again. “You don’t think they do? Page can’t even read, Vaughan. I’m not saying we set up with a settlement. I’m just saying, some consistency couldn’t hurt.”

  He fell into thoughtful silence- a sure sign that I’d won that argument. Although there was no sense of victory when Vaughan and I argued over this stuff. We were doing what we had to in order to stay alive. The sense of competition and sick victory of turning the other into a loser had died probably around the same time humans started dying from infected, corpse-like recreations of other humans.

  We just existed. We just made sure we kept existing. But that was it. Life had settled into a monotonous color of gray and careful routine.

  I had turned into nothing but constant worry and steely determination. If I had any shadow of a sense of humor before, I’d left it in my old life. If I had cared about anything but my family, I couldn’t remember what those things were or why they had ever been important to begin with. My family was my entire universe now. Everything I needed, wanted and refused to give up. And that would never change. Even if we exterminated the Feeders, I would never learn to care for anything else but my family again.

  I just knew that about myself.

  “I’ll think about it,” Vaughan finally agreed in a mumble. “We at least need to do something about Page’s reading.”

  He ended his sentence abruptly when voices drifted up from the ground floor of the building we were occupying. Everyone stilled as we listened to the sounds of people looting what was left of the store.

  “What the hell is that?” Harrison paused mid-shot to glance around wildly. “Is that a Feeder?”

  “They’re being loud as shit!” King agreed.

  “Hey!” Nelson called them out. “We instituted the cuss jar for a reason, morons. Watch your mouths.”

  They both had the decency to look ashamed. We lived in a world without civilized society or even a remnant of any kind of decency, but that didn’t mean we had to become barbarians too.

  I looked at Vaughan and he nodded his consent. I shared an equally nonverbal look with Nelson and he walked Page over to Vaughan who pulled her onto his lap and made her laugh about something just to take her mind off her other brothers leaving. The sound was light, carefree and so purely innocent my chest hurt. She didn’t belong in this world, with all these ugly things. She was the only thing good left in a world quickly decaying into a filthy cesspool of death.

  I mentally checked my weapons- one against my back, one at my ankle, a knife in my cargo pocket, another, larger one at my hip, my favorite handgun now firmly in my palm. I was comfortable with what I was packing; although clearly, I wasn’t expecting a fight, since I was hardly packing anything.

  Nelson met me at the door to a back stairwell that was booby-trapped at the bottom. With one last glance back, we left our family behind to check out the potential threat to our peace and vital stash of supplies and guns.

  Nelson shut the door soundlessly behind us while I moved down the dark, cement stairwell quickly but quietly. My gun was raised the entire time and my adrenaline and instincts pumping at full capacity. The voices still drifted toward us, obviously human and female. Great.

  The last thing I needed was for women to wander through here. There were Feeders all over this town- but it was no different than anywhere else.

  The problem with girls though, was that they tended to die. They weren’t fast enough, quick enough or brutal enough to do what it took to stay alive.

  Ok, that was sexist.

  But I didn’t have the luxury of being politically correct. I’d watched too many lives end over the last two years to believe in equal rights. The truth was, that I was stronger, quicker to act and uncaring of the consequences of my actions. That’s why I survived, that’s how I kept my family safe, and that difference was the exact reason women were becoming a thing of fiction and fable.

  History had shown that because I was a man, I was swift to shoot, faster to kill and determined to protect. Women on the other hand hesitated, letting their feelings get in the way and cloud their judgment. That wasn’t me being a dick. That was me speaking from experience. Time and time again I’d seen this happen; I’d watched the weaker sex hesitate and chicken out too many times to count- their guilty consciences whispering malicious lies of morals and higher standards of living.

  And they were lies. Because morals and convictions died the second the first victim became infected with this filthy disease; and higher standards of living were left for the dead.

  Probably there were exceptions to the rule, but I hadn’t witnessed any yet. And I wasn’t holding my breath that I would any time soon.

  The female voices continued to drift through the door. I couldn’t hear exactly what they were saying; they were at least attempting to keep it down. The problem was that silence was the only constant about this new way of life. There were no filler sounds to muffle a disturbance in our peace. We could hear the voices just because there were voices to hear. It wasn’t entirely their fault they were bringing so much attention to themselves, but I also knew we weren’t the only ones that would pick up on them.

  It was only a matter of time before the Feeders found them too.

  I should warn them away, keep the threat from my front door. But I didn’t want to make contact with them. Depending on the people, they would probably want something from us- either by force, or by begging. Both were equally terrible and would end in the same way. They would get nothing, no matter what I had to do to ensure that.

  Vaughan stayed upstairs with the kids and I took care of these kinds of problems for a reason. He had a heart and I didn’t. His soul still had the possibility of some blissful afterlife, while mine had jumped on a fast train to hell a long time ago. I wouldn’t let strangers endanger my family. Not helpless women, not aggressive men, not undead Feeders. Nothing would come between my family and safety.

  “I’m going to take a peek,” I warned Nelson.

  He nodded but remained silent and alert. I stealthily unlocked the heavy metal door with a set of keys we’d found in the administrative office when we first arrived and cracked open the door.

  I paused, completely taken aback by what I saw. I’d meant for this to be just a cursory glance, clinical and unattached- just like everything else in my life. I had meant to scope out the situation and then pull back before they saw me.

  Instead, I caught myself watching two girls- not women- younger than me and as helpless as Page, sift through the remains of goods on this floor. My heartbeat sped up and my entire body ignited with something I hadn’t felt since my last semester at Northwestern- interest.

  I felt like a voyeur as I observed a short blonde thing, rifle through sweatpants, examining each with a keen eye before deciding if she would keep it or not. She was pretty- even dirty and unkempt. She had a delicate face and lithe body that curved nicely despite how skinny and small she was.

  But it was her friend that kept my attention so fiercely- held it like it belonged to her. She was probably a half foot taller than her friend, with black hair that blended into the darkness around her. Her eyebrows were furrowed in concentration on her striking face, and her full lips pulled into a small smile as she sifted through unde
rwear.

  I swallowed back a shot of lust that went straight from my head to a place that hadn’t stirred like this in years. I almost choked, I was so stunned by my reaction to her. And for long, endless moments I stood there completely confused by her effect on me. It didn’t make sense.

  But then again, she didn’t make sense. Her and her friend, by themselves, near nightfall and in a place that was not familiar to them. They were casually shopping, with hardly a weapon in sight. What were they doing here?

  Although I couldn’t hear any other voices, probably they had men with them somewhere that I couldn’t see.

  I tried to push that thought deeper into my consciousness but my entire body refused to accept that she could belong to someone else. There was something so compelling about her; something so irresistible that she drew my eye and played with something hot and needy and unfamiliar inside me. And it wasn’t just my attention that she claimed, my entire being felt lured to her like a Greek Siren, perched at the bottom of a rocky cliff. The turbulent waves crashed around her, deathly and dangerous, while she waited seductively in the middle of the tempest with a crooked finger and a promise of a thousand wicked things on her lips.

  And this was my first impression of her.

  Holy shit! Apparently, two years of celibacy was messing with my sanity.

  I needed to get it together and fast.

  I shook out my head and watched as she called out to the other girl that they needed to go. The other girl responded immediately- as fluidly and quickly as any of my brothers would. I felt even more confused by them.

  I shut the door just as quietly as I had opened it and locked it back up. They were gone and I could move on with my life. Not really a close call, but maybe it could have been. They’d been armed. And although they didn’t look dangerous, a warning had unfurled something desperate and anxious inside me.