Love and Decay, Boy Meets Girl (3 page)

They just laughed harder.
When had I lost control?

A heavy fist came down on the other side of
the door. And then another. And then another.

Feeders.

We all jumped at the first hit, and then
moved into action on the subsequent ones. It wasn’t safe to stick
around anymore.

Reagan finally stood up- gingerly- and
brushed away the loose shards of glass and debris from her
kneecaps. She hunched over with bent knees, and all in all looked
very uncomfortable. My chest started hurting again and I rubbed at
it with an absent hand.

I didn’t like that I was starting to feel
weird things for this girl. I didn’t even know her. I promised
myself it was just because she was the closest thing to normal I’d
seen in a very long time and, like her friend had said, she was
hot. This was all very shallow of me. But I wouldn’t act on it. As
soon as she got bandaged up and we avoided this Feeder attack, we’d
part ways and I’d stop having to deal with all these stupid
feelings and… urges.

“Those look bad, Reags,” her friend winced.
She sounded seriously concerned. And if they’d been anywhere but
with us, she probably should have been. But we were prepared for
stuff like this. We were prepared for everything.

“I’ll be Ok,” Reagan promised. A new feeling
slipped in with all the rest- admiration. This girl was strong, a
fighter. No, a few cuts on her knees and hands weren’t the worst
that could happen to her, but she wasn’t even going to let them
phase her.

“Let’s go,” I demanded gruffly- probably
gruffer than I intended. But I needed to get her in front of
Vaughan before I lost my mind too.

Nelson led the way and the girls followed in
between. I locked the door before I moved behind them and left the
slow pounding of Feeder fists to rot.

Reagan seemed to be having trouble making it
up the stairs. Her body stayed bent over and her steps were slow
and labored.

Against my better judgment I asked, “Do you
need some help?”

“Uh, I’ll be Ok,” she answered quickly.

My gut churned and I shook my head but still
offered her some comfort. “It’s just up at the top of the
stairs.”

We finished climbing and I felt a little
dazed. Hopefully, Vaughan would just play along because I didn’t
have the mental capacity to take the lead on this one.

I walked past the two girls and Nelson so I
could knock on the door. Nelson probably thought I had lost my mind
cutting him off like that but I needed some breathing room.

Harrison opened the door with gun raised, but
the girls hardly noticed as they blinked against the light, putting
hands up to shield their faces. We ushered them inside and took
them to stand in front of Vaughan. Page stayed hidden, as was
protocol. We had to keep her safe above all else.

While the girls adjusted to the light, I
adjusted to them- or rather her.

Reagan was shockingly pretty. And I was so
unused to loveliness and beauty that it felt like she could easily
be the last of the beautiful things on this planet. Her eyes were
dark, deep brown- so rich in color they were like chocolate
diamonds. And probably just as rare. Her lashes were thick and
smudgy, her cheekbones high, her lips full and soft looking. Her
body was perfectly toned, even if she was a little skinny and my
eyes immediately fell to her slender neck and…. lower. She didn’t
belong here- not with us mere mortals, not in a world ripe with
Zombies and not in any place that would swallow her up and digest
her in the bowels of rotten, putrid, decaying humanity.

I shook my head out and moved to stand near
my brothers. We were a united front, practice and instinct had
turned us into a fluid, fighting machine.

Vaughan was sitting down on the couch,
looking relaxed and in charge. I hid my smile, because I knew this
looked a whole lot more threatening than it was. We would protect
our family if we had to, but we were not bad guys. And we didn’t
lash out unless we had to.

Vaughan was very amused by this whole thing.
I could tell. His eyes were drinking in Reagan and her friend like
he had been deprived of water for his whole life. I knew the
feeling.

“What did you find, Hendrix?” he asked
me.

“Girls,” I all but growled. “They were
shopping
.”

Reagan didn’t take that very well. She
snorted and then bit out, “We were stocking up on supplies.”

“Makeup?” I taunted, expecting some kind of
fierce denial or sarcastic insult.

But even I was surprised when Reagan
admitted, “Just a little eyeliner.”

This surprised me more than anything else.
This wasn’t exactly the appropriate era of history to struggle with
vanity. It should have been annoying- it should have been a huge
turn off. But damn it to hell, it was intriguing. I couldn’t
remember the last time I’d met someone that still cared about their
looks. Even me and my brothers had resorted to beards and shaggy
hair and we were supposed to be this great, last vestige of all
things humane and civilized.

We were letting ourselves de-evolve back into
apes and cavemen while these girls actually put effort into what
remained of their lives. It wasn’t exactly an admirable pursuit,
but calling them vain seemed a little bit harsh.

Still, I couldn’t help myself. I mean, it was
exceedingly frivolous, especially after they nearly died restocking
their lipstick. Now the other girls’ gun was empty and who knew
what Reagan had on her as far as weapons went. They walked right
into our trap and if it hadn’t have been us, it would have been
somebody else. And then they’d either be dead by now, or….
worse.

They were lucky we found them.

Clearly they were ill prepared for this whole
Apocalypse thing.

How could they be so irresponsible? Actually,
it kind of made me angry. And being angry naturally turned me into
a jackass.

“Yeah? Is that eyeliner going to help you
stop bleeding?” I challenged her.

She was fast with her comeback, “No, but you
could.”

I started to say something, although I wasn’t
exactly sure what, when Vaughan cut me off. “She’s right. Help her
get clean before the Feeders get a scent of her fresh blood.”

I thought that might have already happened
and was about to tell Vaughan when her smug look distracted me
completely. I couldn’t look away, although I didn’t try very hard.
And why would I? She was everything in my life that I was missing,
and I hadn’t even realized it until this very moment.

A huge, gaping hole oozed emptiness and
loneliness in my chest, eating up space in my life with every
useless moment that passed. And then there was her- Reagan. She was
both the magnifying glass that enhanced all the colorless, wretched
feelings of loss and aimlessness and the cure, the life-saving
antidote that could remedy my mundane, isolated existence.

I walked toward her like a bug on its
helpless way to a zapper; a meteor pulled in by her unavoidable
gravitational pull- on fire, blazing out of control, committed to
this path of either destruction or salvation. She was light. She
was life. She captivated me and somehow I found myself sucked into
her magnetic field of exquisiteness.

And she didn’t even seem aware of her effect
on me.

Because for some reason she was less than
happy to have to deal with me. In fact, her adorably cocky
expression turned into a frustrated scowl that irked me.

Suddenly, I was extremely self-conscious.
Which was crazy talk. Before Zombies, I had been one of the
captains for the Northwestern swim team. I’d never, not once, had
an issue getting a girl’s attention. And I’d never had them get
annoyed with me. Girls, loved me. They loved the broodiness, the
quiet, understated temperament. They loved everything about me.

Or they used to.

I motioned for Reagan to sit down on a bar
stool in the corner of our large space. I planned on saying
something to ease the tension between us, but her attention was on
her friend. I looked over, too, and watched her wave happily in our
direction. Reagan seemed to relax after that.

I took a quick breath and went for it.
Grabbing her hand without warning, I started to pull the larger
pieces of glass out as carefully as I could. She would live, but
these seemed painful.

She sucked in a sharp breath and blinked away
tears. My chest tightened and I slowed down my effort, being as
gentle as humanly possible with her.

“That’s some defense system you got down
there,” she winced through the pull of glass.

I removed the worst of it, so I took the
alcohol and rubbed it on her slightly bleeding wounds. She made a
high-pitched squeak and her eyes slammed shut. I applied a little
pressure to her palm, hoping to ease away the sting. When she
relaxed under my attention, I relaxed too.

And felt a little bit like Superman.

“Most people that come through that door are
invited.” I sounded like a dick again, but I couldn’t seem to
remember how to be charming. I was out of practice talking to any
other girls besides Page.

“Are they also being chased by Feeders?” she
asked, sounding so snotty I wanted to cringe.

“Hold this,” I pressed her fingertips against
the towel I had been using and ignored her sarcasm. I grabbed
another bar stool so I could sit down at her level and reach all
her wounds easily. I looked over the rest of her, wondering which
place would be the most prudent place to start with.

I decided to continue with her other palm
because in order to get to her knees, she was going to have to take
off her pants. This fact hit me like a punch in the face. I cleared
my throat and demanded that my mind focus.

But holy hell.

Legs.

I hadn’t seen a nice pair of legs in a
pathetically long time.

And then I wasn’t just going to get any legs,
I was getting to see
these
legs.

Some deep, internal, masculine instinct
promised they would be legs worth all this trouble, that these were
the kind of legs that changed lives and altered destinies.

I suddenly felt thirteen again and a little
concerned that King had better stamina than me by this point.

Shit.

“These are bad,” I mentioned as a way to
distract my wayward thoughts.

“I know,” she groaned.

I wanted to smile reassuringly at her, but
instead said, “Bruce Lee.”

“What?” She had no idea what I was talking
about.

“You looked like Bruce Lee with your foot
flying through the door.”

She laughed like she was surprised she was
laughing. And then accused me with, “You could have warned me you
were going to open the door.”

“I didn’t know if you were a friend or an
enemy,” I told her. I knew that was true, but it also didn’t feel
true. I might have been playing it safe, but I always knew she
wasn’t my enemy. I took my eyes off her palm and met her dark gaze.
She held my stare with a cool confidence I admired.

She blushed while we stared at each other,
her creamy skin heating with a sweet redness. “Fair enough,” she
breathed.

I didn’t know what else to say after that so
I went back to work on her wounds. For the first time that I could
remember, she threw me way off my game. And I didn’t know if it was
because I was out of practice or if it was her.

Since I’d never worried about this before
now, I had to assume it
was her
. Something in the way she
held herself, emanating courage and resiliency; the way she watched
me with an intuition that was unnerving, the way she kept glancing
at her friend just to make sure she was alright. She wasn’t from
the world I lived in. She was ethereal… incorporeal… she was the
meaning in a life that had none.

Was that too deep too soon?

Hell, yes. There was something so wrong with
me.

She broke the silence first, “This is quite
the set up you have here.”

Still feeling unnerved I came back
brilliantly with, “Yep.

“Have you been here since the beginning?”

“Nope.” Well, that was better….

“So how long then? You have a serious utopia
up here; I’m surprised there aren’t more of you.”

“We don’t trust outsiders,” I explained
shortly. Although, I wondered if that was still true. She was
here.

“Oh, like me?” She rolled her eyes at me.
“That works out great since I don’t trust you either.”

“You shouldn’t,” I warned her.

“Wow, you sure know how to make a girl feel
welcome.” She was growing increasingly uncomfortable next to me,
but I was almost glad. I couldn’t let this girl in, and I really
couldn’t continue to have these insane thoughts. She needed to be
reminded as strongly as I did. We weren’t friends. I couldn’t take
on another person to watch out for and she wouldn’t want to be a
part of our group anyway.

Although, all those arguments felt so weak
compared to the tornado of convictions she’d been stirring up since
her arrival.

I was in so much trouble.

I needed to get my head and my body back
under my control.

“It doesn’t matter; you’ll be gone in a few
hours anyway.” I stared at her wounds, paying extra attention to
everything I did. That warning was true, but it was more for my
benefit than hers, if I were honest with myself.

“Like, you’re going to kill us?”

“What?” I growled at her. How did she get to
that
conclusion? “We’re not going to
kill
you. We’re
going to send you on your way. We don’t want you here. I already
told you, we don’t trust outsiders.”

Now she looked offended.
Confusing
woman
.

“But I’m a woman,” she said.

Like I needed to be reminded of that.

“Yep.”

“Aren’t you going to rape me?” And she
actually sounded disappointed.

“What?” I practically choked on her question.
“
Do you want me to rape you?
”