Love and Decay, Episode 10 (6 page)

The men walking with us, nodded in greeting to the guards walking around the back grassy area, but didn’t attempt to draw them into conversation.

“Do you have a weapon on you?” One of the guards asked me when the door was unlocked and ready to be pulled open.

I pulled out a handgun from my large cargo pocked near my calf. I checked the clip, clicked off the safety and nodded. “And a knife.”

“Good,” he grunted. “We’ll stay close enough to call for help, but we won’t have the normal protection.”

“Should we wait?” Unease rushed through me at the idea of spending time in these woods without the normal circle of armed weapons. Gage split up bathing between women and men every three days. So the women would bathe one night, the men the next and then the third night we would wash clothes. Whenever it was time to get into the creek, Gage would assign a group of about twenty to make a protective circle while we were occupied in the creek and then twenty of us would take their place while they bathed. It wasn’t exactly an army, but it made me feel better about getting near-naked in the middle of an Oklahoma forest.

“Nah.” The guard yanked open the door and held it open for us. “There’s just one of him; it won’t take long.”

“Besides,” another put in. “You’d have a hard time finding anyone willing to risk their life for him.”

Kane snorted at that. “To credit your own stupidity.”

“What was that?” the third guard demanded at the same time he shoved Kane in the back with the butt of his rifle.

Kane stumbled forward and I reached out instinctively to steady him with two hands on his bicep. He winced when I grabbed his cut and I immediately let go.

Cursing under his breath, he looked up at me and met my startled gaze in the soft afternoon light. “Thank you.” His voice was a low rumble and infinitely gentler than before.

“I didn’t realize your arm still hurt that bad,” I looked back at the forest floor where patches of rich summer grass mingled with dead leaves and broken branches. We’d been lucky with a relatively cool summer so far, but temperatures were definitely heating up and in my long sleeved t-shirt and jeans I was starting to sweat.

“I’m fine,” Kane returned his attention to the makeshift path in front of us.

“Did they…. Has someone….” I wasn’t exactly sure how to ask him if someone had looked at his injuries. After they’d taken Kane away and we settled into the activity room, Gage had sent a former doctor to look at my head wound. I assumed they did the same for Kane; but I’d never bothered to ask.

Feelings of cruel hope they’d let him suffer and humanitarian sympathy that they hadn’t been as callous as me warred inside my head.

“They made sure I wasn’t dying,” he answered dryly. “But by now I probably have an infection. I haven’t had a bath in over a week.”

I laughed before I could stop myself, “I can tell.”

Kane swiveled his head my direction, surprised by my good humor. “You could have come to me a lot sooner, you know. I would never hurt you, Reagan.”

“And while I appreciate that,” I started magnanimously.

But Kane cut me off, “Stop right there. I’m too exhausted to hear the rest of that sentence.”

I laughed again, surprised by his sarcastic sense of humor. “You’re so cranky today.”

He laughed, too, and said, “I promise I’ll be in a better mood after I get a bath.”

We finally reached the creek and the guards spread out and turned their backs to us. I looked at Kane and winced. There was no normal way to go about this. I just had to hope Tyler had already spilled the news to Hendrix and he was on his way to save me.

I clicked the safety back on my gun, pocketed it and then dug around in the bag one of the guards provided. It generously contained a change of clothes, shampoo, toothpaste and a toothbrush, a comb, and deodorant.

I held up the stick of Old Spice antiperspirant and thought about that for a moment. One day humanity was going to run out of deodorant. Sure, we’d been lucky so far to be able to keep it stocked. But one day all of it was going to be gone.

And then what?

Did anyone need stronger incentive to solve the Zombie problem than that?

I mean…. imagine. Could even the Parkers, in all their glory and hotness remain the gods among mortals they were if they smelled like sweat and BO constantly? That was an honest question. Could they?

Oh no, and what about me? I would never be able to rely on just looks in those dire circumstances.
Damn it.

Good thing I loved Hendrix no matter what he smelled like. I just had to hope he felt the same for me.

Wait a second, did I just say love?

I loved him?

I loved him.

I did.

It took imagining him smelling like a sewer to finally admit that I felt that way, but I did.

“Hey,” Kane called me back to him tenderly. “Where did you go?”

I struggled to swallow and met Kane’s warm gray gaze, wrestling with the epiphany still flipping cartwheels inside my head and in my stomach.

Shaking my head slightly to gain perspective I admitted, “I was just thinking about deodorant. And what it will be like when we run out.”

Kane chuckled at my admission but chose not to get drawn into a conversation about the decline of civilized society and the implications no deodorant would have on the demoralization of humanity as a whole.

I didn’t blame him.

“Can you help me with my socks?” Kane asked, sounding almost humble.

“Sure,” I agreed. He had kicked off his boots, so I leaned over and peeled back his filthy socks.
Ick.

Even before Kane ended up in solitary confinement, Tyler and I had never cleaned or disinfected the lower half of his body. His socks were plastered to his gritty feet and smelled god-awful.

“Geez, you smell as bad as they do.” I coughed against the repugnant smell and tried to hide my watering eyes.

“Trust me, I’m aware.”

I grunted a reply and then started to strip the rest of his body. I was keenly aware how intimate we were like this, even with the three other guards standing nearby.

I bypassed his pants and went for his t-shirt. When Kane came into custody he was topless, so this must be a gift from Gage. Well, it was ruined now. And even more so when I used my hunting knife to cut it off. I threw the jagged scraps into a pile with his socks and went about removing the relatively clean bandages.

Someone had been taking care of his wounds, so at least they were clean. That allowed me to have some relief.

I hated that I was scared of Matthias’s retaliation for how Kane was treated, but I couldn’t help it. He was scary. And like Gage had said, we didn’t have the resources to go to war with The Colony. Kane needed to cooperate with Gage.

Which was probably another reason I was sent into the trenches.

I took a breath and went for his pants, while averting my eyes to anywhere besides his washboard abs, bulging biceps or the part of his body I was currently undressing. I felt his hot stare on my profile as I counted rocks along the frothy shore of the creek.

No matter what I tried to think about, my thoughts constantly rushed back to my task. First, his button popped open and then I quickly pulled down the zipper. I yanked my hands back as if they had been burned.

I glanced up, embarrassed and insecure at the same time. “Can you wiggle them the rest of the way down now?”

Kane did a little booty shake to show me he was trying, but it was no use. The jeans were sticky now and stuck to his thighs.

“Alright,” I groaned. I squatted down- ignoring the compromising position- and grabbed the pockets in order to pull them down- hard. I stared at the ground, counting leaves this time, until his pants were at his ankles and he could step out of them on his own- which he did.

“Would you grab my glasses out of my pocket?” he asked while he stood there in black boxer briefs that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Hendrix was going to be so beyond pissed when he walked into this nightmare.

“Sure.” I picked up his jeans with as little contact as I could manage and dug around in the pockets until I found his black-rimmed glasses that were smudged and as filthy as him.

“Would you mind cleaning them off?” his voice was gentle and pleading and I realized he hadn’t been wearing them for probably the entire week.

“Do you still have your contacts in?” I asked quickly and a bit panicked.

He smiled genuinely at me. “No, they’ve been out since we got here. But I didn’t want something to happen to my glasses. Besides I haven’t really needed to see anything since I’ve been sitting in the same chair for a week.”

“Yeah, but,” I started to sympathize with him and then thought better of it. “Can you see me?” I asked instead.

“Mostly,” he grinned at me. “And what I can’t see, I can remember.”

And just like that he sent me spiraling back into “stranger danger” territory. “What about a headache?”

“Yeah, I have a headache,” he answered shortly.

Deciding to move on, I bent down to the creek and began cleaning his glasses. Kane stepped into the shoreline and let the cool, clean water lap at his ankles. He started at the bracingly cold temperature when he first put his feet in, but almost immediately started to adapt to the feel of the refreshing water against his bare skin. He closed his eyes and seemed to sink into a full-bodied peace while he waited patiently for me to finish with his glasses and start on him.

While he was distracted I took stock of his body and his various injuries. The cut on his thigh was the deepest and the angriest looking, but it was still healing nicely. His bicep cut was still deep too, but not as bad. His ribs were still bruised and I couldn’t tell if they were getting better or worse. His face was mostly healed, but his eyes were still black and blue from lack of sleep and the facial gashes were all well on their way to scabbing and probably scarring.

I set his glasses aside when they were cleaned and pulled out a washcloth to use on him. I set about the task as clinically and methodically as I could.
This was so freaking awkward.

My hands brushed over his firm, smooth skin of his chest and taut muscles with an awareness I wanted desperately to avoid. But I couldn’t.

It was there and I needed to admit it so I could move on with my life.

Kane was attractive, gorgeous even. And he had this whole aura of mystery that was a little bit enticing, if I was honest with myself. But that was it.

On the inside he was a hollow, cruel person that lost his moral compass a while ago. The moments he was anything more were just that, moments… glimpses of a person that ceased to exist when Zombies became our reality.

And that’s when I made an executive decision. I couldn’t wash him. I couldn’t cross that line with him. He might try to run, but I had no doubt these men would shoot him dead without question.

Pulling out my hunting knife, I grasped his hands and held them steady while I carefully snipped the tight plastic with the tip of my sharp knife. Kane gaped at me while he shook out his hands, rubbing them at the wrists, struggling to get feeling back into them.

I took a step back and my first real breath since I’d been with Kane in his cell. “I’m leaving this up to you,” I announced gesturing at the creek.

The guards were far enough away that we weren’t exactly in ear shot, but all it would take was one fast scream from me and they would be here immediately.

“You trust me?” he gaped.

“No,” I answered honestly. “But I know you’d rather be here with me then out in those woods by yourself, without clothes and without a weapon.”

His mouth broke into a boyish grin and he admitted, “You’re right about that.”

“Besides, your dad will be here in two days to take you back home. You don’t want to miss out on that opportunity.”

His smile faltered and his eyes flickered up to mine at the same time he walked deeper into the water. The creek came up to about mid-thigh on him and the first thing he did was sink down and submerge his entire body into the lolling current. He popped back out of the water, running a hand through his hair, that startling smile back in place on his chiseled face.

“My dad is coming here?” he asked in true confusion.

“I guess; Gage has some annual meeting with him?”

“Oh, right,” Kane’s brow furrowed but he caught the small bottle of shampoo when I tossed it to him. He proceeded to wash his hair and face, running his hands over his chest and arms and…. lower. I averted my eyes and decided that watching the small white rapids rush over protruding rocks and branches along the shore was the single most interesting thing I’d ever seen. “What are you going to do when he comes?”

Here was my chance to lie to him, to tell him exactly what we weren’t going to be doing. “Oh, we won’t be here.” I worked to sound as causal as possible. I felt the power of his gaze before I even chanced a look his direction.

“Where will you be?” His words were hard stone and he stopped being gentle with his body.