Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes 9-12, Season Three) (22 page)

“The couch in the back was nice for Vaughan,”
Hendrix lamented.

“We’ll stretch him out on the floor of that
van,” I said. “He’ll be all right.”

We took our time scoping out the situation.
Hendrix and Harrison checked out the van, while King and I gave
them cover. The streets were eerily silent. Even while I hoped they
would stay that way, I didn’t trust them to. It was just a matter
of time before someone came after us.

It could be old enemies or new. Living or
dead. It could be just about anything, but I knew they would come
if we didn’t hurry.

It took twenty minutes for Hendrix to get the
van started. The keys had been left in the ignition, like so many
other vehicles abandoned in the middle of the road. But the engine
had been sitting too long for it to want to start.

Hendrix and Harrison worked under the hood,
syphoned gas from other cars and finally coaxed the stubborn
machine to life.

Hendrix looked up at me with the most
relieved smile on his face. I felt hot tears sting my eyes as I
realized we might be able to escape this place after all.

It had felt impossible before this
moment.

Adela and I moved to the back of the truck,
where we opened the doors and helped our friends get out. Haley sat
in the back corner, nursing Lennon underneath her shirt. Nelson had
his arm around her and a grim expression on his face. Page and
Miller sat huddled together in the other corner and Tyler sat on a
dusty, but soft looking couch with Vaughan’s head in her lap.

“We have to change vehicles,” I told them.
Even though the sky was continuing to darken, they blinked at me,
their tired eyes adjusting to the light. “Hendrix got a van
started. They’re waiting for us.”

They silently gathered what little belongings
we’d managed to bring with us and stepped on to the street. We
moved quickly across the road and piled in the old van. It smelled
like must and rust, but it would carry us for a while, so I
couldn’t complain.

I climbed into the passenger’s seat next to
Hendrix and put my hand on his shoulder. “Good job.”

“Didn’t have a choice,” he answered
shortly.

I felt the tension stretch and pull between
us. I didn’t doubt we would struggle through this day, but the
extra pressure and unknowns of where we would end up, how we would
find food and more weapons, weighed on us with depressing
strength.

I couldn’t do this much longer. It was too
much for us to bear.

We had nothing. How would Haley continue to
feed Lennon if she couldn’t feed herself? How would Vaughan get
better if we couldn’t find a safe place to stay and medicine to
help him through this?

Was there even a medicine that could help him
survive?

But we had been here before.

There was hope. There had to be.

We had lived without food and water. We had
lived through a Feeder bite before. We had lived without
anything.

At least we had a van that could hold us,
even if it was barely. At least we were all still alive and
breathing, even if it was barely.

We fought and ended Matthias; we survived the
Mexican territories and Mexico City. We could make it to Colombia.
All of us.

We could stick together and we could
survive.

The heart of the city slowly gave way to
buildings that were spaced farther apart. The road smoothed out and
less dead traffic bogged our path.

We passed a few Feeders, digging at old
remains. They barely lifted their heads as we sped by. Humanity
died out completely on the fringe of civilization. Soon there was
nothing but highway and vegetation.

I stared out the window for a long time and
marinated in the silence. Nobody could find anything to say. Our
battle wasn’t worth reliving, because it was more of the same… a
lifestyle we could never escape.

Vaughan’s ragged breathing was the only thing
that broke up the grumbling roar of the engine.

Hendrix stayed wound tight. I didn’t know how
to approach him or calm him down. I didn’t have the right words to
comfort and encourage him. I didn’t know what to do.

I wanted to fix this, but I couldn’t and it
was driving me crazy.

After a while more, when soft snoring added
to our road trip soundtrack, he reached across the center console
and took my hand.

“This is too much for me,” he said in a low
voice so only I could hear. His voice broke with strangled emotion.
“He’s my big brother. There hasn’t been a day in my life when I
haven’t looked up to him.”

Sorrow hit me so suddenly I didn’t have time
to stop the tears. They spilled over my bottom lashes without
remorse.

Hendrix was
my
hero. There was no
greater man than him. I looked up to him, I respected him, I
revered him and I loved him. He was everything to me.

But a close second on that list was Vaughan.
I felt all of the things for Vaughan that I did for Hendrix, only
at a friendship level. Vaughan was one of the greatest men I knew
and to watch him struggle through this sickness was painful at a
level I thought could break me. After everything I had been
through, it was the current hazard to his health that threatened to
snap whatever strands of sanity I had left.

And yet, my feelings for Vaughan were nothing
compared to what Hendrix felt for him.

I squeezed Hendrix’s hand and tried to think
of the right thing to say.

“He’s my best friend, Reagan.” His words
scratched in his throat, as if he had to fight to get them out. “I
don’t know what will happen if he…”

“He won’t,” I whispered harshly. “Hendrix, he
won’t.”

But even as I said the words I could feel the
sickness darken inside him. He was a fighter. Strong. Capable.
Determined.

And if all of that failed him, he was still a
Parker.

That was enough.

Hendrix followed the compass on his dash and
the road in front of us. Most of the road signs had been knocked
down and so we had to rely on Adela’s fragile knowledge of the area
and hope we were headed in the right direction.

Nobody spoke as the hours ticked by.
Eventually we climbed out of the mountains and the lush jungle-like
vegetation gave way to a more tropical kind.

I watched in fascination as the scenery
changed around us. The cloudy sky evolved into puffy pastels that
stretched over a burning sun low on the horizon.

“We need a place to stay for the night,”
Nelson announced from the back. “We can’t keep going. We need a
break.”

Hendrix’s jaw ticked with frustration, but he
didn’t voice his protests. I could see in his dark expression that
he would have driven straight to Colombia if he could have. He
wouldn’t have stopped for anything but his family.

I hadn’t let go of his hand for hours. My
fingers ached where our bones pressed together, but I knew he
needed this.

I needed this.

“Hendrix?” Nelson asked.

“He’ll stop,” I answered for him.

I sensed movement in the back and I thought
it was Nelson leaning forward to talk to Hendrix, but then Page
spoke up. “Why is the sky glittering?”

I looked at the horizon again and blinked.
“That’s not the sky, Page. That’s the ocean.”

A ripple of excitement vibrated through the
van. Hendrix shifted and blinked at the road.

“I’ve never seen the ocean,” Miller
declared.

“Me either,” said Page, clearly
fascinated.

I hadn’t either.

I had hoped to glimpse it when we went
through Texas, but apparently my US geography was way off. We never
got near it.

Now it stretched out like a sparkling
blanket, not stopping until it met the sun in the sky.

“Veracruz,” Adela announced. “We must be near
Veracruz.”

Nobody said anything because nobody knew what
that meant.

“Is that the name of the ocean?” Page asked
innocently.

I felt myself smile and my cheeks stretched
uncomfortably after frowning for so long.

“Veracruz is,
was
a resort area,”
Adela explained. “It’s where you would have come if you had visited
Mexico before the infection.”

“Resort town?” Page asked. “What is
that?”

Haley laughed, “It means the city was very
nice. There were big hotels and all you can drink margaritas.
Cabana boys.”

“What’s a margarita?” Page asked.

“What’s a cabana boy?” Nelson echoed.

Hendrix’s lips twitched and I counted that as
a win.

The lower foothills never really ended. The
road sloped down to wind around near the beach, but the landscape
never really flattened out.

I didn’t know why I expected it to be flat,
but it was prettier than I imagined.

I had seen plenty of pictures of the ocean
and tropical places before the Internet and TV died, but nothing I
had seen before could compare the vastness and beauty that
stretched before me now.

I sucked in a breath and held it, hoping to
keep my awed tears at bay.

It was such a stupid thing to cry over the
ocean or beauty in general. I’d been fine when we walked into the
cathedral.

But I had nothing to prepare me for this. I
hadn’t expected to run right into the ocean. I hadn’t expected to
witness something so startling and lovely.

Golden sand glistened prettily as white waves
crashed on the shore. Palm trees of every size waved in the breeze,
welcoming us to paradise.

“I have never been here,” Adela told us in a
voice that sounded as awed as I felt. “The desert is a different
kind of place than this.”

True story.

“Where should I go?” Hendrix asked in a
subdued voice. Somehow the ocean had even calmed his restless
soul.

“There,” Haley squealed. “I see… huts? Do you
think anyone lives there?”

Our eyes collectively scanned the shoreline
for signs of life. Fishing boats lined the shore, some tied to
trees, some crashed and broken against rocks. Haley was right about
the huts. There was a cluster of them not far from where we were.
The edges of their thatched roofs flipped up in the breeze like
streamers.

I didn’t see any movement, not even as we
drove closer.

“What’s our weapon situation like?” Hendrix
asked.

Nelson searched the bags that we brought and
let out a weary sigh. “There’s not much here. But if we need it…
just don’t miss.”

Hendrix pulled into a sand-covered parking
lot and shut the car off with the sputtering of the engine. We sat
in silence while we waited for something to happen. Weapons were
passed around to those who needed them and we waited patiently for
anything to move.

The crashing of waves drifted through the
closed windows and sang a song that I could listen to for the rest
of my life. The sun dipped lower in the sky and threatened to wink
out completely.

“If we’re going to explore, we need to go
now,” I suggested.

The doors opened and we climbed out of the
van. I doubted we would get it to start again. I had a feeling this
was the end of the road for her.

But what a good place to die.

I glanced back at Vaughan and hated every
second of that thought train. Shaking my head to banish those
thoughts, I carefully followed Hendrix, Nelson, Harrison and King
toward the huts.

The first thing that hit me was the salty
breeze that stuck to my skin and lifted my hair. I breathed in the
freshest air I had ever put in my lungs and nearly cried from the
cleanness of it. No Zombie rot drifted over me. There wasn’t even
the scent of decaying bodies to taint this perfection.

A front office greeted us with boarded up
windows and a caved in roof. The huts, which were really more like
glamorous cabanas weather worn and dilapidated from neglect, curved
in a large semicircle with a collapsed gazebo in the middle. They
were all built on stilts, sitting several feet above the sand with
wraparound front porches that looked heavenly. A pathway led from
the center straight to the ocean with small sidewalks connecting
each residence along the way.

I could picture this place in its former
glory. I could see how the teak siding would have gleamed in the
sun and welcomed visitors. The straw roofs would have added that
exotic rustic-ness that was so enticing to people who could afford
it. And the cozy atmosphere was both private but not lonely.

We searched each cabana one by one and found
no one living there. It was evident that these hadn’t been touched
in a very long time.

Some of them were useless. The roof had
crashed in and water from rain and the ocean had destroyed
everything inside. Some were just messy from wild animals or
tourists leaving in a hurry. All of them had a thick layer of
sticky grime over everything and smelled of mold and mildew.

Still… it was better than nothing.

So much better than nothing.

We picked out several huts that we could use
for the night. We righted furniture, opened windows and used straw
brooms to sweep out what we could. We stripped the beds until there
was nothing but the bare mattress. Thankfully they had all been
covered with plastic, so all we had to do was rip that off to have
a non-moldy place to sleep.

King ran back for the others to help and let
them know it was safe. As soon as we fixed up the first hut,
Hendrix and Nelson carried Vaughan in and laid him on the bed.

On a real bed.

Tyler sat down next to him and her face
crumpled. She had been so strong over these last few days, but
everything had finally caught up to her. Haley handed Nelson Lennon
and wrapped her arms around our friend.

“Will you hold him?” Nelson asked me softly.
“I’ll help Hendrix get the rest of these in order before
nightfall.”

“I’d love to.” Nelson passed me the baby, who
was fast asleep and in the mood to cuddle. I held him against my
chest, nuzzled his neck and realized that babies were the best
therapy there was.