Love and Decay, Boy Meets Girl by Rachel Higginson Page B

she
crawled through the elevator space without hesitation or further
prompting.
    I let her get adjusted and when she couldn’t
quite get in a comfortable position to get strapped in I laid down
on my stomach and grabbed her ass so she could settle. In any other
situation, I would have capitalized on this moment and investigated
how far she would let me take this. But this was life or death,
survival or Feeder-food. This was clinical, methodical, necessary
to our escape.
    Although the surprised squeak she made when I
touched her did confusing things to my resolve.
    “What the hell?” she growled at me.
    “Just,” I strained against her weight and
clicked the carabineers into place, “there.”
    She was now supported by the rope, although
it wasn’t exactly the most comfortable way to travel. It would do
the job. That’s all that mattered.
    I slid under the elevator that hovered above
a just-big-enough space to slide under and strapped myself into
place too. We would go down together. From now on, we would always
do things together in order to survive. And this time I wasn’t
being a possessive stalker. That was how we did things in my
family. We stayed together so we could stay alive together.
    “Where are you supposed to stay?” I asked her
again. I needed to make sure she got this.
    She glared at me through the darkness, her
features oddly highlighted by the flashlight down below. “Hendrix,
are you kidding me?”
    She would get it. I just had help her. “By
me, Reagan. Always, by me.”
    Her breathing came faster and more
unregulated, echoing off the cavernous walls. I hoped that was a
good thing for me. She went back to staring at the wall in front of
her and we worked silently down the wall until our feet were once
again on solid ground.
    “We rigged it so it’s not connected to
anything, but there’s a barrier to keep it from falling down the
shaft. It should hold in place for a while. We’re just trying to
confuse them while we get out of here. But if they follow our
scent, the elevator won’t hold them for long.” I explained the
logistics of the plan.
    “Do you think my bloody clothes will confuse
them?” she asked and I hoped she meant because she left them
upstairs and hadn’t tried to bring them with her.
    No, she was smarter than that.
    “Probably.” I confirmed.
    “Hey, I’m sorry-“
    “Not now, Reagan.” We didn’t have time for
that and she didn’t have anything to be sorry for. I raised my
semiautomatic and she followed suit. We had to be ready for
everything. Feeders fed Feeders. That was just how things were.
They were mostly lonely creatures until the possibility of food
presented itself and then the more racket they made, the more of
their kind they drew in. One Feeder could become one hundred
Feeders in just minutes. They seemed to crawl up from the cracks in
the ground and out of the shadows of buildings. They were
everywhere, overpopulating this planet with death and disease.
    I didn’t know if there was a long term
strategy to exterminating their threat, but there had to be some
kind of solution to winning back humanity. We had to be stronger
than them. Humanity wasn’t lost- not completely. And we were
smarter, more discerning and most importantly, we still possessed
souls.
    We had to take back this planet- if for no
other reason than to keep anyone else from getting infected.
Zombie-ism was a true predator- not sparing one single life in the
wake of its destruction.
    Vaughan, Page and Haley were waiting for us
on the ground floor. Page was tucked between them like she belonged
there- or rather, like Haley belonged there. Page wore her brave
face and met my eyes when I looked at her.
    She was just so very courageous and I admired
every little part of her.
    She didn’t have a weapon on her this time,
and hopefully she wouldn’t need one. We had all taught her how to
use every kind of gun we had that she was strong enough to hold and
she’d had some knife-training too,