“You got it, babe,” he winked at me.
I almost smiled at his inside joke, but then Kane and his henchmen were back and the door to the school was opened. Inside the building was dark and cool and after the brightness of day outside, I felt blind as I stumbled around inside.
“Careful of the walls,” Kane murmured.
The door slammed with a bang behind us and three things became obvious. The dim candlelight that illuminated the hallways. The tortured keening of the undead. And the lack of smell.
As my eyes adjusted to the light I took in one of the most horrific scenes of my life. In my life- my life that was filled with killing and rotting flesh and death daily.
The school was set up so that it split into two hallways in a V away from the front doors. There was an office of sorts directly to my left made completely of glassed walls and a swinging door. Immediately my eyes fell on Hendrix and Nelson and I only briefly registered the barest hint of relief.
And then my eyes went back to something so vile and disgusting I actually gagged. Zombies lined the hallways. Lined the hallways. The lockers, that were originally used for students, had their doors removed and replaced with steel bars like a jail cell. And stuffed into each, individual locker, so that their arms were able to reach out into the hallway was a Feeder. They moaned low and high at the same time with their faces pressed up against the bars. They space between was wide enough for their bone-thin arms but not big enough for them to stick their face through.
Their skin was paper white and peeling off in places until all that was left was either tendons or bones. They clawed and grasped at the air in front of them as if they could reach the humans that walked in between them, as if only one more inch would get them the meal they seemed to so desperately need.
I stared speechless and disgusted. The feeling was something like watching dog fighting- I knew they were animals, not humans, but the cruelty was staggering.
Through the haze of my thoughts I heard Kane order, “Take him in with the others. I’m taking her to my father.”
Panic infused my boiling blood and my head snapped to Vaughan. It was good that they were putting him with his brothers.
But what about me?
Kane put his arm on my bicep and started to pull me down the opposite hallway. I struggled just a little and his grip tightened. Leaning down so that his mouth was next to my ear again, he whispered, “He will be a hell of a lot safer if you come easily.”
“Reagan,” Vaughan said in a low voice. Our gazes collided with emotion- he was promising that everything would be Ok and I was begging him to make it that way. And then, shocking the ever-living hell out of me, he shouted, “I love you.”
I think my mouth unhinged almost permanently and I stumbled backwards as Kane pulled me down the hallway. I stuttered over what to say back when he held up two fingers and then just one. Two truths. One lie.
“I love you too,” I lied back.
And it was a lie- on both our parts. Because while there might exist some kind of friend-love between us, there was so far none of that deeper stuff.
But then my eyes flickered over to Hendrix who was standing in front of his side of the glass, his jaw clenched so tightly that a muscle was popping in and out. His hands were crossed tensely over his heaving chest and his livid stare was fastened on where Kane’s hand gripped my arm.
I didn’t understand why Vaughan had put us together but I assumed, by taking one glance at Hendrix, it was something to do with protecting his brother. And I would do anything to protect any of those boys so I went along with it- easily. There wasn’t a question in my mind whether I trusted Vaughan to do what was best for this family- including me.
I willed Hendrix’s eyes up to mine and when we finally connected after agonizing seconds my heart slammed into my chest and stopped beating completely. He was tortured behind the glass, utterly pained and distraught. His lips pressed into a thin lined and the muscle in his jaw started ticking again.
With a meaningful look that hit me in the center of my being he mouthed, “Be careful.”
And in reply with as much emotion as I could convey, I mouthed back, “You too.”
Not exactly the most profound thing between people who might potentially, one day in the future…. like each other. But it was the most important thing right now.
I turned back around and followed Kane down the darkened hallway. The sound of Feeders reaching out for me in the dim light was alarming. Their keening drifted around me and in and out of my head like razor blades on soft flesh. My hands were still behind my back, but I desperately wanted to press them against my ears to block out the sound. My heart didn’t slow its rapid rhythm and my skin felt itchy and wrong as it stretched out over my body.