Love and Decay, Episode 10 by Rachel Higginson Read Free Book Online Page A

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