Free Love and Decay, Volume Eight (Episodes 9-12, Season Three) by Rachel Higginson

slumped. He had explained that was his family’s
home and nothing, not even fire or Matthias, could make them
leave.
    We’d also recently learned that Diego now
controlled the northern part of Mexico. Until someone challenged
him, and he was very confident that nobody would, he ran everything
from the US border to Mexico City.
    This was thanks in part to our arrival,
Matthias’s promises and Diego’s aggression; the territory wars we
had gotten mixed up in decimated this entire region. A lot of men
had died over the last few weeks.
    Diego was confident they would name this war
after him.
    Especially now that he was the most powerful
man in Mexico.
    Men from all regions had started to show up
and pledge their loyalty to him. Whatever sadness he’d felt over
the burning of his village had been replaced with something like
happiness. He was still the proud, arrogant man I knew and only
kind of liked, but purpose and a people group to keep alive had
given him something deeper.
    This was something worth living for.
    Adela still planned to leave with us.
    Two days ago, Andy had held a ceremony for
all of the dead from every side of this conflict. We were the only
people participating that hadn’t lost anyone.
    Except that wasn’t entirely true.
    As Andy, Diego, Adela and a few other
Mexicans in attendance spoke the names of the dead we could
remember, I thought of Gage and Kane. I whispered their names with
eyes shut tight and for the first time felt justice for them.
    They were free now too.
    Joy spent the last week preparing us to live
without her. We’d come to heavily rely on her cooking and nursing.
I hadn’t known her that long, but I really didn’t want to leave
without her. She came in handy when I was hungry or bleeding or
dying.
    She was also one of the sweetest women I had
ever known.
    She spent a lot of time with Tyler though and
I could see Tyler’s confidence improve. She’d always been our go-to
girl when it came to injuries, not because she knew a lot, but
because she knew more than the rest of us.
    Now she knew a lot. Joy had also given her an
easy-to-read medical handbook that she said all missionaries were
known to own. We were in capable hands moving forward.
    Haley had also been the recipient of hours of
Joy’s wisdom. Joy taught Haley how to eat from the land and cook on
basically any surface. She’d gone over care for Lennon and how to
take care of fevers, ear aches and other minor problems that could
easily become huge issues for the little guy. She wrote lots of
instructions in a journal that she gave to Haley, hoping to ease
the burden of motherhood in our scary world.
    Andy had been gracious enough to share his
weapon stores with us. We had also salvaged quite a lot from
Matthias’s dead men and the vehicles they left behind.
    The last time we had been armed with this
much weaponry was with Gage at the compound. It reminded me of the
first day Haley and I had met the Parkers and they had been so
prepared.
    And that’s what we were today. We were
prepared.
    We were ready to move on and move
forward.
    The only thing that bothered me was that we
never found Matthias’s body. The building that he’d died in had
been completely destroyed by the time the Parkers, Andy and Diego
had gone back. But they had expected to find something from him. At
least a belt buckle or something.
    But then again, maybe he didn’t wear
belts.
    Diego moved around the living room and took a
seat on the coffee table in front of me. His arm was in a sling,
but the color had returned to his face and he looked healthy
again.
    “Will you miss me?” he asked, a playful smile
tilting his lips.
    “As much as I’ll miss this bullet wound,” I
grinned at him.
    He threw his head back and barked out a
laugh. “Come now,” he coaxed. “We have been made friends. I killed
your Matthias like I promised.”
    I narrowed my eyes on him, “You lay there and
tried not to die.”
    His finger wagged in my face, “Ah, but