by Stevie Kopas
Samson felt his face grow hot. Not out of embarrassment, but out of anger, and shame. Shame that he only felt for hating this man because of the poor white trash he was correct in assuming Al was. “No sir, power’s been out for some time now.” He looked up at the lights and raised an eyebrow.
“Well no shit there, bud. “
“Unfortunate thing about the farmer’s market, fresh food spoils quickly, and what kind of man would I be if I couldn’t feed my family?” Samson worked each finger slowly, cracking each knuckle one by one as he spoke.
“Well excuse me Sam, I didn’t know you was tryin’ to feed your family.” Al’s statement was hard to read. Samson couldn’t tell if he was being remorseful or further pushing his boundaries.
“No worries, Al. I’m just trying to be a good father. But more importantly, trying to be a good husband, because if those things out there don’t kill me, my wife sure will.”
Al had a genuine laugh at Samson’s remark, enough so that Samson even had to laugh. “I don’t think I could take another day of my Moira screaming. Telling me that I’m the breadwinner, I’m the one who is to provide for our family, and that if I were a real man, our children wouldn’t be starving to death.” No laughter followed Samson’s last remark.
Al leaned forward, placing his elbows on his knees and rubbed his brow. He looked up at Samson, “This wife of yours, she a spoiled one huh?”
“She’s provided for.” Samson kept his face stern, knowing the old man was trying to test him.
“I bet she’s a real looker. What are you, a doctor? Yeah, yeah!” Al sat back again, licking his lips and grinning. “Bet you one of them rich ass doctors sittin’ pretty at the end of the world, playin’ ball with your kids in the yard and fuckin’ that wife of yours at night while the rest of us rot out here.”
“That’s enough!” Samson snapped, he seethed with anger and disgust. He felt his stomach drop as if he were on a roller coaster at the mention of any activity with his children being brought up by Al. He was ready to jump on him and blow his head off but he kept himself calm, kept himself still. He thought of his wife, how absolutely bat shit crazy she’d always been, but even more so now that the world had fallen apart. He didn’t want to put Moira in any kind of danger, but he did want to put Al in a bad place.
“Hey bud,” Al put his hands up and batted his eyes, “I’m just tellin’ it like it is.”
“Yeah, I bet you fuckin’ are.” Samson moved to get up but Al had the shotgun back on him in no time.
“Hold on there, where ya think you’re goin’?” Al’s grin was disturbing.
“What exactly did you rescue me for, Al?” Samson glared at him.
“Well Sam, just go on and calm down now. Have a seat back down now.” Samson slowly lowered himself back to the concrete floor as Al continued. “How exactly you think I been survivin’ in here? People don’t exactly drive up to this ol’ piss hole to fill ‘er up any more these days. So I do what I always done best, I trap ‘em and I steal from ‘em, and then I go ahead and feed ‘em to the dogs.” Al wasn’t grinning anymore.
Samson cursed himself for not being able to recognize exactly what kind of criminal the man was. He was a murderer and a thief, and Samson should have known better, but he did know exactly what Al would say next.
“But now that I know that you got yourself a pretty little wife back there in Franklin, I think I’ll have you take me on up there to visit. Whaddya say?”
“Listen sir, you’ve done me the courtesy of providing me shelter when my life was in danger, and you haven’t directly threatened me. So I’d be more than willing to do the courtesy of providing you with a home cooked meal and a bed in my family home. There’s no need for things to get out of hand.”
Al kept the shotgun on him. “You done?” Samson nodded, encouraging him to continue. “Well I tell you what, you do as I say, no fancy shit, things are gonna be just fine. Your kids better not say a word, your wife better have some great tits on her, and you better be alright with me walkin’ right on in and runnin’ the show.”
Samson nodded again, but this time slower.
Al packed a few things into a satchel before they left, and kept the gun trained on Samson as they moved toward the front of the station. The dead still lingered in the back of the building and it would be a clean break out the front. They’d be more easily disposed of now that the odds were a little more even.
As Al unlocked the door, the shotgun still trained on Samson, he reminded him, “Don’t forget what I said back there, and things…in your words, won’t get out of hand.”
Samson narrowed his dark blue eyes at him and smiled. “You’re gonna love my family.”
IV
“Sammy, goddamnit! I’m talking to you!” Moira’s shrill yell snapped him out of his daze. Samson’s eyes remained on the staircase and he realized he had been holding his breathe. He shook his head, and all thoughts of the redneck piece of shit he had brought into his home disappeared.
Samson turned to his wife, her face even beautiful when it was scowling at him. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, “I lost myself.”
Moira rolled her eyes as she took a sip of her instant coffee. “Lost yourself? Hm, in where? There?” She reached up in an attempt to hit him in the head but her height betrayed her. “Well good for you, I’m glad you think you have the time to lose yourself while your family is shut away in this house.” She slammed her mug down on the counter to her right and placed both hands on her hips. “Sammy, if you pull the same shit you did last week, we’re better off without you. You want to just bring home rapists? Murderers? You think that’s funny?!” She was angry, more angry than he could stomach at the moment.
“Moira, sweetheart, I didn’t mean for things to get out of hand, you know that.” Samson wondered how many more times she would bring Al up. He took a step toward her and placed a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged him off and stepped back.
“Oh sweetheart, I didn’t m-m-mean.” She mocked him and pushed his heavy frame with both hands. “All you’re good for is making sure this family doesn’t fall apart.” She stabbed a self manicured finger into his chest. “And if you can’t even do that without putting us in danger then you know what you’ll be good for next.”
Samson turned away from her as she continued to berate him in their living room. He stomped off toward the door, grabbing the Remington with his right hand. He stopped only to glance up the stairs as he opened the front door.
He thought back on when he first met his wife. Samson came from a line of wealth. His father and grandfather and so on were all attorneys and the money seemed endless. It was spring break 17 years ago and Samson had just turned 21. He and his friends were armed to the teeth with money and flew down to Miami to have the time of their lives during their week-long break from University. The nights were long, full of young beautiful women and expensive booze; during the day they slept in the sun and ate lavish lunches on the beach. It was the fourth night into their trip and they strolled up to the club entrance, flashing their million dollar smiles at the bouncers, tipping heavily and saying their “hellos”. Samson found himself distracted by a fast talking, big mouthed blonde being turned away at the door.
“No ID, no entry, shortstop.” A heavily tattooed guard smoking a cigar waved her away.
“This is totally ridiculous! My friends are already inside! I didn’t see you ID any of them!” The small young woman was surely going to find herself escorted off the premises if she kept this yelling up. Samson smirked, watching the girl make a fool of herself. Something about her Napoleon Syndrome he found both amusing and extremely attractive.
“Hey Danny, this chick is holding up the line man, get her outta here.” The tattooed guard called for one of the others to come over and take care of the situation.
“Hey! Hey! Get your fucking hands off me!” The small blonde kicked and hollered at the large man named Danny who had picked her up. Samson laughed and told his friends he’d be r
ight in.
“Woah woah woah man, hold up!” He jogged over to Danny and the screaming girl. Danny turned to see the well-dressed rich kid who had been at the club the last few nights.
“Oh hey, my man, what’s goin’ on?”
“You’ve got my lady friend there, mind if I have her back?” He pointed at the blonde who at that moment ceased her tantrum. She eyed Samson up and down and a small smile crept across her beautiful face.
“Well? You heard him!” She squirmed in the guard’s grip as he set her down.
“You sure about her man? She seems like trouble to me.” Danny shook his head at her as she smoothed out her short white dress and fixed the straps back into place on her delicate shoulders.
Samson held out his hand, slipping Danny a hundred dollar bill. “Appreciate it dude, I got it from here.” Danny shrugged, taking the money and patted Samson on the back as he walked back to the club entrance. He put his hand out, “Sam Eckhart.”
“Moira Lewis.” She shook his hand, still smiling at the dark haired young man who towered over her.
“I think it’s safe to say you’re with me tonight?” He nodded his head back at the club and she rolled her eyes at his smug demeanor, but yet couldn’t wipe the smile from her face.
“Whatever you say, big guy.” She took his arm and they walked right into the night club she was just previously denied entry to. She winked at the guards who chuckled as she strutted by in her strappy gold stilettos.
The rest of the night Moira didn’t dare leave Samson’s side. She was only 19 and had snuck into clubs before, but never managed to get into one this nice. They danced the entire night, chatting and drinking and enjoying the designer drugs his friends had bought back at the swanky hotel room. Samson and Moira made love until the sun came up and when she woke up, she slipped out of the suite without even a goodbye. Samson spent the rest of the trip wondering what happened to the sexy blonde, hoping he’d run into her again but when he returned to school, he soon forgot about her somewhere between classes and parties. He graduated that June with his bachelor’s degree.
Two months later he was packing up the remainder of his things before he left the following morning for his first year of law school. There was a knock at his bedroom door.
“Son,” his father spoke before entering.
“Yeah pop, what’s up?” His father walked into the large, practically empty bedroom. Samson noticed his father’s grim expression. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
His father, almost identical in stature to Samson, sighed and folded his arms across his wide chest. “I’m going to need you to explain to me why there is a pregnant girl asking for you downstairs.”
Samson felt his stomach drop. His mind began racing and he didn’t know how to respond to his father because he wasn’t very sure who the girl downstairs might even be. A dozen female faced rushed through his mind and he felt his face grow hot as a wave of nausea came over him.
“I thought we discussed you being more careful than this.” His father spoke in a hushed but angry tone. “You need to get your ass down there now and figure this thing out.” Samson stood, frozen in place, dumbfounded. “I said now!”
He rushed down the long hall in a panic and thought he might pass out when he reached the bottom of the staircase and immediately heard the girl’s loud voice as he she talked to his housekeeper. He turned to look at his father coming down the stairs behind him, his face still held a stone cold expression. He swallowed the lump in his throat and walked slowly into the living room.
The room fell silent and there before him sat a small framed blonde with a big swollen belly. “Can you give us a minute?” His father and housekeeper left the two alone.
Moira cried in his arms and he held her gently. She had nowhere else to go. She began showing and her drunken father threw her out. She had no job, no friends and no other family. “I’m sorry.” She looked at him with her big blue eyes and didn’t bother wiping the tears from them. Samson didn’t know how else to respond other than to take responsibility for his drunken carelessness in Miami. They were married in an expensively quiet ceremony without love or enthusiasm the following month on a weekend where he normally would have been out with his new law school buddies. His father paid for an apartment and a nanny off campus for Moira and Keira, the new baby, when she was finally born. Samson had never seen himself as a family man, but he was ready for this life whether he liked it or not.
He finished law school and Moira relished in his family’s money, becoming the woman he always knew he would grow to hate. Keira of course had nothing but the best, but so did Moira, and she had no shame in letting Samson know how much she adored his money. That’s the way it started and that’s the way it had always been. A few years later they had their second child, also an accident, but also equally amazing for Samson and Moira. It brought them closer for a while, but eventually they fell out of whatever temporary love they had found themselves in and went through the appropriate motions of wealthy family life in a wealthy family town.
“Did you hear me?!” Moira yelled from behind him, snapping him out of yet another cruel daydream. Samson hadn’t heard anything else and almost continued ignoring her but Moira’s voice became soft. “We can’t do this without you. Babe.” She lingered condescendingly on the last word and he knew the face she was making without even having to see it. Big doe eyes and pouty lips. It was a daily routine with her. The madness that was his wife, almost like a game. Seeing how far she could push him. All for fun, all for her own benefit, all to make him feel like the man he had now come to be, and never letting him forget that in their status of society, no matter how crippled the world, he was the breadwinner. The staple of the family.
Family, he thought to himself before he answered. “I’ll make sure things are right next time.” Samson slammed the door behind him as he ventured out of their home in Franklin Woods.
V
Samson walked down the driveway and quickened his pace as he passed the wreck in in the street before his house. If I could find a tow truck, I’d move this shit myself. He hated that their house was one of the first in the development. “Too much noise and traffic” he had told Moira when they were first looking at houses several years ago, but she had fallen in love with it the moment she stepped foot in the damned place. So in Samson’s mind, the brutal accident that had become a permanent fixture on his property all came back to that miserable decision to purchase the third “Castle” (as Moira so tenderly referred to it) from the guard house in Franklin Woods.
As he strode by the empty houses toward the exit, he thought of all his neighbors, now dead, some from his own doing, and the others probably offed themselves before they could succumb to the travesty of the world. He remembered the wild, angry look on Will’s face when he had first spotted Samson in his yard during the first few days of the infection. Samson knew his longtime golf buddy had plenty of plywood in the shed next door that he needed for their windows. He hadn’t seen Will or his wife Tracy since it had all started so he figured they had gotten out of dodge as quickly as they could.
Samson had entered the yard quietly that afternoon, making a beeline for the shed. He hadn’t noticed Will in his haste, half standing, half leaning, on the steps of his luxurious cedar deck in his sweatpants with the oversized and swollen bite mark on his left shoulder. Samson fiddled with the lock and tossed it aside. Will always left the key in the padlock. What’s the point of even locking the thing up Samson would wonder any time he had been over his friend’s house for a cocktail or a barbecue. He tossed the lock to the grass at his feet and swung the door open. Bingo. Samson entered the shed and grinned at the stack of boards in front of him. Picking up two pieces of plywood in each hand, he turned around to begin stacking them in the yard. “Holy shit.” Samson muttered to himself and dropped what was in his hands. Will had begun to shamble toward him. Lifeless, yet still moving, still growling. His eyes were vacant and cold, his mouth hung open and bloo
d had crusted onto the sides. Samson slowly lowered himself and picked up one of the pieces of thin wood, he knew what he had to do. Faster than Will could react, Samson ran to him and swung the plywood up, striking Will underneath his chin with the corner in an uppercut like fashion. The blow knocked Will back and down to the perfectly green grass he had just been standing on. Aiming the corner of the plywood with a swift precision, Samson rammed the corner of it over and over again into Will’s forehead. Blood splattered and stained Samson’s clothes, the sickening crack after crack of his friend’s skull filling his ears. Finally on about the tenth blow to the head, Samson realized Will had stopped moving, stopped groaning. He angrily launched his makeshift weapon down onto the body of his dead friend, exhaling loudly with a grunt. He looked up and away from the bloody mess toward the open sliding door that led inside Will’s house. He thought of his friend’s wife and wondered if Tracy was still alive somewhere in that house. He climbed the porch steps and slammed the sliding door shut.
Every time he passed Will’s house he thought of that day. Thought of his body, still rotting in his yard, and his wife, either dead or aimlessly shambling about in some room with no purpose. Just another house I can’t steal food from, Samson thought as he passed the guard house and exited to his right out of Franklin Woods. Town was to the left, deeper into the community of Franklin, and the bay was to his right. Town was useless to him after his last few trips. The only building he felt like he hadn’t carefully snuck around in was the high school and he had no intention of checking it out. Since finding Al he hadn’t seen a soul that was alive and he’d exhausted the small town’s resources between Franklin Woods and Paradise Bay in just a short while. The disadvantages of beach town living, nothing here in the off season.
The city, beyond the borders of their quaint area, ten miles away, was not an option. “What are you, stupid? You’ll never come back! And then what would we do without you?” Moira would scream, always shrill, always wild, anytime he brought it up. Samson often wished he had the balls to just go, just go to the city and never come home. What was the point anymore? But then he would remember the children, and he knew he couldn’t leave them with Moira like that. It wasn’t that Samson hated Moira, he just had always known what he was to her, a wallet. And now, in the wake of what the world had become, he was less than a wallet, he was a grocery bag. The thought of it made him bitter with each passing day. How she would admire not only herself, but all her material possessions and the house that she lived in and how she truly believed status or class still mattered. Every single time she would look in a mirror and smile at herself, Samson wished he could smash her pretty little face into it. He imagined the shards of glass embedded in her flawless skin, her shiny blonde hair tainted with blood.