by Siara Brandt
He looked at the small rocking chair in the corner by the fireplace. A child’s chair. And the stuffed bear lying on the floor beside it. He tried not to think about the unthinkable. That Seth and Kesi could already be dead. That he might never find them or know what had happened to them.
He had stopped with Lindel at this deserted house to do some hard thinking. To make some decisions about how to proceed with their search for the missing children. Lindel had a map with him and it was spread out over the coffee table between them. They were discussing the logical possibilities of where the children would have headed and where they might have ended up.
“God only knows where those kids are now.” There was frustration in Lindel’s voice. He didn’t try to hide it.
“They know to avoid the roads,” Thayer murmured as he looked down at the map. He had said this already, not five minutes ago.
“But they did travel the road,” Lindel reminded him.
Suddenly Thayer pounded both of his fists once on the coffee table. Everything on it bounced one time before settling back down again. Then he got up and paced across the room. He stood before the window, feeling a renewed surge of anger toward Letha.
“They’ll be running out of food,” Lindel went on behind him. “And water, if they even have any left. You think they would enter a town looking for some?”
“They’d have to eventually,” Thayer conceded without turning. He didn’t like to think about that. They could run into anything in a town. “There’s nothing to eat in the woods at this time of the year.”
Thayer himself had taught them how to forage for food in the wild. He had taught them everything he could about survival. He knew that until they found Seth and Kesi, he would not give up on the hope that they were still alive. So he couldn’t give up looking. Lindel had no one waiting for him and, like Thayer, he was committed to finding the kids. Even though he had never met them. People were different, Thayer thought to himself. Just like they had always been. Some good. Some bad.
He looked down at a slow-moving dead wandering around in the distance. It looked like a lost soul staggering around in a vast desert. He watched it for a while until it disappeared over a rise. Then he turned back to the room.
“It’s too open here,” Lindel was saying as he pointed to a place on the map. “They would probably keep close to the woods.” They knew the kids were moving away from the river bottoms, but whether that was a good thing or not remained to be seen.
Looking down at the map, but still standing, Thayer passed his hands over his eyes, rubbing in circular motions. They felt dry as sand. He hadn’t slept much and it was showing.
“You’ve got to sleep sometime, son,” Lindel told him.
“I don’t want to waste the daylight.”
After a silence, Lindel said, “So, if we’re right, they’ll be forced to come up along the ridge here. If we’re supposing right. Unless something forces them to make a detour. In that case- ”
In that case, they could be anywhere.
“I’m not ready to give up yet,” Thayer said quietly. “I’ll search the whole damned county if I have to.” And beyond if it came to that.
“I’m not about to quit yet, either,” Lindel reassured him. “But we’ll need gas soon.” They’d gone through two spare cans already.
“We’ll find some,” Thayer told him. “Somewhere. We’ll siphon it from a vehicle if we have to. If the cars are all dry, there’s a lawn mower in the shed. We might get lucky there.”
He sighed deeply. “Storm clouds are building out there,” he remarked absently as he glanced out the window again. “We’ve had a red moon for several nights now. You think that means something?”
“I don’t know,” Lindel sighed. “Who knows what’s going on in the world. The sudden end to pollution around the globe is bound to have an effect on the weather. I know that the earth’s atmosphere causes the moon to appear red. It has something to do with light wavelengths. It’s the same thing that causes sunsets and sunrises to have color.”
“Well, it’s damned eerie,” Thayer muttered, and after a pause, added, “Like a sign.”
“People have always looked at blood moons as signs,” Lindel said. “Since the beginning of time. Maybe there’s a reason for that.”
“You know, there are other people out there, surviving just like us,” Thayer said contemplatively. “Humans have survived plagues before. Bad ones. How do we know there isn’t a cure for this already?”
“We don’t know. Just like we don’t know what started it in the first place. We may never know. Killer pathogens are constantly evolving and these kinds of diseases mutate in ways we never see coming. It could have begun with the infection of just one person or it could have been some terrorist bio-weapon designed to bring mankind to its knees. What I do know for sure is that with an outbreak like this, the CDC would have been contacted, and the federal government would surely have gotten involved. We don’t know that they didn’t start it all in the first place. They’ve let all kinds of things loose before. Plenty of ‘em. Most people don’t want to believe that. Some people, when they hear that, still won’t believe it. But governments all around the world did do it. Lots of times. Long before all our lives got run over by a train. But- ” Lindel went on with a slow nod of his head. “Nature has a way of balancing itself out again. We’re alive, and that’s what matters. We’ve got to find a way to keep surviving.”
“I can’t held wonder why we’re not all infected,” Thayer said. “Or if we are, there has to be some reason why they’re affected and we’re not.”
“I’ve wondered about that myself,” Lindel went on. “I was in the hospital when this all started. There was a person in the bed next to me who was turning. Killed a nurse right in front of me. Of course, at that time, no one realized what was happening. But I saw it firsthand. Shortly after that, all hell started breaking loose. There were lots of cases coming in. Too many to handle. I got out of there fast, but not until I had seen other people turning. I was close to some of them. Real close. Even got blood on me. But I still haven’t gotten the disease.”
Thayer nodded thoughtfully. He’d gotten blood on himself, too. He glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was still working. But what did that matter anymore, except to calculate how many hours of daylight were still left.
“I just know one thing,” Lindel was saying. “No living thing - if you can call them that - can live forever and those things are half dead already. All we can do at this point is to try and find those kids, get all our wagons in a circle and then try to wait it out.”
Thayer agreed. “Daylight’s wasting. Let’s find some gas and get back out there.”
It was less than half an hour later when they found the abandoned packet of food half buried in the leaves. The sun was sliding quickly towards the horizon when they stopped to look at the small bundle lying in the middle of the road. Thayer recognized the cloth right away. Even as he reached his hand out and closed his fingers around the wadded red and blue handkerchief, he knew that it had been Seth’s. It had been Seth’s imaginary Confederate flag. He swallowed hard as he stared down at it, finding it impossible to wish away the sick feeling in his gut.
“It’s theirs,” he told Lindel in a ghost of a voice.
“We’re headed in the right direction then,” he heard Lindel say behind him.
Thayer’s hand gripped the handkerchief so tightly that it shook. “Damn it to hell,” he whispered out loud, thinking again about Letha’s decision to abandon the kids. To practically sign their death warrants.
Chapter 8
Letha felt a kind of euphoria flowing through her veins. On some level she knew what she had done was wrong. But she couldn’t seem to be able to help herself where Galton was concerned. That she could still make him want her so badly with so little effort was a heady obsession for her. Wasn’t that what all women wanted? To be the focus of a man’s attention? Better yet, to have two men fighting over her? To have
complete and utter control over their actions? Their thoughts? There was little enough compensation in this world and deep down, for a while, she had been struggling with her own physical and emotional needs. There was a time when she almost felt like giving up because she had felt so empty. So out of control. Logan had made her feel that way. And then Galton had come along to give her what she needed.
Of course, she had known for a very long time that she could have Galton whenever she wanted him. And eventually she had acted on that knowledge. She had let Galton think he was chasing her. But, really, she had been the one controlling the situation the whole time.
She closed her eyes and envisioned his past lovemaking. It had been aggressive, forceful. Galton was a better lover than Logan could ever be. That secret confession didn’t make her feel disloyal to Logan. Galton was bold and uninhibited when it came to sex. He had made her feel like the most desirable woman in the world. He still did. She couldn’t lie to herself about that. Wouldn’t that be less than honest?
She had seen the evidence of his arousal in the barn and it had taken everything in her to ignore it. One touch, one acknowledgement, and he would have been on his knees before her. She had always been confident of her power over him, since the very first moment their eyes had met. She had quickly learned how easy it was to play both men, to make them jealous of each other. Which put her in the middle. Right where she wanted to be.
She had never felt as alive as when both men were fighting over her. Even now the memory caused a little hitch in her breathing. Galton was forbidden fruit and carnal knowledge was a powerful lure. Especially when Logan had not fulfilled her expectations. And it was his own choice to leave her again. She was not responsible for that.
She was no evil step mother, either. But she was an unwilling one. The thought that she should be both mother and father to Seth and Kesi after Logan was gone had been something she’d rebelled against as soon as it had happened. That was entirely too big a burden for her to carry for the rest of her life. It was hard enough to survive out there without dragging two small children along with you wherever you went. They were too needy, too draining, too restrictive. She had never asked for the job in the first place. Was it so wrong for her to look at her own survival realistically?
Her eyes narrowed as she watched Lordyn in the distance. She had seen Lordyn talking with Galton by the pasture fence yesterday. More than once she had seen them together.
Letha could read the body language. Apparently Lordyn was as tempted by the forbidden as she was. And because of that, her secret hatred of Lordyn had grown until she wondered if she was going to have to take steps todo something about the woman.
She was so intent on Lordyn and Galton that she didn’t even see Logan approach her until his hand was on her back.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. He always asked that, like he didn’t have a clue.
“Everything’s wrong.”
He sighed. “You know I would do anything you asked of me if I could.”
She did not respond. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lordyn lean closer to Galton to whisper something in his ear.
“You can’t give me what I want,” she replied, letting her irritation show.
He assumed that what she wanted was the life she’d had before everything had fallen apart. “I’d move heaven and earth to give you back the life you had,” he told her earnestly. “But you know I can’t do that.”
Except for an almost imperceptible shudder, she did not reply. What had that life been like? Being a full-time, unpaid babysitter for his kids? Being their personal chef with countless meals to prepare and endless loads of laundry to wash? Always putting their needs first? When she thought about the drudgery of her past life when she had been chained to those two spoiled brats, she longed to tell Logan to his face how much she had hated every minute of it. She had held it in so long that it had festered in her soul like a cancerous wound. She had to bite her lips right now to keep it all in.
She had thought that it was all over with, finally. The kids were gone. Galton was in her life now. Who would think that Logan would survive, let alone be able to make his way back here in one piece? Mostly it was in one piece. He’d lost several fingers on one hand. Ironically, he had also lost his wedding ring with those fingers. She had no doubt that he had come back for his children even more than he had come back for her. Hell itself couldn’t keep him from those two. They were a constant reminder of his first wife, whom she suspected he had never really gotten over.
“Maybe someday things will go back to the way they were, Letha. But I can’t change things now.”
Her lips compressed for a moment before she replied, “Don’t you think I know you can’t do that?”
Logan’s misguided efforts to make her feel better were irritating enough, but jealousy was also driving her now. She couldn’t help casting another furtive glance in Galton’s direction.
“Something is going on with him,” she heard Logan say.
She stiffened and frowned in Galton’s direction. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean he’s unpredictable. And impulsive. Worse than he ever was. I don’t trust his judgement anymore. I don’t think he can keep this group safe anymore.”
She almost laughed out loud at that. Like Logan had been around to keep it safe? Like he had made it a priority? He was about to abandon the group again. And her.
“I wish you were going with me,” he said.
“Even if it’s dangerous out there?”
“It’s getting dangerous here, too. We need to make some decisions. When I get back, we’ll talk more about this.”
He was still leaving. In spite of the danger.
“What do you mean we’ll talk about this?”
“Our options,” he said. “We need to talk about that when I get back.”
When he came back? If by some miracle he did manage to find his missing kids, they would tell him everything. Then he would know that she had purposely abandoned them. Would he come back to her then and discuss options?
Logan’s lips thinned with disapproval. “Look at him out there with Lordyn. I would think he’d have better sense than to get involved with another man’s wife. That’s only going to complicate things and lead to more trouble for the group. As if there isn’t enough already. But then Galton seems to have acquired the habit a long time ago of messing around where he shouldn’t be.”
Letha shot her husband a sharp look. What exactly had he meant by that? Did he suspect something?
Whatever his suspicions, she said firmly, “Galton is not involved with Lordyn.”
Logan didn’t have anything to say about that.
“Don’t you think you’re judging him unfairly?” Letha couldn’t help asking. “It looks like Lordyn is the one throwing herself at him.”
“They’re both at fault,” Logan finally said.
She felt Logan’s gaze upon her face. She didn’t turn to look at him, but guilt reddened her cheeks. She blew out a sudden, contemptuous breath to cover it up. “I’ve seen her flirt with you, too.”
“But there’s a difference. I never acted on that,” Logan replied. He looked at Galton again. “I thought that maybe he would go with me. To look for Seth and Kesi.”
“He has to take care of things here. Someone has to.”
She didn’t see the searching look Logan gave her. She was too intent on Galton.
“You understand that I have to do this, Letha.”
“I do understand,” she replied, but there was something cold and brittle in her answer. “I’ve always understood.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant by that. He already knew that Letha resented his children. He just didn’t know how deep that resentment went.
Emotion flared in Letha’s eyes now. She tried to suppress it. She was furious at Logan’s decision to leave her again, but at the same time she wanted him to leave her. In fact, he couldn’t leave soon enough to suit her.
After a
last look at Galton, she said cruelly, “You may never get them back, you know. No matter how hard you try to find them. You can’t wish them back, because nothing’s certain anymore. Nothing. Not even tomorrow.”
“We’ll talk about this when I get back,” he repeated after a silence. It was the only thing he could say to her.
No, she thought. They wouldn’t talk. Because if the zombies didn’t insure that he wasn’t coming back, then the truth would.
Law’s fingers closed around Sidra’s arm. Without warning, he jerked her away from the scav and shoved her behind him. Then he quickly and efficiently took the scav out with his knife.
They got out of the garage and he said, “Next time open your mouth and let me know when you’re in trouble. What are you doing out here anyway?”
She drew herself up and was about to rail him for his rough behavior, but the words died on her lips. He had saved her too many times for her to get angry. By now, there was no doubt in her mind that she wouldn’t have made it this far without him.
“You said we needed to find duct tape. I was looking for some.” She looked down at the scav lying motionless on the dirt floor. “It came out of nowhere. I wasn’t expecting it.”
He sighed and looked at her for a long moment. “Be glad that I got back here when I did. And don’t- Don’t,” he repeated. “Take any more unnecessary chances. I told you to stay put and wait for me.”
“I did wait for you. I told you. That scav came out of nowhere.”
His only answer was a shake of his head. No sense arguing with her. That never got anywhere.