“Colin!” she screamed. She ran to the end of the driveway and skidded to a stop at the road, frantically looking left and right. She took off down the street, pumping her legs furiously against the asphalt.
Brett called out to her from the driveway, but she kept going. Colin couldn’t have gotten far. She could still catch up to him and change his mind. She could convince him to stay.
She made it nearly a mile down the road before she finally stopped. Leaning over to rest her hands on her knees, she gasped for breath. Haven tried to control her breathing, but she was so upset, so angry, that she just ended up sobbing and coughing instead.
No. No. No.
He was gone, and he wasn’t coming back.
He’d left them.
He’d left her.
***
Brett jumped to his feet when he saw Haven crest the hill very, very slowly. She almost looked like a zombie. He waited for her to get to the driveway.
“Anything?” he asked, although he already knew the answer.
Haven couldn’t meet his gaze. She shook her head once and walked past him to the house.
Faith sat on the porch and stopped rocking when she noticed her sister rounding the corner. When she didn’t see Colin, she sank back into her seat and choked back a little sob.
Haven opened the door and slammed it shut. Houston was sharpening his knife when she came in. He paused and stared at her.
“Haven, what the hell was that all about? You just took off without any—” When he saw Colin’s sword, he stopped, relieved. “Well, at least you had something.”
He’d left the sword as a good-bye gift for her.
Brett came up behind her and put an arm around her. She shook him off and ran to the stairs, taking two at a time until she reached the top.
Hours passed. The only one who didn’t miss Colin was Houston. He had a strong feeling that the Scotsman’s departure had a great deal to do with his own arrival. However, it wasn’t difficult to see that the rest of the group had grown close to Colin. Faith sat beside the window for the remainder of the day, waiting for Colin to magically walk down the driveway, back to all of them. Houston decided to put any misgivings about the man aside and tried to cheer up the others. He took Brett out to hunt for rabbits using the animal snare in his knife, and the two had returned with a nice fat rabbit. That had lifted Brett’s spirits quite a bit.
They were discussing Houston’s knife when Haven finally came downstairs.
“What else is in the handle?” Brett inquired curiously.
Houston raised an eyebrow at her as she walked into the kitchen, but went back to explaining the contents of the knife handle to Brett. He took the knife out of its sheath and twisted off the cap on the handle. “Well, for starters, the animal snare you already saw, a snakebite kit, water purification tablets… Oh, here’s a razor blade. And a needle and thread. Pretty cool, huh?”
Brett inspected each of the items from the knife. His youthful enthusiasm was endearing, like a kid in a candy store. Houston was the big brother he never had. “Awesome. I need one. That snare came in handy today, that’s for certain.”
“Eh, I’m glad to finally be able to try it out. We don’t exactly get many opportunities to hunt rabbits in the city,” Houston replied. Looking at Haven, he smiled. “I think this knife and all its gadgets would have been Rosemary-approved.” He walked over to her, and wrapped his arms around her waist, kissing her lightly on the lips. “I miss your grandma.”
Faith looked forlornly at the ground, her hands picking at the loose hem of her dirty dress.
“She would be happy that we’re all alive and well,” Houston continued.
Haven’s expression darkened, and she gritted her teeth and clenched her fists. Brett noticed and gave Houston a warning look, which he didn’t catch.
Her grandmother was dead. Colin was gone. She had five whole people in the world she cared about, and she would never see two of them again.
“She’d still be alive if Faith would have taken care of her.”
“Haven,” Brett whispered, sensing that she was about to lose her temper.
Haven whirled on him. “No, it’s true. If Faith wouldn’t have been such a little pushover, such a pathetic wuss, Grandma would be here with us now.”
Brett glared at her. “Haven, cut it out. We don’t need this right now. I know you’re upset about Colin leaving, but this is uncalled for.”
Faith started to cry.
Haven stared at her unsympathetically. “Yes, cry like the little baby you are. That’s right, you heard me. Grandma would still be here if you would have done your job. How could you leave an eighty year-old woman to fight those monsters by herself? How could you?” She inhaled a shaky breath. “You’re pathetic. You’re nothing to me. You might as well be dead.” Her own eyes were wet with tears.
“Haven! That’s enough!” Brett cried out, knocking the knife’s contents to the ground and standing to go over to Faith.
Without warning, Faith suddenly ran to the front door and opened it, running outside at an unsteady gait on pale, weak limbs.
Texaco barked, jumping in place anxiously and looking back at the others with a plaintive whine.
Haven watched her leave. At first, she felt nothing, no remorse as her sister ran off into the bleak gray afternoon. But as her frail sister’s silhouette gradually faded into the mist, a knot of worry and fear formed in the pit of her stomach, and she didn’t know why.
Chapter 29:
Faith ran blindly into the woods, her face streaked with tears.
She felt a crippling concoction of anger and deep disappointment towards herself. Why couldn’t she be more like Haven? Why wasn’t she braver and stronger like her sister?
Her grandmother would be alive and well had Faith defended her like she should have done.
She tore through the pine trees, not even flinching when branches scratched her face and pulled at her blue flowered dress.
She was moving so quickly through the woods, crunching leaves loudly beneath each footfall, that she didn’t hear the rustling behind her.
She didn’t smell the cigarettes as she passed a thick tree that hid two hunched figures.
She didn’t see several armed men burst through a clearing in the trees to her side.
She wasn’t able to fight back when they tackled her to the ground and roughly gagged her with a dirty strip of cloth.
She didn’t get a chance to scream for help when they dragged her by her feet, her fingers desperately clawing the earth in vain as each step took her further and further away from her home, her family, and everything she once held dear.
***
“Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in.”
Cade Foster crossed his arms and leaned against the back of his truck.
Nearly ten of his men stood around a small figure huddled on the ground.
He smiled and stood, walking over to get a closer look at their latest catch. He already knew who it was without needing confirmation.
Faith’s long blonde hair hung tangled in a mess of leaves, dirt, and bugs in front of her face. Her eyes were red from crying, her nails black and dirty.
“Haven’s sweet little sister. Wow, gentlemen, today’s my lucky fucking day,” Cade remarked, cruelty lacing his words. The men chuckled. Many of them reached out and touched her, stroking her face, twirling her hair, and running their hands along her body.
Her fingers trembled with fear as she pulled her dress around her, trying to conceal herself the best she could, but the material was frayed and torn, useless. She tucked her bare feet under herself. She had lost her shoes as they yanked her through the forest.
“So... How is your sister? Where is she these days? Alive and well, I hope?” Cade sneered, bending down so that he was eye level with her. When she refused to answer, he slapped her face and grabbed her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“Where is she?” he inquired again, his voice steely.
/> “You know, that whore ruined my life,” he continued. “I had big plans for my future. A career in the military. College. When your bitch of a sister decided to get me arrested, everything changed. My parents treated me like I was some kind of demon pervert; the military wouldn’t take me. Forget about getting a decent job and going to college. I lost everything.” He pressed his mouth to her ear and whispered low enough so that the other men wouldn’t hear, “I was raped in jail, did you know that? Gang banged by two prisoners.” He leaned back, resting on his heels. “All because of her. I came out of there ruined... I’m a ruined man.”
Faith swallowed and took a deep breath.
She made a choice.
She was going to protect her family, her sister. She felt a newfound courage surge up inside of her.
“Go to hell,” she responded, refusing to look at him.
He stared at her for a moment then rose to his feet.
“Alright then. Gentlemen, I guess today is also going to be your lucky day. When you’ve gotten her tied up good and tight to that table, let me know.” He turned back to his tent and walked away.
The men around her grinned. Two of them grabbed Faith by her elbows and yanked her to her feet.
She began to cry, knowing that something utterly terrifying was about to happen to her.
“Let me go!” she begged, the tears flowing freely, creating little rivulets down her dirt-streaked face.
One of them, who went by the name Dalton, shoved her roughly onto an old wooden picnic table while a few others held her down. His bushy, greasy, gray beard barely concealed the smirk on his fat face.
“Give me your belts, assholes,” he ordered, whipping off his own leather belt as he spoke. “Listen up real close, girl.” Dalton leaned down to her face, his breath stale, reeking of liquor. “We are going to put every hole on your body to good use. When we get done with you, you’ll wish you were one of them, one of the flesh eaters out there.”
Faith sobbed. There was no one who could help her, no one who would hear her scream.
Her arms and legs were pulled away from her, yanked roughly to the corners of the table. She felt them fasten the belts tightly to the bench, preventing her escape. She felt them greedily tear off her panties. She heard them cackle as they probed her mercilessly with their hands and fingers, breaking her, tearing her, forcing her to bleed. She pleaded with them to stop, that she was a virgin, but that only seemed to arouse them further, inciting them to invade her in more barbaric and savage ways.
When Cade Foster moved between her outstretched legs, his pants unzipped and his eyes full of hatred and darkness, Faith stopped crying.
Fury coursed through every vein in his body as he pounded her fragile form. He wanted her to cry, to scream, to beg for her life. He wanted to hurt Haven the same way she had destroyed him and his future. He wanted to cause her irreversible agony that would last a lifetime. He knew that by raping her sweet, young, innocent sister, he would wound Haven more deeply than he had been wounded. Hell, maybe he’d even kill Faith to really seal the deal.
But the girl wasn’t giving him anything. She wasn’t showing him that he was hurting her. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t get a reaction from her, and this was making him angrier by the minute.
He stopped thrusting and glared down at her motionless body. He paused for the briefest of moments as if contemplating his next move before raising his fist and delivering a slew of slow, bone-crunching punches. His rage increased with each blow, his mind mutating the prone figure beneath him to be Haven instead of Faith.
Faith looked up through the tall trees to the clear November sky. She willed her spirit to soar above her, far away from this place.
Eventually, her vision started to blur crimson until finally, everything faded into darkness.
It wasn’t until Cade hit her so hard that when he reared back his fist, one of her teeth was embedded firmly in his knuckles.
“Cade! That’s enough! You’re going to kill her!” one of the men, Clark, shouted. Three sets of hands pulled him away from her.
“She thinks she’s real tough, does she? That’s fine, real fucking fine. Tell you what I am going to do, pumpkin?” he screamed down at her unconscious body, saliva spewing from his mouth as he roared. “I am going to feed you bit by bit to those hungry rotting bastards. They won’t be as nice as me, and we’ll see how tough you are then.”
Cade glanced around at the stunned faces of his men and saw the fear in their eyes. Regaining his composure, he wiped away the froth that had formed around his lips and pulled out the bloody tooth lodged in the flesh between his knuckles. Tossing it into the fire, he stormed off to his tent quietly muttering to himself.
“You’ll scream, Haven... I’ll make you scream.”
Over the course of the next few hours, each of the villainous men raped and tortured Faith repeatedly. Thinking she wouldn’t last the night, they threw her limp, battered, barely conscious form into the back of Cade’s truck and drove her out to a chain link fence at the edge of the forest.
The men gaped when they took in the scene before them.
Hundreds of zombies leaned against the metal, moaning loudly as they watched the men get out and pull Faith from the truck. The fresh scent of blood sent them into a frenzy, and moving as one, they began to push the fence lower and lower to the ground.
“Shit,” Clark muttered.
“Toss the bitch, and let’s get out of here,” Cade ordered, turning to climb back into the truck.
Just as Faith’s body hit the ground, the combined weight of the lumbering horde piled on the fence became too great. The metal chains quickly succumbed to the pressure, and with a final groan, the barrier collapsed.
The men yelled frantically as the zombies clambered over one another to get to them. Most of Cade’s men scrambled back to the truck, and those who couldn’t fit into the cab leapt into the bed. The clutch burned as the driver panicked to shift gears.
“What the hell, man? Go! Go!” Dalton hollered from outside.
The zombies were faster than they had anticipated, the promise of a feast taunting them and driving them forward. Several ghouls reached them before they were able to accelerate, and Dalton and Clark were yanked out of the bed of the vehicle. They screamed as the ravenous monsters stripped away their flesh, dirty hands eagerly poking through the skin of their bellies in search of prized meat.
Countless ruined, vitiated pairs of feet stumbled beside Faith’s body.
She felt dull sensations of sharpness and pressure on her skin, but she was too weak to move to safety as she drifted in and out of consciousness.
***
A couple of hours later, Faith’s eyelids fluttered open.
She lay there for some time, staring up at the morning sky.
A bird cawed loudly above her, and she moved her head slightly to follow its movements.
Her eyes widened.
She slowly, mechanically rose to her feet, her mind registering only one thing in spite of her bruised and bloody legs continuously giving out beneath her.
Hunger.
Epilogue:
Mark grabbed an earthworm and stuffed it into the old pickle jar he’d been keeping in his backpack. He was so hungry. He hadn’t come across another lake since the big one with the burned boat house a couple of days before, but he knew that fishing was his best bet if he wanted to avoid any stores that might be populated with the undead. Surprisingly, he’d only had to fight off a few, those who snuck up on him when he got sloppy and wasn’t constantly paying attention, or those he’d been arrogant enough to approach out of pure hatred. In those instances, he’d escaped solely because the zombies had been weak and feeble from a lack of food. Since then, he’d realized that it wasn’t a good idea to fight them. He was a kid, and they were much stronger than he was with their rigor mortis death grips. Deciding that he was better off living from what the land could offer, Mark had gotten pretty decent at fishing and capturing smaller animals
and insects. It was either that or sifting through months-old garbage for something even partially edible.
He briefly recalled the day Alex had gone with him to the movie theater, the day when all of this had started. He flinched at the memory, but his stomach gurgled noisily as he recalled the glorious taste of the chocolate and Sour Patch Kids he and Alex had devoured during the start of the movie. Mark frowned, and tears welled up in his eyes. Were the days where he was able to consume heaps and heaps of sugar at the drop of a hat gone? Would he even be able to eat another candy bar again or see Bruce Willis’ determined scowl on the big screen as he vanquished the bad guys? Would he ever get to be a kid again? He knew that life had never been easy for him growing up in a poor, single-parent home, but now, he would have given anything to have a piece of that old life back. Sadly, what he had endured since that one fateful day where he lost his best friend and family in a matter of hours had changed him forever, and more likely than not, he would never get to be a carefree kid again.
Something nearby made him stop in his tracks. He cocked his head to the side, straining to listen. It was a familiar noise. It was a noise that brought a slow smile to his face, the first smile he’d had since the day he lost everything.
Was that a dog?
All of a sudden, he broke into a run, not caring whether a million zombies heard him. Mark desperately wanted to follow that noise. He needed to see what it was; he needed to know that life, a sense of normalcy, still existed. He ran until he came to a clearing in the trees. His heart pounded furiously, and he pushed the branches aside.
A group of people, a young woman and two men, followed closely by a black and white Border Collie, were maybe thirty yards away. The dog looked up at them expectantly, tongue hanging lazily from its mouth and tail wagging contently. One of the men patted its head and said something to it.
He didn’t know if they were friendly. He probably couldn’t trust them. The whole world had fallen apart, and people had become just as savage as wild animals. Mark swallowed hard as he considered everything, at least everything he could tell from the safety of the overgrown foliage. He pondered all of the what-ifs in his head. Maybe they were horrible people who would do worse things to him than the monsters he’d been evading for the last few months. He cringed.
The Good, the Dead, and the Lawless: The Undoing Page 32