Colin happened to look out the window in time to see several zombies shambling in their direction, hands extended in vain as the train began to move forward.
“Aye, they sure have.”
Chapter Eight
Griffin wiped his brow and closed his eyes.
It was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do, and he would never forgive himself.
His hands were covered in blood, and when he looked down at them, holding them out in front of him, his eyes began to water.
He quickly picked the knife back up from the counter and scraped the chopped meat off the tray and into the pot on the stove.
“Griffin?”
He turned around and saw his wife standing there.
She stared at his hands blankly. Her eyes met his.
“Got us a deer in the woods, Mary.”
She went to him and hugged him, not caring anymore that his hands were bloody. “Oh, thank God!” she breathed. “We’ll finally have something to eat.”
Griffin’s arms hung limply at his sides. He didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth.
“I’ll go set the table and tell the others. They’ll be so excited, especially Katherine. She needs the protein, with the baby coming and all.”
Mary scurried out of the kitchen, her thin body suddenly electric with anticipation.
Griffin watched her leave. Her jeans were held up by a belt, a belt that had needed more holes punched into it as of late. His whole family was starving right before his very eyes, and he couldn’t take it anymore.
So he had done the unforgivable because there was no more time to do anything else.
For most of his adult life, Griffin had prided himself on being prepared. He and Mary always canned fruits and vegetables, had bags of rice and beans at the ready, and kept livestock, including pigs and chickens, on the property. They even had a well.
When it came to weaponry, Griffin had several handguns, an AR-15, and a shotgun. The only thing he felt he was missing was a good watchdog. Poor Cooper, their fifteen year-old Golden Retriever, was nearly deaf and was so kind-spirited, Griffin doubted he’d be much use even if they needed defending.
While he had never expected that a bizarre infection would be the end of humanity, if anyone was slated to survive something like this, it would have been Griffin.
What he hadn’t prepared for was the capacity in people to do evil to others.
During the first week, Griffin and Mary watched the news every day, sometimes for hours at a time, wondering when the gruesome stories of outbreaks were going to dissipate. They had two daughters who lived with their husbands further north in the city. Griffin wanted them to come to the farm where it was safer than the city, but both girls refused, assuring them the virus was isolated to the major cities alone and would soon be contained.
By the second week, Griffin was calling his girls multiple times a day, begging them to get to the farm as quickly as possible.
It was in this second week that he saw the first of them.
One of his neighbors across the street decided to drive into town to get supplies. Several hours later, Griffin watched him pull onto the dirt road leading to his farm. The man’s truck was swerving erratically until he crashed into a tree, crumpling the hood and totaling the vehicle.
Griffin had run out to help him, but the man was already dead. He tried to call 9-1-1 to have someone come retrieve the body, but the line was constantly busy, so eventually, he gave up. Since his neighbor didn’t have any family, Griffin took it upon himself to bury the man on his farm near Griffin’s property.
The next morning, before the sun had crested the horizon, Griffin was stirring in his bed, his tired limbs stiff from slumber. His feet bumped against old Cooper who slept soundly at the foot of their bed.
Griffin had just thrown his legs over the side of the bed when he saw something that made his blood run cold.
He would never forget it.
Just outside his bedroom window, his neighbor stood with his face pressed against the glass. Blood and dirt had nearly concealed his features, but there was no mistaking who it was.
Griffin panicked, thinking he’d accidentally buried the man alive. Barely dressed, he ran outside to apologize profusely and help, but the neighbor viciously lunged at him, gnashing his teeth just inches from Griffin’s flesh.
Then he knew.
The chaos had finally reached them.
With one hand outstretched and one keeping the undead man’s snapping jaws away from his face, Griffin grabbed a nearby stone and smashed in his skull.
He buried his neighbor again, this time making sure the man wouldn’t pay them anymore surprise early morning visits.
That afternoon, the phone lines went down for good.
He and Mary drove themselves to near madness wondering if their daughters were alright.
A couple of days later, Griffin decided it was time to go into the city and conduct a rescue mission. He packed up the car with two days’ worth of food, guns and ammo, and even old Cooper, and kissed Mary goodbye.
Griffin had always been prepared. He was an Eagle Scout after all. He thought he was doing the right thing by leaving Mary home, that she was safer at their rural farm miles away from the closest town, than out with him to find their daughters in the tumult of the city.
But he hadn’t been prepared for what was coming.
While he was gone, there was a different type of visit, not from a dead man, but instead, from marauders who broke into their home.
Mary, knowing she couldn’t fight them off, hid under the bed in the guest bedroom. When she emerged hours later, all of her jewelry, their television, and their food supplies were gone. The canned soups and fruits and vegetables and bags of rice and beans… all of it, gone.
She crawled back under the bed and waited there, not knowing if the thieves would return, or worse, if her husband and daughters were still alive, if she’d ever see them again.
Two days later, she heard the familiar rumble of Griffin’s old truck in the driveway and was overjoyed to see that her husband had returned, along with their daughters and their husbands and another married couple who was good friends with her eldest daughter.
Even though Griffin was angry with himself for leaving Mary in such a potentially dangerous predicament, it had ultimately been a worthwhile mission. He’d found his daughters hiding in the same apartment, terrified and hungry, but otherwise unharmed.
When he assessed the damage done by the looters, he was upset to see the front door had been ripped off its hinges, leaving them vulnerable to anything or anyone wandering by. Immediately, he marched out to the shed in the back and within a short amount of time, had sealed off the opening with spare boards and nails.
The bandits could have the television and jewelry—none of that would be worth a dime soon enough. But he was devastated to find the kitchen and pantry stripped of nearly everything they’d been counting on to survive.
They still had the livestock and well water, but with the extra mouths to feed, Griffin began to worry. One of his daughters was also pregnant, and he wondered how a baby would ever survive this horrible new reality.
Not even three weeks later, the pigs disappeared, and a month after that, the only thing left in the chicken coops were feathers, blood, and severed chicken heads. He thought he’d made the coops raccoon-proof, but there were some fierce storms leading into winter, and the coops had likely been dislodged during one of them, allowing the raccoons to sneak under and shred the poor chickens to bits.
While they still had the well, they were out of food. Griffin raided his dead neighbor’s house and wrecked truck, and that bought them a couple of extra weeks.
He went into town with his daughters’ husbands three times, but the undead were beginning to trickle in from the city, and it was becoming harder and harder to keep the farm safe. It didn’t take long before it was impossible, even life-threatening, to make the trek into town.
He tried hunting, but was lucky if he came back with a squirrel or two. It was as though all of the animals had gone into hiding.
One day, while rummaging through the attic for supplies, Griffin discovered a small box of MREs he’d forgotten about from a decade earlier. They’d already gone bad, but they couldn’t afford to be picky. Food was food. But there weren’t enough MREs for everyone, and they found themselves splitting two MREs a day amongst the eight of them.
Griffin couldn’t even remember the last time he fed Cooper.
He’d never been so scared in his life.
When his pregnant daughter began to show severe signs of malnutrition, Griffin realized he had to make a choice.
So today, he took skinny old Cooper to the woods, deep into the forest, away from the eyes of his family.
He gave Cooper one final hug, cried as the dog licked his face and lapped up the tears, completely unaware of what was about to happen, and only wanting to comfort its owner.
Then Griffin took his knife and plunged it into Cooper’s neck, severing the dog’s spinal cord.
Cooper gave a high-pitched yelp of pain, just as a passing train roared by on the tracks running parallel to the forest.
And then it was over.
In his grief, Griffin didn’t register the train.
He numbly scooped up Cooper and brought the dog to his work shed, skinning and hacking the body into pieces.
He buried the fur and inedible bits behind the shed and brought the meat into the house.
Griffin’s eyes were still red when Mary walked in to start a pot of tea.
When everyone came downstairs, drawn to the scent of cooked meat, Mary proudly recounted how their father had killed a deer and excitedly directed everyone to take their fill of the feast before them.
Mary spent a good half hour that afternoon looking for Cooper. Griffin lied to her and said that perhaps the dog had run off in search of a meal. Everyone was worried about the pet’s whereabouts, but Griffin assured them Cooper was a smart dog and would be just fine.
That night, Griffin locked the bathroom door and sobbed. As he lay on the fluffy bathroom rug, thinking about what he had done, he suddenly remembered the train he’d heard in the forest.
Simultaneously, he felt elated and heartbroken all at once.
If he had just waited one more day…
But the deed was done, and there was no undoing it. The only solace he had was that his family would not go to bed hungry tonight.
And while Griffin lay there, the gears in his mind beginning to turn, he started to come up with a plan.
A couple of weeks had passed since Colin’s arrival. The train had navigated up the east coast, stopping just before Washington, D.C. before heading south again.
They would avoid the larger cities, like D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City. Each was already lost, undoubtedly swarming with undead, an impassable, festering necropolis.
It was a pity. The cities would be full of supplies and in bulk quantity, exactly what they required. And there were certainly pockets of survivors who needed help. Colin could tell it kept Kennedy up at night knowing those things. But sending her people out to scavenge for supplies and survivors was a death sentence. It would be a long time before those places could be ventured into once more.
The train was without question the safest place, the passengers impenetrably ensconced within steel, out of reach from the diseased teeth and nails of the zombies. Kennedy didn’t just want it to be a mode of transportation though; she wanted it to be a form of sustainability and growth.
In a few days, Colin was already recognized as a valuable member of the group. He was strong and creative, always figuring out a way to do something more quickly and efficiently than how it had been done before. Many misinterpreted his inability to sit around and idle as a tireless work ethic, one that was much needed on the train, when in truth, he stayed busy to keep his thoughts diverted from what he’d lost.
The day after he arrived, he began unpacking and sorting all of the supplies from the Home Depot, preparing everything for the garden that would be set up in the observation car. Colin didn’t know much about gardening, but since no supply crews were going out, he had nothing better to do.
His enthusiasm piqued the curiosity of a few other passengers who wandered by the car, and before long, he had a small team of volunteers. Most of them were women who spent more time ogling Colin as he worked on the garden, appreciating his sweaty biceps and dirt-stained, calloused hands, than actually contributing anything useful. Colin didn’t notice or care either way; losing himself in his work was his goal.
When Tucker wasn’t in the locomotive, he tried to give Colin tips and pointers on how to lay the soil, which plants needed the most light, or how far to space the seeds in the dirt. He and his wife had kept a garden before the outbreak, and it was something he had been looking forward to growing in his retirement. Tucker was also extremely resourceful and, with Colin’s help, put old tin cans, wood pallets, and PVC pipes to good use as containers for vegetables and herbs.
During his first day on the train, Colin remembered Kennedy handing Tucker a sunny yellow chrysanthemum. It had looked a little wilted in its green plastic pot after the cramped drive back to the train from the Home Depot, but it still managed to bring a huge smile to Tucker’s face. Colin thought he had even detected tears simmering along the rims of his eyes, but he’d been too enamored with the train to reflect on the exchange any further.
One day, he would ask him about it.
He was becoming more and more grateful for Tucker’s presence, his guidance, and his positive, down-to-earth candor. And the older man was skilled in many areas, not just keeping the train running and gardening. He spent time a bit of time each week teaching the children basic survival skills, and he always ended the lesson with an adventure-filled story from his service during the Vietnam War.
In just a short amount of time, Colin began to feel a closeness to the older man, a father-son bond, and that likeness made him want to grow close and pull back from Tucker at the same time.
He didn’t want to lose anyone else.
Colin wiped his hands on his jeans.
Yes, jeans.
He quickly learned that gardening in a kilt was not at all practical, especially in front of a group of sex-deprived women.
“Alright, ladies, it’s dinnertime.” Several groans emanated from the females, clearly unhappy that their daily ritual with the handsome Scotsman was coming to an end. “Thank you again for all of your priceless assistance,” he said with a gracious smile. “I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Colin returned to his cabin to change out of his dirty clothes and freshen up, then went to the dining car. His stomach growled as he grabbed a tray, and he realized he’d forgotten to eat lunch that afternoon. He quickly handed his plate to the man on the other side of the counter who was busy serving everyone food.
It was then that a young woman with long black hair sauntered up to him. Colin stepped back, feeling his heart jolt from the shock of her appearance. She was one of the women who regularly joined the others in the observation car when he tended to the garden, volunteering to “help,” so this wasn’t the first time he’d seen her.
But each time he did, he had the same reaction.
The dark hair… Colin blinked a few times, realizing that aside from her hair, she looked nothing like the woman he still loved.
Her eyes were icy and blue, full of something Colin vaguely registered as desire. He had seen that look countless times before, from dozens of women. It was all the same, an itch that needed to be scratched, a void that needed to be filled.
The one woman he wanted, the one who made him want to revert from all of his old ways, the one he knew it would be different with, would forever be with someone else.
“Hi.” Her lips parted and then closed, puckering slightly as one corner lifted in a sly smile. She was young, early twenties at most, probably sittin
g in a college class daydreaming about what she would be wearing to her sorority’s social that night, when the outbreak hit.
“Hi,” Colin replied blandly. “I’m sorry…” he began. “Who are you?”
“Jess,” she said, pouting the tiniest bit when he didn’t remember her. “We met a couple weeks ago, and I’ve been helping you ever since then. With that garden thing.”
She paused for effect, tilting her head to the side so that her hair fell into her face a little, causing her to push it back slowly, seductively. She wanted him to notice her hand in her hair, the way she ran her fingers through it. She knew what she was doing, and before, he would have taken the bait.
It was nothing new to him, of course. He had seen Jess in so many other women; beautiful and alluring, but nothing more.
“You can sit with us over there.” She pointed to a table with another young woman sitting there who instantly waved at him, sandy blonde hair, the same look in her eyes. “Amanda and I would love to eat with you.”
Colin gritted his teeth and forced a smile, waving uncomfortably. In the past, he would have had a witty one-liner, something smooth and suave he was sure would yield a desirable response. In the past, it would have gotten him more than just dinner. And in the past, Colin could have had both of them if he’d wanted.
Now he didn’t want that anymore. He was ruined, suddenly feeling naked and vulnerable as he stood in the middle of the car. His appetite gone, he started to set his tray down, wishing for nothing more than to be far away from Jess and Amanda.
Someone cleared her throat behind them.
When he turned, he saw Kennedy, and he found her gaze searching his, sympathetic curiosity swimming amidst the pools of green.
“Thank you for being so hospitable, Jess,” she said, stepping between them. “But Colin will be eating with me tonight. I need him to brief me on when we can expect to see the fruits of his labor—and yours, of course—in the garden.”
Jess frowned, not looking at Kennedy, but instead running her eyes over Colin as though she would devour him whole.
The Good, The Dead & The Lawless (Book 2): The Hell That Follows Page 10