Houston, Brett, and Mark walked into the dining car. The scent of food wafted up to greet them, and Mark covered his rumbling stomach and looked up at the others, embarrassed.
“It’s mine, too,” Mark told Tucker, involuntarily licking his lips in anticipation.
“Go on in, and make yourselves at home,” Tucker encouraged.
Houston looked about a bit dubiously. Passengers were seated at tables on either side of the car. They watched the newcomers curiously, but it didn’t escape Houston’s attention that some of their expressions were filled with contempt. He’d seen the same look throughout their tour, and he got the impression that a sizeable percentage of the passengers didn’t want them to feel welcome here.
“You’ll find oatmeal, canned fruit, and maybe even some orange juice if you’re lucky,” Tucker continued. “I already ate so I’ll be getting back to work, but you’ll meet with Kennedy later to go over what she’s expecting of you, if you want to stay with us, that is.”
Houston and Brett shook Tucker’s hand and thanked him for the tour. Then Houston directed Mark toward the buffet, relieved the boy would have a full belly.
A man stood behind the counter, ladling oatmeal onto plates.
While Mark was getting his share, Houston overheard the conversation of a table nearby.
“I can’t believe we are taking on more people.”
“We don’t have enough for ourselves. This is ridiculous.”
“Something needs to be done.”
Worried Mark would hear, he turned and frowned at the couple in the corner. The man immediately reddened and looked down in shame, but the woman stared at him and returned the scowl.
Houston rolled his eyes and handed his plate to the cook.
“Are they always this friendly?” he asked the older man.
The cook scoffed. “Some. They don’t take kindly to newcomers.” He gestured to Houston’s plate. “Less food for them.”
Mark glanced guiltily at his plate.
Brett noticed and gave Houston a look. “Come on. There are some open seats over there.” When they all sat down, Brett rubbed his hands together eagerly as he assessed the items on his plate.
When he looked up again, Mark was anxiously surveying the other passengers over his shoulder, listening to what they were saying about them.
“So,” Brett said, hoping to distract him, “what do you guys think of the train?”
“Do they hate us because we’re eating their food?” Mark asked quietly, his cheeks reddening in humiliation.
“No, they just don’t know what they think of us yet. We have to show them we’ll be friendly and helpful.” Brett tapped Mark’s plate when he didn’t turn around. “Hey. Eyes over here. What do you think of the train?” he queried again.
“It’s awesome!” Mark exclaimed, his expression bubbling with enthusiasm. “I like the locomotive best, where Tucker sits. All those controls and things.” He leaned in impishly. “I wanted to push that one emergency button to see what would happen.”
Brett stifled a laugh and tried to appear serious. “The failsafe button? You don’t want to do that, buddy. It stops the entire train suddenly, like an e-brake in a car. Tucker said that’s only supposed to be used in emergencies.”
Mark sheepishly looked at his plate. “Yeah, I know. It just seemed cool.”
“It was the coolest button in that whole car,” Houston admitted. He stretched his arms and yawned. “There are lots of neat things on this train.”
Mark pondered this. “Can we go meet the other kids here?”
“Sure we can, bud,” Brett reassured him.
Almost as soon as he finished his sentence, a teenager about Brett’s age walked up to their table. Wavy strawberry blonde hair framed a face sprinkled with freckles, while her brown eyes almost seemed to smile on their own. A little girl peeked out from behind her.
“Welcome!” she greeted them, extending her hand. The younger one stuck her thumb in her mouth while looking up at them with big, curious eyes.
Brett took her outstretched hand and shook it hesitantly. After the hostility they’d been privy to while eating, he wasn’t expecting such a warm greeting.
“I’m Lana, and this is my sister, Ellie.” She patted Ellie’s head. “Can you say hi?” she whispered.
“Hi,” Ellie repeated, still sucking her thumb.
“Just wanted to welcome you guys and let you know we’re happy you’re here,” Lana told them.
Brett scratched his head. “Um, thanks, but I think you’re the only one.”
She waved dismissively to the people around them. “They’ll be glad, too. Just takes them a while to warm up.” She threw a quick glance over her shoulder. “I’ve got to get Ellie to class—”
“Class?” Brett interrupted unintentionally.
Lana nodded. “Yeah, it’s something folks on Team Charlie do for the kids. They can’t miss school forever, right? There are a good number of kids here. You’d like it,” she added, looking pointedly at Mark before turning back to Brett. “And me, Derek, Jeremy, and a couple others hang out ‘after hours.’” She made quotation marks in the air with her fingers. “Feel free to join us when you’re settled.”
They all thanked her, and Brett watched her leave, feeling slightly more encouraged about the passengers. “Can’t believe they have a school here.”
“It’ll be great to have more friends,” Mark mused, nodding to himself. He looked up at Brett meaningfully. “But you’re my best friend.”
Brett fist-pumped him. “You’re mine, too, man.”
Colin and Haven made their way to the back of the train, quickly moving from car to car until they reached the last one.
Her hood was pulled over her face, and she kept her eyes on the floor, only making sure she could see Colin’s feet in front of her.
He opened the rear door and stepped out onto the small ledge, then reached for her hand and pulled her out with him.
There was a ladder leading to the top of the train, and he gestured for her to follow him as he climbed. Haven placed her foot on the rung and mirrored his ascent.
Colin was waiting for her at the top, and he hoisted her up with a smile.
She clung to him at first, feeling a bit dizzy and uncertain, but his arms were safe and strong around her, and he assured her that the train was moving so slowly there was no real danger of them falling off.
Hesitantly, she edged away from him and looked around.
The sun-dappled mountains and the towering, majestic pines took her breath away, and she extended her hand, almost as if she could reach out and touch the thick branches.
A family of deer dashed past the train, the little fawns trying to keep up with their mother. There was a beautiful innocence about them, unaware of the hell that had been unleashed upon civilization.
The train gradually climbed higher and higher until she was looking down into strikingly scenic valleys and long, winding rivers; as far as the eye could see, a blanket of mist partially obscured the surrounding mountaintops.
“Wow,” she breathed. The sun warmed her face like a gentle kiss, and she arched up to it, relishing the feeling.
If heaven truly existed, she was certain it would look something like this, and in it, she hoped Faith and her grandmother had found one another.
“Hey,” Colin called to her, a big smile on his face.
She turned to him. He was sitting on the edge of the train, leaning back comfortably, and he gestured beside him to the metal surface. “Take a seat.”
“You look different in jeans. I’m so used to seeing you in a kilt,” Haven remarked as she joined him.
He looked down and shivered. “I wouldn’t be caught dead sitting on this metal tin can in just my kilt.”
She drew her legs up to her chest and clasped her hands around them. “How did you find this place?”
“I was on guard duty one day, and it dawned upon me that this is probably the only place someone wouldn’t think
to find me while the train was moving. I come up here to think. I doubt anyone else knows about it. Except you now.” He shifted his weight onto the arm closest to her. All of the time he’d spent trying to forget her had been in vain.
After a few minutes, she sighed. “It’s beautiful up here. I see why you come.”
“Aye.” Colin took a deep breath and exhaled. “It really is. Makes you forget everything bad that’s ever happened to you.”
“I doubt that,” Haven responded.
“Well, maybe not everything. But it’s better than a backdrop of zombies. I hardly ever see them from up here when we’re moving. Maybe from a distance. But by the time they start heading in this direction, we’re miles down the tracks.”
Haven played with a loose thread on her jacket, eventually snapping it off and wrapping it around her fingers. “Speaking of, what is Kennedy’s plan exactly? Stay on the train forever?” she asked, her tone ripe with sarcasm.
“For now. I think it makes sense. It’s the only place that seems to keeps them out. She’s a bloody genius.”
She studied him. “So you think she’s a good leader. You trust her.”
Colin nodded. “I mean, I’ve known her for a short time, but what I’ve seen has been only positive. She has a heart for her people. She’ll do anything to keep everyone safe.”
Haven raised her brows and grunted bitterly. “She let Cade Foster on this train. That was idiotic.”
He held up his hands defensively. “I get where you’re coming from with him. But you have to look at it from her perspective. She didn’t know either one of you, and it was your word against his. I’m sure if she knew you better, she’d have trusted what you said. But there was a horde behind you guys, and she had to make a decision fast. If I was in her shoes, I probably would have done the same thing.”
Haven remained silent. She wanted to hate Kennedy for her stupidity, but deep down, if she was being honest with herself, she knew Colin was right. “I don’t know what I think of her just yet,” she confessed. “I don’t like following her orders.”
He chuckled. “You don’t like following anyone’s orders.”
Haven jabbed him in the side. “It has nothing to do with that,” she retorted.
“Trust me when I say she’s a smart one for thinking of this. She’s saved a lot of folks already, and she has her system for supply and fuel runs down to a science. Plus, her idea for planting multiple gardens at each of the stops this spring… come on, you have to admit that’s resourceful.” He grinned. “Give her some time. I think she’ll grow on you. And you need to take the train tour. This thing is fucking incredible.”
Haven pried her nails into the ridges on the metal roof. She tried to take a deep breath, but she couldn’t, and the breath she could get was shallow and unsatisfying, like there was an anvil sitting on her chest. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to run into Cade. I never want to see him again. I hate him.”
“If he tries anything, I’ll kill him. He’s vastly outnumbered. Don’t worry,” he promised.
“‘Worry?’ Colin, I wish I could just worry. All I feel is anxiety, and as hard as I try, I can’t shake it. I don’t know what he’s going to do next, and not knowing terrifies me.” Her cheeks flushed in anger. “He led a horde of zombies to our house in the middle of the night while we were sleeping. If Tex wouldn’t have let us know… And then he killed him. He just killed him and threw him through our window to mess with us, to fuck with our heads. What kind of monster kills a dog?” she asked him through gritted teeth. “He tried to rape me back in high school. He almost did. I keep thinking he’s going to try again, and that maybe this time he’ll succeed. But you know what’s the worst thing, even worse than someone leading zombies to my house, killing my dog, or trying to rape me? What if he hurts my family, someone I love? I wish to God every day that I could have Faith back, but you know what? Maybe it’s best she isn’t here. It’s one less person for him to hurt.”
Colin rested his hand on her back. “If he hurts any of you, I’ll kill him. I swear it.”
She turned to face him with tear-filled eyes. “Sometimes…” she began. “Sometimes there’s this horrible darkness that rises up inside of me. I come up with things I would do to someone who hurt my family, all the ways I’d torture them to drag out their suffering and make them wish they were dead. And these things I come up with… they’re sick, they’re wrong; they’re things I’m ashamed of, that I don’t even want to tell Houston.” She held her breath. “I never told you this, but I killed someone once, someone who wasn’t a zombie, someone who wasn’t trying to hurt us.” Colin searched her eyes in confusion. “It was Brett’s friend. We were escaping an overrun college campus, back when all of this started. Brett was driving. His friend had been bitten, but he hadn’t turned yet. I pushed him out of a moving car while he was still alive.” Haven pressed her fingers against a bruise on her skin. “And sometimes I think about how Brett looked at me that day, how horrified he was when I shoved him out, and then I think I’m not really that different from Cade after all. I killed him, Colin,” she repeated, as though she wanted him to convince her otherwise.
“Haven, you are nothing like Cade,” Colin insisted sincerely. “You did it to protect your brother.”
An eagle soared above them, silhouetted against the sky, a dazzling backdrop of colors.
Colin pointed to it. “Hey, never saw one of those up close before.”
They watched the eagle glide carelessly on the breeze, seemingly following the train.
“I wish I could fly. I’d float above all of this so that nothing could touch me.” She wiped her tears away quickly. “I don’t know what to do anymore.” Choking back sobs, she buried her face in her hands. “I feel so… lost, so empty since she died. And it’s all my fault, Colin.”
He pulled her into his arms. “I’m really sorry about Faith, Haven.”
It broke his heart to see her in so much pain, and knowing there was nothing he could do to take it away from her frustrated him greatly. He could only hold her close, whispering soothing words of comfort to her until her sobs subsided.
“We’ve lost so much. What if I lose Brett, Mark, and Houston next, and then I’m stuck in this wretched world with everyone I cared about dead? I don’t think I want to live in a world like that.”
Colin brushed her hair from her face. “You’d have me,” he told her. “And I won’t leave you again.”
Her eyes searched his, deciding whether she should once again build walls around her heart to avoid the pain of abandonment.
Colin’s gaze fell to her lips, where it often drifted to when she was talking, and he desperately wanted to kiss her. He started to lean forward, but stopped, knowing if he did, she would surely hate him later. Turning away, he decided to change the subject instead.
“You know what I miss most about Scotland?”
Haven lay against the cold metal, staring up at the sky above her. Her skin felt tight where her tears had dried. “Besides family?” she sniffled.
“Of course.”
She dangled her hand off the side of the car and flicked her fingers up and down as the wind streamed under them. “The Loch Ness Monster?” She leaned up on her elbows and looked at him seriously. “Is Nessie real?”
He snorted. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.” He gave her a lopsided grin and lay down beside her, placing his hands under his head. “Aside from the obvious, I’d have to say the food. I’ll take whatever slop the guys on the train cook up with plenty of thanks, but damn, I miss a good Haggis with neeps and tatties.”
“What is that?” she asked skeptically.
“Haggis is a pudding with sheep’s heart, liver, and lungs.”
Haven wrinkled her nose in distaste. “That doesn’t sound enticing at all.”
“That’s because you haven’t had mine.” There was a slightly suggestive undertone in his words, implying that he was well-versed in many things beyond cooking. “And neeps and t
atties are turnips and potatoes.”
She shook her head, not catching on. “I don’t know, you’re not doing a good job selling me sheep guts and turnips.”
He kneed her gently. “What, not good enough for you because it isn’t McDonald’s?”
She pushed his knee away. “Okayyy, wise guy. We have a heck of a lot more to offer here for cuisine than just McDonald’s. Well, we used to anyways. What I wouldn’t give for a slice of pizza. Scratch that—a whole pie.”
He had a big grin on his face as he gazed up at the sky, even though she couldn’t see it. “Ah, Haven.” His voice was heavy with nostalgia. “I missed you, girl.”
Instinctively, Haven moved closer to him so that her body touched his.
“I’m sorry for leaving you. It was wrong of me. I just couldn’t…” He trailed off.
“It hurt me more than I thought it would,” she admitted. “I know we didn’t really know each other that long, but in all this… somehow you were my port in the storm, my best friend.”
“I know, and I was an arse for leaving.” He took her hands in his and pressed them against his chest. “Will you forgive me, Haven?”
She could feel his heartbeat, steady and strong, heat radiating from his body, and even in the brisk temperatures, warmth spread through her. Then without further hesitation, she leaned forward and hugged him.
“Always,” she answered, and they sat back in companionable silence for a little longer.
Kennedy rubbed her temples and groaned. Hidden in her makeshift office, her sanctuary, she didn’t have to keep up a tough exterior; she didn’t need to exhibit those leadership qualities everyone looked to her to have, especially on days when she felt like anything but a leader.
Today was one of those days. It was their weekly “town hall” meeting, as they called them. She tried to hold them regularly to keep everyone informed of any new developments or plans, but as of this morning, Johnny B. had told her that a schism was beginning to form amongst the passengers.
Great. As if fighting zombies wasn’t already enough drama.
The Good, The Dead & The Lawless (Book 2): The Hell That Follows Page 16