“Where’s Mom?” Riley asked, cutting off his son’s litany of questions about his scouting trip.
Crestfallen, Brandon motioned towards the cabin, keeping one arm propped on his father’s wide shoulders. “She’s getting ready to cook dinner.”
Riley frowned and placed Brandon back on the ground. The last thing they needed were smoke signals pouring out of the cabin’s chimney today.
Brandon followed as Riley walked onto the porch and stuck his head inside the kitchen through the open front door. “Hi, honey, I’m home,” he called out, trying to hide his concern from Brandon.
Hannah looked up from the vegetables she was chopping and greeted Riley with a smile, which died on her lips as she saw the fear in his eyes. “It’s time isn’t it?” she asked.
Riley nodded. “We both knew this day would come sooner or later.”
She moved to take Brandon’s hand. “How long do we have?”
“I don’t know. An hour, a week, there’s just no way to tell. They may never find this place, but they’re close enough for us to be better safe than sorry.”
Hannah leaned down and kissed her child on the forehead. “Brandon, honey, would you please go play in your room for a few minutes? Mommy and Daddy need to talk, okay?”
As the boy marched off deeper into the cabin, Hannah got back to her feet and turned to face Riley. “Where are we going to go?”
He shrugged. “I have no idea.”
3
It had been a tough decision but ultimately Riley had chosen to leave the truck. It was in great shape, perfect for off-road travel, and he had stored enough fuel to fill it up twice. But the dead controlled the roads now, and the truck was too risky, even out here in the wilderness. It was better, Riley knew, to set out on foot. They would travel slower and they wouldn’t be able to carry as much, but it would be far safer. On foot, they could stick to the trees and stay clear of the roads; they would be nowhere near as noticeable should they come across a group of the dead.
Hannah prepared some rations, and the family divided the load of food and water, with even little Brandon carrying a canteen of his own. Riley also let him carry a hunting knife, though Hannah had protested. The knife would be of no use against the dead as Brandon didn’t have the strength or the skill to drive it into someone’s skull, but it made the boy feel safer and that was what mattered to Riley.
Hannah carried an old-fashioned .30-.06 rifle, which once belonged to her father, and she also strapped a .38 revolver to her hip. Riley carried two holstered .45 automatics, an M-16 he’d bought illegally before the world fell apart, and numerous spare magazines for all three weapons in his backpack.
Leaving this place wasn’t easy for any of them. They’d been up here alone for a full three months since the dead first began to rise. In a lot of ways, it felt more like home than the house they’d lived in for years before they fled for the high country.
They made their way into the woods, and Riley watched a tear slide down Hannah’s cheek as she looked back at the cabin. It cut into his heart like a blade.
They still had no idea where they were headed. There was no logical place to head for, so Riley and Hannah had merely decided to set out east for the coast and hope for the best. If nothing else, maybe Brandon could see the ocean once before they all died.
Riley swore to himself the dead would never take his family alive, even if he had to kill them himself.
4
It was feeding time in the pen. The sun had long sunk beneath the surrounding mountains. Two of the dead guards emerged from within the compound, carrying a large bucket filled with slop as runny as cream corn. With the help of a third guard, they emptied the bucket over the fence onto the ground of the pen. The human prisoners pounced on it like hunger-maddened animals, scraping it up from the dirt with their bare hands.
Scott and David did not participate in the fight for their evening meal. David remained at the pen’s far side, staring at the roadway that lead up to the breeding center. Scott sat Indian style on the ground with his arms across his legs, palms open towards the stars. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow and steady. Scott would find leftovers later, or he would fight with the flock at the morning meal. He doubted if David had any thoughts in his head about food, and he didn’t care. Let the newcomer starve if he wanted to. There were worse ways to die.
All that mattered to Scott at the moment was finding a shred of peace. Meditation could take him away from the horrors of this place.
Earlier in the day, he’d told David to stop hoping, that it was a lost cause, but now he wondered: wasn’t he himself seeking hope by leaving the pen, if only in his mind? He sighed and opened his eyes. The guards were already headed back inside the breeding center and the frenzy among the men for the slop was dying down. Scott slowly got to his feet, ignoring the taunts of his fellow inmates that he’d missed the meal.
This time David saw him coming, then turned back to the fence as Scott reached his side. “How dare you tell me to stop hoping?” David whispered. “Hope is all that’s left to any of us now.”
Scott accepted the stinging words as if he deserved them. He nodded towards the road leading out of the compound. “What exactly is out there that you want so badly? There’s no place left to go. The dead are everywhere. In here, we know we’re not going to be cut open and chewed on.”
“What’s the point of being alive if you can’t live?” David shot back.
“Hank and Buck, those two rednecks over there, would argue with you that we are living. They get fed, have their friendship, and once every couple of days they get to have the orgy of their wet dreams with the ladies inside.”
“But would you argue with me?”
“No,” Scott answered. “No, I would not.”
David grinned. “Then what are we going to do about that?”
Scott offered his hand, and the two men shook. “I’m Scott. Scott Burgess.”
“And you can call me David.”
“I know.” Scott laughed. “Well, David, it looks as if we have a lot to talk about.”
5
Steven placed the half-full bottle of whiskey atop his desk. All he wanted in the world was the feel of its fiery embrace as the alcohol slid down his throat, but he couldn’t bring himself to open the bottle. Too many people depended on him. He hadn’t asked for this job, but the Queen was his ship. She was all he ever loved in his life, and when the time came he’d go down with her. He knew every inch of her like the back of his hand, and yet she’d changed so much over the last few months he barely recognized her.
Once upon a time, she’d been a gleaming beauty of magnificent white hulls, a floating paradise where dreams of love and adventure thrived. Now her hull was spotted with makeshift plates of armor and the scars of battle. Gun emplacements lined the length of the main deck on all sides. Where once she’d held hundreds of vacationers, she now contained barely one hundred refugees, tired, frightened and desperate.
Someone knocked, and through the open door of the captain’s quarters Steven noticed O’Neil standing in the hallway. In one fluid motion, he swept the bottle off the top of his desk and into the drawer where it belonged.
O’Neil shifted uncomfortably. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I have the inventory of our supplies that you asked for.”