They walked through suburbia for a while, Sarah wanting to get a little farther away from the city before they stopped to raid houses. The road was empty and they talked on the way.
"Why were you and Cooper fighting, Mom?" he asked.
"He was a bad man, sweetie."
"He seemed nice. He made me breakfast."
"He was trying to hurt you, David."
"Is that why you took the food away?"
"Yes."
"Was it... poison?"
"Yes."
"Oh. Do you think that's why those other two people left?"
"Yes."
"Where did they go?"
"I don't know, honey."
She thought about the locked bathroom door in the hotel room with the blood seeping out of it, and it gave her a chill. Cooper's crazy face was burned into her mind, like it was right in front of her as they walked down the quiet street. She thought about Herb's warning to her about some of the nasty things he'd seen, and if they had already encountered such horrible things in just their first day, what was lying in front of them?
"They should've come with us," David said, looking at his shoes. "Then we could all go to Noah's Ark together. It would've been safer."
"We're going to have to rely on each other for safety," Sarah said. "We can't trust anyone. You can trust me and I can trust you, and that's it."
"But that man had a sword and a gun! Did you see how he killed that zombie?" he said excitedly. "That was so cool! Well, scary, but cool. He could kill all the zombies for us."
Sarah could feel herself getting angry. "Just drop it," she said. "They can't come with us. We're on our own and we're just going to have to deal with that. If you want to make it to North Carolina, this is how it's going to be, just me and you."
"But what if we run into the zombies again like we did last night? Who's going to protect us from that?"
"We'll just have to figure it out," she said.
"Could my dad have protected us?"
She stopped walking. "What did you say?"
"My dad. If he was alive, I mean. He would be the one who would protect us."
"David..."
"It's okay, I know he's not here, but I mean... we would get there for sure if he was here, wouldn't we?"
"I suppose we would," she said. She started walking again, still taken aback by his comment. He rarely ever mentioned his father, and she rarely ever told him about him. For some reason she thought it would be better if he knew little about him, about who he was, because then maybe he wouldn't feel a sense of loss. But he did. He never knew his father, but he was well aware of the hole in his life that his absence created. Sometimes he just wanted to know about him. For him, it was about trying to be a normal boy, trying to pretend that the world was the way it used to be, that it could go back to that someday. It was about hope, something that Sarah was desperately trying to find, but hadn't discovered yet.
"How did he die?" David asked.
"I already told you."
"No, but I mean how did he die? You told me it was zombies, but how did it happen?"
They were now well into nestled suburbia, and Sarah felt safe to search and scavenge around the houses.
"Let's not talk about this," she said, pointing out a house for them to search.
It was a bungalow that would have been the picturesque family home in the old world, but was now decrepit, with splintered paint on the siding, worn shingles, filthy windows, and rusted porch railings. The lawn was overgrown into a thick jungle of tall grass and weeds. A faded wooden ramp ran along the side of the driveway, up to the porch, and a small wedge of wood was pressed against the lip at the bottom of the front door. Whoever used to live there must have been in a wheelchair.
As they walked up the driveway, David persisted. "I wanna know, Mom. I should know. He was my dad."
She regarded him with a long look. She realized she couldn't hide things from him anymore. Not like she used to. This journey was more than just finding a safe place; it was an education and an awakening. She couldn't stop him from seeing the little girl on the swing, bleeding from the neck and dying, much as she wanted to, and she couldn't stop him from seeing all the other horrors that faced them ahead. It wasn't fair and it wasn't right, but it was the way it was.
She patted him on the shoulder. "Come on," she said, "let's check out this house first and make sure we're safe, and I'll tell you about it after."
The interior of the house was musty, just like all the others. Dust caked on everything, and it looked like a crime scene where the slightest disturbance would ruin the evidence of the lives the family who lived there led. The house looked like it used to belong to a middle-aged couple and their children. Framed photos of the family hung on the walls: a husband; a wife; a little brown-haired girl; and a boy who looked to be about David's age, in a wheelchair.
David started to wander down a hallway and Sarah told him not to go too far. She went to the kitchen first and found some canned food in a Lazy Susan. She picked through the cans and took anything that she thought David might eat. The creamed corn, the canned beets, and the cat food, she left.
She rifled through the drawers in the kitchen and the dining room cabinets, looking for anything she could take with them. She found a can opener, a mini flashlight that still worked and a good chef's knife from the kitchen. She bundled the knife in a dish towel and brought everything to the front door.
The garage, living room and closets offered nothing useful, but she did find some rubbing alcohol in the bathroom.
She found David in the bedroom that belonged to the boy in the wheelchair. He was sitting on the bed holding a picture frame.
"What have you got there?" she asked.
He brushed his thumb across it mindlessly as he stared at the boy in it. The boy was sitting in his wheelchair on a baseball diamond, dressed in a uniform. He wore a glove on his left hand and held a ball in his right, a big smile on his face. David didn't say anything.
She sat beside him on the bed and put her arm around him.
"How did he play baseball?" he asked. "How could he play if he was in a wheelchair?"
"People can do just about anything when they set their mind to it," she said.
"But how could he play when everyone else on the team can do better than him?"
"Because he was a boy with big dreams, just like you, and he didn't let anything stop him. He knew he was going to do it, and so he did it."
"Even though he was in a wheelchair?"
"A wheelchair doesn't matter. If life limits you in one way, that just means you have to find another way to do it. You just have to believe that you can do it."
"So like... that means we can get to Noah's Ark? Because we believe in it?"
"Yeah, I guess it does. All we have to do is believe and we'll get there." She gave him a playful nudge.
She thought about what she just said and was surprised to find herself with a measure of hope. She was having a hard time staying positive about the trip, swept up by all the negative things that happened, but sitting on the bed talking to him actually made her believe, even if only for a moment, that they would get there.
He stared at the boy in the picture, considering what she said as her fingers ran through his hair.
"Your dad died the night you were born," she said.
He looked at her.
"I was pregnant with you and you wanted to come out, so your dad took me to the hospital. But that was the night when everything changed."
"When the zombies came?" he asked.
"That's right. There was traffic everywhere and we couldn't get to the hospital. We were almost there but there was a car blocking the road. Your dad got out of the car and tried to move it out of the way. And that's when they came. Your dad gave his life trying save yours, to make sure that we got to the hospital okay so you could be born."
"So you didn't make it to the hospital?"
"No. But it was the journey that counted.
He gave everything he had for you. He loved you, David. He wanted more than anything to meet you, but even more than that he wanted you to be safe. And that's what he did until the very end."
He nodded. After a pause, he said, "So he would want us to get to Noah's Ark?"
"Yes he would."
A strained look came over his face.
"What's wrong, honey?"
"Do you think that we'll end up like my dad? Do you think that we'll almost get to Noah's Ark and then something will happen to us?"
She pulled him into her chest and squeezed him. "Don't say that. Nothing's going to happen to us. We're going to make it."
"Do you promise?"
"I promise."
They sat for a while and then she asked him if he was ready to get going, to which he happily nodded. They searched the rest of the bedrooms for anything useful and found a backpack and some clothes that fit each of them.
She took a moment to apply the rubbing alcohol she found onto his knees. She didn't know if it was already too late for the alcohol to do anything, but it was better safe than sorry. He cried from the incredible sting of it, but she got him through it. His knees were still chewed up pretty badly, but they didn't look infected. With time, hopefully they would scab and heal.
When she was finished, they put everything she gathered by the door in the backpack and she slung it over her back. Before they left, they sat on the porch in the sun and shared a can of beans. When they finished, they set off down the road and continued on toward Noah's Ark.
"Where's the necklace I made you?" he asked.
She felt her heart preemptively sink, preparing to tell him that it was lost in the wagon with all their other supplies. But then she remembered that she never put it in the wagon, because she kept it in her pocket.
She reached into it and felt the nylon cord brush against her fingers. She pulled it out and held it up almost triumphantly.
He smiled.
She gave the beads a playful flick with her thumb then tied it around her neck and adjusted them to make sure they were lined up and spelled his name properly.
She felt a warmth in that moment emanating from the necklace and flowing into her body. It was the same warmth that she felt on the night her husband tried to take her to the hospital to give birth to their son. As they walked down the road toward North Carolina, whether she knew it or not, that warmth was hope itself.
10
Roadblock
They were in a gas station at the side of the 116, looking at maps. The ones David originally got for them back in Roanoke were lost to the zombies with all their other supplies, but this gas station carried the same two copies of the Rand McNally maps for the rest of Virginia and their jaunt through the top of North Carolina. They stood looking at the map of Virginia together, tracing their fingers along the route.
"Should we go down here?" he asked.
"No, we want to go down the 116 all the way to Burnt Chimney here, and then we're going to take the 122 down over to Rocky Mount. It's more populated, so we might run into a little bit of trouble, but it's not nearly as big as Roanoke, so we should be okay. But we need the supplies."
"Okay."
When the two of them were finished, they stuffed the maps into the backpack that Sarah wore and continued down the 116. It was now getting into the evening and their day had been uneventful so far. The memories of Cooper still ran through her mind, and she worried that they did for David, too, but he showed no signs of trauma. Then again, she knew that he never really caught on to what Cooper really was... what he did to Ramon and Isabella.
They had been walking through wooded country for a long time, the suburbs far behind them. It was all farmland and woods out here, and it would be for a lot of their journey, save for a small town or two that they might pass on the way.
Their feet pattered on the pavement. There was no breeze in the hot, stifling day, and the only sounds other than their footsteps was the rustling of their backpack and the distant chirps of birds nestled in trees. They carried the silence for a long stretch, and David finally broke it.
"Can you teach me how to shoot?"
"I don't think so, honey."
"Why not?"
"Because it's dangerous for you to use a gun."
"I think it's more dangerous for me not to use a gun."
Sarah laughed. "In a world like this? Maybe you're right. But we've only got one, so I think you're out of luck, kiddo."
"But what if you're in trouble and I need to shoot someone?"
She hesitated. "I don't think so. You might blow your foot off."
He persisted. "You shot Cooper in the foot. How did you do that?"
To be honest, she didn't really know. It just came out of her.
"Just show me, Mom," he continued. "I don't want to shoot the gun, I just want to know how. I won't touch it after that."
She smirked and put her hands on her hips. "You're quite the salesman, aren't you?"
He made his eyes as wide as they would go and pouted his lip, trying his best to make a tear roll out of his eye. "Please?"
She stopped walking and actually laughed out loud. She took the pistol out of her pants and pulled the magazine out, making sure that there wasn't a cartridge in the chamber, too. She pointed the gun at the grass next to the road, then squeezed the trigger and the gun clicked.
"Okay," she said, handing him the gun.
He took it and regarded it with awe. He couldn't believe she actually let him have it. She walked up behind him and made sure both his hands were holding it, then she put her hands on his and extended their arms straight out, trying her best to recall the instruction that Herb had given her.
"You see that little bump at the end of it?" she said. "You want to line up whatever you're shooting with that bump. Line it up and look at where you want it to go."
She let him adjust the aim as he found a target.
"Now take a deep breath," she continued. "Stay calm, and don't let your hands shake. That's it. Now, when you're ready to shoot, you want to squeeze the trigger—don't pull it. If you pull it, it's going to move the gun and you're going to miss what you're aiming at. Like this." She pulled the trigger and demonstrated. "So instead," she said, guiding his finger around the trigger, "you want to squeeze it, almost like you're closing your fist. Do it nice and slow. Keep squeezing until the gun goes off."
He scrunched up his eyes and aimed, slowly increasing the pressure on the trigger until it clicked.
"There, you did it!" she said. She let go of him and stood off to the side. "Now try it on your own."
He swung the gun around and aimed at a tree at the edge of the woods. He calmed himself and checked to make sure he was doing everything she told him, then he squeezed the trigger, firing another imaginary bullet at the tree. A smile lit his face.
"Okay, that's all the training you get," she said, taking the gun back from him. "I don't want to stay near these woods for too long."
She slid the magazine back into the gun and stuffed it in her waistband.
"Thanks, Mom," he said.
"You're welcome. Now you can save my butt if I'm in trouble. Just don't go blowing off any feet." She gave his hair a ruffle and they continued along the highway.
When it was getting into the late evening just before sunset, they passed a church near a very small town that she wasn't sure was even on the map.
He stopped in front of it and pointed. "What's that?" he asked.
"That's a church," she said.
"That means church?"
She realized he was pointing specifically at the large cross that adorned the side of the building. "Yes," she said, "that's the cross."
"What's a cross?"
"It's what Jesus died on."
"Oh," he said. "So this is where people go to pray?"
"Yes it is. Or at least it was."
"Can we go pray?" he asked.
She faltered. She had never been religious, sort of being on the fen
ce about all of it her whole life, but after facing the apocalyptic world they lived in, she didn't believe that there could ever be a God—certainly not a benevolent one.
"You want to go pray?" she asked.
"Yeah, can we pray to God?"
"You believe in God?"
"Yes. Don't you?"
"I don't think so, honey."
"Why not?"
"I just think that if God were really there, we wouldn't be living in the world that we are."
"But we're still here," he said. "We're still alive."
"Yeah, I guess so."
"Can we go, Mom?"
She still wasn't sure about it, but it seemed like it was important to him, and he was on the verge of giving her that same puppy dog look again. "Okay, let's go."
It was a very small church and was equally modest in its furnishings. A deep red carpet covered the tiny foyer and ran into a small office at the side and into the auditorium, with a few old walnut tables and bureaus decorating the rooms. Rows of bare wooden pews sat on either side of the aisle in the auditorium, stretching up to the stage. An unexplainable musk hung in the air, imparting a note of sourness, and above the stage hung another large cross.
David happily bounced along the aisle and took it all in. He stopped in front of the stage and looked around.
"How do we pray, Mom?" he asked.
"Well, we can have a seat in one of these pews." She directed him over to the nearest one at the front and they sat down. Small clouds of dust billowed around them as their weight fell upon the wood.
"And now you can close your eyes and pray if you want," she told him.
"Do I have to hold my hands together?"
"I suppose you can. Where did you hear about all this?"
"About what?"
"About God and praying."
"In the Bible."
She raised an eyebrow. "Where did you get a Bible?"
"I found one in a house."
"When?"
The Fall of Man (Zombie Apocalypse Series Book 1) Page 9
