Train of Sin, Last Stop

I feel a glory inside of me

Victory over strangers

Who now have to pay the fee

I smile to myself

Looking at the corpses I ride with

Soon I shall put their dry bones on a shelf

Others will feel

What I have felt

The demon dog has closed their fate with my seal

I let out a laugh

The corpses turn to look at me

In their dead eyes there is no wrath

I scratch my head in puzzlement

I feel a claw

A curse, not Heaven sent

I run to a mirror

Down the red velvet hall

Through the dust I see a tear

It falls slowly down

A furry cheek

I am a Hellhound with fur of brown

I turn back to the hall

Trying to run

I fall to the ground at a crawl

My hands are now gone

Replaced with four paws

I am the beast who is keeping me here

How did this happen?

When did it occur?

Was I not once just a little girl?

Was it the responsibility I bore?

Was it the pain I endured?

Was it when I was thrown onto this train?

No say in the matter

To ride ‘til the end

The end of what?

I can no longer remember

At the end of the hall

The corpses are gone

Empty velvet seats surround me

There is no one here to see

But I do spot a key

On an old wooden box

With a golden lock

But the key is too large to fit in the hole

It is for something else

“It is for your soul,”

It is the Hellhound conductor who speaks

I feel the fur leave my cheeks

I stand on two legs

Naked

Reborn

I grab the key from atop the box

I see an engraving over the lock

“Happy to be free again,

No longer on the train of sin

-The Corpses”

I run past the Hellhound

With a leap and a bound

The key opens the door

And I shiver down to my core

I am ready to step off

This moving train

To feel the wetness of rain

Live my life

After my strife

The corpses held no ill will

When they looked out the windowsill

They saw only me

Young and free

Playing in the sunlight

Until it is my turn to go into eternal night

Chapter Twenty-Three

“Well, I don’t know. It feels like I split my leg open on rough ice racing for my life down a mountain from a yeti, had it heal, and then a damn serial killer took a rusty kitchen knife and sliced the same spot open again. That’s how it freaking feels!”

“Zoe, calm down,” Adonis grabs my hands from across the kitchen table. It is late at night; everyone else is asleep. We moved George and Sandra into their zombie proof house today.

“Don’t tell me to calm down after you ask me what’s been up my ass,” I rip my hands out of his.

“I’m sorry,” he sighs. “It’s just you’ve been on the go since Tom died, and haven’t talked to anyone about it. Don’t get me wrong; you’ve been getting shit done. We have enough wood to finish the fence around the next house now. Luke can move with his grandparents in there as soon as spring is here, but shit. You were just starting to get fun and bam now I’m stuck in a house, in a damn blizzard, with friggin’ zombie fighting Hitler. Smile, damnit!”

“I want my mom,” I cry. Wow, that came out of nowhere, it’s been months, but they are the only words that can escape my lips.

Adonis gets up and moves to the chair next to me. He is obviously a few years older than me and I probably sound like a little girl crying about my mom. He puts his arms around me and I stare at the tattoos up and down his arms. There is a faded angel, with massive wings with the word ‘Guardian’ written below it, and there is a detailed tree with his name carved into the trunk, and a smiley face with its tongue hanging out next to a simple gravestone with question marks as the date. In between them all are road map markings.

“It’s okay. I’m sure she was a great woman to raise someone like you and your brother. She is someone to be missed.” I sob into his arm until I have no more tears left, “Promise me if you feel like this again you talk to me or anyone before you clam up again.” I nod into his arms.

That night I sleep in my bed. It still smells like Tom. My body feels rubbery as I think about that night I cuddled in Tom’s arms in this bed. I knew what he wanted. I could have been there for him like he had always been there for me. We could have been each other's reasons for getting up every day. I fall asleep thinking about his cheesy smile.

I am walking in the woods outside our freshly built fence. I see a clearing ahead and sprint into the sunlight. As I enter the sun I feel the weight of the weapons on my sides melt away. I am on the side of a grassy hill. Surrounding me are mountains, with peaks that disappear into the clouds. The grass is long and blowing in the wind around my legs. I look behind me and the woods are gone, replaced by a steep mountain hike above me. I see a tent a little higher up, and I know it is my family on vacation. I start climbing to reach them.

When I get there Carl is preparing to go on a hike and Mom is rolling up sleeping bags, smiling away. She is healthy, and her hair is long like I remember from my childhood. The mountain air has her cheeks looking flushed and full of life.

“Come on, Zoe!” Dad yells. He is suddenly behind me on a four-wheeler. Carl zooms behind him ready to go on one, too. We are going to have fun! We are going to have a family outing!

There is a crash and I see polar bears tearing through our tent. I run to another ATV that is by the rest of my family now. All four of us zoom away, racing through the hills and valleys. The polar bears are always a few feet behind, and I feel the joy of a family vacation replaced by fear. They are almost on us; we are going too fast to be safe. I look behind me as a bear rears up ready to land on our family.

I wake up in a cold sweat, my eyes take a moment to focus as I stare at the ceiling. The white glows with the moonlight coming in the window. Something other than the dream woke me up. I hear screaming, screeching. A zombie.

I run to the window and I see four of them outside the fence. Trying to get through. Adonis is supposed to be on watch tonight. Where is he? I jump over my bed to the other side where I keep my guns. It is underneath the shotgun and my pistol, halfway under the bed, but I find my .22 long rifle and throw open my window and take aim.

Why is it I never dream about the people I try to? I fire, one drops, a clean headshot. I clear the shell.

Why is it not even in my dreams can I have a normal life? I fire again and miss. The zombie tucked under the fence at the last second. I fire again and take the one next to him down.

Another shot goes off from below me, taking one out. Finally, someone is alert enough to help me. Why is it I am so angry? I sigh and take the last one out as it screams at our fence like a child with a temper tantrum.

I am pissed. I set my gun down and throw a few knives in my pockets instead. I go downstairs to the front door where I heard the other shot go off. I find Adonis sitting on the porch looking at his gun.

“Where the Hell were you?” I say from behind him. Clearly he didn’t hear me coming because I see him jump at the sound of my voice.

“I was walking in the backyard. I didn’t hear them until they screamed. By the time I got up here you had taken most of them out. Isn’t that why we built a fence in the first place? So we could have one person on watch instead of two?”

I glare at him. I wanted to dream, see my mom's face even if it was in a nightmare. I don’t want to forget her in any way. “Be faster,” I say.

“Alright, alright,” he says. Suddenly I don’t want to go back to bed. I know I won’t have any of the people I want in my dreams again. I want it too much. I sit down next to him on the cement.

“You okay? I mean other than being woken up by screaming zombies,” he says. I give a small smile to acknowledge he is talking.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Just trying to figure out why the chicken crossed the road.” He gives me a weird look. “I’m joking,” I say. “I haven’t snapped. We should get rid of those bodies though.”

He pushes himself up off the ground and holds his hand out to me. We walk to the kitchen and find lighter fluid and gloves. We trek across the front yard and drag the corpses one by one to a pile in the farthest corner of the backyard. We douse them and watch them burn. I feel a semblance of happiness as I hear the rotting flesh crackle. It’s like a little piece of revenge on the people that orchestrated this high up in office, even though it is the opposite.

“I wish I knew why this happened,” Adonis says, watching them burn. I forgot we might be the only people left on Earth that know what Susan told us.

“I know why,” I say. He looks at me and I tell him everything Susan told us. By the time I am done the fire is dying out.

Adonis grabs a stick and pushes the little flesh left onto the embers, “Population control. Wow, that’s a new low.”

“I know. I want them dead.”

“They probably are, Zoe.”

“No, not all of them at least. I’m sure when things got bad they had a hunch and protected themselves. They at least had a clue as to why the world was starting to burn. I can feel they are still out there. I will find them one day and rip their hearts out.”

It is quiet for a minute, “You’re scary,” Adonis says.

“Me?” I ask. Then I laugh. “I was a nerd in school. Yeah I liked knives, but I also baked cookies and got straight A’s.”

“Yeah, I figured as much. The blonde hair and pretty eyes made me think you were the home economics type.”

I punch him on the arm. He laughs, “You may be a good shot with a knife and a gun, but you’re hand to hand is horrible.” The fire is fizzling out. I kick dirt over the last little flames. We walk into the house and I go to bed without a word. I have no dreams until the sun wakes me up.

Dad is in a mood the next day. No one can do right by him. I try my best to avoid him by staying outside. I go on a run with George and Lila to collect driftwood down at the shore. As I gather the few logs that have washed up in the cold water I look out at the lake. It is a beauty the world still has. I remember Mom. I remember the box. She was born around this time of year, November 21st.

When we get back to the house I find Dad in his room reading a newspaper from April. “Hey, Dad.” He looks up at me. “I don’t have a calendar, but I’m sure Mom’s birthday was this month. Do you want to put her ashes in the lake?” He smiles at me and walks to his dresser, where he pulls Mom out of the top drawer.

I head downstairs and find Byron in the kitchen. He is bent on making lunch today, and I am afraid of that. He gives me his straight-toothed smile through his scraggly beard.

“Hey, hey, beautiful!” He laughs.

“Hey, Byron…we are going to give Mom a memorial today.”

“Ohhh, good a day to do it. Her birthday is today, ya know.”

“Well I know it is around this time, but yeah.”

“No! It is today! Ol’ Byron keeps a calendar in his brain, yes he do. Today is November 21st!” I stare at him. He never ceases to make me wonder.

We leave George, Sandra, and Adonis in the house. The rest of us walk to the shore together. Persistence is in front leading the way. I think of how Mom took care of him, and how big he is now. We walk straight behind the house so we can look out the window and remember this day.

We gather into a half circle in the cold water up to our calves. The wind whips my hair in a short gust, but it dies down right after. I hold my hands out and Carl takes my left, and Lila grabs my right.

“God,” Dad starts and I can tell the word is unfamiliar to his lips. “Today we say goodbye to Ruth’s body. We know she is out there somewhere, and I, we will see her soon. It’s hard to say goodbye to a 25-year marriage, and I don’t know what I am doing without you, Ruth. But we have strong kids, and you are always with people who love you.”

I hear Carl crying next to me, our wounds reopened.

“Amen,” Byron says. The rest of us follow. Dad opens the lid of the box and walks out into the ice-cold water up to his knees. He lifts the box high over his head and the ashes fly in the wind. He walks back to shore and his eyes are red with tears. My dad looks old. His eyes show wrinkles around them, and there are age spots on his hands in a few places. His bushy eyebrows are furrowed in pain as he walks to Carl and me and hugs us tight. We all cry together. Even Persistence lets out a whimper who is sitting on shore.

The next day I feel lighter despite being heavier. I take my knives to the front yard and practice on the single oak tree we captured inside our fence. It’s cold outside, but the snow isn’t deep. I throw for about half an hour before I lose the feeling in my fingers, and one of my blades that I have decided I will have to wait until a thaw to find. I head back inside and spend the rest of the afternoon with Carl and the kids. Somehow Robin and Harris have retained their innocence. They cried when Tom died, but now they act like they don’t have a care in the world. Their resilience amazes me. They are taller than when I first found them, growing and changing in just a few short months.

Dad is in the kitchen gathering the dried and canned goods he needs to make dinner. I look out the window and see George next door over a small fire and camp grill. They are bringing the meat. We are providing the sides as horrible tasting as they may be. It is normal. Adonis comes down the stairs with a worried look on his face.

“Someone is outside our fence,” he says. “A man and a woman.”

“More people!” Robin yells with excitement.

I get up from playing dinosaur with her and look out the small front window. I see two heads bobbing over the fence. I start to put my shoes and coat on. I hear Dad sigh and continue to work on opening cans. Adonis, Carl, and I walk out into the cold night air. George waves from across the yard. I look to the other side of us and I see Luke and his grandmother, Pearl, setting a table for dinner. They are old and the cold gets to them, but they refuse not to help. So we eat over there and they do the dishes in water Luke hauls up. We walk to our makeshift gate.

“Okay, you two stay back,” I say to Carl and Adonis. “I’ll talk, if things get bad, well, just make sure the safety is off.” I open our dog collar latch and swing the gate open. The figures freeze in the dark, clearly startled.

“We heard about a group on the lake that was taking people in,” says the man. His voice sounds familiar.

“We are good people,” the woman chimes in. Why can’t I place these voices? They sound so familiar

“Is it just you two?” I ask the shadows.

“Yes, yes, it’s been us since the beginning, and we’ve been taking good care of each other,” the woman says. They step forward and in the moonlight I see them, Brian’s parents.

They must recognize me too, his mom gasps, “Zoe? Is Brian with you?”

I stare at them, dumbfounded. Brian’s parents are standing in front of me, telling me they have been alone since the beginning. Well, of course they have been because they abandoned their son at the beginning. I saw him twist after that, morph into a terrible person. His parents had always been a source of angst for him, but to leave him was inhumane. In retrospect that was when he started to change. It was when he became over-protective, insane.

“No, Brian isn’t with me. He should have been with you though.”

“We waited for him, but he never came home. We waited for weeks, but it just wasn’t safe.”

“You waited hours, not days.” They stare at me. I hear Carl on my right behind the fence shifting his weight. “I shot Brian, as a human, not a zombie, and in all honesty, I think it was your fault. Get away from here.”

“Now wait a second, Zoey,” Brian’s father says to me. He sounds cold and angry, “Who are you to send us away?”

I look them both up and down. They are upset that I am kicking them out, not about their dead son. They are young enough to keep moving. They are selfish enough to live on their own. I need to do what is best for my family and friends. My mother had a lot of faith, but she is gone, and God has left me alive to make decisions.

“I am the leader.”

The End