Thicker Than Blood (Thicker Than Blood #1)(40)
The three of us stood by silently while the man brought out his daughter, wrapped tightly in a blood-soaked sheet, and laid her gently in the ground. Alongside her he laid a ragged-looking teddy bear and a folded piece of paper that looked to be a wrinkled photograph. After she was buried, the upturned dirt packed around and above her, the man walked back inside the cabin without a word to any of us, and closed the door behind him.
No one spoke; there were no words. This shouldn’t have happened, this wasn’t fair, she’s gone to a better place, and she’s at peace now, blah-blah-f*cking-blah. It all seemed pointless to voice.
“Should we see if he has any weapons we can use?” I asked, rubbing my temples. “Or maybe ask him if he knows where we can get a vehicle?”
“Let’s come back tomorrow,” Leisel suggested. “Give him time to grieve.”
All of us agreeing on that being the best course of action, we headed back to our tree stand. It wasn’t yet dark out, the sun still hanging heavy in the sky, mirroring how heavy I felt.
Children offered hope, and when a child was taken from this world, it made it seem a lot darker of a place to try to live within.
I lay awake for hours that night, staring up into the treetops, exhausted but unable to sleep. I listened to Alex’s snoring, the branches blowing in the light breeze, until eventually I turned, finding Leisel wide awake and watching me.
I offered her a small smile and she returned it, cuddling closer to me. I knew exactly what she was thinking—that days like today made it all seem so damn hopeless.
? ? ?
The sun woke us early the next morning. Quickly, we washed up in the creek and then headed back for the cabin, but when we arrived, we found it empty. Even the blood-soaked sheets on the small bed were gone.
A small note was pinned to the open door, and on it two simple words had been penned:
Thank you.
Chapter Seventeen
Leisel
“Now what?” Evelyn asked, sounding irritated. “Now what the f*ck are we supposed to do?”
Neither of us had gotten much sleep the night before, but Evelyn looked worse than I did. Large dark circles ringed her bloodshot eyes, her shoulders slumped, and her hands trembled slightly.
“He didn’t owe us anything,” I told her gently. “We just met him at a bad time.”
“I know that!” she shouted, growing even more agitated. “But…but now what?” She gestured around the empty cabin, her eyes wide, her nostrils flaring. “We have nothing, Lei! Nothing!”
“Not nothing.” Alex interrupted us, and we both glanced to where he was standing. There was a small chest at the end of the bed, and Alex was rifling through it, pulling out articles of clothing and tossing them onto the bed. Evelyn and I both stared at the varied shades of pinks and yellows, clothing that so obviously had belonged to the little girl we’d helped bury yesterday.
I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop the tears that formed. Memories of her dying breaths, her sweet little face contorted in pain, and her father’s grief-stricken wails filled my thoughts. Just yesterday they’d both been here, alive and surviving, and now the child was dead and her father was gone. Gritting my teeth, I pushed back my emotions. Now wasn’t the time for it, not when there were three of us right here, fighting through another day.
“We can’t use those, Alex,” Evelyn said tersely. “They’re too small.”
Alex didn’t pause in his digging. “We can use them as rags, as bandages, and a million other things, Eve. There’s more,” he continued, holding up a woman’s dress. “I’m guessing he had a wife at some point.”
Alex tossed another pile of clothing onto the bed, and as I walked forward to inspect it, I noticed Evelyn had hesitated. I glanced back at her with a questioning look that seemed to jolt her into motion, and together we headed for the bed.
Not many of the items Alex found were functional clothing, at least not in this new world. There were dresses, many of them sleeveless, and lightweight dressy tops that would have been perfect had I needed to go to a job interview, not dodge the living dead and half-crazed humans.
More importantly, I didn’t want to wear someone else’s clothing. Clothing that belonged to a family now destroyed. But what choice did we have? The stench of decay and death, blood, sweat, and other foul smells wouldn’t leave our current clothing, no matter how many times we tried rinsing them clean.
Eventually we managed to find a few things we could use. For a bra, I used one of the little girl’s tank tops. It was chest-compressing tight, only reaching to above my belly button, but was already doing a better job of supporting my breasts than the bra I’d been wearing since we’d escaped Fredericksville. Over that I slipped on a black loose-fitting, long-sleeved cotton shirt that had ridiculous lace insets in the back and belled sleeves. Thankfully there had been a pair of jeans inside that trunk as well. They were too big for Evelyn’s slim figure, and far too long for my short legs, but after rolling them a few times, they fit me comfortably.
Evelyn was less fortunate, having to settle for a pair of gray dress pants, and a pale pink child’s long-sleeved nightgown to use as a shirt. Both of us looked utterly ridiculous in our ill-fitting, mismatched outfits, but anything was better than nothing. Or so I kept telling myself.