Page 26 of Reanimated Ruin (Hearts In Horror #1)

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Cat

“I FOUND HER ,” Jules called out from the top of the stairs. “She’s up here, and she looks fine as far as I can tell.”

I dropped to my knees and sobbed with relief. I’d been so sure of the fact that she’d suffered the same fate as my father. There was no way she would have been able to defend herself against him as a living, breathing man, let alone an infected one. I’d expected to see her small form come shambling down the hallway right after him. I sat there paralyzed as waves of emotion rolled over of me listening to Jules try to coax her out of hiding.

“It’s okay, Rhi,” I called out loud enough so that she’d be able to hear my voice. “You can come out now, sweet girl. It’s Cat. I came for you just like I promised I always would. You don’t have to worry, Jules isn’t going to hurt you. He’s one of my friends.”

I heard the patter of light footsteps run across the attic floor and then Jules let out a small ‘oomph’ as she threw herself into his arms. He carefully climbed back down with Rhi clutching him back just as tightly as he was her. Once his feet touched the ground, she got a visual of me and squirmed out of his hold, then ran over to me, tackling me and smothering me in a huge hug.

“Oh, I missed you too, Rhi,” I held her to me, patting her hair and kissing the top of her head over and over. “I’m so sorry it took me so long to get to you. I promise we’ll never be separated ever again. We’re together now and nothings going to change that. I love you so much.”

I was shedding big, fat tears and probably ugly crying, but I didn’t care in the slightest. Everything could crumple around me this instant, but nothing would matter because Rhiannon was back in my arms and she was okay. All the bad shit that’d happened to me was worth it because fate wouldn’t allow the single worst fear I had to come to fruition. She looked around cautiously at my friends surrounding us, gazing down at us without a single dry eye between them, moved to tears by our reunion.

“These are my friends,” I pointed and introduced them to her. “They’re gonna help us get somewhere safe, okay? We can trust them, they’re good.”

She glanced up at me and gave me a small nod. She was usually such a talkative kid, always chatting away about everything and nothing, or asking a million and one questions, but she hadn’t uttered a single word. I stroked a hand down her cheek and then moved to stand up. She clung onto my leg like I was going to just get up and simply leave her here.

I bent over to pick her up, something she was just starting to grow out of before all this. The first few years of her life she was cuddly and always wanted ‘uppies’ but around the time she turned four all of a sudden she’d gained a sense of independence. Hollering at me ‘I do myself’ or ‘I can walk’ when I’d offer to carry her. Now she just wrapped her arms around my neck and buried her face in my hair.

“Do one of you mind grabbing her car seat from my parent’s car before we leave?” I asked them as they all still stood around us in a semicircle.

“Yeah, of course I’m on it,” Sadie spoke and went outside to get it. Dom gave Jules a meaningful look before following her outside.

“What was that all about?” I asked when we left standing alone in the hallway, he glanced at the closed door to my parents’ bedroom behind me.

“We found your mom, but she’s uh,” he looked at Rhi and just shook his head.

He didn’t have to say it. I knew what he was inferring. He handed me a folded piece of paper with my name scrawled across it in her handwriting. I shoved it into my back pocket, now was not the time to read that. I couldn’t afford to lose any more of my sanity, and reading my mother’s dying words to me would tear away at any last shreds.

It’s not like we were ever close. We didn’t have the mother daughter relationship you’d see in the movies or on television. I was having a hard time figuring out how I felt about the whole situation. It’s not that I was happy she was gone, I just felt numb to it entirely. The fact that my father was now gone too though, now that’s a different story.

My entire childhood she was just kind of there. I don’t know if it was due to never having had a maternal bone in her body or if it was simply that fact that any kind personality she had was beaten out of her by my father long before I came along. Besides fulfilling her parental duties, our interactions were kept to a bare minimum. She was good at avoiding my father, had keeping him satisfied and docile down to a science. Then I came along and threw the whole thing off. Sometimes it felt like she resented me for it.

No matter what I did, there was always something for him to pick at me about and work himself into a tizzy over. Then, once he was on a warpath, no one was safe. It’s not like it was anything I did on purpose. I spent many sleepless nights wracking my brain on ways to be the perfect daughter so he wouldn’t hate me anymore.

Nothing I ever did seemed to help though, often times just making things worse for myself. Wasn’t she my parent too though? Never once did she come to my rescue or stick up for me. She could have taken us away from the whole situation and didn’t.

I honestly didn’t even know if I’d ever read the note in my pocket. I contemplated shredding it on the spot and setting fire to the whole cabin. I wouldn’t want to start a forest fire though, especially not now with no fire department to control it. It wasn’t the trees’ fault my family absolutely sucked, they didn’t deserve to burn for someone else’s sins.

If God was real and he was out there somewhere, my parents certainly did not go to meet him and were already ablaze as we speak. After grabbing all Rhi’s stuff and some of my clothes, there wasn’t anything left for me here. When Dom called out that we were all set, I walked through the door with my baby in my arms and didn’t look back.

We made it back to the car without any further interruptions and I got the car seat installed in the back, then strapped Rhiannon in. I was about to go around to the other side to climb in after her when Dom grabbed my arm and stopped me.

“Hey, are you okay?” He asked me, concern all over his stupid handsome face.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be? We got to Rhiannon in time and she’s okay, couldn’t be better.”

“Alright, but you also found out both your parents are dead and one of them tried to make a meal out of you,” he said slowly, like I hadn’t just experienced it for myself.

“Yeah, I’m aware, I was there too,” I sassed at him. “As far as I’m concerned, they never even really acted like parents, so yeah. I’m okay.”

“Jeez, I just wanted to check in,” he put both hands up. “Sorry I even asked, I guess.”

Now that he’d let me go, I continued my way around the car, opening the car door possibly a little harder than I needed to. He just snickered at my antics and got in the driver’s seat. Jules shot me a look from the passenger seat that said ‘I thought we were going to play nice’ and I just gave him a sarcastic smile back.

I was still irritated with Dom for our past couple of arguments. It’s not like I couldn’t see where he was coming from, but he didn’t have to go about it like a total dick head. I’d hear him out, but I wanted an apology first. I wasn’t just going to pretend like nothing happened.

“Where to?” Dom asked us once we were all back in the car.

“Maybe we should try to find a grocery store that’s not too overrun,” Sadie said while digging around through one of our backpacks of supplies. “We’re getting down to the last of the stuff we have and now there’s five of us, so we should probably get as much we can fit in the car. Who knows how long before everything’s been picked clean.”

“I guess I’ll head towards Efferville center then. There’s a few stores there,” Dom said while putting the car in gear and pulling away.

As we drove onward, leaving my old life behind with the only piece of it that mattered in the slightest, I was feeling lighter. I knew I wasn’t completely free of my demons. I knew they’d still find a way to creep into my psyche and wreak havoc, but right now, I was free of their grip. I reached over into Rhi’s car seat and grabbed her tiny hand, rubbing my thumb over the still baby soft skin there.

She blinked up at me sleepily. Who knew how long it’d been since she’d slept or the quality of it when she did manage to get some rest. I let go of her hand to reach over into the back of the SUV, digging around until I found what I was looking for. Her security blanket and a little stuffed cat she’d named Donut. She extended her arms out, opening and closing her hands emphatically at the sight of her beloved friend. I handed him over and tucked her in, she closed her eyes almost immediately. Finally, feeling safe enough to do so, she was passed out cold in minutes.

It was weird to see the town I’d spent most of my formative years in so desolate. We passed by places that should have been teeming with locals just simply living their lives. It looked like everything was frozen in a snapshot of the day everything went down. If it weren’t for the all the gorey scenes with suspiciously missing corpses, you could almost believe that everyone everywhere went missing all at once. It was eerie, though . Where was everyone ? Not only were the living missing, but there should have been at least infected milling about.

We drove in silence for the twenty minutes it took to get to the grocery store we’d decided to try first. It was the one farthest from most of the residential areas and the smallest, so we figured it’d be our best shot. We were pleasantly greeted by an empty parking lot, not a single car in sight, so hopefully that’d also mean no one inside. There was only one infected that stumbled out of the woods upon hearing the sound of our arrival, but he looked like he’d turned quite a few days ago, slowly shambling his way towards the car.

Fall was about to be upon us and while the mornings were chilly, once the sun came out, you were quickly shedding layers of clothing. The undead before us also appeared to be suffering from the unkind effects of the heat. His stomach was horribly distended, the bloating pushing it out to unnatural proportions. Any patch of visible flesh was a sickly yellowy-green color and beginning to slough off in some spots. It was moving pathetically slow, one mangled leg dragging behind with the femur clearly poking through his skin.

We needed one person to stay in the car with Rhiannon. She was asleep and even if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t want to risk her safety. We decided it should be Sadie because she knew how to use the gun and none of us were fucking around when it came to the newest member of our group. Now that she was with us we were of the understanding it was shoot first and ask questions later if any sketchy people showed up while we were inside. I got out of the car with the guys, all of us grabbing our weapons and adorning them before locking the car.

Before we headed inside, I crossed the parking lot to where the infected man had only managed to make it halfway to us in the time since it appeared. It tried to lunge for me but was far from agile. I was able to sidestep its attack, rear my knife back, and slam the blade deep into its temple. It didn’t really bother me to have to put down the infected.

With the way they were starting to decompose it was clear they were truly ‘undead’ and there was nothing that could bring them back after they die the first time. It felt akin to the mercy we offer sick animals. If nothing more can be done, the only humane option left was euthanasia.

I felt sad for the fact that these used to be people with lives and families just like me, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad for eliminating them as a threat. It felt similar to when I’d snapped, made the decision to kill Harry and take my money back. I simply could not let anything stand between mine or my family’s safety. That’s now extended to not only Rhiannon but Dom, Jules and Sadie, too. A switch had flipped in my mind and I was grateful for it. I’d learned a long time ago that I had to be the protector because you are the only person you can rely on one hundred percent of the time.

When I returned over to where the boys were waiting for me, they just gave me a weird look, like they were concerned I was losing my mind. I just ignored them and started walking towards the entrance of the store with them following me a few steps back. The power was still on here as well. It appeared as no one bothered to lock up as the glass doors sensed our approach and slid open. I looked at Dom and Jules to make sure they had their weapons out before continuing inside.

Once we walked through the doors, it was silent inside. Never being able to be too sure, I walked over to an empty metal display stand and kicked it over. A loud metallic clank echoed throughout the store, after a good thirty seconds nothing came charging out at us so we must really be the only ones in here.

Grabbing two carts, we began going through the aisles. We filled one entirely with bottled water and the other with food that would keep for a long time without spoiling. We made sure to hit the toiletries aisle to grab anything we might need from there as well. We were headed to the pharmacy in the back of the store to see if that was left unlocked as well when we heard a thud come from the back storeroom.