Chapter Nine:

April 1887

'Colt!' Sarah's screams pierced the night and Colt ran for the cabin but it was as if his legs were stuck in a muddy bog or a pit of quicksand and no matter how hard he tried to get them to work, how quickly he tried to run, they were being held back and bogged down.

'Colt help!' Sarah's screams became more desperate as did Colt's thrashing movements. The sounds of his daughter's tiny screams mingled with his wife's and with a scream of desperate rage, Colt finally broke free of whatever was holding him back and ran for them.

He was running through a sea of those rabid monsters. They were coming at him from all sides. Clawing, biting, ripping, tearing. The pain was unbearable but still Colt kept going forward. They might kill him but he would not allow these monsters to kill his family. Not again.

He burst into the cabin and his boots skidded to a stop on the uneven wooden floorboards when he saw that he was too late. His thundering heart broke apart yet again. They were rabid. His beautiful wife and his precious baby girl had turned into monsters. They were coming toward him. Their bodies were bleeding from bite wounds and their eyes were gray and lifeless. Their hands were reaching for him.

"Dada!" Loralie's little voice called out and this time instead of running Colt fell to his knees and held out his arms for his daughter as fat tears rolled down his cheeks.

Loralie climbed up into his lap and Colt wrapped his arms around her, holding her tiny body tight against his chest and not caring when she sunk her teeth deep into his throat........

Colt shot bolt upright, his gun in his hand as he quickly looked around the cave he'd camped in. He hadn't built a fire because he had learned they attracted the rabid and while it was April and becoming a little warmer, it was still damp and chilly with all the mud and rock around him.

It was still the middle of the night, Colt realized, though the full moon cast plenty of light outside the cave to see by. He figured he might as well be on his way. He wasn't going to be sleeping any more tonight. Not after that dream.

He grabbed his sack of belongings and his saddlebags from the ground. He'd managed to get a change of clothes, some extra weapons, ammunition and a bit of food from an abandoned homestead he'd come across but he knew he'd have to go to a town soon. He hadn't yet been to a town. He was somewhere in Tennessee would be his guess but he didn't know or care exactly where. That didn't seem to matter when all you ever found were more and more rabid.

Colt hadn't seen a single other living person since that woman who had rescued him from his cabin. There wasn't a day that went by that he didn't want to punch her in the face for rescuing him. Things would be so much easier if she had just let those rabid have him.... At least then he wouldn't be living this non-existent life.

He felt nothing. He was no longer sad but he wasn't happy either. He was numb. He simply was. He didn't laugh, didn't cry. He didn't get angry and yell, as a matter of fact he had yet to speak a word. He wasn't even sure how long it had been since the days had all seemed to run together but he thought it was getting close to two weeks.

Colt wanted to die and yet he was too much of a fighter to just lie down and do it. Maybe going into a town would get it done. There may be a lot of rabid there.. too many for him to get away from. He had killed his fair share of rabid already. Dispatching them with a calm cold indifference. He knew it wasn't their fault that they were doing what they were doing and yet he couldn't stop himself from killing every single one he saw.

He stepped out of the cave and stretched his aching back and stiff legs before walking over to the hitched brown mare that he had also stolen and taken for his own. Of course it wasn't really stealing when the previous owners had just gotten done trying to eat your face, Colt didn't suppose.

Colt secured his saddlebags and put the strap of his sack over the saddle horn before climbing onto the saddle. He knew it wasn't good to leave a horse with a heavy saddle on its back all the time but it was even worse to be caught by a horde of rabids and not have a saddled horse to ride away on. He figured the horse would just have to get the hell over it.

This wasn't the first time Colt had lived on the run. He'd been a wanted man from the age of fifteen on up to twenty-five. He'd been on outlaw. He took what he wanted to take, robbed who he wanted to rob and killed anyone that he felt needed killing. He'd spent many a night sleeping with only the earth for a bed and a rolled up coat for a pillow.

Then at twenty-five he'd very nearly been killed. He had the scar on his right side against his ribcage to prove it and when the weather was too cold his lung still pained him. It was then that Colt had decided he wanted out of that kind of life.

He'd had a friend in the government and that friend had told him that a pardon was possible but that Colt would have to prove he was a changed man. That was where Sarah had come in. She had been getting older and past the age most men wanted for their new wife and Colt had needed a woman to make him appear settled down.

The two of them had had nothing in common and disagreed on just about every part of life. From the best way to eat eggs in the morning to whether or not it was okay to steal to survive. Sarah's family saw black and white with no in betweens, no grays, and Colt was definitely what he would call a gray. He wasn't good, he wasn't bad, he was gray.

The two of them had damn near hated each other until the day that Sarah had come to him and told him that their child was growing inside of her. That had been the day that Colt had seen her in an entirely new light. She was giving him something greater and more precious than anything he'd ever had before and so he decided the least he could do was make sure she was a happy wife.

Love had soon followed. Not an all-consuming fiery passion kind of love but a love born of mutual fondness and respect.

Colt had no doubt that if they'd been given more time their love would have only grown and surely one day it would have been one of those all-consuming loves that the bards and poets liked to carry on about.

He'd never know for sure however because those rabid bastards had taken it all away. His wife. His daughter. His future. His every hope for happiness was gone. Colt knew he'd never be happy again, not without them, but hell he'd settle for at least feeling halfway alive. Or feeling anything at all.

Colt looked out across a field he was passing and saw the deer filling it. For a moment he thought about taking one but he knew that was far too much meat for him alone and he currently had no way to cure the meat. Colt had never been one to kill a creature and waste its sacrifice. If he was starving to death he figured he'd be feeling a little different but his stomach wasn't that empty just yet. It was pretty damn empty but not quite empty enough for that.

Colt had seen a horse just the day before that was covered in bite marks, human bite marks, rabid bite marks, and he had taken note that whatever sickness was raging in the humans blood didn't seem to pass to critters and for that he was grateful. He could only imagine the ways a man would shit his pants if he ran across a rabid grizzly.

He continued on his way, his shoulders slumping with his exhaustion. He hadn't gotten a good night of sleep since he'd lost his family. All he could ever manage was an hour to two before those dreams awakened him. They were always a little different but they always ended the same. With him losing his family to those damned rabid.

It was dawn when Colt saw the town come into view ahead of him. It was a small town nestled at the edge of the mountains with the flatter land stretching out to the west of it. Colt hadn't realized he'd come this far... He supposed that subconsciously he was hoping that if he went far enough west he could find a place untouched by all this madness.

It had rained just yesterday and his horse's hooves splashed in the fresh mud covering the bottoms of his pants with dark splotches. Colt ran his hand over his jaw which was covered in thick dark stubble... closer now to a beard.

He saw several rabid feasting on the dead body of a horse but he kept moving past them. He didn't know how many were in this town and he needed to get a lay of the land before he began to rid the town of them.

This town was surprisingly quiet. He could hear the moans of rabid and the occasional thud as they ran into things. It seemed they suffered from extreme clumsiness, every last one of them.

The silence was then shattered by angry feminine shouts. "Get away from me! I said no!"

"Bitch you'll give me what I want! You're a goddamn whore!" A man yelled back. Colt saw the rabid turning toward the raised voices and he quickly spurred his horse into a gallop to get to the big blue building they'd come from before the rabid did.

The door and all the windows on the bottom floor were boarded up but Colt circled around the back and saw the rope ladder hanging down. He jumped from the horse, threw his sack and saddlebags over his shoulder, pulled his gun, swatted the horse on the rump to get it run off and then headed up the ladder toward the sound of the voices. He might not have been able to save his wife and child from the rabid but he'd be damned before he let some no account bastard force a woman against her will.

***

Kathleen glared at the two big men standing in front of her. They were dirty, unkempt and stunk terrinly and Kathleen didn't think it was simply because the world had turned upside down. She had a feeling that even when things had been good and normal these men had been much the same.

"You're a whore and you'll lay with us!" the fatter of the two grumbled as he stepped toward her. Kathleen clutched the wooden club tighter in her hands and shook it warningly at him.

"You're right, I'm a whore. Which means I lay with men in return for something else. You have nothing to offer me!" Kathleen was pissed at these men as it was. She had lain with both of them mere hours ago with the understanding that they would give her supplies in exchange for her services. They had lied. The only supplies they had was a single glass jar of canned pears. Good but not exactly worth the rutting she'd had to endure from the two dirty fat men.

Kathleen had been born to be what she was. Her mother had been a whore at this very brothel and Kathleen had been raised here. It was impossible to say who her actual father was but the man who had helped raised her had groomed her from a young age to be as beautiful and desirable as she could be.

Kathleen was alone in the brothel now though she had made it as safe as she could against the monsters that had taken over. She'd enlisted the help of several men in town to board up the windows and door the moment the monsters had begun to appear. Then she had put the rope ladder in her window. She'd chosen rope so she could keep it put up while the monsters were around but she no longer worried about that. They couldn't climb.

The man who had raised Kathleen, the man she considered her pa, had died three years before from a gunshot. Her mama had been killed two weeks before by the monsters when she'd tried to sneak to the mercantile for food.

Kathleen had watched in horror as the monsters had attacked her mother, ripping the woman to shreds and then feasting on her body. There had been nothing Kathleen could do to help her... It had all happened too fast.

So now here she was trying to make the best of a bad situation. There were a few townsfolk left though everyone seemed to stay to themselves in the safe havens they had created. Survivors passed through town quite often and Kathleen used them.

She gave them a release, a chance to forget the horror of the world for a while, and in exchange they gave her food, weapons, ammunition and other supplies. The least often that she had to go down onto the streets and into town the better off she was.

"I got something to offer you alright. A big throbbing cock is what I have to offer you." Kathleen rolled her eyes as the fat man struggled to release said desire from his pants.

Then she heard a movement on the side of the building and saw the rope ladder move. She said nothing since the fat men didn't seem to notice.

"Im not interested in having that dirty cock." She countered. She gripped her club tighter and then a face appeared in her window. A bearded, dirty face with eyes such a dark blue it took her a moment to realize they were indeed blue instead of black.

He launched himself into the room, his boots landing with a thud. Kathleen saw the fat men reach for their guns as they turned but they quickly moved their hands away from their holsters when they realized that the man already had his gun drawn and looked pretty sure he wanted to shoot them both.

Kathleen was relieved that her next customer was at least lean and muscular and she was sure he was probably handsome beneath all the hair on his face.

"Who the hell are you?!" the fattest of the men demanded. Kathleen was surprised when the man didn't reply. He looked sad. Very sad. His face was blank, his eyes dull. All he did in response to the fat man's question was step to the side away from the window and motion toward it with his gun.

"You want us to leave?" the other man asked with a chuckle and the newcomer nodded.

"Listen if you want a ride on the whore than you're gonna have to wait your turn. We had her first." The fattest growled and Kathleen gasped and covered her mouth when the newcomer's gun hand shot out and he caught the fattest in the nose. Then the newcomer calmly stepped back and pointed at the window once again.

"You son of a bitch!" the man currently not sporting a broken nose bellowed and he went for his gun. Kathleen stared in shock at the newcomer when he fired a shot into the other man's chest and the man fell dead and bleeding to the floor.

The man with a broken nose stared in wide eyed shock and horror and Kathleen nearly laughed when he ran for the window and then dove out head first.

The newcomer holstered his gun and poked his head out the window before looking back at her.

"Thank you." Kathleen said. "Those men just wouldn't take no for an answer." Kathleen could hear moaning and thumps all around the downstairs walls of the brothel. She knew that the monsters had been drawn to the sound of yells, gunshots and now the scent of blood. "Can you toss him out the window?" she asked, pointing at the dead man.

Still the newcomer said nothing. Instead he just dropped the saddlebags and sack he was carrying to the floor and then hoisted the dead man over his shoulder and tossed him out the window. The shrieks and moans were instant, as was the sound of tearing flesh as the monsters tore in to the fresh meat.

Katherine didn't look out the window as she lifted the ladder and then closed the shutters. She turned and faced the new man who was staring at her with those cold eyes. They didn't look mean just..... lifeless. Dull.

She shrugged, knowing the role she'd be expected to play. It was the only role she had ever played, the only one she'd ever been wanted for. "Well normally a man's gotta give me supplies of some sort before I'll get into bed with him, sir, but seeing as how you just helped me out with those two brutes, I guess I could give you one for free." With that she loosed the tie on her robe and slid the swatch of satin off her shoulder to reveal the soft skin of her naked body to him as the robe pooled at her ankles.