“Yes,” said Tom. “George was with them for years. They stayed at the cottage, surrounded by zombies, for almost two years. At first they had plenty of food, and George made sure the girls ate most of it. When it was about to run out completely, George made a very tough decision and went out. He locked the children in the bathroom, made sure they had the last of the food and some water. Then he imitated what Rob had done: He wrapped himself in torn strips of carpet, took the heaviest golf club he could find, and snuck out of the house. He was nearly killed a dozen times that night and the following day, but he managed to get to another farmhouse.
“The people who lived there were dead, and he had to fight his way through a few of them, but once he did, George was able to gather up a lot of food. He packed as much as he could into two big suitcases on wheels and pulled them down the road, back to the cottage. Getting through the zoms around the cottage was very hard, and it took him nearly a full day of trying one trick and then another, of running and hiding and sneaking around, before he was able to manage it. That became the pattern of their lives. About twice a month, George would go out, foraging for food, raiding all the places where people once lived, hoping to find help, hoping to find someone else alive. He didn’t see another living soul for years. Imagine that.” Tom shook his head. “Eventually George cleared out most of the zoms in the immediate area, and that allowed him a little more freedom. He would go foraging and bring back a wheelbarrow filled with books, clothes, toys—anything he could find to make the lives of the girls easier. He taught them how to read, schooled them the best he could. He wasn’t a teacher, wasn’t a scholar. He was a simple, middle-aged guy; an average and ordinary man.”
“He doesn’t sound ordinary,” Benny said. “He sounds like a hero.”
Tom smiled. “Yes, he does. I’ve heard a lot of survival stories about First Night and the times that followed, and even though a lot of people died, a lot of heroes were born. Often it was the most unlikely of people who found within themselves a spark of something greater. It was probably always there, but most people are never tested, and they go through their whole lives without ever knowing that when things are at their worst, they are at their best. George Goldman was one of those, and I doubt he would ever accept that anyone would think that he was a hero.”
“What happened to him?”
“As Lilah got older, he taught her how to take down zoms. She’s small and fast, so George taught her to come up behind them and cut their leg tendons to drop them, then spike them when they’re down. George worked it out for her, teaching her and practicing with her until she was faster than he was. He said that she had a natural talent for it.”
“That’s half cool and half sad,” Benny said. “Maybe more than half sad.”
“Yes, but it meant that she survived.”
“What about the baby?”
Tom’s face tightened. “This is where we get into the darkest part of the story. George had named the baby Annie, after his own sister who had been living in Philadelphia when the dead rose. He taught Annie the same way he taught Lilah, and the little girl grew up to be a lot like her sister. Strong, smart, and vicious when she had to be.”
They stopped for a few minutes to let the horses drink from a stream. Normally Tom would have steered well clear of the running water, but now they were forced to follow the trail. Even though the forest was quiet, Tom’s eyes never stopped roving over the terrain as they continued their hunt. The horses’ ears constantly shifted around, and both of them pranced nervously. Chief, though bigger, was more skittish, and he kept jerking his head up to look off into the woods, although each time the movement he tracked was a rabbit or a bird. Apache looked around slowly, but his whole body rippled with tension.
“Let’s keep moving,” he said. “Another ten minutes, and we’ll be able to ride again.”
Benny nodded, although again he touched Nix’s book in his pocket to ward off bad luck.
Tom picked up the thread of his story. “It was about eight years after First Night when George first found a living person. It was a man walking through the woods near where we are now. The man was dressed like a hunter and smelled like a corpse, and George nearly attacked him, thinking he was a zom.”