America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (18 page)

"I love you too," she kissed him back. "And if
I'm not okay..." She caught his eye. "I'll come and get you." She
took a deep breath, finished her coffee and walked off to one of
the trucks where Sharon stood watching the field and the highway
beyond.

Mike walked over to Ronnie and Patty, "Go," he
said. "And I can't tell you how much I appreciate both of you. Go
spend some time together."

"She seems okay," Patty said.

"I think she is... or
will
be," Mike said, "Go
on, spend some time together so you two can be okay also," he
finished. Ronnie touched a closed fist to Mike's own before he
turned to leave.

~

Mike looked out at the flooded fields. The rain
was still dripping on the metal roof, but the early morning sky
looked less gray to him.

They decided a short time later to pull out. A
quick meal, and they would be on their way.

The rain stopped. The sun was still hidden
behind a clump of clouds that seemed to cover nearly the entire sky
behind them, but at the very edge of the horizon a line of
white-gold had appeared. The clouds there seemed to be breaking up,
the clear skies making their way to them.

Off to their left, clearly visible without the
rain, the Catskills sat like a beacon guiding them forward. The
trucks were topped off with fuel. Everything was packed away, and
the sun peeked out of its cloud cover just before they drove away.
Mike took it as a good sign. He started his truck, splashed across
a large puddle, rolled forward and dropped one huge front tire over
the broken pavement leading back to the roadway. He turned out onto
the road and led the way.

Two hours of slow travel brought them to a
leaning road sign, a small 79 in a highway symbol, and printed
below it in white lettering:

"Clarksburg 28 miles".

The V.H.F. crackled. "That's West Virginia, in
case you're wondering," Bob said. "State route seventy nine will
take us right into Charleston. But we should skirt that and try to
pick up seventy seven; that will take us into Kentucky." Bob
said.

"Tell me when,” Mike said, "to start
looking."

"Will do,” Bob said, “we're about a hundred and
fifty miles out, so it'll be awhile. Must have been just the other
side of Pennsylvania or just inside West Virginia where we
stopped," Bob finished.

"Made good time," Mike said.

"Yeah. Carry on. I'm standing by," Bob
said.

~Trouble on the highway~

"Put it under her head," Sandy instructed. "So
it tilts her head back and she can breathe freely."

Sandy went back to the chest compressions she
had been doing on Jessica's chest. The exertion was taking the
strength from her arms. Sweat had formed at her temples. It now
rolled freely across her face. She brushed it away with the back of
one hand and went back to working her arms in a steady rhythm. She
was tiring, and she was getting no results.

They were stopped in the middle of what was
left of the highway. There was nothing more than a washed out patch
of rubble and broken fragments of pavement littered about. An
occasional unmolested section of the road would appear, but more
and more it was becoming gravel and mud, and they were thankful for
the big tires and the four wheel drive.

The sun had been playing peekaboo all
afternoon, gliding in and out of the cloud cover. Despite its
occasional appearance, the day was still overcast and gray. Cold
winds blew from the east, and Mike got the feeling that rain was
not far behind the winds.

Sandy stopped, covered Jessica's mouth once
more with her own and blew another deep breath into her lungs.
Jessica's chest rose and fell.

There was some color in her cheeks, but her
lips were still tinged with blue, and she was not breathing. Sandy
blew another deep breath into Jessica's lungs, then moved sideways,
and Sharon took over the C.P.R. Her arms were burning, her lungs.
She looked down at her watch, more than 10 minutes had passed. She
had not realized it had been so long. It had been too long, and
there had been no response at all. Sandy had nothing to give to
her, not even an aspirin. The first aid kits all held non aspirin
equivalents.

She looked over and caught the outlines of
several small, worried faces in the window of the Suburban. Rain
caught her eyes and then looked down to Jessica.

"Sharon," she said softly. Sharon met her eyes.
Sandy was still breathing heavy, her arms still burning, her face
slick with sweat. Sandy shook her head. Sharon thrust her hands
down one more time, straightened up, wiped her own forehead and
looked at Sandy.

"Too long," Sandy said. "Too long."

~Death Following~

The line of vehicles dropped off the edge of
the pavement one by one, ran through the gravel, mud and water, and
then back up onto the asphalt and into the abandoned truck stop.
They were nearly out of gas, but Death was positive that there was
gas here. An oily sheen of spilled gasoline lay over a small
puddle, just to the side of the main island, as if its only reason
for existence had been to prove him right.

The ground had shifted, the concrete tilted up
into the air, but someone had gone to work with shovels, and the
top of an iron pipe lay exposed; a mound of dirt laying to one side
of the twisted concrete.

Death stepped down from his truck and crossed
the twenty or so feet that separated him from the pile of dirt. The
fill neck of the underground tank had been dug out down to about
two feet. The cap was on but he had no doubt that it would spin
right off with ease. They had been here, and if it wasn't them they
were following, them that had been here, then it was maybe
something better, he told himself.

He motioned to the others behind him, and all
four trucks emptied out. Nine of his soldiers stood behind him,
waiting for him to speak.

"They've been here... or somebody's been here.
And they ain't left too long ago either," He pointed to heavy,
rutted tire tracks that passed through the mud at the edge of the
pavement, and then printed the tread pattern onto the road, “That
would've been gone. Didn't stop raining until late this morning.
Can't be more than a couple of hours ahead of us, maybe four at the
most," he said.

A petite, dark haired young woman stepped
forward, "There's dogs over by the woods... eating something. Don't
look like no animal. They slunk off when we pulled in, but I seen
them." She wore a thin, black T-shirt that showcased the piercings
in her nipples. A safety pin jutted through her lower lip, a small
gold chain looped from a nose piercing to one ear. Her eyes were
gray and flat. Another safety pin pierced the top of her
bellybutton, visible where the overly short baby T-shirt she wore
had pulled out of her jeans. She shifted her boot clad feet,
fingered a 9 mm pistol in a side holster, and looked over towards
the edge of the woods where something pink could be seen laying
half in the water that flooded the fields up to the tree
line.

Death followed her gaze and nodded
slowly.

"Shitty, Murder... Go see." He said softly. Two
young men moved from the back and took off into the flooded field
without hesitation. He turned his eyes back to the girl, "Chloe,
you know you're my favorite. You did good, Chloe, you did
good."

The young woman smiled, snapped
her head around and looked back at the other young women behind
her. They were dressed almost exactly like her. "Little,
bitches,
" she said under
her breath.

A snarling sound came from the tree line as the
two boys approached through the calf high water. Three wolves
slumped out of the trees and stood stiffly by the body. Their eyes
shifted back and forth from one another to the boys who had slogged
across the field towards them. One of the young men drew his
pistol, aimed and fired. One of the wolves flipped into the air as
if he had been launched into a backward somersault. He flopped down
to the ground snarling, snapping at his chest were a small hole had
appeared. The other two wolves sprang into the air, startled, and
then fled into the woods.

The young man fired again. The wolf jumped and
then lay still. They both walked forward and looked at the red and
pink thing lying half in and half out of the water.

"It's a dead dude,"
Shitty called back. His voice floated across the
waterlogged fields.
“Part of his head is
gone entirely.”

"Is it one of them?"
Death called back.
"What
happened to him?"

"He got dead,"
Murder called back.
"Can't fuckin
tell how, these dogs been eatin' on him. Could be one of those
fuckers though."

"Who in the fuck else would it
be?"
Shitty yelled back. He lowered his
voice to a near whisper. “Sometimes seems to me that he's got to be
the dumbest motherfucker I ever knowed.” he told Murder. “Seems
fuckin' clear to me.” He turned back towards Death.
”Looks like they had a change of leadership. Part
of his skull is missing, right. I don't think them dogs or wolves
or whatever the fuck they was, done that."

"Get back here," Death yelled while motioning
with one hand. He turned, "Johnny, Nickle, get these trucks
filled."

"Yeah," Johnny said.

"On it," Nickle added.

As they started to fill the trucks, the sun
slipped back behind a block of heavy bottomed clouds and fat, cold
rain drops began to plop down from the gray sky, reverberating off
the steel roof.

"Fuck," Death said.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck."
He
looked over at Chloe, who stood
slightly ahead of everyone else, and motioned with a nod of his
head to the building behind him. She smiled. "Cassie, Tammy, get
some fuckin' food on. I'm hungry. Looks like we're stuck here for
awhile." He added.

As he finished speaking, Murder and Shitty
slumped back across the asphalt, water dripping. "Murder, I'll be
busy for awhile," he said.

"Got you," murder said.

~Death by the Roadside~

They all stood quietly on the side of the road.
Lilly spoke a few words from a small pocket Bible. Her voice seemed
so much more mature than it had when she had spoken those same
words just a few weeks before, Mike thought.

Jessica's body lay in the bottom of a shallow
grave that had been dug into the sandy soil beside the highway. She
was covered with a blue tarp and lay in about a foot of water at
the bottom of the hole. They had tried to keep the hole bailed out,
but it had been no use. Although the ground where they had chosen
to dig had been relatively dry, the ground water was high, and kept
seeping into the hole after digging just a few feet
down.

"And, Lord, watch over the rest of us as we go.
In Jesus name we pray, Amen," Lilly finished.

Jeff and Tim began to shovel the muddy dirt and
stone back into the hole. The stones pattered down and rolled off
the blue tarp as the dirt rained down into the hole. Between the
two of them, they had the shallow hole filled in no time. The first
fat drops of rain began to fall as the trucks began to roll out
again. Two miles down the road, what was left of a small airport
came into view. Several large metal hangars, virtually untouched,
crouched at one end of the twisted and tilted runways. A few inches
of water ran over a fairly intact service road that lead to the
hangars. One section of the road appeared to dip, and looked to be
covered with about a foot of water.

Mike picked up the V.H.F. radio. "I'm thinking
this ain't going to get any better," he said. "I'll go first, but
we should all be able to get across that water."

"Piece of cake," Bob said.

"Let's go," Ronnie said.

Mike turned off the highway and then eased down
onto the narrow road that led to the hangars. The truck walked
across the water like it was nothing, rolled up the slight rise on
the other side and stopped in front of one of the
hangars.

The Hummers, sitting a little lower, threw the
water up in a spray as they crossed it. It rushed against the
undercarriage, but even they had no trouble. "Yahoo," Jeff called
over the radio as he brought his last vehicle across.

The rain was picking up, and Mike hunched
against the drops as he stepped through the rain and found a side
door into the closest hanger. He emerged a moment later and walked
over to a longer hanger and entered the side door. A few minutes
later, he called on the radio.

"This one is empty, but the doors are jammed.
I'll need a little help," he said.

Ronnie and Tom both jumped down from their
trucks and sprinted through the driving rain to the side door. One
of the heavy steel doors had warped in the opening. It flexed as
all three men threw their weight into it, but it held. Then
suddenly it gave way and swung open with a loud bang. The other
door quickly followed.

"Bring them in," Mike called over the
radio.

Kate slid across the seat of the truck, flicked
on the headlights, dropped the shift lever into drive and pulled
slowly into the building. The interior was huge, looking even
bigger on the inside than it had on the outside. There was
absolutely nothing inside. She pulled towards the back, backed
around and parked the big truck. She killed the lights, shut of the
motor and stepped down from the cab. The other trucks drove in
behind her.