America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (19 page)

~

Halfway back in the dim interior, a large wood
stove set out from one wall. A pipe ran from the stove into the
side wall and then to the outside. Janet opened it, blew at the
dust and looked around for wood.

"We'll need wood," she said. She looked the
stove over. "It's not made for cooking on, but the top's flat and
we can make it work. Find me some wood, and I'll get everything
else ready," she said.

~Bad Pennies Again~

Psycho arched her body above Shitty, moaned,
peeked from one squinted eye and saw he was ready. She faked
another moan, thrust her hips harder and then finished with a loud
groan. She waited a half second, tensed her body, faked heavy
breathing, then rolled off him.

"You're so good, Psycho,"
he said. There was no faking in the heavy breaths
that he drew.
"Was it good for you? Was
it?"
he asked.

"Like, how could it not be, Shitty. You take me
all the way. Every time, Baby. Every time."

He smiled and laid back while she quickly
cleaned up with some paper towels she had found in one of the rest
rooms. Then she leaned back into him and let him talk. It was
always the same. How tough he was. How well he could fuck. How big
his cock was. And that was a joke, because... He interrupted her
thoughts. "...You think?" He was asking.

She had no idea what he had said. "I don't
know, Baby, explain it to me better. You know I don't always get
things like you do. You're so smart." She kissed his cheek, rubbed
her breasts against his arm - he liked that - then
waited.

"I was saying," he said, clearly perturbed that
all of her attentions had not been on him. She rubbed against him
again, and he stopped and smiled.

"All I was saying, Psycho, is I think I've been
showing Death that I'm a thinking dude. You know, not like Murder.
You know, today? He couldn't even notice a gunshot wound, couldn't
tell it from what the wolves ate. That will add up. He'll put me
ahead of Murder. Soon, you'll see," he said. "And you'll be
sleeping with number two," he finished.

I already am, she thought. “Oh, Shitty, that
makes me so hot," she said. "Just thinking about it."

~

Shitty could never go more than once. He was
nineteen years old and weighed two hundred and forty pounds. Five
foot nine frame. Ate candy bars all day long, smoked like a
chimney, and she was surprised he hadn't dropped dead or run out of
breath when he had run across the field earlier in the day.
Hopefully he would the next time, she thought.

He reached over, squeezed one breast and tugged
at the piercing in the nipple. Something he thought turned her on,
but actually hurt and scared her a bit too. He might be simple, but
he was nuts. She always joked to herself that it should be him who
was called Psycho. Only, really, when she thought about it, it was
no joking matter.

He had been with an older woman,
in her thirties when they had first picked her up. She was still
Cindy then, only Shitty said it was spelled with an S.
Sindy.
He had his eyes
on her, marked her out immediately. He was on her from the first
day.

She had gotten really wasted drinking hard
liquor with Johnny Red a few nights later and had gotten into a
fight with Shitty's woman, Bitch. Shitty had named her himself. He
had the idea that a woman was owned by the man, like a dog. And so
the man chose the name, he had told them seriously.

She
had
flipped out on Bitch, bitten her
face and broken her nose before Shitty had dragged her off her, and
he had given her the name Psycho.

A few nights later, Shitty had taken her into
one of the bedrooms in the house that they had been sharing. It was
where he and Bitch had been sleeping. He had kicked her out of the
bed and told her to get lost. She had come back at him, kicking and
clawing, and he had simply pulled his gun and shot her.

She had seemed so surprised as her fingers came
up and found the hole in her chest. She had raised her fingers up
to her eyes to see the blood that was there. She had tried to
breath for what seemed like minutes, but was surely less than a
minute, making an awful clicking, swallowing sound. And then she
had fallen down dead. And Shitty had taken Psycho right there on
the bed while she had still lain dead upon the floor. After the
sex, he had dozed off and he had awakened. He had dragged Bitch by
one foot through the house and thrown her out on the front
lawn.

Psycho could not forget that. Nor the way no
one came running to find out what the shot was about, or said a
word when Shitty had dragged her from the falling down house or
when he had tossed her body into the river the next morning after
leaving her in the yard overnight.

Shitty was simple, but he was crazy and she was
taking no chances with him. She moved her body now, once he'd
stopped pulling at her piercing, so it was slightly out of reach.
No matter how the rest of her life went, she was looking for the
end of it. She had no illusions about it; it was going to end up
badly. She could feel it.

~

A heavy canvas tarp covered a neat stack of
wood on the side of the hanger. The front had a small overhang
above the doors, so they left the doors ajar and ran back and forth
until most of the wood was piled by the stove. A couple of gas
lanterns lit the inside up, and once the wood stove was fired up,
it took the chill out of the air.

There were two doors, both of which had
overhangs, and Ronnie and Mike drew the first watch. They helped to
close up the main doors once more, and then each of them took a
thermos of coffee with them for their post. They stood under the
overhangs, trying to stay dry as the rain poured down.

~

Bob came up to Mike later on when he came back
in. "Truck's odometer says only about a hundred and twenty miles
today," he said.

"Yeah, well, the roads were worse, and...
Jessica, and now this. We could've gone another couple hours," Mike
said. “But I just didn't see it happening.”

"Yeah, except we couldn't see the road," Bob
said.

"Yeah, there's that." He looked at Bob
questioningly.

"Channel seventeen... On the C.B.?" he
asked.

Mike nodded.

"Well, the thing is, there was some pretty
regular talk earlier. Garbled, but regular. And it stopped, but,
well... The last one's we heard about on seventeen were those nut
jobs back in Watertown," Bob said.

"Couldn't be them, all this way, could it?"
Mike asked.

"I wouldn't think so, unless, well, unless they
were traveling," he said.

"No," Mike said.

"Yeah, I don't think so either. But channel
seventeen, hell, it could be. Probably only skip. But, I thought I
should tell you," Bob finished. He looked miserable.

"I think, just to be safe, I'll listen in hard
on seventeen tomorrow while I'm driving." Mike said.

"My thoughts exactly," Bob said.

~Kate's journal~

I haven't written in three days. So much has
happened. A man attacked me, tried to rape me. I didn't even know
him, and I don't know what motivated him. I don't understand it at
all.

Arlene shot and killed him. That was horrible
also. So many people were affected by it, not just me, and I can't
see when it will ever really be over for any of us. Can anyone
forget something like that? Not hardly, so I guess it will always
be with me. But I didn't bury it. I have Patty, I have Mike, I have
love to help me understand. Some women don't.

Today Jessica died. She had been feeling down,
ill, but she insisted she was fine. Maybe the shock of the way the
world is now, what happened to me even, but we won't know exactly
what happened or made it happen. Sandy said she arrested, her heart
stopped. We buried her beside the highway, somewhere here in West
Virginia. Not far behind us.

Things we know:

We have a place to go, we're going to get
there.

The days are still about 26 hours long. Maybe
that is the new day.

The destruction is widespread and really bad.
We ran into a lake the other day where there was not supposed to be
one. We could easily tell that as the road ran right into the
water.

There's a lot of skip on the C.B. That tells us
there are other people scattered around the world, at least the
United States. So we're not alone at all. Were just
scattered.

Lilly is a big one for prayer. I'm not usually,
but the last few days I've been praying God will get us through all
of this.

~Nell's journal~

I have found myself more and more grateful for
the people we have over the last couple of days. One of ours was
nearly killed, and worse. She was only saved because another person
happened along. She had to kill the man to stop him.

How does someone, that man, get so far away
from reason?

We lost another of us today. She had a heart
attack. I've seen more bad stuff in the last few weeks than I've
seen in my whole life.

But I have Molly. We have hopes and dreams. I
guess after what happened to Kate, so out of the blue, I worry
something could happen to Molly. I know that's unreasonable. I know
it is. Even so, I find myself praying to God much more often than I
used to.

~Arlene's journal~

I had to kill someone. It's really all that I
can think of. Some low life made me kill him. And I wonder if he
has any idea at all of the damage he has left behind.

~The Army~

Donita sat watching the children
as they lay dead before her. Soon the power would come over them
and they would rise from death into the world of the
Walkers,
her world.

The boy sat waiting beside her. They had
finished the woman, and then the old woman. Neither would rise
again.

The boy was a good soldier. The two before her,
twin girls by the look, or so close to twins as for it not to
matter, should be good choices too. Strong, intact. Their bodies
would turn faster, as the boy's was already doing. Her own body had
taken much longer. Much longer before the rotting flesh had begun
to change to something else, something not exactly living tissue,
but that was nourished by dead tissue. That new flesh was stronger,
more resilient, self healing... Probably other things that she had
not yet figured out.

Her eyes told her when the horse left. To
where, she did not know. But she also knew it was not her
concern.

The boy's flesh already seemed to have made
some of that change. He was completely devoted to her.
Unquestioning. That is what she wanted. The girls would be also.
She knew that instinctively. She could smell it on them. They were
meant to leave that world for this world. It was a gift, really. It
was so unnecessary to have to go through all the pleading and
begging in the leaving of that life, she thought. This one was so
much better. This one did not have an absolute end. This one could
be forever. And forever could not even be measured.

Fight & Flight

~ April 1st~

The rain stopped in the early morning, just
before dawn, and Janet had everyone fed before the sun was fully
up. The trucks were loaded and on the highway just as the first
hint of gray began to creep into the sky and the southern horizon
began to glow.

The sun rose high and bright into a clear sky.
Steam rose off the highway and the trees as the morning warmed up.
The roadway was in better shape, except a few areas where rushing
water had cut through the pavement, and they made good time. They
found themselves running closer to the Appalachians, through the
foothills, and although they saw no road signs, Bob was sure they
had crossed over into Kentucky.

Just past midday, they stopped at a truck stop
complex that featured a diner, a huge garage and a gas pump area. A
cluster of other stores, mom and pops and fast food outlets filled
out the complex.

While they filled the trucks, Mike found a
handful of maps in the cashier's booth between the islands, all
Kentucky.

Everybody lunched on smoked meat and packs of
peanuts, washed down with vitamin water or sports drinks. The
stores were pretty well picked over by what looked to be foraging
animals. A few were little better than flattened, splintered
wrecks.

Behind the gas pumps, a raw red crater had
opened in the earth, and it looked to Mike to be well over fifty
feet deep. As he peered over the edge down into the hole, he saw,
sitting at the bottom, a nearly brand new Ford pickup truck. It
didn't appear to have a scratch on. Things were strange like that
sometimes. He pointed it out to Bob and Ronnie. The three of them
had a little laugh about it, and then they went to work opening up
the fill pipe to the underground gas tank.

~

They got back on the road and found their first
sign just before dark. Mike pulled off into the national forest
preserve ten miles further down the road. They stopped within a
quarter mile of the highway and set up camp for the
night.