America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (4 page)

A few weeks ago she had been... Been? But it
did no good, she could not force the memory to come. A name came,
Donita. She had been Donita; she knew that, but that was all she
knew. And a name was not everything she had been. She had been
something else... something more, but she could not get to whatever
it was. Something that did not wander through the woods. Something
that was not driven by all consuming passions that she could not
understand.

She turned her eyes up to the
moon. It pulled at her. Something in it spoke directly to something
inside of her., something deep, something she believed had always
been there, but there had never been a need to address it because
it lived under the surface, out of her line of thought, sight...
below her emotions. Now it didn't. Now it ruled everything. It was
all she could do not to rush from the trees, find the smell that
tempted her and consume it. Eat it completely. Leave nothing at
all.
Oh to do it... To do it...

Her eyes snapped back from the
moon, and a low whine escaped her throat. The calf, sated, had
wandered away from her mother. Behind her, the boy made a strangled
noise in his throat. She turned, gnashed her teeth and growled. The
thin, skeletal boy fell back, hungry but frightened. She could feel
his fear. It fed her, tempted her to taste him, but he was no food
for her. She knew that much. It was a sort of instinct... drive...
something inside of her. The boy was not her food. The boy was not
her sustenance. He was one of her own. Corrupted. And corrupted
flesh could not feed and sustain itself on corrupted flesh. Fresh
flesh was needed,
live
flesh. Fresh
human
flesh, she corrected.

The boy trembled and grinned sickly, his one
good eye rolling in his head. The other eye was a ruined mass of
gray pulp sagging from the socket. A great flap of skin below that
socket had curled and dried, hanging from the cheek. He felt at it
now, carefully, with his shrunken fingers. She hissed at him and
his hands fell away. She turned her attention back to the wandering
calf that was nosing ever closer to the edge of the
trees.

She desired human flesh. She needed it, but it
didn't absolutely have to be that way.

Two nights ago it had been a rabbit. The night
before that she and the boy had shared a rat. The night before that
they had come upon the old woman. She thought about the old woman
as the calf wandered ever closer to the line of trees.

The old woman had been good. They had brought
her back here and her bones lay here still, in the weeds at the
edge of the clearing behind her. She turned and gazed back past the
boy into their makeshift campsite, searching for the what was left
of the old woman, finding her bones where they lay at the edge of
the clearing they had made. She turned back to the field, watching
the calf as she remembered the old woman...

~The old woman in the ditch~

They had come across the old woman
at near morning. Near morning was the best she could do. Time was
not a real concern to her anymore. The concept held no meaning. She
understood
near morning
because the sickness, the sickness that began to
send the searing pain through her body, had started. The boy had
already been whining low in his throat for an hour in pain. It was
like that whenever the night began to end, when the morning was on
the way, soon to be.

She remembered sunlight. Her old self had
needed sunlight just as she now needed darkness, absence of light.
That had been Donita as well, but a different Donita.

They had been crossing the rock filled ditch to
get to an old house on the other side. The basement of the house
was what she had in mind. Quiet, private, darkness. She had been
scrambling down the steep, sandy side when the scent had found her
eyes and froze her brain.

That is the way she thought of
it.
Frozen
.
Everything... everything besides that smell of flesh was frozen
out. The boy's whining, the coming dawn, the constant hunger in her
belly, the moon silvery and bright so far up in the night sky,
nothing got by that desire. Urge. Drive. It consumed her, and it
had then.

It had touched her eyes and then seeped into
her brain; then it had spread out into her body. Her legs had
stopped moving and she had nearly tumbled all the way to the bottom
of the rock strewn ditch before she had caught herself, her head
already twisted in the direction of the smell. Her ears pricked,
her tongue licking at her peeled, dead lips.

She could smell the old woman.
Knew that she
was
an old woman. It was in the smell. Somehow it was in the
smell. And her flesh. And her fear. The boy had slammed into her
then, still whining, and nearly knocked her to the
ground.

She had come up from that near fall in a
crouch, and the boy had slammed into her once more, so she had
grabbed him to steady him. He had thought she meant to kill him and
had pulled away, but a second later he had caught the scent and
they had both gone tearing down the ditch.

~The Old Woman~

The old woman had heard them coming. She had
begun to whine herself, replacing the boy's whining which had
turned to a low growl. The panic had built in her as she heard them
coming. Her heart pounded, leapt, slammed against her ribs,
bringing pain with it. The pain rebounded and shot down into her
broken leg, the leg that she had broken the day before trying to
scramble down into this ditch to reach the house across what was
left of the highway so she would have a safe place to stay. The
pain slammed into her leg, and she cried aloud involuntarily. A
split second later, the female slammed into her.

She had been on her belly. The
pain was less that way. When the female hit her, she drove her over
onto her back. A second after that, she was ripping at her flesh,
biting, feeding and she could not fight her. She was too strong,
too.....
animal
strong. And then the boy hit her hard, pouncing on her chest,
driving the air from her lungs, and before she could even react,
catch her breath back, he was biting at her throat.

She felt the pulse of blood as he bit into her
jugular, and it sprayed across his face. She felt it go, felt her
consciousness drop by half, her eyelids flutter, flutter, flutter
and then close completely. And the biting was far away, and then it
was gone.

~The Feasting~

The boy had her throat, but Donita had been
biting her way into her chest. She had felt her heart beating, and
she had been gnawing against her ribs when she felt it stop. They
had both calmed then, loosening the grips they had on her, and
settling down to feed.

~

She glanced now at the calf that was less than
three feet from them, its huge moon eyes staring curiously at them.
The calf did not know death, had not seen it, she thought. It knew
its mother's tit, the sweet grass of the spring field, the warmth
of the sun and nothing else. It edged a little closer.

~

She had killed the old woman. She had no use
for her at all. They had eaten so much of her flesh, that she was
useless to them. Couldn't sit up all the way. The boy had taken one
arm off at the shoulder and carried it away like a
prize.

Donita had eaten so much that she had vomited,
but that had only forced her back to feeding until she was once
again filled. She had looked around the ditch and spied the rock.
The old woman had come back already, and she was trying to raise
herself from the ground, trying to raise herself and walk once
more. She had picked the rock up from the ditch. A big rock, but
she was powerful, and she had smashed the old woman's skull in as
she had tried to bite at her. They had dragged her into the woods a
little farther down the road, this place where they still
were.

~

She turned again to the calf. The calf was not
what she wanted, but the calf would have to do for now. She let her
hand fall upon the boys thigh and they both sprang at the
calf.

The calf did not have the time to react. It did
not even bawl. One second it was standing, and the next it was on
its side, Donita's teeth clamped tightly across its throat. A
second after that, it was sliding across the dew wet grass and into
the woods, one wild eye rolling and reflecting the silver of the
waning moon, as Donita and the boy dragged her into the
trees.

Strangers And Friends

~ March 27
^th
~

Smoke from the many fires hung close to the
ground mixing with a heavy mist that had risen off the nearby river
and painting the fields white into the far treeline. As the sun
touched the edge of the horizon, soft red-gold light began to flood
into the world, reflecting off the ground mist, lighting it from
within

Mike could feel the heat on his face as he sat
drinking coffee with Kate, Tim, Ronnie and Patty. Bob and Janet sat
close by. The rest of the camp was up and waiting with
them.

Janet had organized some helpers, and a
breakfast that included cold meat from the evening meal, oatmeal
cooked in a huge pot she had salvaged from somewhere, and something
that was a cross between a biscuit and a pancake. She was cooking
on a large rectangular cast iron grill that Mike and Ronnie had
taken from one of the fast food restaurants and set up for her. The
resulting thick pancakes, or thin biscuits, depending on your
viewpoint, could be used to make sandwiches of the cold meat or
drowned with honey or Maple syrup from one of the nearby stores.
Mike had tried it both ways and some of the oatmeal as well. He had
eaten two thick sandwiches. He couldn't remember any time in his
life where he had consistently eaten the way he did now. His body
just seemed to crave and use more calories than it ever
had.

As he looked around, he realized he wasn't the
only one. Everyone seemed to be able to put the food away, yet
everyone seemed to be thinning down, dropping the excess weight
they had once carried. He himself had noticed that the few extra
pounds he had once carried were gone. His stomach had not been as
flat as it was now since junior high school. Maybe not even then,
he admitted to himself. He sipped at his coffee and watched the sun
rise across the fields, burning the mist away as it
rose.

Jeff Simmons had called on the radio some
fifteen minutes earlier to let them know his party was on the way.
The whole camp was waiting, including Brian and Janelle. Even Tom,
Bob, Molly and Nell who had had their day all planned out were
hanging around, waiting for the newcomers to come into camp. It
seemed everyone had changed their plans to wait.

“
You waiting also?” Mike had asked
Brian as he wandered by him.

He nodded solemnly. “I want to see the new
kids.”

“
Might not be any new kids,” Mike
told him.

“
Oh,” Brian said. He looked
worried for a few seconds. “Nellie said there would.”

Nellie meant Janelle, his constant companion,
one year older. Looked like she was a God to him, because she knew
so many things that Brian didn't.

“
Well, if Nellie says so,” Mike
allowed.

Brian nodded. “She's really smart.”

“
She is. Most girls are,” Mike
said seriously.

“
All of us are,” Kate said leaning
in. She planted a kiss on his cheek, making Brian
giggle.

The Dog wandered by looking for
handouts. He seemed a little put out that he wasn't getting all the
handouts he felt he deserved. He stopped in his wandering, looked
towards the interstate, stiffened his posture, and gave a little
woof. He turned and looked at Mike, his lower lip pulled back
slightly from his bottom teeth, his head tilted at an angle as if
to ask,
Did you hear that?

Mike patted his leg. The Dog wagged his tail,
came over to Mike, allowed his hand to fall on his back and scratch
there, but kept his attention focused on the highway in the near
distance. Mike scratched him under the chin too, patted his head
and told him he was a good dog. He woofed once more and then sat
down, content to wait along with everyone else.

A few minutes later the sounds of the vehicles
came to Mike's ears as well. The Dog's ears were perked now, his
body tense with excitement.

“
Good dog,” Mike said and patted
his head once more. “Well,” he said to the others close by, “Looks
like our company is almost here.”

A half minute later, three Hummers came into
view running on the side of the interstate. Mike raised his radio
from his side. “That's you then, Jeff?”

The lead Hummer flashed its lights and then set
off on a diagonal across the field headed for the small complex of
buildings where Mike and the others waited.

“
It is, Mike,” Jeff answered. His
voice was loud and clear from the radio's small speaker, seeming to
jump out into the air.

~

The Hummers pulled up onto a broken section of
pavement that fronted what was left of the diner and shut down.
Bob, Ronnie, Patty and several others walked across to the Hummers
as they rolled to a stop.