America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (8 page)

“
Did you get a room at the motel?”
Mike asked Jeff.

“
Jessica
and...
Lilly?”
He
asked looking at Lilly where she sat with Tom.

Mike nodded, as did Lilly and Tom. Lilly
smiled.

“
She took care of that today, so
we will be sleeping on real beds tonight, I guess.”

“
Oh, you'll love
it,” Mike said. “After the ground? Absolutely recommended. Best
night's sleep I've had
Well, I was just
thinking of another night,
but it's the
best night in awhile, that's for sure.”

“
What?” Kate asked.

“
Well, the night I was first with
you. Everything had happened, things looked so bad, and there you
were. It was my first good night's sleep since it all happened,”
Mike finished quietly.

“
Oh,” she said, “that's so nice.
It was like that for me as well. Just to know someone cared...
about me.”

“
It was like that for all of us, I
think,” Jeff said.

“
It was for me,” Ronnie
agreed.

“
Yeah,” Patty agreed, her eyes on
Kate.

“
This is such a changed world,”
Bob said. ”Since when have you sat around and had a conversation
that was this true or personal?”

“
I can't recall,” Arlene said,
“Probably, if I'm honest, never.”

“
Me either,” Tom said. He sat with
one arm around Lilly's shoulders.

“
I do now, with Tom, with others,
but I never did, not even with my close girlfriends,” Lilly
said.

“
That's what I mean. It's a
changed world, and I for one am glad for it.”

A few minutes later Tom and Lilly and Kate and
Mike got up to leave for the night's first post. They made their
goodbyes and left the others.

“
...Now, what about crops, and
what about domesticated animals? I mean, why can't we have our own
herds?” Jeff asked Bob as Mike and Kate were walking
away.

“
Well, I thought about that too,”
Bob began.

~Kate's journal~

I am in an actual room with privacy and a
candle for light. It's almost like the world is normal.

Mike and I did early posts and then came back
here and spent some alone time.

It was nice, and it was needed. Bob spoke more
in depth about his ideas than I've ever heard him speak before. I
almost said yes on the spot, but I want to talk it over with Mike,
and we still haven't done that either.

I've also grown really close to Patty, I
wouldn't like to be without her. But it's really Mike. I won't even
kid myself. He helps me to be me, a real part of me, that is the
only way I know to explain it. I love him. Maybe we made our child
tonight. Just maybe. I hope so.

We met some good people today. I don't know if
they will join up, so to speak, but I hope so, and I hope there
will be others.

Things we know: The days are about 26 hours
now, give or take a few minutes. That means the Earth is turning
slower, so we weigh more than we used to. I cant tell any
difference. But Tim, who pointed it out, swears that he
can.

Most animals survived, whereas most people did
not. The stupidity factor Mike calls it, and I agree. C.B. radios
are being used by a lot of people. We can hear more than we can
talk to. But Bob says with a bigger antenna we can both hear more
and talk more. I know there are still good people in the world
worth talking to, so maybe once we're settled, it will be worth the
bigger antenna.

~

I clicked on my MP3 player, chose
the play list I wanted, clicked it down to the bottom of my screen
and then clicked up Gimp and loaded the graphic I wanted to work
on. My mind wasn't on it though. I stared at the screen for
something like ten minutes before I gave up and closed down the
graphic, pushed away from the desk and listened to the song that
was currently playing - Solution Six, by somebody new that I had
never heard of - while I decided what it was I really wanted to be
doing.

The graphic was a small logo for one of my
clients. It was done, but like everything else I did, I would play
with it long past the time I needed to. It seemed like everything
in my life was like that. I was constantly fussing with it. It was
never really done, finished, complete. It wasn't life; it was me. I
could tell myself it was because I wasn't satisfied with my life,
that I felt it wasn't complete, but that did nothing at all to
solve the problem.

I could know, and did know, that
what I missed was a relationship. Sharing myself with more than
just the girl in the electronics section at Walmart where I bought
whatever computer supplies I needed. And what did that amount to? A
smiled,
Hello, how are you,
a quick, reserved, superficial
conversation,
Oh, the blank CD sleeves are
two aisles over.
Another superficial smile
and a thank you. Those were the types of relationships I
had.

Relationships? Did I really
consider those to be relationships? I did. After all, I knew her
name, Becky. Becky
N.
Sometimes I wondered what the N stood for. And sometimes I
even thought about a conversation that had nothing to do with
electronic needs.

Pathetic, I told myself. I must have had
better relationships than that. Oh, the pizza kid. I almost knew
his name... Johnny or Tommy something.

I needed relationships. I was missing life. It
was going by, and I was stuck watching it pass by the glass like a
lonely man riding the bus, watching the world slide by stop after
stop, day upon day.

Anyway, I knew all of that. I knew what
bothered me, drove me, and it was useless. It was useless because I
wasn't willing to do anything about it. I remember thinking, in
fact, that it would take something drastic to take me from the kind
of life I had built for myself and into the kind of life I really
wanted. And that was also part of the problem. I didn't know what
kind of life I did want. And I didn't want to invest any actual
thinking into it.

So there I was, staring at my monitor again,
watching the little red sound graphic jump up and down to the
music. A blues piece. Catchy, but not exactly uplifting. Still it
held my attention with its murky lyrics, but was probably dragging
me right into my own blues at the same time. Weren't blues supposed
to take away the blues? It never worked that way for me. It only
reinforced my own blues. I needed a real life, I remember
thinking.

The furnace kicked on, and a few
seconds later I felt the heat along with the slight metallic odor
that the new furnace had come with. The furnace guy who put it
in,
call me Rocky,
he'd said, had told me the smell would go away. So far it
hadn't. Maybe by next spring, I thought. In any case, it decided
me. I needed to get out of the house, go for a ride, do something,
anything but sit around and stare at my monitor.

It was cold, but the roads were clear. I
grabbed the keys to my car and headed out just that quickly. I
opened the door, and the cold air slapped me in the face. And just
that fast, that world was gone again, and I found myself sitting up
on the mattress in the slightly musty smelling Motel room. Cold air
slipped past my bare chest and I shivered involuntarily.

Kate finished closing the door and then
turned, slowly making her way to the bed in the nearly absolute
blackness, her night vision ruined by the bright moonlight and
fires outside.

“
A little to your left, Baby,” I
whispered.

“
I woke you up,” she whispered
back as she readjusted her path and found the bed, slipping across
the mattress on her hands and knees. I caught her and pulled her
into my arms.

“
Not you,” I answered.

“
I was trying to be quiet,” she
said as she snuggled down beside me, her cool flesh setting my own
on fire. “What was it?”

“
What?”

“
That woke you, Baby.” Her cool
hands slipped over my back and pulled me closer to her.

“
The old world... You... Nothing
at all,” I told her. My lips found hers and we stopped
talking.

All In

~ March 28~

Mike awoke before dawn. He lay quietly, feeling
the heat from Kate's body where it pressed up against his, and
thinking about what the future might be.

The first thing he had thought was that
whatever had happened to the world would be made right. That
somewhere there was someone still in charge, and eventually that
person would get everything back on track. The world would be fun
again. Television, phones, electricity, the Internet, the mortgage
on his house, all of it. That turned out to be a pipe dream. The
whole idea had dissipated quickly. Even so, when they had finally
started out, he had held out some hope, and they hadn't come far,
but Jeff and his people had, and it was the same everywhere. There
was no man sitting in an office somewhere waiting to get everything
back in shape, and if there was, he would have to be a complete
idiot, because he'd be waiting an awfully long time.

The dead woman Jeff had told him
about bothered him a great deal. He had remembered a day he had
gone out, after things had fallen apart. He had heard airplanes in
the night. In the morning, there was some sort of blue liquid they
had sprayed all over the city. He had wondered about that. Why?
What was it? And the bodies in the market... Had it been dogs? Had
it been dogs that had been...
eating
them
?
There was
no nice way to look at it, or put it.

If Jeff was crazy...
But he wasn't. He seemed as sane as any of them
did. No. He couldn't write it off to crazy or not crazy. He
obviously believed what he saw. He had to mark it down to... To
what? He asked himself. To...

Kate stirred and pressed closer to him, and
then settled back down. Gray light began to creep into the room. He
could see the outline of her body.

The movement, the light seeping into the room,
sent his thoughts along an entirely different line.

For the last two days he had found himself
thinking in an entirely new direction. All the old shit is gone,
and that's okay. He didn't care at all if he never saw electricity
again. In fact, he'd rather not have it, and even if there was a
way to fix it all, he didn't want to go back. He was positive, in
fact, that they couldn't go back, none of them, was positive he
wouldn't be able to live that way again, when less than a month ago
his entire life, his entire focus, was wrapped up in the old way.
Hadn't he been watching the countdown show for the end of the
world? Reality TV every night? The big party for the end of the
world? And really, that had simply been a joke.

Nobody, at least most people,
didn't believe the world was going anywhere. It was just another
thing to occupy the head. Even the terminology,
World Ending
, was bullshit. The
world did not end. We think so highly of ourselves that we believe
that the end of society means the end of the world, and I guess it
did for us...
some of us.
But
the end of the
world?
No. The world will go on and on
when we are nothing at all but dust upon the ground.

Now it really was gone, and not
only didn't he miss it, he didn't want it to come back. He didn't
want to chase across half of what had been the United States
looking for some semblance of the old world. His mind was at rest;
he was happy. He allowed one hand to stroke the length of Kate's
body.
Very
happy,
he decided. Kate stirred again. One of her own hands came down his
side, across his abdomen, searching.

"Hello," she said, finding what she wanted, "No
fair, you're awake."

"I was just admiring," he said. He felt himself
grow hard in her hand.

She turned towards him, planting little kisses
on his chest and stomach as her head disappeared below the
blankets.

~

Most of the camp was up and awake by the time
Kate and Mike came out, got some coffee and set down at one of the
tables.

"You two hungry?" Janet Dove asked.

"Starved," Mike said.

"Yeah," Kate agreed.

"How would you like your eggs?" she
asked.

"Oh, sunny side up," Mike said.

"Uh, eggs?" Kate asked. "Where did you get
eggs, Jan?"

"I must be slipping," Mike said, "I didn't even
realize what you said."

Janet smiled. "Tim and Annie. They were running
around yesterday, testing something on one of the new trucks, and
found a barn up the road. Most of it is standing. I know, I went
myself to look. There's a well, and deep I would guess, because
it's still got water. A little wind mill pumps the well. The water
runs down the troughs to the cows. No cows, but the chickens love
it. They moved in. Eggs everywhere." She took the lid off a
cardboard storage box full of packed straw and eggs.