The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (112 page)

Mike looked up. “That would do it, Bob.
I think you have it. Do you think she would? Sandy, I
mean?”

“
Yep. I know she would,
because she just said something to me today about Lilly, Janet,
Patty and Candace. I'm missing one. Another of the new ones whose
name is not yet in my head. But, Sandy talked to me about none of
them being able to work the harvest. She doesn't want to take any
chances when it comes to babies, so that pretty much solves your
problem. If she doesn't want them to work the fields, it only goes
to make sense she would not want them going back into the outside
world,” He raised his eyebrows.

“
Yeah. I can see that. They
can't argue with that,” Ronnie agreed.

“
They are nearly as big as
Lilly is,” Tom added. “How could they think of being in a truck
bouncing over those roads? And who knows what else could happen? I
don't think it'll be a walk in the park,” Tom finished.

“
No. From the radio, I
think it's safe to say it's not going to be a walk in the park.”
Mike cleared his throat. “But, I thought about Molly and Nellie.
Molly is good with a gun... as good as Candace is. Nellie is a
close second, and she knows a lot about first aid because she's
been learning from Sandy. Might cause Candace and Patty to worry
less too.”

“
Leave soon, I would
suppose?” Bob asked.

“
Pretty much have to. It's
already cooler. How far away can winter be? And everything's
changed. We have no idea how bad it will be,” Mike said.

“
Or even if it will be,”
Tom added.

“
There's that too,” Bob
agreed. “Well, let's get together tonight. We got people coming in
tomorrow. It will be crazy. And the more that come, the more that
might want a say in things too. We can do it tonight, set it for
two weeks from now. That will give everybody time to square things
away if they need to, those that are going I mean. And those of us
that are staying, to get you lists of what we would like you to try
to get.”

“
Two weeks is quick,” Tom
said. “I should go with you guys. I just don't know what Lilly
would think.”

“
Or Bob,”
Bob said. “If
you
go, this bridge project, harvesting - and about a
dozen other things I can think of off the top of my head - ain't
gonna happen or get finished.”

“
I asked Bob about stealing
you, Tom,” Ronnie said. “You would be an asset. But I think Bob is
right. Like we said the other night, there are things you and Bob
do here that are too important. There are going to be too many of
us gone as it is, and who knows how many coming in.”

“
And, I wouldn't say it to
Candace or Patty - Lilly or Jan either for that matter - but it's
liable to be pretty bad out there. We may not make it back. At
least not all of us, and we can't even say when we will be back. We
thought about it, but I thought I would rather have you and Bob
here. We have others, but the four of us...”

“
Been through the fire,”
Ronnie finished.

“
Pretty much,” Mike
agreed.

“
Lilly will be relieved.
Bob and I have cut out a lot of work to finish before snow flies,”
Tom seemed embarrassed

“
But,” Ronnie added, “Next
time, you go and I stay.”

That lightened the mood, and they all
laughed.

“
I'm
going up,” Bob said. “I'll tell Jan to let them know.
After dinner?”

Mike nodded. “You'll talk to
Sandy?”

“
Yep.” He looked at Mike.
“Don't tell Candace it was me,” he laughed, but his eyes were
serious.

“
No,” Mike
agreed.

“
We're gonna hear it
anyway,” Ronnie said morosely. “They're gonna know.”

“
Probably. But they'll be
here safe and not there,” Mike said.

The silence held for a moment as Bob
left to head back up to the cave. Mike looked back down the valley
toward the barns. “So... show me where this bridge is going to
go.”

Tom took off his hat, beat it against
his leg and then wiped the sweat from his brow. He pointed back
toward the barns. “Well, you can see where the stream narrows up
there and stays that way. It's deeper. Bob and I were
thinking...”

New York

Donita and the Thousands

The factory covered a few acres. Donita
stood outside and looked it over. Its walls were concrete, poured
in the last century, soft and crumbling. It had been abandoned long
before the world changed. It was not then, or now, a place where
people were likely to come. It was a good place for her army to
wait. Wait, because Donita, and those who were closest to her, were
going back into the south.

She had thought she was done with the
south. She had thought New York was her destination - and it was -
but it was not her destination now. Now she had to travel back into
the south lands, gather more together, bring them to New York. And
from New York... she asked herself. But there was no answer. None
at all.

Hers would wait here, and she would go.
She would take those she wished to have with her. The rest would
fend for themselves. A few strong ones would lead. She knew who
those strong ones were. Jersey, the boroughs of New York, the
suburbs - the dead and dying were everywhere. These who stayed
would not starve, and her army would grow while she was
gone.

South. South again. Then New York, and
then something else. Maybe west. Maybe there was someplace west
that she should be. She didn't know. The voice inside called, and
she answered. It was not a call that she could hear, but a call
that she felt, the voice that had more and more inserted itself
into her life, this life... this new life.

Donita turned and looked at the city
behind her. The skyscrapers in Manhattan, those that still stood -
many had fallen - still stood against the sky. From here it looked
as though New York was just fine, that it still belonged to the
living. That misconception would only draw more of the living to
the city, and more living only meant more dead.

She turned back to the factory. The big
man stood nearby. The boy and the twin, a few others who had begun
to follow her at all times were also close by. They knew. They knew
just as most in the factory knew. The strong ones, the ones that
would lead, were gathering together even now, waiting only for her
to acknowledge them. She walked into the factory, her familiars
behind her.

Hazleton Pennsylvania : Bear and
Beth

Bear stood smoking, leaned back against
the garage door and watched as an eagle lifted into the sky back
toward the interstate. He reminded himself that, although they were
a symbol of power, they were carrion eaters, and it was a good sign
that they were here. If there was enough for the eagles to eat,
then the dead were probably not gathered somewhere close by. From
their observance, down in the city of Hazleton the same could not
be said to be true.

They had driven down from the highway
the day before, but it had not been an easy drive. There had been
running water and a set of railroad tracks to cross too. The water
had not been deep, but more than once Bear had not been sure they
would make it through. The thing that saved them was the fact that
the trees had been cut back from the junk yard area, leaving a
wide, open area and a dirt and gravel road that wound around the
entire yard. Once they had reached that road, it had not been hard
to follow it around to the Hazleton side and find their way
in.

The junk yard itself was fenced, high
chain link fences, and the dead prowled them day and night. There
had been a set of gates at the front of the junk yard that opened
onto the Hazleton side, that had been broken down by a wrecker at
some point, and they had let themselves in through those missing
gates.

The wrecker sat a hundred yards inside
the junk yard, one of the gates wrapped around the front of the
wrecker, the other gate laying bent and crumpled off to one side.
Bear wondered about the story, what had happened with the wrecker
and the gates, but he had no answer, and the people involved were
long gone.

There had been no fixing the gates, but
they had driven an old Greyhound across the entrance, jump started
the wrecker and used it to push the bus up tight to the fence. That
had stopped the dead from easily gaining access to the junk
yard.

The yard covered hundreds of acres, and
they had walked the fence line in the rain to make sure that it was
intact. Bear and Beth both had agreed on that. They wanted no more
surprises. They had come back to find the bus pulled across the
opening and a few dozens steel barrels burning around the long
steel garage building that stood to one side. Old wood and used
motor oil fueled the fires.

The buildings had been closed up tight.
No dead had been inside them. It had taken Mac and Billy more than
twenty minutes to break into the garage building while Bear and
Beth had been walking the fence line. Iris, Cammy and Winston kept
the kids occupied and began to get a meal ready, moving inside the
building as soon as Mac and Billy cleared it.

Something about the rain kept the dead
inside, holed up somewhere in the junk yard. A short time later,
with the rain still falling, they had begun to walk the rows
driving them out. There had been a few dozen inside the yard,
trapped now, and they had routed them out before the rain had
stopped.

Clearing the dead had not been a big
deal. With the others inside the closed garage, Bear and Beth
walked the rows, slamming baseball bats they had found in the
garage against the cars as they walked by. The dead were driven out
into the rows that ran between the cars where Billy and Mac shot
them down.

These were not the same breed of Zombie
they had dealt with in New York. These were slow: slow thinking,
slow moving. Everything about them said slow. After the ones in the
city, these seemed easy. They had cleared them out, thrown their
bodies from the top of the bus out into the road that lead away
into Hazleton, and then stood in the rain, exhausted, looking
around at the huge yard.

That had been the day before, Bear
thought now. He had managed six hours of sleep, and he was amazed
at how much better he felt. He finished his cigarette and tossed it
out onto the pavement, stared at it for a moment and then walked
over and crushed it out with his boot heel. He turned and walked
back into the garage area.

Billy had himself a project he was
working on in one of the garage stalls, to replace the truck he had
been driving. He and Mac had pulled in a huge four wheel drive
truck. The cab was wrecked, the bed gone - probably sold. The two
of them had stripped off the rest of the truck body during the day.
Bear had lent a hand when asked, but mechanical work was not his
strong suit. Not so with Billy, apparently, who was unafraid of
anything mechanical. He became a different person once he had a
wrench in his hand.

Bear had awakened from his sleep to
find that the three trucks besides Billy's all had bigger tires and
rims. Billy and Mac had scouted the junk yard and found them. It
had been a little tough doing the work without power, but it was
not an impossibility. From there, they had moved on to stripping
out the truck that Billy had spotted while they had been searching
for tires.

Bear had driven his truck around the
roads in the junk yard, surprised at how different it felt. It sat
much higher. He could see farther away. He could see the advantage
of that when it came to high grass in the fields or at the side of
the roads. He got out and looked it over. He could see where Billy
had use a hammer to remodel his front fenders where the tires would
have rubbed against them. He was amazed at the difference, and
couldn't wait to try the truck out on the road.

He had come back feeling a little
useless but glad to not have to worry so much about just living for
a few moments. He wandered through the garage now to watch the work
on the truck frame.

A frame, motor, axles and suspension is
what it was. There was nothing else left, and Billy and Mac were
gone, somewhere off in the junk yard searching out parts. A wiring
harness was coiled up on top of the motor, and another snaked its
way back along the frame. Bear shook his head. It amazed him that
Billy and Mac could understand this work. He would have been
lost.

He walked back through the garage to
the area where the children, Cammy and Iris were. He heard the
children giggling before he got there. They were in what had been
an office area. Iris looked up and smiled as he walked in. Cammy
was still perturbed at him for something. He wasn't sure what, but
she looked up too. She looked away just as quickly, and then back
at Iris.

“
Could you watch these guys
for a while,” she asked Iris.

“
Go... Go,” Iris said.
Cammy rose from where she had been sitting and faced Bear. He met
her gaze levelly.

“
Let's go for a walk,”
Cammy said.

She didn't wait for Bear to answer, but
headed back out into the garage area. Bear's eyes slipped up to
Iris, but she looked away. He turned and walked out behind Cammy
into the garage.