The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (116 page)

“
I said I
don't want
you
to go.”

“
I know.
But you know I'm going. If it was you and Candace, you would go. I
know you would. Mike is my friend. It's that simple, and it's my
place as part of all of this... this
place.
Who else would go? Tom? Bob?
David maybe? One of the new guys that Mike doesn't even
know?”

“
You're making it like I
should feel guilty about this, like I'm being greedy... like I want
too much,” Patty said.

Ronnie reached over and pulled her
closer to him. “Stop it. It's not about anybody being right or
wrong. Guilt... no guilt. It's not about that.” He stroked her
hair. “Pats, it's going out because we have to. That's
all.”

“
You could get killed,”
Patty said quietly.

Ronnie sighed. “Okay. I can't say that
wouldn't happen. I can't. But I can say that I am not interested in
being dead. In fact, I have a very healthy interest in staying
alive. I intend to pursue that interest. Honey, I can't see the
future.”

“
I am just afraid,” Patty
said. Her voice choked, and she buried her head further into
Ronnie’s chest. Ronnie held her as she began to cry.

Hazleton: Bear

“
Hey,” Bear said. He knelt
down next to Winston where he lay on a cot. Cammy had found the cot
and set up in a small side office. He looked in his eyes. “What's
going on?”

Winston nodded. “I think it's just
something else, Bear. I know Cammy is worried, thinks it's my
heart, but I don't think so.”

Bear nodded. “What can I
do?”

“
Nothing, really. I think
it just has to run its course.” He shrugged.

“
Pain in your chest? ...
Arm?” Bear asked.

“
Arm aches. Pressure in my
chest. I got a bad ticker... I know it. I get that sometimes. I got
Nitro... plenty,” Winston said.

“
But you don't think it
will get worse?” Bear asked.

Winston lowered his voice. “It's a bad
ticker, Bear. Been bad before; been worse, better. I really think
it's going to be okay. I don't have that feeling of doom. I can't
explain it better than that. You get this feeling when it's really
bad. I don't have that. I think, truthfully, that it will be fine.
Maybe I overdid it a little the last few days. I'll be more
careful,” Winston finished.

“
We'll probably be here the
rest of today and tomorrow. Then we're thinking of pulling out...
if you think you feel up to it. So, rest. Let me know... but be
honest about it. Let me know how you feel,” Bear
shrugged.

Winston shrugged too. Bear stood. Cammy
stayed where she had been, seated on the end of the cot.

Beth

Beth walked along silently. Bear walked
beside her. He had come back after all and caught her as she was
coming down the ladder. He had waited as she made a quick trip to
the garage, and then they had walked slowly into the junk yard,
watching the rows of cars as they went. Bear told her what Iris had
said to him earlier.

“
Iris can be silly
sometimes. She gets an idea in her head and she runs with it,” Beth
said at last. “Hopefully it doesn't cause you problems.”

“
It can't cause me
problems,” Bear said. “I can't believe, though, that Iris would go
to Cammy.”

Beth shrugged. “Maybe,
maybe not. Either way it
can
cause you problems, and I hope it
doesn't.”

“
It
can't,” Bear said again. “Cammy and I had a talk today. Let me
rephrase that,
Cammy
talked to
me,
and I listened.”

Beth looked up at Bear.

“
Cammy
wanted me to know that she is not in love with me...
can't
love me. That was
it. But that's not all of it. People think that we are together,
and I haven't,
she hasn't,
corrected that. But the truth is that there is
nothing there. Hasn't been. She was with someone else when we met.
Long story, but she lost that person. I went through something bad
too... lost someone I loved, the same as most of us did. She wanted
me to know she's not ready to meet someone else. But we're not
together, so Iris can say what Iris wants to say. Doesn't matter...
Can't cause me problems.”

Beth took a sip from the pint and
passed it to Bear.

Bear sipped deeply. “Wow.” He handed
the bottle back, reached into his top pocket, pulled his pouch free
and rolled a cigarette. He motioned to the pouch and looked at
Beth.

“
Please,” Beth
said.

“
Shit will kill you,” Bear
warned.

“
Yeah, well,” Beth laughed
and looked around. “I'm pretty scared.”

“
Guess I feel the same. If
I didn't, I would have tossed this crap.” He rolled a second
cigarette and handed it to Beth. A second later he scratched a
match to life and lit both cigarettes. He blew gray-blue smoke into
the air. They walked in silence for a time.

“
Let's get to where we're
going and then sort this out,” Beth said. She looked over at
Bear.

“
Alright, that's fair,”
Bear agreed.

“
Yeah... No sweat,” she
added.

Bear nodded.

“
Yet,” Beth added with a
laugh. She took a sip from the bottle and then passed it back to
Bear.

Bear chuckled, took another deep pull
from the bottle, felt the fire roll down into his stomach and then
passed it back. “Yet,” he agreed.

September 15th: Evening

The Nation

Candace let her fingers trail along the
flat plane of Mike's stomach. “I had a flat stomach once,” she
said.

Mike shifted, and his own hand traced
the heavy swell of Candace's stomach “I'm pretty happy with the
remodeling job you had done.”

Candace laughed. “You are
a smart ass. I think you had quite a lot to do with this
remodeling
job.”

“
Hmm, I vaguely remember
it.”

Candace gave him a shot in the arm.
“Vaguely?”

“
I'm going to miss you when
we go tomorrow,” Mike said, suddenly serious.

Candace said nothing for a
second. “I could say,
then don't
go,
but that wouldn't make you stay; so I
don't want to talk about tomorrow morning. That's tomorrow. I'll
deal with it then. This is tonight. Tonight you're right here, so
am I.” She looked up at him. Her fingers went back to trailing
across his stomach.

~

“
And you tell Mike that if
you come back messed up, he's dead,” Patty said.

“
Mike is not responsible
for me,” Ronnie said.

“
Yes,
he is. I told him. He
knows. If he brings you back messed up, I'm going to kick his
ass.”

Ronnie laughed.

“
Oh, that's laughable? You
find the idea of me kicking Mike's ass laughable?”

“
No, I find the idea of
someone as pregnant as you are right now kicking anyone’s ass
funny.”

She punched him in the arm.

“
Ouch.
Son of gun.
..
Damn you punch hard, Babe,” Ronnie complained. He rubbed at
his arm.

“
Oh? But I thought you said
it was laughable?”

“
Okay... Okay... Christ.
Mike better watch out, I guess.”

“
Exactly. He better. Now...
you said something about spending time with me?”

“
Yes,” Ronnie
agreed.

“
Well, here I am,” Patty
said.

CHAPTER SEVEN

September 16th

The Old State Campgrounds
Revisited

The State Park sign was overgrown, sun
faded and leaning at the side of the road.

The four trucks sat idling just inside
the treeline of the old narrow road that lead down into the
campground. The driver's door of the second truck in line popped
open, and Beth, wearing military style fatigues and carrying a wire
stock machine pistol, walked up to the driver's side of the lead
truck and tapped on the glass.

Billy looked up from the map he was
reading. “Beth, Just checking out this map. I think this is right.”
His finger jabbed at a spot on the map that had been circled with
red ink. “This used to be a state park. It's early. I thought we
should stop, plan where we go next.”

“
Good a place as any, I
guess,” Beth said. She looked up, staring down along the gloomy
road and into the abandoned campground.

“
What?” Billy
asked.

Beth shook her head. “Nerves are on
edge, Billy. I just thought I heard something.”

She smiled and turned back to Billy
where he sat, map spread across his lap, the truck idling in
park.

“
But it doesn't feel right.
That's why I stopped here, didn't drive down in. Feels funny,”
Billy told her.

“
The location?”

Another truck door opened on the third
truck back and Bear strode toward the front. He left the door
hanging ajar. Halfway between the lead vehicle and his own he
lifted his arms up into the air and shrugged his shoulders. “What's
the deal?” He asked in a deep bass voice.

The window on the last truck rolled
down, the electric motor whining as it dropped. Mac stuck his head
out of the window. “What the fuck, Bear?” he asked.

Bear stopped and turned. He shrugged
his massive shoulders once more. “Something with Billy and Beth.”
He turned and began walking back to the lead truck once
more.

In The Park

The old state park appeared empty at
first glance, but the dead were there, hidden among the trees,
scenting the air with their eyes. The day was overcast. The late
afternoon sky was swollen with rain clouds that seemed ready to
burst at any minute, contributing to the gloom within the
trees.

The sounds of vehicles on the highway
had come to them, and they had faded further back into the dark of
the forest as the vehicles came closer, slowed and then turned down
onto the overgrown dirt road that lead into the old park
area.

The hive kept the road cleared. The
highway was one of a few in the area that was still in good shape
and brought the hive a near constant supply of the living. And a
constant supply of the living brought constant growth to the hive
as those that once lived became those newly risen to death in their
ranks.

Further, down the logging trails that
led away from the old state park area was a graveyard of vehicles
of all types. It was where they took them to dispose of them. It
kept the old park area open and gave no reason for alarm to any of
the travelers that stopped there.

One stepped from the trees now, tall,
thin. He walked with a slight limp, a leftover from the leg that
had at one time been entirely gone. His name had been Marcus in the
old life. In the world of the dead, he had no name, yet he was
still known, respected, followed. He walked down into a cleared
area just out of the tree line and scented the air.

With this new life came new abilities,
and old abilities used in new ways.

The respiratory system no longer
worked. The heart beat in a strange new way, circulating a new type
of blood throughout a body that had begun to change from the moment
that death's decay had begun to set in, some change in chemistry
that he did not pretend to understand on any level.

He could not draw breath to scent the
air. His eyes picked up the scents from the air, and the scents
painted a picture more complete than any of his old senses could
have given.

They told him several things now. The
vehicles were stopped a short distance from the entrance. He could
smell them, sense their feelings, although not precisely their
thoughts or words. He moved his head slightly and scented... ten...
maybe eleven... parked at the side of the road.

Something had sparked fear within them,
and it was running wild, building on the panic that seemed to be
always just under the surface of the living. Fear and Panic. Things
he no longer lived with, conditions that did not exist in this new
life.

The tale the scent told him was that
they may well move on. Something they had sensed with their limited
abilities had caused them concern. He cocked his head slightly. A
second later he moved forward and broke into an easy lope, first on
the dirt road, then into the trees angling for the highway slightly
behind where the scent told him the vehicles had stopped. The
others fell in behind him.

No words passed between them, but a
kind of telepathy existed. What one knew, the others could know.
And although they may not move without Marcus, they still knew,
still felt the things he did. They were not mindless idiots, but
loyal soldiers.

~

Beth lifted her eyes from the map just
as the first of the UN-dead broke from the trees behind the back of
the last truck.