The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (14 page)

A small cheer went up inside the truck
as Tom made the road, turned right, and headed slowly up the big
hill towards outer Washington Street and its miles of car
lots.

~

By the time the sun stood straight
overhead, eight hours of the day had passed by, and a small caravan
of six vehicles were snaking their way back through the debris and
devastation, making their way back to the cave.

Although a wide section of the old
asphalt roadway had toppled into the river, a large area still
remained. They parked the vehicles in under the small overhang of
cliffs above the cave opening. The cliffs extended a little more
than thirty feet beyond the caves then dropped down towards the
ground, leveled out and disappeared into a small wooded area
populated with scraggly, undernourished trees. On the back side of
that wooded area was a huge parking lot that ran up and behind the
cave. It had once provided parking for the downtown area of
Watertown.

Everyone who had stayed behind wandered
over from some project they had been working on in front of the
cave to admire the vehicles. Three new Chevy Suburbans and three
new pickup trucks. The pickups were mismatched, one Ford and two
Chevy trucks. The Chevy trucks were different models, one a full
size pickup, the other a smaller one, all the trucks were four
wheel drive. Bob wore a heavy apron stained with blood and was
carrying a large butcher’s knife as he walked over.

“
Deer,” he explained as
everyone gaped at the blood stained apron. “Wandered right down the
road. Had to be about ten of them. I got one and Sandy got one.
Fresh steaks tonight, and that isn’t all.” He pointed towards Lilly
and Nell where they stood over what looked to be a make shift
fireplace of some sort.

It was built up from the asphalt with
three layers of thick stone that formed a base. From there the back
and sides rose to support a huge wire rack that had been
appropriated from somewhere. A good bed of coals glowed under the
rack and several ears of corn roasted above them on the
rack

“
You guys have been busy,”
Tom said.

“
Never mind that,” Patty
said, “where did you find corn?”

Nell laughed. “There were cases of the
stuff in the stock room of the market. Won’t be good for much
longer, but it is now.”

“
We took a wagon, one of
those little kid wagons,” Lilly said. She looked around. “We filled
it up. It’s still cold in there… It might last a few more
days.”

A small, red child sized wagon, still
loaded with overflowing boxes of corn, sat off to one side. It made
Candace smile when she saw it.

“
I built the oversize
Barbecue,” Bob said. “I remembered that there was a little rib
place down off the square. Wrong time of year to be cooking out of
doors,” He looked up at the sky and smiled, “Well, used to be… But,
I remembered that place, and I remembered that they had always
cooked outside on a huge grill all summer long. So I went and took
the grill. I took a few other things too,” He held up a large pair
of tongs that had been shoved in a side pocket. He re-pocketed the
tongs. “So… the electronics are working again?” He looked
embarrassed at the attention and relieved to be able to hand the
conversation off to someone else.

“
Might have been before,”
Mike started. “Just didn’t think to check. But they’re sure working
now. The hard part is finding vehicles that aren’t all smashed to
hell. All of these have their war wounds. But it’s just scrapes and
dents, nothing serious.”

Bob nodded and then went back to
cutting up the venison and piling it onto two huge platters. One
contained much smaller pieces.

The smaller pieces were long and thin.
Janet and Sandy were stringing them over a second smokey fire that
had been built just past the stone grill that Bob had built. A
makeshift steel roof kept the smoke and heat close to the ground
and the meat that hung on the racks. Tom walked up to admire the
work.

“
It’s all from the Barbecue
place,” Bob admitted. “I’m just using it a little differently, to
smoke the meat instead of cook it.”

“
You know how to do that?”
Candace asked. She seemed impressed.

“
Oh yeah,” Janet told her.
“Bob taught me. He always makes his own jerky, cures his own hams.
Knows his roots and herbs as well.” Bob seemed even more
embarrassed than he had been a few moments before.

“
It’s stuff The Nation
taught when I was a child… to preserve our heritage. We pass it on
to the next generation. The legends say the people will come back
to the Earth Mother. There will come a time when the people will
need the old knowledge again.” He grew serious. “Guess that’s now,”
he finished. He began to place the thick roasts of Venison onto the
grill rack beside the roasting ears of corn.

The group spent the afternoon into the
early evening enjoying each other's company, eating and filling
each other in on the details of their day. The sun sailed smoothly
across the sky, sinking into the Northwest after about fifteen
hours of sunlight.

For the first time in several nights
the stars came out, glowing brightly in the cloudless sky. The moon
seemed to be in the wrong area of the sky and almost totally
eclipsed by the Earth's shadow.

“
Think that was too long?”
Patty asked Tom.

“
We’ll have to wait and see
when the sun comes up,” Tom told her. “But I’d be willing to bet
it’s back closer to what it used to be. And we don’t know what
normal will be now. Maybe longer days… maybe shorter days,” he
finished.

“
Yeah,” Ronnie agreed. “It
would seem a little too good to be true if it could stop, reverse,
and come right back to something close to a twenty-four hour
day.”

“
Yeah. That probably isn’t
going to happen,” Bob agreed.

“
We’ll just have to see
where it levels out,” Patty threw in.

Candace nodded, looked over at Mike,
took his hand and smiled. “This was a pretty good day,” she said.
“We have our own little community here. It’s nice.”

“
I was thinking that also,”
Mike said. He squeezed her hand lightly and pulled her close. The
day had cooled off, and the night had cooled off even more after
the sun had dropped from the sky. It reminded everyone that,
despite the weird weather, it was still late winter; spring was a
month or more away. Janet and Sandy kept the smokey fires burning
under the drying meat, joining in the conversation when they had
the time or opportunity. Lilly and Tom were involved in some sort
of heavy conversation, while Bob, Ronnie and Patty were talking
about hunting, herbs, folk remedies and what kinds of structures
they would like to build for a home. Candace laid her head against
Mike's shoulder and looked up at him. “I’m tired, man of mine.”
Mike smiled at her.

“
I think I have to put my
woman to bed,” Mike said to Patty who sat closest to him. Ronnie
laughed and Patty smiled at him. Tim sat on the other side of
Ronnie, his eyes heavy lidded. Everyone said their
good-nights.

As Candace and Mike got to their feet,
Tim trailed along behind them, following them into the cave,
leaving the rest of the group to their quiet conversations. The
stars shone above. The sky was clear and inky black.

Janet ~ March 18th

Today has certainly been a
better day for all of us. Mike, Candace, Tom and some others went
looking for vehicles today hoping they would find that the ones
with electronic brains would be working. Electronic
something
. Brains, I
guess. I have no real idea. Give me a database and I could tell you
something, but I don’t understand anything at all about engines,
except they’re working again.

The rest of us stayed back and worked
here for the day. We made a few trips around the area. Nell and
Lilly went to the Market on State Street and came back with ears of
corn that were still good. Bobby and I and Sandy went a little ways
down this road to where an old outside restaurant Bob knew about
was. They cooked or grilled food outside in the summer. In the
winter I guess they cooked inside.

We took all the outside grill pieces to
build a grill outside the cave. A big one too. It took a lot of
work, several trips back and forth. We found some wheeled carts,
probably used to move stuff around inside the restaurant, and
wheeled all the stuff we found back down to the cave with them. We
got everything back and Bobby set it up.

Sandy and I collected loose rock from
the cliffs and river banks to build the back and the sides to hold
the racks. The smoking racks were easy to build. The large roof we
used had hung over the whole outside grill back at the restaurant.
There were long, thin metal rods to hold it up. Sandy and I worked
on that as Bob worked on the sides and back of the
grill.

We found extra long metal rods and used
those to hang the meat on. Here we were dragging all that stuff
around, and Bob talking about going hunting so we could have
something to cook on the grill besides corn, when down the road we
hear some light tap-click tap-click, and the deer showed up just as
if the Gods had sent them to us. They saw us about the same time we
saw them, and Bobby and Sandy opened up.

I don’t think people hunted
Deer much in the old days with hand guns, but it was what they had,
well
to hand.
They
each got one.

About then the others came back with
six new trucks as our old ones dropped into the river during the
storms. We spent several hours talking and eating, just enjoying
each other's company, and then almost everyone turned
in.

Sandy and I watched the drying racks. I
took the first watch anyway, so Sandy’s catching a little sleep as
I write this.

We are, several of us, planning to
leave once the spring is here and go on our way. We haven’t yet
gotten around to talking about how we’ll do that, or where we will
go, only that we will go.

Bobby and I are very enthusiastic about
Sandy. She is all for going back to the Earth, building the people
up again. Where there are three of us, there has to be more. I
guess that’s the same, nearly, as where there’s a will, there’s a
way. Our people have always had the will. Now we have the way. I
truly believe we’ll collect more people as we go.

The sky is starry bright. The world
seems to be settling down. I’m sorry that all of this had to
happen, but I’m happy about where my life is now.

Patty ~ March 18th

It's late. I took this notebook outside
to write by starlight; it's that bright. Janet Dove has the watch,
I have the next anyway so I figured why bother to try to sleep.
It's something I've learned about myself; if I can't get to sleep
in the first few minutes, I may as well get back up. Janet came
over and talked for a few minutes, brought me some roasted meat.
I've never had anything like that. It was so good. I should be
happy. I should be contented. I'm not. I'm not, and I realized
today that I can't be, and I don't know what I can even do about
it. I can't even write it here. What if someone read it?

The stars are so bright. It's cold, but
not like it should be. I am so messed up. I will only say... No, I
can't say that. I was going to say I never suspected this, thought
about this, but I did. I just never dealt with it. Now I have to,
and I don't know how. I guess this is my sounding board, maybe even
my conscience right now, and the part of me that is trying to be
unselfish says leave it alone. I will, but for how long?

CHAPTER FIVE

City of Dead

~March 19th~

Sunrise once again found Mike seated on
the small pile of bricks at the cave entrance watching the sky.
Candace sat quietly beside him. They both sipped at their coffee as
the new sun colored the sky a light pink on the far horizon behind
them.

A low fog hung over the river. There
was a distinct chill in the air, and both of them were wearing
jackets.

“
So, about twenty-nine
hours sunrise to sunrise is pretty good, or at least better than
we’ve seen in a while,” Mike said softly. He sipped at his
coffee.

“
Might be the new norm,”
Candace elaborated.

Mike nodded. “Could be,” he
agreed.

The rising sun finally touched the
cliffs across the river and turned the fog into a glowing
yellow-red mist which began to drift apart with the early sun's
heat. They sat in silence, leaning against one another, and watched
the colors paint the cliffs.

Off to their left, Janet and Sandy
watched the fire and sipped at their own coffee, talking quietly
with each other. Closer by the river Patty stood watching the road
and bridges that serviced the North Side. She had given a half wave
as Candace and Mike had come from the cave. Candace had waved back;
Mike had nodded.

The smoke from the fires rose slowly
into the air. The smell of the smoked meat was on the air and most
likely drifting for miles. Several times during the night whines,
growls, scuffling and the clicking of nails on asphalt had come
from the darkness. As the sun rose further, it outlined a small,
mixed breed dog lying about thirty feet from the fire, nose on
paws, looking forlornly at the fire.