The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (140 page)

He had hoped Beth would lead. She had
seemed the logical choice, but she had not taken it directly. It
was not a responsibility he was comfortable with. He guessed she
must feel the same. Beth was there, in the background, listening,
approving or disapproving silently, letting him know with her eyes
what she thought, what she would or wouldn't approve of.

“
That it?” Jamie asked from
beside him.

He smiled and shook his head. “No. But
who isn't thinking deep thoughts?” His smile faded a little. She
answered it with a serious look of her own.

“
Come, eat,” she said at
last. She took his hand and pulled him away toward the
others.

“
I have to talk to Beth,”
Billy told her. She let go of his hand immediately.

“
Beth...
It's always
Beth
, isn't it?” she asked.

“
Jamie,” Billy
started.

“
But it
is!”
Her eyes squirted tears, hot
and fast. “Why?”

“
Jamie... We crossed two
thousand miles together.”

“
I would have... I would
have, Billy.”

“
But you didn't... Why is
that, Jamie? Why didn't you? And when did you find us and start to
follow us, when? And what happened to Scotty?”

“
I'm not talking about
that, Billy. I'm just not,” Jamie told him. Her eyes were bloodshot
and red rimed. She turned her back on him.

“
Oh, for fucks sake!” Billy
threw his hands up in frustration and then forced them to his
sides.

She turned back to him, her jaw set in
a rigid line. “I didn't mean that,” she said, obviously meaning she
did mean it, but wished she hadn't said it. She turned her eyes
away. “Go on. It's okay.” She turned back to him, “Come back later
on?”

Like it never even happened, Billy told
himself. The new world order. He gathered his temper and thoughts.
“Just a few minutes, really. I only need to ask her about staying
or leaving,” Billy told her.

“
I'll wait eating... until
you come.” She turned and walked away without another word. Billy
sighed and then turned and walked off through the
campground.

Quiet conversations passed back and
forth between people as he walked, a few murmured greetings he
acknowledged with a smile to hide his worries, but it seemed as
though there were still too many other things on everyone’s minds,
and the conversations began to die down after a short
time.

The dark blue was rapidly bleeding from
the bowl of the sky, and the conversations beginning to break up as
the people who didn't have the first shift of the watch began to
drift away, crawling into their vehicles to sleep. Billy found Beth
and dropped to the ground beside her.

“
Bad?” Beth asked. She
smiled.

Billy shook his head.

“
I told you before. That
woman is fucking crazy.... That whole little group around her is
crazy... That's why they're with her... You need to stop fucking
her, Billy. I hate to put it like that, that starkly, but, I mean
that's what it is. That what keeps putting the hope in her heart. A
lot of this is your own fault.” She cleared her throat, pulled a
few grass blades from the ground and fed them into the
fire.

“
I know,” Billy said. His
voice was muffled, head hanging between his hands. He felt her hand
nudge his elbow. He looked up and it was outstretched. He looked
puzzled. He took her hand and she pulled him from the ground. They
began walking away, out past the circles of firelight.

“
You're my friend, Billy.
You're not the one for me. But you're fucking that woman because
you think it's the best you can do, like it's what there is for
you, what you're supposed to do, and that is bullshit, Billy.
Bullshit.”

“
Jesus, Beth.”

She laughed. “I got a mouth on me, I
know, but Billy, tell me I'm wrong... Tell me I got it all
wrong.”

“
I can't... I
can't.”

They walked as she talked, the softness
of her hand pulling him farther. Within seconds they were beyond
the circle of firelight and she stopped, her arms coming around him
as she kissed him softly, fully on his lips.

“
Beth,” he
breathed.

“
Just come with me... Stop
thinking, Billy,” she told him. Her mouth found his again and he
stopped thinking.

Her hands worked at his pants zipper
and he found his own hands had already solved that problem as he
pushed her jeans down past her knees. His mouth found the hard
plane of her stomach a second later, and her hand began to stroke
the hair of his head, pulling him closer as he planted little
kisses up across her breasts, teasing her nipples, and then back
down.

“
Don't you take this the
wrong way, Billy Jingo,” she breathed. “Don't you do it,” she
whispered as she pulled him down to the ground. “Come down here
with me...”

~

Jamie watched them walk from the
firelight into the darkness. Her heart sank with one huge jolt. She
had been tempted to chase after them, but she knew that Beth did
not want Billy in the way that she wanted him, needed him, so she
was sure that it was not for that reason they had walked away. She
did not know the reason though and it bothered her as she thought
about it. What other reason could there be? Did you walk off into
the darkness to discuss leaving this camp? Is that how it worked?
Really? She stood, arms folded and watched the stars do their slow
dance as her tears began to spill across her cheeks.

As the minutes passed she became more
convinced that Beth did want him, always had. That it was all some
sort of evil joke they had decided to play on her. On the wind she
heard a woman cry out, nearby a couple laughed softly. A sob caught
in her throat as she realized the truth. She tried to get her
emotions under control, but she failed. She stood, head bowed, one
hand across her eyes.

“
Jamie?”
A barely spoken
question.

She raised her eyes to see Winston
standing close to her.

“
Are you okay, Jamie?” he
asked in his halting old man's voice: A slight quiver mixed with a
raspy edge; a voice that seemed nearly used up.

She caught herself as fast as she
could. “Okay.... I'm okay.... Overtired,” she brushed at her eyes
and tried not to look directly at him. “I'll be fine..., A little
sleep,” she told him as she turned and walked away. She patted his
arm affectionately as she passed by him. A few moments later she
pulled the canvas flaps shut on the tent, tied them from the
inside, blew out the lantern and lay down on her sleeping bag. She
let the tears come full force, losing herself in them.

For a moment she told
herself that she had no one to blame, save herself. That Billy had
told her time and time again that he didn't feel the same for her
as she did for him, but she convinced herself just as quickly that
it couldn't be true.
Could
not
, because a man didn't sleep with a
woman he didn't love, did he? At least care for? Of course not. It
was stupid to think that he didn't care about her. Beth had done
this... Beth had taken him away.

Winston stood outside the tent looking
down at the small pile of belongings Jamie had placed outside
before she had pulled the canvas opening shut. He stood for just a
few moments wondering what it might mean for him, for all of them,
and then he walked away into the night.

~

The stars were hard diamond chips in
the sky as they lay close together in the grass. Billy sat up and
lit a cigarette. His heart was a slowing hammer in his chest. He
rolled his own cigarettes, everybody did it seemed. There was still
plenty of tobacco just lying around behind glass doors and in
locked cabinets. Funny how stress made you pick up the poisons
again. Gamblers did it, alcoholics did it. Smokers too, he guessed.
He wondered briefly how many people had quit smoking, to live, only
to be killed by what had happened, or the dead, or circumstances
from all the fall out. He laughed lightly.

“
What,” Beth
asked.

“
I was thinking millions of
people quit this shit to live... They're all dead and here we
are.”

“
Yeah, well, irony was
never lost on the arts... Better give me one of those too,” she
said.

“
This is bad shit, you
know. It'll kill you deader than a cockroach.” Billy told her.
Cockroaches had not fared well in the rising of the dead and so it
was joke among them if something wasn't doing well. The dead ate
cockroaches like they were popcorn. Bad time to be a
cockroach.

“
Damn, well I hadn't
intended to live forever, cowboy. Now give me one of them damn
things,” Beth told him.

Billy passed her his own and then lit
himself another.

“
My, God. There is nothing
that feels like that,” Beth said as she drew the smoke into her
lungs.

“
Reason it gets you,” Billy
agreed. “Hey... I guess we should at least decide to stay or go,”
he laughed a little.

She looked up at him. “I hate to make
decisions.”

“
Me too... We have to get
moving, I think,” Billy said.

“
Yeah... But not now. Let's
let things settle out a little more. Did you notice how things
weren't quite as bad the later half of our traveling?”

“
Yeah... How long... People
ask me every day.”

“
I don't
know... It's like the feelings along the way... It says stay, when
it says go, we'll go. I know how that might sound. I wouldn't say
it like that to anyone else but you, but I really
feel,
inside
I feel, that we should stay put right now,” Beth
said.

Billy nodded, “Then we
will.”

“
Hey,” she waited until
Billy looked at her. “Whore or good girl?”

Billy felt his eyes tear
up fast. “Dammit, Beth,
never
a whore,
never.
”

She curled into him. “That was my
fear... What was yours?”

“
What do you mean?” Billy
asked.

“
What was yours all those
nights when I looked at you and I could see you wanted me and if
you just asked one more time I would have said yes. Why didn't
you?”

He stared at her for a moment. “I
didn't know that. You said no, I took that as no. I didn't want to
mess up this thing we have. This friendship we have. I have never
had that with any woman, ever... I didn't want to lose that.” He
looked at her for a second longer. “Still don't want
to.”

A single tear slipped across her
cheek.

“
I didn't mean to make you
cry, Beth,” Billy told her in a near whisper.

“
Stupid,” She told him.
“It's for a good reason.” She buried her face in his chest. “You
are not the one, Billy Jingo, but I love you and I don't know if I
can ever feel that for another man or not, not that deep. Whatever
it is I don't want to lose it either.”

“
You won't,” Billy told
her.

She looped one arm across his chest and
pulled herself closer. “Better not.”

He pulled her close with one arm and
took a deep drag of his cigarette with his free hand. The stars
continued their slow journey across the blackness. He felt her
breathing change a few moments later and he held her as she
slept.

The Camp: Billy and Beth

Early June

Billy sat sipping coffee by the fire,
talking over traveling plans with Beth, when a truck dropped down
off the road and into the far end of the field. Conversation died
away as the two of them watched the truck coast to a stop. A few
more trucks left the field, passing the truck where it sat. Billy
rose to his feet, poured the dregs of his coffee into the fire and
looked down toward the truck.

Their trucks were the only trucks left
in the field when the driver's door of the truck opened.

“
Wonder what this is,”
Billy said aloud as Jamie and David walked up.

“
Here comes someone,” Beth
said as she straightened and turned toward a large man that had
stepped down from the truck and was walking slowly down through the
field. The man held a shotgun in one hand, pointing at the ground,
there if he needed it. He stopped in front of the people gathered
around the trucks.

“
I have never seen a man as
big as you that walked that easy,” a young, dark haired girl
leaning against the hood of one of the trucks told him. The young
guy at the front of the hood turned and looked at her.

“
Easy, Iris,” he told her.
He turned back to the big man. “Mac,” he said. He nodded at the
young woman that had spoken. “Iris.” He turned and pointed at each
of the people standing there in turn.

“
Beth, Billy, Winston,
David. There are a couple of kids sleeping in the back of the
Suburban. You're pulling in?”

The man shrugged. “Bear,” he said.
“We're heading out of the city... Saw you and stopped. The lady in
the truck is Cammy.” He raised one hand, turned and waved it at the
truck. A few seconds later, the truck dropped into drive and drove
down the field. The woman stopped the truck, opened the door and
stepped out.