The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (153 page)

Thick, woody branches pushed their way
through the opening into the room. Craige used his hands to push
the brushy branches that intruded into the space back out, snapping
off some of them as he did. A few minutes of work cleared an area
that stretched up about fifteen feet, and was about three feet wide
at the bottom. He worked his way deeper into the space, pushing the
branches before him, the occasional snapping of larger branches
coming to those that waited.

Aha,” They heard him say a few minutes
later. They heard a grunt and a bush came backwards from the narrow
opening, showering dirt across the floor as it did. He poked his
head back around the door grinning. “Come see this, ladies,” he
said as he once more disappeared from sight.

Candace stepped forward. She hesitated,
peering into the narrow opening and suddenly a sheep popped its
head in at her.

“
Bahhhh,” the sheep
protested.

Candace's heart leapt into her throat
as Craige broke into laughter outside of the cave. “Jesus,” she
squeaked. A second later they were all laughing loudly looking at
sheep that was staring back at them, its own eyes wide and
frightened. The sheep popped its head back outside and Craige
appeared in the opening grinning and red faced.

“
You...” Amy said. She
shook her fist at him, but she was squirting tears of laughter from
her eyes.

“
The brave party of
explorers were killed and eaten by a herd of sheep,” Cindy managed.
That got them all going again.

“
Oh, Christ,” Lilly
managed, swiping at her eyes. She stepped up beside Candace and the
two of them stepped out into the light.

Candace caught her breath and tried to
slow her racing heart.

“
Jesus,” she said
again.

“
Scared me too, Candace.”
Amy agreed

“
Goddamn goat,” Lilly
said.

“
Goddamned sheep,” Cindy
corrected, and they all began to giggle as they made their way out
into the bright sunlight.

They looked at each other and burst
into laughter once again. Candace stepped out into the light
first.

“
Oh,” she said. “Come on,
girls. We're home.”

The other three lead by patty stepped
out into the small field above the cave. Behind them Craige pushed
the one inquisitive sheep away and began shoving the broken brush
and limbs he had removed back into the opening. “Unless we want a
cave full of goats and sheep,” he said when Cindy looked at
him.

They followed the stream that wound
through one edge of the field to where it fell away from the
mountain. The valley they had found earlier lay far below them,
winding away on the opposite side of the mountain.

From this vantage point it was easy to
see the other valley in its entirety. The herd of horses, the
larger herd of bison grazing further out.

The valley didn't turn as their own
did. This valley just widened out into a broad plain that rolled
away to the mountains in the distance. On one side the walls fell
away and they could see where their own second valley cut back into
this one.

This new valley was accessible from
their own valley. All that lay between was the rocky ridge. To the
right there was another low rock spine and then a pine woods that
marched away to the horizon. Neat orderly rows, Candace noticed.
Probably reforested land, but it had to be generations ago. The
trees were huge.

One of the big dogs came over and
wagged its tail. The female, Candace noticed. Her belly so large it
nearly touched the ground as she walked.

“
Come here, girl,” Candace
called. The dog trotted over and sniffed her. She wagged her tail
harder. Candace grabbed the fur on either side of her huge head and
gave her a good scratching. He tail wagged even harder. “Looks like
you and me are in the same boat,” she told the dog. She looked
around smiling. “And Lilly... And Aim... Hey! This dog should be
grounded just like we are,” she laughed. “Look at the size of
her!”

“
She looks about to pop,”
Lilly agreed. “But so do we, and we got a way to go
yet.”

Candace laughed. “True.” She looked
around. “Might as well take the easy way down,” she said as she
started for the trail that lead down to the cave.

They walked down the ledge and found
Janna and Beth leaning against the waist high stone wall that
fronted the ledge that looked out over the valley.”Candace,” Janna
said. “I thought you girls were inspecting the caves?” Her eyes
swept over the others to include them in the question.

“
Exploring, Janna. We were.
We found a way to the top of the mountain and also to the other
side.” She included Beth with a smile. “Should you even be up and
around?”

“
It's an arm,” Beth said as
if it really meant nothing more to her. She smiled and dropped the
serious tone from her voice. “I can not stand lying around, and
Bear thinks I should retire from life or something, it's crazy,
really.” She had edged back toward serious, but as she finished
they all burst into laughter.

“
Men,” Amy said. “Good
thing they don't have to have babies.”

Bonnie snorted laughter. “The human
race would be done right there,” she laughed.

“
We also found a small
water filled room. Warmed water,” Annie said.

“
It is going to become a
bath house I suspect,” Craige said. He seemed embarrassed to be
there as everyone turned and looked at him as though they had
completely forgotten he was there. “I... I think I'll go down and
see what the boys are doing,” he added red faced.

'We didn't mean you, Craige,” Cindy
added. Craige turned bright red, smiled harder and mumbled
something as he made his way to the path that lead down into the
valley.

“
Sorry, Cindy,” Amy
said.

“
Why do guys get so
embarrassed by stuff like that? Don't they hang out and talk about
us? Or make a joke now and then?” She asked.

“
They do... It's just
harder when they are caught in it,” she placed a hand to her mouth
to hold back a giggle.

Several others giggled too. Janna
looked serene as she always did.

“
Well,” Janna Adams said at
last. “That seems like a busy morning to me. I wish I had gone with
you I would have liked to see that.”

“
Oh, you'll see it, Janna.
You'll see it,” Lilly told her.

“
Yeah,” Amy added. “You'll
be going, Janna.”

~

By late afternoon nearly everybody had
found an excuse to go looking through the tunnels. It turned out to
be a short walk to the other large cave that overlooked the upper
meadow when you weren’t stopping along the way to check other
passages.

The hot pool was the biggest
attraction. Everyone had their own idea of what it had been used
for. The predominant theory was they were changing rooms of some
kind.

Bob, Tom and Tim had experimented with
a long stick shoved into the crack in the floor where the smoke
rose and the result was a small scrap of stick protruding from the
ceiling in the main cave where the smoke disappeared into the smoke
hole. The cracks probably went all the way to the top of the
mountain, Bob had ventured, but over centuries the cracks had
probably clogged up with sand and dirt, roots from plants, and
slowly became partially closed off. Another stick rammed back and
forth through the crack in the ceiling opened it back up fairly
quickly. The smoke began once again to exit from the top of the
mountain, no longer backing up into the cave.

Bob was excited by the idea of cutting
the hole wider and building a staircase to join the two levels
together. The floor thickness over the smoke hole was no more than
three feet he estimated. It wouldn’t take too much to open it
up.

When Bob came back down to the hot
springs to look it over he was told by Annie, who was affixing a
hand lettered sign to the wall, that the pool was out of service.
Behind her he heard giggling from inside. Bob retreated back down
the tunnel without a word, and Annie slipped back inside the
room

The inside was lit up by a half dozen
lanterns and the pool was full. Every woman in the nation was
there. Some in the water, some just soaking their feet. Even Beth
sat at the edge of the pool. Her arm in a sling, feet dangling in
the water, carrying on a conversation with Jessie Stone.

“
Who was it, Dear,” Janna
asked, as Annie slipped back inside through the covering of
blankets that had been fixed over the entrance. Annie peeled her
clothes off and slipped into the water. There was a stone ledge
very close under the waters' surface and she settled down onto it
sighing as she did.

“
Bob,” she told her. “Oh...
This is so good.”

Candace and Amy floated nearby with
Lilly, their bellies poking out of the water. Annie laid back into
the water and began to float on her own back. She looked down at
her own stomach. A little curve and nothing more, but it was more
noticeable already.

“
Makes me feel a hundred
pounds lighter,” Candace said.

“
It's the mineral water,
dear,” Janna Adams said.

Annie floated by still looking at her
stomach. “Can you see it?” she asked.

“
Janna laughed. “Yes, dear,
you can. A little, but it is there.”

Annie grinned ear to ear and relaxed
back into the water as she floated out into the pool.

~

The men stood in the tunnel way and
waited on the women. Most of them had just come back from
harvesting the wheat fields. They were dusty and sweaty. They had
used the combine attached to the harnesses, and even with only
partially trained oxen the field work was going very
fast.

There were four oxen Bob had been
training. There had been a few hitches, some oxen wanted to stop
and eat as they walked through the fields, but they were young, Bob
had pointed out: More training and by next year they would walk
through it like it was nothing.

The field had come down so quickly that
they had gone over to another field of standing mixed wheat, rye
and barley and done that one too. They mixed the two cuttings
together for a yield that was nearly all wheat. The two custom made
wagons were not much more than rolling frames cut from old trucks
and fitted with the axles. The front axle attached to a tongue that
the oxen could pull. That tongue also steered the front axle, so as
the oxen pulled the wagon naturally followed them.

The rear wheels were the second solid
axle from the big trucks and just went side to side. A huge rough
sided box on skids could be pulled up onto the frame by the oxen.
Pinned into place, and once filled, unpinned and pulled off the low
slung frame by the oxen and stored in the barn.

They had built six of the rough lumber
sided boxes. Four now resided in the barn, full to the tops. The
other two would be used to collect the hay for the mows after it
had dried for a few days.

They were all hot, tired and dusty, but
the news of the pool was too much to ignore. “Hot bath or cold dip
in the stream?” Bob had asked when they had finished.

“
The ladies are lucky they
beat us to it,” Bear had laughed.

Bear had also spent part of his
afternoon with Bob trying o figure out the smoke hole and where it
went to. Crawling around on the smoke black and dusty floor of the
cave above their own, and reaching in to the soot blackened smoke
hole itself had left them both filthy. They were both looking
forward to the hot bath.

Tom and Tim had come back from
exploring the other tunnels exits and were equally hot and grimy.
They had all been about to head down to the men's bathing area of
the stream when Bob had convinced them the women would be out soon
and they could get themselves in there. It hadn't taken much to
convince them. They all made small talk in the tunnel hallway now
as they waited.

“
You should build some
benches for out here, Tom.” Ronnie said.

Tom nodded and then laughed. “We didn't
even have this, this morning. It's funny how fast we just
incorporate something into what is the norm now.”

Mike laughed and nodded. “But really,”
he looked around. “At least three or four. This is like the doctors
waiting room.”

“
Have you seen the doctors
waiting room? Sandy, Susan, Steve?” Tim asked.

“
Yeah... Went past there
this morning. That's why I said it. It's crazy how if this weren’t
here all of a sudden, or the doctor wasn't, we could go right on
and be fine.”

Several heads nodded, but no one said
anything.

“
Surprised Jessie isn't
there,” Tom said at last.

“
She's leaving, I think,”
Bob said. “They’re talking about building that Fold they set out to
build.”

Mike sighed. “It's a name,” he
said.

Bob nodded. “It's what I said... There
is room here for both too... Bad time of year to start out for
something else.” He raised his eyes to Mike. The others were
silent. “Thought maybe to say something to you so you would say
something to her.” He seemed embarrassed.