The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (164 page)

“
I don't want to kill
anyone today,” Pearl said.

“
Oh, you don't want to kill
anyone today. La dee dah. Big fucking deal,” The third kid said,
imitating her accent. His eyes were blood shot. His face was
lacerated, probably from the ambush. He kept rubbing at his cheek,
Pearl saw.

Pearl sighed, flicked her safety off
and aimed it at the kid that had spoken. “I think you're right,
mate. It can't matter if I shoot you... Just another big fucking
deal done with,” Pearl said.

“
Hey,“ the lead kid said,
“You came into our town.”

“
Must have missed the sign
then,” Pearl said.

“
Pretty funny,” the kid
responded. “Look... It's our city. We ain't the only ones here. You
shoot there will be more here in seconds. Then everybody
dies.”

“
If you have to make it
that way, then it has to be that way,” Pearl said. “I can see a way
out for all of us,” she shrugged. “You have to want it
though.”

The one in the back, the one with the
red eyes, swiped at his cheek and his eyes reflexively slipped shut
for a split second from the pain. Pearl shot the lead kid in that
split second. He flipped backwards like a rag doll. Billy shot the
second guy a split second later. The third kid opened his eyes and
blinked hard.

“
Still ready to die?” Pearl
asked. “Just give me a reason, any reason.” The kid released the
rifle he held and it dropped from his hands, clattering loudly as
it hit the pavement.

“
Can't shoot me I'm
unarmed...” He spun and looked off toward the opposite end of River
road. He turned back to Billy and Pearl. “Can't shoot me... I ain't
armed... Can't...” Billy shot him.

“
Christ,” Pearl said. “What
method of warfare is that?”

“
The shoot first and ask
questions later method,” Billy said sadly, as he herded her toward
the truck where it sat at the edge of the roadway. “Been down this
road before. It is what it is.”

A second later the truck roared to life
and Billy spun the wheel hard heading west down River road and the
outskirts of the city.

Pearl bounced around the cab and
smacked her head hard enough on the windshield to star the glass
when the truck left the pavement at better than fifty miles an hour
and hit an area of hard packed dirt from a wash out. She finally
got her balance, swept one hand across her forehead, looked at the
blood and cursed lightly. She fixed her eyes on the road behind
them. Three trucks had rounded the curve in River road that lead to
the cave and were running hard to catch them.

“
Company, love.” Pearl told
him as she settled against the seat back and tried to open the old
sliding window. “Jammed,” she muttered.

“
Fuck me,” Billy said. He
pushed the pedal to the floor, there was nothing else for it. The
glass in the back window starred a second later as Pearl rammed the
rifle stock into it. Another hit and the glass fell out into the
pickup bed area. She raised the rifle and began to fire back at the
trucks. A second later a hole punched through the windshield to
Billy's left. He mashed the pedal harder into the floorboard
feeling the truck skate across the washed out sections of the road
as the truck flew beside the river. Far ahead two trucks were
pulled nose to nose across the road. There was no way past them
without going into the river. A bridge that would take them to the
north side was coming up fast. Cars appeared to clog it, spaced
purposely to close it off.

“
Billy,” Pearl called. “We
have to get north, the other side of this river. If they squeeze us
south we'll be in the damn downtown and they'll have us,” Pearl
yelled above the scream of the engine. “I know that
area!”

“
There's cars up there,”
Billy yelled back. “On the bridge! Blocking it!”

“
There are bullets down
here and they are gaining on us,” Pearl yelled back.

“
Better sit down,” Billy
yelled.

“
Just do it, Billy!” She
continued to fire out the back window.

Billy turned the wheel hard right and
the truck lurched hard to the left, threatening to roll over as the
center of gravity changed. It nearly rolled before it hit the edge
of the pavement, broke over, and then became airborne. It came
within ten feet of a bridge abutment and skirted the front of a
wrecked mini van as it came down on the bridge surface. It hit the
front fender of a small car and sent it spinning.

The truck landed in the middle of the
span, Billy punched the gas and they flew toward the other end of
the span and a small hill that climbed away from it on the other
side. A police cruiser, placed purposely to block the road, went
spinning as they clipped one corner of the rear end, and then they
plunged off the other side of the bridge so smoothly that Billy
couldn't believe they had actually landed.

“
Nearly broke my neck
slamming it into the ceiling,” Pearl yelled. She fell silent.
“I...” She started, but an explosion from the bridge stopped her
words.

Billy locked up the brakes and the
trucked slewed around, finally stopping in a cloud of blue rubber
smoke and a low squall as the tires hopped across the pavement.
They stared back at the bridge from the first rise of the small
hill.

The opposite end of the bridge was a
mass of flames climbing into the darkening sky. “They hit that
abutment,” Billy screamed. “Has to be.” He watched as something
exploded on that end of the bridge and a fireball lifted into the
sky. Black smoke was billowing into the air.

“
Get it going and keep it
floored, Billy. Keep it floored.” She stayed where she was, staring
out the back window, knees driven into the seat top. Billy floored
the gas, the truck lurched to the left and then snapped back to the
road, turning in a half circle and once more pointing away from the
bridge. They watched the jumbled pavement fly by as they climbed
the short hill.

“
This is taking us north,”
Billy said. He had no sooner said it than the truck hit the slight
rise and flew across it.

'Back roads!” Pearl yelled.

“
I don't know the back
roads,” Billy said. “But we have to get off this main road... Hide
somewhere.”

She was trying her best to hang on as
the truck bounced and tilted. One hand clutching the seat back held
her in a somewhat stable position as she watched the fallen down
houses slip by. “Billy, it looks like all streets, but there are
back roads farther out, Billy. I remember... Farms, back roads...
Bad shape even then, so you may have to look hard, but you must
find them.” She managed to get turned completely around and sat
down holding the dash to stay steady. “They must have hit the van
too, or each other. Whatever it was, I don't think they will feel
like coming after us for a bit.”

Billy said nothing. Pearl went back to
watching the road.

“
Billy... Take the next
road that crosses, and let us start looking for a place to hide for
the night.”

Billy slowed the truck and took the
next right, east. Pearl watched the road as the overgrown fields
slipped by. “Pull into that big place on the right. If we can't get
in by the building, we can park alongside and that should hide us
from the road...”

Billy drove them to the leaning
building, a farm machinery business the fallen sign proclaimed, and
continued down the length of the building into the tall weeds.
Billy saw no dead as he pulled deeply into the overgrown brush at
the side of the building so he shut it down. The silence held for a
few moments as Billy checked Pearl's head over. There was a shallow
cut just above the hairline. He taped it closed after cleaning it
with some alcohol swabs from their first aid kit.

“
What now,” Billy asked. He
tried to look outside into the gloom; he saw nothing but the
clouded moon far above them.

“
Come here,” Pearl said.
She pulled him down to the seat and a second later she was lying
beside him. He pulled her closer.

“
We need sleep, Billy,”
Pearl said quietly. “Regardless of what has happened, we need sleep
to be sharp.”

“
I can't sleep, Pearl. I'm
too keyed up.” He pulled her closer, inhaled her scent, tried to
fold her into him. She stroked the back of his head, her fingers
found his neck and massaged lightly.

“
I don't want to sleep,
Pearl,” Billy protested.

“
Let it happen, Billy. Let
it happen.” She stretched out her legs, angled them across to the
drivers side floorboard, and leaned back into the door, he shifted
forward, his head on her breast. The last thing she remembered was
smoothing the hair out of his eyes and then she slipped
away.

Watertown New York

Bear and Beth

Bear crept quietly along the tree line
following Beth.

They had nearly stopped and gone back
an hour before when a huge explosion had rocked the quiet
afternoon. Flames high in the sky ahead of them. They had watched
as a fireball had climbed into the late afternoon sky. The flames
fell off, below tree level, but they had watched greasy, black
smoke continue to rise into the sky until the sun set and they
could no longer see it. Even so they could smell hot metal, and the
roast pork smell they had smelled far too often that meant someone
had been burned alive in the explosion and fire they had seen. The
odors were heavy on the air and they had wondered to each other in
whispers if the explosion had come from the south side of the
river, even the cave they had been heading to when things had
turned bad. They were close enough now that they could see the
flames once more, still burning, a quarter mile or more away from
where they were, and clearly not on this side of the
river.

As the darkness settled in more fully
they stopped and waited for the moon to come up. As they huddled in
the darkness, backs pressed against the side of a building they
could both hear noises in the night that probably meant the dead
were out and looking for them. Bear thought it ironic that the
things to be afraid of in the night were the dead, not the living.
It was like all the horror stories that he had read as a kid had
been true after all. He had just eased away from the wall to check
the path they had used to find their way to this building when he
caught a blur in the blackness of the trees in front of them. They
were both ready, and when two dead burst from the tree line
directly toward them they opened up.

The short burst took them both out, but
Bear was sure it also alerted any other dead or living close by
that they were there. A few minutes later they were moving. The
moon was barley up, but it was too risky to stay put. A light snow
was beginning to fall, covering the ground in white.

They reached the River road and crossed
it to the steep bank of the river. Bear met Beth's eyes and held
them.

“
We both go,” Beth
whispered.

Bear nodded, took a quick look around
the deserted roadway and then slipped over the cliff edge following
a path that lead down to the river.

Pearl had told them that when the
earthquakes had hit the base had shut down and sealed up the small
underground city immediately. The air ducts, wide rock tunnels that
lead into the heart of the project, the two lane wide tunnel that
had been bored into the solid rock and had served as the only
public entrance to the underground city, and dozens of lesser known
entrances had been sealed.

The way in was the same way she had
made her way out, the series of air ducts. The ducts led away from
the city towards a small mountain-peak about a mile from the city,
but they also lead to the river and various other places. They only
needed to find their way to it.

Pearl had told her story: It had been
in the first hours of the apocalypse that had destroyed most of the
world's infrastructure, governments and military might, and there
had been a serious lack of moral among the soldiers, including the
ones that had rescued her from the street instead of leaving her
there to die after she had been injured and then attacked. They had
only been making their way back to the base to lock down, but they
had jumped into the fight, rescued her and bought her back with
them. They had abandoned the vehicle and made their way into the
tunnels the same way she had eventually made her way
out.

She had missed all of that. She had
come around, her head wound dressed, several hours later. Stretched
out on a cot in what looked to be an army barracks. There were a
few soldiers that filled her in on what had happened to
her.

Speaking to the council about it had
bought it back and she had remembered even more of it as she had
told them. They told her what was going on out in the world. She
had likewise learned about V2765. Everyone in the barracks had been
exposed to it. Every soldier had been equipped with small silver
canisters of the stuff and encouraged to use them, both for
personal inoculation and for others. It had been issued to all
them, and they had used it on her. They were also familiar with
what they called Rex. Another agent that counteracted the first.
Few had seen it, but all believed it existed. She had asked no
questions, but she had been unaware that there were questions to
ask.