The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (173 page)

“
Think so?” Pearl asked.
She looked up at the sunlight playing through the holes in the roof
far above, and then back down at Weston: The shadows were deepening
already. She looked back down at Weston. He sighed, his eyes
flickered, but he said nothing. A few seconds later he was pulling
ragged breaths once more.

“
The vial,” Pearl said.
“The canister is the one that can change us.”

“
Just a drop on him? How do
I do it?” Bear asked.

“
A drop will do, that is
how I saw them do it, but a microscopic amount is all that it
needs. It will work its way into him... Any dead that come into
contact with him... That is how it takes the others down. Contact.
They remain social as we are, it is designed to spread because of
that social need they have. With him it will most likely go in the
ground with him and die there, but it will also stop him coming
back.”

Bear stood, silent for a moment, then
twisted the top on the vial and tipped the bottle. They all watched
as the thick liquid came to the edge of the opening, built up and
then slipped over. A fat drop landed on Weston's face and then
smoothed, sinking into the skin of his face as they watched. In a
few seconds it was gone, nothing to show it had ever been there at
all.

“
Leave him to die?” Beth
asked.

“
No... We wait and see...
It's too important not to, we don't have to worry about the dead
here. It couldn't be a better place to wait,” Bear said.

Billy shook his head as he looked at
Pearl.

“
Yeah?“ she said as she
looked back up and met his eyes. “Something?”

“
Several somethings... I
love you... I have been worried sick. I wish I hadn't left you.”
Billy told her.

Beth looked away.

“
That cave got me too
complacent,” Pearl said. “Nearly got me killed. Doesn't matter now.
I love you too.” She pulled his arm and dragged him down to her
level. She wrapped her arms around him and let the tears come. Bear
and Beth walked quietly away to give them some privacy.

“
A few days then... See
what happens with Weston. Get our shit together... Some gear...
Maps... And then we'll lite out.” Bear spoke quietly as he leaned
back against the wall, dug his tobacco out, and began to roll a
cigarette. He handed it to Beth without being asked and rolled a
second one.

They stood silently, smoked, and
watched the sunlight play in the motes of swirling dust and
smoke.

November 10th

The Nation

Craige stepped back from the house and
Cindy wrapped her arms around him.

“
I like it,” she told
him.

“
I've never built anything
with my own hands before,” Craige said.

The house was at the end of the big
valley, where it swung back around to meet the El of the second
valley. It was built into the cliff face at the very apex of the
long valley and the notch in the steep sided hill that lead to the
second valley.

He and Cindy had worked on it for
nearly a month, starting with a small natural cave about forty feet
from the valley floor. A deep fissure had lead from there down
below ground level. No more than a foot wide in places, but up to
five or six feet wide in others places in the soft
limestone.

The limestone hadn't exactly been easy
to carve, but it hadn't been as hard as they had thought that it
might be. And while digging back to widen the fissure it had
suddenly opened up into a large domed cavern. The cavern was dry,
whatever water source had formed it, long since dried up and
gone.

Craige had helped bring the field
harvests in, and worked near the main power plant where a mill had
been set up to grind flour. The hardest part of that had been
shaping a rock to near perfect roundness and flatness to grind the
flour. In the end they had realized that simply running the two
surfaces together would both flatten them and conform them to each
other. A few days of running the stone surfaces together with water
had helped them to fit perfectly with one another.

From that project he had moved to the
sawmill project which was now up and running as well. All three
projects were powered by the water they had originally been dammed
to run the power plant. They had flooded a low rocky area in the
first valley. They had left a small stream that skirted the channel
they had made to deliver the water for the three plants. That
stream allowed them to regulate the amount of water that flowed
through the channel down to nearly nothing if they needed
to.

The snows of October had melted away
nearly the same day, and an Indian summer had come. For the last
half of this month the weather had been warm and Cindy had talked
Craige into a trip to the lake to bring fish, crabs and crayfish to
stock her pond. They had left and returned the same day with five
big chests full of live fish, crabs and crayfish. It had seemed to
be such a small amount as they dumped the chests into the pond,
which had spread from its original plan and finally stabilized at
just under ten acres. But they agreed it was a start, and the fish
could easily find their way back to the lake to winter. Hopefully
they would make their way back in the spring.

All of their spare time had been spent
on the house. The large domed area was converted into living space,
and a spiral staircase lead to the original small cave higher up
which afforded a fantastic view of the valley.

Chloe and Debbie had stopped by and
helped to clear a large area to use as gardens in the spring. Tom
and Lilly, who was already getting around and back to school
teaching; like she had never carried the blond haired, blue eyed
little boy that seemed constantly glued to her hip inside her own
body, had been over to help the last several days. Tom and Craige
wrestled one of the huge iron cook-stoves into the kitchen area,
while Lilly and Cindy entertained little Tom and worked at laying
out a flagstone pathway to the cave. Today they had
finished.

The bed, tables, chairs, fireplace
mantel, the desk on the top floor that Chloe and Debbie had helped
to build. It was all done. No more sleeping bags on the stone floor
of the third cave: As of tonight they would be sleeping in their
own bed. They were outside now looking at the house, standing on
the new flagstone walk.

“
I like it,” Cindy said, “I
really do.”

Craige pulled her to him, smiled and
kissed her.

“
I like it too, but I bet
we'll find a million more things to do as we go along,” he
said.

“
Oh yeah, like some way to
get running water up here. Electric this far out, but that's all
stuff for another day, week, year, I don't care. We have a place
that we can say is ours. A place to live and raise our children,”
Cindy told him.

Craige nodded and pulled her to him
once more. She twisted her head and looked up at him. “A place to
raise our children,” she said again.

“
Yeah, that'll be...” He
looked down at her. “No!” He said.

“
Yes,” she told him and
squeezed his hand.

“
How did it happen,” he
asked.

“
Well, you know,” she said
with a giggle, “the same way it happens for anyone.”

He laughed. “Well, I know that, I mean,
we were trying and nothing. It didn't happen right away, and Jessie
said it might take some time, and now bang! All at once.” He smiled
and then turned serious for the briefest of seconds. “I thought,
well, maybe something was wrong with me,” he admitted.

“
Nope, nothing is wrong
with either of us, but if you want we could practice some more.”
She hooked her arms around his head, pulled him down to her level
and kissed him. “I'm for that,” he said huskily. He picked her up
in his arms.

“
Craige, what are you
doing?” She asked.

“
Taking you home, Baby,” he
told her. He kissed her and then carried her through the open door,
caught the edge of the door with one foot and kicked it
closed.

~

Chloe rolled over onto one elbow and
let her hand rest on Debbie's stomach. Debbie traced the outline of
Chloe's breast with her index finger.

“
What?” She
asked.

“
I don't want to get
pregnant. Not now, not this year anyway. I think I want us to build
our house first, like Cindy and Craige did, or Brad and Jessie.”
She looked around at the stone walls of the cave. They were in the
mineral pool room. It was fairly safe, the middle of the day,
everyone was working. They had so little privacy in the cave that
they had to make time when they could.

“
Did you think that would
upset me?” Debbie asked.

“
I didn't know,” Chloe told
her. She allowed her fingers to run lightly over Debbie's stomach
and down one thigh. Then, just as lightly, she traced her way back
and then started all over again.

Debbie pushed Chloe back onto the rock
ledge which was warmed by the heat of the water. “I want you,” she
said. “All the rest? We'll work it out as it comes along, Chloe. If
you want a house we'll do that: I want something too. I want to be
able to touch you whenever I want to. I don't want to slip off like
this so we can have time together.” Her mouth closed over one
nipple and she gently teased it with her tongue.

“
Okay,” Chloe sighed.
“We'll start tomorrow.” Her own hands had started to explore
Debbie's inner thigh. Fingertips brushing lightly.

“
Whatever you want,” Debbie
told her.

“
For a house?” Chloe asked
as Debbie's mouth moved down across her stomach, leaving a trail of
kisses as it went.

“
That too,” Debbie
said.

~

“
God, Aim, I feel exactly
like one of those big old hogs that Bob keeps down in the barn. I
would never have believed that I could get any bigger and still be
able to move,” Candace said.

Amy ran one hand over her own
protruding stomach. It was big also, but Candace's was like a small
mountain. She lay on her side on the bed.

“
Maybe it's triplets,” Amy
said, half joking.

“
Come here, Aim,” Candace
said.

Amy leaned over and Candace swatted her
on one arm. “You're lucky I can't move or you'd get more,” she told
her.

Amy laughed.

“
Seriously, Aim, I'm
turning into another country here. Look at these boobs. I'm wearing
a D-cup now and it's tight. I've never been out of a B-cup,
sometimes an A-cup if I'm dieting,” she complained.

“
You'll lose the size,
Janna says. You'll be back to an A-cup after you're done nursing,”
she told her. How long does Jessie say?” Amy asked.

“
About a month, and thank
God. I couldn't do this much longer. Even thinking about another
month is hard. It seems like forever.”

“
I'm about a month and a
half, give or take,” Amy said.

“
Look how small Lilly is
already,” Candace said.

“
Tom is a moose. That was
all baby,” Amy said. “Just like you.”

“
You think?”

Amy nodded. “You'll see, it'll go after
you pop... But you truly are the Mother Ship right now,” she
teased.

“
Come here, Aim,” Candace
said.

“
Now, you don't get me that
easy twice,” Amy laughed.

“
Oooh, I'll get you, Aim,
I'll get you,” Candace told her. “Someday... When I can move.” They
both laughed.

~

Ronnie finished wiring the outdoor
sodium arc light, put the small rubber gasket and the cover on the
junction box and tightened the screws. “Ready,” he said.

Together he and Tom walked the pole
skyward and the base dropped into the hole they had made for it.
They put their backs into it and with a final shove it dropped
fully down into the hole and the pole was up.

The conduit enclosing the wire ran
straight down the pole and into the ground. Ronnie scraped dirt
away from the bottom of the pole, found the end of the conduit and
the wire, and with a few connectors and another waterproof junction
box, joined the pole and its light into the line that fed the other
pole lights.

They filled in the trench, leveled the
pole and packed dirt and stone into the hole to steady it. Time,
rain, frosts, would pack the earth fully and the pole would
stabilize on its own, but a good base was necessary to make sure it
stayed straight and level as it did.

They were down at the bend of the
stream where the second bridge was. This was the last light, at
least for now it was. They had several more and enough bulbs to
keep them working for many years, or, Ronnie thought, as Bob was
known to say, they should still be here when Jesus comes
home.

For the last two days they had put in
over thirty of the lights. Each pole was about thirty feet in
height, they sunk four feet of that height into the ground, so the
light sat about twenty-six feet from the ground. They had two
ladders capable of reaching that height to change out lights.
Ronnie had tried it twice, it was a breeze. Tom and Mike were not
so enthusiastic about climbing thirty feet into the air on a ladder
anchored against a swaying pole.