The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (181 page)

“
Thanks, Honey,” he told
her.

“
Having a hard time letting
it go.” She said. It wasn't a question. His face told the story
plainly.

He looked over at her and smiled a
small, sad smile. “Not fooling you, I guess.”

“
Not much... I've been
there myself, Josh. You can't take blame that isn't yours. And you
can't take blame when there is none at all to take.,” she told
him.

He nodded. “I've told myself that more
than once, but it's not the way I'm built. I'm always responsible.
Someone has to be: If I hadn't wanted this project, Bob wouldn't
have been here. If he hadn't been here, he wouldn't be gone... He'd
still be alive.” He held up his hands to stop Shar's protests. “I
know, all wrong, I know,” he said. He placed his hands into his
lap, clasped them tightly together and then released them: Picked
up the coffee cup and drank deeply.

“
Well it
is,” Shar told him. “You could no more make that man go anywhere
than anyone else could. He was here because he wanted to do this.
This whole life we live here was his idea. His
ideal
, you could even
say. He missed none of it if he could help it, and he wouldn't have
missed this,” Shar said.

Josh nodded. “I know, and I'm not as
far into the self pity as it seems. I just can't see the sense in
it. And not just Bob dying, the rest of it. To think that some of
these people were going to try to take this away from him is crazy.
Makes me wonder if he knew it,” Josh said.

“
Mommy? Daddy,” Alicia said
from behind them.

Josh broke into a smile. “Come here,
Baby girl.” He picked her up and sat her on his lap. “Now what do
you want, eh?”

“
Some breakfast, and I
don't want no coffee,” she told him.

“
Yeah? Well how's pancakes
and syrup sound?” He asked. He stood from the ground, swinging
Alicia to one hip as he did.

“
I like pannycakes,” she
told him.

“
Pannycakes? Okay, come on
mommy,” Josh said as he offered his free hand and then pulled Shar
from the ground. “How about dad makes the breakfast this
morning?”

“
Do you know how to do it?”
Alicia asked.

Josh laughed and hugged her. He put his
other arm around Shar and the three of them headed for the
house.

The Valley

Mike and Ronnie

“
So he just wants a piece
of ass, but he can't say he wants a piece of ass, so he says he
loves her and fucks up everything,” Ronnie said.

“
That's about it,” Mike
agreed. “His words.” They were walking far behind the crowd of
people that were making their way to the third barn, a half mile
down the valley.

“
Kind of ironic... Bob
dies... Arlene dies... The baby dies... And the two that started it
all are just fine.” Ronnie said. He looked at Mike who had nodded.
“I wouldn't say that, or speak like I am to anyone
else.”

“
I know that,” Mike said.
“One of the things that I like about this relationship we have is
the zero bullshit factor. I don't speak straight to anyone else all
the time. Not even Candace... I hope that doesn't sound as bad as
it did to my ears when it left my lips, but whether it does or
doesn't it's the truth. I am as honest with her as I can be, but
some things I know to stay away from... She doesn't see it the
same, and she is the kind of woman that will do as she sees fit...
That might not always be what has to be done.”

Ronnie nodded. “She wanted them to
stay.”

“
She did,” Mike
agreed.

“
An impossibility... Does
anyone else know how deep it went? Steve? Sandy and Susan?” Ronnie
asked.

Mike shook his head. “You and me...
They haven't said anything to you since we talked to
them?”

“
Nothing... I don't trust
them, just the way it is,” Ronnie said.

“
Neither do I. They'll be
gone soon enough though.”

“
You downplayed their
involvement when we spoke to them... I don't truly believe they
will appreciate it.”

“
Me either, but the
alternative was laying it all out. Everything Bob told me... Their
plot can't have become common knowledge like David and Janna's
tryst did, or we would have heard it,” Mike said. “And that would
be the last thing we need. A division between all of us, and it
could have done just that.”

Ronnie nodded. “Think they will do it?
Go along with us, leave it all be?”

“
Yeah. The alternative was
made clear, and I will do it,” Mike said.

They walked along in silence for a few
minutes. They were nearly to the barn.

“
New doctor will be here
inside of a week... Traveling peddler will bring him... Rollie...
Trades all over what he calls the territories,” Mike
said.

“
Heard something about
that, and what's the other place... New place down south, Alabama
something... Island, Alabama Island.”

“
We'll be trading with them
through this man Rollie too,” Mike agreed.

Mike paused as they reached the barn.
“I have your support and friendship, Ronnie?”

“
Don't question it,” Ronnie
told him.

Mike nodded and moved into the barn.
The crowd split apart as he made his way to a cleared, raised
platform Tom had thrown together out of empty palettes. Candace,
Amy, and Steve Choi waited on one side, Josh and Lilly on the other
side. They had lost four members of the council in the last week.
They would be replaced today.

Mike held his hands high until the
crowd quieted. The early morning was cold, light snow fell outside
the doors. Most of the people had made it inside and the doors were
partially shut, it was already warming quickly in the large space
with so many people. A young woman whose name seemed perpetually to
leave his mind handed him a slip of paper and he opened it up and
looked at it. The silence settled in.

“
I've just been told,” he
held the note up and turned it back and forth so the crowd could
see it. “We are eighteen hundred and fifty-three souls today... And
there are still parties coming every day.” The crowd murmured, a
few cheered: They were accepting of the news, but it wasn't really
what they wanted to hear.

“
This is not going to be an
easy meeting. We have a lot of territory to cover.” The big doors
moved and Mike saw a few more work their way in. Josh and Shar,
Craige and Cindy, others he had seen, knew by face, but did not yet
know by name. He looked down at the pallets. You are just a tin god
standing on a stack of wood, he told himself. And he was. Maybe he
had thought he was something better than that for a while, but he
wasn't. He looked up and smiled.

“
You know, sometimes a
person in this position: Responsibility, leadership, can lose their
way if they are not careful. If they don't keep an eye on what
really matters, what's important.”He paused. “No one here has
allowed that to happen. We've suffered a loss. An enormous loss,
but we're intact. We're strong, united and we're moving
forward.”

The crowd erupted in cheers, and Mike
waited for it to subside before he began to speak again.

FOURTEEN

December
21
^st

New York: Central Park

Early morning

Donita

She had waited long enough, the time
was here. There were more than mere thousands behind her now, there
were more than a million loyal dead, awaiting commands. She did not
lead them all. There were other leaders scattered through the
millions, but they would all follow her. So far Harlem had held,
but that would change in the next few moments.

She and several thousand followers
began to move with purpose through the park to the opposite end
where the buses still blocked the way. There would be causalities.
Many would pass into permanent death, but they would take Harlem.
It was not the only stronghold the breathers had, but there were
very few left and none as strong as this one.

Her thoughts made her wonder once more
about those in the valley. The ones who did not seem strong at all,
yet whenever she thought about them there seemed to be something
she had missed. Something that still pulled at her. They were the
breather's strongest holdout. She had caught a scent in that valley
that had tried to pull her to it, but she had fought it. She knew
they were there: When this was finished she would take them. They
and whatever compelled her to be there were not part of what drove
her. They would have to wait. She could not understand what drove
her, how or why it did, anymore than she could understand why the
valley and her people pulled her. She had left it behind in her
thoughts, on her way to where her other senses had pulled
her.

This place, this time; but she had
caught a familiar scent on the air this early morning. Briefly, and
then it was gone, but there was no mistake, her senses were too
heightened for that, it had been that same scent she had first
caught from their valley. A scent that still had some sort of power
to pull at her, even in the midst of this war. And why was it here
now? What did it mean? She had no answers, yet it pulled at her
still. It mocked her as though she truly had missed something.
Something she would have to pay dearly for.

One of her followers to her left
stopped in mid stride and shook her head hard. She stopped herself
and within a split second chaos broke out in the surrounding dead.
The one who had stopped shook her head once more, took a step
forward, and then collapsed to the ground. Donita caught a scent on
the air. The same scent that had teased her for so long, but
something else with it, something indefinable. Something deeper
that whispered danger. Her eyes began to burn, and a split second
later as the burning stopped she found herself weakened to the
point that she stumbled a few steps before she caught
herself.

As she watched, all of her followers
began to succumb to whatever this was: More fell, stood once more,
only to fall again and move no more. Her eyes rose to the
destruction she knew lay beyond, on the opposite shore of the river
and the scent that drew her. She took a step in that direction, as
if she actually intended to go there and see what might be there,
but her legs trembled with the effort and she found herself
stopped, sagging against a building to keep herself upright. A few
seconds later and she lost the fight and found herself on the
ground crawling toward the river and whatever might be there.
Something in the river called her, forced her to regain her knees
and then her feet. She staggered onward as her army fell dead
around her.

New York: Harlem

Johnny Red watched the dead fall before
they could even get close to the buses that blockaded their way
into Harlem The machine gun he manned had yet to fire a single
shot. Dollar wandered over shortly after they had begun to fall and
told him to sit tight when they came. Now it looked like they
wouldn't be coming, at least not these dead. They had all fallen.
Some had struggled briefly, but most had not. Standing one second,
sprawled upon one another a second later. Johnny Red watched for a
few moments longer before he slung the Machine gun on his back and
stood along with dozens of others, staring out into the park from
atop the buses.

Dollar raised his voice to be heard
above the spontaneous cheers that went up. He had lugged one of the
huge rubber hoses up on top of one of the buses. He turned to the
crowd now. “There are more hoses! People! Get them hoses. Hose them
down good!”

Johnny Red had a hose of his own
nearby. The hoses were the first line of defense. A few minutes
before they had been about to start spraying the dead with the
gasoline: They had stopped when the dead had begun to fall on their
own. As he picked up his hose and dragged it through a gap in the
buses, the hose that Dollar was manning from atop one of the buses
began to spray.

It took virtually no time to completely
douse the dead with the gasoline. They moved sluggishly, twitched,
tried to rise and crawl away, only to collapse back to the ground.
Only once the hoses were dragged far back, were the Molotov
cocktails launched through the strangely quiet air. The dead went
up with a huge roar of fire, a pressure that caused ears to pop,
and a rush of hot air blew back into Harlem past the
buses.

Within minutes the park itself was
burning and the heat was already dangerously high behind the buses.
Johnny Red watched, frozen, as small streams of burning liquid
began to race across the roadway heading for the line of buses, but
even as he thought to panic it was too late. The flames found the
buses and caught. A minute later Johnny Red and dozens of other
people began running through the streets of Harlem, looking for
another way out. Behind them the tanker they had used to pump the
gasoline blew up. The explosion knocked Johnny Red from his feet,
and for a few seconds afterwards he lay amid the clutter of brick,
wood and glass and wondered if he was dead: If this was what it
felt like. A second after that one of those running by had grabbed
his arm and dragged him to his feet and he had got his legs working
again, running with the others as the greasy black ball of smoke
from the tanker rose high into the air over Harlem.