The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (48 page)

Mike didn't know if she meant the rain
or what had happened. But they would both have to run their course,
and he believed they would.

As he was thinking, David and Arlene
walked over. Mike looked at her. Her eyes were swollen and her face
was too white, but it seemed composed nonetheless. “Arlene... I
want to thank you, Arlene. I...”

She let go of David's hand and reached
out and hugged Mike. Mike stopped talking, put his arms around her
and pulled her to him. She sat clumsily beside him, her head buried
in his shoulder. “I'm sorry,” she said, “but I should have gotten
there sooner.”

“
Nonsense,” Mike told her,
“I don't even want to think about what would have happened without
you,” Mike told her.

“
I had to,” she
said.

“
Damn right,” Mike said,
“You had no choice, but, it's going to be all right, Arlene. It's
going to be all right.”

She pulled her head away from his chest
and looked at him. “You think?” she asked.

“
I think,” he
said.

David and Arlene left and found their
way over to the table where Bob and Ronnie sat discussing the map
and where Bob intended that they should all end up.

Mike sat quietly, sipping coffee,
watching as Arlene became caught up in that conversation and some
color began to creep back into her face. Good, he thought. A hand
fell lightly upon his shoulder as he sat thinking. He turned around
to find Patty standing behind him.

Her eyes were every bit as puffy, red
and swollen as they had been earlier, but her face was much less
tense, and her eyes didn't seem quite so hopeless as they had
earlier.

“
I'm going over to spend
some time with Ronnie. She wants you to come back in for a while,
Mike,” she told him.

Janet bent over the table and filled
Mike's coffee cup once more, looked around, found another cup,
filled it, and gave it to Patty. Patty smiled and picked up the cup
gratefully. “Thank you,” she said.

“
No problem at all, dear.
No problem at all,” Janet told her.

“
Thank you, Janet, Patty,”
Mike said. He picked up the coffee and walked off to the
diner.

He reached the blanketed off section,
hesitated, then pushed the blankets aside and stepped into the dim
interior. Candace rose to meet him, and he took her in his
arms.

She kissed him passionately, pulling
him down into the softness of the built up blankets and quilts. She
pulled back, looked at him, and then rested her forehead against
his.

“
You love me, Michael?” She
asked him.

“
Candace, you know I do.
You know I do; more than anything.” He answered.

Her eyes locked on his own just inches
away. “Do you love me, Michael?” Not much more than a
whisper.

“
Honey...” He bent forward
and kissed her lightly. “You know that I do... You
know.”

“
If you love me, Michael,
then make love to me,” she whispered. Her hands pulled him down and
his own hands found her body, feeling her warmth, pulling her
near.

~

The rain found its tempo; once again
pouring down from the skies. The gray of the skies progressed to
darker and darker shades as the day slipped by.

Arlene threw herself into the
conversation with Bob, Ronnie and Patty. Noting the somewhat oblong
area Bob had circled on the map. The area he had marked out on the
map was bigger than the entire state of New York and then some. It
encompassed the eastern edges of Kentucky up into the corner of
West Virginia, Virginia down to the Carolinas, and on the other
side down thru Tennessee and parts of Alabama and Georgia. She
found herself excited by the possibilities. There were several
large lakes, rivers, three mountain ranges and the Appalachian
Valley, and several other valleys, both small and large, that had
not seen people for over two hundred years.

Janet had a large notebook open before
her and worked at the lists of suggestions people had offered. She
had had no sleep, as almost everyone else, but sleep was not what
was on her mind. She found herself hoping nothing else would happen
to them before they got to where they were going. She went back to
her list, prodding her memories of books she had read on
homesteading, western pioneers, and copying what she was sure of
into the notebook.

Tim sat on the back bumper of one of
the Hummers, a pistol in his side holster, the leather retaining
strap unsnapped. He tugged at the short piece of leather. Annie sat
beside him, one of her pale hands on his thigh. Her red hair
spilling around her shoulders.

Annie had felt a lot of guilt about Tim
at first. Not that she had never had sex. All the girls in school
had been doing it, and she had tried it once herself. Except she
had been stoned that time, and the whole thing had been over in a
matter of seconds, and all she had felt was sore for several days
after. This was different.

This was love. She knew that. It wasn't
just because they had been thrown together; it was the real thing.
She didn't know what she would do without him.

Patty had talked to her about
protection, and she had listened to her, but the thought of a baby
of her own was too much to ignore. The thought of the baby that was
part her and part Tim was beyond ignoring. She couldn't possibly be
happy until she was pregnant, she told herself. After all, all the
other groups are trying to do the very same thing, she told
herself.

“
Are you okay?” she asked
Tim.

“
Just tired, Annie, that's
all,” Tim answered.

“
Tim... What was it like
to... To pick up that dead guy and drag him away like that? I
couldn't do it. I don't think I could do it,” she said.

“
There was... It was bad,
Man, really bad. I hope I never have to do it again.” He took her
hand gently into his own and looked at her. “It was hard, Annie. I
don't want to ever do it again,” he said quietly. She nodded, moved
a little closer and then lowered her head onto his shoulder. He
slipped his arm around her. His other hand tugged at the leather
strap a few times, then he let it go, wrapped both arms around her
and stared out at the falling rain as he held her.

~

The children had grown cranky as the
gray and rainy day had dragged on. Lilly had dug out all of their
toys and had done her best to keep them occupied. Finally, it was
The Dog and Angel that had come to the rescue, volunteering to be
petted, wrestled with and pretty much abused by the five children.
The dogs really didn't seem to mind it. They, it seemed to Lilly,
had been bored themselves and welcomed the attention.

Jessica didn't seem herself. Usually
good tempered and long on patience, today she seemed moody and
distracted, and Lilly had seen her touch her arm a couple of
different times during the day as if she had hurt it. She probably
had hurt it, they had all bounced around in the trucks pretty good.
But, Lilly knew it was also a sign of heart trouble. She decided to
speak to Sandy about it later.

The day wore on. Afternoon came and
went, and then evening, and finally darkness to the accompaniment
of the steady patter of rain. The post changed every four hours.
The camp began to catch up on their sleep.

~Janet Doves journal~

It's late, and I am more than ready for
sleep. I've not slept in more than thirty six hours.

A horrible thing has happened.
Something that has affected everyone in our little community.
Candace Loi was attacked by a madman and nearly sexually assaulted.
And he had to be killed by Arlene Best, a woman who was not even
with us a week ago, and only happened upon the crime by accident.
God in his heaven, it could've been so much worse, but it is bad
enough. Patty has told me that Candace will be all right. She's
strong, she said; she'll be fine. I hope so.

We stayed on today, but we may leave
tomorrow. The rain is steady and shows no sign of
stopping.

~Lilly's journal~

It's been a really hard two days. I am
so tired, I'm sure I could fall asleep standing up. The children
are finally sleeping. Jessica's resting. Sandy thinks she may be
having heart trouble, but said she denies it, so there is nothing
she can do except have me keep an eye on her. And she has no drugs
to give her. Sandy thinks she has been taking Aspirin on her own,
thinking it would help. She says there really isn't much more she
could do, but she plans to stock up on a cross section of
medications the next time she finds a pharmacy. Maybe
Nitroglycerin, a few other drugs she thinks may help her. But,
until then, there isn't much we can do but watch her.

I got to talk to Candace a bit today,
really only a few minutes at dinner when she finally came out of
the little place in the truck stop she's been holed up in. I guess
I would want to crawl into a hole too if it was me.

She didn't seem that different to me,
tired. You could tell she had been crying. But we've all been
crying over the last 30 hours or so. And we're all tired. So I'll
take it as a good sign that she's not letting what that creep tried
to do to her get to her.

Arlene has got to be my hero. She saw
what was happening and blew that fucker away. Right away. I don't
want to sound too happy that she did that, but it could've been me!
It could've been anyone! I had just taken Janelle out there about
an hour before when the rain let up for a few minutes. It really
could have been, her, or me, or both of us.

I'm not going to pretend. I'm glad he's
dead. I mean, like, what would have happened if Arlene didn't shoot
him and then Mike got there? I think Mike would've killed him right
there on the spot. Tom told me he would have if it had been me.
Just like that, right there on the spot.

~Bad Pennies~

Fifty miles northeast four trucks sat
idling on a broken stretch of asphalt. All four trucks were heavily
modified and we're running over-sized tires, but they were still no
match for the stream that had overflowed its banks and what was
left of the road. The rain continued to pour down from the
skies.

C.B. channel sixteen crackled to life
inside one of the trucks.

“
What you gonna do, Death?
What you gonna do?” the voice of Johnny Red asked.

"Shut it down. We're going to shut
these fuckers down so we don't run out of gas and wait for this
ever fuckin' rain to end. Then, when we can get past this water,
we'll find them," Death told Johnny, and Johnny believed
him.

A few seconds later the headlights on
all four trucks snapped off. The engines died, and the only sound
that was left was the steady pounding of the rain on the steel
roofs.

~Building The Army~

She awoke before full dark. One second
gone, the next twilight had released her and all of her senses were
fully on. It was no longer like human senses. She couldn't truly
remember any longer when she had been a breather, for how long,
what she had done with her days and nights, but she regretted it.
She wished she had always been numbered among the
superior.

She thought of it that way, the
Superior Race. Because these senses, they were completely there.
There was no fogginess from sleep. None. She was alert and ready.
In every way, she was now far superior to the being she had
been.

The horse was here with them. She felt
it studying her, waiting for her. It was changed with the horse.
Somehow it was changed. She reached over, touched the boy, and he
was instantly out of twilight. Together they crawled from under the
machinery and out onto the factory floor.

The horse had managed to lift its head
from the floor. Maybe the neck was not broken. Or maybe the neck
was healing, she thought. It amounted to the same thing. It waited
on her now. It was loyal. There would be no more fighting from the
horse.

Her eyes brought her the scent of
people. Without a sound or discussion, the three moved across the
factory floor and out into the bright moonlight.

The smell of a wood fire was on the
air, but the fire itself was out. Nothing but a low red glow some
forty yards past the factory parking lot, still choked with long
dead cars and trucks. They made their way quietly. Twenty feet from
the four sleeping members, the horse stopped and Donita and the boy
continued forward.

One of them was old, useless to her.
Two were young, and one was dangerous. Female. She slept with both
hands around her rifle, it rested between her knees, the barrel
nestled alongside her face.

Donita looked at the woman for a long
time. She would like to keep her, but she knew it was not to be.
She stared for a few seconds longer. The boy was behind her,
waiting.

She knelt beside the sleeping woman.
The smell of her coming death was already a stink upon her,
billowing out of her lungs and filling up the night air. Her soul
knew. Her soul knew and could do nothing at all about
it.

Donita reached forward slowly. One hand
wrapped tightly around the top of the barrel, the other, index
finger extended, found the trigger. She paused a second longer,
hands in place. Then in one smooth move she jerked the rifle down,
jammed it under her chin and squeezed the trigger. The top of the
woman's head flew apart before her eyes were fully open. The live
wire rigidness that had come into her body in that split second of
time now drained away and she sagged back to the ground, one last
breath rushing from her lungs in a low moan. The children began to
scream.