The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (49 page)

~March 31~

The first thing Candace did was take
down the blankets that closed off the area in the corner of the
diner. Mike helped her.

“
I don't want to hide out.
I needed it, but I can't hide from it anymore,” she said. She sat
the pile of blankets down on a leaning pedestal table and took
Mike's hand. A few minutes later they were both sitting, sipping
coffee at one of the tables.

“
I have to take a post.
They've been covering for me,” Mike said.

“
I know,” Candace
said.

“
You'll be all right?” he
asked.

“
Yep,” she said, “I can't
hide. I'll probably take a post as well, Honey.”

“
So soon?” Mike
asked.

“
I just want things to be
normal... to get back to normal,” Candace said. “So I'm going to do
what I normally do.”

He finished his coffee, leaned over and
kissed her again “I love you.” He swiveled his eyes to one of the
trucks where Ronnie and Patty were looking out at the still flooded
fields. “I'll be right there if you need me, Babe,” Mike
said.

“
I love you too,” she
kissed him back. “And if I'm not okay...” She caught his eye. “I'll
come and get you.” She took a deep breath, finished her coffee and
walked off to one of the trucks where Sharon stood watching the
field and the highway beyond.

Mike walked over to Ronnie and Patty,
“Go,” he said. “And I can't tell you how much I appreciate both of
you. Go spend some time together.”

“
She seems okay,” Patty
said.

“
I think she is... or will
be,” Mike said, “Go on, spend some time together so you two can be
okay as well,” he finished. Ronnie touched a closed fist to Mike's
own before he turned to leave.

~

Mike looked out at the flooded fields.
The rain was still dripping on the metal roof, but the early
morning sky looked less gray to him.

They decided a short time later to pull
out. A quick meal, and they would be on their way.

The rain stopped. The sun was still
hidden behind a clump of clouds that seemed to cover nearly the
entire sky behind them, but at the very edge of the horizon a line
of white-gold had appeared. The clouds there seemed to be breaking
up, the clear skies making their way to them.

Off to their left, clearly visible
without the rain, the Catskills sat like a beacon guiding them
forward. The trucks were topped off with fuel. Everything was
packed away, and the sun peeked out of its cloud cover just before
they drove away. Mike took it as a good sign. He started his truck,
splashed across a large puddle, rolled forward and dropped one huge
front tire over the broken pavement leading back to the roadway. He
turned out onto the road and led the way.

Two hours of slow travel brought them
to a leaning road sign, a small 79 in a highway symbol, and printed
below it in white lettering:

'Clarksburg 28 miles'

The V.H.F. crackled. “That's West
Virginia, in case you're wondering,” Bob said. “State route
seventy-nine will take us right into Charleston. But we should
skirt that and try to pick up seventy-seven; that will take us into
Kentucky.” Bob said.

“
Tell me when,” Mike said,
"”o start looking.”

“
Will do,” Bob said, “We're
about a hundred and fifty miles out, so it'll be awhile. Must have
been just the other side of Pennsylvania or just inside West
Virginia where we stopped,” Bob finished.

“
Made good time,” Mike
said.

“
Yeah. Carry on. I'm
standing by,” Bob said.

~Trouble on the highway~

“
Put it under her head,”
Sandy instructed. “So it tilts her head back and she can breathe
freely.”

Sandy went back to the chest
compressions she had been doing on Jessica's chest. The exertion
was taking the strength from her arms. Sweat had formed at her
temples. It now rolled freely across her face. She brushed it away
with the back of one hand and went back to working her arms in a
steady rhythm. She was tiring, and she was getting no
results.

They were stopped in the middle of what
was left of the highway. There was nothing more than a washed out
patch of rubble and broken fragments of pavement littered about. An
occasional unmolested section of the road would appear, but more
and more it was becoming gravel and mud, and they were thankful for
the big tires and the four wheel drive.

The sun had been playing peekaboo all
afternoon, gliding in and out of the cloud cover. Despite its
occasional appearance, the day was still overcast and gray. Cold
winds blew from the east, and Mike got the feeling that rain was
not far behind the winds.

Sandy stopped, covered Jessica's mouth
once more with her own and blew another deep breath into her lungs.
Jessica's chest rose and fell.

There was some color in her cheeks, but
her lips were still tinged with blue, and she was not breathing.
Sandy blew another deep breath into Jessica's lungs, then moved
sideways, and Sharon took over the C.P.R. Her arms were burning,
her lungs. She looked down at her watch, more than 10 minutes had
passed. She had not realized it had been so long. It had been too
long, and there had been no response at all. Sandy had nothing to
give to her, not even an aspirin. The first aid kits all held non
aspirin equivalents.

She looked over and caught the outlines
of several small, worried faces in the window of the Suburban. Rain
caught her eyes and then looked down to Jessica.

"Sharon," she said softly. Sharon met
her eyes. Sandy was still breathing heavy, her arms still burning,
her face slick with sweat. Sandy shook her head. Sharon thrust her
hands down one more time, straightened up, wiped her own forehead
and looked at Sandy.

“
Too long,” Sandy said.
“Too long.”

~Death Following~

The line of vehicles dropped off the
edge of the pavement one by one, ran through the gravel, mud and
water, and then back up onto the asphalt and into the abandoned
truck stop. They were nearly out of gas, but Death was positive
that there was gas here. An oily sheen of spilled gasoline lay over
a small puddle, just to the side of the main island, as if its only
reason for existence had been to prove him right.

The ground had shifted, the concrete
tilted up into the air, but someone had gone to work with shovels,
and the top of an iron pipe lay exposed; a mound of dirt laying to
one side of the twisted concrete.

Death stepped down from his truck and
crossed the twenty or so feet that separated him from the pile of
dirt. The fill neck of the underground tank had been dug out down
to about two feet. The cap was on but he had no doubt that it would
spin right off with ease. They had been here, and if it wasn't them
they were following, them that had been here, then it was maybe
something better, he told himself.

He motioned to the others behind him,
and all four trucks emptied out. Nine of his soldiers stood behind
him, waiting for him to speak.

“
They've been here... or
somebody's been here. And they ain't left too long ago either,” He
pointed to heavy, rutted tire tracks that passed through the mud at
the edge of the pavement, and then printed the tread pattern onto
the road, “That would've been gone. Didn't stop raining until late
this morning. Can't be more than a couple of hours ahead of us,
maybe four at the most,” he said.

A petite, dark haired young woman
stepped forward, “There're dogs over by the woods... eating
something. Don't look like no animal. They slunk off when we pulled
in, but I seen them.” She wore a thin, black T-shirt that showcased
the piercings in her nipples. A safety pin jutted through her lower
lip, a small gold chain looped from a nose piercing to one ear. Her
eyes were gray and flat. Another safety pin pierced the top of her
bellybutton, visible where the overly short baby T she wore had
pulled out of her jeans. She shifted her boot clad feet, fingered a
9 mm pistol in a side holster, and looked over towards the edge of
the woods where something pink could be seen laying half in the
water that flooded the fields up to the tree line.

Death followed her gaze and nodded
slowly.

“
Shitty, Murder... Go see.”
He said softly. Two young men moved from the back and took off into
the flooded field without hesitation. He turned his eyes back to
the girl, “Chloe, you know you're my favorite. You did good, Chloe,
you did good.”

The young woman smiled, snapped her
head around and looked back at the other young women behind her.
They were dressed almost exactly like her. “Little, bitches,” she
said under her breath.

A snarling sound came from the tree
line as the two boys approached through the calf high water. Three
wolves slumped out of the trees and stood stiffly by the body.
Their eyes shifted back and forth from one another to the boys who
had slogged across the field towards them. One of the young men
drew his pistol, aimed and fired. One of the wolves flipped into
the air as if he had been launched into a backward somersault. He
flopped down to the ground snarling, snapping at his chest were a
small hole had appeared. The other two wolves sprang into the air,
startled, and then fled into the woods.

The young man fired again. The wolf
jumped and then lay still. They both walked forward and looked at
the red and pink thing lying half in and half out of the
water.

“
It's a dead dude,” Shitty
called back. His voice floated across the waterlogged fields. “Part
of his head is gone entirely.”

“
Is it one of them?” Death
called back. “What happened to him?”

“
He got dead,” Murder
called back. “I can't fuckin tell how, these dogs been eatin' on
him. Could be one of those fuckers though.”

“
Who in the fuck else would
it be?” Shitty yelled back. He lowered his voice to a near whisper.
“Sometimes, seems to me, that he's got to be the dumbest
motherfucker I ever knowed.” he told Murder. “Seems fuckin' clear
to me.” He turned back towards Death. “It looks like they had a
change of leadership. Part of his skull is missing, right. I don't
think them dogs or wolves or whatever the fuck they was, done
that.”

“
Get back here,” Death
yelled while motioning with one hand. He turned, “Johnny, Nickle,
get these trucks filled.”

“
Yeah,” Johnny
said.

“
On it,” Nickle
added.

As they started to fill the trucks, the
sun slipped back behind a block of heavy bottomed clouds and fat,
cold rain drops began to plop down from the gray sky, reverberating
off the steel roof.

“
Fuck,” Death said. “Fuck,
fuck, fuck.” He looked over at Chloe, who stood slightly ahead of
everyone else, and motioned with a nod of his head to the building
behind him. She smiled. “Cassie, Tammy, get some fuckin' food on.
I'm hungry. Looks like we're stuck here for a while.” He
added.

As he finished speaking, Murder and
Shitty slumped back across the asphalt, water dripping. “Murder,
I'll be busy for a while,” he said.

“
Got you,” murder
said.

~Death by the Roadside~

They all stood quietly on the side of
the road. Lilly spoke a few words from a small pocket Bible. Her
voice seemed so much more mature than it had when she had spoken
those same words just a few weeks before, Mike thought.

Jessica's body lay in the bottom of a
shallow grave that had been dug into the sandy soil beside the
highway. She was covered with a blue tarp and lay in about a foot
of water at the bottom of the hole. They had tried to keep the hole
bailed out, but it had been no use. Although the ground where they
had chosen to dig had been relatively dry, the ground water was
high, and kept seeping into the hole after digging just a few feet
down.

“
...And, Lord, watch over
the rest of us as we go. In Jesus name we pray, Amen,” Lilly
finished.

Jeff and Tim began to shovel the muddy
dirt and stone back into the hole. The stones pattered down and
rolled off the blue tarp as the dirt rained down into the hole.
Between the two of them, they had the shallow hole filled in no
time. The first fat drops of rain began to fall as the trucks began
to roll out again. Two miles down the road, what was left of a
small airport came into view. Several large metal hangars,
virtually untouched, crouched at one end of the twisted and tilted
runways. A few inches of water ran over a fairly intact service
road that lead to the hangars. One section of the road appeared to
dip, and looked to be covered with about a foot of
water.

Mike picked up the V.H.F. radio. “I'm
thinking this ain't going to get any better,” he said. “I'll go
first, but we should all be able to get across that
water.”

“
Piece of cake,” Bob
said.

“
Let's go,” Ronnie
said.

Mike turned off the highway and then
eased down onto the narrow road that led to the hangars. The truck
walked across the water like it was nothing, rolled up the slight
rise on the other side and stopped in front of one of the
hangars.