The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (57 page)

“
No, I'm not ready to
believe that. Look at those horses today. They've been living out.
Nothing's bothered them. I don't know what Jeff saw. I wasn't
there.” Mike sat back on one of the picnic table tops.

Candace nodded. “Well, who's watching
when?” she asked after a short pause.

~

Janet wrote down the mileage, thirty
five miles, and it had taken all day. All three vehicles were
nearly empty, and the cans on the back of the trucks were dry.
There were also dozens of new scrapes and dents in the bodies of
the trucks. They had come through some rough country, even
traveling over the relatively flat lowlands they had traveled. She
was also surprised at how much gas the trucks had burned once the
going got rough, and they were in four wheel drive constantly. That
seemed to double the gas consumption. But the short gas rations and
the dented trucks didn't matter overly much to Janet Dove anymore.
They were going no further.

They had found a notch in the second
mountain chain. They had driven up out of the lowlands, labored
upward in four wheel drive, and they had finally slipped through
the rock and gravel passage into a long, flat bottomed valley
nestled between two ranges.

At the opposite end, at least several
miles distance, a dark fringe of heavy woodlands had been visible
in the dimming light. When they had passed through the notch, they
had rolled out onto a wide stone ledge.

Another ledge, wider in places,
narrowed in others, gradually dropped down to the valley floor. The
main branch ran up to the rocky base of the mountain and into it
about fifty feet deep, forming a large sheltered overhang. A small
stream cut down one side of the pass not two hundred yards away.
They had found the home that Bob had sent them to find. They would
go no further.

Janet was positive, gradual though the
shelf was, that the trucks would never make it down to the valley
floor in one piece. She wouldn't try it anyway, she told herself.
Maybe Bob or Michael, but not her.

They had started a fire under the
overhang, turned the dogs loose to sniff out the darker regions of
the overhang where Janet suspected there was at least one large
cave going back into the rock. The dogs seemed fine, a little
nervous, a little bone weary from two days of nonstop travel and
being bounced around in the backs of the truck, but they all
were.

They took out blankets, sleeping bags,
food and left the rest for the next day. Patty took charge of the
watch, and before the sun was fully down, she had the posts working
on a rotating basis.

~

Patty laughed as she sat sipping coffee
with Janet by the fire, waiting for the water to heat in a large
iron pot for dinner.

“
Funny, we left a cave,
came all this way, and here we are in a cave again,” she shook her
head. The smile on her face stayed put. Janet answered it with one
of her own.

“
It feels right though,
doesn't it?” Janet asked.

Patty grew sober, “It does. I can't put
my finger on the feeling, but you're right. It feels like we're
supposed to be here,” she agreed.

Janet nodded. She tested the water,
then added a large portion of rice to the water and began to stir
it occasionally.

In another pot suspended over the fire,
beans simmered. Thick chunks of canned beef, fortified with some of
their own dried beef, bubbled with the beans.

“
You think they're okay?”
Patty asked Janet quietly.

Janet met her eyes, “I don't know,
Patty. I... I don't feel one way or the other about it. I... I've
been praying to God. I got it from Lilly, I guess, but I'm praying,
and I hope they're okay,” she said softly. Her eyes were moist, but
she rubbed the back of one hand quickly across them, refusing to
let the tears come.

She sighed deeply and then planted a
smile back on her face.

“
We'll get this
straightened out tomorrow, fixed up. It's quite good, isn't it? We
have water. I'm sure there's an actual cave back in there. This
looks like limestone, so that would make sense. This will be home
for a while I think, and we'll have it fixed up nice for them when
they get here, Patty,” Janet finished.

Patty nodded, and blinked back her own
tears. Things had happened so fast, she hadn't even been able to
kiss Ronnie or Candace goodbye. She had barely been able to say
goodbye.

Janet didn't have a feeling, but Patty
did, and she told her now.

“
For what it's worth,
Janet, I do have a feeling. I feel it's going to be all right. I
truly do,” Patty leaned over and hugged Janet, and Janet hugged her
back.

~

Chloe found a little town just before
dark. She went from wrecked store to wrecked store gathering the
things she needed. She was alone, but she wasn't afraid. She had
spent almost a month as Death's woman. She was sure nothing could
scare her after that.

She found a Jeep dealership on the
outskirts of town. The show room was collapsed, the garage no
better, but dozens of shiny Jeeps of all sorts littered the
lot.

She finally found a Wrangler with the
keys in the switch. The battery was a little flat, but despite
that, it started right up. Getting gas was no longer as easy as it
had been with several sets of willing hands, but by the time the
Moon was up and the place was really starting to creep her out, she
had finally filled the tank and two five gallon Jerry cans she put
into the back. Her mouth tasted like gasoline, and she had to
admit, she was more than a little high from inhaling fumes. But she
considered that a bonus. If only the place didn't creep her out so
damn much she'd stay and wait for morning, she thought, get a
little sleep.

She climbed into the jeep and was about
to start it up, and that was when Duffy hit her in the back of the
head with a short piece of a two by four board.

~

Duffy had been drifting long before all
of this had happened. This was no inconvenience to him; it was a
help. Everything was free now. And there were no cops to tell him
what to do. He looked down at Chloe slumped over the steering
wheel. And now I have a woman, he told himself. Can things get any
sweeter?

~Lillie's journal~

We traveled for two days, and now we're
in the middle of nowhere. I mean, like, we're really in the middle
of nowhere.

When we came up over this pass, we
could see for miles, and there was nothing. No buildings, no
quilted farmland, towns, cities, nothing at all. It was almost too
big to see. I didn't know there was anywhere left on this planet
where you could have a view like that.

But, here we are. We found a cave,
really an overhang, but Patty and Janet Dove think there is an
actual cave farther back in it. We'll know tomorrow. Patty said
it's funny, because we're right back in a cave again, and we are.
But Janet said it seems right, and it also does feel
right.

I'm worried. We're all worried. We
don't know where our men are, or Candace. We don't know what
happened at all. And we don't even know how long it will be until
we do know something. I wanted to ask, how will they find us? But I
just didn't want to upset anyone. I don't think it will be easy at
all. Why didn't we think of global positioning? They sell that kind
of stuff everywhere. But are there still satellites going around
and around up there? Or are they all useless now because of what
happened? Did they crash? Lots of questions; almost no answers. And
even if we had global positioning, we would not have had the time
to use it.

So we'll have to place our hope in the
radios. Starting tomorrow we're going to monitor fifteen minutes of
every hour during daylight, Patty says. We'll all be hoping. God is
with us. Keep us strong. Bring those we love back to us.
Amen.

~Candace's journal~

It's not over 'til it's over, they say.
We came back today to find out that one of the girls we had thought
got away came back while we were gone and took off in the truck the
other side left by the woods. We need one more day and we'll be
gone, maybe two. So hopefully she won't be back to cause us any
trouble.

I am so tired of this. Sometimes I
think we should have stayed in the cave in Watertown, fought them
there, let it end there. Then I look at Mike, and I love him so
much that I want any chance at all at a free life. I'm glad we ran,
and all this doesn't seem so bad.

I'm banged up, we all are. At least I'm
not missing part of me like Ronnie and David both are. A piece of
finger for David, a piece of ear for Ronnie. Patty is going to be
so pissed!

Speaking of Patty, and everyone else,
we're all worried. We can't reach them on the radios. Bob supposes
that they could have gotten out of range. I guess we won't know
until we're on our way. And if I don't stop writing and go to
sleep...

I'm back. Mike is sleeping now and my
head's a lot better. I hope we'll start out tomorrow. God help
us.

~In a Dark Place~

Chloe woke up in the pitch dark. Her
head was splitting. She sat up, and stars exploded behind her eyes.
She fought back the headache and sat still for a few seconds until
she felt better.

Someone was snoring close by. She
fought the nausea down in her stomach and took several deep breaths
to clear her head. She had no idea what it was that had happened.
Obviously someone had her, had gotten her somehow. The last thing
she remembered was getting into the Jeep. Had she wrecked it? No,
that made no sense.

She could smell unwashed flesh and hear
the snoring. A man had taken her. Somehow a man had taken her...
Was it them?

Her feet were bound, and her hands were
also tied behind her back. She could feel her boot knife pressing
against her ankle; it was still there if she could get to it. She
worked her hands, rubbing them raw before she finally got enough
slack to pull one wrist free. It was raw. She could feel the slick
blood. The feet were easier, and then she was free.

She sat blinking. She could see a
little now. There was a thin strip of light, like the crack under a
door, off to her left, away from the snoring. She considered for a
minute and then made up her mind. She stood slowly, carefully,
joints screaming, and made her way very quietly across what felt
like a hard-packed dirt floor.

She made her way to what turned out to
be a door. She pushed it open slowly, looking back over her
shoulders as it swung open. She saw the man, a great fat pig of a
man. His back to her in the faint moonlight. She eased the old
wooden door shut and slowly looked around.

She was in a wooden shack behind the
Jeep dealership. So that was it, she thought.

She made her way around to the side of
the building. The Jeep sat where it had, the keys still in the
ignition. She smiled for the first time, but stopped when it caused
her head to scream.

She made her way to the back of the
jeep, hefted one of the five gallon Jerry cans, felt her pocket for
one of the plastic disposable lighters she always carried to light
the huge bomber joints that Death used to roll. She could use one
of those right now, she told herself.

She walked back to the shed, upended
the can and drenched the exterior of the small wooden shack, the
door, and the rest she let run under the door and into the
interior. She puddled a small amount of gas back away from the
shed, set the can down and screwed the lid back on. Then she set it
further back. She'd have to remember to refill that, she told
herself. She thumbed the wheel on the cheap lighter, stretched her
arm out and touched the small flame to the gasoline. It went up
with a low whoosh. She felt it on her eardrums rather than heard
it. The flames bit into the dry wood, and Duffy began screaming
almost immediately.

“
Fucker,” she screamed into
the fire lit night, “Fucker! That will teach you!”

The shed blew up with a
soft
Whump!
And
Duffy stopped screaming.

She walked back to the Jeep. Her head
was pounding. Maybe, she told herself, she could leave off all of
this. It really wasn't her fault. It really wasn't her fight. Maybe
she could just get into that Jeep and keep heading south, let those
crazy bastards settle in the woods. To hell with them.

She picked up the radio from the seat
beside her. She flipped it to the on position and sat listening to
the smooth static. She pressed the talk button down.

“
Hey,” she said. “Hey are
you guys there?”

Silence. And then...

“
Lilly? Is that you
Lilly?”

She didn't know the voice, or who Lilly
was.

“
Nooooo,” she said. Her
head was killing her.

“
Chloe,” she told the
voice. “I don't know if you know me.”

The voice came back. “I know who you
are, Chloe. What do you want?”

“
You guys worried about
me?” She asked.

Silence.

“
Are you?” she asked again.
“Because if you are, you ain't got to be. I'm going. I'm done with
this, you know? I just wanted to say that,” she said.