The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (61 page)

The concrete had allowed them to build
a long stone wall that sat at the edge of the ledge that fronted
the cave and the sheer drop off to the valley below. They had built
a chimney for the smoke hole, as well as another wall at the front
of the cave to close it off and protect it from the rain and snow
they expected. Rain for sure, they had already seen that. They
would know more about the snow in just a few months. Mike hoped to
be back by then.

He pulled a small notebook from his
pocket and wrote... "Base type radios." He then tucked the notebook
away. The notebook was the only way to do it, otherwise he would
forget too many things and...

“
Hey, babe,” Candace said.
She and Patty walked side by side down the pathway from the top.
They were both showing, at nearly six months along, and that was
the main reason that he and Ronnie would be going along with Nell,
Molly, Tim and Annie on the re-supply trip, and Candace and Patty
would be staying behind. He stood quickly so she would not try to
bend to kiss him. Candace was even larger than Patty and already
uncomfortable. He kissed her and held it for a moment.

“
Any more of that coffee,”
she asked.

“
At home,” he smiled. “All
you want... Patty?” He offered.

“
Nope,” she stood smiling.
“I'm going home to my man. With you two leaving tomorrow I have
forbidden him to go anywhere else today or tomorrow. I don't want
him to forget me,” she said. She smiled but couldn't quite hide the
worry in her eyes.

“
I had the same idea,”
Candace said. “Believe me,” she said, kissing Mike again. “He's not
going to forget about me.”

Patty laughed, “You guys,” she said.
The three of them continued down the path to the valley floor, past
the pool and on down the flagged pathway to the stone
houses.

~

They left Patty with Ronnie, and headed
to the next house in line. The inside was still only sparsely
furnished and smelled of the fresh cut pine that had been used to
build the roof and wall studding. They had to make everything they
owned, and it took time. Another thing they had not thought of,
furniture. A few simple chairs or beds. They would remember this
time though; they were on the list.

Candace stayed on the front porch while
Mike went in and started the coffee. The flowers in her little
garden were in bloom and the fragrance was strong on the morning
air. Mike came back out to find her sitting on the long porch swing
he had built for her, fashioned from heavy rough cut planks and
sanded smooth with sandstone, watching the sun continue to
rise.

He handed her, her coffee, and then
carefully sat down beside her so she wouldn't spill it. She was
quiet.

“
Penny for your thoughts,”
Mike said.

“
You don't have a penny,”
she said smiling.

“
Well, you know, if I did,”
Mike said.

“
I've been thinking about
you leaving. I wish I was going, but I’m also glad to be pregnant
with our baby, still I'm going to worry about you while you're
gone,” she took his hand and held it.

“
A month, month and a half
tops, and we'll be back. I wish you were going too, but to be
honest I'm glad you're not. Bouncing around those trucks, you and
Patty both? No, not at all. Sandy was right to say no. So, I'm
gonna miss you, but we'll be back with a bunch of stuff to keep you
busy through the winter and probably the next few
years.”

“
Oh yeah,” she said. “Which
reminds me, computers.”

“
Computers,” he
asked.

“
Yeah, it would be so
helpful to have a few. For the farm, school, teaching the kids. The
power project, but also for my music. You did that right...
Computers? Used to program them,” she asked.

“
Yeah, and I didn't think
I'd see them again, but you're right they would be useful,” Mike
agreed.

“
Can you program,” she
asked. “You said so, right? Can you write a program like Tim wants
for the powerhouse?”

“
Well, I'm okay with HTML,
C, Java, but not so hot with C++. But, I don't have to be, Janet
is,” Mike told her.

“
Janet,” she
asked.

“
Yeah, she worked as a data
processor. But she wrote several data base programs to do specific
work. Not like macros or scripts you write for databases, but real
programs,” he said.

“
Babe, I don't know what
the hell you're talking about, but will you get them?” Candace
smiled.

Mike smiled and pulled out a notebook.
“How many were you thinking,” he asked.

“
A few dozen. A little more
maybe and the stuff to hook them together?” She said.

He wrote it down and then re-pocketed
the notebook. “You got it, Babe. And I'm sorry for the tech-speak,”
he smiled and kissed her. “Now, didn't you say something about
spending time with me, before I left?”

She leaned over and closed his mouth
with her own. "Come with me," she said softly, pulling him from the
porch swing and into the house...

~

There was no head of what they had
named 'The New Nation' and then immediately abbreviated to just
'The Nation,' instead they had chosen nine members from among
themselves and formed a representative panel. There were also no
formal meetings, but when something needed to be decided or
discussed the nine of them got together and hashed it
out.

They would be down to six, losing Mike,
Ronnie and Nellie to the expedition, but they decided there was no
real reason to appoint someone to take their places while they were
gone. It was so rare for them to even meet that there should be
little reason for that to occur while they were gone. “And if it
did?” Patty had asked.

“
Well,” Bob had said. “Six
could decide every bit as well as nine could.” And that had been
the end of it.

Instead of remaining in the dark ages
as some had been concerned about, Bob and Janet had been all for
nearly any and every modern convenience they could find. Bob had
balked at telephones though when Tim mentioned how easily it could
be done.

“
We have radios. I for one
don't want to have to answer the phone so young Tim here can sell
me a subscription to the local paper,” he had joked. But the point
had been made, even with Tim, and he had immediately turned his
attention to radios. Base radios. More power. No Batteries. Radios,
Phones, they were the same thing to Tim's mind. A cell phone could
fit in your pocket. The clunky radios they carried now could not.
Bob would come around once he saw how much easier a cell phone
would work. They were nothing more than a glorified radio anyway.
Tim decided not to mention his argument to Bob though. Maybe
later.

One of the first decisions the panel
had made was to use the cave for a meeting place, clinic, and
storage. There were several dry, cold storage areas. The passages
went on forever it seemed. The ridge that lead away into the
distance, and formed a natural border for the valley, was
honeycombed with caves. Most of them connected to the main cave. At
least the ones they had explored. Probably, Mike had opinioned,
they all did. It was just a matter of exploring them and mapping
them out.

There were also underground rivers,
steep narrow passages that went deep into the ground. They had
blocked off anything truly dangerous within the first few
months.

Sandy and Susan had decided to build
their own home into the stone overhang. It only made sense, Sandy
had said. The clinic was in the cave. The herb racks. The
medicines. They were both working their way through several books
to learn as much as they could about herbs and the natural healing
properties of the trees and plants around them.

Tim and Annie had chosen to live in the
cave too. Tim needed the space for the projects he had going. He
moved from one thing to the next. He couldn't wait to get his hands
on a few computers, and he was sure he could easily learn whatever
Mike and Janet were willing to teach him.

Sharon was learning to nurse from
Sandy. She was also finding her background as a veterinarian's
assistant in demand. She was fascinated with plant and herb
medicines and was as eager as Sandy and Susan to learn
it.

Cindy had stayed in the cave because of
Sharon. She was like a mother to her. Whatever had needed to click
had. Cindy was impressed with the veterinarian skills Sharon had,
and eager to learn from her.

Cindy's other hero was Molly, who could
do just about anything to a motor or any other mechanical thing.
She was learning mechanics from Molly and animal husbandry from
Sharon. It filled her days up. Made her feel useful. And she rarely
thought of her old life any longer.

The large main room in the cave was
used as a gathering place by all of them when ever they wanted to
get together. It was this space that had been closed in with stone,
and a heavy, solid plank door protected the interior from the
elements.

Down in the valley, two of the barns
held most of the animals, several head of cattle and bison grazed
in the valley. They were still fed grain to keep them dependent and
close by. The others, mothers who were through nursing their
calves, were moved to a separate part of the barn and joined the
milking team. They now had twenty-four milkers, and a steady supply
of milk, cheese and butter.

The other half of the barn held
chickens and rabbits. They had separate areas in the same space,
and both reproduced very quickly so they had a constant supply of
fresh meat. Some weeks more than they could use. But It was easy to
use the far, colder reaches of the caves to keep the meat cold. The
cold storage was not enough to keep the meat frozen during the
summer but it did keep it cold enough to keep the meat fresh a few
weeks at a time. A permanent smoke house existed farther down the
valley and took all the excess meat and turned it into dried meat.
Highly concentrated protein that could be stored for months. They
were working on pemmican so that it could be stored indefinitely,
as long as it was kept dry.

The egg supply was also constant with
fresh layers coming along all the time. The beef cows were free to
graze the valley floor. A short section of stone wall had been
erected to close off the exit at the far end of the valley where a
second, longer valley ran for several miles, eventually opening
into untold miles of grazing lands past the mountain
range.

That closed in several miles of the
main valley. The sides of the valley climbed to ridges that were
far too steep for any animal besides a mountain goat to climb. The
area that held the houses and the ledges that led up to the caves
was fenced off.

The horses shared the valley. They
tended to prefer the closer proximity of people. Several horses
were stabled in the second barn along with oxen teams. Some of
those horses were used for field work along with the oxen, but
there were about a dozen horses that were used for riding and
herding the beef cows.

Spread out in the valley there was a
small herd of moose and another of deer. Both by-products of the
cow chow they had used to lure the cows and horses. An even smaller
herd of Bison had stayed in the valley. The question in everyone’s
mind at first was whether any of them were cross mate-able. Because
the moose bulls were constantly chasing after the cows when they
came into heat. They took the questions to Sharon.

“
Moose and Cow, No,” Sharon
said. “Cow and Bison, yes.” She had laughed it off. But soon after
that they were blessed with the first Beefalo calf, and more, she
suspected, were on the way.

The third and fourth barns in the
valley were used for storing grain and hay they would need to get
through the coming winter.

Angel was pregnant, but not by The Dog.
The Dog had no fear when it came to chasing off the Wolves and Coy
dogs that came down into the valley on occasion. Even the
occasional mountain lion. They usually came for the deer, the cows
were too large for them. But the calves were not. And they had lost
five calves to them. The Dog may have had no fear but at fifty
pounds he had been no match for the wolves.. The smallest coy dogs
were close to eighty pounds, the smaller wolves closer to a
hundred, and the larger ones bigger by far. Most often The Dog
ended up on the bad end of things. Torn up, but still game for the
next fight. The problem, as Sharon saw it, was that they needed a
much bigger dog.

Angel was also a mix, but a much bigger
dog. Some sort of Saint Bernard mixed in, Sharon thought, and then
crossed with either a Malamute or a wolf. Malamutes were close to
wolves in size, some even bigger. They had been bred as freight
dogs in Alaska back in the early 1950's, and had actually come from
breeding domestic dog breeds back to wolves.

Sharon had not come up with the
solution, Cindy had.

They had both been present when one of
the larger male wolves had tried to take down one of the nearly
full grown calves they had bought into the valley with them. They
were nowhere near as big as a full grown cow, but they were very
nearly.

The wolf had been no match for the calf
or the calf's mother who had been nearby. The mother had hit the
wolf from the side and broken its spine. She had also delivered a
few well placed kicks before herding the calf off. They had checked
the calf over and used some antiseptic cream on it's belly where
the wolf had tried to rip it open, and then let it return to its
anxious mother. That was when Cindy had noticed that the wolf was
still breathing. Very shallowly, probably not for much longer, but
it was alive.