The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (73 page)

His grin was nearly splitting his
face.

Mike looked around at the others. He
met Bear's eyes and then Josh's too. “So I guess that makes us a
team now,” he said.

“
I guess we are,” Josh
agreed.

Bear nodded. “We are,” he added. “We
are.”

~

A hundred miles to the north Zac Taybro
sat on his Harley in the middle of the cracked and wrecked
highway.

“
All this empty and I can't
even ride my Harley,” he complained.

Amanda looked up from the relative
shade of the open rear door of the SUV, where she sat cross legged
on the rear seat, smoking the biggest joint she had been able to
roll. “You want some of this, Baby,” she called.

“
I wanna ride my fuckin'
bike, is what I want,” Zac told her.

They were parked in the middle of the
highway. There were three dead zombies lying scattered in the
highway. They had been living in the SUV when Zac and Amanda had
happened along.

The SUV had broken down just under an
overpass. The overpass led into a small town nearby. The Zombies
had stayed in the SUV and raided the town nightly. It had probably
seemed like a pretty good system to them. Their mistake had been
deciding to stay put when they heard the bike.

“
I don't know how you can
sit in that goddamned truck with that smell,” he told her
now.

Amanda took a deep pull from the joint
and then sniffed at the air. “She shrugged. “Doesn't bother me,”
she said. “I don't get why it bothers you.” she looked over at the
dead where they lay on the blacktop. The two of them had dragged
them over onto the road.

Two of them had scrambled into the back
of the SUV trying to scratch their way out. Zac had shot them both.
That would have left a mess had they been alive, but the dead ones
didn't really seem to leave much of a mess.

The third one had leapt out
when she had thrown open the door and nearly gotten her. That had
been bad. Having one so close. But she had run the long knife she
carried right through its head. That
had
left a mess, but outside rather
than inside.

The car had smelled pretty bad for a
little while, but once she got the windows down and aired it out it
wasn't so bad. Her eyelids flickered. She took another deep
pull.

Zac Taybro was easily three hundred
pounds if he was ten. His long greasy black hair stuck to his
sweaty cheeks as he sat on the bike drinking whiskey straight from
the bottle.

Give him another hour,
Amanda thought from the open door of the SUV, and he'd pass out
like he had the night before. He did the same thing every time. A
two or three day drunk, then sober for a week or two. Constantly
bitching about what used to be. And the way he dealt with the
zombies? It was just a mater of time before one got him. They were
bound to.
Would have already,
if not for her. How many times had he sat down
next to his bike and just drank himself into a stupor. Too many
times. And at least five of those times the dead had come for him
and would have had him if she had not been there to kill them
first. Maybe she was getting as sick of him as he was of
her.

Amanda knew she was not the most
attractive woman in the world. It was a rough world and age was
catching up to her. She was forty five after all. She laughed and
took another deep hit off the joint. Okay, she admitted to herself,
forty-eight. And it was a rough forty-eight too. For most of her
life she had been a beach baby and the sun had played hell with her
face and skin. Her skin was brown and tough. Her bleached out hair
dry and wispy from too much sun and salt water. The first time Zac
had seen her naked he had laughed at how white she was where her
clothes covered and what a contrast it was.

Amanda didn't mind though.
At least he didn't beat her like Freddy had. He was just a harmless
teddy bear... A
big
harmless teddy bear, she amended.

She took one more hit. The
joint was down to nothing. She pinched it between her fingers and
then flipped it back into her mouth and began to chew what was
left. She laughed once more. A low chuckle to herself as she
listened to Zac continue to complain about the world and the way it
was. A big
bitchy
teddy bear, she amended once more.

Of course he was different when he was
sober. And he didn't like other people coming around. When he was
sober he was a bigger pain in the ass, she thought. But still, he
wasn't mean to her, just others he ran across, and if she was
honest she had to admit that she was not terribly fond of other
people either. Zac was fine, but other than Zac she could not think
of a single person in her life that had treated her with any kind
of real respect at all. None. So why should she care about people
now?

And the few times that someone had
happened along and Zac wanted to make something about it, it really
hadn't bothered her, she reminded herself as the secondary buzz
from chewing the weed and resin in the end of the joint began to
hit her, it was the best part of the high, she thought.

She lost her train of
thought for a second, then remembered she had been thinking about
Zac and how he could be to outsiders sometimes. She concentrated
for a second, trying to get her mind back on track... Oh... Right,
she recalled. The one time when the old dude had happened along
with his old lady. He had done something that had pissed off Zac,
she had no idea what. But before she had even realized Zac was that
angry he had shot the old dude in the face. The old dude's wife had
made such a big deal over that, that he had shot her in the face
too. But, she told herself now, he had been forced to do it. The
old man had pissed him off. Mess with the bull you get the horns.
And the old lady hadn't shut up when he told her to. He
had
told her to, but she
didn't. She had forced his hand, that was all.

She pulled out another huge joint she
had rolled and lit it up. “Come on, Baby... Come get some before
it's all gone,” she told him.

CHAPTER FIVE

September 19th

They left early, just as the sun was
touching the mountains in the South; somewhere close to
Alabama.

Candace, Patty, Lilly and Janet waved
goodbye from the top of the ledge where they rested against the low
wall that had been built there. Sandy and Susan were climbing back
up the ledge walkway that sloped gradually down the face of the
cliff into the valley below.

The children were all gathered at the
wall, some barely tall enough to see over, waving
goodbye.

“
Bring some Gold Fishes
back,” Mark called.

“
You can't eat Gold
Fishes,” Rain said.

“
I don't wanna. I wanna put
them in a... A fish bowl,” he said.

“
A Quarium,” Janelle
pronounced carefully

“
An
A
quarium,” Lilly said.

“
An Ah-quarium,” Janelle
said. She looked at Lilly. Lilly nodded.

Susan and Sandy reached the top of the
ledge.

“
Did you come to play with
us?” Rain asked.

“
Nope,” Susan said. She
reached down and picked Rain up. “I've come to teach you how to
milk cows.”

“
Silly,” Rain told her,
kissing her nose. “We ain't got no cows up here... Where would we
put them?”

“
No?” Susan asked. “Well I
guess I'll have to take you down to the barn then and show you
there.”

“
Only Rain?” Janelle
asked.

“
No, Honey. You can come
too,” Sandy said.

“
Only girls get to go?” Ben
asked.

“
Nope. You get to go too,
Little Man,” Patty told him. “All of you get to go... And we're
going to milk the deer too,” Patty told them.

“
Hey! What about us?”
Candace asked.

“
Nope,” Sandy said. “You're
both grounded still. You'll find stuff to keep you
busy.”

“
Alright, Babies, let's
go,” Susan said. “Time to milk the cows.”

“
And the Deers too,” Rain
reminded her. “I gotta walk too,” She said in a whisper. “I'm big
now.” She struggled to get down.

“
You are,” She agreed. She
looked over at Candace and Lilly. “Chanel six if you need us,
otherwise we'll be back...” she looked down at the children,
“Sometime,” she finished and laughed.

“
Bye, bye,” Rain said. The
group headed down the ledge and into the valley. Janet bringing up
the rear.

On The Road

“
Fuck off,” Zac
said.

He had drank until he passed out.
Amanda had left him in the road, covered with a stained and ratty
old quilt she had found in the SUV. It wasn't a question of not
caring, when Zac went out he was out. Amanda weighed a hundred
pounds on a good day. There was no way she could move Zac, and he
tended to get nasty when you woke him up, she knew. Just like
now.

“
Zac...
Baby...
You got to get up. There's
people here,” she told him. She smiled an apology at the group
where they stood outside their vehicles. The white guys were kind
of cute, but there were two black guys with them and Zac wasn't
going to like that at all.

“
Yeah,” Zac said. “We'll
fuck them too... You best quit fuckin' with me, you dizzy cunt or
I'm gonna kick your fuckin' ass when I do get up...
Leave.
Me
. Alone!”
he said. A second later he was back to snoring.

Amanda shrugged: Noticed her top had
slipped, exposing one pink nipple, drooping from her deflated,
fish-belly white breast. She blushed as she pulled up her stained
tube top: She had a problem keeping it where it should be, she'd
lost more than a little weight since they had been on the road.
Once they settled down someplace she'd put the weight back on, she
told herself. She turned to the group, embarrassed, but they only
stared back. Even looked a little pissy about the whole situation.
Well, screw them if that was they way they wanted to be. It wasn't
her fault, it was Zac. They certainly didn't seem to be in any
great hurry to try waking him up themselves, just stared at her
like it was all her fault. Well, it wasn't. She shrugged once more
and then headed for the SUV. She fired up another joint when she
got there and promptly forgot about the people.

~

“
All we have to do is move
the bike,” Ronnie looked from Mike to Bear.

Mike was glad the children were in one
of the last vehicles what with what they had just
witnessed.

They had the three jeeps, the two large
trucks and Josh and Chloe were driving four wheel drive pick ups
they had taken from the lot of a Ford dealership the day before.
They had left the van behind, it had been too much trouble with the
roads as bad as they were.

Mike studied the situation, deciding:
If they moved the bike they could squeeze around the rest of the
detritus that spread out from the SUV where the woman sat smoking
her joint. It was as if someone had set up a red neck living room
in the middle of the highway, Molly had joked. She hadn't laughed
though, instead she became angrier as she heard his words when the
woman had attempted to get him to move out of the way. “Where are
the flesh eating zombies when you need them,” she had said next.
Ronnie and Bear had both laughed and then agreed with
her.

They had set up their little area of
the highway like a living room. A wrecked moving van a quarter mile
back had been raided and they had dragged two couches and a huge
overstuffed chair from the wreck. They now sat on the blacktop.
Placed haphazardly. Seeming as they somehow belonged with all the
other clutter. A coffee table, overflowing with booze bottles and
trash. And three of the dead apparently lying where they had been
killed. It seemed like a bad scene out of a horror novel, Mike
thought. A brand new Harley sat right in the middle of it
all.

The man was off the center line, over
toward the SUV, but the bike was another story, virtually sideways
in their lane. The overstuffed chair sat near it, but that would be
easy enough to move. The Harley was a different story.

“
How much you think it
weighs?” Mike asked.

“
Had one like it,” Bear
answered. Probably about five fifty or so. The three of us could
move it, but I wouldn't want to move it too far.”

Mike nodded and the three of them
walked over. Bear righted the bike, Ronnie kicked the kick stand
up, and with Mike balancing the bike they rolled it back over the
line toward the SUV.

“
Hey!”
The woman said.

They had obviously startled her, as
though she had forgotten they were there. The smell from the
corpses was high and cloying, and it made Mike feel sick to his
stomache. He swallowed and turned towards her, although he would
have rather walked away to get away from the odor.

She pinched the biggest joint he had
even seen in between two browned fingers. Stained, he supposed,
from all the joints she had smoked. She stood with a hand on one
hip and shook her head as if to clear it. “Are you stupid or
something?”