The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (88 page)

“
I didn't see anything in
the book like that at all. I saw mittens with strings, but nothing
like that. That's what I want also though. Where did you get it,
Pats,” Candace asked.

“
It just came to me, you
know, like your poetry and songs... Like that,” Patty told
her.

“
Well, I like it. That's
how I'm doing mine too,” Lilly said.

“
Yeah... You'll have to
show us: I want it too,” Candace agreed.

In front of them the people were
cutting down the field corn, stalks and all. The children were
entertaining each other, the two older boys with them this time.
One of the larger chests held cold lemonade this time. The other
held water. A small fire kept coffee brewing, and two large spitted
hams sizzled over the fire, about to be served up for
lunch.

Candace set aside the gown, “Guess we
better get ready,” she said. Patty got up easily. She reached down
and helped Lilly to her feet.

“
Honey, are you sure you
are just six months,” Patty asked.

“
Actually, no. It could be
seven.” She counted in her head. “Yeah, it could be seven. It could
have been February, or it could have been March. Sometimes I skip a
month, and my life was a mess back then. It's easily as much as a
month difference.”

“
You didn't test to see,”
Patty asked.

“
No... I meant to: I just
didn't. He and I broke up. Then he came back and I knew by then
that I could be. I had missed, but stress can do that also, it has
with me before, you know? And I didn't feel pregnant. I know that
means nothing. When he came back he wasn't around long, and I
finally got the message. He left and I skipped again so I tested
and bang. There I was, knocked up, and him gone.” She laughed a
little to throw off the seriousness of what it had meant to her at
that time.

“
Well, Lil. You got
everything you need now, and nobody's going anywhere,” Patty told
her.

Together they helped Candace to her
feet.

“
I wish, though, that this
could have been Tom's,” Lilly said.

“
The next one,” Candace
told her. She patted one arm. “Wait until Mike sees me. I've turned
into a cow since he's been gone. He hasn't even been gone two weeks
and look at me!” Candace said.

“
Twins, Candy.” Patty told
her. She looked at her critically. “You just popped out in the
front is all.” She considered. “Okay, you popped out on the sides
as well.”

“
Yeah, the sides too,”
Lilly agreed.

“
Oh, thanks a lot... Both
of you,” Candace laughed. She began to slice a loaf of bread. “But,
really, does it make my butt look big,” she asked. All three of
them roared laughter at that.

On The Road

The livestock truck broke down two
miles into the logging trail.

There had been a faint whine in the
rear axle that had grown steadily louder as they traveled.
Something inside the rear axle had finally let go with a loud metal
clicking, ratcheting sound. That had quickly turned to a high
pitched metal scream and all forward movement had
stopped.

They were at a wide place in the trail.
A stream, not much more than a few feet wide, and barely covering
the rocky bottom, cut across the trail in front of them. A small
clearing led away from it.

They had unloaded the truck and pushed
it to one side of the trail. Just into the trees far enough so that
it would not be in the way. It was certainly going no further the
way it was, as they had pushed it into the treeline the axle shaft
on the drivers side of the truck walked out a good six
inches.

“
Uh, that's a really bad
sign, I'm guessing,” Mike said.

“
That's no good at all,”
Josh agreed as he got out of the truck.

“
Yeah,” Tim agreed. “Either
the shaft has snapped or the clip that holds it is
gone.”

“
It's fixable though,
right,” Mike asked.

“
Nope,” they both said at
once.

“
How much farther to go,”
Josh asked.

“
Probably seventy miles or
so,” Mike said.

“
We need another truck,”
Josh said.

Ronnie and Bear had walked up and stood
looking at the rear dual tires. Ronnie looked at Mike and grinned.
“Never say never,” he said, alluding to Mike's remark, and his own
vow, that he would never go back out again.

“
I could send someone,”
Mike said.

“
You could, but you wont,”
Ronnie said.

“
Shit,” Mike
said.

“
Yeah,” Ronnie
agreed.

“
There's another one just
like her at the farm place, only new,” Bear said.

“
Yeah... Saw it... Didn't
want to go back there so I thought this one would work,” Mike
agreed.

Bear nodded. “Probably a trade in...
Probably because it had a bad rear end.”

“
You are such a help,
Bear,” Mike said.

Bear chuckled.

“
Shoulda, woulda, coulda,”
Josh said. “You can't second guess yourself.”

Mike nodded. “Ronnie's
right. I'll go back. If all goes well I'll be back late this
afternoon,” Mike said. “
Maybe
late afternoon.” He turned and looked around at
the others where they stood, leaning on fenders or sitting at the
side of the road listening.

“
I'm not stupid, so I'm not
about to put a bunch of us in danger going back out there... Ronnie
will stay here and keep things going. Besides, if anything else
happens to him Patty will kill me... Or kick my ass, and I'm not
sure which would be worse.” Several people, Ronnie included,
Chuckled. “Bear. I want you to stay and make sure things stay safe
here. You're about the best shot we have right now. And that is
because I'm taking Chloe, Tim and Josh with me. Tim for the brains.
I don't want to pick another clunker. Chloe because she can
shoot... Better than I can even. Josh because he knows more about
these trucks than I do. Between him and Tim I shouldn't be able to
pick another bad one. Josh also shoots well...” He shrugged. He
paused and waited for the quiet to come back. “Okay... Extra clips
and let's bring a pair of those fully automatic rifles along
too.... We'll be back early to late afternoon like I said.” He got
into his pickup and got it turned around. A few minutes later Tim
and Chloe pulled up behind Mike with a second pickup truck, where
his truck sat idling as he talked to Ronnie.

“
I'll be on six,” Mike told
him and held up a VHF radio.

“
Be careful,” Ronnie told
him.

“
Yeah, well,” He glanced at
Bear who stood to one side. “You guys watch these woods... Light
out if you have to.” He dropped his truck into drive and pulled
away. Tim and Chloe followed.

The Nation

By early afternoon they were finished
with the corn field. The wagon had been off loaded by the pool that
morning, and they had been making trips back and forth between the
first and second cornfields all morning long, loading up the wagon
and taking it to the first silo.

Tom and Craig had kept a steady stream
of corn and stalks coming. Bob and Arlene fed them into a long
hopper that delivered the freshly created silage directly into the
silo at the other end. On their end the hopper pushed the stalks
and corn into a long screw mechanism that chewed everything they
put into it into tiny bits.

The screw was run by the huge diesel
engine Tim had hooked into it. Their supply of diesel was still
good, but Bob hoped to have a similar grinder working with Oxen
power by next spring. He just needed to put Tim's mind to it when
he got back.

The top of the silo was vented; the
bottom as well. They had made a giant post with spokes that was
mounted in the center of each silo. The center shaft was nothing
more than a whole tree sitting in a rock lined pit. The spokes
smaller trees. But not much smaller. A man would never turn it,
especially full of tons of silage, but a team of Oxen could, and
would a few times a week, to allow the air to circulate through the
silage as it dried out. That was the principal reason for the short
silos. Any taller and nothing would have moved the silage at all.
At least nothing they had on hand.

They worked to fill the first silo,
then started on the second. They were nearly to the top of that
silo when the raw material ran out.

Liquid was already seeping from the
bottoms of the silos. A concrete channel directed the liquid into
deep concrete pits in a closed room of the barn. That room was well
ventilated too. There they would turn the liquid into grain alcohol
so pure it would run a gasoline engine. Bob felt they should end up
with a few hundred gallons of the stuff as a by product of making
the silage.

Most of the silage would go to the
pigs, but a fair portion of it would go to the cows as well. The
horses would subsist on grain and hay. Standing hay fields, cut
while the seed was still on the stalk. That would make up the
majority of the cow and bison's diet too. The second stories of all
four barns was nothing but storage, just waiting to be filled with
hay.

What they had planted would never be
enough, but there was so much standing hay, nearly as far as the
eye could see, that they would have no problem filling all four
lofts.

What they had planted would be a much
higher protein yield than the stuff that grew wild. But as they
harvested they sowed their own hybrid seed they had bought in with
them. So all the yields in the following years would be higher in
protein. There would be no shortage for people or animals, once
they had finished with the cornfield everybody headed back to the
cave. Lilly, Candace, Patty and Janet began to get dinner ready, as
well as look after the children, as the others made a steady
procession up the stone ledge and into the far reaches of the cave
to store the corn.

The remaining two fields of corn would
come down by ear and be run through a coring machine, that did just
that, left nothing but a core.

In between the second and third barns
was what looked to be a huge concrete pad. But under the six inches
of concrete it was hollow, about four feet high; rock lined walls
and floor.

The corn would be spread on top,
watched over by people. Fires started underneath to heat the stone
and concrete, and the corn would be dried. The fires under the
concrete had to be carefully regulated. Hot enough to speed the
drying process, but not so hot that it cracked the
concrete.

There were six huge concrete and stone
storage containers that had been built in the fourth barn. That is
where the finished product would end up. The corn would probably
not take up more than two-and-a-half of the big rooms. But some
silage would also be dried and used to fill the rest of the
containers, as the silage worked down they would add the stalks
from the remaining fields to it. As well as whatever they had in
leftover hay that would not fit into the lofts. By the time most of
the excess moisture had been drained or vented off, the silage
would be a highly concentrated, high protein feed. Drying it out
would stop it from working, and allow it to be stored for long
periods of time: By the time the corn was put away, dinner was
nearly ready to be served. People had gone down to the pool to
clean up, or further down the stream to bathe.

There were two areas below where they
drew their drinking water from that they used for bathing. The
first place was for the women. It was close to the pool: Where the
pool drained off it had created a ten foot hole leading down to the
valley floor. The area where the water fell was already elevated
from the valley floor some twenty five feet, so in effect it
created an area about ten feet wide, with a fairly deep bottom and
wide stone ledges, since it was sunken down into the rock it
afforded privacy.

The second area was slightly farther
away, where the stream took a sharp right turn, pulling away from
the side of the mountain and turned out into the valley itself
where it meandered the rest of the way across the valley floor. The
sharp turn had eaten into the rock about eight feet, which dropped
the stream down even with the valley floor. The turn left a rock
sheltered stone ledge on the inside corner of the turn that
extended about twenty five feet before the rock sides fell away and
the stream flowed into the valley proper.

Tim had promised hot water, pipes,
drains, real showers. Everyone knew it would take some work and
that it was probably a few years off, but they all believed it
would happen eventually. For now the cold water bathing was what
they had and no one complained.

Dinner was pork chops, potatoes with
creamy pork gravy, peas and pumpkin pies. Sourdough biscuits. Fresh
cream for the pies and butter for the bread.

“
Okay,” Candace said. “Now
I see why I am getting so big.”

“
Face it dear,” Janet told
her. “You have two trucks parked in that garage.”

Patty nearly spit out a mouthful of the
milk she had just swallowed. Candace laughed so hard tears squirted
from her eyes.