The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (90 page)

His head exploded, and the glass of the
rear window he had been standing in front of blew inward. The shots
ricocheted back to them and then the silence came hard and
stayed.

“
Chloe,” Mike whispered
after a while.

“
Yeah?” Her voice was still
tight. Strained. They had both been looking through their
scopes.

“
You see anything? Anything
at all?”

“
Nada,” she said softly.
“Goddamn truck's in the way.”

Mike nodded to himself. “Alright... I'm
going to stand up and walk down there... I'd say cover me, but I
guess I'll be a sitting duck.” He stood and looked down the road
past the truck. The view was no better. The truck in front of them
was on a slight rise, or the road dipped just past the truck,
either way there was little to see.

“
You guys alright back
there,” Mike asked.

“
Yeah,” Tim’s
voice.

“
Good,” Josh
added.

He cleared his throat. “I'm
going to walk closer and then I'm going to call to them...” He
waited a second, and then walked a few hundred yards forward to
where he thought he would be within shouting distance. He could see
Jessie's truck on the highway below. The area looked deserted.
“
Jess! ... Jessie! It's Mike,”
he yelled. “
Those guys
that were shooting are done, Jess. We killed them...
Jess?”

Silence.

“
Goddammit, Jess. It's
really me... Answer me... Someone!”

Silence.

He stood on his tiptoes.
“
You can see me, Jess... Those guys are
dead... We killed them... I'm standing in plain view, Jess... For
Christ’s sake don't shoot me... Come on, Jess. It's Mike!”
His voice was hoarse already from
shouting.

Silence.... Then he saw her. A shock of
black hair bobbing just above the truck's roof-line. She stepped
around the truck and she was there, standing in full view on the
apex of the hill.

“
Mike?” Her voice sounded
small and far away. Her rifle was in her hands, ready to use.
Another head bobbed, and another, and two men moved up behind
her.

“
Jess, it's me. We're
coming down, Jess,” he yelled.

“
Those bastards shot me,
Michael,” she said in her far away voice. Then she
collapsed.

The Nation

It was late, almost everyone had gone
to bed. Patty and Candace had walked back down the valley to
Candace's house. They sat quietly on the porch in the front porch
swing.

“
I'm worried about them,
Pats,” she said. “It's only been ten days, but I'm worried, Pats.”
She started to cry.

“
Oh, Baby,” Patty said. She
pulled Candace to her breast and stroked her hair. “It's the
hormones, Candy. That's all... Got me all messed up too sometimes,
Baby.”

“
It doesn't feel like
hormones It feels real, Pats. Real,” Candace sobbed.

Patty stroked her hair. “That's why
it's so hard, Candy. It feels so real... But you'll make yourself
sick if you start worrying now, Baby... It's a long way until they
come back, unless everything goes easy,” she sighed. “It's going to
take what it takes, that's all.” She stroked her hair and pulled
her close.

“
Just hold me, Pats. I know
I'm a big baby. Just hold me, Pats,” Candace sniffled. She was
calming down. That was the thing with hormones, Patty thought.
Rushes of emotion.

“
You got it, you,” Patty
whispered. She smoothed Candace's hair and brushed the tears from
her cheeks. She thought about Ronnie, and she admitted to herself
that she loved and needed him. There was more than a little guilt
mixed in though. She hoped Candace was wrong. She hoped it was only
Hormones, but she was more than a little uneasy herself.

“
I love you, Pats,” Candace
said. “You're so good to me.” She was still sniffling, her voice
thick with emotion.

“
I know, Candy... I love
you too... It's gonna be alright, Baby.” She stroked her hair and
wondered how true the words she had just spoken were.

On The Road

Jessie Stone, Darren John, George Dell,
Violet Hideki and Pam Glass were all that was left of the party
that had left that morning. Peter and Melanie Kant and John Steele
were dead, and they had seen first hand what had happened to
Lisa.

All five of them were scraped and cut.
Violet and Pam had dozens of small razor thin cuts on their arms.
They had shielded their eyes when the windows of the truck had
blown in as the fight had begun. Their cheeks and foreheads were
cut as well; wherever else unprotected skin had been.

Darren John had a flesh wound to his
shoulder. It had bled a great deal, it was still
bleeding.

George Dell had been cut by flying
glass. One long, deep furrow that rose across his cheek towards his
temple looked as though it could have been made by a bullet, but it
could have just as easily been made by a flying piece of plastic
from the truck's interior, Mike thought. It was impossible to tell
for sure what it had been.

Jess was the worst. The bullet had
entered the fleshy part of the inside of one thigh. Her pants leg
was soaked with blood; the leg swollen against the
fabric.

Mike had Chloe hold a cloth tightly to
her thigh as he cut the pants away. The wound was clean. Through
and through. It wasn't bleeding hard enough to have hit one of the
big arteries, Mike thought, but it might have nicked one. Chloe
continued to hold the cloth tightly as he looked the wound
over.

Mike picked up the radio by his side.
He had deliberately turned it off. He had made his mind and he did
not want any emotion to get in the way of what he had decided to
do. So he had shut it off and it had stayed off it. He turned it on
now and punched in channel six.

“
Ronnie... Ronnie it's
Mike. We've got problems here, Ronnie.” The sun was sinking in the
sky as he spoke. He was at least three hours away and he had no way
to move everyone. Their trucks were all shot up and they had only
four seats between them in the two trucks they had.

“
Jesus, Mike,” Ronnie's
voice came scratchy, but loudly from the radios tiny speaker. His
voice was calmer when he spoke again. “What's up, Bro... Tell me,”
Ronnie said. Mike told him.

A few minutes later he was talking to
Steve Choi. Steve talked him through applying a bandage using cloth
and a belt over the wound, and then using another belt as a
tourniquet to slow the bleeding. Steve told him someone would have
to loosen the tourniquet every few minutes to lessen the
possibility of damage to the leg. And stop using it as soon as the
leg stopped bleeding.

He had him wrap her in a heavy blanket
to keep her warm and help with shock from blood loss. He got a few
aspirins down her by tapping her face until she awoke enough to
swallow.

“
Mike, you don't want to
spend the night in the middle of the road,” Ronnie said. “Put her
in the back of one of the pickups... You have blankets? Quilts? Get
them. They had to have had them. Get them and pad the hell out of
one of those pickup beds. You can get everyone else in the bed of
the other pickup. It may not be pretty, but it can work. Get them
in there. Get someone with a flashlight to keep an eye on that
tourniquet, and get back here,” Ronnie told him.

“
Hang on,” Mike said. He
turned to Violet and Pam. “Are there more of those blankets and
quilts,” he asked.

They both nodded, and he turned his
attention back to the radio in his hand.

“
Okay,” he told Ronnie.
“We'll be coming at you. I think we got all of them, but I just
don't know...
So...”
He didn't finish. He turned to violet and Pam. “Okay. Get me
all the blankets, quilts and sleeping bags you can get... Shake
them out just in case... Probably full of glass... We're going out.
I guess you heard that. Let's get whatever personal stuff you have
that will fit... We're gonna squeeze into those trucks... All of
us... going in just a few minutes,” he finished quietly.

They got Jess settled down into the bed
of one of the pickups. Pam and Chloe climbed in to ride with her:
They both knew what to do. Jess awoke for just a few seconds and
whispered something in Mike's ear just before he climbed back down
from the pickup bed.

“
What did she say,” Pam
asked.

“
She asked where I was
taking her,” Mike said. And on some other world, in some parallel
universe, that could be true. The Jessie Stone in that other world
might have said that. But the Jessie Stone here said
'I love you.'
Mike turned
and walked to the front of the truck.

The Nation

Janet Dove's Journal

I am not as faithful as I once was
about writing in this journal. It has been a few days.

We are finding a rhythm to our work.
Craig, Bonny and Roberta, our newest Members, have fit right in.
Beth is healing nicely as well, and we just had a few more people
come in tonight. For Craig, Bonny and Roberta, this is the life
they wanted, so they are very happy. I am glad they found us. Sorry
they lost so much on the way, but glad they are here. But that begs
the question, will our travelers who are out there now bring others
back with them? Robert believes they will. He believes the Nation
will continue to grow. And it has been, so he is probably right.
And that brings another question to my mind, how many are there
here? Robert asked me tonight and I had no answer for
him.

I think that people thought I was
keeping track of it, but I have not been. It didn't occur to me
until Robert asked me this evening. It did make me think. I ticked
off the ones I can remember in my head and I was shocked. I think
Robert will be too. The ones I know for sure that have come here
one way or the other over the last few months come to about two
hundred. That sounds crazy. How could that be? But then I thought
about the corn harvest. One day and we were done. Early at that.
Then I thought about when the last time my name came up for a watch
was, and I can't recall. Two hundred and winter is coming and that
may mean a push for others to get here before winter does. I know.
I hear those conversations every day on the radios. There are
groups on the way now.

Robert believes that we will number in
the thousands. He says it is the way it is supposed to be. The
creators purpose. And it has been growing, but not in the way I
thought that it would. Not the way that Robert told me when he
dreamed about it in the old world. The reality is that there are
very few Native American people here at all. I thought there would
be many. But I think maybe that the way it is growing is right.
That it is the way it was supposed to be all along. People in the
old world thought our people had no nation when the whites came to
this country. Thought we were ignorant and lived separately, but we
did not. We were many people bought together as one. We had a
Nation then. Leaders. It is the same here. It really is.

After all, the idea was to put hatred
aside, and that is what we have done, isn't it? Yes. I think so.
For the most part anyway. I guess we still have things we hate. The
dead. The gangs that rule some cities that are still out there in
the world. The gunfighters we hear about are feared and hated. They
are nomads, traveling town to town and killing the dead for pay. I
don't know if I can bring myself to hate them for that though. They
kill, but they kill the dead. The problem is a few step outside of
that role and kill the living as well. Robert believes some of that
can not be helped.

My point is we do still hate, just not
each other... Or a color... Or a point of view, a lover, a child,
whatever the thing is. We had so many lines in the old world and
they meant very little, we just hated nearly everything we did not
understand, or did not want to understand.

So we are growing, and will continue to
grow. Robert says the thousands, and he has not been wrong yet. I
think I will either do a census myself or get someone to do
it.

A funny thing has happened to me. I
have always been so insecure, but some way, somewhere, I lost that.
I am too busy to be insecure. I don't have time. And the things I
say are respected. I had no idea what that would mean to me. It is
a good feeling.

Candace is as big as a house. Lilly is
even bigger, and Patty almost as big. Arlene is only barely
showing, and I imagine Molly will be showing a little by the time
they get back here. And I know of seven other women who are
pregnant. I guess we are in the kid business and happy about
it!

Along The Ridge

The forest ran down along the ridge
from the mountain, covering the naked rock in places, the roots of
the trees going down into the cracks in the rock, the trees
themselves stunted but strong.

The dead were spread out along the
ridge. Squatting in the shadows. Huddled against the trees,
friending the shadows that hid them from the valley below. They
started a few feet into the trees, spread loosely, hidden within
the shadows, and extending back into the darkness from
there.