The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (10 page)

The kid managed three shots before
Candace hit him. He slowly toppled over and splashed into the
river. Lydia stood. Her mouth open wide, staring across the river
to where the kid had been.

Candace raised her eyes to where Lydia
stood, and they caught on the ragged, gaping hole blown through the
back of her t-shirt. She continued to stand. Seeming to still be
looking out over the river. Her mouth working.

“
Lydia,” Candace
whispered.

Lydia slowly turned, her mouth still
working but silent. A small neat hole wept blood down the front of
her shirt. Her chest hitched and her eyes fluttered.

Tom lunged to his feet, his eyes dazed,
and ran to her, catching her as she slumped forward. Her eyes
flickered once more as he eased her to the ground.

A small tight smile came to
her mouth.
“Killed me,”
she wheezed. Her eyes closed, and her chest
stopped its struggle for breath.

~

The silence seemed to go on
forever as Mike and Janet waited. Sudden gunfire erupted in the
distance again. Janet moaned and Mike pulled her closer to
him.
“Ssss alright,”
Mike told her. “
Alright.”
He didn’t believe it anymore than he had the last
time he’d said it. The burst of gunfire came and went just that
quickly, and then silence fell hard on the still morning
air.

Janet held herself rigidly. Mike could
feel her tremble against him. He patted her head. A stupid,
useless, meaningless thing to do, he told himself, but he continued
nonetheless, patting her head and stroking her hair. Useless, but
if nothing else, it seemed to help calm him.

He drew a deep breath, and the radio
squawked. “Mike?” Bob asked.

Mike took a deep breath and swallowed
hard before he trusted his voice to answer. Jan let go of her
breath in a deep whoosh and drew in a long, deep shuddering breath.
Mike stroked her hair once more.

“
Yeah,” Mike answered
quietly.

“
It’s bad,” Bobs voice
broke as he spoke. “It’s bad, Mike. It’s bad.”

In his head Mike could already hear the
words he didn’t want to hear. He had heard everyone’s voice except
Candace’s. It only stood to reason… Still, he didn’t want to hear
it.

“
It’ll be okay,” Jan told
him. She pulled him tight. Her own hands trying to pull his head
against her breast. “Mike… It’ll be okay.”

“
It’s Lydia,” Bob said. His
voice choked with emotion.

“
Candace?” Mike asked. He
hated himself for asking. He hated the weakness in his voice. How
could it be Lydia, he asked himself. I just heard her voice. How
could it be?

“
I’m here, Babe,” Candace
said through the crackle of static. Behind her voice they could
hear what sounded like sobbing. The sobbing came across clearly as
she stopped talking. “We’re on our way back… We’re coming back…
It’s over,” Candace said. She held on to the button for a split
second longer, the smooth silence spitting quietly, then the radio
in Mike's hand went back to solid static once more.

~

“
Be careful, Honey. Be
careful.” Mike's voice came through the radio in her hand. She
nodded, and then keyed the button, “I will. We’re coming back.” She
looked around her.

Tom sat cradling Lydia in his arms.
Bright, thick blood covered the ground under her chest and the side
of Tom's pant leg. The three other bodies lay close by. Bob stood,
ashen faced, his gun still held tightly in one hand.

The pickup truck idled
noisily about a hundred yards away from where Candace stood. The
doors hung open. The Suburban and the State truck rumbled from
behind her. Maybe, she thought, five minutes had passed since they
had spotted the truck and stopped behind them. The kids had come
out shooting. Just like in the movies, Candace thought. Exactly
that. Hell! They had acted like it
was
a movie. Five minutes and four
people dead. She shook her head slowly.

Tom looked up from the ground and met
Candace’s eyes.

“
Let’s get her in the
truck, okay, Tom,” She said softly.

Tom's head slowly nodded.

“
What… what about these…
these others?” Bob asked.

“
Fuck them,”
Tom rasped.
“Fuck
them!
They can rot right there. They’re not
going in the truck!” He looked at Candace defiantly.

“
Okay,” Candace agreed.
“Okay… Bob?” She waited until Bob's eyes left Lydia’s body. “Help
Tom with Lydia?”

Bob nodded and started towards
Tom

“
No,” Tom said quietly.
“Don’t need help.” He swiped a blood covered hand across his eyes,
leaving a bright smear of scarlet across his forehead as he did.
“I’ll do it. I’ll take care of her.” His voice shook at the last,
but he got to his feet, carefully holding Lydia in his arms, and
headed for the pickup truck.

“
Bob,” Candace said,
motioning to the bodies.

Bob looked at her
questioningly.

“
In the river. We can’t
just leave them here.”

Bob nodded, and together they bent to
pick up the first body.

A few minutes later Candace let the
last body slip from her hands and plunge over the cliffs and into
the river far below. She turned her palms upright and stared at
them for a second.

“
Candace,” Bob said. She
nodded, and followed Bob to the truck.

Tom sat behind the wheel, Lydia slumped
on the passenger seat, her head resting against Tom's shoulder.
“You okay to drive?” she asked.

Tom nodded. His eyes met her own. They
were red, and tears perched on the bottom lids waiting to spill
down his cheeks. He cleared his throat, started to speak and then
cleared his throat once more. “I’m going to drive out of the city.
There’s a small little place out by Huntingtonville. My parents
were raised there. There’s a cemetery there...” He trailed off, and
Candace saw the tears that had been perched on his lower lid begin
to course their way down his cheeks. He started to speak again,
shook his head and gave up momentarily. Candace turned her eyes up
to the clear blue morning sky and waited. Tom’s voice came to her
quietly a few minutes later as she watched the empty
sky.

“
There’s a shed… In the
Cemetery… I thought.” His voice choked up again.

“
Yeah. Yeah,” Candace said
softly. “You go. We’ll stop and get Jan and Mike. They’ll want to
be there.”

Tom nodded. His hand fell to the shift
lever on the steering column. His eyes, tear-filled and
overflowing, swept up to her once more.

“
You’ll be okay to get
there?” Candace asked.

Tom nodded, not trusting his voice to
speak. He turned his eyes back to the road.

Candace nodded. “We’ll meet you there.”
She stepped away from the truck and watched as Tom pulled slowly
away.

Mike ~ March 15th

It’s been a very long day in more ways
than one. We are five now. Lydia is gone. It’s crazy, but true. Tom
is in bad shape, sitting by the fire reading Lydia’s
diary.

We buried her today in Huntingtonville,
a little place outside of the city. There’s a cemetery there right
by the river. Tom's parents are buried there. Now Lydia is too. It
took a lot of work; the ground is still frozen a few feet down. It
could’ve been worse. If everything wasn’t melting, we would’ve had
a much harder time digging the hole. Tom couldn’t bring himself to
do it. Bob and I did it.

To make the explanation
short, we were ambushed. I shouldn’t say
we.
I wasn’t even there. Neither was
Jan. We were left behind to watch the cave.

It started in the night; these kids
came and stole one of our trucks. We didn’t know they were kids of
course. It turned into mess. Three kids are dead. Young kids. What
a waste. We don’t even know why they did it, why they chose to
shoot at the others. None of it.

Everyone is messed up, me included. Jan
too, because we weren’t there. But it’s over. This part’s over, but
really it’s not over at all. I don’t know what’s next. None of us
do. The day has already lasted fifteen hours so far. The sun
doesn’t seem to be moving at all. We don’t know what to make of it.
Everyone just wants to get past this day, for it to be
over.

Lydia ~ March 15th

Lydia is gone. They took her. I can’t
believe it, it’s like a nightmare. I can’t deal with it. I won’t
forget it. Tom.

~Huntingtonville~

The moon rode high in the sky. Frost
gleamed from the freshly turned dirt that lay scattered across the
gravel of the road that lead into the cemetery. Silence held, and
then a scraping came from the ground, muffled, deep.

At the edge of the woods, eyes flashed
dully in the over-bright moonlight. Shapes shifted among the trees
and then emerged from the shadows onto the gravel roadway. One
dragged a leg as he walked, clothes already rotted and hanging in
tatters. A second seemed almost untouched, a young woman, maybe a
little too pale in the wash of moonlight. She walked as easily as
any woman, stepping lightly as she went. The third and fourth moved
slower, purposefully, as they made their way to the freshly turned
soil. They stopped beside the grave, and silence once again took
the night, no sounds of breathing, no puffs of steam on the cold
night air.

“
Do you think...?” The
young woman asked in a whisper.

“
Shut up,” the one with the
dragging leg rasped. His words were almost unintelligible. His
vocal cords rotted and stringy. The noises came once again from the
earth and the four fell silent... waiting...

Her hand broke through into
the moonlight. A few minutes later her head pushed up, and then she
levered her arms upward and began to strain to pull herself up and
out of the hole. She noticed the four and stopped, her pale skin
nearly translucent, her blond hair tangled and matted against her
face and neck. Her lips parted, a question seeming to ride on
them.
“It's okay,”
the young woman whispered,
“it's okay.”
She and one of the older
ones moved forward, fell to their knees and began to scoop the dirt
away from her with their hands.

“
It'll be okay,”
Lydia mumbled through her too cold
lips.

“
It will. It will,”
the young woman repeated.

CHAPTER FOUR

More Is More

~ March 16th ~

Mike sat quietly on a small pile of
brick outside of the cave entrance and watched the sun come up.
Forty-three hours from sunrise to sunrise. It made no sense at all,
at least not to him.

The air was warm, not warming, but
warm, and a heavy haze hung on the horizon where the sun was
beginning to rise. Northwest still, but it didn’t seem as far to
the west as it had been just a few days before.

We need something to track that, he
thought. And then, maybe not. After all, what good would it do to
know if it was a little more to the East or the West or
whatever?

His thoughts were broken by a soft step
beside him. He turned as Candace came up beside him carrying two
mugs of hot coffee. She handed him one of the mugs and then settled
beside him.

“
Thank you,” Mike said. She
smiled back and then blew lightly at the hot coffee in her mug.
Steam lifted off the rim of the cup as she did.

“
How long?” She asked
finally, and then took a small sip.

“
Forty-three… Give or take
a few minutes.” He kissed her lightly on one cheek.

“
What was that for?” She
asked with a smile.

“
Because I wanted to,” Mike
told her. He blew on his own coffee and then took a small
sip.

“
You okay?” she asked in a
more serious tone. Her eyes met his.

“
Yeah. It… I don’t think
it’s sunk in yet.” She nodded.

“
It’s like,” he continued,
“when my parents were killed. I knew it. I accepted it as well as I
could, but there was really no time to process it… or, maybe I
refused to process it. Anyway, it was years later before I ever
really dealt with it. That’s what this reminds me of. Someday, once
this all settles down, we’ll process it. Until then, I think we’re
just on cruise control.”

“
What was it?” She asked
softly.

“
Car accident. It was
fast... for them anyway.” He seemed sad thinking about
it.

“
My mother died a few years
ago. My dad right after her. They were older when they had me. Hard
life… Bad genes. Heart attacks for both of them,” she finished
quietly.

“
I’m sorry,” Mike said. “It
must have been hard.”

Candace nodded. “So I know about the
taking the time to process it later thing. I don’t think I’ve dealt
with all of it yet. And this,” She lifted her eyes and swept them
across the sky, the river, the rocks, the road that ran past the
cave and the cliffs that rose on the other side of the river. Her
eyes settled on the sunrise. “This isn’t over by a long shot. Who
knows how or when it will end? I guess we’ll deal with what we can
and keep the rest moving, you know?”