The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (110 page)

Bear reversed the stock of his rifle
and ran at the Zombie in front of him. He clubbed his head flat and
then reversed the rifle and shot him through the head once he was
on the floor. Six more UN-dead dropped from the darkness above, one
right after the other. Two landed on Bear's truck, and he heard
Cammy scream from inside. One stood from the roof, preparing to
leap at Billy as he ran towards Don and Ginny's truck, and Bear
shot him off the roof of the truck. He fell right onto one of the
kerosene lanterns, and the flames shot up immediately, running
under and up the side of Don and Ginny's truck where the kerosene
had splashed. It seemed like less than a second to Bear before the
truck and the stock in the aisle behind that truck went up in
flames. The line of flame rolled away into the store, catching the
merchandise on the shelves as it went.

Beth shot another Zombie as it dropped
from the ceiling and landed nearly in front of her. Don's truck
started, and a second later, Don's eyes showed just above the
dashboard as he dropped the truck into gear and lurched forward.
Bear jumped at Billy, knocking him out of the way as the truck
roared by with scant inches to spare. They both rolled, came up and
Billy fired low, taking the legs out from under one of the dead.
Bear gained his feet, spun towards the front and watched Don's
truck smash dead center into one of the piles of pallets and tires.
It was already burning, flames shooting from under the truck and up
the sides. The flames had fanned when Don had dropped it in gear
and driven from the store. The truck hit, bounced and then came
back down hard on the tires and pallets.

Sparks flew high into the sky. The
truck bounced twice more, Bear saw Don's head bounce off the side
window, and then the truck veered sharply to the left and roared
off into the parking lot covered in flames. A second later, the
sound of the crash came to them as the truck slammed into several
cars in the lot and came to a fast halt. Bear forced himself to
turn away. He couldn't afford the luxury of watching something he
could do nothing about.

As he turned, the gunfire inside the
store picked up. The dead seemed to be dropping from the blackness
of the ceiling in a flood. Thick, black smoke was lifting up to the
ceiling and billowing out into the store. Orange and yellow-blue
flames danced everywhere. The ceiling was lit from the fires, and
as Bear looked up, he could see the dead crouching on the steel
beams that made up the underpinnings of the roof and the ceiling
above them, waiting to drop on the living below.

Bear swore under his breath and then
yelled aloud. “Take them out up at the ceiling. Just open up on
'em!”

A second after that the dead began
coming down faster, shot, some dead, others full of holes but still
moving. The four of them managed to get close to each other and
then backed into the inside store wall, putting the concrete block
at their back and mowing down the dead as they dropped and tried to
get to their feet. It seemed like only seconds later when the dead
stopped dropping from the darkness.

There were two still moving, and Beth
took care of both of them with her long knife. She slammed one boot
clad foot against their heads, one by one, held it tight to the
ground and drove her long knife straight through it in one
shot.

In the silence, Bear could hear someone
screaming in the parking lot, and he remembered the truck. He
turned and ran toward the door when Beth screamed his
name.

“
Bear!”
Her shout was loud in
the store. Bear stopped dead and turned back, sure more of the dead
had begun to drop from the ceiling once more. As he turned, his
rifle began to lift toward the ceiling.

“
Where in fuck do you think
you're going?”

He stared stupidly at her
for a moment. “The truck, Beth.
The
goddamn truck...”

“
I know... I saw the same
fucking thing you did. But where are you going? Because it looked
to me like you were going to run right out there in the dark...
right to that truck.”

“
She's screaming, Beth...
she's...”

“
Yeah, and that's bad. I
don't want to hear it either, but if you run out there, you'll be
dead too, sure as shit. Dead, and not a goddamn thing to show for
it.”

The silence fell again, and the
screaming from the parking lot bled back in. Bear stood, torn,
knowing Beth was right, but the screaming pulled at him like a
physical thing. A second later, something out there blew up, and
the screaming stopped. A second after that, the silence was hard
and heavy. Bear heard a scratching, scrabbling noise from the other
side of Billy's truck and walked over quickly.

In the aisle, behind the trucks, Mac
and Billy were spraying down the fire with chemical fire
extinguishers, clouds of white rising now instead of the thick
black.

Bear came up the side of
Billy's truck. One of the dead had managed to get itself crawling
once more, a hole in the base of its skull. It was moving in jerks,
erratic, but it was moving. “Better come see
this
shit,” Bear called
out.

The four of them stood and watched the
jerky movements of the zombie as it tried to gain its
feet.

“
Very fuckin' bad,” Mac
said. He tossed the fire extinguisher, and it clattered to the
floor and rolled away.

Billy's face was hard. He stepped
forward, levered one single bullet into the chamber of his rifle
and fired point blank into the Zombie's head. It blew apart, and
the Zombie finally quit moving.

“
I do not like that at
all,” Beth said.

“
Yeah, I'm guessing it
missed the brain,” Billy said. “That's the way it looks.” He bent
down, rolled what was left of the Zombie's head so he could see the
bullet hole in the base of the skull. He shook his head. “Just
can't fuckin' tell. Just can't.” He looked over where Bear and Beth
stood together. They both walked over. Bear knelt and leaned in
close. Beth squatted beside him.

“
Looks like the hole blew
the base of the skull apart, but it didn't actually get into the
brain. There's no hole.” Bear shrugged as he stood.

“
Looks that way to me too,”
Beth agreed. She leaned forward, looked around the floor. “Billy,
throw me that stick.” Billy threw a short stick to her, what looked
to have been the base to a small hand held flag at one time. Beth
used the stick to tilt the head forward more. She leaned even
closer. “No... There is no hole into the brain. It hit the base of
the skull, busted the bone out, but it didn't take out the brain.
That's why that bastard was still kicking.” She tossed the stick
aside and rose from the squat she had been in.

“
I hope so,” Mac said. “Or
else...”

“
No.
There is no
or else
. I just looked
at it. Take that goddamn stick and look at it up close like I just
did if you don't believe me. It didn't die because it wasn't a true
head shot. That's all,” Beth said. She turned and walked back
toward the front of the store.

“
Gimme a hand,” Bear said
after a second or two of silence. He and Billy began dragging the
dead out into the parking lot, staying close to the fires as they
did. They both glanced over at Don's truck where it burned along
with four or five other vehicles. They both turned quickly away,
walked back inside and dragged another body out.

The Nation

Mike sat quietly on the rail that
closed off the stalls from the main open floor of the huge barn.
Bob and Tom were finishing up spreading fresh hay across the floor
in the huge open area where the horses bedded down. He and Ronnie
had offered to help but had been told to take a seat on the rail
and wait.

“
He can spread that hay,”
Ronnie remarked.

Tom looked up and smiled. There was a
time, not too long before, when any remark from Mike or Ronnie
would cause an entirely different reaction in him. Whatever
remnants of his feelings, left over from their time together in
Watertown, still existed, were becoming less and less important.
Something new was replacing them. Some sort of friendship, but
something that went beyond mere friendship too. Camaraderie: mutual
dependance and respect. Something like that, he told himself.
Something like that, only more complex.

“
We should have put them to
work, Bob,” Tom said now.

“
Couple smart asses, that's
for sure,” Bob agreed. All four men laughed.

“
Did Candace know you were
coming down here?” Bob asked.

Mike looked quizzical. “As a matter of
fact, yes.”

“
Yeah... Talked to me about
it too,” Bob agreed.

Mike nodded. “Crossing T’s and dotting
I’s.”

“
Well, what do you think,
Bob?” Ronnie asked. “You too, Tom... Does it make
sense?”

Bob finished spreading the last bundle
of hay he and Tom had thrown down from the loft, dusted his hands
and came over to the rail. Tom came behind him.

Behind them, the double barn doors
yawned open, the last remaining light spilling in, the skies dark
blue, bruised purple at the horizon. A horse looked in through the
doors and whinnied at Bob.

Bob turned back to the door. “Well,
come on, Buddy,” Bob said quietly. He patted both hands against his
thighs. The horse tossed its head and pranced into the barn, a half
dozen others right behind him. More would be on the way as night
closed in. Before they left, Mike knew, the horses would all be in
the barn for the night, and the huge doors would be swung shut on
the darkness.

The horse trotted over to Bob, seeming
to Mike to run sideways as he came. Bob caught his huge head,
patted his nose and rubbed between his eyes and then behind his
ears. The horse closed its eyes and dropped its head lower, clearly
enjoying the rubbing.

“
Big baby,” Bob told the
horse. He rested his own head against the horse's as he spoke to
him.

“
God, that is a big horse,”
Ronnie said. It was no secret that Ronnie had a fear of
horses.

Tom leaned against the rail. He and
Mike both nodded.

Bob finished scratching the big
geldings head. The horse wandered a few feet away and began to eat
the fresh hay that was scattered across the floor. Bob turned back
to the others. “I instigated it. I have no doubt. But, yes, I stand
behind it. I told Candace,” he looked at Ronnie, “And Patty too,”
he laughed.

“
A package deal,” Ronnie
agreed.

Bob nodded. “I told them both the same
thing.” He moved to a nearby flat bed wagon and levered himself up
onto the platform. He sighed. “We definitely get our daily exercise
met here,” he said. He looked back over at the others.

“
We need to go. No doubt. I
did not know how fast we would grow, and even my low ball estimates
now are liable to be way off too. I think by fall we could easily
be over a thousand. I know it seems as though we brought in enough
for an army, and some things we did. I think ten generations from
now they will be thanking us for the supply of needles or forks.
Christ, we must have a million of those plastic lighters too. So
some things great, some not so great.”

He looked down at the ground and then
back up. “Do you realize we have about fifteen coats, jackets I
mean, between us. Socks? Sounds petty, but we need socks. And this
is us, not the others I expect here sooner or later. Seed. Lumber.
Do you realize we forgot entirely about furniture or a sawmill? And
I saw two or three of those portable sawmills there at that farm
store where we spent so much time. I didn't think to get one on the
truck though.” He shook his head.

“
I made a bed frame... and
a mattress,” Mike agreed. “I wished I had thought of it too. But
those are not absolutely-gotta-have-them items, are they? I don't
mean to make them sound unimportant either,” Mike
colored.

“
No. No, I see your point.
I'm a little all over the place. Maybe I should have listed the
important stuff first. Medicines. We have three folks here with
heart problems that could die without simple medication. Even an
Aspirin, Sandy tells me, could help. Antibiotics. Books on herbal
medicines. We got Tim. He can read something and figure out what we
need to do to make it for ourselves, so if we can find books on
medical compounds, he could teach us, or show us how to make them.
Did you know that before everything became chemicals there were
natural compounds that were used to cure almost anything? And they
worked too.”

“
And if
we do have a thousand people here by winter and no jackets, warm
clothes, how in hell are we going to get any work done? Gloves.
That sawmill. Tim’s electrical parts he needs to get us power up to
the cave... wire, boxes... hell, I don't pretend I know what he
needs. Thank God
he
does.” They all laughed. Bob leveled his eyes on
Mike. “It's not a frivolous trip. I told Candace and Patty that
too,” he raised his eyes to include Ronnie. “We have to go. No
choice to it. We have to go, or not everyone will make it through
the winter.”

“
Give us
another year when we are able to get the supply up to the demand
and we'll be fine...
maybe...”
He laughed a little.
“No... I suspect, to be honest, that we would be fine. But I also
suspect we will always have a need for those things that are lying
around out there. I'm not saying we will absolutely have to have
them, but we will find reasons to need them. But this trip we have
to have some of these things. Yes, a lot of stuff is going to get
added on. You're gonna have to shut down the requests, believe me.
I told them we need to make it formal, have a council meeting,
everyone there. Let everyone have a say.”