The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (13 page)

Tim is just a kid, Patty’s brother. He
worships Ronnie, you can see it in his eyes. Seems like a likable
kid as well.

Sandy is Native American, like Bob and
Jan. Not from their people, but they clicked immediately, knew the
same people back when the world was… well, the way it used to be.
She’s a nurse; that’s like solid gold. How many nurses or doctors
are there?

Nell is a small, Spanish woman. She
looks to be in her twenties. She was stationed here with her
husband, but he had left last month for overseas duty. She has no
idea if he is okay.

They’re moved in. The cave is large, so
eleven people is nothing. Plenty of room. Everything they owned or
had been on their backs. They lost everything else when their
building collapsed yesterday during the earthquakes and storms. So,
it was pretty simple for them to move in.

Patty and Sandy have both asked about
our plans for leaving, so later on we’ll probably sit down and talk
about it. Nell and Lilly seem more interested in staying. Nell is
afraid to leave the area, as if her husband could somehow get back
here, and if he did this is where he would look for her. It seems
unreasonable to me, but she has the idea in her head. There doesn’t
seem to be a way to shake it, at least not yet. Lilly is captivated
by Tom. Tom has never made any bones about the fact that he doesn’t
want to leave. This gives him someone to be with him. I suppose
that’s a good thing.

We knew there were people around, but
in the last few days it seems like we’ve met both the bad and the
good. I would like to meet more, but no more bad ones.

Candace ~ March 17th (Late)

I know Mike has written tonight, much
earlier, so I won’t go over the same things that I assume he wrote.
It’s been a nasty couple of days, and we don’t know if the bad
things are over or not. We have new people with us. I really like
Patty. I can talk to her, and it’s been awhile, even back in the
world, since I’ve been close to another woman like that.
Relationships seem to form fast now. It’s just the way of the new
world. We’re just taking life as it comes, at face value I guess.
There are no directions for us.

Patty, her man and her brother have
decided to stay. They also decided they’ll leave when Mike and I
do. They don’t want to face a North Country winter in a cave. We
are not cave people and don’t want to be. But we talked about that
too. We may end up in some other cave. It could be the quakes have
caused devastation everywhere. If so where else would it be safe?
We talked a lot. We talked ourselves out. There’s always tomorrow
to talk some more.

If the day is anything like normal
tomorrow, we may go out looking for vehicles. Ours were swept into
the river during the storm. We’ll see what’s left.

After the meeting broke up, I spent
some time talking to Jan, another woman I became instantly close to
when all that I had, had been this notebook and a gun to depend on.
She really likes Sandy. Sandy is enthusiastic about returning to
the land. So are Bob and Jan. I think returning to the land is
fine, except a mowed lawn is okay as well. I guess there are no
more lawns to be mowed though.

I gave my father's gun to Lilly. I
don't know why I did that. I thought that it meant something to me,
but whatever that was has passed on. She noticed it, liked it. I
showed her how to shoot it; what was left to do? Besides, and I'm
being honest, after this stuff with Lydia, after having to shoot
someone, I decided I'd rather put on another forty five. I have an
exact mate to the one I was wearing on me already. I picked it up
the other day. I asked myself tonight, would it have made a
difference if I was wearing it the other day? One on each side?
Well I am now. It makes me feel safer, more ready to deal with
whatever comes at me.

Anyway, Jan and Bob turned
in, as did Sandy. Mike’s long gone to sleep, and I’ve been sitting
here thinking about the last few days, thinking about Lydia…
everything. So, I wrote something, if I had a guitar (I intend to
get one) I’d put it to music. I have the music in my head. I
have,
had
, a note
book full of little songs that I wrote. Sometimes I would get ideas
once a week, sometimes a few a day. They just showed up. I would
see or feel something, and it would come out as a song. Some people
do that with stories. It's the same isn't it? Writing is
writing.

I heard more than once I should do
something with them. Maybe I would have made a better
singer/guitarist than dancer? It's all art isn't it. Maybe I'll
resurrect some of those lyrics when I have the time. Meanwhile,
I'll write them out as they come to me.

It’s a new world, rust falling from the
skies

It’s a new world, scales fallen from my
eyes.

Everything gone in the blink of an
eye,

got time to hurt, but no time to
cry.

Got to keep moving just to stay
alive,

take it day by day and try to
survive.

It’s a new world, death calling from
the cities empty streets.

It’s a new world, mind skipping, heart
missing beats.

Life passing by in the space of a
dream,

moving too fast to know what it might
mean.

Changes and changes, new every
day,

looking for answers, don’t know which
direction they lay.

It’s a new world, got my heart in your
hand.

It’s a new world, time’s spinning
through my fingers like sand.

Yeah It’s a new world, rust falling
from the skies

It’s a new world, scales fallen from my
eyes.

Everything gone in the blink of an
eye,

got time to hurt, but no time to
cry.

Kind of corny, I know, but I like it.
It says how I feel. I think it’s the way we all feel, we’re eleven
tonight, not five anymore. I’m going to bed and hold my
man.

~East of the City~

They were fifteen now. The old factory
was a perfect place to hide. There were two who could bear the
daylight, who did not need the darkness, and they kept watch
through the long days.

There was no hunger, no real need. The
dead were everywhere. The living were everywhere. And then there
were themselves, the UN-dead. Those that had tasted death but had
somehow come back from death, and there did not seem to be anything
to take this new life away from them.

They were very few right now. Some
died, and some died and then found life once more. It was a
mystery. No way to know which would and which would not come back.
They often waited to see, sometimes triumphant in their slow, quiet
way, sometimes shuffling away, dejected, but with the knowledge
that more would come.

They traveled together at night,
avoided those that lived, scavenged the dead and marked their time.
Change was on the wind. Big change. It came on the wind. A scent of
forever death, along with the stench of the living. It came from
the South, and as soon as there were a few more, they would leave
and make their way south.

There was no leader. They just felt the
same things, knew the same truths, realities, felt the same things
inside where their life force was. It was like a collective
conscious, a hive. The workers and no queen. But there might be a
queen. That was the promise that came on the wind. The scent that
tempted them to travel south. It called to them.

~ March 18th ~

With more warm bodies to help guard
through the night, everyone slept better, or at least longer and
with fewer interruptions, Mike thought.

The night had been another long one,
well over twenty hours of darkness, but once the sun did come up,
it crept slowly upward on a straight arc across the sky, the
wandering, drunken course of the day before was gone.

Mike stood in the early dawn light
sipping coffee, back leaned against the rock of the cave entrance,
watching light spill over the tops of the cliffs that cradled the
opposite side of the river as the sun crept higher into the sky. He
felt someone at his side and turned expecting Candace. Instead, it
was the young boy, Tim.

“
Tim, right?” Mike
asked.

The young man nodded his head, seeming
pleased that Mike had remembered his name. “Tom sent me. He said
he’d like to walk out Arsenal Street today, or maybe Washington
Street, and look for vehicles.”

Mike nodded. “Good idea. Tell him I
want to change into some boots and let Candace know I’m leaving,
and I’ll be ready to go.” Tim nodded, smiled and darted back into
the cave. Mike finished his coffee in a few quick gulps, poured out
the dregs and walked back into the cave to find Candace.

~

They decided on Washington Street,
simply because of the sheer volume of car lots that had been in
that area. The sun rose steadily into the sky, maybe not as quickly
as they were used to, but faster than it had been and in a straight
line, rising from the South and looking, Mike thought, as though it
would sink in the North or Northwest somewhere.

Six of them had come. Mike, Tom,
Candace, Patty, Tim and Ronnie. Candace had already wondered
privately to Mike where Lilly might be. It hadn’t escaped the
notice of anyone that she and Tom had spent the night
together.

Candace walked with Patty, keeping up a
fairly constant flow of conversation as they walked
along.

“
So they think the new
stuff will start now then?” Patty asked.

Candace nodded. “They think it would’ve
started before if we had thought to try it again, but none of us
did. It also may have had nothing to do with it at all. We may have
just picked bad vehicles to try.”

“
Seems unlikely though,”
Patty said. “After all, you had no trouble with the other three,
and what are the odds of finding three old vehicles that would be
able to be started and driven?”

“
Yeah. We thought the same.
We just don’t know what was causing them not to work.” They both
fell silent for a moment.

“
So, was Mike your guy
before all of this happened?” Patty asked. She flipped her black
hair away from her face and studied Candace seriously.

“
No,” Candace answered. “I
met him when we came to this cave. I knew as soon as I saw him
though. It shocked me. I’ve never been like that. But I knew. I
decided, and I told him. He decided that fast too. You think that’s
wrong…
weird?
”

“
No,” Patty answered. “It’s
almost the same with Ronnie and me. I knew him. I liked him. We
lived in the same apartment building. When it happened, he came and
got me and Tim. I’m not the kind of woman that feels as though I
have to have a man around for protection. Hey, for a while there I
was a feminist. He just helped, and he wasn’t an ass about it
either,” she shrugged, “A couple of days later we were together,
and I’m not sorry at all. He’s a good man. He’s quiet. Thinks the
world of Tim.” She paused again.

Candace nodded. She understood
perfectly. It did seem as though Patty had some distance in her
words, like something wasn't quite true. But it may be the same way
it was with her own situation. It was brand new. Sometimes it was
hard to believe that it was the truth. They walked in silence,
looking at what the latest quakes and torrential downpours had done
to the small city.

~

The ground that had been torn up had
been leveled out. The roads had vanished in places under a layer of
dirt. The vague outline of the street itself could be seen under
that layer of rubble, and here and there a building or part of a
building still stood.

Cars, trucks, a few stalled city buses,
an occasional glimpse of asphalt where the road rose higher than
the water had flowed. Tom, Ronnie, Mike, and Tim had stopped ahead.
They were close to where the old high school had been. All that
remained on the left side of the road now were a few walls and,
strangely, a large oval track that seemed untouched. The parking
lot, most of it anyway, still remained and was full of
cars.

On the right was a small strip mall,
also with a parking lot full of cars. The men were off the road in
the strip mall parking lot standing next to what looked to be a
nearly new four wheel drive sport utility vehicle. As Candace and
Patty caught up, Ronnie turned and smiled.

“
Keys are in the ignition,”
Ronnie said grinning. Tim tapped the horn, a hard metallic blast
sounded.

“
Battery’s up,” Mike said,
his grin as big as Ronnie’s.

Tom slid into the driver’s seat through
the open door. “Well,” he said. He turned the key.

The motor spun and caught immediately.
The truck kicked up to a high idle. The stink of burning gasoline
filled the warm air.

“
I forgot what that smelled
like,” Patty said. Everyone was smiling and laughing at
once.

“
Let’s say we ride the rest
of the way,” Tom suggested. No one needed a second invitation.
Doors were opened and everyone piled in. Tom shifted into
four-wheel low, eased the truck down off the slight rise that lead
from the road to the parking lot, bouncing the truck on its springs
as it trundled down the rise, over the sidewalk curb, and onto the
dirt and asphalt road below.