The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (148 page)

He scented the air while
his gathered around him. Over one thousand, and nearly that on the
other side of the city waiting for his command. He knew the numbers
exactly, eighteen hundred seventy-three. But the numbers were
unimportant, the time was important. Their time. The end of the old
time. It was on the air.
In
the air. He took a step forward and those behind
him surged, only to stop once more as he stopped, careful to leave
him space. Careful not to bump or jostle him. For such a large
crowd they were nearly completely silent.

He scented the air. There where
hundreds of the breathers hidden away. Hundreds that believed they
were safe. He knew where they were. He knew what they considered
safe: It was safe because he had allowed it to be safe, but the
time of safety for the living was at an end.

He knew he would lose some of his own,
but he knew those he took would raise to join him. It was ironic
really: If the breathers could only look at it that way they might
be able to see it in an entirely different light. A gift. And a
gift was really what it was. How often did you wish you could live
forever? How often had he wished it? So, here it was and they were
running from it. Afraid of forever or afraid of passing through
death to get to forever?

He looked over the dark city. The
breeze that passed his face told him about those hiding. It also
told him winter was on the way. Bad for the breathers, but not for
him or the dead with him. Cold was life. Heat was the enemy. Cold
was something to be embraced, longed for, fought for, striven to
attain. Heat was the destroyer of that life. The coming winter
would be good for them, they would come together and move to the
larger cities.

He took a step, another, and began the
walk down the hill toward the darkened city. The thousand behind
him moved as one, following him down the hill. No fires burned. No
lights shone. He could smell the stink of the breathers. It
repulsed him and yet it drew him at the same time.

He could smell smoke on the air. The
breathers needed their warmth, but it would only lead his to them
more easily. They had their fear of fire, but they had a bigger
fear of him. A fear of what he would do if they did not succeed.
There was another death. Another death that was permanent. He had
set examples, and he could set more, but the deeper into the
process they were the more in tune with him and his needs they
were. They did not need examples. They knew the consequences and
they understood them completely.

The walk down the hill was pleasant.
The air became even cooler as they descended into the valley that
held the small city, the scents of the living clearer. He stopped
near a crumbled store front on the outskirts of the city itself. A
crossroads, or what had been a crossroads. The others stopped
behind him. Waiting.

The main road stretched away into the
city itself. To the left and right the buckled and overgrown
blacktop stretched away. He said nothing, but those behind him
began to divide into groups, some to the left, some to the right. A
few minutes later, the cold blue moonlight shining off the cracked
and tilted roadway, they started on their individual ways. A few
minutes after that the intersection was empty, as though they had
never been there at all.

~

She ran from the doorway of a falling
down building, one of the several that sat at the crossroads, the
children under her arms and pressed closely to her. They were
really too big to carry, and she would not be able to run for long
with them, but she had to put as much distance between herself and
the dead ones as she could, and the kids could never keep up with
her...

She had not heard them come, but she
had sensed something wrong, the way any mother will, and she had
crept to the front of the crumbling building and peeked out the
shattered window, hiding herself in the shadows as she did. They
were everywhere. She had nearly screamed aloud in her fear, but
managed to reign it in because she knew it would lead to discovery.
They would come for her, and if they came for her whether the kids
hid or not they would be finished. They couldn't survive without
her. She had clamped one hand across her mouth and faded back
farther into the shadows.

At first she had refused to look again.
Afraid that they would somehow know she was watching. But she
couldn't stand not knowing where they were and what they were
doing. Were they, even now, creeping toward the building? Was one
peering through the shattered glass and into the shadows where she
was hidden? Her eyes flew open. No, but she had nearly convinced
herself that it was true. She crept forward once more to the
shadows at the front of the old building and the windows there.
They had stood motionless in the road. A vast group. Several
hundred. Maybe more than a thousand. Maybe more than
that.

Some did not look dead at
all, they seemed almost as alive as anyone else. The differences
were there though. You could not put that many living people in one
place and maintain absolute silence. Humans...
Living
humans, she had amended...
Were these still humans, she had then asked herself? She pushed her
own question aside. She didn't really care. The point was
humans...
Her kind of
humans
, would not be that silent. Would
not be able to be that silent.

This crowd had stood stock still. Hands
dangling at their sides. They looked stupid, but she knew they were
far from stupid. She had been watching. They were also not really
very smart, far from it. She had watched them stand still and wait
while someone lined up a rifle or pistol and shot them. Wasn't that
stupid? To her way of thinking it was. But when she had thought
about that she realized it had been some time since she had
actually seen that happen. No. They were smarter than that now. Not
as fast or smart as a human... There was that word again, but
didn't it mean that there was something about them that she didn't
consider human? Something in them that bothered her so much that
she could not look at them as humans? Something...

She had watched, careful not to make
any noise. The children were in the back, in an old freezer room. A
heavy steel door closed and locked with a padlock. Even now they
could be calling out to her and she would not know. And that meant
that the Zombies also would not know. Could not know. She hoped
that they were not upset. Not worried. That they had not missed
her, but she had been relieved that she had thought to close and
lock the freezer door. It had occurred to her then though, that if
anything happened to her they would die in that freezer. No one
would know they were there. No one would come for them. They would
be frightened, scared... She had pushed it away and watched the
dead where they stood, hands dangling, faces blank. They looked
stupid. They looked stupid, dammit, and they should be stupid! But
they weren't.

She had watched from the shadows as a
few minutes later they had begun to move away. No words passed
between them. They made very little noise even in their leaving.
Feet scuffing against the roadway, their clothes rustling slightly.
No more than a whisper on the wind, and she had wondered what it
was that had bought her from her steel prison in the first place...
Intuition? Had to be.

She had waited a few
moments after they were gone. The moonlight was cold. Her breath
fogged lightly on the air. She was terrified, she found.
Still terrified
, she
corrected. She had taken to doing that. Correcting her own words as
if she were someone else. She had worried at first that it could
mean she was going crazy, but she had decided that it didn't matter
if she was crazy or not; didn't matter in this world because the
entire world was crazy. So what was the problem with a little more
crazy? None, she had decided. She could go on correcting herself
forever.

Her heart still hammered in her chest.
Hard... Bam... Bam... Bam... it's a good thing they had not been
able to hear it.

She had looked out at the
road. Empty. Not a sound, but something bothered her about it. If
they knew she was here they would come back: They would. And if
they were gone it would be best to leave right now. Not wait until
they came back and found her... Killed her, she modified.
Yes...
Killed
her. And the kids... Or leave them to starve to death in the
old freezer... Or... Could they figure out the lock mechanism?
Could they? They were smarter, but were they that much smarter?
Maybe they were. Maybe...

She had turned and run to
the freezer. Panicked. Knocking aside a stack of boxes as she went.
The crashing of boxes loud in the silence. More than loud.
Overwhelming. Sending her into a frenzy. She nearly snapped off the
key getting it in the lock. Her breath coming hard and fast.
Creating pain behind her ribs. That sharp pain she associated with
running too hard for too long. And her breaths were shallow, hard
to pull;
hurt to pull
. She couldn't seem to get enough air. And then the key had
slid home, she had twisted the padlock, shot it from the door and
let it fall to the floor.

The kids had been sleeping, but they
had come awake quickly as she pulled them from the floor and began
dressing them.

“
But mommy, I'm sleeping...
I'm tired,” Danny had complained.

Jessie had just stared blankly.
Blinking her eyes and looking around.

“
Honey,” she had told
Danny, “We got to go... We got to... Don't fight me, Baby. Give me
your foot.”

“
Is it the dead guys,”
Jessie had asked quietly, her eyes serious. She had held Jennies
eyes and refused to let them go.

“
Yes, Baby. Yes. Now come
on. Get yourself dressed for mommy... I have enough with your
brother. Get dressed, we got to go.”

Jessie had nodded and began to dress
herself. She had turned to Danny as she dressed “'member them dead
guys,” She had asked him.

He had stopped squirming and looked
seriously at his older sister. “Yeah,” he had breathed.

“
Well they might get us if
you don't hurry up... Making mamma take too much time... They eat
little boys first too.” She had turned away and began to tug on her
sneakers. Danny had stopped fighting and had actually begun
helping.

“
Wrap your arms around
Mommy and hold tight,” Jennie had told them. She had been a big
woman just a few months ago, now she was maybe a hundred pounds.
Maybe it would make her faster, but she didn't believe her own
words, and the little voice inside her head continued to chatter
along about running in boots, and she should have changed to
sneakers, and... She had shut it down, peered out through the
shattered window at the still and empty road. Jessie had reached
down and turned the knob on the door for her, and she had stepped
back and the door had swung inward. A minute later and she was
running through the shadows at the edge of the road. A deep stitch
in her side.

~

He came from the shadows and chased her
down. It was so easy. One of the things that had been slow to
change, but amazing to him once it did, was strength and endurance.
There seemed to be no real limits or end to his energy. Something
in the way this body used energy as opposed to the way the old body
had. It was exhilarating, and thrilling too, as he nearly instantly
outpaced her and came up alongside her. The fear, the stench of
living flesh. It was overpowering. It could drive him crazy if he
allowed it, but he would not allow it. He reached out, enfolded her
in mid stride, and threw her to the ground.

The Nation

Josh looked over the high meadow before
he lead the sheep and goats down into the first Valley. The dogs
went with them and refused to leave them. The male dog seemed to be
determined to mark every square foot of what he considered his new
territory with his scent.

Down below the notch, with its entrance
to the cave and the ledges, the trucks were unloaded with care. It
was still early morning, quite some time until the mid day meal, so
they had begun unloading the trucks first.

To the children it was like Christmas.
Not only were there new and exciting things to see, touch and
feel-Rain had ended up with a handful of wool as she had grabbed at
a passing sheep-there were also new people to meet. A lot of new
people.

They decided to use three large, dry
rooms off the main meeting room to store the materials from the
three big trucks, but they quickly filled up. Everything else that
was easily transportable went into one corner of the huge living
area of the main cave instead.

Bob spied the harvester and asked whose
idea it had been. Mike pointed him to Josh and told him that Josh
had been a farmer. Bob walked up to him and shook his hand
heartily.

“
Man, do I want to have a
few dozen conversations with you,” Bob told him.

Josh laughed. “Good to meet you, Bob.”
He turned and looked down the length of the valley. “Nice... Very
nice,” he said.

In the distance the horses, cows and
bison could be seen. The barns. The stone houses set back close to
the sloping valley walls.

Bob smiled as Josh looked around. “When
you're settled in I'll show you around,” he told him.