The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (149 page)

“
Well, Bob, I don't have a
thing to myself... Nothing to settle in,” Josh told him.

“
Well, let's go then,” Bob
told him. He turned and Josh followed him down the ledge and into
the valley.

Mike stood next to Candace and watched
them walk down toward the valley floor. Ronnie and Amy stood
nearby. “Looks like the bridges are up... The corn's in too?” Mike
asked her.

“
Yep and yep, Baby,”
Candace told him. She had his hand in her own two critically
examining it. She sighed and looked up, meeting his eyes. “We've
been busy. Me and the babies have missed you so we've had to stay
busy. Sandy grounded me though because I've gotten so big,” she
added. She watched his face.

“
Grounded,” he asked, and a split second later.
“Babies?”

Candace grinned. “Babies,” she
agreed.

His mouth hung open. “I don't even know
what to say,” he told her.

“
Say, I love you,” she told
him.

“
I love you,” he told her
and pulled her to him. He kissed her hard.

“
Wow. That was nice. Maybe
you should go away more often,” Candace told him. She plucked at
his hand. “Except this.” She looked at the bandaged hand and shook
her head. “You have to let Sandy see this.”

“
No... No more going away.
I'm never going back out there,” he assured her.

Amy and Ronnie moved over closer to
them. Amy's eyes were bright and she held Ronnie’s arm tightly to
her.

Candace looked at Ronnie’s nose.
“Nice,” she said, and cut her eyes back and forth between Ronnie
and Mike. “Him short a finger and you with a smashed up
face.”

“
Man meets dashboard,”
Ronnie told her.

“
Looks pretty bad,” Candace
told him.

“
Yeah? Well, you should see
the dashboard,” Ronnie said.

“
I believe I owe you an ass
kicking, my man tells me,” Amy said to Mike.

Ronnie pretended to look up at the
sky.

“
How come you have an ass
kicking coming, Baby,” Candace asked him.

“
Uh, I'm the guy that broke
his nose,” Mike asked?

“
You're not sure if you
were the guy that broke his nose,” Candace asked? “Maybe it was the
Nose Fairy?”

Mike laughed. “No... It was me. I
confess, but it was an accident. I'm sorry for it...
Truly.”

“
Good for you,” Amy
said.

“
Yeah,” Candace agreed.
“You do not want to mess with a hormonally unbalanced
woman."

“
I think she can take you,”
Ronnie said.

“
Oh, good, soup her up,
Ronnie. Soup her up,” Mike said. He laughed and the others joined
in. “But really, Aim, it was an accident. I'm sorry about it, but
it was an accident.”

“
I know,” Amy told him. “I
just had to see you crawl a little.”

“
Hello,” a strikingly
beautiful woman said as she hobbled up. She was leaning on a stick.
Her black hair was straight and long, hanging well below her
shoulders. She was no more than five feet tall. Her face unlined,
concealing her age, a smile resting on her full mouth. Her skin a
light brown.

“
Oh, Jess, you shouldn't be
up,” Mike said, turning to her as she walked up.

“
I gave myself permission,”
Jessie told him.

“
Jessie,” Mike said as he
turned and looked from Candace to Amy. “Jess, my woman, Candace.
And my friend Amy, Ronnie's woman. Ladies this is Doctor Jessie
Stone.”

Sandy over heard the introduction from
just a few feet away and hurried over with Susan.

“
This is Sandy and her
woman Susan. Sandy is our nurse. She's been doing all of our Doctor
stuff,” Mike said.

Everyone said their hellos and Jessie
turned to Candace.

“
I wanted to meet you,
Candace. I have heard so much about you. You're a very lucky woman,
you know... Your Mike, he saved my life. Truly and completely,”
Jessie said.

Candace sensed that several things were
being said at the same time. It made her slightly uncomfortable,
but she took Jessie’s hand and clasped it in her own. “It's nice to
meet you, Jessie. Mike told me all about you,” she said. She was
suddenly disconcerted. She felt she had missed something. Something
simple, yet serious

Jessie's eyes lifted and settled on
Mike for a moment. It was brief, but it told Candace everything she
needed to know. This woman had some sort of feelings for her man.
Something that obviously wasn't returned, or there would be no need
for her to tell her how lucky she was.

She smiled again as Jessie's eyes left
Mike and rested on her briefly on their way to Sandy. She would
have to ask Mike about it later, because the thing was, he had told
her almost nothing at all about Doctor Jessie Stone. And nothing at
all about the woman he seemed comfortable calling Jess. She pushed
it from her mind.

“
Sandy,” Jessie said.
“Maybe you could show me around? ... You too Susan, of
course.”

“
A doctor,” Sandy said. She
seemed flustered.

Jessie laughed. “From what
I have heard, you are the doctor here. Believe me. I've heard only
good things about you, Sandy,” Jessie said. She turned to Susan.
“And you. I heard you are learning...
Have
learned
a great deal.” She smiled at the
tall, beautiful black woman and Susan smiled back.

“
What do you want to see
first,” Sandy asked? She was still flustered.

“
Well, the golf course
first, I guess. I hope it's a good one,” She said dead
pan.

Susan laughed aloud and took the
smaller woman’s hand in her own. Sandy's face froze between a laugh
and surprise.

Jessie patted Sandy's arm. “Kidding...
I thought you would expect the golf course joke,” Jessie said. All
three of them laughed and Jessie turned back to Candace and Amy.
“It was good to meet both of you,” She said. “Mike.” She nodded at
him and then turned and walked slowly away with Sandy and Susan, up
the ledge toward the main cave area and the clinic Sandy and Susan
had set up.

Amy's eyes slid to
Candace. She knew that Candace knew. She missed nothing. Amy
widened her eyes slightly and blinked. Candace shrugged her
shoulders, just enough to send Amy an -
it
will be okay message
. Mike and Ronnie had
turned and were looking down into the valley where Bob and Josh
were making their way toward the first of the barns, oblivious to
the small drama playing out right next to them.

A few feet away, Rain and Alicia stood
staring at one another. Alicia was a year older, but smaller than
Rain.

“
I'm a girl,” Rain told
her.

“
Well, so am I,” Alicia
said.

“
I have a little brother,”
Rain told her. “Well, he's not my really brother. He's a
orphoon.”

Alicia nodded “What's a
orphoon?”

“
It's a boy nobody wants, I
guess,” Rain told her. “But I'm not for sure.”

“
I got a brother too,”
Alicia said. “He's my for real brother, but he's really old and he
don't like girls at all.” She told her.

“
How old,” Rain
asked?

“
I don't know,” Alicia
said. “A lot.” She looked at her fingers and then held up all ten,
fanned out. “Maybe this many... Maybe even more.”

“
Wow,” Rain said. “That's
crazy! ... We got a school. They teach us to count there and then
you can know how many for sure.”

Alicia nodded and then scrunched up her
eyes. “You play with dolls?”

“
Yep,” Rain assured her.
“And I got a lot of them too... Wanna see them?”

Alicia smiled. “We could play,” she
said.

Rain smiled back, stuck her hand out,
and Alicia took it. “Come on,” she said. “I'll show you, only you
got to be careful and stay away from the ledge.” She had been
pulling Alicia away, but she stopped and looked back at her
seriously, still holding her hand. “We could fall down a long
way... Auntie Janna said so,” she whispered.

“
Okay,” Alicia whispered
back. She followed Rain up the ledge, holding her hand as they
went, looking respectfully over the rock wall at the long valley
below.

~

Cindy and Chloe walked through the
field. The sheep were scattered throughout the high grasses,
grazing.

“
I just want a place where
I can live,” Chloe said.

“
I can see that,” Cindy
answered. “Chloe... Chloe, I don't hold anything against you. I
went along to stay alive too. And I think that is the truth of the
situation. If we hadn't,” she shrugged. “We would have been dead...
They would have killed us, Chloe, we both know it.” Her voice had
dropped to a whisper when she finished.

“
I thought maybe you'd hate
me,” Chloe said. She choked back a sob.

Cindy stopped, put her hands on Chloe's
shoulders and touched her forehead to her own. “Chloe, I don't. I
couldn't. I'd have to hate myself too, and for a while... For a
while I did, but only myself. I'm glad you're here.” Chloe put her
arms around her and hugged her. Her eyes were leaking. She
sniffled, swiped at her eyes with two fingers. The two women stood
in silence for a few moments just holding each other.

Chloe drew back slowly. “Come on,
Cindy. I want you to meet someone,” Chloe told her.

“
Okay,” Cindy said huskily.
“Then I want you to meet someone.

The two young women turned and walked
back through the field toward the cave, leaving the sheep and the
dogs to the field.

~

They decided to eat outside in the
small area that surrounded the pool at the bottom of the running
falls, below the cave. There were a half dozen large trees that
provided shade for the area. Mike, Ronnie, Bob and Tom left and
then returned with several rough wooden tables on the back of a
wagon. A second trip bought all the chairs that they could scrounge
up, but they were still far short. Quilts spread under the trees
fixed that problem. Several of the chairs were left empty as many
decided the quilts spread under the trees were a better
bet.

Lunch was a whole roasted pig, mashed
potatoes and canned peas. Zucchini bread made with the sourdough
mix they had managed to get going and sustain. And several loaves
of sourdough bread.

They had begun picking berries to make
pies two days before, and there was not a single bush in the valley
that still held wild berries. What hadn't gone into the pies had
gone into storage in the cool reaches of the cave. Fresh cream,
butter and three kinds of cheese were on the table.

Craig and Tom carried the pig away from
the fire and sat it on a huge wooden platter on one of the tables.
It hung over both ends. Two additional platters began to fill up
with meat as the two men carved from opposite sides of the
pig.

People tended to form small groups,
sitting together and talking as they ate. Getting to know each
other.

“
I was in my second year of
residency,” Steve Choi told Sandy in answer to her question. “I was
beginning to like that fast pace of the emergency room in a big
hospital. I was leaning more and more towards trauma surgery, maybe
a position right there where I worked.”

“
I worked in a small
Northern New York town. No drama, no trauma, at least not very
often. We were next to a huge military base. They had their own
hospital, but we got the serious stuff they couldn't handle, which
pretty much meant a lot of that was stuff we couldn't handle
either. Most of the time it was tough staying awake for the shift,”
she said truthfully.

“
Half the time I had that
problem too, I just couldn't find my way to a bed to make it
happen. In a larger hospital if you aren't dealing with the trauma
you're dealing with the paperwork from it. Keeps you on your toes,”
Steve told her.

Sandy nodded. “I've been teaching Susan
what I know. She helps me a lot. We've been trying to identify
plants that have medicinal properties. Herbs too. Next spring we'll
have a pretty good garden area to plant so we'll have what we need
on hand,” she told him.

“
Do you like nursing? Well,
more like doctoring, I guess,” Steve asked Susan.

“
I do. I had never done
anything like this. I was a legal secretary, you know, do all the
work so the lawyer can take the credit and look good. It was a rut,
but I couldn't find my way out of it. I probably didn't try too
hard though... Until I met Sandy: Until the world changed, I just
didn't think of other possibilities,” Susan told him.

Steve nodded. “I have Joe. If not for
what happened I... I don't know what I would have been doing. Still
trying to be me on the sly. The hospital frowned on gay doctors,
not on the record of course. But gay doctors made less, got skipped
over for promotions, that kind of thing that is there, but you
really can't prove. Still, there were more than a few of us. The
world was almost there, becoming more and more intolerant of hate,
and the ones that weren’t were on the way out. It looked like it
could be a good place in the near future. Even so, like you said, I
didn't think of other possibilities until I met Joe: Once we met...
Once the world was done controlling my life, I opened my eyes and
really looked.” He reached over and squeezed Joe's hand and his
eyes followed, smiling.