The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (160 page)

'Where's your head?” Ronnie
asked.

Mike laughed and looked at Ronnie.
“This military base under Watertown... I want to say if it exists,
but I guess that is just denial.”

“
Yeah... But we all knew
it. It shouldn't really be a surprise at all. We knew the
government fucked us over.... Suspected they did, anyway.” Ronnie
said.

Mike was nodding.

“
So... We decided the way
we had to... Bear and Billy know what they are going into. Pearl
certainly knows. Why is it still renting space in your head?”
Ronnie asked.

Mike frowned. “Responsibility, I guess.
I feel like I should be there.”

“
Candace would kill you if
she heard you say that,” Ronnie said unsmiling.

“
Been there. She was upset
when I said pretty much that same thing this morning. She said I
promised... I couldn’t break my word.” Mike said quietly as he
pulled at the wires wrapped around his gloved hand slowly, coaxing
them through the conduit.

They both fell silent and Mike began to
get his thoughts back on the wiring once again. Over the next few
weeks they would be running wire to the houses in the valley and
stringing wire for lights along the pathways that lead to the
houses, school and barns. The pathway lights would be something
like streetlights for the valley.

The wires to the houses wouldn't be
good for much more than basic light, but eventually, with more
wire, they would be able to run more circuits. Probably next
spring, or maybe even next fall before they could get to it, and
that depended upon a lot of things, including how this mission went
with the OutRunners.

“
It's hard to believe that
we are nearly out of wire already. We loaded so much on those
trucks I really thought we had enough to last us,” Ronnie
said.

I thought that same thing. I was just
thinking it,” Mike agreed.

“
Really? Because it looked
like you were lost in thoughts of Watertown again,” Ronnie said
quietly as he pulled another three feet of wire through the
conduit.

“
Yeah, well, that too, I
guess. Hard to stay away from it.”

Ronnie nodded.

Mike went back to thoughts of
electricity. There was a windmill planned. The windmill itself was
already up. It had gone up in two mornings of work a few days back.
But it needed a custom computer program to run it and it also
needed the proper software. It was a project Tim would eventually
get back to.

A second and third bank of solar panels
to supplement the ones that had already been installed, were
planned for the tops of the ridges on both sides of the valley. He
and Janna Adams had carefully crafted a computer system that Tim
would use to run the power system. Mike had readily conceded that
most of the real programming work had been done by Janna Adams. He
was okay, but more of an HTML and Java guy, not the hardcore C++
language that Janna used to build the bones of the software. And
Mike had no doubt that Tim would soon be better than both of them
combined. He had that natural ability to pick up nearly anything
you threw at him.

The computer system would regulate the
power flow between the power plants: Monitor all the separate
systems for usage; keep track of the two storage sites where the
batteries were kept. That included charge states and incoming and
outgoing power levels.

The line was stuck. Mike grasped the
ends of the wire with his linesman pliers and kept a steady pull of
pressure as Ronnie worked the kinks out of the plastic jacket and
sprinkled it with baby powder.

“
Push it backwards just a
little, Mike.” Ronnie said. “Good... Good... Pull it forwards
now.”

Mike pulled and once again the wire
pulled steadily along through the conduit.

The conduit was nothing more than inch
and a quarter pipe in ten foot lengths. It fastened together with
couplers, or elbows where it needed to make a turn. Those
transitions also offered a place to pull the wire from.

“
Okay... Getting there,”
Ronnie said as both men went back to pulling wire.

~

“
How you feeling, Lil?”
Candace asked as she came into the room.

“
Ugh, like someone shoved a
two year old inside of me.,” Lilly said.

Candace laughed, Lilly laughed
too.

“
I'm not kidding about the
two year old though. This kid is huge. I feel like I'm stretched as
tight as I can go,” she said.

“
Baby you are big, that's
for sure,” Candace told her.

“
Hey, Lil,” Amy said, as
she came up behind Candace.

“
Aim,” Lilly said. “Did you
bring it?“

Amy held up a big bag that held three
outfits Lilly had made for the baby, a couple of blankets and a
pair of booties. “Right here,” she said.

“
Thank you, Aim,” Lilly
said. She pulled herself up a bit in the bed as the pain began to
move through her lower back and abdomen again. Candace held her
hand.

“
You're welcome,” Amy said
as she moved up to hold her other hand.

“
Twenty minutes,” Candace
said. “The other one was only fifteen.”

“
Ugh,” Lilly
said.

“
Honey, is that a word?”
Amy asked.

“
Yeah, it's cave woman for
I can't believe I let Grug stick his thing in me,” Lilly said,
laughed and then groaned.

“
That bastard,” Amy
said.

“
Who?” Lilly
asked.

“
Why, Grug,” Amy said. “I
can't believe he did this to you.”

They all laughed. Steve came in with
Sandy as they were all laughing. “How we doing?” He
asked.

“
The last one was twenty,
the one before was fifteen,” Candace told him.

“
Sounds like a little work
yet then,” Steve said. He snapped a pair of latex gloves on his
hands and lifted her gown. Sandy held it as he examined her.
“Coming along nicely,” He told her. “You're dilating. I would
expect that those contractions might start getting closer together
very soon... How are you feeling?”

“
Unbelievably big,” Lilly
said.

“
Well, you are,” He
chuckled lightly, “But it's looking very good. I'll be back in just
a little while. Meantime if you need me I'm right in there.” He
pointed back toward the door.

Sandy smile at her. “I tested
positive,” She told her.

“
What?” Lilly said as
another contraction began.

“
I'm pregnant,” Sandy
said.

“
You must be nuts,” Lilly
said through gritted teeth. Her voice was a snarled growl from
talking over the pain of the contraction.

Sandy laughed. “A little, yes,” she
agreed.

“
Little less than fifteen,”
Candace said solemnly.

“
I figured, now that we
have a doctor... Me first and then Susan wants a child.”

Lilly rode the pain out. She took some
deep breaths and looked a Candace. “That bastard,” she said.
“Grug.” She couldn't get more than one or two words in a
breath.

Candace and the others laughed while
Lilly rode the pain out.

Sandy frowned.

“
Not you,” Lilly said once
the pain began to roll back down. “I'm happy for you... Honestly,
Sandy. Susan too... It's that damn Grug.”

Candace squeezed her hand and
smiled.

“
That one hurt a lot,”
Lilly told her.

Candace squeezed her hand
again.

~

Outside the morning progressed, but the
sky stayed the same leaden gray.

Josh walked to the cave entrance and
looked out over the valley. The sheep were out and the goats with
them. A great deal of the space behind him was now the biggest barn
the Nation had.

He had yet to convince the horses into
the barn, but the Bison had come in after only a few days. They had
readily eaten the grasses and hay Josh had given them, and many of
them could already be hand fed. A few of them were downright
curious and would walk right up to Josh.

The goats and the sheep used a small
area of the barn. There were a half dozen cows who were already
pregnant, crossed with the bison. Almost a dozen bison cows who
were also pregnant, and they had culled the males down to just four
of the biggest. Two they had gelded to use as Oxen, and the other
two they intended to keep for stud. One in the barn, the other in
the field. Never together at the same time as they tended to be
very territorial when the cows were present. They were every bit as
aggressive as the bulls were.

He walked back into a corner of the
barn where Queenie was. The kids had named her Queenie and her mate
Rex. He had made the little area up for her earlier when Shar had
told him it might be her time. Just yesterday Angel had, had her
puppies. Six, all with gray fur. That litter was down in the valley
in the second barn.

Shar was bent over in the corner when
he approached.

“
Five, so far,” she told
him. She moved aside so he could see and as she did the mother slid
another pup out easily and quickly chewed at the cord and cleaned
off the sack that surrounded it. The puppy was crawling around
blindly, searching for a nipple in just a few seconds.

These puppies were a little larger than
Angel's puppies had been, but not by much, Josh thought.

“
Gonna be monsters,” Josh
said aloud.

“
That's for sure,” Shar
agreed. She leaned over and kissed Josh and then went back to
watching the puppies. Content to have him by her. He reached out
and took her hand, rocked back on his heels and watched as another
puppy was born.

~

At the large cave that opened into the
field above the cave, Jessie Stone kissed Brad and then stepped out
into the wide tunnel. She peeked out into the field. The gray sky
hung above it. The clouds nearly touching the tops of the grasses
in the field. It reminded her of snow.

She and Brad were still building their
home in the cave itself. Brad spent nearly every day working on it.
Sometimes Tom or Bob would stop by to lend a hand or some advice,
but for the most part Brad was doing the work himself and enjoying
it.

They had intended to move to the other
cave that fronted the valley on the opposite side of the valley,
but the plans for that cave had changed. One end of the ledge that
overlooked the valley had only been about twenty feet from the
valley floor, due to the way the rocky floor of the valley sloped
upward. But it had prompted Jessie to ask why they didn't simply
continue to build it up until it was level with the ledge itself.
That way they could build the barn right there and run the animals
in and out easily.

“
That would allow us to
drive vehicles in an out to,” Josh had said.

“
Jessie,” Bob had said
laughing, “I think you just talked yourself out of a
home.”

In the long run it had worked out for
the better. They had moved the sheep right down into the valley
using the tunnel to get them there and the new slope down from the
ledge. It had saved days of work trucking or driving them around to
the opposite side of the mountain. They had been there in a few
hours. In the spring they planned to refinish the ledge in
concrete, but for now it worked equally well with built up earth
topped with stone and gravel from the creek bed and the slopes of
the valley.

Harvests, animal movement, meat,
storage, it was all available from either side of the mountain now
by vehicle or on foot. In another few weeks they would be opening
up part of the main original cave to allow vehicles to drive
through more easily. Now they had to maneuver through the main
meeting area and twist around into the tunnel. A little work would
change all of that. They had closed off the same part they now
intended to open up very early on, but since the discovery of the
tunnel to the other side of the mountain it would be a perfect
entrance to make the trip nearly a straight shot and keep the
vehicles out of the parts of the cave they used for people, storage
and even animals.

The only real obstacle was the slope
that came up out of the valley to the ledge of the cave. It was
passable as is, but they were already making plans to change the
slope and lay down concrete there too. The four wheel drive
vehicles had no trouble, but it would make things easier for other
vehicles, wagons, and the larger trucks too. Bob was excited about
a couple of the big trucks to use in the valley during harvest.
They had four, so each side could have two.

The big trucks could hold a lot and
then drive right back through the tunnels to the storage
areas.

Jessie was on her way back down the
tunnel to the first cave. Eventually there would be a stairway
entrance straight down, but that would be after the electrical work
was done.

She had received the call on the radio
from Steve. There was also a telephone system that they planned to
install eventually. Bob had been against that at first, but he had
changed his mind. They depended so heavily on the radio system now
that it only made sense to make the jump to a telephone
system.