The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (179 page)

“
They were naked,” Bobby
said. Her voice was incredulous. “Didn't you see that?”

“
Oh, I saw it... I mean,
sometimes, you really don't know what it was about. It wasn't
something we were meant to see. We should keep it to ourselves,”
Bonnie repeated.

Bobby pushed the door open. “Well, it's
empty now,” she said and smiled widely.

“
After that? I don't know,”
Bonnie said.

Bobby pulled her sweater over her head
in one fluid movement. “Well, I'm going in.” She turned and walked
away.

Bonnie laughed. “You are so bad...” She
hesitated a moment longer, then pushed inside and let the door
close quietly. “Just keep that to ourselves, okay?”

“
Whatever you say,” Bobby
told her as she peeled the rest of her clothes off and lowered
herself down into the water.

~

“
It's been a long couple of
days for you, Jessie, sorry for this,” Bob said.

The barn was empty as Bob lead Jessie
into the open area. The hay mow rose above her, hay weeping over
the edge. One of the horses whinnied from the stalls, the smell of
animals and dung was strong, yet comforting. There was something
she liked about it.

“
Hit a horse on the way
here,” Jessie said now. “It's how I met Mike.” She looked up at Bob
and then around at the barn. Bob stopped at a row of single hay
bales, he motioned for Jessie to sit and then sat himself without
waiting.

“
I must say, this isn't
like you, Bob.” Jessie looked around the barn once more. Her eyes
showed a hint of nervousness.

“
I try to be predictable. I
watch myself, because as a younger man I didn't always do it.
People can get hurt so easily. Lies, half truths, maybe as simple
as misconceptions,” Bob said. “One hand doesn't know what the other
hand is doing... Was it like that, Jessie? Did one hand not know
what the other was doing?”

Jessie turned her eyes back to Bob from
her examination of the barn. “I could say I don't know what you are
talking about, but I would be lying, and I won't do
that.”

“
Well, that's something, I
suppose, “ Bob said.

“
That's Hard, Bob. Not a
side of you I have ever seen.”

Bob' face turned grim as he nodded. “I
had hoped you would say you didn't know what the hell I was talking
about. Maybe even throw fuck in there to really show your
indignation... I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was to hear you
admit it.”

“
What do you think I am
admitting,” Jessie asked? Two spots of red colored her cheekbones.
The pockets under her eyes were white, clashing with the rest of
her complexion.

“
I think you are saying you
planned to take this place away from us. Those of us who built it,
founded it,” Bob said quietly.

“
I thought you were with us
on it,” Jessie said, every bit as quietly.

“
No... Did you hear that
from me? No. Maybe my wife,” he sighed “A lot of treachery has been
going around. Did my wife intend to take over with David at her
side?” Bob asked.

“
I don't know what you
mean,” Jessie said.

Bob watched her face, but he saw she
hadn't known. That or she was a superb liar, and so far she had not
been. Hard to think she hadn't known, but it was possible. He
reminded himself that even he hadn't known for sure until tonight.
He had watched the looks they gave each other for the last few
weeks and figured it out. Tonight he had sent a note to David
asking him to meet her after dinner, another to Janna asking her to
meet him and they had. He hadn't really believed it would work:
When it came to being devious he had no experience. Even so, his
trick had worked: A simple trick, but it was proof enough for him.
He had been close to going into the baths room himself when Bobby
and Bonnie had come along and done it for him. He had stood in the
shadows of an unused alcove and watched it all happen. It was no
longer a maybe in his mind, it was a real thing. It was the reason
he was here.

“
Arlene's David?” Jessie
asked.

“
Yes,” Bob allowed. He
shook his head. “And my wife... Don't know how long it's been going
on... Maybe that's why she promised my vote to go along... She told
me that you twisted her words, misconstrued what she said, and I
had hoped that was true... Up until I caught the two of them
tonight, that is. Then it stopped mattering to me.” He drew a
breath and scrubbed at his eyes with fisted hands. “I'll tell them,
the council. Only fair that you know. You can stay until spring.
They'll be angry, but I will see to it that you can stay until
spring.”

“
No meeting,” Jessie
asked.

“
It isn't up to me,” Bob
said. “If there is a meeting it will be to lay it all out, not to
take a vote to dismiss us and replace us.”

“
How do you know that,”
Jessie said. “A vote might go against you.”

Bob shook his head. “How can you be
so,” He threw his hands into the air. “Callous... He saved your
life, and you want to repay him this way. This is not some project
here, something we hope will work, these are real people trying to
survive... What are they to you, subjects? Pawns to an
end?”

“
That's ridiculous,” Jessie
said. She started to get up, but Bob dragged her back down none too
gently.

“
No? Then what? Don't you
owe some sort of explanation to me?”

“
No,” Jessie said. “Now
take your hands off me so I can leave or I'll start screaming. See
how your reputation holds up to that.” She launched herself from
the hay bale and stalked away to the door. Bob sat alone for a few
minutes and then went to talk to Mike. Better to get it over
with.

December 9th

The Greenhouse Project

Bob Adams

The plastic panels had been going up
all day. A solid foundation had been built: Concrete poured to even
the surface of the ledge: Four courses of concrete block built up
from there. The aluminum beams were easy to assemble and made a
strong wall. The bottoms were bolted into the concrete blocks, the
upper frame bolted into holes that had been drilled into the rock.
Bolt anchors had been inserted with epoxy resin. The rest was just
installing the plastic panels. The aluminum beams had been over
thirty-six feet long, so it had just been a matter of cutting them
to length and then welding the units together. The arch that Josh
had envisioned had been built in, as the beams were originally made
to attach corrugated siding to. A curved wall/roof configuration.
One of many prefabs building styles. The arch was gentle enough
over the thirty foot run so that it was easy to attach and mount
the plastic panels in eight foot sections. Add a gasket and a
second piece, a third and fourth took them to the top. The last
panel was shorter, and Bob was using that top most section to
install mechanical vents in. They operated simply by temperature,
venting excess heat when needed, closing when they weren't needed.
The long rubber strips were pulled from large rolls, measured out,
and cut to length.

Darren and Violet had taken advantage
of the heated space and all the extra help to complete their basic
dwelling in the second cave. Both projects had gone ahead at full
speed over the last few days. The house was up, built into, and
protected under the ledge of the same overhang the greenhouse was
going up under. The walls were cinder-block, the windows that faced
the exterior, glass block. The bathroom and kitchen were in. The
cement for the tub walls had been cast. They intended to cover the
cinder block with wire mesh and then stucco. Creating a finish they
hoped would blend in with the rock that surrounded it.

The glass block was a perfect
substitute for windows. It allowed the light in, but could not be
seen through. Besides, Darren had joked, someone would have to be
standing a hundred feet off the ground to be able to see inside.
They had jumped in with the others to work on the green house for
the balance of the day as they were waiting for cement to
dry.

A huge opening had been left at the end
of the overhang that lined up with the entrance to the long tunnel
and the ramp on the outside that had been built up with earth. It
would allow direct access to the entire tunnel and cave system.
They had installed two huge, steel doors of the same type that had
been used on the barns they had built from kits down in the first
valley. The barns had been assembled from several kits put
together, so there were a half dozen doors leftover and the
hardware to hang them. They had to use straight pieces of steel,
but they had set them within the arch of the beams and they worked
perfectly. The doors had originally been designed to slide open,
but since they were set inside the beams they would not be able to
slide. Bob and Tom had built huge hinges from flat steel and welded
the doors up to swing open or closed.

They had used the steel doors frames,
stripped the corrugated panels from them and intended to install
the plastic sheets in place of the steel. The welder had made quick
work of putting up the new hardware.

What remained now was to finish
attaching the plastic panels to the frame work. Out of nearly one
hundred panels they had started with, they were now down to just
five or six full panels. The full exposure of the greenhouse was a
little over one hundred and ten feet long by just short of thirty
feet in total height.

With the arc of the beams and the space
the ledge already held under the overhang, it gave them a
greenhouse that was over one hundred and fifty feet long by sixty
feet in width. The doors capped the end that had been slightly
widened so that they could use them to enter the tunnel.

Bob was working at the top of the
structure. The last panel was being bolted into place on the
outside as Bob was testing a set of vents and the mechanism that
moved them, to make sure they moved properly and operated
freely.

He was not as comfortable thirty plus
feet in the air as Ronnie or Mike would be, but he was getting used
to it.

He reached over and tugged at the heavy
vent cover that had stuck open, and tried to push it the rest of
the way close. It was under tension, twisted slightly in the frame
that housed it, and a second or two of looking at it showed him the
problem. A small piece of steel slag, left over from cutting the
sheet steel to make the vent, had not been ground down. It had
caught the edge of the ducting and jammed the vent cover so it
could not completely close. He leaned closer to get a better look.
The cover was sitting out a good six inches from where it should be
seated, and all because of the small quarter inch bead of slag at
the back of the vent duct.

He rested his hand on the vent cover at
the front, and then twisted his body to reach his hammer where it
hung at his side. A split second later he was falling. The small
piece of slag that had held the lid had broken free with the extra
weight of Bob's body as he twisted to get his hammer. The lid
slammed down, his hand shot out into air, his body shifted and he
tumbled from the ladder almost as if he were performing some sort
of graceful diving exercise.

The small piece of slag hit the stone
floor a split second before Bob did.

The Clinic

Jessie

Jessie stepped out of the clinic and
tried to catch Mike's eye without coming out far enough for Janna
to see her. When he met her eyes, she shook her head.

It had been no more than twenty minutes
ago that Bob had been standing at the top of the ladder finishing
up the last vent, and now he was dead. How, Mike wondered, was he
supposed to help Janna deal with that. He nodded back and then got
up and walked over to her.

“
I've already called
Candace, Amy, Lilly, they're on the way. I want her to have support
before I talk to her, and, I have another emergency on the way,”
Jessie told him. She left him and went back into the clinic. Mike
walked back to where Janna sat quietly with Sandy and Susan before
he thought to wonder who the other emergency was.

Sandy had kept Janna distracted so she
had not seen Mike get up and go to the clinic door to talk with
Jessie. The door itself was out of view from where she sat, but
Sandy had seen, she had watched Mike walk over towards the door.
She probably knew, he thought, and as if to confirm his suspicions
she looked over at him and raised her eyebrows. Mike shook his
head. The look on Sandy's face remained the same. She had
known.

Mike heard the huge door to the caves'
main area open, felt the cold air sweep past him and turned
expecting Candace, Amy and Lilly, but when someone did come into
view around the corner it was Craige carrying one end of a
stretcher, completely out of breath. Tom brought up the rear in no
better shape. Arlene lay on her side on the stretcher, her face a
mask of pain. David trailed along beside her looking like a zombie,
blood covered his hands, his face expressionless, wooden. Mike
leapt to his feet and tried to catch David as the group swept past
him, but they hurried past him without acknowledgment or
stopping.

The clinic door opened, Jessie and
Steve stepped out and motioned to the next door down. They hurried
Arlene inside, but Steve stopped David and looked back at Mike for
help.