The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (37 page)

He paused for a moment and a pained
look crossed his face. “The little ones, the older woman... we
found them abandoned on the outskirts of a little city up north a
little further, and the people we're refusing to feed them. Too
old... Too young... Worthless they told them. That shocked me. But
she told us later that they had been toying with the idea of
killing them out right.” Jeff nodded at the face Candace made. “And
the women they had with them they treated like possessions.” He
shrugged, “We took them with us. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't
leave them.”

“
It was the same back where
we came up. They were about to try to take us,” Patty said. “We
spoiled their plans I think.”

Jeff nodded. “Maybe I'll talk to Bob
and his woman a little more later on,” he said. “See exactly what
they have in mind.”

“
I think he'd like the
opportunity, and to be honest, I'd like to hear what he has to say
too, where they've gone with their thinking.”

“
We've got the little ones.
Traveling isn't exactly the kind of life they need,” Jeff
added.

“
Well, we've got a way to
go anyway before we hit southern climates. So we've got to travel
some,” Mike said. “There's time to make our decisions.”

“
I think most of us want
someplace safe. That's all, just safe,” Candace said.

“
Safe sounds good,” Arlene
agreed. She squeezed David's hand, and he pulled her closer to
him.

“
I can get behind that,”
Ronnie said. “I grew up in the city. I thought that was bad, but
what we just went through in Watertown? Those people were crazy...
still are crazy, I guess. It's like the way the city was, but if
you took off all the controls. No cops, nobody to stop you at all.
Makes me wonder what things are going to be like in a few years. I
want Patty and our children to have something safer. Sometimes I
think Bob's idea isn't all that bad,” he paused and scuffed one
booted foot at the ground before continuing.

“
I don't know about leaving
all the technology behind, that seems a waste. Not all of it was
bad. What do we really have left? Cars and trucks? High powered
weapons? I guess it's all still out there somewhere. But the
vehicles, the weapons will all rust away, fall apart, then what?
We'll run out of bullets someday. Does anyone know how to make
bullets, where to get the stuff to make gunpowder with? I don't,
that's for sure. And so what little we have that we're using will
pass away on its own. Maybe, in another twenty thousand years or
so, we'll all be living in caves throwing spears at our food. I
read something about that once. The world goes just so far,
something happens and it falls apart. Society devolves, then the
whole thing starts all over again from nothing,” he shrugged,
seeming uncomfortable.

“
You know, I never heard
you say that much at one time before, Ronnie,” Mike said
laughing.

Ronnie nodded. “I don't, not usually,
but I guess I've been thinking as well, Mike. I have Patty to think
of. We have each other to think of. In the old world, well, I was
OK with letting shit go by... slide. I had an attitude of whatever
I think or want won't make a difference so why bother? But now,
that's all changed. We're the ones building our own world. We can
do it right. Not like those guys back in Watertown,” Ronnie
finished.

“
I agree. And I like the
way that you put it, Ronnie,” Candace said.

“
Yeah, it really is that
way,” David agreed.

“
I care about what Mike
wants. I, we, want to have children. We want them to be safe. Mike
and I haven't really talked about it, but I'll bet that all of us
will be talking about it tonight,” Candace finished.

~

The morning crept by, and eventually
Ronnie, Patty, and Candace said their goodbyes and left to take
care of their own responsibilities. David and Arlene went with
them. They all headed for one of the chain stores.

Mike, Jeff and Sharon wound up checking
over a large map of the Eastern United States that Mike had been
carrying with him. It extended to about the middle of the country.
The red line of a grease pencil ran roughly along, following major
routes and ending in Mobile Alabama.

“
Why Mobile?” Jeff
asked.

“
Ronnie's people are from
there. He lived there as a kid until his parents died, then he came
up here to live and ended up in the city, New York, living with an
Aunt. From there he went up to Watertown to work and stayed. But,
he remembers the gulf coast as a kid. A little town called
Pritchard. He wants to see how it is, whether any of his people are
still there. It's south, that's where we're going. About as south
as you can get, and we'll have someone that knows the area when we
get there,” Mike explained.

“
Got the same thing,” Jeff
said. “Arlene comes from Texas, spent time in Arizona, and got
around in Mexico quite a bit as well.”

They all stood from the map and Jeff
looked over at the Auto store. “Think they got tires to fit my
trucks?” he asked.

“
I wouldn't doubt it,” Mike
said. He looked over at the Hummers.

“
Oh, they look okay,” Jeff
said. “It's dry rot. All cracked and split from sitting around. If
you wouldn't mind us being here a while, maybe we can change those
tires out. I've been more than a little worried about them,” Jeff
finished.

“
You're welcome as long as
you'd like to stay, and I'm sure that comes from everyone. Let's go
see what they got,” Mike said. He and Jeff walked over to the auto
garage.

~

By late afternoon they had swapped out
tires on one of the hummers and started on a second one. Tim and
Annie, who had gotten pretty good at changing tires with only tire
irons, had done the first few tires to show Jeff how it was done,
then left him to it.

Molly was still working alongside Tom
and Bob. Between the three of them, they had finished the third
Suburban, complete with tube bumpers, top racks and rock slider
side steps, along with larger, wider tires and the heavy duty
suspension parts they had used for the other trucks.

They had also installed two winches on
this one, front and back.

“
We'll use it to pull out
any of the other trucks that get stuck, whether in front of or
behind us,” Bob said.

They had wandered over to look over the
Hummers, and Tom had gone with Jeff to show him where the tires
were stored. Jeff had found the tires he had wanted immediately,
and Tom had helped him to get them back to the garage.

Mike had left to locate Candace and the
others. He'd finally found them, over their heads in boxes, in a
large storage building attached to the rear of one of the chain
stores.

“
Looking for flour,”
Candace told him. She turned and pointed at three large boxes
resting on the concrete floor. “Those are one pound bags boxed and
untouched. All the twenty five pound bags we found are wet or eaten
into, or both.” She shrugged, leaned towards him and gave him a
quick kiss. He looked injured.

“
Baby,” she said. He looked
around. They were momentarily hidden in the stacks. He pulled her
to him and kissed her harder.

“
Bad, Mike,” Candace said,
pulling him closer to return the kiss.

“
You guys,” Patty said
coming around the corner of a stack of boxes. She smiled
though.

Candace giggled and Mike rolled his
eyes. “Okay... flour,” he said and began looking in
earnest.

~

An hour more of searching located two
more boxes of the one pound bags, a palette of twenty five pound
bags full of rat burrowed holes, and several cases of peanut
butter.

David and Ronnie had loaded up two
large rolling carts, and they were all helping to pull them out
through the main store and into the parking lot. The peanut butter,
the salvageable flour, several cases of vegetables and canned
meats, several kinds of energy bars, along with dozens of cases of
sports drinks filled the carts.

“
No bottled water at all,”
Patty said.

“
I know,” Candace said.
“And we have a lot, but it's not like we can turn a tap and get
more.”

Everyone murmured agreement or nodded
their heads. There were cases upon cases of sports drinks and
vitamin water, and they had taken several cases of those, but they
found no bottled water at all. As they were pulling the carts back,
they ran into the men from the garage coming back from a stream
that ran behind the garage area back along the wood
line.

The water was ice cold, but everyone
liked to stay clean, and it was amazing, Mike thought, what you
could get used to when there was no alternative.

“
I do miss hot showers,”
Bob said. “I think a new Nation will have to find a way to do hot
showers.” Everybody laughed.

“
I'll be up later,” Candace
told Mike. She'd simply picked up new clothes while they were in
the store, as had Patty and Arlene.

As they headed down towards the wood
line, Annie, who had stayed behind to help Tim pick up the garage,
called out to them to wait for her. She caught up and joined them
walking down the trail to the small stream.

The men had picked up their own clothes
and headed to a spot around a small bend in the stream, out of
sight of the women.

~

Lilly and Jessica had cleaned up a few
more of the motel rooms, including a double with adjoining doors to
keep the children together. They had heated water and bathed the
children in one of the bathtubs. Getting the water up from the
stream had seemed as though it would be the hardest part, but Tim
and Annie, testing out one of the lifted Suburbans, had taken them
down with several large water containers, helped them fill them,
then drove them back up in style.

The kids loved riding in the Suburban.
It was just another game to play.

They had not even given them too hard a
time about taking a bath. Jessica took over watching the freshly
scrubbed children while Lilly left to go down to the creek to get
herself cleaned up.

Sandy and Susan were coming up the path
as Lilly was going down.

“
Cold?” she asked. The day
had warmed up. She was hopeful.

“
Jesus, is it ever,” Susan
answered through chattering teeth.

“
Oh well,” Lilly
said.

“
We need to get one of
these Brainiacs to figure out how to get us hot water,” Sandy said.
“I may never warm up again.”

“
Oh, I doubt that,” Susan
said dead pan.

Lilly laughed and headed down the
trail, leaving the two of them walking slowly, arm in arm, up the
trail.

When she arrived, Molly, Annie, Arlene
and Sharon, along with Candace and Patty were already
there.

“
I heard it's really cold,”
Lilly said to no one in particular.

“
It really, really, really
is,” Arlene said. She was standing in the stream, water up to her
waist, shivering.

Candace dove under the water, bobbed up
in the middle of the stream and swam downstream. “It's not bad.
Keep moving,” she called back, “Keeps you warm!”

Lilly peeled her clothes quickly and
looked doubtfully at the water, “Okay, if you say so, here goes!”
She ran into the water and dove under. She surfaced next to
Candace.

“
It's so cold. You lied,”
she laughed. She splashed Candace who giggled and splashed her
back. A few seconds later everyone was involved in the water
fight.

“
Now that warmed me right
up,” Arlene said a few minutes later as the water fight came to a
close.

“
Yeah, me also,” Lilly
said. She was out of the water on the grassy bank drying herself
off and getting dressed.

Candace sat close by with Patty. The
two of them working to brush each other's hair out.

A few minutes later, Janet Dove came
down, “I Thought I'd better get down here while I had the chance.
Dinner's going. I have a little time to myself,” she
said.

“
I can't believe how well
you run stuff,” Patty told her.

“
Yeah, for real,” Lilly
said. “You so much have it together. I wish I did,” she
said.

Janet looked embarrassed. “Oh, it's
just helping out. If I didn't do it, somebody would,” she
said.

“
That's true,” Candace
said, “but I doubt they'd do it anywhere near as well as you
do.”

Janet blushed again. “Thank you,
Candy,” she said.

Lilly smiled. Janet Dove was about the
only person she knew of who could call Candace Candy. She meant to
ask her why that was someday, but she was pretty sure she already
knew why. Janet was like everybody's mother. She was the ultimate
nurturer. And a mother could get away with things no one else ever
could.

A few of the women were still in the
water. They all waited for each other and left as a
group.

~

Mike sat on the sun warmed rock and
looked out over the water. Jeff came and sat down next to
him.