The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (44 page)

“
Nope,” Mike
said.

“
Not me,” Patty
said.

“
Me either,” Candace
added.

“
It looks easy,” Ronnie
continued. “But of course I'd bet he'd buck you off pretty quick if
he didn't want you on him.”

“
She,” Patty said. “It was
a female and females are supposed to be better
tempered.”

“
Pats, I didn't realize a
girl horse could get that big,” Ronnie said.

“
How did you learn that,
about female horses being better tempered?” Candace
asked.

“
It was a novel I
read,
Lonesome Dove
. The horses, female horses, mares, had the best temperament,
but you could get a male horse that was gelded, a Gelding, and they
would be pretty even tempered too,” she said.

“
I never read that book,”
Mike said. “Wanted to though.”

“
You can learn a lot from a
book, I guess,” Ronnie said. “I wonder what a Gelding is. Like a...
like a specific type of horse I imagine? I've heard of a Paint. A
Paint is a kind of horse.”

Patty giggled.

Candace nodded. “I always wanted to
ride a horse. I went to Rochester once. The cops there ride them
downtown. There were several horse farms that I saw along the way
as well.”

“
All the cops are on
horses?” Patty asked.

“
No, just around downtown.
I was there with someone for a concert at the War Memorial. I was
just a kid, so they looked even bigger than they probably were, but
it made an impression on me.” She finished.

“
Well, I'm pretty sure
you'll get to ride horses,” Patty said. “We both will. Even
Geldings,” she said and laughed.

“
Okay,” Ronnie said. “How
have I got it wrong?”

“
No testicles,” Patty said.
“A Gelding is a male that has had their testicles
removed.”

“
Jesus,” Ronnie said. His
eyes looked hurt.

“
Guess that would make you
pretty docile,” Mike said.

“
Yeah,” Ronnie
agreed.

“
We'll learn how to ride,”
Patty said.

Candace turned and smiled, and they
touched closed fists and laughed. “It's going to be so good,” she
said. They both looked over at Ronnie who was still cringing. His
lips compressed into a thin line. They both laughed.

~Donita in the daylight~

She had seen them start into the field,
but even before that, she had known they would come. It was the way
her new mind worked. It had seemed cloudy for so long that it had
surprised her when it suddenly began to process thoughts again. She
thought maybe she was coming back to her old self. But like her
eyesight, it was completely different.

She simply knew things. One second they
were not there and the next they were. Clear, concise, every detail
fully understood. What was not there was reasoning. There was no
reasoning process she had used to arrive at the information her
mind had held. It was as though it came from some other place, as
though it had been delivered to her.

That had caused her to
panic. Delivered meant a kind of dependence, and she did not desire
dependence on anything or anyone. But she had come to understand
that dependence was not what it was, and delivery was not what it
was.
Knowing
was
what it was. She knew things. She knew things out of the air. They
came with the scenting, a part of her new abilities.

Even so, she had nearly waited overly
long. They had stepped into the field and panic had leapt into her
chest and shot through her body like a live wire. She had leapt
backwards where the two lay sleeping and kicked them into flight.
Mindless, screaming flight, and they had run through the trees
soundlessly, leaping from footfall to footfall.

They had run until they had come to the
opposite end of the small woods and Donita had stopped. The sun was
up, sapping their strength, seeming to burn her eyes, but she was
not dead again. She did not fall down and lapse into twilight. It
was not pleasant. The heat from the sun was not
pleasant.

She stared out at another field that
looked almost exactly like the one they had run from. Two horses
grazed nearby, the air brought their scent to her eyes. They had
not turned, so the same air had not betrayed her by bringing her
scent to them.

The idea, the knowledge, came to her
all at once, blooming in her mind, fully formed and ready. If she
knew it, the two behind her knew it too, or at least the one did.
She tensed her legs, squatted, and then leapt from the tree
line.

The horses panicked, but far too late.
She reached the largest one almost at the same moment it saw her.
The huge horse reared, muscles bunching in its rear quarters, front
hooves tearing at the air. Donita was past the sharp hooves and at
its side even as it twisted itself and tried to turn. Her teeth
fastened in the animals neck as she leapt to its back, hands
entangled in its mane, legs clutching at its broad, muscular
back.

She looked over at the other horse. Her
new boy rode its back, teeth into the thick skin of its neck. The
other boy lay scattered upon the ground. His body broken beyond
repair, kicked apart. Her horse reared, and she lowered her body,
pressed into the horse and held on as he ran. The bite would have
him. It was only a matter of time.

~The Road~

Eventually they had to cut out channel
nine on the C.B. For some reason the static, skip and occasional
talk from Syracuse was louder on that channel than any of the
others, and it would not allow the C.B. to scan.

It was better, as far as everybody was
concerned, not to have to listen to it. A steady flicking through
the channels and the occasional bursts of static the skip offered
was much easier to deal with.

~

Late afternoon found them on the edge
of a large lake. The rain was still a low drizzle as they
stopped.

Mike was driving the lead vehicle, so
it was clear to everyone in that vehicle why they had stopped. The
road was gone. The asphalt tilted down and then disappeared into
the lake. Everyone behind them had to come up to take a
look.

A nearby stand of trees provided enough
protection from the rain to consult the map, but the map told them
what they already knew; the lake wasn't supposed to be there. They
were in the finger lakes region, and there were several small lakes
scattered across the map, but none that corresponded to where they
were.

“
There was a road, cut to
the right about a mile back,” Bob said.

“
That's back toward
Syracuse,” Mike said.

“
That is where we don't
want to go,” Tim said.

“
Can't go off road. The
ground is too saturated. So we are probably going to have no
choice,” Ronnie said.

“
Maybe the road will curve
around after a bit, bring us back in this direction. If so we'll be
okay, and we've driven quite a way, so it should have more than a
few roads cutting across it going in the direction we want to go,”
Mike said.

“
Either way, we got to go
back or swim,” Arlene said.

Lilly laughed.

“
That's the truth,” Tom
said looking at the road where it ran into the water. “Wonder what
happened?”

The lake stretched away to the horizon.
There didn't appear to be an opposite shore, at least not one
close, Mike thought. “More damage from all those earthquakes I
would imagine,” he said. “Limestone caves, maybe, that have
collapsed. Lot of that around here. I'd bet it's something like
that, something along those lines,” he said.

“
Might see a lot of changes
like this though, if you think of it. There were places in
Watertown that completely disappeared,” Patty said.

“
Whole neighborhoods,”
Candace agreed.

They backtracked to the next road, then
took the next one going in the direction they wanted to go. That
road, although broken and in some places missing short sections of
pavement, skirted the lake at a comfortable distance. And even
where the road itself was missing, the gravel base made for better
traveling than the fields which were quickly becoming waterlogged,
little ponds and lakes of their own. Mike had no doubt he would
bury the Suburban even with the four wheel drive and the wider
tires if he tried driving through the fields.

By late afternoon the sun was creeping
from the sky, changing everything around them to a darker shade of
gray than they had been seeing all day long. The back roads became
wider, though still broken up, and soon they found themselves on
the outskirts of what must have been a small village. It was hard
to tell for sure. It was really just the presence of more buildings
still standing and a few stretches of nearly intact residential
neighborhoods.

They stopped at a large truck stop at
the convergence of two major roads to top off the trucks' gas tanks
once more. By the time they had located the underground tanks and
then found a way into them, it was late afternoon, and what little
light there had been was quickly fading from the sky. They decided
to stop for the night and fill the trucks in the
morning.

Within a short time, several fires were
going under the long metal roof that covered the gas pumps. They
parked the trucks in a large circle and posted lookouts. They had
seen no one, and even the C B's were quiet, but they were taking no
chances.

Janet Dove, Lilly, Tim and Nell began
to work on getting dinner ready, while a few others checked through
what was left of the small diner and a little convenience store
that was part of the truck stop. They were both stripped bare. Not
so much as a moldy loaf of bread rested on the shelves.

“
Must be people around
somewhere close by, probably down in the village,” Ronnie said to
Mike.

They were all back under the steel roof
sitting on overturned crates and a few leaning chairs they had
found.

“
Had to be, but where are
they now? They had to see us,” Mike said. He was carrying a
portable V.H.F. radio which continued to flip serenely from channel
to channel, picking up nothing at all.

“
Might maybe left,” Arlene
said. She seemed to gravitate towards Mike's group, even though she
had come with Jeff's group, and she grew on you quickly, Mike
thought. She had an open, honest face and seemed to be genuinely
concerned about other people. Mike could understand. It didn't take
long seeing people who didn't care to know where your own heart
lay. Mike and several others had liked her immediately.

“
That could be,” Candace
said. “After all, we did.”

Mike nodded. The little town, village,
had been destroyed. What was left of it had looked deserted. Maybe
they had left, he decided. Tim came around with a large aluminum
container of coffee. Nearly everyone had acquired a sturdy plastic
or Aluminum cup during their stay at the large truck stop, strip
mall complex and had kept it. It wasn't always easy to find a cup,
even disposable foam or paper cups were hard to find.

The coffee was hot, steam rising up
into the rain chilled air. The children were quiet and kept to
themselves looking out at the falling rain. Even The Dog and Angel,
we're subdued by the weather, lying on the asphalt, heads on paws,
looking out at the rain and the darkness.

If there was anything or anyone out
there that shouldn't be, they would let them know, Mike told
himself, and so far they seemed as bored by the rain as everyone
else was. But it wasn't really bored, Mike thought.

“
What are you thinking
about?” Candace asked.

“
I was thinking this rain
makes you feel kind of lethargic, dragged out. Even the
dogs.”

“
Kind of,” she agreed,
snuggling closer to him, “But I like the way it sounds on the tin
roof. And we should all sleep like babies tonight,” she
said.

Mike listened for a second to the light
drumming on the steel roof panels, then nodded. “Lethargy,” he said
smiling.

In no time at all, a small pile of cans
magically appeared, and one of Janet's large steel pots was heating
up dinner.

The children were playing with a small
pile of toys, overlooked by Lilly and Jessica.

“
So, where are we?” Bob
asked.

They dug out the map and began to go
over it, but they had seen no signs, and even the small village had
no sign that they had seen. The cars and trucks scattered around
the truck stop still, predominantly, bore New York State license
plates.

They had been angling across the state,
so most likely they would pass through part of Pennsylvania or Ohio
within the next day or so, unless they had dropped lower into the
state. It would take more than a map to tell them that though, a
roadside sign, something like that.

“
Put over... Just over,
three hundred and fifty miles on the odometer today,” Mike said.
“Of course some of that was doubling back, the long way around,
stuff like that, but we have to be close to out of the state by
now.”