The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (63 page)

On a lighter note I think almost every
woman in the Nation is pregnant. I guess that's a bit of an
exaggeration, but not much. Me, Patty, Candace, Lilly, Annie. Jane,
Alice and Amber are pretty sure. There are so many more people
here. It seems almost like we grow every week. Maybe we do, come to
think of it. Oh and now Molly too, and I wonder who the father is?
But how would I ask Molly without sounding too nosy or even
insensitive? Babies and more Babies, and thank God for them. They
are our real crop. We joke about that, how in a few weeks it will
be time to bring in the corn and that's our crop, but our real
business, our real crop, is babies.

Sandy and Susan are thinking about it
too, only they both want to get pregnant. They're trying to decide
who goes first. God bless them.

Some times I think I am a long way from
my roots. In another respect it seems to me that I have spent my
entire life trying to get to this place... This condition... And I
am so glad that I am here.

May God go with ours tomorrow as they
go back to the outside. Keep them safe. Bring them right back to
us.

~

Lilly's Journal.

I am as big as a house. Seven months,
two to go and I can not really believe it because I am so big. How
much bigger can I get?

Tom dotes on me bad. I mean he waits on
me hand and foot. I am still teaching day times, but I take it easy
late afternoon and evenings.

I would have never believed that anyone
would want to leave this and go back into the world. I think of
this place as set apart. Out there is the other world... The old
world with all of our garbage still there. I only hope and pray
they have a safe trip.

Ouch! This kid kicks like a football
player!

Our life here is good. So good. Thank
you, God.

CHAPTER TWO

September 16th Year one

They left in three Jeeps just as dawn
began to spill its light over the mountains in the
south.

Candace had promised herself that there
would be no tears, but it was a promise she couldn't keep. Tears
were practically the first thing to come. Leaping from her eyes of
their own accord.

Patty had been unable to hold her tears
back either. But both of them had been able to step back and let
them go.

“
Hormones,” Janet told
them. And for some reason that made both of them giggle and neither
one of them had been able to stop.

Sandy came up to the top of the ledge
path, looked down at the two women giggling uncontrollably with
tears running down their faces, turned to Janet and they both said
“Hormones” which caused both of them to laugh.

They both walked over to Candace and
Patty, took them under the arms, helped them to their feet and
started down the ledge.

“
Coffee,” Janet said.
“It'll do both of you good.”

Patty had slowed to a
sniffle.

“
Hormones,” Candace said,
and they both began giggling again.

~

They made good time with the
lightweight Jeeps, and found themselves at the head of the first
valley by late morning. They took a few minutes and used the
radios.

“
Is something wrong,”
Candace asked.

“
No, Babe. We're already at
the first valley so we thought we had better call now... We may be
out of range later on in the day, or tonight when we
stop.”

Ronnie was carrying on a similar
conversation with Patty on a different channel Tim and Annie
sharing a phone talking to Lilly as well and then Patty
too.

Mike told Candace he loved her and then
handed the phone to Molly. Ronnie handed his to Nellie.

A half hour later they were following
the straighter lines of the tall pines through the
forest.

“
This is not a slow trip
when you're not driving a huge truck loaded down with cows and pigs
and all that other stuff,” Ronnie said.

“
I was thinking that too,”
Mike agreed. “It seems as though we are so removed from everything.
So isolated. But it looks like we'll drive out in a little more
than a day.”

“
We're only what, a hundred
miles in? Little more little less?”

“
Little less, I think,”
Mike agreed.

“
Why does it seem to be
going by so fast,” Ronnie wondered.

“
Because, if you think
about it. On the way in we drove slow. And we moved everything out
of the way. Dead limbs, branches, trees, there isn't anything left
to slow us down.” Mike said.

Ronnie nodded. “Plus. No cows, horses,
pig-chickens. Either.”

“
Plus we know where we're
going too. We didn't before. What's a pig-chicken
anyway?”

Ronnie laughed. “I meant pigs and
chickens.” They both laughed.

They settled back for the ride, the
small Jeeps seeming to float across the soft carpet of pine
needles. The sun was just dropping from the sky in the North East
when they left the straight lines of trees and dropped off onto the
old logging road.

“
Hell. We could probably
make it tonight... Later on,” Ronnie said as they pulled onto the
grass covered old road. It didn't look much like the old logging
road that they had followed. Into the forever-wild lands. Summer
had allowed the grass and trees to grow unchecked. Three foot high
grass ran down the hump in the middle of the road. It was even
higher on the sides where the road blended back into the woods.
They stopped and waited for the other two Jeeps to catch up to
them.

“
Drive on,” Mike asked as
they all stared off down the old road, “or stay here
tonight?”

“
Only got bout twenty miles
to go... We could probably reach the park area before nightfall,”
Ronnie said.

“
I'd rather not go in there
after dark. Try to set up tents after dark,” Annie said.

“
There's that,” Mike
agreed. “We don't know what to expect...”

Nellie nodded. “If we stop here we have
time to set up camp, eat, and we can leave early enough... And,
well, we might not even stay there, right?”

“
Everything we need will
have to come from somewhere else anyway,” Tim said. “Except the
bigger trucks and the sawmill setup Bob thought he saw.”

“
So the park isn't really a
stop then,” Molly said.

“
Well,” Mike
started.

“
We may as well talk it
out,” Ronnie said. “The dead.”

“
The dead,” Mike
agreed.

They had all listened to the radio talk
over the last several months. The reception was incredible and far
reaching from the top of the ridge the cave was in.

LA was in ruins. There were still
living factions there, but they were losing ground to the dead. San
Diego was gone. A huge area of the west coast was gone. An even
larger area had been over run by the dead.

New York seemed to be holding its own
in areas. Manhattan was gone, but Harlem was holding its own, a few
northern cities they had heard from.

Other places scattered in between were
still held by the living. Houston. Another place up in Maine. One
in Georgia. It was good to hear the radio talk from those places
day after day, but it was alarming that there were not
more.

In any case they had all come to grips
with it. They had gotten the board of nine together and made some
not for the public decisions. It was a serious thing and they were
taking it serious.

“
I don't think we have as
much to worry about if we stop here. There's nothing to pull them
in this deep.” Molly said quietly.

Ronnie nodded. “What might we run into
there? It's a small park. Nothing close by. Nothing there for them
either, right?”

Nellie nodded. “Maybe. Maybe not. How
can we tell?”

“
And that's the bitch about
it,” Tim said. “How
will
we know?”

“
I don't think we will...
We'll have to keep our eyes open wide. No sleeping,” Mike
said.

Annie nodded.

“
Okay. I'm for staying here
tonight,” Molly said. She shrugged her rifle from her shoulder. “I
am not for getting bit and having one of you guys shoot me,” She
said. Silence held for a moment and then Molly smiled.

“
Only if I had to,” Ronnie
said and answered her smile.

“
You guys are sick,” Annie
said. But she too was smiling.

~

The tents went up fast. They set them
up in the forest itself which was free of grass and carpeted with
the soft pine needles. Mike, Molly and Annie were on grass duty. In
no time they had a wide area free of grass in both directions down
the road.

They dug down into the forest floor and
cleared an area for a fire and started diner. Dried meat, some
canned vegetables and some hard thick cakes that Janet had made.
Berries, ground up dried meat, and pine nuts all mixed into a flour
base made from wheat and rye that grew wild in the valley. Some
rendered fat to hold it all together and then the whole thing had
been baked in the huge stone oven that Bob and Ronnie had built in
the main area of the cave.

The result was a small, round, thick
cake that was as hard as a rock, but if you worked at it it could
be chewed into bite size morsels. The best way to eat it was to
drop it into a stew and let it soften before you tried to eat
it.

“
This would make a good
hockey puck,” Mike said. He tapped his against a rock making a
solid clacking noise as he did.

“
Tasty though,” Molly
said.

“
This would make a good,
tasty hockey puck,” Mike amended.

“
So that's what they meant
by eating the hockey puck in the game,” Ronnie said.

“
All of those guys were
missing teeth,” Nellie allowed.

“
Now you know why,” Mike
laughed. “But... Really... Before someone thinks I don't appreciate
Jan, she did a good job. Let it soak and it really does soften up,
and,
berries with meat?
I was sure I wouldn't like that, but it's nothing
like I thought it would be. I think she's right when she says we
could survive on them and the dried meat.”

“
Protein... Fat. She's
right,” Annie said. “Calories and carbs too. I like that we can do
something like that... That we can make nearly all of our own
stuff.”

“
We've come a long way,
that's for sure,” Mike agreed.

“
We really are completely
self sufficient right now,” Tim said. “All the stuff we're going to
get will just make it easier for us. Make life a little better, but
it's nothing that we absolutely have to have.”

“
Explain the electric
cars,” Molly said. “It's not like we can plug them in so how do we
charge them?”

“
Oh yeah. We can plug them
in. I mean, no. Right now
no,
” Tim laughed. “But once we're
wired we can easily do it. There are four wheel drive electric
vehicles too. That's what I want to find. They're not race cars.
Low speed. Not a huge range either. A few hundred miles, and we
couldn't use them out here because getting them charged up would be
too iffy, but, back in the Nation? We can use them for
everything.”

“
Electricity is easy for us
to make. Not like trying to look up supplies of gasoline or diesel.
I'm sure it's out there, but this would be a lot easier for us.”
Tim elaborated.

“
But they won't be charged,
so how will we get them home?” Molly asked.

“
Generator,” Tim answered.
“Charge them up to the max and they should be able to make it back,
If not we'll run the generators on the way back to recharge
overnight.”

“
So then why are we going
to bring back so much gasoline and diesel?” Nellie
asked.

“
Well the gas is strictly
to get us back, If we can find any that's any good. Gas can go bad,
you know. Mainly it's how it's stored. If it isn't stored airtight
it's worthless after a month or two. And even then there's no
guarantee. We'll need to find some that's been underground in a
capped tank. It's there somewhere; we'll find it, Even if it's not
the greatest we can get back with it. It would probably tear up the
engine though.”

“
Diesel will be okay a lot
longer maybe as long as a few years, even then it's not forever,
but it will get us through the transition period. It will run our
generators if it has too. And we'll need that. Eventually we'll
have our own supplies,” Tim said.

“
Our own...
Gas
you mean,” Molly
asked.

“
No... Well, yes.
Fuel
, I mean,” Tim said.
He smiled shyly. “We can make our own oil easily. And oil will run
a diesel engine if it's warmed up a little. We can cook with oil
too, the same oil, and when we're done with it use it as fuel,” Tim
told her.

“
I heard of that back in
the old days,” Ronnie contributed.