The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (66 page)

“
Right,” Alicia
agreed.

“
Right, Dad,” Richard
agreed.

Josh had seemed to attract all the
strays as he had wandered through the smaller towns around his own
small South Carolina town. He looked across the fire at the young
girl and the young boy that sat there.

“
James, what do you think?
You talked to her first,” Josh asked.

James shrugged his shoulders. “She
seemed okay... She freaked me out is all.” He shrugged again and
then smiled. “I wasn't really expecting anyone to answer.” He
laughed nervously. “No one ever does.” He looked from Josh to
Richard to Katherine who sat beside him, and then at Alicia who sat
on Josh's lap and fixed him with her serious eyes.

“
I know,” Alicia
said.

Josh nodded. “Surprised me too. All of
us I'd bet.” He turned to Katherine. They had met the girl here.
She had somehow managed to stay alive on her own. He had wondered
more than once how she had managed to do that. And that had been
just a few weeks back.

She had decided to stay with them, but
Josh had the feeling that might not be a permanent decision. She
didn't talk much, but she loved the children. “Kat,” he
asked.

She turned her hands palm
up and spread them, then turned them over and glanced at the black
nail polish. “I... I usually hide,” she said. She looked up at him.
“I
always
hide...
But if you think it's okay... Alright, Josh,” she said.

“
Kat.” He waited until he
met his eyes. “I said I won't let anyone hurt you... Anyone, Kat,”
Josh told her.

“
Foolish, I know,” Kat
said. Her hands twisted together in her lap. Warring with each
other. “She said... She said they came from the woods,” she
asked.

“
She said they were in the
woods,” Josh said. “I don't think she said they came from the
woods,” Josh added after a second of thought. “But I guess it would
make me wonder where else they could have come from if they're in
the woods and they didn't come from somewhere in the woods,” Josh
said.

Kat nodded her head. “I
might know them. I mean not really know them, but know
of
them,
w
ho they are... If so, they're good
people... Good people, I think, but I don't know what they'll think
of me,” she added quietly.

Josh nodded. “I have to say
that I don't understand, Kat... Can you explain? How is it that you
might know them and they might know you and they maybe... What?
Not
like
you?”

Tears began to spill from her eyes.
There was no planning. No artifice in it. It just happened. “The
people who... who took me.” Now she began sobbing, and the two
younger children were getting upset.

“
James,” Josh asked. “Could
you take Richie and Alicia for a little while... Maybe let them
play a disc in the van or something?”

“
Sure... Sure, Josh,” James
said. He collected the two little ones and walked over to the
custom Chevy van they were living in. He herded the children inside
and then closed the door with a soft chuffing sound. A few minutes
later the Chevy started and sat softly purring in the
twilight.

They had cleared the field for a
quarter mile in each direction. Really just drove the van over it,
back and forth, until they had flattened the standing hay. Just in
case something tried sneaking up on them. The dead or the living.
He looked around now. The light was fading fast. Soon they would
have to call it a day.

They spent the nights in the Van. With
steel bars welded across the glass and a cage of heavy steel wire
wrapped around the windshield it was about the safest place. He had
cut gun ports into the van at every side and the front and back
areas. He had taken his time building the van. It ran on diesel and
more than once he had gotten by on vegetable oil in between finding
diesel supplies. Kat seemed to get her weeping under control as he
waited.

“
I'm sorry, Josh,” she said
at last.

“
Kat, it's okay... I don't
know what's wrong... What's happened... But we don't have to see
these people tomorrow. We don't have to do anything... We can get
in that van and drive tonight,” He finished quietly.

She nodded and seemed to
get herself under control. She took a deep breath. “Josh... Josh,
my name's not Katherine...
Kat...
It's Chloe.... And what happened is...”

Tom's Journal.

This still seems a little funny to me.
A man keeping a diary. I know it's called a journal, not a diary,
but what's the real difference. Is a journal less personal, if so
I'm doing this wrong.

I was the guy, at the beginning, who
didn't want this. I wanted to stay in Watertown, I didn't want to
leave.

I think something happened to me when
Lydia was killed. It tipped me over, if you get what I mean, but
not all the way. I held it, and when I righted myself I was not the
same man. And then along came my Lilly. And now a child on the way.
I know it isn't my child but I don't care. The next one will be.
And I will still love this one every bit as much.

I guess I wanted to write
about how happy I am. How... Complete? I think that's a good word.
I never thought of, or used that word in that context before. I
feel.... Complete, and that's funny because I never even knew that
I was
incomplete.
But I most definitely was.

I worked with Bob most of this
morning.. We got both engines out of the trucks and using a chain
fall and a pair of Oxen we got them into the power house where we
wanted them. Then we hooked them into the system; hooked up the
fuel lines to the big tanks in the power house. The kid even
figured out a way to use the small automotive alternators on the
trucks to power some low voltage lighting along the pathways. Who
would have thought of that?

Tim is a smart kid. There was a time
when it seemed he would stay in his shell, but Annie bought him
out. And, really, he did the same with her. They're good for each
other.

So the motors are in, now we have to
finish stripping out the trucks right to the frames. We picked
potatoes all afternoon though so we'll have to get back to it
tomorrow. But Tim has a place for every part. The steel and wood
flatbeds? Bridges to cross the stream in two different places. The
heavy steel frames? Retaining walls. The cabs? Look out post shacks
for the ridge tops. Where does he come up with these
ideas?

Our world is going well, or as well as
it can be. We have babies coming and that has made us start to
wonder about death. It's going to happen eventually. We are in
contact with other communities via the radios where it has happened
already. We have talked about what we will do, but only as an
aside. We voted Bob and Arlene to take charge of it.

We built a small cemetery, in truth
it's a dismal place, just a wide gash in the rock. Like a prison
for the dead. Only one way in. Bob and I built a gate, closed it
in. Installed a lock. We haven't had to use it yet though... I
haven't... Have they? It could be, because they don't speak about
it. We have people come in. Some close to death from being on the
run, the trip, lack of food, medical care. One could have died and
I wouldn't know about it at all. It's not hidden... I could ask...
But maybe I don't want to know. Maybe that's the truth of that. But
I'm still worried about it, them, the dead...

What if, God forbid, I shouldn't say
it, but what if a mother dies in childbirth? Will she turn that
fast? How fast then? What should we do? It has to be dealt with. I
guess some of it can't be answered because we have no way of
knowing the answers to it yet. I have heard from others, over the
radio, a few that have come in too, but I have not seen any deaths,
and so I have had no experience with the turning. Really, here for
six months, it is hard to believe what I hear on the radio. I have
yet to see a zombie, living dead, what ever they should be called.
I'm not saying I don't believe. I do. I listen to the radio. I have
listened when places have fallen. There was a little place in
Texas. We heard them when they fell. Nothing since.

We hear what they say in New York and
L.A. They have strongholds there and yet they worry about the dead
over running them. Jesus... Can there be so many? I guess there can
be. And what do we do if they find our little valley here in the
middle of nowhere? Bob says impossible, but I have been to New York
City. I have walked the streets there. They go on forever. How on
earth could there be so many dead that they threaten to over run
that city? A city that big? And L.A. Too. How?

I had hoped that we would sit down and
talk it out before they left but we never did, so I guess it is
left to those of us who are here to wonder and worry about
it.

Later...

I had to leave off. I sometimes get
myself worked up over bullshit. Nothing has come here and I hope
none will. In a few months I will be a father. How could anything
be better?

Later: The Valley

The rifle shot pulled him from sleep
instantly. He had his own rifle in his hands and was running
through the rain a second later. His bare feet pounding down the
graveled path to the barns.

Strangely the pain had not come to him
yet although he knew it had to be there. The rain was heavy, he
blinked his eyes to take the sting of water running into his eyes
away for a moment, and then continued to run.

The shot had come from the barn and as
he ran he tried to recall who had the guard duty in that area
tonight. He heard the sounds of a scuffle before he actually
reached the barn. Behind him he heard Lilly's voice calling after
him, and then Bob's raised in alarm.

Tom rounded the corner of the barn,
feet sliding on the wet grass. The rain was so heavy that he
couldn't really see what was happening as he skidded to a stop, the
black shifting with patterns of light, shifting and the next second
he was sitting up in bed. Heart racing, breath coming fast,
screaming, and a split second later that was gone and he was
staring out into the pouring rain from the overhang of the
barn.

He cried out involuntarily, and then
his body jerked and the back of his head slammed into the rough
planks of the siding. His mouth opened to scream and he snapped it
shut. His heart was slamming hard into his rib-cage, breath coming
so hard it physically hurt. The rifle gripped so hard in his hands
that he could not, at first, loosen it. He finally got his heart to
slow and took a deep breath. The cold night air clearing his mind.
He was far from sleepy now.

He heard the grit of a footstep and
bought up the rifle, turning toward the sound as he did. Bob
stepped around the corner of the barn and peered toward him where
he stood in the gloom. Tom stepped out into the pouring rain and
motioned him over.

Bob hurried over and stepped under the
overhang, out of the downpour. “Christ, Tommy. This
rain.”

“
Yeah,” Tom
said.

“
Thought I heard something,
figured I'd rather come check than be sorry I didn't,” Bob told
him. His eyes were on Tom's own.

“
Didn't hear anything,
exactly,” Tom said. “Maybe thunder... Far off.”

Bob nodded. “Just the same, I think
I'll hang over here with you for a while... This rain is about
putting me to sleep,” he said.

“
It's the monotony,” Tom
agreed. He yawned in spite of himself. He leaned back into the side
of the barn. Bob nodded, leaned back himself, and they watched the
rain fall in silence.

CHAPTER THREE

September 17th

The sun was barely up. Steam rose from
the ground and then seemed to hang just below the tops of the
trees.

Mike was looking at the phenomenon when
Molly came over and handed him a cup of coffee. Molly looked up
into the trees. “Pretty,” she said.

“
I didn't know you could
have steam rising from the ground after a heavy rain and fog too...
At the same time,” Mike said.

“
It's all the same,” Molly
said. “Fog
is
rain,
water,
just rising from the ground. The steam you see rising is fog
as well. So whether it's coming off the water or rising from the
ground it's the same...” She looked to the south. “I would bet
there is a body of water over there. The fog is lifting from there,
drifting over here, mixing with our lifting ground fog and there
you go.” She laughed.

Mike sipped at the coffee. “You sound
like a Meteorologist... On the weather channel... 'Well thanks,
John... Today we're going to see heavy rains across parts of the
northwest...'” Mike parodied.

“
Hey, that wasn't half
bad,” Molly told him. She smiled.

“
Yeah... Misspent
adulthood... Programming and listening to the TV as I worked all
night long. So where did you get the weather speak from? Or am I
being too nosy?”

Molly smiled again, but it
was a sad, careful smile. “Once upon a time... In the old world...
I started work right out of college as a Weather girl on a local TV
station in Mobile... yes they actually called me a
weather girl
and I was so
glad to get the job that I took that shit too. My first big
assignment was as a storm reporter in the middle of a hurricane.”
she frowned.