The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (71 page)

Even now they were
following her scent,
her thoughts
on the air. Questioning... Wondering if she would
come to them. They were newly dead. They had no leader, but they
were willing. Just waiting to be collected. They would follow her
where ever she intended to go.

It meant that her position had changed.
With the death of Marcus she was no longer a soldier, just a
follower... She was now a leader. It wasn't something that just
fell to her, it was a duty that called to her. An urge that pulsed
in the strange blood that flowed through her veins. She had been
considering it like she had a choice to make, but very little of it
was her own choice or free will. Nearly all of it was for the
whole. The collective. The hive. All apt. descriptions, although
none of those descriptors really did it justice.

She turned to the West one last time
scenting the air. She could smell blood on the air. It traveled
with them. And it interfered with her thoughts to a degree. A newly
dead may have followed that scent and it's allure. She would not.
She turned away and a few moments after that she was loping through
the darkening forest following the scent of her own
kind.

On The Road

The farm store had suffered more damage
while they had been gone. Several areas that had been damaged had
been slowly settling. Wet timbers, wind and more rain had helped to
collapse a few more areas. They stood on the highway, the Jeeps
parked in a tight cluster, and looked over the collection of
buildings that had once been a farm store.

“
What do you think, Bear,”
Mike asked.

“
I think there are some in
there.” He looked over the buildings. He pointed with one massive
hand, Index finger extended. His voice was lower, just above a
whisper when he spoke again. “See all that green growth up close to
the buildings? That's all wrong. That would have been eaten by the
Deer. The deer are everywhere. We just passed a few down the road.
You see the way they keep it down. It doesn't get a chance to
grow.” He looked around at the fields that marched off in both
directions.

“
The fields are high...
Cows... Deer... Horses... You don't see it like this anywhere else
cause they keep it down, but they don't want to come here to eat.
The dead. They're in there all right.”

Mike sighed and nodded. “Okay...
Ronnie,” he started. Bear interrupted.

“
Look... It's not so bad.
Let me show you something.” He looked around at the Jeeps and the
fuel cans that were mounted at the back. “Help me to gather some
wood... Doesn't have to be a lot.”

A few minutes later he and Tim had
gathered a pile of wood and set it up in the middle of the highway
upwind from the buildings. Bear doused it with gasoline and then
walked back to Mike. The rest gathered around.

“
They're gonna come out the
back. They're afraid of fire. It's one constant that is always in
our favor. The wind takes the smoke down to the building and
they'll run,” Bear told him.

“
Wakes them up,” Mike
asked. “Gets them running?”

Bear shook his head. “No. And don't kid
yourself. Right now they're down there wondering what we're up to.
They're not sleeping. They know we're out here and they're just
wondering whether we're going to come for them. Don't underestimate
them.” He took a deep breath. “I would get people on both sides and
out back. Mow those bastards down as they run... Don't know how
many there are, but we can get most of them,” Bear finished
grimly.

Mike stood for a second. “Josh, take
James and cover the left side and I'll take the back with Ronnie.
Tim, take the other side with Bear.” A second later they were all
running off to their positions and Bear approached the pile of
gasoline soaked wood and tossed a lit wooden kitchen match at it
before he turned and sprinted for the side where Tim
waited.

The Farm store was really two large
steel building joined together at right angels. They had taken the
earthquakes with relatively little damage. Cracks in the concrete
base of the foundations. A few sections that had been too damaged
to stand had collapsed from the weather. At the rear of the
building, where they had removed the large steel doors that led
into the warehouse the last time they had been here, the building
seemed much the same to Mike as he stood waiting. The wind shifted
though, and the smell of rot and corrupted flesh came to him,
nearly gagging in its intensity. He looked over at Ronnie, probably
intending to say something, but a split second after he looked away
the first of the dead spilled from the building and they were
nearly on him before his finger found the trigger and began to
fire.

Ronnie walked a straight line into them
firing as he went. Mike moved off further to the left and mowed
down the ones that got past Ronnie. He could hear firing on the
other side of the building too, and wondered how bad it could be.
How many there were.

He had no sooner had the thought when
something hit him hard in the shoulder and drove him
back.

One of the zombies had come at a run
from the side of the building and launch itself at him while still
more than twenty five feet away. It came flying through the air.
Mouth yawning. Teeth gnashing, faster than Mike would have thought
possible. He forced himself to fight down the panic as he tried to
turn.

His left leg buckled as it tripped over
the broken pavement and he nearly went down before he caught
himself, but the stumble cost him. The zombie that had hit him was
picking itself up from the ground for a second assault; Mike thrust
his rifle forward and squeezed the trigger but the zombies head
slid down along the barrel and his teeth, gnashing and tearing took
off the end of Mike's index finger. He screamed swung to his left
and kicked out. A second later he was firing point blank into the
zombie where it lay on the ground. A second after that silence
descended.

Mike came up from the crouch he had
found himself in. The ground in front of the rear doors was
littered with a half dozen dead. He reached down and pinched off
the blood flow tightly on his finger with his other hand. The rifle
swung freely. “Ronnie!” He yelled at the top of his lungs. Ronnie
stood from his own crouch, turned and then came running over as he
saw the blood dripping from Mike's hand to the ground.

“
Jesus... Jesus, Ronnie...
Get your knife. Get it right now.” Ronnie slowed to a stop, let his
own rifle swing free and began to reach for his knife, but before
he could reach it Bear stepped around him. His own knife in his
hand.

“
Hold him,” Bear told him,
when Ronnie hesitated Bear screamed at him. “Fuckin' hold him!
Right now!” Ronnie rushed forward and wrapped his arms around Mike.
Bear reached down, yanked the finger from Mike's own grasp, and
began to cut. Mike screamed into the late afternoon silence that
had descended after the gunfire.

~

“
I think it's fine,” Bear
said a short time later looking over Mike's hand. He had taken the
finger where it joined the hand A couple of crude stitches and his
hand looked as though it had never had an index finger at all. The
others stood around in silence, occasionally looking around at the
bodies of the dead that littered the ground where they had fallen,
half expecting that they might rise again. As it was, Tim, Josh and
James had gone around the building looking over the ones that had
fallen and searching out stragglers. They had found two of the dead
trying to pull another into the tall grass. The one they were
dragging was still alive. Impossibly so to Tim, since it had
nothing from the chest down. They opened up on all three and they
were soon dead on the ground along with the others, for the last
time.

They searched the rest of the building.
There were two more that they shot in the head as they lay, teeth
clashing, or crawled toward the high grass, half their bodies
missing but somehow still alive. When they had come back Bear had
taken off Mike's finger and he was stitching the wound closed. Tim
had watched even though he hadn't wanted to. A liberal application
of antibacterial cream and bandaging finished the job. Tim wondered
just what they were going to do when you couldn't just pick up a
tube of antibiotic cream in nearly any department store you
rummaged through. Die of simple infections? Probably, he
decided.

They had all huddled in silence for a
few moments. Bear didn't give Mike back his rifle and when he went
to reach for it he stopped his hand.

“
Not yet,” Bear told him.
“I saw nothing... It starts as what looks like little black
capillaries spreading away under the skin... Then the skin turns
white, like it's sucking away the life as they travel. They'll work
their way across your body...”

Mike only nodded.

“
I'm positive I got it. You
clamped it off fast, I cut it fast... But you sit for an hour...
Two, and if there's nothing you'll be good to go.” Bear turned to
the others. “Bad fuckin' way to introduce you to this... Listen.
You can't turn your back on these bastards at all. They're
stronger, pound for pound than we are. They can kill you with a
little bite you might not even feel.” He seemed to think for a few
minutes.

“
Back a few months ago a
friend of mine took it like that. We ran into a mess of them. One
got past him. He got it before it bit him. He was positive... I was
positive. But we're sitting by the fire a short time later. He has
this little dirt spot on his finger, he thinks... Tries to wipe it
off, only it don't want to come off. And that's when he sees the
little lines... Already they're running up his arm. He flips out,
rips off his jacket, shirt, but they're already running across his
shoulder and into his chest...” Bear stopped and looked around.
“So... an hour... Two, but I think you're okay.” He looked at
Ronnie. “You're his friend... He needs a friend right now... The
rest of us are going to check the building out... Might be a few
stragglers, might be none. You're gonna sit here with him...” His
eyes held Ronnie's. “You can do it?”

Ronnie looked at Mike and then back up
at Bear. “Yeah.” Ronnie said. He knew Bear was asking more. A
deeper question. “Yeah,” he repeated. He turned back to Mike,
settled down to the ground across from him. His eyes followed Bear
and the others as they walked away and then they came back to
Mike.

“
Don't fuck around if you
have to do it,” Mike told him.

“
No,” Ronnie
agreed.

~

The warehouse turned out to be empty.
An hour later they were searching through the building that Bob had
been sure he had seen the sawmill in.

The sawmill turned out to be one of
six. Three different models. Tim chose, selecting the two heavy
duty ones. One to set up, the other for spare parts. They also got
several replacement saw blades. The small propane powered fork lift
they had used before took a great deal of convincing getting it
going. They replaced the tank and ended up having to jump it with
one of the Jeeps to get it running. It ran for a few minutes and
then ran out of propane. The tank they had swapped had not been a
full one. It took some searching to find a full tank. But after
they hooked it up it started right up.

They picked two trucks the size of the
ones they had used the first time. The forklift made short work of
loading the two sawmills. Since there was still a great deal of
daylight left they began loading grain, feed and other things that
were on their lists. A selection of fruit trees and more kept them
busy into the afternoon.

~

Ronnie sat quietly. An hour had passed.
He and Mike had said very little. “How does it feel,” Ronnie asked
at last. “Seems like it would feel some certain way if... Well if
it was turning,” Ronnie finished quietly.

“
Feels the same. Like
somebody cut my finger off,” Mike said. He frowned and then
laughed, startling Ronnie into laughter as well.

“
Yeah,” Ronnie managed
after a second. He leaned forward; his knife flashed and the cloth
of Mike's shirt purred as it separated. Ronnie's knife traveled
upward. Ronnie studied the skin as it was exposed to the failing
light.

~

Bear turned as Mike and Ronnie walked
up. He nodded. “Don't thank me. Just hate me for taking your
finger,” he said. He grinned. Mike answered it.

“
Had me a little worried,”
Ronnie said.

Behind Bear the others where loading
the truck. It was still far from full. Bear looked over at the
truck and then back. “Could have been a lot worse.” He
said.

Mike nodded. “And you would have made
Ronnie shoot me.”

“
Better Ronnie than me,”
Bear said. The silence held. Bear shrugged Mike's rifle from his
shoulder. “Gonna be a little tough to shoot one handed for the next
bit of time.”

“
Yeah... Well, I wouldn't
be shooting at all if not for you,” Mike said.

Bear looked away. “Best get back at
it.” He looked up at the sky. “Afternoons going.”

Mike shrugged his rifle back up over
his shoulder, grimacing a little as he did. Thee three of them
walked over to the truck that was being loaded.

~