The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (75 page)

“
Sheep?” Nellie
asked.

“
Wool,” Mike said. “And of
course we're still looking for a spinet and a loom as well,” he
finished.

“
Museum,” Molly
said.

“
Never thought of that,” He
agreed smiling.

“
Gonna be hard to find
sheep this far down,” Josh threw in.

“
Too hot?” Ronnie
asked.

“
Yeah, but even so, I saw
two different herds up the other side of where we were camped...
'Bout sixty, seventy miles back... North. Small... Good herds
though, both of them,” Josh said.

“
Think they'd still be
there?” Mike asked.

“
Yeah. They weren’t about
to go nowhere. Sheep are pretty simple. They have to be lead to
most things. They'll be there,” he finished.

“
Okay... So we can get them
on the way back then,” Nellie said.

Mike nodded. “Sounds good to me... So,
then there isn't much else to get... The electric four by fours
sound like the hardest thing... We really might be heading back
early,” He said and smiled.

They began to get a dinner meal ready
and placed the first posts as the sun began to sink in the
northeast.

The Nation

It took four hours of steady walking to
reach the lake. Bob was pretty sure they had collected every worm
in the valley. They carried them in several plastic containers.
They had also bought along a dozen ears of corn for bait. Snagging
gear, several large nets, basket nets, fiberglass and bamboo poles
and baskets and containers to carry fish back.

They set up two large tents and then
set up their equipment to fish. Within three hours they were
pulling large bullheads, black bass and lake trout in as fast as
they could cast.

“
I don't guess they've had
a good worm in a few months,” Bob joked.

“
Hell, there was no worm on
my hook at all that time,” Arlene said laughing.

They threw back most of the bony fish;
sun fish, crappies, and kept the bullhead, black bass and
occasional lake trout.

Cindy and Tom quickly set up a long
line of drying racks and built smokey fires under the strings that
ran from rack to rack.

Sharon suddenly gave a shout and Bob
lunged for her and grabbed her to keep her from being dragged into
the lake as a huge fish leapt into the air. It's wide mouth yawned
as it tried to shake the hook. What looked like whiskers trailed
the sides of its huge head, whipping back and forth as it tossed
its head hoping to shake the hook. “What the Hell is that?” She
asked.

“
I would guess,” Bob said.
“That it has got to be what we would call a channel cat.” He handed
his pole off to Tom who had come running and took a firmer grip on
Sharron’s pole as she passed it over. “A Channel Cat is just a big
catfish. Looks sort of like a bullhead, doesn't it? Only a lot
bigger,” Bob laughed. “This one feels about fifty or sixty pounds,
maybe five or six feet long... Give or take,” he grunted as the
fish fought.

It took most of a half hour for Bob to
land the fish. It was taller than Tom, and Tom was well over six
feet.

“
That is one ugly fish,”
David said.

“
It is, but cooked right
that is one tasty fish,” Arlene said.

“
Partaker of the catfish
are we?” Bob asked.

“
Oh yeah,” Arlene said,
“Just leave this puppy to me.”

Two more hours of fishing and the racks
were full. The smell of the catfish cooking was
maddening.

Sharon had helped to find what ever
grew wild near the lake that they could use. Leeks and Wild Wheat
along with a few herbs helped the meal along. Arlene had wrapped
the fish in the wild wheat along with the herbs and leeks and
placed it over a hot bed of coals.

Wild potatoes and carrots grew near the
lake and those were harvested as well. Arlene and Sharon wrapped
them in wheat and let them cook near the hot coals. They had used
butter to mix with the cut up herbs for the fish and the
vegetables.

“
I had thought that
potatoes, carrots, leeks... Onions or what ever those are called,”
Tom said, “were, what would you call it,
domesticated?”

“
Fair enough word,” Bob
agreed. “Many people think that, but the truth is that they grow
wild just like anything else. All you need to know is what to look
for, and you would never go hungry in the wild. That is exactly
what our ancestors did... I wont say domestication didn't help, it
did, but it did not invent... The stuff was already
there.”

Bob had shown everyone how to make a
serviceable cutting edge from stone. Using a larger stone as a
hammer to fracture a smaller stone they had made small knives and
used them to cut up the fish and the vegetables.

They built up the other smokey fires to
keep the insects away as the fish dried and then served up the fish
and vegetables. They sat next to the lake and ate dinner as dusk
came on.

They intended to stay two days and had
already called back to let everyone know how the fishing was
going.

“
They said the kids are
wiped out. Milking this morning, chores this afternoon, and then
they picked some corn to take back. Jan made them hamburgers and
fries,” Bob said. “Yes, the fries
I
was supposed to make and forgot about. And an
apple pie. They picked some small crab apples from some wild trees
down the valley,” he finished.

“
You know,” Tom said,
“Those wild trees could turn out okay if we keep them pruned
back... Take care of them.”

Arlene nodded. “I've seen that. They
probably wouldn't get much bigger, but they will get sweeter. Plus,
we can graft branches in. My Daddy used to do that. Graft in good
branches from other trees. Four or five different kinds on one
tree. You don't get much the first year or two, but after that you
get a couple of different kinds of apples growing on the same
tree.”

“
You did that,” Bob asked.
“Graft? You know how?”

“
Oh yeah...It's not hard at
all. You can do it with different kinds of trees as well. Different
kinds of fruit trees... Any kind of tree nearly... I think.. I know
fruit trees. I've done it with fruit trees... Plants as well...
Slips of plants to clone, same with trees... I have done both.
Grafting and cloning. No big deal. Any nursery does the same
thing.”

“
Well then, you're
elected,” Bob said.

“
Okay... You got it,”
Arlene said. “I'll fix them up real nice.”

~

“
They sound like they had a
blast,” Candace said.

“
They have every rack
filled already, Candy,” Janet said.

“
That's a lot of fish,”
Lilly said.

“
Good protein for you
pregnant types,” Susan said... “What's it like,” she asked shyly.
She was normally so bold that it was surprising to Lilly to see
this side of her.

“
Like someone stuck a
screaming, kicking two year old in my stomach while I was sleeping.
Told them to sit on my bladder and kick me in the kidneys every
once in a while.”

“
Yeah,” Candace
agreed.

“
Ditto,” Patty
added.

“
You know... The other
feeling,” she said with a small laugh.

Lilly nodded. She had tried to joke her
way out of it. She didn't consider herself good at explaining how
she felt about anything at all.

“
It's like you thought you
had everything in the world and then
bang...
You find out you had nothing
at all. It's the knowledge that you are making a life... A
real
life
inside
of you... It's impossible to imagine. It's all the love you have,
all of it, tied up in something you don't understand, but even so
you know is real... It's like knowing how much Tom loves me when he
puts his hand on my belly and he gets this look on his face.” She
paused.

“
It's so emotional, so
pure, it makes me cry all by itself. Just out of the blue... It's
hope, you know?” She smiled. “Then it kicks you in the kidneys and
you go...
Ow!
Damn
that hurt!” Everybody laughed.

“
Really I can't explain it,
Sue... It's like you're in the middle of a magic show, all of this
is happening, and you know the science, but the reality is so
amazing it just blows you away,” Lilly said.

“
Yeah... That's it
exactly,” Candace said softly. “And then they really do kick you in
the bladder or the kidneys!”

Everybody roared.

On The Road

Zac dragged himself upright. The sun
was finally sinking below the horizon behind him. His face was
stiff and stinging pain.

Goddammit
, he thought,
fell asleep in the sun again... All
day
, the little voice in his head told
him.

His tongue was thick and dry in his
mouth and his head was pounding to a heart beat that sounded pretty
scary in its own right. His stomach was queasy.

It felt like something was crawling
down the back of his neck, but when he slapped one slow hand to it,
it was only a greasy bead of sweat rolling out of his hairline and
down to his collar to join the dampness already there.

“
Manda.” He meant to yell,
but his abused throat came out with a nearly silent croak instead.
He reached for the bottle at his side, hot after sitting in the sun
all day, spun the top off and took a long drink.

Fire burned down his throat and
squeezed tears out of his eyes. He cleared his throat. Spat, and
took a deeper drink.

“
Hair of the dog,” he told
himself. “Fuckin' A.”

He tried his voice. Spat.
Cleared his throat once more and then took a longer drink. He took
another drink and shouted.
“Manda, you
worthless, slat chested bitch!”

In the doorway of the SUV,
Amanda came awake.
Wha...,
she thought.

“
Goddamn fuckin'
cunt,”
Zac continued.
“Where in Christ's sake are you?”

“
I'm coming, Baby. I'm
coming,” she croaked. She grabbed a can of warm cola, popped the
top and then sniffed it before she took a drink. Sometimes they
were bad. This one smelled okay though. She took a sip and then a
larger drink when she realized it tasted okay. She hurried over to
Zac. Her pink sparkle fingernails clicked nervously against the
can. “I'm here baby,” she told him.

“
About fuckin'
time,”
he told her. “What's to eat... I got
to get something in me.”

“
We got a lot of stuff,
Baby... We got some chunk soups... Some beef stews, some pork and
beans... Some of them little wienies in a can,” she laughed. “Some
chili.”

“
I want a steak,” Zac
complained.

“
Baby, there ain't no
steaks in cans. At least I ain't seen none. We got some roast beef
in a can, but the last can a that was bad, you said. You said you
didn't want no more a that,” Amanda told him.

“
Prolly went bad in this
ever fuckin' heat,” Zac said. “Give me a couple a cans of that
chili.”

He sat holding his shaggy head in his
hands as he spoke. When he finished he lifted it, shook it and
looked around.

Amanda padded off to get the chili and
a can opener.

Zac's eyes felt too small for his
swollen, aching head. A bottle of Tabasco sauce sat nearby. It
worked well for hangovers, he'd always swore by it. He upended it
and got nothing for his troubles.. He threw it aside in disgust and
took another deep pull from the bottle at his side instead. The
light was seeping out of the sky which made it a little easier on
his head. He rubbed his temples, rubbed the back of his neck and
then his eyes. He flexed his neck back and forth idly and looked
around while he waited on the chili. That was when he noticed his
bike tipped over onto the old couch.

“
Jesus H. Christ and all
his little disciples... What the fuck is this!”
He bellowed. He hauled himself to his feet, his aching head
forgotten, and walked over to the bike. That was when he noticed
that the bike was not even where it was supposed to be. He had
known something was wrong he just hadn't been able to put his
finger on it. The bike had been moved about eight feet from where
it was supposed to be.

Amanda came back with the two cans of
chili and a dirty fork. He wouldn't care anyway about the fork, she
thought. She sat the cans down on the table and started to use the
can opener when she saw that Zac was up and staring at the bike
that was toppled over onto the couch.

“
I was gonna tell you about
that, Baby,” Amanda said.

In two short steps he was
on her and backhanded her with one hand. “
You was gonna tell me!
You was
gonna
tell
me?”

Amanda had gone flying, literally
lifted off her feet and landed on her bony ass in the middle of the
cracked and tilted asphalt. A high pitched buzzing started in her
head. Blood leaked from the side of her mouth. She sat up and
swayed from side to side, shook her head and remembered who she
was. It took a few seconds longer to remember the why of
it.