The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (80 page)

They had headed in this direction
because last night Roberta had seen smoke that had seemed to be
coming from the side of the mountain. She had insisted that it had
to mean there were people there, even though it seemed very
unlikely. Craig had looked as well, but he had seen no smoke, just
the blue gray stone of the mountains. But North East was a good
direction to be heading in any way, Craig had decided, and so they
had come.

Craig, Sissy and Roberta. Bonny and
John were the other two.

Janet had called Bob on the radio. He
had been prepared to come back then, but Janet had convinced him
that they were in no danger and he should stay. Finish what they
had set out to do. The days were already growing colder, and who
knew if there would be time again this year for any other trips.
Besides, she had told him, he could meet them all tomorrow
afternoon or evening when they returned.

She had no sooner finished talking to
Bob than Annie's voice had come over the radio. They were less than
twenty miles out and they would push to be there in a few hours.
They had the woman, Annie said, who had lost an arm. It looked like
the wound had gotten infected. She had lapsed into unconsciousness
and they were concerned she might not last through the
evening.

Janet came out after speaking with Bob
and Annie, and let the three women who were still on the ledge,
staring down the valley, watching the sun finish setting, know that
Sissy had passed away and that Annie and the others would be coming
in just a few hours.

“
Bob says probably Arlene
will be here... Or him if not, to take care of her,” Janet had said
quietly.

Sissy had died just a short time
earlier, she told them. Her heart, Sandy had said. Too much stress.
Sandy had her other patients on bed rest and liquids, she told
them, and thought that most of them would be fine within a few
days.

“
I can take care of it...
No sense in making Arlene come all the way back for that,” Candace
told her.

“
No, Candy... Too much
stress for you... The baby,” she said quietly. “Let Robert worry
about it.” She stood for a second longer. “Might lose one more,”
she said quietly and then walked away.

Candace looked back out over the valley
after Janet finished speaking. That's the truth, she thought. Too
much stress. It is a stressful world out there. She surprised
herself to tears over how readily she could accept that senseless
death was just a part of life. Patty held her and stroked her hair
as they watched the sun set, waiting for Annie and the
others.

~

Bob told Janet that he loved her,
signed off and then set the radio down.

“
It's not the others come
back hurt, is it,” Sharon asked.

“
No. It's not them. Not any
of us. It's a new group of outsiders that arrived nearly starved to
death... Lost one of them... I guess they got most of the others
resting comfortable now though. Another is bad off...”

“
Someone will have to take
care of the one,” Arlene said thoughtfully. She stood from the
fire, Bob watched her.

“
You,” Bob said. “I can...
It doesn't have to be you.”

Arlene nodded. “I'll take a horse, be
there in just about a half hour or less.”

Bob nodded. “Okay. We'll be back
tomorrow.”

“
Didn't say anything else?”
Arlene asked.

Bob shook his head. “A girl they're
bringing in... Lost an arm to one of them. Might not make it... Be
there in a few hours, so...”

Arlene nodded. “So, maybe three.” She
bent and kissed David quickly. He stood and walked away into the
gathering darkness with her.

Bob sat and listened to the early
evening. A few minutes later he heard hoof beats as Arlene headed
back to the valley. David came back a few minutes later and sat
back down by the fire. The silence held.

~

“
Just head back,” Arlene
told the young man who had helped to carry the body out past the
barns to a small cave they had set up to isolate the dead. They had
only used it a few times.

The kid looked doubtfully up at the
night sky and then back down at Arlene. Arlene patted the gun on
her hip.

“
I'll be fine,” she told
him. “Go on... Head back before they start to worry about you.” The
kid started to turn. “Billy, thanks for helping,” she told him. She
smiled to reassure him. He smiled back, turned, hesitated briefly,
and then started back along the path to the main cave.

A thick wooden door was set into the
cave opening. But she wouldn't actually need to get in there. That
was only to lock them in if they could not take care of them quick
enough. To have a place to isolate them. She was here. This one
would never get the chance to turn. There was a small grave already
dug a little further down in an area they had chosen for just that
purpose. There were, in fact, three graves dug. She would use one
tonight, maybe more than one, but tomorrow she would come out and
open another two or three to be ready.

The body was inside a sleeping bag.
Zippered up. She knew without looking that the arms were tied down
to the sides of the body. Sandy would have made sure. They had
rules. They had all decided, and none of them had any wish to break
their own rules. There would be no dead outbreaks in the
Nation.

She walked down to the iron gate that
closed off access to the small cemetery hidden away in the rock,
fitted the key in the lock, and swung the gate open. She walked
back to the body, reached down, grabbed one edge of the bag and
dragged it down the rough path and into a small hidden side area
where they had buried the few they had needed to bury.

This place had been a natural fault in
the rock, a crevice, nearly three hundred feet wide and twice that
in length. The stone walls reached away to the moonlit sky far
above. Arlene switched on her flashlight and continued down to the
first grave in line. There were four others close up and mounded
over. The other two open graves, both of which she may need later,
were off to her left. Plywood covered them, just as it covered the
one she intended to use now.

She let go of the bag, grabbed the edge
of the plywood in one gloved hand and tugged. The plywood came away
easily. She reached down and grasped the bag once more, her hand
feeling the outline of the woman's head beneath the thin layer of
cloth, and she very nearly lost the tips of her fingers as the
woman's mouth bit down through the fabric. The zombie ended up with
a mouthful of glove instead. Arlene swore as she stumbled back, a
little unnerved for a moment.

One finger throbbed, she
quickly held it up to the flashlight beam and turned it back and
forth. Pinched, it was already bruising, but the skin was not
broken. The heavy leather glove had saved her. She looked back at
the bag where the zombies head whipped back and forth beneath the
cloth. The leather glove held between its teeth like a prize. She
stepped forward, pulled her pistol and thumbed off the
safety.
A new rule,
she thought now,
tie the mouth shut
somehow.

She bent lower and pulled the trigger.
The gunshot roared within the stone walls and then echoed off down
the valley. Arlene returned her gun to her holster, retrieved her
glove, picked up one edge of the bag and dragged it over to the
hole.

Sandy's Journal.

It's late, maybe close to morning. I
laid my watch down somewhere and then lost it. That was hours ago.
I just can't remember where I put it. It will turn up, but for the
most part, watches are pretty much useless. They can only count
twenty-four hours and the days and nights are more than that. Half
the time we just look at the sky anyway.

This has been a long day. We have new
members. We have some new people that walked right in out of the
wilderness. One of theirs died right after they got here. Another
is not doing good and I expect he'll be gone by morning. Then Annie
came back, Mike sent her back, with a woman that was bitten by a
Zombie. They took her arm off. I think she's safe from the bite,
but the wound itself got infected. I guess maybe the dead could get
her after all, just delayed. It's going to be touch and go. We have
our own cultured penicillin. I took the rest of her forearm as
well. They had left a stub below the elbow. There is no way to know
if she will make it or not. We'll have to wait and see. I'm glad
Annie is back, but what she had to tell us has everyone worried
about the rest.

The other one of the new ones that came
in from the wilderness that is bad off got bitten. Looks like a
snake to me, maybe a few days back. How he could keep walking is
beyond me. The leg is gangrenous, and it looks to me like the
infection is up into his stomach, lungs. His heart has about had
it.

I'm glad I know what I know, but
sometimes, like this, I feel next to useless. The old world is
gone. Neither one of these people would’ve died in the old
world.

On a personal note. Susan and I have
decided we will follow Molly's lead. Susan will go first this time.
I'm next. I want Michael to be the father, so does Susan. We talked
it over. I don't know what he will think, hopefully not that we're
crazy. This way our children will be close to the same age. Molly
is, after all, just pregnant. They'll be able to grow up
together.

CHAPTER SIX

September
22
^nd

On The Road

It was mid morning when they passed the
couch in the road with the overturned Harley. Mike took a few
seconds, from the window of the truck, trying to spot the woman, or
what was left of her. She was nowhere to be seen, but snapping and
snarling from the nearby trees told them the bodies Debbie had seen
had not gone far. And a large pool of blackened and sun-cracked
blood told a story of its own. She must have been good and dead, if
it was her blood, his, both.

Mike didn't allow the trucks top stop
completely. He sped up again after only a cursory glance. What ever
had happened was over. There would never be a way to tell for sure
if it had been the man they had passed. And even if there were it
didn't answer the why of it and couldn't. You couldn't know what
motivated another man or woman. You just couldn't, and it would do
Ronnie and Chloe no good to pick at the wound it had
caused.

Mike had had the window down. He rolled
it up tight as they passed and switched on the air conditioning,
but the scene remained in his head anyway as he drove
along.

The blood, dark stains on the cracked
pavement crawling with ants, and one hand sitting off to the side
like a toy tossed away by an angry child. Pink sparkles on the
fingernails caught the early morning light and threw it back. Mike
pushed his foot down a little harder on the accelerator and turned
his attention back to the scenery that was passing the
windows.

The roads were deteriorating quickly.
The heat, the humidity, but most of all no maintenance. In places,
the only way you knew where the road was, was the break in the
trees. The straight lines that nature never made. Mike imagined
that in a few years even those would be gone, at least to the
normal eye. Maybe in a few thousand years or so someone would do a
fly over and remark on how, although you can't see it from the
ground, there was once a huge road system that covered the
continent. The ancient civilization had, had a road
system.

He had seen something like that in a
documentary once. Roads, ruins, they all left their marks, at least
for a few thousand years. Maybe longer if the stuff they had been
seeing on Mars were truly indications of past life. It just stayed
there, undiscovered, until the next race of people came along that
was curious enough to look, or advanced enough to look. Maybe that
was the world. Just recycling from civilization to civilization. A
few thousand years flow by and it all starts up again. Like wiping
the playing field even again. He wondered what would emerge
victorious this time.

“
Hey... You okay,” Ronnie
asked.

“
Yeah, I was...” He shook
his head and smiled sadly. “
You
okay,” he asked.

Ronnie frowned but followed it with a
small smile. “Pretty much... I just want to get home and see
Patty... Let it all go.”

Mike nodded. “Me too, Ronnie. They can
keep all of this. I mean we really do have it together back there.
We have something real going on. When have you heard of a society
where everyone really is equal?”

“
Nowhere,” Ronnie said. “At
least not in our history as a people.”

“
You know my
great-grandmother was full blooded Blackfoot. Lived in a mining
camp in Canada, up high in the mountains there somewhere. Only one
way for an Indian woman on her own to live back then, and so she
did. Had more than a dozen kids by different men.” Mike shrugged
and watched the roadway go past. He let up on the gas pedal, the
road surface really was unpredictable. Better safe than
sorry.

“
The last three kids were
by a black man... An escaped slave that had made his way there...
To be free I suppose. I don't know whether they just got along, or
they understood each other, maybe loved each other, but they stayed
together for a long while... A very long while... Then he
died.”