The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (9 page)

“
Either way. One, two, how
would we catch them? And then what? Are we going to shoot somebody
for stealing an old truck? Is that what things have come to?” Mike
asked.

“
Look, don’t get moral on
me,” Tom said. He leveled his eyes at Mike. “I do things my way.
You take from me, you pay for it.”

Mike just stared back at
him.

“
You’re soft,” Tom said.
But his fists, still clenched, dropped from the truck door and he
walked away from the Suburban and back into the cave.

Lydia threw Mike a nasty look, finally
managed to fish a replacement clip from her overly tight front
pocket. Ejected the empty one into her hand and slid the new one
into the pistol with a solid click. “Soft,” She echoed as the clip
clicked home. She turned and went back inside the cave. In the
distance, the muffler of the truck began to fade. It was hard to
tell which direction it had gone.

Bob stepped up beside Mike where he
stood with Candace and Jan. “I’m not going to kill anybody over an
old truck,” he said.

“
Me either” the other three
said in near unison.

“
Guess we better start
making sure everything’s locked up tight,” Mike said.

“
We’re going to have to
start keeping a watch,” Jan said.

“
We will,” Candace agreed.
“What if the next thing they want is a woman?”

“
That’s not funny,” Mike
said.

She leveled her dark eyes on his,
silvery moonlight reflecting from them. “I wasn’t trying to be
funny. Now that they know we’re around…” she shrugged. “Lydia may
have overreacted, but maybe not. Who the hell would pull a stunt
like that anyway? Everything’s just lying around. Want a truck? Go
get one. No… It’s a mind set. Someone who takes like that doesn’t
take because it’s easy; they take because they like it, because
they can.” She lowered her voice, “Truck, woman... might all be the
same to them.”

No one answered.

~

Tom and Lydia sat talking in low tones
as the others walked back into the cave. They had rebuilt the fire,
and the warmth and light spread out, glowing on the stone walls.
“Tom,” Mike started.

“
Listen,” Tom said. “I
shouldn’t have said that... I didn’t mean to say that. And, no, it
would be stupid to go chasing after a goddamn truck in the middle
of the night. And, no, I don’t want to kill someone over stealing a
piece of shit truck,” Tom said. “But that kind of shit can’t
happen. I mean, what’s next?”

“
Yeah,” Mike agreed. “Yeah.
I guess what’s next is locked up trucks. No keys left in them.
And…” He looked over at Candace. “I guess a guard at night. Candace
said… She thinks someone who would come to take a truck might come
to take a woman too.”

The silence held only for a
second.

“
Fuckin’ A,” Lydia
spat.

She looks positively rabid, Candace
thought. “What I mean,” Candace said, “A truck… Maybe one of us…
Who steals a truck when everything’s just lying around free for
anyone who wants to pick it up?”

Tom nodded his head.

“
Well, as soon as it’s
light I say we follow the tracks. If we’re careful, it should be no
problem at all,” Mike said.

“
Goddamn right,” Lydia
said.

“
Should be armed. I’m sure
they will be,” Candace said.

“
Not you. You’re not going
are you?” Mike asked.

“
I’m the best shot we
have,” Candace said. “It’s that simple. If we don’t go after them,”
she shrugged and then shook her head. “No,” she said. “The more I
think about it, they’ll probably come back. And they’ll probably
come back armed as well, hell, maybe they were this time.” She
looked at Lydia.

“
Lydia saw two in the
truck, but how many more were there? Or back where ever they went
to,” she finished seriously.

“
So. The idea is to take it
to them before they bring it to us?” Bob asked.

“
Got a better idea?” Tom
challenged.

“
No… No… But I’m no killer.
It’s still just a damn truck.”

Bob finished.

“
Yeah, tonight it was a
truck, tomorrow it might be me… Or Candace… Or Jan,” Lydia
said.

Bob stayed silent, thoughtful. He
sighed. “What a damn mess,” he said at last.

“
It’s that,” Tom
agreed.

“
I got to agree, Bob,” Mike
said. “It’s not the same world. What if they do come back? Do we
decide then to do something? It might be too late.”

“
Honey. I think it’s best
to go get them,” Janet said quietly, her eyes on Bob's own. Those
eyes looked frightened, Mike thought. He supposed a little of that
fright was resting in everyone's eyes right now.

“
I don’t like to be bullied
or pressured into anything,” Bob said.

“
Hey,” Mike said. “It’s no
pressure, Man. It’s real. It really just happened.”

Bob nodded his head yes, but a frown
remained stamped onto his mouth. Deep lines scarred his forehead.
His hands twisted restlessly in his lap. He suddenly brought his
hands together firmly. “Okay,” he agreed. “Okay. I see the point.
I’ve done a lot of hunting. I’m a good shot with a rifle. I’d like
to go too.”

~

When the sun began to peek over the top
of the ridge on the opposite shore of the Black river, everyone
filed out to the two remaining trucks. It had been decided that
Mike and Jan would stay behind while the others went in search of
the stolen truck. They switched on and tested two sets of F.M.
radios.

“
The range is normally only
about two miles or so, but it’s not like there’s anything to
interfere with them anymore,” Tom said. “We’ll take three with us,
and you keep the other here to monitor us, or if they come back
here,” Tom finished.

“
Do you think that’s a
possibility?” Janet Dove asked.

“
I doubt it, Dear,” Bob
told her with a reassuring smile. “It’s just to be
safe.”

Mike walked over to Candace. Her eyes
met his. He kissed her softly, and her arms slipped around
him.

“
Don’t worry,” she
whispered, “I’ll be careful. And I’ll make sure they’re careful.”
She kissed him and pulled back.

Mike stared at the face of the two way
radio for a long second and then watched her get into the Suburban.
Bob got into the front seat with her. Her eyes met his once more,
and she smiled reassuringly, then started the Suburban and fell in
behind Tom as he drove the big State truck out across the
pavement.

Mike and Janet stood quietly as the two
trucks drove away. Neither of them wanted to go back inside the
cave. The sun was up and warming the old asphalt of the road where
it passed in front of the cave, and what little snow remained was
already beginning to melt.

“
Left here,” The radio
squawked. It sounded like Lydia.

“
Behind you,” came an
answer that sounded like Bob.

Mike shifted the 30-30 Deer rifle he
held in one hand and thumbed off the strap that held his Nine
Millimeter in his web holster. Janet Dove grimaced and then thumbed
the safety off the shotgun she was holding. A short clip protruded
from the base of the shotgun, just forward of the trigger. She had
two more clips in a small pouch on her side, as well as a fully
loaded Three Eighty in a tooled leather side holster she
wore.

What must we look
like,
Mike thought. Aloud he said, “They’ll
be fine.”

“
Really?” Janet Dove asked.
“I truly hope so. I truly do.”

~

The next twenty minutes went by slowly.
Occasional squawks of directions came from the radio, and in the
distance the sound of both trucks could still be heard. The silence
broke all at once.

The radio squealed in
Mike’s hand. One word jumped clearly from the static…
“Jesus!”
… Mike couldn’t
tell from whom. A crashing sound accompanied it, and in the far
distance gunfire erupted in the still, previously quiet morning
air.

The squeal from the radio
abruptly cut off and it fell back to low static. In the distance
the sound of gunfire continued for what seemed like ten minutes,
but was probably no more than thirty or forty seconds in reality.
Mike keyed the radio, “
Candace,”
he screamed.
“Candace?”

Gunfire broke out again in
the distance. The fast…
POP, POP,
POP
of semi automatic gunfire, but the
sharp crack of a heavy rifle too. No answer came back over the
radio. Janet Dove made a small strangled sound in the back of her
throat and a low sob slipped from her mouth. “No, God, no,” she
whispered.

“
It’s alright, Jan,” Mike
told her. He didn’t believe it himself, but it was what you said.
It was how you lied to yourself when you were pretty sure that
things were far from fine. Life didn’t work that way in his
experience. The gunfire had stopped, but the radio maintained its
teasing static as his mind continued to assure him that nothing at
all was right and nothing ever would be again. Just as he had the
thought, the radio in his hand squawked once again.

“
You guys okay?”
a panicked sounding Bob asked.

“
We’re good… We’re good,
base. We’re all good. Everything’s okay,”
Tom answered.

Beside Mike, Janet broke into a sob. He
reached over and pulled her close to him. “It’s okay,” he soothed.
“They said they’re all okay,” Mike repeated dumbly, like the words
were some magic mantra.

“
I need you to come over
here,”
Bob said over the radio in a tight,
controlled voice. Fear quickly spiked in Mike’s heart.

“
Yeah… Uh, you need… Uh,
yeah… Okay… We’re coming… We’re on the way,”
Tom replied.

Mike pressed his button down. “What is
it?” he asked. He spoke with more calm than he felt. “What’s going
on?”

“
Mike… Mike, we got a
little problem here… Give me a second and I’ll get right back to
you,”
Tom told him.

“
Standing by.” Mike forced
himself to say. Now Janet was hugging him and the fear gripped his
heart hard, refusing to let go.

~

“
I’ll kill you. I will,”
The kid said. He held his gun sideways like some banger kid from a
bad Hollywood movie. Blood trickled slowly from one nostril, as
well as from several deep cuts up the left side of his face. His
eyes were focused and hard.

“
No,” Candace said quietly.
Her own forty five was held in both hands aimed at the kid’s chest.
He looks like he’s only about thirteen… Fourteen, she
corrected.

The kids lip curled at
her.
“You think I won’t do it, Bitch? I
will… I will, Bitch… I’ll do it.”

“
No,” Candace repeated
quietly. “I drop it and you shoot anyway. No way, Kid. No way.” She
watched as Bob shifted to his right, drawing farther away from
Candace so the kid couldn’t keep both of them in sight.

“
Stop fuckin’ movin’! Stop
fuckin’ movin'!”
the kid suddenly screamed.
The gun barrel wavered a little, nervously jittering up and down,
the kid’s finger lightly, compulsively caressing the trigger as
Candace watched.

Tom and Lydia worked their way up
silently behind the kid, past the bodies that lay on the ground,
one a young girl.

Behind Tom, Lydia dropped the barrel of
her gun and sighted on the kid's back. Tom stared at her dumbly for
a second and then followed suit.

The seconds played out as the blood
continued to slowly leak from the kids face. His tongue darted out
and tasted it where it ran from his nose. He tried to push it away
from his lips where it ran and dripped down onto his
chin.

“
Last chance,
Bitch,”
he said. He brought the barrel of
his gun down towards her. At the same time Bob took another step
sideways. The kid’s eyes darted to Bob. The gun dipped and swiveled
towards him.
“I told you…”
he began.

All four guns spoke at once and the kid
seemed to do a quick tap dance before the gun fell from his hand
without firing. He tried to suck in a breath but collapsed onto the
dirty asphalt instead.

Before anyone could react,
the silence was split by a scream from across the river. A young
boy stood silhouetted by the rising sun on the opposite side of the
river facing them. Something shifted from his side.
“I’ll kill you… I’ll kill you… You killed my
brother,”
the boy screamed in a high
falsetto. His arms came up quickly.

“
Hit the ground,”
Candace yelled as the kid opened fire with the
deer rifle he had in his hands.

Everyone hit the dirt except Lydia
whose face registered astonishment as she turned slowly to the
river to face the kid.

Candace yelled again as she raised
herself to both cut and bruised elbows and began to fire back
across the river.