The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (95 page)

We had left the others in our place off
the park - an abandoned factory building I had found after I had
lost Donita - and struck out looking for food earlier that morning.
With the park and its crowds so near to us, the shops and small
stores for blocks around us were stripped clean. Another reason to
get out of the city. It was time. I remember thinking that as I
walked along.

I was thinking back to
March as I walked. Not really paying attention to the walk, where I
was going...
March
... Just a few months ago, but the world was still the world
then. And for the next little while there, we didn't even know
about the dead. Dead was still dead. When you closed your eyes for
the long eternal sleep you didn't wake up a short minute later as
something else. No. We were ignorant up until they decided to come
after us. Ignorant. Stupid. Didn't know a thing. Didn't have a
clue.

I had been in Central Park a few days
after the first earthquakes hit. I had left Donita alone and went
down on my own to see what the deal was. I found out nothing. No
one knew any more than anyone else. There was a lot of speculation,
but that was it. There had been earthquakes. It had rained hard for
nearly twenty-four hours straight. The really freaky stuff hadn't
happened yet. We were just starting down our new path, but what was
clear was that thousands of people had died in the city, maybe more
than thousands, maybe a million or more. And certainly millions if
the damage here was the same across the country... or
worldwide.

And my initial estimate turned out to
be a kind. In the city alone: collapsed buildings, fires, exposure
to the elements because there was no shelter. There were millions
of bodies. It was not so bad in those first few days, but a few
days later, when the smell of the dead rotting under the rubble
began, it was horrible. The diseases started then too. And the
diseases took thousands more, and we thought that was the end of
it, but it was not. The dead came next. The same dead, newly risen
to some other sort of life. But that day in Central Park I did not
know about the dead yet. I had no idea what was ahead; what was
before me was bad enough.

At six foot three and nearly two
hundred ninety pounds I don't usually fear much. But that day I
did. I realized there are some things you had better fear if you
have half a brain in your head. It didn't matter that I could walk
through Central Park unmolested. Something was on the wind,
something that didn't care who it touched, did not respect physical
size.

I walked through the park. There were
hundreds there already. In the coming days those same people began
to make the park home. But that day they wandered aimlessly, in
shock. The subway was shut down, the buses. You could not find a
cab. The same with the cops. Everything that was the same about the
city, the things you could depend on to be the same day after day,
were gone. A few short days, and they were gone. No more. And it
had a feeling of permanence to it, a feeling of doom.

I sat down on a bench and watched the
people shuffle by. No noisy kids. No babies bawling. No Joggers. No
dog walkers. Hopeless people shuffling by. The occasional panicked
whack job running around crazily. I saw no one shot that day, but
in the coming days, they, the hopeless ones, began to shoot the
crazies, chase them down and kill them. But that was later. That
day I sat on the bench and wondered what had happened, and that was
when the planes had overflown.

We all heard them from a long way off,
military cargo planes. Slow, sometimes seeming to hang in the sky.
That droning sound as they overflew, blocking the sun from the sky.
This was no fly over to see how New York was, that much was evident
immediately.

I was torn between running
and needing to know what this was. Once you start down that path of
just reacting to fear, it gets bad fast, so I sat there, as calm as
I could be.
'They will not drop
bombs,'
was my thought. I remember it. And
they didn't. What they did was spray the entire city. Trails of
blue-tinged vapor drifting down out of the sky. That was the first
time.

I finally did give in to the fear and
took off through the park, thinking, like nearly everyone else,
that it must be some sort of poison. The government's solution to
whatever it was that was going on in the city.

We didn't know what the blue shit the
government planes sprayed us with right after everything went to
hell was. And I am still not convinced I know all there is to know,
but I suspect things. I have been told things. I met a guy a few
weeks back that said he worked at the Army base over in Jersey. He
said he knew what it was. He said the planes came from somewhere
down south, but stopped there on the way back to re-fuel. What he
told me was it was designed to strengthen us, keep us alive a
little longer, make us stronger somehow. Some dip shit scientist's
idea.

I suppose it was meant as
a boost for us,
a help
. The world slowed down, fell apart; everything stopped
working. They knew they couldn't get to us. We would die. So they
sprayed the blue shit on us, and I could suppose further that some
of us survived the first few months because of it. I can't prove
it, but I suspect it did help us evolve into...

I don't know. Whatever the
hell we are now. I know we're alive. I know our hearts beat. I
still
feel
human,
and I truly think I am still human. If it made changes to the
living, they are very small changes... at least so far.

But the dead - oh, the dead. That's a
different story. It did something else to the dead.

I walked along now thinking my
thoughts. I was lost in them - I'll admit it - right back in March
for a few seconds. But I came back fast.

We were right in front of a line of
cliffs that overhung the river, spread out a little. At least I
was. It's funny how you can forget to be careful so goddamn fast.
It was somewhere past midday when they came for us.

“
Bear! Bear!”

Cammy from a hundred yards down. The
panic and fear in her voice made my heart leap into my throat, and
because of her fear, and probably some of my own, I did a really
stupid thing right then that cost me time. I was so panicked, that
I threw my rifle down and sprinted toward the sound of her voice. I
got maybe twenty feet when the realization of what I had done hit
me. It would have been comical to see the way I locked my legs up
and tried to turn around before I had even come to a stop if it had
not been so goddamned serious.

I had the rifle back in my hands, the
safety off, just a fraction of a second later when Cammy and
Madison opened up on the UN-dead closing in on them from the mouth
of the narrow trail that lead up from the river. I added my fire to
theirs before I had run another fifty feet, and their leader, a
shambling wreck of a corpse, folded up, and then flopped over the
side of the trail and down into the river. I continued to run as I
fired, and I was shocked to realize that I was screaming at the top
of my lungs as I closed in. I am big, but I can move when I have
to.

“
Goddamn-son-of-a-bitching-goddamn-bastards,dead-fuckers!”
All strung together.
Fear words.
I did not hear them at
first so I did not know when they started, and I could not shut
them down once I did hear them. The panic and fear were just too
hot.

I watched as, unseen by Cammy and
Madison, a Zombie crouched on a narrow path above them swiveled his
rotting head to me, seemed to take my measure with a wide, yellowed
grin, and then dropped from the ledge on to Madison's
back.

“
No!
Goddamn-son-of-a-bitches-dead-bastards-bastards!”
I could not say, '
Madison Look Out!'
Or speed up my
feet or any other damn thing. Time had slowed, become elastic,
strange, too clearly seen. The Zombie hit her hard, and she folded
like an accordion, driven into the ground, a few hundred pounds of
animated corpse riding her down into the dirt, clawed hands
clutching, mouth already angling to bite... to taste
her.

I was still thirty or more yards away.
I could not see how that could even be possible. I should have been
closer, but I was not. I saw Cammy turn, panicked, take her eyes
off the other UN-dead and start towards Madison. Unchallenged, the
other Zombies closed ground far faster than they should have been
able to.

I saw the Zombie on Madison take a
mouthful of her back, just below the curve of her neck, and rip the
flesh away from her spine. Cammy's rifle came up and barked, and
the zombie blew apart, raining down on Madison, a storm of black
blood. Somehow, I managed to switch to full auto, get my rifle up,
and spray an entire one hundred round clip into the other zombies
where they rushed along the path towards Cammy and the fallen
Madison.

Madison screamed. Time leapt back into
its proper frame, and I found myself five feet away as Madison
arched her back, screamed and tried to stand. Blood ran in a
perfect river from her gaping wound, across the white of her
T-Shirt and down to the waist of her jeans.

“
I
think... I think...”
Madison
tried.

“
Baby...
Baby,” Cammy sobbed. She dropped to her knees and pulled Madison to
her. “Oh, Baby...
Baby,”
Cammy sobbed.

I looked back up at the trail. Empty.
At least of moving UN-dead. Three or four, it was hard to tell with
the tangle of legs and arms, lay dead on the pathway. Silence
descended. I heard a bird in the trees above calling as if nothing
was wrong with the world, Cammy sobbing, Madison crying
hysterically, the wind moaning through the empty buildings that
were set just back from the cliffs and the river on this side of
the city.

I was thinking,
'That wind is colder. Colder even than when we
started out this morning. Maybe the weather will turn back to snow
and cold. Maybe winter is not done after all... Or coming sooner...
It could be. It's all so screwed up. Maybe, if it does get cold, it
will slow those bastards down. Maybe we will be okay... My, God...
They bit Madison... They
BIT
Madison!!!'
I sagged to
the ground, my mind full of confusion and numbness.

Cammy was sobbing uncontrollably.
Madison had lapsed into shock. I was sitting crossed legged,
wondering where in Hell this would all end up, my rifle fallen from
my hands and laying on the ground next to me. Time spun out,
dragged, seemed elastic once more, sticking in places and jumping
ahead from those places to where it should have been had it
continued to run properly.

Cammy
sobbing, holding Madison up, kissing her forehead, telling
her how much she loved her... how she was her world...

Madison,
eyes rolled back in her head... face pale... fine
beads of sweat standing out on her forehead... her back a bright
slick of red running across Cammy's hands where she held her.
Slowing... Slowing... Cammy mouthing words in such slow motion that
I could not understand what she said. Madison's body sagging, eyes
rolled up to the whites... bright dots of blood speckled across
Cammy's cheeks. Then time jumped, staggered, came back to normal,
and Cammy was screaming and screaming...

“
No! …
NO! … Not my... My, love, my Madison, my...”
Collapsing to the ground with Madison, crying
still... softer, but continuous.

“
Cammy,” My voice, but I
did not know it at first. I actually stopped speaking and looked
around, startled, before I realized it was me speaking. I turned my
attention back to Cammy. “Cammy... Cammy, it'll be okay... It'll
be...”

“
NO!....NO!”
She scrambled
backward, pulling Madison's unconscious body with her. She wiped
one hand across her eyes trying to stem the flow of tears...
“NO! She's... She's okay... Okay... You can't...
You...”
She broke down into sobs, pulled
Madison to her and began dragging her away from me.

“
Cammy...
Cammy, it bit her...
Bit
her... Cammy... Cammy, it's... It's just you and
me, Cammy... It bit her...
It bit
her...”

She let go of Madison and lunged for
her rifle. I sat, still cross legged, stupidly, as she grabbed it
and leveled it at me.

“
Get out,” She said very
calmly. Much more calmly than I thought she should have been
capable of.

“
Cammy...
What are you doing...
Cammy?”

“
GET
OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!”
She
screamed. I reared back as the rifle barrel came up and then
slashed down across my face. I jumped back, but not fast enough.
The steel barrel smashed into my lower lip, through it, and then
hit my teeth. I immediately tasted blood and machine oil. My tongue
ran across my teeth unconsciously. I was sure she had smashed them
out, but the barrel edge had come up short, or I had moved back far
enough. One of those things.

The pain was delayed, but it came
never-the-less. Hard, heavy, fast, down into my lower jaw and then
ricocheted back up into the top of my head. I scrambled backwards,
tripped over my own rifle, got it into my hands, and then time did
that funny slowing, elastic thing again.