The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (103 page)

Patty, her man and her brother have
decided to stay. They also decided they’ll leave when Mike and I
do. They don’t want to face a North Country winter in a cave. We
are not cave people and don’t want to be. But we talked about that
too; we may end up in some other cave. It could be the quakes have
caused devastation everywhere. If so, where else would it be safe?
We talked a lot. We talked ourselves out. There’s always tomorrow
to talk some more.

Park Avenue: Bear

Bear was curled up on the carpet,
Amanda Bynes' carpet, where he had been for hours. Whatever had
gone wrong with the world had gotten worse.

It had started yesterday with wind that
was like a hurricane. It had blown into the city, and the rain had
not been far behind it. Heavy rain, torrential rain. He had been in
Mobile Alabama one year, waiting on a train to go back to New York.
A hurricane was closing in. It had hit the city a glancing blow,
and it had seemed the same as this. Heavy rain, the wind so hard it
seemed to roar.

Then the lightening had come, and the
thunder. Huge bolts. Deafening. Then there was a bad earthquake.
The entire building shook, and he was convinced it would go down,
believed it had to. How could it stand through that? But it
had.

He had begun to get sick shortly after
that, vomiting until there was nothing left, and still his stomach
had not been satisfied. He still dry heaved for hours, it
seemed.

The night went on and on, seemed to
last forever. It was like the sun just decided not to rise the next
day. Or the next day never came. He didn't know which, anymore than
he knew what day it really was now.

There was sunlight. Sparse, barely
there, but he could see through the sliding glass doors to the
balcony. It seemed to be covered with dirty snow. Mounds of it. He
closed his eyes, squeezed them tightly, and rolled up into a
sitting position. His stomach threatened again, but he waited it
out. Once he felt he could walk, he got to his feet, walked to the
glass doors and slid them open.

The entire world was gray. Ash was
falling, blocking out the sunlight. The sun was like a silver disc,
barely seen, riding the horizon. As he watched, the ash began to
drift in onto the carpet. He closed the door and stood
staring.

His stomach had calmed down. Whatever
had been the cause of that, he was grateful it was easing. He
didn't feel like putting anything in it, in fact the thought alone
brought back the queasiness, but left alone it seemed as though it
would be fine.

The day went on. The sun seemed to
slide across the horizon rather than actually rise. The rains came
back hard and the winds with them. In no time the ash was washed
away and the city was back, clean, fresh looking, no dead to be
seen in the driving rain. Apparently they didn't like the rain
either.

Although he was positive he could not
sleep, he drifted into sleep later on that day, lying on Amanda
Bynes' carpet, watching the rain fall in sheets and wash across the
glass.

Watertown New York: March
19th

Candace's Diary

If there was any doubt in anyone’s mind
who is leading us, there isn’t now. Mike does it so easily. I
sometimes think he doesn't realize how much faith people put in
him.

Tom surprised everyone
tonight; he’s with us now. Bob, Janet and Sandy are not. They have
an idea of reestablishing the Native Nation, going back to the
land. It has its appeal, and it’s clear to see they are not just
talking about it. They, Bob and Janet at least, have thought it
out. Janet told me later on that Bob has a place in mind. He has
had that place in mind for years.
Years…
That is how well planned it is
in his mind, how serious he is about it. Never say never, but I
can’t see myself there.

Mike said he doesn’t want his T.V.
Back. Me either, maybe, but was it all bad? No. When he said that,
I thought of an old song, Dire Straits, with a line “I want my
M.T.V.” don’t ask me why that popped into my head, but it did. Must
be the musician in me. My point is, it wasn’t all bad. It wasn’t.
Why throw it all away? Why not get rid of the bad stuff and save
the rest?

Mike said to me later, when we were
alone, that he thinks that’s what Bob really wants to do, get rid
of the bad stuff and keep the good stuff, and if he does really
want to do that then Mike is for it. And, really, so would I
be.

So, we will leave April first, Bob with
us, and we may split or stay together at some point after
that.

Ronnie made a point which I thought was
a good one. It could be a draw on us as a people, as Bob takes some
away from us. I mean, they make it sound so good, who wouldn’t want
to go? Ronnie made that point later when it was just he and Patty
and Mike and me. During the conversation we all had, he skated up
to the same statement, but Bob didn’t like it right out there bald
like it was.

Paradise? Living off the land? Living
as one with Nature? Mother Nature? Doesn’t it sound good? Living in
harmony with God? Almost as if it will not be work at all. No one
shouting at you… Anyway, Mike made a good point too. If we go
towards a way of life more like the old world, technology, we would
not be attracting the same people anyway. So, what will we have
lost traveling together? Maybe people we would eventually have lost
anyway, and it will definitely be safer to travel together. When,
and if, the split happens, we can worry about or deal with it
then.

April first… If there is no snow… If
it’s safe. We still have to decide where we are going, but there is
time.

Donita: March 26th

The hunger was terrible, all consuming,
and it came in crashing waves. The impulse to feed seemed to be the
only coherent thought she had. It was hard to think around, hard to
think past. There were more things changing in her, and she did not
understand them all.

A few weeks ago she had
been...
Been?
But
it did no good. She could not force the memory to come. A name
came, Donita... she had been Donita; she knew that, but that was
all she knew. And a name was not everything she had been. She had
been something else... something more, but she could not get to
whatever it was that she had been. Something that did not wander
through the woods. Something that was not driven by all consuming
passions that she could not understand.

She turned her eyes up to
the moon. It pulled at her. Something in it spoke directly to
something inside of her, something deep, something she believed had
always been there, but there had never been a need to address
because it lived under the surface... out of her line of thought,
sight... below her emotions. Now it didn't. Now it ruled
everything. It was all she could do not to rush from the trees,
find the smell that tempted her and consume it, eat it
completely... leave nothing at all.
Oh to
do it... to do it...

Her eyes snapped back from
the moon, and a low whine escaped her throat. Behind her, the boy
made a strangled noise in his throat. She turned, gnashed her teeth
and growled. The thin, skeletal boy fell back, hungry but
frightened. She could feel his fear. It fed her, tempted her to
taste him, but he was no food for her. She knew that much. It was a
sort of instinct... drive... something inside of her. The boy was
not her food. The boy was not her sustenance. He was one of her
own. Corrupted. And corrupted flesh could not feed and sustain
itself on corrupted flesh. Fresh flesh was needed,
live
flesh. Fresh
human
flesh, she
corrected. Whatever this change she was going through was, it
scattered her thoughts. It left her confused more than it did
not.

The boy trembled and grinned sickly,
his one good eye rolling in his head. The other eye was a ruined
mass of gray pulp sagging from the socket. A great flap of skin
below that socket had curled and dried, hanging from the cheek. He
felt at it now carefully with his shrunken fingers. She hissed at
him, and his hands fell away.

She desired human flesh. She needed it,
but it didn't absolutely have to be that way.

Two nights ago it had been a rabbit.
The night before that she and the boy had shared a rat. The night
before that they had come upon an old woman.

The old woman had been
good. They had brought her back here, and her bones lay here still,
in the weeds at the edge of the clearing behind them. She turned
and gazed back past the boy into their makeshift campsite.
Searching for what was left of the old woman, finding her bones
where they lay at the edge of the clearing they had made. She
turned back
to the moon, watched it as it
slid across the sky for a few moments longer, then she stood, and
the boy followed her into the field. There was a town not far away.
She could smell it. They would have to be careful on the way. There
were others around. They fell into an easy lope, something these
bodies seemed well suited to, and headed to the village to
hunt.

She led the boy and herself into the
small town. The town was empty, at least of people. She and the boy
hunted rats for an hour or two. The rats had done well for
themselves. Fat, sleek and gray, the size of a small dog. They had
gorged themselves. The night made her feel alive, strong, whole.
The boy followed, and they hunted, killed for the sake of killing,
but it was good for the boy.

When morning came, there was not a
stray cat, dog or rat left alive in the small village, and she was
crazy with blood. They left the village, found an abandoned factory
on the outskirts and made their way into the dark depths as the sun
began to rise.

Building The Army

She awoke before full dark. One second
gone, the next twilight had released her and all of her senses were
fully on. It was no longer like human senses. She couldn't truly
remember any longer when she had been a breather, for how long,
what she had done with her days and nights... but she regretted it.
She wished she had always been numbered among the
superior.

She thought of it that way,
the
Superior Race
.
Because these senses, they were completely there. There was no
fogginess from the sleep. None. She was alert and ready. In every
way, the being she was now was far superior to the being she had
been. Even though she could no longer precisely recall the being
she had been, she knew it was true.

She reached over, touched the boy and
he was instantly out of twilight. Together they crawled from under
the machinery and out onto the factory floor.

Her eyes brought her the scent of
people. Without a sound or discussion, she and the boy moved across
the factory floor and out into the bright moonlight.

The smell of a wood fire was on the
air, but the fire itself was out, nothing but a low, red glow some
forty yards past the factory parking lot, still choked with long
dead cars and trucks. They made their way quietly.

There were four sleeping
beside the fire. One of them was old, useless to her. Two were
young, and one was dangerous.
Female.
She slept with both hands
around a rifle that rested between her knees, the barrel nestled
alongside her face.

Donita looked at the woman for a long
time. She would like to keep her. She was strong; she could be such
an asset, but she knew it was not to be. She stared for a few
seconds longer, the boy behind her waiting.

She knelt beside the sleeping woman.
The smell of her coming death was already a stink upon her,
billowing out of her lungs and filling up the night air. Her soul
knew. Her soul knew and could do nothing at all about
it.

Donita reached forward slowly. One hand
wrapped tightly around the top of the barrel, the other, index
finger extended, found the trigger. She paused a second longer,
hands in place, then in one smooth move, she jerked the rifle down,
jammed it under the woman’s chin and squeezed the trigger. The top
of the woman's head flew apart before her eyes were fully open. The
live wire rigidness that had come into her body in that split
second of time now drained away, and she sagged back to the ground,
one last breath rushing from her lungs in a low moan. The children
began to scream.

~

The moon moved slowly
across the sky. Donita sat watching the children as they lay dead
before her. Soon the power would come over them, and they would
rise from death into the world of the Walkers,
her world.

The boy sat waiting beside her. They
had finished the woman and then the old woman. Neither would rise
again.

The boy was a good soldier. The two
before her, twin girls by the look, or so close to twins as for it
not to matter, should be good choices too. Strong, intact. Their
bodies would turn faster, as the boy's was already doing. Her own
body had taken much longer, much longer before the rotting flesh
had begun to change to something else, something, not exactly
living tissue, but that was nourished by dead tissue. This new
flesh was stronger, more resilient, self healing. Probably other
things that she had not yet figured out.

The boys flesh already seemed to have
made some of that change. He was completely devoted to her,
unquestioning. That is what she wanted. The girls would be also.
She knew that instinctively. She could smell it on them. They were
meant to leave that world for this world. It was a gift really. It
was so unnecessary to have to go through all the pleading and
begging in the leaving of that life, she thought. This one was so
much better. This one did not have an absolute end. This one could
be forever. And forever could not even be measured.