The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (106 page)

Mike groaned. “It's like a whole tree.
Christ, it should hold up two roofs,” he complained, as he took one
end from Bob.

Ronnie looked over his shoulder at Mike
and Bob. “Got to go, pregnant lady. I love you,” he bent forward
and kissed her nose.

“
You are so lucky,” Patty
told him. Her eyes were wet, but she smiled. “I get scared
sometimes, Ronnie,” she said in a near whisper.

“
I know how lucky... We all
get scared sometimes.” He kissed her lips, pulled back, held her
eyes until she nodded and then turned to Mike and Bob.

“
Christ, this thing is
heavy,” Mike complained.

“
Coming right now,” Ronnie
told him. He climbed the ladder, turned, took the end of the beam
and walked it forwards as Bob and Mike lifted it and shoved it
forwards and up. The pitch from the fresh cut pine stuck to his
hands, but it helped when he had to grip the beams and lead them up
to the ridge beam. “Okay. Got it. Got it.” He turned back around,
fished a nail from his pouch, pulled his hammer free and began to
nail the beam into place.

Early August

Billy and Beth: The Camp

The fire burned hot, but low, the heat
feeling good as the temperature of the air dropped. The fires were
many. A small group had been sitting, watching the stars come out,
when one by one, nearly all the others had come to sit and watch
with them.

They had driven out of the city in
whatever they could find that would drive and was not boxed in or
frozen in traffic. Taxi cabs, huge delivery trucks and a few city
police cars littered the field they were camped in. Billy and Beth
had found the field and the others had come in after, some the same
day, many more as the days passed.

Billy and Beth had come across the
country themselves, picking up others as they had come., only to
find Manhattan in ruins. They had fled. There was nothing but death
there. Out here, twenty five miles away, it seemed lonely, empty,
but not as oppressive as the city had been. Death did not seem as
though it was only waiting. There were no dead, zombies, whatever
they were. At least they had not seen any yet.

There had been birds calling from the
trees as they had driven into the field. They had circled the
vehicles, staying away from the trees, creating a long open area
all around them. Within the first month, two dozen more had come
and joined them.

They had thirty shotguns, better than
fifty rifles and dozens of handguns between them. They had broken
into gun shops and pawn shops on the way out of the
city.

Billy stood and looked out at the
gathering gloom. Nothing moved anywhere. Jamie came and stood
beside him for a moment before she slipped her arm around his waist
and managed to capture his attention. He bent slightly and kissed
her forehead.

“
Wow. I can't believe you
just did that. I'm already getting the forehead kiss,” She told
him. She smiled up at him, teasing as she said the
words.

“
You know it's not like
that.” He kissed her once more, this time fully on the lips, a
longer kiss.

“
That was better,” Jamie
told him. She looked out over the emptiness. “What are you
thinking?” She asked.

“
I'm thinking we stay here
for a few more days.” He looked down at her. “But we'll have to
leave soon. We need to get south. Summer is winding down. It
doesn't seem possible, but it is. We can't stay too much longer.”
He looked back at the clearing in the middle of the vehicles where
the others sat and talked before the fires. They were sixty two,
and dozens of kids. Three babies and their mothers.

He had never been responsible for
anyone in his life, and now this. He had hoped Beth would lead. She
had seemed the logical choice, but she had not taken it directly.
It was not a responsibility he was comfortable with. He guessed she
must feel the same. Beth was there, in the background, listening,
approving or disapproving silently, letting him know with her eyes
what she thought, what she would or wouldn't approve of.

“
That it?” Jamie asked from
beside him.

He smiled and shook his head. “No. But
who isn't thinking deep thoughts?” His smile faded a little. She
answered it with a serious look of her own.

“
Come eat,” she said at
last. She took his hand and pulled him away toward the
others.

“
I have to talk to Beth,”
Billy told her. She let go of his hand immediately.

“
Beth... It's always Beth,
isn't it?” she asked.

“
Jamie,” Billy
started.

She turned back to him, her jaw set in
a rigid line. “I didn't mean that,” she said, obviously meaning she
did mean it, but wished she hadn't said it. She turned her eyes
away. “Go on. It's okay.” She turned back to him, “Come back later
on?”

“
Just a few minutes,
really. I only need to ask her about staying or leaving,” Billy
told her.

“
I'll wait eating... until
you come.” She turned and walked away without another word. Billy
sighed and then turned himself and walked off through the
campground.

Quiet conversations passed back and
forth between people as he walked. But it seemed as though there
were still too many other things on everyone’s minds, and the
conversations began to die down after a short time.

The light was rapidly bleeding from the
blue bowl of the sky, and the conversations began to break up as
the people who didn't have the first shift of the watch began to
drift away, crawling into their vehicles to sleep. Billy found Beth
and dropped to the ground beside her.

Manhattan: Bear

The taxi was in the middle of the road.
Bear toted a heavy shotgun and wore two 45 Automatics he had
liberated from a pawn shop. He had used them more than once. A
heavy pack on his back held extra rounds for the shotgun and the
pistols as well as food stuffs and other essentials he had picked
up.

He had wandered through most of
Manhattan before finding his way out and across to Jersey. He had
remembered watching huge sections of it burn from Amanda Bynes'
apartment with Donita. It seemed then that there could not possibly
be any part of it left untouched, yet here was a whole area that
appeared to be just that, untouched.

The taxi sat in the middle of the
street. All four tires were up, Bear noticed as he walked closer to
it. The balance of the street was littered with garbage, other
debris from the surrounding buildings and little else. There were
four other vehicles, all of which were parked sedately at the curb.
He pulled one of the pistols as he approached the side of the
taxi.

The windows were up, the partition
between the seats blocking his view until he was nearly even with
the driver's window.

The driver sat behind the wheel, a
browned and shriveled mummy behind the glass. Bear staggered back
against his will, shocked for a moment. The driver grinned back at
him with his permanent, yawning smile. He was leaning against the
door. Bear stepped forward, levered the door handle, and the driver
spilled out with a dry rattle, shattering on the asphalt. Bear
jumped back again, glancing up nervously at the surrounding
buildings. A few pigeons, disturbed by the noise, took flight...
nothing else. A few seconds later, the silence came back, and the
street was once again as it had been.

Bear shoved what was left of the driver
aside with one foot, and leaned closer to the inside of the car. He
pulled his head back out quickly and backed away, his face pale. He
had thought that since the body had seemed dried out, shriveled,
that maybe there would be no smell. He had been wrong. He pushed
the smell out of his head so he could hang onto the meal of stale
peanut butter crackers he'd had for lunch. He walked off down the
street, sucking the cool air into his lungs as he went. He almost
missed the three people watching him from the doorway.

A young, dark haired man had been at
the front. He held what turned out to be a fully automatic machine
pistol in one hand loosely, pointing at the ground. Bear had
brought up his own hands, and they seemed to be indecisive,
hovering over the pistols on either side. He forced them to
drop.

The young man nodded. “No harm, no
foul,” he said aloud.

Bear's eyes lifted to the two women
behind him. He nodded, and they had nodded back.

“
We're going a little
further out,” the young man said. “A couple of car dealers out
there,” he motioned vaguely toward the east. “Get some wheels. Try
to get the fuck out of here.”

Bear nodded.

“
Why don't you throw in
with us then?” one of the women asked. She stepped forward and then
down off the walk; she walked over to Bear. “Damn, you're a big
guy,” Madison said as she offered one hand. The other held her own
machine pistol down to her side.

Bear chuckled. “Bear,” he
said.

She nodded. “John... Cammy,” she said
pointing. They both nodded and then stepped down off the pavement
and walked over.

A few minutes later, they had been
walking through what was left of Union City heading towards the
outskirts, talking as they went.

~

They had met no one along the way.
Before nightfall, they had been driving a pair of new pickup
trucks. John and Bear in one, Madison and Cammy in the other,
weaving in and out of traffic heading back into the
city.

They had ended up in the house over in
Harlem, with the gas lanterns for light, the windows boarded up.
Bear had not been in on the decision to go back into the
city.

When John had gotten himself killed,
Bear had packed up his truck. He intended to go whether Madison and
Cammy came with him or not.

They had gone back to Jersey. Madison
knew the area, and they had settled into an old factory, and that
had been short too. Bear had begun to feel as though a cloud were
hovering over them... maybe even just him.

After they had lost Madison, Bear had
been aimless, unsure what to do with Cammy. Unsure if she would
even come back to herself, and if she did what she would be like.
Once she had come back to herself, they had decided together to
head south. It was a week later, when they had finally started to
head out, that they had met up with Billy Jingo and his
group.

Donita

The fires burned bright, freshly banked
for the night. She could not say what it was in fire that still
frightened her, but it did. It touched something deep inside,
something that she could sense had not always been there, like at
one time she had embraced fire the same way the breathers did. Now
it only frightened her.

Behind her, several thousand hid
themselves in the woods. She had collected them through the south,
across the vast desert, into the mountains, and she had brought
them with her as she made her way back toward the city of New York.
She could not even say why it was New York she was drawn to.
Something here pulled her.

She looked back to the
fires. She should have gone already. There was a dog with the
breathers, and the dog kept coming around,
sniffing
at the wind. It could smell
them, of that Donita was sure. Another dog had been coming around
too, but she had caught that dog and given it over to the twin.
This dog was smarter, or at least smart enough not to come too
close.

The terrible fires burned, sending
their stink into the air, creating heat.

She stood, her legs flexing easily.
Behind her the big man stood also; soundlessly, and although she
did not see him or hear him, she felt him.

She had taken him back in the
mountains. He had become her right arm. Strong. Loyal.
More.

She knew he stood, knew he was waiting
for her to move, knew that he believed the entire world revolved
around her. All this with no words, touches, conscious thoughts.
She looked off through the trees to the opposite side of the road,
across from where the breathers were camped.

Her new eyes saw more than
her old eyes had ever seen, though not precisely as she had seen
with those other eyes. This sight was not suited to daylight. It
could see,
would
see in daylight, but not well. The lesser light of the moon
was the light she needed. She stood now, looking across the field
to where something else had captured her attention.

She had seen the woman far across the
field, past the other road, and she had known she was on her own.
She watched those who were camped out in the field, and she debated
about approaching them. She was wondering whether this group was
right for her, hanging at the edges, checking them out. She had no
idea that she was now being checked out.

She carried a pistol in a holster at
her side. Donita would have to be careful.

She was alone. It was a thing that
Donita knew. She was not a part of the other breathers that were
camped not far away. There were no others back in the shadows
waiting for her. She was a loner, and she had managed to avoid the
other walkers like herself that must have scented her, followed
her. She had also avoided the others, the breathers, like the ones
that were camped in the open field. Donita scented the air and
drank in the information.