The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (114 page)

“
Sorry,” Mike
said.

“
Twelve days,” Candace
said. Her eyes were shiny.

“
Twelve days,” Mike
agreed.

Hazleton

Bear climbed up the steel ladder they
had leaned up against the bus. Beth sat looking out at the street
in an aluminum lawn chair. She turned as he made the top and
smiled. Bear smiled back, turned and looked back into the junkyard
for a moment. The view was unobstructed. The yard stretched away
before him. He turned back to the front. A house lined street, like
any house lined street, in any city. He assumed it went on into
Hazleton, but they had not followed it.

“
Quiet?”

“
Very,” Beth agreed. “These
zombies don't seem all that interested in us. Or... I don't know,
they're stupid... mentally slower.” She shrugged

Bear nodded. “But I wonder if it works
the same. I mean, I wonder if these just haven't caught up yet. And
when they do, I wonder if they'll be as bad as the
others.”

Beth looked back at the house lined
street beyond the bus. She had been watching the street,
occasionally turning to the junk yard, and watching the fence line
for hours now. She had seen two dead. Both had been farther down
the street, a good quarter mile away, so far that it may have been
the same dead woman both times. She had not really gotten much of a
look the first time. “I guess I'm just glad we don't have to fight
them like we were. The brain rest is good.”

They both fell silent. Bear crossed and
sat in the other lawn chair that had been set up on top of the
bus.

“
We should probably move
out in a few days,” Bear said. “It's nice, but it's not getting us
any closer to where we want to be.”

Beth looked over at him. “Where do we
want to be, Bear?” she asked.

“
South... west?”

“
You thought much more
about these people that have this city all set up?”

“
Yeah, except I haven't
heard anything at all about them on the radio. I wonder, if it
truly did exist... if it has fallen to the dead. Just because they
aren't too smart here doesn't mean they aren't there.”

“
So you don't want to look
for it?”

Bear laughed. “Have you considered that
maybe I am not a man who can live a settled life, that maybe my
life will always be in flux? I mean, in...”

“
I know what flux means.”
She smiled again “I am no dumb girl, Bear.”

“
Oh, I didn't mean
to...”

She held up a hand. “I know you don't
think I'm a dumb girl. I over explain sometimes. Or react,” she
colored. She turned away and looked over the street.

The dead girl was back, wandering the
street, stumbling from house to house, slamming into the houses as
she found them, apparently unable to see them or stop herself. She
and Bear watched as she wandered up the street toward them and the
bus that would block her way.

“
I guess a place to call
home,” Bear said. “The year is going by so fast. We need people who
know how to plant gardens, raise cows, things like
that.”

Beth laughed. “You? A
farmer?”

Bear looked at her and
smiled. “Uh, no. I'm not going to pretend either. What I would like
is to be working steel again. That's what I did all of my life, but
that's not going to happen. This will sound crazy, but I think...
This really
will
sound crazy. I've thought about it, and it sounded crazy to
me when I said it to myself, but I think I might drift.”

“
Drift? You mean like a
cowboy in a movie?”

Bear laughed. “More like a
biker movie I saw once, but I think I did get the word from a
western. Yeah... Just drift. I don't think I want to settle down
yet. I've been here one day and it's old...
Lonesome Dove ...
McMurtry
. I think that was where I
read it.”

“
Good book,” Beth agreed.
“So a woman can't tie you down.”

Bear had been watching the dead girl
stagger up the street. He turned now and looked at Beth. She met
his eyes and held them. She looked away first

“
Sorry... Not my business,”
she said.

“
It would depend,” Bear
said.

“
On whose business it is?”
Beth asked.

“
No. It would depend on the
woman,” Bear said quietly. Beth locked her eyes with his again.
This time Bear looked away.

The silence spun out. The dead girl
slammed hard into the side of a garage three houses down the
street, got up, stumbled to the back of the house, across the rear
lawn, and then walked off the end of a retaining wall that dropped
into a deep ravine at the back of the house. She emerged a few
moments later rolling in a loose flap of arms and legs down into
the pit far below. One leg flew up into the air and just kept
going.

“
Ouch,” Bear muttered.
“Jesus.”

“
Took half her ass with it
too,” Beth said.

Bear choked trying to hold the laughter
back. “You are a sick puppy,” Bear managed after a
moment.

“
Hey. You laughed too.
Besides, if she had made it three more houses I would have shot
her, and she would have lost more than a leg and half of her
ass.”

Bear choked again. “That is so fucked
up.”

Beth laughed back. “It is... I'm sorry.
Look what's become of us.” She choked her own giggles back. The
silence came back again. In the distance, somewhere over in
Hazleton, smoke began to rise up into the air, a thick black
pillar. Bear watched it, as did Beth.

“
That did not start on its
own,” Beth said.

“
Nope,” Bear agreed. He
laughed again.

“
This is
amusing?”

“
No, but
the situation is, because right about now I wish I was somewhere
safe and warm.
Drift
my ass.”

Beth laughed. “I don't want to go see
what that is.”

Bear sighed. “Neither do I, but I'm
going to. Can't chance they come looking for us tonight, if we can
see their smoke it's a bet they can see ours.”

Beth stood. “Me and you? We can leave
this to Dell. It's about time to get him and Winston up
anyway.”

“
Winston is up. Didn't see
Dell though.” Bear stood too.

“
Send him back. I'll wait,”
Beth said.

Bear nodded and turned to the
ladder.

The Garage

The van was stripped down, wheels and
frame gone, its doors off and interior stripped out. It was just a
shell suspended from two A frames over the truck frame. Bear
whistled as he walked by and headed up to the overhead storage area
where they had set up sleeping quarters.

Dell was up and getting dressed. “You
came to get me? Must be something up,” he said as Bear walked
in.

“
Yeah. I hate to do it, but
I need you to take my shift on the bus. Beth and I are heading over
into Hazleton. Smoke, just a short while ago. I guess if they
didn't want us to know, they wouldn't have started a fire. I'm
guessing, but I'm sure they can see our fires here.”

“
Take it to them before
they can bring it to us?” Dell said.

Bear shrugged. “I guess it could be
good news. Maybe others that might want to travel with
us.”

“
But you don't think
so.”

“
Nope. If they were
interested in joining, they would have come over. We have fires
that have been going since we got here. How could they miss it? No,
instead they start a fire on the other side of the city.
Suspect.”

Dell tugged his last boot on, shot the
laces through the steel hooks that ran up each side of the boot and
tied it. “Let's go,” he said as he stood from the edge of the
bed.

They were walking into the garage when
Beth called on the radio.

“
Beth says Company,” Billy
told him.

Bear swore. He had clipped his radio on
his belt but had not turned it on. He plucked it from the belt and
flicked the knob. “How many?” he asked.

“
Three,”
Beth answered. “But they're attracting a crowd...
dead.
So don't be
surprised if you hear gunfire.”

She was no sooner done talking than
gunfire erupted from the direction of the gate. All four men ran
from the garage and headed for the bus.

Bear yanked his machine pistol free
from the sheath that held it across his shoulder. He flicked off
the safety as he ran.

Donita

They were not hers, and she did not
understand them. There had been others she had met along the way
that were the same. Dead, passed over into this new life, but not
like her. There was no better explanation for it. These were slow,
empty vessels full of holes. She could not lead them. They could
not hear her voice or any other. She let the boy and the twin run
them down. But they were not really good training for
them.

She was on the outskirts of a small
city. She and the three with her had spent the day before in the
woods, not far from the city, going in at night to find the living.
They were in those same woods now, Donita limping along, the twin
and the boy at her side, the big man behind her. One leg had been a
mangled ruin. It was still not much more than that, and she had
taken shots to the chest that were healing too, but her body was
rebuilding itself as she walked.

Her one remaining twin had lost an eye,
a head shot that had ruined her face. It was rebuilding, but Donita
did not believe the eye would come back. It seemed to be healing
into a twisted mass of scar tissue that covered that side of her
face. The boy was unharmed. The big man had taken most of the shots
protecting the twin and the boy, but he was healing too as they
walked, faster even than Donita was.

The living had thought they were like
the other dead that they had found in the town, slow and stupid, so
they had not been prepared for the reality that she had taken to
them.

She had found them in the basement of
an old farm house. No one guarding, or if there had been, they had
fallen asleep. She would take six that were meant for her. The
others she gave to the boy and the twin. The big man helped her
with the six. It had seemed to go smoothly. The ones that were hers
were stretched out on the cold concrete. She waited while the
others fed. But the night passed and the morning came, and they had
not come back.

It was late in the day when they did
come, and they were not hers at all. They were the same slow,
stupid, infestation that she had found within the town. Malformed,
undeveloped. Not hers at all, not able to be made hers. She had let
them go, set them free. They were no use to her at all.

They had wandered away immediately,
into the small city, walking into houses, cars, street signs and
whatever else was in their way as they stumbled along. She had
watched them go. Blind babies, empty vessels that would never be
anything more, and then the second bad thing had
happened.

She and the others had
been in the basement when the breathers had set it ablaze. She
should have known they were there,
felt
them, sensed them, known
, not only that
they were there, but what they were about to do. But she had
felt,
sensed,
nothing at all until a second before the house went up in
flames. She had barely managed to get herself out through the small
basement window that faced the rear of the house. Even then, she
had nearly lost her own.

The breathers had been waiting and
opened up on her as she crawled through the window. But they
expected the slow, stupid ones, and that was their downfall. Donita
had screamed and launched herself at the nearest breather, riding
him to the ground where she had ripped his throat out before he or
the others could react. That bought time for her own to get out of
the basement and the burning house. Three more of the breathers had
fallen before the others had fled. The big man had picked her up
and carried her back to the woods, and she had lapsed into twilight
as the healing began.

When she had come back to herself, they
had set out through the woods. The longer she walked, the stronger
she felt. She would not make the same mistake again, she told
herself. She looked over at the twin with her now scared face. She
would not make the same mistake again, she repeated to herself. And
they would pay for this. They would pay. She remembered their
scent, would never forget it, and they would pay.

Bear

He was up the ladder faster than he
would have thought possible. Billy, Mac and Dell were up next, but
the firing was over. It had not come from Beth, except at the very
end. There were half dozen dead laying in the roadway a hundred
yards from the bus. Directly below, as Bear walked to the edge and
looked down, two frightened young kids stared up at him. Teens,
maybe, he told himself, not much past that, and they were both
carrying machine pistols, yet they had somehow allowed the dead to
get as close to them as they had - a girl and a boy. The girl had a
gash on one side of her face and looked pretty bad off. He glanced
back up at the dead in the road, and then let his eyes fall on the
other houses on both sides of the road. Nothing and nothing. He
looked to Beth