The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (12 page)

A few loose chunks of stone lay upon
the ground, but the pile of loose brick seemed none the worse for
the long night, seeming to Mike to be in the same place they had
been. Not one brick had tumbled from the pile. How could that be,
he asked himself. Tom voiced his thoughts.

“
Those bricks look
untouched,” he said it softly like such a thing could not possibly
be true.

“
I noticed that too,” Mike
said aloud. Candace simply nodded, passed the pile by and stepped
into the dark mouth of the cave.

Within a short time she located a box
of matches, and lighting small little sticks of flame, found her
way to one of the big heavy duty flashlights where it had rolled to
a stop among a stack of canned goods that had shifted and toppled
over from one of the wooden pallets.

Other than a very small amount of stone
that had separated from the back wall, and a few more toppled piles
of stored goods, the cave looked good.

“
What do you think, Mike?”
Tom asked.

It was one of the few things Tom had
asked Mike's opinion about, and it surprised him.

“
I think if it was going to
come down, it would’ve already,” Mike assured him. Candace nodded
her head in agreement.

The lightheadedness was still with them
as they moved about the shadowy interior. Candace set about
building a small fire while Tom and Mike went out to help Bob bring
Janet back into the cave.

Candace passed out bottled water and
energy bars once everyone was back inside, and their stomachs
seemed to settle down, but the water only woke the queasiness back
up, and no one wanted to try the energy bars. They remained
untouched.

~

Tom wandered back outside the cave,
rested his head against the coolness of the stone that fronted the
cave, and watched the sun in the sky. It described a crazy course
across the sky and did not seem to pick up speed and become more
stable as it headed for the Northeast.

Eventually Mike and Candace wandered
out with coffee, bringing a cup for Tom. He sipped at it
cautiously, but his stomach seemed to accept it better than it had
the water earlier, and it did help to clear his head.

“
Bob’s with Janet. They’re
both sleeping,” Candace said between sips of coffee. She looked up
at the sun where it seemed to hang in the sky.

“
It’s reversed,” Tom said.
“Going backwards; or nearly backwards.”

Mike and Candace both
nodded.

“
Maybe this is it,” Mike
said. Tom raised his eyebrows at him.

“
It, as in maybe it’s done
and finally about to start rotating in one direction. You know,
stay that way.”

“
Maybe that situation will
straighten out the magnetic poles,” Candace said thoughtfully.
“Maybe electronics, circuits, will work again.”

“
Is that what it was,” Mike
asked?

“
Maybe,” Tom
said.

“
I don’t pretend to know,”
Candace said. “Only the Earth wasn’t spinning right, or at all for
a while, and none of the electronic stuff worked. Maybe now it
will.”

“
Yeah. Yeah. But even after
it started back up again nothing worked. At least not when we tried
it,” Tom said.

“
Did we?” Candace
asked.

Tom looked puzzled.

“
Hey, you know what? She’s
right. We didn’t really check again. We just assumed it wouldn’t
work. At least
I
didn’t check. I assumed it wouldn’t work. I mean it didn’t,
why would it?” Mike asked. “Did you guys think the same
thing?”

“
I did,” Tom agreed “First
day or two, but not after.”

Candace nodded in agreement. “If that’s
what caused it, the Earth not really rotating, maybe it will work
now. Or, maybe it’s something else,” she finished.

“
That dust or ash,” Mike
said. “I’ve never seen volcanic ash, but I’ve read about it, and it
seems that’s what it was.”

“
Yeah, I thought that
also,” Candace said. “Really, if there weren’t volcanoes going off
somewhere, I’d wonder. All this Earthquake activity, volcanoes just
make sense. Wherever it happened, it worked its way here on the air
and was dumped on us.”

They looked around at the nearly dry
asphalt. Small areas steamed as the moisture made its way back into
the air. Mike noticed that both Candace and Tom’s shirts were
soaked through with sweat. His was no different.

“
Yeah,” Tom agreed.
“Getting hot.” Mike and Candace both shrugged.
Who knows
,
the gestures said.

They all leaned back against the sun
warmed stone, sipping at their coffee, watching the bloated sun
stagger across the sky.

It was Candace who first noticed the
small group walking across the steaming pavement towards them. Her
gun seemed to magically appear in her right hand. Lying alongside
her thigh, just out of sight.

~

Mike and Tom were nearly as quick
getting their own guns into their hands, but not nearly as
subtle.

“
That’s close enough right
there,” Tom said.

No one spoke for a moment. The two
groups of people appraised one another carefully in the
silence.

The group was small, four women, and
two men. One of the men was no more than a boy, Mike though, but,
after the shootout with the kids a few days prior, no one was about
to take any kid lightly.

“
We saw you from way back,”
one of the women said. She pushed sweaty brown hair from her eyes
as she spoke. “If we meant trouble…” She let the implication hang
in the air.

As she finished, Candace raised her
weapon from her side to let the group know she had also seen them,
and had been ready for them. They smiled uneasily at one another.
The woman held out her hands, and the others in the group did the
same.

“
We don’t want a problem,”
she said softly. “I’m thinking you are part of the group that took
care of those kids from the north side the other day. We heard
it.”

“
If you could hear it, why
didn’t you join in to help us?” Tom challenged.

“
Good question,” Mike
echoed softly.

The woman who had spoken first nodded.
“We have two guns between us. One’s a twenty-two rifle, the other
is a Three Eighty which we only have eight bullets for. We didn’t
realize how things were going to go bad so fast,” she looked up at
the sky where the sun continued its curving, staggering climb. She
looked back at Mike. “We just want to talk for now.”

Candace got to her feet, holstered her
gun and walked towards the small group.

“
Candace,” she said,
holding out her hand.

“
Patty,” The young dark
haired woman answered. She turned to the others behind her. “Sandy,
Nell, Tim, Lilly and,” she pointed to a young dark skinned man who
was standing slightly back and apart, “That’s my man,
Ronnie.”

As she finished the introductions, Bob
and Janet came to the cave opening. Candace made the same
introductions ending with Mike and making it clear he was also not
available.

As her eyes caught Mike's, he seemed
slightly amused by it. As she turned around, she poked her tongue
out slightly at him and made a silly face as she walked towards
him, inviting the others to sit down.

“
Does that make me your
bitch,”
Mike whispered as she sat back down
next to him.

“
Ha, ha,”
she whispered back.
“…Bitch,”
she giggled, but she didn’t
allow the giggle to pass her lips. Mike stifled a laugh, but a
smile rose to his face. He turned to the small group.

“
We’ve got water inside,
maybe some more coffee made, bottled soda.”

“
Some coffee would be
nice,” Patty said and smiled gratefully. Mike left for two cups of
coffee and some bottled water as everyone began to sit down. The
party had been traveling with backpacks and gear, and it came off
now, making a small pile as they sat down. When Mike returned just
a few minutes later, the silence still held. He handed out the
water and coffee and sat back down next to Candace. All eyes turned
to him. He glanced over at Tom, but Tom seemed to be studying the
small patch of asphalt at his feet. Mike found his
voice.

“
So…” He let the question
hang, picked up his still warm coffee and took a reassuring
sip.

Patty seemed to hesitate, so the girl
she’d identified as Lilly spoke up. She flipped loose blond curls
away from her face before she spoke.

“
We want to join you,” she
said finally in a quiet yet firm voice.

Patty, whose hands had been
clasped tightly together, parted them and raised them to her
shoulders palms up in a
‘there you
go’
gesture.

Candace was amazed at how much Lilly
looked like Lydia. She even sounded like her. It must be that age,
Candace said to herself. Everyone acts alike. She looked over at
Tom to see if he had noticed, but his eyes were already locked on
the young woman. Patty continued.

“
We’ve been living in a
collapsed apartment building over off State Street. We couldn’t
find anything better. Now that’s come the rest of the way down. To
be honest, we’re afraid to go into any of the buildings. There’s a
lumber shed over there, just a roof really. We spent most of last
night under that trying to stay out of most of the weather. Not
much to it. We figured we could get out quick enough if it came
down.” She took a deep breath. “That’s where we’re at,” she
finished.

When the girl finished speaking,
Candace’s head was bowed as if in thought. She raised her head, met
Patty’s eyes, and then the others one by one. She let her eyes
wander around their own group. One by one they all nodded. Everyone
on this side was for it; it was easy enough to see. Tom’s eyes were
still on Lilly, so it was clear what his feelings were.

“
You are welcome here,”
Candace said. A small chorus of welcome from the others echoed her
own words. “There’s plenty of space here, and in a few months most
of us will be leaving, so there will be more room after
that.”

The small group of newcomers all seemed
to heave a sigh of relief at the same time. Nervous laughter
followed, and smiles lit up their faces.

Candace stood along with the others and
motioned towards the mouth of the cave. “It isn’t much,” she said
and laughed. “But it’s home.” The group picked up their gear and
backpacks and followed her inside.

Mike ~ March 17th

It’s late, and it’s been a very tough
few days here. We are eleven now, and I’ll get to that. We’ve also
been through several more Earthquakes and aftershocks, rain, the
world stopping, or being messed up worse. I guess I’ll start from
the start, and you can compare it to your own experience. Maybe it
will be helpful.

First yesterday, the sun never really
rose at all. It barely came up and then went right back down. The
night wasn’t too bad at first. It stormed, but then it got worse.
Colder, harder rain, lightening, thunder, and then ash started
falling from the sky.

That was crazy. But then the rain came
down even harder later on and washed all the ash away. Then the
earthquakes came. We had to leave the cave, we didn’t know if it
would hold up or not. All around us things were crashing and
collapsing. Our trucks are gone, fallen into the river. Swallowed
up and gone. The road just washed away beneath them. If we had
chosen there to wait out the storm…

We made it through to dawn
though, but it wasn’t much of a dawn. The sun came up and has been
staggering across the sky. It’s erratic. That’s the best
description I can come up with. We think the Earth finally stopped
and reversed. Or, maybe stopped
again
and reversed. The truth is, we
don’t know. And, the way things are, I don’t think anyone else
knows either.

We were all sic, light-headed, sick to
our stomachs. It reminded me of going to the fair as a kid. I rode
this ride that spun around in a circle. It made me sick, and I
stayed sick for a few hours. It felt like that. Exactly like
that.

The jury is out. The quakes have
stopped, at least for now. Hopefully for good, but we don’t know if
the Earth is done changing directions or even if that’s what it
did.

So, we are eleven. We were joined by
six people tonight. A young woman named Patty. She seems to be
their leader, spokesperson. It seems to be like that now. Someone
has to take control. No other way around it.

Patty is young. Maybe eighteen or
nineteen, dark hair. Small but rugged looking… determined? I don’t
know. Likable, that’s for sure. She and Ronnie are
together.

Ronnie is her man (Her words), young
too, dark brown skin. He was a carpenter. I like him. He’s quiet.
Doesn’t say a lot,

but what he does say is worth hearing.
I know that already.

Lilly is around the same age. She’s
young, blond, looks so much like Lydia, even talks like her. It’s
spooky. Tom is already attracted, you can see it, and she looks
interested too. It seems unhealthy, or it could be, would be… I
don’t know though. Tom has to live his life. The world is so
different, but you know that.