The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (124 page)

There were fires over past the park. It
appeared to be a whole block over by Jordan Downs, but there were
other single fires all over the city too. There had been for two
days now, and no one had come to put those fires out. And there was
more; you could hear gunfire from all over the city all night long.
He continued to pace the hall.

This was not normally a bad
neighborhood, but it was no picnic either. There had been a few
fires here but the people that lived nearby had put them out
quickly. Dozens of buildings had come down or were now tilted
crazily. The looting had started at some point, and now there were
armed men prowling the streets in gangs.

He had acquired a gun from a shop a few
blocks over, ransacked, left open to the world. He had loaded it
and waited, but the few that had ventured to his door had turned
away when they had seen him with the gun.

Winston, the old man that lived in the
back basement apartment, had called them all down to listen to the
radio just a short time ago. Not your average radio, a Short Band
receiver. They had ended up listening to military talk, military
talk that was probably supposed to be restricted. The stories that
had come from that radio said the rest of the world was no better
off. Explosions or earthquakes, there was a great deal of
devastation everywhere.

A few years before, the CDC had issued
a warning about zombies, the inevitability of an attack. How it
would come. Why it would come. What you should do. How to survive
it, and more. Billy and his friends had gotten a good laugh over
it. He had been down in Mexico at the time because of some trouble
he had gotten into in New York. And he had been living like a king.
What sort of trouble could come? What he had listened to on the
radio in the last few days had changed his mind
completely.

Washington D.C. was completely overrun,
the President gone. They weren’t even sure he had made it into
hiding. New York and Atlanta, overrun with the risen dead. Mexico,
absolutely silent. Canada, the same. Millions of people absolutely
silent. How could that even be? And right here in Los Angeles there
was talk on the radio about dead roaming the streets too, and
probably every city in between L.A. and New York, because if they
had overrun the big cities, what kind of chance did the smaller
cities and towns have, he asked himself.

CBS had stopped broadcasting here three
days ago, even though what they had been broadcasting had been
sketchy because the satellites were out. They had been dependent on
travelers coming out of the east or up from the south. It had
apparently not stopped broadcasting soon enough in the west, where
T.V. viewers had witnessed the network studios being overrun, and
the anchor of the evening news attacked on camera. The United
states was under attack by an army of the Dead.

He had spent some time checking the
other stations, cable, Univision? Nothing at all. ABC? NBC? Dead
air. Cable? Satellite? Frozen pictures on some channels, nothing at
all on the others, and not a single channel you could actually
watch. The internet was dead. That had seemed worse than all the
rest of it. Google didn't load the page for his browser, but it
also didn't tell him why. Nothing.

And it wasn't just the United States,
North and South America. Germany had not been heard from in a week.
England, France, all the European countries were incommunicado. The
radio mans words, not Billy's. Australia had seemed fine up until
two days ago. They had been talking about the problems facing
America and Great Briton. They seemed to be wondering what was
going on the same as everyone else. Then the broadcast had stopped
in mid sentence. Shortly after that the few HAM radio operators
that had been relaying information from there had gone silent
too.

He had paced the hallways
since then. He should talk to Jamie... Beth... Winston... Scotty, a
few others. It might be time to talk about getting out of here. The
thing he was concerned about was the non action from the Military.
That was not Military like. For them to be sitting by and allowing
this to happen, it must be a serious thing. And he had no doubt
that eventually they
would
get their shit together, or
think
they had their shit together,
and then they would act. And who knew what their remedy for zombies
might be?

He stopped his pacing. Who did know, he
asked himself again. Nobody. He stood in the hall for a second.
Jamie was upstairs with Beth and a few others. Night was coming.
Traveling in the night was not an option, at least not one he
wanted to explore. But maybe they should be ready to leave in the
morning. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it was not something they should
do hastily, but he did believe they should not stay too much
longer. He turned back towards the stairs, debated only briefly,
then walked back and climbed them to the second floor. He would
start with Beth. Let Beth make the decision. She would know what to
do.

Maine

Carl Freeman rose from his
couch reluctantly, and walked to the front door. He clutched the
thick book, which to him was his Bible, in his hand as he
walked.

There had been some
shooting, and quite a lot of panic in the last several days, but
none of it had touched him. He had locked himself inside the house
after the first earthquake had hit, calmly finished the thick
tattered book, and then had begun to re-read it again. He was once
again at the good part, not the same good part he had been at, but
every part of the book was a good part to him, and so it mattered
not at all which part he was in. But he was at the part where he
might be able to help.

He knew now that the
book,
The Book
,
was not just a book. It was real. It had to be he reasoned, it just
had to be. The author must have been like a God or something, maybe
even
was
God, or
something, and so he had written the book not simply to be read,
although that had definitely been intended, but as a warning.
Something to point the way. The Book was, well, The Book
was a Bible
, he had
decided, and thank God he had been able to figure it out in time,
thank God, praise God, because if he hadn't, he knew, there would
be no hope at all. He worriedly pressed his fingers to the flesh of
his neck. Okay, good, he thought, all's cool on the western front,
no problem, wonderful, great, grand and glorious.

He opened the thick steel
door and peered out. The ground, indeed the house itself, he
thought, had been shaking for the last several minutes A lesser
shock than the others. It was winding down., Maybe over, as far as
the earthquakes were concerned at least. He stepped cautiously out
the front door into what should have been darkness, but somehow was
not. In the distance he could see that the sun was beginning to
rise. He glanced down at his watch. Well, he thought, it must have
stopped, or something. He stared at the horizon for a few seconds
longer and then calmly walked off down the street clutching the
thick book under one arm, leaving the door standing open behind
him.

It was time to leave, he
told himself, and if he ever intended to reach Stovington in time,
he had better hurry.
 

Kansas

Wendell Smith edged the
thick concrete door open slowly. Everything seemed fine, he
thought. The ground wasn't burned, the houses were still standing,
most of them, he amended as he saw some that had fallen and a few
that were leaning precariously. Tommy Switzer's body was still
laying where it had fallen at the base of the stairs, he noticed,
and, although it was none too appealing, it was not burned
either.

He hesitated briefly, and
then quickly ushered his family out into the early morning air.
Kansas City, never looked so good, he thought, and the air had
never smelled so sweet.

He had ushered everyone
down into the shelter just after the first earthquake had hit. They
had already lost the television feed by then and had been down to
the radio broadcast. That had been difficult to follow, but he had
understood that maybe,
just maybe,
the meteor would hit them after all. Tommy had
shown up after he had bolted the door. Too late, or it should have
been too late. He had reluctantly opened the door back up only to
find that Tommy had collapsed just outside the door, and as he had
bent to help him to his feet he had seen the large wound on his
back; what looked like a bullet wound to Wendell. He had seen
bullet wounds before on a crime show he had once liked to watch.
Someone had killed Tommy. He had slammed the door, shot the bolt,
and they had ridden the next few days out in the
shelter.

Yesterday had been
completely quiet, and today there had been nothing more than a
slight tremor. Maybe the end wasn't now, he reasoned, maybe the end
was yet to come. Either way it didn't matter, the kids were safe,
Lucinda was too, and he had a sudden urge to strike out for
Oklahoma, which he fully intended to follow.

The children filed out one
by one, wide eyed, followed by Mrs. smith, who peered cautiously
around as Wendell had done.

“
Wendell,” his wife asked,
“you sure?”

“
Yep. Honey, it's time to
get on with life,” he paused and drew her into his arms, as the
children flocked around his feet. “What do you think of Oklahoma,
'Cinda?” he asked.

“
What'za Okahoma, Daddy?”
little Jasmine Smith asked, as she tugged at his pants leg. Wendell
bent and took his youngest daughter into his arms.

“
Well, Baby, Oklahoma's a
state, or was...” Wendell said with a smile. “How about we go there
and find out for sure what it is, Baby girl, Huh?” She giggled, as
he tickled her chin and set her down. He reached over and took
Lucinda back into his arms and kissed her.

“
You must be nuts,
Wendell,” she said with a smile.

“
Nope, just happy to be
alive, honey,” he said through a large smile.

Between them they herded
the children into the back of their aging station wagon, cranked
the motor to life, and backed slowly out of the driveway, as they
held hands across the split vinyl of the front seat.

L.A: Billy Jingo:

Evening: March 9th

He came up from sleep fast, Jamie's
face above him, her voice a low, panicked whisper.

“
Wha... What...
What?”

“
Downstairs... It's
downstairs,” she didn't finish, but she didn't need to. A crash
came to his ears, but he could not tell if it was from the
downstairs hallway. At least he hoped it was the downstairs
hallway, not the stairs outside of their apartment, or, God forbid,
even closer.

He jumped from the tangle of blankets,
started to pull his shoes on, and then reached for his machine
pistol instead as another noise came from the hallway. This time it
did sound like the downstairs hallway; the steel gate that closed
off the lobby. Billy thumbed the safety off the machine pistol and
ran for the apartment door.

The hallway was nearly completely
black. The hallway windows let in the light from outside, but it
was very little. He slowed and felt his way to the staircase. He
sensed her before his hand brushed against her.

“
Don't you fuckin' shoot
me, Billy Jingo.” Beth whispered tightly. A small penlight clicked
on and he could see her leaning against the wall from the upstairs
apartment.

“
No,” Billy said. It was
stupid, but he could think of nothing else to say. “Going down,” he
told her. He made the stairs and headed down toward the lobby.
Behind him Beth had turned out the light, but he could feel her
following behind him.

The noise became louder as they made
their way downward. Billy tried to count the steps as he went.
Fifteen to the landing, turn to the right, feel for the banister.
Fifteen more to the bottom, but he missed the last step. He had
made himself count the steps just earlier that day in case he had
to navigate them in the blackness.

He nearly fell before his foot found
the floor and he regained his balance. He could smell them now
though, hear them. Just fifteen or so feet across the lobby. He
felt Beth’s hand brush against his back. A second later she pressed
up against him and whispered in his ear.

“
When I flick the light on
them, just shoot!”

“
But what if...”

“
Fuck
What if
... Just shoot. Who do you
think it would be, the fuckin' Avon lady?” Silence fell. The noise
stopped. “Goddammit,” Beth muttered.

A second later the penlight came on. It
was like a floodlight in the narrow hallway. The gate was broken,
forced part way open at the top. Another few minutes and they would
have been through. Six dead were transfixed by the beam. Two with
iridescent red eyes that seemed to glow in the light from the
penlight. Both snarled and lunged at the gate to force their way
through to them.

His pistol was in his hands, but it was
like the beam had frozen him too. He did not begin to fire until
after Beth's pistol began to fire. The noise was huge. Everything
in the closed in space. All six of the dead fell and they thrashed
on the floor. It was over fast. So fast that Billy had not even
thought to breath.