The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (159 page)

Candace shifted, waiting, sipping at
her coffee and replaying the story Pearl had told in the barn just
a few hours before. It made sense. Beyond making sense it answered
questions. Beyond that it was downright scary and it had forced
their hand too. It was one thing to suspect that the base under the
northern New York city might be involved in what had happened, and
yet another to find it absolutely had been.

They had planned a small trip for
supplies, probably just nearby cities, before the snow fell. They
had even touched on it at the council meetings, both the public and
the private meeting. The real business being some collection of
supplies, but the focus more on weapons. The public business being
a small supply trip to test the trucks and the team before winter
set in and grounded them all, the private business had been a
scouting trip to Watertown to see if there was any truth to what
they suspected. All of that was now out the window: If what Pearl
said was true then there was no time to lose at all. The sooner
that the OutRunners set out for Watertown the better.

She shifted again, trying for a better
position. She felt more than a little uncomfortable. Not long ago
she would have been siting at the edge of the ledge, her feet
dangling off the edge. But it was too hard to get back on her feet
as it was, let alone get her feet back over the ledge and under her
without fearing going right over the edge. One of the fun facts
they didn't tell you about being pregnant, your whole center of
gravity changed faster than you could adapt. So the chair was the
solution. It was a lot easier to get up from, and safer too. She
peeked over the edge at the valley floor beneath the cave. It was
still bathed in blackness, but the gray was starting to creep into
the corners, bringing definition as it came.

She heard the scrape of Mike's shoes on
the stone ledge and met his eyes as he came around the
corner.

“
Baby, it's cold out here,”
he said.

She held up his cup of coffee. “That's
why I got this for you, Honey. Careful, it's really hot,” she told
him as she handed the cup to him.

“
Where we going?” he asked,
as he held the cup with one hand and helped her to her feet with
the other.

“
You promised to help with
pulling wire today, remember?”

He nodded.

“
I'm going to sit with
Lilly today. Steve and Jess both think it'll be today,” Candace
told him.

He nodded and then sipped at the
coffee. “Hm... Good... “ His eyes met hers once again. “You get any
sleep at all?” he asked.

“
That's why they make
coffee... No... I didn't, but I'll be fine... Lilly came up just a
little while ago... Two hours or so since she started having heavy
pain,” she said.

“
Oh,” Mike said, surprise
in his voice. “I hadn't realized she was that close.”

It was Candace's turn to nod. “The pain
isn't regular yet, but they are coming closer. She's really big and
she's a small woman, but they think she will be okay.”

“
The pain gets regular?”
Mike asked. He winced, his eyes narrowing and pained.

“
Yep. That's when they have
to kick the men out because you want to kill them all,” Candace
said.

“
Ha, ha... I think,” Mike
said uncertainly.

“
What, my love, are you
going to do when it's me and you have to be there holding my hand,
if thinking about Lilly in pain now makes you wince?” Candace asked
him.

“
I figured I'd pass out
early, like, right off the bat. That way by the time I wake up
it'll all be over with,” Mike said and smiled.

“
Ha, ha... I think,”
Candace said.

“
I'll be fine,” he told
her. “I just thought that there was only pain at that moment, the
few seconds that the baby was born. No one ever said anything about
regular pain.”

She arched her eyebrows. “No? Well,
it's like this. The pain starts, and then it comes and goes. I
haven't felt it either, mind you, I asked Janna. Then, over time
the pain becomes regular, contractions, which is... Never mind, I
can see it's killing you already. Suffice to say, No, there isn't
just few seconds of pain, there is an hour or two... Sometimes
more, several hours,” she said.

“
Wow,” Mike said. His face
was white, even in the early gray dawn-light.

“
Wow is right. You're not
good with pain are you, baby? I mean, like, for real not good with
it, right?” Candace asked.

“
Um, no. I thought about
piercing my ear once,” He colored, the red looking out of place
after the white. “I had a friend do it. He pushed the needle in and
I passed out.” Mike cleared his throat.

“
Damn, and I thought you
would get a nice tribal piece to match mine,” Candace
joked.

“
Ha, ha, I hope,” Mike
said. “I mean, I love the way it looks on your body, but me? Whoa.
I don't think I could do it, Baby.”

“
Easy. Relax. I was
kidding,” Candace said with a laugh. “Although I'd probably like
it.” She focused her eyes on his once again and the laughter bled
away from them. “The thing is, childbirth is painful. So you'll
have to deal with it. And I have two of them... Two!” She said as
the laughter crept back into her eyes.

“
I better go pull that
wire, Baby. They're probably waiting on me,” Mike said.

“
Babe, do you know how many
babies there would be if men had to bare them?”

“
Well... Uh...”

“
None. There would be none,
Babe. Not one.”

“
You're picking on me now,
right?” Mike asked.

Candace smiled. “Kiss me now and then
go pull your wire. I've got to get back to Lilly... Have you
decided what to do about Pearl, Watertown?”

Mike frowned. “No choice. Like we
said... Like we all decided, they have to go. I should be going
with them... It's a bad deal.”

“
No!”
Candace said sharply. “...Never mind that... Never mind it, it's
just hormones talking. … But don't you say that again or even think
it. Your place is right here. They
want
to be there. They understand
what they need to do. Not you. You belong here with me. With the
babies,” she said quietly. “You promised me that... I love you,”
Candace finished.

He kissed her. “I love you too... No
more.”

“
I do love you... I'll be
with Lilly... Soon?” She asked

“
Next couple of days. Bob
and Tim have guys working on finishing up the trucks... The
pretense is gonna be this cold... We don't know how long it will
be... We have to get while the getting is good,” Mike
finished.

Candace laughed. “You are such a nerd,
but I love you. Get while the gettin's good, drop that g, Honey.
How are you ever gonna sound streetwise?”

He pulled her to him and kissed her
longer and they both pulled apart a few seconds later with nothing
further to say. Mike turned and walked down the pathway that lead
to the valley floor. Candace watched until he was lost in the
gray-blackness of the fog and then turned and went inside the
cave.

~

Donita: Harlem

Donita watched from her tree once more,
squatted on a thick limb. Harlem was an exception to her rules and
she didn't understand why that was. Yes, there were dead in Harlem,
but they were dead that stayed dead. She had watched them herself
as they fell, knowing they would rise, and being shocked when they
did not.

Unexpected was probably the word, she
decided, that best explained the turn of events. And there was
more. There was something more on the air. The feeling that she had
missed some sort of opportunity to change everything. Harlem. The
world beyond Harlem. All of it. But whatever the small thing was
she had missed it completely.

She turned her eyes back to Harlem.
There were men looking back at her and her army behind her. She had
hoped it struck fear in their hearts. She had hoped they could see
the uselessness of fighting her. Of holding out. But these men
seemed unmoved. These men seemed confidant of another outcome
entirely, one that Donita herself had not even been aware of until
just a few days past. Loss.

There could be loss. If there could be
one place where the dead did not rise to join her army then there
could be another place, and another. It could change
everything.

She held herself steady, her fingers
tented against the roughness of the bark, her body motionless. A
second later she dropped effortlessly to the ground and walked
slowly back through the trees to the park proper.

There was the other thing. The
knowledge on the air that she had somehow made a mistake. A mistake
that she did not even know about at the time, but that was now
becoming clearer and clearer. She almost understood it. Almost.
Second by second she gathered it to her on the air and understood a
little more.

Donita entered the large park and let
her eyes travel over her army. Thousands upon thousands here and
more waiting on her word. In other cities the same things were
taking place. Battles against the breathers. The cities were
falling, she could feel it. Sense it with her eyes.

Her eyes lifted to the tall buildings
that stood silently in the early morning light outside of the park:
Marching away into the fog and cloud cover that hung over the city.
Immense clouds of flies lifted and settled, looking like some sort
of black ocean spread over the city outside the park. But the air
was cool and the flies would be gone soon.

The flies did not bother her. They were
partners of a sort. The flies carried death to those she could not
reach. And that death would then bring them to her. She squatted,
tented her fingers to support her body, and scented the air with
her eyes.

~

“
So this is it?” Mike
asked. He was standing in the tunnel with Ronnie and they were
pulling wire. What it amounted to was bringing the wire bundle from
up top to the power room. All the other circuits were in. The
batteries had been charging for three days and they were topped
off. The clinic: The large open meeting area of the cave. The
entire tunnel and all three entrances; the bath and shower house,
and the new space inside the other cave that was being converted
into a barn, were all wired: Lights; a few precious outlets for the
clinic.

They had also wired Sandy and Susan's
home, Josh and Sharon's, and installed lights in all the storage
rooms. This line, the last line that had to be pulled to the
circuit box, went up to the guard post and fed two huge outdoor
lights for the field.

At the entrance to each of the three
caves they had installed lighting. They had also installed low
voltage lighting for the ledges and the pathways, steps and even
the narrow pathway that led to the top of the mountain.

“
This is it,” Ronnie
agreed.

To pull wire, Mike had learned, you
started at a junction box and determined how much wire you needed
to reach the next junction box. You could begin by running what was
called a fish, a long, stiff steel line through the conduit,
snagging the wire or attaching it once you reached the other end,
and then pulling it back to you, dragging the wire along with it.
Or you could begin by pulling or pushing the wire through the
conduit to breaks in the conduit where you could work it into the
next section. In any case the goal was to get the wire in the
conduit and to the place you needed it.

The wire could be run as is and left,
but there were too many problems that could arise from that. In the
conduit the wire was protected from the elements, small animals and
accidents where it could be cut or crushed. But pulling the wire
wasn't all that hard, Mike decided, it was more of a smooth,
careful pull so that you didn't damage or kink the wire. You
continued in that manner from junction to junction until you
reached the panel box or the circuit completed itself and
terminated at an outlet, light or some other box.

When this line was completed, Tim would
power up the main panel box. There was what Tim called a main trunk
line that ran down to the power house. It could both supply power
when needed, or take away and store excess power when it was
generated. The power house itself was still being worked on and was
a few weeks away from being operational.

They had tested the power house and it
worked well. They had installed the battery banks for it and the
diesel engines that would run the generators during down time. What
remained to do was to divert the stream into the channel that
turned the wheel that was attached to the generator. That channel
was deeper, angled so that the water would pick up speed as it
came. The channel was finished and encased in concrete. Behind the
power house they had created a large lake that Cindy had envisioned
and would work on stocking with fish next year. All that remained
to do was to open the channel, it was currently blocked off, check
the flow rate and then gear the wheel so the RPM would be correct
for the generator. Mike understood the basics of all of that, but
had no idea how to actually do much of it. Tim had two crews
working to finish it. Tim himself, as well as Bob were nowhere to
be seen today though. They had never left the barn last night. The
work was nearly done on the OutRunners trucks and they intended to
make absolutely sure it was finished sooner, rather than later. Tom
had come in to pull wire for an hour before Mike had cut him lose
sending him down to help Bob and Tim.