The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (17 page)

“
We aren’t looking for a
fight,” a tall, light haired woman in back of the two men said. She
stepped out away from the other two women and the children when she
finished speaking. The lead man said nothing; only stood allowing
the light to arrow from his glasses, reflecting the strong
afternoon light.

“
We aren’t either,” Bob
said. He kept his rifle barrel pointed in their direction, his
finger still resting on the edge of the trigger guard, his voice
strong and steady.

The time played out for a few seconds,
both sides waiting for the other side to lower their weapons first.
Finally, the young woman stepped forward, past the two men,
holstered her own weapon, and then turned to face the young man in
the military fatigues.

“
We aren’t looking for any
trouble,” she said.

It seemed unclear to Bob who she was
talking to, them or the guy with the reflective glasses.

“
They aren’t either,” she
continued, and it became clear she was talking to the young man and
not them.

Bob’s finger slid a little closer to
the trigger. He waited.

The man tilted his head toward the
woman who stood before him. It was impossible to see what his eyes
were saying. He didn’t speak aloud, and for all Bob knew he may not
actually have even been looking at the woman at all. He may have
never taken his eyes off them, only tilted his head to make them
think he had.

The face moved slightly again, as if he
was looking back toward Tom and the others: Moved again as though
he were looking back at the woman once more.

“
Jesus,” Bob said under his
breath.
“It’s like he doesn’t want
to.”

“
Tim, Nell, Lilly… Get back
to the edge of the building… Now,” Tom whispered loudly. “Stay
there. If anything happens, hit those trucks and light
out.”

The head moved slightly once more.
Coming back in their direction again. Maybe he’d seen the movements
behind them as the three moved back around the building as Tom had
told them to, Bob thought.

“
Sin,” the woman
said.

Sin, Bob thought. What…? Was that a
name, he wondered to himself. The man's name?

“
They said they don’t want
any trouble,” The woman repeated.

“
I fucking heard them,” the
military man growled softly.

He seemed to deliberate. His head
turned back towards them and he spoke. “Where did the others
go?”

“
Back around the corner.
You look a little shaky to me,” Tom said truthfully. “I sent them
out of it. We don’t want any trouble… Seems like you don’t want to
believe that.”

“
Didn’t say I did, didn’t
say I didn’t,” The young man said. His rifle stayed steady, which
forced Tom and Bob to hold their own weapons steady.

“
Jesus,” the woman said.
“Nobody wants trouble. Nobody…”

The young man's face shifted slightly
back toward the woman once more. The nose of his rifle
jerked.

“
Jesus, Bob,”
Tom started.

The young man's rifle swung quickly and
Tom saw the young woman’s jacket puff outwards from her back and
watched a hole appear just below her shoulder before he actually
heard the shot. A split second later the young man spun hard to his
left stumbled backwards, and then collapsed to the pavement. Bob
stepped forward, his rifle still tightly held against his shoulder,
walking forward, and sighting on the other young man as he
walked.

“
Drop it, Son, or I’ll put
you down the same way I put down your friend there,” Bob told him
in a deep, authoritative voice.

Tom stepped away from Bob, his own
rifle up and aiming at the young man. The woman who had been shot
slumped to the ground. One hand clutching at the hole in her upper
chest. A low moan of pain escaped her mouth.

The second young man looked as though
he might do anything.

“
I don’t want to hurt you,
Son. There isn’t a reason to get yourself hurt. After all this,
there’s been enough hurt,” Bob said reasonably.

“
I didn’t know he was going
to do that,” the young man said. He looked down at the crumpled
body. “I didn’t know.”

“
Nobody’s saying you did,”
Bob said calmly. “Isn’t your fault. Just point that gun at the
ground… Set it down. Don’t need anybody else to get hurt, right
Son?”

The guy nodded slightly,
looked around like he was surprised to see that both of the women
behind him were still holding their weapons, although they were
both pointed at the ground. He finally realized how it might look
to the man with the rifle. Sin was crazy, he told himself...
Had
been crazy. Sin was
dead now. Crazy didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was that
Sin was dead. He was laid out on the ground, blood leaking from his
mouth. His breath caught in his throat, a sob tearing from his
mouth.

“
He was nuts. They’ll tell
you that,” he told Bob. He reached forward, leaned over and laid
his rifle out carefully on the ground before him. “Nuts,” he said
once more. He raised his hands over his head into the air, then
thought about it and lowered them to his sides, finally clasping
them in front of himself, unsure what to do.

~

When Mike turned into the asphalt area
that fronted the cave, he knew that something was wrong. Sandy had
one of the two way radios on and was listening intently. Mike
reached for his own where it sat on the dashboard, mentally berated
himself for not having checked in on it, although there had been no
plans to do so, turned it on and listened.

Tom was talking calmly.

“…
can’t reach them… Already
tried.”

Mike keyed the button, “Tom, it’s Mike,
what’s going on?”

“
Jesus, Mike. I couldn’t
reach you… We got ambushed. None of us got hurt, but we got one guy
dead on the other side. A woman they shot looks awfully bad… And I
got a guy I don’t trust and don’t know what to do with.”

“
You want us there?” Mike
asked.

“
Yeah… And, hey, Sandy’s a
nurse, right?”

“
Yeah,” Sandy herself
answered.

Mike got out of the truck. Behind him
Ronnie, Candace and Patty had switched the other radio on and were
listening in.

“
Maybe Sandy, you, Candace
and Ronnie,”
Tom said.

“
That’s all of our
shooters, Tom…”

“
Ah… Yeah…”
Tom seemed unsure of what to say.

“
Tom, I’ll send Candace,
Sandy and Ronnie. That’s our best shooter. I can’t leave this place
alone,” Mike told him. Candace nodded at him, he turned and caught
Ronnie’s eye who nodded. Patty looked worried, and her eyes slid
away from his when he tried to make contact. Sandy was already
nodding when he looked her way. “They’re on the way, Tom,” he
finished.

He handed Candace the rifle he had been
carrying. She hurried into the cave and came back out with her pair
of Forty Five caliber pistols. She also came back with something
that was advertised as a hunting rifle but looked more like an
assault rifle and took a clip. She holstered both of the Forty
Fives, tossed Ronnie the assault rifle and set Mike's rifle between
the seats in the truck.

Sandy climbed into the back as Ronnie
took the front passenger's seat. Tom was speaking on the radio,
giving Ronnie directions. Candace was nodding, “I know where that
is,” she said. She started the truck, dropped it into reverse and
began to back away from the cave.

“
Candace,” Mike called. He
ran to catch up to her. She leaned partway out the window and he
kissed her quickly. “I love you. Be careful,” he told
her.

“
I love you too,” she told
him. “I will.” She took her foot off the brake, backed around in a
tight circle and drove quickly away.

Mike and Patty walked to the fire where
Jan still stood, radio in her hand, and began to wait.

~

The radio hissed silence for so long
that Mike was convinced that they were probably trying to call and
something was wrong with the radio. Maybe the batteries were dead…
Something… Maybe…

“
It hasn’t been that long,
Mike,” Patty told him “It just seems that way.”

Mike smiled nervously, “Shows,
huh?”

Patty shrugged. “All of us.” She looked
over at Jan who continued to re-position slices of Venison on the
drying racks. Her mouth was set in a tight grimace as if she was in
pain. She looked up as though she had felt Patty’s eyes upon her
and nodded. Patty smiled at her and Jan answered it with a smile of
her own.

The radio crackled…

“
Got them,”
Ronnie’s voice called over the radio as the static
smoothed out.
“Give us a minute or
two.”

“
Read you,” Patty told
him.

“
Okay,”
Ronnie’s voice came back. “
All of our people are fine. The guy that started the whole
thing is dead. You could say he’s not fine at all. There was
another guy, but he took off. There are two women and two kids
here… Oh, another woman took off… We’re coming back… The one
woman’s been shot… Hang on a minute…”
The
radio switched back to choppy static then came back.

“
Okay… We’ll talk about the
rest when we get there… Uh, those other two aren’t armed… We don’t
know where they went…”

The radio switched back to
static.

“
Be careful,” Mike told
him.

“
Oh yeah,”
Ronnie came back.
“Oh
yeah.”
He clicked off.

~

The three waited silently by the smoky
fire. None seemed able to meet the others' eyes. They were all
worried about the same thing. Where were those other two? Those
trucks could be sitting ducks if they were out waiting to shoot
them up on their way back, running loose and still wanting a fight.
But each of them knew there was nothing they could do but
wait.

A half hour later, the lead Suburban
pulled onto the pavement in front of the cave, cut a wide circle
and parked nose out. The other vehicles pulled in and parked to one
side of each other. Everyone climbed out of the trucks and gathered
in front of the cave.

Patty walked over to Ronnie and kissed
him. Bob went to Jan by the fire, who only now seemed unable to
hold back her tears, and pulled her into himself holding her tight.
His own eyes seemed red and troubled.

One young woman and two small children
stood off to one side. Sandy walked slowly up to Mike.

“
The other one didn’t make
it. I didn’t want to leave her there. She’s in the back of the
Suburban,” Sandy finished. She had blood smeared across the front
of her white nylon windbreaker and soaked into one leg of her
jeans.

“
All right,” Mike told her.
“Are you all right?”

“
Yeah… Pissed off, but
okay.” Sandy answered.

Mike nodded and slipped his arm around
Candace as she walked over to him, drew her to him and kissed
her.

“
Thank you,” he
whispered.

She looked at him.

“
For coming back safely,”
he said quietly.

She hugged him back. Tom walked over.
“We could take her out to Huntingtonville,” he said.

“
No… I think that’s a bad
idea,” Mike said. “We’ve got to talk this out.” He raised his voice
so everyone could hear him.

“
Listen...
If we’ve got people willing to kill us, we’ve got
to take this a lot slower. We’ve got to sit down and talk this all
out, talk it over, make some new rules.” He nodded his head. There
were several murmurs of assent.

“
Ronnie, help me,” Mike
asked.

He and Ronnie walked into the cave and
came back carrying a zippered sleeping bag. They opened the rear of
the suburban and carefully zippered the still warm body into the
bag.

“
We have anybody who knows
something to say?” he asked.` His voice was choked with
emotion.

“
I’ll say something,” Lilly
said. Mike nodded to her. He and Ronnie carried the zippered bag
over to the edge of the broken pavement. The brown water roared
past several feet below.

Lilly wore a serious face. She closed
her eyes; her lips moved silently for a moment, and then she began
to pray.

“
Lord… Jesus, be with us.
This body may not know you, but I know that you know her. Her name
is Emma.” Lilly then recited the Lord's prayer with nearly everyone
joining in.

Mike and Ronnie picked up the sleeping
bag carefully, reverently, and as gracefully as they could, swung
it outward toward the river so it would land in the fast flowing
water and not tumble down the cliff face instead and let go. The
current grabbed it, and it quickly sank out of sight.

Tom, Patty, Janet and Nell began to
gather things for a meal. Candace walked Mike over to the two
children and the young woman.