The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (171 page)

Beth

She stumbled and fell, crying out as
she did. Something, some piece of debris had cut her. Nothing
serious. She saw that quickly, but it looked bad. Maybe it could
buy time.

“
Get up,
Bitch, get up,” The one that had been prodding her told her. He
kicked her hard in the groin with one booted foot.
“Get up and get moving, Bitch.”

“
I can't.” She tried hard
to catch her breath. It was no act. He meant to kill her whether
she got up or didn't get up, and that had caused fear to settle in,
her heart to race, her breathing to become ragged, the pain on top
of that was incredible, it had taken her breath away, nearly made
her vomit. She had also fallen badly on her wrist. “Broke it...
Feels like I broke it,” she said between pulls of air. The air
seemed bad, as though the oxygen content were poor.

The man bent down and stopped just
inches away from her face. His fingers curled into her jacket
pulling her toward him roughly. “Get up or I will kill you right
now. I won't ask again. I don't give a fuck.” He held her eyes
briefly, but they slipped away when someone else spoke.

“
Shoot her and I'll shoot
you next.“ Her eyes darted backwards as best she could. Probably
one of the soldiers that had been behind them. His rifle rose from
the floor and settled on the man in front of her. She couldn't see
his face, but his voice had a cadence she knew.

The man who held her shoved her away:
He tried to shoot and turn at the same time. Not a word was spoken,
no retaliatory words, nothing. He just started to turn and fire at
the same time. A bad mistake apparently, as the other man had also
not been joking: The duct work lit up brightly with the flashes of
rifle fire that punched the air and felt as though it would
puncture her eardrums.

The other three standing close by had
frozen. The rifle fire lasted seconds only and the man lay dead
when it was finished.

The gunfire in the enclosed hallway had
taken most of her hearing. She couldn't hear right. Sounds seemed
coated in cotton, far away, muffled, nonsensical. She didn't know
Bear was there until her eyes rose as a boot stepped into her
vision and continued to rise until they found his profile. A rifle
in his hands, turned toward the remaining three. She rose slowly to
her feet. A blade flashed and her hand was cut free from the zip
tie, she knelt and pulled a knife free from the dead soldier next
to her.

She could hear nothing that made sense,
but she could tell there was anger and urgency in the words she
couldn't understand. The three had their weapons held rigidly,
refusing to drop them. Freed only to be killed in a shoot out, she
thought.

Her hand was numbed from the tie, but
she let the knife fall and immediately squatted and picked up a
discarded rifle. In the space of two seconds the entire situation
had changed. She longed to turn and look at Bear. Maybe he had
tried to say something to her, but the cottony silence held her.
She watched as one of the men started to raise his rifle. She
wondered after, what he had intended: To throw it down? Toss it
away? She didn't know. A shadow parted from the shadows behind the
three and stepped quickly forward. A rifle barrel rose, the barrel
pointing at the mans neck. A split second late she was shoved to
the floor by an unseen hand.

She rolled with the push, and when she
came up against the wall she was on her feet once more. The man
that had been about to shoot her was gone, the other two were
firing at Bear. The shadow behind them was firing at them too. A
friend, she questioned, as her own rifle joined the explosion of
noise in the hallway.

Neither of the two fired back. They had
no time to do so. They crumbled where they had stood. A split
second more and she was looking at Bear as he squatted beside her.
Boots at floor level strode into view, and she looked up into
Billy's worried eyes. He spoke, but she got nothing from it.
Muffled static. She started to move forward and Bear stopped her,
pointing back the way they had come. She knew why. She nodded and
followed him as he made his way back through the dimly lit hallways
deeper into the facility, Billy running beside her.

The Nation:

Jessie and Sandy

It was late. Jessie had walked back up
with Brad. Brad had left to help Bob with something, and Jessie had
found herself sitting with Sandy.

Sandy spoke first. “What have you
decided to do, Jessie, if you leave next spring there are a few
hundred of us that will go with you. Even Bob and Janna...” Her
face was red, and her voice a low whisper. “I feel like I am
pressuring you to do something you don't want to do, but you have
people that believe in you, and the Fold could grow into something
that could rival The Nation. Easily rival the Nation.”

“
I know that, Sandy. It
isn't that. I.” She stared at Sandy hard. “Between you and me for
now.” She thought a second. “You, me, Bob, Brad, Janna a few
others. Don't tell anyone that you don't trust. Can you promise me
that?”

“
I can,” Sandy said. There
was relief in her voice. It was obvious to Jessie she had been
concerned that maybe Jessie had abandoned her ideas for recognition
of the Fold. “I haven't decided to give up. I've decided... I've
decided, why give this up? I mean, it was Bob' idea first, wasn't
it? Wouldn't Bob have a say so in what it is? How it runs? I want
those of us that have been excluded to get together. Have a meeting
of our own. I don't want to leave though, Sandy. I want to stay.”
She finished and leaned back away from Sandy.

“
They will never let you
rename it,” Sandy told her quietly.

“
I know that. But we won't
ask permission, we'll just do it,” Jessie said every bit as
quietly. “Bob, Janna, Steve, that is three of their council that
are with us, am I wrong?”

“
No, they are,” Sandy
admitted.

“
We have the winter to work
it out then, but by next spring I intend for us to be in charge,
not them. If anyone leaves it will be them, not us.” Jessie leaned
back and looked around the mostly empty cave area.

The plan was coming together in her
head. It didn't have to be hard. It didn't have to be complex, it
just needed a little push in the right direction. She looked back
at Sandy and spoke. “Get the ones you trust together, after the
snow fall. We'll all plan an outing, an invited only outing. It
doesn't have to be far, just somewhere where we can hash it out.
Make sure we're all on the same page.” She hesitated briefly. “Can
you do that for me Sandy?”

“
Yes... You really think we
can take over this place?” She asked.

“
I really do,” Jessie said
as she rose. “Let me know when you have the meeting ready and we'll
all sit down together.” Jessie waited for Sandy's nod and then
turned and walked away from the table. She stepped out into the
long passage way and began to walk toward the other side of the
cave system.

Watertown:

Bear, Beth & Billy

The facility was silent. Bear lead the
way to the corridor that held Weston's office, but he was long
gone. The desk drawer was empty. They ransacked the office, but it
was hard to know where exactly what they were looking for was.
Probably with Weston, where ever he was. It was clear that there
must be more of the antidote here somewhere in the facility, but
where?

“
Two floors below,” Bear
said as they left the office.

“
He told you?” Beth asked.
Her hearing was barely there, but there was little noise in the
facility to get in the way.

They walked back into the
hallway.

“
I know he didn't get into
that tunnel,” Billy said decisively. “I shot three people there.
All in battle fatigues... All young.”

Beth agreed. “I didn't see him either.
It looked like those guys were trying to get away too, so it made
me think he still had to be back here somewhere calling the shots
and they were just...” She shrugged. “Running away, breaking
out.”

Bear nodded. “Makes sense.” He looked
up and down the hallway. “Has to be that way then. The other way
leads out. There is no place else he could have gone.”

A few seconds later they were moving
down the corridor, spread out, watching the doors,
searching.

Watertown

Pearl

The cave was silent as they approached
it, but at first it didn't register for Pearl. Her mind was on
Billy, Bear and Beth. She had awakened silent and she had said
little: Anna had not pressed her. She was still not well: Her head
tended to ache fiercely for no reason sometimes. Her leg wore out
after only a little effort: She was jumpy, on edge, so she tended
to second guess her intuitions. It had been Anna who had stopped
them as they had neared the cave entrance.

Her armed had thumped against Pearl's
breast heavily. Pearls rifle was off her shoulder and into her
hands before she had any idea what might be wrong. Her eyes scanned
the front of the cave and the cliffs above it. Nothing. She looked
over at Anna. Anna had dragged her eyes down to the ground with her
own. Puddles of water, Pearl saw, and then the truth had come. They
were not water, not entirely.

It had rained during the night. She
recalled that now as she looked at the puddle before her. Even so
this was not rain only. The water moved sluggishly, red glinted
from the early morning light and as she watched an object shifted
below the surface and turned. A hand, ragged stumps that had once
been fingers, one finger remaining, pointing toward the cave
entrance like an accusation.

“
Jesus,”
Pearl said as she sucked in breath. A second later she was moving
backwards rapidly with Anna. He head was already pounding. They
reached a brushy area near the cliffs that fronted the river and
crouched low in the scrub there. Pearl fished a bottle from her
pocket, shook out four aspirin and popped them into her mouth. Her
head had a pulse of its own. Maybe she
had
injured her head. Maybe life was
just too stressful and she didn't handle it well. Whatever it was,
the headaches had been coming and going. Less the last few days.
The aspirin would knock it back. She offered the bottle to Anna who
shook her head, then returned it to her pocket and buttoned the
flap as she watched the cave entrance.

There were tarps that overhung the
entrance. Nothing they had erected, but hangings that had already
been in place when she and Billy had arrived. Thinking of Billy
once more flooded her mind with worry. She pushed it away and bent
close to Anna's ear.

“
Dead?”

“
Dead,” Anna
agreed.

At her back the river roared on its way
west. In front of her the odor of blood came clearly to her. So
strong she was unsure how she had missed it earlier.

Four hand grenades hung at her waist.
She had found them in the precinct. She had no idea what kind they
were: They could be what Billy had called Flash Bangs, nothing more
than a heavy percussion and a lot of smoke and light. Designed to
suppress crowds, to frighten, not kill and maim.

On the other hand these did not look
like flash bangs, these looked like the read deal. The same sort
they had had back in the truck. She had taken them. You never left
ammunition or weapons, Billy had told her, and that advice had
stuck in her head. There were four at her waist, attached to her
belt, she fingered them now, jostling them where they hung. There
were three more on Anna's belt. They were all the same, whatever
they were.

She looked up to Anna's frightened
eyes.

“
You can't,” Anna said.
“They might be alive in there.”

“
Love,” she patted one arm
with her free hand. The other held her rifle, aimed at the cave
entrance which her eyes continued to dart back to every few
seconds.

“
Anyone inside must be
gone... Dead, or as good as dead.”

Anna shrugged her hand away. “I won't
do it. I can't.” A second later she was up and running to the cave
before Pearl could stop her.

“
Hey...
Hey, Gina! Hey you guys!”
Her rifle
was on her shoulder. Her hands swung free. Her body posture was
defenseless. She seemed to be completely unaware of the danger she
was running to.

Pearl rose from the brush and took
several steps toward the cave entrance, but Anna was already far
ahead.

She knew the attack would come before
it came: When it happened, it happened like this.

She found her rifle had come up of its
own accord. Her finger squeezed lightly on the trigger as the
barrel rose into her line of sight. Point and shoot, find your
target with your eyes, focus on it and your bullets will follow,
Billy had told her. She understood that from sports, football, kick
while your eyes aimed your body. Something like that. Some rule
that her football coach had drilled into her. Mrs Smyth. She had
lived in the council flats then and football had taken her away
from that life a few times a week.

Her rifle barrel lined up on the
opening just over Anna's shoulder when the first dead burst from
the shadowed entrance and lunged at her. She was less than three
feet from the entrance, yelling as she ran toward it. She tried to
lock up her legs when the first of the rotting faces had slipped
past the over-hangings and into the sparse morning light, Pearl
could see that, but there had been no stopping her momentum. She
collided with all three as they sprang from the shadows. Pearl's
finger squeezed and the barrel jumped, kicked back, and she dragged
it back down as fast as she could, her eye fastened on the dead
where they had met Anna in the entryway and were tearing her apart
even as her bullets found them.