The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (182 page)

The OutRunners

On The Road

The shock from the explosions that came
across the river could be felt inside the truck as it crept slowly
through the ruined city following their old tracks to get back out.
Billy sat with Pearl's head in his lap, she murmured in her sleep,
and Billy smoothed the hair from her brow and kissed her forehead.
“It's okay, Baby. It's okay,” he told her quietly. She murmured
once more and then fell back into sleep. Billy watched her a few
seconds longer and then looked up at the monitors. It looked like
most of the city across the river was burning.

“
Was that it?” he asked
quietly.

“
It seemed like the city
blew up all at once,” Beth said from her seat beside
Bear.

“
They burn or the antidote
gets them. I don't care which,” Bear said. He glanced at the other
monitors that also showed Manhattan burning and then turned his
attention back to road.

Across the river

Donita

She had made it to the river before her
great strength had deserted her. She was crawling now, pulling
herself forward with her arms somehow. She pushed as hard as she
could with her feet and suddenly she was looking at the water of
the river. Sluggish, oily, cold. Flames reflected brightly on its
surface.

Her strength was almost gone, but she
dug in with her fingers, causing them to snap as she forced them to
pull her body past the balancing point, and suddenly she was there,
her body tipping, falling into the water.

There seemed to be little transition
between the world of air and the world of water. One minute she was
above the water and the next she was weightless, floating face
down, slowly turning over onto her back in the current, and then
sinking into the depths of the river: Watching the lights above
dim, dim, and then wink out.

The Nation

January
10
^th

Candace's Journal

It has been a rough time for us here
through the new year, but maybe things are going to settle down for
a while.

I have not written in far too long, but
it has seemed to be one thing after another thing and there has
been no time, yet when I hold the two of you in my arms I think of
this journal and why I keep it, why I started it. This is supposed
to be for the two of you. To help you understand us when we're
gone, maybe even while we're here. None of us have decided on that
yet, and all of us have put so much personal stuff in these
journals that we wouldn't be okay with allowing just anyone to read
them. I wouldn't, but this is for you two to read, and I hope
brothers and sisters that come along too, somewhere in the
future.

We had a service for Bob, Arlene and
the baby back on the 9th. The thaw was on a few days after their
deaths and Tom and Craige had managed to dig the graves at the
falls: We had already buried them, but we thought that was best.
Nearly everyone showed up, maybe it was everyone, we're too big to
know.

We have a traveling peddler that we
have been in touch with. He is on his way here, should arrive any
day now. He is bringing trade items, and another doctor to replace
Steve Choi. He and Joe have decided to leave this spring. I am not
positive of the reasons, but I suspect it may have to do with
Jessie Stone and the others.

We still don't know what happened with
Jessie, Janna or David. The consensus is that they made their way
out somehow in the night, past the guards.

It makes no sense to me. The guards are
there to keep people out. Why would they feel the need to sneak
past them? I don't have the answers.

We have heard nothing from the
Outrunners, and many have written them off. I don't know what to
think, but Mike and some others on the council are putting together
a second team to leave this spring. If Bear, Beth, Billy and Pearl
come back they will still be the primary team, but we will keep the
second team. The big question is what happened in Watertown? What
did they find? What were they able to do? We know nothing, and not
knowing makes us question even harder.

We had four positions to fill on the
council, Bob, Janna, Steve, and Arlene and they have been filled.
Another sign to me when Steve immediately resigned when the meeting
was no more than a few minutes old. Bonny and Bobby took seats: Tom
and Chloe the last two. I think they were all good choices, a mix
of new blood and old, maybe what we need to rebuild our
spirit.

Tom has also taken over all of Bob'
farm duties. He is not the do-it-all man that Bob was, so several
others have stepped up to fill his shoes. It feels wrong that he
could be gone. I have accepted it, but it feels wrong. There were
rumors. I write them here because they may lend some sense to all
of it. Janna and David had been in an affair, possibly Bob knew it.
Some think it killed him, He was distracted enough by it that he
made a mistake and fell to his death, but what is the point of
assigning blame? What good does it do? Does it solve anything to be
mad at them? I don't know. I can't speak to it, but I know my
heart, and I know if I lost Mike or Amy I would not be able to
think clearly. I hate to think it though, so I have put it
away.

The people that know what happened have
gone, I don't know if they will ever be back, and so it will do me
no good to wonder and make myself sick with it. And life is too
fast. A day goes by and the world changes. Another and you are
becoming someone else with responsibilities you never had or
thought of. Another passes and you are no longer yourself. Change
comes, and it does its job well.

We have had offers for Steve, Sandy and
Susan, as if we owned or controlled their fates. We simply put them
directly in touch.

Nearby communities we are in touch
with: Alabama Island. West River. Memphis Crossing. Millers Post,
and Several unnamed trading posts or settlements. Some come and go,
change names, leadership, but those are the ones that seem stable,
the ones we will be trading with.

Alabama Island wants Steve, and they
are not the only ones, but they are the biggest and they have the
most to offer him. I feel all of them will be gone by spring. Steve
for sure, Sandy and Susan most likely. Whatever there was that was
broken between her and me is still broken. She ignores me
completely now. Maybe another place is best. I only hope that
Rollie arrives with the new doctor before we have no doctors at
all.

And the part I have to deal with. The
reason I would never let anyone read these journals except the two
of you. And I would prefer that be after I am gone: Amy and
I.

It's not like what happened with Janna
and David, but how different is it? Is it only me wanting it to be
something else? I can't answer that. I am too close to it to see it
clearly. I may never see it clearly. I can only say I love her and
she loves me. Neither of us are willing to give the other up, but I
am unwilling to give Mike up either. Right now I feel guilty about
it. I skipped a page and wrote this... I have to decide somewhere
in the future whether you should know this or not. I guess if you
are reading it you know my choice was to leave the page
in.

The Outrunners

January
15
^th

East Of Home

Bear flipped the helmet visor back down
and ran a bead to connect the two pieces of steel that formed the
last extension for the trailer sides. The other three corners had
been welded, the frame completed. He drew the welding rod downward
and closed up the seam. He stopped and tipped the helmet visor up
to look, then removed it and set it aside.

“
All yours, Billy,” he
said. Billy took only a few minutes to add the 14 gauge expanded
steel sheets he had cut and clamp it in place down the length of
the side. Bear dropped the helmet back onto his head, pulled the
visor down, and began tack welding the sheets to the
frame.

He tacked a bead every two feet on the
sheets, once they were all stable he removed the clamps and spot
welded beads every six inches to secure the sheets to the steel
frame work. The 14 gauge expanded steel sheets were like heavy duty
fencing. The sheets were made from whole sheets of steel. A diamond
pattern was stamped out of the sheets, leaving what looked like a
chain link fence pattern on the sheet. They could be seen through,
yet they were strong enough to hold things securely. Animals,
freight, it didn't matter. Bear finished up, set his helmet aside,
and jumped down off the empty trailer. He walked around it as Beth
and Pearl were doing, appraising both his welding and Billy's
plan.

The entire trailer, starting from the
frame up, had been built with structural oval tubing, square tube
steel, angle steel and plate steel for the floor and rear gate. The
expanded steel covered the sides, sitting in its own frame of angle
steel. Flat quarter inch plate steel made up the floor, welded to
the cross pieces that provided the underlying support. The rear
gate came down to fashion a ramp up onto the trailer. Operated by a
small winch, it could drop down in a matter of a minute and offered
access to the entire trailer at a reasonable angle. The gate was
reinforced with square steel tubing and quarter inch plate
steel.

The entire trailer had taken Billy a
few hours to work out in his head. It had taken Pearl and Beth a
half hour to find a generator and welder and get them working. It
had taken both Bear and Billy less than a day to weld it all up.
Bear welding as Billy cut the steel and clamped it. They had
borrowed the axles from a heavy duty donor flat bed trailer. The
end result was a trailer that was seven feet wide, thirty two feet
long with six foot sides, dual rear axles, and 35 inch tires which
gave it about 15 inches of ground clearance, enough to travel over
most obstacles. It was longer, and sat higher than any trailer Bear
had ever seen, and it would hold more than anything they might have
been able to find on a lot somewhere. It was overbuilt to last and
take the beating it was bound to get.

The tires were thirty five inch
rock-crawlers. They had not specifically needed rock-crawlers, just
something tall enough to match the trucks' height, but the
rock-crawlers added their own edge to the trailer, and they were
heavy ply tires that should be able to roll over whatever came
along. The truck certainly had the power to pull the trailer over
obstacles, the tires just needed to be able to clear those same
obstacles.

This was the fifth day of their layover
in the suburbs of Nashville. They had set off canisters in every
city of any size they had come across. Bear knew it wasn't
necessary, but the urge to speed things along kept him on the
course. None of them knew how long it took to begin to work, but
they trusted in the knowledge that it would work. They hadn't hung
around New York long enough to see the close up results, but they
had watched Weston die with their own eyes, and he had not come
back from that death. Rex did its job. The plagues of the dead were
all but over. It was a just a matter of time.

They had come here to fill their lists.
Ironic, but they were finally at what had started out to be the
soul purpose of this trip. The trailer would help them fulfill all
that had been asked for, even though they only had one truck
capable of making the trip back into The Nation at this time of
year.

Bear chuckled to himself as he set the
helmet aside, he dropped to the ground, back against a nearby tree,
rolled himself a cigarette and smoked. He let his mind
drift.

Getting back this late in the season
was not a foregone conclusion. They might not be able to make it
back in. It depended on the trail in: Whether it had been kept
open, how heavy the snows had been. Here in Nashville they were
next to nothing, but that didn't mean it would be the same a few
hundred miles to the west in The Nation.

As for the rest, he had finally started
to feel okay again. Feel himself, human, alive: Whatever this trip
had made him start to feel it had not been alive. It was good to
have the pressure gone. Good to know that what they were doing was
changing the world. Making it better.

Beth settled in next to him, Billy and
pearl a few feet away. Pearl was on her feet once more. They had
all been worried over her leg. It had seemed to Bear as though it
might kill her for a while, but the tide had turned and the
infection had let go. Beth and he had begun to fit, make sense of
their relationship and each other. They were past the attraction
and into the making it work part of the relationship, and it was
working.

“
A few days to load it all
up and then we should head back,” Bear said.

“
Maybe a little less drama
for a while,” Beth said from beside him. Her head was resting
against his chest and she turned her eyes up to his.

“
Maybe a little less drama
for a while,” he agreed.

“
Build a place,” Billy
added.

“
You, a home?” Pearl said
and laughed.

“
They started that place in
the park when we left... Might be established... Has to be by now,
at least a temporary place for winter,” Billy said.

“
Maybe,” Bear agreed. “I
saw a place on the other side of the mountain one day while I was
out looking things over. It's a few miles from the main cave, on
the eastern side, behind our ridge... Here,” he said. He leaned
forward as Beth sat up. He drew with a small stick: Lines to
represent their own ridge and valley, and another ridge that shot
off from their ridge in an El.