The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (25 page)

“
There’s a place farther
down the lot, the end of the lot. You’ll see where the slope down
to the River Road becomes more gradual... There used to be a road.
The road itself is gone, but it’s easily walked. You can send them
down that way, or I can come up,” Tom said.

Mike followed Candace through the
overgrown trees down to the old road bed. “You going to stick up
here?” Candace asked.

Mike nodded. “I think we ought to for
right now, who knows what’s next. Send Ronnie up if you can spare
him.”

Tom came into view down below and Mike
raised a hand to him. The two women looked drained, numb, probably
still in shock, Mike told himself. Candace leaned into him and
kissed him. “I’ll send Ronnie,” she told him. “I love
you.”

“
I love you too. Be
careful, and let me know what those two have to say.”

“
You know it,” Candace
said. She turned, and with the two women in front of her, she made
her way down through the trees to where Tom waited.

Mike stepped closer to the edge of the
trees and stared out at the square. There were spaces where the
buildings had collapsed, a huge area that had been undeveloped for
years. Most of the square was in sight from this end of the parking
lot.

His eyes moved across the jumbled and
leaning buildings, the vehicles that burned where they had crashed.
The square looked like a battleground. Greasy, billowing smoke hung
in the air like a black cloud descending on the downtown area. He
heard Ronnie coming up through the trees. He turned away from the
square and waited for him to top the rise, and then the two of them
walked back towards the opposite end of the parking lot where they
could watch the entrance to State Street, most of that end of the
square and both the edge of Factory Street and Mill Street as it
began its run across the damaged bridge to the north side of the
river.

“
What’s going on? Can you
see anything?” Ronnie asked.

“
Some. You’ll see in a few
minutes. What happened with the car?”

“
Dead. Got three more clip
rifles though.”

“
So they were down with Sin
and Death?”

“
Looks like it to me. Same
rifles, anyway.”

Mike was nodding. “I guess I knew
it.”

Tim and Lilly stepped out of the
shadows and nodded as Mike and Ronnie walked up.

“
Quiet,” Lilly said. Tim
nodded.

Mike handed one of the Machine pistols
to Ronnie.

“
Nice… Illegal, but nice,”
he said.

“
Takes standard Nine
Millimeter ammo.” Ronnie started to hand it back. Mike shook his
head. “Hang on to it,” he looked around at the parking lot. “I’m
convinced they’ll be back.”

Ronnie nodded. “Four up here?” he
asked.

“
Five. They killed one of
the women trying to escape.” Tim and Lilly had dragged her back
into the woods while he’d been gone. He had seen the vague shape
off in the thicker woods as he and Ronnie had walked up. “How many
in the car?”

“
At least five,” Ronnie
said.

“
Jesus… This is so stupid.”
Mike said. Ronnie nodded and then went back to watching the greasy
smoke rise up into the air.

Mike walked over to the edge of the
tree cover and looked down over the cliff. The road looked
deserted. He knew it wasn’t, but it looked that way. The four of
them all had the machine pistols now, he, Ronnie, Lilly and Tim.
They were better than the weapons they’d had. He wished they had
found some of their own. He whistled long and low, waited a few
seconds and then whistled once more. Bob stepped out of the shadows
behind one of the trucks and looked up. Mike motioned him over and
one by one he passed down the weapons they had brought up with
them.

“
Whoever needs them, Bob.”
Bob nodded, and a second later he was gone. Mike walked back
through the stunted trees towards the rear of the parking lot and
began to wait for whatever might come next.

~

Candace had Tom run up two of the
radios an hour later. Mike berated himself; he had never even
thought of it. A short time after that Janet Dove sent up food in
the form of energy bars and cold, tinned beef. A package of stale
cookies made a meal for the four of them, along with some bottled
water. It was quiet, so Tom stayed to talk for a few minutes before
he headed back down.

“
Those two women are okay,”
he said. “The one has a scratched up face, but Sandy says they’re
okay. They talked to Candace and Patty... Sandy… Janet as well,” he
added. “Those guys were trying to recapture them. Kidnap
them.”

Mike nodded. “That much I
guessed.”

“
They didn’t say anything
else?” Ronnie asked.

“
Yeah, they did. They asked
me to leave though. I guess it was really bad,” he
surmised.

Ronnie and Mike both nodded. “I imagine
it was,” Ronnie said quietly.

“
Guess I better go back,”
Tom said. He started to turn. “Oh,” he remembered, “Here,” He
reached into his pants pockets and pulled out two boxes of Nine
Millimeter shells. “I almost forgot. Candace would be
mad.”

“
Thank you, Tom,” Mike
said.

“
Alright,” Ronnie told him
as he turned to walk away. An hour later the second gunfight
began.

~ On Again ~

The first noise came from the north
side.

“
Trucks coming,”
the radio squawked. It sounded like
Bob.

“
From the north?” Ronnie
asked.

“
Yeah,”
Patty's voice answered.
“Sounds like at least three, coming from deep over on the
north side, like somewhere past the bridge, but coming
fast,”
she finished. The radio spat choppy
static.

Mike moved back through the trees to
see if he would be able to get much of a view towards the North
side, but the river cliffs and the trees and brush that lined both
sides of the Old River Road blocked his view.

He walked back to where Ronnie stood
waiting just inside the trees watching the parking lot
quietly.

Ronnie looked up as Mike made his way
to the edge of the trees and the view of the parking
lot.

“
I was hoping for a better
view, but it’s no good,” Mike explained.

Ronnie nodded. He pressed the radio’s
send button. “Let us know,” He said.

“Coming
now,”
Patty said,
“Coming fast.”

The sounds of the vehicles came clearly
to Mike and Ronnie on top of the cliffs.

“
Four,”
Patty said,
“Just blew by
us heading for the square… They’re all small cars,”
She finished.

“
Got you,” Ronnie told
her.

A split second later they heard the
cars gearing down to slow as they entered the square. But instead
of entering the square, they braked hard, drifted right, tires
screaming, and blew into the parking lot.

“
Fuck,” Ronnie
muttered.

“
Fuck is right,” Mike
agreed under his breath.

“
They’re up here,” Mike
said into the radio. “We’ll get back to you.”

All four cars sped into the parking lot
and spread out; taking up what looked to be predetermined
positions. It was obvious that none of the four realized that the
four of them were inside the tree line watching them. One small,
black Toyota screeched to a halt no more than thirty feet away from
where Lilly and Tim were. Mike and Ronnie were just beyond that.
Lilly and Tim both raised their machine pistols and trained them on
the car.

The car was a four door model, four men
inside of it, one driving, the other three hanging partway out of
the windows, machine pistols in their hands, looking hard at the
parking lot.

“
Let’s move into the tree
line a little deeper,” Mike mouthed as Lilly looked over at him. He
motioned with his hands to make his point. Lilly nodded and Mike
saw her bend and whisper into Tim’s ear. A moment later they both
began to fade back into the tree line. Mike and Ronnie faded back
about ten feet themselves, hoping to disappear into the tree
line.

A radio crackled inside the car and a
voice spoke. The driver reached down, came back with a hand held
radio unit and began to speak.

Mike thumbed a small switch on his own
radio, switching between the two channels his radio received and
transmitted on. No voices came through on either channel. Almost
too late Mike remembered to cut the volume on his own radio. Ronnie
followed suit. A bare second after that Bob’s voice came through
the speaker. Ronnie pressed his radio tightly to his ear and
listened carefully, nodding as he did.

He turned to Mike. “They’re picking
them up on a C.B. in one of the trucks. They were talking as they
were on their way over, still are,” Ronnie said in a whisper. He
spoke softly into his radio as Mike finally remembered to put his
own radio to his ear.

“
No. Don’t send Tom.
They’re here, right here in the parking lot.” He turned to Mike.
“They were going to send Tom with a hand held C.B.” he
whispered.

Mike heard the acknowledgment on his
own radio.

“
Seems like a bad idea with
them so close,” Ronnie whispered. Mike nodded in
agreement.

“
I wonder why the other
side isn’t using radios,” Mike whispered.

“
Maybe they are,” Ronnie
said. He left the balance unsaid. The pair Mike and Ronnie were
using were F.M. This group was using C.B. What else was there, Mike
wondered? If they were listening, they could be picking up on one
or both of the radio systems. Mike watched the same thoughts go
through Ronnie’s mind. They both shrugged and focused their
attention back on the parking lot and the cars that sat
idling.

The sun was close to sinking in the
North East, behind them as they faced the parking lot, putting any
visual advantage in their favor. No bright sunlight in their
eyes.

At the edge of the square through a gap
in the buildings, Mike thought he saw a shadow move. He pointed,
directing Ronnie’s attention to it. He turned to alert Tim, but his
eyes were already locked on the same place. Mike turned his eyes
back to where he had seen the movement. A second or so later, a man
slipped slowly around the edge of the building and looked sidelong
into the parking lot. He was still deep in shadow, probably hard
for the men in the cars at ground level to see, but easy for Mike
and the others to see. The car closest to them would have their
view blocked by the buildings. The man moved quickly from his
shadowy hiding place, surveyed the parking lot in its entirety once
more and then faded back into the shadows again.

In the dark area of shadow, it was
nearly impossible to see the man. The sun glinted off something in
his hand. One of the men in the black car caught the glint of
sunlight nearly at the same time that Mike and Ronnie did and
opened up. The second gunfight began, and the man in the darkened
alleyway who had hidden himself so well, became the first
casualty.

Within seconds fighters appeared in and
around the Square. One running figure stopped, lit the rag that
hung from the neck of the bottle in his hand, and then tossed it at
one of the cars on the far side of the parking lot. The bottle hit
the roof line, shattered, and flaming gasoline splashed onto both
men hanging from the rear windows. Within seconds everything inside
the car was burning. The driver accelerated, maybe thinking he
could somehow outrun the flames, but the speed turned the flames
into a blow torch. The car continued to accelerate, flaming like a
torch. It jumped the curbing, plowed into a tilted section of
sidewalk and became airborne. It crashed nose first into one of the
plate glass windows of the porn shop that graced the shadowy west
end of the parking lot, and the whole lower floor became an
inferno.

The car closest to them began to open
up on the bottle tosser with everything they had. They had delayed,
frozen as the car followed its flaming destiny into the porn shop.
Now they were firing on anything that moved in or around the
square.

In the distance, they could hear the
sound of engines coming closer, big V8 engines, not the small
insect whine of the cars the men from the north side were
driving.

One of the cars backed up and then took
a running start at a wide sidewalk that cut up to the square. The
undercarriage scraped across the concrete as the car flew over the
curbing and slammed down onto the concrete sidewalk, showering the
walkway with sparks. The car raced up the wide sidewalk toward the
square, careening from side to side as it went. The occupants hung
from the windows spraying automatic gunfire into the surrounding
buildings as they went.

One of the other cars began to chase
after the car heading for the square when a group in one of the
buildings on the square side of the parking lot opened up on it.
They heard a steady plink, plink, plink as the bullets found their
way into the cars thin body, then a heavier coughing bark a split
second later as a bigger gun found it.