The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (3 page)

Every time the lightning flashed I
could see the street, or what had been the street. There was no
more street, not really. It was a river; wide, and it looked pretty
deep, all the opposite side of the street was gone now. No houses,
cars, telephone poles, satellite dishes. Nothing. It seemed like
the entire side of the street had washed away right down to the
river. The water roared past me - just a few feet from where my
porch had been - flattened out, and then turned into rapids
breaking away to crash into the Black river further down the hill.
That was when I realized it wasn’t just the other side of the
street that was gone. The other two blocks that had been between me
and the river were also gone.

Later on, the rain turned
to snow, but the lightning kept up.
Lightning in a snow storm
. How crazy
is that? By the morning of March 4
^th
, the river running past my
house was down to a trickle, but the snow was piling up. Down the
hill the Black was over her banks. There was nothing else to see, a
few solitary houses still standing as my own was. But there was no
one around anywhere. That’s when I got into the hard
stuff.

I drank myself to sleep, and when I
woke up I’d lost several hours. My watch still worked at that
point. When I walked to the front door, the first thing I noticed
was footprints in the snow. Three sets, two small, maybe kids or
women, one big, going just past my house, no more than three feet
from my house, where once upon a time in some other world my porch
had been, and I had slept through it. I yelled and screamed for a
half hour hoping that someone would hear me, but no one came. No
one yelled back and told me to shut up either. Just absolute
silence. No birds, just the roar of the swollen Black. Nothing
else.

I’ve thought about the day, the fourth,
a couple of times. Was it the fourth? The fifth? Did I sleep more
than a few hours? I don’t know. And that was the day my watch
stopped working, so I don’t know. One minute it was working, the
next it wasn’t. The face was blank.

There were a couple of more aftershocks
that day, and I began to wonder if my house would be standing much
longer. After all, nearly everything around me was destroyed
already. And, I thought, what if that was an aftershock? Like I had
thought the first quake was the real one and then the one the next
day was so much stronger. It made me realize how stupid I was to
still be in that house. And, I thought, no wonder no one is
answering when I yell. They were all smart enough to get away from
the buildings. Leave. And if I left also, I reasoned, I’d most
likely catch up to them, whoever they were, wherever they had gone.
That was when I had glanced at my watch and noticed that it had
stopped working.

I had been in the habit of looking at
my watch all day. Just nervous, I guess. I was positive that I had
just looked at it and it had been working. But, when had that been?
What time had it been? And when had it been that I had looked at
it? How long ago? All I could remember for sure was that the last
aftershock that had started me wondering had been at 2:57 P.M. I
wasn’t sure of anything after that. Even when I thought back on it
later, wondering what day it was, I wondered why I had never
thought to push the little date button to see what the date had
been. Or had I? Had I and then forgotten that I had? Had I only
remembered subconsciously that it was the fourth? Anyway, the watch
was dead. And what time was it? And where should I go? And how soon
would it be dark? After wasting time wondering about things like
that, things that were absolute bullshit in light of everything
else, I just jumped down into the snow and headed off towards
downtown.

There were a few buildings standing in
that direction. It was still snowing pretty hard, but I could see
the outlines of the buildings through the snow.

There were planes overhead
in the night. I know that sounds crazy, but I awoke to hearing
them. There was a strange smell in the air, and I was
thinking,
in my dream?
Maybe in my dream or maybe awake. Anyway, I was thinking crop
dusters. Like they were crop-dusting. Spraying something. It was
weird. Now I could see traces of blue...
powder?
Something on the snow, and it
made me remember the dream. But I pushed it away and walked. Too
much to see and comprehend as it was without worrying over bad
dreams.

Normally it’s no more than a fifteen
minute walk to the Square. Watertown has an old New England style
Public Square that is the center of downtown. I figured that if
anyone was still alive, that was where they would be.

In fact, I told myself, they probably
would have some buildings open for shelter. Fire Department passing
out blankets, bottled water, hot soup. I could see it so clearly in
my head. I was wrong, of course, but that’s a story for tomorrow.
My fingers are shot. Hey it would be easy to write this on my
computer keyboard, but computers are a thing of the past
now.

I’m warm. I’m dry. I’m pretty much
okay. I survived the day the world ended, but my fingers are sore
and I’m tired, so I’ll pick this up tomorrow.

Candace ~ March 8th

Fresh snow today. The whole world is
covered in clean, white snow. It makes it look like nothing ever
happened here.

I'm with a man named Tom. He's crazy
about me. I just can't feel the same. I could fake it, but I told
myself I'm not going to do that. But I can't keep on this way
either. It is too hard on him, too hard on me.

Bob and Jan Dove are also with us. I
don't know what I would do without Jan. She is level headed where I
am impulsive, a thinker where I tend to just act. A good balance.
Bob has an idea of rebuilding his peoples' lands. He's Native
American, and so is Jan. It sounded crazy when he first said it,
but after I thought about it, it began to make sense to
me.

Lydia is the other member of our party.
She hates me. That's because Tom wants me, and she wants Tom. Maybe
that will fix itself before I have to fix it by leaving and going
on my own.

Today we decided to see if
the city was any better on the other side of the river. It isn't.
We crossed the river, the
Black
river, on a railroad trestle. There is a traffic
bridge, and it looks passable, but it's clogged with cars and some
of those cars look purposely placed to block it off. That creeped
me out.

We walked across the trestle,
carefully, and went up State street. There's a store there, a
supermarket, and we found tracks in the snow. One person. A man I
would guess from the boot tread.

I can not tell you what that was like.
Seeing a footprint left by someone else. Someone else alive in this
whole mess. I felt connected to him. I can't say it or explain it
any better than that. Like a connection existed forever and I only
had to find it. I tried to explain it to Lydia but she just
shrugged. We have this thing with Tom between us though. She wants
him; he wants me. I don't want him. It could be so Goddamn simple,
but it isn't.

Except the footprints.
Maybe the footprints are the answer. I think they are. I believe
they are. We just need to find the person,
the man,
that goes with those
footprints and... And I don't know. I really don't. But I think
he'll know.

The only bad thing today,
we came across a dead man laying crumpled by the side of the road.
I could have sworn he moved, so I hurried to him. But as I got
closer, I could see that he was dead. Long dead. We stood for a
moment and then walked on. Later when we came back he was gone, and
I thought,
was
he
dead? Was he? But I know that he was. I suppose that wild dogs or
something got him. We didn't talk about it, but it bothered all of
us.

Mike ~ March 9th

Maybe it’s March ninth. I guess I
really don’t know. But that’s what I think it is, so that’s what
I’m going with.

It’s late. I spent today getting food,
canned stuff mostly. It was rough. Almost everything is flattened,
and what isn’t flattened is badly damaged. I spent about five hours
a few days ago digging my way into a supermarket on State Street.
The roof was down but held up by the tops of the aisle stacks, so I
was able to make my way through. I just had to be really careful of
broken glass. That was where I went back to today.

I had no flashlight at first, but I
managed to get a small flashlight and batteries. I had to take so
much stuff out of the front area of the store, that all the impulse
stuff they sell was right there, candy, little radios, and of
course flashlights and batteries. I tried a small portable radio.
Nothing but static on the A.M. and F.M. bands both. I brought it
back with me along with some extra batteries. I listened to it a
short while ago; still nothing. Maybe tomorrow.

I spent the day at the supermarket
digging out canned goods and bringing them back here.

Here is a cave. The cave is down in
back of the square, downtown as it’s called. I knew about it from
growing up here. It used to be bricked up. The quake took care of
that though. I was worried about the cave itself collapsing, but it
seems to be fine.

It’s only about a mile and a half from
here to the supermarket, but with no vehicle it’s slow going. I’ve
been piling stuff up on a large sled and making trips back and
forth.

I found several cars and trucks,
snowmobiles, but none of them will run. Most of them have no juice,
but even the ones that do just turn over but won’t fire up. Maybe
if I was a mechanic I could do something, but I’m not. So, it’s the
sled and a lot of muscle work.

I did notice today, after not going
there for two days, that no one else had been there either. No
tracks in the fresh snow. It’s depressing. No way can I be the only
freaking guy here, right? And that made me wonder, what the hell am
I writing this for? I mean, if there’s no one left, who will read
it? I guess those are questions for another day. Another day
because, truly, I don’t want to deal with them today.

So I spent my day getting food. There
are maybe two dozen buildings still standing downtown. But that’s
where I was when I left off writing yesterday, heading for
downtown, so I’ll pick it up from there.

When I got downtown there was no one
there, only the handful of buildings standing as I mentioned, and
two of those went down a short time later from an aftershock. The
Police department... Gone. The Fire department out Washington
Street… Gone. I know I walked out there. Ditto the high school. All
the old houses, the newspaper, the museum. Really, it’s all
gone.

There were some tracks, but how old
were they? I couldn’t tell. And I couldn’t tell where they were
headed either. I got pretty down about it and ended up walking back
down to the square and then down towards the river in back of the
square. There was a porn shop, still there. It seemed like the
dirtiest place I’d ever seen. I mean, why would a place like that
still be there, still be standing when almost nothing else
was?

Is that a statement or what? Hey, maybe
it is. But since I was down that far, I thought I’d take a look at
the river, and that made me think about the cave.

This whole area is limestone, caves
everywhere. This one just happened to be a big one.

It wasn’t hard to find it. It’s on an
old abandoned road below the level of the square, but a good
hundred feet or so above the level of the river. All the brick work
that had once closed it off had fallen. The cave itself seemed
okay. Some rock had come down, but not much. Most of the rock lying
around looked pretty old, like it had been there for some time.
Given the buildings, which were still falling, or the cave, I chose
the cave. It just seemed to make more sense.

It’s quite deep. I have no
idea how deep it goes and no inclination to follow it and see. The
front area is huge, and dry, more room than I could ever use, so
there’s no need for me to go into that darkness and find out how
deep it goes. And that’s funny, isn’t it? What is it that I’ll
need?
Might
need?
Could need? I don’t know. I do know I won’t be spending the rest of
my life living in a cave, that’s for sure. But it’s winter. I have
to stay somewhere for the next few months. Then maybe I’ll head
south if no one shows up to rescue me. I guess it would be me,
there’s no one else here. It shouldn’t be that way though. There
has to be more than me.

I spent the rest of the day looking
around. I walked all the way out to Arsenal Street as well as
Washington Street. The mall, or most of it, has collapsed. But I
should be able to get some stuff out of it. The interstate is car
wrecks and bodies everywhere. I could see it from the overpass. I
didn’t feel a need to go down there to see it in person. I didn’t
want to.

I hadn’t really seen many
bodies. Some at the mall, some at the supermarket, a few others
here and there, but there is so much ground, houses,
things
missing, that I
think the other people just got swallowed up by the quake. There is
a lot of raw earth. Most of the streets are messed up. The
interstate is like that in places, what I can see any way, but
close to Arsenal Street, it’s all wrecks and bodies, wrecked and
burned vehicles; and it smells horrible. I could smell it long
before I came up on the overpass. I’ve decided it will take a lot
to get me to go back out Arsenal Street again.