The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (5 page)

We went back to the river and began
looking along the banks on that side. I couldn't figure where he
had gone.

I backtracked to the store, thinking I
must have missed him, missed something anyway. On the way back, I
saw him crossing the end of Public Square. I practically screamed
out loud, but he didn't hear me. By the time we got there, he was
gone.

The day just started to
slide away. I began to think I wouldn't find him at all. It
depressed me. It was Bob who smelled smoke. All we had to do was
follow the smoke, and we found him.
Bob
found him. How do you follow
smoke? Have you ever tried? I mean, if I could see it in the air,
sure. But I couldn't. Bob knew how to follow it anyway.

I guess there's a lot more that I could
say about today but I'm not going to say it now. I'll say this
though, I want him. I want him, and Tom knows it. It's like Tom
knew it would turn out this way. Jan knew how I felt, knew how it
would be. She told me that today. She said she could see it in me
last night. Like this is the way it's supposed to be.

Lydia knows as well. She's happy about
it. I saw her face when she figured it out. She looked from me to
Mike and back. Then she did it again, this puzzled look on her
face, and then she smiled, looked at me and nodded. I think she's
just biding her time now. I guess I am too.

Michael Collins. Mike. I think I
already wrote his name. I don't know what happens next. How to make
it happen. I'm no good at that sort of thing. I've never done it.
And my little notebook here, my only friend through all of this,
along with Jan, can't help me with that. I can write it here, look
at it, but that doesn't realize it.

I still have my father's gun. That has
also been my friend the last few days. But it can't help me either,
unless I shoot Tom. I guess that's not funny. Tom never liked my
gun. It bothered him. Not ladylike? Something like that I think.
Mike wasn't shocked at all except to say he should have already
gotten one and didn't. It didn't intimidate him in other
words.

Tomorrow is March eleventh. I would
have started a new life tomorrow. Maybe one I wasn't meant to
start. I feel like... I don't know. To be honest, I feel like I'm
just a dumb girl pretending to be a woman, a grown up. Does
nineteen know everything? No. I don't want to pretend at this. I
want to get things right. I don't know what's next. But, does
anybody?

Mike ~ March 12th

Things have been really crazy the last
few days. I’m not alone anymore. It’s funny because that’s the last
thing I wrote, and two days later it’s like an answer to prayer. It
happened later on the evening of the tenth. Oh, and it was the
tenth. Tom has an old fashioned wind up watch. So does Candace.
And, they’ve both kept track. Kept them wound up too. But, in
another way it isn’t the twelfth today at all because the days and
nights, or the rotation of the Earth that makes the days and
nights, isn’t the same at all. It’s much slower. It’s taking about
twenty-eight hours to cycle through. But last week, it was up to
almost thirty six hours. And none of us knows why, except it slowed
up and it’s now starting to get back to a normal length of time to
cycle through a night and day. So, it’s not really the twelfth, and
they’ve just been keeping track of the days as they pass, same as
I’ve been; except for the day I thought I’d lost.

Anyway, as usual, I’m getting ahead of
myself. Let me start from the start; I was organizing stuff. There
is a warehouse down closer to the river full of wooden pallets. I
went down there a few days ago, box upon box. I have no idea what’s
in them. I figured sometime I’d just open a few up and see. Maybe
it would be something useful, maybe not. What’s useful now is
radically different from what used to be useful.

Anyway I noticed all the pallets.
Pallets everywhere. Some full, some piled high with stuff, but a
lot of empty ones; so I went back down with the sled and made a few
trips back and forth to the cave so I could stack the canned stuff
on them, so they’re not sitting on the floor. I was putting them in
the back of the cave. I was so wrapped up in stacking the canned
goods that I never even heard them until Candace cleared her
throat, I guess to get my attention.

It scared me bad. I thought about the
gun I had never bothered to go and get, and a lot of other bad
stuff. It went through my mind so fast. The first thing in my head
was, the wolves got me! They sneaked up on me! Stupid, I know. I
knew it was a person, but my head still insisted wolf. It didn’t
last though, and my reaction scared them too. Lydia said I had a
can of peas in my hand, and she was sure I was going to bean
Candace in the head with them. For some reason she found it funny
that I would bean someone in the head with a can of peas, and she
giggled. I just felt embarrassed, and glad I didn’t throw the can.
I set it down on the stack and took a few deep breaths instead. We
all ended up laughing our asses off. Nervous energy. Release, I
guess, or something like that. And then, we all began to talk at
once.

They had known about me for two days.
They had seen that someone was going in and out of the supermarket.
They were going out to one on the north side, the other side of the
river from where I was. For some reason I hadn’t thought to cross
the river. They had already been on the other side to begin with,
and even though the main bridges seemed too damaged to be trusted,
the railroad trestle seemed solid and unharmed to them, so they
crossed over on that to get to my side. I was impressed; that is an
open trestle, a long way down to the water.

Because the snow on the asphalt was
melting, they couldn’t figure out where I was going when I left the
market. They were actually going back across the river when Candace
happened to look over her shoulder toward the opposite bank and
happened to catch me going into the cave. She had thought to yell,
but over the sound of the rapids, she couldn’t get anyone around
her to hear her, let alone me.

Once they were across, she talked to
Tom; Tom pretty much was their leader (I don’t know if I like that.
Do we need leaders?), and they decided to come back the next day,
which was two days ago, and see if they could find me. They didn’t
know about the cave. Candace had thought I was just climbing the
rock above the river. They searched along the back of the Public
Square, or what’s left of it, and down towards Coffeen Street. If
they had come back down one more road towards the river, they
would’ve found the cave then. Maybe they hadn’t realized there was
a road there at all; so they just followed the path of the river,
thinking I was living in one of the fallen down buildings along the
banks.

They had seen me from quite a way off,
crossing the square as they were heading back. It looked to them
like I was heading for the north side, maybe crossing one of the
bridges, but by the time they got there, I was gone. They even
began to wonder if I had seen them and hidden on purpose, maybe out
of fear. They had searched for a while and then, just when they had
been about to quit for the day, Bob realized that he could smell
smoke. As soon as he said it, everyone else realized they had
smelled it all along as well. After that, it didn’t take long to
find the cave. They just followed the smell of smoke down to the
lower road and found the cave.

So that was that, and now we are six.
Tom, Thomas Evans, he was their leader as I said. He’s an older
guy, in his late thirties. Used to be a truck driver.

Candace Loi (Don’t call her Candy. I
don’t know why.). She’s nineteen and was visiting her grandparents.
She was from Syracuse. I thought she was with Tom. I think Tom
thought so as well.

Bob and Jan Dove. Bob is a
little older than Jan, in his fifties, and he said he is a
mechanic. Jan does,
did
, data processing.

And Lydia. Her real name is Marcia
George. Lydia is her middle name. She said she always liked Lydia
better. She was still in school, local college. I guess she's the
same age as Candace, nineteen.

And last but not least, me.

We spent all of yesterday getting their
stuff from across the river and bringing it over to the cave. I
thought that was weird. Why go get stuff anyway? You can have
anything you want. It’s all free. But in another way I guess I
understand. We’ve lost everything. We want to hang on to what
little we still do have. We’re all going to stay here. And we
talked about what’s next, and what we know about what
happened.

I said I had been kind of planning to
leave once spring came. Head south or west, somewhere where I
wouldn’t have to worry about winter. Tom said it may be that, where
it would normally have been warmer, it won’t be anymore. He said it
depends on what happened. None of us really know. He thinks it
might be smarter to stay here. We could stock up this cave. We
could even hunt. He said he’s sure there are deer around. Bob
agreed with him, at least on there being deer around.

I told them about the footprints by my
house. They said they had seen footprints as well. They had gone
out Coffeen Street and seen the tracks of three or four people
going in and out of a small store there. They had called out, but
no one had answered. They had had second thoughts about calling out
too. They weren’t armed. What if someone shot at them?

That brought my original thoughts to
mind about a weapon. I mentioned the sporting goods store, and we
all agreed to make a trip out there soon.

We talked about cars and trucks and
agreed it would be good to get an SUV or truck of some kind if we
could find one that will run, as they might be the only vehicles
that could drive around as bad as things are torn up. They have
also tried starting a few vehicles with no success. I mentioned my
electronic brain idea, and Tom said he had thought of the same
thing. Turns out he’s also a mechanic. I guess I can see why they
chose him to lead. I feel kind of useless around the guy though. We
agreed to try finding an older vehicle. Tom thinks our chances of
getting one running are good. We’ll see what we can
find.

The first night together was good. The
best I’ve slept since this thing started. Just not being alone, you
know?

I guess I’ll end on that
note...

CHAPTER THREE

To Live Again

~March 12th~

Mike closed his notebook and stuffed it
down into his pack. Looking around the cave, he was surprised how
different a few more warm bodies could make it. It didn’t seem as
cold, so oppressively quiet, so echo filled with any kind of sharp
noise, so… so different. But different in a good way.

Candace had been watching from across
the cave where she had made a little area for herself. She hadn’t
wanted to interrupt while Mike was writing, but now that he seemed
finished, she walked over to him.

“
This was really nice of
you,” she said as she walked up. “We were staying in that old
school building. None too stable. Last night was the best sleep
I’ve had in a while.”

“
Funny,” Mike replied, “I
was thinking the same thing. For me it was just having others
around. People.”

Candace smiled. She’s beautiful, Mike
thought. He wasn’t normally a fan of tattoos, but she had some sort
of tribal stuff that snaked up under her shirt sleeve. Just a hint
of ink where her shirt didn’t quite meet the top of her Levi's made
him wonder just exactly where the ink ended. She caught his eyes
and smiled again.

“
Mind?” She asked,
gesturing at the ground beside him.

“
No, sit down,” Mike
smiled. “I have no manners at all. How long does it take to
devolve? I guess a little over a week.” He smiled again.

She laughed as she sat down. The
silence stretched out for a few seconds, each of them looking
around the cave as the others talked or settled in for the night.
They both spoke at once.

“
Sorry,” Candace said and
laughed.

“
No, really. It’s that
devolved thing again. Go ahead.”

She fixed her eyes on him. “I was just
wondering what you were planning on doing. I mean, have you thought
about leaving? I know you spoke a bit about it yesterday when you
were talking to Tom. But I could see you weren’t quite ready to
fall in with the Tomites yet.” She lowered her voice for the
last.

Mike looked at her levelly. “Yeah… I
guess it does show. I don’t dislike him. I don’t even disagree with
what he said. I just… I just don’t know. We don’t click, know what
I mean?”

“
Yeah, I do.” Candace
answered. “It’s the same with me. I can think. I don’t need someone
to do it for me.”

“
Exactly,” Mike agreed.
“But it’s a little more too, like Alpha male shit. This is my
tribe. Me chief.” Mike finished in a near whisper.

Candace giggled but quickly clamped a
hand over her mouth while nodding her head in agreement.

Mike continued. “I’m not really an
Alpha male type of guy,

but I’m not a dumb sheep
either.”

“
Me either,” Candace
agreed, her giggles under control. She fixed him with her serious
eyes once more. “So what will you do?”

“
Probably like I said, like
everyone else said, leave. But I don’t see why the south or the
west wouldn’t be a good direction to go in. We’ll all see, I guess,
as spring comes on, or as…”