The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (50 page)

The Hummers, sitting a little lower,
threw the water up in a spray as they crossed it. It rushed against
the undercarriage, but even they had no trouble. "Yahoo," Jeff
called over the radio as he brought his last vehicle
across.

The rain was picking up, and Mike
hunched against the drops as he stepped through the rain and found
a side door into the closest hanger. He emerged a moment later and
walked over to a longer hanger and entered the side door. A few
minutes later, he called on the radio.

“
This one is empty, but the
doors are jammed. I'll need a little help,” he said.

Ronnie and Tom both jumped down from
their trucks and sprinted through the driving rain to the side
door. One of the heavy steel doors had warped in the opening. It
flexed as all three men threw their weight into it, but it held.
Then suddenly it gave way and swung open with a loud bang. The
other door quickly followed.

“
Bring them in,” Mike
called over the radio.

Candace slid across the seat of the
truck, flicked on the headlights, dropped the shift lever into
drive and pulled slowly into the building. The interior was huge,
looking even bigger on the inside than it had on the outside. There
was absolutely nothing inside. She pulled towards the back, backed
around and parked the big truck. She killed the lights, shut of the
motor and stepped down from the cab. The other trucks drove in
behind her.

~

Halfway back in the dim interior, a
large wood stove set out from one wall. A pipe ran from the stove
into the side wall and then to the outside. Janet opened it, blew
at the dust and looked around for wood.

“
We'll need wood,” she
said. She looked the stove over. “It's not made for cooking on, but
the top's flat and we can make it work. Find me some wood, and I'll
get everything else ready,” she said.

~Bad Pennies Again~

Psycho arched her body above Shitty,
moaned, peeked from one squinted eye and saw he was ready. She
faked another moan, thrust her hips harder and then finished with a
loud groan. She waited a half second, tensed her body, faked heavy
breathing, then rolled off him.

“
You're so good, Psycho,”
he said. There was no faking in the heavy breaths that he drew.
“Was it good for you? Was it?” he asked.

“
Like, how could it not be,
Shitty. You take me all the way. Every time, Baby. Every
time.”

He smiled and laid back while she
quickly cleaned up with some paper towels she had found in one of
the rest rooms. Then she leaned back into him and let him talk. It
was always the same. How tough he was. How well he could fuck. How
big his cock was. And that was a joke, because... He interrupted
her thoughts. “...You think?” He was asking.

She had no idea what he had said. “I
don't know, Baby, explain it to me better. You know I don't always
get things like you do. You're so smart.” She kissed his cheek,
rubbed her breasts against his arm - he liked that - then
waited.

“
I was saying,” he said,
clearly perturbed that all of her attentions had not been on him.
She rubbed against him again, and he stopped and smiled.

“
All I was saying, Psycho,
is I think I've been showing Death that I'm a thinking dude. You
know, not like Murder. You know, today? He couldn't even notice a
gunshot wound, couldn't tell it from what the wolves ate. That will
add up. He'll put me ahead of Murder. Soon, you'll see,” he said.
“And you'll be sleeping with number two,” he finished.

I already am, she thought. “Oh, Shitty,
that makes me so hot,” she said. “Just thinking about
it.”

~

Shitty could never go more than once.
He was nineteen years old and weighed two hundred and forty pounds.
Five foot nine: Ate candy bars all day long, smoked like a chimney,
and she was surprised he hadn't dropped dead or run out of breath
when he had run across the field earlier in the day. Hopefully he
would the next time, she thought.

He reached over, squeezed one breast
and tugged at the piercing in the nipple. Something he thought
turned her on, but actually hurt and scared her a bit too. He might
be simple, but he was nuts. She always joked to herself that it
should be him who was called Psycho. Only, really, when she thought
about it, it was no joking matter.

He had been with an older woman, in her
thirties when they had first picked her up. She was still Cindy
then, only Shitty said it was spelled with an S. Sindy. He had his
eyes on her, marked her out immediately. He was on her from the
first day.

She had gotten really
wasted drinking hard liquor with Johnny Red a few nights later and
had gotten into a fight with Shitty's woman,
Bitch
. Shitty had named her himself.
He had the idea that a woman was owned by the man, like a dog. And
so the man chose the name, he had told them seriously.

She had flipped out on Bitch, bitten
her face and broken her nose before Shitty had dragged her off her,
and he had given her the name Psycho.

A few nights later, Shitty had taken
her into one of the bedrooms in the house that they had been
sharing. It was where he and Bitch had been sleeping. He had kicked
her out of the bed and told her to get lost. She had come back at
him, kicking and clawing, and he had simply pulled his gun and shot
her.

She had seemed so surprised as her
fingers came up and found the hole in her chest. She had raised her
fingers up to her eyes to see the blood that was there. She had
tried to breath for what seemed like minutes, but was surely less
than a minute, making an awful clicking, swallowing sound. And then
she had fallen down dead. And Shitty had taken Psycho right there
on the bed while she had still lain dead upon the floor. After the
sex, he had dozed off and he had awakened. He had dragged Bitch by
one foot through the house and thrown her out on the front
lawn.

Psycho could not forget that. Nor the
way no one came running to find out what the shot was about, or
said a word when Shitty had dragged her from the falling down house
or when he had tossed her body into the river the next morning
after leaving her in the yard overnight.

Shitty was simple, but he was crazy and
she was taking no chances with him. She moved her body now, once
he'd stopped pulling at her piercing, so it was slightly out of
reach. No matter how the rest of her life went, she was looking for
the end of it. She had no illusions about it; it was going to end
up badly. She could feel it.

~

A heavy canvas tarp covered a neat
stack of wood on the side of the hanger. The front had a small
overhang above the doors, so they left the doors ajar and ran back
and forth until most of the wood was piled by the stove. A couple
of gas lanterns lit the inside up, and once the wood stove was
fired up, it took the chill out of the air.

There were two doors, both of which had
overhangs, and Ronnie and Mike drew the first watch. They helped to
close up the main doors once more, and then each of them took a
thermos of coffee with them for their post. They stood under the
overhangs, trying to stay dry as the rain poured down.

~

Bob came up to Mike later on when he
came back in. "Truck's odometer says only about a hundred and
twenty miles today," he said.

“
Yeah, well, the roads were
worse, and... Jessica, and now this. We could've gone another
couple hours,” Mike said. “But I just didn't see it
happening.”

“
Yeah, except we couldn't
see the road,” Bob said.

“
Yeah, there's that.” He
looked at Bob questioningly.

“
Channel seventeen... On
the C.B.?” he asked.

Mike nodded.

“
Well, the thing is, there
was some pretty regular talk earlier. Garbled, but regular. And it
stopped, but, well... The last one's we heard about on seventeen
were those nut jobs back in Watertown,” Bob said.

“
Couldn't be them, all this
way, could it?” Mike asked.

“
I wouldn't think so,
unless, well, unless they were traveling,” he said.

“
No,” Mike said.

“
Yeah, I don't think so
either. But channel seventeen, hell, it could be. Probably only
skip. But, I thought I should tell you,” Bob finished. He looked
miserable.

“
I think, just to be safe,
I'll listen in hard on seventeen tomorrow while I'm driving.” Mike
said.

“
My thoughts exactly,” Bob
said.

~Candace's journal~

I haven't written in three days. So
much has happened. A man attacked me, tried to rape me. I didn't
even know him, and I don't know what motivated him. I don't
understand it at all.

Arlene shot and killed him. That was
horrible as well. So many people were affected by it, not just me,
and I can't see when it will ever really be over for any of us. Can
anyone forget something like that? Not hardly, so I guess it will
always be with me. But I didn't bury it. I have Patty, I have Mike,
I have love to help me understand. Some women don't.

Today Jessica died. She had been
feeling down, ill, but she insisted she was fine. Maybe the shock
of the way the world is now, what happened to me even, but we won't
know exactly what happened or made it happen. Sandy said she
arrested, her heart stopped. We buried her beside the highway,
somewhere here in West Virginia. Not far behind us.

Things we know:

We have a place to go, we're going to
get there.

The days are still about 26 hours long.
Maybe that is the new day.

The destruction is widespread and
really bad. We ran into a lake the other day where there was not
supposed to be one. We could easily tell that as the road ran right
into the water.

There's a lot of skip on the C.B. That
tells us there are other people scattered around the world, at
least the United States. So we're not alone at all. Were just
scattered.

Lilly is a big one for prayer. I'm not
usually, but the last few days I've been praying God will get us
through all of this.

~Nell's journal~

I have found myself more and more
grateful for the people we have over the last couple of days. One
of ours was nearly killed, and worse. She was only saved because
another person happened along. She had to kill the man to stop
him.

How does someone, that man, get so far
away from reason?

We lost another of us today. She had a
heart attack. I've seen more bad stuff in the last few weeks than
I've seen in my whole life.

But I have Molly. We have hopes and
dreams. I guess after what happened to Candace, so out of the blue,
I worry something could happen to Molly. I know that's
unreasonable. I know it is. Even so, I find myself praying to God
much more often than I used to.

~Arlene's journal~

I had to kill someone. It's really all
that I can think of. Some low life made me kill him. And I wonder
if he has any idea of the damage he has left behind.

~The Army~

Donita sat watching the children as
they lay dead before her. Soon the power would come over them and
they would rise from death into the world of the Walkers, her
world

The boy sat waiting beside her. They
had finished the woman, and then the old woman. Neither would rise
again.

The boy was a good soldier. The two
before her, twin girls by the look, or so close to twins as for it
not to matter, should be good choices too. Strong, intact. Their
bodies would turn faster, as the boy's was already doing. Her own
body had taken much longer. Much longer before the rotting flesh
had begun to change to something else, something not exactly living
tissue, but that was nourished by dead tissue. That new flesh was
stronger, more resilient, self healing... Probably other things
that she had not yet figured out.

Her eyes told her when the horse left.
To where, she did not know. But she also knew it was not her
concern.

The boy's flesh already seemed to have
made some of that change. He was completely devoted to her.
Unquestioning. That is what she wanted. The girls would be as well.
She knew that instinctively. She could smell it on them. They were
meant to leave that world for this world. It was a gift, really. It
was so unnecessary to have to go through all the pleading and
begging in the leaving of that life, she thought. This one was so
much better. This one did not have an absolute end. This one could
be forever. And forever could not even be measured.

Chapter six

Fight & Flight

~ April 1st~

The rain stopped in the early morning,
just before dawn, and Janet had everyone fed before the sun was
fully up. The trucks were loaded and on the highway just as the
first hint of gray began to creep into the sky and the southern
horizon began to glow.

The sun rose high and bright into a
clear sky. Steam rose off the highway and the trees as the morning
warmed up. The roadway was in better shape, except a few areas
where rushing water had cut through the pavement, and they made
good time. They found themselves running closer to the
Appalachians, through the foothills, and although they saw no road
signs, Bob was sure they had crossed over into Kentucky.