The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (53 page)

~

Candace rummaged around in the closest
pickup truck and came up with a first aid kit and a tube of
antibiotic cream. In the back seat of the second truck she came up
with some clean clothes and a pair of boots that were close to the
right size.

Cindy walked the dirt path down to the
creek, staying behind Candace. Up ahead, the moonlight reflected
off the water, rippling across the surface with the current's
flow.

Candace turned, “Okay,” she said,
“let's see.”

Cindy pulled her shirt off over her
head and Candace gasped. She had told her that both men had beaten
and abused her, but she had no idea it would be so bad. Healing
scabs that looked suspiciously like bite marks graced one shoulder
and part of one of her breasts, rusting safety pins in each nipple,
and on her stomach Shitty's name had been carved into the flesh.
Murder had x-ed it out and carved his own name below it.

Cindy began to cry, shaking with the
sobs. Candace took her in her arms and held her. When she was able,
Candace helped her with the cuts and bruises, removing the rusty
safety pins as she went.

~

“
So they're down to six?”
Mike asked. He looked at Cindy. She looked like an ordinary young
woman now without the excessively short baby T and the too tight
jeans, piercings and boots. Her eyes told a different story though.
Puffy, bloodshot and careful. Much more careful than someone her
age should ever have to be.

“
Six,” Cindy repeated, “But
maybe some others got hurt. I heard Murder saying they hit somebody
else. He might have been talking about Murder's truck though. And,
Chloe, she ran after Murder, and I didn't hear no...
any
shots, so I don't
know about her,” she told him.

Candace had gone back up the hill with
Ronnie and Jeff. Mike picked up the V.H.F. radio and called. “Did
you see someone else running away from the first truck?” he
asked.

“
None of us stayed,” Ronnie
said. “That other girl must have made it back to one of the other
trucks though. She's not around here, unless she's well hidden.
Seems we would have seen her though,” Ronnie finished.

“
Okay. Just keep an eye
out,” Mike said.

“
Oh yeah,” Ronnie
said.

But it was three hours before they came
again...

~

“
Mike,” Candace's voice
came through, not much more than a whisper, “We hear the trucks,
but we don't see them... Too dark...” She had the volume down, and
held the radio to one ear in order to hear his reply.

“
I hear them. Just be ready
for anything,” he told them.

“
Got them,” Ronnie said. He
had been looking through the night scope, like all the rest of
them, and he had spotted some movement on the side of the highway
about three hundred yards away. Two trucks were slowly idling along
the edge of the tree line.

The skies had clouded over again, and
there was little moonlight. It was hard to see the two trucks
against the backdrop of the dark trees. The sound was all they had
to go by, and that was deceptive, sounding as if it came from
everywhere... and nowhere.

“
Yeah... We got them,”
Candace said now. “They're moving right next to the tree line...
idling along... real slow. Unsure Jeff and I can get them from
here.”

The radio stayed silent for a beat or
two longer than she thought that it should. “You hear me, Mike?”
she asked.

“
Yeah, better do it...
Better do it, only make it count. I don't want to get into a war
with these guys with those machine pistols, you know?” Mike
asked.

Candace cursed herself “Damn it, Mike.
There's a whole gym bag full of clips and rifles down by the first
truck. Damn it,” she said.

“
Yeah, Cindy just told me.
We have several, but more would be nice. I'm sending David. You
cover him; he'll go down and get them,” Mike said.

“
They're really close,”
Candace said, but just as she said that, both trucks stopped. They
simply sat idling by the tree line.

Less than a minute later David slipped
by them and over the hill. He worked his way down to the truck in
the ditch. Ronnie and Jeff tracked him with their night scopes,
while Candace kept her scope focused on the trucks. They appeared
to be doing nothing, just sitting there.

David was back a few minutes later with
a large canvas bag full of rifles. He stopped as Candace and the
others opened it, each taking a machine pistol and extra clips,
then David moved off with the bag back to the camp. The trucks
continued to sit idling by the tree line.

~

“
I don't like it,” Candace
said ten minutes later. She kept popping her scope up to her eye,
but like the other two, she found little to see. She could only
glimpse a vague outline of someone in the interior of the first
truck, what looked like the driver, sitting... waiting. For what,
she wondered.

“
They're still sitting,”
she whispered to Mike over the radio.

“
You think you can hit them
from there?” Mike asked.

“
Yeah,” Candace answered,
“but, hit what? The front truck is blocking the other truck, and I
really can't see into the interiors,” she finished.

Just as she finished, she saw a shadow
move at the edge of the woods down by the road that went into the
encampment. She swung the scope quickly down just in time to see
four shapes come from the woods and run quietly down the road. She
squeezed off three fast shots, glad to see the trailing runner
fall. She snatched up the radio.

“
They fooled us! They're
sneaking up the road, coming at you now!” Candace
yelled.

She turned back to the vehicles and
opened up on the front vehicle blowing the windshield inward. But
what had looked like a driver was just the raised head rest on the
back of the seat.

“
Come on,” she said as she
jumped to her feet, “We'll come up the row behind them.”

Ronnie and Jeff jumped up and scrambled
after her, running down the hillside for the park road
entrance.

She was nearly at the road when two new
shadows stepped from the trees into the road. She dove for the
ground as their machine pistols barked fire in her
direction

~

As she hit the ground, she rolled hard
to her left and came up on her elbows, the rifle in her hands. The
machine pistol banged against her side on its strap.

Behind her, back towards the camp, the
sound of heavy gunfire came to her. She drew a bead on the one
remaining shadows - the other one had gone somewhere - squeezed the
trigger, and the shadow dropped into the road. She drew a bead on
the second shadow lying in the roadway and snapped off two more
quick shots. The shadow didn't move. It was either dead already, or
she had missed, and this close, she was sure she hadn't
missed.

“
Ronnie,” she called into
the darkness.

“
Yeah, right here,” Ronnie
answered.

“
Jeff?”

Silence...

She raised her voice,
“Jeff?”

But only silence greeted
her.

“
Fuck it. We got to go,
Ronnie. Cover me; I'll go first. If nothing happens when I hit the
road, I'll turn and cover you,” she told him. Gunfire was still
heavy from the direction of the camp.

“
Got you. Go,” Ronnie
said.

Candace took a deep breath, tensed, and
came up running. She made the road, encountering no resistance at
all. Ronnie was up and moving before she even motioned to him. She
waited for a second, wondering what had happened to Jeff, and then
Ronnie was there and they were running off down the road, covering
opposite sides of the road and the shadowy trees as they
went.

The gunfire began falling off as they
closed in on the camp. That only made Candace worry more. Why had
both her and Jeff gone to the hilltop? They were the two best,
leaving no good shots in the camp. She slowed, and Ronnie matched
her pace, really only a fast walk now, then a slow walk, and then
they split up, taking opposite sides of the road, creeping tree to
tree.

A shadow popped up directly ahead of
Ronnie and fired a burst into the camp. Ronnie fired back at point
blank range and the shooter collapsed. They both faded back into
the trees.

Candace squatted behind the cover of a
large pine and whispered into the VHF. “We're coming up behind you,
copy?” she asked.

Nothing... Then a quick click of a mic
button.

She clicked her own mic button once in
answer, stood up and began moving tree to tree once
more.

Cindy had said there were ten total.
That left six or seven depending on what had happened to the one
Cindy had called Chloe. They had killed two by the road and one
here. She had only seen four come down this way, that left three or
four depending on where the girl had gone.

As she was thinking, she nearly walked
right into another one of them crouching behind some bushes. She
didn't hesitate but walked up and fired a quick burst into their
back. Not even realizing it was a young woman her own age, until
she fell backwards, and Candace caught a quick glimpse of her face
as she went down.

A burst of gunfire came from somewhere
up ahead and ripped into the trees next to her. She dove to the
ground and rolled several times. She rolled up on to her feet and
only realized she'd been either hit by a bullet or something else
when she felt blood running from her forehead and into her left
eye. She wiped it away and scanned the surrounding trees carefully.
Two or three left, she thought to herself.

She took several deep breaths to calm
herself and began moving forward once more, moving tree to tree.
Across the way she saw a shadow gliding through the trees matching
her pace. She didn't know if it was Ronnie so she didn't dare
shoot.

Another shadow stepped partly from the
trees just ahead of the shadow she had been tracking and looked her
way. Ronnie! She realized as the moonlight painted his face. And
even as she had the thought, she tracked back with her rifle and
sprayed the trees behind him.

When she looked back, Ronnie's face
wore a shocked look. She pointed behind him where a young man
crashed out into the road holding his chest. Ronnie quickly faded
back into the trees.

She keyed the mic. “You hit any?” she
whispered. The speaker clicked once, paused, then clicked
again.

She keyed the mic once more “If you're
sure you got two,” she whispered, “then we got...” And that was
when the girl stabbed her.

~

The blade bit into her arm,
but hit the bone and didn't pass her arm and plunge into her chest
as the girl had hoped. Her first thought was,
Thank God my arm was there
. Her
second thought was...
she means to kill
me.

Candace swung the machine pistol
downward with all of her weight, forcing the girl's knife hand away
from her body. She looped one foot behind the girls leg and pushed
her forward, sending them both to the ground. The girl was like a
snake, turning and twisting under her to get away. The machine
pistol had slipped from her hand as she fell, and it landed
somewhere between the two of them. The girl had held on to the
knife though, and Candace felt the point scratch across her throat
as she struggled to keep the girls arm away.

She brought her knees up and leveraged
them between the girl's thighs, driving them apart, then drove one
knee into her crotch. She gasped, but would not let go of the
knife.

Candace looked at her face in the
sparse moonlight. So much like Cindy's had looked, stress lines,
puffy eyes, but this girl's eyes were flat, hard and determined.
There was no soft edge to these eyes. She meant to kill Candace if
she could.

Candace tried to leverage herself with
one knee again, but the girl came up with one of her own, catching
Candace in the stomach, driving most of the air from her lungs. The
girl took advantage of that by rolling Candace over and straddling
her.

Candace struggled to hold the knife
back, but it was sinking lower and lower. A face suddenly appeared
over the girl's shoulder. Another one, Candace thought. A shot
exploded like a thunderclap, something warm splattered her face.
Blood, she thought, and then the knife was falling away as the girl
slumped onto her side.

Mike's face appeared above her as she
struggled to push the girls dead weight off her. Mike grabbed the
girl by one arm and flung her off into the brush.

Candace got shakily to her
feet.

“
Jesus,” Mike
breathed.

“
Yeah, this shit has got to
stop,” Candace joked in a shaky voice. Then she burst into
tears.

~Janet's journal~

We are somewhere to the southwest of
Kentucky. Maybe even long out of Kentucky by now. We have heard
nothing from the ones we left behind, and we are all
worried.

We ran the logging trails at first, but
they ran out. So we ran the rows between the tall pine trees,
obviously a reforestation effort; all the trees are planted in
fairly straight lines. But it had to have been years ago. The trees
were giants. There are about sixty miles showing on the trip meter
on the dashboard.