The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (58 page)

“
Chloe, we could talk about
this. You could come with us,” the man's voice said.

“
Nope,” Chloe said. She
turned the radio off and then tossed it out onto the
asphalt.

She shifted the Jeep into drive and
idled her way out to the highway. Behind her, the wooden shack
continued to burn.

~Donita - A mile east~

They were thirty now, and there were a
half dozen laying on the ground who would be coming up out of
twilight any minute. Killers, or they had been in the old world.
Being dead took the killer out of you. At least at first it did.
But then it came back. You forgot all the little things in the old
life. You nearly forgot your name, where you had lived, what you
had done. And then it changed. Every day, you got a little more
back. It wasn't exactly a memory like a memory would be in the old
days, like a breather would have. It was more like found knowledge.
Not there one second, and then there the next. But it was clearer
than the old memories she once had.

Donita didn't question whether that
found knowledge was true or not. It didn't matter. Just like it
wouldn't matter to these. What would matter to these was getting
through the first bit of time, that time where heat still seemed
like the only possible source of life, and you struggled to find
it, only to realize it did nothing for you any longer at all. In
fact, it could kill you.

Then the cold came upon you, found you,
along with its understanding, and you were fine. You began to
understand that life was just a short stop on the way to dead and
that dead was just a way station to walking. And walking could be
forever. Walking was not something as trifling as life. But that
took time, and these killers would be nothing more than babies for
a few nights.

There was a process. She had gone
through it, and the others had gone through it. She supposed any
walker had gone through it. Everything that had to do with life,
heat, that world had to come out of you... sick it up, shit it out.
It had to go. It had to go because it had nothing to do with
walking. Nothing at all.

The dead used what they took in. There
was no waste, so there was no need for a system to dispose of that
waste. They did not heal in the same way that a breather did. There
was no need for time to heal. You couldn't predict it. You weren't
even precisely injured. You could lose a finger, or a leg, while
you were turning and that was that. It was lost. But you could lose
one after, and it was back in a short time. Or most of it. She had
not lost a leg, but she had lost a few fingers. The horse had
broken its neck. It didn't seem broken any longer. One of the twins
had lost an ear a few nights before. It was back. Those things
could be, but they did not depend on any kind of healing like the
living. No.

She looked back down at the bodies
where they lay. These were killers. For a few days they would be
babies. Then for a few days they would get used to the gift they
had been given. Then they would be killers again. They would be
because that is what they were, and you could not change the basic
truths of what you were whether you were a breather or dead. Death
had its Jesus and Devil for that. Well, Donita thought. Satan and
Jesus must be finding themselves with a little extra time on their
hands just lately.

The turnings were coming faster. Where
once seven would pass in to death and maybe one would rise to a
walker, now seven passed into death and five came to be walkers.
Soon it would be seven for seven. She knew that. And soon after
that the whole world would belong to the walkers. The breathers
would be done.

She let her silvered eyes pass along
the bodies that lay stretched out on the ground.

She was not weak. There was a strength
that came with being a walker, a strength that came to your whole
body once you embraced cold. They had moved silently into the woods
and taken these without a sound. They had carried them here. It had
been no expenditure of energy at all.

Killers. Except one. One had not been a
killer at all. But that one might not come back. If he did, she
would have to watch him anyway and she really didn't want to do
that. She would leave him to the twins to teach. He would learn
their ways or he would learn that even in Un-Death there could be
death. Permanent death. You could still get to go see Jesus if you
really wanted to go.

She looked him over. The night was
getting along. They would come from twilight soon.

Chapter eight

Home

~April 3~

They spent the morning locating a herd
of cows and luring them back to the camp with a second pickup truck
and something Bob had found called Cow Chow. There were several
breeds of cows, milkers and beef cows and three bulls that seemed
able to reasonably tolerate each other, and about a dozen calves in
the lot as well.

“
Two or three more looked
ready to drop,” Bob said. “And we have about a dozen horses that
are ready to drop somewhere on the way or after we get
there.”

“
The cows,” he continued,
“are a good thing. We'd get no milkers otherwise. And these are
young, if we keep them milking after they calve, they'll do fine
for us. And, we'll be there long before those calves are done
milking, so, we'll have fresh milk, butter, cheese,” Bob
smiled.

“
Are they really going to
follow us?” Mike asked.

“
I think so. The calves
will have to go into a trailer. No way could they keep up, but I
saw one back at that equipment place, and once the calves go into
the trailers the mothers will stay with us. We will have to stop a
few times a day to let them nurse, but, well, I hope we're not
traveling more than a few days, so we'll make the best of it.” He
thought a moment, “We will lose a few though. They'll wander off,
but we'll keep the feed truck ahead, and the others behind it, cows
and horses right in between, there's only the road, they'll go
right down it. Same with the forest, straight lines, like a road.
The trouble will come when we get to open land. They'll naturally
want to graze, cows and horses both, but I thought a couple of
those Jeeps, the small ones, we can pretty much herd them like
that,” He paused for a second or two and then continued once
more.

“
We have seven drivers. We
have three big trucks, and we need one of the pickups for feed. So
we'll find us three Jeeps, or something small, four wheel drive,
that will be us,” Bob finished.

They found a Jeep dealership on the
opposite side of the little town. The smell of smoke and charred
meat hung in the air. They all wondered if they were about to meet
up with other travelers, but they came across no one as they drew
closer to the smoke that hung in the air.

A shed behind the dealership was a
smoking ruins, but one skeletal arm protruding from under a piece
of rusted tin roof told its own story. Ronnie found the radio where
Chloe had thrown it to the pavement. Everyone was
uneasy.

They had spoken about the radio call
most of the early morning into sunrise and had decided to take it
at face value. For whatever reason, she didn't want a fight, and
that was something they could accept.

“
This is mine,” Ronnie
said. He pointed to the side of the radio case where a bullet had
grazed the plastic, cracking it. “That happened during the
shootout, the one that probably got Jeff,” he finished
thoughtfully.

“
This is where she called
from then,” Mike said, stating what was obvious to all of them. He
looked at the radio. Smears of maroon and a small bloody hand print
decorated the back of the plastic case.

“
Not mine,” Ronnie said,
although it was obvious.

Mike looked over to the smoking shed.
“I guess we will never know exactly what happened here, but I'd say
she got tired of being pushed,” he said.

Ronnie nodded.

They spent the better part of two hours
searching through the wrecked show room until they found the
keyboard. The keyboard, Ronnie explained was where the salesmen
picked up and returned the keys. It had to be close to the front of
the show room yet not right in direct sight of customers. The
mechanics and body shop guys would need access to it to.

Ronnie had spent two summers working as
a body-man at a small dealership in Mobile when he had still been
in high school back in Pritchard.

They found the board in a small hallway
that lead back to the garage area. They took the keys to several
smaller Jeeps and out of those found three that fit their needs.
Cloth tops, bigger tires, heavy duty off road versions.

No one spoke much, the smell on the
air, the puzzle of what might have happened, the silence over what
seemed like the entire world. They picked up the chickens on the
way back.

The farm store had a large poultry barn
in the back. They backed up the big trailer they had selected for
the calves, partially filled the inside with caged chickens and
headed back to the camp ground where the others were
waiting.

Candace had collected thirty eggs and
found six piglets out behind the barn. It was a mystery to her what
they had been feeding on, but they we're healthy and fat. She
brought them to Bob.

“
Those are not just little
pigs,” Bob told her as she loaded them in their own cages into the
back of one of the Jeeps. “Those babies will be full blown hogs
come fall.”

“
Good,” Candace smiled.
“But how did they manage to stay alive?”

Bob laughed. “You probably don't want
to know,” he told her.

“
Well I wouldn't have
asked...”

Bob held up one hand. “You're right.
The chickens, most likely. Maybe some grain if they were able to
get into the feed store.”

“
Pigs eat
chickens?”

“
Pigs will eat just about
anything that doesn't eat them,” Bob said solemnly. Candace didn't
look like she was quite so thrilled about eating pork in the
fall.

“
Huh,” was all she said as
she turned away and went back to packing things into one truck or
another.

~

By the time they made it back to the
camp it was early afternoon. Candace made a lunch with some help
from David. Eggs, spam and pancakes.

“
Eat it like a sandwich,”
Ronnie told Mike as he came to get his own.

“
They're good,” Candace
said around a mouthful.

Everybody dug in. The clearing fell
silent for a while as they ate. Their thoughts were on the next bit
of time, and wondering still about what had happened to the bodies,
including Jeff.

No one had said it, but it seemed
obvious that Chloe could not have taken the bodies. The thought of
how she may have lifted them, taken them away, had been cast in
doubt from the first. How could she have carried them? And why?
But, knowing that she had probably run into problems of her own
threw all of it in doubt. Where were the bodies? Shouldn't they
have been there? Was the body in the burned shed one of their
missing bodies?

They wondered as they ate. Mike and
Ronnie had talked a little about it in private, but no one wanted
to speak about it in the light of day, where things like living
dead just didn't make any kind of sense at all.

After they finished lunch, they shifted
things around. The chickens and the piglets went on the back of one
of the flatbeds. They loaded the calves and two foals onto the open
stake sided trailer and started out down the logging
trail.

~On the Trail~

There were three big trucks with one
Jeep in front of them. The pickup with the trailer in back of them,
followed by some concerned cows and a small herd of horses. The
remaining two Jeeps brought up the rear.

On the narrow logging trail there was
nothing much to do. The cows and horses were more than willing to
follow along behind the trucks.

They made slow time, but just before
nightfall they came to a wide, shallow stream that meandered
through a small, grassy field. They scattered feed, put the colts
and calves out with their mothers and began to set up
camp.

The cows and horses chose opposite ends
of the field.

“
Those cows are fighting,”
David said, pointing at a couple of bulls that had separated
themselves from the rest.

Bob laughed, “More than a few horses as
well,” he said.

David raised his eyebrows.

“
Mating season,” Candace
said.

David flashed red, “Are they
dangerous?” he asked.

“
I wouldn't get near them,”
Bob said.

“
You're probably okay,”
Ronnie said, “Now if you were a cow or a horse...” He lifted his
eyes back to the field and let the comment trail off. Everybody
laughed, David included.

After dinner, Candace, Mike and Ronnie
looked over the chickens and the piglets, watered them and gave the
chickens some grain. The piglets kept nuzzling Candace's hands.
“What should I feed them?” she asked.

“
Well, like I said a pig
will eat anything,” Bob said, “Including each other. Feed them the
scraps from dinner and some Cow Chow, make sure they have lots of
water. They'll be fine.”