The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (62 page)

They had, had Angel tied up to keep her
away from The Dog who was making a general pest of himself because
she was in heat.

“
Too bad,” Cindy had said,
“We didn't get him to mate with Angel first.”

Sharon had smiled. “Cindy, you're a
frickin' genius!”

“
How so,” Cindy
asked.

“
Well. He's not dead.
Everything is working... We can make it work.” Sharon had
said.

Cindy looked down at the wolf. “Hold
him up?” She was trying to imagine how it might work.

Sharon laughed. “Okay. I take it back.
You're not a genius... How did I show you to do it with the
bulls?”

“
Oh...” Cindy smiled as it
came to her. “You think it will work,” she asked.

Sharon shrugged her shoulders, but
continued to smile. “Go get the gloves. Let's find out.”

“
Eww,” Cindy said. “I'm not
too good with that part.”

“
Time to get better, my
dear,” Sharon laughed.

As it turned out it did work, an
unconscious wolf or not. A little help from a turkey baster and a
few weeks later Angel was pregnant.

The lions were another problem. Sharon
had no doubt that a few more crossbreedings would produce dogs big
enough to keep the wolves at bay, but they would be no match for
the mountain lion, or lions, whichever it turned out to be. Bob had
done some tracking and he was convinced it was at least three
different lions they were dealing with.

And the problem with that was the
children.. The lions seemed only to come around at night, but that
didn't mean it couldn't come around during the day. So they had set
a trap, leaving the fresh remains of a beef cow, and Candace along
with Tim had sat up most of two nights in a row. The second night
had been the payoff.

Two of the big cats had come down to
feed on the cow's carcass. The cats had been nervous and so they
had let them both settle in for a few minutes before they had
brought both of them down. They had had no other trouble since
then. The furs along with all the other game they shot went up to
the cave to be cleaned, stretched and turned into usable leather
and fur.

Janet had both Tom and David learning
how to prepare and tan the hides. She herself had only ever done it
on a small scale, so it was somewhat of a learning process for her
too. But there were already some wearing leather vests, pants.
Janet herself wore nothing but leather now. Tom and Lilly both had
begun to wear only leather, and that had convinced Annie, who was
very close to Lilly to try it too. Arlene had already been wearing
leather and Janet opinioned that in a few years they would all
probably be wearing leather.

Candace and Patty were hoping to build
a loom or a spinning wheel long before that. Or have someone build
it for them if they couldn't do it themselves. But both of them had
already begun wearing leather. In all truth, Candace told Patty,
she liked the way the leather felt on her. It was completely
different from cotton, and she wasn't so sure that Janet was not
right. Patty had laughed, but a few days later she had been wearing
a leather shirt top that Janet had made for her, and extolling the
virtues of leather herself.

In a little over five months they had
made the valley into a home. All the prejudices that some had had
about living off the land, going back to nature, or simply staying
alive, had gone by the wayside. The fields they had cultivated
would be ready to harvest in just a few weeks. Corn, beans and
other vegetables. And there were acres upon acres of wheat fields
to harvest.

The power station, although doing
nothing more than powering a few lights right now, would soon be
powering their homes and the main meeting area in the cave. Lights
along the pathways. Once they had wire they could make it work for
what they needed. The hard work to wire it all would willingly be
given as it had been to build what they had so far built. They were
all behind what they were doing. They were behind each
other.

They had found that the gradual slope
of the stream down to the pool made an excellent water slide.
Children and adults alike enjoyed it. It had been used daily
through the long, hot summer months.

Candace and Tim, along with Molly,
Lilly and Cindy had put together a little band. Guitars and hand
built drums as well as a flute that Lilly had gotten Ronnie to make
for her from a pattern in a book. They got together a few times a
week and provided music for the shared evening meals on Saturday
and Sunday.

The shared weekend meals had been
organized by Lilly. She had also set apart an hour on Sunday
morning for a church service. It had started with just she and
Annie, and now encompassed most of the people. It was like no
service in the old world. Lilly would simply read something from
her bible or something from some other spiritual book she had. Bob,
Sandy and Janet would speak a little about the Creator and the
Great spirit. Ronnie explained a little about the Qua-ran and the
Muslim faith. Not really sermons, they would point out, just food
for thought.

Janet would make a huge group breakfast
that just happened to coincide with the end of their service. That
had been the beginning of their day together. And it turned into a
weekly service.

From there it had seemed natural to
Lilly to plan an afternoon community meal together. It was simply
easier for everyone than planning many separate meals. Everyone was
so busy throughout the week that they rarely had time to sit down
together and talk. Sometimes they didn't see each at
all.

Not everyone made it to the community
gathering every week, but no one missed more than one week unless
something unusual was going on. It was the one time where no one
had to do anything except relax and talk. Enjoy each other's
company. Catch up on projects and ideas.

The musicians played, or sometimes
Annie, Lilly and Tim would play music they had collected and bought
with them. But with the power as yet not hooked up and batteries
getting scarcer and scarcer, most often it was live
music.

A dozen groups of people had found
their way to the valley and joined them. They monitored the CB, FM
and VHF bands and spoke with other groups on a nearly daily basis.
They also kept up with the news in the outside world. How bad the
cities had gotten. The plague of the Un-Dead that seemed to have
swept what was left of the country. It made them grateful for their
growing community and the safety they had within the stone ridges
of their valley.

Time was flowing by, and everyone was
beginning to find their place in that flow once more. The community
they had envisioned was becoming a reality and evolving as it
grew.

~

Mike and Candace lay in the big bed in
their bedroom. He had one ear up against her stomach listening,
trailing his fingers lightly across the swell of her stomach he
did.

He had felt the baby move a few times
in the last couple of weeks. It was something that choked him up
inside. So much emotion he didn't know how to express it. But that
was only his thoughts. Candace could see the love spread across his
face and color his eyes. It showed in his smile, in the way he
touched her, in the way his eyes misted over.

The baby kicked him in the
ear.

“
Holy cow,” he said lifting
his head up quickly. “Did you feel that?”

“
Yeah, Baby, I did.” She
laughed and smoothed one hand across his hair as he lowered his
head back down to her stomach again.

“
That was so...
Cool...
This is one of
those times, Baby, that you never forget,” he told her in a voice
that was hushed and filled with awe. He went back to lightly
trailing his fingers across her belly, over the swell and back down
the other side. It was something Candace had told him relaxed her.
And it did this time too. She fell asleep stroking his
hair.

~

Nellie lay with her head on Molly's
shoulder. She rubbed her flat stomach with her palm as one finger
drew imaginary circles around her belly button. “I'm trying to
imagine this with a bump,” she told her.

“
Well it will be soon,
Honey” Molly told her.

“
Are you afraid? …
Nervous?,” Nellie asked.

“
A bit. They say you forget
the pain right after. So...” Molly said.

“
I'll bet it was a man who
said that,” Nellie said.

Molly laughed. “Janet says it's like
that. But you want to kill every man in the world for a little
while... While it's happening,” she said.

“
She said that,” Nellie
asked.

“
Yeah. Just like that. Said
she would have kicked herself in the ass for letting Bob do it, but
she wouldn't have been able to get up to do it.” Molly told her.
They both laughed. “But afterward? She didn't care. Like right
afterward too. She saw her daughter and she said the rest just
didn't matter anymore. You know?”

“
I can guess... I can't get
pregnant... Or, I never did,” Nellie said.

“
It's our last night
alone,” Molly said. Her hand slid down the length of Nellie’s
body.

Nellie let her own hand trail off of
Molly's flat stomach and onto the bed. She pushed herself up,
straddled Molly's stomach and kissed her slowly.

“
I love you so much,”
Nellie told her. She kissed her again.

~

Ronnie pulled Patty to him and held her
as they both allowed their breathing to slow and their hearts to
quit pounding.

“
I don't think pregnant
ladies are supposed to be... Uh... To be that...
Active,”
Ronnie
said.

Patty smacked him on one arm. “You...
This one is,” she said.

“
Are you going to miss
me…
Really
miss
me,” he asked.

She smacked him again, leaned her head
down and bit him lightly on the chest. “Do you want me to show you
again,” she asked.

“
Jesus! You'll kill me,
Patty,” Ronnie told her.

She rolled off him and curled into his
side. “How did you feel about becoming a daddy?” She asked him. His
hand was tracing patterns across her stomach.

“
Babe, you know how I
feel.”

“
No, you... The other child
that will be yours...
Molly's?”

“
Oh... I... I guess I feel
kind of weird. I don't know exactly how I should feel. When they
asked I wasn’t sure. But when you were okay with it, I was okay
with it. But it was an abstract, you know? It wasn't really real
until I did the thing for Sandy and she did whatever she did with
it... Then... Then it was different... That's part of me, Babe. I
mean really part of me. I don't know how I feel... Proud? Nervous
times two? Looking forward to it? Wondering how I will feel when I
see that child and know that it is part of me,” he finished
quietly.

Patty rubbed one hand across his
stomach. “They said the baby will know,” she said. "It probably
won't feel so weird once you're used to it.”

He nodded and touched her belly. “But
this baby? This one will be spoiled rotten... A man who had nothing
just a short time ago, and now, soon, I'll have two little people
who are part of me to love and be loved by.”

“
The babies,” Patty
said.

“
That makes three. I was
talking about you and our baby. We're one, you're part of me and
I'm a part of you. Old testament, New Testament, Qua-ran, they all
say the same thing. We become one. So, there's you, a part of me...
And the baby, a part of us... And the other baby that is part of us
as well... A lot of love for a man who had nothing at all.” He let
one hand travel over the swell of her stomach and
downward.

“
And what exactly are you
doing now,” Patty asked.

His mouth planted little kisses on her
stomach as he worked his way down.

~

Arlene’s Journal

It's the night before the
six will leave to go back to the outside. I think of it that
way...
The outside.
This place is something I have never had. So much love, so
much caring, it overwhelmed me for the first little while. That and
the other. Having to kill a man. But it was worse for those who
stayed behind when we made our way to this place. If they had not
stayed to fight the rest of us would not have been able to get
away. David told me what it had been like for them. They had to
kill too. They had to kill children that were controlled like
puppets. Deadly puppets to be sure, but a puppet is a puppet... a
slave.

And now we're sending them back out
again into a world that can't be any better than it was. It's worse
in some ways. We didn't have to deal with the dead. The radio tells
us they have taken over most of the bigger cities. I just can't
imagine it. But We're sending them out tomorrow, and all so that we
can live a little better. Nothing that we absolutely have to have.
We have everything we could ever need right here. But to live
better.

To live better we need other things. It
makes me wonder if we have changed all that much after all. I hope
it is not a move toward the old society. I really hope not. Enough
negativity though. They're going. I voted yes too, and there are
thing's they will bring back that I asked for too.