The Zombie Plagues: The Story Of Billy and Beth (6 page)

Billy nodded his head and they both fell silent for a few seconds.

“Beth,” Billy said. “It really doesn't matter anymore. I'm the last guy who would ever think of judging you. Believe me. I've screwed my life up so many times it's not funny. As far as I'm concerned what you did, you had to do. It doesn't make you a bad person at all, and it doesn't have any bearing on who you are now. I mean that sincerely.”

Now it was her turn to nod her head. She hadn't realized it, but his opinion mattered to her, and what he said allowed the small smile to re-surface on her face. She had told herself that she didn't care what he thought about her, but she knew even as she told herself that, that she was wrong. It did matter. It mattered a great deal.

They walked together to the back of the garage, and pushed up the steel overhead door. It took a few minutes to move a couple of the cars out of the way, so that they could drive the pickup out of the garage and into the lot behind the dealership.

Billy drove the truck across the grassy back lot, and stopped at the rear of a gas station to look for a state map. Beth followed him into the deserted station.

She filled a paper bag with some groceries, mostly canned goods, while Billy opened the map and studied it on the counter at the front of the station.

“Looks like the best way out,” Billy said, “Is still going to be 91. We passed it, we'll have to back track to catch it. We should be able to skirt around most of the traffic, shouldn't we?”

“Believe it or not, I don't really know,” Beth answered. “I mean I live here, or did, but I didn't get out of the city at all, or hardly ever, so I don't know what its’ like.”

She paused and looked at Billy as he bent over the map. He smiled as he spoke.

“I actually understand that,” he said. “I didn't really know a lot about getting around outside of Watertown. I guess you learn how to get to the places you need to get to, and that's about it. No real big deal though. According to the map there are a lot of loops, sort of side roads that go around, and run parallel to 91, and hey, we've got four wheel drive, we can cut through the fields if we have to, right? That will get us to 10 and ten is our ticket east.”

Beth shrugged her shoulders, as she replied. “I guess?” The attempt at humor was not lost on her, and she flashed a smile at him as she shrugged her shoulders again. “I guess if the cows don't mind.”

Billy grinned back, and they both laughed a little as they walked back out to the truck.

“You know,” Billy said as they climbed into the cab of the truck. “We should stop and pick up a couple of sleeping bags, and maybe a tent too. We still need to pick up a couple more rifles too.” He didn't want to alarm her, or make her start to worry, by bringing the subject up once more, but the truth was that he was fairly worried himself. If there were armed people running around killing whoever they chose too, it would be kind of stupid, he thought, not to have better weapons. Beth had the pistol, and her rifle. Billy had his own pistol and a rifle, but he wasn't sure it would do a lot of good. He wasn't a good shot. She surprised him when she not only agreed, but didn't seem to lose her smile when she did.

“I think it would be stupid not to stock up on whatever we can, guns included,” she said, echoing Billy's thoughts. “You know much about them?”

“Not really,” Billy confessed, “I've never even shot a rifle, you know, just never learned, I guess, or even wanted to. I think I could learn though. You know anything about them?”

“Well, now that you mention it, I do. At least a little. Not from shooting one, but more from seeing them. There are a lot of pawn shops on Beechwood, sort of goes with the territory, I guess. That's where I got this,” she said, holding up her small pistol, “I got the rifle from a smashed in pawn shop... The has to be a pawn shop or sporting goods shop out here somewhere.” Almost as she spoke Billy spotted one across the crowded interstate.

“There is one,” Billy said as he pointed.

They left the truck beside the stalled traffic, and walked through and around the cars to the large shop. They spent the better part of the afternoon outfitting themselves from the racks in the shop and carrying what they needed across the road to the truck. The pickup had a black vinyl bed cover. They opened it, stored the tent and the sleeping bags along with the other camping gear inside it, and then snapped the cover back into place.

“It probably won't keep everything totally dry,” Billy said, “if it rains, I mean. This is kind of more for show than actual protection,” he said indicating the cover. “But it should still do all right.”

They had both picked up weapons in the shop. Billy had picked out a deer rifle, a fairly impressive looking Remington. He had also picked up several boxes of the ammunition the rifle took. Beth had settled on an entirely different sort of weapon. It looked more like a machine gun of some sort to Billy, and she also picked up several boxes of ammunition for it, and several spare clips. She explained to him that it really wasn't a rifle, but a machine pistol, and that it could fire better than seventy rounds a second if it were converted to full automatic. This one wasn't, she said, but she had seen some that were. To Billy it still looked like a machine gun, and he joked that the sight of it alone would probably scare anyone off.

By the time they had loaded the truck and gotten under way it was late afternoon. Even with the late start, and the slow going due to the stalled traffic, they managed to make it to the Colorado River in Ehrenberg Arizona just before nightfall.

The country had been turning more arid as they drove, the river was a oasis. Off to the north giant plumes of smoke blanketed the sky, seeming to spread across the entire length of the horizon. They had both wondered what it might be. Beth had checked the map and she though it could be Yellowstone or something close to Yellowstone.

Shops, stores, and even an RV park had sprung up around the interchange. They foraged for food in the late afternoon and gassed up the truck before evening began to take the sunlight. The air had a bitter hot smell to it, the river flowed sluggishly, the water gray, and a scum of yellow white foam and ash rode the slow current. They sat in the truck and ate quietly while the map lay open across their legs and the seat top. Their eyes would drop to the map and then jump back up to scan the area. It had seemed too quiet, and there were no bodies anywhere. No sign of life either, and the stores and shops had not been looted. Some were still locked up. Empty RV's in the park when they rolled slowly through it. Neither liked the feeling, the whole place just felt wrong.

“Billy,” Beth waited until his eyes left the map and met her own. He lifted them to follow her own gaze. “The silver building over to the right. The door just opened and then closed.”

Billy frowned. “Not something the dead would do, is it?”

“We didn't think they would use sledge hammers either, or come out in the daylight,” Beth said.

As billy watched he saw the door edge open slightly and then close just as slowly. “Saw it... I don't like it. Dead or alive they know we're here and they're checking us out.” He dropped his eyes back to the map.

“Okay,” he said after a few moments. “Lets get back on the road. That takes us away from civilization to a degree. Eventually that will bring us into Arizona, but there's a lot of desolation between here and there, at least on the map.”

“Desolation is fine as long as the dead aren't there.” Beth said quietly.

“Less likely to be,” Billy agreed.

A few minutes later they were running through the desert that ran alongside I 10. There were not a great many cars or trucks there, but in several places there had been wrecks that closed lanes down. With no one to clear them they would have ended up in the desert anyway. And there seemed to be a dirt road that ran beside I 10 for as far as they could see.

The landscape in the distance had been changing as they drove the day away, but with the sun setting a few hours after they set out once more it was hard to tell what the surrounding countryside was like. Billy dropped speed and flicked the trucks high beams on. A short while later Beth was sleeping, her head heavy against Billy's arm. He drove through the night and into the early morning before she woke again.

Watertown New York

Mike Collins' Journal

March 13th

Man, it’s been a long day. We walked out to Washington Street to where the car dealerships are. Everything’s torn up out there, but there are tons or cars and trucks. We found three trucks that we got running, and we drove them back. So we have a pickup truck, a suburban and a big four door state truck, one of those you always used to see along the highway when they were doing road repair. There were a few others we found that also ran, but they were in such bad shape that we left them.

Tom wanted to build one. I mean take one of the new trucks and put old parts on it. I got the idea from Bob that it probably wouldn’t work out the way Tom thought that it would. The right parts would be hard to find. I could see the idea, the appeal of a newer vehicle so we wouldn’t have to be concerned about break downs, but I could see Bob’s point of view too. I think it pissed Tom off though, but it seems that almost everything pisses Tom off.

I didn’t write this in here yet, but Candace and I are together. It just happened that fast. I was surprised in a way, but in another way I wasn’t all that surprised. Who knows how long this world will last, what it was that really happened? Maybe there is no time for slow anymore.

Candace said that, and once I thought about it, I agreed. Things are so different. And she’s right for me. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened this fast in the old world. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all, but everything’s changed. It’s all different, and this seems right. It seems like the way it should have happened with her and me, the right way for it all to work.

It also seemed to work out for the others as well. By that I mean Tom ended up with Lydia. She’s a lot younger than he is, but like I said, it’s a different world now. They seem to be happy together. I thought I felt some animosity from both of them at first, but either I imagined it, or they’ve moved past it, gotten over it, something like that.

We haven’t discussed leaving again. It’ll come up. Candace and I want to go. I think Bob and Jan want to go too. Tom and Lydia seem to be against it. Lydia keeps talking about how none of us know what it might be like anywhere else, like she wants to throw that out before we even discuss leaving at all. Here we have food, shelter, what’s so bad? I guess we have been talking about it without really talking about it at all.

Tom backs up everything she says with a nod of his head. He pointed out we’re in an area of mainly limestone, that’s what made this cave, and we may not find that anywhere else. At least not easily. Maybe they’re right. Hell, they make sense, but it’s the attitude. The rest of us bend. They refuse to.

We decided to go out to Arsenal Street tomorrow to the sporting goods store, and also look at some super markets out there, something else I didn’t check out while I was out there.

Lastly, I’m glad Candace and I have each other. It makes all of this easier to deal with.

She asked me why I’m writing this journal. I felt kind of stupid. I told her why I started it though, and that I’m continuing it for someone in the future. Maybe a child? Someone to come later on?

I expected her to laugh that off, or look at me like I was crazy, but she only nodded as if that made perfectly good sense. She told me she has a journal too. A diary, she said. Of course Lydia jumped on that as well. At first arguing against it, then saying she thought it might be okay. Tom said he wouldn’t do it. He said he’s not leaving to go anywhere and if someone shows up here, he’ll be here, not some journal. Okay.

It’s stuff like that that makes me wonder. And, anyway, I only mentioned it; it wasn't like I wanted anyone else to do it or was trying to encourage someone else to do it. It's that kind of
jump on it
attitude I don't like, like they think I'm looking to screw them over somehow.

But it’s all good. I’m alive. I looked back at some of what I wrote in here. I had no one just a short time ago. I didn’t even know whether there
was
anyone else. Now I have Candace. We have some plans, things we’ve begun to talk about, agree about. A little ego trouble with Tom is really just bullshit in the scheme of things. I have to try harder to look past that. Maybe I'm too damn sensitive. And anyway things are good. This could be a lot worse.

A thing that bugs me and I can not figure out, where are all the bodies? I mean there don't seem to be enough bodies to match all of those that were killed. It bothers me. Maybe they weren't killed? But that makes no sense. Where would they be? I don't have an answer. I only know it bugs me.

Billy and Beth

March 14th

The name of the place was Tonopah Arizona. Billy had eased the truck up onto I10 and that had waked Beth up, the tires bouncing over the broken asphalt.

“Not a big city... A town from the looks of it. Phoenix is close. Ten, fifteen miles maybe. Can't really tell from the map,” Billy said. A gas station loomed out of the early morning gray and Billy wheeled the truck under the roof the covered the pumps. He shut off the motor and they both listened to the tick of the cooling motor for a few seconds.

“Coffee would be real nice,” Beth said. “No way do we want to go into Phoenix... Too dangerous.” She yawned and then covered her mouth and laughed. “Jesus... Morning breath.” She zipped open her knapsack, retrieved a bottle of water, her toothbrush and some toothpaste. She stepped from the truck.