America The Dead (Book 2): The Road To Somewhere

by Lindsey Rivers

  "Not me," Kate said. "We'll be back," she leaned forward and kissed Mike.

  ~

  Kate 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 Kate. Up ahead, the moonlight reflected off the water, rippling across the surface with the current's flow.

  Kate turned, "Okay," she said, " let's see."

  Cindy pulled her shirt off over her head and Kate 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. Kate took her in her arms and held her. When she was able, Kate 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 too tight jeans, piercings and boots. Her eyes showed 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 of the 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.

  Kate 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," Kate'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 as well. 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," Kate 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.

  Kate 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," Kate said, but just as she said that, both trucks stopped. They simply sat idling by the tree line.

  Minutes 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 Kate 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 duffel bag full of rifles. He stopped as Kate 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," Kate 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," Kate 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!" Kate 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.

  Kate 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 Kate 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.

  Kate 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 as well, 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 Kate caught a quick glimpse of her face as she went down.

  A burst of gunfire came from some where 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 trees around her 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.

  Kate 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 Kate 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.

  Kate 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 Kate if she could.

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

  Kate struggled to hold the knife back, but it was sinking lower and lower. A face suddenly appeared over the girl's shoulder. Another one, Kate 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.

  Kate got shakily to her feet.

  "Jesus," Mike breathed.

  "Yeah, this shit has got to stop," Kate 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 60 miles showing on the trip meter on the dashboard.

  We left the straight lines of the trees behind and rolled out into a grassy valley a short time ago. The grass was cut short, or we thought it was cut short until, in the distance, we saw enormous Bison grazing, or are they Buffalo? They look to me to be bigger, like real buffalo, but it's too dark to tell.

  We have half a tank of gas, about the same for all of us. But we each have another ten gallons riding in cans on the back. We're all tired. We're all worried. We're going to stop here and wait for morning to arrive. Hopefully some of us will get some sleep.

  God be with us, please.

  ~Through the woods~

  The trees grew ever taller, the darkness deeper as the moonlight's path to the ground was blocked by the high canopy of the branches as they closed in.

  An hour before dawn they came to a wide and long valley. A small village was nestled in the bottom next to a broad river. The smell of wood fire hung on the cold night air, the glow of fire in the distance.

  The boy came slowly up on one side, the twins on the other, scenting the air with their eyes, listening to the tale that it told. The horse, somewhere in the darkness behind them all, silent, its large eyes wild in the moonlight. She knew that was true, even though she could not see it. It was coming to her, finding its own way, miles away still.

  There where ten breathers there in the small village below, camped among the ruins, on the road, just stopped for the night. Out of the ten, five were to be part of them, walkers, their souls only waiting to be claimed. The air carried their story to them, and another, more complex story with it. A story of the next ones that were to come, the next additions, the army that would be assembled and the place that it would be assembled in.

  The boy and the twins trembled and whined, rusty nails on chalkboard whines, high pitched, slightly crazy, sounding like bats on the wing in the darkness. She did not correct them or scold them. Her hands rose and fell upon their thin shoulders as the air told its tales. A few moments later, the spell was broken, and they were on their way down to the village, winding through the thinning trees, finding the broken parts of what had been the main road, walking close to the tree line as they made their way closer to the fire.

  Fire was their enemy, smoke the messenger of that enemy. Fire was heat; heat consumed. That is what it had been created for.

  This fire frightened her, but it did not set the terror loose inside of her that it once had. It could not, would not kill her. And if it could not, then there was no real reason to fear it. If it could not, then it was no real protection to the breathers. Maybe it could still drive away the living predators, the wolves, the big cats, but she could know about it, reason it out, think around it... feel it. And it said that it was not able to hurt her. Not this time.

  That was another change. Not so long ago she could not think around anything. Every thought was a challenge, and she had been born into this like that, like a blind and dumb baby of sorts, growing blinder and dumber as the time passed...

  And then the change had come. The change brought to her on the air, delivered to her eyes, and these, the boy and the twins, born into that change on the air, struggling less and less, knowing more and more, bodies changing faster and faster. And the horse gone to do.

  She didn't really know what part the animal played. Some part. Some part that was needed for the larger purpose. Maybe this other life would not be the only other life.

  They came to the edge of the darkness, where the fire light refused to lend its light, and stood staring at the small group of breathers bedded down around the fire.

  The one who was supposed
to be on guard had dozed. The fire had burned low. He would probably chastise himself for it, except he would never have the opportunity to do that. He might have a split second in which to ask his God to forgive him, but he would probably waste that split second drowning in his fear, cursing, fighting, dying before he realized he had wasted his time.

  She was by his side a moment later. He slept on as she bent and prepared to take him. The boy and the twins had made their own choices. Her hands pinned his arms and her head darted quickly to his throat. The killing began.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Evidence

  ~ April 2~

  Morning came slowly, golden light filtering down through the trees painting light and dark shadows on the pine covered floor. A light breeze shifted through the limbs causing the shadows to chase each other.

  They searched through the first gray light of dawn, but they had not been able to find Jeff's body. They combed the top of the hill to the highway. All of them had ended up at an area near the top of the hill. A scuffed area of dirt showed something had transpired there, but there was no way to know what or whether it had anything to do with Jeff. A few minutes later Ronnie had found a jacket that they were sure was Jeff's near the bottom of the long hill. It had lain crumpled and bloodstained in a ditch that lead up to the road surface. They had gathered around it, staring down. Kate had finally crouched down and studied it. A few minutes later she picked it up to look closer.

  Several dozen bullet holes stitched the jacket across the back; two punched through the hood. The jacket was blood drenched. She let it fall from her hands and stood, rubbing her hands against her jeans in an unconscious scrubbing motion, her mouth tight and trembling. “He couldn't have walked away from that,” she said.

  Mike lifted his eyes to the trees and then the road. Beside him Ronnie did the same. His eyes came back to Kate to find that she also had checked the surrounding area, even though she knew he could not possibly have walked away. He shook his head. “I... We can look back up the hillside...” He trailed off. Looking anywhere after finding the jacket made no real sense at all.