Kate shook her head. “They must have taken his body. But why?” She looked at Mike and Ronnie.
Ronnie shook his head also. Mike spoke. “Makes no sense to me. People? Wolves?”
“Could be... Could be either. And what do we tell his woman?” Ronnie added.
Kate toed Jeff's jacket where it lay at her feet. She hesitated and then bent and picked it up. “If it's all they left us, then we'll give him a burial.” She looked at Ronnie. “Wolves,” She said.
Ronnie shrugged. “Could be. Why would a person take him?”
“Mike?” She looked at him
“Maybe... Maybe a couple of wolves could have made off with his body, I guess.” He looked up and met her eyes. “We'll run it past Bob. He should know.”
“Yeah.” Ronnie agreed. “Bob will know. Makes sense.”
~
Mike spoke to Bob, but he thought the wolf idea was unlikely. They spoke in quiet tones as Kate insisted on digging a hole and burying the jacket.
Kate had found herself wishing for Lilly. Her own relationship with God was stretched to say the least, filled with animosity to say a little more. But she spoke some words about the shadow of death that she remembered from Sunday school, and they piled the rocks upon the shallow grave they had dug for Jeff's jacket.
They walked as a group down to where the trucks had been parked next to the woods. One was still idling, the other had either run out of gas or had been damaged by the spray of bullets Kate had hit it with the night before.
Kate reached in and turned off the switch of the one still running truck. The silence of the trees and the forest behind them descended.
~
They had parked and had climbed out through the windows. From there they had walked through the shadows down to the park road, and it had almost worked. Only a shadow of movement had alerted Kate. And if were not for that, the night could have turned out completely different.
Back in the camp, after the gun battle was over, Mike had checked Kate over, building up the fire that he had started earlier to make dinner so he would have enough light to see by.
The wound on her forehead looked like a cut, possibly from a rock as she had dove to the ground and rolled. The stab wound in her arm was red and swollen where the blade had bitten into the bone. She admitted it ached when she moved it too fast. Another shallow cut lower down had completely escaped her attention. And a neat round hole through her jacket showed how close one particular bullet had come.
After they had taken care of Jeff's jacket, they searched for the bodies of the others.
They searched for over three hours, all of them, but they could not come up with the ten bodies they were sure they should have come up with.
They came up with only five. Two of the young women were missing, and Cindy couldn't tell them which ones. Either Tammy or Chloe lay dead where Mike had shot her in the head. Too much of her face was missing for Cindy to tell. The body in the truck was missing, and the other that had lain in the road, Death, was also gone.
“Kate shook her head. “No. This guy was dead. I kicked him. I also shot into him twice more to make sure he was dead. He was dead, no doubt about it.” She walked further down the road and then stopped and walked off into the trees. The others followed after a second when it was clear she did not intend to come back.
Mike walked up beside her where she had squatted down in the tall grass. A large jelled pool of blood lay stuck to the root mass of the grasses. Ants crawled all over it.
“Nobody walked away after losing this much blood.” She shot to her feet; her eyes darted around at the trees. “Mike,” She waited until his eyes met her own. “I dumped most of a clip into this one. No way they got up and walked away. No Fuckin' way.”
“I believe you.” Mike told her. His eyes looked worried. “I just want to know they're dead not... not coming back at us again.” His eyes also swept the trees. Cindy, Ronnie and Bob exchanged uneasy glances.
“Had to have been more of the others,” Ronnie said.
“No, Man,” Cindy said.
“How do you know that?” Ronnie turned to her. His voice was raised, but she did not flinch at all.
“Because I was there. I know. I was there. I wouldn't lie. I would be the first one they'd kill... and not fast either,” She finished. And then she did flinch as a shudder ran through her.
Ronnie turned away embarrassed. “I'm sorry,” he said clearly, albeit as he was turning away. Kate tried to catch his eyes, but he refused to look at her.
Mike shook his head. “Let's not go at each other. Let's let that whole thing that just happened slide. We're all tense. It doesn't mean shit, except we're a little spooked... and... with good reason too.” He kicked at the ground. “What the fuck,” he muttered. “Listen,“ he shook his head once more... “Okay, listen, Jeff told me this. I said nothing about it, but maybe it...“ He shook his head again, but he brought his eyes up from the ground where they had been watching his boots scuff the dirt into a small pile.
“So... Jeff said this... a little more about what happened. They had come upon this small town somewhere, didn't say where. He's by himself, like he had said before, looking through this little drug store... busted up but still somewhat intact. Turns the corner in an aisle, and there's the dead woman there. Bad, but, well, we have all seen so much death that after his initial jump back, he takes a close look at her because... well, his words, and he said it to all of us... she didn't look quite right. Somewhere east of okay.” Mike shrugged. “As he is trying to put his finger on what it is that is not quite right, she sits up in the aisle, looks around likes she's blind, then sort of focused on him.” Mike shrugged again. “Said she was blind or seemed blind, but she focused on him...”
“He didn't just stumble over her like he said to us. Anyway... Jeff don't know what to do or say, forgets to breath for a second, and then starts forward to help her. But the first thing he notices is that she has a hole the size of a fist in her chest. The blood is old. There's a puddle on the floor; she pulled herself out of it. And before he can think even a little more, she snarls and begins to backpedal on the tile floor. His mouth drops, and he stands there watching even after she's gone.” Mike had turned his attention back to the ground as he spoke. The little pile of earth had grown considerably.
“A little more than he said the first time he told us. We talked about it a little more... just he and I. I wasn't trying to freeze anyone out or keep it from you. Things have just been happening too fast.” He looked up after a quiet moment had passed to see all of them simply staring at him.
“So... What?” Tom asked. “Are you saying she managed to live with that hole in her? And you guys,” He turned and looked at the others, “You guys talked about this before?”
Mike shook his head. “I'm not saying anything at all. Jeff said he thought she was dead. Never sucked in a breath as she got up... even exerting herself scrambling backwards to get away from him. Nothing. No breath. No blood. No anything... And, yeah... We talked about it, and that was the morning before we left that little complex we were camped out in. Jeff found a... a place. Some of us went and looked it over.”
Tom laughed a short, unsettled laugh. ”So...?”
“Mike shrugged. “So that's what he said.”
“A goddamn fuckin' Zombie,” Cindy said very quietly, like speaking a spell against evil.
Tom looked over at her, his eyes wide. He looked back at Mike incredulous. “Seriously?” he asked.
All Mike could do was shrug.”Tom... It's what he thought.”
“It was on the news,” Cindy said.
“Oh for Christ's sake,” Tom said. “If it's not one thing, it's another.”
“You know, Man. For real. You're the most negative man I know,” Ronnie said.
Tom's eyes cut to Ronnie's and challenged him. Ronnie met the gaze and held it.
“Alright!” Mike raised his voice. “I heard it also. Come on... We all did. How could you not? I though
t it was a joke. I still do. Maybe... I think I still do,” His voice fell and he seemed uncertain. “Doesn't matter, except I brought it up so we could keep our eyes open. Dead people... I don't know. But, I know Jeff was convinced, and that is a fact.”
Silence held. Then Kate spoke. “I...“ she shook her head. “I don't know, but, well, we still got some dead here. We had better check them.”
~
They all dressed alike, were built alike, even looked alike. They wanted them that way, made them that way, picked them that way. Looking at what was left of the girl on the ground, Cindy felt like vomiting again. But she looked harder.
The way Kate had described her fighting with her sounded like Chloe, who was afraid of nothing. But Chloe had never worn anything but black fingernail polish and this girl wore pink. Cindy forced herself to lift the girls shirt. Death had been carved in spidery white lines into her stomach. Cindy rose and let the shirt fall back across the dead gray skin of the girl's stomach.
Had Tammy been Death's woman before Chloe came along? Cindy didn't know. There was no X through the name. That meant nothing either though, not really. Tammy had been no one's woman, so there would be no other name. And Chloe would look the same.
"I just can't tell," Cindy said. "It's one of them. I just don't know which one."
Kate nodded, "Either way, we're missing several... bodies, I guess... people," she sat looking at Mike.
The six of them had searched carefully once more, even searching the side of the road up to the curve. Nothing turned up. They went back to camp, made coffee, and then finally made the meal they had intended to make the night before. Then they sat down to talk things out.
~
"We're out of range on the V.H.F.,” Bob said. "It can't be anything else.”
They had tried to contact the vehicles that had left, but they had received no reply. Just a quarter mile off the road, even the C.B. channels were scratchy with static rather than run over with skip talk. The trees, maybe, but more than likely the foothills and all the trace metals in the rock and the ground, Bob thought.
Everyone had been patched up, and the seven of them looked like refugees from a war zone.
Ronnie had cuts to both elbows, and a nick in one ear lobe. Whether caused by a flying piece of debris or a bullet, no one could say, but the edges looked slightly burned which lent itself more to a bullet than anything else.
Tom had a deep cut over one eyebrow. Where it had come from, he had no idea.
Bob had several large splinters of green wood taken from just below his right eye. He had no idea they were even there until Kate pointed them out to him, made him sit down and then extracted them one by one.
Mike had a deep slice on the palm of one hand and a fairly deep cut to one knee, all from his plunge down the road and into the trees when Kate's voice had cut off over the radio.
David had lost the very tip of his right pinky finger when the shootout at the camp had happened. Somehow the tip of his finger had been in the bolt way when he had slammed it home loading the chamber of one of his rifles. He hadn't even ended up using that rifle, but one of the clip rifles instead. He had simply loaded the five rifles around him so he would have them if he needed them. He had noticed after the battle had ended that he had lost the tip of his finger. Even then it didn't hurt. He kept expecting the pain to kick in, but even as Kate bandaged it, there was no serious pain.
They were all weary, but the food and coffee helped to revive them.
"How far do you think they could have gotten?" Mike asked.
"A ways, anyways," Bob said, "After the logging trails run out, they could run right through the trees. That reforestation stuff was planned out in nice, neat rows, and you should be able to drive along it just like it was a real road. Forrest service often did. I guess they would be stopped once that ran out," Bob said. "Fifty miles? Sixty? I don't know."
"Then how will we know where they're at?" David asked.
"We won't know. Not exactly. But, we'll keep on the radio, once we're within distance. They'll hear us. We'll work it out from there, I guess," Bob said.
“There was no way of knowing how many were coming," Mike said. “I couldn't take the chance.” He looked around at the the trees. "Looks good down here, hidden even, but it's vulnerable. You saw the way they sneaked through the trees to come down in here. We couldn't get them in the trees, too hard. Kate and Ronnie did that. Really, we got only one guy, and that guy pretty much jumped out of the wood line, and that's why we got him. The second one we thought we might have gotten did the same thing. Tom shot him, but he jumped back into the wood line. What I'm saying is, we were sitting ducks. So I sent them out. Better that than we were over run and lose more people. But we'll find them. Might take time, but we'll find them," Mike said.
“So we have no cows, no horses, no trucks. It's like everything we planned to do just fell apart," Tom said.
Bob smiled. "Life is like that sometimes. We need some stuff. I don't know how far Janet got with her lists. Does anybody?" He looked around. Everyone shook their heads no.
"I figured. So, we have to find a place close by, and we haven't passed anywhere, but we have to find a place that has what we need," Bob said.
"Like?" Mike asked.
"Axes, seed, horses and cows, maybe chickens. Sickles, bolts of cloth, things like that, you see? All the stuff that we will need until we get on our feet... in a few years? We'll be able to make everything we need," Bob said.
"Everything?" Ronnie asked doubtfully.
"Yeah, we will. It's not going to be so hard. Will we be manufacturing televisions? Or telephones? Or truck tires? No, but, we won't need them either. Eggs? Beef? Our own wheat? Will we be making cotton and our own clothes? Yes. I think we can do all of that," Bob said.
"Sounds like Quakers, or Amish," Kate said.
"No," Bob said, "I don't think we'll be nearly that advanced."
Kate laughed and everybody joined in.
"Back from here, about two or three miles, was a turnoff. I remember seeing it. No signs. The road was shot, but if I'm right that will take us into a small town about fifteen miles down. At least there's one marked on the map. It may not have everything we want, but we'll have to make do," Bob said.
"Well," David asked, "When?"
"Well, now," Bob said and laughed.
"Shouldn't... well shouldn't we bury them?" Cindy asked.
“And what about the missing ones?” Tom added.
"They wouldn't have buried us," David said. "And they killed Jeff and then took his body. Sharon's gonna go ballistic," he said.
"I think they took the bodies. I don't know how. We'll have to explain it to Sharon and the others." Mike said, "But Cindy is right about burying the ones they didn't get, and we aren't them. Maybe they would've left us, maybe not. They took Jeff," he finished.
"Nor do we want to be like them," Bob added.
“You think they took Jeff and the others?” Tom asked.
Mike shrugged. “Either they took them, or they came back to life and walked out of here. You think they came back to life?”
“No... I don't... I... I don't,” Tom said.
The silence held thick for a few beats. Kate broke it. "Let's go get it done. Maybe it's smart to bury them... just in case," she said.
~
It took about two hours to get the graves dug. They used one of the trucks that had been parked by the woods. The ground was still hard a few inches down, and the soil was rock filled, hard to shovel. They're were all sweating freely when they finished.
"Ground's still frozen, but it's hot," Ronnie said in a subdued voice.
"Yeah, like summer almost," Cindy said quietly.
"I think it's spring," Bob said, "We're just so much farther south..." he trailed off.
They finished up, left the truck they had used where they had ended up with it, and a few minutes later the three remaining pickup trucks pulled out of the park road and turned left onto the highway.
~
Most of the town was gone. A farm equipment dealer sat on the outskirts of town. The main showroom was a shambles but contained that year's new tractors, and although tractors were not what they were interested in, they found what they were interested in out back of the showroom building.
There were over one hundred new heavy duty farm trucks parked on the large lot behind the garage building. There were about twice that many used vehicles. Out of that, they had more than twenty of the large cattle trucks to choose from.
"Will a horse ride in something like that?" Tom asked.
Everybody shrugged. They had passed several large herds of horses on their way down the road. The question in Bob's mind wasn't would they, but whether they even needed them.
“Arlene said no. I believe she's right. But I'm not sure we still need them,” Bob said thoughtfully.
Bob had brought out several bags of oats and a half dozen bales of fresh hay and set them in the back of one of the pickup trucks. He had had something in mind for the way back. But within a few minutes, several of the horse's had approached the trucks and nuzzled the bags. Bob had split open a few of the bags and spilled them across the other bags. That was all it took. A dozen horses were gathered around the truck in no time, and a couple dozen more trying to get close to it.
"Huh," Mike said.
"Huh, is right," Tom said smiling.
"I wanted to try it on the way back, see if they would follow. I got to thinking about that other group we ran across that day. They were probably fed by truck like Arlene said, and used to people. So they were hungry and missing human companionship, and they were looking to us for both of those things. They only veered off because we had no feed and we didn't slow down. I think this bunch, and probably some of the bunch down the road will follow us. Just feed them from the back of the truck, spill it out a few times a day to keep them interested, and I think they'll follow us," Bob said.
"Think it will work with cows?" David asked.
"I do," Bob said. "It only makes sense. Big outfits use long feed troughs. Smaller outfits feed this way, or smaller troughs they fill a few times a day. Either way the animal will come to the food," Bob said.
America The Dead (Book 2): The Road To Somewhere Page 16
