A horrible thing has happened. Something that has affected everyone in our little community. Kate Loi was attacked by a madman and nearly sexually assaulted. And he had to be killed by Arlene Best, a woman who was not even with us a week ago, and only happened upon the crime by accident. God in his heaven, it could've been so much worse, but it is bad enough. Patty has told me that Kate will be all right. She's strong, she said; she'll be fine. I hope so.
We stayed on today, but we may leave tomorrow. The rain is steady and shows no sign of stopping.
~Lilly's journal~
It's been a really hard two days. I am so tired, I'm sure I could fall asleep standing up. The children are finally sleeping. Jessica's resting. Sandy thinks she may be having heart trouble, but said she denies it, so there is nothing she can do except have me keep an eye on her. And she has no drugs to give her. Sandy thinks she has been taking Aspirin on her own, thinking it would help. She says there really isn't much more she could do, but she plans to stock up on a cross section of medications the next time she finds a pharmacy. Maybe Nitroglycerin, a few other drugs she thinks may help her. But, until then, there isn't much we can do but watch her.
I got to talk to Kate a little bit today, really only a few minutes at dinner when she finally came out of the little place in the truck stop she's been holed up in. I guess I would want to crawl into a hole too if it was me.
She didn't seem that different to me, tired. You could tell she had been crying. But we've all been crying over the last 30 hours or so. And we're all tired. So I'll take it as a good sign that she's not letting what that creep tried to do to her get to her.
Arlene has got to be my hero. She saw what was happening and blew that fucker away. Right away. I don't want to sound too happy that she did that, but it could've been me! It could've been anyone! I had just taken Janelle out there about an hour before when the rain let up for a few minutes. It really could have been, her, or me, or both of us.
I'm not going to pretend. I'm glad he's dead. I mean, like, what would have happened if Arlene didn't shoot him and then Mike got there? I think Mike would've killed him right there on the spot. Tom told me he would have if it had been me. Just like that, right there on the spot.
~Bad Pennies~
Fifty miles northeast four trucks sat idling on a broken stretch of asphalt. All four trucks were heavily modified and we're running oversized tires, but they were still no match for the stream that had overflowed its banks and what was left of the road. The rain continued to pour down from the skies.
C.B. channel sixteen crackled to life inside one of the trucks.
"What you gonna do, Death? What you gonna do?" the voice of Johnny Red asked.
"Shut it down. We're going to shut these fuckers down so we don't run out of gas and wait for this ever fuckin' rain to end. Then, when we can get past this water, we'll find them," Death told Johnny, and Johnny believed him.
A few seconds later the headlights on all four trucks snapped off. The engines died, and the only sound that was left was the steady pounding of the rain on the steel roofs.
~Building The Army~
She awoke before full dark. One second gone, the next twilight had released her and all of her senses were fully on. It was no longer like human senses. She couldn't truly remember any longer when she had been a breather, for how long, what she had done with her days and nights, but she regretted it. She wished she had always been numbered among the superior.
She thought of it that way, the Superior Race. Because these senses, they were completely there. There was no fogginess from sleep. None. She was alert and ready. In every way, the being she was now was far superior to the being she had been.
The horse was here with them. She felt it studying her, waiting for her. It was changed with the horse. Somehow it was changed. She reached over, touched the boy, and he was instantly out of twilight. Together they crawled from under the machinery and out onto the factory floor.
The horse had managed to lift its head from the floor. Maybe the neck was not broken. Or maybe the neck was healing, she thought. It amounted to the same thing. It waited on her now. It was loyal. There would be no more fighting from the horse.
Her eyes brought her the scent of people. Without a sound or discussion, the three moved across the factory floor and out into the bright moonlight.
The smell of a wood fire was on the air, but the fire itself was out. Nothing but a low red glow some forty yards past the factory parking lot, still choked with long dead cars and trucks. They made their way quietly. Twenty feet from the four sleeping members, the horse stopped and Donita and the boy continued forward.
One of them was old, useless to her. Two were young, and one was dangerous. Female. She slept with both hands around her rifle, it rested between her knees, the barrel nestled along side her face.
Donita looked at the woman for a long time. She would like to keep her, but she knew it was not to be. She stared for a few seconds longer. The boy was behind her, waiting.
She knelt beside the sleeping woman. The smell of her coming death was already a stink upon her, billowing out of her lungs and filling up the night air. Her soul knew. Her soul knew and could do nothing at all about it.
Donita reached forward slowly. One hand wrapped tightly around the top of the barrel, the other, index finger extended, found the trigger. She paused a second longer, hands in place. Then in one smooth move she jerked the rifle down, jammed it under her chin and squeezed the trigger. The top of the woman's head flew apart before her eyes were fully open. The live wire rigidness that had come into her body in that split second of time now drained away and she sagged back to the ground, one last breath rushing from her lungs in a low moan. The children began to scream.
~March 31~
The first thing Kate did was take down the blankets that closed off the area in the corner of the diner. Mike helped her.
"I don't want to hide out. I needed it, but I can't hide from it anymore," she said. She sat the pile of blankets down on a leaning pedestal table and took Mike's hand. A few minutes later they were both sitting, sipping coffee at one of the tables.
"I have to take a post. They've been covering for me," Mike said.
"I know," Kate said.
"You'll be all right?" he asked.
"Yep," she said, "I can't hide. I'll probably take a post as well, Honey."
"So soon?" Mike asked.
"I just want things to be normal... to get back to normal," Kate said. "So I'm going to do what I normally do."
He finished his coffee, leaned over and kissed her again “I love you." He swiveled his eyes to one of the trucks where Ronnie and Patty were looking out at the still flooded fields. "I'll be right there if you need me, Babe," Mike said.
"I love you too," she kissed him back. "And if I'm not okay..." She caught his eye. "I'll come and get you." She took a deep breath, finished her coffee and walked off to one of the trucks where Sharon stood watching the field and the highway beyond.
Mike walked over to Ronnie and Patty, "Go," he said. "And I can't tell you how much I appreciate both of you. Go spend some time together."
"She seems okay," Patty said.
"I think she is... or will be," Mike said, "Go on, spend some time together so you two can be okay also," he finished. Ronnie touched a closed fist to Mike's own before he turned to leave.
~
Mike looked out at the flooded fields. The rain was still dripping on the metal roof, but the early morning sky looked less gray to him.
They decided a short time later to pull out. A quick meal, and they would be on their way.
The rain stopped. The sun was still hidden behind a clump of clouds that seemed to cover nearly the entire sky behind them, but at the very edge of the horizon a line of white-gold had appeared. The clouds there seemed to be breaking up, the clear skies making their way to them.
Off to their left, clearly visible without the rain, the Catskills sat like a beacon guiding them forward. The truc
ks were topped off with fuel. Everything was packed away, and the sun peeked out of its cloud cover just before they drove away. Mike took it as a good sign. He started his truck, splashed across a large puddle, rolled forward and dropped one huge front tire over the broken pavement leading back to the roadway. He turned out onto the road and led the way.
Two hours of slow travel brought them to a leaning road sign, a small 79 in a highway symbol, and printed below it in white lettering:
"Clarksburg 28 miles".
The V.H.F. crackled. "That's West Virginia, in case you're wondering," Bob said. "State route seventy nine will take us right into Charleston. But we should skirt that and try to pick up seventy seven; that will take us into Kentucky." Bob said.
"Tell me when,” Mike said, "to start looking."
"Will do,” Bob said, “we're about a hundred and fifty miles out, so it'll be awhile. Must have been just the other side of Pennsylvania or just inside West Virginia where we stopped," Bob finished.
"Made good time," Mike said.
"Yeah. Carry on. I'm standing by," Bob said.
~Trouble on the highway~
"Put it under her head," Sandy instructed. "So it tilts her head back and she can breathe freely."
Sandy went back to the chest compressions she had been doing on Jessica's chest. The exertion was taking the strength from her arms. Sweat had formed at her temples. It now rolled freely across her face. She brushed it away with the back of one hand and went back to working her arms in a steady rhythm. She was tiring, and she was getting no results.
They were stopped in the middle of what was left of the highway. There was nothing more than a washed out patch of rubble and broken fragments of pavement littered about. An occasional unmolested section of the road would appear, but more and more it was becoming gravel and mud, and they were thankful for the big tires and the four wheel drive.
The sun had been playing peekaboo all afternoon, gliding in and out of the cloud cover. Despite its occasional appearance, the day was still overcast and gray. Cold winds blew from the east, and Mike got the feeling that rain was not far behind the winds.
Sandy stopped, covered Jessica's mouth once more with her own and blew another deep breath into her lungs. Jessica's chest rose and fell.
There was some color in her cheeks, but her lips were still tinged with blue, and she was not breathing. Sandy blew another deep breath into Jessica's lungs, then moved sideways, and Sharon took over the C.P.R. Her arms were burning, her lungs. She looked down at her watch, more than 10 minutes had passed. She had not realized it had been so long. It had been too long, and there had been no response at all. Sandy had nothing to give to her, not even an aspirin. The first aid kits all held non aspirin equivalents.
She looked over and caught the outlines of several small, worried faces in the window of the Suburban. Rain caught her eyes and then looked down to Jessica.
"Sharon," she said softly. Sharon met her eyes. Sandy was still breathing heavy, her arms still burning, her face slick with sweat. Sandy shook her head. Sharon thrust her hands down one more time, straightened up, wiped her own forehead and looked at Sandy.
"Too long," Sandy said. "Too long."
~Death Following~
The line of vehicles dropped off the edge of the pavement one by one, ran through the gravel, mud and water, and then back up onto the asphalt and into the abandoned truck stop. They were nearly out of gas, but Death was positive that there was gas here. An oily sheen of spilled gasoline lay over a small puddle, just to the side of the main island, as if its only reason for existence had been to prove him right.
The ground had shifted, the concrete tilted up into the air, but someone had gone to work with shovels, and the top of an iron pipe lay exposed; a mound of dirt laying to one side of the twisted concrete.
Death stepped down from his truck and crossed the twenty or so feet that separated him from the pile of dirt. The fill neck of the underground tank had been dug out down to about two feet. The cap was on but he had no doubt that it would spin right off with ease. They had been here, and if it wasn't them they were following, them that had been here, then it was maybe something better, he told himself.
He motioned to the others behind him, and all four trucks emptied out. Nine of his soldiers stood behind him, waiting for him to speak.
"They've been here... or somebody's been here. And they ain't left too long ago either," He pointed to heavy, rutted tire tracks that passed through the mud at the edge of the pavement, and then printed the tread pattern onto the road, “That would've been gone. Didn't stop raining until late this morning. Can't be more than a couple of hours ahead of us, maybe four at the most," he said.
A petite, dark haired young woman stepped forward, "There's dogs over by the woods... eating something. Don't look like no animal. They slunk off when we pulled in, but I seen them." She wore a thin, black T-shirt that showcased the piercings in her nipples. A safety pin jutted through her lower lip, a small gold chain looped from a nose piercing to one ear. Her eyes were gray and flat. Another safety pin pierced the top of her bellybutton, visible where the overly short baby T-shirt she wore had pulled out of her jeans. She shifted her boot clad feet, fingered a 9 mm pistol in a side holster, and looked over towards the edge of the woods where something pink could be seen laying half in the water that flooded the fields up to the tree line.
Death followed her gaze and nodded slowly.
"Shitty, Murder... Go see." He said softly. Two young men moved from the back and took off into the flooded field without hesitation. He turned his eyes back to the girl, "Chloe, you know you're my favorite. You did good, Chloe, you did good."
The young woman smiled, snapped her head around and looked back at the other young women behind her. They were dressed almost exactly like her. "Little, bitches," she said under her breath.
A snarling sound came from the tree line as the two boys approached through the calf high water. Three wolves slumped out of the trees and stood stiffly by the body. Their eyes shifted back and forth from one another to the boys who had slogged across the field towards them. One of the young men drew his pistol, aimed and fired. One of the wolves flipped into the air as if he had been launched into a backward somersault. He flopped down to the ground snarling, snapping at his chest were a small hole had appeared. The other two wolves sprang into the air, startled, and then fled into the woods.
The young man fired again. The wolf jumped and then lay still. They both walked forward and looked at the red and pink thing lying half in and half out of the water.
"It's a dead dude," Shitty called back. His voice floated across the waterlogged fields. “Part of his head is gone entirely.”
"Is it one of them?" Death called back. "What happened to him?"
"He got dead," Murder called back. "Can't fuckin tell how, these dogs been eatin' on him. Could be one of those fuckers though."
"Who in the fuck else would it be?" Shitty yelled back. He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Sometimes seems to me that he's got to be the dumbest motherfucker I ever knowed.” he told Murder. “Seems fuckin' clear to me.” He turned back towards Death. ”Looks like they had a change of leadership. Part of his skull is missing, right. I don't think them dogs or wolves or whatever the fuck they was, done that."
"Get back here," Death yelled while motioning with one hand. He turned, "Johnny, Nickle, get these trucks filled."
"Yeah," Johnny said.
"On it," Nickle added.
As they started to fill the trucks, the sun slipped back behind a block of heavy bottomed clouds and fat, cold rain drops began to plop down from the gray sky, reverberating off the steel roof.
"Fuck," Death said. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." He looked over at Chloe, who stood slightly ahead of everyone else, and motioned with a nod of his head to the building behind him. She smiled. "Cassie, Tammy, get some fuckin' food on. I'm hungry. Looks like we're stuck here for awhile." He added.
As he finished speaking, M
urder and Shitty slumped back across the asphalt, water dripping. "Murder, I'll be busy for awhile," he said.
"Got you," murder said.
~Death by the Roadside~
They all stood quietly on the side of the road. Lilly spoke a few words from a small pocket Bible. Her voice seemed so much more mature than it had when she had spoken those same words just a few weeks before, Mike thought.
Jessica's body lay in the bottom of a shallow grave that had been dug into the sandy soil beside the highway. She was covered with a blue tarp and lay in about a foot of water at the bottom of the hole. They had tried to keep the hole bailed out, but it had been no use. Although the ground where they had chosen to dig had been relatively dry, the ground water was high, and kept seeping into the hole after digging just a few feet down.
"And, Lord, watch over the rest of us as we go. In Jesus name we pray, Amen," Lilly finished.
Jeff and Tim began to shovel the muddy dirt and stone back into the hole. The stones pattered down and rolled off the blue tarp as the dirt rained down into the hole. Between the two of them, they had the shallow hole filled in no time. The first fat drops of rain began to fall as the trucks began to roll out again. Two miles down the road, what was left of a small airport came into view. Several large metal hangars, virtually untouched, crouched at one end of the twisted and tilted runways. A few inches of water ran over a fairly intact service road that lead to the hangars. One section of the road appeared to dip, and looked to be covered with about a foot of water.
Mike picked up the V.H.F. radio. "I'm thinking this ain't going to get any better," he said. "I'll go first, but we should all be able to get across that water."
"Piece of cake," Bob said.
"Let's go," Ronnie said.
Mike turned off the highway and then eased down onto the narrow road that led to the hangars. The truck walked across the water like it was nothing, rolled up the slight rise on the other side and stopped in front of one of the hangars.
The Hummers, sitting a little lower, threw the water up in a spray as they crossed it. It rushed against the undercarriage, but even they had no trouble. "Yahoo," Jeff called over the radio as he brought his last vehicle across.
America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere Page 12
