The Zombie Plagues (Books 1-6): Dead Road

by Geo Dell

  “Tim wants to put lights down this far,” Mike said to no one in particular.

  “I believe he will too,” Bob said. He stopped and looked back down the length of the valley. “Talk to Candace yet?”

  Mike nodded and looked over at Ronnie who nodded too.

  “Bet that was fun,” Tom said with a smile. “If I told Lilly I was going back out there? Christ, I don't want to think about how it would go.”

  “Yeah... Well, that's about how it went for us too. Only difference being, we told them together. Really, all things considered, they took it well.”

  “Patty thinks the council should get together tonight, nail down some absolutes. How long, who goes. She wants to go; so does Candace,” Ronnie said.

  “No way,” Mike said. “I mean...” He shook his head.

  “She's pregnant,” Bob said. “It may be that Sandy will have to say no for you. We talked about getting together tonight. The council meeting should be open though, as we discussed.”

  Mike looked up. “That would do it, Bob. I think you have it. Do you think she would? Sandy, I mean?”

  “Yep. I know she would, because she just said something to me today about Lilly, Janet, Patty and Candace. I'm missing one. Another of the new ones whose name is not yet in my head. But, Sandy talked to me about none of them being able to work the harvest. She doesn't want to take any chances when it comes to babies, so that pretty much solves your problem. If she doesn't want them to work the fields, it only goes to make sense she would not want them going back into the outside world,” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Yeah. I can see that. They can't argue with that,” Ronnie agreed.

  “They are nearly as big as Lilly is,” Tom added. “How could they think of being in a truck bouncing over those roads? And who knows what else could happen? I don't think it'll be a walk in the park,” Tom finished.

  “No. From the radio, I think it's safe to say it's not going to be a walk in the park.” Mike cleared his throat. “But, I thought about Molly and Nellie. Molly is good with a gun... as good as Candace is. Nellie is a close second, and she knows a lot about first aid because she's been learning from Sandy. Might cause Candace and Patty to worry less too.”

  “Leave soon, I would suppose?” Bob asked.

  “Pretty much have to. It's already cooler. How far away can winter be? And everything's changed. We have no idea how bad it will be,” Mike said.

  “Or even if it will be,” Tom added.

  “There's that too,” Bob agreed. “Well, let's get together tonight. We got people coming in tomorrow. It will be crazy. And the more that come, the more that might want a say in things too. We can do it tonight, set it for two weeks from now. That will give everybody time to square things away if they need to, those that are going I mean. And those of us that are staying, to get you lists of what we would like you to try to get.”

  “Two weeks is quick,” Tom said. “I should go with you guys. I just don't know what Lilly would think.”

  “Or Bob,” Bob said. “If you go, this bridge project, harvesting - and about a dozen other things I can think of off the top of my head - ain't gonna happen or get finished.”

  “I asked Bob about stealing you, Tom,” Ronnie said. “You would be an asset. But I think Bob is right. Like we said the other night, there are things you and Bob do here that are too important. There are going to be too many of us gone as it is, and who knows how many coming in.”

  “And, I wouldn't say it to Candace or Patty - Lilly or Jan either for that matter - but it's liable to be pretty bad out there. We may not make it back. At least not all of us, and we can't even say when we will be back. We thought about it, but I thought I would rather have you and Bob here. We have others, but the four of us...”

  “Been through the fire,” Ronnie finished.

  “Pretty much,” Mike agreed.

  “Lilly will be relieved. Bob and I have cut out a lot of work to finish before snow flies,” Tom seemed embarrassed

  “But,” Ronnie added, “Next time, you go and I stay.”

  That lightened the mood, and they all laughed.

  “I'm going up,” Bob said. “I'll tell Jan to let them know. After dinner?”

  Mike nodded. “You'll talk to Sandy?”

  “Yep.” He looked at Mike. “Don't tell Candace it was me,” he laughed, but his eyes were serious.

  “No,” Mike agreed.

  “We're gonna hear it anyway,” Ronnie said morosely. “They're gonna know.”

  “Probably. But they'll be here safe and not there,” Mike said.

  The silence held for a moment as Bob left to head back up to the cave. Mike looked back down the valley toward the barns. “So... show me where this bridge is going to go.”

  Tom took off his hat, beat it against his leg and then wiped the sweat from his brow. He pointed back toward the barns. “Well, you can see where the stream narrows up there and stays that way. It's deeper. Bob and I were thinking...”

  New York

  Donita and the Thousands

  The factory covered a few acres. Donita stood outside and looked it over. Its walls were concrete, poured in the last century, soft and crumbling. It had been abandoned long before the world changed. It was not then, or now, a place where people were likely to come. It was a good place for her army to wait. Wait, because Donita, and those who were closest to her, were going back into the south.

  She had thought she was done with the south. She had thought New York was her destination - and it was - but it was not her destination now. Now she had to travel back into the south lands, gather more together, bring them to New York. And from New York... she asked herself. But there was no answer. None at all.

  Hers would wait here, and she would go. She would take those she wished to have with her. The rest would fend for themselves. A few strong ones would lead. She knew who those strong ones were. Jersey, the boroughs of New York, the suburbs - the dead and dying were everywhere. These who stayed would not starve, and her army would grow while she was gone.

  South. South again. Then New York, and then something else. Maybe west. Maybe there was someplace west that she should be. She didn't know. The voice inside called, and she answered. It was not a call that she could hear, but a call that she felt, the voice that had more and more inserted itself into her life, this life... this new life.

  Donita turned and looked at the city behind her. The skyscrapers in Manhattan, those that still stood - many had fallen - still stood against the sky. From here it looked as though New York was just fine, that it still belonged to the living. That misconception would only draw more of the living to the city, and more living only meant more dead.

  She turned back to the factory. The big man stood nearby. The boy and the twin, a few others who had begun to follow her at all times were also close by. They knew. They knew just as most in the factory knew. The strong ones, the ones that would lead, were gathering together even now, waiting only for her to acknowledge them. She walked into the factory, her familiars behind her.

  Hazleton Pennsylvania : Bear and Beth

  Bear stood smoking, leaned back against the garage door and watched as an eagle lifted into the sky back toward the interstate. He reminded himself that, although they were a symbol of power, they were carrion eaters, and it was a good sign that they were here. If there was enough for the eagles to eat, then the dead were probably not gathered somewhere close by. From their observance, down in the city of Hazleton the same could not be said to be true.

  They had driven down from the highway the day before, but it had not been an easy drive. There had been running water and a set of railroad tracks to cross too. The water had not been deep, but more than once Bear had not been sure they would make it through. The thing that saved them was the fact that the trees had been cut back from the junk yard area, leaving a wide, open area and a dirt and gravel road that wound around the entire yard. Once they had reached that road, it had not been hard to follow it aroun
d to the Hazleton side and find their way in.

  The junk yard itself was fenced, high chain link fences, and the dead prowled them day and night. There had been a set of gates at the front of the junk yard that opened onto the Hazleton side, that had been broken down by a wrecker at some point, and they had let themselves in through those missing gates.

  The wrecker sat a hundred yards inside the junk yard, one of the gates wrapped around the front of the wrecker, the other gate laying bent and crumpled off to one side. Bear wondered about the story, what had happened with the wrecker and the gates, but he had no answer, and the people involved were long gone.

  There had been no fixing the gates, but they had driven an old Greyhound across the entrance, jump started the wrecker and used it to push the bus up tight to the fence. That had stopped the dead from easily gaining access to the junk yard.

  The yard covered hundreds of acres, and they had walked the fence line in the rain to make sure that it was intact. Bear and Beth both had agreed on that. They wanted no more surprises. They had come back to find the bus pulled across the opening and a few dozens steel barrels burning around the long steel garage building that stood to one side. Old wood and used motor oil fueled the fires.

  The buildings had been closed up tight. No dead had been inside them. It had taken Mac and Billy more than twenty minutes to break into the garage building while Bear and Beth had been walking the fence line. Iris, Cammy and Winston kept the kids occupied and began to get a meal ready, moving inside the building as soon as Mac and Billy cleared it.

  Something about the rain kept the dead inside, holed up somewhere in the junk yard. A short time later, with the rain still falling, they had begun to walk the rows driving them out. There had been a few dozen inside the yard, trapped now, and they had routed them out before the rain had stopped.

  Clearing the dead had not been a big deal. With the others inside the closed garage, Bear and Beth walked the rows, slamming baseball bats they had found in the garage against the cars as they walked by. The dead were driven out into the rows that ran between the cars where Billy and Mac shot them down.

  These were not the same breed of Zombie they had dealt with in New York. These were slow: slow thinking, slow moving. Everything about them said slow. After the ones in the city, these seemed easy. They had cleared them out, thrown their bodies from the top of the bus out into the road that lead away into Hazleton, and then stood in the rain, exhausted, looking around at the huge yard.

  That had been the day before, Bear thought now. He had managed six hours of sleep, and he was amazed at how much better he felt. He finished his cigarette and tossed it out onto the pavement, stared at it for a moment and then walked over and crushed it out with his boot heel. He turned and walked back into the garage area.

  Billy had himself a project he was working on in one of the garage stalls, to replace the truck he had been driving. He and Mac had pulled in a huge four wheel drive truck. The cab was wrecked, the bed gone - probably sold. The two of them had stripped off the rest of the truck body during the day. Bear had lent a hand when asked, but mechanical work was not his strong suit. Not so with Billy, apparently, who was unafraid of anything mechanical. He became a different person once he had a wrench in his hand.

  Bear had awakened from his sleep to find that the three trucks besides Billy's all had bigger tires and rims. Billy and Mac had scouted the junk yard and found them. It had been a little tough doing the work without power, but it was not an impossibility. From there, they had moved on to stripping out the truck that Billy had spotted while they had been searching for tires.

  Bear had driven his truck around the roads in the junk yard, surprised at how different it felt. It sat much higher. He could see farther away. He could see the advantage of that when it came to high grass in the fields or at the side of the roads. He got out and looked it over. He could see where Billy had use a hammer to remodel his front fenders where the tires would have rubbed against them. He was amazed at the difference, and couldn't wait to try the truck out on the road.

  He had come back feeling a little useless but glad to not have to worry so much about just living for a few moments. He wandered through the garage now to watch the work on the truck frame.

  A frame, motor, axles and suspension is what it was. There was nothing else left, and Billy and Mac were gone, somewhere off in the junk yard searching out parts. A wiring harness was coiled up on top of the motor, and another snaked its way back along the frame. Bear shook his head. It amazed him that Billy and Mac could understand this work. He would have been lost.

  He walked back through the garage to the area where the children, Cammy and Iris were. He heard the children giggling before he got there. They were in what had been an office area. Iris looked up and smiled as he walked in. Cammy was still perturbed at him for something. He wasn't sure what, but she looked up too. She looked away just as quickly, and then back at Iris.

  “Could you watch these guys for a while,” she asked Iris.

  “Go... Go,” Iris said. Cammy rose from where she had been sitting and faced Bear. He met her gaze levelly.

  “Let's go for a walk,” Cammy said.

  She didn't wait for Bear to answer, but headed back out into the garage area. Bear's eyes slipped up to Iris, but she looked away. He turned and walked out behind Cammy into the garage.

  Cammy walked out of the garage into the sunshine before she slowed for Bear to catch up. She turned and waited, and then they walked in silence down through a row of wrecked cars. As they walked, Billy and Mac came up the row with the wrecker, Mac driving, Billy steering a van that was being pulled behind the wrecker.

  The actual tow unit on the rear of the wrecker had been damaged in whatever had happened with the fence. Bear had looked it over. If he'd had a welder, it would have been an easy fix, and Billy had been looking at a junked generator sitting farther back in the yard that he was sure he could use to run one of the welders that sat inside the garage. But then he had got caught up in the truck frame work, the tires, and Bear had heard nothing more about the wrecker. It seemed like it made no difference to Billy and Mac. They had still figured out a way to use it for what they needed. Bear lifted a hand as they drove past and then turned his attention to Cammy.

  The silence held. She seemed to be searching for words to say. Her head was down, staring at the dirt as she walked along. He thought about speaking but decided not to. He turned his eyes up to the skies instead.

  The sky was deep blue, so deep it made him dizzy to look at it. Clouds on the far horizon, somewhere up to the north. Maybe rain for them later today.

  “Bear,” Cammy said from beside him.

  He looked down at her.

  “I don't love you... I like you, but... trying to love you is just making me hate you.” She looked up at him, her eyes wide, dark, serious.

  Bear stopped, and Cammy came to a stop beside him. She burst into tears and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face against his chest. “I'm sorry,” she sobbed. And the rest of her words were muffled, unclear.

  “Oh, Cammy,” Bear started. He was no good with this, especially once a woman started to cry. It made him feel like he could cry too. A flat bed truck sat nearby. He picked her up in his arms and carried her over to the truck. He sat down, and she scooted forward onto his lap, reburied her face and continued to cry. Bear sat and held her as she did.

  He buried his face in her hair and held her as the time slipped by. Eventually she stopped and lifted her puffy face to his.

  “Do you hate me?”

  “Nope. I don't even see how you could think that I would.”

  She held his eyes. “You're a nice guy. I...” Her eyes started to leak again.

  “Cammy, listen... what made you think you had to feel that way?”

  “Because people think it... People expect it.”

  “So burst their bubbles. You can't live your life to someone else's terms or... What's the frigging word?” He snap
ped his fingers together.

  “Expectations,” Cammy supplied.

  “Exactly,” Bear said. “You can't live your life for someone else.”

  Cammy laughed. Her eyes were still leaking, but it was obvious her mood was changing.

  “So... this has been what was wrong? I've been driving myself bat shit trying to figure it out.”

  “No, you were already bat shit,” Cammy joked. She laughed again, her mood clearly going the other way. “You are the sort of man who lets all sorts of stuff bother you... drive you bat shit, as you say. You have a huge heart. You make me wish I could be happy with you, but I can't.”

  Her tone became more serious.

  “My woman died too... as this was starting. She had a bad heart,” Bear said. “Walked out of the house and didn't come back. I looked for her.” He shook his head.

  “I didn't know that,” Cammy said.

  “I know you didn't know that. There's more to it. You didn't know it because I didn't tell you. I guess I said I lost her, but I didn't actually speak about it like I just did. I can't share that part of me that easily. So it isn't just you, Cammy. I do feel something for you, but I'm not in love with anyone... I...” He stopped.

  “Anyone?” Cammy asked.

  Bear laughed. “Don't you think we're sometimes telepathic? I mean, out of everything I said, you knew to go right there.”

  “And you decided not to answer,” Cammy said.

  “No... No... I just. I just don't know, Cammy. I don't know what my feelings are. Could be.... given the right... Oh, Christ. I'm no good at this, Cammy. I'm not in love either. I'll leave it there, but you should not be worried about hurting anyone. Be happy. This world is so fucked up, Cammy. Be happy. If you're not happy, how can you make anyone else happy?”

  She was still pressed against him, her head resting against his chest once more. She felt like a little sister who was going through a crisis. “I guess the truth is I see you like a little sister. I don't mean that in a bad way, Cammy.”