She climbed into the jeep and was about to start it up, and that was when Duffy hit her in the back of the head with a short piece of a two by four board.
~
Duffy had been drifting long before all of this had happened. This was no inconvenience to him; it was a help. Everything was free now. And there were no cops to tell him what to do. He looked down at Chloe slumped over the steering wheel. And now I have a woman, he told himself. Can things get any sweeter?
~Lillie's journal~
We traveled for two days, and now we're in the middle of nowhere. I mean, like, we're really in the middle of nowhere.
When we came up over this pass, we could see for miles, and there was nothing. No buildings, no quilted farmland, towns, cities, nothing at all. It was almost too big to see. I didn't know there was anywhere left on this planet where you could have a view like that.
But, here we are. We found a cave, really an overhang, but Patty and Janet Dove think there is an actual cave farther back in it. We'll know tomorrow. Patty said it's funny, because we're right back in a cave again, and we are. But Janet said it seems right, and it also does feel right.
I'm worried. We're all worried. We don't know where our men are, or Kate. We don't know what happened at all. And we don't even know how long it will be until we do know something. I wanted to ask, how will they find us? But I just didn't want to upset anyone. I don't think it will be easy at all. Why didn't we think of global positioning? They sell that kind of stuff everywhere. But are there still satellites going around and around up there? Or are they all useless now because of what happened? Did they crash? Lots of questions; almost no answers. And even if we had global positioning, we would not have had the time to use it.
So we'll have to place our hope in the radios. Starting tomorrow we're going to monitor fifteen minutes of every hour during daylight, Patty says. We'll all be hoping.
God be with us. Keep us strong. Bring those we love back to us. Amen.
~Kate's journal~
It's not over 'til it's over, they say. We came back today to find out that one of the girls we had thought got away came back while we were gone and took off in the truck the other side left by the woods. We need one more day and we'll be gone, maybe two. So hopefully she won't be back to cause us any trouble.
I am so tired of this. Sometimes I think we should have stayed in the cave in Watertown, fought them there, let it end there. Then I look at Mike, and I love him so much that I want any chance at all at a free life. I'm glad we ran, and all this doesn't seem so bad.
I'm banged up, we all are. At least I'm not missing part of me like Ronnie and David both are. A piece of finger for David, a piece of ear for Ronnie. Patty is going to be so pissed!
Speaking of Patty, and everyone else, we're all worried. We can't reach them on the radios. Bob supposes that they could have gotten out of range. I guess we won't know until we're on our way. And if I don't stop writing and go to sleep...
I'm back. Mike is sleeping now and my head's a lot better. I hope we'll start out tomorrow. God help us.
~In a Dark Place~
Chloe woke up in the pitch dark. Her head was splitting. She sat up, and stars exploded behind her eyes. She fought back the headache and sat still for a few seconds until she felt better.
Someone was snoring close by. She fought the nausea down in her stomach and took several deep breaths to clear her head. She had no idea what it was that had happened. Obviously someone had her, had gotten her, some how. The last thing she remembered was getting into the Jeep. Had she wrecked it? No, that made no sense.
She could smell unwashed flesh and hear the snoring. A man had taken her. Somehow a man had taken her... Was it them?
Her feet were bound, and her hands were also tied behind her back. She could feel her boot knife pressing against her ankle; it was still there if she could get to it. She worked her hands, rubbing them raw before she finally got enough slack to pull one wrist free. It was raw. She could feel the slick blood. The feet were easier, and then she was free.
She sat blinking. She could see a little now. There was a thin strip of light, like the crack under a door, off to her left, away from the snoring. She considered for a minute and then made up her mind. She stood slowly, carefully, joints screaming, and made her way very quietly across what felt like a hard-packed dirt floor.
She made her way to what turned out to be a door. She pushed it open slowly, looking back over her shoulders as it swung open. She saw the man, a great fat pig of a man. His back to her in the faint moonlight. She eased the old wooden door shut and slowly looked around.
She was in a wooden shack behind the Jeep dealership. So that was it, she thought.
She made her way around to the side of the building. The Jeep sat where it had, the keys still in the ignition. She smiled for the first time, but stopped when it caused her head to scream.
She made her way to the back of the jeep, hefted one of the five gallon Jerry cans, felt her pocket for one of the plastic disposable lighters she always carried to light the huge bomber joints that Death used to roll. She could use one of those right now, she told herself.
She walked back to the shed, upended the can and drenched the exterior of the small wooden shack, the door, and the rest she let run under the door and into the interior. She puddled a small amount of gas back away from the shed, set the can down and screwed the lid back on. Then she set it further back. She'd have to remember to refill that, she told herself. She thumbed the wheel on the cheap lighter, stretched her arm out and touched the small flame to the gasoline. It went up with a low whoosh. She felt it on her eardrums rather than heard it. The flames bit into the dry wood, and Duffy began screaming almost immediately.
"Fucker," she screamed into the fire lighted night, "Fucker! That will teach you!"
The shed blew up with a soft wump! And Duffy stopped screaming.
She walked back to the Jeep. Her head was pounding. Maybe, she told herself, she could leave off all of this. It really wasn't her fault. It really wasn't her fight. Maybe she could just get into that Jeep and keep heading south, let those crazy bastards settle in the woods. To hell with them.
She picked up the radio from the seat beside her. She flipped it to the on position and sat listening to the smooth static. She pressed the mic. button down.
"Hey," she said. "Hey are you guys there?"
Silence. And then...
"Lilly? Is that you Lilly?"
She didn't know the voice, or who Lilly was.
"Nooooo," she said. Her head was killing her.
"Chloe," she told the voice. "I don't know if you know me."
The voice came back. "I know who you are, Chloe. What do you want?"
"You guys worried about me?" She asked.
Silence.
"Are you?" she asked again. "'Cause if you are, you ain't got to be. I'm going. I'm done with this, you know? I just wanted to say that," she said.
"Chloe, we could talk about this. You could come with us," the man's voice said.
"Nope," Chloe said. She turned the radio off and then tossed it out onto the asphalt.
She shifted the Jeep into drive and idled her way out to the highway. Behind her, the wooden shack continued to burn.
~Donita - A mile east~
They were thirty now, and there were a half dozen laying on the ground who would be coming up out of twilight any minute. Killers, or they had been in the old world. Being dead took the killer out of you. At least at first it did. But then it came back. You forgot all the little things in the old life. You nearly forgot your name, where you had lived, what you had done. And then it changed. Everyday you got a little more back. It wasn't exactly a memory like a memory would be in the old days, like a breather would have. It was more like found knowledge. Not there one second, and then there the next. But it was clearer than the old memories she once had.
Donita didn't question whether that found knowledge was true or not. It didn't matter
. Just like it wouldn't matter to these. What would matter to these was getting through the first little bit of time, that time where heat still seemed like the only possible source of life, and you struggled to find it, only to realize it did nothing for you any longer at all. In fact, it could kill you.
Then the cold came upon you, found you, along with its understanding, and you were fine. You began to understand that life was just a short stop on the way to dead and that dead was just a way station to walking. And walking could be forever. Walking was not something as trifling as life. But that took time, and these killers would be nothing more than babies for a few nights.
There was a process. She had gone through it, and the others had gone through it. She supposed any walker had gone through it. Everything that had to do with life, heat, that world had to come out of you... sick it up, shit it out. It had to go. It had to go because it had nothing to do with walking. Nothing at all.
A walker used what it took in. There was no waste, so there was no need for a system to dispose of that waste. A walker did not heal in the same way that a breather did. There was no need for time to heal. You couldn't predict it. You weren't even precisely injured. You could lose a finger, or a leg, while you were turning and that was that. It was lost. But you could lose one after, and it was back in a short time. Or most of it. She had not lost a leg, but she had lost a few fingers. The horse had broken its neck. It didn't seem broken any longer. One of the twins had lost an ear a few nights before. It was back. Those things could be, but they did not depend on any kind of healing like a walker. No.
These were killers. For a few days they would be babies. Then for a few days they would get used to the gift they had been given. Then, they would be killers again. They would be because that is what they were, and you could not change the basic truths of what you were whether you were a breather, a walker, or even dead. Death had its Jesus and Devil for that. Well, Donita thought. Ol' Satan, and Jesus also, must be finding themselves with a little extra time on their hands just lately.
The turnings were coming faster. Where once seven would pass in to death and maybe one would rise to a walker, now seven passed into death and five came to be walkers. Soon it would be seven for seven. She knew that. And soon after that the whole world would belong to the walkers. The breathers would be done.
She let her silvered eyes pass along the bodies that lay stretched out on the ground.
She was not weak. There was a strength that came with being a walker, a strength that came to your whole body once you embraced cold. They had moved silently into the woods and taken these without a sound. They had carried them here. It had been no expenditure of energy at all.
Killers. Except one. One had not been a killer at all. But that one might not come back. If he did, she would have to watch him anyway and she really didn't want to do that. She would leave him to the twins to teach. He would learn their ways or he would learn that even in Un-Death there could be death. Permanent death. You could still get to go see Jesus if you really wanted to go.
She looked him over. The night was getting along. They would come from twilight soon.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Home
~April 3~
They spent the morning locating a herd of cows and luring them back to the camp with a second pickup truck and something Bob had found called Cow Chow. There were several different breeds of cows, milkers and beef cows and three bulls that seemed able to reasonably tolerate each other, and about a dozen calves in the lot as well.
"Two or three more looked ready to drop," Bob said. "And we have about a dozen horses that are ready to drop somewhere on the way or after we get there."
"The cows," he continued, "are a good thing. We'd get no milkers otherwise. And these are young, if we keep them milking after they calve, they'll do fine for us. And, we'll be there long before those calves are done milking, so, we'll have fresh milk, butter, cheese," Bob smiled.
"Are they really going to follow us?" Mike asked.
"I think so. The calves will have to go into a trailer. No way could they keep up. But, I saw one back at that equipment place, and once the calves go into the trailers the mothers will stay with us. We will have to stop a few times a day to let them nurse. But, well, I hope we're not traveling more than a few days, so we'll make the best of it.” He thought a moment, "We will lose a few though. They'll wander off, but we'll keep the feed truck ahead, and the others behind it, cows and horses right in between, there's only the road, they'll go right down it. Same with the forest, straight lines, like a road. The trouble will come when we get to open land. They'll naturally want to graze, cows and horses both, but I thought a couple of those Jeeps, the small ones, we can pretty much herd them like that," He paused for a second or two and then continued once more.
"We have seven drivers. We have three big trucks, and we need one of the pickups for feed. So we'll find us three Jeeps, or something small, four wheel drive, that will be us," Bob finished.
They found a Jeep dealership on the opposite side of the little town. The smell of smoke and charred meat hung in the air. They all wondered if they were about to meet up with other travelers, but they came across no one as they drew closer to the smoke that hung in the air.
A shed behind the dealership was a smoking ruins, but one skeletal arm protruding from under a piece of rusted tin roof told its own story. Ronnie found the radio where Chloe had thrown it to the pavement. Everyone was uneasy.
They had spoken about the radio call most of the early morning into sunrise and had decided to take it at face value. For whatever reason, she didn't want a fight, and that was something they could accept.
"This is mine," Ronnie said. He pointed to the side of the radio case where a bullet had grazed the plastic, cracking it. "That happened during the shootout, the one that probably got Jeff," he finished thoughtfully.
"This is where she called from then," Mike said, stating what was obvious to all of them. He looked at the radio. Smears of maroon and a small bloody hand print decorated the back of the plastic case.
"Not mine," Ronnie said, although it was obvious.
Mike looked over to the smoking shed. "I guess we will never know exactly what happened here, but I'd say she got tired of being pushed," he said.
Ronnie nodded.
They spent the better part of two hours searching through the wrecked show room until they found the keyboard. The keyboard, Ronnie explained was where the salesmen picked up and returned the keys. It had to be close to the front of the show room yet not right in direct sight of customers. The mechanics and body shop guys would need access to it to.
Ronnie had spent two summers working as a body-man at a small dealership in Mobile when he had still been in high school back in Pritchard.
They found the board in a small hallway that lead back to the garage area. They took the keys to several smaller Jeeps and out of those found three that fit their needs. Cloth tops, bigger tires, heavy duty off road versions.
No one spoke much, the smell on the air, the puzzle of what might have happened, the silence over what seemed like the entire world. They picked up the chickens on the way back.
The farm store had a large poultry barn in the back. They backed up the big trailer they had selected for the calves, partially filled the inside with caged chickens and headed back to the camp ground where the others were waiting.
Kate had collected thirty eggs and found six piglets out behind the barn. It was a mystery to her what they had been feeding on, but they we're healthy and fat. She brought them to Bob.
"Those are not just little pigs," Bob told her as she loaded them in their own cages into the back of one of the Jeeps. "Those babies will be full blown hogs come fall."
“Good," Kate smiled. “But how did they manage to stay alive?”
Bob laughed. “You probably don't want to know,” he told her.
“Well I wouldn't have asked...”
Bob held up one hand. ”You're ri
ght. The chickens, most likely. Maybe some of the grain if they were able to get into the feed store.”
“Pigs eat chickens?”
“Pigs will eat just about anything that doesn't eat them,” Bob said solemnly. Kate didn't look like she was quite so thrilled about eating pork in the fall.
“Huh,” was all she said as she turned away and went back to packing things into one truck or another.
~
By the time they made it back to the camp it was early afternoon. Kate made a lunch with some help from David. Eggs, spam and pancakes.
"Eat it like a sandwich," Ronnie told Mike as he came to get his own.
"They're good," Kate said around a mouthful.
Everybody dug in. The clearing fell silent for awhile as they ate. Their thoughts were on the next little bit of time, and wondering still about what had happened to the bodies, including Jeff.
No one had said it, but it seemed obvious that Chloe could not have taken the bodies. The thought of how she may have lifted them, taken them away, had been cast in doubt from the first. How could she have carried them? And why? But, knowing that she had probably run into problems of her own threw all of it in doubt. Where were the bodies? Shouldn't they have been there? Was the body in the burned shed one of their missing bodies?
They wondered as they ate. Mike and Ronnie had talked a little about it in private, but no one wanted to speak about it in the light of day, where things like living dead just didn't make any kind of sense at all.
After they finished lunch, they shifted things around. The chickens and the piglets went on the back of one of the flatbeds. They loaded the calves and two foals onto the open stake sided trailer and started out down the logging trail.
~On the Trail~
There were three big trucks with one Jeep in front of them. The pickup with the trailer in back of them, followed by some concerned cows and a small herd of horses. The remaining two Jeeps brought up the rear.
America The Dead (Book 2): The Road To Somewhere Page 18