“Still is east,” Candace said. “Compass doesn't know where true north is anymore, so it hardly matters. For now it's east.”
Ronnie nodded. “Don't know why it matters to me anyway,” he admitted.
“Because it keeps things normal,” Alice said quietly.
“Maybe,” Ronnie admitted.
“The doctor's office is closed,” Candace said and laughed. “We're all fucked up. No doubt about it. Let's get some supplies and get on the road.” Silence held for a split second and then Ronnie laughed. Alice joined in and Mike chuckled right along with them.
“Let's go,” Ronnie agreed. A few seconds later he was gunning the motor slipping through the high grass, fighting his way up to the overpass.
Tremont PA.
The streets seemed deserted, the buildings dusty and empty. Most of the main street was gone, what buildings remained perched on the edge of a yawning chasm. They approached carefully and looked down to see a small stream flowing across the floor of the cut some forty feet below: Emerging from a dark smudge on one side and flowing under a huge rock overhang on the other. Moss grew on some rocks near the stream. It had an air of permanence. The imagery below looked like something out of a wilderness camping guide.
“Looks like one of those forever wild things... Hike the Appalachian trail or something,” Alice said. She let her eyes wander upward where the buildings perched on the edge of the abyss, as though waiting to plunge down into the small, peaceful stream far below. “And then you have this,” she raised her arms to encompass the buildings where they sat. “Surreal.”
Ronnie nodded his head. He stood from his crouch and looked around at the buildings. “Deserted, I guess.” He had no sooner spoken the words than gunfire erupted and shattered the quiet afternoon air. He dove for the ground, remembered where he was, but too late. He hit the slope to the bottom of the gully and rolled toward the bottom. Halfway down his head struck a small rock outcropping and he stopped wondering about the gunfire and where it had come form.
Alice lunged for the gully, but Mike grabbed her just as quickly and pulled her toward one of the buildings Candace had run for. Already she had made the doorway and stood beckoning to them. Mike pushed Alice forward toward the building and then leapt the short distance to the cover of the corner of the building. The leap was too much for his still healing leg and he collapsed in agony just within the shadow of the building.
“Mike!” Candace from the shadowy interior of the building, Alice crouched next to her.
Behind him he heard running footsteps approaching, he motioned for Candace to go before he pushed himself over onto his back to face who ever this was. The pain flared bright in his leg as he used it to turn himself over, and he almost passed out. He got his gun up and pushed himself up on one elbow ready to fire. A second later a figure ran around the edge of the building and into his line of fire. He hesitated only the briefest of seconds, but it was long enough for the young girl to bring up her own weapon and fire. Mike's pistol roared as he felt a stinging sensation on his neck, and he watched the young girl twist backwards and slam off the brick buildings inside corner as his bullet found her. As quickly as the noise had begun the afternoon turned deadly quiet. No bird calls, the vague gurgle of the stream as it flowed far below in the gully, nothing else. Mike put one hand to the side of his neck and bought it away bloodied. “Great,” he muttered to himself. He turned slowly, used one hand to get his good leg under him and stood from the sidewalk he had fallen on. Candace spoke from behind him and he nearly jumped before he could calm his staggering heartbeat down and respond.
“Baby... Baby, come on,” Candace whispered again.
“I told you to go,” Mike said tightly as he limped toward the darkened doorway of the building.
“And I didn't,” Candace said every bit as tightly.
Mike made the doorway and looked around at the darkened interior. “Where did Alice go?”
“Ran back toward the pit when you went down. I... I couldn't stop her, Mike,” Candace told him.
“Of course not... Wouldn't have stopped me if it was you down there either.” He sighed.
“Jesus, you're bleeding bad, Mike, really bad,” Candace told him. She pulled her t-shirt over her head, wadded it up and pressed it against the side of her neck.
“Feel funny,” he said, “Sleepy... Hey, no bra, that's...” The lights dimmed down suddenly; winked out completely, and he spiraled down into darkness.
Tremont PA
Full dark
“I wanted... I wanted you to know it... I wanted you to know... Know it,” Mike said. His words were garbled and barely intelligible. His eyes snapped open in the darkness, his breath caught in his throat, and he began to sit up. Candace placed a hand against his chest, leaned close and whispered into his ear.
“Lay still, Babe. Lay still... Be quiet... Something is out there... Someone... Quiet.” Her hand kept firm and steady pressure against his chest and he sank back down to the floor. It seemed he was barley holding onto consciousness, his eyes kept rolling up into his head.
“Goddammit,” Candace exploded. “A second late her machine pistol began to chatter. Mike sank back down into unconsciousness.
The Gully
Ronnie's eyes flew open in the darkness. Something... Something had awakened him... He had been asleep and something... Close by a woman screamed and the sound of a semi automatic weapon firing fast came to him. The scream tore off abruptly, reduced to a series of gagging, pleading sounds, and then nothing. He tried to move and nearly grayed out from the pain that flared in his left arm. Something, he thought, was broken or badly injured. He tried again and this time it responded better. Dislocated, he told himself, as he grimaced to bite back the cry that wanted to slip past his clenched jaw. He whimpered slightly from reaction and the expenditure of energy, and grasped his left wrist firmly with his right hand. A second later he was pulling and twisting slightly. A sharp pull, a sharper twist. Once, twice and he was on the edge of passing out. He drew several deep breaths and tried a third time and the shoulder slipped back into place. He fell back against the moist earth and closed his eyes, intending only to gather his strength for a moment, but his eyes betrayed him and he spiraled away down into the dark.
The Vacant building
Candace made her feet and duck walked forward to where the two figures had crumpled to the ground. The one, a woman, half her lower jaw missing, one leg hanging by a thread and blood pumping out of her at an alarming rate, was snarling softly and crawling toward the road where a second woman lay breathing hard. She reached her and rose on one elbow before lowering her face and beginning to bite with what was left of her shattered jaw. The woman laying in the street began to scream, Candace switched to single shot, stood and walked up behind them and shot them both. The one on top still whimpered and snarled, almost sounding as though she were pleading, before Candace shot her one more time and she collapsed: Silent at last. Candace faded back into the shadows, listening, but the night was silent.
She returned to Mike who had slipped back down into a deep sleep once more. She had given him morphine, a small shot. They carried it. She had debated doing it, but he needed it. He had opened up a large section of his neck and the bleeding was heavy. She had to stitch it and she couldn't have him waking up halfway through that. She had looked with dismay at the dirt grimed into her hands and under her fingernails. Infection was a real possibility in this world. She had drenched the whole area with a full bottle of peroxide, something else they carried, stitched the wound with dental floss, and then sprayed it down with a once popular spray antibiotic. She had managed to force three penicillin pills into him and got him to swallow them down, out of it as he was. There was nothing else to do, but wait it out. He had lost a great deal of blood, but she had not been able to get him to swallow again, the water just poured out the sides of his mouth when she gave it to him.
She took his head into her lap now and held him. Watching the black and s
ilent night, her machine pistol across her lower legs. Safety off and ready.
SIX
The Nation
September 19th
They left early, just as the sun was touching the mountains in the South; somewhere close to Alabama.
Katie, Amy, Lilly and Janna waved goodbye from the top of the ledge where they rested against the low wall that had been built there. Sandy and Susan were climbing back up the ledge walkway that sloped gradually down the face of the cliff into the valley below.
The children were all gathered at the wall, some barely tall enough to see over, waving goodbye.
“Bring some Gold Fishes back,” Mark called.
“You can't eat Gold Fishes,” Rain said.
“I don't wanna. I wanna put them in a... A fish bowl,” he said.
“A Quarium,” Janelle pronounced carefully
“An Aquarium,” Lilly said.
“An Ah-quarium,” Janelle said. She looked at Lilly. Lilly nodded.
Susan and Sandy reached the top of the ledge.
“Did you come to play with us?” Rain asked.
“Nope,” Susan said. She reached down and picked Rain up. “I've come to teach you how to milk cows.”
“Silly,” Rain told her, kissing her nose. “We ain't got no cows up here... Where would we put them?”
“No?” Susan asked. “Well I guess I'll have to take you down to the barn then and show you there.”
“Only Rain?” Janelle asked.
“No, Honey. You can come too,” Sandy said.
“Only girls get to go?” Ben asked.
“Nope. You get to go too, Little Man,” Amy told him. “All of you get to go... And we're going to milk the deer too,” Amy told them.
“Hey! What about us?” Katie asked.
“Nope,” Sandy said. “You're both grounded still. You'll find stuff to keep you busy.”
“Alright, Babies, let's go,” Susan said. “Time to milk the cows.”
“And the Deers too,” Rain reminded her. “I gotta walk too,” She said in a whisper. “I'm big now.” She struggled to get down.
“You are,” She agreed. She looked over at Katie and Lilly. “Chanel six if you need us, otherwise we'll be back...” she looked down at the children, “Sometime,” she finished and laughed.
“Bye, bye,” Rain said. The group headed down the ledge and into the valley. Janna bringing up the rear.
On The Road
“Fuck off,” Zac said.
He had drank until he passed out. Amanda had left him in the road, covered with a stained and ratty old quilt she had found in the SUV. It wasn't a question of not caring, when Zac went out he was out. Amanda weighed a hundred pounds on a good day. There was no way she could move Zac, and he tended to get nasty when you woke him up, she knew. Just like now.
“Zac... Baby... You got to get up. There's people here,” she told him. She smiled an apology at the group where they stood outside their vehicles. The white guys were kind of cute, but there were two black guys with them and Zac wasn't going to like that at all.
“Yeah,” Zac said. “We'll fuck them too... You best quit fuckin' with me, you dizzy cunt or I'm gonna kick your fuckin' ass when I do get up... Leave. Me. Alone!” he said. A second later he was back to snoring.
Amanda shrugged: Noticed her top had slipped, exposing one pink nipple, drooping from her deflated, fish-belly white breast. She blushed as she pulled up her stained tube top: She had a problem keeping it where it should be, she'd lost more than a little weight since they had been on the road. Once they settled down someplace she'd put the weight back on, she told herself. She turned to the group, embarrassed, but they only stared back. Even looked a little pissy about the whole situation. Well, screw them if that was they way they wanted to be. It wasn't her fault, it was Zac. They certainly didn't seem to be in any great hurry to try waking him up themselves, just stared at her like it was all her fault. Well, it wasn't. She shrugged once more and then headed for the SUV. She fired up another joint when she got there and promptly forgot about the people.
~
“All we have to do is move the bike,” Aaron looked from Conner to Adam.
Conner was glad the children were in one of the last vehicles what with what they had just witnessed.
They had the three jeeps, the two large trucks and Josh and Chloe were driving four wheel drive pick ups they had taken from the lot of a Ford dealership the day before. They had left the van behind, it had been too much trouble with the roads as bad as they were.
Conner studied the situation, deciding: If they moved the bike they could squeeze around the rest of the detritus that spread out from the SUV where the woman sat smoking her joint. It was as if someone had set up a red neck living room in the middle of the highway, Molly had joked. She hadn't laughed though, instead she became angrier as she heard his words when the woman had attempted to get him to move out of the way. “Where are the flesh eating zombies when you need them,” she had said next. Aaron and Adam had both laughed and then agreed with her.
They had set up their little area of the highway like a living room. A wrecked moving van a quarter mile back had been raided and they had dragged two couches and a huge overstuffed chair from the wreck. They now sat on the blacktop. Placed haphazardly. Seeming as though they somehow belonged with all the other clutter. A coffee table, overflowing with booze bottles and trash. And three of the dead apparently lying where they had been killed. It seemed like a bad scene out of a horror novel, Conner thought. A brand new Harley sat right in the middle of it all.
The man was off the center line, over toward the SUV, but the bike was another story, virtually sideways in their lane. The overstuffed chair sat near it, but that would be easy enough to move. The Harley was a different story.
“How much you think it weighs?” Conner asked.
“Had one like it,” Adam answered. Probably about five fifty or so. The three of us could move it, but I wouldn't want to move it too far.”
Conner nodded and the three of them walked over. Adam righted the bike, Aaron kicked the kick stand up, and with Conner balancing the bike they rolled it back over the line toward the SUV.
“Hey!” The woman said.
They had obviously startled her, as though she had forgotten they were there. The smell from the corpses was high and cloying, and it made Conner feel sick to his stomach. He swallowed and turned towards her, although he would have rather walked away to get away from the odor.
She pinched the biggest joint he had even seen in between two browned fingers. Stained, he supposed, from all the joints she had smoked. She stood with a hand on one hip and shook her head as if to clear it. “Are you stupid or something?”
They all looked at her.
“Zac ain't gonna like it that no ni... black boy touched his bike, I'll tell you,” she said. She took a quick hit off the joint as if to fortify her resolve; squinted and held her breath.
“Really?” Aaron asked. “What was that other word you were going to use?”
“Never you mind, smart ass. And you had best watch how you talk to your betters too,” she told him. She dismissed him, picked up a bottle of pink sparkle fingernail polish, shook it up, pulled out the wand and began to paint one nail.
The three continued pushing until the bike was over the line. Conner kicked the stand down.
“Dumb fucks,” the woman said. “Wait until Zac hears about this.” She took another deep pull on the joint, held her breath, almost lost it, then let the smoke roll out her nose. She seemed to forget about the three men again. She spread her fingers and looked at the one nail critically. She began to dab at another nail.
“You have a nice day,” Adam told her.
“Yeah. It's been real,” Aaron added.
“White trash,” Molly said as she climbed back into her truck.
“Who you?” the woman said. She squinted at Molly who paused part way into her truck, but she said nothing else.
They cre
pt around the section with their vehicles. Just as Chloe inched past the bike it fell over onto one of the ratty old couches.
“Huh,” Conner said.
“Must not have set the kick stand right,” Aaron said.
“Yes!” Conner said. He raised his hand and they both high-fived. “Unbelievable.”
“Yeah. You can say that again,” Aaron agreed.
~
They dismissed the episode from their minds. It was late afternoon, and despite what was behind the vast, empty countryside; the devastation that was worldwide, the coming fall was painting the foliage in vivid colors and the beauty of it caught their eyes as they drove along.
They had spent most of the early morning cleaning out an alternative energy store that they had happened upon. It had anchored the end of a huge strip mall on the outskirts of a large city they had come upon. There had been no sign for the city. Someone had erected their own from a piece of plywood, spray painting, 'Stay The Fuck Out' and at the bottom, 'Dead Body Count 457'. The sign had been done in blue spray paint. Someone else had x-ed out the 457 with orange paint and wrote 458.
They had stopped; they had heard nothing and they had seen nothing, but they had kept their machine pistols handy, and the safety’s off as they drove down into the strip mall. They had spotted the store and it had also appeared empty at first look, but as they pulled down off the highway the dead had been on them immediately.
Conner had run down three of them that had come down off the cracked sidewalk and ran at their Jeep. And then he and Aaron had jumped out and gone after the few that were still coming toward them. Within a few seconds there had been ten of them scattered across the warped parking lot. Conner had walked up to one that lay on the pavement, halfway onto the orange painted curbing that framed the sidewalk.
Half it's mid section had been gone. It's spine vaporized, but it had continued to scrabble against the blacktop trying to pull itself up. Conner had crushed its head with the Jeeps tire iron he had bought from the jeep for just that purpose. A few minutes later the other vehicles were parked by the front doors and Adam and Aaron had kept watch as they searched through the stores for things on Dustin's wish list.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 87