Bruising on his jawline and temple on the right side of his face and scraped up skin in the same place. What wasn't scraped up was deeply bruised. Probably where his head collided with something on the way down to the bottom. His shoulder felt larger on one side, but she was able to move his arm with no problem.
“Hey,” softly from above, but she nearly jumped out of her skin.
“Oh my God you scared the shit out of me,” Alice whispered.
Candace only nodded. “He okay too?”
“No,” Alice said softly. “Too cold... Have to get him out of here... Warmed up.”
Candace nodded and then disappeared for a few seconds. “Okay... Listen, I'm going to get the truck. The one you and Ronnie were driving had a winch. We should be able to get you up with that.”
Alice felt at her pocket for the keys, but as she looked down at her pants the pocket was gone, ripped from the fabric of the cargo pants. “Keys are gone,” she called up. Candace swore lightly under her breath.
“Plan B,” Candace called down after a few minutes. “Our truck is gone, don't know if that was why they attacked us, but they took the truck. I don't know how to hot-wire a truck or a car... Mike is out, so I'm going to go look for something that will run, get a rope and come back here and get you out that way. Hang on.“ Her face disappeared from the top of the embankment and then was back a few moments later. “Water,” she called down. “Don't try to catch it.” She took her time, aimed, and then tossed first one and then two more bottles down. They landed with a hard thud not far from where Alice sat with Ronnie's head pulled into her lap. “Drink... You don't want to get dehydrated too,” Candace told her with a tight smile. “I'll be back as soon as I can.” She disappeared before Alice could speak.
“Come on, Baby, come on,” Alice said as she slapped at the side of Ronnie's face. She finally got him to open one eye, pulled his head slightly higher and got him to drink half of one bottle before his head sank once more into her lap.
Afternoon
They were all huddled around the fire Candace had built inside the small sidewalk area under the overhang of the doorway. There was very little room, but there was a building at their backs and a wide view of the downtown area and the edge of the ravine a few hundred feet away.
“We have got to get out of here,” Candace said. The day was slipping away. She had no doubt that whatever it was that had attacked them last night, plague victims, would be back tonight once the sun went down. She had only a dozen bullets for her machine pistol. Mikes pistol had a loaded magazine, nine, and Ronnie and Alice had both lost their weapons on their fall into the ravine. Candace had smashed the window on their truck, but all the ammunition had been in their own truck, and that was long gone.
“Bad straights,” Alice said.
“Very,” Candace agreed. She eased her lap out from under Mike's head, and rose to her feet. She had found an old mini van that she had used to get Alice and Ronnie out of the ravine. It ran well enough, and had nearly a half tank of gas. It would have to do. She had already transferred what foodstuffs there had been and supplies they could use from the second truck into the mini van, and packed it carefully along the sides of the rear windows. The rear seat had folded down, and there was space to lay both Mike and Ronnie out in the back. The problem was that neither of them were conscious and they were both big men. Not an easy task. Alice had been banged up too. One side of her face was going to be covered with spectacular scars. Candace had dug the small pebbles out of it, washed the dirt away and disinfected it. There was nothing more she could do. She didn't know if Alice was up to the work or not.
“Think you're up to it,” she asked now. She looked up at the sky. “The longer we wait the worse it will be. The day's getting away from us.”
Alice nodded. “No, but I will have to be. Let's do it.” She rose to her own feet, steady now, where just a short time earlier she had been shaky. She had warmed up nicely, and she saw that Ronnie had as well. His breathing had become something closer to normal, even, no rattle in his chest or gasping that she was afraid she would hear. He slept deeply.
Candace had pulled the small van close to the building earlier. She went to it now, opened the rear hatch and returned to where Alice waited. They decided on Mike first. Mike was the heaviest and it might be better to get the heaviest out-of-the-way first.
It took more than twenty minutes before they managed to get Mike securely into the back of the van. They had both collapsed to the pavement breathing hard, not wanting to do anything else. But after only a short break they had forced themselves to their feet once more. The longer they sat, the deeper the weariness had moved into them: Settling into their bodies.
Ronnie had been no trouble at all. Maybe it had been the first tugging and fighting to get Mike into the van, or maybe he was just that much lighter, but he was easily positioned into the back of the van. They both collapsed to the pavement once more. Breath ragged, lungs aching and burning, sharpness resting just below their rib cages, a feeling Candace had always acquainted with running too fast, too hard. She took her time, slowed her breathing, dragged Alice to her feet and walked back and forth in front of the building until her heartbeat resumed its former slower beat, and the sweat began to dry on her skin. Only then did she slow and rest against the hood with Alice.
“This is so hard,” Candace said. She burst into tears, but fought them back just as quickly.
Alice lowered her head into her own hands and a few sobs slipped past her hands before she got herself under control. “Better go,” she said aloud as she raised her tear streaked face.
Candace nodded, moved around the truck and opened the driver's door with a rusty screech. A few moments later the broken pavement of downtown Tremont was shrinking in their mirror as they made their way west once more, heading back to I 81 to continue their trip south.
Conner
On The Road
September 21st
They next morning they buried Nellie and Molly in the field behind the store. Chloe had spoken the words that no one else felt able to speak.
The SUV was a smoking hulk on the side of the road, but the biker was gone. Adam, Conner and Aaron, followed a drag trail away from the SUV and into the woods on the other side of the highway. Machine pistols off their straps and in their hands. The forest was quiet. No birds whistled and called to one another, nothing moved. They followed the drag marks nearly a quarter mile back into the woods before they came across the body.
They had expected to see other zombies. Believed that they had come in the night and dragged the biker off, but there were no other zombies. Just the Biker who had turned sometime after he died, come back, and tried to drag himself to safety.
They had heard the noises in the stillness long before they had come upon him. The rough dragging sound popped out of the silence and Adam had raised one hand for them to stop. They had come up on him slowly then, on either side, safeties off. Adam had circled around to the front.
One leg still worked, the other dragged uselessly behind him. But the leg was out of sync with the rest of his body. It kicked and stuttered, scuffing against the pine needles that covered the floor of the forest.
One arm was gone, possibly back at the still smoking SUV, the other, not much more than bones and shredded flesh clutched at the ground to pull him forward. Adam lowered his pistol and blew his head off. The body jumped, then became still. The silence returned even thicker than it had been.
“That's it then,” Aaron asked.
Adam nodded.
“It doesn't seem enough,” Conner said as he studied the body of the biker.
Adam nodded. “It isn't... But it's what we have... You can't fight the evil... It's gone now.” He toed one shoulder of the biker's body with a heavy work boot, rocking the body as he did. He looked up at Conner.
Conner raised his eyes from the body and caught Adam's eyes. He nodded and they turned and walked back off through the forest.
No on
e had felt much like loading the other truck with what they had come for, but they had done it anyway. By Late afternoon they had been ready to leave. Chloe and Adam had wandered over to the steep sided ravine after the children had been loaded into the truck. Conner stood with Aaron, looking down into the pit. The zombies wandered back and forth, nearly silent. Some making strange noises as they went. A few stood and stared back up at them. Dustin wandered over.
“Dustin... Tell Josh to go ahead, we'll catch up with him in a few miles,” Conner told him. Dustin looked from Conner down into the pit and back.
“Gonna waste them?” Dustin asked.
Conner met his eyes, but didn't speak. He simply nodded. Dustin looked back at the pit and then turned away. A few seconds later three of the trucks started and left the parking lot. Adam left and came back a few minutes later with two five gallon cans of diesel fuel. He had one of the pumps they used to siphon fuel with him. He pinched off the end, folded the plastic loosely against itself and ran a small piece of duct tape around it to hold it. The result was a very narrow opening for the fuel to escape from . Aaron slung his own pistol on his shoulder, walked over and began to pump the handle as Adam turned and began to spray the diesel fuel out over the ravine and the zombies. Several zombies fled to the other side of the pit, their eyes wide and frightened.
If they ran, Chloe and Conner cut them down. It was over in just a few minutes. One or two still moved and Adam, who was the better shot, took them out one by one as Chloe took over spraying the fuel and Conner pumped.
When Adam finished the last one he left and came back with a glass jar of gasoline. He had fashioned a hole in the top of the metal lid with his knife. A rag hung from the hole, already wicking the gasoline out of the jar. Chloe pulled the pump from the nearly empty Diesel can and Conner tossed it into the pit. It tumbled end over end, spraying fuel as it went, crashing to the ground. Adam pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the rag. He cocked his arm and launched the jar into the sky.
The jar arced up into the overcast afternoon sky and then plunged down into the pit. A second later the entire pit bloomed into flame, and they found themselves rushing backwards quickly, away from the heat.
They stood as a group and watched the burning for a few seconds and then turned away in mass. They left a few minutes later with a slow, cold rain falling from the gray afternoon sky.
They had driven through they night as if death had been chasing them too, and found the auto plant that they had wanted shortly after dawn.
Chloe had seemed to get a quicker handle on her grief and moved past it. Maybe dealing with the two youngest children and keeping them from dwelling on what had happened had pulled her back from it also, Adam had thought to himself. He has seen different people deal with it in different ways. Not always the way you thought they might.
Aaron and Conner seemed to be taking it the hardest. Aaron because Molly had bitten him and caused him to let her go when he had reacted in pain. Conner because he had understood in the last seconds what it was she intended to do and he had been unable to stop her. Her eyes had rested on his for that briefest of seconds and spoken to him. Transmitted her absolute despair. She had said goodbye with that look, and there had been no apology in it. Adam sat and listened to both of them as they spoke quietly after they had stopped in the early morning light. Letting them speak it out, rid themselves of the guilt and poison. It had seemed to help a little. Time would tell though.
Dustin, Richard and Josh were also at a loss. With Dustin it may have been harder because he had known her, but it seemed equally harder for Richard and Josh because they hadn't. It had happened so fast and it had been so brutal. Not knowing her well just drove home the fact that it could have been anyone, at anytime.
The miles rolling by during the night had taken the immediacy of the pain from them. Of all of them, only Conner, Aaron and Adam had seen what Molly had done. The others had thought that another shot had taken her: But the truth was not something that could be hidden that easily, and it was not something they intended to hide in any case.
Chloe had come to Conner and spoken of it, cried it out as they had waited through the night. She had told him that she had come close to doing it herself a few months before. She had put the barrel in her mouth, tasted the metallic, oily, biting taste. Felt her tongue contract and pull away from it. She had been unable to do it. She had broken down instead. Cried it out, and the danger had passed. Conner had held her as she worked through her tears. After that she had gone back to the children and seemed to have been able to put it away from her. Conner wished he could do the same. Even talking to Aaron and Adam had not helped.
Killing the zombies in the pit had seemed to help. It had quieted something inside of him, but he wondered what that said about him. Maybe Chloe was the only one who had handled it correctly, she had cried it out and then went on. The rest of them, he suspected, had stuffed it down inside where it would come back some day to haunt them. Conner was certain of that. It had happened that way with him too many times. It was just a matter of when and how it came back.
The big man, Adam, was a different kind of man. He seemed to operate on some other level. Conner liked him, but he had the feeling that it was a rare event for Adam to let anyone in too close. He had hoped that Adam would share some of his past with them. Help them to understand what the world had become. But Adam's answer seemed to be that it was self evident and required no explanation at all.
They sat now in the falling rain in front of acres and acres of cars and trucks. The plant itself seemed largely untouched. It was surrounded by parking lots that spread out in every direction. At some point there had been a fire in the east and several cars parked in a lot in that direction had exploded and burned. They were long dead fires now though; Just blackened, already rusting hulks in the steady rain.
They were all tired but they cruised from lot to lot with two of the jeeps looking for what they wanted. They found it an hour later: Pulled the vehicles together, eyeing the plant itself warily, and made a breakfast, mainly for the children. The rest of them had been subsisting on power bars, nuts, the travel cakes and smoked meat that Janna had packed.
“Four is all we can do,” Conner said, “and we'll have to leave the Jeeps and the last pickup behind.” They had left one pickup behind already. “We'll pick the best four.” He had, had Dustin look them over. “These are not dual fueled so we'll have to charge them. We can do that with the converter from the big truck, then we can drive them back... I can't see any other way,” Conner finished. He sipped at his coffee, blowing the steam into his eyes.
“We could use tow bars,” Dustin said. “I saw a man who lived in my building do that a few times. He raced a car. He towed it to the track every weekend behind his truck. Set the wheels straight. Locked the ignition. Disconnected the drive shaft and that was that,” he finished.
A small smile touched Conner's face. “That was helpful, Dustin.”
Adam nodded. “We passed a place back down the road a few miles where we can get what we need.”
Conner nodded. “Well... Sleep or get this done... I know I've been driving hard... I guess I don't want us to just sit and think. I just want to finish it and head back.”
“No different for the rest of us,” Adam said quietly.
Conner nodded. “I can't take it out on you guys. I'm sorry.”
“I don't feel any different... Worse for you folks... You knew them. As for the world, well, the blinders are off... Even for me. And I've been living right in it.” He finished so quietly that he may have been talking to himself, Conner thought.
“I say let's get it done,” Aaron said.
Adam nodded.
Chloe who had come over closer to listen nodded as well. “Let's get it done... Sleep tonight and then head back tomorrow... I don't ever want to come back out here again,” She said.
“Sleep would be good,” Josh agreed.
“Conner nodded. “Okay,” he said slowly.
“We'll never get all the way better if we keep coming back out here,” Dustin said.
“Fuck,” Adam said. He lunged to his feet and started toward Chloe. She had glanced off across the parking lot and then turned quickly back and locked eyes with Adam. She turned away and Adam followed her eyes to the highway beyond the parking lot. “Conner... Aaron... Two trucks... Three trucks... They saw us,” Adam called tightly.
Everyone was instantly on their feet and facing the highway a good distance away where the trucks were emerging from a screening growth of trees and turning down into the parking lot.
The Nation
Toward the end of the third day when the lines were once again packed, they turned to one of the small streams that fed the lake and got out the netting.
Arlene and David on one side, Sharon and James on the other. They started a few hundred feet out into the lake where it was still shallow and walked up to the stream where it flowed into the lake. By the time they reached the creek they were bunched closer together and the netting was full and hard to pull. Jake and Cindy jumped in and helped to pull the overflowing netting up onto the grassy bank. Together they dragged it further up the bank, away from the water.
Hundreds of crabs, an equal number of fish, several dozen crayfish, and dozens of small mollusks. The fish went back, except for a few large ones. The Crayfish, mollusks and crabs went into several plastic coolers that were not yet packed with fish. With some fresh water from the lake they would keep for a few days.
“I have never had a crayfish or a mollusk,” Cindy said. She looked doubtful about ever trying one either, James thought. He laughed.
“You'll like them... Ever had Squid? Octopus? Part of the family... I'll get this wrong. My brain is not a book like Janna seems to think... But I think it goes like this, they are part of the same species... So are Snails, slugs... Those are Gastropods, the Octopus and Squid are Cephalopods... Same family. People think they only live in the oceans but there are fresh water Mollusks too. Cooked and then dipped in a little butter? Believe me, you will never again look doubtful about eating them. Crayfish? I have not had them in years. People think they don't inhabit northern climates, but they are wrong. They are nowhere near as big as their southern cousins are, but they are there and they are so good.” He smiled. Cindy still looked doubtful. James laughed again.
Earth's Survivors: box set Page 90