by Geo Dell
Animals have been in and out. Anything that could be eaten has been. Nearly everything’s been gnawed on. We put together a good meal with canned stuff though. We took as much as we could carry in the trucks to top off what we had. I say we, but it’s really Janet who’s done the work, gotten people motivated to do something. She’s good at that. A good organizer: meals, children, lists, you name it. She’s one of the most ‘on the ball’ people I’ve ever met. I wish I had half of her confidence.
We’re too far away to pick up anything on the radios from Watertown. Even so, we’ve picked up bits and pieces of conversation as we’ve traveled. Not enough to know where it’s from, but some people somewhere are communicating.
We discussed big cities - Syracuse is not far away - and decided against them. All that concrete and steel, people. Disease alone could be a problem.
Almost everyone approves of what we did today. Approves, that’s a funny word to use, but it’s what it is. There were a few; I could sense it, who wanted to fight. The two new women, Molly and Susan... I shouldn’t try to read minds though.
But I do understand it. And if I'm honest, I wanted to fight too. It was my first impulse, but that sobered me up, the fact that it was an impulse. No matter how I looked at it, after I cut out the emotional response, it made no sense at all. Even so, I find myself second guessing it. I’m not entirely sure I’ve done the right thing talking everyone into going on the road. It could go bad. It could be bad. But I tell myself maybe I’m just unaccustomed to leading.
What if there were others that were being forced to be there? Hell, there probably were. I remember seeing a woman heave a gasoline bomb from the roof on the square. Was she with one or the other side or fighting to be free? No way to know, and could we have won if we had fought them? Could we have helped those people if it did turn out that they needed help, or would we simply have gotten ourselves and them killed trying? Or captured? And we know what that would have meant for the women in our group. And the men? Probably would've just killed us. I did what I thought was best. No, I won't second guess it, I did the right thing.
Where are we going? I don’t know. We haven’t had the time to talk it over. And on a personal level it matters to me what Candace wants to do, where she wants to go.
Tom: I don’t know what to think about Tom. Sometimes I feel like he’s fine with me... We’ll be fine. And I wasn’t all that sure that we could ever get to that place for awhile. And, I’m still not always convinced. Sometimes I see him looking at Candace and I think, if there isn’t something, some sort of feeling still there, then there is some sort of resentment there. He’ll look at Candace then me; one reminds him of the other, and not in a good way. And, you know what? I think I’m being excessively hyper critical. I’m reading too much into it. I just don’t know. I want to trust him. Hell, he’s smart. We need him. Is that a reason to walk the line? Does that make me any better than any of those fakes in the old world that I hated? I don’t think it does. I’m just trying to be real. I guess I’ll keep it real with him, but I’ll have to keep an eye on him because I’m just not sure.
Bob: Bob is straight forward. Bob wants the Nation restored. Bob wants all the native peoples back together living in peace. But where are they? He believes they’ll find us. Maybe they will. He believes in what he calls the Rainbow Tribe; People that feel the call but aren’t completely native, or maybe have no Native blood at all. But they want the life, and he believes they will come to where ever the spirit leads him. What can I say to that? It could be. For all I know that is exactly the way it’s supposed to be. And maybe Jesus will show up too… I don’t mean that sarcastically. A month ago I thought I would spend the balance of my life in Watertown. I liked my life. I didn’t see this. I didn’t believe this when people said it might happen. But how often has some whack job predicted the end of the Earth? Too often.
Even so, here I am. I’m leading people. Other people. They believe I’m capable of doing that. You couldn’t have sold me that story a few weeks ago, that’s for sure. So, Bob? Could be his dream will become a reality. I only know he’s level headed, pretty solid, and he knows more about surviving this kind of world than all the rest of us put together because of his native background.
Ronnie: Probably going to be the best friend I’ve ever had. In the world I had friends, and I thought they were real friends, as tight as I could imagine, but this kind of world makes for a kind of friendship, at least for me, that could never have been in that old world. He’s solid. Loyal. Smart. I need him too.
I’ve started to do this thing over the last few days. I think things out loud, bounce them off him. He seems to think of the things I don’t. That’s important. I may lead, but this is not a one man show.
Candace: I suppose she’ll read this someday. Or at least if she wanted to I would let her. I was by myself. I don’t mean I never went out; I did, but there was no one special, no one I was serious about, and I don’t think there ever would have been. I was used to who I was.
There is nothing she doesn’t know about me, and I’m pretty sure I can say the same thing about her. She told everyone, me included at first, that she was here visiting her grandparents. It's not true though. She was living here. She had wanted to go into Law Enforcement like her father, but she hadn’t been able to make the college end of it work out yet. So, she was here dancing. That’s why she doesn’t allow anyone to call her Candy, except Janet who can do no wrong in Candace’s eyes. She was saving for college. She was dancing here hoping it never got back to anyone who knew her in Syracuse. I love her. It doesn’t hurt to say that, but it scares me.
Patty: She’s got this distance thing with me. Not cold, not mean, not anything like that. I don’t know what it is. It baffles me. Even so, I don’t think it will affect us or the group, and maybe it’s me.
Sandy: She has something against Candace, and that means she has something with me by proxy. It’s just that way. I don’t know what the deal is. Maybe it’ll work itself out, maybe it won’t.
Nell: Nell is solid. I like her. Annie, Tim, good kids, not really kids either. Janet… I should like her and I do but I have this reservation in me about her. There is a part of her that bothers me.
Lilly: I can’t help but like Lilly. She is real all the time. Where Bob believes in The Great Spirit, she believes in Jesus. She calls herself a Christian. She says she’s not religious though, and that Jesus wasn't either. She believes he’s coming back, but probably not for a while, not in her lifetime.
Molly and Susan: I tried not to like them, to be reserved. But they are too likable, too honest, straight forward. They’ll be assets to us. I like them in spite of my fear of just accepting anyone at all at face value. I don’t know what to make of the world outside of Watertown.
I do know that this little drive has been enlightening. There is so much destruction everywhere I look, but then I see other things as well. Herds of deer and cows everywhere, a few horses, and packs of wild dogs as well, and we’ve traveled only a few miles, really. What will the rest be like?
So many animals, so few people. Looks like we’ve adapted ourselves right out of existence. I guess those are my thoughts. They seem kind of small written out like this, but at the same time frightening... huge. We’re down for the night, on the road to where ever tomorrow.
~State Street Hill~
They came from the barn and made their way out to the twisted and buckled road. Thirty all together, and now they did have a leader. They had a leader, and they were becoming less and less afraid of the living.
The fires that burned far below in the city were another matter. They could not overcome the panic and the fear that leapt into them every time they saw the flames leap far below or the smell of smoke came to them on the air currents that floated up over the city and up to where they were.
He came last from the barn, slow, but not slow because he needed to move slow, or because he was missing parts of himself like so many were. He moved slow becaus
e he chose to move slow. He moved slow because there was no need, in his mind, to move fast. Slow worked.
He walked through the others where they had gathered looking down at the city and the pall of smoke that hung over it. He walked to the edge of the road where it curved into the dip that began the long, steep fall down into the city. He stood for a long time... scenting the air... thinking.
The moon continued across the sky. Time slipped by; the noise from the city did not return, and yet he stood still. Finally, he turned and faced them. He shook his head slightly, raised his eyes to the moon and then looked back down. “No,” he said. His voice was smooth, seemingly unmolested by rot and decay. “No,” he said once more. “Not yet.” He walked back to the barn slowly. The others hesitated a few seconds and then turned and followed him back to the barn.
The moon continued its trip across the sky, shining its silvery light down upon the earth.
The Zombie Plagues: Book Two
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SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Geo Dell on Smashwords
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BOOK TWO
Copyright © 2010 - 2015 by George Dell
Created by Wendell Sweet.
Additional Copyrights 2009 – 2015 Wendell Sweet & independAntwriters Publishing All rights reserved
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This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places or incidents depicted are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual living persons places, situations or events is purely coincidental.
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THE ZOMBIE PLAGUES: BOOK TWO
Chapter One
On the road
~ March 26th ~
The camp was up before dawn, tents packed away and breakfast and coffee taken quietly together around the low embers of the camp fires. The breakfast didn't consist of much more than the coffee and a few energy bars, but it suited their purpose well enough. The Dog, who still had no name, was going person to person and begging little tidbits even after his own breakfast of canned meat.
As the sun was touching the horizon, the small caravan of six vehicles were once again winding their way southward, leaving the roads where they were impassable and taking to the fields.
The two Suburbans that had been fitted with lifts and bigger tires had no problem with the on and off road transitions. It was tougher for the other four vehicles.
They monitored the radios as they drove along. Bits and pieces of conversation and skip came through the static. Sometimes clear, sometimes garbled and barely intelligible, but there were no conversations they could follow. Mike had never been a C.B. Radio fan, but Bob had been and he explained skip to everyone.
Skip could be two thousand miles away, or only a hundred. It was a signal that hit the atmosphere just right, or cloud cover, or a mountain range, and carried farther than it normally would have. You might talk to someone a thousand miles away as clearly as though they were no more than a mile down the road. And you might have that conversation for ten minutes or two hours and then suddenly they were gone because those atmospheric conditions that had allowed the conversation had changed.
Early on, Mike had thought about Ham radio. You could reach around the world with Ham radio. But Bob had explained that Ham radio accomplished that with relays. All the people that did the relays were most likely gone, at least for now. Maybe they would be back eventually, but they had heard nothing but a soft electric hiss cutting across the miles the two times they had tried the bands, and no one had answered their calls.
The F.M. Band had also remained dead. It seemed all the traffic was on the C.B. Channels. The V.H.F. Bands, normally used for Marine conversations, were empty too. But that offered a secure option for them to talk without being overheard. As they drove through the morning now, they talked back and forth on the V.H.F. Band, monitoring the C.B. and the F.M. Bands.
~
They filled their tanks two hours after dawn at a collapsed gas station next to the interstate. A length of rubber hose connected to a hand operated Kerosene pump made the job quick. The only hard part had been locating the underground tank. The cover had been found though, the cap spun off, and the odor of gasoline drifted up into the air telling them that the underground tank had not been ruptured.
The little area that serviced the interstate contained a large garage, two small Mom-and-Pop stores, the gas station and a chain auto parts store right next to the garage, probably built with the garage in mind.
On the other side of the asphalt parking lot sat a motel unit that had seen better days. Most of the units were flattened. The swimming pool was cracked and empty; wire mesh and what looked to be a bottomless void graced the middle of the rust stained pool. A second row of motel units running parallel to the pool looked to be untouched. Across the road were two name brand outlet stores, obviously placed to take advantage of the interstate. They had pulled the trucks onto the cracked pavement of the gas station, and after they had finished gassing up the trucks, Mike had gathered everyone together.
Bob and Tom came back from checking out the garage and the auto parts store just after the trucks were gassed up. Bob nodded his head at Mike.
“You noticed Bob and Tom looking over the garage,” Mike said. “We're thinking of stopping here. We'd probably end up here for a few days while Bob and Tom work on the other four trucks. And we need a few other things: tail gate swing outs that can hold a spare tire, gas can too, roof racks to carry gear, lifts, better, bigger tires... In short, the things we had intended to do back in Watertown.” He looked around, trying to catch the eyes of each person individually.
“You can see how much easier it is for the two Suburbans to get around wrecks, buckled roads, down in to and out of ditches. It just makes sense to give the other four trucks that ability, otherwise they'll just be slowing us down. You saw a little of that this morning.”
“Makes sense,” Janet Dove agreed.
Molly nodded. “My only concern is, are those...” she paused and her face reddened, “People,” she managed after a long pause, “coming after us?” Her eyes were dark and questioning. Mike could read the fear in her posture.
“I doubt it,” Candace said. She spoke quietly but forcefully.
“We'll listen in on the radios,” Nellie added.
“They won't come. In the city they knew how to get around... Out here,” Patty waved her arms around, finally lifting them to the sky. “They wouldn't know what to do. Couldn't sneak up on us.” She shook her head. “I just don't think they're the kind that want to deal with even odds.”
Candace nodded in agreement. “You know, Molly. Spineless, right?”
Molly nodded and Mike watched the fear leave her and something closer to determination replace it. She nodded her agreement once more, looking directly at Candace as she did.
Mike cleared his throat and continued. “The reason we traveled on was to put some miles between us and them. It's a long way for them to come. I don't see it,” Mike said. He let the silent nods continue for a moment and then continued.
“There are other things we can do, things we need. Canned goods, maybe one of those cows, or a deer. They seem to be wandering everywhere. The
re really is enough to keep all of us busy for the next few days while Bob and Tom get the truck situation straightened out.” He paused but no one spoke. “So... If there are no real objections?”
“Let's do it,” Molly said.
“Yeah, I'm for it,” Patty added.
~
As Mike turned away, Patty, Candace, Molly and Nell began to set up a plan for monitoring the radios. Everyone agreed that they would probably hear about anything coming their way long before it reached them. Molly went over to the garage a few minutes later and pitched in, helping Bob and Tom move whatever was in the way so that they could reach the racks and garage bays. There were two tow trucks that they used to do most of the work, but chains and muscle power accomplished the rest.
In the end, they cleared out three stalls that they could work in. Molly stayed, and not long after Nell found her way over and began to work side by side with her.
The garage was a prefab steel building that, either because of a whim of the Gods' or its design, had remained standing. By the time some others were returning with a cow and two large does in the back of one of the pickup trucks, the garage was ready to go. Molly and Tom wheeled out a towering chain-fall for the hunting party to use to dress out the animals and then went back to work.
~
By late afternoon the third Suburban was well under way. The lift was done, brush-guards installed and they were working on the carrying racks. Mike and Ronnie stopped by to look over the effort and were amazed. The Suburban looked like something that had rolled out of some sort of Safari outfitters garage, or a futuristic end of the world epic, Mike joked. But that sent them all into silence for a few moments, and Mike didn't mention it again.
Molly and Nell were working on bolting a huge winch to the front bumper of one truck while Tom and Bob worked on stripping out one of the pickups to get it ready for a lift kit.