The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books.

by Geo Dell

  “Tom and I have a project we're working on,” Bob said. He looked at Tom. “Day after tomorrow,” he asked.

  Tom nodded.

  Everyone else nodded too.

  “We can take the wagon, a good team, we'll have to take some netting... The hand nets and poles, and...” He looked up sheepishly. “I guess I'm trying to plan your fishing trip,” Bob told Cindy with a smile.

  “That's good,” she laughed. “I only want to do it... I don't know how to do it.”

  “Ah... Okay, my Dear, leave it to me. Day after tomorrow bright and early,” Bob pronounced.

  The meal continued and the conversations went back and forth.

  “I have some news,” Candace said. She looked at Sandy. “I was going to wait until Mike came back, but, well, its good news.... Big news, so I'll share it.” She took a deep breath. “I'm going to have twins,” she said with a huge smile.

  “Now that's doing it right,” Arlene said. “Bravo, Candace, Bravo!”

  “Wow. Mike's going to be thrilled.” Cindy added.

  “He's going to be a good father too. He will be ecstatic,” Janet predicted. “That's a ready made family.”

  “My dog had six puppies once,” Janelle said.

  “How do them babies get in there anyways,” Rain asked.

  “Uh, we'll be learning about that in school soon,” Lilly said, trying hard not to laugh.

  Everyone stifled their laughs.

  “I think the baby fairy does it,” Janelle told Rain. They both nodded seriously as the adult conversations picked back up around them.

  “It really is good news, Candace,” David told her. “Congratulations.”

  “Yes, Dear. I truly am happy for you,” Janet said.

  “Well,” Patty said. She looked over at Janelle. “It's not six, but it will do.” She giggled. Janelle and Rain both joined in with her.

  Candace giggled too.

  “Six is a lot,” Janelle said. “This many.” She held up six fingers.

  “Exactly right,” Arlene said. “Exactly right.”

  “She's really smart,” Mark said.

  Everyone laughed then a few moments later the conversation moved on. The fishing trip in two days. The corn when they got back from that. Then next week, the second crop of Rye and Wheat which would come down to be dried on the stalk for feed for the horses and cows. Some corn would go to the same purpose.

  Janet passed around a plate of cheese. There were three distinct types.

  Two were made from cow milk and the last from the deer that Bob had been working with. Everyone liked it and complimented Bob on the effort.

  The meal finished up and they all drifted off to their evening jobs. Candace and Lilly began to clean up, joking back and forth as they did.

  On The Road

  When they arrived back at the field, Nellie, Chloe and Molly were playing a game of hide and go seek with the children, using the tent, the van and a few surrounding trees. They all seemed in good spirits. Laughing and winded. Molly's face sobered when her eyes fell on Mike's hand. He shook his head to let her know that he didn't want to discuss it with the children there. Nellie and Chloe watched the exchange and sobered as well.

  Mike laughed, and it seemed to lift the veil that had fallen. The three women and the two children oohed and aahed over the trucks and the trees. Molly looked over Mike's hand.

  “Drop a tree on it,” She asked.

  “A little more complicated than that... I'll tell you later,” he said. She nodded, but her eyes were serious and promised to hold him to his word. She wandered over, slipped one arm around Nellie, and began to look over the trucks.

  The grain harvester was appreciated by Nellie and Molly both. They had both spent the better part of two weeks out in the fields stripping out grain by hand with nearly everyone else.

  Chloe came over to Mike and hugged him. “Thank you,” she told him. She hugged Tim and Ronnie as well. “I want to go back. It will be nice to have a home and people who care... Thank you.” She walked away, and sat down with Richard and Alicia. Alicia crawled up in her lap.

  “Are you still sad,” Alicia asked her?

  “No, Baby. I'm not,” Chloe told her. She kissed her on the nose.

  Alicia smiled and kissed her back. She laid her head against Chloe's chest and almost instantly fell asleep. Chloe held her and rocked her slightly. A smile on her face.

  “Well,” Mike said. “I saw a herd of goats down the road on the way back. It's not exactly a calf, but we could kill the fatted goat in celebration.”

  “Hey now,” Josh said. “Goat's not bad at all.”

  “There's a garden we've been going to. Someone had planted it beforehand or something, I think. Potatoes, peppers, some melons might still be good,” Richard said.

  “Well, I'll go get one of those goats with Ronnie,” he looked down at his hand. “I guess Ronnie will get the goat, I'll go with him. Give us about an hour and we should have a goat for you. You guys get the other stuff and we'll have us a nice dinner, because tomorrow we're pulling out. We have a lot to pick up and then home before too much time gets away from us.”

  Tim and Rich went with Molly to the garden that was just across the road. Mike and Ronnie climbed into one of the Jeeps and headed back down the road.

  ~

  They quartered the small goat and spitted it. The potatoes baked whole on the coals as the goat cooked. A small salad and melon slices made a good meal.

  “You got other kids in the woods like me,” Alicia asked Ronnie who she sat next to.

  “Lots of them,” Ronnie assured her.

  “Do you think they would want to play with me? Because sometimes my brother don't wanna,” she said.

  Ronnie nodded. “Sure they will. They're your age. And you'll get to play with them every day.”

  “Good,” She took a bite of her meat and began to chew.

  “Are there other boys to play with too,” Richard asked.

  “Absolutely. There are a couple of boys close to your age too. They go to school. Sometimes they go fishing, or swimming or you can slide down the stream into the pool at the bottom. They play with the frogs at the streams sometimes.... Brush the horses... You'll like it,” Ronnie told him.

  His grin was nearly splitting his face.

  Mike looked around at the others. He met Bear's eyes and then Josh's too. “So I guess that makes us a team now,” he said.

  “I guess we are,” Josh agreed.

  Bear nodded. “We are,” he added. “We are.”

  ~

  A hundred miles to the north Zac Taybro sat on his Harley in the middle of the cracked and wrecked highway.

  “All this empty and I can't even ride my Harley,” he complained.

  Amanda looked up from the relative shade of the open rear door of the SUV, where she sat cross legged on the rear seat, smoking the biggest joint she had been able to roll. “You want some of this, Baby,” she called.

  “I wanna ride my fuckin' bike, is what I want,” Zac told her.

  They were parked in the middle of the highway. There were three dead zombies lying scattered in the highway. They had been living in the SUV when Zac and Amanda had happened along.

  The SUV had broken down just under an overpass. The overpass led into a small town nearby. The Zombies had stayed in the SUV and raided the town nightly. It had probably seemed like a pretty good system to them. Their mistake had been deciding to stay put when they heard the bike.

  “I don't know how you can sit in that goddamned truck with that smell,” he told her now.

  Amanda took a deep pull from the joint and then sniffed at the air. “She shrugged. “Doesn't bother me,” she said. “I don't get why it bothers you.” she looked over at the dead where they lay on the blacktop. The two of them had dragged them over onto the road.

  Two of them had scrambled into the back of the SUV trying to scratch their way out. Zac had shot them both. That would have left a mess had they been alive, but the dead o
nes didn't really seem to leave much of a mess.

  The third one had leapt out when she had thrown open the door and nearly gotten her. That had been bad. Having one so close. But she had run the long knife she carried right through its head. That had left a mess, but outside rather than inside.

  The car had smelled pretty bad for a little while, but once she got the windows down and aired it out it wasn't so bad. Her eyelids flickered. She took another deep pull.

  Zac Taybro was easily three hundred pounds if he was ten. His long greasy black hair stuck to his sweaty cheeks as he sat on the bike drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.

  Give him another hour, Amanda thought from the open door of the SUV, and he'd pass out like he had the night before. He did the same thing every time. A two or three day drunk, then sober for a week or two. Constantly bitching about what used to be. And the way he dealt with the zombies? It was just a mater of time before one got him. They were bound to. Would have already, if not for her. How many times had he sat down next to his bike and just drank himself into a stupor. Too many times. And at least five of those times the dead had come for him and would have had him if she had not been there to kill them first. Maybe she was getting as sick of him as he was of her.

  Amanda knew she was not the most attractive woman in the world. It was a rough world and age was catching up to her. She was forty five after all. She laughed and took another deep hit off the joint. Okay, she admitted to herself, forty-eight. And it was a rough forty-eight too. For most of her life she had been a beach baby and the sun had played hell with her face and skin. Her skin was brown and tough. Her bleached out hair dry and wispy from too much sun and salt water. The first time Zac had seen her naked he had laughed at how white she was where her clothes covered and what a contrast it was.

  Amanda didn't mind though. At least he didn't beat her like Freddy had. He was just a harmless teddy bear... A big harmless teddy bear, she amended.

  She took one more hit. The joint was down to nothing. She pinched it between her fingers and then flipped it back into her mouth and began to chew what was left. She laughed once more. A low chuckle to herself as she listened to Zac continue to complain about the world and the way it was. A big bitchy teddy bear, she amended once more.

  Of course he was different when he was sober. And he didn't like other people coming around. When he was sober he was a bigger pain in the ass, she thought. But still, he wasn't mean to her, just others he ran across, and if she was honest she had to admit that she was not terribly fond of other people either. Zac was fine, but other than Zac she could not think of a single person in her life that had treated her with any kind of real respect at all. None. So why should she care about people now?

  And the few times that someone had happened along and Zac wanted to make something about it, it really hadn't bothered her, she reminded herself as the secondary buzz from chewing the weed and resin in the end of the joint began to hit her, it was the best part of the high, she thought.

  She lost her train of thought for a second, then remembered she had been thinking about Zac and how he could be to outsiders sometimes. She concentrated for a second, trying to get her mind back on track... Oh... Right, she recalled. The one time when the old dude had happened along with his old lady. He had done something that had pissed off Zac, she had no idea what. But before she had even realized Zac was that angry he had shot the old dude in the face. The old dude's wife had made such a big deal over that, that he had shot her in the face too. But, she told herself now, he had been forced to do it. The old man had pissed him off. Mess with the bull you get the horns. And the old lady hadn't shut up when he told her to. He had told her to, but she didn't. She had forced his hand, that was all.

  She pulled out another huge joint she had rolled and lit it up. “Come on, Baby... Come get some before it's all gone,” she told him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  September 19th

  They left early, just as the sun was touching the mountains in the South; somewhere close to Alabama.

  Candace, Patty, Lilly and Janet 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,” Patty told him. “All of you get to go... And we're going to milk the deer too,” Patty told them.

  “Hey! What about us?” Candace 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 Candace 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. Janet 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,” Ronnie looked from Mike to Bear.

  Mike 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.

  Mike 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. Ronnie and Bear 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 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, Mike 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?” Mike asked.

  “Had one like it,” Bear answered. Probably about five fifty or so. The three of us could move it, but I wouldn't want to move it too far.”

  Mike nodded and the three of them walked over. Bear righted the bike, Ronnie kicked the kick stand up, and with Mike 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 Mike feel sick to his stomache. He swallowed and turned towards her, although he would have rather walked away to get away from the odor.