The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books.

by Geo Dell

  She stopped at the end of the street, caught her breath leaning against the side of a pickup truck, and then took off once more at a fast walk.

  She was halfway through the block when she realized someone was following her, and her heart sank like a stone. Bobby... Had to be. She stopped and peered back through the shadows and dark. The moonlight was bright but it was still not easy to see. She thought she saw movement at the corner of a building two buildings back. She screwed up her courage.

  “Bobby... Bobby don't be sore... Don't...” She stopped and squinted into the gloom. Two people had come from around the edge of that house. Two, and neither of them looked anything like Bobby. Both were shuffling and lurching as they came. Her heart leapt high in her throat, seeming to clog her airway. A strangled squawk came from her open mouth. She swore under her breath and turned to run.

  He caught her under the arms. He must have been standing right behind her all along, she realized.

  “Hey... Hey, there's no...” She stopped in mid word and began to scream at the rotted face that angled down at her own face. His hands clawed at her throat, closing off her screams, and then his teeth found her and he began to tear and bite. A second later the others joined in, dragging her to the ground and then out into the road. They left her under the street lights, her blood pooling around her head.

  The Docks

  Donita walked along aimlessly. The smell of the river was heavy on the air, and she was following it. She was unsure what she had in mind. The tears continued as she walked. It wasn't fair, she continued to tell herself, but telling herself it wasn't fair didn't do anything for her situation. And here she was wandering around in the night where the dead ruled, like she wanted the exact opposite of what she had told Bear that she wanted. Like, instead of dying, she wanted to slip into forever alive like the zombies seemed to be. Like she was some sort of... Some sort of Zombie bait... Teasing them.

  But there were no Zombies around, or if they were, she couldn't see them, hear them, feel them. She pressed her hand flat against her chest. The pain was worse. Much worse. And she wondered how much more she could take, how much more her body could handle. She stopped and drew several deep breaths, trying to ease the pain that seemed to close on her chest like a fist.

  When the pain eased a little, she started off down the street once more, heading toward the river.

  March 11th

  The Dead Girl In The Street:

  They came from the shadows, the smell of blood pulling them. The young man in the lead approached the girl's body where it lay on the pavement. They had watched it far into the darkness and now into the sunrise. But unlike some, it had not come back. He looked over at her now, her eyes dull marbles, her mouth wide as if frozen in a scream, curled on her side, one sneaker twenty feet away. The pink sock on that foot had a hole in the toe, and her toe peeked out, red polish glinting in the early light.

  They had watched as the other dead, the slow ones, had gotten her last night. Not that they wouldn't have gotten her themselves. They had been following her too. But the others had gotten her first. They had chased them off before they could take her too far into death, to the place where she could not come back. But sometimes they didn't come back. No reason, no explanation. They just didn't.

  He walked across the asphalt. The sunlight bothered his eyes, but he wore dark glasses to protect them. He walked up to the girl's corpse and toed it with one heavy work boot. She rocked stiffly.

  “Done for,” he said. His voice was clear but distorted. Two in the small crowd behind him whined. He stepped back from the body. “Go ahead,” he said in a rasping whisper, “Go ahead.”

  The small crowd of seven fell on the girl's body and began to feed on it where she lay in the road.

  Park Avenue: Bear

  Bear awoke to the early morning light spilling into the bedroom. He turned to hold Donita, but she was gone, that side of the bed cold. He lay still for a few minuets, incredulous that he had not only fallen asleep in the midst of all of this, but shocked that he had slept through the night. It was a split second later that he launched himself from the bed. Nearly flying up, and landing neatly on the flats of his feet and running down the short hall to the living room in one smooth motion, propelled by fear.

  It was crazy to think that there was anything wrong. He knew about her heart problem. She had told him it was fine. But the panic had already slipped into his brain and pinned his thoughts down. She had just talked to him yesterday. She had just made him promise yesterday that he would... He pushed it out of his head as he slid into the living room. Empty.

  The strength fled from his body as he stared at the back of the door. His hand reached out and plucked the note from the door. The pushpin went flying. He read it slowly, and then read it again as the tears began to slide from his eyes.

  The outskirts of the city

  They stood in the shadows of the factory as the morning came on. The fires still burned in the distance. Fires were heat. Fires were bad. Fires frightened them all, and they wanted nothing to do with them. Several times they had been tempted to go out into the city and feed, but the fires had been too frightening. Too frightening even with the smell of so much fresh death on the wind. So tempting... So tempting, but the fire was fierce, a pain of its own. Heat was for those who lived the small life. For those who were dead, heat was an enemy. Pain. Corruption.

  They stood and silently waited for a leader. A leader was promised. None of them knew where that leader would come from, when that leader would come, but they knew they would have one. They sniffed the air and waited. Some whining lightly, deep in their throats, other times growling, salivating in their own dry way, eyes running as they scented the air and waited.

  Bear: Last Wishes

  The morning moved on. He had finally gotten himself up from the floor and went and looked out over the city. His sadness and depression stole away as the sun rose, and was replaced with a steely resolve. She had asked him, made him promise, that he would bury her if anything happened to her. She had a fear of the Zombies getting to her, biting her, and turning her. She had made him promise. Promise. Like she had known. Like it was a real thing. And he had thought it was just fear talking, just things you said when you were afraid. Just in case things. Not real things.

  He had known about her heart. He supposed, he admitted to himself now, that he had even known that she could die if she did not have the kind of treatment she needed. Could... He had known too that it was harder for her. He had thought immediately about her heart when she had talked to him, but he had not questioned her. Her eyes had said something to him. Something like, Ask me and I will tell you the truth. All you have to do is ask. And he had not wanted to talk about the truth, did not want to talk about the truth because the truth scared him too badly. So he had not asked. He had pretended he had never seen that permission in her eyes.

  She had talked. She had talked about the things that scared her. She had been worried she would die in the night, turn, and then go after him. They had talked about it, but only briefly. He had shut the conversation down. He didn't want to believe it, and hearing it only forced him to believe it. He had been selfish. He had given in to his fear when he should have given in to her need to talk to him, tell him, and here he was. It was a real thing now. She would not have left if something had not made her leave. A real thing, he repeated to himself. He could see no other reason why she would have left.

  The note had said next to nothing. Just, 'I'm Sorry... I love you.' At least it said that. At least. But why had she gone?

  He took the stairs down to the lobby. The stairwell had been empty, but the lobby had not. The Zombies had long before crashed in through the door and taken over the lobby. He had eased open the door to find two of them laying in the shadows, sleeping, or whatever it was they did that passed for sleeping. He stepped quietly out of the stairwell, shoved a piece of broken board into the fire door opening to keep it from closing and locking him out, and then
walked quietly to where the two lay.

  They stank of death, rotted flesh, corruption. Their chests did not rise and fall. They did not move. Their eyes were partially slitted. It would be easy to believe that they really were dead and had been for some time. The gun was in his hand. He had flicked off the safety before he had stepped out into the lobby. He walked up to the first one, turned slightly to take in the second one.

  Whatever did not work, their hearing did. As soon as he shot the first one, the second would be up and on him. He looked from one to the other, lowered the gun and shot the first one in the head.

  The second one screamed as he turned, a high piercing sound that distracted him for the briefest of seconds. She began to come up off the floor, her eyes wild, flaccid breasts swinging freely, flapping like sails, and he nearly let her get him. He became so distracted that she was very close to having him before he finally pulled the trigger and shot her.

  The first shot took her in the chest and flung her back like a rag doll. But that was all it did. She was scrabbling back for him as Bear stepped into her path and pushed the pistol into her head, squeezing the trigger as he did. She flew back this time and didn't rise again. Rotted brains splattered across the wall behind her. She slid down the wall.

  Bear stood for a second, his breaths coming in long, ragged pulls. He closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, then turned and went back to the stairwell. His concern was whether he should leave the door open or closed. Open and they might get in, closed and he would have to smash the handle set off himself when he got back so that he could get inside. And that made him wonder if he would be back. If he would find her, take care of her, and then make it back to here. He had no way to know.

  A minuet later he kicked the board from the propped open door, and stepped back into the lobby. It closed with a solid steel clunk. If he came back, he would break in. Better that than leave it open for the dead, if he didn't make it back before nightfall, or if they came looking in the daylight. It was the only safe place he had. He walked across the lobby and stepped out onto the cracked city sidewalk.

  He walked a short distance north before he found a stalled delivery truck at the curb. The keys dangled from the switch. The shattered driver's side window and the blood smeared down the door told the story of what had happened to the driver. Scattered sheets, towels and uniforms had tumbled from the shelves and fallen into the aisle of the truck when the driver had driven it into the curb. But there were no dead lurking in the back of the truck.

  The battery was flat. He pushed the truck a few hundred yards before he came to a long slow downgrade. He jumped in, put the truck in second gear, and then popped the clutch out a few seconds later. The motor roared to life. The transmission whined, the truck jerking and bucking, throwing him against the dashboard. A second later he downshifted into first and began to wind his way around the traffic that clogged the intersection at the bottom of the short hill. He began looking for her, convinced that he would find her, be lead to her somehow.

  Out Of The City

  Billy and Beth

  Billy was up on the roof. Beth, Jamie, Winston and Scotty were standing at the edge of the building as he was, looking out over the city. Things were crazy, and they seemed to be getting worse as the days rolled by.

  The police precinct was still burning. It had started sometime during the night two days before, and since there was no one to put the fire out, it had been raging for hours now. A few minutes ago, the roof of the building next door to the precinct burst into flames. Maybe the fire had started inside, or the extreme heat had caused it to burst into flame, spontaneous combustion, but it was a strange thing to watch. It appeared as though it had simply burst into flames all on its own.

  The animated conversation about whether it had been spontaneous combustion or a fire source from inside the other building that had simply burned through, had kept up for a few moments, and then they had all lapsed back into silence. Beth spoke now.

  “Where would we go?” she asked.

  “I think south,” Scotty threw in.

  “South or east,” Jamie added.

  “Makes no difference,” Billy said.

  Beth nodded. “What's the radio say?”

  “It's bad everywhere. Different people, different days, all talking about the dead. Some talk about the living too, gangs, shit like that, but the big deal is the dead. Every major city... Boston, Miami, Providence, San Diego... there are more. Every day you hear more places, and that's bad. But then there are the ones that you don't hear from anymore, and that's even worse,” Billy said.

  “So how is south or east better?” Beth asked.

  “It might not be better than north as far as the dead are concerned. It might not be, but it will be warmer. I mean, no problem now, but winter will come, and we had better be somewhere, with our supplies, settled in for it,” Billy answered.

  Beth nodded. “All of us?”

  “A few others,” Winston said. “Emma, down street. She has a baby. Don and Ginny across the street. They got a few friends too.”

  “Babies... I don't know about babies,” Billy said. “Adults, okay. Children are bad enough, but babies? How do we take care of them?”

  “Billy, should we leave them here to die?” Scotty asked.

  “Fuck, Scotty. I didn't say that. Do we invite them along to get killed? I mean we're leaving the safety... Talking about leaving the safety of this building and going on the road.”

  Beth raised her hand. “Scotty misspoke, or you took it the wrong way. Can we agree on that?” Scotty turned away and then turned back and nodded. Billy nodded too. “Tomorrow... Tomorrow we scout it out. We need trucks... not a car. Something that can get us over the bad spots. And, we'll have to see how far we have to go before we can hope to drive. We sure as hell can't drive here.” She shrugged.

  “Tomorrow,” Billy agreed.

  “Yeah,” Scotty added.

  Beth turned and looked back over the city, watching the building next to the precinct burn.

  March 11th: Watertown: Evening

  Mike and Candace

  The moon was high in the sky. Mike leaned up against the rock face of the cliffs, sitting on a small pile of pallets. He and Candace were a few hundred yards down from the entrance into the cave. Mike had watch. Candace had come with him.

  With Candace had come four others. Bob, his wife Janet, and Lydia and Tom. Mike got the idea that Tom had felt he owned Candace, or he had found her first so she was his. Something like that. If so, he was probably surprised that she was with Mike now. Mike found himself constantly surprised by it.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” Mike asked Candace. She seemed so quiet.

  She laughed. “You don't have a penny.”

  Mike dug into his pocket. “Huh,” he said as he pulled out a penny. “Last one.”

  Candace took it, looked it over, and then slipped it into her own pocket. “Leaving,” she said. “My mind is on leaving.” She saw his smile falter as she finished and quickly amended her statement. “Not without you. I mean us leaving. We can't stay here, Mike.”

  Mike nodded. “Bob and Jan's plan of living in the middle of nowhere?”

  “Well, it's not so bad. But I don't know if I want to live like a...” she screwed her face up.

  “A native?”

  “I don't mean I wouldn't. I mean, we're living in a cave, for Christ's sake. A Tee Pee would almost have to be an improvement, wouldn't it?”

  Mike shrugged. “Maybe.” He fell quiet himself.

  “Anyway, I didn't mean to make you worry. I guess we have some time. But before summer is too far along. Once winter is done?” Candace asked.

  Mike nodded. “South or west, then we won't have to worry about freezing to death in the winter.”

  Candace shrugged. “Depends if the climate is still the same. Everything is so changed.”

  Silence held for a while. The moonlight was bright.

  “Hold me, Michael,” Candace said.


  He pulled her close and held her as the moon traveled slowly across the sky.

  Donita: The Lady In Waiting

  She opened her eyes. The moon was high in the sky. A silver, blue-tinged orb. A glow rose up to meet it, brighter than the moonlight. She lay quietly and watched it for some time, content to watch it as it moved slowly across the sky - at least for the time being.

  It occurred to her, after some time, that the man who had shot her - she recalled that now, lying here in the quiet night; one of the men had shot her when they were through with her... after they had raped her... he had bent over her and shot her... - but, the man that shot her must have done a bad job of it. Must have missed her completely, or skinned her, as they used to say when they were kids. Or a flesh wound. She had heard that used in countless movies on television.

  “Bobby! ... Bobby, are you shot bad? Are you?”

  “Naw, Bill. Naw. It's only a flesh wound. A flesh wound is all.”

  Who hadn't heard that in a movie before, she asked herself. And she had grown up in the projects. She had seen people get shot and live through it, even get shot in the head and live through it. And she had not been shot in the head, she remembered that.

  She tensed for the pain and then sat up all at once. No pain. None at all. The moonlight was bright, but at the street level she was laying in shadows. She gazed down at her chest. Her shirt was plastered to her chest with dried blood. It baffled her. She wondered if she could make it back to the apartment and Bear. Maybe... Maybe...

  It baffled her because it seemed to be a great deal of blood, yet there was no pain. It baffled her because the blood was dry, and no way could the blood be dry. Why... why the man had just shot her a few minuets ago. She had left the apartment and...