“Action Comics number one.” he said “First appearance of Superman.”
Jessie whistled. “Super rare.” he said. “Where did you get it?”
“In a safe at a comic book store in Sioux City.” he said. “It’s all the rage now in the Tower to get things you never coulda had before. You wouldn’t believe what some of them are offering for original paintings.”
He gingerly took the comic back. “Problem is, most of the stuff they want is in New York or LA museums. They can’t find anybody crazy enough to go there.”
He put it back in the container it had been riding in and closed the door.
“It’s a shame, really. It might be possible to get to those places in five or ten years but by then, most of the paintings will be ruined. Even if they’re in a building that never gets breached, you know, no windows get broken or anything, the heat and cold and humidity will pretty much destroy ‘em.”
“Never thought about it much.” Jessie said. “Guess you’re right, though.”
“Yeah,” William said “They tell us all these things, trying to get us to go save the Mona Lisa. It was on loan to some fancy museum in Manhattan but there ain’t no way. There’s a bazillion zombies in New York.”
“We’ll help you look for that chicken coop.” Darren said, changing the subject. “I wouldn’t mind some sunny side up for breakfast. I was kind of lying when I said those powdered eggs weren’t too bad.”
43
Jessie + Scarlet
Jessie laughed so much his face hurt and his sides ached. He’d invited the two retrievers back to the house where he and Scarlet were staying and they brought bread from a Nebraska bakery with them. They decided breakfast for dinner was in order and made scrambled eggs, hard boiled eggs and sunny side up eggs, courtesy of an old mother hen. Darren had a secret recipe that turned beef jerky into passable bacon and they all ate toasted dark bread with honey and jelly. They both updated their maps, adding damaged bridges or broken dams. There were a few new settlements each had found and the brothers declared they had made it their mission to equip all of them with ham radios.
“It keeps everyone in the loop.” Darren said.
“And gets us lots of business.” William grinned as they started playing charades. Once the brothers got warmed up, they kept Jessie and Scarlet in stitches all night with their adventurous tales, their good-natured bickering with about the game and stories about the people they’d encountered along the way. There weren’t many that ventured out beyond the walls by themselves. If someone left the safety of the defenses, it was generally in a convoy with lots of firepower. Those that did wander the wastelands had already gained reputations and had a sort of following. Radio Lakota sometimes had on the air interviews with the various characters and a competition of sorts had started to develop. Bastille built them up like some post-modern Indiana Jones treasure hunters and many of the settlements had a weekly paper that they would fill with happy news of retrieved family heirlooms or prized possessions.
Sometimes the retrievers did it for the adventure, the glory, so to speak. The feel-good vibes they got from survivors getting their wedding pictures and baby photos. Of course, the better reputation you had, the more drinks at the bars or better attention from mechanic’s shops you got. There were the nouveau riche clients also. The new capitalist that started a business, took risks and prospered. They were always wanting something whether it was a rare book or painting or a particular antique or work of art. They were limited to treasures in the Midwest, though. Nobody ran into the coastal cities in the west or east of the Mississippi. Too dangerous.
They laughed until the wee hours of the morning, Scarlet cheated at Monopoly and they almost forgot they were in a stranger’s house in a town where everyone was dead.
Scarlet was watching him sleep and he looked peaceful. His face was unconcerned, the usual grim look was gone and the worry lines were smooth. She woke him with fingers lightly tracing his scars. The long ridges from being slashed, the puckered indents where chunks of flesh and muscle were missing, the wrongly healed gash on his face and the fading bruises around his eyes.
“You have been through much.” she said, butterfly kisses on his gun shot shoulder.
He ran a hand down her bare back, over the bumps of her own scars, then pulled her close.
“Sometimes I think I will go crazy with thinking.” she said, her head on his chest, listening to his heart. “Sometimes I laugh when I want to cry. Sometimes I smile when I want to scream. Sometimes I want to hide behind the walls of a strong city.”
Jessie said nothing, just listened and stroked her hair.
“I miss my mother.” she said, her hands still lightly running over his old wounds. “She died on the first day. She was bitten because she saved me. Things would not be as they are if she would have lived. My father would not be doing what he is doing.”
After a time, she asked “Do you miss your parents? Are you eager to see them?”
Jessie considered before answering and realized that he didn’t. He didn’t miss anyone.
“Not really.” he said. “It seems like the longer I’m away, the less I care about how long I’ve been gone. I guess that’s messed up.”
“Maybe it’s because of what has happened to us.” she said “Maybe we have seen too much. Hurt too many people. Sometimes I feel broken inside from all I have done like my head will never be right again.”
“I know the feeling.” Jessie said, remembering the accusing eyes. “But broken crayons can still color. We can still change the world.”
“Who tell you this?” she asked “How do you know these things?”
“Song lyrics.” he replied, wrapped both his hands around her back side and pulled her on top of him. He didn’t like thinking of serious things and having heavy thoughts so early in the day. He could think of other things that were more interesting.
They ate breakfast late that morning.
Jessie swung by the house where the brothers were camping out to say their goodbyes and Darren asked him to take a look under the hood of his truck, it wasn’t running right. Once they were out of earshot, Darren came right to the point.
“Has your girl been bit?” he asked.
Jessie was startled at the question and just stared at him. Darren grimaced and tried a different approach. He never was very good with all the social graces and being delicate.
“Have you ever seen someone get just a tiny little bite?” he asked “and watch them turn?”
Jessie shook his head after a moment. He’d seen people get torn wide open and change within seconds but not a slow turn. He’d never seen it happen like that.
“I have.” he said. “Our cousin. It barely broke the skin, man it hardly bled at all. It took him about a day to turn into one of those things and his little nick started looking like Scarlets cheek. It had dark runners of poison spreading away from it, just like she does.”
“That’s just an infection.” Jessie said. “She’s had it for weeks. We’ve been trying to fight it with penicillin but I don’t know how much to give her. We’re headed to Lakota now, to get the doctors to look at it.”
Darren nodded his head and put the plug wire back on, the one he’d pulled as an excuse to have Jessie help him with the truck.
“Okay, brother.” he said but his eyes held doubt. “No hard feelings, just saying it looks just like the beginnings of the disease.”
“Can’t be.” Jessie replied. “We haven’t had contact in days and besides, I went over every inch of her body this morning.”
He couldn’t help the grin that spread across his face. “And the only bite marks were from me.”
Darren laughed easily with the kid, his long, gray streaked beard bouncing on his belly. Ah, to be eighteen again.
“Look, I’m sure they’re good down in Lakota, but just in case they can’t figure it out, they’ve got a really good lab at the Tower. Good doctors, too.”
He hesitated for only a momen
t before pulling his pocket notebook and thumbing through it. He found what he was looking for and tore the page out, handing it over to him.
“This is an address in Salt Lake City. There is a safe in the master bedroom, the combination is on there.” He indicated the numbers on the paper. “Inside is a Fabergé egg. The head surgeon at the Tower hired us to retrieve it but it’s way too hot for us. Our gig is stealth and to be honest, easy stuff. We like to brag it up in the bars but mostly we just drive to where ever we need to be and walk out with the treasure. Hardly ever have to use the guns. We couldn’t get within a mile of that place, though. Too many undead. You two are different. It might be something you could get if half the stories I’ve heard about you are true.”
“That’s cool.” Jessie said “But why would I need it? They know me at the Tower. Wouldn’t they help her if I just showed up and asked?”
“They wouldn’t.” he said. “It’s a weird place, man. They’re pretty protective of their resources. A lot of towns don’t really charge you much for services, especially doctoring. Whatever you can afford, usually. The Tower is different. They’re living in their own little bubble, no one leaves and outsiders don’t get past the first-floor mall. I guess you know the CEO rules that place with an iron fist, or he tries to, but Macon is the guy that keeps it running smoothly. He doesn’t have any pull with the docs and the dentists though and they won’t help outsiders unless you have something they want.”
Jessie nodded. He understood. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to worry about it, the only thing he wanted from the Tower was another chocolate fudge ice cream sundae. He looked at the numbers on the paper again before folding it into an inside pocket.
“Which doc had a house in Salt Lake?” he asked “I thought they had to stay in the building for like five years straight, it was in their contract or something.”
“This is just some rich guys house, nobody from the Tower. They got this info off the internet.” Darren said.
At Jessies’ surprised look he laughed again and explained.
“Here’s what I heard so take it for what it’s worth. As far as I know, there was a joint effort between the Tower, Cheyenne Mountain and Lakota to tie in the fiber optic cables with the NSA super computers in Utah. For the good of all mankind, you know. Important knowledge there. Well, it didn’t take them long to hack into different insurance company databases and now they are making shopping lists of things they want. That’s how we knew where to get the comic book I showed you. With your skills, you could get plenty of work there and it’s about the only way for an outsider to get any of their services.”
Jessie sighed. That just wasn’t right somehow. Sure, they were fully independent and thought they could take care of themselves but he also knew his dad had sent a couple of Bradley’s and a bunch of rocket launchers for defense. If the Tower was going to charge everybody for every little thing they did, maybe his dad should start charging them for the protection. Whatever. He thought. That’s what politicians are for. They’ll figure it out.
They kept rolling south towards Lakota, he still thought Sara and Stacey were the best choice to check out the infection. He wouldn’t have to explain everything, they knew about the injections and had been studying them for months. It was only six hundred miles, Jessie could have done that in a day if he was in a hurry but he wasn’t. Riding in the Mercury was pleasant and he found his face a little sore from smiling and laughing so much. It seems like it had been so long since he’d been happy, it would take his muscles a while to get used to it again. The music was up, the windows were down and they were teaching Bob to sing along, all three of them howling. Nefertiti stared with disdain from the back-window package tray and couldn’t be coaxed to add to the chorus. She knew dogs were dumb, now she was even more convinced humans were too.
They rode the wind with their hands, surfed the dolphin as Scarlet called it, from the open windows and played I Spy. They tore down a few fences when they saw distant cattle to give them even more room to roam, more chances at survival. The sky was that impossible blue again, the air had never been cleaner and everywhere they looked, things were vibrant and alive. It was easy to forget about the wars, about the life and death struggles and even about the zombies.
They were going to spend the night in Anselmo, the walled outpost in the middle of Nebraska. It had been another lucky little town where someone realized what was happening on that first day back in September. Somebody that didn’t hesitate to take matters in their own hands and start building a wall. Harry Sanderson had been listening to the radio and had the police band on like he always did. It was four a.m. and he was on his first cup of coffee, just getting the day started, when the first crazy reports started coming in. He’d always been accused of having a tin foil hat; he’d been fully prepared for Y2K, he knew the CIA had killed Kennedy and the illuminati were the true rulers of the planet.
Harry listened for at least an hour before he decided to act. He’d been fooled by the whole Y2K bug but this was definitely something different. This was really happening. He didn’t ask for permission and wouldn’t get off his tractor when his neighbors first saw him and tried to stop him. He told them to go listen to the radio then get their own tractors and help him or, by God, he’d run them over if they didn’t get out of the way.
Most of them did and by noon, they’d taken most of the L&N train cars that had been lined up at the grain elevator. He and Lloyd and a dozen others had drug the cars down the streets and built a wall. Zombies were coming and they were prepared. When they finished, when some of the fever of the moment wore off, they started thinking rational thoughts. What if the radio was wrong? They’d just torn up a bunch of streets dragging the cars around and they’d derailed a whole train. Stolen it, technically. Cooler heads were wagging fingers. Telling them they’d called the sheriff hours ago and when they finally showed up, Crazy Harry and his buddies would be in big trouble.
The police never did make it out to Anselmo but a couple of grain haulers did. The truckers were sick and got mad when nobody would come out to help them or let them in.
“It’s the zombie disease.” Harry had said. “Keep your distance, it might be airborne.”
Most of the townspeople that hadn’t left to go to work scoffed and shook their heads. When the truckers turned into screeching inhuman things and started attacking they weren’t scoffing anymore, they were shoveling dirt and laying up blocks as fast as everyone else.
Jessie had heard the story the first time he came through, sipping beers and eating a bacon cheeseburger at the Fubar, Anselmo’s only watering hole. It was a tale he didn’t hear often enough. Most people were too afraid of getting in trouble to do what Harry had done. Most towns fell from just one infected person.
“We should take them something they need.” Jessie said when he’d told the story to Scarlet. “Some nice little gesture, they were good to me last time I passed through.”
Scarlet thought for a minute then snapped her fingers. “Eyeglasses.” she said, smiling triumphantly. “It’s perfect.”
“Huh?” Jessie said, throwing her a ‘you’re not the brightest bulb in the box’ look. “I was thinking of ammo or maybe some meds from a pharmacy.
“Of course, you were.” she said. And so are all the other traders and retrievers and Gypsies. Who thinks of eyeglasses? I do, because I am a genius.”
Jessie squinted at her. “You’re crazy. Nobody wants glasses. Everybody wants bullets.”
“How old is Harry?” she asked
“I don’t know. Maybe fifty.” Jessie replied.
“Right.” she said. “And his friends who helped build the wall? All farmers, right? Not young ones, either. Who was left in town? People that didn’t go to work. You said so yourself. Old people. Old people need glasses. We’re getting them glasses.”
Jessie started to argue, she could see it on his face as he searched for the perfect rebuttal. To find the reason she was wrong. She also saw it when he realized
she had made valid points.
“Whatever.” he said and she stuck her tongue out at him. “We probably won’t find an optometrist anyway. Besides, they don’t keep lenses there, they send off to get them made.”
“True.” she allowed. “But they have reading glasses and all those sample lenses. We’ll take those and some frames. They can make their own glasses and I’m sure we’ll find a shop in the next big town we see.”
She looked down at her map. “It’s coming up in a few miles and I really need to write this down before I forget.”
She pulled out one of her spiral bound notebooks that she used for a trip journal and started humming as she wrote.
“Write what down? That you thought of taking people some glasses? Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”
“No, silly.” she said “That I kicked Jessies ass in a battle of the wits. That he was totally annihilated and left speechless, grasping for words like a fish out of water.”
“You’re not writing that!” he exclaimed. “Besides, it’s not true. In a battle of the wits, you’re unarmed.”
“How do you spell imbecilic nincompoop?” she asked sweetly, her pen poised.
“S-C-A-R-L-E-T” he spelled out for her. “and be sure to add is a fleshy headed mutant who cheats at Monopoly.”
She stuck out her tongue again and started writing but Jessie jagged the wheel.
“HEY!” she yelled.
“Oops. Sorry.” he said, putting on his sunglasses and looking innocent. “Just wanted to avoid a pothole.”
She started writing and he jerked the wheel again, causing her to send a long black line across the page.
“Did you see that cow?” he asked with exaggerated sincerity. “I barely missed it.”
Zombie Road (Book 5): Terror On The Two-Lane Page 26