America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (17 page)

Her eyes were every bit as puffy, red and
swollen as they had been earlier, but her face was much less tense,
and her eyes didn't seem quite so hopeless as they had
earlier.

"I'm going over to spend some time with Ronnie.
She wants you to come back in for awhile, Mike," she told
him.

Janet bent over the table and filled Mike's
coffee cup once more, looked around, found another cup, filled it,
and gave it to Patty. Patty smiled and picked up the cup
gratefully. "Thank you," she said.

"No problem at all, dear. No problem at all,"
Janet told her.

"Thank you, Janet, Patty," Mike said. He picked
up the coffee and walked off to the diner.

He reached the blanketed off section,
hesitated, then pushed the blankets aside and stepped into the dim
interior. Kate rose to meet him, and he took her in his
arms.

She kissed him passionately, pulling him down
into the softness of the built up blankets and quilts. She pulled
back, looked at him, and then rested her forehead against
his.

"You love me, Michael?" She asked
him.

"Kate, you know I do. You know I do; more than
anything." He answered.

Her eyes locked on his own just inches away.
“Do you love me, Michael?” Not much more than a whisper.

“
Honey...” He bent forward and
kissed her lightly. “You know that I do... You know.”

"If you love me Michael, then make love to me,"
she whispered. Her hands pulled him down and his own hands found
her body, feeling her warmth, pulling her near.

~

The rain found its tempo; once again pouring
down from the skies. The gray of the skies progressed to darker and
darker shades as the day slipped by.

Arlene threw herself into the conversation with
Bob, Ronnie and Patty. Noting the somewhat oblong area Bob had
circled on the map. The area he had marked out on the map was
bigger than the entire state of New York and then some. It
encompassed the eastern edges of Kentucky up into the corner of
West Virginia, Virginia down to the Carolinas, and on the other
side down thru Tennessee and parts of Alabama and Georgia. She
found herself excited by the possibilities. There were several
large lakes, rivers, three mountain ranges and the Appalachian
Valley, and several other valleys, both small and large, that had
not seen people for over two hundred years.

Janet had a large notebook open before her and
worked at the lists of suggestions people had offered. She had had
no sleep, as almost everyone else, but sleep was not what was on
her mind. She found herself hoping nothing else would happen to
them before they got to where they were going. She went back to her
list, prodding her memories of books she had read on homesteading,
western pioneers, and copying what she was sure of into the
notebook.

Tim sat on the back bumper of one of the
Hummers, a pistol in his side holster, the leather retaining strap
unsnapped. He tugged at the short piece of leather. Annie sat
beside him, one of her pale hands on his thigh. Her red hair
spilling around her shoulders.

Annie had felt a lot of guilt about Tim at
first. Not that she had never had sex. All the girls in school had
been doing it, and she had tried it once herself. Except she had
been stoned that time, and the whole thing had been over in a
matter of seconds, and all she had felt was sore for several days
after. This was different.

This was love. She knew that. It wasn't just
because they had been thrown together; it was the real thing. She
didn't know what she would do without him.

Patty had talked to her about protection, and
she had listened to her, but the thought of a baby of her own was
too much to ignore. The thought of the baby that was part her and
part Tim was beyond ignoring. She couldn't possibly be happy until
she was pregnant, she told herself. After all, all the other groups
are trying to do the very same thing, she told herself.

"Are you okay?" she asked Tim.

"Just tired, Annie, that's all," Tim
answered.

"Tim... What was it like to... To pick up that
dead guy and drag him away like that? I couldn't do it. I don't
think I could do it," she said.

"There was... It was bad, Man, really bad. I
hope I never have to do it again." He took her hand gently into his
own and looked at her. “It was hard, Annie. I don't want to ever do
it again,” he said quietly. She nodded, moved a little closer and
then lowered her head onto his shoulder. He slipped his arm around
her. His other hand tugged at the leather strap a few times, then
he let it go, wrapped both arms around her and stared out at the
falling rain as he held her.

~

The children had grown cranky as the gray and
rainy day had dragged on. Lilly had dug out all of their toys and
had done her best to keep them occupied. Finally, it was The Dog
and Angel that had come to the rescue, volunteering to be petted,
wrestled with and pretty much abused by the five children. The dogs
really didn't seem to mind it. They, it seemed to Lilly, had been
bored themselves and welcomed the attention.

Jessica didn't seem herself.
Usually good tempered and long on patience, today she seemed moody
and distracted, and Lilly had seen her touch her arm a couple of
different times during the day as if she had hurt it. She
probably
had
hurt
it, they had all bounced around in the trucks pretty good. But,
Lilly knew it was also a sign of heart trouble. She decided to
speak to Sandy about it later.

The day wore on. Afternoon came and went, and
then evening, and finally darkness to the accompaniment of the
steady patter of rain. The post changed every four hours. The camp
began to catch up on their sleep.

~Janet Doves journal~

It's late, and I am more than ready for sleep.
I've not slept in more than thirty six hours.

A horrible thing has happened. Something that
has affected everyone in our little community. Kate Loi was
attacked by a madman and nearly sexually assaulted. And he had to
be killed by Arlene Best, a woman who was not even with us a week
ago, and only happened upon the crime by accident. God in his
heaven, it could've been so much worse, but it is bad enough. Patty
has told me that Kate will be all right. She's strong, she said;
she'll be fine. I hope so.

We stayed on today, but we may leave tomorrow.
The rain is steady and shows no sign of stopping.

~Lilly's journal~

It's been a really hard two days. I am so
tired, I'm sure I could fall asleep standing up. The children are
finally sleeping. Jessica's resting. Sandy thinks she may be having
heart trouble, but said she denies it, so there is nothing she can
do except have me keep an eye on her. And she has no drugs to give
her. Sandy thinks she has been taking Aspirin on her own, thinking
it would help. She says there really isn't much more she could do,
but she plans to stock up on a cross section of medications the
next time she finds a pharmacy. Maybe Nitroglycerin, a few other
drugs she thinks may help her. But, until then, there isn't much we
can do but watch her.

I got to talk to Kate a little bit today,
really only a few minutes at dinner when she finally came out of
the little place in the truck stop she's been holed up in. I guess
I would want to crawl into a hole too if it was me.

She didn't seem that different to me, tired.
You could tell she had been crying. But we've all been crying over
the last 30 hours or so. And we're all tired. So I'll take it as a
good sign that she's not letting what that creep tried to do to her
get to her.

Arlene has got to be my hero. She saw what was
happening and blew that fucker away. Right away. I don't want to
sound too happy that she did that, but it could've been me! It
could've been anyone! I had just taken Janelle out there about an
hour before when the rain let up for a few minutes. It really could
have been, her, or me, or both of us.

I'm not going to pretend.
I'm
glad
he's
dead. I mean, like, what would have happened if Arlene didn't shoot
him and then Mike got there? I think Mike would've killed him right
there on the spot. Tom told me he would have if it had been me.
Just like that, right there on the spot.

~Bad Pennies~

Fifty miles northeast four trucks sat idling on
a broken stretch of asphalt. All four trucks were heavily modified
and we're running oversized tires, but they were still no match for
the stream that had overflowed its banks and what was left of the
road. The rain continued to pour down from the skies.

C.B. channel sixteen crackled to life inside
one of the trucks.

"What you gonna do, Death? What you gonna do?"
the voice of Johnny Red asked.

"Shut it down. We're going to shut these
fuckers down so we don't run out of gas and wait for this ever
fuckin' rain to end. Then, when we can get past this water, we'll
find them," Death told Johnny, and Johnny believed him.

A few seconds later the headlights on all four
trucks snapped off. The engines died, and the only sound that was
left was the steady pounding of the rain on the steel
roofs.

~Building The Army~

She awoke before full dark. One second gone,
the next twilight had released her and all of her senses were fully
on. It was no longer like human senses. She couldn't truly remember
any longer when she had been a breather, for how long, what she had
done with her days and nights, but she regretted it. She wished she
had always been numbered among the superior.

She thought of it that way, the Superior Race.
Because these senses, they were completely there. There was no
fogginess from sleep. None. She was alert and ready. In every way,
the being she was now was far superior to the being she had
been.

The horse was here with them. She felt it
studying her, waiting for her. It was changed with the horse.
Somehow it was changed. She reached over, touched the boy, and he
was instantly out of twilight. Together they crawled from under the
machinery and out onto the factory floor.

The horse had managed to lift its head from the
floor. Maybe the neck was not broken. Or maybe the neck was
healing, she thought. It amounted to the same thing. It waited on
her now. It was loyal. There would be no more fighting from the
horse.

Her eyes brought her the scent of people.
Without a sound or discussion, the three moved across the factory
floor and out into the bright moonlight.

The smell of a wood fire was on the air, but
the fire itself was out. Nothing but a low red glow some forty
yards past the factory parking lot, still choked with long dead
cars and trucks. They made their way quietly. Twenty feet from the
four sleeping members, the horse stopped and Donita and the boy
continued forward.

One of them was old, useless to
her. Two were young, and one was dangerous.
Female.
She slept with both hands
around her rifle, it rested between her knees, the barrel nestled
along side her face.

Donita looked at the woman for a long time. She
would like to keep her, but she knew it was not to be. She stared
for a few seconds longer. The boy was behind her,
waiting.

She knelt beside the sleeping woman. The smell
of her coming death was already a stink upon her, billowing out of
her lungs and filling up the night air. Her soul knew. Her soul
knew and could do nothing at all about it.

Donita reached forward slowly. One hand wrapped
tightly around the top of the barrel, the other, index finger
extended, found the trigger. She paused a second longer, hands in
place. Then in one smooth move she jerked the rifle down, jammed it
under her chin and squeezed the trigger. The top of the woman's
head flew apart before her eyes were fully open. The live wire
rigidness that had come into her body in that split second of time
now drained away and she sagged back to the ground, one last breath
rushing from her lungs in a low moan. The children began to
scream.

~March 31~

The first thing Kate did was take down the
blankets that closed off the area in the corner of the diner. Mike
helped her.

"I don't want to hide out. I needed it, but I
can't hide from it anymore," she said. She sat the pile of blankets
down on a leaning pedestal table and took Mike's hand. A few
minutes later they were both sitting, sipping coffee at one of the
tables.

"I have to take a post. They've been covering
for me," Mike said.

"I know," Kate said.

"You'll be all right?" he asked.

"Yep," she said, "I can't hide. I'll probably
take a post as well, Honey."

"So soon?" Mike asked.

"I just want things to be normal... to get back
to normal," Kate said. "So I'm going to do what I normally
do."

He finished his coffee, leaned over and kissed
her again “I love you." He swiveled his eyes to one of the trucks
where Ronnie and Patty were looking out at the still flooded
fields. "I'll be right there if you need me, Babe," Mike
said.