America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (5 page)

Mike stood, brushed imaginary dust from the
front of his jeans and then pulled Kate to her feet. He stooped
down, picked up Brian and settled him onto his shoulders. The Dog
followed them as they walked over, completely unlike his usual
exuberant self. He stayed at Mike's side taking small, measured
steps to match his speed.

Mike looked around him. Everyone was carrying a
weapon in their holster, over their shoulder or both. No one was
really expecting trouble, but after the past few weeks no one was
taking any chances. Even Janet Dove, who had never handled a gun,
wore a shoulder holster with what looked like a huge rubber gripped
forty four Magnum pistol, something straight out of a Hollywood
movie, flat beige camouflage paint, black rubber grips and a heavy
duty nylon webbed holster. She wore a smile on her face, maybe to
offset the pistol, Mike thought.

The front drivers door of the lead Hummer
opened and a large red-haired man stepped out onto the cracked and
buckled pavement. The other doors opened and the rest of the party
began to climb out.

“
Jeff,” Mike asked?

“
Mike,” Jeff Simmons responded
with a smile. They both nodded and then shook hands
heartily.

A tall woman, almost as large as
Jeff himself stepped next to him. “This is my woman, Shar...
Sharon
,” Jeff
said.

Patty, Kate and Janet Dove stepped
forward.

Sharon smiled and took their
offered hands,
“Shar...
To pretty much everyone,” She said.

It took a few minutes to introduce everyone,
and then they made their way to the tables. There were three small
children, about the same age as Janelle and Brian, accompanied by
an older woman. She took a seat next to Lilly where she had settled
Janelle and Brian to keep the two smaller children out of the
way.

“
Who is you?” a blonde haired
little boy asked Lilly. “I'm Ben,” he smiled.

Lilly smiled back, “I'm Lilly,” she told him.
“This is Brian, and this is Janelle.”

The little boy looked suspiciously at Janelle.
Probably at the age where he didn't quite trust little girls yet,
Lilly thought. He smiled shyly at Brian.

“
I'm Jessica, Lilly,” the older
woman told Lilly. She turned to the other two children who were
trying to hide behind her. “And this is Mark, and this little lady
is Rain.

Lilly smiled. “Hello, Mark. Hello, Rain. Rain
is such a pretty name.”

“
My mom told it to me,” The little
girl said seriously. She fixed her eyes on Janelle. “I got some
dolls. You got some?”

Janelle turned and pointed at the
store behind her. “I got some. I got a lot.
Are you going to live with us?
”

Rain shrugged her shoulders. “I don't know
'cause nobody told me, 'cause I'm just a kid.”

Janelle solemnly nodded her head.

Rain got up, crossed the short distance,
climbed up on the seat next to Janelle and sat down.

The other couple from the third Hummer had made
their way over to the table. They were young, possibly younger than
Lilly, Mike thought. He reminded himself how much everything had
changed though, how mature eighteen was now, how actual age didn't
have as much to do with life as it once had.

As Mike shook hands, he realized he had been
wrong. David, the young man, was certainly Lilly's age, maybe a
year or two older. But the woman, Arlene, was much older. Maybe in
her early thirties. Again he reminded himself that it didn't
matter. Even so, it reminded him of Lilly and Tom. Lilly came over,
Tom with her, and the two couples seemed to hit it off
immediately.

The entire camp was bubbling over with
conversation. Janet Dove, Patty, Tim and Annie began serving
breakfast to the newcomers. The hum of conversation dropped lower
as the camp began to settle down to eat.

~The Dog~

The Dog sniffed along the edge of the tree
line. He had wandered away from the camp, attracted by the smell of
the cows. It was the most wonderful scent he had ever smelled. He
had already found two pilings of dropping and rolled in them. It
was good. Like heaven, he thought.

But the scent he was following now was even
more intoxicating. It was the smell of something dead, but he
didn't see it that way. He classified scents in an entirely
different way. It was the best scent in the entire world. Two
seconds from now, another scent might come along and transplant
that scent, but for now, it was the top.

He stopped and peered off into the gloom of the
trees. Something had moved in the shadows, and a soft warning growl
began in his chest and quickly built. Deep, bassy, rolling out of
his small frame.

The thing in the shadows moved again, and its
head seemed to cock to one side, the eyes focused on The Dog
through the gloom of the shadows. A higher growl, more like a
subdued snarl reached the dog's ears. He stopped his own growl
momentarily to listen, but his body posture changed. His legs
stiffened. He crouched slightly, his neck lowered and his growl
returned, rising to meet the pitch of the thing in the
shadows.

'The thing... person... mother-father...?' he
wondered. '...Master?' It stopped moving and seemed to be waiting
to see what the dog would do.

Another dog yipped from somewhere out in the
field, and he shot his head up quickly and looked in the direction
the yip had come from, waiting to see if she would yip
again.

She was a stray that had been
hanging on the fringes of the camp. He had caught her scent the
night before, and again earlier this morning. The yip said,
Where are you? I am here... Come and play... I
need you.

His head dropped back to the thing
in the shadows for just a second, but it suddenly seemed far less
interesting than it had been. The other dog yipped once more,
louder, more insistent. And that yip said,
If you're not coming I'm leaving...
it said,
I called
you..
. it said,
Why are you there?
And it was too
much. His head came back up, and he leapt away a second later,
running through the winter blighted wheat of the field, following
the other dog's scent on the air.

In the shadows, the boy settled
back down. He had been tempted to go after the dog, even though
Donita would have been.... would have been displeased, he decided.
It was not displeased, but displeased was the best he could come up
with. It seemed the longer he thought about a thing, the more
abstract it became. He lowered himself back to the ground and
pressed more tightly to Donita's cold flesh, taking comfort from
it. She was like...
like a mother,
he decided. He could not precisely remember what
a mother was, but he was pretty sure his thinking was
correct.

He closed his eyes, and the darkness slipped
over him. The small death... The respite from the living death...
The place where the constant hunger did not drive everything. The
smell of her death came through to him, and he spiraled down ever
deeper.

~The Camp~

“
I never thought of something like
a Hummer, Jeff,” Mike said.

“
There was a National Guard base.
About twenty of these things just sitting there,” Jeff
explained.

“
We were right next to a big
military base and never even thought to check it out,” Mike said.
“Drove by that base all the time. Saw them. Most of them were like
yours, the H-1, version, but I know there are other versions that
aren't military. The H1 and the H2 both,” Mike said.

“
And three and four,” Bob added.
“But the three and four versions are not really military trucks,
not really even off road trucks. But they are really good off road
vehicles, and what about all those Jeeps? One of those new four
door models. I should have thought that, and I didn't,” Bob
said.

“
Well, next time we need a new
vehicle we'll look in that direction,” Mike said. “But the ones you
guys are building are probably going to be damn hard to beat when
you're done with them.”

There were a few of them sitting around
talking. The rest of the camp had drifted off to begin the projects
they had planned to do the day before. Lilly had taken all five of
the children to the toy store to keep them occupied. Jessica went
with her.

Molly, Tom, Tim and Annie left to go to the
garage, and it looked to Mike like Bob was looking for an excuse to
get his hands greased up again. It was probably why, Mike thought,
Bob came up with an excuse to leave a few moments later.

“
Well, Jeff,” Bob said extending
his hand. “It was good to get to talk to you, but if I don't get
over to the garage there's no telling what those kids will build...
or take apart,” he finished with a laugh.

“
It was good to meet you, Bob,”
Jeff said. They shook hands goodbye, and that left Patty, Ronnie,
Kate and Mike as well as Jeff, Sharon, David and Arlene.

“
So,” Mike said in the silence
that fell, “have you guys thought about how far you might actually
go? I mean, all the way to California or just west?”

“
Well, when I said west, it's more
southwest we were thinking. Texas, Mexico, maybe even South
America,” Jeff said.

Mike nodded.

“
Bob and his wife Janet, and maybe
a few others, are going to go back to the land. They're looking for
a place. Wilderness, or close to it,” Kate said, “To settle
down.”

“
We discussed that, but we don't
know just yet,” Jeff said.

“
It would have my vote,” Sharon
said.

“
Mine also,” Arlene said. “We've
only been traveling a week, and I'm already sick of it.”

“
Maybe we're closer to a decision
than I thought we were,” Jeff said sheepishly. “All of you looking
at doing that?” he asked.

Mike looked at Kate; Kate looked at Patty and
Ronnie and then back to Mike.

“
It's on the table,” Mike said.
“We talked it over early on, but no one fully decided. Bob and
Janet, they have an idea of rebuilding the Indian Nation. That is a
different thing than deciding to live in the wilderness, I think
they have a specific place picked out, the forever wild area up
around Kentucky, Tennessee. Extends into Alabama. Huge.”

Jeff nodded. “I think I heard about that
somewhere. Read about it, maybe in school.”

Mike nodded. “It almost sounds
like anti-technology talk. Maybe no rifles. That's what I got from
what they said early on. But, I think that has changed. I think
they've revised things a little. Anyway, it's there on the table.”
He looked at Kate. “I guess for me personally, and I mean
me
, nobody else, it
depends on what my woman wants to do. If she wanted to go, I would.
I mean, we're all going to live somewhere. There really aren't any
cities left. If there are, they're unsafe, or worse from what we've
seen,” Mike said.

Kate smiled at him. “We met some real crazies
back in Watertown,” she said. “This has brought out the worst in
some people.”

“
I told Mike last night we've had
a rough time ourselves. We've taken to avoiding towns, cities.
Starting something over again in the middle of nowhere don't sound
so bad compared to what we've seen,” he said softly.

He paused for a moment and a pained look
crossed his face. “The little ones, the older woman... we found
them abandoned on the outskirts of a little city up north a little
further, and the people we're refusing to feed them. Too old... Too
young... Worthless they told them. That shocked me. But she told us
later that they had been toying with the idea of killing them out
right.” Jeff nodded at the face Kate made. “And the women they had
with them they treated like possessions.” He shrugged, “We took
them with us. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't leave
them.”

“
It was the same back where we
came up. They were about to try to take us,” Patty said. “We
spoiled their plans I think.”

Jeff nodded. “Maybe I'll talk to Bob and his
woman a little more later on,” he said. “See exactly what they have
in mind.”

“
I think he'd like the
opportunity, and to be honest, I'd like to hear what he has to say
too, where they've gone with their thinking.”

“
We've got the little ones.
Traveling isn't exactly the kind of life they need,” Jeff
added.

“
Well, we've got a ways to go
anyway before we hit southern climates. So we've got to travel
some,” Mike said. “There's time to make our decisions.”

“
I think most of us want someplace
safe. That's all, just safe,” Kate said.

“
Safe sounds good,” Arlene agreed.
She squeezed David's hand, and he pulled her closer to
him.

“
I can get
behind that,” Ronnie said. “I grew up in the city. I thought that
was bad, but what we just went through in Watertown? Those people
were crazy... still
are
crazy, I guess. It's like the way the city was,
but if you took off all the controls. No cops, nobody to stop you
at all. Makes me wonder what things are going to be like in a few
years. I want Patty and our children to have something safer.
Sometimes I think Bob's idea isn't all that bad,” he paused and
scuffed one booted foot at the ground before
continuing.