America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (11 page)

~Donita and the boy~

The fires burned bright, freshly banked for the
night. She could not say what it was in fire that frightened her,
but it did. It touched something deep inside, something that she
could sense had not always been there. Like at one time she had
embraced fire the same way the breathers did. Now it only
frightened her.

Behind her, the boy whined, high pitched and
frightened. The fire did the same thing to him. She turned and
allowed a growl to slip from her cracked and peeling lips, and the
boy quieted down immediately.

She looked back toward the fires. She should
have gone already. She should have taken the boy and moved on. The
breathers could mean death to both of them. The dog kept coming
around. And now there was another dog. She could smell
her.

But the breathers didn't usually hang around
that long. Others had come and gone just as quickly. These should
have been gone when the moon rose into the night sky, packed up and
gone while she and the boy had been in twilight. But they were
still there. Their terrible fires burning and sending their stink
into the air, creating heat. Heat was an enemy of all things cold,
she told herself. And she was a thing cold.

She stood, her legs flexing easily, something
they did not do just a short time ago. Behind her, the boy stood
also, soundlessly, and although she did not see him - hear him -
she felt him. She knew he had stood, knew he was waiting for her to
move, knew that he believed the entire world revolved around her.
All this with no words, touches, conscious thoughts.

She looked off through the trees to the
opposite side of the road, across from where the breathers were
camped.

Her new eyes saw more than her old
eyes had ever seen, though not precisely as she had seen with those
other eyes. This sight was not suited to daylight. It could see
-
would
see - in
daylight, but not well. The lesser light of the moon was the light
she needed.

She could see for more than a quarter mile
clearly. But it was not just about the seeing. Smell, the feel of
the air upon her skin, things that could not work the way they used
to work, now worked with her eyes. She saw the scent on the wind.
She perceived the movement of air across her skin with her eyes.
She saw it. Her eyes were her windows to the world.

She saw the rabbits far across the field, past
the other road, and rabbits were fine, but it was not the rabbits
that had attracted her. It was the boy, not much older than the one
behind her, that had caught her attention.

He carried rocks in a pouch, held a weapon in
his hand as he stalked the rabbits.

He was alone. It was a thing that she knew. He
was not a part of the breathers that were camped not far away. He
was a loner, and he had managed to avoid the ones like her that
must have scented him, followed him. She scented the air and drank
in the information.

Alone... Hungry... Mistrustful. He stumbled,
and the rabbits spooked. Before he could react, the rabbits were
across the balding grass patches near the trees on the opposite
side of the road and into the tall grass. She could feel them
running through the grass. Tiny hearts beating fast, knocking
against their rib cages. She tracked the boy at the same time. He
had lunged for the tall grass and then had fallen back. His head
came up, scenting the air the way breathers did, and she knew he
had caught her scent, the same way any hunted animal did, even when
they did not yet know they were hunted. It had been the reason he
had stumbled and frightened the rabbits. She said nothing, simply
flexed her leg and leapt into the tall grass, the boy behind
her.

The woods emptied out into a narrow valley
sparsely populated with scrub pines, a small creek running through
the bottom. The boy made the creek at a dead run, but the fire in
his side caused him to stumble. She was not there to see him
stumble, but she knew it just the same. A second later the boy was
on him, knocking him flat to the ground. When Donita came upon
them, the boy had his hands tightly around the boy's throat, riding
his chest as he bucked and thrashed. She flew upon them, pushing
the boy aside, driving a knee into the boy's throat and closing off
the air he had been fighting so hard for. She pressed her body hard
against his, stretched out flat upon him, and held on as he
thrashed and clawed.

~

He fought hard, but he faded just as quickly.
With no air, breathers could not fight long. Something she had
learned, had known, she told herself now, but she did not remember
how she knew, she only knew that she did. When at last he stopped
his fight, she rolled off him and rose to her full height, towering
over him, looking down at him.

He was barely as big as the boy she had
already. He would be just as ignorant too, stupid... but open to
learn, and he seemed stronger, built bigger. Wherever he had been -
and she could smell places on him that she had never known -
wherever he had been, he had used his rocks and weapon well, kept
himself well fed. She sighed. It was not her choice alone, and she
could feel that the boy resented him, did not want him to be a part
of them. She waited for his emotions - still so much like the
breather he had been - to pass.

He came to his own understanding. The whole was
more than the one. Collectively, they could win. There was no other
way. He came to her, and she understood the change in what he had
felt. He squatted, his hands planted in the red dirt of the valley
floor. His eyes, not quite like her own yet, but changing, turned
up to the moon. Silver-blue moonlight painted his face. She stood
briefly and then moved to the boy where he lay, his dead eyes
reflecting dully the same moonlight that brought so much life to
the other boy. She lowered her body and then brought her weight
down upon his chest.

There was still warmth and it both excited and
repulsed her as her thighs settled on either side of his ribs. She
bent forward and lowered her mouth to his throat, finding the
hollow. She tilted his chin with one hand and then turned his neck
to the side. Her teeth found the artery below the skin and closed
over it. A second later the passion took her, and she lost
herself.

~The hour before Moonset~

She crouched close to the boy, her hands
hanging at her side. The other boy was made. She knew he was made,
he was just having a little trouble finding his way back from his
first twilight. She had no sooner finished her thoughts than the
boy's back arched like a bow and he began to flop and buck. The two
waited as he fought the fact of death. The first few minutes were
the hardest, when your mind could not yet believe that it could
live without drawing breath. That time was barely even a memory for
her, clearer for the boy.

He bucked once more, arched his back so hard
she could hear the tendons straining and then bolted upright, eyes
wide, moonlight alive and shining in them. His chest heaved, heaved
again, but his lungs did not work, would not work. She squatted
still, her fingers tented upon the earth to hold the weight of her
body, and waited.

~ March 29th~

"No," Mike said, " I don't want to get
up."

"Are you sure?" Kate asked
teasingly.

"The sun isn't even up," Mike said.

"Nope, but this is our last morning like this
for awhile," she said.

"Oh," his arms reached around her and pulled
her close. "In that case," he said.

~

After they made love, they lay awake talking in
low whispers, watching light creep into the world.

"There was a song I liked, A
minor,
like the key?
" Kate said.

"I remember that. Some guy." Mike
said.

"Yeah. There was a line, really
there were a few lines that I liked, but one was like the guy was
talking about my life,” she said. “It was,
'I'm just sitting here waiting on a bus for the next.'
Talking about his life and how it was, how he
felt about it. That was me. I used to look out at the world and
wonder where I was going to, what moved me along to whatever might
be next, because there was nothing here for me." She finished
softly.

"I know that feeling. I felt that as well,"
Mike said.

"Yeah, but where I'm at now is the exact
opposite of that. I've got the whole world somehow. You... I know
we'll have children, a safe place to live, friends. God, how could
I have been so far down? Now I can't wait to live life, see what
today is. It's just such a different place. I love you so much,"
she said. Her eyes were shiny in the sparse light. He kissed her
and pulled her to him.

"I love you too," he said as he kissed her
again. He kissed her neck, worked his way down to her breasts, then
across her stomach as she lay back into the pillows.

And the light crept slowly into the
room.

~

Mike sat sipping coffee by the fire when Jeff
and Sharon walked over. Sharon settled into a conversation with
Kate. Jeff raised his eyebrows at Mike and Ronnie. They both got up
and walked away from the fire.

“
What's on your mind, Jeff?” Mike
asked

“
Probably
nothing. I had the overnight... kept hearing something, I don't
know,
out of place.
The Dog kept looking over at the woods, growling really low.
The fires were going, meat still drying, cows, deer, who knows what
else out there in the fields. Could be a predator, I
thought.”

Mike nodded. Ronnie looked concerned. He
stuffed his hands down into his pockets and leaned
closer.

“
That's it. No big deal. I wasn't
about to walk away from here and go check it out in the middle of
the night.” He sipped at his coffee. “Went over first thing, right
after daybreak. It was bugging the hell out of me.”

“
What was it?” Ronnie
asked.

“
Nothing right out there, but...”
he turned and looked towards the woods, turned back, dumped what
little coffee remained in his cup, grounds mostly, Mike saw. “Walk
over there with me?” He asked.

“
Sure,” Mike agreed.

“
Absolutely,” Ronnie said
tightly.

Mike returned his own empty cup to
the table, smiled down at Kate's questioning look.
“No big deal,”
he told
her. He turned away, and he and Ronnie followed Jeff across the
fields toward the small woods on the other side. Halfway there,
Kate caught up, Patty with her. Kate slipped one arm through Mike's
own; Patty had her other arm. “Don't know,” Mike told her. “It's
Jeff's show.”

The smell hit them before they reached the
woods.

“
Jesus,” Ronnie said, “What in
...”

“
Bad,
right?”
Jeff said.
“That's why I wanted you to come along.” He moved his eyes to
include Mike, and then further to include Kate and Patty. “That hit
me hard, just like it did you.” He walked to the edge of the woods
and peered in. “Come on,” he said. “Take a look at this.” He
stepped into the tree line and disappeared from sight almost
entirely. Just another shadow in the shadows that made the tree
line their home.

Kate stepped into the shadowed woods, and her
eyes adjusted almost immediately. Once they did, she could see well
in the shadowed clearing, and it was clear to her that something
had been living here. She stopped. Patty bumped up against her and
then pressed her body tightly to her own, burying her face in
Kate's neck.

“
My God,” Patty whispered against
her neck. She pulled away a second later and walked quickly back
out into the sunshine. Kate looked after her, hesitated, and then
went after her. Mike, Ronnie and Jeff stood in the shadows looking
over the small area that had been hollowed out of the
woods.

The carcass of a small calf lay rotting a few
feet away, the throat torn open, the stomach bloated, swollen,
intestines spilling out of her side where whatever had killed her
had been feeding. A few feet away, a shriveled corpse, whether man
or woman it was hard to tell, but whatever had been feeding on the
calf had been feeding on the body also. The head had been dragged
several feet away. Most of the chest was gone, one arm, and the
stomach lay open. A hollowed cavity.

Mike raised his eyes and took in the gloom. His
eyes searching the area.

“
Something’s been living here,”
Jeff said quietly.

Kate and Patty stepped back into the small
clearing. “Why does it look as though this was cleared?” Kate
said.

“
Exactly my question,” Jeff
said.

“
Probably was already cleared,”
Ronnie said. “Then this animal comes along...”

“
Maybe the body was someone camped
out here, then whatever this was came along and killed them?” Patty
asked.

No one spoke.

Mike turned back to the clearing from his
examination of the surrounding woods. “Trails,” Mike said. He
pointed. “There and there.”

“
Might have been here last night.”
This from Kate. “I say it because there's nothing else here. No
other animals have moved in to take what's left.” She looked at
Jeff.