America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (12 page)

He nodded. “I thought that also. It's maybe not
a problem because we're leaving soon.”

“
Today,” Mike said. His eyes swept
the clearing again. “This morning.”

“
Yeah,” Ronnie agreed.

“
Probably should keep this to
ourselves,” Mike added.

Jeff nodded. “My thoughts.”

“
But I guess we better check the
areas we stay in closer,” Kate said. “Who knows what this was.” She
turned and looked through the woods across the fields. Their camp
was easily visible. She shuddered. Jeff caught her eyes and
blinked. Mike caught the interplay.

“
Yeah,” Mike said. “Whatever it
was could have crouched here, hidden, and watched us.”

“
Do animals do that?” Patty
asked.

“
Sure,” Ronnie said.

“
'Cause it seems like hunters,”
Patty added.

“
Animals
are
hunters, Babe,”
Ronnie said.

Patty stayed silent. Jeff cleared
his throat quietly. “Back in Vermont we came across a... a
nest
like this more than
once.”

“
Why
nest
?
” Mike asked.

Jeff shrugged. “It seemed like a nest. Look at
the way it's arranged, like a clearing, like a real clearing.
Seems...” He shrugged.

Kate raised her eyebrows to him.

“
I don't have an answer, okay.
Look at it though. I never used to hunt in the old world, but it
looks a little like a hunting camp, doesn't it?” He looked
embarrassed.

“
No campfire,” Ronnie
said.

“
Yeah. Yeah, that threw me. I
guess my concern is someone following us.” Jeff said.

“
People don't eat people,” Patty
said quietly. She seemed glued to Kate's side.

“
Zombies do,” Ronnie said and
laughed.

“
Not funny, really. Some people in
Vermont swore they saw things like that.” Jeff said. He looked at
Mike.

Mike fixed his eyes on him. “We
need to be careful there. You mean someone, some
thing
else beside what
you told me?”

Jeff sighed. “Nothing solid. This one guy was
with us a day or two, found a... a nest, he said, a nest like
this... a body. But, the body, he said, was not dead. It got up and
ran away when he poked it with a stick.” He held his hands in front
of him. “Didn't say I believed it. Wasn't there... Didn't see
it.”

“
Yeah, well, that's always the
problem with shit like that,” Ronnie said. “No one you actually
know has seen it, can vouch for it. Dead people coming back to
life? Come on. Really?”

“
Didn't say I believed it,” Jeff
said.

“
No... But do you?” Kate asked.
She looked back around the clearing. Nest, her mind whispered.
There did seem to be an orderliness to it that was human, not
animal. There seemed to be an area that was flattened down where
someone may have slept.

“
No,” Jeff said. “I didn't believe
in that kind of shit at all. I thought maybe it was someone sick,
real sick... nearly dead... out of their head, and so they ran away
when help came.” He shrugged. He looked over at Mike.

“
Go on,” Mike said. “Jeff and I
talked about this. With the stuff that's been going on, us making
our decisions, I didn't think we should get right into it.” He
looked around the clearing. “But this... “ He shook his head. “Tell
them what you told me, Jeff.”

“
I said I didn't
believe in Zombies... Un-Dead... Walking dead, living dead. None of
it. And I didn't. Then one day I was checking out this building. It
smelled bad... like this, but a building. I didn't connect it. But
I stepped into a room, and there was a body, dead. I swear to
Christ that woman was dead, missing part of her neck, body glued
into the blood on the floor.
Dead
. And I nearly turned and left.
And then she sat up... saw me... hissed at me. She
hissed
at me. And then
she took off. And I mean took off, fast. She could move.“ He
shrugged. “That's it. I didn't believe. Not until then.” he
finished quietly.

“
Don't matter if they believe in
you,” Patty said quietly.

“
Oh come on, Pats,” Ronnie said.
“For Christ's sake.”

“
Could be real,” Kate said.
“Doesn't take much, government shit, some sort of chemical
change.”

“
Please,” Ronnie said.

“
Please? Then why did the C.D.C.
issue warnings about it? If it's bullshit, why would they do
that?”

“
Katie, that was
a joke,” Ronnie said. “When I just said it, it was a joke.
I was joking.”

“
Ronnie, don't fuckin' call me
Katie. And it wasn't a joke. An organization like that doesn't
joke.”

“
Sorry,” Ronnie looked
embarrassed. “Sorry. But you don't really think that.”

“
I didn't say I did.” The fire
bled out of her eyes. “Looks like people camped out here though...
not an animal.”

Mike cleared his throat. “Whatever it was
doesn't matter. I saw that whole thing too. Does anyone remember
back in Watertown? It's in my journal. I can't remember the date. I
heard Airplanes in the night, woke up the next day there was this
blue shit all over the snow.”

“
And?” Ronnie asked.

“
And, I don't know. Does anyone?
Can anyone say this wasn't a pack of wolves? Wolves do this. They
act a lot like humans. They do. I'm not ready to say we have
Zombies running around. But, well, ignoring shit is not good.
Better to look at the big picture. I'm not saying it is; I'm not
saying it isn't. But, what was that shit about? Why spray that shit
after all that had happened? What was that?”

“
I remember that blue snow. I
didn't hear the planes. I remember the snow though. Could be they
are real,” Kate said.

“
But. Never
mind. I jumped. I am sorry. But,
fuck,
a thing like that. What the
hell could we do against a thing like that?” Ronnie
said.

Silence held for a few minutes. The gloom began
to get to them. It seemed twenty degrees cooler out of the
sunlight.

“
It was my fault. I shouldn't have
made that crack,” Patty said.

“
I got spooked, I guess,” Jeff
said.

“
Doesn't matter,” Mike said.
“Let's get out of here.”

“
Shouldn't we bury the body?”
Patty asked.

Mike stopped. “Ronnie, go back and get us ready
to go. Jeff and I will take care of this.”

“
The guy's been dead for awhile,”
Ronnie said.

“
Yeah. But I'm
going to do it anyway. Go on back and get us ready. Talk to
Bob.
Babe
,” he
looked at Kate. She turned her eyes to him. Patty was still curled
into her side. “Okay?”

Kate nodded. Patty looked up and nodded too.
“Just scared me,” Patty said.

Mike nodded. “Jeff, you and me., let's go get a
shovel. And this stays with us. Later on we'll sit down and talk to
the others if it looks like we have to. It doesn't look like we
have to right now. I will talk to Bob about it myself,” He nodded,
raised his eyes from the ground and then started through the trees
to get a shovel.

~On the road again~

The camp began to break up at mid-morning. The
day was gray and overcast, a few drops of rain falling from the
sky. But the gray day and rain couldn't put a damper on the smiling
faces talking to one another, laughing behind the glass windows of
the vehicles as the caravan pulled away parallel to the highway,
riding through the grassy field which wasn't in much better shape
than the road.

Each truck had a V.H.F. radio so
they could communicate with each other and a C.B. radio to monitor
everything else. The skip talk on the C.B. was light this morning.
Twice a voice bled through claiming to be from somewhere in L.A.
and warning everyone to stay away. The voice claimed the city was
on fire, gangs fighting for control of what was left.
The dead were rising and walking the
streets.

“
Feds?” Patty asked.

“
Feds landed and took over the
streets?” Ronnie supplied.

Patty nodded doubtfully. “I hope
so. Because it sounded like dead...
The
dead are walking the streets.
” She trailed
off and turned her eyes back to the scenery, woods, fields, low
hanging gray clouds that slipped past the windows. “That's crazy,
though, right? ”she asked. ”
Crazy?
”

“
Yeah, nuts. I
think it was
Feds
. Maybe it means there are still people in charge there?
Could be,” Ronnie said. He pulled Patty closer to
him.

The voice, a young male from the sound,
continued to talk on in a matter-of-fact voice, something close to
a monotone that suggested he was drugged or high. They were all
glad when whatever atmospheric conditions had brought the voice to
them passed, and the other skip took its place.

~

Just before noon they came upon a small gas
station and convenience store area and stopped to top off the gas
tanks. The store looked well used; everything was picked over. But
no one came around, and no one called on the radio. They all got
out and stretched their legs, lunched on canned meat and energy
bars, washed down with vitamin water and sports drinks.

Just after midday, they left the interchange
behind them and continued on their way. The heavens continued to
leak rain and the fields became harder to travel through, so they
stuck to the pavement, traveling slowly on the broken surface,
skirting the occasional abandoned vehicle, tilted piece of pavement
or washed out section of roadway. About twenty minutes later, they
consulted their map under the portico of a sagging motel office and
angled west, off the main highway, away from Syracuse and its
suburbs.

The C.B. was useless, bursts of static and
people blocking each others transmissions. Thick black smoke
billowed up into the air several miles ahead, about where Syracuse
would be, and a plastic electrical smell hung in the air even with
the rain. But they saw no one at all, not even animals. They were
all happy once the black smudge in the sky had disappeared behind
them.

A few minutes after that, a large herd of
horses grazing in a field popped their heads up when they saw the
trucks and then galloped after them for about half mile before
turning and pounding off towards a wooded area in the distance.
That kept everybody talking back and forth on the VHF radios for
awhile. Arlene thought possibly they were part of some range stock,
and they were used to associating vehicles with feed. Lilly worried
that they might be hungry, but Arlene assured her they had plenty
to eat.

Mike had watched one large gray
horse spotted with black on its nose which had kept pace with his
truck. Steam had risen from his coat as he had stopped and then
turned away into the rain.
Beautiful
, Mike had
thought.

"Beautiful," Kate said from beside
him.

He laughed. "I was thinking exactly that when
you said it," Mike told her. "How big do you think he was?" Mike
asked.

"Probably about 6 feet at the shoulder," Kate
said. "Big."

"Got to be," Patty said from the back seat.
"Because we're way off the ground, and it was pretty much even with
us."

"Anybody ever ride a horse?" Ronnie
asked.

"Nope," Mike said.

"Not me," Patty said.

"Me either," Kate added.

“
It looks easy," Ronnie continued.
"But of course I'd bet he'd buck you off pretty quick if he didn't
want you on him."

"She," Patty said. "It was a she. And females
are supposed to be better tempered."

"Pats, I didn't realize a girl horse could get
that big," Ronnie said.

"How'd you learn that, about female horses
being better tempered?" Kate asked.

"It was a novel I read,
Lonesome Dove
. The
horses,
female
horses,
mares
, had the best temperament. But you could get a male horse
that was gelded, a Gelding, and they would be pretty even tempered
too," she said.

"I never read that book," Mike said. "Wanted to
though."

"You can learn a lot from a book, I guess,"
Ronnie said. “ I wonder what a Gelding is. Like a... like a
specific type of horse I imagine? I've heard of a Paint. A Paint is
a kind of horse.”

Patty giggled.

Kate nodded. "I always wanted to ride a horse.
I went to Rochester once. The cops there ride them downtown. There
were several horse farms that I saw along the way also."

"All the cops are on horses?" Patty
asked.

"No, just around downtown. I was there with
someone for a concert at the War Memorial. I was just a kid, so
they looked even bigger than they probably were, but it made an
impression on me." She finished.