America The Dead Book Two: The Road To Somewhere (28 page)

That set the panic on fire within
him. He lunged to his feet, prepared to run up the hill, but the
hill was gone. The camp ground was gone. He was standing in a dense
forest. Others stood around him, silent, seemingly waiting on
him...
or with him,
his mind reasoned.

He tried to speak. “Hey... I'm
hurt bad. Help me!” And he did speak the words, but not a sound
came out of his mouth. He had no air to drive the words, and that
brought him back to the panic. No breath.
No breath meant no life.
No life was
death. He didn't want that. He had been...

He had been going up the
hill?
Going
down
the hill? He couldn't remember.
The... the attack had come. The attack had come and he was...
must
have been
wounded... gravely wounded. And if he didn't breath soon, it
would turn into something even worse. He had to breath. He had to
breath soon or...

She stepped into his line of sight. The bones
in her face were close to the surface, pushing at the taut skin
there. Her skin was greenish-gray, or maybe it was a trick of the
moonlight. Her silvered eyes held his own. Her long black hair was
a tangled ruin.

The skin of the rest of her body
was pale white. Unbelievably white. So white,
translucent,
that he could see the
spidery trails of purple-blue capillaries, veins rising and
touching the surface of her skin and then plunging deep into her
body, under the skin and muscle... pulsing... seeming to be alive,
although she seemed as dead as anything dead that he had ever
seen.

As a kid, he had happened into a
vacant lot one morning on the way to school. He had seen something
over in the weeds that ran along the fence line of the lot next
door. There he had looked down upon the body of a bum who had
either died during one of the recent cold nights or had been
murdered and dumped there. His face had looked like this one before
him. Gray, too pale, the bone structure too close to the surface.
The skin looking more like wax than skin. Just like this...
this...
w
hatever this was.

Jeff sank back down to the ground on his knees.
The cold moonlight shone down, the others still silent and standing
around him.

~

They listened to the radio, and even called a
few times themselves, but they heard no reply. They split up the
posts, built the fire up, banked it, and those not on post turned
in.

Kate lay alone in her sleeping bag, looking up
at the deep black of the star filled night. She wondered about
where they would end up, followed by how much she wanted a baby,
how much she loved Mike. She thought maybe she should write in her
journal. Somewhere in there she fell asleep and woke later to
Mike's gentle touch, waking her to turn the post over to
her.

She rose, kissed him softly, took the cup of
coffee he offered and walked off into the night.

~April 3
^rd
- Mike's
journal~

This must look like the craziest caravan anyone
has ever seen. Pigs, cows, chickens, horses and people all moving
down this logging trail that hasn't been used since who knows
when.

We have seven trucks, so everyone is a driver.
I thought the big trucks would be the worst, but I have to admit,
once we loaded them down, they were much easier to drive. And they
are loaded down with every farm implement we could find, and more
than that, every thing we could think or thought that we would
need. Several cast iron, wood fired cooking stoves in pieces, with
instructions I hope. Several more wood burning stoves. Steel
buildings, seed and grain, two electric generating windmill kits,
and one that will work with stream or river power. We could not
find any solar panels for Tim, so those will have to do, or he will
have to wait until we come out again. Bob thinks next spring, but
he says it could be as soon as this fall. We also packed in trees
to plant, saplings of fruit trees, vine cuttings and so much more I
just lost count.

There were many things that we could not get. A
weaving frame, a spinning wheel, both to make new cloth. We could
find neither, but we did find books on constructing them. We found
guitars, banjos and violins, but no acoustic basses, no flutes. We
did find a piano but couldn't figure out how we could get it on the
truck without breaking it all to hell. And where would we put
it?

I think that we have more than we need. I think
we can always come back, like Bob says, when we need to.

Kate is on watch post, we're both anxious to
end the traveling and get there. She told me tonight that there's a
good chance she might be pregnant. Just about three weeks overdue,
give or take, so she didn't want to get my hopes up. Well, too
late! They're up!

We have had no surprises, except late in the
day when a herd of moose began to follow us. We thought it would be
a problem, but it turned out not to be. They followed along and ate
the Cow Chow falling off the truck. The cows and horses don't seem
to mind them. I don't know how far they'll follow or what we'll do
with them, but they seem to like the Cow Chow.

I feel bad about Chloe, but grateful that we
got Cindy. The things they did to these girls really sickened us. I
can't be angry at Chloe. We'll never know what happened her. We
found where she called from, from the radio anyway. She's gone, but
there's a body there. Maybe one of the crazies that we couldn't
find? Hard to tell. But It almost has to be. It even makes sense.
She couldn't have carried those bodies away on her own. He must
have been with her, helped her, and then they had some sort of
falling out. He went too far, did something, said
something.

There was blood on the phone, so whatever he
did, she was hurt. And we know she was also shot. Maybe life will
treat her better from here on out.

We're back out in the morning.
We're still on the logging road,
well
one of several. They weave all
over the place and turn into each other. But this was the one they
used. We're following the tracks of the big tires. With all the mud
from the rain, it's pretty easy to do.

~April 4 - Patty's journal~

It's fairly early morning here. I have had bad
dreams all night long that Ronnie got shot. No matter what I did, I
couldn't shake it. I don't even have Kate here to tell me it's
okay. I'm such a baby sometimes. I'm not a big believer in dreams,
but it seemed so real. I finally decided to get up and not try to
sleep anymore at all.

We spent the entire day getting this overhang
and the cave behind it livable. Whatever had lived in the cave last
liked to eat deer, big deer. It took all the morning to bring out
all the bones and dump them.

There's a pretty big smoke hole
that also allows light in. Yes I said
smoke hole,
because people have used
this cave before. There are drawings of hands, outlines, drawings
of deer and horses, birds, all over the walls.

This is a huge cave as well. The main area is
bigger than any church or cathedral I have ever seen, and then
there are several dozen caves off this one, and we can't tell where
they may end. The passages just keep going deeper. It's pretty cold
the deeper in that you go also.

The smoke hole got us wondering what's up top,
so we climbed up to take a look. We thought that would be hard to
do, but there are steps that lead up there, worn down. They used
this place a long time, whoever they were.

Janet says the drawings and paintings are not
like Native American art work that she has seen. Makes us wonder
who they were.

The top is flat, and from there you can see for
miles. I mean, it must be miles. We can see the other line of the
Appalachians were we left them in Kentucky, and although we did not
come in a straight line, we did come a long way. I tried the radio
up there, but it was a no go even as high up as I was. Even so, I
go up there every time now to try it.

The other direction shows us our valley which
is huge. There are more mountains in the distance, several rivers,
lakes, herds of buffalo, horses, and other animals that are too far
away to see what they are. It's a long valley, full of living
things, but no other people. No sign of them.

We don't know how much longer we have to wait.
But what can we do? God help us get our people home to us,
Amen.

~Lillie's journal~

I am hanging in there. We worked hard all day,
and I was still so keyed up that I couldn't sleep.

We found the cave Janet was sure would be here.
We unloaded the trucks. We thought they were so packed, but all of
that in here just looks empty. That's how big this place is. Even
so, the cave is cleaned out, bones, mice, rats even. I really don't
know how we'll keep them out, but they're out for now.

We also cleaned off the stone ledge where it
goes down to the valley. We walked it down. It's walkable, maybe
drivable, but who knows. We threw all the rocks and pebbles over
the edge.

At the bottom there is a large open area and a
deep pool from where the stream falls from above. It doesn't really
do a waterfall thing. It's more of an angle down the wall and into
the pool at the bottom. It's nice though. Fresh water so close is a
good thing, Janet says. You can see tracks from small animals where
they come to drink.

I think I'll go sit with Patty for awhile and
talk. We are both missing everyone so much. God stay with
us.

~Jessica~

She sat up abruptly and the dirt and mud flew
from her. She had only been covered with what had trickled back
down into the hole, or slid down in the form of mud. They hadn't
bothered to re-bury her. Her hands came up and batted at her face
for a moment, catching the rat that had been gnawing there. One
boney hand closed around it, and the rat squealed in pain, turning
and trying to bite her. She brought it to her face, stared at its
beady eyes for a moment.

She squeezed harder, and the rat's eyes bulged
from the sockets. She lunged forward, took the rat's head in her
mouth. It bit at her tongue weakly. The taste of the rat and its
fear flooded through her. She bit down hard, and blood spurted
across her face as she crunched down on the small skull
bones.

~Happy Trails~

They were up early, but the sun was still well
up by the time they fed themselves, loaded the calves and foals and
began to move out once more.

The hardest part was rounding up the two
separate groups of animals and herding them with the Jeep's towards
the logging trail. Once they got them going, it wasn't so bad. But
they had not been interested in leaving the small
clearing.

Kate drove the front Jeep, keeping slightly
ahead, scouting for the trucks. When she came to the beginning of
the reforestation project, she stopped and waited for the other
trucks to catch up. It was close to midday, time to feed
themselves, water and feed the chickens and piglets and let the
calves and foals out to nurse for awhile.

Straight lines of trees marched away in long
even rows off into the distance. The logging road naturally ended
at one row, and it seemed to make sense that that was the way the
others had gone. Scouting up that way a few hundred yards, they
found dried mud cast off the tires as they had moved along the pine
needle covered floor of the forest.

"It's good. It tells us it's this one. But if
they turn off..." Bob said.

They all nodded in agreement. Kate tried the
radio, waited fifteen minutes and tried again. Nothing, but they
had to be getting closer.

They had everything moving again a half hour
later. The afternoon passed by slowly as they moved along through
the tall trees. The cows, as well as the horses, didn't seem
inclined to go wandering off into the trees.

The sun was just beginning to set behind them
when they broke through the end of the trees and rolled into a long
valley. A large herd of buffalo grazed close by, but the racket of
the trucks, and the unfamiliar scents of all the people and so many
other animals, sent them running, herding the calves as they went,
to the other end of the valley.

A stream swung in from their left, dropping
from some high cliffs on one side of the valley.

Everyone was stretching their legs when David
saw the red ribbons fluttering from a tree a little past where they
had parked. Once he noticed them, everyone did. And they couldn't
figure out how they had missed them in the first place.

They fed the chickens and piglets, turned the
calves and the foals loose to be with their mothers and cleaned the
insides of the trucks out.

Dinner was smoked beef added to several cans of
stew that had been opened and dumped into a large cast iron
pot.

"I'll be glad when your Janet is cooking for us
again," Mike said.

"Me as well," Bob agreed, "No slight to this
meal, but she has a way with food." Bob said.

"I'll second that," Kate said.

A few grunts of agreement were
added.