Free The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. by Geo Dell

Mike called. “Where
are you going, Man?”
    “ That’s our Goddamn truck.
I’m going to get it.” His eyes were wild, the truck keys in one
hand, a pistol in the other, no shirt, sock-less shoes, laces
trailing.
    “ It’s an old truck, Man,”
Mike said.
    “ It’s my old truck,” Tom said defensively.
“And if I catch that fucker…”
    “ Fuckers,” Lydia
said.
    “ Huh?” Tom
asked.
    “ Fuckers, as in I saw two
heads. Two of them. Not one,” Lydia said. Her voice held a
breathless, excited quality to it that Mike didn’t like. She was
dressed in jeans and a thin T-shirt. She shivered slightly, whether
from the cold or the excitement, Mike couldn’t tell.
    “ Either way. One, two, how
would we catch them? And then what? Are we going to shoot somebody
for stealing an old truck? Is that what things have come to?” Mike
asked.
    “ Look, don’t get moral on
me,” Tom said. He leveled his eyes at Mike. “I do things my way.
You take from me, you pay for it.”
    Mike just stared back at
him.
    “ You’re soft,” Tom said.
But his fists, still clenched, dropped from the truck door and he
walked away from the Suburban and back into the cave.
    Lydia threw Mike a nasty look, finally
managed to fish a replacement clip from her overly tight front
pocket. Ejected the empty one into her hand and slid the new one
into the pistol with a solid click. “Soft,” She echoed as the clip
clicked home. She turned and went back inside the cave. In the
distance, the muffler of the truck began to fade. It was hard to
tell which direction it had gone.
    Bob stepped up beside Mike where he
stood with Candace and Jan. “I’m not going to kill anybody over an
old truck,” he said.
    “ Me either” the other three
said in near unison.
    “ Guess we better start
making sure everything’s locked up tight,” Mike said.
    “ We’re going to have to
start keeping a watch,” Jan said.
    “ We will,” Candace agreed.
“What if the next thing they want is a woman?”
    “ That’s not funny,” Mike
said.
    She leveled her dark eyes on his,
silvery moonlight reflecting from them. “I wasn’t trying to be
funny. Now that they know we’re around…” she shrugged. “Lydia may
have overreacted, but maybe not. Who the hell would pull a stunt
like that anyway? Everything’s just lying around. Want a truck? Go
get one. No… It’s a mind set. Someone who takes like that doesn’t
take because it’s easy; they take because they like it, because
they can.” She lowered her voice, “Truck, woman... might all be the
same to them.”
    No one answered.
    ~
    Tom and Lydia sat talking in low tones
as the others walked back into the cave. They had rebuilt the fire,
and the warmth and light spread out, glowing on the stone walls.
“Tom,” Mike started.
    “ Listen,” Tom said. “I
shouldn’t have said that... I didn’t mean to say that. And, no, it
would be stupid to go chasing after a goddamn truck in the middle
of the night. And, no, I don’t want to kill someone over stealing a
piece of shit truck,” Tom said. “But that kind of shit can’t
happen. I mean, what’s next?”
    “ Yeah,” Mike agreed. “Yeah.
I guess what’s next is locked up trucks. No keys left in them.
And…” He looked over at Candace. “I guess a guard at night. Candace
said… She thinks someone who would come to take a truck might come
to take a woman too.”
    The silence held only for a
second.
    “ Fuckin’ A,” Lydia
spat.
    She looks positively rabid, Candace
thought. “What I mean,” Candace said, “A truck… Maybe one of us…
Who steals a truck when everything’s just lying around free for
anyone who wants to pick it up?”
    Tom nodded his head.
    “ Well, as soon as it’s
light I say we follow the tracks. If we’re careful, it should be no
problem at all,” Mike said.
    “ Goddamn right,” Lydia
said.
    “ Should be armed. I’m sure
they will be,” Candace said.
    “ Not you. You’re not going
are you?” Mike asked.
    “