Free The Dead Road: The Complete Collection by Robert Paine Page B

the tree line. There was no movement. We had done it.
     
    Roger turned to me and smiled. "Fuck yeah."
     
    Amy got out of the car and sprinted up the driveway. "PARKER!"
     
    I winced and got back in the car. "Roger! Let's go!"
     
    He got back in and Eli hit the gas. Amy had cut through the trees, running in a straight line form the road to her front door. We could see her climbing the front steps as Eli drove up to the house. The driveway was littered with bodies. I tried to ignore the wet, crunching sounds as we drove over them. Nothing but dead animals, I told myself.
     
    Amy used her keys, pushing the front door open. She was inside before we pulled up behind the jeep. I could hear her yelling Parker's name. Then she screamed. It was a keening wail, a blood-curdling noise that made all three of us jump. We piled out of the car, getting up to the house as fast as we could. Roger went in first, shotgun in hand. I was last, limping on my injured foot, taking the steps one at a time. Eli went in ahead of me. I could hear Amy crying. Roger had stopped. He lowered the shotgun.
     
    Eli rounded the corner and froze. "What?" I growled, moving as fast as I could. Roger looked at me and shook his head.
     
    I went through the door.
     
    Amy was in the living room. She was on her knees, crying, her hands balled into fists, pounding at the floor. In the couches were three college kids, two boys and a girl. One wore a Bowdoin College t-shirt. On the coffee table was an empty bottle of whiskey, and half a dozen prescription bottles, all of them emptied. White and pink pills of varying shapes were strewn across the table and floor. All three of the kids were dead. I would have thought they were asleep if not for their gray, ashen complexions and the smell of decay. Surrounded by twenty walking corpses for days, they chose to take the easy way out.
     
    Amy wailed. Tears streamed down her face.
     
    The plague had claimed three more victims. I started to wonder how many others, when faced with the reality of the end of life as we know it, had taken this path. How many others lacked the courage, or the will to fight? How many more would rather poison themselves with pain medication and alcohol, or hang themselves, or slit their wrists, rather than face the reality that was outside their door. I turned away from the sight, closing my eyes, trying to steady myself. The task before us was mounting. We had to survive in a world that was trying to kill us, while our own spirits were torn to shreds by what we would have to witness.
     
    I put my hand on Roger's shoulder. "Case the place for supplies. Food, clothes, anything we can use."  He nodded and started moving through the house.
     
    Eli and I waited, watching Amy as she screamed and cried. We would give her some time, but not a lot, and certainly not enough. Maybe there were other survivors out there, waiting for someone like us to come along. Maybe, somewhere to the south, there was a military cordon, keeping an eye on the state lines, keeping the plague out of the rest of the country. I wasn't hopeful, but until we knew for sure we had no choice.
     
    We had to survive until the world got the best of us, or until the best of us wasn't good enough anymore. We had to keep moving.

~Volume Three: Stockton ~
    The mountain air felt good on our faces, driving in the setting July sun, the road shadowed by the canopy of trees on both sides.  They grew in the steep hillsides, some looking like they clung to nothing but bare rock, their roots embedded into the mountain itself.  These trees, nestled in rocky groves between vast stretches of rich hillside soil, they were the underdogs, and yet they endured beyond all hope.
     
    That was us.  So far we survived beyond all hope.  In a world full of walking corpses and the hungry dead, we were still going.
     
    We were in Amy's brother Parker's Jeep.  Parker had committed suicide in the face of the ruination of the world around him.  He and