Zombie Road: The Second Omnibus | Books 4-6 | Jessie+Scarlet Simpson, A. (pride and prejudice read txt) 📖

fight over land again. He sighed heavily. There weren’t enough good people left in the world and he was afraid a few more were gone like so many before them.

Scarlet ran a hand through his hair, pushed it away from his troubled brow and rested her palm against his cheek. She saw the darkness in him and wanted to kiss it away as she stared up into his eyes. Emerald green and cobalt blue that understood each other. There was powerful sadness in this place. It was a monumental graveyard overlooking a nation. Solemn faces on the mountain stared down at the ruins as they would for millennia to come.

Jessie kissed her palm and smiled his half smile. She held his gaze with her darkening eye and he saw only fathomless affection, felt her adoration and worshipped her right back. Agape love in its purest form. Unmerited, gracious and rich in mercy. Unnatural and unusual like both of them, willing to lay down their lives or vanquish a thousand enemies. His chest felt too small for his heart. The enchantment between them was nearly palpable, you could almost see the air around them shimmer as if it too rejoiced and danced with their power. With the unfiltered love that was in their very DNA. A love more than love that would move mountains or shape worlds.

“We find them.” she said.

He covered her hand with his, breathed in her scent and agreed.

“We find them.”

117

Mount Rushmore

They were surprised to find all the shops empty. There had been a battle but it was from long ago. A handful of dull shell casings, long dried blood stains on the floors and walls and a few shoes were all that was left. There were more corpses, some still trying to move but chewed up so badly they could hardly worm their way around. There were a lot of gnawed on bones lying around and they found a few heads, mostly intact, trying to bite at them.

“Weird.” Jessie said and used a gift shop t-shirt to pick up a leg bone that had been mostly picked clean.

Bob sniffed around with a low, menacing growl coming from deep in his chest. He didn’t like it either.

“Teeth marks.” he pointed out. “but not human. Looks like some wolves or something started eating zombies. I guess they would be easy prey.”

“Wolves wouldn’t do this.” Scarlet said. “There is plenty of wild game now, they like fresh meat, not rotting flesh.”

They poked through the rest of the stores but they all told a similar tale. At one time, months and months ago, there had been survivors. From the scattering of clothes and shoes in the plaza, it looked like they’d been trapped by a horde. The shelves were empty of anything edible, all the candy bars and bags of chips. They’d probably been starving and had been forced to try to make a run for it. They saw rolls of tape discarded by the clothes bins and could see how desperate people had made armor out of anything they could.

“I think they succeeded.” Scarlet said. “All the zombies are gone. They must have got to a car and led them away.”

“Hope so.” Jessie said but had his doubts. If any survivors had made it to the settlements, a story like this would have been told and retold around the retriever tables. Bastille probably would have had a whole show dedicated to the Rushmore survivors.

The scattering of heads and bones concerned him. Something wasn’t right, something had happened that he’d never seen before.

“Do you think the virus has spread to animals?” he asked, turning a piece of ribcage in the light, examining the bite marks on it.

“Those are zombie parts.” she pointed out, indicating a slowly snapping head that was lying on its side in the weeds. “Zombies don’t eat zombies.”

One of the eyes was milky black, the other completely eaten away by insects. A long line of ants was marching away from it with tiny little pieces of flesh in their mandibles as another line was coming back from the colony for seconds. Or thirds. Or it was probably their thousandth trip. The bones were stripped clean as only insects can. They’d saved the heads for last for some reason. Maybe because they still moved.

Jessie grimaced, tossed the bone away and it clattered into a pile of others. The skeletal remains were everywhere, torn apart, picked clean and scattered.

“Let’s go up the trail, see if we can figure out how to climb up Washington’s nose. That’s where they were headed.” he said and walked back outside into the sunlight.

There was something unnerving about bugs eating the undead while they were still moving around although it really wasn’t any different than what they normally did when something died, he supposed. Dead was dead. It was just a little creepy, that’s all.

He told Bob to stay by the car and keep Nefertiti company as she dozed on the hood soaking in the heat from the flat black paint.

They made their way down the long concrete avenue of flags to the amphitheater and the walking path that would take them to the base of the mountain. More bones were scattered, picked clean and bleached by the sun.

They were half way up the hundreds of steps on the presidential path when Jessie spotted an overgrown walkway below them. It disappeared around the edge of the mountain where Lincolns head was carved.

“There.” he said and they hopped over the railing, ignoring the signs that said stay off the rocks and stay on the approved trail. More bones were scattered among the rocks and underbrush. Gnawed clean then left for the insects.

They followed the rocky way around the base of the mountain and into the shadows as it continued to climb upward. To their surprise, they found a mounted ladder going straight up, nowhere near as sturdy as the tourist friendly stairs. There was a gap between the back of the heads