Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle (18 page)

So I kissed her.  I pulled her face to mine and I closed my eyes and kissed the shit out of her.  When I pulled away, her eyes opened slowly, and her mouth turned upward into a smile.  She said nothing, but stared into my eyes.

“
I know you’re
smart
and tough
, but I just got you back,
”
I said.

She
held
both my wrists with her small, long-fingered hands.  “And you won’t lose me,” she said.

“So you say. 
And I better not. 
B
ut
promise me you’ll
convince her to
stay here.  I don’t
want her
to distract you
and
put you at risk any
more than you will be.  Okay?”

Gem nodded, then put her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to mine
, softer this time
.  My lips parted, and I reveled in the taste of her
, the softness of her mouth.  We finished the kiss and
I closed my eyes and rested my cheek against hers.  “I love you, Gem.  Make it fast, okay?”

She promised.

We went back inside, and Gem
sat with Cynthia until the woman was nodding, tears rolling down her swollen cheeks.

She had agreed to stay and let Gem investigate.  Gem
wrote
down the address and Cynthia’s
mother’s full name.  She jotted the
name ‘
Taylor
’ down beside it.
  Her daughter.
  She produced a photograph from her wallet, taken from a purse she seemed surprised was still clutched in her hands.

“Take the Uzi and get
plenty of
spare
mags
from the truck before you
head
out.  If you’re not back in an hour, we’re coming after you.”

Give me forty-five minutes.”

“Wait!” I called just as the door was closing.  She stopped and I reached into my belt bag.  “Take this.
  It
s
range won’t be the advertised 20 miles, but it should work for two to three.”

She took the walkie from me.  “This place is well within that.  Good.  I like this.”

“
You
like it,” I said, smiling.  “If you get into any trouble just hit that button and yell.”  I turned to Max.  “There are other gassed up vehicles in that garage, right?”

“Absolutely.  They keep them full and ready to roll.  You might be impressed with the selection.”

I turned back to Gem.  “Okay, no
w that my brain is back in gear and
I know we
’ll have a way to
communicate and come after you if necessary
, get going
and hurry back.”

The dog
and I
looked worriedly at the door as it closed.  I looked from it to Trina, who was awake, but staring blankly at the floor.”

“Trini, I think it’s time to name that girl.  She can’t go through her life as
dog
.  What if you were only called
girl
your whole life?”

Despite her exhaustion, she smiled.  “That’s silly, Uncle Flexy. 
Everybody’s got a name.”

I nodded toward the Great Pyrenees.  “Not her.
  At least not one we know.
”

She smiled.  “
I’ll think of something.”

“And while you’re at it, you should start thinking about seeing if Max has a bowl to give her some water.  And you should start thinking about names for the puppies
, too
.”

With that, she began looking around the room for much needed inspiration.

CHAPTER
EIGHT

Because we needed to leave Trina
, Cynthia
and the
dog
without a name
with Max, we were
acutely
awa
re
that
we were without Gem
and the firepower she provided
.  We’d brought enough spare 9mm ammo with us that we felt satisfied we had enough, but I grabbed the first axe I found in a fire hose cabinet, and Hemp snatched
another when we reached a second station
.

If we ran into any uninfecteds, they would absolutely shit their pants.  I imagined what we looked like.  No sleep in a full day, sweating, dirty, bloody and bruised.

And brandishing submachine guns and axes.

I looked at Hemp.  “Did you see the movie
They Live
?”

We stepped into the service elevator that ran down to the garage level.  “No,” he said.  “Who’s in it?  Anyone I’d have heard of?”

“Not a chance,” I said.  “But there’s a great line in it.”

Hemp swiped his card, hitting the G button.
  The car began to fall smoothly
. 
“And what’s that?”

I smiled.  “I came here to chew some bubble gum and kick some ass.  And I’m all out of bubble gum.”

“You Americans are all a bunch of John Waynes, aren’t you?” 

I shrugged
and we both managed a good laugh.

W
hen the doors slid open it was
into wall of zombies.

There.  I said it. 
Fucking zombies.  I could use
respectable terminology when I was dealing with Jamie, but right now, it was the first thing that came to mind.

Rapid decomposition of their skin had turned it pocked
, wrinkled
and flaky, and as they pushed against one another to access the oversized cargo elevator
,
the dead skin flew into the air like tiny winged gnats.

And they
reeked
.

“Get over!
  Over!
” Hemp shouted, and I did.  He swung his axe neck
-
height, and whacked the heads from the first two he hit, the axe blade embedding into
a
third’s neck
, the black-red blood
spraying every visible surface.  A
disgusting stench that smelled like mold and shit
accompanied
the horrid mist
.  

The moan-scream the things made seemed
unlike
the sounds they emitted
when we were shooting them, perhaps because they were dying differently.  I made a mental note to mention my observation to Hemp later as
I swung
in a broad sweep
from right to left and at a downward angle, chopping diagonally through the head of another lab-coated freak whose teeth were exposed
all the way back
to the molars on the left side, and who had bitten his tongue off
; it
was now hanging by a couple of blue veins out of the side of his
gaping pie hole
. 

Thankfully, he dropped
and I didn’t have to stare at him for long
.  I’d only
slammed into
the collarbone of the next one
, which drove him to his knees
, a short round mechanic-looking
man-monster
with
Phil on his embroidered name badge.  I yanked the axe toward me and it sliced into his neck further then came free, but before I could pull it back for another swing, he was coming at me
, jerking along on his knees
.

Hemp had relinquished his axe and now swung the
Daewoo
submachine gun around.  He took out the fat fucker coming at me first, then sprayed the door left to right and back, taking out six more of them. 
Shell casings rained down hot, peppering me and the zombies coming at us. 
As
the front line of them
fell we found five more right behind them, and now I had time to
pull the H&K around to assist.

Good thing. 
Hemp’s
MP5 clicked, out of ammo as I sent round after round into the next layer of hungry predators outside the elevator.  The pile was building now, and if there were more out there, then neither Hemp nor I could see them from our positions on the floor.

But as Hemp slammed his clip back into the
Daewoo
, we did see something.

Something disturbing.
 
The fat fucker was getting his nose chewed off.

By a head.  A fucking head.

I lo
oked at Hemp, and he followed my eyes back to
the pile of zombies stacked in the elevator
opening
. A
s
the doors
attempted
repeatedly to close
, one
side
kept bumping the severed head of one of the undead creatures onto its face where it rolled until it hit the bump of the nose, then rolled back, again to be hit by the door, like a t
oo-softly hit pinball falling back to the flippers.

And it gnashed
, biting its tongue in half as we watched, a pus-blood-bile liquid running down its cheek as it did so
.  The eyes searched frantically for the food we knew it could still smell
, and that food was us
.  And
as we looked on in wonder and horror,
the other severed head munched on the fat fucker’s nose relentlessly, and was making impressive progress.

I shot the one on the right, and Hemp shot the one on the left.  We stood up and took a very close look at the barricade we would have to clear before we could either begin our work on the gas line or meet the others we would have to slaughter.

I took a deep breath, then turned and puked in the corner of the elevator car.  I heaved up an entire can of half-digested chili.

Hemp looked away and tried to breathe through his mouth.

And then he puked, too.  Right on the fat fucker.
  When he was done, we wiped our putrid mouths on our sleeves and started kicking the bodies aside as best we could, making sure none of them were without severe brain
trauma
.  Then we climbed the stack of
really
dead zombies
.

At the top of the mound, we found we were in the clear.  All told there had been another
eighteen
of them.

I was really beginning to wonder how outnumbered the uninfecteds in this world were.

And then I thought of Gem and reached for my radio.

*****

“Flex, I can’t talk,” she said.  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

My
icy
stare
focused on
nothing.  I pressed the walkie transmit button
almost
hard enough to break the plastic.

“What’s wrong?” I asked in a desperate whisper, because it seemed she was trying to be quiet, and it was automatic.

There was a pause.  “Hold on,” she said.

I did.

Then: “I had to move farther away from them before I felt comfortable talking.  Listen, I think I’ve found Cynthia’s daughter,
Taylor
.  And
she’s alive.  But Flex, I’ve never been so scared in my life.  The things are fucking
stockpiling
bodies.”

I wanted to check the batteries in the walkie, because I didn’t want to hear what I thought I
just
did.  “Gem.  Are you in any danger now?”

“I’m not
, or I don’t think so, anyway
.  Not right now.  But Flex, they’re stacking dead
bodies in the house
.  Like a meat locker.”

“Is it cold in the house?”

“
I have no idea, but this house has a generator running
, so the A/C might be on
.  Looks like it’s supplied from an underground tank or something,
and they seem to know the difference.”

“How many are there?”

“I’ve only seen eight or nine
moving around
, but the bodies are piled two deep
as far as I can see into
the
house,
and I can’t figure out how they got so many.  I mean, hasn’t this only been going on for a couple of days?”

I jammed my finger on the transmit button again.  “Gem, you’d better be sure you’re safe.  Secondly how the hell did you get close enough to see what you just described to me, and find the girl?  That doesn’t sound safe at all.”