Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle (23 page)

Not a word was exchanged between them.  The child’s eyes were squeezed closed as though the nightmare was over and the good dream from which she did not want to awaken had begun.  Over
Taylor
’s head, Cynthia looked into our smiling faces; Gem, Hemp and I must have looked like three morons, our smiles fixed, our expressions tender.

“Thank you all so much,” she mouthed.  Her eyes said enough.

As though on queue, we all nodded and turned to head back downstairs.  Before I left the room I said, “Max, I had to give away the Hummer.  Found a bunch of uninfecteds about a mile and a half from here.”

“That’s good news,” he said.  “A good sign.  Did you tell them I’m here?”

“It’s great news, and yes, we did.  They might contact you, so keep your radios on scan.” I said.  “But I’m going to need another vehicle, if you think you can spare it.”

“We already worked it out, Flex,” said Hemp.  “You gotta check out the Crown Vic I got you.”

“A fucking Ford?” I asked, incredulous.

“I guess
you
might
describe it
in
those disparaging terms
, but it’s a rolling fortress.  We need something kind of nimble and quick, but tough.  The cops drive these
things
for a reason.”

“Okay.  You can convince me when we get back down there.”

We waved to Max and Cynthia, who still held
Taylor
in her arms.

*****

“It’s armored,” Hemp said, smiling.  He walked to the tool box and grabbed a small sledge hammer. 

“What the hell are you doing?” Gem asked. 

Hemp ignored her and raised his arm, slamming the six pound sledge into the windshield glass.

Nothing.

“Jesus,” I said.  “Airplane glass?”

Hemp nodded.  “Exactly.  Tested with frozen chickens fired at it at high speed.”

“Fuck off,” I said.

“True.  It’s called a Chicken Gun, but it’s really sort of a cannon.  Airplanes are only likely to hit birds in flight, so that’s how they test the most vulnerable part, the cockpit windshield.”

“Cool,” Gem said.  She took the sledge from Hemp and gave it a try.  The windshield shuddered, but sounded with a dull thud and did not give or shatter.

“No guns,” said Gem. 
“I’m driving the Suburban.”

“I’ll fix that,” Hemp said.  “
Of course, but I
think we’d feel better
that of the
three vehicles you drive this and take Trina.  Nothing can get in or penetrate the car, at all.  Period.”

“But you’re gonna mount a nice big gun on it, right?”
  Gem was serious.

“
Well, we’re limited right now on what we can mount because of what we have, but I think we’ve got enough to make you feel safe in this car.”

Hemp walked to a work bench on the east side of the room and carr
i
ed back what appeared to be a compact machine gun.  “AK-47,” he said.  “The most widely produced assault rifle in the world.  I’ve got a ball
beari
ng mount planned, kind of like a Lazy Susan.  This will
allow
the machine gun
to sit directly center above the front
cockpit
area. 
It’ll lock firmly
into place
when in the forward position, and that
lines up the clip for
easy
replacement.  I’ll cut
a
slot
in the
roof for the magazine to
travel
in
as it turns
.
  You see?  I’ve already figured all this out.
”

I watched the expression on Gem’s face.  It was awesome to see her so interested in this.
  “Tell us about the engine, Hemp.
  Anything special?
”

“It’s got all you need under the hood.  A 4.6
liter
V8 delivering
around 240 horsepower.  B
ut the door panels are lined with  B6 ballistic steel. 
Plus, there’s
B4
steel
on the roof, which will make it harder for me to –”

“But how
do
I fire
the AK
, and how do I know I’m aimed at what I want to kill?”
Gem was back to the gun.  One track mind.

“Really?  You don’t think I’ve thought this through?  How long have we known one another?” Hemp laughed.

Gem looked at her watch.  “About 20 hours,” she said.  “Okay, go on.”

“Alright.  I’ve wired up a video sight that I’ll mount to the gun.  It’s basically a camera.  We’ll essentially have an A/B switch on the dashboard here, and when you hit B, the GPS monitor screen will turn into your gun sight.  This gun, on the
ball bearing
ring mount, will spin all the way around and stay stable in any position.”

“And I fire it how?”

“You pull a handle.  Just like an old time toilet flush or calling the porter on the Orient Express.”

“And this will be
completed
when?”

Hemp stuck a mask on his head and picked up the cutting torch and clipped it to his belt.   With both hands, he hefted a circular steel plate about fifteen inches in diameter from the bench and climbed up on top of the car, walking on his knees up the hood, not leaving even the slightest impressions in the heavy duty exterior.  He rested his steel plate in the center of the forward cockpit roof and used his striker to light the torch.  Lowering his face shield, he said, “Believe it or not,
a little more than
half an hour.”

He started to cut with a shower of sparks.

*****

Gem was having some fun with the 360 degree submachine gun welded to the top of her Crown Victoria.

At first I had no idea how she was spotting
the infecteds
in the fading
twilight
; the trip had taken longer than we
’d
planned due to road blockages and alternate routes, so
day had begun to melt into night, and there was no moon.

T
hen I remembered.  These creatures had a strange, luminescent eye shine that threw me off; I’d seen it in the dead eyes of Jamie’s neighbor, the swimmer who got dead before he could breast stroke his way to my brain for perhaps his first meal of human grey matter.

But
when
Gem saw the eye shine glimmer in the night,
she pushed the B button on the dash and
swung her AK-
toward the shine
using the pivot handle
Hemp had rigged up.

In a display – almost a cocky display, if you ask me – of confidence, Hemp had used a sharpie to draw crosshairs on the GPS monitor screen in the Crown Vic, so when she was lined up with the zombie, she’d yank
her trigger handle down like a trucker blowing her horn at a passing rig.

And we not only saw crimson-brown sprays of zombie blood fly from their exploding heads as we passed, we saw their dropping bodies fall away, and nothing but Gem’s white toothy smile in the rear view mirror of my Suburban.  She was really enjoying this, and was getting quite good at it.

Hemp was bringing up the rear in his mobile lab, which he had equipped with some items he believed he’d need in his efforts to help Jamie and discover a cure for this thing. 
It was a diesel pusher with a bangin’ motor and a stock turbo system that allowed it to eat up highway, never losing a beat.

I looked beside me.  Trina slept, poor thing.  I was going to put her with Gem, but she was sleeping anyway, and Gem was so into the gun that I knew she’d want to play with it on the way.  Like I said before, when mama’s happy.

I
grabbed my radio and pressed the talk button.

“Hey, guys.  I want to stop at Home Depot and pick up another generator.  I have one at my house, but I’d like to pick up the biggest one they have.”

“I hear they’re on sale,” Gem said.  “Free to the living.”

“Walking dead need not apply,” Hemp said.

I thought of Jamie, still strapped to the goddamned trailer.  Hemp
had suggested we
take her out and strap her down on
the
examination
table he’d brought in his lab, but it wasn’t mounted yet, and I didn’t want to take any chances.  We’d checked her again before leaving the CDC and she was okay.  Alive in her present form of living, anyway.  I didn’t want to change anything.  We’d gotten her this far.

A siren blared in the distance as we approached Lula.  It did not appear to be any nearer or farther away at any given time, so we guessed it was just stuck on. 
I
wondered about, but did not discuss aloud
,
the police officer who went with the c
ar from which the siren blared.  He’d once served his community, and since then he had either become the hunter or the hunted.  I wasn’t sure which I wished upon him.

W
hen we arrived at the Home Depot, which was just three miles – three long, desolate miles – from my home
, I ran inside
,
armed wit
h my Daewoo.  There was a pallet out front piled high with
Generac 17,500 watt
cart-mount generators, but the frames had to be assembled, so they weren’t exactly portable yet. 
One was upended and had fallen halfway out of its box, as
if
someone had attempted to lift it and failed miserably.  These suckers weighed almost 400 lbs, so a forklift would be needed to drop it onto my trailer.

I ran around to the garden center and pulled open the gate.
 
I saw the lime green forklift fifteen feet to my left and ran for it.  I jumped on, turned the key until it beeped, then fired the propane burning engine, which caught instantly.  I drove that bitch like a bat out of hell through the gate and up to the sta
ck.

I’d had enough fun in large buildings that initially appeared deserted.  I didn’t need to have any more.

I’d told Hemp to stay in the land yacht he was driving, but next thing I knew he was beside me, helping me shimmy the next undamaged generator
over the tips of
my raised forks.

“Thanks, pal.  Appreciate it.”

“Pal.  Such a John Wayne word.”

We slid the gen
completely
onto the forks
, made sure it was balanced,
and I jumped back in the driver’s seat.  “Get back in your shoebox.  I got it from here.”

In another minute I had the gen
lowered onto
the trailer.  In another ten minutes we pulled up to my house, my ragtag group of survivors.  It was time to do some planning, some training, and some learning.

I thought we had the right combination of talents to do just that.

*****

The first order of business when we arrived at my home
, after getting our pregnant bitch settled on a soft pile of blankets on the front porch,
was to get Jamie off that trailer and onto one of the exam tables in the mobile lab.  I didn’t want Trina seeing her
.

Now keep in mind, I tried to get that damned dog to come into the house and settle in where it was cooler, but she was having none of it.  Despite the tiny buns baking in her oven, she seemed to want to stand watch, albeit
lying
down.

As
I had assumed would be the case
, there was no power to my home.  Gas was still flowing, and since I had a gas range and water heater, that worked out fine.  My house was on a well with its own pump, and my whole house generator was
in perfect working order as I always maintained it.  There was
a full underground tank filled with 500 gallons of propane, so we were
prepared for baths or showers.  When
Gem
put Trina down on a couch inside, she fell fast asleep, so Gem offered to help with Jamie.  I
reluctantly
accepted.
  Gem hadn’t seen her yet, and while she’d seen others like her – or in the same condition anyway, she had known Jamie.  She had loved my sister.

Hemp was suddenly very CDC-like.  His British accent was crisp and professional.  “The most important thing, and I can’t stress this point enough,
is to not contact her with your hands, and do not let her scratch or bite you,”
he said
.

He stood before the roll, and
untied
the ropes that held her to the trailer.  “Flex, do you have any leather work
gloves?”

“
Of course
.  Four or five pairs.”