The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (130 page)

Hemp tore off his mask as he reached the third step, and called, “Keep the tension on her, Vikki, and pull with everything you have!”

Vikki kept her mask on, but ran backward until all slack left her line, and she jerked the zombie forward hard, now up to the third step herself as Hemp jumped to the top of the landing and out the door.  He leaned backward, pulling with all his might.

As he hit the grass, the zombie staggered through the door with two spears protruding from her midsection.  She was pregnant.  Very far along, judging from the size of her stomach. 

Suddenly she began to turn.  The 30’ of line on the spears very quickly became 25’, then 20’.  The cord wrapped around the rotter, losing length quickly, pulling her and Vikki closer and closer together.

Like an alligator death roll.

Hemp pulled his pistol from his drop holster and rushed the spinning creature.  He fired the gun into her kneecap and she went down in a heap, now writhing on the ground, gnashing and snarling, but unable to free herself or to draw Vikki and Hemp any closer. 

“Keep the tension on her, Vikki!” he shouted, and dropped his gun on the grass, covered with a light dusting of snow.

Another of the walking dead females, this one with bare feet in a tattered, white knee-length dress, appeared in the open door.  Hemp ran straight toward her, raised his weapon, and fired into her face.  Before it fell, he raised a boot and kicked the thing in the abdomen, knocking the now dead and collapsing zombie into the others advancing behind it.  They toppled back into the mist below, and Hemp slammed the door, and inserted the door brace, kicking it firmly into place.

“Click,” said Vikki.  “Now I know what that is.”

Okay,” Hemp said to Vikki.  “Let’s get her back to the lab.  Good job.”

Vikki still did not remove her mask.  Hemp felt she was smart to leave it on.  She was still capable of producing the vapor, and if it were to affect Vikki in the same way it did Lisa, the risk was too great.

“We’ll have to back the van up and transport her that way,” said Hemp, reaching for the net. 

“I think this will be easier than the cuffs.” 

He spread out the net and threw it over the struggling rotter, whose eyes glowed a bright red, and if it were possible, looked angry and intent on more than just feeding.

Revenge?

The creature, from beneath the net, began to emit a vibration.  Hemp stared at her.  The vibration grew louder and louder.  It began to sound like a thousand bee hives all around them, sinking into his very core, reverberating through him.

He looked at the building, and walked again to the door, placing his hand on it.

The door was vibrating.  The hum was initiated by the female, Hemp suspected, a command of sorts.  The creatures behind the door now all droned and  pulsed along with her, and the resulting vibration felt as though it had the ability to disintegrate the mortar between the old building’s brickwork.

The door began flexing under his hand.  Bodies pressed against it.

He turned.  “We have to go, and fast.  We need to get her away from here.”

Together, they dragged the blonde creature, encased in the large fish net, away from the building, closer and closer to the van.

Hemp glanced back every few seconds, one eye on the door.  While he prayed this was his last zombie hunt, he had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t.

*****

As the door came open, many, many things went through Flex Sheridan’s mind.

He once again gave silent thanks that most of the inhabitants of the prison were men.  The females that possessed the enhanced awareness, or whatever it was that made them different, were clearly dangerous and more unpredictable. 

Very much like the differences between normal men and women.  It seemed death could only change things so much.

As the door reached its halfway point, Flex realized he would have liked a small hand axe or a baseball bat as a close-contact last defense, but his side arms and the Daewoo would have to do for now. 

A quick look at the kid.  Eddie had taken
Bell’s Glock 19, and given the Rangemaster over to Bell.  The boy had been breaking down into tears every few minutes, trying to keep his grief in check.  Losing a friend, no matter how long you’ve known them, is hard at any age; it’s particularly difficult when you’re a kid.  Young people have little experience with death, particularly that of their peers.

The door was almost all the way open, and the rush was on; Flex wondered where the other female had gone.  It troubled him, because they had moved quickly through the corridors and had seen no trace of her.  There was always the chance that she’d gone out the door they’d come in, but they were only aware of some of these evolved zombies’ abilities, and nothing would surprise Flex now – not much, anyway.  Every once in a while he took a quick glance down their exit path just in case.

No more time for his brain to focus on anything else but the actions necessary to save their lives.  The door was open, the kid was behind it, his pistol held up to the barred window.  Eddie was filling his prescribed role.

Single rounds, fast and true.  Each man utilized his weapon in just that way.  A greasy-haired, skeleton-thin zombie with pustules oozing from his lanky, tattooed arms; the complete opposite of that – a man who might have weighed over 300 pounds when alive, still appeared to have clung to 280 pounds of it.  He barreled forward, and Eddie’s pistol took him out with a clean shot to the temple from about a foot and a half.  The blood spattered the opposite wall and his body lurched left as he dropped in a heap.

A pulsation began to sound.  Or vibrate.  Or come from within his own body.  Flex wasn’t sure which it was, but five seconds did not pass before all of the creatures advancing through the door appeared to drop at once.

They dropped to their dead stomachs and began crawling on hands and knees.  Fast.

Everyone backed up except Eddie, who was still behind the door.

“Where did they go?” he asked, his voice panicked.  “I can’t see any!”

Flex knew now what the vibration was.  It was Red Eyes, come to direct the action like a zombie Spielberg, knowing exactly how she wanted this particular scene to play out.

He spun around and saw her, standing there dead center in the corridor, her eyes staring at the creatures now skittering on hands and knees through the door.  She did  not advance on him.

Flex raised his gun and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Jammed.

“Keep firing on them, everyone!” shouted Flex, and Red Eyes stepped toward him.  Flex stepped back, fumbling with the magazine, which would jiggle, but not eject.

He looked at her.  She looked back.  Her eyes shone red; as red as blood.  Then she turned again toward her charges and the vibration coming from her throat grew in intensity.

Something changed.  Half of the creatures now rose to their feet, and half crawled forward, staying low.  The strategy made it twice as difficult to take out the advancing horde.  Shoot high or shoot low, but a miss would be less likely to hit another in a crucial, kill spot.

“Waylon!  Take out this bitch!”

Waylon Bell turned and fired, but the Rangemaster just clicked, empty.

Fucking timing!
  Flex pivoted his weapon, seizing it by the barrel.  He raised it over his head and ran toward Red Eyes.  With every remaining bit of strength left in him, he brought the weapon arcing  down toward her skull.

She jerked to the left and the heavy stock of the weapon glanced off the side of her head, tearing her right ear completely off. 

She seemed not to notice, but the vibration stopped as her attention apparently turned to survival rather than attack.  She spun around so fast she might have ended up behind Flex, but he matched her moves, and raised his weapon again in another attempt to shatter her skull and destroy the enhanced brain that squirmed within.

She moved again just as he began his downward sweep with the heavy gun and Flex tried to adjust mid-swing.  It was pointless.  By the time he’d applied the pressure with his left wrist to swing the gun in a flatter arc, she was behind him again.

Flex knew he would not have enough speed to stop whatever she chose to do next.  His muscles tensed in anticipation of her teeth on the back of his neck.

In his peripheral vision, Flex saw West and
Bell ejecting, then slamming in new magazines, and decided giving up was not an option.  So she had outmaneuvered him; so what?   Flex let his knees collapse as though his legs were jelly.  He dropped straight down as the sound of a gun discharging filled the room.

Red Eyes fell forward hard and fast, landing atop Flex, her rank blood and brain leaking from her massive head wound.

Flex quickly rolled over and pushed the dead zombie off him, and the gunfire filled the small space once more.  He scrambled for his Daewoo, and stood up.

Flex hadn’t seen who had come to his rescue, for he was facing the opposite direction.  His initial assumption was that
Bell or West had reloaded and found a clean shot when he’d dropped out of the way.

When Eddie stood facing him, the pistol held straight out in front of him, a wisp of smoke leaking from the barrel, Flex smiled and nodded at him.

“In front of you, Eddie!” he said, seeing a zombie jerking on the door that protected the kid, obviously seeing him and clearly wanting him.

Eddie saw him immediately, holding his weapon up and firing, but like everyone else just had, Eddie had fallen victim to the patron saint of bad fucking timing.

There had to be one.  There was a patron saint for everything else.

Eddie’s gun was empty.  The seventeen-year-old raised the weapon up to bring it crashing down on the skull of the creature, but in seconds, his head was engulfed in pink vapor.  This creature must have eaten recently, for he had plenty of knockout vapor to administer.

But who had he eaten?  Had it been Jimmie?  Nikki?

Eddie choked and coughed and went down, out cold; Flex hammered the K7 with the palm of his hand and the magazine finally ejected, the single jammed round falling to the floor.  He carefully fitted in a new, full magazine, hoping it wasn’t the slot on the weapon itself that was damaged.  It slid right in, locking in place.

Flex raised the Daewoo, rushed forward, and blew the brains out of the creature that had gassed Eddie, just as it bared its rotted teeth, pulled the door clear and dropped to its bony knees for a feast of flesh and blood.

The remainder of the attack squad had lost all organization the moment Flex had taken out Red Eyes with the first blow of his gun stock.  While it did not kill her, it did stop her from whatever psychic communication she initiated, controlling the males of her species who were not as gifted as she and many of her female counterparts.

Or, Flex thought, perhaps the males are merely receivers; the females, transmitters.  And never the twain shall meet.  Without her kind, the males and many of the other females are the George Romero zombies, slow and lumbering, staggering after their prey the way six-year-old soccer players cluster wherever the ball is.

With the females in charge, they’re MLS players.

Flex moved forward, his K7 spitting out single rounds with deadly efficiency.  As he lined up with Bell and West, he saw three more.  In true positional fashion, Bell took the one on the left, Flex shot the one in the center, and West took down the creature on the right.

Silence once again filled the corridor.

Then:  “Mr. Sheridan?”

“What the hell was that?” asked Bell.

“Sounded like my name, and it sounded like a girl,” said Flex.  “Nikki!  Is that you?”

“Hello?  It’s me!”

The voice came from somewhere close ahead.

“Nikki, are you safe?” asked Flex, moving between the piled creatures, his gun barrel pointed downward to take out any biting heads.

“I’m okay,” said Nikki from somewhere up ahead her voice shaky.  “Where’s Jimmy?  Did you find him out there?”

Flex looked at West, who was directly behind him, and shrugged.  “We didn’t find him, Nikki,” said Flex.  “Hang on, we’re coming toward you.  Keep talking.”

They left Eddie on the floor of the outer room.  He would be no good to anyone for a long while, based on the dose they’d seen him take, and even if it was forced rest induced by a zombie, the kid could use a little snooze.

Flex thought about Jimmy, and the odds that he was safe.  At that moment, Flex decided he would make a very big deal about Eddie saving him.  It could change his meager standing in the group, and from what Flex saw, Eddie had the quick decision-making skills and what’s more, the balls to lead a group.   The other kids would need to be able to turn to someone else, and that could be Eddie or Nikki, if Jimmy hadn’t made it.

Nikki’s weak voice came again:  “Jimmy got bit,” she said, as Flex and the others walked slowly down the darkening corridor.

That solidified Flex’s plan for boosting Eddie’s standing.

A holding cell on the left side was where her voice originated.  Flex tiptoed and looked through the barred window.