The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (150 page)

“I lived next door to Don,” said Rachel.  “But I was temporarily stationed at the Bolling Air Force Base in
Washington, D.C.”

“You’re military?” asked Serena.

“I was,” said Rachel.  “Until this.”

Serena asked, “Are they doing anything there?  I mean, were they?  Is there any functioning government that you could see?”

Rachel shook her head.  “It was chaos when I was there.  Just the same as everywhere else I’ve been.  Most of the men and women at the base changed into those … things.  The zombies.  I had to kill a whole bunch of them before I got out.  The surviving MPs were killing anything that moved.”  She raised her tee shirt sleeve and showed me two, round scars.  “Here’s where they hit me.”

“They shot you?” asked Nelson, incredulous.  “Their own kind?”

“I assume you mean Navy, and yes,” said Rachel.  “They were panicking, shooting anything that moved.  I’m lucky, in a way, that there were more of those things than us, because while they just wandered around in the open, I was able to keep under cover and out of sight until I was able to commandeer a truck and get the hell out.  Blew right through a gate.”

“Wow,” said Nelson.  “How’d you meet this cowboy man?”

Rachel actually smiled at Nelson.  Nel’s eyes were wide, and he was listening intently to every word Rachel spoke.  “I was career Navy, and my assignment at Bolling was temporary,” she said.  “Jess, my husband, needed to stay to take care of our small ranch.  It had been in Jess’s family for a century, and there was nobody else, so I went and he stayed.”

“What kind of ranch?” asked Nelson.

“Mostly goats and other livestock, a few crops,” said Rachel.  “Anyway, Jess stayed.  After everything started, I wasn’t able to get him on his cell phone at all.  They did something in DC to jam them.”

“Typical government,” commiserated Nelson, shaking his head.

“Anyway, long story short, I traveled the almost five hundred miles back home through some things I can’t even describe.  It took me two months to get there.”

“Don’t bother going into it,” said Serena.  “It’s not necessary and we know how painful it can be.”

“That we do,” I said.  “And when you think you’re past the worst of it, you realize you’re not.”

Rachel’s face acknowledged our compassion, but she seemed intent on finishing the story.  “When I got back,” she continued,  “Jess was nowhere to be found.  Just gone.  His clothes were still there, wallet, everything.  Even the keys to our vehicles.  But he was gone.  All our livestock had been mutilated.  I heard gunfire, so I got in an ATV and rode over to find Don shooting at another straggler that had wandered onto his property.”

“I almost shot her,” Weston said.  “My fence needed fixin’, but I hadn’t gotten to it.  I felt pretty good about stayin’ at my place indefinitely, but for that damned fence.  I had plenty of food.  Lots of oats for the horses and troughs of water that I could cover to keep it from evaporatin’, for a while anyway.  Had other storage tanks – not the cleanest water, but in the end we could drink it if we had to.  So we did.  Eventually that ran out.”

“That what drove you to leave?” asked Serena.

Rachel nodded.  “I wanted to wait for Jess,” she said.  “I just knew he’d come back.”

“I told her,” said Weston, “He probably hightailed it to DC when all this came on.  I never saw him, I was so damned busy killin’ my other neighbors, but he wasn’t among ‘em.”

I thought I saw something pass over Weston’s eyes for a moment, but could have been wrong.

“But you guys made it,” said Nelson.  “So you’ve been riding Duster and Snowball for like ten months now?”

“Pretty efficient way to travel these days,” said Weston.  “We all need water, and so far, that’s not a problem.  When there’s nothing else, graze on grass.  If I come across bales of hay, I get ‘em that,” said Weston.

“And we’re up high enough that it’s easy to keep an eye out for the neighbors.”

“That what you call them?” asked Nelson.

“It got to be a habit in the beginning,” said Weston.  “I didn’t like my neighbors much anyway, so when they turned into those things that wanted to eat us, the name still made sense to me.  They were just a worse annoyance.”

I laughed, despite myself.  “Well, again, we apologize.  For what it’s worth, if you were going to stay here, upstairs looks untouched.”

“We’re only here for the night,” said Rachel.  “We mostly
gather supplies and find new places to get comfortable while this situation blows over.”

She looked into my eyes.  “As for the personal directive you mentioned, it’s killing every one you come across, right?”

“It is,” I said.  “We don’t think it makes sense to let them go.  If they do find food, it’s people like us.  Letting them go can be a death sentence for someone else.  That doesn’t work for us.”

“Same here,” said Weston.  “There were so many of ‘em outside our room when we woke up, we just figured we’d bide our time, but it didn’t look like they were goin’ anywhere.  Not sure they’d have ever left if you didn’t do what you did.”

“Do you know about the pregnant females?” Serena asked.

“What about them?” asked Rachel.

“They control the others,” she said.  “You can tell them because their eyes are red, unlike the others.  The others have a pink mist – are you familiar with that?”

“I’ve seen what it does,” said Weston.  “
Never got caught in it, though.  Knocks you out, right?”

“Yes,” said Serena.  “It does, but if you’re of birthing age – and you appear to be, Rachel – don’t let one of the pregnant ones blast you at any cost.  It gives them a form of mind control over you.  They can order you to do things against your will.”

“It got my sister killed,” I said.  “Almost got more of us killed, too.”

“Thanks for the advice,” said Rachel.  “Where are you headed?”

“California,” said Nelson.  “Looking for Dave’s Uncle Bug.”

“Uncle Bug?” asked Weston.  “What the hell’s an Uncle Bug?”

“Brett Ulrich Gammon,” I said.  “Bug to his friends.  Lives in a kind of remote spot in northern California.”

“What makes you think he’s okay?” asked Rachel.

“Don’t know for sure,” I said.  “But he’s immune to urushiol, that much I do know.”

“What the hell’s urushiol?” asked Weston. 

I realized we needed way more time to talk all this stuff over than we’d likely have standing in the parking lot of a Knights Inn surrounded by piles of dead zombies.

“It’s a poisonous oil, and the chance that you and Rachel are immune to it is 100%,” I said.  “Look.  We woke up in kind of a pickle and had to move.  So that means we’re hungry, and we’re going to have to dig into our food supply before we hit the road anyway.  If you guys want to, we can kick open another hotel room door, move your horses, have a bite and go over some of this stuff.  We have a lot to do today, but we can take that time if you think it’ll help you.”

“I recon we made it this far with a bit of luck on our sides,” said Weston, looking at Rachel.  “What do you think?  Have some breakfast, see what they know?”

She nodded.  “Yeah.  I love you, Don, but it is really nice to run into other people to talk with for a while.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout offendin’ me,” said the cowboy.  “I’m tough like leather.”

*****

“That’s right,” said Weston.  “I’ve got caught in the middle of poison ivy and poison oak a bunch of times.  Never got anything from it.”

“I have no idea whether I have or not,” said Rachel.

“According to Hemp,” said Serena, “This immunity can go away.  We haven’t experienced it among our group yet, but all that means is you have to be watchful and diligent.  If someone gets a bad headache, just dab some of the oil on their wrist.  If –”

“If that dude starts to sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies, run like hell!” interjected Nelson.

Serena couldn’t help but smile, but continued:  “I was going to say that if a rash appears, you’ve got a big decision to make, and it’s not going to be if you kill them, but how and when.  They should definitely be isolated and restrained immediately.  Everyone should know it so it’s not a surprise.”

“Wow,” said Rachel.  “That’s pretty intense.”

“Good word!” said Nelson.  “That’s exactly what it is.  I hate intensity, and I’m not a big fan of tension, either.”  He swiped his hair behind one ear and prepared to listen intently with it.

“What’s your plan?” I asked.

“Didn’t have one besides what’s gotten us from a year ago to now,” said Don Weston.  “Got room in your expedition?  That is, if you want to go, Rachel.”

I heard the words and my heart sunk.  It wasn’t that I didn’t like them; I did.  It was that in this world, if we had learned one thing, it was that less is more.  I already knew I would not turn them away, though.  If they thought they might like to go to the
Golden State, and they intended to adapt as necessary, my answer would be yes.

“We can’t keep up on the horses,” Rachel said.  “They’ve been good to us.”

Weston looked at Duster and reached up and patted his rump.  In response, Duster’s tail swished and he snorted.  “Before we go rackin’ our brains about that, what’s the answer?”  He looked at me.

I looked at Serena, and saw in her eyes what I’d already wrestled with.  We both knew that the bigger the group was, the more pain in the ass it was to be versatile, but at the same time, Flex, Gem, Hemp and Charlie hadn’t hesitated, so neither would we.  We couldn’t.

“Look,” I said.  “I have a specific mission to accomplish.  If you think where we’re going might be someplace you’d like to settle in for a while, then yeah.  You both look capable, and it’s still a free country, as far as I know.”

They looked at one another.

“And let me add that everyone needs to pitch in with everything – that means finding food, water, defending, all of it.”  I looked at Rachel.  “I take it you’re good with the bat.  Do you shoot?”

She reached behind her and pulled out a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver from somewhere.  “Crack shot,” she said.  “Can’t say I was a year ago, but I damn sure am now.”

“We’ve been doin’ everything you said since this began,” said Weston.  “Rachel here likes the bat-to-head combat and yeah, she’s good with that revolver, but she can also use a rifle like Lucas McCain.”

“Who’s Lucas McCain?” asked Nelson.

“The Rifleman,” said Weston.  “Chuck Connor.  Only Rachel’s prettier.”

“I’m Air Force,” said Rachel.  “Or I was, when there was still that free country you were talking about.  There’s a base nearby where we’ve been stocking up on MREs.  Meals Ready to Eat.”

“I might not know who Lucas McCain is,” I said, “But I do know what MRE stands for.”

“No offense,” said Rachel.  “Anyway, Don and I have been to the base quite a few times since this shitstorm started.  They may sound crappy, but they’re good to eat on the road, they have all the necessary vitamins and they keep for a century.”

“I have a question,” said Don.

“What?” asked Serena.

“I know what it is,” said Nelson.  “You want to know how we walked right through that crowd of stinkers.”

Weston pointed at Nelson.  “There’s more under that blonde hair than I thought.”

“Tons more,” said Nelson.  “It’s WAT-5.  Also known as Walk Among Them, five-hour.  Invented and perfected by one Hemphill Chatsworth.”

“He still alive?” asked Rachel.

“He’s about to be a new papa,” said Serena with a smile.  “Charlie looked about to pop.”

“Baby could kick like it was doing Subdudo in there,” said Nelson, his eyes twinkling.

“Okay,” said Weston.  “So how do we convince you to share this stuff with us?”

“It’s a matter of need,” I said.  “If we pull back those curtains and there are fifty more, we dose you guys.”

Nelson went to the curtain.  “Drum roll, dudes,” he said, a big smile on his face.

Rachel actually made the sound with her mouth, and we all smiled.  She was having trouble keeping it up, because she was trying to fight off a smile, too.

Nelson ripped the curtain back.  Two more rotters stood among the bodies in the lot, but they would be easily handled in conventional ways.

Rachel went to the door and peered through the peephole.  As she reached for the knob, Nelson let go of the curtain and ran to her side.  “Hey, one for me, one for you.  Let’s show each other what we got.”

Rachel raised her eyebrows, smiled, and pulled the door open.  “Which one do you want?” she asked.

Nelson reached into his pocket and pulled out a 3” diameter star.  The teeth alone were over 2”.

“I’ll take the woman.  She’s about what, thirty feet away?”

“About.”

“Thirty two, to be exact,” said Nelson.  “I’d prove it if you had a tape measure.”  He took two quick steps, drawing his arm back.  With his left arm extended for balance, he whipped his right hand forward like a major league pitcher.  The brass rang through the air like the constant peal of a bell and sank into the side of the thing’s skull, just above its left ear.