The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (29 page)

We lay there smoking in silence.  We flicked our ashes onto Gideon’s bible.  It was not an assault on religion – it was a non-smoking room and it was the only portable thing we could use that wouldn’t catch fire.

“So … sleep in, then try to find where we’re setting up tomorrow?”

“That’s the plan.  I feel good about this, Gem.”

“Me too, baby.  I’m glad Hemp and Charlie found one another, too.  He’s a good guy, and I think she loves him, or she’s getting there.”

“I get that,” Flex said.  “He’s crazy about her.  I think he was from the moment he saw her.”

“Okay, finish smoke, pass out.”

“Got any of that weed on you?” Flex asked.

“Not on me.  In the car.”

“Okay,” he said.  “Tomorrow night.”

“If the mood is right,” I said.  “And we’ve got a feeling of security.”

“Yeah,” Flex said.  “No stoney-time if zombies are about.  It’s a rule.”

“Yep.”

We heard a steady thumping against the wall of Hemp and Charlie’s room.  I smiled and said: “Aw, Flexy.   I wonder if this is their first time.”

He laughed softly, and I loved the sound of it.  “I bet they pulled a quickie in the lab a time or two.”

“No!”

“A guy knows this shit.”

I snuffed my smoke out on Gideon’s Bible and so did Flex.  We went down for the count.

And we didn’t wake up until the morning sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains.

*****

In the morning everyone except the girls were up by daybreak.  We gathered in mine and Flex’s room.

Hemp and Charlie came out looking refreshed, but a tad self-conscious, and I had to nudge Flex when they weren’t looking.  I don’t have any idea why I thought it was cute.  Maybe because Charlie was cute, and so young-looking.

After our good mornings, we peeked outside through the curtains and found no dead walkers had ventured to our locale during the night.  I took my Uzi anyway, and Charlie her crossbow, and we went to the trunk of the Crown Vic and carried the cooler full of food from Flex’s house into the room.

It was mostly boxed juices and granola bars, as well as some pop tarts that Trina and Taylor scarfed down later – nothing that would really sustain us in our current states of anxiety and energy use, but it would get us by until we could get to somewhere we could find some semi-fresh dry or canned foods.

Not having ice would be a challenge, but with the generators we had, we’d figure out a way to run a small fridge.  We needed to be able to store perishables.

Making love to Flex last night had been rejuvenating.  It had also served to give me hope for the future; if I could feel that good, even for a brief moment, then no matter what world existed outside our walls, there was love and peace and yes, even ecstasy in my future, and I don’t think I could ask for much more without seeming ungrateful for these gifts.

“Max, pull out that map, would you?” said Flex.  “We need to head out fast.  I have a strange feeling we need to hurry.”

“I hope that’s just your imagination getting the better of you, Flex,” said Hemp.

Max had the topo maps rolled up and tucked on top of the dresser.  He unfurled the one marked Alabama on the kitchenette table. 

“Okay,” he said, pointing near some converging railroad tracks.  “Here’s a place located pretty near the airport.  Gas stations nearby, some small markets.  It’s off
Pinson Valley Parkway.  Gilmer Industrial Park.”

“Wish we had Google Earth.  I wonder if any of the area buildings have large bay doors,” said Flex.

“Hold on,” said Max.  He went to the small desk and opened the drawer.  He came back holding the Yellow Pages directory.

He flipped through and found
Gilmer Industrial Park.

“Most likely,” said Max.  “According to this, one is a steel supply.  I’d say it’s worth a shot.”

“How far to the nearest military base?” I asked.

Max looked at the map.  “Just about four miles from there.  The park’s about six miles from here, so we could get there pretty quick if the roads are clear.”

“What do the roads look like between the industrial park and the military base?” Hemp asked.

Max ran his finger north from the industrial park.  “We should be able to make it there easily.  The train tracks run straight between the two locations, so if the roads are blocked, we might be able to roll along the tracks, worst case scenario.”

“Okay,” said Flex.  “We might not even need the military base if we can get everything we need locally.  Let’s get our shit together and get rolling, then.  The sooner we get there and see if it’s going to work, the sooner we can get settled, Hemp can start working on his testing, and we can find out whether we even want to stay here.”

“We’ve only seen one ghoul since we got here,” I said.  “Wonder where they all are.”

“Oh, we’ll find them,” said Charlie.  “If I know us.”

CHAPTER
SEVEN

I never told you about Flex’s parents, and without even looking at what he wrote in his portion of this chronicle, I know he didn’t mention what happened to them.

Flex grew up in
Georgia, and his father worked as an electrician his entire life.  Most of what Flex knows he learned from his dad, and he was Flex’s idol right up until the day he ended his own life at 43 years of age.

I never met George Sheridan, because Flex was only 21 years old when his dad left this earth for good.  I’m only glad this thing wasn’t going on, because I’ve experienced the horror of seeing loved ones changing into these things, and it’s a real
buzz kill if you’re having a good life experience.

Irene Sheridan had pancreatic cancer.  She was diagnosed with it when Flex was 19, and she hung in there for two years, which tells you something about her, and where Flex gets his determination.

I only know this stuff because when Flex told me about it I looked it up.  Today, fewer than 20% of patients with that type of cancer live beyond a year and a half.  Life expectancy was undoubtedly worse back in 1987.  Irene Sheridan pushed that to two years through her sheer will to live.

  As she lost more and more weight and grew too weak to care for herself, George struggled to balance his desire to spend every precious moment with his dying wife with his responsibility to keep the company going, raise Jamie and Flex, and support all of them.  At the onset of the illness Flex was 19 – barely a man, but far ahead of most kids that age.  Jamie was only 13.

Flex had learned a lot from George, and was nearly as good an electrician as him at that point.  Flex worked with him a solid year since high school, and before that they not only spent every summer working together since Flex was 14, but his dad would put together electrical projects in the garage, show Flex how to draw the schematics, and they’d wire it up.  Sometimes they did all this work just to tear it down again and wire up something else, but it was all damned good experience for Flex, who ate it up.  He loved what power could do, and he liked to arrange its delivery.

They were a team.  George had done a good job building the business and they had a lot of work that took more than one man.  They weren’t ones to hire labor; they did all the work themselves.

Flex told his father in no uncertain terms that he should take care of his wife while Flex took care of the business.  George acquiesced and that is exactly what Flex did.

He hired skilled laborers to help him, and by that I mean
plural
laborers.  It took two additional men to fill George’s shoes, and they took a lot of babysitting to make sure they upheld the standards of Sheridan Electric the way his father would have demanded.

So while Jamie went to school and George stayed home with his wife, Flex took the reins of the company and kept it thriving.  After the day was through, he’d come home and share stories of the day with his parents.  George would sit by Irene’s bedside holding her hand as they both listened to the same stories that Flex’s dad probably used to come home and tell his mother.

Of course Flex never considered that; they both seemed to enjoy the tales of the electrical world, especially now that they were essentially shut-ins as her insides were slowly eaten away.

About twenty months after her diagnosis, Flex’s mother was no longer alert enough to hear the stories, but he still told them.  Nothing earth-shattering, just mundane stuff.  But he loved his parents with everything in him, and it made him feel better.  Soon enough, the time came when his mother was on so many pain meds that she was essentially a bag of bones, too numbed by the drugs to respond or acknowledge his conversation.

Flex told me he often wished for her passing then, and of course I understood.  When he first told me the story of his mom’s illness and the pain that all of them felt as they watched her deteriorate, I could only think of the movie Soylent Green; the scene where the old man went into that facility where he drank a glass of something or other, then watched a movie with beautiful fields of flowers swaying in the gentle breezes until he drifted into death.

And I wondered how that was so wrong.  I still do.

The day she died, George had to be forced from the room.  His love for Irene Julianne Parker Sheridan was so strong he never wanted to let her go, even in death.

He sat by her body for nearly twelve hours before Flex was able to get him into the living room.  From then on he changed; he didn’t talk much.  He stared at the walls and the floor.  He picked up things that meant a lot to his late wife, such as small figurines and embroideries, and cried.

George Sheridan was pretty much gone, too.

All of this served to tear Flex apart, but he had a little sister, now 15 years old and a handful herself.  He had to get her to school, pick her up afterward.  Flex made sure she ate her meals and even helped her with her homework.

In short, Flex’s youth was taken away.  But he was 20 when his mother died and the business was still there.  He expected he’d be able to snap his dad out of it in time, but he never got the chance. 

Exactly a year to the day of his mom’s passing, Flex came home with Jamie in the work truck, having picked her up from school.   They went in the house and she went to her room to listen to music and do whatever it is that 16-year-old girls routinely do, and he searched the house for his father.

Normally a search of the living room would be enough, for George Sheridan was typically sitting in his recliner staring at nothing.  This time he wasn’t there.

My heart aches just writing this.  I remember Flex’s face when he told me the story, and it tore my heart to shreds.  That morning his mind was occupied with thoughts of the jobs on the work schedule and picking up his laborers – not on the fact that it was the one-year anniversary of his mother’s death.  He’s still never forgiven himself for that, I know.  I don’t have to ask to know that nothing I’ve ever said has convinced him that it wasn’t his fault.

Anyway, after a thorough search of the house, he began to panic.  The car was still in the driveway, so he knew his father hadn’t driven anywhere.  Flex told me he ran outside and scanned the yard, but when his eyes fell on the detached garage with barn-style doors that his father had built, his breath caught and he held it.

One door was open about a foot.

Flex said he knew then.  He knew it in his heart.

When he went inside Flex looked up at the loft.  There was George Sheridan, his father, friend, teacher and idol, hanging from the rafters by his neck.

Flex ran to the wall, grabbed the 12’ folding ladder and set it up beneath his father’s body.  He scrambled up it and grabbed his father’s legs, lifting him up, trying to relieve the tension on the rope squeezing his father’s neck. 

But his father was a good electrician and he also knew knots, and he had made a perfect noose that had done a perfect job.

The next few years were the most difficult of Flex’s life.  In a way, I think they were harder than what we’re going through now.  He had to raise Jamie and support them both, but he did it with determination.  He did it in the memory of his parents and for his sister’s future.  And in the end, he did everything he could.  Flex was the best pseudo-father and brother he could be to Jamie, and he did it pretty damned well.

Jamie married Jack Leighton when she was 26 and didn’t have Jesse until she was 31, followed by Trina two years later.

And I can tell you, having known all of them, that Jamie’s choice of husbands and both those little girls are proof that not only did Flex do a good job with his portion of raising his little sister, but Jamie Sheridan – later Jamie Leighton – grew up with great character and excellent mothering skills, both signs of a well-rounded, caring person who did right by those she loved. 

That is, right up until the point she became infected and ate her husband in front of her children.  But seriously – that could’ve happened to anyone these days.

I’m glad to have gotten this down on paper.  Someday I might tell you more about my early life, but let’s face it: after this story, a little girl dealing with the tragedy of her parent’s death by auto accident is just another story.

And I had my Aunt Ana and my Uncle Rogelio to take good care of me.

Until my Uncle ate my Aunt.  See how I can’t end any of these stories with a warm and fuzzy? 

That sucks.

*****

We left the motel using the same passenger arrangements as the previous day; I drove the Crown Vic because I wouldn’t let anyone take my baby from me, and I might just fire up the roof-mount machine gun if they tried.  Nobody was willing to take the chance, and I don’t fucking blame them.

We saw several zombies along the way, and where possible, I blew their heads off.  Max again rode with Hemp in the lab, and every time he fired off the turret-mounted side guns I nearly shit my pants.  He did need practice, though, and it seemed as good a way as any.  I couldn’t help but glance back every time I heard the staccato blasts, and I caught a black-red blood spray in my side mirror more than once. 

He was getting the hang of it.  Good.  We needed more gunslingers in our little gang.  Max might not look the part, but if he was anything like me, he was going to take a liking to ridding the world of these mobile stiffs.

None of the walking dead had blocked our path on the way, but we did have to get out and push a car clear of the roadway once.  Charlie and I stood guard while Max steered and Hemp and Flex pushed the late-model Scion XB clear.  At least it was a compact car, and the keys in the ignition allowed us to unlock the steering column, if not start it. 

The blood on the seat told the story, but we guessed the smears where the former driver was dragged away had been washed away by the torrential rain.

That was just fine, by the way.  Killing the zombies was becoming second nature – seeing the aftermath of their killing and feeding was not, nor would that shit ever be something I could see without wondering who used to love them and how frightened they were as they realized what was happening to them and possibly their families.

We arrived at the industrial park and one building stood out like a sore thumb as exactly what we were looking for.  It was heavy corrugated steel with two large roll-up bay doors.  There was a concrete yard all around the building with a 12-foot fence, complete with barbed wire coiled around the top.  We all pulled up and parked outside the gates, which were closed.  It was the steel company.

We all emerged from our cars except for the girls, who I locked inside, as was my usual practice.  We stood outside the tall, locked gates next to Flex’s Suburban and stared at what might just be our new home.

“Looks pretty deserted,” I said.

“Yeah,” Hemp said.  “I wonder why.”

Flex looked at the parking lot for a minute, then snapped his fingers.  “It was a Sunday.”

“What?” I asked.

“The outbreak started on a Sunday, Gem.  The day I went to Jack and Jamie’s.  The day you found me.  It was a Sunday.”

“So nobody was at work.  Doesn’t look like a retail outlet, so it was closed,” said Max.

“Right,” said Hemp.  “Good, then.  Maybe we won’t have to kill anything inside.”

“Small favors,” I said.

Charlie looked a bit disappointed as she shifted the quiver on her back.

“Don’t you worry, girl,” Flex said.  “I have no doubt that we’ll run into something somewhere that needs an arrow in its head.”

“Alright,” said Charlie.  “But I’ll hang onto these until we clear the building if you don’t mind, okay?”

“Whatever floats your boat,” I said.  “Suzi stays right here, too.”  I dropped the Uzi down off my shoulder into firing position.  “Shall we go through this facility and see what’s what?”

Flex nodded, hoisting his Daewoo.  “Sir Hemp?  Do the honors?”  He nodded down at the heavy Master lock holding the two gate latches together.

“So it’s Sir, now, is it?  I’m afraid only the Queen of England can designate that title.”

“The Queen is dead!” shouted Flex.  “Long live Sir Hemphill Chatsworth!”

“Does have a nice ring to it,” said Hemp, smiling.

“Hold on,” Flex said.  “Look.  The chain’s hanging inside the fence.”

He was right.  Like someone locked the gate from the inside.

“Maybe there’s another gate,” said Max.

We all looked around, but this appeared to be the only entrance.

“I might need this after all,” said Charlie, tightening her grip on the crossbow.

“You might,” said Flex.  “Hemp, go ahead I guess.”

Hemp nodded and pulled a small leather pouch from his shirt pocket, unzipped it and withdrew one of the tools.  He reached through the upright pipes and pulled the lock and chain to the outside, inserted the L-shaped metal pick into the keyhole and worked it in the lock.  In less than ten seconds the lock clicked and the hasp fell from the body.

“Shit.  I was trying to make it look hard and failed miserably,” he said, smiling.