The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (61 page)

And then Charlie had that nozzle open and a fine mist of oil and water doused the rest of the rotters.  Damned adrenaline must have been jamming through her veins at the speed of one of her arrows.   They went down where they stood, creating a mush pile of bone, flesh, blood and of course, the ever-present muck.

To my credit, I had taken out about seven of them  with my MP5 before she took out the other six or so.

When we were sure they were all dead and there were no more ready to spring from the weeds surrounding the station, we got to Flex, who was bent over Gem.  Her eyes were open, and she stared up at us, looking embarrassed.

“Fuck.  How did I get caught short like that?”

“Must have been a lingering euphoria from knowing you’re married to me now,” said Flex, smiling.  “I’m just glad you’re okay.  You are okay, aren’t you?  You feel okay?  Any internal pain?”

She nodded and went to get up.  “I’m fine, and the baby’s fine, Flexy.  I think I’d know if it wasn’t.  Is everyone else okay?”

“Yes.  We need to get moving, though.  Fast.  Did you get everything filled?” asked Charlie.

Flex nodded.  If the bus is full, they’re all topped.”

“Wow.  Matt must have had a good scare.”

We all walked around to the door.  Matt had opened it and Dave sat beside him, the digger ghoul still sprawled out on the seats across from them.

“You okay Matt?” asked Gem.

Dave and Matt both looked up at her and smiled at the same time.

“That was awesome!” Matt said, the smile growing wider on his face.

“Well, I wouldn’t say it was awesome, but it was a bit of a takedown, wasn’t it?” said Dave.  “Is Lisa okay?”

“Yeah,” said Charlie.  “She’s in the lab.  Safe and sound.”

“Good.”

“Dude,” said Matt, slapping Dave on the arm. “You blasted that fuck in the face and sent him ass over applecart!”

Flex looked at Gem, then at me.  Finally he looked at Matt.  “Ass over applecart?  I say the word liniment and Gem has me 80 years old.  How the hell old are you, 90?”

Matt laughed.  He didn’t seem at all traumatized by the experience.  “My grampa used to say that.  It stuck, I guess.”

“Cleanup on aisle 2,” said Charlie.  “So let’s get that shit done and get moving.  I don’t like it here anymore.”

“Why don’t you and Hemp clear those folks out of the lab and get some more Urushiol tanks ready and in the hands of the capable,” said Flex.  “We’ll get this bus cleaned up and ready to roll.   We’re going to need about a half hour, thanks to fuckin’ Quick Draw McGraw here.”

Charlie and I nodded and I think we both smiled a little.  We sure as hell did not want to be on shattered glass and exploded zombie brain cleanup detail.

We rolled in forty minutes.  No more zombies made an appearance, but I swear I felt them watching from somewhere out of sight.

Call me paranoid.  But I think they
were
watching.

****

Chapter 3

The road trip was long, and we’d known it before starting out.  But just how long it would be we had no idea.

My radio clicked.  It was Flex.

“Buddy.  We aren’t planning on going right through the middle of Newark, are we?”

“I know,” I said.  “
Manhattan is a bit densely populated for what’s going on.  I don’t want to be there, either.”

“Gem’s been mappin’.”

“Napping?”

“No, checking out the map.  She’s thinking she’s got a route that’ll steer us clear of
New York City, but it might involve some more elevation.”

“All our vehicles will take some hills, Flex,” I said.  “But we’ll use more fuel.”

“These look more like mountains, but you’re right – all our stuff’s in good condition, including that jammin’ bus.”

Then I heard Gem’s voice in the background.  “I’d rather our vehicles guzzle some more fuel than face off with the rotters again, if you don’t mind!”

Flex’s voice:  “Hey, Mrs. Sheridan.  I marry you and you start getting all domesticated on me?”

I heard a slap, and Flex again.  “Ouch!”

Flex came on again.  “She’s bitchy.  Complaining for two, you know.”

Another slap.  Other ouch.

I clicked on.  “Better quit while you’re behind, Flex, but point taken.  Where to?”

When you get to a town called Pluckemin, look for the 287 North.  Or East.  It’s going to be one of the two.”

“Okay.  The 287 it is.”

“How far does the GPS say it is from here to
Concord, Hemp?” asked Flex.

“We’re already around
Annandale, New Jersey,” I said.  “So around 330 miles or so.  Depends on what we run into along the way, but if we were living in a normal world, it would be around seven hours.”

Gem’s voice again, only softer, her humor mostly gone.  “My mind is working overtime.  What the hell are we gonna find there?”

“It’s the question for the ages,” I said.  “Everyone turn on your CB radios and set them to scan.  Copy that, Cynthia?”

“Gotcha,” she said from the Ford.

“Gotcha, Uncle Hemp!”  It was the sound of Taylor and Trina sounding off together.

“They aren’t sleeping?”

“Really?” asked Cynthia.  “Are you serious?  Do they have a stock of Red Bull under the seat that I don’t know about?”

“Thanks, Cynthia,” said Gem.  “We’ll trade some passengers for a while when we stop.  I know Trina wanted to ride with
Taylor for a bit.”

“It’s been fine, really.  Todd and I have been talking about the old times.  The not-so-long-ago old times.”

I got everyone back on track.  “Back to the CB radios on scan . . . If anyone gets a hit – and I’m hoping it’s more likely as we get closer to New Hampshire – then lock in on the channel and tell everyone else what it is.”

“Got it, Hemp,” said Flex.

“Out,” I said.

I turned to Charlie, who had positioned a short, padded stool between the front captain’s chairs and plopped down on it.  She had one arm curled around mine and her crossbow leaned against her real seat.  She liked being close to me, and I liked her that way.

She gave me a quick peck on the lips.

“So seven hours?”

“Barring any obstacles.”

“Zombie barriers?”

“Bodies, vehicles, zombies.  Some stuff I can push away, other stuff I can pull.”

“Some shit we shoot.”

“Yes, we do.”

She flipped her blonde hair over one ear.  It was much longer than when I’d met her, and with each inch it grew, it seemed to get wilder.  Flyaway, gorgeous straw.

“How you doing back there, ladies?” she asked.

“We’re playing blackjack,” said Vikki.  “If we had money, I’d have taken these two to the cleaners by now.”

Charlie turned her head to see the women sitting around the small collapsible table and I saw her smile.  The simple things could do that to you nowadays.  A game of cards.  A bottle of warm beer.  A conversation about the mundane things you used to do before the dead walked.

And then we hit the 287 and headed north.  It seemed like a turning point.  I thought again how much trouble I’d put everyone through if my hypotheses about the solid, granite substrate didn’t pan out. 

While one place was possibly as good as another if these things were as great in number as we believed, the greater our numbers the better we could begin to rebuild society and eradicate the living dead.  We’d left Birmingham – the relative safety and security of it – to assure ourselves we weren’t just hiding out while the world around us died.

Died and came back to life.

There was, as we now knew, a damned good chance that we could use this amazing new weapon we had to water down cemeteries and prevent new diggers from making their way among the true living.   They were undoubtedly down there now, literally thousands of them.  They had been awakened for the last time from their eternal slumber; awakened by a strange, toxic gas that rose from somewhere deep in the earth and carried with it, for them anyway, a gift of eternal life; of eternal hunger.

It reanimated them, each cell within their decomposed bodies with a new purpose – devour the living.  And to further that goal, mobilize the entire body to allow it to follow, chase, overtake and eat those out there who did not react to the gas that had created them.

Or recreated them.

Why did I let my mind go like this?  If Charlie knew it worked like this, she’d slap the shit out of me, and of that I have no doubt.  She is not a defeatist, and she sees this sort of thought process as seeing it all as insurmountable.

But I don’t see it that way.  I’m excited at each opportunity to kill more of these abominations, thus reducing the percentage of advantage they have over us through their sheer numbers.

We are faster, better equipped to kill, and far more alert.  There is nothing they can do better than us.

At least I don’t believe so.  I still hadn’t figured out the gas entirely.  The pink haze, or fog, or whatever the hell it was.  Thanks to Charlie and my experiments, we knew it emitted from the tear ducts, and I believe it is a bi-product of the gas and decomposition.

But is it more?  Is it some sort of offensive mechanism?  Here I go again.

“Baby?”

Charlie was staring at me.

“Yeah?”

“I saw you.”

I smiled.  “Saw me doing what?”

“Chewing the inside of your cheek.”

“I’m hungry.”

“You’re thinking.  About everything.  Aren’t you?”

“It’s what I do, Charlie.”

“I know.  Give me the latest.”

“Okay,” I said.  “I’m just wondering if all of this is by some strange design.  Maybe it was all in the cards all along.  Creation.  Evolution.  Whatever.  We’re here.  Now the gas.  It’s here.  What it’s doing is undeniable.  The abilities these things seem to have.  Ability to smell brains, for Christ’s sake.  The ability to knock people out with a gas that emits from their tear ducts.  The ability to –”

Sobbing from behind us interrupted my words.  Charlie turned, then disappeared behind me.

“Kimberly, don’t worry.  We’ll protect you, and we’ll teach you how to protect yourselves.  It’s going to be okay.”

Her tears continued, and I think I heard her sisters crying along with her.

“I’m sorry for my lack of consideration.  I tend to think out loud, and I’m sorry.  You need more time to digest our approach to this situation.  I’ll be more considerate.”

“Thank you,” came a weak voice from behind me.  Then two more.

Charlie was back beside me.  She took my arm again and looked at me, smiling.

She leaned over and kissed my cheek, whispering, “If I’d have just let you roil over it in your head, that wouldn’t have happened.  I’m sorry.”

I smiled at her and drove in silence, my mind running over a hundred and one scenarios.

Some good, but most of them tiresome.

****

Concord
was to be upon us in just three hours, but nightfall was coming, we were all exhausted, and we had to stop.  We’d agreed that a daylight arrival was far preferable to a nighttime arrival, especially if they had road barriers set up, which was likely if the survival rate was what I hoped.

As was our practice, when we arrived in
Albany, NY, we looked for a secure building in which to stay.  It presented itself off exit 2 at the Port of Albany.  A Waste Management building, all steel with two nice, big bay doors wasn’t exactly visible from the highway, but several other less desirable buildings were, and that’s how we found this one.  Using my lock picking skills, we accessed the buildings and found them to be deserted.  All the vehicles fit inside, and we even found some cases of water and a warm refrigerator full of moldy sodas.

And something that had been strangely absent since this thing had begun, rats.  All dead, and almost in a pile.  They were concentrated in one far corner of the warehouse like puppies in a litter cuddled together sleeping.  I wasn’t sure how long ago they’d died, but they didn’t appear to be decomposed yet, and there was no severe odor beyond what you might expect to exist in a waste management warehouse.

We tossed a tarp we found over them and kept the kids away from the area.  It was only one night.

That night, while the other refugees slept like the dead once did, Flex, Gem, Charlie and I sat in the front area of the lab, speaking quietly so as not to awaken the three ladies who had made the mobile lab their temporary sleeping quarters. 

“So,” said Gem.  “Big day tomorrow, huh?”

“The biggest so far,” said Flex.

“I’m excited about it,” said Charlie.  “Got a good feeling.”

“I’m apprehensive,” I said.  “But that’s to be expected, I suppose.  I feel a bit of pressure for leading us in this direction.”

“We had to go, Hemp,” said Gem.  “If this doesn’t pan out, we think of something else.  Meanwhile, we kill off some of the walking dead, maybe spread the word about urushiol and what it does to them.”

Flex arched his back in a big stretch, and opened his mouth in a yawn big enough to match.  He laughed softly.

“I’m fuckin’ beat,” he said.  “Feel like I’ve been driving for a month.”

“It’s all the running,” I said.

“Are we running?” asked Gem.

“It feels like we are, doesn’t it?” said Charlie.  “But I know we’re not; we’re advancing, not retreating.  That’s the way I see it.”

Gem was sitting in the passenger captain’s chair and it was turned around, along with the driver’s seat, to face the larger area behind them.  Charlie was on her stool, I was in the driver’s seat, and Flex was plopped down on the floor, leaning against the cabinets.

Gem put her arm around Charlie and pulled her in for a quick hug.  “I dig your attitude.  If these ladies weren’t sleeping, I’d throw the Back in Black CD in for you.

“You do love me,” said Charlie, smiling.

“I need to hit the hay,” said Flex. 

They had made their sleeping arrangements on a queen-sized inflatable mattress just outside the motorhome.  They had two sleeping bags from the church that they’d zipped together, and it looked pretty comfortable.  We were entering Fall now, and we were far enough north that the weather was beginning to turn colder.  I wasn’t absolutely sure, but I believed it was around October 22nd, and it would be getting worse from this point forward.

If there wasn’t anything promising up north, then we might all find ourselves full circle back in
Florida for the winter.

“Okay,” said Flex.  “Let’s crash, get up early, load up on grub and hit the road.  I’d love to pull into
Concord before noon and give us plenty of daylight to explore.”

“Sounds like a plan,” said Charlie.  “Babe, expand the dinette and let’s get horizontal.”

“Do you want all of me horizontal, or is there any particular area that you would like to remain vertical?”

“Oh, my God, get a room,” said Gem, trying to suppress her laugh as she and Flex opened the narrow door.  Then she whispered, “See you tomorrow.  Don’t let the zombies bite.”

I nodded toward a spray bottle sitting on the counter.  “Absolutely not, Gem.  It’s why I keep my special blend close at hand.  Got yours?”

“We do,” said Gem.  “Tickles the shit outta me that all we have to do is give the bastards a little misting and it takes the fight right out of ‘em.”

“One eye open,” I said.  “If they get you with
their
mist first, you’re not spraying anything.”

“
Buzz kill,” said Flex.

“Night,” I said.

They stepped down and closed the door with a soft click.  I didn’t lock it.  I wanted them to be able to get back in with no delays if needed.