The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (69 page)

“The guy’s definitely in charge,” said Flex, impressed with Reeve’s ability to mobilize the people of Concord.

“That he is,” I said.

Reeves waved us over and slapped the side of a newer looking dump truck, and said, “This is a good one.  Needs some fuel, but the newest truck in this fleet.”

They had a pumping facility and underground tanks, along with plenty of area tanks from which they could drain to refill the ones at their headquarters.  Reeves told us they’d probably only exhausted 15% of the tanks in town so far, and had dumped gallons of stabilizer in the remainder to preserve the integrity of the fuel within.

I filled the tank.

“I’ll drive this,” Flex told Reeves as he jumped behind the wheel of the Hino, smiling down at me.

I shook my head and looked up at his smiling face.  “Fucking John Wayne.”

“Get over it,” he said.

“My guys are ready to roll,” said Reeves.  “When you’re done, pull it to the gate and one of the others will lock it up.”

The filler valve clicked off.

“That’s it,” I said.  “Full.  Let’s go get that greenery.”

As I jumped into the cab, the radio on the seat between Flex and me crackled.  “You guys read?”

I picked it up.  “Hey, Charlie.  Everything okay?”

“Yeah, fine.  We’ve got everyone.  Are there people at the brewery yet?”

“Yes.  Kev sent them over, and I think Whit and Dan are there supervising, along with some others.”

“What’s the address?  We’ll plug it into the GPS.”

“Charlie, what did you say to . . . did you say anything to her?”

Charlie’s voice became softer.  “Flex told Dave and Lisa, but no.  Just that they’re not here.”

“Okay,” I said, dreading the moment we had to tell Taylor her mother was dead.  We were all still reeling from it, and would be for a long time.

“Plug in
119 Old Turnpike Road, zip is 03301.”

“Got it, Gem?”

“As we speak,” came Gem’s voice.

“We got it.  Good luck, guys.  And be careful.”

“Wait,” came Gem’s voice again.  “Flex, you there?”

I pushed the talk button and held the radio to Flex’s mouth.

“I hear you, babe,” he said.

“I’m okay,” she said.  “I love you.  Be safe.”

“You will be okay, Gemina Cardoza.  Back atcha.”

We signed off and drove behind the other vehicles, our weapons on the seat beside us.

I liked being in the big truck.

****

I got on the radio again.  Reeves and the others who would be assisting in the harvest of poison ivy were in two other vehicles.  We’d agreed to use channel 19 on the handhelds.

“Come in, Kev,” I said.  “We need to detour.  You read?”

He came on.  “I’m here.  Just say where.”

“I need to get some of our extinguishers from the mobile lab at the house.  They’re charged up and we have a good amount of urushiol mix in them.”

“Aren’t guns enough?”

“If we were only dealing with zombies, then yes, I’d say it would be fine.  But the rats . . . there are some enormous numbers, and they’re low to the ground.  It takes an extraordinary amount of ammunition to kill just a few, and I’m afraid with what we face, we need to utilize the oil.”

“Good call,” said Flex.  When I pull up, you jump out and get ‘em.”

Reeves knew where our house was, because he was the one who recommended it.  He drove straight there in his Hummer and we followed.  Flex pulled the rig to the edge of the lawn nearest the motor home and I got out.

I retrieved three of the extinguishers and tested one.  The gauge was in the green, but a quick blast, and I knew we were okay.

But I didn’t like the stream.  Too narrow.

I was acutely aware of the urgency of our trip, but we didn’t need to die, either.  I put the three tanks on the ground outside the mobile lab and opened the foremost storage compartment.

“What’s up?” Flex called from his open window.

“That streaming spray’s good for pinpoint spraying a zombie’s face, but we’re going to need more of a fan pattern to soak more of the z-rats.”

“Fuckin’ z-rats,” said Flex.  “Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse.  What do you have in mind?”

I found what I was looking for and pulled the hammer out of the compartment.  “I need to flatten the nozzles.  They’re plastic, but this should get them where I need them.”

I put the nozzle down on the ground and hit it hard three times.  To my relief, it didn’t crack, but narrowed to a slit against the concrete sidewalk.

I held it up and gave it a quick burst. The liquid fanned out in a six-foot wide spray pattern.

“Just like a fuckin’ Lawn Boy,” said Flex.  “Brilliant, Hemp.”

“Thanks,” I said, and smashed the other two.  I handed one up to Flex and carried one each to the other two vehicles.

“Use sparingly,” I said, as I gave them the cylinders.  “They only have to get a drop on them.”

I ran back to the dump truck, and jumped in the passenger seat.  Flex hit the gas and followed the others.

****

Reeves had rounded up six men besides himself, and they all wore full-body Tivek suits.  There was no guarantee these men were all immune to the urushiol, so it was a good idea.  He was testing himself, though.  Based on his experience with his father, he chose not to wear one, but he did wear long sleeves because of the weather.

So did Flex and I, but more to keep the sticky oils off our skin.  Once there, if you touched someone else, they could easily get the dermatitis, which could be quite severe.

It was still hard to explain sometimes.  The immunity to urushiol meant you were also immune to the zombie gas.  It did not mean that poison ivy caused people to turn into zombies.  It was almost as ridiculous as the people who were afraid to give blood because they thought they would get some disease.

And they are out there, in huge numbers.  I suppose there aren’t many people giving blood these days, anyway.

To Reeves’ credit, he had rounded up all the doctors and nurses in Concord and kept an area of the hospital functional.  They’d had huge burials and burnings reminiscent of the days of the black plague, but with perhaps a bit less superstition.  Though for the life of me I can’t imagine why; this epidemic is a hell of a lot harder to explain than the black plague. 

This was an illness like no other in the history of humankind.  One that could easily be the end of humankind.

Many had tried.  All had failed.  And now with the rats getting involved, this affliction appeared to have an ace up its bony sleeve.

Onto the harvest.  I can tend to bloviate a bit too much, which might make my chronicles more difficult to get through than Flex’s or Gem’s.  They did a good job.  My teeth were clenched plenty when I read them.  It was as though I were reading something that happened to someone else.

The part about Max was hard.  I didn’t realize what he had meant to me until he was beneath that pile of diggers, being eaten alive.  The worst human being on the planet didn’t deserve such a fate, and he was nearly the opposite of that person.

“Hemp, can you drive this rig?”

“Did you notice the rig I drove across the damned country?” I asked.

Flex laughed.  “Yeah.  Come to think of it.  I’ll guide you.  The ivy is back there, and I can’t back for shit using side mirrors.  Where do you want me?”

I laughed.  “There is something the amazing Flex can’t do?”

“Hey, you developed the opinion,” he said.  “About all I can do well these days is kill zombies.”

“Just stand over where you want me to stop and I’ll get there.”

Flex walked deep in to the field with the other men.  There was a thick copse of trees bordering the field, which was overgrown to the tune of maybe three to four feet tall. 

“The poison ivy is intermixed with the main grass here, but it’s really concentrated near the tree line,” said Reeves. 

I heard it from the cab, my window open.  I knew what Flex was thinking without a word from his mouth.

He’d had enough of fuckin’ tree lines.

I’d ask him later.

“Bring it on back, Hemp!” he shouted, and pulled the shift into reverse.  Damned automatic dump trucks.  Seemed like cheating, to quote Charlie. 

Guns vs. urushiol.  Manual shift vs. automatic.

I watched Flex’s hand in the passenger side mirror until he raised his palm to me.  I threw it in to park and got out.  The fabric cover over the bed was already retracted, so I opened the rear gate and readied it for loading.

“Let’s make fast work of this,” said Flex.  “Three leaves, that’s the shit we need.  Grab any and all of it you can, and keep grabbing it until we can’t fit anymore in the back of this truck.”

“Wait,” I said, and went back to the cab.  I grabbed Flex’s new HK53.  It chambered 40 5.56 x 40mm NATO rounds, and had a reload time of 4.3 seconds.  Beat the crap out of my MP5, but I liked it.  I didn’t know if Gem was going to stick with her backup Uzi or keep Flex’s Daewoo K7, but I knew if she wanted it, he’d let her have it.

I handed it to him, my H&K over my shoulder.  The other men had their fire extinguishers in close proximity to them, and ours was right behind the truck.

We gathered.  And we gathered.  Until our arms were sore.  I kept looking back toward the direction of the cemetery, which was just northeast of where we now worked, albeit a couple of miles, at least. 

I wasn’t so sure the rats couldn’t just walk right over the poison ivy plants – they had fur to protect them, after all.  But if they got it on them and it rained later, they’d be in for a nasty surprise.  Once it made it to their skin, they’d be a melted mess – or at least I hoped.

“Notice anything about these plants, Flex?” I asked, after more than an hour picking.  The truck was about half full.

“They’re not huge,” said Flex.  “Are they normal sized?”

“Almost,” I said.  “Maybe a bit larger than ordinary, but you’d have to know to look for it to notice.  The granite really has made a difference here.”

Flex grunted and pulled more plants up by their roots.  He looked at them.

“Anything in the roots, bud?”

“Minuscule,” I answered.  I hadn’t thought to ask if they had access to machetes, but I didn’t want to sound ridiculous. 

Hey, have you got a purple and blue striped fan rake I can borrow?  With tiny red hearts painted in a circle on the tip of the handle?

What the hell’s gotten into me?

I was about to share my internalization with Flex, but he’d stopped in mid pull of an ivy plant, and was staring into the trees.

I moved toward him and whispered, “What is it?”

“I thought I saw a face in the trees.”

I looked.  “Where?”

“I blinked, and it’s gone.”

There was rustling in the distance, then steady crunching, as though someone were running through leaves and brush.

“There!” said Flex.  “I knew it!”

“Can’t be zombies,” I said.  “They’re drawn to us, they never run away.”

We heard another sound.  Like a radio.  Squelch, then almost a whistle and static.

“Wha – did you hear that, Hemp?”

“I heard it, too,” said Reeves, coming up to us.  “Wasn’t you?”

“Nope.  My radio’s been quiet,” said Flex.  “Would any of your people be patrolling the woods, Kev?” he asked.

“No reason to that I knew of.  Now maybe we should be looking to see who is.”

“Military?’ I asked.

“Like I said,” said Reeves, “they disbanded when this crap hit and went to their families.  Maybe some of them decided to regroup.”

“Be nice if they just joined the group and worked with your folks,” said Flex.

I looked at the truck, then back at the men.  “Once we load what we’ve got torn up here, I think we’ve got enough to last us a while.  I’ve already formulated our immediate use of it, but I really believe we need to have regular parties gathering out here.  When we get through all this, we need to find more.”

“I’d say it’s the most precious commodity in the world right now,” said Flex. 

He was right.  Urushiol was the new water.  It gave life by easily eliminating things that would mindlessly take it from you.  Urushiol and its blends were literally priceless, and no amount of money in the world could buy it.

At least not yet.  The world had not corrupted itself again since this bizarre apocalypse – at least I didn’t think it had.  Not yet. 

In time, I was sure it would.

The men started loading up the rest of what they’d harvested.  I stood facing the forest and stretched, and saw a flash in the trees.  Something had appeared on the ground just inside the trees, maybe fifteen feet. 

It gleamed gold, despite the overcast sky from the earlier rainstorm that had ripped through Concord.  I looked back at the others, who were carrying armloads of poison ivy to the dump truck.  I was alone.  It would only take a second to see what it was, and I was armed.