The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (79 page)

“The Who,” I said.  “Who’s Next.”

I hadn’t heard it since my ill-fated drive to the
Kennedy Space Center.  It was time.

“Kickass record,” said the man who I was now pretty sure went by Frank.

“So you’ll put it on?”

“If he has it.  Give me five.”  He looked at his fellow guard, a heavyset man with a full, bushy head of hair and an easy smile.  “Hey, Frank.  Wait here and keep an eye.  I’ll be back.”

“Sure thing, Billy.”

So it was Billy.  The other one was Frank.  I was close.  Only off by one.

“Thanks, Billy,” I said as he walked away, waving.

Less than two minutes later, I heard Baba O’Reilly’s opening notes.  I had to smile, despite my situation.  Charlie would think it was the coolest thing in the world that I requested music.

I walked to the corner of the lab just as I saw Billy making his way back up the hallway. He was bopping along to the song, and gave me a thumbs up.  I gave it right back to him and opened the small, stainless steel cooler in the back.

Meat.  Bite-sized chunks of raw meat.  I knew immediately what they were for.  It was zombie food.  Why, I wasn’t sure.  If you didn’t feed a zombie, they didn’t die.  Maybe Carville didn’t know that.

If you feed a zombie a lot of food, they get stronger, and the pink mist that can send you into a deep slumber begins to pump out in massive amounts.  I’d prefer they ate only when I had some use for the gas, and when I was prepared for its emission.  In my mind, feeding a zombie is like nursing a great white shark back to health.  Its single-mindedness means that when it feels good enough, it
will
eat you.

And not surprisingly, the knockout eye vapor line of thinking gave me an idea.  I could use the gas in my experiments.  I’d only taken samples in my mobile lab before, and unfortunately, while I had some testing equipment in the motor home, I had pretty much every piece of testing equipment imaginable here.

It would be foolish not to use it.

I walked quickly over to the drawers under the stainless steel counters along the side wall.  I put on fresh nitrile gloves.  I opened several more doors and found some goggle-style eye protection.  I tore open the clear, plastic wrapping on the package, and walked to where the male zombie lay.

The familiar gnashing and tongue-flitting, the horrible condition of their mouths, everything was mundane to me now.  I was cautious of them, but they didn’t disgust me any longer.  They were still very interesting.  Extremely interesting.

I pressed the goggles to his eyes and pulled the strap behind its head.  As I did this, the zombie appeared to be trying to generate the gas, but despite the rapid shaking of the dying eyeballs in their sockets, only such a minuscule amount of the vapor escaped, it was pitiful.

I pulled by each ear on the straps, tightening both sides, until there was a decent seal.  His skin was fairly rotted on his face, but I would only have the goggles on him a short while, and I didn’t expect the elastic bands to dig into him very much.

I went back to the refrigerator and took out a bag of the chunked meat.  As I walked back toward the gurney/exam table on which he was secured, he struggled to turn his head.  Perhaps not because of the smell of the meat, but the smell of me.

I put the meat on a raised stainless steel rolling cart, and rolled it beside his gurney.  I pumped the hydraulic pedal on his exam table it up to raise it up to over four and a half feet tall.

I’d seen syringes, and I took a large one from the far right drawer.  I tore open the paper package and removed the protective tip.  I put it aside.

Then, wishing I’d had chopsticks, I fed Raymond Carville.  One little meat chunk at a time.  It was about fifteen minutes later that I could no longer see his eyes.

They were hidden behind a thick layer of pink mist, trapped beneath the protective eye goggles.

I picked up my syringe, and plunged the needle through the rubber, avoiding his eyes or skin.  Once in, I pulled out the plunger, and drew the gas in.

From there, I poked the needle into a blood sample bottle and depressed the plunger.

I now had my sample of the vapor, and I’d been working something around in my mind that could potentially yield results.

What results, I wasn’t sure.  But I had a sneaking suspicion I needed to make some significant modifications to the pituitary gland.

The pituitary gland is the main endocrine gland, producing hormones that control other glands and many body functions.  The zombie condition could not exist without mutating this gland in a significant way, and considering the impossible mobility of the dead, I was honing in on that particular gland for good reason.  No matter what I hoped to achieve with a given test, this is where I needed to direct my focus.

I needed to un-mutate it.  Not to reverse the condition; I’d already determined that to be impossible.  But that wouldn’t be the case with someone who turned suddenly.  Perhaps someone who had been bitten in a place impossible to immerse in urushiol.

No matter what I devised, it would not – could not – undo decomposition of human tissue.  Not even shampoo can fix dead hair follicles, despite all the claims.  And that’s easy in comparison to what we now faced.

But the idea was formulating in my mind.  I needed to ask Carville to get me some of the gas emitting from the earth and some of the urushiol oil.

I was fortunate the FDA was no longer around, allowing me the freedom to experiment at will.  With that organization and the ACLU gone, scientific progress might just see boom times.

****

I stored the tube of vapor inside another specimen refrigerator in a small plastic rack.  I would keep it there until I had my zombie gas and the urushiol.

After the vapor in the zombie’s goggles dissipated, I removed the eyewear from Raymond Carville, set them aside for cleaning and covered him again with the sheet.  I pulled the sheet from Veronica, and looked her over.  She was nude and not at all concerned about it, her modesty going the way of her tenderness.  Like the rest, she was completely unaware that her decomposing but well-preserved body was on display for all to see.

I was somewhat surprised that Carville allowed this breach in modesty.  I’m sure it was because his men had told him it was fairly simple getting her onto an exam table and strapped down; not so easy to dress her in Levis or a nice dress. 

It was about two ‘o clock when Carville came back up the hallway.  “Making progress?”

I shrugged.  “A bit, I suppose.  I need you to arrange for me to obtain some of the zombie gas.  The stuff coming out of the ground.”

He folded his arms and furrowed his brow.   “What for?”

“For my testing, Mr. Carville.”

“I assumed that, Hemp.  What are you planning to do with it?”

“I’m not exactly sure yet,” I said.  “I haven’t even formulated ratios, much less whether or not any other ingredients will be included in my experiments.  All I can definitively tell you is I believe working with these three components will answer a lot of questions.”

“Three?  What is the other component?”

“Urushiol.”

“Absolutely not.”

I stared at him.  “I need it to find a cure, Mr. Carville.”

“How do you know what you need?”

“To tell you the truth, I’ve never known exactly what I needed for a particular experiment until it was over, but I can tell you that right now I’m in a situation where I don’t have enough components to run any testing whatsoever.

“How do I know you won’t kill them with the urushiol?”

“And what, sir, would you do to me if I did this?”

“I’d kill you.”

I stared at him. 

Carville stepped right up to the acrylic glass and stared at me.  “I’d have men drench your clothes in blood, and then I’d order them to put you outside that wall.  With no protection, the creatures would come out of the woodwork to tear you to pieces and devour you.”

“I see,” I said.  “I’m a scientist, Mr. Carville.  But I can still read people.  I take you at your word, but having said that, I’d like you to take me at mine.”

I waved my arm at the two zombies covered under the sheets.  “I will not harm or kill these two patients with the urushiol.  The component is merely a necessity.  You may relate it to the polio virus being a component of the polio vaccine, if you wish.  Then I ask that you trust me.”

“Are you plotting your escape?”

“I am not.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m relying on my friends for that.  Should they find me and execute a successful escape plan, then I’ll cooperate with them, as needed.  Until then, I’m all yours.”

Carville laughed.  “I love the British,” he said.  “So damned honest.  Alright.  How much do you need?”

“A quarter ounce or so, but bring me an ounce.  Then I can perhaps carry on multiple experiments at once.”

“Did you eat lunch?”

“Nobody asked.”

“Damned morons.  That was Pete’s job.”

“He’s not my biggest fan, and I’ll admit, it goes both ways,” I said.

“He’s got his strengths.  Just haven’t figure out what they are yet.  I’ll have them bring in tuna salad sandwiches.”

“I’ll take my food in my quarters if it’s all the same to you,” I said.  “The smell.  You know.”

“Even with the refrigeration?”

“Can’t stop progress, as they say” I said.  “You can only slow it down.”

****

As I sat in my room eating a very tasty tuna salad sandwich with fresh baked bread and crispy apple slices, my mind was whirling.

The drop ceiling.  The MRI machine and its helium-based cooling system.

The potential for a great explosion.

As I was explaining to my friends earlier and had noted in these chronicles, helium is used for a wide range of things, one of the most important of which is the use in MRI machines to cool the powerful magnet that is the heart of the device, as well as the wires within the machine.  They must be kept at sub-zero temperatures, and helium achieves that easily. 

The key is, the helium must be vented to the atmosphere.  If that vent becomes blocked or closed off, a massive explosion can occur.  It doesn’t matter whether the machine is in use or not.  It only has to be blocked.  The cooling is always taking place.

MRI scanners were normally installed and operated in their own designated rooms.  No metal objects can be loose and in close proximity when this machine is in use, as they’ve been known to pull these objects in from quite a distance.

Like guns, perhaps.

I wasn’t absolutely sure about the ability of the two-inch thick acrylic walls to provide proper shielding for the MRI machine, but I assumed it had been looked into; whoever had built this lab had either known how to follow an installation manual or had a lot of personal experience in the area.  I’d have to trust this was the case, otherwise Carville’s high-tech lab would become like one of those boxes you step into where dollar bills are blowing about and you’re supposed to grab them – only with flying scalpels, forceps, and syringes.  You know, stuff that when flying, can kill you.

I decided to lower the flame on this idea and let it simmer a bit.  When the flavors all melded together, it might just be the perfect blend of technology and cunning to get me the hell out of here.

****

The next morning when I arrived at the lab, the urushiol and the zombie gas were waiting. I had explained a simple process for collecting the gas – more in line with what I’d done to get the eye vapor as opposed to the balloon Gem and I had used to get the sample taken at the steel mill.  I didn’t want to risk any contamination, and having all the sterile equipment, it made sense to at least instruct them how to collect it properly.

Time would tell if they actually did, or if the container provided really held any of the gas.

As I write this chronicle, all of this has already happened. None of the forthcoming events are a mystery to me.

We’ve called our logs chronicles from the beginning, for they are daily chronicles.  Diaries of what we went through from each of our beginnings to whatever end feels appropriate.  Perhaps there will be a time when we no longer feel a need to record our movements and our every decision.

Right now I believe, as do Flex, Gem and Charlie, that it is still crucial.  Even reading through our own words, we could miss something.  We may point out one particular condition that at the time we didn’t feel was significant, but in retrospect, seeing it on paper and reading everyone’s accounts in order might reveal a pattern of some sort.

So what I’m saying is that even when I’m not actually writing these memories and experiences down, I’m analyzing them.  I’m lying in that acrylic-walled prison and I’m thinking about what is important to record, and what isn’t.  I’m thinking about the experiments I want to perform, the MRI machine and how I could utilize it as part of an escape plan by way of explosion, and of course, about Charlie.