The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (83 page)

Sliding Monty’s cage slowly back beside theirs, it was uncanny how they did not notice him.  I lifted the hinged lid atop the zombie ratz cage and opened the wire cage door of Monty’s cage.

Monty did his best to avoid my seeking hand, but I wrapped it around him, and took him out.

I held him by the tail and dangled him over the cage opening.  The rats watched me through the side walls of the clear plastic, paying no attention to the live meat hovering over their heads.

I lowered Monty inside, and dropped him.

He ran to the opposite corner, away from the others.

They watched me.  I watched them.

At one point, Carville came to the wall of my cage.  My lab cage.

“Ready to wrap it up?” he asked.

“Not yet.  Give me some more time.  I’ll call for someone when I’m done.”

“What are you doing?”

“Watching the zombie rats.  I’ve injected one of them with the gas coming from the ground with some saline,” I lied.

“You can mix them?”

“It’s tricky, but you’ve given me all the tools I need.”

“What’s your goal?”

“I’m not sure yet, Mr. Carville.  As you know, testing like this normally happens over months and years.  I’m just trying to come up with experiments to do that might tell me something.  Anything.”

“Is that the fellow, there?” he asked.  “The one off by himself?”

“Yes, it is,” I lied again.  “The good news is he doesn’t seem so intent on eating me as the others do.  It could be he just doesn’t feel well.”

“If he dies, don’t use it on Veronica and Raymond.”

“I never intended to.  I already know what kills them, sir.”

“You’ll be alone for a bit.  I need all hands outside right now.  You need anything?”

I was flabbergasted.  Had I gained his trust that much already?

“No, sir.  I’ll give this as much time as I need.  Until he either feels better and joins the others, or dies.  It’ll be in my notes.  What’s the problem out there?”

“Zombie problem,” he said, shaking his head.  “I acted very swiftly, if I say so myself.  When this thing started, I got a crew of men going immediately.  They put in a twelve foot fence around my property.  It’s strong, too.  My guys patrol the perimeter 24/7, but right now something is going on.  There’s more of them coming, and they look like hell.”

“You mean, you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“About the diggers, Mr. Carville.”

His radio buzzed.  “23, come in.  This is Terry, sir.”

“I have to go,” said Carville.  “But I want to hear about these diggers.  We’ll talk in the morning.”

Carville left, Billy and Frank throwing me a wave and following him down the hall.

I turned back to my cage and realized I had dodged a bullet.

Carville knew very well that I’d been given five ratz.  There were six in the cage.

Nobody in sight.  The cameras over my head could be fooled if I acted casually. 

The worst part was I had to handle one of the ratz, and I hadn’t done it yet.

I found a pair of stainless steel mesh glove in one of the drawers, and took them out.  They would be perfect.  Slash and cut resistant.  As I pulled them on, I wondered how he knew about the ratz, but not about the diggers.  I was certain Pete and Rory knew.

Why hadn’t they shared it with Carville?  It didn’t make any sense if they wanted to be his trusted servants.

Knowledge is power.  Perhaps they felt withholding something from the powerful man gave them more of what he had.  I didn’t see how.

Lifting the lid, I reached in fast and snatched the  first zombie rat out that I could reach.  I felt its bones, even through the mesh glove, and as I curled my fingers around it and moved it toward Monty’s former home, it arched its back beyond what I would have believed possible and tried to sink its teeth into my hand.

Ah, but it was a pointless venture.  My glove had done the trick.  I stuffed him inside, his teeth still refusing to release the stainless fabric until I shook him off.  The second he came free, he came at me again, but I withdrew my hand and slammed the cage door.  His incisors clamped onto the cage bars, and his lower tooth snapped off, falling to the countertop.

I put a towel over the cage to hide him.  If Carville came back and had a second look, he’d just believe he was in error.

I sat on my stool and watched the ratz watch me and ignore Monty.  The fresh meat just inches from them, defenseless. 

For five hours, I watched.  I was getting hungry.  Nobody had come back yet, and I was really beginning to wonder what was going on out there.  I hadn’t yet called anyone – perhaps when I did, they’d come.

Another half an hour passed.

Then something happened.  One of the zombie rats began twitching wildly.  It turned, and as it did so, the other three followed suit. 

As the four bodies dove atop Monty and tore him open in mere seconds, their razor-like teeth shredding fur, flesh and bone, I realized my experiment had been an unmitigated success.

The cookie, wafer, cake, whatever it was - it made an unaffected rat scentless; invisible. 

For a while.

I had no way of knowing if it would translate to humans.  I retrieved my calculator from the drawer and began punching in numbers, densities, and volumes, eventually learning how much a human would have to eat in order to achieve the same amount of time in a neutral state.

It would take a wafer roughly the size of a silver dollar, perhaps 1/8
th
inch thick.  Testing it on myself would be risky.  Charlie would be irate at the thought.  Meanwhile, she would do it herself without a moment’s hesitation.  The girl should have been a scientist.

Only she would have been a mad scientist.   I smiled. 

I realized I couldn’t let Carville know about this.  Not yet.  Not until I convinced him that his only option was to give up on these walking dead family members and let me and my friends help him learn how to survive and take the creatures down one by one.

Only then did any of us stand a chance of returning the world to a semblance of what it once was.

I called for a guard.  They came in minutes.

Chapter 15

“Ready?”

“Hells yes, I’m ready,” I said.  “I’ve been waiting for dark since I woke up.”

“Crossbow?”

“Check.  Urushiol?”

Dave squirted his bottle once.  A stream jetted out.  “Check.”

“Okay, I said.  “All fine and dandy, but we have to hit that gun store.  I don’t know what’ll be left there, if Carville has a team of guys, but I can’t imagine they’d have taken everything that we’d see a use for.”

“We driving?”

“We have to go back the way we came, through that mess again,” I said.  “But it’s the next town over, and it would kill too much time to hoof it.”

“Okay, so keep the lights off and we’ll go slow.”

We walked outside.  “Little moon tonight,” I said.

“Should be enough.  Want me to drive?” Dave asked.

“Why not.  Be careful.  I’ll tell on you if you scratch her car.”

“No shit,” said Dave.  He nudged me and I went around to the other side of the car.

We got inside, and Dave punched the address on
Industrial Road into the GPS.  The GPS Bitch spoke.

“Proceed south on
Shelburne Road.”

“Damn,” said Dave.

“What?”

“I’d rather not go that way.  Hey, maybe there’s an alternate – something that doesn’t lead us closer to Carville’s compound.”

He hit the detour button. 

“Proceed north on
Shelburne Road.”

Dave smiled and hummed some stupid tune, proud of himself.  I laughed and watched the dark roadway ahead.

We followed the directions and turned right onto US Route 2.  The road was narrower than the one we’d come in on, but seemed to have fewer broken down and wrecked cars.  It was also known as Williston Road.

Within a half mile, Dave cranked the steering wheel, throwing me into the door.

“What the fuck?”

“Dude,” he said.  “Check it out.”

“Dude?  What the fuck ever.  What is it?”

“Kevin Smith Sports Connection?  Can you say baseball bat?”

The front of the store had football players, baseball, hockey, lacrosse, and every other kind of player on it. 

Dave pulled the car up to the front of the store, then thought better of it.  He pulled it behind a shuttle bus that had overturned at some point, and now lay on its side, cattycorner to the storefront.  That way it was hidden from the main highway.

“Wanna come in?  I’m thinkin’ a nice thirty ouncer.”

“Not a bad close quarters backup,” I said.  “I’m in.”

We’d brought the headlamps with us, so we strapped them on and got out of the car.  I had my bow over my shoulder, and Dave had the bottle of urushiol dangling from his belt by the valve.  He also had the Glock in his hand, though neither of us felt we should use it in a desolate world where a gunshot could act as a beacon.

Zombies didn’t use guns. 
Yet
.

As we approached the door, we noticed a barricade.  The large, double doors were made of a carved, raised panel wood of some kind, and there was a two-by-six slid down behind the two large pull handles.

“That’s not keeping anybody out,” said Dave, lifting the board out.  Dave pulled on the door, and it opened.

We stepped inside and both instinctively switched our headlamps to the red light, which would be less visible from a distance.

The doors closed behind us, and because the glass storefront was heavily tinted, it was darker than we expected.

“Windows are dark enough,” I said.  “I think we can switch to regular light.” I flipped my switch.  “Damn, it stinks in here.”

Dave followed suit.  “Stinks everywhere nowadays,” he said.  “Let’s get the bats and whatever else we find that looks useful and get the hell out of here.”

Kevin Smith didn’t come to greet us, but then again, he was either dead or the walking dead.  I hoped it was the former.  I looked up at the ceiling where various sports equipment displays hung from the ceiling, and found the baseball stuff toward the middle of the large store.  The single, large room had to be at least eighty feet square with tall merchandise racks filled with equipment for every sport imaginable.

“Damn.  I could use some good hiking boots,” said Dave.  “Size eleven steel toes, here I come.”

“Love mine,” I said.  “They’ve come in handy for kickin’ zombie brain.  I’ll tell you about my first experience one day.”

“Love to hear it,” said Dave.  “But save it for the trip back with Hemp.”

We reached the aisle and found racks of bats on each side.  There weren’t many aluminum bats anymore, but there were some.  Dave’s light shone on a DeMarini aluminum alloy model called Versus. 

Us Versus Them.™

It just sounded like something that should have a trademark symbol behind it, so I wrote it down.  Hey, I still have a sense of humor.  That should tell you something about me.

As Dave lifted the bat from the rack and gave it a test swing, all hell broke loose.

I don’t have any idea how they surprised us.  I don’t know if they have the ability to coordinate and maintain some sort of silence while lying in wait.  All I know is we didn’t know they were there, and we didn’t clear the store.

We fucked up.  The shuffling grew louder, like a terrifying white noise.  The moans and hungering cries began as they began to fully smell us and long for what lay beneath our skin, our skulls.

Dave grabbed for the urushiol bottle hanging from his belt, and as his fingers went to curl around the bottle, it toppled to the ground, the cap popping off, and the precious liquid splashing onto the floor.

His eyes on the advancing creatures, he bent over to retrieve the bottle, but it was too late.  The lid and pump cap had slid to the end of the aisle, and neither of us was going toward the zombies to get it.

“Shit!” he said, frustration in his voice.

“I’ll watch this end, you watch the other,” I whispered.

“Damn, Charlie.  I’m sorry.  Take this,” Dave said, passing me the DeMarini.  He lifted another from the rack and hefted it, then stuffed the Glock into his pants.  The gunshots would be risky, and he’d only use it as a last resort.
I hoped there wasn’t going to be a need for a last resort. 

I laid my crossbow on the floor between us, along with the quiver of arrows.  It wouldn’t be effective here.

My fingers curled around the bat.

There was no strategizing for us or them.  They didn’t come to the aisle, see us and glare threateningly.  It wasn’t their style.  They reached our aisle, saw us, and what was left of their brains told them to walk as fast as they could toward us and quench their insatiable hunger with our flesh.

As for us, if we were to avoid firing weapons this close to town, we had to beat our way out of this mess.

“Jesus,” Dave whispered.  “I’m sorry, Charlie.  I should have known that barricade was to keep something in, not out.”

“Quit apologizing, dude.  It’s not all your fault.  I feel like a dumbass, too.” 

There had to be fifteen of them, which would ordinarily be a cinch, but not in tight quarters like this.

They moved toward us at a good clip, and Dave dropped one of the two bats he held and let out what I could only describe as a primordial scream.  He charged the group on his side of the aisle and with two hands clamped on the handle just above the knob, he literally smashed in the heads of three zombies with three very fast swings of the bat.  The head of the first one, a very thin former man, slammed into the nose of the one beside him, rupturing it.  Green muck jettisoned into the air, but the creature quickly regrouped in time for Dave’s second manic-charged swing.

Dave brought the bat straight down on this one’s head, like he was at a carnival, and fuck if he wasn’t intending on ringing the damned bell so everyone in the town square heard it.

That one, a bare bones zombie, was down for good.  Dave didn’t get too creative with the third one.  He was tiring.  I didn’t see the next hit, but I heard it, and the squishy thud that followed as the next one hit the floor hard.

I was already charging my attackers.  I wound the DeMarini up once, and slammed two of them so hard that  the majority of their teeth skittered onto the linoleum floor like a ripped open bag of M&Ms candy. 

My arms were already tired, but adrenaline kept them going.  I kneecapped the woman who came at me next, her skinless face grinning, accented by pinpoints of pink eyes, even as both of her legs shattered beneath her and she went down.  Her arm reached for me, so I broke it at the elbow with a quick swing, and finally smashed the aluminum club into the back of her brittle skull.

Dave and I both jumped back, away from the remaining zombies, still advancing.  We’d taken out fewer than half of them, but damned if we knew what lay around the next corner.

Then Dave had an idea.

“Stand still, Charlie,” he breathed.  “Spread your legs wide apart and get a swinging stance.”

I did, and so did he.  Then he pushed bat after bat from the many racks until they were like giant Pick-Up-Stix on the floor, impossible to walk over without falling.

I did the same on my side, upending one of the advancing walkers immediately.

As the zombies tumbled, we swung for the caps of their skulls, wet thud after wet thud, and when we saw their horrific noggins crack open, sending them to the already zombie-littered floor, we put one or two more direct hits to their brains, just to be sure.

The floor was now slick with black, putrid goo that used to be the fluid of life, now, along with the bats littering the aisle, making it impossible for the undead monsters to get a foothold.  The slime and rolling cylinders were an impossible challenge for one who already found it hard to think on their feet, what with being dead and all.

As long as we didn’t lift
our
feet, we had dry floor beneath us upon which our feet could grip.

There were three more.  Just three.

They stumbled over their fallen brethren, and we both raised our bats and let them fly again, this time as if we were swinging at a low pitch.

The one on my side lost his head, literally.  I found a burst of strength, pulled that bat back, and gave it everything I had, right from the knob.  The octogenarian zombie’s head flew up and over the aisle.  It went so far, I believe I counted to three before I heard it land.

I heard the sounds of senseless beating behind me, and then there was silence.

Dave and I stood there, listening.

Silence.

He looked at me, and I at him.  He held out his arms, and I scooched across the mucked up, bat-ridden floor and fell into them.  We held each other so tightly at that moment, and we didn’t let go for a long time.  He broke away first, leaned the bat that he still held against the rack beside us, bent over and picked my sticky crossbow from the floor, followed by my mucked-up quiver.  He put the bow over his shoulder. 

We were still borderline hyperventilating from our battle.  Dave looked me squarely in the eyes.

“Charlie,” he said.  “You are one of the most amazing women I’ve ever met, and I’m including Gem and my sister when I say that.”

He laughed a strange laugh, and shook his head, smiling.  “The love you have for Hemp drives you every bit as much as your will to survive and I am fucking proud that you trusted our friendship enough – not to mention my capabilities – to ask me to help you.  Thanks.”

I looked at this guy with the long hair down past his tits and the long-sleeved Harley tee-shirt on.  His beard seemed to have grown another two inches since we found him at that church, and ironically, it made him look a lot like Robb Zombie. 

When he had opened his arms, of course I had kicked the bats out of the way and walked into them, returning his embrace.  Because I knew Dave, and I knew what he needed.  He needed what I did.

We were friends offering one another human warmth and comfort in a fucked up world.

“You’re my friend, Dave.  I think you were from the day I met you.  And more than that, you’re the only person I knew I could tell who would offer to come with me rather than try to talk me out of it.  I hope that’s all I have to say to make you understand that no matter how long we’ve known each other, you’re one of my best friends.  And I’m including every friend I’ve ever had my entire life.”

“Keep an eye out for someone like yourself, okay?” he said.  “That’s what I want.  I want me a Charlie.  Only better looking, you know, and with huge tits.”

I laughed.  “Look, asshole.  I never put down my bat.”

“Cleanup on aisle five!” he yelled, and pushed me, catching the material of my shirt just short of me slipping in the zombie blood and falling on my ass.

He steadied me, smiling.

“You’re a dick!” I said, and we both cracked up, the insane tension of a few moments before evaporated - almost.