The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (87 page)

“You’re bringing up the rear,” said Flex.

He wasn’t kidding this time.

Gem didn’t argue.

Chapter 17

There was no way to know what time it was, but the fact that I couldn’t sleep was all that mattered.

My mind was reeling.  I thought of the MRI machine, of the two zombies on the gurneys in the lab, and of the neutralizing wafers I needed to manufacture more of.

And a plan, forming in my mind.  An immediate one.

I decided to be a nuisance.

I went to the wall of the acrylic prison and pounded on it.  I began screaming, “Mr. Carville!  Mr. Carville!  I need to get to my lab!  Now!  I’ve had a breakthrough, Mr. Carville!”

I pounded my fists on the wall, causing the entire thing to shudder and reverberate.

Lights flickered on down the hall out of view, and I heard footfalls in the distance.  Running.  Billy and Frank, with an exhausted looking Carville walking behind, emerged in front of my cage.

“What in God’s name do you want, Professor Chatsworth?  It’s almost two in the morning!”

“I have things to do,” I said.  “I’m sorry.  So sorry.  But I get these ideas, and if I don’t get into the lab to put them to task, I’ll lose them.  I used to do this all the time when I had free reign at the CDC.”

Carville waved his hand at Billy and Frank, who stilled looked 100% asleep. 

Zombies
, I thought, with an internal chuckle.

“Get him out of there and into the lab,” he ordered.  “What’s this breakthrough?”

“It involves the MRI machine, Mr. Carville,” I said, not exactly lying.  “I believe if I get a detailed look at their internal physiology, which of course I’ve not had the ability to do as of yet, that I might have a method to revive the dead tissue.  It’s based on some experiments done in the CDC with the flesh-eating virus.”

“I’m very encouraged, Professor,” he said, yawning. “Unfortunately, I had a late night due to circumstances beyond my control, and have barely gotten to bed.  So I’m going back.”

He turned to Billy and Frank.  “You two stay with him.”  He waved and retreated down the hall, his slippered feet sliding tiredly.

“Yes, sir,” they said together.  Frank unlocked the door and waved me on.  I walked ahead toward the lab.  I knew the way by now.

When we arrived, they unlocked the door and as they did so, I analyzed the hinges.  Steel, four screw.  Standard.  Nothing beefy about them.  I didn’t know if the information would come in handy, but I wanted to have it anyway.

“Feel free to doze,” I said to the men as they locked the door.  “I’ll be here until tomorrow sometime.”

“It’s already tomorrow,” said Billy, rubbing his eyes.

“Sorry,” I said.  I meant it.  I actually liked these boys just fine.  They’d never treated me with any disrespect other than what they were ordered to do, and by that I mean locking me in various cages.

I’d asked that the zombies be kept in the lab.  They didn’t really care where they were, and they ate just fine regardless of location.  I did put goggles on them, however, because invariably, when I walked into the room, they began puffing out the diffused, scarlet knockout gas, and I wasn’t looking for a sleep aid.

I opened the top of the Liquid Nitrogen and withdrew one of the slides, placing it on the stainless steel workbench.

I lifted the top glass off the slide and got an eight-inch Petri dish, of course named after German bacteriologist Julius Richard Petri.

I know.  Typing that just now reminded me how Charlie would slap me for showing off, then try to have sex with me on the spot for being so damned hot-smart, as she calls it.

I smiled as I scraped the frigid sample from the slide into the center of the Petri dish.  The warmer surface of the dish warmed the vapor and gas mixture, and it began to grow, to multiply almost instantly.  I glanced back up at Billy and Frank.

Both dead asleep, sitting in two chairs against the hall wall.  I smiled and repeated the process with another slide and another Petri dish.

Now I had two compounds growing exponentially.  I’d let them get as large as the dish then stir in urushiol to set it up.

I wasn’t sure of the exact amount of urushiol.  I’d not really expected much to happen when I’d added it before; it was just something to try.  But I had some sort of idea of the amount based on the tool I used to apply it, and I’d run some calculations. 

I didn’t know if the roughly five hour lifespan the neutralizer had on the rat was due to the urushiol or the other components.  It was important that I keep it as close to the same as I could.

Within ten minutes, the compounds had grown to the size of the dishes.  I measured out the correct amount of urushiol, and mixed it in with a glass dropper.

They crystallized and solidified. 

My baking was complete.  Now I only needed to cut the cakes and stash the goods.

I found a silver dollar sized stainless tube, and stamped down into the hard crust of the cakes, cutting perfectly round, albeit somewhat thicker wafers than I’d estimated it would take to affect a grown human being, but too much was better than not enough.  When I finished I had approximately fifteen of them.  I put them inside the drawer by the door, inside one of the latex gloves in the box.  I hid the one I had before in my room.  It was still there.

When this was complete, I walked to the MRI machine and began removing the side panel.  I was as quiet as I could be, keeping one eye on Billy and Frank.

As I removed the last screw and pulled off the rear panel, I saw the Helium vent.  It was sealed with foil tape and had several rivets, as perfect as an airframe fuselage, sealing it.

I shook my head.  This would be harder than I thought.  There had to be another way.

I crawled onto the platform, a few tools in hand, and scooted inside, facing upward.  Three more panels inside.

These snapped on firmly.  I put my screwdriver beneath them and popped the first one out.

Bingo.  I’d found the cooling system channels.  The system was obviously completely sealed until the helium left the system, but venting was perhaps the most crucial element of the design aside from the helium itself. 

I anticipated the eight screws that connected the flange to the housing that was positioned directly above my head would reveal the vent shaft that led up through the ceiling.

I inserted my screwdriver and began removing the screws, one by one.

As the last screw fell into my open palm, I lowered the panel and stared upward at the curved shaft.

I smiled.

****

Dave had mapped out the route, so he drove.  Gem sat in the back with Flex.

We kept the headlights off, and we didn’t hurry.  The Crown Vic was newer, but because of its considerable weight – from the ballistic steel body and ultra-thick glass – the engine was a monster, and could be throaty.  We didn’t need someone hearing us through the silent darkness.

We were about six miles into our trip when Dave called out, “Holy shit!”

No sooner did the words leave his mouth did we feel the car lift slightly and begin bouncing down the roadway as though carried atop shifting, rolling rubber balls.

We stared through the front windshield and none of us could believe our eyes.

Rats.  A sea of them flowing across the roadway, heading west.  They were everywhere, covering every inch of the street, beneath our tires, lifting us and making control nearly impossible.

“Don’t slow down!” said Flex.  “Just crank the wheel and try to stay on the road!”

“Where the hell did they all come from?” I said. 

“Where the hell are they going?” asked Dave, his hands struggling with the wheel.

The car floated now on the sea of infected rat bodies, being carried off the road.  A steep embankment came into view, dropping off about five feet down, and we came precariously close to the edge when Dave gunned the engine, spinning the rats under the wheels away, and biting into solid asphalt.  The car lurched forward, and again became uncontrollable as forward became backward, and we found ourselves looking at Tony’s vehicle behind us, going through the same thing.  He was driving a more economical Scion XB, and seemed to be able to maneuver the small car with greater ease than Dave was.

As our vehicle spun around again to face forward,  a face hit the windshield.   It was a man’s face, horribly disfigured, the eyes open in a dead, hungry stare.  Dave cranked the wheel hard again, jolting the car to the left, and the zombie slid off, its fingers attempting to cling to the glass with no success.

“Shit!” said Gem.  “Is this how it’s been here?”

“Not until right now,” I said.  “Dave, you okay?”

“I’m fucking concentrating on keeping us on the road!” He stared outward, his eyes wide.  “Look!”

Ahead on the street, in the very faint moonlight, the road appeared to be black, flowing lava.  Interspersed among the rats were human zombies.  They all walked westward, the shufflers walking among the undead rats.

For every hundred rats there was a former human, all now craving the same nourishment, all heading toward a destination unknown to us.

“Why tonight?  Why that direction?  Where the hell are they all going?”

The car slid sideways, slamming into a woman’s body, whose head hit the window beside Gem and dropped beneath the car.  The rear tires lurched up and over her as Dave pressed the accelerator.

And then, as suddenly as they had appeared, they were gone, the roadway open again.

I looked behind us, and saw the melee’ continuing its progression west.

“Did we just cross the fuckin’ zombie expressway?” asked Flex.

None of us answered.  We watched the road ahead and hoped that didn’t happen again.

As we hit Webster, the road that would ultimately lead us to Harbor Road, we saw an elephant.

That wasn’t a typo.  And an emaciated lion and a tiger in similar physical shape.  A full-grown giraffe appeared to have fallen across the road, and a hundred rats lined up along its neck like newborn pups on a nine-foot row of nipples.

Dave hit the gas and we hit the giraffe’s neck like a speed bump and surged over with a hard landing on the other side.

“Fuck!” said Dave.

All the animals but the giraffe were extremely emaciated and in the throes of death, buried in rats and human zombies, tearing into their flesh, legs kicking their last violent resistance to being consumed.

The giraffe appeared to have been dead a while.

“Looks like the fuckin’ zoo let out,” said Flex.  “How did they survive so long?”

“I think we know the answer to that,” said Gem.  “They ate each other.”

“How did they get out tonight?” I asked, picking up the radio from the seat.

“I’m breaking silence.”  I pushed the button.  “Tony, do you know anything about this?”

“I think I do,” his voice came.  “Some guys at ZFZ6 were considering releasing the animals at the zoo.  They thought they’d kill Carville’s guys.  Unsuspecting and all.”

“Looks like all they did was create a smorgasbord for the goddamned zombies,” Gem said.  “Must have been what drew the rats and zombies westward in a bunch.”

Dave drove in silence now.

“Dave, you okay?” I asked.

“No,” he said.  “That’s fucked up.”

I pushed the button again.  “Tony, if you see them, tell them they’re idiots.  Complete fucking idiots.  Where’s the zoo?”

“About a mile from Carville’s.  Inland,” he said.

“Okay.  Thanks.”  I looked at the others.  “I don’t know about you, but primates have been in the back of my mind since this started.”

“Mine, too,” said Dave.  “They’re a lot like us.  But they have sharp teeth and claws.  I wonder if they had any gorillas in that zoo.”

“That might be a stretch for a local zoo,” said Flex.

I clicked on again.  “Tony?”

“Yep?”

“Any gorillas?”

“Yep.  Molly.”

“Fuck!” said Dave. 

We got to the marina fifteen minutes later.

****

With the screws in the pocket of my lab coat, I went over to the gurneys and pulled the sheets from over Veronica and Raymond.  They immediately struggled against their restraints, and as I stood there, equally disgusted and fascinated by their very existence, I knew what I had to do.

I had to test the wafer.

There was an obvious problem, though.  Solving it wouldn’t be easy, so I put it aside for the moment.  I had to complete my blocking of the helium ventilation system.  I carried the wadded up sheets that once blinded the zombies as sheets over a parrot’s cage did, and I rushed back to the MRI machine, throwing a glance over my shoulder toward Billy and Frank. 

Frank stared at me.  He raised a hand in a tired wave.