The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (99 page)

He paced back and forth as the thoughts flooded into his brain.  “I can’t put my finger on it, but this girl seems more . . . aware.  I’m going to jot down all behavior that I’ve witnessed in a notebook.  One page.  Everything I’ve seen them do that flies in the face of logic.  Then I’ll mull it over and see if I don’t find a pattern of some sort.”

“No time like the present,” said Charlie, getting up.  She retrieved a note pad and pen from a kitchen drawer.  She handed it to Hemp.  “Start writing, professor.”

*****

Chapter Three

Three weeks passed, and the zombies kept pouring into Concord.  From the looks of their bare feet and tattered clothing, many had quite possibly staggered for hundreds of miles to reach the city.  While large groups went out on regular zombie kills, Hemp had stayed true to his promise; he’d spent a lot of time observing the one he’d come to know as Blue Eyes.

She was interesting on her own, but he was beginning to feel he would learn more if she had another one like herself with which to interact.

It was just after two o’clock in the afternoon, in what Hemp’s watch said was the latter half of February.  He sat at the kitchen table taking notes on his last session with Blue Eyes. 

Flex and Dave walked in the room and gave him a wave.

“Blue Eyes keeping you busy, buddy?” asked Flex.

“Entirely.  Sorry I can’t go along with you.  I could use a break.”

“Next time.  Dave, we need to get changed into our battle gear, so head on over to your house and I’ll swing by to get you when we’re ready.”

“Dude, that’s fine if my battle gear is a tee shirt and jeans.  Pretty much all I got.”

“It’ll do,” said Flex, spreading his arms.  He was wearing the same thing.

Flex put a hand on Hemp’s shoulder.  “Sure you don’t want to go with?  I was pretty sure you’d change your mind by now.”

“It’s not a matter of changing my mind, Flex.  I feel a sense of urgency regarding this female in the lab.  I need to structure more involved tests and find out if there’s more to this behavior than we’ve thought heretofore.”

“Good luck then,” Dave said. 

“And stop saying heretofore,” said Flex.

“Good luck to you gentlemen, and please, be careful,” said Hemp.

“We will, buddy,” said Dave.  “Always.”  He closed the door.

“We’ll catch up later, Hemp,” said Flex, jogging up the stairs.  “Learn stuff!” he called down, now out of view.

Charlie walked out, having chosen her shirt for the day.  This one had a picture of Jesus Christ on the front and said, “Jesus is Coming … Look Busy.”

“Odd shirt,” said Hemp.

“Here to what?” asked Charlie.

Hemp rolled his eyes, and laughed.  “Heretofore.  It means up until this time.”

“Good.  I get that, but
before now
works, too, and so does
up until now
.  Sorry, baby, but the guys I was with – the one or two, that is – before I met you didn’t use four syllable words.”

“Charlie, it was only three syllables, but you’re not the first to express frustration at my word choices, believe me.  Regardless, I’m going to utilize the EEG the way I did with Jamie, I believe.  There my be enough actual observable mannerism and response tests that it won’t even be necessary.”

“Why’s that?”

“The WAT-5.  I won’t have any concern about being attacked.”

“You need to take more, sweetie,” said Gem, looking at her watch.  “You’re about an hour overdue now.”

“Thanks, Gem, but I intended to.  And remind Flex to take some with him, too.  I’ve got a whole freezer bag full.”

“Does Kev have much at the state house?” asked Gem.

“Plenty.  I showed them the ratios, so they’ve been using the base mixture and adding urushiol to it to make a good supply.”

“Beautiful,” said Gem.

Flex trotted down the stairs and came to give Gem a long kiss on the mouth.  “Take care, babycakes,” he said.  “And keep your gun ready and the blinds cracked.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.  “Don’t stay out all night.  I worry.”

“You don’t worry, Gemina.  You come-a-lookin’.”

“Damned straight,” said Gem.  “And I’ll look until I find your ass.  No strip clubs.”

Flex laughed and opened the door.  He turned the knob lock and slipped into the cold afternoon, pulling the door closed behind him.

Hemp looked at Charlie.  “I could use your help.  You know what the tests involved from the last time.”

“What about the baby?” asked Charlie, her face worried.

“Charlie, if I believed there was a risk with you taking the WAT-5, I’d never suggest it,” said Hemp. 

The truth was, he had thought about it a lot.  He’d even taken blood samples while he was on the wafers, and the chemical compound was literally undetectable.  Had anything strange appeared, any anomaly, he would have never even let her handle them.

“You took the wafers before we knew you were pregnant, Charlie,” he added.  “Which is exactly why Dr. Scofield performed the amniocentesis last week.”

“He estimated I was like sixteen weeks then,” said Charlie.

“Yes, and as he said, it was just inside the safe timeframe to carry out the test, and since it was only last week, you probably remember that everything was perfectly normal.”

Hemp put his arm over her shoulder and pulled her to him.  “Dr. Scofield has been doing this a very long time, Charlie.  As you might so eloquently say, he knows his shit.”

“But what if it’s a slow process?”

“That would fly in the face of everything we know about how quickly this metamorphosis occurs.  Nothing about it – and I mean
nothing
– is slow.  I believe any changes would have been nearly immediate.”

“I trust you, Professor.  We face everything together anyway.  Everything.”

“Yes, we do,” said Hemp.  He looked at the beautiful blonde woman who was his wife and best friend, and winked.  “Everything.  Now let’s take it, go to sleep, wake up and get to work.”

“So if I give birth to a little chimpanzee, you’ll still raise it as your own?”

“If you give birth to a chimp, I’ll suspect you’ve been having an affair with Jacko.”

“Oh, don’t even go there,” Charlie said, laughing despite her apparent disgust. 

Hemp enjoyed making her laugh.

“Crap,” said Gem, her voice low.  She stood at the window, her fingers tightening on the gun in her hands.

“What?” asked Charlie and Hemp together.

“They’re here,” she said.

Her radio clicked.  “Gem?”

It was Flex.  She grabbed it.  “Yes, babe.”

“They’re heading your way.  We just had to push over a wall of them to get through.”

“Come back, Flex.”

“We are,” said Flex.  “Five minutes.”

“Mommy, there are zombies everywhere outside!” said Trina from the top of the stairs.

“You were supposed to be asleep,” said Gem, turning to frown at her.

“I was! 
Tay woke up and looked out the window.  Mommy, zombies are all in the streets!”

Gunfire was sounding sporadically outside now.  The neighbors were busy.  What neighbors they had.

“I don’t know how many there are, but we have to get in that lab,” said Hemp.  “We’re good there with the turrets.”

“Nobody’s going in there yet,” said Gem.  “Come here.”

Hemp and Charlie hurried to the window. 

“My God,” said Charlie.

“WAT-5.  Now.  Everyone,” said Hemp.  “You all take it first.  I probably have some residual.  I’ll stand guard while you recover.”

“Girls!  Downstairs!” shouted Gem.  She rushed to the freezer and removed the baggie filled with wafers, broke one in two and handed each girl one as they came into the kitchen.  “Eat.  Or go sit and eat.  Lay your head down when you’re done eating them.”

“These suck, mommy!” said Trina.

“Like we always say, girls” said Gem. 

The next words she spoke were screamed in unison by Taylor and Trina.  “Better to eat what sucks than to have your brain sucked!”

The girls sat in the chairs at the round, kitchen table and ate their wafers.  Smiling at one another, they rested their heads against the glass tabletop and fell fast asleep in seconds.

“You now,” said Hemp.  “Both of you.  Hurry.”

In ten more minutes, everyone was awake and it was Hemp’s turn. 

When he awoke, gunfire already filled the room.  They had followed Tony Mallette’s example and had drilled gun turret holes beneath the windows, and beneath the peephole on the door.  The girls were on their knees, their gun barrels poking through the holes, and they were emptying their magazines efficiently.  Hemp couldn’t tell if they were hitting their targets, but the bodies outside were beginning to pile up.

“Hold up,” he said.  “I see Flex and Dave.”

Gem jumped to her feet, and Charlie joined them.

“Girls,” said Charlie.  “Pull your guns in.  Quick.”

With a slight whine, they relented and put their guns on the hardwood floor.

“You don’t want to shoot Uncle Flexy and Uncle Davey, do you?” asked Gem.

“Hells no!” said Trina.

“No way!” said
Taylor.

They watched as the men pulled into the driveway and got out of the vehicle.  Zombies were all around them, but they had apparently taken their doses of WAT-5 before coming back.

Their weapons were drawn.  Hemp watched Flex raise it.  The male zombie beside him was older, and shambled mindlessly toward him.  Flex hit him in the brain with a single round, and black ooze splattered from the back of his head as he lost forward momentum and fell away.

Hemp could see they weren’t attacking him; they were just in the wrong place at a very wrong time.

Many of these weren’t diggers.  They were dressed otherwise, as you might when you’re fixing cars, shopping for groceries, or going to university.

They were just people.   Yes, there were the odd diggers among them, but they were obvious because of the damage done to their bodies on their long forage upward to reach daylight.  In many cases they missed fingers, and even arms.

Then another female caught Hemp’s eye.  He pointed to her.  “That one,” he whispered.  “She avoided Flex.  She was walking toward him and when she saw Flex shoot the other one, she turned away.”

Hemp gently took the radio from Gem’s belt.

“Bring the woman inside, Flex,” he said.  “The one in the red dress.”

Flex looked around, then raised his radio to his lips.  “She’s heading in the other direction.”

“Put down your gun and she’ll stop walking that way,” said Hemp.

Flex motioned for Dave to lower his weapon, and Flex did the same.  Sure enough, the half-bald, half-blonde zombie in the knee-length red dress glanced backward and slowly reversed direction.

“You’re going to have to push your way through the rest, Flex.  We can lock her in the garage or something.  Just bring her inside.”

Flex raised his radio.  “Sounds like a fuckin’ party, Hemp.”

“The goddamned ratz,” said Gem. 

“Wow,” said Charlie.  “I was so focused on their heads, I missed them.  How did I do that?”

“Hurry, guys.  Get in here.”

Dave opened the door of the truck again, hit one of the other zombies hard with the door, reached inside, and pulled out a bottle of urushiol spray.

Hemp knew immediately what he was doing.  They couldn’t afford to have any of the ratz making their way inside the house.  When the WAT-5 wore off, they could be very dangerous and hard to locate.

“He’s got her,” said Gem, almost in a whisper.

“Boy, does he,” said Charlie. 

It was mesmerizing, Hemp had to admit, watching the zombies handled like domesticated animals. 

Flex had his radio button pushed, but wasn’t talking.  Suddenly, the sound of barking filled the dead radio air.

Lots of it. 

The horde around Flex and Dave suddenly turned and almost ran the men over as they pushed against one another to get to something Hemp could not see.

Flex turned, and Hemp could see surprise wash over his face.  He raised his radio.

“It’s a goddamned pack of dogs!”

Hemp pressed the button on the radio.  “It makes sense, Flex.  They can’t smell you, but the live dogs must smell like a cookout.  They’re going for the food source.”

Flex gripped the arm of the one in the red dress, pulling her beside him.  He said something to her that Hemp could obviously not hear, then started firing madly into the crowd of zombies approaching him.  The one he gripped struggled, but did not attempt to bite or scratch him.

Hemp watched, wondering. 
Did she fear the weapon?  Like any hostage might?

Dave started wildly spraying urushiol in the air, and as he ran in front of Flex, the spray caught the woman-thing in the red dress.  She recoiled from it, and her mouth opened in a scream, but she did not melt.

She didn’t melt
, thought Hemp. 
My God, what is this?

The spray did the trick with the others near the men, though.  Red dress was stunned and momentarily confused.  Flex pulled her onto the porch as Gem flipped the lock and pulled open the door.  Flex, Dave and the female zombie came inside in a rush, and Gem slammed the door behind them.