Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle (41 page)

Flex, despite his fresh bullet wound, reached the group first, stopping ten feet short and spraying six of the
infecteds
. 
The vapor was as thick as
fog, so after he saturated their rotting heads, we all pulled back to watch them disintegrate, also giving the vapor time to
clear
.  No weapon
, no matter how effective,
would save us if we
weren’t conscious to administer it.

When the vapor had cleared, Charlie resumed her attack, leaping over the sludge that had been the zombie’s brains, straight through the church doors.

Hemp knelt down beside the victims, focusing first on the boy. 

“You got
this
, Hemp?”

“I do,” he said.  “Call out if you need help in there.”

I
ran
after Charlie
with Flex right behind me.

Once inside
, we all slammed on the brakes.

The scene before us was one of
complete
horror.  At the front of the church behind the altar and everywhere around it, bodies lay torn open in various positions.  Four bodies were splayed out on the steps leading up to
the altar
, each with two creatures hunched over them, slurping and chewing mouthfuls of arteries, organs and other unidentifiable innards.

Another ten or so
men and women were laid out
before the church’s meager altar, presented
like morbid dinner platters for the undead, with their skulls cracked open and chests torn into
in ways that only starving creatures with single-minded hunger could devise.  Other diggers and rotters worried these corpses with teeth and shredding fingernails, and I cringed as I stared at them, unable to turn away.  The fact that they
were
corpses now was the only saving grace.  Grateful corpses.  Grateful the pain and terror was past.

Later, when it was all over and we’d had time to put the actual memory of this day somewhere in our memory banks where it wouldn’t fuck with us so much during the long, sleepless nights,
I talked to the others about that reek
.
. 

We all agreed.  It was the worst stench any of us had ever experienced. 
It was like a blend of moldy dirt, two-day old
road kill
and shit.  Throw in puke and that nasty taste you get from acid reflux, and I might have come close to describing what it was like. 
I hope you don’t know what that smells like.  If you don’t, it means you’re not subjected to that aroma anymore, and it’s over.  And while it’s not the worst of it – clearly getting your brains and flesh eaten is the worst of it – it’s a precursor to that end.

So while the permeating scent
was literally intolerable,
we had to face the task at hand and get it done
.

We
choked back the puke that inevitably rose up in our throats and we fought through. 

I’d been checking the main room between horrified stares at the zombies, and t
he many rows of wooden, bench
pews
were
empty
.  Blood stains were prevalent on many of them, but nobody occupied them.

The
three of us stood in the center aisle next to the fourth pew from the rear.

One of the zombies raised his face toward us.

And
then
another.  T
hen t
hree more.

They
got to their feet with less difficulty that I would’ve expected
, and within three minutes, all
thirty or more
of them stood and stared toward us.

A zinger ran from the
back of my skull right down my spine.  I think it hit my butt crack and kept on going.

I peed my pants.  Not much, but a little.  I didn’t say anything then or later about it.

I was frightened to death.  I didn’t share that either,  except with Flex.

 
The creatures started moving very slowly toward us, as though evaluating.  Maybe they had thought everyone was neutralized by their vapor, and some sort of confusion set in.  Of the thirty or so, most
appeared to be well-fed and strong, while others might have just crawled out of their graves.
  It was a fucked up blend of the old, the older, the fucking deteriorated, and the somewhat newer.
  But whether extremely decayed or just freshly dead, all of them were just as gore-splattered as the dead walker we’d first seen on the porch of the church. 

And if we had our way, they’d all be the same.  Dead as shit and gone from this world forever.
  I again thanked God for all those families of the dead who had opted for embalming.  It was truly the determining factor with regard to eternal rest. 

The creatures
showed
no indication of
inter-
communication, yet somehow they seem
ed to split almost evenly with
two thirds of them making their way down
each of
the outside aisles, and the rem
aining third coming down the center.  They staggered, shambled, and in come cases walked unsteadily but briskly.

We’d stopped to determine their strategy.

Strategy.
  The mere idea was absurd and unimaginable. 

Flex looked at me and Charlie.

“Are they flanking us?” Flex asked.

“If that means
the bastards are trying to box us in from three sides
, then yep
,” said Charlie.  “
I’d say they’re flanking us.”

Flex clicked his radio.  “Hemp, come in here.  I need you to see this behavior.”

“Just a second, Flex.”

“We don’t have a second, Hemp.  In a second we’re going to have to douse them.”

“I’ll be right there.”

We turned around to see Hemp poke his head in. 

“Hey!” he yelled.

“About a third of them seemed to have heard him.  The others continued their move to surround us.

“Some have intact eardrums,” said H
emp.  “Not sure why, but I suspected that was the case.”

The ones that heard him cut off their former path and moved toward the entry where Hemp stood with his canister
of urushiol.

“I miss my fucking crossbow,” said Charlie.  “This shit’s like cheating.”

“I know what you mean,” I said.  “But just think.  We can kill them all and the only damage to this old
church’ll
be a pool of muck to clean up.  By the time anyone
can think straight enough to consider organized religion
, they can jus
t scrape the dried shit off the floorboards and start praying.
”

The zombies were fifteen feet a
way now. 
Charlie aimed right, I aimed left, and Flexy was
poised to take
out the ones in the middle.  Hemp stood in back awaiting his
moment
.

The three of us
squeezed the chrome valve handles
almost
at the
exact
same time, sending
streams
of deadly oil and water toward
the advancing mutants
, but not before a
cloud of vapor
puffed
into
the air
around them
.  The melting of their insides
began instantly, and the devastating affect to the deaders
was the same as before.  Bodies
melted
into the
mselves, a pop-hissing sound
like a blown pressure relief valve
as reanimated organs melted like flesh immersed in pure lye.

As the
zombies dissolved, their filthy
ooze ran a
cross the floor toward our feet.  W
e instinctively jumped up on the faded wooden pews
, letting the sludge run beneath
. 
With all of our attackers
taken
out, we wondered why Hemp hadn’t eliminated the four coming at him yet.

His eyes on the zombies, unwavering, he said to us: “I’ve got to try an experiment.  Watch and see if you notice anything
in their demeanor
.”

“Baby, their demeanor is fuckin’ hungry, and doesn’t change much,” said Charlie.  “What are we looking for?”

Hemp moved quickly forward until he was three feet from the closest dead walker. 
“If I’m right, you’ll see,” he said, raising
the hose and
spraying
the
nearest abnormal
in the eyes.

Sizzle, pop,
hiss,
drop.  Down and dead.  Everywhere a drop of the oil and water mix landed on the creature, a hole burned in the thing’s body, and these areas continued to sizzle like bacon frying in a pan.

The three behind the dead zombie hesitated.

They absolutely hesitated
.  As though they now realized the chrome cylinder in Hemp’s hand was a threat.

“See that?” Hemp said.  “They can learn, guys.  The fuckers can learn.”

“I did see that,” I said.

“Me, too,” said Charlie and Flex together.

He moved toward the leader of the remaining three, if that’s what she was.  She wore a mu-mu with a loud Hawaiian print of purple flowers, and one ragged
sandal
on a foot that appeared to be short over half its toes
. 
One eye dangled out of its socket, and it appeared someone had ripped out three quarters of her hair, which might have gone to her shoulders when she lived.  She was probably near 250 lbs when alive, but a steady diet of searching for humans to eat and striking out had resulted in sagging skin that itself was torn away in places, and about a 180 lb zombie.

Hemp raised the hose and she actually recoiled.

He sprayed her face.  The two behind her backed off a step
as she began to disintegrate
. 

We all watched from our safe distance, mesmerized and petrified at the implications.

There must have been a lot of oil in that particular dose, for in an amazing display of biological reaction, her body seemed to melt in on itself like a building being demolished by explosive charges. 
I’d seen something similar at the Tractor Supply store. 
Her eyes erupted as we’d grown used to, causing Hemp to leap out of the line of spew, then
the massive amount of fluid began eating the inside of the thing’s body from the neck on down.

Head
imploded
into Neck.  Neck into Chest.  Chest melting into the abdomen, and the abdomen melting into the groin area.  When the reanimated freakshow was just a pair of legs, it fell over
with a thud
and twitched.

This was literally the best
zombie killing
I’d ever witnessed, including
the super creative ends to lives that the wildest
Hollywood
directors dreamed of.  This beat them all, because it was real and it was dramatic as fuck.

“See
them
?” Hemp asked, excitedly.
  “They’re afraid.”

“I do, Hemp,” I said.  “
And I agree. 
But would you mind
just killing them and filling us in later on what you learned?

Hemp
nodded, keeping
his eye
on the other two zombies.  He moved toward them slowly.  They had completely stopped, and never
attempted to move closer to Hemp or us since.

As Hemp advanced, t
he vapor suddenly gushed
, their one known defense and offense mechanism besides their hands and teeth.  Hemp jammed the hose in their faces and squeezed the handle, dispatching
the last two reanimated monsters in the old church.

Their
bodies deflating into rivulets of muck, the slime
ran along the floor, mixing with the vile fluids of the others.  Zombie clothing nearly flattened, and the danger to me and my family of friends was eliminated.

At least for now.

*****

Flex got on the radio to Cynthia.  “Cyn, pull the car right up on the front of the lawn.  We’re going to need your help here.”

“Got it, Flex.”

The Crown Vic started moving, and
Cynthia pulled the car up on the grass, spinning it around and backing it straight up to the church.    I appreciated the fact that she was being considerate of the girls, who would have to turn around and look out the rear window to actually see the carnage of melting bodies.