Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle (6 page)

“Just checking.  Put me down and let’s get the hell outta Dodge.”

*****

Every vehicle had new or newer tires, so the muddy conditions weren’t a hindrance to our passage from Flex’s front yard to the main highway.

Naturally, Hemp drove his precious rolling lab, towing the workshop trailer behind it.  With the additional length, he had to negotiate the gently winding driveway from Flex’s house to the paved road more carefully, but in the end he made it just fine.  The motor clacked but purred like a healthy diesel engine should. 

And I’m not making fun of Hemp at all.  He was sort of a prima donna when it came to his lab, but we anticipated that work space would help him come up with some important information about the outbreak.  Maybe even a cure, down the road.  Or other ways to protect ourselves, such as his BSN device.  I still wasn’t sure that wasn’t all bullshit, but I wasn’t one to question Hemp, and he wasn’t one to kid around about technology.  And he definitely wouldn’t get our hopes up on a lark.  If he said he might be able to do it, he’d already built the fucker in his head and had only to put it together in the physical world.

I was in the Crown Vic with Trina, and for the time being Charlie rode with Flex.  This was mostly because of the stink in the lab from the zombies strapped to the table.   Hemp hadn’t had a chance to seal up the door to the back with more weather stripping, and it permeated the entire ride.  I figured that Charlie was pretty eager to ride along with him though, so if my guess was right, she’d be installing that weather stripping herself if it wasn’t  done in a couple of days.

Flex’s Suburban led our little caravan, and I followed behind him.  I kept a close eye on the lab behind us, but Hemp’s gun turrets had been fully appointed, and the guns were loaded.  If trouble presented itself, Hemp would be churning out so many exploded zombie heads that trouble would tuck its tail between its legs and shuffle for the hills.

Our main concern was road blockages, but there had been none that kept us from getting here in the first place, and unless other normies were out there fucking up the roadways, then we could pretty much rest assured that we’d have a clear path.

I punched the button on my radio.  “Flexy, keep those front wheels on the ground this time, eh?”

“No repeat of the sinkhole incident,” he promised.

The caravan rounded the corner and the CDC buildings came into view.  We drove in through the raised gate that Hemp had unlatched and propped up and skirted around the wrecked
Japan
airliner.

I noticed with some trepidation that there were several bloody slime marks on the concrete where normally dead people had clearly crawled away, my disbelieving logic telling me it was by using only their upper body strength – because that was all that remained of their bodies.

My breath caught short.  I pushed the talk button on my walkie.

“Fuck’s sake, Flex.”

“I see it, babe,” he said.

Up ahead, just outside of building number two – where we needed to go – were probably fifteen zombies.  They didn’t appear to have seen us yet, but from where we were I could see the overturned security jeep and the bodies of the guards that Flex and Hemp had killed on our first visit here. 

They were nothing but skeletons now, but two zombies were still hunched over them, eating God knew what. 

The rain had finally let up, which was good.  And without warning, the door to the Suburban opened and out stepped Charlie.

“Flex, what the fuck!” I shouted into the walkie.

“I didn’t tell her to do that, Gem!”

I honked my horn, but Charlie didn’t look.  Instead she reached into her quiver and held six arrows in one hand, slapped one into the crossbow, aimed and fired.

Dead hit.  Another.  Right through the eye.  The two zombies fell almost simultaneously.

I heard machine gun fire
and saw Hemp had joined her, but our friends
were still
outnumbered.  Hemp was focused on three of the creatures who were approaching my car.  With a determined look on his face, he swung that MP5 around with dead precision and exploded two of their heads in rapid succession.

The third had reached the Crown Vic and was pounding on the door of the car, leaving bloody smears wherever its hands touched.  I almost fired right through the passenger side window, but Trina was beside me.  I struggled for a moment with what I should do.

Its face smeared against the glass and its strange eyes hungered for the visual enticement that was the flesh of living, breathing humans.  God how I wanted to kill it.

But as I pulled Trina’s face away from the creature and continued to stare through the glass, I saw Hemp running full speed toward it.  I wasn’t sure of his plan, but seconds later, with a flying kick, he knocked it back five feet.  It tumbled to the ground and as it
tried
to get up, Hemp stood over it and triggered a long burst of gunfire into its brain, rendering it a mass of bloody, meaty pulp.

No sooner than this threat had been dealt with, I saw five more come around the corner of the building and move in, the eerie eye shine prevalent as they shambled toward where Hemp and Charlie were locked in battle.  Hemp was now preoccupied with two that were closer to Charlie, who had taken down three more but was too engaged to recapture her arrows.  She now had only three arrows remaining in her quiver.  She fired off another that plunged through the side of the head of one of the things that appeared to have been a nurse in a former life.  The creature dropped like a stone, dark congealed blood oozing from the wound.

And now two more moved toward her.  She rushed toward one of the first ones she’d plugged, yanked the arrow out, locked it in and took out another dead walker.

I held my breath watching her through the windshield, my hand on my Uzi.

“Get down, Trina.  On the floor now!”

Trina began to cry, and I said, “Honey, we’ll be okay.  Just get down, please.”

She did.

As I watched in horror, Charlie mounted another arrow and raised the sight to her eye.  She let the arrow fly and it shattered the cheekbone of what might have been a sixteen year old girl in a former life, now staggering along in one Van’s tennis shoe and a destroyed sock.  Its brain was not hit, however, for she kept walking toward Charlie.

I’d had enough.

“Flex, I’m going.  There are too many for them.”

But I looked up and saw that Flex had already exited his truck and held the trigger of his K7 down, blowing the head clean off a former maintenance worker who still wore his tool pouch.  The muck and gore ran down his chest and filled the leather tool carrier with blood and flesh as the animal-human dropped to the pavement.

I dropped the walkie on the seat of the car and said to Trina, “Stay put and lock the doors when Gemmy gets out, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, her tears still flowing.

Charlie had mounted another arrow and as the young girl in the single Van tennis shoe closed to within five feet, she put it through her forehead.  Almost as soon as the piercing wound killed the zombie, Charlie had the arrow extracted by virtue of her boot and a strong grip, and let the same arrow fly at another of the things.

But from the direction of the plane crash, several others moved toward us.  Maybe they’d been feasting on some of the dead passengers who had been scattered around the fuselage, as they were covered with gore and blood.

This brought the total to closer to twenty-five, over half of them already lying still.  As good as Charlie was, and even with Hemp’s and Flex’s help, she’d underestimated, and there were five more zombies coming up on her sides and behind her.

I was out and running, careful to stay out of the lines of fire from Flex and Hemp.

“Heads up, Hemp!” I shouted, running with my Uzi toward the most distant creatures, coming fast.

“Go, Gem!  I got these!” Hemp shouted.  But Charlie was in his line of fire.  “Charlie, drop down, now!” he shouted, and she glanced back and hit the concrete quickly.  Hemp took aim and destroyed two more of the creatures with two three-round bursts.

Charlie leapt back to her feet and said, “Thanks, babe!  You’re a lifesaver!”

I reached the group that had come around the corner.  Two were in lab coats, and to my great fucking relief, neither of them was Max.  I could now see light at the end of the tunnel full of zombies, so just for kicks I started at the first technician’s torso and stitched a line of hot lead up the thing’s neck and right between its eyes.  The others I wasn’t so creative with.  Using two-round bursts, I unceremoniously laid out the other four. 

Charlie took out two more, and suddenly, thankfully, we were at peace again.  Her quiver was empty.

So was my Uzi.

Start to finish, it had taken less than seven minutes.

Charlie looked at me and smiled timidly.  “Sorry, Gem, but I really needed to take some of these fuckers out.  It makes me feel like I’m doing some good in the world.”

“I know,” I said.  “It’s therapeutic.  But I’ve gotten a bit attached to you now, so don’t get yourself killed, okay?  Or turned into one of them.  I’ve had to kill people I love already, and I don’t look forward to ever doing that again.”

Charlie nodded.  “Got it.  I’ll be more careful.  Promise.”

A second later Hemp was by her side, his arm over her shoulders.  “Charlie,” he said.  “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.  I . . . thanks, babe.  Without you guys, I—”

“It’s okay.  I just don’t want to lose you now or ever,” he said.  He pulled her to him and hugged her, and she wrapped an arm around his neck.

Flex approached us and Charlie withdrew from Hemp’s embrace with a soft pat to his chest.  She turned toward Flex.

“Sorry, Flex.”

“For what?  If we wanted to get inside, we had to put these things down.  This is just part of life now, Charlie.  Thanks for having the balls to get the process started.”

“You’re welcome, Flex,” she said, breathing hard.  “Thanks, all of you.  I’ll go get Trina.”

She walked to the car and tapped on the glass.  Trina’s head sprung up, and with a relieved look on her face, she unlocked the door.  Charlie picked her up and carried her along with me, Hemp and Flex toward the building’s entrance door.  We stepped around the mass of dead zombies, careful to watch for live heads.  There were none.

Bunsen stayed in the mobile lab.  The stench didn’t seem to bother her or the pups.

*****

We approached the building and Flex pulled the door.  It opened.

“Shit,” he said.  “Power’s out.  We need to be careful in here.”

Hemp looked at the door handle.  “No muck on the door pull.  I don’t think these things get the process of opening a door yet.”

“Yet,” Flex said.  “And let’s hope they don’t learn.  We know enough scary shit about these things.”

“That’s an understatement,” I said, following the boys inside.  Charlie brought up the rear with Trina in her arms.  She laid the crossbow down just inside and checked her waistband for the Glock, which was still there.  She pulled it out and held it in her firing hand.

We made it up to the lab without being accosted.  Flex peered through the glass to the lab, and saw Max, Cynthia and Taylor inside.  He pulled the door, but it didn’t open.

“Hold on,” Max called upon seeing him through the glass.  “I’ve got it barred.”

He removed something from inside and
the door freed.  We went in
.

“Jesus,” Max said.  “What happened out there?  You guys look wiped.”

“Just a little welcoming party,” I said.  “I guess the twelve you said you saw multiplied.  We ran into about
twenty
out there.”

“I shut down the power.  We were running close and I wanted to save as much fuel as I could for necessities.  I was pretty certain the things wouldn’t be able to get in here.”

“We didn’t run into any inside,” Hemp said.  “Max, do you have everything together?  The stuff we talked about?”

Max nodded.  “Yes, Professor Chatsworth.  Some sniffers and soldering guns, blank circuit boards, and some components, as well as some more medical and lab supplies.  All the food and bottled water we have left, too.”

“I want to get the stuff to the cars and load it up,” Flex said.  “Max, do you have any detailed maps of the
United States
?”

“Some excellent topographical maps,” he said.  “We use them to pinpoint areas of outbreaks and the like.  Wait.”

He went to a cabinet and
removed several long paper tubes, putting them on the table.  He unrolled one.

“This is
a map of
Georgia
, but we’ve got all
of the
states.  Which way are we headed?  Any idea?”

Hemp spoke.  “We’re trying to find an industrial area near a large city, Max.  We want fortification and to be able to house all the vehicles, but we don’t want to be easy targets.  Our ultimate objective is survivability; to have easy access to supplies and at the same time be protected from the abnormals.”