Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles (14 page)

Trina’s feet were off the floor.  “No shit, mommy! 
I can have a
Snickers?”

“If there
are
Snickers,” said Gem, “and there are enough, yes, go right ahead.”

Reeves looked at
Trina, then at
us, his eyes wide.

“It’s a long story,” said Gem, a grin on her face.

Flex jumped in while I choked on my words. 

“If you don’t mind, just
Hemp, Cynthia, Gem
, Charlie, Dave a
nd my
self will go in.  Lisa, do you mind keeping an eye on the girls for us?”

She looked tired.  Shaking her head, she said, “No problem.  They’ve got some cards.  We’ll play.”

“Follow me, folks,” said Dan.  “I’ll lead you to sugar heaven.”

As they ran away, Trina smacked
Taylor
on the arm and said excitedly, “Fuckin’ Snickers,
Tay
!”

I shook my head, but couldn’t help but smile. 
Everyone waved
as they
followed Dan away.  Reeves led us into a large office on the west side of the building, where we all plopped down into brass-tacked, leather armchairs that gleamed, despite their
obvious
antique status.
  Whit pulled up a chair on the side of Reeves’ desk.

“Good group,” said Reeves.  “How’s it been for you?”

“Tough,” said Gem.  “We kill ‘em and we kill ‘em and there are always more to kill.”

Reeves nodded.  “Have you learned anything?”

I spoke up.  “We’ve learned a lot.  We’re here because of what we learned.  Before we share it, however, I’d like to know what you’ve learned.  And let me start out by mentioning that I hold a degree in Epidemiology, and have worked for the CDC in some very high level scenarios.”

“Fair enough,” said Reeves.  “I can’t tell you the feeling I just got hearing that.  We’ve got a lot of people in
Concord
, but I can also tell you that the outlying areas are dangerous.  Infested, you might say.”

“There aren’t many places that aren’t dangerous, Mr. Reeves,” said Charlie.  “We put together a good family between the seven of us.  Our core group has not only kept us alive, it’s kept us sane.”

“Along with some Sex Pistols,” I added.  I tipped my head toward Charlie.  “For her, anyway.”

“You’re not going to believe this,” said Reeves.  He reached into his desk and pulled out an MP3 player.  He slid it over to Charlie.  “Check it out.”

She powered it up and put the buds in hear ears, then started bopping her head up and down, a smile as big as Texas on her lips. 

“Dude!” she yelled over the music only she could hear.  “No feelings, for anybody else!” she sang, and it echoed through the air of the enormous room.  She pulled off the ear buds and stared.

“You?”

“No,” he said.  “Not me.”  His face went from smiling to morose.  He powered down the MP3 player and put it back in the drawer.

“My daughter’s.  She gave it to me before she went to college.  Told me to hold onto it for her.  Said to listen to it whenever I missed her, and it would remind me not to miss her
so
much.”

I stared at him, saw the pain there.  I knew what had happened without hearing him say it.

“I’m not saying she’s one of them,” he said.  “I don’t know.  The moment we got word of what was going on, I tried to call her, but she never picked up her cell.”

“Where did she go to school?” asked Charlie.

“
Georgia
State
,” he answered.

“We came from
Georgia
,” said Flex.  “But Mr. Reeves, there are survivors everywhere.  Scattered, and in danger, but they’re there.  We ran into a few groups in
Georgia
.  She could be among them.”

“
You can call me Mr. Reeves if you want, but Kev is fine, too.  I
’m not so much the mayor anymore as a guy people trust.”

His hair was cropped short – not as short as Flex’s, but evenly, and it was salt and pepper black and gray.  He looked like he’d be as comfortable in a boat on a lake
with a fishing rod in his hand as he would be sitting
in the high-backed leather chair at the governor’s old desk
signing a bill into law
.

“I never wanted to run the place once the shit hit the fan.  Then everyone started coming to me, asking me what to do.  If people weren’t leaning on me so hard for leadership, I’d –”

“You’d go find your daughter,” said Gem.  “So would I.”

“If I’m honest, I might yet.  So here’s the deal.  We’ve been mostly on the defensive since this thing started.  We’ve seen power grids go down one by one, and while this particular area of New Hampshire doesn’t seem to be affected as much as other areas, we’ve had our converts.”

“Converts?  You mean people turning to zombies?” asked Cynthia.

“Exactly.  Zombies.”  He laughed, but he wasn’t smiling.  “It’s what they are, isn’t it?”

“How about your cemeteries?” asked Hemp.  “Are you seeing activity?”

“
We found out what happens to them from Walter Lovell, our funeral director.  Turns out a couple of his charges got off the tables completely gussied up in their burial makeup and chased him out of there.”

“Jesus,” said Gem.  “I’d have shit.”

He laughed, and this time he did smile.  “About the graveyards,
I think if I allow my brain to go there, I’ll just
check out and
go insane,” said Kev.  “We are, though.
  Not a lot, but we are.”

I looked at the others.  “So,” I said, “the cemeteries are placed in locations with less granite, I’m assuming.  To allow for proper depth.”

“I suppose.  I never had anything to do with stuff like that,” said Kev.  “What’s the deal?  How is this happening?”

I sighed and looked at the others, who nodded.  I gave it all to Mr. Reeves.
The short, but complete story, ending with how we’d lost our remaining urushiol in a grand theft auto debacle.

Rather than more defeated
at the news of the world outside the gates of
Concord
,
New Hampshire
, he was energized at our news of the urushiol.

“It makes sense
that I made it
,” he said.  “My dad and I were camping once and walked into a field full of poison oak.  He got a crazy bad rash on his ankles that looked like quarter sized blisters.  I didn’t get a thing.”

“Your immunity to urushiol isn’t likely the only reason,” I said.  “The granite substrate – the only reas
on we came here –
is what
protected around 40% of your population.
”

Whit had said nothing up until now, but at that, he chimed in.  “What’s the normal percentage?  That aren’t getting this thing.”

“We’re figuring only around 10%.  If you’re at around 50%,
we can attribute 10% to natural immunity and the rest to
the granite doing what we thought it would,” I explained.

“So we’re safe here?” asked Whit.

Everyone looked at me, and I didn’t want to say what was on my mind.  But I had to say it, because it mattered.

“
Safer, not safe. 
Are any of you familiar with the helium shortage?”

Everyone looked at each other.  Charlie shrugged
, then slapped me on the arm
.

“We’ve been together all this time and you never mentioned the helium shortage?  What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Everyone laughed.  It was a nice break in the
tension.

“Helium is released as a bi-product of extracting fossil fuels from the earth.  We use it to cool MRI machines and super conductors
, and i
t’s a very important
element
for medical research, and even for future developments of new technologies.”

“And it’s cool to
talk like a chipmunk and
use in balloons, don’t forget,” said Gem.

“Yes, and that’s the problem,” I said.  “There was so much of it that
it was priced extremely low, and because of that, we
used it for fun.  Making things float, making our voices high.  But the problem is, when helium is released, it leaves Earth’s atmosphere and goes into space.  Then it’s gone forever.  And while it’s the second most common element in the universe, there is a finite amount here on Earth.”

“Okay.  How does this tie into the gas coming from the earth?”
asked
Whit
.

“It doesn’t, but it explains how helium dissipates
, and why when it’s gone, it’s gone
.  No matter how much of it was released into the atmosphere, it would never build up.  It leaves, and it’s gone.  I have no way of knowing if this zombie gas does the same thing.”

I watched their faces.  Finally
Reeves
said, “So you’re saying this gas that continues to come up from the ground – in
Concord
in small amounts –
rather than leaving the atmosphere,
could build up
and eventually
turn this place the same as everywhere else?”

I nodded.  “Exactly.  It’s lighter than air, but how it accumulates is unknown.  As I’ve said, it could continue for months, years, a millennium.  There’s no possible way to know.”

Charlie shifted in her seat and spoke up.  “But
babe
, what happens?  If the immunity to urushiol can be hereditary, then isn’t it likely that a generation down the road, it’s all over?  We kill them until they’re all gone, and everyone born is immune?”

Shrugging didn’t seem to be the right response.  So instead, I said, “Maybe.”

“Okay,” said
Dave Gammon, who had been very quiet throughout the meeting, along with Cynthia
. 
He sat there stroking his kinky beard, watching the eyes of everyone who spoke, and it appeared he was just taking it all in.
 
“I really,
really
need to ask about the rats now.”

Reeves looked at us.  “We’ve noticed something strange about them
, too
.”

“What?” asked Flex.

“I fuckin’ knew it,” said Dave.  “Sorry, but I was waiting for someone to bring it up, and nobody did.”

“Thanks,” said Cynthia.  “It’s all I can think about.  Zombies I’m getting used to, but rats scare the crap out of me.”

“You’re getting used to . . .
zombies
?” asked Reeves.

“In a manner of speaking,” said Cyn, with a slight smile.  “I’m
more
comfortable
shooting
them
now than in the beginning
. 
But
I imagine rats crawling up my legs, and
that
I can’t take.”

“Make it two of us,” said Gem.”

“We were taken by surprise, I’m sure like the rest of the country.  At first I was hearing from other heads of state and city mayors that I was familiar with, but that didn’t last long.  The phones died, and the people died.”

He looked at us, his face grim.  “Then they came back.”

“They do that,” said Gem.

“So we naturally tried to treat it like any disease at first.  That didn’t last.  The hospitals became overrun with them.  We ended up firebombing Concord General.”

“Shit,” said Flex.

“Yeah,” Reeves said.  “Then we wised up.  We put together militias and went out hunting.  Every volunteer we could find.  And we found them and killed them w
h
ere they were found.  Then we hauled them in dump trucks into parking lots and had a burning.”

“All over the city?”

“No,” said Reeves.  “Within a certain radius of where the population was concentrated.  There are plenty of places on the outskirts that could be infested, if that’s the right word.”

I think we all realized at that very moment that it had been no picnic in
Concord
a few months ago.  It was through their dedicated efforts that we could sit here now and not be on edge.  They’d done the hard work, as we had.  The only difference was that we were up against a much higher percentage than these folks had been. 

They had some chance at success, and they achieved it
– at least enough to have some down time
.

“So Mr. Reeves, what have you noticed about the rats?” asked Dave, his intense blue eyes staring.

“They’re dying,” said Whit.

“And staying dead?” asked Gem.

“What do you mean?” asked Reeves.

“
When did you notice it
?” I asked.

“The last couple of days. 
Down in the basement of the building.  We were checking it out in case we needed a last line of defense.  Thinking about stocking it up with provisions to last a few months. 
Why?”