Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles (38 page)

“Good point,” said Dave. 
“Maybe they are.”

“Let’s find that boat.  What time is it?”

“Four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“We go at dark.  What’s the zombie situation?”

“There are a lot of bodies out there,” said Dave.  “And a few movers.  We need to be careful as hell.  And quiet.  Urushiol and crossbow.  Nothing else.”

“Right,” I said.

“Oh.  One more thing,” said Dave.

“What?”

“There have been like six chopper flyovers since you went out. 
I don’t know that they’re looking for us
in particular.  But they’re looking.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

We started on our plan.  It was pretty much as skeletal as the
digger
zombies
from the
graveyards
, but it was a start.

****

Chapter 14

Carville’s men delivered the
normal and affected rats
to the lab the
following morning.

They’d
found three unaffected rats and had
captured five of the zombie variety
.

Frank and Billy had become my regular guards, and I was glad.  They were just people trying to survive, and they treated me just fine.  So far, anyway.

One normal rat, which
I didn’t include
in
the previous
numbers, was bitten by the
affected rats
, but so far hadn’t changed.  I hoped it
wouldn’t, but I didn’t have high hopes.

I had to come up with some list of experiments I was attempting; something to keep Carville at bay.  He would expect something from me by way of an approach to the problem.  If I were to analyze it from a fresh perspective, there’s no way I would ever reach the conclusion the illness could be reversed.  I told Flex that the moment he said his sister was wrapped in that swimming pool plastic.

They had already died.  It was the biological reaction that kept them functioning as they did, and I didn’t even understand that.

Carville wasn’t an unintelligent man, no matter what persona he sometimes broadcast on television.  He was shrewd, and that shrewdness wasn’t likely limited to his real estate dealings.  He could call bollocks on someone and probably be correct nine out of ten times.

So I began writing, using the most scientific terminology I could.  I described my experiment of utilizing the zombie gas and the eye vapor in one blend.  The only part I left out was adding the urushiol.

I would have to explain where the urushiol went, though.  He could see that some of it was gone, so I needed an excuse.

I looked over at Frank and Billy.  They would be my answer.

“Want to get involved?” I asked Billy.  “Little experiment?”

Billy looked immediately apprehensive.  “What, Professor?”

“This oil,” I said.  “I’d like to put a little dab on the inside of your wrist.  See if you show an allergic reaction to it.”

“Nah, I don’t think so.  Thanks anyway.”

“Billy, you’re likely immune to it.  It’s why you didn’t  change into one of them.  This is the test.”

“The test is I didn’t turn,” said Billy.  “Test on Frank if he’ll let you.”

“What the hell,” said Frank.  “You say I’m likely already immune?”

“Yes.  99.5% certain,” I said.

“
What do you need?” he asked, walking toward the glass.

I got a cotton swab and put it into the narrow tube of urushiol.  I swirled it around and looked at Frank.  “Just hold your wrist up to the holes here,” I said.

He held up the inside of his wrist, and I withdrew the swab.  I poked it through the hole in the acrylic walls and swirled it around on his wrist.  “Even the residual effect of this would protect you against the creatures,” I said.  They oil may seem to be gone, but with a little saliva, it reactivates.”

That was a lie.  But I got Billy’s attention.

“Really?  Like a weapon?”

“Yeah.  For a couple of showers, anyway.”

“Hell, I’ll do it, too.”

“Hold your wrist up,” I said.

He did, and I did the same thing to him.  I didn’t re-dip the swab, though, and he didn’t notice.  I needed to keep the urushiol
I had
for other things, and this could explain away the amount I was down to Carville.

“There you go,” I said.  “Thanks.”

I went back to write in my noteboo
k
.  They returned to their position by the wall.

“A little Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Professor?” said Billy.

“I was thinking some Pink Floyd,” I answered.  “Can you pull that off?”

“Shit yes,” said Billy.  “He’s got all of them.”

“Good enough,” I said.

Frank settled in, and Billy retreated down the hall.

I pulled the liquid nitrogen container out and withdrew the one inch diameter wafer I’d created with my three component blend.

The cage with the normal rats was on the counter.  The zombie rats were kept in a clear acrylic cage with a hinged hatch  on the top.  The walls were smooth as glass and eighteen inches tall.  This prevented them from being able to climb out, even at full stretch. 

Like human zombies, they watched me intently, staring out, their pink eyes never wavering.

Pink eyes.  I wondered.

Did they have the vapor?  Could they generate it?

I went to the refrigerator and got some of the bovine brains brought to me at Carville’s orders.  I opened the butcher paper and cut a
one
-inch square chunk off, then wrapped the paper around it again and put it back in the refrigerator.

I opened the hatch on the top, and the three in this cage stared upward, mouths working.  I picked up and dropped the brain chunk down inside with a
tweezers
.

They
pounced on it
and attacked the piece of brain as though it were alive.  Seconds later it was completely gone, and they turned their eyes back to me, where they remained.  Pink.  No pinker than before, and no clouds of coral-colored mist.

I opened the hinged lid all the way and put my hand within four inches of them.  They still stood on their hind legs at full stretch, so I wasn’t concerned they could reach and bite me.  They gnashed, gnawed, stretched and bit the air, but nothing else.

No vapor.

Good.  I got my notebook and recorded my findings.  This was the first good news I’d gotten since I’d arrived here, and again, it had nothing to do with any cure for Ryan Carville’s daughter and brother.

I’d isolated the single rat who’d been bitten, and realized I had an opportunity.  I could give him some of the wafer I’d created with my blend and see what it did for him.

Damn it, I thought.  That’s not good enough.  If I gave it to him and he never turned, I would not have known if he was ever going to.  We’d barely had any experience with humans turning, and the rats didn’t have the vapor, so they were different already – I knew that now.  But
how
different?

Pink Floyd’s Pigs on the Wing Part 1 began wafting from the ceiling speakers.  It was the perfect music to keep my mind occupied as I worked.

“Good choice,” I said, almost to myself.

I made my decision.  I would wait.  But I’d use the wafer on an unaffected rat.  I snapped on a new pair of gloves and reached into the cage to get hold of one of the Norway Rats they’d caught.  I held it up.

“What have you got that makes you different
than those freaks
?” I asked.  “Why didn’t you turn?”

His little whiskers danced in the air, and his eyes did their best to avoid mine.  Then I laughed.

I needed a damned blood sample!  I put him back in a cage
by himself
,
retrieved a small straight razor from the lab’s excellent tool kit, and
prepared a syringe.

Ordinarily, a cardiac puncture is the method I would use, allowing me to draw several milliliters of blood.  The only problem with this method is the needle is inserted into the rat’s heart, and the procedure ultimately kills the animal.

I needed these rats alive.  I chose the
Saphenous Vein method, which is difficult, to say the least, with one person.  I didn’t think I would have too much luck asking Billy or Frank to assist, so I figured I’d muddle through.

I lifted the rat out of the cage again, held it down on the table and shaved the inside of its left leg, up to the groin.  Once the skin was smooth and clean, I was ready to move on.

In this case, I would only use the needle to puncture the vein, and I’d force the blood from the rat by
using my thumb or by
pumping its leg in and out
if that wasn’t effective enough
. 

Again, h
olding the rat down on its back with the palm of my left hand, my left thumb was free to press against the rat’s inner thigh to emphasize the Saphenous vein. 

Extending the rat’s leg by pulling on it between my right thumb and forefinger, I got the vein where I wanted it.  Using a tiny zip tie, I held the rat’s leg out with the assistance of a small, heavy vise that gripped the other end of the zip tie, and
I then jabbed
directly into the vein with the
tip of
needle
, quickly withdrawing it
.

The blood flowed.  I got my Microvette tube and
scraped it against the rat’s leg, scooping
the blood into it as I continued pumping the rat’s inner thigh with
my thumb.  Soon I had enough.

I looked over at the acrylic cage containing the zombie rats, and they were crawling over one another, pressing against the side of the cage, all staring at my little patient.  They bit one another to get a clear view, and not surprisingly, I wasn’t worried that they’d kill one another.  Not one bit.

Because it couldn’t happen.

I don’t
believe
my
rat
patient
could’ve been
any happier than I
was
that it was over.  I
held
it up
and looked at its little face again.  “Thank you for your participation,” I said,
and put it back in the cage after blotting at the vein with a cotton swab, making
sure it was clotting properly.

Now the zombie rats stared at me again.

“Fuck off,” I said, immediately thinking of Gem. 

I laughed.  My new friends were a crazy bunch, and I missed them a lot.

As for the rat, now that I had the blood sample, I
could experiment with it.  I watched it for a few moments, confirmed that it suffered no ill-effects from the blood draw, and got it a piece of cheese.

It ate the cheese in short order, and still looked fine.  No signs of changing into one of the zombie rats, or
Ratz
, as I was writing in my log to differentiate them from the others.  The z on the end was very telling.

I didn’t give the rat much cheese
, because
I wanted it hungry for my wafer.  I had no idea how
appetizing it would be, either, so I accepted that it might have to be administered within a chunk of cheese or just put down its throat.

I took the small
wafer
from its wrapping and broke it in two.  I held it out to the rat inside, through the standard cage bars.

The rat sat on its haunches and stared at me.  It looked up at me, then down at the wafer.

Me.

The wafer.

Then it moved forward slowly, its whiskers twitching.  It stopped two inches from my fingers, its nose sniffing the air.  I moved it closer.  It extended its head, opened its mouth, and snatched the experimental cake in its mouth, swallowing it down.

Ten minutes later, it was asleep.

I moved over to
Raymond
and Veronica on the carts, looking at their forms beneath the sheets.  I hadn’t uncovered them today at all.  I didn’t have any reasons to do so unless there were experiments involving them, and since I had to be careful not to hurt them, I really had to do any tests I had in mind on the ratz.

I couldn’t feed them, because I didn’t want the vapor problem.  I’d already told Carville that feeding them provided nothing but a momentary satisfaction of their cravings for human meat and brains anyway, and the moment they were done they craved more.  It was like a chain smoker.  It didn’t matter when the last cigarette was – the only important thing was the next one.
 
Exchange cigarettes for fl
esh and brains.  Same addiction, far more horrible implications.