Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles (45 page)

When this was complete, I walked to the MRI machine and began removing the side panel.  I was as quiet as I could be, keeping one eye on Billy and Frank.

As I removed the last screw and pulled off the rear panel, I saw the Helium vent.  It was sealed with foil tape and had several rivets, as perfect as an airframe fuselage, sealing it.

I shook my head.  This would be harder than I thought.
  There had to be another way.

I crawled onto the platform, a few tools in hand, and scooted inside, facing upward.  Three more panels inside.

These snapped on firmly.  I put my screwdriver beneath them and popped the first one out.

Bingo.  I’d found the cooling system channels.  The system was obviously
c
ompletely sealed until the helium left the system, but venting was perhaps the most crucial element of the design aside from the helium itself. 

I anticipated the eight screws that connected the flange to the housing that was positioned directly above my head would reveal the vent shaft that led up through the ceiling.

I inserted my
screw
drive
r
and
began removing the screws, one by one.

As the last screw fell into my open palm, I lowered the panel and stared upward at the curved shaft.

I smiled.

****

Dave had mapped out the route, so he drove.  Gem sat in the back with Flex.

We kept the headlights off, and we didn’t hurry.  The Crown Vic was newer, but because of its considerable weight – from the ballistic steel body and ultra-thick glass – the engine was a monster, and could be throaty.  We didn’t need someone hearing us through the silent darkness.

We were about six miles into our trip when Dave called out, “Holy shit!”

No sooner did the words leave his mouth did we feel the car lift slightly and begin bouncing down the roadway as though carried atop shifting, rolling rubber balls.

We stared through the front windshield and none of us could believe our eyes.

Rats.  A sea of them flowing across the roadway, heading west.  They were everywhere, covering every inch of the street, beneath our tires, lifting us and making control nearly impossible.

“Don’t slow down!” said Flex.  “Just crank the wheel and try to stay on the road!”

“Where the hell did they
all
come from?” I said. 

“Where the hell are they going?” asked Dave, his hands struggling with the wheel.

The car floated now on the sea of infected rat bodies, being carried off the road.  A steep embankment came into view, dropping off about five feet down, and we came precariously close to the edge when Dave gunned the engine, spinning the rats under the wheels away, and biting into solid asphalt.  The car lurched forward, and again became uncontrollable as forward became backward, and we found ourselves looking at Tony’s vehicle behind us, going through the same thing.  He was driving a more economical Scion XB, and seemed to be able to maneuver the small car with greater ease than Dave was.

As our vehicle spun around again to face forward,
a face hit the windshield.   It was a man’s face, horribly disfigured, the eyes open in a dead, hungry stare.  Dave cranked the wheel hard
again
, jolting the car to the left, and the zombie slid off, its fingers attempting to cling to the glass with no success.

“Shit!” said Gem.  “Is this how it’s been here?”

“Not until right now,” I said.  “Dave, you okay?”

“I’m fucking concentrating on keeping us on the road!”
He stared outward, his eyes wide.  “Look!”

Ahead on the street, in the very faint moonlight, the road appeared to be black, flowing lava.  Interspersed among the rats were human zombies.  They all walked westward, the shufflers walking among the
undead rats.

For every hundred rats there was a
former
human, all now craving the same nourishment, all heading toward a destination unknown to us.

“Why tonight?  Why that direction?  Where the hell are they all going?”

The car
slid
sideways,
slamming
into a woman’s
body
, whose head hit the window beside Gem and dropped beneath the car.  The rear tires lurched up and over her as Dave
pressed the accelerator.

And
then, as sud
denly as they had appeared, they were gone, the
roadway open again.

I looked behind us, and saw the melee’ continuing its progression west.

“Did we just cross the fuckin’ zombie expressway?” asked Flex.

None of us answered.  We watched the road ahead and hoped that didn’t happen again.

As we hit Webster, the road that would ultimately lead us to
Harbor Road
, we saw an elephant.

That wasn’t a typo.  And an emaciated
lion and a
tiger
in similar physical shape
. 
A full-grown giraffe appeared to have fallen across the road, and a hundred rats lined up along its neck like newborn pups on a nine-foot row of nipples.

Dave hit the gas and we hit the giraffe’s neck like a speed bump and surged over with a hard landing on the other side.

“Fuck!” said Dave.

All the animals but the giraffe
were
extremely emaciated and
in the throes of death, buried in rats and human zombies, tearing into their flesh, legs kicking their last violent resistance to being consumed.

The giraffe appeared to have been dead a while.

“Looks like the fuckin’ zoo let out,” said Flex.  “How did they survive so long?”

“I think we know the answer to that,” said Gem.  “They ate each other.”

“How did they get out tonight?” I asked, picking up the radio from the seat.

“I’m breaking silence.”  I pushed the button.  “Tony, do you know anything about this?”

“I think I do,” his voice came.  “Some guys at ZFZ6 were considering releasing the animals at the zoo.  They thought they’d kill Carville’s guys.  Unsuspecting and all.”

“Looks like all they did was create a smorgasbord for the goddamned zombies,” Gem said.
  “Must have been what drew the rats and zombies westward in a bunch.”

Dave drove in silence
now
.

“Dave, you okay?” I asked.

“No,” he said.  “That’s fucked up.”

I pushed the button again.  “Tony, if you see them, tell them they’re idiots.  Complete fucking idiots.  Where’s the zoo?”

“About a mile from Carville’s.  Inland,” he said.

“Okay.  Thanks.”  I looked at the others.  “I don’t know about you, but primates have been in the back of my mind since this started.”

“Mine, too,” said Dave.  “They’re a lot like us.  But they have sharp teeth and claws.  I wonder if they had any gorillas in that zoo.”

“That might be a stretch for a local zoo,” said Flex.

I clicked on again.  “Tony?”

“Yep?”

“Any gorillas?”

“Yep.  Molly.”

“Fuck!” said Dave. 

We got to the ma
rina fifteen minutes later.

****

With the screws in the pocket of my lab coat, I went over to the gurneys and pulled the sheets from over Veronica and Raymond. 
They immediately struggled against their restraints, and as I stood there, equally disgusted and fascinated by their very existence, I knew what I had to do.

I had to test the wafer.

There was an obvious problem, though.  Solving it wouldn’t be easy, so I put it aside for the moment.  I had to complete my blocking of the helium ventilation system.  I carried the wadded up sheets that once blinded the zombies as sheets over a parrot’s cage did, and I rushed back to the MRI machine, throwing a glance over my shoulder toward Billy and Frank. 

Frank stared at me.  He raised a hand in a tired wave.

“Why you running, Hemp?” he asked.

“I’m doing an experiment,” I lied.  “Time is the most crucial component of any test, and I performed a similar one earlier, and I must match the speed.”

I had no idea what I’d just said, so questions would be a bad development.  Frank just nodded and yawned.

I kept my eye on him until he was out again.  When his head bobbed forward, I slid into the MRI machine and quickly stuffed one sheet, wadded into a tight ball, into the ventilation shaft.  I pushed it as hard as I could, then wadded the remaining sheet similarly and stopped.

I pulled it back out and ran to the sink.  The water on, I ran the sheet beneath it until it was soaked and heavy.  The water would fill in the pores of the material, making it more dense and less able to allow the helium to pass through.

I was back at the machine in less than two minutes, had it stuffed up behind the other sheet, and compacted in.  I set to work screwing the cover plate back on.

Twenty minutes and I was snapping the plastic housing back over the plate.

Voila.

Now to figure out how to
either
stay awake after taking the wafer
or coming up with something to wake me up
.  I could not afford to go out
, and if it were unavoidable, then I mustn’t be out long
. 

I had awakened Monty after giving him the wafer,
but
I had nobody to awaken me.  I needed some sort of physical alarm clock.

Looking around t
he lab, an idea began to form.

I knew at that moment that
I would make my escape tonight. 
I had the wafers, I knew how to make more. 
I checked the clock on the wall.  I’d been in the lab for two hours.  That put it at near a quarter to three, give or take.  Nobody usually stirred until at least six.  They usually brought me my breakfast around 7:30
in the morning
.

This could work.

I went to the MRI machine
and went through the power up sequence on the touch screen monitor.  I looked again at the thick acrylic walls
, hoping
the
clear but thick material
would keep all the metal from flying
toward the machine
from all points in the room, while at the same time, allowing the resulting explosion to shatter the walls of my prison.

After, of course, I figured out where to hide.

The machine began to hum.  It would take a while.  I had set it to standby mode, but it would begin the process of activating the powerful magnet, therefore engaging the cooling system.

The minuscule idea that had sprung up in my mind had blossomed, as ideas in my head usually did.  I pulled the Bunsen burner from below the work table and a nine-inch burner tripod along with it.  I looked at the floor alongside the workbench.  I needed a location where I would not be noticed immediately.  There were some places in the lab where I had sometimes been out of view, but it wouldn’t do if anyone saw me lying on the floor.

You see, I
’d given up on not going to sleep.  There was no way for me to stay awake if the transformation between aromatic and neutral required it physically.

Knowing
the wafer would knock me out for a time
, I simply had to create a tool to wake me again.

This would work.

I slid the contraption to the very edge of the work bench.  Then I got a fifty milliliter
borosilicate beaker from the shelf, filled it to within an eighth inch of the top with water, and placed it on the burner, the spout side facing the edge.
  Pyrex, if you insist.  But that is a brand name, and you realize, of course, that I like to be very specific for the purposes of posterity.

I opened the propane valve,
squeezed
the striker and lit the burner.  The flame licked the bottom of the glass beaker.

I peered over the table once more, saw Billy and Frank were still out, and reached into the drawer
to
withdraw a
single
wafer from the
stash inside my
latex glove.

I put it in my mouth and chewed, watching the tiny bubbles beginning to form at the very bottom of the beaker
as the water within warmed
.

Kneeling at first, I lay down on the floor in the fetal position, my back to the counter.  I didn’t know how long it would take me to fall asleep, but when the water within the beaker began to boil, it have expanded enough to sputter in significant enough quantities to splash me with scalding hot water, just on the floor below.

If that didn’t wake me, then I was never to awaken.