Dead Hunger V: The Road To California (25 page)

“That’s comforting,” I said.  “Get it done, then.”

Ten minutes later, Nelson had pulled the creature’s loose clothing over the top of his own, and the pustule-riddled body of the dead zombie lay nude on the ground at his feet.  Apparently, zombies preferred commando style.

Once he finished buttoning the gore-splattered, filthy and tattered long-sleeved shirt, he looked at me, tried to smile, then bent over and threw up in the street. 

When he stood again, his face was green.  “Fuck, dude,” he said.  “They really stink when you’re in their clothes.”

“I don’t want to think about it,” I said.

Nelson recovered a bit and pulled his arms back through his various gear and weaponry.   He adjusted all the magazines in his nasty pockets and the backpack, picked his bike up, and got on.

The moment he was on, he pointed down the street.  “There!” he said.  “That’s one with some wearable clothes.”

“No way.  Let’s keep looking,” I said.

“Dude, you can’t be choosy, and we don’t have much time.  We’ve still got to get gas and get to wherever they are.”

Nelson was right.  It’s that awkward moment when you realize the stoner has more sense than you sometimes, damn it.

We rode down the street.  I killed me a zombie and changed into her clothes.

*****

             
Chapter Ten             

I had to hike the filthy, ankle-length dress up onto my thighs while I rode the bike.  It was loose enough at the bottom that I didn’t think it would impede my ability to run if necessary, so that was okay.

We’d used the siphon to get gasoline, so with the full fire extinguishers, we were riding pretty heavy.  As I rode, I pulled out the radio.

“Rachel, come in.”

“Hi babe,” answered Serena instead.  “Rachel’s filling the chopper with gas.”

“Cool,” I said.  “It’s been an hour and ten minutes, and we’re on the way now.  I wanted to see if you guys had enough fuel to get airborne for a few and tell us where they are.”

“Hold on,” said Serena. 

She came back on a second later.  “We can do it, but the startup uses a lot of fuel, so it’ll set us back.  Worth it, right?”

“Hella worth it,” I said.  I’m not sure why.

“Where are you guys?” she asked.

“We rode northwest like she said, but we’ve been zigzagging, so I just don’t know how close we are,” I said.  “We’ve passed by a few rotters walking, but if we followed them it would take all damned day.”

“Okay, give us like ten and we’ll get up.  Stay in the middle of the street.  If you’re on bikes, Rachel says she can find you.”

“We are,” I said.  “Tell her to hurry.”

“Duh,” said Serena.

I tucked the radio away.

“There’s another,” said Nelson.  “I got it.”  He rode his bike over to where the rotter walked.  It was a female in the same, deep reddish-brown clothing that they all seemed to wear, if they wore any at all.  Stained from over a year of blood, mud and God knew what else.  Nelson pulled his bike ahead and parked it, then put the kickstand down.

He walked up to it, cautious at first.  “Got pink eyes, but they’re not red,” he said.  He looked at her stomach.  “Nothing showing, either.”

“Nelson, just take it out.”

Nelson looked at me.  “Pardon me if I still like to marvel at the capabilities of WAT-5.”  He raised his bat and twirled it three times as though waiting for the pitcher windup.  Then he swung the bat hard, catching the abnormal just above the ear.

The bat disappeared in the left side of her skull and came out the other side, like cutting the top off a soft boiled egg.

“Oh, shit,” said Nelson, disgusted by his own handiwork.  The rotter fell onto her right side and lay still.

I had been circling, but rode over and stopped, putting my feet down and pulling down my skirt over my jeans.

“You think you’re used to it, huh?” I said, knowing what he was feeling.  “Then you remember they used to be people.”

Nelson looked at me, his face unreadable, tapping the business end of his bat on the asphalt.  “It was really hard at first,” he said.  “I remember standing there, still thinking of them as sick people.  They’d come at me and I’d dodge them, like I was some stupid kid playing tag, and I wasn’t it.”

“I never thought about it like that,” I said.

“So I’d just jump back, playing keep away with my body until I realized they’d never give up until they had their teeth in me.  So it got easier, but never easy.”

We heard the sound of the helicopter, and saw it just off to the southeast.  Nelson slung his bat back over his shoulder and ran back to his bike.  We started riding in big circles in the middle of the street and waving.  It wasn’t long before our motion caught Rachel’s eye and she angled the blades toward us.  The bird followed.

My radio clicked, and I grabbed it.  “Yeah,” I said.

“You’re not far from them,” said Serena.  “They’re two streets over.  You head straight to the next corner and turn right.  Two blocks and you’re there.”

I could barely hear her, but I got what she said.  “Thanks, Serena.”

“Want us to stay airborne and cover from here?”

“No, go back and see if you can fill that gas tank.  If this works out like I planned, we’re gonna burn our way to the bitches,” I said. 

“I hate to sound like a broken record, but be careful,” said Serena.

“Nothing less,” I said.  I waved up toward the helicopter and then motioned them away.  It turned back toward where it had dropped us off.

“Did you hear what she said?” I asked Nelson.

“Yep,” he said.  “Straight down this way.  I’ll follow you.  So when we get there, what’s the deal?  I cut left, you cut right?”

“We’ll just approach them that way,” I said.  “Remember.  We’ve got the nozzles dialed in for a fine stream, so just douse the ones in front and then spray high over them so you rain it down on the crowd a bit.  We need them good and soaked.”

“Got it,” he said.  His smile was completely gone.  Determination replaced it, and I liked what I saw.  I’d seen him determined before, and when he was that, he was good.

I pulled down my dress again.  We rode.

*****

“Stop,” I whispered, and we both pulled the bikes up onto a lawn and peered around the corner of a house.  They had moved from the street – which was not good for my plan – and were now pressing in on a house in the middle of the block.  It looked like all the other houses, so I couldn’t tell what was special about that one.

“Nelson,” I said.  “If they go inside, we just burn the whole thing down and get runners – so to speak – when they come out.”

“Works for me,” he said.

But we waited, and in about seven more minutes, they shambled back into the street, moving as one unit.  The roadway was perhaps thirty feet wide.  The group of shuffling infecteds almost filled the street, curb to curb, with maybe three feet on either side, between the houses.  They were longer than they were wide, though.  I guessed their numbers somewhere near 200 now.  They had definitely been collecting more bodies as they made their way toward where the girls and our helicopter waited.

How they knew where to go I didn’t want to think about, but I didn’t have to, did I?

It was the red-eyes.   Sixth sense.  Telepathy.  How much didn’t we know? 

Long distance telepathy.  That was new.  I wondered if Hemp knew about that yet.

“Okay,” said Nelson.  “We have to go eventually.”

“Get the lighter in your front pocket,” I said.  “We’ll need to strike at the same time before they start to scramble, then we start shooting.”

“Is this gonna work, dude?” asked Nelson.

“Hope so.  WAT-5 should help as long as the red-eyes don’t see us.”

“Then we ditch the bikes for stealth.  Speed’s not as important,” Nelson said.  “They’re not fast.  The bikes got us here, but we don’t need them to do this, plus we’re sitting up so high on these damned things they might see us above the crowd and set their robots onto us.”

I stared at him.  “Dude,” I said.  “I feel like I’m talking to Flex or Hemp.  What happened to you?”

“Some of my shit’s a put-on,” he said.  “People tend to be protective of me and they give me stuff.  I kind of got used to it before I met all of you.  It got me to my Gramps.”

“Now that I know,” I said, “I won’t forget.  “Good idea.  Let’s do it.”

We laid the bikes down and crouched low.  When we reached the outside of the group, I pulled the extinguisher off my back and took the handle.  We’d pressurized the hell out of both of them with the bike pump, and the gauges read FULL.

I detached the nozzle from the clip and held the hose in my hand, looking at Nelson.  He did the same with his.  We nodded at one another and took off.

I started spraying as I ran, soaking the perimeter zombies with gasoline, and then wagging the hose high and low.  I glanced behind me and saw Nelson doing the exact same thing.  We’d practiced it, and it was working exactly as we thought it would.

The creatures walked on.  The smell of gas obviously did not alarm them.  It wasn’t flesh and blood, so they weren’t alerted and our WAT-5 made us a couple of walking nothings to those who did see us.

I reached the front of the crowd and saw Nelson disappear behind the rear.  The canister in my hands still felt full, and the arrow was still in the green, so I continued running and spraying, sure to get it over and deep into the crowd.  I stayed ahead of the advancing group and rounded the next corner, now running parallel to the curb, dousing them on the other side.

I saw Nelson come around, and when he saw me, he could not suppress a smile.  He ran toward me, and I ran toward him.  When we reached one another, I said, “Keep going.  Double up, wet ‘em more.”

He did.  I felt my tank reaching its bottom now, so I sprayed more on the outer creatures, and raised the nozzle as it began to sputter.  Nelson was out of sight, likely in the same position as me, but on the other side of the crowd. 

I pulled out my radio, which was on channel 16.

“Nelson,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Light ‘em up.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the barbeque lighter.  I moved right next to a particularly wet zombie who was about two bodies from the outside perimeter of rotters, and I lit him on fire.

Then I ran back and pulled out my Walther.  The crowd caught quickly, the fire spreading in a huge circle, and I saw the bodies begin to stagger and fall.  As they fell, more of them tripped, stumbling on top of the others, catching fire themselves.

A sort of hiss-pop-screaming began to rise from the crowd, but I wasn’t sure they were zombie voices I heard, rather the sound of gasses escaping rotting pockets within their bloated bodies, and the smoke and smell that started to flood out of the collapsing horde was choking me. 

I shot one who broke free.  I heard Nelson’s gun from somewhere, so knew he was okay. 

Where were the females?  Ten deep had fallen in, and I still did not see them.  The smoke was now thick, and the heat caused them to waver back and forth like macabre mirages.

Then I spotted her.  She stared toward me, her eyes burning red as torches through the smoke, and I raised my gun and fired in her direction.  She pushed through the burning bodies directly toward me and I calmly ejected my magazine and slid another into place.

I lowered my arm and watched her.  My other hand instinctively went for the bat, so there I stood, a Louisville Slugger in one hand – my right – and my Walther PPK in the other.

She caught fire.  I was the only one in a dress here, but I’m sure she got no amusement from it.  I stood there, staying clear of the flames, watching as her clothing ignited even further.  I was amazed to see her pants and blouse burn completely off of her, but the garments were probably nearly rotted before the flames even touched her.

Either way, by the time she was ten feet away she was nude, stepping over the creatures, her skin bubbling and cooking over her skeleton.

And still her eyes glowed.  Had I not been flammable myself, I would have walked into that crowd and emptied the magazine into her brain, but instead I waited for her, my hands trembling.

I stepped back.  Glanced behind me to make sure she wasn’t giving silent commands to some out of my line of sight.  There were none.

I still did not raise my weapon.  In fact, I moved my hands behind me so as not to reveal them to her.  She knew what could harm her, but she had no defense against fire.

I was now about eight feet away from the nearest burning zombie.  She drew to within four feet of me when I raised my Walther and fired six shots into her face.

She stopped, her eyes going instantly dark.  I don’t know why, but I dropped the gun, double-fisted the bat and swung as hard as I ever had, knocking her horrid head cleanly off of her spine, sending it deep into the burning madness.

I watched her body become fully engulfed and burn for a few moments until I was convinced it would not rise again, and when I believed it would not, I reached down and took the Walther back in my hand.  Then I ran around the rear of the crowd, looking for the other one.

I did not see her.  The pyre had consumed them all now, and it was a horrid scene reminiscent of some terrible, Holocaust footage.

“Davey!” I heard Nelson shout, and I ran toward his voice.  As I reached him, I saw another of the red-eyes on the ground in front of him.  He had no doubt had a rerun of what I had been through play out on this side.

And he had been victorious.

“Did you find two?” he asked, his breath ragged as he took in the smoke and fumes of rotting, burning flesh and gasoline.

“No,” I said.  “I don’t know where she is.  Maybe she burned.”

Nelson pointed.  “There!   Over by that house!”

I turned, and sure enough, she was there, her blood-red eyes turned toward us.  Suddenly, she walked in the opposite direction.

“The fucking bikes!” I shouted, and Nelson fired two quick shots at a zombie who had emerged from the mess, laying it down.  Nothing else moved.

I kept my eye on the female.  She was six houses down now.  I noted that she was between a yellow and a blue house, then ran toward the bikes alongside Nelson.