The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (127 page)

Flex closed one twitching eye, took careful aim and fired a single round at the satellite dish.

The sound of reverberating metal echoed through the blazing night.

Flex trudged back to their rendezvous site, rubbing his forehead and silently cursing his aging body.

*****

Chapter Fifteen

A partition had been pulled between Kev’s hyperbaric chamber and the others in the room.

Rebecca Dovorany sat on a gurney beside Kimberly Dodd.  They had both taken the wafer, and neither had fallen unconscious.

It was the first real sign that Hemp had seen to confirm this vapor was entirely different than other.  There was no becoming immune to the knockout power of the WAT-5 wafers.  You ate it, you said good night until someone brought you out of it.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Scofield sat on an opposite gurney and stared at them.  Occasionally he scratched his beard, but he did not look away.

“Why’s that guy staring at me?” asked Rebecca.

“Not starin’,” he said.  “Monitorin’.  Don’t you remember my name?”

“Doc?”

“Close enough.  What do you think, Hemp?  How you gonna be able to tell what it does?”

“For God’s sake!” said Hemp, turning and rushing across the room.  He went to the dome containing the head of Blue Eyes and yanked out the tube supplying the oxygen.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Scofield, walking up beside him, taking his eyes off the girls for the first time.”

Hemp lifted the dome.  The head was still.  The eyes closed.  The mouth hung open, exposing the nastiness of its mouth and rotted teeth.

He reached into a drawer, withdrew some latex gloves, and pulled them on.  Using his thumbs, he lifted the eyelids.

The eyes had rolled up in their sockets.  Hemp lifted the head, the palms of his hands on each side, and raised it up to look directly at it.  Straggling veins and tendons hung down.

“Jesus, gross!” said Rebecca.

“I have to agree,” said Kimberly, turning away.  “Can we leave, or can you do that somewhere else?”

Hemp did not address their concerns, rather he said, “She’s dead.”

“Duh,” said Rebecca.  “Doesn’t take a scientist to know that.  They’re all dead.”

“No, this one is dead,” he said.  Hemp looked at Scofield.  “Do you realize what this means?”

“I think I do,” said Scofield.  “But tell me anyway.”

“If she died – meaning she is no longer reanimated, and she no longer has a hunger – then it was as a result of being isolated from the ZG.”

Scofield looked at him for a long moment.  Then he said, “This means when the gas stops, they all …
die
?”

Hemp smiled, and looked again at Blue Eyes.  He put her gently back down onto the cake plate, and covered her with the glass dome.  She remained still.  He turned to Scofield, still smiling.  “That is exactly what it means for now,” he said.

“What do you mean for now?”

“I mean that she’s dead for now,” said Hemp.  “Removed from the oxygen environment and returned to the air contaminated with ZG, she may well reanimate again.”

Rebecca laughed.  “That’s like having a death, near death experience.”

“What?” asked Kimberly.  Despite her disgust at the sight of the zombie’s head, she stared at it for a moment, then said, “Oh, I get it.  She’s already dead, and then she died for a while and if she comes back … got it.”  She playfully slapped Rebecca on the arm.

“Don’t  fucking touch me,” said Rebecca.  She wasn’t smiling.

Kimberly looked at Doc Scofield.  “See what I meant?”

Scofield shook his head.  “So what are we gonna do, professor?  You needed her to see if she could get in these girls’ heads?”

Kimberly hopped off the gurney and moved to the other one that Scofield had vacated.  She didn’t look at Rebecca.

Hemp sighed.  “Exactly.  Now we either have to wait to see if Blue Eyes wakes up, or we have to get another smart female.”

“Huntin’.  Not my game,” said Scofield.

Vikki walked in the room.  She had remained there for the first twenty minutes or so after the girls had taken the wafers, but when nothing happened, she got bored and went back into the room with the others.

“What’s up?  Any changes?”

Kimberly shook her head.  “Shh.  They’re figuring something out.  Important stuff.”

“Hunting isn’t my game either,” said Hemp.  “But in the name of science and medicine, we do what we have to do, don’t we, Jim.”

“Now don’t go tryin’ to get on my good side by callin’ me Jim,” he said.  “You ever seen me fire a gun?”

“I’ll go!” said Vikki.  “What are we hunting?”

“Fuckin’ zombies,” said Scofield.  “Maybe I’d better go.”

“Bullshit!” said Vikki.  “I know guns, Doc.  I can’t tell you how many times I was at the rifle range just in the six months before the gas started.”

“Then how did you end up in that church unprotected?” asked Hemp.

“I didn’t say I used my own guns,” she said.  “They were my boyfriend’s, so they were at his house.”  She looked at Kimberly.  “I wonder what ever happened to him.  We quit dating like a month before this shit.”

Kimberly shrugged.  “He drank too much.”

“So did my husband,” said Vikki.  “I know how to pick ‘em.”

Kimberly put her arm around her.  “Don’t go.”

“I’m good,” said Vikki.  “And you need someone to control your mind.  I don’t think any of us wants Hemp to go alone.”

Kimberly looked at Hemp.  “Are you going to let her?”

“I just need one,” said Hemp.  “You’re really good?”

“Try me before we take off,” said Vikki.  “Damn, I can’t wait!  I haven’t done anything cool since we got here.”

“The karaoke was pretty cool … for a while,” said Rebecca.

“You never sang.”

“No, but I drank warm beer and watched.”

“Let’s go, Hemp,” she said.  “I take it this is pretty dire?”

“It really depends largely on the result.”  He peeked behind the partition at Kev, who had fallen asleep inside his chamber.  His chest still rose and fell, which comforted Hemp.   He had a good feeling about the prospect of success.

“Okay,” he said.  “Let’s go.  I think Kev has cuffs out there.  I want to bring them in case we need them.  I also want to take WAT-5.  If any females are still drawn to us, they’ll be the ones we go after.”

“Say the word,” said Vikki.  “I’m ready.”

She hugged her sister and waved as she and Hemp left the room.

*****

The group stood at the door that Flex had found.  Flex still  had grass and dirt on his jacket, and an angry red mark shaped like the chin of the beast with which he had collided on his forehead.

“You okay, man?” asked West.

“Yeah,” said Flex.  “You guys see a big boy?  About eight feet tall?”

“He wasn’t quite eight feet, but I got him,” said Bell.  “That what you ran into?”

Flex nodded.  “Like a goddamned wall.”

Bell held up the Smith & Wesson .40 caliber.  “My first kill with this puppy.”

“Congrats,” said West.  “You’ll never forget it.”

“Okay, when we go inside, everyone stay together.  We’ll pull this door closed so it’s not an invitation for every dead fucker in the vicinity to join the party.”

Flex checked the group.  Eddie and Ian gripped their weapons like they feared an invisible entity would snatch them from their hands at any moment, and Flex knew how they felt.  Both under seventeen years old, this was exhilarating and terrifying to them at the same time.

Understandably so
, Flex thought. 
But they’re holding their own, at least on the outside.

“Headlamps,” said Flex. 

Flex kept a supply of them in his vehicle at all times; darkness was not a friend to the living.  And while he had never discussed it with Hemp, he had a notion that the dead eyes of the zombies were fixed, dilated, and able to see in the dark scads better than the living.  Just a feeling, borne of experience with them.

“Okay.  Let’s move.”

They all turned their lights on as they stepped into the hallway.  This was not one of the cellblocks, but a visitor wing.  Bodies lay everywhere, many of them devoured right down to the bones. 

“Looks like ratz got to some of these.  No human could work it down to the bones like this,” said West.

“Maggots, ratz, these fucks,” said Flex, pointing to a well-preserved cadaver that had not drawn the attention of any of the above, likely because the bullet hole in the forehead told the story of what it was when it went down.

Eddied stared at the corpse, his beam directly on the forehead.  “Why don’t maggots go after these?” he asked.

“Good question,” said Bell.  “Not for me, but good for Hemp.”

“Jimmy!  Nikki!” shouted Flex, finally shaking off the effects of his encounter with the behemoth rotter, and leading the group quickly down the corridor.  Five shafts of light  from their headlamps shone all around them, snaking up and down the walls and along the floor. 

Silence greeted them.  On the right were eight built-in desks with chairs, partitioned on the sides and separated from the opposite, identical desk by thick glass.  Telephone handsets were mounted on the walls beside the seating areas on both sides.

West was behind Flex, and then the two boys.  Waylon Bell brought up the rear. 

From the corner of his eye, Flex saw movement on the other side of the glass.  He involuntarily spun left and dropped to one knee, his gun raised.

The zombie was on the contained side of the divided building, a prisoner who had likely been seeing a visitor.  That visitor may have been any of the completely devoured bodies near the chairs they had just passed.

Flex heard Eddie cry out in surprise, and fire his gun.

“No!” shouted Flex in reaction, but it was too late.  The round ricocheted off the glass and hit metal twice more before it fell silent.

“Eddie!” he shouted.  “It’s bulletproof glass, buddy!  It can’t hurt you!”

“And that bullet could have hit any one of us,” said West.

“Sorry, guys,” said Ian.  “Eddie just got scared.”

“I wasn’t
scared
, I was surprised,” said Eddie.  “Everyone all right?”

All answered in the affirmative.

The rotter on the other side of the glass walked with them, clawing and biting at the transparent wall made of an invisible material that it no longer comprehended in death.

“Keep moving,” said Flex.  “Hey, I think that’s a guard up there.”

The clothing was different, the shoes were black and shiny, and the body was intact.  This had been a guard that turned.  Flex knelt down beside it and double-checked the head wound.

It looked well-placed.  He nudged it with his Daewoo.

Nothing.  It was dead. 

It leaned against the painted, block wall, and Flex pushed it to its left and it slid away.

The smell of dried shit and decay blasted his nostrils.  Flex gagged, then choked it back.

“Never get used to this fuckin’ smell,” he said, checking the clips on the dead guard’s belt.

“Shit,” said Flex.

“Nothin’?” asked
Bell.

Flex patted the corpse’s pockets.  “There’s something in here, and it feels like keys.”

He put his gun on the floor and pulled the pocket out, sliding his other hand inside.  It wasn’t tight, because the body had deteriorated substantially since its final death, shriveling within its clothes.

Flex withdrew a ring of keys and turned to the others, smiling.  He held them up.  “First time’s a charm, but this creates another problem.”

“What’s that?” asked West.

“Well, when we tell this story, people will say this was too easy.  Anyway, hang onto those keys, Waylon.  Now we can move.”

“Gotcha,” said Bell

“Ian, you’re a little quiet,” said West.  “You doing okay?”

“I’m good,” said Ian.  “Just … staying focused, sir.”

“You do that,” said West.

“Feel that door before you open it,” said Eddie.  “I’ve seen that in movies.  In case there’s fire on the other side.”

“Good idea,” said Flex, placing his palm on the metal door at the end of the corridor.  It was cool.

He put his ear to it and listened.  Nothing.

Before opening the door, Flex whispered, “Everyone be ready.”

He reached for the doorknob and pressed down.

It turned.

Flex looked at West and Bell, blinded momentarily by the lights that shone off their foreheads.  He averted his eyes and said, “This door is unlocked.  The door we came through was, too.  This could mean Jimmy and Nikki found this way inside.”

“I hope so,” said Eddie.  “What are we waiting for?”

“Guns ready, and don’t shoot me,” said Flex, pushing the door open.

This door led into a large room; a reception area where visitors signed in and waited before seeing their incarcerated friend, client or family member.  There was an administrative area with several desks, file cabinets, computers, shredders, and the other usual office suspects.  The front part of the room, separated only by a standing-height counter, was lined with several chairs against the wall.