The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (9 page)

The shot rang in our ears in the confines of the elevator car and the thing’s head exploded,
its body crumpling to the floor.  The doors closed, then bounced open, hitting the creature’s legs.

“Jesus, we have to move him – in or out!”

More of the things were moving toward us from a distant hall.

“
Let’s
get out, then!” Gem shouted.  “We came up here to clear the floor, right?”  Her voice was high-pitched and her accent was prominent under stress.  I looked at Hemp and we knew she was right.  He yanked his leg free of the dead thing’s grip, and we all jumped out, our weapons back in the kill position.

“Stand back, cover this area in thirds!” I shouted.  “I got left, Gem, you get the middle, and Hemp, get the right!”
 

Two
of them, formerly young women, which was fairly evident from the long, flowing blonde hair on one of them and the above-the-knee length skirt on the other, were munching on another woman, this one older, evident by the grey hair and a mustard-colored pantsuit.  The young women’s legs were grey-green with the now familiar roadmap of veins running just beneath the opaque skin.  One had been doing a good job on the center of the woman’s back, specifically the fleshy part at the waist, and the other had been gnawing on the side of the woman’s neck.  Aside from their jaws pulling the meat from her body in stringy mouthfuls, the woman’s body lay still.  She was now dead – mercifully so.

B
ut I must have smelled better, because they were  drawn to me without question.  The flaring nostrils as they rushed toward me mesmerized me for a moment, and in each of them I saw Jamie.  I held my weapon out, wanting to pull the trigger, but wondering in the back of my mind who once loved them, who might be unaffected and be at home, barricaded in the house, perhaps even calling their cell phones wondering why they weren’t answering, but fearing – no,
knowing
– the worst had happened.

Now they
moved
.   Almost as though they were supercharged by electrical probes, they rushed toward me in a jerky-quick motion. I was still trying to put who they once were straight in my mind when I heard that voice – the grounding voice – call out.

It was Gem. 
“Flex,
shoot them
!”

I did
, finally.  I sprayed them with two quick two-round bursts, dropping them for the last time in a splatter-spray of red and gray, along with a mist of unknown fluids that added to the horrific stench in the room – the stench of decaying flesh and the
unbreath
of the undead.

Hemp had just fired on
and extinguished the hunger of two more abnormals heading straight for him, their incisors working and grinding together in anticipation of fresh flesh.  That finished his clip, and he ejected it and tried to snap another in, but he didn’t see the abnormal that had just slid around the corner – and I
mean
slid, leaving a slimy, bloody smear-print of its body along the wall.

This was apparently a janitor, wearing grey coveralls and a name tag that I could not read from my vantage point.  Had that tag been on his head rather than his chest, I’d have blown it apart.

“Hemp, DUCK!” I screamed, and he dropped down onto his haunches, the creature toppling over him rather than into him.  It was like the old Dick Van Dyke show where the actor tripped over the ottoman and onto the carpet, only there was no comic return to his feet this time.  Rather the thing flipped over and landed on its back looking rather surprised – if that was possible – to see me standing over it with my Heckler and Koch. 

The surprise disappeared when I blew hits head apart, inadvertently splattering Hemp with the thing’s brains and maybe the left eyeball.

I looked up again, and then over at Gem.  She was eyeing me, too – there seemed to be a lull.  Taking a quick count, it appeared we’d killed at least 22 of them, and gaining confidence and experience, we’d kept our ammo usage to a minimum. 

Gem came over to where I stood as I held out a helping hand to Hemp.  He took it and pulled himself back to his feet.

“Thanks,” he said.  “I owe you one.”

“We’re gonna need a fucking calculator if we start that shit, friend.  It’s on me.”

“I hope Trina and Max are okay,” Gem said.  “Why did they concentrate up here?”

“More labs up here, plus the cafeteria and staff lounge is on this level,” said Hemp.  “Makes sense, really.”

“But why right here?”

“Look at all the bodies,” I said.  “All the uninfecteds.  They obviously ran for the elevator, and perhaps some just couldn’t get in fast enough.  A pileup at the doors, an attack from the abnormals, and the feast ensued.”

“This area became the food court,” Gem said, not smiling.  “But some had to make it, right?  Max can’t be the only one who got away.”

Hemp shrugged. 
“I don’t know if Max thought of it – but he’s got a PA system there where he can announce throughout all the buildings.  I’m fairly certain the abnormals can’t hear and understand language, so he should start making hourly announcements saying where he is.”

“That could be his plan for after we leave,” Gem said.  “But for now, we need to sweep the rest of this floor.  Is there much left, Hemp?”

“I’m guessing most of the abnormals made their way toward the scent of food, but let’s stick together and go room by room anyway.  If we find anyone else, we can escort them down to Max.”

“What if they’re infected and haven’t turned yet?”

“And Max?  What if he’s infected and . . . “

“Fuck this.  You guys clear the floor.  I’m going back to Trina.”

I nodded.  She was right.  I trusted the Max I’d met downstairs, but we didn’t know enough about this illness or virus or disease or whatever the hell it was to have any real knowledge about its gestation period.

“Go, baby.  We’ll hurry this up and be back down.  Got more ammo?”

She lifted her top and showed me her waistband – two more full clips inside.  “Got it,” she said.  “See you boys down there.”

The elevator doors slid open again, having hit the creature’s legs that still protruded from it.  Gem stepped in over him, and Hemp and I grabbed the thing’s legs and pulled it out of the elevator.  Hemp then reached in,
slid his card, and Gem hit the button for the second floor. 

She waved, looked into my eyes with
concern, and the doors closed.  I hated that part.  I hated any part where Gem wasn’t with me. 

I did not want to lose her again.

*****

Hemp and I continued our way through the third level.  We cleared the cafeteria and the lounge, only having to use another twenty rounds combined.  We encountered fourteen more abnormals, and all-told on that level, we had found twenty-four uninfecteds who had ultimately become sustenance for the afflicted.

We worked our way back to the elevator, and I looked again at the scene laid out on the landing.  The smell was putrid and the floor ran wet with blood and raw, human meat.  Entrails snaked out of abdomens, and grey matter of the abnormals whose heads we’d blown apart splattered everything.  We had to be extremely careful not to slip in it.

As Hemp pushed the elevator call button, my eyes were drawn again to the two young women – well, formerly young women – that I had shot.  Then my eyes went to the woman they had been eating.

But she was gone.  Or
more accurately, her body was gone.

Hemp approached and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Elevator’s here,” he said.  Then: “Flex, what’s wrong?”

I turned to face him.  “I don’t know how, but the woman these two were eating is gone.”  I pointed at the bodies of the t
wo abnormals I’d taken out.  “There was a woman in a mustard –”

I never finished my sentence.  Hemp reached toward me with his short but muscular right arm, grabbed my shirt and yanked me toward him.  I was taken by surprise as the
academic weapons expert sidestepped me and practically threw me inside the open elevator.  As I hit the back wall, still in disbelief, he swung his K7 straight out and blew the head off the woman in the mustard pantsuit.  When this was done, he looked at me as he held the elevator door open.

Hemp’s eyes were disbelieving. 
“She was dead?  Are you sure?”  He looked at her body and clearly saw the chewed hole in her side and back.

I no
dded my head frantically.  “She’s half eaten, Hemp.  Yes, I’m sure she was dead.”

“
Agreed, but she wasn’t dead just then,” he said.  “Which means being eaten is only enough to spread the infection, not to actually kill.  So we’ve got a job to do before we head back down.”

I knew immediately what he meant.  We had at least
twenty-five head shots to administer before we could get back down to the second level, check on Gem, Trina and Max, and proceed with our plan.

We got started.  It was done in
less than five minutes.

*****

Everything was fine when we returned to the lab.  The 2
nd
floor was still quiet, and Max hadn’t turned into one of
them
and eaten Trina or Gem yet.  I could tell by the way Gem was hanging onto that Uzi that it was unlikely anyone or
anything
would get the jump on her.

After verifying that the girls were okay, Hemp and I moved back into the second floor
hall.  The south hallway led to a connecting tunnel that would once have taken you to Building #1, but the door at the end was closed, and we could smell fire.  Building #1 must have been engulfed in flames by now.  Since the tunnel was constructed entirely of steel and glass, there was little risk that the fire would spread to Building #2 from that point.

There were small offices and closets located here, and
after searching them, we’d be finished with the 2
nd
floor.  Storage closets on the left side and four offices, two on each side of the hallway.

“I’ll take the offices on the right, and you get the others.  We’ll split the closets. 

Hemp nodded and pulled open the door to the office closest to him.  I did the same.  I flicked on the light, and saw movement from the corner of my eye.

I swung
my Daewoo toward the far corner desk.  “Stand up.  If you understand my voice, you’re in no danger.”

I saw the tips of delicate fingers at first, then the hands, followed by arms in a white lab coat, blonde hair, and then a face.  It was the extremely frightened face of a young woman on the edge of sanity. 
Her eyes wide, her lip quivering, she began sobbing when she saw me.

“You can put your arms down,” I said.  I moved quickly around the rest of the small office, and saw nothing.  When I walked to her and looked down, I realized what had sent her into a panic.  One of the abnormals, a bullet hole cleanly in the center of its forehead, lay crumpled by her feet.
  It, too, wore a lab coat.  The name tag on that one said Professor Anthony Mihalovich.

I assumed a guard had come in on a search while the woman was hidden, encountered the former professor, and had either become familiar with what had to be done to kill the creatures, or got lucky.  Either way, this woman was alive, and
not
one of the abnormals because of that single bullet hole in Mihalovich’s head. 

I
took her arm with my hand and gently pulled until her legs involuntarily moved away from the thing.  “Come on,” I said.  “Come over here.”

She let me lead her
, her head drooped, her eyes on the ground.  I stopped about two feet from the door and stood in front of her.  I lifted the young woman’s chin gently with my fingers.  “Look at me,” I said.

She lifted her fearful face to mine.  Her eyes darted between mine.

“What’s your name?” I asked, softly.

“Cynthia Preston,” she said in a flat, monotone.

“My name’s Flex Sheridan and I’m here to help you.  You’re going to be okay, Cynthia.  Trust me on that.  Now let’s get out of here.”

I met Hemp in the hallway. 
The adjacent office was vacant, and Hemp had already checked out the other office on my side.  The closets also proved to be empty – nobody hiding there.  But at least we had one more uninfected – one more hope for humankind.

But still the odds for
our existence did not look good.  The number of infecteds clearly outnumbered the others.  And now that we knew the symptoms could be passed through a bite or perhaps even scratches, I was beginning to have my doubts about any sort of positive outcome.

But I couldn’t let Cynthia know that. 

“We’ll have to examine you for cuts and scratches back in the lab,” I told her.  “Don’t worry – there’s a woman with us who’ll take care of that.”

She nodded.  We went.

*****

“Floors two and three are clear?” asked Max.