Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles (11 page)

Flex grabbed the radio from the counter.  “What’s wrong, Dave?”

Gem pulled the lab to a stop.  The road we were on was two lanes in each direction surrounded by forest.   There was a deep median between the east and westbound lanes with a rare break between the guard rails, running into a somewhat deep gully.

“Todd!  He’s on the ground, and the truck is gone!”

“What the fuck?” yelled Flex.  He grabbed his gun and jumped up.  Gem got out of her seat and threw Suzi over her shoulder.   Charlie and I followed suit.

“Trina, stay inside.  Lock that door when we get out.  Understand?”

“Yes,
M
ommy.”

“Do it.  I love you,
S
weetie.”  She patted her cheek and we all jumped out and ran toward the rear of the caravan.  It seemed to take forever just to get past the mobile work
shop trailer.  Dave was right.

Todd lay on the edge of the road, writhing in pain.  He held his knee and alternately, his shoulder.

“Todd!” I shouted, reaching him and kneeling down.  “What the hell happened?”

“I was driving, watching the rear of the bus like I’d been doing the whole time, and
Rory
was in the passenger seat.  He pointed to something out his window, and as I glanced over, I felt arms around
my neck.  Next thing I knew, my door was open, my seatbelt was unlatched, and
Rory
pushed me out.  It happened in less than a few seconds.”

“
Was it
Pete
?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah, he grabbed me, but they must have been planning it for a while.  We’d come around that corner and slowed a bit.  Plus, the guardrails opened there.”

Flex and Gem
were at
the Crown Vic.  They hustled all the ladies out and jumped in, firing the engine.

“Hemp, Charlie!  Be ready!  We’re chasing them down.  If anything goes wrong, get everyone in the lab and use the turret mount guns!”

They cranked the wheel and
turned
the car around.  The truck had
driven across the median where the guardrails
had
opened.  It was pretty steep, and would require some tricky driving on Flex’s part.

Charlie cradled Todd’s head and I watched their progression.  The Ford
reached the opening and Flex slammed on the brakes,
cut over, and
gunned the engine, tearing down the rocky, steep incline.  At the bottom the front right tire dug in, and he spun the wheel, somehow breaking free and accelerating to the opposite bank, which unfortunately appeared to be steeper than on our side of the highway.

The moment the car hit it, the cowcatcher dug into the small hillside, and the car was going nowhere.  Flex gunned the engine trying to gain traction, but to no avail. 
The Crown Vic
’s tires sunk
in
deeper
, and
the car
began sliding
backwards and
sideways
down the
hill
almost
immediately. 
A
rooster tail of dust and rock shot in the air,
and it was clear they were stuck.

I heard it from a quarter mile away.  “Fuck!” yelled
Flex, getting out of the car.

Gem leapt on top of the hood of the Ford and fired her Uzi at the retreating truck until the magazine was empty
.  The big Chevy
crested the
distant hill and disappeared.

Gem had
been too far away to hit them anyway, but I was sure it was more a
display of her frustration than any real hope of stopping them that kept her firing.

And now t
hey were gone.

“Can you get up now?” Charlie asked Todd.  “Where’s your pain?”

“I’m fine,” said Todd.  “N
o numbness, so nothing broken.  Lucky I was able to throw myself onto the grass median when I realized what they were going to do.”

He stood up and dusted off his jeans.  His grey hair was mussed, but other than that and some grass stains, he looked alright.

“Why don’t you and the others get into the lab and wait,” I said.  “I can’t turn that thing around with the trailer, so we’ll use the winch on the Ford to pull it out.”

I walked up to Dave.  “Give me a hand, would you?” I said.  “Charlie, do me a favor and stay here.  Have your gun ready.”

“Gotcha.  Fuck, I’m pissed.”

“Yeah,” Dave said.  “We’re down one
hell of a
vehicle
.”

“No shit,” said Charlie.  “Those top-mount machine guns don’t just fall off trees.”

Flex and Gem leaned against the car, as we approached them, but when they noticed us walking and not driving, they put two and two together, and Gem started pulling out the winch cable.

“Fuck!” said Flex. 

“Look, we lost some supplies and another vehicle.  We can get another, and we’ve got plenty of room to get everyone where we’re going.”

“You don’t understand, Hemp,” Flex said, walking the winch cable up the incline toward us.  “That’s not the worst of it.”

“What do you mean, Flex?” asked Dave.

“The gallon bottle of urushiol,” he said.  “It was in the back of the truck.”

My heart dropped from my chest.  There had been over a half-gallon remaining in the bottle.  “Are you sure, Flex?  That it was in there?”

“I put it there myself,” he said.  He had the cable hooked to the guardrail post and waved at Gem to start the winch.

Gem engaged the motor from a switch inside the Ford, and the car slowly spun around so the front end was pointing straight up the embankment.  Gem cranked the motor and assisted from inside the Ford by steering and giving it assistance with the accelerator.  It then began its ascent up the hill.  When she got over the peak, she hit the switch again, threw the car in park and got out.  She walked up beside us.

“Good job,
b
aby,” said Flex.  Then: “I fucked up.”

“Flex, you didn’t,” I said.  “I didn’t know it was there, but I wouldn’t have objected, either.  It was safe beneath the bed cover.”

“Wait a minute,” said Gem, confused.  “What’s gone?”

“The urushiol,” said Dave.  “It was in the truck.”

“Jesus, are you sure?” Gem asked.

“Yeah,”
said Flex, shaking his head.
  “After we filled the last extinguishers I put it there myself.  Figured it would be okay.”

“And it would have,” I said.  “F
lex, just f
ile this under
shit happens
.  We’ll make more.  At least we have full extinguishers
filled with our solution
and I’m sure, a few spray bottles.”

“Who the hell are those
assholes
, and why did they pull that shit?” asked Gem.

Dave patted Flex on the shoulder. 
“Now I know why you went after them so hard.”

“
Yeah
,” said Flex.  “
And I have a feeling we’re going to run across those fucks again.  They’d better watch out if we do.”

“I get that feeling, too,” I said.  “They were asking strange questions about Ham radios, other stuff.  I didn’t
make too much of
it, but I found it odd.”

“I hope they die out there,” said Gem.

Todd and Charlie had walked over, and Todd did appear to be alright
.

“Todd, you sure you’re
okay
?”
I asked.

He nodded.  “Yeah.  Guys, I’m sorry.  I thought they were okay.  I didn’t think to worry about – ”

“Todd,” interrupted Gem. 
“
They overpowered you. 
How would you know?”

Her eyes suddenly shifted.  Then Charlie’s. 

And then we all looked. 

“What the hell?” said Flex, voicing what we all wondered.

We hadn’t yet had time to tell them the worst of the news when an
inky blackness appeared low on the
distant
horizon
,
swallowing
the entire width of the
highway as it grew closer and closer
.  It looked like black paint was
flowing
along the concrete roadway toward us, some sort of freakish
CGI
animation.

“What is it?” said Gem, transfixed.

“I have no idea, but
it looks like it’s
coming
this way at a good clip
,” said Charlie.

Gem ran to the Crown Vic and leaned in the door.  She came back out with binoculars, and held them up to her eyes.

“What is it, babe?” asked Flex.

Gem gave the binoculars over to Flex.

He looked. 
“Are those
. . .”

“
They’re rats.”

And as
the blackness
drew closer, we could indeed see that it was not one entity,
but many smaller ones, moving together as one
, covering the roadway in
what appeared to be
a solid sheet.

Rats.  Moving toward us like a
lava flow
.

“Get
the hell in
the car, everyone, now!” said Flex. 

He didn’t have to tell us twice
.
  When we were in, he
fired the engine and floored it. 
Thirty seconds later Flex slammed on the brakes, the car behind the bus.  We all jumped out.

The
group gathered around us.

“
Everyone, g
et back in a vehicle,” I said, with as much urgency as I had ever mustered.  I pointed up the highway where the two lanes appeared to be alive.

“
Get
in any vehicle and be ready to move. 
I don’t
know
why they’re
advancing
like
they are
,
b
ut that thing
on the road
that looks like a black lava flow is
, in actuality,
a
mischief
of
rats. 
To put it into language that many of you, and of course, Flex would understand, a mischief translates to a shitload. 
I estimate their numbers at more than a thousand,
but I could be off by half
and I don’t have any interest in
finding out
why they’re acting in this manner or
what they’
re after.”

Nobody said a word
or cracked a smile at my attempt at humor
. 
Instead, e
veryone turned and
charged
for a vehicle
.  We were back in with doors closed in under twenty seconds.   Engines fired, and we were rolling.

Instinctively,
everyone went back to original
vehicle configurations, aside from Todd, who got in the bus with Dave, Lisa and their charges.

From our vantage point in the lead of the caravan, I couldn’t see how close the rats had gotten before we were on the move.  To be honest, I didn’t want to know.

But I now had two more things on my already jam-packed mind. 

Rory
and
Pete
and their intentions.

The pile of rats
we’d encountered
in the warehouse charged back into my mind.  Dead.  Not decomposed.

Charlie sat beside me again, staring.  Before I could say anything, she looked at me, touched me on the shoulder.  I turned to her, keeping one eye on the road ahead.

“What, Charlie?”

“Baby.  Are those zombie rats?”

I
shook my head, my face grim
.  Unfortunately, I think we
both
already knew the answer
; I was just reluctant to put my thoughts into words.

Charlie wasn’t.

“Fucking zombie rats,” she said.  “Sweetie
.
  How many
can there be
?
”

The radio crackled, and I heard Flex’s voice.

“Hemp, Dave.  Come in.”

“I’m here,” said Dave.

“Hey, Flex,” I said.  “I’ve a feeling I know what you want.”

“Hemp, what are you thinking?  About the rats.”

I looked at Charlie, then back at the road. 
A
green
sign
with reflective, white lettering appeared on the roadside.
It said we were 10 miles from
Concord
,
New Hampshire
.