The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (85 page)

“Yeah,” said Dave.  “I think you’re right.  ZFZ4.”

“Maybe it’s a stamp?  The brand of wood?”

“Maybe,” said Dave.  “But that glow is something else.  Pull past the house, and let’s check it out.”

Charlie looked at me.  “You know the biggest part of me wants to figure out how to get to him, don’t you?”

He knew I meant Hemp.  Of course he knew.

“I know, Charlie,” said Dave.  “But we need to see who this is.  It might be Flex and Gem.”

“They don’t hide,” I said.  “You know they don’t.”

“We all hide sometimes,” said Dave.  “They’re no exception.  Let’s check it out, then we’ll go.”

“Okay.”

I pulled the car up, easing onto the gas to keep the engine low.  If there were people in that house, they were already aware we were here.  The Crown Vic wasn’t a fucking Prius.

I parked the car and we got out after reloading the Walthers.  Dave carried the PPK in his hand and had the Glock stuck into his pants.  He was such a skinny bastard there was plenty of room for more guns.  The pants he’d gotten from the gun shop weren’t a perfect fit.

We flanked the house, coming at it from the side.  We could no longer see the flickering light, because the hole, or whatever it was, was only visible directly in front.

We reached the front corner of the house, and looked.  The windows were indeed boarded up, and at regular intervals, high and low, we could see pairs of approximate one-inch holes were drilled through the plywood.  No light was visible through these, only darkness.

As we looked, one of them lit up.  The same yellow glow as the one from the street.  Then it went dark again.

“Peepholes?” whispered Dave.

“Maybe,” I answered.  “Turrets, maybe, too?”

“I can’t tell if there’s any glass.”

“Me either.  Let’s move,” I said.

We crouched low and walked across the yard, keeping tight against the building, but watching for any more holes to open up, indicating someone was watching.  We reached the front door.  It was not boarded.

“I’m going to knock,” I whispered.

Dave shrugged and nodded.

I knocked softly.  Inside, we heard scuffling and low whispers.

“We’re friends,” I said, my mouth close to the door.  “If you were just over by the gun shop, those guys shooting at you stole our truck between Alabama and New Hampshire.”

“Go away,” a voice said from the other side.  “You’re going to give us away.”

“Let us in,” Dave said.  “And you’ll be safe.  As long as we’re out here, you’re in danger.”

Whispering inside.  An argument?

There was silence for almost a minute, then we heard several clicks.  Finally the doorknob turned and the door opened.

A voice from someone out of sight said, “Get in here.  Make it fast!”

We went inside and the door was quickly closed behind us.  Ten people stood and stared as we stepped inside the living room, lit with dozens of candles.  Their faces were haunted, but determined.

I looked to our left, and a man holding a large caliber handgun with a noise suppressor stood there, his eyes unwavering as he held the gun’s barrel directly between us; just a quick motion to kill either of us at his disposal.

“Put your weapons down,” he said, breathing hard.  He was thin but muscular, a full, dark beard and hair interspersed with gray that stuck out on top of his head in a shaggy spike.  “Just until we find out your story.”

“I’m Charlie Chatsworth and this is Dave Gammon,” I said, my voice soft and even.  “We’ll put down our weapons now.”

Dave and I bent over and placed the PPKs on the floor, and Dave pulled the Glock from his waistband.  He still wore the empty side holsters and belt, and put them on the floor as well. 

We both stood up straight and met the man’s eyes.

“We good?” Dave asked.

“Yep,” the man said, lowering his weapon.  He wore a black, long sleeved, button down shirt, the first fastened button maybe the fourth one down.  Gold chains adorned his neck, and gold rope bracelets were on both wrists.

“I’m the one you followed just now, along with Serena over there.”

A woman, also dressed in dark, subdued colors, her hair raven black, and her keen eyes reflecting the candlelight, nodded to us.

“I’m Tony Mallette, and this group right here’s my family – at least what qualifies as family these days.  Welcome to Zombie-Free-Zone number 4.”

Chapter 16

I had a lot to ponder, my escape having moved further toward the back burner, now that I had potentially developed a replacement for the BSN.  The Brain Scent Neutralizer was the equivalent of the first Apple computer, in a way.  It was merely a starting point to be continuously revised by further discovery until the original device bore such a tiny resemblance to the latest incarnation that it became virtually impossible to even explain the similarities between the two.

The most obvious difference was that the BSN was an electronic solution and the wafers were a biological one.

The wafers had to have some sort of direct affect on the pituitary gland, causing the secretion of some biological component that either entirely masked the scent of brain, blood and flesh, or – the only other possibility – a secretion that made
us
smell like
them
.  It was one or the other, and I had no idea which.  I realized I should have taken a blood sample from Monty before putting him in the cage with the ratz, but now all I wanted to do was test it on myself.

I was and am an ethical scientist.  I would never test something on a human being unless I felt the result would be either no result at all, or success.  I would never test something that had the potential for harm, even on a fully willing volunteer.

I had known, upon testing the zombie eye vapor on Flex, that it didn’t kill; I myself had already been taken down by it.  The wafer was a similar story.  I’d tried it on the test rat Monty, and had he not been in the cage with the ratz, he would have survived.  I had no doubt whatsoever. 

I lay in my bed in the darkened room, just the dim hall lights visible along the side of my enclosure.  I thought of Charlie and all my friends.  I wondered when all hell would break loose.

They would find me.  I had little doubt of it.  I knew they wouldn’t stop until they did.  This did nothing but make me wonder how much time I had.

What was Charlie doing right now?  Was she in
Concord?  Was she here, in Vermont?  Who was she with?  But most of all, I wondered what was going through her mind, and how she was coping.

But she wasn’t fragile.  Not at all, my Charlie.  Tough as nails.  Her softest side came out during our time alone together, and every night in my dreams I held her to me and cherished that part of her.

I wondered about Gem and the child she carried inside her.  Was it okay?  Would it be okay?  Or would the terrible biological reaction occur the moment it took its first breath, transforming the child into a tiny demon intent on devouring human flesh?  How wrong or right had we been in our assumptions about new life and how it would be affected?

I was more determined than ever to use this lab to the world’s advantage – not Carville’s – until I was freed.  I needed to stockpile the wafers, but I first needed to test them.

And I was the only possible subject.

I lay awake there in my bed and slipped my hand beneath the mattress, feeling the silver dollar-sized wafer I’d created before calling for someone to escort me to my room.  I needed a dozen more.

Ultimately, I would need millions more, if everything worked out as I hoped.  The beauty of it was that the base for the wafer – the vapor and the gas coming from the earth – when combined, grew exponentially until neutralized by the extreme cold of the liquid nitrogen.   This meant that as long as we had any of it, all we had to do was remove it from the LN
2
and let it expand until I had a large enough base to which to add the urushiol, at which time it would solidify into the end product.

I still had no idea why the two components reacted in such a manner, or if it would weaken in any way the larger it grew.  My intuition said it would not.  It multiplied, plain and simply, creating more of itself in its exact same form.

It was my hope.  I forced myself to remove my fingers from the only wafer I yet had in my possession and go to sleep.  I would need a sharp mind to accomplish all of my plans.

I failed miserably.

****

We sat on the floor of the house, and Tony told us what had been going on in
Shelburne, Vermont.

They had several houses marked with ZFZ and a number throughout the area. It was always written in very small letters, always at the lower right of the furthermost sheathing piece, whether it be plywood or some other material.  They currently had twelve Zombie-Free-Zones in Shelburne, and another five in neighboring towns.  Each home held as many people as could sleep comfortably, and everyone pitched in to gather supplies.  All of the homes had ham radios, and they only allowed click symbols for communication.

They didn’t use standard Morse code.  One of the other ZFZ organizers had come up with a tap code and had distributed it to everyone.  Mostly if Carville’s men were on the prowl and someone else knew where they were headed, someone would tap it out, notifying everyone.  Or if an excellent stock of food was located.  That was tap worthy, too.

“We can’t go out as much anymore,” said Serena.  “Not since the rats.  If we fire at them, we give away our location to Carville’s guys.”

“The urushiol will take care of that once you get it going,” I said.  “Is the problem bad here?”

“Just getting there,” said Tony.  “Mostly they run out of the fields, one or two at a time.  We get the odd horde, but normally smaller numbers.”

We mentioned that we hadn’t seen that many boarded homes in our short search for Tony and Serena.

“Not true,” said Tony.  “There are eight homes with boarded up windows up and down the streets you drove to find us.  Can’t see them at night.  Lots of folks boarded up from the inside.  Too dangerous to be outside.”

“Oh, that makes sense,” said Dave.  “We saw the light here, and that’s the only way we knew.  You should watch that.”

“We normally do,” he said, glaring at a man sitting on the floor with a younger man who looked to be in his earlier twenties.  “Jason here left the peephole cover open.  Nobody noticed it until we heard your car, and then only after the doors closed.  We’ve never had any close calls at all until you showed up.”

They explained that many people had boarded up their homes around town when the craziness began.  Most of them had turned, so were trapped inside their own prisons with nothing else to do but terrorize their families, ultimately kill and eat them, and then be forever unable to escape to hunt for more food.

Well, fuckin’ bully for them.  As long as they didn’t start writing ZFZ on the outside, I was cool with their current status.

“Sorry, Tony,” said Jason.  “I was looking out, and I thought it pivoted back down.

“You have to be sure, son,” said Nick, his arm around him.  “It’s important.”

“Be careful, Jason,” said Tony. “We all make mistakes, but we can’t afford them now.”

“We’re glad he made that one,” said Dave.  “Otherwise we wouldn’t have found you.”

Tony nodded.  “True.”

“So what’s your plan?” asked Dave.

“Our plan’s to survive,” said Tony.  “What do you expect the plan to be, Dave?”

Dave stared at him and I put a hand on his arm as he said, “Just survive, Tony, or take the assholes out?  You know, for your
family
?  Their action’s criminal, no matter what’s happened to society.”

Tony looked defensive and guilty at the same time.  His next words sounded more like an excuse than a reason.

“I get that.  Carville’s guys are heavily armed,” he said.  “Did you see that damned truck they have with the AK on top?”

“Hold off, that’s our truck,” I said.  “I can almost guarantee you they don’t have anywhere near the intelligence it would take to design that roof-mounted system.  My husband designed it, and he’s who I’m here to rescue.  If you saw our car, you know it’s true.  Same gun, same design.”

“That was our next question,” said Serena.  “Why you’re here.”

I explained everything.  Our discoveries, the Ham radio broadcast we left in
Alabama, all of it.  Tony said they’d all heard Hemp’s voice discussing Urushiol and how it worked.  They had not yet learned how to create it, so were mostly using bats, suppressed weapons, and other quieter forms of defensive and offensive techniques.

“We can help you,” I said, looking at them.    “All we need to do is get Hemp back and we can help you as much as you need.”

“If the town isn’t flattened,” said Tony.

“What do you mean?” Dave asked.  “Flattened?”

“Those guys you saw in the truck.  Rory and Pete.  They’re the worst of the worst.  And they got a bunch of guys working with them.  I’m telling you it’s like the fuckin’ Nazis.  They’ve burned buildings they’ve found us in.  They’ve destroyed grocery stores filled with food just so we wouldn’t get to it.  We’re lucky there were tons of smaller, mom and pop operations around here, and we’ve got plenty.  It’s not like we can plant a garden.  You see this shit bubbling up from the ground?”

“That shit is the cause of everything,” I said.  “According to my husband.  He believes it was caused from a fissure in the core of the planet.  When the Earth formed, a fuckin’ bazillion years ago or whatever it was, some meteor crashed into it, embedding this shit inside.  He thinks maybe one too many underground nuclear tests where the charge was set too deep and was a lot too large, cracked the core and allowed for the release.”

“Tony stared at us, and in an amazed voice, said, “It’s like fiction shit.”

“It’s George Romero shit wrapped in Stephen King shit, stuffed inside a Dean Koontz box with Clive Barker bubble wrap,” said Dave, nodding his head.

“So will you help us?” I asked.

“Got a plan?” asked Tony, eyeing Dave.

“Touché” said Dave, smiling.  “But yeah, sort of.”

“Spill it,” said Serena, moving closer to Dave and me on the floor.  Jason and Nick scooched over too.  Each individual’s shadow danced on the wall, thrown here and there by the flickering candle flames.

Dave reached into his back pocket and withdrew a glossy piece of paper. 

“Not many attractions here in Shelburne,” said Dave.  “Sorry if this is your home town.”

“No offense taken,” said Serena.

“One of them is Carville’s home.  A drive-by tour in a bus.”

“Tour’s over,” said Tony.  “The bus would draw a bunch of attention now.

He looked dead serious.  I looked at Dave, who shrugged and unfolded the paper in his hands.

“This is a map of Shelburne,” he said.  “Not topographical, but designed for tourists, which is actually a good thing, because it not only shows Carville’s house and how to get there, it shows boat rental places.”

“I didn’t know you had that, Dave.”

He looked at me.  “You were out.  I couldn’t wake you.  I went out and made a short run to the corner.”

I held up my hands.  “It’s cool – just asking.  Go on.”

“My idea is this.  First off, has anyone been near his house?  Laid eyes on the grounds?”

“Hell yes,” said Tony.  “They built a fence around it.  We saw a bunch of lumber trucks filled with supplies heading in that direction, so we put two and two together.  The fence was probably done over a month ago.  About twelve feet tall, I guess.”

“Can you shoot though it?” I asked.

“Yes, absolutely.  It’s uprights and heavy chain link.”

“So bolt cutters have to be on the supply list,” said Dave.  “Is it guarded?”

“Like a fortress,” said Serena.  “We were coming back from there tonight when we almost got caught by Rory and Pete.”

“Okay,” said Dave.  “Do you know if the fence runs along the lakefront?”

Serena looked at Tony.  “It doesn’t.  Each end of the fence does extend into the water about fifteen feet, but it’s only like four feet deep that far out.  Still accessible from the water.”

“Good, because that’s exactly what I want to do.”  Dave looked at me.  “Charlie, I think we should load whatever urushiol, guns, crossbows, anything and everything we can use, into the boats – whatever kind they end up being, and we make our approach slowly and quietly from the water.”

He looked around the room.  “Anyone have an idea when it’s a new moon?”

Everyone shook their heads, but Tony spoke.  “See those clouds building out there?  The moon’s half as visible as it was when we were hiding from the assholes.  If the clouds keep building, we could at least check it out tonight.”

“Let’s keep an eye, then.”  Dave stood to leave.  He walked over to the plywood wall and pivoted one of the peephole and gun turret cover plates back, putting his eye to the hole.  It smelled of gunpowder.  Then he let the cover swing back down and looked at Jason.  “You’re right.  Could’ve happened to anyone.”

“So tonight, then?” said Charlie.  “We wait for the cloud cover to build some more, then –”             

Suddenly there was scratching on the door.

Charlie and I looked over, reaching for our weapons on the floor simultaneously.