The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (90 page)

Charlie got on the radio.

Flex couldn’t wipe the smile off his face when he saw his truck again. 

“Let’s get Hemp and get the hell out of here,” he said.

****

Raymond Carville was actually very simple to manipulate onto the MRI.  He lay on his back, and I strapped him down so that he couldn’t move.  It was a strange feeling; having control of this monster. 

I felt like the fictional Dr. Frankenstein, but I was more similar to one of his surrogates that had nothing to do with actually creating the beast, but who still wielded control over it.

The magnet temperature was incredibly high now.  I had to enact the rest of my plan immediately.

I went to the drawer and withdrew the wafers inside the glove, knotted it, and stuffed it into my shoe.  I could not afford having it fall out of my lab coat.

It was damned uncomfortable, but it was as comforting as bloody hell to know they were there.

I went to the acrylic walls of the cage, and turned to look at the clock.  It was five thirty.  The sun would be rising in about an hour.  Pounding on the walls, I shouted, “Billy!  Frank!  Wake up and go get Mr. Carville!”

Both men leapt to their feet and stared at me. 

“What the hell?”  It was Frank.

“I need you to get Mr. Carville, now.  I need him.  I’m about to perform an MRI.”

“Why does he need to be here?” asked Billy.  “He’s gonna be pissed, ‘cause you got him up last night already.”

“Perhaps,” I said, “But this is crucial.  He’s going to want to see this.  So please, go get him.”

“Hey, how the – how did you get that thing inside that machine?”

“Not important,” I said.  “I’m a professor, remember?  Very intelligent and all.  Now go get him right away, please.”

The men disappeared down the hall. 

I wiped the sweat from my forehead.  The heating of the magnet was raising the temperature in the lab, but it couldn’t be avoided.

Carville came down the hallway five minutes later. 

“This had better be important, Hemp,” he said.  Then, “You look like hell.”

“I had a bout with your brother.  But as you can see, I won.”  I waved my hand toward the MRI machine.

Carville’s mouth hung open.  “You got him in there yourself?”

“I did,” I said.  “I had the goggles on him and put a dark sack over his head.  I was able to cuff him with the flex cuffs, so it worked out.”

“Rather ingenious,” he said, impressed.  “What is your plan?”

“Come inside, Mr. Carville.  I need you to watch the MRI imaging screen with me.  I think you’ll find this fascinating.”

Carville shook his head.  “I wouldn’t know what I’d be seeing, I’m afraid,” he said.

“What I expect to see should give you great hope,” I lied.  “I’ve combined three components of the gas, the vapor and the urushiol.  I administered it to him in a very small dose, which is what allowed me to safely handle him.  This could be a significant breakthrough, Mr. Carville.  I want you here.”

“Are you serious?” he said, hope washing across his face.  “Do you believe this concoction will reverse the condition?”  He walked quickly toward the entrance to the lab door and waved Billy over, who withdrew his keys.

“The MRI imaging will be conclusive,” I said.  “I’m sure of it.  You’ll get your wish, and I can go home to my family.”

He walked inside.  “It’s very warm in here,” he said immediately, a frown on his face.

“It’s the MRI machine.  It may be in its own room, but the heat it generates is incredible,” I said.  “Not to worry.  If I reverse the decomposition, it won’t matter in the slightest.”

Carville went inside the MRI room and leaned over to see Raymond.  “Little brother, can you hear me?  Can you understand me yet, even a little?  Don’t be frightened, brother.  We’re almost there.  Almost.”

He walked back outside the room.  I closed the heavy, acrylic door.  I wondered if the acrylic would provide adequate shielding, just as I had from the moment I first saw the lab’s design, but it was a moot point.  If shit flew, it flew.

I needed to be in a good position for the explosion.  The front of the MRI machine faced the largest wall of the lab, and that is where the primary explosion would occur.  I wanted to be behind it.

“Due to the heat generated, and its effect on the delicate computer equipment, we’ll need to be on this side of the lab.” 

I rolled the table with the MRI control equipment over to the far wall and hit the power up sequence, dialing in settings that made no difference one way or the other.  The zombie would no doubt move around, screwing the test anyway, should I have actually cared about the results. 

“Once I start, it will take slice views of Raymond’s body, from ankles to brain.  We’ll see it all as it appears, and the images will tell me  a lot.  I’ll explain as we go.”

“Beautiful,” he said, excitement in his voice.  “But can we move Veronica to the other side of the room?  Until she’s better, I hate for her to be so close.

“I understand,” I said.  Veronica was gnashing and struggling against her restraints – not for me, for I wasn’t an enticement – but because of the fresh meat that was her father.  Only Carville didn’t know that.  He assumed I was the reason as well.

I hit the start button on the touch screen.  The MRI began spinning internally and the low hum grew to an incredible thumping.

I watched the temperature gauge with one eye, and the imaging monitor with the other.

It was thirty-five degrees below the highest temperature an MRI had ever reached before exploding.

Make that thirty.

I eyed the bottom shelf of the stainless steel work table.  I’d tucked every towel in the lab down there, knowing it was where I would leap just as the blast took place.

Twenty-five degrees more.  The magnet could blow at any time.

“See this, Mr. Carville?  This appears to be – and I know it’s incredible – healthy tissue.”

My eye moved again to the temperature gauge.

Twenty degrees.

****

After everyone was reassembled on the side of the building, Flex removed the shirt from Pete’s body and tore it into thick strips of material.  He tied Rory’s hands beside his back and makeshift-shackled his ankles together, giving him about eighteen inches of distance between them.  Suffice it to say that Trina could’ve outrun him at that point.

He’d already told us that because there had been no nighttime trouble in recent weeks, Carville had given the okay for just a pair of exterior guards from the hours of midnight to six o’clock in the morning. 

We believed him.  Flex could be intimidating, and Tony was pretty obvious about wanting to put a bullet in Rory’s brain for all of the innocent friends of his that he’d killed.  I didn’t doubt that Tony would ultimately end Rory’s life, even if we should end up letting him go.

That would be Tony’s call.  Hell, Serena was just as likely to do it.  She reminded me a lot of Gem.  Tough and unflappable.

We approached the front door and moved off to the side.  The camera was directly over the entry and obvious, and while we didn’t know that anyone was monitoring it, we felt it wise to stay clear.

I held one PPK on him from the left side, and Dave held the other on him from the right.

“Hit the buzzer,” said Tony.  “Asshole.”

Rory pressed the buzzer.

“Hey, Rory,” came the voice.

“Gary.  Let me in.  I gotta take a crap.”

“Where’s Pete?”
Gary asked.

“Open the fucking door.  He’s guarding, like he’s supposed to be doing.”

“Keep your damned shirt on,” he said, and a buzzer sounded.

As he pushed the door, Dave fired, making a direct hit on the camera lens.

We all pushed our way in behind Rory, crossbow and guns at ready.

****

Items were sliding from the countertop toward the MRI enclosure. Not fast, but they were falling to the floor.

“What’s happening?” asked Carville.  “Is it the shielding you were talking about?  Not adequate?”

It was hard to continue the ruse; the temperature gauge had now drawn to within five degrees of the hottest MRI magnet ever recorded, and I knew that if I were to survive the blast, I had to take action.

“Something is very wrong, Mr. Carville.  It’s too hot, the machine is undulating far louder than it should, and I’m afraid . . . down, now!”

With that, I grabbed him by the shoulders and threw him beneath the counter, and dove in behind him, my back to the MRI enclosure.  The lower shelf was three feet deep, so there was room for both of us.  I had never intended to save him, too, but I didn’t have it in me to watch him die.

My scientific life had been about saving lives, not taking them.

“Tuck and put your hands over your ears, Mr. Carville!  Now!”

I followed my own advice, though I did not know if Carville did or not, for his head was down by my chest.  I felt him respond, and a split second later, a massive concussion shattered the world within the lab.

Pieces of aluminum, plastic, and what I assume were Raymond’s body parts rained down around us.  The entire stainless steel counter beneath which we had sought sanctuary from the explosion had collapsed, tossing Carville and me to the floor among the rubble.  I struggled to sit upright, and pulled my hands from my ears, staring through the thick, airborne dust and debris, and realized I was alive.

I’d made it.

“Hemp,” I said, to test my hearing.  A bit muffled, but my eardrums were undamaged.

I got to my feet and saw Carville on the floor three feet away.  He was not moving.  I went to him and rolled him over.

He opened his eyes.  “Professor . . . what . . . happened?”

“The MRI machine exploded, Mr. Carville.  Do you have any pain?  Can you stand?”

“I can hardly hear you.”

There was blood trickling from his ear.

I repeated it, louder.

He shook his head.  “I don’t know.  I don’t feel like anything’s broken.”

I helped him to his feet, and he stood, steadying himself on my shoulder.

“We have to get out of here, Mr. Carville.”

I turned him to make our way through the wall, and saw the bloody, battered bodies of Billy and Frank.  There were body-sized indentations in the wall opposite the lab – at least where the wall still stood.

I was almost certain they were dead.  Pangs of guilt took me.  Those men seemed like good fellows in a bad position.

“Let’s go,” I said.

The gurney that had held Veronica had flipped onto its side, facing away from us.  A moment later, we heard scraping, and scuffling.

Veronica stood shakily from behind the overturned gurney.  Her eyes went immediately to her father, just feet away.

“V,” he said.  “Baby V.  You’re okay.”

She moved toward us, and I took an involuntary step back.  I could see her left arm was broken, as it dangled uselessly from her shoulder.  She’d lost an eye, and her clothing had been blown from her body.

Still, she advanced. 

“Baby, it’s
daddy
,” Carville said, a slight smile on his face.  “Hemp’s going to cure you.  I’m going to have my baby back.  You’ll have your daddy.”

Three feet away.

“Mr. Carville, come!  She’s not your daughter anymore.  Run,
now
!”

Instead, he stepped toward her.  I stood for a moment, horrified and unable to process why he didn’t heed my warnings.  Still in shock, most likely, and perhaps deafened by the explosion.

In an attempt to move her away, I moved behind her, put my hands on her shoulders and pulled her backward, but she fought me, breaking away from my pull with ease, her one good arm clawing, reaching out for her father.

And I had gripped her tightly and leaned backward.

Horrified though I was, even at that pivotal moment for Ryan Carville, it occurred to me that none of us had ever felt the power of these creatures, and for good reason.  We had never physically battled with them for fear of being bitten or scratched, but now, with this new weapon I’d created purely by accident, they did not fight us.  They did not attack us.

It was, put simply, as though we were a chair, or a table.  It was not movement that drew them.  It was solely scent and their hunger.

Their dead hunger.

This time I ran through the gaping hole in the acrylic cage and stepped into the hallway, wading through the rubble of aluminum, plastic, stainless steel and glass.  Reaching the bodies of Billy and Frank, I knelt down and rolled Billy’s body over.

He was breathing.  I made note of it and took his gun from his side holster, then ran back to the lab.

Carville now held out his arms as if to embrace the girl-thing who was once Veronica Carville, and there was no fear in his eyes.