Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle (2 page)

As I rounded the corner of the house toward the driveway, I saw my uncle come throug
h the window, falling face down
and scrambling back to his feet.  And when I turned back to the driveway, I saw eight or nine more men and women, all just like him, staggering around in the street beyond the drive.

Fishing around in the purse, my fingers curled around the keys and I hit the unlock button and ran full speed to the car.  I saw some of the street creatures notice me, and almost as a unit they turned in my direction

Pulling the door open, I jumped in, tossed the gun and ammo o
n the passenger side and slammed the
door and the key into the ignition almost simultaneously.  I fired the engine and threw the car into reverse, hitting the gas.

Uncle
Rogelio
had reached the car and
now pressed himself against the driver’s side window
, and as I
jammed my foot on the gas pedal, reversing
out of the driveway, he spun off the car and fell.  I felt an impact in the rear and realized someone or s
omething had been behind my car. 
I kept going.  I felt my tires grab, and then the rear of the car lurched up and over, followed by my front tires.

It was a woman in a robe, and I hadn’t killed her.  I think her leg and an arm were broken, but she couldn’t take her eyes off me.  She was as infected as my
uncle. 
I squeezed my eyes closed and hit the street, jammed the car into
first gear, released the clutch and floored it
.

I never looked back.  I didn’t need to.  These things were everywhere.  And at that moment only one thought entered my mind.

Get to Flex.  Find Flex.

I’d filled the car the night before I got to my aunt and uncle’s house, so I had plenty of fuel to put a few hundred miles between me and whatever was happening in south Florida, so I avoided the creatures as best I could, positioned the Uzi in the seat for easy access, and headed toward I95.

I sobbed as I drove.  I couldn’t help myself.  Ten minutes after leaving that fucking horrible scene, it all slammed into my brain like a runaway freight train.  My uncle, for all intents and purposes, was dead.  So was my aunt.  My parents had died years before in a tragic auto accident, and I was alone now.  I had no kids – and to be frank, I was glad.  Whatever had happened was too horrible for
a child
.  And so I cried for what must have been a hundred miles, until I was empty and all fluids were drained from my body.

My brain churned wildly.  Why was Flex so heavy on my mind?  Why did I feel such a need to find him?  I’d left him. He probably wanted nothing to do with me.  And yet, he was all I could think of.  His sister Jamie would be able to tell me if he was still in
Georgia
, but I had no way of knowing who had succumbed to the outbreak, or whatever it was.  Maybe Flex.  Maybe his entire family.  Why was I spared?  Or was I?  Would I soon forget who I was and join these lunatics that were once friends and neighbors, family and loved ones?

My world had flipped.  I was close to flipping out.  I drove with the pedal to the floor
whenever open roadway lay ahead
through the
living and dead
bodies
– and perhaps some that fell into neither category –
and crashed cars.  At least it was morning, and there were hours of
daylight
remaining.  I knew
I might have to stop
for fuel, and that didn’t comfort me. 

I pressed on, one eye on the road and the other on my Uzi – just to make sure it was still there.

*****

I drove my new Camaro as fast as it would go whenever I could.  The car handled well, crouched low to the ground and allowed me to make good time.  I’d gotten the 3.6 liter V6 engine because I didn’t want to pay for the fuel for the bigger V8, but it still punched out 323 horsepower, and that turned out to be plenty.

With a 19 gallon fuel tank capacity and a full tank, I didn’t have to stop for gas at all.  It was around 340 miles to Jamie and Jack’s house, and despite the way I was driving and all the stopping and pulling around crashed and stalled out cars, I still had just under a quarter tank when I pulled into their driveway and saw Flex’s Suburban.

But I did have to stop to pee.  And that was where the goddamned shit hit the fan, and there is NO pun intended.

When I got up near
Fort Pierce
, I was squeezing my legs together, and even with what was happening, I couldn’t think of anything else.  I’d jumped out of bed and begun the craziness that would continue until we either killed all these things or died ourselves, and hitting the bathroom was not on my to-do list.

So, with my Uncle’s Uzi by my side, I had to pull off.  I may be a force to be reckoned with, but I’m also a girl in more ways, and I don’t like the crouch.  I wanted to find somewhere with walls.  A porta-potty would be fine, but construction had dried up since the real estate bust, and they didn’t appear on every street corner as they once did, so I hit the off ramp and made my first mistake as I pulled into a Texaco station.

I saw several bodies as I got off the ramp, and a couple of the crazies staggering around, others feeding on the aforementioned bodies.  I actually threw up in my car at the sight of it, and the full body shakes overtook me then, too.  I hadn’t eaten and I only had about a half a bottle of water in my car, which I’d downed in the first fifty miles.

As I drove past, pressing the gas pedal a bit more firmly, my mind whirled with all that had already happened and the anticipation of what would happen; whether or not I’d find Flex, and whether or not he’d try to eat me.

And I don’t mean that in a good way.

So I double-checked the Uzi to make sure it was in good working order, then looked in all directions, motor still running.  Nobody in sight.  Good.  I eased the door open and stepped out, brushed the vomit from my chest – I still didn’t have a top on.  It was at my aunt and uncle’s house, so there I was in my jeans and a bra, the Uzi strap over my shoulder and looking like a mess.

I cursed tequila then, and not for the first time.

There was a mini-mart and a garage attached to the gas station, and the door to the market was unlocked.  I
went in
and froze in my tracks.  The little brass bell tinkled as I opened the door, sounding more like a fucking gong in my mind as I watched this
thing
in the shape of a man turn his face toward me from his position on all fours.

He wore typical mechanic’s garb, the navy blue polyester pants and the lighter blue mechanic’s shirt, and he had the name ‘Jason’ embroidered on his name badge.

He’d been crouched over a dead man, and I do not use that term loosely in any fucking way, shape or form.  The shredded condition of the body indicated he’d been eaten by more than one of the zombies; there was almost no flesh left on his body, and his skull had been split open and ravaged.  The only way I could even tell it was a man was from the dress shoes, standard patent leather oxfords.  Everything else was so horrendously ripped apart and smeared with blood that it wasn’t even visible beneath the gore.

The floor was smeared and splattered with chunks of the same innards that covered the dead man’s clothing, and I think only my eyeballs didn’t erupt into gooseflesh when that thing that had been feasting on the corpse turned its face up to stare at me.

Black-red chunks of meat and blood clots stuck to Jason’s face like oatmeal on a baby’s.  His eyes looked strangely vacant, but luminescent.  In what seemed an instinctive motion, he immediately pushed himself up from the floor in my direction, those fucking eyes staring, his bloody teeth, long tendrils of something dangling from them, grinding together.  His arms reached for me.

My Uzi already in position, I blew his freakish eyes through the back of his head.  He’d been less than four feet from the door, and my full, two-second blast sent him flying backward twice the distance.  He slammed into the refrigerated cooler wall and didn’t move again.

I would’ve run, but I needed to pee and I needed supplies.  The Uzi would protect me and I didn’t plan on stopping again.

I looked back through the front glass windows and saw nobody.   I was still alone.  Based on the most likely company I could anticipate, that was good.  Alone was good.  I wouldn’t have to blow alone to pieces.

As I turned to locate the restrooms, I saw, in my peripheral vision, a car pass by on the main highway.  I felt an involuntary swell of relief.  There were others alive, too.  They hadn’t yet been infected with whatever this disease was, so at least I wouldn’t be alone in the world.

Yes, Flex came to my mind again.  He never really left it.  At that point I didn’t really, if I was being honest, expect to ever see him again, and it made my heart sink even further.

One more glance outside and I skirted around the muck on the floor of the mart and found the restroom.  Unlocked.  I went inside, locked the door, and did what I needed to do.  I tried the faucets and found the water was still on.  I splashed it on my face and wet my hair.  I was exhausted, and I needed revitalizing.

When I was ready to leave the room, I stopped, remained very still, and listened.  I didn’t hear anything.  From what I’d seen so far, these zombies were more like bulls in china shops than stealth fighters, so greeted with silence, I turned the knob and opened the door.  Stepping out, I tried the other bathroom door.  I needed to clear this place before I started shopping.  No surprises.  I didn’t need any more of them.

The men’s room was empty.  I went to the back storage room and found it to be void of anything or anyone, too.  I saw the clerk behind the counter, though, as I was grabbing the plastic grocery bags.  He was in similar condition to the businessman in the customer area, and I wondered if Jason could’ve
wreaked
all this horror
alone
.  I doubted it, but I couldn’t control it, and fuck if I didn’t have this Uzi in case my suspicions were correct.

I ran toward the cooler.  Yes, Jason’s ripped up zombie-body was in front of the glass door I needed.  Behind it were quarts of wat
er and Gatorade.

I held my breath and grabbed the handle, pulling it open as far as I could,
and
inserted my knee behind it as I slung my machine gun over my shoulder by its strap.  I pushed the door backward with both hands and the zombie slid in its own slime, leaving a nice bloody two-foot wide streak of
muck
on the floor behind it, and full access to the hydration I needed so desperately.

I filled my bags, then grabbed some granola bars and cheese and peanut butter crackers.  I thought I was done, but some Lunchables seemed to be calling me from a chest cooler by the door, so I took six of them, too.

I had three bags filled, and when I pushed the door open, I saw two more of them.

Them
.

They hadn’t seen me yet, but one of them was wearing a uniform similar to Jason’s.  I assumed he was the other one who’d helped his fellow mechanic eat the clerk and businessman.  I wasn’t going to add artist to his list of consumed human beings, so I moved all three bags into my left hand and dropped the Uzi down into the fire position and ran.

My footsteps slamming on the ground drew their attention.  Either that or they smelled me, or something.  I know that recently, Hemp has learned that sound doesn’t necessarily draw them, but perhaps the eardrums die after a couple of days.  No matter.  They saw me, and I was bee-lining for my car.  How they detected me wasn’t necessarily on my mind at that moment.

And they were moving pretty fast toward me.  They weren’t angling to cut me off, as would be instinctual for humans; they just came right toward me in that staggering, stumbling movement, as though balance had become more of a challenge since they decided that people were what’s for dinner.

I screamed as I reached the door of the Camaro, and the creatures were only about five yards away, both side-by-side.  I pulled the door open and threw the bags of food and water inside, then jumped in, my hand pulling the door closed even as I dropped into the seat.

The fingers of one of them curled around the top of the door of my car as I yanked it closed, and as it slammed, the fingers were caught up to the knuckles.

This one was named Buddy.  Buddy’s face was pressed against the driver’s side window, screaming at the top of his lungs, assuming he used them anymore, and he clawed at the glass with his free hand as he struggled to either get free, or to get at me.

The engine fired immediately, and I pressed the clutch and threw the car into
first gear
.  The other freakshow had leaned over the hood, and as I popped the clutch and the car jerked forward, he was thrown sideways, slammed into Buddy, and tumbled away from my car.  I reached the drive and turned into the street, putting distance between me and the gas station.

I was dragging Buddy along with me, and to be quite fucking frank, it was freaking the shit out of me.  I was worried that if I tried to open the door even a crack to free his fingers that he might find purchase with his other hand, and the entire door could fly open with the weight of his body.