Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle (24 page)

“Let’s go kill some zombies,” I said. 

We all ran into the pouring rain toward the fence.

*****

It was, if I were asked to explain it later, similar to shooting animals in a zoo.  Wild animals intent on eating us.  It was as much their fault – this craving of theirs – as it would be the wild animals’ fault for wanting fresh meat.  But that didn’t make it feel any better, this justification.  Sure, it was becoming second nature to shoot them without consideration of their pasts, but if you didn’t numb yourself to it, it would play out in your head something like this – an example of my first five kills that day:

A housewife in her mid-forties.  About 5’3” tall.  Bullet in the eye, blood and bone flies from the back of her head.

A boy of perhaps fifteen years; a few wisps of light brown hair remaining.  Probably loved baseball and his new girlfriend.  Errant gunshot tears through his throat, and the kill shot shatters the remaining teeth from his head and cuts him down in a heap.

A grandfather.  Once dressed in his Sunday best, now in that new fashion look, pants and wrist cuffs with just the necktie, like a past-his-prime Chippendale’s stripper.   As he clung to the fence with both hands I put two three-round bursts through his head just for slamming his elbow into the face of the woman I was going to kill next.

A woman, still oddly pretty despite her horrid affliction.  Bone structure, high cheekbones – I could see this because I could see the actual cheekbones – and long hair that somehow refused to fall out.  Nearly 5’10” tall, barefoot but for the most part still wearing the tattered pantyhose she’d been buried in.  I stitched her with eight rounds in the neck, and her head toppled off her shoulders, indicating she was farther along in the decomposition department than she appeared.

The head lay face up, the once pretty eyes looking directly up at me, the remaining eyelid batting, her teeth moving as they bit into the swollen, flitting tongue.  I put one bullet in the center of her forehead and all the flirtatious shit came to a quick end.

And last of my first five kills was a toddler.  He could only have been three years old.  If you’ve ever seen an old man – really old who had shrunk to the size of a boy, then you might have some idea of what this thing resembled.  His moans seemed singled out in my mind; in my ears.  I heard them in a little child’s voice, and I killed him fast.  I could not stand there and see this destroyed little boy struggling against all these adult zombies, fighting for his meals of human flesh and brains, and hardly strong enough to ever win.

I turned away when I put the Uzi through the fence to his nose and pulled the trigger.  A two-round burst did it.

I didn’t want to over do it.  I wasn’t heartless.  I know he was essentially a sick kid.  A sick kid who had died and rose from the dead and was now dead again.

Dead again.  Words I only thought I’d utter about fiction or movies.

The rest of them were a blur for me.  When my last magazine was exhausted, I stepped back and evaluated our progress.

Cyn was doing very well.  She was crying as she fired her weapon.  Screaming, actually.  She was screaming “Fuck you!  Fuck you!” every time she killed another.

Maybe it was her way of dealing.  “Fuck you.  You killed my mother.  You took my baby’s grandmother.  Fuck you.”

Whatever it took.  I was okay with it.  But I wondered if she could use some one-on-one counseling later.   I’m not trained, but I’m a good ear.

Charlie was a killing machine.  Her shirt of choice today said “If I Had Balls They Would Be Bigger Than Yours.”

I think she was right.  She was a machine.  Tap-tap-tap.  Tap-tap-tap.  Tap-tap-tap.  Three triples, five zombies down.  She was actually entertaining to watch when you kept your eyes on her.  The rest of it was as disturbing as fuck, but again, it had to be done without emotion.

When the group at the gate was heaped in a pile, and I had refreshed my ammo, we ran in opposite directions along the fence line taking out others who had spread out.  There were maybe a dozen more all around the perimeter, and we took them out easily.  As we finished up and met in the back, Charlie and I walked back to the front gate together.

“Jesus,” she said.

“Yeah.  Jesus.”

I pointed as we rounded the building.  “Hey, the boys!”

The Crown Vic pulled up to the gate, stopping about twelve feet back.  There was no way through.
Hemp hadn’t put the cowcatcher
on the Ford or the crew cab yet, so had no ability to use it to push the bodies away.

“I’ll get gloves,” I called.  “Hang tight.”

“I got it,” Cyn said.  She was closest to the door and went inside.

Flex just stood outside the car and looked at me.  “You triple tapped.”

“I know.  You had enough on your hands.”

“D
amn
it, Gem.”

“Hey, I’m your fiancé.  You shouldn’t talk to me like that.”

“Where the hell did they all come from?” he asked.

“I don’t have any idea.”

“I opened the bay door and they were just there,” said Charlie.  “I’m glad I did, or you guys would’ve driven right into the mess.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “At least we had the fence for protection.”

“Fine, but never do this again without telling us what’s happening.  What if they’d have broken through.  Pushed the fence in?”

“They didn’t, Flex.” I said.

“Not this time,” he said.

“Shit,” said Hemp.  He fired his gun into the pile of bodies.  “A live head.”

“Sorry,” said Charlie.  “Still getting proficient with the AK-47.”

“Glad you’re okay, sweetie.”

“Thanks, Hemp.”

Cynthia came back out and gave us some gloves, then tossed the box over the fence to Flex.  He took a pair, and gave a pair to Hemp.

The guys cleared a path to the gate, unlocked it, and rolled it sideways.  Careful to make sure we didn’t get scratched, Charlie, Cyn and I focused on the smaller bodies, all with bandanas tied over our mouths and noses.  This was nasty, stinky work.

“I want to burn them,” said Flex.  “Hemp?  Any ideas?”

“We’ve got two five-gallon cans of turpentine inside,” he said.  “Can’t use it for much else, and we shouldn’t need it all anyway.”

“Okay, let’s make two nice piles on either side of the gates, far enough away not to compromise the fencing.”

The rain had stopped midway through our zombie killfest.   Their bodies and remaining clothing were wet, and I had some concerns that they wouldn’t burn.

“Don’t worry, Gem,” said Hemp.  “
Their skin is so dried and porous
that
at this point it should soak in pretty well.  I think they’ll catch.”

“Fine, but when all this is done, Flexy, can you use that little dozer to dig a nice hole so we don’t have to look at them whenever we come or go?  I don’t want the girls seeing this.”

“I planned to all along, babe.”

When the path was cleared, Hemp drove the Crown Vic inside the building through the bay door and parked.  He retrieved the 5-gallon can of turpentine and walked back out to where Flex waited.  Together, they doused the two piles of bodies with the flammable fluid and Flex touched a lighter to the base of each pile.

The men came back through the gate and locked it up.

We watched the zombie pyre from just inside the bay doors.

We watched until the smoke went from black to white, and the bodies melted into a sunken pile of dark sooted ash and bone.

In the end, the guys had taken out twenty-six of them at the cemetery, and had filled three bags with poison ivy.

We had killed sixty-two of them just outside the gates of our safe haven.

I still felt okay about the place.  So far defending it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

Big, human-shaped, stinky, flesh eating fish with bad complexions.  Never thought I’d long for piranha.

Piranha are easy.  Just stay out of the water.

At least the fuckers couldn’t fly.

*****

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Everybody was upbeat over the next few days, and I’m still not sure why.  Trina and Taylor were enjoying Cynthia’s school and the watercolors, I was enjoying painting again, and Flex and Hemp were working on the vehicles and figuring out the whole poison ivy thing.

As I worked on my painting of me and Flex – which was almost finished, by the way – Flex and Hemp came over to me with Charlie trailing behind.  Cyn was currently holding classes with the girls, but whatever was discussed she could be filled in on later.

“Hey, babe,” said Flex.  “Hemp’s got some ideas we need to go over.”

“Painting is coming along,” said Hemp.  “Is it done?”

I looked at the canvas.  The image of us was soft and flowing, and everything I’d envisioned it to be.  I held the brush for another moment, then put it down.

“You know what?  It is.”

“Just decided that, huh?” said Flex.

“Yes, I did.  I’ll fuck with it until doomsday if I don’t quit sometime or other.  So yep.  It’s done.”

Charlie looked at her watch.  “Doomsday has come and gone,” she said, smiling.  “But there’s nothing more to do with it anyway, Gem.  It’s amazing.  Kinda makes me squirm a bit.”

“In a good way, I hope,” I said.

“Oh, yes.”

Flex stared at it for a long time, his eyes far away.  “It’s beautiful, babe,” he finally said.  “I’ve been there.  I know the way he feels.”

“I was inspired,” I said.  “I’ve been there, too.”

“Okay
,” said Hemp.  “Down to business.  To the table?”

We moved over to the picnic table.  Cyn and the girls were holding school inside the office lately, leaving the table available for meetings, reading, whatever.

“Okay,” said Hemp.  “I want to discuss the poison ivy plants and the implications behind our immunity.”

“Everyone at this table so far,” said Flex.  “What are the odds?”

“Exactly, Flex,” said Hemp.  “That’s what got me perplexed.  This apparent immunity to urushiol is astronomically
against
the odds.  Right now with four of us tested, we’re at 100%.  The immunity rate among the general population, give or take a few percentage points, is around 10%.  So only one in ten should be immune.  At worst, we’re already at 57% if none of the others have the immunity, too.”

“But you don’t think that’s possible?” I asked.  “I mean, that they’re
not
immune?”

“100% is an awfully convincing statistical number, so I’d like to test Cyn and the girls, but if I’m wrong we’re going to have some traumatized kids.”

“Really, Hemp?” said Charlie.  “Worse than what they’ve already been through?”

“Point taken,” he said, smiling.  “I suppose we’ll test them, then.  But I can still carry on with my urushiol tests on our subjects in there.  Under the assumption that we’re all immune.”

“Hemp,” I said.  “I don’t get what this means.  Are you trying to tell us that this whole thing was caused by poison ivy – or this urushiol?”

Hemp shook his head.  “Let me get into what immunity is in a situation like this before I get into my point about the urushiol.  There is, in all of us, the innate immune system.  This is the first line of defense and comprises the cells and mechanisms that provide us with immediate defense against infections.  Part of this is an automatic mobilization of immune cells to the site of a potential infection.”

Hemp swiped his hair away from his eyes again.  Charlie watched him, her eyes sparkling as he spoke.  She was a proud girlfriend when he got all sciency on us.

“Now, the other thing we’ve got is the adaptive immune system, which is very impressive.”

“You’re impressive,” said Charlie.

“Shut up,” said Hemp, smiling.

“You shut up,” said Charlie.

We all laughed, and Hemp squeezed Charlie’s hand in his and continued.

“The adaptive immune system is composed of highly specialized, systemic cells that can eliminate or prevent pathogenic growth.  It’s triggered when the evolutionary older innate immune system gets overwhelmed.  When triggered, the adaptive immune system actually modifies the DNA to protect the host, and each time a particular pathogen is encountered, it mounts stronger attacks against the invader.  It basically prepares the host for future challenges.”

“Okay,” said Flex.  “So that explains how we might be protected, but using that beautiful voice and crisp British accent of yours, tell us how the immunity ties in.”

“I have to be very specific explaining this because I can see how people would initially think I’m saying the virus was caused by urushiol.  The simple answer is no.  The reason obviously is that poison ivy, oak and sumac aren’t even found in all parts of the country.  And while there are several ways to contact minute amounts of it, such as in the skin of mangoes, it’s not how it happened.”