Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle (9 page)

“Consider it done, Maxy,” I said.

“Hemp, Charlie,” I said.  “Can one of you stick near the car?”  I nodded to the three in the back seat.  “Watch out for our unarmed crew?”

“I got it,” Charlie said.  “Hemp, want to see if any of those rooms are accessible?”

“We’ll see if there are any passkeys in the office,” Flex said.  “With these damned electronic locks we’re going to have to do some breaking in.”

Flex and I walked to the corner by the street.  There was absolute silence and nearly pure darkness.  No streetlights, no headlights.  Some faint solar walkway lights were illuminated here and there, but just served to show how much things had changed. 

The office was on the street, and the gated pool area was beside it.  A walkway ran behind the pool fence with the lower level
row
of doors accessing the motel rooms.

Flex pulled the lobby door open.  It was dark, so he switched on his headlamp, and I did the same. 

“Fuck me,” I said, blowing the stench out of my nose.  “Something dead in here.”

“Oh, yeah,” Flex said.  “I don’t see it yet.”

“The flies do,” I said.  The sound of rapidly moving, tiny wings – thousands of them – filled the air.  The buzz was an assault on the senses, mainly because you knew why they were there and what they were eating.  Road kill is one thing.  Gross, to be sure.  But somehow when it’s a human body, the thought of flies feasting on it becomes ultra-disgusting and mentally draining.

My gun held out, I walked the outer perimeter of the office, checked down the hallway toward the vending area, and found it to be deserted.  I tried to breathe through my mouth, but I never liked that idea much, either.  Felt like the nastiness of the odor was taking a straight path into my lungs.

I’d almost forgotten about the pack of Marlboros I’d had in my pocket since we left Flex’s place.  Since the girls were riding in my car, I couldn’t smoke them, so they slipped my mind.

But when there’s a need to battle the rank smell of death, nothing is more effective than a smell I loved, stale or not.  I pulled the pack out, slid a smoke from it, tucked another behind my ear for Flex, and lit it with my Bic.  I inhaled deeply and blew it back out, the aroma of tobacco permeating the office quickly.

“That’s better,” I said.  “
W
e’re al
l clear out here, babe.
”

“I want one,” Flex said, backing out from behind the counter, a grimace on his face.  “And I found what stinks.”

I walked to the front of the counter, slipping the cigarette from behind my ear and lighting it.  I passed it to Flex who hung it from his lip and took a nice, big draw.  His face was white.

“Jesus, this tastes good,” he said.  “The clerk’s drawing the flies.  No threat.” 

He nodded toward the floor, but now that my headlamp was directed behind the counter I could see the evidence of the clerk’s last efforts not to die.  All over the walls were bloody handprints and places where some kind of arterial spray took place.  I’d describe it as a crime scene, but in zombieland all this shit was fair game.  Do the crime ‘cause you won’t be doing any time.  It’s now acceptable to eat your neighbor when zombies run the court system.

“Clerk’s body is pretty chewed,” he said, nodding toward the floor.

I don’t know why, but I had to look.  As if I didn’t know what a zombie-eaten corpse looked like.  Maybe it was me trying to become less affected by it all; a conditioning trick.  Once you’d seen it all, nothing fazed you.  I couldn’t afford to be fazed.  None of us could.  I hoped for the day when all this would be put so far in our past that a cut finger would send us into queasy spells.

I leaned over and took a quick glance.  The clerk was of indeterminable age due to the face being gone, and the hands having been gnawed down to bones.  The body was such a mass of ripped meat and blood I didn’t even know the sex.  No matter.  There was no need to pop this one; the head was cracked, as so many others we’d seen were, and it was empty.

This one was harmless

“I don’t want to go through the pockets, but I think I  might have to,” Flex said.  “No keys here.”

“Can’t we just kick a door in?” I asked.

“Then we’re vulnerable,” Flex said.

We heard a shaking, a rattling from out front.  Flex looked at me.  “What the fuck is that?”

“A fence shaking is my best guess.”

Flex went to the side window in the office and looked out.  “Fucking rotter inside the pool fence.  He’s caught in there,” he said.

“Shit.  Wonder why Hemp didn’t shoot him.”

“He’s not exactly a threat right now.”

Flex let the blinds close and took another deep drag from his smoke.  “I’m getting a little head rush from this.”

We heard a splash.

Flex and I ran outside and looked between the bars.

The ghoul floated on his back in the brackish, green water of the untended pool, an arrow jutting out of his forehead.  We turned our heads to see a smiling Charlie.

“I guess we’re not swimming tonight,” she said. 

“Let’s get into these rooms,” I said.  “I’ve had my nicotine and now I need some shuteye.”

Hemp and Charlie joined us at room 122.  The curtains were drawn back and a shine of my headlamp showed a made bed and no luggage.  It was empty.  The parking lot only had two cars in it anyway, so chances were that almost all of the rooms were the same.

“Stand back,” I said, waiting until they moved away.  I fired the Uzi at the door jamb, and when I was done, the door stood three inches open.  I kicked it the rest of the way and we went inside.

To our relief there was a pass-through door on each side.  This room was set up to be the center room for three that could be shared.

Hemp was smiling.  “Okay, we barricade this shot-up door from the inside and just keep the other two exterior doors locked.  We can go from room to room without going outside and there’s only one way in that we have to worry about.”

Using the same tool he’d used on the fuel pump, some sort of paperclip looking thing, Hemp picked the locks to both connected rooms. 
Flex had to kick in two of the pass-through doors because the inside ones locked on the other side.  Still, once we got in, there was n
o stench, no zombies.  Both rooms were vacant.

Flex grabbed a wooden chair and propped it under the doorknob.  Using the hotel pen, he marked the floor where the chair’s feet rested, then pulled the chair out again.  He removed his pocket knife and poked it through the linoleum flooring, cutting out two rough-edged holes.

Max grabbed the chair when Flex finished cutting and put it back in place.  The feet sat down inside the holes so the chair wouldn’t slide out if someone pushed hard on the door.

“Done this before, Flex?” asked Max.

“I think this shit up on the fly,” he said, smiling.

Hemp nodded approvingly, but said nothing.  He looked at Charlie and held his hand out.  She smiled and went to him, and they took the north side room.

“Night, all,” he said.  “Let’s see if we can sleep in.”  The door closed with a soft click.

“Cynthia, do you mid sharing a room with Max and the girls?  Take that room there, and we’ll stay in the middle.”

“Not at all,” she said.  “Max, you mind?”

Max laughed.  “We spent over a month together in a small lab on cots, Cyn.  I think we’re okay.  Is it at least a king bed?”

“It is,” she said.

“Then we’re good.  Night, Gem.  Flex.  She held
Taylor
in her arms, and Trina walked like a little tired zombie herself behind them into the room.  Cynthia held a battery powered lantern that illuminated the room well.  She closed the door behind her.

I looked at Flex and went to him, wrapping my arms around his waist.  I rested my head against his chest and felt the tension drain from my muscles all at once, and for the first time all day.

“I love you, Gem,” he said.  “And I don’t think I can go right to sleep.”

“Want another smoke?” I asked him.

“Give me a reason?”

“Absolutely,” I said.  “Get out of those clothes.   They’re a mess.”

Flex laughed softly and pulled his shirt off.  He may have been in his
early forties
, but all this work was really toning him up.  It wasn’t quite a six-pack, but I could definitely count three or four 12-ouncers.

I slid my jeans off, pulled the bedspread back and fluffed the pillows.  I pulled my tee shirt over my head and unhooked my bra.  They joined our other clothing on the floor.  Looking at Flex pulling off his jeans, I really wasn’t thinking how disheveled I’d be looking the next day in those bunched, wrinkled clothes, and fuck if we were going to get our clothes from the cars.

I crawled into bed and dropped the pack of smokes on the nightstand.  I slid between the sheets and pulled them back.  Flex slid in, too.

And his arms were around me, rubbing the smooth skin of my stomach, sliding over my breasts and behind my neck.  He lowered his face to my belly, kissing me softly there, working his way up until our mouths came together and our tongues explored one another. 

I felt his excitement growing, and I moved my hand down to meet him, no longer able to contain myself.  He kissed up and down my neck, behind my ears, his gentle, powerful hands stroking my skin, and I had to consciously stop myself from moaning out loud, effectively sounding a FUCK SESSION ALERT! to our companions.

I wrapped my legs around him, arched my back and let myself drift away beneath Flex’s touch.  But it was my turn to take control.  I pushed him off of me and onto his back.  I straddled him and sat upright, my hands stroking his chest, his hands sliding slowly up my sides to cup my breasts, his large hands covering them, gently rubbing the sides, then back down my stomach and around to squeeze my ass hard, pulling me against him.

I lifted up, positioning myself over him, then slid slowly back down, easing him inside.  I closed my eyes, rocking back and forth as I approached the pinnacle, biting my lip as his hips came up to meet me faster and faster, again and again.  As I felt him shudder beneath me, I let go, and we fell together and experienced the thunder of our sexual storm together.

And then I collapsed on top of him, spent and breathing hard.  His arms held me, stroking my back. No words were necessary.  I have no idea how long our lovemaking session lasted or how long we stayed like that; time seemed to have disappeared.  Finally, my senses restored, I rolled off him and fell back onto the mattress, and we lay side-by-side and held hands.

Five minutes later I tapped Flex’s chest and he reached over, pulled out two smokes, lit them both and gave me one.

We lay there smoking in silence.  We flicked our ashes onto Gideon’s bible.  It was not an assault on religion – it was a non-smoking room and it was the only portable thing we could use that wouldn’t catch fire.

“So … sleep in, then try to find where we’re setting up tomorrow?”

“That’s the plan.  I feel good about this, Gem.”

“Me too, baby.  I’m glad Hemp and Charlie found one another, too.  He’s a good guy, and I think she loves him, or she’s getting there.”

“I get that,” Flex said.  “He’s crazy about her.  I think he was from the moment he saw her.”

“Okay, finish smoke, pass out.”

“Got any of that weed on you?” Flex asked.

“Not on me.  In the car.”

“Okay,” he said.  “Tomorrow night.”

“If the mood is right,” I said.  “And we’ve got a feeling of security.”

“Yeah,” Flex said.  “No stoney-time if zombies are about.  It’s a rule.”

“Yep.”

We heard a steady thumping against the wall of Hemp and Charlie’s room.  I smiled and said: “Aw, Flexy.   I wonder if this is their first time.”

He laughed softly, and I loved the sound of it.  “I bet they pulled a quickie in the lab a time or two.”

“No!”

“A guy knows this shit.”

I snuffed my smoke out on Gideon’s Bible and so did Flex.  We went down for the count.

And we didn’t wake up until the morning sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains.

*****

In the morning everyone except the girls were up by daybreak.  We gathered in mine and Flex’s room.

Hemp and Charlie came out looking refreshed, but a tad self-conscious, and I had to nudge Flex when they weren’t looking.  I don’t have any idea why I thought it was cute.  Maybe because Charlie was cute, and so young-looking.

After our good mornings, we peeked outside through the curtains and found no dead walkers had ventured to our locale during the night.  I took my Uzi anyway, and Charlie her crossbow, and we went to the trunk of the Crown Vic and carried the cooler full of food from Flex’s house into the room.

It was mostly boxed juices and granola bars, as well as some pop tarts that Trina and Taylor scarfed down later – nothing that would really sustain us in our current states of anxiety and energy use, but it would get us by until we could get to
somewhere we could find some semi-fresh dry or canned foods
.