Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles (39 page)

I opened the rat cage and nudged the rat inside.  It stirred, and its eyes opened.  A few seconds later, it got to its feet and shook, like a dog shaking off a coat of water.

“What the hell to do now?” I said aloud, staring at the rat.  I didn’t know if the sleeping had been an effect of the blood loss or the wafer. 

I started to think I was slipping.  My methods of experiment control were all over the place.   I was once so organized and patient.  Now I felt hurried and scattered.  I pulled the cage over in front of me once again.

It looked like a perfectly normal rat.  I looked over at the cage containing the crazy, flesh-eating ratz.

They were
still
looking at me.

I looked back at them.

At that moment,
I named my tes
t rat Monty. 
Don’t ask, it just came to me.

I slid Monty’s cage next to theirs.

They
continued to stare at me, hungry for my flesh
.

I stood from my stool and walked away from them.  The zombie rats stared after me
, entirely ignoring Monty
.

I walked back to the counter and picked up Monty’s cage again and put it on the other side of the
room. 
Then
, with my test rat at a distance,
I retrieved
the Microvette tube of Monty’s blood, taken before I gave him the wafer, and carried it over to the ratz cage.

Holding the tube near their cage, I
opened the top
.

It was as though I yelled fire in a movie theater.  Their activity level spun out of control, the smell of raw blood permeating their highly attuned senses in an extraordinary way.

Gem would say
they went ballistic.  Double ballistic.  Far more than when I
myself
had been just inches fro
m them.  I re-capped the sample.

Within five seconds, they calmed again, their eyes watching me, their tiny mouths working side to side.  Their fur had begun to fall out in patches, and they smelled of decay.  Glancing back at them, I put Monty’s blood sample back in the refrigerator,
reminding myself not to get accidentally cut during my escape – if
I were able to find the opportunity to make one
.

Sliding Monty’s cage
slowly
back beside theirs, it was uncanny how they did not notice him. 
I lifted the hinged lid atop the zombie ratz cage and opened the wire cage door of Monty’s cage.

Monty did his best to avoid my seeking hand, but I wrapped it around him, and took him out.

I held him by the tail and dangled him over the cage opening. 
The rats watched me through the side walls of the clear plastic, paying no attention to the live meat hovering over their heads.

I lowered Monty inside, and dropped him.

He ran to the opposite corner, away from the others.

They watched me.  I watched them.

At one point, Carville came to the wall of my cage.  My lab cage.

“Ready to wrap it up?” he asked.

“Not yet.  Give me some more time.  I’ll call for someone when I’m done.”

“What are you doing?”

“Watching the zombie rats.  I’ve injected one of them with the gas coming from the ground with some saline,” I lied.

“You can mix them?”

“It’s tricky, but you’ve given me all the tools I need.”

“What’s your goal?”

“I’m not sure yet, Mr. Carville.  As you know, testing like this normally happens over months and years.  I’m just trying to come up with experiments to do that might tell me something.  Anything.”

“Is that the fellow, there?” he asked.  “The one off by himself?”

“Yes, it is,” I lied again.  “The good news is he doesn’t seem so intent on eating me as the others do.  It could be he just doesn’t feel well.”

“If he dies, don’t use it on Veronica and
Raymond
.”

“I never intended to.  I already know what kills them, sir.”

“You’ll be alone for a bit.  I need all hands outside
right now
.  You need anything?”

I was flabbergasted.  Had I gained his trust that much already?

“No, sir.  I’ll give this as much time as I need.  Until he either feels better and joins the others, or dies.  It’ll be in my notes.
  What’s the problem out there?
”

“Zombie problem,” he said, shaking his head.  “I acted very swiftly, if I say so myself.  When this thing started, I got a crew of men going immediately.  They put in a twelve foot fence around my property.  It’s strong, too.  My guys patrol the perimeter 24/7, but right now something is going on.  There’s more of them coming, and they look like hell.”

“You mean, you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“About the diggers, Mr. Carville.”

His radio buzzed.  “23, come in.  This is Terry, sir.”

“I have to go,” said Carville.  “But I want to hear about these diggers.  We’ll talk in the morning.”

Carville left
, Billy and Frank throwing me a wave and following him down the hall.

I turned back to my cage and realized I had dodged a bullet.

Carville knew very well that I’d been given five ratz.  There were six in the cage.

Nobody in sight.  The cameras over my head could be fooled if I acted casually. 

The worst part was I had to handle one of the ratz, and I hadn’t done it yet.

I found a
pair of stainless steel mesh glove in one of the drawers, and took them out.  They would be perfect.  Slash and cut resistant.  As I pulled them on, I wondered how he knew about the ratz, but not about the diggers.  I was certain
Pete
and
Rory
knew.

Why hadn’t they shared it with Carville?  It didn’t make any sense if they wanted to be his trusted servants.

Knowledge is power.  Perhaps they felt withholding something from the powerful man gave them more of what he had.  I didn’t see how.

Lifting the lid, I reached in fast and snatched the  first zombie rat out that I could reach.  I felt its bones, even through the mesh glove, and as I curled my fingers around it and moved it toward Monty’s former home, it arched its back beyond what I would have believed possible and tried to sink its teeth into my hand.

Ah, but it was a pointless venture.  My glove had done the trick.  I stuffed him inside, his teeth still refusing to release the stainless fabric until I shook him off.  The second he came free, he came at me again, but I withdrew my hand and slammed the cage door.  His incisors clamped onto the cage bars, and his lower tooth snapped off, falling to the countertop.

I put a towel over the cage to hide him.  If Carville came back and had a second look, he’d just believe he was in error.

I sat on my stool and watched the ratz watch me and ignore Monty.  The fresh meat just inches from them, defenseless. 

For five hours, I watched. 
I was getting hungry.  Nobody had
c
ome back yet, and I was really beginning to wonder what was going on out there.  I hadn’t yet called anyone – perhaps when I did, they’d come.

Another half an hour passed.

T
hen something happened.  One of the zombie rats began twitching wildly.  It turned, and as it did so, the other
three
followed suit. 

As the
four
bodies dove atop Monty and tore him open in mere seconds, their razor-like teeth shredding fur, flesh and bone, I realized my experiment had been an
unmitigated
success.

The cookie, wafer, cake, whatever it was - i
t made
an unaffected rat
scentless; invisible. 

For a while.

I had no way of knowing if it would translate to humans.  I retrieved my calculator from the drawer and began punching in numbers, densities, and volumes, eventually learning how much a human would have to eat in order to achieve the same amount of time in a neutral state.

It would take a wafer roughly the size of a silver dollar, perhaps 1/8
th
inch thick.  Testing it on myself would be risky.  Charlie would be irate at the thought.  Meanwhile, she would do it herself without a moment’s hesitation.  The girl should have been a scientist.

Only she would have been a mad scientist.   I smiled.
 

I realized I couldn’t let Carville know about this.  Not yet.  Not until I convinced him that his only option was to give up on these
walking
dead family memb
ers and
let
me and my friends
help him learn
how to survive
and take the creatures down one by one.

Only then did any of us stand a chance of returning the world to a semblance of what it once was.

I called for a guard.  They came in minutes.

Chapter 15

“Ready?”

“Hells yes, I’m ready,” I said.  “I’ve been waiting for dark since I woke up.”

“Crossbow?”

“Check.  Urushiol?”

Dave squirted his bottle once.  A stream jetted out.  “Check.”

“Okay, I said. 
“All fine and dandy, but we have to hit that gun store.  I don’t know what’ll be left there, if Carville has a team of guys, but I can’t imagine they’d have taken everything that we’d see a use for.”

“We driving?”

“We have to go back the way we came, through that mess again,” I said.  “But it’s the next town over, and it would kill too much time to hoof it.”

“Okay, so keep the lights off and we’ll go slow.”

We walked outside.  “Little moon tonight,” I said.

“Should be enough.  Want me to drive?” Dave asked.

“Why not.  Be careful.  I’ll tell on you if you scratch her car.”

“No shit,” said Dave.  He nudged me and I went around to the other side of the car.

We got inside, and Dave punched the address on
Industrial Road
into the GPS.  The GPS Bitch spoke.

“Proceed south on
Shelburne Road
.”

“Damn,” said Dave.

“What?”

“I’d rather not go that way.  Hey, maybe there’s an alternate – something that doesn’t lead us closer to Carville’s compound.”

He hit the detour button. 

“Proceed north on
Shelburn
e
Road
.”

Dave smiled and hummed some stupid tune, proud of himself.  I laughed and watched the dark roadway ahead.

We followed the directions and turned right onto
US Route 2.  The road was narrower than the one we’d come in on, but seemed to have fewer broken down and wrecked cars.  It was also known as
Williston Road
.

Within a half mile, Dave cranked the steering wheel, throwing me into the door.

“What the fuck?”

“Dude,” he said.  “Check it out.”

“Dude?  What the fuck ever.  What is it?”

“Kevin Smith Sports Connection?  Can you say baseball bat?”

The front of the store had football players, baseball, hockey, lacrosse, and every other kind of player on it. 

Dave pulled the car up to the front of the store, then thought bette
r of it.  He pulled it behind a
shuttle bus that had overturned at some point, and now lay on its side, cattycorner to the storefront.  That way it was hidden from the main highway.

“Wanna come in?  I’m thinkin’ a nice thirty ouncer.”

“Not a bad close quarters backup,” I said.  “I’m in.”

We’d brought the headlamps with us, so we strapped them on and
got out of the car.  I had my bow over my shoulder, and Dave had the bottle of urushiol dangling from his belt by the valve.  He also had the Glock in his hand, though neither of us felt we should use it in a
desolate world where a gunshot could act as
a beacon.

Zombies didn’t use guns.
 
Yet
.

As we approached the door, we noticed a barricade.  The large, double doors were made of a carved, raised panel wood of some kind, and there was a two-by-six slid down behind the two large pull handles.

“That’s not keeping anybody out,” said Dave, lifting the board out.  Dave pulled on the door, and it opened.

We stepped inside and both instinctively switched our headlamps to the red light, which would be less visible from a distance.