Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles (46 page)

Something began to churn within my stomach.  I felt my hands tingle
, so I flexed
them, squeezing my fingers, curling my hands into fists
, trying to
suppress
my gag reflex
.
 
I shivered.  My eyes felt as though they had both been pierced by tiny needles, and I had a dull ache at the base of my skull.

I hadn’t noticed any of this with Monty – just that he had gone to sleep.  It was the folly of working with animals.  You had to be keenly aware of their ordinary behavior; you could not simply grab them and begin testing.  A baseline was required, as with any test subject.

I yawned.

B
ecause I don’t remember anything more, I’m assuming that is the
very last thought I had before succumbing to sleep.

****

We’d found three aluminum john boats, all stacked together.  Inside the storage building, there were several electric trolling motors
.  They would be silent and swift,
assuming we could find batteries that still held a charge. 

Flex said he could wire some together in parallel and create the
capacity
we needed, at least to get us by if necessary. 
Turns out i
t wasn’t.  There were about six
AC/
Delco
deep cycle
marine batteries with the little green ball floating center in the little eye, telling us they were charged and ready. 

It seemed as though years had passed.  A world like this one didn’t allow
for the ordinary passage of time in the minds of survivors.  Each day could be such a struggle that it seemed like a week
had passed
as you reflected on all the hardships faced
in those twenty-four hours
.

It
was just never
that hard in the old world.

Okay, sometimes it was.  But it was rare.

So that these damned batteries still had a charge, surprised all of us, but it shouldn’t have.  It hadn’t been that fucking long.  It was, but only in
our
lives, from
our
perspectives.

 
I’ll bet it was just a blink for the zombies.

“We ready here?” said Flex, watching Dave mount the last trolling motor on the john boat and snap the alligator clips to the batteries. 

“Think so,” said Dave, lifting the rear of the boat and gunning the tiny throttle.  The propeller spun silently, and he released the handle.  It stopped.  “Good to go.”

One by one, the guys carried the boats to the water’s edge and put them in.  They pulled all three of them over to the low part of the dock and tied them up.  We all stood there in the dark, and Flex took mine and Gem’s hands in his.

“We’re going to get our boy,” he said.  “I don’t care if you pray or not, you might want to say a few words to whatever god you think runs things.  I know who I’m talkin’ to.”

He closed his eyes and squeezed our hands.  I felt Dave take my other hand, and when I opened my eyes, Tony and Serena held hands, too.  With all this begging for help, whether it was from the universe or God, something had to work for us.

“Let’s go,” I said.

We carried all the guns at our disposal and put them into the boats.  I loaded Hemp’s MP5 last.  It had a full magazine, plus I had three more in my cargo pants, along with mine.  My bow was over my back.  We would need it tonight.  We needed silence.

And we needed luck.

We stepped into the boats.  Flex and Gem in one, Me and Dave in the other, and Tony and Serena in the last one.  Nick had already taken the car away after a quick lesson on how to use the top-mount gun – with out actually using it, of course.  With the GPS sight, it was foolproof.

The water in the bay was as smooth as glass as we cut across.

I felt Hemp growing closer with each passing second.
  I couldn’t help wondering if I were fooling myself, just a stupid girl dreaming about something that would never come to be again.

I don’t know why, but I began to cry.  Dave noticed, but he didn’t say anything. 
I saw determination form in the line of his jaw, his mouth.

Because he knew why
I cried, and he would do everything in his power to make sure
my tears were for no reason at all.

****

I awoke to severe pain on
my left leg, and I jerked it forward, grabbing it with my hand.  My pants were soaked, and I groggily sat up and pulled my pant leg up to see several small blisters.

Then it came back to me.  The wafer. 

I looked, counting at least twelve small blisters, my entire leg red.  Above me, the water had boiled beyond the point of splashing out of the beaker.  I struggled to my feet and extinguished the flame of the burner.

The zombies lay on the gurneys, a mere ten feet away.  I walked over to them and stared down into their faces.

Carville’s daughter, Veronica, stared straight ahead.  The scarlet mist trapped within the goggles I had strapped over their eyes was thick, so that I could n
ot see hers or Raymond’s eyes.

I remembered them both very well, having seen them on television many times.  Ryan Carville had produced a television show where he was the star, a real estate mogul in charge of big projects in
New York
, looking for candidates to head his projects.  Veronica joined him in more recent seasons, thoug
h I did not watch the program, and had known by seeing her next to him in the board room as I clicked past it with my remote.

His brother never did join him.  He was the black sheep of the family, and the word was Carville had tried to help him many times, but he didn’t have the drive of his brother, a mere forty seconds older, nor the intellect.  Perhaps, I thought, Ryan Carville sucked all the oxygen from the womb.

Very much as he still did.

I went behind
Veronica.  She did not struggle
against her restraints, nor did Raymond. 

Could it be? 

I walked quickly to the drawer and withdrew two of the latex gloves, pulling them onto my hands.

Returning to the gurneys, I slid the goggles from her head, then Raymond’s, and moved to the front of them.  Their eyes did not follow.

No mist.  No vapor.  Just the minute leaking that occurred naturally from their tear ducts.  A hum in the background caught my attention.  Followed by a shudder.

The magnet was heating up.  My trained ear and mind may or may not be able to detect when it reached critical mass; I had not experienced the explosion of an MRI machine before.  There had been a previous situation in
Salisbury
,
Maryland
in 2006 where the machine suddenly exploded, but it appeared to have strewn aluminum particles everywhere, rather than causing any catastrophic damage.

I needed a good explosion.  I was happy the opening of the machine faced the acrylic walls, for when the concussion from the blast eventually materialized, it would take the path of least resistance.

I needed it to take out that wall.  And I needed Carville to be in the room with me.

I looked at the clock.  It was almost half past four in the morning.  I had been out for half an hour.

I leaned over the gurney, my face in Raymond’s.  He did not react.  I touched his face, his arms.  This was all new, for nobody had ever handled them with out resistance or attack.

How easily could they be manipulated?  Would they allow themselves to be moved?  Walked somewhere?  Perhaps the old carrot and stick method, using a piece of meat?  I had to be careful.  I was likely still vulnerable to the mist, should it appear.

Best I keep food away from them.  I began to unstrap Raymond’s restraints, then stopped.
  I had to restrain his wrists, at the very least.

Knowing I would eventually perform an MRI on one or both of them, I had made a list of additional supplies.  The flex cuffs were in the drawer with my gloves, and I got a pair of them and carried them back to the gurney.  Working the ratcheting nylon strap cranks in reverse, I loosened the straps holding Raymond’s arms down.  Once it was loose enough, I reached down with both hands and pulled his wrists together over his body
and slipped the plastic cuffs over each hand and over his wrists, then zipped them tight to his skin.  I didn’t tighten them very much, but even so, the plastic cut the zombie’s skin where the tie met its wrist
. 

It felt strange, touching this creature.  The body was cold – as cold as the temperature in the room, which currently read forty-five degrees Fahrenheit.   This was, of course, too warm for an actual cadaver in a morgue, and even the typical temperature of thirty-six to thirty-nine degrees would not prevent decomposition, but it did effectively slow it long enough for
a forensic pathologist
to carry out any
typical
tests.  The only way to halt decomposition
entirely
was
by freezing
the body, but that had other ill-effects
, and made them difficult to work with
.

I looked at Raymond. 
Those bastards don’t know difficult,
I thought.

Before I
committed,
I had to make
absolutely sure that I was
entirely
invisible to the creature.  I knew that when they walked among one another, it was as though they were
unaware of each other
–
bumping
, pushing each other, but only as a result of pursuing the same food source; not to dominate one another or win a battle. 

They were, as I believe I’ve indicated before, singularly focused.  I
had never seen
two or more of them fight over a victim, which meant that they likely did not have the awareness to realize that another zombie eating alongside them would reduce the food available to them.

I went to get Monty’s blood.

With my thumb, I popped the rubber seal from the tube and held it near
him.  The vapor poured forth, and I jumped back, out of the range of the vapor. 

But I was too late.  I had inhaled some of it.

And I
had
felt nothing.
 
Could it be?

I moved back in, turning my head toward Billy and Frank again, just to be sure. 

Out.

It was risky.  If I were to pass out from the vapor, nothing would wake me until I was shaken awake by Carville himself, or his guards.  That would be a foolish mistake
, but easy enough to explain, I suppose
.
  It would dash any hope for an escape if they removed me from the lab, though.  The MRI machine was heating up nicely, according to the magnet temperature reading on the computer.  I had disabled the audible alarm, which would have sounded with a loud buzzer as soon as the magnet exceeded a safe temperature.

Again, I looked at the creatures on the table, then at the vial of blood in my hand
.  Just a
bit
more, I decided, moving in aga
in.  I held the vial toward him, and they both gnashed and
growled;
the pink-red mist clouded from
their eyes
in my direction
.  I move
d
in
to the danger zone
and took a deeper breath, then jumped
quickly away
.

I was not
dizzy.  Not even a little.
  I was perfectly alert.

This was a
n amazing breakthrough
. 
This meant that not only would I be invisible to them, but should they encounter a food source while I was among them, and
I became subject to the vapor
, I would have nothing to fear from it, either. 

O
n the other hand, being able to walk
safely among them while still being susceptible to the knockout gas could
end horribly, resulting
in being
awakened by a zombie engorging himself on your body parts, the wafer’s effects having worn off
minutes, or even hours
before
.

A thought that reminded me
I still had no idea whatsoever of the duration of the wafer’s neutralizing properties in a human system.  I had calculated
the ratios from rat to human
as accurately as possible, but instead of five hours, it could be three or four, or even six or seven.

I checked the clock.  It was
now five o’clock.  If I did
only
have
the
five hours
Monty had
, I’d already eaten up one of them.