Dead Hunger V: The Road To California (39 page)

“Are you absolutely sure about that?” asked Hemp.

“99% sure,” I said.  “Lola stood still, and two of them walked through the crowd and went straight to her.  They set their horde on us and focused on Lola.  She killed them both.”

“And you say she was consciously calling them?” asked Hemp.

I looked at Lola.  She nodded.  “Just confirmed.  Yes, she was calling them.”

“Okay,” he said.  “Hold on just a moment.  I’m going to bounce some ideas off Flex, Gem and Charlie.”

We waited.  It felt really good to have Hemp and the others on the radio, all of us working as a team again. 

After less than a minute, we heard Hemp say, “David, did you check the helicopter for night vision goggles?”

I looked at Rachel and shrugged.  “I didn’t,” she said.  “Would it be equipped with them?”

“No,” I said into the transmitter.  “We hadn’t thought of it.”

“You said this was a medical evacuation helicopter, is that correct?” asked Hemp.

We acknowledged that.

“Then yes, most likely.  They would use it to spot heat signatures of crashed vehicles, airplanes and the like, after any flames have died down.  I do not believe they’re exactly standard equipment, but if equipped with some, they’ll likely be in a case somewhere.  Search the cockpit and cabin areas.”

In the end, Hemp had a fantastic idea.  He gave it to us in detail.

“And David,” said Hemp.

“Yeah, Hemp?”

“Call me in the morning, before you go.  It’s three hours later here, and I intend to be on this frequency, probably before you even awaken.”

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I want to toss this around tonight.  I may have more input in the morning.  If you think it can help you, I’ll be here.”

“Hemp, I know we’ve just been gone almost a week, but I speak for Nelson and Serena, too.  We miss you guys.”

After some back and forth that we all really needed in order to bring our sanity back, and some questions that were on the list that we hadn’t covered, we said good bye to our beautiful friends across the country, and I know without even asking that we all wanted to get back there about a million times more than we had earlier in the day.

The helicopter was fueled.  The sun had set. 

It was time to search for the vent, and hopefully, the door.

*****

             
Chapter Sixteen             

Found something,” said Lola.  “Says
Thermal Eye
on the case.  It’s got something plugged into it.”

Rachel moved back.  “This is it.  Your Hemp is a genius!”

“Ha!” said Nelson, watching Rachel open the box.  “That makes two of us.”

I got the distinct impression that Nelson was still trying to impress Rachel, despite the fact that she’d already taken to him.

Lola opened the box with us looking on.  Inside was what appeared to be binoculars, but with only one eyehole to look through.  A cable snaked through the case and was plugged into the side.

“That keeps it charged as you fly,” said Rachel.  “Perfect.”  She powered it up, and held it up to the woods around the camp.  “It works,” she said, lowering it.  “Dave, we’re ready.  I think this might work.”

“If the gen’s running now.”

“We might see heat signatures anyway.  From something else related to your uncle,” said Rachel.

“Okay,” I said.  “Tonight, you stay here, Albert.  We’re not making any moves, we’re just searching.  Once we find the vent, Rachel will mark it on her electronics and we’ll come back.  Tomorrow morning we’ll load up and hike there.

“Is there a reason I can’t go?” he asked, obviously disappointed.

“There are a few, dude,” said Nelson.  “If
we
crash,
you
won’t be dead.  Then there’s fuel consumption to think of.  Excuse me, but you’re a hefty kid.”

Albert smiled.  “You don’t have many filters, do you, Nelson?”

“Nah,” said Nelson, smiling.  “Filters just make it take longer to say what you wanna say.  Still, it’s tough to stay mad at me, right?”

“I hate to agree with you, but yeah,” said Albert.

Nelson looked at Rachel.  “See?  If people think you’re a genius, they treat you like a know-it-all.  If they believe you’re just a stoner who gets lucky with a good idea now and then, they love you like a puppy.”

“We’ve already had some long conversations, Nel,” said Rachel.  “You’re far deeper than your façade.”

“So you love me like a puppy yet?” he asked, smiling.

Rachel shook her head and did not answer.

Albert dropped his arms to his sides. “Fine, I’ll stay here.  But take one of those handheld radios.  I’m going to be checking in on you.”

“We won’t be compromised, so feel free,” I said. 

“If you’re not doing anything, why all the weapons?” asked Albert.

“Preparation,” said Rachel.  “Just like the scout motto.  “Be Prepared.”

“Got it,” said Albert.  “This sucks.”

“It’s for your own good,” said Serena.

“Whatever,” said Albert.  “Just be careful.”

“We will,” I said. 

With that, we got in the chopper.  Lola, Rachel, Nelson, Serena and yours truly.

*****

We all put on our headsets and Rachel got the Eurocopter in the air.  I couldn’t help but wonder about the red-eyes and their ability to hear, and what they would surmise with this big bird flying over, its blades beating against the air with low, rhythmic
thwumps.

Did they have that much intelligence?  Could their advanced brains still process that this was a machine flown by man, their primary food source?  If so, could they possibly anticipate our mission?  If that was possible, would they realize it was the same as theirs?

I know we both wanted inside.  There could be no other reason to hang around.

“Can you tell where you are?” I asked.

Rachel nodded.  “Marked it as best we could.  Who’s going to use the goggles?”

“I’ll give it a go,” said Nelson.  “Just tell me when we’re there.”

“There could be other vents,” said Rachel, angling the chopper sharply to the right.  “Now’s good.”

We slid the door open and Nelson looked out.  He turned back.  “Somebody hold my belt.  This is pretty freaky.”

Lola sat on the edge of the seat closest to Nelson and loosened her safety belt, allowing her enough room to reach out and grab Nelson’s belt.  She gripped it as he held the device up to his eyes.

“Wow,” he said in wonder.  “I can see all the trees like daytime.  These are cool.”

“Look for bright points of light,” said Rachel.  “Hold on.  I’m bringing it around to the left.”

Nelson steadied himself, and Rachel brought the chopper lower, and banked smoothly to the left.  I was impressed with her abilities and again thankful to have her with us.  She was a ton of contribution tucked into a little, five-foot frame.

“Hold on,” said Nelson.  “Something looks like a green snake down there.”

“A green snake?” I asked.

“Yeah, and it’s even moving,” he said.  “Rachel, can you hover just off to my side another hundred yards or so?”

“Roger that,” said Rachel.

“You know my name’s Nelson, babe,” he said, smiling.

I looked over to see Rachel shake her head.  She said, “And you know that façade doesn’t work with me anymore,
dude
.”

“Touché,” he said, which was a word I would not have credited him with knowing before I discovered his goofball persona was just a ruse.

“There!” he said.  “Davey, take a look.  Right down there.  Bright green spot, then like a snake coming off it.”

He moved and I took his place.  I felt a hand curling under my belt, turned and saw Lola holding me steady now.

“Thanks,” I said, peering through the night vision goggles. 

“We have to get lower,” I said.  “I see what he’s talking about, but I can’t tell what the hell it is.”

“I know, it’s weird, right?” said Nelson.

Rachel said, “I don’t like to get too low because of visibility.  Never liked night flying.”

“If that’s the vent pipe,” I said, “the part shining bright, then what’s the snake part?”

“It’s the exhaust,” said Nelson.  “I’m so freakin’ stupid!  It’s the exhaust stream!”

“Which way is it going?” asked Rachel.

I looked, then pointed.  That way.  Toward where the front of the helicopter’s facing.”

“Then Nelson’s right,” she said.  “The wind is blowing that way.  We’ve found it.”

“Can you mark it?”

“The GPS satellites appear to still be functional,” said Rachel.  “I mean, we’re triangulating okay.  Even if they’re off, we’re marking a particular spot, so it should be accurate enough.  We can cross-reference it to a map when we get back to the park.”

“What?” asked Lola.

“Never mind,” said Rachel.  “I’m thinking out loud, really.  Yeah.  We’ll be able to get back here tomorrow.”

Nelson had taken the goggles again and was looking outside, a smile on his face.  “Wait!” he said.  His smile turned to concern.

“What?” asked Rachel.

“What are … those?”

“What do you see?” I asked.

“Wow,” said Nelson.  “A bunch of dots.  Like … I don’t know, more than ten.  Pinpoints, almost.”

“Want me to get lower?” asked Rachel.  “Where?”

“Just below us,” said Nelson.  “Almost right under us.  Does this thing have a big spotlight or something?”

“Silly question,” said Rachel.  She hit a switch and started moving a joystick mounted to her left. 

The area beneath them lit up like daylight.

I almost asked why we didn’t use that to find the vent, but caught myself before I sounded like an idiot.

We needed the heat signature of the vent pipe.

“Holy shit,” whispered Nelson, almost inaudible in the ambient noise from the helicopter.

“What?” asked Lola and Serena together.

“Look at them,” said Rachel.  “How many?  Hundreds?”

Below us, bathed in the light from our multi-million candlepower spot, the forest revealed body after body, standing among the brush and limbs.  Among these, every so often, red eyes stared upward.  These were the points that Nelson had noticed.

The red eyes.  They were here, and they had called their army.

“Circle them,” I said.  “The hill drops off behind them there.”

Rachel banked left and straightened the bird out.  We came around and she directed the spotlight farther down the mountainous hillside.

The bodies snaked up the hill, bunched up here and there, but wherever there was a clearing, there was a rotter standing, pushing into the next one, all wanting nothing more than to feed on human flesh and to be where their intelligent, female leaders called them.

“Sky,” said Lola.

Nelson spun around and grabbed her hand, which had again been wrapped around his belt.

I knew why.  If her caring hold turned into a vicious shove from a command issued from below, Nelson would be falling to the earth to join the red-eyed corpses.

“Nelson,” she said.  “I wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Dude, I know, but it freaked me out.”

“Okay,” said Rachel.  “I think we know where the door is.  It’s the only reason they would cluster down there.”

“Mark it, and let’s get back down,” I said.  “We really need to think this through for tomorrow.”

We returned to the Railroad Park in silence.

This was going to be a bigger job than we’d anticipated.

But Hemp’s plan still might work – with some tweaks.

*****

Hemp’s instructions for building a bomb were precise.  The design was a bit crude, and it took a lot longer time to extract the gunpowder from a variety of bullets than we anticipated.  Several of us spent hours on it.  Hemp had us locate other household items to use in there, and in the end, we had followed Hemp’s instructions exactly.

Even Rachel had no idea how to put it together, so we were essentially like amateur chefs working off a cookbook, albeit a damned good cookbook.

I was more concerned with the strength of the blast; whether it would have enough power to actually blow anything open rather than just scorch.  We
were
dealing with Uncle Bug, after all.  I wouldn’t bet against him being prepared for a bunker buster bomb, delivered by the US military.

The bomb was somewhat cone-shaped, heavily weighted on the bottom.  If we had to drop it from the chopper for some reason, it would hopefully remain upright, which was crucial because it was designed so that the force of the blast would concentrate downward. 

By the time we were done, it was past eleven o’clock.  Nelson, Rachel, Lola, and everyone else hit the sack, but Serena and I had other plans.  Hemp insisted the bomb would be quite stable, so we put it in the helicopter and got ready to call it a night.

Russell had developed an instant water heater of sorts, used solely for bathing.  It was actually quite ingenious.

They had an elevated tank that they used to collect snow and rainwater.  They conserved it, but because of the creek below, they did not need it for drinking water, therefore it was used mainly for cooking and bathing.

The main hose ran from the bottom of the tank, along the ground.  About ten feet from the massive fire pit, the hose coupled to a pipe and disappeared underground.  Russell explained that they had created a four-foot diameter, multiple-layer, copper coil that rested just inches below the fire pit; as long as there were even embers glowing, the water would pass through and be nice and warm upon exiting.

Placed fifteen feet away from the fire pit was a single, ball and claw-footed bathtub, just like an antique from an old Victorian home.  Maddie said it had come from the same shop that sold the cowbells.

Under the stars, after everyone else had gone to bed, Serena and I filled the porcelain tub with water that was amazingly warm.  Retrieving the soap from our railroad car, Serena and I risked full nudity, sinking into the water together washing away the dirt and grime accumulated over the last couple of days.  We kept our ears alert for the sound of distant cowbells and to our relief, none clanked their metallic warnings to us.

Her head on my shoulder, Serena whispered, “They’re not here.  That’s good.”

I agreed with a nod.  Where all of the disbursed infecteds that had waited outside Bug’s huge doors for so long had gone, we did not know, and as long as they weren’t here now, for the moment we didn’t care. 

But Serena’s vocalized thought did momentarily snap us out of the bliss created by the full, wet contact of her bare skin to mine; her, seated between my legs, her back resting against my front with my arms wrapped around her; lathering up her stomach and breasts, moving down to slide between her legs – all the while trying not to make her seating position too uncomfortable with my involuntary contributions beneath the water.

But that diversion did it.  As I shrank and our thoughts again turned to zombies, I said, “I wonder if they’re making their way to join the hillside horde,” I said.