The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (109 page)

“I heard him talking to Charlie a couple of days ago.  He’s nowhere near that right now.  Hell, we never had enough peacetime for him to focus on any testing at all.  Just when he and Doc Scofield got the lab ready for everything he wanted to do, all this shit went down.”

“Really?  You heard him say he’s not close?”

Dave nodded.  He wasn’t sure anyone else knew.  Hemp was normally honest to a fault, and this was more of an omission than a lie.  But no matter; it was an accidental eavesdrop, and Dave had never told Flex or Gem what he heard Hemp say.  That would be for Hemp to share if he ever got to the point where he believed it was hopeless.

“Hey,” he said, his voice suddenly low.  “Up ahead.”

“I just got the chills,” said Lisa, bringing her gun around.

“Don’t worry.  Just wait until they’re close, and then just act like you work here.  They won’t even notice you.”

Now it was Lisa’s turn to nod.

The group moved side-to-side and weaved unsteadily up the street toward them.  Three males and two females.  One indeterminable.

As they drew closer, Dave began walking straight toward them.  He was uncomfortable as hell, but it was an opportunity, in this bright moonlight, to really look at them.  The first male to reach him was missing an eye, and had only three fingers on his left hand. 

He had, at some point, bitten his tongue in half, and it dangled out of the left side of his mouth like a parched canine.  This one was clearly a digger, because as with all of them, his single dress shoe and remnants of a tie gave him away.

Dave let the thing pass by him, pulled his gun from the drop holster, and held it out.  Tonight, he had attached the noise suppressor again.  No sense in waking the neighborhood.  His finger began tightening on the trigger, when a rapid burst of gunfire erupted from behind him.

He whirled around to see two of the females crumpling to the ground and Lisa standing there, her eyes wide as hell, staring as they dropped.

“Jesus, you could give a guy a warning!” scolded Dave.

“They were surrounding me, Davey,” she said.

“They can’t smell you, or whatever it is they do.”

“They did something.  It was like what you saw today.  Maybe they didn’t know I was food, but it sure looked to me like they were going to come in for a closer look to figure out what I was.”

“Serious?”

“As a heart attack.  And something changed when they noticed the gun.  I think that’s when they started to like, I don’t know, surround me.”

Dave turned and took four steps, caught up with the two males who had passed by, and shot them both quickly in the back of their skulls.  They fell forward, twitching momentarily, then forever still.

The other two – the remaining man and the one they couldn’t identify, were now several feet off to the side, unaware of anything behind them. 

“I got this,” said Lisa.

She fanned the gun and used two three-round bursts to take them out.

“I gotta go check,” said Dave.

He walked over and kicked the smaller of the two over, and knelt down beside the decayed body. 

It was a girl.  Not a woman, but a girl.  Maybe she was nine, maybe eleven.  He’d never know.

“Rest in peace, kid,” he said, feeling a tear coming from his eye.  He felt Lisa approaching from behind and wiped it away.

His sister put a hand on his shoulder.  She said, “It’s that awkward fucking feeling you get when your sister kills a kid who never should’ve been alive in the second place.  C’mon, Davey.”

“You guys okay?  What are you doing out here?”  It was Flex, standing on the porch.

“Walking,” said Dave.  “Just taking care of regular business.  Killing the dead and junk.”

“You’re okay, right?”

“We are,” said Lisa. “Just some quality sibling time.”

“You bring a radio?” asked Flex.

Lisa held it up, along with her bottle of urushiol.  “Yeah.  Just in case.  And zombie repellent.”

“Keep the radio on channel 16,” said Flex.  “I’ll have mine on.”

“Thanks,” said Dave.  “We won’t be long, Flex.”

Flex smiled and waved.  “Just keep the gunfire to a minimum.”

After Flex went back inside and closed the door, Dave said, “If everything were up to me, I’d go tomorrow.  I would, but I can’t see leaving these people in this mess.”

“This mess might not be over for a long time.  Like Hemp said, Concord is a magnet to these things.  They’re attracted to it.”

“So that’s how it’ll be everywhere we go where society is trying to rebuild, I guess,” said Dave.  “More people, more aromatic goodness.”

“More zombies,” said Lisa.  “So what’s the answer?”

They strolled down their street and turned left at the next street.  The moonlight allowed them to see all around them, and was so bright it cast eerie shadows across the abandoned roadways.

“The answer is pretty obvious to me,” said Dave.  “Keep your group to a minimum size, like Flex and Gem and those guys did.  Just the five of them for a long time.  I guess it was inevitable they’d pick others up along the way.  They’re not the kind to leave someone behind.”

“Kind-heartedness put their family more at risk.”

“Unfortunately, that’s the way it seems to be,” said Dave.  “But I have an idea.  If I go, I want to bring you and Serena.  If you don’t want to go sis, I get it.  If you feel better in this community, then I totally get that.”

“To tell you the truth, Davey, I haven’t decided yet,” said Lisa.  “You’re family.  That weighs pretty heavily.  But I also try to look at this from a larger point-of-view.  I’m young.  I’m going to do my part to return the world to something kids can live in without fear.  That means families and rebuilding.  If I’m running around the country, I don’t see how I’ll ever meet someone and start to do my part to repopulate the planet with people who give a shit about air quality.”

Dave laughed.  “Good point.  Stop for a second.”

The air smelled slightly putrid much of the time.  There were few cars on the road these days, so carbon monoxide was far less than before, though Dave could not imagine it was ever that bad here, in Concord.  The putrid smell was rotting bodies.

So many bodies that had been killed beyond reanimation remained inside literally hundreds of locked homes in the area.  The makeshift government of Concord, Kev and his appointees and friends, had organized task forces where gas valves were turned off, bodies were removed and stacked for burning, and other more minor issues were dealt with, but many more remained. 

The smell that almost everyone in town had become used to was there.

But now,
Dave thought,
it’s stronger.

“Which way is the wind coming?” asked Dave.

Lisa leaned down next to the sidewalk and ripped up a handful of grass.  It had not snowed in several days, and while the grass wasn’t pretty, you could at least see it.

She dropped it, and it drifted off to the south.

“From the north,” said Lisa. 

Dave looked in that direction.  “You smell that?”

“Stinks.”

“Yeah, worse than normal. 

Lisa unclipped her bottle of urushiol.  “Ratz?”

“I don’t know.  What’s that building over there?”

“I’ve passed it.  I think it’s like a social club.  Has a banquet hall, stuff like that.”

A crash came in the night, and both Dave and Lisa jumped. 

Dave put a hand on Lisa’s arm.  “That came from that building, sis.”

“I know.”

“We gotta check it out.”

Lisa shook her head.  “No, we don’t.  We can check it out tomorrow.”

“We’re on WAT-5, Leese.  We’ll just slip inside and see what we see.  We’ve got the radio if things go south.”

“Okay.  We didn’t bring headlights.”

“Then we don’t go where it’s dark.”

“You’ve got an answer for everything, don’t you?”

“Almost.  C’mon, let’s go.”

*****

The building was constructed of brick with a flat roof.  From a distance, they could see bubble skylights.

Dave pointed.  “Better idea.  Let’s find roof access and climb up.  We can see if we have a view inside.  Safer, right?”

“I suppose so,” said Lisa.  “I’ve never seen a zombie on a ladder.  Stairs, yes.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Dave.  “I do believe it was the same murderous horde that I saw.”

“Yep.  So you understand why I’m not in the mood for a big confrontation right now, right?”

“Yeah,” said Dave.  “Look.”

The door was open about 2-1/2 feet facing the parking lot.  There were about thirteen cars in the lot, so there must have been a few people here the Sunday it all began, Dave thought.  Just playing cards, dominoes, Bocce, whatever.

No more of that frivolous shit,
thought Dave
.  The only game we play in mixed company is kill the zombies.  Always entertaining, sometimes frightening.  Either way the time flies.

They skirted around the corner of the building, and Dave saw a metal ladder mounted on the outside of the building.  It was latched up about six feet off the ground, but he was tall enough to reach it and release the catch, allowing it to come down to the ground.

“You want to go up first?” he asked.

“Hell yes,’ she said, mounting the ladder.  “If anything comes up behind us, I’d rather you be our first line of defense.”

“Nice,” said Dave, starting up behind her.

She reached the top and carefully crawled onto the flat roof, and Dave was there a couple of seconds later.

He pointed toward the nearest skylight.  “Let’s go look down through there.  Stay back.”

“Really?  You think they’ll see us?  And do what?”

“Old habits, Lisa.  Can’t hurt to be a little stealth, right?”

She shrugged, and they walked softly to the skylight. 

“Shit,” said Dave.  The skylight was obscured, either made opaque from years of sun or made that way to ease the intensity of sunlight through them.

“Let’s go to the next one.  Maybe they’re not all the same.”

They moved silently to the next one, and it was the same as the other.  Dave hooked his fingers beneath the outer lip and lifted.

It came up easily.

“What the hell?”  Dave lifted again, and it came up a full six inches.  “This one’s not even attached.”

“Okay.  So you want to take it off?”

The skylight was approximately 2’ x 4’.  The bubble rose about 10” from the building, and it was a manageable weight.

“Let’s do it,” said Dave.  “I’ll get this end, you grab the other.  On the count of three, we’ll lift straight up and just set it over here.”

“Okay,” she said, leaning over, hooking her fingers beneath the lip.

“One, two and go.”  They raised the plastic bubble up and over, laying it back down next to the opening. 

As they returned to look down into the room, they lay on their stomachs, just their heads over the hole.

“Dark,” said Lisa.

“Our eyes will adjust,” whispered Dave.  “I’m beginning to make something out.”

“Me too,” said Lisa.  “What is that?”

“It looks like a lot of people?” said Dave, blinking his eyes, trying to make the adjustment go more quickly. 

“What’s that light down there?  The pink light?”

“Not sure,” said Dave.  “This is definitely where the smell is coming from.  Wait.  I think I’m starting to see … Jesus, Lisa.  It’s zombies.  Hundreds.”

“What the hell?” she said.

“Straight from hell, sis.”

As Dave’s eyes adjusted, the scene within the banquet hall below became more clear.  Dave knew Lisa saw, too.  He heard her suck her breath in like someone who had just realized the direness of a situation.

“The vapor,” said Lisa.

“Yep,” said Dave.  “See anything else strange?”

“I do.  All the females,” she said, her voice wavering, “are together.”

“The males are in the back of the room,” said Dave.  “Hey, they’re moving.”

As they watched, the women, standing shoulder to shoulder and accounting for probably three-quarters of the room’s occupants, split in almost the dead center of the room.  The male of their species stood still, seeming not to have a role to play in whatever was taking place.

“What are they doing?  Going hunting?” asked Dave.

The women who had been farther toward the front of the room turned and began walking toward the men.

The ones who had exited toward each side of the room made their way to the far rear of the auditorium and walked along the wall.  From all sides, they closed in on the males.

“What the fuck?” asked Lisa.

Dave didn’t know what to think, so he said nothing.  He watched, fascinated, as the female zombies surrounded the males, then pressed in on them, forcing them into a tighter and tighter pack.