The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (162 page)

Some of the bones were not there.  I always pictured an infected walking across a field holding an arm like it was a goddamned turkey leg at a Renaissance Faire.  Just one of my visuals that I couldn’t shake.

The other deteriorated corpse was in the front room.  A fireplace poker lay on the ground near its outstretched arm, and dried, brown smears decorated the brass handle.

I went to it, gathered the material around it and brought all the torn corners together.  I was able to lift the bones, aside from the skull, which had fallen off and rolled against the couch, to the back door, where I dropped them in a metal trash can and put the lid on.

Nelson carried the skull out as though it was smeared in dog shit.  I lifted the lid again and he dropped it in with the rest of the fellow.

Two more bodies were in the front yard.  They would be resting in peace.  Perhaps they said to any visitors, we’re all dead here.  Move along.

We ate food from the helicopter.  Lola did not act strangely that evening, but before we went down for the night, I asked her to chew up one of the special wafers and she agreed.  I’d call it WAT-5 Special, made from the vapor of the red-eyed females but we didn’t know how long its effects lasted.  We’d not encountered any more pregnant females until this road trip, so Hemp had no reason to keep in touch with Rebecca Dovorany for the purposes of monitoring her. 

Either way, the wafers were all magic stuff.

Serena and I didn’t make love that night, though I wanted to.  Instead, we both fell asleep instantly and slept like the dead.

I hope like hell we smelled better than the dead.  I was sure that we were no longer equipped to judge, one way or the other.

*****

When I awoke, I lay there for a while staring at Serena, then quietly got out of bed, trying not to wake her.

I went into the garage and searched the shelves, locating a small, propane camping stove with three spare canisters of gas.  In the kitchen pantry, I found an un-pierced can of Folgers medium roast coffee. 

I pierced it.

Powdered creamer would have to do but it
was
Coffee Mate, and I can tell you the house smelled like Starbucks and the coffee tasted like dry roasted Heaven in a cup.

“Morning,” said Rachel, walking out with a yawn.  Serena was still sleeping, and I didn’t like to wake her up until she was ready; primarily because she was so damned beautiful when she slept that I could watch her for hours.

“Hey,” I said.  “Morning.  Hot coffee, there in that tin camping pot.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked, going to it and filling one of the mugs I’d left beside it.

She added nothing, just held the steaming cup in both hands and took a sip.  “Wow,” she said.  “Don and I kind of put all these good things away,” she said.  “Seems we ate MREs and drank water and let go of all the things that used to make a crappy day better.”

“Well, just remember my new rule to live by,” I said.

“What’s that?” she asked, taking another big sip of coffee.

“Survival is a state of mind,” I said.  “It’s what you make of it.”

“I’m getting that now.  I miss Don,” she said.  “I really grew to love that old guy.”

“We need to have a little service for him before we go,” I said.  “He deserves that, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yes,” she said.  “And I know you didn’t really know him, but he was a good friend to me and Jess and he really did his best to take care of me while we were together.”

“From what he said, you did your share, too.”

“It was a partnership.  Every time I wanted to go back and see if there was word from Jess, he’d agree without any hesitation.  Even after a year.”

I nodded, wondering when I would say something.  It wasn’t now.  She did not need to have any confusion about her feelings for Don when we had our little ceremony, whatever it ended up being.

Nelson came in from outside, and we were surprised to see him, because we thought he was in one of the bedrooms sleeping.

“Mornin’, dudes,” he said, smiling. 

“What’s that you got there?” I asked.

“
Pop Tarts.”

“Shit, I forgot about those,” I said.

“I love Pop Tarts!” said Lola, padding in from the hallway.  “Where did you get them?”

“Pharmacy,” said Nelson.  “I had to pummel six zombies with a plastic bat for these, so if you want any, I’ll have to challenge you to a plastic swordfight battle to the death.”

“You’re funny,” she said.  “I’ll take a pack.”

Nelson smiled at her, his eyes narrow slits, and threw her a foil pack that she caught easily.

“Did you sleep out there, Nel?” I asked.

“Nah, I went out to smoke a bowl and grab the
Pop Tarts.”

“Want some coffee?” I asked him.

“Nah, thanks,” he said.  “You got your morning medicine, I got mine.”

“I can’t smoke weed in the morning,” said Lola.  “I’d be tired all day.  I’d never wake up.”

“Ditto,” I said. 

“I smoked before I got into the military,” said Rachel, “but there’s nothing like a relentless enemy to convince you to stay on top of your game,” said Rachel.  “Assholes
never take time off, it seems.”

“Evil
never sleeps,” I said.  “That said, we had some hilarious evenings with Flex and Gem – sometimes Charlie, never Hemp – where we got high and played games.  Laughed our asses off.”

Nelson handed Lola a pack of
Pop Tarts.  She held the package in her teeth while she poured herself a cup of coffee.  She put in five packs of sugar and the amount of powdered cream she added almost overflowed her cup.

She pulled her blonde hair into a ponytail and sat on a barstool, her knees pulled up to the seat as she sipped the coffee and pivoted back and forth. 

Nelson slid onto the stool beside her and chewed his Pop Tart, looking stoned.

“We’re going to have a little memorial service for Don before we leave,” I said.  “We already almost have a full tank of fuel, so there’s not going to be a lot of prep today.”

“Where’s Serena?” asked Lola.

“Here,” said Serena, walking into the room from the hallway.  She wore gray sweatpants and a blue, ribbed cotton tank top.  Her feet were bare.  Serena’s straight, dark hair was also in a ponytail and I loved the way she looked in the morning. 

I’m not sure I was aware of my smile at first, but when she looked at me and returned it, I knew I must have looked like a love struck goof.

“I smell the coffee,” she said.  “How’s it holding up?”

“Good,” I said.  “And God, it tastes fresh, too.”

Serena got her cup and sank into a couch in the middle of the family room, just in front of the kitchen.

“You know what?” said Rachel.  “While everyone’s relaxed and we’ve got a bit of peace, I want to say a few words about Don.”

She started to cry, then just stopped talking and looked down for a couple of moments, biting her lip.  She looked up again.  “He died, and I know I don’t have to tell you that.  I wanted to do something for his memory, but I just wasn’t ready until now.”

We all nodded.  She carried her coffee slowly to the front of the family room and stood facing us.

“Don was our neighbor for six years,” she began.  “He took a lot of stress off Jess when I deployed by offering his help.  His wife had died a year before my last deployment, and since his kids were all moved out and living in other states, he was pretty much alone with his own hands full.  But that didn’t stop him offering.  I appreciated it.”

She started to cry, took a sip of coffee, and wiped her hair away from her face.  “When I finally made it home, after a crazy journey that I was lucky to even survive, he was there.  He’d put a sign on my door telling me he was at his house and he’d left an ATV right there ready for me.  There was a gun taped to the seat and a flashlight.  That’s how he took care of me before he even knew I was back.”

“Good guy,” said Nelson.  “Cared about you.”

“He did, Nelson,” she said.  “We were partners for a year.  I knew he saw me like his own daughter, and I loved him like a father.  But my parents were in Japan.  My father has been top brass in the Air Force for years, and he was in Misawa with my mother when all this started.”

“Did you ever hear from them after everything began?” asked Serena.

She nodded.  “The first day I got a call on my cell.  It was crazy on the other end and I could barely hear him, but I got the picture.  Within a week of that phone call I knew I’d never see them again.  You guys know what a long week that was, and how much realization we all came to.”

“Hell yes,” I said.  “It was eye-opening.  I didn’t really expect to be alive today, over a year later.”

“None of us did,” said Lola.  “When my whole family was killed I just ran,” she said.  “I haven’t stopped running since.”

“Wow,” said Nelson.

“Anyway, back to Don,” said Rachel, holding up her coffee cup.  “Here’s to Don Weston.  A good man who put me above himself until the day he died.  The kind of man we need on this earth for this time and for all time.  Rest in peace, Don.”

“Rest in peace,” we all said together.

Rachel shrugged.  “It wasn’t much, but Don would be tickled,” she said.

“He’d be honored,” I said.  “As would any of us.”  I checked my watch.  “It’s 9:00.  Let’s say we get the hell outta Dodge by 10:00.”

“We should do some ransacking,” said Nelson.  “See if there’s anything else here we can use.”

“There are a bunch of 1-gallon bottles of water in the garage,” I said.  “That means we’ve got plenty if you guys feel like a quick sponge bath.”

“We just had a nice, hot shower at that model home,” said Nelson.  “Lola, been a while for you?”

“It has,” she said.  “Serena?  Help me out?”

“Absolutely,” said Serena.  “And since it looks like this was a family with a daughter, there are men’s, women’s and about a fifteen-year-old girl’s clothes here, too.  Rachel, those ought to just about fit you.  No offense.”

“Check that,” she said.  “None taken.”

*****

Serena helped Lola in the bathroom with her sponge bath, and everyone else began searching closets and dressers for changes of clothes.  Nelson and I were extra ripe, having worn the disgusting zombie wear, but we felt it necessary to blend in with the crowd to avoid being spotted by the red-eyed females from a distance.  Whether it had played any part in our success, we did not know, but we had no regrets other than our foul odors.

I found a fresh pair of jeans that were only a waist size too big for me, and just the right length.  There was a ZZ Top concert tee shirt from 2005 that suited me just fine.  Nelson settled on a Foreigner concert tee shirt from 1999, and Rachel found a nice button-down khaki that she looked comfortable in.  She also wore a pair of rhinestone-emblazoned jeans from the daughter’s room and a Margaritaville baseball cap with her own ponytail sticking out the back.

Rachel and Lola emerged looking clean – with Lola wearing makeup she had obviously found in the bathroom.  She looked very cute, actually, and I realized I hadn’t seen a woman wearing makeup for a long, long time.  She wore light yellow pants and a black tank top.  Serena had on a pair of cargo shorts – I didn’t know whether they were men’s or women’s, and she kept her ribbed tank.  She looked great in it, so I didn’t mind in the slightest.

Everyone was primped and ready.  We were out of there by 10:00 in the morning as planned.  As the helicopter rose above the fence line, I got chills down by back, eyeing the crowd of walking dead that pressed against the exterior of the fence. 

Fifty or sixty of them.  Two deep, side by side, all along the fence, wearing their bloody-drab clothing, clawing at the metal with no hope of penetrating the barrier.

As I looked down at them, I remembered Rachel’s tribute to Don Weston, and then I pictured what Don must have seen out in his corral that Sunday.  His neighbor Jess Reed, biting into the underbelly of one of his finest calves, and turning his face up to stare at Don with no recognition; only hunger and determination.

I tried to push the image out of my mind.  We rose higher into the air, and as the entire property came into view below me, we saw that the fifty or sixty we’d seen was actually over a hundred.  I immediately knew the meaning of that line in a poem I’d heard a long time ago.

Good fences make good neighbors.

“Fall,” said Lola.

I had barely heard it in my headset, and I hadn’t been looking at her when I heard the words, so could not be sure.  I looked at Serena who stared between Lola and me and I then looked directly at Lola, seeing the look of confusion and fear in her eyes.

“Fall to us,” she said again, then screamed a shrill, ear-piercing shriek.  Nelson had spun around in his chair now, and I saw that he had one of his Ninja stars in his right hand.  He was not smiling.  Rachel glanced over her shoulder every now and then, but remained focused. 

Lolita Lane started crying.  “What’s happening?” she said, staring at me.