The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (73 page)

Chapter 9

Lucky we’d seen Hemp setting up the still in Alabama, because while these were much larger, once we figured out which container was what, it was all set and waiting for the boys and the piles of poison ivy to arrive. 

I had no idea how long we could go without telling
Taylor that something had happened to her mom.  She was almost eight years old, and she already seemed to have matured so much in the short time that zombies walked the earth.  I couldn’t imagine how this would affect her.

Who would this girl become?  Could any of us battle her inner demons with her and keep her from sliding over the edge and into a dark abyss of depression and anger?

I swore I would try.  I decided to start then.

I sat beside her, and took her hand.  Trina sat across from me, smiling. 

“Whatcha doing, Charlie?” Trina asked.

“Holding my friend’s hand.”

“Why aren’t you holding my hand?”

“No reason,” I said, and reached out and took her hand, too.

“Now what?” asked Taylor, her little mouth turned up in a curious smile.

“Jesus, relax.  It’s called togetherness.”

“Wanna play Fuck Off?” I asked.

“We don’t have our damn cards,” said Trina.

“It’s actually damned, if you want to be accurate.”

“Damned.”

“Right.”

Taylor
looked at me as though she were going to say something.  She looked around the room like an amateur about to pull out her gun in a bank and announce that it was a stickup.

“Fuckin’ shit sucks,” she whispered, then slapped her hand over her mouth.

I laughed.  I couldn’t help it. 

“What fuckin’ shit sucks?” I asked.

Trina was almost in hysterics.

“That we don’t have our shitty cards.  They’re all bent to fuck all, but they still work.”

Gem walked up, and we were all looking extremely guilty.  “What’s the big secret joke?” asked Gem. 

“
Taylor,” I said, “says her shitty cards are all bent to fuck all.”

Gem’s eyebrows went high, and she laughed.  “Oh, I gotta use that one.  Trini, is that one of yours?”

Trina, a smile as wide as the proverbial Cheshire Cat, nodded briskly.  “You can.”

“No royalties?”

“What?” asked Trina.

“Never mind.  Charlie, I’m going to call the boys.  It’s been a while.  I thought they’d be here by now.”

I had the radio, and pulled it off my belt and gave it to Gem.

She pushed the button.  “Hey, Sheridan to Sheridan.  You read?”

Static.

Gem tried again.  “Okay,
Sheridan to Chatsworth.  You read.”

A moment later, a click and Flex’s voice, morose and monotone.  “I read.  I . . . I’m almost there.”

A moment I can’t explain hit me for second.  I felt scared and alone, and I still don’t know what it was I experienced.  It was something in Flex’s tone.  His words.

‘I’m
almost there,’  Not ‘
We’re
almost there.’

Gem quickly pushed the button again.  “Flex, what’s wrong?  I hear it.  Put Hemp on.”

Nothing.  Then, “He’s not here.”

“Where the hell is he?” I shouted at Gem, but she didn’t have the button pushed.

“Charlie, wait.  Slow down.  He’ll explain.”

I grabbed the radio from her hand and smashed the talk button.  “Flex, where is he?  Tell me now!”

I don’t know how you can detect hesitation on a radio, but it was there, a gulf as wide as the Grand Canyon.

“He was . . . taken,” said Flex.  “Some men in a helicopter.  Not a military copter.”

“What the fuck, Flex!” I shouted.  “Why didn’t you save him!  Why didn’t you stop them!  How could this happen!”

“Charlie, give me the walkie talkie now,” said Gem.

I didn’t hear her, nor did I give Flex a chance to answer.  I never let the button up.

“Give me the fucking radio, Charlie and sit your ass down.  You have to let go of the damned button so you can hear him!”

She pulled it from my grasp and took my arm.  She led me to a molded plastic chair and pushed me into it.

“Girls,” she said softly.  “Sit with her.  She needs you to hold her hands now.  Hold them tight.”

She stepped away as Trina and Taylor came to me, pulled their chairs beside me, and each took me by the hand.

I hadn’t cried much in front of my new friends.  I’d never felt the need to.  I don’t know if I ever even had time to mourn my mom.

The fact is, I believe it was all kind of hitting me at once.  There was a time that I pretended to have friends and a relationship with a man, but my mom was still my best friend; the one I could tell anything.

Yes, even shit that made her cringe.  I somehow really enjoyed telling her that stuff. 

And there I was, feeling truly weak and helpless for the first time I can really remember.  My rock – my mom – was gone, and my husband had been kidnapped.

I vaguely remember feeling the girls squeezing my hands in theirs, stroking them with their other hands like they were puppies.  Slider had walked over as well, and he plopped down at my feet.

Gem came up to me a couple of minutes later and put the radio on the table.  “They’re almost here.  They can explain what happened then, okay, sweetie?”

She knelt down in front of me and leaned in, her arms over my neck, her mouth by my ear.

“We’ll find him, Charlie.  If it’s the last thing we ever do, we’ll find Hemp and bring him home.”

I nodded, my face buried in her neck, my arms involuntarily going around her as well.  I held tight to her.  She was the strongest woman I’d ever known, including myself.  I’d seen her vulnerable, but she always bounced back, and I knew my best chance of seeing my husband again was putting my trust in her and Flex.

Dave and Lisa had been outside with the other workers, rinsing out the final container.  Once reassembled, we would have three working stills just waiting for material.

Dave came back in, and noticed immediately my grief.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, coming to me immediately.

Gem looked up at him.  “It’s Hemp.  He’s been taken or something.”

“Uncle Hemp’s gone?” asked Trina.

“He’s away for a little bit.  Do me a favor, girls.  Take Bunsen and Slider outside for a pee, would you?  Then give them some more water.”

Trina looked frustrated.  “If we give ‘em more water, they’re just gonna pee some more!”

“Yes, it’s the cycle of life,” Gem said.  “Now go, and make sure Lisa knows you’re out there.  Stay near her, and scream and run back in if you see anyone that looks weird.”

“Like a zombie?”

“Exactly.”

They gathered the reluctant dogs and went to the door.

“Guys,” said Dave.  “What the fuck is going on?”

“We’ll know more when Flex gets back.  Some men in a helicopter took him, I guess.  It’s all we know.”

“What kind?”

“What kind of what?”

“What kind of helicopter?” asked Dave.

“We don’t know any of that yet.  We’re –”

A bay door in the opposite side of the building rolled up and Flex came running inside, his gun over his shoulder.  In his other hand, he carried Hemp’s MP5.

I jumped up and ran to him, nearly knocking Gem over.  “Flex!  What happened?  Where is he?”

Jacko and Reeves came in beside him and said, “Flex?”

“I got this,” he said.  “Get the men to start unloading, would you?”

They nodded and took off.

I stared at Flex, my eyes pleading.  He took me by the shoulders, and I let him.  I was about to jump clean out of my skin, and I needed to be steadied.

“I can describe the helicopter.  I don’t know what kind it was, except that it wasn’t military issue.  It might have been like the kind a hospital uses, like for medical evacuations.”

“Where is he?” I asked.  “How can we find him?”

“I don’t know, Charlie,” he said. 

“Flex, how did it happen?” asked Dave.  “Wasn’t he armed?”

“We were picking the plants.  We had the urushiol canisters nearby, but the guns didn’t seem necessary.  There were enough of us out there.  Me and some of the other guys were carrying our last armloads of plants to the dump truck, and when I turned around, Hemp was gone.”

“So how do you know it was a helicopter that took him?” asked Gem.

Flex’s face was as white and pale as I’d ever seen him.  I don’t know if it was a match for mine.  I listened carefully to each word he said.

“When he wasn’t there anymore,” he said, “we knew he could’ve only gone in the woods.  We all thought some zombies overtook him, you know, with the mist, but we saw where it looked like something had been dragged, and two flat areas of trampled foliage on either side.  We put two and two together and started running, but I think these guys were trained, because they were damned fast.”

“So,” I said, trying to calm myself.  “You saw the helicopter.”

“We just made it out of the woods as it was lifting off.  We saw Hemp’s feet hanging out of the side, and we fired on it, but we couldn’t bring it down or we risked hurting him, too.”

“You fucking
fired
at it?” I screamed, pulling back my fists and pounding Flex in the chest.  “You fucking fired at the helicopter carrying my
husband
?”

I was hysterical, I know, but I was angry and sad and out of my head.  Flex took my abuse for a moment before grabbing my wrists and pulling me to his chest hard.  My breath was impossible to catch, and I thought I was going to suffocate.  I felt my head spinning, and I tried to cling to Flex’s shirt, but I lost the battle.

I passed out.

By the time I awoke, the crew had loaded up all three stills with the poison ivy plants and had started the process. 

The moment my eyes opened I felt my girls around me.  Gem and Lisa, Trina and Taylor.  My posse.

I still needed answers, but I couldn’t possibly feel more loved than at that moment.

Unless my Hemp was there by my side.

****

“The question is, how are we going to find out where it went?” asked Dave.

Flex shook his head.  “Kev, any ideas?  We all saw it, so we know the design.  Four blades, single tail rotor.  Can we try to figure out what type it was, maybe find out the range it can fly without refueling?”

“Yeah,” said Reeves.  “It’s not likely they’d have the capacity to refuel anywhere but their base, wherever that is.  Good idea.”

“Do you have any books or anything you guys can look at?” I asked.

Tears came to my eyes again at my next thought, which I voiced.

“The fucked up thing is Hemp would know immediately.  He’d know who built it and probably what year.”

“That’s no shit,” said Flex, putting his arm around my shoulder.  “Don’t worry, kid.  We’ll find him.  You know I won’t stop until we do.”

I nodded.  I did know that.

“I’m with him every step, Charlie,” said Dave. 

Gem sat beside me, and there was Bunsen, right with me, tucked up against the legs of my chair.  We were back at the
State Building, and we left a crew behind at the brewery, monitoring the progress of our batches.

“We can get to the library,” he said.  “There should be books we can reference there.”

“I saw a number,” said Jacko.  “Do you think that would help?”

“Hell yes,” said Dave.  “If they’re anything like boat numbers, some of the letters could indicate the state of registry.”

Jacko grabbed a pen from Reeves’ desk and a piece of paper from his tray, and wrote N391RC on the page.

“Damn,” said Flex.  “I was hoping something in the number would be an obvious clue to where it was from.  Guess I was looking for TX or CA.”

“No shit,” said Dave.  “Me, too.  There goes my boat theory.”

“Kev,” I said, “Do you know anything about aircraft registration numbers?  Or know anyone?  Any pilots left?”

“Believe it or not, I didn’t know everyone in town – they just knew me.  But I can put feelers out.  I sure don’t know anything about it, except that the first letter N means US registry.  Every country has their own, and ours is N.  Beyond that, it’s just numbers and letters.”

“I feel like we’re bullshitting about nothing, and meanwhile we have no idea what’s happening to him,” I said.  I can’t just sit here.  I need to find him.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” said Gem.  “This is the first step.  We have to brainstorm over what we know.”