The Dead Hunger Series: Books 1 through 5 (82 page)

Now we were thirty minutes out. 

“All I know is that his house is on a bay on a big lake,” said Dave.  “I’ve seen pictures of it on the news, but where exactly it is, I don’t know.”

“Life without Google,” I said.  “It’s a bitch.  Guess we’ll just follow signs.”

“Hey, Charlie.  Right here,” said Dave. 

The sign said Exit 13, Shelburne.

“Well,” I said.  “We’re here.  Now we need to find a place to get some food and make a plan.”

“We need to pinpoint where Carville’s house is,” Dave said.  “If he sent a team to
Concord to get Hemp, then he’s got resources that might be patrolling.  We need to move around in the dark and we need to be quiet.”

   I nodded agreement.  “We’re on the same page.”

I followed the exit road around in a circle, and ended up heading west on the 189.  Cars were thick here.  Overturned, parked, and burned.   I slowed, moving around them where I could, sometimes driving the grass shoulder to get around.  There were several points where we thought the winch was going to be necessary again, but we were able to get through the mess with some three-point-turns and some damned good driving, if I say so myself.

Obviously it wasn’t my primary concern, but I was a bit worried about scratching Gem’s baby.  She could forgive a lot, but besides her original Uzi and Flex and Trina, not much meant more to her than this Crown Vic.

We got through and reached Shelburne Road.

“Shit,” said Dave.

There were bodies everywhere.  The stages of decomposition were so severe, it was impossible to tell whether they were once human or zombie.  Now they were just horrific.  I pushed the recirculation button on the air conditioning to make sure we didn’t have to smell it.

“Somebody’s doing a job on them,” I said.

“If these are all dead zombies, good for us, I guess,” said Dave.  “If not, they seem to be winning.  Wonder how many people lived in Shelburne.”

“
Turn left onto Shelburne Road.  Then proceed 2.9 miles to Bay Road.”

The GPS bitch had spoken.

“Where should I go?” I asked, looking at Dave.

He scratched his chin and smiled at me.  “Go right for now.  Let’s do some recon.”

“What time is it?” I asked.

Dave checked his watch.  “Almost three ‘o clock.  Let’s find a hotel or something.  We can grab a room and figure out our next move.”

“Creatures of habit, aren’t we?” I said.

“Locked rooms are good in a place like this.  I could use a nap anyway,” said Dave.  “Plus, they’ll have a candy machine.  Once I’ve got some sugar in me, we can make a plan.”

“You might have to skip the nap,” I said, making the right.  I drove less than a three blocks and hit Hadley Road, where there was a Liberty Inn & Suites.  “Bingo,” I said.

I pulled the truck into the lot and around to the back side away from the street.

Instantly a figure emerged from around the corner of the hotel.  It was formerly a woman, her once blonde hair dark at the roots, her skin almost a brownish-green color.  She looked at the car and shambled slowly toward us, her coral colored pants tattered, one white canvas shoe on her left foot, the other a mass of blood and bone, but obviously enough to keep her mobile.

Dave nudged me and pointed at his rear view mirror.  “There’s another.  Pretty strong pink in the eyes.”  This one was approaching from the rear of the car, more bones than meat.  It’s face was half devoid of skin, and the eye sockets were dark, save for the iridescent, pink vapor hovering there, telling us it had eaten recently.  It was a male.

“This one has the vapor, too,” I said.

“I wonder who the unlucky meal was,” Dave said. 

“Long as it wasn’t . . .”

I didn’t finish what I began to say.  I didn’t even want to let my mind go there.

“This is a job for
Urushiol
!” said Dave, in the voice of some infomercial ad man or comic book superhero.

“You’re hilarious,” I said, handing him a spray bottle from under my seat.

He held up a bottle.  “Got one.  That one’s for you.”

“Okay, let them get into position, then I’ll count to three and hit the down buttons.”

“You get yours,” said Dave.  “No offense, but I’ll feel better controlling my own window button.”

“None taken,” said Charlie.  “For the record, I’d rather be making this kill with the crossbow.”

“Hereby recorded for posterity,” said Dave. 

“I fucking hate this,” I said.

“Me, too.”

“Are we stalling?”

The creatures were literally pounding on the side of the Crown Vic, and we could hear their guttural moans and growls as their teeth gnashed and their useless fingers tried to penetrate the glass and get inside the car.

“We might have been stalling,” said Dave, rolling down his window and hitting the man, who had been dressed in a suit, indicating he was a digger, directly in the eyes with the urushiol spray.  “But not anymore.”

When I heard his window go down, I had to watch.  The eyes bubbled in the sockets, and the face imploded on itself, then disintegrated.  As we had seen in the past, it began to melt down into the body of the digger, but there apparently wasn’t enough meat in the chest cavity to hold it up or slow its progress.  The head appeared to drop inside the body, and as the creature’s legs staggered involuntarily away from the car and turned sideways, the body literally split in two, splitting front from back, and fell in different directions to the asphalt parking lot with a dull splat.

Only the moldy, patent leather dress shoes kept the two pieces together.

“
That
was weird.  Now you,” said Dave, rolling the window back up.  “No more spectator shit.”

“Gotcha,” I said.  But the female zombie’s face was pressed so hard against the glass on my side, that I didn’t want to open it at all.  Her vapor looked strong, too, and as if on cue, it began puffing out in clouds, the mist clinging to the glass.

“Just crack it and knock her back,” said Dave, growing impatient.

“Okay, okay,” I said.  I hit the down button for a split second, and the vapor came in as I pumped the spray bottle.

“Fuck!” I said.  The bottle didn’t spray.  I held it up and tried it again.  Nothing.  Click. Click.  The pump mechanism was broken.

“Here!” said Dave, holding his bottle to me.

But suddenly I was dizzy, and I couldn’t hang onto my bottle.  I felt myself falling toward the side window, my head hitting it as the spray bottle dropped into my lap.

The last thing I remember were filthy, bony fingers with some sort of meat beneath the fingernails reaching inside the window toward me.

****

I awoke with Dave sitting on the bed beside me.  His hand gently slapped my cheek, and his face swam into focus.

“Dave,” I said.  “What happened?”

“You got gassed girl,” he said, smiling.  “How do you feel?”

I pushed myself onto my ass and realized I was wearing different clothes.  I looked down at my shirt and glared at Dave.

“What the fuck?”

“Sorry.  You threw up, and I had to get those nasty clothes off you.  Don’t worry, Charlie.  I respect your relationship with Hemp.  Nothing happened.”

“Well, I fucking know nothing happened,” I said.  You put me in a fucking Hall & Oates tee shirt?”

“I just grabbed my bag,” Dave said.  “It’s Lisa’s.  She went to a reunion concert a while back.”

“Okay, tell me what happened.  I remember my spray bottle wasn’t working.  I think we need to stick to top quality sprayers from now on.”

“No doubt,” said Dave.  “The bitch’s fingers were in the window trying to scratch the top of your head.  You passed out from that vapor shit, and I pulled you away and rolled up the window.”

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure.  Then I grabbed my bottle and jumped out my door to come around and take her out, but I slid in that slime from the one I killed, landed on my ass and almost brained myself.”

“You okay?” I asked.

Dave turned his right arm.  It was covered with bloody scrapes.

“Fine.  We’re both fine, which is good.  Anyway, I got back to my feet and ran around.  She was trapped in the door by her fingers, so I just sprayed the shit out of her until she was a blob of shit.”

“Thanks,” I said.  “I owe you big.”

“No scores,” he said.  “I have other good news.”

“What?”

“I have Reese’s Pieces, M&Ms, and some Cheez-Its.”

“Find some change in the car, did you?”

“Smashed the machine.  Thank God for preservatives.”

“Yep,” I said.  “That’s right.  God
did
make preservatives.”

“I have other news, only it’s not good.”

“What is it?”  I didn’t need bad news.

“It’s great news actually, Charlie.  I know where Carville’s house is.  Exactly where.”

“How?”

“There are only four attractions in town,” he said.  “The Vermont Teddy Bear Company, the
Shelburne Museum, and Shelburne Farms.”

“And the fourth?”

“It’s a drive-by tour of the home of billionaire Ryan Carville.”

“No shit.”

“None at all,” said Dave.

“Can we take the tour?”

“Yes,” said Dave.  “It’s officially closed, but I’m thinking about another approach.”

“What do you mean?” I said, sitting up, and holding out my shirt again, shaking my head.

Dave pulled from his back pocket a brochure. He opened it, and an aerial photograph of the home of Ryan Carville unfolded. 

“It’s on the lake, like I thought.  We should find a boat and approach by water.  At night, of course.”

“What about noise?”

“Electric motor,” Dave said smugly.

“Is that all?”

“Is what all?” Dave asked.

“The plan.  We can get there.  Any plans after that?”

“Geez, Charlie, I was waiting for you to wake up.”

“How long have I been out?”

“That shit happened yesterday.”

“Fuck,” I said.  Then I looked into Dave’s eyes.  “And Flex and Gem aren’t here yet?”

“Good point,” said Dave.  “Maybe they are.”

“Let’s find that boat.  What time is it?”

“Four o’clock in the afternoon.”

“We go at dark.  What’s the zombie situation?”

“There are a lot of bodies out there,” said Dave.  “And a few movers.  We need to be careful as hell.  And quiet.  Urushiol and crossbow.  Nothing else.”

“Right,” I said.

“Oh.  One more thing,” said Dave.

“What?”

“There have been like six chopper flyovers since you went out.  I don’t know that they’re looking for us in particular.  But they’re looking.”

“Wonderful,” I said.

We started on our plan.  It was pretty much as skeletal as the digger zombies from the graveyards, but it was a start.

****

Chapter 14

Carville’s men delivered the normal and affected rats to the lab the following morning.

They’d found three unaffected rats and had captured five of the zombie variety.

Frank and Billy had become my regular guards, and I was glad.  They were just people trying to survive, and they treated me just fine.  So far, anyway.

One normal rat, which I didn’t include in the previous numbers, was bitten by the affected rats, but so far hadn’t changed.  I hoped it wouldn’t, but I didn’t have high hopes.

I had to come up with some list of experiments I was attempting; something to keep Carville at bay.  He would expect something from me by way of an approach to the problem.  If I were to analyze it from a fresh perspective, there’s no way I would ever reach the conclusion the illness could be reversed.  I told Flex that the moment he said his sister was wrapped in that swimming pool plastic.

They had already died.  It was the biological reaction that kept them functioning as they did, and I didn’t even understand that.

Carville wasn’t an unintelligent man, no matter what persona he sometimes broadcast on television.  He was shrewd, and that shrewdness wasn’t likely limited to his real estate dealings.  He could call bollocks on someone and probably be correct nine out of ten times.

So I began writing, using the most scientific terminology I could.  I described my experiment of utilizing the zombie gas and the eye vapor in one blend.  The only part I left out was adding the urushiol.

I would have to explain where the urushiol went, though.  He could see that some of it was gone, so I needed an excuse.

I looked over at Frank and Billy.  They would be my answer.

“Want to get involved?” I asked Billy.  “Little experiment?”

Billy looked immediately apprehensive.  “What, Professor?”

“This oil,” I said.  “I’d like to put a little dab on the inside of your wrist.  See if you show an allergic reaction to it.”

“Nah, I don’t think so.  Thanks anyway.”

“Billy, you’re likely immune to it.  It’s why you didn’t  change into one of them.  This is the test.”

“The test is I didn’t turn,” said Billy.  “Test on Frank if he’ll let you.”

“What the hell,” said Frank.  “You say I’m likely already immune?”

“Yes.  99.5% certain,” I said.

“What do you need?” he asked, walking toward the glass.

I got a cotton swab and put it into the narrow tube of urushiol.  I swirled it around and looked at Frank.  “Just hold your wrist up to the holes here,” I said.

He held up the inside of his wrist, and I withdrew the swab.  I poked it through the hole in the acrylic walls and swirled it around on his wrist.  “Even the residual effect of this would protect you against the creatures,” I said.  They oil may seem to be gone, but with a little saliva, it reactivates.”

That was a lie.  But I got Billy’s attention.

“Really?  Like a weapon?”

“Yeah.  For a couple of showers, anyway.”

“Hell, I’ll do it, too.”

“Hold your wrist up,” I said.

He did, and I did the same thing to him.  I didn’t re-dip the swab, though, and he didn’t notice.  I needed to keep the urushiol I had for other things, and this could explain away the amount I was down to Carville.

“There you go,” I said.  “Thanks.”

I went back to write in my notebook.  They returned to their position by the wall.

“A little Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, Professor?” said Billy.

“I was thinking some Pink Floyd,” I answered.  “Can you pull that off?”

“Shit yes,” said Billy.  “He’s got all of them.”

“Good enough,” I said.

Frank settled in, and Billy retreated down the hall.

I pulled the liquid nitrogen container out and withdrew the one inch diameter wafer I’d created with my three component blend.

The cage with the normal rats was on the counter.  The zombie rats were kept in a clear acrylic cage with a hinged hatch  on the top.  The walls were smooth as glass and eighteen inches tall.  This prevented them from being able to climb out, even at full stretch. 

Like human zombies, they watched me intently, staring out, their pink eyes never wavering.

Pink eyes.  I wondered.

Did they have the vapor?  Could they generate it?

I went to the refrigerator and got some of the bovine brains brought to me at Carville’s orders.  I opened the butcher paper and cut a one-inch square chunk off, then wrapped the paper around it again and put it back in the refrigerator.

I opened the hatch on the top, and the three in this cage stared upward, mouths working.  I picked up and dropped the brain chunk down inside with a tweezers.

They pounced on it and attacked the piece of brain as though it were alive.  Seconds later it was completely gone, and they turned their eyes back to me, where they remained.  Pink.  No pinker than before, and no clouds of coral-colored mist.

I opened the hinged lid all the way and put my hand within four inches of them.  They still stood on their hind legs at full stretch, so I wasn’t concerned they could reach and bite me.  They gnashed, gnawed, stretched and bit the air, but nothing else.

No vapor.

Good.  I got my notebook and recorded my findings.  This was the first good news I’d gotten since I’d arrived here, and again, it had nothing to do with any cure for Ryan Carville’s daughter and brother.

I’d isolated the single rat who’d been bitten, and realized I had an opportunity.  I could give him some of the wafer I’d created with my blend and see what it did for him.

Damn it, I thought.  That’s not good enough.  If I gave it to him and he never turned, I would not have known if he was ever going to.  We’d barely had any experience with humans turning, and the rats didn’t have the vapor, so they were different already – I knew that now.  But
how
different?

Pink Floyd’s Pigs on the Wing Part 1 began wafting from the ceiling speakers.  It was the perfect music to keep my mind occupied as I worked.

“Good choice,” I said, almost to myself.

I made my decision.  I would wait.  But I’d use the wafer on an unaffected rat.  I snapped on a new pair of gloves and reached into the cage to get hold of one of the Norway Rats they’d caught.  I held it up.

“What have you got that makes you different than those freaks?” I asked.  “Why didn’t you turn?”

His little whiskers danced in the air, and his eyes did their best to avoid mine.  Then I laughed.

I needed a damned blood sample!  I put him back in a cage by himself, retrieved a small straight razor from the lab’s excellent tool kit, and prepared a syringe.

Ordinarily, a cardiac puncture is the method I would use, allowing me to draw several milliliters of blood.  The only problem with this method is the needle is inserted into the rat’s heart, and the procedure ultimately kills the animal.

I needed these rats alive.  I chose the Saphenous Vein method, which is difficult, to say the least, with one person.  I didn’t think I would have too much luck asking Billy or Frank to assist, so I figured I’d muddle through.

I lifted the rat out of the cage again, held it down on the table and shaved the inside of its left leg, up to the groin.  Once the skin was smooth and clean, I was ready to move on.

In this case, I would only use the needle to puncture the vein, and I’d force the blood from the rat by using my thumb or by pumping its leg in and out if that wasn’t effective enough. 

Again, holding the rat down on its back with the palm of my left hand, my left thumb was free to press against the rat’s inner thigh to emphasize the Saphenous vein. 

Extending the rat’s leg by pulling on it between my right thumb and forefinger, I got the vein where I wanted it.  Using a tiny zip tie, I held the rat’s leg out with the assistance of a small, heavy vise that gripped the other end of the zip tie, and I then jabbed directly into the vein with the tip of needle, quickly withdrawing it.

The blood flowed.  I got my Microvette tube and scraped it against the rat’s leg, scooping the blood into it as I continued pumping the rat’s inner thigh with my thumb.  Soon I had enough.

I looked over at the acrylic cage containing the zombie rats, and they were crawling over one another, pressing against the side of the cage, all staring at my little patient.  They bit one another to get a clear view, and not surprisingly, I wasn’t worried that they’d kill one another.  Not one bit.

Because it couldn’t happen.

I don’t believe my rat patient could’ve been any happier than I was that it was over.  I held it up and looked at its little face again.  “Thank you for your participation,” I said, and put it back in the cage after blotting at the vein with a cotton swab, making sure it was clotting properly.

Now the zombie rats stared at me again.

“Fuck off,” I said, immediately thinking of Gem. 

I laughed.  My new friends were a crazy bunch, and I missed them a lot.

As for the rat, now that I had the blood sample, I could experiment with it.  I watched it for a few moments, confirmed that it suffered no ill-effects from the blood draw, and got it a piece of cheese.

It ate the cheese in short order, and still looked fine.  No signs of changing into one of the zombie rats, or
Ratz
, as I was writing in my log to differentiate them from the others.  The z on the end was very telling.

I didn’t give the rat much cheese, because I wanted it hungry for my wafer.  I had no idea how appetizing it would be, either, so I accepted that it might have to be administered within a chunk of cheese or just put down its throat.

I took the small wafer from its wrapping and broke it in two.  I held it out to the rat inside, through the standard cage bars.

The rat sat on its haunches and stared at me.  It looked up at me, then down at the wafer.

Me.

The wafer.

Then it moved forward slowly, its whiskers twitching.  It stopped two inches from my fingers, its nose sniffing the air.  I moved it closer.  It extended its head, opened its mouth, and snatched the experimental cake in its mouth, swallowing it down.

Ten minutes later, it was asleep.

I moved over to Raymond and Veronica on the carts, looking at their forms beneath the sheets.  I hadn’t uncovered them today at all.  I didn’t have any reasons to do so unless there were experiments involving them, and since I had to be careful not to hurt them, I really had to do any tests I had in mind on the ratz.

I couldn’t feed them, because I didn’t want the vapor problem.  I’d already told Carville that feeding them provided nothing but a momentary satisfaction of their cravings for human meat and brains anyway, and the moment they were done they craved more.  It was like a chain smoker.  It didn’t matter when the last cigarette was – the only important thing was the next one.  Exchange cigarettes for flesh and brains.  Same addiction, far more horrible implications.

I opened the rat cage and nudged the rat inside.  It stirred, and its eyes opened.  A few seconds later, it got to its feet and shook, like a dog shaking off a coat of water.

“What the hell to do now?” I said aloud, staring at the rat.  I didn’t know if the sleeping had been an effect of the blood loss or the wafer. 

I started to think I was slipping.  My methods of experiment control were all over the place.   I was once so organized and patient.  Now I felt hurried and scattered.  I pulled the cage over in front of me once again.

It looked like a perfectly normal rat.  I looked over at the cage containing the crazy, flesh-eating ratz.

They were still looking at me.

I looked back at them.

At that moment, I named my test rat Monty.  Don’t ask, it just came to me.

I slid Monty’s cage next to theirs.

They continued to stare at me, hungry for my flesh.

I stood from my stool and walked away from them.  The zombie rats stared after me, entirely ignoring Monty.

I walked back to the counter and picked up Monty’s cage again and put it on the other side of the room.  Then, with my test rat at a distance, I retrieved the Microvette tube of Monty’s blood, taken before I gave him the wafer, and carried it over to the ratz cage.

Holding the tube near their cage, I opened the top.

It was as though I yelled fire in a movie theater.  Their activity level spun out of control, the smell of raw blood permeating their highly attuned senses in an extraordinary way.

Gem would say they went ballistic.  Double ballistic.  Far more than when I myself had been just inches from them.  I re-capped the sample.

Within five seconds, they calmed again, their eyes watching me, their tiny mouths working side to side.  Their fur had begun to fall out in patches, and they smelled of decay.  Glancing back at them, I put Monty’s blood sample back in the refrigerator, reminding myself not to get accidentally cut during my escape – if I were able to find the opportunity to make one.