Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle

PROLOGUE

My name is Gem Cardoza. 
I’m 33 years old, which is the first thing I noticed that Flex left out of his chronicle when I went to read it.  I don’t think he’s embarrassed about being twelve years older than me.  It’s not like he’s 25 and I’m 13, so it’s all perfectly legal.

Not that legal vs. not legal means shit anymore, because it doesn’t.

Anyway, i
t’s been a while since Flex finished
his record of what we went through then
and
a lot has happened over the last
few
months.

Flex doesn’t talk much about his life before the world changed, and I guess there was more on his mind
when he wrote his part of this.  Hell
, on all our minds, for that matter.  Zombies rule the streets, and some disturbing things – yes, even more disturbing than he told you – have transpired since the last entry.

But some really great things have happened, too.

Back then, we’d just finished our burial ceremony for his sister and niece.  Perhaps we should’ve included Trina’s father, Jack, in our ceremony, but we hadn’t really talked to Trina about the fact that he was dead yet.  It didn’t matter.  She stood there and watched her mother eating him, so in her little mind, she knew.  It was, I suppose, some fucked up shit that we didn’t want to reintroduce to her memory.  She seemed to have blocked it out, and in time, we knew she’d begin to talk about him again.

So I’ll tell you a bit about my trip from
Miami
to
Gainesville
where I found the love of my life again at a time when I needed to have him by my side the most.

You know how
when
you’re with someone and things are so good you just keep wondering when the universe is going to jam a knife in it and rip it apart?  That’s what was going through my mind when I was with Flex the first tim
e. 

Everything inside me was telling me he was the man of my fucking
dreams, but because of all the messed up relationships I’d had
before then
, I had this self-fulfilling prophecy running through my head that it couldn’t last.  I often do that – head that shit off at the pass, knowing it will self-destruct on its own eventually, so I beat fate to the punch.

Stupid.  I know.  Being with Flex again was like standing
on
an ice flow
and having a heating blanket thrown over me.  When I
got to
his sister’s house in
Gainesville
after the horror I’d experienced in
Miami
and on my drive
north, seeing him was just like that.

And when he put his arms around me there, with little Jesse lying in that grave beside us,  I knew at that moment  it was the only place I wanted to be, and I also knew I’d never doubt the wisdom of the powers that brought us together for the second time.

But that was then.  Let me tell you what happened to bring me there, and then we’ll move forward with what’s happened since Flex, looking truly frightened for the first time I remember, opened the door to his house and told us to stay put.

I went to the window and watched these two men that I cared for deeply running toward the forest, and my heart pounded like a jackhammer.  My breath was caught in my chest; I couldn’t draw in or exhale.  I remember looking at Charlie and Trina, seeing the fear on Charlie’s face and the confusion in my darling Trina’s eyes.

And I knew for certain we would not do what Flex had told us to do.

Like he
really
thought we would.

CHAPTER ONE

Gem Cardoza’s
Chronicle

I woke up that Sunday morning in my Uncle
Rogelio
’s house in
Miami
. 
I had a small apartment nearby
and if I didn’t have plans, he
and my Aunt Ana
often invited me over for dinner and to sit with
them
afterward by a fire pit in the back yard
while he played guitar, knocked back a few
t
equila shots and sang songs.  He preferred Roy Orbison and even played a lot of Beatles songs.  That was a beautiful time.  I loved
both of them
with every ounce of my being.  My aunt didn’t sing, but she would take this old tambourine and smile as she shook it to the beat of the music, and Uncle
Rogelio
and I knew all the words to every song he played.  We stayed up
past
1:00 that morning.

So what happened to him happened fast.

I was jolted awake at 9:00 in the morning.
  I normally get up by 7:00, but with the
tequila
running through my system, I was down for the count.  Anyway, I didn’t awaken to the usual odors of breakfast cooking; pork sausages, eggs, the spices my uncle used to cook meals – pretty much every meal.

I awoke to screams.  My aunt’s screams.  And growls that sent chills down my spine.

I jumped out of bed and threw on my jeans.  I was in the back corner bedroom, and the master bedroom where my aunt and uncle slept was in the front, off the living room.  The screams were piercing, as though they came from just outside my door.

I slept in my bra and underwear when I stayed over, and I didn’t even try to take the time to put a top on.  Once I pulled my jeans on, I yanked the door open and ran toward their bedroom.

I’d never been more frightened than I was at that moment.  I was sure some gang bangers had broken in and were killing them both, but I didn’t stop to think about my own safety. 

The first thing I noticed was that the door
to their bedroom was open.  They always slept with it closed.  When I reached the doorway I stopped short and stared, my adrenaline pumping through my veins. 
I saw my beautiful Uncle
Rogelio
on top of my wonderful Aunt
Ana
. 
No.  I didn’t walk in on a sexual romp.  I wish I had.

He was biting her.  No.  He was clawing at her skin and tearing into her face with his teeth.  He didn’t look up at me.

I screamed,
“Uncle
Rogelio
, my God, what are you doing?  Get off her!” 

I staggered to the bed, still wiping the sleep from my puffy eyes, and pushed him, and I realized it was the first time he noticed I was there.
 
And then I saw his face
clearly
.  His eyes were blank, yet determined.  He couldn’t take
them
off my
a
unt, who had now fallen unconscious.  I could
still
see her chest rising and falling there in my stupor, and then he was on her again, his hands ripping at her hair, his mouth buried in her face, chewing and trying to tear her scalp from her head.

I know now that he was trying to get at what lay beneath her skin.  His skin had chafed, his color gone.  He was more like a wild animal than any wild animal I’d ever laid eyes on.

I ran back into the guest bedroom.  There was an old, beat up wooden baseball bat there, and I grabbed it and ran full speed back to my aunt and uncle’s bedroom.  Uncle
Rogelio
was on top of her again, doing that horrible thing to my aunt, only now he’d broken through and was tearing at her flesh with abandon.  I raised the bat over my head, my arms shaking, and I brought it down with all my might, slamming it into his back, but still he raged, growling, biting and killing my beloved aunt.

But at that point I was sure she was already dea
d.  She was sixty-two years old
and had heart problems, and I hoped to God it had seized and allowed her solace from this horror.

The repeated impact of the bat eventually got his attention, and his arm came up fast, his blue-black fingers snatching it from my grasp.  With a primal, guttural scream, he flung it away and it smashed into and through the window.  His eyes no longer saw me, his niece. 
They
saw an enemy.

And I was. 
Now I was.

But I ran then, and I was faster than this thing.  My purse was on the dining table and I hooked my arm through the strap – my keys were there, and I had to have it to escape.  I ran into the other spare bedroom and slammed the door just as he came up behind me, and as I held the door closed, I worked to fumble the lock into the STAY THE FUCK OUT! position.

I got it.  My heart pounded, even as what used to be my sweet, guitar-playing Uncle
Rogelio
pounded on the door, scratched on the door, and for all I knew, bit the door.

Uncle
Rogelio
had come home one day with an Uzi machine gun he’d won playing poker with his buddies.  I knew he kept it
in
here, which is why I locked myself in this particular room.  He’d showed me how to use it, much to the chagrin of my aunt, who was not happy at all about it.  But we had fun, loading it up and shooting the shit out of a variety of cans, bottles, and other makeshift targets.  He told her he kept it because the area in which they lived wasn’t getting any safer, but he had a little Smith & Wesson .38, so I knew he kept the machine gun because he thought it was as cool as I did – plus he liked to show it off to his friends.

With the pounding growing in intensity, I opened the closet door and grabbed the gun.  I found the ammo for it and loaded the magazine with utterly shaking fingers.  It took me too long, and the door jamb was beginning to splinter at the knob latch.

When it was loaded, I stood there, pointing the gun at the door.  I don’t know what I was thinking then.  I knew in my heart I couldn’t shoot him, no matter what he’d become.  I believed he was sick – which in a way, I suppose he was – or is.  But I could not bring myself to fire lead into the man that
had,
in many ways
,
raised me. 

So I turned and grabbed the metal box containing the remaining ammunition for the Uzi, and I ran to the window, slid it up fast and threw the gun
and metal ammo box out. 

O
ne l
ast glance at the door allowed me to see it finally give way.  As it flung open and the thing that used to be my uncle staggered into the room,
I dove through that window, grabbed the gun and box from the grass, my purse barely staying on my arm, and ran to my car.