Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles (18 page)

“What the hell are they doing?” whispered Gem.

“Digging, it looks like,” answered Charlie, her voice barely audible.

“For what?” Todd asked.

“I have no idea,” I said.  “Are they alive, or . . . can any of you tell?”

“They sure as shit look alive,” said Gem.

“But they’re moving like ants in a colony,” said Cyn.  “single-minded.”

Suddenly we felt the wind at our backs.  I turned and looked at the sky, and saw dark clouds blowing in on us from the east.

“Want to grab some of them?” asked Charlie.

Before I could answer her question, the rats, as though on command, turned toward us.  Their eyes were blood red with tiny white dots for pupils.  On hind legs they stood stock still, only their whiskers blowing in the new surge of wind.

They flooded out of the holes and moved toward us.  Fast.

“Jesus!” shouted Gem, then began firing her Uzi, blowing rat after rat off of their feet. 

Then we were all firing, backing up as we did so, because the original number of rats, while diminished, had doubled, then tripled, and there were more and more of them pouring from the ground. 

Charlie fired arrow after arrow, and even as I fired my MP5 until it was empty and went to reload, I saw one of her urushiol tipped arrows pierce the back of one of the rats.  It expanded as though it were a balloon on a gas cylinder, and exploded into a shower of fur and blood.

I knew what they were then.  They were what we
had
feared they were.

“Back, back!” Flex shouted.  “Get to the fucking car!”

They were nearing our feet now.  There were too many of them for our flying bullets and arrows to make a difference anymore.  

Three or four rats had reached Cynthia, who had started to run just a second or two too late.  She turned and caught her foot on a head stone, falling face first onto the grassy grave. 
Her shoe had come off, and the rats that had been after her went for the thin sock covering her foot, shredding it to get to what lay underneath it.

Todd ran to her, but as she struggled to push herself up, another hole opened up beside her, and a new stream of rats poured onto her body, the long, gaping teeth
ripping
into her with terrifying speed.

“No!  My God, no!” shouted Todd, and
everyone else turned
to see the horror
unfolding
.

Todd had reached her, and was on his knees beside her, knocking the rats away with his frantic hands, grabbing some and flinging them against the nearby headstones.  Twice he tried to pull her up, but he was now laden with attacking rats, and was in no better position to get up than she was.
  They fell back to the ground, only to be
enveloped by a thick layer of t
he swarming rats
, which no doubt began consuming their flesh instantaneously
.

“Cyn, my God!  Get up!  Get up!”  It was Gem, and her face was contorted with terror as she charged toward them, firing her Uzi at the more distant rats advancing toward them.

Before I realized her error, Flex was on Gem.  He threw his powerful arm around her waist, yanking her
backward.  With a primal grunt, he threw her over his shoulder and ran with all his might
toward the car.

Charlie and I were off to their left side, with streams of vermin now covering the ground, engulfing all you could see.  I couldn’t imagine where they all came from, these hordes of black, furry, dead creatures, but come they did, and in numbers I never would have believed possible.

As Flex carried Gem, she
faced backward, still firing her weapon
and screaming, but the few rounds that actually struck the creatures made little difference in the ultimate outcome should Flex stumble; they would be on both of them as they had been on Todd and Cynthia.  Her bullets, for the most part, were
merely
disrupting the immediate path of the dozens of
mud-matted
creatures charging in Flex’s wake.

We were almost to the car when her Uzi fell silent and she dropped it, now pounding her savior in the back with her frantic fists, screaming, “
Flex! 
We’ve
got to save
them
!  Flex, it’s Cynthia!  And Todd!  They’re going to die, Flex!”

But Flex was in his right mind.  Gem wasn’t.

Flex screamed with each giant step that pounded against the
earth
as he ran with the love of his life on his back toward the car, and I knew he wouldn’t stop until she was safely inside.  Charlie
had reached the car and flung open the door.  I threw my gun in and dove after i
t, and Charlie was on top of me, pulling the door closed
.

As fast as we’d gotten inside, Flex had stuffed Gem
in the back seat, sliding her to the opposite side and pulling the door closed.

And the rats were on the car.  Up the tires and along the side, covering the hood and windshield in what seemed like seconds.  Writhing throngs of the undead creatures with a sole purpose.

I fired the engine, but I couldn’t see outside the front windshield.  The side windows offered no purchase to the rats, so we could see what we never wanted to see. 
Outside the car there were hundreds
, perhaps thousands
of rats now.

Todd and Cynthia’s
outlines
were visible, but only as vague shapes;  they were mounds of crawling bodies, moving and swirling and devouring, seeming to slide along the ground, a foot this way, two feet that way, around and around as they were consumed by vermin unlike any humankind had ever before seen.

The s
torm that had so suddenly appeared now opened up the sky, in a thunderous clap and downpour
as sudden as if giant valve in the sky were opened.
  I turned on the windshield wipers, trying to swipe the creatures away, and it worked, at least enough for me to hit the gas and drive.

With one more hopeless glance out the side windows at the
carnage that we’d allowed to happen
, I closed my ears to the horrible sobs of Charlie and Gem, then realized we were all shuddering with grief and terror.  I pounded the dashboard in anger and floored the car, throwing hundreds of rats off the top and hood of the car as we tore out of the cemetery.

The windshield wipers might have cleared my vision, but
God
had never conceived anything
that would clear the terror o
f that moment from our hearts.

I made the decision to head
for the
governor’s mansion
.  We had to warn
Reeves and the others about
what was coming.

Chapter 6

As I drove,
the windshield wipers beat away the torrential rain.  I imagined
I could
still
hear some of the
rodents
still on top of th
e car, their nails scratching.

Was it my imagination? 
They had likely clung to the gun, so I reached up and pivoted it around in a full circle, then aiming at nothing, pulled the handle to fire it, hoping the reverberation knocked a few more of them free.

“We can’t go back home yet, Flex,” I said.

“I know,” he said, grabbing the handheld.  He pushed the button. 
“Dave, it’s Flex!  Do you read?”

I
jerked my head side to side, then toward the back of the car.  I
didn’t see any
more
rats
on the hood or the trunk; I hoped they hadn’t gotten through the undercarriage and were now working their way into the passenger compartment.  We’d had enough horror for now.

Gem
sat
in the back seat, racked with sobs, her body shuddering.  This strong woman whom I’d only seen break down like this a couple of times before was torn apart.

Flex
kept one arm around her,
but his
embrace
could do little to ease her terror, and we all knew the grief Cynthia’s daughter, Taylor, would be feeling when we returned home.

But we couldn’t go there yet, and
Flex knew it.

“Yeah, Flex, Dave here.  What’s wrong?”

“Rats, Dave.  Get somewhere alone, fast, okay?”

We heard Lisa’s voice in the background when Dave went to respond.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. 

“Have her stay with the girls, Dave.  Go upstairs.  Tell me when you’re alone.”

Fifteen seconds later he answered.  “What is it?  What’s going on, guys?”

“Cyn and Todd are dead,” Flex said, his voice low, as though the words spoken would send Gem back into hysterics.  Instead, she bit her lower lip and looked out the window at the pouring rain.

“We have to go warn Kev and the rest of them. The rats are walking dead, Dave.  I don’t know how else to put it.  They’re dead, but they’re not.  Just like the people.”

“Holy
shit
,” he said.  “Those fuckers can slide under tiny door cracks.”

“I know,” said Flex.  “Find anything you can and stuff it underneath.  Then get into a room with only one entry and easily defensible.  Bring food and water, brother.  We’ll be there as soon as we can.”

Gem grabbed the radio.  “Dave, take care of my babies, please?  Please?”   Her hands were white, squeezing the talk button, but she didn’t let it go for Dave to answer.  Flex pe
e
led her fingers from it, and her head fell to his shoulder, her tears coming anew.

“I will, Gem,” came his reply.  “You know I will.”

“We’ll be in touch,” said Flex.  “I’ll call soon.  Radio if you get in to any trouble.”

“I will,” said Dave.  “Out.”

“Out,” said Flex, then leaned forward on the seat.

“We have to get to the
governor’s mansion
,” I said, rolling down my window.  I stopped the car on the corner where a man with an AK-47 like the one on my car stood.
  He was in his mid-forties as best as I could estimate, and he had short, blonde hair.  Medium build, almost six feet tall.  Looked like he probably had two daughters who played soccer and a son who loved baseball.

He had put his gun on the ground and was unwrapping a thin, plastic p
o
ncho to throw over his shirt against the rain, which had begun to lighten slightly.

As calmly as I could,
but loud enough to be heard over the rain,
I said, “
Sir, g
et everybody you can see off th
e streets and into a safe place
.  Do it now.”

The man looked at the top of the car.  “
Buddy, do you realize there are
a bunch of dead rats on the top of your car
?
”

Before I could answer, two of the rats
the man thought were
dead leapt from the roof of the Ford
onto his chest.  T
heir tiny claws
shredded the material of
his
khaki button-down
shirt in seconds.  From there, they were on his neck
, chewing and squealing
, and he
flailed his arms,
trying to wipe them a
way with quickly bloodied hands as his raincoat fell to the ground.

“Jesus!” I shouted, powering the window back up before more of them slithered down and came inside.

“We gotta help him,” said Flex, jumping out of the car and slamming the door.  I threw him a towel
that Cyn had used to wipe up the girls’ spills on the long trip from
Alabama
, and
he took it, wrapping his hands in it.  He went up to the man, pushed him to the ground and grabbed a rat in each hand, slamming them together like
cymbals
.
 

Flex threw them onto the
sidewalk
and stomped his boot heels onto their skulls, crushing t
hem and rendering them dead for the final time.

He tossed me the towel, and I swiped the rest of the dead rats from the top of the car, and crushed their heads against the asphalt street, just for good measure.

They’d already been
caught in the pivoting base
of the mounted gun
, their heads crushed
, but I wanted to be sure
.  With my H&K in my hands, I went around the back of the car and saw there were no more.

Flex yelled, “Charlie!  Pop the trunk!”

Charlie reached forward and pushed the trunk release on the key remote.