Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle (17 page)

“Fuck this.  You guys clear the floor.  I’m going back to Trina.”

I nodded.  She was right.  I trusted the Max I’d met downstairs, but we didn’t know enough about this illness or virus or disease or whatever the hell it was to have any real knowledge about its gestation period.

“Go, baby.  We’ll hurry this up and be back down.  Got more ammo?”

She lifted her top and showed me her waistband – two more full clips inside.  “Got it,” she said.  “See you boys down there.”

The elevator doors slid open again, having hit the creature’s legs that still protruded from it.  Gem stepped in over him, and Hemp and I grabbed the thing’s legs and pulled it out of the elevator.  Hemp then reached in,
slid his card, and Gem hit the
button
for the second floor
. 

She waved, looked into my eyes with
concern, and the doors closed.
 
I
hated that part.
  I hated any part where
Gem
wasn’t with me. 

I did not want to lose her again.

*****

Hemp and I continued our way through the
third level
.  We cleared the cafeteria and the lounge, only having to us
e another twenty rounds combined
.  We encountered fourteen more abnormals, and all-told on that level, we had found twenty-four
uninfecteds who had ultimately become sustenance for the
inflicted
.

We worked our way back to the elevator, and I looked again at the scene laid out on the landing.  The smell was putrid and the floor ran wet with blood and raw, human meat.  Entrails snaked out of abdomens, and grey matter of the abnormals whose heads we’d blown apart splattered everything.  We had to be extremely careful not to slip in it.

As Hemp pushed the elevator call button, m
y eyes were drawn again to the two young women – well, formerly young women – that I had shot.  Then my eyes went to the woman they had been eating.

But she was gone.  Or
more accurately,
her body was gone.

Hemp approached and put a hand on my shoulder.

“Elevator’s here,” he said.  Then: “Flex, what’s wrong?”

I turned to face him.  “I don’t know how, but the woman these two were eating is gone.”  I pointed at the bodies of the t
wo abnormals I’d taken out. 
“There was a woman in a mustard –”

I never finished my sentence.  Hemp reached toward me with his short but muscular right arm, grabbed my shirt and yanked me toward him.  I was taken by surprise as the
academic weapons expert
sidestepped me and practically threw me inside the open elevator.  As I hit the back wall, still in disbelief, he swung his
K7
straight out and blew the head of
f the woman in the mustard pant
suit.
  When this was done, he looked at
me as he held the
elevator door open.

Hemp’s eyes were disbelieving. 
“She was dead?  Are you sure?”
  He looked at her body and clearly saw the chewed hole in her side and back.

I no
dded my head frantically.  “She’s
half eaten, Hemp.  Yes, I’m sure she was dead.”

“
Agreed, but s
he wasn’t
dead j
ust then,” he said.  “Which means being eaten is only enough to spread the infection, not to actually kill.  So we’ve got a job to do before we head back down.”

I knew immediately what he meant.  We had at least
twenty-five
head shots to administer before we could get
back
down to the second level, check on Gem, Trina and Max, and proceed with our plan.

We got started.  It was done in
less than
five
minutes.

*****

Every
thing was fine when we returned to the lab.  The 2
nd
floor was still quiet, and Max hadn’t
turned into one of
them
and eaten Trina or Gem yet.  I could tell by the way Gem was hanging onto that Uzi that it was unlikely anyone or
anyt
hing
would get the jump on her.

After verifying that the girls were okay, Hemp and I moved back into the second floor
hall
.  The south hallway led to a connecting tunnel that would once have taken you to Building #1, but the door at the end was closed, and we could smell fire.  Building #1 must have been engulfed in flames by now.  Since the tunnel was
constructed entirely
of steel
and glass
, there was little risk that the fire would spread to Building #2 from
that point
.

There were small offices and closets located here, and
after searching them,
we’d be
finished with the 2
nd
f
l
oor. 
Storage closets on the left
side
and four offices, two on each side of the hallway.

“I’ll take the offices on the right, and you get the others.  We’ll split the closets. 

Hemp nodded and pulled open the door to the
office closest
to him.  I did the same.  I flicked on the light, and saw movement from the corner of my eye.

I swung
my Daewoo
toward the far corner desk.  “Stand up.  If you understand my voice, you’re in no danger.”

I saw the tips of delicate fingers at first, then the hands, followed by arms in a white lab coat, blonde hair, and then a face.  It was the extremely frightened face of a young woman on the edge of sanity. 
Her eyes wide, her lip quivering, she began sobbing when she saw me.

“You can put your arms down,” I said.  I moved quickly around the rest of the small office, and saw nothing.  When I walked to her and looked down, I realized what had sent her into a panic.  One of the abnormals, a bullet hole cleanly in the center of its forehead, lay crumpled by her feet.
  It, too, wore a lab coat.  The name tag on that one said Professor Anthony Mihalovich.

I assumed a guard had come in on a search while the woman was hidden, encountered the former professor, and had either become familiar with what had to be done to kill the creatures, or got lucky.  Either way, this woman was alive, and
not
one of the abnormals
because of that single bullet hole in Mihalovich’s head. 

I
took
her arm
with my hand and gently pulled
until her legs involuntarily moved away from the thing.  “Come on,” I said.  “
Come over here.”

She let me lead her
, her head drooped, her eyes on the ground
.  I stopped about two feet from the door and stood in front of her.  I lifted
the young woman’s
chin gently with my fingers.  “Look at me,” I said.

She lifted her fearful face to mine.  Her eyes darted between mine.

“What’s your name?” I asked, softly.

“Cynthia Preston,” she said in a flat, monotone.

“
My name’s Flex Sheridan and I’m here to help
you
. 
You’re going to be okay, Cynthia.  Trust me on that.  Now l
et’s get out of here.”

I met Hemp in the hallway. 
The adjacent office was vacant, a
nd
Hemp had
already checked out the other office on my side.  The
closets
also proved to be empty – nobody hiding there.  But at le
ast we had one more uninfected – one more hope for humankind.

But still the odds for
our existence
did not look good. 
The number of infecteds clearly outnumbered the others.  And now that we knew the symptoms could be passed through a bite or perhaps even
scratches
, I was beginning to have my doubts
about any sort of positive out
come.

But I couldn’t let Cynthia know that. 

“We’ll have to
examine
you for cuts and scratches back in the lab,” I told her.  “Don’t worry – there’s
a woman with us who’ll take care of that
.”

She nodded.  We went.

*****

“Floors two and three are clear?” asked Max.

Hemp nodded.  “Yes.  All clear.  Now we
just
have to
complete the first floor sweep and hope the garage level is safe.”

Gem came back in the room with Cynthia Preston.  She had been in a small office – all glass, but they stood behind some filing cabinets for the physical inspection.

“She’s got some small cuts, but not from human contact so far as I can tell,” Gem said.  “No bites or scratches that might have come from
teeth or
nails.”

“Any headache?” asked Max.

“No, not at all,” Cynthia said.  “I’m exhausted, but my head feels fine.”

She had clearly calmed down somewhat.  Hemp and
I had dropped her off with Max
,
Gem and Trina, then we’d completed the other hallway and room searches.  Not many areas to get to without swipe cards, so if you weren’t in one of the labs when the transmutation hit you, you
didn’t likely access one after
ward.

“I’d suggest you s
tay here with Max.  We’re going to set it up so he’s got power available to him for over a month, and there should be plenty of food.  Nobody knows how long this will go on, but the CDC is the best place to be.”

She nodded.  “I’m only an assistant, but when this started, I heard things.  People I worked with were leaving, rushing home to check on their families.  The main outbreak happened on the third floor, and some made it down and out and I gu
ess to their cars.”

She sat heavily into one of the rolling lab chairs.  “My mother is at home, taking care of my daughter, Taylor.”  Cynthia began to cry and Gem sat in another of the chairs and rolled up beside her.

“Cynthia, honey, how far away is she?  Where’s your mother?”

“Two miles,” she said.  “She lives two miles west of here.”

Gem looked at me
as she asked the next question.  “Cynthia, how old is your daughter?”

I rolled my eyes.

“She’s eight.”

I tried to turn away from Gem’s glare
.
  “
We have a lot of work to do,” I said
, knowing this
wasn’t going to go well for me somehow.

“Flex, I’ll go.  Trina can stay with
Cynthia and Max, since both have already b
een checked
out for cuts and bites –
a quick run there and back.  If her
daughter and mom are
okay,
I’ll
bring
them back with
me
.”

Cynthia’s face looked grateful. 
“I have to go with you, please,” she said.  Her eyes pleaded
, too
.

Gem wasn’t done.  “I have a GPS in the vehicle, Cynthia.  You give me the address and you don’t need to come.  It is dangerous out there, and unless you’re experienced with firearms,
you’ll
be putting
both of us at greater risk.”

“Babe, would you mind stepping into the hallway with me for just a moment?” I asked.

She obliged.
  I let the door rest against the jamb without latching, and spoke in a low voice.

“
You
know the odds are against both of them being okay, right?  And
if one or the other is infected
, we can assume it’s over.”

“I didn’t assume you were
infected
.  Or Trina.  I came looking for
you, which is what she wants
to do, Flex
.  And if you don’t mind, I’d like to assume we’ll find them alive.” 
Gem stopped talking for a moment, looked through the wire-reinforced window in the lab door at Cynthia Preston, and then back at me.

“And if they’re not okay, at least she’ll
know
, one way or the other.  That’s important.”

I shook my head.  “I can’t stop you, can I?  Even if I refuse you use of my truck?”

“I’ll just find something else to use.”

I wanted to laugh and kick her ass at the same time.  Nothing had really changed, but looking at her now, her expression so defiant, I realized this was why I was nuts about her.  Headstrong and a pain in the ass, but tough as hell and frightened of nothing.