Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle (5 page)

In my mind I kept thinking cure.  The gun was in my hand, but I knew I would not be using it on my sister.  Whatever she was, whatever she’d become, she was Jamie, my kid sister, and I loved her more than anyone else on this entire planet.  She had not killed her daughter directly, though clearly she’d been the cause of her death.  But I had to use that logic; she was incapable, even at this strange stage of metamorphosis, or whatever it was, of killing her own child.

And so I had to capture her somehow.  Get her to a doctor. 

Something.

As I stared at her an idea began to formulate.  She stood stock still, staring into the water toward me, her teeth gnashing, gnashi
ng.  I was horrified to see her
so far gone.

I could not get too near her.  Trina was relying on me, and if this was contagious, it wouldn’t do to become infected.  If not airborne, it could be transferred by bodily fluids, and Jamie looked to be capable of spreading her share of them right now.  She could not be allowed to be too near me or Trina.

I stood there, the idea continuing to take shape.  The pool cover was a bubble wrap type material, only thicker.  It was rolled up on a long cylinder at the deep end of the pool, operated by a hand crank.  If I wanted to pull it out, I had only to grab onto it and start to pull it across the pool.  I could safely work in the water, because apparently Jamie did not want to work in the water.  I looked at the large roll and felt in the front pocket of my jeans.  My pocket knife was there. 

I looked at the Jamie-thing again, gauging her reluctance to come in after me, and while I could read nothing in her features, she hadn’t moved.  Aside from her mouth, she stood perfectly still.  Occasionally she moaned, and the gnashing was constant.  Her face did not turn away from me.  I can’t say she
saw
me, but she knew exactly where I was.

I turned and cupped the knife in my hand and swam to the far edge.  As I reached it, I leaned out and took the bubble plastic in my hand and pushed off the edge back toward the middle of the pool, unspooling it behind me.  When my feet could touch the bottom again, I stood, one eye on Jamie and the other on my work. 
With my pocket knife,
I began cutting the plastic off at about
an eight
foot length. 
It was about
fourteen
feet
wide
.  Still light and easy to work with.  I had just finished cutting through the last two feet
and had started rolling it up
so that the width would become my length.  W
hen I glanced back toward Jamie
I
saw that she was no longer alone.

There was a man walking up behind her.

“Stop!” I shouted.  “Stay away from her!”  The man didn’t falter. 
His gait was strange.  Unsteady, jerky.  Jamie, apparently sensing his presence behind her, turned her body and head to see him, but did not step out of his path.  Her movement was enough to allow me to see his face.
 

He
was
her
.  They were the
same
.  My God, he had the
disease too
, and he seemed more determined.  Chills
shot
so fast down my spine I was surprised the pool didn’t ripple as they sped past the water line.  I pocketed the knife and pulled the gun out of the back of my pants, then shook what water I could from it. 
The man-creature
walked around Jamie as though he didn’t see her, his eyes on me.  He walked to the pool’s edge, just opposite where I stood.  Jamie had remained at the corner, eyes on me, but had never walked the edge to be closer. 

He may have been hungrier than even she was.  His teeth and jaws also gnashed and worked at chewing nothing, and he had the same eyes.  His feet now hung over the edge of the pool’s coping, and he looked from my face to the surface of the water. 

“Hey, you fuck!  You’re not
coming in here,” I yelled, my voice tremulous.
 
“
Get out of here, or I’ll put a bullet
–”

And it was as if he
dared
me to do it.  Suddenly he was falling forward,
his body stiff as a board, his eyes staring through me as he plummeted toward the dark water and
into
my sanctuary
.  H
is eyes
were
somehow black, yet aglow with an internal light of their own.  His jaws working back and forth, up and down
,
anticipating my flesh. 
Mid-fall,
I
jerked
my arm
up
and
pulled the trigger hard, shooting
him
square
in the forehead.  Two
more
quick pulls of the trigger
and his left eye was blown out of the socket and
his right cheekbone disintegrated
.

The boo
ming sound shook me to the bone
as I gripped the bubble wrap in my hands and pushed back away from where his body splashed into the water.  I scrambled
to the opposite side and pressed myself
against the pool wall.  Jamie still had not moved, or even seemed to have noticed the
encounter
at all.  As the thing’s body floated toward me, now motionless, I nudged it away from me with the now rolled up bubble wrap
.  When I was sure it was floating away – and to the shallow end of the pool, for I did not want it to sink down anywhere near my
Jesse
– I scrambled out of the water.  I still didn’t know whether this horror was transmitted via air, fluid, or what, but I didn’t want to be in any water this thing might secrete his fluids into.

Once I was out, Jamie started toward me.  It was the water she was afraid of, this woman who was once a hell of a swimmer.  But now I was out, and she was still hungry, because her guttural words came again, and she stepped slowly, erratically toward me.  Not fast, but steady.  I tucked my gun back into the back of my pants and hefted the roll of bubble wrap. 
It was rolled up like a
rug, long and stiff enough for me to use as a tool
to push her
away
. 

If I could push her down, then I would execute my plan.

Or try, at least. 

Starting around the back side of the pool, I hurried around it and soon was in the middle of the yard, between the pool and the patio.  Jamie’s eyes stayed on me, and she jerked steadily toward me.

“Hungry hungry hungry . . .”

But it sounded like “ungy
ungy
ungy.”

Suddenly I was overwhelmed.  My sister was fucked up, majorly fucked up, and I started to cry.  I backed up as she staggered toward me, and it broke my heart to know she would kill me against her will, that she loved me and she would fucking kill me and never even have any conscious awareness she’d done it.  I prodded her with the bubble wrap, and she staggered backward.  When she was off balance, I pushed her with it again. 

I spun around to her side and pushed her toward the side yard fence with the roll, and this time she did fall over.  As she moaned
out loud, and her newfound lack of coordination
made it a
struggle to roll onto her stomach so she could
pull her knees under her and
get up
, I
stood over her and flipped open the roll of bubble wrap like an evacuation slide on an
airplane
.  Like a lizard’s tongue, it uncoiled on her opposite side, all
fourteen
feet of it.  Her
prone
body was parallel to the
eight foot length, and I kicked her square
in the center of her back,
push-rolling
her onto the sheeting.  Another kick and
she was far enough on the sheeting that
I could grab the edge, which I pulled over her flailing ar
ms.  I
then rolled her over onto her stomach again.  Her arms were forced down to her sides, and I gained more confidence as I rolled her further and further along the
fourteen
foot length of the plastic, tighter and tighter.  By the time I got to the end, she was a mummy entombed in the roll, unable to move, and unable to bite or get to me with mouth or hands.

Her moans grew more frantic, but were muffled now.

I lay on top of the roll, feeling her struggling beneath me, but to no
avail; my
breath heaved and my heart pounded.  I was still crying, but now
most of it was with
relief.  I had no idea what I’d do with her, but I had her.  I had her. 

Maybe I
could find someone to help her.

*****

Cinching the sheeting together where I ran out of length, I
struggled to drag
the bundle containing my sister
toward the house.
  An old garden hose lay
coiled there
, and I picked it up to test it for usefulness.  The
rubber w
as still
soft
enough to use
for my purposes
,
so I cut an 8’ length of it and split it lengthwise with my pocketknife.  Now I had two pieces pliable enough to tie like a rope
.  I sat on the roll
with
Jamie’s body inside it, and tied
one length
tightly around the end where her head was, and repeated
the
procedure where her feet were. 

I took note that she was quie
t now
.  But I felt her shifting within, so could tell she was still alive – if that was
even
a word I could use to describe her anymore
.  At the time, I really didn’t know.

As I did this, I kept my eye on the pool and on the yard beyond where I sat working, because if there
had been
one curious zombie-neighbor, there could be more.  And I wasn’t comfortable anymore with just the .38 and three more rounds of ammo.  I needed way more
firepower
if this was as widespread as I had begun to fear.

Trina was on my mind.  She was locked in the truck, and should be safe if she just stayed put, but she was six
years old and not
extremely logical.  I felt a
sudden
sense of
dread and
urgency even greater
than what had seemed to become the new normal.

I stood and looked down at the roll containing Jamie.  Slight movement.  No insane struggling,
n
o screaming.  Stillness.  Silence.
  I could take a moment and go check on Trina.

My gun was in my hand as I opened the screen door and walked around the corner to the side yard.  The rear of the Suburban wa
s visible, and looked okay.  I broke into a slight jog
and
seconds later I was at the truck
.  I knocked softly on the window so as not to frighten Trina.  A second later I saw her little face appear before mine
behind the glass.  She waved her little hand back and forth, her mouth unsmiling.  I
pointed at the lock, and she pulled it up.

I opened the door.  “Hey, baby.  Good girl.”

“Did you find
Jesse
and mommy?” she asked.

I didn’t want to have this conversation, so I lied
to her,
the way adults are supposed to
lie
to kids when what
they’ve
got to tell them would shatter their worlds.

“No, baby.  I think maybe your mommy felt better and they went and hid.  I’m hoping they took your daddy’s car and drove to
Jacksonville
.”  This was a lot of
bullshit
that she’d likely have trouble sorting through.  I was just talking off the top of my head so had no idea what I’d said the moment it was out of my mouth.
  I hoped she wouldn’t ask any questions
and test my powers of recall
, and I got lucky.

She nodded.  “I hope she’s better.  Maybe she was pretending, like at Halloween.”

“I think
you’re right
, honey
.  Just play-scary, like Halloween
.  Now I have something to do that’s going to take me about an hour.  But first
I’ve got
to hook your daddy’s trailer
up
my car
so we can bring some stuff with us
. 
I want you to stay right here, just like you were
, and if you feel
the car
bouncing and stuff, it’s just me.  Get back on the floor and see if you can go to sleep for awhile, okay
?”

She nodded.  I looked at her for a moment.  “Baby, wait right here, okay?  Just a sec.”