Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle (9 page)

Two down,
I thought.

And
as I watched
in amazement
, these zombie things began crawling
with their arms
and hands, dragging
their destroyed bodies
toward me, resuming their even slower, but no less determined
progress up the aisle in my direction
.

I looked back at the five, who were now within fourteen feet of me.  I didn’t know how much ammo was in Gem’s
gun, and I didn’t have time to check now
, but I now figured that head shots were
my best
option
.  To test my theory, I pulled out the Glock, turned toward the two crawlers, took four steps toward them so I wouldn’t miss, and put a bullet in each of their skulls.  A
reddish
-black fluid leaked out, and they lay motionless
, gnashless.

Then I turned, slung the rifle around
to rest against
my back,
and with my shopping bags dangling from my belt and the
Glock in my hand, I walked determinedly toward the five zombies walking toward me, and I stopped six feet in front of them.

“Last fuckin’ chance,” I said.

Two more shuffles and I’d had it.  Five taps, five bullets in five brains.  I had a pile of five zombies in front of me.

I could have stood there for a long time, looking
at that pile of dead bodies.  But the longer I stood there looking at them, the more they just looked
like people.  Like I’d just murdered five
human beings right there in the Walgreens.

B
ut they weren’t that, were they?  Not
by the time
I got to them – or when they almost got to me.  They weren’
t
people
anymore
at all.

They were cr
eatures.  Damned TV zombies, only real.  I wanted to know stuff, like
did
they have heartbeats, audible skills, any vocal skills.  I’d heard Jamie moaning, but these had been quiet
or
unintelligible
. 

Jamie.  Jamie the zombie. 

My mind suddenly
snapped to
the present
and
I
realized if there were seven in here, there could be
more.  I ran down each aisle, the Glock ready. 
Eight rounds left, plus what
remained
in the
machine gun
.  I found nobody else, but I did find the
Benadryl
.  I put three bottles in my bag, then ran to the food aisle and put
several cans of
pop-top canned chili,
some canned tamales,
two six-packs of water, and two boxes of Cheerios under my arm.

Heart healthy.
  To balance out the chili and tamales.

I ran from the store to the truck, all my goodies bouncing
on
my belt.  Gem had flu
ng the door open and slid to the passenger side again before I got there
. 
Focusing on the open door
, I tripped
on something
and
nearly fell
into the cab.  Two bodies lay outside the passenger door,
stacked
almost on top of one another.

“What the fuck, Gem!” I said, slamming the door.

Her face was calm.  “They came up on the driver’s side, and Trina saw them.  I pushed her back down, got out
the other door, walked around to your
side and put two bullets in their heads.”

I stared at her.

“Flex, they were fucking with Trina.  With this baby girl who’s had her share of being fucked with.  I did what I had to do.”

“No apology expected or deserved, baby.  Thank you.”

“We fired at exactly the same time,” she said.  “I heard your gun discharge at the same time I shot these two.  You’re lucky I could restrain myself from going inside, but I have a good sixth sense, and I knew you were okay.”

“So I guess we’re through keeping the scary talk in hushed tones?  Trini?  You okay, baby?”

Gem shook her head.  “She
fainted, Flex.  The poor thing fa
inted when she saw those lipless fucks outside the door.”

I tossed all the stuff into the back
seat. 
“We’ll talk about what happened inside later.  I think we’d better start taking some notes.   For now, I think you should wake her up and make her take half of one of these.”  I pulled the
Benadryl
out of the bag and gave the bottle to her.   Gem lifted Trina from the floor and bounced her in her lap gently.  Trina moaned. 

“Are there any m
ore of those things in there?”
Gem asked.

“
None . . .
moving
anymore.  But I can tell you, there were more of them in there than us.  And all the ones like us
were
–
”

I looked at Trina, who
was stirring awake from Gem’s bouncing
. 
I
just
ran my finger
across my neck
in a slashing motion
.

“I get it,” she said.

I nodded.  “Oh, and I got us a new gun.”
 
I spun the tires and headed north.  “
It works
pretty good
.”

Gem put ‘Police Stations’ in the Points of Interest in the GPS and we pulled out.

“Want some chili?” I asked.

She hit the “GO” button, and the GPS routed it.

“It says we’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said.  “I’m pretty sure I
can eat a can of chili in ten minutes
.”

CHAPTER FOUR

We turned the headlights off
as we rolled into the
area
where the police station was located.  It was a somewhat residential street,
East 7
th
Avenue
.  The police station was on the corner
of that road and
Officer Ponce A
venue
, and a sign indicating PARKING featured an arrow pointing down the latter
. 

It was now almost 2:30 in the morning, and neither of us was familiar with
Tallahassee
.  We had put the radio on and heard static on too many stations.  There was a news
radio station out of
Orlando
that was still broadcasting, and they had a pretty strong signal, because it was still coming in. 

They were calling it a virus, and they said it
started as
a migraine-like head pain, then
attacked the
temporal lobe
of the brain
first, and quickly.  This was, they reported, the portion of the brain that held memory.  Destroying that first made the victims forget who they or their loved ones
were
. 

This worried me, because it was the logical first step in making anyone fair game.  No sensitivities or emotions, no soft spot for anyone.  Husband.  Wife.  Child.  All just food.  As for what exactly made them hunger for flesh, it wasn’t really being talked about – not openly.  It was inferred
but not specifically mentioned, because
it was essentially cannibalism
, and people frowned on that shit even if you were in a plane crash in the mountains in the snow and had to eat your pilot
.

The next thing destroyed by the virus was the hypothalamus
portion of the brain
, where hunger and thirst were controlled.  Only it did not destroy it, per se, rather it ramped it up to the extreme.  This portion of the brain, according to the reporter, who seemed to have learned a ton of brain info in the last several hours, also controlled
the heart, lungs, and other involuntary actions we humans so easily perform.

But it stopped these.  Again, not so much
spoken
, but implied by the talking heads.  So the virus killed off your memory, shut down your involuntary bodily functions, and made you ravenous.

Sorry, but
sound the buzzer please.  BZZZZZZZZT!  Symptom n
umber two should kill you dead, and nobody seemed to have an answer for why the fuck you could continue to walk around without breathing and with n
o heart
beat.
  And I swear, from my confrontation with them in the store, I saw their nostrils flaring as they held their eyes on me, so they could smell.  They
can
smell.

And did this
disease
affect the actual dead?  And if the answer was yes, did
they reanimate?  What happened if you just died naturally?  Did this act like a safety net?

N
ot so fast, partner. 
Heaven can wait, ‘cause
I gotcha. 
Now get out there and eat,
because you’re starving!

If it did affect the dead, did
it only do this prior to embalming?  There were too many questions running around in my head, and to be honest, the fucking radio was freaking me out a bit.  I had enough just looking at some of these victims on the side of the road.
  Gem had a death grip on the
butt
of that 9mm, and I had the .38 between my legs.

Lights still out, I turned left on
Officer Ponce Way, and the parking lot entrance was about 100 yards down on the left.  I stopped at the pivoting barrier and realized in seconds that the power was out, and pulling the parking card was not going to get me anywhere.  I gunned the engine
and slammed through the flimsy pressboard arm with the stop sign painted on it, and flew into the parking lot, the trailer bouncing over the speed bump behind me.
  I cringed, remembering Jamie on that trailer.

No cars moved
in the lot
and nobody
crept around that we could see
.
  The parking lot served three buildings, and snaked between them.

“We’ll need more ammo for the Uzi,” said Gem.  “Maybe at the station.”

“If we can get in,” I said.  “The three of us are okay, so maybe some of them are, too.”

Gem nodded agreement.  “But it doesn’t mean they won’t help us, either.  If things are as bad as we believe, they may welcome the assist
ance of any . . . well, normals
out there.
They must realize
there’s nothing to do but kill –”

Gem stopped talking suddenly, and looked ashamed.  I touched her hand.  “Look.  I said when we left Jamie’s, I had hope.  I still hold onto some of it.  Hell, I’ve got this fantasy that I unwrap her from that pool cover shit, and she’s back to normal, like I made her some sort of cocoon or something, but I know in my heart . . . well, I don’t even want to vocalize it.”

“I don’t blame you for not wanting to give up yet, Flex.  I love her, too.”

“Okay.   I know you
do, Gem. 
Now
, the
game plan.  This is it.”

The building on the left was large and concrete.  There were several police cars parked in front
.  No activity.  No fewer than eight dead bodies lay on the stone steps leading inside.  All had massive head
wounds
but three of them.   Those three had no heads at all.

Gem pointed.  “There’s an alley.  Turn
in there
.”

I did, an
d it was even darker here.  But it
did curve around and run behind the
main
building.  There were three open spaces in a row, and I pulled the Suburban and trailer combo into them and threw it into park. 

Gem had installed batteries in the flashes and the walkies while I drove.  Twice along the way I’d had to run the truck/trailer combo off the road to get around stopped vehicles, and the flashlights came in very handy to see just where an open path was.

I clipped a radio on my belt.  We’d already chosen channel 19 and tested them.  Range was
advertised
to be
over twenty miles
, but I doubted it
.
  Besides that,
I
didn’t
plan on ever being that far away from Gem again.

“Let me go,” Gem said.

“I don’t think so.”
  I reached for her arm as she leaned Trina against me and opened the door.  She wasn’t smiling.