Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle (32 page)

I stood up.  “Perfect!  I’m up for that right now.  We can go out back, get some sunshine and practice, and you can get your tests done without our stupid questions.”

“Your questions make me think,” said Hemp.  “It’s not a problem.  But I’ve got plenty to think about for now, so go have your fun.  Charlie and I will plug away.”

Charlie looked at us longingly.  I knew she’d rather grab that cool new crossbow she’d gotten and come with us, but the look passed before Hemp saw it. 

“Have fun, guys.  We’ll fill you in later,” she said with a wave.

“No passing out,” Cynthia said. 

“Promise,” said Hemp.

*****

We’d stuck several thin pieces of aluminum strap in the ground, ending at about zombie head-height.  This was only 1-2” wide strap, so it took some accuracy to hit, but the good thing was it tweaked backward sharply when it was struck, and bounced back with no need to reset targets.  The
tink!
let you know you hit it, so even if you didn’t exactly know where, you knew you were on target.

For the crossbow, we needed something that wouldn’t damage the points of the arrows, so we used the foam mattress from inside the hide-a-bed.  There was a nice piece of foam board about an inch thick and almost 3’ x 6’, so combining those over a 4’x 8’ sheet of plywood gave us a nice target.  This went up to the left of our aluminum strap targets.

Per Cyn’s instructions, we unwrapped a nice, new
Winchester
.22 caliber rifle and went over the basics of firearm handling with Taylor, who listened attentively to everything we had to say.  No impatience, no whining about getting on with shooting it, nothing.  She was intelligent and even asked good questions when she wasn’t sure of something.  The main lesson, as with Trina, was always to treat the gun as though it were loaded and never point it at anyone unless you wanted to stop that person by killing them.

“Think you’re ready to fire it at the target?” asked Flex.

“Yes, sir,” said
Taylor
.

“Flex is fine,
Taylor
, okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, Flex.”

“Yes, Flex.”

Flex smiled disarmingly.  “Okay, now,” he said, kneeling down on a rubber mat.  “Come over here and let me show you how to use the sight.”

Taylor
knelt down beside him and he held the gun in firing position, but out so that she could look down the barrel. 

“This is a 3-point sight,” said Flex.  “One point is close to the end of the barrel, and the other two are close to the stock, or where you hold it and pull the trigger.  I want you to line up the three sights, which means you’ll move the end of the gun up or down until as you’re looking down that barrel, all three are in a straight line.”

“Straight line,” she repeated.

“I’ll shoot first, so you can get the idea.”  Flex laid down on the rubber matt and rested on his elbows.  He raised the rifle, putting the butt against his shoulder, and the sight in front of his right eye.  “Now, if the center dot on the sight is too high, I’m going to lower the end of the barrel a tad, until it’s right in line.  If it’s too far to either side, I’m going to move it until it’s right over my target and centered side-to-side and in line with the other sight dots.   Make sense?”

Taylor
just looked at him.

“I think she’ll have to try it, baby,” I said.  “That was a long dissertation.”

“It was a shitload of words, daddy,” Trina said.  “You lost me with
I’ll shoot first
.”

I burst into laughter.  Flex joined me, and even Cynthia couldn’t stop herself. 
Taylor
just looked eager to get on with it.

“Here goes,” said Flex.  He fired the gun five times in rapid succession, hitting five adjacent aluminum straps, sending each one back about fifteen inches before springing forward again.  Five shots, five
tink!
sounds.

“Me now?” asked
Taylor
.

“Yep.  Exactly how I showed you.”

“Okay.  I put it against my shoulder, raise the sight to my eye.  Make sure the sight is centered on the metal stick thingys and then balance the end dot between my two front dots.”

“That’s about it.”

She shifted positions until she looked comfortable, and moved the rifle into position.  She looked good, and I couldn’t find any fault with her position.

She fired the gun twice, about five seconds apart.  One miss, one hit of the third aluminum strap from the left.

“Good!” said Flex.  “Got one.  Which one were you aiming at?”

“The first one,” said
Taylor
, clearly disappointed.

“It takes time.  Just like anything worthwhile.”

“I know.”

“Okay, fire away.  When you’re empty I’ll refill you.”

Cynthia looked proud of her daughter as she beaded in on the aluminum straps and was soon hitting them like piano keys, from first to last, then back in the opposite direction. 
Not fast, but taking her time to aim carefully. 
She began about twenty feet back, then thirty, then forty.  We thought that was good enough.  She’d need practice with the longer distances.  The slightest movement of the barrel resulted in a miss for her.

For my part, I liked shooting the crossbow and had become pretty good at it.  I preferred Suzi when it came to protection, because she was fast and deadly, and to be honest, I liked the noise associated with
her
.  The boom meant power. 
If you hear this, stay the fuck away from me!
  No doubt.

But it couldn’t hurt to have the crossbow at arm’s length in case the gun jams or the ammo runs out.  You can’t dig a bullet out of a zombie’s brain and re-use it, but you could sure as hell yank an arrow out and make another flesh-eating freak dead with it.

Trina was on her own, pretty much by choice.  The kid had her ear protectors on her head before we got outside, only taking them off to listen to Flex’s instructions to
Taylor
.  So basically, the rest of the time she wasn’t listening for shit.  She removed her gun from her case, loaded up all the chambers, checked around her and took aim. 

She plinked each aluminum rod at what must have been the upper tip, because they bent nearly halfway backward to the ground before swinging up again.  The lower you hit them, the less they’d flex.

Her little arms were steady, and her face was fixed and serious.  Trina Leighton, my new daughter, didn’t look like a 7-year-old having fun.  She looked like a police officer doing some serious weapons training.

I’d give it to her, because in both mental approach and ability to handle the weapon, she’d improved like crazy, but I sure hoped that if a situation arose where she needed to assist in our defense that she’d panic less than she had that day with Hemp and Flexy in the woods.  I’ve never been more petrified than at that moment, watching her freeze up.

I motioned to Trina as she emptied her 5-shot revolver for what must have been the tenth time.

She looked at me and dropped her ear protectors down onto her neck.

“Yeah, mommy?”

My heart skipped a beat again, and I had to resist grabbing her and pulling her into a hug every time she called me that.

“You’re starting to piss me off,” I told her, a wry smile on my face.

She looked truly distressed at the news, but my smile wiped away some of that emotion.  “Why?”

“Because you’re becoming better with a handgun than me!”

“Oh, I am not!” she insisted.  “Am I?”

“It doesn’t take an expert to spray a bunch of bullets from an Uzi, baby girl.  It takes talent to become accurate with a handgun.”

I could see that little blonde girl who carried my heart around with her inflate with pride.  The smile on her face was still there as she loaded up the weapon again, throwing me the odd glance.  I winked at her and turned to Cynthia.

“What are you waiting for?”

“What do you mean?”

I picked up the crossbow and gave it to her.  “Charlie’s busy, but I think I can show you how to use this.”

“Really?”

“Hells yes, Cyn.  Who knows?  You might prefer this weapon.  Charlie sure does.”

Flex was busy explaining some of the finer points of the .22
Winchester
to
Taylor
again.

“He’s great with her,” Cyn said.

“He is.  I can’t tell you how many ways that man has surprised me.”

“The marriage proposal?”

“That’s one of ‘em, for sure.  A biggie,” I said.

Cynthia looked at me, on her face a sweet smile, as though she were watching a romantic scene in a movie.  “Gem?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you think I’ll find someone out there?”

I didn’t hesitate.  “I absolutely do, Cyn.  Listen.  Hemp seems to think that roughly 10% of the population remains uninfected out there.  Minus the ones who’ve –”

“Yeah, yeah.  I know that part.”

“Okay, well tell me this: Out of a thousand random guys before all this happened, do you think you could’ve come up with ten of them that might work for you?”

“I think I could stretch it.  Maybe.”

“Good.  So if we figure thirty million people still alive, half of them being men, there are fifteen million of them out there to choose from.  So there’s bound to be one great guy out there.  Just one’s all you need.  If you find him, and he doesn’t work out, we’ll give him poison ivy and send him on his way.  Deal?”

“Works for me.  Make it so he doesn’t want to come back.”

“Exactly.  Okay, what do you say we shoot some stuff?”

CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN

As we were wrapping up our weapons training session the sun was beginning to ease its way toward the horizon.  Leaving the targets in place, we headed inside.  As we walked in, Hemp and Charlie were exiting the mobile lab.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I
’ve discovered something pretty fascinating, but what’s more, I
believe I’ve had an epiphany,” said Hemp, smiling.  He moved to swipe his hair out of his eyes, but it was pure habit.  Charlie had cut his hair into a spiked
do
, and he looked even more boyish, if that was possible.  Cute, but boyish.

“And what’s the epiphany?” Flex asked.

“The discovery first.  Come with me.”

We all went inside, and Hemp fired the monitor and began playing back video.  The view was of a microscopic circle.  Inside the circle were what appeared to be scattered dots, perfectly stationary and unmoving.

“This is a playback, so it’s actually live
as it happened
.  Notice the complete lack of living tissue.  Everything is still.”

“Yeah,” said Flex.  “Thought it was on pause.”

“No, but watch.  Using a needle, I took a minute skin cell from my body.  It’s going to look pretty big here, but it fits on the head of a pin, with about thirty others.  Remember how perplexed we were that they could move without brain function?  Turns out there is some function,
but it’
s sending the same signal to every part of the body.  Without variation.”

“What’s the signal?”

“Wait,” said Hemp.  “Here it is.”

The needle came into view and the second it touched the tissue in the microscopic image, all the dark circles within the view con
verged on it – lightning fast.

And it was gone.

“Where did it go?” I asked.

“Did it get eaten?”

“Yes, it did,” said Hemp.  “Not only does the creature have single-mindedness with regard to hunger, so does every cell within it.  The brain says jump, the cells ask how high, and follow instruction.”

“Wow,” said Cynthia.  “How doe
s this
change things?”

“
To me, Cyn, every piece of knowledge is a pathway to an eventual cure.  On their own, each discovery may not seem significant, but when combined with several other results, we may discover something can reverse the condition.  It’s too late for most, but
it has to be researched.

“Fascinating,” I said.

“The epiphany is that
I am reaching the
definite
conclusion that the gas is responsible for the epidemic.  All of it.”

I looked at Flex, and he looked at me.  Cynthia just stared at Hemp and Charlie.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” said Hemp.  “The poison ivy grows at an amazing rate and to a
size never seen before.
  The gas itself emits from the earth, so it naturally affects things
in
the earth before affecting things in the atmosphere.”