Dead Hunger IV: Evolution (10 page)

“Yes, sir,” she said.  “Don’t stay out all night.  I worry.”

“You don’t worry, Gemina.  You come-a-lookin’.”

“Damned straight,” said Gem.  “And I’ll look until I find your ass.  No strip clubs.”

Flex laughed and opened the door.  He turned the knob lock and slipped into the cold afternoon, pulling the door closed behind him.

Hemp looked at Charlie.  “
I could use your help.  You know what the tests involved from the last time.”

“What about the baby?” asked Charlie, her face worried.

“Charlie, if I believed there was a risk
with you taking the WAT-6
, I’d never suggest it,” said Hemp. 

The truth was, he had thought about it a lot.  He’d even taken blood samples while he was on the wafers, and the
chemical compound
was literally undetectable.  Had anything strange appeared, any anomaly, he would have never even let her handle them.

“You took
the wafers
before we knew you were pregnant, Charlie,” he added.  “
Which is exactly why
Dr. Scofield
performed
the
amniocentesis
last week
.”

“
He estimated I was like sixteen weeks then,” said Charlie.

“Yes,
and as he said,
it was just inside the safe timeframe to
carry out
the test
, and
since it was only last week, you probably remember that
everything
was
perfectly normal.
”

Hemp put his arm over her shoulder and pulled her to him.
 
“
Dr. Scofield has been doing this a very long time
, Charlie.
  As you might
so eloquently
say, he knows his shit.”

“
But what if it’s a slow process?”

“
That would fly in the face of everything we know about how quickly this metamorphosis occurs
.  Nothing about it
– and I mean
nothing
– is slow. 
I believe any changes would have been nearly immediate.”

“I trust you, Professor.  We face everything together anyway.  Everything.”

“Yes, we do,” said Hemp.  He looked at the beautiful blonde woman who was his wife and best friend, and winked.  “Everything.  Now let’s take it, go to sleep, wake up and get to work.”

“So if I give birth to a little chimpanzee, you’ll still raise it as your own?”

“If you give birth to a chimp, I’ll suspect you’ve been having an affair with Jacko.”

“Oh, don’t even go there,” Charlie said, laughing despite her apparent disgust. 

Hemp enjoyed making her laugh.

“
Crap
,
” said Gem,
her voice low.  She stood at the window, her
fingers
tightening on the gun in her hands.

“What?” asked Charlie and Hemp together.

“They’re here,” she said.

Her radio clicked.  “Gem?”

It was Flex.  She grabbed it.  “Yes, babe.”

“They’re heading your way.  We just had to push over a wall of them to get through.”

“Come back, Flex.”

“We are,” said Flex.  “Five minutes.”

“Mommy, there are zombies everywhere outside!” said Trina from the top of the stairs.

“You were supposed to be asleep,” said Gem, turning to frown at her.

“I was! 
Tay
woke up and looked out the window.  Mommy, zombies are all in the streets!”

Gunfire was sounding sporadically outside now.  The neighbors were busy.  What neighbors they had.

“I don’t know how many there are, but we have to get in that lab,” said Hemp.  “We’re good there with the turrets.”

“Nobody’s going in there yet,” said Gem.  “Come here.”

Hemp and Charlie
hurried to the window. 

“My God,” said Charlie.

“W
AT
-6.  Now.  Everyone,” said Hemp.  “You all take it first.  I probably have some residual.  I’ll stand guard while you recover.”

“Girls!  Downstairs!” shouted Gem.  She rushed to the freezer and removed the baggie filled with wafers, broke one in two and handed each girl one as they came into the kitchen.  “Eat.  Or go sit and eat.  Lay your head down when you’re done eating them.”

“These suck, mommy!” said Trina.

“Like we always say,
girls
” said Gem. 

The next words she spoke were
screamed
in unison
by
Taylor and Trina.
 
“Better to eat what sucks than to have your brain sucked!”

The girls sat in the chairs at the round, kitchen table and ate their wafers.  Smiling at one another, they rested their heads against the
glass table
top and fell fast asleep
in seconds
.

“You now,” said Hemp.  “Both of you.  Hurry.”

In ten more minutes, everyone was awake and it was Hemp’s turn. 

When he awoke, gunfire already filled the room.  They had followed Tony Mallette’s example and had drilled
gun
turret holes beneath the
windows, and beneath the peephole on the door.  The girls were on their knees, their gun barrels poking through the holes, and they were emptying their
magazines efficiently.  Hemp couldn’t tell if they were hitting their targets, but the bodies outside were
beginning to pile
up.

“Hold up,” he said.  “I see Flex and Dave.”

Gem jumped to her feet, and Charlie joined them.

“Girls,” said Charlie.  “Pull your guns in.  Quick.”

With a slight whine, they relented and put their guns on the
hardwood
floor.

“You don’t want to shoot Uncle Flexy and Uncle Davey, do you?” asked Gem.

“Hells no!” said Trina.

“No way!” said
Taylor
.

They watched as the men pulled into the driveway and got out of the vehicle.  Zombies were all around them, but they had apparently taken their doses of WAT-6 before coming back.

Their weapons were drawn.  Hemp watched Flex raise it.  The male zombie beside him was older, and shambled mindlessly toward him.  Flex hit him in the brain with a single round, and black ooze splattered from the back of his head as he lost forward momentum and fell away.

Hemp could see they weren’t attacking him; they were just in the wrong place at a very wrong time.

Many of these weren’t diggers.  They were dressed otherwise, as you might when you’re fixing cars, shopping for groceries, or going to university.

They were just people.   Yes, there were the odd diggers among them, but they were obvious because of the
damage done to their bodies on their long forage upward to reach daylight
.  In many cases they missed fingers, and even arms.

Then another female caught Hemp’s eye.  He pointed to her.  “That one,” he whispered.  “She avoided Flex.  She was walking toward him and when she saw Flex
shoot the other one
, she turned away.”

Hemp gently took the radio from Gem’s belt.

“Bring the woman inside, Flex,” he said.  “The one in the red dress.”

Flex looked around, then raised his radio to his lips.  “She’s
heading
in the other direction.”

“Put down your gun and she’ll stop walking that way,” said Hemp.

Flex motioned
for
Dave to lower his weapon, and Flex did the same.  Sure enough, the
half-bald, half-blonde zombie
in the knee-length red dress
glanced backward and slowly
reversed direction.

“You’re going to have to push your way through the rest, Flex.  We can lock her in the garage or something.  Just bring her inside.”

Flex raised his radio.  “Sounds like a fuckin’ party, Hemp.”

“The goddamned ratz,” said Gem. 

“Wow,” said Charlie. 
“
I was so focused on their heads, I missed them.  How did I do that?”

“Hurry, guys.  Get in here.”

Dave opened the door of the truck again, hit one of the other zombies hard with the door, reached inside, and pulled out a bottle of urushiol spray.

Hemp knew immediately what he was doing.  They couldn’t afford to have any of the ratz making their way inside the house.  When the WAT-6 wore off, they could be very dangerous and hard to locate.

“He’s got her,” said Gem, almost in a whisper.

“Boy, does he,” said Charlie. 

It was mesmerizing, Hemp had to admit, watching the zombies handled like domesticated animals. 

Flex had his radio button pushed, but wasn’t talking.  Suddenly, the sound of barking filled the dead radio air.

Lots of it. 

The horde around Flex and Dave suddenly turned and almost ran the men over
as they pushed against one another to get to something Hemp could not see.

Flex turned
, and Hemp could see surprise wash over his face.  He raised his radio.

“It’s a goddamned pack of dogs!”

Hemp pressed the button on the radio.  “
It makes sense, Flex. 
They can’t smell you, but the
live
dogs must smell like a cookout.  They’re going for the food source.”

Flex gripped the arm of the one in the red dress, pulling her beside him.  He said something to her
that Hemp could obviously not hear
, then started firing madly into the crowd of zombies approaching him.  The one he gripped struggled, but did not attempt to bit
e
or scratch him.

Hemp watched, wondering. 
Did she fear the weapon?  Like any hostage might?

Dave started wildly spraying urushiol in the air, and
as he ran in front of Flex, the spray
caught the woman-thing in the red dress.  She recoiled from it, and her mouth opened in a scream, but she did not melt.

She didn’t melt
, thought Hemp. 
My God
, what is this?

The spray did the trick with the others near the men, though.  Red dress was stunned and momentarily confused.  Flex pulled her onto the porch as Gem flipped the lock and pulled open the door.  Flex, Dave and the female zombie came inside in a rush, and
Gem
slammed the door behind them.

“Get the bitch in the garage,” said Charlie.  “I don’t want her in here for a second!”

Then came a
growl. 
It was joined by a
nother
low, deep snarl
. 
Just as Hemp and Flex looked toward the source of the sounds, the girls cried together, “Bunsen!  Slider!  Stay there!  Don’t move!”

“Jesus, Gem!” shouted Flex.  “Get them restrained!  You know they never listen to those girls!”

“Shit!” said Gem.  “
Bunsen, don’t move!”

But it was too late.  The protective instincts of the two Great Pyrenees kicked in, and they charged down the steps, taking them three at a time.

Hemp watched as
Flex doubled his grip on the zombie’s arm, but
while
the dogs had seen her as a threat, she smelled their flesh and blood and her insti
ncts took over, seeing them less as a threat than a meal.

She gnashed and pulled away from
Flex
, trying to get to the stairway.
  Had her fingernails not been torn off or worn down to nothing, she would have drawn blood with her clawing fingers.

But the dogs were down now, and their unequipped feet slid out from under them like a go-cart on a slick track.  Both went down, and the zombie pulled harder toward them as they attempted to get back to their
feet and continue their charge
.

“No you don’t!” shouted Flex, pushing
against her
back as Dave and Hemp each grabbed an arm,
forcing
her hard to the garage door.  Charlie ran ahead and opened it.

“Hurry!”

The dogs were
back on their feet
and running full speed toward the creature, whose eyes would not tear away from them.  She howled with hunger and frustration, even as the three men threw her into the garage and
slammed the door behind her
.

The dogs reached the men an
d scratched at the closed door while
Hemp,
Flex and Dave
leaned against the wall, breathing as though each had just finished a half marathon.