Dead Hunger IV: Evolution (49 page)

They went their separate ways, and Flex made his way around the building, staying close to the wall.   The grass was easier to push through there. 

Guards could be anywhere.  They could be infected, too.  Who knows what happened to standard operating procedure at the prison when everything started going to shit.  Pandemonium.  Guards attacking
other
guards
and
prisoners.  Flex couldn’t imagine being locked in a cage, unarmed, uninfected and faced with dozens filled with the dead hunger that controlled their every move.

Flex saw another steel door ahead, on the south side of the building.  On its edge appeared a darker shadow, as though it were … open.

He pushed hard through the grass, and reached the door.  His fingers curled around it, and he pulled it wider.

Flex looked toward the sky and said, “You know, you are a bastard, but right now, thank you, Lord!”

He turned and ran, his legs feeling a new strength.  He leapt over the grass he’d crushed during his slog to the open door
as he smashed even more of it, assuring they’d find the path back to it.

He rounded the corner in a leap, seeing the massive, shadowed figure in front of him too late.  Flex’s mind registered his mistake a split second before his forehead hit the giant’s chin, and he felt powerful arms clutching at his clothing.

But his momentum had been too great, and Flex bounced off the figure with almost equal speed, the fingers failing to gain purchase on his shirt.

It was slow motion.  Just like any sudden, dire situation seems to be.  Flex felt himself falling backward, his mind sending signals to his hands to grab the
K7
.

But the signals coming from his mind were perhaps as scrambled as
the thoughts of
the enormous zombie that now loomed over him.

Flex hit the ground and tried to roll away until he could gather his wits.  His ears rang, and as he tried to spin away, the tall grass cradled him in place like bowling alley gutter bumpers.

My gun, thought Flex.

The colossal monster stopped and turned.  Flex did not know what the reason was, but he took advantage of the few seconds he may have had to feel around him for his gun, which had flown from his hands at impact.

It was somewhere in the grass
nearby, he knew, but even if only feet away, it was invisible and unobtainable at the moment
.

When the long-dead man wearing bloody prison clothes began to walk away, Flex closed his eyes and once again thanked
the
God he had called a bastard just moments before.

And then he thanked Hemp. 

The WAT-6 was still working.

Flex struggled to his feet as the creature moved away, silhouetted
by the distant
, leaping
flames
.

He saw his gun, leaned over with a groan to retrieve it
, and tried to focus. 
From his vantage point, a small rounded edge of the satellite dish was visible.

Flex
closed one twitching
eye
, took careful aim and
fired
a single round at the satellite dish.

The
sound of reverberating metal
echoed through
the blazing night
.

Flex trudged back to their rendezvous site, rubbing his forehead and silently cursing his aging body.

*****

Chapter Fifteen

A partition had been pulled between Kev’s
hyperbaric
chamber and the others in the room.

Rebecca Dovorany sat on a gurney beside Kimberly Troelar.  They had both taken the wafer, and neither had fallen unconscious.

It was the first real sign that Hemp had seen to confirm this vapor was entirely different than other.  There was no becoming immune to the knockout power of the WAT-6 wafers.  You ate it, you said good night until someone brought you out of it.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Scofield sat on an opposite gurney and stared at them.  Occasionally he scratched his beard, but he did not look away.

“Why’s that guy staring at me?” asked Rebecca.

“Not starin’,” he said.  “Monitorin’.
  Don’t you remember my name?”

“Doc?”

“Close enough.  What do you think, Hemp?  How you gonna be able to tell what it does?”

“For God’s sake!” said Hemp, turning and rushing across the room.  He went to the dome containing the head of
Blue Eyes
and yanked out the tube supplying the oxygen.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Scofield, walking up beside him, taking his eyes off the girls for the first time.”

Hemp lifted the dome.  The head was still.  The eyes closed.  The mouth hung open, exposing the nastiness of its mouth and rotted teeth.

He reached into a drawer, withdrew some latex gloves, and pulled them on.  Using his thumbs, he lifted the eyelids.

The eyes had rolled up in their sockets.  Hemp lifted the head, the palms of his hands on each side, and raised it up to look directly at it.  Straggling veins and tendons hung down.

“Jesus, gross!” said Rebecca.

“I have to agree,” said Kimberly, turning away.  “Can we leave, or can you do that somewhere else?”

Hemp did not address their concerns, rather he said, “She’s dead.”

“Duh,” said Rebecca.  “Doesn’t take a scientist to know that.  They’re all dead.”

“No, this one is dead,” he said.  Hemp looked at Scofield.  “Do you realize what this means?”

“I think I do,” said Scofield.  “But tell me anyway.”

“If she died – meaning she is no longer reanimated, and she no longer has a hunger – then it was as a result of being isolated from the ZG.”

Scofield looked at him for a long moment.  Then he said, “This means when the gas stops, they all …
die
?”

Hemp smiled, and looked again at
Blue Eyes
.  He put her gently back down onto the cake plate, and covered her with the glass dome.  She remained still.  He turned to Scofield, still smiling.  “That is exactly what it means for now,”
he said.

“What do you mean for now?”

“I mean that she’s dead for now,” said Hemp.  “Removed from the oxygen environment and returned to the air contaminated with ZG, she may well reanimate again.”

Rebecca laughed.  “That’s like having a death, near death experience.”

“What?” asked Kimberly.  Despite her disgust at the
sight of the zombie’s
head, she stared at it for a moment, then
said,
“Oh, I get it.  She’s already dead, and then she died for a while and if she comes back … got it.”  She playfully slapped Rebecca on the arm.

“Don’t  fucking touch me,” said Rebecca.  She wasn’t smiling.

Kimberly looked at Doc Scofield.  “See what I meant?”

Scofield shook his head.  “So what are we gonna do, professor?  You needed her to see if she could get in these girls’ heads?”

Kimberly hopped off the gurney and moved to the other one that Scofield had vacated.  She didn’t look at Rebecca.

Hemp sighed.  “Exactly.  Now we either have to wait to see if
Blue Eyes
wakes up, or we have to get another smart female.”

“Huntin’.  Not my game,” said Scofield.

Vikki walked in the room.  She had remained there for the first twenty minutes or so after the girls had taken the wafers, but when nothing happened, she got b
ored and went back into the room with the others.

“What’s up?  Any changes?”

Kimberly shook her head.  “Shh.  They’re figuring something out.  Important stuff.”

“
Hunting isn’t my game either,” said Hemp.  “B
ut in the name of science and medicine, we do what we have to do, don’t we, Jim.”

“Now don’t go tryin’ to get on my good side by callin’ me Jim,” he said.  “You ever seen me fire a gun?”

“I’ll go!” said Vikki
.  “What are we hunting?”

“Fuckin’ zombies,” said Scofield.  “Maybe I’d better go.”

“Bullshit!” said Vikki.  “I know guns, Doc.  I can’t tell you how many times I was at the rifle range just in the six months before the gas started.”

“Then how did you end up in that church unprotected?” asked Hemp.

“I didn’t say I used my
own
guns,” she said.  “They were my
boyfriend’s, so they were at his house.”  She looked at Kimberly.  “I wonder what ever happened to him.  We quit dating like a month before this shit.”

Kimberly shrugged.  “He drank too much.”

“So did my husband,” said Vikki.  “I know how to pick ‘em.”

Kimberly put her arm around her.  “Don’t go.”

“I’m good,” said Vikki.  “And you need someone to control your mind.  I don’t think any of us wants Hemp to go alone.”

Kimberly looked at Hemp.  “Are you going to let her?”

“I just need one,” said Hemp.  “You’re really good?”

“Try me before we take off,” said Vikki.  “Damn, I can’t wait!  I haven’t done anything cool since we got here.”

“The karaoke was pretty cool … for a while,” said Rebecca.

“You never sang.”

“No, but I drank warm beer and watched.”

“Let’s go, Hemp,” she said.  “I take it this is pretty dire?”

“It
really depends largely on the result
.”  He
peeked behind the partition at
Kev, who had fallen asleep inside his chamber.  His chest still rose and fell, which comforted Hemp.   He had a good feeling about the prospect of success.

“Okay,” he said.  “Let’s go.  I think Kev has cuffs out there.  I want to bring them in case we need them.  I also want to take WAT-6.  If
any females are
still drawn to us,
they’ll be the ones
we
go after
.”

“Say the word,” said Vikki.  “I’m ready.
”

She hugged her sister and waved as she and Hemp left the room.

*****

The group stood at the door that Flex had found. 
Flex still  had grass and dirt on his jacket, and an angry red mark shaped like the chin of the beast with which he had collided on his forehead.

“You okay, man?” asked West.

“Yeah,” said Flex.  “You guys see a big boy?  About eight feet tall?”

“He wasn’t quite eight feet, but I got him,” said
Bell
.  “That what you ran into?”

Flex nodded.  “Like a goddamned wall.”

Bell
held up the
Smith & Wesson .40 caliber.
  “My first kill with this puppy.
”

“Congrats,” said West.  “You’ll never forget it.”

“Okay, when we go inside, everyone stay together.  We’ll pull this door closed so it’s not an invitation for every dead fucker in the vicinity to join the party.”

Flex checked the group. 
Eddie and Ian gripped their weapons like
they feared
an invisible entity would snatch them from their hands at any moment, and Flex knew how they felt.  Both under seventeen years old, this was exhilarating and terrifying to them at the same time.

Understandably so
, Flex thought. 
But they’re holding their own, at least on the outside.

“Headlamps,” said Flex. 

Flex kept a supply of them in his vehicle at all times; darkness was not a friend to the living.  And while he had never discussed it with Hemp, he had a notion that the dead eyes of the zombies were fixed, dilated, and able to see in the dark scads better than the living.  Just a feeling, borne of experience with them.

“Okay.  Let’s move.”

They all turned their lights on as they
stepped into the hallway.  This was not one of the
cellblocks
, but a visitor wing.  Bodies lay everywhere, many of them devoured right down to the bones. 

“Looks like ratz got to some of these.  No human could work it down to the bones like this,” said West.

“Maggots, ratz, these fucks,” said Flex, pointing to a well-preserved cadaver that had not drawn the attention of any of the above, likely because the bullet hole in the forehead told the story of what it was when it went down.

Eddied stared at the corpse, his beam directly on the forehead.  “Why don’t maggots go after these?” he asked.

“Good question,” said
Bell
.  “
Not for me, but good for Hemp.
”