“Okay.” She turned to Taylor. “Hear that, Tay? They can’t smell us, so we just have to aim at them and
shoot.”
Taylor nodded.
“Let’s go,” said Hemp, opening his door. Charlie sat beside him, and slid out his door. Dave had Trina on his lap, and Taylor sat in the front seat between Gem and Flex.
They got out of the car, and the movement caught the zombies’ eyes. They moved forward, but didn’t gnash or work themselves into a frenzy. They drew closer than Flex liked, but he held his fire and kept an eye on Trina.
She watched one zombie at a time, he noticed. Singled one out, watched it, raised her weapon and sighted it, and hers was the first shot to ring out.
The large, male zombie went down eight feet from her. She looked up at Flex and nodded, satisfied.
Her face
, thought Flex.
She’s . . . being forced to grow up fast. She’s seven years old,
with
steel in her spine and fucking rainbows in her heart.
He turned back and followed her lead. A man in a ragged, brown jacket and one shoe came toward him. Not aggressive, just staggering. He’s lower jaw had fallen away, so any meal he ate would be a scrape
-
fest, to be sure.
Flex raised his Glock and took him down with a single shot. A female behind him nearly ran.
“Flex!” shouted Hemp.
Scared the shit out of him. “What?” he retorted, sharply.
“Sorry to startle you, but did you see that zombie? The woman?”
“What the hell is with you and female zombies lately, buddy?”
“It’s not that they’re female, Flex. It’s how they’re responding. They’re aware, I tell you.”
“I’ll try to keep an eye out for it, Hemp, but I gotta be honest. I just want ‘em all dead as hell.”
“Go at it, friend,” he said.
Flex did. One by one, he blew more brains out of rotting skulls.
Taylor
was off to his left, and she had raised her weapon for what Flex believed was the first time. She walked forward about five steps, and Flex saw Gem hesitate, then stop firing.
Trina took out two more. Her face held no indication of pleasure. She was
as
serious as
the proverbial
heart attack.
Taylor approached
what was formerly
a girl of perhaps seventeen. She had thin strands of brown hair clinging to her head, and Flex was surprised to see the remnant of a red ribbon still clipped to it.
As though in a trance, Taylor drew to within four feet of the teenaged rotter, who stopped and seemed to stare blankly through her. Taylor held the gun up, steady and true, then squeezed the trigger. She cl
osed her eyes as the weapon discharged.
The zombie girl dropped to her knees, then folded backward, landing on the grass with a dull thump.
Taylor stood there for a moment, staring down at the thing’s body. Her eyes moved to the gun in her hand.
“You okay, Tay?” asked Flex, softly.
The eight-year-old said nothing. She bent down, put the gun on the ground, and walked back to the truck. She opened the door and got in the back seat.
Taylor stared straight ahead. She hadn’t closed the door, so Flex did it for her.
He would have to talk to Charlie about it. She had been occupied behind the truck and had not seen any of it.
Taylor was still adjusting.
She’d be turning nine in two more months. Of course she was adjusting.
They finished with the present group fifteen minutes later. Charlie went back to the truck, gave Taylor a big hug, then led her inside the house with the others.
The kids inside the house looked relieved to see us.
It was only natural. While kids liked to believe they knew everything, when life took a dark turn, they looked at
the situation first. Then they looked at the
adults and asked
themselves
two questions:
Are they scared?
Should we be?
After all, t
hey
were
just
kids.
*****
“It’s dead serious out there now,” said Flex,
looking
directly at Jimmy.
Taylor sat quietly next to Charlie, staring off into space. Trina was asleep, leaning back against Gem.
“I get that,” he said.
“Buddy, I respect your group here, I do. But I don’t know if you really get it yet.”
“That’s the problem with you guys,” said Jimmy. “
You don’t understand that w
e get it. It’s dangerous
out there, which is exactly
why we want to be armed.”
“There’s more to protecting yourself than having guns,” said Gem.
Jimmy looked at her, and his expression softened. He liked and respected her.
Plus, she’s hot,
thought Flex. That garnered a lot of respect from a kid dancing on the border of puberty. He knew as well as anyone.
“I know, Gem, but –”
“No buts, Jimmy,” Gem cut i
n, then turning to Nikki.
“Nikki, does
Jimmy
listen to you?
If so,
and you get what we’re saying here,
would you explain our point
to him
?
”
Flex and Gem had discussed Nikki Haley; the cute, curly-haired blonde with a figure that would have made Gem jealous at her age. While they had never asked her age, both assumed she was around sixteen, like Jimmy. It was hard to tell these days when fourteen-year-old girls looked nineteen.
Nikki
shrugged. “
He listens to me when he wants to … or when I
really
want him to
,” she said.
“I’m right here,” said Jimmy, shaking his head. “And don’t give them any ammo to use against us, Nik
ki
.”
“Funny how you put that,” said Dave. “And meanwhile, you’re the ones without ammo. Awkward.”
“Ha ha,” said Jimmy, smiling despite himself.
Probably because Dave was smiling, and when he smiled it was hard to not catch the disease. Like a rampant yawn.
“Look, you guys are smart,” said Flex. “We know that, and we’ve fought for you.
You
know that. But we’re warning you because we’ve been out there and it’s fuckin’ scary.
You
’ve been in
Concord
the entire time, so you
barely know a world where they’re everywhere.”
Flex turned and pointed outside. “You saw that out there? That shit is everywhere outside of
Concord
. And now it’s come here, so your group is gonna have to be tighter than ever. And smarter.”
“Keep the WAT-6, but don’t take it unless you’re going out,” added Hemp. “Bring your bats, bring what you need to use as a weapon. With the WAT-6, you can safely take out your share, if you’re up to it.”
“But don’t waste it,” said Gem. “You need to have it when you need it.”
Eddie
Palmer
, a kid with dark, curly hair and serious, dark eyes, shifted and raised his eyebrows.
“Go ahead, Eddie,” said Jimmy.
“I’m formulating,” said Eddie. “I need to make sure I get this right.”
“This isn’t a formal business meeting,” said Charlie. “Anything’s on the table.”
“I’m worried,” said Eddie, “that they’re going to force us into some facility or something. We’re doing pretty good out here. We’ve set up everyone’s responsibilities, and for the most part, we all do our share. We argue now and then, but we always figure it out.”
“What’s your point?” asked Dave. “Dude, I don’t think anyone’s considering pulling you out of here and locking you away anywhere. I haven’t heard anyone talking like that.”
“Not yet,” said Eddie. “Look. All our parents are dead. Some of them
we
had to kill. It was hard, and we’re helping each other th
r
ough it better than anyone who hasn’t been th
r
ough it can.”
“It’s true,” said Nikki. “I cried for days, and they were there for me.”
“Me, too,” said
Amy Wilson, the oldest girl in the group. “Jimmy saved me. My dad was about to . . . about to . . .
I ran outside, and then I ran into my neighbor, who was just like my dad. Jimmy –”
“I pulled her outta there,” said Jimmy. “I lived two doors down, and after seeing what was happening in my house, I knew exactly what I had to do.”
“He didn’t kill my dad,” she said. “But he did hit Mr. Ferguson pretty hard.”
Amy was probably seventeen, but Flex thought she might have been the least mature, and the most skittish of the kids.
She was shy to a fault, and a bit overweight. To their credit, these kids were not cruel to one another in any way. If Flex could choose a group of kids to start out a society, he’d take all of them.
Dave went to the window. The house was fully furnished, but everyone sat on the carpet in the middle of the living room floor, cross-legged. He pulled back the blind.
“Don’t worry about it, Dave,” said Eddie. “Louis and
Emma
are upstairs keeping watch out of the east and west windows, and Ian and Mason have the north and south sides. They’ll let us know if they come back.”
Hemp dug around in his pack. He pulled out a baggie and opened it, counting its contents. “Okay. I’ve got ten more wafers with me. How many of you are there?”
“Nine of us right now,” answered Jimmy.
Flex looked at Gem, then turned his face away. He knew why there were nine.
There had been ten.
The kids hadn’t thought to throw out the medications that were left in the
medicine cabinets. Chris Miller had watched his father tear his mother apart, and he was beyond the psychological healing his peers had to offer.
Jimmy and Nikki had shared the story with Flex and Gem, and they with everyone else.
Chris had been fifteen years old, struggling from the get
-
go. He stayed in his room, and nobody could make him join in. Whenever he made an appearance, his eyes were swollen, and he would eat just enough to satisfy the rest of his adopted family.
But he never saw them that way. At least that was Jimmy’s take on it. He always looked haunted. By the time Jimmy thought to check the house for drugs left behind by the family that used to live there, it was too late.
Chris had found them and one night less than a month ago, he had taken an entire bottle of Oxycodone.
He wasn’t taking any chances that he would live, and he was successful in ending his life.
The one where you breathe, that is. He did not stay down, however, and Jimmy’s first knowledge of his new existence was when he heard Nikki scream from the next room.
Chris, in his new, breathless, hungry state, barreled into her room and fell upon her in the moon-filtered darkness.
Her scream was immediate, and Jimmy bolted to his feet, grabbed the baseball bat that was always at his bedside, and nearly kicked open Nikki’s door. He didn’t have to be told what to do.
He slammed the bat into Chris’s head with all he had, and the boy-turned-zombie toppled
off of Nikki and to the floor.
Jimmy stood over his former housemate and had pounded and pounded
him until a sobbing Nikki grabbed his arms
, making him stop.
It was over.
Upon hearing about it, Hemp was extremely concerned about Chris’ reanimation. Prior to that, Hemp had been fairly certain that if you had the immunity while living, you would not reanimate upon your death.
That did not turn out to be true.
For two days, Hemp had been non-communicative and immersed in the problem, trying to find a solution.
Hemp finally reached the preliminary conclusion that
If
someone
had an immunity to urushiol and
died prior to the gas coming from the earth,
they
never breathed it into
their
lungs
, and therefore would not reanimate
.
But if
they
spent time alive, inhaling it, essentially saturating
their
brain stem and pituitary gland
with
it,
when
they
died,
they
would turn just as sure as if
they
never had the immunity.
Flex hoped there
would be plenty of opportunity to determine if that was true. Others would die
, after all
, and not all from zombie or rat attack.