He pointed toward the nearest skylight. “Let’s go look down through there. Stay back.”
“Really? You think they’ll see us? And do what?”
“Old habits, Lisa. Can’t hurt to be a little stealth, right?”
She shrugged, and they walked softly to the skylight.
“Shit,” said Dave. The skylight was obscured, either made opaque from years of sun or made that way to ease the intensity of sunlight through them.
“Let’s go to the next one. Maybe they’re not all the same.”
They moved silently to the next one, and it was the same as the other.
Dave hooked his fingers beneath the outer lip and lifted.
It came up easily.
“What the hell?” Dave lifted again, and it came up a full six inches. “This one’s not even attached.”
“Okay. So you want to take it off?”
The skylight was approximately 2’ x 4’. The bubble rose about 10” from the building, and it was a manageable weight.
“Let’s do it,” said Dave. “I’ll get this end, you grab the other. On the count of three, we’ll lift straight up and just set it over here.”
“Okay,” she said, leaning over, hooking her fingers beneath the lip.
“One, two and go.” They raised the plastic bubble up and over, laying it back down next to the opening.
As they returned to look down into the room, they lay on their stomachs, just their heads over the hole.
“Dark,” said Lisa.
“Our eyes will adjust,” whispered Dave. “I’m beginning to make something out.”
“Me too,” said Lisa. “What is that?”
“It looks like a lot of people?” said Dave, blinking his eyes, trying to make the adjustment go more quickly.
“What’s that light down there? The pink light?”
“Not sure,” said Dave. “This is definitely where the smell is coming from.
Wait. I think I’m starting to see … Jesus, Lisa. It’s zombies. Hundreds.”
“What the hell?” she said.
“Straight from hell, sis.”
As Dave’s eyes adjusted, the scene within the banquet hall below became more clear. Dave knew Lisa saw, too. He heard her suck her breath in like someone who had just realized the direness of a situation.
“The vapor,” said Lisa.
“Yep,” said Dave. “See anything else strange
?
”
“I do.
All the females,” she said, her voice
wavering, “are t
ogether.”
“The males are in the back of the room,” said Dave. “Hey, they’re moving.”
As they watched, the women, standing shoulder to shoulder and accounting for probably three-quarters of the room’s occupants,
split in almost the dead center of the room. The male of their species stood still, seeming not to have a role to play in whatever was taking place.
“What are they doing? Going hunting?” asked Dave.
The women who had been farther toward the front of the room turned and began walking toward the men.
The ones who had exited toward each side of the room made their way to the far rear of the auditorium and walked along the wall. From all sides, they closed in on the males.
“What the fuck?” asked Lisa.
Dave didn’t know what to think, so he said nothing. He watched, fascinated, as the female zombies surrounded the males, then pressed in on them, forcing them into a tighter and tighter pack.
And then it began. The vapor. All at once, and in quantities Dave had never seen. The color was deeper, and for a moment, Dave wondered if it was just because of the dimness of the room below and the moonlight being the only illumination.
No, he thought. The color was a darker crimson. Not even pink at all anymore.
As the females began pushing out clouds and clouds of this somehow changed chemical compound, they pushed their way into the group of males like attacking cells in a microscope.
Dave looked at Lisa, who tore her eyes away from the scene below to look back. “What the hell, Davey?”
“This is like an organized process,” said Dave. “There is definite planning and structure that led up to this.”
With an outer ring of women surrounding the men, and the four dozen or so who penetrated into the center of the group, the vapor had now become so thick you couldn’t see anything.
What stood out was the silence of the group below. No moans, no cries. Just the perhaps imagined sound of the vapor escaping their tear ducts and the shuffling of many feet on the hardwood floor.
Then the vapor reached the open skylight, and the smell hit Dave like a blow to the face.
Lisa began coughing uncontrollably, and Dave’s eyes burned as harshly as his nostrils. Like sulfur and
charred
flesh, it filled their nostrils as it billowed from the skylig
ht, directly into their faces.
They both rolled away from the skylight, and lay on their backs, coughing toward the heavens, trying to catch their breath.
“I feel fucking weird,” said Lisa. “Confused.”
“We got a good dose of that shit,” said Dave. “Crap. Didn’t knock us out, though.”
“WAT-6,” said Lisa. “Probably the only reason.”
“I’m as close as I want to get,” said Dave.
“Don’t think I’ll be walking among any one of ‘em tonight.”
“I want to go home, Davey. I’m scared to try the ladder.”
“I’ll help you,” said Dave. “You feel alright?”
“I don’t,” she said. “You?”
“A little lightheaded,” said Dave, and it was true. The taste of the vapor still remained bitter and sharp in the back of his throat.
“It’s dissipating,” said Dave, moving back over to the skylight.
Lisa coughed twice more, and rolled back onto her stomach to look inside the room again.
The room had almost cleared of vapor, and all the males were still on their feet.
Dave
felt a tickle, tried to suppress it, but a hacking cough escaped him in a rush.
Of the crowd of probably two hundred zombies below them, only the females stared upward, their dead faces lit by the eerie glow of their own eyes. The males stared straight ahead. It was a sight that put fear into Dave Gammon’s heart. Dead eyes, dilated and fixed – on them.
“What the –”
Dave
began, then stopped.
Dave realized whatever Hemp had uncovered, it had not been a moment too soon. The women of this stra
n
gely dead life form were somehow changing. And it appeared they were attempting to either control or change the males, too. With their vapor. How, or for what reason, Dave could not speculate. This was something for Hemp to figure out.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here
while the getting is still possible
,” said Dave. “I don’t like this at all.”
“Want to spray them with the urushiol?”
“No,” said Dave. “We’ll only get those under the skylight, and if they can do what they just did, I have no idea what else they’re capable of. And hell if I want to find out.”
Dave helped Lisa down the ladder by going down first and making sure her feet were solidly on the rungs before allowing her another step down. When they got to the bottom, Dave looked at his sister.
“Lisa,” he said, a chill slicing down his backbone.
“What?”
“Your … your eyes,” he said.
She looked up at him, his beautiful sister, her dark, red hair mussed. “What, Davey?”
“They’re glowing.”
“What do you mean, glowing? Glowing how? Are you talking figuratively?”
Dave’s heart began to pound in his chest, so loud it drowned out his own voice. He shook his head, put his arm around her, and practically pushed her alongside him, back toward the house.
“No, sis. Your eyes are glowing crimson. We need Hemp. Now.”
Chapter Eight
When the door burst open, Hemp sat bolt upright and dropped his hand on the 9mm beside their bed.
His other hand hit the button on the battery-powered camping light.
He wasn’t surprised to see Charlie sitting up, her breasts exposed, holding her crossbow squarely on Dave Gammon.
“Sorry, guys. Really
, you can stow the weapons.
But Hemp, I need you now.”
Charlie seemed to suddenly realize she was on display, and
set the crossbow aside, simultaneously pulling
up the sheet.
Hemp lowered his Glock, too.
The
concerned
look on Dave’s face made
his wife’s prolonged exposure seem unimportant.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s Lisa. We went on a walk, and ran into a warehouse full of fucking females.”
“
Jesus, i
s she okay?” asked Charlie.
“Are
you
okay?”
“I don’t know.
Shit, Hemp.
Her eyes. They’re … red
, like the zombies, but not pink.
”
“We’ll see you down there
in a minute
,” said Hemp.
“Okay.”
Dave
closed the door
, and Hemp and Charlie
swung their legs over the sides of the bed and dressed in seconds flat. Charlie threw on an oversized night shirt and Hemp a pair of pajama bottoms and a v-neck tee.
They hurried downstairs. Lisa was sitting on the sofa, fidgeting. She kept intertwining her fingers and separating them. She looked up at them when they came into the room.
Hemp was fixated on her eyes, which did, indeed, have the zombie eye glow, only as Dave had said, far more crimson than pink. Almost blood red.
“Okay, tell me everything and don’t leave anything out,” said Hemp.
Dave told the story, and Lisa jumped in when she apparently thought he was short on accuracy.
“Did they come after you?”
“No,” said Dave. “We were on the roof, and they were inside. We never got physically near them.”
“But the vapor got both of you.”
“Did you pass out?” asked Charlie. “Or feel anything? Faint?”
Lisa shook her head. “I choked like hell,” she said. “And I was lightheaded. We were both on WAT-6. That’s probably why.”
Hemp’s mind was churning like a Mixmaster. He had so many questions forming in
his
brain at once, he did not know where to begin.
“Hold on,” he said.
Hemp made a beeline to the kitchen, pulled a small voice recorder from the drawer, and switched it on. He hit the record button.
“I have to remember this,” said Hemp. “If I forget a single thing later, it’ll no doubt be important. Okay, you said the females blended in with the males, whereas before they were somewhat segregated.”
“Yeah,” said Dave. “The women were all in front and the men were packed in the back.”
“I need a sample of this new vapor,” said Hemp. “The red variety. I’ve got a feeling its properties are vastly different than the pink vapor.”
“Why?” asked Charlie.
“Because they’re changing, and this offensive mechanism is evolving, too. I don’t know how. But before very recently, we’ve not seen any change in the eye vapor. It was pink. Males and females, no difference. The chemical makeup is obviously different.”
“Do you feel okay now Lisa?” asked Charlie. “Sick or nauseous?”
“I’m a little shaky,” she said, tucking her hair behind her right ear. “But other than that, I feel normal now. Are my eyes still red?”
“Hells yes,” said Charlie. “Like fucking glow sticks at a Dead concert.”
Lisa smiled. “Charlie, this is no time to make me laugh.”
“I agree,” said Dave. “Hemp, what can you do? Can you do a blood test or something?”
“Tomorrow,” said Hemp. “We need
light
. Fuel of all kinds is in shorter and shorter supply, and
besides, nothing is brighter than daylight.”
“Lisa, I want you to stay in Dave’s room with him tonight, okay?” said Hemp. “I don’t think it’s a good idea that you’re alone, in case you have some sort of reaction.”
“Absolutely. I insist anyway,” said Dave. “And I’m tired. But Hemp, what about me?”
“How do you feel?”
“Okay, but I was doused, too. What if I’ve been affected in some other way?”
Hemp thought about it for a moment. The females had been administering the vapor to the males. That much was clear. It was no longer being used to subdue their prey; now it was being used for something else.
Some sort of conversion.