“What’ll it do?”
“I don’t know. I’m hoping it preserves your humanity.”
“Interesting way to put it.”
Scofield slid the tray from the unit and patted it. “Climb on up.”
Hemp helped Reeves into the horizontal platform, and before closing him inside, adjusted the flow of oxygen.
He and Scofield slid Reeves inside and secured the latches.
“You didn’t have to pee, did
you Kev
?” asked Scofield, smiling.
“I’m good,” said Reeves, looking at them through the clear plastic. “How long I gotta stay in here?”
“I may leave you to tell us that,” said Hemp. “Let us know if you feel differently. You
’ll
feel lightheaded at first, but that should go away. Anything else, I want to know about.”
“Sure thing, professor.”
Hemp turned and looked at
Blue Eyes
.
She looked back, less than amused.
“Your turn, sweetheart,” he said.
“Pretty familiar,” said Scofield. “She ain’t too much of a pretty thing.”
“She wasn’t bad before I cut off her head,” said Hemp. “Well preserved, act
ually. Particularly her brain and her
hair. It’s what caught our attention at the prison. And her actions. Sitting, awareness. Things like that.”
“You know, I may be able to use what she’s in to create my mini
Hyperbaric Chamber
,” said Hemp.
He went to the drawer and pulled out his
D
remel tool, then opened a second drawer and removed a roll of tubing.
Matching the tubing to a diamond-tipped, ¼” bit, he returned to the table where
Blue Eyes
waited, watching.
“I think she’s in love,” said Scofield.
“We’re not on WAT-6,” he said. “We’re food and she’s hungry.”
“She’s got no belly,” said Scofield.
“Not sure she knows that,” said Hemp. “Come hold the back side of this dome, please?”
Doc Scofield saw where Hemp intended to drill, and put his hands on the backside of the glass cake dome.
Slowly, Hemp powered up the rechargeable Dremel tool, pressing the bit against the glass side approximately an inch from the base.
He then switched the bit to a 1/11
th
inch size, and drilled a small hole in the very top of the dome.
“That should do it,” he said. He put down the Dremel, blew in the holes, sending the fine glass dust into
Blue Eyes
’ face.
If she was irritated by it, she gave no indication. Hemp uncoiled the tubing and stuffed one end into the hole in the side of the dome. It fit snug.
“Perfect,” he said. “We’ll pump oxygen into the dome,
and create a positive pressure. That way we know nothing else can seep in and screw up my clean, oxygen environment.”
“Do you just lay awake at night coming up with this shit?”
“No, Doctor,” said Hemp. “Believe it or not, I make a lot of it up as I go along.”
“Why you giving her oxygen, anyway?”
“Good question,” said Hemp. “Very good. Yes, since they don’t breathe, it seems pointless,
doesn’t it
? Well, the reason I’m doing it this way is that it’s more reliable than a vacuum. If a vacuum gives way, it draws the very air into the environment that I’m attempting to eliminate.
”
“Gotcha,” said Scofield.”
“
The positive pressure
only has to flow very, very slowly
and forces everything else
in the container out. I don’t waste a lot of it, and it does the job.”
Hemp connected the other end of the tubing to an 1.6 cubic foot medical oxygen tank and cracked the valve. He walked back to the dome and held his hand over the small hole in the top until he felt the cool air blowing out.
“There,” he said, rolling a stool over to the head. He sat and stared at her eyes.
She stared back.
“Think I’ll go get some stew,” said Scofield. “Let me know if you need me, would ya?”
“Absolutely,” said Hemp, but his
focus did not leave
Blue Eyes
.
Scofield left, and Hemp watched her watch him.
*****
Waylon Bell’s head hung down
, which would further facilitate the trick they were playing on Eddie and
Ian
. Flex
pretended to slump
over the wheel, and West stood just outside the truck with a pistol in one hand and an urushiol bottle hanging off his belt in case of Ratz.
Flex had found a broken cinderblock that when placed on its side served as a ramp. He placed it near the telephone pole, and West drove one wheel of the truck onto it,
tilting
the vehicle
at
an unusual angle. From a few feet away, it did appear to have crashed into the pole.
It had been West’s idea. If the boys drove up and everything looked peachy, they might take off. Flex didn’t want to get involved in a car chase in Zombieland with an inexperienced driver in his possessive wife’s car.
Flex felt sorry for West. The poor guy had
sprayed five
Ratz
since they finished staging the accident.
But it would be over soon, because headlights appeared from the west.
Seconds later, Gem’s car
came into view
, and Flex lowered his head to the steering wheel, his arms down by his side.
The car pulled up and West staggered to them as Louis rolled down the driver’s side window.
“Jesus, are you okay?”
“I’m worried about Flex!” he said, excitedly. “I can’t wake him or
Waylon
up. We were coming to try to find you guys.”
“Jesus,
Ian
!” said Edd
ie, j
umping out of the car.
“Help us,” said West, holding his head as though injured. “Help us with Flex and
Waylon
!”
Ian
, who to his credit was wearing his seat belt, unclipped it and got out of the car. Flex watched through an elbow with one eye, trying to suppress a smile.
Ian
came to his open window and put a hand on his shoulder.
Flex snapped up and grabbed both of
Ian
’
s
arms, pu
l
ling him hard against the door of the truck.
“Buddy, when we tell you to do something, you’d better fuckin’ well do it,” he said. “I don’t take bullshit from anybody very well at my age.”
“I … we …”
“Don’t give me any crap,
dick
.”
“It’s
Ian
, Flex.”
“It’s fuckin’
dick
, dickhead, fuckwad or
whatever come
s
outt
a my goddamned mouth right now, you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
“Flex, are you alright?”
“We didn’t get into an accident, Eddie,” said West. “I lied to you to get you here.”
Eddie looked embarrassed, but didn’t say anything.
“You really should wake
Waylon
now,” said West.
“Nah,” said Flex. “Then I’d have to explain a bunch of crap, and I don’t have time. Now tell me, fuckwad, why you were headin’ the way you were headin’.”
“I really don’t like that name, Flex. I’m sorry.”
“Answer the question,
Ian
.”
Ian
hesitated, and Flex squeezed his arm hard. “Now. We’re vulnerable out here, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“They weren’t following the zombies,” he said. “Jimmy and Nikki, I mean. They were going to get guns. You guys wouldn’t give us anything but .22s and we wanted bigger weapons.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Flex. “I’m about the biggest pushover on God’s green earth when it comes to guns. You didn’t think you could talk us into giving you more firepower?”
“I don’t know you that well, sir. Would you let me go?”
Flex hadn’t realized he was still pulling
Ian
to the door. He released his arms and the boy stepped back, pulling down his jacket sleeves.
“Where were they going to get guns?”
Ian
looked over at Eddie.
“Just tell him,
Ian
” Eddie pleaded. “Man, they could be in trouble.”
“I don’t mean to be a party pooper,” said West, “but they could be dead.”
“Or dead and no longer dead,” said Flex. “The sooner we find out, the better. Where. Now.”
“At the prison.”
Flex cringed and pounded the steering wheel. “Are you shittin’ me? We told everyone to steer clear of there from day fucking one.”
“You said don’t go near the cemetery,” he said.
“Among other things,” said Flex. “Listen to an entire sentence once in a while.”
As the words left his mouth, Fl
ex almost laughed out loud. He didn’t listen to any
adults
except his
Mom and
Dad when he was a kid.
With everyone else, it was blah, blah, blah.
“Have you heard from them?” asked Flex.
“No. Not since … well, before Gem took us out to find them.”
Now Flex was pissed.
“Which begs the goddamned question, what was the point of that anyway
, g
iving
Gem and Charlie bad information?
It means the whole trip was dangerous and
what’s worse, it was pointless
.”
Eddie spoke up.
“We were going to tell her where we really needed to go when we got to the end of the street, but we never made it there. We really were. We wanted to make sure she committed first, then we were going to tell
her
where to go.
Before we knew it, she turned around and went down that street where all the zombies were.
”
“I’m going out on a limb here,” said West. “I’d say you’re very lucky you didn’t get them to drive you there. Two pregnant women being put in harm’s way like that. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
“Not feeling so proud right now,” said Ian.
“Me neither,” added Eddie.
Flex reached back and shook
Waylon
awake. He came to slowly, asked where he was,
and then remembered everything in another thirty seconds, which was typical.
“Hey, you found them,” he said. “How?”
“Long story,” said Flex. “But we’re going to the prison.”
“Now?” asked
Bell
. “At night? In the snow?”
“Just flurries right now,” said West. “If we’re going, we’d better go.”
*****
“My head feels better,” said Reeves, as Hemp stood beside the chamber.
“That could be a good sign,” said Hemp. “I want to leave you in there until tomorrow. They dressed your wounds in urushiol, which we have known to help in the past.”
“With Gem, right?” he asked.
“Yes, thank God. I’ve never known a Flex without his Gem, and a world like this one’s not the place to start.”
“Hemp,” said Scofield. “Look at the head.”
The red vapor, which had been minimal anyway because
Blue Eyes
had not eaten, was almost gone. Hemp walked to the dome and leaned very close to it. The mouth was perfectly fixed, as were the eyes. He checked his watch.
The creature had been in there just about an hour. He would leave it in its makeshift
hyperbaric
chamber – no matter what changes i
t
ultimately exhibited – for the twenty-four hours he intended to leave Reeves in his chamber. Hemp walked side-to-side in front of
Blue Eyes
.
Her gaze did not follow him. The head had been perfectly alive and very engaged with them prior to the addition of the oxygen-rich environment. Now the bodiless rotter seemed to have either lost all ability to move its eyes to watch, or had lost all desire.
Hemp would know which one soon enough. He had a hope for the outcome. He reached for the bottle full of the vapor the
infecteds
had been basking in earlier that day
at the auction building
.
Was it really just
a few hours ago
? Why did every minute pass like an hour, making it seem that an event that occurred
a little while earlier feel as though days
had
gone by?