Hemp ran over. “What, Vikki? Is it still alive?”
“No,” she said. “
He’s
… he’s
not.
Oh, my God, Hemp
, look at him.”
Hemp knelt down and looked at the young man, from whose abdomen a twisted piece of metal jutted. From this and the several contusions on the boy’s face, Hemp knew he had already been dead by the time Vikki Solms shot him.
Hemp looked into Vikki’s horrified face. “That’s Jimmy Dickson,” said Hemp. “The boy Flex and the others have been searching for.”
*****
“Hemp, you there?
” The voice was muffled.
Doc Scofield walked over to Kevin Reeves, who lay contained within the
hyperbaric
chamber.
“Kev, you’re awake. How do you feel?”
“Good. Really good. Where’s Hemp?”
“Went out to find some zombies,” said Scofield. “It’s just you, me and the ladies.”
“Pull back the curtain, would you?”
asked Reeves.
Scofield slid the curtain along the rod, retracting it.
Kimberly
waved,
stood and walked
up to
the chamber. “Kev, you do look good.
How do you feel
?”
“I actually feel great,” he said. “No headache, very little pain at the injury site. This is amazing.”
“God, that’s good news. Vik and Hemp went out. Rebecca and I are on the new wafers. I suppose the professor won’t have a name for them until he figures out exactly what they do.”
“How long has
h
e been gone?”
“About thirty-five minutes,” said Scofield. “He came back for a net, so since then.”
“A net?”
“Be Prepared,” said Scofield. “Boy Scouts motto.”
“I remember it well
, and Hemp
generally is
,” said Reeves.
“
I’d like to get out of this thing, but I suppose I’ll wait until he gets back.”
Scofield laughed. “You’re gonna have to. Above my pay grade.”
“Gotcha,” said Reeves, laying his head back down.
“I don’t feel anything,” said Rebecca. “Just the same.”
“I think that’s a good thing,” said Kimberly. “Same here.”
*****
Hemp and
Vikki
each took an arm and dragged Jimmy from the middle of the street. Hemp examined him with an LED light.
“It’s hard to say how long ago he turned, but he was definitely one of them.” He looked at Vikki, whose face was still horrified. “It would’ve had to have been done, Vikki. We know it’s irreversible.”
“I would never have wanted to be the one to kill Jimmy. He was a good kid.”
Hemp put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Vikki, this wasn’t that kid. This is a creature
that
would have attacked you. No recognition. No conscience. Any of your sisters, too. I’m worried about Flex and his team, though. If Jimmy’s here, where the hell have they gone?”
“Let’s get what we need and get back,” said Vikki.
“Okay.”
Hemp walked more slowly, allowing Vikki the time she needed to recover. He needed her shooting skills to be on point.
“Over here, Vikki.” He fished in his pocket and withdrew a set of keys. They approached a black paneled van that was parked at the curb among the vehicles used as a barricade.
“What’s this?” asked Vikki. “We driving somewhere?”
“No,” said Hemp. “Only a few of us know about this.
We have
heavier duty vehicles parked around town in strategic locations. Locked tight. All the officials know to keep folks away from them and not to draw attention to them.”
“Okay, you got me. What are they?”
“You’ll see,” said Hemp, putting the key in the rear door keyhole. He turned it and flipped the handle, pulling open the door.
Inside were boxes of ammunition, signal flare guns, handheld flamethrowers,
and rifles
of all kinds.
“Wow,” said Vikki. “For The Big One?”
“Indeed,” said Hemp, moving some things around. “Ah, here they are.”
He lifted a device out and gave it to Vikki. “What is this?” she asked, turning it over.
“It’s a
Seac Sting
spear gun,” said Hemp. “Modified with a thirty-foot cord.
And it’s loaded, so be careful.”
Vikki turned
the spear tip
toward the ground and away from her feet.
“And … what are we going to do with these?”
“
We, my dear, are going to s
pear us a zombie,” he said.
“I thought we needed two
zombies
.”
“I changed my mind. After what you just went through, one will do. In fact, dep
ending on what happens with Kevin in the
Hyperbaric Chamber
, she may serve two purposes.”
“Let’
s get it over with,” said Vikki.
“
What’s the plan?”
“Let’s make sure we’ve got everything we need,” he said, leaning inside the van again. He slung the spear gun over his shoulder and Vikki did the same, but more carefully.
He slid the lid from a wood
en
box and withdrew two
full-faced
gas masks with
large, round filters.
“We going diving, or hunting?” asked Vikki.
“
We take n
o chances,” said Hemp. “Too much
is
unknown yet.”
“Okay,” said Vikki. “But i
f we only need one
zombie,
why do we have two spear guns?”
“Backup,” Hemp said.
He reached back into the van and pulled out a large, handheld spotlight. “Rechargeable. Two million candlepower.”
Hemp
reached in once more and pulled out an aluminum tube with a horseshoe shaped device on one end and a large, rubber foot on the other.
“I’m not asking,” said Vikki.
“We’ll need it, I’m fairly certain,” said Hemp. He
re-locked the van, and started jogging toward the State House basement steps, just across the adjacent lawn. “Keep up and gird your loins, lass” he said. “We’re almost there.”
“You can be so British sometimes,” she said, her breath coming in wheezes. “I shouldn’t have smoked all those years.”
“Actually,
that
axiom
is either Biblical or
Roman,
I’m not sure which
. And no, you shouldn’t have.”
*****
Chapter Sixteen
The group crouched low and ran through the increasing smoke, only stopping to shine the
headlamps
by hand
around blind corners.
“Keep your ears and eyes peeled,” said Flex. “
Most of them aren’t
the slickest
dicks in town
, but we also lost one of the smart ones, and there’s no telling what she’ll do.”
Behind the main reception area where the female had disappeared was a series of hallways. They were painted in a brown and white cinderblock, with the brown covering the lower half of the walls. The doors on the right led to the prisoner section of the visiting area, which meant the cell blocks were likely on the left side somewhere.
“Wait!” said Eddie, third in the line. “Look!”
Flex looked back and him and saw that he pointed to something on the floor. Flex went to it and bent over to retrieve it. It was a key ring charm. A heart, sparsely
bejeweled
with pink rhinestones.
Flex held it up. “You recognize this?” he asked.
“Yes!” said Eddie, a smile on his face for the first time that evening. “It’s Nikki’s. She gave it to Jimmy, but he didn’t want it on his keys, so she just kept it on her. Like a good luck charm. But it’s trashed.”
Flex held it up and looked at it. “Yeah, most of the fake stones are gone.” He squinted at it. “There’s blood on it.”
“Oh, no,” said Eddie.
“I’m afraid so,” said Flex. “Not much.
But look here,” he said, holding it out to Eddie. “Does this look like someone scraped these off on purpose?”
Eddie took the charm, which was bulbous and about two inches high. “Yeah, like with a fingernail. In a straight line.” He turned it over. “Here, too.”
Flex shone his headlamp down the corridor. Tiny, sparkling stones caught his attention every ten feet or so.
Flex smiled and turned toward the others. “Hot damn!” he said.
“Hot damn bread crumbs,” said West. “They’re leaving us bread crumbs.”
“Yes they are,” said Flex, moving at speed again. The others followed behind. They rounded the next corner, and almost tripped over a body.
Bell
shone his light on it. “Head shot.”
“And from a .22, from the looks of the hole,
”
said Flex. “Clean, small. This might have been Jimmy.”
“Look here,” said Eddie. “A foot print. Looks like someone nearly slipped in the blood.”
Flex looked down, and sure enough, a sneaker print had originated beside the zombie and slid toward the gap between the body and the wall. The print wasn’t facing the direction they’d come, but it wasn’t facing the direction they were headed, either.
West shone his light ahead. “There’s more crumbs,” he said, stepping around Flex. Flex followed, and Eddie and
Bell
brought up the rear.
They came upon a locked, steel door. There was a small window in the center of it with bars across it. West looked through.
“
Whoa
,” he said. “Not good.”
Flex shook his head and sighed. “How many.”
West counted in silence for so long that Flex grew impatient. “Larry?”
“I actually go by
Lawrence
.”
“Sorry,” said Flex. “That’s a first for me. Can I call you Larry anyway?”
“I’d prefer West. And there are twenty-two that I count. And some dead ones, too. Not eaten.”
“So more of Jimmy’s kills, I guess,” said Flex. “Everyone get spare magazines in an easy pocket, and let’s pop this door. Let me know when you’re ready.”
Again, Flex waited. Everybody was busily shifting ammo around, checking magazines, refilling. Then everyone fell still, looking at Flex.
Nobody spoke.
“You’re not gonna tell me you’re ready, are you?” asked Flex.
“I’m never ready for this shit,” said
Bell
. “I’d just as soon stand here and stare at you than go through that door.”
“Okay, then alternate plan,” said Flex. “It just came to me. Shooting practice.”
“What do you mean?” asked Eddie.
“Eddie, that door looks to be a pull. You pull it open and hang behind it, ‘cause you’re not on WAT-6. Swap with Waylon and fire his pistol through the bars as you see a shot. Should be perfect, ‘cause it’s head height.”
“And you guys?”
“Well, seeing as how we’re on the wafers, and also seeing as how these are men, as far as I can tell, we’ll be just like them. Undetectable. And that being the case, we’ll just shoot the fuckers as they come through the door. That’s my plan.”
“And me?”
“You’re kinda the bait,” said Flex. “They’re gonna want to eat you, but don’t worry. We won’t let them get to you.”
“Then can’t I stand behind you guys?” asked Eddie.
Flex shook his head. “And what if Red Eyes came creeping up from behind us?” he asked. “You’d be the first one she got to. This is a better plan, believe me.”
“Jeez,” said Eddie. “Let’s just get this over with and find them already.”
“I think that’s what I’ve been sayin’,” said Flex. “Waylon? Keys?”
Bell
stepped between West and Flex and slid the key into the lock. It did not turn, so he tried another. It turned slightly, but he did not fully disengage the lock tumblers.
“Say when,” he said.
In a low voice, Eddie,
West and Flex all said it together:
“When.”
*****
“Okay,” said Hemp
, leaning the aluminum tube against the wall beside the door
. “Do you remember my instructions?”