“You just told them to me a second ago.”
“Please, Vikki. It’s important. Repeat them
, quietly
.”
“When we see the one you want and you give me the word –”
“Which is what?” asked Hemp.
“Now.”
“Yes. Sorry. Go on.”
“When you say now, I
shoot
my spear at her, center mass.”
“And where exactly is center mass
?
”
“Chest area, but stomach is okay, too.”
“Precisely, Vikki. Good. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. But I’m cold, and I want to do this. I don’t know if this is
just
adrenaline or if I’m
really
about to
pee
my pants
.
”
“It’s both,” said Hemp. “I feel exactly the same. I’m going to ease the door open, so put on your mask and I’ll put on mine. I’ll use hand signals for movement, so even though it will be muffled, the only word I’m going to say is
now
.”
“Okay.”
“Oh, one more thing.
I don’t know how aware they are, or what kind of state they’re in while they wait.”
“What are they waiting for?”
“I don’t know,” said Hemp. “Their time, perhaps. Their moment. Anyway, we need to be stealthy. When I pull the door open, we
crouch
low and slip in. Not a peep once we’re inside.
We’re going to initially do this without light.
”
“I’m like fifty years old,” said Vikki. “I don’t crouch like I used to.”
“Do your best.”
“Why
do we have to keep the lights off
?”
“Because
with only thirty feet of cord, we
need to get as close as possible. Once we get one of them, the others will come
after us, possibly quite fast.”
“So why the light if we can’t use it?”
Hemp sighed. He appreciated an inquisitive nature, but they were getting nowhere.
“Because it’s a tool, Vikki.
I don’t care what you are
,” he said, holding up the spotlight.
“I
f you’ve got eyes, this bastard will blind you.
Good enough?
”
“Yep.”
“Mask on.”
Vikki pulled her mask down. Hemp did, too.
He looked at her one last time and nodded.
She nodded back.
Hemp Chatsworth opened the door to Hell.
*****
Because of the filters through which they breathed, Hemp couldn’t smell the telltale stink of the creatures, therefore, could not tell whether the room was occupied.
But it
felt
occupied. They stood on the landing, which was four steps higher than the floor of the large room. It stretched off to the north and south, but he expected that several of the females would be in the immediate area, just near the entrance.
Hemp eased the door closed behind them
without
even a
soft
click.
It was dark, and even when their eyes adjusted, they would doubtlessly see only silhouettes, if anything. Hemp wondered if
the creatures
would be
prone
beneath the vapor as they had been inside the auction building.
That had not turned out well.
Kevin Reeves
still lay in recovery from that experience.
Hemp kept one hand on Vikki’s shoulder. As his pupils expanded,
utilizing
whatever meager light was available to illuminate the room and its occupants, Hemp
saw the mist
, swirling just above the floor.
His heart sank. Now he had to figure out a way to capture one of them without alerting the entire room, which could literally contain hundreds of the creatures.
Then he thought of a way. It was a shitty way, and there was no guarantee of success or getting an apt
subject. As Hemp analyzed his predicament, he wondered if he shouldn’t have anticipated it after the events at the auction house.
There was nothing to be done now. Vikki wasn’t a big woman, but she wasn’t small, either. Through sheer hard work over the months, he’d seen her musculature increase, and she looked like she would be able to hold her own for what Hemp had in mind. A lot depended on how the creature responded.
He tapped her on the arm and nodded toward the door. She nodded in response.
Hemp eased the door open again and they both slipped through, and he closed the door quietly behind them. They both removed their masks.
“New plan,” he said. “Like the old one, but a bit chancier.”
“Okay,” said Vikki. “What is it?”
“We’ve got one, maybe two shots at this. If we fail, we run.”
“I get it. Shoot.”
“A blind shot with the spear. I’ll calculate the position using average heights, and I’ll shoot first. If there is a problem, you need to be ready to shoot next. I do not want to leave here without our intended bounty.”
“You know I’ll do everything I can to make sure we don’t,” said Vikki.
Hemp told her the plan and they went back inside. The net and the aluminum tube remained outside beside the door, awaiting the call of necessity.
Once inside, Hemp crept to the bottom step, just above the basement floor. The crimson mist swirled and licked skyward, and Hemp knew that the creatures lay beneath, gathering their strength, honing their intelligence. They had lain very uniformly at the auction house, wasting not a bit of the available floor space. Feet against wall, head to feet, one after the other, arm touching arm.
A zombie carpet.
The question was troubling. They wou
ld obviously be going after one in the first row, closest to their exit. Once caught, they would have to get it up the stairs, through the door, and back to the lab. Hemp felt in his rear pocket for the handcuffs.
They were there. His mind whirled. In the first row, were they lying prone heads left or heads right? If firing blindly with the spear gun, he needed to know where center mass would be.
Choose one, Hemp. You have to make the call.
Head first. Screw it. He began measuring by sight, calculating where center mass would be on the zombie closest to the exit steps.
Hemp raised his spear gun. The rubber was stretched to its maximum, the trigger tight. He made sure the extended-length cord was untangled.
He closed one eye and aimed. There was no sense in delaying this.
Hemp fired the spear.
He did not hear the sound of the metal spear tip impact concrete, so he stood up and pulled with all his might.
An arm raised from the mist, just against the first step. Then a head and torso. This creature was female, and from what Hemp could tell, a blonde.
Hemp watched the remainder of the floor carefully. No noise had
come from the zombie
and
as
he pulled with all his
might,
the creature got to its feet
, unsteady but with a determined gaze, directly at the two.
As it stood, Hemp glanced quickly behind him. “Now!” he called.
Vikki, who had the spear gun raised and
aimed
as she moved forward,
took
two steps down. She had been poised on the landing at the top.
Hemp’s spear had pierced the side of the creature, but did not seem to have penetrated and come out the other side. This meant the large, retractable barb was wedged inside her body, creating an inescapable situation.
Vikki fired. Her spear flew true, and she hit the creature almost dead center to its solar plexus.
“Now pull!” shouted Hemp.
Vikki did. She backed up the steps quickly, hit the door and leaned back. Hemp moved up the stairs, gathering up the slack in the line. The creature was now being pulled forward, and did not seem to understand immediately what was being done to her.
Hemp tore off his mask as he reached the third step, and called, “Keep the tension on her, Vikki, and pull with everything you have!”
Vikki kept her mask on, but ran backward until all slack left her line, and she jerked the zombie forward hard, now up to the third step herself as Hemp jumped to the top of the landing and out the door. He leaned backward, pulling with all his might.
As he hit the grass, the zombie staggered through the door with two spears protruding from her midsection. She was pregnant. Very far along,
judging from the size of her stomach
.
Suddenly she began to turn. The 30’ of line on the spears very quickly became 25’, then 20’
. The cord wrapped around the rotter, losing length quickly, pulling her and Vikki closer and closer together.
Like an alligator death roll.
Hemp pulled his pistol from his drop holster and rushed the spinning creature. He fired the gun into her knee
cap
and she went down in a heap, now writhing on the ground
, gnashing and snarling, but unable to free herself or to draw Vikki and Hemp any closer.
“Keep the tension on her, Vikki!” he shouted, and dropped his gun on the grass, covered with a light dusting of snow.
Another of the walking dead
females, this one with bare feet in a tattered, white knee-length dress,
appeared in the open door. Hemp ran straight toward
her
, raised his weapon, and fired into
her
face.
Before it fell, h
e raised a boot and kicked
the thing
in the abdomen, knocking the
now dead and collapsing zombie
into the
others advancing
behind it. They toppled back into the mist below, and Hemp slammed the door,
and inserted
the door brace, kicking it firmly into place.
“
Click,” said Vikki. “Now I know what that is.”
Okay,”
Hemp said
to Vikki. “Let’s get her back to the lab. Good job.”
Vikki still did not remove her mask. Hemp felt she was smart to leave it on. She was still capable of producing the vapor, and if it were to affect Vikki in the same way it did Lisa, the risk was too great.
“We’ll have to back the van up and transport her that way,” said Hemp, reaching for the net.
“I think this will be easier than the cuffs.”
He spread out the net and threw it over the struggling rotter, whose eyes glowed a bright red, and if it were possible, looked angry and intent on more than just feeding.
Revenge?
The creature, from beneath the net, began to emit a vibration. Hemp stared at her. The vibration grew louder and louder. It began to sound like a thousand bee hives all around them, sinking into his very core, reverberating through him.
He looked at the building, and walked again to the door, placing his hand on it.
The door was vibrating. The hum was initiated by
the female, Hemp suspected
, a command of sorts. The creatures behind the door now all
droned and
pulse
d along with her, and
the resulting vibration
felt as though it had the ability to disintegrate the mortar between the old building’s brickwork.
The door began flexing under his hand. Bodies pressed against it.
He turned. “We have to go, and fast. We need to get her away from here.”
Together, they dragged the blonde creature, encased in the large fish net, away from the building, closer and closer to the van.
Hemp glanced back every few seconds, one eye on the door. While he prayed this was his last zombie hunt, he had a sneaking suspicion that it wasn’t.
*****
As the door came open, many, many things went through Flex Sheridan’s mind.
He
once again gave silent thanks that most of the inhabitants of the prison were men. The females that possessed the enhanced awareness, or whatever
it was that made them different,
were clearly dangerous and more unpredictable.
Very much like the differences between normal men and women. It seemed death could only change things so much.
As the door reached its halfway point, Flex realized he
would have liked a small hand axe or a baseball bat as a close-contact last defense, but his side arms and the Daewoo would have to do for now.
A quick look at the kid.
Eddie had taken
Bell
’s Glock 19, and given
the Rangemaster
over to
Bell
.
The boy
had been breaking
down into tears every few minutes, trying to
keep his grief in check
.
Losing a friend, no matter how long you’ve known them, is hard at any age; it’s particularly difficult when you’re a kid. Young people have little experience with death, particularly that of their peers.