“Shit, I almost forgot about that,” said Flex. “Remind me to get one of those. Fuckin’ Bond gun.”
Dave twitched his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx, his hand miming an invisible cigar. “Exactly.”
Hemp passed each man a cellophane package with foam earplugs. “
Use them anyway, because we’re not all suppressed. S
tuff them in deep. Then fire away, but don’t miss. A ricochet could be deadly.”
“Fuck it,” said Flex. “Let’s get what we need and we can
put ‘em down on the way out.”
He holstered
his pistol.
The zombie moved forward, toward the bars. Flex stepped away, a bit startled. He’d only been four feet from
the cage
, but hadn’t noticed her
move away in the first place
.
“What was that?” asked Hemp.
“She freaked me out a bit, that’s all,” said Flex.
“No. Pull your gun out again.”
“Huh?”
“I got it.” Hemp walked and stood in front of the female zombie who was once a blond, and whose brown eyes still held their color. He pulled out his sidearm.
Her head dropped and she staggered back, away from the bars.
“This is a sign of awareness,” said Hemp.
“What the hell are you talking about?” asked Dave.
Hemp’s voice and annunciation grew sharp and staccato when he got excited. Flex could hear it now.
“Flex, remember back at your house when I hooked up the EEG to Jamie? The experiment where we watched the brain activity?
They recognized things that could harm them.”
“They didn’t actually react to it though,” said Flex. “Right? I mean, the EEG showed
some intensified brain activity
, but you couldn’t tell by looking.”
“Who could tell then?” asked Hemp. “We had to strap them down, subdue them. There was no way to know how they would react physically. I just realized, guys, that these are the first experiences we’re having with them without
either containment or restraints
.”
“Like seeing them in their natural habitat, huh?” said
Dave
, as he
walked to the next cell. An older zombie occupied that one, and when she saw
his
movement, she came forward, toward Dave. Flex followed and watched.
Dave withdrew his PPK and held it out.
Nothing. The creature stared at him, no gnashing, no fear.
“What the fuck?” asked Dave.
“This actually explains a lot,” said Hemp.
“Well, I sure as fuck wish you’d explain it to me,” said Flex.
Hemp smiled. It was
n’t
exactly rare, because Hemp was a
very
jovial
man
at times, but in serious
or tense
situations, a Hemp smile was infectious
and welcomed
.
“Dude,
tell
us,” said Dave.
“The flanking they were doing at the church in
Alabama
. Where we found you, Dave.”
“Flanking?”
“Yes. They have awareness. I knew it, but hadn’t had any way to really research it without being in imminent danger. Go to the next cell. Try it again.”
Flex walked briskly to the next cell and looked inside. “Empty,” he said.
“No, it’s not,” said Hemp. “Look.
”
He pointed to the corner, shining his light there.
“She doesn’t look as bad as the others,” said Dave.
“Her arms don’t look as trashed. Almost like
live
skin.”
She
sat
on the floor, her back resting against the wall.
“It just dawned on me,” said Hemp. “God, I’m daft!”
“Hey, hey. Don’t beat yourself up. Beat me up or something, because again, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Flex.
“Me neither,” said Dave. “And I consider myself pretty sharp.”
“She’s sitting down. Flex, Dave. Have you ever seen one resting?”
“No,” said Dave. “Unless they’re feeding, they walk. Always walking.”
“Exactly,” said Hemp. “Always.”
Flex looked at her closely. She was hard to see, but slow
ly her head raised and her face turned toward them.
With their three lights shining in her face, there is no way she saw anything but the beams. Silently, she placed her hands flat on the floor and pushed up against the wall, sliding up it and onto her feet. As she walked toward the three men, they all took an involuntary step backward.
Her hair was dark brown,
long and tangled
.
Mostly
there. She walked in typical zombie fashion, with little control of her extremities as she moved. She walked up to the bars, hit them, and stopped moving. Her nose, which was still intact, as was the rest of her face, poked through the bars.
Her eyes were
vivid blue, tinged with an almost bright red
.
“I want this one.”
Dave pulled his gun and held it out., pointing it at her.
Before he even got the gun in position, she retreated.
“Fuck!” said Flex. “Is she . . . alive?”
“No,” said Hemp. “Not even a littl
e. Okay,
a wee bit
, maybe. Like all of them.”
“
So what’s with this
weird
awareness?” Dave asked.
“Her brain is different than the masses.
Sort of l
ike the one over there,” he said, indicating the first cell. “but more advanced. Or less destroyed. I’m not sure which yet.”
“Okay, let’s get one and get out.
I could be here all day and not be able to ignore this smell,” said Flex.
“
You want her, right?”
“I hope she
just allows us to lead her,
” said Dave. “
But I think s
he seems too smart for that.”
He turned to Hemp. “Is that the right word? Smart?”
“
Maybe,” said Hemp. “
Which is why taking the handcuffs was a good idea
.
I’m going to open the cell. Keep your weapons holstered. If she doesn’t come out, we’ll have to go in after her.”
“This shit is like living a comic book. A really dark, excellent comic book,” said Dave.
“So you’re wondering why you’re not having more fun?” asked Flex.
“Dude, you are a mind reader.”
“If you two are done, I’m opening the door now,” said Hemp. “Be ready.”
*****
Gem drove as fast as she could back to town,
pressing the talk button on
the radio the entire time, trying to reach anybody. The horizon
surrounding their makeshift shoo
t
ing range
had been lined with zombies for as far as the eye could see
, and it had really gotten into her head
.
“Yeah, come in,
Gem
. We read.”
“Whit?”
“Yeah,
what’s going on
,
Gem
?”
“
We
got
surprised
,” said
Gem
. “Whit, zombies are surrounding
Concord
I think.”
“Ratz or people?”
“They were too far away to say, but they’re tending to come together, so I’d just guess both.”
“Jesus,” said Whit.
There was silence for some time.
“Whit?” asked Gem. “What the hell are we gonna do?”
“Hold on, Gem. I’m talking to Kev.”
“I’m heading there now,” said Gem. “Serena’s ahead of me on her bike and I’m with Charlie, Lisa and the girls. You need to figure out something fast. There were a lot of them, Whit. A shitload.”
He came back on. “Kev said we need to have a quick gun handout and every able-bodied man and woman in town has to defend.”
“I don’t know if they’re on the other borders,” said Gem. “They came from the woods behind the range.”
“That’s open forest,” said Whit. “They would’ve had to walk for miles and miles to come through that way.”
“Well, Whit,” said Gem. “We know one thing if we know anything. These fucks have nothing but time.”
“We’ll see you here.” Whit clicked off.
Gem turned to Charlie, who’d taken shotgun. “Fucknuts, Charlie.”
“I kinda just wanted to have the baby and see what hanging with Hemp was like for a while,” said Charlie.
“Did Doc Scofield give you a due date?”
Charlie shook her head. “Sometime in
August
is the best he can do. You’re due in July, right?”
“Yep. So I guess we don’t get to settle like we planned,” said Gem. “Not in the cards, babe.”
“
That s
ucks
, but on the bright side, you’re not showing at all
.
Is the doc concerned about that?
”
Gem shook her head. “Not at all. He says with the first kid that’s normal.”
Charlie looked down at her own stomach. “Nothing here yet, either.”
“Give it time, babe. I have a feeling this is a time we’ll look back on fondly, and not too long from now.”
“No doubt,” said Charlie. “I can’t wait, actually.”
Gem’s mind turned back to the horde emerging from the woods at the shooting range.
“
Charlie
,
were there as many of those bastards as I thought
?
It seemed like f
ucking hundreds.”
“You
should have let
me
shoot at them
,” said Trina. “I wouldn’t be scared this time.”
“Sure,”
taunted
Taylor
.
“I know, Trini, but there were too many
,” said Charlie.
“
We’re gonna need backup. The whole town.”
“Me, too?”
“Maybe
,” said Gem. “But at first, no. Not you.”
“Fucknuts!” said Trina.
“Relax, Trina” said Charlie. “You’ve got to take care of Bunsen and Slider. And let them take care of you. When it’s your turn to help, you and
Tay
can have your guns, but your job is to protect our house. Make sure if someone’s outside making noise that they belong there.”
“Yeah,” said Gem, swinging the car into the
drive
of the state house. “We’ll have a password, and if you ask them and they don’t know it, or they can’t
make sounds that sound like words,
you can shoot.”
“But,” Charlie said, “We’ll tell you when you’re on duty. You only get the guns then.”
Trina sighed. “Fine.”
Whit and Kev ran out to meet them. When they opened the door, the flood of information came pouring out.
“We’ve got word the roadblock on
Loudon Road
is overrun. They shot as
many
as they
could, then just jumped back in their
vehicles and headed back to town.”
“What’s happening, Kev? Jesus, why now?”
Kev shook his head. “No clue. I thought we had a pretty good
grip on things
here.
Those things aren’t
going to take very long to get here. Not long at all.”
“Crop dusters,” said Charlie. “Don’t you have them filled with Urushiol?”
“Out of fuel. They’re all bone dry. We didn’t think we’d need them at this point. We thought we had
a handle on them.
”
“Some handle we really had,” said Serena, who had gone in for a bottle of water before coming back outside. She took a big drink and passed it to Gem, who drank deeply from
it
and handed it off to Charlie.
“We need urushiol, but we can’t let them get that close,” said Gem. “Way too many for that. We’d be overrun, period. Have you heard from Flex?”
Whit shook his head. “No. We think
Hemp said something about going
out to the women’s prison
to get a specimen
. If they’re on the way back they should be in range before
too
long. It’s not that far away
, and they’re on WAT-6, so they should be okay
.”