Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle (30 page)

“Is anyone there?  We’re uninfected, and just trying to survive, like you,” I began.  “We can share information or help if you need it.”

Gem tried next.  “Look, dickweed, whoever you are.  If you’re a zombie, then get your ass out here where I can blow your head off.  If you’re not a zombie, we’re not go
ing to hurt you,
‘cause that’s not what we do.”

“More good cop, bad cop?”

Gem shrugged.

A voice came from behind the door we stood directly in front of.

“What if I hurt
you
?”

Gem and I stared at one another.  “A girl?” I whispered.

Gem nodded.  “I think so,” she whispered back.

“My name’s Gem and the guy I’m with is Flex. 
We’re staying at his place in Lula, about 11 miles from here.  Are you okay?”

Nothing.  Then, after about fifteen seconds:  “I’m alright.  I took a few of those fucks down, but I’m alright myself.”

“Do you need help?” I asked.

“What have you got?” the voice said.

“Guns, food, power, shelter, picking up more every day.”

“And a nice mobile lab, if that impresses you,” added Gem.

The doorknob turned.  Gem and I stepped back, our headlamps directed to the door
, our guns at ready, but angled toward the floor
.  It opened fully and an arrow poked through.

“Would you drop that damned thing?” I asked.

“I will if you’ll move your damned lights out of my eyes
and lower those guns some more
!”

We realized we were blinding the dirty blond
e girl, so we directed the bright beams of light
down at the floor by pivoting the mini lights on their hinges. 

She lowered her weapon.

“So you’re the crossbow girl,” I said.

“We saw some of your handiwork,” Gem said.  “Good aim.  How close were you when you took out the one down there?”  She pointed at the gurney 25 yards back.

“I was right about here,” she said.  “Name’s Charlene
Sanders
, but they call me Charlie.”

“Who calls you that?” Gem asked.

The girl shrugged.  Her AC/DC tee shirt was too small for her, but it looked clean.  She looked a bit harried, but
was clearly
tough as nails
and pretty hot, actually
.

“I guess that’s right,” she said.  “Nobody calls me that anymore.  Unless you do.”

“Flex Sheridan, Charlie.  Nice to meet you.”  I held out my hand and she held her crossbow in one hand and shook mine.

“I’m Gem.  Charlie, we’d like to help you if you’ll trust us.  We’ve got a very small group, but we’re working on a lot of things to stay safe.  You trying to get anywhere in particular?”

The girl shook her head.  She looked about
twenty-two
years old
, but this situation tended to make
peoples’ faces
appear older.  She might be as young as nineteen
.

Charlie seemed to relax. 
“Making plans isn’t working
so well for me
. 
I’m more about reacting right now than taking action.  So yeah.  I guess I could see if what you’re doing is something I’d like to be doing.”

“Where does your family live?” Gem asked.

“About ten miles from here,” Charlie said.  “Only child,
my d
ad left when I was fifteen.  My mom wasn’t one of the infecteds as you seem to be calling them, but she’s gone.  I don’t want to talk about it.”

“My sister is infected,”
I said. 
“I love her.  I can’t bring myself to just casually start calling them zombies
, but I can’t kid myself – they’re very zombie-like, so sometimes we slip.  But I prefer to call them
abnormals, infecteds, y
ou know.
”

“I get it,” Charlie said.  “You’re a good brother.”

“
I guess so. 
Okay,” I said.  “First things first.  We need an EEG machine for our buddy.”

“Who’s your buddy?” she asked.

“His name’s Hemp.  British guy,
good lookin’,
shitloads of brains.”

She laughed, and it was genuine and more relaxed than I would’ve expected.

“Well, he should keep them under wraps, then.  These things have a taste for them.”

“I think we’re going to get along just fine,” said Gem, smiling.  “Let’s get our shit done and get out of this
stink hole
.”

The three of us moved down the hallway and came to the door marked Neurosurgery.  We pushed the door open slowly and shone our lights down the vacant hallway.

“
Why
did you come here
, to the hospital
?” I asked
the newcomer
.

“Shine your light down here,” Charlie said, motioning to her thigh.

We both did, and it revealed a good tear in her pants that was soaked around the edges with blood.  She pulled the tear apart, and we saw a deep gash that was still pumping blood.

“I’m like a fucking scented candle to these freaks,” she said.  “Like walking chum.”

“Shit,” said Gem.  “We’ll need to bandage that up fast.  You feel okay?”

Charlie nodded.  “Yeah.  I was searching wrecked cars for supplies and when I left an old Volkswagen Thing, the damned tin body was split open and I caught an edge.”

I laughed.  “A Thing?  I had no idea any of them were still on the road.”

“I’m pretty sure it was the last one,” Charlie said.  “I’d never seen one before.  Even after I got cut I had to look on the back to see what the hell it was.”

“It was the fucking 70’s, that’s what it was.  Everybody was so stoned they’d buy anything,” Gem laughed.

It felt good to hear her laugh.  I looked forward to a lifetime of it.

“Okay, let’s find that machi
ne and get the hell out of here.”

*****

A few minutes later we reached a door that said neurology, and Charlie pushed through it with little hesitation.  This girl would either fit right in with us or set us on edge every five minutes, and I just didn’t know
which
yet. 

Her crossbow held steady in front of her, she waited until our
headlamps
lit the room and told her it was clear before lowering it and looking back at us.

“Okay.  What’s this thing gonna look like anyway?”

I unclipped the radio from my belt.  I wasn’t sure this deep into the building if Hemp would still copy us, but I pushed the button anyway.

“Hemp, come in,” I said.  “Charlie wants to know what the EEG machine’s going to look like.”

Brief static.  “Charlie?” came the answer.

Gem laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile.  “Yes, Charlie,” I said,
holding
the button down
.  “We’ve run into another uninfected, and she’s a tough one.  We’ll be bringing her back to my place.  So … can
you describe the machine?”

“There will be a computer and monitor, for sure,” he said.  “You might see something electronic with several small holes in it – likely plastic, but it’ll have the outline of a head on it.  Telling you where each electrode plugs in.”

I saw a computer on the other side of the room and went to it.  What Hemp described was lying in a tray beside it.

“Fuck, Hemp.  T
ell me the name
Cadwell Laboratories means something to you.”

Static.  “Yep.  They are a manufacturer of a damned good machine.  I think it’s called the Easy
II
.”

“Hold on,” I said, picking up the device.  “
Well, you don’t get the Easy II – this one’s called the Easy III, so I think you’ve got the newer model.  I
t’s got a Dell computer system, and I think a 17”
LCD
monitor.  Is that all right?”

Hemp came back on.  “Perfect, Flex.  Don’t forget the electrodes and cables – everything.  Is it on a cart?”

“It is,” I said.

“Bring the whole thing. 
You don’t know what’s important and what’s not, so we can avoid you choosing to leave something behind that I might need.  And grab a second monitor if you can find one.”

I said to Gem and Charlie, “This is it.  What we came for.  So let’s get it unplugged, wrapped up and ready to move.”

I returned my attention back to the walkie as Gem and Charlie started preparing the machine.  “Anything else I can grab?  Stuff we might need?”

“I
t
wouldn’t hurt to have pain meds and a
s
much alcohol, bandages, gauze, you know – basic first aid stuff
as you can carry
,” said Hemp.  “There’s some in the lab, but not enough for my taste.”

Hemp was right. 
I had a small supply at the house, but this was a brand new, scary-as-shit world. 
We had no idea of the ratio between infecteds and uninfecteds, so it was feasible that hospitals could get emptied out of medications and first aid supplies.  Drug stores abounded, but summer heat, fires, anything could
destroy them or a
t
the very least,
degrade the quality.  Hemp might know how to prolong the life of medications
– some sort of storage method
. 

Luckily we had no diabetics among us – no need for regular injections or life-sustaining medications. 
Problems like that might serve to destroy another chunk of
the remaining human population, but not from our group, anyway.

Gem and Charlie had
the machine
all ready, and we pushed for the door again.  As we made our way back by the zombie with the arrow through his brain, I looked at Charlie and said, “Damned nice work, kid.”

“Kid,” she muttered.  “Been hearing that shit all my life.  I’m twenty-
six
.”

Stopping off at two exam rooms along the way, we gathered the other supplies Hemp suggested.  We didn’t have any more encoun
ters with the living dead, and w
hile Gem and I were happy as shit about that, I think Charlie was a tad disappointed.

I think she loved that crossbow, and if the truth be known, I wanted to see her use it.  I didn’t know at that time how often I’d get to see that.

We still had to go back out into the world, and it was kind of eerie, the lack of the creatures
, or life of any kind.  The dogs had begun teaming up, and we’d seen a couple of small packs of them on the way to the hospital, but for the most part, the local animals were nocturnal, and well-hidden in daylight hours
.  Lula’s population at last census in 20
09 was just under 2,500.

Overall, I
really couldn’t have picked a
better location
to live in a situation like this; s
mall town means fewer people, and that means fewer of
them
. 

Fewer of
us
, too.

Gem seemed to voice my thoughts.  “I wonder if they’re holed up in another meat locker like the last group
we
found,” she said.  “With
a food
stock.”

“I still don’t know what that’s about or how they had the organizational skills to pu
t
it together,” I said.  “
They’re single-
minded, so far as I can tell. 
Cracking heads and eating food.
  I don’t think they can fire generators or work a thermostat.
”

“
Maybe not, but
like the scariest fucking squirrels on the planet, they seem to like to forage and stock up a bunch of fresh brains in case of hard times.”

The drive back to
the
house was uneventful.  We saw a group of around ten infecteds lumbering around about two blocks from the hospital, but they didn’t seem to have a particular direction in mind,
and were utterly disorganized.

I pulled the car over and we all stared in their direction for a while.  The light breeze was blowing in our faces, so we knew they could not catch wind of us.  I imagined them close up, their hopeless jaws and teeth chewing on food that was not yet there to sustain them.

“Is
that
how it starts?” I asked aloud.

Gem shook her head and looked at Charlie.

“Maybe,” said Charlie.  “They turn into these things, wander aimlessly for a while, and then they begin to learn from their kind.  Just like us, they learn those things they gotta do to survive.”

“Shit,” I said.  “The punk rocker crossbow girl is waxing philosophical.”