Dead Hunger VII_The Reign of Isis

by Eric A. Shelman

  The seven of them had breakfast. When they were done, everyone helped load the stuff in the cars and before they left, they found another five-gallon can of propane, along with six small bottles, not to mention three 1-gallon jugs of purified water.

  Hemp opened each one and added a drop of bleach, then closed and shook them. Backup.

  Once again, Gem drove the Crown Vic. Flex was glad to see it. She even smiled at him on occasion.

  *****

  “Wow,” said Gem, slowing the Ford as she worked her way up Main Street. “What happened here?”

  “Stop the car,” said Hemp.

  “We’re stopping,” said Charlie into the radio.

  “Why, what’s up?” asked Nelson from behind them.

  “You’ll see,” said Charlie.

  Everyone got out. They stood and turned in all directions. They had reached the town square. Bodies lay scattered everywhere, some piled on top of one another, others face down, alone.

  Hemp, hefting his H&K, walked toward one of them and knelt down. He touched the fabric of the clothing.

  “What are you checking for?” asked Flex, who had come up behind him.

  “Age,” he said. “This person did not turn at the onset,” said Hemp. “Maybe not at all.” Hemp reached into his pocket and withdrew a pair of blue nitrile gloves.

  “Always prepared, huh?” said Nelson, now standing beside Flex.

  “Old habits,” he said, as Charlie approached.

  “Good habits,” she said. “Keeps the muck off you.”

  Hemp reached down and lifted the arm of one of the corpses. He pinched the shriveled skin between his fingers and it did not crack or tear.

  “I’d say this happened a couple of weeks ago at the latest,” he said. “What’s more, I believe … well, wait a moment. Flex, may I use your knife?”

  Flex pulled his Bowie knife from its sheath and held it out. “Here you go, bud.”

  “The squeamish should turn away,” he said.

  Nelson took Hemp up on it, saying, “I just had breakfast, dude.”

  Hemp pulled the hair back on the man’s body and set the blade at the hairline. He then hammered on the handle with his fist, and the blade sank in to the hilt. Getting up on his knees, he pressed the blade down hard to the right, and the sound of cracking skull could be heard above the silence of the dead square.

  “I heard that,” said Nelson.

  “Sorry,” said Hemp. “Here’s another.” He removed the blade and reversed it, then forced it down through the left side of the skull.

  “Perfect,” he said, giving the knife back to Flex, who wiped it on the pant leg of another body and sheathed it.

  He then gripped in the cut and pulled the crown of the skull off, snapping it in back. His gloves on, he reached inside, grabbed something and gave it a twist-pull.

  Even Flex was having trouble keeping his breakfast down. He turned away and smiled at Gem, who did not get out of the Ford. She was facing him, but did not respond.

  She was in one of her far away moments. Flex understood. When he turned back, Hemp held up a hard chunk of something, about the size of a tangerine. He studied it.

  “It’s got a hole in it,” he said. “Whoever did this used permakill tactics.”

  Permakill is a name Punch came up with for the type of death an ordinary person would have to experience in order to remain dead. It was essentially a death that included brain trauma.

  Hemp looked at Flex and Nelson, who had turned around, but did not look at what he held in his hand. “This one was quite alive,” he said. “Not one of them.” He looked around the square. “I’ll check more, but I believe we’ve got our answer. This was a massacre.”

  Dave Gammon stood beside Punch, who had been walking around the square scavenging any weapons worth keeping. He held three handguns of various brands and calibers and had a rifle of some kind strapped over his shoulder.

  “Who would do this?” asked Dave. “None of them look eaten.”

  “Oh, yeah they do,” said Punch. “Found a whole mound of bodies over there that were just ripped apart and shredded. Basically little chunks of meat left on the bones.”

  “Were their skulls intact?” asked Hemp, looking up.

  “Some, yeah,” said Punch. “But all punctured, like somebody was making sure of something. I think we can all guess what.”

  “Show me,” said Hemp, standing.

  “I’ll hang with Gem,” said Charlie, sliding into the back seat of the Crown Vic. Flex saw her close the door and lean forward to squeeze Gem’s shoulders.

  Flex turned and something in his peripheral vision caught his eye. Movement, on the other side of the square.

  Hemp and Punch, with Dave and Nelson in tow, were halfway across the square, so Flex pulled out his suppressed Walther PPK and went to investigate.

  He saw Gem notice he didn’t follow the other guys. She did not get out of the car.

  As he neared the corner, a walking corpse so destroyed it was almost unrecognizable, staggered out from behind a brick storefront, tripping over a fly-ridden pile of human remains, and tumbling to the ground, landing hard atop another half-eaten dead body.

  Flex was about ten feet away when it appeared, but still he stopped dead in his tracks and took two steps back. He resumed forward movement, his pace slowed.

  As he drew to within five feet, he could see the thing’s hands were intact, but the skin was missing down to the second knuckle on all of its fingers. It struggled back to its bare feet, the rotted skin peeling off them in bloody flaps.

  When it stood, Flex’s mouth fell open. He stepped to the side. Its eyes were missing, likely eaten. It had no ears. The fleshy cheeks, where either a man’s or woman’s breasts would have once been, were mere ragged holes … but there was more.

  Several bite marks adorned the body where it was possible to see them, and small, yellow chunks of something were embedded into the raw meat where there was no skin. Flex could no longer tell whether this had been a man or a woman, for there was no remaining clothing, and if it once had a penis, it was also gone. The skin on the chest appeared to have been gnawed away as if by a pack of rats.

  Flex had never before seen something so lacking in mass or musculature that could still move, not even in the crazy world of the living dead. He approached the thing.

  The group had all taken WAT-5 just an hour before, so Flex didn’t worry about being attacked. And while he did want to show this thing to Hemp and the others, he didn’t want to touch it.

  When on WAT-5, the creatures could basically be “walked” where they wanted, but they did tend to be gooey, and if you didn’t want slime on your hands, a tool or gloves were necessary.

  Suddenly, he heard, “Flex!”

  He jumped at Nelson’s voice and laughed at himself for a second. He had been out of their line-of-sight behind a crashed school bus.

  “I’m fine! Coming to you now!”

  He looked on the ground and saw a tattered umbrella. He bent down and grabbed it, shoving the Walther back into his pants. He used the old parasol as a poker, pushing the creature toward his friends.

  “Whoa, buddy!” shouted Nel, as Flex nudged the walking corpse closer. When he was within five feet, he stopped and tossed the umbrella aside.

  Hemp turned away from his analysis of the dead bodies and said, “A live one,” his eyebrows raised.

  “If only the fucker could talk,” said Flex.

  “So what the hell do you think happened here?” asked Dave.

  Hemp stood directly in front of the zombie and put a hand on its shoulder. It did not seem to notice. It just teetered in front of him.

  He stared at it, long and hard. “Whoever did this missed this one,” he said, turning it. “No trauma to the skull – except the missing eyes, nose and ears, anyway.”

  “Why do it?” asked Dave. “Only half of them eaten, the others just killed. That doesn’t sound logical at all.”

  “Yeah, right, dudes,” s
aid Nelson. “With all this food around, why kill ‘em and leave ‘em? We know these things can paralyze you and save you for later.”

  “That is an excellent point, Nel,” said Hemp. “Back in the beginning, the creatures would simply stockpile those of us they caught. Preserve us for later consumption.”

  “Maybe it was a skill they stopped using as we edibles became more and more sparse,” said Dave. “Maybe they lost that particular tool.”

  Hemp shook his head. “No. That’s the thing about instincts, isn’t it? They are instinctive. Natural.”

  “Okay, then,” said Flex. “I’m stumped. Hey, what the hell are those yellow things?”

  “Where?” asked Hemp.

  “On that fuckin’ zombie. Right where the bite marks are.”

  Hemp leaned forward and it raised its arm, its ragged fingers nearly clawing Hemp’s cheek. He let go and jumped back.

  Flex said, “You really need to look at it some more?” He pulled out his Walther.

  “I’d like to, yes,” said Hemp.

  “Then hold his left wrist and pull his arm out.”

  Hemp did as he was told.

  Flex went behind him, holstered the PPK and pulled out his Bowie knife. “Raise it up more.”

  Hemp did. It looked like a scarecrow pointing east.

  Flex brought the heavy, sharp blade down and chopped its arm off at the shoulder. Hemp realized what he’d done and let go of its wrist.

  “Nice,” he said.

  “One more,” said Flex. “You’re the only guy with gloves on, so do the honors.”

  “I’m not worried –”

  “Well,” interrupted Flex, “I’m worried for you. Arm.”

  Hemp shook his head and held out the other arm. Flex raised his Bowie knife and with one clean, downward swipe, hacked it off.

  Hemp let that one drop to the pavered brick roadway, too.

  “Okay, let’s see what these are now.” He plucked one out and held it up.

  “A tooth,” said Nelson.

  “Exactly. Look at them all,” said Hemp, picking one broken tooth after the other out of the raw meat that comprised this particular rotter. “There were a number of them eating this fellow when he was alive.”

  “Glad you said that, professor,” said Nelson. “I was wondering what the hell ate zombies. Talk about a worrisome threat.”

  “This one was devoured by multiple abnormals, Nelson. There are enough bodies here that there should have been quite enough food for all of them to have their own uninfected to feast on, and yet … half were consumed and half were just killed.”

  “Zombies don’t fucking do head shots,” said Dave. “Living people killed these folks.”

  Hemp shook his head and looked at the others. “There are no errant shots,” said Hemp. “We can look again, but did you see any bullet holes in all those others over there? The intact bodies?”

  “Nope,” said Flex. “Just the brain trauma.”

  “Exactly,” said Hemp. “Which is good enough to kill an ordinary person, but also works to prevent it from coming back. As Punch said, these were all permakills.”

  “So,” said Punch. “Where does that leave us?”

  “It leaves me worried about Max and Isis,” said Hemp. “They would not have done anything like this, so the question now is did they come through here and did they see this?”

  “I’d hope if they did they’d come back for some backup,” said Dave.

  “Fuck that,” said Flex. “Maturity or not, those two have powers beyond what any of us have, and they have the feeling of immortality that all teenagers have. That’s a hell of a combo. I can guarantee they went on.”

  “No doubt seeing a clearer mission,” said Hemp. “Particularly if somehow, instinctively they knew what happened here.”

  “Let’s get the hell going then,” said Dave.

  “Wait just a moment,” said Hemp. “Before we get back to the car, I have to make sure you know what I’m thinking here.”

  “Buddy, let me give it a shot,” said Nelson.

  Hemp nodded. “My confidence is high.”

  “Good, because what happened here was not done by just living humans and it wasn’t done by just zombies, bros. This massacre was done by a combination of the two.”

  “Very good,” said Hemp.

  “No,” said Nelson. “Not good at all. Your next question, and mine too, is this: Were the humans and zombies here at the same time doing this shit, and if so, whoa, dudes.”

  “Wow,” said Punch. “Hemp?”

  “It nags,” said Hemp. “Someone was taking orders from someone, or for the first time in post-apocalyptic history, the abnormals and uninfecteds have teamed up.”

  “I reiterate, whoa, dudes,” said Nelson.

  He suddenly went into a tornado of Subdudo moves, taking the armless zombie down to the ground with his series of lightning fast hand and leg swipes. When it was down, he said, “Flex, knife please.”

  Flex went to grab his knife when a voice came from behind them. They all turned at once.

  “No,” said Gem, staring at the half-dead thing on the ground, her eyes moving to its severed arms, then back to the creature. “I got it.”

  She did not move closer; as she lowered the barrel of Queenie, her Uzi, toward the thing, everyone stepped back to avoid spatter.

  She held down the trigger on full auto mode, emptying the magazine and detaching its head from its pustuled body.

  Everyone watched until her gun fell silent. Flex stepped over the mess and put his arm around her, turning her back toward the truck.

  “You need to tell me what happened here,” she said.

  “We’ll do a bit of brainstorming in the car,” said Flex. “Right now it’s a mystery.”

  *****

  “Don’t leave town just yet,” said Hemp.

  Gem, who had insisted on driving again, said, “Why?”

  “As Flex has alluded to, we have a mystery here in Great Bend, Kansas,” said Hemp. “We have piles and piles of bodies that have clearly been consumed by infecteds, and were subjected to brain trauma afterward.”

  “Doesn’t sound like zombies at work,” said Charlie.

  “No,” said Hemp. “We’ve never seen them use a tool other than their hands and teeth, so it couldn’t have been them. Furthermore, we have many others who were administered a permadeath, but not eaten. Now why would that be?”

  “They were full?” suggested Charlie.

  “I’ve never seen that, but Hemp, is it possible?” asked Gem. “Plus, with their vapor and their ability to stockpile bodies, why wouldn’t they just do that? Save them for later.”

  Hemp said, “There was a point in this post-apocalyptic history of ours when the surviving human race was so scattered and spread out that stockpiling us just didn’t happen because the creatures couldn’t find us in significant enough numbers for that to be necessary.”

  “You mean they didn’t need to stockpile because they never had an overabundance of food … or us,” said Nelson, from the GTO behind them.

  They had developed a system whereby two sets of radios would be in use. In the lead car, Charlie would hold down the transmit button on one radio on channel 16, and in the trailing car, the matched radio on channel 16 would be open to listen. In turn, Nelson would hold down the transmit button on a radio tuned to channel 19, allowing the radio in the lead car to listen on their paired radio. This essentially provided a speakerphone of sorts.

  “Exactly Nel,” said Hemp. “In the beginning, when this was all starting and people were taken by surprise, there were enough unsuspecting people that they had entire housefuls stocked away, like the one in which Flex and Gem found Taylor.”

  Flex shook his head. “Yeah, but now we’re like fourteen years into this thing, Hemp. We know from the Ham radio that other survivors are establishing sanctuaries around the country, so the ghouls could get back to their stockpiling food model, right?”

  “Which begs the questio
n,” said Dave, “Why hit the jackpot of vulnerable people they clearly had the upper hand on, and just sacrifice them all when they could’ve paralyzed them and eaten them later?”

  “They don’t appear to be here,” said Punch. “I know this might sound dumb, but maybe they were traveling light?”

  “Nah,” said Nelson. “Zombies don’t have appointments to keep, and as far as I know, the only thing on their schedules is eating people. No sense in moving on unless everything here is eaten.”

  “Which wasn’t the case here,” said Flex.

  “I go back to my suspicion that there are regular people involved in this somehow,” said Nelson. “If they’re not partnering up with the zombies, how the hell do we have devoured corpses stacked all over the square with brain trauma, and other, uneaten humans with the same kind of trauma?”

  “To get back to my point,” said Hemp, “We need to determine what kind of town Great Bend was. The only way to do that is to search for where they might have set up their city government.”

  “We always picked the most obvious places,” said Gem. “City Hall, stuff like that.”

  “Which is right behind us,” said Nelson. “Got my Rand McNally out.”

  “What we need to do is get to Max and Isis,” said Charlie. “They could be in trouble.”

  “Charlie,” said Hemp. “You see all these bodies out here. This was a town, not unlike Kingman. They clearly did not take the time to protect their borders as we have done, but then again, we do not know how long they’ve been established here. Perhaps they only just relocated here a month or two ago and didn’t have time to fortify it yet. We need to know this.”

  “How does it help us?” asked Gem. “Charlie’s right, Hemp. We need to get to Isis and your son.”

  Hemp took a long, slow breath. “By finding their government seat, we might find documents to tell us what this town square meeting was about,” he said. “We need to know whether it was an internal thing, or if someone from outside communicated with them and asked that the occupants of the town be gathered.”