Dead Hunger VI_The Gathering Storm

by Eric A. Shelman

  I didn’t have one, so I just scrunched my face up in disgust as we moved further into the mysterious bowels of the dilapidated hospital.

  *****

  “Punch, be on the alert,” I said. “If you see glowing red eyes in the distance, just fire at ‘em on full auto.”

  I walked ahead of Punch, the crowbar dangling from my belt loop where I’d slid it through. I walked the baseball bat like a cane in my left hand, and my Daewoo was in fire position in my right. Last, a super soaker water gun dangled from a thin bungee cord, attached directly to my belt. That was filled with urushiol.

  Punch’s setup was similar.

  “The red-eyes are that serious, huh?” he asked, his voice a low whisper, following my lead.

  “Dead serious,” I said, turning so he could hear me.

  I came to several vinyl nameplates on the wall, and one said PHARMACY. The sign specified the pharmacy was in room 2100 and that it was down the next hallway.

  We reached it, and I motioned to Punch to stop. I leaned around and saw something strange.

  The hallway was solid with zombies, but not for about twenty feet. I stared, and Punch looked from behind me.

  “What’s the deal?” he asked.

  “Not sure why they’re not coming,” I said. “They’re just standing there.”

  Punch reached into his pocket and pulled something out. He put it to his eye and looked past me.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “Monocular,” he said. “Smaller, and it fits in my pockets easier. There’s a glass door down there, Flex.”

  I held out my hand and he put the device in it. I held it up to my eye and saw what he was talking about.

  The creatures were trapped behind a single glass door midway down the hall, set into a glass wall that closed off a hallway beyond. We could get closer to them, but they apparently couldn’t advance on us.

  “Good,” I said. “At least we can study the situation before we try to thread that needle.”

  “Thread the needle?” asked Punch.

  I didn’t want to scare him off, so said nothing.

  He tucked the tool away and we scanned in all directions as we moved down the hallway. The walls on both sides were a light color of some kind, and most doors were glass, except those leading into what I assumed were offices, because this was clearly more of an administrative section of the hospital.

  We were now within five feet of the wall of zombies. I turned to Punch. “Turn off your headlight, Punch.”

  He didn’t ask why; he just did it. I flipped mine off as well and said, “Look for red eyes. Ignore the pink. Crimson is all you’re looking for.”

  Together, we scanned the group. Before turning off the light, I’d noticed the long hallway between the doors where they were trapped was about fifty feet long and about six feet wide. The rotting walkers were packed inside, with some, but not much room to mill around.

  “Nothin’ so far,” he said.

  After another three minutes of searching and seeing no red-eyes, I turned my light back on. Punch followed suit.

  “What are the fuckin’ odds of that?” I asked.

  “Of what?” asked Punch.

  I thought for a moment before answering. Hemp had figured out that all of the red-eyes were women who were pregnant when they turned. That didn’t necessarily mean that all of the pregnant females became red-eyes. This fucked with my brain for a moment or two, and I came up with a possibility, but could have been full of shit.

  I suppose I could’ve been stalling our inevitable trip through the zombie gauntlet, but either way, I filled Punch in.

  ‘The red-eyes were all pregnant women when they turned, according to Hemp,” I said. “With pregnancy comes massive production of estrogen. The very purpose of the increased estrogen is to assist the neurotransmitters in their brains so they can still function. So, when zombiefied, the unexpected consequence of all that estrogen was a huge increase in mental capacity.”

  “Man,” said Punch, looking at the crowd beyond the glass. “Sounds like you’ve heard your scientist friend tell that story plenty of times.”

  “That is true,” I said, impressed with my own ability to automatically spew the information. “And it’s not like they’re just smart, Punch. They’re fucking psychic. You saw that bitch on the way here, right? She seemed to know what I was about to do and countered every move before I made it.”

  His light swung from side to side as he shook his head. “I know you explained some of this on the way here, but buddy … I had no idea.”

  “It’s good shit to know,” I said. “Give me a sec. I gotta count.”

  Using an unreliable method of trying to remember rotted faces, shredded clothes and even particular shoes, I quickly figured there were around 285 infecteds shuffling around inside the area. At their feet was a good amount of what appeared to be sticky, blackish goo, and stuck in the muck, I could see the clothing fragments and bones of at least three people who no longer existed.

  There was what looked like a piece of curved aluminum on the floor, too, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  “So,” I said, “assuming my numbers are right – and I’d guess I’m close – there should be around five pregnant females in there, if it’s a 50/50 split between men and women.”

  “They’ve been in there a long time,” said Punch. “No food. Does that make a difference?”

  “It does with the regular vapor. The pink stuff,” I said. “But I have another idea that just hit me, so because Hemp didn’t come up with it, you can’t take to the bank.”

  “What’s that?”

  I sighed, knowing for sure that I was stalling now. I should have been through that door and talking while we walked. I still didn’t move.

  “In every red-eye case that Hemp knows about ,there was a little zombie fetus inside, too. Turned, just like mom.”

  “Fuck,” said Punch. “Sad.”

  “I know,” I said. “Sad and gross. I’ve seen one, so I’ll add fucking haunting to that. Anyway, maybe if the baby didn’t turn, they didn’t become red-eyes. Maybe only if the baby also changed.”

  “Is that possible?”

  I shrugged. “No clue, and it doesn’t matter anyway. We’ve dicked around long enough, so just have your gun or your bat ready, just in case.”

  I reached for the door, but saw that it had no handle. There were two holes where a handle had likely been, but it was missing. Someone had removed it.

  Punch put a hand on my arm. His grip was firm. “Wait, Flex. How’d they all get in there?”

  I looked the group over again, even as their blank eyes, stared back. “They’re not patients,” I said. “They’re all either in suits, scrubs or lab coats, save for a couple of ‘em,” I said. “And those are probably salesmen or something.”

  “But how did they all get into this one hallway? And was it before or after they turned?”

  “No way to know. Why?” I asked.

  “I’m wondering if someone put them in there on purpose. Like a moat filled with alligators or something.”

  “Protecting something?” I asked.

  Punch shrugged. “Maybe a buffer for something,” he said.

  My eyes fell to the curved metal on the floor, and it hit me what it was. It was aluminum tubing and it was U-shaped. It was a damned door handle.

  “The handles were removed on purpose,” I said, pointing at the floor and shining my light on the aluminum piece that lay in the black goo.

  “Someone could be beyond that far door, then,” said Punch. “We need to be quiet.”

  I looked at the door to my right. It was number 2040. I shone my light to a door within the hallway. It read 2044. The numbers were going up, and we needed the pharmacy, which was 2100. The pack of rotters definitely lay between where we were and where we needed to be.

  “Maybe someone was tryin’ to keep folks on this side or the other,” I said. “No way to know, but anyone not wanting to die would avoid t
his path.”

  “They must’ve baited them in here, then closed the door,” said Punch.

  I looked at them again. They were pushing against the glass door and it wasn’t budging. “It’s a pull,” I said. “Zombies have a bitch of a time with pull doors. They’re prone to push.”

  “So,” said Punch, his voice tentative. “Are we goin’ around?”

  I looked at him, smiled and shook my head. “Not a chance, partner,” I said.

  “WAT-5?” asked Punch.

  “WAT-5, exactly,” I answered.

  I tried the door. As I suspected, for us it was a push, and it was unlocked. I was validated once more in front of my new friend. I smiled at him. “I’m guessin’ the other door is a pull from the inside, too.”

  Punch turned around suddenly. “You hear something?”

  I listened. “No. Maybe you’re getting spooked. Sooner we get this over with, the better. Believe me, the anticipation’s worse than the journey when you’re on the magic wafers.”

  I pushed through the door and gently elbowed the rotters to either side of me. Two were persistent, their rotted faces getting too close to me. I reached slowly down for my super soaker and raised it up, giving each of them a little shot of the zombie juice, right in their skanky, lipless kissers.

  Sizzle, pop, hiss, and down.

  “Jesus,” said Punch. “Works like a charm, huh?”

  “Close that door fast,” I said.

  “Fuck it stinks,” said Punch. “I’ve been around some rotted shit – whole buildings full of drone-struck jihadists – this is like a hundred morgues.”

  Like logs floating down a river, the abnormals moved toward us as I edged my way deeper inside to allow Punch room behind me.

  Punch pushed the creatures away from the opening and struggled to inch the door closed a bit farther as each walking corpse cleared the gap.

  He finally got it, and once again, they pressed against it.

  “Wait, Punch,” I said, an idea striking me. “Why don’t we just let ‘em out? It’ll be easier to come back through.”

  “I learned somethin’ a long time ago,” said Punch. “Don’t tear down a fence until you know why it was built. We don’t know what this particular fence is for yet.”

  “Good call,” I said.

  We pushed through, agonizingly slow. We were about one third through, and moving like molasses in winter.

  “If you need to take any out,” I said, “Use the urushiol super soaker or your bat. If there are any red-eyes around, they’re startin’ to hear better, too.”

  “But we gave ourselves away in the lobby,” he said.

  “Yeah, I tend to reach for my gun first, but that’s just because I’m reactionary,” I said. “Even if they heard us earlier, they might not know where we are now.”

  As the words left my lips, a flash from behind us reflected off the glass walls all around.

  I turned to see distant flashlights bobbing near the rear hallway behind us.

  The ravenous creatures that surrounded us became immediately agitated. Their mouths gnashed and chewed, and black saliva dripped from their destroyed lips as they pushed forward, threatening to crush Punch and me.

  I knew why. While we were on WAT-5, the new visitors weren’t.

  I dropped immediately, snatching Punch’s arm and yanking him to the floor with me.

  “Move to the other door!” I whispered with urgency, and Punch was down on his hands and knees with me, pushing past the shuffling legs of the rotters. We worked our way through the putrid coating of muck on the floor, scrambling for every inch as we attempted to reach the opposite door.

  Suddenly gunfire erupted. The glass door behind us exploded, and the bodies around us began to erupt in showers of black-red rain, with hail-sized chunks of brain and skull mixed in.

  Many of the walking dead men and women fell; some scrambled back to their feet, advancing on our uninvited guests.

  Punch and I were now ten feet from the opposite door, practically spider crawling, trying to stay low. These attackers were using automatic weapons and their actions were splattering zombie guts, brains and body parts on every surface, including us, and making our forward advancement agonizingly slow.

  Because of the sheer number of shuffling bodies between them and the opposite glass door, it had not yet shattered, the bullets finding plenty of rotted flesh in which to embed themselves.

  I didn’t shout or scream except in my own mind, my worry for my wife, son and my family so heavy on my mind as I scrambled toward safety. I wasn’t certain that whoever was firing toward us had determined there were living beings among the horde. It was thinning out toward the other door now. We were running out of time.

  I felt Punch right behind me as I hit the opposite door, now completely free from zombies, as they were all pushing toward the people behind us. I got to the door, tucked my fingers beneath it, and pulled it open. I slithered on my belly through the opening, and made sure Punch got out, too.

  We both instinctively looked behind us. We still could not see the people who had fired into the crowd, but that meant they wouldn’t be able to see us, either.

  The door behind us had been splattered with the blood and muck of a hundred zombies, which offered camouflage, but at the moment we got back on our feet, the glass blew into a thousand fragments, pelting us as we ran down the hallway toward our destination.

  I hoped their lights weren’t trained on us at that moment.

  We kept low, crouching below the height of the rotters behind us and reached the door marked 2100 with the plate in the center that said PHARMACY.

  I snatched the nameplate off the door and threw it down the hall. Then I grabbed the handle and turned it.

  Thankfully, this one was not locked. We pushed inside and looked for a way to barricade the door.

  *****

  Chapter Nine

  “This storm has definitely made landfall now,” said Hemp, nervously watching out the back sliding door. “Those winds have to be exceeding seventy-five miles per hour now.”

  “I haven’t seen rain and wind like that since Hurricane Andrew,” I said, holding a sleeping Flexy in my arms. “And that was scary as shit.” I looked at all of them to make sure they saw the serious expression on my face. “We didn’t have the benefit of a basement in south Florida,” I said, “but we have it here, and we need to get into the damned thing.”

  “The problem is, we’ve got no clue where the storm is yet,” said Hemp. “We’ve got no satellite radar telling us when we should start to worry. Gem’s right, though. If this is just the outer edge, we could be in for a minimum Category 4 storm.”

  “I agree with both of you,” said Dave Gammon. “We’re better off if we get to the worrying part sooner than later. Might save our lives.”

  We’d gone into the bedroom to speak privately for a few moments, and everyone was so bored and distracted they didn’t even notice. Bunsen and Slider saw us, though, and they came, too. They both sat there, staring at us, panting as though they didn’t like this shit one bit, either.

  “Settled then,” said Hemp. “Let’s go back in there and round up the troops. Gem, Charlie, why don’t you set everyone about securing as much food and water as they can collect, and then we should be tucked in that basement in a half an hour at most.”

  “I need to radio Flex,” I said.

  “We’ll take the radio down with us, Gem,” said Hemp. “The antenna wire can reach, and we’ll try him once we get settled. I’ve got to wonder what he’s doing now, with this storm raging.”

  “It’s all I can think about,” I said. “And this little guy.” I held the back of my son’s head and put his face against my neck, rocking him.

  Hemp started the process of moving the Ham radio, and we got everyone started, gathering lighting, food, batteries, water and every other provision we could think of. Like a CSX freight train, it moved from person to person down the concrete steps and into the spacious basement.
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  The wind grew even stronger outside. Not just stronger. It started to roar, gaining in volume and intensity.

  Hemp held a bag of headlamps and AAA batteries in his hand and stared out the rear slider.

  “Oh, my God!” he shouted, frantic. “Run, everybody, run into the basement now! Now!”

  “What the hell is it, Hemp?” I screamed over the noise that had grown a hundred times louder than just a minute before.

  “It’s a tornado!” he shouted over the din. “Everybody, go!”

  I saw Trina and Taylor run down the steps, and felt my heart racing. I had Flexy in my arms still, but his playpen was already in the basement. I chanced a look back as I moved to the basement steps, and saw the monster twister bearing down. It was perhaps a half mile away, but I saw trees being torn and flung like toothpicks, which was enough for me.

  As I looked, a tree, a very old and large one, slammed into the back porch, and the decking and railing exploded into enormous splinters.

  I didn’t wait to see any more. I descended the steps and heard Charlie on my heels. I reached the bottom and turned to look up at the others coming in. Hemp and Lola came behind me, followed by Bug with Isis cradled in his arms, but nobody else followed.

  “Where are Dave and Serena?” I shouted, frantic. Hemp was trying to close the door, and felt a hand on my shoulder, and heard a voice. Dave’s voice.

  “Gem, we’re all here,” said Dave. “We’re here, babe.”

  I spun around and saw him, Doc Scofield, Rachel, Nelson and Serena all standing behind me.

  Hemp had the door closed now and he ran down the steps.

  “Mommy!” shouted Trina. “Mommy, Bunsen and Slider are out there!”

  I whirled around and grabbed a flashlight from Dave. I shone it in every part of the basement. Trina was right. The dogs weren’t here.

  Trina was crying. Hysterical. Taylor joined her in her agonizing over the missing dogs.

  I ran over and rested Flexy inside the crib and charged to the steps. Hemp grabbed me as I tried to push past him, and I elbowed him hard to the face, felt the solid impact, and charged away, now free.