Hunger Driven (Book 2): Fight the Hunger

by Allen, William

  I rolled my eyes but said, “You got it, kid. Whatever floats your boat.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  So, my shin bone wasn’t broken. Just badly bruised. The high-topped boots prevented it, I guess, but the knot was still the size of a baseball once Casey got my foot free. I crawled around on the pea-graveled roof on my hands and knees, thankful for the kneepads, anyway, and we set up our camp and spent some time reloading magazines.

  Well, Casey did. I broke out the radio and put in a call to our missing cohorts. The good news was they’d gotten over thirty-five survivors out of the storage facility with Isaac. The bad news was there was no need to go check on the Adair family at their restaurant. That redoubt fell the day before, and only eight survivors showed up in a battered Escalade, trailed by a couple thousand zombies.

  The convoy evacuated through the back road, as we’d heard, and the plan was to park up and spend the night at a nearby wrecking yard Mike and Isaac both knew about. The walls might not keep out a determined siege, but for one night’s rest it would have to do. At least they could get the trucks out of sight.

  A quick count of the dead around us told me we were not going to be getting off this roof top in twenty-four hours unless the zombies decided to move on to hunt elsewhere. From the number of First Wavers I saw below, I thought that unlikely. These guys knew they had us up a creek. Or up a tree, more likely.

  Given these factors, I decided to kill two zombies with one bullet and use this opportunity to train up Casey on the zombie exterminating business while clearing us a way home. Our position wasn’t ideal, and I explained the work practices I’d developed over the last few months of doing this job.

  “Too high? I thought the higher the better?” Casey had protested as I started my explanation.

  “Not really. Look out and what do you see?” I replied.

  “Sea of zombies? Hungry for a bite.”

  I sighed. Casey could sometimes be a trial, but I got some of where she was coming from. The hardcore attitude, at least, seemed to cushion her from the fear. Most of the time.

  “Yeah, but what you cannot see are the ones close to the building. Not unless you lean out, and I don’t advise it. So you can’t really see what might be piling up below. That’s why I prefer one-story buildings. Anyway, this is good enough for thinning the herd, which is what we will work on first.”

  And that’s what we did for the next hour. I explained how the tightly packed horde actually made our work easier, since zombies standing shoulder-to-shoulder made a more stable target. Oh, you’d still get a stumble here and there, resulting in a missed shot but many times, they would just line up for the bullet.

  I showed Casey how I alternated rifles, keeping the barrels from heating and thus affecting our accuracy. Not really a problem with the lower-powered Rugers, but she was having to swap out the M4s every few magazines to prevent them from warming up too much. That was fine, since we had four to choose from. Happily, she already knew how to break the rifles down for cleaning, which she did after every two hundred rounds.

  I just kept plinking away, dropping zombies and keeping a rough count in my head. I had thirty of the twenty-five round, aftermarket magazines with me for the Rugers, so call it 750-ready rounds, and I burned through half of them in that hour, accounting for approximately 350 deader dead in the parking lot area. Not a huge dent in the crowd, but we were using the suppressors and not playing any music, so our harvest wasn’t bringing in a ton of new zeds.

  Casey was a lighter on the trigger, but I noted she sometimes needed two shots to get the job done on the more distant targets. Still, I’d say she accounted for another two hundred for herself in that time. In theory, we could have cleared the lot in the twenty-four hours allotted by Bill, but that was only a numbers game, not reality. I could tell Casey was already getting fatigued by the steady shooting stacked on top of the earlier events of the day, and she would need a break soon.

  As for me, I was feeling it too. I’d taken some painkillers for my shin injury, and the Tylenol with codeine seemed to do the trick for my injuries, but the constant dumps of adrenalin throughout this trip made me aware of my own limitations. I was getting a bit punchy.

  “Let’s take a break,” I croaked out, and once she’d taken her last shot, Casey safed the rifle and set it aside.

  “Need to reload some magazines, anyway,” Casey commented, policing up her brass like I taught her, then dumping the empty shell casings in a canvas bag I carried for that purpose. Reloading 22LR ammo was not feasible, but her slightly larger 5.56mm shell casings could be reused two or three times.

  Rooting around in one of the bags, I found a full 525-round Value Pack box of 22LR and started reloading my used magazines. I’d long ago gotten accustomed to thumbing the small rounds into place with my gloved hands and did it now without conscious thought. I watched as Casey did the same, and as I studied her face, the young woman eventually became aware of my scrutiny and her expression changed.

  “What? Why are you looking at me that way?”

  I shrugged before answering. “Doing this, exterminating the dead, sometimes it gets to people after a while. Remember how I said not to look into their eyes?”

  Casey answered my shrug with her own before replying. “Yeah. Their eyes are creepy. But so what?”

  I cleared my throat before responding. “Sometimes, exterminating just gets to people. That’s all. I’ve taken others out with me, trying to get some help for the work, but most can’t really do it, long-term.”

  Casey snorted. “Hell, I’ve been killing zombies from just about the first day this started. Killed quite a few today before we even got here.”

  “Yeah, and you are good at it. I don’t want to mess with your head if you are fine, kid. Just, this is different than having to kill a pod of zeds trying to eat you. What we are doing, to some people, seems an awful lot like murder. That’s all I mean.”

  Casey seemed to think about that for a moment before replying. “Screw that. They all have to be put down at some point, Brad. Doing it this way seems easier, and safer, than getting into it down at street level.”

  “Ahh, grasshopper. You learn. The path to enlightenment begins with but a single step.”

  Casey rolled her eyes and continued loading her magazines. “So, are we going to stop long enough to eat now? I’m starving.”

  I nodded, saying we would take a half hour break for food and to set up the porta potty I’d thoughtfully packed in one of the first duffels I’d sent up with her.

  “We have a bathroom in one of those bags? This I’ve got to see.”

  After I set up the collapsible stool and placed the liner, she wasn’t so impressed.

  “I’m not going out in the open. That’s just wrong. Maybe over the side, instead?”

  “Well, that is one option. But what are you going to hang on to when you go?”

  That stumped the young lady and while she was trying to work out the logistics, I set up the tent enclosure for the portable bathroom and placed the setup inside. She watched and I saw a red tint to her cheeks as she figured out the rest of my plan.

  “That was a dirty trick, old man,” she declared, but I just started back to setting up the rest of our camp. Noticing my limp and apparently pained expression, Casey insisted on doing the fetching and carrying while I supervised from my seat after that.

  Under my direction, Casey used one of the massive air conditioning units in the center of the rooftop to lay out the solar panels and attached the radios to the charging station. We would keep our communications online no matter what else happened, I explained.

  Next came food, but Casey had that under control. She ate a power bar, washed it down with one of our last sodas, after offering me the same. I accepted, but only drank water. Except as a mixer, I didn’t particularly like carbonated water even before the world went to shit. Now, with the scarcity involved and the diet sodas already turning, I was glad I’d avoided that particular addicti
on.

  After finishing the quick meal and downing the last of my water, I took the opportunity to limp over to the edge of the building and urinate all over the dead waiting impatiently below. I tried to write my initials in their upturned faces but ran out of stream before I finished.

  “Now that is just nasty,” Casey volunteered as I slowly made my way back over to the sanitary station and used a wet wipe to cleanse my hands. Like diet sodas. they were also starting to turn, drying out and breaking down despite my best efforts to keep our supply stored in a closet back at the compound. Even out of direct sunlight and in a cool place, the relentless passage of time marches on, I guess.

  “Just one of the few benefits of being a man,” I replied.

  After lunch, I worked with Casey on building walls and breaking up groups of zombies as they approached. We had plenty of material to work with and enough ammunition, so I demonstrated some of the techniques used to secure the wall in Jasper.

  Casey followed along through one of the scopes, and when she felt ready I let her finish off one of the body berms about fifty yards out from our truck. She didn’t hit her mark every time, making for a ragged pile that ranged back and forth in a rough semi-circle around the truck, but it was close enough for government work, I joked.

  “Why are you teaching me all this?” Casey finally asked as we were once again reloading magazines. By now, the time was creeping up on five in the afternoon, and I figured we had maybe another hour of shooting before we clocked out for the day.

  “Well, you seemed interested in going back to Beaumont at some point, correct?” I said, and it really wasn’t a question.

  “Well, sure. I’ve got plenty of scores to settle with those assholes. I wish … I wish I could get the colonel to send some of his men to do the job. I asked, but he just couldn’t do it.” Casey paused, no doubt replaying that conversation in her head.

  “I understand,” she continued. “He’s already at his limit, trying to keep three communities safe. Heck, he’s trying to hang on with half his soldiers gone. That’s double hard, but he’s doing it. If only we’d had somebody like him in charge at the Civic Center, maybe things would have turned out different.”

  I didn’t reply. What could I have said? Instead, I just went back to the original question.

  “Well, the colonel has been riding me for some time to take on a helper, or a partner, with what I do. The problem there is that most people are simply unsuitable for this kind of work. Oh, Roxy could do it, if she wasn’t sixty-five years old. Ken could too, probably. But he is needed at the compound, to help guard the place and really keep all the systems going.”

  “What about Patty?”

  I nodded. “She could, but still we would be shorthanded. More shorthanded, I mean. So, I’ve tried to recruit some others, but they never seemed to work out.”

  “Because of what you said? They couldn’t stand the work. I’ve heard the rumors, Brad. Doc Kelly didn’t want me doing this, you know? She worried how it might change me.”

  Inside, I had the same worry. I wasn’t sure why I’d picked Casey to train, except for her self-confidence and the poise she’d shown under pressure. And at first, I was just going to get her trained up on weapons as another guard for the compound. Gradually, though, I’d found my mind being changed as she continued to meet and surpass any challenge placed in front of her.

  “You could have escaped. From the Mexicans, I mean. You had the guts and the determination to get out of the Civic Center, and from the hospital camp once you were captured.”

  “Maybe. So what? Where was I going to go?”

  I paused before continuing. “You stayed for them, didn’t you? The other girls. You couldn’t just abandon them, so you stayed, knowing what would happen.”

  Casey was getting upset. I could see it in the way her cheeks were pinking, and the set of her jaw. She wouldn’t look away, though, and met my eyes with her own.

  “So what? What difference did it make? It wasn’t like some fat old Mexican with a beer gut and bitch titties was going to scare me. So what if he wanted to get it on with me. It wasn’t my first time, you know. He had a little dick, anyway.” She paused again, and I could tell whatever she had endured had left a bitter mark despite her protestations to the contrary. I remembered again Kate’s comments about Casey, about how she was more fragile than she was willing to admit, and let her vent.

  “But for the other ones, especially Carly, it was bad. She, they, needed me there. So I stuck around until Doc came up with a way to get us all out. But yeah, when I get time, I’m gonna go back and kill some of them. All of ’em if I can figure out a way. You got a problem with that?”

  I held up my hands, a peace signal. “You asked me why I picked you, Casey. That is why. All of you ladies are tough, in your own ways, but I could see something in you that told me you could do what needed to be done and not lose sleep over it. Like those two guys in the truck today. Are you going to have nightmares about them?”

  “You mean those guys who tried to hijack us?” Casey asked, her face a mask of surprise. “Are you kidding? No, not going to happen. They were trying to kill us. I’ll sleep like a baby tonight.”

  And I believed her. Casey might project a sense of bravado, but underneath she was still just as hard, just as unforgiving, as I was.

  “I don’t need a psycho, Casey, but I do need someone who can pull the trigger and not hesitate. The others I’ve worked with, the ones who cracked if you will, got to where they stopped seeing the zombies as dead monsters walking around. Since these infected aren’t an immediate threat, I guess their brains started protesting the endless killing. But, I think you see the need. You can do the job.”

  That seemed to satisfy Casey and she relaxed. Then, stretching like a cat, she looked at me with that teasing smile she sometimes got. “Well, all right. I just wanted to know. So come on, we’ve got infected to kill. Maybe we can whittle them down enough to get out of here tonight.”

  I sighed with relief and agreed. So far, I estimated we’d exterminated over a thousand of the dead, counting the ones we downed while getting situated up here. Their motionless bodies humped up in piles and as a carpet covering the asphalt expanse of the parking lot. Experience told me otherwise. Despite Casey’s confidence, I calculated that doing the shooting myself meant we would be here at least another night. With Casey’s help, who knew? I decided to make the most of our time.

  “Sure thing. Let’s see about clearing that route to the road out back. Maybe build up some more berms on either side in case we can get the truck started.”

  “Hey,” Casey interrupted, “you never did ask me who was asking about you. Asking a lot, too.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Do I want to know?”

  “Yes, but you have to guess.”

  “Luis, at the front gate? He’s kind of cute,” I said, my voice a dead monotone. “Or maybe Joanne from the fish market?” Joanne, was of course, about eighty years old and shaped like a bag of potatoes. A really unappetizing bag of spuds, at that.

  “Really? You suck at this game. You’re not even trying.”

  “I’m just not a good guesser.”

  “No shit. Well, I ain’t got all day. It was the doc.”

  “Doctor Singh? He seems way too straight for that.”

  “No, you butthead. Doctor Gooden. Kelly. She asks about you every time I see her. At first, I thought it was just her way of making sure we’re are all okay, but she still does it. I think she’s sweet on you. You should definitely hit that, by the way. She’s old and all, over thirty easy, but she’s got a rockin’ body anyway.”

  “Seriously? I’m going to take hookup advice from an eighteen-year-old girl?”

  Casey gave a little laugh, and for once it was filled with honest, childish mirth. “Look around, old man. See anybody else up here on this roof with us? Just trying to help is all.”

  And with that, we went back to our work on killing dead things. This time, we took our t
ime in the waning light, focusing on specific targets. I looked for the club-wielding First Waver but either he’d already bitten the dust or was gone gathering reinforcements. Probably the latter. In any event, I got Casey dialed in on downing the prune-faced men who seemed to be causing all the trouble.

  By the time we lost the sun’s grace and darkness fell, I was exhausted and near to collapse. My body ached and burned in places, and the painkiller definitely needed a refresher after all the shifting and jostling my ankle took. Fortunately, I’d taped an icepack to the knot early on, and though the joint itself was still swollen, the impact area seemed smaller. If I needed to run tomorrow, I was likely screwed, but I reckoned a slow hobble was doable.

  So, I took some more drugs, changed the icepack, and called in to Bill and company. While I was occupied, Casey heated up some delicious MRE entrees for our dinner and came over to listen in on the conversation.

  Bill sounded surprised when I gave him my estimate of how many infected Casey and I managed to retire.

  “Two thousand? Really? You only had a couple of hours,” he said.

  “What can I say? That Casey is a dead-eye shot,” I pronounced, and then continued, my voice harder and aimed at a new audience that might be listening to our conversation, “and we’ve got enough food and ammo to last a long time. Anybody comes around here looking for trouble, dead or breathing, will get a bullet for their trouble.”

  “Understood. Well, good luck. We’ll expect to see you at home in about a week then. Seven days. Out.”

  “Charlie Three, out,” I said, ending the conversation.

  “A week?” Casey nearly squeaked. “I thought those were your friends.”

  “They are,” I replied, my voice lowered.

  Nobody could hear us up here, I didn’t think, but I was by nature a cautious man. Sounds funny, given my new profession, but I tried to weigh the risks instead of charging in without a plan. And we had a plan for this. “They will be by to check in on us tomorrow. Seven at night, which gives us all day to shoot our way free.”