Dead Hunger | Book 10 | The Remnants

by Shelman, Eric A.

  “They can slather it on with brushes on extension handles,” said Jax.

  The grease was to prevent any attempts to gain purchase on the outside of the buses and climb over, because they quickly realized a double stack was not going to happen.

  Nelson also felt the grease could be set aflame if things got out of hand. They had long known the dead could be killed by fire.

  It was now approaching noon. As Nelson drove the Hyster back toward the school bus graveyard, another two forklifts towing buses lumbered by, heading toward Lula.

  Nelson smiled, reached into his pocket to pull out his pipe, and smiled wider. He sure did like being busy.

  As he inhaled the sweet smoke, he was thinking of his gramps, who was on the way to Lula. He wondered if they had encountered any of the dead.

  *****

  “There’s no need to fuck with that right this minute,” said Flex.

  “You saw what happened to the female just now,” said Hemp. “I’ve got this sample here, and –”

  “And it will keep in your little solar-powered refrigerator,” said Gem. “You two are coming with us. It’s going to be the Parker Tornado, Suzi the Uzi, Hemp’s MP-5, and Flex’s Daewoo K-7. Just like the old days.”

  “Never did come up with a name for my gun,” said Flex, frowning. “Hey you, Daewoo.”

  “That’s dumb,” said Gem. “Wasn’t me who said that. It was Suzi.”

  “Maybe I’ll just start carrying a Glock,” said Flex. “I sure know what rhymes with that.”

  Everyone laughed, breaking the tension of the earlier experience with the Red-Eye.

  They wanted to follow Max and Isis down to Athens to check on Manuel, Sarah, and Koko, as well as the rest of the town. They hadn’t heard from them since they left, and they weren’t responding to radio calls, according to Punch. These days, no news could be bad news.

  If there was something wrong there, there was no way Gem would let Max and Isis go there alone to check things out.

  “Okay. It’s only just over 40 miles, so if everything goes right, we’ve got a half-hour prep for weapons and ammo, then a 1-hour drive.” Hemp looked at Charlie.

  “I was going anyway,” she said.

  “My girl wouldn’t let me go off alone,” said Gem.

  Gem started walking away. “C’mon, Flexy. Let’s just be so ready they have to come. We’ll take my beast.”

  Flex hurried after her. When he caught up to her, he took her hand and asked, “You want to bring Colton with? He’s been feeling pretty left out lately.”

  “We’ve been preoccupied since this new bullshit,” said Gem. “But no. We’re not in defend mode yet. We’re still in learning mode so we know how to defend ourselves.”

  “True enough,” said Flex. “He’s been training, though. Gonna be an asset if this shit keeps up.”

  They reached the house and Gem said, “I’m losing hope we’ll ever be past it in our lifetimes.”

  “Maybe it’s a small pocket this time. And maybe it’s not everywhere like before.”

  Gem stopped and turned toward Flex. “Baby, you may be right.”

  “Really?”

  “Does that really come as that much of a surprise?”

  “Sort of. Right about what?”

  “Maybe it’s not everywhere. Hemp hasn’t heard any chatter on the radio. What did they say in Kingman?”

  “Really fine bubbles, but bubbles.”

  Gem deflated. “Damn.”

  “Thought you knew.”

  “I did, I think. I forgot. Getting fucking old. Brain doesn’t work like it used to.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Suzi and Daewoo in hand, Gem drove up in the Mercedes with Flex riding in the rear on the passenger side. “Let’s rock,” she said over the clattering engine.

  “Rocking’s what I do best,” said Charlie, jumping in the front seat. “C’mon, Thelma. Let’s drive this fucker off a cliff!”

  “Whoa,” said Flex, moving boxes of ammo toward the center of the back seat so Hemp could slide in. “Do one or the other of us look like Brad Pitt?”

  “In our dreams,” said both girls simultaneously, then they both high-fived and laughed. “Jinx, you owe me a beer!” Also said together.

  “These girls enjoy the apocalypse just a bit too much,” said Hemp.

  “They always have,” said Flex, smiling.

  *****

  Nelson called out, “Jax, I’m heading over to that row in the back.”

  “I didn’t see them,” said Jax, soaked with sweat. He wiped his brow with his arm.

  “They’re under some huge trees,” said Nelson. “Must’ve got lost in the shadow underneath.”

  Jax looked over. “Yeah, you can barely see them. Okay. I got this one almost hooked up. Jerry and April will be back in a few. They left like forty minutes ago.”

  “Excellent,” said Nelson. He walked toward the back of the lot while Jax continued securing the bus to his forklift.

  Reaching the shade of the large oaks, he stopped, pulled his pipe from his shirt pocket, and held it to his lips. He used the Zippo lighter – all the Bics had drained of butane after so many years – lighting the weed within the bowl. It was a good blend he had grown himself, but it was getting a bit stale now.

  Still stony, but harsher. Nelson would get by. He had planted and was anticipating a nice crop of some good indica, but that would take some time.

  Tucking the pipe away, he approached the row of buses, in a straight line against the perimeter fence of the storage yard, behind the large oaks. When the sun was exactly right, they vanished in the shadows, but Nelson had spotted them one morning when the sun glinted off the buses just right.

  Of course, he didn’t forget; his photographic memory assured that. He knew about the school bus graveyard from well before the recent resurrection of the Red-Eyes; he’d found it while exploring the area around town, looking for supplies.

  At that time, while he had been cruising through the yard on his electric scooter, his eye transferred what he saw into data, and that data was stored in his lockbox of a mind. It was that data that now alerted him to something different.

  The doors to the stored junk buses were typically left closed, as were the windows. Nelson guessed it was to keep critters out, though he couldn’t figure out for the life of him why anyone would care. Nelson would’ve left them all wide open. After all, a school bus graveyard should at least provide shelter for animals seeking it.

  Looking down the row of buses, he saw that of the eight within view, six of them had open doors. The windows were still closed. As he walked toward them, he said aloud, “Somebody was desperate.”

  What he meant was, there were plenty of junk buses in the front of the storage yard; by the time somebody rummaged through those buses, finding nothing but an old, rusty Spider-Man lunchbox or a deteriorating backpack, they would have realized there was no reason to dig through the buses in the rear of the lot.

  “Whatevs,” said Nelson, mounting the steps to the first one. The minute he stepped in, he couldn’t see. It was as though a blanket was pulled over his eyes.

  “Jesus,” he mumbled, reaching in his pocket for his LED flashlight.

  A thump. Several thumps. Disoriented, Nelson staggered away from the vibration-sounds and toward the white glow of the open door. When he reached it, he realized he was foggy, and tumbled out the door, falling to the ground.

  He could see instantly, and his head began to clear as soon as he was out of the bus. He heard something behind him and rolled onto his back to see a rail-thin, male zombie standing on the lowest step of the bus, just two feet behind him.

  Nelson kicked his feet forward, pushing his body away from where the thing would land if it fell out of the bus, but it appeared to be waiting.

  Waiting for what? Zombies don’t wait unless …

  “Shit!” said Nelson, his right hand sliding deep into his pocket and withdrawing a 2” Ninja star. Twisting to get onto his knees and back on his f
eet, he felt a sharp pain in his right knee. He collapsed onto his stomach and tried to crawl.

  “Well, fuck!” he screamed, the pain intense. He stopped for a second to look down at his knee. The kneecap appeared to be on the side of his leg rather than where it should be, and the pain was excruciating.

  Hearing scraping sounds behind him, Nelson forced himself to flip back over and flung the star with all he had. It flew true, embedding itself into the temple of the string bean zombie, now just three feet away. Its head jerked back as black blood spattered onto the side of the dust-covered bus behind it.

  As its knees folded in and it fell away, another was right behind it.

  The slave zombies had apparently waited behind this one, locked in receiver mode, awaiting instructions from a female; Nelson had seen what had happened at the hot springs.

  The next one leapt out of the door of the bus, three more behind it. Nelson’s eyes darted between them, and in his peripheral vision, he saw more Hungerers emerging from the other buses.

  The red eyes of a Mother glowed behind the dead-eyed goons staggering straight for him.

  He was going to be swamped, piled on and eaten.

  His Ninja stars were no contest for these numbers. Nelson scrambled backward, his hand reaching into his pocket for his two remaining stars. Glancing behind him, he saw the path he would take if able to pop the knee back in place.

  A shriek came from all around him it seemed; not one, not two, but what might have been ten Mothers screeching, the piercing noise coming from the entire row of buses.

  Nelson pushed himself to his feet, balanced on his left leg and threw the second star at the nearest creature closing in. This one looked much younger – in zombie terms – than the first one, like it had been changed recently.

  The star was just as effective, though. It struck him in the eye socket, the long spikes embedding into its brain enough to drop it.

  He moved to throw his last one, but Nelson realized it was pointless. By the time it left his hand he would be overrun.

  Turning, he hop-staggered on his left leg, just using his right to touch down and keep him from falling over, and charged away from the zombie-filled school buses. Whenever it touched ground, the pain was excruciating.

  He was slower than them now, though. He felt them gaining on him, and his heart sank. His mind went to his wife Rachel, his daughter Lita, and his Grampa Jim and how he would never see them if he allowed himself to die here.

  The edge of the shadow lay just ahead, perhaps ten feet distant. For some reason he could not comprehend, Nelson Moore began to feel hope in that line; if he could just reach it … would he survive?

  With three more stagger-steps, something clutched his right ankle, jerking him sharply back. He fell forward, his face striking the dirt-covered ground, and his mouth filled with dust; he felt a tooth shatter in his mouth, but he clawed at the ground, pulling himself toward the … demarcation point.

  Where the shadows ended.

  The word came to him. Suddenly, and very quickly, his mind put two and two together – then continued its calculations.

  Mothers occupied every bus in this shadowy row. Why? Because of the shadows. They needed the shadows.

  Feeling himself being pulled backward, Nelson cried out with determination as he jerked his pained leg away, unable to break free. His head, then his shoulders crossed the line from shadows to sunlight.

  Feeling the warmth, and a surge of strength and hope, he jerked his right leg again, this time feeling the slight creature clinging to it slide forward. Now his entire torso was in the sunlight, and he scrambled to his feet again, digging into the ground with the toe of his left tennis shoe.

  As he fully entered the sunlight, he rolled onto his back and gave one more push off. The zombie clinging to his leg crossed the line, and its hand immediately began to smoke.

  The distant shrieks began again, but now they were higher-pitched; a warning. A calling. Nelson did not know, only that the hand that had gripped him had burst into flame like a sudden dust explosion, then dissolved into ash.

  He was free. Unable to stand, he turned sideways and rolled, like a child down a soft, grassy hillside playing with his friends on a summer day.

  Well into the sunlight, he watched as five more of the skinny males charged over the line, despite the warning shrieks – because Nelson now knew that’s what they were – to their minions to stay out of the sunlight.

  It was too late. Either momentum carried them over or the Mothers did not have the control over the Hungerers they once had, but all five who entered the sunlight became momentary torches as their bodies burst into flame.

  Two more steps and they extinguished, all burnable material now ash. Amazingly, their forms remained in human shape until a sudden breeze disbursed them, dusting them over the dirt that was once at their feet.

  Another Hungerer staggered forward from the bus toward Nelson, a nude female with white, sightless eyes and occasional tufts of hair on her head. She appeared cast in black and white in a world of color; so faded was she as she let out a low moan and steadily advanced.

  Behind her the Mother within the bus screeched, but if there was hesitation on the part of the emaciated female, Nelson did not see it. He was staring at her; she had to have been changed since the original stoppage of the earth gas.

  The Mothers were building a new army. They must only consume what was needed to survive, while all others were to be bitten and changed, a new member of their undead forces.

  The screeching behind her increased as she reached the shadow line and crossed it. Her body immediately began to sizzle and smoke, and she fell backward, landing so that the shadow crossed her body at an angle from her left hip to her right knee. The exposed extremities burst into flame, but her torso began clawing the dirt, pulling her half-body toward the dilapidated bus and the safety of her kind.

  Across the shadow line, her legs burned to ash and bone, blackening the dirt beneath them.

  The rest of the horde that had been emerging from the buses, still safely in the shadows, slowed, then stopped. Looking at the shuffling horde before the row of buses, Nelson estimated there were around fifty of the creatures visible. The buses were nowhere near empty, so how many could there be just here, in this one spot?

  Hundreds.

  His eyes taking in the entire line of shadowed buses, he heard a number of shrieks, then watched as the creatures slowly turned and hobbled back to the doors, disappearing inside.

  Nelson let out the breath he had been holding, staring at the remains of the creatures around him. He raised his eyes to the open door of the bus straight ahead, into the shadows beyond. The piercing red eyes stared directly at him.

  They moved forward. Nelson stiffened, feeling in his pocket and finding only one star remaining. He had left his gun on the forklift; there had felt like no reason to bring it.

  Photographic memory or not, heeding lessons is as important as remembering them. If he survived this, he would not do that again.

  The Mother, to his great surprise, stepped out of the disabled bus, standing in the dirt. She looked down at the female crawling toward her.

  She looked back at Nelson.

  He pushed back another foot, digging his heel into the dirt as he tried to manipulate his kneecap back into position with his hand.

  She moved quickly, bending down and scooping up the half-zombie at her feet. She let out a horrible screech and raised the dead thing over her head, flinging it right at him.

  Nelson did not expect it. He dropped flat onto his back, smacking his head on the ground hard, and saw stars as the monster flew inches over his head, already catching fire and disappearing, like a piece of crepe paper touched by a flame.

  He raised his head again to see the red eyed Mother withdrawing back into the bus, where she vanished in the shadows within.

  Nelson looked down, smacked his right kneecap hard with his open palm, and finally felt it pop back into place, even as the
ashen dust from the hurled zombie torso drifted to the ground behind him.

  Wincing, he stood again. He limped back to the forklift and climbed on. He needed to get some kerosene.

  *****

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Before leaving for Athens, Hemp had an idea. He sought out Tommy Watson – a man who had been a survivalist before the original zombie outbreak – and asked if he would man a radio connected to his tower at Flex’s home.

  He agreed. Tommy was a tall, serious-looking man with a thick brown goatee and a cue-ball head. At some point after the outset of the apocalypse, he had a biohazard symbol tattooed directly on top of his skull; the work was excellent, but Tommy had never discussed the circumstances surrounding his decision to get the ink.

  Since the world had died, and other interfering radio transmissions were near zero, the radios connected to the Lula tower could be received up to 17 miles away. Not every day, but it was a good bet on most days.

  Unfortunately, Athens was nearly 40 miles south, so if they wanted to establish a line between them, they would have to build another tower between the two towns or station personnel with radios every four miles or so for the remainder of the distance to Athens.

  Now ten miles on the road to Athens, Gem turned up the stereo, which still cranked 8-track tapes through a Craig PowerPlay stereo, which somebody must have insisted on.

  8-track tapes were phased out in 1982, but the old Mercedes would have been sold in 1981 as a new model, and apparently, the music purist who ordered the car already had a large collection of 8-tracks, and insisted on the Craig system. When Mercedes no longer offered the player, a discerning customer’s demands prevailed, apparently.

  Rock & Roll Band by Boston blasted. From the very first Boston album released in 1976.

  Everybody sang.

  The nameplate on the speakers had worn away long ago, but they still put out the highs and lows, and Gem had the volume maxed out.

  Windows down, hands tapping out the rhythms on the side of the old, faded paint job, Gem drove.