Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle

by Eric A. Shelman

  We slept in shifts, and there were no incidents through the night. By the time 8:00 AM rolled around, we’d all had enough and felt like drinking some coffee and feeling normal for the first time in a couple of days.

  The spaced-out feeling of being up for two days hadn’t completely left us, but Gem sure looked better, and Trina was chattering to Bunsen as though she were entirely human. That she was as big as a human was a fact. Pregnant, she was bigger than most.

  Hemp came in through the front door and laid his gun down beside the table. “I’ll have it with two sugars,” He said, apparently assuming I’d deliver the coffee to him as he plopped down into the wood spindle-back chair. He found the remote on the table and clicked it. I had satellite, so if anyone was broadcasting at all, there might be some chance we’d get it.

  But nothing showed up. Static on every channel. He clicked it off again, not wanting to waste generator fuel on nothing and took the cup of coffee I handed him.

  “I’d have taken you for a tea man,” I said.

  “Most tea is for pussies. American tea, that is.” He looked suddenly at Trina. “I’m sorry, young lady. That was rude of me.”

  “What’s a pussy?” Trina asked, her eyes curious.

  Gem stepped around the table and sat beside her. “It’s a bad word for someone who’s not brave,” she said.

  “Well put,” I said.

  She turned her head quickly toward Hemp and gave him that little girl’s you said a bad word face.

  He nodded and patted the top of her head. “I only meant that Earl Grey is about the only tea you can find here that a real man would drink. Trina, do I need to put a quarter in some jar somewhere?”

  “Not this time,” Trina said. “I didn’t know that one. But I will next time,” she added matter-of-factly.

  “So what’s the plan? We feel good enough that we don’t need a lookout right now?” Gem glanced back and forth between me and Hemp.

  “Gun’s right here,” Hemp said.

  I patted mine, leaning against the kitchen island. “Mine, too.”

  Gem tossed her head toward the sofa where her Uzi rested. “Okay, I guess we can beat a few zomb – abnormals – to the punch.”

  “Regardless, the plan is to hit a Radio Shack or a Best Buy and see if we can get the camera systems we need,” Hemp said. “I’d also like to set up some snares in the woods around here.”

  “Snares?”

  Hemp nodded. “I know it seems kind of archaic, but there are woods on three sides of this property, as Flex knows, and that makes it fairly simple for someone who’s driven to get very close to this house without being seen.”

  “But snares?” Gem wrinkled her nose at me as she took a deep sip from her hot coffee. Her expression quickly turned into one of utter bliss. She did love her coffee.

  “I was up early, and with my trusty MP5 by my side, I took a walk along the woods line. There are clear paths where animals make their way, and these are the same paths that anything or anybody else will make their way.”

  “So booby-trap the obvious paths,” Gem said. “And what about the poor animals?”

  I sat down next to Gem at the table.

  Hemp shrugged. “We’ll need meat, Gem. Flex, what kind of animals you got in these woods anyway?”

  “Oh, shit, that’s right,” Gem said, then slapped her hand over her mouth and smiled as Trina glared at her.

  “A few bears, not too many. “Deer, some feral pigs. I guess a zombie or two.”

  “So you can joke about it but we have to call them abnormals? Great.” Gem shook her head and swatted my arm, causing me to spill my coffee onto the table.

  I shrugged. “I don’t care anymore. What they are they are. What they are, Jamie is. After seeing her last night, I don’t know how to balance terminology versus fear versus hatred versus survival instinct. I love her, but that is not her. Not anymore.”

  Gem’s demeanor changed, and she got up and got a towel from the kitchen and wiped up my spilled coffee. “I’m sorry, baby.”

  I put my hand over hers and nodded. I never wanted her to feel bad, because I knew her heart and it was nothing but good.

  Hemp chimed in, returning the conversation back to his intended task. “Okay, back to the snares. I know how to construct tripwire snares, large or small. If we’re going after food, rabbits, small game, we can set some up on the smaller paths. The trails that lead to your yard, the bigger ones, we’ll set up some heavier duty traps using some pretty large stones. I saw a few good ones out there that should work nicely. With the deteriorated condition of some of these infecteds, and the probability that they’ll only get worse as time goes on, that still ought to do it. Considering we only need an upper branch capable of supporting that kind of weight, we should be able to set some of these up in pretty strategic locations.”

  “Are you hoping to use this system as protection? Doesn’t seem very efficient,” I said.

  “I think he’s looking to use it more as an early warning system that they’re finding their way here, babe,” Gem said. “If we start seeing them snared, we know they’re onto our scent.”

  “Precisely,” Hemp said.

  “I guess it’s better than packing mud cakes along the walkway and trying to get footprints,” I said.

  “What are we, six years old again?” Gem laughed.

  “Hey, it was fun when I was six.” I stood. “I say we get started today. But when we head out, I think I’d like to take the Crown Vic and we should all go. The dog we can lock in the house and we can leave Jamie in the lab.”

  “Bunsen,” said Trina. “Her name’s Bunsen.”

  “Got it. Bunsen,” I said.

  Gem, as was her custom, grabbed a note pad and made a list. First stop, Radio Shack. More walkies and batteries and surveillance camera systems.

  Next stop, another police station. We needed to load up on more guns and ammo. Or a good pawn shop. Some of the shit they kept in the back could be interesting. Hell, even some of the ranch homes would have nice caches of weapons. We were in Georgia, and there was no shortage of guns here.

  And Hemp wanted some medical equipment. Particularly an EEG machine. We put that on the list, but we weren’t sure we would have the time, freedom of movement, or the ability to find everything on our list today. After writing a while, Gem looked up.

  “What’s the military doing about all of this you think?” she asked. “I have to believe some of them survived and are mobilizing.”

  “I haven’t seen one plane or helicopter other than the one that almost crashed on us since this thing began,” I said.

  “That is almost impossibly unlikely,” Hemp said. There should be crashed airliners and small craft littering the country.”

  “I’m sure if we travel far enough,” I said, “we’ll find them. But for now, let’s get ready to go the store.”

  “Forget the useless wallets, just get the guns,” Gem said, smiling as she hefted her Uzi.

  “Note to self,” I said. “Stop by the vinyl store and grab the Beatles’ White Album. Someone needs to hear ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun.’”

  “I already know that,” Gem smiled. “But happiness also involves my Flexy.”

  My house is a ranch, one story with four bedrooms and three baths. I built it a few years ago, and Gem was very familiar with the layout. It was pretty typical, and had a nice long front porch with two steps leading up and a wood railing on all sides except at the steps.

  When I built it I was conscious of the fact that I was somewhat removed from any neighbors, so had security on my mind. The thick growth of trees in the surrounding forest was exactly what I wanted, and the only easy way in or out of my property was through a long, winding gravel drive. I’d graded it very flat, and any vehicle could access it with no problem. I’d kept the curves on the soft side, which is what allowed the huge mobile lab to make the drive up to the house.

&n
bsp; There was a gate at the bottom, the wood swinging type, that I most often closed. I’d left it open when I headed out to Jamie and Jack’s house because other things were on my mind, but if I had to leave for any extended period of time, I always closed and locked it.

  I locked it when we left this time. Hemp suggested we replace the beefy Master Lock with a combo type that any one of us could open without a key. There was no telling what might happen; one of us might lose a key in a scuffle, and the growth on the sides of the fence was very thick, brambly and virtually impassable. Hemp was right again. Gem added the combo lock to the list.

  As Hemp hopped back in the car after swinging the gate closed and securing the lock, Gem said, “Hemp, would barbell weights work in place of rocks? For your snares, I mean?”

  Hemp nodded. “Good idea. I think 60 lbs per snare would work fine. If you can imagine having that much tension pulling one of your legs in the air, I guess you could figure out how hard it might be to free yourself from the snag.”

  “Try 40 lbs. I’m not that ambitious,” Gem said.

  “Fuck. It would take 150 lbs to tame that tiger,” I said.

  “Only if I were looking at you just out of my reach,” Gem quipped.

  I smiled and drove on. Hemp had a little smile on his face as he looked back and forth between me and Gem. I knew he was lonely, and I could tell he wished he had someone to banter with. Besides us, I mean. And it made sense. When he told me the story of his wife and son, I felt for him. He was a great guy, and I couldn’t imagine that with his surfer looks and intellect that he wouldn’t make any woman a bit weak in the knees.

  Plus, he was funny. But what did I expect? The Monty Python guys were all Brits, and damn, they cracked the shit out of me.

  As I left the gravel drive and hit the street I said, “I think we might just hit a local hardware store, and there’s a Target there where we might get the rest. We’ve got some diverse needs.”

  I hit the gas and the Crown Vic’s new tires bit into the pavement and screamed off like the son-of-a-bitch cop car it could’ve been.

  Everyone inside smiled. Even Trina.

  And I was rethinking Fords. It was a strange, new world, indeed.