*****
A few minutes later we reached a door that said neurology, and Charlie pushed through it with little hesitation. This girl would either fit right in with us or set us on edge every five minutes, and I just didn’t know which yet.
Her crossbow held steady in front of her, she waited until our headlamps lit the room and told her it was clear before lowering it and looking back at us.
“Okay. What’s this thing gonna look like anyway?”
I unclipped the radio from my belt. I wasn’t sure this deep into the building if Hemp would still copy us, but I pushed the button anyway.
“Hemp, come in,” I said. “Charlie wants to know what the EEG machine’s going to look like.”
Brief static. “Charlie?” came the answer.
Gem laughed, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Yes, Charlie,” I said, holding the button down. “We’ve run into another uninfected, and she’s a tough one. We’ll be bringing her back to my place. So … can you describe the machine?”
“There will be a computer and monitor, for sure,” he said. “You might see something electronic with several small holes in it – likely plastic, but it’ll have the outline of a head on it. Telling you where each electrode plugs in.”
I saw a computer on the other side of the room and went to it. What Hemp described was lying in a tray beside it.
“Fuck, Hemp. Tell me the name Cadwell Laboratories means something to you.”
Static. “Yep. They are a manufacturer of a damned good machine. I think it’s called the Easy II.”
“Hold on,” I said, picking up the device. “Well, you don’t get the Easy II – this one’s called the Easy III, so I think you’ve got the newer model. It’s got a Dell computer system, and I think a 17” LCD monitor. Is that all right?”
Hemp came back on. “Perfect, Flex. Don’t forget the electrodes and cables – everything. Is it on a cart?”
“It is,” I said.
“Bring the whole thing. You don’t know what’s important and what’s not, so we can avoid you choosing to leave something behind that I might need. And grab a second monitor if you can find one.”
I said to Gem and Charlie, “This is it. What we came for. So let’s get it unplugged, wrapped up and ready to move.”
I returned my attention back to the walkie as Gem and Charlie started preparing the machine. “Anything else I can grab? Stuff we might need?”
“It wouldn’t hurt to have pain meds and as much alcohol, bandages, gauze, you know – basic first aid stuff as you can carry,” said Hemp. “There’s some in the lab, but not enough for my taste.”
Hemp was right. I had a small supply at the house, but this was a brand new, scary-as-shit world. We had no idea of the ratio between infecteds and uninfecteds, so it was feasible that hospitals could get emptied out of medications and first aid supplies. Drug stores abounded, but summer heat, fires, anything could destroy them or at the very least, degrade the quality. Hemp might know how to prolong the life of medications – some sort of storage method.
Luckily we had no diabetics among us – no need for regular injections or life-sustaining medications. Problems like that might serve to destroy another chunk of the remaining human population, but not from our group, anyway.
Gem and Charlie had the machine all ready, and we pushed for the door again. As we made our way back by the zombie with the arrow through his brain, I looked at Charlie and said, “Damned nice work, kid.”
“Kid,” she muttered. “Been hearing that shit all my life. I’m twenty-six.”
Stopping off at two exam rooms along the way, we gathered the other supplies Hemp suggested. We didn’t have any more encounters with the living dead, and while Gem and I were happy as shit about that, I think Charlie was a tad disappointed.
I think she loved that crossbow, and if the truth be known, I wanted to see her use it. I didn’t know at that time how often I’d get to see that.
We still had to go back out into the world, and it was kind of eerie, the lack of the creatures, or life of any kind. The dogs had begun teaming up, and we’d seen a couple of small packs of them on the way to the hospital, but for the most part, the local animals were nocturnal, and well-hidden in daylight hours. Lula’s population at last census in 2009 was just under 2,500.
Overall, I really couldn’t have picked a better location to live in a situation like this; small town means fewer people, and that means fewer of them.
Fewer of us, too.
Gem seemed to voice my thoughts. “I wonder if they’re holed up in another meat locker like the last group we found,” she said. “With a food stock.”
“I still don’t know what that’s about or how they had the organizational skills to put it together,” I said. “They’re single-minded, so far as I can tell. Cracking heads and eating food. I don’t think they can fire generators or work a thermostat.”
“Maybe not, but like the scariest fucking squirrels on the planet, they seem to like to forage and stock up a bunch of fresh brains in case of hard times.”
The drive back to the house was uneventful. We saw a group of around ten infecteds lumbering around about two blocks from the hospital, but they didn’t seem to have a particular direction in mind, and were utterly disorganized.
I pulled the car over and we all stared in their direction for a while. The light breeze was blowing in our faces, so we knew they could not catch wind of us. I imagined them close up, their hopeless jaws and teeth chewing on food that was not yet there to sustain them.
“Is that how it starts?” I asked aloud.
Gem shook her head and looked at Charlie.
“Maybe,” said Charlie. “They turn into these things, wander aimlessly for a while, and then they begin to learn from their kind. Just like us, they learn those things they gotta do to survive.”
“Shit,” I said. “The punk rocker crossbow girl is waxing philosophical.”
“I want to kill them.”
“Not this time,” I said. I want to get you back to my place.”
Gem put an arm across Charlie’s shoulder. “Babe, now I know we’re going to get along just fine.”
Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle Page 42
