by Mark Tufo
On the way to town, Trina had asked us if we were on our way to pick up her mommy and Jesse. She didn’t mention her father Jack, and it may be because in her mind she already knew he was gone. She had been in that house after all, and seeing him like that must have been a nightmare. We were all surprised she slept through the night last night, but she was exhausted, and perhaps even the nightmares couldn’t overpower her need to rejuvenate.
In answer to her question I turned my eyes to Gem. She shook her head slowly, then looked into Trina’s eyes. “We’re still trying to find them, baby. Don’t you worry. They both love you. Just remember that when you miss them.”
Trina said nothing. We promised to get her some dollies at the store if she’d be good and stay with Gem. This seemed to make her forget for the time being.
Normally I hate to lie. Not this time. I wanted to lie to her forever. Make her believe they were still on this earth.
And it kept nagging at me. What we’d seen at the CDC. Those things coming back to life because we didn’t destroy their brains.
I hadn’t done anything to Jesse’s brain. Had she crawled from her earthen grave, now one of them? Was she out there now, even as we faced the horrors of this modified existence, hungry, hungry, starving?
I put it out of my mind. We had to know more. I didn’t want to picture my Jess like that. But it nagged.
Hemp and I stepped past the body, scattering the flies. I waved them away from my face – they had just been feasting on dead flesh and I didn’t like the idea of them anywhere near my eyes or mouth. We had handheld flashlights, but I knew the first thing I wanted. First we reconnoitered the aisles to make sure none of the hungry dead were lying in wait, if they could even do that, and were relieved to find we were alone in the store.
It wasn’t a big store, and at the entry the light filtering in through the storefront windows was enough to see by. About 15 aisles, a local store that specialized in the things the local people most often needed. Generators, plumbing parts, electrical. I headed for the flashlight section and found what I was looking for immediately. While the front of the store was bathed in light, the rear aisles wouldn’t be. I grabbed all they had on the rack and went to the end cap where the AAA batteries were hung. I took down a 24 pack and popped it open and began loading batteries into a couple of the LED headlamps. Hemp had made his way to the aisle where the rope was stocked.
“Hemp! Where are you, buddy?”
“Aisle 7. Found some good high tensile, thin rope.”
I turned into the aisle and met him. He’d taken a small shopping basket and had put six rolls of the rope in it. I gave him a headlamp.
“Bloody good idea, Flex.” He strapped it on his head and slid the switch. The light was excellent and directed.
He said, “I need some very strong, thin fishing line or something. A fifty pound test would work well if they have it.”
“Aisle 12 is fishing and camping gear. You good here? I’m heading over to electrical. Stuff for wiring the cameras.”
“Get as much video cable as you can,” he said. I’d like to spread out our field of vision, so we’ll probably have some long runs. Also get some splicing connectors, and if you can find them, some motion detectors. No sense in powering the cameras unless the motion detectors see something coming. Then they can kick on, and that’ll draw our attention.”
I moved around the edge of the row and made my way down to electrical, grabbing one of the light plastic shopping carts along the way. The kind with the long pole on top so you can’t take them out through the door. Damned staff was too lazy to go retrieve them from the parking lot.
And now there was no staff. Good move, maybe.
I grabbed four motion detectors along the way, then came to the cable wire and pushed all the rolls off the hanging rods into my cart. Same with the connectors.
Then I had a thought. I knew the walkies were okay for a couple of miles at best with obstacles in the way. A super tall antenna would be a big help. The area where we were located wasn’t too hilly, so if I could get an extension antenna wire up high enough, it would open up our distance, perhaps closer to the 28 miles promised by some of the newer walkies. I decided to get the cameras first, then look for something that I could build a makeshift antenna tower with.
“Nothing over here,” Hemp called. “I’m going into the back to see if they’ve got extra stock. There’s a hanger and price for the 50 lb, but it’s empty. I’ll use 30 lb if I have to, but I prefer stronger.”
“Gotcha. I’m getting what we need here. Hey, Hemp! They have video surveillance kits! 6-camera, easy setup.”
Hemp didn’t reply. I unloaded three full sets for 18 cameras. That ought to do it. Hardware stores sure tried to cater to everyone’s needs these days, and I was glad. Radio Shack was officially off the list.
Next, I went to the lock section and found a beefy, 2” hasp master lock with a four-number combo. I didn’t figure the number would have to be that complex considering what we were trying to keep out. I dropped two of them in my basket, too.
Now for the antenna. I was thinking some ½” copper pipe, joined by couplings to a height of 100’ might do it. So ten 10’ sections were on my list. Along with the proper flux and solder and a nice soldering torch to sweat the pipe together. It could be assembled in less than an hour. Standing it up might be a trick, but I was sure Hemp would be able to figure it out. He was an engineer, after all.
I dropped the couplings, solder and torch in my basket, and grabbed the ten lengths of pipe and hefted them out to the Crown Victoria. They clearly weren’t going to fit inside, so I put them down, ran back inside to grab some more rope, and headed back out. Gem helped me bundle them, then we used massive strips of duct tape to secure them to the top of the car just to the side of our mounted AK-47.
Okay, Gem’s AK-47. She loved that thing.
The day was heating up. It was already around 80 degrees.
“Hemp!”
There was no reply. It had been over eight minutes. “Hemp!”
Still nothing.
I left my cart and swung my K7 around to kill position and stood stock still. I heard a bumping sound from the back of the store.
And I ran. I ran to the stockroom door and yanked it open, my headlight bathing each place I turned my head. The room was rectangular, and had several rows of shelves that ran nearly floor to ceiling. My light was nearly absorbed by the room, and only directly ahead of me was illuminated. Hemp was not anywhere in sight, and so far he hadn’t answered. Chills began their trek up and down my spine.
“Hemp! Where are you? Can you hear me, man?”
Still nothing. A shuffle. Off to my left. I yelled again. “Hemp! Answer me or I might shoot you!”
I didn’t think for a second that Hemp would think this was anything like funny. He wasn’t a stupid man.
I turned left and walked quietly, looking down each aisle, my headlamp exposing anything that might move.
Nothing did.
A grunt.
I screamed like a native warrior and ran to the last aisle, turning the corner at speed. A large man, formerly alive but no longer, with peeling skin and reddish-pink glowing eyes, stood right there, stopped dead center at the beginning of the fifty-foot aisle. To stop my forward momentum so that I didn’t crash into the thing, I dropped my gun to hang awkwardly from the shoulder strap, windmilling my arms madly as I struggled to reverse course.
The nostrils flared wide – very wide – and in its moment of what must have been surprise, it just stared down at me. He must have been at least 6’7”, and because he was wearing basketball shorts and a jersey I assumed he’d been playing a little b-ball when his world changed. I felt like I was facing Larry Bird with flesh-eating virus.
His white-yellow teeth shone in my light, and he came at me the next split second, just as I began to make some progress away from him. He didn’t physically move fast, but his sheer size made every step like two of mine. I was startled
; he was too close. I continued my stagger backward, lost my balance again and fell, and as I looked up, he appeared to be ready to drop right on top of me.
I scrambled to my feet again and my gun clattered to the floor. As I scurried away, my left foot caught the weapon, kicking it in my intended direction of retreat. I turned my head back to see what chance I had of getting away when my light fell on a disturbing sight.
Hemp’s shoes. The soles shone in my light. He was unconscious on the floor in the middle of the aisle.
I kicked the gun hard forward again as I continued to put distance between me and the lumbering zombie, whose eyes, even without the illumination from my headlamp, glowed after me. Then, in one fluid motion, I scooped the gun from the ground, rolled onto my back and blasted no fewer than 20 rounds into that huge, deteriorating, fat head of his, laying him down like a pile of bricks smashed by a wrecking ball.
As I watched the mass of meat and gore that used to be his face, I saw his eyes slowly fade to black. I stared for a moment. The shine was life. Somehow. In their eyes. I had not given it enough thought, I now knew. If Hemp was still alive, we would give it the analysis it deserved.
If he wasn’t, I had no idea what we would do.
I knew the creature was gone, finally dead, therefore no longer a threat. I ran down the aisle closest to me, all the way to the end, and turned left. I still didn’t want to skirt past the thing, no matter how sure I was that it was dead.
I got to the end aisle and saw Hemp on the floor. Kneeling down beside him, I took his arm and gently turned him over. He was out cold, but breathing.
He looked unharmed. Externally, at least. No blood. No injury. No scratches or bites that looked human inflicted. Tucking down, I pulled him up by the waist and somewhat to his feet. I bent forward and rested him over my right shoulder, then struggled to stand up. After nearly going over backward, I regained my balance and walk-jogged to the door of the stockroom, pushed through it, and back into the aisle where my cart was. I lowered Hemp inside the cart and he folded up on top of the cable.
Not wanting to make Hemp’s trip in vain, I pushed over to his basket and loaded the stuff in his cart into mine, on top of him. Then I ran for the door.
I’m not sure why I was still spooked. I was almost certain that one creature was the only danger here, but it was like I was eight years old again, and I was conjuring up goblins and ghosts and a thousand arms reaching out to grab my shirttail and drag me into hell.
But I made it to the door. It did not occur to me at that moment, since I lacked complete and utter sanity, that the cart would not fit around the body in the doorway, or that the fucking metal rod that was sticking up would hit the door frame. So, in a perfectly logical scenario, I pushed that overloaded cart full speed through the entry door, the wheels slamming into the torn-up body on the ground and the 1” metal pipe attached to the cart slamming into the glass wall above the door. As a result, the cart containing Hemp and our precious supplies went into a stutter-flip, sending Hemp and all the crap piled on top of him tumbling to the ground.
I realized at the last second what had happened, and I tried to hang onto the cart, but all I did was slow it ever-so-slightly. Gem saw what had happened and practically leapt from the Crown Vic. She looked at me, her eyes wide.
“Jesus!” she shouted. “Are you guys alright?”
“I’m fine! He’s unconscious. Get him into the car!”
I stopped, my breath burning my lungs with each draw, and looked behind me. Nothing in the store moved.
I realized she wouldn’t be able to do it alone since Hemp was dead weight. I ran to Gem and helped her lift Hemp into the car. Then I slammed the door and went back to right the basket and pick up our strewn supplies. I would not sacrifice this stuff that we needed for self-preservation.
Less than thirty seconds later I had the stuff in the trunk of the Ford. I jumped back into the car and fired the engine.
“Fuck this. Let’s get back to the house.”
Gem was slapping Hemp in the face, and not softly. He would not wake up.
“Baby, he’s not coming to!” she said. “What happened in there?”
“I can’t talk right now,” I said.
And nobody said a word until we got through the gate and into the security of my house again.
We stared at Hemp, who we’d laid on the couch.
And we waited.
With our guns at ready.
Chapter 227
Hemp didn’t wake on his own. About 65 minutes after his encounter, Gem sat on the couch beside him and shook him gently by the shoulders. His eyes fluttered open and he moaned.
When he started to stir, Gem got quickly off the sofa, picked up her gun and held it, barrel pointed toward the floor.
“Man. What happened? Gem, why do you have your gun?”
We looked at him. We’d never heard the creatures speak other than in early stages and then, they only wanted to tell us how hungryhungryhungry they were, so we figured he was okay.
“You got got by a zombie,” Gem said. “Sorry, but until I heard something intelligible out of you . . .”
“I got . . . got?”
“In the hardware store,” I said. “You went into the stock room, I started to worry, and next thing I knew you were out on the floor and I was running from a dead basketball player.”
Hemp tried to sit up, then abandoned the idea. He put a hand to his head. “I don’t remember any of it. Just putting some things in my basket, and thinking I’d look in back for more stock.”
“Bad move as it turns out,” I said. “We either need a buddy system rule or just to approach every situation as if one of these things is around the corner. I’m very surprised this thing got the jump on you.”
“I have no idea how it did. I don’t remember seeing it at all. Bloody hell, I don’t even remember the stock room.”
“How are you feeling now?” Gem asked.
Hemp nodded. “Okay. The grogginess is going away pretty fast.”
Gem snapped her fingers. “This is too familiar. It’s exactly what we found with the people in Cynthia’s house, stored for food. Exactly. They were out, save for a couple of them. Taylor was awake, but perhaps in a paralytic state. Flex?”
“Come to think of it, yes. Hemp, you were out, but the problem is, you didn’t wake on your own until Gem shook you. And even that didn’t work for well over an hour.”
Hemp looked confused. “But how? Did it strangle me, cut off my oxygen supply?”
“Not a mark on you, buddy. Except on your elbow – a bruise. Probably from falling.”
“I need to find out what this is.”
I thought for a moment about the eye shine. Everyone had noticed it, and this was as good a time as any to bring it up.
“Hemp, have you thought about the eye shine aspect of these creatures? What causes it, and what, if anything, its purpose might be?”
“To be honest,” Hemp said, “I’ve kind of avoided verbalizing about it too much because it made no sense. But I have tossed it around in my mind, and I will need to do some tests on Jamie if I want to come up with any answers.”
Gem realized she was still holding her gun and leaned it against the end of the sofa. Trina walked into the room and bounced on her feet a full foot in the air.
“Bunsen is having her babies!” she shouted. “Two so far!”
Despite the seriousness of the discussion on the floor, we all smiled at this news. Even Hemp.
“Well, let’s go get some warm towels and see if mama needs anything!” Gem said.
“The miracle of childbirth,” Hemp said, rubbing his face with both hands and getting unsteadily to his feet.
Trina jumped in the air clapping her hands, and ran into the utility room where we’d set up Bunsen on a large quilt. When we walked in, she was in the process of pushing out her fourth puppy. Two of the other three were already latched onto a nipple, and suckling away.
We all watched this with smi
les on our faces. This was indeed the miracle of life, and we had no idea how many things would be born over the next year, how many would die, and how many would refuse to stay dead.
What we did know, by the time it was over, was that there were six more tiny souls on this planet than there were just a few moments ago, and it did our hearts good to see it. We let nature take its course, and Trina and the rest of us mourned to see the seventh pup come out stillborn.
It lay there and never moved. It was born dead, and after an hour we knew it would clearly stay dead. It was the first actual confirmation that this reanimation condition did not affect the canine population.
“They’re so wet and sticky,” said Trina.
“Yes, they are. Don’t worry. Bunsen will get them cleaned up. We’ll help her if she’ll let us,” Gem said.
“Aunt Gemmy, Bunsen is very nice. She’ll really like it if we help her.”
Gem pulled Trina into her lap on the folding chair she sat on as she watched the other squirming pups searching for nipples, finding them, and drinking of their mother’s sustenance.
Hemp stood from his chair. “I have some work to do. Flex, if you think you can handle the camera installation, I’d like to do some stuff in the lab.”
“I’m a fuckin’ electrician, so I think I can handle some cable runs and wire connectors.”
“Just fucking with you, old man,” Hemp said, smiling.
“Hemp, I’m not sure about you going in there alone,” Gem said. “Not after what happened at the store.”
“I know. We need more bodies,” said Hemp.
“I don’t know if I’d put it like that,” I said. “Maybe we need more warm bodies.”
“Point taken. Okay, first things first,” Hemp said. “I guess we should get the cameras up. That way we’ll have a sense of security, and that will set us at ease.”
“And keep us alive,” added Gem. “Which sets me at great ease.”
“Me, too,” I said. “And I already have an alarm system in the house, so I’ll just program it to chime when a door or window opens. I usually turn that off.”