by Mark Tufo
I walked over to the panel and punched the buttons, then tried the front door and a window. Beep Beep.
“Good,” said Hemp. “Once the cameras are installed, I’d like to see if we can secure an EEG machine. I’ve got some ideas how to use it to do some testing – on Jamie, if that’s okay with you, Flex.”
“Hey, if your tests can help her, then there’s no reason I can think of to say no,” I said. “I’m sure she’d agree with us. How do you feel right now, Hemp?”
“Good. No headache, nothing. No memory of it and no effects that I can pinpoint.”
I looked at his eyes. Bright and normal. No mist. No glow.
“Good,” I said. I want to go out and get that EEG machine now. We never got any more guns either, so I want to grab more of them eventually, and we sure as hell need some signal flares.”
“Hemp, if you stay with Trina, Bunsen and the babies, Flexy and I can see about getting this stuff.”
“Okay, but if you’re looking for the EEG machine, will you know it when you see it?”
“Will it say “EEG?” asked Gem.
“Might say electroencephalography.”
“Wanna write that down?” said Gem, smiling.
“Sure.”
“The hospital in Gainesville is about 18 minutes away from here – eleven miles. We already know the road is pretty clear from here to there, so this shouldn’t be a bad trip, so long as we’re not ambushed or put to sleep.”
“Or both,” Gem said. “Nothing is getting closer than a dozen feet away from me. Not if Suzi has anything to say about it.”
“Suzi?” I smiled.
“Suzi the Uzi.”
“Cute. What rhymes with Daewoo?”
“Not even sure you’re pronouncing it right,” Gem said. “You’re going to have to stick with K7.”
“That’s no fun. You ready?”
Gem shook her head. “Not yet.” She went to Hemp and hugged him hard. He returned her embrace, and when she pulled away, she said, “Hemp, I can tell you I love you already. You’re a good guy, and we appreciate being able to call you our friend.”
She hugged him again and he smiled over her shoulder at me as I looked on.
“She’s right, you know,” I said. “Something about our situation has brought us close together fast.”
They broke the embrace and Gem kissed him on the cheek.
Hemp blushed. “Just get the stuff and get back here. Anything goes wrong, then I want you to forget what you don’t have and just get back.”
“I have to go stock up on ammo and hug Trina,” Gem said. “Then I’m ready. Give me three minutes, baby.”
And she was ready in two.
With a full stock of ammo, our walkies and a shitload of spit and vinegar, Gem and I headed out for what we hoped would be an uneventful eleven-mile drive.
“Road looks good,” said Gem, scanning side to side, her hand gripping the K-7 mounted on the Suburban.
We’d brought the truck to haul any equipment we might pilfer, and while it had no side windows, it was damned well protected, just as the Hummer had been. I’d topped off the gas tank with four 5-gallon cans I had stored in my shed at the house. We’d brought the cans with us in case an opportunity to refill them presented itself. Lots of the rural farms had hand-crank fuel pumps plugged into their underground tanks for fueling up their tractors and other equipment.
“We’re already halfway there,” I said. It was now already 2:00 in the afternoon. The incident with Hemp had eaten up a good part of the day, followed by the more joyous incident with Bunsen and her new brood.
The road took a dip up ahead. Years ago a large sinkhole had opened up in the highway; it was nearly a half mile wide, and made the news all over the country. This hole was eventually filled in and paved over, but it had left in its wake a fairly steep downhill, then a peak that most people enjoyed driving over. The kids tended to haul ass down and up, trying to get their cars airborne. If they knew what that shit did to their suspension, they’d think better, but I knew damned well I’d do the same thing if I was nineteen. Fuck yes.
“Hold on, babydoll!” I shouted, and hit the gas. The big Suburban plunged down the hill, reaching about sixty miles per hour. I raced along the short valley, maintaining speed, and hit the uphill at sixty-five. I was pretty sure I’d get at least the front tires off the ground when I came up to the top of that hill.
“Baby, this is fun, but you can’t see what’s over that hill – be careful!”
And I realized she was right. Could be a wrecked car just out of sight, but I didn’t remember seeing any on the way here, and I was committed now. I kept my foot on the gas and hit the top.
My front wheels did indeed leave the ground, and when they came down, Gem let out a rare scream and her door-mounted machine gun slammed into action, her finger hard on the trigger.
Because they were there. A dozen of them from my quick count, staggering in the middle of the street as though they had a destination in mind, and I immediately hoped it wasn’t my place.
I saw them only as my Suburban crashed into the heads of four of them, knocking them backward and undoubtedly putting four nice dents in my bumper. As my front tires met pavement and rolled over their crumpling bodies, I could almost feel my transmission housing, rear axle and tires catch them underneath, pushing them into and grinding them along the pavement. I visualized their twisting bodies caught beneath the Suburban, scraping against asphalt, bones shattering, already-damaged faces being torn up further.
But we also knew it wouldn’t necessarily kill them.
We’d cleared them all and were about 300 yards away from them.
“Pull this fucker around, Flex!” shouted Gem. She ejected the empty magazine from the K-7 and smacked another into the gun as I stopped and spun the truck around to face them.
The others who didn’t get run down had turned toward us, as though they had gotten a whiff of us and needed to have a taste. I started driving slowly toward them to give Gem a better shot.
I stopped about fifty feet away and said, “Wait, baby. Wait until they’re a bit closer.” I felt guilty. “Sorry for being an idiot. I thought we could use some fun.”
Gem gawked at me. “Flexy, this crew of walking dead would’ve been here whether we were doing thirty miles per hour or seventy. Your speed is what immediately took out four of them.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Wait … not yet. Let them get a little closer.”
“Keep the engine running, and I’ll do that,” Gem answered.
She spun her machine gun forward, as did I. We’d removed the side mirrors right after installing the guns, as we quickly discovered we didn’t have the full range of motion that we needed. Problem solved.
Our eyes peeled straight ahead, our fingers rested on our respective triggers, I noticed the four I’d run over were trying to get back on their feet. Only two of them managed to stand, as the other two, a man in a tattered business suit and a woman in a police uniform, could only crawl on their elbows, the damage done by my Chevy evident.
But the other eight zombies were making decent progress. Three of them were completely nude, and I hadn’t seen that before. It disturbed me; it just brought home that everything was gone. Their modesty, awareness, just everything they had ever known, and now it was just food that they craved.
“I want to shoot now,” Gem said, when they were twenty feet in front of us.
It obviously wasn’t a request. The reverberating, staccato sound of round after round exploding from Gem’s window mount machine gun explained that to me in terms that I – and possibly other guns – could understand. I joined her. We took out seven of them, their heads exploding into particles of blood, brains and skull fragments, their bodies jerking like marionette dolls until they finally fell to the ground in heaps of gore.
But with the side mounts, there was one more son-of-a-bitch wearing an “Obama/Biden 2012” tee shirt that neither of us could hit.
“Fucker�
��s in a no-kill zone,” Gem said, grabbing Suzi from the floorboard. She hefted the Uzi and tried to lean out of the window for a shot, but the Daewoo mounted on the door frame blocked her.
“Fuck, Flex, I can’t get him.”
And he was at the hood. And he climbed onto the hood. And now he crawled directly toward the windshield, his dead face staring at us or through us, and we were freaked out and mesmerized at the same time.
He started mouthing the windshield, his bulbous tongue licking the smashed bugs there, trying to get to us, but unaware that the thick tempered glass wouldn’t allow it.
I stared at the thing gnashing and sucking the glass, its nostrils flaring wide, and I turned on the windshield wipers. I know. It was dumb. This wasn’t a bug I could just wipe away.
“Me or you,” I whispered.
“You this time,” Gem said, completely out of typical Gem fashion.
“Okay.”
I opened my door and looked quickly behind the car to make sure none of them had come out from somewhere else to overwhelm us. None had. I swung the door closed and stepped to the side of the hood, my Daewoo leveled at its head. He was still pressed against the windshield, and I already regretted not having side windows. I wasn’t going to accidentally blow out the windshield, that was for sure. I wished like hell that the Suburban had a gun like the Ford. I’d have to put it on Hemp’s list.
“Here, freakshow,” I said, in a sing-song voice. “Come on, you ugly fuck, I’m right here.”
This one was an older man, thick in the middle, but still muscular. He was wearing Nike tennis shoes, which were probably what helped him gain enough purchase to climb up on the hood in the first place.
“You’re scaring my woman, you asshole!” I finally yelled, and though my words likely had no effect, he finally looked directly at me.
And his eyes captured my attention. Even here, in the bright daylight, I could see a slight fog over them, yet they didn’t appear obscured. I swore I could see this fog almost misting off them, like a low-hanging cloud on a field of grass. I shook it off and focused on the sight of my weapon.
He quit trying to bite through the glass. He started to crawl sideways across the hood toward me, and I backed up two steps.
My eyes on him, I also took some quick glances at the crawlers and walkers down the street. They were clearly hurting, for their progress was nowhere near as fast as their zombie counterparts. But they were coming. Like mosquitoes to a bug zapper.
And then I was suddenly very tired of this shit. I put the K-7 directly to the side of the thing’s skull, and as its arm rose jerkily up to grab the gun, I blew all awareness – and half of its brain – clean out of its ugly fucking head. The blood and skull frags splattered onto the windshield, but it didn’t crack or shatter. Gem reached over and hit the washer and wipers. Now the glass was smeared with bloody streaks until about the fifth swipe – then it cleared enough that I wouldn’t have to clean it before driving.
But now I had a dead, bloody zombie sprawled on my hood like some kind of fucked up, morbid prize hunter. I might as well have mounted his destroyed head as a hood ornament.
I looked through the window and Gem shrugged and gave me a nervous smile. Then she did a little “pushing” motion with her hands, like I should get this thing off there.
I hopped back in the truck, threw it into reverse, and punched it. The body slid in its own muck, then rolled quickly off the hood, leaving a nice muddy-blood smear in its stead.
“The others are yours,” I said, throwing the Chevy into drive. “Your window.”
I came to within ten feet of them, cranked hard left, and lined Gem up. In a show of talent, she used very short bursts with her new best friend Suzi, and sent each one of them to the Hell they should have – and might have already been – living in.
When we got back on the road, we didn’t say anything. I held her hand in mine as they rested on the seat between us. The hospital loomed ahead, and I knew then that our little shopping trip was just getting started.
And I was already fucking sick and tired of this new zombie world. I wondered when they would all be dead, or if they ever would be. I didn’t know what had created them, what continued to create them, and how we had avoided becoming one of them. We’d all struggle to learn the answer. But one thing was for sure. I knew well that Hemp, Gem and I could not kill them all by ourselves and set the world back onto its faltering axis.
I pulled up to the emergency entrance and looked at Gem. She squeezed my hand again.
“I love you, baby,” she said.
“I know. Right back atcha. Now let’s get us an EEG machine and I’m thinking some pain killers.”
Her eyes brightened. “I forgot all about the weed I stole from the evidence locker! Let’s go. Now I have something to get back home for. Besides our family.”
I shook my head and laughed, and we got out. And that was one more reason I loved my Gem.
She sure the fuck knew how to make me laugh.
Chapter 228
The hospital was dark. Really dark. We’d worn the headlamps I’d gotten from the hardware store, and with fresh batteries, they were kickass. Plenty of light.
But the smell was putrid. I could practically see the ooze flowing out of the broken skulls of the decomposing bodies on the floor everywhere our eyes fell. I wasn’t sure how it was done, but their brains, in every case, were absent from their skulls, cracked open like raw eggs. I wondered how they accessed this part of the human body, and then I knew.
It was clear. They did not use tools; I’d not seen any level of awareness or intelligence that would suggest they had this ability. It was a primal, instinctive action. They clearly slammed the heads of their victims into the floor until they cracked and shattered and provided access to the meat that these beings craved.
Gray matter. Brains.
I had no idea what this part of the human body provided them or what drew them to it. But based on what we saw, it was what they wanted. Had to have.
It was what they craved.
But Gem and I didn’t want to see any more. We watched for movement as we made our way through the lobby and followed the signs to neurosurgery.
Gem walked slowly, moving her head from side to side, her light illuminating the hallway intersections we came to. So far nobody else appeared. And nothing else.
“You see why I did this now?” Gem asked.
“You mean put a headlamp on Suzi the Uzi?”
“Yep. I’ll tell you why.”
I hadn’t asked, but I was up for some conversation.
“I did it because I might be shooting at some zombie or other, and hear something off to the other side. I don’t necessarily want to have to find the fucker again if I look away and look back, so I want a light where I’m shooting, and one on my head, too.”
“I never questioned your motives, Gem. I had no doubt that there was a logical reason.”
I said this, all the while thinking it was actually a damned good idea, and I should’ve done the same thing. It would make her happy when I outfitted my K-7 with one.
My radio crackled, and I looked at Gem. “What the fuck?”
“Flex, you read me?”
It was Hemp’s voice. I grabbed the radio from my belt and pushed the talk button.
“Hemp! Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at your place,” he said, the voice crackly, but clear enough. “I got the antenna put together and up.”
“Dude, that’s eleven miles away! I thought for a minute you were out front or something. Beautiful!”
Gem almost clapped, but she didn’t want to take her hands off Suzi.
“We’re okay, Hemp. We’re in the hospital, and it smells like a morgue that went out of business and abandoned about a thousand corpses, but so far no movers.”
“Okay, good. I just wanted to test this, so get back to it. Have you found the EEG yet?”
“No, still heading to the right department.”
/> “Alright. Trina’s out here with me. The sunshine feels good, the gate’s locked, and I’m well-armed. We’re fine here, but hurry your rear ends up and get back here safely, okay?”
“You got it, Hemp. Out.”
“Out,” came Hemp’s voice.
I looked at Gem. “That guy kills me. Damned smart!”
“Why do you think I kissed him before we left?” she said.
We walked past a row of gurneys lined up in the hallway. All empty except one. That one had a body in it with something sticking out of its head. It didn’t move.
Gem approached it and saw it was one of them, an infected. But it wasn’t going anywhere now. The thing protruding from its head was an arrow. Gem looked at it in disbelief, then touched the arrow as though making sure it was real. Physical.
“Crossbow?” I asked.
“That, or fucking Robin Hood is roaming the building. Either way, someone took this one out. See how the arrow goes in at an angle?”
I leaned over to look, my light shining on the entry point, right through the eye socket.
“Yeah. It came from that way.” I pointed down the hallway in our direction of travel.
Gem and I continued our slow progress down the corridor, stepping over puddles of muck and blood, watching for moving zombie heads or anything else that might either scare the shit out of us or pose actual danger.
Then we heard a door close up ahead. Not loud. A light click.
“I am so sick of hearing shit when we’re in scary places!” Gem said, frustrated. “I’d like, just once, for you and me to be able to roam around a building filled with dead bodies and not be worried about bad shit happening.”
“I feel your frustration, but I’m still compelled to find out what that was, aren’t you?”
She nodded, but didn’t take another step. “Yeah, exactly. That’s my point. I can’t resist it, but I can’t help thinking that you and I don’t get much quality time. Ugh.”
“Ugh?”
“Yes.”
“Are you ready to start walking?”
“I’m ready to start cursing in Spanish.”
“Let’s walk instead.”