by Mark Tufo
She took off, walking tentatively, and I followed. We weren’t sure which door had closed, but we figured sounds didn’t do much for the creatures, so we started calling out.
“Is anyone there? We’re uninfected, and just trying to survive, like you,” I began. “We can share information or help if you need it.”
Gem tried next. “Look, dickweed, whoever you are. If you’re a zombie, then get your ass out here where I can blow your head off. If you’re not a zombie, we’re not going to hurt you, ‘cause that’s not what we do.”
“More good cop, bad cop?”
Gem shrugged.
A voice came from behind the door we stood directly in front of.
“What if I hurt you?”
Gem and I stared at one another. “A girl?” I whispered.
Gem nodded. “I think so,” she whispered back.
“My name’s Gem and the guy I’m with is Flex. We’re staying at his place in Lula, about 11 miles from here. Are you okay?”
Nothing. Then, after about fifteen seconds: “I’m alright. I took a few of those fucks down, but I’m alright myself.”
“Do you need help?” I asked.
“What have you got?” the voice said.
“Guns, food, power, shelter, picking up more every day.”
“And a nice mobile lab, if that impresses you,” added Gem.
The doorknob turned. Gem and I stepped back, our headlamps directed to the door, our guns at ready, but angled toward the floor. It opened fully and an arrow poked through.
“Would you drop that damned thing?” I asked.
“I will if you’ll move your damned lights out of my eyes and lower those guns some more!”
We realized we were blinding the dirty blonde girl, so we directed the bright beams of light down at the floor by pivoting the mini lights on their hinges.
She lowered her weapon.
“So you’re the crossbow girl,” I said.
“We saw some of your handiwork,” Gem said. “Good aim. How close were you when you took out the one down there?” She pointed at the gurney 25 yards back.
“I was right about here,” she said. “Name’s Charlene Sanders, but they call me Charlie.”
“Who calls you that?” Gem asked.
The girl shrugged. Her AC/DC tee shirt was too small for her, but it looked clean. She looked a bit harried, but was clearly tough as nails and pretty hot, actually.
“I guess that’s right,” she said. “Nobody calls me that anymore. Unless you do.”
“Flex Sheridan, Charlie. Nice to meet you.” I held out my hand and she held her crossbow in one hand and shook mine.
“I’m Gem. Charlie, we’d like to help you if you’ll trust us. We’ve got a very small group, but we’re working on a lot of things to try to keep us safe. You trying to get anywhere in particular?”
The girl shook her head. She looked about twenty-two years old, but this situation tended to make peoples’ faces appear older. She might be as young as nineteen.
Charlie seemed to relax. “Making plans isn’t working so well for me. I’m more about reacting right now than taking action. So yeah. I guess I could see if what you’re doing is something I’d like to be doing.”
“Where does your family live?” Gem asked.
“About ten miles from here,” Charlie said. “Only child, my dad left when I was fifteen. My mom wasn’t one of the infecteds as you seem to be calling them, but she’s gone. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“My sister is infected,” I said. “I love her. I can’t bring myself to just casually start calling them zombies, but I can’t kid myself – they’re very zombie-like, so sometimes we slip. But I prefer to call them abnormals, infecteds, you know.”
“I get it,” Charlie said. “You’re a good brother.”
“I guess so. Okay,” I said. “First things first. We need an EEG machine for our buddy.”
“Who’s your buddy?” she asked.
“His name’s Hemp. British guy, good lookin’, shitloads of brains.”
She laughed, and it was genuine and more relaxed than I would’ve expected.
“Well, he should keep them under wraps, then. These things have a taste for them.”
“I think we’re going to get along just fine,” said Gem, smiling. “Let’s get our shit done and get out of this stink hole.”
The three of us moved down the hallway and came to the door marked Neurosurgery. We pushed the door open slowly and shone our lights down the vacant hallway.
“Why did you come here, to the hospital?” I asked the newcomer.
“Shine your light down here,” Charlie said, motioning to her thigh.
We both did, and it revealed a good tear in her pants that was soaked around the edges with blood. She pulled the tear apart, and we saw a deep gash that was still pumping blood.
“I’m like a fucking scented candle to these freaks,” she said. “Like walking chum.”
“Shit,” said Gem. “We’ll need to bandage that up fast. You feel okay?”
Charlie nodded. “Yeah. I was searching wrecked cars for supplies and when I left an old Volkswagen Thing, the damned tin body was split open and I caught an edge.”
I laughed. “A Thing? I had no idea any of them were still on the road.”
“I’m pretty sure it was the last one,” Charlie said. “I’d never seen one before. Even after I got cut I had to look on the back to see what the hell it was.”
“It was the fucking 70’s, that’s what it was. Everybody was so stoned they’d buy anything,” Gem laughed.
It felt good to hear her laugh. I looked forward to a lifetime of it.
“Okay, let’s find that machine and get the hell out of here.”
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, then: “Oh, yes. 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 mov
e.”
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 much 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.”
Charlie asked what we were talking about it, and we explained it on the way. 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.”
We returned to my house, showed Charlie how to access the gate and lock it again, and drove in. Hemp sat in a glider-rocker on the front porch with Trina looking more miniature than usual in the large Adirondack chair beside him. She was drinking a juice box of lemonade, and he was drinking a beer.
When we drove up he stood and made his way to the Suburban, Trina following close behind.
“Hood’s a mess,” said Hemp. “Close call?”
“Yeah, I have to talk to you about the no-kill spot. We might need a roof mount on this one, too,” Gem said, dropping out of the cab followed by Charlie, who got out of the passenger side rear door.
“Hey,” she said, extending her right hand, but without releasing her crossbow, which was still gripped in her left.
“So you’re the girl named Charlie,” said Hemp, taking her hand. He then pulled her in for a hug and she didn’t resist.
He spoke into her ear, but loud enough for me and Gem to hear, “I’m Hemp. And I’ve gotten just a bit more touchy-feely since I met these two. I appreciate living, breathing humans all the more, so please, excuse my invasion of your personal space, but I am truly happy to meet you.”
After Hemp pulled back and let her go, Charlie said, “It’s nice to meet you too, Hemp. Gem and Flex say you’re a good guy, and from first impressions, I get that, too. Now who’s this?” she asked, smiling at Trina.
“That little one is my niece Trina,” I said.
“What’s that?” Trina asked, pointing to the muck on the hood.
“It’s paint,” said Charlie. Then she knelt down and put the crossbow down in the dirt. She dusted her hands off and put them on Trina’s shoulders. “You are such a little beauty,” she said, smiling.
“Mommy says I’m a princess,” Trina beamed. “My doggie just had puppies!”
“You’re kidding me!” Charlie said, her eyes wide. “How many?”
“Like a hundred,” Trina said. “Wanna come see? They’re inside.”
“A hundred puppies!” said Charlie, smiling up at the rest of us. She raised her eyebrows as if to ask if she could go with Trina.
We all nodded.
She stood and Trina put her hand in Charlie’s without hesitation and led her toward the house.
Hemp picked up the crossbow. “Nice one,” he said. “Can she use it?”
“Shit yes, she can use it,” answered Gem. “I’m looking forward to having her show me how to use it.”
Hemp spread his hands apart. “Well, let’s take a look at that EEG! I appreciate that you brought a pretty girl home with you, but that is, after all, why you left in the first place.”
“You’re right, pal. But one thing – she’s twenty-six, so you might want to treat her more like a woman than a girl. I think she’d appreciate it.”
I noticed a slight smile touch Hemp’s lips at that moment. It seems that came as good news.
We helped Hemp carry the equipment to the mobile lab. He put on a gas mask, checked on Jamie, and came back in the front area of the motor home.
“She’s okay, but decomposition is continuing. I don’t know if it’s different when they’re getting regular food, but it’s not pretty, Flex.”
“Should we feed her something?” I asked. “Hemp, she’s basically been without anything at all to eat since I put her in that plastic. No matter what she is, she must be starving.”
Gem took my hand in hers as we waited for an answer.
Hemp thought a long time before answering. “Flex, I don’t know what she feels or doesn’t feel. I know she is not alive in the typical sense. She has no heartbeat. With the EEG I intend to learn more about her brainwave activity, but for now, under restraint, she’s not exhibiting any signs of pain or suffering.”
I nodded slowly. “Okay. But as for my question of food. Would trying to feed her something alter any of your planned tests? Would it hurt anything?”
“I don’t really know,” Hemp answered. “The eye vapor or mist we discovered seems to be minimal. Her eyes are not very obscu
red, which means this vapor, whatever it is, is quite low. If feeding her increases this, that actually might be a good thing; I need to gather some sort of sample to analyze.”
It all made good sense to me. His professional way of explaining the scientific side to me did help me set aside my emotions somewhat.
“So I hate to keep going back to this, but if we do feed her, what do we feed her?”
Hemp put up a finger and nodded. “I set a few small snares in the woods today after I worked on the antenna, so I might be able to come up with the brains or flesh of a rabbit or squirrel by morning. I can do an analysis of her condition before and after. You know, see if there’s any change at all.”
“Wear protection around her,” Gem said. “We don’t need you passing out again.”
“I have been, and I will,” Hemp said. “Been there, done that, as they say. Gem, about the physical touch aspect of it. You had to actually touch me before I awakened, correct?”
Gem nodded quickly. “Yes, but as I told you earlier, even that didn’t work right away. But yes, it was the same as with the other people we found. Once we touched them, they awoke fairly easily; but it’s as though they were content to sleep indefinitely until awakened. I’m only glad it was us who woke them instead of them.”
I paced away from him and stared at the first aid supplies I’d dropped on the counter as I awaited Hemp’s thoughts.
“So perhaps it’s more of a light coma rather than a sleep,” he said. “I might have to purposely expose myself to it with the EEG connected to me to see exactly what it does to my brain.”
“Bullshit,” Gem and I said in unison.
“I’m afraid it is very important, especially if this is one of the methods they use to subdue their victims.”
“You’ve already been exposed once,” I said. “We know it doesn’t kill you, but we don’t know if the effect is the same the second time. So it’ll be my turn if we try it.”
“Flex,” Gem said, grabbing my arm. “Let’s just assume this is how it works and figure out how to deal with it. I don’t want you to do that!”
“Sorry, babe. I don’t have a choice. I’ll be fine. Hemp was, and he is.”