Dead Hunger VII:
The Reign of Isis
By Eric A. Shelman
Dead Hunger VII: The Reign of Isis
is a work of fiction By
Eric A. Shelman
All characters contained herein are fictional, and all similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
No portion of this text may be copied or duplicated without author or publisher written permission, except for use in professional reviews.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
©2014 Dolphin Moon Publishing
Smashwords Edition
ISBN 9781311779038
Proofread by Linda Tooch
Cover Art By Gary McCluskey
Interior DHVII Cover by Jeffrey Kosh
DEDICATIONS
At this point in the series, there are so many people to thank it is just ridiculous. I must always begin by thanking my wife, Linda. She endures my many long hours sitting at this damned keyboard creating these stories, and I love her for that and for so much more. Thanks, babe. (See where all the “babe” nonsense comes from?)
Second, I thank my brother, Don Shelman. The guy is there for me when I stumble and don’t quite know where to go with a story; sometimes it’s not even input, but a sounding board. He doesn’t need to say anything because I see the light go on when he thinks I’ve had a good idea. Thanks, Don. I love you and am thankful I have you as a brother. Thank you, too, Marion. You love the shit I write like a sister-in-law should.
Jean Middleton deserves thanks, because she is my mom and the English teacher who made sure I knew how to string a sentence together. Mom, you did a better job than you know. I believe that, whether you do or not. You were the person who showed me what hard work was for many decades. Today I don’t fear it. I love it. And I love you. While I’m at it, I want to thank Ed Middleton, my dad from the time I was fourteen years old. He passed away and I miss him.
Last but not least, there is you. Yep. The person actually taking the time to read this dedication page. (And the book that follows.) You have gone along with me on this crazy ride with some awfully strange zombies and some characters I’ve grown to love. THANK YOU. Some of you have read my books in advance and fixed a bunch of my screw-ups! THANKS, Jesse Donovan, Megan O’Hara, Dave Gammon, Carrie Herbel, Debra Allen, Chris and Sharon Berget and others. You all Rock. Jeff Clare and Danielle Pascale? You deserve a mention. You rock hard!!
Prologue
My name is Isis.
As I begin to tell you this story, the year is 2027. There are no flying cars, poverty has lost its meaning and peace on Earth has not been, and likely never will be, achieved. All members of humankind – and I include all men, women and children in that category – will likely be required to commit violent acts for the rest of their lives in order to survive.
Not against one another; never against one another. To the ones known as rotters and infecteds and abnormals. The ones that a film creator named George Romero introduced to the world through his movies as zombies; also called the living or walking dead.
The ones that I call the Mothers and the Hungerers.
I’ve read about a man who died long ago named Nostradamus who was said to be a prophet and one who could foresee the future. I’m of the understanding that nobody ever credited Mr. Romero with this distinctive talent, and yet his work came eerily close to painting a portrait of the world in which we’re now forced to live.
I’ve known nothing different. This is my world, unchanged from that into which I was born.
There are six chronicles preceding this one. The fifth volume tells the story of my father and of the group of survivors who helped us just over thirteen years ago. Within this tiny band of heroes was my cousin Dave Gammon. He and his friends sought out my father, Brett Ulrich Gammon – with no knowledge of my existence.
We were essentially trapped in a bunker in northern California. Without their help, it might have been several years before I would have been able to look upon daylight for the first time without perceiving it through a computer monitor.
You may have noticed above that I said humans will be required to commit violent acts for the rest of their lives.
While I look very much like them, and I was born of man and woman, I’m different. My mother, Angela Gammon, was pregnant with me when she was exposed to the eye vapor from one of the Mothers, or what Uncle Flex and the others call red-eyes.
These Mothers are female abnormals who were pregnant when they were infected by the gas leaking from the very planet upon which we live. The increased levels of estrogen surging through their brains, firing neurotransmitters and enhancing their brain function, caused them to become more evolved than the others.
They continued to evolve and at one time nearly exterminated all those who eventually saved my father and me.
As for the gas coming from the planet, nearly fifteen years later, the clear, odorless gas still emits from the surface of the Earth with no significant reduction in volume.
Hemp Chatsworth, our resident scientist and former CDC contractor, has determined some important things through testing over the past decade. The most important discovery – in his eyes – is that the gaseous element slowly leaves the planet’s atmosphere. Additionally, he has determined that it will someday cease.
As for the most important discovery, it is that when the gas flow does stop and the gas slips out of our atmosphere, the zombies will die.
You may ask what becomes of me when this happens.
I’m not afraid. While a Mother played a part in creating me, and I have a strong mental connection to both the Mothers and the Hungerers, I’m not reliant on the gas to live; I breathe oxygen.
If you have already read through the chronicles of the others, then you know I do not sleep. You also know that I only eat meat and that as a child I had nearly adult-sized teeth suited to those of an exclusive carnivore.
I still have the teeth, but only their sharpness stands out today as my body has grown. I have also since gained control over how I hear, feel and communicate with the Mothers and Hungerers, which was something I was forced to learn at age three.
I do not know if my lifespan will be significantly shorter than that of my human counterparts. I understand that I’m unusual in the world of humans.
I’m turning fifteen in approximately nine months from now. I’m 6’-2”. I have long, wavy blond hair that falls to my waist. I have a photographic memory every bit as good or better than that of Nelson Moore, and I’ve read every volume of a 2012 Encyclopedia Britannica we found in a local library.
Flex and Gem Sheridan told me I wouldn’t be able to understand the world in which we now live without knowing what it was like before.
The violence, despite the zombie situation, seems reduced.
I did not return the books, but I did not need them after the first reading.
Max Chatsworth is a thirteen-year-old boy very much like me and created in the same way. His mother, Charlie, was near giving birth to him when she was exposed to a large amount of the red-eye vapor. Nobody expected that he would metamorphose so quickly.
He is a Transceiver, like me. Also known as a Hybrid.
My mother was exposed to the vapor weeks – not hours – before I was born. Because Charlie’s wate
r had already broken and she was a few hours from giving birth to Max, it was everyone’s hope and prayer that the vapor would have little effect on him. Even his father, Hemp, was certain the vapor would require far more time to genetically alter the makeup of a human fetus – but he and everybody else had been wrong.
Max carries some of my most important attributes, as well as those that just seem strange to the casual observer. He also does not sleep, but he can and will eat things other than meat, though he does prefer animal protein. Our eyes have a constant red glow that can be disconcerting to those unfamiliar with the condition. This has caused many a child in our community to run away frightened, and for this reason we have taken to wearing sunglasses, particularly at night.
He can call the Mothers like me, but neither of us has been able to draw the Hungerers. The Mothers naturally utilize them as their army of sorts, so always gather them as they move. As I had attained the ability to do a year earlier, Max can use his connection like a divining rod, guiding him to our intended prey, rather than drawing them to us and our loved ones. This ability, which came to both of us at around age twelve, is paramount to the survival of all those in our community.
To explain further, I was a child who experienced a condition known as precocious puberty. That is to say it is the medical term for a normal eight-year-old girl who begins to grow breasts and sprout pubic hair as I did, while normal puberty occurs anywhere from age 9 to age 14.
Hemp explained that because I had developed language and brain skills at such a young age and had grown at a much faster rate than a normal child, the only way to know if my precocious puberty was normal is when another of me comes along.
Along came Max. His puberty began at age 9, which settled the question of what was normal for Hybrids like us.
My point is, as I reached puberty, I found that not only could I block the involuntary siren call to the Mothers, I found that my connection with the Mothers – and by association, the Hungerers – changed. While I could not feel them individually, I could almost estimate the numbers of the advancing horde by a sense of their total mass. I could estimate with fair accuracy how many were making their way toward us at any given time.
That knowledge helped us determine a strategy for their annihilation, which varied depending on their numbers.
Max can now do this, too. They are drawn to both of us for the same reason; we, as infants, unknowingly beckoned them. Once they became aware of us, they sought us out, believing we were their unborn children. The reality is that their living dead babies remain squirming inside their wombs, never to be born. This hasn’t changed.
Now we have the ability to determine their direction and either call them or go to them, keeping the shades pulled as we do so. We can only estimate how far away they are and we’ve been off by as much as sixty miles, but our sense of direction means we’ll get to them eventually. With our beacons switched off, we can take them by surprise and rid the world of them.
We have to do this; we are best equipped for it. We still have our parents to convince, though.
There has been something else leading up to this. Now, in our community, there are over 600 survivors. Many of these are pregnant women. We’ve had a bit of a baby boom in Kingman, Kansas.
Max and I believe we need more of us. People like me and Max, that is. Perhaps hundreds more. We understand this will pose ethical questions for the others in our community.
To Max and me there is no question. We cannot do this alone.
*****
CHAPTER ONE
Kingman, Kansas – Spring 2027
The city of Kingman in the state of Kansas was selected by Isis and Max as our home in what might as well have been a secret meeting. At the time, she was six years old and Max was just about to turn five.
Isis had read the most recent encyclopedias and knew the previous population and border dimensions of the town, so determined that it would be of a size that could ultimately be fully fenced and protected, and one that was also centrally located within the United States.
Nobody knew why that was important but Isis – and perhaps Max – and she did not reveal all of her reasons for choosing it until much later.
When they had arrived it was more a ghost town than anything else. It seemed the abnormals had taken Kingman by storm, and it took over a year and a half to eradicate the indigenous rotters. Stragglers came in on occasion from Wichita, which was about a forty-five minute drive to the east, which is why the fencing work began along that side of the town.
There was no more screwing around when they’d arrived. The presence of Max and Isis and the powers they possessed helped greatly during the process of building the fence around the entire populated area of Kingman, and when it was done folks were as proud as if they had just built the Great Wall of China.
It was for the same purpose, essentially. To repel the enemy – of which there were only a few types – all without heartbeats.
Some farmers remained, and along with Hemp and others, they created a water supply system designed after the system used at the Jack Daniel’s Whiskey facility in Lynchburg, Tennessee. They tapped into a decent river on the south side of town and diverted water through a trough, even dumping it from the trough to an enclosed pipe when necessary to move it under a roadway.
More primitive but effective methods of filtration, such as gravel and some charcoal, were utilized in a world with limited power, so the water was safe enough to drink. A second stream of water was provided shortly after, primarily for washing and other purposes. Nobody had gotten sick from it, so their methods were eventually proven, despite their inexperience in such technology.
It helped to have Isis who had read and remembered the Encyclopedia Britannica and who could recite what components were required for proper filtration. She was often Hemp’s reference guide.
Everyone chipped in. The gender breakdown was off-kilter, though. It was clear upon their arrival in Kingman that more men than women had survived the initial zombie outbreak, and that seemed to never quite equalize. Of the roughly six hundred occupants of the town, 44% were women and girls, and the remainder were men and boys.
If they could maintain the world they had restored, that gender imbalance would correct itself. Hemp said so, so everyone believed it to be true. Not only because women lived longer than men, but because little boys and little girls were being raised with intense weapons training and fighting skills, which meant that there were no victims in this new society. No bullies.
Nelson Moore made sure of that. His Subdudo classes were well-attended, and he had, in his infinite wisdom, added a more lethal set of moves – to be used by choice and when necessary.
Bunsen passed away in 2018, and her boy, Slider, died in 2023. Both passed from natural causes, but that did not make it any easier for those who loved them.
Charlie had found herself a litter of Golden Retriever mixes and had taken a runt female for herself, naming it Baby. The rest were claimed quickly by other townsfolk. Before you knew it, Baby was retrieving Charlie’s crossbow bolts from targets – and from dead zombies.
There were several hotels in town, which surprised Flex, Gem, and the others at first. It just wasn’t clear what people would come to Kingman to do, and with 29 motels and hotels, it seemed like overkill.
Much of the city near the riverside was industrial, which provided a plethora of materials both for building and otherwise, and while there were homes near downtown, much was commercial. The hotels were excellent for those who wanted to be close to their neighbors – which was the majority of the population.
The Hampton Inn was among the largest and first to fill up. Next, the Best Western, followed by the Quality Inn and last, the Motel 6. These inhabitants of Kingman were among the happiest, though. They had achieved what they may not have had even in the pre-zombie world; a community of people who looked out for one another.
The fence is what made everything else possible. It was not some flimsy chai
n link barrier; it was solid and strong. It was constructed with every type of treated wood and steel upright they could get their hands on, and when that wasn’t available, they used composite materials. The Great Wall of Kingman – which is what people began calling it upon its completion – stood seven feet tall – though not exactly, because it was about function, not esthetics – and it ran all the way around the city for a total length of six miles. The barbed wire that snaked along the top wasn’t much, but it was the razor variety that could slice through flesh easily, be it living or dead.
Kingman’s wall was a bit shy of the 5,500 miles of the Great Wall of China, but was an accomplishment nonetheless. They had to make several dangerous runs into Wichita to get enough material to finish it, and it took them almost eight years before they were able to put in the last section.
It was a celebration that day. One that Flex would never forget. Watching Gem’s face when she realized what they had achieved after so many years of fighting and running. They had cried as they held each other that day.
Solar power made sense, and thanks to Flex’s electrical abilities, along with other men and women with electrical expertise who found Kingman along the way, they were able to raid a solar panel manufacturing facility and use the panels to keep an enormous bank of batteries fully charged, providing limited power to the citizens of Kingman.
They were always expanding it – because the population wasn’t static by any means – and when they tied their makeshift power plant into the town’s main power grid, another great cheer erupted in the community. Once it was dialed in and adjusted, people in various sections of Kingman were given specific times to use power and limited to no more than two hours per day, not consecutive.
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