Everyone was alive. Now I needed to get the antitoxin, Doc Scofield and Hemp in the same room with my son and Charlie’s new baby. Isis would also be immunized, whether or not she felt it was necessary. Sometimes a baby had to be put in her place.
*****
“Flex, man,” said Dave,” tell me it wasn’t like this the whole time we were in California.”
With Gem, Jim Scofield, Trina, Taylor, Serena, Charlie, Flexy, Isis, the dogs and the newest member of our brood, Max, crammed in the Land Cruiser behind me, we kept our speed to a cautious minimum as Dave carted the rest of us down to Tony Mallette’s house in the Crown Vic. Punch introduced himself to my partners in the zombie war and they all thanked him for taking down the red-eyes.
“Well, Dave,” I said, “I don’t mean to insult anyone, and this definitely isn’t a slam on Bug, but this shitstorm – and the hurricane – all started when you guys got back.”
“No offense taken,” said Bug, from the back seat. “My girl does what she does. I’m just glad we’re all alive.”
“Anyway,” I said. “We were gettin’ ready to live like the fuckin’ Waltons before all this.”
“I’d take a little freakin’ house on a prairie about now,” said Nelson.
“Punch,” I said, “We’ll see about gettin’ the grape GTO back here in the next couple of days,” I told him.
“No hurry,” said Punch. “Pretty distinctive color. I think I can find it if it gets jacked.”
Tony’s house was roomy, centrally located, and it was built out of brick. We hoped it had been missed by the tornado and spared substantial damage from the hurricane.
As it turned out, Tony’s house was intact. On the way there we passed Doc Scofield’s place, and it had not done so well. The path of the tornado was clear, and his home had been dead center. It was more rubble than our place.
Just after we went by, the radio kicked into life. It was Scofield’s voice. With an audible sigh, he said, “There goes my resale value.”
Bug grabbed the radio and pushed the button. “Easy come, easy go Doc,” he said. “I’m starting to miss my bunker.”
“If only anything came easy these days,” said Jim. “I wasn’t there all that long, but it sure started to feel like home. I was ready to grab a club and go out huntin’ for a good woman.”
“Hey, bro, give it here,” said Nelson. Bug did, and he pushed the button. “Grampa Jim,” he said. “Any chick would be lucky to snag a guy like you, man. You’re smart, about the same height as a woman, and you got a nice beard. What else do chicks want?” He paused a moment and said, “Wish I could grow a beard.”
I didn’t hear Scofield laugh, but I’m sure he did. I imagined just knowing that his grandson was alive had to give him some peace.
A huge oak tree had fallen at a home about an eighth of a mile up the street, and it nearly blocked the entire road. As we drove up on a lawn to get around it, two straggler zombies staggered toward us so Bug tried his luck at shooting with his left hand. He wasted three rounds, but eventually took the rotters down.
Dave turned into Tony’s driveway and we got out. I went immediately to the Land Cruiser that pulled in right behind us. Everyone piled out and I lifted Flexy from Gem’s arms. “Let’s get this boy inside and give him the antitoxin. I don’t want my boy breathin’ out of any goddamned pen tube any longer than he has to.”
Gem put her arm around my waist. She didn’t say anything right away. Just the feel of her beside me was all it took to tell me that despite the fact that we lost everything yet again, we had what was most important.
We still had one another. I looked up at the house and thought again about Tony. He was the sole casualty of this harrowing couple of days. He was a great loss and a character who would be greatly missed.
“Tony Mallette is dead,” I said. “Long live Tony Mallette.”
I don’t know why I said it. There would never be another Tony.
*****
Epilogue
It’s been almost a year since the hurricane. Since the Whitmire house we lived in was completely destroyed, we got back on the road and drove. You’ll never believe where we went.
Yep. Back to my home in Lula, Georgia. We’d come full circle.
We had quite a group now, and I know you’re probably thinking that we’d already had a bad experience there, but we had just been exposed to all this crap back then. Our knowledge base and our ability to protect ourselves had come a long way since the days right after this mess began.
I knew of a couple of local distilleries as well, so it was a good bet that we could set up a good processing plant for urushiol. Once we got more of the regular and red-eye zombie vapor, we’d have our WAT-5 and the specialized variety of wafers for our pregnant women – should the pregnancy epidemic continue, and Serena’s condition seemed to indicate it would.
Hemp wanted to make a run by the CDC again to see if any of the mobile labs remained in the garage. He had been big-time depressed to see his burn to a crisp, and there had been a total of six of them on our first visit. We’d taken the best of them and Hemp had told us that the worst one they had was still a hell of a rig.
Flexy responded almost immediately to the Diphtheria antitoxin, and shortly thereafter, his tracheotomy incision healed. It’s almost invisible now. We were able to immunize Flexy, Max and Isis, though, as we suspected, Isis told us it wasn’t necessary.
We let Isis know that no matter what she thought about her need for vaccines, we didn’t care. She was around fifteen months old, so she would have to obey the grownups for a bit longer. I was actually very interested in seeing her grow up so that we could watch her develop. If she were walking and talking at that age, it was anyone’s guess what she would be able to do later.
Speaking of that, since it is now a year later, Isis is just over two years old. She is far taller than the typical two year old – she looks around four – and carrying on complex conversations with her is commonplace.
For Hemp, that is. Hemp can keep up with her and even surpass her. The child is amazing and can articulate and share what she is capable of with anyone, if they care to know.
One thing that Isis can do is something she wasn’t able to do in Whitmire at the time all this stuff happened. Had she been able to do it, we might have saved the mobile lab. The house still would have been turned to kindling. Isis can’t control the weather.
Isis can now block the impulses that she sent out as a younger child; the ones that call the red-eyes to her. She relates it to drawing down a shade and preventing others from seeing in. She keeps the shade drawn at all times, but she explained that it’s only with a conscious effort that it is possible.
Isis also believes there are other things she will be capable of as she gets older. She has indicated to Hemp that when she achieves puberty, the changes in her body will trigger powers of which she cannot even conceive. It’s strange, because I both look forward to and fear what may be to come.
I don’t sit around and freak out like a little pussy about it, but it does cross my mind now and then.
Let’s talk about Max Chatsworth for a moment. He’s one now, and almost as chatty as Isis was at that age. Max also has red eyes like Isis, only he can and will eat things other than meat. Like Isis, his teeth are also oversized, and he does prefer meat to anything else. Max never cries, but Hemp believes he knows why. As a baby, he was very good at pointing very specifically to things he wanted. A rattle. A toy. A piece of beef jerky. Now he possesses the vocal skills to simply ask for what he wants, so he has never had a need to cry, which is, essentially, an unspoken demand for something a child wants.
Max, like Isis, does not sleep. I imagine there will be some marathon chess matches as the years go on, so long as these two remain near one another.
Hemp has run blood tests on his son and has found nothing really out of the ordinary. He and Isis are like brother and sister, and as far as anyone knows, they are unique to the world.
&nb
sp; Isis seems protective over him, and that can’t be a bad thing, considering what the child seems to be destined to grow into. Goddess Of The Zombies. It’s what I picture when I see her as a young woman in my mind. I say this because of a dream I had.
In the dream it is near dusk and the sun is setting in a brilliant, yellow-orange sky. The dark clouds leap from the horizon to the heavens, and everything on the ground is bathed in its unearthly glow.
Gem and I are sitting on the front porch at what I recognize as the Lula house. We are in the swing, and beside us, in the Adirondack chairs, are Hemp and Charlie.
Out in the yard, wearing a long, flowing white dress, is Isis. She stands facing the tree line, her arms outstretched to the sky, the final warmth of the day touching her skin.
In the distance, all along the edge of the forest, zombies appear. Diggers, rotters, men, women and children.
Hungerers.
There are mothers among them, too, as always, remaining behind the front lines, protected by the vulnerable flesh of the hungerers.
Suddenly, Isis lowers her eyes from the sky and stares straight ahead. We turn to see the creatures as they fall to their knees and avert their eyes, unworthy of the gaze of the Goddess, Isis.
Her eyes change from light red to a dark, burning red, no less intense than Mars through a telescope. As this occurs, the zombies, in a motion they are incapable of, rise smoothly to their feet and retreat once more into the cover of the forest.
In my dream, at that moment, Max walks up beside her, a boy of perhaps thirteen or fourteen. He wears jeans and a white shirt, and over his shoulder is a crossbow.
Isis takes his hand and they walk toward the trees, leaving two beautiful young women in their mid-twenties staring after them.
Trina and Taylor, I know.
A boy stands in front of us on the porch and calls, “Go get ‘em, you two!” and he is smiling and excited at the coming confrontation, for he knows Isis and Max will reign supreme. Over Flexy Jr.’s shoulder is a Daewoo K-7 like his pop’s. Yeah. The boy is good looking in my dream, just like his old man.
So that was it; either my dream or a premonition. Not sure which it was just yet.
So at this point, we’re hanging up the chronicles and just moving on with life. I think it’s been long enough since the apocalypse hit that the world has become a place where most people know the story. If anything happens to us, our stack of notes and stories will remain here.
Who knows? Perhaps as the years pass, Isis or Max, maybe even Trina or Taylor will write their stories down. As the years go by, I’ll be slowing down, when possible.
I might just get a kick out of reading the adventures of Isis.
The Goddess of the Zombies.
THE END
A WORD ABOUT THE DEAD HUNGER SERIES
When I sat down to write the first Dead Hunger book, it was the first time I’d written any fiction for over a decade. I had, for some reason, abandoned something that I really enjoyed.
I had never written post-apocalyptic fiction before, and had not been a huge watcher of zombie films. Sure, I’d seen about as much as the average guy who likes movies, but I wasn’t a fanatic. So essentially, this was me capitalizing on a craze. I’m not ashamed to admit it, and I’m damned glad, because by doing it, it brought me out of my writing graveyard, so to speak. I was dead as a writer.
Writers write. That’s what they do. If you ain’t writing, you ain’t a writer.
So in 2011, I sat down and wrote Dead Hunger. I thought of how I would be in a world where REAL zombies were coming at me at every turn, and I tried to draw the characters as me and my friends would be – freaked out, cursing up a storm, but fighting to maintain our defenses and seeking out others who could help.
I found the experience of writing that book was amazing. It poured off my fingertips onto the page, and I had a blast doing it. Then, after joining zombie group after zombie group on Faceboook, paying for ads here and there, and promoting like crazy, I realized that I had achieved … something.
People were reading it! And they were liking it.
So naturally, when it ended with the cliffhanger, there was always going to be a book two. The others just show that I’m still having fun with it and my readers are still demanding more.
I wanted to touch on Charlie. I had never seen the TV show “Revolution” before. I created “Charlie with a crossbow” out of thin air. Then this damned show comes on, and what do I see?
Freakin’ Charlie – yes, blonde – with a freakin’ crossbow. This is an issue, because all of my Dead Hunger series has been optioned for film, and the screenplay is underway as of this time. SO, what I had to do was to come up with a new name and a new weapon for my Charlie.
Enter Callie with a slingshot.
I think you can all see that, if using the round, steel projectiles, that well aimed shots with a powerful slingshot could do some amazing damage to the rotters, and it’s unique as well. So, welcome Callie Chatsworth.
Yeah, it kinda kills my Charlie Chaplin running joke, but that’s okay.
Anyway, my plan is to jump ahead fifteen years now, and have Isis and Max grow up – two unique human-creatures who may or may not have special communication abilities with the red-eyes – perhaps with even what Isis has termed The Hungerers. (Love that name, by the way – it may someday be the name of a book!)
Keep a watchful eye out, okay? Not only for zombies, but for my future work. And … seriously. Try something of mine that ain’t zombie. You’ll dig it.
~ Eric A. Shelman
If you enjoyed this book, please do the author a BIG favor and visit Amazon.com to write a review!
Try retyping this damned link: (You will have to sign into Amazon.com to actually write a review!)
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=eric+shelman
MORE BOOKS BY
ERIC A. SHELMAN
AND DOLPHIN MOON PUBLISHING
1999: Out of the Darkness: The Story of Mary Ellen Wilson
2005: Case #1: The Mary Ellen Wilson Files
2011: Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle
2011: A Reason To Kill
2011: Generation Evil – A Novel of Witches & Reincarnation
2012: Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle
2012: Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles
2012: Dead Hunger IV: Evolution
2013: Shifting Fears
2013: Dead Hunger V: The Road To California
2014: Dead Hunger VI: The Gathering Storm
2014: Dead Hunger VII: The Reign Of Isis
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eric A. Shelman lives in Southwest Florida with his wife, Linda. They normally have dogs, but are dogless for the first time in years. See the next page for more info on that – a tribute.
Eric was born in Fort Worth, Texas, leaving there as a teenager in the early 1970s when his widowed mother remarried and his new stepfather moved the family to southern California.
Eric first took on zombies as a genre in 2011, but has been writing poetry and stories since he was in elementary school. In fact, when he was a young longhair living in Laguna Beach and Dana Point, California, in the late 70s and early 80s, he’d write ridiculous short stories with no plot and no end, all with his friends’ names in them. In fact, you’ll find the names of many people Eric knows today in his stories and books.
Eric has an author fan page on Facebook – and it’s the best place to find out when his next release is coming – just search for Eric A Shelman Author, and you should find it just fine. You can find him on Goodreads, too. Last resort, you can also check out his website – www.ericshelman.com.
Brody (L) and Beau (R)
When we adopted them, they were just seven years old. They belonged to a Realtor who was moving to Costa Rica with his new wife, who wasn’t very fond of these boys.
Their mom, who loved them very much, had committed suicide about a year
earlier, and when we went to see them for the first time, they were both living in a large crate on the lanai of the home. They took to us right away, and we knew right then that they had to come home with us.
Beau and Brody used to be named Kim and Kelsey – yeah, I know, right? Boys named Kim and Kelsey? We thought the same thing and immediately renamed them. They didn’t seem to mind. Linda’s mom, Amelia, was there with us when we first went to see the boys, and she was in from the start.
So, we gave them a comfortable life, they gave us lots of love and laughter, and we’ll miss them. Because our lives are very busy right now, we’re dogless, as I stated on the opposite page.
But that can’t last. It just can’t. it never does.
Dead Hunger VI_The Gathering Storm Page 38