Dead Hunger

by Eric A. Shelman

  “I hear the motor,” said Erica.

  “I don’t hear shit,” I said. “Bad ears.”

  “I know,” said Erica. “Linda told me.”

  “At least it’s legit,” I said. “Not selective hearing.”

  The sounds of an engine grew louder, and we even heard some tires squealing as the chase vehicle apparently rounded a nearby corner. I was just hoping they hadn’t yet been in this part of town and seen the fence intact.

  The noise eventually faded and disappeared completely.

  “What is this place?” asked Erica.

  “I thought it was a repair place, but now I’m thinking it’s a storage yard.”

  “Think we can go now?”

  “After that, I’m afraid to travel during the daytime at all,” I said. “We’re pretty vulnerable.”

  “Maybe, but I don’t like the idea of doing anything at night with those things out there,” said Erica, pulling her long, black hair back into a pony tail and securing it with a band she took from her purse.

  “Let’s give it an hour or so,” I suggested. “Then we’ll see if we can take side roads to Davillo’s.”

  She nodded.

  Only two of the strange new humans wandered into the yard while we waited there. The lot had been closed as it was a Sunday, and the fence was secure before we arrived.

  We waited.

  *****

  I drove slowly out of the parking lot and made a left, then a right. I went as far as I could, zoomed out on the GPS screen to see the best route, and then zigzagged the Escalade through the outskirts of South Burlington until I was on a dirt road running through tall, green trees. I knew the turns pretty well from that point, and soon I was in a massive grass field behind the small gun store/gas station/bait shop. There was a shooting range back there, but currently, nobody was honing his or her skills.

  I parked close to the building out of view of the street. Just for the hell of it, I pulled out my cell phone and tried Nick’s cell. It went to a fast busy signal. Not even a recording, and definitely not helpful. “I’m gonna have to go knock,” I said. “Back door, though.”

  “Maybe you should go around front first to see what’s what,” said Erica.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Probably a good idea. Make sure it’s not smashed in and looted. Will you be okay here until I get back?”

  “Hurry,” she said, nodding. “And be safe, okay?”

  “I will.”

  I got out. “Lock it,” I said before closing my door.

  I heard the clunk of the locking mechanism as I walked away, my Benelli held in front of me. I hugged the building’s south side and moved along the windowless wall until reaching the corner. I eyed the street, didn’t see anybody, and slapped my hand on the intact, glass window in front.

  Then I knew why it wasn’t broken; it was airplane glass. I remembered when they’d put it in their display cases and in the front windows. It was almost impenetrable.

  I looked toward the street again just to be sure, and stood. This time I walked in front of the store and slapped my hand on the glass again. I heard something from my left, turned, and saw the door fling open. “Tony!” shouted Nick.

  I ran to him. “Nick! You’re alive!”

  “Yeah,” he said. Nick was maybe 5’ tall and no more than 85 pounds soaking wet. His head was as bald as a cue ball, and he told a lot of jokes I didn’t understand. I’d always laugh anyway and never let on. He seemed to really enjoy the telling, so who was I to mess up his fun by acting confused at his comic timing and delivery.

  I threw my arms around him and squeezed him hard. “Is Jason here?” I asked.

  “He is,” said Nick. “He made it fine.”

  Something changed in his eyes. Sadness.

  “What about Gaetane?” She was his petite wife, originally from Montreal, Canada. She was, if it was possible, even shorter than Nick, and as soft-spoken and sweet as any woman had ever been. I really liked her.

  Nick shook his head. “Gaetane wasn’t as lucky,” he said. “She turned into one of those… things. It went from a bad, bad headache to her gurgling something about being hungry, to complete stillness.”

  “She what? Passed out?” I asked, reaching out to squeeze his shoulder.

  “Come on in first,” he said. “I’ve been hearing gunfire out there, and those things are everywhere.”

  I went inside and he closed the door behind us. His son Jason, a nineteen-year-old of approximately Nick’s height but with a few more pounds on him and shoulder-length dark brown hair, walked out from the back storage room. “Hey, Tony,” said Jason. “Glad you’re okay.”

  “Hey, Jase,” I said. I walked to him and hugged him. We shook afterward. “How you holding up?” I asked.

  “I’ve been better,” he said. He did not smile.

  “Anyway,” said Nick, turning to his son. “I was telling him about what happened with your mom yesterday. Sure you want to stick around?”

  Jason shrugged. “I was there. I know what happened.” He shrugged again.

  Nick nodded. “Gaetane wasn’t passed out. She died. She was dead. I know because I tried to do CPR on her while Jason called 911. It never worked, and he just kept getting those circuits are busy recordings. We never got hold of anyone.

  “I kept trying to call them. I was obsessed with getting through. Next thing I knew, Jason came running in, telling me that mom was awake. I ran after him and by the time I got to the room, she was growling and grinding her teeth and trying to grab Jason. I ran in there just in time to keep her from injuring him. She came at me instead.”

  “She wouldn’t have hurt me, dad,” said Jason, his eyes dark and brooding.

  “Hell she wouldn’t have. She wasn’t herself.”

  “What did you do?” I asked the question, but realized immediately that I shouldn’t have. He didn’t need to go through it for me. I’d been through my own hell and I didn’t need to drag him through his own again.

  “Initially I pushed her away and tried to calm her. When I saw her eyes – all pink and clouded, and when I figured out she couldn’t understand me, I just thought she was delirious from the sickness or something. She kept snapping her teeth at me and trying to claw at me. I got worried it was rabies or something, maybe from a rabid bat. I don’t really want to talk about the rest if you don’t mind.”

  “You shared enough,” I said. “Sorry. I’m really sorry.” I told him what happened with Linda, and about the pink mist that knocked me out.

  He listened. “Think it’s some kind of mutated strain of rabies, Tony?”

  I shrugged. “I thought that was pretty much under control. I don’t know. If it’s rabies, it’s the worst outbreak in history, I guess. Linda turned, and so did lots of Erica’s neighbors and a ton of other people in town, too. I was at the police station. It was crazy there, too. Lots of cops changed.”

  “At least we have guns,” said Jason. “Lots of them. Plus ammo.”

  “I need to go out back,” I said. “Linda’s friend Erica is out there in her SUV.”

  “She okay?” Nick asked. “Not hurt?”

  “Physically, yeah, but she lost her best friend,” I said. “I did, too. No, I think it’s safe to say it’ll be a while before any of us are okay again.”

  They nodded. Before we reached the back door, gunfire shattered the silence of the dead town.

  I burst out the back door to see a blue pickup truck with what looked like two guys in the cab and one in the back. The man in the passenger seat held a rifle of some kind and he was firing at the Cadillac. One man crouched in the bed firing what I recognized as an AK-47 at the Escalade.

  All of the windows of the Cadillac had been blown out and I didn’t see Erica anywhere. I hoped to God she’d gotten out and run.

  I ran toward the pickup, firing as I went. My first shot put a spray of holes in the side of the truck bed, so I raised the weapon to correct, still in a full run. The driver tapped the horn twice and the guy in th
e back of the truck held on as he spun it around toward us. I adjusted my angle in the opposite direction to try and stay out of their line of fire. The guy in the bed couldn’t fire at all while he held on, so I raised my shotgun, now just fifteen yards from the sliding truck.

  My blast looked like it hit right into the midsection of the man standing in back of the bed.

  He flew over the opposite bed rail as the truck’s rear end fishtailed once more and the driver floored it.

  I heard another report and turned to see Nick holding a long-barreled .45 – which I recognized as his favorite gun, a stainless steel Colt Python revolver.

  As the pickup was just a split second from being around the corner, the rear window exploded behind the men. Then it was gone.

  I ran for the Cadillac while Nick and Jason ran after the truck to see if our last shot had taken out the driver.

  I reached the Cadillac and looked inside.

  Erica’s body lay limp and sopping wet with blood, every inch of her form riddled with bullet holes.

  “No, God no!” I shouted, and slammed my fists on the hood of the SUV, heat rising into my face. “Fuck!” I screamed at the sky, feeling the tears on my face even as my anger surged.

  From the corner of my eye I saw movement. The man I’d shot had rolled over. I turned and ran toward him. I reached him and dropped on top of him. I dropped my shotgun and took him by the shoulders, slamming his head into the ground.

  His eyes rolled back and I pulled him back up and slammed his head into the earth again. It wasn’t hard enough to kill him – the grass was hard from a lack of rain, but it wasn’t enough to fatally wound him.

  His hand reached downward and I snatched his wrist and twisted it until I heard a snap. He screamed, “Goddamnit! You fucking broke my wrist!”

  “Get the fuck up you son of a bitch! You killed my friend! You goddamned killed my friend! She was unarmed, you asshole! An unarmed woman!”

  “Tony,” said Nick from behind me, his voice soft and steady though his short breaths. “C’mon. Let’s get him inside and have him explain who he and those other guys are.”

  I stared at the guy on the ground, his eyes wide with fear. I drew my arm back and punched him in the face, hard. My balled fist connected with his cheekbone, catching the side of his nose, which erupted in blood.

  “Tony!” shouted Nick now. “C’mon.”

  I got off of him and walked slowly back to the Cadillac, looking inside at Erica. Her face had been spared, save for two bullet holes, almost perfectly centered above each eye. The two streams of blood ran down her face and dripped from her chin to her shirt.

  My tears flowed. One by one, everyone I knew, whether intimately or casually, was dying. As hard as I tried to keep control, I felt myself racked with shuddering sobs as my weak fingers slipped from the SUV and I sank into the grass. I lay there staring at the blood dripping from the SUV, and I wished everything would just go away.

  *****

  “Do you know what the hell’s going on?” Nick asked the man. They’d taken the flak vest off of him and saw his chest was angry and red. The ballistic vest had saved his life. I wasn’t happy about that. I wanted him dead for what he did to Erica.

  “All we know is what Carville told us.”

  “Carville?” asked Nick. “Ryan Carville?”

  Ryan Carville. A billionaire real estate magnate who lived in a mansion on Shelburne Bay. He made all his money in New York real estate, among other ventures. He’d gone broke a few times but had managed, like a phoenix from the ashes, to rise up and become more powerful than before.

  The worst of his problems had ended fifteen years earlier. The last few years had been nothing but success for Carville, and his empire was bigger than ever.

  Carville’s compound on the bay had fenced grounds, security guards and means. It was rumored that he had food, water and fuel stockpiles for years to come.

  “I work for Ryan Carville,” continued the stranger. “Or I did. I was his driver for years. Looks like he plans to hole up at his place until his guys clear the town, though. I guess. I don’t have any idea what he’s got planned, and I don’t know where all his thugs came from so fast, like out of the blue.”

  “You’re taking orders directly from him?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven’t seen him since a week or so before this shit started. All I know is I was going to be allowed into the compound after we went out on a clearing run. Those things out there were attacking everyone and Carville’s guys had guns and a plan. I didn’t see as I had a choice.”

  His brown eyes darted back and forth between me and Nick. Jason sat behind the counter, a .22 rifle in his hands, watching out the front window of the store. The glass was covered in thick, steel bars because of the age of the building and the stock inside; had they not fortified the old building, it probably would have been broken into dozens of times.

  From what I knew, they’d never had a break-in.

  “What about Carville?” I asked. “And you’d better start spillin’ it, or I’ll cut off your nuts with one of those hunting knives. Who are you, to start?”

  “Paul Germaine. Like I said, I worked for Mr. Carville.”

  “So he’s got his guys out… what? Killing people during a crisis?” I asked. “I thought he was supposed to be a good guy! Giving to charities and shit like that! Why is he sending you dicks out in the middle of this crap to hurt people?”

  “He’s not! He didn’t say to do this. I don’t know why Pete and Rory started shooting everyone. At first it was just the things, you know? The zombies or whatever they are?”

  Jason said, “Zombies, dad.”

  “They’re not zombies,” said Nick. “They’re just delirious. Crazed to the point they don’t know what they’re doing.”

  “Like hell they don’t know what they’re doing,” said Paul. “They know exactly what they’re doing. We just saw a whole house full of people, all practically in stacks. Those things were in the middle of the rows of people, dragging them through the house and stacking them. We shot the ones outside, but when we got in the house, it was horrible.”

  “What was going on?” asked Jason, mesmerized.

  Paul shook his head. “Those things were just… just…”

  “Eating them?” I finished.

  Paul looked at me, his eyes teeming with fear and uncertainty. “Yeah,” he whispered. “They were eating them.”

  “What did you do then?” I asked.

  “They made me go look inside the house after they killed the ones outside. I didn’t want to go, but Rory said he’d shoot me if I didn’t. So I ran up there to the open door and looked inside. When I saw that shit going on, I had to act like I wasn’t scared shitless.”

  “I asked you what you did,” I said.

  The guy threw his hands out. “What do you mean, what did I do? I saw those… those things eating those people. Like goddamned zombies or something, just tearing them open and burying their faces in their meat!”

  “Did you kill them?” asked Nick, rubbing his bald head with one hand.

  Paul shook his head. “I just looked for a second or two, tried to act calm and turned around and walked back to the truck. I wanted to run at full speed.”

  “What’d you tell them?” asked Nick.

  “That the house was clear. I just wanted to go back to Carville’s. I don’t like these things. I don’t like looking at them much less chasing them down and killing them. They don’t die easy.”

  “You sure didn’t have a problem killing Erica,” I said.

  “Maybe you didn’t see him, but Rory was holding a pistol on me through the sliding rear window. I told ‘em I didn’t want to do this anymore and they fucking threatened to kill me. Plus, I thought the person in the truck was one of those things. She was moving back and forth inside the cab and I never really saw her. I sincerely believed she was one of those–”

  “She wasn’t!” I shouted. “Not by a go
ddamned long shot!” I was back at him with both hands clutched around his neck in seconds.

  I squeezed, watching his face turn as red as blood.

  “Hey!” shouted Nick, putting his gun down and yanking me off him. His little frame was wiry, but he was a strong little dude when he got an adrenaline rush. I didn’t fight him.

  “Don’t be a fucking idiot, Tony!” shouted Nick. “This guy knows stuff we need to know, so mellow the fuck out!”

  I dropped into a folding metal chair with terrible padding. “So, what’s next?”

  “Go on, and you’d better talk fast,” Nick said to Paul. Jason stared from behind the counter. His mouth hung open as he tucked his long, dark hair behind one ear.

  “Look. I haven’t seen Carville and I’m not even sure what they’re telling me is true. All I know is I wanted to be safe, and his compound seemed like the best bet. If I had to work a bit to make that happen, that’s what I would do.”

  “Did they tell you anything about why Carville’s doing this?” I asked.

  “I heard his daughter and his twin brother turned into those things. He’s got ‘em locked in a cage.”

  “A cage?” asked Jason, looking mesmerized. “Where did he get a cage?”

  Paul shook his head and swiped his hair away from his eyes. “It’s like a see-through plastic cage. Acrylic or something,” he said. “He had some secrets, I guess you could say. Had some private parties that I heard got a little weird. The cages are three stories below ground, in what was like a playroom.”

  He shifted in his seat and stretched his neck, cracking it. “So now he keeps his twin brother and his daughter in there. They turned into those things night before last. The minute he saw it was happening all over on TV and stuff, he sent Rory and Pete out and they recruited like thirty guys and some chicks in no time.”

  “What for?”

  “Gathering supplies and weapons, anything. He told them it was important for all of our survival.”

  “But he didn’t say to kill anyone,” I said.

  “It’s not like the guy I know,” said Paul. “Like I told you, Pete and Rory have been running things from the start, at least outside. You know Carville’s not leaving that place. He doesn’t have to. Pete and Rory told us we were dead if we tell Carville what we’re doing out here.”