Dead Hunger VI.5

by Eric A. Shelman

  *****

  CHAPTER SIX

  That night we got to Shelburne, and Nick went straight to his friend’s house. Stu wasn’t home, but another guy Nick knew, Bill Richards, was waiting at his house for him. He told Nick that Stu was alive and well and out scouting for supplies.

  Bill was a round-faced man in his early thirties with pale skin and freckles. His medium length, ginger hair was wispy and thin, and he had a fuzzy little billy-goat beard on his chin.

  He told us they had already avoided Carville’s guys twice, and there were more than just two vehicles patrolling the streets, too.

  The men were out on kill missions, and it didn’t seem to matter if you were a zombie or alive. If you moved, they didn’t ask questions; they just fired at you.

  Stu had an idea to black out the windows on his house and seal up the cracks around the garage door. Within five hours of their second encounter with Carville’s men, they closed all the bedroom doors and painted all the front facing windows black.

  We took all of our new people into the garage and inspected each one under a fluorescent light. There were twenty-two people. Nine women, six boys and girls, and seven men.

  Of these, one boy, one girl and a woman had scratches that looked like they had been inflicted by fingernails. Since there was no way to be sure if it was from the zombies or humans, and we knew now what happened to people with scratches, we fed them, apologized to them and walked them to an interior room. Bill assisted.

  Of the three, the boy named Adam, who said he was seven, and the woman named Crystal, who claimed to be twenty-seven but looked thirty-eight, both had headaches. The girl, Eve, who was twelve, did not.

  I insisted on speaking with them before we locked them in the bedroom.

  “Look,” I said. “This isn’t what we do. It’s not what we want to do. But my wife changed into one of these things. She got a bad headache first. Really bad, just like what you got. It might be nothing, but it might be a symptom.”

  “When will you know if we’re alright?” asked Crystal, tears pouring down her washed-out cheeks.

  I shrugged. “When you turn. Or maybe by tomorrow if you don’t.”

  “Is someone staying in here with us?” she asked.

  The children said nothing. They looked exhausted and numb. I don’t think they heard much. I felt like a reluctant Nazi prison camp guard.

  “No,” I said. “We’ll check on you every hour. If anyone turns, we’ll take them outside. Stay away from one another, please. If you get in that pink mist stuff, you’re not going to be able to protect yourselves.”

  “Why am I here?” asked Paul.

  “You’re not a zombie but we know you’re a problem,” said Bill. “We can’t afford to let you go tell them where we are.”

  “I won’t!” he said. “I want to stay here anyway!”

  “I saw you kill an unarmed girl sitting in her car,” I said.

  Crystal gasped.

  “It would take a lot for me to let you stay with us. But letting you go isn’t in the cards.”

  “You know,” said Bill. “We’d better strap these guys to opposite corners. One to a bed post, the other to the opposite one. If any one of them gets to the others, it could be a mess.”

  “Don’t treat us like animals!”

  “Crystal,” I said. “One day. By tomorrow morning we should know. Please, just try to sleep.”

  Her tears flowed.

  We secured everyone and closed the door.

  I went in for the 6:00 AM check. Everyone was fine except for Adam. The boy had turned in the previous hour. His pink eyes pumped knockout mist into the air as he gnashed his teeth and struggled against his restraints, surely frightening the others tremendously until we came.

  We got everyone else out of the room, threw a blanket over him and shot him in the head.

  The rest of us mourned the boy that nobody claimed to know.

  Then we started to make a plan.

  A survival plan.

  *****

  Just about a month after the beginning of the end of the world, something else began to awaken.

  Rats.

  We didn’t know why. The rats initially appeared to have clustered into huge groups where they died. We’d seen several warehouses and empty, dark spaces where the piles of rat bodies lay.

  We never touched them. We never noticed they weren’t rotting.

  When they flooded the streets, it created a whole new terror, and we lost a lot of people. There was no escaping them. They were as ravenous as the infected humans, but they could get in almost anywhere.

  Sealing up our buildings became really important. The rats were still somewhat nocturnal; that gave us the daylight hours to fortify against them.

  No vapor blew from their eyes. That was a relief.

  As for Carville’s marauding killers, they made the streets more dangerous than the zombies or the rats did. Stu and Bill refused to leave because this was their home and they wouldn’t run. If order was not to be restored to Shelburne by the government, they would continue to fight until they either won or died.

  For the moment, there was strength in our numbers. Before long, we had organized and conducted regular training sessions in hand-to-hand fighting techniques as well as firearm training. No age group was excluded. Anyone new who joined us was evaluated and trained. We had them complete questionnaires about their skills and what they liked to do.

  Our little underground community began to thrive in the shadows. We got good at it.

  I enjoyed working with the kids and teaching them how to fight. This was a world where that kind of knowledge could save you. I instilled empathy and an attitude that insisted you never turned your back on someone in need.

  There would be strangers, friends and even family whose injuries would eliminate any hope of saving them. I wanted to make sure all the kids – and the adults – recognized that when they saw it; it would keep them alive.

  Carville owned two helicopters, and his men began air raids as well. The first winter was hard. The power had gone out months before, and when we lit fires to keep warm, the smoke was a beacon to those seeking us out.

  We never learned the reasons why they came after us all. Paul believed it was because of limited food and water. He said Carville never planned to leave his compound, so he relied on those men to keep supplying him.

  In turn, Ryan Carville would provide them with a safe place to live. I wondered if Carville knew what they were doing to the people of the town he claimed to love.

  Bastards. All of them. I swore one day I would be the one to kill him.

  Ultimately, we located, cleared and secured several houses throughout Shelburne. We called these homes Zombie Free Zones and gave them numbers so that we could map and identify who was in which house.

  I ended up running ZFZ-4. Serena, Matt, Jason and some others moved in. The only limitation was the size and location of the particular home. Each was stocked with firearms, ammo, food and water, and we began monitoring Carville’s men almost as much as they searched for us. We killed them when possible, but there always seemed to be more.

  I really just wanted to share my beginning with you and tell you how we came to be in that little house off the main drag with boarded up windows and gun turrets cut through the plywood, made to look like knotholes.

  I also want to add one last thing to this record before I put it away.

  *****

  I sat with Serena one evening, about four months into this new apocalypse that we soon learned was worldwide. The previous night had been busy, with multiple parties out gathering supplies to stock our safe zones. Water, food, batteries, radios: everything we needed required ingenuity and some travel. Carville’s people were clearing out supplies for miles around with their air capabilities.

  That particular night, everyone else had gone to bed. Serena and I were on watch duty.

  Without a word, she began lighting candles and placing them along the edges of
the room, completely surrounding us.

  We sat in two soft, but worn chairs, and she took my hand.

  “Tony,” she said, “Have you grieved for your wife?”

  “Everyday,” I said.

  “Have you spoken about her to anyone? Really talked about her?”

  I thought about it. “No,” I said. “Not really, just people telling me they’re sorry when they hear. Kind of surface stuff. Like stuff they have to say and stuff I’m supposed to say back when they do.”

  “Tell me about her.”

  I looked at her, the candles flickering in her sad eyes, and knew she needed it too.

  “She loved me beyond what even made sense. I told you what happened to me. Linda sat by me in that hospital bed for three months, and stuck with me when I got out, too. I wasn’t near ready to leave, but they just didn’t have enough beds to let me stay there anymore. Anyway, I was having a tough recovery and I was angry and pretty much hated the world.”

  “Did you take it out on her?” asked Serena.

  I nodded. “Yeah, and even then I knew what I was doing. I wasn’t walking yet. Every day seemed like a setback. I didn’t want her with a man who couldn’t be what she deserved. She was smart. After my brain injury, I felt like I dumbed her down.”

  “You’re smart,” said Serena. “Smarter than you know.”

  I shrugged. “It’s tough. I struggle with every problem. Takes me time to understand them.”

  “But you take the time you know you need,” said Serena. “I never see you rush into a decision, Tony, and when you make a choice, it always feels like it was the right one. At least to me. I think everyone else here feels the same.”

  “Linda made me better than I was, even before the accident. When that happened, in my mind I didn’t deserve her at all. In the end, we couldn’t be apart. We lived a simple life together, but I loved her and she loved me. We showed each other every day.”

  I paused for a second, the thing that had been bothering me finally bubbling to the surface.

  “Beyond missing the hell out of her, my biggest fear is that I’ll become what I would’ve been without her.”

  The tears came unexpectedly. I really believed I had gotten past the sadness at losing her.

  Serena gave me the time before speaking.

  “Anthony, you are a good man. You’ve only grown to be a better man in the time I’ve known you. You’re a leader and someone that all of these people rely on. Linda lives on in your heart and in who you are.”

  I looked up at her. “Thanks, Serena. If this was supposed to be a therapy session for both of us, I guess I’ve stolen all the time.”

  Serena checked her watch. I saw it was 3:00 in the morning. She looked up and her eyes met mine.

  “My husband betrayed me more than once. With other women. I had my twelve-year-old son, David. I won’t say any more other than to tell you that when I left, my son had become one of those things out there. So had my mother. What happened to Enrique is not important.”

  I stared at her in the candle light. “We can go there, you know. Put an end to it.”

  Serena’s tears flowed. “No. It would be too hard. When I put my son into the bathroom, he was already one of those things. I think he still looked mostly normal then, except for his hunger. I couldn’t see him again. Not the way he would look now.”

  “Remember him as your loving boy,” I said. “Your mom, too. Remember the time you shared with her. The good stuff.”

  Serena sighed. “I do that every day, Tony. I find myself smiling, and I know there are many more memories to come, all of which will draw those smiles. Maybe when I need them the most.”

  I leaned over and put my arms around Serena, and she hugged me back.

  This is what we needed, to share our pain and grief. It would help us cope enough to get us through another day, then another and another. Eventually, we could maybe start to build new, good memories.

  It would happen. I already have proof of it, even as I write this.

  I lost Linda. The order of the world collapsed, utterly and completely. You can guess that I never – not in a billion years – believed I’d laugh and sing and enjoy life ever again.

  Within that same year, I made the best friends I’ve ever had in my life. We care for one another and there isn’t one of them I wouldn’t put my life on the line for – and they’d do the same for me. I don’t have even the tiniest doubt.

  I love all of them.

  *****

  If you want to know what happens from here, I can tell you that my story wasn’t the beginning of this post-apocalyptic saga, and it isn’t the end, either. It’s just one chronicle jammed in the middle of a set that continues to grow as others in our group share what they went through and continue telling their little chunk of history.

  Flex and Gem have always encouraged everyone who joins their group to put their stories on paper. They say it’s cathartic – which I guess means it’ll keep you from going nuts – and that it could be helpful to others having a tough time living with the experience of losing almost everyone they knew and loved. Not just losing them, but doing it in the most horrible of ways.

  Flex and Gem are keeping these volumes safe, which is why I’d recommend you try to find my group. We were all in Whitmire, South Carolina the last time I knew. We were prepared to stay there for the long term; trying to build our new little America.

  There’s Flex, Gem, Hemp and Charlie. Doc Scofield, Dave Gammon. Too many good people to mention.

  Flex Sheridan wrote the first chronicle. He eventually named it Dead Hunger. Most of our group took turns writing them, so we’ve put together a really great record of what happened and what we did in response.

  I still think it sucks that I’m dead. I know it’s the only reason you’ve got your hands on this. If you ever run into the person who let this chronicle out, I’m not sure if I want you to punch them for me or tell them I love them.

  Thanks for reading this. I hope it helped you in some way.

  I know I feel better.

  ~ Anthony Mallette

  THE END

  Like the story? Want to know more about the world of Dead Hunger? Go here!

  http://www.smarturl.it/deadhunger

  THE REST OF THE DEAD HUNGER SERIES

  Dead Hunger – The Flex Sheridan Chronicle

  Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle

  Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles

  Dead Hunger IV: Evolution

  Dead Hunger V: The Road to California

  Dead Hunger VI: The Gathering Storm

  Dead Hunger VII: The Reign of Isis

  Dead Hunger VIII: Peace, Love & Zombies

  Dead Hunger IX: The Cleansing

  OTHER WORKS BY ERIC A. SHELMAN

  A Reason To Kill

  The Witches of Laguna Beach

  Shifting Fears

  The Camera: Bloodthirst

  Scabs: The Gemini Exception (A Trilogy)

  Scabs II: The Quantum Connection

  Scabs III: Humans, Gods & Monsters

  Out of the Darkness: The Story of Mary Ellen Wilson

  Case #1: The Mary Ellen Wilson Files

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  All Things Zombie: The Gathering Horde - 2014

  A Very Zombie Christmas – 2014

  Z Resurrected - 2015

  Middletown Apocalypse - 2015

  Painted Mayhem - 2016

  Middletown Apocalypse II - 2016

  Tricks, Treats & Zombies - 2016

 

 

 
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