Dead Hunger_The Cleansing

by Eric A. Shelman

  “Seriously?” asked Lola. “After all these years, I can’t handle a little blood?”

  “Not the first question I thought you’d ask,” said Flex. “He’s cutting open the head of a Mother down there.”

  “Really?” Lola smiled at Punch and ran down the steps.

  Nelson watched her run away and walked to the edge of the building. Flex walked up beside him and Punch joined them. “Whoa,” said Nelson.

  “Whoa is right,” said Punch. “They weren’t doin’ this earlier. Look at ‘em. Pushing through the doors to City Hall. Place has gotta be packed by now.”

  “It’s not packed, because they pushed the goddamned bunker door in,” said Flex, feeling a sense of doom fall over him. “Kevin Reeves got killed, Punch.”

  Punch’s eyes reflected the pain that Flex felt just saying the words. Punch said, “He was a good guy. I liked him from the first time we met.”

  “Same here,” said Flex, staring at the parade of rotters in the street below. “Damn. Look at ‘em all. They have to be goin’ after Gem, Max, Isis and the others. Shit!”

  “Let’s go, Flex,” said Nelson, turning to head downstairs.

  “No, wait a minute,” said Flex. “I’ve counted like over a hundred go in there just since we’ve been up here. That means there have to be thousands moving in on Gem’s group.”

  “Dude, Rachel and Lita are there, too,” said Nelson. “And Serena and Ben, and Max and Isis.” Nelson’s expression changed, as though he had just realized the implications of what they were seeing.

  “With those stone walls and these shitty goddamned radios, we don’t have any way to warn them,” said Flex. “Fuck!”

  “Oh hell, I’m pretty sure they know by now,” said Punch. “Isis couldn’t have a gaggle of Mothers behind her and not know it, and you know those bitches are drivin’ that horde.”

  Flex turned and ran to the hatch and took the stairs two by two.

  Punch and Nelson followed.

  *****

  CHAPTER NINE

  The arched ceiling of the tunnel continued to taper lower and lower, forcing them all to run in a crouched position.

  The bending forward increased Gem’s pain, but she forged ahead. Serena had relieved her of her pack, but Gem refused to relinquish her Uzi, and she still had the Glock in her drop holster.

  Everything seemed to weigh triple what it once had.

  The wet group hurried along the narrow pathway to the right of the flowing channel of water, which was now only a foot or two deep.

  Several abnormals that had followed them through the arch and plummeted into the deep pool had emerged from the rushing water, and now shambled alongside the survivors.

  Lita was crying from the trip over the falls, and Rachel, who had been carrying her for the last fifty yards or so, put her on the ground, propping the child against the wall. “Stay here and face forward,” she said.

  Vikki Solms came over. “I can watch Lita better than I can shoot, Rachel,” she said. “You go!”

  “Thank you,” said Rachel. She shrugged out of the MP-5 strap and swung it around to take out the walkers who made it to the edge of the flowing water.

  With some of the others, the flow seemed to help propel their legs forward, allowing them to keep up. As they did so, they constantly threw their bodies against the west ledge of the trough, clutching with their hands and snapping with their rotted teeth.

  “Gemmy, give me your gun, please?” It was Colton.

  Gem looked at him, unsure what to do. They had given Colton some training and he had learned quickly, but he had a long way to go.

  “You know I can do it! You’re the one that taught me how to shoot that gun right there!” shouted Colton, pointing at her Glock.

  “Colton –” she began.

  “Gemmy, they’re right there! Let me shoot them!”

  Isis and Max led the group with their more enhanced vision, so remained at the front of the pack. Gem had been right behind them, but as the other panicked townspeople pushed past her, she had fallen to the middle of the pack.

  Some survivors had fallen behind, and when Gem chanced a look back, she saw that their group now trailed behind her, the tail end of their group far beyond what she could make out in the dimness.

  People had begun to straggle, and there was nothing Gem could do to control it. Serena had positioned herself at the rear and was doing her best to take out as many as possible, but as each fell, it seemed more emerged from the water beside them. Some had crawled over the edge and sopping wet, were moving steadily along behind them.

  Dave and Serena’s son, Benjamin, had a Mossberg .22, and he was applying head shots very accurately.

  “Gemmy!” pled Colton again, and this time, Gem stopped and pulled the Glock 17 from its holster. She had that gun and a Glock 40, but the G17 she offered had been modified to fire .22 long rifle loads. The magazines she had gotten for the gun each held fifteen rounds. Colton had the most experience with that weapon.

  She gave it to him and said, “Here. I’ve fired two rounds out of this one. Focus on the closest ones, then go after the others who crawl out of the water.”

  She reached into her pockets and pulled out four more magazines, each with an identical fifteen-round capacity. “Here, take these. When you’re out of ammo, I want you back up here. And Colton, be careful, okay?”

  “I will, Gem!” he said, stuffing the extra magazine into his pants pockets. “I love you!” he said, then disappeared into the crowd behind her.

  Gem said a prayer to herself and worked her way toward the trough. If Colton was going to do his part, so would she.

  Her eyes on Isis and Max at the front, and careful not to bang her head on the stone tunnel ceiling, Gem tripped over something. She staggered twice, then turned to see that what she had almost fallen over was the arm of a rotter reaching out of the water channel. It was an emaciated digger, more bone than flesh, just the single, dangling earring hanging from its only remaining ear telling Gem its gender.

  She turned and raised her Uzi, the gun on single-round mode, which Gem found to be less painful to endure with her cracked rib. She fired one into the forehead of the monster and it sank into the channel and floated on ahead, presumably to the river.

  As the dead biter disappeared from view, Gem’s eyes fell on fellow Kingman resident Melissa Kendrick, who staggered alongside the trough with something clutched in her arms.

  At first, Gem did not know what it was; a moment later, she realized that somehow, the woman still held onto her cat, Princess. Gem remembered very well the day she brought the longhaired calico she’d found to Doc Scofield, wanting him to check her out for rabies.

  Scofield told her that if Princess survived ten days, she was not infected with rabies. That time had passed, and Princess had become Melissa’s closest companion.

  Gem guessed that when Melissa had showed up at the bunker with Princess, nobody had had the heart to deny her.

  Melissa Kendrick was not in the best of physical condition; the long, post-apocalyptic years had been hard on her. Each step on the stone floor echoed in her pained expression, but she clutched Princess to her breast with determination, protecting her friend from the threats behind and beside her.

  As Gem was about to turn away, a creature stood up in the trough at full height, throwing its arms out and wrapping them around Melissa’s ankles. The woman didn’t have a chance; she stumbled once and fell forward hard, the cat leaping from her arms and charging through the feet of the other survivors. Melissa hit the ground and bounced to her left, tumbling into the zombie-filled trough of Artesian well water.

  What followed was like a boil of predator fish feeding on a school of baitfish. The rotters in the water turned their attention toward the woman, and Gem saw at least four of them move in like piranhas, ripping her flesh away.

  Melissa was pulled beneath the surface of the water, her legs kicking wildly as she was consumed alive.

  Gem stopped and sw
itched the Uzi to full automatic. She pushed her way back and fired into the cluster of churning bodies – both undead and dying – and held the trigger until the Uzi fell silent.

  While she did not see it and she could not know for certain, Gem hoped that some of her rounds had damaged Melissa’s brain. Whether they had or not, it was all she could do.

  The last that Gem saw of Melissa was her flowered dress being pulled under the water as she and the now dead zombies floated south with the powerful current.

  Gem searched among the many moving legs and feet of the crowd, trying to spot Princess. She never saw the cat. For some reason, this weighed on her heart.

  Up ahead, she heard Isis yell, “Stop! Max!”

  Shaking off the impending feeling of helplessness, Gem pushed through the agitated crowd that seemed to grow smaller with each passing minute. She reached the front and said, “Isis, what’s happening?”

  Serena moved beside Gem, Ben by her side. “They’re all in the water for now,” she said. “Why are we stopping?”

  “Because there’s another fork in the tunnel system,” said Isis. “They both appear to go in the same general direction, but the wrong choice could doom us. I’m just not sure where to go. We’re trying to get to the armory building.”

  Max shrugged out of his backpack and put it on the ground. He opened the flap and dug around. “Here, Isis,” he said. “Can you figure out where we are?”

  “Maybe,” she said, staring at the map of Kingman he had opened. She turned on her headlamp and adjusted it so the map was fully illuminated. She stared at it for a moment, ran her finger from one of the access points they had discovered to the other, then looked back up at Max, Gem and Serena. “Wow. I may have something.”

  “What?” asked Max. “Isis? Now would be a good time.”

  More gunfire came from behind them, followed by a splash. Gem pulled another magazine from her belt and changed out the empty mag in her Uzi. She chambered a round and turned back to Isis. “What’s your idea, Isis?”

  “I need a pen or a pencil,” she said. “Anything to mark on the map.”

  Serena pulled a baggie from her pack and opened it. She gave Isis a felt-tip marker from her supplies, also holding out a pad of paper. “You need something to write on?”

  “No, just the marker is fine,” said Isis. She moved clear of the crowd and knelt down to put the map on the stone floor. Max and Serena knelt down beside her, and Gem stood up, scanning the crowd for Colton. She spotted him standing against the cave wall. Seeing her, he gave her a quick wave and a smile.

  “Stay where I can see you,” Gem said. “For now, okay, sweetheart?”

  “I still have ammo left,” he said, clearly justifying his reasons for not returning to her side. He smiled again, but the underlying seriousness in his face told Gem he realized the danger they were all in.

  “The answer to the question of which tunnel to take could be revealed through a pattern,” said Isis. “There are many symbols used by the Freemasons. Some are for design; some are for identification among strangers. The five-pointed star is very common, and has been used over the centuries to pinpoint locations.”

  “Locations for what?”

  “Any number of things,” said Isis. “Safe houses as well as tunnel systems. It has definitely been utilized to pinpoint buildings holding their secrets.”

  “So how do you apply the star to the map?” asked Max.

  “We take the points we know of and we connect them. I know all of the most historic buildings in town.” With that, Isis put black dots over the Inn, the bank building, the armory, courthouse, the museum, the train depot, the post office, and an isolated barn.

  “Is that it?” asked Max.

  “It depends on what else may have been built and either torn down or destroyed,” said Isis. “You’ll recall that when we arrived in Kingman, the building on the corner of Sherman and Main Streets was collapsed.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” asked Max.

  “Because any one of these buildings or even a site I don’t know about could complete my star pattern,” said Isis. “The building that collapsed was built before 1913, which definitely qualifies it. I never found the Freemason symbol there, but the rubble was too deep. It may have been there, on a buried cornerstone.”

  Isis drew a line from the bank to Kings Inn, down to the post office, over to the armory, up to the courthouse, over to the building on Sherman and Main, one to the Santa Fe Railroad Depot. The last line led to a remote building well out of town.

  “What’s that faraway place?” asked Serena. “It’s not even in Kingman, is it?”

  “Not Kingman proper,” said Isis. “But it’s a prominent historical site of the area. It’s called Prather Barn.”

  Max tapped the barn on the map. “We should think this armory thing over again,” he said. “If we can get to that barn, it’s way out of town. It might be our best bet to get in the clear.”

  “That depends on how far these tunnels run. The barn is the farthest point, and it’s back the way we came,” said Isis. She stared at the map for a moment. “Forget it. There weren’t any channels running that way that I saw.”

  “Plus, with the barn included, there are too many lines to form a star,” said Serena. “Even if you take out another building, you’ve still got six points. How will you know which to use?”

  “The courthouse will likely be the main point,” said Isis. “It is the most prestigious of the buildings marked here. I will assume it’s the top point.”

  After drawing light lines on the map, Isis’ eyes narrowed. She put her finger over the courthouse. The next lines were drawn darker, and seemingly more permanent. When she was done, she looked up. “We take the tunnel on the left. That should take us by the armory so we can collect other survivors, then there should be another fork in the tunnels down there leading us to the old train depot.”

  “So … that’s it? That’s the plan? To that Santa Fe Depot?”

  “Symbolically, it makes perfect sense. It is where people come and go, where they embark and disembark. The Freemasons were not without their logic, nor without their inside jokes,” said Isis, standing and folding the map.

  Gem said, “Where we go after the armory kinda depends on who and what we find there,” she said.

  “That is correct,” said Isis, turning to Max. “We’ll decide that later. Max, this single piece of paper of yours may have saved us all.”

  Max shrugged. “I do what I can,” he said, smiling.

  Gem went to him and hugged him gently, kissing his cheek. “That’s from your mom. She’d have done that.”

  “You’re absolutely right about that,” said Max. “Speaking of Mom, I hope like hell they’re okay.”

  *****

  “We gotta go now, Hemp,” said Flex. “The folks we left in that tunnel could be in trouble.”

  Hemp listened as Flex told him what he’d seen.

  “Isis and Max are very industrious,” said Hemp. “Serena and Gem are with them, as are many other capable residents of the city.”

  “There are thousands of them!” said Flex, pacing back and forth.

  “Flex, please breathe,” said Hemp. “Indulge me for this brief moment. Not more than two minutes.”

  Flex nodded and knelt down beside him. “Sorry, man. Seein’ that crowd pushing into City Hall freaked me the fuck out.”

  Flex could see Hemp was rattled by the pressure he was putting on him, but the consummate professional that he was, he had already moved into teaching mode: “This,” he said, “is a mostly well-preserved brain. It is of a typical color and consistency, with only slight signs of deterioration, just around the temporal lobe. If I were to be told that this brain was removed from a normal 30-year-old woman who had died of a heart attack, I would believe it except for one anomaly.”

  “But you know the truth,” said Flex, eyeing the female on the floor with the cap of her skull cracked open and removed. “Spit it
out. What’s the anomaly?”

  Hemp turned the brain in his hands. “See here, where the brain stem connected? It’s just beginning to decompose. Based on what I’m seeing here, it had to have begun no more than a week or two earlier. Perhaps that is when the gas became less than what could sustain all of their abilities. That may have been what pushed them toward us from all points of the compass.”

  “What?” asked Flex. “So you’re thinkin’ they believed what was happening to them was a lack of food rather than a lack of … I don’t know … their oxygen?”

  Hemp nodded. “The gas is essentially their oxygen, though they absorb it rather than breathe it in. They’re intelligent enough to know something’s wrong, but not intelligent enough to know what. Since they live to do only one thing – feed – they would logically reach that most basic conclusion.”

  “So what about the goddamned talking?” asked Charlie. “Hemp, I mean, damn!”

  “At least in this Red-Eye, the brain was intact enough, theoretically, to preserve memories of speech and other things.” He looked up at the others. “Don’t expect the diggers to ever utter a word. Their brains are far too decomposed for that, and were so when they turned. I would say the more quickly the person died and transformed with their brain intact, the more likely they will have a brief moment of awareness before they truly pass away for the second time.”

  “Wouldn’t be too hard to test that theory,” said Dave. “Next Mother we come across, we have Charlie or Punch destroy its body with one of their Saigas, then get close to them and see if they say anything before they croak.”

  “Dude, what are you hoping for?” asked Nelson. “The next Lotto numbers?”

  Dave smiled, stood and grabbed his bag and gear. “Ready?”

  “Wait to do your experiment in the goddamned tunnels leading back to my girl,” said Flex. “We’re not burnin’ any more time.”

  Hemp did not acknowledge Flex’s comment. “Anyway, this explains a bit, but Flex is right. We need to get to the clinic so we can rescue Beauty and the children, and while we’re there, I can check the water monitor for the current output of gas.”