DEAD HUNGER X
THE REMNANTS
The Next Chapter of the Apocalypse
By
Eric A. Shelman
DOLPHIN MOON PUBLISHING
Dead Hunger X
The Remnants
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.
©2021 Dolphin Moon Publishing
eBook Version
Edited By Ramona Martine
Cover Art By Jeffrey Kosh
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(Just to make you wonder why.)
(And to make you get your reading glasses.)
Author Blah, Blah Blah.
Hey, all. Eric Shelman, here. The gang is back, and I’m glad to see them again. I can tell you though, I always liked the idea of the series ending at a nice round number like ten (X in my numbering scheme) but for some reason, I just couldn’t get it there on the first series run.
The story seemed to play itself out in Kingman, Kansas with lots of folks dying in that book. That’s what we authors do when we know it’s over. A nice lil’ killin’ spree.
Well, none of the dead have returned (except in the memories of the survivors – and yours, of course) but there are a ton of familiar dudes and dudettes you’ll remember. I tried to give them all enough page time that you’ll recall their stories, but there are a LOT of characters, so it wasn’t easy. Plus, I know you really missed Flex, Gem, Hemp and Charlie the most. There may be other periphery characters you like quite a bit, but those core four are the ones that grabbed your heart in book one.
Mine, too.
Anyway, without a full book ten, I did have a novella (Volume VI.5) stuck in the middle to tell Tony Mallette’s story in Shelburne, Vermont, but it was hardly fair to try to slide that in as the 10th volume in the series, so here we are! I hope you enjoy it.
So now, I thank those who have helped keep me in your mind and in your ears, as well as those who have gone above and beyond to beta read for me when I really needed it.
Let me begin with my long-time friend and editor, Ramona Martine. She is a busy woman, but always has time when I need an editor. Thanks, Ramona. You are a character in my Emma’s Rose series, now renamed “The Zombie Flower.” I’ll be finishing that next – my only two-volume series.
Next, I’ll thank my beta readers, Laurie Lane, Denise Keef, Shalon Thomas and Kimberly Munsell. I appreciate their input and for saving me from making a fool of myself or my characters.
Thank you to all the Dead Hunger fans out there, from long ago and more recently. It was such a huge surprise to me how popular the series became – it began in late 2009 and has taken me over a decade to complete since that first book. (The thinnest of them all – now this is the longest!)
I hope you enjoy every page. Please write a review when you’re done. I know it’s a pain in the ass, but you will never realize how much I appreciate it.
Here they are. Some of my closest friends.
Prologue
My name is Flex Sheridan. First off, let me tell you I didn’t really think I’d be writing any more chronicles, but here goes. I’m sittin’ here in our living room – lit by electric lights that just makes me fuckin’ giddy every time I give it any thought – and I’m listening to Gem humming from the kitchen.
Yep. She’s making my favorite. Chili. Hot, spicy chili with onions we grew ourselves and cheese we made ourselves. Thanks to Isis, who only had to read the encyclopedia once to remember it forever, and who loves to read any instructional manual she can get her hands on, we know how to do that.
Colton is our boy. Not by birth; he was once the child of a woman named Irene, who showed up one day at Kingman’s gates. She was hiding an infection from us, though, and she turned into a goddamned zombie right in front of her son.
That’s when Colton shot Gem. Long story. To make it short, Gem and I decided to take the kid under our wings, and it’s been the best thing for both of us. He officially told us his name is Colton Sheridan.
That does me proud.
Colton is a good kid. He just turned 13, or thereabouts. His mom had lost track of his age, what with the apocalypse and all. Colton was a boy in every way, and a perfect shot, like Trina and Taylor got to be.
They helped him learn how to shoot, so it makes sense.
Colton does his own thing, and as long as he stays out of trouble, Gem and I are cool with it. He goes to school in the daytime, and we’ve got the curriculum duplicating what they probably taught in the 1960s or so, plus the latest history.
We teach American History like it happened a couple months ago – it’s important to know how men and women fought and died for this land we live in. Hell, we’ve fought and died for it, too. Maybe as hard as those original patriots.
All I know is democracy can die on the vine if it’s not tended to.
We don’t intend to let that happen. Lawless bullshit won’t fly in Lula, Georgia.
It’s damned strange living in a world without the walking dead, especially after so many years. If I were to really think about it, I think I’d be bitter about the fact that we had to waste so many years. However, if you read our very first chronicles, then you know Gem and I only got back together because of this thing. It might’ve happened on its own, but it seemed before that tragedy struck, we’d both moved on.
We were both single at the time, though. So maybe our reunion was just on the horizon, no matter what the condition of the world was.
Sure, it could’ve been part of a grand design; maybe God knew we would need each other, so He made sure we were ready and available to move through life together.
Some crazy life; Thanks, God. You’re a real practical joker.
Now that I wrote that, I’m sitting here giving it some more thought. I’m thinking that in reality, without the goddamned zombie problem, we probably never would’ve gotten back together. Gem was a couple years in my past by that time, and a woman like her could capture her share of hearts.
But the zombies came and got her thinking about me again. Not sure if that’s the only thing that did it, but if it is, then I have to say I’m glad it happened. Because living in the shittiest world with her by my side is simply way better than living in the best world without her.
I guess that means not much has changed. I still love the bejesus outta her.
So, to recap what went down all those years ago, it started in 2009. Right now, it’s 2030.
I know. It ended at the beginning of last year.
Anyway, it started with the people we knew and loved having really crazy dreams, then just going crazy. My sister, Jamie, was my first experience with the zombie outbreak, and I spent the first part of it trying to keep her … well, contained. Until Hemp could tell us if there was a cure, anyway.
Turns out there wasn’t. We just had to bide our time until that strange gas stopped leaking out of the planet.
Hemp believes that when the earth was formed, some alien asteroid or other smashed into the mess that would someday be our home, injecting the planet with pockets of the alien gas. In testing, Hemp did find some familiar, and some unfamiliar elements, but combined, it turned you into a flesh-eating, living dead zombie.
Yeah, I know. Crazy, right?
But true. Believe-it-or-die true.
So, why didn’t we change? Well, while in a graveyard clubbing what we called diggers – those are the zombies that were
really dead and came back to life – we saw some foliage that caught Hemp’s eye.
Poison Ivy. But not just any poison ivy. Huge poison ivy plants. So much larger than anything he’d ever seen; he took a couple of samples.
He’s not allergic to urushiol oil – the blister-causing element you can find in poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, cashew shells and mango skins, among other places.
Well, in the end, I was also immune. As was Gem, Charlie, Trina, Taylor, Dave Gammon, Nelson Moore, etc. etc.
Getting the picture now? Those plants provided Hemp with some particularly important knowledge. Here it is:
If you’re not allergic to the urushiol oil, you won’t become a zombie. Pretty convenient for us, but very inconvenient for the 90% of people who weren’t immune.
They needed to clear their schedules. They had some walking and hunting to do. You know. Zombie stuff. Busy work.
Now, if you were a pregnant woman when the outbreak came on, you experienced things a bit differently. With the supercharged levels of estrogen in their bodies – naturally introduced to enhance brain function while women are pregnant – they changed into what we later named “Red-Eyes.” Their eyes were a blood-red, obviously, but they also had a glow to them – like ET’s heart light.
No, I’m not bullshitting.
They were also able to communicate with one another. Telepathically. And they could control the dumber of their species – use them as soldiers of a sort.
Of a sort my ass. They could use them as soldiers, and they often did send them into flanking positions to corner their prey and move in for the kill.
The other thing the normal zombies could do was knock your ass out with a vapor that emitted from their tear ducts. When stimulated by human meat, they would blast out this pink mist from their eyes, which would knock uninfected people out like a light.
And you’d stay that way until someone woke you. Let me tell you, you didn’t want that to be them.
While in captivity for a week or two, Hemp did some experiments – he was afforded a beautiful lab as it were, and he needed to look busy – he discovered something that saved countless lives.
It’s called WAT-5.
Walk Among Them – 5-Hour.
He took the earth gas and combined it with the zombie eye vapor. This just created two swirling gases within one sealed beaker, and they did not join together in any way that he could see.
In order to change them from gases to more of a liquid form, Hemp decided to try the liquid nitrogen at his disposal to super cool them.
The next thing he knew, they had blended and congealed in the bottom of the beaker. Just a gooey mess.
But it was growing. The gel at the bottom of the jar was reproducing itself.
Pouring it onto a flat surface, it spread out, confirming his suspicions. It was creating itself out of itself.
He had to stop it. What might happen if it was allowed to continue? Would it eventually become like The Blob from that old horror movie, consuming everything in its path?
Hemp had stopped being skeptical of nearly everything at that point; zombies were real, and that was enough evidence for him that the earth was not as he had believed it was.
It held many mysteries.
Staring at it for a long time, he realized he had only one more element that was related to these two; the one that decided if you would become a zombie or not.
Urushiol oil.
He went to the storage container and withdrew a bottle of the oil. Using a dropper, he added several drops to the congealed mixture.
And … it instantly solidified into a wafer of sorts. Crispy, flat, and disgusting tasting. And to top all that off, when you ate one, you got knocked out, just like when the zombies sprayed you with the eye vapor.
But guess what else? Once you took one of those wafers, you could walk among the zombies and they wouldn’t even notice you.
It was a game-changer.
So. There were many, many things that happened along the way. Eventually, just after last New Year’s, it ended. The gas stopped flowing from the earth, the gas that was here bled out of the atmosphere, and all the zombies died.
Again.
We burned all of them near our little town. We wanted so desperately to put them and all the pain and destruction they brought to our lives behind us.
Several of us have written chronicles telling of our beginnings.
So, where do we go from here?
Anyway, it might not seem like there’s much to tell, right? The original intention of the chronicles was to teach those dealin’ with the zombie-inhabited world how to cope – or how we did it anyway.
The gas leaked from the earth. The zombies came. The gas continued for over twenty years while America and the rest of the world was slammed back to the pre-Edison days, for the most part. The gas stopped and the zombies died.
Simple as that.
So that was the wrap-up of our original chronicle, but with this new text, the intention remains the same; it’s just the situation that’s a little different. We’ve got better tools at our disposal to deal with the stuff that comes up; and by tools, I mean Max and Isis. Both of them are amazing young adults now.
Read on. You’ll find out why there’re even any words on this paper.
And let me say I’m sorry this was ever necessary.
*****
CHAPTER ONE
SUMMER OF 2030
It was just after 2:00 in the afternoon as Max Chatsworth glanced in the rearview mirror before pulling out of Flex and Gem’s driveway. He’d gone over to talk to Trina about going hunting the next day, and to borrow Gem’s car. He only hoped the feelings that had come over him that morning didn’t change everything in a hurry.
What he had discovered troubled him, but he couldn’t discuss it with anyone until he talked with Isis about it.
Isis Chatsworth. His wife. The woman who meant more to him than anyone else in the world. Yes, he was just sixteen and she, seventeen, but not really. They both appeared to be in their late twenties, and that was a product of what they were.
Hybrids. The first Hybrids. Changed in the womb when their mothers were sprayed with the vapor from a Red-Eye.
Had their mothers been sprayed by an ordinary zombie, both would have died in their mothers’ wombs. So as unfortunate as the event was, it sure beat the alternative.
On the other bright side, they were allowed to marry much younger than they would have otherwise.
Sometimes he thought about how obsessed Flex Jr. had been over her before his tragic death. Max was glad he had eventually won her love, and he knew very well he could never have revealed how he felt about her as long as Flex Jr. was alive.
Sometimes, late at night, in the privacy of his own thoughts, he talked to the younger Flex. He’d tell him how much he missed him and promised to care for Isis and to love her like he knew Flexy had wanted to do himself.
The guilt he held in his heart was ill-placed, and he knew it. Uncle Flex and Aunt Gem’s son died because he’d made a mistake. Max had grieved with everyone else, and the funeral had been so damned hard.
With a glance upward, he allowed his mind to return to his destination. He was going to pick up Isis from the Lula, Georgia version of Three Sisters Bar. In honor of their deceased sister, Vikki and Victoria had opened the establishment with the name it had always held.
The old, diesel Mercedes Benz 300D ran perfectly, the clattering diesel no longer a draw to the undead who once marched toward any sign of humanity, looking for a meal.
For now. His dad wasn’t confident it was over forever, the phenomenon of the earth gas. If it started once, it could start again.
Hemp had said it may have simply been a relatively small pocket of gas, and simply depleted itself over time. There was also the possibility that whenever the alien gas inserted itself into the planet, it was in several pockets, and the others just had not breached.
And yet, something was going on. He didn�
�t feel the same things he had before, but not all of his distractions were because of Flex Jr.
He pulled the ’82 Mercedes up to the front of the bar and pressed the clutch, putting it in neutral. Setting the parking brake, he got out.
As he walked from the car to the front door, he looked up to see Isis standing there.
She wasn’t smiling. Her skin, normally tanned in the Summer, was pale, behind troubled eyes.
“Max,” she almost whispered.
Max just nodded. No more words were necessary between them. Not anymore. It confirmed everything he feared.
“Are you finished?” he asked.
Isis nodded, her gorgeous, blonde hair down to the middle of her back swaying with the motion of her head.
“Do you know where we’re going?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said, opening the car door for her. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Hope so,” she said.
He closed the door and went around and got in.
Turning the key, he said, “You feel a pull anywhere?”
“South. In that general direction since I got up this morning.”
Max nodded. “It started for me then, too. I didn’t say anything to you because I wasn’t sure it wasn’t just some funk I was feeling.”
“Same for me. Sorry.”
“We were protecting one another.”
Isis’ eyes held worry. She took Max’s hand and said, “We need to do some things – some tests – privately. I don’t want to alert everyone, and they will notice.”
“Agreed. The farm should work.”
*****
Nelson Moore and Dave Gammon were inside the greenhouse, tending to the plants. On the east side of the long, rectangular enclosure were rows of various vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower, collards, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, and a variety of herbs and spices.
Dead Hunger | Book 10 | The Remnants Page 1