Dead Hunger | Book 10 | The Remnants

by Shelman, Eric A.

It was one reason they had to capture one. They had been down this road before but now that things had changed, everything might be different.

  She also shared that what bothered her most was what Nelson had said; two hordes were in the middle of a battle and suddenly, with a cry from one of the powerful leaders, the confrontation ended.

  As though by command. If they could be ordered to stop fighting and killing, they could be ordered to start. WAT-5 may have no value against such creatures.

  Suddenly, Flex stood up to his full height, directly in front of the rotter. He was four feet from her, his silenced Walther pointed at her face.

  “Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey,” he said.

  The woods were so quiet, Gem heard every word.

  The thing’s eyes opened. She opened her mouth as Max arched the plastic wrap over her head, pulled backward and said, “Flex, grab the roll!”

  Whatever cry she was about to emit was suffocated behind the plastic. Max angled the roll down to capture her arms and quickly pulled it tight and handed the roll off to his left.

  Flex, having tucked his gun into his waistband, grabbed the roll, running behind her and stretching it hard around her shoulders to pin both arms now.

  She started to move. Gem called, “Clear!” and Max and her husband immediately jumped away. Using the scope to aim, she fired the crossbow as she had planned before the creature could force her to rethink her strategy.

  The released bolt flew true, piercing both of the Red-Eye’s legs just above the knees. She tried to take two more staggering steps but fell forward, the equivalent of her shoelaces being tied together.

  Isis heard the other powerful females in her mind. The sound was alien to her, but all at once, the creatures in the warm water came to life, appearing to be searching.

  Max and Flex had moved in again, now hustling as they continued cocooning the Red-Eye. She now struggled no more, as she was entirely immobilized.

  A rotter moved toward Gem, who stood stock still, gauging its abilities. This was a tall, bare-chested male, whose skin looked fresher than she would have expected. He was not a zombie created at the outset back in 2009; he was one of a newer wave of changed humanity.

  After the resurgence. Maybe he was from Athens, or even Lula. She didn’t know everyone in town like she had in the old days in Kingman.

  As the monster turned away from her, Gem silently thanked God the WAT-5 still worked perfectly. She withdrew her blade and reached out, jamming it into his left ear. “No zombie left behind, asshole,” she whispered.

  Knees buckling the moment the blade pierced its brain, it dropped into the water and floated there at her knees. She kicked it away and returned her attention to Flex and Max.

  They were moving back through the water, dragging the entombed Red-Eye back between them. When they reached a milling zombie minion, they would simply push through them.

  “Now, Gem. Eleven o’clock.”

  Gem turned. The Red-Eye that had been on the east end of the pool was moving quickly through the water. As she approached Gem, she saw her eyes were drawn up into the tree in which Isis perched.

  As Gem took aim, the creature appeared to duck suddenly, then find dry footing on the nearby bank of the warm springs pool. With two long strides, she leaped high into the air, her arms outstretched.

  She flew toward the branch directly below Isis.

  Gem tracked her in mid-air and fired. The arrow pierced her neck, causing her to spin around mid-flight. She clutched at the arrow as she missed grabbing the branch, slammed into it, and dropped into the water below.

  A splashing sounded in the distance, and all of them looked. The last free Red-Eye was charging through the water directly toward Flex and Max, moving with uncanny speed through the resistant liquid at her feet. Flex released his end of their captive and dove to his left, pulling his Walther from his pants as he flew.

  She was only two feet from Flex when he fired the Walther. Her head jerked to one side, but she did not stop her forward momentum. In that split-second, Flex sank beneath the surface.

  Gem saw none of it; she kept her eye trained on the injured Red-Eye who had narrowly missed entering Isis’ tree. She stood, ducked to her right behind a thick tree trunk. A second later, Gem heard a snap!

  She waited.

  “Flex!” shouted Max, still holding onto his captive, but frantically looking around the pond for his mentor.

  Gem’s heart pounded. “Flex!” she cried as well, and charged toward the female who now moved at speed toward Max.

  Suddenly, Flex shot up out of the water two feet to the left of the creature, who was dazed from his prior shots. He had the gun held up and fired it twice, then a third time, the suppressor making it sound like cheap Chinese bottle rockets taking off.

  Black goo ran down its forehead as the thing dropped into the water.

  If zombies could look confused, the remaining rotters did. They milled around, eventually stopping and just standing there.

  Gem returned her attention to the tree behind which the leaping Red-Eye had hidden after being shot. She moved forward. Moving in a wide arc, she came around and saw something on the ground.

  “What is it Gem?” asked Isis, now out of her perch and beside her.

  Gem walked over to it and picked it up. Two pieces of a broken arrow. Reddish-black blood drops on the splintered fiberglass, and also on the leaves below.

  She was gone.

  “Wait,” said Isis, looking around. She closed her eyes, and a moment later, clapped her hands over her ears.

  A scream erupted from behind them as Max also reacted to a silent attack.

  “God!” she exclaimed.

  “Isis?” called Max, clearly fighting through whatever pain he felt to call out to his wife.

  “What is it?” asked Gem.

  In the pool before them, all of the creatures began to move at once. They did not move fast – not like the Red-Eyes – but they were clearly following orders.

  Half of them fed out to the east. Half of them fed out to the west. They shuffled along the perimeter of the water, nearly single-file, and all slipped into the forest to their north, in the direction of the escaped Red-Eye.

  Flex and Max had reached the edge now, and Gem and Isis hurried over to assist them. They released the wrapped female and she lay face down on the ground, unable to move a muscle.

  Flex bent forward, his hands on his knees, breathing hard.

  Max had recovered from whatever had caused his and Isis’ reaction. “You okay, Uncle Flex?”

  “Yeah,” he breathed. “Let’s get out of here. This about wiped me out.”

  *****

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “I remember hauling Jamie around on that trailer,” said Gem, after they found a house to hole up in.

  She and Flex sat on the front porch, her Uzi resting in her lap and Flex’s Daewoo leaning against his knee. The bench swing was supported by chains, and they were rusty, but still strong.

  “With those bikes and the kid haulers, we might be able to make a trailer of sorts to get the bitch back to the car.”

  Gem nodded. They stared out at the soaring trees around them. Gem said, “I wonder where that horde went.”

  Flex shrugged. “They need recharging if they want to get to a food source, so I’d expect once we cleared out, they went back.”

  “So, you think the earth gas is more important to them than us discovering they’re there?”

  “After that battle Nel and them saw, the group that held that hot springs stayed there, and I think it was Dave who said he thought the Red-Eye saw him.”

  “You could be right,” said Gem. “Now, Flex. Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey? Seriously?”

  Flex smiled and laughed. “I had to distract her. Seems like it worked.”

  “Yeah, so would saying be-bop-a-lula.”

  “Didn’t come to mind. Maybe I was hungry. I like how you incorporated Lula into that example.”

  “Didn’t re
alize I did until it was out of my mouth,” said Gem, smiling now, too.

  The house Isis and Max had found was also apparently a bicycle rental shop, judging from the sign out front. Inside a large shed beside the house, with wide barn doors that swung open to allow the public to see the inventory, there were dozens of bicycles covered with tarps, from mountain bikes to ten speed street bikes, to beach cruisers. There were also towables for the bicycles, such as kid and supply carriers, makeshift sidecars, some really unique stuff.

  All of them had flat tires, but they found several that were still viable, and the hand pumps fixed the flats handily.

  “So, I say we take our flesh-eating burrito –”

  “Oh Flex,” interrupted Gem. “She’s a taquito. So skinny.”

  Flex laughed. “Okay, our flesh-eating taquito, and stick her on a couple of those kid trailers positioned back-to-back. Or daisy-chained if they’ve got the right connections.”

  “If not, we’ll make them. We don’t have to go that far.”

  “Gotta head north along the Chattahoochee and cut right after we get north of the lodge. Should be a road heading east that’ll drop down to where we’re parked.”

  Nightfall would come in just over two hours. The garage was also a repair shop for the bicycles, so they had some tools to work with to fabricate the trailer setup.

  “Let’s use this daylight. Get Max and Isis. More hands will get whatever work we gotta do done faster.”

  “Yes, but after, I’m radioing Hemp and Charlie to let them know we’re safe and we’re staying until the morning.”

  “Good,” said Flex, grunting as he got to his feet. His eyes shifted before he stood from the bench, and Gem caught it.

  “What?”

  “Saw that did you?”

  She stood too, but without the grunt. “I see everything.”

  Flex picked up his Daewoo. “I’m worried they were only moving at night to avoid detection. If they think we already know about them, you think they’ll go back to their old ways? No more reasons to hide?”

  “They always hid, if you remember,” said Gem. “In the auction house, in large buildings. They’d leak out that eye vapor to control their male counterparts and let them soak in it.”

  “Yeah, but it was more for containment I think,” said Flex. “To keep the gas in. Practicality. They still attacked us whenever they found us.”

  “More often we found them,” said Gem. “Flexy, we’ve been down this road. Those bitches scare me more than the masses, but we know how to kill them all. They’re at the disadvantage as long as the gas is minimal enough that our dead don’t turn.”

  “As long as,” mumbled Flex. “C’mon. Couple hours until dark.”

  *****

  “If we want to get to the spot, we’d better take off now,” said Punch. “You should put on some camo.”

  “Got it in the house,” said Charlie. “Baby, I’ll see you later. I’ll probably be all bloody from field dressing whatever we kill. You know where we’re going.”

  “You’ll stand clear and let Punch do it like you always do,” he said. Hemp walked over to kiss her, then returned to the valve connected to the equipment. Holding a glass beaker beneath it, he rotated the valve counter-clockwise.

  The oil began to flow. He turned around, smiling. “Before you head out, come back. I’ll have a spray bottle ready.”

  *****

  “Looks like rain,” said Doc Scofield. “Wanna start looking for a dry place to stop?”

  “Yeah, keep your eye out for a grain silo, maybe a barn.”

  “You hear yourself?” asked Scofield. “We’re in goddamned Missouri. Every building is a barn.”

  “I saw a sign for some town called Miller earlier. No population listed, but we might find a spot to stay for the night. Then we can get an early start. First light.”

  They drove along the 95, also known as Route 66, until a sign announced their arrival in Miller, Missouri. They made a left and Jim Scofield whistled through his teeth. “Damned tornado tore this place up good.”

  “Wow,” said Cole. “Look at that tractor!”

  The tractor had gone up and come down on its rear, the harvesting contraption that had been mounted to the front sticking up toward the sky like some long dead, steel spider.

  “That swath looks like it goes right through Miller,” said Scofield.

  “Long as it left us a place to stay,” said Cole.

  “You might wanna dodge around the Dodge,” said Jimmy. It was upside-down, partially blocking the road. Jim skirted it easily.

  A moment later, Scofield got quiet and stayed that way, staring out the window.

  “What’s up, Jimmy?”

  “For a sec there I thought I saw a shit-ton of footprints.”

  “In dirt or mud?”

  “That’s just it,” said Scofield. “They were in dried mud.”

  “So, they’re old. No worries if it was a horde. Could’ve been months ago.”

  “What’s the nearest big town to here?” asked Scofield.

  “Springfield, Missouri,” said Cole. “Home of the Fantastic Caverns.”

  Scofield grunted. They continued north to Miller.

  *****

  The horde was on the move; they could hear it pushing through the woods, the sound as their hundreds of feet smashed the leaves blanketing the forest floor, like static.

  The Night Dwellers, as Flex had begun to call them in his mind, harkening from his overly active imagination when he spent night after night reading horror novels as a kid, moved away from them.

  It made him wonder where they were going to feed. It couldn’t be too far if they intended to return to the hot springs, but they might seek out a new location to recharge after being discovered.

  “What are you thinking about, my love?” asked Gem.

  Flex startled, forgetting for the moment his wife was there. He shrugged in the dark. “You hear ‘em?”

  “Like ocean waves,” she said.

  “I thought it sounded like static. Like the old days when I was a kid, and the old Indian would come on TV just before they played the national anthem and it went off the air. Always got the creeps when that snow and static would take its place.”

  “You’re thinking too much.”

  Flex released a huge sigh. “I’m just pissed. We deserve some goddamned rest.”

  “We had a few months anyway,” she said, taking his arm and squeezing it.

  “Not enough. I don’t like that bitch down there, either,” he said. “Wrapped or not, who knows if she’s calling that horde here.”

  “They’re moving west, away from us it sounds like.”

  They sat on the second-floor balcony in resin Adirondack chairs, their guns handy. They had abandoned the bench in front which was on the lower level. Darkness had fallen, so it was not wise to be too easy to get to.

  Max and Isis were in the garage working on the bicycles, making sure some of the multi-speed models were top notch – oiled chains, full tires.

  They had also figured out the trailer for their Red-Eye.

  “There’s nothing west of here,” said Flex. “I saw the map. Just individual farms and homes. Not enough to sustain a hungry horde.”

  “Duncan Bridge Road is there,” said Gem. “Beyond that, it’s the Chattahoochee again. They have to be heading for the highway.”

  “Easy access to the next town?” asked Flex.

  “C’mon. Let’s go talk to Max and Isis.”

  *****

  “What’s up, guys?” asked Max.

  They had lit two Coleman propane lanterns and hung them from hooks screwed into from the rafters of the large shed, which lit the room nicely.

  “The horde’s moving toward Duncan Bridge Road. Probably already there,” said Gem. “We need to find out where they’re going.”

  “We’ve been monitoring this one,” said Isis. “She’s calling, but she’s not as strong as they once were. She could’ve reached out for miles be
fore. Now it seems a half-mile or so is all her range.”

  “How in the hell could you figure that out?” asked Flex.

  “I started listening to her, then walked away from the house until I couldn’t hear her anymore. Well, I rode a bicycle. It was fun.”

  They looked at Isis. “What does she say?” asked Gem.

  Isis looked up at the Coleman lantern for a second, as though pondering the question. She answered, “It’s more of a beckoning. It’s a call. There are no real words with this one – at least not many – but the message is clear in just the feeling. If any get close enough, she’ll bring them to us.”

  “Can you shut her down?” asked Flex.

  “I’ve tried to communicate,” said Isis. “Just to say we mean them no harm, that sort of thing. I share ideas of how they might survive without killing us, and –”

  “And what?” asked Gem, interrupting her. “Just let them live on to ravage the wild animal population? Biting and turning people they encounter as they go, growing their hordes? Not gonna happen.”

  “Gem’s right,” said Flex. “There’s none of that bumper sticker coexisting bullshit, not with them. They may be innocent in all this, but we’re their primary food source and they seem to be lacking in the conscience department.”

  Isis nodded. “I know, Aunt Gem, Uncle Flex. It’s not a promise, it’s a deception. If I can get her to answer, just to establish some sort of communication, we may be able to manipulate them so we can set them up to destroy them.”

  Gem looked into Isis’ eyes. “I should’ve known you better. If that’s the plan, I’m on board.”

  “I never really thought you’d have any doubt.”

  “C’mon, guys,” said Max, looking between them.

  “I never doubted you, Isis,” said Gem. “I think the only reason I ever considered you might have some justified compassion for them is because of your origins. You were created by their intervention. I’m not smart enough to know what you feel deep inside, whether there is any kinship with them – or a feeling like that. I guess I worried that you might give them the benefit of the doubt sometimes.”