Hemp and I continued our way through the third level. We cleared the cafeteria and the lounge, only having to use another twenty rounds combined. We encountered fourteen more abnormals, and all-told on that level, we had found twenty-four uninfecteds who had ultimately become sustenance for the afflicted.
We worked our way back to the elevator, and I looked again at the scene laid out on the landing. The smell was putrid and the floor ran wet with blood and raw, human meat. Entrails snaked out of abdomens, and grey matter of the abnormals whose heads we’d blown apart splattered everything. We had to be extremely careful not to slip in it.
As Hemp pushed the elevator call button, my eyes were drawn again to the two young women – well, formerly young women – that I had shot. Then my eyes went to the woman they had been eating.
But she was gone. Or more accurately, her body was gone.
Hemp approached and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Elevator’s here,” he said. Then: “Flex, what’s wrong?”
I turned to face him. “I don’t know how, but the woman these two were eating is gone.” I pointed at the bodies of the two abnormals I’d taken out. “There was a woman in a mustard –”
I never finished my sentence. Hemp reached toward me with his short but muscular right arm, grabbed my shirt and yanked me toward him. I was taken by surprise as the academic weapons expert sidestepped me and practically threw me inside the open elevator. As I hit the back wall, still in disbelief, he swung his K7 straight out and blew the head off the woman in the mustard pantsuit. When this was done, he looked at me as he held the elevator door open.
Hemp’s eyes were disbelieving. “She was dead? Are you sure?” He looked at her body and clearly saw the chewed hole in her side and back.
I nodded my head frantically. “She’s half eaten, Hemp. Yes, I’m sure she was dead.”
“Agreed, but she wasn’t dead just then,” he said. “Which means being eaten is only enough to spread the infection, not to actually kill. So we’ve got a job to do before we head back down.”
I knew immediately what he meant. We had at least twenty-five head shots to administer before we could get back down to the second level, check on Gem, Trina and Max, and proceed with our plan.
We got started. It was done in less than five minutes.
Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle Page 22