Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle

by Eric A. Shelman

  *****

  Gem was having some fun with the 360 degree submachine gun welded to the top of her Crown Victoria.

  At first I had no idea how she was spotting the infecteds in the fading twilight; the trip had taken longer than we’d planned due to road blockages and alternate routes, so day had begun to melt into night, and there was no moon.

  Then I remembered. These creatures had a strange, luminescent eye shine that threw me off; I’d seen it in the dead eyes of Jamie’s neighbor, the swimmer who got dead before he could breast stroke his way to my brain for perhaps his first meal of human grey matter.

  But when Gem saw the eye shine glimmer in the night, she pushed the B button on the dash and swung her AK-toward the shine using the pivot handle Hemp had rigged up.

  In a display – almost a cocky display, if you ask me – of confidence, Hemp had used a sharpie to draw crosshairs on the GPS monitor screen in the Crown Vic, so when she was lined up with the zombie, she’d yank her trigger handle down like a trucker blowing her horn at a passing rig.

  And we not only saw crimson-brown sprays of zombie blood fly from their exploding heads as we passed, we saw their dropping bodies fall away, and nothing but Gem’s white toothy smile in the rear view mirror of my Suburban. She was really enjoying this, and was getting quite good at it.

  Hemp was bringing up the rear in his mobile lab, which he had equipped with some items he believed he’d need in his efforts to help Jamie and discover a cure for this thing. It was a diesel pusher with a bangin’ motor and a stock turbo system that allowed it to eat up highway, never losing a beat.

  I looked beside me. Trina slept, poor thing. I was going to put her with Gem, but she was sleeping anyway, and Gem was so into the gun that I knew she’d want to play with it on the way. Like I said before, when mama’s happy.

  I grabbed my radio and pressed the talk button.

  “Hey, guys. I want to stop at Home Depot and pick up another generator. I have one at my house, but I’d like to pick up the biggest one they have.”

  “I hear they’re on sale,” Gem said. “Free to the living.”

  “Walking dead need not apply,” Hemp said.

  I thought of Jamie, still strapped to the goddamned trailer. Hemp had suggested we take her out and strap her down on the examination table he’d brought in his lab, but it wasn’t mounted yet, and I didn’t want to take any chances. We’d checked her again before leaving the CDC and she was okay. Alive in her present form of living, anyway. I didn’t want to change anything. We’d gotten her this far.

  A siren blared in the distance as we approached Lula. It did not appear to be any nearer or farther away at any given time, so we guessed it was just stuck on. I wondered about, but did not discuss aloud, the police officer who went with the car from which the siren blared. He’d once served his community, and since then he had either become the hunter or the hunted. I wasn’t sure which I wished upon him.

  When we arrived at the Home Depot, which was just three miles – three long, desolate miles – from my home, I ran inside, armed with my Daewoo. There was a pallet out front piled high with Generac 17,500 watt cart-mount generators, but the frames had to be assembled, so they weren’t exactly portable yet. One was upended and had fallen halfway out of its box, as if someone had attempted to lift it and failed miserably. These suckers weighed almost 400 lbs, so a forklift would be needed to drop it onto my trailer.

  I ran around to the garden center and pulled open the gate. I saw the lime green forklift fifteen feet to my left and ran for it. I jumped on, turned the key until it beeped, then fired the propane burning engine, which caught instantly. I drove that bitch like a bat out of hell through the gate and up to the stack.

  I’d had enough fun in large buildings that initially appeared deserted. I didn’t need to have any more.

  I’d told Hemp to stay in the land yacht he was driving, but next thing I knew he was beside me, helping me shimmy the next undamaged generator over the tips of my raised forks.

  “Thanks, pal. Appreciate it.”

  “Pal. Such a John Wayne word.”

  We slid the gen completely onto the forks, made sure it was balanced, and I jumped back in the driver’s seat. “Get back in your shoebox. I got it from here.”

  In another minute I had the gen lowered onto the trailer. In another ten minutes we pulled up to my house, my ragtag group of survivors. It was time to do some planning, some training, and some learning.

  I thought we had the right combination of talents to do just that.