Dead Hunger V: The Road To California (7 page)

Where we’d go from there I had no idea.  It was impossible to plan that far ahead.  Right now it was just get to the people you love and figure it out from there.

Just like Flex and Gem and Hemp.

Charlie’s story had been different.  When she left those she had loved, they were all dead and she was on her own.  I’m glad she found Hemp.

Hell, I didn’t know it then, but I would ultimately be glad they found us, too.  Without a doubt, after Serena and I do what we have to do in California, I intend to get us back to where they are.  Because they’re my family now.  I hope to bring my Uncle Brett back with us, if he’ll come.

Back to my journey to Knoxville and my younger sister.  I’m sorry I get sidetracked, but so much has happened, I’m sure you understand.

Anyway, I hauled my stash back to the still running BMW bike, tucked as much of the ammo as I could inside its seat and hopped on.  I tucked the .45 into my waistband, and the .22 between the seat and my crotch. 

I turned the handlebars and rolled the bike smoothly toward my three new friends who seemed too intent on meeting me up close and personal.  When I drew close, I stopped the bike, kicked it into neutral, and put my feet down. 

The .22 revolver in my right hand, I held it out.  The closest one was fifteen feet away.  I held out my arm, utilized the sights, and fired. 

Hit him in the cheek.  The side of its face sank in, probably crushing the bone a bit, but it kept coming.  Now I was not feeling extremely comfortable.  I raised it again.  He was at about nine feet.  This time the report sounded and the thing went down.  I didn’t see where the hole appeared, but I had been aiming for its head, so that seemed to be the sweet spot.

I remember thinking about the old zombie movies I’d seen then, and in some of them a shot to the brain worked, and in others, like Return of the Living Dead, the damned pinky finger could live on its own, and they were impossible to kill.

It was kind of a relief to know a shot to the brain could do it.  I fired at the other two, who were still about ten feet from me.  By the time the gun clicked empty, I had them resting in peace.

I tossed the .22 away and touched the .45 with my hand before pulling the clutch, putting the Beemer into gear and turning left, back onto Highway 431.

I rode for two straight hours, dodging this, shooting at that, and almost crashing at least four times.

I didn’t.  Maybe Leona was with me after all.

The trip wasn’t without tears.  After many of them, and another full tank using my stolen siphon, I arrived at my mom and Lisa’s house.

The neighborhood had gone to shit.

*****

             
Chapter Three             

I pulled onto my mom’s street, not wanting to think much about what Lisa had said about her screams.  I’d seen more of the transformed people as I worked my way through the neighborhood, but they had been occupied with other tasks.

I won’t say what tasks – I don’t really think I need to at this point.  Not anymore.

As I pulled up to the house, I saw three bodies; one on the sidewalk, another sprawled in the gutter, and the last dead center of the lawn next door.  Their bodies had all been hollowed out, just remnants of their clothing identifying them as men or women – mostly the shoes. 

These things did not seem to gnaw on feet very much.  Tearing at the clothing seemed natural, but removing shoes was clearly not a task at which they were proficient.

I saw the creatures that I suspected had done the handiwork; four of them walked toward me presently.  I didn’t have any idea at that time if they were coming at me or not, only that they were moving in my general direction. Either way, the .45 was in my hand and it had a full magazine.  There were two more in my front pockets.  On the way I had learned how not to miss, and better, how to clear a jam.

In a hurry.

My mind turned back to Lisa and my mom. 

My mom, who was most likely dead already.  I knew from my brief experience that nobody could be ready for something like what had happened today, and if Matt had turned, Tammy Rowe, who liked to sleep in, would have been his first target.

You have to remember that when I left Panama City, I knew the things attacked and chewed.  I didn’t realize that they actually fed on human flesh until I worked my way 500 miles across three states.  The truth hit me before I left Florida.

So me getting away from Leona had been a matter of being lucky.  I was
lucky
I had been lucky.  Leona could just as easily have sunken her teeth into me had it not been for the horrid physical changes in her that had repelled me from her for the first time.

I’d thought about that during the ten hours the trip had taken me, all told.  The GPS had initially estimated eight hours, but with my stop at the QuickShop for gas, food and water, and my extra two stops for siphoning fuel, it was still light when I arrived, but fading fast.

Anyway.  Back to my mom, Tammy Rowe, formerly Tammy Gammon.  My dad, also David Gammon, died years ago.  He was a heavy drinker who worked construction, only he was the guy you saw at the 7-Eleven in the morning buying a twelve pack.  He was good to me and my mom and he wasn’t an angry drunk.  It just turns out he couldn’t drive all that well under the influence of a twelver, no matter what he thought.

So one evening, on his way home in his beat up Chevy pickup, he fell asleep on the I75 northbound, hit the center guardrail and somehow flew over it.  He hit a mini-van with a mom, dad, grandmother and three kids ranging in age from eight months to four years, killing every last one of them and himself.

My mom was devastated, and I became morose.  I was fourteen years old and hated everything and everyone.  I started skipping school regularly and stayed out all night without calling home.

Mom wasn’t much better.  She was only thirty years old, having had me when she was just sixteen, so she and I fought, made up and did our best to face the world alone … together.

Time rolled on and Tammy was working at a dead-end job as a receptionist at a glass company, making just over minimum wage with no benefits.  I had dropped out of school and started working construction myself, so she was ready to be rescued from her lonely existence.

My mom always had her eye out, so when a man named Matt Rowe came into the shop with a crack in the windshield of his new Corvette, she noticed there wasn’t a ring on his finger.  She made sure her hands were visible, and she smiled at him, finally unveiling the beauty that had been tucked away for so long.

He noticed. 

When he asked, she said yes.  I sure as hell wasn’t leaving Florida for Tennessee, so that was that.  She got pregnant with Lisa almost immediately, which explains why she’s 18 and I’m 36.

So that’s my early story.  I was a hard worker and made good money, being assigned as foreman on most jobs.  I’d go up to see Lisa and my mom regularly enough that Lisa and I became very close, and I liked Matt a lot. He was good to my mom and I hadn’t seen her happier since I was a little kid.

Now I stared at the house of Matt and Tammy Rowe, the sunlight waning as the hands of my watch wound around past eight o’clock.  I’d parked the BMW in the driveway with about a quarter tank of fuel left, and saw the fucked up neighbors coming closer, but not yet appearing to do more than drift in my general direction.  I was vaguely aware that the wind was blowing from them toward me, so that could have had something to do with it.

And there was a stench in the air.  A stench of death.

I ran to Lisa’s window and tapped on it.

I looked behind me to make damned sure I was alone.  I was.  The curtains moved, and I saw Lisa’s face appear as they were swept aside.  She quickly unlatched the window and slid it sideways. 

She was crying before she said the first words.  “Davey, God.”

“I’m here, Leese,” I said.  “Here, take this and move back.   I’m jumping up.”  I handed her the .45, barrel down.

She took it and stepped away from the window as I hefted myself up and onto the sill.  I threaded my left leg in, then my right, dropped to the floor and closed the window behind me.

“Any noise out there?”

She threw the gun onto the bed and wrapped her arms around me, holding me tighter than I think she had since she was six years old and I was leaving her yet again, heading back to Florida.  She sobbed against me.

“Shh,” I said.  “You’ve been looking outside, haven’t you?”

I felt her nod against me.  She pulled away and looked into my blue eyes.  Her eyes were a deep brown, as were Matt Rowe’s, and they were even more dark and sunken that her father’s.  “What are we going to do, Davey?  Where can we go?”

“You might have to think of something, Lisa,” I said.  “This is your territory.  Where would people go in a crisis around here?  To hide?”

She shrugged.  “The church, I think.  There’s a small Baptist church.  Even people who aren’t Baptists go there.  It’s that friendly.”

“I hope it still is,” I said.  “Leese, I don’t have much hope, but I have to go out there.  If Matt’s there, and he’s … different … I’m going to shoot him.”

Her eyes went wide.  “My … father?”

“He’s not
him
anymore, Lisa.  Not if he’s changed like those people out there.  What you heard … I can’t see that it means anything else.”

“I have to see, Dave,” she said.

“That’s not a good idea,” I said.

“He’s my dad,” she said.  “I’ll hate you if I don’t.”

“You might anyway, Leese.  I wouldn’t make you do it, though.  So you’ll have to get over it.”

“We’re jumping to conclusions, Dave.  We don’t know yet.  I only stayed in here because you told me to, and –”

“Did your dad come to the door and check on you after you heard mom screaming?” I interrupted.  “Did mom?  No, right?  Neither one did.  They aren’t blind, and they could have seen what was going on outside just like you, so either one or both of them are like those people out there.”

She just stared at me.

“You’ve got to face it, Lisa.”

“I still have to see.”

I picked the gun up from the bed and checked it again.  Walking to the door, I put my left hand on the knob and said, “We do it right now, then.  If it gets dark, getting out of here’s going to be worse.”

*****

When I opened the door with Lisa behind me, I scanned the hallway.  The light switch was just beside me, so I flipped it up.  I miss those days, thinking back.  These days, without a generator, you’re in the dark or relying on a fast-dissipating supply of batteries.  It’s not that there aren’t a lot of them, but survivors take them first, so they are becoming scarce in even moderately populated areas.

Back to me and Lisa.  I turned to her.  Her brown eyes were wide, her bangs a bit too long and in her eyes.  My little sister’s expression was dead serious.  “Looks like the door down there’s cracked open,” I said.

“I thought I heard metal crashing.  Like pots or something,” said Lisa.  “They might’ve been in the kitchen.”

“First things first,” I said, wishing I’d held onto that .22.  It had been empty, but I might have been able to find more ammo for it, and it would have been perfect for Lisa.  Then I thought of something.

“Leese, did Matt keep guns?”

“Yeah, but just for hunting.  Rifles and stuff,” she said.  “Nothing like what you have.”

“Do you know how to use them?”

She shook her head.  “I’ve only used the small one.  The .22 rifle.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Straight ahead,” she said.  “In their closet.”

“No gun safe?”

She shook her head.

“That’s good.  Think you can handle it?”

“I’m not shooting dad or mom,” she said, her mouth fixed when the words came out.

I shook my head.  She was saying things like this, and I don’t think she really grasped the reality here.  I’d been out in the world; I’d seen what was happening close up, not just from a bedroom window.

It got very real when you had to slaughter them.  You felt dirty, like some kind of sick psychopath, and you had to keep reminding yourself that it was them or you.

I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.  “I told you, if it’s what we suspect, I’ll do it.  I like your dad, Lisa, and you know it.  But he’s not my blood, and ...”

She looked at me.  I couldn’t say the words.

“What, Dave?”

It was like it all flooded back to me at once.  What I’d already done, what I was about to do.  I found myself fighting back heaving sobs, and I knew that while I was crying like this, I wasn’t protecting anyone, much less my sister.  I pushed her into the room and eased the door closed behind us, my back pressed against it.

“Davey, what?” asked Lisa, rubbing my back, then holding my shoulders and she stared up at me.

“I killed Leona,” I said.  “I had to.  She was … one of them.  She would’ve attacked me, and I don’t think she knew me anymore at all.  I could’ve been anyone.”

The sobs wracked me again.  Snot and tears were running down my cheeks and my mouth and chin, and I wiped them on my tiny shirt sleeve.

Lisa took a step back and looked at me.  “What the hell is with that shirt, Davey?” she said, and I looked up to actually see her smiling through her own tears.

I’d forgotten about my Pretty Young Thing, rhinestone-encrusted girl’s shirt, and when I looked down at it, I laughed, too.  I looked at her, considered explaining, and gave up.  I might have spit on her, I laughed so hard all of a sudden, but she was right there with me.

Clearly we were both ready to lose our minds, and laughter, at times like this, could make you feel that much more nuts, but it could also help you chase away some of the crazy and focus – at least when the laughing spell passed.

I shook my head, my smile fading, wiped my nose again, and said, “The .22 rifle is so you not only feel safer, but so you are safer.  There are a lot of them outside Leese, and I need you to be able to stop them if I’m preoccupied.  What kind of shot are you?”

“With the .22, pretty good.  Bigger rifles, not so much.”

“The .22’s enough, if you hit them in the head.  It
has
to be the head.  The brain, I think.  Not sure, but it seems to be.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “I don’t know anything.  I know I’m alive and you’re alive, and beyond that, I know mom’s probably …”

In my mind I was asking myself what we were going to do.  What in the hell were we going to do if the entire country was like this.  If the world was like this.

So I just stopped speaking then, because it was speculation, and I was talking out of my ass.  My mother could’ve run outside or into the garage, or locked herself in the car.  What Lisa heard might not mean anything.  I hoped.  Maybe Matt and Tammy Rowe were just fine.

Just as fine as wine
, as my dad used to say, even though he was a beer man.

I went to the closet and slid open the door.

“Other side,” said Lisa, sliding the other door toward me.  She leaned in and pulled out two rifles.  It turned out that one was a double-barreled shotgun and the other wasn’t what I expected.

“You know how to use this one?” I asked, taking the .22 with a pistol grip and magazine.  “I was picturing something that looked more like a BB gun.”

“Dad doesn’t like reloading.  There’s ammo for it in that box there,” she said, pointing. 

I thought to myself,
If my suspicions are correct, your dad wouldn’t know the difference between this gun and a popsicle stick right now.