Dead Hunger V: The Road To California (9 page)

She quickly hit two numbers and put the phone on speaker.  A girl’s voice said, “Hello!”  Panicked.

“Stacy?  Oh, my God, you’re okay!”

“Who is this?” the voice screamed.

In my mind, I saw a girl cowered in a dark closet, hiding from a killer and frightened out of her mind.  I was positive that I wasn’t very far off.

“It’s Lisa, Stacy?  Didn’t my number show up on your –”

“Lisa!” she shouted, interrupting her.  “Oh, God, Lisa, where are you?  I’m at my neighbor’s house.  I don’t know what’s happening.  What’s happening, Lisa?  What are these things?”

“Where are your parents?” asked Lisa.

“It wasn’t my mom, Lisa!  I was … in the bathroom and she … it … I don’t know!  It was wearing my mother’s robe, but it wasn’t her!  I thought I had to be dreaming – I thought I was having a nightmare!”

“Stacy, I know.  It is a nightmare, but it’s real.  How did you get out?”

Stacy’s quiet sobs could be heard across the line.

“Which way to her house, Leese,” I said.  “Hurry.”

“Turn left up on Wick, and make the first right on Thorogood.  Stacy, we’re coming.”

“My mom’s still over there!” she said.  “She dove at me and I grabbed a towel and pushed her with it.  Lisa, I didn’t want to touch my own mother!”

“Stacy, it’s everywhere,” said Lisa.  “My parents changed, too.  Where’s your dad?”

“My dad?”

“Is he there?”

“No, no!  He called me from New York about an hour ago.  I told him where I am.”

“What did he tell you do to, Stacy?  Did he say he’d be able to get to you?”

I watched Lisa’s face and listened to the relative calmness that had overtaken her voice.  I was amazed at her composure in the face of her best friend’s terror.  It was as though she instantly put her own personal tragedy aside to comfort her friend and make her feel safe.  Lisa had always been a compassionate child, but I was really seeing the woman she’d become for the first time.

Stacy answered the question.  “He’s there on business.  He said he was in the airport ready to come home, but everything was going crazy.  Three planes took off and crashed within view of the terminal.”

“Oh, my God,” said Lisa.

My sense of dread was experienced in silence as I listened to her friend recount the call from her father.

“He said TSA officers were shooting at people, and there were people attacking everyone.  Biting them.  I don’t think he told me everything.”

“We’re coming to get you, Stacy,” said Lisa.  “Which neighbor’s are you in?”

“The Palmers.  Two houses on the right as you’re facing my house.  They were away on vacation and I had the key.  I check on their house.  But Lisa, I can’t go!”

“Stacy, you have to!  Why not?”

“Because daddy says he’s coming, and I have to wait!”

“Stacy, he wouldn’t want you to wait if you’re in danger.  What does the street look like?”

“I haven’t looked out,” she said.  “I’m afraid those things will see me.  And I don’t think I’m in danger here, I’m just scared.”

“What’s the food situation there, Stacy?” I asked.  “If this is short term, we might be better off holing up there until the government gets this under control.  Plus your dad knows you’re there, right?”

“He does, and there’s plenty of food  Mostly boxed and canned, but there’s lots of frozen meat and stuff in the kitchen and garage.”

“We’re coming,” said Lisa.  “We should be there in less than five minutes.  Dave, turn right up here.  Next street.”

“Thank you,” said Stacy.  “I don’t know how to tell you to get in.  I won’t look out.  Call me if you need me to open the back or anything.”

“Okay,” said Lisa.  “I love you, Stace.”

“Thank you,” said Stacy.  “It’ll be good not to be alone.”

*****

We pulled onto Kennedy Avenue just four minutes later, and I was suddenly glad it was night.

What we could see in the Prius’ headlights was a mess.  It was as though everyone on the street had turned into one of these things, and bodies were everywhere, torn open by the new predators of the world.  Many of them were busily feeding, yet as we passed, a score of them were drawn to the headlights or the motion, and turned our way.

“Get your damned head down!” I shouted.  “Or look down, or something.”

But Lisa didn’t listen.  She stared through the windows in horror, her mouth hanging open, her eyes puffy and red from what she’d already been through.

“Why?” she asked, her voice flat.  “This horror is everywhere.  I might as well get used to it.”

“You’re an adult now,” I said, relenting.  “Where’s Stacy?”

Lisa pointed to a white house with dark brown trim.  “That’s Stacy’s house, so two more down.”

Two cars had made it partially out of their driveways, but another two cars had smashed into them from both directions of travel in the street.  The car heading east, before crashing, was a Gold, Scion XB, its front end now smashed against the destroyed passenger side of a white, VW Beetle.  The driver’s side door of the Beetle hung open and the car was empty.

I could make out spattered blood on the inside of the Scion’s windshield, and it appeared, from the way the car was rocking in its crashed position, that a struggle of some sort was happening inside.  I didn’t want to think about the activity taking place.

Lisa pointed to it at the same time I saw it.  “What’s going on there?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but it looks like the owner of the Beetle survived the crash.  Let’s get to Stacy.”

I jammed on my brake as a man ran into the side of our car, his face a bloody mess and his hands clenched into fists as he pounded on the window.  I stared in shock as one of the vein-riddled things yanked back the man’s head and sank its teeth into his neck, pulling back with a mouthful of meat and tendons.

Though the zombie apparently did not excrete it intentionally, I saw the pinkish mist drifting from the attacker’s dead eyes – the vapor that I had first seen coming from Denny Steele, and then from my stepfather.  I had been so close to being enveloped by the mist that last time. Had I not misfired the .45 at Matt Rowe, then ducked beneath the toxic vapor to head butt him, I might have been down for the count.

The mist was a phenomenon that Hemp would later describe as a gas with chloroform-like properties; a vapor created as the zombie gas emitting from the earth melded with the decomposing bodies of its very victims.

The vapor was not toxic in the sense that it caused permanent damage, but if you were subjected to it, you would be rendered  instantly comatose.  If you managed to awaken with all of your body parts, you could recover, but these creatures did not subdue you with it so they could sit back and admire you; they did it so they could eat you at their leisure.  As for how this part of the metamorphosis worked out so well for the abnormals, as Flex initially called them, let’s just chalk it up to a miracle of nature.  Or perhaps in this case, unnatural nature. 

I looked ahead at the crashed cars blocking my path up the street, and back at my uninvited guest.  I then cranked the steering wheel full left and pushed it, knocking the zombie at my window backward.  My tires and rims hit the curb and launched over onto the grass, where  I ran over at least four of the creatures I had not previously seen, all feeding on poor Stacy’s neighbors.  For all I knew, one had been her mother.

I cranked the wheel right to get around two bicycles on their sides in the next driveway, spun the wheel hard left again to avoid a large oak tree, and finally slid the car to a stop in the yard of the house where Stacy was supposedly hiding.

I threw it in park and cut the headlights and engine.  If we were being approached, I could not see anyone, but it would be foolish to think they weren’t coming.  They always came.  Always.

“Call Stacy and let her know we’re here,” I said.  “Hurry!”

Lisa punched buttons on her phone.  “I just texted her.”

“Can’t anyone just call anyone anymore?” I asked.

The phone made a
bloop-bloop
sound, and Lisa looked at it.  “Okay, she’s going to the front door.  If we get there and tap twice, she’ll unlock it really fast.”

But as I looked out my door there were three of the creatures within four feet. 

“David!” shouted Lisa, throwing her body toward me.  It was the same on her side of the car.  There were five of them pressing against the entire passenger side of the Toyota.

“Hold on!” I shouted, pushing the start button again.  I put the car into drive, hit the accelerator and turned hard right, knocking three of the five monsters down as I drove for the only gap I could see. 

The rear tire of the Prius hit and rolled over something, landed, and did it again.  Probably the legs of the creatures unfortunate enough to tumble beneath the car.  This time I left the headlights off and threaded through the melee of the street, silently counting the number of houses to the corner before making my first left.

I then made another left turn on the street behind Stacy’s, Roosevelt Avenue. 

Things were also bad here, they weren’t as bad as on Kennedy.  This time I pulled up over the left curb and drove on the lawns, counting up five houses on the left.

The homes in this area were nearly zero lot lines, so there was perhaps five feet between the homes.  I pulled the Prius to the appropriate gap between two of the houses and stopped it.  Nothing on the street side would be able to get around the car without climbing over it.  I threw open my door because it was clear. 

“Text her again and tell her we’re coming up to the back.  Tell her to be there at the door.”

Lisa got to work.  I looked through the gap at the rear of the house.  It was the right one.  The house was light blue, so easy to spot, even in the paleness of the night. 

Bloop-bloop
.  Lisa looked at her phone.  “Okay, she’s ready.”

“Unbuckle and jump out my side,” I said.  “Then be ready to run.”  I scrambled out and Lisa was right behind me.  She was not a small girl, but I was happy to see that she was agile as hell when she felt the dogs of Hell charging after her, as I believe we both did at that moment.

I yanked the .45 out and held it at ready as we tore through the side yards of the two houses behind that of Stacy’s neighbor, and when I came upon a small, rabbit fence, I jumped over it, shouting, “Fence, jump!”

Lisa did, clearing the two foot chicken wire fence easily.  I chanced a glance back, and saw three of the creatures emerging from between the homes, coming behind us.  They had come through the back yard of the home next door, unhindered by the Prius.

“Come on, Lisa,” I said.  “Almost there.”

I entered the yard and we reached the back door.  I pounded on it, and a split-second later, heard a click.  I turned the knob and yanked it open.  Seconds later, the door closed behind us, Lisa and I stood in a brightly lit hallway, breathing hard.

“Leese,” said Stacy, pushing around me to get to her friend.  She hugged my sister, and they embraced for a long time.  I walked into the living room and fell onto the couch, laying back. 

I was exhausted, but we were alive.

*****

             
Chapter Four             

Shortly after our arrival at the Palmers’ home, we discovered a major cache of food in the garage storage cabinets.  There was literally six months of canned goods, and that included beans, corn, beets, peas, chili, Vienna sausages, Spam, and just about everything else you could think of with and without a pull-tab opener.

The power dumped after around four weeks, and I think we all felt lucky it functioned for as long as it had.  Palmer didn’t have a generator, so we were eating most of the pre-cooked stuff at room temperature and using what propane tanks they had sparingly.  Luckily it appeared they liked camping, so they had two cool little two-burner Coleman stoves and a hell of a lot of the two-packs of small propane bottles, which we used early on to cook up as much of the meat and other frozen stuff that didn’t lend itself to our next trick.

The Palmers had a food dehydrator, so around the three-week point, when all we could think about was when the power cut out, Stacy had suggested that we start cooking and dehydrating lots of the brisket and other meats that lent themselves well to the process.  After that, we sealed it up in the vacuum sealer.  The instructions said that meat would last up to a year if the vacuum held.

I was pretty damned proud of us.  We were adapting in a screwed up world, and while they didn’t have one damned weapon or bullet in the house, the Palmers sure did like to plan for the future when it came to food.

Aside from our worries about the meat going bad, the ice was also a concern.  We only left a full tray of it in the freezer at any given time, keeping three ice chests packed full of it at all times.  Very little air space.  We knew that when the power crashed, all the frozen meat and poultry we hadn’t dehydrated would be trash in no time.  The ice stock would keep it for at least three to five more days if we didn’t open it much, and by then we’d have no power to run the dehydrator or vacuum sealer.

As for why we had decided to stay put, as long as the water kept running, there didn’t seem to be much reason to leave.

Keeping consistent with our newfound survival skills, we had filled both bathtubs with water in the event that it should be cut off, and we had cleaned and filled every viable container in the house with the life-sustaining liquid.

It left only one small shower in which to actually get clean, but it was enough.  Filling the bathtubs had been Stacy’s idea.  Turns out it was the best one.  The canned goods would’ve kept us even without the frozen meat and other stuff – the water was crucial.

We’d been there almost four months, and the tubs were almost empty now.  Evaporation got us, thirst got us.  We still had several bottles, but it was now late September, and the days had been hot for months.

I was worried about Lisa and Stacy, but our host had begun to look very frail of late.

Her hair was dirty blonde, long and stringy, and the nineteen-year-old would fight her nervousness by sitting on the couch, her thin legs folded underneath her body like a greyhound at rest, chewing her split ends, then endlessly picking at them with her jagged, bitten nails. 

I had the distinct impression she was wasting away before our eyes.  Not long after we’d arrived, the church abandoned as a necessary destination for the moment, I’d seen Stacy cinching her pants tighter and pulling them up when they slid down over her hips.  I appreciated that she had allowed us to come and stay with her, and just after dark one evening, while Lisa was taking a much-needed nap, I said something.

“Stacy, you look like hell.”

“Thanks, David.”

“Dave’s fine,” I said.  “But you know that after what?  Four months I guess?”

“Feels like ten years,” she said.  “Thanks for saying I look like shit,
Dave
.”

“You need to eat more, Stacy.  There’s plenty of food.”

She stared at me, her gaunt face expressionless.  “Maybe you need to eat less,” she replied.

I shook my head.  “I’ll go out and get more food if things start running down,” I said.  “If that’s what you’re worried about.  Have you weighed yourself?  How much have you lost?”

“Fifteen pounds,” she admitted.

“Okay, so you’ve weighed yourself.  Have you looked in the mirror, because you’re starting to look scary.”

She unfolded and jumped up from the couch.  “Well, you can just goddamned leave if it’s uncomfortable for you to look at me!” she screamed.

She walked right up to me and I admit I must have pressed myself back into my chair as she leaned in and continued her tirade:  “I’m trying to deal here, and I’m trying to stay alive long enough for this fucking government to do something and tell us when we can get back to our lives!”

“Stacy, I’m sorry.  I was only saying it because I care –”

“Care about what?” she interrupted.  “About the fact that my cell phone quit working three months ago and I never even got so much as a single text from my father after that first day?”

She paced away from me and collapsed back on the couch again.  She looked up at me, tears running down her face.  “You care about me?  What about my neighbors?  Do you care about them?  They’re eating each other, for God’s sake, Dave!  I saw Jan next door attacking her child in my front lawn!  She killed her
six-year-old son
not twelve feet away from my bedroom window before I ever came over here, and she was eating him!”

I sat there and said nothing.  Her head drooped for a moment, and she looked back at me, her anger gone, replaced with immense grief.  “So I hope you have a huge supply of caring inside you, Dave Gammon, because there is so, so much in this world to care about right now.”

There were no words that I could say to her and I knew it.  I didn’t take it personally.  If I were honest with myself, I felt a bit injured inside, but I knew I’d get over it.  We’d all have to get over a lot, and there was no way Stacy could really know what was in my heart, especially in her present state.

I got up and went into the kitchen.  I got two packs of string cheese out of the very last bit of ice in the best ice chest we had, along with a warm, canned protein shake.  She had sunken back into the couch as I shook and opened the warm shake, handing it to her.

She took it and drank.  I then peeled open one of the string cheeses and gave it to her.  She had downed the entire shake, then took a bite of the cheese and attempted a small smile that immediately turned into a frown, and then sobs.

“David, my mother’s out there!” she cried.  “I’ve seen her.  She stands with those other things out there, and she … she wants in.  She wants to get to us like the others do.”

I shook my head.  “She’s not your mother anymore, Stacy.”

She nodded and bit another hunk from the string cheese stick.  “I can’t see her like that anymore,” she said.  “It tears me up a little more every time I see her out there.  First it scares me, then it rips me apart.”

I went to her couch and sat down beside her.  I pulled her slight body over to me and put my arm around her.  “Tell me what you want me to do,” I said softly.  “I’ll do whatever you think is right.”

Stacy leaned away from me and turned to face me.  “You … will?”

I knew there could be only one request.  All I could do was kill her to stop both Stacy’s torture and that of her mother, whether real or perceived in our living, working minds.  “Yes, I will,” I said again.

At that moment, we heard a sound against the window.  It shuddered.

We both jerked our heads toward the sound at the same time, only I was on my feet and she was gripping the empty space where I’d been with both clutched hands.

I went to the window and lifted the rod which, if turned, would open the blinds.  I turned it very slowly.

At first I believed it was so dark out that all external light was unable to filter through to the interior of the house.  But that wasn’t it.  I raised my eyes.

My focus turned to the faces of the zombie-like creatures , all in a row, the hands pounding and scratching the glass, the mouths, tongues and teeth pressing into it, seeing me there behind it, and wanting to come inside.

Behind them was another row, all pushing forward. 

Behind them, another.  They were pushing in against the doors and windows.  Pink mist rose from them, and every now and then, I saw bright red eyes flashing in the distance, like devilish beacons in a distant hell.

Stacy screamed behind me and I spun the rod in the other direction, closing the blinds again.  I ran to the back of the house and did the same with the sliding door verticals.

It was another solid mass of walking dead bodies, pressing against the house hard, sensing the food source within; the only sustenance they now wanted – Lisa, Stacy and me.

In another five minutes, I had confirmed that the house was entirely surrounded, pressed in on by the creatures, who were tireless and determined.

I went into the bathroom and closed the door after making sure Lisa and Stacy were in a walk-in closet – one of the only places with a door they could close that didn’t have windows.  I went in there to be alone, because I didn’t want the girls to see me break down.  I could lie to them, but I could not lie to myself.

I was scared to death.  After four months, we now had to get on the move.  But first we had to find a way out of there.

*****

“You guys stay in here,” I said after my man cry.   “I’m going to pack some food and supplies into whatever I can find, and we’re going to blow this firetrap.”

“How?” Stacy cried, her crying and shuddering making her slight body appear that much more impossibly tiny.  Lisa had lost weight, too.  I saw a hollowness in her cheeks that I’d never noticed before.

“I don’t know yet,” I said.  “Do you know where the attic hatch is in this house?”

“How’s that going to help?” asked Lisa.

I thought about it.  Then I realized it was a dead end idea.  I was stupidly thinking I could somehow access the roof from there, but that wasn’t even possible.  And I was supposed to have been in construction.

Doofus.

“Forget it,” I said.  “I have another idea.”

I closed the door and ran into the garage.  There was an aluminum Little Giant ladder.  Perfect.   I grabbed it, and realized instantly that my own strength had dwindled over the last few months.  It wasn’t  that the food at the house wasn’t nutritious – it was that we weren’t hungry.  Fear had a way of fucking with your taste buds.

I hoisted it up onto one shoulder and threaded it through the door into the house, through the laundry room door, and inside the hall.  I moved down the hallway and opened the ladder beneath the skylight.  It was about a 9’ ceiling and the ladder would get us to 8’.

I locked the legs in and ran back to the bathroom, pushing the door open. 

“Okay, you guys.  I hate to do this at night, but I can’t have one of these freaks breaking a window while we’re sleeping.  If that happens, they’re all pouring in, and we aren’t enough to stop them.”

They both stared at me.  “What?” I asked.

Still, they stared.

“Hey!  Snap out of it and grab what clothes you need.  While you’re at it, grab some of Palmer’s clothes for me.  His stuff fits me about right.  Don’t take much, just enough for a couple of changes.  Stuff it all in a backpack or something else easy to carry.”

They ran off, and I hauled ass back to the living room.  I could practically feel the weight against the glass, and with every creak and groan of the house, I just knew something was going to give way and we would be flooded with the walking rotters.

I climbed to the top of the ladder and saw there was no crank.  No way to open the skylight.  It screwed down from above into a flange that inserted from inside. 

I shimmied back down the ladder, and scanned the living room.  I ran over, took a lamp off a small side table, and threw it aside with a crash.  I grabbed the small, wooden table and hauled it up the ladder with me. 

Holding it with both hands, I smashed it into the Plexiglas skylight until a crack formed.  Then a chip.  With the next slam, the leg of the table poked through, and I knew I would have it in short order. 

I dropped down one rung, grabbed the table by the very top, and rammed it as hard as I could into the skylight with my eyes squeezed closed, hearing and feeling, rather than seeing my success, by the crashing sound and the shattered plastic raining down on top of my head.

I threw the table aside and scrambled up until my head poked through the skylight.  I pushed my shoulders through, clearing a space large enough for any one of us, and knocking the rest of the plastic out of the way.  I then climbed up to the top of the ladder and stepped onto the roof.

As quietly as I could, I crept to the front of the house.  The pitch of the roof was mild, so there was no fear of losing my balance and toppling off the roof.  I reached the edge and looked down.

It looked like fucking Woodstock around that house.  I looked at the neighboring homes.

Wide open.

This meant they could sense us.  In a sea of their own stink, through walls, they could smell us – the living.