Dead Hunger III: The Chatsworth Chronicles by Eric A. Shelman

Author:Eric A. Shelman [Shelman, Eric A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: zombie apocalypse
Publisher: Dolphin Moon Publishing
Published: 2012-07-07T05:00:00+00:00

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We didn’t go far. We turned right down the next hallway, and came to what appeared to be another plexiglass wall. Thick.

Carville turned on a light and I jumped back, involuntarily.

Zombies. Two of them, behind the clear, thick wall. One was a man, and the other was a woman or a girl. I couldn’t tell. They were both in clear cages with several air holes, and a slot that appeared to have been installed for feeding. The inside of the glass was smudged with blood and smears of other things I couldn’t identify.

The moment the interior room lights went on, the lights in the hall where we stood went dark, but if Carville didn’t want his captives to be able to see observers, the point was moot. The light from the room still shone through the glass and illuminated us, so the creatures within the boxes had a pretty clear view.

And they showed it, the vapor from their eyes puffing out, creating a coral-colored cloud around them, their mouths and teeth gnashing and chewing, their desperate, dead fingers clawing uselessly at the smooth surface of their cage walls.

“Why have you got these two caged here?” I asked.

“Because,” said Carville, “They’re not just any two. If you’ve learned anything about me over the years, you know I have a twin brother.”

I looked at him. “Then how . . . how did he catch it and not you?”

“Excellent question, and expected. Raymond was bitten, Mr. Chatsworth. The very first day this began, he was bitten by my wife.”

“Where is she? Is that her?”

Carville’s eyes flashed anger. “That,” he said, his voice shaking, “Is my daughter, Veronica. I think you know Celina wasn’t a child. She was in her fifties.”

The name brought it back to me. I had seen Celina Carville on the news many times, and she was older. Carville himself was in his early sixties, so she was younger than him, but not much by celebrity standards.

“You said wasn’t. Is your wife dead?”

The moment I asked the question I wished I hadn’t. Of course she was dead. She was dead when she bit Carville’s brother.

Carville nodded anyway. “Raymond killed her when she bit him. He reacted out of fear, and I don’t blame him for what he did. He told me she had gone insane, and she had bitten him several times on the face and neck. I saw the wounds, and knew he was telling the truth. In fact they’re still there.”

I looked through the glass at the male creature. Indeed, his face and neck had several deep gouges that had never healed. The girl, by comparison, looked as though she had merely mutated into one of them, as so many had at the onset.

We’d not seen anyone turn from being bitten. Gem had been bitten and we were able to halt any infection by heavy submersion in urushiol oil at the bite location. It was luck we’d done that, or we’d have lost Gem. I was still somewhat surprised it worked, and I’d still to work out in my mind exactly why it did.

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