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  THE FINAL BOOK IN THE DEAD HUNGER SERIES

  Dead Hunger IX:

  The Cleansing

  By Eric A. Shelman

  DEAD HUNGER IX:

  THE CLEANSING

  is a work of fiction By

  Eric A. Shelman

  All characters contained herein are fictional, and all similarities to actual persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  No portion of this text may be copied or duplicated without author or publisher written permission, except for use in professional reviews.

  ©2016 Dolphin Moon Publishing

  Smashwords Edition

  Proofread by Ramona Martine

  Cover Art by Jeffrey Kosh

  DEADICATION

  The Dead Hunger series, as many of you know, revived my writing career. I had abandoned the art of the written word several years before, and Dead Hunger: The Flex Sheridan Chronicle, resurrected my passion.

  Since 2011, when I wrote the very first book that introduced you all to Flex, Gem, Hemp, Charlie and Trina, you have let me know your thoughts about the series; you’ve expressed to me how all of these characters came to feel like real friends and family to you.

  They also became family to me. I know that sounds strange, but it’s true. The moment I would finish another book, my mind would turn to what they were doing when I wasn’t looking.

  No doubt they’d be doing the same crazy shit they did when I was involved. They are a nutty bunch, after all.

  So this is the end. I won’t get into how it ends, and I won’t get into the condition of the world when it ends, but I can guarantee you this is the last book in the Dead Hunger series, so it’s time to say goodbye.

  It’s my great hope that this final book allows you to close the back cover, or flip that last, electronic eReader page and say, “That was the right way to finish it.”

  I want you to be satisfied, even if you are disappointed it’s over. I think you’ll agree that this is a fitting ending for this epic saga that begins in 2011 and ends in 2029. It spans over eighteen years, 3,960 pages and nearly a million words. (955,250 to be precise!)

  You and my characters deserve this ending.

  I dedicate this book to my wife, Linda. She has spent many an evening without me as I sat alone, figuring out where to take my fictional friends. She has made it possible with her understanding and her generosity. She has taken care of me through about three back surgeries and two shoulder surgeries since this series began, and through ups and downs that only we’ll ever truly understand.

  Thank you, Linda. I love you.

  My brother, Don, was also instrumental in coming up with many ideas that provided some of the most exciting scenes throughout this series. It’s Don’s philosophy that nothing is too crazy to voice, and if I like it, good. If I don’t, fine. But he does get a big kick out of reading the book and seeing that I have used his ideas.

  Hey, bro. The pleasure is partly mine, but I think the readers benefit the most. Thanks for your help, man.

  Yes, there are many others to thank, and if you’re friends with me on Facebook, or if you’ve enjoyed the series, you count among them. Many of you have been so supportive of me that I can only marvel at the success you have allowed me to enjoy.

  Now that it’s over, I will ask that you not let it be forgotten; tell your friends that you know of a series that’s close to a million words long that they can dig into and read multiple times. Tell them some really cool friends are waiting for them.

  And let me tell you … you are all some really good friends to me.

  Hell. I may even read this series again some years down the road when I start missing these characters too much. God knows I can’t remember what I’ve written half the time. Luckily, I’ve got fabulous beta readers, such as Giles Batchelor, Shannon Sharpe, Lana Sibley, Tim Feely, and Laurie Mault.

  Authors and associates who have helped me along the way are Mark Tufo, Tracy Tufo, Bobby Adair, Jonathan Maberry, Heath Stallcup, Armand Rosamilia, Shawn Chesser, John O’Brien, Joe McKinney, James Cook, T.M. Williams, Stephen A. North, Shana Festa, Shannon Walters, Jeff Clare, and so many others my head spins.

  Thank you. All of you.

  ~ Eric A. Shelman

  Reference Images:

  The fence line surrounding the city of Kingman, Kansas, which creates the "Safe Zone”, is represented by the dark line. The zombie killing pit is identified as well. The safe zone is less than one square mile, but required that over 3.3 miles of fence be constructed. The shaded area within the circle is where most events take place.

  The image below shows a street-level view of some of the primary locations where this story takes place.

  Below is a satellite view of downtown Kingman, showing key locations within the story.

  PROLOGUE

  My name’s Flex Sheridan. What I’m writin’ here is pretty special to me. It’s what I’d call full circle, me puttin’ pen to paper. I wrote the first chronicle, after all.

  My wife, Gem, is sitting across the room as I write this. She looks at me occasionally and smiles. Sometimes she winks. Hell, sometimes she flashes a tit.

  She’s tall and brunette with crazy wild hair and big brown eyes. I love her more than life itself, and I’m pretty sure she feels the same about me. We got back together the day this crap all started. She’s actually started painting again. Just recently.

  I can tell you that I wouldn’t be alive today if she hadn’t found me at my sister’s place.

  Anyway. I’ll introduce everyone else later. Gem just flashed me a tit and I thought I should write something down about her.

  I imagine you wouldn’t be readin’ this chronicle if you hadn’t read all the others that came before. If that’s not the case, I’d probably be wise to tell you go find the other volumes that came before and read them first so you don’t get lost while I’m tellin’ you this part.

  But it’s probably not necessary. If you’re alive to read this, then depending on how old you are, you probably saw a lot of what I did. I’m just not sure you understand exactly what it is you saw. Because of that, and because this volume of our exploits is extra special to me, I’m gonna run it all down for you again. Don’t worry. I’ll keep it short.

  *****

  In June of 2011, an element of some kind started leakin’ out of the surface of the planet. Everywhere. The effect it had was to take away the humanity from everyone affected by it. It did that in a most interestin’ way. It gave folks a horrible headache, crazy nightmares, and then it changed them from livin’ people into dead ones.

  Not dead in the usual manner; it fired up all the cells in all those dead bodies and made every single one of ‘em starvin’ for flesh. They got up. They were hungry.

  Like sharks, they never stop. Always huntin’ for food; huntin’ us.

  Some of us were immune. We figured that out and wrote about it in our second volume. Hemp Chatsworth was responsible for the discovery.

  Hemphill is his full name. Anyway, Hemp once contracted for the CDC, and he had a couple of important degrees under his belt when we found him. He had a degree in epidemiology, and a mechanical engineering degree. Hard to tell which thing he liked doin’ most, because he was damned good at both.

  Anyway, one day while we were kill
in’ zombies in a graveyard on one of our road trips, he noticed somethin’. The poison ivy plants growing there were huge. Inexplicable, I think was the word he used. Because it was so strange, bein’ the scientist that he was, he took a couple of the plants with us.

  He soon discovered that the plants kept low to the ground grew faster. Way faster. And they got bigger. This caused him to look into what was different down low to the ground compared to higher up. It was right about then that he spotted a puddle of water that answered his question.

  Bubbles.

  They were comin’ up from the ground and makin’ that puddle dance. Then we stopped by to check on some lakes. Same thing. Finally, just to drive it home, he jammed a clear acrylic tube into the ground and filled it with water.

  Damned bubbles. Whatever it was, it was everywhere. Couldn’t taste it, couldn’t see it or smell it.

  But it sure changed folks.

  It was a relief finally knowin’ what caused the apocalypse that fucked the world, but it didn’t give us any way to stop it. There was a way, but it involved waiting.

  How long? He didn’t know. How could he? Some gaseous element was spewing from the earth, and it had to be ancient; as old as the planet itself.

  It could go on for a month, a year, or ten thousand years. If you’ve read all our chronicles, then you know it’s been going on about eighteen years now. Give or take a year. It’s 2029.

  And the goddamned gas was creatin’ zombies out of 90% of living people. Worse still, that trip to the graveyard that day was for a reason; the dead ones were scratchin’ and clawin’ their ways to the surface and we couldn’t believe our eyes. We pulled over and watched tattered bodies of men, women and children emerging from the earth, their fingers bone-raw and their skin peeling from their bodies. Shit, some of those diggers were little more than walkin’ skeletons.

  Turns out the gas hit them first. On its way up from the ground, you know; just passin’ through. As long as they weren’t embalmed, those buried people woke up.

  If you wonder how that could be possible, let me tell you that lots of folks used cheap, cardboard caskets when they couldn’t afford an expensive burial, and embalming wasn’t required everywhere.

  Most states don’t have a law. I say once this is over, we create one. Burned or embalmed. Hell, maybe we just burn ‘em all from here on out.

  Soon after that, we started seein’ some behavior that rocked us again. The damned zombies, who had, for the most part, just wandered around with their shitty hearing and used some sense or another to find fresh meat, started movin’ in an organized way.

  Like a strategy, almost. It became obvious once we finally figured it out, but I’ll tell you, it was damned scary that first time it took us by surprise.

  Turns out the zombies have bosses. Those bosses are what we initially called Red Eyes. Now we call ‘em Mothers, mostly. Why? Because they were poised to be exactly that when the gas made its appearance.

  We’ve also begun callin’ the other ones – the ones that aren’t as smart – Hungerers. It’s what the Hybrids call them. I’ll get to them later, but first, let’s talk about the Mothers.

  Pregnant women, if you hadn’t noticed, are different than most. During pregnancy, women’s estrogen levels rocket skyward to keep their brains functioning normally. Without the estrogen, women would become forgetful while pregnant; unable to remember stuff that would normally be second nature. Things like where they put their grocery lists, keys, guns, other kids – stuff like that.

  Growin’ a baby inside you really takes a lot of resources, and the body naturally does what it must to allow women to function normally. Unfortunately, when these women changed into zombies, this increased estrogen had a little rendezvous with the gas comin’ out of the planet.

  It changed ‘em differently. It made pregnant zombies … enhanced, let’s say. It gave them powers.

  Now don’t get me wrong; the regular zombies have their offenses, too. And I’m not just talkin’ about their odor. Nature may have gotten off the starting block fast with this particular evolution of mankind, but it did what nature always does; it developed offenses and defenses for its creations.

  The regular zombies emit a pinkish vapor from their tear ducts. Hemp chalks it up to some sort of chemical reaction between decaying tissue and the stuff comin’ out of the ground. Anyway, this eye vapor will knock your ass out like chloroform, and allows them to basically save your tasty ass for later. Yeah, of course we learned this by trial and error. Hemp was first to get knocked out; I volunteered to be number two.

  Neither one of us got eaten.

  The time with Hemp was an accident. The second time I agreed to expose myself intentionally, mainly so we didn’t have a third time. We needed to figure out something, and we needed to figure it out fast.

  The best, earliest discovery we made was somethin’ called urushiol. It’s the oil found in several plants, the poison ivy being our primary source. Hemp figured somethin’ out pretty fast after findin’ those huge plants, and he tried an experiment.

  We discovered we were all immune to it. Any one of us survivors could touch it and just go on about our merry ways. No blisters … hell, not even a little red rash.

  I’m not sure if it was then that we caught ourselves some zombies or not. We holed up in a steel supply warehouse where I guess we thought we’d stay a while, and if I’m remembering right, that’s where we learned what the urushiol oil does to the zombies.

  It melts ‘em like goddamned butter. Just a dab’ll take off their entire arm, and then keep workin’ its way up the shoulder. Mist those fuckers with it and they hiss and pop and sizzle into chunky puddles.

  It’s a sight.

  Doesn’t work so well on the Mothers. Not at all. It burns ‘em a bit, but it barely slows ‘em down. This meant bullets for those bitches and spray bottles and water guns filled with watered-down urushiol for the rest.

  Sure opened up our ammo options.

  Then – and I won’t get into how that happened – Hemp came up with WAT-5. The greatest invention since Alexander Graham Bell first told Watson to get his ass in the room over the first telephone.

  When the eye vapor from a standard rotter was blended with what we had begun to call the earth gas, the two components reacted together, and started self-reproducing. Hemp has other words for it, but basically, it just keeps growin’ and growin’, creatin’ more of itself.

  That’s a good thing as it turns out. If you wanna stop it, you just add a drop of urushiol.

  Makes sense, right? All these components had something to do with what was happening to the world and its people.

  Once you add the urushiol, it congeals and turns into a crisp, little wafer. Okay, kinda chewy, and not tasty at all. Just ask young Trina and Taylor. They had to eat more of that shit than I can tell you.

  Oh, yeah. I told you it’s called WAT-5. There’s a reason for that you oughta know: it allows you to Walk Among Them for up to five hours, undetected.

  That’s right. It makes you invisible to zombies. All but the red-eyed Mothers, that is. They can be fooled for a bit, but they recognize actions that aren’t zombie-like, and eventually they’ll figure out you’re alive, and do their best to make you dead. Or food. Whichever they’re in the mood for.

  The other thing that’s odd is when you take it, you go out like a switch. The very second it hits your throat, you’re lights out. Pretty much like the zombie eye vapor gets you.

  If you’re still on your previous dosage, you’ll be fine – you won’t drop off to sleep. So if we’re out in the badlands, we make sure we set timers and monitor how much time we have left.

  Couple more things. The Mothers have eye vapor, too. It’s not the same as the regular rotter variety of vapor. Theirs is crimson red, and it changes young women of childbearing years into their slaves.

  If the Mothers aren’t around, you can’t tell anything’s different about ‘em. When those powerful, female zombies are around though,
the effect of bein’ sprayed forces those girls to obey the Mothers’ telepathically-issued commands. Makes ‘em open doors, windows, stuff like that. Those evolved Mothers can tell the exposed women to make us vulnerable, and they’re powerless to resist it.

  After this happened, we thought it might be a good idea to try extracting the Mothers’ eye vapor and making a new version of WAT-5. The wafers looked almost the same – a bit redder than the others – and when we gave it to some recently sprayed girls, it neutralized the Mothers’ control over ‘em. The young women still heard the commands inside their heads, but they were no longer compelled to act on ‘em.

  A red-eyed Mother recently killed our son, Flex Sheridan Jr. We called him Flexy. He was the best thing Gem and I ever created together.

  It was a matter of our boy lettin’ down his guard – somethin’ we told him time and time again never to do. Mistakes can get you killed in this world; in any world, really, but nowadays, the odds are greatly increased that any slip-up will be your last.

  Last, let me touch on the Hybrids. Isis and Max are two of them. Isis is the daughter of Brett Ulrich Gammon, also known as Bug. While her mother was pregnant, she was sprayed with the vapor from one of the Mothers.

  It had the same effect on her; she was no longer in control of her own actions, heeding the commands of the Mothers. Isis’ mother died during childbirth, but that’s not why I’m tellin’ you this story.