They walked toward the door of the shack. With each step Chong felt his balance improve, but he was not all that encouraged. It was more of a matter of getting used to his condition rather than there being any actual improvement.
“I don’t know if y’all want to hear this,” said Riot, “but I heard once about a feller who got the gray sickness and didn’t die.”
Chong swiveled his head around and stared at her. “I’m pretty sure I do want to hear about that.”
She looked pained. “Well . . . it ain’t like things worked out too great for him.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Together they walked out of the shack toward her quad.
Riot sucked her teeth for a moment. “Well,” she began reluctantly, “this was a feller name of Hiram, a corn farmer up from Arkansas who hired out as a hunter for small settlements. He’d go out with a wagon covered in sheet metal and some horses dressed in coats made from license plates bolted onto leather covers. He’d kill him some deer and whatever else he could draw a bead on, then he’d bring it all back to the settlement and sell it out of the back of his wagon. Well, one time he comes back and he’s looking mighty poorly.”
“Like I am?”
She glanced at him and offered a fragile smile. “Near enough as makes no never mind.”
“What happened?”
“Well, it turns out that he ate himself a leg of wild mutton he’d shot and got sick. He asked my pa to take a look at him, and Pa asked to see the rest of the sheep he’d cut the leg off of.” She paused while she helped Chong step over the back of the quad. There was no seat belt, but she lashed him in place with some rope she took from a gear bag.
When he was settled in, he said, “I think I can guess what your father found when he examined the sheep.”
Riot nodded, but said it anyway. “There was a small bite on its shoulder. Not bad, and not fatal, but a bite. One of them had tried to chow down on it and the critter scampered.”
“So what happened to Hiram?”
“That’s the funny part. And I mean—”
“Funny weird, not funny ha-ha, I get it.”
She nodded. “Hiram got sick as a hound dog. Lay in bed for ten, twelve days, and they posted a guard on him in case he needed seeing to.”
“But . . . ?”
Riot picked up Eve, kissed her, hugged her, and then placed her in the seat. “Hold on to her.”
“Don’t worry,” said Chong, “I won’t let her go. But what happened to Hiram? Did he get better?”
A few strange expressions wandered across Riot’s features. “Not ‘better’ as you’d like to hear. He didn’t die, though. Not exactly. Old Hiram got better enough to get out of bed. He could talk to people and all, and he even went back to hunting after a time.”
“But . . . ?” Chong urged. He wanted to kick her.
“He never did get all the way right again. And every once in a while he’d come down all bitey.”
“‘Bitey’?”
“Yeah. He’d get riled and go all weird and try to take a chomp outta someone. Did it more than once.”
“He bit people?”
Riot looked away. “Might even have eaten some people, but that was just a rumor. He run off after a while, ’bout a half step before people did something permanent about him.”
“What—I mean—what was he?”
“Don’t know what science would call that feller. We kids gave him a nickname, though.”
“I can’t wait to hear this,” said Chong.
“We called him a half-zee,” she said. “Hiram Half-Zee.”
“Swell,” he said, and thought, Lilah will just love that. Right up until she quiets me.
“Hold on, boy,” said Riot. She perched on the very front of the crowded seat, then fired up the quad, and a moment later they were zooming through the forest, the four fat tires kicking up plumes of sandy soil behind them.
70
“NIX, I THINK WE NEED TO FIND THIS ‘SANCTUARY’ PLACE. YOU READ THAT report, you saw the notes. Whoever this Dr. McReady was, she thought she was really onto something important. Faster zoms? Smarter zoms? If there are scientists and some kind of military at Sanctuary, then they have to be told about this. We can’t just let this stuff rot here.”