Read Online Dead Hunger II: The Gem Cardoza Chronicle by Eric A. Shelman - Free Book Online

gas station office and each of us, holding weapons forward, checked the rooms.  There was a decaying stench in the air, and it didn’t take long to discover what it was.
    A fly and maggot-ridden body lay five feet inside the store between the bread and candy aisles of the mini mart.  The bread was all green and molded, a reminder of the things we wouldn’t have anymore unless we made it ourselves. 
    The body was of an Indian man.  He lay face up – if he’d still had a face – and his tag said he his name was Rakesh.
    Rakesh no longer had a brain, and his limbs had been chewed to the bone, so he didn’t appear to be a threat.  It sucked that we still had to make an evaluation when someone was in such condition, but the fact was, we did.
    I stood back three feet and put a single round in his head.  I was done taking chances.
    “I found the switches.  They’re all in the on position,” said Flex.
    He was behind the sales counter.  “I’m going to turn off all the pumps but the diesel.  Our gen’s not going to power all of them.  Maybe one.”
    Charlie stopped at the Twinkies.  “These things have enough preservatives to last a year or two,” she said, pulling three boxes from the shelf.  “Hey, Flex.  Hand me a couple bags from back there, would you?”
    Flex did, and she grabbed three more boxes, loading them up with two packages of Hostess Cupcakes.  The chocolate kind with the white squiggly frosting on top.
    A little of that weed and I’d be all over those.  No doubt. 
    I walked around to the door leading to the service bay.  I pushed through it and saw another body lying on the concrete floor to the right of the door.  This was one of the mechanics judging from his uniform, but he was face down.  I didn’t bother with an examination; I put a bullet in his head.
    Blood splattered against the wall and the floor, and the body convulsed violently.  Hands and feet twitching as the crimson liquid ran away from the body and pooled beside my feet.
    Flex burst through the door.
    “Gem!  Are you okay?”  He looked down at the body on the floor and saw the blood.
    I looked at him.  “Flex.  He was alive.”
    “Jesus, Gem, didn’t he say anything?”
    “I think he was pretending to be dead.”
    “He had to know we weren’t zombies.  We were talking, for Christ’s sake.”
    “I don’t know.”   I was numb.  “Flex, I killed a man.  I just killed an innocent man.”
    Flex knelt down beside the man ’s body .  He’d quit twitching and now lay still.  Flex’s hand went to the man’s ear and he brought back a hearing aid.  He reached around to the other side of the man’s head and found another, then held them both up in the palm of his hand.
    “Gem, he couldn’t hear us.  These are both the rechargeable kind, and he’s had no power.”
    I stared down at the man whose life I’d ended.  It didn’t matter that he didn’t hear us; didn’t know we weren’t a danger.  I took his life, snuffed it out.  I should have been more careful, checked the body before I fired my gun into his brain.  I felt my legs collapsing, and before I could steady myself on the dirty shelf mounted on the wall, I crumpled to the ground, a wave of emotion washing over me.
    I felt Flex’s arms around me immediately.
    “Gem,” he said.  “C’mon.  Baby, you wouldn’t have done this on purpose, and you know it.  Never.”
    I couldn’t speak.  I was bawling.  Maybe the guy had already lost everyone he loved, but he’d made it this long – so long after it all began, only to have Gemina Cardoza, a trigger-happy Guatemalan girl snuff his life out with a single pull of the trigger.
    “C’mon, Gem.  Let me help you up.”
    When I got back on my feet, Charlie stood at the door.  She looked down at the man on the ground and back at me.  She put her arm around me, too.
    “Gem, let me take you back to the car.  I’ll help Flex when I get back.”
    I cried harder because I loved