Hunger (The Hunger Series Book 1) (24 page)

37

Shell-shock was a term coined in the wake of World War I to describe what was now known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, something with which Peter was familiar. But
shell-shocked
had become part of the general vernacular, applicable to everyday people in the grip of sudden and jarring surprise. After a car accident, an earthquake, a fire. Any traumatic event could leave a person shell-shocked, despite the utter lack of artillery shelling. Out of respect for the warriors who had given their lives during that horrible war, and those who, like him, knew what being shelled felt like, he had never used the term. But now, stepping out the front door of Brant’s house to face his wife-turned-ExoGen-monster, he understood how a person, outside of battle, could feel the full and deeply profound horror of surviving an artillery or mortar bombardment.

His legs grew weak as he took the steps down to the brick walkway, which cut through the carrot greens and led to the long driveway. He stepped past the debris that made the house look dilapidated and abandoned, heading down the driveway and stopping thirty feet from the house. If ExoGen Kristen wanted to talk, she’d have to come to him.

And she did. Confidently. He looked her over, seeing the face he remembered—if he ignored the long teeth poking up into her face and the elongated jaw accommodating them. But the rest of her... The once curvaceous body was slender, wiry and twitching with muscles. Her hips jutted out like an emaciated runway model, but she didn’t appear frail. She looked powerful. Long claws on the tips of her fingers matched the teeth. The last time he’d seen her, the claws had been an inch long. They were now at least four inches. A strong wind swept past her from behind, billowing her mane of hair in every direction, doubling her size and making her look even more wild and dangerous. When the wind reached Peter, he caught a whiff of her scent, earthy and pungent.

In nearly all respects, the woman he once loved was now an animal. A monster. And yet, she was walking out to meet him like two parlaying generals before a battle. Parlay was usually agreed upon with the intention of finding a way to avoid bloodshed, but it was rarely successful. He didn’t hold out hope that this would work out any differently, but if there was a chance, he had to see it through.

She slowed as she neared, eyeing the M16 in his hands. He lowered the weapon and slung it over his shoulder. A sign of good faith.

She stopped ten feet away, still standing in the field of carrots. Though she was completely unclothed, Peter felt naked under her gaze. She looked at him with predatory eyes, evaluating him. He was doing the same to her, but found no weakness. She’d been reformed into an efficient killer, every part of her lithe form hardened for constant life and death struggle. She was still human in appearance, standing straight like a modern biped. She might have been a few inches taller, but unlike the Stalkers, she was still, beneath all the sinews and hair, human.

A Rider,
he reminded himself. What the Riders lacked in size, they made up for by forming a predatory symbiotic relationship with the Woolies. He glanced past her, looking for any sign of the lumbering beasts, but they were still hidden within the shadows of the distant forest. The question was, how many were there? And how many Riders? Until he knew that, Kristin had the advantage.

“Want son,” she said, her voice deeper, but still familiar.

“Not a chance,” Peter replied, matching her resolve. He also noticed her stilted language. While she was still clearly more intelligent than the average ExoGen predator, she had lost some of her previous sharpness.

But not her memory,
he thought.
She knows who I am. Who Jakob is.

He decided to appeal to her motherly instincts, if she had any left. “He wouldn’t be safe with you.”

She crouched down, shoved her fingers into the dirt and lifted a single carrot free. It was covered in soil, but looked thick and orange and delicious. She took a bite, dirt and all, her long, sharp teeth snapping the vegetable with a pop. She worked her jaw open and closed, crunching the carrot. Her teeth slipped in and out of the holes in her face. She swallowed loudly. “Will make son strong.”

He understood the message. Jakob would be fed ExoGenetic crops and turned into a monster, maybe a Rider, or something worse. Or maybe her pals would just eat the boy. In all the infinite parallel universes that might exist, he didn’t think there was a version of himself that would ever let that happen.

“You tried to eat him,” Peter pointed out, though he doubted she would care.

To his surprise, she managed a slight frown that exposed the swollen gums holding her long teeth in place. “Hunger is...strong. But makes us strong. Too.”

She stood up again, stretching out her lean body. “Stronger than soldiers. Stronger than you.”

Peter held up his hands. “That might be true, but stronger is not always better.”

She squinted at him, trying to make sense of his words.

“If I were stronger,” he said, “I would have killed you.”

All her twitching and agitation ceased.

“I would have shot you outside the house. Stopped you from...” He decided not to insult what she had become. “But I didn’t. I showed you mercy. And kindness. Because I love you.”

Her whole face seemed to relax. She dropped the carrot and took a deep, shaky breath. “Pe-ter...” One slow step at a time, she exited the field and stepped onto the pavement, just five feet away. She stopped, just out of arm’s reach. “Still...love?”

“Never stopped,” he said, and it was the truth. He still regretted the decision to let her live, but only because he did love her. He could have spared her from this horrible life. Instead, he’d condemned her to endless savagery and painful adaptations.

“You come, too,” she said, reaching for him.

He stepped back. “I can’t.”

She looked wounded. “You said ‘love.’ You said—” Kristen sucked in a sudden and deep breath like she’d just been sucker punched in the gut. She doubled over, holding herself, stumbling back—and looking past him, toward the house.

Time seemed to slow as Peter turned around, turned his back on his enemy, and looked at the home. The front door was open, framing the small body of a woman whose head had been shaved, but was still easily recognizable to anyone who had met her.

Ella looked groggy and confused for a moment as she looked at Peter, and then beyond him. Then her eyes slowly opened, growing large with recognition. Despite the physical alterations, she still recognized Kristen, just as Kristen recognized her.

Jakob and Anne appeared in the doorway, reaching and grabbing, pulling Ella back and closing the door. But the damage had been done.

The wife he had loved, and spared and wished he had killed, had seen his former lover, the woman who nearly destroyed them, who Kristen loathed with every fiber of her being. He had little doubt, that given the opportunity to kill Ella with no repercussions, Kristen would have done so long ago. And now, with him having just claimed to love her, she had seen Ella again, with her son.

A long string of curses flowed through Peter’s mind as he swung back around, leaping away from Kristen as he did so. The move saved his life. Long claws sliced through the air where his neck had been a moment before. Had he not anticipated the attack, he’d be on his knees, clutching his neck and bleeding out in clear view of his son.

“We can leave in peace,” he blurted, still hoping to avoid killing her in front of Jakob. He might regret letting her live again, but he still wanted to protect his son. “No one needs to get—”

Kristen unleashed a high-pitched scream and threw herself at Peter. As he blocked her first swing, a deep, bellowing roar replied. It was followed by the sound of thunder as massive feet charged over the carrot field.

The Riders were coming.

Kristen struck again, diving in a roll and swiping at the inside of his leg. Kristen hadn’t been a violent person. She’d never been trained in how to fight, yet here she was, trying to sever his femoral artery.

He leaped back and swatted down, pushing her hands away. When her legs bent to spring, he knew she was about to tackle him, and once they hit the ground, there would be no avoiding all her pointy parts. So he kicked. Hard. A tooth broke in half as his boot connected with the side of her face and sent her sprawling.

His instincts said to go for the kill. Finish her off. But the man in him, who’d said, ‘in sickness and in health,’ who had held her hand while she gave birth, couldn’t bring himself to shoot her where she knelt, like some captive POW.

He stumbled back. “Please. Kristen. Call them off. I’m giving you the chance to live again.”

“Is not chance I want you to have,” she growled, and then she dived to the side, moving on all fours. As soon as she landed, she leapt the other direction, closing the gap between them while keeping him off balance.

“Kristen!” he shouted. “No!”

Then she was upon him, arms and claws outstretched, jaws hung wide open, ready to cleave his face away. There was no avoiding what happened next. In the face of certain death, Peter simply reacted, instinct and training guiding his every move, while things like mercy and love took a back seat. He ducked down while reaching up to his chest. He drew the Glock 17 handgun from its holster, twisted his hand up and pulled the trigger. The 9mm round sliced upward through the air before striking the soft skin beneath Kristen’s chin and continuing on through her tongue, skull and brain. As momentum pulled her up and over his body, the bullet carved a groove through the bone of her skull, following the curve and then ricocheting through the gray matter, shredding the brain and erasing everything that was once Peter’s wife, without ever exiting the body. Once upon a time, Peter would have called it a clean kill. As Kristen fell to the brick walkway behind him, blood dripping from the small hole in her chin, he thought it was tragic.

His wife was dead, by his hand, and their son had seen it happen.

And then, suddenly, Jakob was by his side, shouting, “Dad!”

But the boy didn’t sound angry. He sounded worried. Like his now-dead mother was still alive and trying to eat him once more.

“Dad!” Jakob yanked on Peter’s arm. Then the boy punched him. “Snap out of it!”

Peter glanced from his dead wife to his son.

“They’re coming!” Jakob shouted, pointing to the field where Kristen had stood moments before. He looked and saw six Riders sitting upon their Woolie mounts, charging across the field and moving so fast, Peter wasn’t sure he and Jakob would make it to the door before the attack party arrived.

He shoved Jakob toward the door, shouting, “Go!” fully intending to follow his son, but then his sensitive ears picked up something over the rumble of the approaching Woolies. The rhythmic thud was easily recognizable to any soldier: helicopters.

38

Ella awoke kicking and punching, drenched in confusion and sweat, surrounded by an unfamiliar living room and the smell of tension. Hands reached out, grasping her arms. Whispered voices told her to calm down, that she was okay, that she was safe, but her last memory, of being
inside
the gullet of some monster, overwhelmed her common sense and told her to fight.

To flee.

To get out.

The hands on her shoulders, fingers hooked around her muscles, like tendrils or claws, slipped away. She lunged to her feet, vision spinning for a moment. The wall caught her as she stumbled forward, mumbling incoherent threats to what held her.

“You’re out,” someone said. “You’re safe.”

The words were like a fingertip of balm on a third degree burn, wholly ineffective and not nearly enough. She slid across the wall and fell through a doorway, bumbling across a hardwood floor and catching herself on a small table that jabbed her ribs. The pain sharpened her senses, but fueled her flight. When something grasped her shoulders from behind, pulling her back, she swung out a backhand, striking hard and being freed. Light drew her forward, toward a large wooden door. She fell against it, hands moving over the locks, snapping them open without looking. Blinding sunlight struck her a moment later, burning the green of the world outside into her retina. She squinted and stepped back, as the sight of endless crops helped her understand where she was.

In a house.

A farm.

Not inside the belly of a predator.

Not consumed.

Safe.

Hands wrapped around her arms once more, two on each side, pulling her back. Voices urged with desperation, but she held her ground. There were fields outside, endless green, but there was also Peter. And he wasn’t alone. An ExoGenetic creature...one of the Riders...stood just a few feet away from him.

She opened her mouth to shout at him, to tell him to shoot it, but then Peter turned around. His eyes locked on hers and then twisted in a kind of fear-fueled shock she’d never before seen on his face. That was when she shifted her gaze left, past Peter, seeing the ExoGen’s face.

And recognizing it.

Despite the twisted nature of the Rider’s body and the protruding teeth and feral hair, Ella had felt the loathing fire of those eyes before.

Her heart skipped in time with her faltering limbs.

But Kristen was dead. Peter killed—

No. He didn’t. Of course he didn’t
. The Peter she knew could never do that, especially to Kristen. She should have realized the truth before, but it wouldn’t have changed anything. The odds of Kristen still being alive, or even still partly herself, were slim. But this was Kristen, with her memory and her hatred for Ella, still intact. The woman’s eyes registered shock upon seeing Ella.

For a moment, Kristen looked wounded.

And then, with the suddenness of a crashing wave—rage.

Before Ella could react, she was pulled from behind, and this time she found herself powerless against the hands dragging her back. Seeing Kristen alive, standing before Peter, her still devoted husband, had sucked her will away. In that moment, she realized just how much she still cared about Peter. Her rock. Despite him staying with Kristen all those years ago, Ella had never doubted, that should some kind of desperate need arise, he would be there for her. It was why she had gone to his biodome first, when there had been others to choose from. She hadn’t known Kristen was out of the picture then, but she had believed Peter would help her.

She had hated herself for thinking it, but Kristen’s death, while tragic, had been a Godsend. She’d had Peter back. All of him. But now...

She fell back onto the hardwood floor as the thing that was once Kristen let out a savage howl. Ella strained to see what was happening, but the heavy door slammed shut. Jakob was there, looking out the window, flinching at whatever was happening outside.

A sharp pain in her arm brought her attention over to Anne, who stood beside her and had just landed a kick. “Are you crazy!” the girl shouted. “Do you know who that is?”

“Oh no,” Jakob said, hands snapping up to his mouth. “Oh shit! No!”

A single gunshot tore through the air.

Jakob’s arms fell. His shoulders sagged. An invisible weight pulled his forehead against the window. He banged it against the glass once, and Ella thought the boy was about to crack. Whatever had happened outside was clearly devastating. One of his parents were dead. Given the gunshot, she assumed it was Kristen. While the boy had already believed his mother to be dead at his father’s hands, this time he had watched it happen. Kristen had become a monster, thanks in part to Ella, but had still been his mother.

But then all signs of the boy’s fragility disappeared. He perked up suddenly, brow furrowed. He turned to Anne. “You hear that?”

The hallway fell silent for a moment. The sound reached them through the floorboards, first as a faint vibration. Then a rumble.

Jakob stood on his toes, looking out the window, and then, without a word, he sprang into action. He flung open the door, revealing Peter standing over his wife’s body, gun in hand, consumed by shock and grief. Jakob leapt from the porch steps and reached his father in three long strides.

The boy pulled on Peter’s arm. “Dad! Snap out of it!” When Peter looked at him, he added. “They’re coming!”

“Go!” Peter shouted, shoving Jakob back toward the door. He took one step to follow him and stopped, turning back, and then looking up.

What is he...

She heard it then. A familiar sound she’d come to know well during her time in San Francisco. But who would have helicopters all the way out here? Had ExoGen sent people looking for them? Were they really that valuable, or that much of a threat? She didn’t think it was possible, so what could motivate these people to track them down?

She considered the possibility that the approaching helicopters were not from ExoGen, but she knew it was unlikely. If there had been other large pockets of survivors—people who had completely avoided eating the ExoGen crops—she would have known about it. No, this was ExoGen, and that meant they’d be ready for war.

Adrenaline spiking, Ella climbed to her feet and shouted, “Peter! It’s ExoGen! Get inside,
now!
”

Her loud, ‘
now!
’ did the trick. He turned and ran for the house, pursued by several Woolies and their Riders, like Indiana Jones running from an Amazon tribe. She flinched when gunfire erupted from the second floor, peppering the field in front of the approaching horde. They weren’t alone in the house, but whoever had opened fire was a horrible shot.

The door slammed shut behind Peter as he entered the front hall. Jakob started working the many locks, but Peter said, “Don’t bother. They’re not going to knock.”

Peter rushed forward, and for a moment, Ella thought he was going to strike her. But he took her arm in his hand and pulled her up.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Later. Get a weapon.”

“Where?” she asked.

He let go of her arm and stepped into the living room where she’d awoken, slinging an M16 off his shoulder. “Anywhere.” He pointed at Jakob. “Kitchen window!”

As the two Crane men separated, her eyes followed Peter, and then she really saw the living room’s decor. In addition to a few pieces of furniture and old paintings hanging on the walls, there were weapons positioned under every window. With wide eyes, she turned and looked down the hallway, spotting the cabinet full of ammo and supplies.

“Here,” Anne said, tossing a combat vest at her mother.

Ella caught the armor and slipped into it, quickly cinching it tight. It had already been loaded with what looked like AK-47 magazines, a Sig Sauer P229 handgun and shotgun shells.

Gunshots rang out from the living room. Three-round bursts. Definitely Peter.

“Back him up,” Anne said in a take-charge way that the girl hadn’t displayed before. “I’ll be with Jake.”

Before Ella could agree with the plan, Anne, an M16 looking oversized in her small arms, headed for the kitchen.
What happened while I was unconscious?
Ella wondered, but she knew the answer to that question would have to wait. They had monsters to repel.

And then an army.

She ran into the living room, and slid like she was stealing second base, stopping beneath one of the three windows where an AK-47 leaned against the wall. Before the Change, it had been the most common assault rifle on the planet, used by modern militaries and terrorists alike. The US military had no use for the gun, but it was popular with gun enthusiasts, and it wasn’t surprising to find in a home that seemed to be overflowing with weapons.

Peter fired two more three-round bursts. She watched a Rider’s head snap back, pulling up off his mount. The giant beast continued forward, oblivious to its passenger’s dismount, and it wasn’t alone. There were five more woolies, two of them now lacking Riders. But there was nothing that could be done to stop all of them before they reached the house.

Automatic gunfire erupted from above.
Two shooters,
she thought. And then from the kitchen. And then from Peter.

Ella popped out the magazine and checked that it was loaded. Seeing it was full to the top, she slapped the magazine back in and yanked back the rifle’s operating rod handle, chambering the first cartridge. She flicked the safety off and thrust the weapon through a wide crack in the boards nailed over the window, shattering the glass on the other side.

She squeezed the trigger, unleashing a fusillade of 7.62mm rounds. But her efforts, like those of the other five people in the house, were too little, too late. The entire home shook as a Woolie slammed into the front porch stairs, careened through them, and then the porch, and then the front door. The wall to her right bulged as the large beast smashed through the front of the house, lodging itself in the hallway. The enemy had breached the castle walls, making the fight more up-close-and-personal, which Ella didn’t mind, but it also separated her from her daughter, which ignited a fire in her gut and unleashed a kind of human rage that had yet to be weeded out by millions of years of evolution.