Outbreak: The Hunger (2 page)

Looking around the room, they see various sized cages.  Some are small enough to house one cat, while others are so large that there is enough room for a tiger to pace back and forth.  Yet, no animal is pacing, moving, or even breathing from the looks of it.

Ten minutes have passed.

“Guys, this is fucking bizarre.  Are all these animals dead?” Jason asks.  They are all looking in various cages.  “Did you ever find out what they are testing in here, Sean?”

“No,” is all he says.  “I think it was a secret, so none of the scientists ever talked about it when I was in the room.”

“Seriously?
”
Jason asks as he glances up at him.  “That didn’t seem odd to you that there was no talking when you were in the room?”

“Well I...”

Sean never gets to finish his sentence.  There is a sudden, violent burst of energy from one of the cats Vicktor is looking at as it jumps up from its dead-like slumber and bites him on the finger.

“Son of a bitch,” Vicktor screams as he yanks his finger away.  “Fucking cat just bit me!” he says as he sucks on his finger to alleviate the pain.

“Okay guys,” Jason says, getting annoyed.  “Enough is enough.  Let’s start opening some cages.”

Thirteen minutes have passed.

Vicktor starts opening cages housing various cats and dogs.  “I should leave this fucker locked up,” he says, looking at the cat that bit him. 

“Hey, ya can’t blame these animals for not trusting human beings, dude,” Sean says.  “They’ve been tortured for so long, they probably think we’re here to do the same.”

“Okay, I can see that,” replies Vicktor.  “But why are they all just sitting there looking at the opened cage doors?”

Vicktor is right.  By this time, Jason has opened a bunch of the monkey’s cages. Vicktor opens all of the cat and dog cages, and Sean gets the majority of the chicken, hamster, and rat cages open.  However, all the animals are just sitting in their cages and looking around.  Poor things are so scared that they don’t know what to do.

Sean goes to liberate a hamster when the hamster turns its head and bites him on the thumb.

“Mother fucker,” screams Sean.  He then shakes the cage, displacing his anger for the hamster onto the metal bars. 

As the noise echoes throughout the lab, all the animals seem to come out of their daze at the same time.  Even the animals that look dead jump up as if they suddenly realize they were being liberated.  All hell then breaks loose as the animals become alert and violent, trying to get out of their torture cells.  The odd thing Jason notices is that none of the animals are attacking each other.  Cats and dogs pay no attention to  one another, and even the rats seem oblivious to the predators around them.  Nevertheless, they all definitely notice the humans.

Fifteen minutes have passed.

“It’s time to get outta here, guys,” Jason says.  He is nervous.  Besides the way the animals are sizing them up, the noise obscures any sound that may be coming from outside.  The cops could be driving a tank up to the lab and they wouldn’t hear a thing.

“What about the larger animals?” Sean yells over to me.  “We gotta get them out too.”

“Dude, if you wanna open the cage for the lion and tiger over there, be my guest,” Jason says.  “But keep in mind the reaction the hamster gave you.”

Sean looks around and sees some rope.  He ties one end to the cage doors and then walks to the opposite end of the lab. He is planning to pull the rope, freeing the large cats at a distance.

Jason freezes.  He  swears he heard talking in the hallway.

Sean and Vicktor see Jason stop moving and look at him questioningly with furrowed eyebrows.

Sean breaks the moment:  “What are you...”

The door on the far side of the lab bursts open.  Five men dressed in military fatigues with full gas mask gear, battle packs, and assault rifles swarm inside. 

“Freeze!
” 
The lead soldier fixes his rifle on us.  “This is a restricted laboratory.”

As the soldiers quickly fan out, covering the entire lab to secure the room, they notice all the animals running around.  They even see some of the animals start to dart out the room through the door they kicked in.

The lead soldier, the one with his gun fixed on us, yells to the others, “We have a Code Five breach!”

Without hesitating, the other soldiers immediately start shooting at the animals  trying to escape.  The noise is deafening as they sweep their assault rifles back and forth on full automatic.

What the fuck are they doing
? Jason thinks.  He wants to stop them, but thinks better about it.

“They’re getting out,” one of the other soldiers says.  Jason  swears he heard an edge of panic in his voice.

With that, the lead soldier takes his gun off us and starts sweeping the floor with a rain of bullets.  “Get the flame thrower,
now
!” he yells to no one in particular.  The soldier closest to the door runs outside to retrieve the weapon.

“Are they fucking serious?” Jason asks, looking at Sean and Vicktor.

“I don’t wanna find out,” replies Vicktor.  “We need to get the fuck out of here now.”

There is a chance. All the soldiers are so busy trying to contain and kill the escaping animals that they seem to have forgotten the three liberators.  They’ve  become a secondary concern.  As they step back, the lead soldier bolts towards them.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” he says.  He reaches out for us and grabs Vicktor’s arm.  It is then he notices Vicktor’s bleeding finger.  The soldier quickly retracts his hand.  “Were you bit by one of the animals?” he asks as he placed the barrel of the rifle inches away from Vicktor’s head.

Jason doesn’t know if Vicktor is going to shit or go blind first.  He manages to stammer out an answer:  “Yeah, a cat...”

Those are the last three words Vicktor would ever speak.  The soldier pulls the trigger.  There is a wet cracking sound as the back of Vicktor’s head shoots across the room and lands inside one of the cages.  A white lab rat notices the fragment of skull and pounces on it, tearing away at it in a frenzy.

Sean and Jason stand frozen.

“Were either of you bitten or scratched?” he asks, turning to us.

We shake our heads as Sean slowly slips his still-bleeding hand into his pocket.

The soldier returns with the flamethrower and immediately starts dousing the  floor with short bursts of flame.  The soldier who seconds ago was interrogating us backs away to watch the flames.  It is then that he sees Sean holding the ropes tied to the lion and tiger cages.  Before he can tell him to drop them, Sean yanks on the ropes.  The large cats immediately come storming out of the cages, straight for the soldier who killed Vicktor.  The tiger pounces on him, and in one fluid motion, sinks its teeth into the soldier’s neck.  Blood squirts and gushes between the beast’s teeth and through the corners of its mouth as he tears the man’s throat out. 

As if working together, the lion attacks the soldier with the flamethrower.  He sees the beast coming at him and aims the nozzle at the charging lion.  He manages to fire off one burst of flame.  The lion almost seems to duck out of the way, but  isn’t fast enough, as its mane  catches fire.   That, however, doesn’t slow the beast down.  It jumps toward the soldier and latches onto his right forearm.  With one vicious tear, he takes the soldier’s arm clean off at the elbow.  The soldier slams to the floor, immediately going into shock. 

The lion isn’t finished yet.  It looks at the maimed soldier on the floor, then goes on to attack the next healthy soldier.

Jason shakes Sean out of his daze.

“SEAN!” Jason yells.  “We need to get the fuck out of here, NOW.”

We race out the door behind us and into the hallway.  There we see another soldier  dead on the ground, the monkeys still tearing and… it can’t be… but it looks like they are
eating
parts of the body.  One monkey uses its sharp fingernails to dig out the soldiers eyes.  Another is chewing on the soldier’s fingers as if they are some kind of exotic beef jerky.

As they try to step around the dead soldier, one of the monkeys sees them and lunges at Sean.  It lands on Sean’s leg and immediately sinks its bloodied teeth into his calf muscle.  Sean’s eyes become wide with pain as he screams.  He tries to shake the monkey off, but it has a vice-like grip around his leg. 

Jason looks around for something he can use as a weapon.  He spots the dead soldier’s rifle lying in a pool of blood, entangled in his unraveled intestines. 
These fucking monkeys are crazy,
he thinks
.  They aren’t just killing these soldiers. They’re mutilating and eating them.
  The monkey responsible for the evisceration is now feasting on the intestines.

Jason slowly approaches the blood-drenched monkey.  Sean is behind him, still howling in pain.  As Jason reaches for the rifle, the monkey turns and stares straight into his eyes.  He thinks he’s going crazy, but it appears it was sizing him up, trying to decide if he was a threat.  It stops chewing for a second, as if debating on whether to attack or not.  It then turns and starts feasting on the soldier’s insides again.  Jason quickly grabs the rifle and runs back over to Sean.

By now, Sean is almost in shock.  The capuchin monkey isn’t just biting him; it is tearing away parts of his calve muscle.  Without hesitating, Jason swings the rifle as hard as he can.  He catches the monkey in its ribs and it doesn’t even respond upon impact.  He turns the rifle around and jabs it hard in the ribs, trying to stab it.  The barrel is too blunt, but it’s enough to piss that bastard off. Without a warning, it leaps off Sean’s leg and is going for Jason’s throat.  Instinctively, he pulls the trigger.  A deafening roar sounds from the rifle.  He hits the monkey square in the chest and sends it sliding across the floor. 

“Sean,
Sean!
”
Jason screams.  “Are you okay?”  Even as he speaks, he knows it might be the dumbest question he ever asked.  Trying to correct himself, he asks,  “Can you put any pressure on your leg?  Can you walk?”

Sean looks at him in a daze. 
Great
, Jason thinks.
He’s going into shock
.  Then Sean  shakes his head.  His mouth slowly opens as he looks over Jason’s shoulder. 

Jason doesn’t want to look at what is happening behind him.  Sean just had a fucking monkey chewing on his leg, but whatever is happening behind Jason is enough to make his jaw drop.

He slowly turns.  “You gotta be fucking kidding me,” he whispers.  The monkey that took a round in the chest is sitting up and looking at us.  He starts to stand when a random burst from the flamethrower brushes across him.  It doesn’t move.  The flames engulf the monkey and it just sits there, staring.  It finally stands and starts walking in Jason’s direction.

“Oh come on,” Sean says in disbelief.  “What the FUCK did they do to these animals?” 

They are in awe.  There’s no other word for it.  They stand there, watching a fucking flaming monkey walking toward them.  About halfway to them, it collapses face down.  The last thing it does is raise its head to look at them.

“Okay,” Jason finally says, breaking this surreal moment.  “We really need to get the fuck out of here.”

The adrenaline coursing through Sean’s body allows him strength, despite the fact that a money was chewing on his leg no more than a few moments ago. It was fight or flight time.  They run through the winding corridors, not really knowing where the fuck they are going.  Finally, they see an  emergency exit.  “If this isn’t an emergency, then I don’t know what is,” Jason yells as he reaches for the door.

As they push through the emergency door, an alarm sounds. 
The back door to the lab wasn’t alarmed but the fire door was?  That makes no sense
, Jason thinks.  Then he realizes that the back door WAS alarmed.  It has a silent alarm on it that went straight to the local military base or private security force.  He runs as fast as his legs will carry him.

Why
, Jason wonders,
would this lab need such a high level of security
?

The last thing Sean and Jason see as they run around the block are the animals scattering. He should’ve felt good about the liberation, but he thinks back to a movie he saw not too long ago,
28 Days Later
, and remembered feeling that they had screwed up.  That they had screwed up real big.

Chapter One

2003 – Austin, TX

Wake up, John
.  Everything is hazy, almost like I am swimming in a very thick fog.  I can almost see the surface of consciousness.  Trying to remember where I am is difficult.  I can’t focus my mind on any one thought.  It almost feels like I was drugged.  Drugged.  Yeah
…
I think I was drugged. But why?  By whom?

Swimming to the surface of consciousness, I can hear my breathing.  It sounds labored.  Am I dying?  Why isn’t anyone helping me? 

I swim closer to consciousness.  I feel hands on my body.  Are they holding me down?  What the hell is happening to me?  I think I’m on a bed.  Not the bed that I share with my wife, but some strange bed.  My wife.  Where is Sarah?  Why isn’t she helping me?  We’ve been married for about a year now.  She’s always been by my side even during those times when I was a real pain in the ass.  She’s always supported me in all my decisions and choices, even when I quit the world of academia to become a professional cook.  I was young when I got my Ph.D., so I figured I better get out of a profession that I hated and give my passion a shot.  That was a great decision, but where is she?

I grip the sheets on the bed tightly.  I’m almost to the surface.  I hear a strange voice telling me to remain calm.  Oh, God… I must have been in some terrible accident.  The doctors must be working on my mangled body, but I don’t remember being in a car accident.  Was it a random shooting?  Why can’t I remember anything? 

My heart starts beating harder as I panic.  One of my eyes is open and I can see four doctors around me.  One is hunched over my chest and is working on my eye.  What the hell is happening?  Wait.  My eye.  I remember now. I’m in eye surgery to get a corneal graft.  I was diagnosed a year ago with Keratoconus, and when my sight started to deteriorate, my doctor said it was time for ‘the procedure.’  All forms of light began hurting my eyes and my vision was really poor, but why is the doctor waking me up?  He’s still working on me.  That sadistic mother fucker.  Or maybe he’s just a really bad doctor. 

I try to talk but my tongue is too thick from the anesthesia.  My heart beats even faster.  I can hear it on the monitor.

“Just relax, John,” the doctor finally tells me.  “I need to bring you back to consciousness in order to get the stitches in your eye.  You won’t feel any pain, but I need you to move your eye when I tell you to.  Do you understand me?”

I groan out an affirmation and start to relax.  For the next hour, I move my eyeball in whichever direction the doctor tells me as he stitches in my new cornea.  He could have warned me about this part of the surgery.  It’s a very odd sensation to see stitches being put into your own eyeball.  I wonder if this is the kind of shit Lucio Fulci dreamed about.  I start to relax but my hands still grip the bed sheets tightly, just waiting to feel the searing pain of a needle being pushed into my eyeball.

When it’s finally over, they send me on my way, hopped up on Vicodin, with my wife pushing me out of the hospital in a wheelchair.  My eye is bandaged and throbbing.  I still can’t talk due to the anesthesia hangover.  I want to tell Sarah how I was awake when they put in the stitches.  It’s kind of a macho story that I’m sure I’ll be telling anyone who will listen to me.  I’ve always been worried that people look at me and see a man who always plays it safe.  Growing up, I was afraid of heights, hated roller coasters, and preferred team sports where I could rely on other people to carry the team.  I was always unsure of myself and within the past 4-5 years, I began to wonder if I had what it took to be heroic, whatever the hell that is.  If the chips were down and something bad was happening, would I freeze up like a deer in headlights, or would I take control and give in to the adrenaline and prove myself to be a Man?  I don’t know.  Getting my eye operated on while conscious seemed pretty cool, but then again, I had no choice in the matter.  The doctor just woke my ass up and told me what to do.  Hhmmm.  Do I have what it takes to be a hero?  If the events ever presented themselves, would I be able to stand up and be brave?  I don’t know.  I like to think I have the balls, but being honest with myself, I just don’t know.

That’s one of the reasons I went into cooking.  It’s one of the most macho professions I could think of where I had a chance to prove myself.  You work under tremendous pressure, its hot as hell on the line, you’re dealing with smoking hot pans and extremely sharp knives, and sometimes it’s just two of you on the line trying to keep up with the orders.  If you go down, you look and feel like a huge pussy. If you keep up and dominate the line, you feel like a conquering barbarian.  I’ve felt both ways. 

I get home and Sarah puts me to bed.  Most nights I try not to dream.  I guess it’s really not my choice whether I dream or not, but I at least try to guide my dreams in a certain direction.  I focus my mind on one thought and try to put that into my subconscious, but with all the Vicodin, I can’t focus on anything.  So I began to drift off, unfocused and vulnerable.

1980 – Philadelphia, PA

“Come on, John. Pass it to me.  Stop being such a fucking hog,” says Dave.

I still get shocked when someone uses the “F” word.  Just the other weekend, my dad took Dave, my brother, and I to a drive-in to see the movie
The Boys in Company C
.  That was the first movie where we all heard the word “fuck” being used in everyday conversation.  Even my dad was getting a little uncomfortable with the amount of “F-bombs” that movie dropped.  After that, “fuck” was Dave’s favorite new word.  He worked it into every sentence he could.  I liked using it too, but I was a little more select.  My restraint kept me from getting punished.  Dave, on the other hand, was always getting busted for using that word.

We are 10 years old and our game of choice is street hockey.  That’s what happens when you live in Philly.  We have a great hockey team, but no one knows how to skate worth a fuck.  So we take to the streets in the safety of our Converse shoes and pretend we’re all skating. 

I pass to Dave and he immediately shoots at the goal.  Steve is in goal, and no matter what team he’s on, Steve always plays goalie.  The fat fuck.  He could just stand up straight and no one would be able to get anything past him.  Fat fuck.  Dave winds up and nails a slap shot right into Steve’s nuts.  That was everyone’s strategy:  If Steve’s in goal, aim for his nuts.  You’d think he’d have caught on by now and started wearing an athletic cup, but Steve goes down howling.  Everyone is laughing their asses off.  I run over to Steve.  He’s all curled up in the fetal position.

“Dude,” I say, looking down at him.  “When the fuck are you going to start wearing a cup?  You get nailed in the balls every game.”

Steve just looks at me with his big, red, bloated face.  I can’t help it and start laughing again.  He stands, thrusts his hand down his pants to adjust himself, and gets back into goal.

“Are you sure you’re up for being back in goal?” I ask him.

“Are we gonna play, or are we gonna talk about my balls?” he answers.

We start playing again.  This is the first time Steve has ever gone back into goal after taking a shot to the nuts.  I think everyone is wondering the same thing.  Is Steve’s crotch off limits now, or is it still fair game?  Moreover, is anyone going to attempt a nut shot again?

Dave passes the hockey ball to me.  I get about five steps with it and fumble over my feet as the ball is taken away from me.  I’ve always been tall for my age.  Last year, when I was nine years old, I grew five inches in one summer.  My whole body ached.  My joints always felt like they were on fire.  I also looked like a scarecrow.  I was so lanky and skinny, but over the last year, I have been playing a lot of sports and trying to eat better.  So I look a bit better than last summer, but I still haven’t grown accustomed to my body.  Whenever I play basketball, soccer, or street hockey, I hate when I have to be the one pushing the play.  Just let me stand under the basket or next to the goal and pass it to me. I’m that fucking klutz that loses the ball almost every time. 

Derek takes the ball from me with ease, but I chase after him, lower my shoulder, and drive into his back.  He goes flying and Dave gets the ball.  He runs toward the goal.  Dave is a great athlete.  No matter which sport it is, he always seems to excel at it.  He gets close to the goal and we can all see the anxiety in Steve’s eyes.  Dave pulls his stick back for the shot and wails it.  It bee-lines right at Steve’s chest.  Steve just stands there and takes the shot in the chest.  He stumbles backward into the goal, but keep the ball from going in.  We all stopTime almost seems to stand still for a second, like when a baby hits his head and waits to see if he’s hurt or not.  We waited for what seemed like forever to see if Steve is all right. 

Steve just rubs his chest and says, “You shoot like a pussy, Dave.”

Everyone laughs nervously.  We all know Steve is hurt but he won’t give Dave the satisfaction.  Steve is a tough fucker when he wants to be.  Dave apologizes about nailing him in the chest, but we all knew that he aimed at him.  Dave is fiercely competitive and wants to win at everything he does.  It can be sports, board games, schoolwork, whatever.  If he is doing something that other people are also doing, he needs to be the best.

I, on the other hand, am not a very competitive person.  Oh, I liked to win, but I never feel like I have what it takes to be a winner.  My body is awkward and too tall, and it seems that whenever it is “up to me” I always fail and let down the others on my team.  That’s why I prefer team sports to the individual sports like tennis, golf, and swimming.  In those sports, it is all up to you.  You compete against yourself.  If you lose, it is entirely your fault, and yours alone.  In team sports, you can spread the blame among your teammates.  I’ll score once in a while to feel like I’m contributing to the game, but ultimately, it’s someone like Dave that will win it for the team.

“Well, at least I didn’t hit you in the nuts again,” Dave yells over to Steve.

Steve just glares at him, picks up the little hard ball, and throws it down the hill.  We all groan. 

“Goddamnit, Steve,” Dave yells. “Why the fuck did you do that?”

“Go fuck yourself, Dave,” Steve returns.  “Go chase it.  I hope a car hits you in the nuts.”

We all laugh.  Steve never is any good at putting someone down.  I run off with Dave to get the hockey ball.  I figure it is a good time for us to get our game plan together for the sleepover tonight.  We slept over at each other’s house almost every other weekend.  This was the time before the Blockbuster video stores dominated the scene and the ‘ma and pa’ corner video chains were the only places to rent movies.  My parents were pretty cool, and set it up with the owners of the local rental place where my brother and I could rent anything we wanted to as long as it wasn’t porn.  Man, my parents were naïve!  I would rent the craziest, bloodiest videos I could find and Dave and I would watch them until early in the morning.  The weekend we rented
Cannibal Ferox,
we stayed up until five in the morning.  We watched it three times in a row.  I figure we could finalize our selection for the evening now.

Steve had a hell of an arm.  The ball had rolled down the entire hill and disappeared into some bushes.

“You should ease up on Steve when we’re playing,” I say to Dave.  “You’re lucky that he has no idea how strong he is.  He could easily kick your ass,” I tease.

“Whatever,” says Dave
. 
“I would kick that fat bastard’s ass.”  We laugh.  We make our way through the bushes looking for that ball. 

“Where the fuck did it go?” asks Dave.

“Beats …” I never get to finish my sentence.  A dog comes bursting through the back row of the bushes.  I don’t know if we scared him or if he is just an aggressive dog, but he means business.  He takes us both by surprise.  I am standing upright, but Dave is crouched down looking for the ball.  I guess I am lucky.  Maybe if I was the one bent down…

That dog just jumps on top of Dave and knocks him over.  Dave is a flurry of arms, legs, hands, and feet.  He manages to get his hands around the dog’s throat, but that dog is crazed.  The first taste that dog gets is of Dave’s forearm.  I see those teeth as they clamp into Dave’s arm.  Dave howls and does the worst thing possible:  he pulls his arm back.  This results in the teeth tearing through the meat in Dave’s arm in a jagged, bloody mess.  The dog immediately sinks its teeth into Dave’s hand, which is right in front of its mouth.  Like a bear trap, those teeth clamp down hard, and takes Dave’s pinky, fourth, and middle finger clean off.  I can see the look on Dave’s face.  He is going into shock from the brutal attack.  Until that moment, I thought the dog was just snapping at whatever body part was right in front of its mouth, but in the next moment, I learn the dog’s true intentions.

With Dave stunned and going into shock, I think the mutt would just go away.  As Dave’s two-fingered hand falls from the dog’s mouth, the dog lunges straight for his exposed throat.  In a flash, the dog has its jaw clamped onto his throat and is biting down hard.  He isn’t just happy with sinking his teeth into the flesh; he starts to thrash around in order to get a deeper penetration.  Dave’s eyes are wide open and glazed over.  I think he knows that dog is going to kill him.