The Hungry (24 page)

The only thing that she did care about was her stomach. She was starving. It had been bad for hours, days, but this was the worst ever. She couldn't remember being so hungry in her entire life. Put together with the drugs, the horrible hunger sapped her strength. It made her wish that she was home, with a refrigerator full of food to prepare, and no more zombies or sociopath genius military dickheads to contend with. The whole world had backed up the toilet, and there wasn't anything she could do about that. She just wanted to eat.

She kept her eyes closed. Miller felt the two men push her onto an elevator. One of the soldiers was chewing gum with his mouth open, making annoying popping noises. The other soldier slammed her into the elevator car as if irritated. The continuous, gentle pinging sound told her they were going down ten or more floors. The doors opened again. She risked another peek and saw the same sterile walls she remembered. Cubicle doors kept rolling by. Time passed, and Miller began to regain her strength.

Eventually they stopped and unlocked a chamber. They had arrived in another large, sterile, stainless steel room. Someone joined them. Miller peeked and saw an orderly in scrubs. Once inside, she was lifted onto a table. She kept her eyes open. They noticed she was awake. The orderly, a young man with acne scars and bushy eyebrows, seemed sweaty and scared. He shined a light into her eyes. Miller blinked and looked away. Her response seemed to satisfy him, and the orderly went away. The guards exited, one still popping his gum. The feeling of panic remained in the air like static electricity.

Miller was alone again. The odd sadness returned. She reviewed all the times she'd been nasty to Terrill Lee and decided she was an ungrateful little bitch. Sadly, she recalled his marriage proposal, the bozo going down on one knee, right outside their favorite restaurant. Poor Scratch had fought for her, and she'd let him walk out alone to his death. And that poor kid Wells. Miller had seen so much death and destruction in such a short period of time. She wanted to be a little girl again, sitting in her Dad's lap, playing with his whiskers.

A face appeared over her. A man, handsome and cruel. Sanchez. He was close enough that that the garlic on his breath and his rank flop sweat were overpowering. The stench sickened her. She turned her head away and closed her eyes tightly, a little child avoiding the boogeyman. Miller concentrated on a pleasant memory, riding her pony Blackie on a summer morning, galloping through waves of alfalfa. She didn't want this piece of shit Sanchez to be the last thing she ever saw.

"Sheriff?" Sanchez was whispering in her ear. "I know you can hear me."

"Fuck you, skeezix," she said, suddenly remembering the obscure insult Scratch had used earlier that day.
That one's for you, Scratch.

"Ah… There we are." Sanchez sat back. "I knew that the sedative wouldn't keep you down for long. You are strong, like me, I can see that. Sheriff, you are a miracle, a perfect specimen. May I call you Penny?"

"May I call you asshole?"

Sanchez smiled. "Penny, you are the first of your kind. Be proud."

Miller stared back, willing him a heart attack on the spot. She fixed her gaze on the ceiling. He stepped away for a moment. Miller could track him by the sound of his footsteps on tile. She heard him tapping on a computer keyboard. She tested her bonds. They were tight as a red state accountant on tax day, but she was shaking off the sedatives, feeling stronger by the moment.
Patience.
Sanchez crossed the small room to stand next to her again.

"Look at me for one moment, if you please."

Buying time, Miller turned her head. She opened her eyes. The room wasn't small at all, not like her previous quarters. This one was large—perhaps thirty feet on a side—with medical equipment, computers and flat screen monitors lining the pristine walls. She sensed something new. There was another person in the room, off to the side. Miller turned her head back and blinked.

Sheppard was perched on a metal stool in the corner. His hands were cuffed behind him. He was scowling at Sanchez, looking mightily pissed off. The sedative was gone now, because Miller could empathize with that look. Her sadness melted away. If there was one emotion inside her that she could now identify, it was a pure, high-octane rage. She tested her bonds again.
Maybe with just a little more time...
She held herself in check. She had to buy a few more minutes. The tension on the Army base was obvious. Miller wanted to hear what Sanchez would say.

Sheppard caught her eye. He shook his head and looked down at the floor, as if to say that whatever was going to happen next probably wasn't worth dying for. Miller didn't agree.

Sanchez said, "I need your full attention, Penny."

"You're like a fart in an elevator, Sanchez. You already have my full attention."

"Good. There's something I want you to see. I think it will clarify why you are here and exactly what it is we want of you."

Sanchez had a small remote control in one hand. He used it to activate one of the giant flat screens. It came alive in vivid high definition. Miller saw it was a view from a helicopter or some other aircraft, probably shot with a forward-looking infrared camera. The FLIR image held and then bounced around disconcertingly, back and forth as if the aircraft were experiencing turbulence, but what the image showed was clear enough. Miller jerked, making the gurney squeal.

Holy shit…

They were coming. They lurched forward in clumps and ragged rows like panicked soldiers used as cannon fodder, thousands upon thousands of them. One would fall and be mindlessly trampled by the others. Missing limbs, gaping wounds, visible entrails that roped out like pasta, nothing slowed them down, much less stopped them. They moved as if with one mind, hunting someone or something, coming right at the camera, at the soldiers, right at the secret base.
So many. Dear Christ so many of them out there…

Zombies. An army of the undead was on the march. The flickering, multi-colored Christmas tree computer readouts that accompanied the horrifying image showed that the creatures were indeed headed south across the desert. Miller studied Sheppard. He was watching this too, and the deep shame on his face was palpable. They had unleashed hell upon the earth. Miller looked back at Sanchez. For his part, the Colonel watched impassively, his chiseled TV star features calm enough to be fully psychotic. He either didn't understand what this meant to the future of mankind, or he just didn't care. Miller suspected the latter.

The camera view shifted abruptly. Now even more zombies groups could be seen, twitching and shuffling, all making steady time. The computers indicated that this group was coming from the west. They were working in concert somehow. The creatures were converging on the base, as if with one mind, closing in on something that lay hidden out in the middle of the desert. Now the tension in the soldiers made perfect sense. Hell was coming, on bare and bloody feet. The creatures were massing to assault the base where it had all began. How the hell did they know? Somehow they did. And they were on the march. Coming here, where she and Sanchez and Sheppard sat waiting like lambs to be slaughtered.

"Aw, it looks like the little ones are finally coming home to visit their big old Daddy," said Miller. "Sanchez, it just beats the shit out of me how they know it's you, but somehow they do."

She turned her eyes back to the screen. Miller forced a laugh to distract him while she tested the bonds again. She was still not strong enough to break free. The camera jerked back and forth between the two horrendous mobs of nightmarish creatures, and then the long recording began again from the top.
Dr. Frankenstein...
Miller found herself chuckling for real.

Sanchez scowled. "There is nothing funny about any of this. What you are seeing is a tragedy. Obviously, we never intended for things to get this far out of control. Sheriff Miller, believe me, I'm fully aware that the blood of every one of those thousands of innocent people is on my hands. It all began here. And it is now up to us to put a stop to the madness."

Sanchez took a step closer. He lowered his voice. "Penny, I need your help to save what's left of humanity."

Miller couldn't resist. Now she laughed heartily, long and loud. For a moment, she actually felt pretty damned good—or at least as good as she could manage when stuck in a filthy wedding dress strapped to a stainless-steel table in a secret Army base being hovered over by a power-hungry madman who was being aggressively pursued by a horde of slimy, slavering zombies. Other than that, she felt good.

"Don't bullshit me like a bleeding heart, Sanchez. Sheppard already told me what you were doing here. You were conducting illegal human experiments because you wanted to create super soldiers. My guess is you had a fat government contract to create something you'd own a permanent piece of, right?"

"The idea could have saved lives," Sanchez said.

"I'm sure that was your primary motivation, not profit. Well, you did it. What you got was an unstoppable army. And now it's here to chew you up and shit you out like a rare roadhouse cheeseburger."

"What can I say, Sheriff? I made a mistake, a horrible mistake, but I don't believe that this is irreversible. In fact, I refuse to accept that conclusion. I believe I can turn you into the cure for this horrible epidemic."

"What?"

"Let me show you how."

Sanchez walked across the room to key an intercom on the wall by the flat screen. He whispered into it. Sheppard and Miller exchanged glances.
What now?
A moment later, four guards ushered a zombie into the room. The soldiers led it in, shackled and connected to long poles that allowed them to control the thing. It moaned piteously with that insatiable hunger. The body shape and size was average for a male. It was undressed except for a pair of torn sweat pants. Parts of the torso were missing, and the creature brought with it the rank smell of death. A bite mask covered its face. It strained against the restraints, but perhaps it had died only recently, it didn't seem that desperate. It also didn't try to tear off its own arms to get free, like the zombies back in the army truck.

Sanchez paced the room, a few feet away from the monster. It tried to snap at him but the soldiers jerked the chains. Sanchez spoke to Miller. "When you were here last, we took a sample of your blood. We isolated a few key proteins that have a startling affect on the undead."

Sheppard seemed intrigued. Miller was fascinated too, against her own will.

"Ready? Watch this." Sanchez reached into his coat pocket. He took out a mundane looking squirt bottle, aimed it at the zombie's face. The creature reacted with mindless rage, thrashing as if it knew it was being threatened in some way. Sanchez squirted the zombie in the face, once, twice. Miller was stunned when the zombie gasped in shock. It then howled—a horrible, painful sound. The body stiffened and the legs kicked. The soldiers holding the poles and chains struggled to remain upright. Seconds later the zombie dropped to the floor. The soldiers let the thing fall with a crash. It did not move again.

"You're telling me that you made that good a weapon just from what's inside of me?" Miller said. She trembled with possibility. Sanchez was a sociopath, but Miller could not help but be impressed. Perhaps there was a way out of all this after all.

"Yes, Penny," Sanchez said. "I extracted it from your blood. You are the key to mankind's salvation."

"Well, fuck me running." Miller looked over at Sheppard, who was still silent. He was now staring at his boots like a scared child. Miller wondered why. She said, "What do we have to do to kill the rest of those things?"

"That's our problem," Sanchez said. "We don't know how to make more. That was our last sample. If we are going to stop the zombie epidemic, we'll need your complete cooperation."

Miller stared at the crumpled heap that had once been reanimated. She didn't seem to have much of a choice. As morally repugnant as it would be to help Sanchez in any way, how else could she atone for Terrill Lee, Scratch and the other people she'd failed to save? She had to do something to stop this epidemic. At least that way she'd know she tried her best.

Sheppard motioned for the soldiers to get the newly terminated zombie out of the lab. The two men exchanged looks, as if excited to see the brass had come up with a solution. They tugged on the poles, putting their backs into it, hauling dead weight.

Sanchez didn't bother watching. He went to the intercom again. "Bring in the other subject."

Meanwhile, the soldiers dragged the newly minted corpse away, both stepping very carefully around the small snail trails of smeared blood and bodily fluids left behind. One sprayed the floor with disinfectant. The door closed behind them.

Sheppard spoke for the first time. His voice was thick with emotion. "Colonel, exactly what are you planning to do?"

"There's more, Sheriff," Sanchez said, ignoring Sheppard. "In fact, there's so much more, I can't even begin to describe it. All the evidence we have indicates that this new virus—the same virus that transformed those poor souls into mindless zombies—has mutated into a strain people can not only survive with, but actually thrive with. That mutated strain? It is now inside you."

A moment later, two more soldiers in medical scrubs came into the room. They were wheeling yet another gurney. A large man was strapped down tight. It was Ragnarok, Scratch's brother. Miller looked him over but still couldn't see any resemblance. The huge, overly tattooed man was bruised, bloody and charred, but apparently still very much alive.

Sanchez waived his hand imperiously. The orderlies left the room. "Penny, this is what I really wanted you to see."

Sheppard had gone pale. He whispered, "Colonel, don't!"

Sanchez opened a wall cabinet, slid out a rolling medical tray. He rolled it over next to Ragnarok's gurney. Sanchez opened a small metal drawer. He withdrew a hypodermic needle, checked it carefully then squirted out the tiny bubble of air. Sanchez walked over to Ragnarok. He grabbed the huge man by the arm. Ragnarok spat at him. Sanchez unceremoniously injected the biker with the serum. Ragnarok whimpered like a baby. He closed his eyes.