The Hungry (28 page)

Miller turned back to look at the zombies slowly approaching their position. Relentless little fuckers. They were tripping, falling occasionally, crawling sometimes, but still coming. The constant firing hurt her ears, reminding Miller of the first night back in the jail. That seemed like months ago, not a couple of days. There were maybe twenty humans left. Unfortunately, she couldn't even begin to count the zombies moving in on them. They'd have to make a last stand here and now. Miller felt the sadness return. She had to figure a way to get these folks out of this mess.

Something caught her eye. Miller walked over to one of the crates. On top was a large, sharp-looking machete. Good for fighting in close. She picked it up, tested its weight. That would have to do. The sick feeling washed over her. She fought it off. Her pulse picked up again, like a bass drum in echo. Whatever was happening, she was reaching some kind of physical and mental peak. Her system was cranking to the max, and therefore they might be very short on time.

"Sheppard, O'Brien, take Terrill Lee, Scratch, and the rest of these people. Be prepared to defend this position to the last man." She walked over to the 'door' and turned to the machine gunners. "Hold your fire as long as you can. Don't let any zombies get inside, whatever you do."

O'Brien said, "Yes, ma'am."

"Oh. And by the way, try not to hit me in the ass on the way out." Before they could respond Miller pushed the door open. She grimaced and stepped out in front of the mob of approaching zombies.

"Penny, don't!" Which one of the men cried out? Miller wasn't sure.

Penny Miller was tempted to try to count the enemy, but there were so many that they seemed to fill the entire hangar. Certainly hundreds were still ambulatory enough to do some real damage. They had finally stopped falling down from the open roof, so no more new ones were on the way, but that didn't make the job ahead much easier.

Sheriff Penny Miller walked calmly out into the open. The soldiers behind her stopped firing. The zombies also stopped as if puzzled or even amused. Things got kind of quiet. Miller braced herself. Her body had never felt stronger. Her pulse was hammering. Her stomach had settled down. The feeling of power was intense and a bit terrifying. She marched up to the first zombie she encountered, a businesswoman about her age. Miller swung the machete at the creature's head, sweeping the top of its skull off with one stroke. Two sounds, the weapon striking bone and then a chunk of skull clattering on pavement. One down, a few hundred to go.

That did it. Several zombies moved forward. One of them, a dead soldier, was grinning with a ruined mouth. The zombie put its hand on Miller's shoulder and tugged at the wedding dress. Miller turned and sliced the zombie's arm off at the elbow. Then she brought the blade back up and cut off its head at the neck. The soldier fell to its knees and over. The fragment of skull came down with a thwacking sound on the hard, cold cement. The zombies milled about for a few seconds, as if trying to reach some kind of consensus.

Penny Miller didn't wait for the next one to come to her. She dove into the crowd of zombies, hacking, swinging, and slicing as she went. They stepped back, startled if not actually frightened. The dead died again in droves. They fell all around her, so many bodies and body parts that she had to step over the growing pile of corpses. Behind her the soldiers began to fire again, picking off stragglers and low lying fruit without firing in her direction. Miller kept swinging, her powerful arms like pistons, feeling strong and certain and exactly like what she was, a new breed of superhuman. The undead died and died again. Corpses piled up all around her. The mounds of bodies reminded Miller of the killing field her deputy had created with his shotgun just a few nights before. Miller moved from one zombie to the next, her arms whirling like a giant female Cuisinart set permanently on puree.

In the background, Miller could hear the gunfire. She sensed the soldiers had come together. They were conserving ammunition, keeping the creatures from sneaking up on her blind side. She relaxed and went on with the butchery. She did allow herself to wonder if it would be better in the long run if one of the bullets found her by accident, managed to take her down as she'd killed Sanchez, actually end this whole thing before it really began, but then she was really too damned busy killing to go all PMS inside for very long.

The gunfire became louder, more insistent. Wondering why, Miller stepped back to take a look at what was happening. She'd cleared an enormous swath through the approaching army of corpses. What had changed?

Perhaps thirty zombies had slipped past her somehow. They were heading for the fort. A few of them fell each and every moment, but the barrage of fire wasn't enough to keep them from overrunning the remaining survivors.

"Fuck a duck," Miller said. She turned to head back to the fort. Something had her by the arm. A bald man in a suit with his guts hanging out. A flash of crooked teeth. A snarling sound. Before she could hack at it, the zombie bit her arm. The pain was tremendous. Blood welled up under its teeth. Miller raised the machete but the thing abruptly dropped to the ground. It trembled and twitched then stopped moving.

And then Miller remembered. Something already in her blood killed zombies. Experimentally, she shook her arm on the nearest zombie. Blood sprayed out, some landing on its flesh. It looked at her in surprise and fell to the floor. That was all the demonstration she needed. She knew that any wound would heal too quickly if left alone. She had no other choice. She took the machete and sliced her own arm open.

Bleeding now, Miller flung her arm around, spraying blood on the zombies as she went. At the same time she worked her way back to the steadily shrinking band of human survivors. Miller couldn't believe what she saw. With each pass of her arm, more zombies fell to the ground and they didn't get up. With her other hand, she used the machete to dismember more zombies. In the distance, Sheppard shouted something. Scratch repeated it. Miller slashed and sprayed and walked. She had such a huge wall of zombies to get past that she found herself climbing over their destroyed bodies like a child climbing around on an urban jungle gym.

She came down the other side of the pile of bodies. A large, overweight man in bathing trunks stood before her. The thing reached out, but before she could react, its head collapsed in on itself. The bullet that took it down whizzed right past her face. She'd almost gotten her unconscious wish and been taken out by mistake.

"Watch it, you idiots!" The gunfire was too loud for anyone to hear her voice. The humans were screaming in terror and firing like madmen, going down under zombies, cutting with knives. Miller saw one soldier in total despair stick his handgun under his chin and blow his own brains out. Time was running out. Miller pressed on bravely. She was going to have to risk being shot by her own people if she was going to have any chance to save them.

The wound in her arm was healing already, but that didn't stop Miller from feeling light-headed again. Her system was overloaded. Miller kept fighting. She had to get to the living, protect them, save those still alive. It was her duty. No fucking zombies were going to stand in her way. She fought her way through the corpses and closed in on the fort, waving her arms. Her once white dress soaked with fresh blood.

As Miller approached the makeshift fort, the sound of the gunfire diminished and died out. She heard it clearly as it went from several weapons to just a couple, then finally to just one. Finally that lone gun was silenced as well. The men had finally run out of ammunition.

Moving as fast as she could, Miller fought her way to the fort. She could hear the screams of some of the remaining living as the zombies came through the barrier. She kept moving. Miller hacked, bled, and just plain pushed her way through the zombies to get to the perimeter of the makeshift fort.

"Scratch, Terrill Lee, Sheppard?"

The noise stopped just as she reached the area. Miller broke through, sweating and panting, her heart almost bursting from the strain. Once inside, she found the little fort filled with zombies, many of them head shot. Sadly, there were no living to be seen. Not one survivor. In fact, many of the zombies now wore uniforms. She decapitated one after another, including the corporal named O'Brien, who had just woken up hungry. She went through the bodies, looking at faces, rolling corpses over, tossing them this way and that. Miller couldn't see any that looked like Terrill Lee or Scratch. Not that it mattered anymore. Tears filled her eyes. She was sure that they were already dead.

She had failed.

The prospect of defeat and utter loneliness sent Miller into one final frenzy. She was fucking angry at the stinking pile of steaming shit that the world had become. She took out her anger on the remaining zombies. Something in her kicked into another level of overdrive. Miller whirled like a dervish, the blade flashing. She cut and stabbed and hacked and screamed until it was finally done.

Nothing stirred. No sound but dripping blood and her own harsh breathing. Miller stood panting in the gloom, clutching the machete, her face streaming sweat. She searched for more zombies to kill. Bodies lay everywhere, but nothing else moved.
Nothing.
She was all alone. There was no one left in the whole world but Sheriff Penny Miller.

She looked down at herself. It was hard to believe that the dress she wore was ever white. It was now blackened, torn and dark red from top to bottom, soaking wet with blood, splattered with brain matter and entrails. What a disaster. Miller was tired, frustrated, and—she hated to admit it—also very, very sad. She'd worked her ass off, been tough as nails from the start and tried to do her duty. And yet none of that had mattered in the end. She hadn't saved anyone. Penny Miller heard herself sob. She also heard a noise.

She raised the machete and bared her teeth in a snarl.

One of the boxes that made up the walls of the fort jiggled a bit. And then it tipped over. Miller faced the new threat. She waved the machete and moved to close the distance. What she saw surprised the hell out of her. Sheppard emerged from a large grating that covered the ventilation duct. Tears filled her eyes. And then she smiled because Sheppard was smiling. He wasn't alone. He was followed by four other soldiers.

Miller moved in close. She grabbed him by the lapels with her gory fingers. "Where's Terrill Lee and Scratch?"

"Right here, darlin'" Scratch came out of the duct. Terrill Lee followed. They both started her way and bumped shoulders. Then they glared at one another as if prepared to throw down on the spot.

Tears in her eyes, Miller shook her head.
Men…

EPILOGUE

It was over at last. Within the hour there were only a few zombies wandering aimlessly throughout the facility, many of them newly minted and still in uniform. They were manageable enough at that strength. Ultimately, ten humans survived the onslaught—Miller, Terrill Lee, Scratch, Sheppard, and a half-dozen soldiers.

Miller took over. She ordered the men to find fresh ammo and use it to pick off the last of the enemy one by one. It was good to be with people again. But Miller didn't bother to learn the survivor's names. She had other problems to think about. Her own body, for one. God only knew what was going on inside her. It was all wrong. She was still wired from the fight with the zombies, pulse slamming again like a jackhammer, and Miller worried that if she didn't calm down soon, her heart would explode. To top it off, when she told him, Sheppard had said nothing to reassure her that it wouldn't happen. In fact, he seemed deeply concerned.

"Sheppard, what's happening to me?"

"Let's go."

As the soldiers continued the mop up, Sheppard led their original group back into the medical wing. They walked down another long, hollow corridor and into a place that Miller would have preferred not to revisit. They entered one of the clean work labs. Terrill Lee and Scratch followed them inside. Sheppard sat Miller down on one of the chairs. He went down on one knee before her like a supplicant at the Vatican. He handed her a protein shake from a small refrigerator. She drank it greedily and snapped her fingers. She'd never felt so hungry in her life. He gave her another.

Wiping her lips, she said, "I'm listening."

"Penny, the virus that infected you is a version of the one that is used in our gene therapy. It modified your DNA beautifully, but with a couple of unprecedented effects." Sheppard pulled out the small UV light. He held it up to her skin. Miller's flesh was glowing, rippling, tinted an unnatural green.

"Okay, so now I'm just a female Hulk?"

"No, the green fluorescent protein that you are expressing is only an indicator that the virus worked. That part of the equation is actually harmless. It's the rest of it that may be a problem."

"What kind of a problem?" asked Miller. Her stomach rolled and her heart thumped and settled, thumped and settled again. Terrill Lee and Scratch were watching, their faces long with concern. Miller sighed. She just wished Sheppard would get to the damned point.

"Come on, tell me."

"The new DNA," Sheppard explained, "it's accelerated your mitochondria. You're using energy much more efficiently. Zombieism, as far as we can tell, is caused by the mitochondria continuing to supply energy to the dormant muscles and nervous system even after death. It's really quite remarkable, in a way. Unfortunately, the side effect that we saw…"

Miller was getting pissed. "What's happened Sheppard? Talk to me in English."

"Look, all the extra energy has to come from somewhere. If you don't keep supplying your body with nutrients, it has to begin to consume itself. That's why the new zombies all decayed so quickly. They were starving but nothing was good enough to keep them going. They kept using themselves up. I can't tell you how fast it happens—we had no time to study it—but our guess was that if the zombies didn't keep eating, they would eventually just wither away in time. That's why they were hungry every second. At least, that was our guess. It all went wrong before we found an answer."