The Hungry (29 page)

"Been wanting to ask this," Scratch said. "What's the story with them bastards only eating humans?"

"That's a very good question." Sheppard sighed. "We have no fucking clue. Maybe there's some nutrient in human flesh that the zombies naturally crave. Maybe they are trying to get their original nutrients back. Your guess is as good as mine."

"Sheppard, you have a sad-eyed, hangdog look, like a plumber who finds a turd in the shower. Say it. What's going to happen to me?"

"You're going to die, Penny."

She nodded. "When?"

"Soon."

Terrill Lee cried, "No!" and Miller kind of liked him for that. Scratch leaned back against the wall like a man in pain. Only Sheppard kept his gentle eyes fixed on her face. He touched her arm. "Listen up. We may have found a way to suppress your energy production."

"Tell me."

Sheppard walked over to a tall refrigerator with glass doors. He removed a small vial and a hypodermic needle. "This stuff here will at least slow down your mitochondria for the time being. That should bring you back to a relative normal. It should work for a while, anyway."

"Should? For a while? You're not making me feel all that optimistic, Sheppard."

"Well, if it works
too
well, it could…" Sheppard hesitated. He shrugged and kept looking her dead in the eye. "Well, here it is. If we fail it could kill you even faster."

"Great," Miller said. She didn't like where this was going. Terrill Lee walked over and gripped her shoulder. His face looked stricken. A tear rolled down his cheek. Scratch went to her other shoulder and patted it. Miller felt less alone.

"There's more," Sheppard said.

"Lay it on me."

"This gets worse," Sheppard said. "If it does kill you, then once the suppressant wears off, you could wake up again as one of those zombies. A brand new kind, to boot. And I have no idea what that would be like for someone as powerful as you've become, but something tells me none of us would enjoy it. We'll have to chain you down before we administer the antidote."

The color drained out of Miller's face. "So those are my wonderful alternatives? Superpowers, zombiedom, or something in between?"

"More or less."

"Sheppard," she said, "you promise me something. If I die and start changing, you blow my head off." She looked around. "All of you promise me."

Only Scratch nodded grimly. "I promise."

That will have to do,
Penny thought. She pondered. Said, "Okay, but you said it might work for a while. Assuming I survive, how long is this shit likely to last?"

"I don't know," Sheppard said simply. "I really don't. I'm sorry."

"Well then, let's put it this way, how much do you have left?"

Sheppard held up the vial. "This much. But we can make more, once I have a working lab again. Terrill Lee is a medical man, he can help out. It will just take us some time to get it done."

"How much time?" Miller demanded. She poked him in the chest. He winced. "Look, Sheppard, what aren't you telling me?"

Sheppard frowned. "I'm telling you all I know, Penny. The truth is that I don't know how much time it will take to make more serum, either. I don't know shit. But you're going to die this way, that much is certain." Without another word, he took a syringe from a container, and filled it with the suppressant. Sheppard pushed out the air bubble. "Unfortunately, maybe we've got to take one last gamble."

Miller nodded slowly. His eyes comforted her. "Kind of looks that way."

"Yes or no?" Sheppard asked, quietly. "This is your call."

Scratch, Terrill Lee and Sheppard watched Miller as she closed her eyes. Miller thought of her childhood, the little house back in Flat Rock, the sunrise on the desert after a rainy night, the smell of fresh sage in the spring. What it felt like to share that first kiss with a man who wanted you. Life could be so incredibly sweet sometimes. Miller opened her eyes.

Penny Miller stared at the hypodermic.

The hypodermic stared back.

AFTERWORD

by Steve Hockensmith

When Steven and Harry asked if I'd write an afterword for
The Hungry
, I agreed... even though I didn't know what the hell there was to say at the end of the book other than "Whew!" What you hold in your hands is an adrenaline-fueled sprint through an obstacle course of horrors, and if you weren't totally spent by the time you reached the last page of the story, you have stronger nerves than I.

Hold off on the sequel for a while, guys! I need time to recover.

Anyway, while Steven and Harry waited patiently for my afterword, I mused and ruminated and cogitated and deliberated and generally frittered the days away with my head up my tail. The novel spoke for itself, it seemed to me. When you get to the end of
Dawn of the Dead
or
Shaun of the Dead
or
World War Z
or what have you, the last thing you want is some tweedy S.O.B. gassing on about the significance of it all.

Eventually, Steven sent me Joe McKinney's introduction for the book, probably in the hope that it would provide the inspiration (and the kick in the ass) I needed to get started. If so, it worked. Kind of. Joe certainly proved there was a lot to say about
The Hungry
. The problem: He said it all. The man is good!

So I'm going to punt. Forget
The Hungry
. Let's talk about
Jaws
.

Sorry, Steven and Harry. Next time you should probably get Seth Grahame-Smith.

So. There's nothing supernatural going on in
Jaws.
(Unless you want to count the shark's appetite. He eats, what—half the population of Amity Island? And he never gets full? Come on. Even a great white's going to start feeling bloated and gassy after the fifth trip to the buffet.) Yet
Jaws
is one of my favorite horror flicks.

You probably think you know why. It's intense. It's visceral. It's got both kinds of scares: the creepy-mounting-dread-goosebumps kind and the shock-you-out-of-your-damn-seat-screaming kind.

But you want to know why
Jaws
really works? You hear it all the time. Just turn on
Entertainment Tonight
the day before the latest Hollywood CGI spectacular lands with a splat in the cineplexes.

"This isn't a movie about giant robots/killer aliens/superdudes in spandex/Smurfs," the director will say. "It's a story about
people
."

Of course, 99.99999999 percent of the time that's bullshit. But with
Jaws
, it's true. Yes, it's basically a monster movie. But first and foremost, it's about how people deal with that monster. And Chief Brody and Matt Hooper and Quint are damned interesting people. If they weren't, when that rubbery-looking shark head drags Robert Shaw into the water, we'd all be laughing. Instead, we're horrified.

That's the genius of
Jaws
. It's not just John Williams' score or Steven Spielberg's mastery of the camera or killer editing or locations that make everything feel like real life. It's all that
plus
characters we care about. Because let's face it: A big, hungry fish can be scary for a while, but as a villain it doesn't have much going for it. Every other
Jaws
movie proved that.

Now Dracula—he's interesting. Frankenstein and his monster, too. Ditto a normal, decent guy who turns into a wolf whenever the moon is full. Because all of these characters
are
characters. They have goals and emotions and regrets and fears. They're not just the proverbial eating machine. To make a shark interesting, you need interesting chum to throw its way.

I think it's the same with zombies.

Ha! Fooled you! I am talking about
The Hungry
after all!

Remember those classics of the zombie genre I mentioned earlier—
Dawn of the Dead
and
Shaun of the Dead
and
World War Z
? They've got good chum. The best. Real people. And
The Hungry
has them, too. Think about why you're excited by the prospect of
Still Hungry
or
Hungrier
or
The Hungry 2: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
or whatever the sequel's going to be called. (Feel free to use any of those titles, guys. All I ask for is a shout-out on the acknowledgments page. And 15%.) I don't think it's the zombies you're looking forward to, though Steven and Harry certainly know how to write undead mayhem. But you can get that anywhere these days. Books, movies, TV shows, video games, graphic novels, Underoos—it seems like you can find zombies in all of them. What's harder to find is a Penny Miller. Or a Sheppard or a Scratch or a Terrill Lee.

I was lucky with my horror novels,
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls
and
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After
. I inherited my cast from none other than Ms. Jane Austen (and the aforementioned Mr. Grahame-Smith). Steven and Harry had to come up with theirs on their own—and they did a bang-up job. The zombies were great, of course, but I never stopped rooting for the humans. And admit it—that's not the case with every zombie saga.

But will Penny and Co. survive whatever's to come next? There's the second great test of any zombie story: Do we care what happens
after
the fade-out? Here's my answer for
The Hungry
.

I lied before, guys. You'd better not keep me waiting for the sequel. Because I guess I can understand the shark's appetite in
Jaws
after all.

I just gorged myself... and I want more.

Steve Hockensmith

Alameda, Calif.

Only a few days past his deadline, 2011

Acknowledgments

Steven:
I would like to thank Harry Shannon, my wife Leya Booth, and our editor Norm Rubenstein, for never questioning my ability to pull this off.

Harry:
I'd like to thank Steven Booth for sticking Penny Miller in that damned wedding dress.

The both of us:
Sincere thanks to authors Joe McKinney, Steve Hockensmith, Jonathan Maberry, Brian Keene, and all of you readers out there for your support.

About the Authors

Steven W. Booth
started writing at the prompting of Harry Shannon. His first novel (not this one), a fantasy that may still be written, was a horrendous mess. So was his second, a science fiction novel. When Harry suggested that they write
Jailbreak
together, from which this novel is derived, Steven had never read any horror other than Stephen King's
The Shining,
and didn't particularly like the genre. But he soon learned that zombies were
fun
. It's easy to bring enemies together when faced with slobbering hoards of the undead, and who can argue with the guilt-free shooting gallery that zombies represent. So it was a no-brainer (pun intended) when they decided to expand the plot and turn
Jailbreak
into
The Hungry.
This is Steven's first published novel.

Harry Shannon
has been an actor, a singer, an Emmy-nominated songwriter, a recording artist in Europe, a music publisher, a VP of Carolco Pictures, and worked as a freelance Music Supervisor on films such as "Basic Instinct" and "Universal Soldier." He is now a counselor in private practice. His books include
Dead and Gone
(a Lionsgate movie),
Daemon,
the Mick Callahan novels
Memorial Day, Eye of the Burning Man, One of the Wicked,
and
Running Cold,
as well as the thriller
The Pressure of Darkness.
Shannon has won the Black Quill for Short Fiction, the Tombstone for Best Horror Novel and has twice been nominated for the Stoker. He can be reached via his web site at
http://www.harryshannon.com
or via Facebook.

COMING SOON FROM GENIUS PUBLISHING

The Hungry 2: The Wrath of God.
Steven W. Booth and Harry Shannon. Available July 6, 2012. Visit
http://www.GeniusBookPublishing.com/the-hungry-2/

"Nevada: America's number one tourist destination-if you're dead!"
After surviving the first days of the zombie apocalypse, Sheriff Penny Miller and her friends relax in what's left of Las Vegas. The Army asks Miller and her party to return to Crystal Place, the Top Secret base that was birthplace of the zombies. Even though the mission is to recover data that may lead to a cure for the virus—and Miller herself—she's pretty sure it's a bad idea. The Army assures her that a crack team of mercenaries will be there to protect them every step of the way. When Miller sees weird religious graffiti scrawled in blood on the concrete walls, she's sure their chances of survival have just dropped to damn near zero. Again.
Sometimes it sucks being right!

Sex, Death & Honey.
Brian Knight. Available June 2012. Visit
http://www.GeniusBookPublishing.com/sex-death-honey/

Meet Butch Quick, a seven-foot tall, 250-pound Native American with a face like a leather football helmet. Butch is a repo man, bounty hunter, and nightclub bouncer, among other things. Times are tough, but he's getting by okay. Or he was until now. See, Butch is having a really bad night. When he repossesses a vintage 1968 Mustang from a neighborhood troublemaker, Butch uncovers a dark secret that tangles him up with a local drug kingpin, the DA's office, a foul-mouthed bird, dirty sex, ugly death—and a dangerous girl named Honey.

In Dark Corners.
Gene O'Neill. Available June 2012. Visit
http://www.GeniusBookPublishing.com/in-dark-corners/

From the mind of Gene O'Neill comes 25 Science Fiction, Horror, and Suspense stories that will capture your imagination and won't let go! IN DARK CORNERS is a relentless pursuit of insanity in a world where no one is as they appear to be, and where nothing can be taken for granted. Each story draws you into the dark corners of Gene O'Neill's imagination.