The Hungry 2: The Wrath of God Read online

  Terrill Lee and Sheppard were also silent. Both men looked pale.

  "If everyone's done gawking," said Scratch dryly, "I want to get the hell out of here before somebody comes back to life."

  "Good idea," Miller said. You have no idea how good, she thought. "Give me some more of that shit for under my nose and let's get moving."

  Without another word, they headed off across the wide tarmac of the hangar toward the precious medical labs. They followed the trail they'd made earlier. Brubeck had either emptied his stomach or he had found his balls, because he didn't stop to vomit anymore. This time, under bright lights, the walk across the tarmac was relatively quick. They soon found themselves directly below what had been the late Colonel Sanchez's office window. It was shattered and splattered with innards and blood as if someone had thrown a hand grenade into a crowd of people or zombies. Miller remembered killing Sanchez, the base commander. She was very proud of that one.

  "We're right above the labs," said Sheppard.

  Rat nodded. "Where's the mainframe?"

  "It's down the corridor from the labs, if I remember correctly."

  "Then that's our next stop," said Rat.

  The soldiers stayed in a tight formation, protecting their charges. They slowed down to investigate every doorway and empty closet. It took them a good fifteen minutes to get to the abandoned computer room but the soldiers were finally getting a clue. She felt a bit safer as a result, but still craved a weapon. Fortunately, none of the bits and pieces of people and zombies that were left on the floor got up and caused trouble.

  The mainframe was remarkably pristine. The scientists had cleared out before getting slaughtered. The computer came online without much trouble, once they figured out that the main circuit breaker had been tripped during or after the evacuation of the base. Psycho, who appeared to be all muscle and spoke in broken sentences, was also an incredibly fast typist. He seemed to understand the inner workings of the mainframe well enough to get it up and running, again in a matter of minutes. The group had grudgingly earned Miller's respect. They were assholes, but they were professional assholes.

  They moved on to the medical labs. The labs themselves were also undisturbed, except for a thin layer of dust that covered everything. Sheppard trotted to a station. He turned on one of the terminals, signed in, and immediately began extracting data onto the flash drives that he had brought with him. The real prize was an external hard drive onto which Sheppard loaded the critical files containing the chemical formulas and manufacturing techniques of the super soldier serum. That was what they'd come for and that's what they'd have to bring back for Gifford.

  The air began to chill and the ventilation seemed to be helping with that awful smell. The clock on the wall started ticking again. No one checked the time, but they all reacted to the sense of passing seconds.

  Rat paced the room, her dark hair and eyes flashing. "How long is this going to take?"

  "Lady, there's a lot of data," Sheppard said. "Look, your job is to provide security, not watch us work. Shouldn't you be on patrol or something?" Miller watched their exchange with some amusement. Despite Sheppard's professionalism as a soldier and a medical man, he had also clearly taken a serious dislike to Major Hanratty. And Miller didn't blame him one bit. She wanted a piece of the bitch herself when this was all over.

  While Sheppard was working on the computer system, he assigned Scratch and Terrill Lee to collect specific paper files and some biological samples from other parts of the lab. Meanwhile, Rat ordered Ripper, Psycho, and Brubeck to gather the rest of the things that they needed. To speed things up, she said. Then Sheppard went to work with Miller watching.

  "Karl?"

  "What is it, Penny?" said Sheppard absently.

  "I've been thinking. Are you sure giving Gifford all this data is such a good idea?"

  He smiled at her briefly. "Don't worry, I've got it covered." He leaned over and whispered something into her ear, and what he said made her feel much better.

  "Good enough," she said, and stepped back to let him work.

  Time crawled by. Everyone else had something to do. Miller found herself standing around, feeling as useless as a dick on a brood mare. She began to wonder what the hell she was doing on this mission. So far, all she'd done was witness some of the team get themselves eaten alive. Now she guarded Sheppard as he screwed around with the big computer. Even Scratch seemed to have tuned Miller out. Why was she once considered so indispensable? So dangerous that they were going to threaten her with imprisonment and execution? These military folks had more secrets than a TV preacher. None of this made any damned sense.

  Miller came to stand behind Sheppard's left shoulder. They watched the printer go through reams of paper. Saw soldiers neatly seal the papers in boxes, tape them up and stack them for removal.

  Watching dully, Miller caught snippets of title pages and subheadings of some of the reports. One caught her eye.

  Miller pulled the report out of the pile and began reading.

  "Uh, Sheriff," said Sheppard, attempting to pull the report out of her hand, "that's a classified document."

  Miller turned far enough to escape Sheppard's reach. She read out loud.

  "Subject: Miller, Penelope J."

  Sheppard reddened. He backed away. His face went slack with shame.

  Miller read. "Viral assay positive: Serum two-six-alpha integrated system wide. No negative side effects. Blah, blah, blah." She paused, and looked up at Sheppard. "Introduction of gene expression accelerant Bravo-three-seven. Blah, blah, blah. Metabolism increased one-hundred-sixty percent, plus or minus twenty percent. Awaiting further results."

  "Penny, don't."

  Miller's eyes widened. "Signed: Sgt. Sheppard, Karl R."

  Sheppard looked away.

  "What the fuck does this mean?" Miller demanded. She held out the papers, began crushing them in her hand. "Did you juice me with something?" She came toward him a little. Terrill Lee and Scratch stopped what they were doing to watch. Even Rat held her place, perhaps curious to see what would happen. The air grew thick with tension.

  "It was just a part of the experiment." Sheppard stepped back.

  Miller got in Sheppard's face. "The experiment? Is that all I am to you, Karl? An experiment?"

  "You had been infected by the zombie virus," said Sheppard. "You could have died. I had to give you something that would speed your healing. We had no idea it would accelerate you as much as it did." He sighed. "Penny, we've been over this before. I did what I had to do then, and when I saw how wrong it was, I did what I had to do to get you and Terrill Lee and Scratch the hell out of here. I learned my lesson. I'm on your side, remember?"

  "Don't Penny me, Karl. As a matter of fact, don't talk to me at all."

  Miller threw the papers up and away. Sheppard frantically grabbed at them. Miller turned and stormed out of the room. No one followed, not even Scratch. That fact hurt her all over again. She stomped down the hall, determined to locate a weapon. Moments later, she found herself in a dark corridor, alone with a few headless corpses. She searched them for guns, found one 9mm with an empty magazine. Miller tossed the empty clip down the hallway with a clatter but kept the gun. If nothing else she could pistol-whip somebody. She squatted on her haunches, thinking.

  Every man I've ever trusted from Daddy on has let me down. Every one of them turns out to be as unreliable an investment as a shitfaced bartender…

  Something moved in the shadows. Miller stiffened. She eased back to her feet. Her left knee popped faintly. She watched, her fist balled up around the gun butt, a sour taste in her mouth. Seconds later a huge, gray rat squealed out from beneath a pile of bloody rags. It seemed to grin at her. It was fat and sassy from feasting on the corpses. Miller hissed and growled. The rat turned and ran away.

  She was alone again. It dawned on Miller that this hadn't been one of her brightest ideas. She was by herself in the corridor with God knows what hiding in the next room over. If she
got lost and left behind but survived the zombies, she'd have her ass blown to Cleveland when that nuke went off in about one day's time. And all she had was an unloaded weapon. This was not a good situation.

  Enough pouting, girlfriend. Miller decided to find Ripper and his crew. That way she'd at least have some company.

  She was quickly reminded why coming on this mission was a bad idea.

  CHAPTER SIX

  9:12pm – 20 hours 48 minutes remaining

  "Ripper? Brubeck? Psycho?"

  Miller's voice sailed like a paper airplane down empty hallways, only to return faint and badly shaken. There was no answer. She walked further still, almost on tiptoe, the empty gun clenched in her right fist. She spotted a bit of light. The lab door was partly open. She could hear muffled conversation nearby and movements beyond the moveable white wall. She was not alone, though the premises seemed empty.

  Miller entered the room. The lobby area was shadowy, but she could see light coming from the far side of the large laboratory, so she wasn't in total darkness. Nevertheless, the blind corners seemed packed with imaginary zombies. Miller saw large, bulky desks with scattered papers. Medical and office equipment sat in hulking silence throughout the room, as if playing possum but ready to pounce. She felt exposed and vulnerable, especially since her only weapon had no bullets. Her eyes couldn't seem to adjust. For a long moment, she stood where she was, listening to the whispering darkness, hearing nothing clear enough for her to understand. She couldn't smell anything but the medical cream she'd rubbed on her upper lip ages before, but something was wrong and she knew it.

  Miller could feel the rumbling of the generators as a low, thin vibration under her feet. She swallowed dryly. It was ridiculous for her to stand in the dark as if she were still a rookie, waiting to be chum for an undead feeding frenzy. Might as well suck it up. It took her a moment to find the light switch. She flicked it on.

  "Shit on a shingle."

  Miller gaped. The room was a horror show out of a mad scientist movie. Everything was clinical and clean, bloodless. A shelf held neat rows of lab reference books. Someone's ID badge sat up against a microscope. Decapitated corpses lay on medical tables, partially dissected, chests pried obscenely apart. Severed limbs, unnamed innards, and other body parts lay neatly on clean white sheets, said organs and limbs evidently arranged by size—or, perhaps, by gender. They were dark with decay. And this time Miller felt her bile rise. For once she wasn't hungry. Miller walked deeper into the lab.

  Something across the room looked like an oddly distorted aquarium with strange lighting. Her mind didn't want to accept what it was seeing. Miller forced herself to move closer to the odd collection of jars.

  Several decapitated heads floated in a faintly greenish-brown liquid, with various lengths of hair that drifted, resembling seaweed. The heads were packed in large glass containers, staring blankly out into the room. Someone here had been experimenting on the living dead, and it had clearly gone on for many months, if not years.

  Fascinated, Miller took a step toward one of the glass jars. The severed head was from a woman, and wrinkled up by the embalming liquid as it was, Miller couldn't tell her age. She'd had dark hair, an aquiline nose and full lips. Her eyes were closed, thankfully. If the scene weren't so morbid, Miller would have thought the woman pretty. Despite her intense desire to be anywhere else, Miller forced herself to look closely. She wanted to turn away, but this had been a person once, someone who still deserved respect. Miller herself had been near enough to zombie-hood to have some sympathy for the devil. We're all human, after all. She brought her face closer to the jar, though her instincts fought the move. All because of an experiment…

  Miller closed her eyes. She shook her head, on the verge of tears. Poor girl. She looked back, and stopped, again staring at the face in the jar. I would have sworn her eyes were closed a second ago. Miller looked closer still. Her pulse sped up. They had been closed. They were now wide open.

  The dead woman blinked. Her lips pulled back in a rigid grin.

  "God damn," Miller said, under her breath.

  The head grimaced. The eyes focused. It saw Miller, saw through Miller and seemed to stare right into her troubled soul. The jaw moved up and down, the thing gnashing its teeth in a useless attempt to get free. To feed. The mindless hunger and hopelessness were clear in those milky-white eyes. And then somehow the severed head managed to move forward to the edge of the thick glass jar, flapping its tongue as if to lick her face.

  Miller jumped back. Her hip banged into another one of the jars. That one tipped over, the loose lid clattering to the floor, and spilling some of the foul liquid out onto the pristine tiles. Miller whirled and managed to catch it before the head—a man's this time—rolled out to crash at her feet. Her empty gun clattered to the floor. The head in the second jar was also awake. He repeated the piranha imitation that the first female had demonstrated, snapping and licking mindlessly. Miller steadied him on his perch. She backed away from the jar, found the empty 9mm on the floor. She heard herself moaning faintly. Her nightmares returned in full force, spinning her close to the edge of sanity. Miller fancied she saw old Luther Grabowski's head in one of the medical jars, grinning and licking his decaying lips. Whispering for her to join them.

  Miller needed time to think. She jogged into the maze of the inner lab, away from the muffled human voices. She ran blindly, hands at her sides, a little girl racing through a haunted house on Halloween. She stopped when she found herself in another large room, this one devoid of bodies. She retched.

  "God in heaven."

  Miller gathered herself. Some of the greenish-brown liquid had splashed on her hands as she'd righted the jar. She wiped them on her jeans. The gooey stuff was cold as the grave. God only knew what was in it. Miller ran to the long, white porcelain trough of a sink across the lab. She yanked on a tall faucet, but nothing came out. Miller retched again. She searched frantically for something to wipe the foul goop off her trembling hands.

  Miller examined all the bottles that sat on one of the laboratory tables, then the drawers beneath them, in search of soap and towels or rags. She would have given anything for a gallon of hand sanitizer right about then. Finally she found an irrigation bottle marked "sterilized water." She put the empty weapon down and squirted it liberally on her hands. She leaned over the long sink and scoured her palms and fingers like someone with spiraling obsessive-compulsive disorder. When the bottle ran out, she wiped her reddened hands on her t-shirt. A little of her initial anxiety had dissipated. What did you expect, Princess? Of course it's Frankenstein's lab. These assholes were nuts enough to endanger their own species. Sheppard was a willing part of it before he wised up. Get your shit wired tight. Start thinking, stop reacting.

  One problem presented itself almost immediately. How the hell was she going to get back out of the lab? She was completely lost. In her frantic search for something to clean her hands, she had gotten even more turned around, and now she couldn't remember which way to go. How do I get back to the entrance?

  Miller listened. She heard someone talking not far away, back a ways and to the left. Those muffled voices from before? She decided that anyone who could still maintain a conversation was probably going to be breathing and thus on her side. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and regained her composure. Gripping the empty 9mm in her right hand, she followed the sound.

  She heard someone's muffled laugh. Miller walked toward the noises. She opened a door, went into a cluttered closet. She backed up and found another way to follow the noise, this time through a medical office. The overhead light had been shot out. Someone or something was inside. Miller's heart kicked like a terrified mule. She squinted. Someone was seated there, as if waiting for her entrance. Someone who didn't move. Miller steadied herself. She waited for a time. Her eyes adjusted.

  A white-haired, bearded scientist sat behind a metal desk, minus a face. He had his own Glock clutched in his right hand. He'd blow
n his brains out rather than be eaten. Good move, Doc. Miller searched for his magazine. His gun was empty as well. Someone had come through here and taken the ammunition, probably to make his or her own last stand a few moments later. This place had unleashed hell on earth.

  Miller kept walking and entered another corridor. She walked on, heading toward the voices. One last hall, almost there. She sighed, came around the corner into another large laboratory, and found the other humans. What she discovered shocked her more than anything back in that dissection room.

  "Uh-huh… huh-uh!"

  Ripper, Brubeck, and Psycho were loading a live zombie onto the pallet truck. It was a body strapped to a stretcher, Hannibal the Cannibal in a leather bite mask and long restraints. Miller took it all in at once. Also on the small electric vehicle were more of the heads in jars, and some huge boxes marked "biohazard." The three men were efficient and cheerfully indifferent to the horror before them. They were laughing and joking as they worked. At least, they were until Psycho looked up and spotted Miller.

  "The fuck?"

  They all turned in her direction.

  Ripper actually looked disappointed. "Aw, Sheriff. Now why'd you have to go ahead and wander off the reservation?"

  "What the hell are you men doing in here?"

  "I was just about to ask you the same question."

  Miller raised the empty 9mm. She gripped it properly. "Stop what you are doing and put down your weapons. You're under arrest."

  Brubeck blinked. "Under arrest?"

  "Hell, you ain't gonna shoot us, Sheriff," said Ripper. But he kept his hands in plain sight anyway. She had their attention.

  "You just keep telling yourself that, Ripper," Miller said. "Psycho, handcuff Ripper and Brubeck. Do it slowly." Miller kept the pistol trained steadily on Ripper's head.

  Psycho reached behind him with an exaggerated slowness. He retrieved his handcuffs, and brought them to where Miller could see them. He let them dangle mockingly for a few seconds, and he grinned.