The Hunger (Book 2): Consumed (30 page)

Cass saw it and rolled her eyes.  “Oh god.  Here we go.”

“What?”  Lance looked over at her, his smile growing wider.

“I can tell by the shit-eating grin on your face that you’re going to say something stupid.”

“Hey, this is going to benefit you too.”  He called over his shoulder to Brown.  “How far into pregnancy can you still have sex?”

Cass cuffed him in the back of the head.

Brown cleared his throat. “How does up until labor sound?” He tried to sound serious, but his voice cracked with laughter.

“Don’t encourage him!”  Eifort elbowed Brown in the ribs though she ended up giggling along with him.

“Doc, I love you.”  Lance winked at Cass.  “See?  How lucky are you?”

“Yeah.  So lucky.  I also can’t wait to hear you joke about getting me knocked up for the next eight months or so. Hilarious.”

“Speaking of being knocked up—it’s never too early to start talking about baby names.”  Lance laughed when he saw the shocked look on her face.  “We can come up with something really cool, you know?  Social conventions are a thing of the past now, so we can name the kid whatever we want.”

“I know I’m going to regret asking this question, but what did you have in mind?”

“Well, if it’s a boy, I’m thinking Max Power.”

Cass choked.

“And Crystal Dragon if it’s a girl.”

“You are such a
dumbass
.”

*****

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T
he world conveyed in
Devoured
and
Consumed
originally came from a short story I wrote titled
Lotion
.  The story was first published in 
Apocalypse: An Anthology by Authors and Readers
 in the winter of 2012.  Several readers contacted me after the release of the anthology, asking if I would ever expand on the story.  Obviously, I decided to do just that and
The Hunger
series was born.

Because I appreciate you taking the time to read both novels, I wanted to extend the original short story to you free of charge.  I hope you have fun with this quick glimpse into the evolution of
The Hunger
.

As always, if you’ve enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review where you purchased it.  Reviews can really help a burgeoning author’s career.

“For the love of all that is holy, will you hurry the hell up?”

I could hear him scrounging around on the other side of the apartment door but I had no idea what he was doing.  He’d been in there for almost five minutes now and I could feel my blood pressure increasing with every passing moment.  It would be dark soon and we’d be dead if we were caught in it.

“Coming, bro!”

I’d been talking to him for only a couple of minutes now and the ‘bro’ thing had been grating on my nerves for every single one of them.  I already regretted coming up here.  This felt like a huge mistake.

“We have ten minutes until sundown!”

“So?”

There was no way he could be this monumentally stupid.  Everyone else had been dead for damn near two weeks, except for me and this dumb ass?

“So?  Are you retarded?” I asked.

The door to his apartment finally opened and he stepped out wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and sandals.  The idiot had actually changed clothing while I sat in the hallway, waiting.  Not only did he waste time doing that, he also put on the least functional things he could find.

“Hey, my third cousin was slightly retarded.  That’s not cool, bro.”

“I’m sorry, have I offended all of the dead special needs people?  I’m pretty sure no one is around to care if I’m politically correct.”  I pointed at his sandals.  “What the hell is the matter with you?  How are you going to run in sandals?”

He looked genuinely shocked at that.  “Why would I run?”

I wanted to slap the shit out of him.  Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and tried to focus on not murdering the only other living person I’d seen in the past week.  I looked him over again after a few seconds of trying to calm down.  He didn’t have the
one
thing that I told him to get.

“Where is your bag?”

“Oh yeah, sorry,” he said, snapping his fingers.  He went back into his apartment, leaving me in the dark hallway again.

I looked out the window at the end of the hall and cursed when I saw how dark it was.  The odds of us getting back to the bank vault before the night fully set in were getting slimmer by the second.  I should have known better than to come back here.

“Sorry, man.  Let’s do this.”  He closed and locked his apartment door behind him.  Why he would bother locking the door when no one could possibly steal his stuff was a mystery to me.

“What is that?” I asked, gesturing to the messenger bag over his shoulder.  “I said to get something that could hold a lot.”

“This is all I’ve got, bro,” he said.

“If you call me ‘bro’ one more time, I’m going to throw you down the stairs.”

“Easy, br−” He caught himself, barely, and tried to act like nonchalant about it.  “Dude, relax.  Everything’s cool.”

I wanted to slap him around like one of the Three Stooges, but I didn’t think we had much time before
they
came out.  “Just follow me.”  I turned around and sped down the hallway, just slower than a jog.

Before today, I hadn’t been inside my place for almost two weeks.  My clothing had started to smell like a compost heap so I had come back to get more.  Unfortunately, and shockingly, I’d run into Greg here.  I hated Greg – always had.  He’s the kind of neighbor that made you cringe every time you saw him coming down the hallway.

“Where we headed, bro?”  His sandals flopped against the floor as he hurried up behind me.

“I’ve been staying in a vault two blocks away in Slessinger’s bank,” I said.  Though I’d been getting in better shape over the past two weeks, I had already started huffing as I took the stairs two at a time.

“In a bank vault?  That’s just weird.”  His breaths came even faster than mine.  “Why are we running, bro?”

“It’s almost dark.”

We reached the first floor and I sprinted across the small lobby of our apartment building.  The front door stood ajar, as I’d left it, and I burst through it, almost tripping over a garbage can lying on the sidewalk.  I jumped over it without breaking stride, only to hear Greg crash to the ground behind me.

“Damn!  I skinned my knee!”

I turned around to see Greg sprawled in the pile of trash, rolling around in it.  He was going to smell fantastic when we were locked in the bank vault together.

“Get up, you fool!”  I didn’t run back to him, but I did stop and wait.  The sun had already set and I could feel myself starting to panic.

“What’s the rush?  I’m in pain here.”  He lifted himself from the garbage, brushing it away from his pants.

I didn’t bother answering him.  It had grown so dark that the streetlights would have been on already, had civilization not come to an end.  We had seconds, if that, to reach the bank.  I took off, sprinting faster than I ever had in my life.  My quads felt like they were about to tear.

“Bro, slow down!”

An abandoned car was parked in the middle of the street in front of me.  I ran around it, bumping it with my hip.  My backpack jostled, the water bottles inside it sloshing around.  The extra weight of the bag slowed me down, but it was my lifeline and I wouldn’t dare leave it behind.  It only had a couple of days food and water in it and I was thankful for that much.

The bank loomed at the end of the block.  I picked up my pace as much as I could.  The first shriek came then, scaring the shit out of me.  That sound had haunted my nightmares since the first time I’d heard it.  It bounced off the hard surfaces of the street and buildings, echoing throughout the entire area.

Another one pierced my ears, making me wince.  That one came from nearby.  Christ, they were so close that I expected one of them to pounce on me as I reached the revolving door at the front of the bank.  I ran into it, throwing my shoulder against the glass, getting it moving as fast as I could.

“Hold up, man!  I’m falling behind!”

I didn’t wait.  I ran across the open lobby, trying to remember where everything was located.  The room was bathed in darkness and I couldn’t see a damn thing.  I bumped into the teller’s booth and I worked my way around it.  The vault sat ten yards past that, the door open.  Every since I’d found this place, I had always left everything accessible, just in case I had to get back here in a hurry.  I ran through the door and tripped over the bottom lip, banging my shin against the harsh metal.

I fell inside and slid across the cool floor.  Piles of stuff that I’d been collecting were spread about.  I rifled through the one nearest me and found a long, metal flashlight.  It took me a few seconds to figure out how to use it, as it didn’t have any buttons.  I twisted the cap on the front and the end lit up, illuminating the vault.  The revolving door squeaked as Greg came through it, so I angled the beam across the lobby, showing him the way.

“What the hell, bro?  Why are you—”

Another shriek, louder and shriller, echoed through the lobby.  That got Greg’s ass moving.  He ran toward me, looking over his shoulder as he came.  “What is making that crazy ass sound?”

I pushed the heavy vault door shut as he ran through it.  It latched into place with an audible thunk. I spun the wheel on the back of the door, locking it just as one of
them
slammed into the other side of it.  Even though I knew they couldn’t get through the thick steel, I still jumped away from the door.  The pounding on the outside grew worse for a full minute before finally abating.

Greg stood beside me, staring at the door in horror.  “What the fuck, bro?”

I took my bag off and dropped it to the floor.  My matches were in the bottom and it took me a few seconds to fish them out and light a couple of candles that I’d placed around the vault.  Greg continued to watch the door with a stupid look on his face.  How did he not know what was going on outside?

“Here,” I said, handing him a bottle of water from my bag.  “It’ll help calm your nerves.”

“Really?  Is there booze in it?  I haven’t had straight liquor in a long time.”

“Booze?  Only a complete dipshit would get drunk nowadays.”

He took the bottle from me and drank half of it in one go.

“Easy!  We only have a limited supply of water.” I snatched it from his hands.

“Sorry, bro, I’m thirsty as shit.”

“I told you to stop calling me bro, for the love of God.”

Greg sat against the wall opposite of me.  “What was making those sounds?  What is bouncing off the door?  This is some seriously scary shit, br—”

My glare stopped him before he could finish the word.  I couldn’t believe it.  How could he have survived in an apartment building for a month?  Not even taking into account his nonfunctioning brain, I didn’t understand how he’d stayed alive while everyone else around him had died.  Especially since he didn’t seem to comprehend the situation we found ourselves in.

“You keep asking me these weird questions,” I said.  “Don’t you know what’s going on out there?”

“I’ve been chilling in my apartment, bro.”  He winced at his use of the word, but continued.  “I’ve heard those screaming sounds a lot, but I figured they were just sick people who sounded funny.”

“Sick people?”  I tore open a bag of potato chips that I’d taken from my apartment.

“Yeah, the news said to stay indoors because of a plague or some shit,” he said.

I remembered the news agencies saying that at first.  That was before the power went out though.  Everyone thought that some kind of airborne disease had been making people sick; mutating their bodies into disfigured freaks.  It was just before everything collapsed when people figured out that the disease spread through the bites of the infected.

Emergency broadcasts had told everyone to stay indoors and not to come in contact with anyone you didn’t know.  I’d still been inside my apartment at that time.  It wasn’t until the power went out that I fled, searching for something safer than my two bedroom place.  I found the bank and the open vault that same day.  Someone else had discovered it at the same time I did and we ended up getting into a hell of a fight over it.  I won.

“You’ve been in your apartment since this started?  That was weeks ago.”  I wiped my oily fingers on my shirt.

“Well, yeah.  I didn’t want to get whatever shit was flying around in the air, you know?”

“How did you have enough food at your place?  I ran out after a couple of days.”

“I don’t like to shop so I always buy a month’s worth of groceries at a time.  It kind of blows because I’ve got shit coming out of cabinets at first, but—”

“You never once looked out the window to see what was making those awful sounds?  How did you not hear the people screaming in the streets?”

“Well, I heard them, but I had taped my curtains against the windows and I didn’t want to break the seal.  I figured that might help keep the disease shit out, you know?”

Wow.  This guy actually thought that duct tape and fabric could keep a virus out of his house.  People were being slaughtered in the streets and he sat in his apartment, getting wasted most likely, and managed to stay alive.  If he hadn’t been the only other person I’d seen alive, I would have thrown him out of the vault.

“So you have no idea what’s happening?  You think everyone got sick and died?”

“That’s what the news said, bro.  What else could kill everybody in a couple of days?”

“If everyone got sick and died, where are the bodies?”  I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t thought of such a simple question already.

He sat across from me, stumped.  “Damn.  I never thought of that.”

Another thump reverberated through the vault.  Thinking about the strength required to run into a heavy steel door and make it shake sent a shiver down my spine.  They seemed to grow stronger every day.  I wasn’t sure that even the vault would be able to hold up forever.  If that was the case – I was screwed.