The Hunger (Book 2): Consumed (6 page)

Eifort and Brown dozed in the backseat, the occasional snore making Lance smile.  Cass stayed awake beside him, eyeing the countryside as it rolled by her window.  She appeared tense to Lance and he couldn’t blame her.  Without the boat, their night would be interesting to say the least.

They barely talked as they drove on, their dour moods hanging in the air between them.

The fuel-indicator light came on as they approached a church on the right side of the road.  The signs indicated it had been Presbyterian.  Half a dozen homes stood on the opposite side of the highway, quiet in the still afternoon.

Lance pulled into the parking lot, easing up to a few empty cars.  Cass roused Brown and Eifort before stepping out of the truck.

“Let’s see if we can siphon some gas from the cars,” Lance said.  “I’d rather keep the truck because of its size and power.”

“We’ll need a hose and a gas can.”  Brown stretched and peered around the small neighborhood.  “One of those houses might have some.”

Cass started across the road.  “I’ll go look, you guys check the cars and see what we can use.”

“Hold on, I’m coming with you.”  Lance jogged after her, wincing as the tender flesh of his sliced neck stretched.  “We shouldn’t go by ourselves anymore.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

Lance caught up to her as she approached the driveway of the first house.  He grabbed her arm so she would face him.  “What’s wrong?  You seem extra pissy.”

“Nothing.  Let’s get this over with.”

“Talk to me, Cassie.”

She stopped and glared at him.

“I’m just joking around.”  He raised his arms in mock surrender.

Her face softened a bit.  “We almost got killed back there.  What if he’d managed to cut your throat?”

“Are you saying you’d miss me?”  The appearance of her softer side took Lance off guard.  It was a rare occurrence to see her show any kind of vulnerability.

“I’m serious.  Brown wants to go and find people, but I think that humans might be the most dangerous things we can be around right now.  Don’t you understand?  People are willing to kill for food, water, and guns.  If we have something they want, they’ll murder us and take it.  People are too unpredictable.”

Everything she said was true.  A man had just blown up their boat and they didn’t even know why.  The Vladdies had clear behaviors and a singular objective.  The survivors, however, behaved irrationally.

Particularly those calling themselves the Minutemen.  Those led by Ralph, the prepper from hell.

“I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying.  But he has a point.  How long can we survive by ourselves?  Don’t you think we’ll have strength in numbers?”

“No.  Too many people in one place always leads to some of them doing stupid shit.  There will always be one idiot who trips over a cable and disables the electricity or opens a door to take a piss and lets the horde in.  We can survive better on our own.”

She stalked up the driveway, head panning back and forth as she looked for daywalkers.  Lance followed her, chewing on what she’d said.  She grabbed the handle to the two-car garage door and lifted it open, the wheels on each side clacking on the way up.

A red 1972 Corvette Stingray was parked inside.  Cass ignored it as she walked by the driver’s side, scanning cluttered shelves and a workbench for a hose.

Lance gaped at the car.

“Holy shit.  That’s a thing of beauty right there.”  He ran his hand across the hood.  He’d always wanted a car like this, but never could have afforded it in his past life.  The idea of searching the house for the keys occurred to him.

“Boys and their cars,” Cass mumbled as she rooted through a box on the floor.  She found a length of garden hose inside.

“This isn’t a car—it’s work of art.  I thought you’d appreciate it, since you’re a failed artist.” Lance leaned against the fender.  “Wanna go for a ride, pretty lady?”

“I want to find a gas can so we can get the hell out of here.”  She walked around the back of the car and searched the other side.

“Sometimes you’re a real pain in my ass.”  Lance looked in the window at the leather seats inside.

“Says the guy who is dicking around with a car.”  She opened a cabinet in the back left corner of the garage.  “Here we go.”

With a gas can in one hand and a piece of hose in the other, she shook her head at Lance as she walked out of the garage.

––––––––

T
he throaty roar of the Stingray’s engine made Lance grin as he floored the accelerator.

He sped down the driveway and over the road before pulling the emergency brake as he crossed into the church parking lot.  Spinning the wheel, he slid the Vette sideways, the tires screaming across the pavement.  Smoke billowed from the rubber as the car lurched to a stop fifteen yards from the Silverado.

The doc’s eyes grew large as he stared at the Corvette.

Lance stepped out of the car with an enormous smile covering half his face.  “Ain’t she a stunner?”

“My God.”  Brown walked over, ogling the curved fenders.  “I used to have one of these!”

“Really?  Lucky bastard.”

“I had to give it up when I went to medical school.  I couldn’t afford to drive a car.”

Lance jingled the keys.  “Want to take it for a spin?”

“I wish.”  Brown nodded to his wounded arm.  “I couldn’t shift it.”

“Will you guys stop screwing around and help us?” Cass glowered at them as she cut a length of the hose away with a knife.  “I’d like to get somewhere safe before the sun goes down.  You know, so we don’t get eaten alive?”

Lance put his hand on Brown’s shoulder.  “The world has ended and men are still playing with toys while women yell at them to do something worthwhile.  The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh Doc?”

He said it loud enough for Cass to hear and waited for the fallout.  Though he’d almost been murdered this morning, he found his attitude turning more jovial by the minute.  Finding the car had lifted his spirits.

He wondered for a moment if he was losing his mind.  They didn’t have much to be happy about at the moment.

“Do you see this axe on my back?  I’m going to shove it up your ass so far you’ll be shitting splinters for the rest of your life.”

“Next she’s going to threaten to withhold sex.”  Lance winked at Brown, who turned his back to the women so they wouldn’t see him laugh.

“Sometimes I wonder why I saved you in that alley.  You’re such a dumbass.”

“A dumbass that you have sex with.”  Lance walked over to a beat-up Ford Taurus and opened the gas cap.  He held his open hand up, signaling for Cass to throw him the section of hose she’d cut to an appropriate length.

“Ugh.  Don’t remind me.”  She whipped the hose at him and it bounced off his chest with a slap.

Lance chuckled as he rubbed his skin.

Eifort brought the gas can over to him, shaking her head.  “You guys are crazy.”

They took turns sucking gas from two different cars, each spitting and gagging as the foul liquid filled their mouths.  The Silverado had a large tank that took quite a while for them to get three-quarters full.

When they finished, Lance tossed the can and the hose into the back of the truck, knowing they’d have to use them again later.

“Who wants to ride in the Vette with me?”  Lance went back to the muscle car and opened the door.

“I’ll drive the truck with Emmett.”  Eifort fidgeted with the dog tags hanging around her neck.  “You said I needed to protect him, so I can’t let him ride in another car without me.”

Brown shrugged and climbed into the passenger seat of the Silverado.

Lance had a feeling that protecting the doc wasn’t the only reason Eifort wanted to ride with him.

Cass glared at the red car with open contempt.  “Why do you want to take that thing?  It has zero functional use for us.”

“I believe it was you who told me to have fun while I could.  Something about having a short life span nowadays.”

She pursed her lips.  “Fair enough.”  She started toward him.  “But I get to drive it.”

Lance grinned and tossed her the keys, running around to the other door.

Cass opened the small trunk and put her axe inside.  She fell into the bucket seat and slid the key in.  The beefy engine rumbled to life.  From the corner of her eye, she looked over at Lance, who was still grinning at her.

“What?”

“I can tell that you’re just being a pain in the ass because you don’t want to admit how sweet this car is.”

She sighed.  “Damn it.”

“Damn it?  Does that mean I’m right?”

“Fine, you got me.  I’m still trying to recover from this morning.  But yes, this is pretty bad ass.”

Lance pumped his fist in the air.  “Ka-ching.”

“What?”

“I think that’s the first time I’ve ever been right about what a woman was thinking.  We’re on the same page, Cassie.”

“Buckle up, dumbass.  And if you call me Cassie one more time, I’m going beat the shit out of you.”

The Stingray fishtailed out of the parking lot, already doing forty miles an hour.  Cass shifted with experienced ease, coaxing the car to eighty before laying off as they approached a bend in the road.

“I bet Eifort is cursing at you right now.”  Lance looked in the mirror on his door, seeing the truck a few hundred yards behind them.

“She’s probably too busy staring at the doc.”

“You noticed that too?”

“A blind man could see that she’s into him.”

“He’s like twenty years older than she is.”

“So?  You’re ancient compared to me, and I still deal with your old ass.”

“Good point.”

Lance thought about what he’d learned of Brown over the past week.  His wife died of cancer almost a decade ago, leaving him broken.  He’d poured himself into his work, refusing to even consider dating someone again.  Childless and unattached to anyone, the man had practically lived at the hospital for the past ten years.

He was a man of singular focus.  Lance could appreciate and admire that.

Eifort’s husband left her while she was stationed in Iraq.  She tried to call home one day and he simply stopped answering the phone.  Her friends finally got a hold of him, only to find out that he’d been sleeping with someone else for a month.

Like so many others of her generation, she was a Dear John, or Jane in her instance, victim.  It takes a real piece of shit to leave someone while they are in the middle of a war.

Her parents died during the first week of the infection, leaving her alone and frightened, even as her job with the military required her to keep everyone else calm and safe.  She was a hero in her own right, setting aside her own problems to help others.

Oddly enough, the four of them had found each other in the aftermath of the apocalypse.  A handful of damaged souls, brought together by an extinction event.

Cass slowed down as they approached a flipped-over school bus in the middle of the road.

Bloodstains ran from several broken windows, trailing into a grass field beside a drainage ditch.  Lance grimaced at the idea of children being taken.  He knew that most of the world’s kids had been killed just like everyone else, but he tried not to think about it.

Some things were just too horrible.

The truck caught up to them as they drove around the wreckage, using the gravel shoulder.  Cass was careful with the accelerator, keeping the car from fishtailing into the field.

She kept their speed down after that, never going above thirty.

Lance watched the calm countryside out the window, letting his mind wander to his earlier conversation with Cass.  Her reluctance to go to Greensburg had him questioning what they should do.  She’d been right about not wanting to stay at Heinz Field.  Was she right about this as well?

They had found, and saved, Eifort and Brown, so the trip hadn’t been without any success.  Still, she had amazing instincts and he would be a fool to ignore them.

“Are you sure we should avoid the safe zone?” he asked a few minutes later.

“Yes.”

They passed by a field with a handful of daywalkers shambling through it.  Their skin was veined and thinning, the infection twisting their bodies.

“OK.”

“What?”  She squinted at him, obviously unsure if he was serious.  “That’s it?”

“That’s it.  You’ve been right about everything else.  Let’s drop Brown and Eifort off, if that’s what they still want, and go somewhere else.”

Cass downshifted, slowing the car down as they descended a large hill.  “I thought you said you wanted to hang around there for a while? See if anyone wants to come with us.”

“I want to be with you more.”  He shrugged, knowing how corny it sounded.  Hell, it
was
corny, but that didn’t make it not true.

She smirked.  “I think all of that loser stuff you told me about yourself was a lie.”

“What? Why?”

“Because you’re pretty damn smooth when you want to be.”

He laughed again.  “I don’t know what to say to that.  It’s like I’m a completely different person now.”

“It’s hard for me to picture you as some depressed couch potato.”

“Ask my wife.  She’ll tell you all about it.”

“You think she’s still alive?  I wonder if she’s at the safe zone.”

“Who knows?  Maybe we’ll run into her and
Don
, that sack of shit.”  Lance rubbed his jaw absentmindedly.  “I owe him one.”

The sun fell closer to the skyline behind them, the shadows of trees extending onto the road.

“We need to find a place to stay soon.  I don’t know what could be secure around here though.”  Cass scanned the fields around them.

“I think we’ll be all right in a barn or a house, honestly.  We’ve only seen a handful of the daywalkers lately.  There can’t be many Vladdies out here.”

“It only takes one to wipe us out.”

They spotted a farmhouse twenty minutes later, nestled several hundred yards into a field.

Cass slowed and carefully navigated a long, pothole-filled driveway that split the field.

The driveway opened up just before the house with two F150s parked by a side door.  Three barns stood in staggered positions behind the home.