The Hunger (Book 2): Consumed (7 page)

A tire swing hung from a butternut tree in the front yard, swaying slightly in a low breeze.

Lance kept his eyes on the house as he climbed out of the Vette.

Eifort and Brown parked behind them and climbed out of the truck.

“Why are we stopping here?” Eifort asked.  Her voice had finally regained its normal volume.

“We need a place to stay for the night.”  Lance pushed the tire swing, hearing water slosh in the bottom of it.  “This looks as good as anything else.”

“We’ll be sitting ducks in there.”

Lance turned back to her.  “Any suggestions on where else we should go?”

She shook her head after a moment of reflection.

Brown looked at the fields around them.  “There aren’t any other houses within sight.  Maybe we won’t have any issues out here.  If there weren’t any people, then the odds are that we won’t run into any of the infected.

“I’m going to search the house,” Cass said, already moving toward the front door.

Lance followed her, pulling his knife out.  He made a mental note to look for a better weapon.  The knife was a great tool of last resort, but he hated its pathetic range.  That and Cass’ axe gave him a form of penis envy.

The farmhouse was large, as they often are, with a multitude of rooms and high ceilings.  Dated wallpaper covered too many surfaces.  Aging appliances and peeling countertops made up the sparsely decorated kitchen.

An old console television sat on the floor in the living room.  It wasn’t even plugged in.

Cass went up a dilapidated staircase as Lance worked his way through a dining room and office.

Several guns rested in a rack in the backroom.  Boxes of shells and bullets were in a desk underneath it.  Equipment to reload ammunition covered the desk.

Lance grabbed a pump-action shotgun from the rack and worked the slide.  A shell tumbled to the floor.  He grinned as he picked it up.

“Bingo.”

A black-handled pistol with a long, silver barrel caught his eye.  He picked it up from the desk, shocked at its heft.  He couldn’t be certain, but he thought it looked like the gun Dirty Harry used in the eighties.

“I found the owners,” Cass called from upstairs.

Lance put the shotgun back in the rack and shoved the pistol into his waistband.  Its ridiculous bulk made him feel like a bad ass.

He bound up the stairs two at a time and paused at the top landing.  “Where are you?”

“Back here.”

Lance went down a hallway to his right, peering into open doors as he walked by.  Cass waited for him in the last room.  She stood by an aged canopy bed, staring at two bodies atop it on a flowered comforter.

The smell hit Lance as he crossed the threshold of the door, making him hold a finger under his nose.  The stench hung in the air like a fog, coating his tongue.

An elderly couple lay side by side, arms wrapped around one another.  Their skin had darkened.  Lance could barely bring himself to look at them.

Empty pill bottles stood on a nightstand atop a handwritten note.

Lance picked the paper up, reading the cursive scrawled on it.

“What does it say?” Cass asked.

“They asked forgiveness for taking their own lives.  Says they couldn’t bear the thought of harming another person, even unintentionally.  They willed their property to their two children.  Their names were Jayce and Kate.”

Cass went to a closet on the opposite side of the room and opened one of the doors.  She pulled a sheet from a shelf and used it to cover the bodies.

“This is pretty horrible,” Lance muttered.

“They chose how they wanted to go out.”  Cass looked at the human outlines under the sheet for a few more seconds before turning back to the hallway.  “We should all be so lucky.”

Lance closed the door behind him and followed Cass back outside.  Eifort stood watch by the truck as the doc siphoned more fuel from the gas tanks of the Fords.

“There are guns inside.”  Lance cocked his thumb at the house.  “Room in the back of the house on the first floor.”

“What’s with the cannon?” Eifort pointed at the pistol in his waistband.

He pulled it out and held it up for everyone to see.  “Pretty bad ass, right?”

“You’re going to eat that thing the first time you try to shoot it.”  Cass shook her head at him.  “Make sure you let me know when you’re going to fire it so I can watch.”

“Don’t be jealous.”  Lance stuck his tongue out at her.

“Yeah, I’ll be really envious when that barrel knocks out your front teeth.”  She walked around the house, heading for the first barn.  “Come with me, Clint.”

The first barn was mostly empty.  Old cow shit covered large parts of the floor.  Flies buzzed greedily over the feces.

“They probably let the animals go before they offed themselves.”  Lance inspected the open gates of all the empty animal stalls.

He hoped they would find something they could slaughter for meat.

The second barn had tractors and other equipment that Lance didn’t recognize.  He lifted a pitchfork from a crudely constructed tool rack on the wall.

“What do you think?  It’s a helluva lot better than my knife.”

Cass dismissed it with a wave of her hand.  “Too long.  If anything gets in close, you won’t be able to use it.”

He grunted and dropped it to the ground.  A chainsaw hung from a large nail.  He grabbed it.

“Eh?  We could use this to go after those prepper dicks, Leatherface style.”

“And bring every Vladdie within a mile down on our heads.”

“You’re a real curmudgeon, you know that?”  He tossed the chainsaw aside and picked up a scythe.  The curved blade had to be three feet long, the handle closer to six.  “Death comes to Greensburg.”

Cass just shook her head.

Lance glowered at her.  “What do you suggest then?  I don’t see any other battle axes lying around.”

She walked over to him, hunching her shoulders with exaggerated annoyance.  After looking over the tool rack for several seconds, she grabbed a sickle and felt the weight in her hand.  “This is probably too light to take out anything of consequence.”

“Anything of consequence?  Who talks like that?”  He pointed at the sickle.  “That thing worked in
Children of the Corn
.”

She tossed it aside.  “You watched too many movies.”

“That’s what happens when you don’t have a job.”

A sledgehammer stood in the corner of the barn.  Lance lifted it, felt how heavy it was, and immediately put it back down.  “I’m not man enough to swing that.”

Cass handed him a hatchet.  “This isn’t bad.”

Lance looked from the small axe in his hand to the large one on Cass’ back.  “You just want everyone to know that you have a bigger dong than I do.”

“What’s gotten into you?”  Cass cocked an eyebrow in his direction.  “You’re acting crazy.”

“I don’t know.  Ever since I thought that guy had cut my throat open, I’ve felt... anxious.  Excited.  I don’t know.”

She turned back to the tools.  “I know something that’ll calm you down.  We need to find you a weapon first though.”

“What something is that?”  He tried to look innocent, though he knew exactly what she meant.

“Stop being a tool bag and help me look.”

They finally settled on a wooden baseball bat.  It was light enough that he wouldn’t struggle to carry it, but it could induce enough damage to be worthwhile.

Cass rooted through a tool chest.  She produced several long, rusted nails.  “These will work.”

“Work for what?”

“Watch and learn.”

She secured the baseball bat in a vice attached to a thick, filthy bench.  Over the next ten minutes, they hammered the nails through the business end of the bat, turning it into a lethal mace.

Lance held the handmade weapon up, inspecting their handiwork.  Nails protruded from several angles, ensuring that he would do maximum damage no matter what direction he swung from.

“Not bad,” he said, impressed with what they’d made.

Afterward, Cass led him to the field behind the barn and helped him relax.

She was right—it worked.

––––––––

T
hey spent the remaining light burying the elderly couple under the butternut tree.

Cass crafted a crude cross from dead branches she found beside a pile of lumber by the house.  She placed them at the head of the dual grave, pausing to whisper a few words under her breath.

“I didn’t know you were religious,” Lance said as they walked back to the house.

“There’s a lot about me that you don’t know.”

Brown came out of the front door with a six-pack in his good hand.  He handed each of them a warm can before sitting on the steps beside Eifort.  They tapped their beers together before taking a swig.

Lance’s face contorted at the warm carbonation.  He enjoyed a good beer as much as the next guy, but this didn’t qualify.  Still, the setting reminded him of the old world, one where grandchildren would swing on the tire under the tree.

A world where the elderly didn’t kill themselves to avoid becoming monsters.

“I think we’ll be safe here,” Eifort said after a few minutes.  “If nothing came along and grabbed those bodies upstairs, then we should be all right.”

“Hope so.”  Brown rotated his shot shoulder, wincing.  “It’s so peaceful out here.  I should have moved out of the city long ago.”

They polished off their beers in comfortable silence, enjoying the evening as it churned over into the night.

For the first time in weeks, they didn’t hear a single shriek as the moon poked its way into view.

Cass and Lance slept on a futon in the living room.  Old springs poked into their backs, but neither complained.  It was still better than sheets on a hard floor.

Eifort and Brown each took separate chairs. No one wanted to sleep upstairs because of the smell.

The doc snored throughout the night.

Lance awoke in a cold sweat around midnight.  His pulse raced as the memories of a nightmare faded away.

He got up and walked around the first floor, peering through the windows, ensuring that nothing stalked in from the fields.  After twenty minutes of pacing, he went back to the pullout bed and slept fitfully until Cass shook him awake in the morning.

“What?” He sat up and rubbed sleep dust from his eyes.

“Breakfast is ready.”

“What’re we eating?”

“Cold soup.”

Lance licked his lips.  “Yum.”

“Better than cold baked beans again.”

During a two-day stretch the week before, they’d lived entirely on canned beans.  A house they had raided had an extensive stockpile of them in the basement.  The entire boat was filled with methane gas both nights.

They ate cans of corn chowder on the front porch as the sun rose over the fields.  Mountains lay beyond, trees extending across the skyline.  A bird chirped from a feeder hanging at the end of the porch.

Lance breathed in the country air, content to sit there for the time being.  He agreed with Brown—he should have moved to the country years ago.  Though it took a significant amount of work to live like this, it felt more rewarding, more personal.

He enjoyed the convenience of the city, but he thought that the bustling nature of it added to the depression he’d dealt with.

Storm clouds crept over the mountains by the time they finished eating.

Eifort found a closet filled with camping equipment by the back office.  She loaded the truck with sleeping bags, matches, and flashlights.  The guns were already in the backseat, along with all the ammunition they could find.

A water pump jutted out of the ground in the backyard from which sweet, clear well water came.  Lance gorged himself on it, relishing the taste of chemical-free nature.  The water sloshed in his stomach as he went back to the porch and collapsed onto the swing.

“Going to rain soon,” he said lazily.

Brown nodded, pursing his lips.  “We should probably stay here until it passes.  Why risk an accident?”

They all agreed and sat quietly, watching as the storm rolled its way down the mountain range.  Lance wasn’t sure how they would get in an accident with no one else driving on the roads, but he liked the idea of sitting around the farm for a while longer.

Eifort spotted jet contrails through a gap in the clouds just as the first rain plopped to the dirt.  “Someone is still out there.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t dropped bombs on the major cities yet,” Lance said.

“Maybe they will.”  Cass chewed on a piece of rhubarb she found growing by the nearest barn.

The first crack of thunder came shortly thereafter, silencing all of them as they watched sheets of rain glide across the fields.  Water poured from the roof gutters, soaking the earth around the house.

Cass got up and pulled her half-shirt over her head, exposing her sports bra.

“I don’t think they would appreciate us getting it on right in front of them,” Lance said, gesturing to Eifort.

“Shut up, dumbass.”  Cass went down the steps, tilting her face to the sky, her hair soaking through quickly.

Her arms lifted from her sides, sticking straight out, palms up.  “Get down here—this feels amazing!”

Eifort and Brown shared a look before she jumped up and pulled her tank top off.  Lance tried not to laugh when he caught the doc staring at her as she joined Cass on the lawn.  She spun around, her bare feet splashing in the soaked grass.

Lance got off the swing and went inside, jogging up the stairs.  He ignored the smell of decay as he went into the master bathroom and grabbed a bar of soap and a bottle of shampoo.

Eifort was helping Brown get his shirt off as he struggled with his wounded shoulder.  The man was in decent shape, considering his age and job-obsessed lifestyle.

“Here.” Lance slapped the bar of soap in the doc’s hand.  He pointed at the corner of the porch where rainwater poured from the broken edge of the rainspout.  “Enjoy a shower courtesy of Mother Nature.”

Careful not to tear the bandage off his neck, Lance pulled his own shirt off and went to the other corner of the porch.  Cass followed him, running her hands through her butchered hair.

They stood under the flow of water, filling their mouths and shooting streams of it at each other.  Lance lathered shampoo in her hair, smiling as she tilted her head into his kneading fingers.  She did the same for him, letting the cool rain clean them better than the Allegheny River had the week before.