Read The Hunger (Book 3): Ravaged Online

Authors: Jason Brant

Tags: #vampires, #End of the World, #Dracula, #post apocalyptic, #Zombies, #apocalypse

The Hunger (Book 3): Ravaged (3 page)

BOOK: The Hunger (Book 3): Ravaged
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Lance wanted to punch the wall. They were struggling to get by as it was. If the horrors of the night were becoming more than mindless beasts, then things were about to get a lot worse.

“Let’s not shit our pants just yet,” Cass said. “This was one experience out of the norm. Listen to them now, they’re out there screaming like banshees. Maybe it’s just a freak occurrence.”

“Maybe.” Brown finished his scotch and stood, leaving the glass on the table. “We’ll discuss it more tomorrow. I’m exhausted and need more rest.”

Lance peered through the window above the sink, spotting the faint glow of the coming sunrise. He knew that sleep wouldn’t come to him for a long time. “What about Billy’s body?”

“We’ll get it first thing in the morning. We don’t need to put anyone else in danger tonight.”

They said their good nights and plodded to their respective bedrooms. Cass flopped onto the bed, lying on her side. Lance sat beside her, rolling his shoulders to work out the stiffness in his back.

All traces of Ralph had been removed from the room long ago. Potted plants sat in the windows, saplings sprouting from the soil. Weapons of all sorts leaned against walls and filled the closets.

A crib sat in the far corner, opposite the bed. Lance had found it while scavenging through a small community of townhomes outside of the Westmoreland mall. They wouldn’t need it for quite a while, but he’d brought it back to put a smile on Cass’ face.

She’d given him a raft of shit over it at first, but he’d caught her standing beside it one night, running her hands over the rails. For the first few weeks, Cass had been pissed off over the pregnancy, but she’d come to accept it, even look forward to the day their little amigo would be born.

“I don’t like this, Cassie.”

She touched the scar on his back from Ralph’s knife. “I don’t either. It feels wrong.”

“Like we’ve been whistling past a graveyard, oblivious to the death closing in.” Lance closed his eyes, doing his best to focus on her warm touch.

The howling outside died down a few minutes later as the Vladdies retreated from the approaching morning.

Chapter 3

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T
hree men retrieved Billy’s body from the trees and carried him to the pile of gas-soaked wood.

They placed the boy atop the pyre.

Others surrounded it, watching as flames consumed the mound a moment later.

Cremation was the method of disposing of the dead at the compound. If they buried the bodies outside of the fence, the Vladdies dug them up and dragged them away. The space inside of the compound was limited and didn’t allow for a cemetery.

Some of the more religious among them had complained at first, but they’d stopped arguing when the bodies of their loved ones were scavenged by the monstrosities roaming the night.

So, they were burned. A Viking funeral—quick and efficient. A pastor, who had wandered into the camp two weeks earlier, gave a small service at each of the cremations.

Lance watched the fire for several minutes, grinding his teeth.

He walked around the cabin then, hands stuffed in his pockets.

Packed earth formed paths around the home, worn down by thousands of weary steps. Grass, flattened and dying, trailed toward the rows of makeshift homes. Lance followed one of the paths, his gaze glossing over the cracks in the dry dirt as he made his way to the shed behind the cabin.

Inside, he grabbed an axe, the wood handle wrapped in dirty, torn tape. The heft felt good in his hands, giving him something to grind his anger and frustration into.

As he walked along the path leading to the pit he’d once fought a man to the death in, chainsaws revved. Men cut up fallen trees, clearing swaths of the forest.

Room had rapidly become the scarcest resource in the compound. New people filed in daily, seeking sanctuary. No one was ever turned away.

But that came with a price. Soon, there wouldn’t be enough space for new RVs or mobile homes. Some people had set up tents, but Brown balked at the idea of that being permanent. Anything that could be destroyed by a strong storm wasn’t viable in the long term.

They’d begun cutting down the trees separating the fields a few weeks ago. It was a slow, difficult process. No one living there had ever been a logger or landscaper, so removing the stumps and brush had proven painstaking and time consuming.

Lance hadn’t helped them too often—he’d been too busy lying around, bellyaching about the pain in his back. When he’d felt healthy enough, he grabbed an axe rather than a chainsaw.

The quick, explosive chopping motions helped him rehab his atrophied muscles. Despite the recent stabbing, his conditioning felt as good as, or better than, it had been in years.

And the mindlessness of it allowed him to focus on the problems their little pocket of the world faced. As he settled in front of a fallen tree, Billy’s death shoved its way to the forefront of his thoughts.

He brought the axe down, sending chips of bark into the air.

The Vladdies came into the light, ignoring the pain of their searing flesh.

Another chop, cutting into the meat of the log.

The creatures had stayed silent, something no one had witnessed before. They’d kept their emotions in check.

Sweat beaded on Lance’s forehead as he chopped his way through the tree. He wiped at it with the back of his forearm.

Working in a pack, the Vladdies had waited for someone to come searching for the boy. They’d failed to kill Lance, but the intent was clear. The beasts could think, however rudimentary.

His breathing ragged, Lance took a break when he was a quarter of the way through the trunk. His arms burned from the exertion, a sensation he’d learned to relish. Gone was the flabby body he’d created from years in a chair, working on computers.

Lance didn’t have the conditioning of Cass yet, but he wasn’t as far behind as he’d once been.

He walked to the edge of the trees, axe draped over his shoulder, and looked to the ever-growing gardens in the rear field. Dew clung to the grass, glistening.

Cass kneeled in a row of tomato plants, plucking weeds. She spent most of her mornings in there, getting her hands dirty, her back and shoulders tan. Gardening provided the same level of relaxing monotony to her as the tree chopping did to Lance.

She paid little attention to the man beside her as he stole glances at her exposed lower back. Her hands plucked and tossed, plucked and tossed.

Lance watched her, marveling, as he did every single day, at the woman he’d grown to love. The depression, the fog, that had clouded his previous life, was gone, evaporated by the brightness of his relationship with Cass.

Cass from the arts.

Lance from IT.

The odd couple, if ever there was one.

His face fell as he thought of the child she carried. He felt overwhelming joy at the idea of having a baby to care for, to raise and cherish. Dread filled him when he considered the danger that child would forever live in.

What kind of character would a person develop if they were raised in the hollow shell of a perished society? What values would they hold? Everything that had molded previous generations was lost, ravaged by an onslaught of abominations. Morality, like everything else, now lived in a gray area.

With last night’s revelation, could Lance even keep the child safe?

The rules of this new world were ever changing.

So far, Lance and Cass had managed to land on their feet, to keep living when so many others had succumbed. But how long could they maintain this new life? He needed to discuss the Vladdies’ behavior with Brown, Eifort, and Cass some more.

Cass stood, arching her back and stretching, letting the sun wash over her face. She gazed over the field of growing corn, onions, and broccoli. Her eyes fell on Lance, and she smiled.

She pointed at him and then herself before grabbing her breasts.

Lance shook his head, grinning. The woman was insatiable.

That suited him just fine.

It took him another half hour to cut through the tree. The sweet odor of freshly chopped wood soothed him. Sweat soaked his entire body, cooling his skin as a slight breeze blew through the woods.

The rush of endorphins had him feeling better.

“Lance?”

“Yeah?” Lance turned around, searching for the man who’d called his name. He spotted Adam, one of the men he and Cass had saved in Pittsburgh.

They’d found him living in a bank vault and followed him into the sewers, where they’d found a nest of Vladdies. The other man they’d found was a fool named Greg, who called everyone ‘bro’.

Adam walked toward him, hands in his pockets. He was an ordinary man of normal height and build, but he was a good thinker and quick on his feet. “You used to work with computers, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Why?” Lance let the axe hang by his side. He understood why Cass liked hers so much. It gave him a sense of power, of confidence.

“Doc Brown is trying to get a computer up and running in the cabin, and he says it needs a new motherboard. I didn’t know what that was, but then I remembered someone saying you used to work on those damn things. I figured I’d see if you’d go on a scavenge run with me.”

“A computer? What for?”

Adam shrugged. “Something about the generator. I’m just a grunt. Want to come along? Otherwise, I’m just going to bring a truckload of computers back and hope one of them works.”

“Sure. I could use a little time away. Did you grab the list from Eifort?”

One of Eifort’s primary jobs, beyond keeping Brown safe and helping to run security, was compiling a list of materials the compound needed. She would meet with the engineers daily to see how the natural gas generators were holding up. If one of those broke down in the middle of the night, all hell would break loose.

They supplied the power that the lights needed to keep the fields lit up.

The solar arrays set up in the compound had batteries connected to them, which they charged during the day. In theory, the lights would only be down for a moment as the power source switched from the generators to the batteries, but the handful of engineers didn’t seem too confident in relying on that scenario.

They’d run a test several weeks before and the batteries had powered the lights for more than eight hours, so everything seemed fine. Still, the idea of placing their survival on the hopes that the batteries wouldn’t drain before sunrise was foolhardy.

And if they had a cloudy day, then all was lost.

Eifort also met with the mechanics, contractors, and anyone else charged with maintenance around the compound. She put together a daily list, which people would take out into the ruins of the old world and search for the supplies.

Lance enjoyed the task and did it often. Every trip was a stroll down memory lane.

Adam held up a slip of paper. “Got it. It isn’t too long today. More of the usual, actually.”

Lance nodded. The usual was food, water, and toilet paper. He made a mental note to look for more air fresheners while they were out there. The portable toilets lining the far end of the clearing reeked beyond belief. “Let’s get going. I don’t want to be gone too long. The doc and I have some things to discuss.”

They’d started up the path leading to the back of the cabin when Lance paused. “Wait, that dipshit Greg isn’t coming, is he?”

“Nah.” Adam grinned. “Cass forced him into shit-cleaning duty all week. He’s pumping out the toilets until Friday.”

Chapter 4

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W
ind rustled Lance’s hair as they drove down the road in a Jeep Wrangler.

The cloth top was down, letting the warm, morning air blow through the vehicle. The exhaust was damaged and loud, filling the tree-lined road with a throaty rumble.

Lance wouldn’t have taken such a loud car out of the compound a month ago, but things had changed.

No one had seen a daywalker in weeks.

Man was little more than a footnote in history. There wasn’t anyone left to be turned. Any people found by the Vladdies were devoured. The infected had long since completed their transformation.

Safety had returned to the day, and Lance and anyone else going on scavenger missions could move around freely. They still encountered the occasional survivor or camp, but those were few and far between.

Conflict between the survivors was minimal. They usually had little in the way of supplies, so there wasn’t much to fight over. Any arguments that did occur usually ended with the bark of a rifle or the glint of a blade.

Lance drove parallel to Route 30, heading east, winding higher up the mountains. The roads snaked around hills and peaks, leading toward the vacant ski resorts of Hidden Valley and Seven Springs.

They’d decided to check out Latrobe, a smallish town close to Greensburg. The college there would be lush with computers and other equipment the compound coveted.

The drive was quiet, except for the infernal exhaust. Lance realized that he hadn’t spent any significant time with Adam since he’d saved him that night. His duties around the compound had kept him busy. He knew little of the man, save that he had been a salesman of some sort, pushing gym memberships or training packages.

Lance thought those were the kinds of monotonous jobs better left in the past.

Adam kept glancing over at him as they weaved around burned-out vehicles.

“What?” Lance asked.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer it.”

“What did you do before this? Before the virus?”

Lance peered over at him. “You know that already. I was in the IT field.”

“Yeah, but I meant what were you in charge of? Did you own a company? Run a corporation?”

“What?” Lance laughed. “Why would you think that? I was unemployed when the shit hit the fan.”

“No way.” Adam’s eyes were wide, disbelieving.

“Yup. Why?”

“It’s just... well... you really have yourself together. Everyone else is running around like a bunch of idiots, and you’re just taking care of business.”

“Me? Have you noticed how close I come to death all the time? I’m a walking disaster.” Lance wondered if he was the butt of some kind of joke.

BOOK: The Hunger (Book 3): Ravaged
13.67Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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