The Hungry 4: Rise of the Triad (The Sheriff Penny Miller Series) (16 page)

THE NEVADA DESERT

Miller was dripping with warm streams of sweat, and not only because the desert on the outskirts of the base was so hot, dry and uncomfortably bright. The drug was really doing its thing now, messing with her entire system. She was glad to have the military jumpsuit that they’d made her wear, even though it was scorching inside too, because the sunshine was brutal enough to turn her fair skin into something resembling barbeque potato chips.

Lovell drove their vehicle. He stared straight ahead. He still hadn’t said a word. Perhaps he felt a bit guilty. But she couldn’t get inside his head. At least, not yet.

“Answer me something, Rat?”

“What?”

“How the hell is it that an operation that comes up with a magic military serum this good doesn’t have the good sense to issue SPF Nuke sunscreen to their personnel?”

“Write your Congressman.”

“Evidently the possibility of me dying from skin cancer in the future isn’t a high priority for Rubenstein and crew.”

“No surprise there.”

Miller’s attempts at humor fell flat, even to her own ears. She was on edge. Even Rat seemed tense. Learning the specifics of their mission didn’t frighten Miller. What was disturbing her right now was something else, something at once deep inside her soul yet far, far away. The effects of this accelerant were unprecedented. Her inner world had swiftly become a strange, unstable place full of strange voices. It was as if her mind was no longer her own. Miller didn’t like it one bit. She’d never felt so frightened.

Lovell drove on. The sun beat down. The Hummer swiftly took them to the north side of Crystal Palace. As they drove further from the center of the base and out onto the hardpan, Miller began feeling strange. Then stranger still. Odd thoughts rippled through her brain like molten lava. Intense emotions followed—dark feelings of despair, hopelessness, frustration, and then more powerful than anything else, there came a savage sense of…
hunger
. They’d fed her before they let her out of her acrylic cell. Her stomach was full. It made no logical sense, yet a need to bite down on something almost overtook her. She fought an urge to ask for a food bar and some water. Her mind was staggering around like a whiskey drunk on St. Patrick’s Day. It was the undead within. She had already learned to block out some of the noise in her brain, but only some of it. She still heard Rat occasionally, and now and then Alex. But there were those other voices—
so many of them
.

Miller looked out the window of the Hummer, scanning the desert, unconsciously searching for the source of the nagging, dreadful feelings of despair. Her eyes narrowed. She spotted a rippling shadow to the east and pointed.

“What’s that?” Miller asked, already knowing the answer.

“Zombie corral,” said Lovell, casually, breaking his long silence.

Rat continued the thought. “Test subjects and leftovers, Penny. They have to store them somewhere, right?”

Miller squinted across the sunlit desert. Their vehicle drew closer, closer still. The shadow became a row of buildings and tall barriers. Miller focused her vision. There, behind a high security fence, stood a horde of fresh zombies. Hundreds of them, just milling around in the heat, their feet stirring up clouds of beige dust. Her heart kicked into high gear. She could feel their misery. Miller felt her eyes well up with sadness. As they drove by the corral, she caught the stench of decomposition that wafted across the sandy desert floor. She gagged. But it wasn’t the smell that was getting to her.

This close up, she could actually
hear
them
.

The weird racket had started out quietly at first, just background noise and static, but it caused a pressure deep inside of her brain, sort of like the beginnings of a sinus headache. After that sensation she felt those awful feelings of despair and heard a loud pulse of humanoid voices in her mind. And now, as the Hummer drove along the perimeter of the enclosure, the feeling of being trapped in a morbid cocktail party was overwhelming. Miller wondered if Rat and Alex were experiencing the same sensations. She doubted it. Lovell and the other guards didn’t notice a thing, of course. They hadn’t been juiced up.

Miller turned to Rat and Alex. She carefully studied their expressions. Rat looked professional, as always, laid back and ready to carry out her orders. Alex seemed confused and depressed, though if he’d heard the zombie horde, he certainly didn’t show any sign of it. He just obviously wasn’t enjoying being part of this experiment. Miller couldn’t blame him. Alex was a part of the triad for some reason, but Miller could only guess what kind of leverage they were using to force his cooperation. Still, whatever Miller was feeling, Rat and Alex didn’t seem to share the problem. It was clear that neither of them was particularly concerned about being this close to the zombie enclosure. They didn’t hear the lost souls. Was she the only one?

Miller couldn’t take not knowing for sure. The loneliness, coupled with having all these zombies moaning inside her head, became something she could no longer ignore.

“How can you stand it?” Miller said aloud.

“Stand what?” asked Rat.

“Them,” Miller said, waving a hand at the horde of zombies as they drove by. The front row seemed to be made up of the newest and freshest. They could almost recall being human. Miller’s mind told her they were still confused about what had happened, where they were, who they were. They were just disoriented and angry and…
hungry.

“What’s to stand, Penny?” Rat said. “They’re dead.”

Lovell said, “We should go make sure of that, in my opinion.”

“Tell me about it,” Rat said. “I’d love to clean up. Rubenstein won’t let me go in there with some napalm and just burn ‘em all down. He says they have scientific value, though what that might be I couldn’t tell you.”

“Alex,” Miller said quietly. “Can’t you hear it?”

Alex snapped out of his own darkness. He looked at her, eyes searching hers, as if he were looking for a hidden message in the question. “Hear what?”

What’s going on?
Rat’s voice was there, so loud inside her mind it almost drowned out the sound of the zombies.
Show us.

“It’s nothing,” said Miller out loud. Miller could feel Rat’s confusion and concern, but Miller abruptly focused her thoughts on Scratch. To say she was worried about him was an understatement. So she concentrated on that feeling, and not the cacophony of voices and emotions she was feeling at that moment. If this was her little secret, perhaps it was better to keep things that way.

Rat and Lovell exchanged a worried glance, but Miller refused to acknowledge them. She thought of Scratch, only of Scratch. She blocked everything else out of her mind. Rat didn’t seem to find those thoughts worth tracking.

Lovell turned east and drove along just outside the fence. The three of them stared through the wire. The enclosure held hundreds of zombies, more than Miller had ever seen in one place in ages. The mental noise reached a shrill crescendo. The zombie horde wailed and complained and suffered. Miller heard the dread in their souls, and the pitch of their endless despair was deafening inside of her head. One thing had become perfectly clear.

No one else heard them.

Miller struggled to hide and control her own emotions. She found herself on the verge of tears. All that suffering in one place was almost more than she could tolerate. Miller knew she should continue to keep this gift a secret, that it might offer her some advantage down the line, but another part of her wanted comfort from the others. She needed the connection to a living thing, before the touch of death bore her away. She decided to tell Rat and Alex. But before she could say anything, Lovell turned north again, out into the desert. He was now racing toward the Ruby Mountains. The obscene muttering in her mind began to fade away. The tension dropped. Miller felt more relaxed, less panicked. She gained control of herself again. The creeping horror abated. Physical proximity definitely had something to do with it.

Lovell seemed to know exactly where he was going. The Hummer pulled up next to an open field, obviously cleared by the military. Packed down lumps of rocks and debris and dead tumbleweed surrounded the flattened area like opened petals on a dead flower. The field featured a metal and wood observation platform and a long firing stand. As soon as they came to a stop, Rat mentally ordered them out of the vehicle. Lovell remained behind. He made a big show out of planning to take a nap. Rat took over. She led them directly up to the firing stand, motioned Penny to one side, and put Alex in front of a mini-gun mounted to a railing. The sun glinted on gunmetal and lanced Miller’s eyes. She blinked away tears. Her head still hurt.

“Put these on.” Rat handed Miller and Alex each a helmet with a dark visor. Alex looked wan and tired. He put on his helmet. Miller still felt disoriented but she complied without thinking. The helmet would at least protect her eyes from the glare. The horde of zombies was out of sight behind the pile of plants and boulders and dirt. No matter. Despite being several hundred yards away, she could still feel them if she tried.

“The fuck?”

Miller squinted. Her visor was completely blacked out.

“Hey, what’s the idea?” asked Alex. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

“I know,” said Rat. “That’s the point. Dragan, you’re up first. I’m going to put your hands on the handles of the mini-gun.”

The chattering of the mini-gun was loud in Miller’s ears, but not deafening, thanks to the helmet. It had some kind of soundproofing. Miller waited in darkness. From what she could tell, Alex was using the weapon well. She waited to learn what was going on. Rat would tell her when they were ready. Miller knew she had to just go along with all of this. It was her only chance to save Scratch.

Miller heard Rat order Alex to cease firing. Rat’s voice was louder than the sound of the gun. It still had the effect of disorienting Miller because she heard it directly in her head. She wasn’t used to that. If this is what it was like being an
enhanced bioweapon,
she hoped her enlistment would be up soon. No one with a soul would enjoy being stitched to other people’s minds in this way. She wanted her privacy back.

Alex stepped away from the mini-gun. Miller heard him stumbling a bit as he walked, boots thudding on wooden planks. Miller listened passively. Even if she’d wanted to help him, she wasn’t certain she could have reached him in time. He already sounded several yards away. Alex apparently kept his balance.

Miller’s mind was invaded again. Her vision popped on, despite the darkness in the helmet. Her view swung to the right, and she could see herself standing there, perhaps ten feet from the mini-gun. She was now seeing herself through Rat’s mind. Rat stood on the observation platform about thirty feet behind them, and perhaps another ten feet above. The sun beat down on Miller’s shoulders. She needed a drink of water. Reality had been unimaginably distorted, yet she felt in control of herself. Her physical vision was still blocked by the helmet’s visor, which acted like a blindfold. She could see, but only through Rat’s eyes.

Miller held onto the railing of the shooting platform. She guessed at the correct distance, and guided herself to the waiting gun. She groped for the handles on the weapon and finally settled down in front of the stand. She had a brief fantasy. She wondered whether the mini-gun would turn sufficiently, allow her to aim at Rat, take her and Lovell out and end this ridiculous experiment. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, Rat’s voice was back in her head.

As if to emphasize the point, Rat turned to look at the four, heavily-armed soldiers—the same four from Rubenstein’s office. They were all watching Miller carefully, weapons up, ready to take her out if she didn’t behave. Lovell had left the Hummer after all. He was standing near the guards, but a few feet away, with a cold sneer on his face. If anyone went for the men, he’d take them out. Rat appeared in Miller’s brain again, as if whispering in her ear.
See what I mean? Look, Lovell and me, we kind of like you guys. This is nothing personal. Just be a good girl and we can all retire rich, okay?

Miller nodded.
I’ll play nice with the other kids, Rat. What do you want me to do?

And yes Miller could see, from Rat’s perspective, two cardboard cutouts of a light vehicle—something like a Hummer only beefier—and one small tank. Alex had already shot them up a bit. Miller calculated the angles between where Rat stood and where she was in Rat’s view, decided on a shooting solution, and opened up with a short burst of rounds.

Miller went to the right and fired another burst. She was right on the money.

There were new targets standing there. They were targets that looked human.

No.
She reached for the straps of the helmet and struggled with the latch.

Miller managed to get the helmet off. The sudden brightness blinded her momentarily. She looked up at Rat and the soldiers. She saw them again through her physical eyes. She squinted. Lovell wasn’t smiling any more. He had grown tense.

“If you don’t put that helmet back on and get back to work,” Rat said, “I’m radioing Rubenstein and tell him to turn the screws on Scratch.”