The Hungry (Book 3): At the End of the World (17 page)

They all stared as a roughly human shape, bathed in an eerie light, raised its arms and floated forward as if born aloft by a non-existent wind.

“Holy shit,” Miller whispered.

It was about thirty feet away from Miller, between two wine racks. She felt a cold malevolence wash over her, and the creature came into focus. It appeared to be the head and upper body of an old man. A
very
old man. Miller looked at her friends. They were just visible in the dim light coming from the creature. Everyone seemed both stunned and frightened.

The old man did not look happy either.

“What the hell is
wrong
with you people?”

The apparition shook its finger in their direction. Miller blinked and looked more closely. The ghost was lit by a reddish light coming from somewhere overhead. It was missing several teeth. It was shirtless and excessively wrinkled, that wizened body covered with thin white hair that had become matted in spots, kind of squashed into mini cotton balls. Then the ghost cleared a raspy throat—which, from the sound of it, led to the expulsion of a large quantity of otherworldly phlegm. It spat on the ground. Miller thought stupidly:
Do ghosts spit lugies?

Terrill Lee still cowered behind Miller. He was whimpering like a puppy. “My God, it’s hideous!”

Miller shrugged her ex-husband away. “Relax, Terrill Lee. You’re embarrassing yourself in front of the children.” She took a step forward into the shadows, intending to speak directly to the creature. A hundred poorly written scenes from horror films flooded her mind. She tried to think of something to say that wasn’t cornball.

“Hold it right there, lady.”

Miller blinked again. She froze in the middle of a step forward. The ghost had raised a machine gun. It was one big, brutal weapon, and the wide barrel gaped at them, ready to unleash a very real, fiery death. This time everyone cringed and not just Terrill Lee.

“That’s a Stoner 63.” Terrill Lee knew his guns. He stayed behind Miller, his eyes wide as paper plates. “He must have been killed sometime during the war in Vietnam.”

For her part, Miller stared at the ghost. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the introduction of a new source of light, he looked more pathetic than terrifying, although that humongous gun was definitely an attention hog. It had a butt pucker factor of nine.

“I’m not dead, you idiot,” the old man said. “I’m as alive as you are.” He pulled back the receiver lever on the gun. It made an ominous click. “And I intend to stay that way.” The old man eyed them angrily. “I was going to let those amateurs upstairs wipe you out, but now I can’t be certain they’ll kill you all, and I sure as shit can’t have you telling them about me, so I guess I’ll have to do you all myself.”

“Wait, what do you mean, kill us?” one of Michelle’s sisters shouted. Miller shared the sentiment. Her mind worked furiously, trying to find a way out of this mess. The old man felt as threatened as they did, and for good reason. Now they were trapped from both sides. Scratch had eased his gun up and casually sighted on the old man. Terrill Lee was useless, but Sheppard was edging closer to his own rifle. Miller knew that if she didn’t figure something out quickly, the old man would open fire or her men would, and they’d all likely be a footnote in a history book that might never be written. Close quarters, no quarter. If everyone started firing, it would be over within a few seconds, a total massacre.

“This isn’t twenty questions, miss.” The old man coughed again, his semi-toothless mouth battling another ball of phlegm. Miller watched as he spat the second wad of goo into the darkness.

Miller raised her hand, palm out. “Can we take a minute to discuss this?”

“Time to die,” the old man said. He started to squeeze the trigger. As he did, a wine bottle flew out of the darkness. It hit the old man squarely in the forehead with a
clank
, but didn’t shatter. The old man’s jaw dropped open. His eyes rolled up into his forehead. He fell backwards, triggering the huge machine gun to fire a volley of five or six rounds. The noise was deafening and the air reeked of cordite.

“Return fire!” Someone outside the cellar door had shouted. A barrage of bullets struck the cellar door, punching holes in the thick metal and supporting wood, allowing slim shafts of light to illuminate the wine racks and dot Miller’s followers, the rapidly moving sight twirling like a disco ball of violence. Ricochets pinged and clanged around above them, bouncing off cement walls, metal hinges and plates. Bottles of rare wine exploded and rained glass and alcohol everywhere. There was no going back now, no room for negotiation. That much was clear.

“Go! Come on, we have to go!” Like a platoon leader, Miller ran forward and scooped up the machine gun before the old man could regain his senses. She turned and faced the hail of gunfire coming from the cellar door. She aimed carefully over the heads of her friends, who were crawling her way, and let go of a few rounds. The huge gun punched gaping holes in the walls and the tattered cellar door. The firing above stopped as the men in the kitchen and hallway sought cover and chattered nervously. The new weapon was formidable. She’d bought them a little time.

“Hurry!” Miller called. She headed into the dark void, the back wall of the cellar, the area from which the ghost seemed to have appeared. The concrete wall had slid to one side and away. She saw an entrance lit by red emergency lights, the sight giving the impression of a long, tunnel-like photographic dark room. Miller swept the space with the barrel of the gun, in case there were any more heavily armed lunatics hiding in the darkness. No new targets presented themselves. Miller turned to see what condition her own people were in.

The men in the lodge above them opened fire again but from a far safer distance. Meanwhile, Scratch, Jimmy, Lex, and Michelle were right behind Miller and crawling into the tunnel. Crosby, Brandy, and Lynn were a few feet behind them, crouched low and moving fast. Sheppard and Terrill Lee were bringing up the rear. True to form, the two medical men, Terrill Lee and Sheppard, were dragging the old ghost by the arms back into the safety of his shelter. There would be no one left behind to reveal how they’d managed to escape.

The firing from outside the cellar continued. The holes in the door widened and splinters and nails spread out in a cloud. Miller knew they were running out of time. She crouched and aimed and just then the cellar door burst open, allowing a stream of heavily-armed men to gather near the top of the steps. They were all semi-blinded by the gloom in the cellar and hesitated at the entrance, clearly reluctant to come further and possibly stumble right into a trap.

Bullets flew. Something fast-moving and hot bit Miller in the calf. Since she wasn’t knocked off her feet, she just ignored the pain.

“Close the door!” Miller ran past her people and faced the newcomers. She fired quickly, loosed a couple of three-shot bursts right above their heads. The men vanished from sight, shouting and screaming. Someone stuck an automatic rifle around the corner and got off some aimless rounds. Miller began to worry. She looked for a door handle, a knob or a mechanism of some kind, but couldn’t find one. “Somebody close the Goddamned door!”

Jimmy took one quick look around. The teen identified something on the wall and slapped at it. The impressively thick cement-covered door slid closed, making that eerie, ghostly
OooOOOoohh
sound they had heard before. The old man hadn’t made the noise, it was the pneumatic pump that powered the hidden entrance. On their side it was bulletproof metal.

As far as those above would be concerned, they had simply vanished into thin air.

A moment later, the lights all came back up to full. Miller and the others looked around, astonished. Concrete walls surrounded them, flat gray paint flaking away, the only features to be found the dull seams between cinderblocks. There was no furniture in the immediate vicinity. Another two corridors went off in opposite directions in a “T” configuration, with the hallway they stood in being the stem. Miller was impressed. The whole place looked like an abandoned military bunker, or perhaps a bomb shelter. No one above them stood much of a chance of breaking in. This joint had been built to withstand a nuclear war. The old man had meant to stay down here forever,

“Is everyone all right?” She surveyed each of them in turn, looking for anything obviously wrong, like blooms of red blood or clearly broken limbs.

Michelle was occupied with Lex, who had a gash on his head. Sheppard was covered in bits of glass, but had no visible wounds. Scratch was covered in red liquid, but by the smell of him, it was wine rather than blood.

Sheppard stepped toward Miller. He crouched down, his face only a few inches from her crotch. “You’re hit.”

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Go do triage somewhere else.”

Sheppard probed the wound with his fingers. Miller flinched. “Stand still,” he said. He tore her jeans a bit and studied the wound. He stood and shook his head. “You should sit,” he said. “Let me fix you up.”

“If I’m not going to die, then I’d prefer you left it alone for now.” She walked away from him and looked around. Terrill Lee was just finishing up with Lex, who was crying uncontrollably. “Is Lex okay?”

Instead of answering Miller, Terrill Lee addressed Michelle, who held her sobbing little boy. “A piece of something missed his eye by an inch. Bleeding like a mother…” He took off his shirt and pressed it against the little boy’s forehead. “Hold this here,” he told Brandy. She took the shirt from him and did as she was told.

“What is this place?” asked Lynn.

Michelle sneezed again. The sound was starting to grate on Miller’s last nerve. All they needed now was to start trading a head cold.

“I don’t know.” Miller turned back to Scratch, Sheppard, and Terrill Lee. “Who threw that wine bottle?”

“I did,” said Crosby. He seemed to have regained some of his composure.

Miller stared at him. “That was a hell of a risky thing to do. If you had missed—or even if you hadn’t—he could have wound up killing us all.”

“We had it under control, Carter,” said Scratch. He twirled his Springfield pistol like an Old West gunslinger.

“I had to do something,” Crosby said.

“What do we do now?” Michelle said. She sounded like she was on the verge of a breakdown.

Miller thought for a moment. She looked down at the unconscious form of the sorry-assed old man. He looked distinctly less ghost-like in the harsh fluorescent lighting. The blood that leaked from the gash on his forehead looked real enough. “First things first. Sheppard, check him out. He knows things we ought to know.”

Sheppard knelt down and looked for a pulse. He opened up the man’s eyelids and watched him for a second. Sheppard pinched the old man on the back of the arm, causing him to flinch and groan, though he didn’t wake up. “He’s alive, and his brain hasn’t been seriously injured. He’s pretty old, so a concussion could be serious. I won’t know more until he wakes up. When he does, he’s going to have a hell of a headache.”

Meanwhile, Crosby checked the old man for more weapons. He looked up at Miller. “He’s clean.”

Miller turned to the others. Even in the greenish fluorescent lighting, there was something very wrong with Michelle’s color. She was pale and sweating. The persistent sneezing wasn’t just annoying, a sign of allergies. She was really sick. Miller felt a flash of anxiety.

Terrill Lee had also noticed Michelle’s color. “Are you hit?” He began feeling her for bullet wounds. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ll be fine. I think I just need to lie down.”

Abruptly, Michelle’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she crumpled to the floor. Jimmy and Lex moved towards her, but Brandy held them back. Miller nodded at Sheppard to take over and fast. He approached Michelle to take a second look. Terrill Lee looked like he was about to snap at Sheppard for invading his territory, but then sagged and didn’t say anything.

“Karl, help us,” Terrill Lee said plaintively.

Miller turned to Crosby. She lowered her voice. “Take the kids and the sisters, and go check out the old man’s bunker. If you find some beds in a safe room, holler.”

“We’re not going anywhere!” Brandy looked up from where she held Terrill Lee’s shirt against Lex’s forehead. From the look on their faces, Brandy spoke for all of them. They had gathered together into a tight family unit, and weren’t about to budge.

Miller didn’t have time for a mutiny. “We need to find somewhere for Michelle and that old man to recover. Go find us a med-kit and a cot, if only for Michelle.”

“I said…”

“That’s an order.”

The women had a stare down.

“Your stubbornness isn’t doing your sister or her kids any good, Brandy,” Miller said, not without kindness. “Go do something productive. Standing over her and getting in the way isn’t helping.”

Brandy changed her mind. She scooted the kids in the direction of the cross-corridor, and the four of them disappeared to the left. The emergency lights remained stable. Miller figured the old man had gone up into the lodge from time to time for batteries, to refuel his generators, and add to his supplies. He had to have been pretty eccentric to have chosen to live down below with so much luxury right above him in the lodge.

Miller turned to Scratch. “Go with them, please. Make sure they don’t blow the place up.” She smiled.

Scratch didn’t smile in return. However, he did follow the others out of the hallway. Miller wondered what had him upset. They were lucky to have escaped with their lives. It wouldn’t take long for the survivalists to realize what had happened, but they wouldn’t be able to do much about it, not with the limited gear they possessed… and not with a zombie plague rapidly approaching.

Miller walked over to Terrill Lee and Sheppard. They were consulting quietly over Michelle. Crosby was standing around like an extra finger on an otherwise expert hand.