Hunger Chronicles (Book 1): Life Bites (22 page)

Everyone is on. Good.

I slow, letting the distance spread between me and the truck.

“Eva!” Blaine yells from where he’s half hanging out the front, his eyes widening in alarm.

“I’m going back for John!” I yell back, trying to ease his concern.

All of a sudden the truck is jerking to a stop and Convict appears beside Brian at the back of the truck.

“Private Harper!”

“What are you doing?” I scream.

“Get up here now, Harper. That’s an order.”

I shake my head, disbelieving at his stupidity. There are no zombies close enough to stop them and they’re wasting the opportunity.

Brian lifts his gun. I suck in a breath. The rifle cracks and I hear a grunt from behind me. Guess there was a zombie close by.

Convict makes a sharp motion and Brian leaps down, bearing down on me. “Guess you’re getting on this truck, fangs.”

Like hell I am. I bare my teeth, warning him off before he can get too close. “Wanna make me?”

He jerks back, shaking his head as he reverses direction back to the truck. “Fine. Have it your way. But you’re fucking crazy!”

Convict is not happy when Brian leaps back in the truck without me, but he must realize it’s a lost cause. With a sharp order the truck is off again, mowing down zombies and chain link alike as it barrels through the front gate at high speed.

I look down at the broken bolt cutters in my hands, knowing I’ve just blown whatever slim chance I had of earning back my keep.

Crazy? Yeah, I guess I am.

22.

Then…

I crouched down beside Raoul into the shadow of the overgrown shrubbery, my hands clenched around my dad’s bolt cutters. The worn wooden handles are warm from my own body heat and in sharp contrast to the chill breeze of the desert. Despite the soaring day temperatures, it gets cold here at night. And here I was in my running shorts and a t-shirt.

Maybe I am crazy.
But I couldn’t exactly pack a backpack with jeans and a sweatshirt. That would have given me away.

Running. It’s what my parents thought I was doing right now. It’s not unusual for me to take off well after dark for a quick run through the park near our house. It’s how I calmed my brain at the end of a stressful day. A difficult homework assignment, a long drawn out rehearsal at drama club, an upcoming test: any of the above would send me out. As long as I told them where I was going and when I’d be back, they were cool with it. Which means that they expected me home in the next forty minutes. Better hurry.

Taking a deep breath, I fixed my gaze on the moon-drenched complex of small round structures in the distance. Each one is just large enough to house a hundred plus pound animal. Each one packed in just close enough to the next to give the tethered occupants enough room to step outside to relieve themselves and gobble up some fattening milk replacement formula.

Fatten them up for the slaughter. The very idea sickens me. Perhaps, if I wasn’t a vegetarian, I’d accept the atrocity before me as necessity, but I didn’t think so. There were better ways. More humane ways. Especially when you added in the fact that these particular calves had been weaned from their mothers before they should have been, and hadn’t seen an ounce of affection, or humanity, since. I could smell the rot and decay from here. Guess they only had to stay alive long enough to make it to the round up.

“You going to tell me what you’re planning now, Eva?”

I looked over at Raoul and rolled my eyes. As if it weren’t obvious. But then, he really doesn’t know me that well, which was half the point of tonight. I shifted, focusing back on the field in front of me. “You’ll see…”

And then we’d see if he still wanted to go out with me. Two weeks. I thought this must have been a record for me. Okay, maybe not a record, we weren’t technically dating. But that wasn’t for lack of interest on his part. Since that night he’d caught me running through the park, he’d been following me around like some sort of hopeful puppy dog. Sitting in the shadows of the theatre during every production, tagging along after me and Carrie at the mall, meeting up with me to jog through the park at night (which is, coincidently, how I’d managed to snag him for this late night adventure). It seemed like wherever I was, he was there. He kept asking me out too, for dinner, dancing, the movies. I kept on declining, which either made me the smartest or the stupidest seventeen-year-old in the world. I wasn’t sure.

Raoul, the hottest guy in the county, no, the state, wanted to date me. Holy crud. And he seemed truly interested (he hadn’t tried for more than a kiss since that first night in the park). I figured after tonight I’d know for sure if he wanted me for me. Tonight would be the true test.

I felt him shift beside me, knew he was about to ask more questions. To cut him off, I stood and dashed into the meadow. It was overgrown, shrubs poking up through the tufts of once fertile grass. Before Mr. Ellis had bought the place, this had been a grazing field. Little baby calves frolicking and kicking alongside their mothers. Yeah, so maybe those calves were destined for the butchers too, but at least they’d had a good life first.

I sprinted for the first little white structure, keeping my body bent and low. I hardly heard Raoul, but a quick glance to the side showed he kept pace.

We made it across the distance without detection. In reality, we hadn’t been exposed for longer than it would take someone to turn on a light, stumble to a window, and blink their eyes a bunch. But it had felt like forever, and I tossed a thank you up to the sky that we hadn’t been found out. Yet.

With a glimpse at the farmhouse—still dark—I crouch-walked to the point where the chain met up with the bolt in the ground. The calf, like all good little babies, was inside its calf-house, curled up and dreaming of its lost mother.

I couldn’t give it its mother back, but I could do this. I could give it a taste of freedom. Its last hurray before its pitiful puny existence was snuffed out to end up on some potbellied, liver-spotted carnivorous-human’s dinner plate.

I took a deep breath. Settling my shaking hands. This moment was too important to cheapen with haste.

When I was ready, when I felt it, I laid my father’s bolt cutters through the bottom link of chain and bore down. Nothing happened. Darn it.

I strained, shifted my grip to the very end of the bolt cutters. Nothing. With a growl I plopped to the ground and placed my hands between my knees, using both my arm and leg muscles to bear down on the bolt cutters. They dug in. All of an eighth of an inch and stopped. Geez. I guess I needed to add weights to my regiment.

“Is there a plan B?”

I shot Raoul an evil look over my shoulder. “You could help.”

“This is insanity,” Raoul chided, but moved in to place his hands below mine on the bolt cutters. A quick tensing of his forearms and the chain dropped to the ground.

“How did you do that?”

He shrugged. “I’m a guy. We’re inherently stronger.”

Yeah, whatever. Maybe true, but he could have at least feigned some effort.

With a huff I stood back up, brushing off my spandex shorts. I couldn’t help but notice that Raoul was looking at my butt as I did. Guys may have had the muscle, but us females…

I slung the bolt cutters over my shoulders, making sure to sashay my hips as I moved to the next white housing unit. Not that I was going to let him touch the goods, but it gave me a perverse sort of pleasure to know I had some sort of power here.

We moved through the rest of the little houses quickly. After the second shelter, and a lot of through-gritted-teeth grunting, Raoul simply took the bolt cutters from me and snipped the next chain per my direction. We made it to the end of the row and then started back up the other side. Finally we were at the last one. A sense of satisfaction rose in my chest as Raoul snapped the bolt cutters through the chain. I’d done it. Correction. We’d done it. Only…

I looked down the line of freed calves. One or two of them had ventured out of their hovels, probably roused by the noise, but none of them had gone past their compressed circle of earth that their prison had allowed.

Huh.

I bent down, sticking my nose into the igloo-like shed of the last calf. It lay in the dim moonlight that seeped through the light colored plastic, staring dumbly at me.

“Come on.” I pulled on the chain dangling from its collar. It lurched up, blinking confusedly at me. “That’s it.” I coaxed it out of the hutch and managed to get it as far as the worn circle in front before it planted its hooves. Not moving.

Thinking of the movies where the cowboys had ground-tied their horses—maybe that was the problem—I flung the chain over the calf’s neck and then moved to its rump, giving it a hefty push. “Go on. Get!”

Raoul chuckled.

I glared over at him. If looks could kill, I’d be an assassin. He sucked back in his smile.

“What do you want it to do?” he asked, all logical sounding.

“I want it to go. To run.”

“Why?”

“I want it to
know
.”

He tipped his head to the side, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Know what?”

“Freedom. I want it to know what freedom feels like.”

I sensed more than saw the many thoughts that went through his head. They were there in the long, drawn-out silence that followed my crazed pronouncement. Finally he sighed, and then knelt down, his hands looping through the collar around the calf’s throat as he seemed to stare directly into its eyes.

The calf’s pupils flared, whites showing, nostrils billowing, and then it relaxed, a shudder—fear? pleasure?—wracking through its body. Raoul stood, taking a step back. The calf took a step, as if to follow. Then another. And another.

Raoul stepped aside. The calf paused. I held my breath. Then blew it out when the calf took another series of steps forward into the old grazing field.

Emboldened by their fellow calf’s explorations, a few other calves took their first tentative steps beyond their eroded worlds. I smiled, biting my lower lip as the nearest snorted into the scraggly grass and then bellowed a happy little baby moo.

Of course, it was too good of a moment to last. A howl pierced the air, followed by a series of sharp yapping. Dogs barking; up at the house. A light flashed on, bathing the space between the house and barn in light.

“Run!” I hissed, knowing it was only a matter of time before Farmer Ellis was out here with his dogs and a flashlight.

We ran, Raoul’s hand reaching to grab mine and pull me along when I didn’t move fast enough for him.

Blood pumping, feet pounding, we bolted through the dead grass toward the line of shrubs that marked the ditch beside the nearby highway. Behind us the world had exploded in chaos. High pitch barking, the distressed call of the baby cattle, a long string of swear words followed by an angry yell.

Oh yeah, Farmer Ellis was not happy.

I didn’t look back, keeping my eyes on our target: the glimmer of red metal on the highway. We were going to make it.

And then a loud crack split the air.

“Christ!” Raoul jerked me toward him. I yelped as his arms encircled me, lifting me right off the ground. Another crack followed on the echo of the first. At the same time Raoul lunged a good six feet to the left. How did he do that?

I didn’t have time to contemplate the impossible. With a burst of speed, we were crashing through the shrubbery. Next second he skidded to a halt alongside his Viper. He dropped me, yanking the passenger door open.

Didn’t have to ask me twice. I dove into the open space, sliding across the cool leather. A second later he was around the car and sliding into his own seat, the door slamming shut. I yanked my door closed just as 600 horses revved to life. And then we were flying down the highway.

All was quiet. The only sound our heavy breathing. Correction, my heavy breathing. Raoul didn’t even seem winded. And then the small interior erupted into laughter. I looked over at him, glaring.

“You think getting shot at is funny?”

He shook his head. “Damn, Eva. You’re either going to be the life of me or the death of me.”

What?
I scrunched my face up.

He looked over at me, his gaze piercing me through the shadows of my car. I sucked in a breath and my heart, already racing, picked up the pace. How did he do that? One smoldering look and I felt like I was sitting here naked.

“My dear Eva. You are the smartest, sexiest, funniest… and most adorable woman I’ve ever met.”

That didn’t sound so bad.

The corners of his mouth lifted up. “And you’re fucking crazy.”

23.

Maybe I am but I’m also a sucker for a cause. Poor baby calves or a crazy man acting as a hero. Guess they both get to me.

I jerk my gaze away from the dust trail that spews out from behind the truck racing across the desert. Just in time too. Though some of the zombies have decided to go on a fruitless chase after the vehicle, the rest of them are going after the only other source of dinner. Me.

A quick glance around confirms what I already know; my little zombie pet is already some other zombie’s dinner. Luckily, I have a lot of options to pick from when it comes to a replacement. And with no censoring human eyes looking on, I can indulge all I want.

All I have to do is keep from getting overwhelmed.

Using the two halves of the bolt cutters like Billy-bats, I smash a path through the closest grouping of zombies. The surge of the advancing horde turns to follow, but even tired as I am, I’m still faster and manage to skirt around to the outside edge. Here the zombies are spaced out enough that I can get my snack. And the zombie that leaps out in front of me—a female soldier with a no-nonsense boy-cut and the broadest shoulders I’ve ever seen—has just volunteered.

I don’t think about trying to overpower this one’s mind, but spin around, sinking my hand into the tattered uniform on its shoulder as I latch my fangs into its neck. It claws and spits at me but my grip is firm and I get a good healthy mouthful before I am forced by the other advancing zombies to thrust one of my bolt cutter halves into its gaping mouth.