The Hunger (Book 1): Devoured (16 page)

“Son of a—”

“Welcome back,” Ralph said. He walked through the prep kitchen and stopped at the open door of the freezer, leaning against the frame. “How’s your head?”

“Hurts like hell.” Lance’s eyes swiveled around, investigating the freezer, hoping to spot his shotgun.

“Looking for this?” Ralph reached around the doorframe to the outside of the freezer and pulled the shotgun into Lance’s view. He held it by his waist, shaking it slightly, as if he were showing a treat to a dog.

“Why are you doing this?”

“You have things that we want.”

“If you’d asked—”

“Don’t bother, son. You wanted us out of here ASAP. I don’t blame you, of course, but that doesn’t jive with what we need.”

Lance closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “What are you going to do with me?”

“Haven’t decided that yet.” Ralph scratched his chin. “Tony wants to kill you. Mike’s a little squeamish about the idea, seeing as you aren’t infected.”

Tony hollered from the dining room, “Just kill ‘em and get it over with!”

“Why the hell would you kill me?” Lance tried to keep the panic from his voice. It didn’t work.

“That’s what I said.” Ralph shrugged his shoulders. “He seems to think that you’ll come after us. I don’t see how you’ll get out of the restaurant when we leave. Not like you have a gun or anything.”

“You want to leave me here, tied up and defenseless? And you were trying to convince me that you’re the good guys?”

“Good is a relative term nowadays, I’m ‘fraid.”

Lance struggled against the tape, getting nowhere. His hands tingled from blood loss because of the cinched bindings.

“Easy now, Lance. You aren’t getting out of those.”

The teen walked into view, drinking a beer from the fridge. “If we just leave him here, won’t he turn into one of those things after they get at him?”

“Boy, it ain’t even noon yet and you’re gonna be half in the bag. Put that goddamn beer down.” Ralph cocked an eyebrow as he turned back to Lance. “You do have a point though. If they don’t kill him, just bite him, we’ll have another one of those damned things coming after us.”

Mike put the beer down on the counter. “I think I’m changing my mind—Tony might be right. We should put him out of his misery.”

“See? Even the kid knows I’m right,” Tony shouted.

“Tony! Keep it down, for Christ’s sake! We broke the window out front, remember? Why don’t you just invite the whole city to come in here?” Ralph rolled his eyes. “See what I’m dealing with, Lance?”

“I feel so bad for you,” Lance said. “Why not just let me go? I’ll walk out of here right now. You didn’t tell me where your rendezvous is, or whatever you called it.”

Ralph studied him for a moment. “Come here, Mike.”

The young man stepped beside his leader.

“You just said that you didn’t like killing someone who wasn’t infected. What changed your mind?” Ralph put his hand on Mike’s shoulder.

Mike said, “It just doesn’t feel right leaving him here for them. Seems more humane to put him down.”

“What the hell is wrong with you people? Why do I have to die at all? Just let me go!” Lance’s voice rose, getting louder and higher, paralleling his fear.

“Quiet. You make a ruckus and you’ll leave me with no choice.” Ralph looked back at Mike. “Maybe we could just let him go. What do you think of that?”

Lance stared at them in disbelief. His life was being used as a tool to teach the boy some kind of warped lesson. These people were mad.

“That sounds good, but what if he wants revenge? Or what if he gets turned in a day or two and we have one more monster trying to kill us?”

“So what do you think we should do?” Ralph asked.

“I don’t know, Grandpa.” Mike refused to meet Lance’s eyes, even though he openly discussed his fate. “Killing him still feels wrong.”

“So why did you say that you think Tony is right?”

“I thought that’s what you wanted to hear.” Mike’s shoulders slumped.

Lance shook his head. This family’s morality was somewhere right of Hitler. Who suggests killing a man because they think it will please their grandfather?

“You people are seriously fucked.”

Ralph’s face flashed with anger. “One more word, and—”

A crash of splintering wood came from the bar area. Tony roared, low and deep, like a growling war cry.

“They’re in!” Ralph spun the boy around and pushed him through the prep area, taking Lance’s shotgun with him.

Lance struggled into a seated position, knowing that he had to get out of the freezer and escape the restaurant somehow. If the Manson family managed to fight off whatever horror came through the window, they’d probably kill him. Then again, if he did get outside, the victims of the Xavier virus would do him in.

His head pounded.

He rolled onto his left hip, scooting his feet under him. Using the shelves to steady himself, he stood up, the tape around his arms skewing his balance.

Lance’s shotgun boomed from the front of the restaurant.

They’re going to bring every one of those damned things down on us.

Quietly moving through the prep area, Lance peeked around the corner. Two of the infected climbed over toppled tables, hissing and clawing at the air.

Ralph cocked the shotgun and fired again.

The buckshot blew away a portion of the neck from one of the infected. It gurgled, blood arcing through the room in arterial spray. It fell onto an overturned table, arms sliding across the wood finish, movements weakening.

Tony sighted the second beast with his rifle and shot it dead center in the chest. It collapsed on the floor after two more steps, death spasms racking its limbs.

Lance spotted his pack leaning against the bar. He had no chance of grabbing it on his way out. Not that he could carry it with his arms taped down anyway.

The teenager pulled a large hunting knife from a sheath on his hip and stepped toward the neck-shot infected. “I’ll finish him.”

He stuck the toe of his boot under its shoulder and flipped it over. As it rolled, a stream of blood shot from its neck, splashing across Mike’s face.

He stumbled backward, gagging and wiping at his face. His knife clattered to the floor.

Lance searched the countertops beside him. A serrated kitchen knife sat on a cutting board, the blade six inches long. His fingers brushed it as he leaned backward against the stainless counter. The men in the other room shouted incoherently as Lance slid the knife’s handle into his palm.

He flipped it with his fingers, aiming the blade straight up, hoping to cut his way free. The sharpened edge touched the tape, but struggled to slice through the surface.

Chancing a look into the dining room, Lance saw Ralph and Tony standing in front of Mike, wiping blood from his face.

“Am I going to be infected?” Mike cried, struggling against their hands. “Am I going to die?”

Only Tony still held a gun. Lance’s shotgun was on the bar, too high for him to grab with his arms bound.

He tried to cut the tape again, but only managed to make a quarter of an inch knick. It would take him a considerable amount of time to free himself. Time he didn’t have.

Ralph stood behind the bar, pouring water over Mike’s face. Lance was at a loss. If he tried to run past them, Tony would shoot him in the back. If he stayed put, they’d surely kill him, or leave him tied up, which would amount to the same thing.

A woman stepped in front of the broken window, arm raised, pointing at the group of men, the shriek of the infected reverberating around the room.

Tony spun and aimed his rifle, blowing the back of her head out. Gray matter misted the air as she crumbled to the sidewalk. Another of Xavier’s victims appeared, climbing through the window, vascular muscles tensing. Tony carefully sighted him, pulling the trigger.

The gun clicked.

“Fuck!” Tony stuffed a hand into his pocket, fetching a single, brass bullet. He fumbled with the bolt action on his rifle, the bullet slipping from his grasp and falling to the floor.

It came for him, jaws gnashing, blind eyes flopping in their sockets.

Lance sprinted forward, his balance thrown off because of his bound arms. His gait awkward, head straight in the air, Lance crossed the dining room in a few steps, hopping over a toppled table.

Tony’s jaw dropped when he saw him. He hesitated for a moment, fingers brushing the bullet on the floor, watching as Lance ran past.

The infected woman cocked her head toward him as he lunged past her. She paused, snarling and hissing, before continuing toward Tony.

Lance hopped from one overturned table to the next, high stepping like a running back drilling through tires in practice. He jumped through the window, struggling with the proper speed and distance because of his bindings. His foot snagged the lower part of the window’s frame, pitching his body forward.

Flesh and concrete collided. Pain ran up Lance’s already sore side, shoving away rational thought as he groaned on the sidewalk. Flash bulbs filled his vision.

Rolling to his back, Lance blinked hard, trying to get his eyes to focus. The swirling clouds of color before him slowly straightened out, centering on another infected stumbling toward him.

“Oh shit.” Lance pushed away the pain, lifting his legs and rocking to his upper back. He kicked forward, throwing his weight to his feet and rolling into a squatting position. He hopped up, foot throbbing, breath coming in ragged gasps.

It
shambled in his direction. It was several days into the mutation, its skin thinned, eyes gone, language forgotten.

Lance spun on his heels and fled, moving as fast as he could without the benefit of swinging his arms. Half a dozen of the infected were ahead, various stages of the disease afflicting them.

They converged on him.

Lance slowed to a crawl, head swiveling around as he looked for an alternate escape route. He spotted an alley to his left, running between two tall buildings. He went for it, knife still in his hand, hoping that nothing waited for him in the shadows beyond.

The alley was dark. Graffiti lined the walls. Overflowing garbage cans festered, flies buzzing around their summits. He rushed past them all, trying to soften his footfalls, hoping they wouldn’t follow him.

A chain link fence, ten feet tall, stopped him thirty yards in.

“Double shit!”

Normally, Lance would have chuckled at his ridiculous swearing. Now he was too busy trying to keep himself from freaking out to appreciate the devolution of his speech.

He spun around, intent on running out of the alley at full speed, fleeing this trap before it could snare him.

One of
them
stood in the entrance. Its head cocked back, mouth distended in a shriek of rage and hunger. It was a woman, or used to be, with the tatters of a dress hanging from thin shoulders.

Lance’s heart hammered in his chest like a piston. He turned back to the fence and frantically kicked at the bottom, hoping he could dislodge the corner and wiggle through. After three solid swings of his leg, it still wouldn’t give.

Using the knife in his hand, he sawed at the tape binding him. The blade dug into his forearm from his spastic swipes, drawing blood. Lance ignored it, moving faster, praying that something would give.

The infected woman stumbled closer, arms stretching out, hisses escaping parted lips. Blind eyes swayed in their sockets as she drew near. Her right leg hitched as she walked, a gouge in her thigh apparent as she stepped closer.

Lance backed against the fence, putting as much space between them as he could. He stared at her, the realization that he wouldn’t get through the tape in time setting in.

Yellowed teeth and a wagging tongue drew his gaze. She lifted her arms, claw-like hands tensing.

When she was less than five feet away, he lunged forward and kicked her in the stomach with all his might. The force of the blow knocked her backward, ass crashing against a garbage can. Lance teetered sideways, struggling to retain his footing. His shoulder collided with a door to his right. Painted black, and set half a foot in the wall, the door had gone unnoticed by Lance as he’d run by it.

He pushed away from it and gave it a kick by the knob. It didn’t budge. The jolt in his leg made his hip ache and he feared that if he kicked it like that again, walking would become too difficult.

Struggling against the pain, he ran for the street, missing the woman’s outstretched hands by inches. He shot past her, hope welling in his chest as he saw the open end of the alley.

Two more of the infected moved into view, silhouettes shrouding their features. They both had thick shoulders and moved faster than the woman did. They’d been infected several days before she had.

Lance skid to a stop, knowing he couldn’t fight two of them without the use of his hands. Even if he wasn’t bound, he didn’t believe he could defeat them. He spun around, taking a step back to the fence, intent out ramming it with the full weight of his body.

The woman was back to her feet, already moving toward him again.

Panic took over.

The idea of being eaten alive like so many others spurred him on. He accelerated toward the woman, lowering his shoulder, hoping to knock her over once again.

A piece of cardboard, slick with dew and other unspeakable liquids from the alley, slid underfoot as he stepped on it. It shot out from under him, throwing his balance off. He careened to the side, falling past the woman and landing on a pile of trash by the end of the alley.

Papers and bags cascaded from the top of the refuse mound, covering his head and shoulders as he squirmed to get back up. The knife fell from his hand, disappearing somewhere amidst the garbage.

He rolled to his back, garbage still blocking his vision. His heels pushed against the ground as he frantically slid backward. Shaking his head did little to clear away the debris as he braced himself for the first bite.

Hisses and snaps came from feet away.

Their feet slapped against the pavement, closing in.

Something thudded, wet and hollow, like a melon dropped on the floor.

Lance stopped moving back and gave his head and shoulders one final buck, tossing a torn magazine from his face.