The Hungry (6 page)

"Ouch!" Something pinched her arm, a sharp sting. Miller tried to pull away but it was over before she could flinch.

"There you go," Terrill Lee said. "That'll help you relax and ease the pain a tad. Now I'm going to stitch you up. All you have to do now is just lie there and try not to bleed to death."

"I see your bedside manner has greatly improved," Miller heard herself saying. The dope was topnotch. The ceiling turned in a lazy circle. She found herself sinking into an abyss, fading to black right there on their old marital bed.

… Miller was back in the station, a rifle in her hands. Zombies surrounded her on all sides. But now instead of Wells manning the shotgun on the other side of the station, it was Terrill Lee. She turned to watch as he systematically took the heads off of three successive zombies. He turned and shouted, but Miller couldn't make out what he was saying. He turned the gun on her, aimed, and fired. She could see the scattershot racing towards her, always approaching in slow motion, but never arriving. Out of the corner of her eye, Scratch appeared, a zombie now with a hideous countenance and wild eyes. He was holding her pistol. He turned it on Terrill Lee. Scratch shot her ex-husband in the forehead. Unlike the shell fired at her, this one met its mark. Terrill Lee's head vaporized in a volcanic eruption of dark blood and brains. Scratch dropped the weapon, turned to her. Miller raised her .30-06, but it wasn't in her hands anymore. Scratch was bloody, his eyes blank and white, his skin and clothes torn and ragged. The stench was nauseating. Miller wanted nothing more than to empty her stomach. He moved in for the kill. As Scratch approached, the urge to retch overpowered Miller. She had no will to run. He touched her with one decaying finger. It was done. She watched as her own skin began to slough off, maggots crawling from open sores. She could feel the bile well up in her mouth and she…

And then Miller was leaning over the side of the bed, vomiting all over Terrill Lee's worn work boots. She knew there wasn't much in her stomach to begin with. She hadn't had a meal since before the zombies came, but that didn't seem to curb a newfound enthusiasm for voiding her insides.

"That's just great!" Terrill Lee said, dryly. Miller continued to retch. "You could try to warn a man."

Miller shivered under the blankets. She hugged herself. He'd dressed her and she was now wearing an old Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. It seemed to cover her enough to satisfy what was left of her modesty.
What the hell difference does it make?
It ain't like he's never seen my honey pot before.

Miller motioned for water to rinse out her mouth. Terrill got some towels from the bathroom and a small cup of tap water. He let her sip a bit and went about cleaning up the mess she'd made. The stench was ripe. Miller swallowed and sighed. She looked out the window. It was still morning, but which day?

"How long was I out?"

"Only about an hour," Terrill Lee said. He gathered up the mess and headed for the laundry room. She heard the washer start up promptly so the power was still running. At least they would have lights come dark.
Thank God for his tender mercies.

Terrill Lee slammed a door. He came back into the room with a spray bottle and some more rags. He scrubbed the floorboards. "I had just come in to check on you when you decided to give me this little gift."

"What did I miss?"

"There was an old man…" Terrill Lee paused. He seemed almost embarrassed. "Well, I might as well say it, a
zombie.
He came down the street, kind of half looked in the window. You weren't moving, so he ignored the house and kept on going down to the highway. Look, whatever is going on outside, it ain't over."

"Where are the neighbors?" asked Miller.

"I haven't seen a soul—er, a
living
soul—since last night. This morning I went from house to house, checking to see if anyone was home, you know, to offer medical assistance, but no one answered or opened their doors. I reckon they're either all gone or dead. Living dead, I suppose. Something like that."

"How come
you
ain't gone?"

Terrill Lee grimaced. "I just waited too damned long. Got trapped last night. The streets were filled with zombies. I managed to take out a couple, but for the most part I just hid out in the garage."

That sounds about right,
thought Miller.
You never were the Batman type.

"Anyway," he said, "I was about to take off this morning when you came home and plowed into the oak tree. I want you to know that I could be 500 miles from here by now if it weren't for you."

Miller could feel the old anger and frustration welling up. He may have been kidding but then again, maybe not. He sure knew how to push her buttons. "I'm sorry I ruined your chickenshit plans to run and hide, Terrill Lee."

"Now, you listen to me…"

"No, you listen!"

Just like the old days.
Shit…

"Hey, look, I don't want to fight with you." Terrill Lee turned away to collect himself. "How are you doing? You sat up this time. You must be feeling better."

Miller glared. Terrill Lee didn't look up. Finally, she softened. There was no sense in fighting with this man. Certainly not now. They needed each other more than ever before. And after all, he had just saved her life.
Put all that old crap aside once and for all, girl. Survive.

"I'm better. Not great, but much better than this morning." She hesitated. "Thank you, Terrill Lee."

"You hungry, girl?"

"I could eat."

"I'll bring you some soup."

"Help me up. I'll come with you."

"That's not such a good idea." He raised a hand to keep her flat on the bed, but Miller was already sitting up again. She tested her muscles. She felt much better.

"I said I'm coming with," Miller insisted.

"Fine, whatever." Terrill Lee helped her up. Miller was glad to find her legs were already stable, and that she was indeed hungry. All that time in the gym had paid off. Terrill Lee led the way down the hall and into the kitchen. Miller followed slowly behind him, sometimes palming and hugging the wall for support. She felt far better than she had any right to feel.

"You want me to…"

"No, I'll do it." Miller made her way into the kitchen—she tried not to think of it as
their
kitchen—and sat down at the breakfast table. The new leather chair was cold on her bare butt. Miller looked around slowly. She saw the den through the passway. She took in the new décor. Every conceivable surface was now covered with animal skin. Hideous stuff. There was a new elk's head over the fireplace in the adjoining living room, as well as huge fish, hunting rifles on racks, and another large oil painting of a woman with enormous boobs. Damn, this lady was considerably more naked than the others. Her nether regions sneered back like a rival.

"Where do you get your decorating ideas? Field and Stream?" Miller nodded to the oil painting. "Penthouse?"

Terrill Lee, now standing at the kitchen counter, ignored her. He opened two cans of soup and some crackers. Miller hid her growing resentment in deadpan humor. She'd had a lot of practice at that.

"Seriously, Terrill Lee, since when do you like your critters dead and skinned? I thought your 'life's work' was to save animals, not sit on them." She rose up and down quickly, her sticky butt cheeks slapping the chair.

"I guess you don't know as much about me as you thought you did," Terrill Lee said. He managed to glare razor blades without turning toward her. In response, a small potted sprig of succulent he'd placed near the kitchen window seemed to lose a hard on.
Score one for Miller.

She studied his back. How well did she know him, when it was all said and done? Once she had considered Terrill Lee loyal and loving, but she'd gotten suspicious about seven years into their marriage. She'd read his phone texts and discovered that he'd been banging his new veterinary assistant. The shit had run through the fan and festooned the flocked wallpaper. They'd raged about it all weekend long.
Seven year itch? Bullshit! All men are assholes. Why, why and why?
Finally, desperate to defend himself, Terrill Lee had blamed it on Miller, saying she was withholding sex to be in control. And that's how he phrased it at their mediation, too. The rat bastard. Fact of the matter was, he hadn't made a pass at her in nigh on two years. Well, even now, she couldn't have sworn in court as to how she would have reacted if he had, but surely it wasn't all her fault for ignoring him. Not really. Well… No, there was no sense dwelling on this.

"That fancy thing work?" Miller asked. She pointed to a new, widescreen LCD TV sitting on the kitchen counter.

"Remote's right there," he said. The slim black device was sitting on the breakfast table next to the salt shaker. Miller found the power button. The first channel that appeared was pure static. So were the next two. Not a good sign at all. The third one was the local news channel. A reporter spoke in low, urgent tones. Her words came out pressured, and stumbled over one another.

"… Have a visual on about three dozen of the individuals. At the moment, they are making their way from the Elko area toward Flat Rock." The frantic station showed a long, telescopic shot, evidently taken from a helicopter or small private plane. A large group of what appeared to be zombies were seen shambling away from the camera in search of food.

"Do they pose a threat to you?" asked the faceless anchor.

"Not at the moment," said the reporter. They showed her now, a petite redhead woman with curly hair. She wore a pilot's headset. "But if we can roll that earlier footage…" The excited woman turned away from the camera. She whistled, then signaled the technician in the back of the helicopter. "No, not that one, Bobby. Number four."

Someone else, a man, said, "Ladies and gentlemen, stay in your homes. Believe me, these are real events. This is not a hoax or some B movie. We must warn you, the video you are about to see is truly disturbing."

Terrill Lee and Miller exchanged glances. It was hard to believe all this was really happening. The TV screen flashed white, then settled again. The same group of undead was seen swarming around a gas station. The picture twitched and danced because the cameraman was a long way off, using telescopic equipment, shooting down from the chopper. A woman came out of what appeared to be the bathroom. She was firing a pistol, running as fast as she could. There were too many of the things. She wasn't going to make it. She knew it, even from far away, her eyes wild and her mouth open in horror. She fired and fired but quickly ran out of ammunition. Miller wanted to scream a warning. The zombies fell on her. They tore her to pieces, that soft flesh rendered and ripped. They devoured her, all in tight close-up. The woman struggled on, still screaming, until one of the zombies bit her neck, a fountain of blood sprayed the others chewing on her body. It was over. Miller nearly sighed aloud with relief. The poor woman could rest in peace.

The zombies moved on. The camera stayed on the corpse. The woman lay still.

And then she moved again.

"Son of a bitch," groaned Miller, Terrill Lee, and the anchor—all simultaneously. Terrill Lee and Miller exchanged a look of horror. The butchered woman sat up. She somehow struggled to her feet. The newly minted zombie marched away to join the steadily growing horde.

"That's the least disturbing of all the tape we have," the reporter said. "Frank, have you heard anything about what's actually causing all this?"

The view switched back to the anchor, a white-haired man with a lined face and an alcoholic's red nose. "I'm sorry Marcia, but we only know what we've been reporting, which is that the trouble started at the Desert Springs Outlet Mall near Elko yesterday afternoon about 10 a.m. local time. Again, folks, this is not a hoax or a motion picture. This is real, this is happening. Stay in your homes. The dead are coming alive."

A box with security camera footage appeared next to the anchor's head. A man with a short, military-style haircut staggered away from the camera, approached a blonde woman and fell upon her. A plain-clothed police officer shot him once, twice, but he continued chewing unperturbed. Someone kicked him. The attacker turned. Even in the stuttering, black and white security footage, you could see that he was covered with the girl's blood. He moved toward the officer, who emptied his weapon into the man, but the creature didn't stop. Just out of range of the camera, the attacker jumped on the officer as the other patrons ran away. Terrill Lee and Miller watched more biting and gore spraying. Abruptly, that scene disappeared. The camera was back in the station. People hurried through the background carrying bags and bottles of water, abandoning ship.

"As you can see," continued the anchor, "whatever is causing this is affecting everyone who was at or near the Desert Springs Mall, and now those individuals are spreading in all directions, though there seems to be a large thrust of movement toward Flat Rock." Frank touched the speaker in his ear. "Okay, okay. Folks, some of us have volunteered to stay here for as long as we can. We'll keep everyone posted as news comes in. Once again, at the top of the news is an unprecedented disaster of unknown scope involving…"

"I've seen enough," said Terrill Lee. He flicked a switch and the screen went dark. The kitchen was silent except for their rapid breathing. Miller could hear her own heart pounding, and suspected it was the same for Terrill Lee. Whatever it was, it was spreading like a wildfire in August.

"Wait," protested Miller. She clicked wildly at the remote. "Turn that back on. Don't you realize our lives may depend on what he says next?"

"Eat your soup," said Terrill Lee.

"Goddamnit, Terrill Lee, don't you start patronizing me again. I'm a Sheriff, not a cheerleader. Not anymore, anyway. Now turn that set back on."

"I said, eat your soup," he said calmly.

"Fine, I'll do it myself." Miller stood quickly. She almost made it all the way to the TV before her legs gave out. She found herself on the floor, flat on her butt. The floor was cold on her cheeks. Tears burned in her eyes but she held them back. A voice in her head told Miller he was probably right, that they knew as much as anyone else by now. They were on their own. She just didn't want to accept that.