The Hungry Read online

  She came down the other side of the pile of bodies. A large, overweight man in bathing trunks stood before her. The thing reached out, but before she could react, its head collapsed in on itself. The bullet that took it down whizzed right past her face. She'd almost gotten her unconscious wish and been taken out by mistake.

  "Watch it, you idiots!" The gunfire was too loud for anyone to hear her voice. The humans were screaming in terror and firing like madmen, going down under zombies, cutting with knives. Miller saw one soldier in total despair stick his handgun under his chin and blow his own brains out. Time was running out. Miller pressed on bravely. She was going to have to risk being shot by her own people if she was going to have any chance to save them.

  The wound in her arm was healing already, but that didn't stop Miller from feeling light-headed again. Her system was overloaded. Miller kept fighting. She had to get to the living, protect them, save those still alive. It was her duty. No fucking zombies were going to stand in her way. She fought her way through the corpses and closed in on the fort, waving her arms. Her once white dress soaked with fresh blood.

  As Miller approached the makeshift fort, the sound of the gunfire diminished and died out. She heard it clearly as it went from several weapons to just a couple, then finally to just one. Finally that lone gun was silenced as well. The men had finally run out of ammunition.

  Moving as fast as she could, Miller fought her way to the fort. She could hear the screams of some of the remaining living as the zombies came through the barrier. She kept moving. Miller hacked, bled, and just plain pushed her way through the zombies to get to the perimeter of the makeshift fort.

  "Scratch, Terrill Lee, Sheppard?"

  The noise stopped just as she reached the area. Miller broke through, sweating and panting, her heart almost bursting from the strain. Once inside, she found the little fort filled with zombies, many of them head shot. Sadly, there were no living to be seen. Not one survivor. In fact, many of the zombies now wore uniforms. She decapitated one after another, including the corporal named O'Brien, who had just woken up hungry. She went through the bodies, looking at faces, rolling corpses over, tossing them this way and that. Miller couldn't see any that looked like Terrill Lee or Scratch. Not that it mattered anymore. Tears filled her eyes. She was sure that they were already dead.

  She had failed.

  The prospect of defeat and utter loneliness sent Miller into one final frenzy. She was fucking angry at the stinking pile of steaming shit that the world had become. She took out her anger on the remaining zombies. Something in her kicked into another level of overdrive. Miller whirled like a dervish, the blade flashing. She cut and stabbed and hacked and screamed until it was finally done.

  Nothing stirred. No sound but dripping blood and her own harsh breathing. Miller stood panting in the gloom, clutching the machete, her face streaming sweat. She searched for more zombies to kill. Bodies lay everywhere, but nothing else moved. Nothing. She was all alone. There was no one left in the whole world but Sheriff Penny Miller.

  She looked down at herself. It was hard to believe that the dress she wore was ever white. It was now blackened, torn and dark red from top to bottom, soaking wet with blood, splattered with brain matter and entrails. What a disaster. Miller was tired, frustrated, and—she hated to admit it—also very, very sad. She'd worked her ass off, been tough as nails from the start and tried to do her duty. And yet none of that had mattered in the end. She hadn't saved anyone. Penny Miller heard herself sob. She also heard a noise.

  She raised the machete and bared her teeth in a snarl.

  One of the boxes that made up the walls of the fort jiggled a bit. And then it tipped over. Miller faced the new threat. She waved the machete and moved to close the distance. What she saw surprised the hell out of her. Sheppard emerged from a large grating that covered the ventilation duct. Tears filled her eyes. And then she smiled because Sheppard was smiling. He wasn't alone. He was followed by four other soldiers.

  Miller moved in close. She grabbed him by the lapels with her gory fingers. "Where's Terrill Lee and Scratch?"

  "Right here, darlin'" Scratch came out of the duct. Terrill Lee followed. They both started her way and bumped shoulders. Then they glared at one another as if prepared to throw down on the spot.

  Tears in her eyes, Miller shook her head. Men…

  EPILOGUE

  It was over at last. Within the hour there were only a few zombies wandering aimlessly throughout the facility, many of them newly minted and still in uniform. They were manageable enough at that strength. Ultimately, ten humans survived the onslaught—Miller, Terrill Lee, Scratch, Sheppard, and a half-dozen soldiers.

  Miller took over. She ordered the men to find fresh ammo and use it to pick off the last of the enemy one by one. It was good to be with people again. But Miller didn't bother to learn the survivor's names. She had other problems to think about. Her own body, for one. God only knew what was going on inside her. It was all wrong. She was still wired from the fight with the zombies, pulse slamming again like a jackhammer, and Miller worried that if she didn't calm down soon, her heart would explode. To top it off, when she told him, Sheppard had said nothing to reassure her that it wouldn't happen. In fact, he seemed deeply concerned.

  "Sheppard, what's happening to me?"

  "Let's go."

  As the soldiers continued the mop up, Sheppard led their original group back into the medical wing. They walked down another long, hollow corridor and into a place that Miller would have preferred not to revisit. They entered one of the clean work labs. Terrill Lee and Scratch followed them inside. Sheppard sat Miller down on one of the chairs. He went down on one knee before her like a supplicant at the Vatican. He handed her a protein shake from a small refrigerator. She drank it greedily and snapped her fingers. She'd never felt so hungry in her life. He gave her another.

  Wiping her lips, she said, "I'm listening."

  "Penny, the virus that infected you is a version of the one that is used in our gene therapy. It modified your DNA beautifully, but with a couple of unprecedented effects." Sheppard pulled out the small UV light. He held it up to her skin. Miller's flesh was glowing, rippling, tinted an unnatural green.

  "Okay, so now I'm just a female Hulk?"

  "No, the green fluorescent protein that you are expressing is only an indicator that the virus worked. That part of the equation is actually harmless. It's the rest of it that may be a problem."

  "What kind of a problem?" asked Miller. Her stomach rolled and her heart thumped and settled, thumped and settled again. Terrill Lee and Scratch were watching, their faces long with concern. Miller sighed. She just wished Sheppard would get to the damned point.

  "Come on, tell me."

  "The new DNA," Sheppard explained, "it's accelerated your mitochondria. You're using energy much more efficiently. Zombieism, as far as we can tell, is caused by the mitochondria continuing to supply energy to the dormant muscles and nervous system even after death. It's really quite remarkable, in a way. Unfortunately, the side effect that we saw…"

  Miller was getting pissed. "What's happened Sheppard? Talk to me in English."

  "Look, all the extra energy has to come from somewhere. If you don't keep supplying your body with nutrients, it has to begin to consume itself. That's why the new zombies all decayed so quickly. They were starving but nothing was good enough to keep them going. They kept using themselves up. I can't tell you how fast it happens—we had no time to study it—but our guess was that if the zombies didn't keep eating, they would eventually just wither away in time. That's why they were hungry every second. At least, that was our guess. It all went wrong before we found an answer."

  "Been wanting to ask this," Scratch said. "What's the story with them bastards only eating humans?"

  "That's a very good question." Sheppard sighed. "We have no fucking clue. Maybe there's some nutrient in human flesh that the zombies naturally crave. Maybe they are trying to get their ori
ginal nutrients back. Your guess is as good as mine."

  "Sheppard, you have a sad-eyed, hangdog look, like a plumber who finds a turd in the shower. Say it. What's going to happen to me?"

  "You're going to die, Penny."

  She nodded. "When?"

  "Soon."

  Terrill Lee cried, "No!" and Miller kind of liked him for that. Scratch leaned back against the wall like a man in pain. Only Sheppard kept his gentle eyes fixed on her face. He touched her arm. "Listen up. We may have found a way to suppress your energy production."

  "Tell me."

  Sheppard walked over to a tall refrigerator with glass doors. He removed a small vial and a hypodermic needle. "This stuff here will at least slow down your mitochondria for the time being. That should bring you back to a relative normal. It should work for a while, anyway."

  "Should? For a while? You're not making me feel all that optimistic, Sheppard."

  "Well, if it works too well, it could…" Sheppard hesitated. He shrugged and kept looking her dead in the eye. "Well, here it is. If we fail it could kill you even faster."

  "Great," Miller said. She didn't like where this was going. Terrill Lee walked over and gripped her shoulder. His face looked stricken. A tear rolled down his cheek. Scratch went to her other shoulder and patted it. Miller felt less alone.

  "There's more," Sheppard said.

  "Lay it on me."

  "This gets worse," Sheppard said. "If it does kill you, then once the suppressant wears off, you could wake up again as one of those zombies. A brand new kind, to boot. And I have no idea what that would be like for someone as powerful as you've become, but something tells me none of us would enjoy it. We'll have to chain you down before we administer the antidote."

  The color drained out of Miller's face. "So those are my wonderful alternatives? Superpowers, zombiedom, or something in between?"

  "More or less."

  "Sheppard," she said, "you promise me something. If I die and start changing, you blow my head off." She looked around. "All of you promise me."

  Only Scratch nodded grimly. "I promise."

  That will have to do, Penny thought. She pondered. Said, "Okay, but you said it might work for a while. Assuming I survive, how long is this shit likely to last?"

  "I don't know," Sheppard said simply. "I really don't. I'm sorry."

  "Well then, let's put it this way, how much do you have left?"

  Sheppard held up the vial. "This much. But we can make more, once I have a working lab again. Terrill Lee is a medical man, he can help out. It will just take us some time to get it done."

  "How much time?" Miller demanded. She poked him in the chest. He winced. "Look, Sheppard, what aren't you telling me?"

  Sheppard frowned. "I'm telling you all I know, Penny. The truth is that I don't know how much time it will take to make more serum, either. I don't know shit. But you're going to die this way, that much is certain." Without another word, he took a syringe from a container, and filled it with the suppressant. Sheppard pushed out the air bubble. "Unfortunately, maybe we've got to take one last gamble."

  Miller nodded slowly. His eyes comforted her. "Kind of looks that way."

  "Yes or no?" Sheppard asked, quietly. "This is your call."

  Scratch, Terrill Lee and Sheppard watched Miller as she closed her eyes. Miller thought of her childhood, the little house back in Flat Rock, the sunrise on the desert after a rainy night, the smell of fresh sage in the spring. What it felt like to share that first kiss with a man who wanted you. Life could be so incredibly sweet sometimes. Miller opened her eyes.

  Penny Miller stared at the hypodermic.

  The hypodermic stared back.

  AFTERWORD

  by Steve Hockensmith

  When Steven and Harry asked if I'd write an afterword for The Hungry, I agreed... even though I didn't know what the hell there was to say at the end of the book other than "Whew!" What you hold in your hands is an adrenaline-fueled sprint through an obstacle course of horrors, and if you weren't totally spent by the time you reached the last page of the story, you have stronger nerves than I.

  Hold off on the sequel for a while, guys! I need time to recover.

  Anyway, while Steven and Harry waited patiently for my afterword, I mused and ruminated and cogitated and deliberated and generally frittered the days away with my head up my tail. The novel spoke for itself, it seemed to me. When you get to the end of Dawn of the Dead or Shaun of the Dead or World War Z or what have you, the last thing you want is some tweedy S.O.B. gassing on about the significance of it all.

  Eventually, Steven sent me Joe McKinney's introduction for the book, probably in the hope that it would provide the inspiration (and the kick in the ass) I needed to get started. If so, it worked. Kind of. Joe certainly proved there was a lot to say about The Hungry. The problem: He said it all. The man is good!

  So I'm going to punt. Forget The Hungry. Let's talk about Jaws.

  Sorry, Steven and Harry. Next time you should probably get Seth Grahame-Smith.

  So. There's nothing supernatural going on in Jaws. (Unless you want to count the shark's appetite. He eats, what—half the population of Amity Island? And he never gets full? Come on. Even a great white's going to start feeling bloated and gassy after the fifth trip to the buffet.) Yet Jaws is one of my favorite horror flicks.

  You probably think you know why. It's intense. It's visceral. It's got both kinds of scares: the creepy-mounting-dread-goosebumps kind and the shock-you-out-of-your-damn-seat-screaming kind.

  But you want to know why Jaws really works? You hear it all the time. Just turn on Entertainment Tonight the day before the latest Hollywood CGI spectacular lands with a splat in the cineplexes.

  "This isn't a movie about giant robots/killer aliens/superdudes in spandex/Smurfs," the director will say. "It's a story about people."

  Of course, 99.99999999 percent of the time that's bullshit. But with Jaws, it's true. Yes, it's basically a monster movie. But first and foremost, it's about how people deal with that monster. And Chief Brody and Matt Hooper and Quint are damned interesting people. If they weren't, when that rubbery-looking shark head drags Robert Shaw into the water, we'd all be laughing. Instead, we're horrified.

  That's the genius of Jaws. It's not just John Williams' score or Steven Spielberg's mastery of the camera or killer editing or locations that make everything feel like real life. It's all that plus characters we care about. Because let's face it: A big, hungry fish can be scary for a while, but as a villain it doesn't have much going for it. Every other Jaws movie proved that.

  Now Dracula—he's interesting. Frankenstein and his monster, too. Ditto a normal, decent guy who turns into a wolf whenever the moon is full. Because all of these characters are characters. They have goals and emotions and regrets and fears. They're not just the proverbial eating machine. To make a shark interesting, you need interesting chum to throw its way.

  I think it's the same with zombies.

  Ha! Fooled you! I am talking about The Hungry after all!

  Remember those classics of the zombie genre I mentioned earlier—Dawn of the Dead and Shaun of the Dead and World War Z? They've got good chum. The best. Real people. And The Hungry has them, too. Think about why you're excited by the prospect of Still Hungry or Hungrier or The Hungry 2: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner or whatever the sequel's going to be called. (Feel free to use any of those titles, guys. All I ask for is a shout-out on the acknowledgments page. And 15%.) I don't think it's the zombies you're looking forward to, though Steven and Harry certainly know how to write undead mayhem. But you can get that anywhere these days. Books, movies, TV shows, video games, graphic novels, Underoos—it seems like you can find zombies in all of them. What's harder to find is a Penny Miller. Or a Sheppard or a Scratch or a Terrill Lee.

  I was lucky with my horror novels, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dreadfully Ever After. I inherited my cast from none other than M
s. Jane Austen (and the aforementioned Mr. Grahame-Smith). Steven and Harry had to come up with theirs on their own—and they did a bang-up job. The zombies were great, of course, but I never stopped rooting for the humans. And admit it—that's not the case with every zombie saga.

  But will Penny and Co. survive whatever's to come next? There's the second great test of any zombie story: Do we care what happens after the fade-out? Here's my answer for The Hungry.

  I lied before, guys. You'd better not keep me waiting for the sequel. Because I guess I can understand the shark's appetite in Jaws after all.

  I just gorged myself... and I want more.

  Steve Hockensmith

  Alameda, Calif.

  Only a few days past his deadline, 2011

  Acknowledgments

  Steven: I would like to thank Harry Shannon, my wife Leya Booth, and our editor Norm Rubenstein, for never questioning my ability to pull this off.

  Harry: I'd like to thank Steven Booth for sticking Penny Miller in that damned wedding dress.

  The both of us: Sincere thanks to authors Joe McKinney, Steve Hockensmith, Jonathan Maberry, Brian Keene, and all of you readers out there for your support.

  About the Authors

  Steven W. Booth started writing at the prompting of Harry Shannon. His first novel (not this one), a fantasy that may still be written, was a horrendous mess. So was his second, a science fiction novel. When Harry suggested that they write Jailbreak together, from which this novel is derived, Steven had never read any horror other than Stephen King's The Shining, and didn't particularly like the genre. But he soon learned that zombies were fun. It's easy to bring enemies together when faced with slobbering hoards of the undead, and who can argue with the guilt-free shooting gallery that zombies represent. So it was a no-brainer (pun intended) when they decided to expand the plot and turn Jailbreak into The Hungry. This is Steven's first published novel.