The Hunger (Book 2): Consumed (29 page)

“I don’t remember—” Her eyes widened when she saw the pink-tinged water surrounding Lance.  “Oh shit!  Adam, get him out of the water and put some pressure on the wound.  Greg, come with me!”

She ran toward the thin line of trees on the other side of the highway.  Her feet fumbled for the first few steps, her gait distorted from the blow to her head, before she regained her balance.

“Where are we going?”  Greg shuffled along after her.  He still held the flare in his hand for some reason.

“Shut up and run!”  Cass disappeared beyond the trees.

Adam dragged Lance to the sidewalk where the water wasn’t as deep.  He placed him in a seated position and pressed against his back.

Lance braced himself against the pain, sucking in a sharp breath.

“Sorry, man.”  Adam pushed a little harder.

“I really need to stop jumping in front of women.”

“What?”

“I keep getting my ass kicked when I try to save someone.  I suck at it.”

“Not sure I understand.”

Lance looked over at the Vladdies scattered around the block.  Their bodies had blackened almost beyond recognition.  Their nest was destroyed, drowned under the sun and the Allegheny, just as Cass had hoped.

Their charred bodies looked like burn victims.

The river continued to flow from the subway, though it no longer erupted from the stairwell like a geyser.  The speed of the current in the street had slowed, the water level finally lowering.  Lance wondered how the other exits of the subway looked.  Were they also crawling with the dead bodies of the infected?

None of Ralph’s men moved.  Most were floating down the street.  Smoke rose from their trucks, damaged irrevocably by the explosion.

“How did they know we’d be here?” Lance asked.

“Who?  Those men?  Who the hell were they, anyway?”

“A couple of assholes.  They’ve been screwing with us since the start of the infection.  But how could they know we were here?”

An engine roared from down the street.  Cass was coming.

A daywalker appeared behind the entrance to the subway.  It staggered across the parking lot of PNC Park, its exaggerated, clumsy gait suggesting it was in the early days of the infection.

The truck appeared a moment later, crashing into the flood, sending cascading waves from each side of the vehicle.  It stopped beside them and Cass hopped out, her feet plopping into the water.

“Help me get him in the backseat.”  She grabbed one of Lance’s arms as Adam took the other.  “How’s the bleeding?”

They hoisted him to his feet, his ankle pulsing as he attempted to put weight on it.

“It hasn’t slowed yet.”  Adam grunted as he helped push Lance into the truck.

He lay face down in the backseat.  Warmth continued to trickle down his back and sides, staining the seat beneath him.  Adam climbed in behind him, kneeling on the floor.

Greg sat in the passenger seat, a small medical kit in his lap.  He handed it to Adam without a word.  He gagged when he saw the blood covering Lance’s back.

Cass ran around the front of the truck and got in behind the wheel.  She floored the accelerator and spun a U-turn in the middle of the highway, thumping over the sidewalk.

“Hand me the walkie-talkie.”  She pointed at the floor by Greg’s feet.  “Hurry up, goddamn it!”

“Sorry, bro!”  Greg picked it up and gave it to her.  He peeked back at Lance again.  Another gag came from him.

Adam tore the medical kit open and pulled a gauze bandage from it.  He placed it against Lance’s back and pressed down hard, making it difficult for Lance to breathe normally.

Fatigue settled in Lance’s muscles and mind.  The desire to sleep pressed in on him.

Cass jerked the wheel around a handful of crashed cars in the middle of an intersection.  The tires squealed as she mashed the gas pedal down again, bringing them back to the center of the road.

She switched the two-way radio on and lifted it to her lips when it squawked before she could speak.

“—
are you there?  Lance, Cass, please!  Someone answer us!
” Eifort’s voice pleaded.

“This is Cass.  We’re—”

“
Thank God!  Listen, Ralph is coming for you!  We caught Nikola using the radio to tell him what your plan was!  You have to—
”

“Ralph is dead.  Lance has been stabbed.  We’re on our way back now.  Tell the doc to be ready for us.”  Her short, clipped sentences hung in the air of the truck.

Eifort paused.  “
He’s preparing a table in the house now.  How far out are you?
”

“I don’t know—thirty minutes, at least.”

“
We’ll be ready.  Be careful, Cass.  He’s going to be all right.
”

Cass tossed the radio on the dash and adjusted the rearview mirror so she could see Lance.

“Why did you jump in front of me like that?  I can take care of myself!”

Lance tried to speak, but his tongue was dry and stuck to the roof of his mouth.  He worked it free and gave Cass a small smile. “Tarpley is going to be pissed that I bled all over her truck.”

“I’m supposed to protect you, dumbass.  It’s not the other way around.”

“Sorry—I have this weird thing about pushing women to safety.  It never seems to work out for me either.”  He blinked slowly.  It was getting difficult to keep his eyelids up.  They felt weighted.

Adam looked up at Cass.  “The bleeding isn’t slowing down much.  Wherever we’re going, you better get us there fast.”

Cass’ jaw clenched.

“Don’t get us in an accident,” Lance said, his words slurring.  “You’ve got our little amigo to watch out for too.”

Greg turned around again, holding a hand to his mouth to hide his gagging.  “Little amigo?  Does that mean you guys are pregnant?  You went down into that crazy-ass subway when you’re knocked up?  Holy shit, bro!”

Lance licked his dry lips.  “It’s a long story, but the gist of it is that Cass is nuts.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, letting himself drift.

“Keep him awake!” Cass shouted.

Adam tapped his cheeks.  “Come on, man.  Stay with us.  We’re almost there.”

“I’m tired from lugging that damn duffel bag.” It took a monumental effort to lift his eyelids again.  His thoughts were cloudy, confused.

“Yeah, yeah.  Keep whining.”  Cass watched him in the mirror.  “Such a wuss.”

“A wuss... who got you... pregnant.”  The back seat swam before his eyes.  He grew dizzy and light-headed.

“Lance?”  Cass reached behind her seat and grabbed his hand.  “Lance!”

His vision blurred and he closed his eyes again, wanting to rest.

Needing to rest.

“
Lance!
”

The last thing he heard was Cass calling to him as he slipped into darkness.

––––––––

S
moke rolled across the clearing, rising above the trailers and mobile homes.

Cass watched the burning body on top of the funeral pyre.

A few others stood around the fire, staring at the cremation with red eyes.

Adam was a few feet to Cass’ left.  He kept stealing glances at her.

“What?” she asked.

“Just seeing how you’re handling this.”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?  We haven’t known each other long, but you seem like—”

“I’m
fine
.”

Adam turned back to the fire, watching as the flames consumed the body.

Greg walked over a few seconds later, his sandals clopping on the packed dirt and bent-over grass.  “Bro, I’ve got some chicks over here who want to meet you.  Well, one of them.  The other is for me.”

“Does this look like an appropriate time?  You can’t possibly be this obtuse?”

“Obtuse?  What—?”

“We’re standing at a funeral, you idiot!  Get out of here!”

Greg sulked away, shrugging his shoulders at a couple of women standing by the cabin.  “Hey, Heidi, Deb, we’ll catch up with you later!  Save me some of that moonshine.  That’s good shit.”

“I hate that guy.”  Cass continued to stare at the inferno.

“Me too.  He makes me want to jump in the fire.”

Cass didn’t laugh at his joke.  He shut up and resumed watching the flames.

Brown and Eifort walked over.  The doc gave a few instructions to a balding, squat man who promptly speed-walked over to a group of mobile homes.

Eifort gave Cass a small hug as she fell in beside her.  “This is so sad.”

“Yeah.  I wish I could have done something more.”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself.”  Brown stood on Cass’ other side, giving Adam a brief nod.  “I’m the doctor around here—if anyone should have been able to do something, it’s me.”  He put his arm around Cass’ shoulder and watched the blaze with her.

By the northeast edge of the field, a few men fired up some chainsaws and went to work cutting away underbrush.  They were to clear more space for extra campers.  Another group of survivors had contacted the camp the day before and were expected to arrive in a few hours.

“Hey, Doc, you better take your hands off my girl or I might get jealous.”  Lance hobbled across the front yard, leaning against crutches to keep weight off his broken ankle.  He hated using them but Brown had insisted.  Somehow, he managed to find most of the divots and rocks in the lawn as he worked his way to the fire.

The wound on his back was tight and painful, but he dealt with it.  Lying around, waiting for things to heal, wasn’t an option anyone had in the new world.  You were either moving forward, or dying.

Lance wasn’t too fond of dying.

Brown retracted his arm and smiled at Lance.  “How are you feeling?  Your color is a little better.”

“A little better every day. I’ll be good as new soon enough.  Let’s see if we can stay out of trouble for the next few weeks though.  I think I’ve reached my quota of ass kickings for a while.”  Lance stopped beside Cass and leaned against the crutch on his right.  He took Cass’ hand in his own.  “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.  Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

“Because you seem to be taking this pretty hard.”

“A pregnant woman killed herself, Lance.  It pisses me off.”

“It pisses all of us off.  We just thought you were taking it a little harder because you’re pregnant too.”

“Maybe I am—I don’t know.  I want to wring Ralph’s neck like a chicken’s though.  I still can’t believe what he had people doing here.”

Lance nodded.  “Well, I did blow him up, so there’s that.”

“There is that.”  Cass looked over at him, the right side of her mouth curling up.  “You did pretty good, for a self-professed loser.”

A white truck hauling a partially enclosed trailer came down the driveway.  Cattle mooed from the back, staring over at the fire.  The truck disappeared around the cabin, heading toward the second field.

Soon they would have an entire section of livestock to raise, assuming they would get lucky enough to find a few more farms with still-living animals.  The remaining Vladdies had begun to leave the city and were already eating deer and other, more domesticated animals.

But with a little patience and a lot of luck, they would soon have meat to pass around their ever-growing camp.

Lance tugged on Cass’ hand, wanting to lead her away from the fire.  They’d suffered through a lot recently, and he wanted to get her mind away from the atrocities that had happened at the camp.  They needed some positivity in their lives again.

The fact that he was still alive had his spirits up.  He only wished that he could have taken care of Nikola himself, but Nathaniel’s men had already dealt with him by the time Lance regained consciousness.

Lance had wanted to know why Nikola had betrayed them again, but Nathaniel was more concerned with the punishment than any rationale.

“Let’s see if we can help those guys finish the fencing for the animals.”  Lance managed to turn around, despite his clumsiness with the crutches.

“We’ll come too, if you don’t mind the company,” Brown said.

“Of course,” Lance said.  “I’ve got a question for you anyway, Doc.”

They walked along the side of the cabin at a leisurely pace, enjoying the light breeze coming from the driveway. Brown and Eifort followed along, holding hands and grinning at each other, their budding romance more in the open than it had been before.

The Wildman of Monroeville screeched from a radio inside the house.  The sound bled outside from an open window in the kitchen.

“...
almost don’t know what to do with myself.  The nights are a helluva lot quieter now.  Too damn quiet, I tell ya!  What am I going to do with my insomnia now?  It wouldn’t be so bad if Leno was still on, but
—”

“He still won’t tell you where he is?” Cass asked Eifort.

“Nope.  He keeps calling himself Switzerland.  He’s a weird dude.”

“...
so raise your glasses once again to those folks out by Greensburg.  They saved all of our asses.  They sent those militant sacks of shit straight to hell.  Gotta love that kind of initiative, you know what I’m saying?  Ballsy.  Hell, I’m rambling again.  Let’s get back to the news of the hour.  Or the day, I suppose, since I only update you at noon.  There I go again.  Christ, I need to get my hands on some Prozac.  Too bad my doctor was eaten a few months ago!  Zing!  Any who, you know those jets flying overhead?  Well, I’ve got a theory.  You see, even if the world has ended, using chemtrails can still
—”

They chuckled at the Wildman’s lunacy.  He was crazy as hell, but they still had someone listen to his broadcast every day.  The past few days he’d shared some interesting news that had raised the hopes of those around the compound.

There was some military movement in North Carolina that sounded promising.  A battalion was working their way up the coast, collecting survivors and exterminating thousands of the infected.  Whether or not they would make it this far north, Lance wasn’t sure.  But he liked knowing that they weren’t alone.

As they walked past the greenhouse, moving onto the path leading to the gardens and the pit, Brown called up to Lance.

“You said you wanted to ask me something?”

“Yeah, I do.”  Lance fought to suppress a spreading grin, but he couldn’t hold it back.