The Hungry (Book 2): The Wrath of God (7 page)

A foul odor floated in the air. The emergency lights still flickered on and off, as if on a whim. Their long walk down the rest of the ramp revealed more of the same carnage and with increasing frequency. The dead and the undead dead lay everywhere. The stench of rotting meat was overpowering, only increasing as they got closer to the immense underground hangar. Miller and her friends knew what to expect. Miller wondered privately whether they should warn the soldiers, or simply let them learn on their own. She decided, peevishly, to keep her mouth shut. They'd all find out soon enough.

"Use this," Rat said. She handed out a jar of menthol cream. "Under your nostrils." The strong medicinal scent made the stink a little more bearable. The group moved on.

The hangar was where they had made their last stand—and where Miller had personally slaughtered hundreds of zombies to protect the other survivors. She'd been all amped up on some form of the virus. The fight had been her last act as a super-accelerated human, before Sheppard had administered the untested antidote. Now she was just a hungry pissed off woman with an uncertain future.

At the bottom of the ramp, they paused for a breather. The lights worked a bit better down here. They could see again, although the shadows were long in spots and thick in others. The inside of the hangar was a war zone. The floor was cold, grossly wet, smelly, and filled with row upon row of corpses in various states of decay. They got an eyeful of the carnage. The professionals seemed stunned. They'd probably witnessed their share of blood and guts, but this was a primitive battlefield from the days of Attila the Hun, with bodies everywhere and no one bothering to bury the dead. The emergency lights dimmed again, and now only shapes could be seen.

The nervous soldiers scanned the lumps that used to be bodies with their flashlights. Everything seemed to be moving in the flickering lights. The soldiers were tense and ready, and for that Miller was grateful. They weren't half as cocky as they'd been above ground.

"We're going to need to bring the power back online," Sheppard said.

"Where is the source?" Rat asked. "I saw the blueprints but I'm turned around."

Terrill Lee spoke up for the first time in ages. "Jesus on a jet ski. Please don't tell me that it's back up at the surface."

Sheppard pointed to his left. "The power generators are over there. The medical labs are across the hangar on the right."

"We aren't going to get very far in our mission without power," Rat said. "Ripper, Brubeck, Cochr…" Rat paused then realized what she was about to say. She grimaced. "Ripper and Brubeck, get the device set up. Psycho, Lovell, let's go power this place up."

"What about us? Ain't we invited?" asked Scratch. Miller studied what she could see of his face in the dim light. He didn't appear so much frightened as bored. She knew Scratch was a good actor, but also had kind of a split personality. He could be reasonable or stark raving nuts. Maybe he was in his reckless mood again. She hoped not.

"You come too," said Rat, exasperated.

"Penny?" asked Terrill Lee. "This ain't such a good idea."

"Don't tell me." Miller said, hooking a thumb at Hanratty. "She's in command."

"Okay, I guess you don't watch a lot of horror movies, Major," said Terrill Lee. "Splitting up the party is always the first step to getting a bunch of folks killed off."

"What are you suggesting we do, hot shot?"

"What he's suggesting," Miller said quietly, "is that if you're planning on getting out of here with the rest of your team intact, you'd best think again. Sending some of them off on their own like that makes them easier targets for the bad guys. It is as good a way as any to make a few more of them zombie snacks."

Ripper and Brubeck waited. Rat glared at Miller and Terrill Lee. Miller stared back. She was writing a speech in her head that would have gotten her shot if spoken aloud.
You arrogant, ignorant, uniformed little bitch…

Finally Rat said, "Ripper, Brubeck, come with us. You can set up the bomb while we're getting the generators up." She turned back to Sheppard. "Lead the way, Sergeant."

The lights flickered up again. The hideous carnage was everywhere. It was a timeless, primitive battle zone, with severed limbs and heads and hands strewn everywhere. Shattered skulls and dismembered limbs with clawed hands. Legs with no feet. Torsos with no legs. Miller had made her last stand against the horde with a machete. Her gorge rose at the sight. She knew it was the zombie virus that had given her the strength and rage to go that berserk, but the consequences were grim indeed when presented to a sober mind. She kept reminding herself they'd all been dead to begin with. Or so she hoped.

They moved on.

It was slow going. The light was better overall, still flickering off and on occasionally, but without it the trip would have taken several hours. They had to pick their way through the clumps of dead zombies. The stench soon overpowered the chemical smell from the nose cream and they all reapplied it. Brubeck and Psycho were assigned the unenviable job of scooping the dead out of the way to make room for the pallet truck to shove its way through. They were panting and spitting. Brubeck had puke on the sleeve of his uniform and looked as if he might heave again at any moment. Frustrated with their pace, Miller stepped forward to help. She dragged away the body of a fat nurse in stained whites. She went back for the corpse of a disemboweled officer. After a time, Scratch and Terrill Lee reluctantly joined her.

The bodies were damp, smelly, and rotting.

"Damn," Miller said. "All these weeks later and this one is still as stiff as a honeymoon hard on."

Scratch snickered.

Brubeck, the CIA man who'd originally presented himself as the toughest of the bunch, finally couldn't take it anymore. He heaved again and again, though nothing much came up. No one went to comfort him. They were all queasy. As for Miller, her response to this display of regurgitation was to wonder if there were any more meal bars handy.
Weird, right now I could eat the rectum out of a dead bull if you loaned me a bottle of hot sauce…

They finally came to the entrance to the generator room. Brubeck stayed back with his eyes on the hangar, just in case anything moved. The air was just wretched. They all knew they needed both lights and air conditioning as soon as possible.

The generator room was between helicopter maintenance and a security station. The door stood open. Brubeck and Psycho were on full alert this time. They didn't need to be told what could be waiting behind those doors. Miller reckoned they had all lost their cherries now. Sheppard opened the door and stepped away with his rifle raised.

The two soldiers swept inside, weapons at the ready. Silence fell, except for their footsteps. Terrill Lee, Scratch, and Miller stayed close to Sheppard, since he was armed. The time crawled by, but at least no one screamed. No shots were fired. A few moments later Miller heard the men call out, "Clear!"

Rat and Lovell entered next, leaving Miller, Scratch, Terrill Lee, and Sheppard waiting outside with Ripper. The lights flickered out again. They were back in the dark. Maybe someone had turned them off to open up the electrical panel. Up and down, light and dark, again and again and again.

"All right, Sergeant," called Rat from inside. "Let's get this thing spun up."

The rest of them entered the room. Flashlights focused. The six generators sat in a row, hulking metal dinosaurs lining up for a drag race. Lovell moved to the doorway to stand guard. The inside of the panel doors was an explosion in a spaghetti factory, wires of all colors and shapes woven in and out of mysterious clumps of metal and plastic.

Sheppard stared at the generators, occasionally looking at Major Hanratty.

"Well?" said Rat.

"Well what, Major?" Sheppard said. "Look, I'm a medical technician. I don't know the first thing about generators. I'm here to extract 'data and materials.' I seem to recall that your job is to facilitate that part of the mission."

Rat glared at him, but if she had a harsh response in her head, it never reached her mouth. She was professional. "Lovell, you're up."

Lovell turned in the doorway. "Ma'am?"

Rat said. "Without Dale, you're our resident mechanic. See what you can do. Brubeck, you stand watch."

The men traded places. Lovell and Sheppard found a tool kit and some diagrams. Miller was impressed. What Lovell could do was quite a lot, actually. He had the first three generators up and running in about fifteen minutes. Number four wouldn't start, but five and six were purring like tiger kittens in maybe half an hour. The air conditioning kicked in as well, and Lovell set it on high exhaust. Still, the situation was dire and slowly pressing in on their options. Thinking of the time made Miller nervous. The base was going to blow sky high in a nuclear fireball and the clock was ticking. She resisted the urge to hurry everyone up. They all felt it.

Miller just watched them work.

While Lovell was happily engaged with the generators, Ripper and Brubeck fiddled around with the large crate. Miller stood in the background, trying to get a look at the center of their attention.

Ripper and Brubeck took the lid and one side off the crate. The metal siding screamed. That's when Miller saw something she hadn't expected. The design made her short hairs wriggle. A radiation symbol, and a nuclear hazard warning. Mass death in a neat, clean package.

The device lay prone on what looked like a pair of long skis. It was a gigantic dildo of a thing with a shiny metal surface and a bunch of numbers along the side. As Miller watched, the two soldiers efficiently armed it and set the clock, then locked the panel up again. The live nuke squatted there on the concrete floor—soundless, mindless, and deadly.

Miller felt her blood pressure drop and her anger rise.
A nuclear weapon?
They brought a goddamned nuke with them and didn't mention it…

Miller sucked in a deep breath. She focused her mind in preparation for reading Hanratty the riot act. Before Miller could open her mouth, Sheppard pulled her aside. He put a finger up to his lips and took her into a small alcove.

"Did you see that fucking thing?" Miller said.

"Keep your voice down," Sheppard whispered. "Yes, I knew about the nuke. They told me earlier. But we can't do anything about that. They'll shoot you if you try."

"Karl, this is insane! There may be survivors all over this area."

Sheppard sighed. He looked around to make sure no one could overhear their conversation. "This is important, Penny. I couldn't talk to you earlier because we were with the General, and then the mercenaries were around. This is what I've been wanting to tell you. Trust me it's a damned good thing that you decided to come along on this mission."

Miller frowned. "Why would it be a good idea to go where they are arming a nuclear weapon?"

Sheppard came in closer to her ear. "I overheard some things when Major Hanratty and General Gifford were chatting. They didn't say it in so many words, but from what I was able to pick up, any one of us who didn't
volunteer
to go were going to find themselves in a world of hurt soon enough."

"Meaning what? Prison?" asked Miller.

"If you were lucky. I heard the term 'Enemy Combatant' tossed around. Do I really have to tell you what could happen if you were arrested under that label? No charges, no trial, indefinite detention. They could hold you forever."

Miller stiffened. She wasn't scared in that moment so much as monumentally pissed off. What was it about these men in positions of power that fucked them up so badly?

"They wouldn't dare pull a stunt like that."

"
Shh!
Yes, they would. Someone has to answer for the epidemic, right? And I mean in a very big way. And I guarantee you it's not going to be the men who gave the order for a secret base researching biological weapons. Someone else is going to take the fall. It's never those guys, right?"

"So it would have been us, at least unless we cooperated. They would have made up a story about how we broke in and caused it all. That was Plan B. This way is even better because they can destroy the evidence, protect the research, and keep their secrets from the rest of the world."

Sheppard said, "There it is."

Miller nodded. "I get it. Thanks, Sheppard."

"Now, please," Sheppard said, urgently, "keep this quiet. As long as we do well on this mission, we should be okay."

"We'd best be," Miller said. She glared at the back of Rat's head. "You know, when this is all over, I do believe I'm going to feed Hanratty and Gifford to the fucking zombies."

Sheppard and Miller came out of the alcove to find Hanratty with her back to them, watching Lovell work.

When Lovell finished, Rat asked, "Will this be enough power for your purposes, Sergeant?"

"I hope so," Sheppard said, a little too casually. "Let's go find out."

They exited the generator room to find the hangar lit up as if it were daytime. The huge overhead doors loomed above them, the roof of a malevolent Astrodome. Bullet holes decorated the walls by the thousands. Dried blood was sprayed everywhere. The floor of the hangar itself was the aftermath of a holocaust. Miller looked across the hangar to the far left corner where they had made their last stand. It was there that the bodies were piled up highest. Miller shuddered as she again remembered whirling in circles, a gory toy top, machete in hand, decapitating zombies by the hundreds, with some of the soldiers she couldn't protect dying, only to rise and join the zombie horde that had just slaughtered them.

Terrill Lee and Sheppard were also silent. Both men looked pale.

"If everyone's done gawking," said Scratch dryly, "I want to get the hell out of here before somebody comes back to life."