The Hunger (Book 5): Decayed

by Brant, Jason

  “The truth of the matter,” Emily said, “is we don’t really know much about the Bandits or that bizarre camp run by Magnus King.”

  Cass glared at Emily. “Bullshit.”

  “I’m being honest. We’ve had zero communication with either of them. We’ve tried to locate the Bandits’ home or base or whatever you want to call it, but haven’t had any luck. A few of our people managed to figure out where King lives, but they didn’t get close enough to sort out a lot of details.”

  “So you have two enemy groups nearby, and you know almost nothing about them?” Lance asked. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “We aren’t focused on warfare here,” Becky said. “Unlike you, we try to keep to ourselves. Surviving the demons is hard enough without fighting other people.”

  Lance held a finger up to stop Cass before she went off on another tirade. “What about this Valerie woman? What do you know about her?”

  Emily and Fred exchanged a long glance before Fred finally returned to his chair. Neither said anything for a moment. Lance waited, letting them sort out whatever it was that passed between them.

  “My husband and I started this place.” Emily gestured around her office. “Over the course of a year, we came down here a few hours a day, with other people, and worked on getting the electricity set up, the defenses installed on the perimeter, and the spotlights on the roof. We did it in secret.”

  “In secret?” Cass asked.

  Emily nodded. “Before we developed The Light, we built the site Valerie runs now.”

  Lance nearly fell out of his chair. Of all the things he’d expected to hear, that wasn’t one. Of course, he knew Emily and Valerie had some kind of history, that much was obvious, but learning they’d actually lived in PA with that crazy lady proved a shocking revelation.

  Reading the surprise on his face, Emily continued. “We’d lived at a different camp for a few months, when a group of former military men came through and wiped us out. We—”

  “Led by Frank Colt,” Cass said.

  It was Emily’s turn to look surprised.

  Lance maintained his stupefied expression.

  “I killed him a few years ago. You’re welcome.” Cass turned to Lance. “Oh, by the way, you’re famous around here for doing something I actually did. Figures.”

  “Uhh, what?” he managed to ask.

  “You killed Frank Colt?” Emily shook her head slightly. “I don’t—”

  “We’ll talk about it later. I’m sure all of you will love to hear the gory details.” Cass gave Becky a smug smile. “Just get to the part where you built the wall around Valerie’s place.”

  “Oh, sure.” Emily took a second to collect her thoughts. “Edward, my husband, was an engineer. A great engineer. He had brilliant ideas about using hydroelectricity to generate unending power that would electrify a large fence around a compound. He talked about it all the time with those of us who were left after Colt disappeared.”

  “That’s when they met me,” Fred said. “And Valerie. The four of us had all lived in the same camp, but we hadn’t spoken until only a few of us remained.”

  Emily kept going. “We pooled our resources and searched for a new place we could call home. When we found that campground, it was a revelation, because it already had a hydro plant on site. It wasn’t fully self-powered, but that’s a story for a different time. We spent a lot of blood, sweat, and tears getting the electricity turned on and building that big wall.”

  “Yeah, we did.” Fred gave Emily a small smile. “Ol’ Eddie was a damn genius with that stuff. He knew exactly what we needed to do each step of the way.”

  “It worked. After the power was on and the wall was built, we migrated everyone from our old camp to the new location. For the first time since the infection, we were safe during the night. We could work after sundown. It was amazing.”

  Becky finally spoke up. “That’s when Valerie lost her fucking mind.”

  “I think she was nutty from the start, but we all ignored it because she did a great job motivating the others.” Fred rubbed a hand over his bald head. “We should have seen it sooner.”

  Emily said, “Edward, Valerie, and I ran the place. I didn’t want anything to do with it, but Edward insisted I help him. He wasn’t all that good with people, you see, and he always said I sanded down his rough edges. What he lacked in interpersonal skills, I made up for. He was the brains and I was the heart, he used to say.”

  Tears filled Emily’s eyes.

  Her throat worked.

  Seeing she couldn’t continue, Fred interjected. “Long story short—after we’re in there and everything is running all hunky dory, Valerie started spouting some really nutso ideas, saying crazy things about men ruining the world and women inheriting the remnants of civilization. That dummy actually told Edward he needed to step down, to follow her orders from now on, because his masculinity poisoned his mind or some garbage like that. Really nutty stuff.”

  “It divided the community,” Becky said. “A lot of people agreed with her. She is extremely talented at convincing people to see things her way.”

  “Edward saw the writing on the wall almost right away.” Emily regained her composure while straightening out her desk, as if the movement helped sort her thoughts. “He started going out on scavenging runs with Fred.”

  Fred said, “We spent most of the time searching for a good place to rebuild. It had to be along some major power lines he could easily route our energy through. No idea how he did that or anything, way above my pay grade, but he finally settled on this place. We brought in a couple of people we could trust and got to work.”

  “While they focused on this building, I kept trying to get through to Valerie. It didn’t work at all. Her ideas got stranger and stranger. It started with her epiphany that women should lead, regardless of who they were or what they could do. Her ideas about men got more dangerous by the day. Eventually, she had the epiphany that we should limit how many men are around at any given point. She conceded that males with special skillsets were still important for the community. But the rest? They would only cause problems over time.”

  “Some guys started disappearing not long after that,” Becky said quietly. Most of the fight seemed to have drained out of her as she slumped in her chair. “I was seeing a guy who had run a small restaurant in Scranton. He was supposed to come over to my place to cook us a nice meal from canned goods I’d found a few days before. As nice a meal as he could with that stuff, anyway. He didn’t show up. I never saw him again. Valerie tried to convince me that he’d decided to leave the camp on his own.”

  “That’s when we knew it was time to hightail it out of there.” Fred chewed on his lower lip. “This place wasn’t ready yet—we still hadn’t finished welding all the metal pieces to the outside of the building—but Eddie and I were afraid she would come for us next.”

  “Why didn’t you take her out?” Cass asked.

  “Because she had supporters.” Emily sighed. “As stupid as it sounds, a lot of people were rallying behind her. She made a lot of promises to them. Of course, she kept most of her really zany ideas about culling some men to those closest to her. If we’d tried to remove her, it would have been bloody. Honestly, we would have lost. All we had to offer was a chance at safety. She promised them a utopia.”

  “We woke up before dawn and told as many people as we could, those we could trust, then got the hell out of there at sunup,” Fred said. “Haven’t been back since. She sent a few of her gorillas down here to antagonize us for a while, but that eventually stopped, too. We got this place finished and the rest is history.”

  “She stopped screwing with you?” Lance asked. “Just like that?”

  “It seems that isn’t quite the case, doesn’t it?” Becky’s sneer returned. “She’s been sending the Bandits to steal our people. We don’t even know how she met them. That partnership happened after we left.”

  “Jesus.” Lance sat back in his chair
. “And I thought we had some crazy stuff happen to us on the island.”

  “We’ve accepted stragglers when they came by ever since. Our population has grown a lot, but the city has so many leftover resources that we’re doing all right.” Emily straightened her back, squared her shoulders. “Edward did right by all of us when he picked this place.”

  “What happened to him?” Cass asked.

  Lance had wondered the same thing during the entire story, but he didn’t want to bring it up right away. It was safe to say if that Edward fella were still around, he would be in the office with them.

  “He grew ill a few months ago.” Emily maintained eye contact with Cass, though her lip quivered. “He died less than two weeks later.”

  “From being sick?” Cass asked.

  Fred said, “Your friend is the first doctor we’ve had here. When someone gets really messed up, we do the best we can, but we don’t really have any idea what we’re doing. Our first aid knowledge comes from a few books we took from a local library.”

  “We think most doctors died during the outbreak,” Becky said. “They were in the hospitals, caring for the infected when the mutation started. We don’t think too many got out before it was too late.”

  Lance remembered when he’d come to at the hospital with Liz and her dickwad boyfriend in his room. The place had fallen into absolute chaos in a hurry. He’d barely made it out of there himself, and he wasn’t tending to the infected. As he’d fled, he’d noticed a lot of doctors and soldiers trying to maintain control.

  Their theory held water.

  “I’m sorry,” Cass said. “About Edward. He sounded like a good man.”

  “He was.” Fred reached across the desk, patted Emily’s hand. “We owe him everything.”

  Emily gave him a grim smile, then turned to Lance. “I’m doing the best I can to keep this place going, but I never wanted to be in charge in the first place. I’m good with people, but I don’t like giving orders and I can’t bear asking someone to do anything dangerous.”

  “I understand, believe me.” Lance could relate. He somehow kept getting more and more responsibility put on him, even though he’d never asked for any of it. “We’re all doing the best we can.”

  “You still should have told him what you knew before sending him to Valerie,” Cass said. “You could have at least mentioned a few details that would have made things easier.”

  Emily laid her hands flat on the desk. “Again, I didn’t know you were—”

  Gunshots cut her off.

  Glass shattered.

  And then the screaming started.

  6

  Greg approached the body on stilted legs. None of his joints wanted to cooperate. The wound on the head looked exactly like Adam’s. Even the hair color matched his friend’s. But the skin was mottled and gray. The neck had bent at an unnatural angle, the face twisted away so Greg couldn’t see it.

  The hands and feet were missing, the limbs ending in rough, jagged stumps. White bone glistened from the bottom of the left leg.

  “No,” he whispered. “Please, no.”

  The stench of decay wafted through the air as he approached. He suppressed a gag, covering his mouth and nose with a filthy hand. He pushed forward, wanting to turn back, wishing for anything but to see what he expected.

  Mud covered most of the clothing, but not all.

  Greg recognized the shirt.

  It was Adam.

  “Is that anyone you recognize?” Emmett asked as he worked on the wounded Bandit.

  Will moved closer, inspecting the body. “I don’t recognize him.”

  “It’s Adam.” Greg’s voice came out wispy and soft. He cleared his throat. “They found Adam and brought him here to screw with us.”

  “Adam?” Emmett’s mouth fell open. “Oh, Jesus.”

  Greg climbed onto the hood of the car, finally forcing himself to look at the face. They’d plucked out his eyes with a crude instrument. Ragged gashes ran from the corners of his mouth to his ears, creating a horrific smile.

  They’d mutilated him almost beyond recognition.

  Beyond the barrier, The Light loomed in the distance. Someone started screaming. Greg tore his eyes from the body, glanced to the building. He finally noticed the damage the Bandits’ gunfire had caused to several massive windows.

  Two huge panes of glass had completely shattered, leaving gaping holes a few floors up. A handful of others were cracked, but they remained in place.

  Half-a-dozen people stood in the empty space of one of the destroyed windows. One was a young, olive-skinned woman who pointed in his direction and screamed in horror.

  Greg thought of Lilith waiting for him inside. Even though she was pregnant, when she heard the gunfire and shouts, she would come to investigate.

  She would see what they’d done to her husband.

  He couldn’t allow that to happen.

  “We have to bury him.” Greg slid from the hood to approach the body from the side. “Before Lilith sees him like this.”

  “Hold on a sec.” Will grabbed Greg’s arm, stopping him as he reached toward Adam. “Who the hell is this guy?”

  “He’s my best friend. I—he was infected, and I had to—” Greg let the sentence trail off.

  Realization dawned on Will’s face. “Oh. Oh, shit.”

  Greg could only nod, afraid he’d lose his composure if he tried to speak again.

  The wounded Bandit gargled.

  It took all of Greg’s willpower not to turn around and stomp the man’s head into goo. After a few seconds of fighting back tears, Greg felt his throat relax. He turned to Emmett. “We have to move him before Lilith looks out the window and sees what they did.”

  “Yes, of course.” Emmett peered at the wounded man. “But I can’t leave him like this.”

  “Fuck him, bro.”

  “You know I can’t let him die.”

  Greg sneered, but held his tongue.

  Of all the times for Doc Brown’s moralistic garbage to flare up, that moment just had to be one. He wished for once his doctor buddy would step back and see the bigger picture. A dying Bandit wasn’t a catastrophe—it was a blessing. But if he did that, then he wouldn’t be Doc Brown.

  Greg took a few deep breaths, looked to Will. “Can you get me a shovel from your building?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Will tore his gaze from the body. “Where will you bury him?”

  “Is there a park nearby?”

  “Uhh, lemme think. There’s a place two or three blocks west of here. Not a big spot, but there’s some earth there. Really overgrown, I’m sure.”

  “Meet there as fast as you can.”

  “You got it. I’ll bring two shovels and a pickaxe. Help you get this taken care of.”

  “Thanks, bro.” Greg forced his attention back to Adam. The sight of his disfigured friend made him want to scream and whimper and curse whatever god would allow something so terrible to happen.

  Will crossed the barrier, then took off at a slight jog toward The Light.

  “Bring some medical supplies with you. And something to carry this man on,” Emmett called after him.

  With a flip of his hand over his shoulder, Will signaled his affirmation without stopping.

  Greg slid one of his arms behind Adam’s back, tucking his other under his knees. Grunting, he lifted the body from the hood of the car and stepped back. The smell hit him like a punch to the face.

  Vomit rose from his stomach, threatening to spray all over the place. Greg heaved twice, but managed to force everything back down. His eyes watered from the grief and the stench, making it difficult to see as he staggered down the sidewalk.

  The body was lighter than he’d expected, though he still struggled under the weight. He wasn’t a strong man. Carrying the drone and batteries for two blocks would be difficult for him, let alone a human body.

  But he vowed not to stop until he reached the park.

  He had to get Adam away from The Light, in c
ase Lilith decided to look outside. It wouldn’t take long for word to spread among the survivors that the mutilated corpse of someone they didn’t know was left at their front door.

  Greg’s guilt grew with each step.

  He should have buried Adam’s body.

  They’d left him on the forest floor for the animals.

  For the Bandits.

  Adam was a kind, caring man. The best man. He didn’t deserve to be mutilated and laid out as a horrific warning. Greg should have dug him a grave, no matter how long it would have taken. It didn’t matter if they were running from crazy cultists and talking Vladdies, he never should have left his friend behind.

  His arms grew weary as he walked.

  An ache pulled its way up his back.

  He tried to ignore the stink of decay.

  Wind ruffled his hair, chilled his hands and face.

  “I’m sorry, bro. So sorry.” Greg finally released his emotions as he carried Adam to the park.

  7

  Cass attempted to spring from her chair when the gunfire started, but a spasm in her back prevented her from standing too quickly. She hobbled to the closest window, one hand kneading at the muscles just above her waist.

  “What’s going on?” Becky asked.

  “We’re taking fire!” Fred sprinted through the door, disappearing into the hallway of goods.

  Glass shattered somewhere below.

  Lance stopped at the window. Peered down. “Looks like those Bandit assholes are shooting at the building.”

  “They’re by the barricade.” Emily pointed to the line of cars in the distance. “They’ve never done this before.”

  Cass put a hand against the glass, watching as a few men shot automatic weapons at The Light. When their magazines ran dry, one waved at the building, shouting something she couldn’t make out.

  But the message was clear.

  The war had begun.

  A handful of men waited by their van, which they’d parked nearby.

  “The one yelling at us is the leader,” Cass said. “Higgins. He’s number one on my shit list.”