BESIEGED (HUNGRY Series Book 2)

by Lawrence Herbert Tide

  It opened an eager jaw seeing that its prey was almost lying on the floor near it.

  Harry arrived and closed his big hand on the creature's bony wrist. A creak was heard and he lifted it, making it find itself supported above its many peers.

  The colossus opened his hand and the zombie crashed on the teeming pile.

  Bo stood up and said, "Thank you, Harry."

  "You're welcome, boy," Harry replied, grinning at him, and then looking down as if the thanks made him uncomfortable. His smile disappeared, making his son's friend uncomfortable.

  Harry startled Bo as he grabbed his ankle tightly, almost making him fall again. The tall colored man released his ankle and put something in front of the big blond's eyes, making him almost squint.

  Surprised, the boy pulled back, horrified to see that it was a skeleton hand, one of the hands of the zombie that had just been ejected. The fingers moved, having spasms, which made Bo feel uncomfortable.

  "Need a helping hand?" asked the black colossus, smiling.

  He laughed heartily and threw the trembling hand over the rampart, adding, "Hey, I've never seen the zombies as numerous and so excited, but why?"

  "That's what I've been trying to make you understand for a while now," Bo interjected, getting closer to Harry to see what was going on downstairs, just like Red and Johnny, and he continued, "I think Adams has so many undead around the community to foster fear, and thereby his power, that it caused a phenomenon he did not expect."

  "What kind of phenomenon?" Red asked, knowing deep down inside that she wasn't going to like the answer.

  "Zombies are always concentrated where there is a food source, hungry zombies attract other hungry zombies, just as vulture clusters on a carcass attract other vultures flying in circles at high altitudes..."

  "... Because they know they are in the process of feeding, and that it will be worth flying up there," interrupted his father, who became silent as he looked down, at a new "wave" of undead beginning to swell along the concrete wall.

  "But I've never seen the zombies behave like today," his son exclaimed, watching at his side the swarming, throbbing mass below. "Looks like ants led by a superior intelligence that would make them organize themselves in a surprising way, like..."

  He fell silent because the wave had just inflated to the point of projecting three zombies to the top of the wall.

  With two swift movements of his sword the young man of color decapitated two of them while the third was returned to the fray because of a powerful punch in the face from Harry.

  The creature fell moaning animally on the wave of gesticulating bodies.

  "They're actually like ants!" the young man said at last, while he wiped on the top of his tracksuit the dark blood remaining on his blade, a habit inherited from the ancient Samurai, when they had killed their adversaries.

  "That's exactly right," Bo said, disgusted as he watched him. "Individually, zombies are very stupid, but when they are in large numbers, they behave as if controlled by a collective intelligence, an anthill or hive, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts that make it up... even if I have to admit that, I do not know why, I sense that there is nevertheless a centralized intelligence somewhere."

  In the face of the growing excitement of the creatures they heard and saw outside, he moved away from the ledge, imitated by the others.

  They had to find a way to establish a defense, and quickly...

  Suddenly the bestial rumor ceased.

  The silence that had suddenly come was heavy, surprising after all the rage that had fallen on the defenders for some time. Red and her friends looked at each other, intrigued, listening.

  The young redhead decided to approach the edge of the rampart again.

  "Watch out, Red," Harry said, moving closer to her, "remember what happened the last time you looked over the rampart!"

  She didn't answer and remained bent over, scrutinizing what was going on below.

  The black colossus came to her side and looked. It was then that Bo and Johnny saw him come to a halt as well, seemingly fascinated.

  "What is happening?" Bo asked as he tentatively approached the edge, adding, "We cannot hear them anymore, they're gone?"

  Nobody answered him and, also leaning on the edge, he was in turn speechless.

  The zombies had stopped screaming like wild beasts, and now piled up on top of each other, slowly and in an awkward silence.

  Standing on the ramparts, the four friends and the other human defenders contemplated the collective intelligence at work. Some creatures leaned against the outer surface of the high walls of the Community, while others climbed up their backs and put their feet on their shoulders, climbing to the heights. The strange collective consciousness pushed the zombies to build some kind of siege towers at the foot of the wall.

  Red was impressed by this manifestation of the power of numbers, and even wondered if it would not be possible to communicate with it. And the red-haired girl could not help wondering, could it be possible to reason with such an Entity?

  While she watched, fascinated, literally layers of these creatures rising to their level, she was impressed by the calmness with which they looked at them, the living human beings.

  One of the creatures, a living dead young man in a shirt and pants in fashion, almost still beautiful, was better preserved and less rotten than the others, and it was looking down.

  It slowly looked up at her.

  Glassy and starry eyes and green ones looked at each other, and it was as if the undead and the human were measuring themselves against each other. She wondered, But what do you want?

  The zombie opened a mouth with still intact and almost colored lips, and the human beings almost expected that the creature was going to speak.

  It opened a disproportionate mouth with rotten teeth and began to roar.

  Thousands of other roars joined his and the young zombie and others jumped to the walls and clung to it while the humans recoiled.

  Someone shouted an order and all the defenders, warned, hit the ground.

  The creatures, remaining hooked, stopped as if they were surprised.

  It was then that a deluge of flames fell on the zombies, transforming them into roaring and gesticulating torches. Some of the blazing creatures, which were moving lower, began to glow, then to inflate like balloons.

  "What's happening to them?" asked Bo, looking at them, intrigued, leaning over the rampart.

  Red opened her eyes wide when she saw everything that was happening and shouted, "Beware everyone, go back!" Having shouted that, she slapped the blond man to the ground as Harry pulled his son, who was looking down, violently toward him.

  Several of the zombies exploded in loud bangs among their fiery fellows which exploded in their turn.

  Some of the guards standing on the ramparts were shaken by the violence of the detonations and, losing their balance, fell screaming on the mass of fiery creatures. Their groans of pain as they were consumed by the flames horrified Red and her companions who had receded, moans that, much to their relief, were quickly drowned in the sound of the explosions.

  There was another series of explosions which caused even more severe quakes. They forced them along with the other surviving defenders to stay behind or dropped them on the concrete path along the inside of the ramparts.

  Finally the last explosion made them jump one last time, and then, all of a sudden, silence returned.

  Well, almost.

  They couldn't hear anything, except for some cracking.

  Gazing cautiously over the ledge while being ready to fling himself to the ground, Johnny and his son saw that there was nothing left at the foot of the ramparts but charred and smoking remains with some flames, which emitted some crackling sounds.

  "Wow!" exclaimed Red, who had just come up to the edge of the ledge with Bo, and he asked, "Is it finally over?"

  As if to answer her question they suddenly heard a shudder and, looking away, they saw,
coming out from behind hundreds of trees and shrubs, literally a stream of undead.

  "The wall!"

  This voice had come from underneath and behind them. Looking back and looking down in the compound, Red and her friends saw a child and his mother, both standing in front of the nearest Community homes. The little boy, in T-shirt and jeans, was pointing something out.

  "The wall. Look, Mom, there's a hole in the wall!"

  His mother looked frightened as she looked where he was pointing, as did the crowd of curious people standing behind them, who had watched the events unfold.

  While several other defenders were observing from the ramparts what was happening outside, the group of friends went down the stairs to reach ground level.

  Taking a look at the part of the wall shown by the little boy, they saw that an impressive crack had formed in the wall.

  "My God," a man wearing work clothes said while passing by them to see the crack more closely.

  He paused and leaned over to take a closer look at the crack which was very wide, then whistled, obviously impressed. He then turned to a colleague who came behind him, in the same kind of work clothes, and said, "Quick, go get one of the robot builders, the crack must be filled before the zomb..."

  He choked when a hand passed through the crack and grabbed him by the front of his collar to pull him against the wall.

  "Help!" he shouted as a dark-rotten bony hand tugged on his collar, and he was literally pressed against the cement surface. An animal grunt was heard, followed by a growling worthy of a wild beast.

  His colleague tried to loosen the embrace, but the fingers with their visible bony knuckles were clearly impossible to open. The only thing he managed to do was to excite even more the creature on the other side, as its roars became even louder.

  "Aaarrrrggghh!" shouted the prisoner, while the side of his grimacing face, pressed hard against the wall, began to turn red.

  A lightning sword slash cut the protruding forearm and the finally released technician fell backwards, taking his colleague back with him.

  A roar, clearly more from frustration than from pain, was heard, coming from the other side of the wall, while Johnny, sheathing his sword, standing near the crack, asked the two men, "Are you OK?"

  The technician was now crouching next to his scarlet-faced colleague, who struggled to pull the decaying hand off his collar, but the bony fingers, still shaking, continued to squeeze hard.

  "Well, desperate situations call for desperate actions," Harry exclaimed, crouching in his turn next to the suffocating man, and then he grabbed a few knuckles in one of his big hands.

  Laughter all over his face, the colossus broke them in great crunches.

  The whitened pieces fell like knucklebones on the chest of the prone man.

  Harry had released the collar and the throat of the technician who, finally, sucked loudly a gulp of air.

  The colossus held in his hand that of the creature's, covered with rot, with a few missing fingers. The colossus stared at it, fascinated, as it was waving its remaining fingers, still full of life, moving like a tarantula partly dismembered by a cruel child.

  "Catch it!" Harry shouted, swinging the bloody hand to his son.

  The latter instantly unsheathed his sword and sliced the hand in the air. It was with the saber still in his hands that he watched the two pieces fall at his feet. Then, while the two parties were wriggling on the floor, the young man looked reproachfully at his father and whispered, "Hey, Dad, don't joke with me like that!"

  The colossus replied with a great laugh, full of warmth, a communicative laugh which the young man, as well as his friends Bo and Red, could not resist. They felt such a desire to lower the tension of the recent days, and this parenthesis was welcome.

  Another hand crossed the crack and Johnny sliced its forearm with a sharp and precise gesture.

  The thing fell at his feet near the two pieces of the cut hand, and the three body parts throbbed and moved at his feet, while roars were heard on the other side of the wall.

  Red felt her hair stand up on her head as she saw several pairs of glowing eyes watching them through the crack, the creatures growling like wild beasts.

  The young redhead turned to Bo and said, "Bo, you have to go and shake Hoffnung, we need those weapons!"

  "I'm straight off!" shouted the blond man while running away.

  "For my part, I'm going to the hospital," Harry said as he lifted the other technician off the ground. Though muddy, he was getting his color back. His colleague said to Red, "I'll quickly get a job robot to plug the crack."

  He ran away while the colossus started walking, the other technician in his arms like a doll.

  The commotion and grunts redoubled on the other side of the wall, and the girl and Johnny looked at each other with concern.

  ***

  Weapons

  The laser beam pierced the edge of the future handle of the crystal blade while, helped by his friend Lee holding the object for him, Hoffnung now gave the handle a more oval, softer shape.

  While the ray grazed the surface, shaving it as close as the width of a hair, imperfections that protruded, heated to thousands of degrees by the ray, instantly passed from the solid state to the gaseous state. The crystal vapors evaporated into the air, billions of carbon atoms, which, from time to time, made them both cough.

  Hoffnung, wearing - like Lee - specially adapted dark glasses of protection, was more focused on his task than ever, while, his heart beating hard in his plump chest, he heard shouts remind him of the roars of animals, outside the workshop, mingled with the distraught cries of the Community's population.

  "So?"

  The loud voice made the scientist jump, making him move the crystal blade sprayed by the laser beam.

  The change of the angle of reflection of the red ray made it deviate towards the jacket of his fellow engineer, who recoiled suddenly.

  Looking scared at the hole that had formed the Asian shouted, "Be careful for God's sake, I could have been killed!"

  They heard a little cough near them and, turning around, saw Bo, who was looking awkwardly at them.

  Hoffnung turned red with anger and shouted, "Do you realize that by shouting at me and making me jump, not only did you almost cause an accident, but also could've ruined an hour of work?"

  The blond and muscular young man didn't seem impressed by the anger of the obese man, and, pointing with a thumb to something behind him, he said calmly, "I did not scream."

  Looking behind the newcomer, the fat scientist suddenly became white as a sheet when he saw that there was, standing behind Bo, the colossus of color.

  The latter stomped over to him, then, leaning forward and looking at him harshly, said in the same loud and stressful voice, "So, where is the blade that Red is waiting for?"

  Hoffnung gave him a shy little smile and then passed to him a crystal sword, holding it by its handle.

  It was brutally taken from his hands and it was a miracle that, holding very lightly the saber by the blade, he let it go quickly enough not to have his fingers wounded by its sharp edges.

  Harry turned the sword between his big fingers, enjoying its lightness.

  He could not help but admire the colorful reflections that emanated from it. Illuminated by the white light of the neon lights above them, the blade rendered all the colors of the rainbow.

  The tall man seemed to relax and finally looked back at Hoffnung, now smiling at him.

  "Good job, I already saw the strangeness as much as the effectiveness of this material... Red will be delighted," said the colossus to the scientist, who finally relaxed too.

  His Korean friend, Tony Lee, near them, didn't seem as reassured, watching the huge visitor with caution.

  Harry added, "How many are there like this one?"

  "How many? Well, none other than this one, at least for the moment..."

  "Only one crystal blade?" thundered the tall black man, whose soft eyes became hard again, an
d whose toothy smile disappeared, his lips tightening with anger.

  "We've already started to work on the second one," the Korean intervened, who had started to laser cut another blade, and he added, "You'll soon have this one and several others."

  Harry looked at him dubiously, still tense, and finally added, "OK, I'm bringing this first crystal sword to Red. Bo, please, watch them and bring the blades to the ramparts whenever they are ready. You two, continue, please, we need all the possible weapons we can get to survive this siege! "

  He turned his back on them and started to move toward the half-open door, while Hoffnung came to help his friend on the blade being laser cut.

  The big scientist could not help but breathe a sigh of relief, his sagging shoulders making him look almost like a balloon deflating.

  "What is that?"

  The tenor voice made both of them jump again and they turned to see Harry standing in front of something near the entrance.

  "What... that?" Hoffnung asked, embarrassed.

  "Yes, that... what is it?"

  "It's something that could help you resist the invasion of the zombies on the ramparts. It was part of a project I worked on for DARPA, the military research agency. Take it, I believe it is loaded."

  The colossus lifted the heavy metal object as if it was a toy, much to Hoffnung's surprise. Harry looked more closely, from every angle, and finally, intrigued, he said, "Explain it to me."

  ***

  Cracking

  "They won't make it," Johnny murmured as he watched the scene with Red.

  "Do not be so defeatist," the girl said to him reproachfully.

  But deep inside herself, she thought he was probably right...

  In front of them, two robots were working on the breach in the wall, watering with a kind of cement gun the crack, which was like a horrible scar across the surface of the wall, usually so homogeneous. The grayish liquid had begun to solidify, but it did not fully succeed, cracking under the external pressure of zombies that were pushing to seep through.