With a deep heart, he looked at a picture of his late wife, Akiko, Mei's mother.
Her joie de vivre, despite her setbacks, and her confidence in herself... She looks so much like her!
He took a deep breath and decided, all of a sudden, to forget the past and to think about the future.
The near future...
Still fumbling in the drawer, he removed from a corner a bag that he opened, revealing dried plants. He took a handful and threw it into the bowl of water next to him.
The herbs dissolved very quickly in the water, giving it a curious green color.
Hiroto then drank as quickly as he could the contents of the bowl, which had now become effervescent.
He then backed away suddenly and lay on his back. The arm holding the bowl began to shake, the same as the fingers clutching it.
Suddenly the bowl escaped him.
The almost empty container fell silently on the soft carpet at the foot of the bed and, emptying its contents, rolled a little further.
Trembling now and spitting some of the green liquid from his half-opened lips, his eyes wide open towards the ceiling, the old man emitted groans of pain. Then the groans stopped and, calming down, he found a calm breath...
An affirmed breath.
Without feeling the slightest effort he rose slowly from the bed and, walking noiselessly, as his ancestors had learned to do for centuries, he approached the door of the room.
He then pressed his ear against it and listened.
No noticeable noise.
He opened the door, which moved without a sound. Welcoming the fact that he had always wanted their apartment to be impeccable in every respect, among other things by making sure to grease its doors, he entered the corridor and, with a thousand precautions, closed the door of his room behind him.
Then he began to walk along the corridor. He then heard a humming that made him stop.
Nobody came to him. Still walking with a step as light as a feather, he passed the half-open door of the kitchen and, stopping near the frame, glanced inside.
Mei was alone in the kitchen, preparing a meal while humming. Standing in front of a table on which she was preparing the meal, she began to sing an old Japanese song.
A song about the fall of the snow...
Hiroto felt at once an impulse, an irrepressible desire to go to her. His eyes began to tinge with red. He smelled the smell of his daughter's flesh, very attractive. The smell of her blood, so fresh, so young, so tasty, according to the aromas he sniffed, even at this distance.
He advanced a hesitant foot, already clumsy...
And he stepped back sharply, hiding behind the door as Mei was turning around.
He breathed as silently as possible, but the sound of his own breath seemed deafening, it was as if it was totally invading his mind, annihilating anything else he could have heard.
Looking now through the thin interstice between the wall and the door, he saw that the young woman had returned again, completely focused on her task.
The old man withdrew a small sharp knife from his belt and looked at the metal point, the blade reflecting the light of the corridor where he was. His hand trembled as he held the handle of the dagger.
Suddenly he planted it in the back of his other hand, emitting a small groan of pain when the flesh was pierced.
The slight moan made Mei turn to look behind her.
Looking at her discreetly, he saw his daughter frown, an interrogation replaced by a frown expressing doubt. She turned around again to continue her work.
The pain made Hiroto's eyes close.
Then his breath became calmer again.
Yes...
The ancestral drug that his ancestors had taken for centuries, to ease the pain and stay lucid during the most frightful battles. This drug, which was one of the many family secrets transmitted down inside his Samurai family, from father to son...
The drug, added to the pain of the wound, had managed to make him emerge from this animal consciousness, monstrous, that he had felt. His eyes had almost completely lost their disturbing reddish color.
He pulled back slowly and then felt something, which touched his back...
Turning suddenly he found himself face to face with a demon. His heart sped up and then, calming down, he could not help but smile.
It was just the monstrous, predator-fanged mask that adorned the front of the helmet of the Samurai's armor that was in the hallway. This monster mask, worn by his ancestors during armor fights, was once intended to frighten enemies. Without realizing it, he had stepped back and almost hit this multi-secular armor inherited from his ancestors.
And he began to meditate while looking at it...
***
Intrusion
"We won't hack it for long facing such a swarming mass," exclaimed Johnny, who, with his hand on his sword still in its sheath, saw the crack widen visibly under the impressive blows of the zombies.
He and his friend stood ready, standing in front of the crack.
His father had left them momentarily to go further back in the Community, to look for gravel lying along a building. He had told them that the strange weapon he had acquired would be more effective with hard and sharp pieces to mix with the dust that it would project.
"Let's hold on, however long it will take to give Hoffnung the time he needs," Red said, holding in her hand the hilt of her crystal blade, for which she still had no sheath. "Hoffnung's Korean assistant has assured me that as soon as they have finished machining other blades, they will pass them on to the most experienced Kendo students, who press them and wait for them. They're resolutely waiting for them!"
A new knock stronger than the others sounded with such intensity that the sound echoed on the walls around them, cement plates falling from the wall in front of them, mixed with the liquid concrete that the robots were projecting.
Each time, the high-speed cement plugged holes in the gray surface, as if the fissure was a purulent wound that was being cauterized by any means…
At least until now.
"As long as the robots inject cement, we'll save even more time, and they will not manage to get through," a technician said, standing beside them, trying to bring joy into his voice, having had to yell to be heard over the sound of the robots' projection pumps.
The technician, who controlled the robots, smiling, moved closer to the wall to make sure that the machines he controlled were aimed at the crack.
A deafening assault was then heard and it was not a few pieces of cement that fell, but a whole section of the wall.
Red saw that the technician was going to be crushed and dropping her blade on the ground she jumped on him, placing him on the ground just in time before a big block of cement fell where he had been.
Carried away by their own momentum, the red-haired girl and the technician went further. Both finally stopped in a cloud of dust.
"Whew!" exclaimed the girl, helping the man in work clothes to get up, to which he replied with a shy "Thank you", so much he had been shaken by what had looked like a tackle worthy of one of the greatest rugby teams.
He coughed, having swallowed some of the dust which had not yet completely fallen, still enveloping them, and then, turning his head in all directions, he began to look everywhere.
"My controller? Where's my remote controller?" the technician asked, eyes now full of fear, looking for it, while mechanical noises were heard.
"There!" shouted a guard, pointing at something on the ground while holding a flamethrower in his other hand. The technician followed where his finger was pointing and then he jumped, gaping, eyes wide.
On the floor, a few pieces of plastic that had been the remote controller protruded from dusty rock rubble.
"No!" exclaimed the horrified technician as, close to him, Red, and others, the mechanical noise grew louder. Turning his head, just as the others, in the direction from which these noises came, he was flabbergasted by what he saw.
N
ear them the robots had become crazy, uncontrollable, moving erratically, and throwing cement jets at high speed and randomly in all directions.
"Hey!" exclaimed Red, throwing herself on the ground and making a roll-and-go that allowed her to escape one of the jets, having a close shave.
The technician who was standing near her was less fortunate and shouted in surprise as he received a large pour of ultra-quick-setting liquid cement on the legs of his pants. The grayish liquid ran down to his feet, flooding his shoes very quickly, imprisoning him in a gangue of stone.
The man tried to lift a foot to try to get his shoe out but it hardly moved, the gray matter clinging to it. The technician tried to lift the other foot, also without success. Then he tried to move the two alternately as fast as he could, but he looked like an insect trying to extricate itself from a big flow of super glue.
"Aaaah!" shouted the man as he fell while the robot finally changed its spear's direction to send the cement in another direction, but it was too late. The man was now lying on his stomach on the ground, hands flat on it while his feet were completely caught in what had become a block of cement.
A younger technician arrived and ran to the two robots, miraculously dodging their jets. He finally reached each of them and, with a regular hand, deactivated a switch. In turn he finally managed to halt the two crazy robots that finally stopped, their cement spears still spitting a few jets of gray liquid on the ground, before the flow completely dried.
"I'll quickly get the other remote controller to put them to work!" shouted the technician before slipping away to one of the nearby buildings, leaving his unfortunate colleague on the floor with Red and Johnny.
More thrusts, even stronger, were heard at the wall. The pressure this time was too strong and another whole area of the wall at ground level, mixed with partially hardened cement, began to collapse.
Johnny and his red-haired friend watched with morbid fascination one part of the wall collapse on the ground like a castle made of gray cards, leaving a wide gap.
A gap filled with a cloud of dust through which they could now see many skeletal silhouettes, moving forward toward them with slow but sure steps.
"Well, that's it, the moment of truth has arrived!" exclaimed Red, holding her blade firmly by its now finely cut handle, that happily no longer hurt the hand that held it.
"Yeah," Johnny replied, sweat dripping from his forehead while holding his Japanese sword firmly in both hands, while he was also on guard.
The man who was holding the flamethrower near them said nothing but swallowed, opening wide and frightened eyes as indistinct silhouettes began to emerge from the gray cloud.
The intruders ranged from living skeletons wearing the remains of clothes made grim by years of decomposition of their flesh, to other more recently "converted" undead. These were still properly dressed, and the only thing that distinguished them from a living human being was a blued skin and dark veins on their faces. They were all advancing, passing through the gap in a synchronized, almost military way.
Something controls them, Red thought, a collective intelligence, really?
"Help!" shouted the technician lying on his stomach near them, still trapped in the gangue of cement.
Red turned her attention to the prostrate man, blaming herself for having forgotten him, and she was not the only one to notice him. Numerous nightmarish creatures stared at him and growled with pleasure.
An immobile and defenseless prey, which was offered to them...
One of the zombies, probably no more than two meters away, advanced much faster than the others with its arms out, its hands with knuckles crooked. The thing uttered a deafening roar, opening an oversized mouth that showed rotten teeth mixed with dried blood.
It walked over to the prisoner on the ground, obviously intending to shred him into pieces.
Red stepped in and stood ready, her crystal sword raised.
A loud beep made her jump as the face of the undead was hailed with projectiles. Its red eyes, at least what was left of them, rotten and resembling dry black grapes, were pierced, then ran down its rotten cheeks.
Turning around Red and Johnny smiled while looking at Harry, who had come back with the futuristic rifle in his hands.
"I was able to recharge it in a few minutes, Hoffnung is a real genius!" Harry said with joy in his voice. Once again, he was like a little kid opening his new toy.
All of a sudden his smile disappeared and he pointed the gun in front of him.
The thing still standing in front of them was opening its rotten mouth, its lower mandible trembling.
A second shot from the gun literally blew off the top half of the zombie's skull.
Red, disgusted, shielded her eyes with one hand so that they would not receive the brain matter that began to rain around the tall creature that was now motionless. Its brain destroyed, it fell to its knees and, face down, it heavily collapsed forward.
What remained of its liquefied brain flowed from the flaring top of its skull, the reddish liquid with a disgusting rotten smell almost spreading to the technician still caught in the cement. His head was immobilized, too, in the gray gangue, visibly hardening. The man watched in horror as the liquid came toward his face and he closed his eyes, preparing to be splashed by the liquid that was probably very contagious. Several seconds elapsed while, eyes closed as tightly as possible, he waited with fear for the arrival of the auburn and stinking substance.
To his great surprise, long seconds passed by, but he didn't feel the slightest contact with any liquid.
The technician timidly opened his eyes to find, with relief, that the puddle had stopped just inches from his face. The smell of decay and dried blood from the liquid made him nauseous.
He heard a sound almost like an explosion as he was shaken.
Then, surprised, he looked all around him.
The top of the cement gangue that had held him prisoner seemed to have partly exploded. Looking at his freed neck and upper bust, he saw huge black hands that continued to tear off remnants of hardened cement around him, as if these fragments had no more consistency than cardboard.
Raising his chin, the technician saw in his field of vision the head of Harry Jackson who, smiling at him, continued to free his body from the grayish gangue. The technician, who was trying hard to get up, saw on the ground next to him, at the feet of his liberator, a sort of weird rifle with a futuristic look.
"It's over, my friend, you're safe," the good giant exclaimed happily as he helped the man, just as smiling, to get up.
A huge sound like a landslide made both jump.
Turning their heads they saw with horror that the wall had completely collapsed.
"No, this is just the very beginning!" Red shouted, holding the guard of her crystal sword firmly in her hands, while all saw in horror nightmarish silhouettes emerging from the cloud of dust left by the collapsed wall.
***
End of Volume 2 – BESIEGED
Don't miss Red's and her friends' next adventures in Volume 3 of the HUNGRY Zombie Series by remaining in contact with the author on his Amazon Author page
Other Books by the same Author
HORROR BOOKS
Don't tell me that you didn't read Volume 2 of the HUNGRY Zombie Series without reading before the Volume 1? You can find it here:
HUNGRY – Origins of Red
Volume 1 of the HUNGRY Zombie Series
And of course, you can also have Volumes 1 and 2 compiled in one Book:
HUNGRY Tomes 1 and 2
of the HUNGRY Zombie Series
About the Author
Discover me and my universe of Science Fiction and Horror
on my Amazon Author Page
L. H. Tide
BESIEGED (HUNGRY Series Book 2) Page 21
