Devoured (The Hunger #1)

by Jason Brant

  The civilians, funneling in and out of the FedEx store and a few of the still-standing tents, noticed that the military was heading out and that they weren’t being taken along for the ride.

  Shouts erupted from several of them as they walked into the street, hands held out in confusion.

  “You’re taking us with you, right?” a long-haired man in his mid-twenties asked. He jogged over to one of the trucks with a canopied bed, pleading with the soldiers in the back.

  “Step away from the vehicle, sir.” The rearmost soldier stood in the opening, a hand raised over his head, holding the frame of the canopy.

  “Where are you going? Aren’t there any trucks for us?” The man kept coming forward until he was within reaching distance of the tailgate.

  “Instructions will be given to you shortly, but for now I need you to stay back. For your own safety.”

  Lance scoffed at the safety remark from his perch on the sidewalk. Safety had become a relative term over the past few days.

  Don and Liz stood a few yards away, dumbstruck by his comment, furiously whispering at each other. They stopped for a moment, watching the angry crowd approach the truck.

  “Take me with you!” Long Hair grabbed the back of the truck and tried to hoist himself inside. He took a boot to the face for his effort.

  The man fell onto the pavement, landing on his back, the whoosh of air bursting from his lungs audible from the other side of the street.

  More civilians ran over, protesting the man’s treatment, shouting questions at the increasingly agitated soldiers.

  “Everyone needs to remain calm. Help is coming,” the soldier-who-likes-to-kick-people yelled over the dissent.

  “Bullshit! You’re supposed to be the help!” Two more people approached the truck. They grabbed the canopy as the vehicle shuddered forward, the driver eyeing the approaching crowd in his mirrors.

  The growing mob panicked and ran after the truck, screaming and punching at the metal sides. The two men holding the fabric of the soft top clung on for half a block before the butts of rifles smashed their hands free. They tumbled and rolled in the street, abrasions and cuts tearing into exposed skin.

  The few soldiers that hadn’t climbed into the vehicles yet dropped what equipment they carried and sprinted to the nearest truck. They watched as the crowd turned its frustration on them, throwing bottles of water and cursing their cowardice.

  Thirty seconds later, the military presence on the block was gone. They drove down the closed streets, ignoring the now useless traffic signals and construction zones, until they turned a corner and disappeared.

  The furious group followed for a while, angrily screaming for mercy and compassion, finding none. After a few hundred feet, their pursuit ground to a halt.

  Vandalism started shortly thereafter.

  Liz turned her attention back to Lance. “I’m going to ignore what you just said to Don.”

  “Why?” Lance stared at the filthy street his feet rested on. The cold concrete of the curb numbed his backside, easing some of the pain in his left side. “The truth hurts too much?”

  “How can you be so insulting at—?”

  “Spare me the indignation.”

  Don glared at him. “How did you know?”

  “Don!” Liz spun on him, her mouth an O of exasperation.

  “He obviously knows,” Don said, shrugging.

  Lance forced himself to stay seated, knowing what would happen if he got to his feet. Pending divorce or not, the idea of someone else nailing his wife didn’t sit well. He wanted to beat the shit out of Don and he knew he could get away with it as the authorities just went to Splitsville.

  So he stayed on the curb.

  For now.

  “What I want to know is how long you guys have been doing the horizontal mambo?”

  Liz held her face in her hands.

  A smile cracked Don’s face. “Eighteen months.”

  The words hit Lance like a blow to the stomach. He wanted to cry, vomit, and rage all at the same time. His jaw muscles worked as he stared at a cigarette butt on the street, his emotions threatening to boil over.

  Eighteen fucking months.

  “I guess our little run in yesterday wasn’t accidental either.”

  “Nope.”

  “Did you send him to intercept me after my job interview?” Lance asked, turning, his eyes boring into Liz. “Figure you could find out if I was going to sign the papers this week?”

  In a fit of anger a few days prior, Lance had threatened not to sign their divorce paperwork. She came home in a foul mood that afternoon, angry about something that had nothing to do with Lance. She’d started on him before the front door even closed behind her.

  The ammunition she used on him that day consisted of her number one talking point—his inability to give her children.

  That frustration, in and of itself, gnawed at Lance’s ego more than anything. Liz had always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, something that he agreed she would be great at. She loved children and envied all of her friends who’d entered motherhood over the years.

  They’d tried for two years before he finally relented and had himself tested. A gnawing suspicion had worked at him for a while before he went to the clinic that day. The results were what he feared—he was infertile. Something about knowing that he couldn’t fulfill one of his primary duties as a husband crushed Lance on a level he didn’t even understand.

  More than the lost jobs and income, their childless home drove the irreparable chasm between them. The one thing she desired above all others was the only thing he could never provide her.

  The heat really turned on when she approached the age of thirty. Her biological clock ticked louder than ever, and Lance didn’t have the tools to keep it quiet.

  To say that he felt like less of a man because of it would be an understatement of ludicrous proportions. Whenever Liz wanted to put him down, all she had to do was bring that up.

  Last week, when she mentioned the fact that she was a thirty-five-year-old woman without any children, Lance threatened to lengthen her misery. If he didn’t grant her the divorce right away, she couldn’t be rid of him as quickly as she wanted.

  It was a petty, stupid, and hollow threat. He wanted out of the marriage as much she did, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

  “Lance, I’m sorry,” Liz said. She let her hands fall to her side, exposing her leaking eyes. “I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

  “Oh really? What did you figure the best way to tell me was? Maybe let it go on for another year or so and then pretend that it was something new?”

  Liz shook her head but didn’t reply.

  Don maintained his smile. “How long have you known?”

  “It was pretty fucking obvious when I came out of the hospital and found you guys holding hands.”

  “Oops.” His grin grew even larger.

  Lance’s hands clenched as they rested in his lap. “I wondered why you kept asking about Liz when I ran into you on the sidewalk, and how she remembered your name after all of those years. If everything else wasn’t going on, I would have figured it out faster. To be honest, Liz, I expected you to have a boyfriend at some point, but eighteen months ago? Why wait a half a year after that to finally file for divorce?”

  Liz started to respond when Don put a hand on her shoulder.

  “What does it matter, buddy? It’s over. Let’s all move on.” He kept on smiling, obviously enjoying the despair he saw in Lance.

  “You need to shut the fuck up, Don.”

  A group of men down the street threw a garbage can through the window of a department store. They hooted and hollered as they climbed inside, looting the place.

  “Listen, buddy—”

  “I’m not your goddamn buddy, Don.”

  “Whatever. Lance, we’re going to the stadium now. I’d prefer it if you waited around for a little while before following. This is awkward enough without having to he
ar you bitch the entire way there.” Don threw his arm around Liz’s shoulders and stuck his chin out.

  Liz inspected the ground, quiet.

  “I’m trying to talk to my wife, so keep your mouth shut.” Lance’s tenuous grasp on his emotions slipped with every utterance that came from Don’s mouth. “Why the deception? Why the wait? Why continue to tear me down and make me feel worthless when you had someone else on the side for so long? And you, Don. How pathetic is it that you would pretend to give a shit about me getting hit by the car?”

  He climbed off the curb and stepped toward them, not knowing what he would do next.

  Don met him halfway, pushing him in the chest. “One more step and I’ll drop you.”

  Lance didn’t expect the push and he stumbled sideways, his shoulder smashing against the brick exterior of the parking garage. He pushed away from the wall and lunged at Don, his fury exploding as he thought of all the embarrassment and emasculation he’d suffered over the past eighteen months.

  He lobbed a sloppy punch that missed by a foot, throwing him off balance.

  Don sidestepped the blow with ease and connected with a short left hook that skewed Lance’s equilibrium.

  “Three years of boxing, buddy.”

  Lance tried to focus on the bigger man, but his vision wouldn’t focus quite right. His ass bumped into a garbage can, allowing him to regain a modicum of stability. He squared his shoulders and widened his feet when a bolt of white-hot agony shot up his left leg.

  His foot cramped, the arch squeezing in on itself as he lifted it to see what happened. A piece of dark glass, similar to that of a beer bottle, stuck out of the bottom of his foot, blood already welling around the puncture.

  “Shit!” Lance steadied himself on the garbage can and pinched the shard with his fingers, holding in a squeal as it moved in the incision. He pulled it out with a hiss, staring at it in anger, before throwing it into the trash can.

  Don smirked, a small laugh escaping him.

  Lance’s blood boiled at the mockery and he reared back to throw another punch when Don caught him with a right hook that sent him to the sidewalk.

  Pain bloomed in his temple. A warm, sticky line ran down his cheek. He watched Don through bleary eyes and muttered, “Eighteen months.”

  “Deal with it, buddy.” Don grabbed Liz’s hand and pulled her away, leading them down the sidewalk.

  “I’m sorry, Lance,” Liz said as she looked back over her shoulder.

  How she had expected everything to play out still eluded Lance. There was no way that he would ever take this kind of news well. While it was true that he wanted out of the marriage as much as she did, the idea of her cheating on him before the divorce process even started made him queasy.

  His head and foot throbbed as he pushed himself to a seated position. He sat on the curb again, watching as people looted and destroyed the street. Their anger mirrored his own as they lashed out at anything in their path. He wondered if the other infected cities collapsed as quickly as Pittsburgh.

  Blood continued to seep from his foot, the pool under his heel growing as he watched. He wiped at the line running down his cheek.

  A shriek came from an open window in the hospital to his right.

  “Shit,” he muttered as he got to his feet, favoring his wounded left foot. “Can’t believe I’m down here getting in a fistfight while there are crazy mutants running around.”

  There was no chance he could walk the several miles to the stadium on his wounded foot without shoes or clothing. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to go there, at this point. She would be there, and the thought of running into them again didn’t sit well.

  His apartment was only a few blocks to the north—he could make it in an hour or two if he didn’t run into any snags along the way. Food, clothing, and water waited for him there.

  He could sleep in his own bed and try to ride this thing out. Or he could at least die in his own home. That sounded better than most of his other options.

  Two men fought over a television on the sidewalk in front of a bar. Part of the wall mount clung to the back of the TV as they tried to wrestle it from one another. They threw blows at each other moments later.

  Lance ignored them as he tested how much pressure he could put on his foot. The pain was bad, but bearable. His concern over contracting some kind of disease from walking on the bare, filthy streets of Pittsburgh outweighed any discomfort he had to endure.

  A window on the side of the hospital shattered, the glass raining onto the sidewalk below. The body of a woman followed, landing on the glass and concrete with a hollow thud like a smashed watermelon.

  The random fights in the crowd abated as everyone stared at the mangled corpse. Their eyes surveyed the side of the building until they found the window the woman came from.

  The head of an eyeless beast poked through the jagged pieces of glass that remained, an inhuman wail echoing off the suddenly silent street.

  Other infected answered the call, loosing a dozen cries through the building.

  Chaos followed.

  People fled, dropping their stolen wares and abandoning their friends. They ran in all directions, screaming and crying, shoving others out of their way. A teenager climbed the pole holding the lights at an intersection, yelling at anyone who tried to follow him up.

  Lance waited, knowing that he couldn’t fight through the herd until it thinned. His foot wouldn’t allow him to keep up and he would end up getting trampled to death. As he stared at the panic and confusion, he knew that this was what waited at Heinz Field.

  People wanted out and they would kill each other to get there. The government would have its hands full if they thought they could contain this.

  He eyed the hospital, scanning the windows in case something decided to come outside. Several faces stared back at him from inside locked rooms. He couldn’t help but question who was safer—the people barricaded in the hospital with those things, or him in the streets with a fearful population.

  The crowd thinned within minutes and he set off, using his left hand along the walls of buildings and handrails, needing the support to keep pressure off his foot. A trail of bloody footprints followed in his wake.

  Two cars were flipped over, their windows smashed in. People ran up and down the streets, generally ignoring each other as they smashed and stole their way through the city. He couldn’t believe how quickly everyone took to thievery as soon as the law left town.

  A liquor store that Lance frequented was stripped bare. Empty shelves, opened freezers, and smashed bottles were all that remained. Lance felt sorry for those who couldn’t keep themselves from drinking their days away even as the world came crashing down.

  He had to stop and take breaks every fifteen minutes. Fatigue and pain threatened to bring a halt to his journey, so he bided his time and rested when he couldn’t stand the anguish in his foot. The soreness in his left side abated a bit as he went, the muscles stretching and relaxing, even as the lower part of his body worsened.

  As he sat on the steps of an apartment building, the tenants going in and out with armfuls of groceries and electronics, he spotted one of the sick—a man in the early stages of the illness.

  He appeared more coherent than the woman he’d encountered the day before, though his motor skills were off and he still mumbled. The man walked on the other side of the street, looking around as if he didn’t understand where he was.

  People scrambled away when they saw him, shouting for help and threatening him to stay back.

  He didn’t listen.

  The man made it to the front of a closed Subway when a gang of polo-shirt-wearing men came up from behind him. They held baseball bats, crowbars, brooms, and even a bowling pin.

  Lance saw them coming and knew what would happen next. He got up and rushed away as fast as his bare feet would allow, ignoring the angry taunts and muted bludgeoning that came from behind him.

  More of the infected wandered ahead, but their madn
ess was more advanced, any aggressors not daring to go near such insanity. They stumbled through the streets, mostly ignoring everyone. A few gave chase to the slower, fatter populace of the ‘Burgh.

  One woman stood out among the rest. The shade of her skin neared translucence, her skeletal system already deforming. Lance never saw the front of her, but he knew that her eyes were shriveled, her face full of veins. The murderous desire had already begun to overtake her.

  Lance took a different street, knowing that the detour would cost him precious time, but he dared not go near the woman. The alleys had less people, though the fear of being caught in one with an infected person kept him from using them.

  He couldn’t outrun anyone if cornered, so he chose his path carefully. The bleeding from his foot slowed as he went, his trail less obvious.

  The pain never lessened.

  Though he saw several beatings and heard dozens more, Lance never saw a police officer or EMT. He lost count of how many of the banshee-like screams he heard come from apartment buildings and businesses.

  The sun neared the horizon by the time he stumbled onto his block and caught sight of his aging building. As the streets darkened, more of the sick appeared, their movements more fluid, the sluggishness he’d seen earlier gone.

  Lance whispered a tiny prayer as he painstakingly climbed the stairs to his apartment, glad that he’d made it home before dark. Something about the night attracted them, and he didn’t want to be around when they took control of the streets.

  Chapter 9