The Hungry 3: At the End of the World

by Steven W. Booth

  Another triad surrounded them. The first one sacrificed itself by charging right into Scratch’s line of fire, while the other two tried a pincer move. Rat and Miller took them out just seconds after Scratch retired the first. The team moved toward the front door, staying low, urging the terrified civilians along. Miller heard a huge crunching sound from somewhere above them. She looked up. Before she could even call out, a burning ceiling beam fell. It narrowly missed Jimmy as it crashed to the floor. Flaming splinters as long as a human arm soared into the air. Miller backed everyone up. She and Rat exchanged looks and both shook their heads. Far above them, they could see a bit of the night sky, the bright flames spouting high up into the chilly air above the roof.

  The entire front of the lodge was collapsing. Another beam crashed down, blocking the front door completely.

  The main exit was closed. The upstairs was ablaze.

  The zombies were pressing in from all sides.

  They had one option left, and it wasn’t very good. Miller took it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Miller led the group through the smoke, around the smashed furniture, and past the piles of dead bodies. She took them across the massive lobby, through the industrial kitchen, and over to the steps leading down. They moved quickly, efficiently. As soon as they’d all safely reached the wine cellar, Miller led them to the back of the room, behind the long wine racks. She pounded frantically on the secret entrance.

  Scratch and Jimmy stayed with her. Rat and her team remained behind to guard the steps leading up into the kitchen. Poor Jimmy looked defeated. He clearly didn’t think this would work. Neither did Miller, but she was also plumb out of better ideas.

  The smoke hadn’t sunk this low yet. Miller knew it would and soon. So would the fire, in due time. She had committed them to one last play. If they couldn’t find that switch, they’d all die of smoke inhalation and their bodies would eventually burn. At least that way they wouldn’t return as zombies.

  Miller stepped back, her mind working furiously. She had all her people down below. At the top of the steps, the firing began anew. The zombies were back after them. Rat and her men were doing an admirable job of holding off the wall of undead, but the humans would soon be overwhelmed in the confined space. Meanwhile, Miller, Scratch, and Jimmy desperately tried to locate the secret switch that opened Gunter’s bunker, a switch that Terrill Lee had found so easily by accident. It was very slow going.

  Miller kicked herself mentally for not having paid more attention. How had poor Terrill Lee managed to open it? Why hadn’t they asked him? She’d simply never envisioned having to come back through this place a second time.

  The smoke flowed down and in like an evil fog. The heat felt unbearable. The pounding of gunfire was loud and continuous. Miller took stock of the situation. Lex was just a little kid, so he couldn’t be counted on for much but pissing his pants and crying. Jimmy was at least trying to participate. He was next to Scratch, searching frantically for the switch.

  Upstairs, Rat paused to reload. She shouted back over her shoulder. “Better pick it up, Penny. They just keep on coming. We’re running low on ammo.”

  “Wanna switch places?” shouted Miller.

  Miller closed her eyes in despair. Scratch was always loyal and had been right there with her through thick and thin. They deserved better than this. She’d made an impulsive decision, and now they would pay the consequences with their lives. Now they couldn’t find the entrance to the bomb shelter. Miller sagged against the concrete wall. She felt exhausted and beaten down. Maybe it was time. Either the zombie horde or the blazing fire would do the trick soon enough. It was as good as over.

  Suck it up, Penny, Miller told herself. Don’t let them see you sweat. Survive.

  Miller continued to search. Scratch took her by the elbow and pulled her toward Gunter’s front door.

  “Hey, Penny! I think I found something!” He’d located a small, recessed gap in the concrete wall. The spot had been placed discreetly, behind a fake wine bottle, one that sat on a rack near the secret entrance. Scratch pushed in on the fake bottle, in and towards the wall. Miller grabbed his arm, expectantly. Scratch stood back proudly, chest all puffed out and everything.

  Nothing happened.

  Scratch pushed again, a worried frown now sagging down his craggy face. Miller waited. The wall remained in place. The firing above them began to slow as the trained soldiers chose their shots more carefully to conserve ammunition. Miller waved smoke away.

  “Whatever you’re going to do, we don’t have all day, Penny.” Rat called. She had an unusual edge to her voice, something that sounded suspiciously like… fear.

  “Thanks Scratch.” Miller patted her man on the shoulder. “Nice try.”

  They looked at each other, the truth of their situation slowly sinking in. Maybe it was really going to end like this, down in a cellar, trapped like crazed animals. Scratch was steady and as reliable as always. He took her hand and squeezed. Miller made him a promise with her eyes. He promised back. It was reaffirmed in a heartbeat. Neither one would leave the other behind to turn zombie. One quick shot would do it. Clean and simple. As if to emphasize that sad point, Scratch tapped the wine bottle with his fingers.

  OOooooOOOOoohhh.

  The wall, so immobile to that very moment, immediately slid sideways.

  Scratch grinned triumphantly. “Who’s the man?”

  Miller turned back to call her people to safety. “Fall back!”

  They turned and ran for the now yawning door that led into Gunter’s inner sanctum. Jimmy followed and now stood near stood near his father. Scratch shot a zombie, missed two more, then got lucky and nailed them anyway. He managed to pile them up in such a way as to jam the cellar steps, at least for a while. As the creatures behind the others struggled to climb over or shove their fellows out of the way, Rat backed down the stairs, finally heading Miller’s direction.

  Scratch called, “Come on, Rat. Move it!”

  Rat and her soldiers retreated toward the bunker, all keeping a very sharp eye out for anyone alive or dead who might be trying to follow them down the cellar steps. The emergency lighting flickered, giving the entire scene an odd cinematic feel. Wraiths of smoke and fire beckoned like angry demons. Miller flashed back to so many other battles, so much death and destruction. Her heart was also still breaking for poor Terrill Lee. Still, she urged the others down into the tunnel like a mother hen.

  “Go! Go!” Rat shouted. Her men obeyed.

  Miller squinted in the smoky dark. She counted heads. Everyone had entered the bunker. When all of them were accounted for, Miller slapped the door operation button, the same one that Jimmy had stumbled upon their first time through. Once again, the bunker door slid closed with that eerie OoooOOhhh sound. They were safe at last. The fluorescent lights came on. Miller bent over, her muscles trembling from the stress, and caught her breath.

  Rat touched Miller’s shoulder. “Lovell’s waiting, Penny. The clock is ticking. We need to go.”

  “It’s going to take us forever to get out that back way again,” Jimmy said. “We’ll have to crawl.”

  “We sure as shit can’t go out the way we came in,” said Miller. “It’s now the back door or nothing.”

  “I think I saw something the last time through,” Jimmy said. He looked like a boy out to redeem himself. “I think there’s another exit. Come on, I’ll show you.”

  Miller looked to Scratch, who shrugged.

  “He’s been right before,” Scratch said.

  Miller nodded. They followed Jimmy down the concrete tunnel. The survivors all gathered around the boy—and at this Miller had to remind herself that he was only fifteen—as Jimmy pointed at a metal box placed low on the wall. He opened the lid with faint squeak. There was a sign next to a red switch. The top half said Exit. The bottom half was covered with dirt and an old spider web. Jimmy swiped his hand across the dirt, revealing the bottom half of the sign.

  It read, Exit
Strategy. Emergencies Only.

  “See?” said Jimmy, proudly.

  “Hold on a second,” Miller said, eyeing Scratch with alarm. Her instincts had just flinched like a mouse at the sight of a cat’s tail. “That old man was crazy on his best day. Let’s think about this for a second.”

  “The lady says wait, Jimmy.” Scratch made it an order.

  Rat started to say something.

  Jimmy didn’t wait. He slapped the big red button.

  “Uh oh,” Miller said.

  BOOM! BOOM! Loud thumps immediately shook the concrete and cinderblock around them, causing thick dust to shower down from above. The lights flickered on and off. The room moved back and forth as if the building were enduring a large earthquake. Miller, Scratch, and Rat stared at each other, all three working to make sense of this new situation. Someone screamed, probably little Lex. The rocking continued and grew stronger, as the solid walls flexed in ways never intended. Two of Rat’s mercenaries dropped to their knees and covered their heads from reflex. Their safe haven had just gone south.

  “Well, shit,” Rat said dryly. She reached forward and grabbed Jimmy by the wrist. Rat jerked him toward her just in time to avoid a falling support beam. It struck one of Rat’s team instead, crushing his skull. The other mercenary edged away. Something deep down below them groaned like an awakening monster. Jimmy had played Gunter’s last card, should his refuge be overrun. The bunker was self-destructing.

  Scratch pushed Miller out of the way. He saved her from some falling concrete. They were driven backwards by a wide pattern of debris. Part of the wall fell away, revealing the distant, upstairs floor of the lodge. It was engulfed in flames. There seemed to be nowhere to go, no way to escape. Rat, Jimmy, Lex, and the two remaining soldiers on Rat’s team were on one side of the growing mess—near the back door—while Scratch and Miller were both stuck on the lodge side. Rat and her people still had a shot to get away. There would be no future for Penny and Scratch unless they moved damned fast.

  “Come on,” Scratch said.

  The walls fell in all around them. Trapped.

  It was too late. Miller and Scratch were cut off from the rest of the group.

  There was no time to discuss the situation. They knew that they had to leave immediately. They were unable to move forward, toward the escape tunnel. They had only one other option.

  Scratch said, “Move.”

  Scratch dragged Miller back toward the entrance to Gunter’s bunker. Toward the wine cellar, the steps, the kitchen. It was the last place she wanted to go, but now they had no other choice. Perhaps the zombies had retreated, confused by the noise and the shifting walls and floors around them. The entire world seemed to be coming to an end as they struggled on, hoping to find the exit. They were likely to be buried alive.

  Someone was trying to talk to them. Miller listened intently as she ran. Rat’s voice was there in her ear. The forgotten radio was receiving. “Penny! Meet us at the helicopter outside! Do you copy? Do you…” The sound went to white noise.

  “Rat?”

  Scratch slapped the cellar door switch. It began sliding open again. A tiny bit of fresher air entered the corridor.

  And then the door stopped.

  The opening was only maybe a foot wide.

  “Push!” Miller said.

  Grunting together, Miller and Scratch managed to get the door to open another foot, barely enough to let them both out into the wine cellar. The lights flickered on and off, on and off. The dark seemed to close in. The air was thick as mud with smudge and dust. Miller couldn’t see much of the wine cellar, just smoke and rubble and flames. She and Scratch crawled, shoved, and tugged each other through the small opening and out the other side of the wall.

  Damn it.

  They ran right into the horror show of the zombie-packed, smoke-filled wine cellar.

  Two zombies appeared. One was a survivalist she vaguely recognized, and the other a teenaged girl from town. The duo spotted them immediately, and turned to greet them with bloody, gore-soaked grins. Miller brought up her weapon and shot the survivalist in the forehead, but when she pulled the trigger to take down the girl, the weapon clicked on empty.

  “Scratch! Help!”

  Standing right beside her, Scratch brought his machine gun up to his shoulder. He pulled the trigger. Miller registered his shock. Absolutely nothing happened. Their luck had run out.

  “I’m empty.”

  Miller didn’t have time to think. She swung the stock of her machine gun up and clocked the girl under the chin, knocking her backwards. Fortunately, the girl fell right into the third zombie in the triad, a white-haired old woman in a nightgown. The two females got tangled up like bowling pins, went off balance, and slipped out of sight behind some fresh rubble. Miller took stock of their path. They needed to get out of the building. Had to move faster than shit through a goose.

  The stairs were clear for the moment, so Miller risked a peek. She watched Scratch spot a fire axe in a glass cabinet. The glass had long since been shot out. Scratch grinned, his handsome face smeared with dirt and gore. He pulled the axe out of the cabinet and tested its weight. It would get the job done.

  “I do love me a fireman,” Miller said. “Let’s do this.”

  Miller heard movement above her. Three more zombies were coming down the cellar steps. A survivalist, missing an arm and part of its face, and one ugly creature so badly burned it looked like a scorched mummy in blackened rags. Miller stepped out into the open to get their attention. When they were focused on Miller, Scratch stepped forward. He swung the axe down on the crown of the burned zombie’s head. The thing’s skull split in two like a melon. It sank down and fell to one side. Miller clubbed the survivalist with all her strength—barely registering that her kill was a big guy wearing a teamster’s hat and a blue work shirt that read HARVEY on the left front pocket.

  There were more zombies coming down the stairs. They fought on. Miller’s strength was waning. She wasn’t going to be able to club her way through that many zombies. They had to go higher, but how could they do that without a decent weapon?

  “Scratch?”

  “Yeah, Penny?”

  “I think we’re out of luck.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Miller turned to look at Scratch. A slight smile crossed his dirty, bearded face. He hefted the fire axe as if to reassure her. Their eyes met and they silently exchanged the same, steady promise. They would not leave the other one behind to turn zombie, no matter what. That was the bargain. Scratch coughed and wiped the sweat from his eyes. Miller had never loved anyone quite so much.

  “Heads up,” Scratch said.

  Miller heard footsteps on the steps above them. Hunnhhh… unhhh… More and more of the foul creatures crowded through the doorway and stumbled down into the smoky wine cellar. The horde was enormous, seemingly endless. They were vastly outnumbered. The zombies then moved into small groups of three. They paused as if plotting their strategy, or perhaps dividing up their last meal.

  “Come on!” Scratch bellowed with rage. He led the way back. Waving the smoke away, they retreated into the only defensible corner of the cellar, that small spot where Brandy and Lex had stayed when they were first trying to get into the bunker. Now this one corner was their only chance for survival. Scratch yanked hard on a tall wine rack that had been loosened by the shaking and the flames. He tugged it back and forth and pulled down with all his weight until it fell over, temporarily blocking the entrance to their safe haven. Scratch had bought them a little more time. Not a lot, but a little.

  They hunkered down to stay below the billowing smoke and breathe clean air for as long as possible. Scratch held on to the handle of the axe. His big hands trembled slightly. Miller held the now empty machine gun, which was covered in red dripping zombie fluids. She felt tired, more tired than she had ever felt in her life.

  “It’s been quite a ride, Penny.” Scratch leaned forward on the axe handle. The blade scratched along
the concrete floor. “One hell of a way to go out, don’t you think?”

  Miller looked at him. Her eyes burned, and not just from the smoke. She pictured so many of those lost: Terrill Lee; her entire hometown of Flat Rock. She thought of so much precious time that had already been wasted. A great sadness overtook her.

  “Scratch, I’m sorry.”

  “What the hell are you sorry about, Penny?”

  Miller thought about life. She saw it with an odd clarity. It had been over so many times before, but they’d always figured a way out. This time they wouldn’t and somehow that seemed okay. Her body didn’t feel all pumped with the zombie virus. Not right now, anyway. She felt like a woman, and a tired one at that. It really was over. Now that the end was actually upon them, she had no real reason to try to be a hero anymore, or to hide her feelings. And so she let the tears come.

  “I’m sorry for everything,” Miller said, “for not being able to keep everyone alive. For not letting you know how I really feel about you.”

  “You think I don’t know?” Scratch asked. His eyes went wide with disbelief. Without waiting for Miller to respond, he moved the axe handle to one side and leaned in to kiss her.

  She put her hands on his mouth, and pushed him back.

  “Wait.” She looked away, hoping that he couldn’t see the fear in her eyes. “What if Karl was right? What if you get infected?”

  Scratch frowned. “I don’t care about that. Especially right now. Besides, you already kissed me. The damage is done.”

  He leaned in again, and this time she let him come close. They could hear their enemy approaching, those slow footsteps shuffling down the cement floor. That unhhhh hunhhh noise as dozens of zombies, desperate to feed, struggled to break through the flaming barrier to reach them. The moment was glorious but soon lost. The makeshift barricade finally collapsed. They couldn’t see through the smoke but they could hear the wood protesting as it was shoved aside and the starving creatures moved closer. Scratch straightened up with a sigh. He threw his wide shoulders back.