The Hungry 5: All Hell Breaks Loose (The Sheriff Penny Miller Series)

by Booth, Steven

  The rotting little boy was closest to Miller, and presented a much smaller target. It opened its mouth and screamed with insatiable hunger. Miller aimed carefully and shot the thing right through its open mouth. Bone, blood, and brainstem splattered out onto the zombie right behind. The boy fell, lifeless, finally at rest.

  Uhh-hunnhh! Uhh-hunnhh!

  It was impossible to keep track of anything during the slaughter. They fired and reloaded and fired again. The horde kept pressing closer. Miller kept forgetting to aim for the throat, and figured most of them were falling into that trap and thus having to use two or even three bullets to put each of the monsters down. She wondered how long their ammo would hold out. The zombies kept pressing forward. The room filled with the stench of rotting flesh.

  As ordered, Rat, Scratch, Sheppard, Brandon, Charlie and Rolf had maintained perfect fields of fire. They kept on shooting and protected specific areas. Miller could barely see over the haze and the pile of bodies jammed into the doorway. Many of the albinos out in the hall couldn’t get over their fallen comrades. They grunted and growled in frustration. Their way was blocked by their own kind.

  Miller watched Charlie as he held his fire until the right shot to the open throat presented itself. It was taking too long. She didn’t have the patience for this. The enemy would win by sheer numbers.

  Fuck that.

  The nearest zombie was hunched over like the first ones had been, with its head hanging down. Miller mentally consulted her high school anatomy lessons. She figured that if she shot down through the crown of the zombie’s head, she could take out the brainstem that way. It was a trickier shot, but she didn’t have time to debate. The scope on the .30-06 was useless at this range, so Miller calculated the shot by instinct and fired.

  Her zombie crumpled to the ground. It stayed down.

  “I’ve got it,” Miller called. “Shoot through the crown of their heads. Go for the top of the spine. That works. Watch me” To demonstrate, she took another shot. A woman in a bikini dropped flat on the carpet and stayed still.

  “Hey,” said Charlie. He raised the barrel of his weapon and saluted Miller. His face was beet red from exertion. “That’s not bad.”

  “Cover your position, damn you,” Miller shouted, though Charlie was right next to her. For a fleeting moment, she wished her old deputy Bob Wells was still alive. He’d been a lazy, sexist, violent asshole who’d often disregarded her authority, but he had been one hell of a good shot. Miller could have used his help right about now. Her ears were ringing. They aimed and fired and aimed and fired again.

  Over the shooting and the groaning of the zombies—there were more now than anyone sane would have expected—Miller heard a new pounding noise. It was coming from her left, on the other side of the wall. This can’t be good…

  Scratch looked around. “What the fuck is that?”

  Charlie shouted back. “That’s the adjoining door. They’re trying to come in from the next suite over.”

  Miller pursed her lips. “And you’re just telling us this now because?”

  “Well, you didn’t ask before.” Charlie looked half crazed. “Look, Penny, I know you like to tell everyone what to do, but that just won’t fly here. After all, I’m not your ex-husband.”

  “Hey, dickwad,” shouted Scratch. “Terrill Lee was a hero who saved my ass once and almost everyone else’s here at least a couple of times over. So why don’t you just shut the fuck up and do your job.”

  “Sheppard,” Miller called. “You, Rat, and Rolf go cover the adjoining door.” She turned to the country singer. “Shirley! Wake the fuck up. Get off your ass and get busy. Make sure everyone has ammunition.”

  “I’ve already handed it all out,” Shirley said.

  “Great,” Miller shouted, “so we’re getting down to hand to hand already?”

  Rat flipped her empty weapon around as if to make it a club. “Sure looks that way.”

  “Stop shooting then. Save whatever ammo is left. Shirley, you start handing out the damn fire axes. Decapitate them when they get close enough, and it won’t be long. We’re going to be up to our asses in zombies in a New York minute.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Well, personally I think it’s time to think about executing a strategic retreat,” Charlie said. He straightened up to a standing position. His hands were shaking. “Would that be okay with your team, Sheriff?”

  Miller fired at a pair of twins, blonde girls with ponytails who were missing chunks of their arms. She got them each in the throat and they went down hard. She cycled the rifle, but no new round popped up. She got to her feet. “Yeah, but retreat to where? There are zombies pouring out of both our exits.”

  Charlie loaded a few final rounds into his .30-06. He slung it over his shoulder. “Just follow my lead when I make the break.”

  Charlie picked up one of the fire extinguishers and stared at a naked male zombie with a shaved head. It looked kind of like a giant dead fish. Miller watched, but steadfastly avoided checking out its junk. “Hey you,” Charlie called. “Over here!”

  Uhh-hunnhh!

  Much to Miller’s surprise, the thing looked up and stared back at Charlie. Charlie boldly closed the distance. He pointed the fire extinguisher right in its face, pressed and sprayed. The zombie put his arms up in a defensive motion, trying to protect itself. It feared something about the chemicals in the foam, or maybe it was the cold.

  It reacted instinctively to the danger, Miller thought. How did it know to do that? Are these albinos more intelligent than the others, or maybe just more self-aware? What the fuck is going on?

  Charlie kicked the scared and stunned zombie in the chest, knocking it backwards and creating a sizable opening in the teeming throng. Miller, Rat, Scratch and the others exchanged looks. Miller shrugged and indicated they’d have to take their chances. The group lined up quickly, prepared to make a run for it.

  “Follow me,” Charlie called. “Stay close.”

  “But where the hell are we going?” Miller ran right to his side.

  “Down to the garage,” Charlie said.

  “But what…”

  “Penny, just follow me. All we can do here is die.” And with that, Charlie sprayed another zombie with the fire extinguisher, and then knocked that one over as well. The mob of undead parted again. Something about the spray and the foam seemed to terrify the albinos. Charlie must have picked up on that somewhere along the way. He’d kept it to himself of course, maybe as a hole card. He didn’t look frightened any longer, just kind of pissed off and excited. Charlie had always been kind of tough to figure out. Miller realized that she was going to have to trust him this one last time, like it or not. She didn’t have any better ideas.

  “Come on, everybody.” Miller slung the rifle over her shoulder, though it was only useful as a club at this point. She picked up an axe. Scratch had been using one of the M-4s, but now slid it around to one side and got his own ax. Sheppard, Brandon, Rat, and Rolf all followed suit. Scratch led them out into the fray. He stepped out from their makeshift barricade, and swung the axe down on one of the zombies, damned near splitting the pale thing in two. He’d gotten the brain stem and damn near everything else in the process.

  “Time for a workout,” Scratch said, as he yanked the axe back out with a wet smacking sound. “Let’s all play Paul Bunyan.”

  The others joined in enthusiastically, hacking and chopping. Shirley stayed back a ways. She was holding Dudley, who hadn’t stopped barking. Miller turned to order Brandon and Rolf to protect Shirley, but they were already doing so, flanking her on either side as she led the cadaver dog to safety. Miller was not amused to see that Shirley had chosen to take her guitar with her. Miller felt a pang of jealousy. She had nothing from her childhood, nothing from the time before the zombies came but perhaps the clothes on her back. She’d lost Terrill Lee, and even her relationship with Scratch was a product of the apocalypse.

  Miller realized that she was losing focus. She br
ought her attention around to the fight. She swung the axe, neatly severing a zombie’s head from its shoulders. The head kept snapping at her, but the body was no longer a threat. The animated head reminded her of the labs she had found in Crystal Palace quite a ways back. Damn, I’m tired, she thought, and targeted another zombie.

  Charlie sprayed the zombies. They hated the foam. It worked well enough to keep them back, and the space allowed the humans to get outside and into the hallway. There were far fewer zombies waiting there, not as many as Miller would have guessed, though enough to pose a threat. She swung the axe again, this time landing a glancing blow on the skull of a teenaged girl in pink shorts and a tank top. Even with half its head missing, the dead girl remained hungry. It reached out for her. Miller brought the axe up again and set her feet to strike.

  Before she could react, Sheppard and Rat came up from behind the creature. Rat shoved it backwards and Sheppard sprayed it with a fire extinguisher. It recoiled long enough for Miller to swing again, and this time she landed a killing blow, splitting its head and neck in half. Scratch was busy keeping two rows of zombies apart like Moses at the Red Sea. Miller joined him for a moment, and together they battled their way closer to the exit, swinging their axes almost in unison.

  It was just like old times.

  When Miller looked up she saw that Sheppard, Brandon, Rolf, and Shirley were at the stairwell. Rolf and Brandon held up lanterns. Rat, Scratch, and Sheppard had stayed behind and were all clustered together, working to protect Miller. The albinos still in the suite seemed confused. They were having difficulty getting through the door at the same time, all jammed together like clowns in a circus.

  “Are you coming, Penny?” asked Charlie. “We’ve got us some transportation waiting.” Before Miller could respond, Charlie turned and disappeared into the darkened stairwell. The door stayed open behind him.

  “We do?” asked Shirley, running after him now, still holding the dog and the guitar case. Her innocence had been replaced by a look of betrayal. Surprise, Charlie had lied to her too.

  “Fall back into the stairwell,” Miller ordered. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  They all followed Charlie. The long stairwell was relatively clear, just a confused albino zombie here and there, crippled or blind ones that were easy for Scratch and Miller to handle. The group moved fast, stayed close together, and soon made their way down six floors, past the lobby and well below ground level. Miller tried to keep up with Charlie, but he was running full out, barely holding onto the railing, and she didn’t want to leave anyone else behind. She worried that the son of a bitch would take off without them if he reached the vehicle first.

  “Move it,” Miller called. “Let’s go!”

  They could all hear the albinos up above, trying to follow them now, stumbling a bit going down the stairs, not making good time. Still, they’d show up sooner or later. Miller hoped Charlie wouldn’t run away, and that he had a damn good escape plan in mind. It was dark in the stairwell, they had only the light from their lanterns, and they were way the hell down in the bowels of the earth. Miller picked up her pace. Fortunately, Charlie finally slowed down and waited for the others.

  “Tell me something, Charlie,” said Miller as she and the others caught up. They were all breathing hard and bent over. Yellow lantern light and long shadows painted the walls as if for Halloween. “If you’ve got a ride hidden down here in the garage, what the hell were you doing living in a burned-out casino just miles from Idaho and civilization?”

  “Yeah, Charlie,” said Shirley. “If you had a car, what the hell were we doing squatting up there?”

  Charlie shrugged and grinned. “Hey, we were getting it on, baby.”

  Miller gaped at him. He’d used the situation to seduce the poor little thing.

  Shirley spat at him. Scratch held her back from scratching his eyes out.

  “You’re a real asshole,” Scratch said. “Or just plain fucking stupid. Which is it, Charlie?”

  Charlie laughed bitterly. “Hell, give me a break. It made perfect sense at the time. You’d have done the same thing. I had the whole place to myself, enough booze to last me a lifetime, and all the pussy I wanted. What else is there to life at the end of the world?”

  Shirley exploded. “I don’t fucking believe you, Charlie! You kept me stuck in this hellhole just because I put out? I thought you cared about me.”

  “Keep your voice down, Shirley,” Charlie said. “Them albinos can hear just fine. We still need get to the truck.”

  Then they all heard noises above them in the stairwell; slow feet shuffling down the metal steps, what sounded like human fingernails scraping along the walls.

  “Charlie, where is this truck of yours, and will it fit the eight of us?” Miller asked.

  Charlie nodded. “Oh, it will, don’t you worry your pretty head about that.”

  From upstairs came a Greek chorus of voices bleating that desperate Uhh-hunnhh! Uhh-hunnhh!

  “Get us out of here,” Miller said.

  Charlie started jogging again, moving the group deeper into the dark corridor. They all followed, but their passage made way too much of a racket for Miller’s taste. They were in zombie country now, down where Charlie had said the albinos liked to hang out. Just like Scratch said there would be. Attracting more from below seemed like a piss poor idea that could get them all stuffed in an undead sandwich. They had no choice but to trust Charlie, at least for the moment. They couldn’t go back, and there was no other way out. They needed that car.

  Miller jogged. Her face was dripping sweat. The others moved briskly, sticking close together, eyeing the eerie darkness ahead. The cement had a strange odor to it down here. It smelled like zombies and rat piss. There were spider webs dangling everywhere.

  Charlie led them to the underground entrance to the parking lot. He pushed the security door open carefully, but it still squealed like something out of an old horror film. They all stood in a tight bunch, and stayed perfectly still. Everyone was breathing heavily. Miller could smell the fear. She was determined to get them all out safely and would just have to deal with Charlie later. Hell, maybe she’d let Scratch kill him.

  Reaching back, Charlie took the lantern from Rolf and shined it into the dark, still parking garage. The rows of cars and trucks waited silently. They were all dusty and a lot of tires had started to go flat. Charlie studied the garage for a time before moving again. He seemed satisfied. He walked a few steps and pulled a small flashlight out of his pocket.

  Shit, something else he’s been holding out on.

  Charlie held up the light. He used it to sweep the immediate area. Still, all Miller saw were the long rows of dusty parked cars and a few skeletons here and there, just bones picked clean by the rats.

  “All clear,” Charlie whispered. He opened the entrance door fully, crouched low and went off into the darkness with his flashlight. A broad white beam lit up the garage and shrank down again as he trotted further away. He’d left them behind with no warning.

  Shit…

  Miller hesitated and did not follow. Their lights weren’t strong enough. She worried the others would get separated in the dark. She did not like giving Charlie a big lead, because he might take it into his head to drive off alone, and she had her people to think about. She had no idea where these albino zombies were coming from, Charlie had said underground, and so the parking garage was just as likely a candidate as anywhere. Maybe this had all been planned from the get go. Had Charlie led them into a trap?

  “Hold up there, Charlie,” Miller called, finally. “Whoa. Come back.”

  Silence.

  Miller and Scratch exchanged worried looks. Sheppard shrugged and Rat shook her head. She agreed that they shouldn’t follow.

  “Charlie?” Miller called. “Charlie?”

  “Hey,” Charlie shouted back at long last. His booming voice echoed through the garage. To Miller’s relief, he was coming back for them. His footsteps stepped closer. “C
heck this out, Penny. It’s snowing underground.”

  Miller said, “What?”

  Charlie used his flashlight to illuminate a nearby corner. He was dead right. There was snow everywhere. Snow? In a parking garage? Miller thought it was the damnedest thing she’d ever seen. And then common sense prevailed. How could snow have gotten down here, and why wouldn’t it have melted long ago? It had to be fake. As Charlie examined the mounds of white, his flashlight passed over a tall sound boom, a large black camera mounted on tripod and some expensive looking video equipment. Then Miller saw the stack of brightly wrapped presents.

  “It’s a movie set,” Scratch said. He moved away from Shirley to stand right beside Miller. “Maybe the hotel was doing a holiday commercial when the shit hit the fan.”

  Sheppard said, “Sure looks that way.”

  Charlie finally came back into view. He was walking briskly and grinning hugely and whistling Jingle Bells. Miller felt relieved. Part of her hadn’t expected to see him again. He didn’t run away and leave them behind after all. Charlie switched to humming Silent Night. He stopped near a pickup truck. He stood there, half in the open, still holding the flashlight. “Are you guys coming, or what?”

  Miller felt uneasy but didn’t know why. “Hang on a second.”

  Charlie waved his other arm in frustration. He used the light to point right. “Come on, Penny, we don’t have time to take a vote. Get your ass in gear. The truck is right over there.”

  Miller wanted to follow, but instinct won out. She held her arm up and kept her people back. “Charlie, where is it exactly?”

  Charlie turned and again pointed to his right. He was in the darkness near a cement pillar, only a few yards from the huge piles of fake snow.

  Dudley growled low and wet in his chest. Miller and Sheppard and Scratch all called out a warning. “Run, Charlie, run!”