The Hunger (Book 2): Consumed

by Jason Brant

  “Where is your bag?”

  “Oh yeah, sorry,” he said, snapping his fingers. He went back into his apartment, leaving me in the dark hallway again.

  I looked out the window at the end of the hall and cursed when I saw how dark it was. The odds of us getting back to the bank vault before the night fully set in were getting slimmer by the second. I should have known better than to come back here.

  “Sorry, man. Let’s do this.” He closed and locked his apartment door behind him. Why he would bother locking the door when no one could possibly steal his stuff was a mystery to me.

  “What is that?” I asked, gesturing to the messenger bag over his shoulder. “I said to get something that could hold a lot.”

  “This is all I’ve got, bro,” he said.

  “If you call me ‘bro’ one more time, I’m going to throw you down the stairs.”

  “Easy, br−” He caught himself, barely, and tried to act like nonchalant about it. “Dude, relax. Everything’s cool.”

  I wanted to slap him around like one of the Three Stooges, but I didn’t think we had much time before they came out. “Just follow me.” I turned around and sped down the hallway, just slower than a jog.

  Before today, I hadn’t been inside my place for almost two weeks. My clothing had started to smell like a compost heap so I had come back to get more. Unfortunately, and shockingly, I’d run into Greg here. I hated Greg – always had. He’s the kind of neighbor that made you cringe every time you saw him coming down the hallway.

  “Where we headed, bro?” His sandals flopped against the floor as he hurried up behind me.

  “I’ve been staying in a vault two blocks away in Slessinger’s bank,” I said. Though I’d been getting in better shape over the past two weeks, I had already started huffing as I took the stairs two at a time.

  “In a bank vault? That’s just weird.” His breaths came even faster than mine. “Why are we running, bro?”

  “It’s almost dark.”

  We reached the first floor and I sprinted across the small lobby of our apartment building. The front door stood ajar, as I’d left it, and I burst through it, almost tripping over a garbage can lying on the sidewalk. I jumped over it without breaking stride, only to hear Greg crash to the ground behind me.

  “Damn! I skinned my knee!”

  I turned around to see Greg sprawled in the pile of trash, rolling around in it. He was going to smell fantastic when we were locked in the bank vault together.

  “Get up, you fool!” I didn’t run back to him, but I did stop and wait. The sun had already set and I could feel myself starting to panic.

  “What’s the rush? I’m in pain here.” He lifted himself from the garbage, brushing it away from his pants.

  I didn’t bother answering him. It had grown so dark that the streetlights would have been on already, had civilization not come to an end. We had seconds, if that, to reach the bank. I took off, sprinting faster than I ever had in my life. My quads felt like they were about to tear.

  “Bro, slow down!”

  An abandoned car was parked in the middle of the street in front of me. I ran around it, bumping it with my hip. My backpack jostled, the water bottles inside it sloshing around. The extra weight of the bag slowed me down, but it was my lifeline and I wouldn’t dare leave it behind. It only had a couple of days food and water in it and I was thankful for that much.

  The bank loomed at the end of the block. I picked up my pace as much as I could. The first shriek came then, scaring the shit out of me. That sound had haunted my nightmares since the first time I’d heard it. It bounced off the hard surfaces of the street and buildings, echoing throughout the entire area.

  Another one pierced my ears, making me wince. That one came from nearby. Christ, they were so close that I expected one of them to pounce on me as I reached the revolving door at the front of the bank. I ran into it, throwing my shoulder against the glass, getting it moving as fast as I could.

  “Hold up, man! I’m falling behind!”

  I didn’t wait. I ran across the open lobby, trying to remember where everything was located. The room was bathed in darkness and I couldn’t see a damn thing. I bumped into the teller’s booth and I worked my way around it. The vault sat ten yards past that, the door open. Every since I’d found this place, I had always left everything accessible, just in case I had to get back here in a hurry. I ran through the door and tripped over the bottom lip, banging my shin against the harsh metal.

  I fell inside and slid across the cool floor. Piles of stuff that I’d been collecting were spread about. I rifled through the one nearest me and found a long, metal flashlight. It took me a few seconds to figure out how to use it, as it didn’t have any buttons. I twisted the cap on the front and the end lit up, illuminating the vault. The revolving door squeaked as Greg came through it, so I angled the beam across the lobby, showing him the way.

  “What the hell, bro? Why are you—”

  Another shriek, louder and shriller, echoed through the lobby. That got Greg’s ass moving. He ran toward me, looking over his shoulder as he came. “What is making that crazy ass sound?”

  I pushed the heavy vault door shut as he ran through it. It latched into place with an audible thunk. I spun the wheel on the back of the door, locking it just as one of them slammed into the other side of it. Even though I knew they couldn’t get through the thick steel, I still jumped away from the door. The pounding on the outside grew worse for a full minute before finally abating.

  Greg stood beside me, staring at the door in horror. “What the fuck, bro?”

  I took my bag off and dropped it to the floor. My matches were in the bottom and it took me a few seconds to fish them out and light a couple of candles that I’d placed around the vault. Greg continued to watch the door with a stupid look on his face. How did he not know what was going on outside?

  “Here,” I said, handing him a bottle of water from my bag. “It’ll help calm your nerves.”

  “Really? Is there booze in it? I haven’t had straight liquor in a long time.”

  “Booze? Only a complete dipshit would get drunk nowadays.”

  He took the bottle from me and drank half of it in one go.

  “Easy! We only have a limited supply of water.” I snatched it from his hands.

  “Sorry, bro, I’m thirsty as shit.”

  “I told you to stop calling me bro, for the love of God.”

  Greg sat against the wall opposite of me. “What was making those sounds? What is bouncing off the door? This is some seriously scary shit, br—”

  My glare stopped him before he could finish the word. I couldn’t believe it. How could he have survived in an apartment building for a month? Not even taking into account his nonfunctioning brain, I didn’t understand how he’d stayed alive while everyone else around him had died. Especially since he didn’t seem to comprehend the situation we found ourselves in.

  “You keep asking me these weird questions,” I said. “Don’t you know what’s going on out there?”

  “I’ve been chilling in my apartment, bro.” He winced at his use of the word, but continued. “I’ve heard those screaming sounds a lot, but I figured they were just sick people who sounded funny.”

  “Sick people?” I tore open a bag of potato chips that I’d taken from my apartment.

  “Yeah, the news said to stay indoors because of a plague or some shit,” he said.

  I remembered the news agencies saying that at first. That was before the power went out though. Everyone thought that some kind of airborne disease had been making people sick; mutating their bodies into disfigured freaks. It was just before everything collapsed when people figured out that the disease spread through the bites of the infected.

  Emergency broadcasts had told everyone to stay indoors and not to come in contact with anyone you didn’t know. I’d still been inside my apartment at that time. It wasn’t until the power went out that I fled, searching for something safer
than my two bedroom place. I found the bank and the open vault that same day. Someone else had discovered it at the same time I did and we ended up getting into a hell of a fight over it. I won.

  “You’ve been in your apartment since this started? That was weeks ago.” I wiped my oily fingers on my shirt.

  “Well, yeah. I didn’t want to get whatever shit was flying around in the air, you know?”

  “How did you have enough food at your place? I ran out after a couple of days.”

  “I don’t like to shop so I always buy a month’s worth of groceries at a time. It kind of blows because I’ve got shit coming out of cabinets at first, but—”

  “You never once looked out the window to see what was making those awful sounds? How did you not hear the people screaming in the streets?”

  “Well, I heard them, but I had taped my curtains against the windows and I didn’t want to break the seal. I figured that might help keep the disease shit out, you know?”

  Wow. This guy actually thought that duct tape and fabric could keep a virus out of his house. People were being slaughtered in the streets and he sat in his apartment, getting wasted most likely, and managed to stay alive. If he hadn’t been the only other person I’d seen alive, I would have thrown him out of the vault.

  “So you have no idea what’s happening? You think everyone got sick and died?”

  “That’s what the news said, bro. What else could kill everybody in a couple of days?”

  “If everyone got sick and died, where are the bodies?” I couldn’t believe that he hadn’t thought of such a simple question already.

  He sat across from me, stumped. “Damn. I never thought of that.”

  Another thump reverberated through the vault. Thinking about the strength required to run into a heavy steel door and make it shake sent a shiver down my spine. They seemed to grow stronger every day. I wasn’t sure that even the vault would be able to hold up forever. If that was the case – I was screwed.

  “So what’s going on then? I mean, I know I’m out of the loop and shit, but what was chasing us?”

  “Vampires.”

  His mouth fell open. I expected his brain to fall out of it.

  “Are you fucking with me?”

  I looked around the room, trying to find the weapon I’d been working on. I spotted it under the pile of stuff I’d rooted through. It had started as a large, wooden cross that I’d found hanging on the wall in the lobby of the bank. For the past few days I’d been working to whittle the end of it into a sharp point. The entire piece had a length of about two feet, maybe three. I had no idea if it would work, but I didn’t have much else to do with my time.

  “Does this look like a joke?” I held the cross up between us, showing him the end I’d been working on.

  “Vampires? Like Count Dracula kind of shit?”

  “Yeah, the thing outside pounding on the door is wearing a cape and speaking with a shitty accent.”

  “Really?”

  I made a huge mistake by bringing him back with me. His dumb ass would eat all my food, drink my water, and I could feel myself getting dumber with every passing moment.

  “No, you iggit. I’m not even sure that ‘vampire’ is the right term for them, but that’s what the last few survivors were calling them before they died too.”

  I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn’t following me.

  “Ok, you said you saw the reports about it being viral. Those were kind of right. It was a virus, but it spread from a bite by one of those things, not through the air. It takes a few days for you to change, assuming they don’t just eat you outright. Oh yeah, that’s the other thing, they eat you, not drink your blood. Well, they do that too, but they do it while they’re eating you.”

  “Bro, that is fucking disgusting.”

  I ignored him and kept going. “In the days while you’re turning, you become sensitive to light. People can stay out in it for another three or four days, but their mind is eroding the whole time. So it isn’t safe during the day or the night. They come out at night, but those who are still converting are out during the day, and they’re half mad. That’s why I’ve been stuck in this damn vault for so long. Today was the first time that I didn’t see anyone wondering the streets during the day.”

  “So that’s why you went back to your apartment?”

  Yeah,” I said. I didn’t tell him how much I’d already come to regret that decision. “These things are fast and strong as hell. I saw one tear a man completely in half and it looked easy too. They don’t have any eyes, those fall out during the fifth day of the conversion, so they use that shriek that we heard as a kind of radar, like a bat. When you hear one of those cries, you’re fucked.”

  “Dude, you’re blowing my mind hole right now.”

  “Just a heads up – all of the legends about vampires don’t seem to be true. If these things really are vampires, that is. Crosses and holy water don’t do a damn thing. Stake to the heart will work, but only because it’s to the heart. Wood doesn’t have anything to do with it. Garlic is effective, but only because it seems to mask your scent. Light is the best right now. It doesn’t set them on fire, but it really kicks their ass.”

  “If crosses don’t work, then why do you have that thing?” He nodded toward my whittled cross.

  “It’s the only thing I could find in the bank that I could sharpen. Fortunately, the vamps don’t seem to have any problem-solving abilities beyond that of an intelligent dog. That’s the only reason we’re still alive.”

  We sat in silence for a while. I couldn’t tell if what I said had sunk in or not, and figured it probably didn’t matter anyway. Greg wasn’t exactly the kind of ally I could use at a time like this. I needed someone with engineering skills to rig some electricity, or someone who knew a lot about guns or explosives. Greg knew how to guzzle beer. Awesome.

  “So what do we do now, bro?”

  “If you call me ‘bro’ one more time, I’m going to shove this cross up your ass.” I held it up again, letting my point sink in. “And now we’re going to sleep. There isn’t much else to do at night.”

  I balled up one of the shirts I’d taken from my apartment and tucked it under my head. I’d grown accustomed to sleeping on the hard floor so it didn’t bother me much anymore. Greg looked uncomfortable as hell, which made me smile. I licked my fingers and extinguished the last of the candles.

  “Out of curiosity, why did you come out when you heard me go into my apartment?” I asked. “If all of the screaming, shooting, death, and explosions didn’t bring you out, why did my keys hitting the door do it?”

  “I ran out of beer this morning,” he said.

  God damn it.

  *****

  The screaming woke me up.

  Light blinded me when I opened my eyes. The vault should have been pitch black as usual. That, combined with the screams that were breaking the common quiet of the day time, had me beyond confused. I looked around the small area for Greg, but didn’t see him. The front door to the vault stood ajar. What had that idiot done?

  The screaming stopped then, followed by a fit of laughter. I would be lying if I said that closing the door and locking him out hadn’t crossed my mind. Over the last few days I’d been doing my best to follow a pattern whenever I left the vault, so I went about following it. I changed my clothes, grabbed my bag, and left the door open.

  I followed the occasional guffaws and chuckles. Greg stood outside, almost a block down the street, dancing. At least, I think that’s what you would call the spasms that were moving him around the road. Music of some kind, techno I think it was called, came from an open car door beside him.

  Greg reached in the door and jacked the volume up. The blaring music made me wince. I hadn’t seen anyone in awhile, but that didn’t mean people weren’t around. I didn’t want to think about what that shitty music could attract to us. Greg continued gyrating, clapping his hands at random times that didn’t match the beat of the music.


  I broke into a run, desperate to turn the music off. When I’d crossed half the distance between us, I realized that I’d left the cross in the vault. Several cars littered the street, their drivers having been pulled out of ripped off doors and shattered windshields. The vamps had struck hard and fast one night, wiping out most of the city in a matter of hours. After the slaughter in the streets the first night, everyone stayed inside. It didn’t work. People underestimated the strength of those bastards, and they ran through doors and walls, dragging everyone off to god knows where.

  “Hey, bro!” Greg yelled when he saw me coming.

  I ran past him, practically diving into the car, and switched off the music. My anger was near the boiling point.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I spun around, giving him my best death glare.

  “What’s wrong, br—”

  “Why in the hell would you do something so stupid? Everything within a three block radius just heard that!”

  “You said everyone was dead. What’s the big deal?”

  “I said I hadn’t seen anyone – that doesn’t mean they’re dead!”

  “Oh. I hadn’t thought of it like that. I just missed music, ya know?”

  “What were you screaming about? I thought you were being killed.”

  “I couldn’t find a car that had keys in it – I was getting mad.” He smiled at the vehicle that had been playing music. “But this beauty had keys and a CD in it. Who the hell listens to CD’s anymore? I couldn’t find any radio stations, so I got lucky.”

  I thought about explaining to him that you couldn’t have a radio broadcast without electricity, but that seemed pointless. My anger hadn’t abated. I took several deep breaths, trying not to strangle him.

  “You left me alone, with the goddamn vault door open.”

  “Well yeah, you were still sleeping. I didn’t want to be rude.”

  “I was defenseless! Something could have walked right in and killed me!”

  He looked a little dismayed at my rage. Or maybe the expression on his face was shock – I couldn’t tell. “Sorry, bro! I was just trying—”