Hounded | Book 3 | Hounded 3

by Douglas, Ellie

  Inside, the building reeked with a malodorous miasma that pervaded the atmosphere so badly that Nakos threw up in his mouth and Harry gagged. Calloway held his breath and covered his nose and mouth. Bellamy seemed impervious to the disgusting smell, and none of them could see Ethan anywhere.

  A curious sound alerted the men, so they followed it toward a closed door. The sound grew louder. Bellamy held up his fingers, indicating for them to ready themselves. With nods of heads, Bellamy swiftly opened the door. On the far side, Ethan’s back was to them and he was cradling something, the noise unfamiliar to the men. It sounded like a wounded bird.

  “Ethan, are you okay, man?” Bellamy asked.

  Ethan slowly turned around. In his arms was a dwarf white tiger. He made his way to the men. They all stared at the cat, then back at Ethan. Blood was covering a part of the tiger’s back and spilling onto Ethan’s hands.

  “You bit?” Calloway asked him while checking out the tiger.

  “No, but he was. If I hadn’t come in when I did, he’d have been dog food for them damn zombie dogs.”

  “Best you put it out of its misery,” Harry suggested.

  Ethan cast him a cold look and held the tiger closer. Making his way toward the door, he turned sharply.

  “I’m keeping it.”

  He then exited and got on board the bus. Everyone was looking at him and the tiger. Some were excited, and others were curious or scared.

  Bellamy, Harry, Nakos, and Calloway exited the pharmacy.

  “It’s all cleared out, Doc. Grab some bags and get what you need. Harry, go with him,” Bellamy said.

  The doc went with Harry and grabbed what he could salvage. Ethan took a seat in the middle of the bus and cradled his new pet. Taking a tee shirt from his backpack, he wrapped it around the tiger’s wounds. Timothy came over for a closer look.

  “What are you going to call her?” Timothy asked as he sat next to Ethan with big bright eyes.

  “It’s a he, and he has a name,” Ethan answered, pointing to the nametag.

  “Crunchie, that’s pretty cool,” Timothy said as he reached out to pet it. Crunchie purred, then flopped out his front paw as if to high-five Timothy. Beaming a mega-watt smile, he high-fived the tiger and then stroked very gently down its back, checking the wound for himself. There was a noticeable lump under the tee shirt and some fur missing where the shirt hadn’t covered. He gave Ethan a quizzical look.

  “He’ll be all right. I saved him. He just needs time to heal up, and he’ll be good as gold,” Ethan said while petting his new pal.

  Bellamy disliked the idea of dwarf pets. Even more, he hated the professor responsible for developing dwarfism in wild animals so people could have pet tigers, lions, elephants, etc. He was responsible for the world dying, the damn zombies, and the very disease that started it all. It was all Professor Boran Keo’s doing. Bellamy’s stomach acid began to bubble, and his face grimaced as he looked at the dwarf tiger on Ethan’s lap.

  Dwarf animals were a constant reminder of the man behind all the death and destruction. He turned quickly away, holding Lily in a tight embrace. He was hoping his thoughts would move to the back of his mind. He told himself to get a grip on his feelings, since it was obvious that Ethan’s new pet was here to stay. Bellamy couldn’t afford feeling anger toward it. After all, it wasn’t the animal’s fault. He sighed heavily. Lily held on tighter. She knew all about his feelings when it came to the dwarf animals.

  Harry returned with Doc Leo. The doc gave a bottle of erythromycin to Nakos for his sister. “It was the best thing I could find.” Nakos thanked him. Bellamy took over the driving, and following Oliver, they were once again on the road.

  CHAPTER 23

  ANKTI

  Every noise amplified within Ankti’s ears. She was irritable, far worse than during her monthly cycle. This was different, and she felt out of control. Her paranoia magnified, and all she could do was sit still and conceal herself from prying eyes.

  She pulled her hoodie up over her head to hide the loss of her hair, although no one glanced at her unless she coughed, and they only did so to ensure that she was okay. To Ankti, those eyes meant something else – they meant to get at her, pull her down, and end her life.

  No George to protect her, either, and her own brother was too busy with his wife and baby. “I hate you, Millie,” she said in a whisper, looking at Millie with foggy eyes and feeling a pang somewhere deep inside stirring a hunger she’d never had before.

  As the days went on, the hunger grew. Her fears grew, too. Her wounds spread rapidly – first the scratch from George nearly three and a half months ago, which was unhealed, raw, scarlet-colored, and aggressively spreading. Then the ones on her ankles began to spread up her calf muscles, and as they did, they slowly ate away at her flesh.

  Not only was her flesh being eaten, but muscles underneath the soft tissue, and her organs, began to corrode. She could feel a heat like none other. To her it felt like she was being forced to drink hydrofluoric acid, purposefully dissolving her organs slowly.

  Kicking off a shoe as the burning pain felt like she’d dipped her toes into a boiling fat fryer, she looked down. She first noticed the odd color of her dried blood. It was darker, blacker somehow.

  Then she saw it. Her toenails had disintegrated, leaving just the raw nail beds. She quickly put her sock back on. Oddly, seeing this didn’t cause her alarm. She felt calm once the initial shock had passed. It was as though her brain had accepted it before her eyes did.

  The bus ride was making her extremely uncomfortable. She drifted in and out of consciousness. She felt itchy, but scratching removed portions of her skin and did nothing to diminish the discomfort. Afraid of being seen, she restricted herself to scratching just her legs.

  Before she realized what had happened, the scratching had turned her once-perfect legs into a field of boils with popping veins radiating in every direction. They looked gangrenous, but her jeans covered them well enough.

  “Sister, are you sure you’re okay?” Nakos asked as he stretched his frame over the seat and looked down at her.

  “I will be. It’s just the flu. I am tired, though. You don’t mind if I sleep, do you?” she asked between coughs.

  “No, I don’t mind. We’re just stopping for a bite to eat. Can I get you anything?”

  She shook her head ‘no’. Nakos left with the others, but he was worried about her, gravely worried. She fell unconscious again not long after he and the others exited the bus and entered the diner. She hadn’t felt Lily’s presence, not a single stir, when she’d checked on her.

  It wasn’t until the zombie dogs entered the bus that she woke, not from the noise, and not from the smell of them. She woke with some primal bond that she shared with them. They approached and circled around, as if to study her. One of them jumped on the seat next to her and just stared into her foggy, clouded eyes. It tilted its head as if to say something, but she wasn’t sure what.

  What brain matter she had left kicked into action and she began screaming. She screamed not from fear of being eaten, but from the primitive bond she realized they shared. She didn’t want to be like them – but her life was slowly, day by day, ebbing away.

  She screamed repeatedly. The zombie dogs acted like soldiers, staying by her side and protecting her. Her screams resonated deep within the dogs, alerting them to guard her. When they came closer, she shrieked even louder.

  A loud noise came from the front of the bus. It was Bellamy, Nakos, and Harry. They were all there, drawing the zombie dogs to them. It wasn’t long before they’d killed the dogs. Ankti felt a sadness swarm at her like electric eels, a sorrow unlike the one she felt when George died. This was different. The dogs dying were like children that she hadn’t even known she had.

  The tears streamed down her darkened gray cheeks, settling on her cracked lips. She tried shaking the feeling from her head. She wrapped another blanket around her wrists and hands and shook herself crazy. She looked like she was
having a seizure. Her heart, what remained of it, felt so much pain, the pain and loss one can only ever feel when they lose a loved one. She thrashed around in her seat.

  Nakos rushed to her side and cradled her until she settled once more. The doc tried to look her over, but she shrugged him away. She took the offer of a water bottle, but after one sip, she spewed it back up. No one knew what was wrong with her, but she did! Now she knew! Ankti dared not tell a solitary soul and double-checked that her hands and legs were well-concealed before she closed her eyes.

  Hunger was what woke her, and that smell of blood, the lure of fresh meat close by. Her eyes sprung wide, her lashes barely visible, her motions slow and unsteady. Her head cocked sideways, facing Ethan.

  Starvation now controlled her. She opened her mouth wide and several back teeth came loose. She spit them to the floor, and they landed by her mangled feet. Her mind felt like a blur of fog and her eyes were no longer seeing clearly. It was as if she was looking through a steamed bathroom mirror.

  An itch irritated her ear. When she scratched it with her hands, still wrapped in the blanket, part of her ear fell off into her blanketed hand. She quickly discarded it as if it was yesterday’s rubbish.

  Pulling the hoodie closer over her head, she made a move to get up from her seat. Unable to remember the last time she’d stood or how to walk, she stumbled and disturbed Nakos, who was first to grab her. She slapped his hand down. “Get away,” she growled, her foggy eyes staring straight at the bloodied tiger. Her tongue lolled around before managing to find its way out of her mouth, and then it licked sideways before withdrawing back inside. Drool had begun to spill out of her mouth, and her once dried and cracked lips split into four sections.

  Nakos believed the fever she had was causing her to be delirious. He looked at the bottle of antibiotics and wasn’t sure what to do. He tried to get her to take them, but she just pushed his hands away. He sat her down firmly and looked into her clouded eyes.

  “Stay here.”

  She weakly nodded, still homing in on the fresh blood smell. The tiger’s bleeding drew her to it. She was hungry for it, with a tingling sensation she’d never had before.

  “Doc, you have to check Ankti out, now!” Nakos told Leo. Then he added, “This time, do something, please.”

  He reluctantly got up, having difficulty removing his eyes from Ethan. He was concerned about him. His attention was strongly diverted when he saw Ankti.

  “How long has she been like this?”

  “I don’t know. One minute she was as you saw, the next she’s like this. What’s wrong with her, Doc?”

  “I need to get her lying down so I can do a full examination of her,” he said as he turned to face Nakos.

  “On it,” Nakos said, rushing to Bellamy.

  “Hey, we gotta find somewhere to stop and pretty soon. It’s Ankti,” Nakos said quickly, then rushed back to his sister’s side. He wouldn’t let her get out of the seat, holding his hand firmly on her shoulder to keep her there.

  Bellamy looked over his shoulder, but all he could see was Nakos standing over his sister. He focused his eyes back on the road. They were minutes out from New Haven.

  “Hon, can you go let Nakos know we’re entering New Haven and I’ll stop there, somewhere safe?”

  Lily replied with a kiss on his cheek, and then she left to pass the message on. Making a quick stop where Ethan sat, she checked him out and then carried on to Nakos. When she saw Ankti, she could clearly tell something was terribly wrong. The woman looks godawful, thought Lily.

  “Bellamy said we’re coming into New Haven and he’ll stop there. She’ll be okay, Nakos, she’ll be okay,” Lily said with a smile. She quickly turned on her heels and rushed back to the front of the bus.

  “Better pull over sooner rather than later. Ankti looks really ill,” Lily said as she took a seat next to Bellamy.

  CHAPTER 24

  NEW HAVEN

  Bellamy drove faster, avoiding obstacles as best he could. A few times, he clipped something. Lily held onto the seat railing, watching Bellamy drive. Turning onto Sargent Drive, Lily was astounded by the disaster. The Mobil station was all but a smoldering shell, and even the Dunkin Donuts behind it was half charred. It was as if a firebombed Mobil had taken half the side of Dunkin Donuts with it.

  He sped past it, turning onto Church Street. His eyes caught the Long Wharf Medical Center. Half of the building was gone, the other half intact.

  “This will do,” he said, pointing to the building. He pulled into the entrance and parked right outside the front doors. His eyes, along with Lily’s, surveyed the area for any threats. They saw more cars abandoned and body parts scattered around, but no signs of the zombie dogs.

  Bellamy signaled Harry over.

  “Wound up the boys, we’re going huntin’.” Bellamy put on his Elmer Fudd voice, which always made Lily laugh. He was spot-on with it.

  “Hon, I’d like it if you stayed back. Not trying to be macho, as I know you can hold your own. It’s just…”

  “It’s okay, babe. I don’t mind sitting this one out. I’m not too fond of checking things out in the dark, not since being attacked. Just promise me you’ll come back.”

  “You know I will.” He bent down and kissed the top of her head. She lifted her face and looked straight into his different-colored eyes. His eyes enthralled her, and her eyes closed only for a second as Bellamy found her lips. While engaged in a deep, meaningful, lingering kiss, an urgency to get going was expressed by Harry, who nudged Bellamy in the shoulder.

  “Plenty time for that later, let’s go,” Harry said, pushing the bus doors open. Ethan handed Crunchie to Timothy, who was ecstatic to watch over the white tiger. Nakos instructed the doctor to stay by Ankti’s side, and made him promise that he would and not to let anyone else near her.

  Bellamy, Harry, Nakos, Ethan, Calloway, and Oliver stepped cautiously toward the building. From the street, it looked like a gang war might have erupted, with bullet holes all over the exterior, a few windows smashed, and the front double doors showing signs of forced entry. One side had fallen off its hinges, and the other had a cannonball-size hole through it.

  Bellamy carefully stepped in, followed by Harry, flashlight in one hand and Beretta in the other. Calloway followed closely behind, his .44 ready at the aim. Oliver was next to enter with his .38 Special, extended arm ready and willing. Ethan followed behind him with his Bokken Hickory wooden sword. The light from outside shone through the bullet holes in a row of what looked like cascading laser lights. The rest of the light bounced off the broken shards of glass, painting eerie shadows that resembled ghostly monsters across the walls.

  The air inside was pungent, dirty, and had that all-too-familiar dead smell, noted Bellamy.

  “Let’s hope the dead are dead dead, and that no fucking zombie dogs are in here.” Harry said as he swung his flashlight around the room. The waiting room chairs had been toppled over, and blood had rebranded the floors, walls, and reception desk.

  As they inched forward, Bellamy’s flashlight caught something wiggling on the ground. They all shone their flashlights on it.

  “Fucking hell!” Nakos blurted as he shot it. “That thing had no back legs and only half a fucking head.”

  “Gotta be more of them sons of bitches. That thing wasn’t alone,” Oliver said as he waved the flashlight around the room. It bounced from wall to wall. Floor to ceiling, they saw blood trails, like a car’s skid mark when breaking before impact. Bodies were soon discovered, most dead dead from bullet holes.

  Three wearing patient gowns had awoken from their comas, and were now wandering around aimlessly, lifeless. If not for their movements and grunt-like sounds, they’d look like hideous entombed creatures, thought Calloway as he pulled his top over his mouth and nose. The smell penetrated to the back of his throat, causing him to cough. Oliver took care of them quickly and quietly.

  “Harry, you wanna do the left corridor?” Bellamy said. “I’ll take Cal
loway and do the right.”

  “Sure thing, boss,” Harry said as he and Oliver went down the left side. Nakos and Ethan hung back in case their noises alerted unwanted guests.

  Calloway had started to sweat. His forehead dripped onto his nose, and that in turn dripped to the sides of his mouth. His back was so drenched that his shirt had stuck to him. He could feel his heart racing. Nothing about searching around a dark abandoned building thrilled him. It was as if he was standing in a bucket of cockroaches blindfolded, while spiders were being dropped on his head.

  Bellamy took the lead and opened doors quickly, ready to blast anything unnatural inside. As they drew closer to the end of the corridor, both he and Calloway could hear muffled sounds from the last room. With his hand on the door, he signaled Calloway to be ready. Throwing the door wide open, he swung the flashlight forward, spreading a glow of amber around the room. His flashlight caught eyes, like the headlights of a car catching the eyes of a scared deer.

  “Don’t shoot!”

  “Don’t shoot!”

  “Please don’t shoot us! Take me, but leave my son alone, please,” The black man pleaded while he covered his crying son with his body.

  “We’re not here to shoot you or your son. We’re clearing the place out, so we can help one of our own with medical assistance,” Bellamy explained.

  The black man looked up at Bellamy. A tiny smile emerged from the corners of his very dried lips.

  “You sure you’re not here to hurt us?”

  “Either of you hurt?” Bellamy queried, noticing the dried blood on the father’s left arm.

  “Just a scratch from my turned wife, but otherwise no. You sure you aren’t here to hurt us?”

  “I promise you, we’re not here to harm you or your son. We have family waiting in a bus outside. You’re both welcome to join us. We’re heading to Liberty Island.”