Hungry Series: Tomes 1 & 2

by Tide, Lawrence Herbert

  "Well, guys, having fun?" asked Vlad, his trunk protruding from the open roof window. Another of his acolytes continued to throw cackling poultry over the ledge, exciting the creatures below. Some stretched their lean hands towards the roof while others, on the dusty soil behind them, were fighting for bloody debris of flesh.

  "Johnny, we're doomed," whined Bo, his heart beating fast.

  He drew back just in time one of his feet, which was near the border of the roof, which was almost caught by a bunch of bony hands and claws. They scraped the rim of the truck on which they were forced to stand.

  Johnny shrugged, but inwardly, he didn't feel reassured. He had the impression that he and his friend were like prisoners of sea pirates from a long time ago. These had fun putting their prisoners on a plank above the sea and making them stumble toward hungry sharks.

  "Well, clowns, your Master Hiroto doesn't seem to be ready to save you," Vlad shouted at them, laughing hard before continuing, "He ought not to reveal to the Community what we're doing here, or you're finished!"

  Vibrations were heard, and looking at him, the two prisoners saw the henchman pull out his smartphone and talk. His voice was covered by the roars and screams of the creatures around them. However the two young men felt their anxiety grow even more, when they realized that he was watching them with an even more worrying smile. He hung up and shouted, "Program changes, guys... Adams has hidden many guards all around the Community, and anyone who tries to approach it without authorization will be shot without warning.

  “Your Master will not warn anyone. Do you know what that means?"

  He stopped talking, waiting for their answer. A minute passed by and neither of the two young people dared to say a word. Vlad resumed, "If you want to know what it means, it means... that you serve us no purpose alive!"

  He looked at the henchman who, behind them, still held them, and he resumed, trying to keep his voice strong enough to be heard above the din, "Let them go to the edge and, if they don't jump, shoot them."

  The man nodded and, turning to Bo and Johnny, he yelled, "You heard? I count three and then you jump, or I kill you like dogs." The two young men remained motionless, looking at him, one with fear, the other with an air of distrust.

  Vlad and his two hit men snickered, and the armed man said, "One..."

  Bo hesitated, preparing to move forward, but he was restrained by Johnny, who shook his head no, no, no.

  "Two..." The man stepped forward, his gun almost touching Johnny's back.

  "Thr..."

  A noise was heard below, and all the people on the roof were amazed by what they saw.

  The zombies were falling one beside the other below them, in a very rapid wave, like dominoes collapsing, as if they were mowed down by something.

  "What is..." Vlad said, leaning a little more to see.

  Behind them, on the other side of the truck, a new line of undead collapsed.

  The armed man leaned over, and that's when Johnny turned around and caught with one of his hands the man's armed hand. Bending painfully the hit man's wrist he struck with his other hand the man at the temple with the back of his fist.

  The henchman lost his balance and his weapon and fell. He shouted while falling on the mass of creatures lying below. Many bone-sided hands closed by reflex on him, while half struck by the fall, he sought slowly to disengage himself.

  Johnny, who had managed to stay steady with Bo, began to run toward Vlad. The latter, who saw him coming, looked down and shouted to someone in the truck, "Pass me your gun!"

  He was kicked in the face before he could react or anything could be passed to him, and he fell backwards, at the foot of the small ladder.

  Johnny grabbed the top of the bars with the intention of jumping on him.

  He suddenly felt that he was grabbed. It was the henchman who had just let go of the bag of chickens on the roof, and from behind, he was trying to smother the young man of color, putting his hand on his throat with the goal to stifle him.

  The hit man was violently punched in the back.

  This made the man release Johnny and, turning around, he was hit a second time, this time in his face by Bo, who had joined them. The man fell through the open window and hit head-first the metal floor, knocking himself out. He finally lay on the floor near Vlad, who was already unconscious.

  "Vlad, what's going on?" they heard on an inner loudspeaker, and everyone recognized the frightened voice of Adams.

  The latter, still sitting at his desk and watching, dazed, everything which was happening on his various control screens. He concentrated his attention on the henchman in the middle of the zombies, who was trying to escape their clutch. Unable to get up to flee their many hands he began to scream, "Help me!"

  His voice stopped when claw-like fingers lacerated his belly and, shredding it, extracted his bloody guts. The eyes bulging with the pain, he saw more zombies crawling toward him, obscuring his sight.

  He then felt an excruciating pain in his chest.

  One of the creatures had just plucked out his heart and he saw it plunge its jaws into the still beating bloody mass.

  "My God!" exclaimed the Administrator, gazing with great eyes at the man being shredded into pieces under the mass of the creatures. Sweat dripping from his bald forehead, he shouted at a microphone, "Vlad, answer me, where are you?"

  The latter was still lying down when Johnny landed heavily on the metallic floor, near him, from the open roof window. He saw that Vlad was lying on his back, eyes closed. Glad to be rid of Adams' damned soul, Johnny reported his attention toward one of the two doors giving access to the front of the vehicle.

  It was then that he received a violent kick in the back.

  This made him fall on his flat belly, his chin hitting hard the metal plates of the floor. The attacker fell heavily on him, making him blow hard from the impact. The pain made him grimace.

  Johnny was then turned over on his back, and it was then that he saw that it was Vlad, who had awakened. The latter pulled on his dark arm and, placing him on his stomach, applied a painful arm lock.

  "So, clown, did you really think you would get rid of me like that?"

  The henchman bowed his back, bending his arm even more in the wrong direction, to the point of soon breaking his arm's joint.

  A violent punch crashed on Vlad's cheek, turning his head sharply under the impact, and he fainted.

  Johnny released his arm and rubbed his aching elbow while sneaking from underneath the unconscious gunman. Relaxed now, he looked at Bo, who, crouching beside them, was smiling at him.

  "I do owe you two beers, pal!" exclaimed the young man of color cheerfully, smiling with all his bleeding teeth to his blond friend. The latter answered, "I bet you do!"

  Joshua Adams felt his stress rising stratospherically, as he watched, on the screens inserted in the wall in front of him, his grip on his little world escaping him. Things were happening both inside and outside the truck, and nothing seemed to be happening as he had hoped. This was a good excuse for him to better his moral, and so he pulled out two things from a drawer of his desk. He served himself in a pretty glass a very old drink of Bourbon, which he placed with the bottle near the edge of his desk.

  Suddenly he felt a shake and clung to his desk, hearing metallic noises, as if the shock absorbers of the vehicle were strained. The movements surprised him all the more because he didn't catch his glass and the bottle in time, which over fell on the carpet.

  The softness of the latter dampened the shocks and prevented any breakage, but the two overturned containers spread the reddish liquid over the ocher colored surface, staining it irretrievably.

  "My God, what's that, an earthquake?"

  He glanced at some of the outside screens and immediately realized what was going on.

  He saw that the zombies that had previously fallen had got up again. Covered in the blood of the chickens and of the shredded man, they gathered once more around the truck.

  Roar
ing with their frustrating hunger, they shook the vehicle violently.

  A noise coming from one of the two doors giving access to his office made him jump. The Administrator glanced at one of the screens that showed the inside of the truck on the other side, and he was startled by what he saw.

  Johnny and Bo had opened a small trapdoor near one of the automatic doors giving access to his office, and they were trying to tamper with the electronic circuits inside it. Presently Bo was fidgeting two wires. Suddenly a spark coming from the little trap briefly dazzled the two young men.

  The automatic door was shaken again, as if it was going to open, but it didn't move.

  Panic seized Adams who breathed loudly, as much from fear of being captured as because of his stoutness. He tried to contact someone by taking his microphone, in which he shouted: "Hey, you, the driver, intruders will eventually get into my office, shoot them down and..."

  It was then that he stopped, angry with himself. He had just remembered that the driver had been the poor guy who had been shredded, whom he had previously ordered to follow Vlad's orders.

  Since he had ordered almost all the henchmen accompanying him to return to the Community to intercept Hiroto, he found himself now alone in his truck. The other fellow, who had fallen from the top of the ladder, seemed to be in as poor a state as Vlad. Both were lying, stunned, behind Johnny and Bo, who were continuing to try to open his door. And he knew that when they entered they would catch him, and that for him, everything would be all over! Power, access to resources …

  It was then that he glanced at the electronic controls on his desk, with their buttons and levers and joystick. And that's when he smiled maliciously.

  "So, when are you going to open that goddamned door?" asked Johnny, who had been pressing Bo for a while.

  "Yeah, yeah, I'm doing my best, but please, don't stress me!"

  "Excuse me, all my apologies, buddy. All this electronic stuff, I don't know anything about it, unlike you."

  "Too often in the Dojo, huh?" the young blond replied, glancing at him mockingly.

  "And you, not enough," replied his friend of color, obviously wounded by his remark. He went on: "So the door, you open it? I'm eager to catch Adams, that old fat bastard, and bring him to the Community's justice! "

  "You're not the only one in a hurry," Bo answered, continuing to manipulate the cables and components inside the little access panel. He licked his upper lip, concentrated on his task, and finally said, still manipulating something, "I think I'm going to make it, here..."

  The click of a mechanism was heard, and a door beside opened at once, but not the one for which they had been hoping...

  Realizing with irritation that the door to Adams' office remained closed, the two young men looked in the direction from which the noise had come.

  The doors had slid and the entrance of the truck was now wide open!

  Several zombies had stood in front of the doors, and now they were watching the two humans through the opening. They groaned, all ready to enter.

  "Hey, what did you do?" Johnny shouted at Bo, who had his hands fidgeting again inside the panel, and who answered to him, "I assure you, I'm sure it's not me!"

  "Indeed," said Adams, laughing, still holding his hand on the door opening control he had just activated. He brought back his hand, and continued, amused, to look at, on the screen, what was going to happen to the two friends.

  The first undead pulled themselves inside the truck and, slowly, began to approach the young men. They huddled together in the corner of the door, close to the hatch.

  "My God, we're screwed!" Bo exclaimed, while Johnny remained focused.

  The zombies roared and opened enormous, deformed mouths, swooping down at once toward them.

  Johnny dodged a creature as he pushed another violently, kicking it at its chest. The thing fell back a few meters and then collapsed, while Bo, struggling with two other living dead, began punching clumsily in their faces.

  He was awkward but strong, and the two things collapsed close to the other creature, which immediately got up.

  Johnny let the creature that he had previously dodged literally leap towards him. Then, letting it push him backwards, he rolled back while dragging the creature with him. Helped by his feet he threw it over him. Carried by their shared momentum, the zombie was projected violently against one of the interior metallic sides of the truck.

  Johnny got up very quickly and he and Bo tried to escape through the entrance that remained open, and finally stopped in its frame. They had come face to face with a mob of zombies. Still covered in fresh animal and human blood, they grumbled and advanced towards them.

  Bo looked behind him and Johnny and saw that the creatures they'd been bullying had already gotten up, and, dragging their feet, walked toward them.

  "No way out in front or behind, we're screwed!" Bo exclaimed, making a face. His colored friend said nothing. He wanted only one thing: to die in battle like one of the Samurais of his Master's family, the warriors whom he had always admired for their courage.

  It was then that, excited, the zombies rushed towards them.

  ***

  Slicing

  They turned again and confronted the first attackers who were also the closest.

  Johnny again kicked back the creatures that came from behind while Bo did the same with his fists. It was with horror that they both felt bony hands scratching their backs, but their attention was focused on their opponents in front of them.

  Suddenly the scratching halted.

  Metallic sounds could be heard behind them and, looking out through the entrance, they saw that the group of zombies who had wanted to attack them from behind was concentrated on someone else.

  A small silhouette was running swiftly from one to the other, slicing arms and legs, which fell on the ground.

  "Master!" Johnny exclaimed, joy on his face.

  That's when he was pushed from behind by one of the creatures he had kicked back.

  So he returned his attention again to what was in front of him.

  He pushed the creature in his turn, putting his hand on its rotting eyes, and pushing its head back, but the pressure of the thing was far too great. He feared to be tipped backward by the creature's efforts. Metallic reflections appeared within the limits of his field of view, as he heard Hiroto's blade whistling in the air around him. The creature pushing Johnny saw its own arms fall at its feet.

  A few other saber thrusts followed, and the Japanese beheaded all the remaining zombies inside the truck.

  "You came to save us, Master," Johnny shouted happily, and Hiroto replied, "I wasn't going to let one of my most beloved disciples and his best friend die!"

  The old man smiled at him but, looking towards the entrance of the truck, his smile vanished.

  A new batch of creatures was arriving. There were dozens of them…

  Contemplating the game on the screen, Joshua Adams manipulated other controls near his desk and grumbled, "How does that work?"

  Johnny saw that they were facing a veritable wall of decomposing creatures, many of them having eyes which were no more than gaping orbits, their rotten tongues visible in their open, greedy jaws.

  The wall of zombies crashed on the ground, pushed violently to the side, as if an invisible car had dashed into them. Seeing this, the trio in the truck opened their eyes wider in surprise. It seemed to them that something, something massive, had darkened through the living dead, something so fast that it was almost invisible, like a blur.

  Just a fleeting impression from the corner of the eye...

  It was then that the fleeting impression returned, like a retinal persistence, and then in a wink, it was replaced by a massive male silhouette which froze, standing now in front of them. His sneakers had made an impressive braking noise, some dust having accumulated around them, as they had dug in the ground because of the brutal braking. It was then that the young man of color recognized the individual.

  "Dad!
" Johnny shouted, and he got out of the truck, embracing his sweating father.

  "My boy," Harry answered, jovial, and he tightened tenderly his arms around his son, closing his eyes. Reopening them after a second, his smile faded, while over his son's shoulder he looked at Hiroto, who was standing nearby.

  The old man, the living dead near him, in case they would rise again. The black giant told him, "Hiroto, man, it would've been best for you to stay inside the van and take some rest."

  "And leave you to the job alone?" replied the old Japanese man, smiling. "That would not have been worthy of me."

  Another silhouette arrived and stopped behind a bush, trying to hide.

  But nothing could escape the old Japanese's notice.

  "Get out of there right now," he shouted to the bush. "I saw you."

  His granddaughter came out from behind the thick curtain of vegetation, sheepishly, her head lowered. She was carrying in her hand the blade, with its crystalline reflections, that she had taken from the van.

  "Red? What the hell are you doing here?" Harry shouted at her, looking at her wide-eyed. "And what are you carrying there, in your hand?" He pointed at the blade, which was partly covered with dark brown spots.

  "Yes, what are you doing here?" Hiroto asked, his fury appearing on his face.

  "I'm sorry," answered the teen girl, continuing, "I went outside, and got lost in the woods. Then I saw that you had left the van and, silently, I followed you."

  "What about your promise?" asked the Japanese, clearly furious, before continuing, "Perjury! I'm furious..."

  A strafing on the ground before him silenced him as he jumped to the side, not fast enough to avoid being hit on the flank. Blood dripping from the wound, he collapsed while moaning with convulsions of pain.

  "Grandfather!" Red yelled, running toward him while the other people went to the ground to avoid being shot. While puffs of dust were lifted around them by strafing, they all looked to see who was firing at them. They saw that it was an automated machine-gun, on a rotating turret, that was shooting them, from the roof of the truck.