The Hungry 4: Rise of the Triad (The Sheriff Penny Miller Series)

by Steven Booth

  “Let me talk to Scratch.” Miller could feel frustration rising up inside of her. It wasn’t because of all this talk of cancer, but because Scratch appeared to be buying into it. His eyes were red and he looked heartbroken. Miller tried and failed to hold herself in check. She knew Rubenstein was lying, he just had to be, but he also had the advantage of his authority. Miller couldn’t remember everything. She was being labeled paranoid and tied down to a hospital bed.

  “Of course,” Rubenstein said. “I’ll check on you later.” Miller thought she detected just the hint of a smile on his face. Or perhaps she was paranoid. Who wouldn’t be, at this point?

  Miller and Scratch watched him walk out of the door. She waited until it closed behind him. Then she waved her fingers, urging Scratch to come close again, and speak quietly into her ear. He crouched by the bed. She smelled his aftershave. He still looked like a stranger. Another wave of anxiety coursed through her.

  “Scratch,” Miller whispered, “you don’t seriously believe him, do you?”

  “It makes sense…”

  Miller cut him off. “Of course it makes sense. The logic seems overwhelming. He has all the props. Me, I’m tied down and full of needles. But it’s utter bullshit. Scratch, I swear to you on Terrill Lee’s grave that I don’t have cancer. I’ve been set up. I have seen too much.”

  “Penny, I know this is difficult to accept,” Scratch whispered, “but I think this is serious. That zombie juice fucked with your innards. You’re really sick.”

  Miller thought furiously. She had to find some way to convince Scratch that this was all a ruse to keep them here. Maybe Rubenstein wanted to turn her into a vegetable, someone that they could do their experiments on with impunity. Hell, maybe the damned Army was in on this, and the center was just hiding behind the guise of a rehab facility. That, or something like it.

  “Scratch, they are doing experiments here. I talked to one of their subjects before a pair of soldiers took me down. I think they’re juicing people with that same stuff that turned me into Super-Sheriff back in the day. I think they even juiced me again.”

  “Penny,” Scratch whispered in a warning tone.

  “You have to listen to me,” she hissed. “They’ve got corridor after corridor of people strapped to beds on the other side of the compound. I remember more now. I talked to a guy named Alex, and he said that they were injecting him with something that made him hungry, something that made his skin crawl. It has got to be the same kind of thing. Sheppard’s zombie juice or something very damned like it.”

  Scratch got up. He walked over to the window, which was now darkening at the approach of night. He looked out at the ocean. Miller closed her eyes. Talking so much was making her headache worsen. She waited for him to come back to her bedside. She felt his presence, the breath entering her ear as he whispered again.

  “Penny, I want to believe you. I do.”

  “You’d better,” she said. “Our lives are at stake.”

  Scratch stood up. He stopped whispering and spoke in his normal voice. “Penny, this is serious, and I need you to take it seriously. You have brain cancer. It’s killing you. I saw the x-ray. We need to deal with that, not some imaginary events that happened during a seizure. There are no prisoners here. No people being experimented on.”

  Miller’s jaw dropped open. There went the entire point of whispering. She felt herself growing angry. “They’re not imaginary. I talked to one. He was locked in a room, strapped to a bed. The guy was there. He was scared. He needed me to rescue him. He…”

  Scratch shook his head almost imperceptibly—a warning to Miller, but of what? Was he acting? “I know you need to be the hero, Penny, but this is all just too ridiculous. We are in a rehab facility dedicated to helping people, not hurting them. You just need to calm down and get some rest. I can’t talk to you right now. Why don’t you get a few winks, and we can discuss this tomorrow.”

  “There isn’t going to be a tomorrow, Scratch. They mean to take me out.”

  “I won’t let them.” Scratch leaned over the bed. He kissed Miller on the forehead. “I love you way too much.”

  The darkening night beyond the window suddenly seemed ominous. The friendly nurse came back into the room. She held up a hypodermic. “It’s time for your sedative.”

  “I don’t want a sedative.” Penny struggled against the restraints. “Scratch, tell her I don’t need it.”

  “Nurse? Maybe she…”

  The syringe was already filled with clear liquid. Before Scratch could say anything, the nurse expertly injected it into one of the IV tubes. Miller gave up. She could feel the sedative working almost immediately. In less than a city minute, the world began to blur. Everything went white and spun away into the distance. That was fine with Miller. She didn’t care any longer. Not even about Scratch. In fact, nothing seemed to matter but sleep.

  CHAPTER SIX

  MALIBU SERENITY CENTER, HOSPITAL WARD

  When Miller opened her eyes, she was still strapped to the bed. The window on the opposite side of the darkened sky was beginning to turn blue, a new dawn stroking the thick glass. She’d lost a lot of hours, or perhaps more than a day. She tested the restraints. They held.

  Miller sighed. A distant piercing sound startled her fully awake. It was a fire alarm, or some other kind of emergency signal, located in some other part of the building. It had a very distinctive wail. Something important was happening, and whatever it was wasn’t good. The manure had hit the proverbial fan.

  “Scratch?”

  He wasn’t in the room. Miller was alone, and apparently trapped.

  She felt like crying her eyes out. If anyone deserved to cut loose, she did. But Miller didn’t cry. Instead, she did a slow burn. She got angry. Her always-reliable adrenal glands kicked in, washing the drugs from her system. She tested the restraints again. Some of her strength had returned. Perhaps they had misjudged how much sedative to use. Miller licked her lips. She was so hungry and thirsty.

  Something was throbbing and thumping, sort of like an air conditioner with a broken pump. But that’s not what it was. It wasn’t in the walls, it was over them; above the entire the facility and still a ways off.

  Helicopters!

  Miller turned her head to look out the window. There were now two bright white dots hanging in the sky outside. They got larger as the sound became a dull roar. Miller could see navigation lights blinking red and green as the aircraft approached the Malibu cliffs. She knew enough about aircraft to know that this meant they were coming directly toward the rehab facility. Were they going to fire on it? Invade the premises?

  That was enough of a stimulus for Miller to try again. If she couldn’t find a way out of that bed, she wouldn’t live to see the dawn. This time the restraints gave a fraction of an inch, she was sure of it. The effort gave her system an odd boost. Her body accelerated like a truck going into eighth gear. Her mind got clear and sharp. She flexed her muscles and took stock of her situation. She was all alone in the room, restrained but wide awake, and everything was beginning to come back into focus. There was hope. She needed to escape at once and go find Scratch. Time to boogie.

  One of the choppers slowed and began a lazy orbit outside the window, the other passed overhead. The bigger problem was the restraints. She had to get out of them. Miller pulled. The one on the right held this time. She took a deep breath and summoned everything left in her depleted physical reserves. She tried the other arm. The chopper overhead seemed to have come back around. It was drawing closer. Were they landing on the roof?

  Her strength grew. The restraint on the left began to tear.

  “Come on, damn it!”

  Miller’s face reddened as she continued to pull and pull and pull. After another long moment, the restraint lost the battle and she accidentally slammed the back of her fist into her forehead. It was a powerful blow. Miller saw dots and stars. It took her a second to recover. When she could see again, she unbuckled the restraint on her r
ight hand then removed the restraint from her left. She undid the one holding her chest down as well. She moved slowly and carefully. She sat up with great caution. Her head swam around a bit but overall she felt okay.

  It was just like Sheppard had told her—the strength, the hunger, the aggression, they were all there. Son of a bitch if they hadn’t shot her up with accelerant. She would show them what a mistake that was.

  Miller peeled the tape off the IV connection on her left hand. She knew from living with Terrill Lee what could happen if she just tore the IVs out of her arms. Accelerated or not, that wasn’t a wise move. If she wasn’t careful, she could bleed out from an artery. Okay, so nice and easy, just remove one and press down with your thumb for a bit. Then do the next and the next. She gently pulled the needle out. There was very little blood. She pressed down hard anyway, using the fabric from her hospital gown. It seemed to work. The chopper noise seemed to die down a bit, as if the aircraft had been withdrawn again. Miller removed the needle from the crook of her elbow. That one bled a lot, but it soon clotted and stopped seeping. Miller gently removed the needles from the other arm. Pressed down and waited. Then she sat up to unbuckle her feet.

  The pain that she had had when she woke up earlier was still there, but Miller didn’t care. She could feel her heart slamming with rage, zombie juice, and the taste of freedom. Pain didn’t matter, she’d just ignore it. She had to get Scratch.

  Miller looked around. She swung her legs around and wiggled her feet. The alarm was still going. The choppers had disappeared from the window. Were they both on the roof, landing troops? Or were they maybe on the lawn outside, to the west? Miller swung her legs off the edge of the bed. One last task remained. The catheter was still inside her. Miller carefully pulled, ignoring the sting and the slimy feeling as it came out of her private parts. She was nearly free. Finally, she stretched and made herself ready. Then she removed the leads to the monitor. She was loose.

  The medical alarm went off, impossibly loud in her ears. Miller kicked it over and it smashed on the floor, knowing the secret was out. Whoever had left her alone to check out the emergency would be coming like a bat out of hell.

  She waited. It didn’t take long. Soon Miller could hear running feet, sneakers squealing along the linoleum, coming her way.

  As the door opened, a man’s voice said, “If she wakes up, we’re both fucked!”

  Miller stood up. You bet your ass, cowboy. She got up and turned to face the door just as it was pushed open. Two men came in, both dressed in hospital whites. They were wearing tactical belts containing Tasers and cans of spray. The tall one was lean and muscular and went right to the empty bed. The shorter one had to weigh two-hundred-fifty pounds. He looked like a defensive tackle. He had a hypodermic full of sedative in one hand. He saw Miller at once. He rushed her, moving remarkably fast, likely intending to slam her to the floor and give her another injection.

  Miller ran at him, knocked the arm with the needle away and grabbed his uniform. She threw him against the wall like a rag doll. His head banged against the x-ray machine and cracked the glass. He slid down the wall with his eyes wide open but no longer seeing. She grabbed the hypodermic and spun around to face the second orderly.

  The second man hesitated, considering a panicked retreat.

  “What are you waiting for, motherfucker?” Miller demanded, the hypodermic needle in her hand. “Man up.”

  He reached for his Taser and brought it up to fire. He was fast but Miller was so much faster. She moved in, grabbed his wrist and bent it unnaturally back toward his body. It snapped and popped. The man screamed as he fumbled with his cocked weapon. The Taser discharged, hitting the man in the chest. He went down, twitching and kicking, but did not pass out. She knelt down and stuck the needle in his leg. She gave him the whole load of sedative. He was out cold.

  Standing up again, Miller marveled at her strength and agility. She’d handled them effortlessly, and that fact made her uneasy as a long-tailed cat near a rocking chair. What had Rubenstein been doing to her?

  Miller searched the two guards for keys. They each had a full set.

  She paused to ponder her next step. She was wearing a hospital gown that was open at the back. If she made it outside, she’d hardly blend in with a crowd. The gown was cold and embarrassing. It was almost as bad as that damned wedding dress. She had to do something about her attire. She thought of stripping the smaller guard of his pants and shirt, but realized it would take too much time and they wouldn’t fit much better than the gown without a belt. Time was short, and it wasn’t worth the effort.

  Miller went to the entrance. She peeked out of her door, checked both directions up and down the corridor. No one was visible, despite the alarms and the activity outside. That seemed strange. Perhaps it was still too early in the day for a full shift to be on duty. Or maybe the others had already been called to emergency stations by the alarm system. Either way, this had worked to her advantage.

  Miller slipped out of her room. She moved out into the corridor. She didn’t know where she was and had to get oriented fast. She had to find Scratch before anyone else did. They needed to beat feet. The alarm continued to wail in the distance as she moved further out into the open. She could no longer hear the choppers.

  Miller moved. She crept down the corridor. It was semi-dark, much like the prison ward she had found what seemed like eons ago. The floor seemed deserted. She looked into two of the rooms and the beds were empty. No one else appeared. For an operation that depended greatly on security, Rubenstein sure hadn’t hired a lot of guards. He’d probably figured the drugs and restraints were enough, plus a couple of strong men for backup. The dumb bastard would learn the error of his ways soon enough. Miller was on the warpath, furious as a cornered badger defending her young.

  Miller kept moving, heading toward the noise. The fire alarm was getting louder so she knew she was going toward the fray. It got louder still. Miller couldn’t tell if that was because of her newly revitalized hearing, or if she was almost to the source. She started jogging down the hall. She reached the end of the corridor and turned. Things were starting to look more familiar now that she was near the center of the building and heading toward the front. Water splattered her hospital gown and bare bottom. The sprinkler system had kicked on belatedly, probably in response to one of the newer alarms. Now she was half naked, wet and freezing cold.

  Miller moved on. She passed through a set of automatic double doors. They opened smoothly. She found herself in the main part of the complex. Smoke was filling the top of the high ceilings. Miller had had enough of fires at the lodge back in Colorado. The place had been packed with zombies and terrified survivalists. It wasn’t something she wanted a repeat of.

  Miller moved quickly, jogging faster now, sharp-eyed and alert. Her sense of urgency had increased to the breaking point. She had to find Scratch and get him the hell out of this nightmare. She broke into a dead run, arms pumping, virtually pain free and filled with rage.

  Miller stopped next to the elevators located over in the residential wing. She was almost there. Unfortunately, the elevators were in fire mode—they were closed, the doors were locked and immobile. This was beyond her even at her current level of strength. Miller took the stairs. Her bare feet slapped and her butt waved howdy in the open as she rocketed up to the proper floor, dripping water, and rapidly retracing her steps from that one lost night.

  She emerged from the stairwell and found herself only ten doors down from room 329. She raced down the hall to the door. Miller was still pissed off, so whacking the door flat off its hinges seemed a lot more satisfying than knocking. Miller kicked the door. Her foot went right through the door, but the hinges held fast. She extracted her foot, scratched and bloodied, and shouted through the hole.

  “Scratch!”

  No sound from within. Warily, Miller peered inside. The room was dark, which was reasonable at this early an hour, though the alarms and the loud racket she’d made shou
ld have woken Scratch, even if he’d been sleeping off a St. Patrick’s Day bender. Had they drugged him up as well? Miller figured probably. She shouted again.

  “Scratch?”

  Frightened, Miller kicked the door again, this time right below the electronic lock. The door came apart in a shower of splinters. Miller pushed it open.

  “Scratch, wake up!”

  She turned on the wall light. It came on, brightening the room. The bed was still made. Scratch hadn’t been there the night before. Then where was he? Miller struggled against panic. He had to be around here somewhere. Didn’t he? Her bare bottom reminded her of her attire. She went to the bureau and quickly changed into a pair of clean scrubs. She found a pair of soft, slip-on shoes to cover her feet. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looked exhausted and distressed, but at least not an escaped mental patient. That would have to do.

  Miller looked up as the sound of the helicopters returned. Their location became obvious, even to someone with normal hearing. They were both orbiting above the Serenity Center. Miller didn’t want to think about who this new enemy might be. Not yet. Their situation was already complicated enough. She had one thing on her mind, and it was a man she thought the world of, even with his beard gone and his hair cut short. While leaving the room, Miller considered her next play. She wanted to stay a step ahead of the danger. She’d need weapons, but finding Scratch was the top priority. With the fire and everything else going on, she would have to move fast if she was going to find him before someone else did. Someone far less inclined to give him a hug and a kiss.

  Miller exited the room. She saw no one in the corridor—both odd at this stage and quite a relief. Guards were one thing, she could just kill them if necessary, but if she had run into some drug-addled but harmless celebrity, she would have felt obligated to drag them away with her, and that would have slowed things down. No time for extra responsibilities. Miller couldn’t spare the attention. She went back down the stairs and retraced her steps. The place was huge, and now filling with smoke. She didn’t have much time left. One thought kept haunting her.