Ravaged (The Hunger #3) Read online

  Cass bent over him. “Does it hurt?”

  “Just a bit.” His voice was a croak.

  The crowd that had surrounded the bonfire made their way over, protected by the conjoined light of both blazes. Brown jogged to Eifort and gave her a bear hug, lifting her from the ground and kissing her cheek. When his eyes fell upon Lance, he lowered her to the ground and knelt down.

  “What happened?”

  “Dumbass decided to light himself on fire.” Cass glared down at Lance, doing her best to look angry with him. The tear running down her cheek hinted at more than anger.

  “Can you speak?” Brown asked him.

  “Yeah.” Lance sat up with a grunt and held his hands up. The backs of his hands were pink. A few spots were worse, but his palms were fine. He would still be able to use them, but the pain made it hard to think.

  His legs were worse.

  Brown pulled at a portion of cloth that had burned into his shin.

  Lance hissed. “Doc, I would appreciate if you didn’t do that right now.”

  Several people stood around them in a circle, gaping down at Lance.

  Adam stood behind Cass. “The infected are backing off for now. The helicopter flew away though.”

  “Bro, that shit was fucking nuts. You’re like Dirty Harry or some shit.” Greg socked Adam in the shoulder. “Nice job with the fire, bro.”

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Sorry, bro. I’m just—”

  Brown looked over his shoulder. “Can you be quiet, please? We aren’t out of this yet. Find stuff to keep the fires going so we can make it to sunrise.”

  “You got it, bro.”

  Lance pointed at Eifort’s gun as Greg walked away. “Please shoot that guy. If he says bro one more time, I’m climbing back into that RV. Burning is better than listening to that.” He looked at his fried legs again. “Anyone have some booze or something? The pain is getting bad.”

  “I have some in my tent,” Adam said. “I think the light is bright enough now to go get it.” He jogged off, using his flashlight to make sure the way was clear.

  “What the hell happened in there? You were supposed to be right behind me,” Cass said.

  “The Vladdie that jumped in the window punctured the gas can and dumped it on me. When I went to follow you, I realized that I couldn’t pick up the flare. It was blocking my way out.” He nodded at the still-burning vampire. “That son of a bitch came in when I was trying to go out the back.”

  Eifort’s eyes scanned the area as she said, “We’re having a helluva run the past few nights.”

  “At least we know the military guys aren’t going to try to kill us,” Cass said. “They just saved our asses.”

  “I guess we owe them a bit of that scotch of yours, eh Doc?” Lance searched the tents for Adam, the mention of a drink reminding him how badly he wanted one.

  “And a lot more than that.” Brown looked at his own hands, a deep frown sliding down his face. “I panicked back there. I’m sorry.”

  “We all panicked, Doc.” Lance thought about standing, but his throbbing legs advised him otherwise.

  “No. The three of you did what was necessary. I lost it and did nothing.”

  Eifort bent over and kissed his forehead. “You were trained to heal people, and I was trained to kill them. We all have our skills.”

  Brown just shook his head.

  Lance would have felt sorry for him if he wasn’t fighting the urge to vomit. The pain continued to grow as they sat and watched the flames.

  Most of the survivors took a seat in the grass, their heads low, sobs shaking their shoulders. Guns were reloaded again, though few were fired. Bottles of water were passed around.

  Brown poured water onto Lance’s legs. Flash bulbs went off in Lance’s vision as he sucked in a harsh breath.

  After several minutes, Adam returned with a bottle of cheap vodka. Booze wasn’t a favorite of Lance’s, but he drank from the bottle like it was a Gatorade. The fire in his throat was nothing like that which had seared his legs.

  “How’s the damage, Doc?” Lance was afraid to ask, but he had to know if he would be worthless for another month again. He knew that they couldn’t afford to have him feeding off them like a leech while he healed from another injury.

  “It’s not as bad as it looks. You’re going to be in pain for quite a while, but you’ll be able to walk.”

  Cass rubbed his back while he leaned against her. His system was winding down from the adrenaline rush of the fight, and his fear came tumbling back.

  The faces of those dragged away kept popping up in his mind. He thought of the people he’d failed.

  The boy whose body he’d found wedged in a tree.

  Too many had died as they looked to him for leadership. And for what? So they could be slaughtered like so many others?

  Lance sat, watching the fire and drinking, fighting against the torrent of emotions that threatened to break him.

  Chapter 14

  Brown finished wrapping gauze around his legs while the sky began to brighten.

  The pain, though fierce, was muted by the alcohol Lance sipped. The wounds weren’t as grave as they’d initially seemed.

  The shrieks of the damned had died down an hour before, allowing people to cautiously work their way around the field. They found spots of blood and chunks of flesh. An entire leg was spotted behind the portable toilets.

  Mothers wailed. Friends cursed their current lives.

  Lance handed the bottle to Cass, who took a long pull before handing it back to Adam.

  They needed to scavenge more bulbs and build protection around them. The idea of going back to work after such a stressful night had Lance wanting to scream. They needed a break, a pause in the madness, but their tormentors would never let up.

  They’d never give an inch.

  A groan escaped Lance as he stood. He moved his legs around, grimacing as the gauze brushed his skin.

  His hands ached.

  Cass stared at the woods. “There were so many of them. I doubt they’re all in one big place like they’d been in Pittsburgh. There isn’t a subway system like there was in the city. We can’t just blow a tunnel this time.”

  “I don’t even know what we—” Lance stopped talking when he heard an odd rumbling sound. He looked to the driveway. “What is that?”

  “Sounds big,” Brown said. He stood beside Lance and peered toward the road.

  The rumble grew louder for nearly a minute before they saw movement at the end of the driveway. A military vehicle of some kind turned in from the road. Two more followed behind it.

  A tank pulled up the rear.

  “I guess the military is here,” Lance mumbled.

  Cass said, “You can say that again.”

  “I guess the military is here.”

  “Ass.”

  Eifort had been pouring a bottle of water on her head when she saw the vehicles and stopped. Her hair dripped as she stood and watched.

  “What kind of vehicle is that in the front?” Brown asked her.

  “It’s an LAV.”

  “They look like hardy vehicles.”

  “Very.”

  They drove toward the cabin, moving slowly, as if they were giving everyone at the compound time to see them. Those who had been moving about, repairing broken things and getting more ammunition from the bunker, halted and stared.

  The lead vehicle pulled into the grass and stopped.

  A hatch on the top opened.

  A bald-headed man stood up through the hole and looked around. He had a massive, square jaw, the kind usually found on boxers or linebackers. A cigar poked from the corner of his mouth.

  He grabbed the stogie with two fingers, lifting it into the air in a small salute toward those standing in front of the cabin. He wore a sleeveless Under Armour shirt.

  Lance raised his hand and waved back. He tried not to shake his head at the man, who looked like a caricature of all the bad military movies Lance ha
d seen. The shaved head, cigar, and angular face could have come straight out of a recruitment video.

  The man hoisted himself from the hatch and stood on top of the LAV, peering around the clearing. A vein the size of a small snake ran from his forearm through his bicep and disappeared into his shoulder. He wore camouflage pants and black boots.

  Dog tags hung around his neck.

  The other vehicles pulled beside his and stopped. The tank idled beside the driveway, a metal monolith reminiscent of the old world, of the ways man used to wage war. Lance didn’t understand what use it would be against the infected.

  “Howdy,” the man said. He hopped down and strode toward them.

  Lance marveled at the thickness of his chest compared to his tiny waist. He wondered if he should blindfold Cass before the man got any closer, so that she wouldn’t realize what a wimp she’d been having sex with.

  The man’s strut would have been comical if he didn’t look like such a bad ass.

  Less than a dozen men climbed out of the other vehicles. They stayed there, milling about and inspecting their tires and the tank’s treads.

  “Hello,” Brown said. His deep, resonant voice didn’t have a hint of trepidation. If he was as nervous as Lance, he didn’t show it. “I take it that was your helicopter last night?”

  “It was.” The man stopped in front of Brown and offered his hand. “Major Frank Colt.”

  Frank Colt, Lance thought. Even his name is hard.

  Brown took the major’s hand. “Emmett Brown.”

  “Emmett Brown?” One corner of Colt’s mouth quirked. “You fuckin’ with me?”

  “No.”

  “Bet you’ve been hearing shit over that your whole life.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Colt looked over their small group, taking in each of them one at a time. He squinted at Cass the longest, his head cocking slightly when he saw her mohawk. “Interesting.”

  Is he checking her out? Lance wanted to slap his forehead for getting jealous at a time like this.

  “I hope interesting is a good thing.” Cass stuck her hand out. “I’m Cass. This is Lance, and that’s Eifort.”

  “Interesting is good. It’s not often that you see a woman with a bleach-blonde mohawk and a shirt with the anarchy sign painted on it. Particularly, not after the world has ended.” Colt spoke with a slight southern drawl, though it wasn’t pronounced enough that Lance could place where the man was from.

  Virginia, maybe?

  “I don’t bleach my hair.” Cass looked at her shirt. “And you’re the first person who has recognized this. I drew it on myself.”

  “Fitting, all things considered.”

  Fuck. Now this guy is smarter than I am too?

  Colt stepped in front of Lance. “Looks like you’ve had a rough go of it.”

  “I’m fine.” Lance puffed his chest out a little bit, before a cough deflated him.

  Smooth.

  “You been drinking?” Colt leaned forward, getting a closer look at Lance’s face.

  “It’s to numb the pain.”

  The major reached into a cargo pocket by his right thigh. He pulled out a small bottle of whiskey and handed it over. “Got a hell of a kick.”

  Lance took a swig, not wanting to look like a pussy. The gag reflex accomplished that for him. He handed it back.

  He had the desire to go around back and start doing pushups.

  Colt nodded at Eifort. “It’s always a pleasure to see another serviceman or woman.”

  “Sir.” Eifort stood at attention and saluted him back.

  “Not much point in calling me sir anymore, Eifort. Major will do. I’ve earned that much, at least. Don’t bother with the salute either. We don’t worry about the old ways, not anymore. Rank?” He stuck his cigar back in the corner of his mouth and took a drag from it.

  “Staff sergeant.”

  “Good. Officers have proved mostly useless nowadays.” He tapped his chest and grinned around the cigar. Smoke escaped his lips as he spoke. “Present company excluded, of course.”

  “Major Colt,” Brown said. “Thanks for the help last night.”

  The major turned his attention back to Brown. “Looked like you folks needed some.”

  “How did you know?”

  “We’re tapped into some of the satellites. They don’t fall out of space just cause the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. We saw a shit ton of them working their way through the woods just at nightfall. I sent the bird up so we could get a look at them with thermal. They were coming at you hard, so I told them to lay the wood down.”

  “Thermal?” Lanced asked.

  “Thermal imaging,” Cass said over her shoulder. “It sees heat.”

  “Exactly. You had a whole goddamn brigade surrounding you. We figured you wouldn’t have the firepower to fight off that many. Of course, we had no idea just how much trouble you would be in. The pilot said they got here in the nick o’ time.”

  Brown said, “Your pilot is right. They took out our lights just after sundown. We’ve been relying on those for the majority of our protection.”

  “Lights?” Colt turned and looked over the field.

  The crowd watching them had grown. They stood thirty yards away, staring at their little powwow.

  “We have a generator hooked up to those big lights there. It runs off the natural gas well on the property.” Brown pointed at the nearest light pole. “It’s kept them at bay until last night.”

  Another puff of smoke. “How’d they take out the lights?”

  “With rocks.”

  Lance watched his face, wanting to see how the major reacted to the news. He didn’t emote much, just kept on chomping on his cigar.

  “They threw rocks at the lights and broke them?”

  “Yes sir... Major, sorry.” Eifort pulled her wet hair back. “The chopper gave us enough time to get some fires built.”

  Lance took a half step forward. “You don’t seem that surprised that the Vladdies are able to problem solve.”

  “The hell is a Vladdie? You mean the Weres?”

  “What? Weres?”

  Colt squinted through a cloud of smoke as he let it roll from his mouth. “Some of my men took to calling them werewolves. Weres for short.”

  “Werewolves? That’s stupid.”

  “They’re big, muscle-bound monsters that kill people and only come out at night. A bite turns you into one of them over a short period of time. No silver, of course, but close enough for government work, I suppose.”

  “You think those are werewolves?” Lance couldn’t keep the incredulous look from spreading across his face. He wanted to laugh at how ridiculous the explanations for the infected had become. They were called vampires, zombies, and werewolves. People always wanted to give a name to the evil lurking under their bed or hidden in the shadows.

  “Course not. I said that’s what my men call them. Why do you call them Vladdies?”

  “Because they’re vampires, sort of,” Cass said. “For basically the same reasons your men call them Weres, I guess. Vladdie is because of Vlad the Impaler.”

  “Ah, the first vampire. I like that.” Colt gave her an appreciative nod.

  Lance ground his teeth. He half expected Colt to show her how big his dick was soon. Even the way he talked around the cigar made him look like a hard case.

  “I thought it was witty,” Cass said.

  “It is.” He peered over her shoulder. “That a battle axe?”

  “Damn right.” Cass pulled it from the holster and handed it to him.

  He grabbed it with both hands, twirling it around. “Good heft. A tad over the top, isn’t it?”

  “It’s heavy enough to damage but not so much that I get exhausted carrying it around.”

  He grinned and handed it back. “I like your style, Cass.” He looked back to Brown. “I take it you’re in charge here, Mr. Back to the Future?”

  “I don’t really like to—”

  “Yes
, he is. He’s a doctor,” Eifort said. “We took this compound from a band of crazy men who held most of the people here captive.”

  Colt kept his eyes locked on Brown’s. “A doctor? Well, you’re worth more than your weight in gold now, aren’t you? It’s good to see a man of intelligence is running the place. We’ve come across several groups of people who are being run by meatheads. They think they can be leaders because they did a lot of bench pressing before everything went to shit. Half of them were working at burger joints or still hanging off their momma’s titties for cash.”

  Lance frowned at the titties remark. He didn’t understand it. Was that some kind of military slang?

  “They get their people killed and then blame everyone but themselves. Goddamn morons.” Colt kept watching Brown as he puffed on his cigar. He didn’t speak for a full ten seconds. “You look tired, my friend. Running an operation like this, under these conditions, can play hell on your mind. I speak from experience.”

  “It’s been rough,” Brown said. “But hasn’t it been for everyone?”

  “That it has. That it has.” Colt peered back at his men for a second.

  Lance said, “You didn’t answer my question. Why don’t you seem surprised about the Vladdies being able to problem solve? That’s a big deal.”

  “Because we’ve already seen other changes in their behavior,” Colt said, turning back to him. “Like I said, we have thermal with the bird. We’ve been watching them for weeks.”

  “What have you seen?” Brown asked.

  “They’ve moving in packs, but not just in the way animals do. Each pack seems to have an alpha, sure, but they’re attacking camps in a calculated manner. We were at a prison in Northern Virginia about two weeks ago when we first noticed it. We managed to build an electrified fence around the courtyard. The Weres started attacking it at different spots through the night, testing for weak points.”

  Colt took a swig from his whiskey bottle. “The bastards tunneled under it a week later.”

  “I saw some holes in the ground in Latrobe,” Lance said. “Maybe they’re doing that everywhere.”

  “They are. At least, everywhere we’ve seen so far. They dig an interconnected series of tunnels around their nests. Usually, they build off a central hub like a sewer or subway, but lately we’ve seen them breaking their big nests into smaller ones. Harder to kill them off that way.”