The Hunger (Short Story): Lotion Read online

  “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 breathes, 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—”

  A wail came from behind us.

  “What was that?” Greg asked.

  “It’s a convert.” I would recognize that awful cry from anywhere. It sounded like a banshee.

  Right before the news went off the air, some egghead professor had guessed that their wailing was a bridge between their human speech and the vampire’s sonic screams. My thoughts on the subject had been along the lines of ‘who gives a shit?’ I just wanted to stay away from anything that made a sound that awful.

  “We need to get back to the vault.” I started toward the bank.

  I only made it a handful of steps before I spotted her. She stood between us and the bank, howling up at the sky. Though she was a good fifty feet away from me, I could see how beautiful she had been. Her long blonde hair flowed over her shoulders, reaching halfway down her back.

  Her skin had seen better days, however. Blue veins ran across her face like a spider web. Judging from her insane behavior, she was far along in the conversion process. I doubted she had any kind of rational thoughts left at that point.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Greg asked. He shifted the messenger bang hanging from his shoulder.

  “She’s gone mad.”

  She stopped howling and lowered her gaze to us. Her eyes were still in place, but they’d shriveled, adding to her nightmarish appearance.

  “Oh shit.” I took a step back. “We’re going to have to run around the block and lead her away from the bank.”

  “I’ve got sandals on, bro! I can’t run too good!”

  “That’s because you’re a retard.” I sprinted in the other direction. If he got left behind, there wouldn’t be much I could do. The two of us might be able to kill her, but her strength would have already increased exponentially. I didn’t really feel like getting my arms ripped off because Greg the Moron was wearing flip flops.

  I didn’t even make it halfway down the block when I spotted another one. A man stood on top of a car, hunched over so far that his knuckles were down by his knees. He let out a wail when he saw us and jumped from the car.

  I skidded to a stop. Greg clopped up beside me, panting already. Another man jumped onto the same car, howling at the sky. There was no way we could take on three of them. I looked around, scanning the street for an alternate escape route. Most of the businesses were shuttered, having been closed when the worst wave of the vampires had struck. There weren’t any alleys close enough to get to either.

  “Oh shit, bro! What’s wrong with their eyes?”

  Some stairs leading to the subway sat off to our right. I ran past Greg, heading straight for them. I didn’t really want to go into the tunnels, but there didn’t seem to be much of a choice. A trash can was on its side at the top of stairs, blocking the middle of it. I had to slow down when I got to it and work my way around.

  The darkness below was terrifying. Without any lights, the bottom of the stairs looked like a black hole. The stairs were slick, as if it had rained earlier, though I was fairly certain it hadn’t. I slipped several times as I raced down them, trying not to kill myself in a fall. Greg came up behind me, his sandals slapping against the ground with every step.

&nbs
p; I jumped the last five steps before the landing that marked the halfway point. That turned out to be a horrible decision because my right foot flew out from under me when I landed, sending me head over heels down the rest of the stairs. I rolled into the darkness below, the harsh edges of concrete slamming against me. My back hit the floor, bringing me to a sudden stop that almost knocked me unconscious. The world spun in circles before me as I stared up the staircase.

  “You OK, bro?” Greg came down after me at a much slower pace. His careful steps made me think that he was concerned with losing one of his sandals.

  “I think so.” My voice sounded small and tinny in the entrance to the subway, as if the dank environment swallowed it.

  I reached up and grabbed the railing, pulling myself up. My head pounded from hitting the floor. I ignored the pain as best I could as I looked up, expecting to see the converts racing after us. All three of them stood at the top of the stairs, wailing in our direction. Greg reached the bottom and followed my gaze.

  “What are they doing?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe the darkness scares them.” That didn’t make any sense to me, but I didn’t have any other ideas. They had us basically trapped down there. Without any lights, we wouldn’t be able to run very far into the tunnels.

  The woman let out a shriek that echoed through the tunnels, upping the creepiness of the dark. They sniffed at the air, but didn’t come down after us. They didn’t move away from the top of the stairs either. We had nowhere to go but further inside the subway.

  A garbage can was behind us, standing in the middle of the station. I rummaged through my bag and found the pack of matches. We walked to the can together, with him yapping at me incessantly. My body felt like a baseball bat had been taken to it. I hoped I didn’t have any internal bleeding.

  I grabbed a newspaper off the floor and crumpled the pages, tossing them into the garbage can. Greg kept yammering at me. I did my best to ignore him. After working the crumpled pages into the trash, I lit one of the matches and set the contents of the can on fire. The outside layers of the paper were a little damp, but the rest weren’t bad, and the garbage was burning quickly.

  The small amount of light provided by the fire was enough to help us see our surroundings a bit. I’d never seen the subway so empty. Then again, I guess no one else had either. Dingy, tile floors led the way to the tunnels.

  “Let’s follow the tracks down to the next station and go back up to the surface,” I said. “Then we’ll walk back to the bank.”

  “I don’t want to walk back by those things, bro!”

  “As long as you don’t decide to have a rock concert in the middle of the street, we’ll be fine.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “How about we just stay quiet for awhile,” I said.

  A janitor’s closet was on the other side of the platform. I crossed the station and opened the door to the closet, surprised that it wasn’t locked. A mop leaned against the far wall. I carried it back to the fire and lit the head. It took awhile to light and didn’t burn well. Whatever chemicals had been used with it weren’t very flammable. It supplied enough light to use as a temporary torch though.

  “MacGuyver would be proud,” Greg said. He hadn’t been quiet for more than a minute.

  We walked to the tracks and turned left, heading for the tunnel. I hopped down, trying not to roll my ankles on the rails. The darkness in the tunnel was all encompassing. You couldn’t have paid me to walk into it a month ago. I wasn’t a big fan of the dark. I was even less of a fan of crazy people that were turning into vampires though, so I kept going.

  “I don’t know about this, bro...”

  “You’re welcome to head back up the stairs.” I wished he would – it would save me a lot of headaches.

  The next station was only a couple of blocks away so I figured it wouldn’t take us too long to get to the next station. Walking in the tunnel turned out to be a little more difficult than I anticipated though, so our pace went slower than I’d hoped. The sound of Greg’s sandals started grating on my nerves right away. I thought about throwing them off into the darkness and making him walk barefoot.

  The mop head burned down pretty quickly, so I took my shirt off and tired it around the end of the handle, adding more fuel to the fire. The shirt burned better than the mop head did, so we had a bit more light for a few minutes. I found a pair of old pants on the ground that I picked up and took with us to burn a little later. I tried not to think about the oily, nasty stuff that covered one of the legs. God only knows why someone would walk on the tracks and take their pants off.

  We’d been walking for about twenty minutes when I first noticed the smell. I’d describe it as rancid, but that didn’t seem strong enough. It reminded me of a time when I went on vacation for two weeks and forgot about the carton of milk in the fridge. This smell was like that, but worse, and it permeated everything.

  “Did you fart, bro?”

  “Yeah, it smells like an animal crawled up my ass and died when I fart.”

  “Damn man, you should probably see a doctor about that.”

  “For the love of—”

  I stepped in a large pool of water, breaking my thought process.

  “Bro, that was a wet fart too. I can actually feel it in the air. This is fucking disgusting.”

  “Shut up,” I hissed.

  The humidity had risen rather sharply when I noticed the smell. It felt like we were swimming as much as walking, which Greg the Moron thought came from my ass for some reason. Why was there so much water in the air down here? The temperature was pretty low, so the entire thing had me concerned.

  I stepped in another puddle and cursed when I felt the water run into my shoes. Our torch had almost burned out so I wrapped the pants I’d found around the end of the mop handle and waited for it to light before continuing. The fabric burned better than I expected and I could see the walls of the tunnel for the first time since we left the station. Almost every inch of them had been covered in some kind of goo.

  “What the hell is this stuff, bro?”

  I didn’t know what was covering the walls, but I recognized what I was standing in. The puddle of water was actually a pool of blood. It ran along the ground, like a river of crimson.

  “Oh shit.” I held the torch over my head, trying to see further ahead.

  The light from the flames flickered off of two spots further down the tunnel.

  “Do you see—”

  The two spots moved.

  “Are those eyes, bro?”

  “I think so.”

  Fortunately for us, vampires don’t have eyes. The converts did though. I didn’t want to try and fight one of those things down here with nothing more than a flaming mop. I looked around in a hurry and spotted a door. It could have been some kind of utility closet, or a maintenance entrance. If it was the latter, we might be able to get to the surface faster than I thought.

  The eyes moved then. They flew forward, blinking in and out in quick succession, their height dropping as they came toward us. I lowered the torch in front of me, hoping to fend off whatever it was.

  A severed head rolled to a stop in front of Greg.

  “Fuck me, bro!”

  The shriek of a vampire exploded throughout the tunnel, making me wince. The sound had a devastating effect in such tight quarters. I saw the outline of the beast ahead of us, walking forward on all fours. Engorged muscles flexed with each step. The reasoning for the converts not wanting to come into the subway hit me then. They knew what hid in the darkness.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “I think we found where they hide during the day.”

  I took off for the door, unsure if I would make it before the vampire pounced on me. Its speed was incredible and it closed the distance between us in an instant. I grabbed the door knob, praying it would be unlocked, and cried out in triumph when it turned. I threw the door open and spun inside, never taking my hand off the knob. Greg ran in as I swung it
closed, squeezing through the opening. I had planned on closing it, whether he made it or not.

  The door felt solid and was made of some kind of metal. I didn’t think it would hold long, but at least it hadn’t been made of balsa wood.

  “Did you see that thing?” Greg asked. His eyes looked like they were about to bug out of his head.

  I waived the mop around, trying to get a bearing on our situation. The room didn’t lead anywhere – it was just a maintenance closet. We were screwed. I slid to the far wall, putting my back against it. My hands shook like crazy, making the light flicker around the room. I took off my pack and threw it to the ground. I couldn’t believe the only weapon I had was a stupid mop handle. I might as well have been holding a toothpick.

  Fucking Greg. If I hadn’t let him come back to the vault with me, none of this would have happened. He just had to play that shitty music in the middle of the street. I’d survived for weeks by myself. Now I was going to die less than twelve hours after picking him up. I looked over at him, preparing to hit him in the head with the mop, when I remembered that he had his messenger bag.

  “Your bag! Give me your bag!” I tore it from his shoulder, dropping the makeshift torch to the ground.

  I pulled at the cover too hard and heard the fabric rip. Greg protested beside me as I tipped the bag over and dumped the contents on the floor, hoping for something flammable that I could put in front of the door. The light would keep it at bay for a little while, giving me some time to figure out what to do.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked as I looked at the objects on the floor.

  He had brought four porno magazines and a large bottle of hand lotion. No clothes, weapons, food, or water.

  “Hey bro – it’s lonely at the end of the world, ya know?”

  “You stupid mother—”

  The door exploded inward. A large, incredibly muscled vampire stepped inside the room, walking on all four like a silverback. It shrieked at us, exposing two pairs of four inch long canine teeth, and sending globs of spittle to the floor.

  “Fuck you, Greg,” I said as the vampire lunged at us.

  *****