Read Online The Hungry by Steve Hockensmith, Joe McKinney, Harry Shannon, Steven Booth - Free Book Online Page B

was everywhere; black clad, tattooed skin and silver chains, roaring up and down before and between the burning houses. A few seemed occupied firebombing a house down the block. The rest were circling around aimlessly, gunning their engines, masturbating their rifles, looking for more and more trouble. They found it.
    Terrill Lee and Miller backed out, wood panels flying, roared down the drive. They backed clean over one of the bikers with a bump and a crunch. Humpty Dumpty , Miller thought, strangely. Miller heard one high-pitched shriek, the last sound the biker ever made—at least from his mouth, anyway. Nasty stuff splattered as they crushed him. He split like a grape in kinky leather. The big, all-terrain tires crushed the bike too as they drove out into the street.
    "Hot damn, Terrill Lee, watch where you're going!" Miller began to scold him, just like the old days, but decided to leave it there. After all, what else could he have done? They had to get away and fast.
    Clink! The first bullet struck the side of the Durango a moment later, as they were wheeling around to go forward. Clink, clink . As Terrill Lee peeled away, she heard more bullets strike metal. Too many to count. It sounded like a fist full of BBs rolling around in a hubcap, just snapping and popping nonstop. Those bastards are trying to kill us! What, they think zombies drive SUVs?
    "Take cover," shouted Terrill Lee. The tires screeched as he swerved around a stunned pair of bikers, a wrecked car, and another headless corpse.
    "Great advice," said Miller. "Maybe next time." She rolled down the window and fired back at some of the bikers. She hoped to at least make them keep their heads down, but her aim was far better than she expected. Some of the buckshot found a pair of the bikers and it took one of them all the way down. His friend grabbed at one thigh, cursing and screaming.
    Terrill Lee checked it out in the rear view mirror. "Nice shot." He gave a low whistle. "I'm sure glad you're on my side."
    Miller looked in the side view mirror. They passed the last of the surprised bikers. Back a ways, trouble was coming. Damned near every one of them had turned and was now following the Durango.
    "Lotta good that my aim will do us if you don't keep moving," Miller replied. "Get us out of here. There's no more law. Those rabid assholes will shoot you dead and cheerfully rape me with everything longer than half an inch on and off over the next two weeks."
    They sped past the school, the torched grocery and all the way out of the empty and burning town. Soon they were in open country. The desert felt safer, but there was nowhere to hide. They'd chosen speed over cover. Sagebrush and sand flowed by like sped-up film. Miller and Terrill Lee stared straight ahead, lost in their own thoughts. Neither one said a word, but they both knew they might well have made the wrong call. Behind them, the bikers gunned their cycles and began to creep closer to the Durango. It was only a matter of time.
    Miller craned her neck to see out the shattered back window. "Head for the main highway," she hollered. "Maybe they'll drop back if they can't cut us off."
    The minutes passed like hours. Some of the riders managed to catch up and come along their right side. One dude with a long beard waved a pistol, as if ordering them to pull over. Miller raised her shotgun and the men wisely dropped back a bit. Miller said, "Whatever you do, don't stop!"
    "Right," said Terrill Lee. He swerved suddenly to bump a short, bald biker who was coming up on the left. The man went flying and his bike slid sideways into the low dunes. "I figured that part out."
    The bikers—uniformly dirty, tattooed, and heavily armed—followed close behind or rode alongside and a bit behind. A few of the riders were now taking pot shots at the truck's tires. Miller watched as one of the biker women—she couldn't help thinking of them as 'bitches' —aimed and fired at the truck. She succeeded only in hitting a