Free The Hungry (Book 2): The Wrath of God by Steven Booth, Harry Shannon Page B

is."
    Miller nodded. "I get it. Thanks, Sheppard."
    "Now, please," Sheppard said, urgently, "keep this quiet. As long as we do well on this mission, we should be okay."
    "We'd best be," Miller said. She glared at the back of Rat's head. "You know, when this is all over, I do believe I'm going to feed Hanratty and Gifford to the fucking zombies."
    Sheppard and Miller came out of the alcove to find Hanratty with her back to them, watching Lovell work.
    When Lovell finished, Rat asked, "Will this be enough power for your purposes, Sergeant?"
    "I hope so," Sheppard said, a little too casually. "Let's go find out."
    They exited the generator room to find the hangar lit up as if it were daytime. The huge overhead doors loomed above them, the roof of a malevolent Astrodome. Bullet holes decorated the walls by the thousands. Dried blood was sprayed everywhere. The floor of the hangar itself was the aftermath of a holocaust. Miller looked across the hangar to the far left corner where they had made their last stand. It was there that the bodies were piled up highest. Miller shuddered as she again remembered whirling in circles, a gory toy top, machete in hand, decapitating zombies by the hundreds, with some of the soldiers she couldn't protect dying, only to rise and join the zombie horde that had just slaughtered them.
    Terrill Lee and Sheppard were also silent. Both men looked pale.
    "If everyone's done gawking," said Scratch dryly, "I want to get the hell out of here before somebody comes back to life."
    "Good idea," Miller said. You have no idea how good, she thought. "Give me some more of that shit for under my nose and let's get moving."
    Without another word, they headed off across the wide tarmac of the hangar toward the precious medical labs. They followed the trail they'd made earlier. Brubeck had either emptied his stomach or he had found his balls, because he didn't stop to vomit anymore. This time, under bright lights, the walk across the tarmac was relatively quick. They soon found themselves directly below what had been the late Colonel Sanchez's office window. It was shattered and splattered with innards and blood as if someone had thrown a hand grenade into a crowd of people or zombies. Miller remembered killing Sanchez, the base commander. She was very proud of that one.
    "We're right above the labs," said Sheppard.
    Rat nodded. "Where's the mainframe?"
    "It's down the corridor from the labs, if I remember correctly."
    "Then that's our next stop," said Rat.
    The soldiers stayed in a tight formation, protecting their charges. They slowed down to investigate every doorway and empty closet. It took them a good fifteen minutes to get to the abandoned computer room but the soldiers were finally getting a clue. She felt a bit safer as a result, but still craved a weapon. Fortunately, none of the bits and pieces of people and zombies that were left on the floor got up and caused trouble.
    The mainframe was remarkably pristine. The scientists had cleared out before getting slaughtered. The computer came online without much trouble, once they figured out that the main circuit breaker had been tripped during or after the evacuation of the base. Psycho, who appeared to be all muscle and spoke in broken sentences, was also an incredibly fast typist. He seemed to understand the inner workings of the mainframe well enough to get it up and running, again in a matter of minutes. The group had grudgingly earned Miller's respect. They were assholes, but they were professional assholes.
    They moved on to the medical labs. The labs themselves were also undisturbed, except for a thin layer of dust that covered everything. Sheppard trotted to a station. He turned on one of the terminals, signed in, and immediately began extracting data onto the flash drives that he had brought with him. The real prize was an external hard drive onto which Sheppard loaded the critical files containing the chemical formulas and manufacturing techniques of