Hungry Dead: Episode 3 (The Zombie Apocalypse Series)

By Steven Hill

When the corpses of the recently dead began returning to life, the world slept. The military, the police, the doctors and nurses and countless other people and organizations in place to deal with crises are the first victims, leaving humanity without its first line of defense.

The Hungry Dead series follows the stories of five people whose lives touch as they try to fight back against, to find refuge from, and to survive the onslaught of the living dead.

In this episode:

Henrietta - A woman pastor clinging to her faith, she just wants to be accepted for who and what she is.

Her closest and dearest friend succumbs to an awful disease the night the world dies. As the apocalypse itself unfolds before her eyes, Henrietta finds herself fighting for her life as the corpse of her friend returns to life with an insatiable hunger for the living.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven Hill
• Release date: Aug 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301307975

Steven Hill

Steven Hill is Director of the Political Reform Program for the New America Foundation and author of 10 Steps to Repair American Democracy and other books on politics. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Salon.com, TheNation, International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, Prospect, and many other publications and websites.

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Hungry Dead: Episode 3

Steven T. G. Hill

Published by Steven T. G. Hill at Smashwords

Copyright 2013 Steven T. G. Hill

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Pastor Henrietta Xavier served double duty, as friend and witness, on the night the world died. It was about seven in the evening, twilight well on its way to ceding its place to night. Henrietta sat down on an uncomfortable chair in a bedroom in the second floor of an old villa-style house on the outskirts of the city.

She shifted her admittedly too-round body on the chair. The hollow metal tubes that made up the backrest dug into her back, catching up against a rib now and again. The pad that made up the cushion on the seat had long ago flattened to little more than a thin layer of nylon that had once been orange, but was now so faded little of its original color remained.

Two lamps shed their too-bright fluorescent light, lending the bedroom a spectral and unnatural glow. The wallpaper had flower patterns on it, and even those petals seemed to shy from that strange radiance.

Reaching up, she adjusted the white collar at her throat.

I don't think that's supposed to be comfortable, Sadie said. She smiled wanly up from the bed.

Henrietta felt a pang of guilt for being put off by the sight. A smile was supposed to be kind, warm. Sadie's smile had always been of that type, before the cancer had eaten her up on the inside.

Now, she looked little more than a skeleton with some skin stretched between the bones. Patches of grey hair clung to her scalp. She looked a hundred years old, even though she wasn't even sixty yet. The shape of her skull was clearly visible around her sunken eyes and caved-in cheeks. Her black skin had a grey quality to it that spoke of the depth of her sickness.

Still, Henrietta reached out and took one of her friend's skeletal hands in her own. The grayness of her friend's flesh became more apparent when they touched like that.

The hand was cold, too. Cold like a hand poking up through the rich, brown dirt of a fresh grave for one last, desperate grasp to cling to life.

Yes, I suppose not. But I always thought the weight was supposed to more spiritual, and a little less asphyxiatin'. Henrietta said, her guilt growing as she tried to smile. Are you sure you don't want anyone else here? I can call someone. Your brothers, maybe?

Henrietta started to stand, as though Sadie had already given