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

clean white sheets, said organs and limbs evidently arranged by size—or, perhaps, by gender. They were dark with decay. And this time Miller felt her bile rise. For once she wasn't hungry. Miller walked deeper into the lab.
    Something across the room looked like an oddly distorted aquarium with strange lighting. Her mind didn't want to accept what it was seeing. Miller forced herself to move closer to the odd collection of jars.
    Several decapitated heads floated in a faintly greenish-brown liquid, with various lengths of hair that drifted, resembling seaweed. The heads were packed in large glass containers, staring blankly out into the room. Someone here had been experimenting on the living dead, and it had clearly gone on for many months, if not years.
    Fascinated, Miller took a step toward one of the glass jars. The severed head was from a woman, and wrinkled up by the embalming liquid as it was, Miller couldn't tell her age. She'd had dark hair, an aquiline nose and full lips. Her eyes were closed, thankfully. If the scene weren't so morbid, Miller would have thought the woman pretty. Despite her intense desire to be anywhere else, Miller forced herself to look closely. She wanted to turn away, but this had been a person once, someone who still deserved respect. Miller herself had been near enough to zombie-hood to have some sympathy for the devil. We're all human, after all . She brought her face closer to the jar, though her instincts fought the move. All because of an experiment…
    Miller closed her eyes. She shook her head, on the verge of tears . Poor girl. She looked back, and stopped, again staring at the face in the jar. I would have sworn her eyes were closed a second ago. Miller looked closer still. Her pulse sped up. They had been closed. They were now wide open.
    The dead woman blinked. Her lips pulled back in a rigid grin.
    "God damn," Miller said, under her breath.
    The head grimaced. The eyes focused. It saw Miller, saw through Miller and seemed to stare right into her troubled soul. The jaw moved up and down, the thing gnashing its teeth in a useless attempt to get free. To feed . The mindless hunger and hopelessness were clear in those milky-white eyes. And then somehow the severed head managed to move forward to the edge of the thick glass jar, flapping its tongue as if to lick her face.
    Miller jumped back. Her hip banged into another one of the jars. That one tipped over, the loose lid clattering to the floor, and spilling some of the foul liquid out onto the pristine tiles. Miller whirled and managed to catch it before the head—a man's this time—rolled out to crash at her feet. Her empty gun clattered to the floor. The head in the second jar was also awake. He repeated the piranha imitation that the first female had demonstrated, snapping and licking mindlessly. Miller steadied him on his perch. She backed away from the jar, found the empty 9mm on the floor. She heard herself moaning faintly. Her nightmares returned in full force, spinning her close to the edge of sanity. Miller fancied she saw old Luther Grabowski's head in one of the medical jars, grinning and licking his decaying lips. Whispering for her to join them.
    Miller needed time to think. She jogged into the maze of the inner lab, away from the muffled human voices. She ran blindly, hands at her sides, a little girl racing through a haunted house on Halloween. She stopped when she found herself in another large room, this one devoid of bodies. She retched.
    "God in heaven."
    Miller gathered herself. Some of the greenish-brown liquid had splashed on her hands as she'd righted the jar. She wiped them on her jeans. The gooey stuff was cold as the grave. God only knew what was in it. Miller ran to the long, white porcelain trough of a sink across the lab. She yanked on a tall faucet, but nothing came out. Miller retched again. She searched frantically for something to wipe the foul goop off her trembling hands.
    Miller examined all the