The Hungry Dead: Midnight and Escape from the Living Dead

by John Russo

Genres: Horror; Supernatural suspense

Synopsis

Your book. . .guided me through my first completed movie. --Quentin Tarantino, on Scare Tactics

From the Master of the Living Dead

John Russo's brilliantly chilling screenplay for the 1968 groundbreaking Night of the Living Dead helped pave the wave for the flesh-eating spectacles that have thrilled zombie fans for three generations. Here, for the first time in one volume, are two of the master's most gruesome and demented novels of gut-wrenching mayhem. . .

Midnight

First, they captured small animals. Then, they moved on to bigger prey. Now the backwoods family that slays together stays together for one last midnight snack: a pair of unsuspecting travelers whose ritual torture and sacrifice will only intensify the demonic clan's cravings. . .for more.

Yeah, they're dead. . .they're all messed up.

Escape From The Living Dead

In an isolated roadside diner, a desperate group of strangers barricade themselves against a ravenous horde of undead customers who crave something more than the early bird special. They want flesh. Human flesh. With a side order of brains and stomach-turning terror.

A Two-for-One Feast for Hungry Horror Fans!

"An unrelieved orgy of sadism." --Variety on Night of the Living Dead

Release date: October 1, 2013

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 368

Sample

In the beginning, the most serious question was: How to feed them?

They shunned animal flesh, although the undead were animals themselves, just like all humans living or dead. “Higher animals” versus “lower animals,” those were the designations. The undead, for some presently unknown reason, recoiled from the flesh of the so-called “lower animals,“ no matter how hungry they were. They wouldn’t eat it even if they were experimentally starved for a week or more. No, they only liked the flesh of living or recently dead humans.

It was very clear early on, in the laboratory, that these zombies shunned all nonhuman flesh—whether living, dead, or near dead. They would not try to make a meal out of a wounded or helpless nonhuman animal of any species, although everyone knew by now that they fiercely pounced upon living or near-dead humans and devoured them like packs of hungry wolves. Even though they were themselves rather slow-moving, their strength was in numbers, and in their ravenous appetites.

But in captivity, when one tried to force-feed them dog meat or horse meat or turkey meat or even more exotic sustenance like rattlesnake or shark meat, no matter what it was mixed with, and no matter if it was marinated, basted, baked, roasted, stir-fried, or deep-fried, it would make them violently ill. It was extremely difficult to control and clean up after them, for they puked and puked, flailing and writhing and banging their heads against the padded walls and the bars of their cells, like crazed crack addicts going cold turkey.

Their value as lab creatures was drastically compromised when they were in such a sick and frenzied state. Dr. Melrose found that out in the early stages of the epidemic and the experiments. So did the other scientists. The ones who later viciously castigated him, joining in with the hordes of unenlightened fanatics who smugly, self-righteously proclaimed his ongoing experiments to be “unethical and immoral” and ranted that he was “playing God” and “doing the work of Satan.”

Yet many of these same scientists used to wholeheartedly condone marvelous scientific breakthroughs like stem cell therapy, gene-splicing, and cloning. But now it was as if they had crawled back into the Dark Ages. They were acting like ignorant savages, frightened by the rise of the undead and by everything that science, so far, had utterly failed to understand about them.

Dr. Melrose despised these hypocrites and naysayers and came to the realization that he was much braver and farsighted than they were. He was a visionary, and they were not. And he was determined to keep on experimenting with the undead, because if he could solve the mystery of their inability to totally die, he might at the same time unlock the Secret of Eternal Life.

It was a bright July morning, and the sun had risen an hour earlier, making sparkling diamonds of the dew on the manicured grass between the tombstones.

It should have been a quiet and peaceful cemetery.

But Deputy Bruce Barnes was taking careful aim at a ghoulish creature plodding toward him.

This one was a male, maybe forty-five years old, wearing a tattered gray suit, a dirty, blood-spattered white shirt, and an unknotted necktie that hung loose, outside its vest. Bruce knew that this walking dead man had probably once loved and likely was loved in return. Perhaps, because he was wearing a suit, he could have worked in an office doing some kind of clerical job. Maybe he had been an accountant, a businessman, or a lawyer. But that was all over now. He was yet another unfortunate victim of this horrible epidemic that no one knew how to cure.

Bruce knew that he had to dispatch the undead man with a well-placed shot to his head. He tightened his finger on the trigger of his high-powered rifle, held his breath, and waited for the creature to come closer. He sighted in on it, steadied his aim, and fired, and the creature fell with a heavy thud.

Bruce ejected the spent shell and chambered another round in his lever-action Winchester. Primed to face even more danger, he sensed movement in the leafy shadows of the maple trees on the outer edge of the cemetery. He heard crackling noises of twigs and underbrush, then another of the undead beings stepped out into the open. And when it came into closer view, Bruce saw that it was a huge male—and he shuddered when he realized that the big oaf was munching on the soft biceps of a severed human arm. The arm looked soft, flabby, and stringy, and perhaps relatively easy to bite into. Absorbed in what he was doing, the big ghoulish zombie did not notice, assuming that it was capable of noticing, that he was being watched by somebody with deadly intentions.

Bruce found this particular zombie to be especially scary. The man was not only threateningly huge, but he had a cruel-looking snarl. It was easy to imagine him as a thug of some sort, a mean, brawling behemoth in his previously “normal” life. He was wearing a flannel shirt, bibbed coveralls, and huge clodhoppers, and Bruce guessed his height at over seven feet, his weight at somewhere between three and four hundred pounds. Subduing this guy on a drunk and disorderly, when he was fully alive, would’ve been a daunting task for Bruce and any other of the three uniformed cops that he worked with on the county police force. But now the big brute was dead and still walking, slowly and painfully with ebbing strains of rigor mortis still partially disabling him—and yet he was even more frightening than he might have been when he was kicking ass in some booze-ridden dive.

Just as Bruce was about to try to bring down the gigantic creature, several more emerged from the surrounding woods. Perhaps they could smell live flesh, for they immediately started shuffling toward Bruce, drooling as if they could already taste him. They were more decayed and dead-looking than most of the ones he had encountered earlier, and there were four of them. He hoped he could squeeze off that many accurate shots before they got to him. He wondered where his fellow cops were. He hoped they didn’t get themselves surrounded in some other part of the cemetery, and he cursed himself for impetuously moving ahead at his own pace instead of waiting for them to catch up. He wasn’t trying to be a hero; he was just trying to get the job done quickly, and he had thought they’d stay close behind him. But now he might have to pay a terrible price.

Which one should he aim at first?

He decided to keep his rifle trained on the monstrously huge zombie carrying the severed arm, try to take him out quickly, and then go for the others.

Just then a volley of shots rang out.

Two of the zombies menacing Bruce went down, hit in the head with bullets.

The big one in the bibbed coveralls dropped the severed arm and turned back toward the woods. A bullet tore into the dead man’s right shoulder, but he kept going, trying to get away. Bruce fired at him and missed. He quickly cocked his Winchester.

More shots rang out as cops and posse members rushed forward, firing their weapons, and several more zombies bit the dust. One of them, a female shot in her torso, reeled but did not fall. Her rasping breath got louder as she kept coming, angry and hungry, wearing an ordinary print housedress, her hair up in curlers. Then a shot right between her eyes brought her down.

Bruce took another hasty shot at the big zombie in the bibbed coveralls, wishing he had a scope on his Winchester, but he didn’t, and the bullet went wild. He cocked his lever-action rifle again and was about to take aim when he heard his boss, Sheriff Paul Harkness, yelling from somewhere behind him.

The sheriff was a gruff, big-bellied man with a cigar-smoker’s loud, hoarse voice. “Hold your fire!” he barked. “We gotta collect a few of these damned things! It’s orders from the higher-ups, and we gotta obey!”

Sticking close to the sheriff was another uniformed deputy, Jeff Sanders, who had been Bruce Barnes’s sidekick on many a patrol. And following those two lawmen were about a dozen well-armed citizens who had volunteered to be part of the ghoul-hunting posse. They clustered among the tombstones and monuments, catching their breath and waiting for Sheriff Harkness to tell them what to do next.

Bruce was on the verge of firing his rifle again at the big dead ogrelike fellow in the bibbed coveralls, but the sheriff said, “Hold it, Bruce! Stop! Let the doc and his guys try to collect that big ugly brute! He might give ’em more than they bargained for! I tried to tell Dr. Melrose we need to kill ’em, not fuckin’ experiment on ’em, but he don’t wanna listen!”

Bruce really didn’t want to ease up on his trigger because the big zombie that he avidly wanted to bring down had momentarily stopped trying to escape and was instead coming back for the severed arm lying in the grass. “I say we kill ’em all!” Bruce said. “Only good zombie is a dead zombie!”

“Listen to me, Bruce,” the sheriff said. “The scientists wanna study ’em—find out why they ain’t quite as dead as they oughta be.”

Bruce shook his head in consternation as he eased up on his trigger finger.

Jeff Sanders put his hand on Bruce’s shoulder. “I want to shoot every damn one of them, just like you do,” he said. “But orders are orders. You don’t wanna get yourself fired.”

Bruce knew that his buddy Jeff, ten years younger than he was, was usually even more of a hothead. Dark, handsome, and effortlessly charismatic, Jeff was a ladies’ man whether off duty or in uniform, although his habitual flirting didn’t seem to ever lead anywhere; it probably could have if he wanted it to, but although he was a flirt, he loved his wife Amy very much, and the bottom line was that he seemed to remain faithful to her. Yet on the job he was often flamboyant or impetuous, sometimes getting both Bruce and himself into unnecessary danger. But at the moment he was trying hard to be the adult in the group and not piss off Sheriff Harkness.

The sheriff yelled over his shoulder. “You guys with the dart guns—c’mon, get up here!”

Four men in white lab uniforms emerged from among the tombstones, wearing white caps and surgical masks and carrying weapons capable of firing the kinds of darts that are used to immobilize wild animals. The sheriff barked at them, “Hurry up! Go get that big guy munching on some poor dude’s arm! Don’t let him get away!”

The four men advanced timidly toward the big zombie in the bibbed coveralls, and Bruce stared at the bold black letters on the backs of their white coats: MELROSE MEDICAL CENTER. In their temerity about facing an ominously huge zombie feasting on a human arm, they slowed and hung back, and Dr. Harold Melrose, a small, balding man in a dark suit, now came forward, flashing Sheriff Harkness and Deputy Barnes a contemptuous look. Around his neck was a stethoscope, and he wore wire-rimmed spectacles and a prissy little mustache, and to him the sheriff and his deputy were just dumb cops, too obtuse to understand the exigencies of true science, so he hustled past them as if they were as worthless as dirt.

As Melrose’s lab technicians got closer to the big foreboding zombie, he dropped the severed arm that was his meal and turned toward the men and scowled at them ferociously. He took a few slow, ponderous steps toward them—and they immediately started firing their paralyzing darts. One dart missed, but the other three struck the big zombie in the leg, chest, and shoulder, and he groaned and fell with an earth-pounding thud, then rolled over, flat on his back.

One of the technicians said, “My dart missed. Lemme have another shot.”

Another said, “No, hold off. We’re not supposed to finish him. Dr. Melrose wants ’em alive.”

“Haw! Alive is exactly what he ain’t! Not like you and me anyways.”

“That’s why the doc wants to find out what makes ’em tick.”

Dr. Melrose came on the scene, looked down at the unconscious zombie, and said, “Excellent . . . excellent . . . a fine specimen. Stand back, will you?”

He knelt over the huge specimen, cupped his hand around the bell of his stethoscope, and started to bend forward.

Sheriff Harkness stepped up and barked a stern warning. “I wouldn’t get that close if I were you, doc.”

Deputy Barnes added, “This is a four-hundred-pound man. You might not have him fully immobilized.”

“Nonsense!“ Dr. Melrose intoned haughtily. “His eyelids aren’t even fluttering. I have to make sure there’s a trace of a pulse.”

Deputy Jeff Sanders couldn’t help scoffing, “What makes you so sure these things even have a heart?”

“That’s precisely one of the factors I intend to explore,” said Dr. Melrose. Then, staring at the sheriff and the deputy, he hit them with a prissy-sounding complaint. “This fellow has been shot in his shoulder. He’s damaged goods.”

“What do you expect?” Barnes said. “He was coming right at me. I wish I had blown his brains out, or what’s left of them. I was trying hard to do exactly that.”

“Don’t blame you,” said Sanders.

But Doc Melrose went on ranting at Bruce Barnes. “You didn’t do so well, Mr. Macho Man. You only gave him a flesh wound, a shoulder burn. It may heal or it may not. We can’t predict yet how much healing capability they may have. That’s one of the very important things we wish to find out.”

He crouched and leaned forward, placing the bell of his stethoscope against the big zombie’s chest. He listened intently while the other lab men looked on with fear and tension in their faces.

Suddenly the huge zombie that was supposed to be inert lunged at Dr. Melrose and grabbed him by his head. The doc tried to pull away, but he lost the struggle, and the zombie sunk his teeth into the good doctor’s throat.

Paul Harkness, Jeff Sanders, and Bruce Barnes jumped around aiming their rifles, trying to get a clear shot to shoot the zombie in his head, but were too scared of hitting the doctor or each other.

The four lab technicians got into different positions close to the big, madly chomping zombie and fired more darts into him, till finally, to everyone’s great relief, the zombie slowly let go of his grip on Dr. Melrose’s head and fell backward and once more lay still.

Bleeding from his throat, the doctor pulled out a white pocket handkerchief and tried to stanch the flow of blood while he groveled in the grass for his wire-rimmed spectacles and put them back on even though they were bent. His neck wound was a quite terrible one, and it kept bleeding profusely, even after Dr. Melrose decided to lie on his back in the grass and try to calm down, hoping that if he slowed his pulse it would slow the blood flow.

One of the lab men rushed forward and seized the bloody handkerchief, trying to help press it against Melrose’s throat wound. The doc was breathing in and out slowly, in great raspy groans.

Deputy Bruce Barnes, a bit panicky now, stepped closer to the doc and put the muzzle of his Winchester a foot away from Dr. Melrose’s temple, saying, “He’s been bitten. He’s gonna turn into one of them.”

One of them lab men said, “No! Don’t shoot Dr. Melrose! Let us take him to the medical center!”

Bruce said, “No way. You smart-fart scientists don’t even know what causes this, let alone how to cure it! He’s gotta be shot.”

“Fuckin’ a!” Deputy Sanders said, suddenly blurting out his true belief in no mercy as he drew his own revolver as if he would dispatch the wounded zombie even if Bruce didn’t.

But Sheriff Harkness intervened. “Hold your fire, you two! At least for now! He hasn’t become one yet, and he won’t until he dies.”

“He’s gonna die right now,” the leading lab man said, “if we don’t stop arguing over him. We have to get him to the medical center right away!”

Another lab man pleaded, “At least give us a chance to help him pull through. If he doesn’t make it . . . well . . . we can do whatever becomes necessary at that time.”

“Okay,” said the sheriff. “That sorta makes sense. Good luck to you. You’re sure gonna need it.”

Dismayed by this turn of events, Bruce Barnes grumbled, “Mark my words. Only good zombie is a dead zombie.”

And Jeff Sanders said, “Right on!”

The sky was high in the sky, and the day was made even hotter by the huge fire consuming the bodies of the undead that had been shot in the cemetery. Deputy Jeff Sanders and an armed civilian, Dan Castillo, dragged the inert form of yet another vanquished ghoul from between two large ornate monuments and over to the fire. The dead thing was heavy, even for two strong men grabbing it by its legs and arms, and they grunted as they heaved it onto the fire, then stood back taking a breather as they watched the dead man’s clothes start to glow, then incinerate.

“This is definitely the craziest day of my life,” Dan said. “I hope I never see another one like it.”

“Well, it’s not gonna end today,” Jeff pronounced. “There’re more of ’em around here, that’s for sure.”

“I think we’ve got them just about cleaned out,” said Dan.

“Just about, but not totally, I don’t think,” said Jeff. He had been surprised two days ago when he found out that Dan Castillo had joined up with the posse because he had always pegged Dan as the bookish type. They had graduated from high school together, and Dan had entered law school while Jeff was being trained at the police academy. Over the past few years, there had been times when Jeff was unmercifully grilled by Dan in courtrooms where the defendants were scumbags who’d been arrested. They both said “no hard feelings” afterward and tried to sincerely mean it, but still they had remained wary while trying not to start hating each other. At first blush, it was hard for Jeff to imagine that the suave young lawyer could be an effective ghoul hunter, but it turned out that he had kept himself fit by playing tennis and handball and was actually a good shot. He liked to let off steam by target shooting, not hunting, and he spent quite a lot of time practicing at a shooting range run by the Evans City Sportsmen’s Club.

“What do you think is going to happen to Dr. Melrose?” Dan asked.

“Gonna die . . . then come back,” Jeff said. “Then he’ll have to be shot in the head by somebody, maybe one of those lab guys who wanted to try and save him.”

“Maybe they don’t all die,” Dan said.

“Never heard of one who didn’t,” Jeff scoffed. “Anyone bitten becomes one of those things. Then they have to be shot or burned.”

“I know that’s usually been the case . . .”

“Always been the case.”

“Yes, as far as we now know,” said the lawyer. “But think about AIDS, Jeff. A disease we totally did not understand, and it was always a hundred percent fatal. We all thought it was worse than the bubonic plague. But eventually we found ways to delay the worst symptoms even if we couldn’t defeat it. And now it’s not always a death sentence. Some folks even survive it and go on to lead normal lives.”

“Ain’t gonna happen to Dr. Melrose,” Jeff said. “He’s gonna turn into one of these thing we’re trying to hunt down and kill. I hope he doesn’t get to bite one of his lab guys first, before they wise up.”

“Why do you call them things when you know full well they’re human, just like us?”

“Because they’re not like us anymore. They used to be, but they’re not now. I keep that in mind so I don’t choke up when I have to shoot them. Especially the women and the kids. I hate having to kill them.”

“Well, it shows that you’re a sensitive person,” Dan said respectfully. “I like that quality in you . . . or anybody. You’re not just a hard-nosed cop.”

“Well, thanks, but you’re more hard-nosed than I am when you’ve got me in front of a jury.”

They both laughed, then Dan said, “We better move on and catch up with the sheriff.”

“Wait a minute—I hear some noises back there in the woods.”

“Just trees rustling.”

“Not enough breeze. Something’s moving.”

“I don’t hear anything. I’m moving on. Are you coming?”

“No, not till I check it out.”

“Don’t go in there by yourself. C’mon, let’s catch up with the rest of the guys and get us some hot coffee.”

“Something is in those woods, and I’m not letting it stay alive to chomp on somebody. I’m goin’ in there.”

“Suit yourself. I’d stick with you, but I’m sure you’re hearing things, Jeff. I’m sorry, but I’m cutting out.”

Dan moved off a ways but then looked back, hoping Jeff would follow. But Jeff didn’t. “Don’t go in there alone!” Dan shouted, but when he didn’t hear any reply from Jeff, he shrugged and reluctantly headed out of the cemetery toward the rendezvous point Sheriff Harkness had previously designated.

Slowly working his way into the wooded area, Jeff’s eyes darted around warily, and he stopped and scanned his surroundings. At first he saw and heard nothing, and he thought maybe his buddy Dan was right in arguing that he was making a mountain out of a molehill.

Then suddenly three zombies, two males and a female, came out from within some thick foliage. Both males were wearing shorts and T-shirts that revealed numerous tattoos covering their arms and legs. The female, in a lavender blouse and tight denim shorts, was a shapely teenage girl who probably used to be beautiful, but now her face was hideously ripped and scarred. All three were spattered with the blood and gore of people they must have attacked and devoured.

Startled by them at first, Jeff wheeled and hastily fired, blowing a hole in the young girl’s chest. She fell, knocked back by the impact, but started to get up again.

The two male zombies kept on coming.

Jeff took careful aim at the female’s head and blew her away. Then he worked his lever-action and swiveled his Winchester onto the closest male zombie.

With a loud rasping groan a fourth zombie suddenly lurched at Jeff from behind, grabbing him by the shoulders and making him drop his rifle. He tried to scramble for the dropped weapon, but now three zombies were upon him, and he had to scratch, punch, and claw at them to avoid being bitten. Pounding a hard blow into the flabby paunch of the zombie who had first grabbed him, he realized its belly was partially rotted and feared that his fist would penetrate into the decayed bowels. But instead the hateful being let out a whoosh of foul-smelling breath and crumpled to the ground, groaning and salivating.

Jeff backed away, yanking his service revolver from its holster. He managed to squeeze off three shots that echoed loudly but went wild as he stumbled backward through the trees.

Emerging into a weed-grown meadow, he found himself immediately in even worse trouble. Six ravenous adult zombies were hovering over the partially devoured remains of a human corpse, and as soon as they saw Jeff, they got to their feet and came at him. He fired his revolver twice, scoring two head shots and a wild miss. But when he pulled the trigger again he got only a click.

Still clutching the empty revolver, he took off running.

The zombies came after him.

He ran toward a small pond and frantically splashed his way in, deeper and deeper. In chest-high water, his hat gone and the rest of his uniform totally soaked, he turned and faced the pursuing zombies. Crazed with fear, he yelled at them, “You damn things! You’re scared of fire—but how about water? I hope you’re scared of water too, you ugly bastards!”

Two of the female zombies hung back, at least temporarily, which gave the lawman hope. But four others kept coming mindlessly forward as if the water made no impression on them. Two big males uncaringly, unfeelingly, slipped under the ripples, seemingly to drown—if zombies could drown. And maybe they could, because in short order there were bubbles gurgling around them, and then the dead things floated like driftwood on the pond’s surface.

But two female zombies kept after Jeff and waded deeper into the water. He clubbed the first one in the head with the butt of his revolver, and then kept on clubbing her again and again till she stopped struggling and floated on the surface like the two others.

When the last remaining zombie lunged at him, Jeff managed to seize her by the throat. Pushing her head under the water, he choked her as hard as he could, terror written all over his face as he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Die, you bitch! Die! Die! Die! Die!”

But her evil, twisted face rose up toward him, and with all his strength, he tried to push her back underwater. Then, even though she was being choked, she somehow started talking to him, and he thought he must be going crazy.

“Jeff . . . stop . . . you’re hurting me . . .”

He choked her harder, trying to make her last rotten breath bubble out of her.

“Please . . . Jeff . . . you’re hurting me . . .”

Suddenly, shimmering, he saw the face of his wife. It wavered like the ripples of the water, then it became clear.

It was Amy, and he was choking her in their bed.

Scared of what he had done, he let go of her, and she fell back, crying and holding her throat.

He covered his own face with his hands, his fingers still tight and sore with the effort of the choking. “Oh, god,” he lamented. “Amy . . . I’m so sorry . . . I’m so sorry . . .”

This was not the first time such a thing had happened. It was sixteen years now since the day that Dr. Melrose had been bitten in the cemetery. Jeff’s hair was gray now, his face lined and much older looking. He was only forty-one, but he was under the strain of posttraumatic stress disorder. He shook his head dolefully, his hands still covering his face in remorse.

Amy’s voice was hoarse from the damage he had done to her with his fingers, and she was overcome with sadness, a sadness tinged with ruefulness because she still loved him. “You say you can’t help it, Jeff. But I’ve stuck with you all this time, through all the counseling, all the rehab and the expensive medication . . .”

“I know . . . I know . . . and I’m sorry, Amy. I understand what you’ve been through. I understand that it’s my fault.”

“But you’re still flipping out on me, and I have no clue where or when it’s liable to happen. I have no idea what sets you off.”

“I didn’t start having flashbacks until three years ago. And lately it’s been coming over me less often. I’ve been having fewer and fewer nightmares.”

“Yes, but it only takes one, like the one you just had, that might kill me. How do I know that next time, or the next, I won’t end up dead?”

“I don’t think . . . I mean, I always manage to snap out of it in time.”

“Always?” Amy said softly. “I’m not so sure I want to keep betting my life on it.”

He started to cry. He couldn’t help himself. For most of his life, even when he was a child, he had prided himself on his ability to hold back tears, even when others bullied him or said nasty things about him, or when he tried out for plays or other high school activities, such as the football or baseball teams, and didn’t make it.

But now he cried. And Amy still loved him enough to wrap her arms tightly around him and try to comfort him.

But he was scared their marriage might be over.

Janice Fazio didn’t know that she was being followed.

And the person following her didn’t know that he was being followed also. He felt sure that she was an easy victim. She was obviously headed directly for where he already knew her car was parked. He had already checked it out, and he congratulated himself for his cleverness, his attention to appropriate detail. To his satisfaction, she had left the car in a sparsely lit lot on a murky side street that seldom had a flow of cars or pedestrians.

It was near midnight, and Janice had just left her friend Michelle in a dinky little cocktail lounge on the depressingly quiet main drag of Willard, a slow, boring little town whose sole claim to fame was . . .