Hungry Jack: Bite I - Appetite

By Albert Lawren

In a world overrun by the spawn, life blooms and withers in an endless cycle of violence. Some eke out an existence wherever they can; seeking to thrive in this new world by their own hands. Others have chosen the rule of force; taking that which they can and burning that which they cannot.

Everyone, however, has to deal with the monsters that bring death to all the living that they can find. Moral men and heartless scoundrels alike are just walking bags of flesh to the raging, slavering beasts inhabiting the ruins of our once-great cities.

Some of these monsters, however, are more than what they seem to be. Some think. Some feel. Some hope. Some actually become more than what they are. And some - some just give up and let the monster within take over. And in all this, a never-ending hunger that pervades all aspects of life.

Welcome to Jack's world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Albert Lawren
• Release date: Jul 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310483615

Albert Lawren

Albert is a ten-foot tall immortal with rippling muscles, a sharp wit, a cunning mind and a charming smile that makes all the ladies swoon. Oh, if only fiction were real - but alas, Albert is actually a mere mortal shuffling along in life and trying his very best to put into writing the ephemeral tales that tend to float around in his head. From fantastical worlds filled with magic and squabbling gods to worlds recovering from the various afflictions we humans can inflict upon ourselves, Albert does his best to share his worlds to those willing to listen.

Book preview

Hungry Jack: Bite I – Appetite

Albert Lawren

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Lawren Publishing

This ebook is for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. The author will appreciate the gesture, and you’ll be supporting his hard work writing this novel as well as future pieces that are still in the works.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Image used in the cover design is entitled Hungry Hungry Jack, which is a derivative of Hyper Gore by Martin Soulstealer, licensed under CC BY 2.0. Hungry Hungry Jack is also licensed under CC BY 2.0 by Albert Lawren.

Chapter 1

It was a day like any other for him: recover from his cross-legged meditative stance and shake off the cricks in his thin, tightly-wound body. Stretch the arms nice and wide, let the grossly constricted muscles loosen for just a bit, and then swing them back up front. Pull up the left leg with the right hand, tug it a bit, release and resist the pull of gravity so that it falls slowly to the ground. Repeat with the other leg using the other hand. Sway the neck left and right a few times, and then reach down to the toes. Lean back, push the hips forward, count up to ten and then stand up straight. That ought to get the sludge in his dead veins flowing early in this cold morning.

Not that it mattered, but he liked to think that it did.

He walked barefoot on the dilapidated wooden floorboards of the forest lodge he claimed as his own and headed straight into the bathroom. He felt his toe stub on a cracked tile, although it was less a sensation of pain and more a dull pressure telling him his foot hit something jutting out of the floor. He looked down and confirmed that the injury looked a lot worse than it felt. The claw-like toenail was shoved out of his toe, split in the middle and angled at an awkward angle. The black sludge flowing in his foot then seeped out, covered the entirety of the cracked claw and flowed around the area for a few seconds before pulling back into his body – the black toenail returned to its original position and looked like nothing had ever happened to it in the first place.

Hm. Another tile popped out. Need to pull the thing out of the floor if I don't want this to happen every time I step into the bathroom.

He looked into the cracked mirror on the wall and frowned at what he saw. It was the same ashen face, with sunken, jet-black pupils greeting him each morning. He peered closer into the mirror, scabbed skin pulled to the bone completing his inhuman look, and frowned even further before releasing his facial muscles. His face started to balloon as the tightly constricted muscles were allowed to expand to their natural size revealing a face lined with powerful jaw muscles that could ward off a few solid hits while cracking through bone in a single snap. He then relaxed the muscles further before tightening them once more so that his face could settle into a neutral frown.

He drew some water from a nearby bucket and splashed some on his face and bald head. He felt the pressure of the water hit him. No cool, refreshing tinge there. He pinched his face. Nothing. He pinched harder. Still nothing. He twisted a corner of his cheek until the scabs cracked and the flesh broke. The sludge oozed out to coat and then heal the damage he inflicted upon himself. He felt absolutely nothing throughout the whole ordeal.

He suddenly regretted spending a few days organizing the mess of gadgets and gizmos in his basement. He had to skip a few meals to line up the junk in his basement, but his collection helped keep him sane while he continually tested the limits of his hunger.

Actually, he would eat all the time if he would let himself go. He could delay it, he could turn his mind from it for some time, but the hunger was always there in the end. There simply was no escaping it, no matter how much raw, living flesh was consumed. The hunger to him was just something that he learned how to live with over time. He could not fight the hunger indefinitely, though. First his sensations start to go, then the hunger grows – considerably – until he finds himself struggling just to think straight.

Not that he would just sit back and leave it at that.

He'd been pushing himself, trying to check the limits of his will. Before he started tempering his hunger, all he knew was an endless cycle of finding the next meal, eating that meal and then finding a new meal all over again. No sleep, no rest – just the hunting and the feasting. He couldn't even manage a few days without going mad with hunger. He'd been testing his limits for quite some time, though. Meditating, dressing in clothes, washing with water, reliving the old human rituals he could remember - all this helped him make slow but steady progress with his hunger. He did not have full control over it just yet, but at least it didn’t hold his entire consciousness hostage. He could better withstand it as it screamed and raged at him to search for the living and rend their flesh. To listen to their wails and cries as he snapped their bones and chewed on their skin and popped out their eyeballs with his bare...

He shook his head as he realized where his thoughts were going.

Definitely getting hungry again.

He walked out of the bathroom, carefully avoiding any more protruding tiles, and headed for the foyer. He slowly put on his tough woodland-patterned hunting clothes – an old yet trusty memento from whoever originally owned the mountain lodge he called home – and strapped on a pair of boots. Clothes ready, he reached for a long, heavy machete and slung it on his back before raising his hood above his head. He then strapped on a sharper knife to a slot in his jacket. They were more decorations than actual tools, though. He could rip apart anything he wanted to with his bare hands and powerful jaws, but he wanted to do what needed to be done in a somewhat civilized manner.

Ready for the task ahead, he pushed the door open and gently closed it behind him. He took a nice big whiff of air through his nostrils, letting the various scents of the forest play with his senses. He couldn't smell the dew on the grass, the water evaporating from where the sun danced upon the earth, the various flowers blooming all around his lodge or the mushrooms growing out of the dead tree trunks. The only things he could smell were the blood, sweat, urine, feces, and musk of the animals in this forest - deer, bears, coyotes, cougars and even smaller animals like raccoons and squirrels.

He picked one scent that caught his attention and shut all the others out. He focused on it over and over again until his dead nostrils were attuned solely to the one scent – that of a young buck. Most likely injured, thanks to the heady mix of coagulating blood that caught his attention in the first place.

All the better, he thought. Ought to save me some time if I don’t need to stalk it.

He flexed and loosened his grip on the hunger. The sludge in his body loosened as well, flowing faster and more smoothly now that he willed his hunger to guide his actions. His jet-black eyes were slowly replaced by two orbs of swirling crimson as his dead, atrophied body hummed with unlife.

Time to hunt.

Chapter 2

He relaxed as he sat down on a rock, belly full of fresh meat stripped from an equally fresh kill. The buck had been an easy catch thanks to its already wounded state. Some mountain cat must have sunk its claws into the buck’s haunches a little too shallowly – wounding and blooding it in the process but ultimately letting it escape.

If only all meals were as easy to come across as this…

He finished wiping the blood off his machete when he heard a loud explosion rip all throughout his forest, the trees shaking and the birds taking flight, followed by the crackling chatter of firearms. A large plume of black smoke slowly wormed its way into the sky, showing exactly where the explosion had come from – the old I-405. He shot up from his rocky perch, his dulled senses bounding back to life. He raised his nose to the air once, twice, thrice. He smelled nothing for a few moments, or at least nothing that his undead senses could detect. Another explosion rocked the forest, followed by another and another until the explosions seemed to continue one after the other. More plumes of smoke crept up, all coming from the I-405.

He didn't even need to turn his nose up this time. The smells came to him with the wind – that of burned flesh, flayed skin, torn limbs, voided bowels and fear-filled sweat.

All of it from deliciously human origins.

He ground himself to a halt. He didn't even realize that he was running at full speed toward the source of the smells, and it took every ounce of his will to resist the urgent call that pricked the back of his mind, the base of his skull and the pit of his gut. No, there would be no lapse of judgment this time. He would willingly investigate this incident of his own free will, not at the insistence of his hunger.

He forced