Pushing past the hurt, Scott tugged harder, lifting as much of Tom’s body as he could manage to give Ridley room to escape.
Tom’s animated corpse was brutally strong. Its teeth pierced Ridley’s carotid artery. Her blood fountained from her neck. Ridley’s cries grew softer. Her gaze drifted. The fight had gone out of her. She put her arms around her husband in a last embrace. Her eyes closed. Scott heard her saying over and over, her words slowing with each repetition, whispering as her life faded, “I love you, Tom. I love you, Tom. I love you…”
A tsunami of horror washed over Scott. He stumbled backward and sank to his knees.
From behind the force that now powered his body, Tom saw the attack as though from the end of a long tunnel. He couldn’t stop himself. He shouted, but couldn’t hear his own voice.
The realization that Ridley was dying gave him a desperate inner strength he had never before summoned. He broke the increasingly thick roots taking hold in his body and surged some remnant of himself forward to the surface of consciousness just as his wife took her last breath and uttered her last “I love you.”
With hands sticky from her blood, he pulled Ridley to him and rocked her. He opened his mouth wide and made low choking sounds. If he’d had control of his vocal cords, he would have roared his infinite sadness. Instead, he could only mime his screams.
He was damned. Unbearable self-loathing replaced anguish. Unable to live with his pain, Tom’s soul surrendered itself to extinction.
From a distance, it appeared as if Tom had gathered Ridley’s body to better partake of a gruesome feast. Yet Scott had seen the flicker of Tom reappear. He saw the devastating sorrow crush his friend’s soul before he disappeared forever.
Tom’s body was devoid of humanity. Hollow.
Tremors reappeared and a snarl came to the creature’s face. Its hands scratched at Ridley’s clothing then entered her body below her chest. It ripped her stomach open. Its teeth tugged at her insides, and it began feeding on her.
Scott had no time to grieve. A pack of four flesh-eating predators were approaching with increasing speed. Their stuttering steps became gliding strides the closer they got to him. He jumped to his feet, willing his legs to find speed. The zombies were moving faster than the others he had seen, and they had a credible chance of catching him.
They stopped hunting him. Ridley’s fresh corpse beckoned and they were slaves to their hunger. Scott felt shame along with his relief.
Before running home, Scott surveyed the neighborhood. The scene was kabuki-esque. Zombie bodies jerked at varying speeds. A few stood alone and still with vacant stares as though daydreaming. Their faces twitched in and out of emotion before ultimately melting into a disturbing slackness.
A gore-drenched female walked aimlessly down the street, wandering in slow circles, her eyes closed. Her expression unexpectedly broke into a radiant smile as if she had seen a glorious sunrise for the first time. Then, just as swiftly, the smile vanished, her facial muscles turned flaccid, her expression blank.
Seared into Scott’s memory was Tom’s behavior after killing his wife. He sensed that Tom’s soul lingered inside his animated cadaver, aware at some level as he watched his body take the life of the person he loved most and then ate her flesh; all the while unable to prevent himself from doing it.
Hell.
Up and down the street, Scott witnessed the gruesome aftermath of several other attacks. Next to Ridley’s corpse even more of the walking aberrations gathered. Her bones cracked loudly as they pulled her chest apart, twisting chunks of torso from her spine, noisily sucking out the marrow.
The sound galvanized him. Cold rage cut through his emotions like parting cobwebs. They fluttered at the extreme edge of his attention. Scott needed clarity, the focus that would mean survival for his family and for the newly orphaned Chase and Katie.
The front door of Scott’s house was temptingly near. However, the risk of attracting unwanted interest was too high. He took a detour that carried him to the top of his street and hooked right through the forest to the six-foot privacy fence that enclosed his backyard. He used the last of his strength to swing himself over.
Lying on the earth for a minute to recover, he saw that Laura and the girls had taken steps to protect themselves. Scott saw furniture stacked from floor to ceiling, braced against the glass patio door, covering the view to the inside of the house. He realized they must have seen what Tom had done to Ridley.
He pulled himself to the sliding glass door and tapped. Maddy’s face appeared at the top of the window. She gave Scott her penetrating stare before deconstructing the barrier.
She hugged him tightly as soon as he walked into the house. She fought back tears. “I knew you were OK, but I had to make sure,” she said in a barely audible voice.
Scott hugged her again and stroked her hair. “I know, baby girl. I know. You did the right thing.”
Laura chugged partway down the stairs. She snapped orders like a colonel on the field of battle. “Maddy! Push the big table over and slide it to the front door. We need to turn this place into a fortress. Dad will be fine. Just keep moving.”
When she didn’t get the response she expected from Maddy, she stomped furiously the rest of the way down the stairs.
She’d pulled back her dark hair, a few loose strands hung next to her cheek. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying over Ridley’s death. Her lips were pressed tightly together. He could tell she had crossed the same threshold he had. Past any fear, she embraced clarity. Grieving would need to come later for both of them. Only action mattered.
“Scott!” He held her close, and they stood in a tight embrace, giving each other strength. “It’s like my dream last night.” Her next words seized his heart and hacked it to pieces:
“Scott, where is Emily?”
Emily’s happy voice echoed hauntingly in his memory. “Going to play. Love you, Dad.”
CHAPTER 25
RAVENERS OF HORRIBLE MEAT
The park was a kid’s paradise floating in a sea of fresh green grass, so recently planted that it was free of dandelions and clover. Sturdy play forts were connected to each other by yellow-roped bridges, monkey bars, and netting. Bright reds, yellows and blues accented the swings and climbing holds of modestly sized climbing walls.
Like any hot Saturday, the park swarmed with noisy children happily playing near a crowd of oblivious parents who chatted with the other adults sitting nearby.
Katie, Chase, and Emily arrived at the park together. When Emily left the house, she saw the others walking to the park and invited herself along. She brought along a small backpack with some water, a few snacks and her trusty Kindle loaded with eBooks.
The walk tired Katie, her body still weak from her illness. She’d feigned a smidgeon of vitality to get out of the house and spend time in the hot sun, which felt so good she couldn’t be persuaded to return home. It nourished her in a way that food and sleep couldn’t, and began to lift her spirit.
At the park, Emily chose an outpost at the edge of the playground, away from the wild activity. It was four feet off the ground and accessible by an easy walk up wooden steps. As she plunked herself down and opened her bag, Katie surprised her by getting comfortable next to her.
“Mind if I just sit here with you?” she asked. “I just need to be outside for a while. If I sit here maybe my bodyguard-brother will stop monitoring me as if I were on the verge of a coma.”
She correctly read what Emily thought and added “I’m probably going to sleep anyway, so it won’t bother me if all you do is read. Go ahead. Read.”
Seconds after she climbed into the fort with Emily, she sank into a sleep devoid of restorative power.
Chase did relax when he saw Katie fall asleep next to Emily. The girls were in plain view from practically everywhere within the park. He walked away from the screaming kids on the playground and sat on a small bench outside the enclosure of three tennis courts. It was as much solitude as he wa
s going to get.
Last night’s game replayed in his mind. He’d blown it. He knew it. His team knew it. People all over New York State knew it. He didn’t think he would ever live it down and dreaded returning to school that Monday.
He mistook the first terrified screams for squeals of joy. The adults that were chasing children around the park looked like parents engaging their families in a spirited game of tickle-tackle. After throwing kids to the earth, powerful grown hands dug fingers into little torsos. Blood began to splatter on the grass.
The real parents and grandparents rushed frantically into the playground to save the lives of their little ones, choking their sobs to call out their names, begging them to answer. Men and women banded together, pulling away the feeding zombies and swooping up the dying children in a vain effort to rescue them.
Chase jumped in front of a young Asian woman with long black hair. She carried a two year-old girl away from the park. The baby was fair-skinned and clearly not the woman’s daughter. She had bleeding gouges on the chubby white arms that poked from a pink t-shirt. Trailing after her was a bald, 40-something man wearing khaki pants and a sunshine-yellow golf shirt. Crimson drops fell from his chin onto the bright golden cloth.
He called out to the woman. The baby’s rescuer misinterpreted Chase’s intention and blindly changed direction, tripping into a tangle of bodies and disturbing the tribe of zombies in the act of feeding on those corpses. They fell upon her, torqueing her limbs into unnatural positions in their work to bring her down. Her shrieks were lost in the cacophony of other screams.
Only feet away, Chase saw a large female zombie who reminded him of the local librarian. It had zeroed in on a small, brown-haired 6-year-old girl wearing a white t-shirt with a pink heart on it saying “Daddy’s Girl”. It pounced on her and pinned her to the ground, leaning forward to eat.
The little girl uselessly kicked her legs in a futile effort to get away, squeaking in pain as the hungry corpse bit her.
He charged at full speed, knocking the creature more than three feet away. Without pause, it twisted its body around and crawled after him. He bent over to grab up the little girl. Not only had she suffered a bite, her ribcage had been compressed to the point of breaking ribs and puncturing organs. She looked over Chase’s shoulder with glassy eyes, blood foaming from her lips as she called soundlessly for her daddy.
He carried her away, jogging toward the small tower claimed by his sister and Emily when they all first arrived. The tiny girl was already limp when he lifted her. But he felt a difference when her spirit slipped away. Her body lost its feather-light tension. Daddy’s Girl was dead.
Chase pushed her body onto some monkey bars, hoping it could escape desecration there. His heart thundered in his chest when he didn’t find his sister Katie in the play structure she’d claimed when they first arrived. He scanned the playground, searching for Katie, finally spotting her across from him, nearly where he’d been sitting when the attacks began.
She and Emily were fleeing from a group of three older boy zombies. Katie struggled to keep ahead and Emily did her best to help. One of them jumped on Emily’s back, attempting to ride her to the ground. Instead, it mostly caught her backpack. She slid deftly out of it before the lunging creature could drag her down, buying them another few moments. Still, the outcome seemed inevitable.
The boy zombies were only three of the five living dead who relentlessly dogged the girls. A chubby red-headed one came straight at them, a soccer-mom zombie with broken ankles staggered from the side. Patches of reddish brown smeared its peach sweatshirt.
Zombies crowded the playground between him and the girls. Chase knew he would never make it to them in a straight charge. He mentally mapped a route that would carry him over and through the wooden forts where there were fewer creatures.
He clambered through, around, under and over the play structures like a Marine Corps recruit in boot camp. As he navigated different sections of the playground, he came across hiding places where pockets of children and adults clutched each other silently, hoping they wouldn’t be found.
From one of those hideaways behind him, a baby began to cry, immediately attracting the attention of the shuffling dead hunting for another corpse upon which to feed.
Attempts to hush the baby were both useless and pointless. The teenaged girl holding the baby to her chest dropped from a platform and hobbled to a patch of thick vegetation at the edge of the park. The walking corpses shuffled after her on twitching limbs.
Chase clambered into the last navigable play structure before he would have to risk an open field race to reach his sister and Emily. Checking over the wall at the final stretch, he almost missed the zombie hiding in a dark corner behind him. Completely eaten below the waist, it slowly pulled itself toward him on shaking arms. A scrape of its watch on the wooden floor alerted Chase just in time.
Hurling himself over the wall kept him from the legless zombie’s grasp. He blindly rounded the fort and encountered a cluster of the undead facing away from him. He scrambled backward to the other side of the structure, giving him a view of the spot where he had last seen the girls. No sign of them.
His sister and Maddy’s sister might both be gone.
Something thudded on the ground behind him. One of the female zombies fell from an overhead bridge in a clumsy effort to catch him. It pulled itself to its feet and stumbled his way.
Ejected from his hiding place and unwilling to give up finding his sister, he took off in the direction of a tall climbing wall in the middle of the playground. He scrambled to the top in no time and threw a leg over the ridge to straddle it. From there, he had a bird’s eye view into many of the play forts. He began a methodical search of each one.
Though an excellent vantage point for Chase, it also operated as the perfect beacon to attract the flesh hunters. While he scanned the park, a mob of the grasping zombies converged at the base of the climbing rock. The creatures lacked the coordination to ascend the wall. Palsy kept them from making it any farther up than the first toehold.
Chase spied a clump of black hair dangling through a slat in one of the higher towers. He was sure it was his sister. He couldn’t tell if she was playing dead, holding still on purpose, or if her body was no longer capable of movement. She might be sick again. Or worse.
He’d completely stranded himself on top of the climbing wall. He considered jumping. The zombies were crowded three deep at the bottom, requiring a significant horizontal leap for Chase to be clear of them when he landed. He might not land softly. Twisting an ankle would mean pretty much the same thing as jumping into the middle of the hungry throng.
Chase was getting light-headed. Perched atop the climbing wall, he had no shelter from the blazing sun. He was dehydrated and already sleep-deprived from the night before. His legs were cramping from having only two positions to choose from: sit or straddle. He shouted again for Katie. His voice cracked as his breath whooshed over the strip of desert terrain that was his throat.
Every few minutes, cries of pain stabbed the air as the zombies discovered another hideout. Only once did a child make it to the thick vegetation, the same place where the teenaged girl had escaped. The others died where they’d hidden.
Chase couldn’t wait any longer. Katie’s sanctuary could be the next one found. He crouched on top of the wall, and with a hoarse yell, prepared to launch himself away from the tower.
CHAPTER 26
NONE WILL WAKE THEM
Clotted blood and playground sand bonded Katie’s cheek to the wooden slats that made up the floor. Her dreams were dark, as if she were sitting in a theater running a projector with a broken bulb. She heard her parents in the blackness. They called out for her, infinite sadness in their voices. She shouted back to them, “Mom! Dad! I’m here!” Their cries were suddenly cut off.
She jolted awake. Emily yanked hard on her arm. “Get up! Get up!” she yelled.
Disoriented, Katie stood on unsteady feet, mumbling, �
�What is it?”
Emily pushed her from the short tower; she fell awkwardly and sat down hard, sending shocks up her spine from bruising her tailbone. Her friend landed next to her and tugged at her arm again. “Come! Now!”
The three young zombies chasing them were in ragged shape. A patchwork of hair and skin blanketed their skulls. Their lower jaws were gone, leaving skulls with tongues hanging loose.
Only a few inches in height distinguished them from each other. The tallest of them dropped to his knees by Katie and grabbed at one of her legs. Emily’s pulls and Katie’s well-aimed kicks freed her before the grotesque siblings trapped them.
Her fever had returned, weakening her to the point where she couldn’t stand up properly. Dodging creatures long enough to get safely home would be impossible. The only option was to find a place out of sight and out of reach. The girls limped toward a tall tower near some dense foliage bordering the back of the playground with the zombies lurching behind them.
After she shed her backpack, more predators joined the hunt. Katie swayed on her feet, losing consciousness. Though Emily was strong even at eight years old, after staggering ten feet, she collapsed under the full weight of her friend’s now comatose body.
Emily strained to crawl away. She suffocated, unable to lift her head and unable to see around Katie’s form. Her yells for help were muffled. She’d seen the gruesome playground attacks and knew what was coming for her. She wondered how much it would hurt when the bites started.
Katie’s body was being jostled above her and she prepared herself for the end. When Emily saw daylight, she lashed out with her feet, making solid contact with one of the things that wanted to make a meal out of her. She heard a grunt after she struck. Hands grabbed her by the forearm and wrenched her so violently that Emily was certain her arm had been separated at the elbow.
The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave Page 11
