It surprised her to hear a girl’s voice hissing in anger, “Hey stupid. We can’t carry you. Run!”
A boy and girl about Emily’s age pulled her to her feet. They wasted no time on her, instead grabbing Katie by both arms and dragging her to the same high tower where Emily wanted to go. The two rescuers had visible bites in their skin. Their will to live superseded the excruciating pain they were feeling and their severe loss of blood.
Before Emily could follow them, fingers snared her hair and jerked her head back. Instead of pulling away, she used one of the moves her Uncle Tommy had taught her and her sister in a basic defense training he had given them, throwing herself into the pull and using the momentum to roll backward onto her feet.
She escaped at the cost of losing a quarter-sized patch of scalp and a fistful of her hair. By then, the path to the high fort was overrun by zombies on their way to intercept her. It could have been her imagination, but she thought the blood seeping from the wound on her head excited them.
She saw a narrow opening underneath a platform of the play forts. She had mere seconds before the zombies were on her. With nothing more to lose, she planted herself on her back and wriggled into the tiny space.
Turning her head sideways to clear the platform’s edge, she scraped her ear on the edge hard enough that she thought she might have torn it off. The fit was extremely tight. She didn’t have the space to lift any part of her body more than one inch.
Above her, the sunlight and fresh air passed through the blue plastic covered grating, saving her from the sensation of being buried alive. Zombies swept their arms into her burrow, hooking her feet and nearly hauling her into the open. Though she loved her pink cowboy boots the way other kids loved teddy bears, she gave them up without a thought. Like her backpack, it saved her life for the moment.
Zombies on the platform saw her below them and poked their fingers through the grate openings. More of them piled on top of the decking, smothering the light and filling her air with the odor of their fermenting bodies.
She hyperventilated, making her dizzy. The sound of her heavy breaths excited the hungry corpses scrabbling at the metal above her. Her lips went numb. She scraped her bottom lip against her incisors hard enough to feel a sharp pinch. She thought she smelled rubbing alcohol and felt stinging in her nasal cavities. Breathing too hard. Going to pass out.
Emily tried to calm down. A skinny digit topped with neon yellow nail polish wormed its way through a hole in the grate and broke off, dropping onto Emily’s chest then rolling down her neck, leaving behind a pink shiny trail of blood.
Her breathing accelerated. Pinpricks swarmed her arms as oxygen-starved blood throbbed into constricted vessels.
At her feet, she could feel the platform’s makeshift wall of bark chips thin and collapse as zombie arms dug underneath the platform. She kicked at the dirt, trying to shore up the flimsy barrier against the hands of the living dead. Her breathing spiked. Then the darkness claimed her.
Bunkered in the tall fort, Katie lay crumpled in the same place where her two rescuers had plopped her after hoisting her to safety. Her skin beaded with sweat as her fever grabbed hold. She had the same dream she’d had the night before, a giant hand pushing her into a corner, crushing more heavily with each beat of her pulse.
Next to her, the boy and girl appeared to be entranced. Muscle spasms caused their limbs to jump bizarrely. A hunger blossomed in them, drawing them to the helpless girl at their feet whom they had saved just minutes before. They gathered near her, their hands extended.
CHAPTER 27
HOLLOW MEN
From the time he told his wife that their daughter wasn’t with him, Scott’s mind focused on Emily. He was desperate to have her home safe. It was all he could do to keep from running out of the house that very instant. But it would be stupid to leave Laura, Maddy, and the baby without knowing they would be safe in the house until he got back.
“Scott, I can take care of this. Go out and save our daughter,” Laura insisted.
“No, Laura. I need to bring her to a house that is safe, with her mom and her sisters alive and well. If I worry about you, I won’t be able to think straight let alone be effective at finding her. Let’s secure the rest of the house. I’ll leave from the back door and you’ll brace it behind me.”
Laura and Scott dashed around the house to secure it, moving heavier furniture to block the doors and windows. Along the way, Scott pointed out additional things to make the home more impregnable. “Get some long screws and fasten the tables to the door and the studs in the wall.”
Though windows were impossible to fully fortify, they did the best they could in a very short time. Laura and Maddy would need to keep working on it.
While they worked, Laura told him, “We’ve been watching the news. This is happening everywhere. People are dying. Just like…” She couldn’t say Ridley’s name.
Scott described what he’d seen in Tom just as Ridley died. “I could see him in there, Laura. Like he’d been held underwater and surged to the surface. Only it was too late. Then, he was simply gone. Tom’s body has no soul left in it.”
Words from a T.S. Elliot poem called “The Hollow Men” popped into his mind. It spoke of the emptiness of soul, of spasming, of life fading and hope dying, of descending into shadows, and of death.
These creatures were the end of all existence. Empty men that could never be filled, no matter how much flesh they devoured, eternally hungry as they turned the world into death’s kingdom.
Hollow men. Dead men.
Laura and Scott had fortified the house, and he readied himself to go. “I’ll be back soon. Just buy us time to get back and get things ready for us to leave. Food, clothes, camping gear and whatever else you think. We need to leave in an hour.”
“Fine. Fine. Just go.” Laura pushed her husband to the patio door. Before he left, Laura kissed him. “Be safe. Be fast. Bring our daughter home to me, Scott.”
She fell back behind the glass door without giving Scott a chance to respond. Her husband would bring Emily home with him or he wouldn’t come back at all.
Laura and Maddy restacked the furniture and boxes to blockade the door behind him.
Scott re-entered the killing fields.
CHAPTER 28
ILL MY CHOICE
Scott retrieved his two-and-a-half-pound mattock from the shed. Similar to a pickaxe, the mattock was made of strong fiberglass and steel, lightweight and lethal with its sharp point and its flat blade. Designed for digging and carving in hard soil and rock, the mattock would prove a formidable weapon. He tossed it over the backyard fence.
Scott grabbed an outdoor chair to serve as a step stool to help the kids get over the tall wooden wall. He threw that over too, then heaved himself over, collected his mattock and hurried stealthily through the woods to the intersection at the top of his street.
There were two neighborhood playgrounds. They were in opposite directions from each other. He knew it wouldn’t be possible to check both parks. Though he believed Emily still lived, she wouldn’t stay that way. Things were unraveling too quickly. At the cross street he had to make a decision–right or left.
His mind marked each precious second that ticked by.
The old scar on his left hand itched. He rubbed it with his fingers, pressing on the ropy, smooth tissue. In the absence of anything better, he took it as a sign and chose left.
Desperation, determination and maximum production from his adrenal gland didn’t fully compensate for his physical exhaustion. The pain in his shoulder nagged at him. After a dozen tired steps, he was momentarily blinded.
Sunlight reflected off metal rims, striking him in the eyes. A mountain bike lay in a patch of tall grass next to the open road.
When he got closer, he saw a streak of blood sprinkled with bits of skin on the hot asphalt. Although Scott was not a religious man, he said a silent prayer of thanks and hope—thanks for the bike, hope that he would get to Emily. Hope fo
r the person who left it. Against all evidence to the contrary, he tried to believe that God had not forsaken humanity.
The bike wobbled until Scott gained his balance and picked up speed. Making the trip on foot would have proven lethal, for both Scott and his daughter. The sun beat down mercilessly from above, sucking water from the earth and stuffing the air with it. Breathing it in was like gulping down pudding. The wheels hummed on the road, chewing up the distance to the park.
He skidded into the parking lot, already running before the bike hit the dirt. The acrid smell of creosote came from the railroad ties used to separate the playground from the parking lot.
The park was full of people, technically speaking. Their bodies were flung all over the playground. The hollow men had indiscriminately chewed their way into the old and the young. Even the very young.
Seeing dead children was soul jarring. Scott couldn’t help picturing them suffering grisly deaths at the hands of parents, grandparents, older brothers, sisters, and neighbors–the people they loved and trusted the most. He pictured their confusion and terror, and his legs turned to rubber.
He cleared his mind. He needed detachment.
Some of the bodies strewn over the playground stirred and raised themselves from the ground. Open wounds covered their limbs and faces. As they stood, Scott saw the irregular movement of freshly hollowed-out bodies. They were becoming the same as the creatures who attacked them—hunters themselves, feeders on human flesh.
Not one of them paid attention to Scott’s presence. They appeared to be docile. It didn’t convince Scott, having seen poor Melissa as she walked to her slaughter at the hands of her neighbors. Standing calmly together had been the disguise they used to get her to come closer.
Scott crept forward, low and alert, keeping an eye on the twitching newly dead scattered all over the park.
He didn’t understand why there weren’t little toddler zombies spastically moving around the park with the “older” zombies. None of the smallest children got to their feet. For some, the damage was obviously too severe for them to reanimate. Their bodies were missing large chunks of tissue and bone. However, for many of the children, their wounds were superficial compared to the resurrected creatures that staggered around the grass. He thought perhaps that they were protected—if he could call it that—from becoming walking corpses. It consoled him to think that they were at peace.
There were survivors. A passel of children and adults had locked themselves behind the chain-linked fences that walled the two tennis courts adjacent to the playground. They called to Scott for help as clusters of the undead clawed their way along the metal links, their gaits slow, unsteady and with unambiguous intention.
The survivors didn’t see that killers were emerging in the midst of them. Some of the people within the enclosure were twitching and shaking.
Scott gestured frantically, trying to point out the danger. No one understood him, and he couldn’t risk shouting to them.
Searching for Emily, Scott scanned the living, the dead and the reanimated. He tried to remember what Emily was wearing, cursing himself, realizing that he hadn’t even seen her before she ran out the door.
Awful “what if” scenarios played in his mind. He physically shook himself out of those visions. He refused to surrender his mind to worst-case hypotheticals. If Emily still lived, Scott knew it would require his full attention to get her out.
Ahead of him, a lock of brown hair dangled from a bright yellow swing. Bits of bone and grey matter clung to the bloody scalp. Dark brown hair, the same color as Emily’s.
The little girl’s ruined corpse was ahead of him. He inspected it more closely. He couldn’t identify the body.
Not far from the swing, he recognized two things Emily always had with her: pink cowboy boots and her backpack.
He now knew he was in the right park. He grieved over the girl’s remains, coming to grips with the likelihood that this was his little Emily. His soul bled over losing her. He dropped to his knees and locked his fingers behind his head, folding his elbows forward to cover his face. Tears squeezed from his eyes.
An urgent whisper whisked across his shattered spirit, like a light broom over heavy glass, just enough to get his attention. “Uncle Scott. Up here.” He lifted his head, recognizing Chase’s voice and aching to see Emily with him. Through slats of the decking two feet above him, he saw the fifteen-year-old son of his dead friend.
“Is Emily with you? Have you seen her?”
Even though the boy’s face was mostly obscured, he could read the expression. Emily had been there, and Chase believed she was dead.
“I’m so sorry, Uncle Scott. I couldn’t get to her. Those things came out of nowhere. There were a lot more of them then. There must have been a hundred of them. I was trapped on top of that climbing wall. It looked like she helped Katie get away from some of those zombie things. She probably saved Katie, the last time I saw them together—over there.”
Chase pointed in the direction of the dead girl and the pink cowboy boots.
It devastated Scott to have his hopes slightly raised and then dashed again. His body went numb. He walked closer to Chase on deadened legs, as if wading through cement, his mind bombarding him with images of his beautiful daughter, dead and broken just feet away.
“OK. OK. Let’s get you down.” He managed to gasp out.
“Uncle Scott, Katie is sick. Can you help me get her down?” Chase pleaded quietly.
Scott started to climb the structure and fell to the ground, holding his shoulder and writhing in pain. He whispered, “I can’t. You need to do it.”
Katie’s face appeared over the edge of the fort. Her sunken eyes were framed by hair matted with sweat and dirt.
In an unnecessary warning, Scott raised his finger to his lips. Then he beckoned to Katie, “Come here.”
Katie looked around the playground and saw the bloody remains of adults and children too ripped-apart to be reanimated. Zombies swayed and staggered nearby. Katie froze. Her lips began trembling. Chase grabbed Katie by the arm and lifted her up and over the top of the wooden railing.
Scott caught Katie by her knees as soon as she got close enough and lowered her to the ground. Katie held on for a moment until she gained her footing. She unlocked her arms and he guided her behind him, motioning her to keep an eye out while her brother came down.
Chase vaulted over the wall, landing as soundlessly as a cat. Scott hugged Katie and Chase, mourning his daughter and grieving for them, knowing even better now the full measure of sorrow they’d feel when they learned that their parents were gone.
Katie and Chase stared particularly at two quivering cadavers lying next to each other near the climbing wall where they had been marooned. Katie buried her face in her brother’s shoulder. Scott searched Chase’s face for an explanation. “Those two saved Katie,” Chase said, “and then jumped out of the fort and cleared a space for me to get down from that climbing wall. The zombies tore into them. They died so we could live.”
Scott examined Katie, searching for any sign of tremor that might signal the Thapp virus that meant the ultimate loss of her humanity. Even though she was feverish, she had no other indications of the apocalyptic plague.
Scott pictured his own little girl. Because he would never hold her again, he needed to hold on to something of hers.
Motioning for Chase to hold onto his sister, he walked carefully to the place where Emily’s pink cowboy boots were on the ground. Bloody handprints covered them. Tears streamed from his eyes, blurring his vision so much that he only saw two pink blobs on the ground. He sobbed quietly as he reached for them, allowing grief to escape for a moment.
Emily’s death pushed him to a crisis of his unnurtured faith. Either there was a God with a purpose and a design, in which case his daughter was home with Him, and he would get to see her again. Or there was not. This was the end of existence and Emily was gone forever. And so was Tom. And so was Ridley.
He cho
se to hang onto his fragile faith even if by a thread, giving a quick prayer for God to take care of his Emily and for strength beyond his own to carry on.
From underneath a nearby play structure, he heard a child crying. He held his breath, listening intently. He wanted it so badly to be her that he believed his desperate imagination had conjured the sound. Crouching down, he peered into the dark cavity.
Emily had scooped a deeper hole to hide in, pushing the dirt into mounds that obscured her from the eyes of hungry zombies. She’d squirmed around in her shirt, rubbing all sides of it in the soil. By hiding her face in her grimy hands, she blended into the black earth. The zombies gradually turned away, seeking others they could find and consume. Most of them were now rattling the fences of the tennis courts.
It had been quiet for some time. Emily felt all alone. She believed Katie and Chase were either dead or back at their house. She didn’t know how far the zombies might have wandered away. She’d fainted and had planted herself in the dirt for so long that she lost her sense of time. She didn’t know if she had been unconscious through an entire night or if she had missed hours… or minutes. She believed she’d never see her family again.
She heard shuddering sobs from someone. She couldn’t recognize who it was. However, she hadn’t detected breathing or any other vocalization from the horrific creatures that poked their fingers at her through the metal grating. She concluded it had to be a living person. Someone who could take her home!
She began to cry at the thought of escaping and dug past the small dirt piles she had made. She broke through at the same time her dad knelt down to investigate. She nearly screamed in joy, still far enough under the platform for her outburst to be muffled.
When Scott saw the face of his sweet girl, he scooped out handfuls of dirt and bark like a badger overdosed on speed. He pulled her out into the daylight and hugged her tightly, whispering over and over, “I found you. Thank God I found you.”
The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave Page 12
