The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave

by Jonathan Teague

  She looked at him dubiously, unconsciously detecting his lack of sincerity.

  Bill tried another tack. He spread his arms dramatically, and announced “Look. It’s not just about keeping you safe. I just heard on the emergency station that they’re bringing a cure! It will fix everyone who was bitten. Come with me, and we’ll get the doctor to help your brother.”

  The news was too good to resist. She wanted so much for it to be true. She gave Bill a hug.

  He hid his wicked smile. Gotcha!

  They rushed to the back door. Making a show of it, Bill ran outside to where two inquisitive zombies had made their way into the backyard. He quickly jumped back into the house. “We can’t go that way. Front door!”

  Much to his frustration, Katie said, “Wait! I need to get something.”

  She bounded up the stairs. When she returned to Bill, she carried a pillowcase, hardly full enough to carry much more than a T-shirt.

  He grabbed her roughly when she reached the bottom of the stairs. “This is no joke. Don’t run off again.”

  The change in the man’s tone scared her. She shrank away from him. He forced his expression into a mask of apology. “I’m sorry. It’s been a very bad day. OK?” and held out his hand to her.

  Hesitantly, she took it and they walked outside. She hid her eyes when they crossed the lawn by her mom’s body and started crying again.

  On top of it all, she was so weakened from her illness that she lost her balance and fell heavily to the ground. Zombies were paying attention. Bill yanked her to her feet. “You need to go faster if you want my help,” then, under his breath, “little brat.”

  Getting feverish, she fell once again on the way to his house. This time, he offered no help, looking down at her imperiously as she picked herself up from the ground. Pathetic.

  When they entered his house, she sensed the badness of it just as Bill picked her up and threw her hard onto the couch. He pondered ways to crush this girl’s spirit before taking her life.

  His brain emptied. Blackness. When he became aware of himself again, he stood in his kitchen staring at the ceiling. He had no idea how long he had been “missing”. Alarmed, he hurried into the living room. The little girl was gone!

  He rushed to the front door, hoping she hadn’t gotten far. To his great relief, Bill found her collapsed at the threshold. He dragged her limp body to his bedroom and tethered her foot to the bedpost with a nylon rope. She had no strength, but Bill wanted to make sure she couldn’t escape if he blacked out again. He could sense others coming on. They would come more frequently. He would have to accelerate his plans.

  Katie woke up anchored to the bed by her foot. She whimpered, “I don’t understand. Why are you doing this? What are you going to do to me?”

  Bill gave her a withering glare. “Your family is gone and you are alive. What makes you so special? Isn’t it your fault that your brother is dead, or will be soon? You might as well have killed him yourself.”

  It was his gift, his ability to find the words that would hurt the most, echoing the self-condemnation she must already be feeling. He thrust each word at her as if cutting into her heart with jagged glass.

  “The reason you are here is simple. It’s a mistake you are alive, and I’m going to correct the mistake. Think of it as God’s work.”

  He opened the door with difficulty. His hands were shaking as much from excitement as from the infection.

  He pondered the unfairness of it all. Just as he really began to feel alive, his consciousness was dying. For the thousandth time, he wished he could stay around to relish moments like this.

  Bill reentered the room after fifteen minutes. He didn’t say a word to her, not wanting to interrupt the sorrow in which she had buried herself. He blocked the windows with heavy blankets.

  He knew the girl’s pain was going to be delicious; he wondered if he would like the taste of her flesh, too. He decided to have the full zombie experience. When he changed, killing would only be about the food. Mindless eating. No better than a wolf gobbling up its dinner. Deplorable. Undignified.

  This was a special occasion. Perhaps his last meal on earth. He would make it an event. A goodbye feast! He got out his best china, his fine silver, his sharpest blade.

  He closed his eyes, imagining his knife piercing Katie’s body. The thought of hot, sticky blood sped the virus’s takeover of his mind. The images spun out of control: His hands scrabbling at her, entering her stomach and scooping underneath her ribcage. But in the present, his limbs became stiff and started to jerk. Bill fought back against the blackness in his consciousness. He pleaded again with the imagined creature invading his body. “Just give me a little more time.”

  He put the folding table at Katie’s bedside and covered it in his best linen. He debated whether or not he should cook her ‘meat’. To quash his nervousness, he amused himself thinking what accompaniments and what pairing of wine would be best, if he had the time to do things properly.

  Everything finally in place, a warm pleasure tickled his gut. He had the idea to say grace.

  He debated where to start on her body. The infection clawing its way into his thoughts made him crave digging into her squishy inner parts. Bill resisted—he wasn’t ready for that.

  He decided to go for that pretty little face. He became fascinated by her elfin ears. They were not yet pierced. Virgin skin.

  The little girl had passed out again. In her unconscious state, Katie had the appearance of a sleeping angel. It infuriated him. He couldn’t have that. It would ruin his pleasure. He shook her awake again. “No falling asleep! Do you hear me?” Her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

  He sliced diagonally with his knife, cleanly taking all of the lobe and looked for her reaction. She was deeply unconscious. He slapped her to no effect.

  Her earlobe looked pathetic sitting on the empty plate. A little blood seeped from it. He bathed the ear in lemon juice and cautiously nibbled on the lower lobe. The sensation of fuzzy hair on his tongue made him gag.

  Determined, he tried scraping the skin off the cartilage with his teeth like an artichoke leaf. It felt rubbery in his mouth. He dry heaved and spit it out.

  He imagined the creature inside him laughing, scorning his earlier pleas, considering him unworthy of joint custody of his body.

  Bill looked down at the girl. She was burning up. Trembling. He figured she was becoming one of them, or dying on her own. Thinking of her as diseased helped him justify his squeamishness.

  Mentally, he discarded her. She had nothing to offer him. Not her flesh. Not her terror.

  His only satisfaction came in disfiguring her. The girl’s face was not so angelic now. Blood crusted on her neck and ear. He had literally marked her as his.

  Bill had one last conquest to make: Laura.

  He opened the garage door for the hungry dead to find Katie. Her destiny was to become zombie food. To the animated corpses gathering in his driveway, he whistled and shouted, “There is a tasty one in here, guys,” before ducking back into the house.

  He listened to make sure zombies followed him into the garage before leaving through the front door. He hastened away as fast as his jiggling Jell-O muscles would carry him. Two zombies lumbered after him.

  His legs suddenly betrayed him, refusing to move. He fell face down in the street. His skin was shredded, but he experienced no pain. In fact, he had no sensation in his body. As his mind spiraled down a dark tunnel, he realized this was the end. “No, wait. One more. I have to get one more. Please!”

  He could not delay it.

  He hoped to imprint one last act before he vanished into blackness, repeating to himself, “Get Laura. Get Laura.”

  The infection conquered Bill’s body, expelling his life force from it.

  When Bill transformed, the two zombies that pursued him stopped and turned toward the house in a slow shuffle. Three others had already entered the house. If she regained consciousness when the zombies began to feed on her,
Katie’s screams would go unheard by all but the pitiless dead.

  CHAPTER 35

  FOR THEY HAVE NO SOULS

  When he ran headlong into the pajama-clad zombie, Scott thought the end had come for him. When its beard-stubble skin slipped off its skull, Scott flinched reflexively to avoid the bite. Momentum caused both of them to fall into a deep window well. Scott’s attempt to twist away from it rotated the undead creature to land underneath him. Its skull hit the cement of the foundation with a sloshy thud. Scott tumbled past the zombie’s body and broke through the basement window.

  A short, squat hollow man of Mediterranean origin fell into the window well behind him. Its coarse, dark, curly hair sprang from its crown like tightly wound springs that had just been released. The heavy curls bobbed when it moved its head. It would’ve scrabbled through the window more quickly but for a lanky, sad-faced ghoul also trying to pull itself into the basement.

  From behind them, a group of hungry flesh eaters pressed dumbly forward, further stifling the swarthy zombie’s attempts to grasp Scott. Its teeth clacked and chattered in its desperation to rend the flesh of a living body.

  Scott landed hard on a stack of dusty boxes, sending up clouds of dust that swirled thickly into his nostrils. He wheezed as he crawled across what seemed like an acre of old, dirty boxes filled with holiday decorations, toys, and papers.

  During his scramble across the storage boxes of random junk, he heard the thud-scrape, thud-scrape of something heavy crossing the floor above him.

  Dazed from his fall into the window, disoriented in the darkness, and with the sound of at least one of the zombies having made it into the basement with him, Scott still felt relief despite the sharp pain in his skull from ramming his head into the stairs leading to the main floor.

  Scuttling up, he crashed through the door low. The cacophony of noise brought the house’s inhabitants upon him.

  A zombie youth arrived first. Its little league uniform was shredded, exposing the shoulder where the boy had received a fatal bite. Its morbidly obese papa dragged its bulk right behind him.

  Exhausted, Scott rolled away from the basement door. In its haste to reach him, the fat hollow man fell on the animated corpse of its dead son. More bulk meant less mobility. He leaped on top of the broad platform of the struggling zombie’s back and vaulted over him.

  He was wild with fear, a hamster caught in a dangerous maze, dashing through body-width pathways between high walls of boxes filled with the junk amassed by the now-dead hoarder that had occupied this house.

  Scott had no strategy. He sped frantically around each room in the house, quickly reversing whenever he encountered a dead end. In the dining room, he encountered the mother, a female zombie almost twice the size of its mate. The dress had been torn away, leaving the body uncovered but for 5X-sized panties and an underwire bra that had long since given way to the pressure of two pendulous breasts that swayed and sagged with each of its footsteps. Circle-shaped wounds oozing blood dotted the curtain of fat that draped from its midsection.

  It pitched itself at him.

  He picked up a kitchen chair, holding it like a lion tamer, jabbing it at the hulking mass in an attempt to keep the walking corpse away from him. He backed into a glass-framed hutch and dodged just in time to avoid what would have been a mortal tackle from the lumbering female corpse. Several pounds of china rained down from broken shelves. A spear of glass pierced the zombie’s temple and it lay still.

  He heard the sounds of other bodies pressing into the rooms and halls of the trash-packed house. He despaired, realizing he would likely meet his end here. In frustration, he shoved the pile closest to him.

  The sounds of glass breaking signaled a potential escape. He dug away trash bags full of aluminum soda cans, at last uncovering a stream of sunlight pouring through a window pane of broken glass. He vowed never again to dismiss the hollow men as too slow or too stupid to trap and eat him.

  Scott wasn’t the only one in the house shoving around the containers of junk crowding the rooms. Just as he prepared to heave himself out the window, a substantial bundle of old magazines fell on his back, knocking the wind out of him and sending him crashing to the floor.

  He could not stifle his gasps of pain announcing feeding time to the living cadavers stalking him.

  The Mediterranean zombie that first pursued him into the basement turned the corner, giving it a full view of Scott writhing on the floor. They locked eyes. Fear flooded Scott’s body with a jolt of energy, powering his muscles to lift him to his feet. He crashed through the broken window.

  The back lawn was mercifully clear of hungry corpses. Butted up against the fence rested a detached garage. If only he could make it to the garage, he had a chance of using yards and alleyways to find his way home.

  Limping to the fence, he thought he detected a little girl’s voice screaming in the distance. It broke his heart to shut out the sound. It couldn’t be Katie, and he could not afford to chase phantoms. He’d be lucky to make it home alive.

  He had to make it all about him and his family now.

  CHAPTER 36

  MIND DON’T SLEEP

  When the sliding door opened in the back of the house and she heard her husband’s voice calling for her, Laura was overjoyed. She checked her happiness, thinking of the ill-fated young man who had fallen to pieces in her arms. That boy had only one living hope: that his sister lived. She hoped with her whole soul that Scott had Katie with him.

  She went to meet him. A dried trickle of blood painted his right temple. She inquired quietly, “Where is she?”

  Scott hung his head in defeat. “I don’t know. And I don’t know how we’d be able to find her. She’s gone, Laura.”

  Laura’s breath caught in her throat and her bottom lip trembled. Her friend’s family was about to be wiped off the face of the earth. She held a fist to her mouth to stifle a sob and exited the room, leaving Scott to give Chase the devastating news.

  Chase sat comfortless. He hugged his knees to his chest, his head bowed. A cotton bandage covered his cheek where the thing that was his father had taken a damning bite.

  Scott put his arm around the young man’s shoulders, saying gently, “Chase, let’s talk for a minute.”

  Chase was part of Scott’s family in every way except for shared genes. With the loss of Tom and Ridley, Scott had been ready to be his dad by proxy, to help Chase as he became a man, to safeguard Katie as she grew up.

  He had failed, and failed epically.

  Scott walked Chase onto the deck in the backyard. Chase knew what was coming. His legs buckled. Scott grabbed Chase by the arm, strengthening him. He pulled the boy around to look at him and gave it to him straight. “Chase, I couldn’t find your sister. I’m sorry.” He relaxed his grip.

  Chase turned away and propped his elbows on the wooden railing. From where he stood, the inanimate form of his father was in plain view. His tears flowed freely, and his shoulders began to shake again in grief.

  Scott was sick over his mistake in bringing Chase outside where he would have to relive the awful moments that led to the death of his father’s body, his own mortal wound and the loss of his sister. He coaxed the young man away, gently directing him back inside the house.

  Chase pushed Scott’s arm away. “No! I need to see him.” He descended the steps to make his way to his father’s inanimate form. He paused in mid-stride. His legs turned wobbly. From his vantage, Scott couldn’t tell if Chase mourned or if he paused to make sure his father’s corpse was truly dead.

  A splinter of concern slid into his mind. The boy might already be changing into something else, something not Chase. He couldn’t help but feel ashamed when his thoughts jumped to ways of killing him if the time had come.

  Scott approached him silently and put his hand on Chase’s back in part to console him. He also wanted to test him, and if necessary, put him down.

  The boy faced him with eyes that revealed he still possessed himself. Scott pul
led him into a paternal hug, firmly declaring to him, “That’s not your dad, son. He would never have allowed anything bad to happen to you or your sister, let alone hurting you himself. Your dad loved you more than anything in his life. Remember him that way.”

  Chase nodded and murmured, “I want to be by myself for a minute.”

  While Chase was alone with his thoughts, Scott went to a modest white shed in his yard. He yanked two tarps from the shelves and threw them outside. Approaching Chase again, he said, “We don’t have any more time, son. Let me take care of this while you go inside.”

  Scott dropped one of the tarps, but Chase refused to leave. He helped Scott hastily drape Tom’s body with the blue tarp—the only burial he would get. Tom’s body was wrecked, his face ruined.

  The warm sun on Scott’s skin made him think of one of many great moments with his friend. The kids had been talking and playing in the yard. Laura and Ridley sat in patio chairs on the deck laughing. Tom stood over the grill, cold beer in hand, shaking his head and furrowing his brow in feigned concern over Scott’s technique.

  With zero time to mourn, replaying the memory of one perfect day was the best way he could think of to say good-bye.

  Chase croaked, “This must be a bad dream. Can’t be real.”

  Scott considered all that the boy had experienced in a day: losing his parents, his sister and now facing a terrible end. He didn’t know how to console him.

  His throat constricted as he fought to keep his emotions from cracking his voice. “Chase you’ve crammed a lifetime of hell into a single day. I’ve worked with kids your age who have experienced horrors, though of a different kind. I’ve told them what I’m about to tell you, but telling this to you means many times more to me than it ever has before.

  Scott unconsciously glanced down at the scar on his hand. “In my darkest moment, I had the strongest sense that the length of our lives is less than a blink of an eye in the scope of eternity. That blip of life matters very much but the pain, the fear, the loss are a fraction of a fraction of a millisecond of our earthly existence.