Hollow men shuffled outside, their bodies audibly dragging across the garage door. Inquisitive hands pushed on the door. Scott had no idea how many grasping fingers would stretch for them as soon as they lifted the door open. They needed the driveway to be clear when the van reversed out of the driveway. Slamming into a pack of zombies would bog them down, tires slipping on the entrails of the dead and ending their escape.
Scott used his smart phone to activate his outdoor speakers in the backyard. “Going the Distance” by Cake played loudly, the deep bass thrumming. He loved that song.
The music got muffled. Tapping on the garage door stopped. Scott hoped it meant the hollow men were drawn away by the music. It made him love the song even more.
They couldn’t afford the sustained cacophony of the garage-door opener. Chase reached the door handle ahead of Scott. “Let me open it, Uncle Scott. You’ll be vulnerable while you draw the door all the way up. Let me go out doing something to save the people I care about most.”
Scott couldn’t bring himself to deny him. They traded places. Chase would open the door. Then they would stand side by side and do what needed to be done to clear the driveway and to get the girls to safety.
With the crowbar lifted in his hand and the mattock ready near Chase, Scott stood close to him, ready for action as soon as the door opened
Chase grasped the release handle that disengaged the garage door from the chain drive. It would give a loud snap when the locking pin slid free, getting the attention of walking cadavers they had just tricked away, but it would allow them to throw the garage door up quickly. Chase counted, his chin nodding.
Three… two… one…
Chase gave the handle a firm yank, creating the pop they expected when it came free. He hefted the large metal door. It clattered its way to the top, screeching.
As soon as the door opened, a corpulent female zombie wearing a muumuu with a bright yellow floral print clasped Chase’s forearm, giving him a vicious bite. He yelped in pain. Seeing Chase in added pain sent Scott into a rage. He couldn’t stand seeing the boy suffer any more.
Scott jabbed the point of his crowbar through her temple, penetrating with an audible crunch. He and Chase bent and unceremoniously rolled the heavy corpse out of the driveway.
Three more dead neared, advancing quickly. Scott and Chase confronted them even before the massive fully dead body finished rolling out of the way. They dispatched two of them with their repurposed tools. Chase swung his mattock with a quick, hammer-like strike. Scott jabbed the point of the crowbar with another slushy crunch of bone.
The third one, a pimply-faced, red-headed teenager, lunged past the mattock’s swings and gripped Chase’s left wrist, holding his arm the way a starving man would hold a Subway sandwich. Chase drove his other fist into the side of the thing’s head. The teen thrust past Chase’s punch and sank his gnashing incisors into Chase’s bicep. He screamed again and shook it off, losing a crescent-shaped wedge of his arm in the process. He then plunged the point of his killing tool sideways into his attacker’s temple.
After clearing the immediate space next to the garage, the yard and driveway were unexpectedly clear. Slapping and rustling noises came from the backyard. Scott signaled Laura to reverse out of the garage and down the driveway.
The ruined backyard fence spat out another small wave of ghouls. More creatures were bottlenecked at the opening, fighting each other to reach the living meat in front of them. Horrible faces, three or four deep, queued at the opening.
Scott’s hope lifted. They were going to make it!
Laura was nearly at the end of the driveway. The front yard was no longer clear. A throng of hollow men flooded the lawn, spilling into the driveway between Scott and Laura. They came so noiselessly and swiftly it was as if they had risen from the earth. Enticed by the noise of the garage and the car, zombies emerged from the other side of the house, the street, and other homes nearby. The horde approached, moving silently.
Scott had seen this play out many times today. It was a game of numbers. The sea of living dead inevitably overcame everything. Scott recalled the screams of his neighbors. They overlapped in his mind and swelled in chorus, a discordant requiem.
No. He wasn’t going to make it.
Afraid his wife and daughters would also be swept up in the killing tide of walking corpses, he frantically waved her away and roared, “Just go! Go! Save our kids!”
He lost sight of her when the creatures packed in around him. They made no sound. Only the brush of clothing, the press of bodies and the scuffle of shoes came from them.
Over the quiet, Scott heard the van idling. Glass breaking.
He gathered a scream from the depths of his soul, “Laura! Go!”
By then, another host of undead had been attracted to Scott’s yells. He tried to pick up the sound of the engine speeding his family to safety. The multitude of whispering clothing created a white noise machine.
He resigned himself to the likelihood he would never know in this life whether or not they had gotten away. He prayed they were safe.
CHAPTER 40
FROM THE THRONG
The hungry crowd jostled each other, jaws quivering, as they flocked to their anticipated kill. Scott would soon be overwhelmed.
Fifteen-year-old Chase gave all he had against the horde at Scott’s flank while a platoon of them advanced on Scott from ahead. His coordination failed. His awareness flickered in and out. In flashes, he realized the zombies were losing interest in him. He shouted, “It’s happening, Uncle Scott. I can’t think. I’m…”
The damning bites that tattooed the undead skin were more visible to Scott now. Onyx-colored lines radiated from the ghastly wounds. On every rip in the flesh, a grey-green mucous appeared that resembled a waterlogged scab. The stench of decay emanated from the puss-hued patches.
By now, Chase would be in the knotted group eager to begin their grisly banquet. He held the crowbar on his left shoulder, at-bat, waiting for the zombies to pitch themselves at him. A buzzing noise floated in the air behind him; tinny music drifted nearby. Just in time, he recalled the morning’s encounter with the blond woman running in her bright pink shoes. Blindly, Scott struck out behind him with the iron bar, felt a thud, and spun around.
“Blondie” had been pretty until something caught up with her. Now its face was horribly mutilated. Most of its skull was visible: maxilla, mandible and cheekbones were framed by raggedly torn skin. Ear buds blared as they bounced loosely against its clothing. It had no ears left to hold them. Where its nose had been, only the black hole of its nasal cavity remained. Its bones were scored with teeth marks. Similar marks covered its body. Meshes of the fetid, translucent webbing were filming over the many gashes on its skin.
It was impaled on his crowbar, the metal crook pressed against the inner wall of the creature’s ribs, keeping him out of reach of its grasping hands. Its mouth quivered, teeth clacking in eagerness to rend Scott’s flesh. He kicked it free and dispatched it with a backhanded swing of the bar. As it crumpled to the driveway, Scott noted the pink shoes were inexplicably pristine. The tinny music played on.
A crush of hollow men circled, jostling each other like a cackle of hyenas cornering their kill. Bill’s corpse hovered just behind the front line, gazing hungrily at Scott. It remained safely outside the range of Scott’s crowbar while close enough to be among the first to feast. Not wanting to be in zombie Bill’s chow line, Scott determined to take him out if possible.
Neither angry nor afraid, Scott was at peace with his fate. He breathed a goodbye to his girls, to this earth, to this life, and resolved to keep fighting until there was too little of his flesh left to reanimate. He speared a few faces with the tip of his crowbar, giving him a little satisfaction but no hope.
Bony hands gripped him, wrenching his left arm outward. Teeth gnawed at his bruised shoulder, grinding away at the tough fabric of his coat. He jerked his arm free, jabbed the crowbar into two more foreheads, turned the bar horizontal, a
nd swung it forward into the crowd, knocking a handful of them off their feet. Another line of living corpses filled the gap.
The thing-that-was-Bill was nowhere in sight.
A ravenous mouth delivered another painful, bruising bite on Scott’s leg. Ski pants thwarted teeth from reaching his skin and muscle. He whipped his leg away, stomping and kicking at the head of the crawling ghoul at his feet.
He couldn’t see daylight through the press of torsos, limbs, and heads of the flesh eaters. He had fought the good fight. The end had come.
CHAPTER 41
RESOLVED TO BE FREE
Not done yet, Chase wrested back control of his body for one last push. He streaked from behind, slicing through the horde, clearing an opening wide enough for Scott to slip through. Chase charged forward like an offensive tackle.
Scott plunged into the opening, danced laterally, spun, and dove left and right. Hands clutched the folds in his heavy ski coat, slowing him down and almost pulling him to the earth. He unzipped his coat and slipped it off. Miraculously, he’d made it through the mob of reanimated corpses. Deliverance!
When he broke free, he glanced behind, hoping to find Chase wading to freedom. The boy had vanished from view.
He hadn’t known if the girls had escaped. He was indescribably relieved to see the van had gone, and at the same time concerned to see broken glass on the road. He didn't regret telling his wife to go, though he longed to see her one more time. He pictured Laura zooming up in the van, shouting at him to get in. His life was joyless without her and the kids.
His overrun property gave him no path of escape, so he clumsily mounted the fence into his neighbor's backyard. He had bounced over so many fences that day that he felt like a worn out jack-in-the box. He barely had the energy to make it. He climbed to a tree house, lowering himself down to the derelict garage near the hoarder’s house that had almost become his tomb earlier that day.
He needed to catch up with them, quickly. Laura was unlikely to make it to the old cabin in the deep forest. Even with directions, his wife would be reluctant to take the chance of getting lost. Her phone had GPS but it would be useless without the cabin location to punch into it. Besides, she hadn’t wanted go there in the first place. She would have her own ideas about places to seek refuge. The historic stone house Tom had suggested? Her brother’s place? Somewhere else?
If he didn't reach his family soon, he wouldn’t know where to start looking for them and he would face the very real possibility that he might never find them again.
He badly needed a car. Every minute that passed carried his family another mile away from him.
CHAPTER 42
TO ALL THAT’S LOST RESIGNED
Laura stopped at the end of the driveway. She watched as the zombies crowded around her husband. Caught up in grief, she didn’t notice the zombie staggering toward the back of the van. He hurled himself headfirst at the back passenger window, cracking it into a glittering spider web of glass.
It was a hideous creature. Freshly turned, it would have looked like a normal thirty-five-year-old man if not for the baseball-sized hematoma in its cheek and a bite wound so deep that it revealed the clavicle. No blood issued from the ravaged muscle.
It threw itself again at the van, catching the same window, scattering the glass, and then scrambled to get past the tightly packed provisions. Emily whimpered with fear as the living corpse scratched at the supplies, digging to reach her. Its hands couldn’t find purchase. It reversed itself out of the van and prepared to attack in a different spot.
Laura got out of the car and taunted the zombie. Maddy was hysterical. “Mom! What are you doing?!”
The walking corpse pivoted to lunge at Laura’s body, it’s head down as if to tackle her Maddy was certain her mom would be knocked to the ground and fall victim to the flesh-hungry creature.To Maddy’s astonishment, she saw her mom’s right hand streak to the side of the zombie’s head. It halted with an abrupt jerk, sank, and vanished from view.
Slowly, Laura lifted her right hand. In it she gripped a long butcher’s knife she had secreted under her seat. Mucous and blood dripped from the blade to the street. She got back into the car and glared at her oldest daughter.
“Shouldn’t poke Mama Bear,” she said angrily, her cheeks wet with tears.
Laura realized the van would soon be overwhelmed with walking corpses. She considered waiting anyway, determined to keep her husband alive and her family together. Scott’s ear-splitting command for her to leave reached them through the raised window.
Maddy began screaming. “No! Daddy! Daddy!”
Laura kept her promise to save the girls. She whipped the van left, slammed the transmission into gear and gunned the engine, gathering as much speed as the van could muster when loaded with people and gear. A handful of zombies slammed their shoulders into the van as it sped off. Laura’s eyes were so watery she could barely see. It mattered very little. There were no cars to avoid hitting and it was desirable to take out as many “people” as possible.
Zombies packed the street near the entrance to the neighborhood, and Laura decided to take the long way out, threading through the streets, surveying the aftermath, hoping for a miracle. Her husband might get away. The detour was a last-ditch effort to save her husband if he had escaped, no matter how infinitesimally small the possibility.
It amazed her to see how few zombies there were in the rest of the neighborhood, concluding the bulk of them must be at her house trying to feed on Scott. The ones that remained behind dotted the yards and streets. Some sat in a stupor next to partially consumed corpses, their mouths and appendages bloody. Spasms of emotion flitted from guilt, to sorrow, to revulsion, then winked out, their expressions wiped etch-a-sketch clean.
Laura drove past house after house with broken windows and splintered doors. She saw a few lawns with Christmas decorations. They had been trampled and smashed. If a house appeared miraculously untouched, she slowed and leaned on the horn. Its sound attracted little attention from zombies sitting in their dazed state. No other souls made themselves known. The neighborhood appeared to be devoid of the living.
She held her breath as she rounded the corner near her home. Bodies were strewn across her yard. The hook of Scott’s crowbar was embedded in a zombie’s skull. Near the base of her neighbor’s fence, she saw a large pool of blood. She couldn’t remember if it had been there before or not. She broke down when she saw Scott’s jacket lying in her front yard. Her stomach heaved and she fell out of the van just in time to empty its contents on the hot asphalt. Zombies were coming for her. She couldn’t pause to collect herself before driving away.
It was just a cute thing that Laura started during their engagement, which over time had evolved into a special communication they shared whenever they were in a place that made it impossible to talk. Using a finger, they tapped out a five beat rhythm gently on the other’s hand to silently say “I-love-you-al-ways.”
Laura pressed the horn five times as she pulled away from her home for the very last time.
CHAPTER 43
UTTERLY FOUND
From the top of the garage, Scott spotted his silver van coming down the nearby street. Laura drove slowly between houses, accelerating whenever she attracted a corpse's attention. His stoicism evaporated with the prospect of reuniting with his family.
He shouted and waved wildly, knowing that while he could see Laura, the reverse wasn’t true for her. He was hard to spot in the mosaic of the neighborhood.
When he saw Laura climb out of the car, he shouted to her, “I’m here, Laura! I’m here!”
He thought she might have a good chance of hearing him in the absence of any other human-made sound. But she couldn’t hear past the sound of her retching. She wiped her mouth on her sleeve and climbed into her seat.
He continued yelling for her, even as she pulled away from the curb. Her five-beat goodbye took the life out of him. He couldn’t breathe.
His mind raced through
options for getting a vehicle in time to catch up with them. The overturned motorcycle popped into his mind. It would be perfect.
Scott slid to the edge of the roof and lowered himself to the ground, then ran between the parallel fences, this time bypassing the hoarder’s house. He made his way to the house closest to the bike. From behind the building, he crouched low to the ground and spied it. The street was relatively clear. He waited a few minutes longer, eager to get on his way but at the same time hesitant to make a fatal mistake.
When he stood up to make his sprint to the bike, he heard a girl’s voice pleading weakly from above. “Uncle Scott. Please, help me.”
Katie stood at a second-floor window of Bill's house, pounding on the glass. She looked frightened, glancing frequently behind her. Blood painted her head and neck.
Scott wrestled with his feelings. It was probably too late for Katie, a lost cause. He’d just seen his family and had a narrow window of time to get to them. If he missed it, he might never see them again in this life.
However, he couldn’t abandon a child, no matter how hopeless the situation. Besides, Katie wasn’t just any child; she was Tom’s daughter and the lone survivor of her family, and Chase had sacrificed himself for her, then used his final moments of life to save Scott’s wife and girls.
He could no more desert her than he could Emily. Scott would protect Katie and comfort her as well as he could for the rest of her life, even if that was only a very short time.
Scott stole to the back door. He peeked in carefully. A menagerie of gory hollow men were milling at the base of the stairs. A few were climbing to the second floor.
He abandoned his idea to get to her from inside the house. Scott ran to the backyard shed, hoping for a ladder. He found one too short for the second story. Time had more than run out. He would have to make do.
The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave Page 18
