I nodded. “Got it. I’ll be in here…babysitting, I guess.” I hated that I sounded so bitter and childish. He was leaving me out. I was being pissy.
“Well, you go ahead and babysit, but make sure you’re watching those windows for us.”
He was right. I took a deep breath and kissed his cheek. “Sorry.”
He grabbed the end of my hair and yanked lightly. “For what?”
“Giving you shit where there’s enough going on.”
“Sweetheart,” he said, pressing his lips to my ear so that I shivered. “I wouldn’t know what to do if you weren’t giving me shit.”
Despite the worry and the fear, I laughed.
* * * *
“Do you think we’ll be okay?” Sally was worrying a slight hole in her jeans so frantically it made me feel anxious.
“We’ll be fine,” I soothed. If Evan could do it for me, I could do it for a young, scared pregnant woman.
She gave me a tired smile. “You don’t know that.”
“I believe it,” I said. Trying too hard to mean it, I clenched my teeth.
“What if it’s something we can’t fix?”
“We’ll figure it out. We can flag down a passing patrol car…”
Maybe.
“Or fix the part.”
Maybe.
“Or find a new part and scavenge it.”
Also maybe.
Cell phone service was spotty, and we really had no idea who to call from where we were. Cell phones, computers, grocery deliveries and utilities in the home were iffy at best most days. I glanced at my phone as subtly as I could and saw no bars. None.
My stomach cramped with worry, but I smiled at her. “Evan’s a smart guy, and I’m no dummy. We’ll figure it out.”
She nodded, rubbed her huge stomach and sighed. “I wanted so much for this baby. Not this life. Not this constant scrabbling fear. And worry. And panic.”
I nodded, feeling for her. This was a fucking horrible world to bring a kid into. Who knew when it would be our world again. If ever.
“To think that monsters are real,” she said. “Monsters are real, and they might…” A small sob escaped her. “Eat my child.”
I bit my lip. We’d all heard stories of hollows carrying off babies, small children, dogs and small farm animals. I couldn’t tell her that wouldn’t happen because it happened every day. They were more vulnerable. Easy picking. And if a hollow saw a chance, its instinct—its only instinct—was to eat.
“Sally—”
“I told Taylor we need to get as much stuff as we could. To be safe. To hunker down. But he wanted to go to his family. And I do to. But this baby’s coming soon, and God, Eleanor…I feel so insecure. I’m scared.”
I patted her leg. “I know.”
She looked around. “Look at you two. So prepared and smart. We were in a small van with the little bit of shit we could scramble, and that broke down, and we were exposed, and walking and—” Another sob, and she simply shook her head and looked down.
“I promise you, Sally. We’ll figure this out. We will.”
“It’s a belt,” Evan yelled, stomping onto the bus. “Something easy. No big deal. I could fix it. If we had one.”
I patted Sally’s leg, then hurried up to him. “I have no service. You?”
“None. Already checked. We’ll have to walk or wait for a trooper. We have a small chance of one pulling over. But if they don’t, and we get stuck here alone…”
Sally sobbed again, and Taylor rushed to her. I felt a stab of annoyance at her then guilt. I couldn’t imagine being in a vulnerable physical way right now. You didn’t get much more vulnerable than pregnant.
“We’ll have to walk,” I said in a hushed voice. “We can’t wait here in case they show.” I turned to Taylor. “You’ll flag one down if you can, right?”
He nodded. “I will.”
“I’m not sure. Maybe you should stay—”
I hustled him up front. “I am not breaking you and me up. And I think he should be with her, not me. I mean my god, Evan. What if she goes into labor?” I hissed. “I think it’s smarter to stay together.” I watched his face. “We’ll take the key with us. What are they going to do? Push the bus?”
He looked unconvinced but nodded. “Okay. Fine. You still run?” He grinned at me.
We were maybe a mile away from the nearest exit. No big deal. But who knew how far we’d have to go off the freeway to get what we needed. The thought of the day slipping away with us wandering around out there made my head hurt.
“I run. Though it’s been on a treadmill for a long time now.”
“Well, let’s do a road test.”
“Bags,” I said. We found our small packs, grabbed some water and guns. Evan explained what we were going to do and told them to sit tight, watch out, guard the bus, be safe and look for troopers.
“Yes, dad!” I teased. No one laughed but me.
Out in the bright day, Evan and I started to jog. I felt good having at least a pack with me. And a pistol. But the fact that car after car after car zoomed past us with no concern, without even an idea to stop for us, filled me with dread.
Chapter Fifteen
We reached the top of the exit and stared at the completely dead road. Hillbilly, Hicksville. Or just rural with a capital deserted.
“Um…cue the horror movie music.” I bent over, hands on knees, huffing and puffing and trying to catch my breath. “I feel old, by the way.”
Evan nodded. “Me, too. But that is…” He pointed in the middle distance. “A service station if I’m not mistaken.”
“And if you’re wrong?” We couldn’t even see down onto the freeway from up here, but the hiss and rush of it was still audible.
He shrugged. “I have no idea. We have to try, right?”
“Right. Can we walk a bit? Not run. Ya know, so I don’t puke up my candy eggs.”
He actually laughed, and the smile was real, I noticed. His face had been unreadable since we left the bus. I grabbed his hand, kissed it. “Are you okay, Evan?”
“Hey, isn’t that my question to you?”
We headed toward the distant structure. His eyes constantly scanned our surroundings just as mine did. I turned every so often to glance behind us, and Evan did the same.
We walked about a half a mile, then heard it.
A low, keening, whimpering sound.
“Fuck,” I whispered. I found my pistol, and Evan followed suit. We stood back to back, doing a full three-hundred-and-sixty degree turn. Nothing.
“Definitely a hollow. No one makes that noise if they can help it anymore,” he said.
The sound of a hollow was something between a hysterical laugh and sob. A chittering lunatic sound. It was the sound of dread.
If there had been soldiers in the street, they would have opened fire on everyone if they heard that sound. Luckily—or not so luckily—we were in a deserted place.
It came again, but the wind bounced it around so we couldn’t pinpoint the origin.
“We need to keep moving, but we can’t run. I think the pounding sound would draw anything out there. Maybe it will just move along in search of a good dumpster to raid and leave us be.”
Maybe.
“We can hope.” I fished around in my bag and found my machete. That went through my belt.
Evan raised an eyebrow at me.
“What? You mean to tell me you think in this situation you can have too many weapons?”
He shook his head. “No way.”
“My dad prepared me.”
He grinned. “Oh, I know it. Can you pull my knife out of the pocket back there?” He turned his back to me, and I rummaged—though not far—through the zipper pocket to find the Bowie knife. I wouldn’t really call it a knife. It was more of a mini-machete.
He strapped it onto his belt. “See that. I’m taking notes from ya, babe.”
It was witty banter, action movie dialogue written with a great amount of finesse. B
ut his eyes darted around constantly for movement—for menace. Mine were doing the same. I know because the strain of trying to track everything had me feeling as if I had rolling ping pong balls in my eye sockets.
“Nothing,” he said.
We were closer to the distant station, and it hit me not a single car had passed since we’d been walking. And the freeway sounds seemed far away now. So fucking distant.
“We’re in bumfuck nowhere,” I whispered.
The whimpering came again. Then an outright lunatic laugh.
“With a hollow,” I growled.
“I know. We’ll be okay. Just watch me and I’ll watch you.”
I wanted to believe that would work, but I just didn’t buy it. My heartbeat was pounding so hard and fast I was sick with it.
The tin sign flapped in the sudden brisk wind. Winter was coming. You could feel it in your bones when the wind blew that way.
“Wish I’d brought at thicker jacket.”
“Wish we could have just driven,” Evan countered and winked at me.
“You think it will get to a point…” I shook my head. Figured I didn’t want to say it.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I almost kicked a can ahead of me, but thought better of it because of the noise.
“Tell me, El.”
“Do you ever think this is not going to go away? They say if we can kill all the existing hollows the problem will be resolved. They’re not like…” I shrugged. “You know. They’re not like zombies. If they bite you, you just bleed. If they kill you, you’re just dead. Thank God. Sort of.” I laughed.
“But what if it doesn’t end? What if it gets to the point the stuff we have managed to keep disappears. Cars, cell phones, food being trucked across country. What if they figure out how to infect? Or multiply. What if…” I was freaking myself out. “What if it spreads to other food?”
I stopped, my body frozen, my heart racing. “What if it spreads to the other food, Evan, and we all end up just jabbering and whimpering and chewing our way through life until we die, mostly brain dead and unaware we’ve become monsters? Monsters.” I shivered.
He glanced around for the hollow, then put his arms around me. “We can’t what-if like that, El. We can’t. We have to move forward. We have to hope the goals we’ve set up as a people hold out for us. We eat smart, we think smart, we act smart. We keep aware, we stick together, we have some faith.”
“I suck at faith,” I said.
He kissed me. “Me, too. But I have to try. And so do you.”
“We should just run,” I said.
“What if it draws the hollow?”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Touché. You sure?”
“I am.”
We ran as quietly as possible. It was better to get there faster and possibly draw attention than drag out the agony and possibly draw attention anyway.
It was a service station, and the clenched anxious place inside me relaxed a little when I realized it could mean help for us. But that place went rigid and tense almost immediately when I saw the sign taped inside the big front window.
“Closed due to hollows. Area infested. Move along. Danger.”
* * * *
“Do they do that? Is that real?” I hissed. We’d pried off some weathered boards from the side door and smashed the window to unlock it. The noise was a risk, but it had to be done. Inside the garage bay, it was dark, dusty and deserted.
Ominous.
“What?”
“Shut down towns?”
He shrugged. “We’ve heard all kinds of horror stories, Eleanor. My god—these things breaking in to eat families. Killing livestock in droves. Eating each other. I’m sure if there were enough in a freckle of a town like this, they would just leave en masse. Shut the place down and move on. Makes sense,” he said. “Look at us. We left your safe, well-stocked home because of an infestation of questionable humans. Surely people would do that for a bunch of flesh eaters.”
I nodded. Studied the walls. Anything to divert my attention from the fact that I felt as if I was going to cry and really and truly wanted to give into that urge. “What are we looking for?”
“A belt. A big one. About this long.” He held his arms apart, and I looked at the parts display. Belts and air filters and all kinds of various car guts were hung from pegboard. He found one that looked good and grabbed it. Then grabbed a second one, shrugging. “Just to be safe.”
“Anything else we need?” I figured, what the fuck. We were here. We had the opportunity.
He grabbed a couple random tools, and I picked up a wrench form the floor that was as long as my forearm. I gave it an exploratory swing.
“Double duty. Tool and weapon.” It was supposed to be a joke.
Just then a high, warbling cry let loose in the cavernous garage. It seemed to soar to the ceiling, bounce around and fall in a swift drop while turning my blood cold. I turned to see the hollow by the door we’d shut. Well, we’d shut it mostly. Quick escape mentality. Only that mentality had actually become an easy entry option.
“Fuck.” Evan found his pistol, leveled it at the thing.
The hollow, a tall lanky man who looked as if he hadn’t eaten in a year shuffled toward me. Clearly, he had eaten, though, because he was streaked with blood and gore. The question was, who had he eaten?
His blue eyes were bright and feverish with intent. His jaw opened and closed instinctively. Already chewing, and he hadn’t reached me yet. His head was cocked, and one shoulder hung oddly as if maybe it was dislocated. I’d never seen a more exhausted looking creature, but he was powerless to stop his motion. His tongue peeked out, seeking. He was filthy and scary, and I gasped at Evan, “Shoot! Why aren’t you shooting at him?”
I leveled the wrench at the hollow, and he let out another gasping, mewling cry. I shuddered.
“If I shoot him, Eleanor, it could draw more. We don’t know if there are more. It’s bad enough to deal with one, but more?”
“I—what now?” I snapped.
“Hit it.” He pulled the Bowie knife free of his belt, and I snagged the machete at my waist. In a moment of panic, I’d forgotten it was there.
“I…” I’d never considered having to hit one or deal with it up close. I’d delivered one or two shots. We’d almost blown up Mrs. Reese’s basement because I had a flare gun. But hand-to-hand combat?
The thing startled me, letting out a long, slow shriek as a hot tea kettle would and zoomed toward me. Fast. This fucker was fast. Because he was alive. Not decaying matter, alive and blood pumping and muscles working.
I took a giant step back, spread my legs to get a better center of gravity, and when he lunged at me, I swept the wrench toward his jaw line. The blow connected perfectly, and the impact of thick metal with flesh and bone jarred me. I felt the blow rattled through my shoulder and down into my back.
“Jesus fuck!” I yelled.
Evan moved in and though stunned and clearly with a broken jaw, the hollow reached for him. Hungry, intent, oblivious to his injury.
“Get back, Evan,” I said.
I swung the wrench again though my arm was pretty much numb and the resonating blow literally staggered me. I made a swipe with the machete in my left hand, but only made contact with the tip of the blade. I cut a swath of skin open, which began to bleed freely, but it wasn’t a fatal hit.
Panic slammed into me at seeing this thing’s blood flowing. At one point, the fear was they were contagious. Their blood and sputum among other bodily fluids carried the disease. That had been proven false and yet the irrational fear of it lived on.
Evan stepped in, said, “Don’t swing.”
“As if I’d cut you, loverboy,” I snorted. My arm was starting to throb.
He grabbed the hollow from behind, got ahold of a handful of its filthy stringy hair and levered its head back. It whimpered and jabbered and howled. It was silenced when he drew the Bowie knife swiftly across the throat, severi
ng the jugular, severing the windpipe and the esophagus. Evan had cut deep. There was rage in that blade.
Silence.
Somehow the silence was more horrific than the fight.
“Right.” He said, tossing his head to get his now bloody hair out of his eyes. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Chapter Sixteen
We hadn’t seen any more hollows. We hadn’t seen any more anything. But what we did see about two minutes before we began hoofing it back to the freeway was a shed behind the building. On a whim, I checked it out.
I started laughing. “Look at this shit.”
Evan crowded in behind me. “Holy cow.”
“No. Holy transportation, Batman.” I giggled as if I was a kid and rushed forward to wheel them out. Not one, but two bikes in perfect condition. Not ten speeds, not even trail bikes. What my sister used to call beach-bum bikes. The kind used to bounce around town, complete with fat comfy seats and baskets of all things.
“This one still has a tag on it. Happy birthday, boys.”
“Twins?” I asked.
“We’ll never know. But thanks to them, we’ll get back faster.”
Evan looped the belts around his neck and followed me out. I hoped the bike I was stealing belonged to a kid who had left town. A kid swept up in some kind of panicked exodus. I hoped he was pissed about leaving his bike and not dead or recently devoured.
“Feels kind of good,” he called to me over the hiss of our tires and the wind. “Feels kind of free,” he laughed.
I laughed, too. Because it did. It did feel good and free. Just from two wheels and a seat.
The road was flat and broad and utterly deserted. We raced each other toward the sound of the freeway.
“Goes much faster this way,” Evan called, pedaling fast.
I put on the speed to keep up and actually found myself laughing again. It was a real laugh that surged from the very center of me. It was flying. It was as it used to be before the infection came.
I swerved around a plastic bag, followed the yellow center lines, dogged him playfully, and we saw the approaching exit ramp. Evan put the brakes on, and I stopped next to him.
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