Hollow Men

by Sommer Marsden

We moved slowly but in unison, him aiming in one direction, me in the other. My biggest fear right then was we’d get spooked and shoot each other. I snorted.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I poked my head behind the door to the algae room. Nothing. I nudged the closet door open with my foot. Nothing. The room was clear.

  “What?” he said again.

  “Just do me a favor. Don’t get riled up and blow a hole in me, okay?”

  He shook his head but then grinned. “If you promise me the same.”

  “Deal,” I said. Without thinking, I leaned in and gave him a brief kiss right on the mouth. Something changed in his eyes. I chose to ignore it. “Next room,” I said.

  The second bedroom was set up for a sewing room or a storage room. There was a wardrobe full of crafting stuff, an old sewing machine, an ironing board, a table to cut patterns or fabric. The wardrobe held nothing but clothes and supplies and boxes of stuff. The closet was for storage. The room was empty but for the ghost of a woman who liked to make things with her hands.

  “Nada,” Evan said.

  We both froze. Somewhere in the house a sound echoed. But it was impossible to tell from where. My heart lodged firmly in my throat, and nausea rolled through me. I was sick with it.

  “Next room,” I said. “We need to clear this place or get the fuck out,” I hissed.

  He touched my arm. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

  I inhaled deep, gave him a nod and followed him out. The next room was the master bedroom. There was an old double bed, the frame was probably seventy years old or so, with hand-carved headboard and posts. Beautiful, but for the bare sagging mattress, crumpled linens, and deserted feel to the whole thing.

  I pulled the closet open. Nothing but what you’d expect. Clothes and shoes. Nothing fancy. Working people clothes. These people did not have a lot of money. Probably less than most.

  “Again zip,” I sighed. I even squatted down to look under the bed. Nothing but dust bunnies.

  Evan had picked up a framed photo of a couple off the bedside table. The man in the image had his arm around the woman proudly. She was laughing toward the camera. Judging by the car in the background, it was taken in the seventies or so. They were young. I pointed to the main dresser to a more recent photo. Them about forty years older, still in love, obviously. Him still proud, her still laughing.

  My throat narrowed, and my vision doubled from sudden unshed tears.

  “Let’s do the bathroom,” I growled and left before he could answer me.

  The bathroom held nothing more than was visible from the hallway, barring a very narrow linen closet. Which held…linens.

  “Upstairs is clear,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “Now back down.” He leaned in, kissed my forehead. He’d caught my look on that photo. Probably my unshared emotions too. I clenched my teeth and followed him out.

  We made our way back down, past our bags, back through the rooms we’d already visited. Another noise came, and it seemed impossible to tell if it was inside or out. I half-expected we were hearing a noise on the perimeter of the house and not in the house itself. Then a knock sounded from downstairs, and we both went wide eyed.

  “I guess we should have started with the basement,” Evan chuckled.

  I made sure the safety was off my gun and watched him do the same. Chances were, though, we wouldn’t want to fire. Not if we could help it. So far the hollows were all up by the road, all hanging out at the service station. A gunshot could get them curious.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s get this over with before I pee my pants. I can’t stand the fucking suspense anymore. We only have to get a few hours from here. Let’s figure out how to do it.” I was getting angry. “I mean Jesus fucking Christ. Should an eleven-hour road trip really have taken this goddamned long?”

  Evan put a finger to his lips. “Get angry later, babe. Let’s move now.”

  It was just the verbal slap I needed to reroute my emotions. I took a deep breath. “Right. I’ll have a meltdown after.”

  He smirked at me. “That’s my girl.”

  Something in me shifted and quivered when he said that. It annoyed me. But it also made me feel good, despite my best efforts to not feel good.

  “Let’s go.” I started out in front, letting him take my rear. Just thinking that made me smile, even as we started to descend.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The main room was a mess. A line of spilled food started at the foot of the steps and traveled toward the back room of the basement, which was the place that usually housed the laundry area.

  “What the bloody fuck is this?” Evan asked.

  I picked up a can of peas off the floor. It was mostly gone, but the sticky, mushy, starchy ones at the bottom remained. A sack of flour lay open at my feet, bags of beef jerky looked as if someone had chewed through the plastic.

  Beef jerky.

  “Shit,” I said, pointing.

  “But everyone knows not to eat beef.”

  My mind flashed to the debris in the frying pan upstairs. It had looked like hash. Or processed meat. I found a tin that was marked Turkey Loaf. Turkey. Safe right? I turned it over as Evan kept the gun trained on the unexplored bit of the basement.

  Way down at the bottom in a long line of ingredients the human mouth could not pronounce was a small asterisk and the words: may contain beef, pork, or chicken byproducts.

  A rustle and a thump from the darkened back room.

  “I think we’ve cornered ourselves an accidentally infected farmer,” I said. “I think they were eating the food they had in reserve they thought was safe.”

  A whimper sounded from the back, and my blood turned to ice in my veins.

  “And?”

  I waved the can. “Byproducts.”

  “Christ,” Evan said.

  We moved toward the sound though I just wanted to run away. “So now?” Evan asked in a hushed voice.

  “So now he or she or they are just eating their way through what’s down here in their reserves.”

  We moved through two old louvered doors, and the washer and dryer came into view. So did an old second fridge and a second shelving unit full of canned goods. Not to mention the body of the farmer’s wife and the feasting farmer himself.

  I leveled the gun and almost fired, but Evan said sharply, “Eleanor!”

  It was too much seeing the man who had once mugged proudly for the camera bent over her that way. In her that way, face smeared, eyes glazed, her body surrounded by packets and cracker sleeves and bent up cans. His hunger had gotten bigger than processed foods. His hunger had gotten huge.

  Or, in the case of some hollows, the infection had proven a bit too much for Mrs. Farmer, and she’d died from it. One in seven hollows died from the infection. Or so the serious newscasters on the six o’clock news told us. Who knew if it was true or not.

  The thing on the floor that was a man but not a man looked up at us. Face streaked with gore. Blankness in his eyes. I tried to think of what the man in the pictures upstairs would think of this. Horrified. Devastated. I wondered if he’d want to live this way. Doing this?

  He wouldn’t. I knew it the way I knew my name was Eleanor Heloise Salt and that I’d held it against my parents until I was ten. The middle name thing. I knew it the way I knew waking up to see Evan beside me made my heart stutter. That I loved him and had never stopped. That if it this had been me, I’d want someone to end it. To stop it. To make me human again by ceasing my existence.

  To my left was a neatly ordered gardening center. A push mower, clippers, spades and garden spikes. Everything a couple could need to work on a small garden. The farm didn’t seem to be farmed any more. Not on a large scale.

  I grabbed the hand trowel and lunged at him. It wasn’t so hard really. He knelt there chewing. Not moving a single hand to stop me. He looked lost, so fucking lost, I felt empty down through the core of myself. Up under his chin, hard and fast, I shoved the
trowel and in a moment the lost look in his eyes faded to a dull gleam.

  He slumped over his wife, and I buckled as if I were a broken toy. Sobbing.

  * * * *

  “Let’s go, let’s go…” Evan just kept saying it as we finished sweeping the basement. The only living thing besides us had been the man. From what we could see, they’d eaten the wrong canned item. Not seeing the small print that beef byproducts could be present. Or taking a chance anyway. The infection had set in, then the feeding frenzy.

  I kicked a bag of dehydrated fruit against the wall. They’d clearly been the kind of people to keep stock and be prepared. They also clearly had made a fatal mistake. It tore at my heart. Exhaustion wasn’t helping.

  “Eleanor—”

  “Don’t,” I said. I was tired. So fucking tired. I had left my home, been bus-jacked by a pregnant woman and killed a man who had clearly loved his wife beyond measure. I was done.

  I sat on a dusty antique chair in the corner and put my head on my knees. I tried to breathe.

  “We can hunker down here—”

  “No,” I said. “We get on the road. They have to have a car. A truck, a bike, a fucking tractor…a horse!” I was losing it.

  I simply wanted to get somewhere safe where humans or hollows weren’t trying to do me any harm.

  “I’ll go check.” His big hand settled on the back of my head. He stroked my hair. I shut my eyes and allowed that gentle, caring touch to penetrate the panicky fog around me.

  Inhaling all the way to my toes, I tried to steady my heart. I held the breath and then blew it out with all my might. “Don’t go,” I managed. “I’m coming with you.”

  “You had to,” he said.

  “Don’t,” I repeated.

  We went upstairs slowly. Watching for debris strewn on the steps and allowing for my own shaky legs to find their strength again.

  In the kitchen, I regarded the disgusting dried on bits of food in the pan. Probably what turned them. I had the fleeting urge to take that cast iron pan and start knocking out windows, banging on walls, breaking shit. Instead, I turned the key in the deadbolt.

  “This door goes out to a summer porch, then to a lot.” I nodded to a dust-and-gravel back lot to the house. “If they have a usable vehicle, it should be out here. It’s later than I’d prefer, but fuck it. I need to get out of here.”

  Evan didn’t speak. Just watched me, nodded and followed. He knew I needed control at the moment, and he aimed to give it to me.

  Things are bad, tell him you love him. Just in case…

  I shook that off. No fucking way. After what I’d just seen, love didn’t guarantee anything. Not even a sane and dignified death. Admitting it once was enough.

  The summer porch was full of canning jars and some dried goods. Stacks of newspapers, some gardening supplies, a coat rack with jackets and muddy boots laid out inside a shallow box lid to keep the mud off the floor. I wondered what they’d think if they could see their home now. Especially the basement.

  It turned my stomach.

  We found the key to the door that led outside on a peg on the wall. Evan unlocked it, and we both peeked outside to make sure no hollows were roaming around. The last thing we needed was another surprise.

  In the distance, something rumbled, and I froze.

  “I think that’s thunder,” Evan said. He tilted his head back as we emerged from the gloom of the porch. “Must be a freak autumn warm front moving through.”

  I nodded. “Sounds about how I feel.”

  He touched my hand but then moved on. He knew not to crowd me. I followed him down the stone steps.

  The backyard reminded me of my grandparents’ yard. Until you hit the field, it was bare and dusty. Hardly any vegetation. Two old aluminum chairs sat with a small table between them. I had a flash of the farmer sitting out here as the evening took over the sky with purple shadows, drinking a beer, maybe with a baseball game on the radio. If he smoked, he’d be smoking them one after the other, just enjoying the darkness and maybe some lightning bugs and cricket song.

  “You okay?”

  I nodded. “Just mourning someone I’ve never really met,” I said.

  “I know, El. Let’s go. There’s the garage.”

  He pointed to the left to a freestanding structure. We headed that way.

  “Do they strike you as the kind of people who’d put their truck away every day?”

  “No. But if people were out poaching vehicles in the panic, or houses, or if they planned to hunker down and not be visible, they might.”

  It made sense.

  “Or if their original ride was taken, by someone like us, or maybe someone much worse than us, they might have a different vehicle tucked away.”

  “I guess. Nowadays you can’t trust anyone.” I laughed. It was a nasty, bitter sound. “People want to eat you or steal your shit. Commandeer your vehicles, your home. Someone’s either trying to eat you or fuck you. Or, occasionally, if you pass through a trigger-happy checkpoint…shoot you.”

  He said nothing. There was nothing to say.

  The garage was locked, but the small side window was easily broken. I slid through it, lighting up the interior with a penlight and found the lock on the inside and opened the two doors wide.

  “Come on in, big boy.” I tried the joke on for size. It didn’t seem to fit. Not yet.

  “And here we are,” Evan said, beaming. “What the hell is this thing. It’s a Dodge van but what year?”

  “Who cares?” I said. “It reminds me of the Mystery Machine on Scooby Doo. I say we hijack it and get our asses to Vermont. And then sleep for a week,” I said.

  It was all I really wanted to do.

  “We need to find the keys,” he said.

  “I give you five minutes,” I said. “And then I hotwire it. I want to get the fuck out of here.”

  His eyebrow went up. “You know how to do that?”

  “Hey, my father believed in a well-rounded daughter. Should know how to cook, clean, shoot, patrol and hotwire cars in case of an emergency.”

  “Good man,” Evan said, turning toward the house.

  “The best,” I whispered.

  Chapter Twenty

  He found the key on the same peg we’d found the deadbolt for the back door. “Thank goodness they were organized. It’s marked ‘van’.” He jingled it at me.

  “Great. I just checked. There’s gas stashed back there by the riding mower. I have no idea if this thing is gassed up or not. And let’s hope that gas is under a year old.”

  “Why? Gas has a shelf life?”

  “Everything has a shelf life.” I dusted my hands off on my pants. “We need to go in and get our bags and load up. Plus…” I inhaled deeply. “We should go in the basement and go ahead and take some supplies. The bus was stocked; the van is not.”

  “All told we have about three or so hours ahead of us. If all is clear, we don’t get stopped and we’re lucky. We really should consider waiting until tomorr—”

  “Let’s be lucky,” I said and headed toward the house. “We’re going tonight.”

  We were fast about it. Loading the van with our gear and pilfered supplies from the couple. I tossed in some bed sheets from a neatly folded basket of clean laundry and medical supplies I found in a kitchen cabinet. It wasn’t the kind of stash we had before, but it would have to do.

  “Let’s go,” I snapped, my voice way more intense than I’d hoped. “I just want to get to your family and fucking crash. Hard. For days. After a shower.”

  He patted my leg. “I just want to hold you while you sleep,” he said.

  I waited for the dirty joke. The leer and playful smile. It didn’t come. It had been a sincere statement.

  I just want to hold you while you sleep.

  All my walls wanted to go up. All my barriers wanted to engage. I wanted to shut down, turn away and pull back. Instead, I whispered, “I’d like that. A lot.”

  He looked shocked when I said it. S
hocked enough to almost make me laugh. It wasn’t something I’d readily admit, and Evan knew that. I was too stubborn and maybe too broken. But it seemed to be a good time to be honest. We fired up the van and headed up the unmarked drive toward the road we’d come from. Then we’d hop on the freeway and be on our way. On our way to something a bit more civilized.

  * * * *

  “There’s been a change in me,” I said.

  We barreled down the freeway, Evan making me check the map and keeping an eye open for any problems. Problems could range from cops wanting us to slow down, ambushes, hollows on the road. The world had turned into a dangerous place, and after the past few days, I simply wanted to get to our destination without stopping. Without problem. There was enough death and deception out there to last me a lifetime.

  “What’s that?” Evan glanced over but immediately put his gaze back on the busy frantic freeway. The day was being eaten up. People wanted to get where they were going.

  “We just passed two people,” I said. I pushed my forehead to the cool glass.

  “So?”

  “So they were walking. They were alone. They had a sign—she did, anyway—that said, HELP.”

  “I didn’t see them,” he said.

  “I did. And that’s the point.”

  We slowed for a checkpoint and became one in a long line of cars. “What do you mean?”

  We fished out our passports, which, thankfully, had been in the packs we’d taken when we left the bus.

  “I saw them, and I said nothing. I felt no urge to stop or to help. No sympathy. No need to step in.”

  “We were just fucked over.”

  “Yeah, we were.” It seemed to be a damn good reason and yet, it just didn’t set well with me.

  Evan rolled down the window. “Sir,” he nodded to the soldier.

  “Where you folks headed?”

  “St. Albans, Vermont.” To the naked eye, Evan appeared relaxed, but I could see the tension in his body language.

  “Just another hour or so, then,” the man said. He handed back our passports.

  “All okay ahead?” I asked.

  He gave a brief nod, glanced behind us at the line building. “Yes, ma’am. Seems to be fine. Though people are wanting to get off the road before work traffic stops. Just be careful who you would stop for or pick up.” He glanced down, looked exhausted suddenly. “I hate to say it, but the pirating on the road is getting worse. Folks taking supplies are getting worse. Highway robbery,” he said. "Literally.”