The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave (15 page)

Chase clambered into the last navigable play structure before he would have to risk an open field race to reach his sister and Emily. Checking over the wall at the final stretch, he almost missed the zombie hiding in a dark corner behind him. Completely eaten below the waist, it slowly pulled itself toward him on shaking arms. A scrape of its watch on the wooden floor alerted Chase just in time.

Hurling himself over the wall kept him from the legless zombie’s grasp. He blindly rounded the fort and encountered a cluster of the undead facing away from him. He scrambled backward to the other side of the structure, giving him a view of the spot where he had last seen the girls. No sign of them.

His sister and Maddy’s sister might both be gone.

Something thudded on the ground behind him. One of the female zombies fell from an overhead bridge in a clumsy effort to catch him. It pulled itself to its feet and stumbled his way.

Ejected from his hiding place and unwilling to give up finding his sister, he took off in the direction of a tall climbing wall in the middle of the playground. He scrambled to the top in no time and threw a leg over the ridge to straddle it. From there, he had a bird’s eye view into many of the play forts. He began a methodical search of each one.

Though an excellent vantage point for Chase, it also operated as the perfect beacon to attract the flesh hunters. While he scanned the park, a mob of the grasping zombies converged at the base of the climbing rock. The creatures lacked the coordination to ascend the wall. Palsy kept them from making it any farther up than the first toehold.

Chase spied a clump of black hair dangling through a slat in one of the higher towers. He was sure it was his sister. He couldn’t tell if she was playing dead, holding still on purpose, or if her body was no longer capable of movement. She might be sick again. Or worse.

He’d completely stranded himself on top of the climbing wall. He considered jumping. The zombies were crowded three deep at the bottom, requiring a significant horizontal leap for Chase to be clear of them when he landed. He might not land softly. Twisting an ankle would mean pretty much the same thing as jumping into the middle of the hungry throng.

Chase was getting light-headed. Perched atop the climbing wall, he had no shelter from the blazing sun. He was dehydrated and already sleep-deprived from the night before. His legs were cramping from having only two positions to choose from: sit or straddle. He shouted again for Katie. His voice cracked as his breath whooshed over the strip of desert terrain that was his throat.

Every few minutes, cries of pain stabbed the air as the zombies discovered another hideout. Only once did a child make it to the thick vegetation, the same place where the teenaged girl had escaped. The others died where they’d hidden.

Chase couldn’t wait any longer. Katie’s sanctuary could be the next one found. He crouched on top of the wall, and with a hoarse yell, prepared to launch himself away from the tower.

CHAPTER 26

N
ONE
W
ILL
W
AKE
T
HEM

C
lotted blood and playground sand bonded Katie’s cheek to the wooden slats that made up the floor. Her dreams were dark, as if she were sitting in a theater running a projector with a broken bulb. She heard her parents in the blackness. They called out for her, infinite sadness in their voices. She shouted back to them, “Mom! Dad! I’m here!” Their cries were suddenly cut off.

She jolted awake. Emily yanked hard on her arm. “Get up! Get up!” she yelled.

Disoriented, Katie stood on unsteady feet, mumbling, “What is it?”

Emily pushed her from the short tower; she fell awkwardly and sat down hard, sending shocks up her spine from bruising her tailbone. Her friend landed next to her and tugged at her arm again. “Come! Now!”

The three young zombies chasing them were in ragged shape. A patchwork of hair and skin blanketed their skulls. Their lower jaws were gone, leaving skulls with tongues hanging loose.

Only a few inches in height distinguished them from each other. The tallest of them dropped to his knees by Katie and grabbed at one of her legs. Emily’s pulls and Katie’s well-aimed kicks freed her before the grotesque siblings trapped them.

Her fever had returned, weakening her to the point where she couldn’t stand up properly. Dodging creatures long enough to get safely home would be impossible. The only option was to find a place out of sight and out of reach. The girls limped toward a tall tower near some dense foliage bordering the back of the playground with the zombies lurching behind them.

After she shed her backpack, more predators joined the hunt. Katie swayed on her feet, losing consciousness. Though Emily was strong even at eight years old, after staggering ten feet, she collapsed under the full weight of her friend’s now comatose body.

Emily strained to crawl away. She suffocated, unable to lift her head and unable to see around Katie’s form. Her yells for help were muffled. She’d seen the gruesome playground attacks and knew what was coming for her. She wondered how much it would hurt when the bites started.

Katie’s body was being jostled above her and she prepared herself for the end. When Emily saw daylight, she lashed out with her feet, making solid contact with one of the things that wanted to make a meal out of her. She heard a grunt after she struck. Hands grabbed her by the forearm and wrenched her so violently that Emily was certain her arm had been separated at the elbow.

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

H
OLLOW
M
EN

F
rom 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

I
LL
M
Y
C
HOICE

S
cott 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 for 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.