The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave (7 page)

She felt sick to her stomach when Chase lost the ball. She knew exactly how he would take it. It was heart-rending to think about. When she saw a female fan attack her son from the stands, Ridley screamed furiously at the TV. Some mothers were protective, but she was a pit bull on crack.
No one
messed with her kids.

After the game, she surfed the news channels hoping to learn who had attacked her son and why. Instead, all the stories focused on the defensive lineman who stripped the football from a rookie running back and secured the championship for the Eagles. The linebacker was named most valuable player. Ridley couldn’t stomach anymore and switched off the TV, missing news of the after-game violence.

Chase.
Desperate to talk to him, she called her husband’s cell phone for what seemed like the hundredth time. Like each time before, a mechanical voice said, “All circuits are busy now. Please try again later,” followed by a rapid busy signal.

Katie’s fever seemed to have broken for good. Her mom checked on her frequently during the first three quarters of the game. Her skin had cooled considerably and she slept peacefully. Ridley traded her intrusive monitoring for listening at the door. Wheezing had replaced Katie’s gasping for oxygen.

It was time to check on the Hales’ daughter. Even though both Laura and Emily’s parents believed her symptoms were pretended or, at most, hypochondria, they had asked Ridley to look in on her when she could. She readily agreed; the friendship between the families was so strong there was almost nothing they wouldn’t do for one another. She locked the door behind her and slipped into the quiet night.

The dramatic changes in climate, the swarms of different diseases, and the constant edginess of everyone around her were all smothering Ridley’s sunny disposition. She felt a persistent foreboding that humanity’s best days on planet Earth were over.

She broke into shivers despite the heat outside. She imagined invisible eyes tracking her on the walk to her friends’ house. She stopped in the middle of the street, like a doe warily scouting an expansive field where hunters lay in wait for her. She managed to keep from running back into her house, forcing herself the rest of the way to the Hales’ front door. She pounded on the door anxiously.

The heavy air seemed to muffle the noise of her knock as effectively as if the door had been covered with a thick blanket. After waiting a minute, she balled her hand and pounded with all the force she could muster.

Thud. Thud. Thud.
“Please, please Emily. Come to the door,” she pled in a small voice.

She could almost feel things creeping in the darkness behind her. Her skin prickled as though she had a fever. She kept her eyes forward. The muscles in her upper torso were fully tensed, rendering her practically immobile. She couldn’t turn around, even if she dared.

Loyalty to her friends overpowered Ridley’s growing terror. She tore herself away from the porch and rushed around the side of the house. The garage door ran parallel to the wide driveway so that the Hale’s swung their cars 90 degrees to enter. Ridley pressed her back against the aluminum door and inched her way up the driveway until she reached the gate of the tall redwood fence that surrounded the Hales’ backyard. They had left the gate unlocked to make it easier for Ridley to check on their daughter.

She opened it cautiously, cringing at the noise even though the hinges were well-oiled and the gate moved easily. She peered around the sprawling backyard to make sure nothing lurked there. Shivers hit her spine in force, and she jumped through, slamming the heavy wooden door behind her and throwing the bolt to lock it with a loud clack.

Stepping away, she listened for the frustrated banging of creatures that she was sure were behind her. The fence creaked in a way that sounded to her like someone had leaned against the door, testing its strength.

Ridley held her breath, not daring to move. The creaking stopped. She told herself it must have been the wind.

She felt ridiculous and berated herself. She needed to make sure Emily didn’t have the life-sucking illness that had been overwhelming her daughter for the last 24 hours. If their situations were reversed, she knew Laura wouldn’t be tiptoeing in the backyard, jumping at shadows.

The Hales always left their sliding glass door unlocked. She slid it open and poked her head into the oddly darkened house.

“Emily? Don’t be afraid. It’s Katie’s mom. Are you OK? I’m coming to check on you.”

She listened for Emily’s voice. Instead, she heard thumping from upstairs, then the dull thud of something heavy falling on the floor.

“Emily! Are you OK?” She entered the dark house, flipping on a light and locking the glass door behind her to keep out her fearful imaginings.

Her inner voice went unheard, whispering, “There is no wind outside.”

CHAPTER 15

P
OOR
A
ND
L
UCKLESS
B
EING

N
eon signs floated behind the large windows of the trolley car-shaped building that rested at the base of a scrubby hill. A beat-up tow truck sat next to Tom’s Escalade outside the roadside diner where Scott and Tom had arranged to meet each other. Next to that was a white, newer-model Chevy Tahoe with extra spotlights and a law enforcement badge emblazoned on the door. Above the painted badge, big block letters read “Sheriff.”

The diner’s cook had a white apron and T-shirt. Grey stubble ringed his balding crown. From behind a long front counter, one waitress served coffee to the motley few who sat on red cushioned barstools. She wore a sky-blue collared dress and white lacey apron. Above her right breast pocket, her nametag read “Marilyn”.

When Tom and his son walked in, she waved to the empty booths. “Sit anywhere you like.”

Maddy walked quickly past her parents and sat down next to a depressed Chase, putting her arm around him. His body relaxed somewhat, the closest he’d come to calm since he had taken the handoff from the quarterback.

Tom appeared gaunt and pensive. His friends misinterpreted his distraction as trying to work out how best to help his son rebound after the loss.

Scott worried over his own family, anxious about how close they had come to being the victims of the two degenerates who he assumed were still lying on the campus pathway. Both his wife and Maddy appeared to be unfazed. His daughter was too young to comprehend what had almost happened. Laura was impossible to read until she decided to share what her mind. For the moment, she’d denied being affected.

She wiped the table and high chair thoroughly with her own disinfectant wipes, according to the routine she followed every time they went out to eat. The scent of fresh lemon left behind mixed pleasantly with the mouthwatering aroma of eggs & hash.

Marilyn brought a coffee pot with her, filling mugs with fresh coffee when she greeted them.

“Hi everyone. I’m Marilyn and I’ll be your server. Just in case that was unclear, with all of the other servers tonight.” She laughed at her own joke. Even though she was the only one laughing, she plowed onward. “Are you ready to order or should I give you a few minutes?”

“We’re ready.” Tom said with a hint of gruffness.

Scott ordered last. “I’d like bacon cooked crispy, sausage, fried eggs over medium, two pieces of wheat toast, hash browns with melted cheese, and blueberry pancakes.”

Her pen stopped for a second on her notepad, and she stared over her glasses at him to make sure he wasn’t joking. “Is that all?” she asked, her lips pursed.

Scott beamed. “Yes. And please hurry before I starve to death!” he added, and playfully shooed her away.

Scott was perpetually hungry. Maybe it was spending most days eating bugs and dandelion leaves while on his survival courses, or maybe he had ingested tapeworm larvae when drinking out of slimy bogs. One year for Christmas, as a joke, Laura gave him a backpack filled with beef jerky, energy bars, ramen noodles, and chocolate. Genuinely excited by his gift, he’d finished eating his present that afternoon.

All was quiet in the restaurant. Tom, Chase, Scott, Laura, and Maddy were all battle weary, and the baby slept.

The Sheriff and the others at the counter were watching TV, gasping at what they were seeing. The Parks and Hales barely paid attention. A pretty Hispanic news reporter spoke into the camera in front of a highway full of stopped cars. “Fear of the whirlwind of viruses spreading through cities has caused mass exoduses of people trying to escape, fleeing to places where they believe, where they hope they will be safer.”

The on-screen graphic below her read “Panic in major cities.” The view shifted to roads littered with abandoned cars, people gathering what supplies they could and racing away on foot as the city began to burn.

The reporter continued on camera, “Smaller cities are not immune. What you are seeing now is the city of Syracuse, where a state championship football game fueled an outbreak of violence that has spun out of control.”

Vague silhouettes wavered in front of cars and buildings that had been set on fire. Blood smears could be seen on people close to the shaking cameras. Sporadic gunfire rattled in the background. “The Twenty-Seventh Brigade Combat Team of the New York National Guard, stationed in Syracuse, has been deployed to bring back order.”

In the diner, it was as if they were watching a movie with elaborate replications of their own neighborhood. The reality of it hadn’t sunk in yet.

With the exception of Scott, who was always in tune with his bottomless appetite, the Parks and Hales hadn’t realized how hungry they were until the hot food was in front of them. Their server refreshed the coffees. Clinking of silverware on plates created the only addition to the ambient noise of the TV.

Baby Autumn woke up halfway through the meal; she, too, was famished. Laura put the blanket over the baby’s head and breastfed her. When she finished, she handed a groggy Autumn over to Maddy, whispering, “Hold her, I’ll be right back,” and made her way to the bathroom.

After Laura left, the diner’s front door burst open with such force the aluminum-framed glass threatened to shatter. A wild-eyed young girl stumbled in, eyes wide in fear. She moved her mouth soundlessly and jerked as she walked as if she were having a seizure.

She crumpled to the ground in convulsions. Her clothes were dirty and torn. Dried blood covered her face and her right shoulder, where a crescent-shaped gash in her skin continued to bleed. The teenager’s jaws began to clench, her teeth grinding together so hard that they had visibly cracked.

The Sheriff was closest to her, and he rushed over, grabbing a napkin wrapped silverware set from a nearby table. He straddled the young girl, trying to pin her down while he waited for an opening to get the silverware between her teeth.

“Hey! Give me a hand here. Hold her arms and legs.”

Tom and Scott were the first to the Sheriff’s side. They wrestled the girl’s limbs to the ground. Scott put his hand on her forehead to stabilize her head and give the sheriff an opportunity to get the silverware in. Her skin was cool to the touch.

Laura left the bathroom, processed what she saw, then took charge. “Stop! Stop right now.”

The Sheriff didn’t even pause. Laura hurried over and gripped the napkin-wrapped silverware just as the deputy thrust it between the clenching teeth. She snapped her hand back with a sharp hiss, briefly holding the silverware with bloodied fingers before tossing it onto the floor. “Now get off her, for heaven’s sake, and give her some room.”

The girl’s thrashing on the floor eased to a tremble. Awareness flared in her eyes briefly before she lapsed into catatonia. The men carried the sick girl to an empty booth

“Sorry, Sheriff,” Laura said with a tired sigh. “This is what I do for a living. She could have cut her mouth, broken more teeth, or injured her jaw.”

Still in his 20’s, the Sheriff had boyish features under closely-cropped blond hair and the barest shadow of whiskers on his face. “Not at all. Glad you were here to set us straight.”

Laura shook her head at him. “Silverware? Seriously? You should know better.”

The Sheriff’s face reddened in embarrassment.“Like I said. Glad you were here.”

She threw Scott and Tom a massive bottle of hand sanitizer. “Bathe yourselves in this. I’ll be back.”

When she returned from the bathroom with the blood washed off her hand, the girl hadn’t moved. The Sheriff looked concerned.

“Do you know her?” Laura asked.

“Her name is Sadie. She’s a sad case. At ten years old, she saw her dad get killed by a car. She was only a few feet away. Her mom dropped them off at home so she could run an errand, and she watched carefully in the mirror for them to get out of the way before she backed up. Sadie dropped something and went behind the truck for it. Her dad yelled for her to get out of the way, but Sadie had her ear buds in, listening to music, and didn’t hear anything.”

“Her dad pushed her out of the way and saved her life. Her mom didn’t see any of it. She only felt a bump as one of the tires rolled over her husband’s chest. She blamed herself. Sadie blamed herself. Her mom has been in a deep depression ever since. She hardly leaves the house for anything other than work. On top of it all, she’s gotten really sick and now it seems like Sadie might be catching it too. What a mess.”

Laura couldn’t keep herself from thinking about her own daughters as she studied the prone figure of young Sadie. She cleared her throat. “So this is the first time she’s had any type of seizure? We should get her to the hospital. Can you call her mom?”

“We’ve had a handful of cases just like this show up since last night. The family doc thinks it’s one of the new diseases flying around these days. He asked us to get the word out to people that if they got sick, to stay in their houses and to contact him for a house call. Said he’d do whatever he can for them. He didn’t want this to spread all over the place and figured he knew better than anyone how to keep it under control.”