The Hole (12 page)

When they’d finished, the men shared iced tea brought by Cecilia, who asked Elliot how the day’s work was treating him.

He told her it was good and refreshing, and he wasn’t lying. In those few moments during which he could set his concerns aside and simply concentrate on picking vegetables or carrying firewood, the unencumbered nature of the work contrasted nicely with the heavy thinking that’d been his primary occupation since Callie got sick.

Cecilia smacked him on the back happily, saying, “I can’t get enough of it myself. The work’s so pure, you understand? It feels as if it’s exactly what God sent us here to do.”

Elliot shrugged and told her he supposed that was right. Cecilia left them then, reminding the men that it was only an hour before lunch and they’d better not be late because the women had poured sweat-and a good many of the vegetables they were picking right now-into a truly fabulous stew. “You’ll need your energy,” she told them, “because you boys have just as much work to do this afternoon.”

And they did. Lunch’s stew wasn’t fabulous but it filled Elliot adequately, even if the conversation accompanying it was thin. The citizens of Nahom had adopted a stand-off attitude toward their two guests, almost as if they trusted Elliot and Evajean as little as Elliot trusted them. But there was also a curiosity on display, a sense that these people expected something of the two of them and were waiting to see if it happened. Elliot hoped he disappointed them.

That afternoon was more of the same, though several of the morning’s men didn’t return to vegetable gathering but, rather, prepared for the evening’s events. And those events, when they came, troubled Elliot and shifted his perspective more than he could have possibly imagined.

Around four o’clock, with the sun drawing close to the valley’s western ridge, the harvest chores ceased and Elliot wandered away to find Evajean. She was sitting at a round table with four other women, all chatting and laughing while they skinned potatoes and gouged seeds out of pumpkins. As he came up, Evajean set down her small knife and walked over to meet him. “Okay,” she said, “I get it now. These people
creep me out.
“

He shrugged. “It’s pumpkins.”

“No. No, it’s not just the pumpkins.” She had leaned in close and was whispering. “They don’t talk about anything, Elliot. It’s like they don’t even think about stuff. I mean, we’ve been here for, what, for three hours and all we’ve discussed is how great supper’s going to be and how nice it is of the men to be doing the harvest, and not even a word-
not a word
-about how there’s a funeral tonight for eight men killed by zombies.”

“Let’s go over here,” he said, and lead her away from the women and towards a small grove of trees by the edge of the town square. In the center of the square, a dozen of Nahom’s citizens were setting up chairs and a podium. “They won’t be able to hear us,” he said. Then, “See? You see what I mean now? There’s something wrong with this place, Evajean. Wrong beyond just fundamentalists living out in the woods. I keep getting this feeling like they already know about us, like they were expecting us.”

Evajean waved her hands. “Me too!” she said. “This one woman, not Cecilia but one named Shirley… Weeks, I think. Shirley Weeks. She’s been watching me. I keep catching her doing it and then she looks away, but I know she was watching me. I can feel her eyes, you know?”

“I know,” he said.

“And other people are doing the same thing. Like this little girl”-Elliot had flashes of the laughing girl in the forest just before he’d had his first encounter with the woman in red-”who’s always peeking at me from behind things. I’m freaking out is what I’m saying and I want to leave. Now.”

“We can’t,” Elliot said and, before she could start up again, he added, “We need them to help us get the truck back up on the road and they won’t do that until after this funeral’s taken care of. I talked with their leader, a guy named Jeffry-Uncle Jeffry, they call him-and that’s what he told me.”

Evajean shook her head. “Tomorrow. Elliot, I don’t know if I can wait until tomorrow. What if you’re right and something’s going on here. You said about the treasure hunting, how strange it was, and what if they’re into even weirder stuff? What if they plan to hurt us-or sacrifice us?”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Elliot said, and waved cheerfully at one of the women who was watching them from the table. Was that Shirley? he thought. “I don’t think these people are into that kind of stuff. But I don’t know what their plan is and I think we should just concentrate now on getting through without anything bad happening until we can get the truck working again and go back to driving to Colorado.”

“But what if they don’t help us with the truck?” she asked. “What if they have no intention of us going to Colorado. I don’t know why I’m so scared, Elliot, but I am.” Then she said, sounding embarrassed, “I feel like I’m hysterical.”

“You’re not,” he said. “At least, I don’t think you are. I think you’re picking up the same stuff I am and it’s not good, whatever it is. But let’s stay together, not let them divide us up, and I’m sure we can make it through until tomorrow morning. They’ve got the funeral keeping them busy.”

But Evajean wasn’t buying it. She’d picked up that suspicious bug that had kept him on edge since he’d arrived in the town, and she appeared to be suffering from it far worse. Elliot didn’t know why it’d taken her so long to notice the oddness of Nahom and he was glad she did now, but he had to keep a lid on it or she’d blow whatever cover they had left.

“Look,” he continued, “we won’t even split up. Just stay right here, right next to me, and if it looks like they’re going to try anything funny, we’ll just take off into the woods. Worst that can happen is we run into some crazies but, then, that’s what we seem to have already done.”

She smiled at him and he could see she was calming down. He put his arm around her shoulders. “We can do this,” he said. “I mean, we’ve made it through a lot so far, right?”

Evajean nodded and didn’t pull away. He held her and she said, “I’m scared. Really, that’s all. I’m probably freaking myself out.”

“Let’s just not worry about it. I mean, Jesus, think about what we’ve been through just getting here. The woman at the store, that big group of them on the road, the car accident-”

“And you,” she said. “Getting captured and the cave…”

“So this is nothing,” Elliot said. “These are nice people who happen to be kind of religious and are freaking both of us out. We just think about it that way and wait until tomorrow morning and everything’ll be good.”

Evajean pulled away from him and looked up at his face. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s crazy. I feel crazy. Maybe we can just go back to the house?”

They did and, until one of Nahom’s men tapped on the door to let them know the funeral was about to start, Evajean and Elliot sat inside and chatted about old times and dead family what it would be like if everything just went back to normal.

But that ended with the measured knocking on the front door and, when Elliot opened it, a large man in a white collared shirt and grey pants told him Uncle Jeffry had sent for the two of them and that things were about to start. Elliot assured the man they’d be there momentarily.

Now he and Evajean were standing in a crowd of the entire one-hundred and forty, minus the dead, while Jeffry read a passage from one of the scriptural books. Nothing about it so far was too far out of the ordinary for a funeral, albeit with a lot less pomp and circumstance than the Catholic ceremonies Elliot was used to. There was singing and praying, and the families of the deceased spoke their fond memories. One of the men had had five wives and several of the others had two. The number of impacted children was minimal, however, and Elliot-who realized he felt a degree of guilt for what he now watched-was glad for that.

It was during the eighth of these eulogies, as an old woman spoke of her son’s courage and willingness to serve God, that the first of that night’s sequence of terrible events occurred.

Elliot was staring at his feet, unable to look into another yet another pair of anguished eyes. Evajean leaned against him, humming quietly and unconsciously to herself. The little girl in the row in front of Elliot-a girl he was convinced was the one who’d lead him on the brief chase through the woods-tilted her head to the side like she was listening for something, then clapped her hands to the sides of her head, and screamed. She fell backwards, over the chair, and into Elliot. He stumbled forward against her, trying to grab her arms and keep her up, but his startled actions missed and she landed on the grass, legs caught in the chair’s legs, beating her firsts against the ground while screeches pushed through her clenched teeth.

Jeffry, standing to the left of the podium, ran forward, calling out, “Is she okay? What happened?”

Men were pulling Elliot back, trying to get at the girl, while somewhere on the other side of the crowd a woman called out. “Oh God! Oh Jesus!” she shouted and, as he was dragged way from Evajean, Elliot saw the woman pointing toward the ridge. Coming down from that hill, in a single row like Roman soldiers, were over a hundred crazies, armed with rocks and branches, faces to the sky as they ran.

Elliot hurled himself forward and grabbed Evajean. “We have to go!” he shouted over the calls of the men and the cries of the women. Uncle Jeffry was doing his best to calm the crowd, saying something about the church and doors, but nobody seemed to paying him any attention.

They forced their way through the crowd and, as they reached its periphery, it seemed people grasped the heart of Jeffry’s message and began running to the church. Evajean pulled in that direction and Elliot, after brief hesitation, allowed himself to follow her.

When the entire population of Nahom had run through the church’s open entrance, the heavy wooden doors swung shut, and the panic subsided. Elliot heard sobs and the children asked questions about who those people were and where they came from. A little girl, standing near Evajean, asked the emptiness in front of her if those were the bad people who killed her daddy. Evajean pulled her into a hug and whispered in her ear.

Elliot walked over to the closed doors and asked one of the men standing near them if they would hold.

“I don’t know,” the man said and looked over at Uncle Jeffry, who was talking with a group of women. “I don’t know how long they’ll hold.”

Jeffry said, “Okay, everyone, please, let’s try to remain calm. We dealt with these people before and we can do it again. Right now, we need to make sure the church’s windows are shuttered and locked and so I need some of you to carefully make your way through the building and assure that is the case.” He pointed at the men near the door. “And you, you’re only role right now is to be certain nothing gets through those doors. Put your weight against them if you need to, but keep those doors shut.”

Elliot helped the men. He and several others ran through the church, grabbing desks and chairs and anything else they could find, and stacking their haul against the doors. While they did this, Jeffry and the women took the children in the back then began closing and fastening the shutters. From outside, they could hear the crazies gibbering, but the sound was far off still. Elliot wondered what they were up to and why the zombies hadn’t pressed the attack.

Nahom, this far out in the mountains, didn’t have electricity lines, so when the last of the shutters was pulled shut, the church became completely dark. Children cried out and sobbed, mothers and fathers doing their best to provide comfort while clearly upset themselves. Elliot tracked down Evajean and sat with her as Jeffry talked quietly to his people, telling them they needed only wait this out, that the people outside couldn’t get in.

“I’m not going to say I’m scared,” Evajean said.

“I know,” Elliot said, looking around, trying to see if there was somewhere else they might sit, closer to an easy exit in case things went bad.

“I’m scared,” she said.

Elliot put his hand on hers. “Remember what we said? About just sticking this out and leaving?” He squeezed. “It’s one more thing to stick out.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“Only one more thing.”

And they were quiet for several minutes then, listening to the sounds of the Nahom’s citizens, these fundamentalists making perhaps their last stand in their house of God. Still, the sense of strength Elliot got from them was staggering. The people of this town were not terrified anymore. They’d set those emotions aside and made themselves focus on what they could do against the horde that had violently interrupted their mourning. Elliot had to respect them for that, even if he couldn’t fully wrap his head around what they got out of their isolated, religion driven existence.

“I’m going to talk to Jeffry,” Elliot said when he was relatively sure Evajean was in control. “I want to know what he plans to do.”

“Just to wait,” she said. “Like he told us. Just wait.”

“And hope they go away? I’m not buying that. It’s silly. We don’t have any food.”

She shook her head and Elliot could barely make out the gesture in the faint light coming from the small stained glass windows near the roof. “It’s-”

Something heavy slammed against one of the windows to their right. Children screamed and a group of men rushed to the location of the hit. Then a crash came from the other side of the church and Elliot turned to see a faint arc of sunlight where the wooden shutter had cracked.

“Stay here,” he said to Evajean and ran over to the small breach, trying to see outside. He couldn’t make out much more than moving shapes, blurred and indistinct, but then another rock crashed into the window and the glass between him and the shutters’ wooden slats shattered. He fell back, away from the falling glass, and called out. “Over here!” he yelled. “They’re coming through over here!”

Men, women, and more than a few kids scattered, some heading toward Elliot and the window to fight anything that might burst forth, while others ran in the opposite direction, terrified to be near the crazies if they did make it through. Elliot stayed where he was, again trying to look through the break in the shutters to get a sense of what they might be up against.