The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave (16 page)

He skidded into the parking lot, already running before the bike hit the dirt. The acrid smell of creosote came from the railroad ties used to separate the playground from the parking lot.

The park was full of people, technically speaking. Their bodies were flung all over the playground. The hollow men had indiscriminately chewed their way into the old and the young. Even the very young.

Seeing dead children was soul jarring. Scott couldn’t help picturing them suffering grisly deaths at the hands of parents, grandparents, older brothers, sisters, and neighbors–the people they loved and trusted the most. He pictured their confusion and terror, and his legs turned to rubber.

He cleared his mind. He needed detachment.

Some of the bodies strewn over the playground stirred and raised themselves from the ground. Open wounds covered their limbs and faces. As they stood, Scott saw the irregular movement of freshly hollowed-out bodies. They were becoming the same as the creatures who attacked them—hunters themselves, feeders on human flesh.

Not one of them paid attention to Scott’s presence. They appeared to be docile. It didn’t convince Scott, having seen poor Melissa as she walked to her slaughter at the hands of her neighbors. Standing calmly together had been the disguise they used to get her to come closer.

Scott crept forward, low and alert, keeping an eye on the twitching newly dead scattered all over the park.

He didn’t understand why there weren’t little toddler zombies spastically moving around the park with the “older” zombies. None of the smallest children got to their feet. For some, the damage was obviously too severe for them to reanimate. Their bodies were missing large chunks of tissue and bone. However, for many of the children, their wounds were superficial compared to the resurrected creatures that staggered around the grass. He thought perhaps that they were protected—if he could call it that—from becoming walking corpses. It consoled him to think that they were at peace.

There were survivors. A passel of children and adults had locked themselves behind the chain-linked fences that walled the two tennis courts adjacent to the playground. They called to Scott for help as clusters of the undead clawed their way along the metal links, their gaits slow, unsteady and with unambiguous intention.

The survivors didn’t see that killers were emerging in the midst of them. Some of the people within the enclosure were twitching and shaking.

Scott gestured frantically, trying to point out the danger. No one understood him, and he couldn’t risk shouting to them.

Searching for Emily, Scott scanned the living, the dead and the reanimated. He tried to remember what Emily was wearing, cursing himself, realizing that he hadn’t even seen her before she ran out the door.

Awful “what if” scenarios played in his mind. He physically shook himself out of those visions. He refused to surrender his mind to worst-case hypotheticals. If Emily still lived, Scott knew it would require his full attention to get her out.

Ahead of him, a lock of brown hair dangled from a bright yellow swing. Bits of bone and grey matter clung to the bloody scalp. Dark brown hair, the same color as Emily’s.

The little girl’s ruined corpse was ahead of him. He inspected it more closely. He couldn’t identify the body.

Not far from the swing, he recognized two things Emily always had with her: pink cowboy boots and her backpack.

He now knew he was in the right park. He grieved over the girl’s remains, coming to grips with the likelihood that this was his little Emily. His soul bled over losing her. He dropped to his knees and locked his fingers behind his head, folding his elbows forward to cover his face. Tears squeezed from his eyes.

An urgent whisper whisked across his shattered spirit, like a light broom over heavy glass, just enough to get his attention. “Uncle Scott. Up here.” He lifted his head, recognizing Chase’s voice and aching to see Emily with him. Through slats of the decking two feet above him, he saw the fifteen-year-old son of his dead friend.

“Is Emily with you? Have you seen her?”

Even though the boy’s face was mostly obscured, he could read the expression. Emily had been there, and Chase believed she was dead.

“I’m so sorry, Uncle Scott. I couldn’t get to her. Those things came out of nowhere. There were a lot more of them then. There must have been a hundred of them. I was trapped on top of that climbing wall. It looked like she helped Katie get away from some of those zombie things. She probably saved Katie, the last time I saw them together—over there.”

Chase pointed in the direction of the dead girl and the pink cowboy boots.

It devastated Scott to have his hopes slightly raised and then dashed again. His body went numb. He walked closer to Chase on deadened legs, as if wading through cement, his mind bombarding him with images of his beautiful daughter, dead and broken just feet away.

“OK. OK. Let’s get you down.” He managed to gasp out.

“Uncle Scott, Katie is sick. Can you help me get her down?” Chase pleaded quietly.

Scott started to climb the structure and fell to the ground, holding his shoulder and writhing in pain. He whispered, “I can’t. You need to do it.”

Katie’s face appeared over the edge of the fort. Her sunken eyes were framed by hair matted with sweat and dirt.

In an unnecessary warning, Scott raised his finger to his lips. Then he beckoned to Katie, “Come here.”

Katie looked around the playground and saw the bloody remains of adults and children too ripped-apart to be reanimated. Zombies swayed and staggered nearby. Katie froze. Her lips began trembling. Chase grabbed Katie by the arm and lifted her up and over the top of the wooden railing.

Scott caught Katie by her knees as soon as she got close enough and lowered her to the ground. Katie held on for a moment until she gained her footing. She unlocked her arms and he guided her behind him, motioning her to keep an eye out while her brother came down.

Chase vaulted over the wall, landing as soundlessly as a cat. Scott hugged Katie and Chase, mourning his daughter and grieving for them, knowing even better now the full measure of sorrow they’d feel when they learned that their parents were gone.

Katie and Chase stared particularly at two quivering cadavers lying next to each other near the climbing wall where they had been marooned. Katie buried her face in her brother’s shoulder. Scott searched Chase’s face for an explanation. “Those two saved Katie,” Chase said, “and then jumped out of the fort and cleared a space for me to get down from that climbing wall. The zombies tore into them. They died so we could live.”

Scott examined Katie, searching for any sign of tremor that might signal the Thapp virus that meant the ultimate loss of her humanity. Even though she was feverish, she had no other indications of the apocalyptic plague.

Scott pictured his own little girl. Because he would never hold her again, he needed to hold on to something of hers.

Motioning for Chase to hold onto his sister, he walked carefully to the place where Emily’s pink cowboy boots were on the ground. Bloody handprints covered them. Tears streamed from his eyes, blurring his vision so much that he only saw two pink blobs on the ground. He sobbed quietly as he reached for them, allowing grief to escape for a moment.

Emily’s death pushed him to a crisis of his unnurtured faith. Either there was a God with a purpose and a design, in which case his daughter was home with Him, and he would get to see her again. Or there was not. This was the end of existence and Emily was gone forever. And so was Tom. And so was Ridley.

He chose to hang onto his fragile faith even if by a thread, giving a quick prayer for God to take care of his Emily and for strength beyond his own to carry on.

From underneath a nearby play structure, he heard a child crying. He held his breath, listening intently. He wanted it so badly to be her that he believed his desperate imagination had conjured the sound. Crouching down, he peered into the dark cavity.

Emily had scooped a deeper hole to hide in, pushing the dirt into mounds that obscured her from the eyes of hungry zombies. She’d squirmed around in her shirt, rubbing all sides of it in the soil. By hiding her face in her grimy hands, she blended into the black earth. The zombies gradually turned away, seeking others they could find and consume. Most of them were now rattling the fences of the tennis courts.

It had been quiet for some time. Emily felt all alone. She believed Katie and Chase were either dead or back at their house. She didn’t know how far the zombies might have wandered away. She’d fainted and had planted herself in the dirt for so long that she lost her sense of time. She didn’t know if she had been unconscious through an entire night or if she had missed hours… or minutes. She believed she’d never see her family again.

She heard shuddering sobs from someone. She couldn’t recognize who it was. However, she hadn’t detected breathing or any other vocalization from the horrific creatures that poked their fingers at her through the metal grating. She concluded it had to be a living person. Someone who could take her home!

She began to cry at the thought of escaping and dug past the small dirt piles she had made. She broke through at the same time her dad knelt down to investigate. She nearly screamed in joy, still far enough under the platform for her outburst to be muffled.

When Scott saw the face of his sweet girl, he scooped out handfuls of dirt and bark like a badger overdosed on speed. He pulled her out into the daylight and hugged her tightly, whispering over and over, “I found you. Thank God I found you.”

Catching movement in the corner of his eye, he snapped his head around. Chase had his finger pressed to his lips. The zombies were waking up.

CHAPTER 29

O
NE
S
MALL
G
RAVE

S
ilence was paramount. Sensing a change in the dozens of hollow men in the park, Scott shepherded the three kids to a more hidden place. With the fort at their backs, Katie and Emily looked ready to break into a run, but managed to keep still.

Scott whispered three questions at the speed of an auctioneer, fueled as much by euphoria as the urgency to get away. “Were any of you hurt by those things? Can you run? Are there others we can save?”

No, yes, and finally, from Chase, “We’re the only ones left.”

They fired their own questions back at him. “Where’s Mom?” “Are our parents safe?” “Why is this happening?” The three kids stared at him, breath suspended, wanting to know yet terrified of the answers.

Scott dreaded breaking the awful news to Chase and Katie, and it wasn’t the right time. Grave expression, half-truth, and misdirection were Scott’s allies. “Mom is fine. Everyone is at home. It’s bad, but we’re going to make it,” he assured them. The kids exhaled, their panic subsiding.

“We need to leave
right now
,” he whispered.

The bodies of the recently deceased were reanimating. Their heads shook as if trying to get water out of their ears. Jaws started moving, teeth were grinding. They seemed to be entering the final stages of their transformation. A handful of the cataleptics began shambling slowly in their direction.

Avenues of escape were cut off as more and more of the creatures were transformed. They needed a distraction to save them. Scott was torn between being the one to take the girls home and being the one to lure the hollow men away from them. Katie might need to be carried.

He studied Chase and made his decision.

Scott put his arm around him and pulled him closer, their foreheads almost touching. “Be strong. I have some important things to tell you. You need to know what’s at stake.”

Chase heard in Scott’s voice how serious this was.

“Your dad and I have always seen greatness in you. I’ve watched you grow up. I know the adult you will be—fearless, honorable, tough. I wish we had the years for you to develop into manhood, but the situation is too dire. We don’t have years. We have minutes, maybe only seconds for you to become that great man. I need it right now. Our lives depend on it.”

Scott held him by the shoulders more tightly before saying, “Your mom and dad are dead.” Chase took a sharp breath.

Scott continued without pausing, needing Chase to quell his grief for the moment. “You and Katie are all that’s left of your family. The two of you must survive this. You
will
survive this. And…I need you to save Emily. We can’t stay together. These things need to be drawn away while the others escape. I will do that part. You are going to get the girls home.”

Chase shook his head.

Scott pushed harder. “You saw me try to climb up to the fort. I’m hurt. I wrecked my shoulder this morning, and the pain is almost overpowering when I try to use it. I’m exhausted. If I try to get you and the girls away from here, we will all die. However, I
can
get to a bike over there.” Scott pointed to the parking lot.

“I’ll get these creatures to follow me. I’m counting on you to get the girls to my house. Will you do this?”

Chase swallowed without saying anything.

Scott asked again, more firmly, “Chase, will you get my daughter and your sister home?”

Determination flared in his eyes. “Yes. I will.”

Scott knew the young man would not fail. “It’s even more dangerous than you know. Your dad is one of
them
now.” He flicked his chin subtly in the direction of the nearest zombie. “You can’t tell that he’s changed. He looks almost normal. If you see him, you
must
run from him.”

A sliver of hope appeared in Chase’s expression, thinking Scott might be wrong about his dad.

“Chase, he
will
do worse than just kill you. I’ve seen him…” He finished his warning by pointing at the playground.

He pivoted him to the girls and gave him a last bit of instruction. “Don’t turn on our street. Go past it. Make sure no one sees you, then cut through the woods to my backyard. I left a chair for you to get yourselves over the fence quickly. Go to the patio door. Maddy will be watching for you.”