The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave (19 page)

Then he was assaulted by the memory of hollow men kneeling at Ridley’s corpse, elbows deep into her as they scooped her gore into their hands and then into their mouths. They seemed insatiably hungry too.

Scott felt sick. He spat out a gob of saliva thick with acid. He almost threw the roast away but reason took hold and returned to the house considering whether or not he could salvage the meat. He tossed the roast into the convection oven and set for the timer for thirty minutes at high heat. It would turn the pork into dried jerky but he couldn’t risk the diarrhea, abdominal pain, and vomiting that could come from eating raw pork. Besides, pork jerky would taste better than the fire-scorched rats they might have to resort to in the future.

If they were ready to go before the roast finished cooking, he would leave it behind.

Emily had taken the baby upstairs to sleep in her crib. Katie continued monitoring the news while downloading files to the mobile devices.

Laura, Chase, and Maddy had taken the passenger seats out of the Honda Odyssey and stowed the bench seat, opening up the large cargo space. For the kids, they’d built a claustrophobia-inducing tunnel framed by two-by-fours on a foundation of fully packed fiberglass coolers, plastic containers, and a large wire dog crate.

It would only delay the inevitable if the van stalled, but if zombies broke through the glass on the way out of town, it would slow them climbing in and pulling the kids to their mouths.

Scott and the other three began packing feverishly. Too many hands were involved, and they kept bumping into each other, so Chase went back inside to help Katie and Emily. Scott, Laura, and Maddy stacked supplies tightly above and around the tunnel, creating an artificial carapace to protect the kids who would hide inside.

They’d finished most of the work and were getting in each other’s way again. Laura and Maddy continued the jigsaw puzzle, filling gaps and finding room for a few final pieces. Things were nearly ready to go.

The Advil had worn off and shoulder pain slowed Scott down. He’d already placed a big bottle of the stuff in an appropriately prominent position—the cup holder on the driver’s side. He popped three into his mouth and swallowed. Though Scott never needed to wash down the rust-colored anti-inflammatories, he decided to indulge his craving for a cold beer. He wondered if it would be the last he would ever have.

As he sipped his beer, he started thinking about what the family cabin must look like now. He hadn’t been there in years; even then it was in poor shape. Suffering through summer or winter, if it ever came, would be brutal.

Even though he had his toolbox packed tightly in the van, there were other tools he had in the basement that could make bigger repairs easier: a hand operated winch, and a rope and pulley hoist.

As Scott put down his bottled beer and left the kitchen for the basement, the sliding glass door flew open, startling him. Chase fell inside. “Help! Uncle Scott!” His words sounded as if they had been spoken through slushy snow.

Streams of blood flowed from a wound on Chase’s cheek. The muscles in his body were tensed, the veins in his arms were engorged. His right hand held the mattock. Blood-drenched hair and bits of skin were splattered across the sharp black tip and bright yellow handle. “Katie is gone. Dad…” he trailed off and started to shake, then covered his face and cried.

Scott dashed out the door, shouting “Stay here! I’ll get her!” He ran to the back gate, passing the remains of his friend Tom splayed on the lawn. His skull was punctured in places. The fence door was wide open. He secured the gate and ventured to the edge of his front yard.

Katie had vanished.

He ran to the Park’s house first. Bits of Ridley’s body scattered the front lawn. Scott tried unsuccessfully to forget the sounds of her final cries. He twisted the knob on the front door. Locked. He rang the doorbell and knocked as loudly as he dared. He thought about jumping the fence into the backyard but he couldn’t waste a lot of time looking for Katie. If she was in her house she would hear him. If she was not in her house, she could be anywhere and getting farther away by the second.

Hearing nothing from inside the house, Scott leapt off the porch and ran down the street.

The neighborhood was overrun with hollow men. At the next corner, Scott saw a clump of them gathered around a kill. He edged closer, fearing that he would find them feeding on Katie.

When he approached the pack of feeding hollow men, he saw it couldn’t be her. There was too much meat and bone for it to be the body of a nine year old. A nearby black biker helmet rocked as it was jostled. Inside it, protected by the thermoplastic, was the intact head of the victim, its mouth frozen open in a scream.

The biker’s Harley leaned against a white car parked on the street. A smear of red paint began from the car’s rear bumper and disappeared behind the motorcycle’s frame. In a failed attempt to dodge the hollow men converging on him, the biker had struck the rear of the car and scraped along the side of it before being pulled off the Harley to his horrific demise. . Scott marveled the Harley was still upright against the car. He was also surprised he hadn’t picked up the distinctive sound of the loud engine.

Slipping past the gruesome buffet, he searched anxiously for a sign of Katie. She couldn’t have gotten far. He assumed she’d hidden. He gave himself a little distance from the zombie kill and risked shouting for her.

“Katie! It’s Uncle Scott. Let me know where you are!”

He had attracted all of the wrong attention and none of the right. Necrotic heads snapped in his direction. Calculating the amount of time he might have before the hollow men fell on him, he shouted again.

The advancing menace spread out; previously unseen zombies appeared from side lawns and backyards, closing ranks across the path he had counted on to get home. Much like a rising tide, they hadn’t surged in quickly, but a significant mass of them surrounded him before he realized.

He wracked his brain for an alternative that didn’t include trying front doors and praying that the house would be both unlocked and unoccupied. Pacing steadily away from the zombies that were herding him, he suddenly thought of one escape likely to still be open to him.

Between two of his neighbor’s houses were two fences that ran parallel. One neighbor had used chain link, the other planted a wooden fence that had fallen into disrepair over the years, sagging away from the other. This created a narrow gap that Scott believed he could slip through and the zombies likely could not.

Keeping the shambling corpses in view, he backed into the first neighbor’s yard. The creatures hemmed him in. He whipped around to run to the fenced area and promptly butted heads with the corpse of a sturdily-built, pajama-clothed black man. It had stalked Scott silently. If Scott hadn’t chosen that moment to turn, the creature’s teeth would already be ripping into his neck.

It had no brain to concuss, no sensation of pain that would rock the zombie back. It grasped Scott by his bruised shoulder. The zombie lowered its mouth to bite.

Scott slammed his right forearm underneath the dead man’s jaw with all his strength, delaying the snapping teeth from breaking into his skin. Meanwhile, the pack of ravenous zombies that had followed him into the yard were now just a short lurch away.

His arm weakened. He pressed his forehead against the creature’s cheek. It was sickeningly pulpy, like an overripe plum. It reminded Scott of how a spider’s venom liquefied flesh after one painful bite.

The scrape of his brow split the zombie’s skin, sloughing it off like a wet Band-Aid, making its head slide past Scott’s grip.

CHAPTER 31

F
OR
H
ER
, H
E
F
IGHTS
, A
ND
B
LEEDS

F
rom the back of the house, Laura heard Chase and Scott unintelligibly shouting at each other. She ran into the kitchen too late to see Scott leave and saw Chase weeping on the floor, his shoulders spasming with each sob. She pulled him onto a bench and used a wet towel to clean the blood from his arms and face.

He was the spitting image of his father. She studied him sitting with his head hung down, his shoulders shuddering, his body shaking. She froze in worry. It seemed like a repeat of Tom all over again. She’d seen through the window earlier that morning when Ridley walked up to Tom, sat, and put her arm around him just before he…

No. Chase was not his dad. He was a terrified boy whom she’d watched grow up from a toddler. A boy she had rocked before putting him down for a nap, who sat on her porch with her daughter every summer, licking homemade popsicles. Chase was all alone in the world. Laura was the only mother he had left.

She wiped the blood away, revealing the ugly bite already beginning to fester. Grey, spidery lines formed at the edges of his ripped skin. Closing her eyes, she put his head on her shoulder and rocked him, humming softly.

Chase’s sobs quieted and he took a breath. “The sliding door was open. When I went to close it, I saw Katie was standing on a lawn chair close to the fence. She was saying, ‘Daddy? Is that you Daddy? Uncle Scott said you died. Hello? Can you hear me?’

“Uncle Scott warned me, and I believed him, but I had to make sure. I mean, he told us Dad had turned into one of those things. What if it Scott made a mistake? What if my dad was trying to find us and didn’t see us back at our house? What if he needed help? I had to know.”

She nodded. This boy would end up dying simply because he missed his father. Guilt rested heavily on her for not helping him come to terms with it better before now. But she couldn’t possibly know the right thing to do at every given second. She grappled with the likelihood that there would be more of these wretched losses.

Chase paused, gingerly resettling the wet cloth against his torn skin. Laura imagined the stinging of raw nerves exposed in his wounded cheek. He went on, the words sounding like his mouth had been stuffed with cotton.

“I looked over the fence, too. Dad was just standing there. He was the only one around. I wanted him to come closer to see if he’d really turned into one of those things. He turned his head to stare at us, then turned away again. One side of his face was dirty. His hair was spiked with blood. He kept opening his mouth, except we couldn’t hear him. I thought maybe he was being careful, trying to keep those things from sneaking up on him.”

“Katie stepped down from the chair and must have lifted the latch on the gate. I didn’t see her do it. The door opened just a bit and Dad pushed his way in, and the door knocked Katie down. He stared at both of us—trying to decide who he wanted to get first, I guess. He still looked like my dad, but the way he walked and the emptiness in his eyes… he didn’t even recognize us.

“I still had this.” He pointed at the mattock. “I must have carried it outside without realizing. I slid myself over to shield Katie and started swinging it back and forth. I warned him to get away. I’ve been bigger than my dad since last year. I thought I could beat him if I needed to. He got around me. I didn’t think those things could go fast.”

“He almost got Katie, so I jumped on him and dragged him to the ground. He flipped around, grabbed at my legs and bit me. He couldn’t get through my Levis. I kicked at him until I finally got free. Before I could stand up, he got on top of me again. I had my arms against his shoulders so he couldn’t bite me again. But I couldn’t hold him. I was tired and afraid. He was really strong.”

At this point, Maddy glided into the kitchen from the garage. Her face was stricken with despair. She’d picked up enough to understand what had happened.

“While my dad fought me, Katie came up behind him and began hitting him with her fists. She kept yelling ‘Dad, stop. It’s us. You have to stop.’ He seemed to relax, as if he’d realized he was doing something wrong. He started to get off me. When the pressure came off my chest, I thought he might go after Katie again. I tried to get up. He turned around, held my head in his hands and bit my cheek. I got away from him.

“He chewed on the piece of my cheek that he bit off. It hurt so bad. I was so angry. My brain went all fuzzy. I hit him on the head with this.” He lifted the mattock. “And then I hit him again. And again.

“Dad is dead. I think he—or it—probably killed my mom. He tried to kill Katie. And now, I’m…”

He stopped speaking. He wasn’t ready to say it. Laura couldn’t bear to hear it; she made soothing noises and patted his head until he composed himself enough to continue.

“I saw Katie’d run away, and I shouted for her to come back. I ran to the driveway and yelled again. I didn’t see her, and that’s when I ran inside for help.”

Chase swallowed and glanced around. “Where is Uncle Scott? Why aren’t they back?” He was on the verge of total collapse. “Is my sister gone too? Are we all going to die?”

Laura tried reassuring the inconsolable boy. “Scott will find her, Chase. I know he will.”

She pressed his face to her shoulder again and rubbed his back. In addition to calming him, it also kept Chase from seeing the fear in Laura’s eyes. It was true. Her husband should have been back long before now.

CHAPTER 32

R
UIN
S
EIZE
T
HEE

M
addy snapped. She had been standing by helplessly the entire day. She hadn’t been able to do anything other than pack the van. Now she was losing the boy she would love for eternity. Her lips were tight with anger; her body trembled with frustration.

As soon as Chase finished his story, she decided to exact punishment on the carnivorous dead still hunting her family. Undetected, she picked up the mattock Chase had used to kill the zombie that used to be his father. She stormed upstairs, a ruse to misdirect anyone who might be tracking her movements in the house. She climbed through her bedroom window, lowered herself to the garage roof and then dropped to the ground.