The Hollow Men (Book 1): Crave (23 page)

“It’s OK, son. We know you are doing the right thing. We’re fighting it because we love you and we’re having a hard time accepting it.”

Groaning in the wood framing the garage door added more urgency.

Scott rallied the family to the van. “Here is how we’re going to do it. Both Chase and I will clear the way for the van. When it’s clear, slow down. Don’t stop. If there is time, I’ll pile into the front passenger seat with Maddy. If there isn’t time, I’ll jump on the roof and hang on the luggage rack while Mom gets us out of the neighborhood.”

The van practically bulged outward from the mass of provisions. Frozen foods and icepacks carpeted the floor of the tunnel to house the younger girls. They hoped the cold would keep them from feeling the otherwise unbearable heat inside.

Just as Emily took refuge there, Laura changed her mind, telling Maddy to hold Autumn in the front seat.

“No,” Scott said.

“I want the baby in my sight at all times,” Laura said.

“You need to have your arms and legs free in case things go wrong. Putting the baby in back is going to be the safest situation for everyone.” While it was a logical argument, the true reason Scott resisted was remembering the tiny baby boy swaddled in a blue blanket lying under the earth in a makeshift coffin.

Laura gave in and handed the baby to Emily. They closed off the tunnel with a box of supplies and shut the rear door.

Scott rushed Laura to the driver’s door. He held her close and whispered, “I love you with my whole soul, Laura. The girls are the only other people I could love as much. Promise me. If you need to leave me behind to save the girls, get them to a safe place.”

“I promise I will take care of our girls. But this is not goodbye. I have a feeling we’re going to be OK.”

Scott didn’t share her optimism. He had a sense that his family would be going on this journey without him.

Before she climbed into the driver’s seat, Scott pressed a rough drawing into her hand: directions to the family cabin. “No arguing, Laura. Please. Let’s go to the cabin and ride this out.”

She hugged him one more time and strapped herself in behind the steering wheel.

Maddy and Chase stood together. Maddy’s head was down. Scott saw more twitches in the boy’s musculature. The infection was taking over, the craving for human muscle and bone would soon appear.

Scott didn’t like how close Maddy stood to Chase. Suddenly, before Scott could react, Chase pulled Maddy close and lowered his mouth to hers.

A first kiss. A last kiss. Tender and pure.

Maddy reached her hand to his face. Chase winced when she touched him. Her fingers came away sticky from the blood on the bandage covering his cheek.

Chase wrenched himself from Maddy and turned away from her. After a pause, she climbed into the front seat of the van. Chase’s voice had a strange hollowness when he said, “I’m ready.”

He wore a grave yet peaceful expression.

Tiny tics disrupted his features every few seconds. He didn’t have long.

Hollow men shuffled outside, their bodies audibly dragging across the garage door. Inquisitive hands pushed on the door. Scott had no idea how many grasping fingers would stretch for them as soon as they lifted the door open. They needed the driveway to be clear when the van reversed out of the driveway. Slamming into a pack of zombies would bog them down, tires slipping on the entrails of the dead and ending their escape.

Scott used his smart phone to activate his outdoor speakers in the backyard. “Going the Distance” by Cake played loudly, the deep bass thrumming. He loved that song.

The music got muffled. Tapping on the garage door stopped. Scott hoped it meant the hollow men were drawn away by the music. It made him love the song even more.

They couldn’t afford the sustained cacophony of the garage-door opener. Chase reached the door handle ahead of Scott. “Let me open it, Uncle Scott. You’ll be vulnerable while you draw the door all the way up. Let me go out doing something to save the people I care about most.”

Scott couldn’t bring himself to deny him. They traded places. Chase would open the door. Then they would stand side by side and do what needed to be done to clear the driveway and to get the girls to safety.

With the crowbar lifted in his hand and the mattock ready near Chase, Scott stood close to him, ready for action as soon as the door opened

Chase grasped the release handle that disengaged the garage door from the chain drive. It would give a loud snap when the locking pin slid free, getting the attention of walking cadavers they had just tricked away, but it would allow them to throw the garage door up quickly. Chase counted, his chin nodding.

Three… two… one…

Chase gave the handle a firm yank, creating the pop they expected when it came free. He hefted the large metal door. It clattered its way to the top, screeching.

As soon as the door opened, a corpulent female zombie wearing a muumuu with a bright yellow floral print clasped Chase’s forearm, giving him a vicious bite. He yelped in pain. Seeing Chase in added pain sent Scott into a rage. He couldn’t stand seeing the boy suffer any more.

Scott jabbed the point of his crowbar through her temple, penetrating with an audible crunch. He and Chase bent and unceremoniously rolled the heavy corpse out of the driveway.

Three more dead neared, advancing quickly. Scott and Chase confronted them even before the massive fully dead body finished rolling out of the way. They dispatched two of them with their repurposed tools. Chase swung his mattock with a quick, hammer-like strike. Scott jabbed the point of the crowbar with another slushy crunch of bone.

The third one, a pimply-faced, red-headed teenager, lunged past the mattock’s swings and gripped Chase’s left wrist, holding his arm the way a starving man would hold a Subway sandwich. Chase drove his other fist into the side of the thing’s head. The teen thrust past Chase’s punch and sank his gnashing incisors into Chase’s bicep. He screamed again and shook it off, losing a crescent-shaped wedge of his arm in the process. He then plunged the point of his killing tool sideways into his attacker’s temple.

After clearing the immediate space next to the garage, the yard and driveway were unexpectedly clear. Slapping and rustling noises came from the backyard. Scott signaled Laura to reverse out of the garage and down the driveway.

The ruined backyard fence spat out another small wave of ghouls. More creatures were bottlenecked at the opening, fighting each other to reach the living meat in front of them. Horrible faces, three or four deep, queued at the opening.

Scott’s hope lifted. They were going to make it!

Laura was nearly at the end of the driveway. The front yard was no longer clear. A throng of hollow men flooded the lawn, spilling into the driveway between Scott and Laura. They came so noiselessly and swiftly it was as if they had risen from the earth. Enticed by the noise of the garage and the car, zombies emerged from the other side of the house, the street, and other homes nearby. The horde approached, moving silently.

Scott had seen this play out many times today. It was a game of numbers. The sea of living dead inevitably overcame everything. Scott recalled the screams of his neighbors. They overlapped in his mind and swelled in chorus, a discordant requiem.

No. He wasn’t going to make it.

Afraid his wife and daughters would also be swept up in the killing tide of walking corpses, he frantically waved her away and roared, “Just go! Go! Save our kids!”

He lost sight of her when the creatures packed in around him. They made no sound. Only the brush of clothing, the press of bodies and the scuffle of shoes came from them.

Over the quiet, Scott heard the van idling. Glass breaking.

He gathered a scream from the depths of his soul, “Laura! Go!”

By then, another host of undead had been attracted to Scott’s yells. He tried to pick up the sound of the engine speeding his family to safety. The multitude of whispering clothing created a white noise machine.

He resigned himself to the likelihood he would never know in this life whether or not they had gotten away. He prayed they were safe.

CHAPTER 40

F
ROM
T
HE
T
HRONG

T
he hungry crowd jostled each other, jaws quivering, as they flocked to their anticipated kill. Scott would soon be overwhelmed.

Fifteen-year-old Chase gave all he had against the horde at Scott’s flank while a platoon of them advanced on Scott from ahead. His coordination failed. His awareness flickered in and out. In flashes, he realized the zombies were losing interest in him. He shouted, “It’s happening, Uncle Scott. I can’t think. I’m…”

The damning bites that tattooed the undead skin were more visible to Scott now. Onyx-colored lines radiated from the ghastly wounds. On every rip in the flesh, a grey-green mucous appeared that resembled a waterlogged scab. The stench of decay emanated from the puss-hued patches.

By now, Chase would be in the knotted group eager to begin their grisly banquet. He held the crowbar on his left shoulder, at-bat, waiting for the zombies to pitch themselves at him. A buzzing noise floated in the air behind him; tinny music drifted nearby. Just in time, he recalled the morning’s encounter with the blond woman running in her bright pink shoes. Blindly, Scott struck out behind him with the iron bar, felt a thud, and spun around.

“Blondie” had been pretty until something caught up with her. Now its face was horribly mutilated. Most of its skull was visible: maxilla, mandible and cheekbones were framed by raggedly torn skin. Ear buds blared as they bounced loosely against its clothing. It had no ears left to hold them. Where its nose had been, only the black hole of its nasal cavity remained. Its bones were scored with teeth marks. Similar marks covered its body. Meshes of the fetid, translucent webbing were filming over the many gashes on its skin.

It was impaled on his crowbar, the metal crook pressed against the inner wall of the creature’s ribs, keeping him out of reach of its grasping hands. Its mouth quivered, teeth clacking in eagerness to rend Scott’s flesh. He kicked it free and dispatched it with a backhanded swing of the bar. As it crumpled to the driveway, Scott noted the pink shoes were inexplicably pristine. The tinny music played on.

A crush of hollow men circled, jostling each other like a cackle of hyenas cornering their kill. Bill’s corpse hovered just behind the front line, gazing hungrily at Scott. It remained safely outside the range of Scott’s crowbar while close enough to be among the first to feast. Not wanting to be in zombie Bill’s chow line, Scott determined to take him out if possible.

Neither angry nor afraid, Scott was at peace with his fate. He breathed a goodbye to his girls, to this earth, to this life, and resolved to keep fighting until there was too little of his flesh left to reanimate. He speared a few faces with the tip of his crowbar, giving him a little satisfaction but no hope.

Bony hands gripped him, wrenching his left arm outward. Teeth gnawed at his bruised shoulder, grinding away at the tough fabric of his coat. He jerked his arm free, jabbed the crowbar into two more foreheads, turned the bar horizontal, and swung it forward into the crowd, knocking a handful of them off their feet. Another line of living corpses filled the gap.

The thing-that-was-Bill was nowhere in sight.

A ravenous mouth delivered another painful, bruising bite on Scott’s leg. Ski pants thwarted teeth from reaching his skin and muscle. He whipped his leg away, stomping and kicking at the head of the crawling ghoul at his feet.

He couldn’t see daylight through the press of torsos, limbs, and heads of the flesh eaters. He had fought the good fight. The end had come.

CHAPTER 41

R
ESOLVED
T
O
B
E
F
REE

N
ot done yet, Chase wrested back control of his body for one last push. He streaked from behind, slicing through the horde, clearing an opening wide enough for Scott to slip through. Chase charged forward like an offensive tackle.

Scott plunged into the opening, danced laterally, spun, and dove left and right. Hands clutched the folds in his heavy ski coat, slowing him down and almost pulling him to the earth. He unzipped his coat and slipped it off. Miraculously, he’d made it through the mob of reanimated corpses.
Deliverance!

When he broke free, he glanced behind, hoping to find Chase wading to freedom. The boy had vanished from view.

He hadn’t known if the girls had escaped. He was indescribably relieved to see the van had gone, and at the same time concerned to see broken glass on the road. He didn't regret telling his wife to go, though he longed to see her one more time. He pictured Laura zooming up in the van, shouting at him to get in. His life was joyless without her and the kids.

His overrun property gave him no path of escape, so he clumsily mounted the fence into his neighbor's backyard. He had bounced over so many fences that day that he felt like a worn out jack-in-the box. He barely had the energy to make it. He climbed to a tree house, lowering himself down to the derelict garage near the hoarder’s house that had almost become his tomb earlier that day.

He needed to catch up with them, quickly. Laura was unlikely to make it to the old cabin in the deep forest. Even with directions, his wife would be reluctant to take the chance of getting lost. Her phone had GPS but it would be useless without the cabin location to punch into it. Besides, she hadn’t wanted go there in the first place. She would have her own ideas about places to seek refuge. The historic stone house Tom had suggested? Her brother’s place? Somewhere else?

If he didn't reach his family soon, he wouldn’t know where to start looking for them and he would face the very real possibility that he might never find them again.

He badly needed a car. Every minute that passed carried his family another mile away from him.