Hollowland Read online

  “I don’t know what that means,” Harlow replied, still bravely meeting Vega’s gaze. “You say things all the time, and I don’t know what any of it means.”

  “It is the end of days,” Vega said.

  “Well, obviously,” Lazlo laughed dryly, but he stopped short when Vega glared at him.

  “‘I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth.’” Vega wasn’t speaking to us so much as preaching by then.

  “Everything you see around us, that is the fourth horseman.” Vega gestured broadly to the barren landscape, knowing somewhere out there were legions of zombies.

  “So what happens next?” Harlow asked, and I couldn’t tell if she believed anything Vega was saying, or if she was just asking questions to kill time.

  “‘There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth,” Vega continued.

  “We need to go,” I said, more forcefully than I had before. “We need to get somewhere before sundown. So, let’s pack up and get out of here.”

  “But I’m still tired!” Harlow protested, and that’s probably why she had been engaging Vega. The longer they talked, the longer she went without walking.

  “What’s going on?” Lia asked, returning from her bathroom break.

  “We’re leaving.”

  I tossed my beef jerky wrapper on the side of the road, since littering didn’t seem like that much of a problem when most of the world’s population was dead. I slung my bag over my shoulder again, carefully wedging the gun behind me.

  “Can’t we wait just a little bit longer?” Harlow begged as everyone packed up

  “Five more minutes won’t make your feet feel better,” I said. “And I told you to stop wearing those stupid shoes.” I nodded down to her oversized combat boots.

  “They protect my feet.” Harlow admired them lovingly.

  “By destroying them?” I scoffed

  “Come on.” Lazlo held his hand out to her. He had already gotten to his feet and put his bag over his shoulder. “I’ll give you a piggy back ride, since it’s my fault we’re walking anyway.”

  Harlow looked at his hand, almost too excited to trust him, then tentatively, she put her hand in his and let him help her up.

  I watched skeptically as he hoisted her onto his back. Lazlo was muscular, but he wasn’t a big guy. Admittedly, Harlow couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds, if that.

  With a surprising level of ease, he lifted her onto his back, and she wrapped her arms around his neck. I hadn’t seen her look quite that happy ever before, and I doubted I would again.

  Harlow was too content to say anything, so she lapsed into silence as we walked. Ripley stayed behind, napping in the brush, but she’d catch up eventually. She always did.

  I was afraid that Vega would continue with her sermon, so I tried to make small talk. Unfortunately, I wasn’t very good at it, but Lia picked up my slack. She talked amicably with Blue and Lazlo about everything under the sun, and that was okay with me.

  The flat landscape gave way to soft hills, and the desert was getting increasingly greener. It was still early in the afternoon when we found a small brown A-frame sitting right off the road. We could see a few more houses in the distance, meaning that we were probably getting close to a town.

  I didn’t really want to camp here, since it was still too early to stop for the day, but it might have supplies we could use. We didn’t know what was inside, so I suggested that Lazlo and the girls wait outside while Blue and I went inside to raid the place.

  Harlow didn’t care what we did as long as she didn’t have to walk anymore, and she plopped on the front lawn the instant we stopped. Vega went a few feet away to kneel and pray, while Lazlo and Lia stayed close by the house, keeping an eye out for roving zombies.

  The smell hit me the instant I pushed open the front door. The stench inside the house had become too familiar – rotting food and death. Blood splattered the walls, and a human arm lay on the floor in the front room. The arm looked like it had been there a while, and I couldn’t hear any zombie groans.

  I went into the house further, and that’s when things got weird.

  At first, the place seemed trashed in the way everything did after zombies tore through it. But then I got the impression it was more than random ransacking. In the kitchen, all the cupboards had been opened, so only perishables were left.

  A raccoon lay dead under the table, but it hadn’t been mauled by zombies. It’d taken a bullet to the head, and not that long ago, based on the total lack of maggots.

  “People were here,” Blue said.

  “Pretty recently too,” I nodded.

  “That’s a good thing… right?”

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. I looked out the window, where Lia laughed at something and Harlow plucked at a flower in the overgrown lawn. “This place has been gutted, though. We should move on.”

  “We’re not that far from a town anyway,” Blue said. He moved towards the door, but I stayed put, surveying the carnage. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I lied.

  Something about the state of the house gave me a bad vibe, but I couldn’t place it. Zombies had trashed it, and other survivors had gotten supplies. That wasn’t any different from what we did.

  They had killed a raccoon, but that wasn’t that big of a deal. It’s not what I would’ve done, but I didn’t always make the best decisions.

  “We might be getting close to the quarantine.” Blue tried to alleviate my anxiety. “Maybe soldiers were here.”

  “Maybe,” I said, but I didn’t think so, at least not the part about soldiers doing this. “Come on. Let’s go.”

  We went to the front door, and I stopped short. When we had come in, we hadn’t looked at the back of the door, but I did now. Someone had scrawled Helter Skelter across it, using thick, poisonous zombie blood as ink.

  A chill ran down my spine. I didn’t understand the message, but someone thought it was a good idea to play with infected blood. That was never good.

  “What the hell does that mean?” I asked.

  “It’s a song by the Beatles.” Blue paled. “And in the Charles Manson murders, after they brutally murdered people, they wrote ‘Helter Skelter’ on the refrigerator in blood.”

  “Somebody’s emulating Charles Manson?” I asked as the knot tightened in my stomach.

  “No,” Blue said unconvincingly. “They probably did it as a joke.”

  “Real funny.”

  Blue didn’t want to stand around and talk about it anymore, and I followed him outside. Lazlo asked how it went, and I told him the house was empty. Blue and I failed to mention the note on the door or anything about people being here already. There was no point in freaking them out.

  Lazlo stopped carrying Harlow, but she didn’t seem to mind. The clustering houses of a town was up ahead, and she perked up at the sight of them. Her pace quickened so much, I had to tell her to slow down. I didn’t want anybody in front of me, not when I didn’t know what lie ahead.

  Before we even reached the city limits, we could see it was in shambles. Garbage was everywhere, the lighter things blowing around in the wind. It smelled rank, like rotten banana peels and sour milk.

  A burnt shell of a car sat in the middle of the road. A zombie head was mounted on the front, like a hood ornament. It’s swollen, greenish tongue hung limply from its mouth.

  “This is what the outside world is like?” Lia asked. Her ashen skin blanched further, and she gaped at the mess around her.

  While the rest of the world had been falling apart, she had been hiding in a basement. This was her first time seeing exactly what had become of everything

  “This is worse than anywhere I’ve seen.” Lazlo’s expression mi
rrored hers. Like Lia, he had been spared from most of this, but to me, it looked about par for the course.

  Ripley made guttural sounds and moved in closer to us, but we’d all moved closer together, walking in a slow moving lump.

  The town had been disassembled. Siding had been ripped from houses. Blood and dismembered bodies littered the streets. A pile had been set on fire on a front lawn. It had been burning too long for me to tell what it was, but it smelled of hair and tires. A dog gnawed on a carcass too disfigured to be recognizable, but it took off when it saw Ripley.

  I pulled my gun out, and Blue did the same. When Harlow saw us draw our weapons, she made a frightened whimper.

  I didn’t like that she didn’t have a gun or anyway to defend herself, that none of us did except for Blue and me, but we didn’t have enough weapons. I would’ve given Harlow or Lazlo mine, but I could do more good with a gun than they could.

  “Just stay together,” I said.

  Lia and Harlow held hands, huddled together, and Harlow reached out to take Vega’s hand, including her in their circle. Lazlo stayed close to them, and he picked up a metal rod, giving himself a makeshift weapon.

  Over the past few months, I had learned how to fight against manic raging monsters. Pvt. Beck spent hours teaching me how to shoot, how to fight, but all his lessons were designed with zombies in mind. They were the enemy. So the one thing I was unequipped for was something logical and intelligent.

  When a bullet whizzed past my head, so close I could feel the breeze on my temple, and blasted through the window on a house across the street, I knew we were in trouble.

  Lia screamed, and she and Harlow ran away from the shattering window, assuming that was where the shot came from. But they were actually running towards the shooter.

  I yelled to stop them, but I realized too late that we were already surrounded.

  – 11 –

  A red Toyota riddled with bullet holes sat on the side of the road, and I rushed at Harlow, Lia, and Vega, pushing them into the side of the car. Ripley disappeared, hiding in the chaos. Blue and Lazlo stayed on the other side of the street and jumped behind a bloody sofa that had been left on the curb.

  The air was rattled with the sound of gunfire, none of it coming from Blue or me.

  Nobody had closed in on us yet, but I saw them running across the street or repositioning themselves amongst the garbage they used as barriers. I couldn’t be sure how many there were, but I had seen at least three, not counting the mystery shooter who’d nearly blown my head off. He was the one doing all of the shooting so far.

  Our assailants appeared to be mostly men. They weren’t army, but they had on military based outfits, with a hobo twist. Some kind of army surplus black and gray camouflage with dirty, ragged black civilian clothes layered with it.

  They came from the north side, so we could either retreat back the way we came or go over to the side where Blue and Lazlo were hiding.

  Bullets peppered the car, making a horrible tin sound as they bounced off. Harlow covered her hands over her head and screamed. I crouched next to her, aiming my gun at the street in front of us.

  When one of the men ran across the road, I fired, hitting him in the leg. He pulled the trigger on his gun, shooting emptily into the air.

  “Go!” I shouted, waving my arm for the girls to run across the street to the couch where Blue and Lazlo hid.

  Harlow was too curled up to notice me, but Lia was paying attention, so she grabbed Harlow and darted over, with Vega close by them.

  As soon as they started running, I stood up and looked over the Toyota, searching for the guy who had been shooting us. After I shot one of his friends, he stopped shooting. I didn’t know where he was hiding, except the bullets were coming from higher, so I just started shooting out all the windows in the second story of the houses.

  I took a step back, walking backwards to the couch. The guy I had shot earlier sat in the middle of the road, nursing his leg wound. Nobody came out to help him, but in the bushes nearby, somebody started shooting at me.

  Blue shot at him. I’m not sure if he hit him or not, but I ran backwards, still pointing my gun at the houses, and nearly fell over the couch.

  “Why are they shooting at us?” Lia asked, her arm wrapped tightly around Harlow.

  I was catching my breath, so I just shook my head. I didn’t have an answer anyway, but Blue exchanged a look with me. If these people had anything to do with the Helter Skelter we saw earlier, they were probably doing it just because they could.

  Other than the injured guy moaning, the street had fallen silent, and I didn’t trust it.

  “What are we gonna do?” Lazlo asked in a hushed voice.

  “Shoot and run,” I said.

  I went through my bag, pulling out the two clips I’d taken from the dead soldier at the quarantine. I didn’t know how many bullets were left in the gun, but I had a feeling that I’d be out by the end of the day. Assuming I was even still alive at the end of the day.

  “Run? Where?” Lia’s eyes widened.

  “That way,” I nodded towards the house in front of us. “Don’t go inside. Just run past it, and keep running.” I shoved the clips in my back pocket for easier access, and I turned to Blue. “When I start shooting, they run. You go with and cover them.”

  “You’re coming with us, right?” Lazlo knelt on the ground right next to me, and his dark eyes met mine.

  “I’ll be right behind you.” I didn’t know if that was true or not, so I looked away from him. I had to get them running, and I’d hold off the assholes as long as I could.

  “When should we run?” Vega asked. She looked at me evenly, her voice and posture cool and calm. My heart raced so hard, I thought it might explode, but she looked the same as she always did.

  Somebody fired, and a bullet burst through the back of the couch, right between Lazlo and my head. Stuffing exploded out around us, and I decided that now was as good a time as any.

  “Now!” I commanded and jumped up.

  I kept most of my body hidden behind the couch, although I’m not sure how well it worked as a shield, and rested my gun on the back of it.

  When I aimed my gun, I heard everyone behind me start running, with Harlow screaming again. A few feet in front of me, one of the men in ratty camouflage walked towards the couch, pointing a gun right at my head.

  Without even thinking, I fired off three rounds into his chest, emptying my chamber. Blood darkened his shirt. He collapsed back on the road, and I ducked back behind the couch.

  My hands trembled when I switched out the clips, so it took longer than it should have. I had just killed a man, and I had never done that before. Not a real person, just zombies.

  But they were still shooting at me, so I swallowed it back.

  Blue and the others had already disappeared around the house. I just had to keep these bastards back, and then I could catch up to them. I took a deep breath and took my post back over the couch.

  A glimmer of light from the roof three houses down alerted me to the sniper. I shot twice at him, and then he slipped, falling off the roof and onto the ground. I couldn’t see any of the other men, and everything fell silent again.

  Nobody else made a move, and I wasn’t even certain there was anybody else to make a move. I waited a beat to see if anybody came out, and I had to take my chance and run. I got up and took off around the house.

  I didn’t really know where they went so I had to think like Lia and Lazlo, since they were probably leading the way. Knowing them, they would take the easiest, quickest way, thinking the faster and farther they could get away would be best. That was probably true, so I took the paths of least resistance.

  After traversing a few dilapidated yards and junk filled alleys, my side screamed in pain and my lungs burned for oxygen. I kept trying to push my legs, but I couldn’t anymore. I stopped, gasping for breath, when I made it to a deserted street.

  Based on the older brick buildings lining the
street, I guessed this was the Main Street. Quaint, with lampposts and destroyed flowerpots lining the streets.

  At one time, there had been banners, proclaiming this “The Best Little Town in the West,” but they were torn and stained with thick, greenish blood. Windows were broken out, all the stores had been looted, and the occasional limb or body part lay discarded about. A crow cawed, flapping its wings as it settled more comfortably on the back of a wooden bench.

  I walked slowly, a hand pressed to the stitch in my side as I tried to catch my breath.

  “Remy!” Harlow shouted, her small voice echoing off the buildings downtown.

  She clamored out of a broken store window down the street, waving her arms to get my attention. The sign above the door had once advertised a barbecue place with a folksy name, but someone had written “kill all the piggies” in goopy red letters. The same writing Blue and I had seen in the house outside of town.

  “Remy!” Harlow hurried towards me. “Are you okay?”

  “Harlow, go back inside,” I said.

  Just because nobody had tried to kill us yet didn’t mean they weren’t around, and I would feel better with her safely waiting inside a building. I should have sped up to chase in her inside, but my legs felt like rubber.

  “Harlow, stay here!” Lia leaned her head out the window.

  They were all yelling when they should be quiet. When Harlow kept coming towards me, refusing to listen to either of us, Lia climbed out of the window to get her. Maybe she sensed that there was still something dangerous in the air.

  The crow flapped its wings again, and I looked over at it. I heard a clicking, sounding oddly loud thanks to the buildings, and some part of me knew what it was but couldn’t place it.

  Suddenly, the crow exploded in a burst of black feathers. I never heard the gun go off, but the sniper had thought to use a silencer.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the light glinting off the top of the building on the corner. Harlow jumped back, startled by the bird, but she didn’t move. Then I heard the clicking sound again.

  “Run!” I shouted and sprang into action.