Hollowland Read online

  The car was hidden in an old carriage house in the woods behind the compound. The marauders had a tendency to damage or take anything they wanted, so London and Sam stored and hid anything of value. They rarely used vehicles anyway, since it made them more conspicuous to marauder attacks.

  Sam led us through the intricately linked hallways, so we exited through an entirely different set of doors than the ones we came in. Like the cellar doors, a few strategically placed bushes all but blocked the doorway.

  When I slid by, the branches stung at my skin, making me acutely aware of the ramifications of having an open wound. I had gone out first, after Sam, and I pushed the branches back with my arm, waiting until everyone else made their way out.

  A startling chill nipped at the air, the first real chill I’d felt in our travels. Time moved differently than it had before, but fall had to be arriving. Dense fog settled around us, making it hard to see, and everything I heard sounded muffled and far away. The circumstances weren’t ideal for an escape plan, but I didn’t want to wait any longer.

  “It’s over that way,” Sam pointed to an area to the east of us. With the fog, the trees looked like shadows, since I could only see the silhouettes. “In those trees.”

  “You’re not coming with us?” Harlow asked.

  “I’ve got things to do,” Sam replied noncommittally. Maybe that was true, but based on his quick exit back into the compound, I bet he felt it too. Something just felt… off. Like an electricity in the air. Uneasiness seemed to set in, and even Blue didn’t look right.

  We walked towards the car, and I tried to pretend like nothing felt strange to me. But we moved in a huddled mass, and at a much slower pace. Part of that was because we were unfamiliar with the unstable terrain. Broken bottles, car parts, random garbage, even a dead zombie or two littered our path to the carriage house.

  “How far away is this thing? I’m getting cold,” Harlow said. I glanced down at her and saw her bony knees were covered in goose bumps.

  “Almost there,” I said as if I really knew. The closer we got to the trees, the farther away they seemed to be. The fog created an unnerving optical illusion. “It wouldn’t kill you to wear pants.”

  “Just because the world is full of zombies doesn’t mean I need to dress like one,” she shot back, and Lazlo laughed under his breath.

  “She has a point,” Lazlo agreed. I would’ve glared at him, but I heard something and stopped short. “What? What’s wrong?”

  “Shh,” Blue held up his hand and cocked his head, listening.

  I held my breath as the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Harlow’s breath came out in shallow rasps, and from the corner of my eye, I saw her slide her small hand into Lazlo’s. For his part, he scanned the area around us.

  Then I heard it. A low, hollow rumbling, but the blanketing effect of the fog and the echoing from the trees made it impossible to tell where it was coming from or how far away. It came again, this time louder, and another one joined in. They were death groans, and they were increasing in decibel and number.

  “Here.” I pulled my gun out. I flicked off the safety and handed Lazlo the ammunition clip, praying he knew how to use it.

  “What?” Lazlo’s eyes widened, but I didn’t have time to explain.

  Blue had a shotgun London had given us, and Harlow had the handgun. That left me the only one unarmed, but the branch on the bush had left a nasty scratch down my arm, a thin line of blood on my tanned skin. Chances were I wouldn’t make it out of a zombie fight uninfected, so I didn’t want to waste a gun on a lost cause.

  I grabbed a long, bent pipe from the ground. It had belonged to a car, but right now, it looked strong and heavy enough to ward off a few zombies. I took another step forward, with Blue and Lazlo flanked close behind me.

  As if materializing in front of us, the dark, lurching shadows appeared in the gray fog.

  One of them came into view where I could actually see its eyes, all swollen and yellow. But once I could see it, it could see me. It gave a long, low howl, and then charged toward me, moving at the crazy speed that only a newly turned zombie was capable of. Lazlo fired his gun, and astonishingly, it hit the zombie right in the chest.

  Lazlo may have killed one zombie, but we had been spotted.

  – 13 –

  Harlow couldn’t aim at all, so I positioned myself directly in front of her. When a zombie ran at me, I swung the pipe like a baseball bat. Its head, which should’ve been cracking bone, squished more like a rotting pumpkin two weeks after Halloween. An eyeball shot out, flying into Lazlo’s chest, where it landed with a sickening splat.

  Harlow started screaming, and I’d only killed one zombie.

  “Get to the car!” I shouted at her.

  Lazlo and Blue shot at anything that came our way, but the zombies just kept on coming. I remembered what it had been like at the army quarantine, when there had been an endless supply of zombies that had managed to take out a whole troop of soldiers.

  Another zombie lurched towards me, and I jabbed the pipe straight through its chest, slamming it down onto the ground. Its swollen tongue lulled out of its mouth, and it spit foamy saliva at me.

  I stood on its stomach to leverage myself when I yanked the pipe out, and its belly squished under my foot. When I did pull the pipe out, an enlarged, greenish heart came attached at the end.

  I would’ve taken the time to marvel at how disgusting that was but I heard Lazlo cursing behind me. More importantly, I heard him but not the gun. I whirled around to see Lazlo, trying desperately to reload the gun, as two zombies made their way towards him.

  The first of the zombies only had one leg, and the other zombie looked like it was dying, so he had a small window of time. Blue and Harlow had backed off, heading towards the carriage house, and didn’t see how close Lazlo was to being eaten.

  I raced over to him with a fat zombie at my heels. I stopped abruptly, shoving the pipe out behind me. The zombie couldn’t think to stop and impaled himself on it. Unfortunately, it only stabbed into his enormous gut, slowing him down but not killing him.

  The thing about zombies, and this one in particular, is that they didn’t look fat so much as swollen. Like someone had taken a normal sized person, and then pumped them full of water so their skin stretched like a bloated animal carcass.

  From the wound around the pipe, the zombie’s belly drained that weird greenish, sludgy blood, along with some other liquid that reminded me of runny pus. Without thinking about how disgusting the mess would be, I slashed the pipe along his stomach, slicing him open.

  It was like popping an overgrown zit. Liquid sloshed out of him, and I jumped back to keep from getting it on me. I’m not sure if the zombie was dead, but he fell to the ground, and for now, that was good enough for me.

  When I turned back to Lazlo, the older, dying zombie towered over him. Its face has shriveled beyond gender recognition, its eyes sunken almost completely in. It opened its mouth, preparing to chew off Lazlo’s face, and even though it only had four or five good teeth, they were long and sharp. Lazlo, being a complete genius, was still trying to fix the gun.

  I chucked my pipe at the zombie, throwing it like a spear. Had it been human or even a newer zombie, the pipe would’ve cracked the skull and ricocheted off. But because this one was so old, and its bones and muscles had started to gelatinize, the pipe tore through its head. Brain matter, blood, and bits of gooey skull splattered all over Lazlo, who covered his head and cringed.

  “Move, you idiot!” I shouted. The one-legged zombie was hopping over to finish the job.

  “The gun-” He held out to me, all slick with zombie viscera now.

  “If it doesn’t shoot, then hit them with it!”

  To demonstrate, and to save our lives, I took it from him and swung at the zombie coming towards us. This one was a lot younger, and it clearly looked like a man. A man who had very recently had his leg torn off from the knee down. So when the butt of the gun came in contact wit
h his head, it did little more than stun him.

  I slammed the butt of the gun in his chest, and he lost his balance and fell back onto the ground. He reached out with his yellowed talon-like fingers, but I narrowly dodged them.

  When he was on the ground, I flipped the gun, and using the barrel, I drove it into his eye socket. The instant the gun smashed into his brain, the zombie stopped reaching for me. He twitched, then stopped moving completely.

  “Thanks,” Lazlo breathed.

  “You have to learn how to fight better.”

  “Hey, we did pretty good!” He gestured to the seven or eight zombies that he and Blue had managed to shoot. “The gun just jammed or something.”

  “If the gun jams, you find another way to kill them.”

  I couldn’t see any other zombies around, but I heard a faint death groan. Harlow and Blue had disappeared into the fog. The gun was a complete mess, with brains and goo clogging up the barrel, and it might’ve jammed before that. I left it behind and started hurrying ahead.

  “Remy! Lazlo!” Harlow yelled from somewhere ahead of me. “We’re at the car!”

  “We’ll find you, but keep quiet!” I shouted back. I didn’t want zombies attracted to the noise she made.

  Lazlo and I darted through the trees, narrowly missing several low hanging branches. I heard a tremendous roaring sound, and when I looked back, I saw it.

  The zombie wasn’t moving fast yet, but when she cocked her head at me, there was something calculating in her eyes. She was newly turned, so she was strong and fast, and it looked like she still had some brains.

  A broken tree stump jutted out across from us, and that was the only weapon I could see. She ran at us, with Lazlo standing in between me and her, so I pushed him out of the way.

  I jumped up, barely making it high enough to grab onto the branch above me. The fog had left it slick, and my fingers threatened to slip off as the bark burned and scraped against my skin.

  I swung back, then forward, meaning to kick her, but I timed it wrong. She snarled and bit at my foot, and I managed to connect with her head, kicking her solidly in the nose. It started bleeding, and the blood still looked normal.

  Thanks to her push, I swung back hard this time. The momentum of the back swing sent me flying forward, my feet pushing heavily into her chest. She flew backwards, landing on the jutting wood from the broken tree.

  My hands couldn’t take it anymore, and I fell to the ground. The tree had only gone through her stomach, so she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t figure out how to push herself off the tree, but she might eventually, so we had to hurry.

  “That was awesome!” Lazlo said, sounding way too impressed as he scrambled to his feet.

  “That was stupid.” I shook my head, walking quickly. “I almost got my foot bit off. I didn’t have a chance to time that right, and I’m in the woods without a weapon. I’m practically suicidal.”

  “No way, you’re-”

  Lazlo’s undue praise was cut off by a pretty horrific sight. The fat zombie that I had eviscerated earlier lurched around a tree towards us. I could actually see a gravel driveway, presumably leading up to the carriage house, but this half-dead zombie stood in our way. His engorged, green intestines hung out, dragging on the ground around him.

  “What’s your plan?” Lazlo asked as the zombie stumbled towards us.

  “I don’t really have one.” My only recourses were running away or hand to hand combat, and I did not want to hit him. My fist would pop his skin like a water balloon.

  “Go.” Lazlo took a step forward, so he was standing next to me instead of behind. “Go to the car. I’ll hold him off.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “No. You saved my life.” Lazlo looked at me earnestly, as the behemoth lumbered on. A long string of his intestines caught on a branch on the ground, momentarily slowing him. “I’m not gonna let you die.”

  “Dying to save me defeats the purpose of me saving you.”

  Before I could think of something, I heard a roar behind us. I turned around, expecting some horrifically fast zombie, but what I saw made my heart soar.

  Ripley came tearing through the trees, her mouth pulled back in a fierce snarl, revealing her long, bloody teeth. I took a step back so she could go flying by us, and she pounced onto the zombie. He exploded in a terrific mess as her claws pierced his flesh, but she didn’t seem to mind.

  The trees were suddenly bathed in yellow from the headlights, and a beaten up station wagon rolled down the driveway. It came to a stop when they saw Ripley gnawing on a corpse. Harlow sat shotgun, and she rolled down the window.

  “Come on, you guys!” Harlow waved us on.

  Without further prompting, Lazlo and I jogged over to the car. Lazlo slid in the backseat, but I ran around the back and opened the hatch. I called Ripley, and she looked uncertainly at me.

  Echoing through the trees, we could still hear the death groans of more zombies. She flicked her tail sharply, then decided against zombie hunting, and hurried over and dove in the back. I ran around and jumped in the backseat next to Lazlo.

  I got in just in time to see three more zombies emerging from the shadows, including the one I had impaled on a tree. One of the zombies slammed its hand onto the back of the car, leaving a bloody handprint and making Ripley growl, but then we were moving too fast for any of them to catch us.

  “Now I’m really glad I came with,” Harlow said, watching out the window as we drove away. She had rolled it up as soon as she saw us coming, but she stared out emptily at the world hidden under a blanket of fog.

  “What are you talking about?” I leaned back in the seat, catching my breath.

  “They’re overrun with zombies.” She didn’t sound relieved or even upset by the thought. She said it in the same way she might mention that it looks like rain today.

  “Good thing we had Remy,” Lazlo smiled at me, trying to lighten the mood. He brushed his black hair from his eyes, and I didn’t appreciate the gleam in them. “She was so badass back there. Did you see her? She took down like five zombies by hand.”

  “Yeah, and two of them got back up,” I muttered.

  Lazlo continued talking, but I could still hear Ripley in the back, slurping loudly as she licked herself clean. It reminded me of my own wounds in need of cleaning, and I looked down at the scratch on my arm.

  It wasn’t a bad cut, and it’d already scabbed over. If I wasn’t afraid of catching the zombie virus, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Next to the thin red line down my arm, I had speckles of greenish blood, splatter from the zombies.

  “Did you get hurt?” Lazlo noticed me inspecting my arm.

  “On the bushes,” I said, barely above a whisper.

  My heart clenched in my chest, and I had to swallow hard. After everything I had gone through, a damn bush was the thing that would get me.

  “What?” Lazlo moved across the seat closer to me. The cut was on my right arm, the one on the opposite side of him, and he leaned over me to see it.

  “What’s going on? What are you talking about?” Harlow already sounded panicked, and she sat on her knees on the seat so she could turn around and face me. “What happened?”

  “I got a scratch when we came out of the building.” I kept my voice as even as possible. I didn’t want to frighten or upset them anymore than I had to. “And I have zombie blood on my arm. I might be infected.”

  “Let me see.” Lazlo grabbed my arm, as if looking at it changed what happened.

  “You guys should leave me here,” I told them.

  “No!” Harlow shouted instantly, her eyes wide and appalled. “No way!”

  “We’re not gonna leave you,” Lazlo reiterated, his words soft and low.

  He stopped looking at my arm and turned his attention to me, so I pulled my arm back from his hands. I tried to move farther away, but I was already against the door.

  I rubbed my temple and stared out the window. Tears wanted to form, but I refused
to let them. I knew I should make them leave me on the road. It’s what I had done, several times before.

  But I was too selfish and afraid, and too hopeful. I hadn’t been bitten, and I couldn’t see zombie blood or saliva directly in contact with my own wound. So there was still a chance.

  “The incubation time is a maximum two to three days before it’s all-out zombie,” I said thickly. I chewed my lip and looked back at them. “As soon as it starts happening, the high fevers, headaches, chills, vomiting… I need you to shoot me. I don’t want to turn. I need you to kill me first.”

  “I’m not gonna kill you,” Lazlo shook his head, unable to even process the idea.

  I wanted to argue that he’d be saving me from turning into a monster, and that if he didn’t, I’d end up killing him. But I didn’t want to think about it, and saying it aloud would make it worse somehow.

  I looked away from Lazlo and met Blue’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t said much of anything since we left, but the serious look in his eyes meant he was thinking the same things as me. I was so grateful to have another rational person in our group, otherwise none of us would survive.

  “I’ll do it,” Blue promised me, and I nodded.

  Harlow had been staring back at me, but she gave Blue a hurt look, as if he had betrayed her or me somehow. Really, he was doing us all a favor. If he were a more of a leader, he would’ve insisted that I stay behind, and I wouldn’t have fought him on it. I just wasn’t strong enough to insist I stay behind myself.

  “Hey, I’m not dead yet,” I forced a smile. Harlow looked sadly at me for a second before turning around and sitting down.

  Lazlo returned to his side of the car, sitting low in the seat. He reached over and took my hand. I let him, but I refused to look at him. I wouldn’t acknowledge any amount of comfort it gave me, or even the slightest bit of butterflies that overcame the nausea and fear that had swept over me.

  I stared out the window at the graying world around us and wondered how much longer I’d get to enjoy the view.