Hollowland Read online

  “Seriously?” Lazlo came up behind us, and Vega looked over her shoulder at him, with that same eerie calm as Korech. “I narrowly escaped being raped and murdered?”

  “I don’t know why that’s so shocking,” I said, trying to lighten the mood, and opened the car door for Vega. “You were almost killed by a zombie two days ago. Rape and murder seems a little mundane after that.”

  “He wasn’t evil,” Lia interjected, her arms wrapped tightly around her, as if she were cold. Vega ignored her and got into the SUV, sliding up next to Harlow. “He was just misled. The devil works just as mysteriously as God does.”

  “Fascinating,” I said and gestured to the car so she would climb in.

  I was not in the mood to get into a religious debate.

  When the world started ending, everybody became a convert and wanted nothing more than to spout the virtues of whatever apocalyptic religion they had latched onto.

  I wasn’t sure who, if any, of them were right, but my best bet for avoiding hell was avoiding death.

  “Hey, Lazlo’s gonna drive.” Blue leaned on the open car door, yawning. “I’m gonna hop in back and catch some sleep, if you wanna sit shot gun.”

  “Sure, whatever,” I shrugged.

  When I got in front, I moved the passenger seat forward as far as I could, giving Blue legroom to stretch out. I leaned down in the seat, resting my battered shoes on the dashboard so my knees pressed up to my chest.

  Blue sprawled out in the back, as much as the space would allow, and almost instantly fell asleep. I grew envious of his ability to sleep and handle stress. He remained unruffled in almost every situation.

  Harlow had fallen into an uncharacteristic silence, and I tried futilely to get her out of it. She sat on the far side of the car, staring out the window blankly. Whether I agreed with Korech or not, he had managed to build a world that was entirely separate from our own, and when our world had gone to hell, his became incredibly appealing.

  The sky lightened to a grayish-blue, and the rest of the passengers had fallen asleep. For most of the ride, we drove in silence, but Lazlo was starting to fade. Any panic or adrenaline from the night had worn off.

  “So… do you have any idea where we’re going?” Lazlo asked, suppressing a yawn.

  “You’re the one driving.” I gave him an odd look, and he smiled tiredly.

  “Yeah, but aren’t we on some mythical quest to find your long lost brother?”

  “He’s not the Holy Grail, and he’s only been gone for a few days,” I brushed off Lazlo’s teasing and leaned my head on the headrest.

  “So I used hyperbole,” he rolled his eyes. “You knew what I meant.”

  “I already told you all I know. Go north, and hope we find somebody who knows something.”

  I hated the vagueness of the information, and when I kept repeating it over and over again, it only hammered in exactly how unrealistic and ridiculous it sounded. Fortunately, nobody else really had a better plan, or any plan at all, so they didn’t question it.

  “What’s your brother’s name? Max?” Lazlo asked.

  “Yep.”

  “How come you don’t talk about him ever?”

  “What do you want me to say?” I picked at a frayed string on my jeans.

  “I don’t know. Whatever you want.” Lazlo shrugged. “I just think it’s weird that this kid is so important to you, and he’s the reason we’re all traveling across the country, and you never say anything about him, other than you have to find him.”

  “I’m not forcing anyone to go with me,” I said icily. “And going to a quarantine is good for you, too.” Finding Max didn’t necessarily benefit everyone, but he had been taken to one of the only safe places I knew of on earth.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he sighed. “I just… Why are we going after him?”

  “He’s my brother.” I looked over at him. “Wouldn’t you go? If it was your brother or mother or third-cousin? Everybody else is dead.”

  “So that’s it? That’s the only reason you’re going?” He arched an eyebrow. “There’s nothing special about the kid at all? It’s just some arbitrary action because he’s a surviving family member.”

  “No, of course not,” I bristled.

  “Then tell me about him.”

  “We survived everything together.” My chest ached at the thought of Max. It was so much harder when I let myself think or worry about him. “He’s strong, a lot stronger than most kids. I never had to remind him to run or tell him to duck. He always just knew.”

  “So what happened? How come he’s not with you now?” Lazlo asked.

  “He’s sick.” I let out a deep breath, and it was shaky, so I swallowed hard. “He’d been in the medical center of the quarantine. Then the zombies attacked. Some of the army personnel and Max had already evacuated by the time I tried to get to him.”

  “What’s he sick with?” Lazlo asked. I shook my head and looked away, unwilling to talk about it anymore.

  “I know you’re just being nice and conversational, but I can’t talk about this. I can’t talk about him,” I said as gently as I could.

  “Why not?”

  “I can’t talk about stuff because I can’t see it. If I want to do this, I have to put on blinders and go, and keep going. If I stopped and thought about all the shit I’ve done and seen this past year, I couldn’t…” I shrugged, unable to really speak anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” Lazlo apologized and looked over at me. “You’re better with all this than I am.”

  “Hardly,” I laughed hollowly.

  “No, you are,” he insisted. “You’re better at everything than I am.”

  “That’s probably true,” I said, and Lazlo laughed. I even smiled a little.

  The sun started to rise above the horizon, and I felt a little better. I was just thinking that Lazlo might not be a total idiot when the SUV began decelerating. Based on the panicked expression on Lazlo’s face as he pounded the gas pedal, I knew he had no clue what was going on.

  Then the SUV stopped moving entirely.

  – 10 –

  “What the hell happened?” I demanded.

  Lazlo shook his head, fiddling around with the gauges on the car. A monitor mounted in the dash for GPS and satellite radio glowed blankly the way it always had. In some strange attempt to revive the car, Lazlo flicked on the dome light.

  “What’s going on?” Blue asked groggily from the back.

  “I don’t know. The car just stopped,” Lazlo managed to downplay the anxiety in his voice.

  “Did you hit anything?” Blue leaned forward between the seats to investigate further.

  Lazlo accidentally clicked on the stereo, causing Bon Jovi’s hit song “Wanted Dead or Alive” to come blasting out of the speakers, scaring the hell out of the three girls sleeping in the back.

  “Sorry!” Lazlo fumbled, turning it off.

  “What’s happening? Why aren’t we moving?” Lia asked frantically.

  “I don’t know!” Lazlo snapped in frustrated. “It just stopped!”

  “Whatever. I have to pee,” Harlow sighed and got out of the car, and Vega went with her.

  I considered telling them to watch out for zombies, but the rising sun showed nothing around. Mountains were off in the distance, but the land around the highway was still fairly flat, with green shrubbery dotting it. Other than sparse vegetation, there was nothing.

  We had traveled through a small town about an hour before, but it looked just as deserted as this. Zombies tended to only be a problem when there was an actual population, not a forgotten stretch of highway.

  “Oh, I see.” Blue nodded. “We’re out of gas.”

  “What do you mean we’re out of gas?” I glared at Lazlo.

  “Oh,” Lazlo said as understanding hit him. “I didn’t even notice.”

  “You didn’t notice?” I shouted incredulously, but he looked more exasperated than ashamed. “You’re a fricking idiot!”

  I t
hrew open the door and got out. Sitting there pissed me off too much, so I paced next to the car. My mind raced. Losing the vehicle would slow us down so much, and we’d be way more exposed to injury or death. All because Lazlo didn’t think to pay attention to the damn gas gauge.

  “Maybe we can figure something out.” Blue got out of the car. He ran a hand through his sandy hair and looked around.

  “Remy.” Lazlo had gotten out and walked around the front of the SUV. Based on his stupid sad expression, I suspected he got out to calm me down. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t think about it.”

  “That’s right!” I reeled on him. “You never think! I have no idea how you ever survived this long!”

  “Look, I’m sorry!” Lazlo looked hurt, but I didn’t care. “I haven’t driven a car in like a year, and the little red gas gauge light never went off.”

  “Seriously?” I gaped at him. “God, Lazlo! I don’t care if you’d never driven a car ever! You should be able to tell when we’re running out of gas!”

  “I’m an idiot! I screwed up!” Lazlo yelled back. “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I want you to-” I didn’t know what I wanted but I was so pissed, I couldn’t stand it. I pushed him, hard. He’d been standing close to the SUV, and he slammed back into it.

  “Remy!” Blue took a step towards us.

  I wanted to punch Lazlo, or punch anything really, but I just shook my head and took a step back.

  “Maybe we should all calm down,” Lia said, sliding out of the car, but she really just meant me, since everyone else was irritatingly calm. “We can all eat and stretch our legs.”

  “Stretch our legs?” I scoffed. “We’re gonna be walking for the next thousand miles!”

  “Remy, we’ll find another town.” Blue looked at me, as if he could stare me into being reasonable. “We’ll figure something out. It’s not that bad.”

  “I am really sorry,” Lazlo repeated, rubbing his shoulder. I had pushed him back into the car pretty hard, but he deserved it.

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. I was too deflated to argue anymore, and it wouldn’t make the situation any better. Nothing I did seemed to make anything better.

  Lia went around to the back of the SUV to see if she could find something to make for breakfast, and Lazlo went to help her. Ripley jumped out and stood in the middle of the road, sniffing the air and looking confused.

  For breakfast we had SPAM and olives because they were heavier to carry, and we needed to lighten our loads. Things like beef jerky traveled easier. I didn’t eat much of anything, settling for warm water and pacing. Lia made everyone say grace before they ate, but I mumbled through it

  Afterwards, I climbed in the back of the SUV and went through our stuff. Harlow helped sift through her clothes, and I picked out the bare essentials everyone could carry. This meant I’d have to leave behind the shotgun I’d stolen from Korech.

  I hated leaving behind weapons, but we didn’t have any bullets for it, and we might never find any. We only had two guns, so I gave the handgun to Blue and kept the semi-automatic for myself.

  With our bags packed as concisely as possible, I grudgingly said goodbye to the vehicle. We started down the road, going north. I downsized back to my overflowing messenger bag with the gun hooked to it, and everyone else had done roughly the same.

  Harlow’s mood had strangely lightened since we started the long trek down the highway, and she and Lia had a banter that I found mildly irritating. They talked cheerfully about everything they saw on the side of the road and plunged into an intense game of “I Spy.”

  “I spy with my little eye….” Lia chewed her lip, thinking of something good, which would inevitably be a tree or a stone or some other piece of vegetation, since there had been nothing of interest to look at for miles. “Something… green.”

  “Um...” Harlow looked around, and I’m not sure if she was pretending to debate to build suspense, or she was actually that clueless.

  “It’s a bush.” Lazlo broke his silence. He’d shut up since I pushed him earlier, but the game had gotten to be too much for him. “It’s always a bush.”

  I suspected Blue had tolerated their game because he had more patience than the rest of us, and I didn’t say anything because it would be more of a headache arguing with them.

  “But there’s different bushes,” Harlow said indignantly, glaring at Lazlo, but Lia lowered her head. “She was talking about a specific one.”

  “Ooh, the intensity of it all!” Lazlo waved his hands in mock excitement. “We may never know the exact bush Lia saw on our 300 mile walk!”

  “Well, what else are we supposed to do?” Harlow snapped. “And it’s your fault we’re all out here walking anyway!”

  “Why don’t you try playing another game?” Blue suggested before Harlow and Lazlo got into it more.

  “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things,” Vega said. She looked straight ahead, talking to no one in particular.

  All of Harlow and Lia’s musings had been interspliced with random declarations from Vega. She spoke rarely, but when she did, it was almost entirely in Bible verse. The verses she said had little connection with the conversation at hand, but none of us chose to address that.

  While back at Korech’s ranch, I had felt some kind of kindred spirit with Vega, but the more time I spent with her, the more I found her kind of off-putting.

  Lia could be annoying in her own right, since she was older than me but behaved more like Harlow, but Vega was just… weird. She held her head high, always looking ahead, reminding me of the old films I’d seen of Nazi’s marching.

  “So… was that your suggestion for a game?” Lazlo asked Vega, giving her a sidelong glance.

  “It means that we have a task at hand, and we need to work to achieve it before we can play,” Vega replied, her voice emotionless.

  Lazlo exchanged a look with me, but I just shrugged. What did you say to that?

  “We don’t have a task at hand,” Harlow scowled. “We’re just walking. We can walk and talk at the same time.”

  Vega didn’t respond to her, so nobody said anything. Harlow tried to introduce another game, but Vega had shamed Lia, and she wouldn’t play.

  After a while, Harlow started to slow down. She lagged the entire time, with her and Lia following more to the back, but she was falling farther and farther behind.

  “I’m tired!” Harlow had to shout to be heard since Vega and I were so far ahead of her. “Can’t we like take a break or something?”

  “Just a little bit longer,” I said.

  The sun was right above us, so it had to be close to noon, but if I were on my own, I’d walk without stopping at all. It was incredibly frustrating never knowing what time it was, and I wanted to make it somewhere “safe” by sundown.

  “But I’m hungry. And I have to pee,” Harlow persisted.

  I turned to face her and walked backwards, meaning to encourage her to keep moving. She had already taken her messenger bag from her shoulder, dragging it behind her.

  “Fine,” I sighed. “Let’s do a quick lunch.”

  “Thank you!” Harlow immediately plopped onto the road.

  Vega turned to me, and without any tone to indicate her approval or disapproval, she said, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”

  “Okay.” I matched her blank tone. “We are going to have lunch now. So… we can work better.” I didn’t know what she was trying to get at, and I didn’t really want to offend her.

  “Okay,” Vega nodded. “I’m going to go to the bathroom.”

  “All right. Excellent.”

  I watched her as she walked off the road to do her business behind a few bushes, purposely giving a wide berth to the area where Ripley had lay down to nap. Ripley had been following us closely, but spent most of the time walking in the grass. I guessed
that was easier on her feet than the hot asphalt.

  “Are you eating, Remy?” Lia asked.

  She had already squatted down on the road to go through her bag, next to where Harlow sat. Blue and Lazlo wandered back over to them, and Blue slipped off his oversized backpack. He stretched and rolled his shoulders, and I was eager to ditch my bag and do the same. My shoulder and back were killing me.

  “Maybe just a beef jerky,” I said.

  My stomach complained, wanting more food, but it was hard to walk on a full stomach. Besides that, we were dividing the food among six people. I needed to conserve as much as possible.

  I dropped my bag onto the road with a thud and pulled out warm bottled water. Lazlo tossed me a beef jerky when I got closer to where they sat in a circle, but I didn’t sit down myself. It would just be harder to get up. My feet throbbed, and my legs ached, but I knew we had to keep pushing through it.

  “So what’s up with her?” I asked Lia, nodding in Vega’s direction, where she had finished peeing and moved on to praying.

  “That’s just how she is,” Lia shrugged. “She was always different, even for us.” She opened a can of tuna with a can opener Blue had smartly taken, and gave it to Harlow.

  “I’m so glad she decided to come with us,” Harlow muttered, eating the tuna out of the can with her fingers. Sanitation wasn’t much of an option anymore.

  When Vega came back towards us, Lia excused herself to go to the bathroom. Lazlo sat on his messenger bag, using it as a chair. Taking a big bite of his beef jerky, he eyed up Vega.

  “You hungry?” Blue asked her, nodding at the food Lia had taken out.

  “I won’t eat until sun down,” Vega said, like that meant anything. “But I will take some water.” Blue handed her a bottle, and she took a long drink.

  “So… Vega,” Lazlo looked at up at her, forcing a friendly smile and squinting in the sunlight. “That’s a fun name. Were you named after Vegas?”

  “Vega means ‘light.’” She stared at him so hard, I half-expected him to burst into flames. “‘I am the light, the truth, and the way.’”