Hollow Men (11 page)

I clenched up around him. Yanked his hair hard enough to make him hiss. I wrapped my legs around his slim waist, feeling his muscles flex and bunch as he fucked me. The effort of his body entering mine was easy to gauge if I touched his flanks. I opened my mouth to protest, to ask him to take it back, but he brushed his mouth over mine, and I got lost in it.

I whimpered, and he framed my face with his big hands and held me still to kiss me, his body filling mine with every move he made.

I hooked my ankles behind his back. I think I was afraid he’d disappear. I wanted to do anything I could to keep him here. Keep him close. I just didn’t want to admit the emotions.

He moved his hands to shove them under my ass and hike me up higher. “Yeah. Right like that,” he said, grinning in the dark. He reminded me of the Cheshire cat, the subtle glow of his white teeth in the gloom.

His cock slid against my G-spot with every motion. Every brush, every nudge, filled my insides with warmth, triggering me to grow tighter around him.

We both groaned simultaneously. Laughed. Then back to kissing.

“I’ve got about three seconds in me,” he said in my ear, nipping the lobe.

He stopped thrusting and dragged his hips back and forth so his pelvis ground against my clitoris.

“Yeah,” I said. I sighed. “Me, too—”

He thrust hard, and my words dissolved into moans as I came.

“Shh,” he said and kissed me quiet. “We don’t want to wake up the campground.”

My body flickered, twitched, spasmed around him, and I let him eat up every sound I made. When I touched his face, he grew still, then one more thrust, and he was coming.

“Eleanor,” he said, and I smiled.

He rolled off me and without letting me even consider fleeing, he wrapped a big arm around me and pulled me close.

“You spanked me,” I whispered.

“Yeah.” He squeezed me. “You liked it. A little.”

“A little,” I said, and he laughed. Truth was: a lot.

Chapter Eleven

“El? Wake up, El.”

I sat up, reaching for a gun that wasn’t near me. It was over in the corner. It lay abandoned after our impromptu fight-fuck the night before.

Evan was standing by the bus door, holding coffee. The wonderful smell of it hit me. I wanted it, but I heard a tone in his voice that set me on edge.

“Coming,” I muttered. “Hold on.”

I growled under my breath. It would help if I had pants. I spotted my jeans crumpled on the seat of one of the recliners and snagged them while keeping the blanket around my waist. I slid them on, shoved my feet into a pair of Vans and grabbed my gun. The rest of me would have to wait. Something in his voice told me this wasn’t a social thing—whatever it was.

“Yeah?” I came up behind him to see two people at the base of the bus steps. Both thin. Both sunburned. Both looking quite like refugees. I say they were thin—and they were—but for her belly.

Pregnant.

“What’s up?” I asked. My heart and stomach sank a little bit.

“These folks are travelers. Walking—” He barely looked at me from the corner of his eyes. I put a hand on his shoulder and waited. “As you can see, Sally is in a family way. They were wondering if we could give them a ride. Connecticut. She has family.”

“I—” I shut my mouth. I had no idea what to say.

“Please,” she said, clutching her belly. “We’ve asked around. Most people are packed already. But you…”

We had a bus. How do you claim no room if you have a goddamn bus?

I didn’t point my gun at her, but I shook it a bit so she’d see it. So her companion would see it.

“Lift up your shirt.”

“El…” Evan groaned.

“Look,” I said to her as much as him. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but there are a lot of people out there who only have themselves as priorities. They see this new world as a place to take advantage and get ahead. They call it survival of the fittest, but it’s really much more devious than that. Just your belly,” I said to Sally. “Just that.”

She nodded, cast a glance at the man with her and pulled her shirt up. Her belly was so big she couldn’t button her coat. Her gloves were mismatched I noted. I held my breath, hoping for a legitimate pregnant gut. The thought of a pregnant woman walking in a place we knew for a fact had hollows was too much.

It was a belly. A big, pregnant belly complete with outie belly button and stretch marks and, as I watched, a rippling of a foot or a hand from the inside out.

I exhaled.

I peeked out the windshield. “Okay. You two go by the bathhouse. The soldiers seem to have a fire and even some coffee. Let us talk. I need coffee,” I added. “Can’t think straight until I’ve had caffeine.”

She smiled; he didn’t.

“Thank you,” Sally said.

The man nodded his thanks but said nothing. “This is Taylor,” Evan said.

I nodded back, and they turned to go. He took her hand and led her away. Evan shut the bus door, and I made a beeline for the coffee. I hadn’t been kidding.

“Way to wake me up, Ev,” I said, punching him lightly on the arm.

“Hey, they knocked, then it was them pleading their case and…well, clearly I can’t make a decision like that without you.”

“Couldn’t even let me have coffee first.”

“Have two cups now,” he said, smiling. “Peanut butter toast?”

I shook my head. “Nah. I’ll have a protein bar or something in a bit” I ran a hand through my bed head. “So what do you think?”

“Christ. I have no idea. You?”

“Ditto.”

* * * *

The four of us sat at a picnic table as the cold wind swirled around us. “We’ll help. We can do…whatever.”

“Well, if we get on the road and really push it, we might only be together a day,” Evan said. “The trip isn’t that long, it’s anything that might slow us down. Wrecks, issues, checkpoints.”

“We can be dropped at the easiest place for you,” Taylor said. His mouth was tight.

“We’ll take you where you need to go,” I said, my voice much softer than it usually is.

“Okay,” Sally said, smiling. “Thanks. But seriously, anything you need, we can help. We want to help. Not be dead weight.” The whole time she spoke she stroked the baby bulge inside her sweatshirt.

“I just want to make sure you guys understand…any bullshit, and we’ll stop and put you off no matter what.” Evan said it with a lot of steel in his voice.

I hardly ever heard him sound that way. It was a little scary.

“Yeah, we got it,” Taylor said.

“Good. We’ll be pulling out in about a half an hour. It’s morning rush hour so the majority of patrols will be out now. Good time to travel.”

Sally smiled and picked at a thread on her gloves. “Can I hit the bathhouse before we go?”

“Sure.” Evan smiled.

“Why don’t you let me go with you? If you can take a speedy shower, I can spot you.”

“Spot me?”

I cleared my throat. I didn’t want to scare her, but I had to be honest. “There were some hollows in camp last night. They…took a man. I think it would be best if someone else was there to watch your back.”

She seemed to consider it, then surprised us all by bursting into tears. “Hell of a world I’m bringing my baby into, isn’t it?”

The men looked nervous and baffled, so I was the one who took her hand, smoothed her hair and led her away. “A shower will make you feel better. I bet you’re exhausted.”

“I’m okay.”

I chewed my lip. She was lying. She moved sluggishly, almost as if it was a struggle to walk. The fragile skin beneath her eyes was dark from fatigue. She looked haggard and sallow despite the extra weight from the pregnancy.

“Well, you’ll be even better after a hot shower,” I said.

“Hot?” she asked, perking up.

“Well,” I laughed. “Hot at first.”

“I’ll take it,” Sally said.

“Yeah, that’s how I felt.” I winked.

Miraculously, we had the cavernous bathhouse to ourselves. I wasn’t too fond of it. It felt open and creepy—ready to ingest us as if it were a truly haunted house.

I flicked all the lights on and realized that was only about fifty percent of them. The rest were either burnt out or busted. “Not exactly luxurious,” I muttered, “But it’ll do.”

For some reason, the structure was way more imposing when I was looking over her than keeping an eye out for Evan or him for me. Maybe it was because she seemed pretty much helpless as far as protecting herself. Maybe it was because she was pregnant and that added a whole new layer of pressure to the scenario.

She walked into the changing room and shut the wooden door. I leaned against the wall, waiting. It only took a minute for the water to cut on and then her head and shoulder to appear over the shower stall. “Wow. I haven’t showered in a place like this since summer camp when I was a kid.”

I laughed. “Come to think of it, neither have I. Man, summer camp was the worst.”

“See, I liked it.” She used some of the shampoo from the campground dispenser. Neither of us had thought to bring a bag or toiletries or even clean clothes from the bus. We had been in too much of a hurry.

“It was hot, and there were bugs and…Christ,” I rolled my eyes,” When I think back the
counselors
were just kids themselves!”

Sally tilted her head back and giggled, but I heard it swiftly turn to a sob.

“You okay?” I didn’t move. This was emotional, not danger.

“I just can’t help but think my baby will never get to experience summer camp. Good or bad. Not with people running around eating…each other.”

“You don’t know that, Sally. These things are finite. If we can eventually kill them all…life could resume. They’re not the undead.” A bark of laughter slipped out of me. It made me uncomfortable—that I could make that sound. It was a defeated sound.

“But if we don’t…if more get infected?”

Since the cause had never been definitively pinpointed—only the main source—it was a fear most people lived with.

“You and your husband will give this baby everything it needs. Maybe not the childhood we had—”

She cut me off. “Husband?”

“Taylor?”

Uh-oh, I’d stepped in it.

She snorted. “Taylor is not my husband. My hus—Brad—was killed in the first wave of infection. A co-worker…” She shook her head. “He died,” she finished weakly.

“So Taylor is…?” I left the sentence open ended.

“He’s Brad’s cousin. He came to find Brad and instead found me barricaded in the house. We’re trying to get to Connecticut to his other cousin—my brother-in-law David.”

“Why on foot?”

I saw her shiver. The water must have turned cold. I smelled that horrible pink soap that seemed to be universal to public restrooms and bathhouses and knew she’d be done soon.

“We had a vehicle. Then it died. We stole another, and that one went up. The transmission dropped. That was just a few miles from here, and Taylor had heard folks used this as a waylay station. We couldn’t find anything that wasn’t abandoned because it was broke down so we just walked.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. It made me nervous, having two people with us. One of them pregnant. I wanted to believe one hundred percent neither of them would ever try to pull anything, but I didn’t really believe that about anyone anymore.

With the exception of Evan
.

“…some time to sleep.”

I’d zoned out. “I’m sorry. What?”

“I’m just looking forward to Connecticut,” she said, smiling wanly and turning off the spray. “I really could use some time to sleep.”

I nodded. “Get dressed and we’ll get back to the bus. You can sleep as much as you want while we drive.”

She looked so grateful. And yet my worry continued to gnaw at me.

Chapter Twelve

The bus pulled out two hours later. Evan was pissed. His jaw tense with repressed frustration. The line to get out of the campground seemed to go on forever.

“Mass Exodus,” Evan said. “From last night’s attack. Folks are too paranoid to stay.”

And since there was only one unpaved road with soldiers at the end to check folks out, it was a long process.

“We’re going to be on the road later than I like,” he whispered to me when we were finally within eyeshot of the exit.

“I know. We’ll just do the best we can.”

“Between traffic and checkpoints and…” he shook his head. “I don’t want to be traveling past rush hour. You know that’s when a lot of stuff happens. Better to just pull over and hunker down if it comes to that.”

It was beyond frustrating, to be honest, because once upon a time a trip from St. Mary’s, Maryland to Vermont would have taken eleven to fourteen hours with stops for food and to allow for traffic.

“We’ll just do the best we can. If we…” I took a deep breath. Anxiety crawled in my stomach, and I felt sick. I had left my home for this? “If we need to hunker down, we’ll take turns keeping watch. The bus has the built-in perk of one entrance. The emergency door is barred and locked and will stay that way. Nothing’s getting through that.”

His jaw had not softened. I was worried for him. “I hear you,” he said.

We inched forward again, and I could clearly see impatience in his posture. It made me even more tense. Not a good way to start the day.

I glanced back and found Sally had fallen asleep sitting in one of the recliners. She’d refused our bed, smiling, saying it would make her feel weird. More intrusive than she already felt.

Taylor was in one of the matching recliners. Sitting there, looking frazzled, he cradled his shotgun in his arms as if it were a child.

He made me nervous.

* * * *

Taylor watched Sally like a hawk. And true to her claims of being tired, she slept through our eventful trip. We witnessed a car, speeding at least eighty miles per hour, blow a tire and cause an accident. Traffic slowed, and I watched, heart in my throat, as the people got out to deal with the situation. All of them looked nervous—no, terrified. These days, any time you were exposed you ran the risk of running into a hollow. No matter where you were.