Hollow Men (15 page)

I swerved around a plastic bag, followed the yellow center lines, dogged him playfully, and we saw the approaching exit ramp. Evan put the brakes on, and I stopped next to him.

“When we ride down go straight to the bus. Keep your eyes open. No knowing if anything saw us come up and is watching us leave.” He was panting just a little, his cheeks bright with color.

“Got it.”

He brushed a hunk of hair out of my face. “I say we load these puppies in the bus and take them with us.”

“Think there’ll be room?” I loved the prospect. I hoped he said there was. “You know, with our visitors.”

“If there isn’t we’ll rig them to the back or strap them to the roof, yeah?” He laughed.

“Yeah. I agree.”

He leaned in and kissed me. I saw the kiss coming but didn’t try to run from it. Or dodge it. Out here in the sun with the secretive whisper of traffic below, the bikes had awakened something dormant. A sense of fun, maybe.

“Brace yourself,” I said.

Evan’s eyes went darker. His lips compressed, and his jaw went tight. I watched it all happened. He thought I was making fun of him.

I put a finger to his lips. “Stop,” I said. “I’m not poking fun. I…I love you, you idiot.”

“Eleanor—” he said around my finger.

“Shut up, Evan. I’m not saying it to make you happy. I’m saying it because it’s true, and I think the truth deserves to be said. This is a big deal for me so just shut the fuck up, okay?”

He laughed softly. His eyes were on me. They were full of so much it was impossible to label.

“I never stopped loving you. Never. I dated some and let me tell you…”

“What?” he finally said when I didn’t speak.

“There are some real frogs out there, Evan.”

He chuckled. “But?”

“But you’re a frog prince.”

“Can’t I just be a prince?”

I shook my head. “Don’t push it, buddy. Now enough mushy stuff. We can hash all that out in Vermont. Let’s go. Let’s get these people where they need to be and get where we’re going.”

“Deal.” He surprised a cry out of me by snatching me close with an arm around my waist. Our bikes rattled and clanked, but it was fine. Because he was kissing me, and I was letting myself remember the feel of being with Evan. Really being with Evan. That feeling was the embodiment of what it felt to be loved. To be adored.

It was perfect. Even in the middle of the mess our world had become.

* * * *

“What are they doing?” I yelled.

I saw a few bags on the side of the road by the bus. Evan frowned, and that made my stomach clench up in a knot. What the fuck?

He didn’t answer, just put on speed and I followed suit.

I saw the bus door’s magical accordion move, only it was in the wrong direction. They were shutting the door. Then the bus roared to life.

How the fuck…?

We came to a stop in dust and gravel. Sally’s full face pressed to the gap in one of the windows.

“What the hell are you doing, Sally?” My head hurt. Though the key was in Evan’s pocket, the bus was running. They’d hotwired it. Or there’d been a hidden key.

Surprisingly, despite the idea of losing our safety and our transport was second to seeing them drive off in something my dad built. Something his hands had helped make.

“Sorry,” she said. And I’d be damned, but she did look a bit sorry.

At the front of the bus, Taylor sat behind the wheel. Head down, arms ramrod straight, fingers gripping the wheel so hard I could see the tension in his forearms from there. His body language spoke volumes. I got off my bike and lowered it down.

Three bags in the dust. My full duffle, Evan’s full duffle, and a bag of food. Guilt was heavy here.

I ran to the front of the bus, stared him down through the windshield. Then I went to his side window. It was partially down.

“What the fuck, Taylor? I could have had you taken off at the first checkpoint. When I found out you were fresh out of prison. But I didn’t. Fool me once,” I said, feeling the hot restrictive ache of unshed tears in my throat. I would not fucking cry. I’d run out in the middle of traffic first.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He was barely audible above the rumble of the big engine.

“And how did you do…” I waved my arms. “This?”

“We’ve been in the back. There were supplies back there. Including extra parts for the bus. You’d be surprised at what you look at and rummage through when you’re bored.”

“And you know how to hotwire.”

His eyes drifted away from me. “Yeah.”

Of course, you do…

Sally had come up to stand with him. She was behind this. This was all her.

“Sally, there’s plenty for us all.”

She shook her head. “I need a place. I need a
place
,” she said, pleading with her voice. “For my baby. He’s coming soon. His daddy is gone. His life is…” She waved her arm. “This. This is his life!” She sobbed, and I almost felt sorry for her. Almost. This was an emotional break. This was fear.

The harder side of me said, welcome to the real world, sister.

“We can all go together—” Evan said. He’d come up behind me.

“No!” She shook a gun through the window, and we both took a step back.

Taylor looked beyond apologetic. “I think it’s just best if we go.”

“We left you food,” she said. As if that meant something.

“Gee, thanks.”

She frowned. Waved the gun again, but almost as an afterthought.

Taylor started to turn the huge wheel to put them out in traffic. He gave one more sorry glance.

“Wait!” I said. “Please!”

I remembered it sliding out. I remembered sticking it with the paperback books and old magazines.

He started to give the bus gas.

“Please!” I shouted again.

They stopped, eyeing me suspiciously.

“There’s a book—a photo album—back with the old western paperback and hunting magazines. Give it to me, please.”

Sally rolled her eyes. That bitch.

“Sally, you’re doing this supposedly for your baby’s future. Can you please let me have the only proof I have of my past?”

Her face changed, and her eyes went bright and shiny. If I wasn’t mistaken, she was crying. She moved to the back of the bus, and I followed. Evan stood and glared at Taylor for another second before following me.

She found it and gingerly slid it through a very narrow crack in the window. I took the book and considered trying to grab on and break the window. But those windows were damn near impossible to break—barring the bus rolling.

I thought about it. Let it go.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“You should be,” I said. “You really should be.”

She winced.

“But that’s okay, Sally. I believe in Karma. Mine is good. I stopped to let you on. I gave you a place to be safe. Yours is not so good. You took what I offered, and you turned on me. Good luck, Sally. You’ll need it.”

She banged the window angrily, and the bus started to pull away.

We could have shot the tires out, but the bus would still roll. And then it would have drawn attention to us. We could have shot the gas tank, but I did believe in Karma, and the unborn baby on that bus had done nothing wrong.

Chapter Seventeen

I dropped to my duffle and clutched the photo album. In it were pictures of my parents. Pictures of me and Evan before life took a left turn into shitsville. Pictures of a happy home, a happy life, a playfully sneering teenage me who was surrounded by love.

I would not cry.

Evan came up behind me as people zipped past us on the freeway. Moon faces—indistinct and pale—flew past. People looked at us, but no one stopped. Of course, they didn’t. I wouldn’t have.

Evan’s hand came down on the crown of my head. His fingers spread out he mussed my hair. “Let’s get moving, Eleanor. We can’t just sit here.”

“Why did we let them in?”

“Why did we leave them with the fucking bus?” He laughed. It was a horrible sound.

“My fault,” I said.

“Ours,” he said. “I was the one who brought them in initially. You were the one who wanted us to stick together. We were both being logical—being
human
. It bit us on the ass. Lesson learned.”

“My father helped make that bus,” I said.

He ruffled my hair again. The gentle touched sent a shiver skating down my neck.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

I stood and shoved the album into the duffel. I forced my small pack into the larger duffel and then put it on my back as if it were a backpack. It was stuffed full and heavy as shit.

“Are you sure—” Evan eyed me.

I cut him off. “I’m sure. We have to take all the stuff. If we put the small ones in the big ones and fill the god damn baskets with food we can ride back up to…” I nodded toward the exit we’d gone up and since come down. “Deserted Town up there.”

He frowned, but then proceeded to do as I said. Instead of filling the baskets, though, he found a bungee cord in his pack and strapped the duffle of food to the front of his bike so it wouldn’t fall over the front tire. He climbed on. “Ready?”

“Ready,” I practically snarled.

“You okay?”

“No.” I started to pedal, making sure I focused straight ahead. I would not cry, and I would not sit and feel sorry for us or become fixated on our stupidity. I could practically hear my father in my head:
the karma’s on them, Eleanor. Not you. You acted with good intentions.

Fat lot of good those good intentions did me.

We pedaled toward the off ramp. It was slow and off-balanced, and my constant need to scan my surroundings for hollows or even human raiders had me feeling wobbly as if I’d just learned to ride a bike.

“It’ll be fine.” Evan had pulled ahead just slightly, and I watched him, letting my mind drift briefly. His broad back, slim waist, hair blowing in the wind. He turned back to check on me, caught me looking, smiled at me despite our craptacular situation.

“It’ll be fine,” I echoed. I didn’t believe it for a moment, but I said it anyway. My mother had been into positive energy. She’d believed you got what you put out into the world. So despite the urge to choke the life out of Sally and Taylor should we ever meet up again, I’d tried to breathe and let it go.

We’d go find some transportation and get our asses back on the road. Vermont could not come fast enough.

* * * *

There were more of them. More than we’d ever expected. Something was drawing them, or something had set them off. We dodged hollows on the road back toward the garage.

“If we can check those cars in the bay…” Evan panted. “We might be in luck.”

Most of them, we zipped past, even though we weren’t going that fast. They seemed content to grab for us, but when they missed, they didn’t pursue us, just kept dragging themselves down the long empty road. So far I’d spotted about eight. “Eight is enough,” I gasped, pedaling faster. Then I laughed.

“Share a joke,” he grunted.

“Nothing. Old TV reference that wouldn’t be funny to anyone but me,” I said. “My father used to make me watch it on the reruns. Said it had good family lessons.”

A hollow came from the ditch by the side of the road, preceded for about two seconds by its whimpering cry. Evan took the bowie knife and stabbed it in the neck, cutting off its sound.

When that happened, when we wounded but did not kill them or sometimes when I saw TV footage of them cut down in the street, my stomach cramped with dread. They were still people. Not alive, really. Not like us. But not dead either. And killing them hurt some part of my soul. I hated taking life even if it was to save mine.

By the tension in Evan’s jaw as that body dropped—for it was a body now, after jamming the bowie knife through the eye socket—he felt the same. His whole body had contracted on the move, the bike falling to the black top. Stabbing a living thing through the eye was not as easy as the movies made it seem. It requires real muscle. It requires true determination.

“Drop the bikes or take them?”

The nearest hollow we could see was beyond the garage at this point.

“Right now they’re slowing us down,” I said. “We can run from here. But if we need them…” I snorted, black humor rearing up in me as dirty water in a swelling stream. “We know where to find them. I doubt we’ll find any hollows riding down the road to grandmother’s house.”

He chuckled, squatted and unstrapped the food duffle. Then we did a quick visual sweep for anyone headed our way and took off for the garage bay we’d already broken into today.

“Fuck,” Evan said.

“What?”

“Just thinking,” he glanced over his shoulder at me, reached out to take my hand. “If there are this many wandering around in daylight. How many will there be come nightfall. They usually just chill out when the sun is up.”

He was right. So I ran faster.

We staggered inside the bay as if the devil himself was on our heels. Our boots smacked the stained cement floor and echoed, so damn loud and nerve wracking in the quiet of the day.

I dropped my pack and bent, hands on knees, sucking air as if I might die.

“You good?” Evan laughed.

“I am old.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I
feel
old.”

“Okay, that I’ll buy.” I stood up straight, stretched, then went and made sure the door we’d kicked shut was sealed. The lock was broken so we barred the door with a tool bench. The bay doors were down and locked. Evan double, triple checked. And then I went and rattled them myself for good measure.

“Door to the store?” I asked.

It was open when he pulled on it, but the entry doors to the store themselves were locked. However a few windows were broken. So was a small window over one of the work benches in the bay.

“This place is fine to regroup,” Evan said, coming back into the bay. “But not to hunker down if we need to. Too many compromised areas.”

I gave him a short nod. “Let’s check the trucks then. Maybe we can just get on the road.”

He put his head under one and shook it. “No way. Half the engine’s been pulled out.”