The Hole (8 page)

He was still thinking about this, pondering what he’d learned during the frantic events after the crash, when things went all to hell.

Shouts came from the mouth of the cave and the woman in red dropped the stylus. She yelled something at the short suit, who let go of Elliot’s arm and ran outside, the line of crazies opening to let him through. In that brief gap, Elliot thought he saw more crazies, a sizable group, running toward the cave, waving clubs. Were they fighting each other now? Had they really, genuinely lost it?

The screaming was louder and then the line of crazies flexed in the middle, some of them falling back as the attackers charged in. Elliot watched as a huge man dressed like a farmer smashed the head of one the crazies with a shovel. The blade, shiny in the firelight, caught him just below the ear and sank in a few inches. Elliot was glad for the commotion because it meant he didn’t have to hear that hit, didn’t have to listen to bone break and grind on the shovel’s steel.

The farmer pulled it free, laughing, and soon he was joined by more rescuers or murderers-Elliot didn’t know which-dressed in similar down home styles, waving bats and scythes and axes, some with torches and one taking aim with a rifle. The gun went off horrifically, and Elliot flinched back against the far wall of the cave as the tall suit, who’d remained nearby, fell, coughing and clawing at his throat where the bullet had torn a hole as big as coffee cup.

Elliot was yelling now, “I’m not one of them!” over and over, hands by his ears from the sound of the gun and still the attackers came through the broken line, smashing crazies’ arms and faces, breaking backs, shattering knees. The violence overwhelmed him, and he cowered down against the rock and dirt, looking away but still shouting his plea not to kill him, that he wasn’t with the woman in red, he wasn’t crazy and just wanted to get the hell out of here. “I’m not one of them!” he said again, nearly crying, as the man with the shovel stood over him, holding the weapon above his head, ready to bring it down and Elliot with it.

But then the short suit, who’d somehow made it back through the heart of the melee, grabbed the large farmer around the shoulders and wrenched at his chin, yanking the man’s head back, but not breaking his neck. The two fell, kicking and clawing, and Elliot reached tentatively for the shovel. He snared it and pulled it to him, clutching it hard and backing away. The suit climbed on top of the farmer and gibbered, babbling out his insane language in long strings of nonsense punctuated by spitting and, a few times, biting.

At the mouth of the cave, the crazies had grouped, reorganizing themselves into a fighting force of sorts, several wielding the dropped weapons of the attackers. Elliot saw bodies, at least a dozen, but in the uneven light of the fires and the madness of the brawl, he couldn’t tell how many were from each party. He didn’t know who he was rooting for, anyway, and wished only that an opening would appear and he could run back into the forest and keep running until he passed out, like an overdriven horse.

The fight beside him ended. The suit had made it to his feet and, as Elliot watched horrified, kicked the last life out of the enormous farmer. Elliot raised the shovel and said, “Get away from me,” but the suit ignored him, instead heading back to the cave’s entrance to join his companions.

Elliot’s mind was very near shutting down. The shovel felt too heavy, and the heat from the fire, concentrated at the back of the cave, made his vision blurry, his face hurt, and his legs wobbly. He couldn’t sit down, had to keep himself up and ready to run, but more than anything he wanted to turn around, put his face against the wall-or down in the cool dirt-and shout or cry until this was all over. Because he hated watching the fight and the violence; and seeing the suit do that to a man, even another crazy, was beyond Elliot’s experience-or, really, his comprehension. Being chased by the crazies, even being captured, he could handle, for what they were up to was ominous, yes, but it wasn’t acute. The Wal-mart woman was an exception to that, with her sudden violence, but the woman in red and the two suits hadn’t actually hurt him. They hadn’t broken skin.

A lot of skin was being broken now, though. And bones. Screams echoed in the cave. Blood muddied the ground. Crazies were hurting each other-killing each other-and it was like someone had poured two wasp nets into the same paper bag. So Elliot held the shovel and he screamed.

And then it was over. The sounds of the fight fell away except for moans. The cave was emptier now, and the remaining combatants, perhaps ten inside and an unknown number out in the woods, were all members of the attackers. Elliot, still holding the shovel, told himself this wasn’t what it looked like, that they weren’t going to turn their weapons on him. It was silly-he’d seen what these people did-but he had to believe it because otherwise he’d likely go mad.

A young man, blood on the side of his face and hair dirty and sticky, came towards him, hand held out. Elliot shifted the shovel, tightening his grip, and prepared himself to kill this man.

Who said, “Thank God we found you. Are you okay?”

Elliot blinked. The crazies didn’t speak English.

“
Are
you okay?” the man said again when Elliot didn’t respond.

Elliot shook his head, slowly.

“You’re hurt? Where?” The man took a step closer, looking Elliot over, but Elliot lifted the shovel. “No, wait, no,” the man said, backing up. “It’s okay, we’re here to help.”

Elliot didn’t believe him, not really, and so he kept ready to attack, to fight whatever it was this guy and his friends tried to do.

“Look,” the man said, hands up, “we came here to get you, to help you. Do you understand?”

Elliot nodded.

The man continued, “You’re lucky we found you. These people, they’d have hurt you or worse. We’ve seen them before and that’s what they do: they’re mean and evil. But you’re safe now.”

Elliot, still shaking and still not willing to trust anyone, asked the question that’d plagued him since he’d first climbed out of the overturned truck. “Where’s Evajean?” he said. “Where’s Evajean Rhodes?”

The man looked over his shoulder at an older fellow who’d come up behind him. This latter farmer, dressed in the same simple but well tended style-though his shirt was torn and his left leg sported a painful gash-had a look of leadership about him. His weathered face, deeply lined and leather dark, wouldn’t have been out of place staring from a Depression era photo of sharecroppers. He nodded at the younger man, who continued.

“She’s fine,” he said. “She’s being taken care of. Evajean got some scrapes and bruises, and she sprained her wrist in the accident, but she’s doing just fine.”

Elliot did start to cry then, dropping the shovel and falling to his knees, heels of his hands pressed into his eyes. She was safe. That’s all he needed to hear, to know everything that’d happened in the hours since the truck hit the boy and he’d come awake upside down at the bottom of the hill hadn’t been wasted effort. Nothing he’d done had helped her, not if these people were telling the truth, but he didn’t care. She was safe.

“The dog’s okay, too,” the man said, and laughed. “In case you were wondering.”

Elliot smiled and coughed on his tears. “I was,” he said. “Thank you.”

“Oh, nothing to it.” And the young man turned again to the elder and they conferred in whispers while Elliot got to his feet and leaned the shovel against the cave wall.

“We should be leaving now,” the man said and put his hand on Elliot’s forearm. “It’s safer back in town than out here. We’ve seen a lot of these things.” He nudged the corpse of a crazy with his boot. “There’s probably more out there and we’ve lost men.” This last he said not with the cracking emotion Elliot expected but matter-of-factly, like a coach admitting his team was down twenty-one points at the half.

“Okay,” Elliot said. “Okay, we should go. Where?”

“Nahom.” He grinned. “Our slice of heaven on earth.”

With that, the men began gathering their dead, while the wounded were tended to and patched enough to make the journey back to the town. The crazies had killed four of their number, a fortunately small amount, Elliot saw, as his rescuers waded around the nearly two dozen corpses they were responsible for.

“You’ve fought them before?” Elliot asked the older man, who’d remained stationary throughout the preparations, arms crossed behind his back. The response to this question was a curt nod and no eye contact and Elliot nodded himself before walking to the mouth of the cave and looking out at the night.

The dense stars and full moon shown white light over the tiny valley. Men dragged corpses into piles while some, armed with torches, set the bodies on fire. Thick smoke rose greasy from the pyres and the smell, much to his disgust, reminded Elliot that he hadn’t eaten in perhaps half a day.

Shortly, the men finished their work. Their dead they carried, by the arms and legs or across the back. Elliot was reminded of that first day he’d spoken with Evajean, when they’d had dinner. Carrying Henry looked much like this. He was tremendously glad he’d get to see Evajean again and he hoped it wouldn’t be too long back to Nahom.

As they walked out of the valley, the one who had spoken to him before approached Elliot, the sadness of loss now visible in his eyes. “These men fought well,” he said, as if Elliot had questioned that. Then he nodded. “They fought with the righteousness of blood atonement.”

That didn’t sound good, Elliot thought. He changed the subject. “I’m Elliot Bishop,” he said, holding his arm out to the man.

“Elder Andrews.” He shook Elliot’s hand. Up close, out of the dim light of the cave and under the bright moon, Elliot figured Andrews couldn’t be more than twenty-eight, and probably three years younger at least.

“And you live out here?” Elliot asked.

“In Nahom.”

“I mean, you live out here in the mountains?”

“Our town’s not very big so-”

“A hundred and forty,” Elliot said.

“You saw the sign? Yes, a hundred and forty. Or so,” he added. “So you could say it’s ‘out here in the mountains,’ I suppose.”

“And you’ve run into them before?”

Andrews made a gesture with his chin, towards the cave. “Do you mean those people back there?”

“The zombies,” Elliot said.

Andrews laughed at this, a bright sound that was startling in the heavy night. “Is that what they’re called? We don’t have a lot of contact with any of the big cities and don’t watch TV, so I don’t know, but is that what people are calling them now?”

Elliot shook his head. “Just what Evajean and I call them. We thought they were like the things in the movies.”

“I don’t know about those,” Andrews said, “but I like that word. Zombies. It does fit.”

Not really, Elliot thought. Not at all. They were crazies and they thought and talked and were smart. Definitely not like zombies. But for some reason he didn’t want to say so to this man. Calling them crazies to Elder Andrews struck him as wrong. He couldn’t come up with a good reason why, though.

Andrews said, “But to answer your question, yes, we’ve had quite a few dealings with the
zombies
in the last- Oh, I’d say in the last month. A few showed up in Nahom, just walking down our little main street, speaking in tongues. You’ve heard them do that?” he asked. “I assume, with the time you spent-”

“I heard it,” Elliot said. “It’s like another language.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. They’re sick, is what I think, and disease has made them mad. That’s all it is.”

That’s not all it is, Elliot thought. And he knows it. He knows it’s a language and not just babbling but he doesn’t want to say so. He’s lying.

“Anyway,” Andrews said, “Some of them came into Nahom and they hurt one of the children. Began beating him, and pretty badly too, until a few of the town’s menfolk saw what was happening and stopped it. We kept watches then, each night for a week, but none came back.”

“But they did eventually?” Elliot said.

“Oh, yes. Quite a lot of them. You could almost say they laid siege to us. Perhaps fifty, maybe more, gathered on the ridge to the north of Nahom and waited. We sent men up to talk but they were chased off. The zombies aren’t friendly, not at all.”

“Did they attack? I mean attack the town?” Elliot asked, as he and the rest of the party ascended a small hill. He was panting now, exhausted physically from the events of the past several hours, but also, and more deeply, emotionally. He needed to see Evajean and this conversation, this game of what he was sure was information hiding with Andrews was only to take his mind off how how much he wanted to lay eyes upon her, hold her close, and then sleep.

“The following morning, they did. Just as the sun came up, a few dozen of the zombies came down that ridge, screaming and charging like red indians. I wasn’t there,” he added, “but that’s what those who were told me. We had a mighty brawl but the zombies don’t fight terribly good and we were able to turn them back without any deaths. Not like this time.” He trailed off and they walked in silence for a while.

The woods had grown very cold, though Elliot wasn’t sure how much of that was from finally having the luxury to notice the chill. They walked for at least a couple of miles, through terrain that was now familiar: dense trees, moist soil, low vegetation, and copious mosses. There was the smell of forest, heavier than what he remembered from his childhood out west. The woods felt unchanged for ages. The other men in the party were quite, with no minor conversations to pass the time. Rather they stared ahead, concentrating on the hike, many burdened by the bodies of their fellows who’d been killed in the fight. Elliot felt both scared by these men and sorry for them; scared because of their alien sternness and somewhat creepy ways, but sorry for the sacrifice they’d made to save him. Why had they done that? Was it merely at the request of Evajean-for he assumed she’d sent them out to look for him-or was there something else, something hiding in the omissions in what Andrews had told him?

It was too late tonight to find any of that out, he decided. Best to wait until morning, when he could think on it with a clear head unencumbered by this night’s madness. A bed was what he needed and Elliot imagined what it would be like to slip between sheets and blankets, to lay his head on a soft pillow and let the weariness that had invaded him completely win for several hours.