The Hole (5 page)

“Don’t,” Evajean said, but Elliot wasn’t listing. He couldn’t count their number, had no real idea how many were coming toward the vehicle, but the column was wide and long. There were men and women of every age and children, too. Some looked clean and well dressed, like they’d just headed out for a peaceful stroll, while others were injured, limping, clothes torn and dirtied. Yet all of them were careful to avoid the truck, to stop walking long enough to let is pass. They didn’t make eye contact with the two passengers, didn’t seem to acknowledge them at all, in fact, at least nothing beyond recognizing the danger of the truck.

After half a minute the crowd thinned and soon Elliot and Evajean were driving through empty scenery again, too stunned to talk about what they’d just seen.

* * *
 

The day’s light had dimmed and the highway was snaking through the gentle curves of the Appalachians when they ran into the boy.

Elliot had been fighting the weight of his eyelids and the need of his head to drop onto the comfortable support of the seat belt strap by his ear when Evajean screamed.

“Look out!”

He hit the breaks and swerved, not paying much attention to what he was doing, and startled out of drowsiness. At first he didn’t see anything, just the arc of the road and the trees bordering it on either side. But then, as Evajean frantically repeated her command, he saw the boy.

He was walking out from between the trees and toward the road, head shaking violently, his path confused. The truck was skidding very nearly sideways now, and as Elliot joined Evajean in what had become little more than wordless shouting, the rear end of the vehicle, still moving at considerable speed, slammed into the boy.

They could both hear the impact, even over their own voices and the barking of the puppy, and the sound was terrible. There was a loud bang and a drawn out crunch, and then the truck was off the road and whipping around directly at the trees. This second collision, far from being merely audible, entirely drowned out everything else.

Elliot pushed himself off the steering wheel, moaned, and ran his hand carefully across his forehead. Something didn’t feel right, something more than the warm tackiness his fingers skipped lightly across, something more than the pain even this tender contact radiated between his temples. No, this was an out of place difference, a nagging change in what he had expected after a lifetime of performing just such a gesture. He had encountered no hair. He thought about this a moment, then felt the heavy weight weight of the seat belt across his chest and the heat of blood in his cheeks.

Je was upside down. Hanging, held fast in the the truck’s seat, he could now see loam crushed against the windshield and hear the sounds of the forest coming through the smashed driver’s side window. This was all distant, though, like he was watching it on a television across the room. If he just closed his eyes, maybe, and let a short nap incubate him against the sense of displacement, then he could approach the situation with the clear head necessary to figure out what to do next.

No, Elliot. That’s not right. Going to sleep is, in fact, the worst thing you can do.

He groaned and forced himself to look around. Only his window was broken and, out the back, he could see a line of scattered supplies spread across what looked like the slope of a hill. He swore, thinking of how much time it’d taken him and Evajean to collect all that stuff and get it stowed away in the truck.

Evajean-

She wasn’t there. He looked again at the passenger seat, panic making his face even hotter, but it was empty. Her seat belt was retracted and twisted around the headrest. He didn’t see any blood.

“Evajean!” he tried to call out, but the pressure across his chest was too much and he only croaked an inarticulate vowel sound.

She was gone. And so was the dog. This last hit him harder than Evajean’s absence, actually, and the feeling shamed him. It’s just that the dog was his. He’d found it and not matter how good her idea might be, he’d be the one to name it.

His thoughts were fuzzy. He needed to focus. Where Evajean west was more important than a puppy, he knew that. There wasn’t any blood and no head shaped fracture in the windows, so she was probably uninjured. Maybe she’d gone for help.

He laughed at this. Help had died with the rest of the world.

Elliot reached around and undid the seat belt’s buckle, holding his other arm above his head to brace his fall. This small gesture barely helped-the pain in his skull bloomed again and he lay writhing on the roof of the truck for what seemed a very long time.

When it abated, Elliot dragged himself through the broken window, careful of glass, and stood up. The trees had killed most of the remaining sunlight, which filtered weakly through the canopy. The ground was wet and dark, overgrown with moss and ivy, much of this blanketing decaying logs. He couldn’t see any sign of foot traffic, no discarded clothes or supplies that might give him some idea of where Evajean had gone. He shouted her name again, getting the full volume this time, but received no response. She must be far away, then, and he didn’t know which direction that might be.

Elliot turned around to see about the truck. They certainly wouldn’t be driving it back up the hill. The grill was smashed up against a huge tree stump and the left front tire was bent at a bad angle. Everything they’d carefully backed into the back, the entire haul, had been scattered by the fall in a neat path back up the slope, with a large dump of it where the truck and probably first rolled over. It was to this pile he now ran, remember the swarm of crazies they’d driven through, and thinking his first step, before tracking down Evajean, was to find one of the shotguns.

This minor quest proved successful after a scant five minutes. Wedged between two rocks, sticking up like the sword in the stone, was the gun with the curved clip, the one he’d conveniently loaded after they’d taken it, trying to figure out how the thing worked. Holding it now, though, he swore. He’d forgotten about the trigger lock and, looking around, he couldn’t see the cash register anywhere. Even if he found it, what were the chances of the key being inside? And how would he get it open to check?

He kept the gun, though, as he worked his way back down the hill. Holding it made him feel more secure, even knowing the best he could do would be to club an assailant with the stock.

Armed and ready to set out, he called Evajean’s name again. The sound only echoed back. Where would she have gone? Back up to the road made sense: at least there she’d have a direction to walk and an easy path to follow to get back to the truck, whether she found help or not. She’d be dumb to do it, he thought-a crowd of crazies might be up there, with that boy they’d hit just the advance guard-but Evajean struck him as perfectly practical. Holding fast to the gun, Elliot began climbing the hill.

It wasn’t far to the road. The truck must not have been going fast when it slid off the pavement, because it only took him a few minutes to break through the trees and look out on the empty stretch of asphalt. Both directions were clear, so he chose the one leading further into the mountains. They hadn’t passed any real signs of civilization on the way up and Evajean knew that. She’d press on, hoping to get lucky.

Elliot did the same. For a half an hour he walked, glad for the pleasant chill of fall, but tensely observant for more of the people they’d driven through. He didn’t want to have to try to fight anyone, didn’t trust himself to do it right. The victory at the Wal-mart, if calling it that made sense, was luck and fear and the madness of the moment. Repeating it was unlucky. So he stuck to the edge of the road, by the trees, and kept himself ready to run into the forest at the first sign of pursuit.

None came, however. Eventually, the road bent up in a steep curve, and a the midpoint of the arc he saw a wooden plank nailed to a the trunk of a large pine. Next to this the forest opened and a dirt path, ten feet wide, headed off down a gentle slope. The plank, aged and grey, said, “Nahom. Population 140 or so.”

Elliot tapped his fist against the sign as took the turn, making his way back down again into the forest.

The dirt road to Nahom was much more of the former than the latter. He hiked for at least a quarter of a mile, careful not to lose the track. This wasn’t easy. The road widened and contracted, was perforated by clumps of small trees, and in one spot not too far after he started, disappeared entirely. Elliot had to wander forward in a wide arc, always glancing back to not get lost, before he found it again. In fact, perhaps driven by the frustration he was already feeling from the destruction of the truck and the loss of their supplies, he quickly came to think that the sign was just a joke or that Nahom had once had 140 or so but was now long gone, like that colony at Roanoke Island.

He pressed on, though, because really he didn’t have anything else to do. He could either follow the road to wherever it did-or didn’t-lead, or he could go back to the road and keep on along it, probably getting further from Evajean with each step. This whole thing was supposed to have been an adventure, a way for him to get out of that dead town with someone alive and share the road with her and maybe, if they were very lucky, figure out where the Hole was,
what
it was, and bring a degree of closure to the madness of civilization’s apparent end. And that’s exactly how he’d felt until he came awake upside down in the truck, that other living person gone, and the adventure veering in a terrible direction before it’d had much of a chance to even begin.

“Fuck!” he shouted, overcome with despair that would later just embarrass him. Right now, however, the exasperation washed over him with perfect reasonableness. How else was he supposed to act? How would anyone act in this kind of insane situation?

Elliot leaned against a tree and set the gun down. He realized then that he’d forgot to bring a water bottle, had in fact forgot to bring anything beyond the useless weapon. This made him laugh sickly, knowing that, of course, he hadn’t brought water or food or any item that might keep him alive long enough to see this adventure though its next turn. He-

He heard something. Up ahead, though trees dense and low, something was walking around. Thoughts of Wal-mart flashed and Elliot grabbed up the gun again, holding it tight and ready to swing. He stepped softly toward the trees, trying not to make any noise and being mostly successful, but almost as soon as he began to move the sounds from the grove stopped. Elliot froze, a dozen feet from where he thought the noises had come from. Had it heard him? He didn’t think one of the crazies would have stopped if it had. Elliot had them pegged more as aggressive-or wholly uncaring likes the ones on the road.

He crept closer, lifting the gun higher, ready to bring it down fast if something sprang out of the trees. The woods were quiet and Elliot realized he couldn’t hear any mumbling, none of the strange speaking in tongues common to the crazies. He couldn’t be sure they all did that but the ones he and Evajean had run into certain did, so maybe…

“Hello?” he said, just above a whisper, his voice cracked but hopeful.

No response, but whatever was back there started moving again, running this time, and away from him deeper into the forest. “No, wait!” Elliot said, and broke off after it.

Once during this brief chase he thought he saw the other person: just a quick glimpse of cloth, maybe the hem of a skirt, and black shoes kicking up dirt and moss. These were small, child sized, and Elliot felt the hot guilt of running over that boy, no matter if he’d been one of them. Was he running through the woods after a kid?

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he called to her, sure it was a her because little boys don’t wear skirts and don’t have shoes like that. “Stop running, please!” All these words had the staccato thumping that comes with running, and they were very likely unintelligible. He wished she’d give up this silly evasion. He just wanted to talk, to find out where he was and were Evajean was.

“Please, stop,” he called again. But she didn’t. He ran on and so did she, Elliot following more flashes of the dress-it was yellow and ankle length-and those black, Sunday school style shoes. Was she from Nahom, one of the hundred and forty or so?

It was while he was thinking this last that the babbling started. From his right, closer than he guessed the girl to be, he heard another set of footfalls, and the barely linguistic mumbling of one of the crazies. Oh, shit, he thought. Oh, no, not now. Please.

He stopped running and turned in that direction. A brief, terrible moment of calm held him, and then not the expected one but three of the crazies-of the zombies-emerged from through a line of raspberry bushes. They brushed absently at the branches, casually unconcerned with the deep scratches and welting lines of blood caused by the thorns. Elliot felt terribly silly with his locked gun held out in front of him.

“Stay back,” he said, but of course they paid no attention. The three-a woman in a bright red sun dress, and two men who wouldn’t have looked out of place arguing in front of a judge-just kept coming at him, talking louder now, like friends from a foreign country out for an evening hike. He continued to yell at them, commanding them to turn back, that he didn’t want to have to hurt them. And they continued to ignore him. Elliot started backing up, keeping the gun high, feeling out behind him with the heels of his feet so he wouldn’t trip over any low vegetation or fallen branches.

The crazies seemed to notice him for the first time. The woman pointed and all three stopped talking. And then they charged.

Elliot turned away and ran. He didn’t care what direction and had lost all immediate desire to find Evajean or Nahom, if it existed. What he wanted was only to get away from these three zombies, his mind flooded with mad thoughts of being bitten and turned into one of them.

Glancing back, he could see the woman was out in front, having overtaken the two suits, and was sprinting after him with her head down and her arms pumping. The men only jogged, faces pointed up at the trees and sky, shouting incoherently. They were quickly being outpaced by the woman and Elliot thought it would be easy to lose them if they kept that pace.