Аманда Хокинг - Hollowland

I kept the loaded gun in the back of my pants, and I never let him find out. My plan was to kill him as soon as he started turning into a zombie, and then kill myself. For seven excruciating days, I waited for us both to die.

“But he never did.” I shook my head. “I was too afraid to leave. I might have stayed up there forever with Max, but soldiers came in, looking for survivors to quarantine.”

Beck had been the one to find us, and at the thought of him, I felt fresh guilt. We had never really been together, not in any sense of the word, but he hadn’t been gone for very long. Kissing Lazlo felt like a betrayal to Beck’s memory, and I moved farther away from Lazlo.

Beck was the first person I had told about Max possibly being infected. Other soldiers would’ve left us to die or killed us themselves, but Beck believed me.

At the quarantine, he took Max to the doctors and scientists, who were trying to find a cure or a vaccine for the virus. Beck looked out for both of us, making sure that the doctors didn’t reduce Max to a glorified lab rat, and training me so I would be able to defend us.

“So they know?” Blue asked, drawing me back from my thoughts. “The doctors, they know he’s immune and that’s why they’re keeping him safe?”

“Yeah,” I nodded.

“Why are you so worried?” Harlow asked. “Max is obviously a top priority for them. That’s why they evacuated him first. Why do you need to get him so badly?”

“He almost died on my watch, and I swore that if he lived, I would do everything to protect him,” I said fiercely. “And I can’t live up to that if I’m not with him. I need to be there, and I need to be sure.”

“I can buy all that but… why did you keep this a secret?” Lazlo asked, sounding almost hurt.

“Because. Telling people your brother might be the cure to the worst epidemic known to humanity sounds insane. Or worse. The wrong kind of people would do anything to get their hands on somebody like Max.” I looked up at them. “I’m trusting you that this won’t go any further.”

“Who are we gonna tell?” Harlow rolled her eyes.

“Come on,” Blue said, apparently done with the conversation. “We should get back on the road. London made the quarantine sound like it wasn’t too far from here, and I’d like to make it there by tomorrow.”

Lazlo tried to walk with me out to the car, but I made a point of keeping a step ahead of him. I sat in the front seat next to Blue, and Harlow sat in back with Lazlo.

A definite tension was in the car when we started on the road, and that didn’t help the situation any. This is why I always tried to travel alone. Getting involved with other people never helped anything.

I offered to take over driving as the sun started set, but Blue gave one derisive look at my arm and said no. It hurt, but it was the smart thing to do. If I ended up going rabid, it would be better if I weren’t behind the wheel when it happened.

I still didn’t have any symptoms, but that didn’t mean anything. I had seen enough infected people to know that sometimes, it just happened. They were fine, then they’d start vomiting, and then they were crazed monsters trying to tear out my throat.

Lazlo ended up driving, and I moved to the backseat so Blue could have shotgun. I thought it would be better to give Lazlo some space. I had no idea how I felt about the kiss earlier, but I knew that I didn’t want to complicate things any more than I already had. And I didn’t want to hurt Harlow anymore, either.

By the time nightfall settled in, Blue attempted a nap, resting his head against the window of the car door, and Harlow chatted with Lazlo about anything.

Her main interest seemed to be Lazlo’s music career, which he seemed uncomfortable talking about. When we had first met, he been nearly bragging about it, but now he didn’t even want to mention it.

“So you had your own signature bass?” She leaned forward, resting her arms on the back of the seat so she could talk to him. “What does that mean?”

“It just means that I designed a line of basses for a company.” Lazlo shifted, and he looked at me in the rearview mirror. “What about you, Remy? Did you ever play an instrument?”

“I’m sure she did,” Harlow replied dryly, sitting back in the seat. “She can do anything.”

“You know, you can’t be mad at me forever,” I told her.

“Yeah. I can.” She crossed her arms and stared straight ahead.

“I won’t be around forever,” I said gently.

She looked at me from the corner of her eye, unwilling to turn her head completely. Her eyes rested on the scratch on my arm, and almost reluctantly, she caved. Her entire body relaxed, her arms dropped to her sides, and she looked at me sadly.

“I was never mad at you,” she said like she had no idea what I was talking about.

“Good.”

“Now that that’s out of the way, anyone wanna play a game of ‘I Spy’ with me?” Lazlo asked. Since he hated the game, I assumed he suggested it to further appease Harlow.

“It’s too dark to play.” Harlow looked out her window at the black landscape. Without any electricity, the only lights on the road came from our car. The stars shone brightly, but the moon only had a thin crescent to give off light.

“Nonsense. There’s gotta be stuff we can see.” Lazlo searched the road, determined to prove her wrong.

“What about that?” Harlow pointed to the front windshield.

On the road a ways in front of us, the headlights glinted off something shiny. The closer we got, the more things glinted. Small flashes of light all across the road, reminding me of lightening bugs, but the glimmer had something menacing about it.

“What the hell is that?” Lazlo leaned forward, slowing the car down.

We drove near enough where the headlights hit more than their eyes, and we could see them lurching forward. They weren’t at their usual manic speed, but they were definitely a small legion of zombies. They stood there or stumbled ahead slowly, their arms hanging disjointed, their faces clawed and drooling. Some of them looked dismembered, and all of them were old and in terrible shape.

“Holy shit!” Lazlo slammed on the breaks.

“What’s going on?” Blue snapped awake, and Ripley growled in the back.

“Zombies are blocking the road!” Lazlo gestured to the pack in front of us. “What do I do?”

We sat in the middle of the road in an elderly station wagon with two guns and a lion, and I didn’t know how much ammo we had left. I might already be infected with the virus, and none of us knew exactly how close or how far we were from the quarantine. An army of half-dead monsters trudged towards us, and we had to make a decision.

“Run the fuckers over,” Harlow said, and none of us disagreed with her.

Lazlo pressed on the gas, and the car surged forward, as fast as this car could surge. It plowed into the zombies, and it gave me a twisted satisfaction at watching them splat on the hood on the car. Harlow actually squealed.

The car mowed down a few of them initially, but running into bodies took a toll on it. And then the zombies started pushing back. Too late, we realized the zombies were at lot stronger and faster than they pretended to be. They had faked us out.

We weren’t moving forward at all. They rocked the car from side to side, trying to tip us, and I remembered the truck where we found Ripley. The zombies had flipped it, and here we were, in the exact same situation. And I knew how well it turned out for the people in the truck.

Harlow screamed, and Lazlo shouted for everyone to hang on, although I’m not sure how that would help. Blue told me to get the guns, but I was already on it, climbing into the back with a very pissed off lion. She slammed her paws into the windows, trying to get at the zombies taunting her from the other side, and I prayed she didn’t break the glass. I did not need her letting zombies in here.