Page 14 of Hollow Child

Lillian was looking back over at Stella, laying on the ground using the lion as a pillow, and she asked, “So she is pregnant then?”

“Seven months,” Stella answered.

“It’s a difficult trek to make. Are you sure that you’re up to it?” Lillian asked.

“I’m stronger than I look,” Stella assured her.

“I am sure you are, sweetheart. We all are, or none of us would’ve made it this far,” Lillian said, and her eyes went over to Boden with a new scrutiny. Garrison and his daughter Samara even looked at him with suspicion.

“Max is the father, and he and Stella aren’t related,” I blurted out so everyone would stop looking at Boden like he was some kind of a creep.

“Well, um, that’s good to know, I suppose,” Garrison said with a nervous laugh.

“What about you then?” Samara tilted her head and looked at Boden. “Are you single?”

“I’m with Remy.” He motioned to me, and I just nodded.

“And you?” Samara asked as Serg returned with an armload of firewood. “Are you paired up with the lion or something?”

“No, I’m sorta my own thing,” Serg explained. “I always have been.”

“What about you all?” Stella asked. “Any of you dating?”

Lillian shook her head. “No. We’re just travelling companions.”

Tensions eased enough that we were able to sitaround the fire and eat supper together. The others had a duffle bag of supplies, and neither group suggested sharing, much to my relief.

Boden and Stella seemed bizarrely eager to get to know the others, and Max and Serg were friendly. I was the lone one who seemed completely uninterested in banal conversation with strangers.

“How did you all hear of Emberwood?” Boden asked. His arms rested on his knees as he ate jerky, and the warm fire highlighted his rugged face and brilliant eyes.

“We were in a government quarantine outside Seattle,” Lillian answered, and she motioned to Garrison and his daughter. “I had been there practically since day one of the outbreak. Garrison and Samara arrived only a few months before the quarantine fell to the zombies. They told me about Emberwood, and it sounded like a much better alternative to dying in the rubble.”

“Wait. You’re claiming that a quarantine zone held for almost a decade?How?” Boden asked.

“It was a very elaborate base with walled off quadrants and plenty of redundancies,” Lillian said. “But the zombies finally got in the place anyway, and it was overrun about six months ago.”

“They’re still overrunning shit?” I asked. “Even after all this time?”

“Remember when they told us that the zombies would die out within a month?” Serg asked, and all of us shared some joyless laughter.

“So, Garrison, if you’re the one who told Lillian about Emberwood, how’d you find out about it?” Stella asked.

“We just heard others talking, and saying it’s a nice place where people can be safe,” Garrison explained. “Samara and I started out in Vermont, and we’d had her mom and our other daughter Nadja…” Hetrailed off, then cleared his throat. “We’ve come a long way since then, through bases and homes that all eventually went to the zombies.”

“And yet you think Emberwood will be different,” Samara said dryly. “All the settlements eventually go to the undead.”

“We’ve survived this long, humanity has survived this long, and we will continue to find a way,” Garrison insisted.

This was followed by a heavy silence until Stella piped up again and asked, “What about you, Polly and Castor? How did you hear about Emberwood?”

“A woman who was helping us mentioned it, and after her face was eaten by a zombie, we decided to keep going north,” Castor explained flatly.

Later on, when everyone had bedded for the night, except for Lillian who was the first to stand guard, I stayed up watching her from the shadows.

“You should sleep,” Boden whispered beside me. “Tomorrow is going to be long enough as it is.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, as if I had a choice. It wasn’t like my body would let me just close my eyes and pretend we were safe out here.

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