Page 17 of Hollow Child

Lillian shook her head. “No. Death groans, howls, whatever grunting moan that one is making, I have heard all of that before. But the humming is new.”

A friend of mine in high school used to have an old car with subwoofers so big that the bass resonance would feel like an earthquake when we listened to Snoop Dogg. Standing here listening to the zombiesgave me a similar, but much more macabre, feeling.

“It’s like bad subwoofers,” I said.

“It reminds me of bees,” Boden said.

Castor looked at him like he was an idiot. “Bees buzz, and the zombies don’t have wings.”

“No, not when they’re flying, but when they’re killing an invading wasp,” Boden elaborated. “I saw it on a nature special once. They crowded around the wasp and vibrated their wings so intensely that they kill the wasp.”

“Maybe it’s all those zombies crammed together, trying to move and breathe, and the sound is echoing through the mine,” I speculated.

“How long do you think they will stay down there?” Castor asked.

“Maybe someday, when humans rise up again, and those zombies are little more than bones and dust from weathering the earth for so long, people will come and bury them underneath layers of dirt and rubble,” Lillian imagined. “But even in their graves, I bet they will still hunger.”

“Christ, that’s dark,” Boden said, but he didn’t disagree.

“Maybe they’ll drop dead tomorrow, but that doesn’t seem likely,” Castor said, somewhat more optimistically.

“All that matters to me is that they can’t get out of there.” I pointed to the only roadway down into the mine, and it looked to have been blown up some time ago, leaving charred rubble and no way off of the first step of the mine without scaling a wall.

“They don’t have anything to offer us,” Lillian said with a flat finality as she stared at the pit of thousands of zombies. “We should split up and look for supplies. There are so many buildings, and we should move on soon.”

It sounded reasonable enough, so Lillian andCastor took the buildings to the south, and Boden and I took the ones to the north.

“Anything good in there?” Boden asked as we went into a musty, bloody cafeteria.

I shook my head. “Anything good has already been taken or rotten a long time ago.”

“If there’s a lot of people passing through on their way to Emberwood, this has all been well and good picked over,” Boden commented.

“Yeah. Just let me take a quick pass through the storage room behind the cafeteria. Then we can head back in.”

“All right. I’ll wait for you outside,” he said, probably because the smell inside was putrid.

He went out, and I took a quick walk through the storage room. A skeleton lay in a pile of waterlogged toilet paper, stained rust red. But there was nothing we could use.

I made my way back to the main cafeteria. The front doors were open a bit, letting in sunlight, and I could see Boden waiting just outside.

“Hey,” a girl’s voice, approaching out of sight, and I think it was Polly.

“Your brother is around scoping for supplies with Lillian,” Boden said, answering a question she hadn’t asked yet. “They’ll probably be back out front soon, since there’s nothing really worthwhile here.”

“Bummer,” Polly said with a sigh. “Where’s your wife?”

“Just inside. I’m waiting for her,” Boden replied as I was reaching the door.

“I’m not his wife,” I said as I came out, and they both turned to look at me.

“Oh. Sorry. I just kinda assumed you were married,” Polly replied awkwardly.

“We’re together,” I amended. “But we’re not married because there’s no governments or religionanymore.”

She frowned, looking perplexed. “Ooookay. I don’t really care that much so you don’t need to tell me your life story.” Then she turned back to Boden. “Which way did Castor and Lillian go? I want to catch up with them.”

He pointed to the north. “That way. But like I said, they’re probably heading back to the gate by now.”

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