Page 33 of Hollow Child

“It tried to attack your blood, the way I’d seen it do before,” he continued. “But when it engulfed your cells, the virus acted strangely. Instead of expanding and growing, latching onto things and mutating them, it moved erratically. It stopped moving or interacting with anything, so essentially, it died.”

It was not the fear of infection or my own mortality that drove me down to the river. I just had to get her blood off of me. I couldn’t stand how warm and sticky it felt as it dried on my skin.

I waded out into the shallow edge of the river, so I could clean off my toes, and I crouched down so I could wash it off my hands and face and neck. The water was frigidly cold, but I didn’t mind.

My chest hurt because my heart was beating too fast, and I could barely get the air down in my lungs no matter how desperately I tried gulping it down.

Suddenly, I slipped and fell into the river. I grabbed onto a sturdy reed along the shore before I could get swept down to the waterfall, and I crawled back up the bank.

The cold shocked something out of me, and I couldbreathe again.

I wrung out my clothing to remove as much excess water as I could, then I headed back to camp. Everyone was slowly gathering their things. Even Castor was managing with the help of Samara.

“Aren’t you going to change into something dry?” Boden asked when I came back and started pulling on my socks and shoes.

“It’s going to rain, so there’s no point,” I replied flatly. “The hike will take a few hours. I’ll be fine.”

Boden sighed. “Okay.” He walked away, and I never looked up at him.

We left the cave behind as dark clouds blotted out the sunrise. The sky was gray, and beyond the wooded area we’d camped out in, the land was barren and flat. At one time, fairly recently by the look of the stumps, this had been a thick forest, but all of the trees had been cut down.

A well-worn dirt path ran between the lost forest of felled trees. Midmorning, when the rain started, it quickly turned to mud that slipped and squelched under my shoes. Soon it came down hard enough that we couldn’t see more than half a kilometer in front of us.

Complicating the matter was the fact that we could not hurry given the state of our group. Castor was practically a zombie himself, stumbling along as Samara led him down the path by his hand. How she could manage that after what she’d gone through the day before, I have no idea.

Garrison’s watch was loose around her wrist. I had caught Samara staring at it a few times and struggling to hold back tears.

And there was Stella. Max walked at her side, holding her arm, while she used the walking stick in her other hand. She was setting the pace for the group, which meant she was the one slowing us all down.

“Come on, Stella,” I urged. “We’re so close. Let’s give it your all so we can get there.”

“What the hell, Remy?” Max snapped.

“Jesus, Remy,” Boden added in exasperation. “Everyone is already giving their everything! We’ll get there when we get there.”

“Oh, I am so sorry that I want all of us to survive and not get taken out by hypothermia or zombies or bears,” I replied glibly.

“The rain is letting up,” Lillian argued. “We’ll all be fine.”

“We are not all fine,” Samara said sharply.

“Can everyone just please stop yelling?” Stella asked, sounding tired and angry. “Everything is horrible enough without all the fighting!"

“Do you need to take a break?” Max asked her gently.

“No, I need everyone to just shut up and keep moving!” Stella shouted. “Please!”

Everyone fell silent after that, much to my relief, and over the next ten minutes or so, the rain slowly tapered off. It was still foggy, so we couldn’t see that far in front of us, but at least it wasn’t so cold or wet.

But of, course, good things couldn’t last forever. In the distance, I heard the groan of a zombie. Stella couldn’t really hurry up, but it turned out that didn’t really matter, because a group of zombies suddenly appeared from the fog, heading right toward us.

20

Stella

The zombies were fast, faster than any I had seen in years. I remember them being so quick when I was younger, in my early days with Max and in the few flashes I have of the time before I met him. They were like lightning made of shadows, darting from behind buildings and out from trees.

But that had been so long ago. The zombies that wandered around the lakehouse were lumbering and decaying, and I sometimes wondered if they were more in search of death than in pursuit of food.

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