Page 86 of Hollow Child

I almost leapt out the window after him. I meant to, but Boden’s arms caught me around the waist, holding me back before I could.

I was screaming Max’s name, as if he could hear, as if he could get up. He was on the ground, unmoving, as the horde of zombies descended on him. They tore at his clothes first, and then his flesh.

Over all the groans and growls of the zombies, I could hear the squelching sound of their hands tearing into his abdomen, and the grisly crunch as they tore off his arm.

Boden tried to pull me away, so I couldn’t see the zombies dismember Max, but I gripped onto the windowsill. I refused to look away from him. He wasmine, the thing I loved the most in the world, more than the baby or Boden or myself.

I was there the day he came into the world. I was the first person after my parents to hold him, and I had loved him then and every day since. I had born witness to his birth, and I would bear witness to his death.

It took too long, and it was over too quickly, because then he was gone, gone,gone… Just bones and blood and tatters of muscle and hair. And the zombies that devoured him went back to clawing at the walls because they were still so very hungry.

By then, I wasn’t screaming Max’s name anymore. I wasn’t screaming any kind of word. It was a visceral, primal sound made of rage and pain that consumed me.

I only stopped because my voice gave out. It cracked and broke, and my throat burned like I had scraped off a layer of skin. I gasped for breathbecause my lungs demanded it, and my face was slick with tears.

“Remy?” Boden said quietly, and his arm was still around me. He was afraid that I would jump out the window after Max, and he was right to have that fear.

“It’s not so great when someone else gets to decide if your loved ones should die," Samara said, and just the sound of her voice filled me with a blind rage.

I was so angry, it was vibrating all through me, and I could hardly think straight.

“You killed my dad, and you killed Castor’s sister,” Samara was explaining as if I gave a single fuck about any thought or opinion inside her vapid head.

She was nothing except the object of my all-consuming rage.

I let go of the windowsill, and I feigned relaxing into Boden’s arms so he would let go of me. It worked, but I was not relaxed. I was coiled so tight, and I needed to find the right moment to strike.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” someone shouted at Samara.

“You don’t understand what she’s like!” Samara insisted, her voice tilting toward frenetic. “She is a remorseless killer!”

“So you killed her brother without remorse?” Boden asked her in disgust. “Your father was a very good man. He would be so sickened by you, Samara.”

“Max wasn’t –” Samara began, but I didn’t let her finish. I couldn’t stand to hear his name in her voice.

I grabbed my sledgehammer, and I slammed it into her head with all my might. I only got one strike before Castor grabbed me, trying to stop me, but Boden intervened and pulled him off me.

With the amount of blood already pooling underneath Samara’s head, and as hard as I had hit, she was probably already dead. But I’d like to thinkthat some consciousness was still there, some pain synapses still firing inside her brain, so that she felt every single blow as I pummeled her head into absolute mush with the sledgehammer.

5o

Remy

The only reason I stopped swinging the hammer was because my hands had grown too slick with blood. The handle slid from my grip and fell on the loft floor.

People were crying and yelling. Not all of them, but enough. I hadn’t been able to hear anything when I’d been focusing on destroying Samara, and now the sound all came back like a roar.

“Let me go!” Castor was yelling and bucking at Boden, who still held him.

“Why didn’t you stop her?” A woman was shrieking, and a man moved toward me, like he meant to stop me now.

Ripley had been sitting near the edge of the loft, licking her wounds, but she came over and put herself between me and the man. She gave a low growl, and he moved against the wall, cowering with the others.

After Ripley set everyone straight, they all fell silent, and it was only the zombies outside. Inside, it was just Castor crying, and my own ragged breath.

“Are you done?” Boden asked me.

I nodded, and he let Castor go. He ran past me to crouch beside Samara. There was nothing left of her head anymore, but he pressed his face against her chest as he sobbed.

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