Page 92
Story: Hollow Child
“That thing is right behind me,” he warned breathlessly, and I looked over his shoulder in time to see the King charging across the garage roof to make the same jump we just had.
“Is he smarter than the other zombies?” I asked, and Boden pulled me out of the way as the gorilla came crashing in through the window. His shoulder clipped the window frame, and it cracked the wall and broke the remaining glass.
He had come in much faster than we had, so he went skidding across the balcony and careened through the railings before falling to the empty main floor below.
Ripley didn’t hesitate to jump after him, and she pounced on the massive gorilla’s back, digging her claws into his flesh.
I glanced around the balcony until I spotted my sledgehammer. I grabbed it and raced down the stairs to the main floor sanctuary. Ripley was a skilled fighter, but she had never been up against a zombie gorilla, and I didn’t want her to face him alone.
While she attacked his back, I swung for his face. His bulging eye exploded underneath my hammer, splattering green goo everywhere, and one of his enormous fangs broke in half.
The King tossed his head back to let out another demonic howl, and that left his neck exposed. Ripleysaw her opportunity, and she seized it. Her wide mouth wrapped around his throat, sinking her fangs deep within his flesh and muscle, and she tore it open with her powerful jaws.
He must’ve been a very old zombie, because I could hear the gelatinous squelch of his bones as Ripley bit straight through his spine. It had only taken the lioness a few moments, and she had chewed the gorilla’s head clean off.
“I guess lions really are the king of the jungle,” Boden said as he joined me in watching Ripley finish off her kill.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Exactly. Why are all the zombies so quiet?” I asked.
And then Ripley seemed to notice too. Her ears tilted this way and that. Fire was crackling, and far away, a baby was crying. But no more groans or howling. The stained-glass was covered in red and green imagery depicting figures on the cross, so the windows blocked our ability to see what was happening around us.
It was only Boden, Ripley, and I standing in the empty sanctuary, and I had no idea what we should do with the eerie silence.
The double doors at the front of the church opened, and standing there was Stella. She was unharmed, but her auburn hair was wild, and her dress was damp.
“Stella?” Boden rushed to her. “What are you doing? How did…”
As he trailed off, staring out beyond her, I came over and looked past him, and then I saw it too.
The zombies hadn’t gone anywhere. They were all still here, but they were standing still and not making a sound. They had parted enough that there was a straight pathway down the middle, a path that Stellahad apparently walked to get to us. None of the zombies tried to hurt her or bite her or even move at all.
54
Stella
In the old church, I found Boden, Remy, Ripley, and the headless corpse of a gorilla, but I had not gone there looking for them.
Lazlo had stopped when we got to Emberwood so he could help someone, and I had gotten out then. There were zombies scattered on the roads around us, but before I even had a chance to say anything, the zombies stopped moving and fell silent.
My mouth tasted like cotton, and beneath the scent of death and fire, there was a cloud of something that hovered around me. I first noticed in the cab of the truck, when Lazlo had blasted the heat to help dry me off.
I’d asked him if he could smell anything, but Lazlo had only noticed the fishy odor of river water. But this was something else. Musky and pungent, like freshly tilled soil and the spray of a skunk.
As soon as a zombie came within a few meters of me, when they were close enough to breathe in the pheromones I had been emoting since I yelled for them tostop, they would straighten up and go still.
Lazlo called after me, asking where I was going, but I didn’t reply because I knew I was safe.
I followed the voice inside my head that continued to yellhelp, and as I walked, the zombies stilled around me. But soon they even stilled far away from me, beyond the immediate range of my scent.
When a zombie stopped near me, I decided to have a closer look. A middle-aged man with long hair except on the left side where his scalp had been ripped down to the skull. He was staring right at me, but his glassy eyes were really lookingthroughme.
I leaned in closer to him and breathed in deeply. His breath smelled of rotten meat, but around him, he had the cloud of musky and pungent that I recognized from radiating off me.
The other zombies seemed to not only respond to my pheromones, but also adopted it and began emitting it for themselves. They heard my message ofstop, and they were repeating it and passing it along to each other.
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