Page 4 of Hollow Valley

I ran forward, the aches of my feet and legs suddenly forgotten, and I could hear Boden jogging after me.

Before we even reached the edge of the open pit, I could see the blackened piles of ash and bone.The pheromones were still hazy, but there was an overpowering odor that anyone could smell.Smoky ash, putrid sulfur, and an undeniable sweetness all mixed together in a sickening stench.When we reached the edge, it was enough that Boden had put his arm over his nose to block it.

Last time I’d been here, all the stepped levels had been filled with zombies.They still covered every square of dirt, but instead of fleshy and animated, they were unmoving black soot and charred bones.

None made a sound, but their final thoughts lingered in the ashes that clung to their remains:Fear.Pain.Run.

I shuddered and swallowed the guilt that threatened to rise up my throat in the form of bile.

“Somebody finally took care of them all,” Boden said, sounding rather relieved.

“They didn’tallneed to be taken care of,” I replied thickly.

He gave me an apologetic look, then put his hand on my shoulder.“You’re thinking about that kid again?”

I blinked and turned away.I had made my choice a long time ago when I left Chosen here and went back to my family.I couldn’t risk my newborn daughter around a zombie hybrid, and I couldn’t abandon her for a child I didn’t know.No one would have allowed him onto the Barbarabelle anyway.He might have been contagious, and he could certainly summon and command zombies.

Even today, even if I’d known this is how the hybrid child’s story would end, I wouldn’t have made a different choice.I chose to protect my family first – as I always had, as I always would – and now all I could do was live with those choices.

“I bet that’s what all that smoke was about last year,” Boden commented.“Remember all those dark clouds in mid-April?It went on for a few days, and Remy was planning to investigate when it finally went out.”

“Who did it?”I asked.My back was to the pit, because I didn’t want to look anymore, and that awful prickling urge made my hands tremble.

“I don’t know.Someone with a match and a hatred of zombies,” he replied simply.Then he looked back over at me.“Come on.We need to find somewhere to camp, and I think it would be good for you to get away from this place.”

“It’s too late for us to go far.”I glanced up at the darkening sky.“Let’s just find a building.”

3

Stella

Out of the horrors that existed in this world, I was ashamed to admit that the thing I struggled to stomach the most was the scent.Decay and death that vacillated between nauseatingly sweet and overpoweringly rancid, and underneath all of that was the musty odor of abandonment.Sometimes, if I ventured into the wrong areas, the stench became nearly palpable, like a dense fog hanging over everything.

Even with the pit of burnt corpses, the Tarik Copper Mine wasn’t anywhere near the worst as far as apocalyptic nightmare scents went, but that didn’t mean it was pleasant.

We chose a shed down the driveway to camp out.Back when the mine had been working, it had likely been storage for tools and equipment, but most of that had been picked clean by the time we found it.Boden liked it because it was relatively small and empty, with only a few dusty shelves and random tools strewn about, so it was easy to secure.

There was enough space for us to lay out our bedrolls, and we left the door cracked so we could set up our travel stove.The travel stove was basically a metal box that we fed twigs into, but it was easy enough to heat up our food and provide some light and warmth for the nights.

After we ate and settled in, I worked on the scrapbook I had been making for Rafaella.I wanted to show her as much of the world as I could, so I collected things as we walked and pressed them between pages of a blank journal I’d found.

The pink blossoms of the Nootka Rose (Rosa nutkana) and the vibrant Scarlet Paintbrush (Castilleja miniata) next to a wing from a lemon-yellow Swallowtail Butterfly (Papilio canadensis) and an iridescent indigo feather dropped from a Tree Swallow (Tachycineta bicolor).

Back at the Lakehouse, I’d been fortunate enough to have access to a rather substantial library that included a full set of encyclopedias and books covering topics from fishing and kayaking to foraging and hiking.Because books weighed so much, we weren’t able to take nearly as many as I would’ve liked, but we’d made room for a Farmer’s Almanac and an atlas as well as a few other of my favorites, including a copy ofThe Velveteen Rabbitfor Fae.

Still, I hated that she would be growing up with so much less information than I had, and I was trying to recreate as much as I could for her while I still remembered it.

Sleeping on the road never came easy, despite the exhaustion of walking as much as my body would allow.Laying down on the hard ground, my arms propped under my thin pillow with the days’ dirt and the ashy stench of death clinging to me, for once it wasn’t the hunger but the longing in my chest that got to me.It was a genuine pain, a twisted knot right in the center of my very being, so I couldn’t get comfortable no matter how I lay.

“Are you doing okay?”Boden asked after I’d been tossing and turning.

“Yeah.Sorry.Hope I’m not disturbing you.”

“No, it’s hard to sleep on the road.I get it.”

“I haven’t been away from Fae like this before, not since she was a baby.”My words came out thick, as if the sadness had filled my mouth with cotton, and tears welled in my eyes.

“We can go back, if you’re not up for it,” he offered gently.“There’s no shame in staying back to take care of your family.”