Chapter Two
“This won’t be a normal sermon tonight. You all know what happened at the community center. You all know what will happen to us if we wait for help. I ask not that you listen to me as your pastor. I ask only that you embrace the message of our Lord. One last time.”
–Father Elijah Campbell. Larkspur, Colorado. 20 Days After.
* * *
Was there anyone out there?
That was all Leah could think as she stared into the empty sea. A grey, overcast sky hung low today, with the waves beating against the beach to match. She’d heard a lot about what lay behind this endless wall, and seen some of it in pics and on video too. But for all her time in this world, Leah had never crossed that threshold, nor graced distant lands. For all she knew, there was nothing past those waves but more sea, pressing against the sand until it swallowed all in sight.
Who could say otherwise? As Leah watched the daily assault of water against shore, she wondered how humans had once thought themselves bold enough to stand against the system that they were mere cogs within. Maybe Pandemonium was all that remained, a little pocket of fiery chaos in a world trying to reorder itself, no more than an echo of the civilization that had come before. Maybe life had run its course, and only death remained. Soon, the echoes would fade, the embers would die, and there would be nothing left but the dark, grey sea. The Hollowing would reach its finality, and the world would reset as it had before. No people. No stories. No future. Only death.
Or maybe this wasn’t the end. Maybe death was no more than the inverse of life, and the two stood in balance, with one never being able to overtake the other. After all, the waves beat without end, but the shore stood obstinate to each blow. For all the strength of the ocean at large, there was an equally powerful continent to her back, one that was just as dark and dismal as the world beyond, but where the spark of life still remained. If the ruins of America had survived, then there could still be innumerable places where life fought for survival, always destined to lose each battle, but still able to win the greater war against death.
Or maybe Leah had just had too much to eat.
She’d been coming to the coast more these days between Hunts, an act that Mastermind would always tell her was a waste, once before leaving, and again the second she returned. He hadn’t been wrong yet. Every time Leah made her way out here, she’d face the void for hours on end, hoping that something new might come from such nothingness, but always leaving disappointed, a wasted day and hours of her own time extinguished, never to be regained. Would it ever change?
A gurgle erupted between the cacophony of waves, its owner nearby. A hollow had washed onto the beach, perhaps twenty paces away. As its head turned her way, it grunted and wobbled to its feet.
Leah frowned. Leave it to nothing to conjure more nothing, she reflected. Such was to be expected, these days. She pulled her burgundy scarf over her nose and went to face the interloper, matching its puppeted movements with her disciplined own. She would face death again and win.
Drawing close, the hollow was much smaller than Leah had suspected, perhaps half her height, with a feminine frame beneath rags that had once been clothes. A child when the Hollowing had begun, now forever trapped in a child’s body. The hair had long since fallen out, save for a few strands, seaweed clinging stubbornly within.
But it was the eyes that gave Leah pause. For a moment, she thought she’d seen a flicker of light, but they were empty and without meaning, just like the sea that had vomited them up. White pupils narrowed onto her own as the hollow raised its arms, the Hunger its sole mechanism.
“Nothing in there, huh?” Leah asked.
The hollow hissed. Sea water spilled from its lips.
“Worth a try.”
Leah drew her trusted pistol from its holster, a M1911 with a hair trigger installed for ease, and a customized suppressor that had a wider tube and an interior coated with a gas-absorbent grease. The metal pressed against the rough fabric of her black leather gloves as she unlocked the safety.
The hollow marched on, oblivious to the finality it would soon face. What else could be expected? When the mind was gone and only the Hunger remained, there was no alternative. Hollows were superior to her in that way. By not having souls of their own, they never had to struggle with the questions of life and death, or the eternal war between the two.
They just walked, ate, and when circumstances permitted, they died again, this time for good.
Leah pulled the trigger. It was a single shot. Clean. Straight between the eyes, and out the other side. The sand puffed out where the bullet struck the beach, and the hollow groaned one last time before flopping, with no more movement of note.
Leah holstered her 1911. “Got anything good, at least?”
The dead hollow said nothing.
“Yeah? Well, fuck you too.”
Leah drew her black steel combat knife and went to work, slicing through the remains of clothes in the hopes of deriving value within. In her experience, most had hollowed on the run, with some item or other on hand, and one that they’d valued more than life itself. It might have been a pic, or a toy, or a family heirloom, or perhaps something with more utility, like a pocketknife, or a watch, or even a book. Children were no exception. When the Hollowing came and humanity clamored to escape its day of judgment, everyone rushed any way they could, no doubt certain that they could weather the storm.
In the end, all were proven wrong.
To Leah’s disappointment, whatever this hollow might have had in life, its time rotting in the sea had stripped it of anything important. The pockets had been torn inside-out where they hadn’t fused with rotted flesh below, and any cloth still loose had all but disintegrated.
Leah found its Marks, at least. A half-dozen incisions just shy of the shoulder, with deeper scars running down the back, and a matching pair below. A mix of black and maroon, contrasted against the deep blue bloat of its otherwise untorn flesh. The girl had been bitten. No surprise, really. Most took bites before hollowing, though scratches weren’t the rarest wound in the world. This girl hadn’t been so fortunate in life, and based off the level of degradation, even less so, in death.
“Do me a favor and die with some bullets next time,” Leah quipped. “That cool?”
The hollow said nothing.
Leah sighed. Enough playing for today. She cradled the dead hollow in her arms and wandered into the sea. The waves beat against her steel-toed combat boots first, and then her faded jeans next, and then up to the rim of her sheepskin jacket. As the water pressed against her waist, Leah gave the hollow one last look. The clouded eyes were locked with hers, as empty in death as they had been in undeath, yet still calling to her all the same.
Why fight? Why survive? Why cling to this mockery of life? Why not let it end, as death had intended? Leah supposed that it was questions like these that truly drove her to this barren beach. What was an ocean, but every reservoir that had ever been drained, and how else could she face that inevitability, but with her own continued existence? So long as she remained herself, she could still think, and feel, and remember, and enjoy, and experience all that this world had to offer. As terrible as this form of existence could be, it was still hers, and only death’s finality could take that away. But if she fought against that fate until the bitter end, every second she gained would be hers forever.
Perhaps that was all Leah needed.
She dropped the corpse. The tide receded, and with it, the hollow was sucked back beneath the waves where it had come. Leah went back for the shore, leaving death defeated yet again.
As she rung the water from her jeans and poured it from her boots, her peripherals scanned the ocean one last time. An object popped into view, just on the cusp of the horizon, dark and brown against the backdrop of blue. Her eyes strained tighter, and for a moment, she could almost make it out.
Is that a raft? Here!? Only Seaside had boats anymore, and they almost never brought them this far south. Not without a good reason, anyway. This one was also coming from the west. Nobody ever came from out there.
Leah yanked her binoculars free, rubbed down the lens, and narrowed back onto the horizon.
…Only to have her hopes dashed. Her “raft” was no more than a rusted buoy, drifting with the tide, with no life to herald of its own.
Leah put her tools away, gave her boots one final squeeze, and moved to leave. Yet again, she had vindicated her own fears, with nothing new to report but another day wasted. Maybe next time, she told herself. I’ll find proof that there’s still a single living human in this world. My kind couldn’t have wiped them all out.
Though she wasn’t sure if she believed it.
