Hollowland
Page 37

“Come on, you guys!” Harlow waved us on.
Without further prompting, Lazlo and I jogged over to the car. Lazlo slid in the backseat, but I ran around the back and opened the hatch. I called Ripley, and she looked uncertainly at me.
Echoing through the trees, we could still hear the death groans of more zombies. She flicked her tail sharply, then decided against zombie hunting, and hurried over and dove in the back. I ran around and jumped in the backseat next to Lazlo.
I got in just in time to see three more zombies emerging from the shadows, including the one I had impaled on a tree. One of the zombies slammed its hand onto the back of the car, leaving a bloody handprint and making Ripley growl, but then we were moving too fast for any of them to catch us.
“Now I’m really glad I came with,” Harlow said, watching out the window as we drove away. She had rolled it up as soon as she saw us coming, but she stared out emptily at the world hidden under a blanket of fog.
“What are you talking about?” I leaned back in the seat, catching my breath.
“They’re overrun with zombies.” She didn’t sound relieved or even upset by the thought. She said it in the same way she might mention that it looks like rain today.
“Good thing we had Remy,” Lazlo smiled at me, trying to lighten the mood. He brushed his black hair from his eyes, and I didn’t appreciate the gleam in them. “She was so badass back there. Did you see her? She took down like five zombies by hand.”
“Yeah, and two of them got back up,” I muttered.
Lazlo continued talking, but I could still hear Ripley in the back, slurping loudly as she licked herself clean. It reminded me of my own wounds in need of cleaning, and I looked down at the scratch on my arm.
It wasn’t a bad cut, and it’d already scabbed over. If I wasn’t afraid of catching the zombie virus, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it. Next to the thin red line down my arm, I had speckles of greenish blood, splatter from the zombies.
“Did you get hurt?” Lazlo noticed me inspecting my arm.
“On the bushes,” I said, barely above a whisper.
My heart clenched in my chest, and I had to swallow hard. After everything I had gone through, a damn bush was the thing that would get me.
“What?” Lazlo moved across the seat closer to me. The cut was on my right arm, the one on the opposite side of him, and he leaned over me to see it.
“What’s going on? What are you talking about?” Harlow already sounded panicked, and she sat on her knees on the seat so she could turn around and face me. “What happened?”
“I got a scratch when we came out of the building.” I kept my voice as even as possible. I didn’t want to frighten or upset them anymore than I had to. “And I have zombie blood on my arm. I might be infected.”
“Let me see.” Lazlo grabbed my arm, as if looking at it changed what happened.
“You guys should leave me here,” I told them.
“No!” Harlow shouted instantly, her eyes wide and appalled. “No way!”
“We’re not gonna leave you,” Lazlo reiterated, his words soft and low.
He stopped looking at my arm and turned his attention to me, so I pulled my arm back from his hands. I tried to move farther away, but I was already against the door.
I rubbed my temple and stared out the window. Tears wanted to form, but I refused to let them. I knew I should make them leave me on the road. It’s what I had done, several times before.
But I was too selfish and afraid, and too hopeful. I hadn’t been bitten, and I couldn’t see zombie blood or saliva directly in contact with my own wound. So there was still a chance.
“The incubation time is a maximum  two to three days before it’s all-out zombie,” I said thickly. I chewed my lip and looked back at them. “As soon as it starts happening, the high fevers, headaches, chills, vomiting… I need you to shoot me. I don’t want to turn. I need you to kill me first.”
“I’m not gonna kill you,” Lazlo shook his head, unable to even process the idea.
I wanted to argue that he’d be saving me from turning into a monster, and that if he didn’t, I’d end up killing him. But I didn’t want to think about it, and saying it aloud would make it worse somehow.
I looked away from Lazlo and met Blue’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t said much of anything since we left, but the serious look in his eyes meant he was thinking the same things as me. I was so grateful to have another rational person in our group, otherwise none of us would survive.
“I’ll do it,” Blue promised me, and I nodded.
Harlow had been staring back at me, but she gave Blue a hurt look, as if he had betrayed her or me somehow. Really, he was doing us all a favor. If he were a more of a leader, he would’ve insisted that I stay behind, and I wouldn’t have fought him on it. I just wasn’t strong enough to insist I stay behind myself.
“Hey, I’m not dead yet,” I forced a smile. Harlow looked sadly at me for a second before turning around and sitting down.
Lazlo returned to his side of the car, sitting low in the seat. He reached over and took my hand. I let him, but I refused to look at him. I wouldn’t acknowledge any amount of comfort it gave me, or even the slightest bit of butterflies that overcame the nausea and fear that had swept over me.
I stared out the window at the graying world around us and wondered how much longer I’d get to enjoy the view.
As the day progressed, the sun burned off the fog, revealing scenery lush with grass and trees. It reminded me of back home in Iowa, and I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it living in the desert for so long.
The sun also warmed the car, and I cracked the window, relishing the green scent of the earth around us. Everything smelled so sweet, but that might’ve just been because I knew this might be the last time I ever got to breathe it in.
Not that much longer, we came into another small town. This one looked like most of the other towns we’d seen, evidence of havoc and death, but not quite as devastated and volatile as the town with the marauders.
After our experience in the last one, Blue meant to just drive on through it, avoiding trouble as much as possible. But Harlow said she needed to go to the bathroom, so Blue looked for the nicest, least destroyed house he could find, and pulled in for a pit stop.
Butter yellow with shutters and a white picket fence, the house looked quaintly picturesque. The lawn and flower gardens had become overgrown from lack of tending, and some of the siding and shutters had splatters of dirt and blood on them.