The Hole (9 page)

“Is it far?” he asked, trying not to make the quest sound like a complaint.

“Only have a mile or a little more.” Andrews laughed. “And then you can sleep. Not far, but everything seems a lot more when you’re in the woods.”

“It sure does,” Elliot said and stomped along behind the men, letting the jarring impact of each step keep him nominally awake.

“You’ve lost people too in this?” Andrews asked some time later.

Elliot blinked, then stared forward.

“To the disease?” Andrews added.

“We all have,” Elliot said.

“But family? Was anyone dear to you afflicted?”

“My wife. And my daughter.” Why was he telling this man about Clarine and Callie? The distrust was still present and still strong, and it felt somehow damaging to their memory to be bringing up their names in this violent crowd, no matter if the men had saved him. Callie and Clarine didn’t need to be here, not in this place.

“I’m sorry,” Andrews said. “I lost a wife myself. I can’t imagine what it must be like with- to have lost a child, too.”

Elliot nodded. It was, in fact, still difficult for him to imagine fully.

“This is still painful for you, I see that,” Andrews said. “I apologize for bringing it up. We should be in Nahom presently, just over this hill up ahead. It is a beautiful place and you can rest safely there.”

“That will be wonderful,” Elliot said, giving full emphasis to each word. The talk of Callie and Clarine and the thought of going up another hill drove the exhaustion deeper into his core. He didn’t know if he could make it.

But he did. Eventually they were over the ridge and he saw the lights of tiny Nahom spreading out beneath them like a sparking picnic blanket left at the bottom of the valley. A hundred and forty people seemed a lot for so small a place, more an encampment than an actual town. He heard the breathing of the men around him relax and their pace improved, enthusiasm for home carrying them forward.

Elliot let them fall away from him, content to stand a moment at the top of the hill and watch this mundane scene. How long had it been since he’d seen the twinkling lights of human habitation, the normalcy of that simple sight? Months? Since the power was turned off and the world had felt entirely dead. And that had been- He didn’t know, but a long time.

Andrews turned back and saw him still on the ridge. He trudged up and put his hand on Elliot’s back. “Come down,” he said. “Evajean is safe. You can see her. And then we’ll get you something to eat and a soft bed. What to do next-Evajean has told us something of your plans-can wait until morning. For now, there’s just this one short descent remaining.” And then he jogged away, towards Nahom, and Elliot after a moment followed.

She must have been waiting for their return or heard the men coming down the hill, because Evajean was standing there, where the slope leveled out and the grass was packed by the daily life of the town. She waved as he drew near enough to see in the moon’s faint light, and then he was next to her and hugging her and asking how she was, was she okay, had she been hurt? And she told him she was fine, just fine, and wanted to know the same about him.

“It must have been horrible,” she said, after they’d broken their warm-but still only friendly-embrace. “They said you were captured and they were going after you, to rescue you.”

Elliot nodded.

“It was the crazies?” she asked, wanting the answer to be no but knowing it wouldn’t.

“A lot of them. And not like the ones on the road or at Wal-mart. These talked. They communicated. They weren’t,” he said, hating to admit it out loud, “actually crazy.”

She looked at him like he was, though, and then said, “There are beds in this wonderful little house they’ve set aside for us. You should go to sleep now, Elliot, and, really, I want to do the same. I couldn’t until now because I couldn’t sleep not knowing if you were okay, but I’m completely wiped. We’ll talk about the crazies in the morning, okay?”

“Sure,” he said, “sure, okay.”

“That dog’s already figured out how to climb between the covers,” she said. “It’s been there, sometimes even snoring, since I got here. If it’s still doing that when I get back there, it’s going to be staying in your room.” And she smiled at him and Elliot felt like things would be okay, at least for the night and that this night was all that really mattered anyhow.

She led him through town-only a dozen houses and what he took to be a meeting hall or church, but the night was too dark to make much out-and then along a short path by a backyard sized field high with corn. Beyond was a little ranch house, cozy with light flickering from two of the front windows. “They said the woman who lived here died,” Evajean told him. “Of old age, not the plague. Nobody’s moved in, so it’s ours until we decide to leave.”

There was a tone in her voice, one Elliot hoped he was only imagining, that made it sound as if she intended their leaving to be put off for some time. He felt a dull fear then that she’d given up on the search for the Hole and that she wanted only to stay with these people. But that was just his mind not thinking straight after the night’s events. This place, like the men who resided in it, gave him a numbing sense of the creeps. Nahom felt bad and wrong, dirty with a slick of unseen crude, its residents contaminated-and contaminating.

Enough, he thought. That house looks so wonderfully rustic and homey and the beds inside are likely just as congenial. Sleep and don’t worry about anything beyond that.

That was a plan he could manage, even in his less than perfect state. Evajean pushed the rough wooden front door open and the dog barked at him from the ragged couch pushed against the opposite wall of the tiny living room. He walked over to it, the need for sleep hitting even harder now, and scratched between its ears. They still hadn’t come up with a name, but that too would wait for morning.

“I’m this way,” Evajean said, pointing to the left. “You’re over there,” and she directed him to the right, through another door that appeared handmade. That would mean the kitchen was through the opening in the back wall next to the couch and that those four rooms were the house in its entirety. He stumbled through where she’d sent him and the dog followed. Inside was a bed that took up nearly all the space and an armoire with the same locally crafted appearance. It was into the former that he let himself fall, not worrying about his clothes, asleep within moments of settling into the terrifically lush comforter. The puppy hopped up next to him, sniffed around, and burrowed under the blankets beside his head. They both slept-and Elliot dreamed.

In the morning, the dream would fade quickly, lost in thoughts of breakfast and the warmth of the dog against his leg. But that night Elliot’s mind, overwhelmed by excitement and grief, confusion and the hints of mystery, played. It wandered and explored the information it had and the emotions that afflicted it. His mind processed.

He sat in his home, at the same kitchen table Evajean had eaten her steak and told him how much she needed to find the Hole. A radio in the front room played a song too low to hear and Callie giggled out on the deck. He smiled with that sound, glad for it. She was just at the age when he felt okay to have her out there by herself, finding her own amusement, without the fear that she might eat the wrong thing or wander away into the street. Blessed independence made his job as a parent that much easier and he needed it, after years of necessary vigilance, his attention never fully focused on anything because part of it-a great deal of it, actually-had to be mindful of what Callie was up to.

So he let her giggle along with some unknown activity and he pushed around the papers on the table. Clarine wanted him to get another business going because she knew that’s what he wanted. The sales job he had, brokering deals for an insurance company, paid their minimal bills, but the landscaping venture had put the entrepreneur bug in him and it buzzed now, louder with each month and each year. “You could sell these policies on your own, couldn’t you?” she’d asked, but he didn’t want that. Insurance didn’t ring in his head the way the hands on of landscaping had. Yet the market here in Charlottesville, if you could believe it, was flooded. Nobody needed another company of guys with trucks and lawnmowers. Elliot would try his hand at something else entirely, just as soon as he figured out what that was.

Callie shouted to him from the backyard. “Daddy!” she called. “Look what I found!”

He stood up, happy to push the piles of research to the side for a moment, and walked through the door at the back of the kitchen, out onto the deck. Callie sat, legs wide and leaning forward, in the middle of the yard. She’d been digging, the garden trowel tossed on the grass to her left. Elliot inhaled to yell at her, because they’d been so stern with her about tearing up the lawn, told her time and again there were places to dig if she wanted to dig but the green grass he’d spent so much time on wasn’t it-but then he saw what she was holding in her tiny right hand, rubbing it with the other, and he fell silent.

The stone was four inches across and nearly round. As Callie petted it, the surface-a deep green like brilliant jade-shimmered in the changing light and shadow. In the quiet afternoon, he could hear the stone humming.

“What is it, Callie?” he asked after a moment.

“Look at it, Daddy,” she said and held the stone up to him. “I don’t know what it is? Do you know what it is?”

He didn’t. Could be jade, maybe, but the green was too much, too intense, like injection molded cheap plastic. Except for that glow-and the sound. It was all rather familiar, though Elliot couldn’t tell how or why. Dirt was still caked on it in places and he realized Callie had been brushing that off when he’d walked up.

“You get that from the hole you dug, honey?” he said, and his daughter nodded enthusiastically.

“Right there, daddy,” she said, pointing at the wound she’d torn in the yard. “I know I’m not supposed to do that but I was out here and I was gonna dig in the corner like you and mommy said I could but then I just had to dig here. I had to.” She turned her gaze dramatically to the ground. “I just had to. Don’t be mad at me, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, “okay, Callie. But can I see what you found?” He reached out for it but Callie pulled it away.

“I can find more,” she said, smiling. “It tells me where.”

“What does, honey?”

“This,” and she waved the stone at him, chastising her father for his obliviousness.

“Callie-”

“Look, daddy, there’s another one over there!” She stood up, still holding onto the stone, and ran to the back corner of the yard. Half way there, she remembered she’d forgot to bring the shovel, and came back for it, shaking her head in embarrassment. Finally equipped to dig, Callie again found the spot and began spearing at the grass.

“Callie!” Elliot called, the anger at her misbehavior coming back, but she ignored him. She hacked at the ground with great wide strokes, faster as Elliot drew close.

With one last plunge, she broke through and golden light burst forth from the hole, fierce and almost angry. Callie cried out and fell backwards. Elliot grabbed her, snatched her away from that terrible fountain of energy that was climbing through the sky, screaming as it went. Elliot could hear voices in it, shrieking and cursing his daughter for what she’d done, and she looked up at him, eyes suddenly sickly. Her mouth opened and what came forth was not that cheerful pixie voice but words he couldn’t understand, words that tumbled over each other in a mad soup of phonetic chaos. Elliot dropped her, fear making his legs weak, and his daughter crawled at him, lips pulled back, teeth clicking loud enough for the sound to carry through the cacophony.

He ran back toward the house, only thinking to get away, to put the door between himself and that thing scrambling across the lawn, that thing with his daughter’s body but not her eyes.

And Evajean was shaking him, standing over him as he lay on the rough, hard wood of the floor. He blinked and tasted blood in his mouth. The dog barked down from the edge of the bed. His cheeks were wet with tears.

They ate breakfast that morning at a long table parallel to the front of Nahom’s church, tightly packed with stools and folding chairs, each occupied by one of the town’s residents. Evajean and Elliot weren’t made to feel like outsiders, but they weren’t the center of attention, either. Rather, the atmosphere was comfortable and the food-oatmeal and applesauce, with fat rolls of whole grain bread-hot and satisfying.

Elliot sat with Evajean on his left and a pudgy woman in her sixties to the right. Mrs. Reed, she’d been introduced as, but, she said, you can call me Cecilia. She asked him a few questions about where they were from, where they were headed, and pressed for information on just how terribly awful it must have been to be out in those woods all alone. She’d heard about the night before and, as is always the case in such a small community, knew them men who’d died. It was sad, but they’d given their lives to save others, and that was as good a death as one could ever hope for.

Elliot nodded along with all this and offered up innocuous facts about the last couple days, but he kept their ultimate destination to himself. He didn’t know if these people were even aware of the Hole and, still remembering his conversation with Andrews, he wasn’t going to fill that ignorance in for them. The town and its residents were too clean, too nice, and that had him on edge.

“This is delicious,” Evajean said to Cecilia, mopping up the last of her oatmeal with a roll.

“You’re too kind to say so, honey,” the rotund little dame said. “It’s not what it ought to be, what with supplies being scarce and those things out there in the woods meaning we can’t be heading up to where you folks live to get more coffee and butter and jam.”

“No, this is perfect,” Elliot said. And, at least as to just the food, he meant it. His stomach had felt as hard and small as a golf ball when he’d woke up for the second time that morning, and the meal, while bland, remedied that spectacularly. Evajean had let him sleep for another couple hours after the nightmare and then she’d shaken him awake, telling him the town’s folk were setting up for the morning meal and if he wanted any, he’d better get himself out of bed. She’d set out a change of clothes brought by one of the families of the dead, and they fit well enough, though he didn’t much care for the rustic farmer look. The town had already been well into their meal by the time he walked back across the field and into the square before the church, but they’d left room for the two of them and set aside a few scraps of meat for the dog. The puppy was now under the table, gnawing at the thick beef with its tiny teeth, growling occasionally in satisfaction-or frustration.