Hollow Men Read online

  At the front of the bus, Evan stood and stretched for about a year. I heard something in his back pop, and I winced, but he groaned with pleasure. “That’s what I’m talking about,” he sighed, then bent over to touch his toes.

  “I could have driven some,” I snapped, suddenly feeling bad. And worse—useless.

  He grinned at me. “I know. But we’re two peas in a pod.” He snagged me around the neck and pulled me in to plant a kiss on my head. It was both annoying and endearing. “Control freak, meet control freak.”

  He stuck out his hand, but I punched him lightly in the ribs. He laughed and let me go. We all got off the bus together, and Evan locked her up tight. That was another thing my father and Mr. Peterson had added. An extra lock on the outside. Good thinking.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “How many of those are you going to buy?” Evan watched me load my arms with pecan nougat eggs.

  “As many as I can carry. Put your arms out.”

  He shook his head. “Oh, no. I won’t be party to your tooth decay.”

  “Evan!”

  He snorted and thrust them out so I could fill them with a bunch of eggs. He cradled them and followed me to the register. It seemed The Big Rig still took money, but also offered trade. People coming through didn’t always have cash, and money had sort of taken a nose dive in value depending on where you were in the country.

  “Cash, trade or work?” the clerk said. Larger banks were still operational for the most part, though many small ones had fallen due to workers being infected. ATMs were not available in many places since they were easy pickings for robbery. Often establishments on the road would offer travelers the option of work or barter. Charge was starting to go the way of the dinosaurs as more and more people feared economic collapse. They wanted their money or they wanted work or goods in return. No more promises of payment.

  I swallowed hard remembering when it had been cash, check or charge.

  “Cash,” I said.

  She started to ring the eggs up and paused to look at me and smile. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you like these things?”

  “I grew up eating them. I fucking love them.”

  Evan jostled me.

  “Sorry,” I said, blushing.

  “No problem. I have seven brothers and work in a truck stop. I’ve heard that word.”

  I glared at Evan, and he chuckled.

  “Was your meal okay?” She gave me a total, and I paid it.

  “Great, actually. Nice to eat something that isn’t reconstituted.”

  Fresh food was often scarce. It depended on who could truck what where. If you grew your own, you had a better chance. But you might even have poachers in your garden. Sick ones—since hollows would eat anything—or well ones who were just plain hungry.

  “It was probably just reconstituted for you.”

  “Actually, I got the giant salad with the eggs…”

  “Ah, good choice.”

  I took the bag from her, wished her a good night and we went to find Taylor and Sally. He was outside smoking a cigarette. She was in the bathroom. Again.

  “Woman has a bladder the size of a peanut,” Taylor said. But he said it with affection.

  “It’s the baby. Pressing on it.”

  Back at the bus, we climbed onboard. We’d killed several hours in the truck stop, eating, wandering and shopping. Now the sun was going down, and I was tired. Tired from traveling. Tired from thinking. Fuck, tired from just existing lately.

  I yawned, and they all followed suit.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Evan said.

  I shook my head. “You drove. I can—”

  “Too wired to sleep,” he said.

  I offered Sally the bed, and she refused. Taylor helped her get into a recliner to sleep, and he took the other when we insisted. I shut my eyes and figured any moment the fatigue would take me under. Evan sat up behind the driver’s partition. I couldn’t see any part of him but for his boot and the tip of his rifle.

  I was so tired my eyes burned, yet every time I shut my eyes, they popped back open as if self-propelled.

  Taylor was already snoring, and Sally was definitely out. I listened and heard the rumble of diesel engines and the pop and crunch of tires on gravel. Off in the distance, I heard sirens and even though that was an utterly normal sound now…it triggered anxiety in me.

  I tried to breathe—failed.

  I held my breath, blew it out, tried again. I got a breath, yes, but it was shallow. Not enough air. Not enough.

  I got to my knees, crawled across the bed and tiptoed up to Evan. I hated being needy but maybe it wasn’t needy, maybe it was just a backup. Someone to have my back. Why did I have to put such a negative spin on simply being human?

  Lost too many already.

  He sat up straight when I showed up. “Eleanor—”

  I pushed my finger to my lips. “Shh. I can’t…” I shook my head as another flare of anxiety burned through the center of me.

  I was kneeling by his legs, and his eyes were lit by nothing more than the occasional sweeping illumination of headlights. The neon truck-stop sign painted a rainbow behind his head on the headrest of his seat.

  “I can’t breathe,” I whispered. I put his hand to my chest and let him feel the chaotic beat of my heart.

  “Panic attack,” he said, smiling. “It will pass.”

  I nodded. I knew he was right, but it didn’t help me with that claustrophobic feeling in my lungs. I put my head in his lap and just sat there while he stroked my hair. Every brush of his fingers over my head soothed me. Loosened my chest a bit more.

  I shut my eyes, letting my body relax. He always stroked my hair that way when I needed it. It was Evan’s magic touch—kindness, caring.

  “It will be okay,” he said. His voice so soft it was barely audible. “It will, El. You’ll see.”

  I nodded, and when I did, I felt the firm curve of his cock beneath my cheek. I smiled. Wiggled my head.

  “El,” he chuckled.

  “Shh.” I said it this time. I found his zipper and pulled it down. Taylor’s snores soared and then stopped, and I froze—we both did—until he started again. They were asleep.

  “Eleanor, I’m supposed to be—”

  “So watch,” I said. “Just watch while I do this for a minute.”

  I found the head of his cock with my lips, my tongue and thrilled when he groaned softly and stifled it with obvious difficulty.

  “In a minute, I might drop dead from how good that f—”

  “Shh,” I said again around his girth. It made him sigh softly, that rumbling vibration from my mouth. I raised my head. “You might wake them,” I whispered.

  There is something to be said for stealthy sex. Sex where you must be quiet. It’s a big, fat secret you share. And the secret is all about titillation and pleasure.

  I stroked his balls by sliding my fingers into his gaping fly. I sucked and ran my mouth down as far as I could go on his shaft. My lips pressed his pubic hair. My eyes prickled with water from nearly triggering my gag reflex. He tasted of soap and salt and cotton.

  I inhaled deeply, the scent of my Evan, and licked up his length to run my tongue along the smooth-as-silk ridge of his cockhead. His fingers tangled in my hair, and he gripped hard enough to make pain shiver along my scalp. Between my legs, I went wet and needy.

  The sound I made clued him in. He let me go down on him for just a few more seconds before he found my elbows and lifted me. “Come on, El. I need you.”

  I swallowed hard and looked away even though he couldn’t see my eyes. Those words did something to me. Something strange.

  “You’re on watch,” I reminded him. But when he touched my waistband, pulling me toward him, I shimmied forward, letting him kiss my belly, run his fingers over the plump split of my pussy. The soft fabric of my pajama pants rode that cleft, making the moment all the more unbearable.

  Evan hooked his fingers in the waistband a
nd pushed my pants down. He buried his face between my legs, tongue finding me, licking me, making me wetter.

  “Come on. You face me. I’ll watch out the window, and you watch behind me. Where the partition ends. In case they sneak up on us.”

  His voice was dark and gruff. I wasn’t fooled. At this point, neither of us cared if Sally or Taylor woke up. This was what we needed to do, and we were doing it.

  The night was dark, uncertain and full of people who would not hesitate to fuck up your life forever. Both infected and uninfected. We needed this moment of sanity. Of togetherness.

  I kicked my pants off, and he opened his fly all the way. Evan’s shotgun sat propped near us, an odd third party to our stolen moment.

  He helped me straddle him, his big hand guiding my thigh as I moved. Evan pushed a hand to my chest, settling it between my breasts, pressing my tee to my thickly pounding heart.

  “Stay right here a second. Don’t move.” He swept the head of his cock back and forth along my slit. Over and over until my thighs were trembling. “Now,” Evan said.

  I sank down, slowly, relishing the tension and the penetration. Lingering to feel every shake and shiver of my thighs. Every struggling gulp of air. He moved up swiftly to meet me, thrusting in short brutal motions as his hands captured my face and he kissed me. His mouth insistent and hot.

  “Are you watching, are you watching?” I murmured when I realized my eyes were closed and I was, in fact, not watching.

  “I am…sort of.”

  “Evan—”

  “The world can wait one minute, Eleanor Salt,” he said. His voice wasn’t teasing. He wasn’t smiling. He was dead serious.

  “I—”

  “Shut up, and kiss me,” he said. His hands settled—solid and comforting—on my hips, and he held me steady as he fucked me.

  I kissed him as commanded, but then his mouth drifted away, his teeth skating over my neck, down to my clavicle. He bit me hard enough to make me jerk in his arms, and when he drove into me, I came from the sensation of teeth on my skin, cock buried deep.

  “Shh, be quiet.”

  “It feels good,” I said, lips pressed to his ear.

  “I know. But feel good more quietly.” Now he was smiling.

  “You know I’m not a quiet girl,” I said.

  He found my nipple through my top and pinched. He repeated the assault on the other one, and I squeezed my pussy tight around him. “Cheater,” he said.

  I rocked back and forth, back and forth, grinding my clit against him as he remained buried in me. I found his chest and smoothed my hands over it. Streaking headlights lit us up before traveling on and leaving us buried in shadows. I pinched his nipples through his tee.

  “El!”

  “How do you like it?” I teased.

  He grabbed my ass and hauled me against him, shoving up into me even deeper. “I sorta do,” he laughed and captured my mouth with his.

  The talking and teasing and banter ceased, and we were just two bodies in motion, seeking pleasure and release. “El,” he said, and I knew what that meant. In that tone.

  I held on tight as he drove up and I sank down, our bodies in tandem, getting more frenzied—closer and closer to coming.

  When my body couldn’t grow any tighter around him, warmth rolled through me, pulling streaks of pleasure along with it. “Evan,” I said, still moving, riding out the spasms.

  “Sweetheart,” he sighed and held me even tighter, even closer. I hadn’t thought it possible, but there it was. And he covered my mouth with his as he came. Him keeping me quiet and me doing the same for him.

  His cries slipped over my lips, and I found myself clutching at him to feel the pleasure course through him as electricity skittering across water.

  We sat there in the silence, Sally and Taylor snoring lightly as background noise. Echoes of my orgasm sounded in my cunt, and I realized I wasn’t quite ready to move. Not quite ready to let him go.

  “Brace yourself,” he said in the near dark.

  I planted my hands on his shoulders and let my forehead press to his. I knew what was coming, and I was just going to let it be. I wasn’t going to twist myself up by fighting it.

  “Here’s the part where I remind you I love you, Eleanor,” he whispered. His warm breath tickled my ear.

  “I—”

  He clamped a hand down over my mouth and stifled me. He shook his head. “Don’t say anything. Go back there and get some sleep.”

  I cocked my head, and when he moved his hand I said, “You don’t know what I was going to say.”

  “I don’t want to know,” Evan said. “Not yet. Now go on…” He helped me untangle myself from him. When I leaned in to kiss him, he whispered, “Get some sleep. I’m watching out.”

  He was watching out for us. Watching over us. It had been a long time since someone had my back, and I marveled at how fast I was adjusting to it. It had terrified me at first. Now it seemed almost normal. Being with Evan constantly, being with him physically, too—nearly normal.

  I yawned big and wide and realized I would sleep after all.

  “Two a.m.” I reminded him softly. “Wake me, and I’ll take my turn. You need sleep too. So you don’t crash us into an overpass.”

  “Aye-aye, captain,” he chuckled.

  “You know it.” I crawled into the bed and was almost instantly asleep.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I’m surprised you have any teeth,” Evan growled.

  I snorted and nearly choked, and Sally giggled. I took another nibble of my pecan nougat egg and made sure do add an: “Mmm.”

  That made Sally laugh harder. Even Taylor smiled.

  “Eating candy for breakfast,” Evan growled, easing the bus into the left lane. We passed a state trooper, and Evan gave him a friendly wave.

  “Is this any less appropriate for breakfast than reconstituted shrimp or kimchi noodles?” I asked. “To me a big butt-load of sugar makes more sense than tiny, freeze-dried shellfish.”

  He cracked and smiled.

  “There are protein bars back there. Dried fruit. Even those disgusting crumbly breakfast pastry things.”

  “Breakfast of champions,” I said.

  “Eleanor,” he sighed.

  I was about to say something else to make him roll his eyes when the bus gave a lurch and a sputter.

  The candy turned to dust in my mouth.

  “Ev?” I moved toward the partition.

  His face had gone white, and he held up a silencing hand. He grabbed the steering wheel roughly as the bus veered. His hands were white-knuckled as he tried to hold it steady.

  Another lurch and a shudder.

  “Sit down,” he said, his voice tightly controlled. So controlled it scared me. “Everyone stay seated, you hear me?” He called.

  Sally, no longer laughing, and Taylor, white-lipped with concern, both called out affirmations they’d stay seated.

  He began to pilot the behemoth of a vehicle to the right lane. The breakdown lane.

  The breakdown lane.

  My mouth was dry, but my upper lip had broken out in a sweat.

  “What is it? Do you know?”

  The bus lurched, groaned, seemed to stutter. But it kept rolling.

  “I think it’s the alternator. I think. I’m going to get it as close to that off ramp as I can before it goes,” Evan said. His face was a mask of tension. His neck taut from clenching his jaw.

  Fear blossomed—bright and deadly—in the middle of my stomach, and I forced myself to take a big breath. To be calm. This was okay. We’d figure it out.

  The cloying sweetness of candy flooded my mouth, and I felt sick.

  I glanced at Sally who was silently crying. I was grateful she was keeping herself together enough to be quiet. Taylor leaned over and said something in her ear. She smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes.

  The bus rolled forward as if it were a thing that would not die, but it staggered a bit more, the very feel of it uncoordinated
and jerky. I gripped the bar of the partition at the front of the bus. I was opposite Evan in the front seat. Outside the window, I saw nothing but typical side-of-the-freeway landscape. Dead grass. Some overgrowth. A ditch. An incline lead up, up, up to a sound barrier to keep the constant noise of the traffic from invading homes that were no doubt built on the other side.

  “What are we going to do?” I said, keeping my voice low, hoping that the two in the back couldn’t quite hear me.

  “I don’t know. We’re going to wait until it literally will not go another inch, and then we’re going to get out and see what the problem is.”

  “And then?”

  “And then we hope it’s something I can identify, then fix.”

  I nodded as if I were totally calm and said, “Got it.”

  My mind raced. If he went without me, we were split up. If we went together, we were leaving our bus—basically our rolling home—in the hands of strangers. I’d grown to like Sally and even Taylor, but I didn’t want to leave them in our bus. Alone.

  “It’ll be okay,” he said to me. It didn’t sound as if he believed it, but he said it to me and it warmed my heart he was trying to comfort me.

  The bus moaned and shuddered, and, finally, he steered the behemoth into the breakdown lane with difficulty. Everything seemed to stop. Then just the sound of four people breathing hard and the rush and whoosh of traffic. All those cars and vans and buses rushing to get to their destination, too busy and frantic to even notice us, most likely.

  “Okay,” I said. I dropped the rest of my candy egg on the seat next to me. My hand was sticky and sore from clenching it my fist so hard. “Now we can…”

  Evan stood and looked to the back. “Taylor, anything back there that could help me get up closer with the engine if I need to? Might be able to just climb on the bumper, but…might not.”

  “There are some milk crates full of stuff back here,” he called. “I’d have to empty them.”

  “Do it,” Evan said. Even his voice was tense.

  I got up close. “Why are you taking him?”

  “I’m not sold on them. I figure he’s the threat, so if he’s with me, I’ll feel a bit better. Don’t worry. We’re just trying to figure out what the fuck happened. We can’t be here come dark. Hell, El, we can’t be here past rush hour.”