Hollow Men Read online

  “I’ve always trusted you, Evan,” I said matter-of-factly.

  He looked—for the briefest of seconds—as if he was going to lean in and kiss me. And for the briefest second I prayed to anything that might be up there in the heavens he would. I wanted to feel the heat of him, another person, someone I had always liked, pressed to me. Kissing me.

  Then he backed up a step and said, “We’ll keep our ears open for any bullshit, but let’s go eat.”

  “Right,” I said and followed him back to the kitchen, drawing the blinds on all the windows along the way.

  * * * *

  He was traveling further north to find others. Up toward Vermont, Massachusetts, Maine and the like. More military bases. Larger groups of people living together. Communes, compounds, whatever you wanted to call them, they were safer. Evan’s destination was St. Albans, Vermont where an aunt lived and the rest of his family was headed.

  Night was falling, and a band of rogues was still clustered around my street. For the most part, my neighborhood looked deserted and since those of us remaining had done nothing to draw attention to ourselves, the hollows and the poachers mostly paid no mind to my home. Apparently, those who found it amusing to shoot live humans, no matter how dangerous they might be, weren’t as attentive to detail as Evan. He’d noticed my house appeared inhabited from the get-go.

  “It’s a shame they’re so near your car,’ I said, peeking out the hole in the front window plywood. “I feel as if I’m holding you up.”

  He gave a short laugh and moved in close to try to see. “As long as they leave it alone, I’m cool. As far as you holding me up…”

  Then he was looking down at me. All towering six-foot-three of him to my five-foot-ten. I found it a little hard to swallow…breathe…think. We’d always been good together. Always fit as if we were hand and glove, in the sex department and out of it. The only issue had been the making-a-commitment thing.

  “Yeah?” I tried to keep my voice level. I failed.

  “You could never hold me up, Eleanor. I’ve always stayed willingly in your company. More than willingly. You know.” He shifted and smiled, trying to lessen the tension with his body language, it seemed. “It took me two years to get over you. I barely dated and found something wrong with every girl.”

  “You always were picky,” I snorted.

  “The only problem with those girls was they weren’t you.”

  I moved him aside and looked out the window again. “Oh,” I said, once he couldn’t see my face. Then: “Looks as though you’re spending the night.” My stomach dropped when I said it. “Because if they’re all worked up over hollows, just think what they might wanna do with you.”

  “Fine by me. Where do we sleep?”

  I chewed my lip. “Downstairs. Follow me.” I made sure not to look at him as I led the way. If I looked at him, I might just lose my mind. Or my panties. It had been a long, long time, as I said.

  Now is not the time, Eleanor…

  But my body wasn’t so in tune with my brain tonight.

  “So, Eleanor Salt, is this where you bunk down?” He was using his best drill instructor voice. The voice we used with each other to back in the day to imitate my dad. We never made fun, though. My dad was hard not to love.

  “Sir, yes, Sir!” I snapped. It felt weird to be having fun. To be joking around. “Right back here. You remember this,” I said, softly. My voice changing a bit. I flipped the main room lights on, not worried about the strangers outside seeing them. The windows were blacked out from the inside, fitted with wrought iron coverings, and a few weeks back I’d shuttered them as a final touch.

  I pushed the hidden button for my father’s recessed room and stepped back. Evan had moved up close behind me, and we watched the door slide open on its well-oiled runner. “Ah, I can’t get over how much of a genius your dad was. Papa Prepper.”

  I laughed at that. I’d forgotten the nickname we’d used for him. But my eyes stung, too, and I quickly wiped at them.

  “Sorry, El. Sorry.” His arms came around my waist, and he held me close. Evan nestled his chin on my shoulder and kissed the side of my face.

  “I bet you miss them both something awful.”

  “I do.” My voice was choked.

  He squeezed me tight, and I sort of just…melted into it. I knew I shouldn’t, I should get myself together, but it was so hard to resist. He felt it, too.

  “How long you been alone here, Salt?”

  “About six months, Blackwood,” I said, joking. “I mean, I’ve been out but…I’ve been here mostly for that long. Since the outbreak.”

  “Too long.”

  I hit the light for the main room and together we walked into the space I slept in when the neighborhood was active. It had two sealing interior doors and some low-tech alarm systems built in. It made me feel secure enough to sleep, being in there. Which was a blessing.

  I turned on the security monitor my dad had installed a few years back. It was a simple closed circuit TV feed, and I monitored the porch and the street for a minute. “They’re still not interested in us,” I said.

  “Good.” He turned in a circle. “I’m guessing that’s your cot since Mr. Boo Boo is on it.”

  “Careful, I might shoot you,” I said. Mr. Boo Boo was my first stuffed animal, and he was still important enough for me to keep in one piece. My dad bought him in the hospital gift shop two minutes after I was born because he wanted to be the person to give me my first stuffed animal. No matter how hideous or sad looking it might be. The dominant votes were hippo or mutant octopus.

  “I’ll take this one,” he said.

  I heard the bed groan as he sat. He really was a big guy.

  “Sorry, for the uninvited drop in.”

  “It’s fine,” I said quickly. I almost added I’m glad you came but couldn’t quite bring my mouth to say it. I hadn’t realized how lonely I’d been until he’d shown up to make me see it. Being alone fucked with your head.

  My dad’s safe room had a built-in bathroom. Small as fuck, but it did the job. I went in, washed my face and stared at myself in the mirror. Haunted gray eyes stared back at me.

  I had a brief flash of the last time Evan and I had been together. His hands standing out ruddy-white in contrast to my almost caramel skin. He was a mutt of Irish, Scottish, English and French. Me…I was English, German and a hefty dose of Native American. No one could ever agree on what tribe, so I went by law of averages. The most common I’d heard from family members, including my dad, was Cherokee, so I just ran with that.

  The image of his hands on skin faded when his face appeared in the doorway making me jump.

  “You okay, El?”

  I nodded, giving him a wan smile in the mirror. “Just noticing I look like shit.” I quickly began to brush my teeth.

  “You could never look like shit, El,” he said, straight-faced, then left me to my ablutions.

  I climbed into bed after hitting the overhead light. Evan had found the small reading lamp attached to his bunk. “Okay if I read? It won’t keep you up?”

  “It’s fine,” I said. “No worries.”

  “Some interesting books in here. The Art of War…”

  “My dad’s,” I laughed. “Never read it.”

  “Hot Tropical Nights?” he asked. I could hear him grinning.

  “My mom’s.”

  “Ever read that one?”

  I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Shut up, Evan.”

  “Oh…I’ll have to look for the good parts.”

  I turned on my side and tried to sleep. Trying my best to ignore the sudden hot flare of lust in my stomach. “You do that.”

  I dozed. But not for long. I was lulled by the sound of turning pages and oddly the presence of another person. The sleep was swift but restorative. I rarely slept for any length of time anymore. Simply because there was so much to be concerned about. So much to track. Real men and women were often more dangerous than the hollow. The hollow simply opera
ted on a single need—hunger.

  I woke when Evan flipped off his light. There was utter silence but for his breathing. No sound came from the streets above, so it seemed all was well. Three things filled my head: Evan’s respiration, a faint ringing in my ears from the silence and the bass drum beat of my heart.

  I waited for the intense alertness to pass. For my heart to calm down. For my urges to pass.

  They didn’t.

  “Ev?” He wasn’t sleeping. I could tell. I could feel it.

  “Yeah?”

  “You asleep?”

  “Am I talking to you?” He was smiling. I could tell.

  “Can I—I mean, you won’t get all—” I sighed and simply shut up. I crawled out of my bunk and traveled the five big paces from my bunk to his. I just stood there, not quite feeling him but sensing him.

  In the dark, fingers found the waistband of my leggings, tugged me a step forward. “You coming in or you just gonna stand there and taunt me, Eleanor?”

  I moved onto his bunk, my body folding into the small space with ease. We were face-to-face and belly-to-belly and the warmth coming off him was unbelievable.

  “You’re not going to think…” I stopped talking for a moment just to push my hands flat against his hard chest, his lean stomach. I felt the muscles under my palms jump a little. Felt the rigid length of his erection press to the front of me. He kissed me, and I forgot what I was going to say.

  “Think what?” Evan broke the kiss. His lips traveled from my mouth to my jaw, tingling arcs of electricity seemed to zig and zag along my skin wherever his lips touched me. “That we’re going to get married and have babies because you’re lonely and I’m lonely, and we’re so fucking good together, El?” His fingers pushed back down under my leggings, the warmth of his skin seeming to burn me.

  Between my legs, I grew wetter. In my heart, I grew needier.

  “It will be okay. We can just…have this connection?” Now I was kissing him. And once I’d started, I couldn’t imagine stopping. His mouth parted, his tongue danced over mine. Big hands gripped me at the small of my back and trapped me to his body. I found his erection through his boxers—he’d ditched his jeans—and squeezed.

  He framed my face with his hands, and though I could barely see the shine in his eyes from the monitors high up on the shelf, I could tell he had that intent Evan Blackwood look. The look he got when he was serious as a heart attack. “This can be whatever you need it to be, El. Whatever it is you need.”

  “Right,” I said. Then I pushed my hand past the barrier of his boxer briefs and stroked that impossibly hard yet soft skin with a firm grip. His hips arched toward me, and he gasped against the side of my face. I swept my thumb over the tip of him, feeling the silken slide of pre-cum spread over his glans. “Turned on, Evan?” I grinned.

  “El, just thinking about you can turn me on. It’s always been that way. That never changed.”

  “Shut up and kiss me,” I said before I could let that comment sink in. I’d been alone too long to hear those words. They fucked with my thoughts.

  He cupped the back of my head, holding me close as the kiss deepened. I felt the tickling in the back of my throat and my chest only Evan had ever inspired in me. It was as if my body could barely contain its joy at being close to him. He was addictive and sexy, kind and funny. Walking away from him and the life he thought we could have together had been the hardest thing I’d ever done. I was only eighteen at the time. I thought that was an exaggeration. At twenty-four, I realized it wasn’t.

  I pushed the thought away and shoved his boxers down to get closer to him. He had the same thought because he slid my leggings down over my hips. I helped him, and there was a blind, humorous moment where we were a tangle of clothes and limbs and yet, in the chaos, we kept pausing to kiss. To touch.

  He flipped me suddenly, and the urge to react with my own force never came. I expected it to after so many weeks and months of being on red alert. Not this time. This time, I melted beneath him, parted my thighs and let him slip between them. Feeling the drag of his cock along my wet slit had me humming softly.

  “What song is that?” I felt him smile against the side of my cheek. He nuzzled my neck, laying a gentle bite along my shoulder in the way that had always turned me on. He remembered my body. The sensation coupled with that thought spiked my nipples with arousal. He ground his body against mine, and I followed suit, arching up to get more friction.

  “That’s the this-feels-good song,” I joked. But I had to swallow hard at a sudden rush of emotion in my chest. He was such a good man. How had he ever left my mind?

  His fingers sifted through my hair and his lips pressed to mine once more. He licked my lower lip, bit it softly and whispered, “If I don’t slide into you right now, Eleanor, I might lose my mind.”

  “That makes two of us.” I found him with my hand and guided him to my slick pussy. But he knocked my hand away and dragged the head of his cock along my entrance. I made a desperate sound, and he shushed me.

  “Patience.”

  “I’ve never had any.”

  “I haven’t forgotten.” He slipped just the tip into me, and my body stretched, my pussy flexed, anticipating more—craving it.

  Evan pushed my hands above my head and threaded his fingers through mine. He held me that way, blissfully trapped beneath his grip, beneath his bulk. I could feel the pounding of his heart and mine seemed to be keeping time. The silence was deafening as he started to move. Every wet sound of acceptance from my body for his was surreally audible.

  “I’ve missed the feel of you, El,” he said.

  I couldn’t answer. My cunt relaxed but gripped him at the same time. It had been ages since I’d had sex. He felt too big; he felt too perfect. Too much and not enough. Conflicting sensations that had one link only—pleasure—coursed through me, and I groaned.

  “Don’t,” I said, but my words held no heat.

  “I just had to say it once,” he chuckled. But the laughter bled into a slow exhalation as he truly started to move, thrusting deep and rotating his hips to press all the secret places in me that made me try to move my hands. He pressed them down more firmly, held me flat. “I’m running this show,” he said. “You stay where you are.” He drove deeper, harder, and I was fuller, fullest. I came with a sudden cry that he instantly covered with his big hand.

  “Shh, baby. No noise. This is stealth sex. It’s not safe tonight.”

  It was the truth, and the strength of his words and the way he was plunging into me now, a bit more forceful, a lot more intense, made me come again. A blinding second orgasm, smaller, but no less sweeter, than the first. It was the realization it wasn’t safe tonight, and yet…I was not alone. I was with someone I actually trusted. Someone I once had loved.

  The universe had seen fit to smile on me for a change.

  “El?” He pinned me down by my hips now, moving briskly, kissing me wherever his lips seemed to land. He found my nipple with his teeth, bit me so I hissed.

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s been a while…”

  The other nipple was located, clamped between sharp teeth, tugged so that a bolt of startling pleasure shot from breast to cunt.

  “And?“ I gasped.

  “I’m not gonna last for but another…”

  I put my legs up around his waist, opening my body to him. Every time he thrust into me, the base of his cock brushed my clit. I craned my neck, licked his ear, bit the lobe, whispered, “I’m glad you’re here, Evan.”

  “Now,” he sighed. And his body went rigid under my seeking hands. I gripped my internal muscles tight and moved up to meet him. Coming one more time in-synch with his peak. It was the sweetest of all, soft and fleeting but meaning more than the first two had. We’d come together. Something we’d often managed back when we were a couple.

  I didn’t even let myself consider why that meant so much to me. And breaking from my own code of ‘don’t get attached’, I let him curl around me and
hold me close, then I broke all the rules. I let myself drift off into a calm, peaceful sleep.

  Chapter Three

  I rolled over into an empty space. Soft, furtive noises filled my ears. I blinked in the gray light. It was morning for sure. There were only two very small camouflaged windows in the room. Not big enough for a person to crawl through, just big enough for a filter of natural light. Each was about as big as a large tissue box.

  I shifted to my back, blinking to clear my eyes. “Evan?”

  “Shh,” he said. “Hold on a minute, Eleanor.”

  “What’s up?” I lowered my voice to a whisper and sat up. My heart was banging suddenly. Something in his tone told me there was trouble.

  “How secure is your upstairs?” he asked. “I wasn’t really paying attention yesterday.”

  “Secure,” I said. “The windows that don’t have wrought iron security bars are reinforced by the plywood the way the front porch one is.”

  “And that is?”

  “That is a fitting. It’s a brace that comes through the inside piece of wood, and then we screw on an anchor. So if you pull from one side the anchor prevents a breach.”

  “How much time would it buy if someone were serious?”

  I didn’t like this question at all. I moved toward him to the camera monitor. I saw nothing at first. Then a quick flash of a body as it moved around the perimeter of my house.

  “It would take a group of people a while, but it could be done. Very few things are infallible.”

  “You said wrought iron window coverings?”

  “Yeah,” I moved behind him. I put my hands on his shoulders just to feel his energy mix with mine. My stomach was a ball of nerves. “And they’re installed on the inside.”

  “Inside?” He looked up at me, blue eyes showing too much concern for my taste.

  I smiled. “My dad taught me given enough time and determination anyone would dismantle them from the outside. Once they’re off, they can get at the windows. So we have them on the inside. Those windows, as you can imagine, don’t open easily. I had to find iron fittings I could put my hands through and sort of coax the windows up if we wanted fresh air.” I shrugged. “That was some time ago. Now they mostly stay closed.”