Eve's Hollow by Charles Bedlam (best free e reader .txt) 📕

The wall of fire engines hid the scene of a terrible massacre. The corpses were many in number and not a single one was identifiable. Estelle saw bodies torn to pieces, arms and legs scattered across the intersection. Cars were flipped over with bodies hanging out of some of them. The blood was everywhere, dark from age, but plentiful in quantity. These people were slaughtered, but by what?

She slowly and carefully made her way down the other side. Estelle carefully stepped through the mess of dead people, avoiding scraps of flesh and pieces of bones. She was very shaky now. She moved forward and stepped on something hard. She quickly stepped back and looked down at a dismembered hand grasping a revolver. Looking at it, then looking at the carnage around her made her think that the gun would be of no use to her. It didn't help this poor soul. However, she felt it was better to have it and not need it as opposed to needing it and not having it.

Hesitantly and cautiously, Estelle knelt down and picked up the hand. It was cold, rigid, and clammy. She grabbed at the fingers and forced them to unbend with a sickening crack. She pulled the gun away and tossed the hand aside, shuddering. She held in her hand a Smith and Wesson model number 13 handgun. She opened the cylinder and checked the chamber. She had four shots. She knew that she'd have to make them count. As she looked down at the gun in her hand, she experienced a flashback of her past life.

In this particular twisted memory, she held a gun very similar to the one that she had just found. The difference was that in the memory she had the weapon trained on a young couple, terrified, begging, and innocent. Estelle shook her head and forced herself to focus.

“What was wrong with you?” she whispered to herself.

Just then she heard voices. Instinct took over and she hid herself behind a car. She peeked over it and saw two figures entering the intersection. They appeared to be men. At first relief flooded her body. These were the first living people that she had seen in this awful place. Her initial intention was to approach them, but she hesitated as they approached. They were dressed in dark green military combat uniforms. They carried guns and one of them seemed to be ill tempered. They stopped walking only fifteen or so feet from where she was.

“What a mess,” the first man said. He had light brown skin and dreadlocks that feel just to his shoulders. He was thin but, through his clothing seemed muscular.

“A mess?!” the second man shouted with a laugh from his chest, “this was a goddamn slaughter! Never put it past the boss to use people to get what he wants.”

The second man was slightly shorter than the first. He carried a shotgun. He sported a short Mohawk and had light skin. Estelle noticed that the first man seemed far less happy about whatever it was that they were doing.

“So, what are we doing here, Mike?” the first man asked, inspecting one of the bodies.

“We're gathering intel for the report on the boss's machine,” Mike said kneeling next to a body as well. “Come here, Harrison.”

The first man, named Harrison moved over to the body that Mike was inspecting. They spoke a little quieter so Estelle had to listen harder to hear what they were talking about. Mike picked up the arm of the body and showed it to Harrison. He showed him thin, dark markings on the skin.

“This machine,” Mike started, “is a real game changer. Nothing like it has ever been seen in Eve's Hollow. It was made to kill either mass amounts of people or one really big son of a bitch. These lines are in the arms are from the veins in the body exploding. As a result, the burn marks follow the path of the veins and show on the outside of the skin. It works on people and the Punished.”

“I don't get it,” Harrison said, “why were there people here? Why didn't he just test it on the Punished?”

Mike stood up. Harrison followed. “He wanted to know if it killed them both and materials for the machine are difficult to find so he knew he had to test it in one shot. So he rounded up some survivors to lure the Punished, then trapped 'em all in here with those engines. Then, while the Punished were feeding on the helpless victims, he used his machine. Tore everyone here apart. The lucky ones ended up like this fella.” Mike gave a kick to the corpse that they were examining.

“I wouldn't want to be on his bad side,” he added with another laugh.

Harrison said nothing. He seemed to be in deep contemplation. Estelle did not have a very good impression of Mike, but she felt that Harrison was a more compassionate person. The girl watched intently. Estelle was still getting used to being in her physical form. According to her memories, she had not been a child in several decades. To make matters worse, the only human interaction she could recall were undesirable memories from that life. She didn't know what to do. She pondered for a moment. One side of the box said that she might be able to approach them and because of her appearance, they'd safeguard her. Another side was that these men could be dangerous and there's no telling what they'd do with or to her.

“What was that?” Mike said turning in Estelle's direction.

She caught her breath in her throat and ducked down behind the car. She looked around and found the source of the sound. A low gurgle-like moan was coming from the lone survivor of the massacre. Estelle crawled under the car as Mike approached the man. There was a great deal of his abdomen missing. He lie on the ground, clutching what was left of his innards.

“H-help...h-help...me,” he pleaded. “P...p-lease.”

Bang! The shotgun blast echoed off of the surrounding buildings. It scared the poor girl half to death. Estelle's heart jumped up in her throat and clutched her chest and tried to steady herself.

“Let's get outta here,” Mike said. “Blast will attract the Punished. We got what we came for.”

The two men wasted no time and swiftly left the intersection. Estelle waited until they were out of sight, then another minute just to be on the safe side. Then, she crawled out from under the car. She stood over the specimen that Mike and Harrison were inspecting. She saw the burned veins in the arms. It looked terrible. She imagined what it must feel like to have your blood boil, then catch fire. It must have been awful.

Estelle approached the man that Mike had slain. Of the many ways her past life had taken a life, a shotgun was not one of them. In the past she had never felt anything for the people that she wronged, but she felt a deep sadness for this man. That sadness washed over her as she saw pieces of the individual victims.

A screech then tore through the air. Estelle spun around in all directions, searching for the source of the noise, but it reverberated off of the buildings and made it difficult. She looked everywhere but didn't see anything. A terrible chill crawled up her spine like spiky, crawling fingers. She knew right then that she needed to leave. She chose the left side of the intersection from where she entered. There was an eighteen-wheeler blocking this part of the intersection with heavy stone blocks built up so the victims of the massacre couldn't crawl through. Estelle thought to climb atop the truck to get a better view and hopefully find her heading.

Afraid, she climbed to the top using a ladder that was fixed to the side. She crawled forward a bit, then stood to her feet. Her plan for feeling nothing and facing the world cold, blew up in her face as fear wrapped its cruel clutches around her throat. On the other side of the truck stood a crowd of the most ghoulish people Estelle had ever seen. Their skin was a sickening shade of gray which darkened near the shoulders and head. It was tight too, as if the skin had been stretched over their bones. Their eyes and mouths produced a ghastly orange glow. There must have been a hundred of them and they all looked irritable; slouching, breathing heavy, moaning and grunting. She felt as if they couldn't wait to attack something. Could these be the Punished that the goddess had warned her of?

They hadn't seemed to notice her and she knew she should slowly back down and get far away from the truck as possible. That's the funny thing about fear. It stops you even when your logic and reasoning are processing. Estelle could not move. These creatures inspired disgust and dread. She was mesmerized by their collective glow. She stared into the crowd and saw men, women, the disabled, and the elderly. They all had this sort of sway about them and they didn't seem to notice anything.

“LOOOOK!” one of them bellowed.

Estelle was shaken down to her very atoms. All of a sudden, a hundred heads shifted up at the same time. A hundred pairs of glowing eyes were fixed on Estelle.

“Protect Eve!” shouted one.

“Protect the Hollow!” screeched a woman somewhere in the crowd.

“KILL the girl!” the first one snarled.

“Kill the girl! Kill the girl! Kill the girl!”

The Punished broke out in a chant, which erupted into a frenzy. All at once, they charged the eighteen-wheeler, dark gray hands reaching for Estelle. Reaching to catch her, then eliminate her. The force of the hundred Punished rocked the trailer that Estelle was standing on. She lost her balance and was thrown from the top of the truck. Pain pulsed through her back. The fall knocked the wind out of her and she struggled to breath.

Through teary eyes, she could see the trailer still rocking. The screaming coming from behind it. They were coming for her. She rolled over and tried to get up. Her right shoulder blade seared and she could not move her right arm very well. Using her left hand, she rose to her feet and hurried off in the direction that Mike and Harrison departed. She had just reached an opening in the pile of cars on that side of the intersection when she heard the truck trailer topple over. It came with a loud crash, followed by the raging screams of the Punished. Estelle quickly passed through the opening and ran for her life.

Estelle didn't bother to take in her surroundings as she sprinted down the street. It was a towering hallway of darkness with a bloody red ceiling that stretched on forever. She dodged cars and what she took for corpses. For a moment she thought that she had lost her pursuers. They did catch up though and she was nearly out of energy. She heard their cries behind her and knew that they were fast approaching. She figured it would be better to stay off of the streets, so she cut down an alley.

Even when she was alive, she had never seen or heard of a city so massive. It seemed that she could run forever and that it would only be a matter of time before the Punished caught her. She pushed that terrible thought out of her head and slowed down to catch her breath. She hid behind a dumpster and held her gun tightly. Across from her a corpse sat against the wall, still and quiet. This was obviously going to be a lot harder than she thought. How was she going to find a single man in a city of this magnitude? She felt like she deserved this. Images