The Hole by Aaron Ross Powell Read Free Book Online

over. It was to this pile he now ran, remember the swarm of crazies they’d driven through, and thinking his first step, before tracking down Evajean, was to find one of the shotguns.
    This minor quest proved successful after a scant five minutes. Wedged between two rocks, sticking up like the sword in the stone, was the gun with the curved clip, the one he’d conveniently loaded after they’d taken it, trying to figure out how the thing worked. Holding it now, though, he swore. He’d forgotten about the trigger lock and, looking around, he couldn’t see the cash register anywhere. Even if he found it, what were the chances of the key being inside? And how would he get it open to check?
    He kept the gun, though, as he worked his way back down the hill. Holding it made him feel more secure, even knowing the best he could do would be to club an assailant with the stock.
    Armed and ready to set out, he called Evajean’s name again. The sound only echoed back. Where would she have gone? Back up to the road made sense: at least there she’d have a direction to walk and an easy path to follow to get back to the truck, whether she found help or not. She’d be dumb to do it, he thought-a crowd of crazies might be up there, with that boy they’d hit just the advance guard-but Evajean struck him as perfectly practical. Holding fast to the gun, Elliot began climbing the hill.
    It wasn’t far to the road. The truck must not have been going fast when it slid off the pavement, because it only took him a few minutes to break through the trees and look out on the empty stretch of asphalt. Both directions were clear, so he chose the one leading further into the mountains. They hadn’t passed any real signs of civilization on the way up and Evajean knew that. She’d press on, hoping to get lucky.
    Elliot did the same. For a half an hour he walked, glad for the pleasant chill of fall, but tensely observant for more of the people they’d driven through. He didn’t want to have to try to fight anyone, didn’t trust himself to do it right. The victory at the Wal-mart, if calling it that made sense, was luck and fear and the madness of the moment. Repeating it was unlucky. So he stuck to the edge of the road, by the trees, and kept himself ready to run into the forest at the first sign of pursuit.
    None came, however. Eventually, the road bent up in a steep curve, and a the midpoint of the arc he saw a wooden plank nailed to a the trunk of a large pine. Next to this the forest opened and a dirt path, ten feet wide, headed off down a gentle slope. The plank, aged and grey, said, “Nahom. Population 140 or so.”
    Elliot tapped his fist against the sign as took the turn, making his way back down again into the forest.

14
    The dirt road to Nahom was much more of the former than the latter. He hiked for at least a quarter of a mile, careful not to lose the track. This wasn’t easy. The road widened and contracted, was perforated by clumps of small trees, and in one spot not too far after he started, disappeared entirely. Elliot had to wander forward in a wide arc, always glancing back to not get lost, before he found it again. In fact, perhaps driven by the frustration he was already feeling from the destruction of the truck and the loss of their supplies, he quickly came to think that the sign was just a joke or that Nahom had once had 140 or so but was now long gone, like that colony at Roanoke Island.
    He pressed on, though, because really he didn’t have anything else to do. He could either follow the road to wherever it did-or didn’t-lead, or he could go back to the road and keep on along it, probably getting further from Evajean with each step. This whole thing was supposed to have been an adventure, a way for him to get out of that dead town with someone alive and share the road with her and maybe, if they were very lucky, figure out where the Hole was, what it was, and bring a degree of closure to the madness of