Light drawn from lonely lamppost sentinels flooded the street, but I beat feet and hid in the shadows so I wouldn’t end up a slab of dead meat.

  It was just as well too, for no sooner had I found the cover of a friendly shrub, then the doors of the other houses on the cul-de-sac burst open and more of those hollows came charging into the lit up street. There were two men and a woman in a dress, one of the males looked like someone I could easily handle with his slim physique and short stature, but the other man looked built like a gorilla with a neck that may not as well have existed. Meanwhile, the hollowed woman twitched and slashed at the air, a large kitchen knife gleamed in the lamp light.

  None of the three appeared to have noticed me, but then, they hardly seemed to notice each other either. The most they did was growl when they came too close together, but otherwise did not attack like that first woman had done to me. The feeling of her long nails tearing at my face burned on my cheeks, so I was in no mood to go attempting to take on three crazies all at once, hollow or human.

  Too bad the phone in my pocket made a loud ding that caught their attention.

  I didn’t need to see all three of them turn their heads toward me simultaneously at once to know that they heard the noise, but I knew that I’d be having nightmares of their synchronous glances long after I escaped this crazy town. Fortunately there was enough distance between them and me that I was able to get out of cover and dash further down the street and out of the small neighborhood without getting too close. I heard them following me for a hot minute, but I never looked back. It wasn’t until I was another block down the road and by a gas station that I stopped to catch my breath.

  The three hollows were in sight, but they were shuffling in the opposite direction, away from the dark gas station and back into their cul-de-sac’s light. Another ding from my pocket reminded me of how the stupid phone almost got me killed and I whipped it out to see who had messaged me and what.

  The first message read: “Are you real?” Which was a strange message, but no less stranger than the other two. The second said, “I have a quest for you. Slay the four remaining hollows of Jensen Court and earn a reward” and the third message that had just come in was a little more eerie: “Get away from the gas station, go back to the cul-de-sac!”

  It was a different number than the one that had sent the welcome text message earlier, but checking the phone log revealed that it was the same number that had called me about leveling up. Apparently there were multiple parties interested in making contact with me.

  The gas station seemed harmless enough, even if it was not lit up like the cul-de-sac I had come running from. Now that I thought of it, I was feeling a pang of peckishness from not eating for who knows how long. The promises of high fructose sweet treats and cold soda appealed to the simpler rules governing my brain that demanded immediate satisfaction, so I started to make my way to the gas station’s alluring entrance.

  The lingering stench of gasoline accompanied by slurping noise activated a different part of my mind that belonged to a time before gunpowder and steel put man on top of the food chain. It wrenched back control from careless impulse and stopped me dead in my tracks, eyes already tracking from where the noise was coming from. There was a man stooped by one of the gas pumps.

  At least it had the general size of a man, until it started moving.

  I wasted precious seconds, glued in place while the thing in front of me shoved a gas pump nozzle down what accounted for a throat and drank the contents. The longer I stared at the lump of roiling flesh, the more detail I could make out with my eyes adjusting to the lack of direct light. Horror propelled my steps backwards, fueled by the visage of rotten meat still moving with squalid determination, defying the laws of nature that said such an abomination should not exist. I did not know what that thing was, but the import of getting away from it drove me back into the middle of street, where I released a breath I did not even know I was holding.

  Thankfully it did not follow me, but something else had, paranoia gripping my shoulders with the invisible tense grip of a masseuse of terror.

  Where was I?

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  The text said “Hopeville”, but I had never heard of any crazy place like this where people ran around without eyes or…things like that creature existed. This is insane, this is stupid! I’m going to die, but I don’t want to die, but I don’t have anything to live for, but…

  Stop.

  Panic was seeping her electric fingers into my spine, numbing gooseflesh and roiling my belly. I did not have the luxury of popping a few benjamins like I was some midtown dink and had to refocus the old fashioned way.

  “God, it’s been a while…”

  My prayer was sloppy, rushed, and rusty. It’d been years since I prayed to the Big Man upstairs, but I figured He wasn’t one to forget a name or face. He was like me in a way, always seeking out, looking for the scuzz that hides in the dark and is more likely to stick you in the back than shake your hand. Difference between Him and me was that He loved those kind of folks ugly and all, while I learned where their pressure points were to cause them the most pain.

  When the words were said, I dropped an “amen”, but I was still full of dread, but now I could think a little more clearly. The situation was bad, but I’d made “bad” my career since I was sixteen. I surveyed the area around me with a fresh set of eyes.

  I was on a road in the middle of a suburban neighborhood that terminated in a cul-de-sac. There is a gas station near me and further down the road, past a stretch of fields, it looked like there were some non-residential buildings. In the driveway of the last house on the street there was a car.

  A car.

  It was like my prayer had been answered, though I hadn’t been specific enough to ask for something like that. Getting my hands on some wheels would let me burn rubber and get out of this freak town. The alternative was traveling by foot and I didn’t know how far the nearest other town or city was, it could take me days otherwise.

  I slinked to the car, staying out of sight of the hollows still roaming the end of the cul-de-sac. It was red, my favorite color, but the model was one of those American kind. I always preferred Japanese myself, thought they were more reliable, but silly preferences would have to be set aside for necessities sake. The door was of course locked, but I did not have the luxury of finding the owner and asking if I could take his car for a joy ride; I’d have to hotwire the thing. It was no problem for me, I learned that kind of thing in community college, just like I learned how to apply the “universal key” to locked doors.

  As I was about to smash a handy garden rock through the passenger side window, my phone dinged again. I dropped the rock and hit the ground behind the car, but I was too far away from the hollows down the street to notice the noise this time. I fished the phone out of my pocket, grumbling.

  “I need to turn that stupid sound off.” The message made me cease my complaining and do a guilty start.

  It was just one word, “Don’t.”

  There were no obvious cameras around, on the houses or light lamps, but whoever was sending me these texts could obviously see me.

  I wrote back, “Who are you”, but I waited for a long minute and there was no reply. Seeing this, I grabbed the rock I had dropped and made to smash the window again, and this did the trick as the phone dinged again.

  “Don’t test me. Please. I’m a friend.”

  “Friends know each other”

  “But I know you, Richard Slate. If you want to survive, you’ll have to do as I say.”

  That was creepy. Whoever this was on the other end must not have known me as well as they thought, because I did not like the tone they were taking. Not to mention how evasive they were being in their replies was a red flag, this little exchange was going nowhere. Fed up with the one way relationship, I messaged back.

  “How can I trust you”

  The response was immediate, “I was right about the gas station, wasn’t I?”

  They had a point. I let go of some of the tension in my shoulders and figured I’d hear this person out. Maybe they knew something I didn’t.

  “Good, glad to see you’re coming around, Dick.”

  First, I’ve hated that nickname since I was a child and second, my secret helper’s seeming omnipotence was getting unnerving.

  “Call me Richard”

  “Have it your way, Rick.”

  That would have to be good enough.

  “What exactly do you want me to do”

  “Like the quest said earlier, slay the four remaining hollows in Jensen Court.”

  “How do I do that”

  “That’s up to you.”

  Great, aside from issuing silly quests and the occasional warning, it did not seem like my new overseer could provide much in the way of material support. I checked around again, still no cameras or drones overhead. The three hollows in the cul-de-sac, Jensen Court, had become two, the woman hollow with the knife was somewhere out of sight. I’d have to find her first, I didn’t want a knife coming at me out of the dark. There was just one more thing I had to know before I went hunting.

  “How do I turn off this stupid phone ringer”