The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (11 page)

He tried to remember his life, how it felt. He remembered the events, working at the factory assembling showerheads, the occasional trip to the bar, the occasional night out with a string of girls he never really got to know.

He remembered having his own apartment for a year when he was 19. It was a total dump, a studio with barely enough room to take a deep breath, but it was his, and that was pretty great. Total freedom. Total independence. When his dad had a stroke and couldn’t work, his parents asked him to move home to help out, though, so he did.

He remembered moving back in, toting boxes and boxes up the stairs to his old bedroom, hanging up the old posters to make it feel like his again. No more apartment, yeah, but no more bills. That much more money to throw around on narcotics and booze and gifts for those girls he never really got to know.

He remembered these things, yes, this sequence of events that comprised his life. He couldn’t really remember how it felt, though. He couldn’t remember what he thought about, what he desired, what he worked toward or dreamed of or hoped for. He could watch replays of scenes in his head like playing an old movie, but he couldn’t find his way back inside there, inside of his old self.

He breasted a hill and coasted down the other side. Steep as hell. He ran the back of his hand across his forehead as the bike picked up speed, felt the sogginess of his eyebrows. His hand dislodged some of the sweat so it drained down the sides of his face. He tasted the salt of it in the corners of his mouth.

He moved through a rich neighborhood and locked eyes on a house enclosed by a big iron gate that he’d always been curious about. The fence was comprised of thick iron bars and looked out of place, even in an upscale neighborhood like this. He’d always been especially intrigued that the gate in front of the driveway was controlled by a little number pad that could be used to unlock it. It was like something on TV. In high school, he’d witnessed the owner leaning out of the driver’s side window of his Lexus to punch in the code, watched the gate roll out of the way automatically, his mind blown.

He always thought the gate attracted attention more than anything else, though. He could easily climb the thing. And anybody looking at it couldn’t help but wonder what the owner was trying to protect with this lavish setup. What was he hiding? What would possess him to spend thousands of dollars to have this thing installed? It was basically begging for burglary.

And there were no laws left now. Almost no people at all. His bike ride achieved a destination after all. He’d get a look inside the gate.

His bike overturned in the driveway, he put his hands on the iron bars. He let his eyes scan across the yard, skimming past the two-car garage and basketball hoop to gaze upon the yellow siding of the main building. In most respects, the house itself was nothing special. It looked the same as the other homes in this subdivision, none of which apparently necessed an elaborate gating system. It was a tri-level built in the 1970’s that he estimated to be about 1,800 square feet, assuming the basement was finished. It was possibly even modular, though he wasn’t certain about that. The one across the street looked like an awfully similar house in a different color, an eggplant or plum shade rather than the light yellow of this house.

He slid his hands off the vertical bars, hopped up to grab the horizontal bar and pulled himself up. His arms shook a little as they hefted his weight, but he didn’t find it too difficult. He rested his chest on the cross bar, adjusted his hands to inch his belly up onto the beam, then swung one leg up and over followed by the other, his body doing a 180 in the process. Faced the other way, his abdominals once again rested on the bar. He took a breath and eased himself to the ground.

He took a couple of deep breaths and brushed the dust off the front of his shirt. Yeah. That was too easy. So easy, in fact, that it was almost a disappointment. He felt a little twinge of doubt, some sense that maybe there was nothing interesting in the house after all, but it faded. There must be something here. There must be. Still, if they wanted to keep people out, Travis thought, they probably should have made the fence taller than six feet.

He walked to the house. The wind kicked up, and he realized how sweaty he was as the air swirled over the back of his t-shirt. All of the places where sweat adhered the fabric to his skin went cold, and the wet became bothersome. He shimmied his shoulder blades to try to get the soggy shirt to release from his back, but it didn’t work. He picked at it with his thumb and index finger, pinching and pulling the fabric away from his flesh. It snapped back right away, of course, but he thought maybe it felt a little better afterward, at least.

His feet trod over the asphalt, which gave off a considerable amount of heat. He didn’t realize how much until he stepped onto the grass and felt the cool there. It was a big relief, a sudden freedom from a smothering force he was only vaguely aware of in the first place. It was strange, though, to wade through this knee high grass. It suddenly didn’t feel like he was really outside of someone’s house. Looking upon the waving stalks gone to seed from a distance was one thing. He’d gotten used to that. Walking through the tall stuff, feeling the cool of it brush against his calves, was another. He’d push-mowed the lawn at home for something to do when he was drunk, but all of the other yards were well overgrown now. He guessed they would be from now on.

He padded over to the big front window, cupped his hands around his eyes to try to see inside. Dirt smudged the glass, though, and the glare from the sun was pretty bad. He couldn’t see much, just sun lit spots on white walls and the vague shape of a rounded doorway leading into the next room. He couldn’t even see these things exactly, just some hazy sense of them.

He took a step back and looked up and down the house again. The front door was a few feet to his right. He would try it, and he’d circle around back to try whatever doors were back there, too, but he figured there was a pretty good chance he’d need to break a window to actually get inside.

He moved to the front door, turned the knob. Locked. Shocking. He crossed a bed of gravel, turned the corner and trudged through the tall grass once more. It seemed itchy now. He couldn’t help but imagine ticks protruding from the tops of the plant life, disgusting little limbs extended, waiting for something with a beating heart to come along.

The back door popped open as soon as he turned the knob. He wasn’t expecting it and did a stutter step, almost falling into the damn place. He stood up straight, letting go of the knob. The screen door pressed against his back, though he wasn’t sure if it was consoling him after the near mishap or trying to help push him down.

He stepped into the house, removing his arm from the screen door to let it close. It took a second for his eyes to adjust to the shaded interior, so the first thing he noticed was that the air felt different, somehow drier on his skin and in his throat as he breathed. He stood in a little back porch area, a four-foot square section of linoleum flooring covered with shoes and boots in various sizes. The basement steps descended in front of him, and the doorway to his left led into the kitchen.

He took the step up and passed the fridge to round the corner. His skin crawled right away as he crossed the threshold into the actual house. He squinted. It looked like a normal kitchen, a nice one even, but some part of him was certain that something was wrong. He stopped, eyes gliding over shiny black countertops, the pile of mail and magazines on the snack bar, the open jar of dry roasted peanuts next to that, as though someone would walk back into the room any minute to continue snacking.

A whiff of something like death hit his nostrils soon as he moved past the snack bar into the living room, but a muted version of it, something much smaller than the odor of the dead boy in the grocery store, he thought. He couldn’t quite be sure what to make of it.

White leather furniture filled the living room. Travis might have found that amusing if he wasn’t so nervous. Diagonal bars of sunlight shined through the window pane, making meaningless patterns on the wood floor.

He pressed on, some determination welling in him to see what wonders and horrors this place must hold. He didn’t know why this felt necessary, but it did. All part of him wanted was to run right back the way he came and never look at this house again, but all he could do was put one foot in front of the other, advancing whether he liked it or not.

The living room contained nothing of interest, and the same held true for the den or whatever this family might have called the room with the books and the recliner. The bedroom downstairs was similarly empty of intrigue as was the bathroom. That left the upstairs.

Unlike the wood floors stained dark throughout the downstairs, cream carpet covered the steps. Plush. His foot sank down into it and the wood beneath squeaked as he took the first step. He mounted the steps slowly, listened to his heart bang away in his chest. He no longer was sure if he was looking for some rich person’s well-protected treasure or the rotten bodies of a dead family. Maybe it was both at once.

The third step from the top moaned as his weight settled on it, a throaty bark of a sound like a walrus begging for fish at Sea World. His hair pricked up again, and he paused, hand clutching the banister. For the first time he considered that someone living might still be here.

Or some
thing
.

He stood there for a long time, three steps from the top, his head swiveling back and forth, straining to listen for any tiny noise.

Nothing. Nothing but the sound of his beating heart.

He climbed the final stairs, feeling somehow vulnerable, almost naked, as he released his grip on the banister and moved into the open space of the hall at the top of the steps. His palms tingled. His chest spasmed breath in and out. His blood roared.

There were four doors up here, two to the left, one to the right, and one straight ahead. All of them were closed but the one at the end of the hall which was opened a crack. He figured the one to the right must be the master bedroom. He may as well start there.

His feet plodded in that direction, the carpet inching up to grip the soles of his shoes with each step before releasing them with some reluctance.

The smell hit as soon as the door squeaked out of the frame, a musty version of the roadkill smell at the grocery store. And then something charged at him, a dark blur, its movements familiar but not quite human.

He froze.

The dog hurled itself at him, tongue lolling out of its mouth. Its paws slapped at his knees as it pogoed straight up and down, its tail wagging with great gusto. It was part greyhound, he thought, based on the large rib cage to tiny waist ratio, a 20 pound blur of red fur that didn’t hold still long enough to really get a good look at, though from the glimpses of its face he got, it looked like it was smiling.

“Hey dog,” he said, brushing at its head.

It dropped its feet to the floor and pushed its head into his legs, smearing its eyes on his jeans. That’s when he realized how emaciated it was. Every rib was visible. It was starving. He patted the side of its barrel chest.

With the moment of crazy fear gone, his senses faded back in, and the smell hit again. Death.

He finally let his gaze dance across the rest of the room. Dead bodies sprawled in all directions. Two lay on the bed, adults, judging from the size of them, though they were badly decomposing and torn up pretty good. Their heads seemed to have congealed bloody smears instead of human faces. Two children folded over each other in a pile of rotting limbs on the floor. From his angle, he could see that the legs had been partially eaten.

He scowled as he thought this over. If they were stuck in a closed room, how did they...

He looked down at the dog, its front legs still hopping off of the ground over and over, sometimes going into alternating stomps like it was playing piano. He couldn’t see blood around its mouth, but he knew. He knew that it did what it had to do to live on for days after the people passed on. Claw marks gashed the door and the wood trim around it. It had tried to get out, too.

And then the smell was too much, and he was running away. Tears filled his eyes as he hurried outside. Not tears of sadness. Involuntary tears in response to the noxious fumes. He leaned over the tall grass, dry heaving a few times. He stayed in that hunched over position for a long time as the nausea faded. At some point he realized the dog was next to him, its tail wagging like mad.

He looked up to find the world unchanged, unmoved. Heat distortion shimmered above the blacktop. The air was still.

Erin

Presto, Pennsylvania

29 days after

There was something different about this house. She could feel it.

Erin’s shoes scuffed across the sidewalk as they made their way up to the front door. Golden fronds of overgrown grass reached over the path, brushing her knees as she passed.

A small white butterfly fluttered near her face, and she batted it away. If only she could get rid of the ones in her stomach that way.

What did Izzy call them again?

Her eyes drifted over to Izzy, brown curls bobbing up and down with each step. The kid lifted a dirty sleeve and swiped it across her face, wiping at her nose.

What the hell was she gonna do with this kid? The booger-smearing was the least of her concerns. She was sixteen. Not old enough to take care of some eight-year-old kid.