The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (21 page)

I don’t care.

I don’t care.

I don’t care anymore.

To Hell with it.

He dreamed of fire suspended over a lake. A ten foot wall of orange flames the size of a football field that hovered 25 feet above the surface of the water. It lit up the black of the night. He watched the glowing ring a long time, tendrils of flame twisting around each other. Looking above it, flashes flickered on and off in the dark heavens like the fire might reach up at any second, orange fingers stretching out to touch the face of God.

With two bare feet sunk in the sand along the shore, he could see the shimmer of the heat in the air all around him, but he couldn’t feel it. He couldn’t feel anything at all.

The next morning, he walked out to the fire pit. He crumpled old newspapers into balls for kindling, sitting on a blue and white plastic lawn chair that he believed had been in his family since the 1980’s, some terrible heirloom from relatives he’d never even known. Years of sun bleached the once royal blue to a powder blue on the front. Not so much on the back.

He made a teepee of sticks, lit the newspaper and stoked as needed to get flames going before putting a bigger log on. Then he hung the pot of water over the flames. Coffee was a lot harder to make these days, but it would be worth it this time.

No booze today, though it was a booze day in the rotation. No pills. No weed. Nothing.

He wasn’t using again until it was done, and he wanted to take a few days to get right. Maybe a little target practice and what not. He stared into the fire, flames licking around the bottom of the pan, the whole pit seeming to hiss out a never ending breath.

The coffee was Maxwell House. Instant. Flavor crystals. Pretty good considering the circumstances. Hot as hell, though. He blew steam across the top of it and sipped it slowly. The drink stung his tongue and the roof of his mouth in a way that made his head jerk and all of the parts of his face twitch one by one.

Looking at the fire, he remembered his dream. The cylinder of flame in the sky that he could see but could not feel. It seemed strange, in a way, to dream about all of that bright light when the nights were so black now. Maybe it was some kind of wishful thinking.

When the coffee got cool enough to drink, he chugged one down and stirred up another. Instant coffee always had a dark chocolate note for him – very bitter, sort of fake, but sort of tasty in its own way. He had grown to really enjoy it, though he didn’t have the patience to make it every day. Better to savor it, anyway. He had a lot of it on hand. Three cases of Maxwell House and some kind of generic brand he couldn’t remember the name of. Still, it would go quickly if he guzzled nine cups a day.

Of course, he had a few pounds of real coffee beans, too, but he hadn’t come across a hand grinder yet. Maybe that’d be something to save for a special occasion. He didn’t have a lot of things left to look forward to in that sense.

Life would be weird now that the novelty of having endless products to try would be over. No more would he sample new flavors of Mr. Pibb or Doritos or blast through the drive through to try new Taco Bell concoctions. He’d plow through the products he had now, maybe unearth a few oddities in houses around town, but that was it. There weren’t armies of people manufacturing mass quantities of Spaghetti-o’s out there anymore. No farmers remained to coax fruit and grain and vegetables from the soil. He pictured the fertile fields out there, overgrown with weeds, branches and stalks heavy with unharvested crops, so much fruit spoiling on the vine.

A world of convenience and novelty would have almost none of either soon. But it was better to not think of that.

He sipped at the second coffee to make it last a while, watched the fire burn down to coals that seemed to blink off and on depending on when the wind was blowing. Smoke twirled into the air, braids of white that twisted up above him and came uncoiled into nothing.

And he thought of the dream again. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew. He knew that in one way the dream was right; that when death came, he wouldn’t feel anything.

Erin

Presto, Pennsylvania

29 days after

Erin undid the clasps at her neck, coiling the gold chains into the palm of her hand, feeling how the metal held the warmth of her skin. She dropped the jewelry into the suitcase and watched the chains slither down the pile like shimmering snakes.

The suitcase wasn’t fully packed yet, but she figured it was only a matter of time before she crammed it so full of treasure she wouldn’t be able to zip it up.

She dug her hands into the jumble, grabbing a fistful and then letting the baubles fall back onto the pile. She felt like a pirate admiring her booty. Yar!

In some ways, she supposed they
were
pirates. They spent their days plundering and looting, amassing riches.

She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it, yet. But she figured at some point it would probably be useful to barter with. Maybe more than paper money. If they ever interacted with other people again, anyway.

Erin picked through the jewels until she found her favorite piece -- the turtle ring. She put it on and wiggled her fingers so the diamonds sparkled and the iridescent colors in the opal really flashed.

Now that she looked at it again, she wasn’t even sure it was supposed to be a turtle, but the way the stones were arranged, it reminded her of one. The opal was the shell and the diamonds were the head and feet and tail.

Izzy came into the room with an old pickle jar clutched in her hands.

“What’s this?”

Izzy flipped the jar, revealing a piece of paper taped to it. Scrawled in her eight-year-old handwriting were the words SWEAR JAR.

“Funny.”

Izzy set the jar on the kitchen counter.

“According to my calculations, you owe the Swear Jar five bucks.”

Erin took a running start, sliding on her socked feet across the tile in the kitchen. She came to a halt next to the sink and reached for the Christmas tin from the old lady’s pantry.

“This should keep me paid up through the rest of eternity,” she said, pulling the whole roll of money out and stuffing it in the jar.

“What are you going to do with all that cash?”

“Something fun.”

Erin laughed.

“Yeah? Like what?”

Izzy wedged her bottom lip between the gap in her teeth, thinking.

“Chuck E. Cheese.”

“Good luck with that,” Erin said.

She gave one last waggle of her hand, admiring the twinkle of the ring. She pulled it from her finger and tossed it back into the suitcase.

Maybe she’d bury it for safe keeping. Draw a map so she could find it when she needed it. X marks the spot. She smiled to herself.

Just like a real pirate.

Travis

Hillsboro, Michigan

57 days after

He pedaled his bike, keeping the pace moderate to conserve energy. A canvas bag dangled at his side, long and army green and loaded with weapons that clanked against each other when he rode over bumps. The sound reminded him a little of ice cubes rattling in a glass but bigger and dryer.

The train tracks made two parallel lines running alongside this stretch of road, which he could just make out in the darkening sky. It’d been an overcast day, gray sky all the while. And now that the light drained away to night, the gray blackened above him like charred meat.

He hardly noticed these things, however. His mind tumbled other matters. Visions of the near future and visions of the past intertwined in his thoughts.

When his dad heard about the incident at the convenience store, the one where Travis got punched and ran home crying, he told his son that violence was the way Neanderthals solved problems, that walking away was the civilized response, that he had nothing to be ashamed of as a man. They sat in the living room, just the two of them, and his dad’s eyes looked all wet. Not like he was on the verge of tears, exactly. Just moist like a dog’s eyes.

Travis fidgeted with a lighter while his dad talked, spinning the wheel in slow motion so it wouldn’t actually spark, and he hated himself more and more as his father tried to comfort him and tell him that being a huge pussy is somehow still manly. He shifted his legs periodically, the springs in the seat of the chair creaking and groaning. A strange feeling came over him as his father droned on, like his identity had retracted, and all he could do was look down at his pants and play with his lighter and feel the warmth creep into his cheeks, the heat swelling as the talk wore on. He wanted to combust, to vanish into a wisp of smoke, but he sat there and listened and nodded.

And then his mind shifted gears, and he pictured himself kicking open the door to this factory, stalking back to the office and shotgun blasting these guys in the face one by one until the blood stopped flowing and their hearts kept still and their bodies went cold and rigid.

The warmth surged into his face once more, but it was different this time. He would go for it. To hell with the risks. He might die trying, but to hell with it. He thought maybe that’s what a man really said, what men like him and his father stopped saying somewhere along the way, but he had it back for the moment, and it felt good.

To hell with it.

He pedaled harder and reminded himself to slow down. No rush. Better to arrive just as it gets dark and wait. Wait until the dead of night when they nestle into their bags. Kill them in their sleep. Of course, he knew it could go any number of ways. Much was left to chance here. If he could find a way to isolate any of the men away from the group, it’d be perfect, but he didn’t know a good way to do that.

He followed the blacktop away from the tracks, riding along country roads spider-webbed with cracks and cratered with potholes, problems he was certain existed before all of this, though now they had little chance of ever being repaired. Not in his lifetime, anyway, he thought. He passed fields of green pocked with the beige of those plants already withering. He wondered how much food out there was going to waste, how many millions of pounds of grain in all of those states that seemingly do nothing but grow wheat and corn. Right now, it didn’t matter so much, but food wouldn’t be so easy to come by before long. He could already imagine revisiting this thought, these millions of pounds of food rotting unpicked, the first time he got truly hungry. It was a matter of when, he thought, not if.

And then he thought that was a funny thing to think about on a night that he might very well not survive. Hunger could wait for another day, hopefully. For now he needed to concentrate on murdering a bunch of people in their slumber.

When he rode up on the factory, the truck wasn’t in the parking lot. A sheen of sweat sprouted all at once across the surface of his skin. Shit. What if they’re done here? What if they’ve moved on, and he missed his chance by a day or two?

Shit. Shit. Shit.

OK no need to panic yet. He circled back about a tenth of a mile to stash his bike in the corn where they wouldn’t see it if they returned and speed-walked to the building to investigate. The light was mostly gone from the day. He could still see, but if he stared straight at anything too long, it got all hazy as he strained to make out detail. He found it best to look at things out of the corner of his eye and only in quick bursts.

The pavement transitioned to gravel and then to dirt under his feet as he made his way to the door. He adjusted the strap on the gun bag, trying to simultaneously stop it from digging into his shoulder so much and slide his hands into position to rip a gun free should anyone be inside.

He paused at the threshold, a feeling of déjà vu becoming unavoidable, but at least this time he knew the terrain pretty well. He eased open the door to find the foyer just as he’d left it, dark and empty. He made sure to close the door behind him and followed the yellow line up the steps.

With his nose inches shy of the next steel door, he listened for a long moment. Nothing. Just the thud of the blood banging along to the beat of his heart in his ears, which reminded him of the sound of wind whooshing off of a ceiling fan just now. Even with no sound on the other side of the door, he unzipped the bag and fished out a handgun. Better safe than sorry. That’s what everyone always said about heading into a demented killing spree, right? Or maybe they said “brandish ‘em if you got ‘em.” He couldn’t decide.

He eased the door open, the little click as the knob reached the end of its rotation making him flinch a little, his shoulders jerking and his muscles stiffening so the top half of his body went rigid. His eyes snapped to the circle of half light where the jagged hole formed a mouth in the far wall. The gray light reflected off of the concrete to somewhat illuminate the rest of the chamber. Nothing moved. He felt the muscles along his spine release, and he took a breath. Still, he wouldn’t know much until he got a look in the office area.

He walked, his heart hammering out an angry beat in his ribcage. Even though he stayed light on his toes, only letting the balls of his feet contact the floor, the scuff of his shoes echoed everywhere around him. The sound fluttered around the room like bat wings, he thought.