The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (27 page)

Yeah, fuck you.

His throat tightened up, and his eyes hurt from being open so wide. He wanted to shoot the dead body again, shoot it until all that was left was a blood and bone smoothie in a thick puddle on the floor, but he couldn’t do that. He turned out the light, dropping the shotgun and squat-walking toward the doorway as he pulled the handgun free from his pocket. He hated to leave the shotgun, but holding still long enough to load it didn’t seem wise, especially adding in the noises the shells would make.

Not done yet. They all die.

As he moved into the hall, he felt a twinge of fear, a flash of how impossible this was, that he would stalk through these offices and kill another handful of murderers who were all armed and waiting for him. Fucking impossible.

But no. The hatred was stronger than the fear. The heat poured into his face again, made it feel like he was submerged in scalding water.

He knew they were scared now, too, and he liked that. He moved toward them, toward where he knew they must be, his body still gliding along, his weight still bounding from the ball of one foot to the other without sound.

The dark seemed less empty now. Somehow all of the hurts were right there with him, all of the pissed beds, and all of the kids laughing when he ran away from a fight, and all of the girls who didn’t want him, the ones who accepted his gifts but never really got to know him, and his dad telling him it was OK to be a pussy. They were all right there in the dark, all around him. Not to be scared of. Not to be ashamed of. There to be burned out, to have their faces disintegrated into a bloody spray.

Because the world was empty now. Life and death were all that were left, and he chose death. He wielded death, dealt it from the barrel of his gun. He had become death, the destroyer of worlds. Faces just disappeared if he wanted them to, and he did.

A glow spilled out of the doorway ahead, a rectangular glimmer that crawled across the floor of the hall. It moved a little, the sides of the rectangle slanting. So they were in the next office, at least some of them, handling a lantern or a flashlight.

Good. He liked knowing where they were, and he smiled harder.

His feet padded forward, and the sweat drained down everywhere, and the air felt cold against the wet sheen all over him, like all of his skin was an open mouth in the winter. And for a second he thought maybe he had gone a little crazy at some point in here, that maybe all of the booze and pills had messed him up somehow, and he remembered reading about how insane certain pills could make you. They messed with the sleep part of the brain, the hypnotic part, so the affected person is almost dreaming while awake. But no. He didn’t think so.

Things made sense, he thought. This all made sense.

The light moved again, the rectangle’s sides slanting the other way, and then he heard footsteps. He stopped walking and aimed his gun at the illumination, waiting for the shadow in the shape of a man to step into the hall. Time slowed down again, and his heart punched away in his chest, trying to beat its way through ribs and sternum.

Something dark flickered in the light, but whatever it was, it didn’t quite come into the hall. He stared down the gun, finger not quite twitching on the trigger, but he felt like it wanted to. He breathed in through his nostrils and out through his mouth, the air thick and warm on his lips. The rectangle of light was the only thing that was real.

And then it fluttered a moment, shimmering on the floor like a strobe light, and guttered out. Black filled in the rectangle, and he got a momentary whiff of smoke. So it was a lantern, and someone must have blown it out.

Footsteps clattered out into the hall. Damn. Travis backed up against the wall, fired two shots and belly smacked the floor. A man yelled in the distance, his voice wild in the darkness like the scream of some wild animal. Apparently he’d hit one of them. Based on the sound, it seemed they were running away from him.

Interesting.

They didn’t bother firing back either. That surprised him. He got to his feet, fired two more shots and ran toward them, dragging his hand along the wall to guide him, hearing the door into the main chamber close somewhere in front of him. The echo of the footsteps dropped off at that point, reduced to just his.

Shit. They were getting away.

He clicked on the flashlight, still clenched in his teeth, and the hall lit up in front of him. He stepped over the corpse, two red holes in his chest. The door wasn’t far. He got to it, fumbled his free hand over the steel to the handle, opened it. He shut off the light to avoid making himself an easy target.

No clouds tonight. Moonlight glinted through the hole in the factory wall, a soft glow that reflected off of the shiny paint on the floor. He could see them running for the next door, and he realized that he was still in shadow in the doorway. They couldn’t see him.

He raised the gun, fired, cocked the hammer back, fired again, cocked the hammer back, fired again. He moved without thought, like his hands just knew what to do. In the distance two of the bodies dropped to the ground, the head on one and the neck of the other spilling blood on the way down.

Vibrations rattled through his arms as he fired four more times. The char of gunpowder filled his nostrils. Pink splotches throbbed in his field of vision in the shape of the flash from the muzzle. The heat undulated in his face, a living, thrashing thing, angry like the surface of boiling water.

Only one person still moved in the distance, the black silhouette of a man hunched down, his movements frantic. What the hell was he doing? Was he hit? Travis fired three shots. Missed. The man still did whatever he was doing, working at something on the ground, maybe.

Travis wiped his palm on his jeans and fired three more times:

Miss.

Miss.

Click.

Shit.

He fired a couple more times, though he knew it was useless. Click. Click. The clip was empty. He reached into his hoodie pocket and found only shotgun shells. Had he packed an extra clip in there? Had he dropped it? He wasn’t sure anymore.

Fire roared inside of him, the fumes of it spilling out of his mouth when he exhaled. He wanted to throw the gun down in frustration, but he didn’t. He held it.

The shadow rose, turned toward the door. Travis sprinted after him. It was the first time in a while that words had formed in his thoughts:

Not going to fucking happen.

The shadow disappeared through the door, a jangling sound momentarily ringing out around him. Keys. That’s what he’d been doing. Stooping to get the keys off of one of the dead guys.

Oh shit, the bodies.

Travis tripped over a limb, an arm he thought, stumbling forward for eight paces before he crash-landed on the floor, his chin hitting along with the heels of his hands and his ribcage slamming down after that. Fuck. His head went swimmy. He couldn’t think right, but he dragged himself up onto wobbly legs.

He knew walking out the front door would be dumb, that anyone with brains would wait for him there and kill him on the spot, but he did it anyway. He couldn’t run now, not with his legs like two columns of custard somehow propping him up.

He limped into the doorway and walked through it. The night air pressed its chill against his wet flesh, his sopping shirt. Moonlight lit up everything tonight, the road and corn stretched out in front of him.

A gasp inhaled, and Travis swiveled his head to find the man sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck. The keys jingled against each other. The man struggled to find the key or the ignition or both, Travis thought.

He stalked toward the truck, feet beating at gravel, and the bandit drew his weapon, the gun shaking in his hand. He could see the fear coming off of him like steam. In that moment, the idea of seeing the fear made perfect sense.

Travis jolted forward like a pit bull going in for the kill, he slammed the truck door on the guy’s arm just as the guy fired at him, the bullet flying off into the corn, the gun wrenching free from his hand as the door snapped bones near his wrist. Travis kicked it under the truck.

The guy ripped his arm free from the door, his wrist all limp. He flopped it once and screamed like a dying cat. So scared. Travis smiled. He wondered what kind of waves came off of him. What was this guy seeing come off of his body that terrified him so?

He peeled open the car door, reached into the truck and ripped the guy out by the collar of his t-shirt. The body slumped straight to the ground, flopping in the rocks in an awkward heap. In the moonlight, Travis saw that the guy was still in his sleeping attire – boxers and a white t-shirt. He seemed small, his torso shivering against the rocks.

Travis moved without thought now, falling on the man, pinning his arms under his knees. He closed one hand around his throat and clubbed the face staring back at him with the butt of the pistol. The first strike split the flesh open red, and it grew more wet from there. The crunch of metal striking bone entwined with a wet slap like bare feet pattering through a mud puddle.

He couldn’t really see the human in the thing beneath him anymore somehow. He looked on the injured pieces, the split nose, the broken teeth in the mouth, the eyes open wide and scared, but they seemed more like disconnected body parts that didn’t quite form into a man’s face. He never got that flash of recognition, that moment when it all made sense.

The body underneath slowly went limp, but he kept slamming away. And the heat came over him again, bubbling and frothing just beneath the surface of his skin.

By the time he stopped beating at it, the man's face was destroyed. Two bulging eyes looking in different directions set in a mess of red pulp with a skull vaguely discernible underneath. The puddle below grew like spilled fruit punch on linoleum, seeping outward in all directions, dark liquid filling in the spaces between the rocks. He sat there a second still breathing hard, looking at the face but somehow not really seeing it. Blood dripped down off the gun, gummy droplets clinging to the metal for as long as possible before they finally let go. He tucked the weapon in his belt and stood.

He walked out into the road, the soles of his shoes clapping against the asphalt. Moonlight shined down upon him, and the air felt thick and damp and cool against his sweat and blood soaked skin. He held his arms out and closed his eyes and let the chill of the night sink into his flesh to finally cool the heat inside of him. The endorphins were there, the ones that come with this kind of primal victory, though the rush wasn’t all that impressive compared to the oxy, he thought.

A breeze kicked up and goose bumps raised along his outstretched arms, the tingle running in a wave from his wrists to his shoulders. He took a deep breath and let it out all slow.

Now what?

The restless part of him felt no satisfaction. It already wanted more. More of what, he didn’t know.

He opened his eyes and looked down the empty road, the black nothing that stretched out in front of him for as far as he could see, moonlight glinting off of the gooped up patches of tar. And the heat receded another notch inside of him, and the cold gripped something in his chest and made his shoulders quiver for a second. He brushed frigid fingertips at his brow, felt the skin of his face gone clammy instead of burning. The night air was so thick he thought he could see it taking physical form in the distance, a black mist twirling at the horizon.

Now what?

Erin

Presto, Pennsylvania

38 days after

She dreamed she was riding a horse. It galloped at full speed beneath her, tearing across an open plain. She didn’t know how to get it to slow down. There was no saddle, so she had to lean forward to clutch the horse’s mane to keep from falling off.

The wind in her face stung her eyes, making them tear up.

They broke through some low grass and the horizon came into view. She squinted, not taking her gaze from where the land met the sky.

The landscape ahead dropped away to nothing. They were approaching a cliff.

She panicked, tugging at the horse’s mane, lightly at first, and then harder, trying to get it to stop. They continued on at the same pace, heading for the edge of the world.

She thought about jumping off the horse, but she was scared. With her luck, she’d roll right under the hooves and wind up pummeled to a jelly.

The edge came to meet them faster than she’d anticipated. There were only a hundred feet or so left. Looking over the edge, a body of water took shape below.

This was her last chance -- her choice was to jump from the horse or jump with the horse. Her palms began to sweat, but she held tight to the horse’s mane, her decision made.

The horse leapt, plunging into the emptiness, and Erin had a brief moment to consider the water hundreds of feet below. She wondered at her choice to stay on the horse before sheer terror took over and her thoughts devolved into pangs of panic.

She felt herself falling, falling, and then she was twitching herself awake in the bed.

She laid there a few minutes, letting her heart rate return to normal, reorienting herself to reality.

Thinking back over the dream, she wondered how many times she’d even ridden a horse? Only once or twice, and yet her subconscious must have recorded and cataloged every detail because the dream had seemed so real.