The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (32 page)

Erin took a few steps back from the heat and observed that it really wasn’t creating a lot of smoke. She went back around to the front of the house, watching for any wisps above the roof line, but there were none. It wasn’t a huge fire, but really, the smaller the better for their purposes.

Still, she wanted to test this right. What if it rained for a few days and they had to burn wet wood? Back at the fire, she threw on more wood, hoping a bigger fire might make a bit more smoke. It didn’t.

“Try some leaves,” Izzy said, not even looking up from the comics page.

“What?”

“My neighbor used to burn leaves every fall. It made a ton of smoke.”

Worth a try, Erin thought.

She scooped a bundle of dry leaves into her arms, waddled to the fire, and dumped them on top, dusting her hands together. Almost instantly the leaves began to smolder and smoke. She went back for another two armfuls, trying not to think of all the bugs and worms and other creepy crawlies inside. When she was satisfied with the amount of smoke, she pulled at Izzy’s sleeve.

“We should go hide. Just in case.”

Crunching through the dry leaves littering the forest floor, they walked deeper into the woods. They found a fallen tree to perch on and waited. Izzy was still perusing the newspaper.

“Ew,” Izzy said.

“What?”

“Family Circus.”

“Told you.”

Erin noticed that the trees over the fire seemed to disperse a lot of the smoke, keeping it from rising in one concentrated column. Worth keeping in mind.

Minutes passed, and the flames died down. When it was only embers left, Erin decided to call it a success.

She kicked at the dirt next to the fire pit, trying to smother the remainder of the fire. The last thing she wanted to do was create some kind of monster forest fire out here.

“Go see if you can find something to put the fire out,” Erin said, and Izzy took off toward the house, the comics pages flapping behind her like a cape.

Erin expected her to return with a pot filled with water from the toilet tank. Or maybe a fire extinguisher. What she did not anticipate was Izzy lumbering around the corner of the house with the giant can of cheese.

“Nice,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Well, we’re not going to eat it, are we?”

“Just be careful. Don’t cut yourself on the lid or something dumb like that.”

Izzy upended the container over the fire and a viscous orange liquid oozed out. The top had formed a skin, and that came out first, followed by a slightly lighter hue of cheese goop. It slopped into the pit, sizzling as it hit the embers. The heat caused the cheese to boil and bubble, like the mudpots she’d seen when her family took a trip to Yellowstone. It made a wet noise like someone blowing raspberries.

“Cheese farts!” Izzy said, giggling.

Steam rose, imparting a smoky-cheesy smell to the air. Cheese farts, indeed. But it worked. The cheese sludge had extinguished the fire.

Erin turned to Izzy.

“We made history today, Iz.”

“Because now we can have a fire?”

“No. Because I guarantee you that’s the first time anyone has ever used nacho cheese to put out a fire.”

She held up her hand for a high five.

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

42 days before

The white light shimmered off the pale gray tiles. Mitch looked down to avoid the brightness, but he found orbs of illumination staring back at him every few steps anyway. The brightness proved unavoidable.

They straggled past a couple of racks of shitty DVDs and the horde around them splintered into segments moving left, right and straight. Mitch and the boys veered right, squaring their shoulders toward the produce department. Mobs of people swarmed the displays of plant life. From what Mitch could see, the fruit was already gone, the black racks picked clean aside from a stray grape and a lemon, shriveled and moldy. People shuffled around the empty shelves in small groups, skittering in all directions. They looked haggard, a few without shoes on, many with their hoods up and their heads down, like refugees fleeing some kind of genocide. Maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth, Mitch thought, more than most of them even knew.

He stopped walking, just planted his feet on a perforated rubber mat near the empty crate where the watermelons used to be. He tried to think. What would make the most sense to buy in this scenario? It was hard to concentrate with people bustling around the way they were, with panic and chaos broadcasting from brain to brain like radio waves. Voices brayed out staccato bursts, nervous chatter like everyone was amped up on 13 cups of coffee. It may as well have all been in a foreign language, like they teleported to some Middle Eastern country he’d never heard of the minute they stepped into the light.

“What are we doing?” Matt said, tugging at his dad’s sleeve.

“Huh? Oh, I’m thinking.”

“About what?”

“I’m trying to decide what we should grab. I didn’t think... I mean, I didn’t know people would clean the place out like this.”

“Oreos. We’re supposed to get Oreos.”

Mitch laughed and even that came out neurotic and rushed.

“OK, fine. We’ll try to get Oreos first.”

“Try? You think people took them all already?”

“I hope not, but look around man. People are going nuts.”

They angled left to get back out to the main aisle, working their way through the humanity to get to the Oreos. A squat man rushed past going the other way with both arms clutching hot dog buns to his chest, additional bags of buns dangling from his fists. Mitch made eye contact with Kevin as the bun man passed, and they laughed. He knew his older son was upset, probably a lot more in tune with the reality of the situation than Matt was, so it made him feel better to see him smile. Not that much better, maybe even a sad version of better, but it was something.

That’s the trick, right? Find these happy moments, these hopeful moments. Find them and hold onto them. Make yourself believe you’re happy for as long as you can, and then slip into oblivion. No amount of thinking can prepare you for death, Mitch thought. You can’t brace yourself in some certain way and ease into it. Better to fool yourself for a lifetime and slide into it when no one is looking, not even you.

Empty space occupied the freezer display where the pizzas were supposed to be. Mitch pointed a thumb at the bare freezer as he spoke.

“Damn. The savages ran wild in here. Even took all of the good pizza.”

“We still have a few at home,” Kevin said. “And who knows how long the power will be out? We should get grain. Rice. Oatmeal. Ice for the coolers. Maybe containers to store water. Stuff for...”

“After,” Mitch said.

“Oh, God,” Matt said, covering his face with his hands again. Mitch put a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Hey, you’ll be alright,” he said. “You’re tough, aren’t you?”

“What? Yeah, I’m just worried that the Oreos will be all gone. ‘Cause of the savages, I mean.”

“Yeah, well we’re about to find out.”

They turned right, stalking into the cookie and cracker aisle. There were still a few things on the shelf here: chicken flavored crackers, off brand chocolate chip cookies, a couple of damaged boxes of chocolate Teddy Grahams. His eyes jumped farther down the aisle, looking for blue packages, the shitty dehydrated chocolate cookies with a layer of hydrogenated white crap sandwiched between them. Or maybe it wasn’t hydrogenated anymore. He remembered reading something about it.

A detail from the article sprang to mind: Oreos were as addictive as cocaine. He remembered that. They did a study with rats that found the little guys loved the cookies as much as they loved hard drugs. He could imagine rats here in the store now, scurrying along with the people, fleeing from trouble, gathering supplies to hunker down somewhere.

That would be a weird job, though. Feeding cocaine to rats.

A blue package caught his eye on the bottom shelf some 10 feet ahead. He focused on it, his conscious reality filtering down to the blue exterior, the flap on the side where the front and back pieces crimp together like the edge of a candy wrapper. Subconsciously, his brain must still be telling his legs to put one foot in front of the other, but he didn’t feel it at all, didn’t think about it. It just happened. From his perspective, he simply glided closer and closer to the package, the sounds around him fading down into something small and way in the background, like the chatter of a school cafeteria full of people heard from several classrooms away.

But no. Not Oreos. Chips Ahoy.

“Damn,” he said.

“Here,” Kevin said.

He reached deep into the shelf, his hand hovering over bags of off brand ginger snaps that looked more or less untouched. All the way in the back, a package sat atop the snaps. The shape looked right. He pulled the box out of the shadows, and the light revealed blue and white and pink. Pink? Oh, it was the Double Stuf kind.

“Good eye,” Mitch said, clapping his son’s shoulder.

Kevin handed the Oreos to Matt, who turned them around to read the label, his eyebrows crushed together.

“Double Stuf?” Matt said, smearing a finger over the smooth plastic in front of him.

“Yeah, they have more of the white stuff than regular Oreos,” Mitch said. “You OK with that?”

“Uh, yeah. This is going to be awesome.”

The boy tucked the cookies under his arm, and it occurred to Mitch that they had forgotten to grab a cart in all of the confusion upon walking into the bright light. That was dumb.

“Should we go get a cart?” he said.

“They’re all gone,” Kevin said. “The rack up front was empty when we walked by anyway.”

Mitch remembered the guy carrying all of the hot dog buns in his arms. Maybe the lack of carts played a role there.

“Damn.”

“It’s all right, Dad. There are three of us. We can carry plenty.”

“I guess.”

“This way.”

Kevin took the lead. They turned back, weaving through an influx of traffic in the cookie aisle. Looking past them, Mitch saw the dark half of the store in the distance. The generators must only power the grocery side, leaving the department store type area in the dark. Damn. He had planned to grab some things from over there. Should they brave the lack of light? The decision could wait.

They merged into the flow of traffic in the main aisle once more, advancing three rows to find the grain and pasta shelves. Kevin turned sideways to make himself skinny enough to squeeze through a gap between two fat men, and he squirted through to get ahead of his dad and brother. Mitch grabbed Matt’s shoulder to make sure he wouldn’t do the same.

“Kevin!” Mitch said, his voice rising above the tangle of chatter.

His older son disappeared in the thick crowd populating this aisle, the red hair swallowed up among the shoulders and torsos. Mitch’s heart sped up.

Still gripping Matt, he elbowed enough space to maneuver between the stagnant fatties, jostling them out of his way with a little force. One of them, a man with a salt and pepper beard and hair hanging down to cover one side of his face, gave Mitch a dirty look. In turn Mitch stared at him, his forearm touching the gun in his belt once more. The man looked away.

Now he battled his way through the writhing mass of limbs and torsos. All of the people seemed to be jockeying for position, closing in on something ahead that he couldn’t see. Some of the people were turning back, fighting their way upstream with goods of some kind in their hands, plastic bags of something.

And then Kevin appeared among those fighting their way back, a smile on his face. Mitch stopped and let his son come to him.

“The stock boy brought out a couple of boxes, but the people tore them open before he could stock them,” Kevin said. “I got in there and got some.”

He cradled nine pounds of brown rice in his arms.

Baghead

Rural Oklahoma

9 years, 126 days after

Delfino put the car in park, and they sat facing the blockade of armed children.

“So these are the ruthless war mongers you warned me about? A bunch of kids.”

Delfino said nothing, but the look on his face seemed to lack any trace of amusement.

“Turn the engine off and get out,” the kid in the front said. “Slow. Hands up, too.”

“Wait,” Baghead said under his breath. “What are we paying the toll with?”

Delfino shook his head, his chin tucked in a strange way. He spoke through his teeth.

“It’s taken care of. Just stay quiet.”

“But couldn’t we pay someone to take out seven kids?”

“This is one squad. They have an army that would hunt us for the rest of our lives and dismember us. And a lot of them are kids, sure, but not all. Please, please just shut your mouth.”

He turned the key, and the hum of the engine died out. The quiet swelled up around them, filling the empty space where the motor had churned, the only sound remaining that of the wind swishing fistfuls of sand around.