The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (50 page)

“Totally.”

Delfino sucked air between his teeth, a grimace forming on the half of his face closest to the lantern. Bags presumed the other half grimaced as well, just in the dark.

“That’s the worst,” Delfino said. “Makes my sack skin crawl just to think of it.”

Bags caught up, and they moved forward together, Delfino slowing down to match Baghead’s limping gait. He felt alive again to be back in the light, relieved, though his heart still fluttered in his chest from the adrenalin.

The pain in his groin faded just a little, and now Bags could see where they were going somewhat better. A foot path slashed a brown line into the greenery, though it didn’t lead to a building, at least not one he could see within the perimeter of the lantern’s light. They walked for a while, the taint throb slowly dying away.

The bob of the lantern moved the shadows in unison like Delfino was a puppeteer pulling all of the strings at once, making them stand up and sit down and dance a herky jerky dance. Bags got so focused on watching the silhouette’s shuffle that he didn’t notice right away when the path split in two.

“Here,” Delfino said. “This is it. Hold the lantern for me, would you?”

Bags held the light up as Delfino walked to the apex of the fork in the trail, got down on his hands and knees, and began brushing at the loose dirt right along the line where the beaten path gave way to the clumps of grass. Soon he stopped brushing and seemed to dip his fingers into the earth along that place where the grass and path touched.

“Here we go,” he said.

He pulled a rectangular flap of the ground up, maybe two inches thick with the clumps of grass still sticking out of it and everything. A little dirt fell out as he flopped it open but not much. It was a surreal image, something revealed to be manmade out here in the middle of endless fields. Like something from a magician’s act, Bags thought. He held the lantern up to get a look at the bottom of the sheet of earth, finding plastic lined chicken wire there.

“Pretty sweet, right?” Delfino said. “The roots of the grass hold the soil in place in case it rains or whatever. Plus the roots get all tangled up in this wire mesh, so you can peel the whole thing up like a sheet of sod. I saw it on TV a long time ago.”

In the place where the flap had been, Bags found another of those old metal coolers like the one in the back seat. Delfino reached down, wedging his finger in the gap to pop the lid.

The driver’s torso adjusted then and blocked the light so when Bags tried to gaze down into the open cooler, he saw only shadow. Delfino plunged a hand into the gloom, and when he retracted it, a 9mm handgun appeared in its grasp.

“This one work for you?” he said, tossing the gun to Bags.

Baghead caught it without thinking, pinning it to his torso with his free hand. It almost surprised him that he didn’t flinch or try to get out of its path, just snatching it out of the air like a football instead of an instrument of death.

Delfino turned to root around in the cooler again, and Baghead thought about telling him. Telling him what, though? That he hadn’t touched a gun in years? Was that a wise thing to share? Delfino interrupted the thought, as usual:

“This one is more my style.”

He lifted and held a sawed-off shotgun over his head like an athlete hoisting a trophy.

“Always been more of a shotgun guy, I guess. Just racking one of these things gets me half hard, you know? Anyway, we’re armed, finally. Pretty great, right? You want to carry the lantern or this can of gas?”

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

41 days before

The day wore into the afternoon, the boys finding distraction in playing Horse in the driveway. Mitch didn’t watch them very closely, but he heard. The basketball pounded against the blacktop, the sound echoing in all directions. Their voices rose over each other, a tangle of words he couldn’t quite make out.

He sat at the table, drinking another glass of water, staring at the blue square of sky visible through the window over the sink. His hand rested on his stomach, now full. He’d fished some lunch meat out of the cooler and made a pastrami sandwich with some spicy mustard that was delicious. His appetite surprised him, and handling the meat made him a little queasy at first, but as soon as he tasted it, he felt better. It was like an old friend coming home after a long time away.

He thought he would be gone by now, and he kept the Beretta tucked in his belt in case it became necessary. So far it wasn’t. If he had to, he would do it in the shed, he thought. His initial instinct, like his wife’s, had been to hide his death away from Kevin and Matt completely, but when he thought on it more, he decided against it. He wanted to be alone for the act itself, of course, but after that? Well, maybe they should see. It would be disturbing, of course, but they would have closure. Plus, they could retrieve the gun, an item of utmost value going forward.

Anyway, with food in his gut, all of that felt far away. His mood was better than it had been since before he ventured down into the basement with Janice in the first place.

He tried not to think about it, tried not to let his hopes breathe, but his faith just grew and grew.

He turned on the phone again, watched it flash through the cycle of screens. Then it vibrated and beeped. Was that...? He had a text. His chest seized up, a breath caught in his throat. The idea that maybe his boys would have a place to stay after this, someone to look after them, fluttered inside of his ribcage like a bird’s wings. He tapped the screen a couple of times and read the message from Janice’s parents.

“We are both sick. In hospital. I am doing OK, I think. He is not. Would be great if Jan and the boys could visit. Soon.”

He closed his eyes. Without looking, he felt around for the proper button with his thumb, powered the phone down, and skidded it across the table to be away from it.

He paced up and down the hallway outside of the bedrooms. The floor creaked under his feet, the boards beneath the carpet squeaking shrill and dry. He tried to run through the options in his mind, but he couldn’t think of any. He could keep trying to call parents of friends, but nobody was answering or calling back, and conserving the battery was probably the better option.

What else?

Well, he could pace the floors in his home and wait to die. That one might be worth looking into, he thought.

But no. He shouldn’t think like that. He didn’t have to die. If it happened that way, it happened that way. Nobody would know until the thing played itself out, he figured.

He heard the thud of the ball slamming the backboard outside, a long range miss from the sound of it. The sound startled him out of his thoughts for a split second, though.

He stopped walking and drummed his fingers on his cheek. Was he losing it? Was he fooling himself? He’d sat in the basement, napping in a lawn chair, while his wife morphed into a zombie, and now he was telling himself that he was going to be OK. Total nonsense. Some denial thing, probably some primal function, like part of the survival instinct that would keep him fighting and hopeful in dire circumstances.

Then again, he had regained his appetite, and his headache had died out almost completely. He couldn’t say for certain that the black streaks running across his chest had lessened, though he thought so. Still, the food and headache were definitive pieces of information. Were they evidence of something or not? He couldn’t say.

Without thinking, he walked back out to the kitchen, bare feet pattering over the cold linoleum. It felt good. Refreshing. He felt alive again, at least most of the way.

His hand reached out for the handle to the fridge door, gripping it, and then he stopped himself. He couldn’t browse for food now. The power was out, and they needed to keep it closed as much as possible. Weird how ingrained these habits are, he thought. The compulsion to eat and drink whether or not one was actually hungry or thirsty. He didn’t know what to think of it.

Letting his hand fall away from the fridge, he turned toward the sink, light shining through the window above it. Something wasn’t right. He knew that, but he didn’t know what it was.

The boys? He listened. After a beat, the basketball bounced off the driveway a few times and clanged against the rim. No. They were fine.

Was it-

His torso convulsed, bending him at the waist. His mouth opened, teeth prying wide, and the second wretch heaved chewed chunks of pastrami sandwich from his mouth, spilling them in wet globs that slapped on the linoleum. The smell of puke and spicy mustard crept up his throat to fill his sinus cavity.

He tried to stand up straight, but he couldn’t. Two more abdominal contortions tore the rest of the food from him, but that wasn’t all. Blood came up, too, in a steaming spray, projectile vomited against the floor, washing over the chunks of chewed meat and bread. Some kind of black goo came up next. It looked about the same consistency as the blood. Thick. Opaque.

So maybe he wasn’t fine after all.

Erin

Presto, Pennsylvania

48 days after

Erin took off, dodging cornstalks. She headed for the path that wound through the woods to the road. She suspected Izzy had gone this way, but she wasn’t certain.

How could she have run off like this? Did she really have that little sense of how dangerous things were? Even in the best of times, you don’t run toward gunshots. You run away from them.

A tangle of roots caught her toe, and she teetered forward, knees slamming into the ground. She didn’t even look down, didn’t slow her pace. She could worry about bruises and bloody scrapes later.

By the time she reached the spindly sumac bushes that marked the end of the field and the beginning of the woods, she was out of breath. Oxygen clawed at the insides of her lungs with each inhalation.

She kept moving toward the road, eyes scanning, but Izzy was nowhere in sight.

The trail cut up a hill, winding its way through the trees. Erin climbed upward, bending forward to rest her hands on her knees while she walked.

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Izzy had gone back to the house. She
had
mentioned being hungry. Maybe she just got tired of waiting for Erin to give the go-ahead. It seemed like a silly explanation, but she was just a kid. Kids could be silly sometimes.

She half-considered turning back to check the house. Just then, the area where the trees thinned to make way for the road came into view. And there was Izzy, standing motionless on the shoulder. She stood so still, at first Erin’s eyes missed her.

Another jolt of energy came upon her, and Erin darted forward, taking everything in quickly. Izzy’s stillness alarmed her at first. She imagined someone standing just out of sight, pointing a gun at her, telling her to freeze. But her eyes told her Izzy was alone.

Well, alone except for the dead bodies heaped in the road at her feet. They were fresh, the first fresh dead she’d seen since the plague first started. It was different than seeing the near-skeletons. The dried-up husks left in the houses they scavenged. It was even different than the rotting pile at the gas station. This was scarier. It felt wrong.

But she could worry about that later.

Gripping Izzy’s forearm, Erin swung her around. Maybe a little too roughly than she meant to.

“What the hell, Izzy? Why would you run off like that?”

Izzy’s lower lip disappeared into her mouth.

“I just wanted to see.”

Erin’s voice went up a notch, incredulous.

“See what? The psycho who murdered these people? What if he — or they — had still been here?”

A knot of wrinkles formed on Izzy’s chin. She looked at her feet.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I
do
know. They would have killed you, too. Or worse.”

Curls fell over Izzy’s eyes, obscuring her face. But her hair didn’t block the sound of her sniffles.

Christ. Now the kid was crying. It wasn’t what she’d intended, but maybe it would get through to her now. Still, Erin hated how much she sounded like her mom.

She lowered her knee to the dirt so they’d be at eye level.

“Don’t cry. I didn’t mean to yell. But you scared the shit out of me.”

Izzy’s nose quirked as she sniffed. Her eyelashes were all matted together with tears.

“Language,” she muttered, trying not to smile. Just like Erin knew she would.

She squeezed the kid’s arm, so skinny she could almost wrap her fingers all the way around it.

“Promise me you’ll never run off like that again.”

“I promise.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

Her head bobbed, yes. Erin reached out and pinched one of Izzy’s curls between her fingers, stretching it out until the hair was straight. She released it, the hair bouncing back like a spring.

They turned to head back down the trail, when a noise came from behind.

It was a rasping sound. The sound of air scraping over a dry throat.