The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (52 page)

He glanced down at the gun. It rested just a couple of feet below his head, but it somehow felt like peeking over the edge of a cliff, that overwhelming tension of looking down on the jagged earth far below. Half exhilarating. Half terrifying. For Mitch, looking over bridges and cliffs served as one of those moments when the notion of his existence came to the forefront of his thoughts. The dread of existing, of not knowing where it was headed or what it was for. Half of him locked up, frozen in fear, watching his toes, keeping them well away from the edge. The other half wanted to hurl himself every time. Not out of great sadness or despair. Not for any melodramatic, attention-seeking reasons. Just as a way to ease that dread of existence, of being conscious of himself and his mortality and the meandering trajectory his life traveled. To turn off the endless anxiety and self-consciousness, to turn the unknown into a known, any known, even death. To turn the in-between into something permanent. Something final. Forever.

He closed his eyes again, searching himself for those feelings now that he needed them. But the fear was so big just now. He felt like a child too scared to get in the deep end of the pool.

It was a weird feeling to know that killing himself was the best option, the only solution to all of the problems before him, and still find himself too scared. But he would wait, and the right feeling would come around. He knew it would come around. It had to.

Teddy

Moundsville, West Virginia

74 days after

All of his things, aside from his food and drink stash, fit into a polyester laundry bag that he slung over his shoulder. It bounced along with his footsteps, the bottom of the bag slapping at his back once in a while.

He walked down the middle of Main Street, feet treading on the parallel yellow lines. Birds darted on and off of the dead power lines above him, not singing but chirping single notes periodically, alarmed screeches that he took as warnings to keep his distance. He’d never liked birds. They seemed so cold hearted. Dead-eyed things. No feelings inside.

The sun warmed the asphalt beneath his feet and reflected the heat so he felt it on the exposed skin of his arms and face. He pictured his cheeks going pink, shimmering like two pieces of salmon in a frying pan, the layers flaking away from each other. He wanted to see if that was real, but there were no windows around to cast his reflection.

He took a right on Walnut Street, heading up a hill. With nothing occupying his traps for the past few days, he’d bided his time scouting houses for a new place to stay. The search turned up many promising options with features he’d only ever seen on TV. Marble countertops. Vaulted ceilings with skylights. One of them even had an elevator, though it didn’t work since there was no electricity. Still, he thought that was pretty classy.

The house he picked had none of these things. It was a fairly modest place. Sure, it was in a convenient location, just three blocks from his traps and four from the well with the hand pump where he’d been getting his water every day. But those reasons didn’t factor into his decision either. Not truly.

Another right put him on Pinehurst. Green grass and pine trees surrounded houses set back from the road. In this subdivision, the houses had a little space, a little privacy, even though they were right in the midst of everything downtown.

The last house on the right was the one he’d settled on. White vinyl siding with blue-gray shudders that looked to have been sun bleached a few shades lighter over the years. Paint chipped, flaking away from the wood around the windows, and the sills all looked bloated and spongy and rotten. Green mold or mildew of some kind crept up one side of the garage, the jagged edges of the green blob against the white made it look like a land mass on a map, Teddy thought. None of these things concerned him.

He pushed open the door and crossed the threshold, stepping out of the sunlight and into the shade. He paused just inside, letting his eyes adjust. Soon the couch and loveseat took shape in front of him, leather upholstery. Forest green. Berber carpet swathed the floor. Cream with brown flecks.

It felt dry inside, and he found no signs of water damage or mildew on the interior, despite the mold and rotten wood outside. There had been no dead bodies here either.

None of these were factors in his choosing this house, though. The basement was what he liked. It was perfect. The heavy steel door with a clasp for a padlock. Poured concrete walls, all smooth. Just one window, but the most secure one you could get. Glass blocks cemented in place. Not going anywhere.

It was the perfect basement. The perfect place to keep his pets.

Erin

Presto, Pennsylvania

48 days after

Erin crossed around the two remaining bodies to where the almost-dead man had lain. She stared at the bloody stain on the road, the only remaining evidence that he’d been there, and tried to think of an explanation.

She leaned forward, studying the blood in the waning light. She couldn’t remember exactly where he’d been positioned, but it seemed like the bloody spot on the asphalt sort of smeared toward the other side of the road. Like maybe the body had been dragged?

Could he have stayed alive long enough, had enough strength to pull himself into the grass?

She hopped around the stain, careful not to get her shoes in it. She scanned the surrounding area, even taking a few steps into the grass to be sure, but he was nowhere to be seen. There wasn’t any more blood that she could see, either.

She didn’t like this. Not at all. Her fingers squeezed around the utility knife, a reminder that it was there. She looked down and noticed her hands were shaking. They were cold as hell, too.

OK, think. What would the most rational explanation be?

That he turned into a zombie and walked off?

I said rational, she thought.

So maybe whoever killed him came back for the body. Why? No idea. But it wasn’t impossible. Though why they’d only take the one body and not the other two-

She stopped, holding her breath, another icy wave traveling up her spine and over her skin.

Maybe they came back for him because they knew he wasn’t dead. Maybe it had all been a ruse. A trick to lure them in.

And then she remembered that she’d left Izzy alone at the house.

Branches whipped at her face and arms, but she barely felt them. She lost her balance at the bottom of the hill, rolling sideways on her hands and knees into the field, re-bloodying the scrapes from her earlier fall. But she clawed her way upright and ran for the house.

She didn’t bother scoping out the house before hand, she just barged in, slamming the screen door into the side of the house.

Izzy was at the dining room table, in the midst of shoving a handful of Frosted Flakes in her mouth. She leered at Erin.

“What?”

Erin steadied herself against the door, panting.

“I thought-”

She let her head fall backward to rest against the door.

“Never mind.”

Izzy hadn’t been kidnapped. So that was good.

But that still didn’t explain where the hell Almost Dead Guy wandered off to.

Erin turned and pressed her face to the screen, squinting through the holes and out into the velveteen half-light of dusk. Was he out there right now, watching? Pissed off that they hadn’t helped him?

She closed the storm door and locked it, then went through the whole house, double-checking the other doors and windows. Back in the kitchen, Erin set a candle on the table and lit it.

“No lanterns, tonight, OK?”

Izzy shrugged.

“I thought we were going to have a fire today. So you could do laundry.”

“It’ll have to wait,” Erin said.

That night, Erin couldn’t sleep. Before she got in bed, she tucked the utility knife under her pillow.

Now she lay there, eyes open. Every time she heard a noise, her body jerked a little involuntarily. Her mind raced, trying to determine the source. Eventually she’d calm herself. Just the house settling. Then she’d snake her hand along the mattress until she felt the cold metal of the knife under her pillow. Checking to make sure it was still there.

At some point she dozed off, because she was awakened by Izzy screaming. Erin’s eyes twitched open, and she struggled against the blanket to push herself into a seated position. They were alone in the room when Erin finally got her bearings. It was only Izzy having a nightmare.

“It’s OK,” she said, squeezing Izzy’s shoulder. “You’re having a bad dream.”

Izzy blinked and rubbed at her cheek.

“I had a dream that we were cannibals.”

Of course. Erin knew she shouldn’t have told Izzy that shipwreck story.

“We were eating that man on the road. And he was still alive.”

Better us eating him than him eating us, Erin thought. But she didn’t say it out loud.

Instead she pulled the sheet up to Izzy’s chin and said, “You’re alright, now. Go back to sleep.”

When she closed her eyes, she saw the smear of blood on the road again and wondered, what if?

Ray

North of Canton, Texas

2 days before

He woke to the smell of pickles, that vinegar odor. She sat on the curb next to him, a couple of bites into her burger, a strawberry shake balanced between her knees.

He glanced around the parking lot, getting the vague sense that something was off, something was missing, and then it clicked. The Grand Cherokee was gone. It felt like someone large twisted the heel of their boot into his chest.

He sat up, and their eyes met. She finished chewing before she spoke.

“Police are on their way.”

“What? No police. We have to get out of here, get moving.”

“You got whacked in the head and your Jeep got stolen. The gas station attendant called it in.”

He stood, and the pain throbbed in the back of his head, an ache that spread like a burst of little lightning bolts reaching out toward his forehead.

“No police. It’s a waste of time. We’re not waiting around here to try to get the SUV back. Plus we had that run-in last night. With the soldiers.”

He thought of the gun, the murder weapon, in the glove box as he said it. He was almost sorrier to lose that than the vehicle itself. Almost.

“Right,” she said.

He patted at his pockets.

“Goddamn. They took my phone, too. Do you have one?”

“It’s dead.”

“Damn. Well, we can just charge it in the…”

“In the car? Yeah, I thought the same thing before I remembered.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, felt his eyes flick back and forth as he tried to think.

“Whole thing’s going to hell. But let’s get out of here before the police show.”

She took a huge bite of sandwich and then hesitated, turning the semi-circle of beef and bread in her hands, trying to figure out a good way to wrap it back up. A few strands of lettuce flopped out of the side.

“Here,” he said.

He held the shake while she returned her burger to the waxed paper wrapper from whence it came.

Baghead

Rural Arkansas

9 years, 127 days after

The blackest dream.

He runs through the field with the gun in his hand, weeds grazing him and flicking out of the way, the air thick and black. Heavy with wet. Pressing clammy fingers against his forehead and chest, chilling him. It passes between his lips, touching his throat on the way to his lungs.

The lantern sways in the distance, the circle of light growing smaller as it pulls away from him, leaving him in the dark. He runs faster, as fast as he can, but it’s no use. He can’t keep up.

His lungs burn, which makes the cold air entering them feel all the more wrong. Too hot and too cold all at once. Like sweating in the winter. That chill that seeps deeper and deeper into the muscle as you work and move and perspire.

He goes to yell, but just as his throat opens to create the sound, the gun slips from his fingers. He stops running, cuts off the cry in his throat, dropping to his knees, hands patting at the dirt and the weeds. How could he drop the gun?

And then the light flickers off and on, twice, three times, and vanishes. And he gasps, and the dank air reaches deeper into his chest, tendrils of wet pressed against the walls of his lungs like tentacles, like flaps of flesh inside of him.

The darkness surrounds him, envelops him, thick and wet around him like a womb, and then he falls. No ground catches him. No one catches him. Into the void. Into the abyss. He falls.

He thrashes and kicks and flails at the emptiness. And he thinks of the girl, the pit in his stomach somehow growing wider. The rabid child. He was supposed to take care of her, supposed to look after her, but he’d failed. He’d let it slip through his fingers.