The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (58 page)

His finger stroked at the trigger, felt the smooth of the metal there moistened with sweat. It should be so easy, shouldn’t it? Don’t pull the trigger. Squeeze.

His eyelids parted, opening a sliver to reveal the shelf and concrete floor before him, the gun and part of his fist still hovering at the bottom of his field of vision. No words rushed through his head just now. No poetic monologue occurred to him. No voice inside reflected or reacted or reassured him in any way. His consciousness became a series of feelings only: a churn in his gut and a sting in his eyes and the soggy feeling of all of that sweat pouring out of him.

And fear. Fear constricted like a ball of contracted muscle in his belly. Fear like a child’s, like a little kid frozen stiff in the dark, blanket pulled up to cover the head, breath subdued to something that barely moved the ribcage. Fear that throbbed in his skull, some electrical current that made everything outside burn too bright, even with his eyes nearly closed.

It should be so easy, but his finger rested on the trigger unable to finalize this process. He couldn’t even imagine applying the necessary pressure, couldn’t picture the flex of the hand, the curl of the finger.

He felt like an idiot animal gone rigid at the sign of trouble, like a baby rabbit hunching down and going motionless while the dog charges straight for it. Frightened and stupid. Too dumb to do what had become necessary. Too dumb to move at all.

He tasted the grease and the metal in his mouth. Wanted to make them go away.

And the shelf went blurry, a smudge of brown before him lit up by the daylight streaming in from the cracks above and below the shed door. And the tears caught between his eyelids, and the water made it look like the light formed clear shafts, lines that rotated if he adjusted his squint a little. It reminded him of being a baby, crying in the crib, looking up at the ceiling through his tears.

The water spilled in time, hot liquid draining from his eyes to mingle with the sweat on his skin. It didn’t feel like he was crying. It felt like something that was happening in the area, happening around him instead of to him, inside of him. It felt like his body was going through the motions, a courtesy gesture of some kind made in reverence to the circumstances, but he was outside of that now.

He closed his eyes, and he felt his pulse jerk in his neck, and he wished that he could lie down in the shadows under a tree somewhere. He could sprawl on the dusty earth, and he could leave his body, and he could disappear. He could crawl into the black and be done.

He pictured this, felt the dirt on his hands as he lowered himself into the dark, felt the cool of the ground press itself into his person as his shoulder blades touched down upon it, and he looked up into the purple light weaving through the branches, the day fading out, fading away. And a great stillness came over him, a silence inside and out.

And his hand flexed, and his finger curled, and he squeezed the trigger in slow motion, the pressure of his flesh upon the metal growing, his eyelids squeezing tighter as he braced for it. He squeezed harder and harder, pushing past the fear, past the anxiety, past the swirl of mixed feelings.

He squished as hard as he could, the gun shaking like mad now, grinding his lip against his bottom teeth, but the trigger wouldn’t budge.

His eyes snapped open.

Oh.

He forgot to flip the safety off.

Erin

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

53 days after

She didn’t have time to think now, it was all auto-pilot. She snatched the keys from the ground, spotting as she did the label that said, “Main Office.”

She jammed the key in and turned. This time it obeyed. The door unlocked.

As she wrenched the handle and shoved the door open, she saw him. Next to the claw machine, craning his neck around, trying to figure out where the noise came from.

His eyes locked on hers, and even from that distance, even in the dimness, she could see the confusion on his face. Like it took him a moment to realize what he was looking at. A person. An actual living human being. She tore her eyes away.

She waved at Izzy, who hadn’t budged from her hiding spot. For some reason, she didn’t want to speak. Like if she didn’t say anything out loud, maybe they could just disappear.

Izzy scurried past her, and then she was stepping into the darkness of the office hallway, and the man was yelling, “Hey!” And this time it was real and not just him singing like some kind of creeper Elvis.

The door slammed behind them, and only a beat later, he was there, pounding on the steel. It sounded like the booming of a bass drum the way it echoed in the hallway.

Erin couldn’t see Izzy, but she could feel her standing next to her in the darkness, clutching at her sleeve.

“You OK?”

“Yeah. But I’m scared.”

Erin took her hand, squeezing it.

“We’re going to be fine. Just take a few deep breaths.”

Erin released her grip on Izzy’s fingers.

“Don’t let go! It’s too dark in here.”

“I need to get the lighter out,” she said.

Erin moved Izzy’s hand to her shoulder, then bent to unzip the backpack, fumbling with the straps in the blackness. Her hands shook as she unzipped the front pocket on the bag.

She flicked at the lighter a few times, afraid at first that it was out of juice. She imagined fumbling down the hallway, trying to make their way by feel. Trapped in the maze again. But the fourth time she struck the flint wheel, it caught.

The flame illuminated the cinder block walls in a dim yellow glow. There were three doors before them — two on the right and one straight ahead.

“Now what? We just hide in here ‘til he gives up and leaves?”

Even though Izzy was whispering, the hallway amplified her words, bouncing the hard consonant sounds around.

Erin chewed at a chapped spot on her lip.

She wasn’t sure he would give up. But she didn’t want to tell Izzy that. It had also occurred to her for the first time that there may be another set of keys somewhere in the place. Another thing Izzy didn’t need to know.

Erin took a step forward to get a closer look at a familiar sign posted on the nearest door. Another Emergency Evacuation Map.

She leaned in, squinting at the dot marking their location. Her brow furrowed. Could that be right?

She held the lighter out toward the door at the end of the hall, straining her eyes. Sure enough, over the door was a sign that read EXIT in red letters that no longer lit up.

Erin shuffled down the hall, dragging Izzy along in her wake. When they reached the door, she jiggled the handle. Locked.

She had Izzy hold the lighter next to the keys, looking for a label that said “exit” or maybe “back door”. Flicking through them again gave her a little tingle of panic. How long had it been since they’d entered the hallway? One minute? Or ten? She wasn’t sure if it was the excitement or the dark, but her sense of time felt off.

She went through all the keys, not finding a label that fit. She tried the office key she’d used before with no luck. Process of elimination, then.

Her anxiety grew with each fruitless turn of a wrong key. She couldn’t stop picturing the door behind them swinging open, the man’s silhouette outlined in the doorway.

It felt like she’d tried all of the keys twice when finally the lock turned. When Erin pulled the key loose, she held it close to her face to read the label. It said, simply, “STARES.”

The misspelling made her snort, and she pushed through the door into another pitch black chamber. The scraping and soft thud of their feet echoed in the space. Erin took the lighter back, relit the flame. It was a small alcove with only one direction to go, and that was up.

Next to a No Smoking sign, someone had pasted a computer printout that read, “No Smoking means NO SMOKING!!! That includes the roof! -Management.”

Erin made sure the door locked behind them before she led the climb up the stairs. At the roof door, they had to pause to find yet another key.

“They have this place locked up tighter than Fort fucking Knox,” Erin said, flipping through the keys.

For once Izzy didn’t scold her.

The lighter jittered around as Izzy wiggled her knees.

“Stop moving the light around.”

“I have to pee!”

“Your bladder has impeccable timing.”

“I can’t help it! It’s like when you play Hide and Seek. You get the drenaline rush and then you gotta go.”

Erin didn’t bother telling her it was
a
drenaline. She couldn’t focus on Izzy’s vocabulary and the singing psycho downstairs.

When she stepped through the door, the brightness practically seared her eyeballs, but she didn’t care. The air smelled so fresh it almost seemed sweet. Was there something blooming nearby or was it just the contrast of the fresh air after the stagnant atmosphere of the abandoned building? Another thought she didn’t have time for.

She skirted around a vent, trying to keep her footsteps light, not wanting to give away their position. At least the roof was flat, she thought, which was a lot easier to maneuver than if it were pitched.

When she reached the edge, she peered over, trying to gauge the drop. A row of dumpsters lined the wall below, giving them at least something to break their fall.

“We’re not going to jump, are we?” The tremble in Izzy’s voice betrayed her fear.

Just as Erin was about to explain that jumping was their only option, her eyes fell on something.

“Of course not,” she said, pointing. “We’re going to climb down that ladder.”

As Erin swung herself onto the top rung, she couldn’t help but worry that this would be it. Just when it seemed like they’d escape, the man would round the corner of the building. Or, having found the keys, would follow them to the roof. She imagined him appearing above her now, grabbing Izzy from behind.

She quickened her pace, scooting down the ladder.

“Alright, start climbing down,” she told Izzy.

Erin let go with one hand and hopped to the ground, skipping the last few rungs. She kept an eye on the parking lot while Izzy climbed down. Still clear. As soon as Izzy hit the pavement, Erin grasped her hand and headed for the bikes. And then they were pedaling away. Erin still couldn’t quite believe it. She glanced behind her, convinced every time she looked back that she’d see him on their tail.

She kept them pedaling for a long while, not entirely satisfied that they’d put enough distance between them and Chuck E. Cheese.

It didn’t fully click that they were going to be OK until they saw the “Welcome to Presto” sign. The familiarity of it put her at ease.

Izzy must have felt the same sense of relief, because she broke the silence that had dominated their ride.

“That was scary.”

Erin heaved a sigh.

“Yeah.”

Even though they’d been pedaling for over an hour, when the driveway came in sight, they both picked up speed. Erin glided up the path standing on one pedal. She dismounted, leaping off the bike and letting it roll forward on its own for several yards before it tipped and crashed to the ground.

She stretched both arms toward the sky and screamed in victory, forcing all the tension out.

“Woo!”

She’d always thought all the yelling and chest-slapping in sports was kind of silly, but now she got it. Sometimes crowing like a rooster just felt like the right thing to do.

Baghead

Rural Arkansas

9 years, 127 days after

Baghead stood there looking at the place where the glass had been, his ears ringing from the gun’s blast. Something tugged at his arm. Delfino. The driver’s mouth moved, too, teeth bared, spit flying, but Bags couldn’t hear him. Couldn’t hear anything but that high pitched monotone in his head like some dog’s endless whimper.

Another round fired. Another sound too loud for his ears to process, a pop and a crack and a high pitched click all at once, and he realized that the force of it vibrated the ground just a little, made the whole street shimmy a tingle up into his toes, and somehow he knew that everything had gone slow on him, that time itself had decelerated. A second sound came a moment later as though to affirm this thought, a hollow thump as the bullet embedded in the driver’s side door.

Delfino screamed at him, though he still couldn’t hear him, and the driver yanked his wrist as hard as he could, trying to pull him to the ground, but Baghead twisted and ripped his arm away.

He walked toward the wooded shoulder, toward the place where the gunfire came from. He sensed no fear in himself as he strode forward, taking a jump step over the ditch and moving into the cover of the woods.

It wasn’t until he was three paces into the woods that he looked back through the branches and saw the pool of blood on the asphalt where Delfino had been, the shotgun lying next to it.

Lorraine