The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (59 page)

North of Canton, Texas

2 days before

“You know, you remind me of my wife in some ways,” he said.

They sat on a bench in front of a discount shoe shop. A green and white awning shaded them, though it was still too hot.

“Is that so?”

He nodded and looked out at the lot. She watched him reach into his pocket and feel the unused canister of pepper spray.

“We were married for 27 years, but we’ve been apart a long while. The death of our son was hard enough, but we made it through. For a while, anyway. After all of the stuff in the media came out about how much money I’d made, and what exactly I’d done to make it, things were different. She didn’t see me the same way, I guess.”

Lorraine didn’t know what to say, so she looked out at the lot, too, and things were quiet for a while.

“I tried to get a hold of her, with everything going on, but she’s not answering. Shoot, maybe she’s already dead.”

This time the quiet lasted longer. They watched the cars jerk into parking spots, watched the people hustle about.

“Why is something about this harder than killing?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, I put bullets in those soldiers’ heads without a moment’s hesitation – just POW, POW -- but this feels different. It’s more personal. More cruel. Does it feel that way to you?”

“It does. These people aren’t threats to us like the army men might have been. Had we stormed the barricade, the soldiers probably had orders to shoot, don’t you think?”

He leaned back, his shoulders touching the bench.

“Could be. Maybe you’re right. But still… This is just a little pepper spray. The person will survive.”

“Maybe when it’s something like this, you can identify with it because it’s something small. You can imagine getting pepper sprayed, right? You can picture yourself in that kind of agony, eyes and sinuses and throat on fire. But death? Death is too big to comprehend. You can’t picture that for yourself. You can know it intellectually, but your imagination can’t conjure images for it, can’t believe it to really be possible.”

He nodded, and then he turned and smiled at her.

“That was… You know, you have a real way with words. That was very well said.”

She smiled, felt a little warmth in her cheeks. Her mind riffled through ideas for a new subject.

“Do you think it was hard for the person that clocked you over the head and stole your Jeep?”

His lips pursed for a moment, a stern look etching lines on his face and then softening.

“Maybe so. It took some gumption, I’d say.”

“Didn’t I hear you talk about this once in a sermon on TV?” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Do unto others what has been done to you, right? I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but still...”

He laughed.

“I thought you were going to say, ‘Bludgeon thy neighbor as thyself was bludgeoned.’”

Baghead

Rural Arkansas

9 years, 127 days after

He felt the pistol in his hand, though he didn’t recall prying it from his belt. The texture of the grip pressed its pattern into his palm, and the metal advanced toward matching his body temperature.

And he felt the warmth flush his face, the kind of animal heat he hadn’t felt in a long time, his heart banging in his chest, the red blood and adrenalin coursing through him. That little tremor quivered in his arms again, muscles tightening and releasing with incredible speed.

Part of him could see all of this happening and discern its meaning, how this was the response of a threatened animal, part of his survival instinct, bred into animal genetics since way before humankind roamed the planet. But another part of him was fully in the heat, fully in the moment, pressing forward, pupils dilated with bad intentions like a tiger’s just before it pounces. And that part of him was driving just now, that part exercised unchecked power over all current activities.

He stalked through the grass and between the trees, moving up the sloping hill before him toward higher ground. He didn’t think about where to go. He went where the sound came from.

When it felt right, he got low, walking in a crouch, letting the tall grass and bushes shield his position some. He moved mostly without sound, neither hurrying nor delaying.

Again, he knew when to stop, and so he did. He crouched even lower and waited. He watched and listened for a long while, realizing only then that his hearing had faded back in at least some of the way.

Something rustled in the brush up ahead somewhere, twigs snapping, leaves rustling, and a man took shape, stepping out of the foliage into a clear spot some 15 feet beyond Baghead’s position. A man holding a rifle.

Thick black stubble climbed up the man’s cheeks, reaching almost to that rounded line at the bottom of each of his eye sockets. He was young and scrawny. Sinewy. He turned the other way and back, almost like he knew he was being watched, though Baghead read no fear on the man’s face. His features made him seem bratty, in fact – pouty lips and a twisted up brow like that of a toddler in the full-on thrust of nap refusal.

Baghead checked the safety, verifying that it was off. For a split second, the thinking part of him intervened, so in shock that he was seconds away from killing a human being that it short-circuited his instincts, left him frozen with his thumb on the safety.

But the heat swelled in him again, flaring in his chest and crawling up onto his neck and shoulders before finally seething once more, deep in the deformed flesh of his face. It radiated off of him, warming the canvas draped over his head.

He stood, aiming and firing all at once, knowing the shot would connect, and it did. A head shot, a little low to be fatal, though it dropped the man in a heap.

Baghead waited a second, gun still extended before him, but the man didn’t stir. He walked over and stood above the fallen figure.

The man’s nose was mostly gone, a red mess and an open hole into his sinus cavity left in its place, split down the middle by a remaining fragment of septum. His eyes fluttered, full of blood.

Baghead didn’t dally or gloat. He put two in the brain, retrieved the man’s rifle, and stepped away, walking back toward the road.

Ray

North of Canton, Texas

2 days before

The wind blew, and it pressed his sweaty shirt to his chest, adhering it there. Slime coated his body like he was sweating a thin gel instead of liquid, or at least it felt that way.

He strode across the lot, his eyes locked on the back of a man’s head. His heart slammed in his chest. His eyelids twitched. And the sweat poured and poured and poured.

This was it. This was all. Life or death determined by a can of pepper spray and a PT Cruiser in fair condition. It was so silly, he almost wanted to laugh, but he was too keyed up on adrenalin for anything like that.

He gripped the canister, positioned it to be ready to extract from his pocket without a hitch, readied his index finger on the button, on the trigger. Sweat drained down the sides of his face, and his vision seemed a little pink around the edges. Everything felt hot and wet and blurry like he was walking around in a bad dream.

He zigzagged between cars, working on a diagonal. He tried to walk fast enough that he would beat the man to the destination, but not so fast so as to arouse suspicion. He let his eyes drift to the car. The one they’d finally picked.

They’d watched the man enter the shoe store and looked at each other. Somehow they didn’t have to say anything. They just knew it’d be him. Maybe his suit made it seem like he’d pull through something like this better than most. Maybe it was the notion that no one could truly miss a PT Cruiser all that much.

The cars blocked most of his view of the man. From his vantage point, it looked like a disembodied head floating just over the cars in the parking lot. And somehow that would have been easier. He could pepper spray a floating head. No problem. Sounded kind of fun, really.

He tried not to think about what this man might be up to today, but the questions came to him anyway. What kind of day was he interrupting with this? Did he stop here on his lunch break from work?

From what Ray remembered of the man’s attire, he looked to be dressed in formal wear – a black suit. That suggested office work, but it could be something else. A funeral, maybe. Not unlikely with all of this death around. Did he bury a family member this morning?

He could see this man at the service, a child-sized casket framed by heaps of flowers in the front of the church. Light poured through the stained glass windows, casting red and blue shapes on the floor. Hushed weeping rested atop the atmosphere like a wet paper towel, somehow made the air feel heavy and damp, like the tears themselves could be felt all around.

Shit. Better to not think about it.

He focused on his breathing. It was getting away from him, short breaths puffing in and out of his nostrils. No. Deep breaths. That’s what he needed.

His lips parted, and the cool air rushed into his throat for what felt like a long time, and there was a pang of anxiety at the apex of his inhalation, at that moment when his chest had fully expanded, some childhood fear he’d long forgotten, like maybe he wouldn’t stop inhaling somehow, like his diaphragm would push his ribcage past its breaking point, snap it wide as if preparing him for open heart surgery. But then the exhale came upon him and deflated his torso like it always did, and the feeling went away, to be forgotten until the next time.

The floating head walked past an empty parking spot, the body taking shape beneath it, arms and legs swinging along. He was close now, just a few feet away. And he wasn’t a head, and this wasn’t just acquiring a car. He was a man. A human being.

He pulled the pepper spray out of his pocket, holding it at his side as he strode the last four paces as the target got close enough to touch.

“Excuse me, sir,” Ray said, his voice wavering a touch. “Did you drop your wallet?”

The man stopped mid-stride, hesitated for a second, and turned, eyebrows half-scrunched and half-raised at the same time.

Ray brought the pepper spray up and fired. It squirted a misty stream into his jaw, across his neck and onto the shoulder of the man’s jacket, and then stopped.

Everything drifted into slow motion. The man turned his head to look down at his shoulder, his face blank. His tongue flicked out to touch his top lip, and then his eyes swiveled to meet Ray’s. His mouth opened, and just as he looked poised to speak, his head jerked away from the shoulder. He brought the heels of his hands to his eyes, fingers curled against his forehead.

“Keys,” Ray said. “Give me the car keys.”

The man peeled his hands away a little, revealing reddened eyes, the eyelids wet and dark and swollen like moist plums, though the shadows may have enhanced that appearance a bit. He didn’t speak, and he didn’t move to give up the keys. Ray wiggled the pepper spray at him.

“Look, I don’t want to use this again. Just give me the damn car keys. Cell phone, too.”

The man didn’t move, his eyes locked on Ray.

“You should see how bad your eyes are fucked up already. I’m sure you’re feeling it. Imagine if I spray this shit directly into them. This is a goddamn emergency, OK? I’m not saying it again. I’ll count to three, and then I’ll take the keys once you’re blind and writhing around on the ground.”

The man’s shoulder jerked, but otherwise he kept still.

“One.”

Ray raised the can to eye level, finger twitching on the button, closing one eye as though sighting a gun.

“Two.”

The man raised a hand, palm facing out, like a policeman directing traffic to halt. He fumbled the opposite hand into his pants pocket, and the keys jingled within. He pulled them out and tossed them to Ray underhand.

“No phone,” the man said with a shrug. An “s” formed on his lips after a beat, perhaps to add a “sorry,” but he stopped himself.

“Good enough. Now walk away.”

No hesitation this time. The man strode back toward the store. Ray watched him walk and paw at his eyes for a few seconds before he climbed into the PT Cruiser.

The key entered the ignition, and as he twisted it he thought, “She was right. Do unto others what has been done to you.”

Erin

South of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

70 days after

The back door was unlocked. A lucky omen.

Erin gave Izzy one of the hand signals they’d worked out, the one that meant “stay here.” They’d gotten their scavenging trips down to a science. Usually, they could clear a neighborhood in a day. Which was why they were out here in the BFE suburbs.

“What’s B.F.E.?” Izzy had asked as they rode through the empty streets south of the city earlier that morning.

“It means we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

There was a beat, like Izzy was trying to puzzle something out.