Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1) (4 page)

6.

Mackie awoke to a faint smoky odor and a soupy murk.  His eyes burned, his parched tongue had a sandpaper texture, and his throat felt as if he’d swallowed a handful of staples.

He gradually became aware of a soft orange light painting the gloom at intervals. 
Candles.

He was lying flat on a thin fabric, a pillow beneath his head and a blanket covering him.

He ran his fingers over the material beneath him.  Not felt.  Billiard cloth.  He was lying on a pool table.

Mackie knew where he was then.  The student union.  He’d racked quite a few games of eight-ball here, ten-dollar bets that he’d lost more often than he’d won.

Someone spoke, the familiar voice raspy but honeyed with a light Southern inflection.  “Almost makes you believe in Providence, doesn’t it, Mackie?”

Mackie was sure he was dreaming.  Dreaming, or in the throes of a massive narcotic overdose.  Maybe he had swallowed a bottle of pills before drifting off.

Maybe he was dead.

Maybe this was Hell.  
That
would be Providence.

With Krider and Satan playing chess like a pair of retired seniors in a park somewhere.

He tried sitting up, but a supernova of pain exploded inside his skull and gravity had its giant hand on his chest.  Shards of glass pierced his brain.  Electric ice raced through his veins.  His breath sat like wet cement in his lungs.

Again, that Southern-honeyed rasp.  Like gravel soaked in cane sugar and syrup, coaxing, sibilant as a copperhead.  “I think you can use this.  I need you calm for what happens next.”

Something wrapped around Mackie’s right arm just above the elbow, and then a vice-like pressure choked his entire arm.

A moment later came a sting, followed by a rush of warmth flooding through him, blanketing the pain in his head and face.

The Haldol?  The endorphin rush that flooded his brain a moment later told him otherwise.

Krider’s favorite candy.

Heroin.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed since he was knocked unconscious, but he hoped he had been out long enough to allow his metabolism to catch up to the opioids in his system.

If not, even with his relatively high tolerance for narcotics, this new dose could be just potent enough to flip the switch on his respiratory system to the “off” position.

His death wish upon discovering Allie’s condition had now given way to a fierce will to survive.  Because he wanted his hands around Krider’s throat.

The rage rising within him after hearing Krider’s voice had been drowned by confusion and a sense of absurd surrealism.  Before the anger had a chance to resurface, it was swallowed by the warm bliss produced by the syringe’s contents.  In another place and time, he could have enjoyed this.

“We won’t overdo it,” came Krider’s voice as if from across a softly lapping bay.  “Just enough to take the edge off.  I’m guessing you’ve probably had a few of your feel-good pills since you got here.  The world ends but some things never change.”

Mackie tilted his head slightly and stared up into the face hovering over him.  The reddish beard peppered with flecks of silver.  The brown hair that fell just below the base of the neck, thinning at the crown.  The feverish eyes of a cruel, cunning madman.

“So?” Lucas Krider asked.  “Do you want to kill me?”

Every day.  More than you know.

But Mackie couldn’t find the voice to verbalize that response.

“I’m sure you’ll want to try, once you’re well enough,” Krider said.  “And all these guns in the room probably won’t change your mind.”

He picked up a chair near the pool table and brought it close to Mackie.  “But you may want to listen to what I have to say first.”  He sat and fished a small ziplock bag from the pocket of his slacks.

Gummy bears.  A treat Krider indulged in frequently.  It would’ve seemed endearingly childish behavior for a normal man, but Krider somehow made the habit a perversion.  He popped a few in his mouth and chewed.

“I’m going to miss these,” Krider said, smacking wetly.  “But I imagine there are enough of them around to keep me going a few years. It’s a world of supply and demand, as you know better than anyone, Mackie.  The supply may dry up, given the collapse of the manufacturing systems, but the demand has certainly died off, too.”

Mackie’s eyes adjusted to the dim light.  A large Hispanic man in a dark T-shirt and cargo pants, his hair shaved to stubble, stood nearby.  His bulging arms cradled what looked like a military-grade assault rifle, an M16A1.

Mackie recognized him.  Herrera.  A long-time Krider loyalist and one of his most feared assassins.

Do psychos have some sort of “goon gene” that protected them from the solar flares?

Mackie didn’t roll too far down that philosophical track or he would have had to account for his own survival.  He preferred to think of it as bad luck.

To Herrera’s right, two men and one female lounged on a sofa near the snack bar.  Two other assault rifles leaned against the right side of the sofa, their barrels resting on the arm.  With the room lit only by candles, Mackie couldn’t recognize the rest of Krider’s crew.

When enough saliva drained into his throat to lubricate it, Mackie asked, “How...how are you here?”

Krider smiled.  He was never one to smile coldly; his warmth always seemed genuine even if he intended to order your execution with his next breath.  He was a man who took pleasure in every moment.

“Well, the answer to that has multiple parts.  But a big part of it is you, Mackie.”

Mackie’s real question was how Krider and Herrera had survived the Big Zap.  Further proof that God had surely lost interest in what was left of His scorched earth.

“But...the storms...how did—”

“Oh yes.”  Krider’s smile widened.  “Everything just kind of went to shit out there, didn’t it?  I was here from Tampa with six men.  Two dropped dead immediately, and another Herrera had to put down, ‘cause he was all...” Krider contorted his face in a pantomime of a rage-filled Zaphead.  “Creepy,
creepy
shit.”

Herrera chuckled, a sound like pebbles tumbling down a metal chute.  “Bad horror movie, bro.”

“We were at the safe house when all this happened,” Krider said.  “Enjoying a respite from the heat, waiting to see how things played out with you and Ms. McAllister.”

Of course he’d want to watch, after setting up Kara to get her revenge.  He wouldn’t have missed that for the world.

“Where is Kara?”

Krider ignored the question.  “The few of us that were left, we stocked up with plenty of guns, some other supplies from my safe house, and we made the trek here.  Killed plenty of those crazies along the way.  Would’ve been a short trip by car, but well, those storms pretty much eliminated
that
possibility.  No chance in hell of getting an engine to turn over now.  They’re calling it ‘After.’  Apparently the scientists tried to warn us but the asshole politicians buried it.  Typical.”

“Why come here?” Mackie asked.  “Why not stay holed up in the safe house?  You wouldn’t have taken that kind of risk just for me and the McAllister girl.  You couldn’t have been sure we even survived.”

“That should be obvious to you, Mackie,” Krider said.  “What’s happening out there is happening everywhere.  Help is
not
on the way.  America doesn’t exist anymore.  Society doesn’t exist anymore.  But a college campus like this, it functions as its own little community.  A place with plenty of shelter and resources and enough survivors to get by.  A castle keep for the New Age.”

Krider would also want to align himself with other survivors, though Mackie wasn’t aware how many were here, with the exception of Kara.

“We found Ms. McAllister exiting the campus,” Krider said.  “And after Herrera removed a Glock from her person, she and I had a conversation.  Seems she didn’t play her part in all of this as expected.”  Krider nodded toward the front entrance.  “But with all that’s happening out there...well, of course that changes things.”

Mackie hoped his anger would dull the heroin high.  It was in there somewhere, the rage he needed to leap up from the table and put his hands on Krider before a bullet cut him down.

But all he felt now was, well...
floaty
.

“What did you do with her?” Mackie asked.

“She’s with a few friends of mine.  Restrained, but alive.  She wasn’t willing to say much, even with a little persuasion from Herrera, but we did manage to pry your whereabouts from her.  She obviously doesn’t feel any great sense of loyalty to you.  I guess it didn’t take her long to figure you out.”

Mackie swallowed hard to flush the sand and cotton from his throat.  “You played us both.”

Krider chewed another green gummy before continuing.  “My hope was that Ms. McAllister would kill your girl, and then, in a fit of Shakespearean grief and rage, you would kill her in turn.  Of course, if the pieces didn’t fall in place as hoped, I wanted to be here to personally supervise the clean-up.”

Mackie’s limbs felt weightless, but a dense pressure seemed to keep his head pressed to the pillow.  “But that’s not you.  That’s not what you do.”

Krider nodded.  “You’re right.  It isn’t.”

As Mackie spoke, it felt as if his words were clouds of mist somewhere above his head.  “Why do this?  Why go to this kind of trouble?  You could’ve had us both killed anytime you wanted.”

Krider stroked his beard and then ran his hand through his hair.  “They were a little before my time, but y’know what I loved when I was younger? 
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
, EC horror comics from the ‘50’s.  All those twisty, ironic morality plays.  Your wasted life is nothing if not a morality play, Mackie.  Your bad decisions brought you to this point, and your failure at a very simple task brought the McAllister girl into your life.  I knew I had to cut you loose, but putting all this together and playing the two of you against each other...well, that’s the kind of creativity that’s kept me alive for so long.”

Mackie’s burning eyes drifted from Krider’s face to the ceiling.  “Looks like God just unleashed the biggest morality play of all. Wipe most of the human race off the planet and turn the survivors into raging, mutant killers.”

“Maybe God isn’t the one who deserves the credit,” Krider said.  “But nothing changes in my world.  You see, doing what I do and doing it well requires a certain amount of showmanship.  Theatrics.  Unpredictability.  It’s a big part of how I keep the people close to me afraid.  And doing what I do only works when people are afraid.”  He smiled again.  “But now...now
everyone’
s afraid.  No telling how many of those Zaphead things are out there, running wild, tearing people limb from limb.”

“You sound like you’re loving all this.”  The billiard table grew softer beneath Mackie as the heroin kicked into lower gear and thrummed through his central nervous system.

“It’s always been survival of the fittest.  The rules have changed now, but the game’s still the same.  This is fun for me, sure, but fun is only a by-product.  Survival is the real pay-off.  Same as how working for me kept you and your family alive.  The world ended, and I’m
still
keeping you alive.”

Krider removed his hand and leaned back.  “You weren’t cut out for the game, Mackie. You never developed a taste for it.  Never mastered the
flinch
.  You could pull the trigger when I told you to, but you’d always,
always
flinch first.  And the flinch got in your way.  Didn’t matter that, technically, you got the job done.  I knew the day would come when you wouldn’t, or you’d make a mistake that would compromise everything.”

“Do it, then.  Spare me another Scarface soliloquy and get it over with.”

“I’ve been generous with you, Mackie.  I let you and your family and your mutant girlfriend live after you betrayed me.    I taught you ways to kill and survive that put you
orders of magnitude
above most of society.  And, hell, you even got
paid
.  I mean, c’mon, just how well were you really doing with that shit-ass liberal arts degree?”

Krider’s voice modulated to a higher octave, but he quickly brought it back to his baseline of honeyed placidness.  “But what you gave me in return,” he said softly, “was the
bare minimum
.”

“I did...everything...
everything
you...” The words vaporized in Mackie’s dry throat.

Krider plucked another gummy bear from the bag and tossed it playfully at Mackie’s face.  It bounced from his cheek and fell to the billiard cloth.  He barely felt the contact.

“That’s just how tight I have to run my ship, Mackie.  Flinching is unacceptable, ‘bare minimum’ doesn’t cut it, and ‘half-assed’ gets you dead quicker than anything.  But a half-assed
junkie
, of all things?  Keeping you around was never an option.”

“So just kill me.  I don’t understand what you’re waiting for.”