The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (22 page)

He kicked open the door to the offices, arms extended, clutching the gun. It was darker here, but he thought he saw the black rectangle of an empty sleeping bag on the floor. He snaked his forearm into the bag again, this time wrenching free a flashlight. He pressed the button. It clicked, and a circle of light appeared. His eyes needed a second to make sense of things. Yes, a sleeping bag sprawled on the floor before him, and, yes, it was unoccupied.

Interesting.

That likely meant they were still staying here. If so, they’d be back tonight. Meaning he could wait here. He could hide in the shadows, and he could come out when the time was right.

He smiled.

Mitch

North of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

42 days before

Nobody spoke as the car trekked south on the highway, going back the way it came. The traffic was much denser now, and they slowed to a near stop every few minutes. The progress coming in bursts and lulls made Mitch think of the vehicle as a salmon fighting its way upstream to lay its eggs. That was something like what he was doing, he guessed. Depositing his offspring somewhere before he died. Not the safe place he wanted to take them, though.

The cracks in the windshield looked like a firework explosion frozen in place, and every line led to the bullet hole in the center. Someone had taken the cabin, had shot at them. He felt sick when he thought about it. He’d failed. How long could these little kids make it on their own without even having long term access to water?

He’d tried to call the grandparents several more times. No answer.

“Dad, who was it?” Matt said.

“What?” Mitch said.

“Who was it that tried to shoot us?” Matt said.

Mitch tried to think about how to answer it.

“Some bad people must have moved into Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin,” he said. “They thought we were trying to take it from them.”

“Are you going to call the police?”

“Yeah, I might. Once we’re home.”

“Cause you should probably call the police.”

The conversation trailed off, and the boy went back to looking out the window. Soon enough Mitch’s thoughts swelled once more in his head to assail him.

How could he let this happen? How could he have spent his whole life coasting toward this ending? He thought maybe that’s how life worked. You waste time and get comfortable and get soft and just when you fully relax, fully let go, fully take existence for granted, time sucker punches you in the throat. It dry gulches you. And you gasp for breath, but it’s too late, fuckhead. It’s too damn late. You don’t get time to say goodbye. You don’t get time to collect your thoughts and process what’s happening. You blink a few times and life winks out, and it’s gone. You’re gone.

And that’s it. And that’s all.

The traffic slowed again. They stopped next to a minivan, the driver’s arm dangling out of the window with a cigarette between his fingers. The man brought the smoke to his mouth, wrinkles forming around his lips as he hit it. What an idiot, Mitch thought, and then it occurred to him that this smoker would outlive him without a doubt. That all of the safety he’d felt in his life was a lie, all of the times he looked down on other people for their poor choices came with some sense that he would be OK, that the bad things would happen to other people. But the bad thing had happened to him, to his family, to his wife already gone and him fading away.

Acid crept up into his throat. It tasted like a mix of vinegar and vegetable broth on the back of his tongue. He was going to die. Death swirled inside of him even now, black tendrils snaking their way ever deeper into his flesh, into his being.

The loss was inevitable. Life would deny him even the ability to set his boys up in a place where they might have a chance. It would humiliate him, smear his nose in the piss of his own failures and snuff him out. He guessed that was always the case, though, wasn’t it? Life counted down the hours until it could kill him from the moment he was born, the sad ending etched in place all the while. Life is a game that nobody wins. We all die. We all lose.

Shit.

All of the cars lurched into motion again, the still nature landscapes on the side of the road slowly blurring once more as they gained speed. He watched the boys in the mirror for a long time. They seemed lost in that trance again, each staring out their own glass screen at the never ending stream of images out there, lulled down into that waking stillness usually reserved for people who have been hypnotized.

He looked away, and the desperation gripped him around the chest, squeezed his rib cage, constricting the air flow. Pain throbbed in the middle of him. His mouth popped open then, shallow breaths rasping in and out.

Was he going into shock? Was this a panic attack? He thought this was a panic attack. But what else was there to do but panic?

How could he live out these last few hours? How could he keep going? Shouldn’t he just implode? Just evaporate into nothing? How could he still be here, still exist for these next few doomed hours? Shouldn’t the weight of it crush him, the desperation overwhelm him and erase him?

He caught part of his reflection in the mirror. Purpled up bags of flesh puffed beneath his eyes, and the whites were all bloodshot. He looked like shit, but he was here. He was still here. Still breathing. What was he supposed to do, though? How could he fill the time in any kind of way that made sense?

How could he pretend everything was OK for a while more yet? Shouldn’t he do something drastic or meaningful here and now? And if that proved impossible, why wouldn’t he just curl up in a ball and wait for death? Should he pretend everything is fine and dandy right up until the moment he turned into a flesh eating monster? Should he distract himself with ice cream novelties and reality shows until the end? Why carry on the charade that things were OK?

For the kids? Maybe. He didn’t know if it was really for them. It certainly wouldn’t do them any good in the long term. Just so long as they didn’t panic right up until he died and became a zombie, right? That’d be a big help to them.

He craned his neck, his face actually pointed toward his children for the first time in a while, no piece of glass between his eyeballs and them. It seemed intense. Uncomfortable. Unfamiliar. Air passed in and out of his open mouth in ragged bursts, drying out the mucus membranes, and he felt patches of skin on his cheeks and forehead going hotter than the rest. He could picture the red blotches decorating his face. Matt glanced over at him, his head wheeling his way in slow motion until their eyes met.

“Watch the road, Dad,” he said.

He turned back, the road ahead again filling his vision through the windshield. His breathing seemed to slow to a normal pace as they barreled down the highway. He knew that some moment had passed. Something that happened here was over, for better or worse. Something he didn’t understand.

Fast food and hotel signs blossomed in the sky in the distance, jutting up from the ground to tower above the tree line.

“You guys hungry?” he said, eyes finding comfort in watching them in the mirror’s glass.

Travis

Hillsboro, Michigan

57 days after

He hugged his knees to his chest, the shotgun snuggling between his legs and belly, the bag with the rest of the guns touching his right hip. The dark and the quiet squeezed themselves against his person, made his head feel like it was going to burst.

It was sometime after midnight by now. Way after. It had to be. Didn’t it?

He couldn’t be sure. Time became an imaginary thing here in this dark closet all alone. The rivers of sweat draining down the sides of his face were real. Each breath was real, the inhale and then the exhale, hot air passing through his nostrils and mouth. Everything else, everything outside of this three foot by three foot cell wasn’t all the way real. It was just an idea.

He’d heard the men return at some point, the rumble of the diesel engine, the slam of the door, the baritone drone of male voices chattering on. He found it impossible to decide how many there were. All of the voices bled together. It almost sounded like one person talking, pausing, interrupting himself. Only when they laughed could he hear more than one voice.

And of course, he probably wasn’t listening to the whole group. There were maybe a handful or less in the room connected to his closet. Others were surely elsewhere, stretching out with their sleeping bags pulled up to their chins.

What had he been thinking upon hiding in here? How could he possibly kill them all?

He thought about the shotgun. Two shots and it would need to be reloaded. Jesus. What kind of odds did that give him? He would have to discard the shotgun after two blasts and switch to the handgun. Or perhaps run and try to regroup.

He breathed through his mouth now, his breath all hot and sticky. He felt his eyes straining to see in the darkness and closed them. This was a death sentence. It was impossible. Should he just run away? Should he cower in here until they leave again?

Two droplets of sweat ran down his back, one then the other a second later, thick beads that felt like they were the width of quarters. His shoulders twitched at the tickle of the liquid’s movement.

No. No, he couldn’t run. He couldn’t hide. Better to die like a man than live his whole life a coward, a worthless bed-wetting crybaby coward. Is that what this was all about, really? Some way to be a man after a lifetime of never quite getting there? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. In the dark, his reality filtered down to one idea: he wanted something, one thing, and he would get it or die trying.

He closed his mouth, his breath feeling awkward and choppy and insufficient in his nostrils, but he kept at it, held off that low level panic and focused on his breathing. Slow and even. In, hold it, and out in slow motion.

Nothing stirred in the room beyond. Nothing moved but the heave of his chest and the beat of his heart, both growing controlled. Steady. The dark felt infinite now, just blackness and emptiness stretching out around him forever.

In time, a calm came over him, though it wasn’t quite a calm, truly. It was some animal feeling that made his arms feel strong and his blood feel hot surging through his veins. Some primal hatred that extinguished his fear, made him believe once more that he could and would kill them all.

To hell with it.

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

42 days before

The hungry animals all crowded around the counter to get their scraps of red meat. Maybe it was some weird perspective granted by his impending death, or maybe the energy in the room turned restless and hostile because of the spreading diseases and riots and so forth outside, but the routine experience of getting burgers at McDonald’s seemed strange. Unfamiliar. A little scary.

Scowls adorned fleshy faces all around them. Generally speaking, there seemed to be a fake tan glow prevalent among this bunch, that bronzer shade of orange that glows in broad daylight, so it almost looked like they were surrounded by unhappy jack-o’-lanterns. He kept the boys close. Knowing the black marks had spread from his arm over his shoulder and onto his chest, he feared nothing in terms of harm coming to him. He did worry for his sons around these rabid pumpkin heads, though.

The people writhed in the lines ahead of them. Mitch thought they looked like a mosh pit or maybe like sharks jockeying for position in the swells to get their piece of wounded surfer. He and his family waded through the thrashing consumers, making their way to the front and ordering their food. Matt got a kid’s meal, Kevin got a Quarter Pounder meal, and Mitch got a Big Mac meal.

Fighting through the crowd in the lobby wasn’t part of the plan. The line at the drive thru had been horrendous, however, and Matt wanted to eat inside anyway, so here they were. Maybe it was a waste of time, or maybe it was a final real meal with his boys. Like being on death row. Greasy burgers and fries washed down with Coke -- a fitting end, perhaps, to a life where he never really tried. Never tried to accomplish anything great, anything meaningful to even him, let alone anyone else. It was a fast food life, lived for convenience, lived without regard for much beyond finding comfort, shoving empty calories into his face to try to feel better about the emptiness all around. And it was too late to take any of it back now, he knew, so he might as well wash it down with cola instead. If he could wash death itself down with cola, he would do that, too.

Christ on a crutch. Was he having an existential crisis while ordering a Big Mac at McDonald’s? Fucking ridiculous.

The clerk loaded their food onto a plastic tray, and he carried it, elbowing through the crowd to find a place to sit. Matt picked a counter space with swiveling chairs running along a window to their right. Good enough. The tray flopped onto the tabletop, the burgers hopping upon landing, the fries shifting in their sleeves, ice cubes rattling against the sides of the paper cups. They sat and went to work. Wrappers peeled away, and boxes popped open, and ketchup packets squirted their contents into the appropriate places.

Kevin worked at his burger first, taking large bites, chewing a couple of times and then slurping some Coke in with the half chewed food, sometimes shoving a fry into the mix before the drink. Matt swiveled back and forth endlessly in his chair as he scooped up huge wads of ketchup, using his fries more like spoons than anything, periodically pausing to suck down cola. Mitch went back and forth from burger to fries, picking up strands of loose lettuce strips from the bottom of the burger box to mix with his bites of Big Mac.