The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (44 page)

The car descended a small hill, picking up speed with gravity’s help, making his stomach feel that twinge of excitement like being on a roller coaster. Without thinking, he floored it, butt lifting off of the upholstery, foot pressing all of his weight down on the pedal. The engine roared, and the car rocketed through the emptiness, lighting up the black nothing all around.

His heart thumped, though he didn’t perceive it as rushing so much as a more powerful beat, a more confident one. He felt alive, and that notion occurred to him. Feeling alive. Shit. He didn’t feel alive until he was about to die. Better late than never, though, he thought.

He looked down at the speedometer, saw the needle thrust back and forth in the realm of three figures, and let up on the pedal some. Probably not wise to do 116 mph when you’ve got a body in the back seat. He pictured a yellow bumper sticker affixed to his back window that read, “Dead body on board.” Then he pictured getting pulled over for speeding, the cop thrusting his nightstick into the mess of blankets. For whatever reason these images struck him as funny, though. He knew the police were too busy to be worried about traffic violations just now.

He dropped it down to 80 as a compromise and pressed on. The scenery had changed while he sped along. More and more trees populated the sides of the road now. Sparsely wooded grass fields slowly thickened around him as he sped by. Pines intertwined with oaks and maples, blotting the landscape with fuller and fuller foliage like adolescent peach fuzz becoming a fully fledged man beard.

Well, this would do, he thought. He didn’t know why, but it felt right.

Lorraine

Houston, Texas

3 days before

She stared out the window at the blackness, shoulders squared away from the driver. Something about the dark out there intrigued her just now, like if she stared into it long enough, something would have to take shape in the gloom, something would have to make sense of all of this.

Ray hadn’t said a word after the confrontation with the soldiers. Did it even count as a confrontation, she wondered? It was less like he confronted them and more like he sucker punched them with bullets. Not that she was judging him. Life and death were the only judges that mattered for now, maybe.

If she was honest with herself, there was almost something exhilarating about watching Ray put bullets in the soldiers’ heads. The fury of that blaze of the muzzle, the crack of the gun. The violence of that first entry wound, that hole torn in the forehead. The force of the bloody spray exiting the back of the skull, knocking the head toward them on a limp neck as though the man was sneezing. The decisiveness of Ray’s arm swiveling the gun to the second head and firing again. It was brutality. It was carnage. It was flesh separated from bone, brain separated from skull. Life extinguished faster than stubbing out a cigarette butt.

There was a horror to all of that, of course, but she found herself numb to it just now. She’d seen too much death up close to feel it at all. (And maybe the pills played a role in that numbness, too.) Instead she merely sensed the kind of primal awe one felt when watching a knockout punch in a heavyweight fight, when watching a lion pounce out of the weeds to snag a zebra, when watching a shark thrash around to tear up a seal.

The soldiers died quickly, at least. She couldn’t say the same for her husband.

Erin

Presto, Pennsylvania

41 days after

Izzy held a book horizontally across her chest while Erin stacked more on top, right up to her chin.

“Are you sure you’ve got them?”

Izzy’s tongue protruded through the gap where her front tooth was starting to come in. She nodded, all seriousness.

Erin lifted her own pile and followed Izzy into the house. The books clattered onto the carpet in the living room.

Izzy nudged a drug reference book with her toe.

“Why do we need all these again?”

“Because this,” Erin gestured at the cluster of books that looked like fallen dominoes, ”is the old school version of the internet.”

The blank expression on Izzy’s face told her that wasn’t enough explanation. She bent and picked up a book on wilderness survival.

“This one is going to teach us how to make fire by rubbing two sticks together. Hopefully we won’t ever need it, but matches and lighters could run out at some point. You never know.”

She traded the wilderness book for a gardening book that was as thick as a phone book.

“We can read this and learn how to grow vegetables.”

She dropped it back into the pile and selected a title on prepping.

“This book will tell us how much food we need to store for winter and how to preserve the stuff from our garden.”

Izzy still had a puss on.

“What?”

Her lips pouted out.

“I don’t like tomatoes.”

“I see,” Erin said. But she didn’t. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“My dad had a garden. But the only thing he ever grew was tomatoes.”

“Oh. Well, we can grow whatever you want. Corn, potatoes, melon, squash, lettuce.”

“Strawberries?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Erin settled into the carpet and slid the books around into piles: camping and survival books in one stack, gardening in another, miscellaneous in a third.

It was funny that the library had been left untouched, really. Aside from a handful of things like food, water, and gas, the library probably had some of the most valuable things left at this point. Erin didn’t know dick about survival, but she’d found dozens of books there that could teach her. That was worth way more than their pile of pirate loot.

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

41 days before

Falling from a crouch to his knees, he brushed away dead leaves with his fingers, crispy papery bits and soggy flaps alike. Black soil stared back at him, clumps of it clinging to his hands. The earth was moist here. Not wet enough to be mud, but damp enough to have a clay-like consistency rather than a sandy one. He wished he’d brought a shovel, even a small garden spade, but he hadn’t. No use fretting over it now.

The woods towered over him, long and tall and dark. He leaned back a moment to adjust the flashlight clenched between his teeth, taking care not to get his muddy fingers too close to his lips. The light shined up into the trees for a moment, the beam revealing crisscrossed branches hung up above him. Though he’d only wandered 20 feet off the road, he felt enclosed here. Encased by the thick green wall he’d trampled through to get under the canopy of trees where the undergrowth wasn’t as thick.

This was good cover for the hand dug grave he was about to carve into the ground. When he focused on that part, he felt better about it. It wasn’t such a bad resting place. Better than winding up in a dumpster fire, at least.

He scratched out wads of top soil and flung them away, his hands clawing and scooping and flinging with great speed, great gusto. The clumps of dirt rattled through leaves and soon started slapping together into a pile along the edge of the hole. The divot in the ground was small, though, despite his great effort. He knew this would take a while.

He felt the heat build in his face as he worked. The humidity in the air made sure that his sweat didn’t evaporate, so the perspiration drained down from his forehead, drizzling from his jawline to the dirt in little bursts. It soaked his shirt until it was a sopping thing that drooped at the collar from the weight of the moisture.

Still his hands flew. The black dirt on top gave way to a sandier color below, more densely packed and not as wet. He probably wouldn’t be able to go much deeper, he knew. Maybe a couple more inches if he put in some elbow grease.

His headache seemed to swell from a consistent dull pain to a sharp one, the stabby feelings coming on harder and faster now. It made his jaw clench involuntarily, a little gritting sound ringing out as his teeth ground against the handle of the flashlight like they meant to shatter it.

As the pain faded, his mind began to wander. How many hours did he have left now? Maybe eight? He mulled that a moment. It was OK, he thought. He just had to make the most of it. Had to.

He heard the drops before he felt them, rain pattering against the canopy above, slapping into the dead leaves on the ground with a papery rasp accompanying the smack of the impact so it sounded a little like a snare drum. A fat one finally got him on the back of the neck. Water so cold it almost stung. It clapped into his flesh and spread, wrapping chilly fingers around his neck. He swiped at it with his hand without thinking, caking mud against his skin.

Shit.

He sat up, feeling almost dizzy from the body heat he’d worked up as he dug. In that sense the rain was a blessing. A few more drops dove into his hair, and now the cold felt good as it spread over his scalp. Still his head remained swimmy like he’d stood too long under a hot shower, the bathroom filling with steam. He sat a while, breath heaving in and out of him. He hoped that holding still would help him cool some, but so far it wasn’t doing much.

He looked down at the grave. It wasn’t deep at all, maybe a foot and a half at the deepest point, but it was going to have to do.

Standing, he wiped his hands on his wet pants, three swipes each, mud streaking over the thighs, and then he took the flashlight out of his mouth. A big drop got him right on the forehead, a blast of cold that didn’t really dim his headache, though for a split second it felt like it might, and even the hope of relief was a good feeling.

He trudged to the car, the plants rubbing their wet leaves and stems against his arms. The cool water felt good enough running down his limbs, chilling him to the point that goose bumps rippled across his flesh. But there was something a little slimy about the plants’ touch, something off-putting.

He ducked under a branch and took a high step over some prickers, and just like that, he was in the clear along the side of the road. Strange feelings washed over him as he moved out in the open, treading on the grass, legs free to maneuver without picking a path between branches and over logs. He pointed the flashlight down the path of the road and stared off into that opening. The air tasted fresh out here, too, not so thick. The rain had let up to a mist now, which wet him as he walked through it.

The dome light kicked on when he opened the door to the back seat, and for a moment that twinge of fear came upon him, like a flashback to the vulnerability he felt in the driveway. It passed, though. The last building he’d passed was a couple of miles ago, and it was a business that was almost surely unoccupied at this time of night. There may not be any living soul around for miles. Just one dying one, he thought.

He leaned into the back and unpiled the blankets, cloaking her top half in just one -- the afghan she always wrapped around her legs when she sat on the couch. The flashlight returned to its vacation home between his teeth. He grabbed her by the ankles and scooted her halfway out into the night, and then stooped to scoop her in the same fashion as before -- one arm cradling under the knees, the other under her shoulder blades.

Her head rested against his shoulder again, and it felt like her somehow. Maybe the afghan made it seem that way. He wasn’t sure. He wondered, as he walked, what his motivation for wrapping her up had really been.

Was he scared of someone driving by and spotting him toting some chick with a shattered skull out into the woods? He didn’t think so. Carrying someone wrapped in a blanket didn’t look much better in his opinion.

Was he protecting her from the rain, from being exposed? Maybe. He was going to stick her in a muddy hole in the woods somewhere, though. That would leave her pretty exposed.

Did he want to bury her with her blanket? He didn’t know if it was the truth, but he liked that explanation the best. It felt more like she wouldn’t be alone somehow with the familiar blue and white knit nestled around her. For a second he thought she wouldn’t be as cold, maybe, but he knew it wasn’t true. It was cold under the dirt, and there was nothing to be done about it.

He mashed down more greenery, feet tromping the thicket of weeds into the ground as he contorted and squat-walked under branches to make his way back under the tall trees. The ground was mushy now, his feet sinking into the soggy concoction of wet leaves and mud below. It felt like walking on an endless layer of cheesecake with wet leaves on top of it.

Shit. He hadn’t considered how hard it might be to find his way back to his digging spot. He rotated his head back and forth as he walked to swivel the light across the ground. The movement was slow and repetitive. Robotic. It all looked the same, though.

He walked, the afghan growing wet and heavy as the rain picked up again, droplets collecting and combining on leaves to spill fat drops that exploded cold water on his head and neck and shoulders. He stayed patient, though. He didn’t panic. If he had to dig a new grave, he’d dig a new grave. He had time to do it if it were necessary.

There. The flashlight shone on the rim of black topsoil around the sandy brown hole. It did stick out among the green after all. Maybe the mud puddle collecting in the hole helped. The water reflected his light.