The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (49 page)

“Here we go,” Delfino said.

It took Bags a second to make out the faintly worn spot in the weeds up ahead to the left. His eyes traced the path as far as they could and found no signs of a building before the light cut off.

The Delta 88 slowed and made the left turn, bouncing a little over the rough terrain. The sound struck Baghead more than the feeling. The hum of the tires cut out, replaced by thuds and squeaking shocks and the sound of the taller weeds tinkling against the bumper and swishing against the undercarriage.

“Reach down behind my seat, would you?” Delfino said. “There’s a lantern there. It’s partially wedged in the opening between the floor and the back of the seat so it won’t fall over.”

Baghead squared his shoulders toward the back windshield and reached an arm between the seats. He tried to fight off that little butterfly feeling in his stomach as his hand descended into the void, but he couldn’t quite do it. The tip of his thumb found the floor, and he flopped his hand along it like a fish, fingers feeling around on the Astroturf-like carpet and rubber floor mat.

There. He caught the side of the glass chamber with his middle finger and let his hand crawl to the top of the lantern like a spider, latching onto the looped metal handle and lifting. The bottom of the seat tugged on it for a moment before it let go.

“Got it.”

“Nice. I’ll light it here in a second.”

The Delta 88 breasted a hill, and then took a sharp left. The weeds this far out looked to be about waist high, most of them. Their path was clear of trees, but none of those around them looked bigger around than a cigar anyway. This must have been one of the areas recovering some from the worst of the Dust Bowl years. Some of the places farther west would probably never even get this level of growth back.

Without warning, Delfino stopped the car, put it in park, and shut off the ignition.

Bags glanced around and saw no building in the vicinity. He had expected a cabin of some type, something small and far enough off the road to avoid interest. In his head, he saw a ramshackle little place with a single window that’d been boarded up, barely big enough to be called a cabin instead of a shed. Instead he saw only weeds.

“Hand over that lantern,” Delfino said.

Baghead did as he was asked. But he wished he could see the driver, to get a read on him. Some paranoia reached up out of the dark and seized him by the throat, making it hard to swallow or breathe. Jesus, what did he really know about Delfino? Why had the guy asked so many questions and then driven him out into a field? Could Father have wanted some kind of interrogation before the assassination? Would he be digging for some particular piece of information?

He stared into the black nothing to his left, eyes straining.

Flint grated against steel, sparks flashed, and the Zippo lit with a click and a whoosh. The flame glowed under Delfino’s chin, flickering red and orange hues up onto his face, something about the dance of shadows around his eyes and brow making him look demonic. Then the lighter moved into the glass chamber to light the lantern. The glow started small and swelled.

Bags looked through squinted eyes, searching Delfino’s face and finding no maliciousness, no more trace of demonry. He saw a simple man that loved his car, his job, and, apparently, quite a wide variety of pornography.

“It’s not far,” Delfino said. “Do you want to come with me, or stay here and watch the girl?”

Bags looked back to see the girl sound asleep.

“I think I’ll come along. My legs could use stretching.”

Ray

North of Canton, Texas

2 days before

The sun came up, everything going gray and then returning to full color, and the Grand Cherokee rumbled on. A scraggly mess of trees occupied the roadside to their left, all stunted and close together, branches intertwined, everything shrouded in leaves. An expanse of grass lay to the right. Ray knew that Dallas was somewhere off to the west. Not far, even, though you couldn’t tell when you stared into the wall of malnourished brush that direction.

A mist descended upon them in the morning, wetting the windshield and the asphalt below like a can of beer on a summer day. It evaporated quickly, though the tires still sounded different rolling over the half-moistened blacktop for some time after all else seemed dry.

They passed through sleepy town after sleepy town as the day inched toward lunchtime, and Ray hated every second that their speed dropped to 25 miles per hour in residential areas, but he didn’t know the best way to get to the interstate, and he figured it best to keep moving. He knew they’d made terrible time to this point, picking random roads and weaving only vaguely in the direction they’d wanted to go. The least he could do was keep going.

Ray opened a bottle of water, took a sip, plopped it into the cup holder. His eyes stung like someone had flung sand in them, those tiny shards of glass ripping up and down every time he blinked.

How far away from Houston was far enough? He wasn’t sure. Dallas would probably get hit, too, and they were close as hell to that right now. Maybe better to get out of Texas altogether, he thought, to just keep going, to never stop.

Of course, they would have to stop for gas and a piss break soon. Maybe grab something to eat. The thought made him uneasy. He didn’t like to think of their momentum stopping for even a few minutes.

As if on cue, a gas station with a Dairy Queen next door caught his eye ahead, and he decided to go for it sooner rather than later. To get it over with and not stop again until Texas was in the rearview and, preferably, sucking on their tailpipe.

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

41 days before

He stood under the cold water once more, the bathroom light glinting through the frosted door of the shower stall, lighting up powder blue tiles along the walls. He lowered his head, letting the shower’s spray blast directly onto the crown of his dome. His fingers alternated between scratching and massaging his scalp. It felt good.

He’d almost blacked out when the cold first washed over his head this time. Everything had faded out for a split second, sound and vision reduced to black nothing. When it flipped back on, a breath rasped into him all loud and choked, and everything had a red tint for a moment. He’d gripped the little built-in shelf for soap to avoid falling down.

He felt better now, though. The cold cleared his thoughts once more, made him feel like himself. He didn’t think it would work much longer, but he was thankful that it was working now. And he was thankful to be able to take his sons out for a drive. They would carry on without him, he knew, and if he was helping prepare them a little bit for that, he was happy.

He tipped his head back and now the cold liquid tumbled across his nose and cheeks and brow. Maybe it was just the water’s chill, but his headache seemed to have receded to almost nothing. He could only tell it was there now if he really concentrated.

He stepped back, blinking a few times to clear the water from his eyes. The black capillaries on his chest didn’t seem to have advanced at all. The black streaks almost looked to have thinned out in places. He had to stop himself from thinking about that too hard, though.

He stood before the fogged mirror as he dressed, pulling on the long sleeve shirt, the tie dyed one Kevin had made him at some day camp years ago. Iron-on letters spelled MITCH across the front.

It had been weird to stand in front of his closet, flipping through the t-shirts on hangers, figuring out which one to die in. This one made sense, though. His boy had made it for him.

“You OK, Dad?” Kevin said. “You look all dark around the eyes.”

“I’m fine. Not enough sleep is all, and I probably need to drink some water.”

They stood in the kitchen. With the power still out, there wasn’t much to do as far as distractions, so everyone milled around, moving from room to room at random, wasting time. The boys didn’t seem terribly concerned with Mitch’s impending death. He thought maybe it was hard for them to grasp the reality of it, the gravity of it. In most ways, he was thankful for that.

The grandfather clock chimed to mark the half hour.

He took a glass to the sink, letting the water spill over his fingertips until it ran cold and then filling it. He drank. The fluid felt so cold draining from his mouth to his stomach that it was almost like it was burning his throat for a second.

He looked at Kevin and Matt between drinks and realized that he was preparing them for a harsh world, making the intuitive leap to some kind of life after a societal collapse. He didn’t know exactly when he committed to that line of thinking. Maybe it was during the riot. Anyway, with the diseases raging like they were, it seemed a possibility, maybe even a strong one, but he supposed there was still some hope they’d be back in school before long, that things would return to normal. He hadn’t considered that in a while, and it seemed so strange. Life would go on without him and Janice, perhaps in a totally normal way. Still, he had no regrets as far as his approach. Always best to prepare for the worst, he thought.

Sweat beaded up on the outside of the glass, and his fingers slipped a little as he went to take another sip. How long had he been standing here, staring at nothing, thinking? Thinking about fairy tales where all of this worked out OK.

But what if? What if the worst didn’t happen?

He closed his eyes and chugged down the rest of the glass. He tried to stave off the thoughts burbling up from his subconscious, the part of the brain where faith must live, the part that wants to believe in ghosts and Gods and aliens and so forth. He did his best to keep these ideas at bay, but he couldn’t.

What if he didn’t die? What if he fought the disease off? Surely someone would develop an immunity. That’s how it worked, right? Maybe it would be him. His headache wasn’t as bad. The black tendrils beneath his skin seemed to be receding. Maybe his immune system was killing it even now as he refilled his water.

“I think...” he said, catching himself.

No. Even if there was some sliver of a chance that he’d survive, he couldn’t express that to his sons. He couldn’t give them any kind of hope if it might not come true.

“What?” Matt said.

“Huh?”

“What do you think? You started saying something.”

“Oh. I forgot what I was going to say.”

He took another long drink of water, his eyes drifting closed as he drank. It didn’t burn in his throat anymore. It felt cool and nice and refreshing. Was that good?

Ray

North of Canton, Texas

2 days before

“I’ll take a Hungr-Buster with cheese and jalapeños,” he said.

His hand rested on the gas nozzle where it entered the car, and the vibrations from the flowing gas made his palm and fingers tingle. He looked over to her on the other side of the car, one hand cupped against her bangs to shade her eyes. Her other hand pulled her sweater up over her shoulders. It wasn’t cold out, but it was so windy that it almost stung.

“Anything to drink?” she said.

“Oh yeah, I’ll take a Dr. Pepper. Fries, too.”

“Gotcha.”

She went inside to get the food, and he turned back to watch the numbers on the pump ascend. He was pleased that this was going off without trouble, and his mind felt clearer now that his bladder was empty. She’d come back any minute with a bag of burgers and some drinks, and they’d burn out of here, eating on the road.

He didn’t note the scuff of the shoes behind him as the gas nozzle clicked off and he returned it to its holster, never had any inkling of foresight as the blunt object swung down into the back of his head. He just felt its impact and a flash of panic as he tumbled to the concrete and everything went black.

Baghead

Rural Arkansas

9 years, 127 days after

As soon as they stepped out of the car, the insect sound surrounded them. The wall of chirps and clicks and throaty sounds reminded Bags that at least one biological community was thriving in the post-apocalypse.

His legs ached, and it only got worse a couple of steps in. Pins and needles throbbed along his inner thighs, the epicenter of the pain pulsing upon his taint, creeping up onto the flesh of the underside of his scrotum. He hobbled after Delfino, struggling to keep up, wandering off of the path so weeds slapped stalks and stems at his pants.

There was something terrifying about the lantern getting farther and farther away, the light withdrawing, leaving him alone in the dark. Like the lit place was the only thing that was real, and everything else was a black hole you fell into forever.

Delfino stopped, swinging the lantern back toward Baghead. He spoke in that gritty tone just louder than a whisper.

“You coming?”

“Yeah. Sorry. My legs are asleep. Well, really it’s my crotch, mostly. Total nightmare.”

“Aw, damn. Is it getting that under-flap of the ballsack?”