The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (53 page)

And thunder rumbles, and he shakes himself awake in the Delta 88, in the dark, with rain pouring down, rattling against the windshield and slanting through the beams of the headlights.

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

41 days before

The rain beat down harder now, giving off hollow noises so it almost sounded like a steel drum banging out a monotone melody above him. He kept his eyes closed, and his heart slowed down, and his breathing slowed down, and something like a calm came over him. A stillness. An emptiness.

He put his hand on the gun again, this time leaving it there, fingers crawling over the thing and settling in. Not gripping it, just touching it. That’s what he needed to do first, get used to touching it, get comfortable with the feel of it on his fingers. Let that become routine, and he could do the rest.

He opened his eyes, found the jar of water and drank. A little liquid dribbled out of the side of his mouth, tumbling to his shirt, soaking into the tie-dyed fabric in a dark oval just above his belly button.

His brain kicked up once in a while, launching into the whir of conjecture, of pontification, of self-consciousness, but he stopped it. Blocked it out.

No more words.

His fingers shifted over the surface of the gun, and he felt the way the metal had gone warm against his skin, felt the line where the heated part gave way to the cool of the untouched steel. His index finger traced up and down that line.

The rain hit in staccato bursts now when the wind blew, firing off watery explosions against the wood at the rate of a machine gun or a snare roll. He could tell that it had gotten cooler in the shed since the downpour started. Even with the door closed, the air found its way in to press its chill into the swollen flesh of his face, to blow cold against his sweat-soaked brow.

He closed his eyes again and concentrated on his breathing, drawing every inhalation in slow and even, holding it there for a beat before letting it out. The air tickled when it crossed through the back of his mouth and entered his throat, cool and thick. His ribcage swelled up like a bloated raccoon on the side of the road, and then it deflated, and the muscles in his back released their tension little by little as his shoulders sagged for a moment before he repeated the process. His chest tingled.

His fingers clasped the butt of the gun, sliding it into the crook of his palm, the index finger finding its way to the trigger, and he lifted the gun, felt the heft of it strain against his wrist and forearm, felt his deltoid shimmy a little as it raised the piece of metal, and his elbow bent, angling his hand toward his face, toward his mouth, and the steel grazed his chin, cold and hard, the sharp angles scraping against his stubble and withdrawing, and his lips parted, and his teeth parted, and his tongue smacked a moist sound as it pulled away from the roof of his mouth, and the cold air reached into the gaping hole in his face and caressed the wet places, the pink places, with its icy touch, and his breath blew some warmth back at the cold, and saliva excreted from his glands to try to fight the dry of all of this air-to-mucus-membrane contact, and the clear fluid pooled under his tongue, and the muzzle pushed past his lips, tapping his two front teeth on the way with a sound like dropping a pair of Chiclets on a tile floor, and his breath rushed past the gun, redirecting to pass around the sides of the obstruction, and the barrel hesitated a moment in the opening, and it swayed there, rocking in the empty space between his teeth, and another breath blew against it, almost whistling in the hollow between the steel and the flap of lip and cheek on one side, and he squeezed his eyes shut so tight that it hurt a little, all of the muscles cinching all the way, spasming a little, pinching folds and wrinkles into the swollen skin of his eyelids, and the barrel lurched, the muzzle touching the roof of his mouth, connecting and disconnecting, cold and dry, making his shoulders jerk, and he could taste it now, the taste of metal and grease in his mouth, on his lips, on his teeth, and he pictured black sludge smeared around in his mouth, though he knew that wasn’t real, and he tilted the gun in slow motion, bringing the angle of the barrel closer to perpendicular to the roof of his mouth, inching and inching until one end rested against his bottom lip and teeth, and he waited a beat, and he pushed again, and the muzzle scraped over his palate until it dead-ended at the back of his front teeth, not quite forming a 90 degree angle with the top of his skull, but close, and he waited, and the metal quivered against his teeth every few seconds, little rattling shakes that made sounds like when the dentists slid the little mirror around in his mouth, and his nose itched, and his chest jerked for breath, and he realized he’d been holding it, and his finger trembled on the trigger, muscle tremors twitching all along his hands, wrists and arms, and he exhaled, blowing hot air past the cold bulk in his mouth again, and the rain poured and poured and poured on the roof, hollow clanging now like someone beating on the top of a garbage can with drum sticks, and the muscles around his eyes let go, and he grasped after some type of calm, some type of stillness he could hold inside of himself long enough to be able to do this, and the violence of the act felt so huge, so appalling and unfathomable and gruesome, the idea of a bullet ripping through him, and he pictured it, pictured the muzzle flashing, the gunpowder combusting in a fast-motion blaze to create the force to launch a cylinder of metal around 800 miles per hour into his skull, chunks of bone exploding, blood vessels rupturing, gelatinous brain tissue disintegrating into a spray of jelly, the force of the bullet pushing an expanding wad of shattered bone and blood and brain out of the exit wound about the size of a fist, and something chirped to his left, a shrill throaty sound with a ragged texture, and the sound wavered once and then steadied itself, its voice an endless grating thing, inorganic.

Huh? What the hell was that?

He opened his eyes to find the gun and his hand occupying the bottom half of his vision. He let his eyes drift to his left, scanning past the weed whacker and the grass shavings and the gas can. Nothing out of the ordinary. Now he turned his head, the barrel of the gun pressing into the inside of his cheek until he adjusted it to match the new angle of his mouth. His vision crawled over a shelf in the corner covered with tools and cans of paint and cloth rags clouded black with soot.

He saw nothing, but the chirp rasped on, its tiny voice rattling out a high pitched vibration. It reminded him a little of a buzzing light bulb, but there were no lights here. No electricity at all in the shed, and even if there were, the power was still out.

He swiveled his head back so it was facing straight ahead and looked up at the ceiling in a way that made it so he could barely see the gun jammed into his mouth. Just the faintest black smudge at the bottom of his field of vision.

His back ached between the shoulder blades, and the sting of tiredness crept over his eyes again. The anesthetic of his focus faded out, all of the pain swimming up from the depths. Some moment had passed, he knew. Some spell he’d been under had withered away, the sound snapping him back to reality. He squinted his eyes, watching the world through eyelash-thatched slits, and he pulled the gun out of his mouth. Saliva sheened on the barrel, the drool thickest near the muzzle.

The sense of the gun’s absence was visceral. An emptiness occupied his face, tingled in the muscles of his jaw, cried out from all of the flesh of his lips and gums and the roof of his mouth.

Erin

Presto, Pennsylvania

50 days after

Erin lifted and lowered the handle on the old well. The sound of the pump lulled her into almost a trance.

Squeak.

Clank.

Gurgle.

Squeak.

Clank.

Gurgle.

Water gushed out from the spigot and slapped into the bucket below. She continued working the pump until the water sloshed over the top edge of the metal bucket.

She tipped the bucket, dumping out some water so it would be easier to carry. A little more splashed into the grass when she set it next to the grill.

The valve on the propane tank squeaked as she twisted it open and lit the burner. Then she lifted the bucket with a grunt and set it over the flame. When the water got hot, she added the detergent and gave it a stir.

Shirts and shorts went in first. Erin pushed them down into the water with a wooden spoon.

While her vat of clothes bubbled away, she looked out over the landscape. There had been no sign of the possibly-reanimated corpse of Almost Dead Guy. No more gunshots or further evidence of other people in the area at all. Nothing out of the ordinary. But she still half-expected to gaze out one of these days and see his zombified figure staggering toward the house.

When the clothes were well done, she plucked them from the water with a pair of tongs and set them aside to cool off before wringing them out. After that, they went into a second bucket of cold water where she could rinse out the soap.

She may not know dick about survival, but she at least knew how to do a load of laundry.

The stinky socks and crumpled up wads of underwear went into the pot last, being the dirtiest.

Izzy slipped through the back door and hopped down the steps.

“What are you making?”

Erin lifted the spoon, revealing a pair of Izzy’s striped undies.

“Underwear soup. Want some?”

“Ew, no!”

Izzy squatted over a soccer ball she’d found in the barn. She looked kind of like a bird trying to hatch an over-sized egg.

“Do you how to play Rain on the Roof?”

Izzy shook her head, and Erin stepped away from the heat of the grill, leaving the underthings to simmer.

She showed Izzy the game, like Erin’s mom had shown her all those years ago. They took turns throwing the ball on the roof and then they raced forward, trying to catch it before it touched the ground.

After a few rounds, Erin went back to stir the linens.

“Why don’t we just get new clothes?” Izzy’s words were punctuated by the ball bouncing over the shingles. “When the old ones get dirty, we can just throw them away. We’d never have to do laundry again.”

Erin tapped the spoon on the edge of the bucket.

“I don’t know. It seems wrong somehow. I mean, at some point, we’d probably run out of new clothes to wear. We’d each need over three hundred pairs of socks. Over three hundred pairs of underwear. That’s a lot.”

Izzy snatched the ball mid-air, her hands slapping into the leather.

“Only if you change them every day.”

“Well I don’t want to walk around in sweaty underwear, so yeah. I’ll be changing mine every day, you little crust butt.”

Erin dodged the ball Izzy hurled at her.

“I’m not a crust butt!”

“That’s exactly what a crust butt would say.”

Erin lifted the bag, hoisting it up and down, trying to get a feel for the weight. Was it too heavy?

When she first got the idea, she thought she’d put together one bag. She hadn’t necessarily planned on telling Izzy about it, either. Only because she didn’t want to scare the kid. But as she mulled over the various scenarios in which the bag would be useful, it occurred to her that it was entirely possible that they could become separated if something went wrong.

So she made two panic bags. That’s what she’d been calling them, in her head of course. One red and one pink, both filled with emergency supplies.

“Here,” Erin said, handing Izzy the red bag. She’d picked up on the fact that Izzy had an aversion to anything pink.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a… bag,” she said, omitting the word “panic.” “There’s one for you and one for me. Packed with important stuff in case we ever need to get away in a hurry.”

“Like when we left the camp?”

“Exactly.”

“I want to go through all of it so you know what you have. The other thing is, there’s some good food in here, but you can’t eat it. Not unless we really need it. Get it?”

Izzy nodded.

Erin unzipped the top and upended the bag on the rug.

“Dry clothes,” she said, holding up a Ziploc bag with a shirt, pants, hoodie, socks, and underwear inside. Anything that needed to stay dry was packed in plastic, just in case.

She lifted another bag containing toilet paper, matches and a lighter, and tea lights. (Erin’s had the addition of tampons for her “minstrels.”)

“Shit tickets and candles.”

A chuckle slipped out before Izzy could stop it. She shook her head.

“You owe the Swear Jar like ten million dollars.”

Erin went through the rest of the contents, packing each item back in the bag when she was finished.

Obviously there was food. She’d spent some time figuring out what food gave them the highest calories by weight. Canned goods were out — they were way too heavy, plus they required a can opener. They’d found a few energy bars, so those went in first. The box of Slim Jims wound up being a great find. They were light, individually packaged, and almost all protein. She divided those evenly between the two bags. Lastly, they each got a half-eaten jar of peanut butter and some foil packets of tuna.