The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (57 page)

Izzy followed Erin toward the back. They used the game machines as cover, scurrying to get behind them as silently as they could manage.

They paused next to a machine called Big Bertha. Through the netting on the sides of the machine, Erin could see the man. He was still up front, wandering through the play area. It was twenty feet from where they were to the prize counter and the locked door that led to the office. She clutched the keys in her fist, the metal radiating her own body heat back at her.

She grabbed Izzy’s hand, counted to ten, and scrambled to the prize counter. She paused, holding her breath, listening for a sign that the man had heard or seen them. She kept waiting for him to come barreling straight at them, but he was still ambling around, humming to himself.

Satisfied, she lowered the keychain to the ground so she could flick through the keys without them jangling together. She finally found the one labeled, “Office.”

Erin stuck out a hand between them, indicating that Izzy should stay tucked behind the counter. She walked backward in a crouch until her butt bumped into the door. Inserting the key in the lock reminded her of the game Operation. At least this time there wasn’t a loud buzzer if she messed it up.

“Hey!”

Every part of her turned to ice at the sound of the man’s voice, except her eyes, which rolled back and forth searching for him, bracing herself. Would he come hurtling out from behind one of the machines to tackle her? Or would he just shoot her on sight?

If he didn’t have a gun, she’d have to fight him. She still had the knife. Then maybe Izzy would at least have a chance to escape.

Seconds passed before she realized he hadn’t spotted her. He hadn’t even spoken at all.

He was singing. Something about murder and blood and guts.

Lovely.

She swallowed, glancing over at Izzy, the look of pants-pooping terror on the kid’s face was probably a mirror of her own.

Turning back to the key, she twisted but met only resistance. Jiggling right and left didn’t matter. It wouldn’t budge.

Fuck.

She could feel the scrape of metal on metal more than she could hear it as she extracted the key. She brought the keys closer to her face to get a better look at the labels, and then the unthinkable happened.

She dropped them. They hit the ground with a slap and a clang, like a bag of pennies.

The singing stopped and so did her heart.

Teddy

Moundsville, West Virginia

76 days after

When the older woman got close enough, she flamed up as well. Another flash, another whoosh, that suction tugging at the flesh of his face again.

Her hair vanished immediately. Just gone. The remaining scalp looked shiny, red, almost wet. And brighter, hotter flames seemed to lick from the top of it, reaching higher, higher.

He knew right away that this wasn’t good.

The fire engulfed the exposed joists along the ceiling, the wood going a touch darker, wisps of smoke rolling off of it. He could picture the whole thing going up. His dream house engulfed in flames.

The dead thing stumbled about, so far not standing still long enough for any of the wood to catch, but it was going to be close, he knew. Jesus, he was going to burn the house down.

He lurched forward, pushing the zombie, trying to knock it over. He didn’t know what he’d do after that, but he had to do something. The thing wouldn’t go down, and he burned his hand some, the flaming liquid clinging to his palms until he smothered them against his pants, hands rubbing up and down his thighs.

The fumes and the smoke twirled dizziness in his head again, the heat around him only adding to his disorientation. The zombies moaned and moaned, all choked gasps and coos and whimpers that he couldn’t even enjoy.

Another whoosh behind him. A bigger one.

He turned. The younger one had toppled down onto the landing and both canisters of lighter fluid went up then in bursts. Every four or five seconds a ball of fire shot out of the blaze consuming the bottom half of the steps. Some of the fireballs rained a fiery spray out into the room, lighting up chunks of the floor like mud puddles of fire where the fluid burned atop the concrete.

The heat shimmered all around him now, hazing and blurring everything, smoke scratching at his throat, the stench of burning bodies intertwining with that of the steps going up quickly.

His head swiveled up toward the basement door, which seemed so far away just then. The stairs were a roman candle. Impassable.

He knew now that he was going to die in his perfect basement.

Ray

North of Canton, Texas

2 days before

They walked among the cars, the heat rising up from the asphalt in a shimmer that pressed its sticky torso against his. He’d sweat through his undershirt, shirt, and suit jacket by now, but there was nothing to be done about it for the moment.

Lorraine drifted along beside him, a pink blob moving in the corner of his eye. She was a graceful, long necked woman, much like his wife had been.

Somehow he knew that she was warming to him, at least a little. He knew now that she had heard all of the bad things about him, had been reluctant to go along with him, but that she was seeing that he wasn’t some monster. He wasn’t a saint, but he wasn’t such an awful person, either. Just a good businessman.

He didn’t know how he knew all of that, though. Her outward communication hadn’t conveyed a word of it, but he knew it anyway. He thought it was like how a dog could read body language and know what its master wanted with very little aptitude for understanding language. He had the ability to read things in people’s motions, in their posture, in the smirks and twitches and creases on their faces that were painted and erased within a fraction of a second.

This above all else he attributed his success to. Not smarts. Not talent. An animal thing he couldn’t explain and didn’t understand. He knew people. He knew what they wanted, and he knew how to give it to them.

He realized that they’d reached the front of the parking lot without accosting anyone or committing grand theft auto. His fingers stroked at the canister in his pocket, but he didn’t draw it.

They stood in front of the door to Gamestop, about ten feet out from the automatic doors which opened and closed as people flowed around them in both directions. He didn’t know what else to do, so he just stood there and watched.

A kid walked out. The uneven mustache sprouts on his top lip made it look like he wasn’t old enough to drive, but the car keys cupped in his hand said otherwise. Ray tried to imagine jetting pepper spray into the boy’s face, watching his eyelids swell up and tears gush out.

“Christ,” he said half under his breath. “This is going to be hard as hell.”

Baghead

Rural Arkansas

9 years, 127 days after

Baghead reached a hand into the back seat, clutching the girl’s blanketed shoulder and giving it a shake. Her head lolled a bit on her limp neck, and then her breathing changed, a slow inhale. Her eyelids fluttered, opened, pupils momentarily going wide as they looked upon the man before her with the canvas bag on his head, and then contracting to something normal.

“You should drink some water,” he said, handing her a bottle.

She took it and drank, her eyes drifting closed as she tipped the bottle back.

“It lives,” Delfino said, smiling. “I was beginning to wonder. You slept a long time, baby girl.”

The girl chugged the water as he spoke, taking three quarters of the bottle down at once, stopping for a wet, heaving breath and then finishing it off. Both men looked upon her. Baghead realized that he had no idea what she might say or do next. No idea.

She set the bottle down on the seat next to her, blinked a few times, eyes screwing up toward the ceiling in thought.

“I have to piss,” she said. “Pretty bad.”

After a beat of silence, Delfino busted out laughing, slapping Baghead on the shoulder.

“Come with me,” Baghead said. “We’ll find a place in the weeds for you to go.”

He reached underneath the door handle, grabbing the gun and tucking it into his belt.

Delfino tried to say something, but he couldn’t pause his laughter long enough to get the words out. His face went splotchy and red, tears shining on his cheeks.

Maybe it was the rain cutting back to a sprinkle and then dying, but Baghead had some heightened sense of time passing in this moment. It’d only been a few minutes since the near car accident so far as he could remember, but it felt much longer.

“This is Delfino,” Baghead said, walking back to the car from their piss spot just off the road. “Tell Delfino your name.”

“Ruthie,” she said.

“That’s a pretty good name,” Delfino said, leaning against the driver’s side door. “Not exactly Anya, but it ain’t bad at all.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Her parents didn’t make it,” Bags said.

Didn’t make it. Those were the words he’d used when he asked her about them. She had nodded.

“I was thinking we’d wash Ruthie’s hair before we move on,” Bags said. “Maybe eat something.”

“That makes sense,” Delfino said. “Might want to check out the car back there first.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking. It couldn’t have been there long. Not on the toll road. They would have cleared it within a day or two at the most, I figure. I don’t know. Just makes me a little paranoid.”

“How do you mean?”

“I don’t know how to describe it, man. Just feels like the thing doesn’t belong.”

“Well, let’s go take a look.”

“Yep. Bring your gun.”

Delfino scooped up his shotgun with one hand and reached in his pocket with the other, pulling out that sandwich bag of deer jerky again.

“Here, Ruthie,” he said. “Eat this, and wait in the car. We’ll be back in a minute.”

The baggie crinkled in Ruthie’s fingers. She climbed into the back seat and closed the door behind her. Baghead watched her tiny hand reach in for a piece of jerky, and he wondered if he’d ever ask her about what really happened to her parents or if he’d just let it go.

He turned, jogging a couple of steps to catch up with Delfino, and then he followed the driver’s gaze to the car up ahead.

It was a black Lincoln Town Car, he thought – or maybe a Continental – from the mid-to-late 1990s. A boxy thing. Not quite as ridiculous as the Delta 88, but not as far off as one might think for them being manufactured 25 or so years apart from each other.

Delfino’s gait slowed as they got within a few feet of the Lincoln, and Bags matched his stride. Nothing stirred within the car, each seat empty.

As they got to within arm’s length of the driver’s side door, they stopped. Still nothing of interest visible inside.

Bags looked upon his driver, finding his lips tightened, wrinkles etched into his forehead, a web of lines creasing his eyelids. Observing the alarm in Delfino’s features surprised him as he felt no real concern here. Seeing the car was a little weird, sure. They’d literally not seen another vehicle on the road thus far. But the idea of seeing a person – a real live human being out here -- seemed so remote.

“Something ain’t right,” Delfino said, his voice again grating in that range just above a whisper.

Baghead looked back at the black car, thinking perhaps he missed something. Instead he found his reflection in the window, the canvas bag stretched over the misshapen dome he called a head, the one messed up eye that seemed to be attempting to droop over his cheek bone and off of the side of his face.

Others probably thought he wore the mask because people couldn’t bear to look at him, but they were wrong. He wore it because he couldn’t bear to look at himself.

It always caught him unprepared, the pang of nausea he felt looking at his own face, even the few bits he could see through the eye holes, but then he looked away and let it go. In a fundamental way, having a face was in his past, being human was in his past. That’s how he felt about it, and that’s how he moved on.

And then something cracked somewhere behind him. Piercing. An explosion too loud for his ears to make sense of entirely, like pieces of metal colliding at impossible velocities. And his reflection shattered and disappeared as the window fell.

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

41 days before

His skin crawled, every hair follicle on his arms and legs perking up one after the other. Hot breath heaved in and out of his nostrils, made them expand and contract, and perspiration slimed his skin, oozing from the flesh on his back and forehead, cascading into the crevices between his nose and cheeks.

The gun trembled against his bottom lip. He tried to steady it, but he couldn’t do it. Any attempt to stop it only made the shaking worse, made the muscles jerk harder, rattled the gun against his teeth and the roof of his mouth.