The Scattered and the Dead (Book 0.5) (10 page)

The profanity was not the death itself, nor was it the lives turned to dead bags of rotting meat around me. The profanity was that someone chose this. In a world where life had been made as scarce as it ever was, someone defiled it anyway. En masse.

And why should I be surprised? I’ve seen what people do to each other so many times. What they’ve always done to each other. Why would I expect anything else?

Even breathing through my mouth, I could smell it. The stink was like a wave in the air, it stung my eyes. I almost thought I could feel it on my skin, some astringent chemical sting.

I gazed into the shaded interior of the tent straight ahead, a little light creeping through the places where bullet holes perforated the canvas. More dead lay within, flopped over cots at haphazard angles, blood congealed in pools below them.

I kept walking, moving deeper into the rows of tents. I don’t know why.

But I heard something rustle ahead of me.

50 days after

The soldier walked out of the gloom of the tent ahead of me, seeming to materialize in the air five feet from where I stood, his assault rifle at his side. He had a dim look about him, a mouth that looked at ease when opened for breathing.

He said, “What are you-”

I imagine he was going to say “doing here,” but his words cut off abruptly when my machete split his forehead at an angle from his hairline to his brow, the blade half buried in the top of his face. The wet crunch of cleaved bone mixed with a high pitched metallic vibration that cut off almost immediately like a muted cymbal.

I didn’t feel the machete rising up over my head or really even feel the swift downward stroke of its swing, but I felt it striking the skull. His neck buckled, chin tucking toward his chest and then I felt the force in my arms and hips unload like a home run swing sending the ball 650 feet into the upper deck. There was almost a recoil as the follow-through got cut off, a shocking vibration in my hands as all of that momentum bashed into a man’s brain and stopped like a head-on collision.

Again, I don’t recall choosing this action. My arms just did it.

He dropped to his knees, and his eyelids fluttered for what seemed like a long time before he toppled over, his lips whispering out little stuttering consonant sounds, lispy
ess
and
sh
sounds, mostly. My eyes drifted to the patch sewn on the chest as he blinked. It said BENNETT.

The blood crept out from around the blade, slow red tears draining down from the wound. Not as much blood as I would have thought. Not like that politician shooting himself and turning on the faucet.

I cupped my hands under his arms and pulled his body into the shade of the tent. That machete was lodged in there pretty good, so I worked the blade back and forth, trying to get it free from the skull’s grip.

Endorphins flooded my brain, but no particular thoughts occurred to me. No righteous feelings of having vanquished one of the mass murderers of this camp. I couldn’t say for sure if this guy was responsible, of course. He was a threat, so I eliminated him.

I didn’t let the rush of animal delight over handling the situation diminish my focus, though. I suspected he wasn’t alone.

50 days after

The blade squeaked against the bone before I could get it free from the skull, a scraping moan like something I’d only ever heard at the dentist’s office when the hygienist got a little feisty in taking those hooks to my teeth. A little shrill.

I wiped the blood off, smearing the machete on the sleeve of the soldier’s shirt, one side and then the other like a butter knife on the edge of a piece of toast.

Then I hooked my hands under his arm pits again and pulled him deeper into the tent. Nestling the limp body among the cots, I flopped a couple of the other corpses on top of him on the diagonal, covering him as best I could in the limbs of the elderly people.

I didn’t really know what to do after that, so I crouched at the edge of the tent and waited. I listened for a time, hearing nothing, my thoughts beginning to stir. I wondered, if the soldiers had really done this, and if the orders had come from the top, what might the reason have been? Not enough supplies for all of the camps so some have to go? Too many sick in a particular camp means they pull the plug? It seemed like such a leap to go straight for murdering people, but the only motivations I could come up with were of the cold, calculated variety.

Well, two could play at that game. This guy’s buddies would come around looking for him before long, and I’d be waiting on them. My arm flexed and I felt the heft of the machete in my hand again, my muscles wanting to remember that unwinding and recoil, wanting to feel it again.

Around this time, the notion that I’d killed someone, a flesh and blood human being, finally started down the long road toward sinking in. I wasn’t upset. Even with the ambiguity regarding this individual’s involvement in whatever massacre went down here, I wasn’t upset. I couldn’t get over that level of force I’d felt, the torque I had created, the power I expelled. It felt nothing like I’d felt hiding in the gas station, quivering under the counter. I felt like a beast. I felt in control.

I shifted my weight from foot to foot and pushed up onto the balls of my feet to stretch my calves. In the process, I kicked the M4 carbine at my feet. Okay, yeah. Fuck the machete.

I placed the blade down. I’d try to remember to grab it on the way out, maybe.

The assault rifle seemed so light. It almost seemed like a toy at first. I turned it over a few times, tucked the stock against that place where the deltoid and pectoral meet, pinched one eye close and gazed down the barrel.

This was no toy. It felt right.

I didn’t flinch when I heard the snare-roll-like burst of automatic gunfire somewhere off to my right. I moved out.

50 days after

I squat-walked forward, passing through the opening in the tent, moving from the shade into the sunlight. The gunfire had come and gone in one quick burst, but my ears still felt it somehow, an inward suction feeling like my inner ears had the wind knocked out of them, or maybe like my ear drums were attempting to retract further into my head to get away, wishing only to be swallowed up by my brain.

I weaved my way there between the tents and used them for cover as I advanced, peeking around every corner, inching toward the source of the sound. My feet tousled the tops of the blades of grass and smashed oblong sections of green down with every step, bodies still sprawled to my left and right, though they seemed to be getting sparser as I moved deeper into the rows of tents.

I held the gun in front of me, watching it bob along at the bottom of my field of vision, feeling almost like I was playing out a tense video game moment in real life.

No intricate strategies occurred to me here. No thoughts of flanking or outmaneuvering anyone. No plans to create a distraction to try to isolate my enemies and take them out one by one. No words at all passed through my skull. Just feelings and heat and a throb of electricity. Wet, hot, red feelings that pulsed in my brain and hammered in my chest and shuffled my feet forward and made my finger tremble against the trigger. An uncontrollable urge that demanded satisfaction.

About seven tents deep, I rounded a corner and found myself facing the backs of two soldiers. Their rifles stood ready before them, aimed at a fidgeting body on the ground. I watched the helpless figure squirm at their feet, a bald man with a sickly yellow complexion. He made no attempt to beg for his life, didn’t even look the soldiers in the eyes.

I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d looked like that on the gas station floor and as they dragged me out onto the glass covered asphalt. Did I writhe around like that?

And I thought about how much I’d dreaded this. Even before everyone died and the world became harsh and violent right out in the open, I’d dreaded confrontation. I’d worried about it. I feared that when it finally came along, I’d freeze, I’d flinch, I’d be too scared to move.

But it was here, and I knew no fear. I felt the power in my arms, felt the gun in my hands, and I had control. I found myself stimulated by this, found pleasure in the aggression welling up inside, that sadistic glee that makes you smile right before you jump out and scare someone.

I raised the carbine, lined up the site with the back of the flat-topped head, aiming directly for that knobby spot where the brain pan ends and the skull slopes into the neck. I took a breath. Blinked a few times. I could feel every individual drop of sweat on my skin just then, all of them oozing at different speeds, meandering downward on different angles.

My finger squeezed, and the gun popped out a percussive sound, the stock digging into my shoulder, and the brains blasted out of the front of the shattered head. I wheeled to the right, lined up the second flat-topped skull, rinsed and repeated just as the soldier turned toward me, and his head, too, came apart, this time the bullet entering near his temple and the gloop flying out of the back.

A feeling came over me then like someone poured a shrieking kettle of water in with my brain. The warmth roiled all through me like when you wake up sick and confused, and my hands and arms shook from the adrenalin, stimulation to the point that my thoughts smeared together. My jaw clenched as tight as it could, flexing in rapid fire bursts.

The only word I can think of to describe this moment is fun. Really fun. Like riding the biggest, fastest, most satisfying roller coaster and orgasming the whole time. It was the strangest, sickest feeling, but I couldn’t wipe the smile off of my face, couldn’t stop the tingle that filled my chest with every breath.

I don’t remember the bodies falling, don’t remember the knees buckling and the dead weight slumping to the ground. I just remember the two of them in a final state of recline a few feet apart from each other, their heads torn to pieces, one faceless, one not. And I looked upon them for a long while, and these words came to me from nowhere:

“And all the king’s horses, and all the king’s men, couldn’t put their brains back together again.”

The toppled figure that lay before the army men showed no real reaction to either my gunshots or the gory scene in front of him. I’d almost forgotten him. Almost felt alone for a second there.

He crawled toward the corpses, his movements slow and strangely inarticulate. And I knew right away he wasn’t normal, wasn’t quite human.

I watched his arms drag him across the grass, watched him mount the faceless corpse, watched his eyes remain blank while he went to chewing the loose flaps of flesh around the edge of the exit wound, rivulets of blood squishing out of the corners of his mouth. I sat and stared as he went at it for a while, gnawing and chawing and slurping, before I put a bullet in his head, too.

53 days after

I think I hallucinated some people today. So that was new.

I rode my bike South checking out some of the stores out that way. First of all, I should mention that it smells like piss over there. Like everywhere. Just a real pissy smell hanging in the air. Human urine. Not the best.

So I had my t-shirt up over my mouth and nose, and I checked out some of the shops in one of the plazas over there. The hardware and sporting goods stores had been cleared of anything useful. I thought about taking a volleyball to talk to, but I figured screw it.

It gets weird to feel so alone as you do this stuff, so I think I was singing as I walked into this Chuck E. Cheese. I guess I sing when I’m out there now. I didn’t really realize this until I heard a noise and then I saw these girls in the back of the restaurant. I got kind of embarrassed. They were young. Like a teenager and a little girl. I made eye contact with the older one as she slipped through a door. It really caught me off guard, so I froze for a second and then I worked my way over there. The door was locked, and by the time I found the key and got in there?

Nothing. No one there. Of course.

I bet I will sing less when I start hearing voices, so I’m looking forward to that.

57 days after

So I think I’m all done. Writing, that is. How long could this really go on, anyway? It was never going to work between us. I see that now. Truth is, and I’m not trying to be mean here, you just aren’t my type. I ain’t into dead chicks.

And I’m leaving here, anyway. I’ve been out riding, scouting, all day the past few days, and I’ve found places with functioning hand pumps on the wells out in the damn boonies. A house up on a hill that I can easily defend. I almost can’t believe it’s unoccupied, though I suppose it won’t be for long.

Now when I sleep, I dream of those two corpses, one faceless and the other not. I see their heads come apart over and over. But it doesn’t bother me. It doesn’t upset me. It’s not like the chocolate snot. It’s destruction without meaning. Just a thing I saw. A thing I did. A thing I will do again. A thing I want.

A thing I became.

That’s the truth right there.

The beast is come.

I am the end.

And you should know that when I look in the mirror, I like this thing I am. Whatever it is, whatever it means, I like it. I feel like a beaten up match that finally got scraped against the sidewalk hard enough to ignite, and now I’m going to burn brighter and hotter than all you motherfuckers combined, dead or alive as you may be. I will burn anyone who gets close.