The Scattered and the Dead (Book 0.5) (5 page)

14 days after

I had a dream about the milkshake. The Frosty. The ropes of chocolate snot dangling against my mom’s lips.

There were no words. No nonsense dream dialog to make it unreal. Just that image. The strange shapes rising up from her stomach and spewing from her mouth, all of the pieces drenched in milkshake. The chocolate pool settling and spreading over the blanket draped over her legs.

Who would make a world like this on purpose?

But it’s Okay. It’s fine. To get that picture out of my head, I can go to the window and look down at the way the bars of sunlight stretch over the corpses.

What do I want? Peace? I find peace all over the place, really. Everyone is resting in it. Everyone but me, I think.

15 days after

Sometimes I think you are still here, still alive. I know it’s unlikely, but sometimes I believe it. Maybe that’s just easier, to think that maybe things could still be okay when I know they’re not. Maybe I just need something, anything, to believe so my brain reaches out and latches onto this.

Or maybe it’s real. Maybe you are over there in your apartment right now, reading or eating some kind of canned food you had stored just in case. Soup, maybe. Tomato soup that you heated on a little hibachi grill that you set up by the window above the kitchen counter, and now you wish you had a grilled cheese to go with it.

Yeah. Maybe that.

16 days after

Leaving the apartment for the first time since the EMP felt so fucking crazy. I had to work up the guts to go out there, and my spine prickled the whole time I walked around, an itch so bad like the skin on my back had turned to scales, so bad that no amount of scratching could satisfy it.

I started small, just opening the door made me feel weird as hell, so I did that a few times, fighting back the urge to slam it closed right away, half expecting some psycho to pop out of one of the other doors with a shotgun or a Florida-style zombie to pounce out of nowhere and attach its jaw to my face.

Then I built up the courage to ease through the doorway and tiptoe the three doors down to the corner and back just to get a feel for it. Next I walked down the hall the long way and back, willing myself to not sprint back. My heart blasted out around 600 beats per minute during those practice runs, those thudding beats that make it feel like your ribcage might implode somehow. Maybe my heart rate is a little slower at this point. Only 550 BPM or something.

Even now that I’ve been all over the building, my calves quiver as I move down the empty halls, and my knees do that Jell-o thing where they want to buckle every other step. The stillness in here is hard to stomach.

Once I felt comfortable walking around in the open of the hallways, I climbed down the stairs to the office. It was locked, but the metal wedge doorstop went right through the glass window there with the slot where we drop our rent checks. The safety glass held the shattered pieces in place, but I used the doorstop to pound out a hole, and I threaded my arm through the opening to unlatch the dead bolt.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom in this windowless chamber of desks and filing cabinets, but once they did, I dug around in the secretary’s desk for less than a minute before finding the huge key ring. It was in the second shelf on the left, the same one I’d watched her retrieve it from back when she first showed me my apartment. I’m not sure if the key to every apartment in the building is here. It almost doesn’t seem like enough. Either way, it’s a lot of them.

I started on the basement floor, moving from apartment to apartment. The first three were stripped down to the pieces of furniture too big to move on short notice along with mostly junk items deemed unworthy of making the journey. Some of it in piles on the floors and couches. Some of it in boxes that didn’t make the final cut. The rooms all looked messy in an almost windswept way. A little food got left behind, too, so I guess that’s nice to know in case my jerky supply starts to wear down.

The door on the fourth apartment stuck in the frame, like the wood was somehow swollen. I thought about knocking, like the stuck door was an omen that someone might actually be in this one, but instead I put my shoulder into it and bullied my way in.

The smell hit then and made my face pucker. I had no doubt about what caused the odor.

Death. Death, indeed.

An old man curled up in a mess of blankets on his couch. Thick white whiskers ran along his jaw and crawled down onto his neck almost to his chest, and his mouth opened too far, lips sagging into the gaping hole in a way that didn’t look right.

The smell conveyed an almost chemical element somehow, like something that would be used to peel paint mixed with road kill. I’m not a decomposition expert, but based on my observation of the bodies outside, I’d say he was just exiting the bloating stage and on his way into raisin-ing.

I was suddenly glad my apartment was two floors up from the odor. I really had been very, very lucky in that regard. Hard to feel that great about it in that moment, though, I guess.

I pulled the collar of my shirt up over my mouth and looked around for as long as I could stand. He didn’t look like the type to have a gun or a sweet crossbow or anything. His things made him look more like a hoarder, piles of newspapers and magazines in every corner, clutter piled on every table and counter.

I locked him back into his tomb and walked back up the steps, done basement spelunking for a time. It’ll be dark soon. I think I’ll check more apartments tomorrow.

I stopped outside of your door and gazed upon it for a long while, jingling the keys around in my hand. I considered knocking, but it was a very half-hearted consideration. I could never actually do it.

I don’t want to know.

17 days after

Still no gun, but I found a machete. I always pictured myself finding a handgun that I could use to blow people’s heads off. Should the need ever arise. Now I have to adjust that mental image to me chopping someone’s head off instead. It’ll take some doing, but I’ll get there.

I guess picturing it becomes easier when the heft of it rests in my hand, tugs at my arm. Something about the feel of it just makes me want to swing it, to go nuts on some jagoff’s neck or at least clear some thick tropical foliage.

I’ve taken a look inside 42 units so far. It’s a strange feeling to confirm more and more completely that I am the only person left here. About half of these apartments are vacant and largely cleaned out. The other half contain the dead. I wear a mask while I check the rooms. It doesn’t block all of the smell, but I think it helps a bit. I almost can’t believe how quickly being around dead bodies has become routine. Maybe all of that time looking at the corpses on the sidewalk got me prepared for it. Or maybe my brain detaches from all of the death to keep me safe, like blocking out a traumatic memory.

Just today I came upon 11 dead bodies. A dead girl leaned back in a La-Z-Boy. Maybe twelve years old. An older woman face down on the linoleum in the kitchenette, mascara streaking down from her eyes onto her cheeks. A slacker-looking guy in his thirties in a fetal position on the carpet with a big open bag of Cheetos next to him, his fingers and lips stained orange.

At least I’m not in Florida, right? These dead just lie around. They don’t hop up and stagger about in a biting mood. Generally speaking, the Atlantic coast dead are go-getters. Me? I prefer the slothful dead you find as you get away from the coast, thanks. Just hook them up with a bag of Cheetos and they’ll chill out on the floor.

The machete wasn’t the only useful item I found. I’m now sitting on a much bigger dry and canned food stash, which is awesome but won’t do me much good when the water stops. My toiletries are very well stocked, too.

Oh yeah, that reminds me: One of the vacant places featured a huge dump in the middle of the living room carpet. All of the furniture was stacked on one side of the room with a single huge log stretched out in a straight line in the middle of the bare floor. I don’t know about you, but I take that as a commentary on the tenant’s feelings toward the management. Seriously. The world is ending, everyone is goddamn dying, and they took the time to shit on the carpet before heading out of this place. It speaks volumes.

I’d say a turd is worth 10,000 words. Maybe more.

18 days after

In my dreams, I surf the internet, mouse in my hand, clicking and flicking through page after page on Amazon. Reading customer reviews. Purchasing everything I want or need. My cart fills with strange foods like dried mango slices and well reviewed varieties of ramen from Asia that I’ve never heard of, and then I hit up the electronics department for a new phone and a bunch of video games that never existed in real life.

This sense of relief comes over me, like it was silly of me to ever believe I’d lost this, that I should have known it would be back, that it would always find a way back.

Most of the time, the entire image of the dream is the browser. I don’t even see the laptop or have any sense of my physical setting or existence aside from the feel of my finger clicking the mouse button.

If only Amazon could help me now.

19 days after

The water is down to the tiniest trickle now. If I leave a glass under the open faucet, it takes about nine minutes to fill. I didn’t time how long it takes the toilet tank to refill, but it’s a long, long time. I know this is the beginning of the end of my time here, and I don’t like it.

Something about the water flow slowing down this much makes me paranoid to drink it, too. Like now that it’s creeping along, does that make it somehow susceptible to bacteria? I have no idea. It tastes the same to me. I guess there’s certainly no one treating it at the plant, putting chlorine and whatever else in it, so some amount of bacteria build up is happening for sure.

Not like I have a choice, though. Die of thirst or drink up. I guess those are my options.

Still, I’ve collected and filled a lot of additional water bottles and jugs. I even have a couple of huge Rubbermaid storage containers that I filled in the bathtub. I’d estimate that I have over 100 gallons in reserve. Maybe 200. Not much in the grand scheme, but enough to make it a little while once the pipes offer no more fluid.

20 days after

The great apartment hunt is over. I am officially alone. (I checked all but one, of course. So I’m alone unless you’re alive in there. But I know you’re not.) Searching the apartments ultimately yielded me a decent haul. Such a strange variety of things packed away behind all of those closed doors. Not counting the massive dump on the carpet downstairs, I think the weirdest thing I saw was a bed stripped down to just Andrew Dice Clay sheets. A single full body image of the Diceman printed on these sheets. Old as hell, I assume. I didn’t even know those existed and someone a floor below me was sleeping on them. Presumably by choice.

The big find was one of those survival filter straws. Basically I can stick this thing into any body of water, drink through it, and filter out 99.9% of all bacteria and parasites. According to the package, it filters up to 264 gallons, so that more than doubles my drinking water supply. Huge. Hopefully I never need to use it, of course.

I now have tons of headache medicine, too. It has to be thousands of tablets. I almost want to get a headache just so I can obliterate it with Advil, Tylenol, or Nuprin depending upon my mood.

I gathered up all kinds of camping gear. I didn’t look through all of the boxes of camping stuff I came upon. I just took all of it. I figure tents, survival kits, hatchets, sleeping bags and so on all have value now. I’ll sort through it to figure out what I really need if and when I leave this place.

I grabbed a bunch of blankets. It’s hot as balls now, but there won’t be any furnaces toiling away on my behalf this winter. Maybe I’ll be somewhere where I can build a fire or even in a more temperate climate if I’m lucky, but the blankets should be useful either way.

I’m excited to try some of the food I found, too. I grabbed many boxes of cereal – Honey Nut Cheerios, Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms, and Apple Jacks -- and a couple of containers of shelf stable milk. Some canned tuna and fast food mayo packets I’m going to whip up in a bit for lunch. I don’t have bread, but I do have club crackers. It should be an interesting experience after so long eating jerky.

The machete wound up being the only decent weapon, unfortunately. I found some kind of ninja throwing stars in a desk drawer, but I didn’t take them. Seemed pretty pointless to me. I did take an aluminum baseball bat as a backup to my blade.

I also found enough dead bodies to put together a really impressive looking mass grave. I don’t think I will, but it’s nice to have that option.

I celebrated the end of the hunt by cracking open a bottle of Crown Royal I found. I mixed it with warm Coca-Cola out of a glass bottle. Not too bad. The booze went straight to my head, made me dizzy in a happy way. I quit after the second drink, though. Something too bleak about drinking alone in this apartment building that is more like a mausoleum now.