The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (62 page)

He’d watched the house go from across the street, the flicker of the fire raging in the windows, and the roof finally collapsing. It was fast once the fire made that transition from the basement steps to the floorboards above. Even still he could feel the heat on his face like a sunburn. He pictured what he might look like on the bed, his cheeks approaching the red shade of a lobster.

His plan had failed. He couldn’t keep them. He couldn’t even burn them in his own home, in his kingdom, his domain. What hope did that leave him going forward? A life without a plan quickly becomes meaningless. He’d heard that somewhere as a kid and always remembered it. Now he had none. No plan at all. Nothing to work toward, to look forward to.

His thoughts jerked back and forth, ideas that circled back on themselves, never resolving, like when one remembers song lyrics incorrectly and gets stuck in a loop without end.

First of all, why couldn’t he kill them and keep them at the same time? It’s all he wanted. Dumb that it didn’t work that way.

He drank again, the citric sweetness exploding on his palate, the acid tingling on his tongue and the inside of his cheeks.

Maybe it didn’t matter about the zombies, though. They just weren’t that fun. They weren’t what he really wanted. Even burning them every day, hearing those ghastly sounds they made, would bring him no satisfaction in the long run, wouldn’t soothe the restlessness inside of him.

When he was honest with himself, he wanted a girl. A real girl. To touch. But he knew that the way he wanted to touch girls was wrong. It was bad. It was worse, even, than throwing the cats and dogs in the back of the truck. You couldn’t watch videos of it on TV or on the computer. You couldn’t talk about it at school.

He guzzled more Mountain Dew, spilling a little on his chin.

Why did everything have to be so confusing? Just like the difference between cats and dogs and meat. It made no sense when you really thought about it. Made no sense at all.

His eyebrows wrinkled then. He sat up, hand resting on the curve of the two liter again, but he didn’t lift it. He walked himself through the thought once more and smiled.

Teddy thought he understood. When it was an animal, people cared about it. But after that, after it was dead, it was meat. Nobody cared about meat. And that made it OK to eat and everything.

It would be wrong to touch a girl the way he wanted when she was a girl. But it wouldn’t be wrong when she was meat. It’d be no different than hacking up those zombies.

That was all there was to it. He would find a girl. A real girl. He could make her meat, and after that, he could touch her however he wanted.

He lay back and closed his eyes. He tried to stop smiling, but he couldn’t.

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

41 days before

The sunlight made it so he could only keep his eyes open for a few seconds at a time. It wasn’t particularly bright out, he thought, the sky retaining a bit of an overcast from the rain, but after all the time closed up in the shed, his eyes couldn’t take it. He fought it, forced them open, held them as long as he could, the soft flesh all around them quivering, but after a fraction of a second, the eyeballs rolled back, and the lids wove his eyelashes back together.

A vision contrasting white vinyl siding against green grass snapped shut to blackness over and over, but he pressed forward. He knew the way well enough.

Half-blind and stumbling, he kicked through the grass, wetness clinging to his shoes. The yard gave under his feet, squishing like a plush carpet, much softer than the concrete slab he’d grown used to, and the open air all around brushed its cool against his cheeks, the sky above full of it, stretching out forever.

A tingle came over him as he mounted the steps of the back porch. It started when his fingers wrapped around the metal rail, like a spark, an electrical current, passing from the wrought iron into his hand and traveling up his arm, up his neck, behind his face and through his head until every follicle on his scalp pricked up. Even with all that was going wrong, his life disintegrating all around him, he thought it felt goddamn amazing to be alive. To inhale, to feel the air rush into his lungs, pulling his chest taut, to feel the blood thrumming all through him, to feel this crazy tingle bristle across the top of his head for no good reason.

He stopped short of the back door, and the tension in his shoulders released just a little. God, he wanted to push through this door, grab a beer out of the fridge and plop down in his recliner to watch some TV. There was probably a baseball game on. He could heat up some Hot Pockets or something between innings.

But no. No more.

He opened the door and advanced into the kitchen. He stopped in the middle of the room, blinking a few times, letting the feeling of being home wash over him one last time, trying to savor it. He walked to the sink, let the water run over his fingers until it was nice and cold and then filled his jar, that ascending pitch ringing out as the water level rose. All of these tiny details, all of these experiences that filled his life, they’d all be gone so soon, and it was hard to fathom.

He drank, a single droplet of water spilling out of the corner of his mouth and running down his chin. The rest rolled through his mouth and down his throat, cooling him all the way down.

He heard video games in the next room, and he knew that the power had come back on. Damn. The desire to watch TV, to gaze upon that flicker of images, was like an itch behind his eyeballs. Un-scratchable.

He tipped his head back to down the last of the water, mopping the back of his wrist over his lips. When he returned his head to its normal upright position, a dizziness came over him, a weakness in his neck that wanted to let his chin sink all the way to his sternum.

He fought it, tried to keep his head up, tried to keep his eyes open, his vision steady. He felt like a captain fighting to right a listing boat at sea.

And then things went black. Full black. Flipped off like a switch.

His consciousness faded in, and he lay face down on the tile floor in the kitchen. His head hurt like hell and swirls swam along the edges of his vision. He lifted his head, which took considerable effort, and blinked his eyes hard a few times, tried to clear his vision, but everything still flickered and blurred around him.

This was it. This was the end.

Christ, he was lucky to have not already turned. He didn’t know how much time had passed while he was out, but he heard baseball on TV in the next room instead of video games now.

He pushed himself up on hands and knees, prying the gun from his belt, and crawled toward the basement door. Not fast, but the best he could muster. Things went gray again right away, and he stopped, taking deep breaths. He just needed to make it to the basement steps. Not all the way down. Just to the other side of that door. That was all.

Color blushed back into things, and he crawled again, hands shuffling forward and legs dragging along behind. He put his head down and pressed forward, no longer even looking where he was going.

He heard a beer commercial on TV in the next room. A zany one about a guy who built his entire house out of cans of Bud Light, much to his wife’s chagrin. It reminded him to drink responsibly, and then the top of his head hit wood.

The door. He’d made it.

He reached up for knob and pulled it open, falling over on his side to get out of its path. Now he slid forward on his belly, his crawl almost more of a slither as he eased himself down a couple of steps. A change came over him as he crossed that threshold, a relief that he could die apart from them, if only separated by this door, and he found new strength in his arms.

He pushed himself up and turned back, reaching out, fingers gripping the bottom of the basement door and swinging it his way. More relief as the door closed and the latch clicked, leaving him in the dark. Breath heaved in and out of him, and he settled back, his head and the top half of his back now resting against the door.

The gun quivered in his hand, and his arm shook pretty bad as he lifted it.

No bullshit now. Just do it.

He brought the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.

Erin

South of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

70 days after

Terror took hold, and for a moment Erin couldn’t speak. Eventually she forced out a hiss.

“Run!”

They both bolted toward the back door, but it was too late. The basement door was flung wide and the thing roared, an inhuman noise that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

It looked like a man, but not. Something was wrong with it — something that went beyond the fact that it was covered in blood. There was a gaping wound on one side of the head, the eye on that side crusted shut. But even with just the one eye open, Erin could tell the thing was dim. Like a… she didn’t want to think it, but it was too late: like a zombie.

The thing swayed there at the top of the stairs, blocking their exit, and the lone eye wandered, never seeming to focus on any one thing. Erin wasn’t sure why it hadn’t come at them yet. Could it not see them if they held still?

And then it lurched toward Izzy, and without thinking Erin jumped forward.

“Hey you!”

She pulled her phone from her pocket and threw it at the zombie-thing.

It rounded on her, and she fumbled at her belt for the gun. She lifted, pointed, squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She squeezed again, and Izzy yelled, “Shoot it! Shoot it!”

And then the zombie launched himself teeth-first at her.

His bulk knocked her to the ground, pinning her there. Up close the smell was nauseating — the stench of rotting flesh and dried blood and unbrushed zombie teeth.

She had a handful of his matted hair in her fist, which was the only thing keeping him from taking a big juicy bite out of her neck. Her other hand still held the gun. She pressed it to his skull and pulled the trigger again, but it wouldn’t fire.

Over the snarling beast on top of her, she heard Izzy’s voice.

“The safety! You have to turn the safety off!”

The gun was gummed up with zombie goo now, and Erin’s hand slid down the grip. She clenched her fingers around it, refusing to let go, and somehow she managed to flick the little switch with her thumb. This time she pulled and it fired and there was an eardrum bursting blast and a wet chunky spray hit her face. The zombie went limp on top of her.

She wriggled out from under it part of the way, but the dead weight pinned her down.

Izzy ran over and threw herself down next to Erin, clutching her shoulder and half-screaming, half-crying. When the ringing in her ears faded a little, she realized Izzy was asking if she was OK.

“Did it get you?”

Erin tried to push the thing off her, but she was all shaky. Her muscles felt like Jell-o.

“I’m fine.”

Izzy let out a sob of relief, then started babbling again.

“I told you! I told you there were fucking zombies!”

“Dude, language!” Erin said.

They were quiet for a second, and then they both laughed.

“Now get this thing off of me.”

Izzy helped her roll the body to the side. Erin scooted away from it and tried to find a dry patch of her shirt to wipe her face with.

“Here,” Izzy said and handed her a roll of paper towel.

“Thanks.”

Erin looked over at the zombie. They both did for a long moment, silent.

It seemed different now than it had moments before. Smaller. The expression on its face more pained than aggressive. It wore a blue and purple tie-dye shirt with some iron-on letters that spelled out “MITCH” across the chest.

“What’s with the shirt?” Izzy asked.

The tie-dye looked like a do-it-yourself project, and the letters were all a little cock-eyed.

“I bet it was a gift. From-”

Erin pictured the little socked feet in the bedroom then.

“Never mind.”

How stupid was she? Finding the gun, coming up with her Jonestown scenario in which the whole family offed themselves, but never wondering where the bodies of the adults were? Dumb.

“How sad is that?” Izzy said.

“What?”

Izzy’s eyes were still locked on the swirling tie-dye of the shirt.

“That he ate his own family.”

“How did you-”

“You said not to go in the back bedroom. Like I don’t know what that means. Kids.”

Erin poked Izzy’s belly button.

“Stop being so smart, will you?”

A gong sounded, and for a second Erin thought it was some kind of warning, some harbinger of more bad shit to come. They both went rigid and held their breath, bracing themselves for it. And then Erin recognized the melody. It was the grandfather clock, striking noon.

Erin slapped a hand over her chest and let her body slump back into the counter.