At least not as quickly as the Zapheads had reverted to primal, wild killers. Mackie had observed little change in most wildlife, suggesting the solar storms had largely affected only the central nervous systems of humans.
Mackie read the ID tag that hung from the cat’s red nylon collar. Into the metal of the tag were stamped the words Hi! My name is Sabbath, and below in smaller print was Ms. Kinney’s address and phone number.
Sabbath. Mackie smiled. He held the cat up and glanced quickly between its thighs. Mom cat or tom?
Sabbath was female.
He placed Sabbath on the kitchen island and removed his bottle of water from his backpack. He poured what was left into a small bowl he found in a cabinet above the sink and placed it on the island. Inside the sink was a small pile of dishes submerged beneath a few inches of grimy water. Ms. Kinney had left the dishes there to soak before the Big Zap and Sabbath had used the water in the sink to hydrate herself.
Resourceful kitty. You’re a survivor, too, huh?
While Sabbath drank from the fresh water Mackie provided, he opened cabinet doors and removed several cans of food, along with a jar of peanut butter, two sleeves of Ritz crackers and an opened can of Pringles. He also found several cans of Sabbath’s wet food. In the cabinet below the sink was an unwrapped case of bottled water. He took four bottles and placed them—along with the peanut butter, chips, crackers, and canned foods—in his backpack and found his way to the bathroom to look for first aid supplies and hygiene products.
There he found two tubes of toothpaste and a toothbrush, along with mouthwash, deodorant and shampoo. He squeezed a small cylinder of paste onto the brush, and using water from a bottle, scrubbed the accumulated muck from his teeth. It felt like armies of bacteria had camped in his mouth.
Feel closer to human than I have in weeks.
He found a carton of tampons, opened it, and dumped the contents into the backpack. Something the ladies would surely appreciate.
The mirrored medicine cabinet above the sink held bottles of vitamins, Advil, muscle relaxers.
Muscle relaxers. If Ms. Kinney had those, there was also a possibility she would have...
No. Mackie forced himself not to read the labels on the other prescription pill bottles in the cabinet. But some of the medication here could be useful—if, for example, Ms. Kinney had an unfinished bottle of antibiotics. But maybe he should leave the medicines to Artiss. He couldn’t trust himself to—
Kuh-pak.
Gunfire. Dante putting down a Zaphead, most likely. So much for military training.
Mackie slammed the cabinet door shut. Inside a drawer beneath the sink he found rubbing alcohol, peroxide, and band-aids. Those he would take. He was compelled to check on Dante to make sure the situation was under control.
Mackie picked up Sabbath as he passed the kitchen and placed her delicately inside his backpack, nestling her among the canned food and other supplies, leaving the zipper open wide enough to allow adequate oxygen but not so wide that Sabbath could easily escape.
When he stepped outside the house, Dante stumbled toward him, a hand clamped to his neck, blood flowing freely over and between his fingers. He was unarmed, his eyes startled wide in pain and incomprehension.
14.
Mackie understood what had seemed so off about the gunshot he’d heard a minute earlier. It hadn’t come from an assault rifle.
Artiss staggered from the house he and Dante had occupied just moments ago. His face held an expression that was both dazed and frightened. Dante’s rifle was strapped across his left shoulder, and in his right hand he held a Glock with the barrel floating unsteadily between the ground and Dante.
Considering how often he’d used the gun in his previous life, how could Mackie not have recognized the sound of his own Glock?
Because you never heard it from a distance.
“Artiss, what the hell’s going on here?” Mackie demanded, hoping to freeze the guy into inaction.
“The little bastard... he shot me.” Dante kept his hand pressed tightly to the wound on his neck, but his legs were unsteady, knees buckling. He wouldn’t stay on his feet much longer.
“Artiss, what’s happening?” Mackie forced himself to keep his voice calm. “Was there a Zaphead?”
Tears spilled across Artiss’s cheeks and his body shook. He looked at the Glock like it was something he no longer wanted to hold but was too scared to drop.
“Where did you find my Glock?”
“What damn difference does that make?” Dante gurgled and pitched forward onto his knees, but pushed himself to his feet again with a force of will he wouldn’t possess much longer—not if that wound kept pissing blood. “Little son of a bitch...son of a bitch! I’ll kill you.”
Dante tumbled toward Artiss in a weak attempt at a charge but was on his knees again before he could cover the distance between them. His pale and sweaty skin was a precursor of shock.
“Dante, stay down,” Mackie barked. “Artiss, put down the gun and talk to me. Tell me how this happened.”
“He said...he told me that...oh God, I can’t do this!” Artiss was losing whatever modicum of control he may have had before. With the Glock in his hand, that made him exceptionally dangerous.
“Don’t know...what he’s talking about...” Dante huffed.
“Artiss, put the Glock and Dante’s rifle down and let’s talk about this.”
“You little asshole.” Dante crawled across the asphalt toward Artiss, who backed away. Dante plummeted face first parallel to the entrance of a gravel driveway. A battered Toyota sat propped there on four tires with tread as thin as tissue paper, the rubber deflated and cracked.
When Dante fell, he instinctively turned his head left to protect his nose and mouth. This gave Dante a clear view of the space beneath the Toyota, and what he saw there elicited a yelp of alarm.
A human form scrabbled spider-like on all fours from beneath the Toyota.
Zaphead.
Dante screamed and Mackie jumped backwards, the weight from the backpack pulling him off-balance. His feet flew from beneath him and Mackie landed squarely on his ass, a wave of pain radiating bitter heat from the base of his spine to the top of his skull.
“Shoot it!” Mackie ordered Artiss.
Artiss blubbered helplessly.
The Zaphead wriggled onto Dante, its fingernails tearing into the flesh of his neck opposite of the fresh bullet wound. In one hand, the Zaphead—a middle-aged female, her once-dark hair shot through with strands of dull gray and filth—held a hand tool, a three-pronged gardening fork. While her teeth snapped at Dante’s face, she struck his back repeatedly with the hand fork, the sharp prongs puncturing a fresh set of three spaces with every blow.
For a horrifying second, Mackie wondered if she’d been happily tending her begonias when the Big Zap sent her into a new state of existence, a reaper of a different kind of crop. From his position on the ground, Mackie had a full view beneath the Toyota. A corpse lay crumpled on the pavement, its upper body shredded from either the Zaphead’s teeth or her hand fork, likely both. Mackie couldn’t tell if the corpse was male or female. It was generic meat.
Artiss stood frozen, tears wet on his cheeks, the Glock still hovering uncertainly.
Mackie shucked the backpack—he could feel Sabbath tumbling around inside, mewling in distress—and reached for Herrera’s knife.
Shit. Mackie had left it in the kitchen after executing Ms. Kinney.
Guess I’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way.
He lunged forward and gripped the Zaphead’s shoulders, his feet skidding on the pavement as he tried pulling her off Dante.
The problem wasn’t the Zaphead’s strength so much as her grip on the flesh of Dante’s neck. If Mackie pulled harder, her teeth would likely tear the skin and open up a wound just as nasty as the damage Artiss’s bullet had inflicted.
Mackie seized the hand holding the three-pronged fork before the Zaphead could use it to strike Dante�
��s back again. His biceps quivered from exertion as he fought against the inhuman strength fueled by her rage. A clicking sound resonated in her throat, like a spark plug arcing juice. “Artiss! Get over here and help me!”
Artiss stayed where he was. The hand holding Mackie’s Glock had fully dropped now, the barrel pointed uselessly at the pavement. His face had the same tight mask of animal panic that the Wendover kid in the dining hall wore.
Up to me.
Mackie bent the Zaphead’s wrist backwards with the hope of inducing enough tension to make her drop the bloody gardening tool.
The tendons in her wrist and the muscles in her upper arm resisted briefly before surrendering to the force of Mackie’s superior musculature, but her fingers remained clamped firmly around her weapon.
Her sun-scorched brain was obviously damaged to the point where it could no longer recognize or respond to pain.
With his left fist, Mackie struck several tight blows against the Zaphead’s skull. He soon recognized the futility of such an action—he seemed to suffer more pain than her from the blows—and renewed his focus on the hand holding the garden tool.
The prongs had shredded large swaths of flesh across Dante’s back, like furrows on a farm field. The raw, gore-soaked wounds glistened from beneath the ripped fabric of Dante’s green T-shirt.
Dante howled beneath the combined weight of Mackie and the Zaphead, the Zaphead’s teeth sinking deeper into the flesh of Dante’s neck, her head twitching from side to side like dog trying to pry a toy from its owner’s hand. Had she been able to gain more traction, the Zaphead would have peeled Dante’s neck open like a peach.
The bullet wound on the other side of Dante’s neck bled freely, but the damage didn’t appear to be as severe as Mackie first thought. Rather than lodge itself firmly inside the neck where it would likely have severed an artery and inflicted extensive tissue damage, the bullet had grazed the neck and shredded a small patch of skin and muscle as it completed its trajectory.
Artiss was scared and out of control and had, for whatever reason, turned on Dante. But he wasn’t much of a shot.
This fucked-up new world is no place for amateurs.
Mackie braced his left forearm beneath Zaphead’s elbow and wrenched backwards until he had a solid arm bar in place, much like the one Herrera used on Meredith in the dining hall. Then he torqued the Zaphead’s arm back...back...back until Mackie heard the satisfying snap of bone above Dante’s wails and the Zaphead’s rabid growling.
The Zaphead’s fingers released their hold on the garden tool, but she kept her teeth locked into Dante’s neck. The flesh had finally begun to yield beneath the force of the Zaphead’s bite, and blood oozed from beneath the wound, staining the Zaphead’s lips and Dante’s scalp.
Mackie picked up the hand fork and sent the tines crashing against the Zaphead’s skull. Two of the tines bent but they scoured twin red grooves on their way to her hair. He pulled the tines free and repeated the process, this time shattering bone.
He plunged again.
And again.
Again.
Mackie’s arm was too weak to lift the hand fork for another strike by the time he realized that the Zaphead had gone still, gray matter oozing out the gashes along with freshets of blood.
He tossed the hand fork aside and pried the Zaphead’s jaws free from Dante’s neck and pushed her away. Dante cursed softly between sobs and weakly drove a boot into the dead Zaphead. “Bitch. Fucking bitch.”
Mackie squatted and tried to guide his breathing into a steady rhythm again, glancing around to make sure the commotion hadn’t lured out more of them. Artiss was seated on the pavement, facing away from Mackie, Dante, and the Zaphead. He set the Glock down beside him and dug the heels of his palms into his forehead as if trying to stave off a migraine. Vomit painted the pavement near him and soaked through patches of his jeans.
Can’t stand the sight of blood, huh? Shoulda thought of that before you shot a man.
Mackie clambered to his feet, gripped handfuls of Artiss’s T-shirt, and dragged him to the parked Toyota. He spun Artiss around and threw him face first against the hood, and then slid Dante’s assault rifle from Artiss’s shoulder. Artiss made no move to resist, moaning dumbly.
Mackie spun Artiss around again to face him and drove the rifle’s stock deep into Artiss’s gut. Artiss doubled over and tried to suck in the escaped air that had been forced from his lungs, a string of vomit trailing from his lower lip.
Mackie leaned the rifle against the car, gripped a handful of Artiss’s curly hair from the back of his head, and sent a fist sailing into Artiss’s nose.
“What did you do?” Mackie shouted into his face. “What the hell did you do?”
Blood leaked from Artiss’s pulped nose. “He told me to kill you both,” he said softly. “He told me there’d be a place for me...if I killed you and Dante.”
Mackie slammed Artiss into the Toyota’s hood again. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“He’s got the gun.”
“What? Who—” Mackie spun in time to see Dante’s hand close over the Glock that Artiss had discarded. He was still sobbing as he rolled over on his back and pressed the barrel against his bloody temple, his neck pulsing twin jets of red from the carnage.
“Dante, wait.”
“Hurts...too fucking much,” he gurgled. “Game over.”
“Dante-”
“Don’t…wanna…turn into one of-”
“Dante, that’s not how this works!”
Kuh-pahk.
The Glock jumped in Dante’s hand and his skull ruptured. Dante’s face shifted from tears and agony to slack nothingness.
He was scared he’d become a Zaphead after being bitten by one.
He really thought Hollywood zombie movie logic applied…
Mackie threw Artiss to the pavement, knelt over Dante’s corpse, and gently pried the Glock from his bloody fingers.
Go for the rifle, shitbag. Please give me an excuse.
Artiss made no move to rise from where he had fallen.
Mackie stood over Artiss for a moment and then threw a kick into his gut. After the blow landed, Mackie paused before sending three more in rapid succession. Then Mackie bent down and pressed the Glock’s barrel against Artiss’s forehead.
“Start talking.”
“He...he cornered me. Told me to volunteer for the supply run you and one of those soldiers was gonna get sent on. Told me to make sure you two didn’t come back. Blame it on those freaks or other survivors or whatever. He gave me the Glock, told me if I did this, if I proved my loyalty, he’d protect me.”
“Wait. Stop. Krider told you this?”
No. Krider never left my sight in the student union before we left.
“The big Mexican.” Artiss whimpered. “Hernandez.”
“Herrera.”
Artiss rolled over on his back and stared at the sky as he clutched his battered abdomen. “He’s got a plan, man. He’s going to kill all the men on campus. Control the women. Keep them doped up on heroin and pills. Loan them out...for goods and services, y’know, when other survivors find the campus.”
Mackie’s gut tightened. “You mean as prostitutes?”
Artiss nodded. “That girl you take care of, the one that’s batshit crazy, even though she’s a Zap freak now, he thinks people would be willing to trade up for the chance to bang her—”
Mackie forced the Glock’s barrel into Artiss’s mouth and down his throat before the kid realized what was happening. His eyes widened and his throat spasmed as Artiss’s gag reflex took effect. Mackie held the Glock inside for another few seconds, scraping metal against teeth, before pulling it free of Artiss’s mouth and striking him across the forehead with the barrel.
“It’s not my idea!” Artiss sputtered. “He said if I helped him by killing you and Dante, he’d let me live, he’d protect me. I’d have a place, man.”
“Krider doesn’t know about this?”
&n
bsp; Artiss shook his head. “I didn’t want to go along with this. I mean, he handed me that Glock and I could’ve used it on him...but he’s a frickin’ beast. I was scared of him. If he wants you all dead, there’s nothing any of you can do about it. And I’m a pussy, okay? If he was gonna give me a chance to live, I had to take it.”
“Bullshit. He handed you a loaded weapon. Even if you were too scared to try and use it against him, you could’ve told me and Dante about his plan before things went this far. You went along with this because you wanted to. What else did he promise you? That you could have your turn with the women too?”
“Yeah, okay, so maybe it sounded like kind of a good deal at the time. But look at what’s happening out here, man! There’s nothing left.”
Mackie emerged from his red haze of rage long enough to glance around. No Zapheads in sight, but the noise might be drawing them from the woods and houses. They couldn’t stay exposed much longer. They’d wasted too much time here already and were down a man.
Have to think fast.
“I lost my head for a second and I agreed to some pretty bad shit,” Artiss sputtered. “I get that now. But when I tried to kill Dante, I just couldn’t do it. I fired, but I was too scared to even aim the gun right.”
“Well, you did kill him,” Mackie said. “He’s dead because of you. Don’t think for one second you failed at that.”
“I just lost my head, man. I figured Herrera would probably kill me even if I did what he asked, but I just...look, I just wanted to believe him. Believe he’d keep me around if I proved myself. God, I’m just so sorry.”
“Why you?” Mackie asked. “I could understand if he wanted to get McRae or Dante or Sayles in on this. Or why not even go directly to Krider with it? Why would he trust some dipshit kid he doesn’t even know?”
“Because he doesn’t trust them, man. He wants to be in charge now. He knew the other guys he’s with and those soldiers, they wouldn’t want that. They’d try to stop him.”
“I’m going to kill you now,” Mackie said, his voice so level he even scared himself. “And when I get back to campus, I’m going to do the same to Herrera and Krider.”
Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1) Page 9