“There was a solar storm, lots of flares,” Mackie said, wondering how technical he should get. The kid probably didn’t understand electromagnetic pulses, and nobody had figured out what kind of radioactive effect had spawned the Zapheads. “They sent off these waves of energy that scrambled the wiring in their brains.”
“Kind of like zombies?”
“Something like that, but these things just want to destroy us instead of eat us. For some reason, some of us don’t seem to be affected.”
“Like those people on campus with the guns? Those are normal people?”
“They aren’t Zapheads, but they’re not normal.”
“I should have been with him. He...” Jason heaved his shoulders as he choked with anger and sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” Mackie said again.
“Did those things get him?”
“They’re called ‘Zapheads,’” Mackie said. “That’s what the news called them before everything shut down. But it wasn’t them that killed Benny.”
Jason drew in a sharp breath. “Who then?”
“Survivors. At the college.”
“What did you people do?” Jason’s voice splintered into sobs.
“Not me. There are some bad people on campus. One of them...he thought your friend was a threat. And he killed him.”
“Benny, he’s...if he doesn’t take his meds, he’s not right.”
Mackie could relate. He’d been off his own meds far too long, and the psychological craving squirmed inside his head like a slick worm.
Jason cleared his throat and asked, “Who did it?”
“A man named Herrera. He’s a psychopath, a murderer.”
“Is he your friend?”
“No, Jason. He isn’t.”
“I want to kill him.”
“So do I.”
Mackie opened his backpack, took out a bottle of water, the remaining Ritz crackers, and the jar of peanut butter. Sabbath swatted playfully at his hands with her paws as he removed the items. She’d seemed eager to escape a few moments earlier, but now that things had settled, she was comfortable once more.
Mackie placed the food and water next to Jason. He didn’t touch them at first, but eventually he opened the sleeve of Ritz and popped a few in his mouth. And then suddenly, the jar of peanut butter was open and Jason was shoveling in handfuls of a muddy cracker and peanut butter mixture, guzzling the water to flush the thick globs of salty sweetness down his throat.
“Go easy,” Mackie said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
Jason just kept shoveling in the food and draining the bottle of water. Soon the cracker sleeve was empty and the jar of peanut butter had been almost fully depleted. Out of crackers, Jason used his fingers to shove in mouthfuls of peanut butter.
Mackie rolled his eyes. So much for saving the rest of the jar for later.
After the crackers, peanut butter, and water were gone, Jason asked, “You have any more?”
“Yeah, but you’ve had enough for now.”
Mackie sat down beside Jason. “What are you doing out here?”
“Told you. I was looking for Benny. I looked for him at the college for awhile, saw people hanging around with guns. Couldn’t find him and I didn’t wanna get shot, so I headed back this way. Saw you and those two girls talkin’. Thought you might know something about Benny.”
“But you couldn’t ask?” Mackie said. “You thought it’d be better to just brain me with a tree branch?”
“Hey, I don’t know who the hell you people are. Looks like you’ve all got guns. I was scared. And I wanted to find my friend. And what if you were one of those things...those Zapheads?”
“Why did you think he’d be on campus?”
“That’s where we were headed when we got separated.”
“You guys knew the way?”
“We’d take field trips from Wendover, sometimes get special tutoring at the college, like we were their guinea pigs. When all hell broke loose, we locked ourselves in this room—there were three of us: me, Benny, and this girl Anna—and we waited there for awhile. Nobody showed up to help. We climbed out a window and ran. Bunch of those crazy people chased us for awhile. We found these houses up on that hill back there...we stayed in one of them for awhile. And then Anna got hurt.”
Mackie checked the forest around them for signs of either Zapheads or Krider’s crew, exhaustion creeping in as Jason continued.
“She went outside one morning, and one of those things was out there...I don’t know what happened. When she came back inside, she had blood all over her.”
Jason wiped at his eyes again. “We tried to take care of her, but she just got worse and worse. Benny, he said he was gonna go to the college, look for help. But he hadn’t had any of his meds for awhile...I mean, he just wasn’t himself.”
Mackie understood. By the time Benny found his way to campus, his brain was in such a fog that he probably couldn’t remember why he had come in the first place.
“Where’s Anna now?” Mackie asked.
“She’s gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I tried to, y’know, bury her out here. Couldn’t find a shovel, just one of those hand tools people use in their gardens—”
“You mean a spade?”
“Think so, yeah. I didn’t do such a good job. Maybe you could come with me, take a look?”
Mackie glanced through the trees in the direction of campus. No orange flame glow. No scent of smoke. He had no idea how long it would take Meredith and Kara to put the plan in motion. There were so many moving parts involved that the probability of failure was high, if not inevitable. There was no time to take a walk with this kid and look at his friend’s makeshift grave.
But until he saw flames or smelled smoke, there was nothing but time.
“Is it far?” Mackie asked.
“No, just on the edge of the woods.”
“Okay, then. Sure.”
19.
Mackie picked up his backpack and they walked east, back toward Faculty Hill. They had little difficulty following a clear path, though they did stumble a few times on uneven patches of ground that weren’t well lit. Just a few feet beyond the point where a backyard gave way to brush, Mackie spotted a shallow depression in the soil. A human shape lay inside, loosely covered with dirt. A hand protruded from the soil, and long strands of hair framed a partially concealed face. The spade lay a few feet away.
“You can’t leave her like that,” Mackie said. “Animals will get to her.”
“I know. I just...I got tired. And I wanted to find Benny.”
Mackie knelt next to the grave. The head of a stuffed toy frog peeked above the dirt covering Anna’s chest.
“She loved that thing,” Jason said. “Always kept it with her. I just...I wanted her to have it.”
“How old was she?” Mackie asked.
“Fourteen, I think.”
“And you?”
“Sixteen.”
Shit. Bad enough being a grown-up in the apocalypse, but to have this as your whole future?
The moon was bright enough to allow Mackie his first clear look at Jason. The kid was tall, roughly the same height as Artiss, with the same long shaggy bangs spilling over his forehead. No wonder Mackie mistook him for Artiss at first. But Jason was stockier, with less of Artiss’ lean, sinewy muscle. He wore jeans and a T-shirt that depicted Spider-Man dangling upside down from a web strand. Below the image was the phrase “Just Hangin’ Around.”
“Help me move her.” Mackie brushed away the soil covering Anna and unclasped the toy frog from her fingers. He tossed the frog aside and slid his forearms beneath her armpits while Jason took hold of her ankles. They lifted Anna from the grave and set her gently to the side. Dirt clung to the bloody wounds on her torso.
“Keep an eye out for Zapheads while I dig.” Mackie clawed furiously at the depression with the spade, deepening it in frustratingly small increments. From this part of the woods, Mackie had no
view of campus, so he worked quickly, tiring himself out much sooner than expected.
After several minutes, his body ached and was slick with sweat. His T-shirt clung to him like a sticky film.
“Something’s moving around in your backpack,” Jason said.
“It’s a cat.”
“A cat?”
“Yes.”
“Is it yours?”
“Just adopted her.”
Jason said something else, but Mackie didn’t hear as he continued scraping away at the soil with the spade. Fortunately, now at the peak of summer, the dirt was loose enough to be excavated with relative ease. During fall or winter, this would’ve been impossible.
As he dug, Mackie constantly craned his neck toward campus, forgetting that he had no view of what was happening in that direction. He sniffed for the scent of smoke but could smell only the dirt and an odor emanating from Anna’s body—-something unclean, but not quite full-on putrescence.
Finally Mackie stopped digging. “I think that’s deep enough.” It probably wasn’t deep enough to keep a determined scavenger from unearthing the body, but it was a much better job than Jason had done.
They gently rolled Anna’s body into the deeper depression. Mackie folded her hands over her chest and placed the toy frog beneath them. Then they scooped handfuls of dirt over her.
Anna was now completely concealed by several inches of soil. Mackie realized the grave wasn’t nearly as deep as he’d first thought. Within a short time, animals would scatter pieces of Anna all over the woods. But maybe Jason would feel a little better now. In the end, did it really make much difference how fast she returned to nature?
“Should we mark the grave with something?” Jason asked.
“Okay, yeah.”
Mackie found several small stones nearby, and placed them on top of the grave in the formation of a cross. He didn’t know Anna’s religious beliefs, and he had none of his own, but at least this was an attempt at meaning.
“Good enough?” he asked Jason.
“Yeah. Yeah, I like that.”
“You wanna say anything?”
Jason knelt down next to the grave. “I’m sorry you got hurt, Anna. I’m sorry we couldn’t get you help in time.” Jason didn’t bother wiping away his tears. “I’m sorry that people weren’t so nice to you. I’m sorry your parents...I’m sorry they did what they did.”
Any kid who ended up at Wendover didn’t have a happy story to tell. He wondered about Jason’s own story, the circumstances that had brought him to Wendover. He seemed more stable than Benny had, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a seething viper’s nest of rage and despair that would claw to the surface in unpredictable ways. The kid could turn violent again at any moment.
After a few moments, Mackie put a paternal hand on Jason’s shoulder and said, “I need to go.”
“Where to?” A glistening smear of tears and snot covered Jason’s face.
“Back to campus. I have to get rid of those bad people.”
“Like the one that killed Benny?”
“Yeah. Especially him.”
Jason stood. “Let me help.”
“No.”
“Hell d’you mean ‘no’? Benny was my friend. I want-”
“I don’t care what you want. These are incredibly dangerous people. Your friends are dead—-no reason for the same to happen to you. There’s some cottages not far from here. You can stay in one until this over. I’ll come back for you then.”
“You mean I can stay with you at the college?” Jason’s voice was hopeful.
“After this is over, yes.”
“But I can help you get these guys. Let me help.”
“No, Jason.”
“But it’s just you. How are you gonna do it alone?”
Mackie picked up his Glock and shouldered the backpack. He couldn’t feel Sabbath moving inside, so he gave the pack a slight jostle to provoke some movement, to make sure she was still alive. He felt her shift around inside, heard the clank of the cans as her body moved against them.
“It’s not just me,” Mackie said. “Some people on campus will help. We have a plan.”
“Well, I’m gonna do something to help, too. You can’t stop me.”
Mackie rushed at Jason, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and jabbed the Glock into his throat. “You can stay where I put you and keep out of my way, or I can put you down here and bury you next to your friend.”
“All right, you asshole! Screw you, man.”
Mackie didn’t respond to the burst of face-saving machismo.
“Let’s go.”
They moved quietly through the woods. At one point, Jason’s foot snagged a root and he toppled to the ground. Mackie helped him up, and the walk resumed.
“What’s your name?” Jason asked.
“Mackie.”
“You a student at the college?”
“Used to be.”
“Quit or graduated?”
“Graduated.”
“So...what are you doing here now?”
“Saving the world. What does it look like?”
When they arrived at the eastern edge of the woods, Mackie looked out toward campus. No flames. No smoke. As the trees and brush thinned, the ground sloped downward into a valley where the cottages sat. The roofs were silver under the moonlight. There was no sign of movement near the cottages, at least in the open areas.
Mackie and Jason walked down the embankment and into the valley below. Jason stumbled over something that rang out with a hollow clank. A figure shuffled between two of the cottages, its glittering eyes giving away its location. It looked to be a burly, overweight male that moved with an awkward lurch.
“One of them,” Jason whispered.
“I’ll handle this.”
Mackie crept alongside one wall, listening for the Zaphead’s footsteps. He planned to swing the Glock’s barrel into the Zaphead’s temple, dropping him long enough to use the knife.
But before he could attack, Jason rushed past him and plowed into the Zaphead, knocking him to the ground. The Zaphead emitted a clicking, chuckling sound, clumsily rolling around while Jason punched at his head. The kid seemed to be unleashing his anger on the creature, but he was raising a ruckus that would draw any Zaphead in the vicinity.
Mackie stood over them and waited for Jason to change position atop the Zaphead, and then drove the tip of the Ka-Bar into the mutant’s forehead. Its limbs collapsed and it lay sprawled on its back, Jason rolling away and wiping at the blood that had sprayed his face.
“What did you do that for?” Mackie whispered.
“To show you I could help.”
“You put us in danger. I don’t need that kind of help.”
Mackie tried the door of the nearest cottage. Locked. He lifted his Glock to smash out a window near the front door when he heard a voice to his left say, “Who’s your friend?”
Mackie spun toward the voice and came face to face with barrel of an assault rifle, Artiss standing at the other end of it, his face leering and predatory.
20.
“You need to stop pointing that thing at me,” Mackie said.
His head had turned at the sound of the voice, the hand holding the Glock a split second from instinctively following suit, but the rifle’s barrel was looming large in Mackie’s face before he had a chance to raise his own weapon.
Artiss nodded toward Jason. “Where’d you pick up this stray?”
So the little shit had betrayed him. Not entirely unexpected. Mackie had anticipated something like this: send Meredith and Kara along as planned, wait until they were out of the woods, create a false sense of security. Mackie had considered the possibility but felt powerless to eliminate it. Artiss was an unknown variable, and Mackie had lost the gamble, that was all.
The question was where was Herrera? And Kara and Meredith?
“You gonna tell me who he is?” Artiss asked, pointing the rifle’s barrel over Mackie’s shoulder at Jason. “Or
maybe he wants to introduce himself?”
“His name is Jason. I met him in the woods. He’s from Wendover Home.”
Artiss laughed. “Are you kidding me, man? Another one of those freak kids? They’re all over the place now that nobody’s around to keep them in their cages.”
“Artiss, I told you what was gonna happen if you screwed me over.”
“Yeah, you did. But I got the bigger gun now. Toss me that Glock.”
“Artiss, what you’re holding there, it’s out of your league. Why don’t you put that thing down before you get hurt?”
“Yeah, it’s nighttime and I can’t see so great, but at this range? Won’t be hard to hit you or your new buddy.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Mackie dropped the Glock and booted it toward Artiss. Artiss kicked the Glock behind him with the heel of his shoe. “And that backpack. I want that, too.”
“Nope.”
The shadows created by the moonlight contorted Artiss’ stunned expression into the semblance of a demonic Halloween mask. “Hell did you say?”
“I’m keeping the backpack.”
“Maybe I’ve decided that you’re not.”
“I’m keeping the backpack.”
“Doesn’t bother you any that I’ve got this rifle pointed at your face?”
Mackie sighed. “You’ve got us, Artiss. But I’m keeping this backpack.”
“Why? Because of that cat you’ve got in there?”
“Yes.”
“Cute.” Artiss chuckled. “You reach for anything in there and I’ll put you and your friend down.”
“Sure,” Mackie said. “And then what story do you tell Krider and Herrera this time? You’re burning up your supply of lies.”
Artiss stepped back at an angle and motioned toward the cottage on his right. “In there, asshole.”
Mackie and Jason stepped over to the cottage’s front door. Mackie turned the knob, pushed the door open, and they both stepped inside. Artiss shifted behind him—stooping to pick up the Glock, Mackie figured.
Inside the cottage was more of that same dead, humidity-choked air Mackie was tired of sucking in. Being outdoors after the Big Zap was far preferable—-at least the sun hadn’t scorched away the clean mountain air. He could only imagine how bad the big cities were, with bodies piled high and everything rotting.
Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1) Page 12