Scavengers

by Nate Southard

  “Hey, Chris. You found ’em yet?”

  A moment of silence, and then, “Sure thing. We’re already halfway to the store. Where the fuck did you go?”

  “Kiss my ass.”

  “And I was gonna bring you back a Snickers bar.”

  He snapped the walkie-talkie back onto his belt and stepped to the window. Morris and Eric stood by the truck, each of them watching different ends of the road. Neither of them appeared panicked in any way. So far, so good.

  He crossed the hall.

  He reached for the doorknob and paused only a second, long enough to whisper something like a prayer, a plea that he might find the keys on the other side. Butterflies fluttered in his stomach, telling him he was taking too much time. He obeyed them and twisted the knob. Locked.

  He stared at the fake brass knob in disbelief. Why on earth would somebody lock this one door and leave the rest of the house wide open?

  He wedged the end of the crowbar between the door and the jamb. He’d never tried something like this before, but he had an idea how it was supposed to work. Once he positioned the bar just above the doorknob, he yanked back with both hands. Wood splintered and popped, the doorjamb cracked, and the door swung open.

  The zombie on the other side charged him.

  The torn sheet around the female’s rotten and bulging neck told him everything he needed to know. She’d locked herself in the room and then hung herself. Probably hadn’t remembered how to work the lock once she woke up hungry.

  He brought the crowbar up with both hands and managed to crack its rounded end against her chin in the instant before she slammed into him and they crashed through the opposite doorway. He gagged at the woman’s stench, but he remembered to shove the crowbar up and away from himself, not even trying to stop his own fall. The impact jarred them both. She snatched at him with hands that had decayed to little more than bony claws. He pushed again, and she tumbled off him, landing in a twisting heap of bones and decomposing meat.

  He scrambled to his knees. He wanted to reach his feet, but he feared he didn’t have enough time. The zombie hissed and shrieked, making animal sounds almost as awful as its stench. It scrambled to a crouch, and thick folds of skin sloughed off its arm and fell to the carpet. He sucked in a great breath and swung the crowbar in a vicious arc.

  The zombie’s head exploded. Brittle bone and brain that was almost liquid flew through the air and peppered the computer desk and wall. The reek of decomposition doubled, and Blake dropped the crowbar and slapped a hand over his nose and mouth.

  He heard thundering feet on the stairs and had enough time to hope it was only Chris before a wave of sudden weakness buckled his knees. He collapsed to the floor and stared at the ruined corpse in something like awe. How much worse could this day get?

  “Jesus, Ellis. Where was she?” Chris, all right. Under the circumstances, he found the man’s voice oddly comforting.

  He pointed out the door. “Across the hall. Hung herself.”

  “You okay?”

  “Fine.” He drew in a shuddering breath and then climbed to his feet, ran his fingers through his hair. Cold sweat left them slick.

  Chris looked back and forth from the ruined woman to the room where she’d killed herself. “Jesus,” he said. “What is it with this place and suicide? Doesn’t anybody want to fight?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Trying to style your hair and failing.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Chris.”

  Chris pouted, an exaggerated expression. “C’mon. Is that any way to talk to the guy who found these?”

  The jingle of keys was the best sound he’d ever heard.

  TWELVE

  Chris watched Eric give the ignition a turn and receive a series of clicks for his trouble.

  “Good try, though. Was rooting for you the whole time.”

  “Goddammit.” the cook said before popping the hood and moving to give Morris a hand.

  Chris watched the big man fumble with the hood, trying to raise it with one good arm. He thought maybe he should help, but decided he’d rather continue to keep a lookout. That’s what they’d told him to do, so fuck them if they needed the help. He’d come running once he heard the truck’s engine turn over, not a second earlier.

  He patted his pockets and realized he still didn’t have any cigarettes, still couldn’t remember the last time he’d had one. Searching his memory banks for a Camel or Marlboro, he came up empty. All he knew for certain was that he’d kill for a fucking cancer stick.

  He eyed the pickup. Eric was snapping the last negative clamp to the Super-Duty’s engine. “Should probably let that charge a couple minutes,” the scrawny guy said.

  Chris turned away and looked at the house. Maybe he could find a pack inside. He had a few minutes to look.

  He walked toward the front door.

  ————————————

  “Are we sure this will even work?” Eric asked Morris. “I’ve never tried this with a battery that wasn’t attached to a running car.”

  Morris nodded. “Years back I had a job at the airport. I had to wheel around a car battery on a cart for folks in long-term parking. All through winter you had batteries going dead, and my job was to freeze my ass off and give folks a jumpstart. Paid great for a part time job.”

  “You say so. How long should we wait?”

  “Few more minutes. We try it too soon, it’ll just drain the good battery.”

  “Right.” He leaned against the truck. Every time he came close to relaxing, his muscles screamed, reminding him just how much frightened tension coursed through his body. They did it now, and he decided leaning wasn’t the best idea. The last thing he needed was for his muscles to cramp up on him.

  He wished he had some kind of edge, but the only thing his mind turned up was cocaine. He remembered the way it used to set his nerves on fire, make him fast and reckless. With a couple of lines he could outrun a freight train right up to the point he fell across the tracks.

  Sometimes he still missed the drug, missed the fun he used to have while sucking it up. It had caused its fair share of problems, though. Hell, the last time he’d used, it had changed his entire life.

  ————————————

  They’d decided to call it a Midnight Party. Maybe it was a silly idea, especially when it was just the two of them, but whenever the pair of them came together it felt like a celebration. So a Midnight Party, a full weekend with no lights and all the cocaine they could inhale. Any fool could have told them it was dangerous and stupid for a couple to do such a thing. The coke told them different, though. When thick became thin, they always listened to the coke before listening to such ridiculous things as reality.

  Eric arrived at Renee’s house just after four in the afternoon on an overcast Friday. His boss had shit-canned him the day before for showing up to work with a white boulder under his left nostril and an aching need to jerk off on one of the waitresses. Thinking back on it, he probably shouldn’t have tried to perform such a move in the middle of the dining room during dinner hours.

  Fuck it. Other jobs would come along. They always did for the good chefs. Besides, Renee was a hotter piece of ass than any of the waitresses at Dante’s.

  She didn’t make him wait until dinner hours, either. She dropped to her knees as soon as he walked in the door, leaving him to try and hold on to two sacks of groceries while he watched her red hairdo bob back and forth in front of his crotch. Once she got him off, she rinsed with some mouthwash and kissed him hello. He started working on her belt, and she pushed him away, told him he had to cook her dinner before he got to stick it in her.

  He snickered but decided it was a fair deal. Better than some of his other girls, at least. Most of them wanted gifts or help making rent. They never could understand their usefulness was directly proportional to the amount of pussy they threw his way.

  So he worked on dinner while Renee worked the lightb
ulbs. She unscrewed the first ten or so, but then she snorted up a couple of lines and got bored. The remaining bulbs she smashed with one of her shoes. How she made it back to the kitchen without ripping her feet to shreds was a wonder of God and nature. She didn’t bother cleaning up the glass, either. When her husband got back from Boston, he’d be good and pissed.

  Eric shrugged as he chopped fresh rosemary. Wasn’t his problem. Once Monday rolled around, he’d be asleep in his apartment. Let Renee deal with her hubby. He’d have to sleep off a hangover and then find a job. Really, he had enough on his plate.

  Dinner took about an hour, rosemary crusted lamb with some vegetables. Not the most difficult dish, and really nothing too amazing, but Renee groaned and moaned through the whole thing like she was close to orgasm.

  He augmented their traditional place settings by cutting up three lines of blow to the right of each plate. Renee tooted hers up like they were an appetizer. He finished his last line for dessert. Then he shoved everything to the floor and laid Renee across the table. She squirmed beneath him, and he pressed her shoulders to the cold wood.

  She’d changed into a black evening gown, really trying to bring some class to the evening. The garment tore down the front in a series of staccato rips, exposing the pale breasts and stomach beneath. Her tiny nipples darted toward the sky, and he gave them all the attention they deserved, his tongue and lips working them in a coke-fueled frenzy. Their sex continued, any trace of emotion dissolving into the white noise memories of snow, buzzing like a transmission through a bad radio.

  She tore at his shoulders as he stabbed his cock into her, ripped a scream out of his chest. Once the pain eased a little he darted forward and shoved his tongue into her mouth. She sucked on it eagerly, moaning into his mouth.

  She rolled him onto his back and moved her knees alongside his waist, rode him like a bull. Her nails dragged over his chest, his sides. The closer she came to the end, the rougher she got. What had started as scratches became slaps. The slaps twisted into punches that rocked his head at the same time they strangely turned him on. She screamed obscenities at him, her hips bucking in time with her words. He slapped at her breasts, leaving red welts over her nipples. She shivered with each impact. He grabbed hold of her waist and tried to hang on until she was finished.

  She called him worthless.

  He called her a slut.

  Her fist popped against his cheekbone, and she called him a faggot.

  He grabbed her hair and yanked her head back until she screamed. He said she was an ugly whore.

  Her fingers twisted in his hair. She growled as she lifted his head and banged it against the table. Stars boomed in his vision, and he thought about what an incredible piece of ass he’d found. She brought his head down again, and the pain sent a shiver of pleasure all the way down his spine to his cock, threatened to make him explode then and there.

  Her growl became a scream, her entire body shuddering like she’d been strapped into an electric chair.

  ————————————

  He remembered her wrenching his head away from the table and the world spinning beneath him like it was out of control. Then he remembered the look of pure ecstasy and hate in her eyes before she crashed his skull against the hardwood and everything went black. Before he could remember anything else, he stepped into the yard and started stretching.

  “Good idea,” Morris said.

  “I thought so.” He bent at the waist and tried to touch his toes. His thighs and calves screeched in protest, but he kept reaching.

  “When was the last time you ran, anyway?”

  “Last night. I started practicing once I came up with the plan.”

  “And before you came up with the plan?”

  He chuckled. “Ten years or more. Who’s counting?” He grabbed his right ankle and lifted it until it touched the back of his thigh. The pain it caused wrenched a gasp out of him. He let the ankle drop and shook out the entire leg, repeated the procedure for the other.

  “You really think you can do it?”

  “Time’ll tell, I guess.”

  Morris shook his head. “Right. Better you than me, I suppose.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t look at me. Not my plan.”

  “Good point.” Eric twisted at the waist and felt the muscles of his torso beg forgiveness. He denied them, continuing to turn and then stretching the muscles of his arms. As he kept working his muscles and tendons into submission, dark thoughts crept into his head. Was this crazy idea he called a plan anything more than suicide? Nobody had offered a better idea, but that didn’t mean his wasn’t insane.

  Maybe insanity was just what they needed, though. The entire world had gone crazy, after all. It took the end of just about everything to do it, but the death and turmoil he’d known in Chicago had finally found him way out here in the middle of nowhere.

  So yeah, his plan was crazy. It was suicidal and stupid, but so was life these days. Anybody who said different was a liar.

  He closed his eyes and continued stretching. When the time came to run, he’d be good and ready.

  ————————————

  Chris chose to look upstairs because he hadn’t spotted anything even resembling a cigarette during his search of the kitchen. He knew the odds of finding something on the second floor were pretty goddamn slim, but he’d gone through enough bullshit already, and if there was any chance he could get some nicotine in his system, he was going to take it. The day wasn’t even halfway over, and he didn’t think he could finish it without smoking something. His body craved tobacco, would settle for nothing else.

  He caught the stench of the dead woman halfway up the stairs. Jesus. He couldn’t think of another time he’d smelled something so bad. Less than an hour earlier he’d been surrounded by the damn things, and the smell hadn’t been nearly as horrible. Maybe the closed in area trapped the stink. It made a certain amount of sense.

  When he failed to find a pack in the master bedroom, he felt his temper flare. What was it with these backwoods bastards? They grew the stuff like you wouldn’t believe, but nobody had a pack of Camels?

  He decided to check the opposite end of the hall. Each step brought a more potent stink, and by the time he crossed the stairway he’d buried his nose in the crook of his arm. It didn’t help much, so he just gave the computer room a glance from the doorway. No smokes sitting out in plain sight. He thought good and hard about checking out the computer desk, but the smell already had him reeling. If he didn’t find any in the opposite room, he’d come back.

  ————————————

  Blake exited the house carrying a gas can. He saw Eric in the yard doing lunges, Morris watching the street, head turning back and forth.

  “Saw the truck only had a quarter tank,” he said. “Found this in the garage.”

  Eric stopped stretching. “Quarter tank should be plenty.”

  “You think? That thing’s a monster.”

  “Doesn’t matter. We don’t know how old the gas in the can is. Might just be varnish by now.”

  Blake shrugged. “Could be the same deal in the truck.”

  “So why push our luck?”

  “I just don’t want to walk home.”

  Eric smiled. A thin layer of sweat glistened on his face. “We won’t be walking home.”

  “Right.” He set the gas down on the lawn. “So, how long until we’re gone?”

  “Five minutes, maybe. Just want to give the battery a little more juice.”

  “Fine.” He turned away from Eric and approached the truck. He pressed his hands to its side and looked up and down the length of its frame. “Better get us home safe,” he whispered. “I promised a girl.”

  THIRTEEN

  Chris paused in the guestroom doorway. He wanted to enter, wanted to find some smokes and maybe a good paperback, but his feet wouldn’t move. Something about the angle, looking down at the unmade bed. It shoved a lump into h
is throat, made his heart accelerate within his chest.

  “Fuck you,” he said, but the memories roared back anyway.

  ————————————

  “It hurts, Daddy!”

  He looked at the bleeding impressions of teeth in Danielle’s arm and tried like hell to keep the panic out of his mind. It was a losing battle though, and he knew that. The sweat that slicked his hands and bit into his eyes told him the truth. The way his entire body shook only reinforced it. When he looked out the windshield and saw the car’s front end jitterbug back and forth across the roadway, he knew he was maybe five minutes from cracking up.

  Danielle whined as she scratched at the wound.

  “Don’t do that, honey.”

  “But it itches.”

  “I thought it burned.”

  “Both!”

  “Well, you’re not supposed to scratch something like that. Remember what I told you about mosquito bites?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me.”

  “If you can go five minutes without scratching them, they’ll never itch again.”

  “That’s right. Now, the clock says it’s twelve after seven. If you can go until seventeen after without scratching that bite again, I promise you it will stop itching.”

  “But it itches real bad.”

  “I know, honey. Just try for me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Sit on your hands.”

  “Okay.” She did as he asked, and her little face scrunched up as she tried to resist the urge to dig her fingernails into the wound.

  He looked at the clock again. Five minutes. Once seventeen after rolled around, she’d know he’d lied to her, that not all of Daddy’s promises came true. Would she believe anything else after that? Would it even matter?