Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1)

Mackie Dailey dismounted his bicycle as he rolled into town, the rear tire nearly flat. He fed a palm-full of Vicodin into his mouth and flushed them down with warm Diet Coke before patting his waist for the comforting heft of his Glock. It was tucked in his jeans and hidden beneath his windbreaker.

He wasn’t sure why he was hiding it, exactly. Habit more than anything. He hadn’t needed it since gunning down the last Zaphead about three miles back.

The Vicodin, however, Mackie always seemed to need. Prescription pain meds were in high demand in After, and thus served as useful currency. The few poor souls who survived the solar storms craved escape from their unfortunate new reality.

You didn’t spend much time on the highways these days without both weapons and items for bartering. In the six weeks since the shit hit the cosmic fan, Mackie had dealt from both hands—sometimes for food, sometimes to rid the world of those violent, glittery-eyed creatures that had mutated during the catastrophe. An old man holed up in a stranded Winnebago had told them they were known as “Zapheads,” a name given them by the mainstream media just before the storms put the lights out for good.

Mackie dropped the bike on the road, letting it bang against a Mercedes that had a white-haired, well-dressed corpse at the wheel.

He didn’t need the bike anymore. After two weeks and two hundred miles, he was nearly there.

Pecks Mill was as dead as all the other places, a faded factory town in the western North Carolina Mountains that never had a chance to reinvent itself. Old brick and cracked concrete harbored no signs of activity, human or otherwise. Cars and trucks jammed the downtown area, bodies drawing flies in some of them, doors open on others. The sandwich shops, art galleries, law offices, and antique malls sat silent behind dark glass. The stagnant odor of rot permeated the streets.

Mackie thought about calling out, but he was close enough to his destination. Why risk another encounter? He only had three clips left for the Glock, and he wasn’t in a trading mood at the moment, assuming any survivors lurked in the buildings or their upper-floor apartments.

Something clattered in an alley, sheet metal scraping.

Mackie drew his Glock and shifted to the sidewalk, stepping over a dead delivery man dressed in brown. He hugged the wall and eased down to the corner of the building. Zapheads were drawn to noise and movement, and probably employed a wide range of sensory inputs that no one had time to analyze. When you were in survival mode, the scientific process went to the back burner.

Footsteps slapped on pavement away from him, followed by a whispered “No.”

Human.

Mackie poked his head around the corner. A young man—maybe just a teenager—fled up a fire escape. Just behind him was a Zap, evident by her ragged clothes, wild hair, and crazed demeanor. She could have been a teacher or housewife before. Now she was clearly on the hunt.

Mackie leveled the Glock and hit her in the back just as she reached the first metal rung of the fire escape. The report echoed between brick walls like thunder in a desert canyon.

That will draw them, for sure.

The survivor reached the second-floor landing and looked down at Mackie. Young, dirty-faced, and scared, but his eyes didn’t have that glittering Zap quality. Definitely a human.

“Wait,” Mackie said, but the kid elbowed the glass in a window and rolled inside the building.

Before Mackie could reach the fire escape, a weird, rattling sound came from behind a delivery truck. Two Zapheads emerged, jogging at him in that weird half-speed hurry they used when wanting to destroy.

Getting their rage on.

He couldn’t worry whether they might have been upstanding citizens only six weeks ago. He couldn’t trouble himself with the morality of murder. Zaps were a threat, and they’d rip him apart if they could. Mackie had some unfinished business, and these things were nothing but dangerous obstacles.

He wasted two more rounds. The kid he’d saved was long gone. Probably sixteen years old, he’d be too freaked out to trust Mackie anyway. The kid would be a liability, too, a responsibility that would slow him down and endanger him.

Mackie continued his journey, more alert now. The pills took the edge off the adrenaline, or he’d be wired so tightly that his head would explode.

Better finish this before those wires snap and whip my brain into Jell-O.

The Evans-Lawson campus began to emerge from the rows of stores, parking lots, and modest houses that lined both sides of the road. Mackie hadn’t been here in some time, but even in After, the campus had lost none of its intoxicating bucolic flavor. The landscaping was still orderly and the lawns had not yet gone over to weeds. The green ridges that rose up behind its stone-walled buildings imparted a sense of protection and refuge, like a medieval castle keep.

If any local survivors had banded together, they’d almost certainly be holed up there. Hopefully with Allie among them.

And maybe Krider. Two birds with one stone.

Mackie wasn’t much for nostalgia, but something turned in his chest just the same. He’d had some good times here. With its quaint, mountain charms and proximity to ski resorts and hiking destinations, Evans-Lawson was more popular with outdoorsy slackers than the intelligentsia. Mackie belonged to neither group—and neither did Allie, really—but he missed the place just the same.

Those days reminded him of things long forgotten in After: possibilities, youthfully naïve optimism, maybe even love.

What came later was something very different.

Something much uglier.

And that was even before the solar storms scorched the sky and turned the world below into a wasteland worthy of a Bad Religion record.

The storms shut down the world’s power grid and rendered any device or service dependent on it useless.

Cell phones, cable, internet. Cars, even.

All of it gone.

But that wasn’t the worst of what the storms brought.

A pair of decomposed bodies, bloated with rot and saturated in congealed blood the consistency of pancake batter, lay facedown in the gas station parking lot just ahead. Another sat in a dark blue Mazda parked near the front entrance, his head leaning against the driver’s-side window, smears of blood and liquefied skin staining the glass.

There were no more Zapheads nearby as far as Mackie could tell. The campus would likely be a different story.

Mackie jogged across the road and entered the campus from a northwestern angle, the August sun to his back, his Glock held in a two-handed grip and pointed downward. The summer sessions were always sparsely populated. Otherwise the number of corpses lying on the grounds would have numbered in the dozens rather than the sporadic few Mackie encountered as he moved further toward Linvale Residence Hall.

He couldn’t be sure he would find Allie there, assuming she had survived the storms and remained unchanged, but she had made Linvale her home for the previous four semesters, so it made sense to try there first.

Far more likely, though, he would find her body lying somewhere here on the campus lawns among the other corpses.

That was the second-best outcome.

In addition to laying ruin to the world’s technological infrastructure, the solar storms also cut a reaper’s swath across humanity’s population. Most died immediately, the electrical and chemical processes powering their bodies snuffed out by one angry lash of the sun.

Some did survive, and a few of those had come through unharmed and no different than they were prior to the Big Zap, besides being scared shitless.

The others became something different.

The shock must have affected something in their nervous systems, or maybe their brain wiring. Mackie didn’t need to understand the science to know these things were bad news. Lots of bad news.

And every survivor mattered. If enough humans were left, they’d eventually have to make a stand and take back their world. Not that Mackie wanted any part of that task. He’d never been one for enlisting.

I’m finding Allie and Krider, if they’re around, and then I’m out.

Clinging to the shadows of campus support buildings, Mackie fought mixed emotions. The deep, rich green of the campus lawns, the dogwoods and white oaks, and beautiful stone architecture of the residence halls and academic buildings stoked pleasant memories from his days as a student here. But the sight of scattered corpses and the stench that accompanied them burned those memories to vapor.

The Vicodin began to take hold in his bloodstream—a euphoric flush of warmth and pleasurable numbness. That was probably why the shuffle of staggered footsteps behind him didn’t register right away, until the fingers scrabbled at his flesh.

The weight hit him.

Frenzied breaths sprayed hot mist on his neck.

Teeth sank into the soft meat just above his right shoulder.

A biter. Most of them just rip and claw.

Mackie jutted his pelvis forward and then rammed his backpack into the Zaphead’s gut. Mackie gripped the Zaphead’s forearm and bent forward, yanking the thing off-balance. The momentum carried the Zaphead over Mackie’s shoulder. She landed at his feet with a wet gasp.

Mackie was an average martial artist at best. More efficient with a Glock or Ka-Bar knife than his fists or feet. Thankfully, a few of the techniques he picked up from Krider’s man Braunbeck in Tampa had stuck.

Mackie planted one boot on the mutant, pinning it to the ground.

The Zaphead was a girl, early twenties, a brunette with a pixie haircut and a dingy gray tank top. A Misfits insignia was tattooed on her throat beneath her right jaw. A punk chick, the type Mackie would’ve once found appealing.

She wasn’t very sexy now. Her eyes were a dry, stoner red, irises glittering like a mad furnace. Her lips were torn and mangled, most of her teeth ground down to stumps and exposed nerves.

She had obviously tried chewing through something her teeth weren’t strong enough to pierce, tearing her mouth to raw hamburger in the process. Common Zap behavior. He’d bet some human bones had done much of the damage.

The bite near Mackie’s shoulder burned and stung, but it didn’t concern him. Zapheads, as far as anyone could tell, weren’t infectious, unlike the zombies of pop culture. Instead of feeding, they simply wanted to destroy.

The girl thrashed and shrieked beneath his boot. His Glock fired with a sharp crack, and a hole opened in the Zap’s forehead.

One more for the burn pile, God.

Not that he thought anything up there was watching or listening, but the alternative was talking to himself, and that wouldn’t end well.

Three other Zapheads ambled near the rear of a lecture hall building a short distance ahead. The sound of the pistol shot had captured their attention, but with their view of Mackie partially obscured by the building, their eyes had yet to locate the source.

Save ammo. Time to move
.

Evans-Lawson had a relatively small, compact campus, unlike more sprawling mountain universities such as Appalachian State. Traversing it from end to end was a ten-minute stroll at most. When you were running for your life, it could be done in ninety seconds.

He took off for Linvale Dorm. He didn’t contemplate what he might find there. If Allie was dead, well, he had more than enough narcotics in his possession to dampen his anguish while he waited for the abyss to consume him.

No matter the end result, Mackie wouldn’t have to feel pain for long. Or feel anything, for that matter.

He darted forward, dodging fallen corpses. Most of them seemed to be students, given their youthful appearance and clothing.

Well, “youthful appearance”
was stretching it, considering the decomposition taking place. Pus oozed from nose rings and flies found succulence in various orifices as death, the great equalizer, worked steadily to erase their ages. But these had obviously been kids, only a few years younger than Mackie himself, cut down inside the comforting bubble of academia before the realities of corporate economies had an opportunity to do the same.

A few of the bodies seemed older—thirties, maybe even early forties at a guess. Whether these were nontraditional students or faculty members, Mackie wasn’t sure. One thing he knew: death didn’t discriminate a damned bit when it came to granting tenure.

The constant stench of putrescence was something he avoided. He preferred to keep a wide berth from the decaying bodies scattered on the grass. Even so, he looked at each one closely to be sure Allie wasn’t one of them.

He no longer had a line of sight on the three Zapheads he’d left behind. Hopefully the noise from his Glock had drifted vapor-like across what little remained of their ability to process stimuli, and their attentions were now focused elsewhere. At any rate, now that Mackie had gained some distance, they were off his radar.

Plenty of new worries to contemplate.

Linvale loomed ahead, to the left of the student union. At six stories, it was the largest residence hall on campus and one of the few at Evans-Lawson that wasn’t co-ed. Like most other buildings on campus, it was an intricate, neoclassical style stone construction. Easily defended, except for the glass doors and high windows on the ground floor.

Mackie quickly covered the remaining distance, his back bent in a slight crouch and his eyes scanning left and right. Afternoon was sliding toward evening, and he wanted to get a feel for the landscape before dark. You didn’t shut your eyes unless your back was covered and you had an escape plan. Despite the opiates, he’d adapted to survival mode with almost startling ease, as if he’d been subconsciously preparing for this collapse his entire life.

Because you’ve been wrecking the inside all along. Now you have the environment to match.

It was almost laughable, this notion that he actually had some idea what he was doing. Since graduation, he had learned to use a gun and handle himself reasonably well in a fight, true.

And he had killed people. Normal people, not just the Zapheads that crossed his path.

Yet he was far from an expert at this sort of thing.

But then, who was?

He paid particular attention to each entrance he passed. The doors to most buildings at Evans-Lawson were opened on the inside by push bars; while even the highest functioning Zaphead would have some difficulty negotiating a doorknob, it would be simple enough for one to lean his weight against a push bar and stumble outside if he happened to see Mackie through the door’s glass inset.

He’d been taught that situational awareness was a crucial element of self-defense, and though some Zapheads moved at a more languid pace and seemed less observant than their rabid brethren, Mackie wanted to spot them in advance rather than be caught unaware again. The Vicodin wasn’t helping; Mackie’s arms were waterlogged and the harbor fog of an early-stage narcotic high settled over his head.

Not the most ideal circumstances for an armed man waist-deep in potential threats on an extraction mission. But he wasn’t sure he could handle what lay ahead without a good buzz to soften the edges. And he sure wouldn’t be at the top of his game with the monkey of withdrawals riding his shoulders, pounding a hammer into the back of his skull.

Another scattering of corpses sprawled on Linvale’s front lawn—most female, but none of them Allie. A momentary surge of hope cut through the Vicodin swimming in Mackie’s bloodstream. But there was no percentage in getting too excited just yet. Assuming she was even inside the building and not elsewhere on campus, Allie was likely either dead or another member of Zaphead Nation.

Or she could be nowhere near Evans-Lawson. It was the slimmest of possibilities, but Allie may have left the campus, either alone or with other survivors, to look for help elsewhere. Though her car was surely as dead as every other at the moment, she may have even tried finding her way back to her parent’s home in a county several hours east.

The thought sent shards of ice stabbing through Mackie’s gut. Allie likely wouldn’t last long on the highway, even with traveling companions. He wasn’t sure any survivors would last long, including himself.

Not that he planned on lasting. Once he determined that Allie was safe and he warmed his soul on that last ember of joyful memory, and then making sure Krider was dead, he was checking out. Pills or pistol, either would do, though one option was certainly more pleasurable than the other.

He wished he could call her, but even if cell phones still worked, she had changed her number and blocked his several months ago. Just normal relationship turmoil that now seemed laughably silly in the face of the human race’s possible extinction.

Gee, the world’s gone to shit. But can we still be Facebook friends?

All residence hall doors required a keycard that doubled as student ID for entry. The glass panes in the front pair of doors and first floor windows remained surprisingly unbroken, but the glass in the doors was reinforced by wire mesh. No point in trying to shatter it to enter the building. The first-floor dorm room windows were an option, but the blinds were drawn and Mackie wasn’t about to enter a room he couldn’t case first. The sound of breaking glass might also draw other Zapheads.

But...wait
.
The solar storm shut down all power. Anything powered by electricity is useless now, even electric locks.

That should mean...

Mackie gripped the handle, pressed down on the latch with his thumb—

—and felt his heart speed up as he pulled the door open smoothly and without even the squeaking of a hinge.

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