Bone And Cinder: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller (Zapheads Book 1) (13 page)

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.

The blinds were open in the room, allowing bluish moonlight to filter inside in horizontal shafts, though hardly enough to illuminate the room.  After Mackie’s eyes adjusted, his gaze darted around.  He expected to see Herrera’s bulk propped in a chair, his wolfen smile glowing ghost-like.

No one was there.  Nothing but cheap, dusty furniture and carpeting.  A flat-screen TV that would never again vaporize brain cells in the guise of entertainment.

When Artiss came inside and shut the door, Mackie asked, “You must have seen that Zaphead outside. Why didn’t you kill it?”

“He wasn’t bothering me none,” Artiss said.  “Besides, a dead Zaphead lying around, that might have tipped you off that someone else was close by.”

Mackie and carelessness had a long history together, most of it attributable to his pill appetite.  But underestimating Artiss—-that was one mistake too many.  And it looked like he’d pay for it with his life.

“Where is he?” Mackie asked.

“Where’s who?”

“Herrera.”

Artiss laughed again.  “He’s, uh...well, he’s not here yet.  But he will be soon.”

Even with Artiss holding them at gunpoint, there was an extra layer of...
wrongness
here.  The situation was coming into view like a slowly developing Polaroid; and there were still parts of the picture Mackie couldn’t yet see.

“Artiss...what’s happening here?”

The shadows that painted Artiss’ face still twisted his features into fright-mask contortions, but his expression seemed less demonic now, more wistful.  “Maybe it’s time for a new plan.”

Jason, confused, said, “Dude, what is he—”

“Quiet, Jason,” Mackie said.

“That would be a good idea,” Artiss said.  “Mackie knows I don’t mind shooting somebody.”

Mackie swallowed down the bile that was creeping into his throat.  “What you told me on Faculty Hill...was any of it true?  Does Herrera even know about any this?  Taking over the campus...was that really his plan?  Or was it yours?”

“He doesn’t know about it
yet
,” Artiss said.  “But he will.  And I know he’ll like the idea.  I mean, you think I can’t tell what’s going on here?  That guy Krider...he’s obviously involved with the mob, right?  Or, hell, maybe the mob doesn’t even really exist anymore, but that guy...he’s definitely involved with organized crime in some way.  And a big Mexican walking around with guns and a bulletproof vest?  We gotta be talking cartel, right?  And look, I’m no expert on this, but I know prostitution is big business for cartels.  If that was the case before all this shit happened, why does it have to be any different now?  If anything, sex has become even more of a prime commodity.  It’s not like money has any value.”

Mackie laughed.  “So you’re a sick little prick that’s okay with rape.  Now you’re stuck here with all these beautiful women on campus, and there’s no law, no authority of any kind to tell you that you can’t do what you want to do.  That I understand.  But why bring Herrera into it?”

“Because he’s a
beast
.  He’s massive.  So powerful, I can tell.  He’s the one that needs to be in charge.  Krider seems too much of a pussy for what this is going to take.”

“So, if Herrera isn’t involved in this, how’d you get my Glock?” Mackie asked.

“Just swiped it, man.  The other guy that’s always with Krider and Herrera—”

“McRae.”

“Yeah, I guess so.  He had it on him.  He takes it out while he takes a piss.  Goes off to get high with Todd and Emma, forgets the gun.  Nobody was watching, so I took it.”

“They’ll be after you.”

“When you threatened to kill me, after that screw-up with Dante, I had to think fast.”  Artiss’ voice softened.  “I figured you’d come up with some plan to take out Herrera, and I was hoping you’d let me be involved.  But the way you freaked out, I figured you were even more dangerous than Herrera.”

“Because I am.” Mackie’s voice was cold, even though he was vulnerable at the moment.  Artiss clearly didn’t want to kill him, at least not right away.

“There’s only room for one top dog here.  The only way this works is if all y’all are dead.  You, Krider, anybody standing in the way.”

“Your dream is a sick little fantasy.  Don’t you realize the world is over?  We’re all that’s left?”

“What’s this got to do with me?”  Jason asked.

“Shut up.” Artiss’ voice rose an octave and became shrill and juvenile, like a psycho spoiled brat whose toys had been taken away.  “I’m the one with the gun now.”

“Where’s Kara and Meredith?”  Mackie asked.

“I got them here, man.  They’re tied up good’n’tight in the back room.  First I’m going to kill you and the retard here. Then I’m going to break them in a little for what’s ahead.  And after I’m through, I’m gonna find Herrera and make my pitch, with your corpse as a token of good faith.”

“And what makes you think Herrera’s gonna keep you around?” Mackie asked.  “Maybe he’ll decide he likes your plan, but he doesn’t actually
need you
to make it work.”

“He’ll go for it.  ‘cause I’ll be
his
.  I’ll do anything he wants.  I can be useful to him.  He’ll see.”

Artiss smiled.  It had a cold, serpent quality that was almost as predatory as Herrera’s.  “And I’m sorry, man, but that cat of yours?  When we start running low on food, it ain’t gonna be around for long.”

Mackie wasn’t convinced that Artiss had somehow grown a big enough pair of balls to kill him, but the young man’s twitching and fast chatter made Mackie uneasy.  The guy was close to losing it.  Mackie would have to play this just right.

“Okay, let’s say Herrera goes for your big plan.  That still leaves Krider to deal with.  And Krider might be a little pissed that you took me out.”

“Yeah,” Artiss snorted.  “I forgot you guys were best friends forever.  But I like my odds.”

“I never would’ve let you live, after what happened on Faculty Hill.  I had no problem letting you think I would, so that’d you go along with this plan I had, back when I thought you were scared and sorry and wanted to make things right.  But I would’ve killed you after it was over.  Meredith, one of the girls you’re so eager to rape?  She tried to talk me out of it.  Think about that when you’re doing whatever sick shit you plan to do to her.”

While he held Mackie and Jason at gunpoint and rambled, Artiss’ face had shifted in kaleidoscopic fashion from childish innocence to casual, stupid cruelty to predatory hunger and back again.  Now his face changed into something Mackie recognized as pure, boiling anger, the shadows casting him as almost cartoonish evil.

“I’m not a retard.”  It was Jason.

“What’s that?” Artiss said.

“You called me a ruh-retard.  I’m not a retard.”

“Well, I don’t give a shit what you are.  But if you were normal, you wouldn’t have ended up at Wendover.”

“I’m not—”

“Hush, Jason,” Mackie said.  Anyone who thought the human race would rise to its best when facing extinction had been a fool.  As far as he could tell, most of the survivors had devolved into craven, selfish sociopaths.  At least the Zapheads had an excuse for their behavior.

“Whatever you are, you’re gonna be dead in just a sec,” Artiss said.  “Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to head over to Wendover and make sure no other retards are left crawling around over there.  ‘cause I damn sure don’t want no more of y’all showing up around here.  Well, no
boys,
anyway.”  The grin was back.

“And Mackie, when I get hold of your crazy zombie bitch girlfriend, I’m gonna do stuff to her that no one’s even thought of yet—”

Thum thum thum.

Someone pounded on the door, and a voice Mackie didn’t recognize called out, “I can hear you in there!  C’mon out!”

Artiss instinctively turned his head toward the door.

Before he realized his mistake, Mackie was on him.

Mackie twisted the rifle’s barrel to the right, out of harm’s way, and bulldozed Artiss backward toward the front door.  Artiss’ finger squeezed the rifle’s trigger and a hail of bullets sprayed into the adjoining kitchen.  Shots struck the stove and the refrigerator in a series of metallic
pings
.

With Mackie’s weight driving him, Artiss crashed hard into the front door, with a wooden crack and the rattle of hinges.  On the other side of the door, the voice called out, “Shit!”

Mackie kept the rifle pinned to Artiss’ chest and drove his forehead into Artiss’ nose.  There was that same, satisfying tomato-on-concrete
splat
Mackie remembered earlier from the first beating he gave Artiss, and trails of blood poured from Artiss’ nostrils to his lips.

Beating this little prick just never stopped being fun.

Mackie cocked his head back and plowed it into Artiss’ face a second time.  Artiss screamed and then lunged his head forward, sinking his teeth into a piece of Mackie’s cheek.

The pain felt like a face full of hornets.  Mackie drove a knee up into Artiss’ crotch, but Artiss shifted his hips slightly so that his thigh took the force of Mackie’s knee rather than his ball sack.

So the kid wasn’t a complete idiot after all.

With a resounding crash, the door burst inward, the force sending Artiss and Mackie hurtling backwards.  Mackie dug in his heels to stop the momentum.

He hadn’t had time to shrug off the impact before charging at a briefly distracted Artiss.  If he lost his balance and ended up on his back...well, that was it.

A silhouette filled the doorway, backlit by the moon.  The door hung loosely from its hinges.  The light was too sparse to make out any features, but an assault rifle was part of the silhouette.  The figure was definitely too small to be Herrera.  And that hadn’t been Herrera’s voice.