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

by Nicholson, Scott

  Kara nodded. “My room’s on the first floor. I tried to leave a couple of times, but some of those things were roaming the hall. Thought it made more sense to wait here for help.”

  Mackie’s face hardened. “You were just gonna leave her here?”

  Kara’s eyes widened and a note of defensiveness raised the pitch of her voice. “I wanted to find help. I wanted to see what the hell was going on. The power goes out, our phones stopped working. I see all these dead bodies out the window on the lawn, and then Allie—”

  Mackie held up his hand. “I get it.”

  “It’s those storms that did this, right?”

  “I think so, yeah. I think that’s how it started. I talked to some survivors on the road and they told me about the media reports. Big solar storm was just supposed to mess with communication satellites, but apparently the electromagnetic pulse was way bigger than scientists predicted. And some people were already turning into Zapheads before the worst of the storms hit.”

  “Is it like this everywhere?”

  “Everywhere that I’ve seen. I imagine the cities are worse.”

  Allie’s Benadryl fog continued to lift, and she struggled frantically against the tape binding her hands and feet. An odd, guttural moan rumbled from her throat but was choked off by the panties stuffed and taped inside her mouth.

  Mackie opened his backpack, rooted through crushed packages of potato chips and Lance crackers—the contents made soggy by a can of Diet Coke that ruptured while he was struggling with the Zapheads in the stairwell—and pulled out a syringe filled with clear liquid.

  “What’s that?” Kara asked.

  “Haldol. A sedative. After the storms, me and a few others raided a hospital. I thought if I found Allie, but she wasn’t...if she was like the others, I could use this to keep her calm while we escaped.”

  “So, you were going to, what, just date-rape-drug her and carry her out of here on your back like a caveman?”

  An epically shitty plan, Mackie agreed. Just like all the other plans he’d made with Allie.

  He uncapped the syringe and moved toward Allie. “Well, the good news is I won’t have to do it alone. There are two of us now.”

  “Wait a second, hero. I didn’t sign up for a rescue mission. And what are you going to do with her? Keep her as a pet? And what if that stuff doesn’t work on her?”

  “I can’t leave her like this.” After tapping the syringe and gently depressing the plunger to remove air bubbles, Mackie darted the needle into Allie’s arm.

  Her eyes gradually lost focus, and her motions became less spastic as the Haldol took effect.

  “Is that safe?” Kara asked, as if it mattered whether the drug killed her now.

  Mackie nodded. “I think so, yeah. But if we want to carry her out of here, I don’t think we have much choice.”

  “So what now? We try to leave?”

  “Unless you want to live in a dorm room the rest of your natural life.” Mackie sat beside Allie again, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.

  Not a terrible idea, he thought.

  College life had been many things: freedom, momentum, possibilities.

  Allie.

  Mackie’s relationship with guns, drugs, death, crushing guilt, and the ephemeral dragon he chased that made the guilt tolerable now seemed light years from his student life.

  Being here, it was something that he had never stopped missing.

  He drew his knees to his chest and let his head fall forward. He didn’t know anything about Zaphead physiology, but she seemed calmer now.

  “You’ve got a gun,” Kara said. “I’d say that wins a game of ‘Paper rock scissors.’”

  Kara crossed the cluttered room and peeked through the curtains. “A few of those…what was that word you used? Zapheads?”

  Mackie nodded. “That’s what we call them.”

  Kara seemed to turn the word over inside her head. “Some of them are wandering around out there. It will be dark in two hours. May as well wait until then.”

  “Sounds good. I just...I just need to rest for a little bit.”

  Kara sat on the lower bunk, where Mackie had been just a few moments before. “Did you get anything else while you were at the hospital?” she asked.

  “Antibiotics. Some basic first-aid supplies. Raided a vending machine, too.” A hefty dose of prescription pain meds, as well, though he chose not to mention it. Vicodin, morphine, Oxy. Mackie had, up to this point, restricted his pill intake to Vicodin, a weaker branch of the opioid family tree. He found comfort and fuel for denial in that small bit of self-control.

  But if he needed an excuse to up the ante, the end of the world certainly qualified. He realized he’d hatched a fallback plan after all.

  “We have some food here,” Kara said. “Some soup cups and chips. Ramen noodles, Chef Boyardee. I’ve tried feeding Allie a little, but I can’t get much in her. And, y’know, I don’t want her to choke.”

  Mackie hadn’t even considered that Allie may not have eaten recently. Kara had even changed her soiled clothes, apparently. He felt a sudden rush of gratitude toward the young woman. Maybe she’d only stayed here out of fear, but she could have rid herself of Allie at any time.

  They rested in silence for awhile as something thumped in the floor below. Mackie’s gaze moved around the room. Little about it had changed since he’d been here last. The posters were different and reflected Allie’s changing tastes in music, but the small millennial-era television and dollar-store DVD player were the same. In one corner of the room, a dust-coated Fender acoustic guitar sat. Allie had used it to strum songs by Nirvana, Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, and other bands that had enjoyed their greatest popularity during her early childhood.

  He’d teased her about playing “Wonderwall,” the cliché for solo guitarists the world over. What he wouldn’t give now to hear that familiar chord progression ring out from beneath her fingers again.

  And the smell. Aside from the Zap stench, the room had the same odor Mackie remembered from his first visit here, years ago. Musty, but flavored with a light floral scent, a faint but not cloying undertone of incense. The only difference was the smell of urine from Allie’s soiled blankets.

  “She talked about you some,” Kara said. “You know...before.”

  Mackie lowered his chin to his chest again. “I can’t imagine she would’ve had much good to say.”

  “I could tell she cared about you. She was worried, I think. About the pills. The people you worked for.”

  Mackie nodded. “She had a reason to be. I made some bad choices.”

  Mackie listened to the wind blowing through the trees, fresh summer air drifting through the gap in the window, a bird chattering somewhere as if its world hadn’t changed a bit.

  “You showing up here like this, with everything that’s happening out there...you obviously care about her a hell of a lot,” Kara said.

  “She ever tell you anything that suggested she thought otherwise?” he asked.

  “Well, no. She knew how you felt. I don’t think she questioned that.”

  Mackie sighed, closed his eyes. “I was a couple of months away from graduation, and all I could think about was how I didn’t really want to go home. I’d lie in my room every night and all I could think about was the uncertainty...what do I do next? What kind of job will I get? How do I be...y’know, significant? All I really wanted to do was just stick around here. Then I met Allie and she gave me a reason to.”

  Kara smiled. “You wanted to be one of those creepy guys who never leaves college?”

  “Allie was here. There was nowhere else to graduate to.”

  Allie’s restless motions had eased now, the Haldol soothing the fires burning inside her skull. She still appeared conscious, but Mackie hoped she’d fall asleep soon.

  Do Zaps even sleep? What would she dream about? Being human again?

  He stood, picked up the blanket from where it had landed when he threw it off Allie earlier, an
d draped it over her again. The act of tenderness was in wild contrast to the tension in her features.

  “She told you other things too, didn’t she?” Mackie said. Something about the shape of Kara’s face and wavy hair seemed familiar, and he wondered if he’d seen her photo among Allie’s Facebook friends. “About the pills.”

  Kara’s gaze tried and failed to meet his. “You don’t seem like...well, you don’t seem—”

  “Like a junkie?”

  Kara’s thin lips pulled upward into a slight smile. “Like an asshole.”

  “Well, I am that. But an addict, too.”

  ”How?” Kara asked softly.

  “How--?”

  “Becoming an addict. How did it happen?” The questions were coming more easily now.

  “Just like the solar storm. Shit happens.” Mackie took his seat beside Allie again. He draped her legs across his own. It was how they had often sat when watching television or reading together. Something about it seemed perverse now, a mockery of a human relationship, but it still felt comforting.

  “So, what, you started working for a drug dealer?”

  Mackie leaned his head back. “I started working for a man named Lucas Krider.” He looked closely at Kara’s face for any signs of recognition at the mention of Krider’s name.

  Kara sensed that Mackie was waiting for a response. “Should I know that name?” she asked.

  Even beyond the rumors and suspicions of his criminal enterprises, Krider’s name had a long reach in the South. Though he was based in Tampa, Florida, he had a particular fondness for the North Carolina mountains, owning several restaurants and vast swaths of property in Asheville, Boone, and in the vicinity of the Evans-Lawson campus.

  Krider had a safe house near here, stocked with guns and a supply of narcotics that filtered into the community when his pushers hit the streets, and Mackie was convinced the guy had come here to get revenge.

  I wouldn’t be surprised if that son-of-a-bitch is still alive. He’s like a cockroach. Well, if he is, I’m going to track him down and squash him.

  Because revenge cuts both ways.

  As Mackie dove into Krider’s curriculum vitae, Kara’s eyes widened. “Dixie Mafia? That’s an actual thing?”

  “It’s a little different than what you see on TV, but yeah, it is.”

  Mackie felt himself closing down. He didn’t want to take this conversation further. They needed to leave soon, but all he wanted to do now was sit next to Allie and sleep. Maybe dream of the good old days.

  “I got sucked into his world. I needed drugs, he needed people willing to do bad shit. To his competitors. To anyone that could compromise him in any way. It was just beatings at first, small time shit to make a statement. He didn’t order me to make kills until later. He had others for that, people that were good at it, had a taste for it. But when he made those demands of me, it was too late to walk. I was trapped, because the people I loved were at risk.” He glanced over at Allie, the pain of separation just as sharp now as then.

  The whole world had been reduced to cinders and rot outside, but if Kara was aware of anything other than Mackie’s story, she gave no indication. She seemed to be studying him, making up her mind about something.

  “You’ve killed people,” Kara said. Mackie couldn’t tell if she had phrased it as a statement or a question.

  He knew his silence was confirmation, but he didn’t give a shit. No way was he hashing this out there with a stranger.

  And maybe if he scared her enough, she’d help with Allie just to save her own neck if nothing else.

  “That’s freaking insane,” Kara said.

  “The people I fell in with, they’re much worse. Believe me.”

  “And you can live with that,” Kara said, her eyes crawling back toward the scissors that she had placed nearby. “With murder.”

  Mackie remembered the night he spent puking his guts out after the first time, and the solid hour he spent in his car holding a pistol to his temple. Somewhere along the line the self-loathing had shifted into a stony aloofness, a sense that he was permanently walled off from the human race.

  He had come damn close to not living with it.

  “I could live with keeping the people I love safe. If I refused, I’m not the only one that ends up in a drainage ditch somewhere. This was self-defense and protection for my family. That’s how I have to look at it. Of course, none of that means shit now. Everyone I loved is probably already dead or...” He nodded at Allie. “Like her.”

  Kara’s voice was quieter now. “Did she know?”

  “That’s why I lost her. My decision, then hers.”

  In spite of the room’s humidity, Kara wrapped her arms around herself as if huddling against the cold. “So what do we do now?”

  The Haldol had taken Allie someplace else, and now she looked more peaceful than Mackie himself had felt in years. He wasn’t sure how much longer it would last, but he had an ample supply of the drug. And if she stayed violent, well, it wouldn’t be hard to inject a fatal dose.

  “We better go soon,” he said. “Not sure how many more Zapheads are close by, but I killed two from this floor on my way here. If we move fast, I think we can get out safely. I don’t have much ammo left, but hopefully it’ll be enough.”

  “Hey, at least your goon training helps you in the apocalypse,” Kara said.

  “Shooting a Zaphead isn’t murder,” Mackie said. “It’s a mercy killing.”

  Kara glanced at the young woman beside Mackie. “Then why are you trying to save her?”

  “Maybe there’s a cure. Maybe this is all temporary, some kind of meteorological fluke. Maybe the sun comes up one morning and everything’s back to normal.”

  “Except for ninety-nine percent of the human race being dead?”

  “Whatever. I’m not leaving without her. If you need to go it alone, I understand, but together we might just have a chance.”

  Neither of them acknowledged just how difficult it would be to make progress while carrying a body between them. And even if either of them could think of a safe place to travel to, getting there wasn’t likely—not without a working car and limited ammo left for Mackie’s Glock.

  Maybe Allie’s dorm was the safest place they could be right now. Suddenly he wasn’t in such a big hurry.

  Mackie’s lids closed over his burning, aching eyes. Was he really this tired?

  A moment later, all was dark.

  5.

  When Mackie awoke, the sun had set, and his mouth had the texture of sandpaper and tasted like a dirt-caked sock. For one panicked moment, he forgot where he was. A candle burned in the corner, throwing a throbbing wash of red-orange around him. It reminded him of campfires along the road, when he’d huddled with survivors trying to figure out why the world had gone to hell.

  He vaguely recognized the girl leaning over him, but her name escaped him.

  For some reason, she was holding his Glock.

  He tried to sit up, but the girl used her foot to push him back to the position he had fallen asleep in.

  “It’s cool, Mackie. Just stay there for now.”

  Kara.

  Mackie turned his head to the left and saw Allie beside him, her wrists and feet still bound, the panties still bunched inside her mouth. Mackie last remembered her as relaxed and docile, but now the rage seemed to have returned. She looked as if she wanted to strip off every shred of her own skin with her teeth and fingernails.

  The Haldol wore off. How long was I asleep?

  And why is Kara—

  “I wanted to kill her, y’know. That’s what I was here for, actually.”

  Mackie wasn’t sure he had heard her right. The Vicodin hangover fuzzed his brain. He tried standing again, but Kara pointed the pistol directly at his face. Mackie also noticed that she was wearing his backpack.

  “But plans changed,” she said.

  She’s robbing me, the bitch.

  Did she even know how to use the Glock? Not that
it was that difficult to figure out, with no safety and all. Untrained shooter or not, at this range, she could easily do some damage.

  He’d have to think his way out of this. And his bullshit reservoir was bobbing down near the E.

  “Kara, what the hell are—”

  “Craig Everson.”

  Something about the name was familiar. But why would she blurt it out with a gun pointed at Mackie’s face?

  “Stay with me, Mackie. Do you remember someone named Craig Everson? I need to know you recognize that name.”

  He didn’t.

  And then he did.

  Suddenly, all the shit happening in the post-apocalyptic solar shitstorm world outside made a lot more sense than what was happening in Allie’s dorm room.

  Craig Everson. Small time lowlife. A meth head that made the mistake of getting pinched at a routine traffic stop with Krider’s product in the trunk of his car.

  And Krider’s orders.

  “I know this doesn’t get easier, Macklin. You’ve done this a few times before and you’ll do it again, but it never gets easier. Still, I need you to take care of this, and you know you will. You can leave his family out of it, but you know what needs to happen to Mr. Everson.”

  And Mackie had taken care of it.

  Followed him home one night after he made bail and put a round in his forehead while his old lady screamed on the front porch.

  Krider wasn’t a big fan of witnesses, but Mackie had been sloppy that night, all the Vicodin in his system blurring his good judgment. Or maybe some buried spark of decency inside him had turned him away from another innocent kill.

  “He was an epic screw-up, don’t get me wrong,” Kara said. “But he did a lot of good for me and my mom. And when you took him away, she completely fell apart. All the shitty men in her life, and here was one that had a problem, sure, but he didn’t hit us, did his best to keep the bills paid. Didn’t try to put his dick where it didn’t belong. When you killed him, she just couldn’t handle it.”

  “I...” He ran down the list of possible excuses but didn’t bother wasting his breath. He justified his actions as protecting the ones he loved, and topped it off with the consolation that he was really just putting lowlifes out of their misery. But even lowlifes had loved ones who would suffer their loss.