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

by Nicholson, Scott

  “You sound like you’re loving all this.” The billiard table grew softer beneath Mackie as the heroin kicked into lower gear and thrummed through his central nervous system.

  “It’s always been survival of the fittest. The rules have changed now, but the game’s still the same. This is fun for me, sure, but fun is only a by-product. Survival is the real pay-off. Same as how working for me kept you and your family alive. The world ended, and I’m still keeping you alive.”

  Krider removed his hand and leaned back. “You weren’t cut out for the game, Mackie. You never developed a taste for it. Never mastered the flinch. You could pull the trigger when I told you to, but you’d always, always flinch first. And the flinch got in your way. Didn’t matter that, technically, you got the job done. I knew the day would come when you wouldn’t, or you’d make a mistake that would compromise everything.”

  “Do it, then. Spare me another Scarface soliloquy and get it over with.”

  “I’ve been generous with you, Mackie. I let you and your family and your mutant girlfriend live after you betrayed me. I taught you ways to kill and survive that put you orders of magnitude above most of society. And, hell, you even got paid. I mean, c’mon, just how well were you really doing with that shit-ass liberal arts degree?”

  Krider’s voice modulated to a higher octave, but he quickly brought it back to his baseline of honeyed placidness. “But what you gave me in return,” he said softly, “was the bare minimum.”

  “I did...everything...everything you...” The words vaporized in Mackie’s dry throat.

  Krider plucked another gummy bear from the bag and tossed it playfully at Mackie’s face. It bounced from his cheek and fell to the billiard cloth. He barely felt the contact.

  “That’s just how tight I have to run my ship, Mackie. Flinching is unacceptable, ‘bare minimum’ doesn’t cut it, and ‘half-assed’ gets you dead quicker than anything. But a half-assed junkie, of all things? Keeping you around was never an option.”

  “So just kill me. I don’t understand what you’re waiting for.”

  Krider patted his hand. “You haven’t had the best of days. Sleep it off. We have more to discuss in the morning. Herrera here will stand guard in case any crazies come knocking.”

  A flare suddenly pierced the heroin fog saturating Mackie’s brain.

  Allie.

  The last time he’d seen her was during the pummeling he took from Krider’s men. Mackie tried to speak her name, but his voice was lost in a painful cough.

  Krider seemed to read the panic in his eyes. “She’s still alive. You were thinking of putting her out of her misery, I could tell. That’s part of what we need to discuss in the morning when you’re feeling better.”

  Krider walked away then, and Mackie loosened his grip on the tiny bit of resistance he was holding on to, allowed the weight of drugs and exhaustion to pull him beneath the surface of sleep.

  7.

  The girl he had seen lounging on the sofa the night before was standing over him when he woke up. He wasn’t restrained, but his legs were heavy and numb. The candles were out and gray shades of dawn filtered into the room.

  She held a Styrofoam bowl of dry Frosted Flakes and a can of Welch’s grape soda. She offered them to Mackie.

  “Sorry, no milk,” she said.

  “Good. I like it dry.” Mackie forced himself to a sitting position through the sunbursts of pain that detonated in his face and skull. He winced as he reached a shaky hand out for the bowl of cereal.

  The girl gently pressed the bowl into his hand and popped the tab on the soda can. She sat it down beside him on the billiard cloth.

  Her hair, pulled back in a ponytail, was almost the same shade as Allie’s, though it was streaked with warm shades of red. She wore a green T-shirt and camouflage pants. Mackie had never known anyone in Krider’s employ to wear camo.

  “You’re military?” he asked.

  “National Guard.”

  Mackie halted the progress to his mouth of the Frosted Flakes pinched between his fingers and thumb. After the Big Zap, Mackie assumed there wasn’t enough government left to deploy military units. “Was the Army mobilizing to fight?”

  “We weren’t officially deployed,” she answered. “After the power went out and people started dying, I knew we were in a crisis situation. The phones weren’t working. There was no way to receive an official deployment notice even if one came through. I suited up and waited at the armory outside of town for other members of my unit to show up. Not many did. Besides, we didn’t know exactly what we were supposed to be fighting.”

  “Why are you with Krider?”

  “Me and a few Guard members were out there trying to help in any way we could. We looked for survivors, but mostly we just found...those things.”

  “Zapheads.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard them called. Zapheads.”

  She laughed softly. “Yeah, okay. Well, that’s what we found. Some of them just shuffled around with blank expressions on their faces, like meth heads you’d see in some documentary or whatever, but the others were more ferocious than anything I’d ever seen. Only three of us survived. Krider and his men came along, helped us out when we were cornered. Gave us better weapons. They were headed here to take shelter and look for supplies. Invited us to tag along.”

  Mackie munched on the Frosted Flakes and took a sip from the can of soda. “He’s a monster. A Dixie Mafia lieutenant, and he’s done things you can’t imagine. There’s no possible way you can trust him.”

  “I get the feeling he’s a little sketchy. But he helped us out earlier, and right now we need to band with all the survivors we can find.”

  “Not this one.”

  Before the girl could respond, Krider opened the door and strode in. The two men Mackie had seen lounging on the sofa with the girl last night followed Krider inside. They were also dressed in T-shirts and camo pants. One wore a camouflage uniform shirt unbuttoned over his green T-shirt. They both nodded at the woman, obviously members of her National Guard unit.

  A short muscular man in a chamois shirt and slacks, an assault rifle slung across his shoulder, brought up the rear. One of Krider’s own, but Mackie didn’t know him.

  “Meredith taking care of you?” Krider asked Mackie.

  “The sugar rush is kicking in.”

  “That’s the only rush you’re getting for a while,” Krider said. “I’ll take you to see Allie. The McAllister girl too, if you want. Then we’ll finish our talk.”

  ###

  The air was thick with summer humidity, even so early after sunrise.

  The tranquility was spoiled only by the sight of so many corpses on the campus lawns. The odor of rot competed with the scent of dogwoods in the thick air. His drug hangover burned away with the last of the dew. A surreal quiet hung over it all, almost unsettling.

  Mackie spied armed sentries on the tops of two buildings, obviously providing surveillance. For all his many faults, Krider was excellent at organizing muscle. He might have been a general in a former life. Krider was perfectly at home in this new world of chaos and dog-eat-dog.

  As they trekked across campus to the library, Krider made introductions. The two National Guardsmen were Sayles and Dante. Sayles looked close to Meredith’s age—mid-to-late twenties. Dante seemed much older. Late forties, at least, some gray at his temples.

  Krider’s man was introduced as McRae. Unlike Herrera, who hid his savagery beneath an easy-going demeanor, McRae’s compact, muscular frame was coiled with tension. He seemed vaguely familiar. It was possible he and Mackie had crossed paths earlier, but Mackie couldn’t remember.

  Possibly a recent recruit, but if so, his presence here indicated that he had worked his way through the ranks quickly.

  Given the fact that Krider’s crew seemed to have had an unusually high survival rate compared to the general population, he wondered again about his “goon gene” theory that bad wiring in
their brains might have somehow protected them.

  When Mackie saw a young couple sitting on a bench outside a residence hall, he immediately assumed they were Zapheads. But everything about them seemed too...lucid. They sat chatting quietly as if enjoying a lull in their day between classes.

  “You found other survivors?”

  Krider’s head turned to the bench and he nodded. “A few, yes. We searched every building on campus after we arrived, cleaned out a few crazies that were hanging around. Gathered the survivors.”

  Inside the library, a girl sat at the circulation desk, as if she was ready to check out materials for patrons. She looked up at the group of men nervously, her oval face framed by dark hair, and her eyes crowned with thick, yet well-groomed, brows.

  She seemed familiar to Mackie. Something about her features reminded him of an actress on some teen soap Allie had enjoyed watching.

  Krider nodded politely at her. “This is...hell, can’t remember your name, darlin’.”

  “Rebecca,” the girl said softly.

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. We found Rebecca here hiding upstairs.”

  Mackie nodded a greeting that Rebecca didn’t return. At a table in the middle of the room, another young guy sat, his hands palming his face. Krider didn’t bother with an introduction.

  “This way.” He led Mackie deeper into the first-floor stacks. They rounded a corner of a shelf stacked with biographies. Allie lay on the floor, covered with a blanket, head resting on a pillow. The wadded-up panties had been removed from her mouth, and as Mackie knelt next to her, he could no longer smell the waste she had soiled herself with in her dorm room. Her eyes were opened but unfocused and her lower jaw quivered slightly. A dark-skinned girl with curly, caramel hair sat near her.

  “We’ve kept her comfortable with the sedative we found in your backpack,” Krider said. “When that’s gone, we have other things that will help. We probably should have killed her, but I know you two have unfinished business. Besides, we need to observe how these things behave.”

  “She’s not a thing,” Mackie said, not even believing his own brand of bullshit.

  “She’s in good hands.” Krider nodded to the girl that sat near Allie. “Desiree here has been looking after her. We gathered some water from the fountain out there so she could clean her up.” Desiree, the impromptu nurse, smiled as if she’d swallowed live worms.

  Mackie stroked Allie’s face, brushed her hair back from her forehead with his fingertips. He couldn’t mask the trembling of his hand.

  “Mind excusing us for a moment, Desiree?” Krider asked. She nodded, stood, and left.

  “Find Herrera. Tell him to bring Ms. McAllister,” Krider told Sayles.

  A few moments later, Herrera arrived with Kara. Her hands were bound behind her with a zip tie, her mouth covered in tape. Her left eye was swollen and her face was painted with dried blood and eggplant-colored bruises. Herrera gently pushed her in front of Krider, and then lowered her to a seated position.

  Mackie stood, heated shards of anger stabbing through his chest and stomach.

  “This one, I don’t think she was happy to see me,” Krider said.

  Mackie stepped forward, his fists clenched. Herrera gave a crooked grin and Krider held up a palm. “Before you get stupid, keep in mind that this was mostly self-defense,” he said. “She wasn’t exactly in a calm state of mind when he found her. Of course, Herrera had to get a little aggressive to get the information he needed from her. But you two can discuss that later.”

  Mackie knelt next to Kara and assessed her injuries. Her face gave away nothing; no tears, no anger, no outward signs of distress. Just a blank, Zen calm. Mackie plucked at a corner of the tape covering her mouth.

  “You leave that where it is, bro,” Herrera said.

  “No.”

  Herrera tensed in anger, but Krider stayed him with a raised hand. Mackie peeled the tape from Kara’s mouth. She stared past him into the shelves of books at his back. His first instinct was to ask if she was hurt, but that was obviously a pointless question. She looked defiant enough to lie anyway.

  “We need to finish our conversation,” Krider said. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “I’m not leaving them.”

  Krider’s laugh was soft, but punctuated with a sharp note of incredulity. “Your girl, Allie...well, that I can understand. But her?” He jerked his thumb at Kara. “She was here to kill Allie. And you, too.”

  Kara breathed steadily, but a pronounced swallow betrayed the anxiety she fought to conceal.

  “And when we found her, she had no problem giving you up,” Krider said. “Are you really stupid enough to show her the kind of loyalty she’s never shown you?”

  “She kept Allie alive.”

  Krider’s eyes widened and he cackled with glee. “You call that alive? Love is not only blind, it’s seriously fucked up.”

  “Leave them out of this. Just you and me.”

  Krider shrugged. “Okay, then. We’ll just get to it.” He crouched down to Mackie’s eye level. “So this is the thing: we’re all that’s left, kid. You, me, and a handful of others here on campus. Nobody’s picking up the pieces anytime soon. But we can build something together.”

  “So the world ends, and you still want to be in charge.”

  “Think of it like this, Mackie. Had those storms never come, and the world kept turning as usual, you’d be dead now. I would’ve seen to that. But you survived an event that few others did. The apocalypse came and you’re still here. Think about that.”

  “Hell before, hell after. All the same to me.” Mackie moved closer to Allie and sat beside her, leaning his back against the book shelf. He kept his head facing forward.

  Krider stayed crouched but didn’t bother moving closer. “I know you want to kill me, but there’s a better way. For both of us. For everybody.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Look around.” Krider smiled wide and spread his arms. “We’ve got food here. We’ve got plenty of shelter. We’ve got enough guns to march to the Holy Land and start a new Crusade. We’ve got a community. Help me run it. Help me protect it. You may have disappointed me as an employee before, but the fact that you trudged through Armageddon to reach your girl...that tells me what you’re really capable of. I need you here.”

  “You’re insane,” Mackie said.

  “Then give me a better option. We can stay here, scrape together a life for ourselves. Or we can go back out there and take our chances with the crazies in a world that’s never gonna be what it used to be.”

  Mackie turned his head and locked eyes with Krider. “I know what you are. The end of the world hasn’t changed that. You want to control these people. Run things just like you always have.”

  “You can think I’m a despicable piece of shit, Mackie, but the one thing I can do is lead. These people that are left besides us, that’s what they need now.”

  “Go to hell. But first, do yourself the favor of killing me now. You keep me alive and I’ll separate your head from the rest of you and shove it so far up your ass you’ll shit gummy bears for a week.”

  Herrera howled. “Thousand-pound cajones on this pendejo.”

  Krider ran a hand across his beard. “We can do that, if that’s really how you want to play this. But what about her?” He nodded at Allie. “You had an opportunity to give her a kind death, and you passed it up. I don’t think you would’ve done that if you didn’t have some hope that she could get better.”

  “She won’t get better. I know that now.”

  “What do any us really know at this point? God just hit the reset button on everything. Whatever the new rules are, we haven’t figured them out yet. What happened to Allie, we don’t know if it’s permanent. If you stay and work with me, we can take care of her. Other survivors will show up here at some point. Word will spread that we have a sustainable community. Maybe the day comes when a doctor arrives, or a scientist, or someone with some kind of answer
s. It doesn’t have to be over for her, Mackie. You’re her only chance.”

  “I thought you said the rules were ‘survival of the fittest.’”

  Krider stood. “If you want to play hard-ass and spout off lines to show me what a tough guy you are, you’re free to do that. But I also wouldn’t have a problem letting my guys rape Allie and this McAllister bitch while you watch before putting bullets in all three of you.” He turned to leave, but looked over his shoulder before walking away.

  “This is society now. Get on board or not. Let me know when you decide.”

  Herrera winked at Mackie and followed Krider out of the library.

  8.

  Allie’s eyes were closed and her breathing was soft but steady. Whoever was administering the Haldol was careful to dose conservatively. Mackie stroked her forehead again as those glittering eyes tracked his face. There was no recognition in them, and barely any awareness. He wondered if she saw him as prey, or an irritant, or possibly a threat. He walked over to Kara.

  “Kara. Whatever’s going through your head right now, we need to figure this out.”

  “He was here,” Kara said softly. “All this time he was here. I saw him and I didn’t think it could really be him, and when I tried to pull your gun, it was too late.”

  “You can’t think about that right now,” Mackie said.

  “I sold you out.”

  Mackie sighed. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be scared.”

  “Krider is scary,” Mackie said. “But let’s deal with where we are now.”

  Kara smiled sadly. “I heard everything he told you. We stay here and work with him, or we die. You’re a tough guy, Mackie, but there are more of them, and they have guns. And we wouldn’t have a chance out there against God-knows-how-many Zapheads.”