The Scattered and the Dead | Book 3 | The Scattered and the Dead

by McBain, Tim

  “We were friends,” he said. “And if it makes any difference, I am sorry about it. All of it.”

  Delfino let things go quiet between them after that. Wanted to give her time to settle down before he asked after Ruth’s situation.

  They both stared out at the kids swirling around the yard in circuitous paths that never quite seemed to repeat themselves. And the sound of children playing lulled them over time in his estimation. There’s hardly a more peaceful sound in this world, Delfino thought — in this life, even.

  He watched her out of the corner his eye for a few seconds as he readied himself to enter the conversational fray with her once more. A smile idled at the corners of her mouth as she looked on the kids. That angry knot between her eyebrows had died back to smooth flesh as well. Those seemed like good enough signs to him.

  “Something else I wanted to ask about. One last piece to go toward repaying the time I found that girl’s people. What was her name… Kayla?”

  “Kaylee,” Erin said through gritted teeth.

  “Kaylee. That was it.” Delfino smiled. “Anyhow, that job took a fair amount of tooling around, and while you covered the cost of getting her here from there, I did a large portion of the legwork pro bono, you could say.”

  Erin glared at him across the picnic table.

  “You’ve got some balls, coming here and asking for a fucking favor on top of everything else. You know that?”

  He waited for the anger to fizzle again, and it did, after a few seconds, though a guarded look remained in her eyes.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s about the girl.” Delfino nodded toward the group of children across the way. “Ruth. I kind of figure she needs a place to stay. A permanent residence or whatever the hell. And it looks to me like she’s getting on pretty well with your young ‘uns. I know it’s a lot to ask, but you know I’m not cut out to take care of a little one. You all are the only people I know who I’d trust with it. No hesitation. Anyhow, I ask you to consider it.”

  He pointed to the girl running around with the others, giggling just now.

  “She was covered in blood when we found her. Someone else’s blood, at that. You gotta figure she’s been through some shit in her nine or ten years on the planet. Finding her some place tranquil, some place harmonious, with people she could really grow to trust — I have to imagine it’d do wonders for her.”

  He watched Erin’s eyes go soft as they looked upon the girl racing around the fence, and he knew that it was all going to work out here for Ruth after all, that at least this one thing would work out.

  Erin

  Ripplemead, Virginia

  9 years, 37 days after

  Erin watched the girl. She and several of the other younger kids had moved over to the giant grid of trampolines set up in one of the yards.

  That had been Izzy’s idea. “The Trampoline Park,” she’d called it. And Erin had bitched and whined the whole time they spent hauling the six boxed up trampolines from the sporting goods store. But Izzy had been right. The kids loved it. Even the adults played on it sometimes.

  On the hottest summer nights, sometimes they all dragged their sheets and blankets out to the trampolines and slept under the stars. Well, except Marissa, who said that, “God created screens for a reason. I’m not offering myself up as a blood buffet for the mosquitoes.”

  Ruth would bring their total numbers to eighteen. Eight adults, if she counted Izzy, and ten children. Half of the kids were strays, as it was. It had started with Cameron, the little boy she and Izzy had rescued from a slaver named Spider. Then there was Rayne, who’d been dropped on their doorstep at almost the same time Erin was slitting Spider’s throat. Odd how that had all worked out. It was like the universe had suddenly decided they were a refuge for lost children.

  Erin spotted Cameron, who was watering an area planted with fruit trees. He was almost an adult himself, now. He’d be sixteen next year. And Rayne would turn eight in the fall.

  And they’d only been the beginning of it all. Now they had Jade, an eleven-year-old they’d found wandering the streets of Roanoke. Erin had seen a couple of the SS guys eyeballing her, probably wondering how much they could sell her for in one of the brothels. So Erin had swooped in and taken the kid under her wing to keep that from happening.

  Then there’d been Kaylee. A teenage girl who’d been separated from her family during a raider attack. Erin and Izzy had come upon her wandering down a stretch of highway, looking utterly lost. With Delfino’s help, Erin had eventually located Kaylee’s parents, who’d fled to a settlement further north.

  Word seemed to spread after that. Two of the prostitutes in Roanoke had paid Erin to take their children in. Erin would have done it for free, if she’d been honest, but she used the goods they’d traded her to pay Delfino to take Kaylee back to her family.

  Erin’s eyes slid back over to Delfino.

  “I want to know who this guy is. This Bagface guy.”

  “Baghead,” he corrected her.

  “Whatever,” Erin said. “What’s his story?”

  Delfino sat up straighter.

  “Where’s Marcus?”

  “Why?”

  Head swiveling, Delfino made a show of searching for Marcus. He spotted him weeding a patch of peas and lettuce in the garden across the way and waved him over.

  “Because, I like Marcus, and it’s been a while. I wanna catch up with my old pal while I have the opportunity.”

  Erin blew out a breath.

  “You want a buffer. You think if you call Marcus over, he’ll… I don’t know. Keep me from gutting you where you sit.”

  Delfino grinned widely as Marcus approached.

  “I see you two are getting along. Or no blood’s been spilled yet, at least.” Marcus sat down beside Erin on the bench and rested his elbows on the wooden top. “That’s good.”

  “Yeah, well… We’ll see about that.” Erin crossed her arms. “Delfino was just about to tell me who his friend is, and how he came to be missing one of his hands.”

  Delfino’s smile faded as his gaze wandered back over to where the kids played.

  “First, I want you to tell me you’ll take the girl.”

  “Of course—” Marcus started to say, but Erin held up a hand. “Oh come on, Erin. We’ve never turned a kid away before, and we’re not about to start now.”

  “I know that. I want to know why Delfino is making us agree to it before he explains who this handless wonder is.” She narrowed her eyes. “Because that can only mean this dude is bad fucking news.”

  “It’s not him that’s bad news…” Delfino picked at a spot if lichen growing on one corner of the table. “So you’ll take the girl? She’s a good kid.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake. She can stay,” Erin said. “Now quit stalling.”

  Delfino licked his lips, buying himself another two or three seconds before he had to say the words.

  “We were on our way to the camp. To see Father.”

  Erin sat up straighter.

  “Wait. This guy is one of those?”

  “No.” Delfino pawed at his chin. “As far as I can tell, he’s not affiliated at all with Father’s group. But he must have, you know, done something. Or know something he wasn’t supposed to know. Because ol’ Father kind of issued the Hand of Death on ‘im.”

  Erin sucked in a breath. She was so stunned she couldn’t speak for several moments.

  “Are you fucking insane?”

  “Erin—” Marcus says.

  “No, I really want to know if he’s lost his goddamn mind. Because I know he didn’t just tell us that he brought someone marked by the Hand of Death here.” She pointed at the cluster of children bouncing on the trampolines. “Here. How could you do something so stupid? You know they’ll go to any lengths to find him, sacrifice anything or anyone who gets in their way. You put a target on our backs, on their backs.”

  She jabbed her finger in the direction of the kids play to e
mphasize her point.

  Delfino shrugged and let out a sigh.

  “Not like I had much choice in the matter.”

  “Oh no? You couldn’t have just… left him somewhere that isn’t here?”

  “Come on, Erin. Is that what you would have done?” Delfino asked. “I always figured you for the type to help those most in need. Like you done for Marcus when you first met him. And like you done for these kids. Ain’t like he chose for a goddamn team of assassins to come at him. Ain’t like he wanted ‘em to chop his fuckin’ hand off. So now what? I could let him die in the backseat of my car, or I could ask someone for help, even if there’s some danger involved. That’s it. So here we are, turning to someone for help, someone who owes me, as it happens. Someone I helped not so long ago.”

  She glared at him, jaw clenched so hard it quivered slightly.

  Delfino put his hands up in a disarming gesture.

  “Don’t have to give me the stink eye. I’m just answerin’ your question. You asked how I could bring him here. Well… that’s how. And the bottom line is, he needs help. Bad. And he’s a decent sort of guy. Smart as heck. Knows all manner of things. And he paid me to do a job. Plus, Ruthie took a liking to him.”

  Erin scoffed.

  “Besides all that, he’s my friend.”

  Several seconds passed before she anyone spoke.

  “How many?” Erin asked.

  “What?”

  “How many fingers left?” Erin held up a hand and wiggled her digits. “The Hand of Death, idiot.”

  “Oh. Right.” Delfino nodded. “Three down. Two to go.”

  “Two?” Erin repeated.

  She closed her eyes and tilted her face at the sky. The sun filtering through the thin skin of her eyelids tinted everything red.

  “You need to be gone. Soon.”

  “We will be,” Delfino said, nodding again. “Soon as he’s healthy enough to move about on his own, we’ll be gone, OK? Believe me, he’s as eager as I am to be done with this journey. I don’t figure we’ll stick around more than two or three days at the most.”

  “That might be too long.”

  “Nothing I can do to speed it up. Guess I could go ask his passed out ass to heal faster, but I doubt it’ll help much.” Delfino stretched out his legs in front of him. “That’s about the extent of ol’ Dr. Delfino’s powers, I’m afraid.”

  Erin got to her feet and brushed the back of her shorts. If she stayed here much longer, she might not be able to resist the urge to punch Delfino in the throat.

  “I told Katie I’d help with dinner,” she muttered, starting to walk across the lawn.

  “Are we good, then?” Delfino called out.

  “Oh sure,” she said. “We’re good. But if any of Father’s men come sniffing around here, I hope you don’t expect me to shelter and protect your ass. I’ll serve the both of you up on a silver fucking platter.”

  Lorraine

  Rural Tennessee

  1 year, 54 days after

  The water gurgled around the car in the dark, the flood still a threat surrounding them in some vague sense, but it felt far off now. Felt like something dangerous that had passed, another critical obstacle that they had survived, that they had defeated.

  Lorraine could hear the peril retreating in the current — those roaring rapids reduced to a thin trickle, the cracks and groans of trees being toppled and uprooted replaced by a peaceful quiet stretching out over the land.

  And as they sat still a while, the shock and stimulation of all the commotion faded away. Bliss rose up to take its place. A lightness washed over her. A soft feeling. A gentle touch.

  Life. Life had persevered once more. Even after all she’d suffered, simple survival brought her intense euphoria, that animal rush of endorphins, some sense that she was winning, that she would keep winning for a long time yet. Maybe that was the most primal coding etched into all of us, she thought. The universal code that united all life on this planet. From the spiders strung up in trees to the whales deep in the blackest depths of the sea, the core message was the same: Keep living. Keep the species going. No matter what the world throws at you, keep fighting, keep clawing, keep winning. On a certain level, life was that simple.

  Her hand moved to the swollen place in her middle, palm and fingers curling around the curve there. This was the real meaning of her victory, she knew. On a long enough time line, that would be the ultimate meaning of her life.

  Louis laughed next to her, a breathy sound coming out of his nostrils.

  “What?” she said, though she thought she knew. She could feel the smile on her own face. It ached a little toward the center of her cheeks.

  “I don’t know,” he said. His voice sounded delicate now, somehow lighter and younger than before. “Guess I can’t believe we made it is all. I mean, it keeps hitting me that all of that really happened, and we kind of lived through it unscathed, and I don’t know… It washes over me in waves. Kind of makes me giddy or something. You get anything like that?”

  She nodded, then remembered he couldn’t see her in the dark.

  “Yeah. My cheeks hurt from it. Not so bad, is it?”

  “No, ma’am. I greatly prefer it to the alternative.”

  They fell quiet for a stretch. That positivity somehow palpable in the cabin of the car.

  “Maybe the only question is what happens next,” she said at last.

  It didn’t occur to her what a somber thought this was until she heard it in the faltering tone of her voice.

  Louis grunted. Something non-committal. Lorraine thought she should let it lie, but after a few heartbeats, she couldn’t resist.

  “I mean, we’re still trapped in the car for now. And odds are good that all that flood water gushing through the engine block did more harm to a car that already wouldn’t start, yeah?”

  A loud slap startled her out of going on. Louis must have slammed his head on the steering wheel.

  “See? This is the alternative I was talking about,” he said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means a second ago, we were happy — beyond happy, thrilled — to be in this moment. To be alive. To be breathing. To be out of imminent danger. And seconds later, we’re worrying about the future, about possibilities. Speculation. Conjecture. And what for? What good does worrying about the endless possibilities do us? What does the anxiety accomplish?”

  “I’m not…” Lorraine hesitated for a second to collect her thoughts. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think about what comes next. The morning can only be a few hours away, you know? It’s reality. We have to deal with it.”

  “We will deal with it… when it happens. We can’t deal with it before it happens. That’s the thing about the future. It’s only ever an idea in your head. It’s not real. What’s real is the present. The present is always real. So let’s not worry about it. Not yet.”

  Lorraine chewed her lip as she processed his words. There was a certain logic to all of it.

  “Don’t you get scared, though? About what might happen next?”

  Louis’s silhouette shrugged in the driver’s seat.

  “Of course I get scared. I do. But I let it go. As quickly as I can, I let it go. For this moment — here and now — things are OK. We’re still in kind of a rough spot perhaps, but we’re OK. So that’s cool. I’m going to be thankful and leave it at that for a bit. That’s how I try to live my life. In the moment. In the now. Worrying about the future doesn’t prepare me for it. It only hurts me, you know? You can’t dwell on those thoughts that injure you, or they’ll cut you up inside again and again.”

  They fell quiet after that, the only sound the tiny sloshing of the water streaming ever past.

  Erin

  Ripplemead, Virginia

  9 years, 37 days after

  Erin lounged in a chair in the infirmary, mending a moth hole in one of their good down winter coats by lantern light. Usually Marissa took the lead on overnight nursi
ng duties, but Erin had known she wouldn’t be able to sleep and volunteered. She had too many things on her mind. Her thoughts whirled and churned like the frothy pool at the bottom of a waterfall.

  In the excitement and bewilderment of Delfino’s sudden appearance, she’d nearly forgotten about the major haul they’d made after discovering the bunker. She’d planned on going straight back there with Izzy to pack up the rest of the supplies they’d left behind, but she couldn’t leave Marissa here to care for a patient in this state without help.

  Erin squinched her eyes shut. Sewing by lantern light always made her eyes hurt.

  Setting the coat aside, her gaze roamed over to the man across the room, who was even at this very moment hovering somewhere between life and death.

  An enemy of Father’s. That would have been bad enough all on its own. But no, it always had to be that much worse. This one had a bona fide Hand of Death order out on his head.

  A twinge of nausea ran through her. Oh right. And then there was that. The pregnancy.

  Erin closed her eyes and waited for it to pass. She momentarily forgot where she was and made the mistake of breathing deeply through her nose, which rewarded her with a whiff of sick room smell. They’d cleaned up Bag Guy’s wound, applied a new dressing, and after dinner, she’d even helped Marissa give him a sponge bath, getting to most of body save for what lay under the bag. But that had only done so much, and the man still had a sickly stink to him. Old sweat and soiled clothes and a fevered, infected body.

  The odor instantly sent the reading on her Barfometer through the roof. A moment later, Erin was dashing out the back door in search of a place to vomit.

  Erin stumbled over to a rosebush and retched into the foliage. When she’d finished unloading the contents of her stomach, she just hunched there with her hands on her knees, sucking in the cool night air.

  She’d been lucky she hadn’t had a bout of morning sickness like this in front of Marissa, or she would have known something was up.

  Erin reached for the bundle of fresh mint leaves she’d picked after dinner and put some in her mouth. They helped quell the nausea sometimes. She wished she would have remembered them before taking that big nose-full of stench in the infirmary.