The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1)

by McBain, Tim

  She laid out two squat towers of blocks, three wide by two tall. She left a space between the towers for the fire, and laid the tub on top, like a bridge.

  Erin paused to admire the setup. Her fingers itched to slide her phone from her pocket, to snap a photo of her creation with the pink sunset in the background, to slap an ironic hashtag on it before posting it for the world to see.

  #SpaDay #pampered

  Instead she gathered wood and kindling and some paper for the fire.

  Izzy glided by on her bike.

  “This is a lot of work for a bath.”

  Erin cracked a twig in half.

  “It’s going to be worth it. Besides, once we get the generator, we won’t have to go to all this trouble. We can just hook up the water heater.”

  With the fire crackling away, she started to haul the water from the well pump, one bucket at a time. The first bucketful hissed when it hit the hot metal and produced a cloud of steam. She poured in five buckets and then stopped to add more wood to the fire.

  She dipped her fingers in. The water was still cold around the edges, but she swore the water in the center was a little warmer.

  She continued the back and forth of toting water, pausing now and then to add more wood or test the temperature. She filled the tub about half way, and left an extra bucket full of water nearby. Then she went inside and gathered soap, a washcloth, shampoo, and two towels.

  When she came back out of the house, Izzy and her bike were nowhere in sight. Erin set her bath gear in the grass next to the tub, added another log to the fire, and moseyed up to the barn. Izzy’s bike leaned on its kickstand next to Erin’s bike.

  “Izzy?”

  No answer.

  Back at the door, she surveyed the property. Could she have gone in the house after Erin, and she hadn’t noticed?

  She headed toward the house, trailing her fingers along the surface of the bath water as she passed. It was definitely getting warm. Slowly but surely.

  Erin crossed under the pine tree and something brushed her shoulder. She whirled around, thinking Izzy had sneaked up behind her from somewhere. But the only thing behind her was her own shadow.

  A piece of bark struck the top of her head. The sound came from above: the high-pitched cackle of a tiny witch.

  Erin peered up into the branches of the tree and found Izzy sprawled on her belly over a large bough.

  “You won’t be grinning when I climb up there and hang you from a branch by your underwear.”

  Izzy slithered down from her perch.

  “Can’t get me now.”

  “I can still give you an atomic wedgie.”

  Izzy chuckled, then stopped abruptly.

  “What’s an atomic wedgie?”

  “It’s where I hike your underwear so high, I stretch it up over your head. And then you’re just stuck like that. For eternity.”

  “Nuh uh!”

  “Yep.”

  Erin lurched at her, and Izzy took off running for the house, squealing the whole way.

  From inside, she pressed her hands and face to the screen, distorting her features. She smeared her face down, catching her nose on the screen so it squashed upwards like a pig.

  Erin’s shoes thudded up the porch steps.

  “Do you want to take the first bath?”

  Izzy moved her head side to side, dragging her nose along the screen.

  “Are you sure? If you go after me, you have to use my funk water.”

  Izzy’s finger found a hole in the screen and jabbed at it.

  “I’m not taking a bath.”

  “Come on, Iz. You have to.”

  “No!”

  Erin took a half-step backward at Izzy’s tone. She’d never thrown any kind of tantrum before.

  “Izzy,” she started, not sure how to proceed.

  “I said no! You can’t make me.”

  With that, Izzy flipped the lock on the screen door and stomped farther into the house.

  Erin stood motionless for a moment, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened. Guess the kid must really hate baths, she thought.

  Grass swished around her ankles. When she reached the tub, she plunged her hand in. It was warm. Maybe not quite warm enough, but she couldn’t wait any longer.

  She stoked the fire and added two more logs before kicking off her shoes and peeling away her socks. She unbuttoned her shorts and let them fall down around her ankles before she stepped out of the leg holes one foot at a time. When it got to the point of taking off her shirt, she had a sudden twinge of bashfulness. She reminded herself that she and Izzy might as well be the last two people left on the planet.

  She pulled her shirt over her head. The uneasiness uncovered a partially buried memory, from when they first arrived at the FEMA camp. They made everyone coming into the camp undress and go through a disinfectant shower. Not that it ended up doing them any good.

  It had been humiliating to disrobe in such a public way like that. They had female guards and workers manning the women’s tent, but they just stood there and stared at them. She felt like livestock. She probably wouldn’t have been able to do it if she’d been alone. She only got through it because her mom was with her and told her it was OK. Everything would be OK.

  Well, shit.

  Now she understood Izzy’s fit, maybe. It would have been traumatizing enough for a kid to go through that at all, but Izzy had come to the camp alone. She turned her head over her shoulder to glance at the house. Probably best just to leave it alone for now.

  She got the rest of the way undressed and climbed in. The water had warmed a few more degrees while she disrobed, and it felt delightful. She probed at the bottom of the tub that hovered over the fire and pulled her hand away like she’d touched a hot stove. Because that’s exactly what it felt like. Something to consider if she ever had to do this again. Lining the bottom with stones could help. Or maybe more cinder blocks. They wouldn’t transfer heat the same way the metal did.

  She couldn’t stop grinning as she lathered the soap and shampooed her hair. After rinsing the suds from her head, she leaned back.

  For the first time in she didn’t know how long, she actually felt relaxed. Tension eased out of her shoulders and neck. She let her eyes bat closed.

  So peaceful.

  The screen door banged open and shut.

  “I see Erin’s boobies! I see Erin’s boooobies!”

  Erin opened her eyes to see Izzy dancing down the steps, singing the words in a continuous loop.

  “Take a good look. This is you in a few years.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I hate to break this to you, but you don’t get a choice.”

  Izzy looked down at herself, crossing her hands over her chest.

  “Fine then. Small ones would be OK, I guess. Really small.”

  “Now you jinxed it. You’re going to have huge ones.”

  “Nuh-uh!”

  “Yep. Massive hooters.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Sorry, that’s just how it works.”

  “I’ll just cut them off.”

  Now Erin was the one covering her chest.

  “Ouch. That’s a little extreme, don’t you think?”

  Izzy shrugged, and picked up a stick from the pile of kindling next to the fire. She jabbed it into the glowing red coals.

  “Don’t they get in the way?”

  Erin laughed.

  “Yeah, they kind of do.”

  “Do they hurt?”

  “Hurt?” Erin thought about it. “Not really. I mean, they can get sore sometimes. Like when you jump on a trampoline without a bra.”

  Izzy spit out a laugh.

  “What?!”

  Erin pantomimed grotesquely huge boobs bouncing in the air in slow motion in front of her, adding a BOOMP! BOOMP! BOOMP! sound effect.

  Izzy keeled over into the grass, laughing.

  “That’s so gross!”

  “If you think that’s gross,
just wait. You’ve got a whole smorgasbord of puberty grossness ahead of you.”

  “Pube-erty,” Izzy repeated, stretching out the first syllable and giggling.

  Erin knew she’d eventually have to have the birds and the bees talk with Izzy. But the thought of broaching the subject scared her almost as much as the thought of running into other people. Or zombies. Or becoming a zombie.

  She thought back to her own first lesson about sex. She was about Izzy’s age, and she heard some kids on the bus talking about masturbation. From context she knew that it was something relating to sex, but she wasn’t sure what exactly. So that night, she asked her mom.

  “When I was a kid, they told us you’d go blind if you did it. You probably won’t, though. Anyway, it’s a thing boys do.”

  That was it.

  Eventually, she resorted to asking Kelly. Kelly’s sister, Liz, was six years older. Kelly always had the scoop on sex stuff from eavesdropping on Liz and her friends.

  Sprawled on bean bag chairs in Kelly’s basement, Erin spent the better part of The Princess Bride working up the nerve to ask. When she finally pressed her face to Kelly’s ear and mumbled those four mysterious syllables, Kelly’s head snapped back, eye’s glowing with the same mischievous spark they always had when they talked about things they weren’t supposed to.

  Her top lip curled back a little in that sneering smile.

  “You don’t know?”

  This was why she hadn’t wanted to ask Kelly in the first place. She could never resist lording it over Erin for a little while. Basking in the superiority of her more advanced knowledge of sex.

  No wonder she’d been so uptight about sex. She hadn’t realized it at the time, of course. She wasn’t like Maureen Majors, who took every opportunity to remind everyone that “as far as the Bible is concerned, you will go to Hell if you have sex before marriage.” She thought of herself as being open-minded. But she wasn’t really.

  Like when Kelly lost her virginity to her boyfriend, Erin remembered feeling disappointed in her. Even though Kelly and Ryan had been dating for two years. Now that she thought about it, that probably had more to do with the fact that Kelly hung out with Ryan more and more and Erin less and less since they’d started dating.

  She couldn’t have imagined a way to bring it up with Izzy without it being totally awkward. And now here it was, the perfect segue.

  “You know what it is, right? Puberty?”

  Izzy groaned and poked at the fire.

  “I know all about minstrels because of my brother’s girlfriend.”

  Now Erin was the one laughing so hard she bent at the waist, nose touching the water.

  Izzy stared at her.

  “What?”

  Erin tried to stop laughing long enough to explain, but she only got out a strained, “minstrels!” before convulsing in amusement.

  Izzy tossed her stick in the fire.

  “Why is that funny?”

  As the laughter subsided, Erin was able to catch her breath.

  “Minstrels,” she said, and chuckled one more time, “are like… medieval traveling musicians.”

  “Like a bard?”

  Erin slapped the water, sending a warm spray splashing in every direction.

  “Why would you know the word bard but not minstrel?”

  “Video games.”

  “Of course. Yeah, bard and minstrel. Pretty much the same thing. But you were thinking of menstrual.”

  “Fine, then. Menstruals.”

  Erin grinned.

  “What now?”

  “Well a menstrual isn’t a thing. It’s an adjective, I guess. It would be menstrual cycles. Or menses. Or menstruation.”

  Izzy plopped onto the ground.

  “And boys don’t get them, right? Menstrual… cycles?”

  Erin shook her head.

  “The lucky bastards.”

  “Language,” Izzy said, then after a beat, “Don’t they get anything?”

  Erin thought about it and smirked.

  “Yeah, they kind of get their own thing. It’s not exactly the same, but it can be… embarrassing,” she said, thinking of the time Kirk Meade got a hard-on in his gym shorts in ninth grade.

  She didn’t think Izzy needed to know about that just yet. She leaned her head back against the metal rim of the trough and closed her eyes, sinking a little lower into the water. They’d have plenty of time to delve further into the topic later. They had all the time in the world.

  Ray

  Galveston, Texas

  3 days before

  The unlit cigar made his lips tingle where it touched them. He adjusted it in his mouth, slid the tube of tobacco from one corner to the other. The itchy nicotine tickle traced this movement after a few seconds delay, swelling to reach that full-on medicinal sting.

  He stood on the deck, forearms leaned against the rail. Green grass trailed out in front of him, dropping off into a little swath of sand and then the blue forever-ness of the ocean. Wind whipped off of the water. He lifted his hat to let the rushing breeze touch his hair, muss it up some. His hair had gone all silver young, but he still had a full head of it. He thought about that often and felt lucky. In his line of work, that was important.

  He brought a hand to the cigar and held it while he adjusted his lips yet again. He’d given up smoking the things years ago, but he still liked that acrid feel of nicotine seeping into the lining of his mouth. It burned a little if he got it right. He didn’t quite get there this time, though, and the end was soggy now, so he pitched it.

  He looked back at the house, saw his muted reflection in the sliding glass door. Between the sunglasses, sandals, and cargo shorts, he looked more like a beach bum than a man of God. Then again, that was probably a more accurate description of his lifestyle.

  His eyes trailed away to scan across the rest of the house. His mansion was empty now. No staff left. No women. He’d sent them all away. Told them to get out of town sooner than later.

  He could barely stand to be inside the place, alone in the quiet. He kept finding excuses to walk around the yard or around the neighborhood. Those locations were empty, too, but when the wind blew in off the water, the landscape moved, and it wasn’t as bad somehow. It felt like he’d turn a corner and find a group of people socializing, sipping cocktails, gossiping, laughing.

  He’d initially thought he would ride this thing out. Not anymore. Food and water were getting to be a concern already even before he heard, and there was never any sign that the government would get their shit together to repair things anytime soon.

  But one phone call from Ted Miles yesterday had eliminated the last of his delusions that he could stay home. By government order, Houston would be erased within two days, disintegrated by nukes. Even if Galveston survived the blast, the radiation could get it. And he planned to be far, far away by the time it happened.

  Yet again he felt lucky. How many would die under that mushroom cloud? Millions? And surely Houston wouldn’t be the only city being targeted. He had money, and he knew people, and because of those things, he had a chance to get away from it. He’d go north, out into the middle of nowhere, and wait.

  He turned away from the house, looked out at the yard again. It would still hurt to leave this place. His fortress. He’d paid cash for it, spent the bulk of his savings. All of the accountants and money people told him it was a mistake, a bad investment, but he didn’t listen. He was the one that built an empire, and they were the ones working for him. He still remembered the conversation he had with Ted, his chief financial adviser at the time, before he moved on to be a lobbyist.

  “Tying up all of that capital in real estate just isn’t smart, Ray,” he said. “It’s better to keep that money earning for you. Let me put it this way: There are a bunch of investment opportunities available that are the equivalent of wide open slam dunks. I’m talking about sure things that will put points on the board. Sinking all of that money into a house is like passing up the dunk to heave up
a jump shot from half court. You never know what can happen in the real estate market, or what your earnings will look like in two years.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about all of that,” Ray said. “I expect my earnings will be just fine. Hope and salvation are evergreen.”

  He walked across the deck and down the wooden stairway into the yard. The wind rushed at him again, pressing his shirt flat against his chest. It kept at it as he made his way to the garage, but he didn’t mind. He liked the way the air moved across his cheeks and nose.

  His arm pressed into the door to the garage, and he stepped through, out of the breeze, into the stillness. He flipped the switch, and the fluorescent bulbs hesitated a second before they flickered on.

  A fleet of vehicles stood before him: two Jaguars, three Cadillacs, five SUVs, a matching pair of jet skis and a speed boat. He could only take one, of course. He walked past them, fingers dragging over glossy paint. He knew which one it would be before he even entered the room, of course. The rest had a 50/50 chance to survive the blast, he thought.

  A few garment bags hung on a rack to his left. His emergency suits, always ready on short notice. He stripped off his clothes and changed into one. Better to head out this way, right? Everyone trusts a man in a suit.

  At the far end of the garage, he knelt before a mini-fridge, reached in and pulled out six bottles of water, hugging them to his chest. These he unloaded in the passenger seat of a Jeep Grand Cherokee. This was his choice, perhaps the most modest of his automobiles, but he figured modesty had increased value now that everything was falling apart.

  One more call. One more try, and then he’d leave. The cell phone rang against his ear, his pulse keeping the meter, and the voicemail message came on, and he hung up. It was too weird to hear her voice and have no idea if she was OK.

  Maybe she wasn’t dead, he thought. Maybe she just didn’t want to talk to him. The two possibilities seemed about equally likely.

  And so he drove out away from his compound, leaving behind all he’d built and all he’d owned, bringing nothing but a few bottles of water along for the ride. Well, those and the handgun in the glove box. He knew he’d be fine, though. He may not have had faith in many things, but he had it in himself. He was an earner. A charmer. Always had been. He’d find his way like he always did.