The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1)

by McBain, Tim

  The stab of the headache ruptured in his brain again, and he saw a pink splotch within his closed eyes from where the hurt seemed to occur. He brought a hand to his left eye and pressed on it. It didn’t help, but the cool of his fingers against his eyelid felt good. The headache was worse now, the pain sharper, bigger, coming on more frequently. That wasn’t good, but it was no surprise.

  The Sickness. The sickness unto death, he thought. Those words had banged around in his head in this very basement last night, before she was gone. He didn’t know why he thought them or where they came from. He did know that last night, sitting on the lawn chairs in the basement with Janice, chugging Red Bull and beer, seemed like 50 years ago.

  He opened his eyes, and the feet returned to his field of vision. They were entirely motionless, of course, still and dead like mannequin legs, but it still somehow felt like they’d popped up the moment his eyelids parted. Like they were gone, erased until he looked at them.

  He took a step forward, hesitated, took another stride. Now color flowed back into the shoe, vanquishing the gray. The pale pink canvas contrasted with the white sole. A little dirt scuffed the left toe, but otherwise no one would know it was six or seven years old. Maybe even older than Matt.

  Still, he kept his distance. He stopped a couple of paces shy of the sprawled figure on the floor, but he let the flashlight drift forward, its glow creeping up the body in slow motion, revealing the faded jeans that flared slightly at the ankle. Boot cut jeans for someone who never wore boots, he thought. The bottom of her hoodie covered the waist of the jeans, an oversized blue one that used to be his. It stretched to the point that the fabric was almost worn thin enough to see through at the elbows, all slack and sagged, and she wore it almost like a snuggie. Finally the tarp came into view, light reflecting off of the gray plastic surface, her face sheathed somewhere underneath, her shattered head, her broken body that could never be fixed, all wrapped in plastic.

  He brushed his fingers over the stubble on his upper lip and thought about how he would go about this. Should he scoop her up, tarp and all, lugging her over one shoulder? He turned back to glance at the steps. Getting up those would be rough, but he thought he could do it. She wasn’t heavy.

  Wheeling back toward the body again, the light caught on the toppled lawn chairs off to his right. Her purse lay there on its side, the pack of cigarettes protruding halfway from the open zipper. The impulse made no sense to him, but he couldn’t resist. He walked to the chairs, knelt, picked up the pack of smokes and shook one loose, resting it between his lips. For a second he just sat there, his nostrils full of the smell of the unlit cigarette like expensive coffee with an extra tang to it, and then he remembered what he was supposed to do next. He braved a hand into the black of the purse’s interior, swimming it around in there, feeling the jumble of items rattling against his palm and knuckles until his fingertips found the lighter and secured it.

  The flashlight wobbled on the floor as the lighter’s flame lit up his face from beneath. Only half of the tobacco lit, so he puffed the cig a couple times to get the cherry even. It tasted pretty bad. He’d never acquired a taste for tobacco smoke, but he knelt there and smoked it anyway. He still didn’t know why. Maybe because it was hers.

  He picked up the flashlight again, holding it so it pointed to the ceiling and watching the second hand smoke drift through its beam when he exhaled. The idea of lung cancer crossed his mind, and he almost laughed.

  It was weird, he thought. In so many ways he’d lived like he would live forever. He’d taken his time for granted on one hand and simultaneously not fully indulged, not fully embraced his passions on the other. It was the worst of both worlds. Maybe this would be the lesson he’d try to teach his boys – that their time is precious and they should use that as a motivator to do something awesome, not a reason to fear a death that’s inevitable -- but then maybe not. He didn’t know if you could learn this lesson without experiencing elements of it, and if so, he didn’t know if he could be the one that could teach it to them.

  He stubbed the cigarette butt out on the floor. The red tip crushed into a smudge of black soot with a muffled hiss. He stood then, his eyes returning to the tarp covered body, and he knew how he needed to do it.

  Baghead

  Rural Oklahoma

  9 years, 126 days after

  As soon as the sand cleared enough to see, they got moving again. The engine seemed to cough a little as it started up, choking on dust. But the sound evened out, and they rocketed forward.

  The car seat vibrated beneath Baghead, and when he stared straight ahead long without blinking, he got a weird sense of how fast they were moving. He almost had to let his mind go blank, let his eyes go unfocused to get there, like looking at a magic eye picture in a mall years and years before.

  “Can I ask you another question?” Delfino said.

  That shook Bags out of his state of concentration. He tried not to sound annoyed when he responded.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Do you have a real name? I mean, I’m guessing your birth certificate didn’t say ‘Baghead’ anywhere on it.”

  “I did. I don’t anymore.”

  “I see. You want to tell me what it was?”

  “No.”

  Delfino’s brow wrinkled for a microsecond, but it smoothed out just as quickly.

  “That’s fair enough, I guess. What’s a name even mean out here?”

  The conversation died, and the silence in the car got more and more comfortable, Bags thought, like lying in bed, feeling the sheet do that slow motion swell from cold to lukewarm to toasty. It was almost like an anesthetic, a thing that numbed him and calmed him and cleared his head.

  They drove past a barn, the roof all caved in, the whole structure leaning to one side like a well-timed sneeze by either of them would take it down once and for all. Even in this state of decay, the structure was an odd sight in the middle of this barren landscape, sand all drifted up along one side of the building like snow. Barns had populated all of this land not long ago, he knew, but almost none were left. The drought and the dust storms changed everything so fast.

  His tongue moved to comment upon it, to say something to Delfino to wash away the feeling that prior conversation had surely left, but something held it. The momentum of the silence won out. After a couple of minutes, he was happy for that, to have kept hold of the hushed feeling in here.

  The sound of the road lulled Bags into a tranquil state. The rhythmic thump of the tires rolling over the cracks here almost sounded like a horse’s gallop, and the engine’s hum steadied until it felt like a held chord on a background organ, low in the mix, just there for ambiance.

  He stared straight ahead, not thinking, not looking at anything, his muscles limp. Asleep with his eyes open. Drool pooled in his mouth, threatening to spill out of the corners of his lips.

  “Uh-oh,” Delfino said.

  Bags’ eyes blinked a couple of times and then drifted to Delfino’s before finally following his gaze to the road ahead. It took him a second to make sense of what he saw there.

  A bloody stump sat in the left lane of the highway, only vaguely looking human. It appeared limbless, though somehow sitting up, the face covered in red.

  Delfino slowed the car a little, and they craned their necks to get a better look. All time seemed to slow down for the moment.

  The closer look revealed that it wasn’t a bloody stump after all. It was a little girl with her arms and legs tucked into her t-shirt, squatting in the road. Maybe 11 years old. The blood made her facial expression hard to read, but Bags thought it seemed pretty catatonic. Her total lack of acknowledgment of the Delta 88 seemed to back up that assertion. She gazed off at nothing.

  She wasn’t dead, however. She blinked, and her blank expression didn’t convey any pain. Hopefully the blood was someone else’s, Baghead thought.

  They passed her, and the car picked up speed again. Bags whirled to watch her through the back windshie
ld as she began that process of shrinking, of her discernible features folding up into a black speck that the horizon would devour.

  “Pull over,” he said.

  Delfino sucked air between his teeth and then spoke.

  “We can’t.”

  Baghead turned to face him.

  “Pull the car over.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “I’ll jump out of the moving vehicle if you want me to.”

  “Look, that kid might be in trouble, might desperately need our help, or it might be a trap. We can’t know.”

  “Unless we stop and find out.”

  “And knowing will do us such good after we’re beheaded, won’t it? We’ll be so happy about it, we’ll gush blood out of our necks and roll our heads around on the asphalt a while in glee.”

  Bags didn’t say anything.

  “I told you. That’s what they do out here. I’ve seen it myself.”

  He scratched his chin before he went on.

  “For all you know that kid back there is the work of one of the five. So go rolling out that car door to your funeral if you want, but this car ain’t stopping.”

  Bags sat back, his jaw all clenched up, and they rode in silence for a while. He angled himself away from Delfino and looked out the window.

  Wisps of sand flitted around in the wind atop the dunes, the sunlight catching on the grains in the air so it almost looked like handfuls of glitter being tossed around.

  The ride grew bumpy once more, and the Delta 88 slowed in anticipation of a big crack in the road up ahead where the dirt fill had gotten washed out by the rain. The change in momentum made both of them lean forward in their seats, heads pushed out over their knees.

  When the car got down under 30 miles per hour, Baghead opened the door and jumped.

  Mitch

  Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

  41 days before

  He peeled the tarp back from her face, and there she was, the broken being he’d sworn to have and to hold. He guessed he would hold her once more after all.

  From the brow up, her head was mostly gone, a haggard concave dome of bone with dried blood gummed up all over it. Beneath that it still looked like her, though, especially after he dragged a hand over to her eyelids to close them. He dipped a rag into the bucket of warm water next to his leg, and went to work washing her face. Grime wiped away from her cheek, a second swipe clearing that crevice where the nose and face meet.

  He knew this gesture wasn’t for her. She was gone. It was for him.

  As he dipped the rag again and wrung it out over the bucket, the water made sounds that reminded him of taking a bath as a boy, of giving his sons baths when they were young. It was a happy sound and a calm one. He brought the rag to the opposite cheek and repeated the process.

  As the smudges of black faded away, her skin beamed so clear and smooth. She looked like herself again. Strange how a person’s face comes together, the pieces form into something that looks so intentional, like a painstakingly crafted sculpture instead of the random chance of genetics and biology.

  He thought this task would be an unpleasant one, but it wasn’t. It was important to him somehow. There would be no tarp as he carried her now, and he wouldn’t sling her over his shoulder like a bag of rock salt. He would do it in a way that made sense to him. He didn’t know if it was a way she would’ve wanted, but he hoped so.

  The rag navigated the jagged edge where her skull cleaved off, scrubbing there, clearing away most of the blood, though he knew he couldn’t get it all. Again his hand dunked into the warm, the rag soaking up fresh water to help clear away the blood. Again he twisted the piece of cloth, and again the water dripped down into the water in the bucket, the sing-song melody of its impact reminding him a little of wind chimes.

  Her dying wish was that the boys not see her like this, not see her as a zombie, especially one with her brains blown out. He would make sure that was the case. He could do that. Time was short, though, and digging a grave six feet deep wasn’t an option.

  He and his wife would need to take one last road trip.

  Teddy

  Moundsville, West Virginia

  69 days after

  Teddy’s hatchet hacked hard enough at the thing’s neck that with just one stroke its head flopped down, dangling along with the tatters of black t-shirt draped over the sickly gray skin of the chest. The thing hissed, and when it tottered toward him, the head swung back and forth like a pendulum. Teddy laughed. It seemed too funny, like something in an animation, the way it hissed and dangled at the same time.

  It was never quite right killing them, though. They never whimpered or looked scared how they were supposed to. He liked those sounds the animals sometimes made in the back of the truck, little feminine mews and cries. The noises made his heart flutter, made his teeth grit, made his cock so hard it throbbed.

  It wasn’t like that killing the zombies. They didn’t show any feelings beyond a mindless aggression. There was only one thing that really made them seem to suffer, but it was involved. He could only do it so often.

  He raised his hatchet again. He knew another whack at the neck would finish the job, most likely, as decapitation did the trick. He aimed, but he couldn’t do it. Not yet.

  He changed his grip and swung at the arm twice. The skin split open like the scored slash on a seared duck breast and black goo oozed out. He guessed that was old blood of some kind. These things didn’t make much sense. Even after he cut them open and looked at all of the insides, they didn’t make much sense to him. Just black globs and gloop and shriveled bits.

  He backpedaled, letting the thing come at him, that dark substance seeping down its arm, the head grunting and hissing and clattering its teeth upside-down in its dangling position.

  Something cold brushed at his back, and he jumped. He could picture the second zombie creeping up on him, its arms gripping around his waist as its teeth sank into the curve where the spine and neck meet. But no. It was just the chain of one of the swings.

  The surge of adrenalin rendered his hands cold and shaky within a second of the contact, excitement and fear and life flowing through all of him. He took a breath and hurled himself at the zombie, hacking and slashing with great gusto.

  The head flopped to the grass, but he leapt again for the body, falling with it as it tumbled to the ground. He straddled it and bashed away at it for a long time after it was still, his arms and chest and face wearing a spatter of thick black blood. Gummy drops mixed with sweat trailed down from the sides of his brow, flowing into the creases between his cheeks and mouth.

  He realized his mouth was open, so he closed it.

  Lorraine

  Houston, Texas

  3 days before

  Houston rolled by on the sides of the street, the endless urban sprawl. Fast food signs and streetlights cut arches and wedges into the swelling shadows of dusk. When she looked up at the lights, she could almost believe things were normal, that everything was the same as it had always been. No plague. No zombies. No riots. None of it.

  Then movement in the driver’s seat caught her eye, and she turned to see not her husband, Greg, but Ray Dalton, the televangelist, manning the wheel, taking his cell phone from his ear and hanging it up. So things were not normal. Not at all.

  She didn’t know why she got into the car with Dalton. Not really. She was out of it, standing at the gas station with nothing left, pretty far gone on prescription pills, and then he showed up. Of all of the people in the world, the multi-millionaire snake oil salesman pulled up in an SUV. She knew he wasn’t a good person, knew all the rumors about his whole operation being a money making scheme, that he talked more about attaining wealth than scripture, that studies showed he spent 70% of his time on TV asking for money rather than preaching, that he didn’t even read any of the prayer requests sent to him, just had grunt workers remove the checks from the envelopes and throw the rest away.

  Still, she needed to get out of town fast,
and his car seemed to have gas in it. Maybe she would stick with him for a while. Hell, if anyone would survive a nuclear blast, it’d be the cockroaches and Ray Dalton, right?

  She thought about telling Dalton what Greg had been told by his boss, that several major metropolitan areas in the South would be nuked, Houston among them. She looked at him in the driver’s seat, though, his chiseled jaw, his thick head of silver hair, and she couldn’t bring herself to do it. He’d already said they were headed out of town. That was good enough for now.

  She couldn’t tell him what her husband had known or what had happened to Greg.

  Mitch

  Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

  41 days before

  With her face clean, he looped one arm under her knees and the other under her neck. He lifted her that way, like a sleeping child, her broken head resting on the edge of his pectoral and shoulder. After hours on the concrete basement floor, she felt like cold meat against his torso, the way a leftover Thanksgiving turkey gets that chill to it after a few hours in the fridge.

  He adjusted the bulk in his arms before moving out, staring down a moment into that black chasm where her brain used to be. The smell of the congealed blood wafted in his face, a familiar odor. Not a rotten smell, at least not yet. It smelled the way pennies tasted, he thought, recalling putting one of the coins in his mouth as a child and getting yelled at by his mother.

  He walked across the basement floor, and the legs dangled from his arm, the head flopping and bouncing against him with every step. He had expected to find her muscles stiff with rigor mortis, but perhaps the rigidity had already passed, or perhaps the zombie virus sped it up or prevented it in some way. He didn’t know, and he guessed it didn’t matter much.