The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1)

by McBain, Tim

  “Are you all right?” she said.

  “Fine. Just my head hurts some.”

  “Take this.”

  He turned to her and she held out her hand, dropping a pill into his. Xanax. He turned the bar over in his palm.

  “This ain’t exactly headache medicine.”

  “It will help you calm down is all.”

  He thought it might be a mistake to dull his senses in any way at this point, but he didn’t care for the moment. Any relief was welcome. He popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed it dry. It felt stuck in his throat, so he pawed at his neck, wiggled his Adam’s apple back and forth as though that might help shake it loose.

  “Thank you,” he said after a moment.

  A truck passed by on the road, and the engine growled, and the air rushed at them, more clouds of dust whipping around everywhere.

  “If we had the gun, we’d have a better shot at getting another vehicle,” he said. “Any weapon, I guess, would help our cause.”

  “Wait.”

  She stopped and opened her purse, digging around a while. This purse was full of solutions, he thought.

  “Here.”

  She pulled a little plastic canister out. Yellow with a black lid. It almost looked like a travel sized can of hairspray or maybe one of those old school breath fresheners that people always squirt into their mouths in movies just before a big date. He took it from her, spun it around to read the label.

  Pepper spray. Police strength.

  Teddy

  Moundsville, West Virginia

  76 days after

  He sat on his new couch now, watching the dust motes drift in the bars of sunlight glinting through the front window. Settling in at the new house was coming along well. It smelled cleaner here, and it already felt like home, felt like his own.

  He didn’t sleep much that first night, tossing and turning on a new bed, his eyes unwilling to stay closed, but that had already passed. He felt fancy sleeping up high on a mattress not touching the floor, a mattress long enough to support his feet rather than leaving them to dangle off the end. Even the blankets were softer here, no longer scratchy.

  He wished he had some ice cream to celebrate the move. A bowl of vanilla bean would be great. Or meat. Meat would be even better.

  He stood, gathering a couple of cans of lighter fluid that had rested on the couch cushion next to him, tucking one under his arm and one in his hands. He passed through the kitchen to the basement, pausing outside the door, listening to the sound of shoes scuffing on the cement down there.

  He’d already lured a pair of zombies into the chamber, which was exciting at first, but in the hours since he’d secured them, something about it had become disappointing. For all of the effort it took to trap them and have them follow him all the way home and down into the basement, it was anticlimactic. They didn’t moan at all in their cell, didn’t whimper to acknowledge the power he had over them. They just shuffled from wall to wall, pressing their hands into the concrete and moving on, mostly undisturbed.

  It angered him somehow, like a decent movie with a bullshit ending. He knew how to liven things up, though. It’d get messy, but it would be worth it.

  He twisted the key in the padlock, opened the basement door and descended into the cell. He let his feet fall heavy on the steps. He wanted them to know he was coming.

  The creatures turned their heads toward him, their facial expressions still as dim as ever, mouths hanging open, eyelids all drooped. They were both girls, one with long brown hair, maybe 15 or 20, the other with short salt and pepper hair, probably in her 40s. He tried to picture their features un-zombiefied, but it was difficult. Maybe they were even pretty before all of this. He couldn’t say.

  Their shoulders squared toward him, their hips twisting around to match a beat later, and the feet now scuffled in his direction, rubber soles sliding over the cement.

  He popped the top of one of the cans of lighter fluid, swiveling the red nozzle out and letting the other can fall to his feet on the landing at the bottom of the stairs. He pointed the red tip at the younger girl, squeezed the can.

  A burst of fluid spurted in her face, and she didn’t even blink. The sides of the can tinkled out a little two tone melody when he let go. He squeezed again, harder this time so he could maintain a steady stream like urine, the lighter fluid trailing down from her eye to her gaping mouth, spraying inside, slapping against the inside of her cheek. The sound of the flammable juice pooling echoed in the hollow of her throat.

  Something about all of this satisfied him beyond what he had expected. He’d doused zombies with accelerants before but never in his own home. It just felt right.

  He moved to his left, walking around the perimeter of the room like a boxer staying outside, making the opponent chase him. The zombies followed, too slow to ever catch up.

  He sprayed the older one, lighter fluid spritzing her hair with such velocity that little droplets flung off in a mist that seemed to hover above her. Then he pointed the bottle lower, wetting her body a little, almost embarrassed to do so at first. He found confidence soon enough and worked the bottle up and down on diagonal lines like a paint roller, soaking their bellies and boobs.

  The fumes filled the room now, made him a little lightheaded. Time to end the suspense. Time to give them what they came here for.

  He tossed the can of lighter fluid onto the landing with the other and reached into his pocket, fingers fishing around, tumbling and fumbling the little wooden sticks around in there before he finally got a hold of one and pulled it free.

  He scraped the match against the zipper of his jeans, and it hissed and flashed as the chemical tip ignited. He held it at eye level as the flash died down and the wood maintained the smaller flame.

  This was it. Just about as aroused as he could be.

  He flipped the match at the younger one, sent it in a spiraling arc toward her face, trying to land it in her mouth like a three point shot.

  Mitch

  Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

  41 days before

  He stomped his foot, the sole of his shoe pounding into the concrete slab with a smack and a thump. Right away, the endless chirp wavered and cut off like something falling out of the air around him. The silence welled up to fill the shed, and his shoulders tensed, and it felt weird to move, to breathe, to exist at all.

  He scratched behind his ear and thought about what this meant. The sound reacted to him, to his stomp, and the nature of the sound guttering out was definitely organic, a living thing. Not a light bulb or some electrical noise. It must be an insect after all.

  His eyes darted back and forth, scanning along the place where the floor and wall met. Could it be some kind of cricket? One of those fat cicada-type things with black veins stitched through its wings? What being could possess this shrill, gravel-throated voice? And how could it screech for minutes at a time without stopping to inhale? Did it not need to breathe?

  Nothing stirred in the shed, though. No six-footed creature stepped forward to reveal itself, pattering out to the center of the room with one arm raised.

  He let his eyes drop to his lap, looking upon his hand resting on the firearm there. He grit his teeth and wished he could do it all in one motion, just lift the steel to his face, pull the trigger and be done with it, a flash and a pop and off to oblivion, off to somewhere else or maybe nowhere, but he couldn’t do it.

  The sweat seeped from his pores again, beads of moisture glomming together into pools that clung to his skin all over. The wet did nothing to ease the heat inside of him. It just made him feel soggy and sopped into his clothes so he felt like he was wearing wet rags.

  He thought that from afar suicide seemed like mostly a sad thing, an abstract thing, maybe even romantic in a tragic way, someone in so much pain that they couldn’t go on, someone choosing a time and place to leave because they couldn’t do it anymore. But up close it was so violent. Sticking a gun in his mouth and pulling the trigger fe
lt like such an aggressive act now that he stared its reality in the face. How bad did you have to hate yourself to be able to do that? A person didn’t just have a streak of sadness or a lack of confidence in that case. The feelings they had toward themselves probably had more in common with the people who shoot a bunch of kids at their school. They wanted destruction. They wanted blood. They wanted bones splintered and brains disintegrated and their face erased into a bloody jelly. Maybe that wasn’t true in many cases. He couldn’t be sure. But it must be true in some. Up close, that’s what felt necessary to be able to do it, to overcome the fear.

  Not sadness. Hatred.

  Not blue feelings. Red hot fiery ones.

  All of the passion and despair and energy that drove people to do all that they do in the world, all of that life force channeled into hatred for one’s self that swelled up so huge that it couldn’t be contained. Maybe society needed to turn that into a Hallmark card version of what it really was to be able to deal with it. They needed to make it small, a smiley face with the smile turned upside down. But it came from the same place that murder came from, the same place that rape came from, the primal place that seethes and flails and finds satisfaction only in inflicting pain and death and destruction. It was those things turned inward instead of outward.

  He rubbed one hand against his neck, feeling the smooth skin give way to rough at the place where the stubble began under his chin. He wondered if the black crept up there now, dark lines threading over the curve of his throat and moving out of view beneath his facial hair.

  He thought it strange to be human just then, strange to be a walking bag of meat, the smartest of the apes, strange to live in a world that pretended that the animal part of him was less real than the social constructs all around. When he touched the gun, his fingertips grazing over the metal, he knew that life and death were real, that somehow they hadn’t quite seemed real before, back when he wanted nothing more than to kick his feet up and watch TV. Before, all of the fake things seemed real: TV shows and sports and political theater masquerading as policy debate and investment portfolios and real estate deals and picking out new appliances and the hope of trading in the station wagon for something a little sportier once the kids were a little older.

  But no. He was a hunk of meat, a group of muscles, a four chambered heart squishing red blood cells loaded with oxygen and nutrients to his oversized brain. And now the scenario had tasked him with destroying the meat, defiling the flesh, blowing a big red hole in the oversized brain so all of the blood poured out like water spiraling out of a bathtub faucet.

  He touched his neck again, felt the warmth and the thrum of the pumping blood against his palm. He closed his eyes, and his pulse fluttered against his hand, his ribcage shaking like the walls of a building about to buckle in an earthquake.

  Again his fingers took their places on the handle and trigger of the gun, and again he lifted it. He stared straight ahead, his eyes locked on a bottle of WD-40 on the shelf across the room, the gun bobbing and weaving at the bottom of his field of vision. His shoulders twitched a few times, that little quiver like getting a chill.

  He closed his eyes and slid the gun between his teeth again.

  Ray

  North of Canton, Texas

  2 days before

  Heat shimmered off of the road now, the midday sun making his eyes want to pinch closed rather than look at the bright light reflected off of the white line running parallel to them.

  The plaza in the distance became their destination – a mini-mall with surplus clothing shops and a Gamestop. What came next would be pretty simple, he thought. They just needed to pepper spray somebody and take their car. They could even grab some deeply discounted jeans along the way, maybe.

  The pepper spray canister bulged in his pocket, not quite visible if you didn’t know to look for it, he thought, but he felt his pants tighten around it with each step, a little fabric pinch and then a release. He stared down at it while he walked. Maybe you could see it, if-

  “Question,” she said.

  He looked up, waiting for her to go on, feeling a little self-conscious to have his pants and crotch gazing interrupted. She finished her thought in a deadpan:

  “Is that a can of police strength pepper spray in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?”

  He laughed. He hadn’t seen that coming from her. It made it funnier that she kept a totally straight face, staring off into the distance, almost looking distracted.

  “Real question,” she said. “How are we going to pick?”

  “Pick?”

  “How are we going to... you know... pick a car, I guess?”

  “Oh.”

  His eyes scanned the businesses on the horizon again, swinging down from the red signage of Gamestop to the movement on the ground before it.

  People moved to and from cars. Even with the apocalypse upon them, people still wanted video games and ponchos and Skechers. From this distance, they looked small, their shoulders slouched, their movements indistinct, somewhat aimless.

  His head swiveled over to take in the mouth of the lot. It stirred with life as well. Minivans and SUVs thrummed in and out in rhythmic bursts like the parking lot was inhaling and exhaling soccer moms.

  He zoned out watching these moving parts, his mind going all the way blank for a good 90 seconds, and then he remembered that she had asked an interesting question: how would they pick a car? Better to think of it as picking a car than picking a victim, too. She was smart.

  “I don’t know. It’ll be just like shopping for a new set of wheels, maybe,” he said.

  Erin

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  52 days after

  Erin made certain they approached the building from behind. She didn’t want to ruin the surprise. They hid their bikes behind a rusting blue dumpster at the back of the strip mall.

  “Close your eyes,” she said.

  Erin watched Izzy’s eyelids snap shut. She took a small hand in hers and led Izzy around the side of the building.

  “What is it?”

  Erin turned back and saw that Izzy had opened one eye a crack. She stopped walking and stuck a finger in Izzy’s face.

  “Cover those little peepers!”

  Izzy slapped her free hand over her eyes. Satisfied, Erin continued around the building.

  “It’s a surprise. No peeking.”

  Their feet scuffed over the gravel of the mostly empty parking lot. When they were nicely centered about a hundred yards in front of the building, she took Izzy by the shoulders and squared her toward the facade.

  “OK, open them.”

  Izzy’s mouth popped open at the familiar logo, eyes zig-zagging over the letters and the cartoon mouse on the sign.

  “Chuck E. Cheese!”

  “Happy birthday, Izzy.”

  Izzy clapped her hands together.

  “You remembered!”

  “You only mentioned it like every day for the past week.”

  As they crossed the parking lot, Erin scanned the area. She didn’t want to linger in the city longer than they had to, but she wanted to do something nice for Izzy. It was her birthday, and she was still a kid. She deserved a little fun now and again. Plus, it made it so their trek into the city wasn’t a complete waste of time.

  Chuck E. Cheese was one of the few places they’d come across with all of its windows still intact. Erin tugged at the door, but it was locked.

  “Still got that bobby pin?” Erin said.

  Izzy produced the little twist of metal from her pocket. She kept begging Erin to let her try picking the locks. Might as well go for the full birthday spoil-a-thon.

  While Izzy worked at the door, Erin ran through the last few days. For the thousandth time, she bemoaned the fact that they still hadn’t found a gun.

  First they’d tried the Rod and Gun Club in Presto. With a name like that, you’d think it’d be some kind of firearm cornucopia. But it turned out to be more of a banquet hall
type of place, like an American Legion. The only difference was they had targets set up in a shooting range out back.

  Next they searched Presto’s lone pawn shop, but it had been cleaned out of everything but some older model TVs and an electric guitar with the neck snapped off.

  Save for hoping to come across a gun in someone’s house on one of their scavenging trips, Erin realized they’d need to brave the city if she was serious about finding a gun.

  According to the trusty phone book, Cabela’s was the best option. They left first thing that morning, taking along only their ditty bags, food, and water. Erin stowed the utility knife in her pocket, just in case.

  They rode out toward Presto before veering onto the highway. As her bike bumped over the rumble strip that marked the shoulder of the road, Erin’s eyes followed the serpentine line of cars extending into the distance. It was still now, of course, most of the cars literally bumper-to-bumper. It kind of reminded her of a snake. A big, dead snake.

  Several times they had to get off their bikes, walking them around a big pile-up or through a tight squeeze of vehicles. Even though the sporting goods store was only about ten miles away, it was three hours before they arrived.

  As soon as she rolled up and saw the jagged hole in the glass out front, Erin knew their chances were slim. But she tried to keep her hopes high.

  They entered the store, stepping through the gaping glass mouth. Everywhere she looked, merchandise was strewn about. Like a tornado had gone right down every aisle.

  When they reached the firearms section, Erin’s shoulders slumped.

  “Damn,” she said.

  The racks were empty. Even the display models had been taken.

  A giant faux mountain rose from the center of the store, complete with taxidermy mountain goats, ram, deer, and wolves. One of the stuffed goats was captured mid-climb, legs akimbo. How bizarre that this used to be someone’s full time job. Some person dedicated a lot of time to stuffing that goat, but not just stuffing it. Posing it in a very precise manner so that it would look natural. And alive.