The Scattered and the Dead (Book 2)

by McBain, Tim

  But no other feelings came upon him when he walked in this place. Not really. Just that increased heartbeat, the vague stimulation that he could never quite figure out, never quite find anywhere else in life that he looked.

  Izzy

  Presto, Pennsylvania

  171 days after

  A crosshatched square of Chex cereal lay in the palm of Izzy’s hand. She held absolutely still, even holding her breath just in case.

  The squirrel’s tale bobbed once, twice, nose twitching all the while.

  Come on, she thought. Don’t be afraid.

  It scampered a few inches closer, and it was a good thing she was holding her breath or she would have screeched in excitement. This was the closest it had come so far.

  The crash of the front door slamming against the wall shattered the silence, and the squirrel took off in a blur, abandoning the morsel of food. Erin stomped through the door with another load of supplies.

  Izzy exhaled and tossed the cereal square into her mouth.

  “You scared it away.”

  Erin stopped knocking snow from her boots.

  “What?”

  “The squirrel. I was this close to getting him to eat from my hand.”

  Erin’s eyes traveled the distance from Izzy’s chomping mouth to the open cereal box on the table.

  “Stop feeding all of the food to vermin.”

  “It’s not a vermind,” Izzy said. “What’s a vermind?”

  “You’re supposed to be guarding the sleeping bag.”

  One thing Izzy noticed was that Erin never called him Squirrelman. Or even just man. Or boy. Or he or him. He was “the sleeping bag.” And the sleeping bag was an It. Same with the squirrel.

  Erin shrugged out of her coat and hung it next to the door. She pushed the curtain aside and moved closer to the glass, her nose almost touching.

  “That was the last load. At least for now. It’s almost dark.”

  She muttered something else about the effing snow. Except she didn’t use the word “effing.”

  “I heard that,” Izzy said. “Language.”

  “Looks like this is going to be a full-on blizzard. I guess there’s one silver lining to all this.”

  “That we saved Squirrelman? And the squirrel?”

  Erin raised an eyebrow.

  “No. We got all that extra food.”

  “That’s not nice,” Izzy said.

  Erin’s eyes swept over the sleeping bag, skipping over the face quickly, and focusing on Izzy’s empty hands.

  “Where’s the gun anyway? I told you, you can’t just leave it around.”

  Izzy rolled her eyes and lifted the Beretta from where it rested in her lap.

  For a little while, she thought finding the food changed things. It was proof that she wasn’t just a dumb kid. Erin had to see that.

  But now Izzy wasn’t sure she saw it at all.

  Decker

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  167 days after

  He woke in the dark, confused, sitting half-upright. He tried to feel around on the nightstand for some matches to light the lantern, but he not only found no matches, he found no nightstand. Just a solid object with some plush to it. He traced it all the way back, discovering that it was under him as well, like the mattress kept going well beyond where it should go, except it had a rough texture.

  His fingernails scratched at the upholstery, and the answer to the riddle popped into his head: this was the couch in the living room. It all came back then in a flash. The crawl from the bed down the stairs. The successful trip to the well. The yellow-and-green-afghan-nap apparently stretching out into something longer.

  His tongue made the rounds in his mouth again, finding that a little of that sludgy, gritty feeling had returned. He should get more water soon. He knew he hadn’t come close to catching up to where he should be in terms of either hydration or hunger.

  He rose, the afghan spilling from his lap to the floor, and he stretched his arms and shoulders, rolling his neck one way and then the other. It popped when he went left with it, the sound crunchy and gigantic in the quiet of the house.

  He looked down at himself, just able to make out the densest columns of black that he knew to be his legs. They felt sturdy under him for the first time in a while. Strong. He realized that his shiver was gone, and the core of his body seemed to have some warmth to it, even if his hands and feet were still chilly.

  Looking out the window, it looked to be just before dawn, a little gray on the horizon hinting at the daylight to come. Not enough light to see anything beyond the vague shape of a doorway in here, but it wouldn’t be long.

  He lifted the flap of his coat off of his hip and fished his hand into his pocket. When his fingers retracted, they gripped the hard rectangle of steel they’d been looking for. The Zippo opened with that familiar click. His thumb found the flint and spun the wheel. Sparks flashed and caught, the flame flickering and bobbing before it settled.

  Let there be light.

  He lifted the lighter above his head like a torch and watched the light spill out into the kitchen, the silhouette of the snack bar and the stools before it coming clear. And then he wheeled the light to his right to illuminate the landing and the steps running up from it. If he was going out in the cold again, he should do it right this time.

  He went upstairs for the bucket, the stench of stale piss assaulting his nostrils about two thirds of the way up the steps. Acrid. Astringent. The intensity of it made his face pucker. It reminded him of walking into the laundry room as a kid when the kitty litter needed changing.

  He cupped the sleeve of his jacket over his mouth and nose and held his breath as he crossed back through the doorway into the bedroom. The floor creaked as he made his way to the nightstand, then moaned a little as he stooped to light the lantern.

  The lamp flickered like a strobe for a second, and then the light swelled to fill the room. He slid the lighter back into his pocket, the heated piece of metal like a hot coal resting against his thigh.

  Now he scooped the bucket in one hand and the lantern in the other and made his way back downstairs. The shadows of the rungs supporting the banister all shifted angles with every step he took, which somehow made his descent more dramatic. He felt like some higher being, carrying light down to the mortals and heathens and beasts.

  Again the silence struck him against the sound of his footsteps as he pattered over the linoleum to the back door. Strange how huge every noise became in the quiet and the dark.

  He left the lantern on the back porch and crunched through the snow to the well, repeating the yanks on the handle he’d performed earlier. The dying bird squawks came back, accompanied by that beat of metal on metal, but these things barely caught his notice.

  He shifted his weight from foot to foot while he worked the pump, reveling in the strength he felt there, the articulation of movement that the tiniest amount of food and water seemed to have restored to this group of muscles. His calves bulged, and just along the meeting place between each calf and ankle, he felt the tiniest soreness, a little reminder of how stiff he’d been before. Something about that faint pain illustrated how good he felt now, pressed some pleasure button in his brain that made him giddy to be alive, to be mobile, to be thinking clearly.

  Crazy how fleeting these moments were, he thought. The times when one caught glimpses of what an insane miracle life truly was, to feel how incredible it felt to be here, to be conscious. Whenever it happened, he tried to hold onto that sensation for as long as he could, but even now in the heart of one such moment, he knew that it would eventually slide away like some great weight that his arms and fingers couldn’t support for very long. The feeling was too heavy to hold.

  Still, he had it for now. He smiled in the dark. He knew he would be OK now. He would survive. And he knew people would come around before long, and he would know how to handle them when that happened.

  The well hissed and spat, and he filled his bucket to t
he brim.

  Erin

  Presto, Pennsylvania

  171 days after

  She couldn’t sleep, so she lay in bed, staring at the darkened window. She couldn’t see much, just the occasional swirl of snow beyond the glass. The ebb and flow of it reminded her of a freshly shaken snow globe.

  It was pointless. She knew that.

  At best, they were keeping him alive for a little longer. A few more days before he died. A few more days before he turned.

  Would he turn if he hadn't been bit before he died, though? She still wasn't sure about that. She’d checked him over for bites and wounds, found nothing. But she also couldn’t stop picturing him going zombie. That was probably for the best. She had to assume he could. And would.

  A soft scratching sound came from the other side of the bedroom door, and Erin jerked into a sitting position, grabbing the gun from under her pillow. She aimed the pistol at the door, waiting.

  She’d locked it of course.

  The noise was gone. Erin let herself fall back into her pillow. She rested the pistol on her chest. Had the noise even been real or was she just imagining things?

  Another thought flitted about in her head as she lay there. What if he was faking it? That it was all a ruse so they’d let their guard down, and he could pop out of there and steal all their stuff?

  She’d made sure to lock the other bedroom where they kept the food, of course. But it wasn’t like a flimsy indoor lock was going to keep anyone out for long.

  She was being silly though. No one could fake sick that well. She didn’t think so anyway.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  There. The scratching again. The wind kicked up, howling through the fields and rattling the windows in their frames. She strained to listen over the sound of the blizzard.

  Fuck it. She wasn’t going to wait around in here for something to happen.

  She glanced at Izzy, curled up on the other side of the bed. Out like a light.

  Outside of the warm protection of the blankets, Erin instantly started to shiver. Even through two pairs of socks, the floor felt like ice on her feet.

  She pulled on a sweater and crept to the door.

  Now that she was closer, she could hear it more clearly. It wasn’t quite a scratching sound either. It was something familiar that she couldn’t place.

  She stood next to the door for a long time, trying to work up the courage to unlock it. Should she unlock it slowly and just try to peek out? No, the band-aid method was better. Rip the fucker off, all at once.

  She counted to three in her head, twisted the lock, and flung the door aside, catching it with her foot so it wouldn’t slam into the wall and wake Izzy. She raised the Glock in front of her and held her breath.

  Nothing. Just the kitchen and living room, shrouded in darkness. And silence.

  Again she started to doubt that she’d heard anything.

  She fumbled around in the dark, fingers searching for the familiar shape of the flashlight on the dresser. When she found it, she clicked it on and swept the room with the beam of light. The tension in her muscles relaxed a little when her light illuminated the sleeping bag, confirming that Squirrelman was still in it. He was just as still as before. Not a zombie. Yet.

  She got closer, aiming the light at his face. The grey undertone to his skin made him look already dead. But if she held her breath, she could hear his, rasping over a dry throat.

  His lips looked better. That was about the only thing that had improved. They'd been all dried out, cracked and papery. But the liquid they'd been giving him had rehydrated them a bit.

  He didn't have the whorls of black the zombies had. But did that come later? After they were dead?

  Sometimes she thought she should just kill him now. Put him out of his misery. They were putting off the inevitable. But she couldn't do it. Even if Izzy hadn't been there. She couldn't do it.

  She'd have to if he turned, though. She’d probably have to shoot him if he just died, to make sure he stayed dead.

  Squirrelman. What a ridiculous name. But she didn’t have anything else to call him, so she went with it.

  The noise came again, off to her left, and she went rigid. Slowly, quietly, she turned, angling the flashlight toward the source.

  The squirrel froze when the spotlight hit him, not unlike a deer in headlights. His nose twitched twice, and then he raced into the darkness and out of sight.

  Could squirrels turn into zombies? She didn’t know. But if this was a zombie squirrel, instead of brains, it apparently hungered for cereal. A jagged hole gaped on the side of the box, cardboard chewed and ripped away. Great. They were going to have to squirrel-proof all the food now.

  She checked the fire, stoked the coals, and added more wood. When she swung the stove door closed, the squirrel was back on the counter, admiring the hole it had excavated into the side of the cereal box.

  She shooed him away with a flap of her hand. In the dark it was hard to see it scurry away. It was more like the squirrel just vanished.

  Inspecting the box, it didn’t seem that the squirrel had actually gotten into the food. He’d just bored a hole in the cardboard. Erin opened the cupboard and slid the box onto the shelf, then stopped, looking into the darkness around her.

  The plastic bag crinkled in her hands as she unrolled the top. Her fingers found the opening at the top and wormed their way in. After removing a fistful of cereal, she rolled the bag back up and tucked it in the cupboard.

  The box made a hollow sound as she tossed it onto the kitchen table. She sprinkled the loose bits of cereal into it.

  A yawn overtook her, inflating her chest. She sat down at the table, crossing her arms and resting her chin on top to wait.

  She couldn’t hear or see him until he was on the table top. The squirrel’s tail bobbed and twitched as it navigated the polished wood. It hesitated, trying to decide if it was safe to get close enough to this unknown human, she supposed. She could appreciate the concern.

  Finally it hopped close enough to the box to reach inside. He reached in and took a square of cereal in both hands, then held it to his mouth. He took dainty bites and rotated the square around so that it chewed all the corners off first.

  Despite herself, she smiled. She had to admit it was pretty cute for vermin.

  Deirdre

  The Compound

  9 years, 25 days after

  Shelly’s body rested on the bank of the river. She was waterlogged. Bloated and immense.

  Deirdre couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. Her eyelids fluttered, but she couldn’t look away.

  The girl lay face down, head tilted just a little to her left, pale cheeks and purple lips that looked to be stuck in the process of melting into a dark puddle. The heat was getting to the dead girl already, breaking everything down. Softening her. Pulling her apart. Her flesh made so soggy that it was no longer quite solid, crumbling away like boiled ham. Most of her head hair had washed away in the river. Her bottom teeth were gone.

  Deirdre had been assigned to guard the crime scene until the detectives arrived, the messenger banging on the door of her cabin, shaking her awake from a nap. She gathered her things, and her feet stumbled her down the steps and out into the world, though her mind still seemed half-tethered to the dream world. Even after the hour and fifteen minute walk to this location, she hadn’t quite woken up. Not really. She still held that fog of sleep in her skull.

  The river smelled awful, something she’d thought about at length on the walk here. Even after more than nine years without pollution, it smelled like a mix of ass and rotten eggs. She guessed that’s how bad you can fuck a river – even a decade can’t undo it. Someone said the smell was so bad that it peeled the paint off of the buildings closest to the water. It was tough, Deirdre thought, to pin down the cause and effect there, but it was true that the sheds closest to the river had been stripped down to bare wood.

  As bad as it may smell, however, she’d always like
d the sound of the river. The rush of the water flowing around bends and jostling over rocks. It was like music. Not a full song so much as a single chord held to give a sense of ambiance, like a minimalist score in a movie. The chord seemed to change as she walked alongside the waterway, the pitch shifting along with the dips in the land.

  She had been hungry on the way here, too. She wanted to get this over with so she could get back and fix something to eat. Spicy noodle, maybe. That had been her favorite of late. Kind of a bastardized pad Thai based on whatever ingredients they had handy.

  Now she didn’t feel hungry at all. In fact, she couldn’t feel her hands or feet or face. Everything went cold and numb the minute she laid eyes on the swollen corpse.

  All she could think about was hugging Shelly and telling her everything would be OK, wrapping that tiny creature in her arms. That feeling swelled in her again. Not for long. Just a flash. The sense that she held something special, something rare and strange like a weird bird. She felt it for just a beat, and then it disappeared.

  The numb spread into her torso and took her breath away like a wedge of ice piercing her lung, stabbing her in the heart.

  Shelly’s body smelled worse than the river of shit.

  The detectives arrived and milled around the corpse. They talked now, she knew, but she didn’t hear them. She heard only the sound of the water rushing past.

  The cold of the shock gripped her brain now, seeming to pluck her from this scene, at least partially, to pull her up into her head to shield her from this harsh reality. The river, the body, the detectives – all of it seemed farther away. She could see each of them if she concentrated, though things seemed to blur along the edges like looking at the world through a glass dish smeared with butter.

  She let her eyes drift closed, concentrating on only the sound of the water. It gurgled along the muddy banks, tinkled where it sluiced over a downed tree branch, and slapped against the flat surface of a large stone.