The Scattered and the Dead (Book 2)

by McBain, Tim

  “Work. Not necessarily the act of physical labor. Not even the concept of employment. Not exactly. But work as in an ongoing effort, a journey you choose for yourself, something you put some care into, some promise you strive to fulfill. Not a task to accomplish and be done with. An ongoing process. That’s what life is always about. The process, not the result. The journey, not the destination. The result, the final result, is the same for all of us, you know. The destination lies six feet down. Maybe shallower than that these days. That’s where we all wind up. In the meantime, we got this time to kill, you know? Seventy years if you’re lucky. Whatever it winds up being, might as well do something and do it well enough to make it worth your while. That’s all there ever really was, I think, and I don’t think it changed much, even when the world up and went to hell. That’s my take, anyway.”

  Baghead turned to the window and watched indiscernible objects flit by in the dark, the whole world obscured and distant and shrouded in black for the moment.

  “I see what you mean,” he said. “I suppose I even agree with you. But even if there are universal aspects to the human experience, constants that transcend time and technology, much of our dreams are occupied by things specific to the world around us. Money. Cars. Movies. McDonalds. Coca-Cola. With all of those things wiped out all at once, it left a void, you know? It revealed much is all I’m saying.”

  Delfino licked his lips, nodded.

  “I guess I can agree to that.”

  They fell quiet for a while, both staring out into the dark places where the headlights couldn’t go. Eventually, the sky spit little droplets of rain down to pelt the windshield. Not a full on rain. Not even a legit sprinkle. More like a half-hearted threat, tiny explosions of water that tapped out a sparse drumbeat.

  Delfino gestured toward the backseat, a little flick of his head in Ruthie’s direction, before he spoke again.

  “What do you think they’ll dream about? The kids, I mean. Having never known smart phones or the internet or fast food or video games or movies, what things will they obsess about? And once those of us old enough to remember these things are gone, what will the world be like? Do you think it’ll be different, or do you think that loss seems like a bigger deal than it really is?”

  “I’m not too sure.”

  “About which question?”

  “All of ‘em, I guess.”

  Delfino clucked out a weird laugh.

  “You’re all question and no answer, you know that? You analyze my point of view, quiz me about it, but when I ask you something, you’re suddenly not much of a talker. Seems funny. A guy who spends his whole life publishing words, and he has nothing to say. They’re mostly other people’s words, I suppose. The things you gather up.”

  Baghead shrugged, the hood wrinkling at the back of his head, and then he replied.

  “Forget fast food. Most of the kids around here have probably never had citrus fruits. Hardly any fruit at all, probably. Not a lot of orchards ‘round here, right? And no trucks are bringing in shipments of groceries.”

  “Berries.”

  “What?”

  “I bet they’ve had berries, at least. Raspberries. Strawberries. Maybe blueberries. Stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, maybe. I mean, hopefully. But that’s the thing, I guess. That’s what I was trying to say before. We share these experiences, and we share these desires, these dreams. I guess it shifts over time, you know? I mean, it always has. From caveman times to the era of feudal farms to what you’re talking about, the shared dream always morphs. I guess that will just happen again. We’re in a unique position, those of us who survived the plague and the bombs. We got to watch our version of the dream die a rapid, violent death. Most people don’t get that kind of perspective, you know? They live with the dream, almost like they’re inside of it as much as it’s inside of them. They can’t see it, but right now we can. Of course, it makes it hard, maybe impossible, for us to try to imagine what it might be like for the next generation, but…”

  Silence swelled in the place where Baghead’s thought trailed off. His mind stirred now, tumbling over the way dreams change over time, flipping through the figments in his head, a collection of images wrapped up in nostalgic feelings toward products and people and pets all gathered in his head like a book of photos. Memories and imagined bits to page through.

  He wondered. Nostalgia for what? For Coca-Cola? For Skittles and Frosties and those shitty convenience store apple pies that come in a little plastic sleeve? It was ridiculous. But it was also real. He did feel a pang of warmth and regret and desire all at once for each of those products, like lost and forgotten family members. Cousins long dead that he’d never find again.

  Delfino twirled another cigarette between his fingers and thumb, rested it between his lips, lit it. Smoke coiled off of the tip of it, making his right eye squint.

  “I was sure wrong, wasn’t I?” he said.

  “What?” Bags said.

  “I said I was wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “I said you don’t talk, at least not about yourself. You do, I think. Not all the time, maybe, but I guess you have something to say after all.”

  That electric sting receded some in Bag’s eyes. Not enough that he could sleep, but enough that closing them to rest felt pleasant for the first time in a while.

  His mind drifted back to that encounter in the woods again. These events didn’t replay like a movie in his mind so much as the feelings all reoccurred to him in sequence. The butt of the gun pressed against his palm. The sweat gathering and dripping along the back of his neck. That waver in his arm as he raised the weapon before him, and that brief jolt of recoil popping his wrist and shifting his elbow a few inches. He felt them all over and over. In his heart. On his skin.

  A bump in the road bobbed his head up and down which shook him from the trance, from the place between waking and sleeping he’d slid into. He blinked a few times before his eyes fluttered open to stay.

  Bright surrounded them now. Gray light everywhere. The glare of it squinted his eyes back to slits right away, kept everything smeared in a blur, shrouded in translucent blobs. It surprised him, the light, made him wonder how long he’d drifted off in thought. It had to have been more than an hour, he thought, for the dawn to creep up on him like this.

  And then the smoke smell returned. Much stronger now. Much more unpleasant. Like a burning bag of trash, he thought. The odor put that picture in his head. The plastic shriveling, garbage juice sluicing down over crushed cereal boxes and milk cartons.

  After quite a struggle, his pupils managed to clear the fog away. He blinked a few more times out of habit.

  The dashboard came into focus first. Then the road sharpened ahead of them, the worn texture of the blacktop coming in crisp like a high definition picture being broadcast into his skull. After a beat, movement beyond the road top caught his eye, and he let his eyes drift toward it.

  Smoke billowed along the horizon, a thick sheet of a black cloud winding its way into the heavens. It looked like a storm cloud had squatted down directly on the land, but he knew it was smoke, both by the movement and the smell of it. He watched it roil a long moment, tendrils of black twisting around each other within the dark wall, before Delfino spoke.

  “City’s burning.”

  Deirdre

  The Hole

  9 years, 32 days after

  The rain poured down again, droplets slapping into leaves and pelting the roof of the shed where she sat. A mist rose from the ground where it ran down off of the shingles.

  Deirdre felt small again. Powerless. She fought to hold onto the feelings that had burned so bright on the banks of the river, but they’d faded in the last few days, replaced by doubts. What could she really do about any of this aside from get herself killed?

  Another poor sap was stuck down in the hole in a thunderstorm, shoveling dirt out of the way so piss and shit could take its place. But what did that make Deirdre, the
one sitting there all night to guard said sap? She didn’t know. Maybe there were two saps out here.

  Lantern light spilled over the surface of the table, just enough to cast an oblong reflection and illuminate the silhouette of her gun on the opposite side. It probably emitted less light than a candle when she had it set this low. Hopefully that meant it wasn’t enough for someone outside to see her face, though she doubted the notion.

  Lightning blazed outside, lighting up the rectangle of the world she could see through the doorway. Weird to see that stuttering version of things as the brightness throbbed, the strobe effect making it look like the tree branches were some kind of stop motion animation.

  But she also saw a lumbering figure in that momentary glow. She recognized the gait right away. Curtis.

  She sighed, and her fingers found the lantern’s knob, turned it. The flame swelled inside the glass, and the shadows in the room shrank back into the corners.

  Thunder rolled some seconds later. It seemed far away. Muted. Soft.

  Curtis tromped through the brush, and she could hear the swish of wet ferns and the snap of twigs. It sounded like a yeti stomping around. She wondered sometimes if he made all of that noise on purpose so as not to sneak up and scare her.

  “Beautiful night to dig a poop hole, isn’t it?” he said, his voice ringing out a beat before his frame filled the doorway.

  She didn’t laugh. She just shook her head, which for whatever reason made him chuckle. He took a seat at the end of the table and pushed her gun out of the way so he could rest his forearms there.

  “Who has the honors of digging in the rain tonight?” he said.

  “Roy something. I forget his last name.”

  He sat back, eyebrows wrinkling.

  “Really, now? I never thought I’d see the day. You know, you’re usually pretty meticulous about the details of whoever you’re watching. You’ve always got a name and occupation locked and loaded for me when I come out this way, sometimes even a few anecdotes to share with me.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know.”

  The perplexed look stayed fixed on his face for another beat, and then he nodded once and the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed.

  “I suppose you’ve got other things on your mind. After what happened with the girl and all, I mean. I was real sad to hear it.”

  They were quiet for a long moment. The wind blew and the sizzling sound of the water rushing off the roof seemed to grow more intense for a moment.

  “Do you ever wonder about why things work the way they do?” she said.

  “How do you mean?”

  She looked at the glint of the lantern light on the tabletop as she talked.

  “Why everyone obeys Father, worships him, lets him have whatever he wants in his house up on the hill while children starve in the shacks down in the valley.”

  When she glanced up at Curtis, she found his mouth agape, his eyebrows arching up to try to touch his hairline. He didn’t move. She was pretty sure he was holding his breath, even.

  “You can’t say that stuff out loud,” he said. “Any of it.”

  She stared at him, blinked a few times.

  “I’m just sayin’,” he said. “That’s treason. You won’t be digging any poop holes for that. You’ll be digging a shallow grave where they’ll bury you and your severed head.”

  “Maybe.”

  Curtis leaned forward in his seat.

  “If you want to fight anything in this system, just make sure it’s the hill you’re willing to die on. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “We all die somewhere. On some level, surviving merely means you get to die later.”

  Now he was the one just staring at her, his lips pursed a little like a grumpy toddler.

  “I may as well pick my own hill is all. You know?”

  He leaned back, narrowed his eyes a little.

  “You don’t sound like yourself, you know that? Not even a little.”

  She looked up at the wood that ran to the peak of the shed’s roof. The lantern painted a yellow circle of light there that flickered just a little.

  “Maybe people change. You ever think of that? Maybe I sound exactly like myself today. Not yesterday or the day before or last week. Today.”

  That soft thunder clattered again like bowling balls rolling in the distance. He licked his lips.

  “There are moments in life when two paths lay before you,” he said. “Moments where you pick your path and you can never go back. So take a good look at what you’ve got, on the inside and on the outside, before you make the choice, because everything you’ve got, all of it — that’s what you stand to lose if you pick wrong.”

  He started to stand up and stopped himself, his hands slumping back onto the table.

  “Look, just don’t do anything crazy, all right? You’re kind of scaring me with all of this talk. You’re a good girl, OK? I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”

  He gathered his things and made ready to head back out into the rain.

  Deirdre smiled. It wasn’t until he said those words that she knew, for certain, that she was going to do something crazy. Even if she didn’t know what it was just yet, it was going to happen.

  And soon.

  Erin

  Presto, Pennsylvania

  173 days after

  Breath rattled in Squirrelman’s throat, a dry wheeze. Erin struggled to loosen his grip, but he only held tighter. His eyes opened, lids going wide to reveal too much of the whites.

  She changed tactics, placing a hand on his forehead and using that as leverage to keep his gnashing teeth away from her arm. Instead of biting her, he spoke.

  “Nina,” he said again. “I’m sorry.”

  And then his eyes rolled back in his head, and his fingers slid from her wrist. He slumped down into the pillow.

  Erin scooted away, though she was now mostly convinced he wasn’t a zombie. Zombies didn’t talk, as far as she knew. She rubbed at the spot on her arm where he’d grabbed her.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “He’s delirious from the fever.”

  The way Izzy said it was so serious and matter-of-fact, Erin almost wanted to laugh.

  “Is that your official diagnosis, Doctor Izzy?”

  Izzy nodded gravely.

  “One time my brother had the flu really bad. He got out of bed and wandered into the living room, saying weird stuff that didn’t make any sense. Then he stood in front of the window and started yelling for my dad to get out of the road, but my dad was in the kitchen, making dinner. There wasn’t even anyone in the road.”

  “How long did it last?”

  “I don’t remember,” Izzy said. Then she sat up a little straighter, eyes lighting up.

  “Oh!”

  “What?”

  “I just remembered!”

  Izzy smiled to herself then, looking kind of wistful. Erin had to nudge her to bring her back to the present.

  “Well?”

  “Huh?”

  “How long before your brother snapped out of his flu-induced acid trip?”

  “I told you, I don’t remember.”

  “Then you said you did remember.”

  Izzy looked confused, and Erin started to wonder if one or both of them were losing it. Maybe whatever Squirrelman had was contagious and one of the first symptoms was having nonsensical, circular conversations.

  “Oh, I get it. But that wasn’t what I remembered.”

  “OK,” Erin said. She rubbed the back of her neck and waited for further explanation.

  “I remembered what we had for dessert. When my brother was sick.”

  Erin sighed and squeezed her eyes shut.

  “It was the first time I ever had Green Lime Pie. You know, with the fluffy white stuff on top that’s kinda like a marshmallow?”

  “Wait, wait, wait,” Erin said, biting back a grin. “Say that again.”

  “Marshmallow?”

  “Before that. What kind of pie?
”

  “Green Lime.”

  Erin buckled over, giggling.

  “What?”

  Tears dribbled from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks and splatting onto the floor below.

  “Green Lime Pie!”

  Izzy’s brow furrowed. “It’s a thing!”

  Erin shook her head, not quite able to get the words out.

  “It is! We had it!”

  Erin kept laughing.

  “You’re a big jerkface.”

  When Erin finally got herself under control, she wiped the moisture from her face and took a deep breath.

  “It’s Key Lime Pie.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “That’s where the limes are from. The Florida Keys.”

  “Oh,” Izzy said. She pressed her lips together. “Well, how was I supposed to know that?”

  “You weren’t.”

  Erin reached out and tugged at one of Izzy’s ringlets.

  “I just thought it was funny. That’s all. And the marshmallow topping is called a meringue.”

  “Do you think we could make it?”

  “Meringue?”

  “Key Lime Pie. When we go south. You think they’ll have limes there?”

  Erin’s gaze fell on the window, and the flakes of snow falling past it. Sometimes she wondered if they’d still even make it through the winter. It was hard to imagine being somewhere warm, with the sun warming her back and fruit ripening on the trees.

  “Sure,” Erin said. “If we find limes, I’ll make you a Green Lime Pie.”

  Baghead

  Rural Arkansas

  9 years, 128 days after

  “Is this… I mean, have you seen this kind of thing before?” Baghead said.

  Delfino shook his head.

  “Nothing like this. Not even close. I’ve seen fires, of course. House fires. Car fires. One time I watched a high rise apartment building in Columbus, Ohio burn. The brick facade crumbled and fractured into these blackened shards that rained down everywhere. But something like this? Never.”