The Scattered and the Dead (Book 2)

by McBain, Tim

  “You’re having a panic attack, but you’re going to be OK.”

  The closer of the two hugged his arm to her chest, the soft touch of a woman something he’d nearly forgotten about. She smelled like lotion.

  “Do you have a name?”

  Alarm flared in him. He was confused, but he knew he had to hide from them, to hide who he really was, what he really was. He pushed his teeth together to speak, not knowing what he would say until after it came out.

  “Jones.”

  Now the other one spoke, the one standing further back with the demon wings.

  “Well, Jones, we’re going to help you. Father Dalton is going to help you just like he helped me.”

  His eyes winked shut, and everything went black.

  When he came to, the ladies had pulled him out onto the sidewalk out front.

  “He’s waking up.”

  His eyelids fluttered, squinting shut every time he tried to open them, trying to protect his eyes from the sun. He looked up in flashes at the two women standing over him. Seeing them for a fraction of a second at a time made it feel like looking at photographs, but he saw them clearly now. They were older. One with bright red hair, the other looked like she’d had some work done, strangely large boobs and lips. Neither one had wings.

  “I’m Lorraine, and this is Fiona.”

  Fiona bobbed her red head.

  He pulled his head up from the concrete, and his hands bounced along the ground around him, fingers pressing into the sidewalk like he was playing a piano.

  “Your gun is just over there, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

  Lorraine tilted her head, and he followed the trajectory to find the weapon leaned up against the brick side of the building. Knowing where it was seemed to ease his panic some, so he laid his head back down on the ground.

  “We found you for a reason, Jones. We’re out here today to find people and invite them to come and join us. We’re building a community, a safe place with food and shelter and security, 119 strong and growing. That can be 120 if you want it to be.”

  She launched into her spiel, which he struggled to pay attention to. His eyes still tensed around the edges, squeezing, making him fight just to see at all. Without thinking, he interrupted her.

  “You’re out here recruiting unarmed?”

  For a moment his gaze held steady. He focused on Lorraine, who seemed to be more of the leader of the two. She blinked a few times, those big lips agape in a way that reminded him of a fish, a little taken aback that he’d interrupted her from the look on her face. Instead Fiona spoke up.

  “Father Dalton protects us when we’re out here. It all happens for a reason.”

  “Who is Father Dalton?”

  “Well, Fiona calls him that, but he’s not a priest,” Lorraine said. “He’s Ray Dalton, our leader. He’s a good man.”

  The name sounded familiar. It took him a moment to place it.

  “The televangelist?”

  They nodded.

  He knew Dalton. He was a con artist. A millionaire many times over from ripping people off. And here he was with people flocking to him even after society had collapsed. Something about it made him nauseous.

  The rest of the day after that had been a blur. He’d ridden back to Maryland with the women, to the compound. It was dark by the time they got back. They’d fixed him a plate of food – sloppy joes made with what he believed to be some kind of fake meat — and showed him to a cabin that he could call his own if he liked, a little shack on stilts with a cot inside.

  And now here he was, staring up at a ceiling he couldn’t quite see, flecks of spit squirting between his teeth. The rage still compressed his chest, still made bolts of electricity shoot down the length of his arms, his hands and wrists twitching involuntarily. The anger clawed at his insides, looking for any way out.

  How could the world be so stupid? To consent to the whims of a false prophet like they always did. To put their lives in the hands of a sociopath, a carnival barker. Maybe all of the worst things he’d thought about people all along had been true. Maybe what hurt most was seeing so much of the same in himself.

  Erin

  Presto, Pennsylvania

  190 days after

  Erin flipped through the pages of the atlas. Was this really the right plan? Her stomach gurgled with nerves just thinking about it. With the fire crackling in the stove and a bowl of warm popcorn in her lap, it seemed stupid to leave this place.

  As if in answer, the wind kicked up, sending a flurry of snowflakes swirling past the window. She shook her head. They didn’t have a choice, really. All they needed was one bad winter, and they’d be corpsicles.

  She took a handful of popcorn from the bowl and set the rest aside so she could hold the map in her lap.

  They needed to move south, to warmer weather. That was all she really knew. Avoiding densely populated areas was next on the list.

  She liked the idea of following a river. It would be a =water source if they couldn’t find a well or collect rain. And maybe they could even fish. That meant taking the Monongahela south from town or cutting west first and meeting up with the Ohio river.

  She used the red pencil to sketch a line from Presto over to Wheeling, West Virginia. They’d want to skirt around the city, of course.

  “Why not take 79 South? It’s a straighter shot.”

  Erin startled at the voice behind her.

  She slammed the atlas shut and fixed Marcus with a hard stare. Damn him for sneaking up on her like that. Spying on her plans.

  “You’re welcome to take any path you like,” she said.

  He looked away, nodding to himself. This was how it had been since she told him he had to go. He didn’t argue with her anymore, at least. Or call her “Your Majesty” with that sneer on his face. Just had that blank reaction most of the time.

  Erin heard a rustling to her left. She swung her head around to see the squirrel armpit-deep in her bowl of popcorn.

  “Hey! Varmint!”

  It scurried away but not without taking a few kernels with it.

  Izzy’s voice was thick with condescension. “The squirrel has a name, Erin.”

  “Oh yeah? What is it?” Erin turned to face her.

  “No wait. Let me guess.”

  She tapped her lips with her pencil, pretending to really wrack her brain.

  “Jessica?”

  “No.”

  “Richard?”

  “No!”

  “Cecil?”

  Izzy laughed. “It’s Rocky!”

  Erin nodded, then stopped. She swiveled around until she could see Marcus.

  “Rocky?” she repeated. “As in Rocket J. Squirrel?”

  Marcus’ eyebrows lifted, forehead crinkling into a dozen lines.

  “How do you know ‘Rocky and Bullwinkle?’”

  Erin tossed a handful of popcorn into her mouth.

  “My dad liked old cartoons. I used to watch them all the time when I was a kid.”

  Marcus smiled at her for the first time in days. Or maybe it was the first time ever.

  “How do you know it?”

  “My-” Marcus started, then stopped himself. The smile disappeared, replaced by the blank fog. “I used to watch it when I was little, too.”

  But Erin noted the way he’d cut himself off. The change in affect. Squirrelman had secrets.

  Deirdre

  The Compound

  9 years, 35 days after

  Confusion coiled in her gut like a tangle of snakes tightening into a knot. She knew, in the vaguest sense, what she wanted: vengeance. At any cost. She didn’t know the particulars yet, though, and her mind struggled with it even now as she lay in bed trying to sleep.

  These thoughts tumbled for a long time in the dark, circling back over themselves time and again, finding no place to resolve. She had a pretty good idea of who she wanted to go after, and of course she knew why. Where to strike and when eluded her for the time being. And decipheri
ng the how was the most maddening of all.

  The wind picked up periodically and moaned a little in the gaps between the cabins. A front was moving in. She could feel it in her sinuses. Not a headache. Just a strange pressure. When the rain finally hit, the feeling subsided and she finally slept.

  She dreamed that dark water surrounded her. It was too murky to see through, though she could make out glints of light here and there where the sun hit the surface at the right angle. Beams shined down into the gloom, flicking on and off like flashlights.

  She wasn’t alarmed to be under water. She found herself free to move, and in the realm of dreams, the watery locale seemed to make enough sense to be calming. It didn’t occur to her to try to get out or to feel any sense of danger in the situation. She was happy enough to watch the sunlight paint and erase itself before her over and over.

  The cold held her in its grip, seemed to drain all of the warmth from her. It chilled her limbs first and then went to work on her torso, made her ribcage quiver. Touching the back of her arm, she couldn’t help but think of pulling a raw chicken out of the fridge, feeling the way the cold had sunk all the way into the flesh of the breast.

  The water cupped her ears, blocked everything out. It sounded like listening to the ocean in a shell, she thought, that warbled white noise that always seems to be moving without going anywhere.

  She drifted more than she swam, and she realized at some point that the current was pulling her. Without consciously thinking it, she had assumed that she was in the ocean up until the current took hold. She didn’t know why that was, really. Now, though, she thought that perhaps this was a river. Something about the water’s pull suggested that, the way it rippled over her, and the water didn’t sting her eyes which probably meant it was fresh.

  The current grew stronger as these thoughts occurred to her. It surged all around her, bubbles everywhere, and it ripped her along, tugging her deeper and deeper, the cold only intensifying as she descended. The water was a violent, thrashing thing, an enemy that gripped her face and tried to smear it into the muck along the bottom, now just a few inches below.

  And now she wasn’t calm.

  She fought it. Her legs kicked. Her arms flailed. All of her movements seemed slowed, her motor skills dulled. Her muscles felt weak and shaky. Affected by the cold? She wasn’t certain.

  She hit bottom then, face first, then belly. Thick black goop enveloped her, almost sucking her down, like the river bed just swallowed her whole. She felt for something solid to push off from, her hands and feet scrabbling at the Earth and finding only mushy goop the consistency of oatmeal. The slime seeped under her clothes, touched her everywhere in a way that left a residue, a residual smear that clung to her skin, like that of greasy fingers, impossibly cold.

  She tried to scream and felt the water and sludge rush into her mouth. The cold gushed around the bend at the back of her throat and poured into her lungs, that feel of grease coating the inside of her like the trail of a slug.

  She woke then, gagging on non-existent muck, blinking a few times, feeling the dry of the air sucking into her lungs, the warmth of it. Her heart thudded away in double time, and sweat sopped her hair near each temple. She swallowed in a dry throat.

  Another bad dream. She should have known. Maybe some small part of her had known all the while, but that didn’t stop the sweat or slow her heart rate, did it? So what use was it?

  That gray light of morning filled the room. It was enough to see objects clearly, though it rendered them in grayscale for the moment. Lighter tones peeked out from the edges of the curtains. It must be just before dawn, she figured.

  She sat up, swung her feet off of the cot and onto the floor. She froze in that position for a long moment.

  She knew what to do now – who, what, when, where, and how.

  Erin

  Presto, Pennsylvania

  210 days after

  “Attention mall shoppers, there is a clearance at the… record store.”

  Erin smirked to herself, then lifted the mug to her lips. The record store. Did those even exist anymore? Well, obviously nothing much existed anymore. But did the mall still have a store that sold CDs in those final days? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to the mall. Seventh grade? She was sure when they’d made Mall Mania, they meant actual records.

  She watched them through the veil of steam rising from her coffee. Izzy spread her wad of phony Mall Mania cash into a fan and peeked over it, a mischievous glint in her eye.

  The money was pink, naturally, which somehow hadn’t stopped Izzy from wanting to keep a few bills in her pockets at all times. Usually she dismissed anything pink as “dumb and froofy.” But every time Erin did laundry, she found another handful of bills tucked in Izzy’s clothes.

  The kid leaned over the board, moved her plastic piece, and let out a celebratory whoop. The man formerly known as Squirrelman nodded, eyes squinting almost closed.

  “It’s gonna be like that, huh?”

  Izzy grinned.

  “Yup.”

  He tilted his head to one side. “You sure you’re not cheating?”

  “Don’t get butthurt just ‘cause you’re losing, Marcus.”

  He scoffed and glanced at Erin.

  She stopped mid-sip. “What?”

  “Nothing,” he said, eyes back on the game board. “Just marveling at her vocabulary.”

  “You think that’s my fault?”

  Before he could respond, Izzy flailed her arms in the air with impatience.

  “It’s your turn, Marcus. Hurry up!”

  Erin watched him slide his game piece over the squares marked on the board. Every time she started to think he wasn’t so bad, he had to open his stupid trap. Who was he to judge her for anything?

  She set down her coffee and traded it for a can opener. She spun the crank, slicing the lid of the can open inch by inch, and seethed a little more with each turn. She saved his ass. Dragged him all the way back here on that bike. Spoon-fed him. And then he criticizes her.

  The can opener clattered to the counter. She wedged her finger between the edge of the can and the newly opened lid, trying to pry it open without-

  She gasped as the sharp metal edge bit into her skin. The way the air hissed over her teeth was loud enough that Marcus and Izzy both stopped what they were doing and swung their heads in her direction.

  “What happened?”

  Erin’s gaze lifted from the tiny pinprick of blood on her fingertip.

  “I cut myself.”

  Izzy started to get up, eyes wide.

  “It’s not a bad one,” Erin said, then looked back down. Blood oozed from her finger now, the cut deeper than she’d thought. Great rivulets of it ran down her hand, dribbling onto the counter.

  “Oh,” she said. Her knees wobbled, and her face felt hot, and then she was falling forward, arms splaying out to catch herself on the counter. She blacked out for a moment, except instead of everything going black it was all red, like when you close your eyes and point your face at the sun, and people were calling her name, and then her eyelids fluttered open, and it took her a few panting breaths to figure out where she was.

  The stove. But the bottom of it. Not the usual angle. And way up there, above her, on the counter? Her French press, empty but for the wet, used grounds.

  She was in the kitchen. But on the floor. Why?

  Izzy’s face slid into view, inches from hers.

  “Erin!”

  “I’m OK,” Erin said, though she didn’t sound that convinced herself.

  “Let her up.” Another voice. Marcus.

  Izzy scooted out of the way, and then Marcus was pulling her upright so she could slouch against the cabinet behind her.

  “What happened?” Izzy asked.

  Erin was still trying to figure that out. She blinked, head lolling to the side.

  “She fainted,” Marcus said.

  “Why?” Izzy sounded scared. “Is she sick?”


  Erin tried to protest, but her voice seemed small compared to theirs.

  “I didn’t faint.”

  Marcus ignored her, continuing his explanation to Izzy while he wrapped something around Erin’s hand.

  “Some people are scared of blood, and it makes them faint.”

  She took in a big gulp of air and raised her voice a little higher.

  “I didn’t faint.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “I got a little woozy. That’s all.”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “I. Did. Not. Faint!”

  “I said OK.” Under his breath, he added, “Your Majesty.”

  Her eyes squinted into a glare.

  Through gritted teeth she said, “I heard that.”

  “Do you have a first aid kit?” He’d wrapped a dish towel around her finger while she bickered, and he held it tight with his hand, squeezing gently.

  “In the bathroom,” she said. “Under the sink.”

  Marcus looked at Izzy and gave a flick of the head.

  “Go grab it. And some alcohol or peroxide.”

  “I’ll get it,” Erin said, and tried to gather her feet underneath her to stand. She got as far as a squat before Marcus put a firm hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down.

  “No, you won’t.”

  Before she could argue further, Izzy was back with the kit and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. She hopscotched over to the other side of the kitchen and snagged a roll of paper towel as well.

  “Thank you, Nurse Izzy,” Marcus said.

  “You’re welcome, Doctor Marcus.”

  She watched him unwind the towel. He paused when he got to the first sign of blood. Dark splotches stained the blue fibers black where it had soaked into the towel.

  “You shouldn’t look if the blood bothers you.”

  “It doesn’t bother me,” she said, but she averted her eyes.

  The towel came away and the cold air stung at the wound. Marcus turned her hand in his, studying the laceration.