The Scattered and the Dead (Book 2)

by McBain, Tim

  “Get them. Gas and as many bottles as you can carry. Rags, too,” he said, clapping Louis on the shoulder. He took the assault rifle from the man.

  Another grenade roared outside. It sounded like it’d been an overthrow, exploding somewhere behind them, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Send word down the line that we need to save ammo for the time being. We’ll fire just enough to suppress their advance. Might as well wait for the light show before we open up all the way.”

  Louis nodded.

  “Be quick.”

  Deirdre

  The Compound

  9 years, 66 days after

  The last heat wave of the summer had given way to the chill of early autumn. The leaves hadn’t turned, not yet, but they would soon. She could feel it in the air, in that damp chill that enveloped the dirt path tonight. The air was so heavy, so dense with moisture, that it was a wonder she couldn’t see it, a mist hanging everywhere around her.

  She walked alone among the cabins, though she could hear the crowd chattering somewhere up ahead. Even if she couldn’t make out any words, their voices seemed to convey hushed anticipation, a nervous excitement, tension waiting to be resolved. That’s what rituals brought out in people, she thought. Some simple fascination with an expectation being met, a familiar process being executed to completion. Repetition lent a magical quality to routine things if you dressed it up with talismans and costumes and such.

  The harvest bonfire was their biggest ritual here in the compound. Bigger than Christmas. Bigger than New Year’s and Thanksgiving and Halloween. Bigger than all of the other holidays combined. Toward the end of every summer, the process began. They piled wood up in the vacant field toward the south end of the grounds – now known primarily as the bonfire field. It started out looking like a regular pile of firewood and grew and grew until most of the field was filled with crisscrossing branches and boards and even some rotting furniture and such. And when the proper night came, they torched it and drank strange alcoholic punch, each cup ladled out of large bowls. People writhed and danced around the fire all night, the air growing cold enough that they could see their breath in the humidity, but the fire and booze kept them warm nonetheless.

  The mask made her breathing seem louder, and the way it partially reflected every exhale against her cheeks was unpleasant, warm and wet and claustrophobic. The hood, too, made her paranoid. She didn’t like the way it cut off her peripheral vision.

  This was the traditional garb, though. They all wore the porcelain masks and robes to the bonfire – like some Hollywood fantasy of a cult mass. She didn’t know why. She didn’t think anyone knew why.

  She smelled smoke before she could see the flame. The bonfire field was up a little ridge from where she walked, and she climbed the last straightaway alongside some of the other stragglers arriving a bit late. For all she knew, one of them was Isaac. It was unlikely but not impossible. The thought made her skin crawl, just for a moment.

  The crowd took shape as she crested the hill, the hooded heads all facing the ring of fire working its way into the middle of the field in slow motion. Punch cups hovered alongside all of them, dipping under the hoods and retracting.

  There were rumors about the punch itself. Some said it was absinthe, which didn’t make much sense to Deirdre since it was reddish rather than green. Some said it was laced with a mild hallucinogen of some type. She wasn’t sure about that, either, though there was always something a little off about the drunken state she achieved upon downing a few cups. It made her feel distant from real life, like the world outside of her body was dimmed and muted, and reality seemed more firmly rooted in her skull for a time, almost like a waking dream. Not an unpleasant sensation, she thought, more relaxing than anything.

  But tonight she wouldn’t imbibe the fluid, even if she was being handed a cup now. She would pretend to sip it a few times and dump it when she got the chance. She wanted to keep her head clear.

  An energy seemed to vibrate off of the crowd, an electric tingling in her chest that she only felt now that she stood among them, shoulder to shoulder. Was it excitement or anxiety? She wasn’t sure. Maybe they were pretty much the same thing.

  She scanned the crowd on the opposite side of the fire, feeling emboldened somehow by the mask. She could let her gaze fall over all of them without any chance of them knowing who was looking or why. Of course, all she saw were masked people staring back at her, the same blank expression on every face. She had devised a way to recognize the one she wanted to see, however, though she didn’t see him for the moment. There was no real hurry.

  The crowd moved idly like cows roaming for new grass to graze, and she left her place along the fire’s edge to fall in with the herd. The punch sloshed in the cup as she walked out among them, bits of ice rattling against the plastic. She brought the rim to her lips, pretended to take a swig, dumped a little out as she lowered it to her side.

  The beat started all at once, the deep throb of conga drums being pounded with hands somewhere in the distance. She realized that she’d never really thought about the drums in years prior. By the time they started, she’d already been a little tipsy. Being sober this time around, they seemed a bit ridiculous, but they had a clear effect on the crowd. All movements fell in time with the trance-like beat.

  She watched the fire for a while and let the beat lull her thoughts. Even with no booze, something about the atmosphere was contagious. This was the long moment of tranquility, some inward reflection time before things devolved into dancing and drunken shouts.

  She thought about Shelly, the perpetually smiling girl she had been all those years ago and then the scared girl she became more recently. She thought of her body in its final bloated pose, the nearly hairless head, the flesh weeping away from her face into a dark puddle, the flies circling over the soggy carcass. It was once a person, but in that moment it was no different than a dead fish. Meat for the insects.

  Nothing could undo what was done. Nothing could put the melt back together into a solid human being, into a girl who smiled all the time. Nothing could put whatever energy or soul or spirit back into the shell.

  She knew this desire to make someone pay was borne out of animal hatred, animal fury – a rage that could never be satisfied. It was pointless on some level, a base instinct, a mammalian desire for control.

  It would bring her soul no satisfaction. She knew that. She felt that. She knew it in her mind and in her heart. But she would carry on regardless.

  There was nothing better to do.

  She blinked, let her eyes focus, and saw the cracked mask way out in front of her, facing the fire, a big chip missing from the porcelain chin. That was him.

  Time to do this.

  Ray

  The Compound

  279 days after

  The fragrance of gasoline filled the cabin. Ray had always liked the smell.

  Fuel glugged out of the can into an old Dr. Pepper bottle. When it was about half-full, Ray put it next to the others: two smaller coke bottles and a big curved green bottle that once held Tosti Asti sparkling wine.

  Assault rifles still banged away on the other side of the room, snare roll bursts firing out the window one after another. He could still make out Louis and Jones eight feet in front of him, but just faintly. They were the darkest shapes among the dark gray.

  “Where’d Lumpy get these bottles?” he said, grabbing the last, a Mountain Dew bottle from the 80’s he’d guess.

  “Digging around in the woods,” Louis said, turning his head but not actually looking back at the preacher. “He said it was one of his hobbies back home. Digging for old bottles, I mean. Milk bottles and stuff. Scavenging antiques and the like.”

  Ray nodded. He thought about asking whether or not Lumpy had been one of the ones in the cabin that took on the grenade, but he knew better. It wasn’t the time for it.

  Another grenade exploded somewhere off to their left. He didn’t see it, but it sounded like it was out
in the open, falling short of the cabins again. His heart fluttered in the wake of the latest boom, but his hands remained steady, prepping the rags, getting them just damp enough with gas to hold a flame and tucking one in the open mouth of each bottle.

  “We’ll need to get closer,” he said. “Someone will, at least. Throwing a half-filled burning bottle isn’t the same as throwing a grenade. You won’t be able to get the same kind of distance.”

  Louis blinked a few times, again turning his head in Ray’s general direction without making eye contact.

  “I’ll do it,” Jones said. “Just set up the bottles, and I’ll do it.”

  “Bottles are all set.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Jones lowered his gun and stepped away from the window. Ray couldn’t see his face very well at this angle, but he searched his body language for signs of fear and found none. No hunched shoulders. No nervous twitches.

  Ray crossed the room, clapped him on the shoulder, and his eyes got a little moist. Lorraine must have been wrong about the kid. She wasn’t often, but he was about to risk everything for them. That was commitment above and beyond.

  “Have you got a-”

  Jones interrupted Ray’s question by plucking a Zippo from his hip pocket. He held it up a moment, angling it toward the window to let the moonlight glint on the chrome, and then he put it back in his pocket.

  “They won’t be able to see me coming at them now, at least,” he said, staring out the window into the black. Muzzle flashes blinked on and off out there like a sparse string of orange Christmas lights.

  “We’ll fire over your head en masse to try to suppress them for a while here, but Christ on a pony, don’t dally out there.”

  “I won’t.”

  Ray handed over the handgun he’d brought along.

  “I hope you don’t need this, but…”

  Jones tucked the gun into his belt, and then he hugged the bottles to his chest, glass clinking against glass, gas sloshing around in each of them. They moved to the half-light spilling into the open doorway, and the lines on the boy’s face seemed to change as he prepared to mount his attack. He looked so calm, so expressionless, so utterly cold that it sent a shiver up Ray’s spine. He’d never felt that way looking into a man’s face before.

  “You’ve got five shots, kid. Make them count.”

  Jones moved out. Ray watched him become a touch more visible, the black shades faltering to gray as he stepped through the doorway and moved into the open. He stooped low, zig-zagging across the grass, a tactic they’d discussed between bursts of gunfire as they waited for Louis to return with the supplies.

  All of the assault rifles on their side of the firefight opened fire in unison, a riot of sound. The men ducked out of their respective windows, their outstretched guns shooting blindly, aimed high, now hoping not to maim but to distract the opposition long enough for Jones to reach his destination.

  Ray felt a sting in his lip, and it dawned on him that he was biting it. He stopped.

  Jones was a walking shadow now, a hunched black thing snaking across the field, shoulders writhing in a strut that seemed almost reptilian. When the silhouette disappeared into the darkness along the shed, Ray felt his chest convulse. Air sucked into his lungs, and he realized he’d held his breath as Jones scampered for cover. He’d made it, though. He’d taken shelter behind the little tool shed, and now he’d set up shop to light and toss his bottles of fire.

  He watched that shadowed spot along the shed, afraid to blink. His heart pounded in his torso, his ribcage quaking. Nothing stirred there. God, what was taking so long? Jones hadn’t gotten hit at the last minute had he?

  Flame flickered then, appearing in the blackness like a light flipped on. The orange glow lit Jones’ face from underneath, the lines along his brow and chin looking sinister, almost demonic before the lighter moved away, gliding to the first wick.

  The glow disappeared for a moment, and then a new flame bobbed atop the bottle. He couldn’t tell which one it was. The Dr. Pepper, maybe.

  The tiny fire swelled, lighting up most of the rear of the shed to the degree that the rough texture of the siding became visible, like the thing was wrapped in one giant asphalt shingle. It was a lot of light. Much more than he’d anticipated. Hopefully Jones chucked it soon or this whole plan could be over quickly, even if the shed gave him cover for now.

  But Jones didn’t throw it. He set it down, the light wavering, the shadows stretching and lurching over the wall with the flame’s movement.

  “What the hell is he doing?” Ray hissed.

  The lighter’s light vanished again, and then a second flame appeared above another bottle. One of the Coke bottles, Ray thought, based on the size.

  “He’s lighting another one,” Louis said. Stating the obvious seemed to be the extent of the man’s battle skills.

  Now both wicks seemed to catch fully in unison. The fire crackled and undulated upon each bottle, burning brighter than before.

  Ray held his breath again, and everything went into slow motion.

  The first flame moved quickly, lighting up the back of Jones’ head as he pulled it back behind his ear. His wind up was more like a quarterback’s than a pitcher’s, which Ray thought made sense given the shape and weight of the object to be hurled.

  It quivered there a moment, and then it flung forward. The glow arced over everything like a rainbow. The projectile didn’t tumble end over end, but its flaming tail spiraled, the limp part of the rag whipping with each rotation.

  The glass shattered against a tree trunk about eight feet off of the ground, and liquid fire whooshed out of it. A sheet of orange spread from the point of impact and descended to the ground. It was so bright it made Ray’s eyes water after so long staring into the dark, but he didn’t look away, didn’t even blink.

  The throw had been a good one, lighting up the right patch of woods to reveal five armed men, all of them sporting shaggy hair and haggard beards. The closest two were together, perhaps only 30 feet from Jones, and the rest were spread out. A tall one stood off to the left, and two short, stocky figures occupied places off to the right. In the initial blaze, Ray could see all of their faces, read the fear and surprise and awe in their expressions.

  Good, he thought. Now the raiders were the hunted.

  The flash quickly built to a peak and receded, the illumination dulling, though not all the way. The blanket of fire remained, spread over a swath of ferns and dead leaves, but the sharp details blurred back into wispy gray things, and the color leached out of most everything but a ring of green just around the yellow and orange of the fire itself. The men reverted to silhouettes, their faces swallowed up by the shadows.

  Movement caught his eye, something off to his right, and his head swiveled that way.

  Jones pulled the second bottle back behind his ear, and he didn’t hesitate this time. He let it fly. Once more the flaming tail wagged behind the bottle so it almost looked like a crappy comet crashing to the Earth.

  The bottle exploded, the tinkle of the glass seeming to exhale a cloud of fire all at once, and the two closest raiders screamed as the flame whooshed upon them, the cloud of fire hovering there for a long moment and closing around them like a fist. It was a direct hit. The shaggy hair was gone in a flash, the beards a beat later, and then the hands covering the faces began to blacken.

  The blaze made Ray shield his eyes, somehow brighter than the first. He saw the heat shimmer over them as they both instinctively brought their hands to their faces, and tried to escape.

  That wasn’t going to happen, Ray knew. Not even if they stopped, dropped and rolled. They were doused in burning gasoline, a blanket of flaming fuel dropped over them that soaked into their clothes and hair like fiery water. This was as far as they went.

  Their screams were pathetic, ragged and shrill, like alley cats fighting in the wee hours of the night.

  They stumbled away from the burning patch of earth, but not fast enough. The fir
e grabbed hold of one of the grenades, and that one invited the rest to the party as well. The doubled-up boom chopped the men down on the spot, the bulk of their legs disintegrating into a bloody spray, toppling them to the ground in heaps.

  The screams didn’t cut out, however. They only intensified.

  And finally the gunfire resumed, somehow speeding time back up. Not all the way but some.

  Of the three left, Louis cut down the tallest one, splitting the middle of him open red and watching him go limp and disappear into the brush. Crazy to think that being gut shot was a mercy in this scenario, but it was, Ray thought. The damage was severe enough that he’d bleed out quickly without being set on fire or having his legs blown apart.

  Men in one of the other cabins dropped one of the stocky guys, and Ray heard a woman’s celebratory scream.

  “I got ‘eem! I got ‘eem!”

  He knew the voice. Fiona. Apparently Fiona was manning one of the assault rifles.

  The lone survivor, the other stocky figure, broke for the darkness, hurdling brush and deadfall in a dead sprint. A cacophony of yells and cries burst in the cabins around him, and Ray realized that all gunfire had cut off. Why weren’t they firing on the escaping figure?

  “The fuck’s going on?” he muttered.

  Louis pointed toward the woods.

  “That is.”

  Izzy

  Cecil Township, Pennsylvania

  260 days after

  They’d been pedaling forever. That’s what it seemed like to Izzy anyway. Her legs weren’t tired, though. She stood on the pedals, rearranging her backside on the seat in an attempt to find a more comfortable position. Her butt, on the other hand… well, that was a different story.

  “My butt hurts,” she said.

  Erin squeezed the hand brakes on her bike and drifted back in line with Izzy.