The Scattered and the Dead (Book 2)

by McBain, Tim

Erin’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness now, and she saw Izzy’s mouth pucker like she just bit down on a lemon.

  “What? Why?”

  Right. Of course the kid was going to argue about it. Like Erin was asking her to share a toy.

  “Because. I said so.”

  “But it’s my gun!”

  Erin considered pulling the age card, but that was always a loser with Izzy.

  “No, it’s not. It was that zombie dude’s gun, and I killed him, so now it’s my gun. Give it to him.”

  Izzy’s nostrils flared, but she obeyed and unzipped her pack.

  “This is stupid. Just because I’m the youngest doesn’t mean I can’t do things.”

  “I don’t really need-” Marcus started to say, but Erin shushed him.

  “Just take the damn thing.”

  He let Izzy set it in his hand. He turned it over, inspecting it.

  “It’s heavy.”

  “Wait.” Erin squinted at him. “Have you never actually held a gun before?”

  He shook his head.

  Izzy saw her opening and pounced. “See? This is why I should have the gun. He’s a novelist.”

  “It’s novice. And it’s not up for debate.” Erin turned to address Marcus again. “You’ve seriously never held a gun? How is that possible?”

  “Had you held a gun before all this?”

  She frowned and shook her head.

  He raised his eyebrows, as if he’d made his point.

  “OK, but that was Before. Now it’s After. Surely you thought it would be prudent to arm yourself with all the wackos and flesh-eating creatures out there.”

  His shoulders came up in a shrug.

  “I don’t like guns.”

  She snorted. “But you’re a boy.”

  “So what? Should I assume that because you’re a girl, you like pink, frilly lace things?”

  Izzy giggled.

  “She has some pink, frilly underwear.”

  Erin gave her some evil side-eye, though it probably lost most of its effect in the dark.

  “What are you laughing about, Miss Brown Stripe?”

  Izzy repeated the words, confused. “Brown stripe?”

  “That’s what kind of underwear you have.”

  Izzy’s forehead wrinkled.

  “What does that— hey!” The creases deepened when it dawned on her. “I don’t have skid marks!”

  Erin ignored her and pressed on.

  “If it comes down to it,” she said to Marcus, “point and shoot. It’s not that hard. Just don’t forget about the safety.”

  Izzy started to plead again, but Erin put up a hand to silence her.

  “I don’t have time to argue about it anymore. I’m going.”

  She wasn’t sure the kid would even be sad to see her go after having her favorite death-dealing toy taken away, but Izzy threw her arms around Erin's torso, hugging her harder than seemed possible for her scrawny limbs.

  "Don't get hurt."

  Erin smirked a little.

  "I won't."

  Marcus took a step closer, and for a moment Erin thought he was going to embrace her, too. Instead, he put a hand on her shoulder and patted it a few times. It reminded her of a football coach move, and she wondered if Marcus had played. Before.

  "Be careful."

  She nodded.

  "Yep."

  She turned to go, but stopped and turned back to him.

  "Did you play football?"

  She couldn't actually see his frown in the dark, but she could hear it when he spoke.

  "Me? No." There was a pause. "Why?"

  "Nothing. Nevermind. I'll be back soon," she said.

  She started out in a crouch, but as she progressed down the hill, she moved into a crawl. Eventually she found herself slithering through the grass on her belly, staying as low as possible, even though she figured it unlikely that anyone was near enough to see her. Would they even be watching the bridge at night? She had to assume they would. After all, she hadn't expected to be shot at in broad daylight. And because of that, she had a new sense of open space. A new paranoia to add to the always-growing list.

  It made her mad all over again, thinking about it. She could understand the desire to be wary — even aggressive — to outsiders. But this? Shooting from a distance, at someone who hadn't harmed you, someone that couldn't harm you if you just stayed hunkered down in your hidey-hole... that just seemed cowardly. She cursed the men again, but part of her knew it was irrational. They weren't acting out of fear. Their instincts were predatory in nature. Not based on survival but greed. So she cursed them for that, too.

  It was a slow crawl down the hill, even slower making her way back up to the woods toting luggage.

  “How much more?” Marcus asked after the third trip.

  “I think this will be the last trip.”

  She trudged back out for the last of it. The journey to the bridge felt routine now — not safe, exactly, but not so dire as before — and her mind wandered as she walked. She mentally ticked off all the things they’d nearly lost, thankful for each and every item she salvaged. Even shitty Mall Mania. They were lucky to be able to keep any of it.

  She was halfway down the hill when she got a whiff of something acrid and burning. At first she thought it was wet burning leaves, but after a moment she placed it. Cigar smoke.

  Someone cleared their throat and spit. She froze, tucked behind a scraggly shrub. It provided limited cover at best, but it was better than nothing.

  There was someone on the bridge. But how? And why?

  She thought back to watching the men arrive, some detail squirming in the back of her mind, begging her to take notice.

  The motorcycles. She’d heard them first, then the sound of the truck joined in. She’d counted six when they rolled up on the bridge, but she hadn’t counted them when they left. Had one of them stayed behind?

  It was the most likely explanation. But that still left the ‘why.’ Did they always guard the bridge at night? Or was it because they were used to shooting fish in a barrel, and they didn’t like it when the fish managed to escape?

  Her heart, which had been pounding ceaselessly since she first scooted from the edge of the trees, seemed to double. Was it a trap? Had they been waiting for her to come back this whole time?

  Did they know she was down there now?

  No, she thought. They could have shot her in the dark or grabbed her by now if that was what they wanted.

  A new realization hit her, and again her heart rate soared. She was beating them. First they’d failed to shoot her on the bridge. And now she was sneaking right up to the foot of their lair and stealing back the supplies they’d been too dumb to notice. She was winning.

  She felt herself grin in the dark. Her lips parting made a little noise that seemed loud in the silence, but she kept smiling anyway.

  She waited there behind the bush for what seemed like an hour but was probably five minutes or less. Though her animal instincts wanted to stay folded up behind her only cover for however long it took the predator to retreat, she forced herself to move.

  Every movement led to a swishing of the grass that might as well have been the roaring of thunder in her ears.

  Under the eastbound overpass, she crept to the edge, body pressed against one of the support pillars. She was pretty sure he was on the westbound bridge. That was where they’d originally driven up. She was afraid to poke her head out, but she wanted to make sure. She held her breath and slowly leaned out, eyes scanning the dark night.

  She would have missed him if not for the glowing cherry at the end of his cigar. Once she noticed that, she could just make out his silhouette against the sky. A darker shade of black.

  Her fingers practically itched, wanting the gun in her hand. She could probably shoot him from here. Maybe.

  There were a million problems with that idea, starting with “What if she missed?” and ending with “What if he’s not alone?” So instead she held still
and waited for him to move away from the edge.

  She shifted her foot, knocking into an aluminum soda can. It scraped and rattled all the way down the concrete incline. Fucking litterbugs.

  Almost immediately, she heard the man call out.

  “Hello?”

  Erin froze again, almost amused by his amateur move. If someone really was out there, did he really think it was smart to call out to them?

  She smirked to herself, and then there was a click and the beam of his flashlight started sweeping her side of the bridge.

  Shit.

  She watched the circle of illumination as it moved, coming closer. He was nearing the edge where he could hop down and investigate if he wanted. She needed to hide.

  The incline up to where the bags were hidden was too steep for silence. She scrambled to the top, hearing the scuff of her shoes on the concrete echoing under the bridge. It reminded her of the sounds a colony of bats might make flying out of a cave, leathery wings flapping.

  When she reached the support beam that concealed their gear, she grabbed the edge and hurled herself over it, landing hard on her knee. She bit down on the sleeve of her jacket to keep from groaning in pain.

  Overhead, she watched the shifting shadows caused by the sweeping movement of the flashlight.

  She risked a peek over the edge of the girder. He was less than ten yards away, still just a silhouette in the darkness with an orb of light in his hand. She held her breath as he passed by her position.

  With his back toward her, she envisioned sneaking up behind and killing him. She imagined the damage different weapons would do. A gun. A hammer. Finally a knife, slitting his throat.

  She could do it, she thought. She could be on him before he had a chance to know what was happening.

  Better not. What if there were more than one? One she could take, maybe. But two men who probably outweighed her and as she'd pointed out before, had predatory instincts about them? Men who had killed before and would do it again without hesitation? She wasn't sure she could match their lack of scruples. She'd killed that charging zombie, yes, but killing a human, even a piece of garbage like the ones that had shot at her? That would be different.

  So she waited, hunkering down, barely breathing. There was a strange noise, something that took her a few moments to identify. A scratch and a whoosh. The first thing that popped into her head was someone lighting a torch in an Indiana Jones movie. But then she placed it: a match. He had stopped to relight his cigar. This irritated her. So ballsy. So brazen. Why did he get to walk around like he owned this empty world, while she was stuck hiding in a spider-infested nook?

  Answer: because he was with the guys that shoot on sight.

  His footsteps retreated back up to his perch on the neighboring overpass. Finally. Erin was patient, giving him another several minutes to settle in. She wondered what he did up there all night?

  His voice cut through the darkness then. Erin held dead still, her heart pounding in her ears.

  “Sir Spanksalot, you there?”

  There was a scratch of static and then the sound of a garbled voice, she assumed a response, but the volume was too low for her to hear.

  “Eh, thought I heard somethin’. Didn’t find nothin’, though. Musta just been the boogeymen in my head.”

  More unintelligible noise from the walkie-talkie.

  “I fuckin’ hate bein’ out here at night. ‘Specially by myself.”

  For a moment, the channel on the walkie talkie cleared, and she heard a snippet of a man’s voice. He was laughing.

  Sir Spanksalot, I presume, she thought.

  “Yeah, well fuck you, too, Spanky.”

  Erin waited, wondering how long this conversation would go on. Would they just sit there chatting all night, the way she and Kelly used to do in middle school?

  It was a good thing, now that she thought about it. He was both distracted and making noise. She slung one of the remaining backpacks over her chest and the other over her back. Each swish of the straps made her freeze and hold her breath, listening for an interruption in the conversation. But the man on the bridge kept yammering away.

  “Hey, ‘member that one Jimbo hit a few weeks back? The one that burst like a fuckin’ melon? Who was that guy? That fuckin’ guy, man. The one that used to smash shit with a big ass hammer?”

  Erin stopped. The walkie talkie crackled.

  “Gallagher, yeah! That’s what that fuckin’ guy’s head was like. A watermelon gettin’ hit with a sledgehammer. Hilarious.”

  She gripped the pistol a little harder in her fist as her hate for the men soared to new heights. This was how they passed the time? Reliving the people they’d killed like it was a sitcom rerun on TV? The vision came to her again of sneaking up behind the man and turning the tables. She didn’t think he’d be laughing quite the same when it was his head exploding in a spray of skull shards and brain matter, his blood spurting from his neck.

  She shook her head, sighed, and was about to take another crouched step forward when something stopped her. A familiar shape in the darkness to her left.

  With vengeance in mind, her lips pulled into a smile.

  Baghead

  Little Rock, Arkansas

  9 years, 128 days after

  “This is it,” the stranger said.

  A brown brick building squatted before them, the front windows all covered with cardboard duct taped into place. It didn’t really look like a warehouse, Baghead thought, not even a small one. But then it didn’t really look like an office building either.

  The stranger approached the entrance, put his hand out to check the door, palm cupped and advancing in slow motion. It was going to be locked, Baghead thought, and this partnership would come to an end. Their passage blocked, they’d turn now and go their separate ways.

  “It’s open,” the man said, pushing the door open a touch. His arm strained at the weight of the door, and the blackness inside the building seemed to peek out at them through that cracked opening.

  “Let’s be quick,” Bags said. “The fire is close now. Best to get in and out before it gets here.”

  The stranger lowered his shoulder and shoved, disappearing into the shaded hole. Delfino took the door next and passed it to Bags. It was heavy. A rectangle of steel. The handle cold to the touch. The building swallowed Ruth, and he stepped in behind her.

  All was black for a long moment. Silent and still.

  An orange glow flared next to them. Delfino’s butane lighter raised over his head, lighting the way. Baghead didn’t realize that he’d drawn his gun until he saw it hovering in front of him in his left hand, the water bottle still tucked in his right. For a second he thought about putting it away, but then he figured it was probably for the best to have it at the ready in here.

  They stood in something like a reception area. A counter stood about waist-high in front of them with a table littered with papers beyond that.

  “Doesn’t seem like anyone’s here,” the driver said.

  The stranger tilted his head.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” he said. “Al’s a little strange, but I seriously doubt he’d leave the place unlocked and unattended.”

  He cupped a hand around the corner of his mouth and called out.

  “Hey Al!”

  Everyone waited a beat. Breath held. No response.

  “Anybody here?”

  Still nothing.

  “No Al here after all,” Delfino said.

  He winced as he looked upon the lighter clutched in his fingers.

  “Look around for a lantern or a candle or something before I burn off the tip of my thumb.”

  Heads swiveled. Hands brushed over countertops. Ruthie pushed through the swinging batwing door to poke around behind the counter, and Delfino followed.

  The lighter’s flame wavered along with the driver’s movements, bending shadows everywhere around them, almost whipping the silhouettes against the walls before they settled again.

  �
�Here,” Ruthie said.

  She pulled a lantern out from under the counter where it hung from a hook.

  “Good eye, Ruth,” Delfino said before clucking out a little chuckle.

  The wire handle transitioned from her fingertips to his, and the lighter’s flame swooped under the glass bowl. Then he pulled the lighter free and snapped it shut, dropping it in his breast pocket and giving his hand a shake, fingers flopping around as though going limp might help remove the heat and pain.

  The glow inside the lantern blossomed in slow motion, orange light swelling around them to beat back the shadows in the room, forcing the thickest black into the corners. Delfino lifted the light to get a better look at the counter and table tops, the flame inside spitting once before settling.

  “Not much here,” he said. “A few papers. I assume the goods are through there.”

  He tilted his head toward the door in the rear corner of the room.

  “That’s right,” the stranger said. “Al must be back in the store room. Can’t hear us or something.”

  Again Bags read the stranger’s face for signs of deception. The building didn’t seem so big that not hearing would be likely, he thought, but then maybe Al was a little hard of hearing. It wasn’t impossible.

  He knew the suspicion was warranted, of course. People really were trying to kill him – four of them, in fact – under the authority of a Holy Order. Still, it was impossible to know when his perceptions were based in reality and when they were rooted in paranoid delusion, which made it tough to know how to act.

  In any case, he saw no signs of anything in particular, no flashing micro-expression illustrating nerves, no tongue flicking across the lips, no shifting eyes, no little smile forming at the corners of his lips, a gesture which some people seemed to get when lying in Baghead’s experience. The guy looked cool. Blank. Vaguely confused by, or perhaps even disinterested in, this passing moment.

  They pushed through the door finding a darker room beyond it. A chamber more than a room, maybe. An expanse of concrete floor with rows of items stacked on shelves from floor to ceiling. Car parts, mostly, from what Baghead could see in the lantern’s gleam.

  “See? Plenty of tires just up there. Now, we just need to find Al.”