The Scattered and the Dead (Book 2)

by McBain, Tim

  “First comes love! Then comes marriage! Then comes-”

  Marcus’ hand clamped over her mouth.

  “Fine! Just to shut you up. What do you want?”

  Izzy stroked her chin, relishing the power.

  “I want the gun.”

  “No way.”

  “I just want to carry it sometimes. Let me hold it until we get to the cabin.”

  He crossed his arms, weighing it. His jaw moved from side to side as he thought.

  “Just until we get to the cabin,” he repeated.

  Izzy nodded. She couldn’t stop grinning with her new-found power. That would teach them to treat her like a kid.

  Marcus

  Rural West Virginia

  264 days after

  He dreamed of a hummingbird caught in a spider’s web. Marcus reached down, clutching the tiny fluttering thing gingerly with one hand. He cleared the sticky silk away with the other. The filaments were matted to the wings, and it took him a while to get all of it free from the tiny feathers.

  Before he could finish the job, someone nudged him, and he dropped the bird.

  Still half-asleep, he had the sensation of being somewhere unfamiliar. Somewhere that gave him an uneasy feeling. The group home? He felt cold fear coarse through him.

  He grabbed whoever it was in the dark. He would fight this time.

  “Hey, it’s me.”

  A girl’s voice. Whispering. And then a hand on his, gentle. His first thought was Nina, but he was more awake then and remembered that Nina was gone.

  There was a click, and then bright white light illuminated Erin’s face.

  He was relieved for a moment, but it faded quickly when he wondered why she’d be waking him in the middle of the night. This was it. She was going to tell him to go. And maybe he deserved it for striking that stupid bargain with Izzy. Letting her carry the gun. That was dumb.

  Or maybe it was worse than that. What if Izzy had told her about the other thing? Even though it wasn’t true.

  “You alright?” she asked.

  Or maybe he was just being paranoid. If she was going to make him leave, would she still ask if he was alright?

  He was still gripping her arm. He let go.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s OK. I probably should have been a little more subtle about waking you up, but I was kind of freaked out.”

  Marcus sat up, rubbing his eyes.

  “Did something happen?”

  She shook her head.

  “Well, what scared you?”

  “I didn’t say I was scared. I said I was freaked out.”

  He rolled his eyes. Whatever Izzy thought she saw, she was wrong. Erin might be kind of cute. But she was also more-than-kind-of a pain in the ass.

  “OK, Your Highness.”

  “Hey! We had a deal!”

  “The deal was that I stop calling you ‘Your Majesty.’”

  She squinched her mouth into a tiny knot, and he was glad he couldn’t really see the look in her eyes, because he was pretty sure it would have turned him to stone.

  “You’re a dick.”

  He wasn’t sure why he kept teasing her really. It was a defense mechanism at first. An attempt at seeming like he cared just as little as she did. And now it was just habit. A dynamic he’d set between them.

  “So you weren’t scared. What ‘freaked you out?’”

  She rubbed at her arms, as if she felt a chill.

  “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I get here. I thought the woods were creepy, but this place… it feels off. You know?”

  “Yeah, actually. I do,” he said, running a hand over his head. “I was starting to tell you earlier. People got murdered here.”

  “By that cult?”

  He nodded.

  “Well fuck. I guess I won’t be sleeping tonight.” She pulled at the bottom of her hoodie, tucking her knees inside. It made her seem child-like and vulnerable.

  He laughed quietly. “Sorry.”

  “Eh, maybe someone should keep watch against murderous, undead Hare Krishnas,” she said.

  “I can stay up, too. If you want.”

  He sensed that she started to say no but changed her mind. She shrugged, looking very small all folded up under her sweatshirt.

  “If you want,” Erin said.

  Baghead

  Little Rock, Arkansas

  9 years, 128 days after

  That hiccup of breath finally sucked into Baghead’s lungs, time suddenly set in motion again.

  The stumped wrist lowered then. He wasn’t choosing this action so much as watching it happen, watching his limb glide downward, arcs of blood still geyser-ing out in steady bursts.

  The hand looked shriveled already somehow, fingers curled. It swayed a little with the movement of the arm. Limp. Dead. It reminded him of a pair of Nikes hung on a power line by the laces, lurching just a little in the breeze.

  Something popped, and the lantern light twirled over the wall of tires. Baghead swiveled his head in time to see the blaze of Delfino’s shotgun firing straight into the floor. He felt the force of the blast in his chest as much as he heard it, though the echo rang around the room for what seemed like forever.

  Delfino tumbled. Baghead could tell by the trajectory of the driver’s fall in relationship to the stranger’s outstretched arm that the barefooted man had just landed a haymaker, a huge right hand, probably a sucker punch from behind that landed on the side of the cranium.

  Delfino landed on his ass, his neck whiplashing forward and back, the lantern toppling over and spinning on its side. The light again twirled around them in a way that somehow reminded Baghead of being a toddler on a carousel.

  The stranger stooped toward the driver, ripping at the gun. He pulled it away from Delfino, but then the driver’s grip tightened, pulling it right back. A low grunt rumbled out of the struggle, something like a St. Bernard growling, but Baghead couldn’t tell who it came from. The tug of war continued, the gun shaking around between the two men.

  Laughter hissed out to Baghead’s left, back in the shadows. Right. The man wielding the machete. The one who said, “Uh-oh,” just before he lopped off Bags’ hand. Damn near off, anyway.

  The figure stepped out of the darkness, partially at least, the back of the machete leaned against his shoulder. Baghead could only make out the silhouette of him in those first few moments. Wispy hair rose up from his scalp in a chaotic mess, tangled, a little frizzy and thin. His shoulders seemed especially broad, though he wasn’t very tall.

  And then the emaciated face came into focus in the light. Tan skin stretched taut over cheek bones, dirty and stubbled and scabbed up everywhere like it’d blistered in the sun. This was more a creature than a man somehow, or at least that’s what Baghead felt in that moment. Something ancient and savage that had no business walking upright on two legs.

  The thing stood before him, the eyes opened far too wide like footage he’d seen in documentaries of paranoid schizophrenics being restrained in psych wards. The smile crooked and creepy and beaming all at once.

  Laughter wheezed and hissed between those smiling teeth, his lips moving just a little.

  “Gotcha,” the thing said, its tongue flicking out between its teeth for a split second after he spoke, moistening its lips as though about to eat.

  The machete blade lifted from the shoulder, its disposition going from slack to tense all at once like it was attached to a coiled spring now, just waiting to go off.

  Baghead lifted his good arm in front of himself at an angle, the bottle of water still perched in his grip. For a split second the thought of the gun skittering away crossed his mind, but it didn’t stick. Not that he was likely to get to it even if he tried. He backpedaled a few steps, water sloshing against plastic in his hand. Some part of him knew this made no sense, holding up the water, knew that he’d brought a bottle of water to a machete fight, almost finding the blackest of humor in the notion, but that part of him was overwhelmed by some
shrieking animal panic that could only think to shield itself and back away.

  The sight of him seemed to make the creature laugh harder. It staggered a couple of steps toward him, the machete quivering over its shoulder like a slugger’s baseball bat waiting on a fastball. As it moved further into the lantern’s light, its attire came clear – a filthy white t-shirt with the sleeves ripped off and equally dirty jeans. It looked like it had been wearing both for months or even years.

  Baghead’s heart glugged in his neck, the ball of muscle ascending to just under the hollow of his throat and pounding there. And the faster it beat, the faster the blood surged out of his wrist, leaving a scarlet trail between him and the one set to murder him momentarily, the wet glistening in the lantern’s glow.

  His life, some part of him realized, was not flashing before his eyes. Nothing in particular was. Only the blood and the panic and the wavering machete blade poised to deal the death blow and the water bottle serving as the worst shield he’d ever seen, the feel of his breath hot against his lips, his chest quivering with fear, some vague sense of the pain where his hand had been removed. He couldn’t feel it, really, but he knew the hurt was there.

  That was it. Nothing more. He was just an animal, an ape with a bag over its head, a frightened mammal trying in vain to back out of the kill chute even though it knew quite well that it was too late.

  He tripped then, his heel catching on the edge of a tire and taking him down. His fate was sealed, but he held the water bottle between his body and his attacker anyway, a trembling tube of wet plastic, liquid jiggling around inside.

  A lightness came over his head, a tingle roiling over his scalp, and an empty feeling inside his skull. Maybe this was it after all, he thought. The part of his consciousness that could still muster thoughts in words considered for a moment that this was the onset of whatever spiritual experience someone might have in the moments before death. A feeling akin to dizziness, a spacey, spinning, incredible lightness of being, like the essence of him would float out of this body momentarily.

  But then he realized that he was probably passing out due to the blood loss. No guiding light. No ghost shuffling away from this damaged piece of meat. Just a brain not getting enough oxygen. A stuck pig, bleeding out on this concrete killing room floor.

  The dark silhouette moved closer. It wasn’t laughing now, he didn’t think, but he couldn’t see very well. His eyelids grew heavy, saggy flaps of flesh that wanted only to close for good.

  He listened then. Listened to the grunts just behind him where Delfino and the stranger still struggled for the shotgun. Listened to the scuff of this thing’s footsteps sliding over the cement, seemingly in no particular hurry. He listened for something more, some missing piece, though he didn’t know what that would be at first.

  The girl. Where was the girl?

  Maybe she’d run as soon as everything went to shit here. He hoped so. Let him die so the girl could live. He’d be OK with that.

  He could see it when his eyes closed. Ruth crashing through those swinging doors on her way out into the street. Running. Away from this place. Away from the fire. Running forever, if she needed to. He saw her in fast motion, tiny feet pounding over asphalt and dirt and grass alike.

  He let the water bottle fall to his side finally, the worst shield ever relieved of its duties. His head flopped back to the cement as well. The relief of the strain of his neck muscles seemed to outweigh the discomfort of the back of his skull cracking the floor. Better for it to be over now, maybe. Better to make that trade if he could. His life for hers.

  If you’re there, God, I accept the offer. You drive a hard bargain, I must say, but I’ll take it.

  He opened his eyes. The edges of his vision blurred badly now, every line bending and distorting, every object animated a bit like he’d taken some powerful hallucinogen. The silhouette stepped closer. It towered over him, filling much of his field of vision with the blackest of shadows.

  Everything seemed to grow silent. Still. That slow motion beat of inertia that seemed to proceed all truly dramatic moments in life, he thought.

  He heard the smack of his lips parting, the tiniest percussive sound like something happening very far away, and that seemed to break the spell.

  The silhouette sucked air between its teeth as it brought the machete back behind its ear, wiggling the blade gently as it wound up for the killing blow.

  He felt no fear in this moment. Not anymore. It all seemed to flow away from him like a stream, like the blades of grass floating in the creek when he was a boy. He’d throw in two at a time and watch them race. The first to cross through the rocky waters under the concrete bridge and come out the other side was declared the winner, and two more contenders were plucked from the ground. Not all of them made it, of course. Just like he wasn’t going to make it now.

  He didn’t flinch. Didn’t close his eyes. He blinked a few times, but he held them open. He didn’t know why, but that was important to him then, to keep his eyes open, to see this finale, to live in this moment instead of hiding from it, to look upon death’s face, upon God’s face if anything like that could be real.

  The silhouette hesitated in that position, the blade coiled up over his shoulder, shuddering, waiting to be unleashed. He heard the creature’s lips part somewhere in the blackness above him, heard just the start of the soft vocalization come out of that place, a vowel sound, only part of a syllable.

  And then the flash lit up everything, and time stood still again. Another crack of gunfire rang out somewhere to his right. Close. The low frequency portion of the sound was somehow too loud, too percussive, for his ears to even hear right. It made it feel like his ear drums were imploding, but it was the high-pitched screams of the gun’s report that came echoing back from the concrete floors and walls, the ringing screech everywhere in the air around them, all of the reflections folding over themselves.

  It wasn’t Delfino’s shotgun. He knew that. The sound wasn’t loud enough or deep enough.

  And in the orange glow he saw the creature’s face. The muzzle’s blaze flickered over it like a long flash of lightning, illuminating the emaciated cheekbones, the blisters that formed semi-circles under each orbital socket.

  And the head jerked, and the face broke up into a cloud of blood. That’s how it looked to him in that moment, at least. Like when you kick up sand under the water, that little billow of discoloration spreading outward, half-mist, half-fog, expanding like a misshapen mushroom cloud, obscuring everything. But this mist was vaguely discernible as red in the half-light, and the creature’s face disappeared within it.

  The shadow returned for a beat, and then another flash ensued. Another ear imploding blast. Another round of echoes drowning everything out with their piercing wails.

  The glow lit up that cloud, looking almost like some nebula footage from outer space, some shapeless mass hovering over Jupiter.

  For a moment he could see the vaguest impression of the broken face behind the cloud, one eye just gone, a bloody hole torn in its place, some sense that the skull around it had cracked like an eggshell. But a second nebula burst out then to re-obscure it all, another bloody cloud a little off center from the first.

  The black swelled to overtake the light again, and the lightheadedness blossomed into vibrations in his limbs and in his scalp, those pinpricks one feels when a limb is asleep but all over. His eyelids fluttered and drooped. He was passing out, he knew. The loss of blood.

  He mustered what strength he could to turn, to angle his head and shoulders to the right. Without thinking, he pressed his stump into the ground and immediately his body jerked and pulled it away, that clumsy spinal reaction like pressing his fingers to an electric burner for a split second as a kid. But he kept going, kept turning.

  He saw the creature’s shadow collapse out of the corner of his eye, its bulk shattered and tumbled to the ground as limp as possible. And the machete blade cried out upon hitting the concrete, the sound made distan
t and small with the high pitched echoes everywhere still. Hearing itself had turned into a gulf, an absence, Baghead thought, after such violent bursts of noise.

  Finally his field of vision had made that quarter rotation like a panning camera, and his eyes climbed over the objects in the lantern light before him, squinting and squirming and trying to make sense of it all.

  Delfino still slumped on the floor, but he had the shotgun under his control. It sat across his lap, inert, one hand gripping the stock while the other rubbed at his jaw. He looked confused, perhaps faintly cross-eyed.

  The stranger held his hands up, palms lit up bright white. His eyes looked wider than ever and wet, the whites beaming against his dirt smudged skin. His expression was blank no longer. He looked frightened, but he wasn’t looking at Delfino.

  And then he saw her. The girl. Ruth. The lantern light lit her up from below so her face and brow were shrouded in strange shadows that made her look a little impish. Her face showed a steely expression, aggressive yet unemotional. It reminded him of some bird of prey waiting to swoop down for the kill.

  The gun looked huge in her hand. Her arm extended into the shadows, holding the weapon in blackness, but he could see the shape of it, the curve where her wrist sloped, the barrel of the gun jutting out of her little fist. And he could see enough to know she had it pointed at the stranger. She must have turned it on him after she killed the other.

  His vision darkened along the edges, narrowing to a visible circle directly in front of him with a rim of black around it until all he could see was the girl and her gun.

  Tunnel vision. The words came to him from nowhere, all slow and dim, and he knew somehow that his ability to think was slipping away, leaking out of him along with his blood. It was like trying to think in a dream, knowing somehow that none of this was quite right.

  The pins and needles throbbed in his neck and skull, and his arms buckled at the elbows, no longer able to prop him even partially upright. His head flopped back into something wet and warm, and he realized it was his own blood pooled on the concrete, gone just a little tacky in the air by the feel of it, almost gummy. He took two deep breaths, and the circle of black cinched closed around him.