The Scattered and the Dead (Book 2)

by McBain, Tim

  Delfino’s head bobbed as the stranger talked and pointed further on.

  “Hey, Al!” the stranger shouted.

  The silence was the only response once more.

  Delfino lifted the lantern, whether he was looking for Al or trying to get a peek at the tires somewhere out there, Baghead couldn’t say. What he could say, however, was that the stranger was sweating profusely. First he saw the glimmer of wet on his forehead and along his brow, positively glowing in the lantern light, and then he saw the dark rings under his arms. That was a detail he hadn’t noticed before.

  Could he have missed it? Or was the sweat something new? It was warm in here, but was it hot enough to make one sweat through one’s shirt?

  His intestines rippled in his belly. He wanted to say something, to raise this observation in the form of a question, maybe, or to just point out the sweat as an idle comment, even just to raise his hand, to get Delfino’s attention. But no. He did nothing. He walked along with the group as they moved deeper into the room.

  “Here we go,” Delfino said.

  It took a second for Baghead’s brain to register what he was seeing. No more shelves ahead of them. Just stacks of tires. Loads and loads of tires. Hundreds, at least, he figured.

  “They should be sorted pretty well,” the stranger said. “Al is real particular about that kind of thing.”

  Something about finding the tires made him feel a little better. Like maybe all these doubts really were simple paranoia. That all that was happening was exactly what it seemed on the surface.

  Delfino veered to the right, looking at the tires that way. Baghead kept on the straight course, slowing but not quite stopping.

  Just as his shoulders passed the next row of tires, a voice spoke to his left. Raspy. Not quite high-pitched, though particularly thin. Above all else, it was far too close.

  “Uh-oh,” it said.

  In the fraction of a second Baghead had to process this information, two thoughts occurred to him. He was pretty sure this wasn’t Al, and he could hear a smile in the voice, a smile on the verge of hysterical laughter, though he couldn’t see the face producing it from within the shadows.

  The blade seemed to come from nowhere, a disembodied machete forming in the blackness and thrusting itself into the light, set on a course for destruction.

  The weapon plunged, a quick downward stroke delivered with great force. It caught Baghead at the wrist and hacked his left hand damn near off.

  It felt like time froze just after that violent burst. Like the next hiccup of breath took several minutes or more.

  He lifted his arm in slow motion, and the hand dangled from the wrist as though held on by string. The gun clattered to the floor and skittered away into the shadows, and then blood spurted from the stump.

  Pain flashed at the end of his arm, tattered meat where a palm used to jut out, a ragged opening where the cylinders of his thumb and fingers used to protrude. The pain flushed his face with electricity and heat and made his whole body jerk once. A scream built in his throat and died. His being, his consciousness, seemed to retract into his head before his throat could follow through. Something pulled him away from the pain, not from the horror, not from the loss, those were still quite real, but the physical pain, at least, was muted by shock, held at bay.

  He pointed the wound toward his face, blinking dumbly when the red spattered him. It couldn’t be a hole, a fleshy cavern gaping into his arm. He knew it couldn’t, but that’s exactly what he saw in the half-light. Not a stump but a bloody hole. A cave made of muscle and tendon.

  All he could hear was the sound of the blood beating in his ears, and all he could see was his left hand hanging onto his wrist by a thread of connective tissue like a toddler’s mitten strung to the sleeve of a tiny jacket.

  Erin

  Triadelphia, West Virginia

  262 days after

  There was a satisfying thunk as the blade pierced the rubber, followed by the hiss of air rushing out of the tire.

  Erin glanced back at the troll on the bridge, but she could still hear him yammering over the walkie to his buddy, He Who Spanks Frequently.

  She gave each tire of the motorcycle a good and thorough slashing. No sense doing a job half-assed. Things like this, you had to take your time, do it right. Make sure they’d need all new tires. She was sure they could find them. A band of raiders with guns and bad intentions could probably procure just about anything they wanted. But she took a small amount of satisfaction knowing that the bridge troll would be supremely pissed off when he found his bike in this state come morning.

  Just as she turned to leave, something else came to her. She fumbled around at the front of the bike, relying entirely on feel. Her hand brushed a leather strap. There.

  She followed the strap to where it connected to the bike, gripped the key, and pulled it free from the ignition.

  Erin aimed a one-finger salute at the bridge troll, pocketed the key, and set off on her slow climb back up to where Marcus and Izzy were hiding.

  “Geez! What took so long?” Izzy said when she returned.

  “Sorry, it was hard to find the last two bags in the dark.”

  The story about the man on the bridge tingled on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t tell them. Especially not Izzy. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she wouldn’t be able to explain why she’d still gone for the last two bags. She’d tell them in the morning, when the sun was up. When it would be easier to laugh about the terrors that happen in the night.

  They walked deeper into the woods, to where Marcus had piled their gear against a tree. They crawled halfway into their sleeping bags and huddled together, leaning on their pile of supplies.

  Erin was still keyed up on adrenaline. She didn’t think she’d sleep, which was maybe for the better. Knowing people were so close, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep watch.

  Izzy, on the other hand, zonked almost instantly. She was nestled between them with Rocky curled up on her chest.

  For a long while, Erin just stared into the darkness. Under normal circumstances, as if they even existed anymore, she would have been scared to be out here in the woods at night. Every little shiver of leaves would have had her craning her neck around and squinting into the black. But compared to the bridge, this felt safe.

  Not that she had any plans to stay the night so exposed like this ever again. Something hard dug into her hip, and she shifted in her sleeping bag. All those empty houses with empty beds and she was sleeping on the ground tonight.

  Time passed strangely in the dark. Especially when she would normally be sleeping. She was so tired by the end of the day after all the work that had to be done, whether it was splitting wood or riding the bike, that she was almost always asleep in a matter of minutes. But sitting here in the dark woods with no way to mark the passing of time, each second dragged on.

  She thought again of the feel of the knife entering the motorcycle tire. The memory brought a smile to her lips.

  “Something funny?”

  Erin started. The voice was so close and so unexpected that her first instinct was to go for her gun. After her brain had a moment to analyze the information, to figure out it was Marcus, she settled back against their pile of gear.

  “Jesus, you scared me!”

  “I scared you? I doze off for a while and wake up already half-shook when I remember we’re out in the damn wilderness, and then I look over and see you staring into the dark with a big evil clown grin on your face.”

  Erin couldn’t help but chuckle at that. It was maybe the first time she realized he was kind of funny.

  “But I scared you,” he repeated, muttering it mostly to himself, she thought.

  Erin pulled her sleeping bag a little tighter around her, trying to keep the chill of the night air from creeping in.

  “Well?” Marcus said, as if he’d been expecting something more.

  “What?”

  “Are you going to tell me what was so funny
or what?”

  It took Erin a moment to even remember herself. What had she been so amused by? Then she remembered the man on the bridge and the bike and the way the sharp blade punctured the rubber. The smile returned, accompanied by a nervous little laugh. She glanced down at Izzy.

  “You’re not gonna like it.”

  He shifted in his sleeping bag. “Now I’m really curious.”

  “There was a man on the bridge.”

  “What kind of man?”

  “The kind that shoots at strangers from a distance.”

  “Hold up. You’re saying you were crawling around down there with one of those psychos standing directly overhead? Are you crazy?”

  “One, he wasn’t directly overhead. He was on the other overpass.”

  “Oh, I beg your pardon. He certainly couldn’t have shot you from that great distance of ten feet.”

  Erin rolled her eyes, a gesture she was sure was lost with the lack of light.

  “Two, I didn’t know he was there until the last trip.”

  “I still don’t see what part of any of that is so funny.”

  “That’s because you keep interrupting with your commentary.”

  Marcus put his hands up. Satisfied, she continued.

  “As I was leaving with the last two bags, I noticed his bike.”

  Even in the dark, she could tell by the set of Marcus’ mouth that he had something to say. But he kept quiet, letting her finish.

  “So I slashed his tires.”

  Marcus sighed, air rushing out of his lungs. He hunched forward a little, looking like a deflated balloon.

  Erin remembered something then and fumbled in her sleeping bag. When her fingers found the loop of leather, they grasped and pulled, sliding the keys free from her pocket.

  Erin jangled the keys in the night.

  “I took these, too.”

  She spun the key chain around her fingers a few times like a lasso and then let them fly. They crash-landed somewhere in the dry leaves.

  Next to her, Marcus shook his head.

  “Can I say something now?”

  Erin nodded.

  “You are completely insane.”

  Izzy

  Rural West Virginia

  264 days after

  Her back ached from the backpack. Her feet were sore from walking. She missed her bike. And her bed. Every day when they woke up and started their trek again, she wondered why they ever left in the first place.

  Izzy’s stomach grumbled, and she clapped a hand over her belly button, like that might shut it up. They’d had a feast the morning they abandoned their bikes. Erin said they couldn’t carry it all, so they might as well eat what they could. Since then, they’d had to rely mostly on what they found along the way. That meant that today they’d each had a granola bar in the morning and a package of Raymond noodles for lunch. (Erin always corrected her and said RAH-MIN, but Izzy was pretty sure she was wrong. Marcus was no help. He just stood by looking amused when they argued like that.)

  “I’m hungry,” she said and instantly regretted it. Her voice sounded whiny in her own ears. Like a kid. Erin would say she was a kid. Izzy hated that. Like she needed to be reminded of how old she was.

  Maybe when she turned ten they’d start to treat her like less of a baby. It was double digits after all.

  Erin glanced back at Izzy for a moment, and then she and Marcus exchanged a look. She hated that too. It was like they had some kind of secret grown-up language now.

  “A little bit further. Then we’ll take a break,” Erin said.

  At least Erin and Marcus were getting along. She didn’t mind that part. It reminded her of a book she read once in Mrs. Smiley’s class. It was about a group of siblings that solved mysteries. The Boxcar Children. She wasn’t sure what happened to their parents. Probably they died, like Izzy’s parents and Erin’s parents and Marcus’ parents and even Rocky’s parents.

  They exited the trees into a clearing, and all three of them froze in unison. Izzy was the first to break the silence.

  “Whoa.”

  Erin squinted at the sight before them.

  “Am I dreaming? Or am I actually seeing this?”

  “No,” Marcus said. “I’m seeing it, too.”

  It shimmered in the late afternoon sun. A palace made of gold. Again they lapsed into silence. Several seconds passed before Izzy spoke again.

  “What if it’s like in the fairy tales, and there’s a witch in there, and she tries to trick us into eating candy so she can fatten us up and then eat us?”

  Erin started down the sloped clearing.

  “I hope there’s a fairy tale witch in there, because I will eat the fuck out of her candy.”

  They took a cursory look around the grounds, confirming neither the presence of zombies nor fairy tale witches.

  Erin read the name off a sign. “New Vrindiban.”

  “Oh man.” Marcus stopped walking and looked around.

  “What is it?”

  “Isn’t this the Hare Krishna place? I read a book about it,” he said. He did a slow turn, as if seeing it all for the first time.

  “What’s a Hairy Krish-whatever?” Izzy asked.

  “They were sort of a hippie cult. At least that’s how the book described it. There was some crazy stuff that happened here in the 80’s.”

  Erin tipped her water bottle back for a drink and then wiped her mouth.

  “What kind of crazy?”

  “Crazy like m-” his eyes fell on Izzy, and he made a face like someone goosed him. “-mmmmustache growing competitions.”

  Izzy narrowed her eyes.

  “What? That’s not a thing!”

  “Yeah, it is,” Marcus said.

  “Erin, is there such a thing as a mustache growing competition?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You’re just saying that!”

  “Excuse me, but I happen to be an expert on facial hair contests.”

  Izzy watched them share another one of their secret grown-up glances.

  “You guys are a bunch of buttmunches.”

  They rounded a bend in the path and came upon a large pond.

  “I may be a buttmunch, but the last one in the water is a rotten turd,” Erin said.

  She yanked a boot from her foot and let it drop to the ground with a thud. Then came the next boot. She peeled off her socks and stuffed them in the boots.

  Halfway down the dock, she paused to pull her shirt over her head in one swift movement.

  Izzy saw Marcus’ eyes go wide at the sight of Erin with no shirt on. He averted his gaze, first looking out at the surrounding mountains, and then at his feet.

  “Umm, should I, uh…”

  One of Erin’s eyebrows arched.

  “Relax, Marcus. It’s just a bra.”

  “I know,” he said, still unable to make eye contact. “It’s just…”

  Erin hung her shirt over a sign that warned of the dangers of swimming with no lifeguard present.

  “Just what?”

  “Nothing,” Marcus said. He shook his head.

  But when Erin shrugged and dove off the end of the dock, Izzy saw the way Marcus peeked shyly up through his eyelashes, and she knew it wasn’t nothing.

  They changed into clean, dry clothes in one of the cabins perched near the pond. A folded piece of glossy paper on a desk in the bedroom caught Izzy’s eye.

  “I found a map of this place,” she said, unfolding the page and smoothing it out on the desktop.

  Erin leaned over her shoulder for a look.

  “Holy shit.”

  “Erin!”

  “Sorry, but look.” She pointed at one of the buildings drawn on the map. “There’s a flipping restaurant.”

  They set off with the map and found the restaurant a short walk from the cabin. Erin let Izzy toss a rock through the glass front door, and then she shimmied in alone to check it out.

  She returned a few moments later, crunching on a bag of banana chips. She
tossed it to Izzy.

  “We hit the motherfudging jackpot. There’s too much to even take with us, but we can stay here a few days, rest a little, eat like kings, and then head out again.”

  They passed the bag around, and for a while their chewing was the only sound.

  “There was a propane grill back at the cabin. You guys should go grab it and drag it over here.”

  Izzy clutched the bag of banana chips to her chest.

  “Can I take these with me?”

  Erin snorted.

  “Go for it. There are like twenty bags inside. By next week, you’ll never want to see another banana chip again.”

  Erin disappeared back inside the restaurant, and Izzy and Marcus headed back to the cabin. Izzy held out a banana chip, and Rocky made the leap from Marcus’ shoulder to hers.

  “I saw that, you know,” Izzy said. She had a mouth full of dried banana, and when she spoke a few errant crumbs escaped.

  “Saw what?”

  She wiped the corner of her mouth.

  “The way you were looking at Erin.”

  “I wasn’t looking at her.”

  “Oh yes you were. You were looking at her big bazooms.”

  “What?”

  “Her bazooms. You know, her boobies.”

  Marcus made a choking sound and stopped walking. He started coughing and banging on his chest, and Izzy waited for him to recover.

  He finally managed to wheeze, “You shouldn’t talk like that.”

  “Why? Because it’s true? You’re in love with her, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Marcus and Erin, sittin’ in a tree-”

  “Quit.”

  “K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. I should probably tell her.”

  “Don’t.”

  “It’s not nice to keep secrets.”

  “It’s not a secret. It’s not even true!”

  Izzy sensed weakness. She ran her tongue over her lips.

  “What’ll you give me?”

  “Give you?”

  “To keep quiet.”

  “Nothing. You can’t blackmail me with a lie.”

  She called his bluff, turning on her heel and heading back toward the restaurant. She started singing louder.