The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1.5) Read online

  Contents

  Title & Copyright

  Postcards from an Empty World

  Baghead

  Fiona

  Lorraine

  Ray

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Lorraine

  Ray

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Lorraine

  Ray

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Ray

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Marissa

  Fiona

  Marissa

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Marissa

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Marissa

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Marissa

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Fiona

  Decker

  The Scattered and the Dead

  THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD

  Book 1.5

  Tim McBain & L.T. Vargus

  Copyright © 2016 Tim McBain & L.T. Vargus

  Smarmy Press

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Postcards from an Empty World

  Volume II

  Baghead

  Looking back on the times just before and after the fall of civilization, I find myself fixating on people’s dreams. Not the places they go during slumber, though I suppose those may be interesting enough. I’m talking about dreams in terms of their deepest hopes and desires. The visions of a better world that exist somewhere in the subconscious minds of all men and women; the unspoken state of perfection they move toward; the ideal future that shapes their view of themselves and their worlds.

  These dreams, I find, were not so quick to change in the face of the death of most everyone and everything we knew. Just after, people still dreamed about types of success and pleasure that no longer existed. So often their first thought was to turn to a product for a solution to a problem, to check their phone or their email, to try to buy some comfort or shelter from pain. For a time, we still saw things through the prisms of commodities and information.

  But I think during that first winter, the dreams began to adjust. And as I dug through letters and journal entries, I found more and more things buried in these dreams that disturbed me.

  Four of the people we meet in this volume were documenting their time as they moved into that first winter, and one story is from before. All of them, I suppose, are confronting the deaths of the old dreams and the births of new ones.

  -Baghead

  Fiona

  Beckley, West Virginia

  128 days after

  Winter elbowed its way inside today, the cold creeping through the windows and floors to lay its hands on me, to make itself felt. A nasty guest.

  I built a fire in the wood stove, piling up logs and watching them burn down to flakes of black. Orange coals glowed within, and the iron stove went from cold to warm to hot, kicking out intense heat that filled the room. Standing too close made the flesh on my face feel like it was about to bubble up into blisters.

  It warmed me, perhaps, but it brought me little comfort. How will I gather enough wood to fight this cold off every day for months? How will I gather any wood once the snow blankets the ground, grabbing my ankles with every step I take?

  If my count of the days is right, it would be Thanksgiving today. I should be thankful to still be here when almost no one else made it. I should be thankful for life now that it’s scarcer than ever, shouldn’t I? I don’t know if I am.

  I try to make sense of it all. Could all of this death be part of God’s plan? Or has he left this place? Left the few of us here? These are the end times, aren’t they? If God has left us, who does that leave in charge?

  I don’t know. I try to stay positive, but the days go black faster and faster.

  Doyle came by this afternoon. He brought a bunch of wood, too, hauling bundles of it in a pair of large wagons. Hard work, I suspect, for a man in his 50’s. (He’s only ten or so years older than me, but it somehow seems like more.)

  His timing on these things remains curious to me, arriving not 45 minutes after I wrote that journal entry about needing firewood. Sometimes it’s as though he can read my thoughts. As if he’s trying to stave off all of my fears and worries.

  And despite his kindness, I find something ghoulish about the man. Something ghastly. He smiles so much. Too much. Flashing those pointy gerbil teeth at all times, his eyes gone wide. It’s a bit odd to smile like that, I think, to go around cheery like that. Everyone else is dead just about, and Doyle seems as pleased as can be to check in on me and do chores for me. Something about it makes my skin crawl.

  Of course I’m not attracted to the last man on Earth, or this part of the Earth, at least. He has a bulbous forehead, perpetually shiny, and that horseshoe shaped receding hairline thing going on above it with a poof of silver hair in the center. A tuft. He has those wet, dog eyes, too. Like a sad hound of some kind. Oh, and I think I already mentioned the gerbil teeth.

  Yeah.

  He loaded the wood in here, pretty much doubling the stack I keep in the back room. After that, I felt bad, so I offered to make some tea. He accepted, of course.

  “Getting cold now,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  Steam roiled off of the top of my tea cup, and I held it close to my nose to warm it. The inside of my nostrils felt all wet after a second, but that wasn’t so bad compared to the cold. My nose is always the last part of me to get warm. It stays frigid even after the fire gets roaring to the point that I take off my jacket.

  “I do enjoy a hot beverage,” he said out of nowhere, sipping at his tea.

  “Me too.”

  It felt like talking to the dental hygienist, always spouting mundane observations while they root around in your mouth with those hooks. I decided to play it like I do in that situation and not respond. He took another slug of tea and went on.

  “Still cars going past on the highway. Not a lot but some. Maybe 15 or 20 a day, I guess. Isn’t that crazy? That there are still people out there? Sometimes I think about going out to flag one down. Anyone. Just to talk to someone, I guess. But it’s too risky. After all that’s happened around here, I mean. We’re better off to keep to ourselves, I expect.”

  I nodded, a single bob of the head. I sort of regretted acknowledging his speech. But maybe I’m too hard on Doyle. Maybe he’s not so bad.

  “I won’t keep you,” he said, tipping his head back to polish off the tea.

  He looked at me with those sad dog eyes, and the guilt crept over me.

  “Thanks for the wood,” I said.

  Lame, I know, but I didn’t know what else to say. I guess even when I feel bad about it, I don’t actually want to be around him.

  I don’t know why I keep this journal. I lost the first two notebooks worth of stuff in the move, and it didn’t bother me. I didn’t even look very hard. It’s not like I care to look back on these horrors I’ve witnessed and lived.

  It’s not preserving these moments for future reflection that concerns me, I guess. It’s
the writing itself. The catharsis of recording these images and feelings that flicker over me. Somehow writing it all down expels them, purges them. The idea of sharing them makes it feel like I’m not doing this alone. It keeps me sane, at least a little. I hope so, anyway.

  When you write things down, it always feels like someone is listening, doesn’t it? But then I think again about that idea of God being gone, and a shiver runs down my spine. If He isn’t listening anymore, who is?

  Lorraine

  The Compound

  108 days after

  Ray,

  Today will be our first day apart in nine days, so I wanted to write you a quick note to put with your lunch.

  You already know, of course, that the work we are doing is building something special, something bigger than either of us. If the price to be paid for that is a little time apart, so be it.

  I know you’ll be careful out there, and I know you’ll bring more people back to our flock. Still, is it wrong that I can’t wait until it snows so you have to stay home with me?

  -Lorraine

  Ray

  Rural Maryland

  108 days after

  Lorraine,

  I just read your note, and I am eating the sandwich you made as I write this. Have I mentioned that I hate the days when we are apart? Not to mention that I never seem to find anyone on these solo days. When you’re with me, we always happen upon at least one person, you know? You must be good luck.

  I do like driving, though. I guess I always did, though this is nothing like back home. The feel of the curves and dips on these mountain roads is something else entirely. Gives me that tingle in my belly. Something like riding a roller coaster, I guess. Maybe that will fade in time, but it hasn’t lost its novelty yet.

  These roads chiseled into the mountains are a sight to behold; the stone walls sheared off at rigid angles, strips of tar etched into the rock. I know you’ve seen a bit of this yourself, but every day I see new pieces of it. New mountain views. Makes me feel small somehow.

  Something so striking and strange about these highways gone lifeless. Vacant aside from me and my SUV. The feeling is heightened when I’m out here on my own, and I never get used to it.

  Alas, but my sandwich is gone. I’d best press on. Once I cross a couple more towns off my list, I can get home. I can’t wait. I miss you terribly.

  It occurs to some part of me to shroud these feelings, to conceal them. But I am old now. I have no reason to hide anything. The truth is that it hurts me when we are apart. The loneliness twists up my guts until I’m sick with it. Maybe that’s the most romantic thing a man can say to a woman – I love you so much it nauseates me.

  -Ray

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  129 days after

  I nailed moving blankets over most of the windows today. I left the living room windows just to have a room with a little light, but I did blanket up the sliding glass door in there.

  Orange coals glowed in the stove while I pounded nails into the wood trim around the glass. Just enough to fight off the cold for now. The work kept me warm, too.

  Strange, though, to walk through the gloom in here, shadows shrouding everything in little clouds of black that thicken into a wall as I move away from the living room. Like living in a cave or something.

  I read back through yesterday’s entry just now. I really need to try to be nicer to Doyle. Maybe our personalities don’t mesh, but the man means well. I believe that. He has helped me so much with food and wood, let alone being a little company now and then.

  I try to think about what might happen to us, Doyle and me. It’s hard to look ahead. When you’ve seen so much death and disease and murder, it’s hard to believe that a tomorrow will really come, let alone a bunch of tomorrows that stretch out into years and years. But I’ve been thinking about it this afternoon.

  Somewhere out there, there must be groups forming. Groups of good people banding together to defend themselves from the raiders. I think Doyle and I will find one of these groups. We may need to get through the winter first, but we will find them.

  That’s the hope that will keep me going, I think. No matter how cold it gets.

  I pulled my mattress out so I can sleep by the stove, throw in more logs during the night if I need to.

  The noise comforts me. I like it when it burns real low. When the fire’s breath ceases hissing, and the hot embers shimmer and crack periodically. I mean, I like to hear it roaring, too, to stare into the flicker of the flames trying to climb up the chimney chute. There’s a primal joy in that, something that dates back to cavemen, I think.

  Still, when it burns low and the heat still radiates off of the stove. I like that. Knowing that I’m saving a little wood, letting that residual heat wash over me for a time without burning up my resources. It warms me in a different way.

  My grandma used to tell me that the antichrist would have his day. He would rise up to lead mankind to slaughter, and he would rule over the rotting remains of the Earth once most everyone was gone. Could that be what I’m living now? And if so, does that mean the antichrist is the one listening when I write here in my journal?

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  131 days after

  I wanted to feel in control. That was all. It didn’t mean anything.

  Doyle sleeps now on the mattress next to the wood stove. That deep, drunken sleep that grabs someone and holds them under for a good eight or ten hours before it lets go.

  We had sex tonight. (We “boinked” I think he called it at some point. Gross.)

  It started with the whiskey. He brought over a few bottles just as the sun faded out of view, said it’d keep me warm, help me pass the time if I got snowed in for a day or two anytime soon.

  One of them was Jim Beam black label, the kind Warner used to drink. Before all of this.

  Doyle just stood in the doorway, gray light framing him. He held the four bottles out, two per hand.

  “Well, I better get to heading back,” he said. “It’s almost dark, and it smells like snow out here already. I just wanted to check on you, really, and like I said, I thought you might enjoy these bottles if the weather turns to shit.”

  Part of me regretted the words I replied with before they were all the way out:

  “You should stay for a drink.”

  I’m trying to be nicer, I guess. I don’t know why I’m always so cold to the man, even if he is the kind of guy to say “boink.”

  Anyway, his wet dog eyes blinked a few times. He had a look on his face like he’d just gotten the wind knocked out of him, and then he stepped through the door. He took off his puffy coat and lay it on the couch, sat down next to it.

  I took the bottles out to the kitchen and put them on the counter.

  “What will you be having?” I said, raising my voice so he’d hear me in the next room. “Whiskey or whiskey?”

  He laughed.

  “Oh, I’m not picky.”

  I poured two high ball glasses and walked back.

  “No ice,” I said as I handed him his drink.

  “That’s okay. I stored these in the garage, so they should be chilled well enough.”

  I drank. He was right. The cold filled my mouth, and that medicinal burn tingled all the way down. It smelled so familiar, this fermented fluid. It smelled just like Warner.

  Doyle started talking then, his lips all juicy with whiskey, almost as wet as his eyes.

  “Weird that it’ll be Christmas before long, isn’t it? I mean, sort of. With no one around – no kids and all -- I guess it won’t really feel like it, but technically, you know?”

  I chugged the rest of my drink.

  “I’m going back for more. You want another?”

  He nodded, downed the rest of his in one gulp and handed his glass over. I brought the bottle back with me. I figured we might drink more, but I liked looking at it, too, like looking at a memory.

  “Do you think there are groups of
people out there? Good people. There have to be right?” I said.

  “I guess that must be true. The trouble is finding them, I suppose, without getting our damn heads blown off.”

  We got quiet for a beat, and then he licked his lips and went on.

  “We’ll find them, though. We might need to get through this winter first, hunker down and survive the cold, but we’ll find them.”

  “What do you think it’ll be like?”

  He took a drink, held it in his mouth for a moment and then swallowed. When he talked his eyes looked far away.

  “Well, I think we’ll go South of here, to a place where there’s no snow for years at a time. A place where the sun shines even in the winter, and the peaches are so thick they make the branches sag like slouched shoulders on all of the trees. There’ll be a little colony of people. Maybe a few dozen. Maybe more. And while a bunch of us will work at harvesting the fruit and vegetables and grain, I think there’ll be a group of men and women working on finding or building a working generator. A bunch of generators, really. Enough to power every home in the colony. And I think wherever you go, you’ll hear the children running around to play tag and hide-and-go-seek, laughing and squealing.”

  He took another drink.

  “That’s what I think. Something like that, anyhow.”

  The whiskey seemed to take hold as he spoke. I felt it in my head first, like a tingling on my scalp and a dulling of my worries. Then my tongue and throat went numb with periodic needle stab feelings to accentuate the lack of sensation the rest of the time. My eyelids got heavy, too, but I didn’t feel tired. Not at all.

  He stood.

  “I should probably get going, though. It’s dark now and all.”

  He slid his arms into the sleeves of his green army coat and zipped it up. The truth is that I wanted him to stay, but I didn’t know how to say it.

  We walked to the door.

  “It was nice to spend a little time together,” he said. “I know I rub people the wrong way sometimes. That’s just how it goes. And I know you’ve been through quite a lot, so I’m fine giving you plenty of space. If I’m ever encroaching on that, just let me know. I don’t always have the best social awareness, but I try to.”