The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1.5) Read online

When I opened my eyes, the driver’s side door was opened a wedge. A foot stepped through below the door, and then a face bobbed into the opening above it. A smiling face, his eyes seeking mine and locking onto them.

  I gasped.

  For I knew the silver-haired man who stood before me, the laugh lines around the eyes, the strong jaw. It was the preacher, the one from TV. Ray Dalton. And I knew in my heart that this was no coincidence. No random chance had brought us together. It was the sign from God I had been waiting for.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  151 days after

  Dalton and his friend Lorraine wait in the Grand Cherokee outside while I gather up the last of my things. From here, we’ll head to the little camp they’ve set up. They’re building a group, a community, in Western Maryland. 49 strong and growing. They went on a road trip to look for people who needed help as soon as the snow cleared, recruiting trips they call them. And because of the route they took today, I will become number 50.

  It seems entirely random, but I know it’s not. It’s the group I’ve dreamed of all along. I won’t even be alone on Christmas.

  I burst into tears as Dalton explained these things to me, childlike sobs pouring out of me. I wanted to tell them about what happened with Doyle, about the dreams and the strychnine, about how everything went bad while we were here on our own, but Lorraine stopped me.

  “You can’t look back. You have to let go. We all did things to survive. All of us. We all crossed lines we didn’t think we’d cross, but this is a fresh start for everyone. A new society. A new harmony, a new order that we will create together, piece by piece. The world as it existed before is gone, and everything that happened before is erased. It’s a new beginning for each of us.”

  She rubbed the back of my hand while she talked, and I let the words of Doyle’s story die in my throat. The tears still poured out for a while yet, but I stayed quiet.

  Now my things are packed up, the last load just about to go out to the trunk of the SUV. I wish I could go out back and bury Doyle, but there’s no way. Like Lorraine said, I can’t look back. I have to let go.

  This notebook is pretty well full, and I suppose that makes more than one reason to leave it behind.

  Here’s to a fresh start.

  Decker

  South of Pittsburgh, PA

  159 days after

  It’s Christmas. My first Christmas since everyone died, and I am sick. Really sick. I don’t think I’m going to make it.

  Christmas-pocalypse. Shit. I think I had something better than that. Can’t remember.

  My brain feels swollen in my head, so much pressure in my skull like someone shook up a two liter of Dr. Pepper in there, and I’ve vomited everything I have eaten for the past six days. I keep water down, it seems. Everything else comes roaring back up to paint an abstract picture.

  I lie here in my bed and look out the window at the snow everywhere, my blanket draped across my legs. I sleep and wake and the day goes bright and dark out there, the days go by, the time dries out and blows away.

  Every so often I rise on shaky legs, stumbling through the house to piss and get another pitcher of water, throw my bucket of vomit away. Wood floors creak underfoot, and I lurch and sway like a ship navigating a stormy sea.

  I didn’t have the energy to keep the fire going, so the cold crept into the house, into my room little by little. There were times I could see my breath even lying in bed.

  I don’t know what has inspired me to write or where I’m even finding the energy to do it, the clarity to do it. But the fog has cleared some, and I think I wanted to say that I’m sorry. That I was wrong, and that I regret some of the things I’ve done. If there is a God, he will know which ones I mean. I lost it for a while there, embraced madness as a way to survive, embraced that animal part of me, and it was wrong. That’s not who I am, or at least, it’s not who I was before all of this.

  Winter is here. The end of things. Many creatures don’t survive it, so at least I’m not alone in that sense. Our dirt nap will be like a big sleepover.

  I have wondered off and on if the illness I have is the plague. I’m not sure, really. At first I thought maybe I ate something that was off. Some damaged can full of strange bacteria. I haven’t vomited blood or anything like that, but neither did my mom. We’re not bleeders. In any case, I think I’m all done.

  This isn’t a suicide letter, but it’s not far off.

  Weird memories keep coming upon me as vivid as can be. I remember sitting with my mom in our apartment when I was a kid, the window unit blasting, and the room cold enough to make my glass of Sprite sweat. It was late. Dark. I folded out the couch in the living room, where I sometimes slept in the summer for fun, like camping, almost, and I sat there on that thin mattress and flipped through the channels, watching a bunch of music videos that made no sense to me. I remember the acid and sweet of the Sprite on my tongue, the chill of the air conditioner eventually leading me to retract my arms through my sleeves to hug against my torso inside of my shirt.

  I remember finding a Playboy at my Dad’s house when I was really young, looking at the photos of naked women, aroused yet perplexed, not quite sure how their genitalia worked.

  Is this what happens when you’re dying? Shards of your life come back to you one by one, exactly as they felt? Movies play in your head, fragments of your time relived?

  I plead with myself, with my imagination, to find a way to come to grips with death before it arrives, to find a way to accept that inevitable fate. But how? What am I supposed to do with that information if and when I’m able to truly process it? That’s the paradox that runs all through life, I guess, at least for me.

  I’ve perpetually found myself convinced that I can’t live a life that makes sense without understanding my imminent death and making a real effort to incorporate the idea of mortality into my worldview. I feel like if I don’t connect with that, my life gets lost in a series of fast food moments – my actions and relationships and thoughts veer toward easy answers, perpetual consumption, comfort and convenience valued above all else with no sense of meaning underneath. I forget to hold onto the passion of being alive, falling into taking it for granted, into that grind of production and consumption that becomes daily life. Everything becomes easy, neat, packaged, tidy, thoughtless. Every day becomes the same thing, the same color and shape and taste, like life itself should come with fries if you want them.

  And yet when I attempt to grapple with mortality, attempt to incorporate it into my worldview, I find no actionable way forward with that nugget of information. What am I supposed to do with it? What path to redemption presents itself when one eschews comfort and a thoughtless sense of immortality in favor of a realistic view? I can’t find it. Even now, on what seems to be my deathbed, I can’t find it. When I get glimpses of death, of the real thing, life only seems more pointless.

  I remember back in the empty apartment building, I tried to throw that idea of worrying about mortality away, tried to throw the idea of meaning itself away. I chose to live as an animal, live in the moment and take what I wanted. In some ways, I still think that approach makes the most sense, which terrifies me. I don’t want to believe it, but I kind of do.

  Argh. I need to fill my water bucket, stumbling out into the cold, crunching out to pump that well handle. It adds up to quite an exertion, which I’m sure will drain the rest of my energy and leave me dizzy and panting. We’ll see, though. Here goes.

  Indeed. I’m tired now, too cold and tired to go on, so I think I will set this aside. I don’t want to look back on these words, or I’ll wonder why I wrote them down at all. Funny how this spiral of thoughts never stops spinning, isn’t it? The words come cascading out like a waterfall, and they won’t stop until my body goes cold and rigid, until my consciousness divorces itself from my body and shuffles off to some other place.

  Or maybe nowhere.

  The Scattered and the Dead

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  - About the Authors -

  Tim McBain writes because life is short, and he wants to make something awesome before he dies. Additionally, he likes to move it, move it.

  You can connect with Tim on Twitter at @realtimmcbain or via email at [email protected].

  L.T. Vargus grew up in Hell, Michigan, which is a lot smaller, quieter, and less fiery than one might imagine. When not click-clacking away at the keyboard, she can be found sewing, fantasizing about food, and rotting her brain in front of the TV.

  If you want to wax poetic about pizza or cats, you can contact L.T. (the L is for Lex) at [email protected] or on Twitter @ltvargus.

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