The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1.5) Read online

  The shadows fluttered in the light beneath the door at the end of the hall. The dark spots shifted to the side and disappeared, leaving only the glow spilling out from the next room.

  It was hard to fathom, the notion of a creature stirring just on the other side of this rectangle of wood. It was disturbing in some way. Whether it was living or dead almost didn’t matter. It didn’t feel right.

  I inched that way, my eyes fastened to that semi-circle of brightness shining under the door. I stayed light on my feet. Soundless.

  The gun rose in front of me, and the black hunk of metal quivered for a second as my arm moved it into place. It felt alive in my hand. A throbbing organism that made my palm tingle. I could feel how it was just waiting to go off.

  I don’t remember deciding to speak, but the words came out of my mouth anyway, my voice sounding deeper and more gravelly than I remembered.

  “If you’re in there, and you’re alive, say something now. Otherwise, I’m coming in blasting.”

  Another thump. Another flitter of shadows undulating in the light beneath the door.

  I waited long enough to take a single deep breath, arms and fingers prickling with the adrenaline, and then I kicked the door down. It cracked like a baseball bat hitting the ball cleanly, wood splintering around the latch. The thing swung a quarter of the way open and stopped abruptly as it struck whatever had been standing just beyond it, the whole thing shivering on the recoil like a tuning fork.

  I kicked it again, more of a push to try to knock the thing off balance. It worked. I felt the door push something down with a sound like a 40 pound bag of salt getting dropped on the floor.

  I sidled through the opening then, the gun pointing the way in front of me.

  Sunlight streamed through the windows, the light seeming bright white somehow after my time in the hallway. Almost like the light in a hospital room.

  The thing squirmed on the floor like a beetle stuck on its back, arms and legs moving without clear purpose, seemingly trying random combinations of motions in hopes that one would right it. Noises jabbered out of his mouth as he flailed.

  It was a boy. A dead one. Maybe high school age. Shirtless with a black crater in the center of his chest. A ragged wound scabbed up into a rough texture almost like the blackened remains of a log after a campfire.

  I raised the gun and shot him in the head, and the kicking and jabbering cut off all at once.

  I looked on the thing for a beat, but I felt nothing in particular. It was the first one I’d killed since Arkansas.

  I turned and stepped through the doorway, reentering the shade of the hall.

  And then the screaming started again. Somewhere ahead of me.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  130 days after

  Doyle stood in the doorway with another wagon load of wood behind him. It was the first time he’d stopped by since it happened, and he struggled to maintain eye contact, blinking and looking at the floor, eyeballs juiced up even wetter than usual. His hair looked more frazzled than normal, too, puffs of it half-feathered up from the wind.

  “Brought a little more wood since the snow cleared out.”

  “Thanks. Come on in.”

  He nodded and wheeled the wagon in. I stood back and watched as he went to work stacking the wood in front of the blanketed up sliding door. He spoke with his back turned, those wisps of frizzy hair bobbing as his head moved.

  “Better to get as much lumber as we can in here before the snow settles in to stay a while. That’s the way I figure it.”

  “Yeah, that makes sense.”

  His spine and shoulder blades sidled back and forth in front of me, and the pieces of wood clattered into each other as they moved from the wagon to the stack. It sounded like that slow clapping that builds into thunderous applause, except it didn’t go anywhere. It stayed slow.

  “You think you’d like to stay-”

  “I better get going early tonight. It smells like snow again, and I’m beat from splitting wood all day. Arms and back are pretty tender just now, you know?”

  He still stood with his back to me, but his head sunk down now, facing the floor, almost disappearing behind his shoulders. Everything fell quiet for a long moment. Totally still.

  “I understand.”

  He turned to face me, his eyes only meeting mine for a fraction of a second before he brought a hand up to rub his index finger and thumb at them. He took a breath and his chest quivered a little.

  I couldn’t believe how rattled he seemed. Usually he was so chatty, yakking my ear off about the minutiae of his day.

  After a beat, he strode to the door, his hand still blocking his eyes, and then he spoke over his shoulder.

  “Well, it was good to see you. I’ll try to bring more wood along soon, weather permitting.”

  “Thanks, Doyle.”

  He stepped over the threshold and closed the door behind him. I heard the spring creak as the screen door swung closed and click as it latched, and I watched through those two panes of glass as Doyle’s back moved away from the house.

  He never looked back.

  I tossed and turned on the mattress for a long while, but sleep refused to overtake me. Lying there wasn’t wholly unpleasant, though. I found a little peace, if not slumber. I listened to the fire’s breath, and the sound of the wood cracking periodically, and the wind blowing over the stovepipe chimney with a low pitched whistle that sounded like a cross between someone blowing across the top of a beer bottle and some freighter’s fog horn out at sea.

  My spine stretched out, all of the muscles in my back letting go one by one, the tissue around each vertebrae sighing in relief, the lack of tension bringing me pleasure.

  My body rested some, but my mind couldn’t. So I got up and lit a couple of candles, went out to the porch to get the jar of water I put out there. I never realized how much I’d miss having cold drinking water on tap until it was gone. Oh, it’s cold when it comes straight out of the well, but once I haul the buckets in, it gets up to room temp before long. I leave big mason jars on the porch often to keep it chilled, though I know they’ll start to freeze over here soon. Maybe by then the rooms at the back of the house will be cold enough to do the job, which would make for a mixed blessing.

  Doyle tumbled around in my thoughts as I tried to sleep, of course. The man confuses me now more than ever. His behavior earlier today was hard to figure, that was for sure. Even now, I see his back to me when I close my eyes. It feels like wherever he is out there, his back is surely to me. Strange. Something about our sexual encounter disturbed him or made him uncomfortable around me.

  Did he feel guilty about something? Perhaps. That could explain it. His wife died two and a half years ago of breast cancer, however, so his guilt wouldn’t be out of any sense of marital betrayal, or at least I wouldn’t think so.

  With anyone else, I could buy it as more of a general awkwardness, some shyness or embarrassment bubbling up to the surface, but Doyle didn’t seem that type to me. The guy had always been a talker, totally unashamed.

  Frustrating.

  It’s strange to write in the dark. The candle on my desk flickers when I exhale through my nostrils, and the shadows flit across the paper of this notebook.

  The dark falls so early now, and the nights last so long. I better go put some wood in the stove and try to sleep.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  132 days after

  Another two days have come and gone without sign of Doyle. I vacillate between frustration and worry. Sometimes I think about walking the nine blocks down to his place to check on him, but it seems a little forward.

  The snow refrained from really falling the past two nights. The sky spit tiny flakes now and then, but nothing that accumulated. Still, it’s been cold as hell. Painful when the wind blows.

  My hands wear flaked up red spots from the trips back and forth getting water. They’re rough to the touch like the texture of the sidewal
k. Cracks branch over my lips, too. It hurts like hell to smile. Not that there’s been much to smile about for a long time. Even the unexposed places are starting to go now. The skin on my back feels papery, flaky, dried out.

  I’m burning through my wood faster than I’d hoped, too. I’ve tried to take it slow, tried to keep the fire simmering instead of blazing, but I think it burns faster now that the air is so dry.

  I dreamed of Doyle. Of our torsos pressed together in the dark, skin on skin, moist with sweat as thick as vegetable oil. His hands and arms trembled where they touched me, and my skin prickled in those places as well, a feeling like goosebumps with the electricity cranked up, every follicle roiling.

  And the tingle spread throughout my body, crawling up to the top of my head, creeping down between my thighs. I felt it in my breath, in the tips of my fingers, in all of those tiny places between my teeth.

  And I leaned back atop him, sitting upright so I towered over him, over the shape of him in the dark. Our bodies moved in unison, and I felt that power again, of all of his energy channeled into worship of me, of his will slaved to my command. And it didn’t feel like he pressed himself into me. It felt like I was consuming him. I didn’t accept him. I tamed him, controlled him, ingested him.

  I brought a hand to the pillow beneath his skull, and I took it, pulling it out from under. With both hands, I nestled it down onto his face with care, compressing inch by inch until his breathing cut off. I held it there for a long time, held it as the bucking of his hips under me weakened, held it until he went still piece by piece, finally releasing it when the rise and fall of his chest had ceased for some time.

  I stayed there, straddling the still figure. He was so entranced that he never even fought back. He submitted to my command until the end.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  133 days after

  The snow shrouds everything in white. Huge flakes drift down to find their place among the others, all of them joining on the ground or on rooftops, attaching so the many become one. Others latch onto branches and dead power lines, encasing them in puffy sleeves.

  The flakes fall now as they have for the past six hours without pause. The speed has changed some, the rate of snowfall speeding and slowing like someone flipping that switch on the windshield wipers. At its thickest, I couldn’t really see the house across the street through the white haze. It’s not far from that even still, more like looking through the flakes and some kind of gray wisps at the house over there.

  We’re up to six inches of accumulation and counting, and I know in my bones that it won’t let up for a long while.

  So that’s it. No more waiting around. I guess it’s here. The real winter. The snow that stays for keeps.

  So quiet now out there. I went to fill a couple of buckets of water, and the snow muffled all of the sound. Muted it. It wasn’t just quieter, though. The sound seemed different fundamentally. Dryer and darker and duller. Despite the idea of the snow absorbing some of the volume, it was so still out there that my every movement seemed blaring, obnoxious, downright attention-seeking against the starkness.

  The snow drifted up against the house, and that which was left flat on the ground turned brittle with a crusted top like crème brule. With every step, I snapped through that crisp layer, sinking just beyond ankle deep in the fluff. The crunch of every footstep rang out as I trudged through it, buckets dangling at my sides.

  I cranked the pump, metal squawking against metal, shrill and harsh like a wounded bird. My heart fluttered before the fear wormed its way into my consciousness. The worst feeling crept over me just then like I wasn’t alone, like I was being watched. I wanted to keep going, to keep yanking the crank up and down like it was nothing, like it was all in my imagination, but I couldn’t.

  I stopped. The crank slowed to a halt, and I let my hand fall away from the handle. I watched the steam twirl out of my nostrils, and when my exhale ended, I held my breath. Listened. The few drops of water plunking into the bottom of the bucket provided the only sound.

  Someone was behind me somewhere, I knew. Someone watching. Waiting. Someone laughing at my fear.

  I tried to block out my grandma’s words about the dark figure who would rule over those left behind on an empty world, about the antichrist, but I couldn’t do it.

  My neck throbbed, quivered like an overfilled water balloon about to burst. My shoulders twitched, fighting my command to turn around, to face what must be behind me.

  I tottered from foot to foot, that hardened layer of snow cracking and crunching out sounds like someone chewing on ice cubes. My vision twirled away from the pump, passing over the yard and facing the street behind me.

  Nothing.

  No one.

  The same empty houses, empty town, empty world as always. Total isolation.

  The wind picked up, and the snow blew around, kicking up from the ground in swirls of white powder. When the light hit the icy bits in the air, they twinkled like glitter.

  I filled the buckets and went back inside.

  I find myself disturbed. Too disturbed to sleep. When I close my eyes I see myself standing at the pump, slowly turning to face the emptiness. I see the vacant houses all around me. I see the snow whipping around, swells of it curling and disintegrating in the air.

  A thought wriggles in my head like an Earthworm on a rainy sidewalk. What if someone really was there when I was getting the water earlier? What if Doyle was the one watching me? Is that possible?

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  136 days after

  The drifts lean into the doors and the sides of the house. It looks like a bunch of white waves crashed into the building and got frozen in place. More like time itself stopped mid-crash rather than the freezing being temperature based.

  The drifting makes it harder to estimate how much snow has fallen out there. It’s a lot. I’d say somewhere in the 18-24 inch range. The drift against the front door is probably three and a half feet. Ridiculous.

  Of course, the snow stopped, finally, after a day and a half, and it only got colder out there. The kind of cold that freezes that little bit of moisture in my nostrils as soon as I set foot outside.

  The cracks on my hands look like spider webs now, too, and papery flaps of skin dangle from my nostrils. I have to stop myself from picking them off, because that only makes it sting and get worse, turning all red and mottled.

  A week has come and gone without Doyle checking in. I know the snow makes travel difficult, but I thought he’d want to make sure I was OK. I thought he’d want to see me.

  I lie here and listen to the wind swishing the snow around. Sometimes, if it blows just right, the smoke plumes down from the chimney to swirl around by the window. I watch it through the glass, watch it dip and twirl and float up and away. It almost feels like watching something on TV.

  I sat by the stove, sipping whiskey in the dark. Not to get drunk so much as to feel that burn on my lips, feel it spiral down my throat like chemicals going down the drain, smarting all the way down.

  I took the bottle straight to my face, clenching the glass between my teeth and tipping it back. No reason to bother with drinking glasses now, I figured. There was no one left to try to impress.

  The fire had burned down, though there was plenty of heat in the room. Still, it was quiet without that constant hiss all around me. The wind still blew now and then, sprinkles of snow whipping into the windows and siding, but these sounds only served to remind me of the quiet.

  My consciousness seemed to whittle down to just those few elements. The dark. The quiet. The feel of the bottle against my lips. The burn of the alcohol catching in my throat.

  In time, that alcoholic tingle crept into my head, crept into my thoughts, and things came clear the way they can only when you’ve been drinking. The disconnected pieces snaked their way together to form new thoughts, fresh perspectives.

  I thought about how the nights are long and dark, the space b
etween the days stretching out into something unpleasant. It almost felt like a new day would never actually arrive, like when you hold your breath underwater just long enough that a panicked feeling overtakes you, like some part of you already believes after 45 seconds that you’ll never draw breath again.

  And then I thought of Doyle. I saw him delivering big wagon loads of wood, stacking them for me. I thought about how he did all of these favors for me right up until he got me in bed, and then they cut off and he vanished. Maybe that should have been obvious all along, but I didn’t think of it that way until tonight, the idea that sex was his end game all the while, that he used me.

  I thought about how eerie it had been for all that time, the way he always knew just when to bring wood, just when to do whatever I needed. Strange, right? Not only was he the last man on Earth, he also seemed to read my thoughts.

  What were the chances of that, anyway? That it would be just the two of us left here in town? That everyone else would die or leave, and just the two of us would remain here and meet up? And how did we wind up in bed when I was repulsed by him like I was? How did things go this way? Looking back, it seemed such an unlikely course of events.

  And I thought about what all of that might mean going forward. Were we just left here to do as the devil pleased, confused and flailing, perpetually confounded by our own behaviors? Did the antichrist set me on this strange path that seemed to make no sense to me? Did he hold sway over my thoughts even now?

  I tried to picture Doyle there in the room with me, just sitting in the rocking chair in front of the window in the dark, just that outline of him, that silhouette of a man there that I could just barely make out. I tried to imagine what I’d say to him if he were there. I wasn’t sure.