The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1.5) Read online

  And then I remembered that moment by the pump, that awful moment when I knew in my heart that someone was watching me, that Doyle was watching me, and all of these puzzle pieces snapped together.

  He read my thoughts. He spied on me and bent me to his will, used me for his pleasure. It was him. It had to be. Everyone else died. Everyone died but me and the antichrist.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  137 days after

  I woke in the dark, hung over, my tongue a piece of fine grit sandpaper glued to the roof of my mouth. My thoughts had cleared some, the clouds of drunkenness parting.

  A determined feeling had taken root as I slept. In my brain. In my heart. It steeled me. Calmed me. Prepared me for what might come next.

  I opened the stove and prodded around with the fire poker. A few coals flickered orange when I moved them, but it was almost all the way out. I piled in a handful of skinnier logs and a couple of crumpled up phone book pages, and the flames kicked up a little.

  I liked the way the orange light shined on my face as the paper burned, liked the way the heat swelled in time, the way it felt upon my cheeks and the bridge of my nose. The glow lurched and faded and brightened at random like a living, squirming thing.

  I crumpled more balls of phone book paper, tossing them in as needed to keep the fire licking into the wood until it had time to catch. The yellow paper balls unfurled as the flames consumed them, ads for cleaning services going black and breaking up into ashy flaps.

  I knew in some way that I couldn’t be sure. Not yet, anyway. I couldn’t know with certainty that Doyle was the destroyer, the beast, the one who orchestrated all of this disease and death. If I were going to act on it in some way, I needed proof.

  I closed my eyes, the glow of the fire flickering against my eyelids.

  If it were him, he would be marked, wouldn’t he? Some marking on his skin, likely on his forehead or on the back of his hand. I recalled reading that. Maybe that would provide the truth I needed.

  The wood blackened along the edges, smoke twirling off of it, thick and white. Soon it would burn like all the rest.

  I slept off and on throughout the morning, the light in the room creeping to a brighter shade of gray each time I woke. It was the best I’ve slept in a long while. I needed the rest.

  The fire had burned down somewhere in there, and the cold closed in on me. The lack of warmth outside of my blankets made it almost impossible to muster the willpower to climb out of bed, but I did it.

  I pulled on three pairs of socks before crossing the wood floor to the back of the house, but the chill fought its way up through to shock my heels and toes, numbing them right away.

  I ladled a mug of water out of the bucket and brushed my teeth. This act woke me up the rest of the way, and I realized how much better I felt. How that sting in my eyes had retreated, how clear my thoughts had become. Weird how it sneaks up on you once in a while, how good it feels to be alive. Rinsing my mouth out with frigid water only cemented the sensation.

  I was ready to make my move.

  Ray

  Rural Virginia

  111 days after

  The screech erupted somewhere ahead of me, somewhere in the shade. Shrill and dry and close. I froze, looked for movement in the shadows.

  The gun ascended before me again, quivering at the end of my arm. My hand and forearm went icy and numb, and my arm seemed more like something hovering there than an actual part of me.

  I opened my eyes wider, trying to will my pupils into adjusting to the lack of light here. Still, I saw nothing. No movement. Just the vague outline of the dining table and chairs beyond the mouth of the hallway, solid black shapes that stood out against the gray everywhere else.

  I crept forward, neck and forehead slicked with sweat, jaw muscles bunching and releasing in fast speed, teeth gritting without my say so. My heart quaked in my chest so hard that my ribcage rattled a little with every beat.

  Entering the shade felt like I was being submerged in something physical, the darkness touching my clammy skin, pressing itself into me like it’d leave black marks all over. Still, I eased forward, feet skimming over that plush carpet, the end of the hallway ever nearer.

  Another scream. It sounded so close, so loud, that it was hard to believe it wasn’t right on top of me, that it must be somewhere out there in the dark instead of inches from me. I couldn’t quite accept that notion, kept waiting for something with claws to leap out of nowhere like a pouncing cat to attach itself to my face.

  I crossed the line where the hall ended and the walls opened up into the kitchen and dining room. I scanned the new terrain, head swiveling back and forth. Still nothing moving, no being present that I could see.

  I could now see a rectangle of illumination where sunlight spilled out from behind curtains to my right. Not enough to light the space too much, but it somehow felt better to have that little source of light rather than the darkest shade of the hallway.

  I took a few steps forward, stopping just shy of the dining table. Once again my voice caught me off guard. I didn’t feel myself choosing to speak, didn’t think of the words before they came out, and my voice itself sounded grittier than usual.

  “Whoever, or whatever, the fuck you are, best come out now.”

  The curtains fluttered like giant wings, flapping and parting in the middle, the bottom billowing up like a parachute. The opening between the drapes widened, and the light flooded into the room, spilling over the table and chairs which stood between me and the window.

  In the confusion, all I could think was that a bird had come through the broken window and couldn’t find the way out, flitting about, squawking periodically. It would make sense, I thought.

  Then the silhouette stepped into the opening between the curtains. The outline of a boy, maybe 8 or 10 years old, arms thrashing to free himself from the fabric still partially draped over him. He froze then, light streaming to light up his messy hair from behind, arms still raised over his head. His shoulders jerked once and held still again. I thought maybe this was as he saw me, a recoil of shock or fright, but being backlit, his face was entirely encased in shadow from my vantage point, so I didn’t know what to think.

  He screamed like a wild animal then, like some human-insect hybrid tipping his head back to howl and chirp and screech all at once.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and goosebumps prickled and tingled all up and down my limbs. I could tell by the sound that he wasn’t dead, wasn’t some mindless resurrection case like the others. But then I didn’t think he was quite right, either.

  I shuffled back a few steps without thinking about it, without thinking about anything, the gun wavering from side to side in front of me. My left shoulder blade collided with the corner where the room tapered to a hallway, the contact making me jump, all of those tingling places throbbing with terror and ice and adrenaline.

  The boy charged at me, an animal now more than a human, the way I saw him, a beast growing darker and grayer as it jolted away from the window’s light and fully immersed itself into the shaded part of the room.

  The gray blur zigzagged around the table and chairs, and I traced his serpentine path with the gun as best I could. The muscles in my arm shook like hell, and I heard my breath whistling between my clenched teeth.

  I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to think.

  When he got close, my finger tightened on the trigger.

  He jumped.

  I squeezed.

  The muzzle blazed, lighting up his face and my shaking hand in orange for a split second. Then the crack of the gunfire split the air around us open. The gun kicked just a touch against the crook of my hand.

  And his head came apart. It almost looked like the bullet popped open the top of his skull like a lid for just a second and poured the contents out. I know that can’t be what happened, but when I try to remember it, that’s what I see. The rounded top slides up just a touch and the red and
the bits spill out.

  Jesus. I put a bullet in a little boy’s skull.

  The brains and blood hit the floor first like some jelly and cream cheese concoction belly smacking the carpet. A wet slap. Heavy. The body made impact a moment later, hitting the ground limp. With a thud. Dead weight. Literally.

  And the blood drained out for a little while, pooling around the broken head, darkening the red carpet in a semi-circle. The bleeding verified it. He had been alive. Not the black goop that seeps out of the dead ones, this was red blood.

  I went to the window and opened the curtains the rest of the way. I don’t know why.

  The sunlight lit up everything. Motes of dust swirled over the table where the whoosh of the moving curtains had kicked them up. The sun glared off of each one like a handful of glitter floated over me. Over us. All of the shiny pieces drifted away from me and moved toward the body.

  And now I saw the boy in full color. He looked lean and hard for such a young kid. Tan, too. A scar etched a crooked pink line into one cheek, and scabs seemed to trace the circular lines where the eyes and cheekbones connected.

  Had he survived out here alone? Had he gone a little mad in the process? Had he always been that way? A rabid child left out here with no one for miles? No one but the dead, that is.

  But no. No more. I don’t want to know.

  We’ll just leave it here in this letter, and we’ll never touch upon it again. Not in text. Not out loud. Never again.

  Sometimes it feels like that’s our only choice, doesn’t it? Both options flawed and awful. To stare into the wound, or to pretend it doesn’t exist.

  -Ray

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  137 days after

  Bright white surrounded me, enough light to force my eyes down to the narrowest squint. I watched the world through the blur of my eyelashes, lifting my chin to look up. The sky opened up above me, endless empty space. Clear cold air that stretched from me to the gray wisps that shrouded the heavens.

  I trudged through the snow, half jogging, my feet crunching through the crusted surface over and over. I almost felt bad to sully that white blanket covering the ground, to crash across the surface of it and rip it up.

  Holes gouged the ground with each step, pocking that sprawl of snow. The footprints themselves made me uneasy as well, a trail of hard evidence displaying where I’d been, hinting at what I was up to. A dotted line that led straight to me. So I ran in slow motion behind the houses in the subdivision, moving right along the tree line where the backyards gave way to the woods rather than traveling on the sidewalk or road. Maybe I couldn’t conceal the prints very easily, but I could tuck them away. Keep them places his eyes were less apt to go.

  The snow grabbed my feet and ankles with each step. It made sure I worked twice as hard to get half as far, made sure that my best attempt at running still resulted in sloth-like speeds.

  My breath coiled in the air before me, plumes twirling out of my nostrils and trailing off to the sides as I rushed forward. It felt good to move in the open like this after so long confined to my little area. I felt like a dog getting loose for the first time in a long while, sprinting across the yard, leaping a few times for good measure.

  My spine stretched out, and my arms pumped at my sides. I hurdled my way over and through the snow, launching myself into high steps that fell into a rhythm in time. From a distance maybe it would have looked like skipping more than hurdling. Kind of a moot point since everyone is dead. There was no one left to watch me from a distance.

  The subdivision ended, but I still had a few blocks to go. I veered left into an alley, zigging and zagging through the yards that had no fences.

  When I got within a block of Doyle’s place, the crunch of my footsteps seemed louder. More obnoxious. More obvious. I slowed. Even my breathing seemed loud at that point. A little ragged. I felt the cold air abrade my throat as it sucked down into my chest. Something so strange about that chill getting inside of me, puffing up my lungs like two balloons filled with some foreign, cold gas.

  I stopped. Stood perfectly still, my hands on my hips. I knew it made no real sense, but I wanted to get my breathing under control before I went any closer, wanted to feel in total command of my faculties as I made my move.

  I imagined my face gone rosy in the cold, flushed, splotches and swirls of red everywhere. The flesh of my cheeks stung pretty good, a sensation that only made itself clear to me now that I was still. I guessed that the rush of air against my skin numbed that away as I jogged, but now I wielded no such protection from the pain. The sting swelled on cue, and when I grimaced, my dried out lips seemed to crack and split. I hoped it was my imagination.

  My chest heaved a long time, spiraling the air in and out of me. Somehow the cold burned, the dry wind attacking all of the wet places inside of me, trying to make them crack as well. No amount of willpower could slow these breaths or quiet them. Somehow that alone made me want to panic, that feeling like my body disobeyed me, betrayed me, some irrational sense that my breathing might never slow to normal, might never quiet back down.

  It did, though, of course, in time. I knew that I needed to remember that, to hold onto the notion of patience prevailing in these matters if I could.

  I pressed forward, taking careful steps now. Quiet steps. A tingle throbbed in my chest, icy electricity palpitating within my ribcage. No matter how uneasy it might have made me, no matter how scared I might have been, there was something incredibly stimulating about sneaking up on Doyle like this, of turning the tables, of stalking him like my prey rather than the inverse.

  The snow squeaked and cracked below me still, tiny versions of the thunderous bursts of sound that accompanied my jogging. The noises made my breath stutter in and out, the anxiety freezing my diaphragm, my body trying to stop and listen, an instinct I had to fight through just to walk and breathe at the same time.

  There it was. Doyle’s place. Brick and wood stained dark, almost black, adorned the rear of the mid-century modern home. The nearly flat roof always made it look wide to me, sort of squat, and the rectangular windows were framed in lines that made them look much wider than they were tall, which probably accentuated the effect.

  A decent sized back yard stood between me and the house. Much of the snow here was tramped down, especially that around the wood pile where an ax still stood at an angle, its head lodged into a log. Something about its trajectory reminded me of a tick sticking out of a dog’s ear, growing fat with the blood of its host.

  I swiveled my head to the left and right, scanning for a hiding spot that would provide the best vantage point. This was the tricky part, to get close enough to see without being detected or leaving footprints close enough to draw notice. There were a few trees to choose from, and some small brick structure coated in snow just beyond the wood pile. Maybe a little outdoor counter top for grilling? It was hard to tell with the few inches of white powder piled upon it.

  It struck me that I wasn’t even sure what I hoped to gain in this, at least not specifically. What could I possibly see from a distance that would clarify my position on these matters? What behavior could I observe that would confirm or deny my suspicions? And if the antichrist could read my thoughts, wouldn’t he know what I was doing even before I did it?

  Maybe, I thought, I was deluding myself. Maybe I had other reasons for spying on the man, or maybe I was losing it a little bit, my mind cracking and splitting and pulling apart in the cold just like the pink flesh of my lips. Maybe. It was hard to say, hard to think.

  Something banged somewhere in front of me then, and my shoulders jerked in fright, that pang of electricity in my ribcage shooting panic all through me before I could think long enough to place the noise -- a door slamming shut. My eyes danced along the house, spotting a blurry silhouette rising up from the snow, a man with his back to me.

  I ducked behind the closest tree.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  137 days
after

  I held my breath. I listened, my ears straining to the point of sensing some high pitched ring that wasn’t really there. Silence thrust itself at me, squirming everywhere around me in the air, screeching out shrill sounds that only existed in my head.

  My shoulder scrunched into the bark of the tree where I leaned into it, pressing hard enough that I could feel the texture through my coat and hoodie and shirt. My knees bunched up into my chest. I brought a gloved hand up to my mouth, letting the side of my fist touch my lips.

  Silence still rang out everywhere. Howling emptiness. Screaming nothing. I turned my head, trying to angle one ear and then the other toward the man, hoping at least one of them might hear something. Anything. Please.

  And then his boots squeaked, crushing through the snow, beating down the packed areas as they moved. His gait seemed uneven. I couldn’t imagine what might cause that, but the sounds grew louder, so I knew he was getting closer. Even with him advancing toward me, I felt better. Knowing where he was felt better.

  I flicked my tongue out over those cracked and craggy flaps that used to be lips, regretting it right away when the opened up parts got to stinging, everything feeling that much colder when my tongue retracted, the frigidity latching onto the wet of my saliva. It felt like licking a tattering piece of cardboard and tasted salty, almost like tears in a strange way.

  The pound of the footsteps stopped before they got all that close to me. After a beat of quiet, the snow squeaked again and a thud rang out of two solid objects colliding, with a second, softer collision following quickly after the first. Another beat of quiet. Another double thud, loud then quiet almost like a heartbeat.

  I peaked around the corner in time to see the ax rise above the hatted head. It swung down, striking the quarter of a log sitting atop the block, splitting it long ways. The cleaved pieces tumbled to the ground on each side. He set the next piece of lumber down and repeated the process, gathering the split pieces every three or four passes and tossing them onto the wood pile.