The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1.5) Read online

  Dear Jesus! Could it be taking effect so quickly? It seemed too fast. But then… maybe. I held my breath and watched, waiting for convulsions, for spasms and hacking and projectile vomiting.

  Instead he cleared his throat and spoke.

  “I’ve been thinking about what you talked about.”

  I had to concentrate to speak, picturing my tongue moving and my jaw working up and down before either of them would comply.

  “What’s that?”

  “About finding a group. You’re right, you know? We have to do that. We have to put every effort into finding others. It scares me, but what use is a life when it’s lived like this? Alone in our cells. Confused and afraid and closed off from the world. We have to take that leap of faith. Believe that we can find someone worth trusting and make a real go of it.”

  I smiled a little. Nodded. He went on.

  “I don’t know if you noticed, but I’ve been keeping to myself these past few days, trying to wrap my head around all of it, trying to find a way to make it all make sense. And I realized that my faith in humanity could outweigh my fear of it. Not only that it could, but that it must, or all is already lost.”

  I watched another spoonful of strychnine breach his lips, his tongue flicking out to collect a little that had stuck to his top lip. I wanted to slap the utensil out of his hand, wanted to knock his bowl to the floor and dump the soup down the drain. But I sat, and I stared, and the wind rustled in and out of me like dead leaves scraping along a sidewalk.

  I knew it was already too late.

  Marissa

  Hialeah, Florida

  88 days before

  My therapist told me to write down everything that happened like I was reliving it in a letter to someone I’d never met, focusing on communicating how I felt in each moment. Whatever that’s supposed to accomplish. She has a bunch of fancy diplomas on her wall, however, so I feel obligated to play along. Here goes:

  I chugged coffee at the stoplight, washing down half chewed chunks of Egg McMuffin with pitch black brew that scalded all the way down. This was supposed to be my break, a 55 minute lunch to split the twelve hour shift at the hospital into manageable pieces. Instead I was forcing down fast food and weaving around the slow-ass drivers to get home as fast as possible.

  The babysitter had left a message that my 8-year-old son, Tony, was sick. Really sick, Candice said, and I needed to come home. Fine. Whatever. I’ll take a break from caring for sick people in the hospital by driving home to care for another one.

  How I felt in this moment: Annoyed. Candice had pulled this crap before. She was a worrier, only seventeen, kind of paranoid and gullible at the same time. She clutched a pillow to her chest while she watched all of those shows where fake ghost experts pretended to investigate haunted houses and crap. Utter garbage.

  But what was I going to do? I had to check on my son. Just in case Candice wasn’t crying wolf for once. I couldn’t risk it.

  After the last morsel of McMuffin slid down my esophagus, my hands fumbled in my purse on autopilot, retrieving and lighting the cigarette before I even realized what they were playing at. That’s the funny thing about nurses. Despite working in hospitals around droves of people with cancer and emphysema, many of us smoke. Maybe most of us. I couldn’t tell you why. Something about a nicotine break makes me feel like I’m getting away from the bullshit when almost nothing else does, I guess. Maybe it’s like that for all of the others, too.

  I cracked the window, eyes flicking from the road to watch the smoke trailing off the tip of my Winston drift through the opening and disappear. My jaw clenched and unclenched over and over. It tends to do that when I’m pissed off.

  I arrived at our condo, parked, stubbed out my cig in the ashtray, and headed for the back door. I cut a corner through the grass, hopping over the little shrub that separated the yard from the sidewalk. The plant snagged the ankle of my scrubs and just about knocked me over. I think if I had gone down, I would have ripped it out of the ground on the spot.

  I tried the door, found it locked. Typical Candice. I banged a fist on the steel and started digging for my keys.

  The door inched open, fearful blue eyes shining in the sliver of a gap for a beat before it opened the rest of the way. I brushed past her on the way in, my feet thumping on the linoleum as I rounded the island in the kitchen and moved toward the stairs.

  “Is he in his room?”

  She didn’t answer, just blinked several times.

  “Hello! Is Tony in his room?”

  “On the couch.”

  I changed directions to head that way. All of the curtains were drawn in the living room, so it felt like walking into a basement or into the shade of the woods.

  Tony lay on his back, staring at the ceiling, eyes glazed. A fuzzy green blanket bunched around his chin like a scarf, making it look like he was just a head lying there on a throw pillow. Black and purple surrounded his eyes, the flesh there the shade of an eggplant and puffy looking. His breathing sounded a little raspy, too. Perhaps slower than usual.

  “How you feeling, baby?”

  His eyes shifted to look at me, and he blinked a few times, but he didn’t say anything. His expression remained blank. I fell into nursing mode almost instantly, charting the assessment in my head. Patient is not alert or oriented but is responding to normal verbal.

  How I felt in this moment: Concerned. Almost embarrassed that I’d been so mad at Candice when my boy looked quite sick after all.

  The babysitter slunk into the room behind me and moved to the other side of the couch, her fist tightened and pressed into her lips as she looked down on Tony.

  “Has he not been responding like this?” I asked.

  Candice shook her head. No, he’s not been responding? Or no, this is a new phenomenon? I didn’t even bother asking her.

  I knelt next to him, fishing a hand into the blanket to check his pulse. The seconds ticked away on my watch while I counted. After thirty seconds, I multiplied the number by two. 108 beats per minute. A little elevated but still technically within the normal range for his age. His skin felt cool and damp, though. Not sweaty, exactly. Almost more like touching the flesh of an amphibious creature.

  “He was burning up earlier,” Candice said, her voice wavering a little. “Now he’s chilly so I got him wrapped up in that blanket. I didn’t really know what to do, so…”

  I nodded.

  “You did good, Candice. I’m glad you called me. Has he thrown up at all or had loose stools?”

  “No. Wait. You mean, like, diarrhea?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I mean, I don’t think so. I didn’t check that out or anything.”

  She put that fist against her lips again.

  I looked down at Tony, and his eyes locked with mine, eyelids squeezing closed in slow motion flurries that somehow reminded me of an intelligent cat. His breath caught on mucus gathered in the back of the throat and scratched in and out. That happened often in the hospital with bed-ridden patients, especially those right at the end. The noise bothered the families, but it wasn’t actually a big deal. Totally normal and manageable. Sounded worse than it was.

  I rubbed his chest through the blanket, feeling the rise and fall of his ribcage.

  “Does your stomach hurt, baby?”

  Tony just looked at me, slow blinking some more. I couldn’t get a great look at him in this gloomy room.

  “Open the curtains, would you?”

  Candice obliged, and gray light poured through the glass. That’s when I realized how pale he was. His skin shone the color of cream apart from the bruised looking eyes.

  “We’ll take him in,” I said. “I’ll call and arrange things.”

  Candice’s lip quivered.

  “Is he… Will he…?”

  “He’ll be fine, Candice. Here. Take my keys and clear the clutter out of my backseat so he can lay back there. You can just throw all of the papers and stuff on the floor.”

  In t
his moment I felt: Hm… I want to say cautiously optimistic. I was glad to be here to take care of this. Tony looked pretty bad off, but we were handling things.

  Just as I handed Candice the keys, however, Tony sat up, bolting upright like a deranged killer in a horror movie who had been presumed dead. He looked at me, eyes wild and wide, mouth agape.

  He leaned forward and vomited blood. It pooled before him, thick red streams cascading over the puffy green blanket and drizzling to the floor.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  138 days later

  Doyle rested on the love seat in front of the window, and the gray drained the light out of the day behind him. A hand rested on his gut, fingers wriggling.

  “Guess it’s been too long since I had a finely cooked meal like that. My digestive system doesn’t know what to do with good food anymore.”

  Sweat beaded on his forehead, and he grimaced a little. God, I wished it could just be over already. I wanted to run out of there, just rush out into the woods and belly flop in the snow and disappear. Bury myself. Fill my mouth up full of white powder to take my breath away.

  But no. No, I would stay. I would offer him what comfort I could. I would make sure he didn’t die alone.

  “You want a glass of water?” I said.

  “That’d be great.”

  I went to the backroom and ladled some water for him. A little splashed down and wet my fingers. I noticed then that the two big chapped lines crisscrossed on the back of my hand had scabbed over. It looked almost like a black X in the shade back here, the size of a quarter. Something about it made me shudder.

  I walked back out and handed over the beverage. He guzzled the water, one hand still cradling his belly. He chugged most all of it down in one gulp, gasping when he finally came up for air, speaking bursts of words in those spaces between breaths.

  “Thanks. My throat tightened up on me something fierce. Like a pain from my stomach all the way to the back of my mouth. Constricted feeling. Never felt anything like it before.”

  “I can get you a piece of ginger candy. That stuff is magic. Always helps calm my stomach.”

  His eyebrows crinkled up as he considered the idea.

  “Yeah, sure. If you think it might help.”

  I went to the kitchen and fished one out of a tin for him.

  “You’re lucky. I bought these in bulk back in the day. Still have a bunch.”

  “I don’t feel too lucky just now.”

  He paused for a beat and went on.

  “Sorry. I’m not trying to be rude about the soup or anything. I know it’s not your fault. Just… I’m in some serious pain is all.”

  “No need to apologize, Doyle. I just wish you weren’t hurting.”

  He nodded and stuck the candy in his mouth. It clicked against his teeth as he adjusted it.

  “Do you chew these?”

  “No. You suck on them. Or I do, anyhow. They get stuck in my teeth if I chew on ‘em.”

  He nodded again.

  Things got quiet for a long moment. I folded my arms, watching him out of the corner of my eye from the other side of the room. It couldn’t be long now, could it?

  “Come sit with me. If you want.”

  “Oh, sure. I was just trying to think if there’s anything else I could do to help you.”

  My legs felt heavy, limp, almost dead. I knew I must be in shock or getting there.

  I plopped down in the seat next to him, the couch cushions cold against my back, the upholstery a little rough, a little worn. We looked into each other’s eyes, and he shook his head and grimaced some more.

  I turned my head and looked out at the room, that urge to flee coming over me again. The sound of my heartbeat seemed to swell up and up in volume until it was the loudest thing. The only thing. Not racing, really. Just a steady thump like a kick drum pounding out an even beat. A knocking vibration that only I could hear. Through that noise, this feeling came over me like I was missing something, like I was forgetting something important.

  He was talking then, his lips moving, but I couldn’t hear his words. Couldn’t hear anything but my pulse, my blood, that thumping ball of muscle in my chest.

  The idea was there then, the thing I was missing. It flitted just on the edge of things still, but I could feel it arriving, could sense it gurgling up from my subconscious thoughts to emerge in my conscious mind like I was reeling it in on a fishing line.

  This was it. It was here:

  What if Doyle was fucking with me?

  Marissa

  Hialeah, Florida

  57 days before

  I handled the car with aggression, putting all of my weight on the accelerator and jerking in and out of lanes to weave around the slow asses. Candice huffed and puffed in the passenger seat next to me, a white knuckled grip on the door handle, tears in her eyes.

  Tony lay in the back with blood smeared down his face. He actually felt a little warmer after vomiting, his face, at least, though I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. His breathing was loud as hell still. He blinked up at the ceiling, not terribly concerned from what I could tell. I thought he could be in shock.

  How I felt in this moment: Determined. I didn’t let the fear in, didn’t let it touch me. I didn’t even think about what might be wrong with him. He was going to be fine. That’s all there was to it.

  I flicked my arms to the left and the car flitted into oncoming traffic to make it around vehicles stopped at an intersection. I ground the heel of my hand into the horn as we zoomed through the red light.

  “I’m sorry to ask this,” Candice said. “But do you think… I mean… could it be Ebola? Because we’ve touched… we’re both… his blood.”

  She held up her bloody hands, turning them back and forth like she was displaying a nice pair of gloves in a commercial. Red ran up to my wrists as well. I focused so as to not scream at her.

  “If it’s Ebola or something similarly contagious, we’ve been exposed, but we’re driving straight to the hospital, aren’t we? What else would you suggest we do at this point, Candice?”

  “Nuh-nothing. I don’t know.”

  Tony groaned in the backseat.

  “Are you OK, baby?” I said.

  No response. Just raspy breathing, and then a wet sound. Gushing is the best word I can think of for it.

  I turned to Candice, who looked into the backseat to check on him.

  “Is he OK?”

  She studied him a moment, eyes squinted.

  “No. I don’t think so. He just… crapped a bunch of blood, I think. It’s soaking through his blankets, getting all over.”

  I slapped her then. My hand was open, but I delivered the blow with some force. Not one of those girly slaps that connects with a high pitched clap. This was a solid thud. It snapped her head around, and her cheeks went all red.

  I don’t know why I did it. I guess I didn’t like the way she worded what she said, but I don’t think she was thinking very clearly.

  Tony was going to make it, of course. I wasn’t going to let her suggest otherwise.

  Candice faced away from me, shoulders angled toward the window as we flew past a cluster of mini-vans. Only nine blocks now. The rasp still grated in and out behind me, so I knew Tony was hanging on back there.

  I heard the moan of the siren before the twirling red and blue lights caught my eye in the mirror. The police. About five cars back and looking poised to close the gap.

  “Shit,” Candice said next to me. “We can’t stop now. He won’t make it.”

  She locked eyes with me, brushed the tousled hair out of her face. Her cheeks still shone red, but there was a fierce look in the set of her brow now. A defiant look.

  “I know,” I said. ”We aren’t stopping, baby. Not a fucking chance.”

  Despite everything going on, I couldn’t help but smile just a little, and Candice returned an evil grin my way. I was impressed that she had gotten over the slap so quickly, and I was
glad for it. I guess the new threat kind of rallied us back together. For Tony’s sake.

  We snaked around traffic, slaloming into the opposite lane when necessary. The cop car matched our every move, gaining on us. Three cars back, then two cars back.

  The siren’s warble intensified as the cop car closed to within a car length of us, a piercing wail that shifted and kicked into a faster paced whoop once the car was right on top of us, close enough for bumper to bumper contact. The volume surrounded and overwhelmed me, eliciting a physical response. A tingle throbbed in my chest and clambered up into my throat as the siren gargled out choppy sounds.

  I gritted my teeth, watching the lights spin in the rearview mirror, watching the cop’s expressionless face through the windshield. Some small part of me wanted to stop, to pull over and give up just to make the shrill screeching go away.

  My fingers fumbled along the arm rest, finding the window button and pressing it. The sheet of glass descended into its crevasse, and I stuck my arm out the window, waving the cop up beside us.

  “Come on, assfuck. Get up here.”

  An almost imperceptible shift of the eyebrows in the rearview told me that the officer had registered my intent. His car jerked a little, showed some flash of hesitation before he approached on our left and pulled up alongside us, the siren cutting out, but the lights still twirling. His passenger side window retracted into the door, and his eyes flicked back and forth from us to the road ahead.

  “Pull over,” he said. He sounded calm, almost disappointed.

  I yelled to him.

  “Can’t do it. I’ve got a sick — got a dying child in the back. It’s life or fucking death. We’ve got minutes.”

  His eyes squinted, the skin around them bunching into wrinkles. I could see the “p” forming on his lips, but he stopped himself, nodded.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  The siren howled again, and the cop car pulled in front of ours.

  Fiona