The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1.5) Read online

  I pass my fingers over the candle’s flame, venturing closer and closer without really feeling it. It only serves to wake the nerves up enough to sting from the cold. No real feelings. The candle still burns, but I think my glow is gone.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  151 days after

  My body shakes. My teeth chatter. My fingers and toes scream out, burning with cold. I took a few swigs of whiskey to soothe my head, to warm my throat and stomach with that alcohol burn. I know being drunk actually makes me more likely to freeze to death, more likely to forego shivering in my sleep and let the cold all the way in, but I couldn’t resist. Even now, I sip at the bottle, barely containing the urge to chug it all down at once.

  And still the night stretches on. No sign of daylight. No sign from God. No sign that anyone but me even exists.

  I pile myself under blankets, but the warmth won’t build. It won’t take hold. I try to fidget, to move enough to create a little heat, but it’s hard to keep going. I’m too tired.

  I’m afraid that if I fall asleep again it will be the last time I do so. Even so, slumber is all I want.

  Does this count as suicide? I think it must. I’m choosing this path, aren’t I?

  Another swig to wash that broth-like taste of acid reflux off of the back of my tongue. The sting feels good all the way down, a kind of warmth, a kind of subtle pain that cuts through the cold feelings, makes me forget my fingers and toes, makes me forget the way my body convulses.

  I try to focus my thoughts in those post-drink moments, to further consider that idea of me being the antichrist, or perhaps of Doyle being the antichrist, but it all blurs together in my head. Like my skull is a blender whirring all of my thoughts into a pasty puree, leaving me unable to discern anything but mush.

  The windows offer me no light. No hope. And I wonder if the night will ever end. It doesn’t seem possible. It seems like the darkness is infinite, the cold endless. It seems like the only things I will ever really know are the dark and the cold and myself. A candle and this pen and paper are the only weapons I have to fight it. Not great.

  Maybe this really is hell. An endless night in an empty room, in an empty world, the cold claws of death tightening around me eternally.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  151 days after

  My eyes drifted closed a few times, the ambient sound filtering away into the silence of sleep. But I always shook myself awake, always lifted my chin, the sound of my breathing fading back into my consciousness.

  When the first glimmer of gray encroached outside the windows, I was sure it was my imagination. I knew this night couldn’t truly end. I knew my mind was playing tricks on me, conjuring hallucinatory images to comfort me.

  The quiver in my torso rose and fell in a steady rhythm, a big shake that gave way to a smaller shake, that pattern repeating itself over and over. There was some comfort in the repetition. It seized my chest and squeezed as it rattled me, dictating the pattern of my respiration, requiring exhales to fall during the big shakes. I didn’t mind its bossiness, though. I didn’t mind much of anything anymore.

  I realized that some lethargy must be falling over me, perhaps that listlessness that settles on people as hypothermia sets in, the slowing down that makes it possible to fall asleep and freeze to death peacefully. I couldn’t say for sure, though. Maybe I was just tired due to the lack of sleep. Still, the pain in my hands and feet seemed smaller, my tolerance for my scenario seemed to be growing.

  The sky went a few shades paler, some of the details in the room fading back into view even through that layer of crusty frost on the windows. I could make out the white coffee mug on the TV stand next to the mattress, the curve of the handle taking shape if I squinted just right. This woke me up some, my heightened state of awareness turning the hurt back on in my fingers and toes like flipping a pain switch.

  I’d made it through the night. That had to mean something.

  I rose to my feet, stiff joints slow to obey, slow to bend as I’d commanded. My knees wobbled as my legs straightened up to bear my weight. My ankles popped one after the other as I forced them to flex. The constant muscles spasms and shivering made all of this more difficult, an extra variable in the balancing equation.

  I bent at the waist, my upper body rocking atop my dead legs. I didn’t force it. I just stood in that awkward position until things settled a little. Things evened out some in time, and I stood upright.

  Leaving the blanket felt insane. Not that it was warm at this point, but it did shield my skin from the coldest, driest air, at least. It fell away as I stood, and the chill rushed into to press itself against me, worming through my pajamas to wrap itself around my body.

  I wiped my nose and felt something hard and cold there. Strange. My fingers backtracked, retracing their steps to inspect further.

  An actual piece of ice clung to the tip of my nose. Frozen snot. It formed a curved layer capping the end of my nose. I jammed the nails of my index finger and thumb under the edges of it and worked at it, ripping it free within a few seconds. To my fingers, it somehow felt like peeling apart a peanut M&M. To my nose, it was more like peeling off a hat that had adhered to my scalp and taking a thick layer of skin with it. The exposed dermis cried out when the cold touched it, an incredibly exposed feeling, like the chill was reaching inside of me now, rooting around beneath my skin.

  I pinched my nose in the crook of my hand and held it there. It was equally cold, but it did keep the air away from the opened up place, protected the wound.

  I walked across the room and back. My gait jerked a little, my joints loosening at uneven intervals, the inconsistencies making themselves felt in my footsteps. Still, it felt good to move, to walk. I knew I’d need to keep going, keep the muscles in my legs working to hold on to what little body heat I had left.

  I paced back and forth endlessly, and the day took shape out the windows, the swirls of gray creeping in to combat the shadows around me. It still didn’t quite feel real, perhaps because of the frost blocking up the windows like they’d been smeared with Crisco. I saw it in an abstract way, a general increase in light that occurred in slow motion, rather than witnessing firsthand the daylight falling upon the grass and the trees. Still, even the indirect way was heartening.

  I rubbed my hands together as I walked to try to build up some warmth, tucking them back into my sleeves between rubs. The skin was so dried out that it felt like sliding together sheets of sandpaper. I’d strapped on my coat, feeling around in the dark by the back door to locate the coat rack. When there was enough light in here, I’d find my gloves and hat to cover myself a little better. Dumb to forgo them in the night, but I wasn’t in my right state of mind. I knew that now.

  Still, the walking had warmed me at least a little. The pain in my legs had shrunken back from my calves so it only really affected my feet now. That had to be a good sign.

  The immediate future seemed pretty simple. If I kept moving, I would live. If I stopped? Maybe not. Probably not, even.

  I didn’t want to look too far ahead, didn’t want to take anything for granted, but maybe if I got warmed up some, I’d try to make it to Doyle’s and get a fire going. It was the only way forward I could think of. I didn’t think that surviving the night was a true sign from God, but it meant something to me. I knew that I wanted to live. Even if I’d done wrong, even if I wasn’t right in the head, I wanted to live a little longer, to breathe and think and stretch out my legs.

  It occurred to me that I needed to stay hydrated, something that had slipped my mind in the cold. Drinking a cold glass of water is the last thing on your mind when you’re shivering like this.

  I strode to the bucket in the backroom, but I found a layer of ice atop it. I tapped at it, hoping to find that papery coat of frozen water that would clear out of the way without trouble like skin on top of soup or pudding, but no. It was thick. Solid. Not frozen through, but sturdy enough that I would need something
hard and heavy to break it.

  I abandoned the frozen bucket for the moment and did a couple more laps from the kitchen to the front door and back, keeping those muscles churning, the blood pumping. Deep breaths entered through my nostrils and inflated my chest, the shivers still coming on in pulses to try to shake the air out of me.

  I pictured tools I could use, my brain a little slow to come up with options. I imagined a steak knife stabbing at the ice, but I knew that wasn’t what I wanted, so I paused the movie in my head. The tool changed to an ice pick, the movie resuming, the pick jackhammering away, white shavings flying around. Then it switched mid-swing to a hammer pounding on the surface, the ice shattering after a couple of swings so crooked lines ran off an open hole in the middle of the bucket. Finally, my mind turned the hammer around, using the claw side as a nice compromise between the two approaches, offering a balance of piercing and bludgeoning at the same time.

  Good. That would do.

  I moved to the closet in the hall and knelt to rifle through the toolbox inside. The hammer was near the top of the pile, tucked under a few crisscrossing screwdrivers. My fingers found the handle and plucked it from the heap.

  The ice caved in on the second hit, the hammer cracking through and plunging into the water with a sound reminiscent of the toilet. I ladled out a glass of water, trying to clear toilet thoughts from my head as I drank half of it and scooped out a refill.

  I walked on, sipping at the drink as I did my rounds, forcing down mouthful after mouthful of the icy cold beverage. The shivers still rattled my sternum, still made my jaw quiver like I was about to burst into tears, but the sting had died down in my hands and feet. I thought I must be getting warmer.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  151 days after

  It was strange the way that primal desire to live, that human will to survive, overpowered all of the other feelings. I was feeling down after what happened with Doyle, and rightfully so, I supposed. Still, I didn’t quite lie down and die. I hung in there, and that lust for life crept back up, snaked its way into my heart to make it bump again, to keep me moving, keep my feet shuffling over the floor, keep my body heat from getting sucked out into the cold.

  I didn’t know where I’d go. I didn’t know what I’d do. But I was still here.

  When I first heard the rumble of the engine outside, I thought it was in my head. I still paced the floor, some modicum of warmth finding its way into my limbs as I ambled around, the numbed out feelings giving way to pins and needles in the palms of my hands. I remembered having that paranoid sensation when the dawn first inched over the horizon, thinking that I must be hallucinating the light, and I remembered that I’d been wrong. Maybe I was wrong again.

  I stopped and listened, that car’s growl growing closer. I walked toward the front door, my feet now awkward as the rhythm of my gait changed. One hand unlatched the deadbolt, and the other twisted the doorknob and pulled it open.

  The daylight streamed everywhere, intense in both brightness and the clarity of detail it revealed. Every blade of grass stood distinct from the rest. Every nick and flaw in the grain of the wood along the deck presented itself, like scars on a chin giving it character. After so long in the relative shade behind those frosted windows, these things took my breath away.

  I stumbled forward a couple of paces, my feet pounding the wood planks, my eyes squinted down to slits even with a hand cupped around my brow for a little shade. The car sounded closer than I had anticipated, perhaps just a block or two off.

  I didn’t think. I moved toward it, feet thumping down the steps and crunching over the frozen grass. I blinked a few times, trying to coax my eyes into adjusting to the light out here, but it was hard to say if it helped at all.

  When I got to the street, it occurred to me for the first time that I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I stopped. These could be killers. Rapists. Maybe even cannibals for all I knew. Who knew what people had resorted to out there? Doyle and I had come upon more than a few bodies we were quite sure had met violent ends, though the levels of decay often made it hard to say for sure what had happened. Slashed throats. Holes consistent with gunshot wounds. Deep purple strangle lines running rings around necks.

  Once more I had a choice. I could choose the path of fear. I could turn back, stay safe but stay alone. Or I could choose the path of faith. I could walk into this danger, risking everything, putting all of my trust in whoever was driving out this way in a car.

  I thought on it for a moment, the car engine shifting gears so the sound of the engine changed pitch. A little breeze blew into my face and the hair sticking out of my hat twitched in the wind.

  I stepped forward.

  Fiona

  Beckley, WV

  151 days after

  Gravity kicked in as I accelerated down the hill, my footsteps gone choppy and wild. More than jogging, I fell and caught myself over and over, one lunging step at a time. I barely even watched my feet, though, hardly saw the ground at all.

  My gaze remained locked to the distance, fixed to the car I could just make out way down there. Light glinted on a sheet of glass, but it was hard to tell if it was the front or rear windshield. Was it coming toward me or moving away? I didn’t know, so I ran.

  I sloped down the mouth of a driveway and transitioned from the concrete of the sidewalk to the asphalt of the street. My speed built and built. It felt like if I stuck my arms out to my sides, I would take flight, curling up into the air into an arc to swoop down onto the car, pouncing on the roof like a cat, maybe with one leg splayed out to the side in some Spiderman-esque position.

  Air rushed in and out of my lungs, cold and dry. I felt it in my nostrils, in my throat. And that little shake still persisted in my torso, muscles still convulsing, but it was different now. Adrenaline had morphed it into an electric throb, a trembling tingle that stayed constant instead of the rhythmic rattle from the cold.

  The hill bottomed out into flat ground, and I kept going. The run evened itself out, my gait going smooth, controlled, my knees and ankles no longer getting jammed with every step. My cheeks juddered with the bob of my footsteps, that pink flesh inside my mouth sliding up and down against my teeth, and I realized that my mouth had dropped open to keep up with my lungs.

  The cold hugged around me, open air that stretched out in all directions. All of me felt exposed, uncovered, like that burning spot on the tip of my nose where the skin got peeled off.

  The car looked like a dark SUV. Maybe black or navy blue. Possibly even purple. I squinted, my eyelids squeezing together so that my eyelashes filled my field of vision. I concentrated to look through them, letting them blur into the foreground. The vehicle’s grill sharpened into focus first, and then the headlights formed alongside each side of it, and I knew it was headed my way.

  People. Real live people sitting behind the glare on the windshield just ahead. I almost vomited from the sheer stimulation of it.

  I lifted my arms up over my head and waved them, wrists crossing over each other and separating. I didn’t realize I was yelling until my voice cracked. I sounded dry, harsh, more like a bird’s warning cry than a call out for help, I thought. I knew it was doubtful anyone could hear me from this distance, especially with the windows up, but I yelled anyway.

  I blinked a few times, watched everything go from bright to dark and back. My heart sped up and my eyes went wide. I almost panicked when the car disappeared for even a second behind the flesh of my eyelids, like that was a real risk, the sedan might just vanish into a puff of smoke, or roll away from me if I looked away at all. It was almost like the most superstitious part of my brain believed that my eyeballs held some sway over the car’s movements or even its existence altogether.

  All things drifted into slow motion when the SUV got within a block of me. I could see the vehicle better now, an older model Jeep Grand Cherokee from what I could make out, at least 15 or 20 years old. Black as I’d first thought. The light rip
pled on the hood and windshield, the reflections morphing into new shapes as the shiny surfaces slid toward me.

  I knew this was it. My prospects for living or dying might well be settled in these next few minutes, as though my life, my fate would rest on a single roll of the dice. Were the people sitting behind the glare on the windshield kind or hostile? Let’s see what the dice have to say.

  The car slowed as it drew near. I could make out silhouettes, moving shapes behind the glass, but not faces. It looked to be two people, but with the glare obscuring my view, I couldn’t be certain.

  I dropped to my knees and left my hands above my head, no longer waving. I didn’t consciously consider it at the time, but I guess it was an act of submission. I didn’t want to seem a threat in any way, so I threw myself at the mercy of these strangers entirely, making it clear that they would choose my destiny for good or ill.

  My chest heaved, and I sucked in air, ragged breaths scraping at my dried out throat. My heart still hammered against the horizontal bars of my ribcage, not yet willing to slow back down.

  The Jeep inched toward me, only about fifteen feet out now, creeping forward so slowly that I could make out the tread on the tires in full detail. Every groove. Every divot. And then the wheels stopped. I could sense the faintest jerk in the vehicle as the driver shifted it into park.

  I closed my eyes, focused all of my attention onto the sound of the SUV’s engine, the feeling of the cold blacktop seeping into my knees serving as the lone distraction. The pitch shifted a half a step higher now that the car idled in park.