The Scattered and the Dead (Book 2.5) Read online

  Contents

  Title & Copyright

  Delfino

  Delfino

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Erin

  Erin

  Erin

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Erin

  Erin

  Delfino

  Father

  The Scattered and the Dead

  THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD

  Book 2.5

  Tim McBain & L.T. Vargus

  Copyright © 2017 Tim McBain & L.T. Vargus

  Smarmy Press

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Delfino

  Outside of Poplar Bluff, Missouri

  9 years, 131 days after

  Hello.

  It’s me, Delfino.

  So, um…

  Look, I ain’t much of a writer, but what the hell?

  Way I figure it, this is my big chance. I can scrawl out a little journal here — a few pages, I reckon — hand it off to ol’ Baghead, and then I’ll be published. Immortalized on the page. A legend who lives on and on and on via the magic powers of the written word.

  So I’ll have that going for me.

  Of course, Bags isn’t himself just now. Lost a damn hand via machete. Not good.

  I think it was the left. Pretty sure. I guess I should check that real quick. Want this journal to be accurate.

  Hang on.

  Back.

  Yep. His left hand lies in an alley in Arkansas. Or whatever remains of it.

  I remember when we snipped that little flap of skin that kept it dangling from his wrist and the hand dropped away at last… for a split second, I wondered if we should keep it. I mean, not seriously. It was an irrational thought or whatever. I just got the weirdest urge to snatch it up when I saw it lying there on the asphalt. A hand seems like the kind of thing you’d want to keep, you know? Important piece of equipment, that. Not something to go leaving in a mud puddle.

  But no. It was already too late for it. Already gone. His severed paw was close enough to one of the buildings that I figure the fire took it in time.

  Anyhow, he’s been sleeping in the backseat of the Delta 88, mostly. Drinking a lot of fluids. Taking pain meds. All that junk.

  OK wait.

  I should set the scene or something, maybe. Is that what you’re supposed to do?

  We’re in Missouri now. I parked us in the brush near a small playground to sleep for the night, and it’s morning now. A gray-skied bullshit morning. Not raining, at least.

  I’m sitting on a picnic table being devoured by green lichen. The wood planks have gone wonky, so the son of a bitch leans like a one-legged man. Better than nothin’, I reckon.

  The wind rips through here once in a while and blows everything around. Grass flapping everywhere. Swishing like mad.

  We’ve been taking it slow, to be honest with you. Way more breaks and sleeping than would normally be necessary. I don’t figure it would do Bags much good to arrive at his destination in his current state. So we’ll keep the pace conservative for now. Let him heal and whatnot.

  He’ll need his wits about him when he gets where he’s going, and even then it might not be enough, I’m afraid. Right now he’s sleeping damn near twenty hours a day and not sitting up for more than two or three minutes at a time. I figure he’ll start getting better sooner than later, but… He lost a lot of blood, and I imagine he’s in a great deal of pain.

  Pulled over to eat lunch just now, and I don’t see a lot of reason to hurry, so I’m back to writing. Ruth and I built a small fire in the grass field just next to the road, and I’ve got a pot of water on for tea. Rare and expensive as shit these days, but I think I enjoy it more than I used to. Supposedly it’s not even real tea. Some other plant, according to the rumors. Tastes good, though.

  Citrus notes. A hint of banana followed by a spicy burst of cloves. Smooth mouth feel. Or whatever.

  Ruth sits out next to the fire now, picking at a patch of clover, poking sticks at the coals and what have you. Seems like we’ll never get out of Missouri. I guess at our current pace, it might be a while yet.

  Now that I have this pen clutched in my fingers, I do remember some writing I did way, way back. Maybe a couple years after the world went to hell. It was a letter. A letter to a special lady friend, as a matter of fact. And it wound up depicting some harrowing shit. I think I know where it is, too. Would make another excellent entry in one of Baghead’s books. Maybe I’ll draw him up a little map or something.

  Ha. Didn’t take ol’ Bags long to figure out what I’m up to.

  “What are you doing?” he just said from the backseat.

  “Writin’.”

  “Writing?”

  “Writin’.”

  He was quiet for a moment.

  “So you figure this is your big chance, huh?” he said, finally.

  I laughed.

  “Yep. So happens I’m fixin’ to be immortalized on the page,” I said.

  “I thought you weren’t much for the written word?”

  “I’m not.”

  It’s the truth. Only novel I remember liking much was A Clockwork Orange. Disturbing shit but weirdly funny. All that crazy slang. Everything was “horrorshow” this and that. Malenky. Rot. A pain in the gulliver. And I liked all that stuff about “your humble narrator.” That bit always stuck with me for some reason.

  Anyhow, I guess a lack of appreciation for literature never stopped anyone from writing a book before. Why should it start now?

  I went out to get my water off the fire, and once the raging boil died back a little, I packed a wad of dark stuff into the little tea strainer and set it to steep. It’ll only take a few minutes, and once it’s done, I figure we can get a move on.

  It’s getting to be late in the day now. I don’t figure we’ll drive long after dark, either, so I should probably get things wrapped up and be gone. Your humble narrator needs to get back on the road.

  Delfino

  Outside of Sikeston, Missouri

  9 years, 132 days after

  We’re being followed.

  I’d suspected it yesterday, but I didn’t want to write it down for fear of jinxing it or something. Like as soon as I wrote it, it would become real, become certain, but not until.

  I shook myself awake to the sound of a car going past sometime late in the night. The park was close enough to the highway to see and hear any movement, although I didn’t m
anage to wake myself in time to see anything but taillights. All I could say for sure was that it was a small car of some kind. A hatchback maybe.

  My first thought, of course, was that these people were tailing us. That could be paranoia, I knew, but there are three assassins out there trying to kill Baghead, after all. A little paranoia is warranted.

  Anyway, between the dark and the brush I’d parked us in, I knew there was no way anyone would see us. Not without a spotlight and doing some real searching around.

  The car never slowed, the red of the taillights drifting over the top of a hill and disappearing.

  My mind tumbled thoughts like rocks in my brain pan. If they were following us — and it was still an if at this point — I wanted to run through the possibilities. A lot would depend on how long they’d been following. I’d guess since Arkansas, at least. Little Rock, probably. Just a gut feeling. So how long was that? Two or three nights now. And we’d stopped to sleep every night, so they must have a sense of that.

  If they’re looking for us, they’ll probably pick a spot down the road to lie in wait. Or perhaps, if they were of the less subtle variety, they’d come back this way to take a peek.

  Sure enough, a beat-up Ford Fiesta came rolling past about three hours later. Real slow. Pretty obvious, it seemed to me.

  Again, I don’t think they saw us, but I can’t be sure.

  I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. I watched the empty road until well after sun up when Ruth started to stir. Then I went out and started a fire to cook up some oatmeal for us. The Fiesta never came back by. Nothing at all did.

  It wasn’t until I had my second spoonful of oat goop that it hit me. Two cars. The only way that following us for a long while made any sense that I could figure meant it was a two-man job. They were watching our progress. Waiting. Patient. Funneling us into a trap.

  Of course, a couple bites later, I figured the lack of sleep was only feeding into my paranoia, right?

  But no. I saw the Fiesta again tonight. If any doubt remained that they were out here looking for us, I think that’s passed. Now we just have to figure out what to do about it.

  And let’s just say your humble narrator has some ideas.

  Tonight we set up camp out at a rest stop off the interstate. I parked behind the building to conceal us and cut some green stuff to lay over the windshield. Tall stalks of ragweed and thistle. Hoping that’ll prevent or minimize any glare from the windshield or what have you. It’s all overgrown to hell out here like it is everywhere, so I figured we’d be all right should the Fiesta or its partner come creeping along.

  And so it came to pass in the early evening.

  The Fiesta came right up on us, rolled through the rest area parking lot. Thankfully we were well concealed, and I’d put out the cookin’ fire some half hour earlier. If they’d had their windows down, they’d have smelled the smoke still lingering yet, I imagine.

  From what I could see looking through the crisscross of boughs laid over the Delta 88, the car went past slowly, but it showed no signs that they’d spotted us. No brake lights. No little stutter step type hesitations. Just a smooth roll past.

  Anyway, I didn’t tell Baghead or the girl about any of this yet. I don’t see much to gain in doing so. A little girl and a guy recovering from the loss of an appendage? Nah. I’ll have to find a way to handle it myself.

  They’re moving on us, but I have a plan.

  Erin

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

  9 days before

  Kelly-

  Check this out. Hand-writing you a note, old school style. Just like in sixth grade, right?

  We’re staying at one of the camps now. I guess most people are. It’s boring, but other than that, it’s not so bad. Everything runs so smoothly here that I sometimes forget that people are dying in droves out there in the real world.

  We saw some on the way in. Dead people, I mean. Three bodies slumped next to a park bench in the suburbs. Their faces looked all dried out like beef jerky. Wrinkly.

  My mom told me not to look, but it was too late. She acts like I’ve never seen a dead body before.

  Anyway, I tried calling and texting you about a million times, but it seems like all the lines are down or busy or whatever. Pretty concerning if you ask me, but my mom is like, “I’m sure there are things higher on the list of priorities than whether or not you can text your friends, Erin.”

  Well, duh. But… what if there’s an emergency or something and someone needs to call 911? What then, Mom?

  I suppose you can guess why I even have this notebook with me. She made me bring homework! Yep, it’s the end of the world (heh), and she’s still worried about my summer reading for AP English. So if anyone asks, these are my notes for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

  It’s really, kind of, totally, absolutely horseshit. With all the dumb crap she made me bring, I could only fit one extra pair of clothes in my backpack. And it’s not like there’s anywhere to do laundry here. I’m going to start smelling soon. I guess I could request another jaunt through the disinfectant showers. Just kidding. That was the worst.

  Did you have to go through the showers at your camp? I’m assuming you’re at one of the other camps, anyway. I will be mad if I find out you have a secret bunker somewhere and didn’t invite me.

  There is nothing to do here. I’ve been hanging out with this girl named Breanne who’s pretty cool. She’s going to be a Senior in the fall. Mostly we wander around the camp and try not to die of boredom.

  Speaking of Breanne… She is a total flirt. It’s ridonkulous, really. Earlier today, for example, we were hanging out around the mess tent. It’s insanely huge, easily the size of the gym at school. A group of the National Guard guys stationed at our camp was there eating lunch, and Breanne was pointing them out to me. I swear, sometimes it seems like she knows everyone at camp, which can’t be possible, because we both just got here.

  “That’s Jay Bennett in the middle. The one on the far left is Jimbo… I don’t remember his last name. Max Rippingale is the other one. Everyone calls him Rip or Ripper.”

  I peeked at the three of them in their identical camo pants, jackets, and hats.

  “How can you even tell them apart? They all look the same.”

  “No, they don’t! Jim is short and kind of chunky. Max is the skinny, tall one. And Bennett is the perfectly chiseled hunk of manmeat.”

  She says things like this. I think one time she used the term “buns of steel,” but the memory is blurry. Perhaps my subconscious is trying to protect me from the trauma of the experience.

  Just then the soldiers stood up and headed right for us, so I didn’t have time to comment on how vomit-worthy the phrase “hunk of manmeat” is. They had to turn in their meal trays, and I realized that Breanne had been loitering right next to the dish collection area for a reason.

  “Hello, Sergeant.”

  She said it all coy with a lot of eye blinking and hair twirling.

  “Hey, Breanne,” Manmeat — I mean, Bennett — said.

  Up close I could see that he has black hair and super clear blue eyes. He does kind of look like an underwear model, but he’s one of those guys who seems a little too full of himself for my taste.

  The other two guys smiled and said hi, but they were still on duty, so there wasn’t a whole lot of chatting.

  Breanne’s little sister popped out from under a tablecloth just then and yelled, “Boo!”

  Breanne jumped. “Izzy! I told you to quit doing that!”

  Breanne swatted at her, but Izzy only giggled. She ducked back under the table and scurried out of the mess tent before Breanne could catch up with her.

  We sat down at one of the empty tables, and Breanne went back to picking people out and telling me their names.

  “The horse girl by the coffee station is Collette. I think she said she was a Sophomore.”

  “Horse girl?”

  “As in, she’s into horses.
”

  Breanne’s tone indicated she thought she was stating the obvious.

  “And I’m supposed to know that just by looking at her?”

  “Well, yeah. Are you blind? The long, plain hair pulled back into a ponytail. Like a horse. Her whole room is probably decorated with horses. Horse calendar, horse bedspread, horse curtains. Every school has a horse girl. The horse girl at my school is Holly McGovern. She brings a different horse figurine every day.”

  “Brings it to school?”

  Finding my incredulity amusing, I guess, Breanne started to laugh. She nodded in response.

  “What does she do with it?” I asked.

  “Puts it on her desk.”

  I stared at her, not really believing.

  “She just pops them on her desk in the middle of class? Like it’s no big deal?”

  Now Breanne was laughing pretty hard.

  “She pets them sometimes.”

  Breanne kept on giggling, and I couldn’t help it. I started laughing too.

  “I still don’t know whether I should believe you or not,” I said once the lulz slowed.

  She took a deep breath and stifled another rogue chuckle.

  “God’s honest truth.”

  “I wonder if the horse girls are like the female version of the Lego nerds?”

  “Lego nerds?” she asked.

  I told her about Kyle Mackey and how he used to bring his latest Lego constructions to school: the Millennium Falcon, Big Ben, a pirate ship.

  “You might be on to something,” she said. “Man, I bet if you paired up a Lego nerd with a horse girl, it would be a match made in heaven. True love.”

  “Now we just need to find a Lego nerd for… what was her name again?”

  I glanced over at the girl with the long ponytail and pale pink glasses.

  “Collette.”

  I propped an elbow on the table and leaned my chin on my fist.

  “How is it that you already know half the people here?” I asked.

  “Because I’m very friendly,” Breanne said. She poked my arm with a finger. “You should try it sometime.”

  “I’m friendly!”

  “If you say so.”