The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (31 page)

Izzy grunted.

“Except…”

“What?”

“I’m stuck.”

“What do you mean?”

Izzy had both arms in the air now, and she wriggled from side to side.

“This mud. It’s like trying to swim in chocolate pudding!”

Erin started to laugh.

“It’s not funny! What if it’s like quicksand, and it starts sucking me under?”

Erin scooted to the edge of the bank and stuck out a hand.

“Here.”

Izzy extended her arm but couldn’t quite reach. Erin leaned a little farther until their fingers intertwined and then she pulled. But the mud pulled back, and Erin went toppling into the muck head first.

She floundered under water for a few seconds before righting herself. As she broke the surface, she opened her eyes. At first, all she could see was brown. She had to use her fingers like windshield wipers to clear the mud from her face. Even through mud-plugged ears, she could hear Izzy cackling. At least she was amused.

She shook her head to clear her ears. Bits of mud flung from the ends of her hair, splattering onto Izzy’s face in a polka dot pattern.

“Hey!”

Now it was Erin’s turn to laugh.

Izzy splashed at her in retaliation.

“You don’t want to start this,” Erin warned.

Erin cupped her hands together and squirted a stream of water the way her dad had taught her.

“Oh, I’m real scared,” Izzy said. Or started to say. She drew out the hard vowel sound in “scared.” Taunting, with her mouth wide open.

The jet of water hit Izzy’s gaping maw like a bullseye, hitting the back of her throat. The spray cut off the last word and turned it into garbled, sputtering nonsense.

It came out more like, “Oh, I’m real scaaaaAAGGLAGLARGH!”

Erin snickered, reminded of one of those Midway games where you have to spray the clown with a water gun to fill the balloon.

She threw her hands in the air and gave her best impression of an old school carnival barker.

“We have a winnah!”

Izzy coughed and spat and tried to look angry, but it was hard to pull off with her giant gap-toothed grin.

“You’re dead.”

Erin dodged the softball sized wad of mud flung in her direction.

“You’re playing with fire, my friend.”

“No,
you
are!”

Erin shot another stream of water at her, trying to get her in the mouth again. Izzy was ready for it this time, snapping her mouth shut and closing her eyes.

Izzy’s fist rose from the depths, clutching a gob of mud the size of a grapefruit.

“It’s payback time.”

Erin ducked under water this time, narrowly avoiding impact. When she resurfaced, before she could even take a breath, a sticky mass of river muck rocketed into her forehead.

“Yes! Eat it!” Izzy said, and then produced a laugh fit for a maniacal cartoon scientist.

An all out mud war ensued, and by the time they called a truce they both looked like swamp creatures.

Erin hooked a finger through the wheel spokes of the bicycle and inched it toward the creek’s edge. It really did feel like trying to swim in pudding. Each movement felt like someone had pressed the slow motion button on a remote control.

She slithered up onto the bank and tugged on the bike. The weight of the bike coupled with the suction of the muck made it difficult. Izzy stood a few feet away, smearing the mud on her arms in circles.

“Help me, mudbutt,” Erin said.

“I’m not a mudbutt! You’re the mudbutt.”

Izzy took the front wheel and Erin grappled with the few inches of frame sticking above the water. They heaved, almost falling backward when the swampy mire finally released its grasp on the bike with a
squelch
.

Erin sat on the bank, watching clots of mud drip from Izzy’s clothes and hair.

“If you didn’t need a bath before, you definitely need one now. Filthy little mudbutt.”

With a flick of her fingers, Izzy sent a spatter of muddy droplets at Erin. The sludgy spray plopped against the coating of goop already completely encompassing her person.

Erin ran the flat of her hand over Izzy’s arm like a squeegee, scraping several cups of mud away. She repeated this motion over the rest of Izzy and then herself. By the time she finished, the remaining layer of mud had started to dry in the sun. It felt tight on her skin, and when she moved, little cracks appeared, like in pictures she’d seen of Death Valley.

“You know what I could go for right now?” Erin asked.

“What?”

“A Tootsie Roll.”

Izzy wrinkled her nose in a scowl.

“No way! That’s the crappiest kind of candy!”

“I know,” Erin said, lifting her bike from its prone position on the ground. “But for some reason, I want one. My mom used to give me one of those cardboard and plastic Tootsie Roll banks in my stocking every year for Christmas. I threw so many of those away without eating a single Tootsie Roll. Such a waste.”

“You’re nuts,” Izzy said.

“You’re telling me that if we found one Tootsie Roll on our next shopping trip, what could be the
last
Tootsie Roll in the whole world, you wouldn’t fight me for it?”

Izzy cleared mud from the seat of her bike.

“Milky Ways are better. And Three Musketeers.”

“Why don’t you just wish for a unicorn while you’re at it? I’m not talking about what candy is the best. I’m talking about the weird but unique, semi-chocolatey, taffy thing that is the Tootsie Roll. They’re not the best. But there’s nothing else like them.”

“I guess I’d have a bite.”

“Ha! Like I’m sharing.”

Back at the house, they took turns filling a watering can at the rain barrel and then holding it over the other person’s head like a mini shower. It wasn’t a bad setup, except that they ran out of water pretty quickly. Erin tried using water straight from the well, but it was so cold, she actually screamed when Izzy dumped it on her, her torso jerking with that spinal response that reminded her of touching the handle of a hot pan.

She scratched her head. She could still feel the grit of the mud on her scalp.

Now that she’d solved the puzzle of how to move the generator, she felt less urgency to do so. It wasn’t going anywhere. And so her thoughts returned to a bath.

Her eyes flicked over to where she’d left the horse trough next to the barn. The idea of a fire still made her uneasy. Whenever that image of smoke on the horizon came to mind, she got bubbleguts again.

Still, they’d have to build a fire sooner or later. Maybe she’d start small, with a test fire to see how much smoke it made.

After a lunch of jam on crackers and green beans — “more like gray beans,” Izzy said — they got back on their bikes. Erin led the way back to the rhubarb house. It was a good distance away from their place, probably at least a mile, and Erin remembered seeing some wood stacked out back.

The grass closest to the house was nearly up to her waist, but as she swished through it and got closer to the shade cast by the woods, the grass thinned out. She hadn’t noticed before, but there was a ring of cinder blocks next to the woodpile. A fire pit. Perfect.

Izzy hopped onto the circle of cement blocks and walked around it with both arms out, like it was a balance beam.

“Don’t fall in. You’ll get all sooty,” Erin said.

“I won’t.”

Izzy bent her knees and dismounted.

Erin pulled three logs from the pile, upsetting a spindle-legged spider that went scurrying deeper into the pile.

Squatting next to the bricks, she arranged the wood in a teepee shape, the way she’d always seen on TV. She’d never actually made a fire before, but how hard could it be? Make a teepee, crumple up some paper for kindling-

Oh.

She hadn’t thought about that. Hadn’t planned much at all before leaving the house, other than grabbing a lighter. She’d been so proud of coming up with the idea of a test fire that she kind of just rushed out without thinking too far ahead. Idiot.

She patted her pockets and came up with a wadded up Kleenex. Izzy sat next to her, snapping the twigs from a fallen branch.

“Got any paper?” Erin said.

Izzy shook her head. But then her eyes went a little wider.

“I can go get some from inside.”

She hooked a thumb over her shoulder.

“Oh, right.”

Of course there’d be paper in the house. Maybe she wasn’t such an idiot after all.

The green bucket was still in place by the window, but they went around front to enter. Erin never locked the doors after they were finished. Seemed pointless.

It was odd being back inside one of the houses. There was still some of the same uneasiness. A sense of being a trespasser. But at the same time, there was a feeling of familiarity since they had been inside before. Erin stood just inside the door, absorbing the sensation. Izzy bounded past her, up the steps.

Erin followed, pausing in the kitchen to peer into the can of nacho cheese.

“Gross.”

Izzy’s head popped up from behind the breakfast nook.

“What is it?”

“That huge thing of nacho cheese.”

“Is it all moldy?”

Erin shook her head.

“No. It looks exactly the same. It must be indestructible, like Twinkies.”

Izzy laughed.

Erin heard rustling and then Izzy was waving a stack of newspapers at her.

“Will these work?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

“Language!”

Back at the fire pit, Erin slid a sheet of newsprint from the pile. Her hand started to crumple it, until the front page headline caught her eye. She stopped, eyes flicking left to right over the letters.

US Death Toll Reaches 16 Million.

A sub-headline read - Pandemic Swells Worldwide.

She stared at it, trying to imagine 16 million people dead. And that was just the beginning.

“What are you reading?” Izzy said.

“Nothing.”

Erin scrunched the paper into a ball and nestled it under her wood teepee.

“I was just thinking about how I didn’t think anyone got the newspaper anymore. The paper version, I mean.”

Erin added more paper balls to the pile. She got to the Sunday comics and paused. She pulled that sheet free and handed it to Izzy.

“Here. This was the only part of the paper I was ever interested in reading.”

Izzy took the page, face already glued to the colorful images.

“My parents used to wrap most of the Christmas presents in the old Sunday comics.”

Izzy wrinkled her nose.

“Were you poor or something?”

Erin laughed.

“Maybe that was part of it. But I think they also thought it was less wasteful than buying fancy wrapping paper that was just going to get torn off and thrown out after a few minutes.”

She found another section of comics and set it aside. It seemed wrong to burn the comics pages for some reason. She wasn’t sure if it was nostalgia or just that it was so much more colorful than the rest of the paper.

“Plus, they are pretty festive.”

Izzy chuckled at one of the strips.

“I forgot to warn you. I don’t know if they still print it, but beware of Family Circus.”

“Why?”

Erin pantomimed sticking her finger down her throat and made a gagging sound.

The button on the lighter clicked under her thumb. She held it under the paper, watching the orange flame scorch the paper black. The flames spread, engulfing the pile of paper and sending fiery tongues to lick over the logs.

Erin rocked back on her heels, proud of herself. She’d started her first fire. And then the flames died, sputtering out as the last of the paper was consumed.

“Damn,” she said.

“L-A-N… however you spell Language!”

“Well, the fire went out.”

Izzy peered over the edge of her comics pages.

“You didn’t use any of the kindling I made.”

With one toe, she kicked at the pile of twigs she’d broken from the dead branch.

“Oh,” Erin said. She’d been thinking Izzy was just tearing the branch apart for fun. “Have you done this before?”

“Not by myself. But breaking the sticks into kindling was always my job when we went camping.”

Erin started over, scrunching the paper into wads, tossing them under the wood. Here and there she added some of Izzy’s sticks. She lit the pile again, crossing her fingers.

As the flames grew higher, she added more of the twigs, watching the outsides blacken. It was working. The smaller pieces were actually burning now. She threw on more paper and more of the wood caught. The fire crackled and popped, one of the embers exploding into sparks.