The Scattered and the Dead (Book 1): A Post-Apocalyptic Series (46 page)

She clamped a hand on Erin’s sleeve and started pulling her.

“Wait, did you go inside? You’re not supposed to-”

The house came into view through the dried stalks then. Izzy released her grip and Erin’s hand returned limply to her side.

“Holy balls.”

“Isn’t it awesome?”

“In the most literal sense of the word, yes. Yes it is.”

The house was, well not even a house, really. Even the term “mansion” didn’t quite do it justice. Was mega-mansion a word? She didn’t know.

It was an ugly sprawling thing, looking a lot like eight or nine houses stuck together. If she was going to have a mega-mansion, she’d want it to look like a castle or a palace or something.

The saving grace was the pool area, complete with a water slide, diving board, water trampoline, and cabana.

“I still don’t like that you came this close by yourself.”

“I did everything you always tell me. I stayed at the edge of the field for a long time, watching. And I didn’t go inside.”

After waiting a few minutes at the edge of the lawn, Erin judged it safe to move closer.

Izzy gasped.

“Look at the bottom of the pool!”

Erin peered over the edge and found herself looking at a coral reef inhabited by a rainbow of tropical fish.

“Is it real?”

The ripple effect of the water almost convinced her, but Erin shook her head.

“It’s just a mural. Pretty cool, though.”

Farther out she saw sharks and a killer whale and at the far end, a shipwreck. She got goosebumps just looking at it.

Water splashed, and Erin looked over to see Izzy on her hands and knees, plunging her hand into the water. Her chin tilted up.

“So? Can we?”

“What?”

“Go swimming, duh!”

Erin cast a glance back toward their house, imagining the wood still sitting in the bike carrier. The food inventory incomplete. Then the rippling blue surface of the pool caught her eye. She still hadn’t managed to get Izzy to take a real bath. It had been a while now since her own bath. And while a dip in the pool wasn’t exactly the same as sudsing up with soap and shampoo, it was better than nothing.

Plus, how long since they’d done anything fun? They’d been working their butts off.

“OK, but the last one in is a rotten egg,” Erin said, and dove into the pool.

Erin squeezed the hem of her shirt. The way the pool water ran between her fingers reminded her of the time she made homemade lemonade with her grandmother. She closed her eyes, conjuring the smell of fresh lemons, trying to force the citrus tang to replace the salty chemical stink of the chlorine. Would she ever see a lemon again?

A slapping sound filled the air. Her eyelids rolled open in time to watch Izzy waddle out of the poolhouse wearing flippers, goggles, and a snorkel. A toy boat was tucked into the crook of her elbow.

Erin tousled her hair with a beach towel — another item looted from the poolhouse — and unfolded onto one of the lounge chairs next to the pool.

“Where are you headed, Jacques Cousteau?”

“Huh?”

Izzy’s voice echoed out of the snorkel.

“He was a famous oceanog- forget it.”

Izzy tossed the plastic boat into the pool and cannonballed in after it. The waves from her entrance sent the boat listing from stern to bow.

“Looks like rough seas.”

“Nothing this old girl can’t handle,” Izzy said, nudging the boat toward the center of the pool.

Erin nestled her head against the back of the lounger.

“That’s what we need.”

Izzy spit the snorkel out of her mouth and said, “What?”

“A boat.”

“I don’t think it would fit in the pool.”

“Not for the pool, doofus. On the ocean. We’ll sail the seven seas!”

“Like pirates?”

“Yar! Like pirates, matey!”

“Where would we get drinking water?”

“Hmm, good point. Maybe a big lake would be better.”

Of course, that wasn’t the only problem with the plan, once she thought about it. Even if they were able to catch fish, they’d still need other food to survive. Then there was the problem of mobility. If all the car engines were dead, then so were the boats. That still left sailing as an option.

Erin had only been sailing once. Some friends of her parents had a sailboat, and they went out on Lake Erie one summer. The clearest memory Erin had of that trip was passing an island in the boat. It wasn’t much of an island, maybe two or three acres at most, with a short rocky beach and a few scrubby little trees. And yet squatting in the center was the carcass of an old house. Just the stone shell remained — a foundation with a chimney at either end.

“What’s that?” Erin asked, not able to take her eyes from the ruins.

“That’s Gull Island,” her dad’s friend Bill said. “Used to be a house there, as you can see, but now it belongs to the birds.”

Erin squinted as they got closer. Sure enough, the island teemed with them — swooping over the remains of the house, taking off from the swaying grass, perching in the trees.

“People lived there?” Erin said.

Bill nodded.

“Sure. Though now that the birds have taken over, I hear if you don’t watch where you’re walking, you’re liable to end up neck deep in bird shit.”

Erin watched the island until it was just a speck on the horizon, transfixed. What would it have been like to live there? Wouldn’t it have been lonely to be out there, all by yourself? And yet despite that, she felt drawn to it.

Maybe the boat wasn’t such a bad idea. If they could find an island, they really could be safe from it all. No zombies. No disease. No psycho bad guys.

Abandoning the toy boat, Izzy flipped onto her back and kicked her feet. With the flippers on, she was able to propel herself around the pool at an impressive speed. After two laps, she paused to float near where Erin was sitting.

“Can we still be pirates even if we’re not on the ocean?”

“Of course. If we can’t be pirates, then what’s the point?”

Erin wrapped the towel tighter around her shoulders.

“I like the idea of a lake better anyway. Less scary.”

“Scary?”

“Being in the middle of the ocean would freak me out.”

Izzy propped both arms on the deck of the pool and wriggled out of the water. Beads of water cascaded off her flippered feet, and she scooted forward on her belly. She looked like a seal flopping out of the water onto a shelf of ice in the arctic.

“Haven’t you ever been on a cruise?”

Wet strands of hair bumped Erin’s cheeks when she shook her head.

“Nope.”

“Well I have. It’s not scary.”

“It would be scary to me. What if you hit an iceberg?”

Izzy laughed.

“You won’t be laughing when your cruise ship starts a-sinking.”

“Have you ever seen those ships? They’re huge! There’s no way they’d sink.”

Erin clapped her hands together.

“That’s what they said about the Titanic! You jinxed it now. We can’t get a boat.”

Izzy rolled around so she was sitting on the edge of the pool, feet in the water. She churned her legs, producing furious rapids which she then dropped the toy boat into. It lurched, to and fro. Anytime it got close to straying outside of the rapid zone, Izzy plucked it from the water and set it back in the turbulence.

She paused her agitation and said, “But our boat would be small enough that we would just be able to steer around any icebergs.”

Erin didn’t know if that was logically sound, but she’d already had another thought.

“What about pissed off whales? They’ll ram a hole right into the side of the boat.”

“They will not!”

“Haven’t you ever heard of Moby Dick?”

“That’s made up,” Izzy said, upending the boat to drain the water it had accumulated.

“Yeah, but it’s based on a true story. And you know what happened to the crew? Their boat sank, and they wound up drifting around in lifeboats for months. When the first guy died of starvation, they tossed him overboard. But when the second guy died-”

Erin realized how grim the tone of the conversation had turned. Probably not the wisest idea to be filling a kid’s head with this stuff.

“What?”

“Nothing. Never mind.”

She ran her hand over the napped texture of the towel so she wouldn’t have to look at Izzy.

“Now you have to tell me!”

When she didn’t answer, Izzy kicked her legs in protest, fins slapping the water loudly and splashing Erin in the process.

Erin exhaled loudly.

“Fine! When the second guy died, they ate him.”

The splashing stopped all at once.

“What? They did not!”

Erin nodded.

“That’s so gross.”

They were silent for a moment, and then she added.

“I wouldn’t eat you if that happened to us.”

Erin couldn’t help let an evil grin spread over her face.

“I make no such promises.”

“That’s not funny!”

“In fact, I’m feeling a bit peckish at the moment.”

She lurched forward, crawling down the length of the chair toward Izzy.

“I might just have to eat you right now!”

Izzy launched herself into the pool with a squeal, and Erin dove in after her. She chased Izzy around in circles for a few laps, but with the fins on, Izzy could outswim her easily.

Erin paused to catch her breath. Glancing down into the undulating water, she realized she was floating above the shipwreck. She flapped her feet and propelled herself away from it.

“Goo!”

“Ha ha, chicken!” Izzy called from the other end of the pool.

“That’s what you’re going to taste like! A chicken nugget. I’ll dip you in barbecue sauce.”

Erin planted her feet against the side of the pool and kicked off in Izzy’s direction.

Mitch

Bethel Park, Pennsylvania

41 days before

Dawn crested the horizon just as he turned onto their street, the sun an orange ball rising through the mist to kill off the rain and burn away the patches of fog all at once. His eyes stung, and his clothes were still soaked, but he was home. It might not be for long, but he was here.

He pulled into the driveway, the car’s tires sloshing through the mud puddle in the gutter on the way in. He always thought the sound of the wheels jamming into the potholes of water sounded like cannonballs plunging into the sea in a pirate movie.

He killed the engine, hand resting on the key for a long moment before he withdrew it from the ignition. He jangled it against the other keys, wrapping his fingers around the lot of them and sliding them into his pocket.

Once more, he found himself unsure of what to do next. Oh, he knew how this story would end, knew exactly where he was going, but he didn’t know the route he would take to get to that destination.

Maybe he shouldn’t even go inside. Maybe he should drive off and handle this himself, leaving the kids now so they wouldn’t have to deal with it. He liked this option in a certain sense, but it was problematic in a couple of ways. If he took one of the guns, the kids would have no way to retrieve it. That seemed too valuable of a tool now. The car itself would also have great value, even if they didn’t know how to drive it yet.

He craned his neck to look up at the house through the glass screen of the passenger window. He could leave the car, leave the guns and walk away. He could walk the two and a half miles to the bridge and hurl himself to the river. That would do it, right? A handful of people did it every year. He tried to imagine it, tried to picture what it must feel like to plummet off of the edge, the wind assailing you, the water rushing up at you.

But no. No. Not everyone who jumped died, and even if he did, he would come back, wouldn’t he? Unless he managed to brain himself, he would come back. He would bite and kill and spread the disease. He couldn’t let that happen.

He lowered his head into his palms, the flesh of his hands cold against his forehead. Even in wet clothes he was burning up like his skull was an oven set to bake his brain at 450 degrees. The kind of heat that made it hard to concentrate, hard to think. Maybe that was why every decision was so difficult just now.

He looked at the house again, the sun glancing across the slats of the porch, reflecting off of a rectangular piece of the white siding. He wasn’t quite done with this place yet, he thought. He’d ride things out for a while more. He could still make himself useful, and he would.

He opened the door, stepped out onto the wet concrete and stretched. His arms reached up, one then the other, back extending to uncoil the muscles along his spine. He rolled his neck from shoulder to shoulder a few times, the pain in his head seeming to flop from side to side as he did so.