Tim McBain - The Scattered and the Dead (Book 0.5)

THE SCATTERED AND THE DEAD

Book 0.5

Tim McBain & L.T. Vargus

Copyright 2016 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 authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Decker

Pittsburgh, PA

21 days before

Hi,

You dont know me, but I live down the hall. I see you, though, and sometimes I feel like I know you. I see you walk out of the building and get into your car. The wind picks up strands of your hair, and the whole world moves around you, and you are alive.

Ive never known how to say hi, though. I guess I still dont, but Ill take a crack at it.

So yeah. Hi. Im Decker. What up?

(Sorry if this is weird. Its my first semi-creepy letter to a girl that I dont know, so Im still figuring things out. Oh, and just to be clear, my name is John Decker, but everyone just calls me Decker. Even my mom.)

Have you lost anyone? Im sure you have. We all have. Dont know why I asked. I guess I just didnt know how else to bring it up, you know?

My mom died early on. I sat with her in the hospital. Plastic shrouded her room, and they made me wear a hazmat suit. Back then, they thought shit like that might make a difference. Im sure lots of other people didnt get this opportunity to be with their loved ones the hospital workers couldnt be expected to hook up everybody with a suit and supervise them to some degree and all -- but my business lawyer knows people. He had me make a donation to the hospital, and that was that.

Trying to remember, the images get all mixed up in my head like theres a missing piece that makes it impossible to put it back together properly. Some sense of the way things used to be that got ripped out. I know it should be there, but its not, and I cant quite remember how things used to feel, I guess.

The nurses told me she could go at any time, so I slept in her room for six nights. I didnt sleep so much as close my eyes and squirm around in a chair in my hazmat suit. But yeah.

I didnt realize what they meant at the time, but I think the nurses tried to offer me something to help her if she wanted to do the whole assisted suicide thing. I was pretty out of it, though.

But she was sitting up and talking, and she seemed like herself and everything. She kept telling me I didnt have to stay the night, that shed still be there in the morning. So on the seventh night I went home, slept in my own bed.

In the morning, I went to Wendys before I headed over to the hospital. I got this idea that I should get my mom a Frosty. They were her favorite. I knew Id have to sneak it in since you cant take anything like that into the plague ward, and I knew itd be soupy as hell from being tucked against my body inside of a damn hazmat suit, but I dont know. I thought shed like it.

Even through the suit her room felt different. Her face seemed more gaunt, the skin pulled tight around her cheek bones, puckering into pits below them. New wrinkles shriveled around the edges of her mouth. Dry. Crusted. She didnt look at me at first. She just opened her mouth and kind of arched her tongue against the inside of her lips a few times like a lizard.

Hey Mom, I said.

She blinked a few times, eyelashes fluttering, and then she smiled.

Decker. Good to see you.

Her voice wavered a little, a rasp grating in her throat that hadnt been there the day before. She extended her hand, and I held it for a moment, though I couldnt really feel her touch through the PVC, just the pressure of it. I could tell her arm had a tremor to it, though.

I released her fingers and dropped my voice to a whisper.

Hang on. I brought you something.

I closed the door, glancing down the hall and seeing no one. My heartbeat and my breathing seemed to grow louder as my hands fumbled to open the suit. I wasnt sure what the nurses would say if they caught me in the act. What could they really do? Still, I felt the adrenalin tingling in all of the places where my skin touched the suit, like sweat and excitement manifested in those spots in some electric throb.

The Frosty cup squished as I pulled it out of my hoodie pocket. Way too soft. I knew that meant it was melted as hell, but I hoped it was better than nothing.

Thinking back, its hard to even express how this felt at the time. I was excited to be giving her this. It felt important in some way that no longer really makes sense. A Frosty. A dairy and sugar concoction that formed some primal connection to how things used to be, how things used to feel, some way of looking at life that felt a long time gone. I dont know. In that moment, it felt important, though.

She drank it through a straw, stopping to smack her tongue against the roof of her mouth periodically. She thanked me over and over again, and she seemed to gain some strength as she drank, her eyes clearing and looking more alert, her sentences growing longer, the syntax more complex.

Its creamy, she said. My tongue and throat have gotten so dry, I think from the medication theyve got me on. I asked the nurses for something to help, but they just pour me glasses of water which does nothing. But this?

She wiggled the paper cup in her hand.

This feels wonderful.

The cup rose to her face, and her dried out lips cinched around the straw again. I could see the silhouette of the chocolate drink climbing up the inside of the plastic tube.

Well, Im glad you like it.

She smiled as she drank, and white cracks spider webbed out from the corners of her mouth as it widened. Even as I looked upon these signs of physical deterioration, and even though I knew things had grown much worse in a short period of time, I couldnt actually picture her dying. I couldnt imagine a world where she didnt exist.

When she finished, I took the cup and straw out to the trash can near where I suited up. Disposing of the evidence, I suppose. Maybe it was because I was wearing the suit, but the hallway felt like a tunnel, like I was passing through some narrow tube between places. I focused on not looking into the few uncovered windows on the doors to my left and right, at all of the people dying off in droves. The nurses told me that my mom was lucky in that she wasnt a bleeder. The disease affects people differently, I guess. The bleeders suffer the worst, though they dont suffer as long. I imagine it feels long enough to them. Anyway, I didnt want to see any of that, so I didnt look. I kept my eyes on the floor as much as possible.

People in suits just like mine bustled by, too focused on the horrors transpiring all around to wonder who I was or to notice the stupid fast food cup in my hand. I got the urge to wad it up as best I could in my fist, but I thought thatd be more suspicious, more remarkable, so I opted against it. My fingers wrapped around the top of the cup so my hand looked sort of like a claw in one of those junk machines reaching into the pile of crappy stuffed animals to pull one out.

I reached the garbage can, tossed the cup in and turned back. None of the nurses at the station there noticed me or anything.

When I got back to the room, I could tell things werent right. My moms eyes were rolled back in her head, her neck tilted so her chin angled up toward the ceiling. Her lips peeled back just enough to reveal the clenched teeth inside. She moaned through her teeth, a pitiful sound, the sharp inhalation of a gasp blended with the weak cry of a small child. A scared sound. A helpless sound.