Dredging Up Memories (18 page)

I moved the gun, stood straight, and backed away.

“Does this hurt?” I brought my boot down on his ankle. Another crack rang loud, but Fat Boy didn’t groan or growl or scream. A moment passed, and I saw it. His pointer finger on his left hand moved. It wasn’t much, but it was enough. 

“So you’re in there, right?”

This time, the movement of the finger was more defined.

I nodded.

“Good.”

The gun went back into my waistband, and I picked my bat up from the ground. Then I turned and walked away. I climbed up into his truck. There were guns in the cab and all sorts of stuff in the bed. Water and cans of gas and canned foods and a couple of lanterns and knives and alcohol. There were other items, things I was certain they had stolen off the dead or maybe even the living before Fat Boy and Scrawny came across them. Things like watches and shoes and more than a dozen pair of women’s panties and a box filled with jewelry. I thought of the brunette’s wedding band. When they were done, it would have been taken and added to their box of trophies.

I shook my head and glanced in the direction of Fat Boy. Part of me wished I hadn’t shot Scrawny in the head. He needed to suffer just the way Fat Boy was, but I reacted, and he was as dead as dead could get.

I did my best to unload as much of their supplies into the van as I could. A lot of it went onto my mattress, but I didn't care. Supplies were more important than the comforts of a pseudo-bed.

The sun was setting as I piled the last of the supplies into the van except for a bottle of Jack Daniels.

But I wasn’t done. I grabbed the shovel from the van and went to the side of the road, opposite of where Fat Boy struggled to move. The grave wasn’t as deep as I would have liked it to be, but it would do the trick. I lay the pretty woman in the hole and found her skirt on the ground not far from where she had killed Fat Boy. I set it over her hips, and then I buried her.

The sun was gone by then. I went to the van, got in, cranked it up, and put it into gear.

Are we leaving now?
Humphrey asked. She sounded different. Scared, maybe.

“Yeah.”

Good.

I said nothing as I uncorked the whiskey and took a big swallow. It was liquid fire going down my throat and settling in my stomach. It set my ears to buzzing.

I let off the brake and eased by Fat Boy’s truck and then by Fat Boy himself. He writhed on the ground, one leg and arm moving, his head jerking from side to side.

In the old world, the crazies were everywhere. As we drove down Old Batesburg Road, I began to think maybe, just maybe, I had become one of the crazies of the new world.

Twelve Weeks and One Day After It All Started…

The Batesburg armory was a lost cause. I found that out after a fitful night of sleep on a hill behind a house in Leeseville. There had been a battle there (if that’s really what it could be called. It was more like an attack and an attempt at defense). The dead lay scattered along the lawn but also in piles closer to the building as if the soldiers just shot and shot and shot until the dead stumbled over each other and got stuck outside. I pulled the van up close to the lot but parked in the road. I mashed the horn as hard as I could. It was a manly sound, not one of those friendly little beep beeps that was more apologetic than warning.

What are you doing?
Humphrey asked.

“A test.”

For what?

I looked at Humphrey. Her eyes were shiny glass that looked real at that moment. She looked like she had been crying or was about to.

“To see if any of them get up.”

She didn’t respond.

Nothing moved beyond our windows. I pressed the horn again, held it for several seconds. Still, nothing happened. I pulled the van into the parking lot, mindful of the bodies, though I guess I didn’t need to be. They were all dead, and if they weren’t, then they needed to be.

I mashed the horn one last time as hard as I could with both hands. I held it down for a good ten seconds. Like I thought, a couple of rotters came around the corner, but they moved so slowly. They were more skin and bones than anything else. The one moving the fastest was tall and missing patches of black hair, and his arms hung down at his sides. His head lulled on his shoulders as if his neck had been broken. The other one was shorter, but one of his legs had been wounded, and he seemed to drag it behind him as he hobbled along. I thought he would fall over, but somehow, he kept his balance.

I took a long swallow off that bottle of Jack Daniels I had pilfered from Fat Boy’s truck. I wiped my mouth and got out of the van, gun ready, flashlight in my back pocket, a knife, also taken from Fat Boy’s truck, in its sheath on my belt. I tucked the gun back in my waistband and reached into the van for the bat.

“Hi guys. My name is Hank Walker, and you killed my wife. Prepare to die.” I think a smile crossed my face as I thought of
The Princess Bride
, a movie from back in the eighties. Inigo Montoya had said something similar about his father. I didn’t have a sword like Montoya did, but I did have a baseball bat, and I planned on putting it to good use. I swung at Patchy Hair. His head spun on his shoulder, a burst of blood spraying out. His neck was broken. Patchy Hair tilted to one side, spinning on his heel, and then fell forward, right into the shorter one. They both fell to the ground. I brought the bat down on the shorter one’s head. And just like that, they were both down for good.

I looked around, waiting for more of them, but none came. I took a deep breath and a closer look at the carnage. It told me they had been overrun a while back. The bodies had already taken on a parchment look, and the stench wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was pungent but fading. There were plenty of flies and rats and a few snakes, but they scattered as I walked through the corpses.

Bodies blocked the front of the armory, making that door impossible to enter. I made my way to the back. The gate had been knocked down. There were no military vehicles behind the building, and the back entrance was propped open by a couple of bodies. I entered the darkness, flicked on the light. My boots weren’t as quiet as I hoped, giving off hollow clops that echoed throughout the building with each step.

There wasn’t much to the place. A few rooms along the back and what looked like a warzone in the front. There were as many dead inside as there were outside. The floor was sticky with dried blood. The clopping of my boots gave way to a sickening
shwisk
sound.

To my right, someone moved. I caught the turning of his head on the outskirts of the light’s beam. I turned to see a soldier who was little more than bones with chunks of flesh still on them. One side of his face was missing, as if he had shot himself but missed his brain. I unsheathed the knife and walked over. His teeth clattered together as he snapped at me.

“I’m sorry,” I said and drove the blade into his temple. I took the gun lying beside him, shoved it in my waistband.

There were other weapons, most of which still had bullets in them. I did what I had done for what felt like my entire life at that point: I pilfered the weapons, making trips back and forth. The van was getting full, and there was no real way of sorting things out. Not there at least. The mattress was completely covered before I arrived, and I had taken to sleeping behind the wheel again. The weapons went into a helter skelter pile near the back.

Searching for my baby brother and son was a slow process. Gathering supplies in the process took even longer. Still, I had to get everything I could use.
Leave nothing behind
, I told myself.

I was worried that at any point, I could turn over a body or lift one off of another and find Bobby or Jake. I wasn’t sure what I would do if they were there and one of the dead, especially if they hadn’t already been put down.

I found some clothes—army fatigues and boots and shirts—folded in footlockers. Not that I wanted clothes, but winter was coming, and there was no need to freeze when I could try on a few things and take them with me.

Hours passed, and when I was done, Bobby and Jake were nowhere to be found.

I let go of a heavy breath and made my way back to the van.

Did you find them?
Humphrey asked in her sweet, childish voice.

“No.”

What now?

“We ride.”

I drove away, the half empty bottle of Jack between my legs and a hole in my chest. It was then that I realized I would never see Jake or Bobby again. I took a long swallow of the whiskey, wiped my lips with the back of one arm. The beginnings of a good buzz began to kick in.

I meant to head for the lake, for the seclusion of a body of water. Maybe I could find a boat and just float out there until I died. At that moment, dying didn’t seem such a terrible idea as long as it was permanent.

There were turns made, straightaways taken, more turns. I think I was trying to get lost in a world that had been that way for several months. Why not? Everything else was gone.

…

Everything.

…

…

As daylight began to die out, I found myself along Highway 321. I was nowhere near the lake. In fact, it was just the opposite direction. Another turn and I was on Highway 78.

I had succeeded in getting lost.

Further down the road, I saw the sign for Blackville. A mound of charred bodies lay by the road.

“Someone’s been here.”

Who?
Humphrey asked. There was a quiver in her voice. One I understood quite well. So far, all the living people we came across were on the wrong side of losing their minds, a byproduct of the fall of civilization as we once knew it.

“I don’t know, but…”

Can we leave?

“What?”

Can we leave? People scare me now.

I nodded. “They scare me too.”

I pulled onto Road 3 and stopped. 

After not seeing people for months, I had managed to run into an overzealous preacher and the remains of his congregation and two good old boys with a hankering for dead women. Now, I came across some others, this time Native Americans.

They were surrounded by a horde of dead, fighting them off as well as they could.

Let's go, Hank. Please, let’s just leave
. A whine was in her voice.

“We can’t leave them like this,” I said. “We can’t leave any of them like this.”

They didn’t have guns. That was the first thing I noticed. They did have knives and sticks, but that meant close quarters combat. From the looks of it, they were losing.

I grabbed several guns, left the van, and slammed the door shut. Before it closed, I heard Humphrey crying.

I ran, getting close enough to take aim and hit the dead and not the living. One shot, two, three, four, all true. Five and six and seven. More dead fell away. Some of them turned to me. Several more shots and I could see the Native Americans. Some were soaked in blood. There were a few on the ground, dead or dying, chunks of flesh ripped free from throats and stomachs and arms and faces.

I dropped an empty gun, pulled another one from my waistband.

It took only minutes, but it seemed to last much longer. Finally, the last of the dead dropped to the ground. He was an older man. His hair had been gray when he was alive but had become a nasty yellow in death. He had been kneeling over a body, his jaws snapping and ripping at the flesh of the dead woman lying there. The top of his head disappeared, and he slumped forward over the woman’s body.

In the aftermath, I heard crying. I turned back to the truck, thinking I had left the door open and that I was hearing Humphrey. The door was closed. The crying came from a little girl lying on the ground. There were teeth marks on her right bicep, and blood washed her skin and clothes in red. A woman knelt beside her and pulled the little girl’s face into her breasts. She was crying also.

“Thank you,” one of the men said. He was older, his hair gray and pulled back into a ponytail that ran down to the small of his back. His jeans were dirty, and his shirt was blood-soaked. There were splashes of blood on his skin. He held a wooden spear with a stone head. On his back was a book bag.

“Did they bite you?” I asked.

“No, not me but others.” He looked around. Three of his people were dead, and the little girl would be soon. He drove his spear into the skull of the woman the elderly dead man had been eating. Then he turned his attention to two men, both older, maybe even close to his age. He stabbed first one then the other in the skull and then went to the woman and little girl.

Blood dripped from his spear as he stood over them. I was looking at a man who knew what he had to do but who was too attached to do it. I wondered if that was his granddaughter. I wondered, not for the first time, if it were Bobby, could I put him down?

“We must hurry,” he said and took the girl in his arms. 

“What are you doing?” I called after him. “She’s going to turn. You can’t save her.”

“There is still time.”

“Time? She’s been bitten. Time is not on her side, and if she turns, it might not be on yours either.”

“Thank you for your help, for saving us. But we have to go now.”

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To the Healing Springs.”

I had heard of the place before. Jeanette and I had once tried to find it but never made it there. Images flashed in my mind of that day, little snapshots that cut deep into my heart. I always thought the stories told about it were all a bunch of hogwash parents told their kids. It was nothing but a hoax, a place where the sick went to drink from the fountain of healing. Whatever.

But what if it were true? What if there was a fountain or lake that could heal wounds and save those who were infected? I heard myself speak softly. “Where?”

“No time to talk. She is dying, and we must get her to the Healing Springs.”

“Where is it?”

They turned to me—six adults with sad eyes. The older man spoke up. “Down the road a way.”

“A way? As in miles?”

He nodded. “We don’t have time to talk. We need to get Alaya there soon, or she will die.”

I’m not entirely too sure I believed him, but his belief in the ability of this water, this Healing Springs, gave me hope. And she was just a little girl. How can you not help a child?

“I’ll take you,” I said. “I can’t get you all in the van—it’s kind of full, but I can take you and the girl.”

He looked at me then to the crying woman beside him. She nodded. So did he.

“Thank you.”

Before leaving the five adults behind, I gave them weapons and hoped there was enough ammunition to get them to the Healing Springs safely.

“I hate to do this, Humphrey, but you have to move for now.” I took Humphrey out of the car seat and then unstrapped it. The man got in, the girl cradled gently in his arms.

She glanced at me and then at the stuffed bear. “Would you like to hold her?” I asked. “Her name is Humphrey.”

The girl reached out, her hand trembling, and took the bear.

Humphrey didn’t make a sound. She just went into the child’s arm and lay still as the child took comfort in her.

We drove.

By foot, it would have taken a couple of hours to get to Healing Springs. By vehicle, it took only a few minutes—ten at the most. I learned the old man’s name was Imeko, and he was almost eighty. The girl was Alaya, and she was almost seven.

Imeko directed me around a turn and into a neighborhood.

“Just down that way,” he said.

I rounded another curve and followed a straightaway until it turned into a wooded area. The trees made a cul-de-sac. There was a stream that widened, then narrowed as it went back into the trees. There were several wooden squares on the ground made of landscaping boards. In the middle of each square was a set of PVC water spigots—four spouts on each one. There was a stone picnic table that looked as if it had been there since the beginning of time.