Dredging Up Memories (27 page)

Twenty-Nine Weeks, Five (?) Days, and Some Hours (?)

After it Started…

I’m tired.

Hetch is gone. I’m not certain he will return. He headed out shortly after the snow began to fall, but he hasn’t returned yet. That was almost two days ago.

I think. It’s getting harder to focus, harder to make thoughts into coherent sentences. I hear the moans of the dead, but when I open the door, all I hear is the wind and tree limbs cracking and popping under the weight of snow and ice. I don’t even see any biters… You would think I would see them since I hear them so clearly…

I’ve been writing…as much as I can ever since Hetch left. My fingers keep cramping up. My knuckles on my right hand are swollen, making it difficult to hold the pen. I have to stop often to rest my hand…and my thoughts. I’ve left so much out but have somehow managed to catch up to this moment in time.

This moment in time? At this moment, I’m dying.

There. It’s out there now.

I’m dying. It’s a truth I haven’t wanted to admit, but now, as death nears…well…I’ve come to accept it.

The fever has been here for over a day. My skin stings. The more I rub it, the more I want to pull it off. I realize now that the scratch marks I’ve seen on biters were not inflicted by the dead but by the living as they were dying, their fingers clawing at and peeling away their own skin. I’ve scratched at my arms and chest, leaving marks behind. Beads of blood trickle from self-inflicted wounds, but I can’t stop rubbing and scratching at my burning skin.

…

…

My stomach cramps. It’s like someone yanking on my intestines every few seconds.  The first few times…the first few times, I doubled over so far as to fall on the floor until the cramps eased off a little…enough to stand or get back in my chair…

…I want to pull my guts out and cut them from my body with one of the knives…in the…kitchen.

My eyes boil…

They are dry, and I swear there is sand in them…

I want to say a few things before…

…

…before I go.

It’s still snowing. It doesn’t snow like this in South Carolina. Hetch…he left to find the…Healing Springs…my God my stomach…

…

…

…

…

Hetch said he would be back…be back in a few hours. Hours? No. The snow slowed him down. He might have ran out of gas…or ran off the road…or maybe the biters got him…

It’s probably…probably…just as well. By the time he got back…gets back…if he gets back…I’ll be dead.

Sweating from the fever, my body on fire.

My lungs feel so full…so hard to breathe…

Must finish this.

Focus, Hank. Focus.

Focus…

I drank the last of the Healing Springs water yesterday. It’s not enough. The wound on my thigh is gray. It’s turning black. The veins are thick and bulging against my skin. The bandage is no longer blood-soaked but green and brown with pus. I can smell the infection. My fingernails are yellow and crusted with blood.

I’ve already begun to rot.

While I still have a little strength…

When I was a kid, my brother, Lee, once fired Pop’s shotgun. It had a name…I can’t remember what it was right now…something like an animal or…that’s it. It was Ox, like Babe the blue ox, but without the Babe, the blue. Lee broke his shoulder. I think I might have wrote that already…

I’ve never fired the gun. I always wanted to…but after what happened…to Lee, well, I never got up the nerve to touch it much less shoot it. That was before the entire world died. I’ve held the shotgun several times since, staring at it, wondering how it would feel to pull the trigger. Before this gets me, I’m going to lose my socks—it’s not like I need them to keep warm or anything.

I went outside yesterday. The snow was six inches deep if it was one. There’s probably more now. I did my best…but the hole I dug wasn’t that deep—maybe just enough to cover up my body and leave a mound of dirt, or snow, in its wake. 

Something happened while I was out there. Something…odd. Several biters appeared out of nowhere. I didn’t hear them, but they must have heard or seen me…I don’t know. When I finally saw them, I lifted the shovel and prepared to defend myself. They stopped their approach when they got within about ten or fifteen feet of me. They stared at me through their cataract white eyes, their jaws slack and their skin grayish-green. Then they all shambled off, their feet dragging along in the snow, leaving ruts behind.

They moved so slowly… The cold must slow them down. That’s fine information to have now…

“Where are you going?” I yelled. “I’m right here.”

One of them turned back. I’m not sure if it was confused or not, but the look on its face was just that: confusion.

“Yeah, you!” I yelled. “I’m talking to you. Come and get me, you rotting bag of bones.”

The biter turned away and joined its companions as they left me there.

Anger.

That’s all I felt.

Anger.

I’ve been chased and chased…by these things…and now that I’m right there, no gun in hand…wanting an end to it all…they just walk off.

I stumbled up behind the male, who looked back at me. He had scratches on his arms and face, and he was missing an eye. I wonder if he plucked it out when he was still alive. The shovel connected with his skull. It split open. I drove the spade into the back of his head after he hit the ground. Then I went after the other two men. I smashed the first one, swinging the shovel like an axe. The second one turned back to me, as if attracted by the commotion behind it. I screamed as I bashed its head with the spade. I continued to scream and yell and beat the biter long after its head had ruptured like a rotten watermelon.

When I was done, I stumbled backward and fell into the snow. I dropped the shovel as well. I lay there, staring at the gray sky, snow still falling, my clothes steadily becoming soaked…

When I was a little boy, I loved to make snow angels. Making them was like doing jumping jacks while lying down. Lee was always really good at it…so was Jake.

I lay on the ground, my arms weak and body tired. I wanted to go ahead and die. Maybe I could freeze to death…but that wasn’t happening. I was too hot to freeze. The snow melted around me…

I didn’t make a snow angel.

I thought…

Hetch almost died that first time we went scavenging together. That old man…that old man had been right on top of him. Then he turned around and came for me… Hetch said there was a kid in the store. That kid…did the same thing. They could smell him…they could smell the
rot
inside of him. They didn’t go after him because he’s infected…

Maybe the water heals the wounds and lets you live…maybe…maybe…

Then the second odd thing happened.

I felt something licking my face. It was wet and like sandpaper. I wanted to swat it away but was too weak to move all that fast. I shifted my head to the side, and there stood the dog from Batesburg. He was kind of scrawny, and he might have been sizing me up, hoping he could make a meal out of me.

Go ahead,
I thought.
Eat me, and get it over with.

He didn’t eat me… He licked me, and there was no joy in what he did. I think he knew.

I struggled to stand and threw the shovel aside when I was halfway up. I fell back into the snow…

…

…

My stomach feels like it’s going to explode…

…

…and spill my intestines all over the floor…

…

…

The dog ran away the best he could in the growing snow. I watched him go, his tail tucked between his back legs.

…

…

I hate myself for scaring him away.

I crawled back to the house…and up the steps. On the landing, I leaned against the door. My eyes were heavy. I wanted to sleep…sleep and never wake up…never wake up.

I don’t remember opening the door…or crawling inside…or getting back to the table… I woke here, my head down, the pen still gripped in my hand…

My fingers hurt… I can barely move them…

Hetch should have been back by now…

…

He’s probably dead…

I think I’ve looked at the picture of the pretty brunette for the last time… I think her name is Cate… I hope she’s alive and safe… She really is a beautiful woman…

Thinking of her makes me sad…and I feel…

…guilty.

…

My Jeanette is dead, and I miss her terribly…but it won’t be much longer now…not much longer at all…and I will be with her…forever…

I won’t be traveling to Table Rock…I won’t die at her grave…

I’ll find her though… In death, I’ll find her…

…Maybe, I’ll find Bobby too…and Jake…and Pop…and Davey…and Lee…maybe they’re all waiting for me.

We can all be together again.

That’s comforting…like the images of Heaven Momma always talked about…

How many times did she tell us boys, “Fly right, and go to Heaven. All your departed friends and family will be waiting there for you when you get there”?

I can see them now. Pop with his bald head and dry sense of humor, his way of saying things that made you think even though you didn’t want to. Lee, with his unkempt hair and scraggly beard…always quick with a smart remark. Jake with his boyish smile and big heart…Rich and his family. Wilson will be there…oh yes he will…Jeanette with her pretty smile and soft skin and loving arms and…

…

…

God, I miss her…

…

…

I can’t cry anymore.  There are no tears left…

My head began to hurt sometime in the night.

Thumping…thumping…throbbing. The veins along my skin feel thick…as if they were growing and would burst from the swelling. The pain…the pain is like a migraine…a vice on my skull, squeezing my temples and cheeks and running down into my jaw and neck…stiffening…

…

Focus, Walker…

Jeanette was—
is
—my soul mate. We did things together that I probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. Spontaneous things. Like getting donuts in the middle of the night or going to the beach at midnight so we could watch the sun come up. One time we ran through the sprinkler system at the old baseball field at two in the morning. We laughed and slipped and got soaked and got turned on, and that led to…well, you get the picture…

When Jeanette told me she was pregnant, we had only been married for three years. She had wanted babies sooner. Shortly after we got married, she asked, “When are we going to have children?”

She caught me off guard…she was good like that. I looked up from the book I was reading—yeah, I used to read—and said, “Why don’t we wait until we’ve been married three years and we’ll talk about it. Okay?”

She agreed. Reluctantly.

On our third anniversary, September 6
th
, it was…she came out of the bathroom with one of those pregnancy tests. Her eyes were glassy, her bottom lip trembling…just a little…and she said, “I’m pregnant.”

“Seriously?’ I said.

Her face crumbled… It was the wrong response…

…

…

I wish I had said something else…

I wish I could change that.

When Bobby was born, and I held him for the first time, I knew then that, yeah, seriously…I’m a father…

…

…

I feel like I’ve been hit in the head with a hammer. Yellow dots dance in my vision…

…making it hard to write.

I would lie down…but I need to finish…need to tell my story…

It’s not that I don’t want to be forgotten. I don’t care about me…I want my family to be remembered…

…remember Jeanette…

Baby, I’m so sorry I let you die. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when the dead came… I’m sorry I told you to go…to leave our home… It would have been safer there…

I love you…

I love you…

I love you…

Remember Bobby Henry Walker…

I never called him Junior. I wanted him to have his own identity.

Bobby…if you’re still alive, stay safe, be strong. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you and your momma… I’m sorry you had to see her die. Please, know that Daddy loves you…

Daddy loves you…

Remember Leland…

…

…

…this hurts…

My stomach is in knots. I reek of death. The wound on my leg has spread lower than my knee and up into my hip. My bones are stiff. The blood in my vomit tells me I don’t have much time…not much time at all…

Everything is growing fuzzy around the edges…