Dredging Up Memories (28 page)

Hang on, Hank. Just a little while longer, old boy.

Remember my brothers. Leland Rex Walker. Richard Clark Walker. Jacob William Walker. The best brothers a guy could want…

Did I ever tell the story of Jake riding his bike and trying to jump over a hole he and the neighbor boy, Billy, dug?

They were ten, I think… I can’t remember now. I probably won’t remember much longer…

They dug a hole—a deep one, maybe four feet wide and three feet deep…

They built a ramp—a crappy one. Three cinder blocks and a piece of plywood. For a skateboard, that might have been okay. For a bike, it was a disaster waiting to happen.

…Cramps…

Hold on, Walker…

Focus. Focus…

“Hey, watch this, guys,” Jake said and straddled his bike. He went around Billy’s yard several times, picking up as much speed as a ten-year-old could. Then he hit the ramp. 

…

…

The front tire didn’t go up like it should have. It went down and hit the other side of the hole. Jake shot forward on the bike, racking what little manhood a kid his age has.

…

…

That’s probably not how he wants to be remembered…

Remember Pop.

Pop, I tried to make it. I tried to make you proud. Like most of my life, I failed again. But you always saw the possibilities with me… Where everyone else thought I would fail, you never gave up. Thank you, Pop.

Remember Davey Blaylock…

The best friend a guy could ask for. Thick and thin, to the end… It’s my fault you’re dead, Davey. I’ve had to live with that ever since…I still can’t believe it…

Remember them all.

Remember them all…

Remember…

Remember…

…

…

…

Breathing…is so hard now. Lungs are full of nastiness. It took almost all the energy…the energy I had to reach the side door.

I made a note… I’m not sure I spelled the words right, but I tried. The note…the note says, HETCH, STAY OUT. I’M DEAD. I think I taped it to the door…then I locked it…

It’s almost time… I can hear Death knocking on the door. You just come on in, Death… Just come on in. I’m…in the back…bedroom…the one I thought Hetch would die in…

Hetch…

He wanted to be remembered…

Remember Hetch.

He never married. Never had kids… He had a gal, but they called it quits before…the crap hit the fan…

He survived two bites and a nasty cut… He went for help. He was a good guy…

Yeah, he must have died too…never came back… Get away while you can…from the crazy man…

…the crazy man with the dead on stakes around the house…

…Don’t blame him…don’t blame him at all…

I can’t

quite see all that

well right now…

Mine eyes have seen the

glory of the coming of the Lord…

He is trampling out

the vintage where the grapes of
wrath are stored;
He hath loosed

the fateful lightning

of His terrible
swift sword.
His truth

is marching

on…

The wrath? Did I just write that? The wrath…is the dead…so many of them…the world ends…the world ends because of the wrath…like that preacher man said. The dead will eat the living…something like that.

My eyes don’t see much of anything right now…

Everything…everything…

…is a haze.

I hear the dead…they’re coming for me…

I can hear them over the roar of the trains…in my ears…I can hear them…over the forever…sounds of gunshots in my soul, thumping…thumping with my rapid heartbeat. They pound at the door…I can hear them…

Coughing…

Blood…so much…

blood…

I’m tired.

Fingers hurt…body hurts…mind…

mind…is numb…??

I hear them… I hear them…

The door…how did they…how did they get up…

…steps…

They’re here…I hear them…

…the dead…

Hetch, forgive me…

Thirty Weeks and Two Days After it Started…

I woke up.

You have to understand that.

I.

Woke.

Up.

I shouldn’t have.

Everything was blurry, and there was light—bright and white—that hurt my eyes when I opened them. A raw pain like that of staring at the sun for far too long on a hot summer day ripped through them. I clenched them shut.

“He’s awake.”

The voice sounded excited. And familiar. But muffled as well. It was definitely a voice I knew, but my ears felt clogged, and there was a slight buzzing in them.

One hand went to my face, shielding my eyes when I opened them again. The light was still there but not directly in my field of vision.

“Hank?”

That familiar voice again. I shook my head, opened my mouth to speak. All that came out was a wheezing croak.

That familiar voice spoke. “Hetch, get some water.”

Hetch? Hetch? He’s still alive? No. I must be dead and this is…wherever it is.

And who was the familiar voice?

“Turn down the lights, will you?” the voice said. It felt odd to hear that. I hadn’t seen real lights that weren’t powered by flames in a long while.

The lights dimmed, and I lowered my hand. Things were still blurry, but I could see in the gray of the room that I was not home. I was not in a hospital, and I wasn’t at the house at the lake. The room was nothing more than a square box, no windows to be seen, and a door across from where I lay in a bed. There were several chairs—the type that belong in a dining hall or cafeteria and not in a place being used as a caregiving room. A sheet covered me from midsection to toes. My head lay on a soft pillow.

My skin no longer burned.

My stomach was no longer in horrible knots.

My head didn’t hurt.

My lungs no longer felt full. I could breathe.

The fuzziness in my vision faded as my eyes adjusted to the room’s light.

“Hank? Drink this.”

The voice was in front of me, just off to the right. A hand touched my arm. It was rough, a hardworking man’s hand. I could see a white cup. There was a straw jutting out the top. The person who spoke lowered it to my mouth, and I drank. The water was cool and fresh and felt like Heaven as it went down my throat, filling my chest and stomach with its sweet relief.

My vision cleared a little more, and the person who stood by me wasn’t Hetch. I rubbed my eyes, blinked several times.

It was impossible.

“Jake?”

“Yeah, Brother. It’s me.” He laughed. Tears streamed down his face.

I reached up. I was so weak I could barely grip his hand. His skin was real, his touch was real. It
was
my baby brother…and if he were there…

My eyes opened fully then. My heart sped up. “Bobby? Where’s Bobby?”

“He’s okay, Hank. He’s asleep.”

He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay. He’s okay.

That’s all I could think for several long seconds. My head dropped to the pillow as if I were completely exhausted though I was more relieved than anything else.

“Where is he?”

“Down the hall. I’ll wake him in a little bit. The poor kid’s had a rough few months.”

“Haven’t we all?” I asked.

“Yeah. I reckon so.”

Another thought dawned on me, and I tried to sit up, tried to scoot away from my baby brother. “You have to get out of here. I’m dying. I should already be dead… I…”

“You about scared the life right out of me is what you did.” Hetch came up beside Jake. His beard was gone. He wore clean clothes. His left arm was in a sling, and there were several fading cuts on his face.

“We beat on the door, and you didn’t answer, and that note you left…I just knew you were dead. When we found you…” he shook his head, tucked his lips in on each other. “You were sitting on the floor in the back bedroom, your shoes and socks off, that stupid shotgun by your side. If I didn’t think you were already dead, I would have killed you myself.”

“I was dying,” I said. “You never came back.”

“I did,” he argued. “If I wouldn’t have, you really would be dead and probably stumbling around that house you locked yourself in.”

“The biters. They were trying to break down the door. I heard them.”

“The only thing you heard were me and the soldiers.”

“Soldiers?”

“Yeah. The military—it’s still around. At least, what’s left of it.”

There were still soldiers. I chuckled.

“I thought you were dead.”

Hetch laughed this time. “I thought I was too. The van skidded off the road. I was an idiot—driving way too fast for conditions. I hit a patch of ice and spun out, went right off the road and into a ditch. Knocked me stone cold out. When I came to, the door of the van had been taken completely off, and a soldier was pulling me free from the wreckage.”

“Soldiers? Seriously?”

“Yeah. Seriously. They thought I was crazy when I told them of the healing water.  But one of them knew the place and took me there.”

“Was there anyone there at the Healing Springs?”

“One man—an Indian.”

“Imeko?”

“Yeah, I think that’s his name.”

“Where were the others?”

“Others? It was just him and a stuffed teddy bear.”

“A stuffed teddy bear?” I smiled a little.

“Yeah. The old guy was sitting on one of the picnic tables with the bear in his lap.”

“The bear, was it wearing any clothes, maybe some bunny pajamas?”

Hetch’s face scrunched up, his brows creased down. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

“Humphrey.” I didn’t realize I spoke aloud, but Hetch responded.

“Yeah. That’s what the old man called it.”

“Called
her
.”

“What?”

“Humphrey’s a girl.”

“A girl?”

“Long story,” I said. “Is Imeko okay?”

“He’s alive and well, or as well as he can be. He was covered in snow. We thought he was frozen, but he looked at us when we drove up. We got what I needed and then tried to get him to come with us. He fought us every inch of the way, saying his people died there and he wished to do the same.”

“His people died there?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Is he here?”

“Yeah, but he’s not happy about it.”

“What about his granddaughter?”

“I told you, it was just him. There was no one with him. Just him and the teddy bear.”

This bothered me. I started to ask if he were sure but bit back the question.

“How long have I been out?”

“Six days.”

“Six days?”

“Yeah. I didn’t think you were going to make it. I had to keep one of the soldiers from putting a bullet in your head when we found you.”

“Thanks.” I meant it.

It was all so much to take in. Hetch being alive. Jake being alive. Bobby…Bobby being alive. I wanted so bad to get up from that bed and find him and hold him in my arms. There were other things I wanted as well. Questions filled my brain, threatening to make my head explode. Then he set a notepad on my bed. It was the same one I had written in as time ticked away the seconds and minutes of my fading life. I looked up at him.

“I thought you might want that.”

“Thanks,” I said. I opened it and flipped through the pages. My handwriting grew worse and worse as I got sicker and sicker. Some of it didn’t make much sense, and a lot of things were left out. I closed the notebook and nodded. I guess I did want there to be a record of me after all. (This is also the notebook I currently write in. This, I think, will be the last entry.)

“Where am I?” I finally asked after a long silence with me staring at a blood stain on the notebook. It had to be mine.

“Fort Survivor S.C. #3.”

“What?”

“That’s what they call this place. Fort Survivor S.C. #3.”

“Where are we—not the name of the place, the town?”

“Century Falls—it’s a little town in Lee County.”

“Is it safe here?”

“Safest place I’ve been in a long time.”

“We’re at the high school,” Jake said. “They built walls around it, dug a huge moat. There’s a little bridge—like a drawbridge—on one end. It stays up at all times except when someone comes and goes. Security is tight. No one comes in until they have been thoroughly checked over, strip search and all. Even then, they are quarantined until the docs can look them over. Hank, it’s safe.”

“How long have you been here, Jake?”

“Five, six weeks. Something like that.”

“And it’s safe here? You’re sure?”

“Hank, the dead can’t get in. I can show you if you like.”

“I’d like that.”

It was another couple hours before I was able to get out of bed. They told me it was four a.m. when I woke. By seven, I had eaten a bowl of oatmeal and showered—hot water and all—and was dressed in clean clothes. My stomach felt odd at first, probably from having actual food in it after being so sick.

“Can I see Bobby?”

Jake smiled. “Let him sleep, Brother—we’ll see him soon enough. Are you ready to see how safe this place is?”

Hetch and Jake led me out of the room. My legs were still unsteady, but after a few minutes of walking the halls of the high school, they began to feel stronger.

The sun was just coming up as we made our way outside. It was cold, and there was plenty of snow on the ground.

“It snowed a lot.”

“Too much,” Hetch responded.

We trudged across the ground, the snow crunching underfoot. I pulled my coat tight and shoved my hands in the pockets. My breath came out in plumes of white vapor. It was good to breathe.

The walls loomed higher than I expected. In my mind, I envisioned cars or trucks or maybe buses and semis surrounding the entire school, each one bumper to bumper but with enough gaps beneath them to allow a few biters to get through from time to time. What I saw was nothing like that.

The walls were concrete—prefabbed or otherwise didn’t matter—and easily twenty feet tall. There were ladders anchored to those walls. Every ten feet or so, a soldier stood, weapon in hand. They didn’t talk to one another. They stared out at the world beyond the school grounds.

“Come on,” Hetch said and made his way to one of the ladders. I followed, but I moved much slower than he did. My legs and arms were tired by the time I reached the landing. The soldier said nothing to us as we moved closer to the edge of the wall.

From where I stood, I could see the moat. It was wide—thirty or forty feet—and maybe just as deep. Inside of it were hundreds of stakes; one end of each one was buried in the ground, the other end sharpened and pointing toward the sky. There were plenty of corpses in the moat, their bodies impaled on the stakes. Some of them still moving their arms and legs. I think I heard a couple of weak moans as well.

Beyond the moat and the stakes and the bodies was what was left of the town, which wasn’t much. Many of the buildings were destroyed, fires having done the bulk of the damage. I wondered if they had been burned down on purpose. Snow covered a lot of the black soot around the ruined buildings. There were hollowed out husks of cars lining the crumbled streets. It looked like someone had dropped a bomb on the town, and all that was left was the school.

A few biters shambled around but terribly slow, the cold weather hindering their movement.

We walked the wall the entire area around the school, coming up on what could be considered the front of the compound. The drawbridge was there in the up position.  There were four men standing guard here, each with a rifle and all of them looking straight ahead.

Like the rest of the area around the school, the buildings and cars on that side were nothing more than rubble and shells, the skeletons of a previous life and time.

“Let’s go in,” Jake said. “You’re probably starving.”

I hadn’t noticed at that point, but he was right. I was more than starving. I was famished. The small breakfast I had eaten consisted of a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal and water.

Inside, we hung the coats on pegs near the entrance. The warmth of the building immediately began to thaw my frozen face and hands and feet. We made our way along the halls, all of them painted white, the lights brilliant in their glow. We passed a few people heading the opposite direction, mostly in groups of three or four but even a few loners who looked as content as full church mice.

A family of four walked past us. The older of the two children—a girl with red hair down to the middle of her back—was a teen. There was no mistaking that. The other child, a boy who was probably not quite to his teenage years, looked away as we approached. The man had dark hair and sunglasses, and he held the hand of the young woman he was with.