His Name Was Zach

by Peter Martuneac

  He never even heard the shot that killed him. The muzzle flashed and then all he could see was white. He felt no pain as the bullet struck his skull. He felt a weightless sensation and then a strange tugging in his chest, as if his soul was being physically separated from his body.

  “God, please, take care of my girl,” Zach thought, and then he thought no more.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The pistol fired, kicking in Abby’s hands. Zach’s head snapped back and then his body crumpled downwards, hitting the ground with a sickening thud. Abby shrieked and jumped back, as if she was not expecting this. Tears flooded her eyes immediately as she cocked her arm back and hurled the Glock as far as she could and then ran in the opposite direction. She wept bitterly as she ran and eventually dropped to her knees, bent over so far that her forehead touched the ground. She had her arms wrapped around her stomach, as if in physical pain, and kept saying ‘I’m sorry, Zach’ between sobs. The thought that Zach was now dead was so surreal that she didn’t want to believe it. She called his name over and over, as if he would hear her and come hold her.

  Several minutes later, when the tears finally stopped coming, she walked back to where Zach lay, still holding herself. She almost hoped that somehow he’d be alive, as if the bullet had killed the virus and not him and then they could go on together. But no, he still lay on the ground, of course. Abby looked down into his eyes that were usually so full of life, but now they stared back blankly. She reached down and gently closed them. At the very least, Abby told herself, he had a calm, peaceful look on his face.

  “I can’t just leave him like this,” she thought. She ran back to the seven-ton and looked around inside the cab. To her relief, she found a short shovel behind the bench. She walked back towards Zach and began to dig a grave next to him. The ground was soft from the deluge of rain earlier, so her work was fast. She tried not to look at Zach’s body as she worked, but she couldn’t help the occasional glance, and each time it made her whimper softly.

  When she was done, she grabbed Zach under his arms and carefully dragged him into the grave. She laid him down gently and then folded his hands on top of his chest. She reached into her shirt, pulled out his dog tags, and detached Grace’s wedding ring, placing it in one of Zach’s hands. “You’re with Grace now,” she whispered.

  Abby stayed at the foot of Zach’s grave for a moment longer, looking her last upon her mentor, her protector, her father. Slowly, reluctantly, she took her shovel and stabbed the mound of dirt, gathered it up on the shovel’s head, and then gingerly sprinkled it over Zach. She did this again and again, each shovelful feeling heavier than the last. She worked from his feet up to his head, but paused before covering his face. It just seemed so wrong. But Abby reminded herself, against her will, that he was dead and that he needed to be buried. She carefully laid the dirt over his head, and then did the same with another shovelful of dirt. Finally, when at long last Zach was buried, she patted the dirt down with the shovel and then threw it back in the truck.

  She looked around for something that could serve as a grave marker. She looked back inside the truck and noticed a plain black panel on the dash. “That’ll do,” she thought as she hopped back down to retrieve Zach’s multi-tool from his ruck. She undid the screws on the panel and then used her knife to etch a message into it. This is what she wrote:

  Here lies a great man.

  His name was Zach.

  Dum spiro, spero.

  This last line comforted Abby. It was the Latin phrase that Zach had tattooed on his forearm. ‘While I breathe, I hope’ is what it meant. It was the creed that Zach lived by, and Abby had indeed never seen him give up all hope. He was a strong man, all the way up to his death, and Abby silently vowed that she would be like him.

  She stuck the panel about halfway into the ground just above Zach’s head, looked down at the grave she’d made for him, and felt satisfied that she’d done the best she could. She then set about preparing to leave. She emptied all three of their packs and then stuffed Zach’s ruck with everything she thought she’d need. It was heavy, but she could handle it.

  She found the picture of her and Zach in her ruck, still in its frame. She opened the frame and slid the picture out and then tossed the frame aside. The corners of her mouth turned up into a sad smile as she looked at this frozen moment of time. She looked at Zach’s barely noticeable smile and laughed quietly in spite of her miserable condition. He never was very photogenic. She turned the picture over and, pulling a pen out of her pocket, wrote this short message on the back: ‘August 2020 Family Picture’. She sighed and then slid the photograph into her pocket.

  Everything was taken care of. Everything Abby wasn’t bringing with her she threw into the truck. She attached Zach’s holster and his pistol (no, hers now) to her belt and thigh. She then picked up Zach’s ruck (no, hers now) and threw it on her shoulders. She put her hat on her head and straightened it out. She put the rising sun to her back and looked over at Zach’s grave one last time. She kissed her fingertips and blew it over to him.

  But she didn’t move yet. She didn’t want to take this first step forward. By taking this first step, Abby would be admitting that Zach was gone and that she was carrying on alone. This was the first step down a dark and lonely road, one fraught with peril, and Abby was afraid to walk down it.

  But then Abby put her hand to her chest and felt Zach’s dog tags pressed against her skin, right over her heart. She realized that she wasn’t going forward alone. Zach was going with her, wherever she went, as long as she kept him in her heart. He might be gone, but he was only lost if Abby forgot him. She closed her eyes and thought about that.

  She saw herself as that kid once again, that frightened young girl who had just lost everything and was all alone. Once again she was standing just inside the threshold of her old life, afraid to move forward, knowing that things would never again be the same. But then she felt Zach standing next to her. She could feel his hand taking hers. She could hear him say, “Are you ready, Bug?”

  Abby opened her eyes and smiled as a lone tear ran down the soft curve of her cheek. “Yes,” she whispered, “I’m ready.”

  Abby took that first step.

  Abby will return.

  For updates on the coming book, like and follow ‘His Name Was Zach’ on Facebook, and the official blog at ‘hisnamewaszach.wordpress.com’.

  Now turn the page for a short teaser of Abby’s next story!

  Chapter One

  The road seemed like it would go on forever. After every turn, after every rise in the terrain, there was always more road to follow. Occasionally an old highway sign would tell her how many miles it would be before she reached a major city, but Abby did not like those reminders of how far away she was from her goal. To make matters worse, she did not even know where exactly she should be going. All she knew was that she should head west.

  So that is what she was doing. Like the pioneers of old, Abby was heading west in search of a new home.

  This search was long and arduous for Abby. Being alone, she doubted herself at every turn, wondering if she was making the right decisions. She had never had to rely too heavily on herself for navigating the Wild. Zach had always taken care of that; Abby just went wherever he went. And with no one to talk to, no one to seek counseling from, Abby could do nothing but brood on the past. Many times she would feel so encumbered by her memories that she could barely trudge forward, making her progress very, very slow. Other times she would simply sit in one place, usually an abandoned gas station near the highway or an old farm house for hours, unable to find the will to even walk.

  The onset of winter further slowed Abby’s journey. It was an unseasonably cold winter, and it was snowing as early as late October. Abby had clothes that were suitable for the cool air of autumn, but not the snow and ice of winter. At every car, every house, and every building Abby searched for winter clothes, finding little besides an old jacket and some leather gloves. The cold
forced her body to work harder to stay warm, and with the scarcity of food, it had precious little energy with which to do this. Add this to the approximately 1,000 mile journey that Abby faced and it is plain to see how Abby’s physical toughness was being tested just as much as her mental toughness.

  After three or four weeks of travelling alone (she didn’t keep track of the days), Abby was only about halfway to her objective. She stuck to westbound highways as much as she could for two reasons. One was to avoid getting lost, and the other was to hopefully find cars with useful gear in them. But she was in a rural area of Kansas, just outside of a small, abandoned town, meaning she rarely came across any car, let alone one with stuff still in it.

  That is why Abby was hardly hopeful when she spotted an old SUV along the side of the road. It was a pale, washed-out red color. Its owner had clearly had it lifted and upgraded with some heavy-duty off-roading tires. The back of the vehicle had no less than a dozen bumper stickers, most of which were clichéd or crude jokes, though one of them did manage to put a small grin on Abby’s face. It was a parody of those commonly seen bumper stickers that begin with “If you can read this…” and then lead to a joke about being too close or not paying enough attention to the road. But this one read, “If you can read this, I’m not impressed. Most people can read.” Abby smirked for a moment and shook her head.

  Abby at first wanted to just pass by this one. No other car had ever yielded anything useful to her, and this one hardly looked promising. But something prodded Abby to just check it anyway. She sighed and then casually opened up the trunk and glanced around inside the abandoned vehicle.

  For the most part, all she could see was trash, but Abby decided to take a closer look anyway. Besides, she wouldn’t mind taking a second to get out of the brutal wind. She looked over her shoulders to make sure that no one would be sneaking up on her, mostly out of habit since she had not seen anyone since Zach died, and then climbed into the old SUV, closing the trunk behind her. She crawled up to the front seats looking left and right for anything useful. Up in the passenger seat was a thin, blue toolbox. Abby opened it up and to her delight found some potentially useful items: needle-nose pliers, a flathead screwdriver, and a small plastic baggie filled with screws of varying length. She dumped these into her mostly empty ruck and then observed the driver seat.

  Abby’s eyebrows arched up in surprise. The keys were in the ignition! Most people had taken their car keys with them before abandoning their cars, mostly out of habit but also out of hope that they would soon come back. Did Abby dare to hope that she could get the car running? She dropped her ruck onto the floor, pushed the bill of her hat up a bit, and then clambered into the driver seat. She rested her hands on the wheel for a second, saying a silent prayer as she did so, and then put her hand on the key, closed her eyes, and gave it a turn.

  The engine was turning over! Abby held the key there for a second, hoping to hear the roar of the engine coming to life, but it didn’t come. “Come on, start. Start!” she pleaded. She tried again but with the same results. Abby sat back in the seat dejectedly. So close! If this vehicle had a manual transmission she could try popping the clutch, but it was automatic so that was not even an option. But Abby refused to give up on the old SUV yet, not after coming so close to getting a ride.

  She popped the hood open and then hopped to the ground. Walking around to the front of the car, she lifted the hood up and then propped it open with the support rod. She then turned her hat around backwards and looked down at the engine block with her hands on her hips, trying to spy something that looked wrong. Zach had taught her a little bit about car mechanics over the years, as well as some minor repairs that she might be able to do, so there was a slight chance that Abby could get this thing running. First she checked the battery connections, but those were fine. She pulled out the air filter and sniffed the inside of the air cleaner housing. There was a smell of gasoline, so the engine was getting gas properly, which also meant that the fuel pump was functioning.

  She put the air filter back in its place, and then Abby checked the spark plugs, and she noticed that one of the wires had been disconnected! She knew how to fix this, she just needed to recall it from her distant memory.

  She went back into the driver’s side door and reappeared a moment later with the needle-nose pliers from her ruck. Returning to the engine, she stood up on the front bumper and leaned into the engine so that she could more easily reach the spark plugs. Locating the spark plug in question, she pulled the boot off with her hand and then used the needle-nose pliers to detach the small metal clip from the end of the wire. She then grasped the spark plug wire in one hand and disconnected its other end from the distributor.

  Abby’s concentration broke as she heard a sudden noise behind her! She spun around and hopped to the ground, reaching for her pistol…