Dredging Up Memories

by A. J. Brown

  “I can’t believe it. It worked.”

  “I can’t believe it, either. I just knew I was going to die and…and…”

  “Yeah, I get it. I was about to put a bullet in your brain.”

  The smile faded from his face. One appeared on mine. My heart didn’t feel so heavy. There was a way to save those that were bitten. I doubted it would work after someone died, but there was a way to save them before they reached that point. We didn’t speak for half a minute. Maybe more.

  “Why don’t you take a shower? You smell like death warmed over. I’ll make you something to eat.”

  After he left the room, I lit a couple of candles. The cabinets still had food in them but not a lot. We needed to go on a supply run eventually. But not tonight. Hetch was probably still in no shape to run from biters.

  I pulled out a box of crackers that had expired two months earlier. They were still crisp and held no signs of going stale. Two bottles of water went on the table. My mouth was dry, and I could feel my body wanting—craving—the alcohol I had lived off of for weeks. I didn’t know if there was any more over at the other place, and I had no real desire to find out. My body, however, begged me to search. There had to still be some over there.

  I held onto the edges of the table, closed my eyes, and took deep breaths. In and out. In and out. In and out.

  The urge passed, and I sat down. I could see the jug with the Healing Springs water in it. There wasn’t much left—maybe a third of a gallon. I wished I had known about this…

  …before Pop died…

  …before Davey died…

  …before I sat in that warehouse holding Lee’s hand as he threw up and sweated and wasted away, greeting death with a touch of humor and a lot of tears and begging me not to let him turn…don’t let him turn…please, Hank, don’t let me turn…

  …

  …

  …before Jeanette…

  A crushing blow sank my spirits. Hindsight and all that aside, my family was dead, and there had been a cure all along. Somewhere in the background of the world around me, I heard the sound of water running behind a closed door. I lowered my head to the table, the weight of truth crushing me all over again.

  I cried…

  Twenty Weeks (?) After it All Started

  Hetch was sometimes a pain in the rear, but he was one of the living and one who wasn’t Hell bent on feeding me to his dead wife, or raping a pretty biter, or blinded by an overzealous preacher-man. He was normal—for what that was worth. Normal was relative in the old world. It was unheard of in the dead one.

  We’re all just a little messed up in some way or other.

  And maybe that’s what made him Hetch: being normal in this screwed up world.

  It took almost a full week before he was strong enough to do anything besides lie around and nap. There were times where he acted like a little kid, whining about not feeling well and wanting me to bring him his meals. I watched his temperature like a doting mom to that whiny kid, checking it often.

  Two weeks after Hetch’s arrival, I made a run into Batesburg for medicine, passing the armory of dead soldiers along the way. There were biters outside of town but not as many as I expected to see so close to the town proper.

  The drug store was empty of life of any kind. And there were plenty of bottles of medicine—Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Aleve, Excedrin, and a whole host of generic brands as well. I took as long as I could, gathering medicines in plastic bags I grabbed from the front counter and throwing them in a buggy. There was water and Gatorade and chips and crackers and some canned goods, and bandages and…and I realized then that the little town had no survivors. It was a startling epiphany that made me cold all the way to the bone.

  I had never before felt like someone was watching me even though there was no one else around.

  Until then.

  I looked around the immediate area, saw no one in the gray shadows of the store. I pulled out my pistol and pushed the buggy toward the front. One wheel didn’t want to cooperate and rattled along the floor instead of turning quietly. The hairs on my neck stood on end, and I couldn’t shake the shiver that had crawled up my spine. It was like someone had taken a piece of ice and touched me on the back of the neck.

  Outside, there were half dozen biters roaming the streets. I shoved the gun back into my waistband and slid the machete from its sheath. I had to be quick. To let them notice me before I could take a few of them out meant running for the truck before I was ready. Though I was almost positive I would never return to that drug store or even that little town, I still needed the supplies I had stashed in the buggy.

  I moved quietly, sneaking up behind the first few and bringing the machete over the tops of their heads with ease. Two or three others noticed and turned toward me. I took them out before they grew too close to each other and then made my way back to the van. In the driver’s seat, I exhaled and put my head on the steering wheel, my hands gripping either side of it. I never get used to the feeling of the dead being around—they are like venomous snakes waiting to strike, and yeah, their venom will kill you.

  The air of the town gave me the creeps, as if the ghosts of all the dead surrounded me. My skin crawled as if hundreds of tiny hands slid along my body. I almost turned the key in the ignition and put the van in gear. Getting out of there was all I wanted even if it meant leaving the buggy of supplies on the sidewalk.

  I looked around again. There were no more biters to be seen. Honestly, I don’t think it would have been so terrible if there had been a thousand of them right then. At least the dead were physical—I could see them. I could hear them. I could react to them. The way I felt right then, getting out of the van was more dangerous because I couldn’t see anything that could harm me.

  I opened the van door and got out. I went to the buggy. Its wheels were loud on the concrete, shaking the metal frame as they hit each crack and bump along the way. The side door opened, and I tossed supplies inside haphazardly, not caring if anything spilled out. I shoved the cart aside. It bumbled a few feet before tipping over, crashing with a loud clatter of metal on concrete.

  I hissed, suddenly angry with myself for the extra noise. Then I saw it. Out the corner of my eye. I turned, my hand already pulling the machete from its sheath. It was a biter. It had to be.

  But it wasn’t.

  I stared at the dog. It was brown and white and thin. It was small and scruffy and dirty and pathetic looking. Its ears hung down, a clear sign it was scared. It was probably as hungry as I was.

  “Hey,” I said. “Hey, little dog.”

  I hadn’t seen many animals since the end of the world began, and this one looked as lonely as I had been—as I still was. I took a step forward. It took a step back. Both hands went out in front of me.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Another step forward and the dog backed away again, its tail between its legs.

  We stared at each other a while longer.

  “Stay here,” I said as if the dog was going to listen. It had probably been through as much as any person had. I went back into the drug store. It took a minute, but I found the pet food section. It was close to the back, near the pharmacy. I grabbed a bag of dog food and made my way to the front. The dog was gone by the time I got back outside with the bag open.

  “Doggie?” I called softly, not raising my voice too loud.

  I made my way around the corner of the drug store.

  “Doggie?”

  The backside of the store held nothing more than garbage and a rundown car that probably wouldn’t crank up in an emergency. I made my way to the front, turned, and walked down the street a little way. I didn’t get too far before I heard the dog growling.

  On the other side of a parts store was the dog. His fur was on end, and his tail was tucked between his legs. But he wasn’t running, and he wasn’t cowering down. He growled then barked and then backed away, his nails tapping on the crumbling blacktop. Standi
ng in that little alleyway between the parts store and another store were several biters. At first, they didn’t notice me. I wasn’t sure if somewhere in their brains they recalled how dangerous an angry dogs could be. Or maybe they were just as dumbfounded as I was to see a living animal. It didn’t matter one way or the other. The dog was food for the dead. As I think about it, many people would have considered him food for the living. Yeah, maybe that’s why he didn’t let me near him.

  In this world…in this crap hole those of us that remained still lived in, seeing a dog was like seeing the past. It was Fido and Rex and Lassie saving little Timmy. It was man’s best friend trying to survive without man and man trying to survive without dogs. It was Scooby Doo, where are you? It was Sam from I Am Legend taking on vampire dogs and saving Will Smith’s behind. It was everything that was right about the old world and everything that was wrong about this new one.

  The stalemate ended when the biters started shambling forward, some of them going after the dog, some of them coming for me. I dropped the dog food and had the machete out in as quick of a motion as I could. I swung it in a wide arc, taking the tops of two biters’ heads off. I swung again.

  And again.

  And again.

  With each biter I took down, another one replaced it. What was going on? That alleyway wasn’t that big. Where were they all coming from?

  I drew my pistol and took the nearest one out. The biter’s head snapped back with the force of the blow. The bullet exited the back of his skull and struck a woman behind him in the forehead. They both fell, like dominoes, one bumping into another, and then they struck a couple more. In seconds, half a dozen biters were on the ground.

  I pulled the trigger a few more times. The dead fell, their bodies like matchsticks or kindling, forming a barrier that the others couldn’t quite get through without falling over. For them, it was a final death sentence, and I was their executioner.

  One.

  Two.

  Three.

  Four.

  Five.

  Six.

  How many more? So many in such a tiny space.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Where were they coming from?

  I heard growling from behind and spun to see the dog crouching, as if it were about to strike. There, at the mouth of the alley, were several more biters. Coming to the party, I guess.

  “Crap!”

  With a wall of dead bodies to one end of the alley, I started for the entrance. Before I got there, the dog lunged at one of the biters, hitting it in the stomach. He ripped at the woman as she fell to the ground. He jerked his head from side to side, tearing rotten flesh from her body but not killing her, not like I guess the dog thought it would.

  I couldn’t risk a shot, so I turned the gun to those still standing. Three shots and the gun was empty, but the biters at the entrance were down, and they would never get up. The dog was gone again, but the female biter was still alive and struggling to stand. She struggled no longer after the machete’s blade split the top of her skull down to her neck.

  Behind me, the wall of flesh had held the remaining biters at bay. I stood for a moment, looking, watching. Then I realized the alley I was in lead to the entrance of another building. Or maybe it was the EXIT to the building and the entrance was on the other side. Either way, the door was open, and the dead had piled out of it.

  I watched. It’s all I could do. Everyone who had survived in that little town must have gone to that building as a safe house, somewhere they could conjugate or…no, that wasn’t it. I was wrong in so many ways, but the biggest of those was how many people would have survived the initial outbreak. This town might have supposedly had a safe haven in the armory just outside of its boundaries, but within…within, there was no way this many people survived.

  Unless.

  “They are the people who came here to escape.”

  Suddenly, I had hope. Just as suddenly, it was gone.

  If Bobby and Jake were in there, they were dead. They weren’t in the armory. They weren’t at the Table Rock cabin. If they were there, they were dead.

  I was sapped of energy. In the span of fifteen seconds, I went from hoping I would find someone from my family to knowing there was no way they could be alive, not in that building where biters still filed out of.

  My shoulders slumped. I left the wall behind me, stepped over the biters at the mouth of the alley and stopped on the street. The dog was a few buildings down. He had pulled the open bag of food away from the alley and now had his head buried in it. I couldn’t blame him.

  Back at the van, I grabbed a gas can. I hated wasting the fuel, but I had to take care of the dead. Bobby or Jake could have been among them. I hated the idea that if they were in that building, then they would suffer unbelievable pain before they died. But I couldn’t go in after them. It was the only way.

  It was the only way.

  The ghosts were all there, and they begged to be silenced.

  I doused the wall of corpses with fuel. I went back to the mouth of the alley and cut away the shirt of one of the biters there. I found some stones and bricks and wrapped them in torn strips of cloth before soaking them with gas. I tossed them into the crowd and then went back to the front of the buildings. The parts store was on my left. I smashed the window with one of the stones and went inside. There were no dead there, only the specters of their lives.

  More gasoline went onto the floors and counters and shelves. I made sure and doused the oil shelves as well as I could. With the can empty, I left it on the floor, went back to the van, and got a lighter.

  The dog was gone, the bag of food ripped open, most of it still lying on the sidewalk. I guess he had his fill.

  I took another piece of clothing from the dead and dipped it in the gas in the middle of the floor of the parts store. I went back outside, lit the arm of the shirt, and watched as a flame quickly engulfed it.

  “Bobby, Jake, if you’re in there, I’m sorry.”

  I tossed the shirt into the store. There was a loud WHOOSH even before the shirt hit the floor. Flames raced through the building. I backed away and watched. Soon, the entire store was burning. When the flames leaped from it to the stores on either side of it, I walked away.

  I got in the van and closed the door quickly. For good measure, I locked it. Even inside the van, I felt out of sorts, as if at any minute, the boogey man from under some kid’s bed was going to grab me and pull me from the vehicle.

  I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the feeling. It didn’t work. I sat there for the longest time, watching as flames hopped from building to building. A few biters appeared from shops or from around corners, their bodies on fire. Most of them didn’t get very far before collapsing. Those that managed to get away from the buildings still didn’t make it beyond the road before they too dropped to the ground where they died—in agony, I suppose.

  My heart hurt as I watched them die. Deep down inside, I hoped none of them were Bobby and Jake, though honestly, I felt somewhere in that mass of rotting corpses they were there.

  I also hoped that I would see the dog again. Man’s best friend and all that. I didn’t.

  As day began to give way to dusk, I cranked up the van and left the small town behind.

  Twenty Weeks and an Afternoon After it All Started

  The drive back to the lake felt like it would take years. In truth, it was only twenty or so minutes. By the time I reached the house, the creepy feeling I had in Batesburg was gone, but it never really left my mind for the remainder of the day. Neither would the burning corpses I left behind, many of them still shambling about inside or around that building.

  I thought about the dog. If only he would have let me get near him. I guess I get it—the dead and the living alike had probably scared him in some way or other.

  I got out of the van and took a look back in the direction of the small town. Black smoke hung in the sky off in the distance. I wondere
d if the entire town would burn down, and if so, would the flames end there? Or would they follow me to the lake or head off in another direction altogether? Maybe the world burning itself to the ground wasn’t such a bad thing, all things considered.

  Leaning against the van’s side, I closed my eyes. Behind those lids, I saw Bobby and Jake in better times, and then I saw them burning, their skin flaking off, their bones crumbling to the ground, hands seeking something to grip hold of, something to pull themselves along.

  Tuck and roll. If only they could.

  Hetch lay on the couch while I brought things in and put them away. Then I sat at the table and tried to control my shaking hands.

  “Hank, are you okay?”

  He had stood and crossed the room at some point and was only a few feet from me.

  “Hank?”

  “What?”

  “What’s wrong? What happened?”

  I didn’t answer right away. Instead, I stood and grabbed a bottled water from the counter. I uncapped it and drank half of it down. It was cool and refreshing. I leaned against the counter, staring at and through him, not really seeing anything.

  “Hank?”

  “I saw a dog,” I said.

  “What?”

  “A dog. You know, man’s best friend?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know what a dog is. What about it?”

  “It was alive, and it looked like it hadn’t eaten in months.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got some dog food from a store and took it to him, but he ran away.”

  “And you’re upset about this?”

  “I heard him growling, and I went to investigate. There were biters in the alley—dozens of them. I took a bunch of them out with the machete, but they kept coming and coming and coming. Then I realized…all those biters were the townspeople and probably others who had gone there for safety.”