by A. J. Brown
I dug my last grave for the dead that day, and I buried a little girl…one I had killed. Hetch tried to help, but I wouldn’t let him.
“Come on, Hank. Let me dig a little.”
“No.”
“You’re exhausted. Just let me help.”
“No!”
“Why not?” He was in my face. A sneer crossed his lips. I reckon he was pissed. I was taken back to my high school days where boys would feign wanting to fight, daring the other guy to take the first swing, too chicken to do it themselves.
I had never been that chicken.
I swung, clipping Hetch’s jaw and sending him to the ground.
“It’s my burden,” I said.
Nothing else was said about it. Hetch stood watch as I finished digging the grave and placed the little girl in it. I put a sheet over her body.
“I’m sorry,” I said again before tossing the first spade full of dirt onto her little body.
When I was done, I drove the shovel into the ground next to the little girl’s grave. I stared down at it for several minutes before walking off. The day had gotten colder, and there were clouds rolling in. The weather was about to turn bad. If I had been thinking straight, I would have noticed that right away, and I would have known we needed more wood for the fireplace and needed to make sure we had plenty of supplies for winter.
Hetch spoke, something about “it was an accident.”
Whatever.
I was an accident. Everything I had ever done was an accident. Even the way I met my wife had been an accident—if not for her bumping into my truck, I would have never known her. I tried to avoid them as much as possible, but somehow, they always found me. Or I always found them.
I made my way back to the house, went up the steps, my thigh throbbing. It was difficult making it up the stairs, but I managed.
It’s amazing how time can crawl by so slowly that you swear you could see whiskers turning gray while other times, it passes so fast that if you blink, an hour or two or three is gone. By the time I made it up the steps and inside, it was dusk. How long had I fought the dead? How long had it taken me to dig the grave and then to fill it in? How long did it take for me to get up the steps and inside? Time…
I lit a candle in the bathroom and stripped out of my clothes. I thought about burning them the first chance I had. The shower was cold but a welcome feeling on my skin all the same. The bar soap was little more than a sliver, but when the suds ran down my stomach and onto my right thigh, the stinging was instant and intense. I rinsed my leg quickly and touched the area. I jerked my hand back as if I were shocked by a jolt of electricity.
“What the…?”
The shower went off, and I stepped out of the tub. I toweled off the best I could before tamping down the area on my thigh that was sore. When I was done, I held the towel to the candlelight. I saw blood.
My hands were trembling as I picked the candle up from the sink basin where it had been sitting. I held it down toward my leg.
…
…
…
I wrapped the towel around my waist and left the bathroom. Hetch was sitting on the couch—the very place he had spent the last couple of months. He sat up immediately.
“Hank, listen. I know you feel bad…”
“I’ve been bit,” I said, cutting off anything he wished to say.
Twenty-Nine Weeks, Three Days, and Seventeen Hours After it Started…
“Where’s the water?”
Hetch was in the kitchen, pulling bottles out of a useless refrigerator. I stood in the living room, the towel draped around my midsection, a thin trail of blood seeping down my leg. It had surpassed my knee in a map-like pattern and made a line down my shin. The blood was almost to my foot.
“Where’s the water jug, Hank?”
“There’s not enough,” I said.
He popped his head up. “Where is it?”
“Under the cabinet beside the stove. I didn’t want to accidentally drink it by mistake. You never know when you might need it.”
“We need it now,” he said and slammed the refrigerator shut without putting all the water bottles back inside. He took a couple of steps to his right and turned around. The cabinet door came open, and Hetch emerged with the jug of Healing Springs Water. He grabbed a cup from one of the top cupboards and set it on the counter. Hetch was careful in pouring the water, letting none slosh out onto the counter or floor.
“Drink,” he said and held the cup out to me. His hand was shaking.
I took it, downed it, and then handed it back.
Hetch poured another cup. I could see desperation in his eyes when he held it out to me. “Drink.”
I knew that feeling. I still do, now more than ever.
He held the jug up. There were maybe two cups left. If I were lucky, there would be three.
The wound wasn’t terribly deep, but it was wide. It looked like a chunk of muscle had been pinched in a vice, but the teeth marks were unmistakable. The torn skin—three inches in length and just as wide—was still red, the exposed tissue as pink as it could be. Blood still dribbled from it.
“Drink,” Hetch said and again held the cup out to me.
I felt the desperation running through my veins. It was the same desperation I saw on Hetch’s face. I didn’t want to go out like that. I didn’t want to wilt away and then wake up dead one day. I didn’t want to be trapped in a decaying body with little control of what I was doing. I didn’t want to die, but I wasn’t afraid to either. I had seen plenty of death. I lost all my loved ones, all of my friends. Really, there wasn’t much left to live for.
I had been bitten, and there wasn’t near enough of that holy water to keep the infection at bay for too long.
I drank the water anyway.
“Come on. Sit down. Let’s put some water on the wound.”
“I’ll get a rag,” I said.
“No. I’m just going to pour it on. Just like you did with me.”
He was careful. He tried to keep as much of it on the wound as possible. Not more than a few drops spilled down my leg. He tore a dishrag into strips, put one on the wound, and wrapped the other piece around my leg, knotting it at the side to hold the bandage in place.
We sat quietly, both of us staring down at my leg. Blood had already begun to seep through the bandage. Hetch rocked back and forth in his chair, his hands rubbing together as if he were cold. I was already planning my leave, thinking of how to get away from Hetch and head home. If I was going to die, I wanted it to be in my bed with a bullet in my temple. Better yet, I could go to Table Rock and lie down by Jeanette’s grave. We could be together in death.
Yeah, that was what I would do.
“Where did you get the water from?” Hetch asked, bringing me from my thoughts.
I shook my head, shrugged. “I told you. The Healing Springs.”
“Where is it?”
I had to think for a moment before I recalled. “A little town called Blackville.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know. I just kind of ended up there one day.”
“Do you have a map?”
I nodded. “Out in the van.”
He went outside, a flashlight in one hand, a gun in the other. He was quick about it, only gone for a minute or two. When he came back in, he dusted himself off as if he had fallen down.
“It’s snowing,” he said.
“Snowing?”
“Yeah.”
I got up, winced when I put weight on my right leg. An odd burning sensation clung to the wound and radiated outward. At the door, I looked out. It wasn’t a light snow dusting the ground like I had expected. The flakes were thick and fat, and the world was quickly becoming a sheet of white.
I turned around to see Hetch hunkered over the kitchen table, the map unfolded, the flashlight shining on it. One finger traced along the map.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to find Blackville.”
> “You’re going to try to make it there in the snow? You’ll never get there and back in time.”
He looked up from the map. “I’m not going alone. You’re coming with me.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Hank, you will die if we don’t get some more of that water.”
I sat back down, my hands in my laps. “I’m okay with that.” And I was, honestly, okay with it.
Again, he looked up from the map. “I’m not giving you a choice. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“Things were different then.”
“How? How were they different then than they are now?”
“I hadn’t killed that little girl then.”
How do you argue that? Hetch didn’t know either. All he said was, “It was an accident, and I’m not going to let you commit suicide over an accident.”
“She needed our help, and I killed her.”
“You tried to save her.”
“I shot her in the head!”
Again, there was no argument.
He went back to the map, his finger tracing the route he planned on taking.
“We can take 378 to 391 and then hit 178…”
“Yeah, I know—through Batesburg. I know.”
“You know how to get there?”
I shrugged. I guess I did know. “I took the same route from Healing Springs to here, so, yeah.”
“Let’s go.”
“No.”
“Don’t be stubborn, Hank.”
“Let it go, Hetch.”
“No. We’re going to get you to this Healing Springs place and get some of that water.”
“I’m not going.”
“You’re going.”
I walked to the kitchen counter, picked my pistol up from on top of it. “I’m not going. I’m done. I accept it. Get over it. Get on with your life. Do whatever you want to do. I don’t care. I’m going home—at least close enough to it so I can be with my wife again—and I’m going to die, but I'm not going to flame out and wake up again. I’m going to eat a bullet and end this whole mess. I ain’t coming back as one of them.”
Hetch’s hands went to his hips. “Why?”
“Why not?”
“Don’t, Hank. I’ve spent the last three months here. You saved my life.”
“The water saved your life. Not me.”
“Why did you take care of me? Why did you use that stuff on me instead of keeping it for yourself?”
I wanted to punch him. I wanted to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger. I wanted him to leave. But I didn’t want any of those things. He had been a stranger three months earlier. But he wasn’t then. He was the closest thing to a friend that anyone could have these days. And I had saved him. Me. Why?
I was tired of being alone. I needed companionship. I needed a friend.
“That was different,” I said.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“You sound like my wife.”
And the argument went cold. The world hit me hard between the eyes. I set the pistol on the table. My towel dropped to the floor. My head spun, and I felt nauseas. No, the infection wasn’t getting to me. My comment did. I couldn’t believe I had said that.
You sound like my wife.
Jeanette had been a great woman, and sounding like her should have been a good thing, a compliment. Instead, I made it sound horrible, like she was someone hard to live with, a difficult person.
“Hank?”
Hetch still stood by the table.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I…you’re a good guy, Hetch.”
My head was still spinning, but I was aware the towel was on the floor. I bent down, holding tight to the counter, picked it up, and wrapped it around my waist. I looked at Hetch. He could have been one of my brothers.
“I was tired of being alone,” I said.
“What?”
“I saved you because I was tired of being alone. I would be dead already if you hadn’t come along—I would have drank myself to death, and if I ran out of alcohol, I would have went out searching for more—a death sentence if there ever were one.
“You were my redemption.”
We stood in silence, two men who had lost everything they had ever loved, and now…now one of us was going to lose the last shred of hope he had, and the other one was going to die.
“You were my salvation too—literally,” he said.
I pulled a chair out at the table and sat down. “When I die, I want you to forget me. Okay? Just forget I ever existed. It’ll make things easier for you.”
“You’re not going to die. And I’m not going to forget you. Why would you want to be forgotten?”
“I just do.”
“I want to be remembered,” Hetch said. “It probably won’t happen, but that’s what I want—to be remembered as a survivor. As someone who made it through the worse, and came out on the other end.”
“You want to be remembered?”
“Yeah,” he said and took a seat across from me. “I want someone—anyone—to remember me.”
“And how are people going to remember you?”
“I don’t know. I might write a book about the end of the world, about the dead and about surviving.”
I nodded, my jaws clenched.
“I’m not going with you,” I said.
“Come on, Hank.”
“I’m not going to stop you from going. But if I start getting along in a bad way, it could be worse for you. You go, get the water. I’ll wait here.”
“Are you going to be alive when I get back?”
“Do you mean am I going to kill myself while you’re gone? No. If I’m dead, the infection will be the reason.”
“Can I take the van?”
“Yeah.”
“Can I have the keys?”
I pointed to the coffee table in the center of the living room. “Right there.”
“If the map is right, it shouldn’t take but a couple to four hours to get there.”
“It’s snowing, Hetch. It might take a little longer than that.”
“I’ll be back real soon.”
“Okay.”
“And Hank?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t die on me.”
“I’ll try not to.”
With that, Hetch left. I didn’t stand to watch him go, but I listened. I heard each step as he made his way down the stairs. The van door opened then closed. There was the roar of the engine when he turned the ignition. The motor revved, then came the sounds of the tires crunching rocks and snow and ice as Hetch pulled away. The sound eventually died off, and I was left to myself, to the silence of the nightmare I was in.
As I sat there, I realized how terrible of a mistake it was not to go with him. The creeping loneliness started to fill the room, taking the places where dark shadows hadn’t loomed yet. The candle on the table flickered, doing its dance, but I thought the darkness would get it as well, extinguish it the way the infection had all but extinguished mankind. I licked a thumb and first finger, reached across the table, and put out the flame. Complete darkness filled the room.
And I sat.
Thinking.
Dying.
Hetch wanted people to remember him. He wanted to tell people of the future—if there even is a future—about the world today, the dead, the living, the destruction, the bodies of the truly dead lying and rotting, the flies buzzing about them, the snakes and rats taking what they could, the buzzards conjugating and pulling apart what was left of the dead like an open buffet. He wanted to let someone know that he had been alive, that he had been a person who had a life before the world got fed up with humans and decided to eradicate them.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.
Maybe it was a great idea.
I stood from the chair, my eyes having adjusted to the dark room. I went over to the couch Hetch had recovered on, reached beside it, and picked up my backpack, the one Hump
hrey had ridden in during all of our little excursions for food or gas or while looking for other living people.
A touch of sadness reached out to me, grabbed me and held me for a few moments. Then it was gone, and I pulled my flashlight out. I flicked it on and began my search of the house. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for: a pen and some paper.
I sat back at the kitchen table, relit the candle with one of several hundred lighters I had collected over the months, and began to write.
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…