by A. J. Brown
It may have been just me, but I thought I could feel Jeanette in that hall with us. I could almost picture her leaning against one of the cinderblock walls, her head tilted, her arms crossed over her breasts. She was smiling, and there were tears in her eyes.
Then he noticed me—who I was. And as the world slowed down again and he began to run for me, I heard him yell…
“Daddy!”
~Hank Walker
Date Unknown
Dear Faithful Readers,
If you wouldn’t mind staying with me for a little while longer. I’d like to tell you a tale (but not of a fateful trip). If you don’t get that reference, then you’re probably too young to remember Gilligan’s Island. If that’s the case, it’s okay.
A few years ago, back at the end of 2009, I was part of an online writers’ group. In that group, we discussed various points of writing and the merits of the rules that go with it as well as publishing successes and their counterparts: the unsuccessful attempts. One thing this group was good about was challenging each other. We would throw out prompts to help with creativity. We often held contests that lasted several months and dwindled the participants from around twenty to one lone writer—the champion. It was like a writer’s Survivor challenge. It was no small feat to go deep in the competition, but it was even tougher to win it.
When not competing against each other, we often threw out random things to discuss. One day, the topic turned to zombies. Remember, this was the end of 2009. The Walking Dead comic books had only been around a few years at this point, and the television series was still almost a year away.
“It’s an overdone subgenre,” many of my fellow writers said. “It’s cliché, and there is nothing new out there.”
One person even said, “There is only so much you can do with a zombie story.” I can’t remember exactly how I got involved in the conversation. At the time, I wasn’t really interested in zombies. Sure, I had seen my fair share of movies and read a couple of books (David Moody’s Autumn series had been my favorite), but I had no interest in writing a zombie story. What I was interested in was character development, and at that time, my writing was going through a significant change, one that would eventually create the voice and feel of my stories today.
A suggestion was made and then a challenge issue. Surely, I couldn’t write a story based on human character and emotions. Surely, the story had to be zombie-driven. Everyone would get eaten, and mankind would go out in loud screams and deafening moans. The group knew I was all about challenges. Surely, I wouldn’t let a challenge go without at least giving it a try.
Christmas came and went, and on January 20th of 2010, I sat down and wrote this line: The rifle was light, unlike Pop's shotgun. I stared at it for quite some time, trying to figure out why that line was so important. Then I said, “Screw it. I’m just writing one scene.” Those seven words turned into just under 2400, and the story of Hank Walker was born. But that’s not where this story ends. Oh no. This is where it began. You see, originally, Hank’s tale was called, My Brothers and I, and I had no intentions of writing beyond that one story, that one scene. That’s what I thought. Some of my writer friends thought the story was okay, and a couple of them liked it. One of them—a wise man by the name of Eric, who totally hated zombies and was one hard critic to please—said he thought it was cool, but he didn’t like the title.
“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“I didn’t see any brothers. Where’re his brothers?”
He had a point. If I was going to call it My Brothers and I, then it needed to have Hank’s brothers in it. Remember, at this point, I had no intentions of continuing on with this storyline. I just wanted to prove I could write something somewhat emotional and have zombies in it as well. I thought I had succeeded, especially with this particular line close to the end of the original piece: The children, they're always the hardest to kill.
Then a curious thing happened. Out of nowhere, the title came to me, three words that sent my brain into hyper drive with thoughts of a bigger story. Dredging Up Memories. I thought on those words hard. As a writer, I tell stories about people. All of these stories are memories, whether mine or the characters’. And by telling their stories, I dredge up their memories time and time again. All writers do this whether they realize it or not. We tell stories of memories.
Though he seemed to stay on my mind, I didn’t write anything else about Hank for a while. That changed when I found a website dedicated to stories about the zombie genre. The website, Tales of the Zombie Wars, had a lot of cool stories on it. I wondered if I could get Dredging Up Memories published there. I subbed it, not really expecting much. Then on April 9th, 2010, it appeared on TOWWZ. I couldn’t believe it. I must have gone to the site a dozen times in the first two or three days. Why? Because people could post comments about it. As much as I wanted to see good comments, I really thought it would receive more negative than positive.
Then I saw this comment: I like the story very much. It really finds the balance between having a John Wayne who shoots at everything without mercy and a total coward who starts crying for anything as a main character. I’m only somewhat missing a closing to the story. Wouldn’t surprise (or disappoint) me to see this story continue…
It was followed by another one: A great lead in— One thing I really like about this piece is how you portray a guy trying to deal with the insanity of his situation. You portray him, his thought process, in such a realistic, connectable manner—the details are killer, such as the Spiderman T-shirt and his thoughts about his 6th grade teacher. Most of all, I think you do a fantastic job of relaying his doubts—are they really ‘dead’ in the old sense? Does little Tommy still feel pain in that state? So well delivered; really looking forward to where this goes!
I was hooked. Yeah, there would be more to this story. And there was. Plenty more. Though the story is clearly a zombie story, I tried to layer it with a simple question: What if the souls were trapped inside the bodies of the biters? This would make the story less about surviving the z-pocalypse and more about having mercy on the people trapped in the rotting corpses shambling around the world. And what if one of those souls was in the dead body of a loved one? If it were you, could you pull the trigger and end the existence of someone you love even if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it would be what they wanted if they could speak? I honestly don’t know if I could do it. It would almost be better to find out the loved ones had died and someone else helped them find rest, or peace, or true death than to have to do the deed myself.
If you live in the South Carolina area, you may recognize a few of the places mentioned here. Table Rock, Sommerville, Blackville, Columbia, Batesburg, Saluda, Newberry, and a few other places are all real. I did take a few liberties with scenery, but some of those places are as authentic as they come. Like Healing Springs. The legend about the location is just as I wrote it. The way it looks is just as I wrote it. The healing abilities of the water? Well, I don’t know if they can cure the bite of the undead, but I do know it was the perfect solution to the nastiness that is the zombie bite. Obviously, there are a few settings that are completely made up though they are based on real places.
Like many of my stories, Dredging Up Memories has a lot of me in it. However, only one character is patterned after someone I know. That person would be Jake, Hank’s baby brother. He was influenced by my own baby brother, Andy. You see, I truly believe that in the situations that Jake was put in, Andy would know what to do even if he was scared and unsure of how to go about it, or even if he could actually go through with it, but in the end, he would. He just would. This is Andy. He’s a good ol’ boy who does right by folks. If push came to shove, Andy would do right by those who were dead and needed to be released. He would also persevere where so many others would just give in and take the out a bullet provides. Sounds crazy, I know, but sometimes, you just feel something so strongly it has to be true.
If you’ve come this far, I
want to say thank you for sticking with me into the darkest hours of the night. Thank you for reading about Hank Walker and the heartache he goes through. This may be the end of Dredging Up Memories, but it’s not the end of Hank Walker’s saga. There is more. Hank has blank spaces in his memory that need filling in. Being drunk for weeks at a time will do that to you. Those blank spaces need to be explored. I’ve already started looking into them, and what I’ve discovered is Hank doesn’t recall those events for good reasons—some things your mind hides away in the depths of your soul because you simply can’t handle the truth of those things. For Hank, death may be better than the truth. Ahh, but that story is for another time.
Again, I thank you for reading Dredging Up Memories. I hope you enjoyed Hank’s story. Until we meet again, be kind to one another.
A.J.
The Great Big Page of Thankfulness
I’d like to thank a ton of folks, but that list would be longer than this book is. Still, there are some I wish to thank personally:
To my old writing group, Liquid Imagination, where Hank Walker’s story was birthed. Many of the stories I have written over the years have direct connections to you guys and gals. Without y’all, well…let’s not dwell on that.
Justin Dunne, your constant encouragement and questions about Hank and his story helped keep me going when I started to lose enthusiasm with it. Sometimes you just need someone pushing you onward. In my case, this was you. Thanks, Mate.
A special thanks goes to the administration of the Tales of the Zombie Wars (TOWWZ) website. If not for you guys, Hank’s story would have ended at that opening chapter.
For all the folks who commented on Dredging Up Memories on TOWWZ, thank you. Your comments, as much as anything else, played a huge part in this story continuing and even finding its end. It was always good to see a chapter posted, but the real thrill came from the comments of you fine folks.
As always, a great big thanks and a huge kiss go to my wife, Cate, for constantly telling me I can do this writing thing and for not letting me give up when I felt nothing was going well.
Finally, to all of you, Faithful Readers. You are the driving force behind many writers. To be read, to have your work enjoyed by you, is one of the biggest thrills a writer can have. Thank you.
A.J.
About the Author
A.J. Brown is a storyteller who pens emotionally charged, character-driven stories that often include a touch of the dark paranormal.
If you would like to learn more about A.J., you can check out his blog, Type AJ Negative. You can also find him on Facebook at his personal profile (ajbrown36) or his author page (www.facebook.com/typeajnegative).
You can also find his other books, Along the Splintered Path, Southern Bones, Cory’s Way, and A Stitch of Madness on Amazon. You can get the print versions of all of those books on Amazon as well, but if you would like to purchase one signed and for a significantly lower price, contact A.J. directly through his e-mail address, [email protected]. Or you can visit his online store at: https://squareup.com/market/aj-brown. A list of all of his publications can be found on his blog, Type AJ Negative.
Table of Contents
Five Weeks After It All Started
Five Weeks and a Day After It All Started
Seven Weeks and Two Days After It All Started
Eight Weeks and Three Days After It All Started
Eight Weeks and Four Days After It All Started
Nine Weeks and One Day After It All Started
Nine Weeks, One Day, and an Hour and a Half Later
Ten Weeks (?) After It All Started, Give or Take a Few Days
Eleven Weeks After It All Started
. Eleven Weeks and Three Days After It All Started
Eleven Weeks, Four Days, and Fourteen Hours After It All Started
Eleven Weeks, Four Days, and Seventeen Hours After It All Started
Eleven Weeks, Four Days, and Nineteen Hours After It All Started
Twelve Weeks After It All Started
Twelve Weeks and One Day After It All Started
Twelve Weeks, Three Days, and a Few Hours After It All Started
. Twelve Weeks and…Almost Four Days After It All Started
Twelve Weeks and Some Days (?) After It All Started
Thirteen Weeks (?) After It All Started
Too Many Weeks After It All Started
Seventeen Weeks and Two Days After It All Started
Twenty Weeks (?) After It All Started
Twenty Weeks and an Afternoon After It All Started
Twenty-Nine Weeks and Three Days After It All Started
Twenty-Nine Weeks, Three Days, and Seventeen Hours After It All Started
Twenty-Nine Weeks, Five (?) Days, and Some Hours (?) After It All Started
Thirty Weeks and Two Days After It All Started