Jake walked a mile or so down the long, narrow, winding roadway, before approaching the long gravel driveway that led to his parent’s house. This was his childhood home. He walked up onto the ten-acre farm, which was dwarfed by many of the vast farm spreads Jake had seen in his travels. But this was just the right size for his parents.
As far back as Jake could remember, his father, Charles, had been growing all the fruit and vegetables the couple would require for survival. He had raised cows, pigs, and chickens for their meat as well. Charles did all of that while working for more than thirty years as a caretaker and landscaper for a nearby state-owned facility and campus.
Jake’s walk up the driveway revealed familiar sights. He saw rows of corn off t o the right, and fruit bearing trees to the left. There were rows of assorted vegetables fenced in behind electric wire to keep them from being eaten by the migrating deer that pass through almost nightly. Jake strolled further. He could see the enclosed porch on the north side of the old white Victorian style house.
The porch had a concrete floor, a screen door, and screen windows. Jake could see through the window screens to see a figure sitting within. The person did not seem to have noticed the visitor and was rocking slowly back and forth on a gliding red rusted metal swing. This bench swing was covered with cushions adorned in a yellow and white flowered print.
Jake walked slowly closer and was able to recognize the figure on the gliding bench to be his father, Charles. Charles wore his traditional plain colored T-shirt with a breast pocket on the left, a brown pair of Dickies pants, and his brown Timberland work boots.
Charles was 68 years old, and still in good health other than having minor typical old age issues with his eyesight.
“Dad, it’s me,” Jake said as he reached within ten feet of the screen porch door.
Charles did not recognize the person who stood before him, but he thought he recognized the voice.
“Is that you, son? You don’t look like my Jake.”
Charles knew there was one certain way to determine if this was truly Jake. Charles would ask him a question that only Jake could possibly know the answer to. “What was the name of that tremendous bullfrog you caught down at the pond bac k in grade school. You won that frog jumping contest with him. Remember?”
“Ribbit” Jake said without hesitation.
Charles knew that no one else would have known the answer to that question. He leapt up from his seat and hugged his son, his arms unable toreach completely around Jake’s wide statuesque physique. Jake was taken aback by this. It was uncharacteristic of his father to show emotions of any kind.
Before Jake could comprehend his father’s display, that flash of emotion ended just as rapidly as it started. Charles asked,“what the heck did you do to your hair?”
Before Jake could explain, Charles again quickly diverted topics. “I need you to sit down. There’s something you need to know.” Jake and Charles sat side by side on the porch’s gliding r ed rusted metal bench. It was reminiscent of many previous evenings from at least fifteen years prior. In the past, there was a lot less conversation then time spent just taking in the scenery. The two would relax, watching the breeze waft through the pines and the hummingbirds jettisoning back and forth.
But this night would be much different. Conversation would be flowing here like- never. Charles said,“Your mother is dead, Jake.”
“Oh, no. I feared as much when I saw you alone on the porch,” Jake sympathized. “She was very sick going back a few months. The doctors never could seem to pinpoint
exactly what it was. T owards the end, Clara became incoherent. She wasn’t eating. Sometimes it was as if she had no memory or recollection of who I was or who she was, or where we were. One day I was out in the garden digging up potatoes with a hoe when she came speed walking out the front door of the house. She came right towards me. I yelled, ‘Clara, what’s wrong?’ She didn’t answer. She just kept coming. And then she attacked me.
“She was biting, scratching, trying to ravage me. Her eyes were glazed over and cold. Not human. She showed no emotion. It wasn’t as if she was angry or enraged, she was acting more like a starving, deprived, vicious animal attacking its prey.
“I knocked her in the head with the metal end of the hoe. Once was not enough; it really didn’t even faze her. She kept coming, still fixated on trying to gnaw on me. I had to strike her again, and again. I lost count of how many swings I took.”
“Dad, it’s OK. I know you didn’t have any choice. You did what you had to do. The same thing happened to Rich and Holly. And I was placed in the same situation as you were.” Charles was now sobbing, something Jake had never seen his father do. EVER. “I knew the stories about you were untrue, Jake. There was no way you would harm your brother and his wife. Your mother knew it too. In the last couple months, she was talking about you a lot. She sensed that you were alive and nearby and coming home soon. As a matter of fact, she wrote you a letter. It’s in the living room on top of the fireplace mantle.”
Struggling to hold back his emotions and anguish, Jake walked into the living room and found the letter. It was tucked into a white sealed envelope with the word“son” neatly handwritten in cursive on the front.
He opened the envelope and removed the thrice-folded stationery. Jake read it silently after looking over his shoulder to see that his father had not followed him into the room. “Jake - if you are reading this, then I was right all along about you still being alive and coming home to us. I knew you were too strong and stubborn to let anyone get the best of you. You’re a fighter, just like your Grandpa Bill. It’s important for you to know that your father and I know you did not hurt Rich and Holly. They were sick, much like I am now. I don’t know what it is, but it’s horrible. At times I hate everyone and everything and want nothing more than to go on a rampage and… never mind that. While my mind is clear now, know that I love you. WE love you. Your dad never says it just because he was raised that way. But he really loves you and he loved your brother. Nothing can ever change that. We are constantly told by other people that we did a good job raising you. You have grown up to be such a caring, respectful, successful man. You make us proud to be your parents. Love, Mom.”
Jake’s heart filled with remorse and heartache. He paused momentarily in order to regain his composure before returning to the kitchen to face his father. This was never a family that showed emotions of any sort. Jake’s eyes flooded, but he wiped them dry before a semblance of a tear could make its way onto his weather-worn cheek.
“Jake, can you stay a little while and have dinner?” Charles asked. Jake nodded in the affirmative. The two men walked out to the garden to pick some fresh, ripe ears of corn and tomatoes to eat alongside their main course of pork chops that Charles had earlier retrieved from the freezer.
Father and son returned to the kitchen of the old ranch house, and Charles sliced the tomatoes. He laid the slices down onto a plate of breadcrumbs, then flipped them over to cover the alternate sides as well. He then sent the crumb-covered slices into a sizzling oiled frying pan on a stove top burner to let them brown slightly. Meanwhile the corn ears were cooking in a saucepan one burner over, and the pork chops were baking in the oven below.
After consuming their dinner, the men decided to play billiards and devour some Narragansett beer. Jake had never known his father to be much of a consumer of alcoholic beverages, drinking only on occasion when offered a beer but never purchasing any on his own.
Charles removed a vinyl protective cover from his old mahogany eight-foot-long pool table with cracked leather pockets and legs carved with eagle claw feet. The cover had a thin layer of dust on it.
They each selected a cue stick from a rack mounted against the wall. Jake proceeded to swivel a blue square chalk cube back and forth against the tip to prevent slippage upon contact with the cue ball. A cassette featuring classic George Strait country music was prompted to provide a fitting soundtrack for the tournament.
&
nbsp; Neither of them had played pool in quite some time, so it took a while for the players to reclaim any semblance of their once fluid strokes or precise aim.
Between their pool shots, the duo reminisced about years past. They reflected on visits that Charles and Clara had made to Texas. Twice a year the Rhode Islanders would leave the smalltown solitude of West Greenwich to make an expedition to Dallas to visit their two sons and their families.
As one large group, the family would visit tourist attractions like the Stockyards in Fort Worth, the Dallas Arboretum and the zoos in both of those cities. Also memorable was an outing they all made to the Sixth Floor Museum in downtown Dallas. This was the building that was formerly known as the Texas School Book Depository. It was here that Oswald supposedly pointed a rifle out of a sixth-story window to gun down President Kennedy as his limousine drove westbound along Elm Street, just south of the building.
After several games and with the score being even at four wins apiece, the competitors retreated to the living room and found themselves watching an ancient rerun of a “Rockford Files” episode. After that ended, Charles switched the channel over to the second half of a live baseball game in Tampa, Florida, where the Boston Red Sox were matched up against the Tampa Bay Rays.
“I hate to watch games that are played in that ballpark, with that damn dome and ladder up on the ceiling. Why the hell would they build a domed ballpark in Florida, anyways?” Jake commented.
“Yeah, it was a poorly designed stadium for sure,” Charles agreed.
The topic of conversation soon took a solemn turn as Charles asked,“so what's causing all of these people to turn into monsters or zombies or whatever?” Jake told his father the little information that he knew about these incidents. His knowledge was particularly limited due to his efforts to maintain a low profile while on the run and hiding from the law.
“I’m not sure what is causing them or where they are all coming from. I just know in order to destroy them you must cause serious trauma to their brains or else they keep on coming. Nothing else seems to work.”
“A couple months back your mother and I were walking at the pathway that circles the cemetery on Weaver Hill Road. We would go there every couple of days to get some exercise and toget to know our future neighbors,” Charles chuckled. He was proud of himself for coming up with that humorous aside.
“You can’t walk on the side of the road out here anymore because there’s so much traffic. Those cars are all flying up the road. It’s a good way for a person to get their ass run over! Anyways, we were walking around the new section of the graveyard when we noticed one of the fresh new graves seemed to be caving in. The topsoil and sod grass were slowly sinking into the grave. That one had only been occupied for about a week. The name on the head stone was Rosemary B Standifer.
“Each day we returned and looked at it. And each time it appeared to have sunk deeper into the ground. We didn’t know who to call to notify them about the situation. We just kept going hoping to see a caretaker or grave digger working there so we could let them know about it.
“Then finally one day we returned and saw a gaping hole where the grass had been. We could see all the way down into the depths of the grave and noticed the lid of a simple pine box casket. You know Clara’s hearing was much better than mine was. As we were standing there, bent over and looking down through the crevice, she told me that she heard something. It sounded like a clawing or scraping sound from inside the coffin. Clara shrieked, ‘I think Rosemary is trying to scratch her way out!’ and she took off running out of the cemetery plot like she had just seen a ghost.
“I decided not to stick around either. I just took off after Clara. I was so flustered I tripped over a tree root and twisted my ankle. I fell to the ground, and before long, my ankle swelled up like a balloon. So much for my plan to try out for the Pats this year.”
Again, Charles smirked at his humorous side note.
Charles continued his tale. He said that when he caught up to Clara, he told her she was crazy and that she had imagined hearing sounds from within the grave. But the next day they returned to see the entire top of the casket unearthed, the coffin lying empty, and no sign of Rosemary B. Standifer.
Clara was convinced Rosemary had been buried alive and dug her way to freedom. Charles was more inclined to believe that a grave robber had been digging away at her grave a little at a time for several nights. Then last night the robber came back and finished the job, stealing the body for whatever morbid reason.
But Charles knew this did not appear to be the work of the body snatchers. The casket lid apparently had been broken from within, not from the outside. The elders returned to the cemetery the next day to find the entire property surrounded by a six-foot-high woven wire fence and a gate that was fortified with a padlock.
Charles and Clara wondered if the fencing was meant to keep the human walkers out or to keep the DEAD walkers in?
Now time was slipping by, and it was getting late. Jake knew that the Boston cops were probably closing in on. By now they probably know where his father lives and would be arriving any time now to look for him. Jake could not chance staying there any longer, as much as he would have loved to stay forever.
Jake told his father he had to leave. Charles was now looking slightly different even from when Jake had first arrived. He was looking older, more weathered and worn down.
“I understand,” Charles said. “It’s probably for the best anyways. Do you need a ride?”
“No, Pops. But thanks anyways. I don’t want you to get involved in this any further. You already took a risk by letting me stay as long as you did.”
Jake began to turn toward the door to make his exit. Charles extended his right arm and placed his right hand on Jake’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, son. You turned out to be quite a fine young man.”
“Thanks, Dad. I owe it all to you and Mom,” Jake said as he removed his flat wallet Dallas Police badge from his billfold and handed it to his father. I don’t need this anymore. I want you to have it if you like.”
Charles opened his hand to receive the gold shield. “I would love to have it.” Jake handed the metal over andwalked out the front door. He whispered, “I love you, Dad.” It was a sentiment that his father had never felt necessary to express verbally to Jake. But Jake knew that the feeling was mutual.
Jake began walking back down the long, winding gravel driveway toward Route 102. Now that Jake was out of earshot, Charles sighed and murmured, “I love you too, son.” He then went back inside the modest white single-story house as he studied the new shiny hardware in his right hand.
Charles depleted the final two cans of Narragansett while watching the finale of the Sox game. It was a victory for Boston thanks to another late inning comeback, led by some clutch hitting by Mookie Betts.
Charles stood up from his La-Z-Boy recliner and walked over to his dormant fireplace. He methodically removed his shotgun from a rack above the fireplace mantle. He walked out to the back yard and into his hand-crafted chicken coup painted in brick red to match his barn and tractor garage.
Charles proceeded to provide food and fresh water for his rooster and six hens as he did routinely every evening. However, Charles acted out of the ordinary when he left the newly laid eggs behind in the nesting boxes and neglected to shut the coop door behind him as he walked away.
Charles proceeded east on his property to his once dark brown stained barn. Over the years, the tone had faded into more of a grey. He set the loaded shotgun down on a grain barrel and climbed up the ladder leading into the hay loft. He threw down a bale of hay and then climbed back down the ladder.
Charles used his trusty pocketknife to cut the string on the bale, then spread the hay all over the floor of the stall. This stall belonged to Charles’ only remaining cow; a Jersey named Martha. Charles left Martha’s stall door wide open as he reclaimed the long gun and walked out further east on his spread. He went out through his pasture and toward
a thicket of pines.
A sixty-foot-tall majestic pine tree was one of many lining the eastern border of the properly. Tied around the base of that tree was one end of a cow lead. The other end of the rope was tied around the neck of one Clara Hathaway. But Clara was not Clara. She was now a creature. A once-human entity that now was more monster than homo sapiens.
IT was growling, moaning, pulling the rope taught and trying to reach Charles with its extended arms and clutching hands. IT began to gnaw at the knot in the cow lead near its mouth. Beside the looming tree was a hand-dug, three foot by five-foot rectangular hole in the ground, three feet deep. A blood-covered shovel was lying within. Charles climbed down into the pit. Dusk was approaching, so Charles removed a small six-inch flashlight from his front left pants pocket.
He turned the light on and placed it in his mouth, biting down gently to hold the device in his dental vice grip. He picked up the soiled shovel and illuminated the bottom of the hole, then dug another three feet lower.
Charles threw the shovel back up to ground level. He jumped up and grabbed a handful of level ground, then pulled himself out of the earth’s depths. He took the shotgun in hand and placed the double barrel between the eyes of the frustrated, hungry monster.
Charles looked skyward, then used his right hand to make the symbol of the cross to his head, chest and arms.
“I love you, Clara. God forgive me.”
His right index finger squeezed. An explosion ripped through the weapon, propelling a handful of lead pellets through the barrel and outwards. The force of which struck the creature’s forehead, completely blowing off the skull cap. The creature’s body fell backwards into the pit. Then, without taking a glimpse within, Charles began to shovel soil back into the pit.
Charles walked back inside, feeling cheated and angry and hostile. He peered into the mirror of his bathroom medicine cabinet and lifted his John Deere T-shirt to reveal a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around a large deep gash across the center of his torso.
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