Dredging Up Memories (12 page)

Eleven Weeks and Three Days After It All Started…

I used to feel sorry for them. You know, the dead.
When the outbreaks started and people began to die and then get back up, everyone was scared. Panic filled the streets and hearts of most people.

Not Pop.

No, Pop told me the dead—whether they were truly dead or shambling around looking for someone to bite down on—deserved to be treated with respect once they were finally ushered from this world. It was Pop who told us that we should bury them. It was only right. And that’s what we did until it was just me. Even then, I did it for a while longer.

Pop’s gone.

Leland’s gone.

Davey Blaylock’s gone.

The four of us had set out to rid our little town of the undead. When all was said and done, there had been more dead than alive, and I was all that was left of our quartet.

And I had buried a whole town, my dad, and my oldest brother; and my best friend had sacrificed himself for me.

I felt bad for them. I felt sorry for them.

Until I reached Table Rock.

The family cabin sat just outside the state park—maybe a mile or so away—and I had to drive through a world gone to hell from my hometown to Summerville, to Columbia, and through Greenville. You never get used to seeing the carnage, the death everywhere. 

So few people were left alive.

It was no different in Table Rock.

There’s a stretch of road that leads to the cabin. Trees line either side of it. For a good portion of that road, there is a ditch along one side. Most folks never knew it was there. They just saw a grass-covered embankment and tried to keep themselves on the road.

When we were kids, Davey and Leland and I sometimes stole one of our mother’s empty purses—always an empty purse, never one with anything in it. It would have been Hell to pay if our moms had caught us with one of their good ones. We’d head out along that stretch of road.

The good thing about living out in the country is there are all sorts of things to get into. Tree climbing, skinny-dipping, hunting for all sorts of animals. On those Saturday mornings when we had nothing better to do, we would hunt down black snakes—the longer, the better—and put them in the empty purse we had stolen out of one of our mom’s closets. Then we’d set the purse along the side of the road—just enough on the shoulder to be off the grass but not in the road itself.

Then we’d hide, either in the ditch or just inside the trees, and we would watch. The anticipation was the worst, but it was always funny when a car slowed down and someone got out and grabbed the purse. They would run back to the car and drive off as if nothing ever happened. But then they would stop. The car door would open, and the purse would get thrown out, sometimes still open, and the snake would fly through the air.

We used to entertain ourselves for hours doing this. 

As I made my way to the family cabin, I saw the dead lying in the ditch—the equivalent of those black snakes about to strike—or stumbling about trying to get up the embankment but not quite able to. Only one of them came close enough to my vehicle that I wished I still had my old, familiar truck. Swiping the dead would have done little damage to the front end of it. I can’t say as much for the van.

I reached the dirt road that led up to the cabin a half mile away. It was bumpy, and a rooster tail of dirt kicked out behind the van.

Are we almost there?
Humphrey asked.
“Yes.”

Is this where your wife and child are?

“I hope so.”

It was true. I hoped they were there and safe, but the road in gave me little hope. Nearing the cabin, I saw more and more of the dead. There had been a struggle here, and I didn’t know how anyone could have survived with as many dead as there were lying about. I went around some of them that were in the road, ran over others.

My palms were sweaty, and there were a mess of butterflies in my stomach.

I’ll say it now: That was the last time I was ever scared of anything.

I pulled the van up to the cabin, circled around the dirt drive that went in an oval in front of the place. The windows were boarded up, but the front door was open. Lying in the doorway was a body. Lying on the porch and all around the house were many more. A dozen? Twenty? I don’t know, but my heart sank.

I didn’t have to go inside to know that more of the people I loved had died. The view from the van told me. I reckon I already knew.

…

“Humphrey, stay here.” 

Okay.

I got out, grabbed several guns, and tucked a couple into my waistband. An extra pocket full of rounds and a flashlight and I started for the cabin.

I was a kid again, and it was summer time. Leland and Rick and I were walking up to the house, dirty from a long day of playing in the woods. Jake tottered along behind us, the youngest of the five brothers—well, four when you consider Charles died before I was born in an accident that was never talked about around Momma. I could smell Momma’s cooking and hear Pop chopping wood, which was a good sign. Pop chopping wood meant we would be coming to the cabin on weekends and maybe even during Christmas vacation.

At the porch, which was nothing more than one step up, I was an adult again, and Rick and Leland and Pop and Momma were still dead, and I had no clue about Jake or Jeanette and Bobby. I held my gun out and checked the safety. It was off. I stepped around several corpses, nudging them to make sure they wouldn’t be getting up.

In the doorway, I stepped over one more.

The inside of the cabin was shaded in gray, but I could still see enough to know that a fight had been had there. I flicked on the flashlight and let the beam fall across the room. There were a handful of dead rotters on the floor, all of which were missing some part of their scalp. Chairs were overturned, and the old card table we used to play poker at when Momma and Pop weren’t around was crumpled beneath the body of a dead man.

I didn’t need to go any further inside to know no one was there, but I went anyway. What if they were in the back room and they didn’t know help had arrived? Worse still, what if they were like every other dead person in the world right then? I hated the possibility of that, but I had to face the truth, the reality of the world, and the time I lived in.

Quietly, slowly, I made my way across the room, light in one hand, the other carrying one of my guns. There was no real hallway in the cabin, only a square area that branched off into a bathroom and three bedrooms. There was a back door off the last bedroom at the very back of the cabin.

The bathroom was empty.

The first bedroom—the one Leland and Rick slept in when we were kids—was empty. There were several splotches of blood on the wooden floor. A bad feeling crawled up beside me. In the bedroom across from the first one—where Jake and I slept—the linens on the bed were stained. My stomach flip-flopped, and my breath felt like it died in my chest.

The last bedroom held nothing but the furniture. If the sheets wouldn’t have been ruffled, it would have looked like no one had been there in years.

I didn’t try the back door.

Back the way I came, I stopped halfway across the front room. The front door had been open when I came in, but I hadn’t realized how much so. It was shoved all the way against the wall. The door wasn’t what stopped me. The white paper taped to it was.

I walked over, pulled the paper free of the door—there were four pieces in all, and the same hand didn’t write them.

Back outside, I went to the van; any reading could be distracting, and I had figured out those four sheets of paper were important.

Everything okay?
Humphrey asked.

“I don’t know, little buddy.”

The first letter was unmistakably Jeanette’s handwriting. Part of me let out a relieved breath. They made it to Table Rock—at least I knew they had gotten that far. That relieved breath was gone entirely too fast.

Dear Hank,

Please take care of Bobby. You’re all he has left. If you find this, please know I love you—I’ve always loved you. Be strong, Hank. Be strong for me. Be strong for Bobby. I’m so sorry I won’t be here when you get here. Please, just know I love you.

Love,

Jeanette

Her writing had been shaky, and there were splotches of dried moisture where I believe her tears had fallen. The dream back in Summerville came back to me hard, like a punch to the face.

You can’t die, Walker. Bobby needs you. He can’t lose us both.

It hadn’t been a dream after all. She had been there. Jeanette had found me and sent warning that I wouldn’t find things the way I wanted to when I arrived there. Things were bad—real bad—and she had to tell me, had to help me get better one last time so I could carry on and find my son.

The tears tugged at my eyes, a couple of them spilling down my face as a pain so strong in my chest formed that I thought I would die right there in the van.

Humphrey asked her question again,
Is everything okay?

I shook my head.

She said nothing else.

Jake wrote the second letter. His hand was unsteady as well.

Hey Brother,

I smiled. That’s what he always called me. Brother. Jake never called me by my name. Most folks didn’t. I was simply Walker to everyone except for my wife and Bobby.

If you’re reading this, then you made it to the cabin. I’m sorry, Brother. Things got a little crazy, and there were too many of them.

We held them off as best we could, but a few of them got in. I guess you’ve done figured that part out, haven’t you?

Only me and Bobby made it out without any marks. He’s a brave boy, that son of yours. I don’t know where he learned how to shoot, but if you taught him, you did a good job. Bobby did everything he could to protect Jeanette. I did too. But, Brother, there were so many of them, and when they got inside, I could only do so much.

I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.

Jeanette got bit by one of them, and Bobby unloaded his entire gun into it. She didn’t cry. She refused to. She didn’t want Bobby to see her all sad, and crying would have been the last thing he needed.

I just want you to know she didn’t suffer. She went pretty quickly after being bit—less than a full day.

And she didn’t turn either. I promised her I wouldn’t let her, and I know you wouldn’t have wanted her to be like that.

Bobby and me, we’ve moved on, heading toward Saluda—remember the old Armory out that way? A few soldiers came by, and we’re about to leave with them now. They said there’s a safe haven in Saluda.

If you get this note, then please, come and find us in Saluda. Bobby needs you. I need you, Brother. I’m scared, and I ain’t as tough and sure about things as you are.

I hope Leland and Davey and Pop are okay, and if they are with you, then thank the Lord for big favors.

I gotta go, Brother, but one more thing before I do. I buried Leland’s family and Jeanette around the back of the Cabin. Jeanette wanted me to leave you something on her marker. I hope you get it.

I pray we meet again.

Jake.

Emotions are a horrible thing. A wide range of them struggled for dominance in my head and heart. Sadness. Anger. Pity. Fury. Rage. Urgency. But no fear.

I set the letter on the dash and got out of the van. The sun was still high at that moment, but it wouldn’t be for much longer. If I was going to get out of there while it was still daylight, I needed to do so soon. But I needed to do something first.

My body shook as I walked back to the cabin. My eyes were blurred by tears. At that moment, a rotter could have come out of the woods, and I probably would have been a dead man. I gathered myself when the thought hit me, wiped my eyes, and pulled the gun from my waistband.

“No need getting killed now.”

My voice startled me.

I looked around, saw no one, and then rounded the side of the house. Trees were only about twenty feet away—how could that have been safe? How could an area where the dead can’t be seen long before they arrive be safe? I wanted to punch myself. I wanted to scream. I sent them there.

It’ll be safer there
, I had said.

I was wrong—there’s no place safe in this world. What I had done was isolated my family from the rest of the world and sent them to their graves. The weight of that decision—a split-second thought that seemed rational at the time—bore down on my shoulders, threatening to crush me.

At the backside of the cabin were eight graves, dug by my baby brother. Each one held a handmade cross of tree branches held together by twine and nails. Jake had carved the names of each person onto their respective cross. I had done something similar for Leland and Pop. But this was Jake, this was the little kid I had been charged with to protect when we were kids.

And I had let him down.