Dredging Up Memories (6 page)

“We’ll get help,” I said. “We’ll figure something out.”

He shook his head again. “No, little bro, we won’t. I’m a dead man, and I’m not going to be a burden on you guys.” He pointed down at Paul Marcum. “And I ain’t going to end up like that. Can you believe this, little bro?”

“No,” I said. One brother was already dead, and Lee was going to join him. It was only a matter of time.

“Paul Marcum,” he said. “Paul Marcum. I used to kick the crap out of him in school. You know, I hated him, man. Remember when he squealed on us after putting sugar in Mr. Robinson’s gas tank?”

“Yeah, man. I remember.”

He laughed again. “I can’t believe it. I’m going to be taken out by a nerdy rotter. How ironic is that?”

I shook my head against the memories, looked through the dirty windshield. A man lay slumped in the front seat of the car, his brain spattered on the windshield and side glass. I could see flies buzzing about his body. I didn’t recognize the face, and what little bit I could make out didn’t look anything like I recalled of Mike Simmons’ appearance. 

Around the corner came three more rotters. I leveled my aim on one, pulled the trigger. Missed. 

“Crap!”

There was no time for missing. Worse still, there weren’t enough bullets to go wasting. I steadied my hand, squeezed off the next shot, and dropped one. Two more shots and the other two were down.

I rounded the passenger’s side, glanced inside. No purse. No little kid toys.

More of the dead had come out into the street, probably to see what was going on. If they were lucky and me not so much, it would be dinner time.

Hurry,
my mind screamed.

The one closest to me was a girl—a teenager who the boys probably liked a lot. Her light brown hair probably flowed with the breeze when she was alive. She might have been a cheerleader or danced in the school plays. At that moment, she was another one of the dead, her soul trapped in a body that only functioned to stumble about and seek out the living. I wondered if she were screaming inside as she approached me. The center of her head disappeared, and I made my way to the back of the car. I wanted to close my eyes but couldn’t. I glanced down and saw…

…nothing on the bumper. No sticker, no scratches where Lee might have taken it off. The weight lifted, and I turned my attention away from the car, from what I had thought was Jessica’s Chevy, and to the more pressing advancement of the dead. I counted six. Among them were two kids, both clearly under the age of ten.

I backpedaled toward my truck, slung the rifle off my shoulder, and aimed. One down. Two down. Backed up. Ran for the truck. I reached inside, grabbed another gun, checked the rounds, and fired off two shots. The children were last to go, slower moving than the rest and further off. I hated the feeling of nausea that swept over me, the way sweat spilled from my pores, the empty feeling in my chest as I first took down the little girl then the boy. They could have been siblings. Maybe even twins.

Urgency swept over me as another realization kicked in.  No matter how much I viewed these rotters as once living, breathing, loving people, they were still dead, and they would just as soon kill me and tear me apart than let me walk out of there unscathed. It didn’t matter that they were still inside those bodies. They weren’t in control, or at least I didn’t believe them to be. I turned in a circle, scanned the street, and saw no one else.

I got in the truck, backed it up to the car, and popped the release for the gas tank. As a kid, we learned the art of siphoning and even with the safety features on new cars, a hose could go down into a tank easily enough. Thankfully, a hand pump system made it easier. I grabbed the gas cans from the back of the truck, opened each one, and set them by the car. I opened the car door. The dead man slumped a little but didn’t fall out. Bending down, I pulled the gas lever. At the back of the car, the small door popped open. The siphon hose went down into the car’s tank easy enough. I squeezed the white rubber bulb several times until gas flowed through the hose and into the cans.

Another one of the dead came from behind one of the buildings. The front of her blouse was torn, exposing a ruined breast. I took a deep breath, let it out after putting her down. 

With the cans full, I closed all but one of them and set them back in the truck bed. I poured the last one into the truck’s tank. 

I hopped into the truck, rolled the engine over, and pulled off. It was still early in the morning by the sun’s dial. Noontime was a good two hours away. More supplies were needed, and a convenience store sat a few buildings away. I parked the truck, again pointing it toward the interstate. I slid from my seat.

“Hang tight, Humphrey,” I said then added, “Don’t leave without me.”

The window to the store had been shattered. A brick lay on the floor a few feet away. I stepped through the opening, glanced around the dimly lit space. Glass crunched under my boots as I stepped slowly toward the first aisle. It still amazes me how ransacked some places were and how untouched others were. In this case, the place had been ransacked, but there were still plenty of canned goods on shelves. 

At the checkout counter, I grabbed a handful of bags and stuffed them with as many cans as I could. Four bags went out to the truck, and then I was back in for more. From the corner of my eye, I saw the lurching man, his large stomach split open, a trail of intestines dangling between his legs, his mouth slack and bloodied. Even in death, carrying all that weight appeared difficult. I took a deep breath, aimed. A second later, he fell backward, his arms flailing forward as gravity pulled him down. 

Back in the store, I stopped at an aisle holding chips and candies and other things that in another life weren’t all that good for you. A man sat in the center of the aisle, his clothes dirty, hair disheveled. He was older, maybe pushing seventy. I took aim but lowered the pistol.

“Hey,” I called. “Hey, you.”

The man looked at me. There was color in his face, stubble on his chin. His brow was wet with sweat, and in his hands was a bag of chips. He shoveled a handful into his mouth and chewed quickly. He repeated this several times. I couldn’t believe I stood twenty feet from another living person. He was as much skin and bones as many of the dead were, but he was alive, and alive was something I hadn’t seen since…Davey’s death.

I took a step forward. He cringed away from me, turning his shoulder as if he thought I would steal his chips. I stopped, not wanting to scare him.

“Hey…umm…it’s not safe here. Not without a weapon at least.”

He pushed onto his knees and then placed one foot on the floor. It took a few seconds, but he managed to stand though shakily at best. He stumbled away from me, grabbing another bag of chips as he did so.

“Wait a minute,” I called after him. 

He was faster than I thought and was through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door before I could reach him. I pushed it open, my pistol instinctively at the ready. Across the stock room was another door. He opened it and went outside. 

“Not bright,” I said and hurried after him. 

Outside, I was met with the backs of the buildings, where trash and recyclables once went. A few cars sat where their owners had left them for the last time. And the dead were everywhere—maybe only ten or twelve of them but entirely too many to take on without any weapons.

The man hurried past the outstretched arms of a woman, her head sagging on her shoulders, a bone jutting through her neck. He weaved in and out as if he were afraid of nothing, as if the dead wouldn’t turn on him. At that moment, I wished I could have been that fearless, but truth be told, every day I was scared, just like a child at night with the shadows playing across the wall. Only the boogeyman is real in this world. 

Fearlessness like that could get someone killed. I knew this and took the cautious approach. I leveled my aim on the nearest of the dead, pulled the trigger. Three more shots and the path I needed to catch up to the old man was a little clearer. I passed near the woman with the bent neck, gave it little thought as I put her down. The skin of her throat tore with the broken neck she had suffered, and her head fell back on her shoulders before she hit the ground.

I saw the small house and made a run for it. The old man was almost to it when I reached him. He opened the door and looked back at me. His brow was creased, and I saw a hint of blue from behind slit eyelids. “Go away,” he said. “Leave us be.”

“Wait. What?” I said.

“Go away. We don’t want you here.”

He stepped inside the small house, made to close the door. I grabbed it with one hand and held it open. “The world is dead now. You can’t stay here. They’ll get to you eventually.”

“We’ve made do so far. We’ll be fine.”

“Maybe so,” I said, desperate all of a sudden for him not to close the door on me. “But you’re the first living person I’ve seen in weeks and…and…” I was at a loss for words. 

He grunted, then his eyes lit up slightly, the lids opening, showing some yellow in the whites. Red lines snaked through, like cracks on the yellow backdrop. He shook his head as if he were aggravated.

“Come on in. Besides, I need to get my Louisa something to eat. It’s been a while since she’s had any food.”

I looked behind me. The dead made their way toward us, no longer a dozen but more like twenty or more. I stepped into a dimly lit room, candles flickered their shadow dancers along the walls. The old man slid a board over the door—a makeshift lock that hearkened back to the days of knights and Vikings.

There were guns lying about and bottles of water. The guy wasn’t so helpless after all. 

“Good to see you have some protection,” I said.

“Give me your gun,” he said. 

I turned to him, saw the shotgun in his hands. 

“Whoa, Mister,” I said and put both hands in the air about face high. “I’m not here to hurt you or anything.”

“I said give me your gun.”

The first of many thumps struck the door from the outside.  The dead had reached us.

“Give me your gun. I won’t tell you again.”

I nodded and lowered the hand with my pistol in it. He took it and tossed it on a dusty couch. 

“Now the knife.”

I slid the machete from my shoulder and dropped it to the floor. “Look, Mister, I don’t know what the deal is, but—”

“I tried to warn you,” he said. “But you wouldn’t listen. Since you’re here, my Louisa is hungry, and I’m all out of food for her.”

“There’s plenty of food back at that store.”

He shook his head. “Not that Louisa will eat.”

My stomach dropped. Even before he opened the only other door in the room, I knew what he meant. At that point, I prayed he didn’t pat me down and find the cop’s gun tucked in my waistband.

The man opened the door slightly and motioned with a jerk of his head. “Get on in there.”

“You’re making a mistake,” I said.

“They all say that,” he responded. He cradled the shotgun in the nook of one elbow and held the doorknob with his other hand. “Now get on in there. She’ll take you dead or alive, and I have no problems putting you down before she gets hold of you. That’ll keep the noise down since you won’t be screaming.”

I could take him. I knew I could, but I had to be careful. Reaching for the cop’s gun was out of the question at that moment. I gave a nod and stepped forward, hands still in the air. As I approached the door, he opened it further.

“Louisa,” he called. “Time to eat, Sweetie.”

A groan echoed from the room. I peeked through the foot of space between the open door and the jamb. That room was darker than the one I stood in with no candles to keep it lit.

Three feet from the door, the man stepped to the side, pushed it all the way open. In the light of the dancing candles from the front room, I could see bones on the floor, skulls with hair still attached, faces that were half eaten. My stomach lurched as Louisa came into sight. She was a big woman with thick chords of gray hair hanging alongside her gore-stained face. Her housedress was bloodied and clung to her ample breasts that sagged to her belly. A meaty hand reached forward, and fear clutched me tight.

“Get,” the man said and shoved the shotgun forward.

It was all reaction, maybe from having three brothers. I dropped my right arm quickly, the hand grabbing the barrel of the shotgun. The left hand came down across the bridge of the man’s nose. It cracked, popped, and blood spilled down his face. He fell back against the door, stunned, the open hand reaching for his shattered nose. Louisa—his Louisa—grabbed his elbow, pulled him to her. His eyes widened, and he screamed as she bit down on his shoulder. The shotgun fell to the floor. I ducked. It didn’t go off.

The man tried to shove her off of him, but her teeth were firmly at the base of his neck. His screams were loud and filled with terror. I could have helped him. I could have pulled out the gun from behind me and put a bullet in Louisa’s head and pulled him free of her. But I didn’t. In those seconds before Louisa had bit into him, I saw the remains on the floor, saw the crazed look in his eyes—he was going to feed me to her, his Louisa. That town had been through what every other town in the world had, but the survivors had faced something worse, being sacrificed to the very thing they were trying to escape.