Dredging Up Memories Read Free

skull cracked, and mercifully—for both of us—it was over.
    I dropped the shovel, backed up until my butt hit my truck. I climbed in, locked the door. For the first time since the world went to hell, I cried. Straight up and down bawled. Images of my family scampered across the front of my mind, Jeanette and Bobby, my brothers, Pop. It was all too much to swallow.
    “Get a grip, Walker,” I said and wiped my eyes. Several deep breaths followed. 
    Most of the rest of that day, I dug holes. Three of them: one fairly large and two smaller. The dead are heavier than folks might think they are, especially Mr. Mitchell with his trailing insides. It’s dead weight—no pun intended—and it’s like carrying tree logs or boulders. I laid them in the big hole, like human matchsticks all in a pile. Mr. Martin and the dead body beneath his wheel and whatever remains of folks littered the street went into the second hole. The bones and body parts that had been scattered about went in there as well. Tommy and Thomas Banks went together in the last one. I couldn’t bring myself to separate them. But I didn’t bury them right away; was Karen still alive? Was she dead? Was she somewhere around the neighborhood, in her house?
    Though we were raised in the church, I had never been much on praying. But I prayed this time—I had come to praying a lot by then. I said some words out into the air, hoping the wind would carry them to the right ears, the right heart.
    Night was well on its way. There was no time to sweep the houses like I had hoped to. The day’s events had drained me, both heart and soul. I went back to my truck, locked the doors, and loaded my pistol and rifle. Behind the seat sat Pop’s old shotgun. I still have never fired it, not having the luxury of a broken collarbone like my brother. Maybe one day, I would. But not that day, the day I took down an undead child and his father. The children, they’re always the hardest to kill. 
    I closed my eyes, pistol in hand. Exhaustion claimed me as night settled in…

Five Weeks and a Day After It All Started…
     
    The rap on the window snapped me from dreams of Jeanette and Bobby sitting in the warm sun at Brayland Park. Bobby squashed tiny ants as they scurried onto the blanket Jeanette had laid out. She wore a sundress, yellow and white striped that came to just above her knees. He was in a baseball uniform, Junior Jaycees on the front of his garnet shirt, his number 9 on the back along with his last name, WALKER, in white lettering. I was there, watching everything through a video camera lens. I wasn’t very good at holding the camera steady, but thankfully, in the dream, I held it just right.
    Jeanette looked up at me, waved. She got Bobby’s attention, and he glanced up, taking his mind from the destruction of the ant family long enough to flash me a toothy smile and yell, “Cheese.”
    I woke. Not to a cop knocking on the window wondering why I was parked in the middle of the road and why there were a number of guns in the cab but to a woman, her dead fingernails scraping glass, brown stains on the front of her once blue shirt. Her skin sagged along her face. I could see gray tissue beneath her drooping bottom eyelids. She had no eyes, just a sense that something living sat beyond her reach.
    I cranked the truck up, let it idle for a moment as I watched the vaguely familiar woman. She mashed her face against the window, her nose bending to the left, her lips squashing on the glass. Her moan was muffled, but it was enough to kick start my instincts. I backed up. Her lips left a smudge of brown behind. She fell forward, gravity pulling her off balance and to the ground. I shifted the truck into DRIVE. Her skull popped beneath the tire. My skin crawled. My stomach flipped. I closed my eyes and listened to the rumble of the truck’s engine. 
    I drove the length of the street. It ended in a cul-de-sac. I circled around, glancing at the houses. In the distance, I