Dredging Up Memories Read Free Page A

could see the graves I had dug the day before. No undead shambled from open doors or fell over damaged fences. The woman lay dead for good in the middle of the road, her head nothing more than a pulpy mass of tissue and bone.
    Before getting out of the truck, I grabbed my guns. In the rearview window, I saw Ox hanging on its hooks. Maybe one day, I would use Pop’s shotgun. Until then, I have my rifles and pistols and all of Leland’s ammo. Pop’s as well.
    “Don’t think about them,” I said and stood from the truck. 
    A hundred feet away lay the woman. I went to her and nudged her with the toe of one boot. I had to be certain. 
    The houses loomed before me, the U-shaped cul-de-sac appearing more and more like a death trap than the homes of loving families and good country folk. The houses felt larger than they were. In my mind, they were like abstract paintings, distorting the reality of the world, making things stretch out higher to the sky. I wasn’t looking forward to going inside any of them. These sweeps made my stomach knot in anticipation. Or dread. Probably a little bit of both. 
    I inched into the first house, a yellow, two-story ranch style. The door remained open. Inside, the place was in shambles. Furniture was tipped over, windows broken. Blood had been spilled on the floor and spattered on the walls. There’s always a lot of blood. Pictures of happier times hung on walls. A woman, a man, a little girl all smiling wide. The girl clutched a tan teddy bear wearing a bunny suit. I wanted to smile at the innocence, but I knew that purity was gone, and if that little girl were still in the house, there was a good chance she was dead—either really dead or risen up. 
    Before heading up the stairs, I closed the front door, made sure the back one was shut as well. I didn’t need any rotters coming in while I was upstairs. They could be sneaky like that. I learned that lesson the hard way during one of the first sweeps I had done a few weeks earlier. It was in one of those Victorian houses on the edge of town. Not many folks lived on Route 11, so I thought nothing of leaving the door open. The problem? The owners had probably been old or disabled—there was a ramp that led to the porch. I should have known better, but at the time, I don’t think anyone still alive knew much about these things. 
    I made the sweep, found no one in the house. On the way down the steps, three rotters greeted me. One of them—an older man with a bald head—was missing an arm and looked like the rot was catching up with him a lot faster than the other two. He was slow and bumbled about, running into the walls and the banister before he fell down. His head ruptured when it struck the hard wood of the floors, ending things for him before I could.
    The other two…
    The other two weren’t quick like a living person, but they still moved with something akin to grace, making a straight line toward the steps. I leveled my pistol at the first one and waited. He managed to get a foot on the first step before teetering back and bumping into the other one, another male, this one younger, maybe a teenager or in his early twenties. I watched, wanting to see if they could actually climb the steps, if their stiff muscles and bones would allow them to lift those legs higher than an inch or two off the ground. 
    Again, the one male tried to go up the stairs but couldn’t seem to get his leg high enough. I took a couple of steps down, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening. My ears rang. Only the teenager remained, his brown hair somehow still neatly combed.
    “Sorry, kid,” I said, squeezed the trigger again. He toppled over, landing on the old guy with the ruptured skull. My hands trembled for hours after that. 
    I shook my head, pushing aside the memories, and went up the stairs. There were three rooms: a bathroom and two bedrooms. Only one door was closed. I checked the two open rooms first, finding the mother in a