Dredging Up Memories (9 page)

I grabbed my pack and Ox and headed up the stairs to the second floor. I was exhausted and wanted sleep, but there was the matter of my shoulder. In the bathroom mirror—one that was as tall as the door it hung on—I pulled my shirt off. The skin was tight and purple and red. The swelling covered the clavicle completely. 

Dislocated.

I tried to lift my shoulder. Bright bolts of pain shot through my arm, and I let it drop. I spun in a slight circle, tears in my eyes.

”Come on,” I said, looked at myself in the mirror. When did that beard grow in? When did those dark gray bags form under my eyes? When did I grow so old?

The pain was bad but would be worse if I didn’t get the shoulder back in place.

I put my hand under the elbow and lifted my arm. The growl from my throat scared me. The pain of locked up muscles being forced to move brought fresh tears to my eyes. I pulled it as straight as I could and began applying pressure to it. With a quick shove upward, my shoulder moved with several pops.

I screamed. My vision filled with dots, and my stomach grew sour as the immensity of the pain threatened to swallow me. I yelled, long and loud, as I jammed the shoulder up a second time. My head swooned, and my vision wavered and grayed along the edges. I thought I would pass out from the pain, but then, just as suddenly as the lightheadedness had come on, it was gone. On the third try, there was an instant of relief as the shoulder went back into place. It was like an extracted tooth: It may be gone, but you still felt the phantom pain of it. My head grew light, and those spots in my vision became larger. I stumbled from the bathroom and into the room that belonged to the boy. I was breathing hard, and sweat poured over me. With the door closed, I slid the dresser in front of it.

To tell the truth, I don’t remember crawling into the bed or setting my pistol on the nightstand beside it. I don’t remember pulling Humphrey from the bag and setting him—
her
—on the pillow next to me.

What I remember is waking up with the sun shining through the slats in the blinds, my body aching and a tickle in my throat. I sniffled a snot runner and wiped my nose. A moment later, I sneezed. Then again. And again. And several more times after that just because my body wanted to.

My breathing came in phlegm-filled rasps. I sat up, fully alarmed at what appeared to be a cold setting in. My shoulder hurt but not like it had when it was out of socket. It was more of a dull throb that let me know it was still there and still hurt. At any other time, a cold would be just that: a cold. But in these times, where a cold started this whole mess, my mind seized on the only truth it could: I was dying, and sooner or later, I would become one of
them
.

I sat up in the bed, holding my arm tight to my chest and hoping not to jostle the shoulder too much. I swung my feet to the floor. My boots scuffed against the hardwood floor, and I stood too quickly. The swooning in my head forced me to sit back down. I waited, eyes closed, head down, for the world to stop spinning. When it did, I stood slowly. My heart hammered my chest and the thoughts…the thoughts that traipsed across my mind…

What if I am dying? What if this is the Rotter Flu that took so many others? What do I do? There’s no cure. Do I…

I shook my head to that thought. If push came to shove, I guess, then I would. That reminded me of what someone said when the rotters became a reality: Always keep a bullet for yourself just in case the worst happened. I checked my weapon. Plenty of bullets there. Which one had my name on it?

A tickle formed in the left nostril, provoking a sneeze that was followed by four more. I coughed, told myself that the scratch in my throat was nothing.

I limped my way to the door and eased the dresser from in front of it. From there, I made my way to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet. I don’t know who owned the house before the end came, but they had medicine for both colds and pain. I took two of the cold pills dry and wished I had grabbed a couple bottles of water before I took off. But I hadn’t.

Another cough.

Another sneeze.

Another snot runner sniffled back up into my nose.

“I can’t be sick. There’s been few people…barely enough to…”

The Paul Marcum lookalike came to mind. I bludgeoned him badly, and this was Karma biting me on the butt. Humphrey said something when I got back in the truck. He said I had blood on my face. I wiped it away—black gunk, thick like sludge. I had looked at it and then wiped it on my jeans without much thought.

I couldn’t help but laugh. Like my brother, I had been done in by Paul Marcum—Lee by the real deal and me by the phony. How do you like those apples?

Down the hall in one of the other bedrooms, I found some clothes. They were a little big for me, but they were clean, and clean was good. I changed then dumped my old clothes into a trash bag that would probably never be moved outside that house. With my old boots on, I grabbed the pistol. The end of me may have come, but I wasn’t going to go without a fight. And if I was going to fight, I needed my guns…

“Stay here,” I told Humphrey after shoving the couch away from the door.  She sat in the center of it, a loaded pistol on her lap. “I’ll be back.”

Are you sure?

I gave a nod. No, I wasn’t sure. To be honest, I had no intentions of going back. Humphrey had been with me for a short while and he—
she
—had probably kept me sane through much of the Hell, and I didn’t want to turn into a rotter with her there to see me. I wanted to leave and die somewhere else without Humphrey having to know. In a way, I guess I was sparing her the pain of watching me die. “You bet, buddy,” I said.

The door closed with a click, and I lowered my head. She was just a stuffed toy. She wasn’t real. All of the conversations we had were in my head. Right? Still, the guilt of lying swelled in my chest. I bit my bottom lip and shook my head. A deep breath and I headed down the steps, passed the dead person at the base of the stairs, and kept going.

I limped but barely. My ankle and knee were tight, but my shoulder hurt more. I sneezed and grimaced as something tore free in my chest. I spat a string of yellowish phlegm out.

Life is funny sometimes. Not that haha funny but more like a curve ball you just can’t hit. There were no rotters walking around when I reached the road. I walked that same stretch back toward the shopping district, saw the overpass in the distance. The closer I got, the tighter my chest became. The anxiety of meeting death head on scared me as much as dying itself.

The first of the dead that appeared made my skin prickle. I moved between two cars, ducked down, and hurried around it. At the overpass, I looked down at my truck. Bottled water lay on the ground, and the dryness of my mouth begged me to run down and get some, but I didn’t. Instead, I eyed a drug store about a block or so away. I hurried around the burned bodies and the car with the man’s head splattered against the windshield.

After crossing the overpass, I realized that I had made a mistake. They were there, so many of them wandering aimlessly about. I didn’t have near enough bullets to take them all out. I detoured into a parking lot where several cars sat and then hurried along the edge of a building, checking the corners when I had to step away and out into the open. At the drug store, I stepped over a body in the doorway. Flies hummed about it, no doubt getting their daily fill of rotting flesh and laying their billions of eggs.

I eased into the door, my heart hammering. A little girl leaned against the counter, her hair dirty and matted. I eased down a side aisle, almost frantic with panic. If I shot her, the others were sure to hear.

The pharmacy sat at the back of the store. Several corpses lay back there. I went through the half door, made sure it closed behind me. It would take a little work for the girl to get it open, and with the upper half clear, I could see her if she heard me and managed to make it back there.

In the pharmacy, I nudged the bodies. Someone had given them each a bullet to the head. I rummaged around in the semi-dark area. Though a lot of the drugs had been looted, there were still several bottles of good painkillers and cold medicines. Even better was the large bottle of 500 mg Amoxicillin in pill form. I set my pack on the floor, unzipped the front pouch. The Amoxicillin and painkillers went in along with the prescription cold syrups.

I realized as I stashed the drugs away that I wasn’t ready to die. I was getting meds to try and fight off the sickness. I didn’t think it would work, but I had to try, right? I needed to live. What if Bobby and Jeanette were still out there? What if they were looking for me? It had been extremely foolish of me to leave the safety of the house, but maybe…maybe if I could make it back with the meds, things might be okay. And even if I died, at least I would have Humphrey there to comfort me.

The sneeze was as sudden as the longing for my little stuffed traveling partner was. Snot and phlegm shot out of my mouth and nose. I inhaled deeply, and several more sneezes came. I tried to stifle them, but still, there was a noise with each sneeze. After the fit subsided, I heard the shuffling feet from outside the pharmacy door. I scanned the back part of the area for anything that could keep me from firing either of my guns. Sure, I could have used old Ox’s butt again, but swinging the shotgun with the arm as stiff as it was didn’t seem feasible.

What I found was a broom. That’s all. It was an old wooden variety, the bristles well worn. I grabbed it and broke the broom head off on one of the counters. It made a loud crack that seemed to echo in the room. By the time I looked up, the little girl stood in front of the half door. She groaned or growled or mumbled. I don’t know, but she sounded angry. 

“Hey there, little girl,” I said. She looked to be eight, maybe nine. I thought of Humphrey, of the voice I heard the day before. That girl had sounded about the same age as the one in front of me.

She growled and bumped against the door hard. She reached a stiff arm out that seemed to creak when she moved it.

Deep breaths wheezed in my chest, and that tickle came back in my nose. I stepped forward, the broom handle raised over my head. My scratchy throat only got worse as I swallowed hard.

The girl tried to break through the door, the one arm outstretched with blood crusted under the nails. Her eyes were cataract white and seemed to glow in the gray of the building.

“I’m sorry.” I swung the handle down on her head as hard as I could. She stumbled back. If she had been alive, it would have dazed her and knocked her to the ground. She was far from alive, and though it seemed to daze her, she stumbled forward, a howl in her throat and black blood oozing down the center of her forehead. Again, I swung the handle, knocking her back. Then I opened the half door before she could step forward again. 

I was vaguely aware of the pain in my shoulder but not enough to lessen the force of the blows. The next swing was like a baseball bat, coming across and catching her in the side of the head. She toppled to the floor. I brought a boot down on her throat. Still, her jaws chomped at me. A moment later, the jagged end of the broomstick jutted from one eye socket, and she moved no more.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeated.

My breaths came in wheezing gasps, and my eyes itched. A sneeze came, and snot bubbled from my nose. I wiped it on the shirt, went back to the pharmacy, and grabbed my pack and old Ox. I scrounged about a little more back there, found a shoulder brace and arm sling among the braces and crutches. I pulled it from the packaging and tucked it in the center pouch of the bag.

Out in the store, I pilfered the few remaining water bottles. There were some chips and, holy cow, a can of Beanie Weenies. I drank down one full bottle of water, let the coolness of it relieve the scratch in my throat and quench my thirst.

I caught a glimpse of the dead girl, and my heart began to ache not only for her but for my little stuffed buddy and the girl in my head that owned her. That guilt resurfaced, and I thought of Bobby. Would I have left Bobby alone in an unfamiliar house with the dead walking around outside while I went off to die? No. Never. But I had left Humphrey, my traveling companion those few weeks. I hated myself. In my mind, I could hear her—because that’s what she was, a girl—crying. I could feel her fear as the dead surrounded the house and threatened to bust down the door. And I hadn’t bothered locking up, so getting in wouldn’t be all that hard for a rotter that managed to make it up the steps.

Before leaving the pharmacy, I checked behind the counters. There had to be—and there was—a weapon. It was nothing more than a steel bar that someone had placed back there, something you would use for leverage on a lug wrench, but it was sturdy and hard and would probably only take one shot to take out any of the dead if they got too close.

As I had before, I hugged close to the buildings on the way out. In the parking lot, blocking my way to the road, stood an emaciated rotter. Skin hung off his body as if he had been a huge man at one time and had lost a full person’s worth of weight. His head was bald, and he held that blue/gray tint of a person who had asphyxiated. His jaw hung slack, and the steps he took were nothing more than toe drags along the ground. There were deep grooves along his face where he had been scratched. I ran toward him, my knee and ankle no longer hurting like they did a day earlier, my pack heavy on my shoulders.

His skull ruptured with a loud
CRACK,
and he collapsed to the ground. Very little blood spilled from the gash in his head. Later on, I would think about that slight bit of sludge that leaked from the wound and wonder how long he had been dead. I would wonder about the longevity of the deads’ afterlife and if all the living had to do was wait them out until they finally rotted away.