The bite was a ragged and bloody mess. Half the flesh of her forearm was gone, torn away to leave the bone shining wetly , a sickly flash of white and red in the beam of my flashlight. Her shirt lay in tatters beside me, and it didn’t feel right that so much of her was exposed. Something inside me rose up, angry and jittery and wanting to cover her up, to hide the soft skin bared to the cold night air.
We’d used her shirt to wrap the wound as we ran, hoping against all odds that she’d make it, that this time it would be different. We ran until our breath ran rough and hard from our mouths, until she fell and couldn’t get up on her own and I couldn’t carry her further. We ran until all that was left was to sit quietly beside her in the dark of an aluminum storage shed as her life slid away into the dirt beneath my muddy knees.
I checked her pulse again, wishing for a flicker under my finger tips as I held them to her wrist and then her neck. She had stopped breathing within moments of being carried into the shed. I had turned for the briefest of time to close the door. When I turned back, I knew she was gone. Even in the pitch dark, I knew.
Her eyes were closed and her chest still by the time I fumbled my flashlight out of my backpack. I tried chest compressions and blew air into her lungs, noting how dry and cold her lips felt. I didn’t know how to let her go. I couldn’t accept that she’d been taken from me.
I became lost in that endless moment, refusing to say goodbye. Finally, I sat back on my heels, paused and took in the dark and quiet that surrounded me. A breath shuddered out of me.
Another.
And then another.
Blinking back tears, I refused the urge to check her pulse again. She was gone, and hope wouldn’t change that. The blood from her wound was already congealing, turning black and burned looking, a clear sign of the infection reaching the final stages. I had to move on, to survive. We’d promised each other we’d never give up. I never thought I’d be the one who had to carry on alone.
Another tear blurred my sight as I took the locket with the pictures of her daughter from around her slender neck and buttoned it safely into my shirt pocket. I patted it once, setting it in place over my heart. Then I picked up the remnants of her shirt and used it to clean the hair and blood off my machete. I checked, making sure the edge wasn’t dull from splitting bone.
Beside me, she began to move.
The stained leather binding protests as I close the cover of the journal, erasing the sight of the panicked, scrawling, hand written entry. I take a moment to redirect my attention to more pleasant thoughts, close my eyes and lean back in my well-worn chair, its springs groaning lightly.
The sun is warm on my face as a breeze filled with the aroma of summer wild flowers moves slowly through my open window. My office is quiet and peaceful as I sit here in momentary solitude, sipping of my coffee and trying to forget the aches of my old bones. No one else is awake in the house, and I enjoy the few quiet moments afforded me by being an early riser. Soon the sound of small feet will patter down the hallways, dogs will bark and beg for breakfast, and my young wife will check on me to ensure I’m content and working diligently on a project I would prefer to set aside.
I have a job ahead of me, and it is one I’ve been hesitant to approach for months. Most people would think that a historian would relish any opportunity to chronicle the passing of time and lost civilizations, to detail the accomplishments of the previous ages so that we may learn lessons from those long ago lives and the ways in which they were lived.
n this instance, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I have become the unfortunate recipient of a much tattered and well worn leather journal that was unearthed by my oldest son, the budding archaeologist who makes his father so proud with his continued accomplishments. As proud as I am of him, I now wish that he had never found this crumbled reminder of the past, the contents of which detail the life-threatening struggles of one man to survive in an environment that I can only assume is the closet semblance of hell to ever exist on this earth.
The tales told within the old journal currently sitting on my desk present the sum total of one man’s final days, a man I have come to respect with the greatest regard.
His tale is of the early days of the zombie infection, or the ZI Plague as many of my contemporaries now call it. These pages detail those years when the dead walked through fallen cities and the last vestiges of humanity huddled alone and afraid, hungry and injured in mind, body and spirit. Those dark years, now almost seven decades past, have begun to fade as those amongst us who lived through those times pass on into old age and eternal rest.
For many of us, children of the survivors, the true horrors of that time can never be understood. I am reminded of the early 21st Century when the last of the great generation passed away, leaving no one alive with firsthand memories of when the world went to war. There are meanings that cannot be conveyed in histories, and I think I begin to see what the passing of time does to great tragedy, the blunted edges that are created by the pounding of father time’s hammer. It is hard to remember the poignant horrors of war if one has not fought it, and I wonder what effect this has on humanity. Are we reduced in some way? Is there truly a punishment to be paid for forgetting the past? What if the past refuses to be forgotten?
I may wish it otherwise, but I have read this story of one man’s past. I have read it so many times that the words are etched in my mind as if I wrote them myself all those long years ago. The life of this man haunts me. His words have become the forlorn whispers of forgotten ghosts at my shoulder, begging for release, for remembrance. His story cannot be unlike so many others from those times, yet he chronicled it fastidiously, detailing even the mundane and commonplace struggles of his everyday life. His repeated attempts to find others to connect with and the continuous disappointment that such endeavors brought to him make me hurt with him even though so many years separate us.
What hope did he have? What depths of loneliness did he know? What faith could have sustained him? What power of will, what instinct must have driven him? What chance that his words would survive to tell his tale, of his efforts to live on in the face of horrible tragedy and loss? Did he write this in the hopes that someday, someone would find his story and understand the decisions that he made? Are these words his explanation for a life lived in the worst of times, or do they beg forgiveness for his actions?
I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, nor am I the right man to offer them closure. Each time I read his journal entries I am overcome with different emotions and differing impressions of the man who wrote them. I may never fully understand what drove him to chronicle these events in such a way, but I hope that their shared reading may release his ghost.
I wish him only peace now, as he knew so little of it in life.
What follows is the tale of a lone survivor in a land of the dead. I shall endeavor to list each of his entries exactly as he wrote them, to stay true to his words and transfer from these dirtied and crumbling pages the life of this one man so that each of us may try and gleam from his shattered existence an answer to an eternal question that shames those of us who may look back on the years of the infection without the fear that so clearly marked those who lived through those darkest of times.
What would you do to survive?
May we all find our own answers, and be content in the hopes that we may never have to prove their truths.
Winston Martin
