His wife and son lay dead in the car.
The Passat's windows were cracked and the key had been turned. Andy guessed that Shelly had started the car with the garage door closed and the windows down and had asphyxiated herself and Isaiah with carbon monoxide. The moldy smell in the garage had masked the lingering scent of car exhaust and the terrible odor of decay. When he opened the car door, though, Andy could smell it more strongly. A note was taped to the steering wheel. He grabbed it and read it as he wept.
He was still in the garage, weeping and vomiting when the others caught up to him. Later, he recalled being led into the house by Royce and Milo.
He sat on the couch in his living room for a while staring ahead. Finally, his senses returned. He stood up quickly. His dramatic change in demeanor must have scared the others. "I need to bury them," he said resolutely. "I have two shovels in the garage. Will someone help me?"
"We all will man," Royce said. Milo, Oscar and Bob all voiced their affirmation.
The men all exited the house, walked down the stairs and went back to the garage. The sun had finally emerged from the clouds and was hanging low in the sky as the sandy earth received his wife's and son's linen-shrouded bodies.
"I met Shelly during my first semester of college," he said sadly as he and his friends stood over the fresh graves. "She and I started dating after we realized we were going to the same church. We got married a few weeks before we graduated from college and we had Isaiah a little more than a year ago.
"You all know this about me. I am a committed Christian. Shelly was too. She was the anchor that God provided me in stormy waters. She was my best friend. She was my lover. She-" he began to choke up. "She and I loved each other so deeply! And Isaiah, he was my little boy!" he cried out and fell to his knees.
"May they rest in peace," Royce said softly, patting his shoulder.
They finished filling the graves as the sun dipped below the horizon, bathing the clouds in brilliant splashes of color. The others went back inside and left Andy at the graves. He stood there for what seemed like a long time reading the note from Shelly over and over.
“Andrew, I am so very sorry. I am so sorry,” he murmured as he read it.
The sky faded from pink to orange to red to purple to black and soon it was too dark to read the note. The stars emerged and eventually Andy could even see the milky white outline of the galaxy, stretching across the night sky.
"Goodbye Shelly, goodbye Isaiah," he said calmly, as the moon rose in the east, over the bay. "Rest in peace beloved wife and beloved son." He stood there for a little while longer.
"We travel through a barren land with dangers thick on every hand but Jesus guides us through the vale, oh the Christian's hope can never fail," he sang. "Sometimes we're tempted to despair, but Jesus makes us then His care. Though numerous foes our souls assail, oh the Christian's hope can never fail." He walked back to the stairs and climbed them to the house. He walked in and sat down at the kitchen table with the others.
"So I suppose Oscar and I will set for Atlanta in a couple of days," Bob said a little later.
"I'm going to follow them as far as Bayou La Batre," Milo said.
Andy nodded. "There's nothing for me here. I have family scattered all over the northeast quadrant of the country. I have a sister in Chicago, my father's in Detroit, two brothers live in Buffalo and my mother lives in Manhattan. If it's alright, I too will follow you all as far as Milo's before I head north."
"That's cool with me," Milo said.
"I'll stick with Andy," Royce said.
"Alright," Milo said. "I guess we all leave here two days thence?"
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Jim Gibson
Day 38
Phil and Jim both gasped. They ran over to the body. His skin was gray, firm and cold. There was a note pinned to his orange plaid flannel shirt. Phil grabbed it and read it aloud.
"If anyone finds me like this, please know I didn't want to do it. I believe myself to have no other options though. The house is surrounded by monsters who crave flesh. It is growing cold as winter approaches as well. I have no means of escape and I do not wish to become one of those monsters should I lose my mind and leave the house. The date is now November 24. If you can, if civilization is ever restored, please find my children and tell them their father loved them very much. Their names are Richard Andrew Gibson of Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi; Victoria Anne Eccleston of Chicago, Illinois; and Philip Joshua Gibson Junior and James Daniel Gibson both of Buffalo, New York. May Detroit rise from the ashes and be great once more!
Signed Philip John Gibson Senior"
Phil dropped the note and looked up at their dad. "Help me cut him down," he said tearfully.
Jim cut the rope holding his father up and laid the body on the cool concrete floor with Phil. Jim sat on the floor beside him silently. Phil kept walking in circles, crying.
"Guys?" Vik yelled from upstairs. "Is everything okay? You've been down there for a while."
"No," Phil yelled. "Our father is dead!"
Jim heard footsteps as Vik ran downstairs. His roommate gasped when he reached the bottom.
"What happened?" he asked.
"He hung himself," Jim said quietly. "A couple of weeks ago. I guess the cold preserved his body."
"Oh my, I'm so sorry!"
Phil stopped walking in circles and looked at Vik. "Thanks."
Jim stood and they all went upstairs. By now it was dark outside. Sherry sat in the living room, building a fire in the fireplace.
"Their dad is dead," Vik said.
Sherry stood and ran over to Phil, embracing him. "I'm so sorry!"
Phil buried his face in her shoulder weeping.
Jim noticed all of their bags had been brought in and set on the floor. He supposed Vik or Sherry had brought them in. He sat down in front of the fireplace and watched the flames slowly consume the log that had been placed in the hearth.
Vik sat down beside Jim and watched the fire with him.
"I'm sorry to hear about your father," Vik said finally. "I know what it is like to suddenly and unexpectedly lose one's parents."
"Thank you Vikram," Jim said.
"If you wish to talk, I will listen. If you simply desire silence, I will be silent."
Jim nodded. It had always greatly bothered him that his dad had screwed up his marriage with his mom. He was a good father, or at least he tried to be. Jim just never understood why he was continually unfaithful. Didn't he realize what had been at stake?
Phil and Sherry sat down beside Jim and Vik, around the fire.
"Sometimes," Jim said, "I wonder why mom married Steve."
"Me too," Phil said quietly.
"I mean, Dad had a thing for the ladies, but at least he was a nice guy and tried to be involved in our lives. Steve was a jerk who spent so much time in the office and who spent most of his free time with his own snotty nosed kid. Phil, after you went off to college, I don't know if I ever told you about how Steve decided to take Mom and Tyler to Hawaii with him and made me stay home to watch the house?"
"They went to Hawaii together?" Phil asked indignantly. "Huh, I guess at least you weren't the only one who missed out. I didn't even know they had gone to Hawaii. I'll bet Andy and Vicki didn't either."
Jim nodded. "But dad, on the other hand, was a good guy! I remember he took us to Tigers baseball games every summer and usually let us travel with him on road trips. Do you remember when he let us go with him to Tampa when the Tigers played the Devil Rays? We had box seats for every game!"
"Yeah, that was awesome," Phil said, grinning. "Remember when he took us to the All Star Game in Minneapolis?"
"Yeah, I remember we got lost in a shady neighborhood. Dad was so flustered!" Jim laughed.
"Yeah," Phil replied, wiping his eyes, “Dad was pretty fun to be around."
"Yeah. I'll miss him," Jim said.
"Me too."
Everyone sat there quietly for a while. Then Phil j
umped up and ran to the back of the house. Jim heard him digging around in a closet. A few minutes later he returned with a couple of cloth items bundled up. He laid them out on the floor behind everyone.
Jim turned and saw a giant Detroit Tigers flag stretched across the living room. In the middle of it, Phil laid an autographed gray and orange Cecil Fielder jersey with the number 45 emblazoned on the back.
"We have to bury Dad," Jim said.
"Yeah. Tomorrow we're going to procure the neighbor's bass boat, we're going to dress dad in Cecil Fielder's jersey and we are going to wrap him in the Tigers flag. We will have a short ceremony for him on the lake and bury him in the lake," Phil said.
"Sounds good," Jim said.
"Do you guys want help?" Sherry asked.
"No," Phil replied. "This is a task for me and Jim and just us. You guys can stay here and hang out while we pay our last respects to our dad."
"Okay," she said.
"Now, my dad used to keep a solid supply of beer and wine here. It's not water, but it's probably the only safe thing to drink in here," he said walking into the kitchen. "Bingo!" he said triumphantly. Jim heard the clanking of cans and Phil returned to the living room holding two six packs of Red Stripe.
"Rehydrate my friends!" he said, laughing.
Jim grabbed a can and opened it. The distinctive pop sounded delightful. The cold brew quenched his thirst as he took a drink.
"Of course, in the event of the apocalypse dad wouldn't have bottled water!" Phil exclaimed, laughing. "Instead he had Jamaican lager!"
Everyone laughed.
The next morning Jim awoke to the feeling of sunlight on his face. He sat up. Beams of light were filtering through gaps in the plywood sheeting over the windows. Everyone else was still asleep.
He stood up and walked out into the backyard. It was chilly out, but warmer than it had been for the last few weeks. The lake stretched toward the horizon, the blue surface broken here and there by small chunks of ice. Jim turned and looked at the wooden privacy fence surrounding the backyard. It was still intact.
He sat down at the picnic table in the backyard and sighed. He had been pretty optimistic about finding his dad alive. It had been crushing to find him dead. Jim’s father was dead.
He dwelt on that for a moment. His father was dead.
He felt a tear fall.
He shook his head.
Of course, because of this finding, he was no longer optimistic about finding his brother or his sister or his mom or even Steve. Jim dreaded going to Chicago now.
He shook his head again. He had to be strong. For Phil and for the others he had to be strong. He wiped the tears from his eyes. He took in a deep breath and sighed.
"Aren't you cold?" Vik asked, interrupting his thoughts. Jim heard the frozen grass crunching under his friend’s feet.
"I'm fine," he said. "You sure you want to live somewhere cold? You seem to dislike this."
"No, no. I just figured you'd be cold, that's all," Vik said, as he sat down on the bench beside Jim.
"I'm fine."
"How are you doing man? I mean, with your dad and stuff?"
Jim shrugged. "I'm managing I guess."
Vik patted his shoulder. "I know it hurts."
"Yeah."
"I ever tell you how I found out that my parents died?"
Jim shook his head. "I guess it happened before we met, huh?"
"Yeah."
"Huh."
"I had just finished my last final before Winter Break. It was a few weeks before Christmas. My parents flew back to India to visit family for Diwali. They were going to fly home a few days before classes started for the spring semester.
"They called me every day while they were in India. I was back in Houston housesitting for them. I remember they called me before they got on the plane to fly back. They said they would be back around noon the next day.
"My dad's co-worker Dave was supposed to pick them up from the airport. Well, noon came and went and I received no call from them. I assumed their flight had been delayed. At three that afternoon, Dave called me and asked if I had heard from them. I hadn't.
"Then I got the call from the airline. Their plane had disappeared from radar a thousand miles southwest of Midway Island. They were searching for the plane but couldn't make any promises. I knew then that my parents were dead."
"Wow man.”
"Yeah. They found some fragments of the airplane and a few suitcases floating in the ocean about two weeks later, but they never found any large parts of the airplane or bodies. They think it experienced some sort of mechanical failure that caused the plane to break up in the sky. Investigators told me it was extremely likely my parents didn't feel anything.
"So needless to say, I missed the first couple of weeks of class that semester. It was awful. But friend, I can tell you now that you will survive. Eventually the pain will fade enough to no longer be so piercing.” Vik patted his shoulder again.
"Thanks Vikram," Jim said.
"You're welcome friend."
Jim heard the sliding patio door open. He turned and saw Phil and Sherry walk outside.
"Chilly, huh?" Phil asked.
"Yeah. At least all the snow melted," Jim replied.
"We going to do this?"
"With dad?"
"Yes."
"Yeah. Let's do it."
"Okay, go next door and take old man Warren's bass boat."
Jim walked around to the front yard and climbed over the neighbor's chain link fence. As he walked through the backyard he saw a zombie pressing against the glass patio door of the house, its flesh hanging from its bones in places.
Jim walked to the little dock on the shore and climbed into the bass boat. Then he untied it from its mooring and started the motor. He steered it over to his dad's yard and tied it off at the dock.
"See anything over there?" Phil asked as Jim walked up toward the house.
"Yeah, Warren is a zombie now."
"Ha, that guy was always a grouch."
They walked inside. Phil grabbed the flag and the jersey and he and Jim went downstairs to their dad's body. He lay on the concrete floor looking peaceful.
"Help me lift him into an upright position," Phil said.
The brothers wrestled him into an upright position; his body was stiff. Then they put the jersey on him and buttoned it. When they were finished they carefully laid him on the spread out flag and wrapped it around him tightly. When they were finished, they both looked at each other.
"I'll get the shoulders if you get the feet," Phil said.
"Okay."
The brothers lifted their dad’s body up and carried him up the stairs out of the basement. They then carried him out the backdoor and to the bass boat. They lowered him into the boat and then Phil walked over to the shed. He came back with rope and several dumbbells.
"We're going to weigh him down so that he sinks and doesn't float back to shore," Phil said as he climbed into the boat and began wrapping rope around the flag near their father's shoulders and knotting it together.
Jim climbed in and grabbed a length of rope and began tying it around their father's legs and knotting it. He grabbed two of the dumbbells and tied them to the ends of the rope.
"Alright guys," he said. "We will be back soon."
"Be careful," Sherry said.
"You know you have our condolences," Vik said.
"Thanks," Jim said as Phil untied the boat. Jim started the motor and steered them out away from the shore.
It was a clear day and the wind was calm. The brothers motored out to a spot a couple of miles offshore.
"I guess this is a good spot," Phil said.
Jim killed the motor and they coasted to a stop.
"Philip John Gibson was my father," Phil said solemnly. "I am his namesake. He was my father, he was my mentor and he was my friend. He died before his time, but he is honored in death. May he find rest at the bottom of Lake Saint Clair."
"Inde
ed. Philip John Gibson was my father," Jim said solemnly. "He taught me right from wrong, he gave me a love of baseball and film. He was not a perfect father, he made mistakes. But he accepted responsibility for his mistakes and he taught me to do likewise. He is honored in death and may he rest in peace."
Jim and Phil stood up carefully, trying not to tip the boat over. They slowly lifted the body and lowered it into the lake. It sank quickly, bubbles coming up as it descended.
The brothers sat back down in the small boat and sat there at that spot in the lake for a while.
"I guess you listened in on that phone call too, huh?" Phil said finally.
"Which phone call?" Jim asked.
"The one where he called mom and confessed everything to her and took responsibility."
"Yeah. I remember he called and you answered and then ran to your room after mom took the phone and quietly listened in. I did too."
"Man, how old were we when that happened?"
"I was eight. It was right before we moved to New York."
"Wow, so I was ten. It's funny Jim, I remember that call like it was yesterday."
"Me too. He said, 'Now Judith, I know you divorced me because I was unfaithful to you. I confess I committed adultery at least ten times with ten other women.' I remember there was silence and then mom said-"
"Well Philip, it's about time you came clean!'" Phil said.
"Yeah, and then dad apologized and took responsibility! It was crazy!"
"Yeah. He tried Jim, he tried so hard."
"He really did. I mean, I guess many a man has been led astray by his desires."
"Yeah. Let's head back to shore."
They arrived back at shore around noon. Vik ran up to greet them. "Hey! I think when we leave we should take your dad's Lincoln!" he yelled as Phil tied the boat off.
"Ha! He hasn't been buried for a day even and you're wanting us to divide up his assets!" Phil yelled, laughing.
He and Jim climbed out of the boat and followed Vik to the garage. Their dad's orange Lincoln Navigator sat in the middle of the room. Phil examined it.
"Well Vik, I guess you're right. The Lincoln has a full tank of gas, compared to the Jeep's quarter of a tank, and it is more spacious inside," he said.
Darkness and The Grave: A Zombie Novel Page 28
