by Scott W Cook
Of course… he hadn’t expected the attempt to succeed.
President Abraham Lincoln was tired. A kind of deep bone weariness that was usually reserved for men who’d spent far too long in the battlefield. In the latter half of the next century, the term Post Traumatic Stress Disorder would be coined for what the president was feeling.
While he hadn’t fought in the war directly, Abe Lincoln had taken the emotional weight of being the man responsible for over six hundred thousand deaths upon his broad shoulders. Yet even this tall, powerful and brilliant man couldn’t support such a weight forever… not without some cracks in his armor at least.
Yet his personal pain wasn’t simply that of a nation torn asunder and then put back together at terrible cost. His loss was very personal as well. His beloved son Willy had died recently and taken a piece of his father’s heart with him.
On the other hand, while all of this weight lay on his shoulders, Lincoln did feel a glimmer of relief and even further, that perhaps some of the weight would be lifted soon. Despite the tragedies, both personal and national… he’d won. He’d guided his broken nation and reassembled the pieces into what would surely be stronger from the break. He could be proud of what he’d achieved, although it was more likely that he would minimize his contribution as was his way.
When he heard the rustle of the curtain behind him, however, he knew that he’d never get the chance to see what would become of his beloved country. He didn’t know how he knew… he just knew… He knew that it wasn’t Bill Parker stepping into the booth.
There was no time to react. He felt the muzzle of a weapon press up against the back of his head and heard the sound of thunder roar in his ears. As his consciousness faded, Abe retreated into his mind and into the past…
It was the summer of 1827. Abe, a robust and powerful young man of eighteen was looking for work in order to support his family. It was the custom of the time that all young men send their wages back to their father’s until the age of twenty-one.
Abe rankled at this. He had never held a high opinion of his father’s work ethic nor his luck. It galled the young man that even after growing up and striking out on his own, he still had to cow tow to his virtually penniless father.
So when James Gentry, a prosperous farmer that Abe had known since his childhood offered him a job, he jumped at the chance. Gentry had been an acquaintance of Thomas Lincoln, Abe’s father, for over a decade. In Abe’s view, James Gentry was about as unlike Thomas Lincoln as any man could be. He was successful, hardworking and a true gentleman.
Gentry suggested that Abe and his own son, Allen, carry a load of goods down to New Orleans on a flat boat. Gentry would provide the boys with supplies and pay their steamboat fair back up to Indiana.
Abe couldn’t refuse. Not only was it a chance to earn money for his family, it was a chance to get away from his father as well. It was a chance to see more of the world and to strike out on an adventure. This spoke to Abe’s frontier spirit in a way he couldn’t refuse.
So in late May, after constructing their flat boat on their own, the two young men struck out down the Illinois River and into the mighty Mississippi.
It was an extraordinary time for Abe. He truly felt as though he was finally the master of his own fate. He and Allen would steer their boat through the winding channels of the great river, often reveling in the total silence of the wilderness. On other occasions, they’d stare wide eyed at the cities they crossed through such as St. Louis. Then there were the great steamboats.
The young men were awed by these marvels of modern science. The great multi-decked side and stern wheelers that plowed against the currents and carried passengers out of the deep south and into the upper regions of the great river.
These stately behemoths dwarfed Abe’s forty foot flat boat. He’d stare rapturously as a three hundred foot four story steamer would chug past them, throwing up great clouds of steam exhaust from its stacks. Passengers would line the railings and wave and call to the two men as they floated by.
It was somewhere near the end of June, more than two-thirds of the way through their nearly three month trip when their adventure took a dark turn. As was their custom, Abe and Allen would find a place to anchor or tie up at night. It was possible to navigate the muddy Mississippi by lantern light, but it was difficult. One could easily float out of a deep channel and onto a mud bank without warning.
The men were somewhere in northern Louisiana. They found a small cove off the main flow of the river and guided their boat along the bank and secured it to a tree. They were near the edge of a wooded area, but a little brisk walk inland before the sun went down showed that they were no more than a half mile from the edge of cultivated land. Probably a cotton or grain plantation.
“Seems quiet enough, Abe,” Allen said as they made their way back to the boat.
“Sure does,” Abe said happily, “I’m itching to get the stove lit and fry us up a mess of pork and beans. I’m starved.”
Allen laughed, “When aren’t you starved, Abe?”
Abe grinned, “When I’m sleeping.”
Allen emitted a snorting laugh, “I don’t know about that! I’ve heard that belly of yours rumble in the dark.”
Abe laughed with his friend, “It’s only fair, Gentry… I’ve heard you rumble in the dark and by the smell, it wasn’t your belly I heard!”
Both boys lost it then, laughing deep in their bellies and clutching their knees to keep from falling over. Their good spirits drained away quickly as they stepped out of the foliage along the bank and saw movement on the deck of their boat.
“Damn thieves!” Allen cursed.
“We’ve got the drop on em’,” Abe said, drawing his big axe from its sheath on his back.
Abe never went anywhere on shore without it. Not only was he an expert woodsman, and the axe could cut a few days’ worth of firewood in no time… it was a great means of defense as well. He’d only had to brandish it once so far on this trip, and the sight of this extremely tall and broad shouldered giant wielding what looked to be a battle axe was enough to make a whole gang of men run for the hills.
The sun had set but enough of the twilight remained for Abe and Allen to see that two women were huddled on the deck while two men were working at the ropes that were secured to sturdy trees along the bank. The people were dressed in shabby clothes and had dark skin.
“Negros!” Allen hissed.
“Probably escaped slaves,” Abe agreed. He stepped from the cover of the woods and held his axe out so it was clearly visible in the dwindling light.
“Stop what you’re doing!” Abe roared at the two men.
Allen rushed past and up onto the deck. He didn’t have any kind of weapon but it didn’t appear as if he’d need one. The two women just cowered behind a pile of crates.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Abe demanded as he strode toward the two slave men. They stared back at him with wide eyes and half open mouths.
“Suh…” one of the men stammered, “Da’ devil in dem woods…”
“It appears the devil is at the edge of them, as well,” Abe said sternly, “This is our boat you’re trying to steal. What do you have to say for yourselves?”
“We didn’t mean nothin’, suh,” The other man said in a quavering voice, “We seen this boat here and it be empty, so we’s figgered it was left is all.”
Abe frowned at them, “you’re lying to me.”
“Please, suh!” one of the women called, “They’s somethin’ out there… somethin’ evil… and it’s comin’!”
Abe was about to demand silence when he heard something in the woods. Something was coming all right. Probably overseers. He hadn’t seen slavery in person yet, but what little he knew of it he didn’t like. These people were clearly frightened.
Fear of the beating they might receive for running away was bad enough, but even in the low lighting, he could see that the two men were literally quaking with terror.
What the devil
was this?
“Abe…” Allen said, “I think they’re truly terrified. These two girls are in tears and shivering like it was winter.”
The sound in the woods was growing louder. Abe didn’t know why, but there was something in the sound that he didn’t like. There was something… malevolent in it. At first he didn’t know why he felt this way, and then it hit him.
Someone, or a group of people perhaps, was methodically plowing through the trees and brush. Yet it wasn’t the careful sound of men searching. As a woodsman, Abe knew the difference between carefully picking your way through a trail and simply blundering through the growth.
And that’s what this was. Something was slowly but steadily moving toward them without care or even an attempt at stealth. Whoever it or they were, they weren’t afraid of being heard nor were they afraid of chasing away their quarry.
They just… came unbidden and heedless.
“Get on board,” Abe said to the men, “you’ll be safe.”
The two men looked at him questioningly.
“Go on!” Abe barked, “It’s all right. Who’s after you?”
“Not a who,” The first man who spoke said, “They ain’t men… at least not the kind of men we ever seen. They’s something terrible about them, suh… You needs to get on here with us and shove off!”
Abe waved them off and hid himself behind a nearby gnarled old elm tree. The sound of the approaching people… it had to be more than one… was growing ominously louder. Abe shouldered his axe and waited.
They burst from the trees less than ten yards from his position. Three figures, perhaps men although it was difficult to tell at that point. They moved in a jerking fashion, as if they had some sort of trouble with their legs or feet. Although relatively slow, the figures slouched steadily toward the flat boat.
When they caught sight of the people on board, the three shambling people raised their arms and began to moan in a decidedly hideous and unsettling manor. Abe felt a chill run up and down his spine. He didn’t know what it was, but he certainly knew something was terribly awry with these folks.
“Devils!” One of the woman shrieked.
This only seemed to excite the three pursuers. They moved closer to the raft, their stumbling and uncoordinated movements, perhaps comical in another circumstance, were frightening. There was deadly intent in them.
“Stop!” Abe shouted as he stepped from behind his tree.
It worked, momentarily. The three figures, only silhouettes now against the dull silver of reflected dusk on the river, seemed to take notice of him and pause in confusion.
“Go back where you came from!” Abe growled, brandishing his axe and stepping closer, “Or by God, you’ll wish you had!”
The three people turned to him in unison and began to snarl and moan once again. They seemed not in the least dissuaded by his size or his weapon.
“They’s the dead, missuh!” The second woman pleaded with Abe, “You’s got to run!”
What was this nonsense? Abe thought to himself, Dead?
He knew that some of these transplanted Africans, or more accurately their descendants, practiced barbaric religions that involved spirits and macabre rituals. It was perfect foolishness, of course. Yet watching his three guests shuffle toward him in their remorseless way almost made him believe the slave girl.
“I say it again,” Abe said sternly when the three were only a few yards away, “You will stop and remove yourself from the vicinity or I will make you regret staying.”
“Abe!” Allen shouted from the deck, “For God’s sake! This isn’t right! Just get up here and let’s go!”
This distracted the three again, but they were too close to Abe now to care much about a distant sound. As they once again came on, Abe began to detect a sour rotten stink emanating from them. It was as if they’d crawled from a swamp recently and were coated in all manner of vile things.
Or the scent of the grave… Abe thought to himself as another shiver ran through him.
They were on him then. One of the men latched onto Abe’s left forearm with his teeth. The bite was incredibly strong, much stronger than he thought it should have been. Abe yanked his arm free, a good portion of his woolen shirt tearing away. A trickle of something warm ran down toward his wrist.
The man had broken skin!
Abe’s fury rose and as he took two long strides back, he swung his axe not with all he had, but with a good portion of it. The blade bit into the man’s chest and buried itself as deep as the handle, shattering the man’s breast plate and cleaving his heart in two for certain.
And yet… and yet he didn’t fall! He didn’t even cry out in pain, in fact.
Even as Abe yanked the blade of his axe free, the man… the thing kept coming after him! This was impossible! Unless… unless the slave woman’s words were true.
“The head, suh!” One of the men cried, “You gotta get em’ in the head!”
Abe didn’t question this. He swung his axe again, a good up and over arc and the blade crashed right through the forehead of the thing that had bitten him. It’s moaning stopped and it immediately crumpled to the dirt.
Abe deftly side-stepped a lunge from another one of the abominations and this time nearly cleaved its head in two with a powerful sideways swing. As he watched this one drop, the third grabbed him with both hands and tried to draw the much larger Lincoln in.
By this time, there was considerable shouting from the flat boat. Abe was grappling with his assailant, who like his friend was trying to bite him. In a display of raw power fueled by his rage, Lincoln roughly spun the man, grasped him by his ragged collar and belt and picked him up bodily over his head and hurled him into a nearby tree.
“Sweet Jesus, Abe!” Allen shouted as he ran up with a club in his hands, “No wonder the Clary’s Grove boys left you alone!”
Abe was huffing with exertion, “He’s still moving, Allen!”
Gentry brought the heavy wooden club down on the thing’s head and repeatedly bashed it until both young men heard the sickening crunch of a skull caving in on itself.
“Are you all right, Abe?” Allen asked from the darkness.
“Mostly,” Abe admitted, “One of them bit me. Drew a little blood, although not bad. Let’s get back aboard and take a look with the lantern.”
As the two men clambered aboard the flat boat and into the dim circle of light cast by the lantern that Allen had hung outside the door to the deck shelter, one of the slaves stepped forward, “You bleeding, suh!”
“One of those… fiends… bit me,” Abe said, “When I hit him in the chest with my axe… he didn’t fall. He didn’t even cry out in pain…”
“They zombies, suh,” the other man said knowingly, “they the dead that’s been brought back. They don’t feels no pain. They don’t think. Just come after you… and if they catch you… they eat you to da bone.”
“Abe looked down at his forearm. The bite wound was small, just a minor break in the skin. It was big enough for a trickle of his blood to wind its way down to his hand, but nothing serious, “It sounds like superstitious nonsense… but after this… I believe you. What’s your name, sir?”
The man seemed taken aback by this politeness, “I… I’s Sam Thomas, suh. This is my brother Jim. These here are our wives, Ota May and Rebecca.”
“Well,” Abe said, shaking Sam’s hand, “You’re safe now. You’re welcome to stay with us… although we’re headed for New Orleans.”
“Suh…” Jim said, “You been bit.”
Abe shrugged. Allen offered him a wet rag and he began to clean off the blood and pressed the rag to the wound, “Nothing fatal. I’m fine.”
The two men looked to each other, then the women and then back at Abe, “You not unduhstand, suh… they’s diseased. When a man get bit by one of them things… he gets sick and dies…”
“And then rise as one of them,” Ota May finished solemnly, “It always happen.”
“Abe…” Allen breathed.<
br />
Before Abe could respond, there came another rustling from the trees. The four slaves huddled together in fear. Abe groaned and grabbed up his axe.
“Hello!” A man called out from the darkness, “You on the flat boat… are you all right?”
“Thank the lord!” Rebecca exclaimed, clasping her hands together.
“It’s not the slave overseer?” Allen asked.
“No, suh,” Rebecca said, “that’s reverend Butler. A kinder white man there never was.”
“We’re here,” Abe said into the darkness, “Please show yourselves. We’ve had… some excitement this evening.”
Out of the darkness that nearly completely gripped the land and certainly the tree line came two men. One was tall, although still a few inches shorter than Abe and the other was of medium height. Both men were broad in the shoulder and looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties.
“I see you were attacked,” the shorter of the two men said.
“And that you defeated the attackers,” The other man said in what sounded like a foreign accent although Abe couldn’t place it.
“I’m reverend John Butler,” The man with the black hair and engaging eyes said, “And this is my friend, Thad Louis. Were any of you hurt?”
“Oh, reverend!” Ota May emoted, “This fine man was bitten defendin’ us.”
Butler smiled at her, “I’m glad to see the four of you are all right.”
“What bout him?” Jim asked and pointed to Abe’s arm.
“I’ll handle that,” Butler said, pulling a flask from a satchel he carried, “What’s your name, young man?”
Abe raised an eyebrow. While Butler was clearly ten years his senior at the very least, he wasn’t so much older to think of Abe as a young man by comparison. Abe shrugged, “my name is Abraham. Abraham Lincoln. This is my friend, Allen Gentry.”
“Lincoln?” Louis said with mild surprise, “how fortuitous…”
“What’s that mean?” Allen asked with suspicion.
Butler only smiled, “We’ve heard the name Lincoln. Named for your grandfather, if I’m not mistaken, isn’t that correct? Please drink this, Mr. Lincoln. It’s very important that you do in order to counteract the zombie disease.”
