The Last Letter Read online

  THE LAST LETTER

  WB Welch and Tory Hunter

  Copyright © 2019 by WB Welch and Tory Hunter

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  ASIN: B07SX622BY

  We would like to dedicate this book to the wonderful writing community on Twitter.

  Without you all, this book may not exist.

  1

  Dear Morrigan,

  I can’t believe I’m writing this. I thought it was over. I’ve been trapped in my attic for two weeks. I think two weeks. I don’t even know what day it is. It was pitch dark up there. Hot, dry, itchy. So itchy. I had to sleep on old, splintery plywood without so much as a pillow, and the insulation dust is still eating me alive.

  I should have vacuumed up there while there was still power. I knew that was my last resort. Once the restaurant shut down, and I started hearing constant gunfire in the distance, I stopped leaving the house, and I lowered the attic ladder so if something started happening here on our street, I could climb up there quickly and hide. I thought I would be hiding from criminals, though. I thought this epidemic was killing so many people that society was in collapse and now everyone with a criminal inclination was having a free-for-all.

  When I woke up to squealing tires and shouting and gunshots outside the house, I didn’t even take the time to peek out the window. I grabbed a gallon jug of water and my backpack and climbed into the attic, drawing up the ladder and closing the door behind me.

  I was up there for half an hour when I heard a window break. It was the kitchen window, the one behind the table. It’s low and you can step right in from the deck. I could hear it growling and thrashing around. Then another came in. Before long, it sounded like the house was filled with them. I had no weapons, no way to escape, and nothing but a gallon of water and a little bit of food. That awful growling and moaning never let up, not for a second. They sounded angry. Slamming into the walls, knocking things over. I could feel the house shaking, and I could tell more were coming in every day. It had to have been because they could smell me. After a while, the sound of them became white noise, just a constant, nightmarish soundtrack set to blackness. All I could think about was being eaten alive, about the floor giving way or one of them having the wherewithal to pull the drawstring and lower the attic door. Do you think they can climb? Would they have piled on top of each other until one of them could reach?

  I started having these spells of intense vertigo. It felt like the Earth was spinning, like the house was going to tip over and spill me out onto the ground. At some point, I ran out of water. Then I stopped sweating. I puked until there was nothing left in my stomach. Then the gagging started. God, the smell. The putrid sweetness of rotting human flesh, made all the more potent by the heat. I’ve never smelled anything so awful. It took my breath away. It made me want to die.

  Maybe that’s why I finally crawled over to the attic door and tried to take a peek. I only intended to lower it just a crack, but it fell open. Three of them stood right below, all young men. They paused in unison and turned to gaze up at me. Then they went mad.

  That’s why Jacob came. He just happened to be passing by and heard them getting all riled up. He told me he knew there had to be some “warm flesh in here.” His words. He even chuckled about it. This was after he killed them all and opened the trap door and came up the ladder shining a flashlight in my face and screaming at me, demanding I say something or else he would shoot me.

  I couldn’t talk. I don’t know how to describe it, Morrigan. It was like I’d forgotten how. Words didn’t come to mind. I couldn’t formulate a thought. Everything was just heat and pain and blinding light.

  Lucky for me, I started wailing. I didn’t even realize I was crying at first. I just thought I couldn’t breathe. I felt so numb--wait, how can you “feel” numb? Detachment, I guess I should call it. In any case, my sobbing was enough to convince Jacob that I hadn’t turned into one of the reanimated dead, and suddenly, out of a haze of semi-consciousness, I felt him dragging me across the attic floor. I was so confused. I thought he was going to feed me to them. Then his voice broke through, and I started to understand words again. I realized I was being rescued. What an uncommon life experience it is to be saved by another. I’m not so sure I wanted it. In that moment, I think I wanted to die.

  I’m sorry. I know I’ve said that twice. I don’t want to waste ink scribbling anything out. I only have the one pen. I’m fine. I guess. I mean . . . things are better. I’m not covered in insulation fibers. By some miracle, there’s still running water, and I took a long, long bath. There’s light now, too. Air. Food. I can stand up and walk around. I’m not so dehydrated that my throat feels like it’s slowly sealing shut.

  I’m scaring myself. I need to think about something else.

  I never knew Jacob’s name, just that he’s the guy who was always running shirtless through the neighborhood twice a day, once in the morning, once around dinnertime. He always waved at me when I passed him on my way to work. Not a friendly wave necessarily. More like an obligatory and slightly annoyed wave. I always felt like he thought he owned the streets, and the rest of us were using it with his reluctant permission.

  Or maybe my perception is warped. Maybe I’m just a cynical and paranoid person.

  Anyway, Jacob slaughtered something like fifteen of the dead without firing a gun, then pushed the couch in front of the door and the refrigerator in front of the broken window. Then he came and made me crawl down out of the attic. I lay on the floor crying and staring into the eyes of a dead girl while he boarded up my windows and dragged all the dead out the back door, piling them up on the deck. Then he boarded up both doors, picked me up and put me on the couch, gave me food and candles and a lighter, told me a bunch of things, most of which I can’t remember, and then crawled out that high window in Stacy’s bedroom and left me by myself.

  Now here I am, sitting on the couch, writing this letter by candlelight. The couch is still blocking the door. It feels weird being right in front of it, but this sure beats lying on plywood, getting caked in fiberglass dust.

  Since beginning to write this letter, I’m remembering more of what he told me. That he’s going to start bringing supplies to everyone in the neighborhood who’s still alive. There’s Herb, the old man who lives next door to me, and a cop down the street--the brick house with the blue light over the front door. I think he said there’s a couple somewhere closer to your house. He said he can outrun the dead and that he has a four-wheeler. I remember hearing it all now, but I was so delirious at the time that I couldn’t distinguish between what was real and what was happening inside my head.

  This feels like a dream, doesn’t it?

  Now that I’ve regained some semblance of motor function, I can’t sit still. I can’t relax. Jacob said I’m okay as long as I’m quiet and to go back up to the attic if they do break in. I’m sitting here terrified that even the slightest noise will draw one of them to the door, and then more will come, and any minute, I’ll be back up there. I’m having to block my sneezes, and it hurts. You know how I sneeze a lot. All that fiberglass I inhaled, the dehydration. My throat is raw and itchy, and trying not to cough is making my eyes water. The plywood covering the windows and the two-by-fours barring the doors seem inadequate against more than one or two of the dead at a time, but I just can’t bear being in that attic again.
>
  I’m so glad to be able to write to you, Morrigan. I’m afraid, and I’m all alone. When everything happened, Stacy left to go find her family, even though they were saying on the news that the interstates were clogged. I tried to get her to stay, but she wouldn’t listen. No big surprise there. Stacy never listened to me. She was always looking for advice about her boyfriend--her never-ending series of boyfriends. So many late, wine-fueled nights of crying and laying out her problems, stopping here and there to answer the guy’s texts, and the night always ended with resolve, an agreed upon solution, which, the next day, she either forgot or deliberately defied.

  I hope she made it somewhere safe. The not knowing is the worst part. Not knowing about my family, all my friends, everyone at the restaurant, my regulars. The people I knew growing up. Every stranger I’ve ever passed on the street. Even my ex-boyfriends. Funny, at my worst times, I wished death upon them. Now it seems so cruel to have thought that way.

  How did this happen? How can any of this be real? When is it going to end? Are we going to make it through this? What will be left on the other side? What was the point of anything? Human civilization has been building for ten-thousand years only to be wiped out in less than a month?

  Before the news stopped broadcasting and the power went out, they were saying every continent. Every single continent. Maybe that doesn’t include Antarctica. Maybe there are a dozen people down there who’ve lost communication with the rest of the world and have no idea what’s happening. Maybe there are small islands that weren’t affected, populated by people who never had any contact with the outside world to begin with. Wouldn’t it be great to have been born in a place like that? To be there now?

  How’s your dog, by the way? I’m sorry, his name escapes me. I had this moment after Jacob left, and I sat there in the quiet, when I couldn’t even remember my own name. I almost had a panic attack, convincing myself I’d somehow been infected. Maybe a scratch on my arm brushed up against the wall where . . . something, blood or saliva, had smeared. I thought maybe this is how it starts: your memory fades.

  And then what? Darkness? Nothingness? Does a shadow of consciousness remain? Just enough that you can feel the agony of insatiable hunger?

  Sorry, I’m rambling. I haven’t talked to anyone in so long. How are you? Is your house secure? Do you have your guns? Don’t worry, I know you’re going to hound me about my own supplies. You gripe at me when I don’t have enough food in the fridge or when you find pizza boxes in the trash. What I wouldn’t give for a slice of pizza right now.

  Here’s what Jacob left for me, because I know you’ll ask:

  5 cans of chicken noodle soup

  3 cans of pinto beans

  2 cans of pear halves

  1 jar of applesauce

  2 cans of corn

  5 candy bars (omg)

  5 sticks of beef jerky

  He said he would bring more. He said he goes out every day, that he can’t stand to stay cooped up in his house.

  Meanwhile, here I am, weak and helpless and scared out of my mind. There’s no way I could fight off one of those things. I probably don’t have it in me to try. Stacy had to open all the pickle jars around here.

  I miss Stacy so much. I’m worried about her. Why did she go? The odds are terrible that she made it somewhere. It’s only through sheer luck that I’m alive, and I stayed put. I understand her wanting to be with her family, but driving off into all that chaos? She left me. She left me to die here.

  Oh my God. As I was writing that last line, I heard a car crash. It hit a tree. There’s a little sliver between one of the plywood boards and the wall where I can see out the window. I wonder if you heard it too, if you’re watching it right now. I can barely see from here. I don’t know if the driver escaped. I sure hope it’s no one we know. Or knew.

  Okay, I’m getting freaked out. I just heard someone screaming, and now more of them are coming up the street. The fire is drawing them in. I hope your house is secure. They’re coming your direction. I think the fire is close to your house.

  If this letter actually reaches you, I guess it’ll be two days before I hear back. He’ll deliver it to you tomorrow, and then you’ll have to wait for him to return and pick up your response.

  Until then, I’m going to try and get some sleep. I need to blow out these candles. If I can see out, that means they can see in. The burning car actually gives me some comfort. The way it’s lighting up the neighborhood, I doubt they’ll notice a little sliver of dim candlelight.

  I have the attic door lowered, though, just in case.

  With love,

  Laura

  2

  Dear Laura,

  I should have called you. I should have called you before I boarded up my house, before this got bad. I just wasn’t…I was only thinking about my family.

  My parents and my pregnant sister are in Ohio. They stocked up on food and boarded themselves in just as their town ran out of gas. Last time I talked to them, they had yet to see a dead for themselves, but they said their neighbors were going crazy enough even without the virus hitting. “Panic changes people,” my dad said as I listened to my mom sniffle, then blow her nose in the background.

  I’m glad you’re alive. That’s a good place to start. You and I can’t reach everyone, but at least we can talk to one another for now. Thank God for Jacob. Even if you hadn’t dropped the hatch, you couldn’t have kept going on like that much longer. I can’t imagine what it was like, existing in the dark and hearing the deads rummage around beneath you. It’s bad enough hearing them bang around outside. I’m terrified they’ll get in. They sound so strong.

  Did the bath help your skin feel any better? If you have some acetone, use it to wipe the places that sting. Acetone helps break down the fiberglass particles.

  Heathcliff is well. He’s wagging his long, golden tail at me right now. He has no qualms with the apparent apocalypse (Is that what we’re in, an apocalypse?). He’s happy to spend his days jogging the inner perimeter with me, lying in my lap, and eating human food. We ran out of kibble about a week ago. The hardest part has been bathroom breaks. He’s so well housebroken, he didn’t understand me telling him to pee inside. I thought he might poison himself from trying to hold it too long.

  In other news, what the fuck? I assume you haven’t heard what they are actually calling this. I was at the fire station when news started coming in locally. There were reports of seemingly random acts of violence, often between family members, and rabid people breaking into homes and cars. All emergency vehicles had to roll out at once. Before we could even see our first call through, we had dozens more waiting. We responded to as many as we could, but we were overwhelmed. Our Chief radioed in before long and told us to go home. He said we were past the tipping point. There were too many to save, it was spreading too quickly, and we didn’t want to be out in the thick of it when the military arrived--he stressed that part

  I did hear from a co-worker, Chance, that it started up north. He called me before the lines went out, said he has a friend whose dad retired from the CDC but still has some contacts there. They think it started in either Canada or Alaska, of all places.

  I’m barricaded in. I had some two-by-fours and plywood in the basement I intended to use to build a small shed out back. I didn’t plan a way in and out when I was boarding up the place, though, so I had to toss a knotted rope to Jacob from my north window on the second floor. It’s funny. It had been quiet, so when Jacob came knocking, I was ready to blow a hole through the door. A dead one saw him climb in the window, then spent the next two hours trying to find his own way in. We could hear him sniffing and clawing and banging around. Jacob decided to wait it out while I wrote to you. He said he would try to bring your letter by tomorrow.

  Aside from the accident yesterday, I haven’t had much trouble. I make sure to keep quiet. Heathcliff is well-trained and doesn’t bark mindlessly.

  The car that crashed into my tree…it was horrible. Ther
e was a mom and young girl in there, a toddler. They survived the crash, but by the time I dropped my rope to try and help, the deads were already breaking into the car.

  Laura, I’ve seen a lot over the years, but that was by far the most horrific thing I’ve ever witnessed. The woman was turned around, desperately fumbling with the child’s buckle while deads bit at her neck and arms. Someone came running out of the darkness and leaned in through the broken back window to get to the child. I stopped watching at that point. I just couldn’t. They were surrounded. The screams are what I remember the most. They were so shrill…all I could do was hold myself and cry.

  I didn’t slee[tears smudge end of sentence]

  You’re right. Not knowing is the hardest part. I wish I had a way to keep in touch with my parents and sister, Robin. They said they were getting the house boarded up. Robin went to my parents’ since her husband was out of town. They live in a remote part of Ohio, and the worst of it hadn’t hit their region yet. They didn’t believe me, how bad it was, until I sent them a link to news outlets videos in other cities. It surprise me how long it took for the event to be announced nationally. Maybe the doctors thought they would be able to contain it, more maybe the government didn’t want to declare it an outbreak for fear that chaos would ensue.

  After the car crash, I sat up half the night thinking of my sister. She was due a few days after the power went out. What a time to have a newborn. Of course, even in the midst of all this, the last time I spoke to my parents, they wanted to know if I had been dating anyone. They’re relentless with the grandchildren talk. Now I’d give anything to hear them lecture me on the importance of family…I was really excited to have a niece…

  Anyway, I can’t dwell. Everyone here needs to keep their head on straight. Jacob doing runs is swell, but it would be best if we could somehow get together into one house. It would save Jacob the trouble of having to deliver to multiple locations. These deads are smarter and faster than I would have given zombies credit for, and they seem to have a keen ability to hear and smell. If we could initiate a distraction, maybe we could pull it off. I’ll spitball some ideas with Jacob and let you know what we come up with.