Memory Road

Part One

Every man is an omnibus in which his ancestors ride.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

1

1998

Creatures crawl in search of blood…

David Stone couldn’t get Michael Jackson’s Thriller out of his head. It just ran over and over through his brain like a long-distance runner trying to break a new record.

‘You okay?’

David looked to his right. Jimmy Schuster sat in the driving seat, looking back at him, his blonde hair partially covering one eye. ‘You sure this is the only way?’ David asked.

‘No. I just wanted to see if you’d go along. Course I’m sure.’

David looked out through the windscreen at the sign above the gates. It was dark, but the wrought iron sign stood silhouetted by the dreary moon that hung behind it in the night sky. Longview Cemetery.

‘I dunno,’ David whispered.

‘You dunno what?’ Jimmy fired back. ‘We’re going to be famous. We won’t even have to finish college. If this… when this works, we’ll be on the cover of every science magazine in the world. Hell, we’ll even make the cover of Vogue. Think of all the girls that will want to date you then.’

David sat there, trying to decide, and also trying to stop his hands from shaking.

And those whoever shall be found, without the soul for getting down…

That damned song again. He didn’t even like Michael Jackson. But he had run out of the room when he first saw the Thriller video when he was six. That had been twelve years ago, and it had given him nightmares, but now it was coming back to haunt him again. The fact that he was about to enter a cemetery in the dead of night was probably a good reason this memory had floated to the surface of his mind.

And rot inside a corpse’s shell…

‘Let’s do it,’ David said. Jimmy nodded, doubt creeping across his face now that the actual moment had arrived.

They scaled the wall easily, but had trouble finding the shovels they had tossed over before starting their climb. Jimmy pulled a pen light from his pocket and found his shovel after a minute or so. David’s shovel had taken a weird bounce and ended up lying against an old headstone. He reached for it, half expecting a flesh-torn zombie’s hand to reach up through the soil to grab his arm and drag him down into the grave.

Of course, nothing happened.

Although David had been to this particular cemetery many times – albeit for completely different reasons and at daytime – it just wasn’t the same at night. They didn’t use the pen light for fear of attracting unwanted attention. Instead, they wove their way around the graves under the light of the moon. David knew the location of the grave they were looking for, but in the murky darkness he walked straight past it and had to retrace his steps when they reached the outer wall of the cemetery. The Michael Jackson song had finally vacated his racing mind, but the tight knot in his gut had doubled in intensity since entering the graveyard. And, as the two teenagers gazed down on the grave they had come to rob, they felt they were taking part in some strange B-movie. I was a teenage graverobber, David thought, and then he realised it was the title to a Stephen King short story. Great, I’m in a graveyard and now I’m thinking about Stephen King. Perfect.

They dug down into the grave for three hours before hitting something other than dirt. Jimmy’s shovel made a dull thud as it collided with, and then broke through, a rotting coffin. David, who was out of the hole at the time, moving the excavated dirt back from the edge, froze when he heard the noise. The boys looked at each other. It was too dark to see any detail on their faces, but they both knew that the other was struck with terror now. As if on cue, a gust of wind wound its way through the graveyard like a fright of ghosts had entered the realm of the dead. The wind whistled through the trees and both boys felt the hairs all over their young bodies stand to attention.

Jimmy hoisted himself out of the grave and dusted himself off. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘Let’s get it done. It’s getting late and we have to fill this thing back in before sunrise.’ His voice broke on the last word he spoke, making him sound like a cliché from a horror movie.

David didn’t move. Jimmy stared at him for a moment, saying nothing. David finally jumped into the silence. ‘Couldn’t we just take a piece of his coat or something?’

‘No. We discussed this, David. We need a tissue sample. You know that.’

David reluctantly sat down at the edge of the grave, leaving his legs dangle inside. For a moment he heard Michael Jackson in his head again and thought he saw Jackson coming up out of the grave toward him, the zombie version of Jackson.

Cause this is thriller…

Sliding down into the grave, David landed on the coffin and was glad that it took his weight. If his leg had broken through, he thought that might have been the end of this expedition. For him anyway.

‘Give me the pen light,’ he instructed Jimmy. Jimmy handed the light to him and stood at the edge of the grave, watching. David thought he looked like a guy getting ready to bolt.

David bent down, turned on the light. He searched the surface of the coffin for the breach Jimmy had made with his shovel. As he traced the light along the decayed wood, he brushed away any remaining soil. The light found its quarry about halfway down the coffin’s lid. The hole was just about big enough for David’s hand to fit through, but he didn’t reach inside. Instead, he turned to Jimmy again. ‘I don’t think I can do this.’ The light from the torch danced on the coffin, in sync with the hammering beat of David’s heart.

‘There’s nothing in there. It’s just a bag of bones. Now, grab one and let’s go.’

‘If it’s so easy, why don’t you come down and do it?’

‘Hey, he’s your grandfather, not mine.’

This statement didn’t help David at all. It had quite the opposite effect really. He felt a shiver run down his spine. His mother had always said that you got a shiver down your back because someone had just walked over your grave. He wondered now how his mother would feel about her son desecrating the grave of her father.

After a few moments of silence, David inhaled deeply, held it, and pushed his hand in through the break in the coffin. He didn’t have to search around for long. His hand wrapped around that of his grandfather’s, and David felt the air rush back out of him, accompanied by a low moaning sound.

‘You okay?’ Jimmy asked.

David looked up to see that Jimmy had taken a step back from the open grave. ‘I’m holding my dead grandfather’s hand. How okay could I be right now?’

‘Go on. Pull it out. Break off a finger or something.’

David winced at Jimmy’s words. He bit his lip and started to pull. At first there was resistance and David knew he wasn’t really trying. He was just holding the hand really. The hand of a grandfather he had never met. A hand he was holding for the first time right now. Pleased to meet you, Granddad.

CRAAACK!

The rotted hand came away from the wrist making a snapping sound that David felt deep down inside. He felt like his hand had broken and he would pull his arm out to see a stump where his hand should be, spurting blood everywhere. He fell backwards onto the coffin, leaving the hand go. Another, louder crack reverberated around the enclosed space. The coffin was about to collapse under him. In the next few seconds, he would be lying next to his dead grandfather. He looked down at the break in the coffin and saw his grandfather’s hand hanging there, fingers pointing up towards him as if it was still attached to the body. It was as if his dead grandfather was pointing at him. ‘How dare you desecrate my grave, boy. You’ll rot down here with me for your sins. We all rot down here.’ David heard his grandfather’s voice in his head like he was whispering into his ear.

David looked up to see Jimmy’s hand reaching down towards his face. He didn’t hesitate. He picked up the rotting hand and then grabbed Jimmy’s sweat soaked one. Jimmy started pulling him up and out of the hole. Although his impulse was to drop it, he held on to his dead grandfather’s hand. The sides of the grave started to give way as David desperately tried to use his feet to climb out. The two of them nearly went tumbling back down into the darkness. David reached up and tossed the withered hand out onto the grass. He then used both hands to climb up, and eventually managed to crawl out of the grave.

They sat at the graveside for a few minutes, both out of breath. Silence descended around them and the creepiness of the cemetery seemed to multiply with each silent moment’s passing. David looked eastward and thought he saw the first inklings of morning arriving. He looked at Jimmy and could see him more clearly now. In a few minutes dawn would break.

‘Quick, we have to fill in the grave. It’s getting bright.’ David jumped up and gazed down at the detached, rotten hand that lay on the grass. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a re-sealable sandwich bag. Turning it inside out, David used it as a glove and picked up the hand. He reversed the bag and sealed it inside, glad he didn’t have to touch it again. He placed the sandwich bag on a nearby headstone and returned to Jimmy who had already started shovelling dirt back into the grave.

2

In the three days since their grave robbing expedition David Stone and Jimmy Schuster had worked around the clock on the rotting hand. On the morning of the third day, after pulling an all-nighter, David had hit the jackpot. He was alone in the college laboratory – it was spring break – and he danced around the tables proclaiming himself to be a genius. And maybe he was. David had managed to extract DNA from the bones of his grandfather, dead and buried almost forty years earlier. Now, an experienced scientist could have accomplished this feat in hours instead of three days, but this was an achievement for a sophomore college student, no doubt about it.

When Jimmy arrived at the lab, David was sitting at his desk, head resting on a textbook, snoring loudly. Jimmy let him sleep while he reviewed the night’s work. David was meticulous at keeping notes and documenting procedures. Jimmy drank his Starbuck’s coffee as he read David’s notes. When he realised that David had achieved their goal, he screamed at the top of his lungs and started doing a jig around the room. David bolted upright, wide awake in a heartbeat. He always had the ability to go from snoring to wide awake in an instant. David put it down to years of late nights and early school mornings. He just made his body adjust to the rigorous schedule he demanded of it.

‘You did it.’

‘We did it.’

‘We’re going to be rich.’

‘Don’t get too excited yet. All we’ve done is what any professional lab anywhere in the world could do.’

Jimmy smiled. ‘Yeah, but they don’t have TTD2105.’

‘Until we get it to work, it’s about as useful as a rake in a snowstorm.’

As it turned out much later, what they had achieved was only the beginning, and this was an unnecessary step.

‘We need to discuss that name too. I don’t like it at all. TTD2105.’

‘We will,’ David said, dismissing him.

Jimmy walked over to the shelf where the extracted DNA samples from David’s grandfather were lined up in glass vials. He inspected them for a minute, then turned back to David. ‘So, let’s do it.’

It was David’s turn to smile now. ‘How about tonight? I need some sleep first.’

‘Tonight? I was thinking next week, but hey, let’s go for it.’

They high fived and then, totally against their male instincts, they hugged. It felt right though. They knew they were on the verge of greatness. This was a moment akin to the ones Jobs and Wozniak had experienced when they realised they were on the threshold of changing the world forever. David felt what they were about to attempt would make Jobs’s and Wozniak’s achievements seem pedestrian by comparison. They only reshaped the world, he thought. We will reinvent it.

David broke the man hug first. ‘Until tonight then,’ he said, trying to speak like he imagined Jobs would have addressed Wozniak. Jimmy laughed and patted David on the back.

‘You were always rubbish at accents.’

David smiled. ‘Where we’re going, we don’t need accents.’

‘To the future,’ Jimmy shouted, not knowing that he would be dead in less than twelve hours.

3

When David strolled back into the lab, Jimmy had been busy all day. He stood in the middle of the lab, next to an old dentist’s chair, holding a syringe in his hand. ‘Ah, Mister Bond, I’ve been expecting you,’ he said.

David laughed but inside his heart began rapping against his chest. That morning he had been strung out and tired. He hadn’t given a lot of thought to how close they were to their big goal. Now, looking at Jimmy holding the syringe, David’s bowels growled their condemnation of this plan. He felt like they might decide to scupper the whole adventure here and now. He thought about what they were about to attempt. What he was about to attempt. In the next few hours, he would either change the world or leave it for good. This thought did not help the bowel situation.

‘Ah, Miss Moneypenny. You’re looking quite masculine today.’ David spoke with his best British accent and Jimmy broke up. They joked around for a few minutes, both of them avoiding the obvious. Dreading the obvious in fact. Eventually, David reviewed Jimmy’s notes and the laughter faded away, replaced again by tension and anticipation. They both sat down and reviewed the whole process again. They had to be thorough. There was too much at stake to just drive ahead recklessly.

Two hours later, all the notes were put aside, and David took his place in the old dentist’s chair. ‘Just a couple of fillings today please,’ he said.

But the laughter between them was short lived this time. Jimmy licked his lips, his mouth dry and pasty all at once. He looked down at David in the chair. ‘You ready?’

‘No, but let’s do it anyway.’

Jimmy hesitated. ‘I’ll be timing you. A couple of minutes max, okay?’

‘Don’t worry. We’ll be lucky if we get that.’

Jimmy held up the syringe, tapped it with his finger. He brought the needle down to David’s exposed arm. The veins were prominent, inviting the jab. Jimmy stopped and locked eyes with David.

‘Maybe we should have started with an animal?’ David said, smiling.

‘Couldn’t risk hurting an animal.’ Jimmy smirked. ‘Besides they can’t talk.’

David nodded, the joke dying between them.

‘Sweet dreams, buddy,’ Jimmy said and slipped the needle into David’s arm. David did not fall unconscious immediately, as they thought would happen. Jimmy pulled out the needle and David smiled up at him.

‘Alice moving under skies, never seen by waking eyes.’ David’s eyelids closed abruptly, startling Jimmy. Then he opened them again and stared directly at Jimmy, who felt his spine begin to crawl. David’s eyes looked so distant and lost, before closing again.

And then David was gone.

4

At first it felt like a dream. Nothing made sense and David was unable to make a connection between the lab seconds earlier and where he was now. Images pounded his brain. He saw his mother, his father, friends, strangers, all from different points of their lives. He had the sensation that he was moving at great speed. He had dreamt of flying before, but this was different. In his dreams he could never move fast and barely managed to get off the ground at all. It was like his mind knew that the act of flying was not natural, and it worked to prevent it, even in his dreams.

But this was different. He was flying, but not through air and space. It was like he was hovering and everything else was flying past him. His mind wondered aimlessly, and he let it run for some time. The images kept coming. A dog he vaguely remembered as a child. A house he was sure he had never seen before.

Then blinding white light obscured everything. David concentrated hard. He wasn’t sure what he needed to do. He decided he needed to stop. That was it.

Stop.

He pictured the word in his head and immediately felt himself slowing down. He focused harder and the white light exploded around him and he could smell something; something vaguely familiar. Images unfolded around him. The smell was stronger now. David looked up and saw a beautiful blue sky above him. The smell invaded his nostrils again and overpowered him. What he could only describe as a mist around him lifted and he found himself standing outside a house on a clear summer morning. The house was made from wood and stood on a hillside overlooking the unfolding fields below. A stream meandered past on his right, navigating around a copse of trees. Horses occupied the field in front of him, grazing lazily in the hot sunshine. David could feel the heat from this rising sun, too.

Then he heard a gurgling sound.

He looked down to see the baby in his arms. That new baby smell teased his nostrils again. He felt overcome by the love he had for this child; a child he had never seen before in his short life. But he loved her nonetheless. It was a girl. How did he know that? He couldn’t know, but it was a girl. The baby’s eyes fluttered open and she smiled up at him. It was then that David heard the voice. It came from his lips, but he hadn’t spoken.

‘Welcome to the world, baby Martha.’

David heard these words and he knew he was not dreaming. He felt the urge to move forward, to feel more, to stay here. But he remembered Jimmy and the lab and the syringe. It had worked. He knew that now. The man had said Martha. David had smelled the baby, felt the unconditional love for her. It all felt real. Too real. Unlike anything he had ever imagined or dreamt before.

Then he pulled back and white light exploded around him again. The sensation of flying returned, and David tried to focus on the lab and Jimmy.

Martha.

The man had said Martha, and David had felt the love this man held for this tiny little person.

Martha.

It wasn’t a dream. David knew that now. He ignored the images flashing around him. His thoughts were still back at the house, the blue sky reaching away from him, that baby smell invading his nostrils. He had felt what the man had felt, had been one with the man. And he knew now that if he had wanted to, he could have become the man in some way. He had felt the urge to move forward, to take control. And he almost did.

Martha.

The name danced in his mind. He knew the name, but he had never used it to address the owner. He had called that person, not by this name, but by another.

Mother.

5

The images disappeared as quickly as they had come. David opened his eyes and found himself back in the lab sitting in the old dentist’s chair. Someone was leaning over him. He assumed it was Jimmy, but he couldn’t focus his eyes properly. He closed them and waited a moment before opening them again, feeling a little nauseous. Light flooded in and his eyes started to adjust slowly.

The man standing in front of him was not Jimmy Schuster. He was older, at least fifty, and he was wearing a suit. The man smiled at David. Immediately, David felt a dislike for this man. He was smiling but it was as if he was wearing a mask and what was underneath was altogether terrifying.

‘Welcome back,’ he said.

David said nothing. He looked around and saw Jimmy across the room, sandwiched between two other men, also in suits, but much bigger and younger than the man who stood over David.

‘Well,’ the man continued, ‘Did it work?’

David hesitated. The man smiled again. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just excited.’ The man stepped back and gave David some room.

‘My name is Blake Carson. I’m from Carson Sequencing, out of New York. We’ve been following your little exploits for a while now.’

David sat up in the dentist chair, still a bit groggy. ‘What exploits? We’re only students.’

‘Ah, I think you’ve been working for more than just extra credit, don’t you?’

David looked at Jimmy. The look on Jimmy’s face confirmed his worst fear. Jimmy had already told them everything. He knew they were in trouble, but he tried to remain calm.

‘What do you want?’ he asked Carson.

‘To work with you. What you’ve uncovered here is amazing. A real leap forward.’

‘We haven’t uncovered anything.’

‘Oh, I beg to differ. You see, Jimmy here just loves the Internet, and he has the most interesting blog.’ Carson looked at Jimmy and back to David.

‘It’s in its infancy yet,’ David blurted out.

Carson stepped toward David again. ‘So, it did work? What did it feel like? What did you see?’

David stared back at Carson. He said nothing, although he knew the game was up.

‘We want to help, David. Picture a lab three times bigger, more equipment, people to assist you. Imagine what we could achieve.’

David forced himself to get out of the chair. Carson took a step back, but the other two suits took a step forward.

‘We’re not interested. Not yet anyway.’ David tried to keep his voice calm, but he could feel the quivering of his vocal cords betraying him. He hoped that Carson hadn’t noticed.

Carson didn’t speak. He turned away from David and strolled around the lab, taking it in. His gait reminded David of a lion in one of those documentaries, as it circles its prey. As if he could hear David’s thoughts, Carson paused and sniffed the air, straining his head up and to the left, like he had caught a scent. He turned and faced David again.

‘That’s a pity, David. A real shame.’ There was no emotion in Carson’s voice. No regret. No anger. Nothing. David couldn’t place the accent. This guy could be from anywhere. If he was human at all, David thought.

David felt a new kind of fear overtaking him then. As Carson stared straight at him, almost through him, he felt the fear start to twist him from the inside. Externally, his brow broke a cold sweat and he felt his head start to tremble as if it was too heavy for his shoulders and would fall off at any second.

‘I had hoped to work with you both on this,’ Carson continued. ‘It’s so exciting. A world changer… literally.’ Carson nodded at the two suits who reached into their jackets and pulled out guns. ‘But life is full of disappointments. What defines us is how we cope with these challenges that life throws at us.’

Jimmy started to cry openly now. Carson didn’t seem to care. He pulled out his own gun, complete with silencer. He didn’t point it at either of them, just held it by his side. He looked from David to Jimmy and back to David again.

‘The way I see it I have two choices here.’

Hot on the heels of his last word, Carson raised the gun and shot Jimmy in the head. He buckled and fell to the floor like a giant magnet had been activated under him and his head was full of lead. ‘And now we’re down to one choice,’ Carson said.

David lunged toward Jimmy, but Carson raised his hand, stopping him. Carson’s demeanour hadn’t changed a bit. His breathing was normal, and he was actually smiling. Jimmy had just been shot but it was Carson’s smile that turned David’s world upside down. He bent over and vomited.

‘You need to concentrate on your fate now, David. Jimmy’s fate has been decided. You cannot help him. But you can help yourself. And what’s that saying? God helps those