After Life (24 page)

The girl stopped again, panting as much as her sister had been. The sweat mixed with tears to form a salty stream down her face.

Michelle stood still in the middle of her street, at the point where three different routes met, and continued to scan. “Can’t go back,” she whispered to herself. “Not without help.”

Suddenly, a shot was fired somewhere behind her. Michelle jumped and turned.

She couldn’t see who had fired the shot, but the target was evident — in the yard next door to the Norris’ house, some thirty feet from Michelle, a zombie had been sent sprawling onto its stomach. Even in the darkness, illuminated by only the moon, a growing circle of dark liquid around its head was evident. If it had fallen in the direction it was moving, it had been directly for the unaware Michelle.

She ran back toward the sound. It was too far back to see the shooter, only enough to make out a standing, indiscernible form a ways back from the now motionless zombie. She stopped over the zombie. “Mrs. Cormoran?” Michelle breathed.

She blinked and shook her head, turning her attention away from the zombie toward the shooter that had saved her life.

“Who’s there?” Michelle said as she drew nearer.

“Get back inside!” a voice hissed. “Now!”

Michelle stopped, surprised. “Mom?” she said. “Mom what are you doing out here? You need to be with Kellee.”

Her mom faltered briefly. “Don’t worry about that,” she said. “Inside!”

“Mom, I’m not going back in there until I find someone who can help her. You go in, I’ll be fine.”

Her mother exhaled deeply. “Michelle,” she said, her voice stern and sad. “You will come inside right now. Lord only knows how many more of those…things will show up, after hearing the gunshot.”

“Mom, Kellee…”

“Michelle, your sister is dead!”

Michelle stopped. She looked at her mother closely, then shook her head. “She can’t be dead. I’ve only been outside for…”

“She is,” her mother said, her voice sinking again. “I don’t know what the hell happened. One minute, she was there, then she just…stopped.”

Michelle didn’t respond at first. Then she nodded and started to walk back toward her house. Her mom watched long enough to make sure the girl was coming, then turned back toward home as well.

“The baby?” Michelle asked, though she sounded like she had a good idea of what the answer was going to be.

Her mother shook her head.

Michelle lagged behind as her mother climbed the steps and entered their house. Just as her mother crossed the threshold, Michelle heard her let out a sob. Michelle entered seconds later. She peered into the room where she had left her sister and saw her mother curling up on the floor next to the body, lying down beside her in the blood.

Michelle’s eyes filled with new tears and she swung the door shut. She threw the deadbolt closed again and sank down to the kitchen floor, where she curled up in a ball and cried. She could do nothing else; her sister was beyond saving.

Chapter 2: What to Do Next

“They’re okay,” Lowensen said in response to questioning looks from Celia and Simon. “They got in.”

The students and their teacher were gathered around the podium in the front of the room, just underneath the chalkboard. Brandon had sunk into a chair and was rubbing his ankle, but the others all stood, panting, waiting for the arrival of the fathers.

Celia found herself devastated to be back here, back in the classroom that she had already been in twice in the past twelve hours. Earlier, Celia had thought the room was fresh, exciting, new. Now, it just felt stale, stagnant and terrifying.

“What do we do, Mr. Lowensen?” Simon asked. “You said we can’t stay here.”

“We can’t,” the teacher said. “Not forever. But we might be able to outlast the Z’s upstairs, wait until they move on. It’s all we have right now.”

Celia’s mind immediately fell back to the small bit of food she had eaten out of her father’s trunk back in Barnstable. It wasn’t much, but she was glad she had had it, now that she was faced with the question of when she might be able to eat again.

The group fell to silence, everyone watching the stairwell entrance for when Andy and Roger would pass through. They could hear the two men talking, but Celia, at least, couldn’t make out the conversation. She strained to hear what was going on up there, but to no avail — if she hadn’t already known who the men were, Celia wouldn’t even have been able to make out the identities of the speakers.

After a minute, they got quieter. Then there was another noise, one that Celia thought she recognized.

The door had opened.

She couldn’t make out any other voices from up top and, once the door closed back, it was silent. Celia couldn’t figure out what that meant.

Minutes passed with no one moving, no sound coming. The six of them in the classroom waited, twelve eyes on the entrance. Celia realized at one point that she was holding her breath, and exhaled, wondering how long it had been since her last breath.

Finally, after at least five full, silent minutes, a sound came from the concrete stairwell. Someone — and only one someone, based on the footsteps — was descending, coming toward them.

Instinctively, Celia grabbed at her weapon, and noticed Simon and Stacy did the same. The chances that a zombie had been dawdling at the top stair for so long before moving toward them idly was slim, to be sure, but there was no sense in taking chances.

The footsteps stopped again, just shy of the spot where the owner might have come within sight of the classroom occupants. Again, the pause was excruciating, as Celia didn’t know what to expect. Had Roger left when the door opened? Had her father? Had both of them, for some reason, and the feet belonged to a slow-moving zombie that had wormed its way in?

Then, suddenly, the owner of the feet cleared his throat.

Andy.

Though it was only a noise from deep in his throat, Celia knew that was her father’s sounds. There was no doubt. Simon, only inches to her right, let his shoulders fall, and she could tell he knew that was not a noise made by his own father.

Celia put the gun on the podium and hurried to the entrance, just as her father came within sight. When she finally saw him, she came to a stop. Andy looked wiped out, devastated. He had somehow aged years in the fifteen or so minutes since they had arrived back at Morgan College, and seemed far smaller than he ever had before.

“Daddy?” Celia said. “Daddy, what happened?”

Andy looked up at her as though he were surprised to find her in front of him. He surveyed the group at large, meeting each set of eyes in time. He stopped on his daughter, Simon and Brandon.

They all looked back, waiting for Andy to tell them what happened, tell them where Roger was, tell them what to do next. Andy stepped forward to hug his daughter.

“We’re safe,” he whispered, then raised his voice and repeated it. “We’re safe. Everyone relax now. We’re safe.” He looked to Brandon, still sitting in the desk. He had his leg propped up on an adjacent chair, and Andy could already notice swelling. Brandon wasn’t going to be traveling quickly any time soon.

Andy hated to see that. Things were adding up for him. Whereas before, he only felt as though he needed to protect himself and his daughter, he now felt as though his number of charges was growing by the minute. He didn’t see how he could abandon Stacy, his daughter’s roommate, all by herself. Roger had left Simon in Andy’s care. And now the young man Andy felt the newest responsibility for, the young man whose mother he had killed for no reason, was barely mobile, stuck in the Morgan College classroom.

The man did his best to maintain a poker face. “Just relax,” he said again, patting his daughter’s shoulder. “Everyone. We’re going to stay here for a while. We’re going to hang out, wait for it to clear up top. Try to get some sleep, try not to worry too much.”

On command, Travis sat down on the floor, propped up against the wall below the chalkboard. The word that the boy was allowed to sleep seemed to be all he needed, and he had his eyes closed within seconds. Lowensen and Stacy slowly followed suit, finding their own spots on the floor as Andy and Celia watched. Even Brandon, without rising from the desk, shifted into a position that might allow him to relax.

Simon though, didn’t move. His eyes were still on Andy, still searching for the answer to what had happened to his father.

Celia too, was wondering where Roger had gone. He had seemed basically fine when she saw him in the parking lot. She looked from her father, to Simon, and back to her father. Andy, she could tell, had met Simon’s gaze. He nodded and looked to his daughter. “Give me a minute,” he said.

Celia returned the nod. She went to sit next to Stacy, in essentially the same spot where she had briefly fallen asleep earlier. She kept her eyes on her father and Simon, who went to the other side of the classroom, near the door that led to the bowels of the underground building. They began speaking in hushed tones, far too quietly for any of the rest of their group to hear.

“What do you think happened?” Stacy asked in a whisper. “Where’s his dad?”

Celia didn’t answer. She watched as her father put his hands on Simon’s shoulders and forced the young man to meet his eyes. Seconds later, she saw Simon nod. His shoulders gave him away, as they sagged from their normally proud position.

“Gone,” Celia said at last.

“What does that mean?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “But whatever happened, my dad just told Simon that he’s gone.”

“How do you know? Wouldn’t he be crying?” Stacy seemed defiant at Celia’s claim, like she refused to believe it.

“Simon? No. I don’t think he cries much.”

Stacy teared up, as though she were compensating for Simon’s lack of tears. She sniffed loudly, causing Celia to move her attention over to the girl.

Stacy was sitting cross-legged against the wall, hugging her midsection. The confident girl who had lounged on their dorm room bed and played with Celia’s chapstick was gone, replaced by this worried person.

“Don’t worry,” Celia said. “Remember what you told Brandon in the car? ‘Just make sure you are okay.’”

Stacy snorted. “But we aren’t okay. We’re trapped in a place we already escaped from, and we don’t have any food or anything. We aren’t okay. Simon’s dad wouldn’t be okay with this.”

Celia looked back over to her father and the young man. They were still speaking in hushed tones, and Simon still, despite his proud exterior, looked defeated. “You don’t know that,” she said to Stacy.

She snorted again, wrapping her arms more tightly around her midsection. “Of course I do. His dad wouldn’t be okay with this. My mom wouldn’t be okay with this.
No
parent would be okay with this.”

“You…” Celia started, before Stacy cut her off.

“I
do
know that,” Stacy said. “I
do
know what a parent would be okay with. I promise you I do.”

Celia squinted at her roommate, confused by the vitriol in her words. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“I know what a parent would be okay with, Celia,” she said, looking down at her stomach. “I know, because I’m pregnant.”

Chapter 3: Too Much Baggage

The drive had continued, largely in silence, since they had avoided the zombies near the Rhode Island border. No more than five or ten words had passed between the three of them in that state, and few more were spoken as they traversed Massachusetts.

“The bridge is coming soon,” Michelle said, surprising Donnie. He had entered a bit of a zone as he drove, his eyes being the only part of him that moved quickly, scanning the horizon for any sign of…anything.

He nodded to himself, but didn’t speak. Michelle was right; they would be to Buzzards Bay and the two bridges that provided the only road access to the cape within five or ten more minutes.

After another short bit of silence, Michelle spoke again. “What do we do when we get there?”

“Take the tunnel,” Salvisa grunted from the back seat.

Michelle turned to see the old man. He was slouched in his seat, looking out the window like a petulant child. “The tunnel?” she said.

“The Cape Cod Tunnel. Doubt you need the resident’s pass these days. Used to be no way through unless you were a Cape Codder. But no more. It’ll be clear, passable.”

Michelle cleared her throat, hoping to correct the old man without upsetting him. There was no Cape Cod Tunnel, she knew that much. “Mr. Salvisa,” she started hesitantly, “I don’t think… I wouldn’t think the tunnel has been maintained since 2010,” she said, opting for appeasement than defiance.

Salvisa’s face broke into a small grin, though he didn’t look away from the window. “Gotcha,” he said.

“What do you mean?”             

“Sweetie, the Cape Cod Canal Tunnel Resident’s Permit is the oldest joke in the northeast. Oldest joke. Anyone who went on the cape more than once knew it. Sometimes used it to mislead visitors. Always got a big laugh out of it.”

Michelle nodded. She was glad the old man had been kidding; it hadn’t been funny, but at least she hadn’t had to convince a crazy man that something didn’t exist — a fool’s errand if she had ever heard of one.

“No, we’ll need to devise a bridge plan, I suppose,” the man said. “Damned if I cross on foot unless I have to. Did enough walking across Connecticut to last me this life and the next.”

Donnie drove along. He had already gotten into territory he vaguely recognized from his childhood trips to the cape — it was a Pavlovian response he maintained, seeing a sign for Bourne got Donnie started drooling, as his parents always stopped at the Bourne IHOP. It was just on the other side of the bridge. Even now, Donnie thought he could smell butter pecan syrup. Regardless, he knew this meant they were within a minute or two of the time when they would have to have a plan, one way or the other.

“What exactly were the plans for blocking the bridge?” Donnie asked. “I never read the full plan.”

Salvisa snorted again. “Worked in Stamford and never read the plans,” he said with derision. “I suppose it’s just a
wonderful
thing we have you as our fearless leader.”

Donnie hit the brakes and spun in his seat. “Mr. Salvisa,” he said, already tired of the crazy old man, “first of all, I was in charge of the New England Regional Rest Area Readiness Committee. This car was part of that project. So, if not for me, your old ass would still be wandering Connecticut,
still
on those tired feet of yours. You’re welcome.

“Second of all,” he continued, “I’m not the leader. I’m the driver. For now. Forgive me for not having read the entire plan for a bridge several hours from my home, just in case I was stranded in Buzzards Bay when the zombies decided to come back. I didn’t read the plans for the Hoover Dam either. So if you know the answer to my question, please, enlighten me. If not, do me a favor and shut the fuck up and start properly appreciating the fact that I stopped and let you take a ride in my car.”

Salvisa didn’t speak initially, just looking back at Donnie with an indignant expression. Michelle, though, answered. “I know the plans,” she said. “Studied up on them when I realized Stacy would be going to school out here.”

Donnie exhaled. “And?” he asked, trying to adopt a nicer tone than the one he had used on the old man.

“If there’s no people here, we’re probably fine. They installed movable barriers to be put in place if the zombies returned, but everything I read said they weren’t much more than glorified railroad gates, a symbol to stop more than a real impediment.

“Our problem will come,” she continued, “if the guards were as obedient as Nick and stayed at their station.”

“What do you mean?” Donnie asked.

“They knew we’d be coming,” she said, almost laughing. “They knew there’d be students in Hyannis, knew that if the zombies came back parents would try to get to their kids. Told them not to. Travelers only work to spread the virus. The other schools — Santa Fe, St. Louis — were less isolated, so they were built on giant private compounds, supposedly walled in completely. Towns within themselves. There were shops, adults, that sort of thing, sure, but everything walled in. Here, though, they figured they could block 90% of the people coming by just preventing access to the cape altogether.

“So they had patrols in place. No unauthorized access to Cape Cod, even before an outbreak. In the event the zombies came, no access at all, authorized or otherwise. We aren’t supposed to be allowed across. Keep the students safe over there. Guards were told to shoot on sight, human or not.”

Donnie slammed the brakes. They had pulled relatively close to the closest bridge — they had already gotten in sight of the roundabout that sat only a handful of yards from the bridge. “You might have told me that a few minutes earlier,” he said, startled at the idea that he had been driving unknowingly into certain death.

Michelle nodded. “I didn’t realize we were as close as we are.”

Donnie shut off the engine, afraid that a guard at the bridge might see the lights and investigate. An astute-enough patrolman would have already seen them, he knew, but he wasn’t particularly interested in keeping them on until they
were
spotted. “So you’re saying the only way across is to kill any guards that stuck around?”

Michelle nodded again. “I think so. I don’t have any better idea.”

“Michelle, I’m not sure I…”

“You won’t have to,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

Michelle had decided this before they had ever gotten on the road. She felt bad enough asking Donnie to accompany her into untold danger and an extremely high chance of death; she wasn’t about to make him kill someone for her just because she was determined to get to her stepdaughter against any and all orders. No, she had decided the minute she knew she was going to Hyannis, if there were guards that had to be dealt with, she was going to be the one to deal with them. It wasn’t fair to ask him to do any more than he had already done. It wasn’t even fair to ask him to do what he already had.

She didn’t love it, but she knew she had to be the one to face down the guards.

“What are you going to do?” Donnie asked.

Michelle already had her gun in her hand. “Hope they don’t see me coming,” she said, opening her door.

She and Donnie locked eyes as she started to exit the vehicle. There was something in his look that Michelle couldn’t discern. Just as she stepped out of the car, he reached out to her, grabbing her by the wrist. “You can’t…” he said.

“Donnie, I have to.”

“Then I’m coming with you.”

Michelle smiled at him. She wasn’t at all surprised Donnie was willing to try to join her on this fight, but she shook her head. “No, Donnie,” she said. “I’ve already asked you to do too much. You stay here, you and Mr. Salvisa, and wait. If I don’t make it through, you can still find someplace for the two of you.”

Donnie, with tears in his eyes, didn’t release Michelle’s wrist for a moment. He shook his head once, before Michelle nodded back to him and pulled her wrist from his grasp. Donnie released her hesitantly, but made no further moves to stop her. Nonetheless, he found himself strongly wishing for her safety. He didn’t know if it was hoping or praying; he didn’t want to label it, he just wanted Michelle to make it through this.

“Here,” Salvisa said, pulling Michelle away from their eye contact. She turned her attention to the backseat, where the old man was proffering his backpack. “Take this,” he said. “You only have one gun. After all the excitement, I’d wager it’s low on ammunition. You’ll find plenty of supplies inside that zipper. Extra weapon on top, full clip.”

Michelle smiled, appreciative of the sacrifice Salvisa had to be making to give her the supplies that had made it there from Maine. She accepted the pack from him. It was heavy, heavier than the pack she had lost at the service area. She figured there had to be more grenades inside, and she wondered what else she’s find if she delved deeply into it.

She refused the temptation, simply opening the top flap and removing the offered weapon. Just below it was an extra clip, which she took as well. “That’s enough, Mr. Salvisa,” she said, passing the bag back to the old man. “I appreciate it, but I think I need a little more mobility than a fifty-pound pack would offer. That’s just too much baggage. And anyway,” she added as she figured out the best way to carry two guns and an extra clip on her relatively form-fitting clothing, “if I can’t get the job done with two full clips plus whatever I have left in my weapon, I’m not going to get it done at all.”

The old man in the backseat seemed to accept this argument, and took his backpack back without comment. Michelle closed the door and stepped away from the vehicle, turning her eyes toward the roundabout and, beyond it, the bridge, where she was likely to engage in a gun fight and, if all went
well
, murder. If all went poorly, Michelle was leaving from the relative safety of her car in favor of death.

Nonetheless, she couldn’t see how she had any choice. Michelle walked away from the car that held the only two people, other than her stepdaughter, that she knew in the world, and set out toward the roundabout.

“Stacy,” she said as she walked. She would kill if she had to, if that was what it took to get to her stepdaughter. To the only part of Madison she had left. “Stacy.”

Even in the darkness, in the moonlight, Michelle was sure she could see the silhouette of the bridge looming in the distance, almost 180˚ across the roundabout from where she was.