After Life | Book 1 | After Life Page 12

  She hadn’t noticed the extra weight until she was hit by the sunshine as she and everyone else stormed through the door to the outside. Celia hadn’t remembered it being this bright when they took shelter, but she supposed her eyes had grown accustomed to the lesser lighting inside the classroom.

  Outside the door, Celia saw scores of the dead. Many of them, most of them, were crouched over bodies, getting their fill. Celia saw the sunglasses kid, his shades lying disregarded several feet away, kneeling over a corpse that was being devoured by no fewer than seven other zombies, crouched around the body like a group of vultures. Around each group, the pools of blood were spreading rapidly, giving the whole paved area a polka-dot pattern.

  Z’s that had not managed to find a spot at a dead-body buffet were walking around randomly. Some, Celia saw off in the distance, were heading in the vague direction of the highway she and her father had driven in on. Others though, the ones that apparently hadn’t figured out the right direction, were aimlessly shambling around. Some stopped near the buffets, looking for an inlet to the feast, but when none presented itself, the creatures continued to wander.

  Celia blinked several times as she exited the stairwell. In front of her, her father and Roger Stone fired off a couple of cursory shots, taking down the two Z’s nearest to the door. Stacy and Simon ran out on either side of Celia, though neither one needed to fire a shot right away. Just behind Simon, Mr. Lowensen ran, hunched over, his figure largely blocked by the tall boy. Her own face, she suddenly realized, was streaked with tears, including several now-dried ones she had apparently shed earlier without realizing. She didn’t know when she had started crying, but she knew she was still doing so.

  Celia’s weapon was held at her side, though her finger was on the trigger and her elbow was locked. It was true that she had never used the weapon for any purpose other than the large Z-cutouts that adorned the range her father frequented, but she nevertheless knew how to hold a gun, knew how to have it at the ready for use at an instant’s notice.

  The girl was suddenly grateful for her father’s meticulous pursuit of a parking spot. When they had arrived at Morgan College, Andy had circled the parking lot five times before spying the well-parked parents who were pulling out of the convenient space. Celia, more eager to see her new school than to find a luxurious spot, had been practically hopping behind her seat belt as she awaited the stopping of the car.

  As her vision cleared before her though, the first vehicle Celia caught sight of was her father’s run-down Camry, sitting calmly in the closest parking space, and she loved the sight. That car meant freedom. That car meant comfort. That car meant, above all else, survival.

  So Celia set her eyes on the car. She had two capable adults in front of her, two seemingly capable peers alongside her, and dozens of theoretically viable adults in her wake—Celia figured that she need pay attention to nothing but her vehicular savior.

  And, for the first five or six steps out of the “safe place,” she was right. None of the buffet Z’s spared a glance for the people flowing from the door, and none of the shamblers were facing their direction, either. Celia heard Lowensen sigh behind her.

  It was a premature exhalation, though. The two gunshots attracted the attention of a few nearby Z’s, including the sunglasses kid. That zombie, along with half a dozen others, turned toward the motley crew, and advanced toward them. Within seconds, she saw several of the eaters abandon their meals for the chance of “fast food,” as well.

  Suddenly, Celia remembered what Mr. Lowensen had said in the classroom, scarcely a few hours earlier.

  “They’ll eat anything with flesh,” he said. “They always prefer live meat… don’t think you can sneak past, that they’ll be satisfied with a stationary meal. They come after you.”

  At the time, Celia had considered that sentiment an empty warning, something the adults said to make them as “careful” as possible. Now, though, she saw the words were legitimate; the Z’s truly did prefer the thrill of the hunt.

  Within seconds, Celia saw her father take down three more Z’s, a small group off to their left that was devouring a nearby body. Roger, meanwhile, cleared out the ones that were working on a body merely feet away—the body, she assumed, of the man who had tried to fool Roger into allowing him admittance into the classroom.

  Stacy fired off a few shots, taking down one, and Simon got into the action as well, knocking off a few to the same side as the ones Andy had destroyed. Behind her, Celia heard several more gunshots, and saw Z’s falling all around, even as she heard the crying lady sob even harder. Suddenly, two young men not much older than Celia sprinted past toward the parking lot. She recognized them as the two excited brothers from the small family that had blockaded itself from anyone else, insisting on providing only for themselves. One of them carried a set of car keys, which jingled in his non-gun hand as he ran past. His partner laughed as he sprinted past, leveling one with a hurried shot that hit the onetime sunglasses wearer.

  “Three!” the shooter cried joyously.

  “I have two,” his brother called back with a bitter tone. “Would have more if I didn’t have the damn keys.”

  “Give me the keys then!” the first said. “I don’t want any excuses when I win!”

  The second boy laughed and ran ahead. The first one, though, ran a little too close to a downed zombie, the one that he had shot only seconds before. Unfortunately for the young man, the Z hadn’t really been stopped. The gunshot had grounded it, to be sure, but it hadn’t been aimed well, hadn’t truly ended the zombie’s non-life. After having fallen to the ground, the zombie suddenly reached out, grabbing the young man by the ankle and biting down hard.

  “Jeremy!” his brother cried, dropping his keys and gun simultaneously. “Jeremy!” A few feet farther back, Celia heard the crying woman sob one last, tremendous sob and hit the ground. Based on what Celia could hear, Mr. Lowensen seemed to hit the ground behind her as well.

  Jeremy cried out too, a pained, guttural noise that Celia couldn’t have imagined seconds earlier. He too, dropped his gun, as the zombie kept chewing on his leg.

  After a few seconds of crying and shaking his leg to no avail, Jeremy suddenly stopped screaming and stood momentarily still. He dropped his head and his arms fell limp at his side, looking like a hanging crash-test dummy. And then, just as suddenly as he had been bitten, Jeremy’s head jerked up, and his now-white eyes searched around, looking for something else entirely.

  “Jeremy!” his brother cried yet again, and he started to walk toward the now-zombie. From behind, Simon Stone pushed the boy forward, continuing him on his path toward the cars. Simon spared a second to once and for all end the sunglasses zombie’s existence before continuing toward the parking lot. The young man, Jeremy’s brother, looked behind him as his older brother’s body started to chase after them, limping due to the open gash in its leg.

  Celia’s eyes were wide as she saw that there were three people in Jeremy’s path, not two. In addition to the obvious targets of the brother and Simon, the zombie Jeremy was following a path that would take it directly toward Celia’s father, who, having run ahead of everyone else, did not see the early-20s zombie coming up behind him.

  The girl felt her hand shaking as she raised the heavy gun. Zombie Jeremy, which still limped after her father and the two young men, was still young, still fit, still fast despite its injury, and neither the brother, nor Simon, nor Celia’s father saw him gaining on them.

  Celia pointed it at Jeremy. The Z was mere steps behind her father, who had gotten slowed down as he took out a group that crouched over another body, when she went to pull the trigger.

  But she never did it. Celia’s brain willed her hand to take the shot, but her finger refused to clench, to take the action. All her practice had taught her was how to aim, not how to be okay with firing a gun, at actually shooting something. She didn’t care about the zombie, of course, but her finger didn’t get the memo, and Celia couldn’t make
herself pull the trigger.

  All the same, Celia heard a shot from her right, and saw Jeremy’s body fall. The zombie, a giant hole now in its head, finally lay still on the ground.

  Celia looked to her right, where she saw Stacy, suddenly standing still, lower her gun from the direction where Jeremy had stood seconds before. The girl turned toward her almost-roommate. Her eyes were wide, but she had managed to pull the trigger when Celia couldn’t.

  “Thank you,” Celia mouthed, and the two of them sped back up in their sprint to the cars.

  Just ahead, Celia saw her father swing the unlocked door open. Celia jumped in beside him, and Stacy leapt in behind Andy. Not ten feet away, Celia saw the Stones reach their car, and the athletic-looking 50-something woman and her son joined them in their wagon. Several spaces away, the other family and the lone boy who was also a member of their party got into another vehicle.

  Suddenly, the other back door of the Ehrens’ car opened. Celia spun in her seat and saw Mr. Lowensen leaping in and slamming the door behind him.

  “We’re here,” the teacher said, breathless. Celia was shocked to see him; she had thought he had gone down around the same time as Jeremy, and didn’t think he’d have gotten back up in time to join them. But there he was, grabbing his seat belt and buckling himself in. Celia looked to her father, who nodded and put the key in the ignition.

  Celia turned her attention to the window, looking out in terror, worried that a Z would try to make its way through at any minute.

  She saw no zombies, though. Two cars away, however, she did see the young brother of Jeremy reach his car and try to open the door, with no success. He fished in both his pockets for the keys, apparently not remembering having dropped them after his brother’s death.

  When the young man did finally realize his inability to enter his vehicle, he spun around helplessly, looking for his mother or another safe haven. Celia’s eyes followed his own, and saw the crying woman from earlier lying on the ground, beneath the bodies of two zombies that were working on her neck and midsection. The young man cried out again, then spun and looked toward other vehicles.

  Most of them, though, were already pulling out of spaces. Curiously, she saw one car back out of its space, then accelerate back in. The driver and his son left the car there, jumping out of it and into the nearby car of a woman and her son Celia had seen them talking to in the classroom. She didn’t know what the point was of their short trip in the first car, but they were soon stowed away in the new vehicle and on their way.

  From his car, the young brother of Jeremy saw the same hopelessness Celia did. He wasn’t going to find a ride. Sobbing, he fell back against his car, collapsing against his own panic.

  Celia turned to her father. She saw that he had taken in the same scene she had, and he opened his mouth to speak. “Open the window,” Andy said. “We’ll take him—”

  “We don’t have to,” Mr. Lowensen suddenly said from the seat behind Celia.

  Andy turned to look at the teacher, anger in his face. “What do you mean? We can’t just leave him.”

  The teacher flinched, just from Andy’s face and tone. “I didn’t mean that,” he said as though he were pleading his case. He reached into his pocket and raised his hand. “I just meant,” he continued, dangling keys, “that he could still drive himself. If he wants.”

  Lowensen unbuckled his seat belt and opened the car door. He stepped out of the car. “Porter!”

  The young man turned in surprise. When he saw the teacher, his face registered a mix of annoyance and panic, but he didn’t respond. “Porter!” the teacher said again, then held up the keys. The young man’s face suddenly slackened, and he reached out his hand. Mr. Lowensen lobbed the keys to him, and Porter took a step forward to catch them.

  The teacher fell back into the vehicle and shut the door, buckling his seat belt back as he did.

  “We good?” Andy said to his carload.

  “Good, dad,” Celia said. “Just go!”

  Andy pulled the car out of the parking space, among the last to leave the grounds of Morgan College. He fell in line behind the Stones’ car on the way out.

  Celia turned in her seat and watched the young man, now truly alone, climb into his own vehicle. She saw him get into the car and shut the door, but she didn’t see the car start. As the line of cars slowed, funneling toward the exit, she saw his shoulders sag. The young man reopened his car door and exited the vehicle. He threw his keys to the ground and started walking back toward the bodies of Jeremy and his mother.

  Andy didn’t stop the car. He drove toward the parking lot exit, past the cars whose owners had never made it back to them. As he passed the car that had been driven a few short feet before being re-abandoned, Celia noticed a zombie trapped under the right front tire. She didn’t know how the old man driving that car had managed to get in a situation where he could take the time to drive over a zombie before continuing on his way, but at least she now knew what he had been doing.

  Jeremy’s brother’s plan, though, was less clear to her. He was walking back the way they had come, slowly and deliberately making his way to his mother and his brother.

  “Dad?” Celia said, her voice rising along with her panic. “Dad? What’s he—?” Her voice caught in her throat as the young man approached the two Z’s devouring his mother. He grabbed one by the shoulders and flung it off of his mother’s body, then forced the other one off with a well-placed kick. He stood above his mother for a brief moment.

  Just as the Ehrens’ Camry left the parking lot, Celia saw Mrs. Porter’s body spring to life. It sat up, saw the young man standing over it, and reached out with both arms. A less aware viewer might have thought it was nothing more than a mother reaching out for her son’s embrace, but Celia cried out.

  Just before they drove out of sight, Stacy and Barry turned in their seats to see the body of the mother pull her son close and take a huge bite out of his abdomen. The last thing they saw was the young man crying out and falling to the pavement.

  Chapter Nine: Cosmic Judge, Jury, And Executioner

  “I want you to pray with me,” Michelle said.

  It was the first thing either of them had said since leaving Nick. Donnie, in the passenger seat, had watched the security guard disappear behind them, not turning his head to the front until Michelle had made the turn and Nick was gone from sight.

  From there, the two drove along for about ten minutes, neither looking at each other as Michelle navigated out of the city. So Donnie would have been caught off guard by anything Michelle might have said. The fact that she was asking him to join her in prayer was just icing on the disbelief cake.

  “You what?” Donnie asked.

  “I want you to pray with me,” Michelle repeated matter-of-factly. “Most of the people we know have died in the last couple hours. I have one person left in my life who’s not in this car. Unless I’m mistaken, you don’t even have that many. And I don’t even know if Stacy is alive. So, yes, I’d like you to pray with me. For Madison. For us. And for Stacy.”

  Donnie sighed. “Michelle, I don’t….”

  “You don’t what, Donnie? Believe in God? That’s fine. I do. And I’m going to pray. All I’d like is for you to hold my hand and think what I say.”

  “But….”

  “Donnie,” Michelle said, her voice growing stern. “Please. I’m not asking you to change your belief system for me. Just do this.”

  “Why?”

  For a moment, Michelle didn’t speak. She checked her gas gauge—more than half full, a good sign—and surveyed the landscape of suburban Connecticut. She had always known Donnie’s religious beliefs, but had never really worried about them, figuring he was entitled to his own beliefs. Never really worried about them, that is, until now, now that it mattered.

  Now that their lives hung in the balance, Michelle realized, she was worried about the fact that the only person she knew for sure she still had in her life was going to wind up in Hell,
provided he didn’t end up a zombie first. Now, now that it was too late to ease Donnie into anything, Michelle regretted not really discussing God with him before.

  “Donnie,” she started at last, “you’ve always been nice to me. And Madison, Cal, Lambert… You’re as good to people as anyone I’ve ever known.”

  “I’ve never seen any reason to antagonize,” Donnie said cautiously. He didn’t know where Michelle was going, but he felt like he was talking himself into a trap. “Especially not people I work with, see every day.”

  “Granted,” Michelle said with a nod. “I get that. But you’re nice even to people you’ll never see again, even when there’s nothing in it for you.

  “Even to Nick back there,” she went on. “He was being downright nasty to you.”

  “Being nice is always preferable to being…you know, the opposite. I even used to use that as an argument for why a lot of atheists are better people than Christians—a lot of us do good just to do good, not because we think it’s going to set us up with a fancy penthouse in the sky somewhere down the road.”

  “And, when we were talking to Nick, you said ‘what goes around comes around.’ You mentioned karma.”

  “Michelle, I was there,” Donnie said, exasperated. “What’s your point?”

  “Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but if you believe in ‘do good things and good things happen,’ then don’t you also have to believe that there is something out there? If we’re just the lucky planet to have properties to develop life, then it shouldn’t matter whether you do good or bad things—what you do has no bearing on what happens.

  “So,” she continued, picking up steam, “any kind of belief in karma sort of has to coincide with a belief in some kind of cosmic judge, jury, and executioner, doesn’t it?”

  Donnie sat in silence. He felt like Michelle was lawyering him, talking in circles, but he couldn’t really poke holes in what she was saying.