After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Read online

  “I got a call today,” Jane said after it had all been silent for a bit.

  Mickey blinked, surprised at the apparent change of subject. “From who?” he asked.

  “My cousin,” she said. “Sean.”

  “Sean?” Mickey echoed. “Do I know Sean?”

  Jane shook her head and offered a small laugh. “You met at the wedding, and I’ve probably brought him up three or four times. You’re forgiven for not remembering him.”

  “Oh,” Mickey said. “What did he want?”

  “He’s struggling,” she said. “He doesn’t have family close anymore, and Sean’s never been the most capable. Ever since he moved to Maine, he’s been on his own, and I feel like he’s drowning.”

  At the mention of Sean having moved, Mickey stiffened. “Don’t start that, Jane,” he said. “I’m handy. I’m capable. We can move anywhere and we’ll be fine, as long as we have each other. I don’t need to stay in a little apartment because I can’t survive out there.”

  Jane put her hand on Mickey’s shoulder. “That wasn’t my point,” she said. “I trust you and your hands more than anyone in the world.”

  “So what was the point then?”

  “Sean is struggling,” Jane said. “He’s struggling, and a small farm a few miles away from his place is for sale.”

  Mickey’s mouth opened slightly, finally getting what his wife was saying. He looked off into the distance, as though he had never considered his suggestion as a real thing. “Maine?” he said, then resumed his vacant stare. A minute later, he added, “You’d be okay with Maine?”

  “I don’t know,” Jane said with a shrug. “I do know that I’ve seen you go from a happy man, excited about what the future could bring and ready for every challenge to this angry version of yourself. If getting out of the city, trying something new is what you need, then it’s what we need. I’ll try anything, as long as I’m trying it with you.”

  Mickey smiled. “Maine,” he said with some thought behind his voice. “Maine. Maybe Maine.”

  Outside, in the street, someone started yelling unintelligibly. The yelling caused a nearby dog to start barking, nearly in time with the shouts. The noises went on for a few seconds before they were drowned out by another train passing by.

  In the apartment, Mickey started looking around, in the directions of the various noises. “No matter where we end up, it doesn’t change anything,” he said. “Here, Maine, Timbuktu, it doesn’t matter. Maybe Maine. But it doesn’t matter.” Then, just before he was totally drowned by the train’s rattles, he added, “We still need just one good plague.”

  Chapter Two: Selfish

  2030

  Mickey didn’t know a lot of people and that number got progressively smaller the further he got from his home, even without a zombie world to deal with. He had kept it that way intentionally for a long time.

  So it was with more than a little surprise that, as he took a left turn that was a solid 30 miles from his house, he recognized someone.

  Diana Hendrickson was one of the first people he and his wife Jane had met when they moved to Maine. Then, she was a high-school student who had been the daughter of the real-estate agent who sold them their land. They didn’t see each other for years after Mickey had moved in, but their families reconnected years later, when Mickey was 39 and had a newborn son, Jack. Diana, then 24, had her own child. They became friendly for several years, through Mickey’s other two kids, Diana’s divorce, Jane’s death, and even into a few unsteady and tentative dates in the months leading up to the 2010 outbreak.

  She wasn’t beautiful, but there was a comfortable feel to Diana. Even as a teenager, when they had first met, Diana reminded Mickey of a grandmother — short, a little round, cute in a doll sense. Her hair had been a light blonde color that bordered on gray her whole life, and she wore it in a short, curly, Betty White style that made her seem older than she was. She was never the type to drive the men wild, but she was comfortable. Mickey knew he’d never feel for Diana what he had felt for Jane, but he enjoyed just being with her, having her rub his back. It was comforting.

  For a while, Mickey didn’t know what fate had befallen Diana in 2010 until they came across each other on the OutTheres website in 2017. She lived about 30 miles farther away from Mickey than she had in 2010 and had lost her son in the outbreak. They had bonded again over their respective sadness over lost children, but in the end, Diana’s spirit was just too far gone. She couldn’t start anything up with Mickey again. Nothing real. She had lost her ability to get close to someone else.

  They remained friendly but distant. Mickey had only seen Diana three or four times in the last couple years, but regardless, he knew her, and he was surprised to see her.

  Making matters worse was the fact that Diana was clearly dead, and was a zombie walking the streets.

  It was enough of a shock that Mickey pumped the brakes, forcing Jack and Lara both to lurch forward in their seats. Neither had been paying close attention to Mickey’s driving, and looked up suddenly. The zombie that had been Diana was alone, barely pulling itself on what looked like a dislocated left ankle. Her left side was bloody from head to toe to the extent that Mickey couldn’t even tell where Diana’s fatal wound had been inflicted.

  Seeing her then, Mickey remembered the last time he had seen Diana. It had been close to a year earlier, when Mickey had last accepted a request to check on Salvisa. He was getting gas at the same time as Diana, and he had told her what he was doing. Her eyes went briefly wide at the prospect of someone having to check on Salvisa, afraid it was for a foreboding reason. Mickey had reassured her then.

  That conversation meandered onto Mickey’s family, and he told Diana for the first time that Jack’s wife had left. Diana had listened, nodded, and hugged Mickey, pulling him in close and pushing his head down to her shoulder, like he was a grandkid with a boo-boo.

  “It’ll be alright,” she said, as though Mickey’s own wife had left. “You can handle anything that comes your way.” She had said “anything” with as many syllables as the human mouth could manage on that word, drawing it out far longer than the norm. “And if you think you can’t, you still can.”

  Mickey had thought of those words again in his truck only a few minutes earlier. He could handle anything. Could. He didn’t want to have to just be able to do things, though. He didn’t want to show what he could do anymore. He could handle anything. He just didn’t want to.

  Mickey stopped the truck.

  “Dad?” Jack said. “What are you doing?”

  Mickey didn’t say anything as he opened the truck door and walked over to the barely-mobile Diana zombie. It was alone. It was feeble. And Mickey had his knife. He hadn’t bothered with any of the other undead they had seen on the road, but this was Diana. This was a woman he had known, had liked, had kissed. Maybe they were never going to be in love, but they loved each other. And he wasn’t going to leave her like that.

  Mickey pulled the zombie’s head straight up by Diana’s poofy hair and drove his knife into the back of its neck. It was effective, as the instant Mickey removed his knife from its neck and his hand from its head, the zombie crumpled to the ground.

  He walked back to his truck, wiping the knife off on the towel Mickey kept in his back pocket.

  “What was that?” Jack said.

  “That was Diana,” Mickey said.

  “Di...,” Jack started, confused, before he remembered. “Oh! Oh, man, Dad, I’m sorry.”

  “Who’s Diana?” Lara asked in the back.

  Mickey sighed. It was obviously not her business, and obviously a sensitive moment. But ask she had. “Friend of mine,” was all Mickey said as he started driving again.

  Lara made a noise in the back. Mickey wasn’t sure what exactly it was, but if he had to describe it, he would have said a snort, and that wasn’t what Mickey wanted to hear. He decided to be the bigger person and ignore it.

  Jack did not. “What was that?” he asked.

/>   “‘Friend,’” Lara said. “It’s such an antiquated notion. People don’t have friends anymore.”

  “Why?”

  “A friend is just an anchor that isn’t holding you down yet,” she said. “Think about all the Out Theres that you’ve heard of. Salvisa. Andy Ehrens. Nelson O’Reilly. They didn’t spend 2010 protecting people. They just survived. The only story on Out-Theres I can remember where someone had to protect other people was Barry Lowensen’s, but that’s Barry Lowensen. We can’t all be him. Having long-term connections that you feel the need to protect is how you get killed.”

  Mickey had heard this philosophy before, and he didn’t care for it. It was the Lone Rangers, the Rovers, the people who thought that connections doomed you in a zombie world.

  “So you have no friends?” he asked, hoping his voice was relaying how much he didn’t like what she was saying. “No family?”

  In the rearview mirror, Lara shrugged. “No friends I care enough to go hunting for now. None who would look for me. My mom’s still alive — or, I guess, she was. No idea since this started. But I cut off with her a year ago when I decided to hit the road. No friends longer than a night or two at a new house, and then it’s on the road again.”

  “What was your plan?” Mickey asked. “Say this didn’t happen. Say the Z’s never came back. You’d just bounce house to house forever until you died of old age?”

  The shrug again. Mickey could already tell that was going to bother him. “Don’t plan ahead,” she said. “If I find the right person, maybe we get close for a night. But if I find myself feeling too strongly about someone, that’s when I know I need to go. It’s the only way to survive this.”

  Mickey wanted to argue with her, tell her that it wasn’t her lack of connections that saved her, it was the existence of Mickey’s connection to Sean, that she was alive precisely because of emotional bonds. But he could already tell it wasn’t worth it. And it seemed to Mickey that Lara didn’t even totally believe what she was saying. It was the Rover credo, that much was true. But Lara seemed to be trying to convince herself as much as anything. And that was a hard thing to believe. So as Diana’s body faded in the background, Mickey just hit the gas pedal and drove on. Lara, though, wasn’t done, and this time she said something Mickey felt he did need to respond to.

  “If you really think about it,” she said, “2010 was one of the best things that could have happened to us. I’ve read about it. The world was overcrowded. People hated each other. We were falling apart. But before yesterday? No wars that I’ve heard about. Everyone who wants a house can find one. People take care of themselves however they want and live their lives.”

  Mickey shook his head. “Spoken well and truly like someone who has no idea what they are talking about,” he said. “If you’d lived through 2010 — if you’d lived through anything, you’d know how stupid that is. You think having a few extra square feet to yourself is worth the deaths of half of everybody who has ever existed? You’re just selfish, little girl. I was once, too.”

  Lara shrugged her shrug again. “Maybe I’m selfish, but I’m alive, and they aren’t. And that means I win.”

  Mickey shut his mouth again. He wasn’t going to engage with this. Lara was his chattel, riding with them, but he could tell they were never going to be friends. And he was pretty sure that was exactly how she wanted it as well.

  Chapter Three: Speed Bump

  Michelle didn’t know Boston well. Her plans consisted more or less of heading north and hoping the road cooperated. It was ironic that she knew the directions well once they got to Maine — Stamford employees were required to know directions to Salvisa’s compound in case of emergency — but couldn’t navigate what had been one of the biggest cities in the country.

  Then again, she remembered a favorite joke of the internet in the days before 2010. It showed an overhead of New York City, all right angles and square blocks, and said “New York, because we love you and want you to get where you are going.” Below that was an overhead of Boston. The city, much older, much rougher drawn, was all curves and dead ends and roads running to nowhere. The text overlay said “Boston, because fuck you.”

  Michelle remembered her mom seeing that once upon a time and finding it hilarious. She had understood the point, but as a teenager who had never been northeast of Ohio, it hadn’t resonated as much with her.

  Now, though, was a different story. Because Michelle felt like every other road she saw turned into a small alley, or curved back on itself, or just didn’t lead anywhere that looked promising. They had come in on a major road, Michelle thought, which gave her hope it would stay a major road all the way through the city. But at the same time, some of the offroads she had seen looked major for a few hundred yards before summarily becoming little one-way nothings. She drove along, hoping that wouldn’t happen with the road they were on.

  Beside her, Stacy was still hugging her midsection. Michelle wanted to tell her to stop it, that it wouldn’t help anything and at best would just make her dwell on it, but knew it wouldn’t do any good. In the backseat, Celia and Simon were sitting close to one another. Michelle smiled at that. It felt normal in a world where nothing else did.

  The roads were largely empty. A couple of times they passed the remnants of incidents, and there were small groups of zombies here and there, but Michelle hadn’t seen a living person she didn’t know since leaving Corbin. She thought she would see more by coming through Boston, but they were either gone or hiding out.

  Michelle started to feel pessimistic about the road they were on. It had looked industrial, with wide lanes for trucks and bordered by what had once been fast-food restaurants and pharmacies. But it was getting narrower, and was starting to run parallel to warehouses, old junkyards, the types of spots that didn’t promise a sure passage.

  The earlier mini-wrecks they had passed didn’t scare Michelle. Not too much. On a wide road, she could drive around them without any real concerns of disabling the car like she had done with Donnie on the way to Morgan College. But as the road got smaller, she started to get more worried. They were nearing the point where a wrecked car and enough zombies could make the road just about impassable.

  So the next one they came across, Michelle eyed it cautiously. It was a big, boxy vehicle that had run just off the road to the left, boxed in by a light pole and a warehouse space. Zombies were climbing the vehicle, trying to force their way in wherever possible. And maybe it was her increased attention to the incident, or maybe she’d have realized it regardless, but through the group of zombies that surrounded the vehicle, it suddenly occurred to Michelle.

  She knew the vehicle.

  She hit the brakes, motioning to the others in the car to pay attention. If the zombies were still trying to get into the Humvee that Erik had stolen, that meant the zombies believed there was still something inside the Humvee to get. And that meant that Erik was still alive, even if he was trapped. There were 10-12 zombies clamoring about the vehicle — not a terrifying number, but more than Erik could have possibly hoped to take on by opening the door.

  “Is that ours?” Celia asked,

  “Certainly looks like ours,” Michelle said. She stopped the car and pulled out her gun.

  “Why are we stopping?” Stacy asked. “Just go around.”

  “Erik’s still in there,” Michelle said. “He has to be. Can’t just let him die.”

  In the backseat, Simon had already pulled out his weapon as well, so it seemed he agreed. Celia moved to follow. After a second, Stacy did the same, but Michelle stopped her.

  “Not you,” Michelle said. “You have enough going on. You wait here. Be ready to drive away if you need to.”

  Stacy looked annoyed that she wasn’t going to help, but she nodded. From their stop about 30 yards away, the others started to climb from the vehicle, moving as quietly as they could. Michelle knew it was only going to be a matter of seconds before the Z’s realized they had company — realized they had fresh mea
ls available — but she didn’t want to call attention to their presence if they didn’t have to.

  It only bought them a few seconds, as Michelle was still just about within arm’s reach of the car when the first zombie attacking the Humvee took notice of them. It was a younger Z, capable, likely turned at the outset. It had been an athletic teenage girl, one that would have been called a volleyball player in another era. It wore a T-shirt that hung down almost as far as the shorts it had on — for a second, Michelle wondered if this zombie even had bottoms on.

  But it had noticed them and pushed off the vehicle to start in their direction. Michelle held her hand up for Celia and Simon to wait, to let it get closer to them before they started shooting. Cal, the cocky guy from her office in Stamford, had always given that advice.

  “The people who think they know things will tell you different,” Cal would say. “But trust me on this. Say you have 20 feet. Your instinct is going to tell you to shoot them immediately — every foot closer is a foot more dangerous. But you let them advance. Sure, it makes your aim better, and that’s important. But it also creates a speed bump. Z’s are clumsy. You take down two or three of them at 10 feet, halfway between you and the group, and the other ones chasing are gonna go ass over teakettle trying to get by the ones you took out. You shoot when they’re at the furthest point and they’ll be past them before they even really get moving. It’s how I saved people in 2010, I’ll tell you that.”

  Michelle had heard that story countless times and, haughty tone aside, she believed in Cal’s advice. So she held her hand out for a few seconds, until the first zombie was far enough out that any others would have to pass it. And as soon as it was, she fired. She fired five shots, which would have been an expense she couldn’t have afforded if they hadn’t found the vehicle holding all their extra belongings. As it was, she just wanted to be done with the situation.