After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Read online

  The five shots worked on the lead zombie, and Celia and Simon immediately joined in on the trailers.

  Michelle noticed, with some satisfaction but also a bit of frustration at Cal being correct, that one Z had managed to avoid all the gunfire until it tripped over the lead zombie’s motionless body, at which point she was able to take it down pretty easily.

  It didn’t take the three of them much to render the situation safe, at least temporarily — the noise would draw others in short order. But as soon as it was clear, Michelle started to move toward the Humvee. Almost as fast, she slowed again. She generally trusted that Erik was still opting for pacifism in the fact of Michelle’s group, but she wasn’t about to bet her life on it. So she walked up slowly, navigating around the mass of zombie bodies lest any of them not be totally dispatched, and circled around until she was in reasonable view of the side of the vehicle.

  “Erik?” she called. “Are you okay?”

  The driver’s door of the Humvee opened, and Erik spilled out. He was sweaty, breathless, like he had been engaged in the gunfire and not merely trapped in a vehicle. Michelle felt her suspicions rise almost involuntarily.

  “Were you bitten?” she asked. Her gun had been at the ready the whole time, but as she asked the question, she could see Simon and Celia snap back to attention as well.

  “What? No,” Erik said. He looked at the nervous eyes staring at him. “No! Nothing got near me. I was just scared.” With no one appearing totally satisfied, Erik sighed and stripped down slowly, still trying to catch his breath. “No,” he said again, “I just … I screwed up my driving. When I saw the group of them, I tried to angle to the right side of the road. And then, out of nowhere, there were some there, too. So I jerked it back left. Overcorrected. Hit the light pole. Car died. I wasn’t bitten. Nothing ever even had a shot at me. But I thought that was it. Stuck inside that thing until I starved or got so hungry I made a break for it. That’ll freak you out.”

  He got all the clothes off as he told the story, and was nearly redressed before he finished. Michelle finally lowered her arm. And, since it seemed Erik wasn’t out to get them either — he didn’t even have his gun in his hand — she moved to the Humvee and started unloading the packs they thought were gone forever. Simon moved to help her. Celia, though, stayed where she was and kept her eyes on Erik.

  “Why did you leave?” she asked.

  Erik shook his head. He didn’t answer for a moment, and when he did, the words were measured, careful. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just… it was hard. Every minute I was with you, I was thinking of my wife. I know we’ve all lost someone, but you guys were right next to me. I just suddenly felt like I had to go.”

  “Go where?” Celia asked. “Where were you headed?”

  He paused again. “Same as you,” he finally said. “Maine. Salvisa’s. Only way our paths crossed again, I guess. Even if I wasn’t going to go with you, going made sense. This all needs to … stop. I just didn’t know if I could do it with you.”

  Michelle finished putting the packs in the trunk of their adopted vehicle. “Well,” she said. “Your choices now are ride with us or walk the streets of Boston. Any thoughts?”

  Erik looked like he would laugh. “Not much of a choice,” he said. Still out of breath, he moved to their car and started to climb in. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I won’t do that again.”

  “I believe you,” Michelle said. “All the same, I can’t let you have a gun. And we can’t leave you alone. You understand.”

  He nodded. “I do.”

  Michelle took his gun from him and got back in the driver’s seat. Stacy, next to her, looked like she had barely moved the whole time. Michelle started the car as Celia and Simon circled the car to get in on the passenger side, next to Erik. As they did, Michelle heard a noise a little ways behind the car. She turned in her seat to look.

  At first, she saw nothing. Then, out of nowhere, a car came speeding into view, coming from one of the small Boston side streets. Whoever it was was driving faster than surely would ever have been allowed when Boston was a real city. Michelle wouldn’t even have driven that fast through the ghost town they were in now. But this person, driving a battered-looking mini-SUV from the 2000s, wasn’t considering anything like stopping. The SUV was past Michelle almost as soon as the others realized it was there, rolling over two zombie bodies in the process, and disappeared from view only seconds after.

  “Wow,” Michelle said after a moment’s silence. She wasn’t sure how else to react. “They were in a hurry.”

  “I saw a few of those,” Erik said. “Got passed more than once. I’m kind of surprised how many people are out. Thought people would be hunkering down.”

  Michelle shrugged. She couldn’t worry about any more than what was in her control, and that was just the people in her vehicle. And, she suddenly remembered, that included Stacy.

  “You’re a doctor,” Michelle said to Erik.

  “That’s right.”

  “You can help then,” she said. “We have a pregnant woman in the car, and we have concerns.”

  Chapter Four: Terminal

  Celia had almost let Stacy’s situation slip her mind completely. There had been zombies, which meant there had been a problem to deal with. That became the first, and ultimately only, priority, and Celia had let anything else going on fade from her mind.

  Realizing she had forgotten her friend’s predicament totally, even for a moment, made Celia feel an involuntary kinship with her father. Andy had told her of autopilot, about how he could be more at home in action against zombies than he could trying to make a life absent a zombie world. At least when there were zombies he knew to just act. No thinking, re-thinking, overthinking. No time to agonize over the right or wrong call. You just made a call. Right or wrong, the decision had to be made, and it had to be made quickly. Andy sometimes described it as therapeutic, even if he always followed that up with the phrase “silly as that sounds.”

  Celia hadn’t really gotten it until then, getting back in the car and realizing she had forgotten her friend’s health issues. Stacy was still there, still worried, but there wasn’t any part of Celia’s brainpower available for that. She had to deal with the zombies before them and, following Michelle’s lead, she had. She didn’t know if Michelle’s insistence on waiting to fire was right, even after the fact. She just followed the lead and tried to make it the right decision in the end.

  Now, they were back in the car, back to a non-zombie situation, and Michelle had reminded her — Stacy needed help. Celia couldn’t do anything herself to assist, but she was listening closely.

  “You?” Erik said, his eyes turned to Stacy. She nodded, and he returned it. “I had my suspicions earlier, with the whole bathroom thing. Congratulations. Do you have a doctor at home?”

  Stacy shook her head. “I’ve only known a few days. My moms were going to handle it.”

  “I understand,” Erik said. His voice now was calm, reassuring. Celia could tell, just as her father was in a zombie world, just as their teacher, Barry Lowensen, was in a classroom, that Erik was in his element, comfortable in this sort of situation. “Shame on the timing, but it could be worse. How far along are you?”

  Celia leaned forward. She was curious about this answer as well. “Four weeks? Five?” Stacy said, as though it were a question.

  Erik nodded. “Good, good. And what is the problem?”

  “Cramping, mostly,” Stacy said. “A lot of it. And spotting. There was blood in the toilet back when we stopped.”

  Next to Celia, Simon was squirming. The rest of the car was filled with women and a doctor, and he clearly was uncomfortable with this conversation. But there was nowhere for him to go.

  Erik noticed this. He looked at Simon’s squirming, then stopped and looked outside the car. Celia followed his gaze. Everything appeared calm for the time being

  He nodded and looked to Michelle. “Should we step out of the car for a moment?”


  Michelle echoed the quick survey of the surroundings and opened her door. Erik followed suit. Celia started to do the same, then stopped, then moved again, then stopped again. She wasn’t sure if she was welcome in that private of a situation. Finally, she decided she’d stay still, even if most of her wanted to hear every word.

  From her seat, Stacy opened the door and moved to step out of the car. Almost immediately, though, she sat back down. Michelle was rounding the car and got to Stacy around the time the girl tried a second time. She got to her feet, but stumbled sideways. Michelle lunged forward, catching her around the waist, and helped her back to her passenger seat.

  Erik hurried around the car as Celia sat up straight. Up front, Stacy started crying anew, and Celia could tell she was losing her optimism.

  “You okay?” Erik said as he got to Stacy’s side, kneeling so his head was at the same level as hers.

  Stacy shook her head, then nodded. “I feel okay,” she said softly, sniffling. “Just got dizzy when I stood up.”

  Erik nodded. His tone hadn’t changed even after the stumble, though Celia could tell he was more on edge. “We can stay right here. Can I assume,” he said, speaking slowly but confidently, “that these are worse than any normal feelings you’ve had so far?”

  Stacy looked down. “I … think so,” she said.

  “And how long have you been experiencing these feelings?”

  Stacy shrugged. “A day, maybe?” she said. “With everything else going on, I don’t…”

  Erik nodded. “That’s fair,” he said. At the same time, Celia was thinking back to her last 24 hours with Stacy. The girl had been hugging her midsection almost ritualistically. Celia had thought it was just some instinctive protection move, but now she wondered how much of that time was Stacy being in pain. And she wondered if she should have done more.

  “Am I losing the baby?” Stacy said, as though she was sure she knew the answer and just felt obligated to ask the question.

  Erik had barely so much as touched Stacy, but he shook his head. “Standing here, on a dirty street, next to a car? I’m definitely not going to make that claim. I can definitely tell you that we don’t know that. Nothing you’ve told me about means anything beyond we need to be careful, to take precautions. A miscarriage is one possibility on the table. But I want to stress to you that it is only one. There is nothing uncommon about cramping, or spotting, or dizziness during pregnancy. There isn’t even anything uncommon about them all coming together. Is it something to worry about? Perhaps. Is it something to monitor? Absolutely. Is it bad news? Not necessarily.”

  “So what do we do?” Michelle asked, sounding at least a little reassured.

  “Here?” Erik said. “Nothing. I’d love to have a clinic where we could do a full workup. Obviously, we don’t. Failing that, rest. I’d put this girl on bedrest if I had the option. I guess … car-rest. She sits in that seat and doesn’t move unless she has no other choice. That’s the deal. At least until I can figure out something beyond that.”

  Stacy nodded. Celia could tell that, where Michelle had sounded relieved by Erik’s words, Stacy did not seem to share those feelings. Earlier, words of Stacy’s mother had helped to calm her, but now, she just looked shaken.

  “We’ve got, what, five hours to Salvisa’s?” Erik said.

  “More like four,” Michelle said. “Maybe less, given I don’t expect much traffic.”

  Erik nodded. “Hopefully it’s an uneventful ride. You sit. If we have to get out of the car, you still sit.” He looked behind the car and blanched.

  Celia spun around, expecting to see a group of zombies sprinting toward them. Her hand was already moving toward her weapon. Instead, two cars came tearing around an intersection a few blocks back, one about twenty yards ahead of the other. Celia thought to herself that she could see the lead car hesitate briefly, but she couldn’t be sure. Before anyone could do much of anything, the lead car got to the next intersection and cut back the other way again, with the second car following. They were gone from sight quickly, and out of earshot almost as fast.

  “What the hell are people doing?” Michelle asked.

  “They’re out,” Simon said. He paused, then went on. “A terminal diagnosis is the ultimate hall pass.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Simon looked back at where the cars had briefly been. “One of the magazines I used to read,” he said, “was this thing about terminal patients. Cancer, I think. When they were fighting the disease, when they thought they might survive, they wouldn’t do a lot. House, hospital, house. Treatment and rest. But when they knew they were dying? They’d try to do stuff from their … I don’t know what it was called, basket list? The stuff they wanted to do before they died. Jump out of a plane or kiss a lost love or something.

  “In 2010, nobody knew what it meant when the Z’s came. They had hope. Maybe they’d go away tomorrow, or maybe we’d kill them all off. Whatever it was, they didn’t know how it would end. Now … you guys remember Carla?” he asked, and Celia remembered the woman the day before who had seen her husband and daughter killed and ended up hanging out a car window screaming and shooting every Z she could find. “She was just done. No hope. She just wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and that’s what she did.” He waved vaguely at the world around them. “I think that’s what people are doing now. No sense in hunkering down and hoping when best-case scenario is hoping to survive this time and then live in fear that it will happen again in 20 years.”

  The car fell silent. Celia hadn’t thought about that. In her mind, they would get to Salvisa’s, figure out how to turn it off, and then life would go back to normal, whatever that was. But Simon’s description made some sense. There would be a lot of depression, a lot of despondency after a second inexplicable outbreak of Z’s. For the first time, Celia realized that not only would they have to find a way to shut off the signal, they’d have to broadcast to the world what they had done, how they had done it, and that it was over for good. That was another entire step.

  No one spoke for a bit. Simon’s depressing words hung over the group like a guillotine. Finally, Michelle clapped her hands together.

  “All the more reason,” she said, “that we need to do this. Worldwide depression is a great way to not defeat the Z’s.” Celia could tell she was doing her best to sound perky, to inject some brightness into a dark moment.

  It didn’t really work. Erik, who had been energetic before, got up from his kneel at Stacy’s side like he was suddenly 65 years old. He walked back around the car slowly. Stacy turned to sit normally in her seat like it took all her effort. Even Simon, who had been generally optimistic throughout, slouched a little, which Celia might not even have noticed if she hadn’t been leaning against him.

  Celia, though, felt motivated. A purpose was what she needed. Her dad had had a laser focus, and it had served him well right up until the end. She needed to do the same. The added option of bringing hope back to … well, just about everyone, assuming Simon was right, only redoubled her resolve.

  “Drive fast,” Celia said, sounding as perky as Michelle and nowhere near as forced. “Let’s do this.”

  Chapter Five: Dreams

  Most of the remnants of the pre-2010 world had long since faded. Mickey remembered when a 2024 ice storm combined to take down an old Subway in Pittsfield. Mickey had driven by after the thaw and had seen the sign, the second-to-last easily recognizable pre-outbreak sign, crunched on the ground, with only the green part of the logo’s arrow still recognizable.

  Lara had some points about the world since 2010. Yes, you had to move past the millions upon billions dead, and obviously that counted far more than anything the other way, but the points were there. Sean had moved into the house that had burned down after poor upkeep had ruined his first house. It hadn’t taken him much beyond scouring the neighborhood for an abandoned home that Mickey and Jack could help him repair. The biggest conflict Mickey had heard of on a global scale was
a brief scrape in the Koreas almost a decade ago and he honestly didn’t know how it had resolved itself, but he was confident it hadn’t seriously escalated. The world of 2030 was, by and large, peaceful. Peaceful, but dull.

  Mickey had never missed the city, not really. The tiny apartment he and Jane had shared in the city — the rattling train, the lack of opportunity — they were all part of a life he had been happy to leave behind. But he couldn’t help but look back on the world he had lived in before, even the parts he had hated, and be impressed. People had grown from a society that could be taken down by a few diseased rats to a society that, for better or worse, shared entire cities with rats like they were neighbors. Businesses could be conceived of, established, erected, ignored and torn down inside of the time it had once taken people to travel from one city to another. Mickey had never been a regular at Subway, but he admired the testament to “America that was” that stood behind it.

  Fred DeLuca, the man who had founded Subway and been its CEO, had popped up on the Out Theres website some years after 2010. He had survived the outbreak — according to some estimates, he was the richest survivor though money hardly mattered in the aftermath — and survived a leukemia scare years later. With money no longer a big factor in the world, DeLuca had shared the only contribution he really had left: his story. He had borrowed $1,000 from a friend in the ‘60s, started a restaurant, and hit 2010 worth north of a billion dollars. It wasn’t inspiring as a survival story, but Mickey liked it as a story that recalled what had once been possible. Starting from nothing and making it big. It was what he and Jane had dreamt of when they had first moved to the city. It was what he hoped for for his own children.

  But after 2010, there were no dreams. He hadn’t hoped Adie would grow up to be the first female president. He had just hoped she grew up. His biggest aspiration for his granddaughter was survival, a life without zombies. That wasn’t living. That was existing.