After Life | Book 1 | After Life Read online

  For his part, though, Andy had only one speed left. In his heart, he knew he had to get back to his daughter, make sure she was safe, but he couldn’t find the energy, the drive to speed up. He had been the one to take charge, to know what to do all along, but he had made a bigger mistake than just about anyone—perhaps even bigger than the mistakes Lowensen made to get them all here. The teacher had gotten them in a bad situation, sure, but he hadn’t actually killed anyone.

  The only thing—the only thing—pulling Andy forward at this point was Celia. If it weren’t for her, he very well might have wandered off into the wilderness, to whatever Z’s were out there waiting for him.

  For the third or fourth time since they left the supposed Safe Place, Lowensen slowed down to Andy’s pace, trying to encourage greater speed.

  “Mr. Ehrens?” he said, prodding. “We’ve really got to speed up. There’s no telling what we’ll find at the cars.”

  Andy nodded, but didn’t turn his head to meet the teacher’s eyes. They were less than a half block away from the right turn that would put their co-travelers back in sight, and Andy felt, somewhere within him, that the actual sight of his daughter would help to speed him up, if anything could.

  In the next few seconds, two things happened. Stacy, a few feet ahead of the two men, reached the corner. She turned toward their destination and stopped in her tracks. At the same time, from a distance that could only be the cars’ location, several gunshots rang out almost simultaneously.

  That sped Andy up; those gunshots came from Celia’s direction. He and Lowensen quickly joined Stacy at the street corner and turned to see what she saw.

  Even in the darkness, there were no surprises in front of them. Not after the gunshots. There, not four hundred yards from where they were standing, Andy saw that his companions were under siege. A horde of zombies, forty strong at least, had arrived, seemingly out of nowhere, from a small side street near where they had parked. Celia and the others were scrambling to get into the cars, with a Stone behind each wheel. The gunshots too, were coming from the Stones’ weapons, as the others—Celia, Travis, Carla and Amanda’s son—were far more focused on simply getting into a vehicle than they were in firing their weapons.

  Where the zombies had come from, how they had been able to surprise the others, Andy didn’t know and couldn’t guess. He didn’t care. What he did care about was ensuring that Celia got to safety, and, as he watched her slam her car door shut, with Simon climbing into the driver’s seat next to her, it seemed to be a goal that was being realized. Seconds later, the car lurched forward, and the younger Stone sped toward Andy, Stacy, and Lowensen, carrying the other two students as well. Just behind it, the elder Stone navigated his car behind his son’s, leaving a mob of zombies sprinting behind them. Carla, with her one good arm, leaned out the rear passenger window, firing at the zombies. Her body barely fit out the window, but the woman was firing as quick as her finger would flex. Andy saw no zombies fall, but appreciated her gusto nonetheless.

  Their problems weren’t over, though. Andy glanced behind him and saw with a fair level of dread that some zombies—presumably, though he couldn’t be sure, the ones from the safe house—were fast approaching from their rear. The group was smaller, maybe 10, but formidable regardless, especially since Andy’s group’s only chances were to take the time to try to climb into the moving vehicles or to try to keep the army of undead at bay.

  Andy’s first worry was that the Stones would honor self-preservation above all else and drive right past his crew and him without stopping. Somewhat sheepishly, Andy wondered to himself if, in a role reversal, he would pass right by the Stones, saving himself, and he admitted that there was a chance he would.

  The Stones, though, did not drive by. Simon, in Andy’s Camry, reached them first, some ten seconds or so before the first Z’s would arrive. As Simon pulled to the intersection, bringing him in sight of the side road the Z’s were advancing on, Andy saw his eyes grow wide. He recovered quickly, though, and waved them over.

  Andy ran around the car and threw the back door open, climbing in next to a shocked Travis. Lowensen did the same on the other side, pushing the two boys into the middle. Celia opened the front passenger door, and Stacy squeezed in with her.

  “Go!” Andy cried once they were all on board. Simon hit the gas, and the car sped forward on the road Andy had turned away from during their initial sojourn. He turned in his seat, checking to make sure Roger went the same way in his car.

  He didn’t. As Andy watched, Roger swung left, driving toward the Z’s. Simon, though, didn’t look back, speeding away as quickly as the old car would go.

  “Where’s he going?” cried Lowensen, also watching. “Why isn’t he following?”

  “Decoy,” Simon said dully.

  “What?”

  “He told me,” Simon said. His tone was low, his pitch never rising. “At the cars. ‘They come,’ he said, ‘you get out of here. I’ll draw them away.’”

  “But…we have cars,” Lowensen said, sounding incredulous. “He could drive with us.”

  “He couldn’t,” Simon said. “We were running on fumes. That was why he stopped in the first place. That car has maybe a mile left in it, he said. He was just ashamed to admit it to you, Mr. Ehrens.

  “That lady,” he continued, “said she’d stay with him. Said she’d help him, as long as she could.”

  “Why would she do that?” Lowensen asked.

  Simon didn’t answer. He didn’t need to, Andy thought, as Carla’s hopelessness had been obvious since they had fetched her from the remains of her own vehicle after the Guardsmen attack. Her family was dead, at peace if anything, and she was stuck in this living hell. She was a hell of a woman, and Andy knew the only way she could find whatever version of salvation she could find for herself was to help the others. And, based on the certainty Simon spoke with, it was a decision Roger and Carla had come to during their drive earlier. Either way, Andy was glad he had kept his gas tank as full as possible, and maintained two five-gallon portable tanks in the trunk in case of emergency.

  “They’re sacrificing themselves?” Celia asked in a horrified voice.

  Simon let out a laugh, a hollow, lifeless noise that had no humor in it. “Well, he hopes not,” he said. “He’s hoping the car can go long enough for them to get through, make it away from the Z’s. He said that if all else fails, we meet up at Morgan College.”

  “At the school?” Stacy said. “Why would we go back there?”

  Simon shrugged. He was trying, and failing, to separate himself from the likely loss of his father. “We didn’t have any other landmark,” he said. “Mr. Ehrens, if it’s okay with you, unless you all found anything more promising, I’d like to go back to school.”

  From a few feet to Andy’s left, Lowensen let out a snort, echoing Andy’s own emotions in that moment. They already had no better option than going back to school, if only to try to make their way to Wal-Mart, and now fate seemed bound and determined to direct them back to the place where their whole misadventure had begun.

  Andy sighed. There seemed to be no avoiding it. He looked ahead, at the dim view illuminated by the car’s head lights.

  “That’s fine, Simon,” he said. “We’ll go back to Morgan College.”

  Chapter Nine: New Plan

  “Peter… Salvisa?” Donnie said, incredulous. It simply wasn’t possible that the old man standing in front of them was the Peter Salvisa. There was no way.

  The man nodded, smiling. “That is my name,” he said, “though some just call me ‘The Out-Theres Guy.’ I’ll answer to either. I’ll even answer to ‘Old Man’ if your brain settles for naming me by what I look like.”

  Slack-jawed, Donnie turned to Michelle, who was returning the same astonished look back at him. A few seconds later, Donnie blinked and turned back to the old man.

  “What are you doing here?” he said.

  The old man chuckled again. For someone who, even without zombies
, couldn’t have counted on many more years of life, he certainly seemed to be in a jaunty mood; he had laughed more in their minute-long conversation than Donnie had in the past several days.

  “Original plan,” he said, “was to get to Stamford, try to connect with the folks there. Zachary Lambert, Madison Crane, Lawrence Alvarez, someone there. Thought we needed to talk face-to-face. Phone wasn’t going to do it for me. Not this time.

  “Of course,” he continued, letting out another almost-infuriating chuckle, “by the time I’d gotten on the road, gotten ‘Out-There.’” Another laugh. “It was too late, and I was halfway across godforsaken Massachusetts with nowhere to hole up. Needed to come up with a new plan. Then my goddamned car decided to up and die on me back in Bristol—right at the old ESPN headquarters. Twenty-odd years ago, I’d have treated the home of SportsCenter like some kind of goddamned Mecca, but that place was just a bunch of buildings with nothing for me, just like all the other damn buildings in New England.”

  Salvisa had worked himself into a bit of a lather as he spoke, and he finally stopped for breath. Michelle had felt a surge of emotion run through her when he mentioned Madison, and she managed to push it back down. No one spoke for a moment, until Salvisa caught his breath and started again.

  “I wonder whatever happened to Chris Berman.” He shook his head. “Then I made my new plan. Kept searching for a safe place,” he said. “Just a diamond sign. Found one, but the place was fucking barren. Didn’t have a speck of safety in it. Didn’t actually think it would be that hard to find sanctuary. You all know what I mean when I say safe place?” he asked, suddenly curious.

  Both of them nodded. “We do,” Donnie said. “We worked in Stamford, Mr. Salvisa. Mr. Lambert was my boss. Miss Crane was hers.”

  For the first time since they had met him, Salvisa seemed taken aback. He stepped back and squinted at the two of them. “Then why the hell aren’t the two of you there? Seems to me you’d be holed up as neat as anyone, comfy and sipping on a latte.”

  Michelle turned away from the conversation. She knew they had to explain what had happened, but she also knew that she wasn’t going to be able to be the one to do it.

  Donnie jumped in. “We could’ve been safe,” he said. He nodded to Michelle. “But her daughter’s in Hyannis, at Morgan College, and we’re trying to get to her.”

  Salvisa looked to the both of them. Finally, he nodded. “Potentially good,” he said. “Most of you ‘experts’ would attest to the ‘save yourself first’ philosophy, but what are we if we don’t look out for family? Loved ones?”

  Donnie felt himself smile. Salvisa, supposedly the world’s number-one zombie expert, agreed with him on the wisdom of pursuing reunion. The “potentially” was odd, but otherwise the conversation was reassuring.

  “Perhaps, then,” Salvisa continued, suddenly seeming less eager to join, “I shouldn’t ride with you folks. Might be best if I tried to continue on to Stamford. Not too far away; maybe they and I can handle this ourselves.”

  Donnie briefly considered letting the old man travel on, if only so he wouldn’t have to put up with that infernal chuckle anymore. But he stopped himself. “No,” he said. “You can go to Stamford if you want, Mr. Salvisa, but you’d be going for the supplies, for the building. Not for the people.”

  Salvisa narrowed his eyes. “Why,” he said. There was no question in his voice.

  “There’s no one left,” Donnie said, his voice falling almost to a whisper. “We were the last ones out.”

  “And everyone else went….”

  “There was no one left, sir,” Donnie repeated. “They’re dead. All dead.”

  Salvisa leaned onto the hood of the car. He had been almost annoyingly energetic throughout the conversation, but this realization seemed to drain it from him. “Zachary Lambert?” he said. “Zach is… dead? That simply can’t be possible, son. It can’t.”

  “It is, Mr. Salvisa. I promise you. I found his body. Bites to his wrist, his leg, bullet hole to the back of his head. The man was well and truly dead.”

  Salvisa continued to shake his head. “And Lawrence? Madison? What of them?”

  Donnie spared a glance at Michelle. She seemed to have shrunk with each mention of Stamford, and he was anxious to move on from the topic as quickly as he could. “There’s nothing left, Mr. Salvisa. Nothing. But we can’t very well hang out here convincing you. You are welcome to go with us—more than welcome, if that pack of yours has food and water in it. But we have to get going, and we have to get going now.”

  Salvisa continued to stand in shock for a few seconds. Finally, he snapped his mouth shut from its hanging-open post and nodded. “You’re right,” he said. “You’re right. New plan: In the car. You can answer my questions while we drive. This, frankly, is a story that I must hear.”

  Donnie shook his head. “No, Mr. Salvisa,” he said, making the man stop in surprise again. “We have just lived through that. We aren’t living through it again. Not now. Not yet. You are free to come with us if you want, ride with us as far as the car will take us. But you’ve gotten all the story on Stamford you’re getting any time soon. You’ll have to be content with the knowledge that there’s nothing left. Besides, what story can there really be? You can probably guess it all.”

  Salvisa nodded again. He seemed to realize that, despite his knowledge, his experience, he wasn’t in control of this situation and wasn’t going to be. Michelle, having watched the whole conversation without a word, marveled at Donnie’s handling of it. She knew he had shut down the storytelling for her sake, and loved him for it, but the fact that he managed to wrest dominance away from the man who knew more about their current world than anyone said a lot about her traveling companion.

  Donnie and Michelle climbed back into the car. As Salvisa trudged to join them, Donnie leaned to Michelle. “Who the hell is Lawrence Alvarez?” he asked.

  Michelle nodded. The name had clicked in her brain when Salvisa said it, but it had taken her a minute to place it. “Used to work in Stamford,” she said. “Six, seven years back. Died of a heart attack.”

  “And Salvisa thinks he’s still there? They never told him?”

  Michelle shook her head. “There’s no way. You said he and Lambert were close. Not a chance Salvisa wouldn’t have heard about that.”

  “So… what does that mean?”

  “Donnie, he’s old. I mean, old. Man might not be all together.” Michelle had thought from the beginning that something seemed to be off about Salvisa, and he had done nothing since to assuage her. For their time together, she decided, she needed to keep a close eye on the old man that was joining them.

  He climbed into the seat behind Michelle, and Donnie started driving again.

  “What is our new plan, then?” Salvisa said after a few minutes. “Arrive in Hyannis and knock on the door?”

  Neither of them answered him at first. Finally, Donnie spoke. “We don’t know,” he said. “‘Get there’ is all we know for now. If they’re inside, and we can confirm that, then we’ll find the closest safe place and hide too. Just so long as we know Stacy is okay.

  “But if she’s not, if she’s on the run, then we need to get there to help. If we can. If we’re in time.”

  Salvisa grunted some sort of old-man approval. They drove on in three-person silence for another few minutes. Then, off in the distance, just at the edge of the area the headlights could hit in the darkness, Michelle saw something ominous.

  They were at the border of Connecticut and Rhode Island. And with the end of the state, that meant the end of what had once been a toll road. And that meant a toll plaza.

  It was one of the biggest failings of the attempt to remake the country after 2010. Most interstates were converted into toll roads, in an effort to pull in some money from travelers, as the government was one of the biggest losers in the 2010 outbreak. But they didn’t account for people unwilling to even leave their houses when not absolutely necessary. The tolls cost more in upkee
p than they brought in, and were scrapped in short order, leaving only morbid abandoned concrete structures to a bad idea spaced sporadically around the interstate.

  Theoretically, coming across the toll plaza wasn’t such a bad thing. Of course, no one was there to take their money, and so Donnie could have passed through without stopping. But sometime since the return of the Z’s, someone had passed through the area. And they had left it in bad shape.

  The toll plaza had been destroyed, leveled by an explosive, rendering it impassable. And stuck on one side, the same side as Donnie and Michelle, was a mass of zombies, at least twenty. It seemed clear to Michelle that someone had been pursued by these zombies and felled the toll plaza.

  For those people, it was successful. For Michelle, Donnie, and Salvisa, though, it left them stuck on the same side as the undead. And, as the headlights fell on them, they seemed to realize they had a chance at a meal approaching, and the group at large started running toward the car.

  Donnie slammed on the brakes. He had been scanning the area, searching for a way through or around the toll plaza as they approached, but none presented itself, and now Donnie realized he needed to get going in the other direction, find a more circuitous route around the plaza. And he needed to do it now.

  He wrenched the car into reverse, retreating as quickly as he could. The car, of course, was faster than the zombies, but then, it had to be—the nearest exit from the interstate was a mile back, and there was nothing between them and that exit except for a mile-long chasing path.

  When they had reversed enough to give Donnie the chance, he swung the car around and kicked it into drive, letting him look in front of them instead of behind, and started going once again, hoping against hope that they would make it to the exit before any zombies that had started chasing them earlier.