After Life | Book 1 | After Life Read online

  Michelle realized then that she didn’t need to be angry with the men to make her move. She just needed to remember that she might be Stacy’s only hope of survival.

  With that in mind, Michelle turned her attention back to the booth, all the motivation she needed stuck in the memory of that young girl with blood streaking down her face in the hallway of the Stamford facility.

  The two men looked up, out toward what Michelle figured had to be the third as he made his latest loop.

  Her moment had arrived again. This time, Michelle didn’t wait. She clutched her weapon in her right hand and sprinted from her hiding space, opting for the strip of grass that ran parallel to the road, silencing her approach as much as possible.

  It appeared to work. Michelle ran lightly past the dead bodies that were lying in the road, and the men in the booth did not look in her direction. In fact, Michelle made it far enough that she could see in the open doorway, could even tell that the standing guard’s shirt needed ironing.

  She had her shot.

  Michelle raised her gun, leveling it at the slovenly guard. He could hardly have been an easier target, taking up most of the doorway as he laughed with his partner. For another half-second, though, Michelle hesitated.

  Then Lindsay Quinn’s daughter’s face flashed into her memory again. Then Stacy’s did.

  And Michelle fired.

  It wasn’t a perfect shot, hitting the man low in his ample gut. But it was more than enough to bring him to the ground, more than enough to bring the other man to his feet.

  The first victim screamed in pain, but Michelle didn’t hesitate, re-aiming at the second man. Her aim was better on this shot, entering through what appeared to be the man’s nostrils. He, too, fell to the ground, making far less noise than the other man.

  It was easier than Michelle had anticipated. Movies, TV shows, everyone growing up had told her that shooting a man, killing someone changes a person. Maybe, Michelle figured, the change would come later. Right now, all she felt was adrenaline, and it was overpowering any remorse she might have felt at shooting the two men.

  The easy part done, Michelle looked around for what cover she could take. These two were relaxed, unaware, sitting ducks. The other one, the one on patrol, was already more on his toes than the two in the booth, and now he knew there was definitely something to deal with.

  Michelle made a beeline for the guard booth, knowing that it was her only likely source of cover without backtracking to her former hiding spot, and the guard booth was now the closer option.

  She slowed as she reached the doorway. The first guard, the fatter one, was still crying out, though it was more strained, less powerful now. Either way, he wasn’t dead. The second one was, as Michelle couldn’t detect even a shudder from him, but the first was writhing in agony, moaning as his hands clenched the bloody hole low on his shirt.

  Michelle paused. His name tag read “Preston.” She couldn’t just kill the man. She had incapacitated him. That was all she needed for her purposes. Maybe if she let him live now, he would be all right. She had done enough to him to get to Hyannis. That was all that was necessary.

  Michelle reached down and removed the weapon from its holster around the man’s waist and put it on the counter. The weapon was now out of reach of the guard, meaning that even if he regained enough strength to retaliate against Michelle, he would have a hard time doing so.

  She started to turn her attention to the outside, to where her enemy had to be fast approaching. Before she could orient herself, though, the wall-length windows to her left shattered as a gunshot rang out. It passed through the booth no more than a foot to her left, but it—and the resultant glass shards—missed Michelle completely.

  The other guard had retaliated. Had his aim been only slightly better, Michelle would have already failed in her solitary mission. As it was, she ducked below the now open-window and leaned up against the wall that was closest to her new assailant. She tucked herself into a small space left vacant among the chair, Preston and the other guard, who, Michelle read from his chest, was named Emmanuel.

  The booth had been a stupid choice, she suddenly realized. There was minimal room, especially considering the bodies in there with her, and the other guard could easily box her in. And, with the only light coming from the lantern on the counter, she was blind to anything more than fifteen or so feet away.

  But that was moot now, as it was the choice she had made, and the choice she was stuck with. Michelle maintained her crouch, but stretched her arm to reach the lantern and pulled it close to her. She turned the gas level down as low as she could, then blew out the flame, putting the small booth into the same darkness as the outside. It was a risky move, as it gave her ten to fifteen seconds of almost complete blindness as her eyes adjusted to the fresh darkness.

  The assailant didn’t seem to recognize his fresh advantage, though, and the briefly blind period passed without incident.

  Michelle turned her attention to the doorway. Unless the guard managed to lean in the now-broken window and turn his weapon down upon Michelle, the doorway was his only approach. And the small booth was surrounded by enough concrete that Michelle thought she could hear any other kind of assault.

  Also working in Michelle’s favor was the fact that the wounded man’s gut rose almost as high, lying on his back, as she did in her seated position. It was an unanticipated benefit, but she couldn’t help but notice it.

  And so Michelle sat there, her eyes and gun both pointed toward the small doorway, waiting for the third guard to approach.

  “What… what the hell are you doing?” came the voice of the wounded guard, pained and breathless. The voice was higher-pitched than Michelle might have guessed, though that might have come from the fact that his attention was diverted to his rapidly spilling blood. “What the hell are you thinking?”

  Michelle looked down at him. His face, which earlier had been bright red despite his inaction, was now blanched and pale. She felt a sudden pang of guilt at having shot him, but quickly pushed that emotion aside.

  “My daughter is on the Cape,” she said, turning her attention back outside. “Morgan College. I need to get to her.”

  The man coughed twice, then repositioned his hands over his wound. He breathed deeply several times. “You… dumb bitch,” he said as tears fell from his eyes. “My son’s at Morgan College, too. It’s the reason I’m still on duty. Your daughter’s as protected as anyone in the goddamn world. We kept anyone—human, zombie, who-the-fuck-ever—from crossing the bridge. She’s safe. You shot me. You shot me for nothing.”

  This time, Michelle didn’t look at him. “No,” she said. “That’s not true. Zombies can be on the Cape. I don’t know how, but for all we know, the Cape is full of zombies right now, and all you’ve done is keep their saviors on the wrong side of the bridge.”

  The man coughed, though Michelle couldn’t tell if it was a result of his wound or his disbelief of her claim. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “We’ve kept everything from the Cape. They can’t get there. There’s no zombies. None. If you’d read what came out of Stamford….”

  “I worked at Stamford!” Michelle hissed at the man. “I worked there. I know everything that happened there. Our guard on the street maintained his post. Stood there and fought back as the dead attacked him. He protected us, kept any zombies from getting in. And you know what? They got down there anyway. They killed everyone there except me and one other person. They got all of us.”

  “He didn’t do.…”

  “He did his job,” she said, anticipating his retort. “He did. He stayed out there and manned his post. However the zombies got down there, whoever it was, they were humans when they entered the facility. They were fine. Unwounded.

  “We never really figured out what started the outbreak in 2010,” Michelle went on. “But, based on today, it came from people overestimating their safety, and not realizing that zom
bies can start anywhere. Anywhere. So I respect the job you’ve done here, Preston, but I couldn’t just sit in Connecticut and hope that you were enough, when I know there’s a damn good chance you wouldn’t be. I had to get to my daughter. And you never would have let me through.”

  Preston didn’t speak for a minute, breathing deeply. Michelle spared a glance at his gut, and saw liquid coming through his clenched hands that was darker than normal blood. Finally, Preston breathed in, in what she recognized as a prelude to speech. “You better hope you’re right,” he said, in a voice that sounded pessimistic.

  “I am,” Michelle said.

  She and Preston sat in silence for at least a minute, if not more. Wherever the other guard was, he didn’t seem to be making any kind of approach. Once again, the only sound was the anguished breathing of Preston.

  “What makes you positive?” Preston asked at last through painful spasms. He wouldn’t last much longer without aid, Michelle knew.

  “I told you,” she said. “No one got in at Stamford. No one. There’s no doubt. But I watched everyone die. I watched,” she hesitated, reliving her experience, “I watched them.” Her voice broke, and Michelle felt tears streaming from her eyes. “I watched them die.” She sniffed, trying to contain the emotion, at least until she was safe again.

  Preston didn’t respond. Michelle briefly glanced at him, and figured that his lack of response was due to his attention being turned toward his wound, and his energy turned toward keeping himself alive.

  Michelle grew impatient, waiting for the other guard to reveal himself. She didn’t think anyone would be able to creep up to the booth, but she wasn’t secure enough in her belief to feel safe in her hiding spot. So she slowly and carefully pushed her weight forward and crept toward the door, painstakingly climbing over Preston’s body in the process.

  Just then, she saw a flash of movement outside the small door. The guard, she guessed, had grown just as tired of waiting as she had, and was approaching the door with some degree of speed. Michelle raised her gun and pointed it, squinting into the darkness.

  The darkness was almost complete. Almost. There was just enough ambient light to see another quick movement, as the approaching guard seemed to be using a zig-zag approach to her. Michelle’s instincts took over, and she fired ahead of the guard’s zag.

  She didn’t know how accurate her shot was, but she heard a pained yelp from not far away and knew that, at the least, she had wounded the man. Judging from his continued gurgling, it hadn’t been a clean kill shot, but it had been enough for her purposes—her eyes adjusted to reveal a prostrate body lying on the ground, no more than twenty feet from the shack, clutching at its neck.

  That was it. She had succeeded. The men were on guard, and they had tried to keep her from the bridge, but Michelle had beaten them. With luck, Preston, and perhaps the guard outside the booth, might even survive.

  She stood up, stepping gingerly over Preston’s body. She didn’t want to graze the man’s gut and cause him any more pain than she already had. Michelle crossed over to the body of the guard outside the booth.

  The man was still breathing, his hand on his neck as he tried to keep his blood where it was supposed to be. It was clearly a futile effort, as his hands, arms, neck and shoulders were completely covered in the dark redness that quickly told Michelle that the man didn’t have much longer to breathe.

  “Hang in there,” she said, though she knew it was to no avail. The man, whose name tag Michelle couldn’t read in the darkness, let out two more short, quick breaths, then fell still. His hands fell from his throat, and he ceased all movement. He was dead.

  Michelle knelt over the body, feeling flashbacks to Madison’s death in Stamford. Everything that had happened over the past five minutes suddenly collapsed in on her, and she fell in front of the body that was before her. She felt the tears flow freely, and Michelle let herself cry for Madison. She cried for Lambert, Cal, Preston, Emmanuel, and the other man she had shot. She cried for Stacy, for Lindsay Quinn’s daughter, for Lindsay Quinn and Ben. Michelle cried for everyone she knew who was dead or in danger because she, and her peers, had failed in their zombie protection plan.

  She cried openly, kneeling over the guard’s body. She cried so forcefully that she was barely aware as Preston, ten or twelve feet away, suddenly sat up and fired a shot from an unknown weapon. The shot echoed into the night, and Michelle heard the sound of someone crying in pain, then falling to the ground and going still. The person couldn’t have fallen more than ten yards from where Michelle cried, and she hadn’t even noticed.

  She didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know who Preston had shot. But Michelle turned her attention back to the guard, who was now lying over top of Emmanuel’s body, his hands just above the other guard’s now-empty holster, Emmanuel’s gun now in Preston’s hands.

  The two of them—Michelle and Preston—met eyes, and Preston gave out the slightest of anguished nods. “There were two guards patrolling the bridge,” he said. “Two. Not one. Get to Morgan College. Get there, get your daughter. And protect my son.”

  Chapter Six: Well-Placed Destruction

  Celia couldn’t sleep. Neither, she could tell, could Simon—the young man was still curled into a near-fetal position against the wall, his eyes open and unblinking.

  Other than them, though, everyone else in the room appeared to be out cold and had been since Andy had drifted off a few minutes after finishing his story. That had been more than an hour earlier, and he was still sitting in his small desk.

  Celia let her eyes fall from person to person. Andy and Simon she had already observed thoroughly—particularly Simon, as Celia found herself increasingly unable to keep her attention off of the young man—so she looked to her roommate.

  Stacy was asleep in her own corner, her arms as always clutched around her midsection. Celia had to shake her head, reminding herself that she couldn’t, in fact, detect that the stomach had grown slightly larger since they had met less than a day earlier, that the growth she thought she saw was only her mind working with the new information that the girl was pregnant.

  From Stacy, Celia’s attention turned the rest of the group, to Brandon, Travis, and Lowensen. The two boys were curled up—Brandon in his desk, Travis on the floor—looking like lost children. Lowensen, though, had splayed out, taking up as much room as he could. Even in sleep, he got on Celia’s nerves.

  Celia scowled at his sleeping form. While she hadn’t shared the initial fury directed at Lowensen at his earlier confession, she didn’t exactly admire the man for the situation he had left them in.

  No, Lowensen, who earlier had portrayed himself as a confident, knowledgeable teacher with enough guidance to direct an entire school, had turned out to be as scared, timid, and ignorant as the students. As Celia. And she couldn’t help but hate him for that.

  Celia closed her eyes and shook her head, ashamed with herself for having pushed so hard to convince her father to let her go to school. It had seemed so perfect, so risk-free. And yet here she was.

  Celia opened her eyes and almost jumped. The teacher was looking back at her.

  He had been asleep only seconds before, but now the teacher was awake, looking back at Celia. After a second, he pulled himself to a seated position and gave her a small beckoning wave.

  Celia stood up slowly, not sure why he was calling her over. She made her way down the classroom steps toward the front of the room. As she did, Lowensen stood as well. He motioned for her to keep following, and headed toward the small doorway that presumably led to the offices and whatever else in the bowels of the building.

  As he neared Simon and saw that he, too, was awake, Lowensen nodded for him to rise as well. He opened the door to the hall and wordlessly passed through. Simon and Celia exchanged confused looks, but they followed, Celia closing the door behind them.

  “Come with me,” the teacher said once the door was closed and he could use his voice without waking their compani
ons. He started down the concrete-and-floodlight corridor with purpose, clearly knowing exactly where he was going.

  “Where are we going?” Celia said, whispering despite the lack of necessity. She followed regardless, hurrying to match the steps of the suddenly decisive teacher.

  “First, to my office,” Lowensen said, smirking as he walked. “Then, to the teachers’ lounge, just past the chemistry lab.”

  “Why your office?” Celia asked.

  Almost simultaneously, Simon, just behind Celia, muttered his own question. “There’s a chemistry lab?”

  “There’s a chem lab,” the teacher confirmed, nodding as he walked. “You all likely wouldn’t have seen much of it for months, maybe longer. You weren’t ready. But there’s a chem lab, a cafeteria, a gymnasium… heck, there’s a squash court down here.”

  “Why your office?” Celia asked again, speeding up to draw even with the teacher.

  Again, he ignored her. Lowensen took the hard left turn necessitated by the hallway and, if anything, sped up. Celia made the turn as well, and almost suddenly stopped. There was moaning and scratching coming from the first door down this hallway.

  “What… what is that?” Celia asked in a whisper.

  Lowensen slowed slightly and gave a half-look at the room. “Cafeteria,” he said.

  Celia had to rise to her toes to see through the high windows on the doors. And even then, she couldn’t see much beyond the hands. So many hands were clamoring for the door, pushing out. The door bulged against the pressure, but it wasn’t giving.

  The group that had gone to eat. Celia hadn’t even thought of them since everything started. And now she felt horribly guilty for that. These people had died faster than anyone, hadn’t even been able to escape the room they started in. There had to be 50 people in there, all dead. Celia had seen more death in the last half a day than in her entire life up to that point, but the fact that she had completely forgotten these people was something else.