After Life | Book 1 | After Life Read online

  His burden lessened, the teacher looked to Celia. “What are we burning? We’re burning… this,” he said raising his arms around him, conveying the word “everything.”

  “Why?”

  “Fire kills them,” he said, returning to work. “Kills them better than any gunshot.”

  “But… it kills us, too.”

  “Not if we get out,” he said.

  “How do we do that?”

  “There’s another exit,” Lowensen said. “Secret. Didn’t publicize it. Only opens from the inside. Wanted to have it available in case… this happened. So we open the door, we get them in here, we liquor them up and light them up, and we slip out the back. All goes well, it gives us enough time to get away. Very least, it keeps the numbers low enough that the weapons could have an impact.”

  Celia wasn’t sure what to make of that plan, but she didn’t think she was the one to grade it. Her father would be able to evaluate the teacher’s idea better than she would.

  So Celia shrugged and crossed over to the bar, grabbing the first box she got to and carrying it to the doorway.

  Chapter Nine: Self-Destruct Button

  They were in the car, on the road, already on Cape Cod. The bodies of the four guards were lying in their wake, the bodies of their former mates in Stamford further behind, and the bodies of who knew how many students lay before them.

  From her spot in the passenger seat, Michelle was silent. She hadn’t raised her eyes above the dashboard since they climbed back in the car. Donnie, despite his best efforts to raise her spirits or remind her of Stacy, hadn’t managed to break through. The memory of her musing that killing someone hadn’t changed her passed through her mind, and Michelle let herself acknowledge the irony.

  Suddenly, though, Michelle felt a hand pat down on her right shoulder. Salvisa’s hand, from the backseat, was patting her on the shoulder.

  “Well done,” he said in a low voice. “You did what you had to do. No one will begrudge you that, in this life or the next.”

  It was hollow comfort, if that. But the delivery—from the mouth of a crazy old man who had seen more death than any ten people ever needed—made her feel like, despite her isolation during the event, Michelle wasn’t alone.

  “How far to Hyannis?” she said dully, finally lifting her head.

  Donnie smiled, happy that Michelle was, at least, engaging with them again. It was just a start, but a start meant there was more to come. He checked his watch and tried to remember Cape Cod’s size before guessing. “Twenty minutes?” he said. “Maybe twenty-five?”

  Michelle nodded faintly. She turned toward Salvisa’s backseat arsenal. “We need to be ready,” she said.

  “Plenty of time,” Salvisa said, patting her arm and stopping her. “I’ll be ready. You rest. It’s a short rest, but it’s necessary.” Suddenly, the old man glanced through the dashboard accusingly, as though the outside world had just stolen his wallet. “The sun will be up within an hour or so. I want to have your daughter and be inside by then. You rest now so we can do that.”

  Donnie resisted the urge to scoff at the old man. While Salvisa was undoubtedly crazy, Donnie agreed that he’d like to be holed up within an hour. The sooner the better.

  Then, Salvisa continued to speak, and Donnie never agreed with him again.

  “Tell me,” he said, suddenly stern. “How old is your daughter?”

  Michelle sniffled. “20,” she said. “Born nine months after the End.”

  Salvisa exhaled in what seemed to Donnie like relief. “Good,” he said. “Wouldn’t want to be chasing a ghost.”

  “What does that mean?” Donnie asked.

  “No way to know for sure,” Salvisa said. “But if she was about a year younger than she is, I’d say we’re trying to fix the cold of a cancer patient.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means she’d already be a zombie, son,” Salvisa said, snapping at Donnie. “It means that, if this girl we’re going after was born in, say, 2012 or 2013, wouldn’t matter how fast we got to Hyannis, how many security guards we shot on our way. It means that some 99 out of 100 of the kids out there that are still in their teens are busy chomping on their parents’ necks, not watching out for their own.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Salvisa laughed. “I know many things.”

  Donnie braked slightly and turned to stare at the old man. “And how,” he said, speaking slowly and over-enunciating, “do you know that? How do you know that teenagers are zombies?” Something in the way Salvisa was talking was making Donnie suspicious. It was one thing for him to assume the young, untrained kids out there would have succumbed to the virus. It was another thing altogether for him to figure that any young people born after a certain, arbitrary deadline were automatically zombies.

  Salvisa met Donnie’s gaze for a minute, then shrugged. “I suppose it doesn’t matter who knows now,” he said. “Odds are I’ll be dead soon enough anyway.” He stopped speaking and turned to look out the window for a moment before continuing. “Either one of you ever studied neurology?” he asked at last.

  Donnie and Michelle both shook their heads.

  “The brain,” Salvisa said, “is more like a computer than anyone ever really admitted. We want to think that our innate intelligence, our common sense, our adaptability made us special, set us apart from the motherboards and binary code. All that was, was fear. We saw Terminator and didn’t want to believe robots could take over because we were in some way superior.

  “But all we are is computers, and pretty damned basic computers at that. Give a PC the right algorithm, and it would beat us at everything. I think Jeopardy proved that once, years and years ago. Our brain can send a signal to our hand to do something. You know that. Well, one brain can send a signal to another brain too, if it’s given the connectivity.

  “Anyway, the gap between humans and computers became smaller and smaller as we advanced ourselves, forcing ourselves to be more and more technological. Kids were always texting, grown men were always on their Bluetooth. 200 years ago, a man got up in the morning, went out on the farm all day, tended the animals and the crops, came home with what he had made, his wife made dinner, they fucked and went to bed. Didn’t need a computer to be successful. Didn’t need a cell phone, a GPS device, an md3 player or whatever they were called. Just needed a mule, a plow, and a good woman at home.

  “We grew too dependent on our button-pushing, on our data streams. And there was a faction of our society that acknowledged that dependence, figured out that we were fast approaching our own Terminator reality.

  “Well, if you’ve come to realize that your world is growing its eventual demise, is cultivating the very thing that will destroy it, what do you do? You try to show it to them. This group, this faction kept growing, kept gaining people in all branches of population, our workforce, our government. It’s not at all dissimilar to the Illuminati or the Masons, so many years ago. They had… infiltrated, I suppose, anything they chose to infiltrate.

  “They wanted to show that computers weren’t really the answer, weren’t the things we should devote our lives to. Originally, they tried small steps, inconsequential, really. They spread the rumor that Y2K was going to destroy our world. Total poppycock, but they thought that by instilling fear of computers in the general populace, they could create a revolt against computers.

  “It didn’t work, of course. The general population had grown so accustomed to computers that all people did was buy bottled water and hope. And when January 1, 2000, passed by and they could still instant message their friends, everyone forgot about the supposed threat and kept tap-tapping away at their keyboards.

  “So these people recalculated. They looked at what they thought was the core of our problems and set out to stop it there. The snake dies from the head, after all. So they looked at it all again, and they realized—what is the source, the cause of all the digital-mania? Kids. The youth of the world were the most tech-obse
ssed out there. And they were the easiest ones to get to.”

  “‘Get to’?” Donnie repeated.

  “‘Get to,’” Salvisa repeated. “See, at the same time as this whole thing was going on, there were all sorts of developments in nanorobotics. We were implanting chips in the babies being born all over the populated areas of the world. Sure, Africa missed out on these babies, because they were busy having AIDS and shooting each other, but all the developed countries had babies getting chipped right and left.

  “Like I said, this faction, the Anti-Techs, were everywhere. And we knew about the nanotechnology. Well, it’s not at all hard, if you have people in the right place, to start getting these tiny chips manufactured with some… alterations, if you will. We started getting these chips made with a data stream that would influence our actions more significantly, would overpower the general brain chemistry, if need be.

  “And that wasn’t all,” he continued, picking up steam. Donnie couldn’t help but notice that Salvisa had switched from “they” to “we” as he spoke. “These chips started being made with what I suppose you would call a virus, something that would… infect, I suppose, others who came into contact with it. Like I said, we aren’t that different from computers. A virus attacks one computer, and if it’s good enough, it can infect all the computers in its network, all the computers with connectivity, and so on and so on. And people have their own network. And bites are connectivity, after all.

  “Basically, once this plan was made, all that had to be done was develop a program for the chips, and flip the right switch at the right time. The thinking was that people would see this happen and they would retreat back into themselves, back into the minimally technological world that the Anti-Techs wanted. Some technology was great, of course. Phones were fantastic. We had no problem there. But the goal was to reduce the dependence as much as possible.

  “Well, it worked. To a point. Nanobots got implanted, kids were computerized, then 2010 happened and 90% of the world were goners. But less than a year after The End, I remember seeing an ad for the iPhone 5, the new, post-zombie model, the one that would reinvigorate the entire world of technology.

  “The Anti-Techs wouldn’t stand for that, of course. Wiping out six of every seven people, and Nintendo just keeps making games? That’s silly. We had reached critical mass on our technological advancements, and we needed to stop advancing. Leave it be. Go farm. Call your family if you need to, have e-mail, sure. But don’t stay tied to texting. Don’t use a video game that can detect where you’re standing. Don’t have satellites track your every move.

  “So we started up with nanobots again. It took about a year, give or take. Enough time for us to see that we hadn’t accomplished our goal. Hadn’t quite severed the snake’s head. But we started getting the doctors out there again, started implanting the nanobots in most kids born in late 2012 or after. It permeated most of our culture, much faster this time, because we knew how to do it. And from there, all it took was flipping the switch again. Pressing the self-destruct button, if you will. Maybe this time, people will see that we can’t resort to computers, GPS, technology to solve all our problems. Maybe this time, we’ll do what we tried to do.”

  Salvisa fell into silence in the backseat. Neither Donnie nor Michelle reacted, letting the story sink in. There was so much new information there that Donnie didn’t know where to start. At least, he figured, he now knew how Stamford had been overrun—Lindsay Quinn, the woman who had brought her daughter to work that day, had unwittingly introduced the infection into the Stamford facility.

  What Salvisa hadn’t answered was why. Even if Donnie could accept the Anti-Techs rationale for 2010, it seemed they had accomplished their goal. People still had cars, phones, base technology. But Donnie hadn’t sent a text message in 20 years. Hadn’t played a video game since before his mission trip. Wasn’t even sure he could remember how to upload music to a mobile player. He too remembered the iPhone 5 advertisements—it had gone on the market and bombed miserably, as people had learned not to devote so much attention to their gadgets. What was left of Apple folded within months of its release. Nintendo didn’t even make it that long. For better or worse, Donnie figured, the Anti-Techs had realized their goal.

  “So why now?” Donnie asked. “We don’t live on our cell phones anymore. Seems these people got what they wanted.”

  “Have we?” Salvisa asked, bitterness in his voice. “Because I seem to recall our fearless leader stumbling into something of a rallying cry over the past few months. What is it he’s been saying? ‘A phone in every pocket, a website for all occasions’? Morgan must have said that a hundred times over the past six months. No one learned a lesson from 2010. They just got scared for a while. Like a criminal who gets busted breaking into a house. For a month, two months, half a year, they toe the line. But as time goes by, as the memory fades, as the shock of being caught wears off, they start to think they can do it again. And eventually they’re prying open windows again. Fear, it seems, is the only true motivator, and everyone needs a refresher course every now and then.”

  Donnie couldn’t take it calmly anymore. “You operate a website!” he cried. “The most successful website in the world! You are at the forefront of technology.”

  Salvisa chuckled this time, a dry, humorless laugh. “A necessary evil. What better way, we thought, to monitor people’s level of fear, level of awareness? I suppose you can consider me something of an Anti-Tech spy.”

  Michelle still hadn’t spoken. Donnie, in his seat, was seething, and had almost pulled the car to a stop. He was so mad he could barely see the road anymore. He was trying to form words, but Michelle finally found them before Donnie could settle himself enough.

  “What about the break?” she said softly.

  “What break?” Salvisa said with a growl.

  “In 2010,” she said. “The break. For, what, a few hours? The zombies went down. Just stopped. Then all of a sudden, they were going at it again. What happened?”

  Salvisa shook his head, a remembering smile on his face. “You ever bump a light switch?” he said. “Same thing, basically. Someone—damned if I know who—flipped the switch, turned off the signal for a bit. Soon as they realized what they had done, they turned it back on. And when the whole thing ran its course, we flipped the switch again.

  “Now, you all tell me,” he said, his accusatory tone from their first meeting returning, “how in the hell did those things get into Stamford? Part of the reason this move had to be made now is that the government was still isolated, didn’t have any kids in there who might have already been implanted. We did it wrong the first time, didn’t explain that it was the technology we were battling.

  “The plan this time was to let this infection run its course, keep all of you holed up, and try again. I even have a new homepage designed for the site. ‘If you are alive today, know that is true only because you are not a slavish devotee to a power button. Technology is the root of all evil, and the ones who didn’t realize that are now dead, undead or dead again.’ But that depends on you—the Lamberts, Madisons of the world, the ones who should be in charge—being alive.

  “So I’ll ask again. How the hell is it that we are gallivanting about Cape Cod instead of comfy-cozy in Stamford, sipping on a water bottle?”

  Once again, Donnie was cut off before he could answer, this time by Michelle. She had barely moved throughout the old man’s story, but now she whirled around in her seat, her weapon pointed at Salvisa’s face.

  “For people who did what they did to try to protect people, you sure as hell don’t know anything about them,” she said, venom in her voice. Donnie pulled the car to a complete stop. “You really thought people were going to be okay leaving their kids to die while they sat comfortably in luxury at work? You really thought there was no chance someone might just happen to bring their daughter to work today? There was no chance of that? You just flipped a switch, figured, what, you and Lambert could repopulate the earth
yourselves? Think again, you old bastard. Setting yourselves up to be the last two men on earth still won’t get any women to fuck you. I’d let the world end first.”

  Michelle held the gun in Salvisa’s face. It shook as they sat, though Donnie figured it was now more from anger than grief. Either way, while he agreed with the anger at the man in the backseat, he didn’t exactly love the idea of her firing a shot in their closed vehicle. If they were going to kill Salvisa—which he was not opposed to—he wanted it done outside of the car.

  “Michelle,” Donnie said, working to calm his own voice. “We can’t do this here.”

  “What do you mean?” Michelle asked, though her head didn’t move an inch, and neither did the weapon.

  “He’s a son of a bitch,” Donnie conceded. “He deserves to have you shoot him. But we need him. Right now, he wants to live just as much as we do, and he’s already come in handy. We need him.”

  Michelle stared Salvisa down for a full ten seconds. Then she reached into the back and grabbed the backpack, laboring to pull it into her own lap. She turned to face forward, then spun back again, her gun at the ready. “Give me your weapon,” she said.

  Salvisa, who hadn’t acted surprised or scared in the face of Michelle’s anger, nodded and handed his pistol up front. “May I point out,” he said, his voice sounding almost amused by the proceedings, “that, while I certainly side with this young man that killing me is a poor idea, that, without any of my weapons or gear, I’m likely to be something more of a hindrance to your progress than an aid? Seems to me I’m more an appetizer than an assassin in my current, unarmed condition.”

  “You can have a weapon when you need a weapon,” Michelle said, her voice cold. “Not before.”

  Salvisa nodded, even though Michelle, facing forward, couldn’t see the action.

  “So how is this one supposed to end?” Donnie asked. “Why aren’t you standing there at the switch, like you’re supposed to be?”