After Life | Book 1 | After Life Page 34

  “Go where?” the man said, his voice breaking as he got to where Stacy and Michelle stood. “Go where? Go to where you can kill me?”

  “Shut up!” Lowensen said, his own voice exasperated. “He said we aren’t going to kill you! Just do what he says!”

  The man closed his eyes and nodded, and Celia figured he either was crying, had done so, or would soon. Or all three of those.

  “What’s going on?” Michelle said when everyone had stopped moving.

  “We have a hostage,” Andy said, his voice almost happy. “Vince here has been drafted into our care for the time being.”

  “They won’t trade anything for me,” Vince said. “They’ll kill me, ‘long with the lot of you. B’lieve me, you won’t be able to hide in there just ‘cause you took me.”

  “Shut up!” Lowensen said again.

  “Like I said,” Andy continued, “Vince here so graciously consented to being tied up and coming with us. His friend, whose name escapes me, was not anywhere near as gracious, but I’m sure Vincent will be more than willing to help us.”

  “Help you what?”

  Andy turned to Vince, and the humor drained from his voice as he did. “You killed some of our group,” he said. “On the road. Last night. Shot holes into an SUV, killed two people, and just drove away. Left us to be eaten. Left us so you could reach safety for yourselves, and only for yourselves. So now you’re going to help us get into that building, help us get into safety. And if you’re so sure they won’t trade safety for your life, then I suppose you’re going to help us in another way.”

  The man started nodding as Andy spoke, though his sobs continued. “You’re going to help us kill them,” Celia’s father said.

  Chapter Six: Kill ‘Em

  Andy was tired of the man’s sobbing. If anyone had a right to cry, to mourn, it was his own people, who had seen countless deaths, far more than the one that Vince had seen just a few minutes earlier. Vince, his hands still bound, sat on the ground against the car Michelle had driven, his back against the front driver’s-side tire.

  “So tell me,” Andy said, nudging the man with his foot, “what do we need to do? How do we survive?”

  Vince nodded, slouching in his spot, seeming resigned to whatever fate Andy decided. “First,” he said, sniffling between words, “ya gotta know: I wasn’t wantin’ them to kill your men. Tried to stop ‘em.”

  “Okay…” Andy said, nodding for Vince to continue.

  “I swear! Murph was drivin’ then. We were in the back vehicle, an’ he stopped the Hummer and told O’Reilly to send you guys a message.

  “We didn’t have a choice,” Vince said in a seeming non-sequitur. “We had to leave Edwards.”

  “Why?” Andy asked, his voice stern.

  “’Cause we didn’t want to die! Edwards was s’posed to be the safest damn place in the world, next to that school. S’posed to be the place we could stay, hold the faith, keep the Army presence, no worries ‘bout any damn Z’s coming on base.

  “Didn’t work out that way, though. Lord knows where the fuckers came from, but first thing I know, my buddy Smithton’s kid’s bitin’ his wife, right in the gut. Kid musta been nine, ten maybe, took a big ol’ chunk right out of that gal. An’ Smithton couldn’t do a damn thing to stop him—how do ya stop your own kid? Z or no, that was Smithton’s kid there, an’ all he could do was watch as the boy left the wife and attacked Smithton straight up. Took a big-ass chunk out of Smithton’s leg. That was when I had to do somethin’. Pulled out my gun. Shot Smithton an’ his lady an’ his kid. Not a choice there.

  “Anyways, good lord only knows how them Z’s got on camp, but they was there. Everywhere. Couldn’t find a building didn’t have ‘em all over the place. So me an’ Murph an’ the rest of the survivors decided we had to leave, had to get somewhere that we could hole up. Murph and a couple others’d heard of that Wal-Mart, so we figured best chance we got was to get somewhere like that.

  “So the ones that could get away did. I’ll never forget, Lewis an’ his wife were all set to go when this kid—didn’t even recognize him, but I’ll never forget him now—busted out from behind the mess hall, came runnin’, Lewis didn’t even have time to react, an’ he chomped down. Full force out of them jaws, snapped clean through Lewis’ wife’s calf. Didn’t know the human jaw could get through that kinda bone, but this kid’s jaw did it no trouble. I s’pose you couldn’t really call it a human jaw at that point. No matter, kid managed his way all the way through. Lord, her screams. Lewis couldn’t deal with ‘em. Collapsed then an’ there.

  “Tried to get him to come with us, but wasn’t any good. Couldn’t get him to make a peep after all that happened. That was where he was, and that was where he was gon’ stay. Had to leave him.

  “So we did,” he went on, reliving his terror and shuddering every other sentence. “We left, an’ we headed to that Wal-Mart. Didn’t even have time to get all our ammo. Don’t think we made it out of there with one goddamn explosive. Lucky to have gotten out with the bullets we did. Just left. Murph was drivin’, I was ridin’ shotgun, last Hummer in the group.

  “We’d been drivin’ a few miles when we saw a coupla cars. Musta been you folks, tryin’ to make your way our direction. Couldn’t’a been no one else. Everyone else drives on past, like you weren’t even there, but then the radio crackles through. ‘Kill ‘em,’ they says. I think it was Menendez. ‘Kill ‘em.’ That was all he said.

  “So Murph slows down, pulls up alongside that last car. I tried to stop him. Told him we could just drive, let you folks find your own way. I begged Murph. Begged him to drive on, let you folks go, let you all find your own safety without us stoppin’ you. ‘If we gotta stop ‘em,’ I says, ‘do it at the building. Maybe they find some other whole place to hole up, maybe we don’t have to worry ‘bout them at the Wal-Mart. Maybe we can let ‘em go without more blood,’ I said. But Murph and O’Reilly wouldn’t listen. Said the supplies might be limited. Said we couldn’t risk you gettin’ there an’ takin’ what was ours. Said the only place to hide on the whole damn Cape, Buzzards Bay to P-town, would be that Wal-Mart building, so made sense we’d scare you off sooner rather’n later.

  “I told ‘em not to shoot, but O’Reilly did anyway. Big ol’ fucker rolled down his windows an’ let fly. Didn’t shoot the lot of you, an’ for that I’m forever grateful, but he shot that third car. Whatever happened to them, O’Reilly’s the one that fired the shots.”

  “There were four in the car,” Andy said, his voice grave. “You killed two. Wounded another. They’re all dead now.”

  “Like I said,” Vince said, like that news didn’t surprise him, “O’Reilly fired the shots. I couldn’t stop him, no matter what I said. After that, we drove on.

  “Got here directly, an’ we started to make our way inside, but turned out there was some others there already. Couldn’t’a been more than 15, 20 people. They’d just got there, were ‘bout to enter when we showed up. Acted so happy that we were there, that someone official was gonna help ‘em get through this. But Murph an’ O’Reilly an’ the rest, they just opened fire, leveled the lot of ‘em. Never stood a chance.”

  He shook his head, looking haunted by the memory. “Couple of ‘em made it inside, but they all got it eventually. We weren’t ‘bout to stop shootin’. Took ‘em all out, holed up inside soon as we could, kept a couple on guard the whole time.

  “Mine an’ Murph’s shifts’d just started when you all show up, cut Murph’s throat like it wasn’t nothin’. An’ now you’re gonna kill me.”

  Vince appeared to sob again, crippled by his fear, but Andy wouldn’t have it. “Hey!” he said, nudging the man with his foot. “I didn’t ask for your autobiography. What’s the best way to get inside? What’s the best way to protect my people?”

  Vince nodded. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I’ll tell you, but ya gotta promise to leave many of my men alive as you can. They’re my family now.

  “I didn’t tell you,”
he went on, his tears coming again, “my own boy was one of the infected in the camp. Joseph. Eleven years old. I’d already left for the mornin’, an’ when I came back, after seein’ Smithton, Joseph’d been infected. Lord knows how he got it—I didn’t see a scratch on him—but he wasn’t Joseph anymore, wasn’t nothin’ but a Z in Joseph’s clothes. I slammed the door on ‘im, left him locked inside the house.

  “He wouldn’t tolerate that,” Vince said, his voice hollow. “Heard ‘im scratchin’, poundin’ on the door, tryin’ to get after me. But that wasn’t my boy. Wasn’t Joseph. Those eyes.…

  “Anyway,” he continued, shutting the memory out, “I slammed the door on him, closin’ the last family I had inside my quarters. So only family I got now is O’Reilly an’ Menendez an’ the rest, so you gotta promise me you’ll keep many of ‘em safe as you can. I understand you folks gotta do what you gotta do, and the good lord knows O’Reilly will shoot you soon as look at you, but you gotta promise me you won’t kill any more than you gotta. Some of ‘em ain’t the men. Some of ‘em are the wives. Don’t think none of the kids made it, but wives, innocents. Near all of us had family at the camp, a few got away. Humvee Murph an’ me were in, that was the only one didn’t have no wives on board. Probably why they told us to do the shootin’.

  “So please, sir,” he said, meeting Andy’s eyes. “Kill who you must, but no more’n you must. They’re my family now, an’ I couldn’t bear to see ‘em all die.”

  He looked from Andy to the other adults, his eyes wide, desperate, as though seeking absolution. Andy nodded back to Vince, but the others remained stoic.

  “Okay,” he said. “Well, you can get inside the building without too awful much trouble. Doors don’t even lock. They’re just heavy. Metal doors, open outward. Much as the Z’s knew how to kill just ‘bout anyone, they never did learn how to open a door, other’n beat it ‘til it caved in. These doors won’t cave in.

  “S’pose they made the doors that way so any living soul could get in, keep the Z’s out. Anyway, shouldn’t be too difficult to get in, so long as none of my boys see you. And at the front door, they ain’t likely to see anyone. They’ll all likely be huddled in the interior, unless one of ‘em decides to be runnin’ laps same time you show. See, it’s two layers of building, an’ the first layer oughta be pretty safe for anyone, for a short time.”

  “What do you mean, ‘two layers of building’?” Andy asked.

  “Just what I said,” Vince said. “It’s two layers. It’s like they built the whole Wal-Mart, then made another Wal-Mart outside it, ‘bout twenty feet wider on all sides. There’s this hallway, goes all the way ‘round, like a moat. Ain’t got no one patrolling the moat, just me an’ Murph outside, an’ the rest hidin’ out on the interior. They’re guardin’ the openings, though. Got two people with guns trained on both inside doorways. Getting’ to the second level’s gonna be tough. But you can get into the moat no trouble, easy as you could get into the old McDonald’s down by the highway.

  “Your trouble will come if you ever want the chance to eat, get to the generator, use the facilities. Those are all inside the main building, inside the moat.

  “Somewhere in the past twenty years, they built a whole second damn building inside that Wal-Mart. Shell’s still the damn navy blue you’d expect, but it’s like they built a whole community inside. Outside walls are just there to be walls, to make it harder to get to the main doors.

  “The inside building was made 90 degrees opposite the moat, so you gotta go right or left once you get inside. It’s like—you remember the old childproof Aspirin bottles? You had to line up the cap with the bottle an’ the grooves to take the cap off. Wal-Mart building’s like a closed Aspirin, turned childproof. Ain’t hard to open, just gotta get to where the opening is.

  “Anyway, if you can get to one of the openings without them hearin’ you, might be able to get far as the inside openings, far as where the second guards are.

  “After that? Search me. Damned if I can think of a way you folks can get all the way inside, ‘less you have some gas an’ about eight masks in that backpack of yours.”

  Vince looked from Michelle to Barry to Donnie to Andy, desperation in his face, his eyes searching for a friendly face. He found none. After meeting Andy’s eyes, he nodded and lowered his gaze to the ground. “I told you what I know,” he said, his voice low. “I can’t give ya’ nothin’ more to go on. Either that’ll get you inside or it won’t, but I can’t fathom anything else I could say.

  “I wish we hadn’t killed your people, though,” he added hopefully. “Lord knows, you all could survive out in the open like you have, you’d be useful in any sorta defense situation, but like I said, they weren’t ‘bout to listen to my advice. Figured they had nothin’ to worry about, once they got inside.”

  Andy nodded. He had come across several such people in his adventures in 2010, men and women who knew they were safe and refused to let anyone else share in their precious supplies, no matter the cost. That was why, despite what other faults he might have had, Andy had truly loved Carl. While the man was self-assured to the point of hubris, Carl hadn’t sacrificed any others for his own well-being. Even when he had pulled his weapon on Andy, it had been so he could eat himself, regardless of Andy’s participation, not so he could eat at the expense of Andy. Enough others had been willing to kill just to prevent sharing that Carl’s equanimity had been refreshing.

  On top of that, Vincent’s terror in the face of weapons told Andy that he was telling the truth, at least about the Wal-Mart. He might not want Andy and company to kill off the group inside, but he was being straightforward about their hopes for survival.

  “Okay,” Andy said after several minutes’ silence. “Okay. We’ll trust you, Vince. But I swear to all that is good in this world, if you’re lying, I will make sure I take you to hell with me. One way or another, if you’re sending me in to get me, my daughter, or anyone in my group killed, I’ll make sure you suffer for all eternity. That is a promise.”

  Vince nodded, and the terrified look in his face only grew in the face of his newest threat.

  Chapter Seven: Heaven

  With Vince and Murph out of the way, there was nothing keeping the group from driving right up to the doors, Celia thought. Her father, though, shot that idea down.

  “We can drive to the edge,” he said, his voice stern. “But no closer. If Vincent’s lying, if there’s a guard at the door, we don’t need to drive up and give him a clear shot.”

  “I swear to you…!” Vince started, but Andy cut him off.

  “I heard you, and I believe you’re probably telling the truth,” Andy said to the man. “But sure enough to bet my life? No thank you. So if it’s all the same to you, we’ll settle for planning our own way, and you can just sit tight. And,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “please. Be quiet. Speak when spoken to. You aren’t going to help your cause any more.”

  Vince nodded, looking back to the ground.

  “We’ll drive to the side of the building,” Andy continued. “Enter the parking lot on the side, we ought to be able to get within a couple hundred feet of the door without anyone inside even having any hope of seeing us.

  “Now,” he said, turning to face Celia, who was now standing with Stacy and Simon, close to where Brandon was still sitting in the car. “You four. Manage your weapons, be on watch. But hang back. You don’t ever step an inch in front of me. I lead. You’ve done well so far. All of you. But this is different from anything you’ve ever faced, and I’d feel much better if you just hung back and took care of Brandon’s ankle and Vincent’s… well, make sure he doesn’t run off.”

  Celia nodded. It was pointless to argue with her father’s instructions, and she was honestly unsure of how much help she would be in their assault—she was hardly mentally ready to attack well-trained Army men, no matter how vital it was.

  She climbed back into the car with everyone else. They deposited Vince in the backseat in betwe
en Simon and Donnie, and Andy pulled out in front of Michelle and her load, directing them to his designated stopping point.

  “You gotta promise me,” Vince said after about a block. “Just kill what you gotta. Please. I don’t wanna be part of any more deaths. I couldn’t take that.”

  “I told you,” Andy said. “I’m not like your people. I’ll kill to protect my daughter, get her safe. But I won’t kill just because I can. That’s what your people do. Not mine.”

  Vince nodded. Celia kept her eyes ahead. Less than a minute later, she gasped.

  Andy had just made a right turn, bringing the Wal-Mart and its lot into view. The bodies of the people the Army men had killed—presumably the other survivors from Morgan College—were visible, but what Celia was gasping at was the other body, the one that was much closer to them.

  Murph’s body.

  The figure lay flat on the ground, right next to some sort of crate that he had apparently been using as a chair. She could pretty easily tell how Murph had met his end—his seat backed up to a row of hedges, and a pool of blood surrounded his head and neck area. Celia’s father, it seemed, had been both stealthy and brutal in killing Murph and seeing the result was jarring.

  Andy drove past Murph’s body without sparing it a glance, parking his car to the right of the building, in a spot where anyone inside would have needed X-ray vision to spot them. Michelle stopped just behind. They were no more than ten feet from the last Humvee in the line.

  “Now,” Andy said when everyone had again left the cars and congregated, Michelle lugging her overloaded pack. “We’re going to do this quietly. If Vincent was right, we ought to be able to move in, along the wall, without the people inside hearing us before they need to.”

  Suddenly, Celia heard a noise from the other side of their cars, a whoosh of air. She turned, with her father and the others whipping around nearly as quickly.