After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Read online

  “Turn around,” Michelle said.

  “Turn around?” Stacy echoed.

  “Yes. He’s never going to move if we don’t. He’ll die there.”

  From the back, Brandon scoffed. “He was shooting at us. I’m okay if he dies.”

  Michelle shook her head. “He wasn’t. He was stopping them.”

  Stacy complied, turning the car back toward the Wal-Mart. When the Hummer was again facing the building and the others looked out, they saw the man, who still hadn’t moved. The zombie on the edges of the large parking area was moving forward, but it had a ways to go.

  As the Hummer drew near, the man on the ground didn’t even seem to notice it. It wasn’t until Stacy pulled the vehicle to a stop, only a handful of yards shy of the man, that he even flinched. He shrugged, wiped his face, then turned his head slightly toward them. He made no aggressive actions, either offensively or defensively. He didn’t even acknowledge the weapon that still lay on the ground before him.

  “Stay here,” Michelle said. “And keep the car on.” With her own weapon still at the ready, she climbed out of the vehicle. She walked toward the man slowly, afraid he might reach for his gun at any moment. But he never did. His head was still turned toward Michelle, just barely, enough that she knew he was aware of her. When she got right up behind him, he looked back at the body in front of him, and Michelle could hear him sniff.

  “Why did you shoot him?” Michelle asked.

  “I told them,” the man said, his voice low, barely audible. “Told them for 24 hours now. People aren’t the threat. Not anymore they’re not. Killing you all, trying to kill you all over and over, it might have helped us survive, but then what kind of world would we have survived for? Zombies kill what zombies have to kill. I’m not questioning them. This? This doesn’t make sense.”

  He lapsed into silence then. Michelle gave it a moment, then prompted him. “So …”

  “I couldn’t do anything about it when it was all of us. You saw what they did to Menendez, to Vince. If I had spent any more time telling them to let you guys in, I’d have been dead, too. Even coming back here,” he motioned down at the body, “Steve told me to shut up about a ‘truce,’ that he’d decide who deserved the Wal-Mart building and who didn’t, and I might be on the ‘didn’t’ list if I didn’t shut up.

  “When you killed June, Steve wasn’t going to stop. That was his wife. He’d have chased you until he found you or the zombies found him. I had to stop him. Didn’t mean to kill him. Just stop him. Scare him. But I moved too fast, hit him too squarely. He took a minute to die. And he just stared at me. Hate. He hated me.”

  “He did it to himself,” Michelle said softly, putting her hand on the man’s shoulder. “If he’d been willing to listen, we’d have given him the building. If he hadn’t chased us, you guys would be safe now.”

  “I know,” he said, defeated. “I know. But still, I pulled the trigger.”

  They lapsed into silence for a moment. Michelle kept her hand on his shoulder, but spared a look over her own. The slow-moving zombie was within 50 yards or so, but still barely creeping along. Well behind it, though, Michelle saw a couple more zombies, ones capable of more swift movements.

  “I’m not even a soldier,” he said softly, shaking his head. “They were the soldiers. I’m just the doctor. Just the doctor. ‘Do no harm.’”

  “Do you want to stay here?” Michelle asked. “The Wal-Mart should be pretty safe. We can move the other Hummer in front of this door if you want. Or,” she hesitated, not wanting to make decisions for the kids still in their vehicle. Finally, she figured she didn’t have a choice, and pressed on, “you can come with us if you want. We can help each other.”

  The man kept staring at Steve’s body for a moment. Finally, he looked toward the door, to where June’s body lay. “I’m not staying here,” he said.

  “Okay,” Michelle said. “Get your gun. We need to go now.”

  He picked up his gun. After a second, he handed it to her, in what Michelle took as a sign of trust, in both directions. She helped the man up, and they moved to the Hummer. It was already overcrowded, with seating for only four per vehicle and five occupants counting Michelle, but she knew she wouldn’t have been able to leave that man behind and keep her conscience. She motioned for Simon and Brandon to move to the flat space between the back seats, and the man climbed into their now-vacant seat.

  Michelle climbed back into her own seat. She looked to Stacy, who was looking back at her with a “What’s going on?” look. Michelle just shook her head and motioned forward. Stacy shrugged and drove again.

  They were well and truly departed now, leaving the now-vacant Wal-Mart behind. They were heading toward Maine. They were on their way.

  That thought was immediately followed by another thought — that of regret. Michelle had risked almost everything she had — physically and emotionally — to get to Stacy, to get the two of them to some level of safety. And now she was leaving that safe place in the dust as fast as the Hummer could accelerate.

  It felt wrong. It felt like heading upstairs during a building fire, when the rest of the building was fleeing downward. Even now, knowing why they were leaving, it took everything Michelle had in her to keep from ordering Stacy to stop the car. For the second time in as many days, she was leaving safety for danger, and there was no one she loved on the other end of this journey.

  But they were out, and they were gone. There was no turning back. So Michelle settled into her seat, looking forward, ready to tell Stacy directions on driving north. They were out, on their way, and she would do her level best to make sure it ended up being the right decision.

  Chapter Seven: Fog

  With their home nothing but a memory, Jack had started talking about Salvisa. Things like how much Mickey thought Salvisa knew, whether there was a cure, whether he would even be willing to talk to them in the first place.

  Mickey, though, had set his sights more locally, on the home of Sean Logan, Mickey’s friend and neighbor. Sean was not like the Lewises in preparation; Sean was needy. Mickey regularly found himself bringing Sean supplies, even in a non-zombie world. In the current situation, Sean, living alone and with Mickey and Jack leaving, would only survive as long as his current loaf of bread held out. The man didn’t know how to prepare.

  It always bothered Mickey, but he had known Sean for a big chunk of his life, and felt some level of obligation to the man. So when they reached the intersection where they would take a left to head out of town and to Salvisa’s, Mickey instead opted for a right.

  Jack noticed. “Dad? What are you doing?”

  “Sean,” Mickey said, hoping Jack would know that Mickey needed to check on his friend and leave it at that.

  He didn’t. “That old screw-up? Dad, he’s not your responsibility.”

  “He is,” Mickey said. “I can’t leave him without checking.”

  Jack scoffed, but didn’t argue. Arguments between Mickey and Jack were always on the shorter end. Both could be stubborn, but both also knew how stubborn the other was, so they both knew when to shut up if they didn’t feel too passionately about a given subject.

  And that was all Mickey planned. Stop at Sean’s, see that he had supplies and was safe, maybe offer him the run of Mickey’s place, and leave. Mickey briefly wondered if he might even offer to let Sean come with them, as the one thing Jack was right about was Sean’s role as a general screw-up. The one thing Sean had on Mickey was age; Mickey was fit, but he was also in his early 70s. His left knee argued with him on the best of occasions, and his lungs no longer had the capacity they once had. Sean, in his late 40s, wasn’t the paragon of physical fitness, but an able body was an able body.

  Mickey was still rolling the idea of adding Sean to their trip over in his head when he turned off the road and through the row of trees that separated Sean’s property from the street. Almost immediately after clearing the treeline, Mickey hit the brakes.

  Sean’s house was o
n fire.

  Jack hadn’t been paying close attention as they drove, but when he saw the fire, he sat up like the teacher had just called on him. “What the hell?” he asked.

  Mickey, stopped at the end of the driveway, didn’t speak. The house was fully engulfed, but hadn’t taken down the foundation yet. There were no people in sight, but no zombies either. Still, the sounds of the burning and the smoke that was blowing away from the house would surely attract attention soon enough.

  It took Mickey only a moment of thought to realize there was no sense in trying to put the fire out or dawdling there. He put the truck into reverse and started to leave. Just as he did, though, a flash of movement from Sean’s house caught his eye and Mickey turned back.

  “Did you see that?” he asked, looking at the window on the far right of Sean’s one-story house, where Sean’s bedroom was.

  “See what?” Jack replied. Somehow, he already sounded bored of the fire.

  “Sean’s window,” Mickey pointed, his eyes not moving. “Thought I saw a …,” he trailed off, squinting at the spot again.

  Suddenly, the movement came again. It was unmistakable this time. Someone — it must have been Sean — was waving inside the room.

  This was different. Mickey could have left the house in his dust if he had seen no sign of Sean. Maybe the guy was gone, or maybe the fire had already killed him. Either way, Mickey and Jack weren’t equipped to fight a house fire on their own — let alone any zombies that might happen by — just to search for a person who might be there, might be alive. But concrete evidence there was a living human inside the home? Mickey didn’t have it in him to leave that.

  He put the truck back into drive and started to move forward, which brought Jack around to his involvement in things. “What are you doing?” he asked. “We can’t put that out.”

  “It’s a one-story house, son,” Mickey said. “Break one window and we can get Sean out. We can’t leave him to die.”

  Jack’s face told Mickey that he would have been fine leaving Sean to die, but he didn’t say anything. And when Mickey stopped the truck near the house, Jack didn’t hesitate as he jumped from the truck.

  Jack got to the bedroom window before Mickey. He pulled out his gun and swung the butt into the window. It cracked, but didn’t give. He repeated the motion, and the window gave way. Jack, and Mickey coming up behind him, jumped back from the smoke that poured out of Sean’s window.

  When it cleared slightly, Mickey moved ahead of his son and climbed inside, his knee barking at him as he pulled himself from the ground.

  It was almost black inside, and stiflingly hot, but the flames themselves hadn’t yet reached the bedroom. Mickey ducked low to try to avoid the smoke and looked around the room. He saw Sean almost immediately, lying facedown on the ground next to the bed. He was barely coughing.

  Mickey paused for a moment. He didn’t know what had caused the fire, or what Sean’s condition was, but life had taught him not to approach an unknown body too quickly in the world of zombies. You never could tell.

  He examined Sean as best he could from a distance of about five feet. He couldn’t see anything worthy of worry, but didn’t want to be too hasty. It wasn’t until Jack, still outside, called in, “Dad? Dad, you okay?” that Mickey moved.

  “Fine,” he called back through the smoke, and even that little bit of speech caused him to fall into a coughing fit of his own. The smoke was penetrating, a fog settling on his old lungs that kept them from doing their job. Between it and the heat, Mickey suddenly had a whole new level of respect for any monk who had set himself on fire in the days when such things happened. Respect mixed with a helping of marveling at their stupidity.

  When he got the coughing under control, Mickey moved toward Sean. The man was still moving, but didn’t seem like he’d be capable of getting out under his own power. Mickey pulled Sean's right arm over his own shoulder and pulled the man up as much as his old body would allow. He drug Sean to the window, where Jack hauled the man out.

  Mickey followed out the window. Getting outside, only inches from the still-burning home, was freeing. The fog cleared, the temperature dropped what felt like a hundred degrees.

  Jack was pulling Sean a few feet from the house, and Mickey noticed Sean’s chest and stomach were bleeding from the broken glass that was still in the window frame, and it had already started soaking through his shirt. When Jack stopped dragging him and laid him flat, Sean coughed weakly a couple times.

  “The girl,” he croaked out after a minute.

  Jack looked to Mickey, who returned the look. They didn’t know what Sean was saying, and Mickey had a feeling Sean didn’t, either. He lived alone, and Mickey didn’t know when he had last had a visitor who wasn’t Mickey himself.

  “The girl,” he said again when neither man replied.

  “What girl?” Mickey asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “Inside,” Sean croaked, then fell into a new coughing fit. Mickey and Jack made eye contact again, and Mickey could tell his son was wondering the same thing he was. There was a girl inside? And Sean was wanting them to retrieve her? They couldn’t know where she was in the house, if she even did exist — and Mickey had his doubts. On the other hand, if they didn’t go looking, and it turned out there was a girl, Mickey would hate himself.

  “I have to look,” he said to his son.

  Jack looked back at his father incredulously. “You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “You’ve already done more than you had to.”

  Mickey just shook his head and moved back toward the house. Just before he re-entered the house, he called back to his son, “Keys are in the truck, if I don’t make it back out. You can still get to Salvisa’s.” Without waiting for Jack’s response, he pulled himself back in through the window.

  Fog again. If anything, it was worse this time than it had been before. Mickey ducked low again and moved toward the door. It was open, and he could see the flames down the hall. If any girl that existed wasn’t in the adjacent bedroom or the bathroom, Mickey wasn’t going to be able to find her. He glanced in the tiny bathroom and saw it was empty, then moved to the second bedroom. The door was pulled to, but not closed, and Mickey pushed against it.

  There was something behind the door. Something heavy. Sure it was the girl, Mickey pushed the door open as quickly but gently as he could. He got it open just enough to push his way through and crouched low again.

  His eyes had to adjust to the darkness of the room, full of smoke, curtains drawn. There was barely any light in there at all. He squinted down, and his eyes pulled in a shirt first. He reached down for it, but felt it give way under his hand. He squinted again. There was another shirt, some pants, a towel, a bedsheet …

  Laundry.

  The pile massed against the door had been a mess of laundry that, Mickey could now see, had fallen from its vertical hamper in the closet. He swore at the clothes and threw them aside, then looked around the room.

  He couldn’t be sure in the darkness, but Mickey didn’t think there was anyone in there but him. “Damn Sean,” he thought, cursing the man for whom he had just risked his life twice. Mickey left the bedroom and moved to go back into the master bedroom. As he did, he noticed the flames were moving his way. It felt worse than a zombie’s approach, because the gun at Mickey’s side would do nothing against the fire. That said, he thought for the briefest of seconds, if the flames were to get him, at least he knew he wouldn’t come back after his death as a fire.

  That thought passed quickly as Mickey decided he didn’t really want to be picking which death he’d prefer. He re-entered Sean’s bedroom and started to head toward the window. As he did, though, he saw something next to the bed, on the far side from where Sean had been. It had been hidden from his view his first time in the room and, though he had given a cursory glance when he had re-entered, he hadn’t noticed it. There was a leg there, and, as Mickey rounded the bed, he saw the leg was connected to the body of an unconsc
ious girl, no older than her early 20s.

  Mickey didn’t recognize her. She wore clunky hiking boots, baggy jeans and a T-shirt, and looked to be at best malnourished. If not for the slight rise and fall of her chest in the moment Mickey looked at her, he might have thought she was dead. But he pulled her up — much easier to do than it had been with Sean — and moved her to the window. He grabbed a blanket off the bed as he did.

  He looked out, expected Jack to be standing there waiting, but his son was still crouched over Sean’s body. He held his towel wrapped around his hand.

  “Jack!” Mickey called. His son turned quickly. When he saw his dad at the window, he wiped the sweat from his face, then hurried over, pushing his towel back into his back pocket.

  Mickey threw the blanket over the window sill, hoping not to repeat the mistakes that had left Sean so bloody, then handed the girl to his son. She was dead weight, and Jack had to drag her out so roughly that Mickey was glad he had thought to use the blanket.

  He followed out, determined that that would be his last trip into Sean’s house. Jack was dragging the girl further from the building than he had Sean. Mickey guessed he was taking her all the way to the truck, so he moved to Sean’s body to do the same.

  He stood at Sean’s head and reached under his arms to drag him. Before he moved an inch, though, Jack spoke up. “Don’t bother, dad,” he said between strains at dragging the girl. “Sean’s dead.”

  Mickey didn’t move, his friend’s head still between his hands. “What?” he asked, looking down at Sean’s face. Nothing seemed to have changed, but even as he thought that, he realized that something had changed, and his son was right.

  “Gave one more coughing fit when you went back in, then stopped moving. I tried, but he was done.”

  Mickey nodded. There had been a lot of smoke, and Sean hadn’t been doing well. Still, it felt sudden. He let his friend drop back to the ground and turned toward the truck to help Jack. Just as quickly, he turned back, drawing his knife. He looked over Sean’s body, then moved back to the house to get the blanket that still lay over the windowsill. He placed the blanket over his friend’s face, found his eye with his hand, and jabbed the blade through the blanket and eye socket, into Sean’s brain. It gave way readily.