After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Read online

  Mickey pulled the blade back out, wiping it clean on the blanket, and stood up. Jack was struggling to load the girl into the back of the cab, so Mickey headed over to help his son.

  “What were you doing?” Jack asked when Mickey got near.

  Mickey grabbed the girl’s legs and, with Jack at her torso, they lay her flat in the back of the truck. She hadn’t stirred, but her breath was less labored out from the smoke, and when they let her go, she rolled slightly into what looked like a more comfortable position. Jack climbed out of the truck and went to close the back door, but Mickey stopped him and climbed in. He pulled up the legs on the girl’s jeans and removed her boots and socks, placing them in the floor boards. He moved up to her torso and raised her shirt to her chest and rolled up her sleeves. The girl was clean. She hadn’t been bitten.

  Mickey left the truck, closed the rear door of the cab, and the two started to climb back in to the truck. As he started the truck back up, Mickey looked back at where he had left his oldest friend. Behind Sean, the flames had moved into the bedroom. And beyond that, coming around the side of the house, Mickey saw the first few zombies starting to appear. He thought he recognized them as the same zombies that he had spied from his house a few minutes earlier. They spotted Sean’s body before they noticed the truck, and moved to the side. The blanket was gone in seconds, and they started on their meal.

  Mickey gunned the gas, kicking gravel up under the wheels, as he turned to leave Sean’s house. The zombies didn’t even respond to the exit, focused as they were on the feast before them.

  “What were you doing?” Jack asked again as Mickey pulled back onto the road. “What took you so long with Sean’s body?”

  Mickey glanced in the rearview mirror, but by this time everything about Sean’s property was out of sight. “I couldn’t keep them from eating him,” he said, his voice dull. “But I made sure Sean would never have to be a zombie.”

  Chapter Eight: Calm

  The zombies they had seen at the Wal-Mart hadn’t followed them — or, if they had, Celia hadn’t seen them. She had caught glimpses of some, including some she thought she recognized as students from the college, along the road as Stacy drove, but nothing had gotten near enough for them to even start worrying about the threat.

  Stacy had driven for about ten minutes, following Michelle’s instructions. They had started seeing signs for Route 6, and Michelle had told Stacy that was her destination, so even the directions had become rare. They drove along for a few minutes, and Celia had started watching the scenery of Cape Cod. What was supposed to have been a multi-year trip to the Cape had turned into a one-day sojourn, and she couldn’t imagine a scenario in which she’d ever return, so she made a point to take in as much of the area as she could.

  She was looking out the driver’s-side rear window, then, when she saw a sign that indicated “Shallow Pond” a couple hundred yards from the roadway, and Celia sat up straight. They were driving directly away from the ocean, so what small glimpses of it she had gotten were going to have to sate her. Still, Celia loved the water, and the pond — a pond in name only, as Celia couldn’t see the other end from where she was — was an almost-suitable substitute.

  As they drove by, she strained to see as much of the water as she could. And just as she caught the full view, she remembered her last time at the ocean, years ago, with her father. They had ridden there in Andy’s old sedan, of course. The sedan that she just now realized she’d never be seeing again.

  Celia hadn’t come to terms with losing her father. Not yet. Not in less than a full day. But he had driven into her head her whole life that people could — in fact, did — die at any minute. It was a tough thing to come to grips with as a child, but now that it was real, Celia knew her father had been right to drill that into her head. But even with that knowledge, Celia’s realization about the car threw her. Her father was gone. She might never see their old home again. That car was the only thing she had left of their old life, and it was now several miles behind them, virtually unretrievable. It had the food in the trunk, sure. But it also had some of her father’s belongings. It had at least one picture of him. And she couldn’t get to those things.

  Celia felt herself starting to cry. She knew no one would fault her for it — every student in the car had lost a parent in the last day — but she didn’t want to have to explain that the tears were because of a car. It would be too hard to relate without feeling silly. So Celia resolutely faced the window, blocking her face from view as much as she could. They were nearing the end of the pond, and she wanted to see the water.

  Celia saw a human form walking along the water’s edge. It was walking without any defined purpose, but wasn’t aimless enough that Celia could definitely call it a zombie. On the other hand, she couldn’t think of a reason a human would be down at the water.

  She focused on the form, then. It was a woman, not much older than Celia was. She had her arms at her side and wore a blue two-piece bathing suit that would have landed her on magazines in another era. Her face was turned toward the water, like she was waiting for a boat, and she walked slowly.

  Celia leaned toward the sight, as though the extra inch or two of space between her and the car door was going to help her see. Suddenly, the car ground to a stop, the brakes squealing, and Celia pitched forward as far as she could before her seatbelt caught her. The car started moving again almost immediately, and Stacy wasted no time getting back to speed.

  “What happened?” Simon asked from his uncomfortable spot between seats. He and Brandon were sitting so low in the vehicle that they couldn’t have seen the ground at all.

  “Zombie,” Stacy said, as casually as she might have said “raccoon.” “Almost jumped in front of the car. Gone now.”

  Celia hadn’t noticed the zombie — from Stacy’s motions, it had been on the right side of the vehicle — so she turned back to the water, to see what had become of her friend at the water. It took a second, as the woman was no longer standing where she had been. Celia spotted her target a second later. No longer did she see a beautiful woman walking along the water. Now, it was sprinting toward the vehicle as fast as its bare feet would allow. With the full form facing her, Celia could see a bite taken out of her left shoulder, and blood streaking down her face. It was as far from the idyllic scene of a moment earlier as it could have been.

  The zombie was more than a hundred yards from the vehicle, and losing ground. There was no threat there. So Celia continued to stare, amazed at how much her perception had changed just from getting a different angle. She had been aware, even as she was watching the “woman” walking along the water, that there was every chance she was seeing a zombie, but even with that knowledge, the verification was jarring. In that moment, Celia flashed back to the sunglasses kid from the day before, and she was reminded of how little she really knew about living in a world of zombies.

  Celia cast her attention back to the water. No breeze was creating any waves. The only word she had to describe the pond was “calm.” Even in a world with so much tumult, so much uncertainty, the water could remain calm.

  Celia knew that she didn’t know much. But even with that thought, she knew that her love for water, for the calmness no matter what was going on in the world around it, wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chapter Nine: Rational

  “I want to thank you,” the man said from the seat behind Michelle. It was the first thing he had said since they left the Wal-Mart. For the briefest of seconds, Michelle even had to think about who he was.

  “You could — hell, maybe you should — have left me there,” he went on. “I’d be dead now if you had. And you didn’t owe me anything.”

  “We aren’t like —” Michelle started, then stopped. They didn’t have this man prisoner, he wasn’t being coerced into cooperating with them like Vince had. He really did seem to work in opposition to his former compatriots. She needed to be nicer to him than she felt like being. “We wouldn’t leave someone
to die,” she settled on. “You wouldn’t either, I imagine.”

  He was silent for a moment, staring out the window. Finally, Michelle saw in her visor mirror, he shook his head faintly. “I’m Erik,” he said.

  “Michelle,” she replied. None of the kids spoke up to offer their own names, so the group lapsed into silence for a moment. Michelle looked back to the road. She had been distracted earlier, thinking her own thoughts — hadn’t even seen the zombie that Stacy had braked so hard to avoid. She didn’t like that she had missed it, that she had let the faux security of a vehicle distract her from the world they were living in. Yes, a Hummer would be a tough thing for a zombie to get through, as would any vehicle. But this was something like Michelle’s fifth car in the last 24 hours; vehicles weren’t foolproof.

  There was the occasional zombie near the roadway — moreso as they reached and turned onto Route 6 — but no groups large or close enough to pose a threat. Not yet, at least.

  Stacy was seeing the same thing as Michelle, it seemed, as she soon piped up. “There really aren’t many of them,” she said. “What does that mean? Are they somewhere else? Or are there just not that many this time?”

  Michelle didn’t answer for a moment. There were several possible explanations for the small number of the undead they were seeing, and not all of them were as good as Stacy’s hopeful tone indicated. But from her vantage point, she had no way of knowing which was correct, and she saw no sense in trying to sound confident when she had no reason to be.

  “I’m not sure,” she said eventually. “Could be there aren’t as many this time. That’d be nice. But there are other possibilities. For one, the Cape became limited access when they decided to open the school here. Camp Edwards, the students, some permanent residents, but it’s just not a very populated area. And the guards,” she paused, remembering those guards she had killed, “weren’t letting anyone else on. Could be, when we get to the mainland, we’ll run into a lot more.

  “Also,” she went on, pointing to a group of zombies at least a quarter-mile away that were crouched over a body, “between the ones you all killed yesterday and the fact that the Guardsmen probably killed any they saw, there are a lot of meals lying around the Cape. The ones that are here might be distracted. We get to a place that hasn’t seen as much killing as this place, we’re liable to have a lot more to worry about.”

  Stacy didn’t answer for a minute. Finally, she asked a question Michelle hadn’t yet given much thought. “How do you think the other schools are doing?”

  The other schools. St. Louis and Santa Fe weren’t on de facto islands. They were smaller walled-in towns, basically glorified Army bases. Michelle would have had a much harder time breaking in to either of those campuses than she had had storming Cape Cod. And Salvisa’s revelation that the very students the walls were meant to protect were the ones most likely to be infected meant that those walls would basically be serving as undead incubators.

  “Nothing we can do about that,” Michelle said as her answer. “Maybe we find out one day. Until then, best not to think about it too much.”

  Stacy nodded. From the backseat, Erik piped up again.

  “Did you have to kill my wife?”

  It was a question asked without malice, just curiosity. And Michelle hadn’t the first clue what he meant. “What?”

  “My wife,” he said again, and again, he said it without anything but curiosity. “You all killed her. In the hallway.”

  Michelle thought back. When they had first entered the Wal-Mart, they had encountered a woman — lookout maybe, just out for a jog maybe — who had pulled her gun on Stacy. Her shot had killed Donnie, who had protected Stacy, but Celia’s father had taken the woman out before she could do any more damage. Vince had called her Pastis. Could that really be this man’s wife?

  “…Pastis?” Michelle asked, unsure.

  In the rearview, she saw him nod. “My name is Erik Pastis. That was Christine.”

  Michelle nodded back. “We did,” she said. “When we came in, we surprised each other. She pulled on us.”

  “You couldn’t have just held her, like you did with that guy, Vince?”

  “There was no way. She shot first. Killed my best friend.”

  Erik nodded, still without anger. “Who did it?” he asked.

  Michelle didn’t answer right away, so Celia piped up from the back. “My dad,” she said softly.

  Nothing happened for a minute. Though the man hadn’t made any moves, and hadn’t seemed like he was out for revenge, Michelle was glad in that moment that she had his gun safely up front with her. She also thought the fact that the man’s wife was the soldier, and he was just a soldier’s spouse, went a long way toward explaining why he seemed so opposed to the actions of the Guardsmen.

  Finally, Erik spoke up. “I understand,” he said, barely above a whisper. “You didn’t have a choice. I just needed to know.”

  Michelle didn’t want to press him, but Stacy didn’t seem to have any such qualms. “You aren’t angry?” she asked.

  He looked down at the floor. “I wish she wasn’t dead,” he said. “I’m angry she’s dead. Sure. I hate it. She was my life. I loved her. But she killed one of your people, and my guess is, she’d have killed more if you hadn’t done something. I don’t know how I could be mad about that.”

  It was a rational answer, in a situation where just about anyone would be completely irrational. Michelle was glad he didn’t seem to be angry, but she also couldn’t help but wonder when Erik’s irrational side would rear its head. She felt sure it would.

  “I learned a long time ago,” he went on, “the key to being mad is having a reason to be mad. A target. In 2010, I was working at a restaurant. Crappy little corporate place, sucks the soul out of everyone who works there. Just trying to pay my way through med school. Used to be, if one server got sent home and the other didn’t, the other one would get pissed. And, sure. But one day I thought about that, and if I’m mad because I’m not cut, then what I’m hoping for is that I get cut and the other person doesn’t. So basically, I was just hoping that someone else had the reason to be mad. And that’s no way to go through life. Anger can be created or destroyed. If someone wrongs you, be mad. If someone does the only thing they can, though, being mad isn’t healthy for anyone. I’m upset she’s dead. I don’t know how to be mad at you for that.”

  Michelle kept listening. She appreciated the sentiment, but she got the impression Erik was trying to talk himself into the points he was making.

  “We were trying to have a baby,” Erik said softly. Michelle noted the comment, and decided that, rational or no, she wouldn’t be giving Erik his gun back unless she absolutely had to.

  Chapter Ten: Decision

  “Who is she?” Jack asked. He was turned around, looking at the girl in the backseat. She hadn’t woken up, but her breath had evened out, and Mickey guessed it would be just a matter of time before she regained consciousness.

  “I have no idea,” Mickey said. “Sean didn’t have any kids.”

  “Do we wake her up?”

  “No, no.” Mickey had his eyes on the road. There had already been one group of the undead that, had it been closer to the road, might have made the road impassable. As it was, he had clipped one with his right-side rearview mirror. That mirror now lay broken on the road somewhere behind them, as did the zombie it had hit. He was fine letting the girl lie back there in silence, at least until he got to an area he felt more in control over.

  “So we just take her?”

  “Why not?” Mickey asked. “She’s not liable to slow the truck down. And I don’t know where she was from, but the only house I know she’s been in isn’t of much use to her now. This is the best choice.”

  Jack didn’t seem comfortable with Mickey’s choices, and he eyed the unconscious girl with some contempt, but he finally turned to face forward.

  They lapsed into silence for the next few minutes, Mickey with his eyes locked onto the road.
He hadn’t wanted to lose his rearview; he definitely didn’t want to lose more than that. It wasn’t much more than an hour’s drive to Salvisa’s compound under normal circumstances, but Mickey expected it to take at least twice that with cautious driving, and it could easily turn into more if any one of a hundred different zombie-related situations presented itself.

  Jack and Mickey were well-stocked for a trip into dangerous territory. The Lewis boys provided for themselves for just about everything in their lives, and when they couldn’t make something themselves, like weaponry, they learned to trade for it. And trade they did — they had had a well-stocked gun room back at the farm. In the floorboards below where the girl now lay, and in the storage cabinet in the truck bed, were rifles aplenty, and there were handguns on holsters on both men’s hips. Extra ammunition for the handguns was just about everywhere in the car — each door held some, as did the men’s pockets, the glove compartment, and just about any other nook or hidey-hole. The doors also had multiple knives, and the driver’s side one held a police baton.

  The truck bed storage cabinet held water and food. It also held a small photo album of Adie’s short life and her favorite doll. They both had known, when packing, that they might never make it back home, and so Mickey had insisted — and Jack hadn’t really argued — that they take keepsakes of the young girl along with them. It was all they had left of her.

  Mickey found himself thinking about his granddaughter sadly, and those thoughts naturally took him to his own daughter and son. So many lives had been cut short because of the zombies, but his was still going, and for reasons he didn’t understand. Mickey wasn’t anything special. He hadn’t done anything in particular to survive, other than not being where the zombies were. He knew people who had fought off hordes of the undead, who had devised intricate traps or weapons to combat them, or who had protected their loved ones to great effect. He hadn’t managed to protect much of anyone, and the only times he had really had to battle zombies in any number were when he had gone looking for his daughter. Those were self-inflicted battles.