After Life | Book 1 | After Life Read online

  Andy reached into his holster and removed his gun.

  Celia had staggered back against the wall and crouched, already in a state of panic. Tears were flowing and she was breathing heavily. Stacy seemed more composed, and had produced her own, smaller handgun as well, but Andy could see the fear in her eyes all the same.

  “What do we do? What do we do?” Celia asked.

  Andy stepped over to his daughter, prepared to help her, when they all heard the sound of glass shattering in the girls’ room.

  “What was that?” Stacy asked.

  “It went out the window,” Andy said.

  “Fourteen floors down?” Celia asked.

  “What do we do?” Stacy asked, she and Andy both ignoring Celia’s question.

  “Classroom,” he said, trying to feign confidence. He reached his free hand down for Celia and, after a few seconds of staring, she took it and allowed him to help her up. He led the way back to the stairs, pulling his daughter behind him. Stacy stayed close as well.

  Just before they got to the stairwell door, the last door on the right burst open, and a girl came falling out of it. Just behind her, another female form—a zombie—crawled after her. It had a bone sticking out of its left lower leg and could no longer walk. The girl it was chasing was crying and cradling her left hand, which carried obvious bite marks.

  Andy didn’t pause. He aimed the gun at the crawling zombie’s head and shot it once in the head. It stopped immediately.

  “Thank you!” the girl gasped, tears flowing down her face. “I didn’t know what I was—”

  Andy didn’t let her finish. He shot her in the head with the same precision he had used on the zombie. Once again, Celia cried out.

  “Dad! She was—”

  “She was infected!” Andy said immediately. “That’s all she was. You can’t fight that off. One nip and you are done. Listen to me,” he went on, turning to face both of them, “I ever get bitten—ever—even a little bit, you shoot me right between the eyes. I mean it. Don’t wait, don’t think about it, don’t try to convince yourself that I’ll be the lucky one—I won’t. You see anyone bitten, you don’t wait. You shoot first, ask questions later. You can’t be too careful. Anybody wounded—” he stopped. Instead of finishing, he just nodded at them. Stacy returned the nod. Celia, though, just stared.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” Andy herded the girls into the stairwell. From below, Andy could hear screams, cries, and gunshots.

  “Can we get all the way down?” Celia asked.

  Andy cocked his gun. “One way or another,” he said.

  They descended two levels past closed doors without incident, though Celia heard screams from both halls. She stopped briefly as she passed the thirteenth floor, her instincts telling her that she had to do something to help. But Andy and Stacy passed without a pause, and Celia reminded herself that she couldn’t help even if she wanted to. At the twelfth floor entrance, she made herself hurry past.

  The door to the eleventh-floor hallway stood open when they got there, and Celia could see blood smeared across the doorway and a motionless hand lying across the threshold. She stood a few stairs above, just behind Stacy, as her father stepped into the doorway and fired four shots into the hallway.

  “Hurry!” he said as soon as he was finished. “Keep going!”

  He ushered Stacy, then Celia, ahead of him. Celia ran past, sparing the slightest look into the hallway as she did. Without stopping to count, she saw at least half a dozen bodies—one, lying face up, had blood smeared across her face and a bullet wound in the forehead. She couldn’t make out anything about the others, nor could she tell which ones her father had been responsible for.

  She continued past the doorway, which Andy slammed shut as he followed. With her head turned, Celia didn’t see that Stacy had stopped, and ran into her on the stairs. Only the banister Stacy was holding kept her from falling down to the tenth-floor landing.

  Celia started to ask Stacy why she had stopped, but a look ahead revealed the answer—the landing, and more specifically the stairwell that continued below, was already crowded. Frozen, she stared down at the landing, where a group of human forms knelt over a body. Between the gnawing heads, she saw a bright pink top that was now stained with blood. Lower, she saw what looked like a broken heel on her feet. Celia shook her head, realizing the girl from the classroom must have tripped again.

  “Z’s are moving down,” Andy said. “They always do.”

  At her father’s words, Celia snapped out of her trance and leaned over the railing, looking downstairs. Every few feet, she saw a repeat of the scene on the landing—zombies were eating away at a variety of bodies, young and old alike.

  “Mr. Ehrens?” Stacy said, breathless. “Mr. Ehrens, what do we do?”

  Andy, too, cast a look over the railing and down the stairs. At a quick look, he counted at least twenty-five zombies over the next two or three flights, and that wasn’t counting bodies that looked dead but Andy knew could rise at any second. He thought about Stacy, who seemed proficient with her weapon but not exactly emotionally stable, and Celia, whom he had taught to shoot but hadn’t armed, and realized that even if she did have a weapon, he didn’t know if he could trust her stability, either.

  “We can’t go down these stairs,” he said finally. “We’d never get through.” He looked for his alternatives, and realized that—being on the tenth floor—they were adjacent to the walkways that connected them to the boys’ and parents’ dorms. “There,” he said, pointing to the walkway to the left. “Parents’ dorm!”

  He forged ahead of the girls, shooting the two zombies that were working on the improperly dressed girl below him. He herded the girls into the stairwell, then closed the door behind them just before a group of zombies came at them.

  The girls had stopped ahead of him, waiting for the door to close. His magazine emptied, Andy reloaded his weapon and looked at the two of them.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  Chapter Nine: Sit And Wait To Die

  In his sickly, weakened state, Lambert couldn’t get the door closed. A group of zombies forced their way in, and the first one latched onto his hand and bit down hard. Another followed behind, trying to get to his leg. Two others—Madison recognized one as a guard by his uniform, though she didn’t know the man by name—crossed the room toward her. At the same time, she was making her way to the desk. To her gun.

  The zombies, though, were just a bit faster. The first crashed into Madison just as she reached the gun. She shoved it away as the other one lunged at her. Madison grabbed the weapon just as the zombie grabbed her leg. She fired a shot into each of the zombies’ heads, but not before the zombie managed a nip to her right ankle.

  It was lucky Madison had fired the moment she had. Another second, and the pain from the bite would have blinded her to anything else, including the gun in her hand. Almost as soon as the Z’s teeth hit her skin, Madison would have sworn her ankle was on fire, and the leg it was attached to was about to ignite. Hot pain seared through her body, all the way into her brain. It faded soon after, but for four or five seconds, Madison was utterly incapacitated.

  When the pain had passed, Madison looked down at her wound. It was not a significant injury in itself, but her heart had already sunk. She knew what a bite meant.

  Finally, she turned her weapon to Lambert and the two zombies at the door, taking both creatures out with another pair of shots. The zombies dispatched, Lambert finally closed the door.

  “Shit!” he cried. He slid down to the floor, leaning against the door, and coughed violently. “Shit, shit, shit. They get you, Madison?”

  Madison nodded. “Yes, sir. The ankle.”

  “God damn. My wrist. My leg. They made a fucking buffet out of me.”

  “How many of them were there out there?”

  “Hallway is teeming,” he said, coughing again. “Gotta be a dozen or more.”

  Madison picked up the phone on her desk and lis
tened briefly, but there was nothing on the other end. “Phones are dead.”

  Lambert nodded. Madison looked at her boss, who she could tell was struggling already. “How do you want to do this?”

  He grunted. “Your gun. Your call.”

  Madison felt her gun. It felt heavier than she ever remembered. “I’ll do you first,” she said, trying to block out the pain coursing up her leg.

  Lambert nodded again. “Thank God my wife is dead,” he said, almost to himself. “Swore I’d protect her. I’d have failed.”

  “We’ve done all we could, sir,” Madison said.

  “‘All we could,’” Lambert echoed. “‘All we could.’ Madison, you and I are supposed to be two of the top prevention experts going. Supposed to be able to stay alive even when everyone else has died. Supposed to be the last line of defense. Yet here we are, nursing our wounds and preparing for suicide. Twenty years and we haven’t prepared a damn thing that’s real.

  “Let me ask you,” he continued, his voice rising. “What would you have done if you’d heard confirmation today? If word had come before we got bitten?”

  Madison thought. “I… I would have alerted the proper….”

  “You would have hit the big red button is what you would have done. Made a call, told everyone to hide out. And you’d have locked the doors and hoarded your tin cans and diesel fuel, waiting for… waiting for whatever comes next. We didn’t even establish a plan for what happened if they got in here! We didn’t think it’d come to that. So we’d just be waiting for the Z’s to run out of people to eat, or for them to just go away again. Highest-ranking officials in our goddamned government, and we’d sit and wait to die.”

  Madison wanted to argue. Her pride told her to. But her mind, and the wound in her leg, told her there was no argument to be made. “Where do you want it?” she asked.

  “Back of the head,” Lambert answered, gesturing to the target. “And don’t miss. Be damned if I’m going to wake up as one of them.” He started to go through the effort of pulling himself up, but he was too weak to do so. He crawled further into the room and propped himself up on his knees.

  Madison limped to him, sweat pouring. She held the gun to the back of his head.

  “I’m sorry, Madison,” Lambert said, his voice barely audible.

  Madison fired, and her boss fell forward. She looked down at the body for a moment, then removed her suit jacket and draped it over his upper torso and head. She put her gun up to her head, but froze. After a moment, she looked around the room, searching. Tucking her handgun into her waistband, limped into her inner office, where she picked up a piece of paper off of the printer and a black marker from her desk. She scribbled a single word onto the paper.

  Madison limped around her desk and pulled the stapler out of the drawer. She took the note and stapler to Michelle’s desk, where she pulled out her gun and placed it on the desktop, then sat in the chair.

  She could feel her body giving way to the virus. Her vision was fading—she briefly wondered how the zombies could even see, if her vision was already suffering, before realizing she didn’t give a damn. Her leg around the bite was already completely numb, and she could feel the dead feeling moving up.

  Madison put the paper up to her chest, as high as she could put it without covering her neck or head. Once she had it in place, she opened the stapler and plunged it through the paper, through her top, and into her chest. The first staple went in just above her right breast. Madison cried out briefly, but even that noise came with great effort.

  Shaking, she repeated the staple lower, just below her nipple, then followed suit on the left side of her body. With each successive motion, the pain, in fact the feeling altogether, was less. By the time she stapled a fourth time, she didn’t even feel it go into her skin.

  She felt herself losing consciousness. Madison reached in front of her to pick up the gun, then stopped and left it on the desk. She looked over to Lambert’s body, and shook her head.

  Just before she lost consciousness altogether, Madison muttered, to no one in particular, “I’m sorry, too.”

  Chapter Ten: We Go, We Shoot, We Leave

  “They still out there?” Donnie asked, shaking as he knelt against the wall. “Haven’t heard any gunshots in a while.”

  “Nope,” said Calvin McRell from his spot by the door, peering through the small crack. “They took off. Heard one of them mention going for a jog. Gotta keep in shape.” He turned to Donnie and scowled.

  Twenty-some years ago, Calvin had been at the head of his class at Annapolis. Before 2010, he had been well on his way to a high-ranking naval career. These days, he still wore his blond hair close to his head, still had his clothes pressed every day, and still had the ripped physique that came from strenuous daily workouts. Michelle knew all this because Calvin never missed the opportunity to tell of his exploits.

  Now, she sat at his desk, spinning around slowly in the chair. The room was just like the office Michelle had come from—Madison’s office. Everything was reversed, so that the door to the outside and the door to the inner office were opposite of where Michelle was used to them, and there was an extra desk and chair in a corner, less of a feminine touch to the décor, but constructed identically. Michelle always wondered how Donnie and Cal got any work done. With their contrasting personalities, she was glad she didn’t spend any more time with the two of them together than she did. “Take it easy,” she said without looking up.

  Calvin laughed. “Yeah, take it easy,” he said. “We’ll just kick it here. Never mind that the food stores aren’t in this room, because this place was supposed to be the last safe place, right? So we’ve got, what, a pot of coffee and a can of sugar. Yep, let’s take it easy. No worries.” He closed the door as quietly as he could. His hands on his head, he walked away from the others, facing the wall.

  “I didn’t say ‘Relax,’” Michelle said, stopping the spinning. “I said take it easy. We don’t need the sarcasm. It doesn’t exactly help.”

  “Got a better idea?” Calvin said.

  “What idea? We go, we shoot, we leave. Find a place to hole up. 2010.”

  Calvin spat on the floor. “Brilliant.”

  “You got a better idea?” Michelle asked. With Calvin’s silence, she pulled her pistol from her holster. From across the room, Donnie stood up and copied her motion.

  “She’s right, Cal,” he said.

  “No shit,” Calvin responded, rolling his eyes. He nodded and pulled out his own gun, but didn’t move toward the door.

  Michelle looked from Calvin to Donnie. Neither looked likely to make a move, so she headed for the door. Donnie immediately fell in step behind her.

  She stopped at the door and checked her magazine. It was full. She looked back at her two companions, but neither met her gaze.

  Michelle reached for the door handle, almost pulling her hand back. She thought the metal handle felt hot to the touch, almost as though there were a fire outside.

  “You gonna go?” Calvin asked. Michelle thought she could hear his voice shake as he asked, but it was still all the encouragement she needed. She pulled the handle down and threw the door open, almost smacking Donnie in the face as she did.

  In the hall, there were a handful of zombies. One of them, the one closest to the office, had clearly been no older than 13 or 14. She was the only one out there that Michelle didn’t recognize. The others all seemed to be coworkers or other facility regulars. They all turned at the sound of the door opening. Michelle assumed that an early-arriving zombie had gotten down there and infected the coworkers. The little girl, though, was a mystery. Michelle paused, wondering how a child had gotten in.

  The zombies didn’t pause. The little one turned toward Michelle. Instinctively, she flinched. It had been twenty years since Michelle had seen those black-and-white eyes, but she hadn’t seen enough of them the first time around to ever get used to it. She also figured there was no number she could have seen to ever get used to that
sight.

  And the smell. Michelle had first noticed the smell while they sat in the office. It horrified her. The odor reeked of a combination of body odor and decay, and the only time she had ever smelled it was during the events of 2010. Somehow, that was the first thing she had noticed, even through the door, even though the zombies had only been back for a matter of minutes. Opening the door stung her nose as the smell flooded in.

  The young zombie, with no noticeable injuries but streaks of blood streaming from each side of its mouth, sprinted toward the three of them in the doorway, jaws snapping. Michelle tried to force herself to pull the trigger on her gun, but nothing happened. When the creature was within only a few feet of the doorway, she heard a shot from just behind and to her right, and the small zombie went down.

  A small glance behind her revealed to Michelle that Donnie had been the one to fire the shot. He stood with his gun still held out and his mouth open.

  The shooting, though, kicked Michelle awake. She finally aimed her own weapon and felled the next three zombies that had started to head their direction. Seconds later, Calvin joined in, and the two of them progressed down the hallway shooting. Donnie followed behind, though Michelle noticed his gun never fired again. By the time they reached the T-junction, the hallway was devoid of any signs of the undead.

  Michelle took a left at the junction. Donnie paused, but followed her.

  “Geniuses,” Calvin called after them. “Where the hell are you going? Out is that way.” He stopped outside the men’s room door and gestured to the right and the stairwell that would take them outside.

  “Madison,” Michelle said. “In her office. Lambert, too, unless he’s dead already.”

  “The hell they are,” Calvin said. “If they’re still in there, they’re dead. If they’re alive, sure as shit they’ve left by now.”