After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Read online

  “What is this?” Michelle asked, picking the paper up from the table. “Good luck,” she read. “The world needs you, and the world needs this. Signed, 2010 survivor.” She looked up at Stacy. “Must work at the factory.”

  Again, neither of them spoke for a minute. Finally, Stacy got up with the stick and the little pamphlet and hurried to the bathroom. Michelle followed, but Stacy shut the door when she got there, so she leaned against the wall just outside the room.

  “I didn’t know you were having sex,” Michelle said, affecting a casual tone.

  “Just once,” Stacy said.

  “With who?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, then after a moment added, “Samir.”

  Michelle nodded. “He’s a good kid,” she said.

  “Haven’t seen him since we did it,” Stacy said.

  “Why?”

  “He’s nice,” Stacy said. “But I just wanted to have the experience.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Stacy didn’t answer for a moment, and the sound of urination came from the bathroom. After a moment, she spoke again. “By the time you guys were my age,” she said, “you had both survived zombies. Mom had shot people, shot zombies, had just about wandered the countryside for the better part of a year. She was pregnant with me already. You had lost your sister. You guys did so much. I sit home every day and read. On a good day, I walk to the park. Mich, I had to do something.”

  Michelle didn’t answer for a minute, ruminating on the comment. Finally, she smiled. “And sex with a skinny Indian boy was the best you could come up with?”

  Stacy laughed. “I didn’t have anyone to shoot.”

  The toilet flushed and the door swung slightly open. Michelle entered the bathroom, where Stacy was sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Her shorts were discarded, sitting on the floor, and her T-shirt easily covered her underwear so she looked even younger, swallowed by the enormous shirt. She held the pregnancy test in her hand, staring at it as though willing it to give an answer.

  “Well,” Michelle said, pulling the stick from Stacy’s grasp, “if nothing else, you have an experience now.” She leaned against the vanity and read the instructions. “Give it five minutes,” she added, putting her hand on Stacy’s again-bouncing knee to settle it.

  Stacy nodded. She wrapped her arms around her knees to hold them in place and stared at a spot just below the doorknob.

  “If I’m … if this is positive, do you think Mom will still let me go to school?” Stacy asked.

  Michelle nodded immediately. “You’re going to that school,” she said. “I don’t think she’d pull you out of it if your legs fell off.”

  “Good.”

  “Why haven’t you seen him again?” Michelle asked after a moment.

  Stacy shook her head. “I should. Especially if I turn out to be … you know. But I didn’t care about him, you know? I just wanted to do something. And he was there.”

  “Stacy, you ought to —”

  “I know!” Stacy snapped, then caught herself and made an apologetic face to Michelle. “I know. I wish I had done this better. Been nicer to him. Been more careful. I made mistakes here, I know. I wish I hadn’t.”

  They didn’t speak again for a few minutes, Michelle checking her watch every few seconds. Finally, she appeared to decide enough time had passed.

  “Okay,” she said, and Stacy sat up straight. “Remember that we’ll figure this out no matter what it says here, okay? You’re going to school, and we’re still a family. Your mom and I aren’t going anywhere.”

  Stacy smiled, a tight, pained smile that didn’t really show any happiness. “So what’s it say?” she asked.

  Michelle took a deep breath and held the stick up so she could see. She squinted at it, then looked at the little instruction pamphlet, and back to the stick again.

  “Stacy?” she said at last. “You’re pregnant.”

  Chapter Two: The Bridge

  2030

  Stacy had driven along fairly peacefully through the rest of Cape Cod. For her part, Michelle had been getting more and more nervous as they drove because she knew what would come at the end of the cape. There were two bridges off of Cape Cod. One was more convenient to the path they had taken but still had guards at it.

  The other had no guards. And the reason the other had no guards was because Michelle had killed the ones on duty.

  Michelle knew that they had to use the Sagamore Bridge with its dead guards and haunted memories. Still, when Stacy pulled to an intersection, wasn’t sure where to go, and asked, “Which way?” Michelle froze.

  “Turn right,” Brandon said from the back seat. “Go to the Sagamore Bridge.”

  “Both bridges are guarded, kid,” said Erik dully. “Might as well go to Bourne. It’s closer.”

  “No,” Brandon said with conviction. “Sagamore is better.”

  “We’re likely to get shot at either one,” Eric said. “Why go farther to get to the same thing?”

  “We won’t get shot at Sagamore,” Brandon said. “My dad’s a guard there.”

  Michelle’s mouth fell open. Stacy, appearing to side with Brandon, made the right turn and headed toward the Sagamore Bridge. Finally, Michelle found her voice again. “What … what’s your dad’s name?”

  “Preston Hirsch,” Brandon said.

  Preston. He was the one Michelle had mortally wounded, the one who had ended up saving her life on her first pass through Sagamore Bridge. He had said his son was at Morgan College.

  “He’ll be stationed in the booth,” Brandon said. “But their orders were to shoot anyone trying to get on the Cape. They’re allowed more lenience with people trying to leave. I’ll go up and explain. He’ll probably even come with us when he finds out. I’m sure he can help.” He paused. “He won’t take Mom’s death well, though.”

  She had to tell him. That much was clear. It was far better that he know the truth than to stumble across his father’s dead body at the guard booth and have to wonder. But Brandon was barely 24 hours removed from losing his mom. He was alone, and he was alone suddenly. From what Michelle had gathered, neither Simon nor Celia had come from two-parent homes, and Stacy still had Michelle. Brandon was the one who was getting the worst end of the deal.

  But she had to break it to him. They were getting close to where the bridge would come in sight. Just as she started to say something, though, Brandon spoke up.

  “Ma’am? How’d you get onto the Cape, anyway?”

  He said it slowly, as though he were just having the realization. When Andy Ehrens had asked Michelle the same question back at the school, Brandon had been off with the kids, not listening. But now, having talked about the guards’ “shoot first” edict, Brandon appeared to remember that Michelle had come from Stamford, and that that had to mean something had happened.

  Michelle nodded, then turned to look at Brandon. Her eyes, she knew, answered his question as well as anything.

  Brandon’s back stiffened as he figured it out. “What happened?”

  Michelle let out a long exhale, longer than it really needed to be, as she tried to contemplate how to answer his question. “You know the rules,” she said. “They were told that the Cape was perfectly safe, and that they were to shoot on sight. Well, I knew the Cape wasn’t safe. I had to get to Stacy.” She shook her head. “I don’t know what else I could have done.”

  Brandon looked down at the floor of the vehicle. “My dad’s dead?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and she felt herself start to cry. “I shot him. But he lived for a minute. I hid out with him while he was bleeding, and explained everything. He said it was okay, Brandon. Once I explained what had happened, he said he understood, he said I made the right call. He said to protect you. He even saved me from the last guard. Shot one of them himself.”

  No one in the Humvee spoke. Stacy had pulled to a stop as Michelle explained. Michelle glanced around the vehicle and saw that both Stacy and Celia were cryin
g, and it looked like Erik might be as well. Simon was looking downward, but from what Michelle had heard, he hadn’t even cried when his own father had died so she didn’t expect anything out of him here.

  “I’m sorry,” Michelle went on. “I wish I hadn’t. I wish I had had another way. I did a lot to get here, to get to Stacy, and that’s the one part of it I wish I could take back. Maybe …” She trailed off. She had started the “maybe” with the notion that she’d come up with other options than shooting Brandon’s dad, but the best she could think of was that she could have gone to the other bridge, and that was just dumb luck. Beyond that, Michelle didn’t have any idea what she might have been able to do differently, and it seemed silly to come up with inane suggestions just so appease the young man.

  “Just drive,” Brandon said angrily. “There’s nothing to worry about at the bridge now. Guess we can drive along.”

  Stacy hit the gas, and they moved forward again. The bridge was the next turn. Michelle felt herself sliding down in her seat, trying to disappear from the world. She was only minutes removed from having to explain to Erik why they killed the woman he was trying to have a baby with and she had moved on to explaining to Brandon why he was an orphan.

  She didn’t want to see what was waiting for her on the other side of the bridge. Preston and Emmanuel’s bodies were still in the booth. The other guard she had shot and the woman Preston had were still lying on the ground outside it. She could still see it all in her mind, shrouded in the darkness of the night, but now she was going to have to see it again, for real, and in full daylight.

  As Stacy pulled on to the bridge, Michelle heard movement in the back. She turned, and Brandon’s head was suddenly very close to hers. He was looking out the window, as though he were expecting his father to be waving to him on the other side. Maybe he was holding out hope that Michelle’s visit hadn’t been fatal. She wanted to tell him there was no way, but she knew she had already done that. Might as well let him have the relative peace of the bridge ride, she figured.

  As they crested the bridge, and the guard booth came into view, Michelle realized there was one problem she hadn’t considered — bodies attract zombies. There were two piles of zombies feasting outside the shack, one on each guard out there, and the small shack itself looked like a college frat prank trying to see how many people they could fit in a phone booth.

  Brandon slunk back. There was no hope there. There were only zombies, and a lot of them. Michelle had thought about stopping, letting Brandon get out to say goodbye to his father; something he hadn’t gotten to do with his mother. The sight they were seeing now had nixed any notion of that.

  And then, as Stacy got within earshot of the first zombies, Michelle realized something else — they were boxed in. A couple of the zombies noticed the arrival of the Humvee and got up from the woman’s body, sprinting toward them.

  The Sagamore Bridge was a four-laner, with nothing dividing opposing directions of travel. The bridge was lined on each side with tall, nearly unclimbable poles along the edges that curved in, so as to prevent anyone with aspirations of jumping. It was better than a quarter-mile long, and there was no way Stacy would have time to turn the Humvee around or reverse the length of the bridge without the zombies reaching them. And if they abandoned the vehicle, their only recourse would be to run the other way, because the poles meant whatever was on the bridge in the middle stayed on the bridge.

  The other option, of course, was to drive straight through them. Michelle had tried that with her own car a day earlier to her own peril, as that had directly led to her car becoming a lawn decoration. Then again, this was a Humvee, a vehicle made for greater durability.

  Stacy had slowed the vehicle down at the sight of the zombies and looked behind her, as though wondering whether reversing was an option. “What do we do, Mich?” she asked at last.

  Michelle squinted ahead. “Drive,” she said.

  Stacy was incredulous. “Forward?”

  “You’ll be fine,” she said, then added, “Don’t hit any more of them than you have to.”

  Stacy swallowed, then nodded. By this point, there were only a few zombies headed their way, but Michelle knew it was only a matter of seconds before the majority of the group came sprinting toward them. Stacy drove forward. The first couple zombies bounced off the front of the vehicle like rodents. As the group came running, though, the passage became more difficult. Stacy pulled toward the left of the road, with the majority of the undead coming from the guard booth at the end of the bridge on the right.

  “Can we get through them?” Michelle heard Celia ask from the back.

  “This thing should get through most anything,” Erik answered, though his voice sounded nervous.

  “Should we shoot them?” Simon asked, moving up to the space between Stacy and Michelle.

  “Too many,” Michelle said. “Couldn’t shoot them all. Shoot some and we risk creating a roadblock in front of us.”

  The Humvee erupted with conversation — about how to handle the zombies, what to do with the Humvee, and whether to use the guns — as Stacy neared the end of the bridge. All eyes were outside the vehicle. They were paying attention to the zombies, to the bridge, to the road. They were talking over one another, each offering up his or her best advice for what to do.

  And then suddenly, all the talking in the vehicle stopped, as a shot rang out and deafened them all.

  Michelle turned to see who had decided to start shooting without warning anyone. It was foolish, reckless, and damaged everyone’s hearing.

  And then she saw that none of that mattered. The person who fired the shot was Brandon, and he had used it on himself, shooting under his jawline. The young man was dead.

  Chapter Three: Part Friends

  “I never should have had a kid,” Jack said out of nowhere.

  They hadn’t spoken in a while, not since Mickey had been quizzing his son on his post-Salvisa plans, so this comment came as a surprise. “What do you mean?” Mickey asked.

  “Adie,” Jack said. “That was stupid. In a world like this, where things can happen at any minute, bringing a kid into it? It was selfish. I couldn’t protect her. I just proved that.”

  Mickey shook his head. “No,” he said. “The selfish thing would be to never have a kid just so you don’t have to someday feel bad. People not having kids because of what someday might happen? Son, that’s not a problem of a zombie world. If people thought like that, we’d have stopped having children the first time one got eaten by a saber-toothed tiger.”

  Jack shook his head. He was looking out the window, and Mickey didn’t think he was even listening to him. “Hey,” he said. “You took care of Adaline. She was a healthy, happy little girl. You were a good father, a good provider. I’m heartbroken that she’s gone, but it’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault.”

  Mickey’s son continued shaking his head. “I brought a defenseless little person into this world and just hoped she’d be okay. And I knew what kind of dangers exist in this world.”

  Mickey stopped the truck. He put it in park and turned to face Jack. His son was leaning against the door of the truck, with his legs propped up close to him. His chin was tucked down toward his chest. It was as small as Mickey had ever seen his son look.

  “You were born,” Mickey said, “in 1984. Middle of Reagan’s presidency. Also, middle of the Cold War. Far as we knew, nuclear war was never more than a button-push away. I was bringing you into a world that could have ended any day. Was I selfish? I don’t think so. You can’t guard against everything. All you can do is raise your child as best you can. That’s what you did with Adie. She’d have been a wonderful person. She was a wonderful person. Nothing that happened today changes anything you did, makes you wrong in any way. The only other alternative would be to just give up, make your generation the last generation, and hope something new evolves on this planet. That would have been the selfish route.”

  Jack didn’t say anything, but hi
s head nodded very faintly. Mickey watched him for another second, then said “Let’s just go,” and threw the truck back into gear.

  They were coming up toward the left turn that would take them to I-95 and the quickest way to get to Salvisa’s. It was also the route Mickey had absolutely no intention of taking. If he were forced to take the interstate, he would, but it would be a last recourse — zombies moved to interstates and other well-traveled areas. Mickey might be able to drive through whatever groups they found on the interstate, but he wasn’t going to risk it if he didn’t have to.

  So he turned right. There were back roads and the like that would carry them all the way to Salvisa’s. It would take a little longer, but the only schedule they were on was to get there before they died.

  It would mean that Mickey would be running stop signs on the road. He didn’t mind driving a little slower, but he had no intentions of stopping any more than he had to. And he wasn’t likely to get pulled over by anyone.

  As he crested the hill just after the turn, though, Mickey found himself slamming on the brakes. There were four zombies in the road — healthy zombies, moving quickly across the road toward a man in the yard to the right.

  He was about Jack’s age, but heavier, in worse shape. He had a thick, dark pile of tight curly hair on top of his head that was flecked with gray and a flannel shirt that, even with his larger size, was draped over him like a poncho. He had a gun in his hand that by all accounts he had recently used, judging by the bodies on the lawn in front of him. Unfortunately, the zombies he had shot hadn’t been coming from the road, like the current assailants were, so the man was facing the wrong direction as he stared at his kills.

  “Quick!” Mickey said as he stopped the truck. He and Jack pulled their guns out and jumped from the truck.

  The trailing two zombies weren’t difficult. They had been distracted by the arrival of the truck and were running toward Mickey and Jack. The Lewises felled those two in short order.