Life After (Book 2): The Void

by Bryan Way

  After another hour or so of enjoying the holiday cheer, it’s back to work. Karen again inspects my bruise, finding a bull’s-eye of dark, tender skin on my lower back. Following a host of questions, she deems it unlikely that I have internal bleeding, damaged organs, or cracked ribs, but insists on another checkup. Rich and I see to our firearms; fortunately, the bullet that struck my Winchester’s forestock caught wood, making it only slightly less comfortable to hold and no less functional. We now have two M-16s and three magazines between them; one is empty, one is full, and the other has about ten rounds left. As we tally the weapons, I bank on Rich not noticing that my Colt is missing and succeed.

  On the way back to my room, the PA crackles to life and my heart begins throbbing in my chest, but the announcement is merely Helen stating that Ally wants to see me in her ‘office’, which I assume to be the isolated computer room in the technology wing. I brush my teeth, take my pills, get dressed, and head to the first floor. On my way down the steps attached to the breezeway, I notice Jake with his head pressed against one of the windows overlooking the courtyard. I consider stopping in to say something, but he seems to be at peace.

  Once in Ally’s ‘office’, I take a seat and she gets right down to psychoanalyzing me, which is uncomfortable when it’s this obvious. She tells me vaguely of conversations she’s had with Rich, Mursak, and Helen over the past twelve hours concerning our successful rescue by way of relaxing me, but it doesn’t work. Throughout the affair, I feel tense and stand-offish, condescended to and irritated by her attempts at subtlety when she brings up the subject of killing people out of perceived necessity. It takes all of my will not to lash out.

  At some point, I stop listening and find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that this is all bullshit. Of course I feel like I had to kill those men, is that somehow supposed to make me feel better about doing it? I don’t feel as awful as she thinks I do, which is likely as awful as I probably should, but this isn’t Zoobilee Zoo; the sooner she realizes that yesterday’s episode wasn’t a ginned up morality tale resulting in a lesson designed for an infant to digest in one sitting, the less likely I’ll be to shout at her until she cries.

  It had occurred to me that the only repercussions of killing a person are internal at this point; no one’s going to come knocking on the school door asking questions about the bodies at DC cubed, and no one here is going to treat me any differently. It’s all down to how I feel about it, and nothing she says is going to change that. If I’d accidentally killed my roommate at college I’d be a puddle of remorse, but, to date, I’ve shepherded Don Baker into the beyond, spent a few hours with Julia before she willingly marched into the unknown, beat the corpse of John Squared into the nether, and listened to my brother’s final terrified wails.

  What’s sure to prey on my mind is the second guy I killed grabbing his neck and pushing me away. The look on his face was more injurious confusion than it was fear or anger; he simply didn’t understand what had just happened or why, and he probably didn’t see futility until after I’d removed his head. What a horrifying concept. He probably felt the blade separate his neck as a rush on par with a convulsive cough, and then observed a spiral of vision as he spun toward the ground.

  I can’t remember anything I’ve said, but Ally smiles as I leave, so I at least gave her the impression that she’s done a good job. I head up to medlab to get a look at Anderson, but on my way the PA stops me yet again; there are apparently at least ten Zombies near the front lawn. With Alpha team woefully understaffed, I rush to the flank and observe as Beta kills our would-be assailants without difficulty before carting them off to the pool. As I watch them unfurl the theatre curtains used for transit, I feel a pang of disappointment that I didn’t get to try out my trench knife prototype.

  Beta team finishes up without attracting anymore of the undead, so I make my way to Anderson. I enter the room to find him limp and unattended, hooked up to an IV as his chest mechanically heaves up and down, leaving his lungs empty for a few seconds before repeating the cycle. Drawing closer introduces me to an olfactory nightmare of toxic breath and old sweat, forcing me to cover my mouth and nose with my t-shirt when I pull a chair up to look at him.

  I expect myself to be angry at his disquieting state, but it’s more depressing than I expected. I’ve seen him sleep before, but since he’s joined the Guard, there’s always been something resembling tension in his joints, as if he were able to control his muscles subconsciously. Now, he’s a rag doll, his bushy brown mane greasy with perspiration, his proud, distinguished nose leaking snot into his beard. The more I watch him, the more I suspect that he’s about to wake up. He doesn’t.

  A half hour passes before Mursak quietly joins me. He doesn’t say anything when he enters, grabbing one of the classroom chairs and dragging it noisily across the floor toward me. Mursak lets out a nauseated cough as he covers his nose and mouth with a flannel shirt. The humor fades quickly, leaving me to wonder what good I’m doing here, if any. I’d like to be here when Anderson wakes up, of course, but we have no idea when that might be.

  My thoughts drift until they center on the fact that there is no comfortable position for me to sit without making my back feel like it’s going to snap and fold me over. As I stand, I attempt to exit with as little sound as possible for a reason I can’t fully explain. Mursak stops me before I can get to the door.

  “Grey… what do you think about Rob?”

  “…seriously?”

  “Good. I don’t trust him either.”

  I rest my back on the chalkboard.

  “Any reason?” I ask.

  “He’s an addict.”

  “Yeah…?”

  “My cousin Mark was.” Mursak continues. “He, uh… used to steal from my parents. Apologized when my uncle caught him… said he bought back what he’d sold, and gave us some of the things that’d been missing… earned our trust… and did it again. He said he was sorry… and that’s when I saw it… same thing I saw in his eyes the first time he apologized, only now I recognized it… he was full of shit. So full of shit he made himself believe it. I don’t like to pass judgment… but Rob’s full of it.”

  I can’t stifle a snicker before responding.

  “I told you about that girl in the community center?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He would’ve shot me if he could…” I continue. “I was lucky. I’m starting to think she wasn’t.”

  “Can we prove it?”

  “How?”

  “She still there?” Mursak asks.

  “Of course.”

  He shrugs his eyebrows.

  “…you wanna go out there?”

  “Why not?” Mursak continues.

  “Because… I don’t know… it’s an unnecessary risk…?”

  “Unnecessary? Grey, he tried to kill you, he may have killed this girl… you really wanna see if he does it again?”

  “No… I don’t.”

  “So… we make an excuse… we had two helicopters fly in yesterday, and there were a dozen Zombies outside today. That connection isn’t a stretch. You volunteer, we go to the community center tomorrow.”

  “You remember how we left it.” I swallow. “You sure that’s wise?”

  “For once, I’m really not in the mood to debate this.” Mursak asserts. “Do you, or don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I do…”

  “Tomorrow, then, if they accept?”

  “If I can talk Rich into it.”

  He nods and gets up, making his exit quicker than I expected. I steal one last long glance at Anderson, make for the door, and then head to the cafeteria where I find Rich conducting an AAR with Beta team. Deciding against interrupting, I sneak into the kitchen from the back to get a look at our water cache; between the recently purified and replenished ‘disaster’ reserves, the basement supply, and our refilled plastic bottles, there’s nothing to see but a well-kept stockpile.

  Though Karen is busy, I know she’d tell me I sh
ould lie down and ice my back, so I collect an ice pack and head back to my room where I’m surprised to find Melody folding her sleeping clothes on the bed. She barely acknowledges me as I enter and lay myself out. With the ice pack perched just above my hipbone, I watch her stare out the courtyard window for a long time. “Jeff…” The sound of my name obliterates the silence as I attempt to mask my surprise. I hum to indicate my arrested attention.

  “Mind if I sleep here a while?” She asks.

  “…of course not.”

  “…thanks.”

  “…Melody…”

  “Mel. Just Mel.”

  “Mel… you want to talk about what happened?”

  “No.”

  She continues staring out the window and sighs shortly after I remove the icepack.

  “Ally said I shouldn’t.” Mel starts.

  “Shouldn’t what?”

  “Stay here.”

  “Stay here?”

  “With you, ya know?”

  “Oh…” I reply. “Anything in particular she said?”

  “Nothin’ I wanna repeat. I just… I feel better, ya know, having someone else in the room. Y’know, safer?”

  In the intervening silence, I think hard on what I could or should say. How does she feel about her capture? What happened to her? Was it bad enough that she wanted those men dead? Clearly she doesn’t think of me as a monster because she’s willing to spend her evenings in a bed next to me, but is it merely because I’m a safer substitute than the alternative?

  After twenty minutes or so, I re-apply the ice pack and again recognize Mel’s presence in the room, identifying the frozen relief of her face as one of quiet desperation. I can empathize. As I have so many times in my own life, I can feel her replaying moments of her ordeal to almost injurious levels of repetition, imagining different outcomes if she’d changed so much as the position of her hair, restarting the scenarios constantly when she imagines new variables, all of which lead nowhere.

  “Jake tell you about his funeral songs?” Mel asks suddenly.

  “Uh, yeah…?”

  “What’s yours?”

  “Haven’t decided.” I groan. “You?”

  “I, uh… no… not… really…”

  “…why do I get the feeling you have?” I ask.

  “Because, ah…”

  “What is it?”

  “…promise not to laugh?” She sighs.

  “Of course.”

  “Heartbeats. By The Knife.” She says finally.

  “Don’t know it… why would I laugh?”

  “I played it for my friends once… they said it was stupid… I told them John put it on a mix for me… they were like ‘oh, that explains it’. So… I never played it for anyone else… I guess it is stupid…”

  “Don’t say that. It meant something to you. It matters.”

  She nods silently and eventually smiles. After another twenty minutes, I again remove the icepack and attempt to lie on my back, a maneuver that only elicits a rumble of pain I can’t help but vocalize, and shortly thereafter Mel leaves the room. I find myself drifting off when the clarion call of my vibrating phone painfully rouses me to my feet. It’s Alan.

  “Alan… been a while. Merry Christmas.”

  “Uh, eh… you too…”

  “How’re things?”

  “Eh… not great… we, uh… lost another one…”

  “Shit…” I have a seat on the bed. “What happened…?”

  “We went to pick up some clothes at the Nittany Mall… figured we needed to get out before we got snowed in…”

  “Uh huh…” I mumble, switching the phone to my other ear.

  “Didn’t get the full story… but I think he… Dan, uh, Nick’s roommate… uh… I think he got distracted or something… got bitten.”

  “Oh no… the TechNoir guy?”

  “Yeah… on the way home… we uh… uh… we stopped and uh… someone… someone…”

  “…shot him?”

  “Yeah.”

  I think I read his hesitance.

  “I take it Dan didn’t go willingly?”

  “Nah…”

  “Someone insisted?”

  “Yeah…”

  “The person who insisted… are they nearby?”

  “Uh, yeah… relatively… I guess…”

  “So Dan didn’t agree to get out of the car… was there a fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “More of an execution than a mercy kill?”

  “Definitely.”

  “…was it Nick who pulled the trigger?”

  “Yeah.”

  The moment of silence that follows is uncomfortable for both of us. I can’t stop myself from contrasting this update with last night’s affair, but I wonder how an outside observer might characterize these events. With what little detail I’ve gleaned from Jack and Alan, Nick sounds like a psychopath to me, but who am I to judge after what I’ve done? Is Nick better or worse than I am? Or Rob? Unsure of how to continue posing yes-or-no questions, I switch topics.

  “So… how’s everyone else holding up?” I ask.

  “Not good… well, uh… we’ve got other… we’ve got a problem…”

  “What?”

  “The water tastes bad.”

  Alan’s puerile assessment sends my mind spinning through the possibilities suggested by a change in the water sufficient to alter the taste. We’ve considered the likelihood of a water shortage or water contamination, but never actively thought out a scenario in which our supply would become poisoned in a manner that renders it useless. How long until their water starts causing health problems? Is the problem bacterial or viral, or has the water become contaminated with oil or some other mulishly harmful solvent? Is there any way they can fix it? “We might have to talk about you guys getting down here.” My utterance is as unexpected for me as I imagine it is for him.

  “…what?”

  “If there’s a problem with your water, there’s literally nothing either of us can do.”

  “So… what, then?”

  “Either find a way to filter it… or start figuring out a way to get down here.” I immediately regret the implications of that statement and attempt to deflect. “Anything else going on up there?”

  “Well… there’s still a lot of them in the streets… and, uh… I don’t know… we don’t know if there’s anyone else left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There were other people… in Penn State, I mean, and, uh…”

  “How many in your group?”

  “Eight.”

  I wish he hadn’t quoted that number; adding another eight people almost doubles our current complement, and the influx would represent a significant strain on our already dwindling resources. On the other hand, I couldn’t allow the possibility of eight people to whom I have tacit connections dying slowly from poisoned water and ultimately becoming undead themselves. Our water supply is in no immediate danger, and we clearly have the space to accommodate them, but I can’t imagine how dangerous any attempt to unite might be.

  “Okay…” I eventually sigh. “Take stock of everything and everyone… start thinking of stuff you’d need to make the trip down. And just in case… be ready to bring us a water sample.”

  “Okay.”

  “Alan… be thorough. Vehicles, gas, weapons, emergency supplies… you need to be ready to travel cross country, get me?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Jack still okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine.”

  “Good… so, uh… just call me in a day or so.”

  “…alright.”

  “Later.”

  I hang up and feel a rush of panic as I imagine talking this over with Rich. I guarantee he’ll agree to a link up on principle, but I can imagine he’s going to beat me senseless over the details. The most reasonable course of action would be meeting them halfway to reduce the risk on either side. I can’t imagine we’d be able to make it all the way up and back in one
piece, but since I promised to make up for what happened with Dory, I owe it to them to try.

  I pick up the icepack again to find it warm and gooey, so I return it to the cafeteria freezer and take some ibuprofen. On my way back, I spot Rob in the hallway, so I do my best to avoid coming within twenty feet of him and end up taking the longest possible route back to my room, deciding on the way that I’d like another shower. I gather my belongings and take care of all my bathroom necessaries before getting dressed. On the way back to my room, I notice a few people in the cafeteria, so once I’ve replaced my personal effects, I make my way back down to find Rich, Mel, and Ally, picking up on their conversation before I enter.

  “…but it’s important that we deal with these things…” Ally continues. “We’ve only had Jimmy a few days now and I haven’t heard anyone talk about what happened to his mother.”

  “Why would we?” Mel asks, obviously irritated.

  “It’s a traumatic event, ergo it shapes our collective future. Even though everyone deals with it differently… I just want to make sure we’re managing our emotions. Especially Jimmy.”

  “He doesn’t know.”

  “He knows his mother is gone. If we all pretend it didn’t happen, it’ll have devastating repercussions on him moving forward. But we’re not just talking about him… what happened last night…”

  “Ugh, this again…” Mel scoffs.

  “…what happened last night affects all of us. We need to manage our emotions… to talk about it… because the longer we avoid it, the more damage it does. We need to come to believe that no one here is responsible, nor is our situation.”

  “How is it not responsible?”

  “I meant our living situation. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, and as if we aren’t in enough danger, imagine the risks engendered by untreated trauma; depression, insomnia, panic attacks, attempts at self-medication, or worse… we’re already skirting cabin fever, seasonal affective disorder, survivor’s guilt, and it’s safe to assume we’re all suffering from PTSD… if we deal with it now, we can better manage the impact… maybe even reduce it enough to make a positive difference. In essence, we have it easy now, and if we assume this episode reaches a positive conclusion, we can all come out ahead of the curve.”