Life After Death

by Jenkins, Seb

“Is there any other way out, Joey?” Max asked clearly, grabbing his friend by the shoulders.

  “No, not that I know of anyway. It’s okay, there’s not that many of them; I fought off more on my own the other night when I saved you, didn’t I?” Joey responded with a cocky swagger.

  “Good point. We stick close and we don’t take any risks, okay?” Max instructed, but Joey was off down the stairs before he’d even finished his sentence.

  Max hightailed it down the stairs after him, making sure to snatch up his bag on the way out. Joey was already halfway towards the clickers, who had now noticed the two men and began to shuffle their way over, arms outstretched and teeth chomping together. Their flesh hung more loosely off their bodies than any Max had seen; he didn’t know if that meant they were weaker or had been infected longer or what, but he jogged forward to joined his hot-headed companion.

  The undead horde was now upon Joey, who had retrieved both his machete and a short, sharp blade from his belt. The first clicker approached him, and in one swift movement Joey thumped the machete deep into its skull, wedging it in completely before stabbing the throat aggressively with his second blade. The clicker fell to the floor and he heaved his machete out from its battered head.

  Three more undead approached him from all angles as Max fought to catch up to assist him. Max was however immediately held up by a clicker of his own who had split from the main group. He grabbed the handle of his bat and arched a powerful swing, crushing down on the top of the clickers head. As his adversary tumbled onto the tarmac, he pounced upon the body and slid his knife softly into the temple.

  As Max looked up, he saw Joey, now encircled by the rest of the clickers, chopping and swinging his machete wildly. In fairness to him, bodies were dropping at his feet by the second, and Max admired the man’s quick footwork, constantly shifting onto a new opponent. A quick jab with his machete sliced through the face of a clicker to his left, the blade forcing itself all the way through the entire head, bursting through the far side with a disgusting squelching sound. Yet another body fell, and Joey spun to cover his own back, catching his foot on his most recent fallen victim.

  Max’s friend tripped and fell to the ground, instantly surrounded by clickers and blocked from Max’s view. Without a second’s hesitation, Max flew into the action, barging his way into the middle of the group to shield his comrade. He spun on his axis, over and over again, extending his bat wielding arm to knock back each and every clicker. Buying himself some time and space, he began to take them on, one by one.

  He plucked up Joey’s machete, which had been dropped in the commotion, and turned to the nearest undead. With an aggressive, forceful strike, he carved through the throat and neck, severing the head from the body before kicking the body away with the base of his shoe. Two more clickers were upon him now, as he pushed one in the chest, sending it stumbling back, before sending the machete deep into the brain of the second. Blood spurted from the decomposed wound, spraying across Max’s face.

  Wiping the red from his eyes, Max continued to slice his way through the pack of clickers, feeling the faint metallic taste of blood in his mouth that made him feel sick to his stomach. Joey had managed to heave a collapsed body from on top of him and grabbed the last clicker by the scruff of the neck in the process. He thrust his knife into the eye socket to the tune of a nauseating pop. Both men breathed heavily and stood in silence.

  “Well thank fuck you were here Joey! I’m not sure I could have handled that last one!” Max let out with a coy smile.

  Both Max and Joey burst out laughing, before collapsing to the floor in exhaustion; surrounded by blood, bodies and death.

  Chapter Ten

  Max and Joey made it back to the house with no further dramas, both sinking into the comfortable sofas and sitting in silence for a good while. They had laughed it off but in truth it had been a horrific ordeal and both were still recovering from it. Max knew that he had been terrified throughout, and although Joey would never admit it, he suspected he had been too.

  “Thanks for that back there by the way,” Joey said with more conviction than anything Max had heard from him since they met.

  “No problem mate, just returning the favour,” Max smiled.

  “I mean obviously I had it covered, but it was nice for you to get some glory for once,” Joey teased; both men laughed.

  “Hey, you never explained to me why you saved me the other night; you could have died. We both should have died really,” Max though aloud.

  “Simple. You needed saving man,” Joey expounded.

  “And that’s enough?” Max questioned.

  “For me, yes, without a doubt. Every single time. My parents raised me to believe that every life is as important as my own, and I agree. Everyone is worth saving don’t you think?” Joey asked.

  “I’ve got to say man, if it was the other way round, I can’t be sure I would have done the same thing,” Max said with a touch of guilt.

  “Well you did today didn’t you? I lost my head out there and you waded in after me without a seconds thought for your own life. How is that any different?” Joey argued.

  “Because you’re not a complete stranger. I knew for a fact you were worth saving. You had no idea what kind of person I was,” Max maintained.

  “True,” Joey admitted.

  “If I’m honest I was praying that you’d be a cute blonde,” he joked.

  Max smiled at Joey and both men broke out into a chuckle, before resuming the silence they had sat in before.

  “Really? Every life is worth saving?” Max asked, not able to get over this idea.

  “Well obviously there’s extremes, I wouldn’t be busting a gut to save Hitler or anything but yeah, that’s just how I was raised. Been donating my blood as much as I can ever since I was eighteen. AB negative; not a lot of donors out there so I’d like to think I saved a few lives,” Joey said proudly.

  “AB negative? No way! Me too!” Max laughed.

  Max and Joey shared a disbelieving laugh, before falling silent, thinking, and both came to the same sudden realisation.

  “You don’t think…?” Max started.

  “Did you get a vaccination?” Joey asked from the edge of his seat.

  “Yeah, I’m guessing you did too?” Max responded.

  “Yes…” Joey said, the cogs clearly turning in his head.

  “So you reckon that orange serum only worked on a tiny percentage of the population, and the rest…turned?” Max enquired.

  “0.5% of the population, that’s what the doctors always told me when I donated,” Joey thought aloud.

  “So 95.5% of the world is dead or dying,” Max gasped, realising that it was so much worse than he thought.

  “That explains why neither of us has found any other survivors until now,” Joey agreed.

  They sank into another state of silence, coming to terms with this sudden piece of news. After a few minutes, Joey broke the muteness.

  “You ready to tell me who John is?” Joey probed, careful not to evoke any kind of anger from Max.

  “He was my brother,” Max muttered.

  “He is my brother,” he said more firmly.

  Joey nodded, understanding what Max meant.

  “I’m sorry,” he said simply, met by a nod from Max that they both knew meant thank you.

  “You actually remind me of him a bit,” Max sniggered, thinking back over his childhood growing up with John.

  Like Joey he had always been the immature one, constantly joking around.

  “Oh really? Was he black too?” Joey asked, returning them again to a sense of laughter that was becoming common between the two friends.

  “I know it sounds awful, but it’s kind of a good thing he’s gone. Don’t get me wrong, I miss him so much, but this isn’t a world that anybody should have to live in,” Max blurted out.

  Joey fell silent and after a few seconds with no reply, Max looked up to see that his friend’s mind was clearly elsewhere. He r
ealised that now would be a good time to ask about his family.

  “What about you, I’m guessing you didn’t grow up here alone,” Max probed as delicately as he could.

  Joey sighed.

  “My parents both died about five years ago, way before any of this. That was when I moved into this place, didn’t want to see the family home sold to anyone else, ya know? I moved in here with my girlfriend at the time, Tara,” Joey stuttered, not able to make it past Tara’s name.

  Max could see that Joey was fighting back the tears, and remained quiet without prying further. Joey needed to tell him this in his own time.

  “About three years ago, Tara got pregnant. We hadn’t been trying, but we were over the moon anyway, don’t doubt that! Our little baby wasn’t an accident, he was a gift! He was born nine months and seven days later, five pounds, six ounces. God he was beautiful. They were the happiest two years of my life,” He continued, clearly welling up, giving up attempting to hide it.

  Max reached across, and gave a warm, friendly pat to Joey’s thigh, letting him know he was there for him.

  “What happened to them Joey?” he asked, fighting off the tears behind his own eyes.

  “Tara got infected early on. She must have been one of the first. I got her the vaccine but…obviously it wouldn’t have worked. Our baby…little Ben…he just couldn’t hang on. He wasn’t strong enough, he was a fucking child; he didn’t deserve this shit-heap of a world!” Joey cried, tears streaming down his face as he bawled into his hands.

  Max moved across to the other sofa and put his hand on Joey’s shoulder. No words were spoken, because Max knew no words could help. He just sat there, a constant reminder that Joey was no longer alone.

  Joey sniffed and wiped away the water from his eyes.

  “What about you man, no family? There must have been someone apart from your brother surely?” Joey asked, maybe trying to take the pressure off himself.

  “My parents died years ago, John was the only family I ever had really. Not that I spent enough time with him in his last years. Not enough,” Max admitted shamefully.

  “No wife? Kids?” Joey asked.

  “No, nothing like that. I had a girlfriend years back, we started planning our lives together after she got pregnant. I even had a ring,” Max said, scoffing at the last part.

  “She…well she lost the baby after 3 months and we could barely look at each other after that. The reminder was just too much, it clouded over any kind of love we ever had for each other,” he carried on, growing quieter.

  “And after that, I never really got close to anyone again. I guess I never will now,” he laughed; not because he found it funny, but because it was the sudden realisation that maybe he had wasted his life; only figuring it out now that it was too late.

  “I’m glad I saved you Max. I don’t think I could have taken the loneliness, the pure isolation, a second longer,” Joey confessed.

  Max undid his bag and rustled through it until he found two, slightly cold cans of beer he had managed to salvage from one of the houses earlier.

  “Well then…to friendship,” he toasted, passing a can over to Joey.

  Max felt as if he knew Joey now, and he definitely trusted him. Behind all the jokes and bravado, he was the same as Max. Damaged. He had lost people too, and they definitely both needed each other right now.

  “Friendship,” Joey repeated back, as they clunked the cans together and took a swig, returning once again to silence.

  Chapter Eleven

  Only one month had passed since Max had been rescued by his friend Joey, but their relationship had developed into a tight, brotherly bond. Max would never replace John in his mind, but it felt good to be able to share, talk, and most importantly laugh, with someone again. Although Joey about ten years his younger, Max felt that they were very similar people, with similar haunted pasts.

  Max sat up in his bed, and looked around the room he had now made his own. His belongings littered the tables and floor; he had never been a tidy person. Max stretched his arms up into the air whilst letting out a muffled yawn, careful not to make any noise which could wake up the slumbering Joey.

  He tiptoed towards the bathroom where he had smuggled the bottle of ketchup from the kitchen. Squeezing a pea sized blob onto his hands, he rubbed it across his face, repeating until his head and body looked convincingly bloody. Tearing his plain white t-shirt slightly in the arms and chest, Max took a deep breath before exiting his room. Creeping up towards the door next to his, he took a moment to prepare before crashing through Joey’s door with as much force as he could.

  The wooden door swung loosely, crashing into the wall the other side, as Max shuffled in, moaning and clicking his teeth. His outstretched arms reached towards Joey, as he stared intensely at the flesh on his neck, growing ever closer.

  Joey flew into an upright position, letting out an ear shattering scream of a small girl as he did so, backing up towards his pillow to move as far away from his intruder as possible. Max couldn’t stay in character any longer, throwing himself into a ball on the floor in a fit of laughter and hysterics.

  “What the fuck was that noise?” Max wheezed between gasping breaths.

  “Oh fuck you Max! Fuck you!” Joey shouted, his heart still racing.

  “You’re lucky I don’t sleep with a throwing knife you bastard!” Joey continued.

  Max dusted himself down as he pulled himself back to his feet.

  “All I know my friend, is that I now make the score 5-3 to moi, which means it’s your turn to do breakfast,” he said with a cocky grin.

  He exited the room before popping his head back round the door frame, “Oh and I’ll have my tea with 2 sugars this morning thank you,” he added.

  Joey couldn’t help but laugh, throwing every insult under the sun towards Max. These prank wars had become common rituals within the house; it was sweet relief to achieve some kind of normality amongst the death they now surrounded. Max walked with a spring in his step back to his bathroom to wash up before joining his personal chef for breakfast.

  “Okay, I have to admit man that was a decent effort,” Joey chuckled as he walked into the kitchen.

  “I hope you realise that the comeback’s on though,” he warned, clearly already trying to think of ways in which to seek revenge.

  “Oh I count on it mate,” Max laughed, sipping from his tea.

  The two wolfed down their breakfast in no time, and talk turned to their daily plans.

  “Got time for a few games before we head out?” Joey asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Max replied, already on his feet.

  Max followed Joey down to the basement, through the door into the large boiler room. There wasn’t much to see in here really; the stone walls and floor were bare, with a boiler in one corner and a grubby looking open bathroom to the side. Next to the bathroom sink stood a slightly rotted wooden door, leading up some stairs and into the back garden. In the centre of the room stood the men’s new pride and joy, fresh from a recent scavenging mission: a full sized, fold away table tennis table, complete with net, bats and a pack of balls.

  They had lugged this back from over three streets away but it had been worth it. Max and Joey were not only fiercely competitive but painfully evenly matched.

  “Hey, how come Mr Paranoid built a whopping great big metal door upstairs but you’ve just left that one as it is?” Max asked as they set up the net.

  “Dunno really, I reinforced the outside so it’s still strong, but I ran out of scrap metal. It only leads up to the back garden anyway; it’s all surrounded by fences, so it should be fine,” Joey explained briefly.

  “Why, does it frighten you?” he teased.

  “Oh shut up and serve,” Max laughed.

  After three closely fought games, Joey emerged victorious, gracious in the midst of his win.

  “You are my bitch!” he repeated over and over again with his hands in the air, bowing to an imaginary crowd.

&n
bsp; Max would have been annoyed if he didn’t know deep down he would react in the same way. Instead he laughed at his friend as he finished his lap of honour around the table, before tripping over the last leg.

  “Smooth,” Max said.

  “Shall we head off then?” he suggested, moving the subject away from table tennis, knowing that Joey’s ego did not need any further inflating.

  “Nah, let’s take the day off; to be honest, we’ve searched most the houses anywhere near here now anyway. Plus we’re good for food for a while,” Joey said, clearly keen to spend a day lazing around the house.

  “Sounds good to me,” Max agreed.

  They looked at each other and simultaneously suggested “Beers?” before cracking up at their own synchronicity.

  Within five minutes they were each laying on a sofa, with a cold beer in one hand and a newly opened crate on the floor. One beer turned into two, and two beers into five and before long the two men were slurring along to music blaring from a retro juke box in the living room.

  “Those clickers out there may be scary as fuck, but they can’t do this!” Joey shouted before chugging the rest of his drink and opening a new one.

  “I don’t know, it would explain why they stumble around so much!” Max yelled in reply, following suit and cracking open another drink for himself.

  As night fell, the friends were still drinking away merrily, swapping funny stories from their past and reminiscing. Almost inevitably talk eventually turned more to the future.

  “So…how do you think this is all gunna end?” Joey asked profoundly.

  “What do you mean?” Max replied, confused.

  “Well, think about it; either we have to go, or they do,” Joey explained, nodding out the window as he referred to ‘them’.

  “Someone has to be wiped out,” he added.

  Max paused.

  “I’ve never really thought about it. I guess I just assumed it would all fix itself eventually. I guessed that someone, somewhere would find a kind of cure you know?” Max thought aloud.