Life After Death

by Jenkins, Seb

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Max and Lizzie followed Mona’s directions, never looking back to see if they were being pursued. They ran in silence; only the slapping of their shoes on the cold, damp ground filled the night with sound. As they rounded the corner to the car park at the front of the centre, they immediately bee lined for the sole car, parked in front of the main doors.

  “Nearly there kid,” Max whispered encouragingly, noticing that Lizzie was finally feeling the stress and strain of the last few days.

  Max placed his hand gently on her back and ushered her forward with him, still jogging towards the car.

  “Get in! Put your belt on!” Max ordered, ripping open the passenger side door for Lizzie.

  She clambered in, throwing her bag onto the back seat, but keeping her knife close. They had made it to the car, but somehow, it still didn’t feel safe. They weren’t out of the woods yet. Max ran full circle round the car, using the end of his bat to smash out the lights as quietly as he could. The last thing they wanted was to draw attention to themselves. Max jumped into the driver’s seat, chucking his bag over his shoulder with a hollow thud.

  “Time to get out of this shithole, kid,” he said urgently, but Lizzie could still hear the nerves in his voice.

  “Too right!” Lizzie agreed.

  “No driving like a fucking granny, okay!?” she joked, trying to lighten the mood.

  Max put the car into gear. Placing one hand on the wheel, he used the other to flip the middle finger at Lizzie. She laughed and sat back in her seat, somehow more relaxed after the altercation.

  Max pulled out of the car park. Despite Lizzie’s jibe he took it slowly and quietly. He didn’t want to wake any of the Brotherhood up with engine noise; he would wait until he was a little way down the road before really putting his foot down.

  “Max…” Lizzie began, before stumbling and losing her words.

  “What’s up kid?” Max asked, not taking his eyes of the road and the mirrors, still paranoid this was all an elaborate trap.

  “If I ever, you know, get infected…don’t let me end up like them. Just end it please,” Lizzie pleaded.

  “Look, kid-” Max started to argue.

  “Max! Promise me, please,” Lizzie begged, with a whimper.

  Max nodded to her. He couldn’t verbalise what he had just agreed to do; it didn’t bear thinking about. He wouldn’t ever let it come to that anyway. The one purpose he had now was to keep Lizzie safe.

  “Let’s hope to god we’re both immune they, ay kid?” he finally said with a smile.

  “How many people out there are like them, do you think?” Lizzie asked, glossing over Max’s joke.

  “The madness in their eyes; you could see the humanity seeping out bit by bit. The hunger, the anger; I’d never really thought about people changing in that way, I’ve only ever seen people die from the disease or turn straight away from a bite. What we saw back there was so much worse,” she continued, spilling out her fears onto Max.

  “I know kid, but the more we know about this shitty disease, the better we can avoid becoming one of them,” Max suggested.

  It was the best argument he could come up with.

  After all, as depressing as this was to him, Lizzie would have to live in this world for her entire life. At least he had been out and lived before the disease struck; she was still so young. This world was the only one she would ever know.

  “We just need to be more careful from now on; keep the sleeves of your jacket pulled down, we’ll pick up some gloves from somewhere. The last thing we want is to be infected from a little scratch,” Max said, racing through the gears and upping the speed as he did so.

  “Yeah, a little scratch is no way for two bad-ass fuckers like us to go down,” Lizzie laughed.

  “Exactly kid,” Max chuckled back, taking his hand off the gear stick to firmly grab her shoulder comfortingly.

  For the next few minutes, the pair sat in silence, both going over the events of the past night in their heads. With the amount of near-misses, it’s a miracle they made it out of there alive and avoided the pit. That was still playing on Max’s mind.

  What was the pit? The way Otto’s eyes shone with glee as he told him about it, and the way Mona couldn’t even look him in the eye when he asked about it.

  He prayed that he and Lizzie would never end up there, but he was dying to know what it was. If it had been just him on his own, he might have been half tempted to turn around and find out. Save people like him who had been captured and sent there, and for once in his life be the hero; but he had Lizzie to think about, and he couldn’t put her in danger. Max’s train of thought was broken as Lizzie ended the silence.

  “What was that back there? When you woke up screaming my name?” she asked delicately, clearly something that she had been waiting for the moment to ask.

  Max paused, unsure of how to answer.

  “I just thought I heard them taking you away,” Max lied as best he could.

  “Well that’s the biggest load of bullshit ever,” Lizzie shot back.

  “You going to tell me what you really saw?” she asked, but Max could tell it was actually a demand.

  “I just had a dream about some faces from the past,” Max explained.

  “And I’m not about to let yours join them,” he added.

  Lizzie opened her mouth to pry for more information, but Max raised a hand in the air to silence her.

  “What?” she whispered urgently.

  “I have a feeling something’s following us,” Max replied, his eyes glued to the rear-view mirror. He thought it may be his eyes playing tricks on his, but again he saw a flicker of light shine from something behind him.

  “I think someone’s tailing us. Shit!” Max cursed, putting his foot to the floor on the accelerator.

  “Oh god!” Lizzie yelled, the colour rushing from her face, replaced once again by sheer fear.

  “Is it Otto?” she asked desperately.

  “I don’t know Kid, but hopefully we can outrun th- Shit!” Max cursed again.

  The car jolted and spluttered, Max glanced down at the fuel tank indicator, the arrow pointing at a bright red E.

  “We’re out of fucking petrol! We’re running on empty here kid!” he exclaimed in a wild panic.

  Lizzie didn’t reply. She was too busy panicking herself, constantly looking over her shoulder, waiting for Otto and his men to pull alongside them. They both knew that if they were captured again, escape would be impossible. If they caught them, they were dead.

  “I need to get off this road! It’s too open and we’re going to clonk out any second now” Max thought aloud, taking the nearest possible exit.

  Max desperately willed the car on, driving as fast as he could with what was left of the petrol. He took every turn possible in an attempt to lose whoever was following them; left, left, right, left, right. There was no way of telling if they were still in pursuit or not. Max took a final right turn, before the engine finally cut out and they rolled to an eventual halt.

  “Grab your bag and get out now!” Max ordered as he did the same.

  He threw the door open, his bag in his right hand, and leapt from the car. Slinging the bag over his shoulder, he grabbed Lizzie by the arm, dragging her along with him. He put out his hand and gave her a leg up, pushing her over a nearby fence into someone’s garden, before clambering over himself.

  Crouching low, they scrambled as fast as they could, climbing from garden to garden until they reached the last one in this row of houses. Max pushed his finger to his lips, straining his ear back in the direction they came.

  “Can you hear anything?” Lizzie murmured.

  Max shook his head, before pointing towards the French doors of the house in front of them. Max ran towards them, keeping as low as he could before gently pulling the door handle to his left. The doors slid open to the pair’s joy, and they slid inside before shutting them quietly behind them and flipping the lock.

 
Max darted around the house, double checking each room for anyone living here, and each door and window to make sure they were locked. They were in luck; the house was empty. Max ran back down the stairs, ushering Lizzie up with a ‘come here’ gesture.

  “There’s a bedroom upstairs, window facing out onto the street, and you can jump onto the top of the garage from it if we need a quick exit,” Max whispered, leading her to the room.

  He left the curtains undrawn, as all the others in the house were. He didn’t want to do anything to draw attention to where they were hiding. The night was again silent, filled only with the harsh, nervous breaths of Max and Lizzie. Even the birds who had begun to chirp and chime minutes before now fell silent, as if even they realised the danger approaching.

  Max took up a spot next to the window, crouching low, only just peaking over the top, desperately both looking for their pursuers and also hoping he wouldn’t ever see them.

  An hour went past, maybe two; Max couldn’t be sure. But there will still no sign of anyone.

  “Maybe it was just another car; just some other survivors using the same road,” Lizzie suggested.

  “Or maybe it was Otto, but we lost him in all those back streets and he’s given up,” she proposed again, attempting to convince herself that there wasn’t any danger.

  Max sensed that she needed some kind of confirmation or sense of agreement from him, to settle her nerves.

  “Yeah, maybe kid. It was probably nothing,” he said. It was the best he could give her.

  “Get some sleep. I’ll stay up and keep watch for a while longer,” Max said, nodding towards the bed.

  “Okay,” Lizzie agreed simply.

  Her eyes were bloodshot and she looked deprived of any rest, both emotionally and physically. She climbed into bed and within a few minutes she was in a deep soundless slumber.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you kid,” Max promised, before his eyes too drifted to a close, and he fell into a sleep, propped up underneath the window.

  “Max!”

  “Max!”

  Max was being gently woken up by a light shake of the shoulder. His eyes flicked open, taking a moment to adjust to the light.

  “Lizzie?” he asked.

  Max rubbed his eyes, jumping out of his skin as he removed his hands. The blood in his veins once again ran ice cold and his fists turned white, clenched in a furious rage.

  Otto stood before him, smile beaming and eyes wide and crazy. He held Lizzie in front of him, tightly, with a knife pressed against her throat.

  “We really need to stop meeting like this,” he giggled.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Get your fucking hands off her!” Max growled at Otto.

  “Look, Max; we’ve been through this. Me, knife, her throat, lots of friends, lots of guns. Then there’s you. Alone. No friends,” Otto gleefully described, with such exuberance.

  Max was more scared than he had ever been of anyone or anything. Not only was Otto threatening, he was so horrifyingly unhinged to his very core. Usually in a confrontation, Max could read the other person, plan out his next move; but with Otto there was no chance. Even he himself probably didn’t know what he would do next.

  “Oh I’m sorry, of course, how silly of me! You did have a friend!” Otto giggled, emphasising heavily on the word ‘did’; his eyes wide with joy.

  Otto turned and nodded to one of the two armed men standing guard at the bedroom door. He exited the room briefly before returning with a black sack. He passed it to Otto carefully; even his henchmen looked terrified of him. He seemed to be far more affected by the disease, far closer to changing into one of those monsters.

  Otto grabbed the sack, and threw it to the floor in front of Max’s feet. The sack and its contents thudded onto the wooden floor, followed by an eerie silence. Otto gave the bag an excited little kick, as the object within rolled out onto the floor.

  “OH SHIT!!” Lizzie screamed at the top of her voice, but still drowned out by the insane cackling coming from within Otto.

  Max looked down at the object, now resting on the toes of his shoes. Mona’s severed head stared back at him, the eyes still wide open; full of shock, fear and horror. Around her mouth, they had painted a wide clown like grin in bright red lipstick. The flesh hung loosely from her neck and it looked to have been hacked off slowly, rather than one clean cut. The smell of rotting flesh shot up Max’s nostrils; it was a smell he would never be able to forget.

  Max looked away, fighting the urge to be sick. Even after he had looked away, he could still see her face, etched forever in his memory.

  His body was awash with emotions. Guilt, for the sacrifice Mona had made; fear, that Lizzie would meet the same fate; and anger, that people like Otto still existed in this world. Max fought all his urges and slowly looked up at Otto. He looked deep into his eyes intensely, waiting for his next move. Max wasn’t playing his games. Otto wanted him to lash out; he wanted an excuse to shoot him in the leg or to cut Lizzie’s throat.

  Otto met his stare, willing him to lunge forward, willing him to test his nerve. Max stayed still, shooting a hateful look back at the crazy man.

  “Boring,” Otto mumbled like a young child, before gesturing towards Max with his head.

  The two men by the door moved towards him. They had guns, and Otto still had the knife to Lizzie’s throat. For now, Max would have to just go along with this.

  “Oh I so look forward to seeing you in the pit, Max,” Otto sniggered.

  Otto’s henchmen grabbed Max, one under each arm, before the man to his right smashed the butt of his rifle down hard on Max’s head.

  “MAX!” Lizzie yelled.

  Everything went black.

  Max was back at university, curled up in his bed. He moved his arm to his left to squeeze her closer, but he only clasped air. His eyes blinked open unwillingly and he yawned. The bathroom light was on.

  “Come back to bed you tit!” Max called out playfully.

  Her cute face poked out from around the bathroom door. She tried to look mad at him, but after a couple of seconds couldn’t help but break into a grin. She liked it when he called her that really; it was endearing. She wandered back towards the bed and climbed back in next to him, snuggling her chin into his chest. Max pulled her tightly into his body and held her there.

  “I love you so much,” He said, kissing the top of her head.

  He looked down awaiting her reply, but she was already sound asleep, her breath brushing his bare chest.

  Max smiled.

  Suddenly the picture changed. Max was in a house, but years later, lying in bed once more, an empty space beside him again.

  “Come back to bed you tit!” Max called out.

  He waited for her little face to pop round the door as always but nothing came.

  “Tit?”

  No reply.

  Max pulled himself out of bed, stretching and yawning as he did so. He stumbled out the bedroom door, and down the stairs. She was standing in the kitchen, fully clothed, a bag by her side.

  Max crept up behind her, grabbing her from behind and tickling her as he often did. She jumped out her skin, turning round and smacking him over and over on the arm.

  “Max no! Max not now!” she yelled, which quickly turned into muffled laughs.

  Only they weren’t laughs, she was crying.

  “What’s wrong?” Max asked urgently, pulling her into an embrace.

  She pushed him away.

  “Max, I can’t do this anymore!” she blurted out between the tears.

  “Wha...what do you mean this?” Max asked nervously, grabbing hold of a nearby chair.

  “This, here, us! I just can’t,” she sobbed.

  “What do you mean? What are you saying?” Max asked hesitantly, sitting down in the chair.

  “Is this because of the baby?” he added.

  She nodded, unable to structure a sentence through her crying.

  “You think I don’t think about t
hat little guy every day too?” Max pleaded, standing back up and touching her arm.

  “Max, I just can’t. I’ve made up my mind. Seeing you is just a reminder of everything,” She explained, now making deep tear-filled eye contact with him.

  “We both know we were too young for all this Max. I love you, and you will always be the one, but you’re not ready. You’re still so immature, you’re still finding yourself, and that’s okay, but I need to take a step back. I’m sorry. I love you,” She sobbed, before wiping her eyes and picking up her bag.

  Max was frozen into place, not sure what to say, or how to say it. Before he knew it, she was at the door.

  “Please, wait! Let’s talk about this!” he yelled the most generic things that came to mind.

  “Goodbye Max.” she said softly, brushing her hand on top of his before walking away.

  He stood there, watching her walk away.

  He watched the one person he had ever loved; the only person he ever would love, as she walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Max woke up, still groggy from the knock on his head. He reached his hand behind his head to feel for a bump, but his wrist snapped back and the chinking sound of metal rang out. Max felt out with his fingers; his hands and feet were chained. At first he thought his vision was still blurred from the knock on the head, but it appeared that there was actually just very little light in the room.

  “Max, is that you?” a voice whimpered from across the room.

  “Lizzie?” Max called back out into the darkness.

  His eyes were adjusting slightly, but he could still only just about make out her silhouette.

  “Well it ain’t the fucking tooth fairy,” she laughed, but she was clearly terrified.

  “Are you chained up too?” Max asked, voice tinged with concern.

  “Wouldn’t be sat over here if I wasn’t, Einstein,” Lizzie replied coolly.

  “Where the fuck are we kid?” Max asked, ignoring her sarcasm as usual.

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie said with a heavy sigh.