After Life

by Daniel Kelley

  “But… they did!” Michelle cried. “They were down there. Killed —” The words caught in Michelle’s throat, and Donnie finished for her.

  “They killed everyone down there, best we can tell,” Donnie said. “Lambert, Madison, Cal, everyone… but us.”

  “I know,” Nick whispered, nodding to the body in the guard’s uniform. “Thought it was all safe down there, until he came running out.”

  “Who is that?” Donnie asked.

  “Ben. From downstairs. I was hiding out in there, and he came sprinting out. I thought he was coming to check on me, make sure I was okay and called to him.” Nick flinched. “But when he turned… those eyes…”

  “You had to shoot him,” Michelle said, trying to be comforting. “You had to, Nick. It’s not your fault.”

  “So, wait,” Donnie said, sounding confused. “If none of them got down there, where the hell did the Z’s come from? How did they get down there? And who the hell was that little girl?” Michelle’s mind had already landed on the little girl, as well.

  “That one I know,” Nick said. “You know Lindsay Quinn? Worked in the commissary down there? She brought her daughter today. Said she had to, whatever reason. That’s how she got in. But Ben checked them both. Ben checked. However the infection got down there, it didn’t come through my door.”

  Michelle and Donnie both fell silent. If the zombies hadn’t come in through the door, and no one had been infected when they entered, Michelle couldn’t fathom what had happened.

  But what did that mean? Could people spontaneously turn into zombies, without a bite? As far as Michelle knew, no one had ever pinpointed exactly how the 2010 outbreak had begun. Based on what she was learning, she couldn’t think of another possibility outside of the spontaneous transformation, which if anything was more chilling than the guesses she had. Nick said no zombies had come in or out — other than Ben, who had only made it a few feet — yet there were undeniably zombies downstairs, and there was clear evidence of them in the street. Either they arose spontaneously, or Nick had fallen asleep at the door long enough for some zombies to sneak by. Only one of those seemed possible.

  “What are you guys planning?” Nick asked, nodding to their packs. “Where are you going to go?”

  “Hyannis,” Donnie said.

  “Hyannis…Massachusetts?” Nick repeated, incredulous. “Why in hell…?”

  “Stacy Crane,” Michelle said. “Madison’s daughter. Before she died, she…”

  “She asked us to go get her,” Donnie finished, leaving out the details of how they had found Madison.

  “That’s noble of you guys,” Nick said, with a tone that indicated he didn’t really think that, “but going across New England for one girl? That’s suicide. You don’t have to do it. It’d be insane.”

  Donnie put his hands up, signaling Nick to stop talking. “Michelle’s going,” he said. “No matter what. And I’m not going to…”

  “Then she’s an idiot,” Nick said, giving Michelle a look. “Plain and simple.”

  “Nick,” Donnie said in as stern a voice as he could muster. “Stacy was…is Michelle’s stepdaughter.”

  Nick stopped, looking like he was trying to draw a family tree in his mind. “Wait…Michelle and Stacy’s dad…?”

  “No.”

  “Then…”

  “Madison and I were married,” Michelle said, finding her voice at least. “She was my wife. So I’m sorry you don’t think it’s a good idea, but I am going to find my daughter. With or without you or your approval.”

  Nick froze. After a silent moment, he nodded. “Where’s your car?” he asked, his gaze still on Ben’s unmoving body.

  “Winthrop.”

  “You know to stay off the interstate, use back roads?”

  “We do.”

  “How much did you pack?”

  “Knives. Ammo. Meal bars. Water. Much as we could carry.”

  Nick nodded again. Then he reached under his shirt, and pulled out a small cross on a chain. “And do you have…?”

  Donnie had to prevent himself from rolling his eyes while Michelle nodded.

  “Good,” Nick said.

  Michelle stepped past the two men and turned left, toward Winthrop Place. She didn’t want to waste any more time than necessary. For one thing, the sooner she got to the car, the sooner she could get to Stacy. For another, the sooner she got to the car, the sooner there was one extra barrier between the zombies and her.

  As she walked away, Michelle heard Donnie fall in step behind her. A second or two later, Nick’s footsteps followed as well.

  “What are you going to do?” Michelle heard Donnie ask Nick. “Are you coming with us?”

  “With you?” Nick echoed. “To Cape Cod? Yeah, I think I’ll be fine here.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Michelle asked.

  “I’ll find somewhere,” Nick said. “Somehow. ‘The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.’”

  Michelle recognized the verse as a line from 2 Timothy 4:18 and, despite her hurry, she slowed and smiled. She remembered herself quickly though, and sped up again.

  Donnie, just behind her, noticed the steps, but said nothing. He had also recognized the verse, and again decided to let it pass. Somewhere, deep in the back of his mind, something appreciated hearing it stated in an appropriate situation, but the majority of his brain told him it was a fancily dressed fortune cookie.

  The three of them turned the corner onto Broad Street. The first building they approached on their side of the road was a large church, looming over the small road. Without thinking about it, Donnie veered right, off the sidewalk and out into the road, putting more distance between himself and the house of worship.

  “What was that?” Nick asked once they had cleared the church and Donnie stepped back onto the sidewalk.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Donnie, there might as well have been a force field around the church when you went by. You took a berth wide enough for a semi truck.”

  “Did I? I didn’t even realize it.”

  Nick stopped and eyed Donnie suspiciously. At the end of the examination, Donnie felt fairly certain Nick had come to an unfavorable conclusion. “Donnie,” he said in an accusatory tone, “could I see your Bible?”

  Donnie didn’t stop his eyes from rolling this time. Michelle and Lambert had always been religious without proselytizing, without condemning Donnie and other atheists for their decisions. But there were just as many — Nick included, it seemed — who felt the Donnies of the world were no better than the zombies, had been the ones to anger God to the point of sending the zombies in the first place. In their defense, Donnie acknowledged to himself, there were just as many atheists who treated the devout as true idiots for their beliefs. And, he mused, that wasn’t all that different from the world before 2010. Some things never change.

  “I don’t have one, Nick,” Donnie said, speeding up to catch Michelle.

  “Care to explain that?” Nick said, not losing a step.

  “Not really.”

  “Try.”

  Donnie sighed. Nick wasn’t going to leave it alone. That much was clear. “Fine,” he said without turning his head. He’d tell the story if he had to, but he wasn’t going to let Nick slow him down. “2010, I was dead. Z’s all around me, and I was sick as a dog. Didn’t stand a chance. Had maybe ten seconds at most, and nowhere to go. Standing on a sidewalk in the middle of the city. Nowhere to go. Nowhere.

  “Then I heard this, this gunshot. Turned around, there was a Z not two steps away, on the ground, hole in his head. Looked toward the shot, and there was this church.” Out of the corner of his eye, Donnie saw Michelle flinch, her head turning toward the one he had just avoided. “No, no, not that one,” he said. “New York City. But yeah, there was this church, and the priest was standing out front, gun in his hand. He had shot the Z, and he herded me into the church. That place was stocked, man. Up
stairs, had enough food, supplies. Looked like our storeroom back in the office. Holed up in that church throughout.”

  Nick nodded. Donnie didn’t often talk about his experiences in 2010, but he knew Nick’s story. Nick, a teenager in 2010, had been working at a church potluck and bake sale against his will. He had been his family’s resident goth loner, anti-church, anti-religion, anti-everything, Nick said, until the outbreak. It was during that time, though, that Nick, having lost his father and two brothers, hid out in the church basement with his mother, the preacher and a handful of members of the congregation.

  “There was no way we had enough food,” Nick always said of the events. “No way. I mean, it was a potluck. A bake sale. We had some brownies. Hot dogs. Lemonade. Nothing non-perishable. Should have starved in a week. But we stayed holed up the whole time. Never even felt hungry.”

  In recounting the story, Nick always drew parallels to the Feeding of the 5,000, to how faith and prayer could supply when natural means couldn’t. Donnie, on the other hand, always heard that story as the tale of how an adolescent boy ate stale food for a while and then glorified the memory.

  “Sounds like you had just about the best 2010 you could ask for,” Nick said, his tone judgmental. “Sounds like about five and a half billion people would kill for that experience. Literally,” he added, his voice dripping with malice.

  “Maybe so,” Donnie said. “Maybe I did get lucky, Nick.” For the first time since passing the church, Donnie stopped and looked at the guard. “In fact, of course I did. But that’s all it was: luck. There was no divine intervention, no ‘God’s will’ at work.”

  “There was, Donnie,” Michelle said from several feet ahead; she hadn’t stopped when he did. “There was. You just didn’t see it. But how can you have lived through that, had a holy man save your life, and not seen it? You saw what you were looking for.”

  “I wasn’t looking for it?” Donnie said, trying not to get annoyed with Michelle. She was far more important to him than Nick. “Michelle, do you know what I was doing in New York City? I was in a cab, just back from Aruba.” Donnie heard Nick scoff and went on. “I was there on a mission trip. I was faithful, Nick. I was. I was the best Christian you’d ever want to meet. Prayed to God every night, every morning. But what good was that? Sure, I survived. But, like I told you, our hideout? It was upstairs. That meant I spent the whole outbreak watching. Saw things worse than anyone should have to. Parents eating their children’s bodies. Children eating each other. And why was the priest carrying a gun? I mean, if there’s anyone who shouldn’t have had a gun back then, wasn’t it him?

  “So, yeah, I survived. Hooray for me. But there was no reason I could see — then or now — why I should have been one of the ones to survive when women, children, better people than me had to die. So they could go to heaven? So those of us that survived could value our lives more, turn to God more, be better people? I mean, if you say so, but Z’s seem like an extreme measure.

  “I’m sorry, but the only thing that made sense to me — the only thing that makes sense to me, is that I was wrong. There’s no God out there pulling some fancy strings. And any God that would choose zombies as his method of enforcement isn’t a god I feel much allegiance to. I mean, I’d love it if there were. It would make a lot of this world easier to handle. But wanting something to be true doesn’t make it true, you know?”

  “So what do you believe in, Donnie?” Nick asked, still with a spit in his voice.

  “What do I believe? I believe that out of all eleventy billion planets in all the kajillion galaxies out there, one of them was bound to be the perfect distance from the perfect star to provide the perfect atmosphere for life to develop. I believe humans, like dinosaurs and amoeba and whatever else before them, are subject to the waxing and waning that comes with planetary dominance. I believe that, twenty years ago, we had a period of waning, just like we did during the World Wars and the Black Plague. We’ve been waxing ever since, and today, for some reason, we started waning again.

  “And you know what else I believe? I believe that what goes around comes around. So if there is a God out there, and he, for whatever reason, did decide to send the zombies down here to, I don’t know, teach us a lesson, then that is one hell of a hit his karma took. Because that’s just a bullshit tactic. So if there is a God, he’s due for a whole load of shit for sending those things. Twice.”

  The three of them walked in silence until they turned onto Winthrop. Donnie saw Michelle’s car about fifty yards away when Nick finally spoke.

  “You’re going to have a lot to answer for someday.”

  “Maybe he will, Nick,” Michelle said, not wanting to continue this conversation any more than she had to. She knew there was going to be no changing Donnie’s mind, no making him know what she knew — at least, not in the time it would take to get to the car. “Maybe he will. But maybe he won’t. I mean, if ever there were extenuating circumstances, the Z’s would be it, wouldn’t they? I don’t know, and I hope Donnie never has to pay the price for his beliefs, but I don’t think it’s our place to tell him that.”

  Nick nodded, clearly annoyed. By this point, they had reached the car, and Michelle opened the driver’s door. Immediately, the repetitive ding-ding-ding noise started, letting them know that the keys were in the ignition — theft in 2030 was not nearly the worry it had once been, and Michelle rarely bothered to secure her vehicle.

  Donnie opened the passenger door and turned to Nick. “Are you going with us?”

  Nick shot Donnie an annoyed look and shook his head. “No thanks,” he said. “I don’t have a kid in Hyannis.”

  Michelle closed her eyes. Nick was right; he didn’t have a kid in Hyannis. Neither, she thought sadly, did she. Neither did any living person she knew. Still, she was going.

  “So what are you going to do?” Donnie asked.

  “Who knows?” Nick said. “I’ll find somewhere to hole up. I’m a survivor.”

  “What about the office?” Michelle asked, trying to will herself not to think about Madison. “Didn’t you say you had to stay there no matter what? Isn’t that ‘the job’?”

  “Screw the job,” Nick said. “The only job now is to survive.”

  Chapter 8: Fast Food

  The gun in Celia’s hand felt huge, unwieldy. When her father had shown her how to shoot, how to carry a gun, how to clean it, how to reload, it had felt heavy, sure. But this was a new weight. Like the gun in her hand had gained about fifteen pounds in the past few minutes.

  She hadn’t noticed the extra weight until she was hit by the sunshine as she and everyone else stormed through the door to the outside. Celia hadn’t remembered it being this bright when they took shelter, but she supposed her eyes had grown accustomed to the lesser lighting inside the classroom.

  Outside the door, Celia saw scores of the dead. Many of them, most of them, were crouched over bodies, getting their fill. Celia saw the sunglasses kid, his shades lying disregarded several feet away, kneeling over a corpse that was being devoured by no fewer than seven other zombies, crouched around the body like a group of vultures. Around each group, the pools of blood were spreading rapidly, giving the whole paved area a polka-dot pattern.

  Z’s that had not managed to find a spot at a dead-body buffet were walking around randomly. Some, Celia saw off in the distance, were heading in the vague direction of the highway she and her father had driven in on. Others though, the ones that apparently hadn’t figured out the right direction, were aimlessly shambling around. Some stopped near the buffets, looking for an inlet to the feast, but when none presented itself, the creatures continued to wander.

  Celia blinked several times as she exited the stairwell. In front of her, her father and Roger Stone fired off a couple of cursory shots, taking down the two Z’s nearest to the door. Stacy and Simon ran out on either side of Celia, though neither one needed to fire a shot right away. Just behind Simon, Mr. Lowensen ran, hunched over, his figure largely blocked by the
tall boy. Her own face, she suddenly realized, was streaked with tears, including several now-dried ones she had apparently shed earlier without realizing. She didn’t know when she had started crying, but she knew she was still doing so.

  Celia’s weapon was held at her side, though her finger was on the trigger and her elbow was locked. It was true that she had never used the weapon for any purpose other than the large Z-cutouts that adorned the range her father frequented, but she nevertheless knew how to hold a gun, knew how to have it at the ready for use at an instant’s notice.

  The girl was suddenly grateful for her father’s meticulous pursuit of a parking spot. When they had arrived at Morgan College, Andy had circled the parking lot five times before spying the well-parked parents who were pulling out of the convenient space. Celia, more eager to see her new school than to find a luxurious spot, had been practically hopping behind her seat belt as she awaited the stopping of the car.

  As her vision cleared before her though, the first vehicle Celia caught sight of was her father’s run-down Camry, sitting calmly in the closest parking space, and she loved the sight. That car meant freedom. That car meant comfort. That car meant, above all else, survival.

  So Celia set her eyes on the car. She had two capable adults in front of her, two seemingly capable peers alongside her, and dozens of theoretically viable adults in her wake — Celia figured that she need pay attention to nothing but her vehicular savior.

  And, for the first five or six steps out of the “safe place,” she was right. None of the buffet Z’s spared a glance for the people flowing from the door, and none of the shamblers were facing their direction, either. Celia heard Lowensen sigh behind her.

  It was a premature exhalation, though. The two gunshots attracted the attention of a few nearby Z’s, including the sunglasses kid. That zombie, along with half a dozen others, turned toward the motley crew, and advanced toward them. Within seconds, she saw several of the eaters abandon their meals for the chance of “fast food,” as well.