The school was the least appealing thing Celia could imagine seeing. The thing she had most looked forward to less than a day earlier, the thing that she had nearly skipped toward, was now terrifying. And Stacy’s comments about mothers didn’t help things, either — Celia didn’t even remember her own mother, and so the words that were comfort to Brandon worked more as a reminder of what Celia didn’t have, as opposed to the intended soothing feeling.
If she hadn’t had Stacy almost on her lap, crammed into the front seat of a 20-odd-year-old car with six other people, Celia might have vomited on the spot.
As it was, she forced back the bile. The tears though, fell fresh. And the occasional sniffle she heard coming from the students around her told her she wasn’t the only one who was upset about their return to the cursed school.
Celia looked left at Simon in the driver’s seat. Simon, with more reason to cry than anyone but Brandon, was steely-faced, driving along as though nothing had happened. How he managed to stay composed in light of everything that had happened so far, Celia didn’t know, but it helped her to see him remain stoic.
Simon pulled into the parking lot — the same one Celia felt like they had just left. On instinct, she turned her attention a bit farther up, trying to see what had become of the Porter boy and his mother. In the darkness, she couldn’t tell if they were there or not, but soon realized that it didn’t matter. They were obviously either zombies or dead, and neither status needed to be on her mind now. As it was, nothing showed itself on the darkened horizon — at least, nothing mobile. There were a number of flat, immobile bodies, ones that had been shot or eaten or otherwise destroyed in the earlier college events. The landscape around Morgan College was barren, devoid of motion or activity.
“Do you see his car?” Lowensen said from the backseat. For a second, Celia didn’t know what he meant. Then it clicked: the teacher was searching for Roger, Carla and the Stones’ car, the reason they had returned to Morgan College in the first place.
She turned her attention to the other cars in the lot, hoping one of them would jump out at her, but none did. She supposed that, if Roger had made it back to the school, he’d have more of an alert system in place than “Hope they recognize the car.” At the very least, she figured, he’d have found a way to keep the headlights going.
And so she, and the group at large, came to the realization that Roger wasn’t there. Whether that meant he was dead, a zombie, stranded, or on his way, no one could know.
“How long do we stay?” Stacy asked. Her head jerked over toward Simon as she asked the question, as though she were afraid of offending him with the question.
“Hard to say,” Celia’s dad said. “We took something of a direct route. Even if Roger’s car had enough gas to make it here, we’d likely have beaten him.”
“Ten minutes,” Simon said.
Andy was taken aback by this. Simon, he figured, would be the one who wanted to wait the longest. “Are you sure about that, son?” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be a whole hell of a lot of danger here at the moment. Might be worth waiting a few extra minutes, on the off chance he can make it here on foot.”
“No,” Simon said. His tone was clear. “We give him ten minutes. If he found out I sat here, out in the open, for any longer than that, he’d kill me himself.”
An hour earlier, Andy would have been totally on board with the idea of not waiting around for anyone. After all, waiting in the open, he had found, was just about the best way to get bitten. But that was before he had already pointlessly killed one of their companions. He didn’t want to make a habit of it.
“It’s okay,” Andy said, trying to reassure Simon. “We can wait longer.”
“Ten minutes,” Simon said again. “Mr. Ehrens, that’s all we wait. I’m sure. I love my dad, but if we wait longer, then how long do we wait? What if he’s not here in twenty minutes? Forty-five? I mean, my dad is good at surviving. Maybe he makes it on his own, on foot, for hours. A day. Do we wait here that long? When do we decide he’s not coming and go? If we don’t set a deadline, and stick to it, we’ll never leave.”
Andy found himself nodding as the boy spoke. He was right. They couldn’t just wait ad infinitum.
Simon circled the lot, never stopping the car, never letting the passengers out of their cramped quarters. His head barely stopped moving, turning from front to right to left and back to front every second, never settling on a spot, never getting into a position where he could be surprised. Roger, Andy decided for what felt like the twentieth time, had trained his son well.
The minutes passed. For the first several, Celia kept her eyes on their surroundings, like the rest of them, searching for Roger’s car, or the man himself. After four or five, though, she turned her attention away from the outside world and toward the car’s dashboard clock.
They had gotten to Morgan College at 9:48. Celia watched the clock go from 9:56 to 9:57, and wondered if Simon would really stick to his ten-minute rule.
Knowing she had almost a minute before the clock would change again, Celia again allowed herself the chance to look outside the car. She didn’t look for Roger, though. Enough eyes were doing that. Instead, Celia kept her eyes trained on the shadowy forms that made up the three buildings of the college she had so looked forward to.
What had she been anticipating? Three barely erected buildings in a strange city with largely unprepared people she didn’t know? Celia was only just now realizing that the world she had spent 20 years dreaming of, the world her father had grown up in, the world before zombies, was not a world she would ever see. Instead, Celia acknowledged, she was in a different world, one that hadn’t been portrayed by William Shakespeare, by Jon Krakauer, by whoever it was that had written the Bible.
For as long as she could remember, Celia had idealized life at college, portraying it to herself as an Eden-like glimpse into the world of the 2000s — no zombies, no impending death, just a group of young people gathered in one place. Maybe, she had thought, she’d even get the chance to learn what hacky sack was.
But no. That wouldn’t be happening. She knew that now. All she was looking out at, while they circled the small Morgan College parking lot, was the nighttime remnants of a pipe dream, the remnants of a daydream that had become a nightmare. There were bodies in the darkness — none she could make out clearly, but she could tell they were there. Somewhere in that blackness, she knew, lay the body of that sunglasses-wearing kid, the one who had embodied her hopes of a carefree college life.
Now, that kid and his sunglasses embodied Celia’s dead dreams, the remnants of what she had hoped for and the truth she now lived, the truth that said the most she could ever hope for was a tortured existence at her father’s side, seeking to avoid death for a few more hours. That kiss she had shared with Simon felt like it was only a few minutes old and yet a hundred years ago, as she found it hard to imagine ever revisiting that moment, a brief moment that let her feel like she had when she first saw him on campus, like there was still a reason to be hopeful or optimistic.
Instead, Celia thought as she surveyed the small part of campus she could see from the car, there was no good reason for her to have any sense of optimism, any positive feeling. There was nothing in the world as Celia knew it that should make her feeling anything other than miserable or hopeless.
It was as she had this thought that she caught her first sight of movement on the grounds of Morgan College. Off in the distance, barely visible in the headlights, Celia saw the slow movements of a humanoid figure, walking along the path they had initially taken from the classroom. She saw it just as she glanced down at the dashboard clock, noticing that it flicked to 9:58. Celia found herself doing a double take to make sure she saw what she thought she saw.
“Time’s up,” Simon said, accelerating slightly. His voice sounded hoarse, more emotional than it had in several minutes. “He didn’t make it. We have to go.”
No one in the car spoke as Simon navigated his way
to the exit. Just as he reached the main road, though — just as he hit the point of no return — Celia did speak.
“Wait,” she said, her eyes not moving from the figure on the horizon. “Just wait.”
“We can’t,” Simon said, though he sounded less sure than earlier. Whether this was because he was now speaking to Celia or because he was less secure in his convictions to abandon his father, Celia didn’t know. “We can’t wait here forever. We have to leave him. We have to go.”
“We don’t have to leave anyone,” she said, pointing at the figure that she could now make out clearly. It was clearly human, and moving as fast as it could toward them, toward the car. “Your dad is right there.”
Chapter 11: The Toll
The interstate’s onramp, the one that, in a normal world, Donnie might have used to enter the highway, came into view a bit down the road. Unfortunately for the living people in the car, it came into view just behind a mass of zombies, 25 maybe, that were sprinting toward them.
“Shit,” Donnie said. There was no heightened emotion to it, no exclamation. It was merely a word that he said, something to acknowledge their surroundings, regardless of how unsurprising they were. The word itself was little more than a sigh.
He slowed the car, unsure what to do next. “Do we plow through them?” he asked.
“There’s too many,” Michelle said, her voice low. “We damage this car like we did the other one, they’ll be on us in seconds.”
“So what do we do?” Donnie said. He glanced in the rearview and saw nothing, for the time being. “The ones from the toll will be here soon.”
“They will indeed,” came the voice from the backseat. Donnie jumped. He had forgotten about Salvisa sitting back there. He spun in his seat to see the old man digging through his backpack, the lone pack they had left after Donnie and Michelle had abandoned theirs in the service area.
“Turn the car around,” Salvisa said.
“Why?” Donnie said. “There’s no way to go that way, either.” As he questioned the order, though, Donnie swung the car around again. He didn’t drive, however, feeling as though he had himself well centered between the two groups of pursuers.
“We aren’t going that way,” Salvisa said. “We just need to put some distance in.”
Donnie started to ask what the old man meant by that, but before he got the question out, he saw him find whatever it was he was looking for in his pack. He removed his hand, and Donnie recognized in it the vaguely egg-like shape that represented only one thing — a hand grenade.
“Mr. Salvisa?” Donnie said with alarm. His suddenly spiked tone forced Michelle to turn and look as well. “Where did you get that?”
He looked at Donnie with some level of surprise. “Where did I get it?” he repeated. “Where did I get it? I got it from my pantry. Shelf below the peanut butter.”
“What are you doing with it here?”
“Did they leave?” Salvisa craned his neck around and looked behind him. He seemed genuinely curious. “No. They’re still there, boy. So I’d say what I’m doing with it ‘here’ is saving our asses. Make sure the car’s in drive.”
With that, Salvisa stepped out of the car and turned to face their pursuers. At the same time, Michelle, unable to contain herself, lowered her window and leaned as far out as she could to watch the old man.
Salvisa pulled the pin, cocked his arm and, with surprising athleticism and aim, launched the grenade several yards in front of the closest pursuing zombies, a group of ten or so that were all going about the same speed.
The grenade thrown, Salvisa dove back into the car. “Drive!” he said. Donnie slammed down on the pedal, lurching the car forward.
Michelle kept her eyes behind them, watching for the explosion. An attack like Salvisa’s would have been largely ineffective in traditional combat, she knew, as humans would see the grenade approaching and, in the small window provided them, either dodge the explosive or return the volley. For zombies, though, those concerns were non-existent — throw the grenade well, time it right, and they’d run right over top of it as it exploded without any consideration at all.
And, as Michelle watched, that was exactly what happened. Salvisa’s aim was true and, though it took a bit of a sideways hop, it erupted mere milliseconds after the first Z had crossed over it.
The explosion was surprisingly small, as far as Michelle was concerned. She had never seen the result of a hand grenade, never known any real violence beyond the occasional zombie shooting. There was no catastrophic boom, no giant mushroom cloud of fiery devastation. The road itself barely ended up with much more than an above-average-sized pothole.
What the explosion lacked in visual impressiveness, it more than made up for in precision — the entire group of lead pursuers, it seemed, were felled by the burst. It wasn’t a total devastation, of course, as a dozen or more continued their chase. But the group was cut in half, and Donnie spun the car around again and drove back toward them.
“Heads inside the car,” Salvisa said. “Windows up, duck low as you can. High beams on.”
Michelle followed his instructions, raising her window as quickly as it would go. Donnie crouched low enough that he could scarcely see over the dashboard.
“Why are we ducking?” Michelle asked, instinctively lowering to a whisper.
“Z’s are stupid,” Salvisa hissed back. “They chase the car because they smelled human, saw silhouettes, heard voices. They don’t know, cognitively, that car equals people. Duck down, blind ‘em with the lights, decent chance they’ll forget ‘people.’ Now that there’s some meat on the ground, something that might serve to distract them, give them a sure meal, they might stop considering the car, start in on the dead Z’s.”
Michelle was surprised. Maybe, she thought, Salvisa wasn’t quite as crazy as she had first thought. She felt one small bump that she guessed was Donnie being unable to avoid one of the fallen, then noticed the car start to seriously accelerate. Moments later, she felt safe to peek above the dashboard again.
All she could see now was the onramp from earlier, this time standing before them unblocked. She looked behind them, and confirmed what Salvisa had guessed — the zombies that were left seemed perfectly pleased to be crouching over their fallen comrades. Once again, Michelle had the thought that the old man in the backseat might be slightly more “with it” than she had at first believed.
“Thank you, Mr. Salvisa,” Donnie said. “That was brilliant.”
“I have my moments, son,” the old man replied. “I have my moments.”
Donnie sat in brief silence. He had heard an older man say “I have my moments” twice before, as far as he could remember, and both times had been courtesy of the priest who had saved his life in 2010.
The first was just after the man had sealed them inside the church, when one of Donnie’s fellow hiders had thanked the father for his quick thinking and solid aim. “I have my moments,” he had said, though it was offered without the slightest of grins.
The second time he had said it to Donnie had been six years later, as the man lay on his hospital bed, dying of some kind of cancer. He had looked at Donnie and, in a brief lucid moment, said to him the phrase Donnie had later turned into a card to be left in cars needed by scared, zombie-eluding travelers: “Remember, son,” he had said, looking at his wife and daughter near the bed. “We are who we surround ourselves with.”
“Father Burns,” Donnie had said, crying as he did, “that’s brilliant.”
This time, the old priest smiled. His eyes met Donnie’s, and with some of his last words, he said it again: “I have my moments.”
Both phrases had stuck with Donnie, and he appreciated Salvisa inadvertently calling them to mind. Though Donnie was never sure why Father Burns was carrying a weapon, what a holy man needed with a firearm, he had loved the man. While he had lost his faith in 2010 with the coming of the zombies, he had maintained the front of a religious man until Burns’ death, at the youngish age
of 63, in 2016. After that, Donnie no longer saw any reason to pretend, and he had closed the door on God.
It had been difficult at first, and Donnie had been depressed for months afterward, but that feeling had faded — mostly — as time passed. But the memories of “I have my moments” and “We are who we surround ourselves with” had never gone anywhere.
Still driving, he climbed the onramp, navigating through the tollbooth there, and cranked a hard left onto the road.
“Do you know how to get there from here?” Michelle asked.
Donnie nodded. “I know to go east,” he said. “And there aren’t any more toll plazas on I-95 once we hit Rhode Island. We’ll be okay.”
“I hope so, son,” Salvisa said. “I’d just as soon get off the road before sunup.”
“Why’s that, sir?” Donnie said.
“I never travel by daylight, if I can avoid it. Daylight saps your power. Daylight is for plants. Daylight is the bane of our existence.” Salvisa coughed. “I’m a survivor, that’s what I am. And you don’t survive as long as I have without learning a few things. You recall vampires, yes? Dracula? Superstitious nonsense, of course. But the idea that being in the sun weakens you? That’s accurate. You want to live a long life? Be a night owl.”
With every new word from the old man in the back seat, Michelle felt her confidence waning again. It was sounding more and more ridiculous as he went on. He was a survivor; there was no denying that, but it seemed to her that the only real learnings Salvisa had retained were the ways to avoid and kill zombies. Everything he had gone through, as far as Michelle could tell, had only served to break down Salvisa’s sanity, make him crazy, cause him to spout the nonsense he was speaking now.
“No natural light, if you can avoid it. Causes cancer, blinds you, drains your soul. All these things are true. So I suggest we get to Hyannis, just as soon as this fine automobile will get us there. Longer we’re out in the daylight, the weaker we are. Death follows the day.”
After Life Page 21