Sure enough, a few seconds later, the door opened. There appeared to be only one person inside, a black man in his early 40s. He was short and very thin, looking like he needed to grow some more, but the flecks of gray in his short hair and the wrinkles around his eyes revealed his age. He wore wire-framed glasses that looked like they were made for someone with a wider head than him. He wore a white button-down shirt with thin tan stripes, still tucked into his brown pants that appeared to be corduroy. He looked sick, or like he hadn’t slept in some time, and he held a gun in his hand. It was that which he pointed at Michelle and the others as the door opened, but it was a shaky grip, looking like he hadn’t used it in this manner very often. Still, the others kept their guns at their sides, nobody wanting to spook him.
“If you worked in Stamford,” he said nervously, “why were you in Hyannis? And why in the hell would you all leave?”
Michelle looked over her shoulder to see if the earlier group of zombies, or any other, had gotten to their location yet. None had, but Celia too was nervous of their arrival.
“I’ll explain,” Michelle said. “But can I do it while we gather supplies? I don’t want to remain out here and vulnerable longer than necessary.”
The man looked at the four of them, one by one, like he wasn’t sure what the answer to the question was. Finally, Michelle reached out to the man, holding on to the barrel of her weapon. She was offering him the gun.
“You can hold this,” she said, “while we’re inside. My daughter and I will come in, and you can hold both of our weapons the entire time we are in there.”
“What about those two?” he asked, though he already looked less tense.
“If it’s okay with them,” Michelle said, turning to Celia and Simon, “I think it would be smart to have someone out here to stand guard. You can redo your band on the door while we’re inside. They won’t come in.”
Michelle looked at Celia and Simon, and they both nodded their agreement.
“I’m Corbin,” the man said at last. “I don’t have much.” He lowered his gun slightly, but still took Michelle’s and Stacy’s guns from their hands. “I won’t tell you you can’t have anything, but this place wasn’t as stocked as I had anticipated. You can take some ammunition, provided it suits your needs, and I can spare some water. No food. I don’t know if I even have enough of that for me.”
Michelle nodded. “It’s more generous than you have to be,” she said. She moved toward the door, but the man stopped her.
“First things first,” he said. “No one comes inside without inspection. Clothes”
Celia started to object, then realized it was pointless — this was how it worked in a zombie world. Michelle and Stacy, too, both looked like they wanted to balk at the order, but both eventually started to disrobe.
Michelle went through it more quickly — as Celia understood it, she had to do this every day at work, so she probably was accustomed to the process — and stepped from her clothes to prove to Corbin that she hadn’t been bitten.
He nodded to her, then turned his attention to Stacy, who had removed her shirt but was going slowly. Seeing her roommate’s bare stomach had Celia once again imagining she could tell a size difference that she knew she couldn’t. “It’s okay,” Michelle said when Stacy continued to dawdle. “This is how it works. Nothing is going to happen.”
Stacy slumped her shoulders and continued. She removed her bra — just to her right, Celia could tell that Simon was trying to look without being obvious about it, just as he had with Michelle, and she wondered if this was Simon’s first time seeing a naked woman — and moved to her pants.
When Stacy pulled her sweatpants down, Corbin jerked his arm back up. “She’s been bitten!” he said.
The others followed his gaze, and realized that Corbin was keying in on the remnants of the same blood that had been at issue in the service area restroom, and that Stacy’s underwear had suffered as a result of the problems. Stacy quickly pulled her sweatpants back up. Corbin, meanwhile, took a step toward her, with his gun raised.
“Stop!” Michelle said, putting herself between the two.
“Don’t stop me,” Corbin sneered. “She’s been bitten.”
“She hasn’t!” Michelle said. “There are … other reasons a woman might have blood in her underwear.”
Corbin stopped, as though this hadn’t occurred to him. Finally, he said, “She’s not coming in.”
“Yes she is,” Michelle said. “She can stay in front of you if you want. You can keep your gun out. But I’m going in, and my daughter goes where I go.”
Corbin stewed it over for a moment, then nodded. “Let’s go,” he said.
Celia watched as Stacy put her bra and top back on, and the three entered the office, and heard the sounds that indicated the door being bound again.
She and Simon were alone out there then. And Celia was sure some Z’s — either the ones she had seen or some others — would be along shortly. Normally, with relatively slow-moving zombies, she would hold off on firing until they were close, to raise her accuracy. But considering their situation, she was going to shoot as soon as she saw anything at all. She wanted Michelle and Stacy to know as soon as possible if there was any threat.
Simon stood a few feet away from Celia. She looked over to him every few seconds, but he avoided her eye. Finally, Celia walked up to him. She realized he was embarrassed at having stared at Stacy and Michelle, and wanted him to know she wasn’t upset.
Celia squeezed Simon’s arm and started to say something to let him know it was okay. Before she could, though, he leaned forward and started kissing her.
It was a surprise — a welcome surprise, but still a surprise. The times leading up to this that she and Simon had kissed had been extreme moments, emotional ones. This was nothing like that. This was just a moment where he kissed her.
After her initial shock, Celia returned the kiss. She wondered if him seeing the women had inspired the moment, then realized she didn’t care. She was enjoying the moment, and whatever had caused it was fine with her.
It lasted all too short a time, as eventually the two of them both realized they needed to pay attention to matters further away from each other’s lips. They separated, but their hands fell together as they had so often in the last couple of days. Celia took to watching the area they had driven in from, and Simon’s sights were set on the area’s other exit.
They stood like that, hands clasped, for a couple of minutes. Every passing second made Celia more sure that the next second would bring the group of Z’s from the road, and when they didn’t arrive, she just kept redoubling those thoughts.
Finally, something happened, but it had nothing to do with the arrival of zombies. Celia heard from behind her the sounds that indicated the band being once again removed from the door. Whatever they had gotten inside, they were now done getting it.
She turned, and Michelle and Stacy were coming out of the office, each with a small sack of things Celia couldn’t yet identify. Corbin was behind them, still inside the doorway. When they had fully exited the office, Michelle turned back, and Corbin handed her the two guns. That done, Corbin immediately slammed the door.
“Did you get everything?” Simon asked as the two returned to the car.
“I think so,” Michelle said. “At the least, if we fail, it won’t be a lack of supplies that causes it.” She loaded their new supplies into the trunk of the car, then stopped. She opened the bag and waved Simon over. They reloaded his weapon from the new supplies, then repeated the action with Stacy’s and Celia’s guns.
“Let’s go,” Celia said when that was finished, eager to be gone by the time that group of zombies, which she could still see in her mind, got there.
They got into the car, and Michelle backtracked out the way they had come. Stacy went right back to hugging her midsection, as though nothing had happened since then. Celia realized then that she didn’t think Stacy had spoken the entire time they had been a
t Corbin’s office.
Simon had chosen the seat in the middle of the backseat this time, sitting right next to Celia and leaving the window seat open. Celia had no complaints.
As Michelle left the parking lot, Celia instinctively looked right to where the group of zombies would be. And there they were. The lead zombie was by itself, still running for them, even though by then it couldn’t possibly have known where they had gone, just running in a direction. At least twenty yards behind it was the broken-arm zombie, and the others trailed behind that.
Celia drew a sharp breath. Her first reaction was to shoot the Z’s, and then she wanted to warn Corbin. Neither was necessary, though, as the car they had and the distance between them meant the Z’s weren’t about to catch up. Still, Celia stared at them, and her hand unconsciously went to the gun at her side.
But there was no need. Michelle saw the sprinting zombie, and its slower compatriots, and didn’t even react. She pulled out of the parking lot and drove away, with that running zombie still chasing after something much faster than it.
Celia watched it fall further behind. By the time it was gone from sight, she thought she had relaxed a little. Her hand was no longer on her gun. It was in Simon’s. She didn’t know when that had happened, but she was grateful to have him, and grateful that group of Z’s was gone.
Of course, no sooner did she have that thought than it was followed by a second one, telling her that one group might be gone, but there were still who-knows-how-many between them and Maine. Celia felt herself go on edge again. And she realized this was who she was now. Her father had always been the nervous type, his eyes darting and his knuckles white. And Celia had always made fun of that trait. But now, living in that world, she understood. Even with no threat anywhere near them, she knew she wouldn’t relax. And she hated that, and hated the people who had caused it.
Still on edge, Celia redoubled her determination to stop the signal, no matter the cost.
Part 3: The Power of People
Chapter One: One Good Plague
1992
The tracks not far from the window rattled to life. The train wasn’t in sight yet, but the tracks were shaking with the train’s approach and the pictures on the wall in the living room rattled back in response, like the water when the T-Rex was approaching in Jurassic Park. The rattles continued for a moment, like they were speaking to each other in their own language.
As the train approached, the woman moved to the table next to the couch. A coffee cup left there had begun shaking, moving gradually to the edge of the table. She picked it up before it fell off the edge and took a drink, finishing the contents. She scowled at the now-cold beverage and watched out the window as the train rattled past and her entire living room shook.
It was a small, cheap apartment. The living room had a small sofa — more of a loveseat — with a single end table and lamp. A boxy television sat opposite the sofa, on top of a small credenza with junk mail piled atop whatever horizontal surface was left. The kitchen, if it could be called that, opened into the living room. It had a couple feet of counter space, a small fridge, a sink and a stovetop. The dishes piled in the sink rattled along with the rest of the room, and the burners on the stove joined in as well.
With the train going, the woman just watched, holding her coffee cup. She couldn’t have been older than 30, despite the crows feet at her eyes doing their best to suggest otherwise. Her arms and hands showed that she hadn’t lived as long as her eyes might have argued. She had a mousy appearance, with a small face and small ears on a small head held up by a small neck. She was thin, fit, but her posture, like her crows feet, made her look older. If there were gray in her hair, it was invisible among the light blonde strands that were tied back in the most ragged of ponytails. The woman wore a waitress’s outfit, her apron tied around her waist. The light blue outfit had small stains on it — a couple brown splotches just above the apron, a watery mark at her shoulder. The air around her smelled like fried food, coffee, and cigarettes.
Once the train had gotten past and all the vibrating surfaces had quieted themselves, the woman carried the coffee mug into the kitchen area and placed it on the growing pile of dirty dishes. She untied her apron and placed it on the counter next to the sink and slipped off her shoes. Now barefoot, she placed both hands on the edge of the counter and leaned, her head down and her eyes closed.
She stayed there for a bit, until the sound of a key roughly entering the lock outside the door piped up. She looked to the door as it opened, and a haggard man entered.
He was wearing a loose-fitting dark blue suit and carried a similarly colored folder, with pieces of paper sticking out at all available edges. The man was in his early 30s, but had lines on his face that more-or-less matched those on the woman’s, plus a few that were all his own. His hair was graying around the temples, but his physique was impressive. His head glistened with sweat, and his suit was sticking to his back. He sped into the apartment and threw his folder down on the counter.
“One good plague,” he said. “That’s all we need. One good plague.”
“Mickey?” the woman said, still leaning on the counter, though her head was now raised. “What do you mean?”
“Just wipe out half the population,” he said, as though she hadn’t spoken. “Just knock out a chunk of the herd, and this world gets so much better. You know we’re adding 200,000 people to the population every day? Every damn day, there are 200,000 more people in this world. That’s 200,000 more mouths to feed. 200,000 more homes to build. 200,000 more jobs we need.” He leaned against the counter, a foot or so away from her.
She put her hand on his. “No luck today?”
He shook his head as he loosened his tie far enough that it was little more than a lasso around his neck. “Thank you for your interest, but we have no openings at this time,” he said. “Thank you for your interest, but we have no openings at this time. Every damn place. There aren’t any jobs. Because there are too many people. The job market is saturated, but people are still having babies! More babies and more babies. Had to wait three trains just to find one I could cram myself on to, spent the ride standing with my nose in some homeless man’s armpit.”
“Mickey…” she started.
He continued talking like she hadn’t started. “Find a place in this city to eat a sandwich,” he said, turning and walking away from the kitchen counter. He ended up next to the small sofa, looking out the window at their nothing view. “A place for a minute with your thoughts. A bench, a picnic table. Even a ledge where I can sit for 30 seconds. I ate my lunch today leaning against a wall outside a junk bodega. And I dropped my banana. And who cares, it’s a banana, I can still pick that up and eat it, right? Literally, in the two seconds it took me to switch hands for my sandwich and bend down, some dog grabbed the banana. Damn thing was gone in a flash. No banana for me!”
She almost laughed, but held it in. “Mickey,” she said again.
“And then,” he went on, smacking the wall in front of him. “And then I made the mistake of drinking a bottle of water. Because then I had to pee. Dominicans telling me I can’t pee there. Telling me in Spanish, so I don’t even know if that’s what they said, but there was definitely a ‘no’ in there. ‘Customers only’ signs in every business. Had to half-run while holding it until I could get to the subway stop, and used a dirty toilet next to a urinal that someone had used for something that was not urine. All we need, Jane. All we need is one good plague.”
“Don’t talk like that,” she said. “You don’t mean it.”
“I do!” he said. “I mean every word. Bring on whatever damn illness they have. The strong survive, the lucky survive. The survivors can have their own space. Find a damn job.”
“You say that,” Jane said with a hint of a smile. “But what if you’re the one who dies in this plague of yours?”
“Great!” Mickey said. “Fan-bloody-tastic! Then I don’t have to worry about any of this anymore!”
Mickey slapped the counter and walked over to the window, just as the pictures on the wall started to rattle again as another train neared. Mickey stared at the pictures reproachfully, as though he could admonish them into ignoring the rattle. When the train got there, and the room was as loud as it could be, he turned to Jane and yelled something that was lost amid the train noises.
“What was that?” Jane asked after the train had passed and the noise subsided.
“I said I want to get out of here.”
“That’s a good idea,” Jane said. “Let’s take a walk. Let’s cool off and maybe go get ice cream. I’ll just get my walking shoes and…”
“No,” Mickey said, frustrated. “I don’t mean here,” he motioned around the living room. “I mean here.” He moved his arms in a huge circle. “Let’s get out of New York.”
“What?” Jane asked. “And go where?”
“Somewhere else,” he said. “Anywhere else. Let’s go to Georgia and pick peaches. Let’s go to Oregon and become like the weird people they have there. Let’s go to ….” He looked around the room and stopped. He wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve and pulled his tie even looser. He appeared to flounder, and let his last few words hang on the air, his sentence unfinished.
Jane moved to a small portable fan that was clipped to the counter and turned it around, letting the small fan try to push air toward the living room space where Mickey was sweating. The fan didn’t accomplish much in the stifling room. The wallpaper was peeling and the refrigerator was running so hard it could almost compete with the passing trains. The window gave views of other windows across the alley that had window air-conditioner units in place — units that Mickey and Jane’s windows lacked.
She picked up a towel that sat on the counter next to the sink and walked it over to Mickey. He took it and patted at his face, clearing away sweat that was replaced with fresh reinforcements almost immediately.
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 13