Simon, though, didn’t hesitate. He led the way into the garage, his gun in hand. The garage was a relic of a more populated era, with enough parking spaces for several dozen cars just on the level they could see. Only a few spaces were occupied, and those were all on the far end of the ramp, near the door to the adjacent building. Near the entrance where Celia and Simon were was just empty.
Parking garages were the types of things Celia only knew from her reading. And as far as she could tell from the fiction of the late 1990s and early 2000s, they were notorious for being dangerous spots where anything bad could happen. Celia had relied on imagination and description before, but seeing one now, she understood. Every shadow could hold mysteries. Every different level of the garage was a huge question mark. Every car could have something scary behind it. Celia no longer felt excited by this first date.
Simon was suddenly farther ahead of Celia than she felt comfortable with, so she scampered in. Once she got past the entrance, through the first gap and onto the incline that carried them uphill, Celia noticed the back of the garage one level up was open to the street behind them as well.
About halfway up the ramp, she caught up with Simon, who was walking slowly and checking the next level as best he could. The two of them finally got to the first car in the garage about two-thirds of the way up, but it was a two-door sporty little thing that would barely hold the two of them, let alone Michelle, Stacy, and Erik.
They moved right past that car without even checking. The next car, a few spaces further on, was an SUV big enough to hold all five of them and their stuff. Celia got excited, even hurrying ahead of Simon to open the door herself. She pulled, and … nothing.
Celia stood outside the first car, dejected. Her dad never locked his car. Not many people did where they lived, or anywhere Celia had been. The world had more or less decided the infinitesimal chance of a car being stolen was worth it if the exchange was providing the public service of “here’s a car if the zombies return.” It was an unspoken agreement in most of the places around where Celia lived. But based on the first car she had tried to open in this garage, it wasn’t universal.
Simon looked unfazed. “We’ll find one,” he said, then appeared to note the look on Celia’s face and continued. “My dad never locked his door either.”
Every time Celia had thought of Andy over the last day, she had felt herself slow down, sink into depression. She kept trying to tell herself to get over it, but at the same time she knew it had only been a day. She was allowed to grieve even if the world said there wasn’t time for that. So she let herself feel her feelings every time Andy popped into mind, if only for a few seconds.
Simon, whose own father had only died about a day earlier than that, didn’t appear to have those moments. Even mentioning his father then, he hadn’t added any more emotion to the event than if he had been talking about some long-ago person he had never met. Simon let those moments come and go, and Celia couldn’t tell he was even registering them.
He moved to the next car, but it was locked as well. He shrugged and kept moving, turning the corner in the garage to the next level. Celia followed behind. They fell into silence for a moment as Simon led the way to the next group of cars. There was nothing, only their footsteps in the dusty silence, as Celia watched Simon move.
The silence was shattered by the crackling of the walkie-talkie in Simon’s pocket. When Michelle’s voice came through, Celia felt her stomach lurch and her heart knock sideways. The sound had broken such a silence that she had started to feel like noise just wasn’t possible anymore.
“Any luck?” Michelle asked.
Simon tried another car. No luck. “Not yet,” he said into the walkie-talkie. “Bunch of locked cars.”
A few seconds passed and then Erik’s voice crackled through. “Is there a door to the main building there?” he asked.
“Well … yeah,” Simon said back. “Wouldn’t there be?”
“Not as often as you’d think, these days,” Erik crackled back. “Only on the first level anymore. And a lot of places instituted a key drop. Like a reception desk when you enter the main building. It was the balance between locking your doors for safety and still having cars available for people who needed them. Go in the door. Probably a security booth or stand or something just inside. Then it’s just a matter of matching key to car.”
Simon nodded, then said, “Thanks,” back through the walkie-talkie.
Celia was the closer of the two to the door. It was set up almost like an apartment or house door, with a peephole at eye level, and it opened outward, like the doors at the Wal-Mart building. It had no lock — zombies couldn’t use keys, and humans didn’t need to be locked out.
Celia pulled the door open. It opened to a long hallway, looking like the dorm hall Celia had seen briefly at Morgan College. There were a few nondescript doors dotting the hallway on the right and left, ending in a doorway that had a little window on its side that indicated it led to a stairwell. From their vantage point at one end of the hallway, every door looked closed but one. About ten feet inside the door, set off to the left, was a small room with a big glass window and a doorway that sat wide open. She figured had to be the spot for the keys, so she headed there, with Simon a few feet behind.
The room was deeper than Celia expected. There was a small desk and chair just inside the room, a couch along the back wall. On the ground in front of the couch was a long green strip of rug that almost resembled grass leading to a small incline with a hole at the top of the little hill. There was a flat black section at the other end of the strip that had a small white ball resting on it, and a long metal stick with a flat club-like bit on the end of it. Celia didn’t recognize any of that. But above the couch, on the wall, was a pegboard with about a hundred pegs, and keys on a couple dozen of them. Most of the keys didn’t have much to identify the car, but above each peg was a number. Celia hadn’t noted numbers on the parking spaces on their way in, but she figured that had to be the identifier.
“Go out there and pick a car,” she said. “Biggest one or whatever you think. I’m guessing the space is marked with a number. Probably better to do that than end up with that two-door or something.”
Simon nodded and turned back to the garage. Celia suddenly had a very real feeling of being alone even if Simon had only been gone a few seconds. She hadn’t been alone since all this started — considering how protective her father had always been, she had barely been alone her entire life. Even with Simon only a few dozen yards away, the fact that there was a full wall and closed door between them made Celia uncomfortable.
She squirmed, fidgeting with one of the keys closest to her for only a few seconds before her unease was shattered in the worst way possible — gunshots. Two rang out from Simon’s direction.
In an instant, Celia had her gun ready. She had yet to be the first line of defense in any situation they had faced, and she wasn’t eager to start now, but she would face the situation if she had to. Was Simon dead? Bitten? She didn’t know. Could he have run off at the sign of danger? She doubted it, but couldn’t guarantee he hadn’t.
Celia only had to wait a few seconds for the answer, as the door flew open and Simon came hurrying in, his gun in hand. He was breathing heavily, but didn’t appear to have any greater concerns than fear.
“Are you okay?” Celia asked. She hurried over to him and threw her arms around him.
“I’m okay,” Simon said, breathing heavily.
“What happened?”
“A bunch of them,” Simon said. “Some from a level above, some from the street. They just showed up. I didn’t even hear them at first.”
Celia stepped back from Simon. He looked scared and smaller than she remembered and all she wanted to do was help him calm down and make him feel better. She brushed her hand on his cheek. “Do you think they heard the walkie-talkie?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said as his breathing slowed. “Maybe.”
“What do we do now?”
Simon looked behind him at the door. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Wait? Give it a few minutes at least. Maybe another car will come by and they’ll chase that.” Celia nodded, trying to think of an alternative and failing. Suddenly Simon’s hand moved to his pocket. “Why haven’t they asked how we are?” he asked, fumbling with the walkie-talkie. “They had to have heard the gun.”
Celia thought. “They don’t know what is going on in here,” she said. “They might think we need the silence.”
Simon nodded. He held the walkie talkie up and hit the button. “We’re fine,” he said. “A group came and surprised me but we’re inside the apartment building now. We’ll give it a few minutes. You guys okay?”
It took several seconds, but the walkie-talkie crackled back through. “We’re okay,” Michelle said, barely loud enough to come through. “We saw some from where we are, but none noticed us. They’re all inside the garage now.”
“Okay,” Simon said, walking toward the office that had the keys. “Be safe.”
With that, Simon placed the walkie-talkie on the shelf of the counter window. He put his hands over his head and kept trying to catch his breath.
Celia stared at him. Simon had been the hero of the situation ever since the zombies returned and saved more of them than anybody but her own father. And yet there was something she felt like she was missing in the moment. But either way, they were still alone together, they were still as safe as could be expected. It wasn’t how she’d have drawn up a first date, maybe, but it wasn’t a complete failure.
And then Celia realized what she had forgotten.
“You know what?” she said. “I made a mistake. I forgot one of the safety steps.”
Simon stopped and turned to look at her, confused. “What do you mean?”
“It was when you came back in,” she said, adopting a sly smile. “You were in a fight with zombies. Any time someone is in a fight with zombies, you can’t just trust them. You need to check them.” She took Simon by the hand. “Every inch of them.”
Chapter Eight: Giving Up
“You don’t have to stay,” Michelle said. It had been at least a couple hours since they had last heard from Simon and Celia inside the parking garage, and while there hadn’t been anything close to a Z threat near them, she knew it was only a matter of time until there was.
Her ankle hurt. Her ankle hurt a whole lot. She wasn’t even close to being able to put weight on her left leg. If it came to running, she could hobble slowly maybe (but maybe not), but any able-bodied zombie would be upon her in a matter of moments.
Stacy could probably run. As a last resort, there wasn’t much reason, physically, to doubt her. But every extra movement scared everybody. Maybe she’d be fine, but if there were already health concerns about the baby, surely running for her life could only exacerbate things.
Erik, though, had no such concerns. He hadn’t been injured. He was there just as a protector for Michelle and Stacy, and she didn’t want to condemn him just because she was injured. So she was letting him go.
“Really,” she said again. “Thank you for staying. Thank you for the help so far. But staying now is just asking for it. I’ll give you a gun. You can go.”
Erik looked at her, at first like he thought it was a trap. But once he realized Michelle was being genuine, he seemed briefly tempted before shaking his head.
“No,” he said. “Even if I wanted to, I’d need a car, and the only place I know of that has a car also has Z’s. No sense in risking that.”
Michelle couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t said no for any noble reason or to protect them, but she was happy nonetheless that he stayed. And he hadn’t taken the gun when she had offered it, so she was even happier to believe that he’d at least stick around if things got hairy long enough to get a gun.
“Thank you,” she said.
Erik nodded, but didn’t say anything. He took to pacing back and forth alongside the car.
“What do we do if the Z’s come?” Stacy asked after a moment’s silence.
Michelle shrugged. “We run,” she said. “Erik probably runs the fastest. I die. But you can get away.” Stacy’s eyes went wide. “Hey,” Michelle went on. “Hey. It’s okay. Your priority is yourself and your baby. If you wait with me, we all die. That’s just the truth now that my ankle is like this.
“We all have different levels of risk right now. You and your baby are a worry, but for now, a small one. Me? If anything happens, I’m an enormous risk. Erik, Celia, Simon? They’re healthy. As long as they can run, they’ll be okay. But the key is to not make a mistake. Don’t put yourself at risk to save someone you can’t save.”
Stacy was fighting back tears, but she nodded.
“Anyway,” Michelle said with a small smile, “you said you wanted some excitement in your life.”
Stacy looked at her like she was confused what she meant for a moment, but then seemed to remember their weeks-ago conversation in the bathroom and smiled. “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she said.
“Of course not,” Michelle said. “It never is. Scripted excitement isn’t actual excitement. That’s why we never wanted ‘excitement’ for you, and why you’ll never actually want ‘excitement’ for your child. But,” she added, brushing Stacy’s hair back and doing her best to ignore the pain in her ankle that shot up her leg when she shifted weight, “they’ll find excitement too. They all do. Maybe it’ll be zombies. Maybe it’ll be small Indian boys. Maybe it’ll be … I don’t know, anything. Whatever it is, I’m positive you’ll be ready. You’ve been ready for anything your entire life. You’ve just never known that about yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Stace, nobody has ever loved anyone like Madison loved you. But you know as much as I do that her job meant she was out of the house a lot. She did her best. So did I, once I came around. But you raised yourself in a lot of ways. And you might be a little weird sometimes,” she bumped Stacy’s shoulder with a smile, “but you have been an adult since you were about 12. You taught yourself so much. Do you remember when you met Samir? He was running around a playground with his shoelaces loose, tripping over and over, so you showed him how to tie his shoes. And he’s close to a year older than you, Stace. You were the teacher, the parent of all the kids you were ever around. If the college had been a success, I can guarantee you’d have been the head of the class in no time. Teacher’s pet.
“You probably don’t know that term, actually,” Michelle added. “The jerks meant it to be an insult, you know, the one who sucked up to the teacher and made everyone else look bad. But that’s stupid. The teacher’s pet was the one most invested. The one who was getting the most out of the class. And that would have been you, Stace. You were so ready for this. And the fact that it isn’t happening? I don’t even care. You’re so ready for everything. If that means we get to Maine, get to Salvisa’s, shut it down, and start a new life, you’re ready. But if it means Z’s show up here in the next five minutes, I can’t get away but you can? You’re ready for that too. I never want you to forget that. I’ll always be with you. But you don’t need me. You never have.”
By the time Michelle was finished talking, Stacy was crying. She shook her head when Michelle said she didn’t need her, but didn’t say anything back. Outside, Erik was still pacing, but since the Z’s that had gone in after Simon and Celia, they hadn’t seen anything to be nervous about.
Michelle sat back and considered her options. In the best possible scenario, Simon and Celia got a big vehicle, the others managed to lug Michelle into the back with a minimum of pain, they got to Salvisa’s property, it was easy to somehow figure out what shut down the signal and do that, and the world got back to normal.
It all sounded so simple.
Michelle figured that every step in that process, up to and including the world somehow being “normal” ever again, was increasingly difficult, and in
her current condition, she was going to make every part of the process that much harder. It crossed her mind to let them go, say her farewells, try to find a Safe Place and hole up there.
But she was the only one who knew the way. All Stamford employees had to know the location of Salvisa’s property and the way there, and that included a video of the route. She could tell the others the way, but asking them to navigate a strange region guided only by second-hand knowledge of a video was dicey at best. She knew she could get there on her own, but she didn’t trust her ability to convey that information.
Michelle knew she was stuck continuing along as far as she could, no matter how much her leg hurt her. At the same time, she meant what she had said to Stacy about leaving her behind. Getting to Salvisa’s was their mission. But their primary mission was to stay alive. If keeping Michelle around to direct them there would end in the group at large dying, then there was no point in keeping her alive. Better to leave her, give up on the mission, and hope to ride out the storm like those who did in 2010.
And then Michelle changed her mind again. She agreed with everything she had just gone over, but at the same time telling someone to leave her felt like giving up. And she wasn’t going to give up. She knew what that looked like.
In 2010, after her sister Kellee had died, Michelle saw her mother give up. After Kellee had died, their mother curled around the body for a while, lying in silence. After several minutes, though, it had occurred to Michelle that there was every chance Kellee’s body would turn, and that she could become a Z — they learned later that dead bodies without a bite couldn’t turn, of course, but at the time all she knew was fear.
“Mom?” Michelle had said. Her mother hadn’t responded even with movement — it was like Michelle was a ghost. “Mom, we have to … we have to get rid of the body.”
Anyone watching would have said her mother still didn’t move, but Michelle was sure she saw her arms tighten around her sister’s body. She gave it another minute, then tried again.
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 18