“Mom? Mom, if we don’t, she might … we … mom, we have to do something.”
Her mother still didn’t speak. Michelle, still crying from everything, looked around, like there would be someone there who would support her. There was no one.
Michelle circled around, trying to face her mother. In doing so, she saw something she had temporarily forgotten — Kellee’s baby. The child had been stillborn, and her mother had apparently wrapped it in a blanket before she had lost Kellee. It was in a bundle there, beside Michelle’s sister, and it was almost too much to handle.
No, Michelle remembered thinking to herself. She had lost her sister, had lost the niece she’d now never have, she couldn’t lose her mother at the same time. She leaned forward and touched the side of her mom’s face.
“Mom,” she said. “What if she … Kellee could, you know?”
Nothing. Michelle could see the tears, but beyond that, her mother might as well have been asleep.
Michelle stood up. She went back into the kitchen, to the door she had left through earlier and collapsed against after she came back. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she couldn’t look at her mom like that any longer. She sat back down on the floor, her back against the door, but before she could even get comfortable, Michelle realized she heard something. It was faint, but there was definitely a noise outside the door.
She turned around. The window in the door was small and up high — annoyingly so, a complaint Michelle had always had as one of her standard whines. There was no checking who was at the door without a stepstool or tiptoes, straining, and looking remarkably stupid to the person on the other side. Michelle hated it.
Now, though, she loved that high window. Michelle was very happy to be hidden from the outside as much as she could. She got up on her toes, strained until just the smallest bit of her face showed in the window, and looked out.
It was still dark outside, and it took her eyes a minute to adjust, but it was unmistakable. The form was human, but that was the only thing human about it anymore.
They had gotten there.
They must have heard her when she was outside, calling for help. Michelle ducked back down as quickly as she could, as though that would do anything once they knew she was in there. She hurried back into the living room where her mother and sister were and started blowing out the candles as quickly as she could.
Kellee had always wanted them to keep the candles limited to as few as possible, but Michelle had regularly lit as many of them as she could when Kellee wasn’t around so she could have more light. In the moment, she could not have regretted that more. There were candles all over the living room, some almost extinguished, some fresher as they had dug more out of their closets, and it meant Michelle had to circle the room, carefully stepping around the tableau in the center, to make it as dark as possible. Every few seconds, she looked back at her sister’s body to make sure there was no movement there.
It was only when she was done that she realized what an exercise in futility it was. With the random and unsteady light in the room, Michelle hadn’t noticed the coming daylight, but by the time she was done extinguishing all the candles, there was enough light outside that there was no hiding in the darkness anyway.
The noises outside got louder and clearer. And they had started moving to the kitchen window, lower to the ground, easier to see inside.
Still, Michelle’s mother hadn’t moved. Worse yet, where she was lying was now visible to the Z’s at the window, which only increased their fervor to get inside. They started banging against the glass, silhouetted against the rising sun. Michelle ducked back out of sight, though her mother’s lack of movement meant that didn’t matter much.
Michelle looked around, frantic. They didn’t have many options. They could go upstairs and try to block off the stairwell. There was a good chance that would work, she figured, but it meant that they’d be stuck upstairs where there was even less food than there was throughout the house, with no means of escape and no end date. Or they could go out the back door and hope to get away that way. It obviously gave them more ways to escape, but it also meant they had nowhere to hide, no food at all, and no idea how long they’d need to run.
Before they did anything, though, Michelle needed to get her mother moving.
“Mom!” she said. Nothing. She got down next to her head. “Mom!”
Her mother might as well have been absent. She might as well have been Kellee.
Kellee. Michelle realized that if there was any hope of her mother snapping to attention, she needed to not have Kellee and the baby lying right there. Michelle grabbed the end of the sheets on the floor and flipped them over Kellee’s body as best she could. She then drug the bodies away from her mother a few inches and climbed in between them.
“Mom,” Michelle said, picking up her mother’s head in her hands and putting her face as close to it as she could. “We have to do something.”
Her mother’s eyes opened. But they might as well not have. Michelle wasn’t sure she had seen her and wasn’t sure it mattered if she had.
Michelle looked around for anything to help. She had no ideas. The sun had risen enough that the only cover they had inside the house was the reflection the zombies had to be seeing against the glass from outside. The banging on the door and windows was growing ever louder, and the moans outside were louder still. Michelle half-heartedly shook her mother’s shoulders a couple of times, but it was becoming increasingly clear nothing was coming from her.
Suddenly, a noise came from behind her. Michelle spun around to see still more Z’s at the living room window, trying to get in through the boards over that large window.
They could no longer leave that way either. Even if Michelle was able to get her mother to respond, to be ready to act, there was no way for them to leave. All they had left was upstairs. And even that depended on Michelle’s mother doing … anything.
Michelle ran into the kitchen and grabbed the knife block. She didn’t even know which knife would be the best one for whatever she needed to do with it and certainly didn’t expect to be able to fend off however many zombies there were all on her own, but she couldn’t just not do anything. So she carried the knife block back into the living room where her mother still hadn’t moved.
“Mom!” Michelle cried. Nothing. She ran to the stairs and went up two of them. Then she turned back, as though she were testing her mom with the threat of leaving to see if she’d respond.
Still nothing.
Michelle sighed. She couldn’t leave her mother. She couldn’t survive up the stairs in their house, all by herself, with just a knife block for company and any scraps of food that she might find up there — which might be none, she wasn’t even sure. Michelle dropped her shoulders and went back to her mother. She sat down on the floor in between her mother and the body of her sister and pulled out the biggest knife she could find from the block.
She wasn’t giving up. But she also didn’t know what else to do. So she sat there, legs pulled up in front of her chest, knife pointed out in front of her as though the Z’s would kindly fall upon the blade one at a time.
The sun was shining brightly through the windows, silhouetting the dead against the glass. And still they pounded. The noise was amazingly loud to just be groans and hands slapping at the windows and doors. Michelle looked at her sister’s body and briefly considered whether she could use it as bait, but she knew she didn’t have it in her to do that to Kellee.
So she sat. She didn’t know how long it was, but eventually, she heard the window in the kitchen start to crack. A few seconds later, it broke all the way, and only a second or two after that, the living room picture window started to give way as well.
It would still take them some time to get through. The kitchen window was small, and the living room window was barricaded. But her main advantage was gone.
Still her mother didn’t move. Michelle wiped tears from her face and continued to look aroun
d. The only face she could make out against the sunlight was one on the edge of the living room window. It was the face of a man, older, probably 50s. It had an old green hooded sweatshirt that was torn and shredded at the left shoulder with blood streaking out. Its left arm was trying to force its way in, but it didn’t have much strength, so it was mostly the right arm doing the work. The face was jowly, with cheeks hanging down like an old basset hound, and graying sideburns that would have been more in place in the 1970s. The hair on top of the zombie’s head was surprisingly dark, given the gray in the sideburns, and was pulled back in a ponytail that was losing the battle of time and coming undone.
The zombie had been Michelle’s neighbor.
His name had been Mr. Caswell, and he lived at the corner a little ways up. She wasn’t sure, but it might even have been his yard she had gotten to when she was out looking for help the night before. Michelle realized she didn’t even know his first name. He had walked a big mutt around the neighborhood regularly, and he liked to stop and watch the kids at the park play youth baseball. Some of the kids around liked to whisper jokes about him doing so for illicit reasons, but Michelle preferred to believe he just liked to watch the game.
She couldn’t break her eyes away from the zombie’s. Its eyes were blanched, white, haunting. She felt like they were staring down deep into her, and it made her go cold. Michelle kept staring, even as she heard the noises in the kitchen behind her that indicated at least one zombie had gotten in and was scrabbling across the sink.
A loud thunk next told her the zombie was into the kitchen and had fallen to the floor. It forced her to turn away from the older zombie’s gaze and look to see what was happening on the other side of the house.
The zombie that had gotten in was trying to scramble to its feet but was held up by another zombie coming in the same way and falling on top of it. That gave her a few seconds, but they’d get untangled soon enough.
Michelle raised the knife, ready to do whatever she could, but at the same time she closed her eyes. She still didn’t want to give up, but she also knew she didn’t have much other choice. Her eyes closed, her arm out straight holding the knife, Michelle tried to close out all the noise and waited for the inevitable.
She waited. Ten seconds made sense — they might still be tangled up. But then 20 seconds went by. Then 30. Then it had to have been a full minute.
Suddenly, Michelle realized that her efforts to close out the noise hadn’t been as effective as she had thought. It was silent. She opened one eye, then both. The zombies were still there, still on the kitchen floor, still at the window. She looked behind her and they were still there as well, Mr. Caswell and all. The only difference was that none of them were moving.
It was still. Like they had all fallen asleep. Michelle didn’t move, fearing it was some kind of trick. She looked back and forth from kitchen to living room window several times, sure one of them would get up and start moving again, but nothing.
Michelle stayed there, sitting, knife clenched in her hand, for what had to have been hours. The truth was she had no idea how much time had passed, except for the fact that the sun rose higher and she could make out finer details of the Z’s out the window, no longer silhouetted by the morning light. She found her eyes tracing the lines of each one, trying to see if she recognized any more of them, but she either didn’t know them or couldn’t make out enough details to tell.
Finally, Michelle remembered her mother lying there. She looked down and was amazed to see her mom’s eyes had moved. They were looking back at her.
“Mom?” Michelle said, breathless.
“Are you okay?” her mother asked, as casually as if it was a normal world and she had seen Michelle stub her toe.
“Mom?” she said again. “Are you … what’s going on?”
“Are you okay?” her mother repeated without affect.
“I … I guess so? Mom, what happened to them?” she asked, gesturing around them in an “everything” manner.
“Good,” her mother said. “I’m glad you’re okay.”
With that, Michelle’s mother climbed from the floor up to her feet and walked upstairs, to where her bedroom was. Michelle heard the bedsprings squeak as she lay down. Still she sat there, breathless and confused.
Her mother had gotten up as though nothing had ever happened, gone upstairs, and as far as Michelle knew never spoke again. Michelle had sat there on the floor for as long as she could, waiting for something to happen, but it never did. Nothing moved. Finally, she had gone upstairs to check on her mother and found her asleep. Scared to move her, Michelle had wandered the house blindly. She ate an entire diet bar — one of their last, and the most she had eaten at one time in weeks. She peeked into Kellee’s bedroom. She used the bathroom — directly into the toilet, even though it wasn’t functional, just because she didn’t want to use the bathroom corner they had designated with the zombie bodies all around.
Eventually, Michelle settled into her mother’s big chair in the living room and waited. A full day passed, which she only knew because it got dark, then silhouette-y, then light again. Michelle still didn’t know what to do. She checked on her mom twice more and found her asleep both times. There was breathing. Michelle checked.
As dusk fell on the second day, she heard a voice outside.
“Hello!” it cried, an authoritative female voice. “Hello! Looking for life!”
Michelle ran to the living room door and wrenched it open, nearly falling backward as zombies fell in upon her.
Crossing through the backyard opposite their own was a woman in camo pants and a tank top. She had broad shoulders and a thick waist, with hair in a dirty mullet and an equally dirty face. She was nobody’s definition of attractive, but Michelle had never seen a more beautiful sight.
“I’m here!” she cried.
The woman — whose name, Michelle learned eventually, was Darla — came over. She didn’t know any more than Michelle did, but had eventually ventured out when nothing was moving. Together they had cleared up the house as best they could. Eventually they went and checked on Michelle’s mother again.
“What’s wrong with her?” Darla asked, a gruff, judgmental question.
“She’s been still since … Kellee,” Michelle said. She had explained the whole situation to Darla and didn’t want to go through it again.
“Hey!” Darla said. She knelt beside Michelle’s mother and smacked her face in a “wake up” manner. “Hey! You don’t get to give up. No one gives up.”
Michelle’s mother’s eyes opened. She looked at Darla, then at Michelle, then rolled over, pulled the covers tight around her, and closed her eyes back.
“Fuck this,” Darla said. “No use for people who aren’t going to make themselves of use. Time to leave. You coming?”
Michelle stared at her. “But my mom…,” she started.
“Her?” Darla said with a spit. “Dead weight. Gotta leave her, kid.”
Michelle shook her head. “You can go if you want,” she said. “I can’t leave her.”
Darla shook her head. “Emotions,” she said, still judging.
With that, Darla was gone, and Michelle never saw her again. She held vigil for her mother for another day before anyone else showed up, and this time it was an Army group looking for survivors. They took Michelle in, carried her mother out on a stretcher. They holed up in a de facto refugee camp after that, where some of the older people there tried to teach some of the young survivors and Michelle joined that exercise, learning what she could. Meanwhile, her mother stayed in bed. Eventually, she died, with the doctor there blaming a blood clot but Michelle believing she had starved herself.
Michelle looked over at Stacy. The girl looked out the window, scared, nervous, looking like Michelle did when she was stuck in her living room waiting for the zombies to wake back up and come get her.
And in that moment, Michelle realized that no matter how painful it was, she was going to have to continue. She was
going to have to stay with Stacy, help her and the others get to Salvisa’s. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t give up.
Chapter Nine: Somewhere To Go
“Why were you making a move to the truck?” Mickey asked once they were clear of the couple at the billboard. He gave a look to Lara at the rearview mirror to see how she’d react.
She met his gaze and shook her head. “I wasn’t,” she said. “I promise. I don’t know what he thought he saw.”
Mickey looked over to Jack. “Possible you didn’t see what you thought you saw?” he asked.
Jack was silent for a minute, staring out the window. Finally, he spoke. “I don’t think so,” he said quietly. “But who knows.”
Mickey looked at Lara in the rearview again. “Just tread lightly,” he said. “I don’t want to have to worry about you.”
Lara nodded. “I’m not going to do anything to hurt you,” she said. “You saved my life.”
With that, the group lapsed into silence. They were within the last 20 minutes or so of driving before they’d reach Salvisa’s property and Mickey had his attention up. And that was needed as the road got increasingly busy the closer they got. People weren’t supposed to be on the roads. Not now. Not with the dead about.
Yet here they were. Mickey hadn’t been counting cars, but he started to wish he had. He had expected a nearly barren roadway all the way to Salvisa’s, but instead he saw the people on the billboard, and even without them there had been a few freshly wrecked cars, some vehicles on nearby roads, some people driving so fast they passed him and his old truck like they were standing still.
The one thing every vehicle he had seen appeared to have in common? Direction. Other than Nathan heading to Great Moose, every traveler Mickey had seen appeared to be heading the same way, and he could only assume it was the same direction the couple on the billboard had been heading.
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 19