From there, it was just a wrestling match. Erik was at a serious disadvantage, and before long the other man had him pinned. He held Erik down with his left hand and threw a punch with his right. It landed squarely, landing on Erik’s cheek and knocking his head back into the soft dirt.
That was enough, Mickey figured. If Erik was telling the truth, this wasn’t doing any good at all. If he was lying, then the man had gotten his point across. Either way, the fight needed to end. He started to step forward, hoping someone else would move forward to help as well — Mickey wasn’t any more well-equipped to fight the man than Erik was, and given his age, he might fare even worse.
The person who managed to stop the fight, though, wasn’t a helpful bystander — it was Erik. He appeared to recognize he wasn’t going to do well in the confrontation, so he grabbed at the only thing he could in the moment. The man’s gun. Wearing it in a shoulder holster left the man’s weapon clear for Erik to grab even from his pinned position, and though he couldn’t pull it out of the holster, he wrenched it sideways enough that the gun was pointing into the man’s torso.
The man was cocked back for another punch and didn’t even appear to realize what Erik was doing. Just before he swung forward, Erik pulled the trigger.
The gunshot was loud, even with the commotion around the circle as people took in the skirmish. It went in through the man’s side and down. Mickey couldn’t tell exactly where it went in and exactly what damage it inflicted. It did, though, accomplish Erik’s goal of not getting punched. Almost immediately, the man rolled off Erik, screamed and grabbed at his side.
The first person to react to the shot, before anyone gathered around watching, was Erik himself. As soon as the man was off of him, Erik scrambled to his feet, pulled the gun the rest of the way out of the holster and put it on the side, lifted the man’s shirt up over the wound, and started to put pressure on it.
“I’m a doctor!” Erik cried. After a second, he spoke again. “I need help!” With the group around still too stunned to move, it was Mickey who arrived at the scene next.
“What can I do?” he asked.
Erik’s hands were already coated in the man’s blood, and Mickey looked down to notice that Erik’s shot had come out somewhere in the man’s inner thigh, with that bleeding as well. It wasn’t a good situation either way, though Mickey’s admittedly limited knowledge of gunshot wounds told him the man could be in much worse shape.
The man, it appeared, disagreed.
“You son of a bitch!” he said to Erik between pained breaths, before Erik could even answer Mickey’s question. Erik ignored both of them and pulled off his own shirt, holding it over the man’s side wound. He put his knee over the man’s leg in an attempt to stem the bleeding there.
“You son of a bitch!” the man gasped again.
Erik didn’t even look up. “I didn’t want to shoot you,” he said as he worked on the man’s wounds. “But I also didn’t want to get punched.”
The man clenched his teeth and looked like he wanted to argue that point, but Mickey saw Erik’s logic, and the man seemed to as well.
“Is he going to be okay?” Mickey asked. He thought he could tell the answer was yes, but wanted Erik to say it so the man could hear it. He needed to know he would be fine.
Erik examined the wounds again, then half-nodded. “He should be,” he said. “But sitting in the mud isn’t helping him.”
The man looked around, then shook his head violently. “The Z’s are back and you just shot me in the goddamn midsection,” he said. “Hard enough to survive in this when you’re at full health.” With that, the man reached his left arm out, grabbed the gun Erik had discarded, turned it against his head, and pulled the trigger.
It was sudden. Less than a minute earlier, he had been a burly man winning a fight. Ten seconds earlier, Erik said he would probably be okay. But Mickey understood. “Okay” didn’t have much meaning in a Z world. Even if Erik were an expert doctor and the man’s injury went as well as possible, he had driven into the wilderness of Maine by himself and was dealing with a debilitating injury. Maybe the wound wasn’t bad. But even in the best case, the man was going to be completely dependent on those around him for at least a little while. That wasn’t something some people could deal with. He wanted out on his own terms.
Mickey suddenly realized he’d have done the same thing. His goal was to find out what he could from Salvisa for his and Jack’s benefit. That done, Mickey had nothing left. If he suffered a bad injury, he was going to make their job harder, not easier. If something happened to him like happened to the dead man in front of him, it occurred to Mickey he’d do the exact same thing.
In response to the man’s action, the group around them went quiet. Erik fell backward as though he had been hooked at the Apollo. His hands were soaked in blood and he sat back on his knees, the blood soaking his knees in front of him as he slouched, staring at the body of the man that he hadn’t actually killed, but the difference really only mattered in a technical sense. Erik had killed that man, and Mickey could see that realization hitting him.
There was nothing to do in the moment. Erik still had questions to answer, but this clearly wasn’t the time. And Mickey had no interest in straining himself moving the dead man’s body. So he walked away.
Almost immediately, he turned back. Erik wasn’t in any condition to answer questions, but Mickey realized that might work to his advantage. Lies are difficult, but they’re even more difficult when you’re in the wrong frame of mind. And if Erik was lying, he didn’t deserve the respite. Mickey wasn’t going to get into a physical confrontation with him, and he certainly wasn’t going to let him get anywhere near his gun, but he was going to ask the grieving man his questions. And he was going to do it tactfully.
Mickey took a knee in front of Erik, on the other side of the dead man. He wanted Erik to be able to see the both of them, alive and dead, in front of him.
“Hey,” he said, barely above a whisper. The group that had gathered around to watch the fight had mostly dispersed, and Mickey didn’t want to summon them back in hopes of creating another commotion. “Hey. You didn’t kill him.”
Erik didn’t speak. He stared down at the body and shook his head.
“You didn’t kill him,” Mickey said again, still softly. “But it is your fault he’s dead.”
This got Erik’s attention. He looked up at Mickey slowly, with his face registering a mix of shock and betrayal. Mickey could tell he had wanted to believe that none of it was his fault, that he hadn’t actually been responsible for what had happened, but that what Mickey said hit him as well as a slap.
“It’s your fault he’s dead,” Mickey said again, “because I’m almost positive you’ve been lying to us.”
Erik started to shake his head, slowly, like he was hearing the words from underwater and was fighting the tide to even get his head moving. “I didn’t …” he started.
“You did,” Mickey said. “I don’t know how much you’ve lied about, but at the very least, I know for an absolute fact that Michelle Rivers was not fired from Stamford.”
“She … she …,” Erik tried to say, but he was still staring at the dead man’s body and he floundered. Finally, his shoulders sagged. “She wasn’t. You’re right.”
Mickey nodded. “Thank you,” he said. “So can you please tell me the truth.” Erik shook his head, like he was trying to shut Mickey out. That wasn’t acceptable. “I’m asking nicely,” Mickey said, “because I don’t want to have to ask any other way. So can you please tell me what you’ve lied about.”
Erik continued to look down. “They did kill my wife,” he said.
“Is that true?”
“It is. They say it was self-defense. Honestly, I believe that’s true. But they did kill my wife. That was why I didn’t want to stay with them. Ran away from them once, but they caught up to me. Any other time we stopped, there was nowhere for me to go. So I stayed. But when we got here, and they weren�
�t paying attention to me, I thought I could get away. Make them have to leave. Exactly what happened, until … he …” Erik motioned to the dead man’s body in front of him and trailed off.
Mickey nodded. He felt like the man was being honest now, but he hadn’t gotten all the information he wanted yet. “Do they really want to kill Peter?” he asked.
Erik shook his head. “He’s dead.”
Mickey faltered, nearly falling onto his side. He caught himself and didn’t think Erik noticed, but he hadn’t expected that. “What do you mean?”
Erik snorted, a half-laugh that carried no humor. “What can that mean?” he asked.
“How do you know that?”
“She killed him,” he said nodding off in the distance, vaguely in the direction the SUV had driven to. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know what happened beyond that.”
Mickey squinted at him. His instinct wanted to say Erik was still lying, still making up stories just to sow discord. But Erik was defeated. He had tried to get away from the people he had ridden with, the people who he was scared of, and his lies had resulted in a man dying. Erik wasn’t making anything up anymore.
Mickey stood up. He turned back to the road, looking where the SUV had gone after it had left Salvisa’s driveway. He tried to run through in his head what he’d have done in their shoes. They had driven through who knows what to get to Salvisa’s home to accomplish something, Mickey didn’t know what, only to have it turn to hell the minute they arrived. But even if Erik was right that Salvisa was dead, they of all people in the world knew it, and that meant they had come to this place with a purpose that no one else had. And that meant they wouldn’t be going far away.
The driveway. The wide driveway a little ways down, the one where Kim’s car still sat, the one Mickey and Jack had used as a gathering spot only a short while earlier. Going there would put them far enough away that they couldn’t be seen or easily followed on foot and they’d see anyone coming in a car, but close enough that they’d be able to come back as they decided to.
Mickey looked back to where Jack was still idly standing around outside Salvisa’s house, intermittently knocking, yelling, and pacing. Nothing was happening there. There were no variables. But maybe here was a variable. Maybe just a short distance down the road from the man’s house, there would be something they could get some ideas from.
Back where everybody was standing around, talking among themselves and watching Jack struggle, Mickey saw Kim. She was standing back from the masses, watching the small groupings congregate like an outsider in high school trying and failing to find the right clique to join. Mickey walked over to her.
“You left your car back at that other driveway,” he said to her as he walked up.
Kim looked over at him with some surprise. “I … yeah,” she said, confused.
“Want to go with me to go get it?”
Kim was surprised. Amid everything else, she clearly thought this was a weird thing for Mickey to think of. “Sure …,” she said in a faltering response.
Mickey nodded. “I think we might have some company there as well.”
Kim looked at Mickey, then to the end of the driveway, then back to Mickey. Suddenly, she realized he meant the people who had left. “What are you going to do?” she asked.
Mickey shrugged. “Talk to them,” he said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I think it’s clear we aren’t getting the full story.”
“Why do you want me?”
Another shrug. “Your car’s there,” he said. “Figure I can use the backup.” Mickey nodded to the others. “My son is busy, and I don’t think he’d be very helpful in unfamiliar territory like that. McVay … I don’t know about you, but I can only take so much of his personality. And Lara, the girl who came with me, she’s … well, I like her more now than I did when we first got together, but I’m still not a huge fan. You seem smart. You seem … ready.”
Kim nodded. “Well, thank you.”
They climbed in and Mickey started the truck. Jack never even seemed to acknowledge the move. Some of the strangers turned in surprise, but didn’t do much else. Lara, though, turned from her vantage point near the broken part of Salvisa’s fence and looked to the truck. Her face read shocked, but it also read something like betrayal. She looked abandoned.
Mickey had a moment of thought that that face wasn’t one Lara’s face had had much practice making in her life. Betrayal was an emotion reserved for those who kept someone close, and from what he knew of Lara, the only person close to her in years was Sean. For all his faults, Sean was as loyal as a basset hound. By keeping people at arm’s length, Lara hadn’t had the opportunity to feel betrayal. But just in the last little while she had had to rely on Mickey to save her life more than once, and that meant that she could feel betrayed if she saw him leaving.
Just for a second, Mickey felt bad. Jack was self-sufficient, and in his current state he’d barely notice Mickey was gone anyway. But Lara was more aware, less all-consumed, and he was driving off and leaving her. He knew he was only going a little way down the road and would be right back, but she didn’t. He felt a pang of guilt. And in that guilt Mickey realized that Lara, who had gotten so on his nerves for so long, had grown to someone he cared about. The more Jack lost his temper, the more Lara was endeared to him.
Mickey made a mental note to apologize to Lara and explain upon his return. In the meantime, he turned his attention to Kim, the woman Lara had earlier described as looking “sad.” Ruminating on that, Mickey had agreed with Lara’s evaluation. It wasn’t that Kim was any sadder about the zombies than any of the rest of them. Sadness was a dominant emotion in this world, just as it had been twenty years before. But most of the people — especially these people, the ones who had ventured out in search of answers — had a zest, an energy. They were sad that this was happening again, but they were still motivated to find their answers. Kim, meanwhile, seemed to have a world-weariness. She had the bearing of someone who would have been better off hiding out, not out in the world searching for answers.
“You didn’t come here willingly, did you?” Mickey asked as he pulled onto the road.
“What do you mean?”
“Jack and I were at home when this started, and for several hours afterward,” he said. “We’re here because Jack wanted his answers and was fine leaving home if that’s what it took. But we don’t have to be out. But I get the impression that’s not the case for you.”
Kim wasn’t looking back at Mickey. Her eyes were trained out the window. After a second, she almost laughed. “I live in Minnesota,” she said. “Haven’t left the state since 2013 until a couple weeks ago. My husband died just over a year ago. I didn’t leave the house much when he was alive, but I left it even less after that. Just stayed home. I probably didn’t go 10 miles from my house in a year.
“Anniversary of his death was two weeks ago. I was cleaning the house. Cleaning his little collection of lighthouses. Jason managed to save his collection through 2010. Had a huge group of them. And they sat there, on a shelf, his favorite thing. He had traveled all along the coast. Even after 2010, I’d stay home and he’d take his trips, go see the lighthouses. Almost none of them still operational. Just broken-down old relics. But he loved them, made his trips. And I’m sitting there dusting these things that I looked at every day that just reminded me of his death. And I said no more. I wouldn’t just run my course at home. So I decided I’d go see those lighthouses. Got in the car that day. I drove to Maryland and I’ve gone up the coast. Quickly. I didn’t have anyone to visit. Just wanted to see the lighthouses, see what my husband loved so much. And I saw a lot of them.”
Mickey shook his head. “And of course this happened while you’re away. I’m sorry.”
Kim shook her head right back. “No,” she said. “I’m not sorry. I’m living my life. I figure I’m going to die in this. I’m not in any kind of shape to protect myself. When this happened and I knew there was no way I’d be
able to get home, I figured I’d try to find Salvisa’s, at least see if I can find some answers to what’s going on. And that’s fine. I figure I’ll die here, but I figure I’d die at home.”
Mickey considered this. He’d heard better stories, he’d heard worse stories. But he didn’t know how that tracked to the sadness he and Lara had seen in her.
“What will you do if you don’t die?” Mickey asked.
They were almost to the other driveway and could see an SUV — Mickey figured it had to be the one they were looking for — parked there. Just as they got near the turn, Kim spoke. It was a response that answered Mickey’s question of why she was sad. She wasn’t worried about dying. She was worried about living.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think I want to find out. I don’t think I’ll like myself if I survive.”
Chapter Three: The Switch
Michelle had never been able to bring herself to fully trust Erik, but she hadn’t thought he hated them so much as to try to get them killed as he had at Salvisa’s. And if the commotion by Salvisa’s house hadn’t distracted the increasingly angry people at the right moment, Erik might have succeeded.
As it was, the second they had the chance Michelle’s group had jumped back into the SUV and Simon had torn out of the driveway.
“Where do we go?” he had said, sounding more depressed than scared.
Michelle hadn’t known what to say. They had had one destination ever since leaving Morgan College, and suddenly it was not an option to them. She hadn’t even known where she would go after Salvisa’s property if things had gone well; the fact that things had gone wrong almost immediately left her at a total loss.
It was Celia who had stepped up with the idea. “We stay close,” she said. She pointed to a driveway not a quarter mile away from Salvisa’s. “There. We park there, we regroup, and we walk back.”
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 29