“We go right back?” Stacy asked, surprised.
Celia shrugged. “You think anyone there just then saw us well enough to recognize us? We avoid Erik. There were a lot of people there. Just stay away from him. Even if the others think they recognize us, they won’t be sure. We still have to do what we came here to do.”
Simon appeared to mull over the idea. He pulled into the driveway Celia had indicated, pulling to a stop next to a little sports car that appeared to have been left there. He didn’t appear to be convinced about what Celia was saying, but he was following her orders. “What do we do if we can’t avoid Erik? What if he spots us?”
Celia didn’t have an answer for that. “We avoid him as much as we can,” she said with a noncommittal head nod. “And we do what we have to do if we can’t, I guess. Hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Michelle nodded. “You’re right. That’s what you all should do.”
Stacy turned to Michelle. “What do you mean?”
Michelle motioned downward. “If we drive there, I can tag along,” she said, indicating her damaged leg. “If we’re walking, I have to stay here.” The others looked down. Each of them appeared to have forgotten Michelle’s injury with everything else going on. Stacy’s face fell. “It’s okay,” Michelle added. “You guys don’t need me anymore. I’m not ready to go, but the thing you needed me for was getting here. At this point, I don’t know any more than you do. You can do this without me. If you have to walk, you’re going to have to.”
The SUV was silent for a moment. And then, suddenly, Celia and Stacy spoke at almost the same time with almost polar opposite reactions.
“We can’t!” Stacy started.
Celia was quieter. “Okay,” she said.
That stopped Stacy short, and she looked to Celia with a betrayed face. “What do you mean?” she said with an angry voice.
Celia motioned to Michelle. “She’s right,” Celia said. “And I don’t have an alternative.”
Stacy’s face said she wanted to argue, wanted to get indignant. But her mouth just opened and closed a couple of times impotently. They sat still for a couple of minutes as the kids all pondered the implications of leaving Michelle behind and Michelle wondered what she would do if she were truly alone.
Finally, Stacy’s head dropped. “Okay,” she said.
Almost immediately after that, a pair of headlights appeared on the road. A few had come by in the other direction, heading toward Salvisa’s property, but this one was coming from the same way their own vehicle had come. There was always the chance it was just a car passing Salvisa’s, by misdirection or coincidence, but as it slowed toward their driveway, Michelle knew it was a vehicle coming toward them.
That might be a significant problem or it might not, but even if it wasn’t a threat, the question mark meant that it was at least some problem. Michelle held her gun at the ready, though from her post in the back seat of the SUV with no angle to shoot from and no way to escape, she knew she wasn’t in any spot to defend them.
The others saw the vehicle too, and were ready. Simon and Celia jumped from their spots in the driver’s and rear passenger seats, respectively, with their guns up while Stacy pulled her gun and sat ready.
It turned out to be a pickup truck; a big one with an extended cab. It pulled to a stop barely in the driveway and killed the engine. For a moment, nothing happened. Celia and Simon stood next to their SUV. Michelle turned painfully in her seat in an attempt to see. But the truck sat still. Whoever was inside didn’t move.
Michelle didn’t know what that meant. Were they readying to shoot? Were they deciding whether they were about to get shot? There was no way to know, and not knowing was the biggest threat of all.
It felt like ten minutes passed. In reality, it was probably one or two, but Michelle’s heart was racing faster than it had at any point since the outbreak had started. She felt like she could count her pulse like a metronome.
And that feeling only intensified when the driver’s door of the truck opened, and nothing happened. That was it. The door opened a couple inches. No hands came out, no feet appeared below the truck door. There wasn’t even an identifiable dome light inside the cab of the truck that indicated the truck knew the door had opened. In the darkness, through the rear window of the SUV, Michelle had to squint more than once to reassure herself the door actually had opened and she wasn’t imagining anything.
She wasn’t, though. The shadow the moon was casting had definitely changed. But still, nothing happened. Another ten minutes, but really one or two, passed, and then the passenger door of the truck opened the same way. Still, though, that was it. Another 30 seconds passed, and then both doors slowly swung open the rest of the way. Seconds later, a gun was tossed out of each door, each one landing in the dirt about five feet from the truck.
Michelle felt something, an emotion she couldn’t quite identify, because she wasn’t sure what emotion she was supposed to feel. At the corners of her eyes, she saw both Simon and Celia stiffen, like they thought they were supposed to have a reaction but didn’t know what it was supposed to be. She couldn’t see Stacy behind her, but could only imagine her reaction — one of cluelessness — was the same.
After another few seconds, four hands poked out, two from each door. In the darkness, Michelle couldn’t tell much about them, but decided that the driver’s hands were male, the passenger’s female. She felt especially sure about the passenger, as those hands were painfully small, the kind that might have been child’s hands if Michelle didn’t already know what had happened to most of the world’s children.
“Can we agree,” came an older male voice from the truck, “that we aren’t here to shoot you? We aren’t here for a showdown.” Nobody on Michelle’s side of things reacted. “Our understanding is that you came here for some reason we don’t know,” the voice continued. “We know that man, the one who arrived with you, was lying. We don’t know why you are here, but we aren’t here to confront you.”
Michelle felt part of her wanting to exhale, wanting to breathe easy. That was promising. But she knew liars would lie, and she wasn’t sure yet. Still, the hands stayed up, and then the driver’s feet appeared.
Simon leaned back onto his heels and spared a look back to the car like he was looking for guidance. Celia didn’t move, but her gun was pointed at the ground as she stared.
The man finished his emergence from the vehicle. He stepped around the door of the truck with his hands raised, his legs shoulder-width apart. The man was old. Had to be pushing his mid-70s, and though he was still athletic, Michelle felt better that he wasn’t going to move as fast as any of their people if it came to it.
“My understanding is that one of you is Michelle Rivers?” the man said. “My name is Mickey Lewis.”
Mickey Lewis. Michelle remembered the name from Stamford, though she barely knew the man. Their interactions had entirely been the occasional call from her, connecting long enough to ask him to hold for Madison.
But it was a name she knew. And one Erik hadn’t known. That had to mean something good for her, for them. Michelle struggled sideways in the backseat to the still-open door and climbed out, putting all her weight on her right leg and still gritting her teeth to keep from crying out at the pain of jostling her left.
“I’m Michelle Rivers,” she said, straining to say the words.
Mickey’s hands fell slightly at the sight of her, but he caught himself and put them back up. “Are you okay?” he asked.
Michelle nodded and tried to put some humor into her response. “Yeah, why do you ask?” Simon almost chuckled at the comment, but Michelle thought her joke was undercut by her reaching out to lean on the open door.
“That man was lying about you, correct?” Mickey said.
Michelle nodded again, then realized she wasn’t sure Mickey could see her movements in the dark. “Of course he was,” she said. “You know me, Mr. Lewis.”
“And Peter?”
“He
’s dead.”
“How do you know that?”
Michelle paused, but then figured there was no reason to lie at this point. “I killed him,” she said.
Mickey faltered again, and this time he didn’t catch himself. “You what?” he asked. As he did, the woman stepped out of the passenger’s side of the truck. She was just as small as her hands had indicated, but she was clearly not a child — even in the darkness, Michelle could tell she was middle-aged or older and painfully skinny.
Michelle stood up as straight as she could. “I killed him, Mr. Lewis.”
Mickey stared at her. “Then what are you doing here? What’s here for you if not Peter?”
Simon had turned to look at Michelle completely at this point. Michelle looked into the SUV and saw Stacy staring at her as well. Even Celia, who had been on the other side of the vehicle, walked around — as though they were all curious how straightforward Michelle was going to be; being upfront and honest with Erik hadn’t gone so well.
But Michelle was done lying and misleading. “The switch,” she said. “The switch to end all of this.”
Chapter Four: Death Trap
Explaining the situation to the old man and the not-quite-as-old woman was a complicated process, but Celia had grown accustomed to explaining impossible situations to strangers over the last few days. She felt herself going on autopilot as the group explained how Salvisa had been one of the driving forces behind everything, how he had tried to get to Stamford, how he had died, how they were planning to get into his home to turn the signal off. They had gathered around the rear of the SUV with Michelle perched on the rear bumper to talk through their options and share knowledge.
The new man, Mickey, had taken a minute to adjust. He appeared to have a connection with Salvisa and the news took him by surprise. After a minute to gather himself, he had then taken his turn, explaining about how many people were there, how they hadn’t figured out how to get into Salvisa’s home yet, how they had come to realize Erik was lying, and how Erik had accidentally killed that man. Mickey was apparently fairly new to the scene at Salvisa’s, so the other woman chimed in with some details as well.
“How many people know Erik lied about us?” Michelle asked after the rest of the details had been shared.
Mickey shook his head. “I’d say almost everyone knows that his story is suspect, just based on how the man he killed was acting. But knows for sure? Just us, I believe, unless he’s told people since we left.”
“So what happens if we show up again?” Celia asked. She remembered how the people had been gathering around during Erik’s lies. She remembered the guns slowly coming out as they thought they were hearing of a threat. If she needed to come in ready to shoot, she would be, but Celia didn’t want that to be the default.
“I’d say you’ll be safe,” Mickey said. “From what I can tell, there aren’t many initiative-takers there, especially with my son distracted by Salvisa’s house and that man dead.
“Never even got his name,” Mickey added as an afterthought. “But I’d still say that Kim and I should get there first, just to be safe, and I think we might want to let you all leave your vehicle here, just in case someone is on edge and recognizes it.”
Mickey motioned to the sports car Kim drove. Celia had noticed it already. It was a good deal like the sports car she and Simon had used to escape the parking garage. That meant it would only hold two of them.
“We’ll take that,” she said. “Simon and me. Can Michelle and Stacy ride in your truck?”
Mickey nodded. “The car would be a tight fit, I guess. Yes, we can do that.”
“So what happens once we get there?” Stacy asked. “Nobody has been able to get into his house yet. Why would we be any different?”
“Everybody else is being timid,” Michelle said. “They just want to get in to see a man they think is alive. We want to shut off a signal. If we just break his walls down, well, worst-case scenario we shut the signal off that way.”
Mickey gave a little half-chuckle. “That’s what my son wanted to do this whole time,” he said. “I talked him out of it. Shows what I know.”
Michelle nodded. “Not like you knew the whole story. You were being appropriately cautious. But if we just find a tough enough vehicle, would it be able to take down one of Salvisa’s walls?”
After a moment of thought, Mickey shrugged. “Nothing’s impenetrable,” he said. “There are RVs and campers there. Not many of them, and they aren’t all exactly in tip-top shape, but I suppose we can get something together in a pinch.”
They fell into silence then. Celia couldn’t say what everybody else was thinking, but she was puzzling. Something was missing, and she couldn’t figure out what. They needed to get into Salvisa’s and turn the signal off. They knew how they were going to get in, and there was no way to know what they’d find when they got in there. It felt like they had covered everything they could cover so far, but Celia couldn’t shake the idea that they had forgotten something.
“What about the Z’s?” Simon asked quietly. “There aren’t any around right now, but who knows when they might show up.”
That was it. Celia felt silly. She was so consumed with turning the signal off that she forgot what was happening because the signal was on. Simon was right that they hadn’t seen any zombies in a while, but they had no plan in place for if and when that changed.
Nobody answered Simon for a minute, showing Celia that no one else had considered the problem either. Finally, Celia spoke.
“We just work fast,” she said. Simon gave her a look, and Michelle followed suit. “If there was a foolproof way to do this, we’d do that. But sometimes there isn’t one right answer. Sometimes there isn’t any right answer. If we get in and turn the signal off, then any Z’s that show up will stop anyway. If we don’t, well, then who cares? We knew there was a chance we’d die doing this anyway.”
Again, there was silence. Finally, Mickey clapped his hands together and said, “Good enough for me I guess.”
One approval apparently made it good enough for everybody, because they started moving. Mickey and Simon helped Michelle to the truck while Kim and Stacy walked themselves over. Celia settled into the driver’s seat of the sports car. Once Michelle was in the backseat of the truck, Simon turned to the sports car and looked briefly surprised to see Celia ready to drive, but he shrugged it off and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Think we can do this?” he said when they started the car. Mickey had started the truck as well and was backing out of the driveway. Celia followed suit.
“We’ve asked that every time we’ve stopped,” Celia said, “but we’re still here. Until we haven’t done it, my plan is to do it.”
Simon nodded. “That works,” he said. He put his hand on Celia’s, even though the car was a stick shift and she needed the free hand. “I’m glad to have you here,” he added. “It feels safe.”
Celia smiled. She had the same feeling having Simon with her. It was why she had been proactive in suggesting they stay together in their car. Part of her wanted to pretend it was to keep Stacy and Michelle together, but she knew that was only the answer she’d have given anybody if they had asked. No, she felt safe with Simon, and the fact that he felt safe with her was just as nice. Neither one needed the other necessarily, but they both needed the other all the same.
It was short-lived this time, as they only had to drive a short way back down the road to get back to Salvisa’s property. There were people scattered around when they pulled back into the driveway, but no one appeared to pay them much attention. Celia supposed that made sense, as there were clearly enough vehicles there that a new one or two didn’t really make a difference.
The first time they had gotten to Salvisa’s property, Simon had just pulled into the first opening he could find. This time, Mickey and his truck drove right past the early space and toward the house itself. With no other real plan in mind, Celia followed. As they drove up, Celia started
tallying the RVs. There were seven of various sizes, but Mickey’s evaluation had been correct — there weren’t many impressive specimens. Luckily, they didn’t need one to do much more than crash into a house, but based on how Mickey had described the house’s sturdiness, she wasn’t positive they even had one hearty enough for that job.
They didn’t have another choice, though, and as Mickey pulled his truck to a stop ahead of Celia, she did the same. With these two vehicles pulling up to the top of the driveway instead of stopping at the foot, people started gathering around just out of curiosity. Mickey climbed out of his truck first, hands raised in a “calm down” gesture. Celia thought she saw some shoulders fall when Mickey emerged, disappointed in the lack of excitement. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Celia, tired of waiting, threw open the door and stepped out herself.
People turned to her. She wasn’t familiar. This was interesting to them. She wasn’t sure if any of them recognized her, but this was a person they didn’t know pulling to the front of the line like someone had bought a Fast Pass at an amusement park. In short order, Simon and Stacy got out of their cars as well, as did Kim, the lady who had come with Mickey to the other driveway. Michelle stayed seated in the truck.
Celia had her eyes out for someone, though. The only person she was likely to recognize in the area. Erik. Mickey said he had given up his lies, but she still didn’t trust him to not cause more problems for them, for whatever reason. It took her a moment to find him, as he was blocked by some of the people gathering around. He was kneeling on the ground behind the group, shirt off, barely seeming to have noticed the most recent arrival. Celia took in his posture and gathered that that had to have been where Erik had accidentally killed the man, and he was still stuck where he was, mourning.
As the group gathered, Mickey looked around. A young woman, the youngest one there other than Celia, Simon and Stacy, walked up to him with a confused look. Mickey met her gaze and then looked away. “I’m sorry,” he said.
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 30