“You’ve gotta think,” Celia said, one hand at her holster, “every single car that’s come here has pulled a few in this direction, even as they left them in the dust. They’d lose their way, another car would drive by them, and they’d get a little closer and a few more would join them. Then we had gunshots here. First one told them which way to go, then all the shots a few minutes ago must have brought them fast.”
Michelle nodded through her pain. That had been a fear in the back of her mind, but she hoped the cars had left the Z’s too far behind them to worry about that. Apparently that wasn’t the case.
“I’m not gonna be a lot of help,” she said, trying and failing to shift weight.
Erik turned his attention back to her, almost like he had forgotten she was even there. After a moment, he looked around. “Guess no one is coming with bandages,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Michelle said. She tried to pull up to a half-sitting position, but couldn’t move that much. “It doesn’t hurt as much as it did a minute ago. I think it’s getting a little better.”
“Really?” Erik asked, some doubt in his voice.
Michelle stopped and did a little self-assessment. “Yeah,” she said slowly, appraisingly. “I don’t feel good or anything, but it’s not as bad as it was. Really, it hurts, but the biggest thing is just that it’s gotten cold out here.”
Everyone stopped. Michelle watched them for a minute, curious, then remembered what Mickey had said about making sure she wasn’t cold. “What’s wrong with being cold?”
“If it is cold, there’s nothing wrong with it at all,” Erik said. Behind him, a few zombies appeared at the head of the driveway. “But it’s not cold out here. Feeling cold is a sign of shock. That’s a problem.”
“How big a problem?” Michelle asked. As she did, she pulled her hands away from her abdomen again and looked down.
Brown.
Chapter Seven: Imagination
Mickey felt bad leaving, but he also didn’t know what more he could do for them at the house. They knew what he knew about how to get into Peter’s house.
Peter. They hadn’t ever been “friends” in the typical sense. But they had been friendly enough. Other than family members, Sean, and one or two others, Mickey had spoken to Peter Salvisa more than anyone in the past 20 years. He knew him in the sense that he might know his insurance agent or the bartender at a local restaurant. And he felt betrayed in the sense that he might if his insurance agent had been arrested on charges of animal abuse. You think you know a person, but you never really do.
Mickey hadn’t had any idea if Peter would have the answers for Jack. He knew it was possible, but he also thought there was at least a better than even chance that Peter would be just as confused as they were. What he never saw coming was what actually happened, that Peter not only knew what was happening but he had actually caused it.
Mickey wondered if he could have prevented it. Maybe, if he had made more of a point to talk to Peter over the years, he would have figured it out, would have known.
He did his best to close that thought out. Even if he had figured it out, Mickey wouldn’t have been able to do much. It wasn’t his fault. It was Peter’s fault. It was hard to discover that the man who had caused so much pain and death was one of the closest things Mickey had to a friend, but Mickey was doing his best to convince himself that didn’t make any of it his fault.
With Jack gone and his questions answered, though, Mickey didn’t feel like he needed to hang out any longer. His job was done, and the only job he had left that he wanted to accomplish was seeing the ocean.
Decades ago, Mickey and Jane had taken their kids to a friend’s oceanfront house on the coast of Maine in Rockport. At home, the kids had their baby proofed areas, in their bedrooms or in a living room with baby gates. At the Rockport house, there were no such protections. Mickey and Jane had spent the whole week at the house chasing after 5-year-old Mark, 3-year-old Jack, and 18-month-old Lily. It was the least restful week of Mickey’s life, even less relaxing than living in the shadow of the subway in New York City and being woken by a shaking apartment every few minutes. Afterward, his friend had very politely but very firmly requested that they not bring the kids back to the house until they were several years older and could be more trusted around his property, which was only fair. Mickey never went back to the house again.
But even with all that, it was one of Mickey’s fondest memories. The house’s living room had huge picture windows overlooking the ocean, and Mickey would stand there in the mornings, sipping coffee and watching the waves crash. Jack and Mark were old enough to sleep in a little, and Jane loved her early-morning “Lily cuddles,” so Mickey had just a few minutes to himself. He would stand there mesmerized. The ocean was the closest thing to a religion Mickey had ever found, just experiencing the awe of something that much more powerful than you. He liked the idea that people once said they would “conquer” the ocean merely by sailing across it. No, Mickey thought, that wasn’t conquering the ocean, that was the ocean taking you for a ride. Any time the ocean might want to squash you like a bug, the decision was the ocean’s and the ocean’s alone.
He had thought about the ocean a lot since the zombies had returned, and just wanted to see it again. Of course, living near the Maine coast, Mickey had seen it countless times over the years, but he had never recaptured that peaceful experience like he had at his friend’s house so many years before.
Now, with nothing else to fight for, nothing else to live for, Mickey had made a determination. He was going to make the short drive to the ocean. He was going to stand on the beach, look out over the waves, experience his religion one last time. And then he was going to kill himself. His life had been long, only occasionally happy, and at the end, miserable. It wasn’t anything like he’d have drawn it up. But if he hadn’t been the one to author most of the twists and turns, he at least wanted to be the one to pen its conclusion.
So a few minutes after leaving Salvisa’s property, Mickey pulled into the small, abandoned lot of a public beach not far away. He had passed the occasional zombie, the occasional dead body, a few cars passing him in the opposite direction still trying to get to Peter’s and be disappointed, but he paid none of it any heed. That wasn’t for him to worry about anymore. It was still night, but the first few signs of sunlight were peeking over the horizon. He hurried his truck into a parking space, though actually trying to get between the lines felt like a particularly pointless endeavor, and nearly ran out to the beach. This was going to be his sunrise, and slow legs weren’t going to rob him of it.
The parking lot led the way to a berm about ten feet high that Mickey couldn’t see over from his truck. But there was a little set of concrete steps that went over the barrier and would reveal the beach on the other side. Mickey climbed the steps and stopped at the top.
There it was. The ocean, the beautiful goddess herself, fell away before him. The first few rays of sunlight were spilling onto the waves as they crashed into the shore, and other than the sounds of waves, it was all peaceful. Mickey stood there, imagining his cup of coffee in his hand, imagining his wife cuddling with his daughter in the bedroom downstairs, imagining his two sons splayed out in their foldout sofa bed in the other room. Then he figured, if he was imagining things, he’d keep it going. He imagined his granddaughter, Adie, laughing and playing back home. He imagined his friend, Sean, somehow happy with Lara the Rover, both of them settled down and making sense of the world. He imagined Diana Hendrickson, the woman who had been a grandmother even when she was a baby-faced teenager, happy in her home, seeing Mickey on occasion. He imagined Michelle, the woman he barely knew, not shot, not with a broken ankle, happily spending time with her daughter. He imagined the other two young people with Michelle, the ones who had seemed so close, going out on dates, relaxing, seeing a movie. He imagined Kim, not dead, with her husband Jason, visiting lighthouses, taking regular trips, regular vacations, not hiding at home or expecting de
ath. He even imagined Peter Salvisa, the man who had caused all of this, not being that man, not being the reason all of his memories and imaginations were just making him cry. He imagined Peter a happy old man, going to baseball games, maybe getting lucky and seeing someone pull off that hidden-ball trick, seeing someone hiding the most important thing in plain sight. “Make them look where you want them to, and you can do your thing off on the side.”
He imagined all of these things because Mickey wanted more than anything else not to die angry. Simmering just below all of his contented imaginings was a rage, something like what he imagined Jack had to have felt near the end. He knew Jack had been suffering, had been struggling to deal with a world that wasn’t making sense to him. Jack was always angry. But whether Jack had hidden the true depths of his anger or Mickey had just been blind to it as his father, he had never seen what Jack had done back at Salvisa’s property coming. And even though he knew he would never do the same, Mickey could feel that anger. His wife and kids were all dead. Adie had died before she ever had a chance at life, and so had Lily. Sean was dead, and so was Lara. Diana was gone. Mickey didn’t know if Michelle would survive her wound, but she’d certainly never be the same. Peter was dead, and the world was better for it, but he was dead nonetheless. So many people were dead, and so much anger was built up over all of it.
The anger was deserved. It was warranted. But it also wasn’t how Mickey wanted to feel at the end of his life. He wanted to look out over the ocean and feel calm. He wanted to remember his coffee, remember the giant window, remember the peace that came with just being a family man, with a wife and kids and no threat of death hanging over everything. He wanted to feel those things before he died.
So Mickey had his gun in his hand, right where his coffee cup would be, and he looked out over the ocean. The sun was rising further now, speckling the sky with red and orange and yellow, the surface of the water waving its little reflection back at it as if to say hi to the morning. Mickey brought his imagination back to his little vacation in the little beach house with his little family, and he breathed in the memory as deeply as he could.
Then he looked down at his gun. He was going to end his story on his terms. The final chapter was Mickey’s to write.
Chapter Eight: Any ideas?
The sun rising in the sky made it easy to see how many zombies had gotten to Salvisa’s property, and it was a lot. Some people had left, some people had died, and some were hiding in their cars, but there were still plenty of the older people who had spent their night milling around the property shooting, screaming, fighting. Down near the end of the driveway, it was loud, bloody, and messy.
Further inside the grounds, Celia was ready for Stacy to shut down. After she had found out about her mother’s death outside Morgan College a day earlier, Stacy had been almost impossible to reach for more than a few minutes. So after Michelle’s last words before she died — especially since they were a pained, barely whispered “I love you” to her daughter, followed by a “you can do it” that might as well have been just mouthed as she fell still — Celia just about wrote Stacy off as any help.
Instead, Stacy raged. She screamed, she punched the ground. If the zombies hadn’t already been pouring in the front entrance, Stacy’s wails would have brought them from as far away as Ottawa. Celia knew the extra noise didn’t actually matter, given the situation, but she wanted to channel Stacy’s anger into something productive.
“Hey,” she said, as gently as she could while still trying to be forceful. Stacy didn’t even seem to realize she had spoken for a minute. She screamed another scream at the sky, a wordless cry that resembled nothing so much as the anguished moans of one of the zombies coming to get them. Celia reached out and put her hand on Stacy’s.
The scream trailed off. Stacy looked down at Celia’s hand as though it were completely alien to her, something she didn’t understand. Slowly, she traced the line of the hand up Celia’s arm, up her shoulder, and to her face. When the girls’ eyes met, Stacy blinked the tears out of her eyes and appeared to realize there were other people there for the first time. “Celia?” she said, trying to catch her breath.
“This isn’t over,” Celia said, dispensing with the formalities. She didn’t have time for Stacy to mourn. There was only one RV they could even hope to use to break through Salvisa’s walls, and Stacy was the only one Celia knew who might be able to get it running. “She told you you can do it. Prove her right.”
“What do you mean?” Stacy asked. She was acting like she had completely forgotten where they were, what was going on.
“The RV,” Celia said. “We have to get it running.”
With that, Stacy’s eyes went wide, the memories of what was going on flooding back into her head. “The RV?” she asked, sniffling as she did. The rest of the people left on Salvisa’s property — and there couldn’t have been 30 still living at this point — were working on the zombies while Stacy, Celia, Simon, and Erik remained huddled over Michelle’s body.
“You said you might be able to start it. We can still turn this off. We can still make this work.”
Celia wasn’t sure what the request would do to Stacy. When Andy had died, Celia had felt herself disappear for a while. If she had been called on to do something, anything, immediately afterward, she felt sure she would have failed spectacularly. A few hours, even a few minutes, changed things, but in the immediate aftermath, she was sure she’d have been useless in any pressure situation. So asking Stacy to step up and help was asking a lot. But Celia didn’t have any other ideas.
Stacy looked at the entrance to the property, where there were more zombies than people. Some were crouched over dead bodies, not yet aware of the live meat that awaited them. Others were pushing past those and making their way up the driveway. Some people who had been bitten were rising again. Stacy looked to Michelle’s body on the ground and made an indeterminate grunt. “Fine,” she said. “Take me to the RV.”
Again, Celia was impressed. Stacy’s state of mind couldn’t have been good for what she was doing. Then again, she didn’t have a lot of choice. It was try to fix the RV or see how many of the incoming Z’s they could shoot, and there were far more of them than any group they had faced so far. Some entering the driveway had been shot, but others hadn’t, and some of the ones that had gone down had already been replaced by the people who had been bitten. And more were pouring off the road the whole time, with plenty of gunshots to attract their attention. The adrenaline alone might have been enough to get Stacy working.
Either way, Celia and Simon started to move toward the run-down RV, with Stacy marching behind them and even Erik drifting along. Lucky for them, the vehicle was as far from the zombies and the road as it reasonably could have been, so every step they took toward the RV was a step they were taking away from the Z’s.
Celia jumped back in the vehicle she had tried earlier and repeated her attempts. Turn key. Hear coughing engine attempting to get going. Fail. She did it twice as Stacy listened. Finally, Celia looked at her. “Any ideas?”
Stacy was looking at the hood of the RV, her ear cocked toward the sounds. Amid the gunshots and screams, Celia was sure she couldn’t have heard a lot, but she slowly started to nod. “Pop the hood,” she said. “Let me see inside.”
Celia scrambled around a moment, but finally found the hood catch and released it. Erik opened it for Stacy as the girl walked to the front of the RV and looked inside. “Try it again!” she cried.
Celia complied, with the same results. Stacy watched it for a moment, then stepped back and met Celia’s eyes over the hood. Celia thought she could even see the girl give a small hint of a smile. Stacy walked over to the driver’s door. “Climb out a second?”
Celia exited the RV, and Stacy climbed in to replace her. She tried the key herself, pumping the gas a little as she did. Her results appeared to be the same as Celia’s. Finally, the almost-smile hit Stacy’s face again and she leaned back in the seat. She gave ou
t a hollow, humorless laugh. “Well, I know what’s wrong,” she said.
Confused, Celia leaned forward. “What?” she asked. “Can you fix it?”
Stacy let out the laugh again. “Not unless you have a pump close by,” she said. “Celia, it’s out of gas.”
Celia felt her face go flush. The gas hadn’t even occurred to her. Of course it was out of gas. That was just their luck, even moreso because they had wasted time coming over there and trying to start the vehicle.
Even as she blushed from embarrassment, Celia felt herself panic as well. What was their next step? They couldn’t start trying random vehicles hoping to find one that worked. They didn’t have time for that unless they got incredibly lucky. So the only option they had that she knew of was Kim’s sports car, and she didn’t trust that thing to get through the chain link fence that was outside Salvisa’s house cleanly, let alone the house itself.
“What do we do, Celia?” Simon asked. He didn’t look as panicked as she felt, but Celia could tell he was worried. He had been good for even more ideas than Celia had to that point, had come up with plenty of ways to get them out of things, but even he was stuck.
Celia looked around. The people who had been firing at the zombies coming onto the property had largely fallen back or been bitten, and the ones who were left looked to be running out of time. Celia only had one idea.
“We have to try to shoot them,” she said. “It’s all we have left. We have to try to kill them.”
Simon looked at the zombies coming in. The group was big, with at least forty or fifty already on the driveway and a group entering that stretched further back down the road than they could see. He gulped a couple of times, but nodded. “We’ll never make it,” he said. “But we have to try.”
“No,” Erik said, sounding defeated. “No, there’s another way.”
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 33