Life After: The Void

by Bryan Way

  “Doesn’t solve nothin’.” She resumes eventually. “Doesn’t change what he did. I’m not sayin’ you’re gonna be friends… but… you know… two sides here, not twelve?”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Julia mentioned it. One of your lines? You’re right. You can’t… live in this group and be lookin’ over your shoulder. He might surprise you.”

  “Again.”

  “Jeff…” Karen starts. “Please…”

  “He tried to shoot me… and for all we know, he killed that girl in the locker room…”

  “Jeff. There’s not much I ask of you, right?”

  I hang my head in silence. “Look, I might be wrong…” I finally continue. “But it’s not outside his MO. I don’t want to wait and see if he’d do it again.” I turn to see Elena standing in front of us, and when she has our attention, she throws a pile of leaves in the air as though it was supposed to be a magic trick. Karen starts clapping, and I hesitantly join. Eventually, Elena returns to the pile and Karen sighs before replying. “I wish you’d spend your time doin’ somethin’ constructive…” As she speaks, Mursak comes through the door beneath the breezeway. He waves at Karen and me and we return the acknowledgment. He begins to play with Elena, leading the two of them into another part of the courtyard.

  “Rich talk to you about our… argument?” I ask.

  “Ten minutes ago. That’s why I’m out here.”

  “…really?”

  “Yeah. He’s buildin’ up an apology.”

  Karen looks off to the side, prompting me to do the same.

  “It’s not all his fault.” She continues. “The honeymoon’s over.”

  “Honeymoon?”

  “We’re past the point of believin’ that survival is as good as it gets.”

  There’s a long pause.

  “Karen, are you and Rich sleeping together?”

  “Not yet. Why?”

  “I appreciate your candor… Melody was trying to figure out where you’d do it a few days ago…”

  “She bonin’ up on the job?” Karen chuckles.

  “…huh?”

  “Jeff… she’s sleepin’ next to you…”

  “…I’m still Julia’s.”

  We sit quietly as Mursak continues to play with Elena. “Well… you wear it on your sleeve.” Karen continues. I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. She yawns, stretches, and stands up. Taking her cue, I stand up as well and follow her to the breezeway door.

  “Rich tell you why we’re going out?” I ask.

  “Yeah…” She confirms, starting up the stairs. “Can’t say I share your passion, but we’ve been bottled up a while… it’s worth seein’ what’s out there.”

  “I’m excited to get my writing.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah… a few gigs of music, my cell phone, my keyboard… everything I’ve written since middle school is on my computer.”

  “Well, I can see why you’d want that…”

  I recognize while speaking that she couldn’t care less. She seizes the momentary silence as an excuse to bail on further banal conversation.

  “Hey… I think I’m gonna get a nap in.”

  “Sure…” I reply. “See you around.”

  “Guess you don’t have a choice.”

  She grins as she runs up the last few steps and turns off to the left. The abrupt end of our discourse makes me feel awkward enough that I begin seeking ways to occupy myself, so I turn tail and wander back down the stairwell until I get to the basement, following the whirring heartbeat of our heating unit into the machinery room. Since I’ll always associate these halls with Day of the Dead, the mystique of breaking in on October 9th washes over me, but the feeling abates quickly.

  The steel desk we used to barricade the door is still in place, only now it has Rich’s schematic notebook on the surface. Apparently, Rich’s father was not only contracted by the high school, he would occasionally bring Rich along with him, giving him an exclusive insight into how this nearly half-century old heating device works. Since I have no desire to speak to him again until he calms down, the notion that he comes down here once a day hurries me back up to the main hall.

  I make my way up the stairs and turn right, passing the gate on my way toward the band room, which hasn’t changed much since we removed the lockers. We’ve also left the golf cart in the hallway outside, having not used it since Elena’s rescue. I exit through the doors connecting the band rooms to the technology wing, running my hand along the concrete barrier while I kick some leaves out of the way. A sudden urge to get on the roof sees me scaling the steel awning, noticing with no small satisfaction that the exertions of climbing have gotten less stressful in the last month.

  I pull myself up on a concrete ledge and walk toward the front lot, stopping between the exterior wall of the gate and the doors to the auditorium loft above me to the right, where I’m told Ava met her end. I stay crouched as I look out over the front parking lot and lawn, seeing our school bus just below me to the left, the front end pressed firmly against the outside of the auditorium, leaving just enough space between it and the gate for a person to squeeze through. I also see a few stray undead cloaked in shadow, oblivious to the fact that I’m watching them.

  Despite Julia and me never traveling to this spot together, she always seems to be on my mind when I get here. Once, long before the arising, Ava, Mursak and I came up here one autumnal midnight where the three of us were almost caught by the police. Even as we made our daring escape, I found myself both wishing Jules was there to enjoy it and thankful that she was not in danger of getting caught. As I wonder how our children might have looked, I want so badly to put my arms around her one more time.

  It strikes me that Julia is approaching legendary status in my mind; she only lived sixteen years, but if I live until my fifties or sixties, she will still be the same teenager with whom I shared what could be dismissively described as puppy love. I let loose a heavy sigh as I watch the dead slowly make their way to nowhere. In spite of a well-earned reputation as a scourge of marauders, seeing them mill around in a pastoral daze feels mundane. When I remember what happened to Julia, however, I can feel my blood pressure skyrocket. Even now, it’s tempting to go down there for a mass execution.

  Given plenty of time to think it over, I’ve managed to diagnose my obsession with Zombies prior to their kind becoming a reality; in an existence based on conflict, whether in the form of Indians, Nazis, Commies, or terrorists, humanity is constantly seeking to villainize an Other. The ability to empathize with a given enemy may not render them inert, but it does complicate the ability to maintain a moral high ground. Zombies not only represent the most feasible monster in fiction, they signify a complete absence of morals, and thus, disposing of them remains an indefatigably affirmative absolute. This theory holds true in reality, since I’ll never have to worry if I’m doing the right thing by killing as many of them as I can.

  When night begins to shroud the sky, I seek shelter inside to see if anyone has dinner plans, finding Karen ready to prepare some frozen, prepackaged meals. In terms of variety, this is as exciting as Columbus Day. Now that we’ve progressed to the point of removing all the spices from the local supermarket, we take turns reading cook books and suggesting different recipes for our remaining stock of meat, which was bolstered by a trip to a butcher who had an impressive array of pork, beef, and poultry in his walk-in freezer.

  Gathering that I have at least a half an hour until mealtime, I collect some clothes and head to the gym. Entering the girl’s locker room always feels criminal to me, a feeling made worse by the fact that the showers resemble my impression of the prison variety; it’s an open room with large tiled walls and two rows of twelve showerheads with no curtains or dividers.

  I drag a metal folding chair across the floor, hearing the echo of the plastic leg tips rubbing off on the concrete. Keeping it just out of reach of the stream, I rest both my towel and fresh clothes
on it, then turn on the water and allow it to warm before checking to make sure that I am alone. I finally disrobe and take my place at the nozzle closest to a dividing wall.

  In spite of my lifelong enjoyment of bathing, and the fact that it’s been five days since my last shower, the water feels unnaturally warm to the point of making me uncomfortable. No sooner than I’ve stepped in and lathered up, I already long for being warm and dry. Wondering if I’m somehow exhausted, I hunch down in a pose reminiscent of those exiting the afterbirth of time displacement equipment in the Terminator films. “Jeff?” Melody’s outside the door. “Are you okay?” Am I okay? I hear the door whining open and step closer to the shower.

  “…what?” I ask, peeking out to find her still wearing the red jogging suit as she approaches with a towel and clothes folded up in her arms. She stops as I return to the stream and rinse off. Once I have a towel, I look beyond the wall again. “You were making… noises…” I towel off quickly and get dressed, stepping around the divider as I dry my hair.

  “…what?”

  “Like… I dunno… moaning… or sighing…?” She continues.

  “Oh… I don’t… what are you doing?”

  She shrugs the towel toward me.

  “I usually wash up for dinner.”

  “You should really dial that back.”

  “I know, I know…” She replies. “We’re gonna lose the water. Might as well use it while we got it.”

  “Problem is… if you don’t start taking even a few days between showers, you’ll feel like your skin’s crawling inside a week when it goes.”

  “Any tips?”

  “Start slow…” I continue, not bothering to take in my reflection as I walk past the mirror. “Take six showers this week, five next week… so on.”

  “That what you did?”

  “In college…” I return to the shower and start gathering my things. “…once you see those communal showers in the dorms and get started on your coursework, you stop bathing as much.”

  “Gross.” She replies, her voice muffled.

  “You adjust to the smell.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Better get used to it.” She appears around the divider, leaning against it to listen. “When we lose water, we’ll all stink within a few days. The quicker you adjust, the better.”

  “Huh… food for thought.”

  Struck by the notion that I’ve never heard those words come out of her mouth before, I slip my shoes on and nod as I walk past her. “Jeff…” When I turn back, my eyes follow her hand as she unzips her jogging outfit; once freed of the jacket’s restraints, her cleavage relaxes beneath a white camisole, and I instinctively turn back to the door. “Would you mind sticking around? I’ll just be a second.” I nod without looking back, then head for the door. Taking a seat outside, I end up being treated to yet another high school flashback: I was seldom sent into the hall for discipline, but the polished concrete floors adorned with autumn-colored speckles will forever be burned into my brain.

  I get bored of this recollection and get up, walking to the opposite end of the hall to view the impressive stack of gym mats blocking the exterior doors from the inside. I put my ear to the wall to see if I can hear anything at the rampart just beyond, but I cannot. I return to the locker room and still hear the shower running, finding myself tempted to cross the parking lot to get to the cafeteria. No, I said I’d wait, so that’s what I’ll do. After some disinterested glances at various posters, message boards, trophy cases, and a peep inside both gymnasiums, the sound in the locker room has transitioned from running water to a hair dryer to silence.

  When Melody first asked if she could use a hair dryer, the firm answer from Anderson was no, but with a little persistence, he relented on the grounds that we sit on top of the cars forming the rampart and use a synchronized watch to see if it would be audible outside. Anderson was disgruntled at this experiment, but if nothing else, it proved we could run a hair dryer inside without hearing it outside. Melody finally emerges from the locker room with a big smile, leaving an aromatic scent in her wake.

  “Perfume?” I ask.

  “Just a little bit…”

  “You know you shouldn’t…”

  “Yeah.” She replies.

  “…okay.”

  I lead the way to the cafeteria.

  “So…” Melody starts. “I was thinking about that guy…”

  “…you’re gonna have to be more specific…”

  “You know… the philosophy guy… Rene…”

  “Descartes.” I answer.

  “Yeah… ‘I think therefore I am’, right?”

  “Well, ‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’.” I reply.

  “Okay… so… what’s the point?”

  I lift the gate that separates this hallway from the rest of the school, allowing Melody to pass under it before me.

  “Well… Descartes used his perception of his own consciousness as a primer to validate his place in reality…”

  “Uh-huh…”

  “The funny part is, his beliefs in Meditations on First Philosophy aren’t substantive.”

  “…what the hell does that mean?” She asks after a moment.

  “He ‘proves’ to himself that he exists, then decides rather haphazardly that his existence has a cause and that the cause must be god, because in his view, something cannot come from nothing.”

  She’s quiet for a minute.

  “So he’s wrong?”

  “Well… he’s only a man. To err is human, they say.”

  “Uhm… I mean… why tell me if you don’t agree?”

  “When we talked about it before, I was using Descartes to illustrate that philosophers seek to address questions like that…” I offer. “Sometimes posing them is more interesting than answering them.”

  “So, it’s more like… only you know you exist… and only I know I exist.” Melody replies.

  “Exactly.”

  “I hate that… if you can’t prove that anyone else exists… I mean… how do you trust them?”

  I shrug. “By having faith.” She smiles. “I like that…” We continue to walk until the silence is replaced by the lively sound of conversation warming the hall.

  “So… d’you ever find the meaning of life?”

  “Still working on it.”

  “Well, when you figure it out… you’ll let me know?” She asks.

  “Absolutely… got any ideas?”

  “I dunno… having kids?”

  She smiles and walks into the cafeteria while I consider that. In a scientific sense, sure, all living things are coded with ensuring their own legacy, but I easily avoid drawing any conclusions as I feast on my TV dinner alongside my friends. Unfortunately, I suffer the consequences of tomorrow’s hastily made plans; rather than sit at the same table, Althea, Karen, Rich, and Jake have chosen to set themselves up on the opposite side, close to the windows. Rich eyes me up as I walk toward the table of Anderson, Helen, Mursak, Melody, and Elena with my tray. “This is new…” I say by way of introduction as I take my seat.

  “Heard you guys had a fight?” Melody asks.

  “Didn’t we talk about that?”

  “I knew he was pissed about the computers, but you never said you gave him a beat down.”

  “Well, it wasn’t like that…”

  “Gotta be honest…” Mursak starts with a mouthful of food. “The only one of them I miss right now is Karen.”

  “Hear hear!” I reply.

  We raise our bottles of water, crumpling the flimsy plastic together in a makeshift toast.

  “That’s mean…” Helen offers.

  “It’s true… talking to Althea is like talking to a college professor…”

  “That doesn’t appeal to you?” Mursak teases. “I thought you were a brownnose at Temple?”

  “Thanks.” I mutter. “And by the way, has anyone here really talked to Jake?”

  Melody raises her arm halfway.
<
br />   “He’s never really talked to me.” I add.

  “Yeah…” Mursak affirms.

  “He always takes Rob’s side, or Rich’s…”

  “And you like solidarity so much…” Helen says.

  “Right.” I only realize that was a snipe a moment later. “We’ll all cool off once it’s done.”

  “As long as everyone makes it back okay.”

  “…we’re going to.” Mursak says assertively. “I mean, we know alternate routes, exits, places to hide, alternate transportation…”

  “Every blocked road, every squatter…” Helen mutters.

  “We know the risks.” I interrupt. “No one knows how different it is out there, and that’s kind of the point. What if the town is empty? What if some people put together a stronghold? What if the highways are blocked? Anderson, you know if something happens where we have to get out of here, we’d better have some advance scouting.”

  “You realize I was a scout in the Guard, right? We do recon…”

  “I mean if we have to jam out like we did at the community center… no advance warning.”

  “Yeah…”

  “Besides…” Mursak begins. “You started labeling that Delco DOT map…”

  “Jesus, where’d you get that?” I ask sincerely.

  “Online.” Anderson says with obvious pride. “Printed a 28 by 40 in the graphics lab and put it under a Plexiglas sheet so we can mark it with a grease pen.”

  “…when did this happen?”

  “Today… and we’re in luck… the Department of Transportation updated it this year.”

  “How many copies do we have?”