Life After: The Void

by Bryan Way

“I can print another.”

  “Bring it with us tomorrow… ohhhh shit…” I sigh.

  “What?” Anderson asks.

  “Rich is transportation manager.”

  “Wait, what…?” Melody asks.

  “Remember when we designated roles for everyone, so you’d know what to do if something goes down?” Anderson continues.

  “Yeah?”

  “Rich is in charge of vehicles and plotting routes.”

  “I can’t plan it with him…” I offer quickly, pointing at Anderson and Mursak. “One of you has to do it.”

  Without hesitating, both of them put a finger on their nose at exactly the same instant. “Uh…” Helen starts. They remove their fingers. “Nose goes.” I say. “Rock paper scissor. One round. Winner picks.” They both sigh and get their hands ready. “One, two, three, shoot!” Anderson is scissors, Mursak is paper. “Dammit! You always pick rock!” Mursak says, standing up. Anderson grins and starts chuckling. “Not if it’s something I really don’t wanna do.” I grab Mursak’s arm. “Not now…” Mursak gives a reactionary tug at my grip, and then sits down before I continue.

  “Look on the bright side… you can say Anderson and I dragooned you into it. Let him believe you don’t necessarily want to.”

  “So I just tell him I need help plotting a route?” Mursak asks. “We really can’t do this ourselves?”

  “Technically we went over his head by not including him in the vote… this is ironclad. He makes the transportation arrangements.”

  “All right…”

  After dinner, the first priority is to refill our empty water bottles with tap water; Karen tests it regularly using kits we took from the local hardware store, and the group takes an excursion to the reservoir every two weeks to test the source directly. Following the refill, Mursak goes to Rich and the two of them promptly steal off for the graphics lab. I take advantage of his absence and ask Karen if the three of us can get sleeping pills; now that Daylight Savings Time is over the sun will rise a little after 7:00am, and since none of us are prepared to wake up that early, we’ll need drugs to get the proper amount of sleep. Karen gives us 10mg of Zolpidem apiece. When Mursak is finished with Rich, he informs us of the vehicle for our trip and assures us that Rich will handle stocking it with supplies.

  We arrange our weapons and clothes in such a way that we won’t bother anyone when we get up to leave, then go over the route; Mursak relates that Rich favored four-lane, two way roads while avoiding areas that may attract attention. The three of us jointly suggest alternatives in case of emergency, develop a rough consensus, and then individually check each other’s gear to ensure that we have the proper supplies. Our nervous attempts to over-think the trip yields a suggestion that we attempt to call phones potentially left in our four destinations, but this is dismissed as it could draw unwanted attention. My final remembrance is that I’ll need my dorm room key.

  Once we’ve finally convinced ourselves we’re prepared, we take our sleeping pills at 9:30pm with the intention of waking up at 6:00am. I fall asleep within ten minutes, praying that Anderson doesn’t snore.

  12-20-04, MONDAY

  For some reason, the theme from the Ghostbusters montage is in my head when the alarm goes off, and this motivates me better than I could have imagined. I kill the alarm without waking Melody and take a moment to ruminate on the fact that I don’t feel tired at all. Across the dark room, I can hear Anderson and Mursak getting themselves up as well.

  We step out into the hall and disrobe our sleeping articles in favor of jeans, t-shirts, flannel, and boots. I don my trench coat and make sure my fob is loaded with toothpicks. Once dressed, we bring our backpacks and weapons downstairs where we proceed to use the toilet and brush our teeth before repairing to the cafeteria for breakfast, where Karen, wearing a bathrobe over her pajamas, surprises us with defrosted pancakes, tea, and apple juice. As she returns to bed, I’m distinctly reminded of my mom.

  Once finished, we clear our plates and head for the gate, where we find the ceiling-mounted security barrier that normally separates us from the auditorium hallway propped open. We duck under, turn left, and walk through the exterior auditorium doors between the flowerbeds to find Rich sitting in the driver’s seat of a white 2001 Subaru Outback with the engine running. We all stop and Rich exits the vehicle.

  “Purring like a kitten.” He says with a smile. “John’s gonna have to drive, it’s a manual.”

  “Thanks…” Anderson replies.

  “Got an extra five gallons in the back, two spares, enough water and rations for a week, flashlights, batteries, signal flares, sleeping bags, CB, empty backpacks… you boys should be all set.”

  “Thanks again.” I offer.

  Before I get in the car, Rich puts his hand on my shoulder.

  “They have movies at the electronics store?”

  “Yeah…?”

  “Think you could find me Spellbound? Alfred Hitchcock?”

  “I own it.”

  “Really?! I’d like to watch it sometime.”

  “…sure, just let me know…”

  “Will do… anyway… safe trip.”

  He pats my shoulder forcibly and makes his way back inside, locking the doors behind him. When I turn back, I find that Mursak has taken shotgun, something that doesn’t surprise me at all. As I settle into the backseat, Anderson continues to adjust his mirrors. I peek into the trunk to find ample space for whatever we might pick up. “Ready?” Anderson asks. Getting no complaints, he eases on the gas and gently takes us out of the parking lot.

  I look at the clock: 7:12. Acknowledging that the sun will officially crest over the horizon in a matter of minutes, I pop in my first toothpick. As we pass in front of the school, Mursak and I turn toward a corpse wearing a green turtleneck sweater beneath a gray suit stumbling through the frost-coated front yard. “Herrr-maaan…” I say disapprovingly. Mursak smiles as he looks back at me.

  “Herman’s the college professor?”

  “Nah, he was once a guest lecturer at UPenn… goes to dinner parties on the Main Line whenever he can to talk about the experience… he enjoys brandy in a rocks glass, but doesn’t smoke.”

  “Right…”

  “And he finds suede distasteful.”

  Mursak laughs hard. “Is he married?” He asks.

  “Oh no… he ended it with Marisole years ago. He’s a widowee.”

  “No matter how much I hear that, I can’t get used to it. Oh, right here…” Mursak indicates to Anderson, prompting a turn onto a road cramped with modest, picturesque colonial houses. “Widowee… sounds like a widow on a diuretic.”

  “That’s sick.” Anderson offers.

  “What?”

  “You just made up a life for that Zombie?”

  “Herman?” I reply. “He’s been around for a few weeks now.”

  “That makes it okay…” Anderson opines. “Secane’s first?”

  “Yep… you’re headed the right way…” Mursak affirms, toying with the map. “Uh… you’re going left on Cedar Grove, right on Sproul, follow that to Springfield, then Bishop…”

  “Yeah, I get it… we might need to make a detour at 476…”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Check Point 5.”

  “Is it set up across the bridge, or before it?” I ask. “Because if it’s before we can probably get around.”

  “If not?” Anderson asks.

  “Carrell’s parking lot has a shortcut.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Though clearing the dead traffic on West Chester Pike would be a thankless task, we’ve displaced a few accidents on alternate routes, leaving our chosen roads both well-traveled and familiar. We all turn our attention to an undead young man traipsing toward the car to no avail; Mursak once suggested a driving game involving types of Zombies in which each of us would get points for having chosen a specific attribute, but it never caught on. I practically hear him calling that one for being under 25.

&nb
sp; As we crest a hill, we can see that access to Sproul has been blocked by a truck that crashed alongside a gas station at the corner, but Anderson knows as well as the rest of us that the alley behind the station leads to several different access points, so he quickly gets us back on track. I feel exposed as we pass by Lawrence Park, one of the few commercial precincts in town large to be called a shopping center.

  Once we pass the largest local cemetery on our right and a dense thatch of naked trees and vine-laden forest on our left, we spot Bishop Carrell High School and the wreckage of Check Point 5 blocking the thoroughfare. Anderson slows to a crawl as Mursak and I roll down our windows and scout to keep our tires safe from broken glass and metal fragments. “Cleared?” Anderson says, but I’m not sure if it was a question. When he speeds up, Mursak and I murmur protests.

  “Someone cleared it…” Anderson replies.

  “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean…” Mursak starts.

  “Look at the road.”

  Indeed, a path seems to have been cleared in a straight line slightly wider than the Outback with a significant amount of debris scuttled off to the left shoulder. Ahead, the k-rails, sandbags, and razor wire of the former Check Point have been pushed out of the way just before the road splits into two bridges over I-476. “Windows up, heads down.” Anderson instructs quietly. Mursak and I comply, both loosing our side arms. The car continues slowly forward until we stop; I can tell by the chain link fence and highway divider I see through my window that we’re on the overpass.

  The sunroof slides open and the wind hugs Anderson’s body as he stands on the center console. “What?” I ask. He takes a moment before responding. “476 looks clear. Couple of walkers.” He takes his seat and Mursak starts to sit up. “Down.” Anderson reaffirms. He continues slowly for a quarter mile, and then speeds up.

  “Alright, we’re good.”

  “So, uh…” I start.

  “Thought it might be a trap.”

  “And?”

  “Doesn’t look like it… eyes and ears.”

  Jarred by this prospect, Mursak and I consider our surroundings judiciously; this includes our collective astonishment when we pass through an intersection with Route 1, which is completely free of cars, an amazing feat considering our proximity to the I-476 onramp. The rest of the trip is an unremarkable trek through hilly, wooded neighborhoods until we get to Bishop Avenue, an intersection that features a startlingly postmodern church with massive, gold-colored statues enacting the crucifixion above the entrance. This shocking yet beautiful installation always fascinated me as a kid.

  My anticipation mounts as Anderson drives along Bishop until we arrive at the Baltimore Pike intersection, abandoning the quaintly dense suburbs for a seemingly unending series of old gray strip malls. Straight leads us down a hill toward Secane and right takes us to our first destination. When we turn right, I glance at Mursak as he transcribes the state of the roads in a notebook.

  There is an unsurprising amount of dead traffic on Baltimore Pike, since this stretch of road features dozens of gas stations, motels, restaurants and big box stores arranged in no particular order. Even before the arising, I detected an unsettling deadness hovering over this stretch of road, thanks largely to the dried up husks of concrete and glass commercial buildings long since out of business. There are more Zombies than I thought there would be, but not enough to make me anxious.

  The next thing I know, Anderson turns into the parking lot of our big box destination. He slows down considerably, and I see why when I turn my attention to the street; the broken glass and twisted metal of what used to be the front door have been perverted into rubble, mixed seamlessly with shredded cardboard, at least two corpses, and shards of shattered plastic and circuitry. As soon as he can, Anderson turns the vehicle diagonally into the exit lane and shuts the engine down while I make use of my inhaler as a precautionary measure.

  Before Mursak and I can even open our doors, Anderson has his open, his window down, and his rifle perched in the trim. Not sure how to take that, Mursak and I freeze. “Well?” Anderson asks after a moment. Easily interpreting his terseness, we pop out of our doors with our empty backpacks and jog straight for the front. “Sak, cover right, I’ve got left.” He nods and sweeps across the parking lot, his shaggy hair shaking as he perverts his wiry frame into a hunched run.

  We approach the door from opposite sides and turn in simultaneously; the only active lighting fixtures appear to be at the far end of the store, hanging forty feet above the major appliances. Mursak reaches for his flashlight, but I signal to halt. “Not ‘til we need it… I’ve got batteries and GPS…” Mursak creeps to the right as he responds. “We’re gonna need a better adapter and more Ethernet cables.” A barren battery display is knocked over before me, but I can still see a few silvery packages gleaming by the checkout counters. I end up with mostly AAAs and Cs. At the end of one counter, there is still an abundance of lithium batteries, so I take all of them as well.

  I slink into a partially shadowed CD aisle and hunker down to listen for Mursak, but I can’t hear him in the computer aisle from this vantage. I consider lifting my radio, but we didn’t discuss turning them on in the first place, so if he’s in trouble, he’ll either fire a shot or activate and throw his emergency strobe. I duck-walk down the aisle, occasionally grabbing the odd CD I don’t have, and then cross over into the next aisle to find a display for holiday music. Sure enough, there are several copies of Melody’s CD. It’ll make a nice Christmas present.

  I try to stay out of the well-lit areas by remaining between the aisles as I make my way to handheld electronics. Unfortunately, this section has been completely cleaned out. I console myself with the knowledge that a GPS wouldn’t be useful if things continue as they have. I poke my head into the next aisle to find Mursak snatching up a few PC game boxes while toting several packages of 100ft Ethernet cables. I make four rapid, quiet clicks with my tongue and he turns toward me.

  “What else you need?” Sak whispers.

  “Got everything…”

  “How ‘bout a TV?”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Why not?”

  “…okay.”

  Sak stuffs what he has into his backpack, and whatever doesn’t fit goes into mine. The area around the TVs is dark, particularly the built-in home theatre testing room with soundproof glass doors. Unsurprisingly, most of the expensive displays have been taken, but we manage to find a floor model 60” plasma TV right next to the home theatre. A sound similar to someone swishing in a sleeping bag scrapes out about two hundred feet away on the opposite end of the store. When my head pops up, Mursak freezes. The sound echoes again.

  “Let’s just…” I stop mid-sentence as Mursak’s fingers ball up into a fist on my trench coat lapel. Turning slowly, I see a dozen people sleeping on the floor of the home theatre; they were easy to miss at a glance, arranged in such a dense group that they appeared to be shadows from the furniture, but I don’t know how I avoided spotting the gun rack packed with automatic weapons mounted on the back wall. The toothpick falls out of my mouth.

  The swish sounds off twice, and a moment later Mursak is tugging me away from the TV. Keeping our heads low, we go directly toward the tile path surrounding the center of the store and I swing back to look at the room again just as a light switches on. Mursak takes off before I have a chance to react, and someone inside the room blows a whistle loud enough to make me shut my eyes. In a whirlwind of terror, I catch the people scrambling out of their sleeping bags as the swishing noise picks up in tempo and starts heading directly for me.

  “START THE CAR!” Mursak shouts from the front entrance, struggling to untangle his rifle from his backpack as he runs toward the bright opening at full speed. Unlike my nightmares, my feet spread apart and push much harder and faster than I could have imagined; my father always said my legs could take me farther than my lungs. As each step draws me closer to the entrance, the unmistakable crackle of an M-16 burst rings out, f
ollowed promptly by the bullets smacking into a series of objects to my right.

  More shots ring out as I turn left toward the doorway, and though I still have another forty feet to go, I know I’ll be well covered by the shelving unit that extends all the way to the exit. Once my foot hits the sidewalk, I look up to spot Anderson’s rifle poking through of the backseat of the Outback and Mursak behind the wheel, the muffler spouting gray smoke. Knowing precisely what Anderson wants from me, I clear the doorway by making a hard right and run along the side of the building until I make it to the exit ramp. I glance back to see a man in balaclava and a winter coat jog through the doorway, immediately spot me, and raise his rifle.

  Before I can turn toward him, an explosion echoes in the cold morning air as Anderson’s .308 round blows a patch of flesh out of the man’s shoulder. His body torques to the right as he uselessly fires off another burst into the parking lot, the bullets audibly ricocheting once they’ve cracked the pavement. The car is already moving before I can finish pulling myself inside, but I still hear the high-pitched wail of a woman finding her fallen compatriot as we pull away.

  “What the fuck?!” Anderson scolds.

  “Didn’t see ‘em ‘til the last second…” Mursak replies.

  “Jesus Christ…” Anderson works the bolt on his rifle, ejecting the hot cartridge before replacing it with a new one. I wait for a moment to interject. “Good shot, by the way…”

  Anderson explodes into hysterical laughter. Some of the undead continue to list toward the vehicle, but the largest contingent is drawn to the imprudent gunfire and fresh blood of the parking lot we leave behind. “Second gear.” Anderson instructs Mursak. The engine grinds slightly as Mursak makes an awkward transition and Anderson rolls his eyes.