Life After: The Void

by Bryan Way

  Once in the serving area, Mursak and Anderson make their way into the back to grab food. I sincerely hope they just get canned goods, because anything else from this place might make me sick, since the cafeteria usually got the worst kinds of meat; if memory serves, they got the worst kind of everything, except when they had a guest chef come and make dessert crepes, or sometimes Bananas Foster.

  A scream emerges from the kitchen area, followed by several heavy thuds. I poke my head in the door to see Anderson standing over a dead man in navy coveralls, his head resembling a chocolate covered cherry cracked open in a ring at the top, exposing a bright, leaky red orb. After looking up at me for a second, Anderson slams his crowbar into the brain, sending mushy bits cascading off.

  Leaving Anderson and Mursak to their devices, I go back to thinking about Bananas Foster, listening to the sound of cans being shuffled about in the kitchen. For some reason, my recollection of this particular dessert makes me wonder what kind of drinks we can make for the upcoming holiday, which in turn makes me think about New Year’s and forces out a line of questioning I might not have otherwise considered.

  “Hey Anderson…”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s going on with you and Helen?”

  For the next twenty seconds, I hear nothing but shuffling cans.

  “…what?” He replies, finally.

  “What’s going on with you and Helen?”

  “…what?”

  “Come on, dude… are you guys, like, dating, or what?” I ask.

  “I dunno…”

  “…you don’t?”

  “We don’t like to talk about it…” He says with a nervous chuckle.

  “…we?”

  “Yeah… let’s just leave it that…”

  “Dude, it’s not the Spanish Inquisition… are you or aren’t you?”

  More cans shuffle. “Sak, can you check that freezer?” He mumbles, actively ignoring me. “Alright you secretive bastard…” After a few more minutes, the two of them come out of the kitchen with their bags nearly full. I make sure to look Anderson in the eye, smile, and shake my head as he passes me. The three of us go out the way we came in and drop our supplies at the car when I hear something I can’t quite explain.

  An extended howl rips out from the residential neighborhood beyond the trees to the east, loud enough to stop all of us in our tracks. The unclear nature of the noise this far away makes it impossible to categorize, but I’d say it was either a person screaming or a car revving. Our silence is rewarded by a follow-up noise that is most decidedly human, likely a person screaming out an angry sentence at the top of their lungs. After a moment, a car can be heard clearly tearing off down the road as the shouting continues, followed by three distinct shots.

  “Pistol.” Anderson and I say simultaneously. We listen for another thirty seconds and get nothing; if this doesn’t expedite our departure, I imagine nothing will. “So… medical center?” Mursak asks, to my chagrin. I watch as Anderson struggles with a decision and finally shuts the car door. When Sak walks off toward the buildings to the west, Anderson follows. I bring up the rear once I’ve had a chance to pop in another toothpick.

  As we continue west, the ringing sound I heard earlier and have since ignored becomes unavoidably audible. After a few more strides, I locate the source as the library and computer center, separated from the road by a gentle downward slope and obscured by sparse trees. During the minute it takes us to approach the solid beige façade, I count about fifty undead milling beneath the shadowed entrance alcove.

  “Uh, no.” I mutter.

  “What?” Mursak asks.

  “You don’t see that?”

  “They haven’t seen us…”

  I sarcastically raise my arm to point.

  “Come on…” He continues.

  “Sak, do you not see that?” Anderson asks.

  “Relax…”

  “Uh… no?” I continue.

  Oblivious to our plight, Mursak marches confidently toward the clearly marked medical center jutting out of the grass like a mobile home anchored in front of the library. As a few Zombies on the outside of the group begin their staggering turns toward us, Anderson pulls up his crowbar and advances quickly. The mass now seems to be less distracted by the sound, more tempted by the smell of fresh meat.

  “Sak…!”

  “He’s not listening…” I offer.

  “No shit!”

  Anderson starts tapping the crowbar into the blacktop as he walks back toward a massive, angular iron sculpture jutting out of the meadow by the road. Once there, he bangs the crowbar into the hollow metal in a makeshift dinner bell while I advance toward Mursak, who smashes the glass in the medical center door with his rifle and reaches in to operate the handle without even looking. I wish I could slap him for that.

  He pulls the door open with one swift jerk, and to his surprise but no one else’s, a corpse steps toward him and makes a violent slash at his throat. Mursak dives back toward the railing and throws himself over, only a few feet away from the advancing horde. An instant later, the front half of his attacker’s skull blasts apart with the echoing crack of Anderson’s rifle, splattering dark red chunks on the wall behind it.

  I turn back to see that Anderson has already switched back to his crowbar, and I think he mutters something about a grenade. I return my attention to Mursak, who has already used his formidable climbing skills to mount the railing and cruise back inside the medical center. Seeing that he’s not at risk of being accosted by the group, I finally turn my attention to them. The result is nothing short of shocking.

  To date, I’ve only killed one Zombie who represented someone I knew; John Squared met his unfortunate fate at my hands nearly two months ago. When I look at this group, I can pick out at least twelve of my former dorm dwellers, including my roommate Paul. A wave of nostalgia washes over me so heavily that I feel like calling out. I knew these people. I talked to them. We took classes, played volleyball, and ate dinner together.

  After gazing at Paul, I next turn my attention to Andrea, the bookstore clerk whose advances I ignored while I was dating Julia. As Anderson shouts commands from behind me, I pull the rifle off my shoulder and take three steps forward while taking aim. Paul is first, and I shatter his glasses with a blast through his orbital socket that sends him and two other Zombies to the ground. I take aim at Andrea and miss. I miss again. I strike her in the chin, causing her to shuffle backward. When she turns toward me in response, I pause to steady my aim and fire a shot that blows the top of her jaw apart, sending her teeth in every direction as it rips through her skull and mists the surrounding bodies with the brains that once harbored affection for me.

  “GREY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! BACK UP!” Anderson shouts, prompting me to shoulder my rifle and switch to my katana. I look back to see him strafing to the right in an attempt to pull the crowd away from Mursak. Since it seems to be working, I join him and swing even wider, pulling the radio off my belt.

  “Sak! Get out of there!”

  “Almost done…” He replies.

  “Come on, you greedy bastard…” Anderson mutters.

  “Just a few more…”

  “NOW!”

  I shout so loudly that I go hoarse, and taking another step introduces me to a dizzy spell that temporarily clouds my vision. Mursak remains inside, but only a few of the undead are headed after him. I take a stride around Anderson to confront them, but he pulls me back.

  “Get the car!” Anderson instructs.

  “I can’t drive stick!”

  “Fuck it!”

  Anderson bolts toward the Outback, leaving me alone to face the thirty-some corpses ambling forward. Following my original plan, I circle around the group, keeping twenty feet between us, and draw the few headed toward the medical center away. When I look back, I see that they’re already turning toward me, giving me only ten feet on either side before they can touch me.

  Panic sets in as I step out of the su
n and into the shady grass outside the library. My heart is pounding against the roof of my mouth, making it harder to breathe. I try to steal a peek inside the medical center, but between the shade from the trees and the darkness within, I can’t see Mursak. As I retreat along the asphalt path to the library doors, a car horn squeaks through the hammering bell. I turn to look past the bodies closing in, glimpsing a spark of white paint and a hurried reflection of trees flashes across a car windshield.

  I take two strides and leap as the Outback detonates the cluster of Zombies. The tires squeal as I pull myself to my feet and run wheezing toward the medical center. The Outback spins around in an arc as the rear end takes out another swatch of bodies, and as I slam myself into the side of the stairs, the passenger door skids by my face, close enough that I could touch it with my nose. My fleeting glance inside reveals Anderson’s gnarled face as he torques the wheel.

  “Sak!” I scream, out of breath as I secure my hand on the railing and pull myself clear of Anderson’s wrath. I clamber up the walkway and blast through the door, instantly locating Mursak picking through a pharmaceutical cabinet. Without hesitating, I grab him by the backpack and yank him through the doorway amidst a sea of curses. He tries to resist, but my anger fuels my muscles enough to pull him down the steps toward the now frozen Outback as Anderson hangs his head out the window coughing.

  Mursak tries to push past me, but I shove him up against the car as we both look back to see a carpet of wriggling bodies splayed across the ground, their old blood dripping off the side of the building and the bark of the tree outside to soak into the soggy grass and warm blacktop. When I open the door, Mursak steps inside without complaint, allowing me to hop into the passenger seat before Anderson speeds off along the strip, passing both residence halls before arcing back toward the main road.

  “Breathe out the windows!” He shouts, lowering them all and opening the sunroof to vent the gas from the deployed driver’s side airbag. Anderson races off, allowing the wind to help clear out the car before placing his shirt over his face and leaning back in to better control the steering wheel. After a moment, the noxious gas of the airbag has been blown out. I want to look back at Mursak, but I’m too furious and too out of breath.

  “I can’t believe this thing is still driving…” Mursak states.

  “What the FUCK was that?!” Anderson shouts.

  “Give me a…”

  “SHUT UP.”

  “We need medical supplies…”

  “Was that in the FUCKING plan?! Was it?”

  Anderson lets out an escalating grunt of displeasure before banging his hands repeatedly into the steering column. Finally, I catch my breath enough to turn back.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?” Mursak replies.

  “What the fuck is in your skull?!”

  I face front as he launches his rebuttal.

  “…we don’t have any medical supplies you didn’t get from the hospital… this place had prescriptions…”

  “Worth getting bitten for?” I ask.

  “You wanna die from a cold?”

  “Worth getting bitten for!?”

  “You wanna die from a cold?!” Mursak repeats. “Yeah, it was a risk, but if one person gets sick in the group… forget fighting, forget rationing, forget planning, we’re all dead…”

  “If you want to pull a goddamn stunt like that, you tell us first…”

  “Exactly!” Anderson pipes in.

  “Why do I have to tell you anything?” Mursak asks.

  “Because we’re in charge.” I state.

  “Oh, who put you in charge…?”

  “He did!” I shout, pointing to Anderson. “You go off and pull a retarded stunt like that, you’re liable to get us all killed… we run this group so that doesn’t happen…”

  “Like it did with Julia?”

  “STOP THE FUCKING CAR!”

  The force of my insistence sees Anderson slam on the brakes a few meters from the intersection with the main road. I turn back to see Mursak horrified. “If you ever say anything like that again, I will wound you, and feed you to those things. Is that clear?” Mursak is barely able to nod. “WHAT?!” He mutters an apology as I turn back to face the road. Anderson continues driving, and after a few seconds, I launch an assault on the dashboard with my fists, punching it repeatedly until my knuckles go numb.

  The rest of the drive down I-476 is understandably silent. As we’ve traversed much of the Blue Route without incident, we deviate slightly from Rich’s flight plan by continuing south in the northbound lanes; if we encounter any northbound traffic en route, we can easily divert to the empty shoulder to allow for the right of way. We disembark at the Villanova exit around 11:45, making it to Bryn Mawr without incident, though Anderson has to sidetrack to Montgomery Ave. rather than the more convenient Lancaster Ave. due to either a rather massive accident or a carefully composed blockade of vehicles. I imagine we’d debate the topic if we weren’t silently stuck in an argument.

  As we pass by a row of houses, a flare explodes overhead. Anderson slows down as we all lower our windows to listen and watch. Apart from the moaning of a few resurrected corpses now drawn to the hollow crack of a glorified firework, the streets are silent. Among other things, this event resets our social tête-à-tête by way of necessitating a strategy.

  “Do we look for them?” I ask.

  “Them who?” Anderson rebuts.

  “Whoever shot that…?”

  “…no?”

  “What if they’re in trouble?”

  “What if they’re not?”

  “All right…” Mursak interrupts. “Do we assume that was directed at us?”

  “Yeah…” I continue.

  “And the odds of something bad happening just as we pass by are astronomical… I mean, ludicrous, right?”

  “So either they’re just trying to get our attention… or it’s a trap.”

  Anderson utilizes his master control to raise the windows and speeds away. The car falls silent as I look out the back window to see a cluster of undead meandering across a road that stretches into a shadowy patch of trees near the source of the flare. “Everything’s a trap…” I mutter loud enough for them to hear, prompting Anderson to shift uncomfortably in the front seat. “Remember when I went to the reservoir with Karen last week?” Mursak asks. I lean back to indicate he has my attention.

  “I heard two people talking.” He continues.

  “…what?”

  “Off in the distance… behind us… it wasn’t clear, but I heard it. One of ‘em laughed.”

  “Okay… I don’t know why you’re telling me this.” I say, looking at Anderson as he remains silent.

  “Notice the stores seem more cleaned out each time we visit?” Mursak replies. “There’s someone else in town… and in two months, we haven’t seen each other. Or worse… we’ve never seen them.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic… you weren’t there when we met Dave and his posse… they didn’t mess with us, we didn’t mess with them. If they’re anything like us, they don’t want to draw attention. They’re harmless.”

  The car stays quiet for a moment.

  “That’s really bullshit.” Anderson adds.

  “How so?”

  “Two months ago Gordon’s still had guns, the supermarket still had canned food, Wawa still had bottled water… and we snapped it up. If there’s someone else out there and they go dry on one of those… where’s the first place they’re gonna look? And what if they don’t feel like asking?”

  This raises the hairs on the back of my neck swiftly enough to activate my tear ducts, a sure sign that I’m either adequately gauging Anderson’s level of discomfort or that I felt the same thing at one time and suppressed it. Thinking through this makes me want to be home. Not my old house, of course, but the high school. My urge to discuss the matter further is censored by the physical manifestations of Anderson’s continued distress.

  In a matter of minutes,
we’ve arrived at the former Mursak residence, which looks much the same as when we left. Anderson and Mursak volunteer themselves for the entry, owing to their better knowledge of the premises. It’s just as well, since my knuckles are now red and swollen. The fact that Julia had never been here infects my brain once I’m left alone, so I do myself a favor by concentrating on her intently for several minutes until I feel compelled to think of something else. Fortunately, as I sit in the car alone clutching my radio, fear about what happens when we get back takes over.

  No doubt Rich will be upset about the state of the car and feed us some bullshit on how it could have been avoided, but we can get Anderson to relay our dire circumstance and the importance of our new topographic data to shut him up. We’ll update the map with Mursak’s notes, unpack and sort our gear, set up our computers, and finally start gaming.

  I suppose first we’ll have to select our new rooms so we can avoid rearranging whatever setup we achieve, but I have to wonder what that does to the group structure. I assume Anderson will take a room with Helen, but will Mursak take up a domicile with Elena? Are Rich and Karen moving in together? What happens to Jake and Althea? Or Rob? Does anyone intend on staying in the keep? Does Melody expect to share a bed with me?

  I take a moment to remind myself of how futile this line of thinking is when weighed against our diminishing food supply and the possibility that we’ll run out of water. Once the power goes out, we’ll have to incorporate the remaining frozen meat into various stews, provided the gas holds out long enough to keep the ovens going. Anything that goes bad will have to join the rest of the rotten meat basting at the bottom of our swimming pool.