After Life (9 page)

Andy stopped just short of the door. He grabbed Lowensen by the lapels on his blazer and spun him around, pinning him against the door. “‘Fix this’?” Andy said. “‘Fix’ it? Let me tell you something, Lowensen. There is no ‘fixing’ this.

“What I said is true: you’ve condemned most of these people to death. Forty-some people in that classroom, and my most optimistic estimate, thanks to you and your lack of planning, is that we’ll lose three-quarters. And
that
is only because there are a few of us who know what we’re doing this time. You son of a bitch,
every one
that dies is your fault. You want to start fixing this? You get your ass in there and start explaining to them how you killed them.”

Andy let go of Lowensen, and the man slid down to a crouch and gasped for air. “There’s no other way?” he asked pitifully after a few moments.

Andy snorted. “Other way? What, you think I keep a year’s worth of food for forty in my other pocket? How the
hell
did you live through twenty-ten?”

Lowensen looked up. At first, he looked like he wanted to fight Andy, to argue with him. Finally, he looked back down at the concrete floor. “My dad,” he said. “My brother. A group. Literally never fired a single bullet myself.”

Andy scowled at the teacher a moment, then narrowed his eyes at him and asked, “Never fired a bullet yourself? What about your story earlier? The Z with the clump of dirt on its head?”

Lowensen shook his head again. “Wasn’t my story. Read about it on the Out-Theres site. Thought it’d sound more impressive if it sounded like I did it myself. But Mr. Ehrens, I’ve really never done this myself. My dad. My brother. I was lucky.”

“Lucky?” Andy said, trying and failing to keep himself from getting too angry. He lifted the teacher back to his feet and opened the door to the classroom, forcing Lowensen to enter ahead of him. “You weren’t lucky. You were goddamned blessed.”

Chapter 3: Dead Ma
n’
s Pockets

“What do we do?” Donnie asked. Michelle hadn’t said anything in at least ten minutes.

It took Donnie repeating the question, with her name, twice more, before she looked up from Madison’s body’s side. When she did, it was obvious to Donnie that she had been crying, though he could no longer see the tears in her eyes.

She stood up, tucking her hair behind her left ear as she did so. “That’s easy,” she said. “At least for me. I have to get to Hyannis.”

Donnie nodded. “Michelle,” he started, but she cut him off.

“Donnie, you don’t have to come with me. I wouldn’t expect you to. I wouldn’t even want you to, because it probably means you’re dead. But I have to get to Stacy. I have to. Madison died asking me to do this. I can’t not do it.”

Donnie stepped closer to her and placed his hand on her arm. “That wasn’t what I was going to say,” he said. “I’m going with you, no matter where it is. I was going to ask how. Even if we get to Cape Cod, it’ll be near impossible to cross the bridges, won’t it? They’ll be shut down, patrolled,
something
. Those were the rules. How do we even
get
to her?”

Michelle shook her head. “No idea,” she said, punctuating it with a sniffle. “I’ll swim. A boat. Don’t care. I have to get to her.” For the first time since they had entered Madison’s office, Michelle met Donnie’s gaze. Behind the redness, the puffiness that had developed from the crying, he saw more confidence in Michelle’s eyes than he had ever noticed before. He felt any lingering doubts he might have had about going with her fade.

“Okay,” he said. He moved to Lambert’s body and dug into Lambert’s pants that were on the ground next to him, finding a clip in each of the hip pockets. The boss had left his gun in his office, but still had reserves. “Two clips,” Donnie said to Michelle.

She had watched his search and thought about stopping him, but she was touched by his determination to help. Finally, she allowed herself a small smile, sniffing at the same time. “Donnie,” she said, “there’s enough ammo down here to take out Rhode Island. We don’t need to raid a dead man’s pockets.” She looked down at Madison’s body again, then told herself not to do it anymore. The more times she looked, she thought, the harder it would be to leave.

Donnie nodded sheepishly. Michelle, though, was struck with a thought, and joined him at Lambert’s body. She removed the jacket that still covered Lambert’s upper body and investigated. He had been only partially dressed, so his wounds were obvious. There was, of course, the bullet hole, presumably provided by Madison, through the back of his head, but there were also bite marks on Lambert’s wrist and lower leg. The zombie that had been Madison hadn’t been working on his corpse when Donnie and Michelle entered, which meant those wounds were suffered while Lambert was alive. However the infection had gotten in, it hadn’t been from Lambert.

Michelle wasn’t sure how to feel about that. She had hated Lambert unequivocally since she realized the infection was back, assuming it had all been his fault. To find out she was wrong meant she hadn’t spent a large chunk of her recent life working in close quarters with such an awful human, but on the other hand, it meant Michelle had no idea how the infection
did
get in.

She lowered the jacket without explaining to Donnie what she had been looking for. He walked to the door and cracked it open, peeking into the hallway.

“How does it look?” Michelle asked.             

“Cal’s body sticking out of the bathroom,” he said. “Don’t see anything else, and looks like’s nothing’s been working on him. Think we got the last of them?”

“We can hope so,” she said. The lack of any creatures eating Calvin could be nothing but good news, she figured. “Go to the storeroom.”

Donnie nodded and pulled the door all the way open. What Michelle saw coincided with what Donnie had reported — there was nothing in sight to fear. All the same, she kept her gun in her hand. Donnie, she noticed, did the same.

They stepped back into the hallway, Donnie first. When Michelle passed through, she stopped and pulled the door closed behind them. No way was she going to accidentally peek back in and see Madison again unless she had to.

Donnie made his way to the second door on the right — the storeroom, where the whole facility should have been able to get food and survive for as long as they might need to. But in the construction of the facility, the storeroom hadn’t been viewed as the panic room; the entire
facility
had been seen as the panic room. As such, the storeroom
hadn’t been built to be secure — just to be a room. The swinging door didn’t even lock, didn’t even
latch
. Donnie pushed it open and flipped the light on.

For all her years there, Michelle had only been in the storeroom a handful of times, and none in several months. She hated the room. It reminded her of loss, of what might have been but no longer would be. There were three lines of shelves, each at least twenty-five feet long and eight or ten feet high. The first two sets of shelves were lined with all sorts of nonperishable foods and bottles of water, looking like a Y2K clearance sale. The third shelf, though, was full of weapons, ammunition and similar supplies. As much as Michelle had always hated the room, it now felt like a godsend. She sighed every time she had ever gone in, but this time, for the first time, it was more of a happy sigh, a relieved noise escaping her mouth.

“How do we do this?” Donnie asked. “I mean, we can’t carry much, can we? Four arms can only hold so much.”

Michelle shook her head. “Madison,” she said again. “Madison brought in camping backpacks for each of us a few years ago. ‘Perfect for being on the move,’ she said.” When Donnie nodded, Michelle went on. “They’re in the office. Cabinet under the coffeemaker.” Donnie nodded again, but didn’t move. Michelle glanced behind her unwillingly. “Can…” she started, “…can you get them? I can’t go back in there.”

Donnie’s eyes went wide as he realized what she had been saying. “Yeah! Yeah, sorry,” he said, hurrying out. Seconds later, he came back, carrying the pair of packs.

Michelle nodded to him, then turned to face the room again. “So,” she said sadly, “where do we start?”

Chapter 4: Jesus Christ Himself

Celia felt something nudging her side, but she didn’t want to get up, didn’t even want to open her eyes. She waved her hand at whatever it was and continued to lie there. Maybe, she thought, if she stayed asleep, she’d eventually convince herself it had been a dream.

“Hey,” a not-entirely-familiar voice said, and the nudge came again. “Hey.”

She moaned in what she hoped was a “leave me alone” tone, but when another nudge and another “Hey” came, she gave up and opened her eyes. She was confused right away. The leg her head was resting on was wearing cargo pants, and she was sure her father had been in jeans. On top of that, she noticed the presence of a second body part, other than the leg, was cushioning her rest, and she pulled her head away immediately.

Celia sat up and turned to see who she had been resting on, and blinked for a few seconds before recognizing the face. Another few seconds later, she remembered the name of Simon Stone, the young man whose dad her own father had befriended. “What?” she said, trying not to sound annoyed but thinking she had failed.

Simon’s nervous downward gaze told Celia that yes, she had failed. “Your dad,” he said quietly, pointing to the door, “just came back in. With Mr. Lowensen. I think they’re going to say something.”

Celia looked in the direction Simon was pointing. She saw her father and the teacher standing just inside the door, Simon’s father a few feet away. It seemed they were engaged in some kind of whispered argument. Her father looked furious, and Mr. Lowensen looked terrified more than anything else. And, unlike when he had been addressing the students earlier in the day, when Celia had thought he looked scared but feigning confidence, there was no false bravado about Mr. Lowensen this time. Many of the other adults — and a few of the kids, including Stacy — had formed part of a circle before them.

She stood up and, without waiting for Simon, walked over. She heard him following behind as she pushed through a few of the people standing around and got near.

“Daddy, what’s going on?” she said when she was close enough not to have to raise her voice.

Andy spun to face her. He looked at her in what she thought was pity but didn’t answer. Instead, he went on to scan the rest of the crowd around them before looking back to the teacher and saying, “Lowensen?”

Mr. Lowensen looked at him in disbelief, but when it became clear that Andy was not going to back down, he nodded and said in a voice barely above a whisper, “We can’t stay here.”

Celia heard some murmurs of confusion in the crowd. Simon’s father, standing closest to the other two, finally spoke. “…Why?” he said, sounding like he half-believed this to be a joke.

“We don’t have anything,” Mr. Lowensen said. “Not really. What food we have is worthless. Minimal power. It wasn’t scheduled to arrive yet.”

The murmurs grew louder, and Celia heard someone at the back of the group start to cry.

“What does that mean?” asked a man who had to be in his late 60s from just to Celia’s left. “Where do we go?”

Mr. Lowensen shook his head and looked at the floor. “I don’t know,” he said.

Fists bared, the 60-something man stepped toward the teacher with a pronounced limp — he appeared to have a nearly dead left leg. Before he had shuffled more than a step or so, Andy stopped him. A few others had started to move forward behind the man, but when Andy stopped him, he stopped them all. “Hold on,” Celia’s father said. “Hold on. I want to do the same thing. But we need everyone at full strength. Everyone. We need everyone able to contribute.” He looked at Celia as he said the last part.

“What does he mean when he says the food is worthless?” the man in his 60s asked.

“There isn’t much of it, and we’re unlikely to be able to get what there is,” Andy said. “I checked out his claim on this, and it’s true. Staying here, as things stand now, is not an option.”

“He killed us!” a woman cried out from the other side of the group. “He killed my little girl! We can’t survive out there. We can’t!”

Andy waved at everyone to calm down. “We
can
,” he said. “We can. I did it in twenty-ten. Lowensen did. And if
he
can, anyone can. No reason to think we’ll die this time around.” Celia could hear confidence in her father’s voice, but she didn’t believe his words, and she got the gut feeling that he didn’t, either. “What we
can’t
do,” he went on, “is lose our heads. We can’t go crazy, and we can’t panic. Do that and we
are
dead. But if we stay calm and rational, we can stay alive.”

“What do you propose, Andy?” Roger said. Celia noticed he hadn’t moved to attack Mr. Lowensen when the others had. “How do we approach this?”

Andy looked at Roger with a look of gratitude. “First thing,” he said, “is we can’t
all
stay together. There are, what, 45 of us? 45 people together is a good way not to notice if one gets bitten, if one goes missing. Smaller groups are better. Easier to hole up in groups of ten than groups of forty. Need less food, less room. I say we cut ourselves down. Four, five groups at least.”

“And then what?” the 60-ish man asked.             

Andy almost smiled. Celia saw the corners of his mouth turn up briefly, but he caught himself. Despite himself, this was his element. This was where he knew the answers, depressing though those answers may have been. He knew what to say to these questions. He looked around at the people in the semi-circle, one by one, before answering. “We survive,” he said.

Another murmur went through the group as they all processed his announcement. Finally, the “He killed us” woman collapsed against the man next to her in tears. He staggered briefly, but collected himself and addressed Andy. “That’s all?” he asked, with a hint of anger behind the words. “‘Survive’? That’s all you can tell us?”

Roger answered for Andy. “What do you people want from him? He’s in the same predicament we’re all in. He didn’t do this. I’ll tell you what we do — those of us who can get home, do it. Just like twenty-ten. You hide where you can. You —” he pointed to the 60-something limper. “Didn’t I hear you saying this afternoon you were still planning on going home tonight? You can’t live far, then, am I right?”

The man said nothing, but grunted some sort of agreement.

“Fine,” Andy said, jumping back in. “You know how many your house can hold, then. Take who you can and go.” The man nodded slowly this time. “Any of you who live nearby, do the same.”

“We’re Out-Theres!” one of the students cried excitedly. He and his brother shared a quick fist-bump.

“Hey!” Andy said, his voice stern. “This isn’t a game, son. I was an ‘Out-There.’ So was Mr. Lowensen. There are probably some others here as well. And not a single one of us ever wanted to do it again. There’s no glory in shooting a gun to survive. Some of us will die. Maybe you. Maybe your brother. Maybe your mother. We
don’t
want to be Out-Theres. I don’t care how good you are with a gun; you aren’t safe in a zombie world until your gun isn’t even necessary.”

The young man looked at the floor and nodded. After a second, though, he and his brother glanced at each other again, and Celia saw them smile.

“Okay,” Andy went on. “Group off. Let’s see where we stand.”

Celia watched as groups of people assembled — smaller, she noticed, than her father had hinted at. The old guy had gathered who appeared to be his wife and son, plus another young man, and had huddled together in a corner, closing themselves off from anyone who approached. Another group — the crying woman and her husband, a student who seemed unrelated, and a father-daughter combo — was doing the same on the other side. The two excited brothers and their mother had already made it clear that they were leaving and taking no one with them.

Andy watched as well, with some annoyance. If there was any chance of getting to their house, he knew, he could have taken the Stones, Stacy, and at least half a dozen other people — he had a fully stocked cellar, and it had been stocked since 2012 when they had moved in. The problem, though, was that their home was just outside Ithaca, and, supplies or not, they couldn’t legitimately hope to make a drive of that length. His home was not an option.

With those groups formed, Andy tallied about 34 or 35 people left. “Okay,” he said, “that’s good. You folks go to your homes. Remember, just like twenty-ten,
don’t let anyone in
. Get in, lock the doors, pull the curtains, whatever. I don’t care if Jesus Christ himself comes knocking at your door —” At his mention of Jesus Christ, Andy thought he heard a snicker from Lowensen behind him. “— you don’t open it.”

The 60-something man limped forward. “We don’t have space,” he said with a hint of an apologetic tone and a glance to the side, “but you folks do have a few options.”

“What do you mean?” Roger asked from his post near Andy.

“In 2010,” he started, “they had been working on construction on Hyannis’ first Wal-Mart. Never finished it, with everything that happened, but I heard a rumor a few years back that the building would be turned into a standing shelter. ‘Safe haven any time,’ they said.”

Andy nodded. He wasn’t sold on the idea, considering that he was trying to figure out a way to escape from what he had thought was a “safe haven.”

“Also,” the older man said, “Camp Edwards.”

“What’s Camp Edwards?” Lowensen asked softly.

The man sent the teacher a furious look. “Fucking teacher in Hyannis doesn’t know Camp Edwards,” he spat. “National Guard. Used to be a big guard base. I know in the years since, they refashioned it so soldiers’ entire families could live on base. Easier that way. If there’s an open safe place out there, I’d wager Edwards would be it.”

Andy nodded. Camp Edwards sounded much more practical to him. He thought he remembered seeing some faded signs for it on the way in. “How far?” he asked.

The man looked to his wife. “What would you say, Gina? 25 miles?”

His wife, who hadn’t spoken the entire time, jumped at the mention of her name. She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “More like 20. Maybe less,” she said.

The man nodded. “She’s probably right. So about 20 miles to Edwards, about five to Wal-Mart. Those are your best bets, I’d say.”

Immediately, several of those who were not yet grouped started speaking at once, each trying to defend his or her choice between the two options. Much of the group seemed to be favoring the Wal-Mart, though Andy was not part of that majority. He supposed it made a certain amount of sense, though, as people were choosing between two question marks, and the ones less used to being “out there” were opting for the less distant question mark.

“Guys, there’s no point arguing,” he said finally. “It sounds to me like there is a decided faction that wants to go to Wal-Mart. If you want my advice, I’d say you all split into a couple groups and get yourselves there. The rest of you, head for the base.”

The group at large seemed to be okay with Andy’s advice, and he saw a few of them start to make their groups. A moment later, he felt a tentative tap on his shoulder.

“What?” he said without turning to face Lowensen.

“Where,” the teacher started, nervously, “do you think you’re going to go?”

“Where are
you
going to go?” he asked back. “I’m not your Google, Lowensen.”

“I wasn’t sure. I guess…Camp Edwards? I mean, we were supposed to be a safe haven here, but that failed. I don’t know what’s going on with that Wal-Mart building, but I don’t think I want to rely on it.”

Andy scowled. He hadn’t wanted to agree with the teacher, but the reasoning was sound. “Sounds like you’re with us then,” he said.

“Us too,” Roger said, walking up to them. “Wal-Mart seems unwise to me.”

“Listen to me, Lowensen,” Andy said. “You’re on a short leash. My daughter and the other kids, they’re allowed to be clueless. They didn’t live through this once already. But the fact that you did, you got all of us here and now we’re
trapped
? I stopped them earlier, but you had better not give me any reason to shoot you.”

The teacher slunk back into the corner like a wounded dog.

Andy looked around the room. The two Wal-Mart groups seemed to have formed, with what looked like about ten or eleven people in each. That left twelve people to go to Camp Edwards — Andy and Celia, Roger and Simon, Lowensen, Stacy, an athletic-looking woman in her mid-50s, her terrified son, a married couple with their daughter, and another boy who looked like he was by himself.

“By the way,” Andy said, looking back at Lowensen, “what was up with your little giggle earlier?”

Lowensen looked like he wanted to laugh again, but he resisted. “You said, ‘I don’t care if Jesus Christ himself comes knocking at your door,’” he said.

“So?”             

“Jesus Christ?” he said, eyebrows raised. “Mr. Ehrens, he was the
first
zombie.”