Death After Life: A Zombie Apocalypse Thriller (12 page)

“Fuck you,” he hissed, making up for extreme unoriginality with existential venom. The gun discharged, the feeder’s brain was pierced, and its skull’s contents sprayed the seat-backs.

Voskuil rose, unsteadily, to see several people approaching him. Approaching him
with weapons
.

“He’s bit!” exclaimed the black guy from the ticket line. The sight of the man’s Smith & Wesson, admittedly wavering but still leveled at Voskuil’s chest, was a deafening call to action.

With the thoughtless self-preservation of an animal, Voskuil went into the routine he’d learned in self-defense courses and drew aim. He squeezed the trigger without the slightest hesitation. Hit in the chest, Uncle J. inadvertently fired as he collapsed. The errant shot virtually severed the wrist of his niece, Hilary, who would never regain full use of her hand.

Voskuil turned and ran. Bullets zinged past him as other audience-members shot to kill. He heard the teenage girl wailing in pain and anguish behind him.

Some people would have been deeply troubled by this fleeting auditory detail. These were the wracking, soul-chilling howls of someone who had lost more than they imagined possible, and on top of it felt more raw, physical pain than they could conceive of.

But Voskuil was not the type of man to carry this with him. Faced with an angry feeder or a small child, if it was you or him, Voskuil knew in his heart of hearts the choice was already made.

He banged through the emergency exit doors and onto the street. Racing across a wet alley, he recognized the adjacent parking lot as the one in which he left his car.

Voskuil climbed the cyclone fence like a nimble teenager. He was on the fluid autopilot of the desperate. He had already dropped lithely to the pavement by the time the other audience-members plunged through the exit doors, out for his blood.

Voskuil darted to the driver’s side of his Porsche, crouched and slipped the key into its lock. The door opened and he slithered behind the wheel. Hoping they hadn’t seen him yet, he pulled the door shut as soundlessly as he could.

Only when he’d fired up the ignition and thrown the gearshift in reverse did he risk a glance out the windshield.

His pursuers must have heard the car engine because three shapes were running toward the fence. Someone stuck their handgun through the links to squeeze off a hurried shot.

Voskuil felt his rear bumper crunch into that of another vehicle. He slammed the car into drive and leaned on the gas pedal. The Porsche leapt forward, scraping the front of a minivan before bouncing onto the street.

Voskuil, keeping low, gunned it. In seconds he was a block away and could drive normally as the theater receded behind him. No one else was on the road.
 

He’d made it.

Voskuil’s elation at his temporary escape melted into terror when he looked at his throbbing forearm. He was in the process of hitting a freeway ramp at 45 miles per hour when he noticed it and he benefitted from another piece of luck (as though someone, upstairs or down, was guiding his course) that the ramp didn’t curve at all. Otherwise, he would have driven straight through the guardrail. For in that terrible moment, his eyes, and his full concentration, was on the bite.

Bitten. A real bite. Skin broken, flesh pierced, blood drawn. No two ways about it. That meant only one thing.

He was infected.

Which meant death, anywhere he went, no matter who he talked to. Instant, summary execution.
Euthanasia
. Even his own mother was expected to do her duty and put lead in his head. Were she still alive, of course. Voskuil had lost her at a particularly damaging age, 14, and it colored his teens in ways that would make disturbing stories of their own.

Now, it seemed an utter certainty that soon he would be dragged kicking and screaming into a triage like his own, where someone just like him would inject acid into his brain and whisper meaningless, deceitful reassurances the whole time.

Voskuil admitted to himself that the scenario was a melodramatic exaggeration because he would fail the first v-test and be shot on scene. Truth be told, the deed would be done by someone like Lena Gladden’s butch wife.

Voskuil wasn’t ready to die.
 

He refused to accept his self-diagnosis, however clinically accurate it was. James Voskuil couldn’t go out like this. No… Not at 41, single and alone, because he got bit watching a cheesy road-trip comedy.

No.

He piloted his car onto a lofty intercity arterial, most of the streetlamps burnt out and unreplaced. Voskuil searched his mind. Was there a
chance
?

The name of Voskuil’s fraternity brother, Wes McIntyre, popped into his head. The most successful of their college circle, Wes had found his way into the Department of Homeland Security. That was a coup, even before the onset of the virus, but since then it had become a veritable royal appointment.
 

Voskuil hadn’t talked with Wes in almost a year, but he knew his old friend was stationed at the CDC in Atlanta. Obviously this posting put him at the hub of research into the world’s deadliest affliction. We would either find a cure or shuffle meekly into the void, where countless other living things had gone.

Voskuil might have found it ironic when he zipped past a “There is no Cure” billboard except that they were so ubiquitous it was impossible to avoid one. Instead, his mind inexorably returned to the only chance he had.

He pawed the phone from his pocket and paged through the address book to McIntyre. He certainly didn’t have the guy speed-dialed. But they were good friends, once….

Voskuil hit “send” and waited for the phone to connect.

Hoping against hope.

#

While Voskuil dialed, Nic and Lena danced to a supercharged cover of the old Diana Ross song, “Upside Down.” Lena felt completely at peace just enjoying the familiar beat. Strangely enough, she’d discovered dancing post-virus. Now there was a passionate release in the dancing she had never felt before.
 

She’d once read that in war-torn Sarajevo a sense of fatalistic romance permeated the dance hall culture. Young couples met or courted on the dance floor, never certain if one or the other would be alive the next Saturday night. Many romances bloomed in the sharing of that intensely alive, not-to-be-taken-for-granted opportunity to
feel
.

This anecdote resonated with Lena more every day. The uncertainty of one’s existence added a powerful emotional dimension to any melody, and cast the specter of potential tragedy over any relationship.

Dancing with the woman she loved, Lena experienced fleeting bliss. Nic also seemed exultant, in perfect sync with both Lena and the music.
 

A few clubgoers watched admiringly; no one moved with such grace and passion, so they stood out like paired stars in an otherwise cloudy sky.

When the song segued into a less inspiring tune, Aloe Blacc’s “The Man,” the couple retreated to their table. Lena wanted to capitalize on the tidal wave of good vibes that dancing had produced. She was still tingling with life, in fact, as if she’d just popped Ecstasy and chased it with Red Bull.

It was time.

“So…. Wondering why I’ve ordered virgin drinks all night?”

Nic gazed at her. If she’d been too disconnected to notice that very thing, she was certainly quick to catch up. The knowledge was absent from her eyes one moment and there the next.

“You’re kidding,” she said. Lena was thrilled to see, in that first raw instant before Nic started thinking, a burst of joy. Whatever happened next, that filled her with joy of her own.
 

“I had it done six weeks ago but the results just came back the other day. We’re gonna be mommies!”

The joy had rapidly vanished from Nic’s eyes. As Nic spoke slowly and deliberately, Elena felt stung by every word. “How on earth…. Do you expect to raise a child in this world?”

This was not surprise talking. It was Nic’s deep-seated belief that no child deserved to grow up in this nightmare. And Lena had predicted just this reaction, which was why she’d taken so long to tell Nic, let alone having it done without her wife’s agreement.

“I know how you are about this,” Lena said, feeling the last of her warmth and security fading, “But it was actually my choice. If you don’t want to be around… That’s up to you.”

Nic’s sharp intake of breath told Lena that she’d hit back too hard. She immediately put an arm around her.

“Nic, you know that’s not what I want,” she said. “Not in a million years. It would kill me to lose you, in fact. I’m serious. Unless… unless there was someone else in our family. Someone else to keep me on this planet.”

“Jesus, you know what I do,” Nic said. “The odds of me enjoying my retirement benefits aren’t great.”

“That’s why I had to! Because lately, I haven’t been so sure I’m afraid of dying or just want to get it over with.”

“I know the feeling,” Nic said.
 

“This is
why
we stay alive, rather than curl up and die…. Because things might be better for our children. Because they deserve the chance to find out.”

“Hate to break it to you,” Nic said, too roughly, “But it hasn’t been looking great for ‘might be better’ in a long-ass time. Do you want to point out the encouraging trends that you’re gambling on?”

“It’s not about…. Fine, let’s just put guns in our mouths right now.”
 

Lena’s chilling seriousness stopped Nic in her tracks. Lena continued. “Come on! Why live through any more days like today? Days like yesterday? Days like
tomorrow,
and the day after that?!”

As Nic touched Lena’s face, tears were welling in her eyes, which was shocking. Lena could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen Nic cry.
 

“For you,” Nic said. “Any day with you is a good day. Whatever else…. I want to be here, like this….”

Then she kissed her and Lena knew it would be all right. Nic would be there with her, till the end. Whenever that was. And that was enough.

#

Wes McIntyre was roused from deep sleep by the blaring of his phone. He set it to ring like nobody’s fucking business, so there was absolutely no chance he would do what came naturally and go back to sleep.

“Ohmigod!” The woman beside him trilled, jumping out of bed as if discovering moray eels beneath the sheets.

“Sorry, if it ain’t loud, I tend to disregard this annoying piece of shit,” Wes said to the girl, whose name he’d forgotten, and grabbed the phone.

“McIntyre.”

“Oh, thank God. Thank God. Wes. It’s Jim. Voskuil. Jim Voskuil, man.”

“Right, sure, Jimbo. What’s up?” Wes said, rubbing his eyes. Why was Jim Voskuil from Yale calling him in the middle of the night? On infrequent Sunday evenings, they might talk about golf and old times with young women, but that was about it.

Speaking of young women, his eyes drifted back to last night’s conquest. Wes didn’t use his status to nail women. He was a purist, a pickup artist, and went to great pains giving each a convincing, but unique, life story during his approach. He liked to keep a low profile, avoiding TV cameras and carefully managing the media, so his face wasn’t widely known.

Voskuil babbled on, his voice so high and reedy it was barely recognizable. “You guys have been working on a cure, haven’t you? Around the fucking clock, right? Well… any luck? Between two old friends?”

It didn’t take Wes long to put together what was going on here. He sighed, taking the phone into the bathroom and closing the door. “Damn Jim. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Wes! Please. Tell me the truth.”

Something — and he would never be sure what — kept Wes from throwing out a glib, “Sorry, Jim. God knows we’ve tried…” and letting the guy cry himself off the phone. But he hesitated three seconds longer than he should have, and it told Voskuil everything he needed to know. “Wes. Buddy! Tell me you can help me…”

Wes found lying difficult only with his male friends, which may have been why he had so few of them. But he wanted to discourage Voskuil, as if that were possible. “You’ll never make it down here, the roads are all shot to hell and I can’t send a plane for you.”
 

“I have a million dollars,” Voskuil said. “For you. Cash.”

“I was gonna help you anyway,” Wes said immediately, though he wasn’t sure of that. “But fine, that’ll be nice.”

It did buy old Jimbo more consideration. You could do more with less these days, so the phrase “a million dollars” had regained a little of its old magic. Through it all, Wes had retained an ardent love of money. He knew how to turn it into more practical things.

“I’m on my way,” Voskuil said. “I’ll take care of everything right, don’t fucking worry. You can be sure I’ll be on your doorstep soon and not as one of them, either.”

“Great,” Wes said, though he meant, “Fuck.” He was well aware of the position Voskuil was putting him in. It was a security breach of the highest magnitude to disclose to a civilian that CDC might have found a cure. If this transgression was discovered, Wes would lose more than his job.

“One more thing, Jim. Call it a ground rule. If any new cure rumors pop up, and I don’t care if they come from L.A. and you’re in Davenport, Iowa…. Deal’s off and you die. Got that?”

“Got it,” Voskuil promised. “No one will know.”

#

In the wake of those few charged moments, Lena and Nic sat holding each other and listened to the music for awhile. Though the progressive trance built infectiously, and the endless patterns swirling on the wall seemed to quicken with new life, the club was clearing out.

Lena watched a table of twenty-somethings for a moment. They were dour hipsters, two couples, the kind who came to clubs to watch people having fun and cluck self-important bitchy-cisms to each other.

“Do you want to dance some more?” Lena asked Nic. Hipsters be damned.

“No. We should probably call it a night, don’t you think?”

Lena was about to disagree with her, call in a few chits, and get what she wanted. She was chasing the dragon, hoping to relive her happy memory.