After Life (15 page)

“I…I don’t think so,” he said, worried that one wrong word would cause Michelle, rightly or wrongly, to shoot him in the head, a result he wasn’t exactly eager for. “I really don’t think so,” he repeated.

“How do you feel?” Michelle asked.

“Fine,” Donnie said. That was the truth. Other than the external injuries from his fall, and the fact that his heart was beating so hard he thought it might burst at any moment, Donnie felt none the worse for his encounter. “I feel fine right now.”

Michelle nodded. “That’s good,” she said, “but infection can take a few minutes, especially if it doesn’t directly enter the bloodstream. If it got in through your eyes or your mouth, you’ll feel it eventually.”

Donnie knew all this was true. “So what do we do?” he asked.

Michelle shrugged. “Wait.” She put the water bottle and rag on the church stoop and climbed the stairs, where she entered the church and looked around inside briefly. There was one body she found, only a few feet inside the door. It had once belonged to a small child, no older than 8, and, judging by the blood streaking down each side of the child’s mouth, it had been a zombie by the time the bullet hole that Michelle saw in its forehead found its target. A few feet away, Michelle found a gun. When the rest of the area proved empty, Michelle assumed this child had infected the woman that had attacked Donnie, and the woman had destroyed it but, for whatever reason, hadn’t killed herself. Heaven, Michelle thought ruefully. There’s that old worry that suicide is the one way not to get there. Even in infection, some clung to that.

When Michelle came back out of the church, deciding that no one else was inside, she made sure to shut the door behind her.

Donnie stayed several feet away from Michelle while she secured the area. If he
had
been infected, he wasn’t about to stand so close to her that she wouldn’t have the chance to react when he changed. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is how it happened that she came out the door right then. It’s been hours since this started. Why was it right when I was standing by the door that she wanted to leave?”

“You ever read Salvisa’s stuff?” Michelle asked immediately.

“On the website? Sure, a lot of it,” Donnie said.

“He conducted this…oral history after 2010. Spoke to all sorts of survivors. One of the conclusions everyone seemed to come to is that a zombie, if it is somehow in an enclosed space without knowing there are people outside, will just…be. They’re content to stay trapped, because they don’t
know
they’re trapped.

“But the second something alerts them to the outside world,” she continued, “like, for example, knocking, they’ll do anything to get out. Once they know where food is, it’s all-consuming. There was this story I read, from a juvenile detention center. Some zombies in a cell ended up destroying their
own
brains trying to get through the bars.”

As she spoke, Michelle had moved on to the body of the woman on the ground. She rolled the body over and felt around her person, in her pockets, through her clothes.

“What are you looking for?” Donnie said, taking a seat on the stoop from which he had fell.

“Not sure,” Michelle said. “But it can’t hurt to look.” She pulled a small gold chain with a cross on the end out from underneath the woman’s sweater. “Maybe this is why she didn’t like you,” she said, turning to Donnie with a smile.

Donnie chuckled. “Maybe,” he agreed, nodding.

Her search concluded, Michelle stood up. “It’s been, what, five minutes?” she asked. “How do you feel?”

Donnie started to answer, then stopped. He wasn’t about to lie to her. He stood up himself and paced about ten feet in either direction, feeling his face and hands as he did. Finally, he stopped. Michelle, he noticed, had yet to put her gun away, or even to remove her finger from its spot just millimeters from the trigger as she watched him consider.

“I think I’m good,” he said.

“You sure?” Michelle said, raising an eyebrow toward Donnie. As she did, though, he noticed her gun hand relax. She wanted confirmation, but she also trusted him.

“Yeah,” he said. “I mean, my head hurts like hell from where I fell. And my ass is killing me. But that’s all external stuff, right? I’m good.”

Michelle eyed him bottom to top, ending by stepping close to Donnie and checking his eyes. Finally, she tucked her gun back into its holster. “Good,” she said, putting a little too much of a light tone into her voice. “Then let’s go. Hyannis awaits.”

Donnie nodded and followed Michelle toward the church car. He too tried to affect a light tone. “I can’t believe we’re stealing a church car.”

Michelle spared a glance back at the body of the woman in the bushes. “Yeah,” she said. “We’re stealing a church car.” After a short pause, she added, and Donnie was sure she was no longer talking about the car, “May God forgive us.”

Chapter 12: Hungry

Celia couldn’t remember ever in her life feeling hungrier than she was right then. At first, she thought she was just being childish, until she really thought about it and realized that she hadn’t eaten since sometime the night before, and it was now early evening.

She was hesitant to say anything, though; their lives were on the line, she felt like a little hunger was the last thing she should be complaining about. After all, she knew her father had gone days at a time without food in 2010; surely she could go one.

By the time her father had gotten the car turned around, the convoy of military vehicles was out of sight. They drove along in its wake at a slightly slower speed than they had been going before. Once, briefly, Celia thought she caught a glimpse of the trailing vehicle, but Roger slowed long enough that the convoy disappeared again.

“Where do you think they’re going?” Lowensen said from the backseat.

“Hard to say,” Andy said. “There’s always that Wal-Mart building.”

“You really think they could be going there?” the teacher said. “If a National Guard base wasn’t secure, how secure could an old department store be?”

“Let me know when you’ve got a better idea, Lowensen,” Andy said, sounding exhausted. “I already thought I had a safe place.” Lowensen sat back in his seat and looked at the floorboards.

Suddenly, the young man sitting in the middle seat leaned forward. “Mr...” he started, before floundering.

“Andy, son,” Celia’s father said. “Call me Andy.”             

He nodded. “Yes, sir.”             

“What did you need?”

The kid blushed. “I...I don’t mean to distract you, but…” he stopped speaking then and looked to the floor of the car.

“What’s your name?” Andy said, turning slightly in his seat.

“Travis,” the kid said, not looking up.

“Travis,” Andy repeated. “Believe me when I tell you this. You can’t say
anything
wrong in the world of the zombies. You
shouldn’t
know what to do. If you have a question, you ask it. Never be embarrassed.”

Travis nodded. “It’s just so…unimportant.”

“No it isn’t.”

“I’m just…” he hesitated again, before letting it all out in one breath. “Sir, I haven’t eaten since this morning, and I know it’s not that important, especially considering everything else that’s going on and the fact that we don’t even know where we’re going to end up, but if there’s any chance we could take a minute to find some food, I’d really appreciate it. I’m just so hungry.”

The car was silent for a minute. For her part, Celia was happy someone had broached the subject, but until she knew how the others would react, she didn’t dare voice her agreement.

Finally, Andy laughed out loud. No one else in the car made a sound as Andy worked to control himself. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s fine. Tell you the truth, son, I’m starving myself.”

“You are?” Travis said, like he thought Andy was saying that just to make him feel better.

“I am indeed,” Andy said. “Tell you what. I can’t very well stop Roger up there right now, but first chance we get, I’ll dig through our trunk. I’ve got a fair amount of food back there.”

Celia nodded. She remembered rolling her eyes at her father’s insistence on the survival kit — complete with food, water, ammunition and clothes — in the trunk of the car, but now she was grateful.

Andy continued. “If I had any brains in me at all, I’d have grabbed some when we were stopped back there. Been hungry since I found out we didn’t have any food. Seems to me, if I was hungry, I’d have thought to, you know, eat. But no worries, son, we’ll get something to eat for all of us.”

Travis smiled, the first even moderately upbeat expression he had given since he joined them in the car. “Thank you, sir.”

Celia was happy her father planned to get them some food, but was curious about the surprisingly optimistic tone her father had adopted since their run-in with the Guardsmen a few miles back. Her father was a positive person, sure, but his jovial nature of the past few minutes had Celia on alert. Why would he sound
this
positive? There was no reason Celia could figure, unless her father had decided that they were doomed, and didn’t want everyone to go out sad.

Ultimately, she decided to keep her father’s motivation out of her mind. He had his reasons, she knew, and it was best not to question them, lest she actually find out those reasons.

Instead, Celia kept her eyes forward, and wondered where exactly it was that they were driving to. And she prayed they’d get the chance to eat soon.

Part 3:

Unrest, At Peace

Chapter 1: Flowers

The fall air was crisp, just chilly enough to necessitate some sort of light jacket. As dusk settled in over the cemetery, the air chilled, dropping the temperature to the point that only the heartiest or stupidest would venture out without extra warmth.

The man entering through the gates, though, was neither of those things, and so he had a long beige trench coat pulled tightly across his body, and on his head he wore an old-style newsboy cap pulled low. With the jacket tight across his body, the outline of a holster could just be seen on his right thigh, barely below the spot where his hands were jammed into his pockets. There was no car in the small lot behind him; the man appeared to have walked there.

He strode with purpose as he passed through the sparsely populated graveyard. He seemed to be targeting some spot near the back, as he didn’t spare even a glance at the other tombstones while marching.

The wind picked up, swirling enough to throw a few leaves around the man. He shivered and pulled his hands from his pockets to flip his collar up, revealing dark brown leather gloves on both hands. He returned them to his pockets and pulled the coat tighter around him.

The man made his way through the dated, slightly crumbling gravestones in the front of the cemetery, finally crossing over into a new branch, where the stones looked newer, more polished. Except in the places of the brand new plots, where the dirt and sod had been recently churned, the grounds in the area were not well kept, with the grass growing higher than normal for a cemetery and the red, yellow and orange leaves going almost entirely unraked.

None of these features seemed to garner any notice from the man, though, as he finally found his target tombstone, one of the smallest there, near the furthest back corner. He slowed as he neared, and finally came to a stop a few feet shy of a plot that had not quite been there long enough to blend into its surroundings, but was clearly not fresh.

The man stood before the grave looking down at it, his shoulders slumped. For at least five minutes, he stood there unmoving, unspeaking.

Finally, he removed his hands from his pockets and pulled his cap from atop his head. It revealed a clean-shaven head that was as dark as the gloves on his hands. He pulled the gloves off and placed them, with his hat, into his pockets. That job done, the man crouched down, balancing like a coach in a timeout.

The gravestone he stared at had only a few words etched into it. There was no epitaph, no deep meaningful phrase, just a name and dates:

REGINA STONE

June 15, 1971 - August 19, 2029

The man brushed his hand over the churned dirt, near where the woman’s feet would likely be. Finally, he spoke, without looking up from the ground.

“I wanted to bring you flowers,” he said. “Even went out to your garden to pick them. But you told me not to ever bring anything that dies to your grave. Nothing that dies. But, honey, they’re flowers. I so want to just bring you a bouquet of flowers.

“Like I did when we were dating. I promised you I’d bring you flowers the first time I saw you every month. And I did. I did.” He chuckled to himself as he continued. “I went broke in the ‘90s buying you flowers.

“I never cared about them. Couldn’t tell a rose from a daisy from a, what-do-you-call-it, forget-me-not. But you loved them, and I would have brought you a tree, a whole sequoia, if it meant I’d get to see that smile on your face when you got them. I don’t care if it was predictable.

“Today is the first of November. The first. It’s the first time I’m seeing you this month. So, yes, Regina, I wanted to bring you flowers. You deserve flowers. You deserve
all
the flowers. It kills me not to have brought you flowers. But you insisted.

“You must know that it absolutely kills me not to have you around anymore. But our boy is learning. He’s smart. Like you. You know that, I know, but it doesn’t make it any less true. He outgrew me years ago. I can teach him survival, common sense, but his true intelligence is all a product of you.”

The man stood up. Though he was no longer wearing his cap and gloves, he didn’t seem to be concerned with the cold. He took off his jacket and walked over to a nearby tree, hanging it from a branch. The removal of the jacket showed the man’s gun in his holster even more clearly. He stepped back to his wife’s grave and continued.

“They’ve decided to start schools again,” he said. “President Morgan announced it a few days ago. This time next year, in Hyannis, St. Louis and Santa Fe, three schools are going to be up and going. Morgan says they aren’t worried about overcrowding right away, says some people are going to want to send their children to school, and some are going to want to wait and make sure the schools are ‘worth it,’ whatever that means. ‘We’re going to return to our salad days, see the heights of the early days of the millennium,’ he said. Promises we’re going to have programmers, engineers, everything he seems to think we lost in 2010.” The man laughed. “The man promised ‘a phone in every pocket, a website for all occasions.’ Silly nonsense. But, honey, it’s a
school
. It’s a school for our boy.

“Simon’s going. No doubt in my mind. I’ve already talked it over with him, and he’s excited. I think he knows, Regina, that there’s only so much I can teach him, only so much I can do for him, now that you’re gone. I dare say that, if the zombies ever come back, Simon’s going to be in good shape, but anything else? I fear I won’t have him prepared. A boy needs his mother.

“Nonetheless, he’ll be going to Hyannis next year. I’m going to make sure he learns everything I can’t teach him. Everything
you
would have taught him. I’ll find teachers, people who know things, who can make sure our boy meets his potential.

“And then I’ll be by myself. Haven’t been by myself more than a night at a time since, what, 1992? But I’ll have that house all to my lonesome — no Simon, no…” the man’s voice cracked briefly, but he coughed and went on. “No you. I’m not sure how I’ll handle that. I know that you’re better now than you have been in, what, five years? You’re in heaven, looking down over us, instead of trapped in that blasted chair. I know this. And I’m happy for you. But you don’t know how hard it is to be down here, knowing I’ll be all alone.

“Even near the end, when you were almost gone, I could look in your eyes and know you were still in there, still helping me. Just still there. It’s horribly selfish of me. Horribly. You are in a better place now than you have been in years. Years. It’s not fair of me at all that I should wish you back here with me, trapped in that useless body. But I do. I can’t help it, Regina.”

Tears were falling from the man’s eyes as he spoke, crouching over his wife’s grave. He brushed a couple of them away.

“I just want you to know what I always wanted you to know: you were better than me. I was blessed that you agreed to go on that first date. Blessed that you found it in you to spend time with me at all, let alone stay married to this fool for 37 years. I know I’m not a bad man, and I never have been. But you made me so much better than I would have been. I’d like to think that I did the same for you, but I don’t know that that’s true. But I
know
you made me better. And I hope I can do that for Simon.

“I wish I could be telling you these things to your face. But this is the best I can do. So I’ll come see you as often as I can. I’ll let you know how Simon is doing, in his life and in his…” his voice cracked again. “…in his school, thank God.

“And,” he added, his voice gaining in conviction, “next time I come, I’m bringing you flowers. You deserve flowers.”

“You don’t have to do it next time, Dad,” said a voice from behind the man. When he turned, he saw a much younger man standing some fifteen feet back, looking every bit the older man’s miniature, holding a full bouquet of flowers.

“Simon?” the man asked, confused. “What are you doing here?”

“I saw you in the garden before you left,” the boy said, nervous. “I saw you start to pick flowers five different times, but you never finished. I figured you were coming to see mom. So after you left, I went back there and picked a dozen and followed you.”

Simon’s father smiled. “You’re a good boy,” he said, “but do you know why I didn’t bring flowers?”

“Mom told you not to,” Simon said simply. “And I bet she meant it, Dad. But if she knew what you were going through, how much it meant for you to be able to bring her flowers, she’d change her mind, Dad. I know it. It’s the first of the month. Just bring her flowers. No matter what she said, it’s what she’d want.”

The man stared at his son for a full minute. Finally, he walked over to the boy and hugged him.

“Dad?” Simon said. “Dad, you’re crushing the flowers.”

Simon’s father broke the hug then and pulled away, taking the flowers with him. He stepped back over to the grave and placed them at the foot of the marker. He didn’t speak as he did so, but kissed his hand and patted the tombstone on his wife’s name. That done, the man stood up yet again and turned to face his son.

“You’re a good boy,” he repeated.

Simon nodded, clearly embarrassed by the compliment. His father retrieved his jacket from the tree branch and started to leave the way he had come, with Simon close behind.

On the ground, a few feet from Regina Stone’s grave, underneath the tree, a single dark brown leather glove lay in the grass, where it had fallen from the father’s jacket pocket. Around the cemetery, the wind died down, to the point that there was no need for the man to again bundle up, meaning the loss of the glove as he left.