After Life (23 page)

“Or we wait a half hour, hope they’ve gone by then,” Andy said. “There’s no need to be too hasty. You’re staying here. I can only assume Carla…” at Roger’s downward glance, Andy nodded. Carla had died somewhere between Barnstable and Hyannis, that was clear. “I hope she died knowing how grateful I, we, are. But we shouldn’t be sacrificing anyone else. If you keep sacrificing everyone, soon you’ll sacrifice anyone.”

The two made eye contact again, and Roger’s face again read a near-smile. “Do you know what ‘sacrifice’ means, Mr. Ehrens?” Roger asked. “I can’t define the word exactly, but I bet you can. But what I know about the word is when you give up something of value to get something else of value. Does that about cover it?” At Andy’s nod, he continued. “Mr. Ehrens, I am no longer of any value. My job is done. My son is in the hands of who he needs to be in the hands of. My wife has gone to a better place. There is only one thing left I can do for him. For all of you.”

Andy shook his head. “Roger, damnit, no. I’m not going to let you do this.”

“You don’t have a choice, Mr. Ehrens,” Roger said, putting his hand back on the door. “I need to protect my boy. This is the only way I can do it.”

Andy pushed Roger’s hand down. If he wasn’t going to stop him, he was at least going to know what he had planned. He had noticed, though, that the scrabbling outside the door appeared to have stopped, at least for now. “So, what, you’re just going to run out there, see how far they’ll chase you?”

Roger nodded. “I am. I will kill those that I can, draw away others. I’m a fast man, despite my age. All goes well, maybe I can draw enough away that you all can get out.

“Or,” he continued, “at the very least, considering that boy’s injury, I might be able to even the numbers out a bit. Make it a fair fight.”

With that, Roger put his hand back on the door’s crossbar. He raised it enough to open the door, then stopped and looked back at Andy again.

“Tell my son,” he said, exhaling. He looked suddenly ashamed. “Tell him I was bitten. Tell him I had a bite already, that I got it before I even saw you all again. Please.”

“I’m not going to lie to him, Roger,” Andy said. “He doesn’t deserve that.”

Roger met Andy’s eyes again and almost smiled. “You don’t have to,” he said. He coughed, then raised his right arm to his left wrist, pulling back his sleeve to show a bloody scratch there. It wasn’t a bite, but if it had come from a zombie, Roger’s fate was still sealed, if slower-acting. “You don’t have to lie. Just please, Mr. Ehrens, please take care of my boy. Teach him what he needs to learn.”

With that, Roger raised his gun and re-opened the door. He ran out into the night. As the door swung back closed, Andy heard the gunshots start.

He didn’t stop to listen. He pulled the door closed, lowering the crossbar back into place. The gunshots continued for a few seconds, growing fainter as, presumably, Roger continued his diversion.

Seconds later, the sound faded, and Roger Stone was gone.

Part 4:

The Family Way

Chapter 1: Sign of Life

“Mom?” the girl said. “Mom? I’m bored.”

The older woman shook her head, but didn’t respond. The girl, in her late teens, never saw this response, as she continued fussing over her toenails. Sitting on a floral-print couch, the girl had her feet propped on the coffee table in front of her and knelt over them with the tiny red brush from the bottle of polish that she held in her other hand.

Her blonde hair was pulled back into a slightly off-center ponytail, held in place by a bright pink band. In a pink spaghetti-strap shirt and black leggings, she couldn’t have been older than 17 or so.

The living room around her, too, was largely domestic. In addition to the couch, there were two chairs in the room — a leather recliner and a straight-backed wooden chair. The three chairs sat in a crude semi-circle that faced a high-end, wall-mounted, flat-screen television. The TV hung above a small entertainment center that housed a DVD player, satellite box and Nintendo Wii, with the associated remotes and handheld controllers sitting in the vicinity. The entire tableau was bookended by two enormous DVD racks, one on each side, which held a wide array of movies. The coffee table, except for the space occupied by the girl’s bare feet, held two large photographic books, an Entertainment Weekly, a TV Guide and two Kindles, all arrayed artfully across the table. The seating options and the coffee table all sat upon a grouping of white bed linens that covered the floor like big, cheap area rugs.

While the recliner sat empty, the straight-backed chair was filled by the middle-aged woman who had given the small head-shake to the girl’s declaration of boredom. She wore a thin pair of reading glasses low on her long nose as she looked down on a hard-bound book in her lap.

And then there were the candles.

All around the room — on the two couch end tables, along the credenza on the far wall, even sitting atop the electronics under the television — candles were lit and flickering. The room’s lone window, a large picture window over the couch, had a large empty bookshelf shoved between it and the couch, blocking light, meaning the candlelight provided the only light available for either the mother’s reading or the daughter’s nail painting.

The candles provided a cacophony of odors as well, as the candles were not the useful, utilitarian light suppliers of emergency; they were instead the decorative, perfumed things one might purchase at Yankee Candle or Bath & Body Works. They mixed with the smell of the nail polish, and the resultant odor attacked the senses with a mix of vanilla, cucumber, cinnamon, apple and ethyl acetate. Just below those scents was another, far worse one — the faint mixture of human waste, coming from somewhere deep within the home.

The two women didn’t seem to mind the scent, which was only accentuated by the stagnant air. The candles had all burned down to below half their height, and other, burned-out candles lay discarded in a corner, indicating that the women had had ample time to grow accustomed to the smell.

Her last toe painted, the girl recapped her polish. She leaned as close as she could and blew on her feet, then looked to her mother.

“I’m hungry,” she said, putting just enough of a whine in her voice to give it the definite “feed me” inflection children often give their mothers.

Her mother nodded, but didn’t take her attention from the book. The girl gave it ten seconds, then sighed. “Fine,” she said petulantly. She threw her legs off the table and forced herself from the couch, rising to her heels, balancing with her toes in the air.

She gave her mom the kind of look only a teenage girl can produce and hobbled to a door that stood just inside of a narrow hallway out of the room. She reached blindly into a cardboard box on the top shelf of the closet and pulled out a thin, brightly wrapped package, about the size of a candy bar. The girl examined the label, scowling at the words “Nutrisystem coconut almond bar,” before unwrapping it. She tore off a chunk about an inch long and sniffed it before biting it in half.

Hobbling back to the couch on her heels, the girl chewed slowly, scowling all the while. She threw the rest of the wrapped bar onto the coffee table next to one of the Kindles and plopped back into her seat, eying the other half of her bite as though she hoped it would change into something more appetizing. When it failed to do so, she swallowed the first bite, waited a few seconds, and threw the other piece into her mouth.

When that bite, too, was gone, the girl sat in silence for five minutes or so, growing more restless with each one. Finally, she leaned forward, reaching for the rest of the bar that was before her.

“I thought you didn’t like those,” her mother said without looking up.

The girl stopped, her arm still stretched out in front of her, inches from the bar. “I don’t,” she said. “But it’s not like we have any more Diet Cokes or peanut butter. I’m hungry.”

“Mmm,” her mother said. “Well, I think you’ve had enough for now. Once we run out of those, we’ll really be in trouble.”

The girl rolled her eyes and flopped back. “Yeah,” she said. “Kellee bought two years’ worth and ate, what, two meals? We can eat Nutrisystem forever.”

“We might have to, dear.”

“Well, great.” She rolled her eyes. “I guess, then, we’ll be super-thin when those things come.” She looked back to the bar on the table. “And we’ll taste like crap.”

The girl’s mother chuckled and closed her book, carefully placing her bookmark in place as she did so. “Why don’t you get some sleep?” she said. “We don’t need both of us awake this long.”

She shook her head. “I’ve only been up for, like, three hours, mom.” Her face suddenly grew more serious. “When is the last time you slept?”

“I can’t sleep,” her mother said with a sigh. “Every time I close my eyes, I’m afraid something will happen. The dead will come, or your sister…”

“That’s why I’ll stay awake. You can’t just stay up forever. Sleep.”

The older woman nodded. “Perhaps I will.”

Just then, a cry came from a room a little farther down the hall than the closet. It was a female voice, crying in pain.

Both women sat up at this, suddenly on alert.

“Kellee?” the mother called out. “Kellee, are you okay?”

A door in the hallway opened, and Kellee waddled out. She was breathing heavily and using the wall for support.

She was in her mid-20s at least, and could have been pushing 30. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, though nearly as many strands had come loose as remained in place. She wore an enormous pink and yellow dress. Her face was dripping with sweat as she made her way toward the living room.

And she was enormously pregnant.

Kellee’s mother rose from her seat at the first sight of the girl and hurried to her. She took her daughter’s hand in her own and put her other arm behind her back to help guide her into the room. The other girl watched with interest but didn’t yet make a move.

“Michelle, get up!” her mother said. “Move the coffee table, make some room for your sister.”

Michelle finally made a move, following her mother’s instructions. She unfurled an enormous blanket over the couch just before the other two got to it.

“What was that scream?” Kellee’s mother asked as she helped her daughter lie down on the couch.

Still breathing heavily, Kellee looked at her mother and sister before answering. Finally, she shook her head. “Contraction,” she said.

Her sister’s eyes widened, but her mother just nodded. “Was that the first big one?” she said.

“No,” Kellee said. “They’ve been coming for a while now.”

That got the mother’s attention. She pushed the coffee table even farther to the side, knocking over her straight-backed chair in the process, and knelt by her daughter’s side. “What does ‘a while’ mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Kellee said, wincing as she did. She moaned again, then breathed steadily for a few seconds. “A while,” she said finally. “They’re getting pretty bad.”

Her mother glanced at her watch. “Honey, you should have told me. With the way your stomach has been bothering you, you shouldn’t be taking any chances,” she said. “Come on.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand again and pulled on it, standing as she did.

“Mom, what are you doing?” Michelle asked. “She should lie down.”

“No, she shouldn’t. Not on the couch. If she’s lying down, she’s doing it on the floor. But if the baby’s coming, she needs to squat.”

“Squat? Like she’s peeing in the woods?”

“That’s how it’s done, dear,” her mother said. “Now hush, so we can do this.”

Michelle rolled her eyes and stepped back from the other two. At the same time, Kellee got up from the couch. Just as she got to her feet, though, she let out a cry again, grabbing at her midsection.

“Squatting it is,” her mother said, centering her daughter over the bed linens on the floor.

“She looks like it hurts,” Michelle said.

Her mother nodded, but barely seemed to have acknowledged the words. Kellee cried out again, bending over as she grabbed at her enormous stomach.

“Mom, she looks bad,” Michelle said again. “Should I go try to find someone?”

“No!” Kellee cried through heavy breaths. “No,” she said again once she had gathered herself. “No, don’t go out there. Not for me. Not for anything.”

“Kell,” Michelle said softly. “Kell, you don’t look good.”

“It’s fine,” her sister snapped. “It’s a contraction. They happen all the time. It’s how babies get born. That door doesn’t open.”

As Kellee spoke, Michelle’s attention was drawn lower, to the white linens on the floor. Just below where her sister stood were three red spots. Seconds later, they were joined by a fourth, then a fifth.

“Mom?” Michelle said. “She’s bleeding.”

Her mother nodded. “That happens.”

As the woman reassured her daughter, though, something inside Kellee opened up, and a veritable river of red flowed down from beneath Kellee’s dress.

“Mom?!” Michelle cried again, stepping back.

Now Michelle’s mother sprang into action. Kellee looked down, seeing the situation for herself, and suddenly seemed overwhelmed. She collapsed to the floor, lying in a pool of her own blood, and started to sob.

“What do we do?” Michelle asked, frantic.

“Stay calm!” her mom hissed back at her, her voice barely above a whisper. “I’ll figure this out. She’ll be fine.”

“No, she won’t, mom!” Michelle cried, her voice getting louder as her mother’s got softer. “This is not how it’s supposed to be!”

Michelle watched her sister and mother for another moment, then nodded. “I’m leaving,” she said. “I’m going to find someone who can help.”

“No!” Kellee said, her voice barely audible. She had grown pale, lying on the floor, and the pool of blood was only growing. “You can’t…”

Michelle didn’t acknowledge her sister, making her way out of the living room, through the kitchen toward the door.

“Where are you going to go?” her mom called, apparently resigned to the fact that Michelle was leaving.

“Dr. Norris,” Michelle said as she unlocked the two deadbolt locks. “They’re, what, two houses down? If she’s there, she can help.”

“Honey, there’s no chance she’s there. None.”

“So what do I do, mom?!” Michelle cried. “Do what you’re doing? Just sit here and hope she doesn’t die? I can’t! If Dr. Norris is there, she can help. If she’s not, I’ll come back. But I can’t
not
look!”

Without waiting for a response, Michelle ran out the door, not even putting on shoes.

The family’s cul-de-sac was barren, empty. Street lights lined the road, but they were unlit, standing in darkness like suburban scarecrows. No creatures, human or otherwise, were in sight, other than the teenage girl on her doorstep.

Michelle stopped just outside her door for a second, though whether her hesitation was due to her surprise at the darkness, the fact that she was no longer used to the fresh air, or another reason wasn’t clear.

Seconds later, she kicked back into gear, sprinting as quickly as her freshly painted toes would allow to her right, to the first house off the cul-de-sac.

“Hello?!” she called when she reached the Norris’ doorstep. She pounded on the door, calling out again, but heard no response. “Hello?!” she called again, louder this time. Still nothing.

Michelle stepped back from the door. The house, like the rest of the neighborhood, was in darkness. If there was a candle burning inside, it was not apparent to her.

“Somebody help!” Michelle cried out, turning her attention to the street at large. “Somebody! My sister…she’s…somebody help!”

She looked in every direction, looking for somebody who would hear her, somebody who would come to Kellee’s aid.

The street, though, was dark and silent.

Michelle walked further from her house, her head turning right and left as she scanned the available windows for any sign of life. When she reached the street corner — some seven houses away from her own — Michelle seemed to realize the risk inherent in traveling so far from safety and slowed down.

“Hello?!” she cried again, but the response from nothing didn’t change.