After Life (26 page)

And so Michelle sat there, her eyes and gun both pointed toward the small doorway, waiting for the third guard to approach.

“What… what the hell are you doing?” came the voice of the wounded guard, pained and breathless. The voice was higher-pitched than Michelle might have guessed, though that might have come from the fact that his attention as diverted to his rapidly spilling blood. “What the hell are you thinking?”

Michelle looked down at him. His face, which earlier had been bright red despite his inaction, was now blanched and pale. She felt a sudden pang of guilt at having shot him, but quickly pushed that emotion aside.

“My daughter is on the Cape,” she said, turning her attention back outside. “Morgan College. I need to get to her.”

The man coughed twice, then repositioned his hands over his wound. He breathed deeply several times. “You… dumb bitch,” he said as tears fell from his eyes. “My son’s at Morgan College, too. It’s the reason I’m still on duty. Your daughter’s as protected as anyone in the goddamn world. We kept anyone — human, zombie, who-the-fuck-ever — from crossing the bridge. She’s safe. You shot me. You shot me for
nothing
.”

This time, Michelle didn’t look at him. “No,” she said. “That’s not true. Zombies can be on the Cape. I don’t know how, but for all we know, the Cape is full of zombies right now, and all you’ve done is keep their saviors on the wrong side of the bridge.”

The man coughed, though Michelle couldn’t tell if it was a result of his wound or his disbelief of her claim. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “We’ve kept
everything
from the Cape. They can’t get there. There’s no zombies. None. If you’d read what came out of Stamford …”

“I
worked
at Stamford!” Michelle hissed at the man. “I worked there. I know everything that happened there. Our guard on the street maintained his post. Stood there and fought back as the dead attacked him. He protected us, kept any zombies from getting in. And you know what? They got down there anyway. They killed everyone there except me and one other person. They got all of us.”

“He didn’t do …”

“He did his job,” she said, anticipating his retort. “He did. He stayed out there and manned his post. However the zombies got down there, whoever it was, they were
humans
when they entered the facility. They were fine. Unwounded.

“We never really figured out what started the outbreak in 2010,” Michelle went on. “But, based on today, it came from people overestimating their safety, and not realizing that zombies can start anywhere.
Anywhere
. So I respect the job you’ve done here, Preston, but I couldn’t just sit in Connecticut and hope that you were enough, when I know there’s a
damn
good chance you wouldn’t be. I had to get to my daughter. And you never would have let me through.”

Preston didn’t speak for a minute, breathing deeply. Michelle spared a glance at his gut, and saw liquid coming through his clenched hands that was darker than normal blood. Finally, Preston breathed in, in what she recognized as a prelude to speech. “You better hope you’re right,” he said, in a voice that sounded pessimistic.

“I am,” Michelle said.

She and Preston sat in silence for at least a minute, if not more. Wherever the other guard was, he didn’t seem to be making any kind of approach. Once again, the only sound was the anguished breathing of Preston.

“What makes you positive?” Preston asked at last through painful spasms. He wouldn’t last much longer without aid, Michelle knew.

“I told you,” she said. “No one got in at Stamford. No one. There’s no doubt. But I watched everyone die. I watched,” she hesitated, reliving her experience, “I watched them.” Her voice broke, and Michelle felt tears streaming from her eyes. “I watched them die.” She sniffed, trying to contain the emotion, at least until she was safe again.

Preston didn’t respond. Michelle briefly glanced at him, and figured that his lack of response was due to his attention being turned toward his wound, and his energy turned toward keeping himself alive.

Michelle grew impatient, waiting for the other guard to reveal himself. She didn’t think anyone would be able to creep up to the booth, but she wasn’t secure enough in her belief to feel safe in her hiding spot. So she slowly and carefully pushed her weight forward and crept toward the door, painstakingly climbing over Preston’s body in the process.

Just then, she saw a flash of movement outside the small door. The guard, she guessed, had grown just as tired of waiting as she had, and was approaching the door with some degree of speed. Michelle raised her gun and pointed it, squinting into the darkness.

The darkness was almost complete. Almost. There was just enough ambient light to see another quick movement, as the approaching guard seemed to be using a zig-zag approach to her. Michelle’s instincts took over, and she fired ahead of the guard’s zag.

She didn’t know how accurate her shot was, but she heard a pained yelp from not far away and knew that, at the least, she had wounded the man. Judging from his continued gurgling, it hadn’t been a clean kill shot, but it had been enough for her purposes — her eyes adjusted to reveal a prostrate body lying on the ground, no more than twenty feet from the shack, clutching at its neck.

That was it. She had succeeded. The men were on guard, and they had tried to keep her from the bridge, but Michelle had beaten them. With luck, Preston, and perhaps the guard outside the booth, might even survive.

She stood up, stepping gingerly over Preston’s body. She didn’t want to graze the man’s gut and cause him any more pain than she already had. Michelle crossed over to the body of the guard outside the booth.

The man was still breathing, his hand on his neck as he tried to keep his blood where it was supposed to be. It was clearly a futile effort, as his hands, arms, neck and shoulders were completely covered in the dark redness that quickly told Michelle that the man didn’t have much longer to breathe.

“Hang in there,” she said, though she knew it was to no avail. The man, whose name tag Michelle couldn’t read in the darkness, let out two more short, quick breaths, then fell still. His hands fell from his throat, and he ceased all movement. He was dead.

Michelle knelt over the body, feeling flashbacks to Madison’s death in Stamford. Everything that had happened over the past five minutes suddenly collapsed in on her, and she fell in front of the body that was before her. She felt the tears flow freely, and Michelle let herself cry for Madison. She cried for Lambert, Cal, Preston, Emmanuel, and the other man she had shot. She cried for Stacy, for Lindsay Quinn’s daughter, for Lindsay Quinn and Ben. Michelle cried for everyone she knew who was dead or in danger because she, and her peers, had failed in their zombie protection plan.

She cried openly, kneeling over the guard’s body. She cried so forcefully that she was barely aware as Preston, ten or twelve feet away, suddenly sat up and fired a shot from an unknown weapon. The shot echoed into the night, and Michelle heard the sound of someone crying in pain, then falling to the ground and going still. The person couldn’t have fallen more than ten yards from where Michelle cried, and she hadn’t even noticed.

She didn’t know what had happened. She didn’t know who Preston had shot. But Michelle turned her attention back to the guard, who was now lying over top of Emmanuel’s body, his hands just above the other guard’s now-empty holster, Emmanuel’s gun now in Preston’s hands.

The two of them — Michelle and Preston — met eyes, and Preston gave out the slightest of anguished nods. “There were two guards patrolling the bridge,” he said. “Two. Not one. Get to Morgan College. Get there, get your daughter. And protect my son.”

Chapter 6: Well-Placed Destruction

Celia couldn’t sleep. Neither, she could tell, could Simon — the young man was still curled into a near-fetal position against the wall, his eyes open and unblinking.

Other than them, though, everyone else in the room appeared to be out cold and had been since Andy had drifted off a few minutes after finishing his story. That had been more than an hour earlier, and he was still sitting in his small desk.

Celia let her eyes fall from person to person. Andy and Simon she had already observed thoroughly — particularly Simon, as Celia found herself increasingly unable to keep her attention off of the young man — so she looked to her roommate.

Stacy was asleep in her own corner, her arms as always clutched around her midsection. Celia had to shake her head, reminding herself that she couldn’t, in fact, detect that the stomach had grown slightly larger since they had met less than a day earlier, that the growth she thought she saw was only her mind working with the new information that the girl was pregnant.

From Stacy, Celia’s attention turned the rest of the group, to Brandon, Travis, and Lowensen. The two boys were curled up — Brandon in his desk, Travis on the floor — looking like lost children. Lowensen, though, had splayed out, taking up as much room as he could. Even in sleep, he got on Celia’s nerves.

Celia scowled at his sleeping form. While she hadn’t shared the initial fury directed at Lowensen at his earlier confession, she didn’t exactly admire the man for the situation he had left them in.

No, Lowensen, who earlier had portrayed himself as a confident, knowledgeable teacher with enough guidance to direct an entire school, had turned out to be as scared, timid and ignorant as the students. As Celia. And she couldn’t help but hate him for that.

Celia closed her eyes and shook her head, ashamed with herself for having pushed so hard to convince her father to let her go to school. It had seemed so perfect, so risk-free. And yet here she was.

Celia opened her eyes and almost jumped. The teacher was looking back at her.

He had been asleep only seconds before, but now the teacher was awake, looking back at Celia. After a second, he pulled himself to a seated position and gave her a small beckoning wave.

Celia stood up slowly, not sure why he was calling her over. She made her way down the classroom steps toward the front of the room. As she did, Lowensen stood as well. He motioned for her to keep following, and headed toward the small doorway that presumably led to the offices and whatever else in the bowels of the building.

As he neared Simon and saw that he, too, was awake, Lowensen nodded for him to rise as well. He opened the door to the hall and wordlessly passed through. Simon and Celia exchanged confused looks, but they followed, Celia closing the door behind them.

“Come with me,” the teacher said once the door was closed and he could use his voice without waking their companions. He started down the concrete-and-floodlight corridor with purpose, clearly knowing exactly where he was going.

“Where are we going?” Celia said, whispering despite the lack of necessity. She followed regardless, hurrying to match the steps of the suddenly decisive teacher.

“First, to my office,” Lowensen said, smirking as he walked. “Then, to the teachers’ lounge, just past the chemistry lab.”

“Why your office?” Celia asked.             

Almost simultaneously, Simon, just behind Celia, muttered his own question. “There’s a chemistry lab?”

“There’s a chem lab,” the teacher confirmed, nodding as he walked. “You all likely wouldn’t have seen much of it for months, maybe longer. You weren’t ready. But there’s a chem lab, a cafeteria, a gymnasium… heck, there’s a squash court down here.”

“Why your office?” Celia asked again, speeding up to draw even with the teacher.

Again, he ignored her. Lowensen took the hard left turn necessitated by the hallway and, if anything, sped up. Celia made the turn as well, and almost suddenly stopped. There was moaning and scratching coming from the first door down this hallway.

“What… what is that?” Celia asked in a whisper.

Lowensen slowed slightly and gave a half-look at the room. “Cafeteria,” he said.

Celia had to rise to her toes to see through the high windows on the doors. And even then, she couldn’t see much beyond the hands. So many hands were clamoring for the door, pushing out. The door bulged against the pressure, but it wasn’t giving.

The group that had gone to eat. Celia hadn’t even thought of them since everything started. And now she felt horribly guilty for that. These people had died faster than anyone, hadn’t even been able to escape the room they started in. There had to be 50 people in there, all dead. Celia had seen more death in the last half a day than in her entire life up to that point, but the fact that she had completely forgotten these people was something else.

Celia looked through the window again, trying in vain to catch a glimpse of a full face. She wanted one person, one face to lodge in her memory, but between her height and the hands in the way, she couldn’t see anyone’s face.

Celia stared at the window. At the hands. She was going to remember those hands, so she wouldn’t forget anything else.

Finally, Celia broke away. Lowensen had left her far behind in the hallway, and even Simon had started to move on. She hurried to catch up. At the end of the hall, a door had been left slightly ajar, the light inside still on. Through the slit left in the door, the light fell ahead, casting a line of bright whiteness onto the hall floor. Celia could tell that the teacher’s attention was dead-set on that room, so she focused on it as well, assuming it to be the teacher’s office.

When the three of them reached the door, Lowensen paused briefly, one hand on the doorknob despite the fact that it was already open. He glanced at the two before pushing it the rest of the way.

The room inside looked like it had been occupied for months, maybe years. Celia didn’t know how long the teacher had been at Morgan College, had been staying there, but his office had the look of one that would belong to a tenured professor, not one in the first days of a school’s existence.

Just inside the door, barely avoiding getting beaned by its inward swing, sat a desk. There was a boxy, ancient-looking computer atop it, projecting some kind of flickering light, though Celia couldn’t see much of the screen from her vantage point. The keyboard was surrounded by papers with scribbles all over them, though those too she could not see clearly.

To the left of the doorway was a garish purple loveseat that was also filled with papers. The two bookshelves on the wall opposite the desk were similarly cluttered. In fact, nearly every horizontal surface of the room seemed to have some sort of paper on it, as though the teacher was in the middle of grading a thousand term papers at once.

Two small spots of the room were uncluttered by the reams upon reams of papers. One was the spot right in front of the computer, where there lay only a keyboard, a mouse pad and a short, empty glass. The other open space was just beyond the desk, atop the filing cabinet in the corner of the room. Instead of the mass of disheveled papers that Celia saw everywhere else, the top of the filing cabinet held only a square glass bottle that tapered at the top, ending at a cork-shaped glass stopper. Inside the container, reaching almost to the top, was a dark amber liquid.

It was this then that the teacher made his way toward as he entered the office. He plucked the bottle from its home on the cabinet and turned to leave the room again.

Just before reaching the door, the teacher stopped and turned again. He looked around the room, his eyes stopping on some of the papers that were stacked around. Finally, he turned to Celia.

“Hold this,” he said, holding out the bottle. She took it, confused, and watched the teacher step back into the center of the room.

He stood silently, his gaze circling the room. His eyes watered over as he looked, and Celia heard him sniffle twice.

Celia started to approach him, to ask him if he needed anything, but before she could move, Lowensen acted first. He reached out to the bookshelf nearest him and grabbed it by the top with both hands. Before Celia or Simon could react, he yanked on the wood, pulling the whole shelf down.

The teacher leapt backward as it fell, letting books, papers, tiny tchotchkes fall ahead of the shelf at large. The shelf’s contents crashed to the ground in a large “whoomp” noise. The shelf itself was caught by the loveseat and rotated as it fell, winding up at an angle above the floor.

“Damn, that felt good,” Lowensen said, nodding.

“What do you mean?” Simon asked.

He laughed, the tears from a moment early nothing but a memory and lines on his cheeks. “I hated this office, kid,” he said. “It was mine, and that matters, but I hated it. Didn’t care about keeping it up. I wanted to be in the classroom, be out there, doing things. The office was a requirement; it’s what teachers do. But I don’t think I’ll ever have use of it again. I tell you, not much releases frustration like a bit of well-placed destruction.” The teacher looked at the two of them and his smile grew. “You guys wanna try it?”

Celia wasn’t sure what to make of the offer, but after a bit of coaxing, she handed the bottle back to Lowensen and she and Simon went in. The boy made his way to the other bookshelf, while Celia opted for the computer.

Almost simultaneously, the two of them felled their targets. Just before she threw the monitor to the floor, Celia saw a website that said “OutTheres” across the top in a harsh, angry font. Below that, the screen was white, with plain black text that said “OutTheres is gone. Get to safety NOW.”

She didn’t stop to consider the screen any further, ripping it down with as much force as she could muster. It toppled from its station on the desk, falling onto the space below. The small glass shattered under the monitor, taking the OutTheres.com screen with it. A few sparks came up as the screen died, but the cables ripped from the wall next, and the monitor continued its descent, knocking into the desk chair as it fell to the ground with what Celia had to admit to herself was a wholly satisfying crunch.

As this happened, Celia heard behind her a louder crunch. She turned and saw the other shelf, the one Simon had taken on, lying flat on the floor, its fall unimpeded by couch or desk. One of the walls of the shelf had clearly cracked in the fall, but other than that it looked to be none the worse for wear, merely lying flat instead of upright.

Simon watched the shelf on the ground for a full thirty seconds, as though daring it to get back up. When it refused to move again, he looked up, meeting Celia’s eyes. Though his shoulders still slumped, though he still wore a frown and looked beaten-down, his eyes blazed, alive for the first time since father and son had separated in Barnstable. Lowensen, it seemed, was right that some well-placed destruction could do wonders.