After Life (31 page)

His older son laughed, pulling from his pocket a snack pack of Oreos. “Wouldn’t that be the shit?” he said, opening the package.

“It surely would,” Bobby said, his smile growing. He looked to his other son, who steadfastly refused to show any trace of a positive emotion. “Come on, Barry,” he said. “We survived. We’re okay. And I tell you what, any man that can survive these damn things out in the open the whole time, like we did? Any man like that can write his own ticket. Get in with the government, become a ‘zombie survival’ teacher or something. Seems to me any man that can say he survived this shit like we did could no-shit do whatever he wanted in the world we’re in now. Make a blue million dollars.”

Barry, still sitting on the floor, looked at his father with his eyes wide. For the first time since entering the store, his worried look disappeared. For the first time since entering the store, Barry’s face looked happy, as happy as any of his companions.

For the first time since entering the store, Barry smiled.

Chapter 2: Safe Place

Stacy hadn’t handled the news of her mother’s death well. She had stalked off, refusing to believe the truth, until she had made it some twenty yards away.

Everyone’s first act, as a group, was one Andy knew all too well — to a person, each of them stripped down. Per Andy’s request, they had stopped at underwear, though that was mostly because Stacy clearly knew these people, and he didn’t see need to shame Celia or Stacy any more than was necessary.

The body inspections had gone on almost wordlessly, though Andy couldn’t help but notice Simon paying his daughter a fair amount of attention, and she him. It was not until everyone was deemed safe and had redressed that Stacy repeated her question about her mother. The nervousness with which she asked the question told Andy that she certainly had a decent idea of the answer already, but Andy knew she would need it explained.

And so Michelle had explained it, and Stacy, who Andy hoped was thinking back to Amanda’s last words about mothers, had walked off to grieve on her own. Donnie, concerned for her safety so far from the group, had trailed the girl, lingering several feet away to monitor her as she mourned.

Michelle used the time to explain to the rest of the group who she was to Stacy and Stacy’s mom, who Donnie was to her, and who the two of them were regarding Stamford.

“How… did you get onto the Cape?” Andy asked. His first instinct was to ask her motivation for the trip overall, but a quick look to Stacy answered that question. The duo’s success in crossing a supposedly guarded bridge, though, was intriguing.

The woman’s reaction, though, told Andy not to dig deeper. Michelle’s eyes turned dark and she ended eye contact, which answered Andy’s question as well as any words could have.

Andy tried to push past the moment. “Where’s your car?” he asked, knowing full well they couldn’t have made it all the way to Hyannis as quickly as they had on foot.

This time, Donnie answered, from his position several feet from Stacy and nearly fifty feet from the rest of the group.

“Crashed,” he said dully. “Not three blocks from here. Dead.” He looked ashamed of his own actions — not as ashamed as Michelle was of hers, but ashamed nonetheless.

This was bothersome. They had earlier crammed seven people into Andy’s old sedan, but even that was a stretch, and there were now eight people they needed to find transport for. Almost immediately, Andy moved to the cars, one hand on his gun, his other trying door handles.

The first door he tried was locked, which came as a surprise — not everyone kept their keys in the car these days, but he couldn’t remember the last locked car he had come across. The second was unlocked, but Andy couldn’t find keys to it anywhere inside.

The third car, the one that still sat atop the zombie that had proved to be Travis’ destruction, was unlocked, but the man that had settled his car on the zombie apparently hadn’t bothered to shut the car off, and so the gas tank was empty and the battery dead, rendering it even more worthless than the other two.

It was on the fourth car that Andy got lucky. The car, a late-‘00s Maxima, opened readily, and Andy saw a set of keys on the seat. He climbed in, turned the key, and the car started up immediately.

He sighed. In 2010, he had been on the run for weeks, often as not coming across cars that were out of gas, out of battery or otherwise unusable. To have extra cars just sitting in the parking lot, ready for use, was a welcome change.

“Two cars,” Andy said, turning back to the group with what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

While Andy had been scavenging, Michelle and Celia had both turned their attention to Stacy, grieving as she was a ways from the group. With them on guard, Donnie felt free to wander back to Andy, Lowensen, Brandon and Simon.

“So, what’s the plan?” he asked, his hands stuffed deep into his pockets. Donnie had shed his pack, and stood with his shoulders slouched, looking younger than he was. “I don’t know if you guys are familiar with it, but we could look for a ‘Safe Place.’”

Andy cut him off immediately. “Bad idea,” he said. “We found one in Barnstable. Barren
and
infested. Best I can tell, securing and stocking them was little more than a dream. No one got as far as actually doing it.”

Donnie cursed. He had worried about that, as the “Safe Place” initiative was relatively new, but had held out hope that someone had actually done their job correctly. “Okay,” he said. “So what are you all thinking?”

Before Andy could speak, Lowensen jumped in. “At the start, we decided we had two options,” he said, his voice bright. “There was Camp Edwards, which you might well have passed on your way here. And there was an old Wal-Mart building, which we were told was to be repurposed as a shelter.

“Well,” he continued, adopting what Andy recognized as his professorial voice, “we as a group decided to shoot for the camp, thinking it was more likely to be secure. Long story short, that struck out, so we’ve been running under the tentative plan that we’d proceed from here to the Wal-Mart building. That is, if we can find it.”

Donnie’s eyes lit up. “Wal-Mart?” he said. “We saw an old Wal-Mart building a few miles back. Looked like there might be people inside it, too.”

It was Andy’s turn to get excited — he had not been eager to hunt blindly for a Wal-Mart in an unfamiliar area. The fact that these two newcomers had stumbled across it, and it looked promising, was good to hear. The downside, he knew, was that it seemed he was wrong yet again — he had decided Camp Edwards was a better destination, yet it seemed clear that that idea was as wrong as shooting Amanda in Barnstable. Regardless, the fact that they knew where the Wal-Mart was struck Andy as excellent news.

Excellent news, that is, that vanished as soon as Donnie spoke again.

“I’d say that’s a great idea, too,” Donnie said. “It’s bound to be well-guarded. Out in front there were a bunch of Army vehicles. Humvees. Green, camo-looking things. A bunch of them there. It’ll be reinforced as anything.”

Donnie didn’t notice the dejected looks on the faces surrounding him until he had finished speaking. “What’s wrong?” he asked, confused by the gloomy turn the conversation had taken.

“Humvees?” Andy said, knowing what that meant. “We go to Wal-Mart, we’re as likely to get killed by humans as we are by zombies.”

“What do you mean?”

Andy proceeded to tell Donnie the story of their attack on the road to Camp Edwards, and the heartless way the Guardsmen had killed Philip and Meredith and doomed Carla to her eventual death as well.

By the time the story was over, Donnie’s face had turned the same ashen pallor as the others, and he looked confused again. Their story jibed with what he remembered seeing at the Wal-Mart building, with a variety of dead bodies scattered around the parking lot. Those were likely the corpses of the Morgan College population who had taken refuge in the Wal-Mart, but who had been killed by the arriving Camp Edwards people.

“So…” Donnie started before trailing off.

“We don’t have anywhere to go,” Lowensen said. “We’ve got no plans.”

Chapter 3: At the Expense of Others

The three women huddled together a handful of yards away from the men as Stacy cried. Michelle hadn’t given her all the details of Madison’s death, merely telling her she hadn’t made it out of Stamford.

There would come a time, she knew, when she would have to tell Stacy the whole story, the tale of finding Madison’s corpse walking her own office and the note stapled to her front. But that time would be after they had found safety for themselves, not while they were standing out in the open, not while Stacy was already inconsolable. This was not a time for full disclosure; it was a time for moving forward.

“Remember what Brandon’s mom told you,” Celia was saying, barely speaking above a whisper, from her spot a few inches to the right of Stacy’s head. “Remember. Make sure you are okay. That’s what you need to do now. Wherever she is, your mom will be okay so long as you make sure you are okay. You and your baby.”

Michelle nodded, though she had some measure of surprise. Stacy had confessed her pregnancy to Michelle when she found out a few days before leaving for school, but had told no one else, not even Madison, so Michelle was surprised to learn that this stranger knew already. Then again, she knew, extreme circumstances could draw people together. These two girls, it seemed, had bonded quickly.

Suddenly, Stacy jerked her head up and looked around with a surprised look. “We can’t stay out here,” she said. “All those gunshots, the noise from the fire and the cars? Any of them that are still around will be here. Soon.”

The realization hit Michelle as well. She knew they were exposed, sure, but she hadn’t really considered the implications of being out in the open — especially since she knew there had been a group of zombies only a few blocks away that she and Donnie had encountered. She didn’t know the level of devastation at the college, but bet that Salvisa’s story meant there were as many zombies concentrated in Hyannis as there were anywhere in the country. Except, Michelle thought mournfully, for the other two schools. She shuddered to think that there were parents all over the country whose children were dead, dying or undead while they thought they just
had
to be safe.

Celia had already climbed to her feet. She, too, had gotten lost in the narrow, forgetting the big picture. But a quick scan of the area told her that, at the least, they didn’t have any immediate company. How long that would remain true, she didn’t know, and didn’t care to find out. Stacy was right; they needed to go.

She turned to her father and the men, but saw that they were as clueless as she was. Her father looked lost and confused when Celia first turned her attention that way, but after a few seconds, he met her gaze, and his look hardened.

“No,” Andy said, his voice stern. “We’re not going to let those sons-of-bitches dictate where we can and can’t go. I’ll be damned if I let my daughter, these kids die out here because some guys in camouflage pants don’t want to share their toys.”

Celia didn’t know what her father was talking about, but Lowensen, Simon, and Donnie all started nodding with varying degrees of vigor, so she didn’t argue.

“What do you think we should do?” Donnie asked.

Celia watched her father perform some mental math. “Best I can remember from the highway incident,” he said, “there were ten-twelve vehicles. They wouldn’t take that many rides unless they had that many asses. Means we’re dealing with at
least
forty of them. And they’re armed.” He paused, his eyes settling on Brandon, then moving to Celia and Stacy. “Whatever we do, this won’t be easy. We’re hardly in peak condition.”

“No,” Stacy said, rising to her feet. She wiped her eyes before continuing. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

Andy eyed her for a moment before apparently deciding he didn’t have any choice but to trust her. “Okay, then,” he said. “The thing working to our advantage is that they won’t expect us. It’s been some fifteen hours, a whole nighttime since our paths crossed. I guarantee they think they’re comfy and cozy in there, the last people alive on the Cape. Or at the very least, that there aren’t any more stragglers like us out in the open. So if we can time this right, get the drop on them, we might be able to at least catch them off guard. After that, we just have to hope.”

Michelle found herself nodding. It was a horrible plan. It wasn’t even a plan, really, just a rough outline to attack. It was, more likely than anything, suicide. But she didn’t have anything better to offer, and a glance to Donnie told her that he didn’t either.

“Now,” Andy continued, turning his attention to Donnie, “you all know how to get back to the Wal-Mart building? You know where it is?”

Donnie nodded, and Michelle remembered passing the building they were talking about. It was isolated, with conceivable approach angles at all 360 degrees. Those facts gave her more hope — minimal, but anything was more than zero.

Michelle passed across the group to the car Andy had started, leaning in to make sure the gas tank was relatively full. She turned back to the group. “Sounds like we don’t have anything better,” she said. “We’re going to need to plan a hell of a lot more before we go into anything but suicide, though.” When Andy nodded, Michelle continued. “And if you all haven’t even
seen
the area yet, the best idea is probably to go there and scout it out, so you at least know what you’re dealing with. Or to give us time to come up with a slightly less suicidal plan.” She had meant that last sentence to come off as a mood-lightener, but didn’t think her tone had conveyed anything other than seriousness.

“Before we go,” Andy said, moving across the parking lot, away from Michelle. He stopped at a car that was in the middle of the lot, not in a space, opened the door, and popped the trunk. “We probably ought to get ourselves some food. I know I’m starving.”

He pulled a box out of the trunk that was full almost to the top with what looked like the meal bars Michelle remembered from so many other storage spaces. While she would be perfectly happy to go the rest of her life without ever trying NutriSystem again, she couldn’t argue with the “starving” comment — Michelle hadn’t eaten anything since her breakfast the day before, and had been mourning the loss of the food in her pack since she and Donnie had abandoned their supplies at the Connecticut service area.

The whole group gathered around Andy’s cardboard box, each of them pulling a pair of meal bars from it and tearing through the packaging. After a few seconds crunching on his own food, Andy returned to his trunk and pulled out a cooler than held bottles of water, distributing one to each of them as well.

As they ate, the teens — Celia, Stacy, Simon and Brandon — huddled together, close to the food supply. Celia and Simon, Michelle noticed, gravitated toward one another, and she smiled at another example of bonding in extreme circumstances.

With the kids in the middle, though, the adults turned their attention outward. They arrayed themselves in as near a circle around the group as they could, and monitored the surroundings as they ate.

Michelle, too far from Donnie and too unfamiliar with Andy or Lowensen to talk, ate and drank in silence. The two Hyannis men, though, stood nearer to one another, and Michelle couldn’t help but overhear, though she didn’t think they knew that.

“You certainly did your best to sound official back there,” she heard Andy say, his voice anything but warm.

“I suppose I did,” Lowensen said hesitantly. “I don’t think I planned it. I just fall into that routine when I’m around new people. I’m a teacher.”

“The hell you are,” Andy said. “You’re not as worthless as I had thought. I’ll give you that. But what you are is an opportunist. We meet a couple of new people, and you decide that’s your big chance to impress some people who
don’t
know that you’re as fake as a three-dollar bill. You just want to feel like you felt when you had us all down there in the classroom, listening to you. You just want to feel powerful.”

For a full minute, the only sound Michelle could hear was her own chewing. Finally, Lowensen spoke again. “You’re right,” he said. After another pause, he spoke again, moving more quickly this time, as though he had been bottling it up for some time. “I just don’t know any other way to be. Mr. Ehrens, I started gunning for this kind of job, teaching zombie basics, capitalizing on my own survival, twenty years ago. The minute I thought the zombies were gone for good, I started fantasizing, dreaming about the money I could make. I thought I’d get on reality TV, get a book, make a movie. Had no idea pop culture would just
die
. So I turned my attention to school. I was the first person — far as I know — to lobby for the school reopening. Thought I could capitalize that way.

“And I would have,” he continued. “I’d have been a
damn
good teacher, if that’s all it had ever been. Think back to your best teachers, Mr. Ehrens. Was your favorite English teacher an author? I bet your gym teacher didn’t play pro baseball. Those that can’t do, right? I never thought the Z’s would come back. Never. And if they were never coming back, who cares if I make a few bucks off of it? I think you’ll agree that I was a good teacher, a good speaker. And I know math, English, science, everything else they’d need to be whole people. I just never thought they’d come back. Never thought that.”

“Well,” Andy said, clearly unimpressed, “they
did
come back, Mr. Lowensen. So I’m sorry your dreams didn’t come true, but I’d appreciate it if you’d stick to being honest and straightforward in conversation, instead of trying to claim every bit of glory and impressiveness you can.”

At this Michelle, spared a look at the interaction, to see how Lowensen might respond to his dressing-down. The teacher looked suitably abashed, and nodded to Andy. “I can do that,” he said. “I really am sorry. All I was trying to do was make the best of my own situation, Mr. Ehrens. Isn’t that what we all do?”

“We do,” Andy said, nodding. “But we don’t do it at the expense of others. Hundreds of others. Most of us don’t do that.”