After Life (6 page)

Chapter 7: Smart People Can Do Some Stupid Things

“What is your issue, Madison?” Lambert said at last. He and Madison had been locked in a staring contest since Michelle’s departure, but he broke first. “Why’d you send her away?”

“You didn’t submit to inspection when you got here this morning,” Madison said, her voice icy.

“So?”

“And this ‘flu’ of yours,” she continued, “bears all the evidence of bite symptoms. All of them. Anything you want to tell me, Lambert?”

Her boss stared back at her, mouth open even wider than it had been all morning. After another coughing fit, he spoke. “You’re kidding. You think I’d risk everyone in here just for, what, my goddamn pride?”

“I learned long ago, sir, that some smart people can do some stupid things. All I know is that, 99 days out of 100, I can’t imagine you pitching a fit just because some old man in Maine hasn’t checked in with you. So I wonder what is different about today.”

“And you decided what was different is, what, I suddenly became a moron?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Madison said. “But I do know that I
need
you to lose your clothes. Now.” She pulled the gun out of her waistband, holding it at her side, deliberately aiming it away from Lambert.

He blinked at her twice, coughed once, but finally shrugged angrily. He pulled his suspenders off his shoulders. “Amazing,” he muttered, his scowl never fading.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Madison said. “But I feel it is necessary.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he snorted, undoing the knot on his tie.

Madison watched as he pulled off his tie, followed by his dress shirt and undershirt. After a long pause for another coughing fit, he sat down in a chair to pull off his shoes and socks. Struggling again to his feet, he undid his belt and let his pants fall.

“There,” he growled. “Are we quite done?”

“I don’t think so, sir.”

“What now?”

“Underwear.”

“Now, wait just a —”

“Sir,” Madison stopped short, then continued, “my best friend was killed because we let a man join us who had been bitten directly on the ass and he didn’t tell us. How that happened, I’ll never know. But, please, sir,” she said, making a point to display her weapon again, “drop the Hanes.”

Lambert paused, but finally nodded. He let his briefs fall to the floor. He stepped away from the pile of clothing and held his hands straight out, giving a 360-degree spin.

Madison stared. Lambert was clean. Absolutely. There was not a scratch on the man. Lambert met her gaze and stared for a moment. Finally he growled, “Satisfied?”

She nodded, breaking the gaze, and placed the gun on Michelle’s desk. “Yes, sir,” she said. “I apologize.”

“You damn well better,” he said, returning to his pile of clothes. “Forcing me to strip down. Damned embarrassing, Madison.”

“I apologize for not trusting you, sir. Not for making you strip down. That is a well-established protocol that you already violated this morning.”

Lambert nodded, still angry. He struggled back into his underwear and dress pants. When he bent again to retrieve his shirt, though, another coughing fit took hold of the man. He staggered briefly and put his free, un-handkerchiefed hand to his head.

Madison walked over to him. She put one hand on Lambert’s arm and quickly knelt down and scooped up his undershirt with the other. The sick man laboriously pulled the sweat-drenched shirt over his head while Madison picked up the rest of his clothes in a handful. After another short coughing fit, he gathered the small load from Madison.

“I’ll get dressed in my own goddamn office,” he said. He trudged to the door, but turned back before opening it. His glare had faded, but was not gone altogether. “Madison,” he said as though it hurt him to do so. “Good work. Doubt anyone else here would have had the guts.”

From her spot by the wall in the empty part of the room, Madison nodded but said nothing. She looked down at the floor, hoping doing so would allow him the chance to feel as though he had won something, that he had the power in the end.

Lambert turned again to leave. He pulled the door open a crack, but almost immediately it was thrown into him by an outside force.

“What the —?” Lambert said as he tried to fight the outside pushing.

Madison’s head snapped back up. She saw Lambert pushing furiously against the door on one side. On the other side, she saw a handful of vacant stares coming from black-and-white eyes as the zombies tried to force their way into the office.

Chapter 8: One Nip and You Are Done

The girls and Andy were still chatting away as they approached the girls’ floor. Andy dominated the conversation, telling them stories of his days at college.

“My apartment was a 20-minute drive from campus,” he said as they rounded past the 13
th
floor. “Never lived in the dorms, didn’t end up making as many friends in college as I’d have liked. This will be great for you girls. Make friends, meet new people.”

Celia rolled her eyes. “Dad, everyone’s new people. And you don’t have to try to sell me on this; I was the one who had to convince you, remember?”

Andy smiled and nodded. They passed through the stair door onto their floor. He led the way and pulled open the door to the girls’ room, which had been left open a crack.

All three of them stopped in their tracks. There was already a girl in the room, looking like one of Stacy and Celia’s fellow students. She was standing between the two beds, looking down at the chapstick tube Stacy had been playing with before. She was dressed in a simple T-shirt and tight jeans. Celia thought, though, that something looked off about her. Her posture was oddly tilted, and her hair was pushed across her face in a way that made Celia think she couldn’t even see out of her right eye.

When the girl heard the door open, though, her head snapped up. That was when they all saw her eyes. They were white and gray, completely inhuman. Involuntarily, Celia cried out with the realization of what she was seeing.

The creature’s mouth fell open, and it sprang over Stacy’s bed toward the still-open door. Before it got there, though, Andy swung the door closed. They heard a crash as the zombie ran into it, but it held. The door’s opening seemed to have clued the zombie in to how best to exit, and the sound of rabid clawing came after the initial crash.

Andy reached into his holster and removed his gun. Celia had staggered back against the wall and crouched, already in a state of panic. Tears were flowing and she was breathing heavily. Stacy seemed more composed, and had produced her own, smaller handgun as well, but Andy could see the fear in her eyes all the same.

“What do we do? What do we do?” Celia asked.

Andy stepped over to his daughter, prepared to help her, when they all heard the sound of glass shattering in the girls’ room.

“What was
that
?” Stacy asked.             

“It went out the window,” Andy said.

“Fourteen floors down?” Celia asked.

“What do we do?” Stacy asked, she and Andy both ignoring Celia’s question.

“Classroom,” he said, trying to feign confidence. He reached his free hand down for Celia and, after a few seconds of staring, she took it and allowed him to help her up. He led the way back to the stairs, pulling his daughter behind him. Stacy stayed close as well.

Just before they got to the stairwell door, the last door on the right burst open, and a girl came falling out of it. Just behind her, another female form — a zombie — crawled after her. It had a bone sticking out of its left lower leg and could no longer walk. The girl it was chasing was crying and cradling her left hand, which carried obvious bite marks.

Andy didn’t pause. He aimed the gun at the crawling zombie’s head and shot it once in the head. It stopped immediately.

“Thank you!” the girl gasped, tears flowing down her face. “I didn’t know what I was —”

Andy didn’t let her finish. He shot her in the head with the same precision he had used on the zombie. Once again, Celia cried out.

“Dad! She was —”

“She was
infected
!” Andy said immediately. “That’s
all
she was. You can’t fight that off. One nip and you are
done
. Listen to me,” he went on, turning to face both of them, “I ever get bitten —
ever
— even a little bit, you shoot me right between the eyes. I mean it. Don’t wait, don’t think about it, don’t try to convince yourself that I’ll be the lucky one — I won’t. You see anyone bitten, you don’t wait. You shoot first, ask questions later. You can’t be too careful. Anybody wounded —” he stopped. Instead of finishing, he just nodded at them. Stacy returned the nod. Celia, though, just stared.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.” Andy herded the girls into the stairwell. From below, Andy could hear screams, cries, and gunshots.

“Can we get all the way down?” Celia asked.

Andy cocked his gun. “One way or another,” he said.

They descended two levels past closed doors without incident, though Celia heard screams from both halls. She stopped briefly as she passed the thirteenth floor, her instincts telling her that she had to do something to help. But Andy and Stacy passed without a pause, and Celia reminded herself that she couldn’t help even if she wanted to. At the twelfth floor entrance, she made herself hurry past.

The door to the eleventh-floor hallway stood open when they got there, and Celia could see blood smeared across the doorway and a motionless hand lying across the threshold. She stood a few stairs above, just behind Stacy, as her father stepped into the doorway and fired four shots into the hallway.

“Hurry!” he said as soon as he was finished. “Keep going!”

He ushered Stacy, then Celia, ahead of him. Celia ran past, sparing the slightest look into the hallway as she did. Without stopping to count, she saw at least half a dozen bodies — one, lying face up, had blood smeared across her face and a bullet wound in the forehead. She couldn’t make out anything about the others, nor could she tell which ones her father had been responsible for.

She continued past the doorway, which Andy slammed shut as he followed. With her head turned, Celia didn’t see that Stacy had stopped, and ran into her on the stairs. Only the banister Stacy was holding kept her from falling down to the tenth-floor landing.

Celia started to ask Stacy why she had stopped, but a look ahead revealed the answer — the landing, and more specifically the stairwell that continued below, was already crowded. Frozen, she stared down at the landing, where a group of human forms knelt over a body. Between the gnawing heads, she saw a bright pink top that was now stained with blood. Lower, she saw what looked like a broken heel on her feet. Celia shook her head, realizing the girl from the classroom must have tripped again.

“Z’s are moving down,” Andy said. “They always do.”

At her father’s words, Celia snapped out of her trance and leaned over the railing, looking downstairs. Every few feet, she saw a repeat of the scene on the landing — zombies were eating away at a variety of bodies, young and old alike.

“Mr. Ehrens?” Stacy said, breathless. “Mr. Ehrens, what do we do?”

Andy, too, cast a look over the railing and down the stairs. At a quick look, he counted at least twenty-five zombies over the next two or three flights, and that wasn’t counting bodies that looked dead but Andy knew could rise at any second. He thought about Stacy, who seemed proficient with her weapon but not exactly emotionally stable, and Celia, whom he had taught to shoot but hadn’t armed, and realized that even if she did have a weapon, he didn’t know if he could trust her stability, either.

“We can’t go down these stairs,” he said finally. “We’d never get through.” He looked for his alternatives, and realized that — being on the tenth floor — they were adjacent to the walkways that connected them to the boys’ and parents’ dorms. “There,” he said, pointing to the walkway to the left. “Parents’ dorm!”

He forged ahead of the girls, shooting the two zombies that were working on the improperly dressed girl below him. He herded the girls into the stairwell, then closed the door behind them just before a group of zombies came at them.

The girls had stopped ahead of him, waiting for the door to close. His clip emptied, Andy reloaded his weapon and looked at the two of them.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Chapter 9: Sit and Wait to Die

In his sickly, weakened state, Lambert couldn’t get the door closed. A group of zombies forced their way in, and the first one latched onto his hand and bit down hard. Another followed behind, trying to get to his leg. Two others — Madison recognized one as a guard by his uniform, though she didn’t know the man by name — crossed the room toward her. At the same time, she was making her way to the desk. To her gun.

The zombies, though, were just a bit faster. The first crashed into Madison just as she reached the gun. She shoved it away as the other one lunged at her. Madison grabbed the weapon just as the zombie grabbed her leg. She fired a shot into each of the zombies’ heads, but not before the zombie managed a nip to her right ankle.

It was lucky Madison had fired the moment she had. Another second, and the pain from the bite would have blinded her to anything else, including the gun in her hand. Almost as soon as the Z’s teeth hit her skin, Madison would have sworn her ankle was on fire, and the leg it was attached to was about to ignite. Hot pain seared through her body, all the way into her brain. It faded soon after, but for four or five seconds, Madison was utterly incapacitated.

When the pain had passed, Madison looked down at her wound. It was not a significant injury in itself, but her heart had already sunk. She knew what a bite meant.

Finally, she turned her weapon to Lambert and the two zombies at the door, taking both creatures out with another pair of shots. The zombies dispatched, Lambert finally closed the door.

“Shit!” he cried. He slid down to the floor, leaning against the door, and coughed violently. “Shit, shit, shit. They get you, Madison?”

Madison nodded. “Yes, sir. The ankle.”

“God damn. My wrist. My leg. They made a fucking buffet out of me.”

“How many of them were there out there?”

“Hallway is teeming,” he said, coughing again. “Gotta be a dozen or more.”

Madison picked up the phone on her desk and listened briefly, but there was nothing on the other end. “Phones are dead.”

Lambert nodded. Madison looked at her boss, who she could tell was struggling already. “How do you want to do this?”

He grunted. “Your gun. Your call.”

Madison felt her gun. It felt heavier than she ever remembered. “I’ll do you first,” she said, trying to block out the pain coursing up her leg.

Lambert nodded again. “Thank God my wife is dead,” he said, almost to himself. “Swore I’d protect her. I’d have failed.”

“We’ve done all we could, sir,” Madison said.

“‘All we could,’” Lambert echoed. “‘All we could.’ Madison, you and I are supposed to be two of the top prevention experts going. Supposed to be able to stay alive even when everyone else has died. Supposed to be the last line of defense. Yet here we are, nursing our wounds and preparing for suicide. Twenty years and we haven’t prepared a damn thing that’s
real
.

“Let me ask you,” he continued, his voice rising. “What would you have done if you’d heard confirmation today? If word had come before we got bitten?”

Madison thought. “I… I would have alerted the proper…”

“You would have hit the big red button is what you would have done. Made a call, told everyone to hide out. And you’d have locked the doors and hoarded your tin cans and diesel fuel, waiting for… waiting for whatever comes next. We didn’t even establish a
plan
for what happened if they got in here! We didn’t think it’d come to that. So we’d just be waiting for the Z’s to run out of people to eat, or for them to just go away again. Highest-ranking officials in our goddamned government, and we’d sit and wait to die.”

Madison wanted to argue. Her pride told her to. But her mind, and the wound in her leg, told her there was no argument to be made. “Where do you want it?” she asked.

“Back of the head,” Lambert answered, gesturing to the target. “And don’t miss. Be damned if I’m going to wake up as one of them.” He started to go through the effort of pulling himself up, but he was too weak to do so. He crawled further into the room and propped himself up on his knees.

Madison limped to him, sweat pouring. She held the gun to the back of his head.

“I’m sorry, Madison,” Lambert said, his voice barely audible.

Madison fired, and her boss fell forward. She looked down at the body for a moment, then removed her suit jacket and draped it over his upper torso and head. She put her gun up to her head, but froze. After a moment, she looked around the room, searching. Tucking her handgun into her waistband, limped into her inner office, where she picked up a piece of paper off of the printer and a black marker from her desk. She scribbled a single word onto the paper.

Madison limped around her desk and pulled the stapler out of the drawer. She took the note and stapler to Michelle’s desk, where she pulled out her gun and placed it on the desktop, then sat in the chair.

She could feel her body giving way to the virus. Her vision was fading — she briefly wondered how the zombies could even see, if her vision was already suffering, before realizing she didn’t give a damn. Her leg around the bite was already completely numb, and she could feel the dead sensation moving up.

Madison put the paper up to her chest, as high as she could put it without covering her neck or head. Once she had it in place, she opened the stapler and plunged it through the paper, through her top, and into her chest. The first staple went in just above her right breast. Madison cried out briefly, but even that noise came with great effort.

Shaking, she repeated the staple lower, just below her nipple, then followed suit on the left side of her body. With each successive motion, the pain, in fact the feeling altogether, was less. By the time she stapled a fourth time, she didn’t even feel it go into her skin.

She felt herself losing consciousness. Madison reached in front of her to pick up the gun, then stopped and left it on the desk. She looked over to Lambert’s body, and shook her head.

Just before she lost consciousness altogether, Madison muttered, to no one in particular, “I’m sorry, too.”