After Life

by Daniel Kelley

  “Daddy?” Celia repeated.

  He looked up at her. The gun he had just picked up felt heavier than his, but after a glance, he saw they used the same ammunition. He pulled his weapon back out and passed it to his daughter. “You need a gun,” he said.

  Celia looked at the weapon for a moment with a scared look, but took it at last.

  “All right,” he said, standing up. “Keep going.”

  They made it the rest of the way down to the ground level without incident. Andy stopped the girls just inside the door, wanting to check the outside world for himself first. He peered out the door’s small window.

  Outside, Andy saw the chaos he expected. There were bodies scattered around, and several of the survivors — mostly the kids, the students — were crying or had gone catatonic. One of the first things he saw was a girl who sat motionless as a zombie ran up to her. She made no effort to fight it as it tore into her skin, barely even crying out at the bites. A few feet away, he saw a broken zombie flailing around. It had two obviously broken legs and probably a broken arm as well, and was dragging itself along by its one intact limb, dragging itself toward the catatonic girl and her attacker. Andy recognized it as the first zombie they had seen — the one that had plunged out the girls’ window.

  In the center of the three buildings, though, Andy saw exactly what he had hoped for — order. Just outside the tiny outbuilding that marked the passage to the classroom, and safety, Roger Stone stood sentry, herding unbitten people down the stairs, while Simon held the gun high. Andy saw the boy take three shots, hitting his mark with two.

  “The classroom,” he said to the girls. “All we have to do is make it about twenty feet and we’re safe. You can do this.” He looked back. Both girls were nodding, though he could see the nerves behind the nods.

  He pulled the door open and the three of them took off on a sprint. He fired a shot to their right — one that was probably unnecessary, given the distance of the zombie, but Andy was taking no chances with his daughter.

  He was the first to arrive to Roger, Simon and the building.

  “Bites, scratches?” Roger said.

  “Nothing, nothing,” Stacy said, breathless.

  Roger eyed them suspiciously, and looked like he wanted further proof. Instead of asking for a strip search, though, he looked up and met Andy’s eye. Andy nodded, and Roger returned it. “Go on in,” he said.

  Celia started to make her way into the building, but she saw out of the corner of her eye a young man step out of the boys’ dorm. It was the sunglasses wearer, the zombie-lover, and he ran out and swiveled his head with what looked to Celia like desperation. He bore no signs of injury. A few feet behind him, she saw another figure. This one was obviously a zombie, and it was running straight for the young man. Celia tried to wave her arms, to warn him, but she was too late.

  The running zombie, though, didn’t bite the sunglasses kid. It didn’t even acknowledge him. Instead it ran right by, merely running into his side as it did.

  The collision knocked the sunglasses off of the kid’s face, and they fell to the ground. As they did, Celia saw his eyes — they were not the sunken, almost black dots she had seen when he had removed his sunglasses in the classroom; they were the horrifying, black-and-white orbs that she could already tell would haunt her dreams.

  She stopped still, staring at what she had, only seconds before, thought was a fellow student. There weren’t even any bite marks. Finally, she felt Stacy tugging at her elbow, and Celia realized where she was and entered the stairs.

  Celia ran down the stairs as quickly as she could. As she got to the bottom of the stairs, she realized the only steps she could hear behind her were Stacy’s, so she turned to look. Her father was sharing a couple words with Roger Stone at the top of the staircase. She saw Roger shake his head about something, and her father nodded and came in after her. He stopped at the top. Behind him, Celia saw another man run up to Roger, who crossed his arms. The man looked at him pleadingly, but finally nodded and unfastened his pants.

  Andy, meanwhile, was fiddling with the tiny phone at the top of the stairs that they had looked at earlier. Celia could see he was getting frustrated with it, and he finally gave up whatever he was doing and slammed it down on the cradle.

  He came down the stairs, and Celia continued on her way into the classroom.

  It was nowhere near as full as it had been during the orientation less than an hour earlier — there were fewer than 50 people there. But it was exponentially louder, as students and parents alike cried and commiserated. Andy strode past Celia, leading the way to the front of the room. She watched as he scouted them a space against the wall, far from any door. It was a spot below the corner where the chalkboard met wall. He leaned heavily against the wall below the board, then slid down it until he was in a seated position. She and Stacy joined him in the corner.

  “What now, Daddy?” Celia asked, sitting next to him.

  He looked at her, seeming almost surprised. Celia had never seen her father as take-charge as he had been in the dormitories, but now he looked as nervous as he had in the car on the way to Hyannis.

  He looked at her for a moment, but finally smiled. “Nothing,” he said, reaching up with his right hand and rubbing her head. “We’re fine now. They built this place to keep us safe in the event something like —” he gestured toward the stairwell they had come from, “— this happened. Again. We’re fine. This isn’t going to be like me, and Carl, and Mike before. We can stay here as long as we need to.”

  Celia watched him as he spoke, and felt herself almost relaxing. He was right — Mr. Lowensen had told her earlier that the classroom was fortified, that they could stay down there for a long time if need be. It was reassuring, to be sure.

  “What about the phone you tried?” Stacy asked. “I saw you try to call out.”

  Andy shook his head. “Dead,” he said, then winced at his choice of words. “Couldn’t call out. Didn’t seem like it was even hooked up yet. Guess that system wasn’t actually planned to be operational ’til school started. Or maybe they’ve already shut it down. Either way, I couldn’t reach anyone. For better or worse.”

  From the stairwell, Celia heard the heavy door to the outside world close. She hadn’t seen anyone else enter since they had — not even the man who had unfastened his pants — but she watched with interest as Roger and Simon Stone came into the room without any accompaniment. Roger scanned the room for a second, saw them in their corner and quickly joined them, Simon his miniature right behind him. The young man looked shaken.

  “I think we did all we could,” Roger said as he got over to them. “I didn’t see anyone else healthy after you three, and they were starting to overwhelm us.”

  Andy nodded. “You did well, Roger,” he said. Then he squinted, remembering. “What about the last man? The one after us?”

  Roger shook his head. Simon suddenly walked away, against a curtained wall, and appeared to start crying. “Bitten,” Roger said. “Ankle. Tried to keep it covered up. When I called him on it, son of a bitch drew his gun.”

  Andy almost spat. “Damned fool. He’d have killed us all. You drew first?”

  Roger shook his head again and cast a glance at his son. “Simon. I was not prepared for that. One of the kids, I might have understood — they might not know. That guy was in his 50s. He knew. He knew exactly what he was doing. So I didn’t have my weapon ready. But Simon saw what was happening and brought him down.” As Roger described what had happened, Simon nearly doubled over in the corner. Celia thought he might throw up, but the boy soon stood back up and walked back over next to his father.

  Gradually, the room got quieter, as everyone calmed down and settled in for what they assumed was a long wait. Celia slunk down even farther in against the wall, resting her head on her father’s chest. Stacy paced back and forth in front of them, her arms crossed across her midsection as though she was worried she might vomit, while Simon and Roger both leaned against
Mr. Lowensen’s desk a few feet away. Andy absent-mindedly stroked his daughter’s hair as they sat there in silence.

  Celia closed her eyes, shocked at how tired she was. She was asleep in minutes.

  Chapter 12: Where Else Would I Have Gone?

  The first thing Michelle saw when she got into the office was Lambert’s prone form, lying flat on the floor. She saw his legs sticking out from his white underwear, and his suit jacket draped across his head and giant torso. Seeping out from below the jacket — which looked to Michelle like Madison’s — was a pool of blood.

  She and Donnie pushed the door until it was open all the way, and she glanced down at the pair of bodies that had been blocking it. Neither one was Madison’s.

  Donnie stepped over to Lambert’s body and lifted the jacket. “Dead,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, dropping the jacket back in place.

  Michelle nodded. She had already been sure of that, but she supposed it had been worth confirmation. She took another step into the room, and noticed two pairs of legs sticking out from behind her desk. Michelle gasped and felt her legs give out. She fell to her knees. From there, she could see that neither of these bodies was Madison, either, but that the creature that knelt over them, eating away at the neck of one, was.

  Michelle cried out, a noise the zombie that had been Madison heard. It spun its head toward her, and Michelle saw what Madison’s eyes had become. They were bleached, soulless. Her face was streaked with blood, which appeared to still be flowing out of her mouth and down her cheeks.

  The creature pulled itself up, favoring its right foot. It limped toward Michelle as quickly as it could. Michelle knew she should do something, pull her weapon or run, but she was frozen. This was Madison, after all.

  She couldn’t respond. Couldn’t react.

  Donnie, though, could. Within seconds, he fired off a shot, catching the zombie in the side of its head. It pitched sideways and fell face-first to the floor.

  Michelle watched the body fall, watched it lie there, and still didn’t respond. She kept staring until she felt hands on her shoulders — Donnie had come up behind her. She flinched, startled by the sensation, then leaned back against him. She could feel herself welling up. She had known that Calvin was probably right — if Madison and Lambert were still in the office, that probably meant they were dead. It probably meant that Madison had been right, that Lambert had been infected, and Michelle hated him for that. But she hadn’t been able to actually talk herself into that truth. Here, though, was proof.

  “Michelle,” Donnie said after a moment. “Michelle, we have to go. We can’t stay here.”

  Michelle nodded and stood up slowly. She turned to leave, then stopped. “What was on her chest?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I… There was a piece of paper on her chest. It had something written on it. I didn’t see what it said. I have to read it.”

  Donnie nodded. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and guided her to the body, where they together rolled the body over.

  There, scrawled on a piece of paper that looked to be stapled directly to Madison’s chest, was one word, written in black marker: “Stacy.”

  “Stacy?” Donnie asked. “Any idea what that means?”

  Michelle mustered a tiny nod. She couldn’t have figured out anything else the note might have said. “Stacy,” she said. “Madison’s daughter.”

  “Madison has a daughter?”

  Michelle nodded again. “Dropped her off at Hyannis just the other day.”

  “And she, what, wants you to get to her?”

  “You didn’t need the note,” Michelle whispered to Madison. “You didn’t need the note. Where else would I have gone?” She knelt down and lifted Madison’s left hand, removing the ring from it.

  “I never knew you two were this close,” Donnie said, helping Michelle up again.

  She turned to him. The tears, which thus far had been stopped just at the edges of her eyes, finally flowed out. In her right hand, she showed Donnie Madison’s ring. With her left, she fished into her jacket pocket and pulled out the ring’s match.

  “We were married,” she said.

  Part 2:

  The God Damned

  Chapter 1: Spectacles, Testicles, Wallet, Watch

  The young man stepped out of the airport coughing. Despite his tan arms and floral-print shirt, his face was pale. He squinted as the sunlight hit his face, then dug into his chest pocket for a pair of sunglasses, which he donned between coughs.

  He couldn’t have been older than his late teens, still a high schooler. His shaggy blond hair was stringy and wiry, looking like it hadn’t been washed in several days. His fingernails, too, carried dirt and grime around their edges, and his shirt and khaki shorts similarly lacked freshness.

  Behind him, he pulled a small suitcase on wheels that looked to be near bursting. A small tag attached to the suitcase’s handle indicated his name was Donnie Neyer, and he had come from Queen Beatrix International Airport in Aruba.

  He finally stepped up to the line for cabs and hailed the first one that approached. The cabbie, a bulky Pakistani with a thick mustache and a dark, stained shirt, scowled when he climbed out of the driver’s seat and saw the state of his passenger.

  “You clean?” he asked with a suspicious eye. The young man coughed again, but nodded. The driver looked unconvinced, but finally shrugged and helped the kid load his wheelie bag into the trunk. They each climbed into the vehicle.

  “1437 West 42nd,” the young man said between coughs. The cabbie programmed his GPS. Once the cab had pulled away from the airport, the kid leaned back as far as he could and put his arm over his head.

  “No sleeping in the cab,” the cabbie said, his voice a tight staccato. The kid didn’t move at first, while the driver watched in the rearview. His head lolled to the side eventually, and the driver turned and yelled, “Hey! You drool on my interior, I’ll —” He stopped there, as the young passenger sat up and fell into yet another coughing fit.

  The cabbie nodded. “Good. Cough means awake.” He turned his head back forward, repositioning a St. Christopher doll on his dashboard as he did so.

  He kept driving, eventually reaching the downtown area. As he reached the red light at 36th, he glanced in his rearview again and, for a moment, couldn’t see the young man at all. He wheeled around and looked. The teen had fallen to his side, and was lying flat across the backseat

  The cabbie banged on the glass partition that separated the two of them. The kid waved his arm weakly, showing he was still awake, but kept his head down.

  The cabbie’s scowl remained. “Tell myself every year,” he muttered. “Never work Sunday after spring break. 2008, vomit. 2009, vomit. Every year. Hangovers ruin my car.” He looked back again and shouted, “I said no drool!”

  Just as the man turned to face forward, the window to his left shattered, and two pairs of arms reached in.

  “What the hell?!” the cabbie cried out, slapping at the arms. The young man in the back didn’t move — the glass partition had largely deadened the noise of the breaking glass, and he didn’t seem to have noticed.

  The cab driver forced away the first thing reaching in at him, but in doing so the other one had the chance to grab him by the neck, and tore a hunk of skin from it by mouth. The driver cried out in a mixture of pain and anger and shoved away the biter. Finally free from the two attacking him, he leaned over to his glove compartment and yanked it open, pulling out a small pistol.

  “Fucking junkies,” the cabbie said as he tended to his injury. Though it didn’t appear to be a mortal wound, it was still a bite to the neck. He put the gun in his left hand and used his right to angle the rearview to investigate his injury.

  Seconds later, one of the two creatures climbed back up and reached in at the man again. The driver shoved it away from the vehicle and, leaning out the broken window, shot it twice in the chest.

  The sound of the gunshot roused the
young man in the backseat, and he sat up as quickly as his body would allow to see what was happening. The first thing he saw was the driver’s left arm yanked downward at the elbow. The driver cried out yet again as his humerus shattered. He yanked what was left of his arm back into the taxi, and the gun flew out of his hand and into the passenger seat.

  The kid in the back, his eyes now wide, looked out on the scene around him. The creature that had taken the two bullets to the chest was lumbering back to its feet, seemingly unaffected by the gaping wounds it had suffered. A few yards behind it, on the sidewalk, an old lady was being attacked by a prepubescent boy. An adult woman was trying and failing to fend off what looked like a basketball player just out of the gym. A basketball was just bouncing off the curb and out into the street.

  The young man opened the passenger-side rear door and scrambled out of the cab. This side of the vehicle was clear, and the kid looked wildly both ways for a safe direction. He started to go back the way they had come, then stopped, thinking to himself. He returned to the vehicle and opened the front door, reaching in and retrieving the driver’s gun. As he did, the driver lunged for the kid.

  The driver’s eyes had become blanched, black and white, and he no longer seemed to be feeling the effects of either his neck injury or his arm. The young man leapt backward, staggering between a pair of vehicles parked at the curb, but he kept his grip on the gun. He stepped onto the sidewalk and heard a smattering of gunshots all around. The young man flinched with each one, his eyes wide and astonished.

  Suddenly, a shot rang out at the street corner, just a handful of yards from where the young man stood. He wheeled and watched in horror as one woman stood over another. The upright woman was still holding a gun with a shaking arm, training it as best she could on the body on the ground, which had taken a bullet to the gut. It started to climb back to its feet, just as the one that had attacked the cab driver had done.