After Life

by Daniel Kelley

  “Where do you think they’re going?” Lowensen said from the backseat.

  “Hard to say,” Andy said. “There’s always that Wal-Mart building.”

  “You really think they could be going there?” the teacher said. “If a National Guard base wasn’t secure, how secure could an old department store be?”

  “Let me know when you’ve got a better idea, Lowensen,” Andy said, sounding exhausted. “I already thought I had a safe place.” Lowensen sat back in his seat and looked at the floorboards.

  Suddenly, the young man sitting in the middle seat leaned forward. “Mr...” he started, before floundering.

  “Andy, son,” Celia’s father said. “Call me Andy.”

  He nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “What did you need?”

  The kid blushed. “I...I don’t mean to distract you, but…” he stopped speaking then and looked to the floor of the car.

  “What’s your name?” Andy said, turning slightly in his seat.

  “Travis,” the kid said, not looking up.

  “Travis,” Andy repeated. “Believe me when I tell you this. You can’t say anything wrong in the world of the zombies. You shouldn’t know what to do. If you have a question, you ask it. Never be embarrassed.”

  Travis nodded. “It’s just so…unimportant.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “I’m just…” he hesitated again, before letting it all out in one breath. “Sir, I haven’t eaten since this morning, and I know it’s not that important, especially considering everything else that’s going on and the fact that we don’t even know where we’re going to end up, but if there’s any chance we could take a minute to find some food, I’d really appreciate it. I’m just so hungry.”

  The car was silent for a minute. For her part, Celia was happy someone had broached the subject, but until she knew how the others would react, she didn’t dare voice her agreement.

  Finally, Andy laughed out loud. No one else in the car made a sound as Andy worked to control himself. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s fine. Tell you the truth, son, I’m starving myself.”

  “You are?” Travis said, like he thought Andy was saying that just to make him feel better.

  “I am indeed,” Andy said. “Tell you what. I can’t very well stop Roger up there right now, but first chance we get, I’ll dig through our trunk. I’ve got a fair amount of food back there.”

  Celia nodded. She remembered rolling her eyes at her father’s insistence on the survival kit — complete with food, water, ammunition and clothes — in the trunk of the car, but now she was grateful.

  Andy continued. “If I had any brains in me at all, I’d have grabbed some when we were stopped back there. Been hungry since I found out we didn’t have any food. Seems to me, if I was hungry, I’d have thought to, you know, eat. But no worries, son, we’ll get something to eat for all of us.”

  Travis smiled, the first even moderately upbeat expression he had given since he joined them in the car. “Thank you, sir.”

  Celia was happy her father planned to get them some food, but was curious about the surprisingly optimistic tone her father had adopted since their run-in with the Guardsmen a few miles back. Her father was a positive person, sure, but his jovial nature of the past few minutes had Celia on alert. Why would he sound this positive? There was no reason Celia could figure, unless her father had decided that they were doomed, and didn’t want everyone to go out sad.

  Ultimately, she decided to keep her father’s motivation out of her mind. He had his reasons, she knew, and it was best not to question them, lest she actually find out those reasons.

  Instead, Celia kept her eyes forward, and wondered where exactly it was that they were driving to. And she prayed they’d get the chance to eat soon.

  Part 3:

  Unrest, At Peace

  Chapter 1: Flowers

  The fall air was crisp, just chilly enough to necessitate some sort of light jacket. As dusk settled in over the cemetery, the air chilled, dropping the temperature to the point that only the heartiest or stupidest would venture out without extra warmth.

  The man entering through the gates, though, was neither of those things, and so he had a long beige trench coat pulled tightly across his body, and on his head he wore an old-style newsboy cap pulled low. With the jacket tight across his body, the outline of a holster could just be seen on his right thigh, barely below the spot where his hands were jammed into his pockets. There was no car in the small lot behind him; the man appeared to have walked there.

  He strode with purpose as he passed through the sparsely populated graveyard. He seemed to be targeting some spot near the back, as he didn’t spare even a glance at the other tombstones while marching.

  The wind picked up, swirling enough to throw a few leaves around the man. He shivered and pulled his hands from his pockets to flip his collar up, revealing dark brown leather gloves on both hands. He returned them to his pockets and pulled the coat tighter around him.

  The man made his way through the dated, slightly crumbling gravestones in the front of the cemetery, finally crossing over into a new branch, where the stones looked newer, more polished. Except in the places of the brand new plots, where the dirt and sod had been recently churned, the grounds in the area were not well kept, with the grass growing higher than normal for a cemetery and the red, yellow and orange leaves going almost entirely unraked.

  None of these features seemed to garner any notice from the man, though, as he finally found his target tombstone, one of the smallest there, near the furthest back corner. He slowed as he neared, and finally came to a stop a few feet shy of a plot that had not quite been there long enough to blend into its surroundings, but was clearly not fresh.

  The man stood before the grave looking down at it, his shoulders slumped. For at least five minutes, he stood there unmoving, unspeaking.

  Finally, he removed his hands from his pockets and pulled his cap from atop his head. It revealed a clean-shaven head that was as dark as the gloves on his hands. He pulled the gloves off and placed them, with his hat, into his pockets. That job done, the man crouched down, balancing like a coach in a timeout.

  The gravestone he stared at had only a few words etched into it. There was no epitaph, no deep meaningful phrase, just a name and dates:

  REGINA STONE

  June 15, 1971 - August 19, 2029

  The man brushed his hand over the churned dirt, near where the woman’s feet would likely be. Finally, he spoke, without looking up from the ground.

  “I wanted to bring you flowers,” he said. “Even went out to your garden to pick them. But you told me not to ever bring anything that dies to your grave. Nothing that dies. But, honey, they’re flowers. I so want to just bring you a bouquet of flowers.

  “Like I did when we were dating. I promised you I’d bring you flowers the first time I saw you every month. And I did. I did.” He chuckled to himself as he continued. “I went broke in the ‘90s buying you flowers.

  “I never cared about them. Couldn’t tell a rose from a daisy from a, what-do-you-call-it, forget-me-not. But you loved them, and I would have brought you a tree, a whole sequoia, if it meant I’d get to see that smile on your face when you got them. I don’t care if it was predictable.

  “Today is the first of November. The first. It’s the first time I’m seeing you this month. So, yes, Regina, I wanted to bring you flowers. You deserve flowers. You deserve all the flowers. It kills me not to have brought you flowers. But you insisted.

  “You must know that it absolutely kills me not to have you around anymore. But our boy is learning. He’s smart. Like you. You know that, I know, but it doesn’t make it any less true. He outgrew me years ago. I can teach him survival, common sense, but his true intelligence is all a product of you.”

  The man stood up. Though he was no longer wearing his cap and gloves, he didn’t seem to be concerned with the cold. He took off his jacket and walked over to a nearby tree, ha
nging it from a branch. The removal of the jacket showed the man’s gun in his holster even more clearly. He stepped back to his wife’s grave and continued.

  “They’ve decided to start schools again,” he said. “President Morgan announced it a few days ago. This time next year, in Hyannis, St. Louis and Santa Fe, three schools are going to be up and going. Morgan says they aren’t worried about overcrowding right away, says some people are going to want to send their children to school, and some are going to want to wait and make sure the schools are ‘worth it,’ whatever that means. ‘We’re going to return to our salad days, see the heights of the early days of the millennium,’ he said. Promises we’re going to have programmers, engineers, everything he seems to think we lost in 2010.” The man laughed. “The man promised ‘a phone in every pocket, a website for all occasions.’ Silly nonsense. But, honey, it’s a school. It’s a school for our boy.

  “Simon’s going. No doubt in my mind. I’ve already talked it over with him, and he’s excited. I think he knows, Regina, that there’s only so much I can teach him, only so much I can do for him, now that you’re gone. I dare say that, if the zombies ever come back, Simon’s going to be in good shape, but anything else? I fear I won’t have him prepared. A boy needs his mother.

  “Nonetheless, he’ll be going to Hyannis next year. I’m going to make sure he learns everything I can’t teach him. Everything you would have taught him. I’ll find teachers, people who know things, who can make sure our boy meets his potential.

  “And then I’ll be by myself. Haven’t been by myself more than a night at a time since, what, 1992? But I’ll have that house all to my lonesome — no Simon, no…” the man’s voice cracked briefly, but he coughed and went on. “No you. I’m not sure how I’ll handle that. I know that you’re better now than you have been in, what, five years? You’re in heaven, looking down over us, instead of trapped in that blasted chair. I know this. And I’m happy for you. But you don’t know how hard it is to be down here, knowing I’ll be all alone.

  “Even near the end, when you were almost gone, I could look in your eyes and know you were still in there, still helping me. Just still there. It’s horribly selfish of me. Horribly. You are in a better place now than you have been in years. Years. It’s not fair of me at all that I should wish you back here with me, trapped in that useless body. But I do. I can’t help it, Regina.”

  Tears were falling from the man’s eyes as he spoke, crouching over his wife’s grave. He brushed a couple of them away.

  “I just want you to know what I always wanted you to know: you were better than me. I was blessed that you agreed to go on that first date. Blessed that you found it in you to spend time with me at all, let alone stay married to this fool for 37 years. I know I’m not a bad man, and I never have been. But you made me so much better than I would have been. I’d like to think that I did the same for you, but I don’t know that that’s true. But I know you made me better. And I hope I can do that for Simon.

  “I wish I could be telling you these things to your face. But this is the best I can do. So I’ll come see you as often as I can. I’ll let you know how Simon is doing, in his life and in his…” his voice cracked again. “…in his school, thank God.

  “And,” he added, his voice gaining in conviction, “next time I come, I’m bringing you flowers. You deserve flowers.”

  “You don’t have to do it next time, Dad,” said a voice from behind the man. When he turned, he saw a much younger man standing some fifteen feet back, looking every bit the older man’s miniature, holding a full bouquet of flowers.

  “Simon?” the man asked, confused. “What are you doing here?”

  “I saw you in the garden before you left,” the boy said, nervous. “I saw you start to pick flowers five different times, but you never finished. I figured you were coming to see mom. So after you left, I went back there and picked a dozen and followed you.”

  Simon’s father smiled. “You’re a good boy,” he said, “but do you know why I didn’t bring flowers?”

  “Mom told you not to,” Simon said simply. “And I bet she meant it, Dad. But if she knew what you were going through, how much it meant for you to be able to bring her flowers, she’d change her mind, Dad. I know it. It’s the first of the month. Just bring her flowers. No matter what she said, it’s what she’d want.”

  The man stared at his son for a full minute. Finally, he walked over to the boy and hugged him.

  “Dad?” Simon said. “Dad, you’re crushing the flowers.”

  Simon’s father broke the hug then and pulled away, taking the flowers with him. He stepped back over to the grave and placed them at the foot of the marker. He didn’t speak as he did so, but kissed his hand and patted the tombstone on his wife’s name. That done, the man stood up yet again and turned to face his son.

  “You’re a good boy,” he repeated.

  Simon nodded, clearly embarrassed by the compliment. His father retrieved his jacket from the tree branch and started to leave the way he had come, with Simon close behind.

  On the ground, a few feet from Regina Stone’s grave, underneath the tree, a single dark brown leather glove lay in the grass, where it had fallen from the father’s jacket pocket. Around the cemetery, the wind died down, to the point that there was no need for the man to again bundle up, meaning the loss of the glove as he left.

  Chapter 2: The People Who Should be There

  Dusk was just starting to fall over Barnstable as the little two-car convoy entered the town. From his vantage point in the second car, Andy hadn’t seen any sign of the caravan of Army vehicles in several miles, and had a feeling the Stones hadn’t, either. In fact, Andy had a strong feeling that Roger was no longer even really hoping to track the Humvees, and was instead merely looking for safe haven.

  Andy mused that the reason he had that feeling was because that was what he’d be doing, were he in the lead.

  And so, when the Stones’ vehicle slowed to a stop, Andy wasn’t as surprised as the murmurs in the car indicated his fellow passengers were. Nonetheless, Andy wasn’t excited to be stopping anywhere — even a safe place — at dusk. Visibility as the sun goes down could be worse than the visibility in the dead of night.

  Regardless, Roger had stopped his car, a hundred yards or so shy of Barnstable proper, and so Andy stopped his as well. He kept his lights on as he removed his seat belt and stepped out of the car. To his right and behind him, Celia and Stacy did the same. Barry Lowensen opened his door, but remained in the car.

  “What’s up?” Andy asked Roger as the older man and his son exited their vehicle.

  Roger shook his head. “Damned if I know where that Wal-Mart is. Passengers didn’t. I’m assuming you don’t. Not sure that’s exactly what we want to be aiming for.”

  Andy nodded. He was right; Roger didn’t have any greater Cape Cod navigational skills than Andy himself did.

  “What does that mean, Daddy?” Celia said. “Where do we go?”

  “Towns,” Stacy said. “Anywhere with a ‘Safe Place’ sign.”

  “‘Safe Place’?” Roger echoed.

  “My mom told me about them,” Stacy said. “It’s, like, a diamond-shaped yellow sign. Picture of a shadow person holding a smaller shadow person. Something like that.”

  The teacher finally stepped out of his seat in the vehicle. He poked his head above the roof of the car, resting his left arm on it and his right on the door.

  “Those signs?” he said. “They’re old, hon. Used to post them at McDonald’s and such. To show kids where they could go if they were lost or something. Not very helpful nowadays, I’d suppose.”

  This time, it was Stacy’s turn to shoot the teacher a withering look. “I’m not, like, guessing, Mr. Lowensen. It’s a government thing. They decided a few years back that it didn’t make sense to ID a place for lost kids when kids barely ever leave their house.”

  “So they reappropriated it for another kind of ‘Safe Place’?” Andy said, impr
essed. “Clever.”

  Stacy nodded. “Yeah. They didn’t, like, publicize it, but the signs now mark government places, ones that are protected and secure in case of an outbreak.”

  “Never heard anything about that,” the teacher said.

  “Wouldn’t make any sense to tell everyone,” Andy said. “Then anyone who finds themselves out and lost would go there.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “If ten people show up?” Andy said. “Probably nothing. If ten thousand? Then one of two things happens: you let in the people you are supposed to — officials, scientists, I don’t know — and ten thousand others force their way in. Or you close out the ten thousand, and the five people who are supposed to get in don’t. You’ve got to make sure the people who should be there can be there. Same reason we never knew the truth about Area 51.”

  “Right,” Stacy said. “They figure people who know about them have a reason to know about them. So if we can find one of those Safe Place signs, there’s at least a chance they’ll let us in.”

  “Sounds like an idea, at least,” Andy said. He wasn’t sure how much of an idea it was, as it basically amounted to “go look for a yellow diamond sign in the world,” but it was a better idea than anything else he, or they, had.

  Andy opened the trunk of his car. Pushing aside a small case that carried his extra ammo, Andy pulled back a plastic container that held as many granola bars as he had been able to store. He removed a handful, passing them out to the group at large.

  Lowensen tore into his granola bar with vigor, showing he had been just as hungry as Andy and young Travis.

  Stacy continued talking between bites of her own granola bar. “I don’t really know where they are, but Mom said you could find them in most towns of any kind of size.” She looked down the street into Barnstable. “I have no idea if this is big enough.”

  “I don’t guess it can hurt to look,” Roger said.