“And if it’s a coincidence,” he went on, “why did the Out-Theres go down? Wouldn’t the site keep running without him?”
“True,” Michelle said with a nod. “I don’t know, Donnie. Probably never will.”
Donnie nodded. It was true, his worries were groundless — the chances they’d find out what happened to Peter Salvisa were only slightly better than the chances Zachary Lambert and Madison Crane had been faking their deaths back in the office.
He lapsed back into silence as Michelle drove. He knew that, logically, there was no way they were ever going to know what had caused Salvisa’s sudden silence. But at the same time, he knew there was no way they could legitimately hope to get to Stacy, holed up somewhere in Hyannis, and yet here they were, driving toward Michelle’s stepdaughter as fast as the little church car would carry them.
That thought raised another, more worrisome one in Donnie’s mind, and he jerked his head up.
“Michelle,” he started, “how much gas do we have?”
Michelle gave out a bitter laugh. “I was wondering when you’d ask that,” she said. “Basically, I was wondering if we’d actually run out of gas before you asked.” She glanced down at her gauge for a moment and continued. “You won by, best estimate, five, ten miles? We’re real low.”
“What do we do when we run out?”
“Pray,” Michelle said. “We can hunt for a gas station or something, but I can’t say I’m optimistic. Our best bet, once this car is over with, is to keep going on foot, hope we find another car, some gas, something.
“Hey,” she added, trying to laugh, “maybe we can cut back to Stratford, see if there’s a direct flight out of Sikorski airport.”
Donnie feigned a small smile at the joke. He appreciated the effort, but the acknowledgement that they’d be walking within minutes had him clenching in all the wrong places. “Heck,” he said, trying his hardest to return the humor. “If we’re playing that game, let me bust out my GPS and have it take us right to the nearest Sunoco.”
The humor fell flat, though, and they lapsed into silence, until Donnie murmured, more to himself than to Michelle, “Guess we aren’t quite so high-tech these days.”
Minutes later, Michelle’s prediction turned out to be nearly spot-on, as the car wound to a halt on a small road that ran through a tiny town, small enough that she didn’t even know the name of it.
“Good little church car,” Michelle said, patting the steering wheel as she pulled the keys. “Thanks for the lift.”
Michelle removed her seat belt and climbed from the car. She had pulled her pack from the backseat and had it on her back before Donnie had set foot out of the car.
“Think we’ll be able to find another car?” he asked as he scrambled to catch up.
“Eventually?” Michelle said, her eyes forward. “Sure. There are cars everywhere. We stay alive long enough, we’ll find a car.”
There was enough behind Michelle’s words that Donnie didn’t push. Eventually? Stay alive long enough? Donnie didn’t see a lot of reason for optimism.
So he didn’t ask any more questions, simply retrieving his own pack and hurrying to catch up with Michelle, who had already started down the street.
They made it to the nearest street corner before Michelle stopped. Donnie, still catching up, saw her look both ways down the cross street.
“Aren’t you responsible,” he said. “Looking both ways before crossing the street.”
“Where do we go?” she said. “I was only walking straight because, you know,” she waved vaguely at the broken-out storefronts they had passed. “Buildings. So, where do we go? Ocean a mile to our right. Ahead is absolutely nowhere. Interstate’s a mile to the left, isn’t it? More crowded area, more gas stations, more cars, but more zombies, too. But...transportation. Maybe.” She lapsed into silence.
It only lasted a moment. “I say straight,” Michelle said. She wanted no part of a main thoroughfare, no matter the vehicular advantages it might hold. They wouldn’t drive very far if they were zombies.
“Really?” Donnie said, his focus now fixated to their left.
“Really,” she said firmly. “That, or right. I’m willing to see if we can find a boat to take us east if you want.”
Donnie immediately shook his head, and Michelle couldn’t argue. If she knew for a fact they could find a boat near the ocean, she’d have already led the way to the right. But if they couldn’t find a boat — and, considering her lack of boating expertise, any boat they might find would need some sort of autopilot — they’d be merely cornering themselves.
“Okay then,” she went on. “Straight ahead is my pick.”
Donnie didn’t speak for a moment, still looking in the general direction of the interstate that Michelle feared. Finally, he turned that direction and started to walk.
“Donnie?” Michelle said, standing still. “Donnie? What are you doing?”
“Michelle, we have to go left,” he said. “There aren’t many possibilities once we get to Hyannis. Either Stacy is boarded up at school or she’s not. If she is, the chances of us actually getting in to her are slim and none. If she’s not, odds are she’s dead. And if she’s not dead, she’s looking for a place to hole up somewhere in Cape Cod. Big area. So it’s at best one in, what, 10 we’ll ever even see her, ever even know what happens to her. Longer we take to get there, lower those chances get. Longer we take, more chances she dies or finds a hideout. You’ve got to get there as soon as you can, come hell or high water. That means we have to risk venturing into the zombies. Getting there late is the same as getting there never. We can’t not take the fastest possible route.”
For what felt like the twentieth time, Michelle’s heart went out to Donnie. For better or worse, he had committed himself to her cause. She nodded to him, and fell in step behind Donnie as they took the left-hand path.
“Slim and none,” Michelle murmured, echoing what Donnie had said. “What if we get there two minutes late, Donnie? What if I get there in time to see her turn into a zombie?”
Michelle’s voice went quiet, and Donnie could tell she was thinking of her discovery of Madison in that moment.
“Don’t worry about that, Michelle,” he said, trying his best to sound soothing. “You won’t have to watch. Worst-case scenario, absolute worst, if she’s a zombie? You won’t see it. We’ll never find her.” Michelle continued to walk toward the populated area, toward the interstate.
Donnie slumped his shoulders and followed along. “There’s just no way we’ll ever know.”
Chapter 4: Declaring Your Aliveness
Bang. Bang. Bang.
The sounds still hung on the air, a good five minutes after they had actually been there. Three shots, coming from somewhere no one could see.
What they meant, no one standing at the two cars could guess. They had sent four of their group. Did that mean three were now dead? Or wounded? And if so, which three? And why? Or, were they shooting zombies? Three of them? Was anyone bitten?
Celia didn’t know the answers to any of these questions. And she couldn’t tolerate guessing. So, while the Stones and the rest of their group peered down the street, wondering aloud whether someone should investigate, questioning the shots and waiting for more, Celia walked in the opposite direction, going until she was in a small field that was on the side of the road.
The field was an open area, with nowhere for zombies to be lurking for at least a hundred feet — exactly what Celia’s father had taught her to look for if all else failed. She stood in the center and knelt down to the ground, unable to stay upright.
She stayed there for several minutes, her eyes clenched shut. Another shot rang out in the distance, but Celia did her best to close that out, as well. She knew that keeping her eyes closed totally defeated the purpose of the open area, but she couldn’t bear to look at the world, knowing that her father might now be dead, dying, or a zombie.
Suddenly, Celia heard a noise behind her. She snapped out
of her fears and jumped up, spinning to see what was coming behind her. Her new fears were unfounded, though, as the source of the noise was only Simon, slowly approaching.
“You okay?” the young man said, his eyes pointed down at Celia’s feet. His gun was stowed, and his hands were jammed deep into his pockets.
Celia nodded, but didn’t believe it herself, and knew she hadn’t convinced Simon.
“I’m sure he’s okay,” Simon said, his eyes not moving from the ground.
Celia nodded again. “Thanks,” she said.
“I saw him with his gun,” Simon continued. “Outside the classroom. He knows what he’s doing. If something happened, he’d have been the first one ready to shoot. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“Thanks,” Celia said again. “But I don’t think I’ll be sure until he gets back.”
This time, it was Simon’s turn to nod. He finally raised his eyes from the ground to Celia’s face and met her eyes for a split-second before looking away, a far cry from the way he had looked at her in the classroom, before the two of them had met.
He looked back to the people by the cars, back to his own father. Suddenly, he spoke again. “Sex is a way of declaring your aliveness,” he said, out of the blue.
Celia stepped back. “What?”
Simon shook his head. “Sorry,” he said, again avoiding eye contact. “My mom had these old magazines, articles from 2010. I used to read them all the time. 20 years in a house with just my parents, I read everything I could find. I remember reading this one about sex and grief. There were these interviews with all sorts of people — old, young, men, women. But there was this quote pulled out, big type, across two pages. Talking about how, when you feel bad, worse than anything, sex can make you feel better. Psychologically, it’s like…you can feel good even when you feel at your worst. It was this old woman, saying, ‘Sex is a way of declaring your aliveness.’” He finished speaking and again looked up at Celia. This time, his eyes showed nervousness. He had obviously not planned to talk about sex with her, but it had happened nonetheless.
Celia laughed. She had her choice of two possible reactions, laughter or anger, and had chosen the cheerier. It was clear that Simon had no idea what to say when he wasn’t talking zombies and survival. After a few seconds, once it was clear that laughter was all Celia was going to offer, Simon offered a tiny nervous grin back at her.
“Thanks,” she said for the third time.
“Glad I could help,” he said. He took a step forward, bringing himself within a half-step or so of Celia. This time, she didn’t withdraw. Simon pulled his right hand from his pocket, and Celia found herself taking it in her left. It was warm, and sweaty, but she didn’t mind. She looked down at their hands together, then up at Simon. This time, he was looking straight back at her, just like he had been in the classroom a few hours earlier, and she was reminded of how much she liked that look. She hadn’t had much opportunity to interact with boys her age, so this was a first, and she didn’t hate it.
Looking into Simon’s eyes, Celia felt a level of safeness for the first time since they had come across the zombie in her dorm room back at Morgan College. She knew her father would give anything for her safety, and that was comforting, but it was nice to know that her father wasn’t the only place Celia had to look to for a guardian, for protection if she couldn’t do it for herself.
So, of course, in the one moment that Celia started feeling safe, secure, from somewhere in town, blocks away, another pair of gunshots rang out without warning.
The fear came to Celia anew. She dove her head forward, burying it in Simon’s chest. Their hands separated and he, now free from her grasp, placed his hands on her back nervously, tentatively. As he did, another shot rang out, seconds after the first two.
Seconds later, Celia realized they were not in immediate danger. She couldn’t say the same for her father, but could only hope and pray he would return in due time.
Celia pulled back from Simon, though his hands didn’t move from their spot on her back. She looked up at him to find that he was still looking down on her. His eyes were protective, she could tell, and they were kind too.
Celia didn’t know Simon well. But in that moment, she didn’t care. His eyes made her feel comfortable, safe, even in a world where she could die at any moment. She reached up to him, resting her left hand on his shoulder, placing her right on his cheek. Almost without thinking, Celia found herself pulling Simon’s head toward her own. Suddenly, their lips were meeting. At first, it was merely a peck, Celia experiencing her first kiss and assuming Simon was experiencing his as well. It progressed though, as the two of them awkwardly tried to maneuver their virgin lips against one another.
Finally, they pulled apart. Though Celia was reluctant to do so, she knew they had more pressing matters to deal with. But she realized, in that single moment with Simon, it had been good to declare her aliveness in her own way.
Chapter 5: Kinks Out of Our Necks
Michelle fished a bottle of water from her bag and took a drink. She was in decent shape, but the combination of keeping her head on a swivel and a loaded pack on her back was wearing her out quickly.
They had turned off their first road not a half-mile earlier, and were now walking through what had once been a subdivision, at Donnie’s insistence. At Michelle’s question, Donnie had explained that if they were going to get to the highway, for better or worse, they were going to go as fast as possible, and he had declared his way to be a shortcut. Michelle, not as familiar with this particular area, had finally yielded to his guidance, though she wasn’t in love with the idea.
Her uneasiness grew as Donnie cut through the driveway of a house that had clearly been uninhabited since 2010 and led into a gathering of trees in the back.
“Donnie?” Michelle said, forcing her way through a clutch of bushes. “Donnie, how can you know where the interstate is from here?”
“I just do,” Donnie said, his voice steady as he skipped over a shrub. “Trust me.”
Michelle had her doubts, but admitted she didn’t have any better routes in mind and so followed along.
And just as well, as minutes later Donnie led her through a final group of trees into an opening. Not three hundred yards away, Michelle saw a familiar, and very welcome, sight: an interstate service area.
Before 2010, service areas had been small mini-exits, generally stocked with a gas station, a McDonald’s and little else, so positioned because they let travelers get off roads without having to bother navigating.
In the years since, though, many such stop-offs had been repurposed as worst-case-scenario emergency landing points in the event of a new generation of Out-Theres. The gas pumps were still supposedly functional, but the service areas were no longer for parents with kids needing a break from a long drive; they were for, quite simply, Donnie and Michelle — people on the run from the dead, who needed, if all else failed, a way to be on the move.
Supposedly, Michelle knew, these service areas had been supplied with a handful of gassed-up cars, ready to be driven by any desperate traveler. And, on the far end of the service area, Michelle could see a line of about five cars that certainly appeared to her to be ready to run.
“I had forgotten all about the service area emergency points,” Michelle said, smiling at the sight before her.
“I hadn’t,” Donnie said, offering back a smile of his own. “Before I came to work for Mr. Lambert, I’d been in charge of the New England Regional Rest Area Readiness Committee. This was my project.”
“That’s how you knew the fastest way to get over here?” Michelle asked with a gasp. “You knew exactly which backyard to cut through? That’s amazing.”
Donnie’s smile grew with pride. “Michelle, I was very good at my job.”
Michelle’s mind drifted back to the situation at their own base, which had been meant to be the safest of all places in the world. Somehow, though, those in charge of the place she’d spe
nt most of her time had never accounted for the eventuality that zombies actually could have gotten in, as only that main exit had been secure. “Glad to know someone knew what they were doing,” she said, more to herself than to Donnie.
“Right?” he said, answering regardless. “I tell you what’s been bothering me,” he went on. “How much has gone wrong. I mean, everything. We didn’t have a single safeguard in place if Z’s ever got into our building, short of, ‘Well, shoot the hell out of them.’ And you remember what Nick said? Apparently, they had told him that, if zombies did return, he was just supposed to stay on guard. Forever, the way he described it. What the hell was that? Was that just their way of saying they had someone on point while really just hoping they never had to worry about it? I mean, ‘stay on guard forever’ hardly seems like a thought-out plan.”
Suddenly, Donnie laughed out loud. “You know what we didn’t have at work? Nowhere in that damn building? Beds. Cots, sleeping bags, pads, whatever. Not a damn thing. If we’d had to hole up there, we’d have been sleeping in desk chairs and on concrete floors. No one, in 20 years, said, ‘Hey, guys, what about a mattress?’ A single goddamned mattress. Maybe we’d have survived the outbreak, but every one of us would have needed a three-day massage at the end, just to work the kinks out of our necks.
“We were all just a bunch of fuckups,” he said. “All of us. Nothing was ready. Nothing was prepared.”
Donnie glanced over to Michelle as he finished. She had slowed down, and he saw fresh tears in her eyes. “Michelle?” he said, his tone growing concerned. “Michelle? What’s wrong?”
“‘Nothing was prepared,’” Michelle repeated.
“Right…?”
“Donnie, nothing was prepared. Yeah, we’re heading to Hyannis to find Stacy. But you know what I hope to find there? All I want to find is a locked door leading to a basement classroom. Just the idea that Stacy is downstairs, is safe. Then I’ll work on finding my own safe place, and I’ll be able to see her again when this is all over.
After Life Page 17
