by Laila Blake
Laila Blake & L.C. Spoering
After Life Lessons
Book One
a novel
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
AFTER LIFE LESSONS
Copyright © 2014 Lilt Literary
Cover image © lofilolo | Canstockphoto.com
Cover Design by Laila Blake
Published by Lilt Literary
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Any unauthorized reproduction or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the authors.
First Printing: April, 2014.
ISBN-10: 0-9960054-0-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-9960054-0-1
First Edition: April, 2014
www.liltliterary.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter One
Letters From Abandoned Places
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Letters From Abandoned Places
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Letters From Abandoned Places
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Letters From Abandoned Places
Chapter Twenty-Five
A Letter from the Authors
About the Authors
More Books by the Authors
Preview: By The Light of the Moon, by Laila Blake
Acknowledgements
After Life Lessons is a book that went through many drafts and phases. At various stages, we had brave and kind beta readers who came in, and offered aid, advice or just another set of eyes to check if we were heading in the right direction. We are indebted therefore to Hayley, Lana and Siobhan who took the time to read an early draft and to give us vital feedback for the editing process. Further, we are immensely grateful to Deborah O'Neill Cordes and Jeanne Hill who read through the last draft.
We also owe a debt to the self-publishers and micro-publishers who have come before us, who started to even the path we are treading and who earned the respect of readers and reviewers alike. Without their shoulders to stand on, we could not have come this far. One person in particular has been of huge help to us. Harper Bliss taught us a lot about starting out in the publishing world and we are grateful for her words of wisdom.
Lorrie would like to thank her parents, Allen and Jeannie, for forever supporting her, from a notebook-toting 8 year old right on up through college and beyond. She also extends her appreciation to her kids, Kate and Milo, for understanding why Mommy is always at the computer. Lastly, she would like to thank her husband, Andy, for being patient and kind and supportive, all while never quite understanding the process or the technicalities, but believing in her all the same. Thank you, thank you.
Laila also thanks her brother Robert for his constant support in all her writing endeavors and his timely rescue whenever she gets lost in web or cover-design. She would further like to thank her father, Lorenz, for reading the first draft of her German translation and for his brutal honesty that made her look at a few issues in a new way. Thank you all for the constant support.
Chapter One
Something was dying in the flurries of snow.
Emily couldn’t see five feet of road in front of her, but the desperate howl pierced the wind. A dog maybe, or something altogether wilder. It seemed to harden every muscle along her spine, forcing her body into a more awkward pace, one hand firmly around Song’s, dragging the boy along. The wind piled snow into drifts, threw it into icy funnels that danced between the trees. Piece by piece, they had let go of their possessions, offered them like sacrifices to the snow, to earth’s gravity and fatigue. Song had long stopped complaining; he’d even stopped coughing, just hung on to her, placing a shaking foot in front of the other.
The dog howled again, and Emily forced her legs to quicken the pace. Song whined, and after a few steps, his hand slipped out of hers, and he sunk onto a pile of snow.
She was aware they were going to die; that was as clear as the icicles that hung from the hard guitar-case she still carried strapped to her backpack. She could barely walk on her own skinny legs and they wouldn’t get far, but she pulled him up anyway, hefted him onto her hip. His frozen cheek came to rest against hers. He coughed, tried to lock his ankles around her waist, but his boots were too slippery, and he soon lost the strength to try again.
Emily was not far behind. With each step along the icy road, her knees shook, and even in the split second in which she slipped, she found herself utterly unsurprised, almost unmoved.
They were going to die.
Blinding pain blasted through her wrist, up along her arm when she landed—hard on her left side, protecting Song from the brunt of it—and, still, she was left impassive. The pain drove tears to her eyes, and the wind froze them on her cheek, but she hardly noticed. She struggled back to her feet, sucked in stinging breath after stinging breath, and pressed forward.
There had to be something out there, something other than the snow, the trees that formed an aisle on either side of them. Hope felt foolish—but this was logic. They were not out in the wilderness; there had to be something.
“Song, please, please…” she begged, when he slipped down her thigh again, clinging to her neck like a monkey. She hefted him back up, swallowed the pain that shot through her arm, and tried to squint through the snow. Another howl filled the stillness, closer this time.
In her head, in her legs, it felt like she was running. The truth came closer to padding along on heavy feet, but it was the idea that mattered, the breath that burned in her lungs. She envisioned herself bursting through the trees to some large, well-appointed house, with food and a bathtub big enough to float in, to make it all worth it.
What she found—in the end—was a decrepit gas station, but she reminded herself, sing-song voice in her head and all, beggars can’t be choosers.
They made an inelegant entrance, crashing through the door that hung on its hinges, into a convenience store that had been ransacked long before, the toppled shelves mostly emptied, covered in dust and a fine layer of ice. Emily hauled the both of them through the tangle of wood and wire, past the cash register that lay, gaping open like a wound, on the floor by the counter. The wind whistled through the broken windows, and had it not been for the storeroom just behind the cigarette display, there would have been no point to the gas station at all, not for them.
The storeroom had only one small window and a rotting desk—no food in sight. It was cold, still, but temperature was relative—they were out of the snow, out of the wind, and she could finally set her boy on the floor, and collapse herself.
Every motion sent pain crashing up her arm, and somewhere in the back of her mind that scared her almost as much as Song’s cough and the way his cheeks were burning up the moment he was out of the wind. Biting down, she pilf
ered through her pack, throwing onto him whatever they had left: a few clothes, a blanket. Where was the towel she’d always used to rub him dry?
“I’m getting some snow to melt, okay? Don’t move.”
Song didn’t answer; Emily grabbed the empty bottle and struggled to her feet. She thought of fires, of tea and food, as she stumbled through the storeroom, cradling her arm and ducking her chin into her scarf to protect her face from the wind. Kicking the door open again with her boot, she squatted down, and pushed snow into the bottle until her gloves were caked in the stuff. She was back on her feet, shivering, when something broke through her pain-addled senses.
The dog barked, once, then again—vicious, aggressive and scared. A shadow hushed through the snow somewhere far ahead. Emily stood, frozen on the spot until, in the distance, hulking shadows emerged—a soft grey against the chaotic white of the blizzard. Forcing down a shriek, she commanded herself to move, pushed the door closed as quietly as she could, and threw her head around looking for something to barricade it with. She gave up when she saw the broken shop-windows, the pointlessness of any attempt to secure the building. Out of breath, she slipped back into the storeroom.
Song stirred.
“Water?” He sounded more pitiful than she could remember, and Emily swiped ineffectually at her eyes with her frozen hand as she pushed the bottle under her clothes to hurry it along. There was a chair that fit under the door handle, but it looked flimsy, it looked like death.
“Not yet. Soon,” she whispered, forcing her voice to stay calm. “Are you cold?”
Song shrugged; he coughed, and she scooted to his side, pulled him closer. The bottle of snow lay heavy against her stomach, insulated by nothing but a thin layer of fabric to protect her naked skin. The cold wandered up her chest, and down her legs, and she bit down hard to stop her teeth from chattering.
“When's Daddy coming?”
“He... I don't know, Duck.” She drew a sharp, wet breath in through her nose. His question burned in her gut and behind her eyes, the guilt of a dozen half-truths and avoidance tactics.
“He needs to hurry up,” Song sniffled. “We're supposta be together. And I miss him.”
He buried his head against her neck and shoulder. Just like when he was a little kid, his cheek rested on her clavicle, so close to the colorful bird tattoo that his nose touched the little tail feather and he had just enough room to wriggle his fingers under her scarf and draw them along the outlines of the bird's wings. He’d always done that when he was upset or afraid—an exercise in peace. Emily squeezed him tight.
“I know,” she whispered, rubbing her nose over his temple and trying not to show how afraid she was, how hard she was listening for any sound. “Hey, um… why don’t you try to sleep for a bit, hmm?”
“But I’m thirsty,” he croaked, and the few simple words triggered a new fit of coughs that rocked his body so hard, Emily pinned him against her chest until he came up for air, eyes red, puffy and hopeless. Sighing, she pulled the bottle from under her many layers and inspected it. When she turned it around, a few drops of melt water ran into the lid. It was still too cold, but she relented, let him have that one sip to drink. He shivered when it went down his throat and she took the bottle back.
“Hush, Duck,” she breathed, tears burning behind her eyes. “I’ll try to get a fire started later, okay? I promise?” Just as soon as there were no more dogs and no more hulking figures around.
How he continued to believe her, she would never know, but Song nodded, and clung to her. She remembered endless nights a long time ago, a fever pulsing through his tiny body, and how those hours of holding him under the blanket in their well-heated apartment were like a special kind of hell—now she felt guilty for how warm he was against her frozen and brittle body.
Drifting off was easy, frighteningly so, even sitting up, even supporting his dead weight when Song sunk under in slumber. Time passed like water flowing, and she was floating in some groggy world between waking and sleeping, when she became aware that they weren’t alone anymore.
It was more instinct than knowledge, and she froze, arms protectively tight around Song’s sleeping body. Holding her breath, she turned her head to check on the door. The chair was still in place, and she couldn’t hear anything. For a moment, she almost convinced herself that it was a dream, pain, anything but real, imminent danger—until the explosion of sound outside. Her head snapped around to the window, and there they were.
Five. Five of them, as far as she could see. Something was dying out there and so they came, like vultures.
Years ago she had believed that fear could be overcome by repetition, but now she knew that wasn’t true. Her chest seized up, still grew hard and clammy every time she saw them. There was hatred, too, and the harrowing images that followed her into her nightmares.
She didn’t dare move or make a sound. They were known to get into spaces, to break glass. But with the dog out there maybe, just maybe, they hadn’t noticed her and Song. After all: they were mindless, weren’t they? They followed the scent of blood and death, voices, screams, sudden movement. They were dead, not sharks, circling a blissfully ignorant swimmer.
There was scrambling and animal sounds of terror and pain. Emily pushed her hands over Song’s ears to try and spare him the sound of breaking bones and tearing limbs, of the choked death howl that burned in her gut. She could feel the bile rise up in her throat. Sullivan flashed through her mind: Sullivan on the ground trying to fight off two.
She checked if Song was still asleep before she allowed the tears to fall. She had long learned to cry in total silence.
The dog went fast, even if it didn’t feel that way, her muscles wound tight and aching; she knew this logically. The dead didn’t play with their prey; still, she watched them—she had to. She had to make sure they didn’t grow aware of the two living bodies inside the gas station, that their breaths stayed as quiet as possible, that the creatures would move on once they had butchered the dog.
Time passed—not hours, though it could have been years for all that it mattered—and her eyes parched staring out the window into the blinding expanse of white. The snow continued to fall and Emily was grateful for the moments in which it came down so hard, all she could see was shadows, moving behind a screen of chaotic flurries. She clamped down on her teeth until pain pulsed up her temples and behind her eyes. With nothing to wash out her mouth, the bile continued to burn in her throat. Song slept on, though, and she had a flash of jealousy, of irrational irritation, that she was all alone with that terror in her bones.
Emily only dared loosen her rigid stance when the hulking figures had passed from view, but she still forced down sobs and coughs, and the desperate need to move her leg, which was prickling with the lack of blood flow.
She stared out of the window and at the remains of the dog, the blood-soaked snow. If Song didn’t know it had once been a dog, would he eat it? She wanted to throw up again—but it was meat, and there was still some left. They were messy eaters, the dead, always leaving so much behind. But Emily didn’t move to try the subterfuge. The virus scared her more than their hunger, more than a clean death, more even than Song's cough. And still, she couldn’t stop looking, couldn’t stop staring at the carnage until it was burned into her retinas, until the snow slowly, so slowly pulled its blanket over the corpse.
Letters from Abandoned Places
Winter 2016, February, I think
Somewhere between Cleveland and Youngstown, Ohio.
Dear Sullivan,
The road has always been yours. Your territory, your freedom and your bondage, all at once. Now it's mine.
It feels like we have been on it forever, have walked for miles, for leagues on end. “This is nothing,” you once said, “we can get that far, easy.”
Did you believe it when you said it? Because you were used to crossing distances, because you were always on the road, because it was your home more than our apartment ever was?
> It is a thought that enters my mind in every town we pass, every road we walk down: Did you play a show here once? Have you walked the same way? Have your wandering feet ever stood right here where I am standing?
The world is so unreal, I don’t know what happened, but we used to see some survivors here or there, or zombies, but now we go whole days without seeing anything. I forget sometimes what a blessing that can be.
It feels like a world in between, a wild and cold and empty limbo that retained some superficial characteristics of earth to ease the passing. And in this world it would feel perfectly natural to walk from one time into another, if I could only find a patch of earth to stand on that you’ve stood on before.
I could come up to you and smile. “You don’t know me yet…” I would say, “But you will. Don’t try to figure it out… and you can think I’m crazy, that's okay. Just make sure that you don’t spend the summer of 2015 in New York City.
“That’s all, and if you do, you and the people who love you most—and by that time you’ll know why I tried to warn you off it, just convince them to spend the night in the sewers—or better yet, to just keep walking until you’re out of the city.”
I haven’t watched enough science fiction to properly figure this out, but I’m pretty sure one of three things would happen:
Either a) Song and I fade into nothing and you lead your life until you meet us. And this time, we don't lose you and life will make sense again,
b) it causes a new bubble in the ocean of the multi-verse and in this new parallel world, we stay together but Song and I in this world will never know,
or c) the paradox we created causes a rift in the space-time-continuum and it devours the entire planet.
Sometimes, just… sometimes I think I’m going crazy, but c) doesn’t sound so bad at all. It sounds clean. All this would end, but I wouldn't have broken my word, I wouldn't have given up.
