After Life

by Jaron Lee Knuth

  Nathan was staring at the floor, unable to look into Alex’s eyes as he spoke.

  “Everyday I look outside and think ‘today is the day.' Today is the day I will leave and I will find them, and I will be a hero because I faced insurmountable odds just to be with my family.”

  Alex saw tears rolling down Nathan’s face. The imposing frame of the man melted away, and his body folded under the weight of his thoughts.

  “I never leave,” he spoke, the tears dripping off his lips. “I can never summon the bravery I need to go out there. I can never…”

  Nathan shook his head, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

  “I tell myself they’re dead now. I tell myself they’re dead so that I can sleep at night. I want them to be dead so that I made the right decision in staying.”

  Alex placed his hand on the man’s shoulder and squeezed, saying, “No one blames you. I’m sure if your wife were-” He paused. “She would understand why you did what you did. She would want you to live.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nathan said, his posture stiffening. “I have to live with it now.”

  Alex watched the man’s face. Nathan did not have the cold, stone, unfeeling face he expected. His face was one of pain. And acceptance. He truly was living with his decisions.

  “Unlike me,” he thought.

  Alex lowered the volume of his voice to nearly a mumble under his breath. “I let someone die. I let those things kill him so that… so that Morgan could live.”

  Nathan looked at Alex, asking with genuine concern, “Did you have a choice?”

  “It didn’t feel like it.”

  “You saved your girlfriend’s life. You need to focus on that.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, trying to believe Nathan’s logic. “She’s not my…”

  “Nathan!” Owen yelled from across the enclosed space. “Come here a second, will ya?”

  Nathan nodded at Owen and patted Alex’s leg as he stood up. He flashed Alex a smile before walking over to Owen who had Harold and Brenda standing near him.

  As Alex watched Nathan lift boxes of car batteries onto a cart, he found himself uneasy. A knot formed in his stomach again when he felt his mind try to push away his feelings. He still felt himself trying to bottle it up.

  He stood up from the couch and stumbled off into the darkness. There he found a place where he could see nothing, even when his eyes were open. There he lost himself in his mind and openly wept. He allowed his mind to completely fall apart, to lie in ruins.

  He knew he could rebuild.

  He knew he would be stronger.

  Day 39

  6:26 pm

  Morgan wandered into the clothing section of the store looking for a clean t-shirt. When she got deep into the department, she heard Ashley and Emma laughing somewhere in the darkness. Morgan pointed her flashlight toward the noises. Near the corner of the dressing rooms, the two of them sat in overly fluffy prom dresses, tears streaming down their faces from their uncontrollable laughter.

  “What are you two doing?” she laughed, immediately jealous of their emotion.

  The two girls were startled by Morgan’s light and Morgan saw them both straighten up, trying to act “normal.”

  “Nothing,” Ashley answered back. “Just trying on clothes.”

  “Sounds fun,” Morgan said, stepping closer to them.

  “Turn off your light, my Dad will see us,” Emma said, her voice mumbling with a lisp. “And it’s so bright…”

  “What?” Morgan asked, sincerely confused.

  “My Dad. I don’t want him to come over here” Her words were slurred together.

  Morgan shined the flashlight into Emma’s face and saw her pupils rolling back into her head under barely open eyelids.

  “What is wrong with you?” Morgan asked, stepping forward. “Were you guys drinking?”

  “It’s fine. She’s fine,” Ashley said, grabbing onto Morgan’s arm and lowering the flashlight out of Emma’s face.

  “What’s going on?” Morgan said seriously, looking into Ashley’s eyes, which were also barely open, but looked straightforward.

  “We just took some pills,” Ashley answered, annoyed. “Nothing strong. We didn’t take that much.”

  Morgan’s face remained unchanged, her reaction muted. “What did you take?”

  “Oxycontin. It’s fine. I’ve taken it before, I know what I’m doing.”

  Morgan’s face continued its blankness. “You’re getting high? When those things are outside?”

  “Yeah. ‘When those things are outside.' That’s exactly the reason why I’m getting high.”

  “Ashley, you can’t just-” Morgan said, but Ashley cut her off.

  “I can’t what? I can’t try to forget about what’s outside? I can’t try to pass these days by without crying my eyes out with boredom? You should try it before you knock it.”

  “No Ashley, I just mean-”

  “Just stop. You’re not that much older than me. Don’t act like you know any better what’s going on.”

  Morgan was about to start yelling back at her, but caught her breath and let out a heavy sigh instead. “Ashley. You’re… you’re right. You can do anything you want to.” Morgan shook her head and readjusted her glasses. “I’m not judging you. It's just Emma. She’s young.”

  “You can’t tell me… tell me…” Emma’s voice drifted off as her eyes rolled into her head again.

  Morgan looked at Emma and felt nothing. Feeling no sympathy for the young girl in her pathetic state, Morgan knew she had completely turned off. Morgan sat down with them. Turning off her flashlight, she let her eyes adjust to the near darkness.

  “When you stay here a few more weeks, and you start to feel your brain melting from the monotony, let me know.” Ashley leaned back. Morgan could hear the smile on her lips as she talked. “There’s plenty of pills to go around.”

  Morgan said nothing. Her mind considered the place that small bottle of pills could take her. Her mind considered a place far away from here.

  “Do you have any cigarettes on you?” Ashley asked.

  Morgan tossed Ashley the rest of a crumpled up pack from her pocket. “I’m actually trying to quit.”

  “What?” Ashley was shocked by the concept. “Why in hell would you want to do that? Seems like a pretty merciful way to go now days.”

  Morgan shrugged her shoulders. “Yeah, I just… I don’t know. I’m just…” Her face scrunched up in discomfort as she tried to change the subject awkwardly. “I haven’t seen you around the group much.”

  “Yeah,” Ashley mumbled, holding a cigarette in her lips while she dug in her pockets for her lighter. “That’s sort of on purpose.”

  “Do you just not get along with them, or…” Morgan paused, trying to figure out exactly what she was asking.

  Ashley let out a deep drag from her cigarette, smiling as she said, “What is this?”

  “What?”

  “Why are you asking me this? Why are you pretending to care?”

  “Pretending? I’m not pretending. I was just asking you because…”

  “Because why? Because you feel bad that I take pills to get through this bullshit? Because you think you can help me?”

  “No,” Morgan said gently, trying to be as genuine as possible. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I understand about the pills. It’s easier not to feel.”

  “Are you joking?” Ashley laughed. “I take that shit so that I can feel. Something other than this. Something other than pain, and misery, and hopelessness. I take that shit so that maybe, just maybe, I might find something to laugh at again.”

  Morgan was silent for a long pause.

  “I’m sorry,” Morgan finally said softly.

  “Forget it,” Ashley answered, blowing out another lung full of smoke forcefully.

  “I feel like if I let myself feel anything, I’ll break. Like I’m just going to shatter into a million pieces and scatter across the floor.”

&
nbsp; Ashley shrugged, not sure she completely understood Morgan’s state, but knowing that she could relate. She sucked down a deep drag from her cigarette.

  “What about Alex?” Ashley asked, her voice sharp and unsympathetic. “Aren’t you two like totally in love, or whatever?”

  “No. I mean, not really, but…” Morgan struggled to explain it to herself, much less anyone else. “Alex and I aren’t really…” Morgan sighed, taking another pause to figure out the best word to use.

  “How long have you guys been together?” Ashley asked, trying to help her focus her thoughts.

  “We’ve been friends for years, but we aren’t really ‘together.' I mean, I am… I was…” Morgan nervously spun her engagement ring on her finger. “Someone asked me to marry them and it wasn’t Alex, but I don’t think my fiancé is…” Morgan took a deep breath. Speaking her thoughts out loud felt like finalizing them. Like signing a contract.

  Her voice would make it true.

  “I don’t think my fiancé is alive.”

  “You totally love Alex,” Emma mumbled, almost tipping over even though she was sitting on the floor.

  Ashley took a drag and let the smoke roll out her nose, burning the insides of her nostrils. “Do you?”

  Morgan stared into the darkness. The dim glow coming from the electronics department barely gave her enough light to see Ashley’s silhouette.

  “I don’t know if I can answer that.”

  “You don’t know if you can… or should.”

  Morgan thought about the question. She let the concept roll around in her mind.

  “It has barely been a month. I don’t even know for sure that Christopher is dead.”

  “Christopher is your fiancé?”

  “Yes,” Morgan answered, her voice becoming weak.

  “And so you think that it’s not right that you’re having these feelings for Alex.”

  “Right now? Honestly? It doesn’t seem right to have any feelings.” Morgan shifted in her chair and let out a sigh, assuring herself it was okay to speak. “My parents died. They died last year and when it happened, I was… I was so lost. I was looking for someone to blame and just trying to figure out why it happened, and I couldn’t believe something so terrible had happened. I wanted them to be alive so badly.”

  Ashley was silent, smoking her cigarette and just letting Morgan talk.

  “Now… now that all this has happened and I’ve seen everything that people have lived through, and when I see Alex worry about whether or not his mom lived, or his dad lived…” Morgan held her face in her hands, embarrassed by her words. “Now I’m happy my parents died. Now I’m happy they never had to see this. I’m happy I don’t have to worry about what happened to them. I know they’re dead. I know where they are and how it happened and that they died quickly and…” Her words were lost in a flood of tears. “I’m scared that I want Christopher dead too!”

  Ashley felt an urge to comfort Morgan, but her baser instinct of coldness cut in and stopped her from moving. She stayed where she was and spoke directly.

  “I think you’re afraid to feel because things might change and you might be wrong again. You’re afraid what you feel isn’t what you’re supposed to feel, and if you let yourself be with Alex... then that means Christopher is dead.”

  Morgan said nothing, too scared to admit the girl was right.

  “What you need to realize,” Ashley explained, letting out another drag of her cigarette as she spoke. Each word let out a small puff. “What you need to accept, is that the way you feel about Alex has nothing to do with Christopher. If you love Alex, it doesn’t mean you were wrong about Christopher. It doesn’t make the way you felt about him any less real.”

  Morgan was shocked at Ashley’s maturity. “I just want it to be okay to be happy. Every time I almost say something to him, every time I almost tell him what I’ve always felt about him, every time I finally accept this new world, and that my old life is over, something reminds me…” She took slow breaths. “And then I turn off. Then I just go numb.”

  “You can’t do that,” Ashley said, her voice sounding deep and brooding. “If you turn off like that, you might as well be dead already.”

  “I want to feel…”

  “Life is short, girl. Even shorter than when they used to say, ‘life is short,'” Ashley said with a snarky tone.

  “I know.”

  Morgan began to cry, feeling something for the first time in weeks.

  Maybe years.

  Her body shook, convulsing with each whimper. Her mind flushed through every painful memory she had held back and every denied emotion, releasing it all.

  Ashley and Emma moved next to her, pushing her wet hair from her face and holding her. The three of them rocked back and forth, slowly.

  Day 39

  8:02 pm

  Alex – who sat in the electronics section with Owen, Harold, and Mr. Peterson playing cards – ignored everyone’s protest to Herman Leblanc's choice of classical music for the night, and enjoyed the orchestral score. Alex knew their card game was slow and half-hearted, none of them particularly interested in who was winning. Days held nothing more than passing time.

  Owen slapped down a king of hearts on the discard pile and said, “I wanted to run something by you fellas.”

  Harold picked up the king and traded it for one of his own cards. “What is it?”

  “I’ve been talking to Nathan about this, but I thought I’d see how you guys feel.” Owen cleared his throat and sat up straight. “What Alex told us about the military... it got me thinking. Thinking about Fort Ripley.”

  “The army base?” Mr. Peterson asked. “My cousin was stationed there when he was in the reserves.”

  “Really?” Owen perked up. “Do you know the way?”

  “Sure.” Harold asked, “Why?”

  “I think that if the military is really out there, than we should try to contact them.”

  “Yes!” Harold shouted, slamming his fist on the table for effect. “Absolutely!”

  Owen kept talking, trying to keep the momentum of the conversation. “Listen, if we can get to Fort Ripley, they might have a radio, or something we can use to get in touch with whoever it was that set off those bombs.”

  Mr. Peterson rubbed his chin, pondering the idea. Harold just kept nodding, looking back and forth at everyone else sitting at the table.

  Alex shook his head again, not giving the idea much thought before he dismissed it. “I don’t think it’s worth the risk. If the military are really in any shape to fight back, they’ll find us.”

  “You don’t know that,” Mr. Peterson said.

  “And you don’t know if they are even there,” Alex said, arguing back at him. “We’re safe. We have plenty of food. Why risk it?”

  “It’s important that we… we need to find other survivors,” Owen said, lying his hand face down on the table. “Of course everything is fine here, but if the government is still active...”

  “Absolutely,” Mr. Peterson agreed. “The government.”

  Alex ignored Mr. Peterson. “You didn’t hear the radio. I mean, they sounded like a bunch of kids playing with firecrackers. I don’t think these guys are who you want them to be. Besides, we can’t risk anyone’s life on a hunch. The bombs they set off may have been their last idea. What if they gave up when it didn’t work?”

  Harold looked angry as he pointed his fat finger in Alex’s face. “America’s troops don’t give up.”

  “Whoa.” Alex held up his hands and slid his chair away from the table. “I didn’t say anything about… I mean, come on, you aren’t seriously going to pull that patriotic bullshit on me are you?”

  Owen stood up and stepped behind Harold saying, “First of all, we don’t need to use that kind of language. Second, I don’t find anything wrong with ‘patriotism,' Alex. This is America-”

  “No!” Alex yelled, cutting him off, “This isn’t America. Not anymore. There is no America. There is no milita
ry. At most they are people just like us, but with better weapons.”

  “You better watch your tongue,” Harold said, his face turning red under his thick black beard.

  “I’m telling you the truth. That’s all. I just don’t want anyone else to die needlessly.”

  Owen held his hand out, saying, “Alex, I think you better find somewhere else to take a time-out and cool off.”

  Alex stared into the falsely calm eyes of Owen, infuriated with him. His head felt as if it were swelling with blood before he finally exhaled and stomped away, cursing under his breath. As Alex walked away he heard Mr. Peterson and Owen begin talking about Mr. Peterson’s willingness to leave the store to look for the base.

  Alex sat amongst the shelves of greeting cards in the dark of the store. He stared at the floor, sunlight from the front doors giving him just a fraction of light. By his feet laid a card with a monkey wearing a dress printed on the front. He was reminded of the ridiculousness of society before the infection. It was the same society so many people in the store wanted to keep.

  “Is it someone’s birthday?” Nathan’s voice came from behind him, startling his perception of being alone.

  Alex spun around and saw the large man smiling down at him.

  “I heard you arguing with Owen,” Nathan said, leaning against the shelf of cards.

  “He said you didn’t think it was a good idea either.”

  Nathan shrugged. “I don’t. I tend to think you’re right. Blowing up Minneapolis doesn’t make me feel like we’re winning.”

  “I swear, it only took a few minutes for them to be walking around again. Most of them got blown apart, and the ones that didn’t were pretty damaged, but as soon as you left the blast zone-”

  “I believe it,” Nathan said, shaking his head as he stared at the floor. “I mean this isn’t a normal war. Who the hell knows how to kill something that’s already dead?”

  “Time,” a voice from near the cash registers called out.

  Nathan spun around and shined his flashlight on the spot where the sound came from. In the light he saw Brenda, the high school science teacher, holding an arm full of candy bars.