Chapter Four: Milling Around
Mickey pulled into Salvisa’s driveway, then almost as quickly threw the truck into reverse and left the driveway again. He directed the truck the same way he had been going, as though Salvisa’s driveway had just been a wrong turn.
The place had looked like a concert venue, cars pulled off the driveway right and left to park in the grass, people milling around. Salvisa’s property was big, expansive, and generally abandoned. The old man didn’t spend much time outside the security fence up near the house. Mickey didn’t even know who mowed the grass for him. So all Mickey had ever done when he came to Salvisa’s was drive up to the gate and say hello. This was very different. The driveway was still the driveway, but people had apparently been arriving at Salvisa’s for hours, parked in the grass, and then … Mickey didn’t know what.
“What are you doing?” Jack asked with some anger.
“Too many cars,” Mickey said. “I don’t know if Peter would open the door for just me, let alone you two. A hundred extra people? We’ll never see the man.”
Jack snorted. “So we’re back to the whole ‘breaking down the wall’ thing.”
Mickey shook his head. “What do you think that’s going to accomplish, son?” he asked. “Peter is going to see us break down his wall, see a hundred people come pouring in, and just shrug and explain what he can? If there even is everything? You don’t know the man. That’s the absolute best avenue to get him to refuse to tell anybody anything.”
Jack shrugged. “Everybody is quiet until you start ripping out fingernails.”
Mickey stopped the truck. “Son, listen to yourself. You’re talking about torturing a man, destroying his home, all because he might know something that might give you some answers. It won’t bring Adie back. Nothing will. This is just for peace of mind. If you find something out from Salvisa, that’s wonderful. If you find it out because you’ve destroyed an old man’s life, that’s not peace of mind. That will weigh on your conscience as long as anything. Tell me you understand that.”
Jack stared out the window and didn’t say anything, like a 13-year-old who had been grounded. He still looked angry. Mickey didn’t think he was going to get a response. He started driving again.
After a moment, Lara spoke up from the back. “Why did you leave the driveway?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” Mickey said. “Nowhere, really. I’ve just spent the last few hours planning for how I’d approach Peter if we were the only people here, and now I have to recalibrate. Wasn’t considering the chances that this many other people would have the same idea. I’d rather go in with a plan in mind.”
Lara looked disappointed but sat back in her seat and didn’t say anything. Mickey went about a half-mile down the road and pulled off into a wide driveway of what looked to be an abandoned farm. The black fence was dilapidated, with as many planks missing as not, and the fields behind the fence were overgrown. It had once been a beautiful property, as Mickey recalled, but these days it was nothing but a home for feral cats.
He stopped the truck just outside the broken-down fence and killed the ignition. He didn’t have a plan in mind but wanted a quiet place to think. As soon as the truck was stopped, though, Jack opened his door and started to leave the truck.
“Where are you going?” Mickey asked, worried his son was going to take his destructive approach right back to Salvisa’s door.
“Gotta pee,” Jack said without looking back. He walked a few feet into the field.
“Actually,” Lara said from the back, “I kind of have to do that too.”
Mickey waved in the general area of the field on the other side of the driveway from where Jack was. “I wish I had a better place to offer you,” he said, “but the tall grass should provide at least a little privacy.”
Lara shrugged and left the truck herself. Her days on the road, Mickey figured, had done their fair share to kill off most of her desire for modesty. As she walked away, Mickey opened his own door.
“Walk around a little before you start,” he said. “Nothing worse than being surprised with your pants down.”
Lara nodded and went into the field herself. Mickey watched as she paced around a bit, then could see her crouch in a spot in the center of her pacing. He turned his thoughts back to Salvisa’s property, but they settled there for only a few seconds before he was jolted from those thoughts by a car, an old two-door sports car, pulling into the wide driveway behind him.
Mickey didn’t know who this was, but he wasn’t going to be approached … well, with his pants down. He pulled his gun out and jumped from the car, out and facing the new car even before they had it in park.
The driver’s side window rolled down and a pair of hands poked out, raised like Mickey was the police. He walked around to the side of the car, keeping his distance. His gun was in his hand, but it wasn’t raised. Mickey looked into the car. The driver was alone. It was an Asian woman, mid-50s. She was clearly short, with her head only barely high enough to see out of the windshield from the car’s bucket seat. Her black hair had flecks of gray and hung down around her face like an oval. The car and driver did not match at all.
“Who are you?” Mickey asked. His hand was relaxed on his gun. Whoever she was, she didn’t seem to be a threat.
“Kim,” she said. “Can I step out?”
Mickey looked her over once more and nodded. She pulled her hands back in, removed her seat belt, and climbed out of the car. Mickey’s impression had been correct. She couldn’t have been much above five feet tall, and if she weighed a hundred pounds he’d have been surprised. She looked weathered, like she’d been through a lot, but still alert. She wore a holster around her waist with a gun tucked into it, but otherwise didn’t look well-suited for a zombie world. She had on a blouse that would have looked more in place on a second date than in a dangerous world and had on long black pants that wouldn’t do much of anything to fight off a zombie bite. She wore flats on her feet that were only half a step above sandals.
“Okay,” he said. “Clothes.”
Kim nodded. “You too.”
Mickey put his gun away and started to remove his shirt as Kim did the same. Just as they both did, though, Jack stormed up, back from his bathroom break.
“Who’s this?” he asked angrily. His gun was out just like Mickey’s had been, but it was raised like he was ready to shoot.
Immediately, Kim went on the defensive. She stepped back behind the still-open door of her car and crouched, affording herself a bit of cover. In the middle of it, Lara came back in, looking back and forth between the group with surprise.
Mickey stepped in front of Jack. “Calm down,” he said. “We’re getting to that.”
“We don’t need more people, dad,” Jack said, looking past his father.
“I don’t think we have a choice in the matter,” Mickey said. “The ‘people’ are already where we need to be. Might as well see why one of them is here.”
Jack stared at Kim a little more, than lowered his gun. “She needs to strip down,” he said.
“We were already doing that,” Mickey said. “You’ve got to rein yourself in, son. This isn’t my first time.”
Jack kept his suspicious look but nodded. He put his gun away and started to remove his own shirt. Mickey and Kim did so as well. Behind them, Lara, who no one had even acknowledged, did the same.
In short order, they were four naked people standing in an abandoned driveway in the middle of nowhere. They each in turn stepped away from their clothes and did a spin. Everybody looked clean. Kim looked incredibly thin. Unhealthily so. Mickey revised his estimate of her weight down to about 90 pounds. He could probably take her with one hand, even in his 70s.
As they all got dressed again, Mickey spoke. “Okay, so who are you?” he asked.
“I’m Kim,” she said again. “I’m nobody.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I was on Salvisa’s property
,” she said, “when you pulled in. Everybody has just shown up and been standing around, like we’re waiting for Woodstock to start. You were the first ones to leave again. I figured even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re doing something, so I followed.”
Mickey nodded. “And what were you doing there?”
Kim shrugged. “Same as everybody else, I suppose. They didn’t know where else to go. Maybe Salvisa has answers.”
“And does he?” Jack asked.
Kim shook her head. “Nobody knows. We’ve knocked, we’ve yelled, no response. Can’t even tell if he’s there.”
“So what are people doing?” Jack asked, sounding angry.
“So far, not much,” Kim said. “That’s why I left. A lot of milling around.”
Jack shook his head. “Bunch of do-nothings.”
“They don’t know what to do,” Mickey said. “We’re all new to this. Peter’s place isn’t Sean’s house. He was an old prepper. The man had gates around fences around steel walls. Your whole ‘truck beats wall’ stance might not have worked out so well.”
Kim raised her eyebrows. “‘Peter’?” she asked. “You know him?”
Mickey was briefly surprised at the question, but he realized that pretty much everybody called the man by his last name. “I do,” he said. “Old friends, of a sort. Really just one of the few people he’d talk to willingly, which I guess was as close enough to friendship as it got with Peter.”
“So you know how to get in?”
“I know some things,” Mickey said. “Really, I know that the only way I ever got into Peter’s house was with him letting me in. If I had had to break my way in, I’m pretty sure I’d have starved to death before I ever got halfway through the job.”
Kim’s shoulders slumped. “I was afraid this would be a waste,” she said.
“A waste?” Mickey said. He almost smiled. “Did you have somewhere else to be?”
Kim shook her head. “I haven’t had anywhere to be for years now,” she said sadly. “But that doesn’t mean I wanted to drive out here just to sit around in a field for nothing.”
Jack stomped, looking like he was throwing a tantrum. “Be damned if that’s what you’ll be doing,” he said. “We’ll find a way in.”
Kim looked at Jack with some nervousness. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Jack stared daggers at her. “I’m fine,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I have a mission to accomplish.”
Kim’s gaze shifted from Jack to Mickey, and she shot him a look like she wasn’t sure about Jack.
“I’m sure my son’s fine,” Mickey said, as soothing as he could muster. “Adrenaline’s high, that’s all.” He wasn’t even totally sure he believed that himself, but he didn’t want to tell a new stranger he wasn’t sure about his son.
“Are you okay?” Lara asked, her first words since going to pee.
Kim looked surprised, like she hadn’t really realized Lara was even there. “Why?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Lara said. “You seem … sad.”
“The world just ended for the second time in 20 years,” Jack said with a spit. “If you aren’t sad, you aren’t paying attention.”
“I know,” Lara said, “I just …”
“He’s right,” Kim said quickly. “I’m sad. But I should be.”
Lara didn’t appear satisfied with that response, but she let it go. Mickey wanted to turn the group’s attention to their planning. “How long have you been here?” he asked.
Kim thought for a moment. “Five or six hours?” she said. “There were a couple dozen people when I got here, but they just kept coming. I’d say with you all we’re up to 120, 130. But they’re just aimless. Milling around.”
Mickey nodded. As he was considering his options, he actually didn’t mind the group. He thought blending in might be best. Walking in and announcing that he had a history with Peter would just call attention to him and Jack, and he still didn’t love the idea of knocking on Peter’s door with 100 people behind him. If he could find a way to get Peter’s attention with the other people not noticing, that might be best.
He would go in quietly. He would ease his way to the door. He wouldn’t go in strong. That would be Mickey’s plan.
Jack had a different one, though. He reloaded his gun with authority. “Time to go,” he said. “Maybe I can’t drive through his wall, but I can drive close. Get in the truck.”
Chapter Five: Food
Simon had driven along the road for a bit, but in true Boston fashion it had started to grow less main, just like the ones before. Just before Michelle started to figure out something to offer him for advice, though, Erik spoke up.
“Take the next left,” he said. There was more authority to his voice than Michelle would have guessed. She didn’t mean to give that away to him, but Michelle’s lack of a poker face gave away her surprise to Erik.
“I saw a sign,” he said, waving generally to the left. “Interstate’s that way.”
Michelle hadn’t seen the sign, but she also wasn’t totally sure which way to go other than a vaguely northward direction, so she nodded and watched as Simon followed Erik’s directions. Sure enough, a few blocks up, there was indeed a sign indicating they were approaching I-95, which by itself would get them all but the last 15 miles or so to Salvisa’s. Assuming no zombie-related interruptions and assuming they had enough gas, Simon could stay on 95 to Bangor, a long stretch of safety where only Portland posed significant worries.
Michelle almost relaxed, such as relaxation was possibly in a zombie-infested world in a strange SUV with a badly broken ankle. She sat back in the seat. She did want to check on that gas situation, though.
“How are we on gas?”
Simon let out a soft chuckle. “Celia took the keys to six cars, and we gave ourselves enough time to pick the best option. Full tank. We could drive a long time.”
That was the best news Michelle could have gotten. As Simon took the right turn onto the interstate, Michelle let her mind go to the turn-by-turn directions she’d need to give Simon once they got to Bangor. They were drilled into everybody’s heads in Stamford, but since she never realistically thought she’d need them, Michelle hadn’t gone over them much in recent years.
So she let Simon drive, and she tried to rebuild the directions in her brain. There had been a video. Right turns. Left turns. An intersection with a weird angle where they had to turn right in almost a U-turn. She was sure she’d recognize the path once they got there. If she had to pass along the directions now, though — if for some reason they had to leave her — Michelle had no confidence she could leave them with enough directions to get there. That just redoubled her motivation to stick around, even if their likely extended car time meant she wasn’t likely to face much danger any time soon.
“How long am I on this road?” Simon asked.
Michelle was lost in her own thoughts at the start of the question, and before she snapped back to attention to answer, Erik spoke up. “I think you can take this all the way to Bangor,” he said.
“Bangor?” Simon asked.
Erik chuckled. “I think you can take this for a few hours, really. It should get us within a short drive of where the man lived all by itself.” He shot a sideways look at Michelle as he spoke, as though he were seeking confirmation.
“That’s right,” Michelle said. “Bangor is only about 15 minutes from Salvisa’s property. How’d you know that?”
Erik shrugged. “Maine’s not that big. 95 goes to Bangor, you figure it out from there. Seemed like a safe bet.”
Michelle nodded. That was a fair enough answer.
And then it was silent. It wasn’t the tense, uneasy silence of sitting in the wrecked car waiting to see if Simon or Celia would return. It wasn’t the antsy silence of sitting in the Wal-Mart waiting to go on a life-endangering journey. It wasn’t the terrified silence they had experienced so many times over the last few days. They were still scared, but this sile
nce was different. This silence was just … silence. They were just five people in a car, driving. If not for the guns they all wore and the lack of road-trip music blaring, it could have been a spring break drive in 2009.
It wasn’t anything Michelle would call relaxing. Her leg was still excruciating, they all smelled, each of them knew Stacy might be having a health crisis, and each of them knew they were driving toward some level of danger; a level they couldn’t even begin to guess at. But it was as close to relaxing as Michelle had experienced. This wasn’t a matter of driving a few miles. It wasn’t a matter of driving and wondering if Stacy was even alive. It was just driving.
They continued in their silence for several miles with no real threats presenting themselves. Michelle didn’t notice more than one or two zombies at a time, with none blocking their path. Simon never seemed to even have to redirect the car.
“Mich?” Stacy said from the front seat after a long while, breaking the silence. “I’m hungry. There’s still food in the bags, right?”
Michelle was surprised Stacy had said anything. She had barely spoken outside of worries about her health in some time unless directly asked a question , but apparently the hunger was strong. And, Michelle realized as she considered it, she was hungry too. They had last eaten when they were still at the Wal-Mart, and while that wasn’t really that long ago, it had been far longer since any of them had had a real meal and they were expending more than enough calories to warrant food.
“I think so,” Michelle said. She turned to Celia. “Can you climb back there and check?”
Celia moved almost as soon as Michelle spoke, leading Michelle to think Stacy wasn’t the only one who had been wanting food, she was just the first to say something. Celia climbed over the row of seats and into the back area, digging into one of the bags.
As she worked, Michelle looked out the window at a service area Simon was passing. As he moved past the fuel pumps, she caught a glimpse of the cars that were left by Donnie’s planning committee. There were four cars there, but they were spaced out enough that Michelle figured there had once been at least seven or eight.
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 24
