After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life

by Kelley, Daniel

  Lara stepped forward. “So after all this,” she said with hate in her voice, “you’re just a murderer? You’re here to figure out what happened to your family? What would your daughter say if she were here now and found out her dad was a killer? What would she say to you?”

  Jack almost laughed. “If my daughter were here?” he asked. “I wouldn’t be. I’d be home. So your question doesn’t matter.”

  Lara shook her head. “No wonder your wife left you,” she said. “Who would be able to live with someone like you?”

  Again, Jack almost laughed. “Tried to leave is more like it,” he said.

  “What?” Mickey asked. “What does that mean?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Jack said. He took a step toward Lara. “You’ve got a smart mouth for someone who should be dead now. Would be, too, if it weren’t for my dad. I got Sean killed off while dad was in there getting you. That old bastard would have been an anchor on us within the first mile. You’re lucky I’ve never had you alone.”

  Lara’s eyes went wide. Jack, it seemed, had just admitted to killing the man she had loved, but it took a second for the full weight of his words to hit her. As it did, those wide eyes started to tear over, and she came running at him. She flailed a few ineffectual punches at Jack’s chest, but he flicked her away like a child. Before anyone could do anything else, Jack raised his gun again and shot Lara.

  The girl Mickey had carried there from Sean’s house, the one who was so silly and naïve but nonetheless had loved Mickey’s friend, fell. She didn’t die right away, but a couple of pained yelps were all she could muster before she lay still.

  Behind Jack, Michelle raised her gun again. But whether her injury held her up or she wasn’t much with a firearm or Jack was just fast, Mickey wasn’t sure. Whatever the reason, Jack spun until his back was to Mickey and fired again. This shot was aimed even worse than the one at Lara, but it still hit Michelle in the stomach. She went down to her knees slowly.

  “Anyone else?” Jack said, waving his gun at the kids who came with Michelle and the few others around. “Anyone else not interested in getting the answers we came here to get? I’m tired of the bullshit.”

  Michelle still had more to say, though. “You’re the biggest coward here,” she said through pained breaths. Her hands were clutched around her gut, and her daughter was kneeling by her side, crying freely now. “You’re a …”

  “Stop it,” Jack said. “You can think anything about me you want, but I’m done listening. Anyone else feels like complaining to me or about me,” he looked at the people in front of him, none of whom even had their hands on their guns — a couple of people even had their hands raised like it was a stickup, “can either shut the hell up or go the hell away.”

  Michelle opened her mouth to speak again, but had to stop to cough away some of the pain first. Before she could collect herself to keep going, Jack aimed his gun back at her. “I can see I’m going to have a lot to deal with out of you,” he said. “And god knows you aren’t going to be any help at this point.”

  Jack steadied his aim. Michelle closed her eyes to prepare for another shot. But before he could pull the trigger, Mickey shot. He was still behind Jack, still watching his son stop being his son in so many ways, and realized Jack wasn’t paying him any attention anymore. But Mickey couldn’t watch his son become this without doing something about it. So he did something.

  The shot went into Jack’s back just above the heart. He fell forward, his gun flying to his side. Within seconds, the girl, Celia, had picked it up and backed away. Jack rolled over, his hands grasping at his chest, though there was no exit wound for the bullet.

  “Dad …,” he whispered as he realized it was Mickey who had shot him. “Dad …”

  Mickey could feel himself start crying. “I had to, Jack,” he said.

  “Dad …,” Jack said again. He was struggling to speak. “Why?”

  “You’re killing people,” Mickey said. “You’re killing people who don’t deserve it. I don’t know what happened to you, son, but this is the only way left I can save you.”

  Jack squinted, like he was trying to figure out what Mickey was saying. His breathing was getting shallower. At the last moment, Jack let his arms fall to his side. He opened his mouth one final time.

  “Sorry.”

  Chapter Six: Blood

  Gunshots hurt. That felt obvious, but Michelle had sent out a lot of bullets in the last few days and hadn’t received one yet, so she felt like it was something to notice. The pain of the broken ankle was awful, but the gunshot was so much worse. The pain of losing Madison had been a different pain, and certainly a worse one overall, but as physical ailments went, getting shot was probably the worst she had ever experienced. Even worse than the gallstones.

  The other people had handled the zombies well. Some fifteen or so had streamed out of the man’s RV and other than the woman, Kim, Michelle had only seen one person come under a real threat, and it looked to her like they had escaped unscathed. She would have joined in the fighting if she had had the mobility to get there. Instead, she had stayed up at the head of the driveway with the others and gotten herself shot in the process.

  She imagined this was what Preston must have felt like at the bridge guard station after she had shot him. She remembered the blood poured out of his big gut, first red, then a sickly brown, then black. The darker the blood got, the more Michelle had been sure Preston didn’t have long. In retrospect, she wasn’t even sure how he had had the strength left to shoot the other guard and save Michelle. But nonetheless, Michelle wanted to watch her blood to see if it got darker. She knew that wasn’t a real diagnostic test, but she didn’t have anything else to go on, and the only doctor she knew to be in the area, Erik, apparently wanted her dead.

  So every few seconds, Michelle pulled her hands away from her gut and looked at them. In the darkness, she couldn’t be sure, but they kept looking just red to her. She was clearly going to need significant medical attention one way or another, but she felt like red was a good sign.

  With Jack dead, McVay and Lara as well, and the zombies apparently stopped, most of the attention fell to Michelle. Most of the attention, that was, except for the people who jumped in their cars and left. Apparently people were growing tired of waiting for something to happen with Salvisa’s house, and with them now having come under real threat, they were bailing out. Not everybody left, but a big chunk of the population of Salvisa’s driveway was making its exit. Closer to Michelle, Stacy was already kneeling by her side, and Celia and Simon swooped in as well.

  “Are you okay?” Stacy asked after they were sure Jack was dead.

  Michelle pulled her hands away from her gut again. Red. “I don’t know,” she said. “I think so. Hurts like hell.” She tried to laugh at that last line, because she thought nothing could be more obvious than that, but instead it came off as a pained grunt, which she supposed got the point across just as well.

  “What do we do?” Simon said.

  “Can she lie down?” Mickey asked, stowing his gun away.

  Michelle thought about it, then nodded. Celia and Stacy held her arms as she leaned back. A shot of pain from her ankle flared up, making her forget for a split second all about the gunshot, but it faded quickly and the gunshot roared back to attention.

  “This sucks,” Michelle said as she got to the ground.

  “Put pressure on the wound,” Mickey said.

  Simon got his hands down to Michelle’s stomach and started pressing against where the bullet had entered. He pressed hard, hard enough that Michelle might even have considered that another source of pain if she didn’t now know what real pain was. Simon looked up to Mickey. “What else?” he asked.

  Mickey shook his head. “I don’t know, kid,” he said. “I’m no doctor. I just know you put pressure on wounds. Make sure she doesn’t get cold. You cold?”

  Michelle took a second to self-assess. “I don’t think so,” she said between breaths.
>
  Mickey nodded. “Good. But other than that, I guess some mix of hoping and finding a doctor.”

  “Erik’s a doctor,” Stacy said.

  “One who tried to get us killed already,” Simon said.

  “But he’s a doctor,” Celia said. “He has no way left to lie.” With that, she moved off in the direction of some of the others, the ones who hadn’t left, where Michelle figured Erik had to be.

  Michelle looked up to Stacy. The girl who had just lost her mother and was terrified she was losing her baby was now crying freely at the possibility of losing her stepmother. Suddenly, it occurred to Michelle that she might have made a mistake ever leaving Stamford. If she and Donnie were still holed up there, he’d be alive and she’d be healthy. Salvisa would have showed up and she could have just killed him there. Preston and the other guards at the bridge would be alive. Stacy and the others from the college could have holed up in the Wal-Mart for however long they needed. Sure, maybe they wouldn’t have taken the shot at saving the world by going to Salvisa’s, but they weren’t having any luck in that regard anyway. Maybe she should have just stayed and hoped.

  And then Michelle started to remember. Donnie had saved Stacy’s life at the door to the Wal-Mart. And who knows if they would have been able to get the guardsmen out of the building without Michelle using Salvisa’s grenades. Or what might have happened when Erik and the others had returned to the building if Michelle hadn’t been there to help.

  No, she had made the right choice. But it certainly didn’t feel that way in the moment, struggling to breathe as her gut kept bleeding, struggling to close out the pain in her leg as the pain in her midsection refused to be quiet. Lying down in the dirt outside an old man’s house in Maine probably wasn’t doing great to fight off any infection through her open wound, either.

  But in the moment, she was looking at her daughter, staring into the face of the only family or friend she had left.

  “I’ll be okay,” Michelle said to Stacy, with no idea if that was true. “And you’ll be okay. And your baby will be okay. We’ll all be okay.” She looked down at her hands again, which were intertangled with Simon’s but doing far less of the pressure work. Still red.

  Stacy sniffled. “Really?” she asked.

  Michelle tried to nod. She wasn’t sure her head actually moved. “Just get this done,” she said. “Take care of everything. I’ll figure things out.”

  Stacy tried to smile back, but Michelle started to feel like she was not really seeing the world as Michelle did. Michelle started to wonder if she looked worse than she felt, based on how Stacy was acting. And that would have been a feat, because despite what Michelle had been saying, she felt like death might have been a reasonable alternative.

  Simon looked up to Mickey, who was standing over Michelle and just staring. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m sorry you had to shoot your son.”

  Mickey met Simon’s eyes, seeming like he had almost forgotten what had happened only a moment earlier. After a second, he dropped his head back. “It is what it is,” he said. “Jack wasn’t in his right mind. Not anymore.” Suddenly, Mickey looked around like he was just remembering where he was. “I should leave,” he said out of nowhere.

  “Leave?” Stacy asked. “What do you mean?”

  “I came here for two reasons,” Mickey said. “To figure out why my granddaughter died, and to help my son find peace with it. Well, I know why Adie is dead now. And my son … well, he’s at peace one way or another. What else do I need to do?”

  “But … we might need you,” Michelle said, still getting her words out through pained breaths. “You can …”

  “I can’t do much,” Mickey said. As he spoke, Celia and Erik came up behind him. “Not anymore. That young woman of yours, she’s a better leader than me. So are you, if you were, you know, not like you are. These young folks of yours are capable. The others took out the zombies. I’m just an old man.”

  “You’re leaving?” Celia said as she got there. Erik knelt down to Michelle’s side and started to assess.

  “I am,” Mickey said.

  “Where are you going to go?”

  Mickey shook his head. “Told myself I wanted to see the ocean again,” he said. “Going to drive out there, see the sunrise over the Atlantic, and then use this gun one more time.”

  Mickey didn’t even wait for a response from the others. He walked over to his truck, started it up, steered it around Kim’s sports car, and drove away. He took a left out of the driveway, the opposite direction of the way most of the people had gone. He did it like nothing was going on, like he was going to the store. The other cars had torn out of the driveway like race cars. Mickey’s truck was leaving on its own, and it wasn’t in a hurry.

  Michelle watched it go. Mickey had saved her life, or however much of a life she had left, and had helped them get back onto Salvisa’s property. She didn’t want him to just go.

  She looked down at her hands again. Still red. She thought maybe they were darker, but she also knew she might be imagining that.

  Erik motioned Simon’s hands away and was applying pressure. “I told people to try to find gauze or anything we can use as a bandage,” he said. “Without that, though, it’s just going to be a matter of keeping pressure on it and hoping we can stem the blood flow.”

  Michelle nodded, then half-realized this was Erik working on her. “Why are you here?” she asked. “You tried to get me killed.” He had been through a lot since they parted. His hands had blood on them even before he got to Michelle — which didn’t strike her as a good thing for her own health, but she didn’t have many alternatives — and his shirt was gone. He had been crying, too.

  “No,” Erik said, shaking his head. “I just tried to get away from you. You people killed my wife. You say you had to, you had no choice, and I guess I believed you, but all I wanted was you to have to leave and let me be away from you. No one was supposed to get hurt.”

  Michelle shook her head. That couldn’t have been all Erik was trying to do. He had had other opportunities to get away from them, like back at the apartment building while Celia and Simon were trapped, and hadn’t taken them. Yes, those opportunities would have meant danger, but no fears were so great that she thought it would have kept him there. But she had to take him at his word.

  “Am I going to be okay?” she asked, raising her hands. Red.

  “I don’t know,” Erik said. “The good news is that you’re talking to me now. The longer you feel okay in this situation, the longer you should stay okay. That’s not exactly diagnostically foolproof, but better alive than dead, you know?”

  Michelle nodded, as though those words would give her much comfort at all.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” Erik said. “I think they would have killed you after what I said. I honestly didn’t want that. You guys leaving was all I wanted to happen.”

  Michelle didn’t forgive him, but she also didn’t know if he even wanted the forgiveness. Accidentally killing that man had seemed to give Erik a surprising peacefulness, a clarity that he had lacked before. He was almost acting like he was in a state of zen, going through the motions with purpose but not exactly urgency.

  “So what now?” Simon asked. When the others looked at him, he shrunk back. “I mean, like, we have to take care of Michelle, but then what? The RVs didn’t work.”

  “That one almost started,” Stacy said through her tears. “What happened there?”

  “It was junk,” Celia said. “And it only almost started. I don’t know much about cars.”

  “I do,” Stacy said.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I didn’t have much to do at home all day when mom had to work at the office. Sometimes I tinkered. Destroyed one of my mom’s cars, but figured things out. I did all my mom’s oil changes. My mom’s and Michelle’s.”

  Michelle nodded. It had started when Stacy was only ten or eleven, the fascination with machines. She had thought she could fix some
rattle in Madison’s car, and instead had rendered it a worthless pile of metal. But she was right that things started coming to her. Stacy was gifted in that way.

  Suddenly, a pair of cars entered the driveway, turning in from the direction the group had left earlier. They came in with purpose, giving Michelle the impression these were some of the cars that had left returning.

  “What’s that?” Simon asked at the cars’ arrival.

  “They’re coming back,” Michelle said through gritted teeth.

  “Why?”

  “Maybe they changed their minds,” Celia said. “We could use all the help we can get anyway. Especially if we can’t get the RV running.”

  “You guys are still trying to get in there?” Erik asked. “After all this?”

  “Nothing changed about that,” Celia said. “The signal’s still going.”

  Erik shook his head. “I don’t understand. Eventually you have to give up.” The cars that had returned parked, and some people jumped out. “They’re coming!” someone said in a panic.

  “Who’s coming?” Erik asked, quietly. The people from the cars certainly couldn’t hear him, but others nearer to him said the same.

  “Z’s!” the woman cried.

  “How many?” Simon said, taking a few steps over to her.

  The woman — mid-60s, small, not well-equipped to fight a cold, let alone zombies — shook her head as she hugged herself. She closed her eyes tight. “All of them!” After a moment, she spoke again. “A lot of them. There’s a mass of them. Too many. Way too many!” The man driving the other car that was back had climbed out of his car and he nodded his agreement, face pale.

  The group gathered around Michelle tensed up. Stacy pulled her arm back around her midsection and let out a little gasp. “How?” she asked.