Celia spun to him. “What do you mean?”
Erik shook his head. “I can get you into his house,” he said.
All three of them stopped. They turned to look at him, the commotion going on nearby forgotten. “How?” Celia asked.
Erik put his gun away. “The number panel outside his door. I know the code to unlock the door.”
“How do you know that?” Stacy asked.
“All of us did,” Erik said, his voice hollow. “All of us. The Anti-Techs. We all knew.”
Celia thought she could feel her mouth drop open. “The what?”
Erik shrugged. “Guess it doesn’t matter. You know I’m a doctor. The group enlisted a lot of us. Had to have doctors. And we knew the code to get into his house if —” he waved around generally, “— this happened.”
“You knew how to stop this all along and you watched people die instead of telling us?” Celia asked, furious.
“I don’t want to tell you now,” Erik said, matching her fury. “I am happy this is happening. World needs to learn a lesson! I should be safe in that Wal-Mart with my wife now, waiting for it to blow over! But you people killed her, destroyed my chances there, and left me with no choice. Only reason I’m telling you now is because I’ll die otherwise.”
Celia had been angrier with Vince for killing her father than she was right now with Erik, but it was close. She had to stop herself from shooting Erik right there, but the fact that the man was right, and he was their only real hope of surviving kept her from doing it. “Go,” she said, as coldly as she could muster.
Erik was already moving. He ran back toward the opening in the chain link fence and up to Salvisa’s door, the other three close behind him. He stopped at the panel outside the door and pressed a button. The little plastic door on the front of the panel slowly flipped open, with a little red light over a little number pad revealed underneath.
“We can’t trust him,” Simon said quietly to Celia from their spot a few yards from Erik. “He just wants to save himself.”
Celia nodded. She had no intention of trusting him. At the same time, she was starting to understand a lot of Erik’s questionable actions. His near-constant efforts to convince them not to head to Salvisa’s hadn’t been cowardice, it had been an attempt to keep them away. His ditching them at the service area but still heading this direction hadn’t been as much him trying to leave them as it had been trying to get there first and head them off. His lies when they had gotten to Salvisa’s had been as much about trying to stop them in their efforts as it had been to get them in trouble for killing his wife. Erik had been acting in his own self-interest this entire time.
But they couldn’t take the time to worry about that. Celia glanced behind her and saw that the zombies were drawing near — so near, in fact, that Stacy was already turned and firing. The other people who were fighting the zombies off were losing, and losing badly. Celia could only see a couple of them left, and as she looked, she saw one use her last bullet, turn to try to run, and get grabbed. Simon turned to join Stacy.
Celia looked back toward the house and saw Erik finish entering the numbers. The little light turned from red to green and he started to move to the door.
“Stop!” Celia said. Erik jumped, startled. Celia moved toward him with her gun raised. He raised his hands slowly.
“You aren’t going to let me in?” Erik said. This time he really did look scared.
“We are,” she said, turning the knob with one hand and keeping the gun trained on him with the other. The door opened easily, and she could feel a small sense of relief wash over her. It wasn’t the end, by a long shot, but it was a big step. “But you come in last. I don’t trust you not to lock us out behind you.” She stepped in and hollered to Simon and Stacy. “Come on!” she said.
The two of them glanced at her behind them, saw the door was open, and ran to join her. Simon hurried in. Stacy was just behind.
“Did you see anyone else?” Celia asked her.
Stacy shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Go with Simon! Find the switch! We’ll be behind you.”
Celia nodded and turned to follow Simon, who was already deep in the entry hallway. She stopped briefly and turned to Erik. “You can come in,” she said.
Erik lowered his hands and headed in. He crossed into the foyer and turned to close the door.
But he was too slow. As Erik pushed the door, the first zombies reached it from the other side and pushed back. He wasn’t ready, and the force knocked him backward. Simon had already turned back and saw what was happening. He pushed past Celia and tried to help Erik and Stacy push the zombies back out and get the door closed. “Go!” he cried. “Find the switch!”
Celia nodded, but before she turned away she saw a zombie, a young one, down near the bottom of the door, reach in and grab Erik’s foot. As she turned to run, she heard him scream a scream that could only have meant he had been bitten.
She didn’t know if Simon and Stacy were okay. She couldn’t check. If they were succeeding in getting the door closed, then she couldn’t help. And if they weren’t succeeding, her best avenue to help would be getting to the switch, not turning back and hoping.
All she could do now was search.
Chapter Nine: Giving Up
Salvisa’s house was remarkably well-kept for a single man who was pushing 90. It had a dainty living room, with an old-style recliner and a maroon couch, a bookshelf on the left, a grandfather clock on the right, a wall decoration that looked almost like a shrine with a baseball bat in a place of honor atop it and baseballs displayed in a row in front of that. It had an ancient kitchen with white appliances and deep brown cabinets. It had a breakfast nook with one lonely chair against a small table, salt and pepper shakers on a lazy Susan on the table bookending a little letter shelf. It had a small pantry. It had a bedroom with a four-poster bed and a heavy-looking dresser that appeared to have been put through its paces over the year. It had a bathroom. It had a closet.
Celia knew it had all these things because they were what she found on a quick pass through the house. What she didn’t find was anything that might be called high-tech. There was no TV in the living room. There were no digital clocks. There wasn’t even a microwave in the kitchen.
And — most frustratingly for Celia’s purposes — there was no computer. Nothing in the house indicated it might be a way to turn off any sort of signal from the Z’s. It looked more than anything like the house maintained by the old woman, Cathy, who had lived next to Celia and her father her entire life back in Ithaca.
It was almost comforting in that sense. Celia had only been in alien territories since leaving home, and seeing something even moderately familiar triggered something. On the other hand, of course, there were the gunshots, and the screaming, and the knowledge that at any moment it could be too late. The entryway was a hallway, funneling the Z’s into a single place for Simon and Stacy to shoot, and with each one that went down, it made it harder for the next ones to get in. They would eventually get through, but the narrow access point was a help. Still, they’d get through. A grandmotherly house of domestic plainness was nice, but this was not the time.
But there was nothing. Celia stood in the kitchen and felt herself getting frantic. Part of her had assumed all this time, even when they were stuck in the commune in Boston, even when Erik was getting them threatened, even when the RV wouldn’t start, that they would figure this out, that the next step was the only thing let she had to figure out and then the job would fall into place. Well, here she was. There was no next step. There was only this step. And she was flailing.
Suddenly, she was back on the beach, years ago, just a child, and her father was quizzing her. She was digging holes in the sand to trip zombies, she was hoping her little trap would be the right answer to Andy’s pop quiz.
“You’re smart, Celia,” he had said. “Very smart. You’ll be able to figure out what to do in most situations. But I don’t want you cock
y, thinking you’ll always think your way out of it.”
That was her problem. She had gotten cocky. She had decided they would succeed no matter what happened. That was not the right approach. She needed to step back and acknowledge that this might end poorly. Then she could be the smart woman her father believed her to be.
Celia was sure she could hear Simon screaming over the gunshots — not the scream of having been bitten, but the primal scream of someone who was desperate to win. She couldn’t hear Stacy, but there were still at least two guns firing, which had to mean something good. Also a good sign was the fact that they were in a hallway that didn’t have any rooms off of it and she hadn’t seen anybody come through — not Stacy or Simon, not a zombie, not even Erik.
She stopped. They were in a hallway. On the other side of the hall wall to the right when coming in was the kitchen. The bedroom, the living room, the bathroom were all further into the house. But that hall was narrow, and there was a wall next to it. Celia hadn’t found anything that would indicate there was something behind that wall, but … there had to be something there. The house promised it.
Celia moved back out of the kitchen and passed the hallway, forcing herself not to look at what was going on in there. She stood in front of the wall that had to be hiding another room. A panic room. Either the way into the room was in front of her, or it was in the hallway and she had missed it — if that were the case, the game was already lost.
So Celia decided for herself that that couldn’t be where it was, if only because the other answer would be too awful. Anyway, Salvisa was hiding the room; it wouldn’t make sense to then place its entrance right by his front door.
It had to be this wall, then. The wall was the most cluttered part of Salvisa’s house, with that bookshelf, large framed art — some abstract blend of shapes and colors — a full-length mirror. There was a table, nothing huge, that was filled with knick knacks. It hit Celia that the wall should have stuck out to her at first, if only because of the clutter. Nothing in this house was an accident. If he had the clutter there, he had it to cover his tracks.
Celia grabbed the mirror and wrenched it from the wall. It came away surprisingly easily, but there were no indications that anything behind it would give way. She did the same with the art, with the same results.
The bookcase? Celia scowled. Salvisa, she figured, was echoing the clichés of her father’s old dime-store novels and used a bookcase to guard his secret passageway. That was boring, but it was also complicated. Was it a single book that would trip a switch? Did she need to move the entire bookcase? Celia had no idea, and didn’t know how to even start investigating.
Then she had a memory. Back at the Wal-Mart building. Michelle relaying the story of how Salvisa had been out of his mind. She had used the “death follows the day” example, but she had also mentioned something about Salvisa’s hand grenades. Celia squinted, trying to remember what it was.
The memory floated back. “The pantry,” he had told her. “Shelf below the peanut butter.”
The pantry. Celia ran back by the opening to the hallway. As she did, she realized she was only hearing one gun fire. Suddenly, Stacy stumbled back into the living room. She appeared to be fine, but no longer even had her gun in her hand.
“Celia!” she cried as she saw the girl run past.
Celia slowed down just long enough to hand Celia her gun, then she hurried over to the pantry she had barely looked at and flung the door open. The peanut butter was right in front of her, head height, easy to spot. Below it was … nothing that looked explosive to Celia. A jar of flour, another of sugar. Then a third jar. Celia peered in the translucent top of it and realized this had to be what she was looking for. She wrenched it open. Sure enough, sitting in the bottom of the jar, all by its lonesome, was a single egg-shaped ball, the thing she only realized as a grenade because of her brief views of them when they were used in the Wal-Mart fighting.
As she looked at it, Celia realized she wasn’t at all sure how to use the thing. All she had really seen Michelle do when she had used the grenade was a toss. She vaguely remembered Barry Lowensen fidgeting with it in some way as he used it on his suicide. There was a little loop, like a keyring, on one of the ends of the oval. Celia ran her finger over it gently. It resembled the ring on the fire extinguisher at their home, which Celia had also never used, but at least she knew that had to be removed. She figured she had to do the same.
As Celia returned to the living room, the next question was how she would target the grenade. Did she just need to toss it at some part of the wall and hope? What if it didn’t work? It was the only one left in Salvisa’s pantry, so she only had one shot.
There wasn’t much time. Stacy was shooting again, using Celia’s gun. A glance into the entry hallway showed the Z’s were basically piled on top of one another, but others were climbing over the pile. Simon had backed into the living room as well.
Celia ran over to the corner, where the wall blocking the room and the wall to the outside met. She figured blocking the explosion on one side could only help inflict damage. She knelt down, trying to remember exactly how long it had been between Michelle throwing the grenade at the Wal-Mart and the explosion. She knew it had at least been a couple of seconds, but whether that was two or three second or ten-plus, she couldn’t remember. Regardless, she put the grenade on the floor and knelt next to it.
For a second, she hesitated. This felt insane. She was going to cause an explosion in the room and not even leave the room. She was going to give Stacy and Simon as much notice as she could, but who knew how much that would be. What if this grenade was more powerful than the ones in the Wal-Mart? Or what if the one in the Wal-Mart was more powerful than Celia even knew? She hadn’t seen the explosion of the one Michelle had thrown. She hadn’t even seen the explosion of the one Lowensen used. She was relying on sound and aftermath. Maybe this grenade would bring down the roof over their heads. Or maybe it wouldn’t even be big enough to make a dent in the wall and she was wasting time.
And then the scream.
From behind her, Celia heard Simon cry out. She whipped her head around and saw that Simon, just clear of the entryway to the living room, had run out of bullets. A zombie climbing over the pile in the entryway had apparently tumbled down the pile and grabbed at Simon’s ankle as it fell. Celia couldn’t tell if Simon was crying out of pain or simply fear, but either way, she couldn’t wait anymore. Either the grenade was going to work or it wasn’t, but she no longer had any other strategies. She pulled the pin — it took her two tries, the thing didn’t come out easily — and ran backward.
Stacy had shot the zombie who had gotten hold of Simon’s leg. For a second, the three of them were clear. “Get back!” Celia cried as she ran.
The other two looked around in surprise, wondering what Celia was talking about. Whether they saw the grenade or just followed her lead, Celia didn’t know, but first Stacy, then Simon started moving in the same direction she was. The lead Z’s did too, though they were definitely just following the humans.
Seconds later, it happened. Celia hadn’t gotten all the way to the opposite wall yet, and she felt the push from the grenade as the explosion sent waves through the air. She was sure the ones who were behind her felt it even more.
She turned to look. Stacy had fallen to her knees — Celia’s fears for her pregnancy flashed again. But they were quickly replaced by new fears. Simon had gone to his knees as well, which wasn’t bad in itself, but one of the zombies behind him had been pushed forward as well, and it was grabbing at his ankle. Simon cried out again and tried to scramble backward, but the zombie stayed with him.
Celia no longer had a gun. Stacy did, but it had fallen from her hands as she fell forward. So it took Celia a second to retrieve the gun, and another second to shoot the zombie off of Simon.
She took just a second more after that to look at Simon. There was no blood pouring from his pants leg, no sign that he had been bitten. Simon leapt t
o his feet and moved to help Stacy up. As he did, he met Celia’s eye.
“Did you…?” Celia asked.
“Just go!” Simon cried, pointing to the spot where the grenade had gone off.
Celia looked back to where the grenade had been. It had worked. Not perfectly, but she could now see a hole in the wall that revealed another room on the other side. It was small, not big enough for even Celia to get through, but it was there. There was another, bigger hole in the wall to outside the house, right in the corner where she had set the grenade. That hole she could almost get through, which was annoying — she’d have rather the bigger hole show up where she could use it. And it was scary, because that meant any Z’s still outside could potentially find their way in that way. But still, she had made a hole to the room. She could see it. The baseball bat in the place of honor on the back wall could, she hoped, take care of the rest, and take care of it quickly enough.
Celia made eye contact with Simon. She gave him the gun, then ran over to the wall behind Salvisa’s recliner and removed the bat from its perch above the row of balls. As she did, Simon started shooting again, taking down the other two Z’s that were in the living room. For the moment, there were no more. Celia didn’t know if the others could even climb over the mass of zombies that Simon and Stacy had made in the doorway, but she wasn’t interested in waiting to find out. Maybe the mound was high enough to block the doorway. Maybe they were still trying to get in that way and couldn’t. She hoped so. But even if that were the case, they would eventually find their way to the hole in the side of the house.
Celia stood before the wall and held the bat in front of her awkwardly. She didn’t know how to best swing it. She raised it over her head like a sledgehammer and swung it down into the exposed drywall between the studs in the wall. It knocked a little flap of it loose, but between her poor aim and her bad form, it might as well have been a wave of a fan.
She looked to Simon, desperation in her eyes. She didn’t know if he would be any good with the bat, but she knew she wasn’t. Simon nodded.
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 34
