“Let me,” he said and traded Celia the bat for the gun. She joined Stacy a few feet away and watched as Simon got to work, swinging the bat. He had excellent form and started making headway on the wall that would have taken Celia forever. The zombies outside, trying to find their way over the pile, were moaning but didn’t seem to be making any other progress.
“We’re doing it,” Stacy said, almost breathless. “I can’t believe we’re doing it.”
Celia wanted to tell her not to get cocky. After all, they were only getting into a room that might or might not have an answer they might or might not be able to access. But for the moment, it was quiet, and they were about to get through the wall. That was invigorating.
Simon kept swinging, and Celia kept watching. In another situation, this would have been hypnotizing to watch. Simon wore a baggy shirt, but the sleeves were short, and she could see his arm muscles rippling as he swung. Each swing brought them closer to the inside of the room. Celia glanced down at Simon’s ankle and still couldn’t see any blood.
They were doing it. Stacy was right. And as Simon made a hole big enough that he thought they could all get through, Celia felt herself start to smile. It hadn’t been easy, and it had certainly been bloody, but every indication was that this was about to come to an end, that they were about to be successful.
Simon stepped away from the wall, making room for Celia to get through. Ladies first as always. She smiled and passed through.
The room was clinical. All white walls, a single desk with an impressive-looking all-white computer on top of it, a single leather desk chair. In the far corner, just opposite the wall that led outside, was a door in the floor. A trapdoor. Celia almost smacked herself. It hadn’t occurred to her to look at the floor, but Salvisa clearly had this room only accessible through some trapdoor in his house Celia hadn’t noticed. That was why she couldn’t find a secret door.
The computer was running. The screen was dark, but there was a little green light on the bottom of the monitor that indicated it was on, and Celia thought she could detect the little electrical whir going even as her heart was beating twice as loudly.
What she didn’t see, though, was any kind of “switch” that might do what the switch she was searching for was being asked to do.
Suddenly, a scream behind her. She whirled around. In the opening between the walls, Stacy was climbing through, but something was stopping her. And whatever it was — and it could only be one thing — was making Stacy scream in pain. She was most of the way into the room, but her arm was being held.
She stopped screaming a second later and lurched the rest of the way into the room, revealing Simon behind her, still wielding the bat, which now had blood splatted across it. A zombie had reached in from the hole to the outside and surprised her.
She had been bitten. She screamed again and started crying. Simon hurried through the wall to join them and he and Celia immediately threw their attention to Stacy.
“It … it …,” she tried to say through her screaming and tears, but that was as far as she could get. The bite wasn’t bad. It was a flesh wound, as it were, and even at that the zombie hadn’t been able to get its teeth more than the slightest bit into her skin. But they all knew that that was enough.
“Stacy…,” Celia tried to say, but she had no idea what to say after that.
Stacy made an angry face and stomped her foot. She looked like a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Damn it!” she screamed. Then she stopped. “You have to turn the signal off,” she said. “I’m not dying for nothing.”
They locked eyes for a second, and Celia nodded. She turned to Simon. “Help her over to the wall,” she said. Simon nodded, and Celia turned her attention back to the desk. She pushed the chair out of the way and tapped at the keyboard. The monitor woke up to reveal it was on the dashboard for the OutTheres website homepage. Celia had been to it once or twice in her life, but hadn’t fallen in love with the site like others. Still, she recognized the logo and the design next to the control screen information that Salvisa could access as the site administrator. The words plastered across the screen echoed the message of danger she had seen on Lowensen’s computer in his office back at the school.
She shrunk the webpage off the screen and looked at Salvisa’s desktop. There was nothing of note there. No icons, no nothing that might indicate it was the landing spot of some system sending out a signal that was causing the Z’s. She was sure it was there, somewhere in the bowels of the computer, but hunting it down by clicking around and blindly hoping was going to take her some time.
“I can’t find it in here,” she said. “It would take too long.”
She locked eyes with Simon, who had been looking down tending to Stacy. The girl was still in pain, but her moans were getting quieter and her skin was getting paler. And then it occurred to Celia that Simon too had gotten pale. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Simon appeared to almost blush. He looked at the floor. “The zombie in the living room,” he said, pulling up the leg to his pants. There was a scratch. Not a big one, not even one he was likely to have noticed otherwise. But a scratch was a scratch.
“It took a second,” Simon said dully. “But then it was just … it got hot. It hurt so bad. It never stopped hurting. It still hasn’t.”
Celia’s mouth hung open. She had worried about Simon, but she never saw blood, and then he had been strong. He had helped Stacy. He had broken in the wall. He had fought the zombie. Even more than that, this was Simon. He had maybe been the strongest person Celia had been around the last few days. He had shown no signs of anything. He hadn’t wavered. And yet here he was.
Celia felt herself giving up. There was nothing on the computer, nothing on the desk she could see that could help. Stacy and Simon were sitting against the wall and they were both fading. Stacy might even have been unconscious. Simon was moving that way.
Celia moved to the wall and sat down next to Simon. She put her hand on his leg, and he slowly put his on top of it. In the distance, Celia thought she could hear gunshots, though she didn’t know who could be firing them. So she sat there. She didn’t know what else to do. She closed her eyes.
It only lasted a moment before the noise came. Celia looked up and saw the hole in the wall they had entered through. More Z’s had arrived. There were two of them pushing through the person-sized hole in the wall. One had its torso through. Celia sniffled. She still had her gun. She hadn’t the first idea how many bullets she had, and she didn’t even care to check anymore. She didn’t think she was going to make it out.
“Simon,” she said, nudging his arm. But Simon didn’t move. He was still breathing, but he had fallen into unconsciousness. Stacy too, was definitely out. Celia thought about just lying there next to them and letting the chips fall where they may. But she refused to go out like that. She would at the very least fight.
The first zombie was almost into the room, the second pushing behind it. There were at least two more further behind, and Celia could see a little glimpse of one pushing through the hole in the wall to the outside. She pulled her hand out from Simon’s and stood up.
Celia ran over to the corner and tried to pull up the trapdoor. Locked. That made some sense, she supposed. Salvisa could only get into the room that way, so the lock would be on the opposite side. She couldn’t get out that way. Celia stood up and faced the zombies.
She blinked back the tears that had formed in her eyes. She was going to do this clear, even if she failed. Whatever gunshots were being fired outside were still going, so she told herself she had some support in spirit, even if in practice the bullets flying were of no help to her. She raised the gun and fired at the first zombie.
It took the bullet right in the head and fell, the momentum wrenching its legs free and letting it fall into the room. That freed the second zombie to climb in as well, but Celia shot again and hit that one in the throat.
She stepped forward and she kept firing. The third zombie went do
wn, then the fourth. The one outside the house was pushing through the wall and trying to enter. She couldn’t get a good enough angle to kill it outright, but she fired a few times and rendered it barely mobile.
But more came. There were four more in the opening quickly. Celia still didn’t know how many bullets she had, but she was sure the number was going down. Still, she fired. And she hit. Two more went down.
Another zombie appeared. It snapped its jaws and stared forward with those awful white eyes, lunging into the doorway. It looked awful, like it had been on the losing end of a bullfight. Its clothing was ripped and torn, its face was bloody, and it could barely reach out with its arms. Celia blinked. This zombie was Erik.
She had just assumed that Erik had been basically devoured by the zombies entering the house, but in retrospect, the Z’s had been chasing Simon and Stacy. They always preferred live meat. So Erik had lay on the floor of Salvisa’s foyer and been trampled while the zombies tried to get over him to the people standing before them. He had been bitten, died, and come back all while a fight was going on right on top of his head. And now, with most of the zombies taken down, here was Erik, still trying to ruin Celia’s life.
She aimed her gun again. She wasn’t going to win her fight against all the Z’s, but she was going to win this one. Celia exhaled deeply, pushing every last bit of air out of her lungs. She held the gun straight in front of her with both hands, and fired.
The head that had once belonged to Erik snapped back. The bullet had hit it directly between the eyes. The zombie, and the man who had tried in so many different ways to get them killed so many different times, was dead.
That still wasn’t the last one. Still two or three more zombies remained behind Erik, and Celia was sure more would come soon, if for no other reason than the gunshots outside had only gotten louder and if anything more persistent. It was cathartic to shoot Erik’s corpse, but it wasn’t the end. With the next one trying to climb over him, Celia changed her aim and pulled the trigger again.
Click.
She was out of bullets. Simon and Stacy were unconscious, and didn’t have a bullet between them anyway. Celia’s gun was now worthless. The baseball bat was still by Simon’s side, so that was what Celia picked up next.
She thought back to her ineffective swing at the wall moments earlier. She wasn’t going to make much headway with it. But it was what she had. She looked at the bat, noticing for the first time that it had a signature across it. She couldn’t make it out, but the engraving on the barrel said “Derek Jeter.” Celia didn’t know who that was, but she issued a silent plea to Derek to help her and raised the bat, stepping forward to greet the zombies as they entered.
Her swings were still flailing, nothing special. Given enough time, Celia might have killed zombies with it if they were content to lie still and take the beating. As it was, she felt like a small child trying to beat up a big brother. She felt like she could hear the zombies laughing at her swings. It wasn’t that she was weak, she just had no muscle memory for swinging a baseball bat.
Nonetheless, she swung as hard as she could. There was only one Z far enough into the room that it could move freely, and she focused on it. Zombies didn’t have the capacity to show pain or react to a blow in any way but what physics decreed, so it just kept trying to climb through the hole, and Celia kept swinging.
As the zombie got most of its body through the hole, Celia’s swing threw it off balance. It fell to its left, turning as it fell and landing on its face. She turned her attention to the next zombie coming through and swung again. It wasn’t much more effective, but it was just as cathartic. Celia swung as hard as she could, as quickly as she could, focusing only on this latest zombie.
That was the opportunity the other zombie needed. It had turned over on the floor, and it lunged up, grabbing Celia by the wrist. She tried to turn the bat back onto the zombie, but it got a bite of her forearm before she could.
The pain was white hot and excruciating. It radiated up her arm and throughout her body so fast that she dropped the bat mid-swing. It flared through her and just never subsided, like Celia had put her whole body on a hot stove burner and left it there.
She cried out and lunged backward, out of the Z’s grasp. It got up to chase her, but the zombie climbing into the room fell on top of it, slowing it down. They would both be up soon as they untangled from one another.
That didn’t give Celia enough time to do much of anything except retreat. She cradled her right arm in her left and stumbled backward, falling to a seated position next to Simon. She understood almost immediately how Stacy had fallen unconscious so quickly. Celia probably could have willed herself to stay awake, to keep fighting, but there wasn’t much point to it, and letting herself pass out would at least let the pain subside.
As the zombies climbed back to their feet, and as the gunshots outside continued unabated, Celia leaned against Simon’s shoulder and felt herself fall asleep.
Chapter Ten: Over
It was all white. And it was all silent. It was like looking at the brightest piece of paper from up close, with nothing to break up the plainness.
Celia felt herself blink. There was nothing but white. Was this the afterlife? She had heard a hundred different stories of what to expect after death. Her own personal beliefs had been that there might be a god for her life on earth, but she couldn’t expect much of anything after death, but here she was, looking into the white and wondering if she was experiencing it.
A second later, the pain still coursing through her right arm told Celia that couldn’t be the case. Wherever she was, she was lying flat on a hard surface. She reached down to the arm and felt where the bite had been. She lifted the arm in front of her face and looked at the dried blood that streaked down the arm, then turned her hand over. It was dirty, ragged, clearly not any sort of hand that belonged in an afterlife.
Then Celia felt the body next to her. She turned her head to the left. Simon, looking asleep.
This didn’t make any sense. Celia closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to push out the cobwebs. She must have been having some sort of dream, the kind people get when they’re dying and the endorphins rush in. It wasn’t a pleasant dream, but it could have been worse. At least Simon was there. And the radiating heat of the bite was gone, even if the pain from the bite itself still existed.
But she opened her eyes again, and nothing had changed. Celia decided that at the least she had to investigate this dream. She put her hands down and started to push up, then almost immediately pulled her right arm back up. The burning was gone, but the arm still didn’t want to have weight put on it. She pushed herself using only her left arm.
In front of her, only a couple feet away, was the body of a zombie lying face-down. She couldn’t be sure without seeing it from the front, but something in her brain told her this was the zombie that had bitten her. It had a bullet hole in the back of its head and a pool of blood stagnating in a halo around its head. Only a few inches further back was another, which had to be the other zombie that had gotten tangled with the first. It too had a bullet hole and a pool of blood.
Celia looked to her left. Sure enough, Stacy was there. All three of them were basically where they had fallen unconscious, only slid down to the floor instead of propped up against the wall. Beyond the two dead zombies were a couple more, one just inside the hole in the wall, one just outside. The sunlight streaming in from the hole in the wall told Celia that either not much time had passed, and it was still fairly early in the morning, or a whole lot of time had passed, and it was another morning altogether.
Celia rubbed her eyes, confused. She looked to her right, to Salvisa’s desk. It was still there, just as it had been before. But two things were different. One, the computer had gone back to sleep, though its little light indicated it was still powered up. And two, the chair was occupied.
“You’re awake,” Mickey said. His voice was half surprise, half relief.
“I �
� I am,” Celia said. “Mickey?”
He nodded at her. “I didn’t know what to expect out of you three. Still don’t from the other two, I suppose.” He closed an album that had been open in front of him.
“Wh … what do you mean?”
Mickey stood up, tucking the album under his arm. “I didn’t know if you all were alive or dead. Well, that’s not true. You were breathing. But I didn’t know if you were alive or dying. So I watched.”
“What happened?” Celia asked.
Mickey walked over to her and picked up her left wrist, checking her pulse. “I don’t suppose I know what this should feel like, but it doesn’t seem crazy to me.” He stood up and looked down on her with an appraising look. “Looks like I got back just in time. I saw the hole in the wall and climbed in there just as those two were about to get you,” he said as he pointed down at the two zombies at Celia’s feet.
“Why did you come back?” she said, breathless.
Mickey looked down. “I never should have left,” he said. “I had made my decision. I had said I was going to see it through until I knew what had happened to my granddaughter, and until my son had found peace. One happened, the other never would. So I was going to go.
“But I got to the ocean, to where it was all going to end,” he went on. “I just wanted to see the water one last time. I was there. I watched the sunrise. It was where it was all supposed to end. My story was over. But I just couldn’t do it. I knew what you all were trying to do, and if I could help …” He trailed off, then appeared to think about it and shrugged. “I had to come back,” he finished.
“How am I alive?” Celia asked. “How are we alive?”
Mickey shrugged again. “I wasn’t sure if you would be,” he said. “But I shot the ones outside, shot them, and there weren’t anymore. I turned off the signal like you all said and figured I’d see what happened with you all. Not like you could get the drop on me.”
After Life | Book 2 | Life After Life Page 35
