After Life by Daniel Kelley Page B

“Explain.”
    “We have food through the weekend, maybe a day or two beyond that,” he said. “The rest wasn’t going to be here until later on. Didn’t think we’d need backup stores right away . Thought enough to get us through a few days at a time would be enough at the start. And what food we do have is already in the cafeteria. We can go in, kill all the Z’s in there, for what? A week’s worth of provisions, considering the mouths to feed? There’s no food, Mr. Ehrens. No food.”
    Andy felt his heart sink. After all the talk, all the supposed preparation of the past twenty years, people had apparently learned only how to talk of a plan. When it came to action, it seemed, humans hadn’t learned a thing. He felt his bile rising, and he reached down and pulled Lowensen up.
    “Let’s go,” he said, pulling the teacher toward the classroom.
    “Where are we going?” Lowensen said, sounding like a child who didn’t want to go to the dentist.
    “Where are we going? Where do you think we’re going?” Andy pulled the teacher toward the classroom door again. “I’ll be damned if I’m going to be the one to tell these people you’ve condemned them to death.”
    “What? No! I told you so you can come up with a way to help me fix this!”
    Andy stopped just short of the door. He grabbed Lowensen by the lapels on his blazer and spun him around, pinning him against the door. “‘Fix this’?” Andy said. “‘Fix’ it? Let me tell you something, Lowensen. There is no ‘fixing’ this.
    “What I said is true: you’ve condemned most of these people to death. Forty-some people in that classroom, and my most optimistic estimate, thanks to you and your lack of planning, is that we’ll lose three-quarters. And that is only because there are a few of us who know what we’re doing this time. You son of a bitch, every one that dies is your fault. You want to start fixing this? You get your ass in there and start explaining to them how you killed them.”
    Andy let go of Lowensen, and the man slid down to a crouch and gasped for air. “There’s no other way?” he asked pitifully after a few moments.
    Andy snorted. “Other way? What, you think I keep a year’s worth of food for forty in my other pocket? How the hell did you live through twenty-ten?”
    Lowensen looked up. At first, he looked like he wanted to fight Andy, to argue with him. Finally, he looked back down at the concrete floor. “My dad,” he said. “My brother. A group. Literally never fired a single bullet myself.”
    Andy scowled at the teacher a moment, then narrowed his eyes at him and asked, “Never fired a bullet yourself? What about your story earlier? The Z with the clump of dirt on its head?”
    Lowensen shook his head again. “Wasn’t my story. Read about it on the Out-Theres site. Thought it’d sound more impressive if it sounded like I did it myself. But Mr. Ehrens, I’ve really never done this myself. My dad. My brother. I was lucky.”
    “Lucky?” Andy said, trying and failing to keep himself from getting too angry. He lifted the teacher back to his feet and opened the door to the classroom, forcing Lowensen to enter ahead of him. “You weren’t lucky. You were goddamned blessed.”

Chapter 3: Dead Ma n’ s Pockets
    “What do we do?” Donnie asked. Michelle hadn’t said anything in at least ten minutes.
    It took Donnie repeating the question, with her name, twice more, before she looked up from Madison’s body’s side. When she did, it was obvious to Donnie that she had been crying, though he could no longer see the tears in her eyes.
    She stood up, tucking her hair behind her left ear as she did so. “That’s easy,” she said. “At least for me. I have to get to Hyannis.”
    Donnie nodded. “Michelle,” he started, but she cut him off.
    “Donnie, you don’t have to come with me. I wouldn’t expect you to. I wouldn’t even want you to, because it probably means you’re dead. But I have to get to