After Life Read online

  The play was the only thing keeping them in Minnesota ever since Christopher had graduated. He talked all the time about how he couldn’t decide between Hollywood and New York. The Minneapolis theater scene wasn’t even an option for the movie-obsessed actor. Fame was what he craved.

  Alex disallowed his mind from lingering on the idea of losing one of his last friends.

  “He’s still going to do the play. Filming wouldn’t begin until next January, so it’s perfect for him.”

  She spun her tires a bit and Alex secretly hoped he wouldn’t have to get out into the snow and push. Her tires finally gripped hard and the car lurched forward. She didn’t bother trying to stop before leaving the parking lot and pulled directly into traffic. The back end of the car slid a little farther than she intended, but she righted herself and started their journey out of town.

  “What is he auditioning for?” Alex asked, hoping he could learn more about the trip and their plans without sounding like he was snooping.

  “Some Spielberg alien movie. I don’t remember the name. The Blue Light? The Blue Night? Something.” She waved her cigarette into the air, acting as if it wasn’t that important. “He’s auditioning for the scientist who figures out that the aliens are here to help, and he tries to talk the president out of nuking them.”

  “That doesn’t sound very original.”

  “Whatever. It’s Spielberg so it’s good for his career, for sure.” She smashed her cigarette butt into the ashtray as they pulled onto the interstate on-ramp.

  “So like, if he gets the part are you guys moving?” Alex glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, trying not to appear desperate for an answer.

  She just shrugged her shoulders again and said, “I’m not sure.”

  Her attitude was infuriating to him some times.

  “She's acting like it's no big deal,” he thought. “Did she really care so little about me? Did it really not bother her to move away from me?”

  He looked out the window, watching the traffic build up as they merged onto I-94 and headed out of Minneapolis. Giant SUVs, pick-up trucks, and eighteen-wheelers boxed them in on all sides, and the smell of exhaust started leaking through the tiny car’s heater.

  “Oh man, that’s so obnoxious.” Morgan reached over and turned off the fan in the heater, trying to cut down the smell. She immediately pulled out another cigarette and lit it.

  Alex decided to change the subject back to what he thought Morgan really wanted to talk about. “You aren’t actually letting this blogger get to you, are you?”

  “No,” she said. “I mean, I don’t know.”

  “Morgan! Come on. You get tons of fan mail every day. You can’t let some kid with a blog affect your-”

  “No, no.” She cut him off, waving the hand with the cigarette casually toward him. “I know. I mean, I just needed to get out of the house. Too much crap all at once, ya know?”

  “Okay. Just remember how many people love your work.”

  With no response to his statement, Morgan asked, “How about that diner in Stillwater? You can still smoke there, right?” Without waiting for an answer, Morgan merged into the exit lane.

  As soon as she pulled out from behind the large semi-truck in front of them, she let out a scream that caused Alex to jolt his head forward and look out the windshield.

  In the middle of the far right lane, stood a man dragging his feet through the shin-deep snow.

  Morgan jerked her arm to the side, spinning the steering wheel toward Alex. The car turned sideways, but it continued to slide forward, directly at the man. Alex braced himself against the dashboard and Morgan continued screaming.

  “Shit, shit, shit!” Morgan’s words stumbled out of her mouth until she screamed at the top of her lungs, “Dude, look out!”

  The car kept sliding down the highway sideways, but the man made no motion to move out of the way. He kept walking slowly, dragging one of his legs behind him as if it were broken.

  At the last second the car’s tires gripped the pavement and the small Volkswagen lurched to the side of the road. Its rear bumper just missed the man in the road. Alex looked out the back window and saw the man didn’t even flinch as they zoomed past him.

  Morgan twirled the wheel around, directing the car back at the road so they didn’t continue into the snow bank. She managed to wrestle the car into control and it slowed at the stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp.

  “Oh my god,” Morgan said, resting her head on the steering wheel when the car completely stopped.

  Alex reached over and almost placed his hand on her back, but pulled it back. “It’s okay, Morgan. It’s okay. You did good. You did really good.” He said these meaningless words of comfort, even though Morgan would require none. His tongue felt swollen and his brain was flush with adrenalin. He could barely think straight.

  “What is with people today? I almost hit a guy on the way to pick you up and then this. Was that frickin’ guy homeless?” She gasped. Alex could see her cheeks flush red with anger. She turned her head toward him. “What was he doing? He wasn’t even wearing a coat! I almost killed him! Alex, I almost killed him! Unnhh!” Morgan shook her hands out in front of her as if she was casting water off her skin and pulled her hair back behind her ears. “Now I really need to smoke.”

  She pulled out from the stop sign and headed toward the town of Stillwater. It was there that a diner supplied coffee and greasy breakfasts for weary travelers. Alex looked down the road, in the opposite direction of Stillwater. There amongst the falling snow three men were wrestling another man to the ground in the middle of the street.

  Alex was about to say something, but the car sped away, and soon he couldn’t see the men in the blizzard. Morgan turned on the stereo and the car was filled with one of his favorite songs. This was enough to make him forget about what he saw and he began singing the familiar lyrics.

  Day 1

  11:08 am

  Morgan lit her third cigarette since they had sat down on the red, cracked leather booth. She took a deep drag, then smiled at the waitress refilling her cup. Outside the window the snow began to let up, but the wind continued blowing it around, causing very low visibility. Many of the customers “ooh-ed” and “aah-ed” as the cars and trucks went sliding through the stoplight in front of the Diner parking lot, barely missing each other. The anticipation for a crash was thick in the air.

  “Well, this is morbid,” Alex said, sipping his vanilla shake. He hated the bitterness of coffee. He also liked the fact that he saw just a hint of jealousy in Morgan’s eyes when his giant shake came for him, and she got her tiny cup of coffee that had the consistency of tar.

  “We should be in t-shirts right now,” Morgan said, looking out the window longingly. “What the hell did we do to this planet?”

  Alex smiled. “We made a lot of money raping the earth. That’s what we did.”

  Morgan, sensing his sarcasm, rolled her eyes. She snatched the cherry off the top of his whip cream and popped it in her mouth.

  “Yum,” she said, staring directly at him as she chewed the red fruit.

  Alex grew uncomfortable with even the slight flirtation and he instead looked at the small TV hanging over the counter. The volume was muted and they had the closed captioning turned on, but on the screen were images of the freak snowstorm all over the Midwest.

  Morgan took a sip of coffee and her mouth hung open for a few seconds before she spoke, as if she needed to push past her own thoughts. “Alex, do you think Christopher was a good choice for me?” Even she was taken aback by the randomness of her question, but she had no idea how to segway into the topic. “Do you think he is a good choice for me?” Morgan’s voice trembled and she took another drag off her cigarette.

  She hated asking questions like that. She hated exposing any vulnerability. Her father taught her at an early age that exposing things like that was a sign of weakness. She always suspected this was a lesson he planned to teach the son he never had. Reg
ardless, he had toughened her up more than most girls she knew. In fact, throughout her life, when she saw other girls break down and cry over simple things, or drag out their problems in overly dramatic public situations, she cringed. She saw her own weak self reflected in these moments.

  Alex saw things differently. He saw that exposing herself to pain was her true power. Holding a balance between her strength and weakness was the true art. This complexity is what enthralled Alex. Her ever-changing, ever-evolving state of mind is what made her transcend the other people who never grew past one-dimensional parodies of themselves. Her ability to constantly grow and adapt to everything life threw at her. This escaped her personal view of herself. She was the strongest person he knew, yet she refused to see it.

  “Alex, are you listening?”

  Alex kept looking at the TV, only half aware she was talking. “Morgan,” he pointed at the TV, “look at that guy.”

  Morgan looked over at the TV, ready to yell at Alex for interrupting, but saw a man slowly dragging his feet through the snow, his jaw hanging slightly askew. He wasn’t wearing a coat, or hat, or any winter apparel. In fact his clothes looked shredded and torn. Alex got up from his seat and stepped closer so he could read the small print at the bottom of the screen.

  “They’re saying it’s a massive flu epidemic that’s causing people to act like that. Wandering around outside no matter what the temperature is. They aren’t responding to anyone.”

  “Just like the guy on the road,” Morgan said. She stood up and started reading the scrolling words at the bottom of the screen with Alex.

  The words crawled across the screen, revealing their information inch-by-inch as the videos continued to play.

  Outbreaks of the deadly flu have been confirmed nationwide - New reports suggest outbreaks in Europe and Japan

  Officials say people suffering from the flu virus have appeared unresponsive and hostile

  The CDC issued a statement calling the speed of the outbreak “unprecedented”

  “Oh man, I totally don’t want to get sick,” Alex said, sitting back down in the booth.

  Morgan sat back down and put her cigarette out in the ashtray. She sipped her coffee and shivered as the warm liquid rolled down her throat. She looked across the table at Alex and watched him slurp up the last of his shake.

  He looked innocent to her at that moment, like there was nothing else going through his head other than the sweet flavor of vanilla. His normal look of worry and concern was gone, if only for the briefest of seconds. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and opened her mouth into a tiny smile.

  “Look at that guy! He must be sick.” A trucker was shouting and pointing out the window.

  Everyone looked out through the blowing flakes and saw a man wearing a suit crossing the same intersection that all of the cars had been sliding through. Instead of taking steps the man lurched forward, thrusting his shoulder to give his body momentum. His feet dragged across the ground and he looked as if he might topple over at any minute. He slowly made his way toward the Diner.

  “Someone should help him,” one of the waitresses said, passively pleading with the customers.

  “Guy is gonna get hit,” a trucker mumbled, huffing his breath under his mustache.

  The group gasped in unison when a pickup truck sped toward the intersection and locked its breaks. The truck honked its horn as it started spinning out of control, crashing into the man and sending him flying into the diner parking lot. His body slammed into the side of a semi-trailer and flopped on to the ground. A splatter of blood remained stamped on the trailer where his head had impacted.

  Everyone stood frozen in shock at what they had witnessed. The pickup truck continued to spin and came to a stop nearly a block away. The man’s body lay on the ground, still as death.

  And then he moved.

  Slowly, the man in the suit lifted his arms and pushed against the ground, lifting his body. He gradually pulled his legs underneath, leaning against the semi-truck cab for assistance. Blood poured from his torn neck with a rhythmic gushing, and his head bobbed side to side. Lifeless eyes stared into the diner. His arms lifted away from the expensive suit he wore that was torn and stained. His hands reached out toward all the customers staring out of the window.

  The waitresses screamed. The truckers cursed incoherently. Morgan reached out and grabbed Alex’s arm, digging her short fingernails into his skin.

  Alex was frozen, staring at the man in the suit as he continued to lurch toward the diner, his leg almost broken in half. A bald trucker in a blue flannel shirt finally stepped outside and approached the man. He held out his hands saying, “Just sit down there, buddy. We’ll get ya some help.”

  A waitress dialed 911 on her cell phone, but cursed loudly when she got a busy signal. Just as the bald trucker reached out to touch the broken frame of the man in the suit, the body fell forward. The man in the suit's blood covered hands gripped onto the bald trucker's arms. The man in the suit pulled himself closer, his mouth open wide and his eyes showing only white orbs. The bald trucker tried to support him, but the man in the suit lifted himself, pulling his face up to the bald trucker’s chest.

  The bloody, wounded face lunged forward, mouth stretched open, baring broken teeth. The bald trucker felt the jagged edges of the teeth dig into his neck, first squeezing his muscle, then piercing through. As the teeth slipped inside, the wound sent the warmth of blood dribbling down the neck and onto the trucker's chest. The man in the suit's teeth slid under the muscle of the neck, and he ripped his face away with a hunk of bloody meat the size of a fist hanging from his mouth in a stringy mess.

  The customers in the diner reeled back at the same time. Everyone screamed in fear and anger. The bloody man in the suit feasted on the hunk of meat and he let the trucker’s body fall to the ground. When he finished chewing, he sniffed the air near the trucker and then turned toward the diner. He began his lurching movement, disregarding the body of the dead trucker all together.

  Another trucker yelled, “That son of a bitch killed Chester!” This trucker had long curly red hair that matched his thick beard. He slammed the front door of the diner open, stomping out into the parking lot to confront the murderer.

  A waitress yelled out, “No, Red! Don’t!”

  By the time she yelled, the red haired trucker was already outside and punching the man in the suit repeatedly in the face. The man fell to the ground, but kept struggling.

  As Red continued to pound his fists into the crushed skull of the man, the bald trucker with a bite out of his neck began to twitch in the snow.

  “He’s alive,” Morgan gasped and pointed at the bald trucker's body. A waitress yelled at her phone from behind them when there was still no answer from the emergency services.

  The twitching trucker suddenly sat upright, blood still gushing from his wound. He scrambled to his feet and stepped toward Red who was only beginning to slow his assault. The murderer’s skull was nothing more than a bloody, pulpy mess in the snow.

  Red turned toward the twitching, bleeding man and jumped to his feet to help him. The bald trucker lunged forward, and Red tried to block the gaping mouth with his arm. The trucker’s teeth sunk in to the meaty part of Red’s forearm. The bald trucker ripped his teeth away, pulling strings of flesh and muscle with them. Red fell into the snow and the bald trucker in the blue flannel began chewing his mouthful, watching Red with the same white, lifeless eyes that the man in the suit had only seconds ago.

  “Morgan, we need to get out of here,” Alex said to her, never taking his eyes off the windows. The crowd was panicking, and Alex could feel the tension in the air.

  “My car is out there.” Her voice drifted off as she pointed out past the madness. The attacking trucker jumped on top of Red again, snapping his mouth open and closed like a crazed dog. Behind them was Morgan’s Volkswagen.

  Two more truckers ran outside, trying to stop the mayhem. More blood was spilled, and Morgan’s grip wa
s beginning to turn Alex’s arm numb.

  Showering the window in a spray of blood from his neck, Red slammed into the glass with his body. His mouth was open and his tongue swirled around on the glass. He moaned and gurgled through the blood in his throat. His hands pounded on the glass, smearing crimson handprints on the icy exterior.

  The men behind him moaned as well, all of them covered in blood with gaping wounds that produced more red fluid every second. Only the original man in the suit didn’t move. His head was still nothing more that a liquid puddle formed from Red’s fists.

  The men who were moving ran toward the Diner, their mouths hanging open in a look of salivation. Two older men braced the doors, holding them closed so the crazed men outside couldn’t get in. The two men yelled for someone to call the police. Red continued pounding his fists into the window. The glass splintered and more of the bloody men started to give up on the door and join his pounding.

  “Holy shit,” Morgan said bluntly. Alex backed away from the window and finally tore his eyes away from the carnage. He scanned the back of the diner and yanked Morgan toward the kitchen saying, “Come on, we need to get out of here.”

  Morgan did not argue.

  The two of them pushed through swinging doors into the kitchen and they heard the cook yell at them to get out. They ignored the cook's demand and he gave up, focused more on the insanity happening in his parking lot.

  The two made their way past the row of oven-tops and hanging fry pans. They found a metal door in the very back with a red exit sign taped on it crookedly. Alex pushed open the door and they both watched a pile of wet snow fall down from the roof. He immediately realized he had forgotten his coat. He began to turn back, but he heard the shatter of glass from the front of the diner and then the explosion of screams. Morgan turned and looked directly into his eyes, drilling her fear into his brain. He nodded, letting her know she need not explain, and they both ran out the back door, leaving the inhuman moaning sounds behind them.