I had a near-death experience when I was fifteen. I know the truth about the afterlife. It's more terrifying than you can imagine. PART THREE

"How long have you been here?" I asked Aaron.

He shrugged. "About two years, I guess. I tried offing myself in '13. But time's weird here. It passes differently. A day could seem like a week, a week could seem like a day." He pointed to Nadine. "Little Miss Friendly's been here the longest. Eight years."

"Fuck you, Aaron," she grumbled.

Aaron ignored her. "Tourists -- that's what we call us, the living -- come all the time, but most of them are dead before they even realize what's going on. The Residents -- that's what we call the dead folks -- see to that. That's if they're lucky enough to show up here during the day. If they wind up here after dark..." He trailed off.

"What do they do? Eat them?" I asked.

He laughed without much humor. "You've seen too many movies. No, they're not cannibals. They don't eat us. They kill us because they hate us. That's all. pure and simple."

"Why?"

"Who knows? Maybe they see us as intruders. Or maybe they're jealous because we're still alive and they're not."

"Have you ever tried to communicate with them?" I asked.

He shook his head. "They don't have a whole lot to say. They're not very bright, and they're pretty single-minded. But they can be pretty damn clever, too. Watch your ass if you're going to wander around Dead Land. You never know when you're going to fall into a trap. You're just lucky I happened to be heading out to scavenge for supplies and ran into you."

I shuddered. Then a thought came to my mind. "You shot that one and it...it died. It melted."

"Yeah, they can be killed. But there's a fuck of a lot more of them than there are of us."

"But if they're already dead and this is the Land of the Dead, where the fuck do they go after you kill them?"

He shrugged. "Who the fuck knows? Detroit? Like Nadine said, none of us really have any answers."

"So what's the plan? What do we do?" I asked, looking around at my new friends.

"The plan is to stay alive as long as possible," Nadine answered flatly.

"That's it?" I said.

"You got a better idea?" Dante asked.

I didn't. I looked at Aaron. "You said living people like us show up all the time. Have any of them ever escaped from Dead Land?"

"Escaped how?"

"Like, gone back to the Land of the Living."

"Not that I know of. Most of them are pretty bad off in the normal world. Folks like us. Braindead. Paralyzed. Terminally ill. People who are only alive because they're on life support and their families can't bring themselves to pull the plug."

"And when they do die, when someone does pull the plug...?" I already had an idea what the answer was going to be.

"They turn into Residents. Then they go after us. It doesn't matter how well they knew us or how close we were while they were alive. They see us as the enemy."

"It goes both ways, too." Clark added.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"If you die here, you die in the living world."

I took a moment to absorb this all. "So what, we're just stuck here until we die in the real world or those things catch us?"

"That's about the size of it," Jeff muttered.

"And when we die..." I couldn't finish. No one said anything for a while. A thought occurred to me.

"What about food? What do we eat?"

Aaron seemed amused by my question. "Are you feeling hungry?" he asked me.

"No," I said, "now that I think about, I'm really not." And it was true, even though I hadn't eaten since that morning, when I had still been a normal teenager existing in a sane, bright, living world. I wasn't thirsty, either.

"Tourists don't have to eat or drink in Dead Land," Aaron explained. "We don't sleep, either. So on the bright side, we don't have to worry about starving."

The unconscious young girl on the cot, Lauren, groaned again.

"What about her?" I said to Aaron. "You just said we don't sleep."

"She's not sleeping. She's dying in the real world. The closer you get to death there, the closer you get here."

"What's her story?" I asked.

"She was in a house fire," Nadine explained with uncharacteristic softness. She gently wiped sweat off Lauren's brow with a cloth. "My guess is she got burned pretty badly and's probably in a medically-induced coma to keep her from feeling the pain. She's only been here for about a week...what feels like a week, anyway."

"Is there anything we can do for her?" I asked.

Nadine looked at me gravely. She reached behind her and pulled a handgun from the back of her jeans. She held it up for me to see. "We can put her out of her misery. She'll die on the other side. Or we can wait for her to die there and then shoot her to keep her from turning. Those are our only options."

"Jesus," I whispered.

She laughed humorlessly. "Who's that? In case you haven't been paying attention, kid, Jesus ain't gonna help us. He isn't even real."

I looked at Aaron. I eyed the shotgun he was holding, then looked back to the handgun Nadine had. "Where did you get the guns?"

"Right here," Aaron replied. "The station armory. There's not much ammo left, though. That's one of the things I was going out to search for when we bumped into each other."

"Those things know we're holed up in here?"

"Yeah, but don't worry about them. This place is like a fortress. All the windows are barred on the outside. They can't get in."

"Why don't they try to burn the station down?"

"Like I said, they're not too bright. Or maybe they're afraid of fire." He paused. His face turned to a look of concern. "I'm worried about the sewers, though."

"Why?"

"That's how we've been able to move around under the town to gather supplies without them detecting us. That mob that was chasing you saw us duck down there. They might be waiting for us next time we go out."

"What do we really need so bad we have to go out at all? You said we don't need food or water."

Clark answered for him. "Ammo for one thing, like Aaron said before. Also gasoline, if there's any to be found. There's an emergency generator in the parking garage, but it needs juice. If we can get it going, we can have electricity and we won't need all these fucking candles and lanterns to see."

"Yeah, we're getting low on candles, too," Nadine added.

"And kerosene for the lanterns," Dante said with a strange sense of urgency in his voice.

Aaron glanced out one of the barred windows. The light had dimmed outside. "It's too late to worry about that today. It's getting dark. It's too dangerous to go out in the dark. We'll try for a supply run tomorrow."

"Wouldn't it make more sense to sneak out after dark when it'd be harder for those things to see us?" I asked.

Aaron shuddered in response to my question. For a brief second a flash of fear crossed his face. "It's not those zombies outside that you have to worry about after dark."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I demanded.

Clark sighed and looked at me. "There's something we didn't tell you before, kid. I guess we were saving the worst for last."

"What?" I asked fearfully. I remembered something Aaron had said earlier: Tourists come all the time, but most of them are dead before they even realize what's going on. The Residents see to that. That's if they're lucky enough to show up here during the day. If they wind up here after dark...

"Those walking corpses aren't the only thing out there," Aaron said. "They're bad enough, but after it gets dark, you also have to watch out for the Shadow Lurkers."

"Shadow Lurkers?" I asked, already not liking the sound of it. "What are those?"

"We're not really sure," Aaron said. "Maybe they're what those things become after you kill them. Or maybe they were never human to begin with. Maybe they're demons."

"They only come out at night," Nadine said with a tremble of fear in her voice. "They hide in the shadows. They're all over the place, watching us all the time, waiting for it to get dark, and then..."

"Then what?"

"Then they take you," Clark said quietly. "They come out of the shadows and if they catch you in the dark, they take you."

"What the fuck do you mean, they 'take' you?"

Jeff, who had been silent for some time, spoke up. "There was a guy who showed up here around the same time I did, about four months ago. Dave. Seemed like an okay guy. I guess we were kind of buddies. We were out looking for supplies and got caught out after dark on the other side of town. It was stupid really, we knew better, but I guess we weren't paying attention. We tried to hide from the Residents down in the basement of the old Methodist church. We only had one flashlight with us. And the batteries were running low. We decided to make a break for it and try to get back here before they ran out completely. We ran up the stairs. Dave was right behind me but he tripped and fell back down. Hurt his leg. I started down to help him and...I saw...this...thing...come out of the darkness behind him. It was liking a living wall of shadows. And it had eyes. Glowing red eyes. I shined my light on Dave to try to protect him, but the beam was too weak. Too dim. It...it fell over him. Enveloped him, like a wave. He didn't even have time to scream, it was that quick. And then it receded back into the dark. And...he was...gone. Just...gone. There wasn't a trace left of him."

I stared at him, chilled to the bone by his story. I found my voice. "Then what happened?"

"I ran until I found a manhole and used the sewers to get back to the police station. The whole time my flashlight was getting dimmer and dimmer. I kept expecting it to go out any time and the same thing that happened to Dave to happen to me. But I made it back, just barely."

"Shadow Lurkers never come out during the day," Aaron said, "even in places that are always dark like sewers and basements. They need it to be truly dark. And they're scared of light sources."

"That's why we need candles and lanterns," Dante added. "They keep them away during the night."

"But we're running low," Clark said grimly, "and it's getting harder to find more around town. Supplies are dwindling."

"We have enough to get through tonight...if we're lucky," Nadine added. "After that..." She shrugged.

"Shit," I muttered.

"This town's pretty well picked clean," Aaron said. "Tomorrow I'm going to try to head for the next town to find supplies."

"Aaron, no, it's too dangerous--" Clark began to protest.

"It has to be done," Clark cut him off. "We need candles, and batteries for the flashlights. And more ammunition. Maybe we can even find gas for the generator."

"The nearest town's ten miles away," I said. "How are you going to get there? Is there a car?"

"No. All the cars are long dead. Besides, driving in a car would draw too much unwanted attention. I'll go on foot. It should only take a couple hours both ways, plus another hour to stock up."

He looked over the group. "Any of you guys in?"

"I'll come," Dante said immediately.

"Yeah, me too, I guess," Jeff said with some hesitation.

Aaron looked at me. "How about you, new meat? You up for some adventure tomorrow?"

Actually, no, I'd had all the adventure that day that I could stand for a lifetime. And I didn't want to leave the relative safety of the police station and venture back out into the hellish world outside. But Aaron had saved my life, and I didn't want to turn my back on him and leave him and the others to go on a dangerous mission to gather supplies from the next town -- a mission they might not come back from. I felt like I would be betraying him. So I forced myself to say: "Sure, why not?"

He nodded, pleased. "Good." He looked out the window. It was dark now. I could still hear the living dead moaning outside. "It's getting late, so let's try to get some sleep."

"I thought you said we didn't need to sleep in Dead Land," I pointed out.

"We don't," Nadine explained, "but if we try hard enough, we can doze off for a while. It helps pass the time, and take our minds off...all of this."

"Whose turn is it to stand guard?" Clark asked the group.

"Jeff went last night, so it's Dante's turn," Aaron said.

Dante nodded and Aaron handed him his shotgun.

"If she"--Aaron indicated Lauren--"dies while we're asleep...you know what to do."

Dante nodded somberly.

A pained look came over Nadine's face at this exchange, but she didn't say anything. She stroked the unconscious girl's face gently, brushed back her hair, and whispered something into her ear. Then she lay down on the cot next to her and closed her eyes.

The rest of us, except Dante, did the same. Dante stood vigilantly beside the door of the Police Chief's office, holding the shotgun.

I lay down on a cot, closed my eyes, and tried to doze. My mind felt like an overloaded computer trying to process everything that had happened to me that day. I still couldn't fully believe this was all actually happening.

Eventually I managed to fade away into a state of half-sleep

TO BE CONTINUED