Life After: The Basement

Life After: The Basement is the second short story in the Life After series, a collection of new adult horror fiction by American author Bryan Way. It was self-published by Way on July 15th, 2014. The short is preceded by Life After: The Cemetery Plot, followed by Life After: The Phoenix, and is directly connected to the novels Life After: The Arising and its sequel Life After: The Void.

Synopsis
''It's two months into the zombie apocalypse. The mystery surrounding how the dead came back may be unsolvable, but that won't stop two crusading truthers from paying a lethal price for their answers. ''Eric Matthews and Mia Muxworthy, the former a conspiratorial fanatic and the latter a hard-bitten realist, seek the origin of an undead scourge that has ravaged their hometown. Eric staunchly believes it began with a secret government project while Mia fights to remain open-minded, but their radical thinking is about to collide with a harsh reality: the abysmal fringes of human nature are far more insidious than any conspiracy theory they could have imagined. Bridging the gap between Life After: The Arising and its sequel Life After: The Void, Life After: The Basement presents a devastating backstory behind one of the most explosive moments in the series while calling into question whether ignoring the danger of digging for the truth is worth unearthing the horrifying realities buried beneath the surface of society. undefinedundefined

Plot Summary
Two months after the zombie outbreak in Newtown Square, Eric Matthews and Mia Muxworthy find themselves on the verge of unveiling a devastating truth: that the apocalypse is of local origin, centered around the dubious construction of an understaffed wellness center in close proximity to a multinational business conglomerate with ties to state and federal government agencies. While Eric is wholly convinced of the overarching conspiracy, Mia is less willing to draw conclusions from what she views as thin evidence, exposing a rift between the two of them.

An impending argument is interrupted by their friend Chris Lequire, who had previously provided them with intelligence. When Chris demurs at some of Eric's conclusions, Eric cites the Johnstown flood tax as a justification for the conspiracy, but Chris is unswayed by his convictions, passively indicating that Eric's reach exceeds his grasp. Lequire's quick departure reopens a debate on the cause of the outbreak; Eric is fixated on some indefinable yet definitive proof, but Mia argues that there may be nothing to give them a satisfying conclusion to their efforts.

The following morning, Eric and Mia are beset by a small horde of undead. Forced to improvise a plan for their immediate survival, they bumble onto the property of Mason Dantis, who quickly takes them in and offers to house them for the foreseeable future. Echoing his earlier paranoia regarding the scope of the conspiracy surrounding the arising, Eric is unable to shake his suspicions until it is revealed that Mason is taking care of a toddler named Jimmy. Set at ease, and much to Eric's chagrin, Mia regales Mason with some generalities of their mission after he brings them something to drink, but before she can get too far, she and Eric pass out.

Mia wakes up first, jolting Eric back into consciousness; they have been caged in dog crates in Mason's basement, finding a severely beaten and malnourished woman chained to one wall and a female zombie chained to another. When pressed by Mia, the woman, who identifies herself as Tracy, indicates that she has no knowledge of the outbreak. Shattered by the horrors of their situation, Eric quickly comes unraveled despite Tracy's insistence that they plan their escape. Eric descends into a full-blown panic when Mason returns, unlocks his crate, tases him, and drags him into a back room with a furnace.

With Mason distracted, Tracy and Mia try to hatch a crude escape plan over the growing sounds of Eric's terrified screams in the next room: Mia has to upend her crate so she can get close enough to release the zombie with the hope that she can hold her chain until Mason returns. Though she successfully frees the zombie, Mia fails to hold the chain, resulting in Tracy getting bitten. Hearing the commotion, Mason reenters the room, whereupon the zombie promptly emasculates him. Frenzied, Mason rips a pistol from his ankle holster and fires off two wild shots, the second of which instantly kills Mia.

Before Mason can steady his aim, Eric rushes out of the adjacent room and stabs Mason in the back with a fire iron, quickly executing him with the pistol before taking out the zombie as well. Seeing that Tracy has been bitten, Eric makes an overture at shooting her, but she manages to convince him to spare her life for Jimmy's sake. Eric relents and allows Tracy to free herself while he cradles Mia's corpse, rambling about the futility of their situation before mumbling that Tracy might find sanctuary with an acquaintance of his at the Delaware County Community College. After imparting some basic first-aid instructions, Eric indicates that Tracy has about two days until she turns into a zombie herself. Tracy begs for Eric's help, but her pleas fall on deaf ears once Eric shoots himself in the head.

Tracy recovers quickly, frees herself from her chains, and bounds up the steps to make some food before she rifles through Eric's backpack. Once she's showered and treated her wounds, she begins meticulously preparing supplies, but she's stopped dead by Jimmy. Unable to contain her jubilation at seeing him, Tracy suggests that they take a nap together. When she awakens the following morning, she prepares to leave, treating her wound again, packing food, and taking time to draft a letter.

Upon leaving the house, Tracy quickly encounters a long string of abandoned cars at a major thoroughfare, forcing her to continue on foot. Despite her weakened, emaciated state, Tracy manages to carry Jimmy for large portions of their trek toward DCCC, doing her best to keep him calm in spite of the circumstances. When passing in front of Thomas Massey High School, several people on the second floor shout for her to come inside. Overjoyed by this deliverance, Tracy tells Jimmy he'll be staying with new people before she smiles for the first time in a long time.

Conception, Writing & Publication
While writing late one spring night in 2013, Way detected the stinging aroma of burnt pork wafting in through his windows. Alarmed by such a pervasive stench so late at night, he called 911 and asked for the fire department. When they arrived, the firefighters acknowledged the presence of the acrid burning smell throughout his neighborhood, but could not determine its point of origin. The same thing happened a few months later, though this time the odor was stronger and smelled more like burnt leaves. Coupled with a noise he perceived as muffled screams a few weeks later under similar circumstances, Way began to imagine that one of his neighbors was up to something sinister.

Though he assumed this conclusion was borne of mundane suburban paranoia, Way perceived a promising story idea: not only did the details of these disconnected incidents paint a picture, the depths of his paranoia cultivated an unrealistic theory that likely had nothing to do with their explanation. Thus, he determined to incorporate these ideas into a story that would present a specious conspiracy theory on the outbreak's origins; though Way happily entertains amusing conjecture (such as the theory that Stanley Kubrick helped fake the first two Apollo missions), his aversion to stubborn fanatics manifested in Eric, who is so righteously consumed by his assumptions that he is incapable of rational thought when it comes to the outbreak. Mia, on the other hand, is a manifestation of a kind-hearted friend who avoids disabusing such fanatics so as not to embarrass or infuriate them, a flaw with which Way identifies. Not wanting the story to smack of simple satire, Way chose to present a scenario which exposes the strengths and weaknesses of both temperaments.

The short's namesake scene came from Way's desire to write something intense, fast-paced, gruesome, and terrifying, drawn on his morbid fascination with missing persons and captivity cases. In keeping with his desire to bolster the connective tissue of the Life After universe, he ultimately chose to fit the end of Tracy's journey into the middle of Life After: The Void, despite the fact that he'd conceived her scenes in the second novel well before he had any ideas for The Basement. The earliest drafts were finished in May of 2013.