AfterLife Read Online Free PDF

He hadn’t seen him in more than a year even though they lived in
the same city. Once they were very close; now he didn’t even call him on his
birthday.
    Wes got a quick glance of his brother’s familiar face.
People always said the two brothers looked a lot alike except his hair was a
little lighter in color than Wes’s. There were tears in Lyall’s eyes. Jordan
quickly reached down and closed Wes’s eyes.
    “What was the cause of death?”
    “We believe it was an accidental suicide, a combination of
liquor and pills.” Meri placed her hand on Lyall’s arm. “We’re going to conduct
a full investigation just in case there’s any evidence of foul play, but for
now it looks like there isn’t any. If you come with me, I’ll set you up with an
officer who will take you up to your brother’s apartment.”
    Lyall didn’t say anything. Meri lead him off. Jordan zipped
the bag back up and once again Wes was in darkness.
    It was hard to see Lyall cry. Wes wanted to get out of the
bag and hug his brother. For the first time he realized the impact his stupid
choices were going to have on other people, especially his family.
    Lyall was his only sibling and older by four years. Wes didn’t
know how their relationship had become so distant. He’d always looked up to
Lyall when they were kids. When Lyall wanted to play a new sport, so did Wes.
When Lyall wanted to pick up a new hobby, so did Wes.
    It was only a memory now, but once their family was a close,
happy one. Then a few years ago their father died and everything changed. His
brother became detached as he grieved in his own way, and their relationship
changed. His mother dove into church and civic duties to fill the void left by
the loss of her husband, and had little time for her sons. It was a frustrating
time for Wes. He had tried to talk to his mother, to remind her that they all
missed their father, that they needed to somehow find peace together and move
on without him. The conversation made his mother agitated and irate; she
wouldn’t talk about it, and Wes ended up walking out of the house, leaving her
in tears.
    His relationship with his mother was now so strained they no
longer talked or visited. She had left him as surely as his father had, but her
abandonment felt intentional. To his credit, Lyall eventually tried a few times
to smooth things over, but the attempts seemed only half-hearted. During the
next few months, Wes and Lyall gradually stopped talking, and Lyall seemed to
pull away even more than he had immediately after the funeral. Somehow, they
all just forgot how to be a family. Now Wes realized it was his fault as much
as anyone’s. For all these years he’d placed the blame on them for leaving him,
but the truth was that it was his choice to be alone. Wes wondered if he’d ever
get the chance to talk to his brother again.
    “Well, Wes, you play dead very nicely. You made that easy on
us.” Meri helped Wes climb out of the bag once they were alone in what looked
like a small truck equipped for refrigeration. “We’ve got a little bit of a
drive ahead of us, and we have to preserve your body as much as we can. You may
find it harder and harder to move once you’re refrigerated, but it is what it
is.”
    Wes looked around the inside of the truck. He imagined the
outside to be marked as some sort of police vehicle even though the inside was
completely empty other than a few benches lining the walls.
     “We are part of a group of people called AfterLife,” Jordan
began to explain after Wes found a place on one of the benches and the truck
lurched into movement. “We’re a group of living dead, Mortuis to be more
specific, and people are dying to get into our very exclusive group.” Meri
again shook her head at Jordan’s remarks. Jordan laughed and continued.
“Although the living dead have been around for almost as long as people have
been dying, AfterLife has only been in existence since the early 1800s. We give
purpose to