THE DEAD WALK DIARIES: NIGHT

by

Joe Young

Published by Joe Young at Smashwords  Copyright © 2010 by Joe Young

All Rights Reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher.
Any similarities to those living, dead, or undead is unintentional.

www.thedeadwalkdiaries.com

Sara
Misled
Amateur Video
The Writer Jonathan Reed
The Office Memos
I am Zombie
National Guard
Incident Report
Radio Broadcast
The Diner
The Prisoner
The Last Sermon
The Game
Night
Amanda
Zombie Hunter

Sara

Sara is an eleven-year-old girl with a pleasant disposition. She loves horses, school, ice cream, and books. She also has dreams of being a writer. Her diary was used to record her story ideas as well as her daily experiences. She started keeping a diligent record of her life after reading “The Diary of Anne Frank” in school. She often wondered if she would experience anything monumental or historical like Anna Frank did.

Dear Diary,
Tonight we went to Aunt Jenny and Uncle Jim’s house for dinner. It was fun. I like visiting with my cousin and I love my Aunt’s string beans. I don’t think I would like having dinner there as much if she didn’t make those for me. Unfortunately, I found out that it has cream of mushroom soup in it. Yuck! I hate mushrooms! You can’t taste them, but just knowing that–yuck. My mom tried to keep it from me by distracting me when I asked Aunt Jenny what the ingredients were. It didn’t work, I persisted and Aunt Jenny “spilled the beans.” Ha! I guess I will have to find a new favorite dish.
The best part of the night was when Bridget and I switched around everyone’s drinks. We all had the same glasses, so when Dad wasn’t looking I would switch his beer with my ginger ale. B switched her water with Aunt Jenny’s wine. This went on for all of dinner and the grown ups were so into their conversations that they didn’t even pay attention. We laughed so hard when someone would sip the wrong drink, then find the right one, and not even notice that we were switching them. I even pretended to drink my dad’s beer. B pretended to drink her mom’s wine and actually took a sip! Then she acted like she was drunk. I can’t remember ever laughing so hard.
Ugh. Traffic. We’re not far from home, but we’ve been in traffic for a while now and it’s not moving at all. Dad’s rolling down his window and sticking his head out to see if he can find out what the hold up is. Mom’s asleep, which is normal for her after she drinks too much wine.
Dad said he couldn’t see anything, just a lot of traffic. He turned off the car and told me he would be right back. He’s going to walk up the highway and find out what’s going on. A lot of people were getting out of their cars. Dad slammed the car door when he left and it didn’t even wake Mom.
I’m going to try to sleep.
A loud bang woke me and I think the car shook a little. I saw a big orange fireball in the sky over the trees way up in front of us. I was having that nightmare again, where it’s dark all around and people are grabbing at me. I tried to wake Mom and tell her, but she won’t wake up. I hope Dad gets back soon. I fell asleep, so I’m not sure how long he’s been gone.
A police car siren startled me. The police car flew past us on the shoulder of the road, followed by an ambulance and another police car. I guess it’s an accident causing all this traffic. 
This is weird. The highway we are on overlooks a shopping center. The stores are all closed, but there are people walking around the parking lot. Not walking normal, walking slow and stiff. I see seven–no eight. They are just wandering around. Creepy.
More people are honking now, Dad’s not back and I’m getting scared. Where is he? What’s taking him so long? What if traffic starts moving? I tugged on Mom’s sweater again. I even coughed really loud and tried to wake her that way. It did no good.
There is nothing to do, but sit here and look around. The people in the parking lot are gone now. It’s empty. Something is happening up ahead. It’s dark and hard to see. It looks like people are getting out of their cars and walking this way. What’s that noise? Is that screaming? Wait, let me open the window.
A few people walked quickly past the car, between the lanes, away from the traffic. They looked more scared than me. Where’s Dad? I want to go home.
Someone grabbed me. They reached through the window and grabbed me. I have never been so scared in my life. I screamed so loud, it woke Mom. I slipped out of my jacket and got away. I think it was one of the people from the parking lot. They walked up the hill. They’re all around the car now. They are around every car now. I climbed into the front seat and mom is holding me. We are both scared. 
Who are they? What do they want? They keep banging on the car.  Mom and I are in the middle of the seat, away from the windows. The girl in the car next to us is screaming. They broke her window and they are pulling her out. They are attacking her. Mom has covered my eyes and put my head down. I can see my page, but nothing else. What’s happening? The pounding is getting louder. The car is shaking. Mom is trying to cover my ears. 
I hear glass smashing. It sprinkles across my book. Mom screams–

Misled

The author is a high school student and lead singer of the garage band “Misled.” His diary is a collection of life experiences, poetry, and song lyrics that revolve around his four-member band. 

The shit has hit the fucking fan. When this is over, we can do a whole CD of this shit. An entire living dead theme from the CD cover, to the videos, the T-shirts, our instruments, the stage, the tour, and living dead groupie girls. The possibilities are endless.
I have to write this shit down while it is still fresh in my head, pass it down to my future legitimate and illegitimate children.
Okay. Today was business as usual. I actually did not cut a single class all day long. I may lose the bet with Sean, he probably cut two today. But, I was on a creative streak. Some prolific shit poured out of me today and I put it all in this book. Future hits definitely. Two solid rockers and a ballad–got the melody and all.
So after school, Brad and I headed to his garage. Jen was working so I hadda pick her up at 7pm. On the ride, I told Brad about the new stuff and he loved it. I could see him working on the solos in his head. We got to the garage and worked on the first song until we noticed that Dipshit was late. 
We were waiting for him ‘cause we wanted to hear the song with the drums.
Dipshit texted me: “flat tire, pick me up.” Brad and I got in the van and headed over to Dipshit’s house, which sucked ‘cause he’s in the sticks. I texted Jen to see if she can sneak out early, so then we don’t have to make another trip. It was cool. The boss was home sick and the other waitress could punch out for her.
We got to Dipshit’s and he threw the flat in the back. We were all crashing at Brad’s this weekend since his Dad was away. Dipshit planned to get the flat fixed in the morning. We shot over to the Diner and Jen snuck out the back. Then we headed back to Brad’s. There was a shit-load of traffic for some reason, so we took the back roads.
That’s when we saw the first one. It stumbled across the road right in front of us. We had the music blasting. Brad jammed on the brakes and we stopped right before squashing this dude. He didn’t even flinch, or jump, or anything. He did turn and look at us. This dude was fucked up. His face was all shredded and his clothes were soaked red with blood. He eyed us through the windshield. He had these freaky albino eyes. They were like all white, but you could see these black dots in the center darting to each one of us. (We have to get contacts like that.) Then the guy smiled or growled, showing his big bloody teeth. Jen covered her eyes and Brad rolled up his window. The guy slapped the windshield and then went to the passenger door and started banging.  We thought he was either trying to get in or trying to get at Dipshit. Now we know it was the latter.
At first, we thought this guy was in a bad accident on the highway and just walked away delirious. Jen was freaked out, so she said to take off. Dipshit said that we should take this guy to the hospital. Then Brad saw someone else on the sidewalk.
There was this guy sprawled out on the sidewalk. We could see him on his back between these two parked cars. He was faced away from us in a white business shirt and a red power tie like he just got home from work. This dude was covered in blood and lying in a pool of what had to be all the blood that used to be inside him. The guy’s leg started shaking and Jen screamed. The guy turned over to face us and all his guts spilled out onto the sidewalk. I mean everything; his intestines, his liver, his kidneys, his lunch–everything. 
Just to recap–this guy’s neck was shredded to shit, he was sitting in all of his blood, and his guts are on the ground. All of a sudden, HE GETS UP. This guy is dead. He must be dead–he has to be dead. But, he gets up and walks toward us while dragging his organs behind him. A few short steps later and he’s slapping his bloody hands on Brad’s window. Brad hit the gas so hard my neck still hurts.
We got about a block away when Brad hit the brakes. He stared in the big side view mirror and kept repeating “What the Fuck? What the fuck?” Jen had that face like she drank too much and was about to puke. The two dead guys were walking after us. They weren’t moving fast, but they were making their way–until the woman came out. A lady came out of her front door with a cordless phone in her hand.  We couldn’t hear what she was saying to them, even after we killed the music. When the two guys turned to the woman, and she got a good look at them, her hand flew to cover her mouth. Either in repulsion or to hold back vomit, take your pick. 
The first dead guy leaped on the lady, went right for her throat, and took her down. We heard her screaming, even over the screeching tires from Brad hitting the gas again. We watched through the back windows as the second guy kneeled down and bit into the lady’s stomach. His intestines stretched all the way back to the other side of the street, but he was hungry.
Nobody spoke on the ride back. It was quiet for a good ten minutes until Jen was like “We should have helped her.” Believe me. there was nothing we could have done for her, she was dead before she hit the ground. 
When we pulled in to Brad’s driveway, Decker was there waiting in his car and plucking his bass. No one replied to his “Where the hell were you assholes?”
Brad headed straight for the front door and we followed. All except for Dipshit. He pointed down the street. There was another one about six blocks down. We pulled Decker inside with us and filled him in on what happened.  
At first, he thought it was a joke and waited for Dipshit to give it away. When Decker realized we were telling the truth, he went silent and said nothing until he had chugged two beers. That seemed like a good idea and we all had one. 
Brad played with the TV. There was nothing on. No news, no special report–just a blank screen. The Spanish channels had pre-recorded soap operas on, but that was it. Jen dialed 911 on her cell and got a busy signal. I called Jen with my cell to see if cells were working at all and got a prerecorded “All circuits are busy” message. Dipshit tried the house phones and they were dead as well.
I looked out the front window and saw the one from down the street. It was a business woman in a skirt with one high heel and blood smeared down the left side of her face. She was about three blocks away. 
Brad suggested we warn the neighbors. Jen was freaked and wouldn’t go outside. I gave her a fresh beer and said I would stay with her. Decker was buzzed already, so we didn’t want people to smell beer and think he was a drunken ass. That left Dipshit and Brad. Dipshit grabbed a stickball bat and a shovel from the garage. Dipshit handed Brad the bat and they went guerilla style out the front door. I flipped the dead bolt and watched through the window until Jen called for me. 
Jen pulled me close and buried her face in my shirt. She cried on me for a good while, until we heard a knock at the front door. I went to open it, but decided to look out the window. Good thing I did, it wasn’t the guys. It was the dead business lady. She spotted me at the window and lunged for me. She slapped the glass and Jen screamed.
Brad and Dipshit came back and snuck to the front door behind the lady. Dipshit knocked on the door. What a Dipshit! They probably could have snuck right in, but Business Lady heard the knock, snarled, and charged them. Dipshit smacked the bitch in the head with the shovel and she went down. What a cool fucking “dunk” sound a shovel makes when it hits something. It would sound awesome under a percussion track. I let the two boy scouts inside and then locked up the door behind them.
“There’s more coming.” Brad warned. He had seen them approaching down both sides of the street.
Jen asked about the neighbors. They went up and down the block and there was nobody home, except for some old senile guy that wouldn’t listen. He saw the long hair and assumed that we were full of shit. So, he slammed the door in their faces. Fuck him. We tried.
Brad suggested we board up the windows and barricade the door. It was a good idea, so we did. I hooked the ipod up to the stereo and played some tunes. The music calmed Jen, which is what I wanted. Another beer helped too. 
It didn’t take long at all to secure the house. Well, except for Decker, he was slow as shit. He kept smashing his thumb, so we made him just hold the boards in place while we nailed. “Nailed” is such a cool word. It would make an awesome song title. *Note: Write a song called “Nailed.” 
Brad’s Dad had plenty of plywood and two-by-fours in the garage because he had just remodeled the house. He did a very nice job, spending considerable time on the woodwork in the livingroom alone. Brad hammered a nail right into the molding of a window without hesitation. Jen said something about destroying the wood. Brad shrugged it off, he didn’t get along with his dad too well. Besides, he helped with a lot of the remodeling. 
It didn’t take long to board up the front and back door along with all of the downstairs windows. Brad went around and checked each window, pounding in a few extra nails here and there. He mumbled something about some of us missing the studs. 
We finished just in time ‘cause those fuckers came out of the woodwork. We didn’t even hear them pounding until the playlist ended and the music stopped. By the time we finished, they had completely surrounded the house. We cranked the music again to drown out the wall thumping.
We gathered and watched from the upstairs window. There were all kinds of them out there. I saw a mechanic, a nurse, a maid, a little girl, a cop, and a tattooed biker with a helmet still strapped to his head. They all had bloody mouths and chunks of flesh missing from somewhere on their bodies. The cop was missing half his arm like it was gnawed off. The nurse had no face. The mechanic had no fingers.
Their skin was pale and lifeless. They were sluggish and slow. They weren’t the smartest things either. I don’t think they even knew that we were upstairs watching them. But, somehow they knew we were inside and they all wanted in. They all wanted us. Who the hell knows why? They can pound all night long, they ain’t gettin’ in. Decker spit out the window and his saliva splattered on some guy’s forehead. 
Whatever was going on was happening all around. It was dark, but you could see for a couple of miles. There were some small fires up and down the street. There was a huge blaze past the trees in center city by the diner. We could hear sirens coming and going far away in every direction. There was the pop of distant gunfire. We even heard some screams. It was total chaos out there.
Jen noticed that, except for some stragglers, they were all surrounding this house and no one else’s. Dipshit said maybe they were like sharks, attracted to smell or sound. Decker said it was probably Dipshit’s smell alone. Good one. Sound made the most sense so Dipshit went downstairs and turned off the ipod. We waited in the quiet for a few minutes. They continued to pound against the walls–all of them–all around the house. We went from window to window and checked. Either it wasn’t the sound or it was too late and they just knew we were in here now. If that’s true then they might be a little smarter than we think.
What in Samhain is going on here? What happened to these people? 
We stayed upstairs in Brad’s room where the pounding was quieter. We sat, opened fresh beers, and talked about what the hell was going on. We all shot out random explanations. Our two best theories were science experiment gone awry and governmental biochemical weapon disaster.
We figured by morning everything would be cleared up. The Police, the Army, or the National Guard–or some local hit squad would come storming through and wipe out all of this shit. If they can. If they don’t, then we might have a real end of the world apocalypse on our hands. Either way I can think of no better thing to do, but party like it’s our last day on earth. That makes an awesome album title: LAST DAY ON EARTH.
We moved the drum set, the amps, and all of our equipment from the garage to the living room. We powered up and jammed all night. We did some classics and played every song on our first CD, top to bottom. Jen was dancing and even sang a few tracks. I caught it all on the DAT recorder. After that, we all took a break to piss. 
Decker belched and broke devastating news–we were out of beer. Brad yelled “Futher Mucker” into the microphone and plucked a bar dive on his guitar We did what all sensible teens would do in the same situation–we raided the liquor cabinet. Brad’s dad was a serious bourbon and scotch man, which totally sucked. The only item of use was a half bottle of vodka, but we polished that off with a round of shots.
As we put down our drained shot glasses, our eyes all wandered to Brad. He had his older brother’s ID and always got the beer. It was habit for us to look at him.
Brad said, “Fuck it, let’s go,” and drained the last of his can.
Jen refused immediately. Decker was too drunk to give a shit and Dipshit was gung-ho for it. He squeezed an empty in each hand, compacting the cans smaller than I could with a hammer. He’s a Dipshit, but he’s a strong bastard.
We went back to the upstairs window and scoped things out. There were hundreds of them out there now. An ocean of undead surrounded the house.
Brad said, “See I told ya we’d have a huge following.” 
Decker stuck his head out of the window next to us and puked, showering the creatures below. He wiped his lip and said he was ready now.
The van was right next to the garage, so we could get on top of it from the roof. We needed a way to get them away from the doors though. 
Apparently, Molotov was a Russian premier who invaded Finland during World War II. While dropping bombs on them he lied and told Russia he was dropping food. The Finns retaliated with Molotov “cocktails” to go with the “food” he was dropping. They stopped the Russian tanks and prevented the invasion. Brad is full of all kinds of knowledge. It’s the reason why I run all my lyrics by him before they are final. 
We grabbed all of the scotch and bourbon bottles and brought them upstairs. Brad topped off the bottles with what little gas was in the can for the weed whacker. I pulled the curtain off of the window and started ripping it. Brad said we weren’t using that. He said we were using better rags. Then he asked Jen for her tampons. Jen rolled her eyes like we couldn’t know what a period was and that she even got them. She gave them up demanding they be replaced by next week. Dipshit unwrapped them and played with them for a bit while Brad soaked them in rubbing alcohol. We taped one to each bottle.
We each made sure that we had weapons. Brad and Dipshit had their stickball bat and shovel. I grabbed an old pickaxe from the garage and Jen grabbed a hammer.
We had to create a fire wall around the van, so I hung out the window, lit the tampon, and dropped the first cocktail. It plunked a dead guy in the head and dropped to the lawn without breaking.
“We have to hit the concrete and work back,” Brad said. He leaned out and tossed one high in the air. It spun slowly and shattered in the driveway, just outside the horde of undead. It exploded in this tall orange fireball that we could feel the heat from all the way at the window. Twenty of them went up in flames. They made noises, almost like screams, as their flesh sizzled. It cracked and popped even after they fell to the ground. It smelled terrible, but it worked awesome.
Just that one bottle killed a bunch of them and pushed the others back some fifteen feet. They didn’t like the fire at all. We tossed three more cocktails and it gave us all the space we needed. We saved the last four for our return. Dipshit decided we needed more fire and tossed a bottle. It hit too close to the van. He’s a fucking uncoordinated asshole. I am shocked that he even questions his nickname. We hurried out on to the roof of the garage, and then the roof of the van. We climbed inside as quick as we could. 
Brad screeched the van backwards out of the driveway. There were a few thumps on the back door where we hit some of them, but we couldn’t see anything.
Once we were off the block it looked like we had driven into a warzone. Abandoned cars were in the middle of the street with their doors opened. There was a house completely engulfed in roaring flames with no firemen to put it out. The undead were wandering everywhere. There were not as many as around Brad’s house, but there were a lot.
The closer we got to town, the worse it was. There were more fires, more abandoned cars, and even more undead. We maneuvered around a flipped police car with a smashed, bloody windshield. It had another police car mashed into the side of it with a pedestrian pinned between. The pedestrian was one of the undead. Whether he was before the crash or not, I don’t know. He flailed his arms and his bloody jaws nipped air. 
An ambulance sat with all of its doors open and a gurney hanging out of the back. Someone was strapped to the gurney under bloody sheets. The body was covered head to toe with the sheets. Which means that they were probably dead when they were buckled in by the paramedic. An arm reached out from under the red tinged fabric and grabbed for us. They must have heard the van creep past. Maybe Dipshit was right about the sound thing after all.
There were splatters of blood everywhere; a puddle here, a splash there, a trail here. I think that’s what made my bones cold and gave me a shiver. It was seeing a splash of blood, say one on the side of a car–smeared into a Rorshach pattern, and wondering how it got there. 
We stopped a block from the beer distributor. There were a bunch of the creatures stumbling around the street. It wasn’t bad, but we knew that once we got into the store, they would surround us quickly. We needed to figure a way to get in and out with no problems. It was like we were planning a heist. Well we were, but no one was gonna come after us. No one alive anyway.
Brad turned the van around and backed through the front double doors. The aluminum frames squeaked as they bent and glass showered the top of the van, spilling to the concrete. The ass of the van was bigger than the doors and squeezed the door frame out. Big spider cracks ran out along the store’s large glass windows. We poured out the back doors of the van right into the store. 
There was a fat guy in there with a baseball cap on. He waddled toward us and groaned as if he was saying, “What are you doing in my store? Get out you assholes.” Dipshit whacked him in the head with the shovel making that “thunk” sound again. The guy went down and didn’t get back up.
We threw stuff in the back of the van in a mad frenzy, like a shopping spree won on a game show. Brad and I got some cold cases from the freezer.  Jen piled pretzels, chips, and mixed nuts in the back seat. Decker stood guard on one side of the van and Dipshit was on the other. We were squeezed in there pretty tight, but there were gaps that they could crawl through.
They started to gather at the window. We didn’t have much time left. They started to crawl through, cutting themselves on the glass. Decker switched his bat for the pickaxe I had set down. A bald mechanic got in and Decker brought the pick right down on his head. It stuck in the guy’s skull and Decker couldn’t get it out.
We grabbed some warm cases, for reserve beer, and then piled into the van.
They were all around us–banging and rocking the van. Brad hit the gas and plowed through them. It was like going over a whole bunch of speed bumps.
On the ride back, Brad was drifting from lane to lane and picking off the walking dead one by one. It was dark, but the streetlights were on. The undead were nothing, but dark shadows until they got close. You could see a surprised expression on their face just before their head cracked on the grill and sent them flying. 
Brad would yawn, pretend to fall asleep at the wheel, and veer right into a dead walker. After the thump, he would steer straight and pretend to wake up. “What? What? I’m not sleepy, I’m fine to drive.” He did it a few times. We laughed so hard. I think Jen peed herself.
When we were almost back, Brad slammed on the brakes and we all slid forward. “Whoops missed one,” he said and backed up. I didn’t see it, but you could hear the “thunk” at the back door and the sound of a body sliding across the pavement.
When we got back to the house there were not as many dead surrounding it. I guess they saw us leave or it was too quiet inside. There were still a hundred or so, but not the crowd from before. 
Driving into the garage would be the best way to get back in. We had moved all of the equipment out earlier so there was plenty of room. We made another firewall with two of the cocktails. The dead freaked. We cooked about five or six. Brad clicked the garage door opener and we were back in the house in no time. We unloaded the van and cracked open fresh beers. We were into our second round of beers before the firewall outside had died down. We got drunk and played music all night long.
A little after four in the morning we were tired and totally hammered. Decker had already passed out in Brad’s Dad’s recliner. Brad went to his room and Dipshit fell on the carpet and just stayed there. Jen and I took the couch. Despite the pounding, we all slept through most of the day. I got up late in the afternoon and wrote while everyone else slept. 
Both Decker and Dipshit got up a few times, used the bathroom, and raided the snacks. So did Jen. We sat around watching movies, since there was nothing but static on all of the channels. Everyone pretty much fell asleep again.
The undead continued to bang on the house–hundreds of them, loud as can be. Right after the sun went down, the power went. I scoured the kitchen for candles and some apirin. I found both and kept writing.
Later, Brad emerged from his room.
“Dude, we could really use a generator.” he smirked and twirled the van keys in his hand.
I put down my pen and smirked back.

Amateur Video

Video Transcription
  
The beginning of the video contains shots of teens doing tricks on skateboards in the parking lot of an industrial building. The camera operator is John. Tim and Austin are doing tricks. Tim glides down a railing from the loading dock and lands perfectly.

AUSTIN: (laughter) That was awesome!
JOHN: (laughter)
TIM: I think we’re busted.

The camera pans away from the boys to a man in a suit, approaching  from the other end of the parking lot. The camera zooms in on the older man with disheveled gray hair. His hazy eyes are sunken and his mouth is covered with dark coagulated blood that runs down onto his shirt. He shuffles across the lot toward the boys, dragging his right leg. 

JOHN: I don’t think so. This guy is messed up. He looks like he’s been in a car accident or something.

John zooms out. Tim flips up his board and tucks it under his arm. Austin jumps down off of the dock and joins the others. Tim steps closer to the approaching man.

TIM: John, you got your cell? We may have to call an ambulance for this guy.

The injured man creeps closer and then lunges at Tim.

TIM: Hey! What the. Get (inaudible.)

Tim pushes the man back with the tip of his skateboard. The injured man presses his chest against the board, clawing for Tim. He nips the air with blood soaked teeth. Austin steps in and pushes the edge of his board against one of the man’s flailing arms, trying to help push him back.

AUSTIN: Sir, what are you doing? Sir please stop.
TIM: Get him away from me.

Tim musters a strong push. The man stumbles back and falls to the pavement with a loud crack.

JOHN: Did you hear that?
AUSTIN: Was that his hip? I think he just broke his hip.

The man sits up and lunges for Tim, but unable to move his legs or get up.

TIM: Is he trying to talk? He keeps moving his jaw.
AUSTIN: Dude, look at his eyes. John, zoom in on his eyes.

John repositions and zooms in on the man’s eyes. They are cloudy white with small dark circles in the center.

JOHN: Weird. You can’t even tell what color they are.
TIM: Is he an albino?
AUSTIN: He’s bleeding out of his mouth. John, call the police or an ambulance.

The camera faces the ground momentarily.

AUSTIN: Give it to Tim.

John hands the camera to Tim. Tim focuses on John dialing his cell phone.

TIM: Austin step back, let me get all around him.
AUSTIN: What for?
TIM: I don’t know, in case the police ask questions.

The injured man follows Tim as he circles around. He lunges and snaps his jaw, but he is unable to move below the waist.

AUSTIN: Sir, were you in an accident?

The injured man is focused on Tim, lunging at the camera.

AUSTIN: Sir, we are getting you some help. 

Tim zooms out. Austin looks into the camera.

AUSTIN: Man, he’s in shock or something.
JOHN: No signal.
AUSTIN: What? You should have full bars. I always get full bars here.

JOHN: Where’s your phone then?
AUSTIN: My bitch sister swiped it.

John holds up the phone to Austin who checks the screen.

JOHN: Believe me?

Austin nods. John takes the camera back and zooms in on the injured man.

AUSTIN: Let’s head up the block. Maybe we can find a cop.
TIM: We should just wait. There should be one by soon to kick us out of here.
AUSTIN: (laughter) right.
JOHN: Figures today they won’t show.
AUSTIN: Huh?
JOHN: They’re here all the time. It figures now that we need one–they won’t show.
AUSTIN: Assholes.
JOHN: Should one of us stay with him?
AUSTIN: Tim can stay.
TIM: No way! This guy creeps me out. I ain’t staying.

END RECORDING
BEGIN RECORDING

Tall dead grass moves past the lens. The camera faces the ground and then is tilted up. John looks into the lens. Austin walks beside him. Tim is not present.

AUSTIN: (whispering) See right there, I can’t make it out. Zoom in on that.

John straightens the camera and zooms in on two crouched figures a distance away. The figures are huddled together and have their backs to the camera.

JOHN: (whispering) There’s two people, a guy and a girl, hunched over.
AUSTIN: (whispering) What are they doing?
JOHN: (whispering) I don’t know–praying or some shit. Are we facing East?

John zooms in closer and steadies the camera. The woman, who is kneeling on the right side, moves further to the right. In the gap it’s clear that they huddled over a man lying on his back. The woman plunges her face into the man’s chest and tears away flesh with her teeth. The camera drops.

JOHN: Holy shit. Holy (inaudible) They’re eating that guy. They’re biting and…
AUSTIN: What?

Austin takes the camera and steadies it on the couple. The man on the left side, gnaws at the dead man’s throat, ripping bloody flesh from it. The man takes a moment to stop and chew what he bit off.

AUSTIN: Fuck! (inaudible)

The camera shakes and then steadies on the man feeding. The man holds his head up and has a long chunk of meat dangling from his mouth. His face is covered in blood. He turns sharply and stares directly into the camera. The man leaps to his feet and walks quickly toward Austin and John.

AUSTIN: They heard us. 
JOHN: What?
AUSTIN: They heard us. Run.

The two boys run with the camera pointed to the grass.

END RECORDING
BEGIN RECORDING

The camera faces concrete.

JOHN: We need to get someplace secure.

(the sound of a gunshot)

AUSTIN: Check this out.

The camera is raised and John moves past Austin and peeks around the corner of the building. They are surrounded by shrubs. The camera auto focuses on a police car stopped in mid-street. An officer stands outside the open door and fires his weapon at the approaching walking dead.

AUSTIN: No way! He hit him three times in the chest and he’s still going after him. 

The dead man reaches the officer and takes a bite out of his arm. The officer yells in pain and shoots the man in the head. The back of his head disintegrates, spraying blood and grey matter on the hood of the vehicle. The dead man collapses to the street.

JOHN: I think I’m going to be sick.

AUSTIN: Don’t hurl dude. Did you see that? He shot it in the head and it went down.

The officer reloads a clip as a swarm of people stagger toward him. In a barrage of gunfire he shoots six walking dead in the face and the backs of their heads explode. More and more of the dead surround the officer. He enters his patrol car, slams the door and speeds down the street. Mowing down two walking dead in his path.

AUSTIN: We have to get some guns. 

John pans the camera around. He and Austin are hiding behind bushes. The group of creatures seem to be following the departed police car and don’t notice the two young men. John pans along the side of the building.

JOHN: We should try and get in here.

The camera moves to the sky. The sun is orange and low in the sky.

JOHN: Sun’s going down. We should hurry. 

END RECORDING
BEGIN RECORDING

Inside a dimly lit stairwell, John is holding the camera with Austin leading the way. The grey walls and cement steps suggest that it’s the stairwell of an office building. They climb flight after flight of stairs. At the top of the last flight they rest, appearing sluggish and tired.

AUSTIN: It’s about Goddamn time.

At the roof door, Austin rests his hands on his knees and John tilts the camera over the railing. Six or seven levels of railing can be seen clearly until they fade into darkness.

(slamming noise)

Austin pushes against the door and John rapidly moves the camera to him. Austin hits the door again with the side of his body. He bounces off with a thump.

AUSTIN: You have got to be kidding me.

Austin winds up for a big slam and pushes the door open. He stumbles out onto the roof. John follows him. Austin does a quick survey of the roof. The camera is panned quickly all around. It’s dark, but the sky is bright. The roof seems bare except for a large air conditioning unit.

JOHN: Do you see anything we can use to block the door?

John follows Austin as he circles the roof.

AUSTIN: I don’t see anything.

(screeching noise)

Austin moves to the edge of the roof and looks down into the street. He points. 

AUSTIN: Check this out.

John moves to the edge of the building and points the camera down into the street. The camera auto focuses as John zooms in on a late model car racing down the street. Three undead are hanging on the hood and roof of the vehicle. The driver sways the car from side to side trying to break the grip of the creatures.  The camera follows the car as it continues down the street around an abandoned car in the road and then turns a corner. The camera returns to Austin.

AUSTIN: Dude, that’s messed up.

Austin walks the perimeter of the building next to the narrow concrete ledge. John points the camera down into the street below. Several walking dead are scattered around. He zooms in. A group of creatures seem to be following the car. They are sluggishly moving in the same direction.
John zooms in on a man in a disheveled business suit. The man is lean and in his fifties. His lips have been torn or eaten from his face. His teeth fill up most of the area. His eyes are sunken and very dark. He staggers with a limp after the car.
John focuses on a woman in the street. She is crawling. Her face is covered in long black hair. She is in a red skirt and wearing one heel on the left foot. Her right leg is mangled and she drags it as she pulls herself with her arms.

JOHN: Jesus.

John pans quickly to several other creatures in the street.
(sound of distant gunshots)
The camera whips up to Austin, who motions John to come closer.

AUSTIN: Hurry up, come over here. Check this out.

Austin points down a side street. About half way down the block, a circle of twenty walking dead have surrounded a building. A bright circle from a spotlight moves to one of them. The dead man cowers from the light. A moment later, his head explodes. Someone in the building is firing on the crowd. The spotlight moves to a woman with bright red hair. The dead woman turns from the brightness and then her head explodes. She falls to the street.
The camera zooms to it maximum on the building. The shadowy figure of a man aims a rifle out of the third story window and fires at the creatures. Another person is holding a hand held spotlight out of the window beside him.

AUSTIN: See, I told ya we needed some guns.
JOHN: Should we go over there?
AUSTIN: Yeah right. Wanna get your head blown off?

The spotlight illuminates a security guard’s face and then the back of his head explodes. The man drops. John surveys the accumulating corpses in the street.
(sound of screaming)
John zooms out and pans around, looking for Austin. Austin is on the other side of the roof. The camera shakes as John jogs to him. Down in the parking lot, two girls run to a parked car in the lot and frantically try the doors. They are locked.

AUSTIN: Hey!

The girls run to another car and try the doors. It is locked as well. They look back to the line of trees that they ran from. A large number of walking dead sift through the trees in slow pursuit of the girls. They move to another car and try door handles. They are locked.

AUSTIN: (whistling) Hey! Up here! Go to the door on this side.

The girls look up into the camera. They run simultaneously to building. John pans around. Hordes of creatures are filling the parking lot.
John moves to the roof door and opens it. He points the camera over the railing. He zooms in on the hands of the girls grabbing the railings. They race up the stairs.

END RECORDING
BEGIN RECORDING

On the roof, the camera is on the two girls. One of them cries, face planted in the shoulder of the other.

JOHN: What are your names?

The girl not crying whips her long black hair back.

BECCA: I’m Becca, this is Jess. 

Becca squeezes Jess tight and kisses her on the cheek.

BECCA: It’s okay, we’re okay. We’re safe now.

Becca takes a big breath and tries to calm down.

BECCA: Oh my God. I’m so glad we found you guys. Oh my God.

John zooms in on the two girls. Jess has reduced to sniffling and we see her tear soaked face for the first time. Both of them appear to be about sixteen years old. Aside from dirty jeans and unkempt hair they look uninjured.

JOHN: I’m John, this is Austin. 
BECCA: Thank you so much.

Becca hugs Austin and then John, bumping the camera.

BECCA: Sorry.

She returns to Jess who latches back on.

BECCA: You’re a junior, right.
AUSTIN: Yeah.
BECCA: I’ve seen you before. We’re sophomores.
JOHN: Where did you guys come from?
BECCA: We were at the game. You wouldn’t believe–We got away.

Becca shakes her head, tears fill her eyes, and she turns from the camera. John holds it on her for a few seconds and then pans to Austin who has walked to the edge of the roof. Austin stares over the ledge down into the parking lot.

JOHN: What is it?

John moves to Austin. The parking lot is filled end to end with the undead and more are squeezing in. Many of the dead are dressed in blue shirts and sweatshirts with the local high school logo on it. Several football players and cheerleaders are in the crowd.
A thump comes from the roof door and Austin runs to it. Before he reaches it, the door opens. Austin slams the door with his shoulder, closing it. Four bloody, dirty fingers stick out of the frame.
The door is pushed open and Austin pushes again. Becca joins him at the door and they push it closed. John lays the camera sideways on the black roof as he helps push against the door.
The edge of the door is pushed open a couple of inches and then closed. This happens several times.

AUSTIN: Ahh! (unintelligible) There’s too many of them.

The door is forced open.  Jess’s hair is grabbed.

JESS: (screams)
AUSTIN: This way!

John grabs the camera as the group pulls Jess from the dead and they fleeaway from the door. The camera shakes violently. The feet of walking dead can be seen walking through the door as the group moves around to the side of the small building that houses the roof door. Austin jumps up, grabs the roof ledge, and pulls himself on to the roof.

AUSTIN: Come on. Give me your hands!

Jess reaches up and Austin drags her onto the roof. Becca jumps up, grabs the roof edge and gets an elbow over. The creatures pour around from the side. John leaps up, grabs the roof edge, and tosses the camera. It spins three hundred and sixty degrees and settles on him. Austin pulls Becca up as John gets his elbow over. Becca and Austin move to help John. They pull him up. Creatures grab his legs and pull him back. Austin and Becca strain and pull John closer. More hands wrap around John’s legs and tug him back. Becca loses her balance and her grip of John’s hand.

BECCA: Shit!
AUSTIN: Ahhhhh!

Austin can’t hold John by himself. John’s hand slips from Austin’s grip. John is pulled into the crowd of dead and disappears below the edge of the roof.

AUSTIN: John!
JOHN: (screams) 

END RECORDING
BEGIN RECORDING

The camera is tilted up and steadied on the crowd of creatures that surround the small roof. John is dead and lying face down on the roof. He is being devoured by the creatures around him. The girls sob.
Austin stands and pans around the roof. They are completely encircled by walking dead. The edge of the small roof is just out of their reach. They claw at it and grasp for it, but they cannot get a grip of the ledge to pull themselves up. The number creatures around the roof is massive and extends to the ledge of the building.

END RECORDING
BEGIN RECORDING

Austin focuses on John’s corpse. His shirt is torn open and the meaty part of his back has been chewed away. John’s body twitches. John rolls onto his side. He pushes himself up and stands. John is dazed initially. He looks around at his surroundings with foggy white eyes. Black veins spider around the edges of his face. John notices the camera and looks into the lens. Austin zooms in until John’s blank eyes fill the screen. John snarls and reaches for the group on the roof.

END RECORDING
–END TAPE #1–

The Writer Jonathan Reed

I begin this writing with a word of caution to you, the reader. Although I am well known for my collection of fiction writings, every word contained herein is true. And, with my innate propensity to describe events with particular detail, there are parts of this account that are not for the feint of heart. They may upset even the most stern of systems.
For me, it started shortly after my lecture at the University. Teaching the art of writing supported me for many years until writing did by itself. I had always planned to give it up by that point, but by then it was too late. Teaching had become extremely fulfilling for me. 
I reviewed the pile of paperwork that had accumulated on the desk in my office for an hour. I had nearly reached the last page of the stack when I heard a light rap at my door. I was well entrenched at my desk and by the time I had whisked the door open–a heavenly slender female figure was walking away. The figure turned and my stomach felt like it had been dropped off a cliff. 
“Jonathan,” she said in a sigh of relief. Some tension left her posture.
I had heard that she was back in town a few weeks prior. She had gotten divorced and was back home taking care of her father. I had wondered, daily, about the moment we would see each other again.
“Hello Angie,” I said with an uncontrollable smile.
Angela Baxter and I were college sweethearts. We were in love and inseparable. Inseparable until I went to medical school. Life got in the way and we drifted apart. 
“How have you been? It’s been a long time,” I added.
“I’m doing well.” 
She took a few steps closer and I wanted to kiss her right there on the spot. I was earnest in my fight to remain a gentleman. 
“Come in, please.” I stepped back and pushed the door open wider. She smelled beautiful and I felt like a boy in school again, giddy with nervous excitement.
She entered and took a quick glance around the cluttered one room office.  There was not much to my little corner of the university. It was filled with books and papers, haphazardly arranged to look neat. I had made some half-hearted efforts over the years to fill it with some trinkets and give it a personal touch. Angie stood uncomfortably in front of my desk as if she were a student that needed a test score raised. 
“I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, not at all, I was just finishing up. I did hear you were back and I was meaning to–”
“Me too. It’s just taken me some time to settle in.” 
Angie moved to the corner of my tattered wooden desk. She looked fantastic, even better than I had remembered. Her hair was longer, simple and more mature. She had a navy skirt that hugged her curves nicely, and a navy sweater with a white blouse–and just the right amount of buttons undone. She was stunning.
“I was sorry to hear about your divorce.” I attempted to be sincere. I wasn’t sorry about the divorce, I was sorry about the pain she most likely went through. If it was anything like mine, it was an emotionally draining experience.
“Yours too.” She smirked with her trademark innocent flirty smirk.
I wondered if she had heard about my divorce in passing or if she had inquired about it. I kept the conversation going. 
“Any children?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
We had gotten all of the particulars out of the way. As far as the past fifteen years were concerned, that’s all that I wanted to know for now. 
“I’m sorry, can I get you something to drink? Some coffee? Tea?” I moved to the small makeshift beverage area on top of my wide file cabinet.
“No thank you, I’m fine.” She ran her finger across the name plate on my desk. It read “Dr. Jonathan Reed.” She had gotten it for me before I left for medical school.
“You still have this?”
“It still reads right. Just not a doctor of medicine,” I joked. 
She giggled, but in a restrained sort of way. Something was troubling her. She looked up from the desk and turned to me. Her eyes were sad. 
“That’s part of the reason I’m here.” She moved closer. “Truth is, I have been meaning to see you. I’ve thought about you a lot. Even before I got back.” She turned away. “Just haven’t had the courage, I guess.”
I moved closer and gently held her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“It’s my father, I checked him into the hospital next door today, and he’s getting worse. They don’t know what’s wrong.” Tears pooled under her eyes and ran down her face. She turned away. “I don’t know any of the doctors here and I don’t trust them. Could you see him?”
“I’ve only had two years of med school,” blurted from my lips. It was the stupidest thing I could have possibly said. I could see her disappointment immediately and I tried to cover. “But, I’ll take a look of course.”
She brightened quickly. “Oh, thank you Jonathan. I just didn’t want you to think that it was the only reason I was here.” 
I hugged her. “Not at all.”
Angie filled me in on the details as we walked briskly across the street to the University Hospital. She had returned from running errands in town to find her father in his chair in front of the TV with a blood soaked rag around his arm. He had been bitten. How or by what, he didn’t say. He had a fever and was incoherent, so she took him to the emergency room.
I knew her father well. I had spoken to him on many occasions over the years, usually to get a tidbit of information about Angie. He was a salt-of-the-earth man of few words, so I can understand why she couldn’t find out exactly what had happened. He was old, but no one knew exactly how old. He had altered his birth certificate as a teen so he would be old enough to enlist during World War II. I don’t even think the late Mrs. Baxter knew his exact age. He is one of the toughest men I know. He’s worked on his family’s farm since he was a boy and continues to run the place to this day. He’s not the kind of person to see a doctor about anything. For Angie to get him to a hospital, he must have been in extreme pain or not thinking clearly.
“Did you see the bite?” I asked as we entered the hospital through the sliding glass doors.
“Yes, that’s the first thing I looked at.” Angie stopped at the elevator.
“Was it an animal bite?”
“I have no idea what it was. It didn’t look good. It was badly infected by the time I saw it.”
We exited the elevator, rounded the empty nurses station, and walked into the hospital room through the open door. Angie’s father was restless in the bed. His skin was pale and clammy. His eyes were sunken, most likely due to dehydration, and his forehead glistened with sweat. He looked terrible.
I moved closer and examined his right arm. The bite was covered in white gauze about midway up on the top of his forearm. A red circle of blood filled the center of the bandage. I could easily see infection spreading away from the wound in his veins like leafless twigs. They were dark purple, almost black, under his colorless skin. Angie waited anxiously for me to say something.
“He’s septic,” I said as I rubbed the evening stubble on my face.
Angie’s shoulders slumped and she sighed. “That’s what the doctor said.” She moved around to the opposite side of the bed.
I checked the hanging bags that fed his IV. “They have him on antibiotics and they are keeping him hydrated. That’s pretty much all they can do for infection.”
That did little to comfort her and I could see she wanted a more precise explanation. She brushed her hair back behind her ear with her fingers and held her father’s hand. He didn’t seem to notice that we were even there. 
Angie cleared her throat. “What bit him that caused the infection? The doctor said it wasn’t rabies, it that true?”
“When was he bitten?”
“It was sometime this afternoon. I saw him this morning and he was fine.”
“He was fine. You mean he felt fine or you didn’t see any bite?”
“I handed him his morning coffee. If he had a bite on his arm I would have noticed it.”
I shook my head. “No, with rabies there are no visible symptoms for several days or longer. This is something else.”
I started to remove the tape holding the gauze to the wound. “Do you mind if I take a look?”
“Please.” Angie looked at me with a desperate, but hopeful glance. I lifted the tape and peeled back the bandage. The gauze stuck to the pus covered wound. I had only pulled it halfway when a putrid smell filled my nostrils. I recoiled.
Angie covered her nose. “Oh God.”
I removed the rest of the gauze. The bite was sickening. It was two inches in width and very deep. Whatever had bitten him had gotten close to the bone. The gap of missing flesh was filled with a green and yellow mixture of pus. I rotated the arm, ignored the stench, and got a closer look.
“I don’t think this is an animal bite. It’s too small. It looks like a person bit him.” 
Angie looked at me puzzled. “Why would–” She leaned closer to her dad. “Dad, did someone bite you? Did a person bite you?”
Her father didn’t answer. I returned his arm gently to the bed and peeked my head out of the room. I didn’t want to put the same dressing back on the wound. I looked for a nurse in either direction and saw none.
“I’ll be right back,” I said.
I took a walk back toward the nurse’s station. I rapped my fingers on the counter of the empty desk. The phone rang continuously in a low electronic chime. I looked around for a few seconds and saw no sign of anyone. The halls were barren.
I moved to the nearest hospital room. The door was closed all, but an inch. I pushed it open. An elderly woman was sleeping soundly in bed. She had white curly hair, a peaceful face, and an oxygen tube under her nose. The line of light from the door ran across her. After not seeing anyone on the floor since we had gotten here, it felt good to know there were others around. Come to think about it, we hadn’t passed a single soul, that I can remember, from the moment we entered the hospital. I left the room and returned the door to its original position. 
I checked some cabinets near the nurse’s station and kept my eyes on the hallways for a sign of life. I was able to find some packets of gauze and tape. I returned to the room. Angie hovered over her father and had tears in her eyes. She turned from me to wipe them.
I discarded the old bandage in the red medical waste container. I opened the fresh gauze and gently wrapped it over the bite.
“We should let him rest and let the antibiotics do their job. Come on, I’ll buy you a cup of coffee”
“Okay.” Angie sniffed and smiled as widely as she could under the circumstances.
I thought it best to take Angie’s mind off of her father for a short while. There was little we could do for him, it was just a matter of waiting for the antibiotics to clear up his system. He would probably be better in the morning. I had ulterior motives as well. In the short time we had spent together, since she knocked on my office door, I had realized that I never stopped caring for her. She had never been completely out of my heart. I was anxious to know if she felt the same.
We sat at a small round table in a little area next to the cafeteria. The cafeteria was closed, but a row of vending machines offered some limited food choices. I had coffee and Angie had tea.
It was if the past fifteen years hadn’t passed and we were still in college. We didn’t discuss anything of consequence really.  We didn’t discuss much of our divorces, or work, or the plans for our life that didn’t work out. We talked endlessly and the world around us seemed to disappear like we were the only two people left on the planet.
I had refilled our cups only once and we sat there talking long after they had been emptied. On our way back to the room, I reminded her of the time in college when she had held me hostage for a whole weekend. She was pledging a sorority and was supposed to kidnap a brother from another fraternity. She drove to my school with some other pledges late on a Friday night and abducted me. The pledges tied me, put a frat hat on my head (since I wasn’t in a fraternity), and pawned me off as a frat boy. Angie was my warden and we spent a lot of time together alone. She was laughing about it when we entered her father’s room.
Her smile, which I loved to see, quickly dropped. The hospital bed was empty and the sheets were strewn aside. Angie checked the placard on the wall outside the door just to be sure we had entered the correct room. I noticed the end of the IV resting on the bed, coated with blood and wrapped in clear tape. Her father must have pulled it out of his hand.
Angie was panicked. “Jonathan, where did he go?” 
I shook my head. He was barely conscious when we left, let alone in any condition to walk away. I had been septic once from a kidney infection and it doesn’t matter where the infection is, your entire body hurts. I didn’t look half as bad as Mr. Dexter and I couldn’t get out of the hospital bed for days even with the doses of morphine.
We went back into the hall and looked in all directions. The corridors were empty. It was time for a room-to-room search. We hadn’t gotten to the first door when we heard movement down the hall behind us.
“Dad!” Angie said relieved.
Her father was down by the nurse’s station. He wandered out of one of the rooms and walked slowly toward us.  He looked like he was trying to call to us and it appeared that he had vomited on himself. A dark stain ran down the front of his gown under his chin.
Angie walked more briskly and I hurried to keep up.
A nurse stepped into the hallway and steadied Mr. Baxter. We couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she began to guide him back to his room.
Just then, the most gruesome thing happened. Mr. Baxter attacked the nurse. He bit her neck and tore away a chunk of flesh. The nurse screamed and her jugular sprayed blood in pulses on the ceiling and walls.
The two of them dropped to the floor with Mr. Baxter attacking the neck again. The nurse’s scream ended with a gurgle. Mr. Baxter continued to chew. 
We rushed to them. I arrived first and yanked Mr. Baxter off. He had a firm grip and it took a second tug to send him stumbling backwards. He stumbled, fell, and his back slammed the floor a few feet away.
Angie was kneeling next to the nurse in shock, watching the blood drain out of her as she sucked for air. I grabbed a folded gown from a pile on a nearby cart and pressed it to the nurse’s wound. She was already ghastly white and losing consciousness. 
“Angie, go to the phone behind the desk and see if you can get help.”
She was flustered and I repeated myself more firmly so she could hear me. Angie moved to the desk. A shadow crept over me and I turned. Mr. Baxter had gotten up and was standing over me. His eyes were murky and sunken. The bones in his face were pronounced as if the water had been drained from his skin–you could make out his skull underneath.
He lunged for me, just as he did the nurse. My hand rose instinctively landing on his chest and blocking him. He groaned at me and scratched at my sleeves. I rolled him to my side and he was back on the floor again, across the nurse’s legs. I jumped to my feet and backed away. The nurse coughed up blood with her last breath and stared fixed at the ceiling. She was dead.
Angie had the phone in one hand, and stared bewildered at her father. 
“What’s wrong with him?”
I stared blankly back at her with no answer. Mr. Baxter clawed at my feet. I took a step back and he followed me while he grunted and snarled with blood stained teeth.
“Mr. Baxter?” I said as I took a large step back.
He was on top of the nurse now. Her skin was drained of color and looked transparent white, like it had been coated in talcum powder. 
Mr. Baxter turned from me and plunged his teeth into the nurse’s neck. I moved back behind the nurse’s station and stood next to Angie. My eyes never left her father. We watched in horror as he ate the nurse.
Angie couldn’t watch any longer and turned away. I couldn’t believe it at first, but he was biting, chewing, and swallowing pieces of the nurse. I took the phone from Angie and pounded on the keypad. I tried every number to get an outside line, but there was no dial tone. I started pressing the speed dial buttons: Admissions, Billing, Pharmacy, and Security. I let each line ring at least ten times. There was no answer.
Mr. Baxter worked his way up the neck and ate the nurse’s face.
I couldn’t watch any longer. I turned away and pulled Angie’s head into my shoulder. Her eyes were puffy and tearing.
“What’s wrong with him?” 
A door slowly squeaked behind us. The old woman, who I had peeked in on earlier, walked out of her room. Her throat was torn and bloody. Her gown was stained red from her neck to her knees. She had the same vacant look that Angie’s father had, but the vacant look was focused on us.
She moved toward the station, dragging her IV stand by the tubes still taped to her right arm. She raised her free arm and clawed at the air. She opened her mouth and let out this empty, breathy moan. Blood bubbles surfaced on her torn neck.
I held Angie closer.
“Oh my God,” she cried.
She covered her mouth with both hands. She was horrified and her body stiffened in my arms. 
“We need to get some help,” I said as I guided her out of the nurse’s station. We slowly backed down the hall toward the elevators.
Angie’s dad noticed the old woman creeping past and stood up behind her. He started to stalk us like the old woman did. As we continued to move back I noticed motion behind Mr. Baxter. The nurse who had been dead on the floor, rolled onto her side. She turned and looked at us.
Angie squeezed my arm tighter. “Jonathan.”
“That’s not possible,” I said. “She can’t be alive, it’s not possible!”
The nurse rose to her feet and followed us.
We turned and ran to the elevators. Angie and I pushed the button at the same time and tried to catch our breaths.
“This elevator goes to the parking deck. Let’s take the hall across to the other building and go down to the emergency room.” 
The elevator hadn’t arrived and Angie’s dad, the old woman, and the nurse were getting closer. “Okay,” Angie nodded. I grabbed her hand and ran. 
We abandoned waiting for the elevator and crossed the sky bridge to the other building. The walls of the sky bridge are windows to the outside that overlook the parking lot. We were moving quickly and all that I could see was the black of night.
We arrived at the elevators, pressed the button and checked for signs of our pursuers. There was no sight of them. The door opened and we got in. I pressed the button for ground level. That would bring us to the emergency room.
“There has to be someone in the emergency room,” I panted.
Angie nodded and caught her breath. For a brief moment, I feared that the doors would open and a crowd of people with torn throats would swarm the elevator. The door opened and my fear turned out to be mild in comparison.
The emergency room was chaotic. The large room was packed with patients. People lined the walls–some sitting and most standing. Nurses and doctors weaved through the crowds. The room was thick with the noise of sniffles, coughs, crying, and shouting.
The wide automatic entrance door was in constant motion, not being able to fully close before more people rushed in from outside. Everyone entering was wounded on some part of their body; an arm, a leg, a shoulder, a hand, or a part of the face. 
A policeman helped a fellow officer through the automatic doors. His leg was shredded and dripping blood. The policeman had a wound on his forearm. Blood was trickling down and dripping off of his elbow. A nurse handed them masks and continued around the room handing them out to anyone that did not have one.
“What the hell is happening?” I said.
The elevator doors began to close and I stuck my arm out to stop them. I took Angie’s hand and pulled her off the elevator. We squeezed up against the emergency room wall and got out of the way.
“Excuse me, we need some help,” I said to one of the doctors.
Doctors and nurses passed us by like we were invisible. After a few moments a grabbed a doctor by the back of his scrubs as he passed.
“Doctor what’s going on here?” I said firmly.
“I’m sorry I don’t’ have any information for you. We’ve heard nothing from the CDC yet.”
The doctor tried to get away and I pulled harder on his scrubs.
“What’s happening to these people?”
“We have an outbreak. It’s spreading rapidly.” I don’t know any more than that.”
“An outbreak?” said Angie.
The doctor stopped tugging for a moment. “Do you have any symptoms?” Angie and I both shook our heads no. “Are you injured or have you had any contact with the infected?” asked the doctor.
By our pause in answering he assumed the answer was affirmative.
“Wait here, put some masks on and someone will be with you as soon as possible. Please, I have to go.” The doctor glanced down at my hand and I let go of him. He hurried off and I moved us back up against the wall. 
“Jonathan. What do we do?”
I shook my head. I wasn’t sure.
There was an old man fastened to a gurney near us. The man’s wrists were bound to the side rails. He looked just like Angie’s dad had looked–pale with sunken cloudy eyes. As someone passed by the gurney he would lunge at them. 
A doctor’s lab coat was strewn over the man’s legs. A stethoscope sat on top of it. I thought about how when I was septic I couldn’t move, but Mr. Baxter could. Then my head filled with the picture of the nurse taking her last breath and then the old woman–her throat was torn as well. It wasn’t medically possible that she could be walking around. I took the stethoscope and put it in my ears.
“What are you doing?” Angie tugged on my arm.
“Just a second, I have to see something.” I placed the silver cone on the old man’s chest and listened. He wiggled his arms and snapped at me, but I ignored him and continued to listen.
I heard nothing.
“He has no heartbeat.”
“What? Jonathan that’s impossible. I see him moving”
I pulled down the sheet to gain access to the man’s arm. It looked like it had been chewed like an ear of corn. Angie caught a glance of it and recoiled. I pulled the sheet down by his other arm and felt for a pulse. He had no pulse.
I stopped and gazed around the emergency room again. Every injured person in the emergency room had something in common. As far as I could tell, their injuries were all bites.
I turned back to the old man and swung the stethoscope over my neck. I held out my fingers, just out of reach of the old man’s mouth.
“Jonathan, what are you doing?” Angie tugged on my arm.
Snap. I moved my fingers out of the way. The old man snarled.
“It’s the bites.”
“What?” Angie tugged harder on my arm.
“Have you been bitten?” I asked. Angie was puzzled by the question.
Did your father bite you?” I asked as I checked her extremities. 
“No.” She shouted and pulled away.
“We have to get out of here.” I started maneuvering through the crowd to the door.
“Jonathan, tell me what’s going on.”
“I will, as soon as we get out.”
We were almost at the door when a heavyset man in work clothes entered through the automatic door and bit the policeman on the neck from behind. The policeman dropped the officer who was leaning on him and grabbed his pistol. He fired four shots at the heavyset man. The room filled with screams. The shots were deafening in the large room.
The bullets pushed the heavyset man back, but they didn’t stop him, he kept coming. It wasn’t until the officer shot the man in the head that he dropped to the floor. Blood and grey matter sprayed on the glass door. The officer waved his gun around the emergency room wildly and held his bleeding neck with his other hand. The people inside backed away.
The automatic door opened. The officer spun and shot the teenaged boy that stood in the doorway. The boy was hit in the cheek and the side of his face was blown off. It had happened so fast that I couldn’t really say whether the boy was infected or not. There were more people coming toward the door from outside. The officer started shooting them in the head. He didn’t even take the time to see if the people were a threat or not–he just fired shot after shot without stopping. He was going to die soon and he didn’t care.
I grabbed Angie and joined the crowd filling the hallway. The panicked crowd stuffed the hall as we raced to the nearest exit. Once we cleared the exterior glass doors, the crowd scattered. It took me a second to get my bearings. We were on the other side of the hospital, opposite from where we entered. I thought the best thing would be to return to my office. It wasn’t far and we needed be away from people.
We heard a scream from the other end of the parking lot and turned to look. A woman from the hospital was trying to get in her car when she was attacked by one of the infected. A man with no shirt lunged at the woman with his jaws open wide. My first instinct was to run over and help the woman.
Before I saw him clamp down on the woman’s arm, Angie screamed. At first I thought she was horrified by what we were watching until I was bumped from behind. One of the infected tackled Angie to the ground. I immediately pulled the man off of her and tossed him back.
The man was small and it was easy to move him. He stumbled backwards and fell. 
“Are you okay?”
Angie nodded yes, but I could see she was shaken. 
I turned to the infected man, who was on his back and climbing to his feet. I knew this man. 
“Karl?” I said. 
He did not acknowledge me. Karl Withers was a short, thin man with grey hair. He was wearing a sweater with a blazer over it. It’s his trademark and I have never seen him in anything else.
Karl slowly climbed to his feet and came toward us. The circles around his eyes were dark and his cheeks thin. In the dim light of the parking lot it looked like a skull on a body. He reached for me and I stepped back. I glanced around for some type of weapon–a thick fallen branch, a broken bottle, a garbage can–anything to fend him off. There was nothing in sight.
Karl lunged at me. I stepped to the side and slipped my arm around his neck. I was careful not to go near his mouth. I pulled my arm tight and closed his windpipe. My nostrils filled with the smell of pomade from his hair. He reached back and tried to grab me. 
All of my frustrations came to the front of my mind at that moment. My long and painful divorce, years of unhappiness, the anger of not having the life that dreamed of, the frustration of not having made different decisions. Hate swelled in me and I clenched my jaw tightly. I tightened my hold on Karl’s neck.
The thought occurred to me that my efforts might be in vain. If Karl is infected and has no heartbeat, he may not require oxygen. I remember being held under water in the pool as a child. The longer I was deprived of oxygen, the more I would writhe and squirm to get free. At some point my lungs would burn with a desire for air. Karl acted no different now than from the first squeeze of his windpipe two minutes prior. There was hardly a struggle. Not only did the infected not require blood for circulation, or a heartbeat, they didn’t require oxygen either. Under the bizarre circumstances it seemed quite logical; no heartbeat, no blood required, no oxygen, no breathing required.
My anger tripled. How can we expect to battle something that is already dead? How do you cure a disease that renders the infected dead–yet allows them to continue spreading the infection? It was at that moment I realized the grave danger that the entire human race was in.
Yes, we eat too many fast foods, don’t exercise enough, and smoke cigarettes. Those are all real problems and they all threaten us–just not tonight, not right now.
The human race as we know it could end tonight. 
It was then that I heard Karl’s neck snap. His body went limp in my arms and he dropped to the ground.
Angie looked up at me in horror like I was a monster. But, she didn’t know what I knew. She didn’t know that Karl was dead before we stumbled on to him. She didn’t know that everyone chasing us was dead. She didn’t know that tomorrow the whole world might be dead.
I ran to her and at first she backed away from me. I held out my hand.
“Angie, we have to go,” I pleaded.
There were more infected in the parking lot and they were heading toward us. They were flowing out of the hospital door like a river into the sea. Angie looked around and saw them all. She saw the real monsters. I think she realized that I had done what I needed to do to protect her–to protect us.
Angie gave me her hand, I pulled her to her feet, and we ran. 
Our feet slapped hard and loud on the pavement. I worried that it could be heard for miles around. Who knew how many infected were surrounding us in the dark? They might leap out of the bushes and attack us right now.
I wanted to grab someone and take them with us, save them from what was going on. Save them from what I knew was going to happen. But, there was no one around–no one alive. With a quick glance behind us, I could not see any of the group that had fled the hospital, except for few that attempted to get into their cars. The infected fed on them now.
The infected walked and slumbered about. They heard our footsteps and were coming after us. 
Now I wasn’t certain if my office was the best place to go. There were no supplies there. There was no food, no water, no radio, and no TV. We needed to be someplace secure, a place we could stay for a while and still communicate with the outside world. My home seemed to be the logical choice. Angie’s house was too far away. My house was less than a mile. It was a small place, and it wouldn’t take long to secure. Plus, it had a basement. The basement had only two entrances, the door from the kitchen and the exterior access door, which was rusted shut–I hadn’t been able to open it in years.  
I squeezed Angie’s hand a bit tighter and quickened our pace. I noticed that I was panting heavily. I consider myself to be in good shape, but I was still straining to get air into my lungs. I don’t think it was from the running. I don’t think it was my body’s demand for oxygen. The thought of a fast spreading disease taking over the town, and possibly the world, filled me with panic. How far has this spread? Is it just local? Have other cities been affected? What if it is worldwide? It was like a giant hand around my chest, that tightened and constricted me. The disease caused the infected to lose all sense of control and morality. Basically, their higher brain functions like reasoning, logic, and speech. The infected were reduced to primal creatures and for some reason their instincts were to attack and feed on the living.
Maybe it’s the disease. Maybe the virus, on a cellular level, drives its host to feed on people. It’s similar to when a person craves a particular kind of food, their body is telling them it’s deprived of some vitamin or mineral. That’s the body’s way of preserving itself. Maybe the virus gets something from the blood or the flesh of the living that enables it to survive–that enables it to keep a dead body moving. In the same way humans have a desire to procreate, the virus spreads to the victims through bites. Biting is just another form of reproduction.
Angie stumbled and I slowed to check on her.
“I’m okay, just tired.” I could see it in her face that she was exhausted and her chest was heaving as she starved for air.
“My car is in the lot, just around the corner.” She acknowledged me with a nod that she was ready to go. We continued jogging, at a slower pace. 
I stopped at the corner of the building. I wanted to make sure it was safe to go to the car, but I knew Angie’s legs were burning just as badly as mine. This was a good spot to rest for a minute and catch our breath. We both leaned up close against the building, partially hidden by the landscape that beautified this side. I felt like a young teen again, running, hiding, and spying. But, there was no fun in it, it was for survival. My heart thumped rapidly in my chest.
The infected wandered around the faculty parking lot. I counted ten, but they were spread out and none were near my car. I took Angie’s hand and crept along the bushes in front of the building, keeping low and sticking to the shadows. I watched each of the infected, as Angie did, looking for the slightest change in their gestures–making sure we were not spotted. At my car, I pulled out the keys as quietly as possible, keeping the jingle to an absolute minimum. When I slid the key in and unlocked the passenger door, I could see the relief in Angie’s face. The wrinkles were gone from her forehead. She felt safe for the moment. I opened the door and she slid in. I pushed the door closed, went around, and entered through the driver’s side. 
I hesitated for a brief moment before I turned the key in the ignition. I wondered what was going to happen once I turned that key. I started the car and every one of the infected turned and moved toward us. There was no way to be covert or keep quiet now. I stepped on the gas and squealed backwards out of the parking space, smashing into the compact car parked in the next row. As I pulled away and viewed the wrecked car in my rear view mirror, I remember how I hadn’t had an accident in at least ten years. 
Three of the infected latched onto the car. Two clung to the hood and another grabbed onto the roof. I hit the gas hoping they would fall off. The two on the hood instinctively wrapped their fingers around the lip by the windshield. I could not see what the one on the roof was doing, but the roof crinkled like a tin can under the weight of the person. I made a few rapid turns to shake the three of them off, but it was ineffective. Angie fastened her seat belt as I sped down Main Street. It was cluttered with abandoned cars and I veered around them, exaggerating my turns to try and shake off the infected. The street ahead became too crowded with abandoned cars to pass so I turned down Sixth Street as sharply as I could and lost the man on the hood. He rolled off spinning several times in the air before hitting the pavement. 
I made another right onto my street. I purposely made the turn wide and sideswiped a car on the corner. It crushed the legs of one of the infected and tore him from the hood. I watched in the rear view mirror as he fell to a crumpled pile by the car and struggled to stand on two shattered legs.
The woman holding onto the hood had long curly hair flapping wildly in the wind. Her white eyes were locked on me through the windshield. Her dead hands firmly gripped the top of the hood by the windshield wipers. She hissed at me showing her bloody teeth from someone she had probably killed and infected.
The woman pulled herself close and smashed her head on the windshield. Angie jumped and clung to my arm. I swerved quickly from side to side, but the infected woman smashed her head on the windshield again. Three thin cracks led away from the point of impact. The next strike would breach the thin glass barrier that had been protecting us. I kept swerving the car to give myself time to think and hoped that by the constant motion the woman could not pull herself up and strike the window again. 
We were rapidly approaching my house and passing several infected on the way. If we were to just stop and make a run for the house, we would have the woman on the hood to deal with as well as a few neighborhood stragglers. I needed to improve our chances of getting into the house safely by getting this woman off of my car.
The woman pulled her hand back and punched through the windshield. Glass scattered around the car. Angie screamed and covered her eyes. I lost control for a moment and brushed a parked car sending out some sparks where metal grinded metal. The woman’s cold gray hand reached through the windshield and clawed for us. We hit one of the infected in the middle of the road. The windshield glass around the woman’s arm sliced into dead flesh.
I needed to act quickly. The home next to mine, the Johnson home, had a large maple tree on its front lawn.  Little Timothy Johnson used to wave to me from the tree as I would pass by. He spent several summers in that tree until bicycles and skateboards became more interesting.
A direct hit to the tree would propel the infected woman off of the hood. Seat belts and airbags would protect Angie and myself–I just wasn’t certain about the speed. If I hit the tree going too fast I might render myself unconscious or too dazed to make a run for the house. If I hit it traveling too slowly, it might not be enough to knock the infected woman off. 
“Hold on,” I said and Angie braced herself.
I took my foot off the gas and turned the car. We lifted from the seat when we went over the curb. Even the woman on the hood lifted off of it for a moment. I steered straight toward the tree and collided with it. The impact wasn’t as abrupt as I thought it would be. I suppose because the hood buckled around the tree and created some cushion by absorbing some of the impact. My chest pushed against the seat belt. It pushed so hard, I expected it to snap. I held my arm out across Angie’s chest and tried to ease the collision for her.
The infected woman went flying backward in what seemed like slow motion. She smashed the tree and then dropped to the hood like a rag doll. Blood oozed out around her slowly with most of it coming from her mouth. I checked Angie and at the same time unbuckled her seat belt. She was dazed, but had no visible cuts or scratches. I tugged my door handle, but the door did not open. The impact must have squeezed the frame. I pressed the button to lower my window and it glided down. I slipped out and I could see the infected moving toward us. I sprinted to Angie’s side and she was coming out of the car. I took her hand and pulled her toward the front door.
I had my key ready when we reached the door and got us inside. I closed the door quickly and locked it up. I peeked out through one of the three small windows at the top of the door and saw several of the infected stumbling toward the house.
I knew I had to secure the house, but my body was demanding some rest, even if it was for only a few minutes. I turned and leaned back against the door with a long sigh. Angie did the same and looked around the hall. 
“So this is your place huh?” We both burst out in laughter.
Of all the dates I have had in my life, I would have wanted one with Angie to be a close to perfect as possible. This night was on the complete opposite end of the spectrum.
“I wouldn’t want to be here with anyone else,” I said and Angie smiled.
Angie used the bathroom while I took a quick inventory of what needed to be done. My home is a small one-level ranch. On the main floor is a kitchen, living room, television room, bathroom, and two bedrooms. I had eight windows to board up and two doors. The front and back doors were probably secure enough on their own, but a few extra boards wouldn’t hurt. Besides, the crowd of infected outside was growing rapidly.
I took all of the scrap wood I had in the basement and piled it in the living room. Angie walked out of the bathroom clean and beautiful as if tonight had never happened.  I apologized in advance to her because she was going to get dirty again.
Angie and I went window to window with hammer and nails putting up the boards. They hadn’t broken through the windows yet, but it was only a matter of time and I wanted to be ready. When we ran out of wood, I used the dining room table and the entertainment center in the television room.
In less than an hour, we had boarded all the windows and reinforced the doors. The house was safe for now. I peeked outside through the gaps in the planks and saw that the crowd continued to grow. If they had enough infected they could probably lift the entire house off of its foundation and walk right in. I kept the basement door open–in case we had to get in there quickly. I also saved some boards to secure it from the inside.
The basement was a last resort, but as I looked at all the infected that were trying to get in, my stomach twisted and I couldn’t help but feel that I would be in the basement before the night was over. 
Angie collapsed on the couch in the living room and closed her eyes. The infected banged on the outside walls and I could see her face twitch from the racket. It wouldn’t be easy to get any sleep tonight, even if we could push the evening’s events out of our minds.
“Hungry?” 
Angie answered without opening her eyes. “Not really, thanks.”
I went into the kitchen and took a quick inventory of what we had. The water was still running so I filled as many containers with water as could find. I hadn’t dropped off my recyclables in a while so I had plenty of bottles to rinse and fill. I turned on the old radio I had in the kitchen. I had been meaning to replace it with a CD player or an mp3 player for years, but I just never got around to it. Tonight I was happy I hadn’t gotten around to it. The radio was set to the local station and I probably hadn’t changed that in a year. There was no static and no music–there was just silence. It was like the station was still there, but they were not broadcasting. I spun the tuning knob and managed to find some music on a few stations, but no news. I was still turning the dial when I heard Angie cough.
I sat on the arm of the couch beside Angie.
“What’s happening Robert? What did you mean earlier that they were all dead?” Angie asked without opening her eyes.
“You were right before when you asked about the rabies. What’s going on is not rabies, but something similar. It’s a virus Angie. It’s a virus that kills whoever it infects and then brings them back to spread the infection.”
“But, what about the bites? Did you say it was spread by bites?”
It was obvious to me that Angie did not comprehend the magnitude of what was happening around us. The world as we knew it had been completely turned upside down. Our very survival was on the line and she was asking about the bites. 
I grabbed her arms and was about to stress how dire our situation was when my thumb pressed on something wet. I pulled my thumb back and it was stained red. Angie open her eyes and stared at me vacantly. I rolled back her sleeve and revealed a bite mark.
I felt like all the air had fled my lungs and there was no more oxygen around to take in. 
“I’m sorry Jonathan.”
I noticed that Angie was pale and her skin was glistening in the dim light. I put the back of my hand against her forehead and she was burning up. 
“It’s not your fault.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
Earlier, I had envisioned the remainder of the night with Angie to have a romantic undertone, despite the circumstances. I actually thought it was nice, just the two of us locked up in the house. It reminded me of that time at college. I was her captive again. I guess on some level I have always been her captive. There was a part of me that, after all of these years, had never let her go. 
The next few hours flashed through my mind again, but this time it was a horror story. It would be just like her father. She would be in agony for the next few hours, become septic, and eventually die. But, tonight death would not be the end all and be all of existence. She would rise again, become one of the walking dead, and try to infect me.
“In the parking lot, when we left the hospital, that man.” Angie burst into tears. 
I put my arms around her and nestled her head under my chin and against my chest. 

THE next few hours happened exactly as I had expected. Angie became more and more incoherent. She burned like a furnace in my arms as I held her in my bed. I had a half a bottle of oxycodone left over from my kidney infection. I crushed the whole bottle up, put it in some water, and gave it to her a sip at a time. It seemed to help a little. 
While my thoughts should have been about Angie and our brief time left together, I thought about what I should do with her once she became one of the infected. I could restrain her, but I didn’t want to do that while she was alive, whether she would be conscious of it or not. I could snap her neck like I did Karl’s, but there was no way I could bring myself to do that. I could put her outside to be with the others, but opening up a door or window now was too risky, the infected had surrounded the house. So, I sat there and held her and tried to keep my thoughts on her. Her breathing became slower and slower. She would take a small breath in and I would wait for the exhale. I waited and waited, wondering if the next breath would be her last. I waited until finally she breathed in and did not breath out. I stood up, kissed Angie on the cheek, and left the room.
My bedroom door doesn’t lock so I nailed it shut. Before I had put the last nail in the frame–Angie was scratching at the other side of the door.
I sat in the living room for a while and listened to Angie scratch. During that time, the walking dead outside had smashed through all of the windows in the house and now thumped on the wood we had put up. 
I moved the water, the radio, and all of the canned goods into the basement and boarded the door. 
And this is where I sit now with the static of the radio turned up to drown out the dead banging on my walls. Angie’s scratching being the loudest of all. I sit here and type and wait for dawn.

The Office Memos

TO: All Office Staff
FROM: Randy
SUBJECT: Please stop tampering with the supply closet

It has come to my attention that the entire office has become a pack of deranged, bloodthirsty psychopaths. You have ignored your typical daily tasks and are now consumed with the desire to break into the supply closet. Although there is fresh meat in here, I demand that you all return to your desks and continue with today’s action items.

*  *  *

TO: All Office Staff
FROM: Randy
SUBJECT: Office Manager meeting

There will be a meeting in the supply closet of office managers. Since I am the only office manager alive, it will just be me at the meeting. Topics of the meeting will be: Promotion of the Office Manager to President and replacement of all staff. All staff is asked not to disturb or interrupt the meeting. This includes trying to break down the door.

*  *  *

TO: All Office Staff
FROM: Randy 
SUBJECT: Randy Johnson has been elected the new President

As of 9:15 PM this evening, the sole surviving member of the staff has voted to make Randy Johnson the new President of the company since Mr. Foster, the Previous President of the company, has been eaten by his staff. Mr. Johnson’s new position and title will take effect immediately and his salary will be quadrupled and backdated since the first of this month.

*  *  *

TO: Accounting
FROM: The President 
SUBJECT: My salary

Please quadruple my salary and backdate it from the first of this month. Please slip the check under supply closet door–today if possible.

*  *  *

TO: All Office Staff
FROM: The President
SUBJECT: Please submit resumes

As president I have had a board meeting with myself and unanimously decided to fire all staff. All staff will be required to submit their resumes and re-apply for their old positions. If you are a deranged bloodthirsty psychopath, this must be clearly stated on the top of your resume.  We are an equal opportunity employer. Please slip all resumes under the supply closet door.

*  *  *

TO: Becky
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: You may be dead, but you are appreciated

Becky, as the new president of the company I would like to thank you for your hard work and efforts. Since you are a stickler on keeping an overabundant supply of copy paper. (I count eight cases) I have been able to effectively barricade the office supply door and make it difficult for any bloodthirsty psychopaths to get in, including yourself. 
I know that the previous president did not appreciate you. After all of your hard work he tried to chew your head off with his teeth. I promise, as your new president, that I will not treat you in the same manner. Furthermore, I will give you one month’s severance pay and make sure that your husband receives it.

*  *  *

TO: Becky
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: P.S.

Thank you for the stock of memo pads. You never now how many memos I will send out as the new president.

*  *  *

TO: Linda
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Sorry you’re dead

Linda, you are the most beautiful woman I have even seen. Remember at the office Christmas party when we talked the entire night? I think I fell in love with you that evening. The hug you gave me when we said goodbye, I have never forgotten it. I know that things have been complicated with Phil and you were waiting for the right time to break things off so we could be together. I just want to say that I’m sorry about what the bloodthirsty psychopaths did to you, ripping you apart like that. I guess if you were by my desk and not over in marketing, you could have made it into the closet with me. Well, you would have had a chance at least. I wouldn’t have locked you out like the others. I would have let you in. I can’t let you in now because you are one of them, so please stop groaning my name and I can hear your nails scratching at the door. 

*  *  *

TO: James, Carla, & Steve
FROM: Randy
SUBJECT: Sorry for not letting you in

Hey guys, I’m sorry about before. Things just got crazy and I panicked. Those psychos just stormed in and made everything crazy. I just ran, like you did. I ran to the first safest place I could find. And you followed. I heard you guys yelling for me to wait. I heard you pounding on the closet door asking me to open it. I heard you screaming when the bloodthirsty psychos got you. I just want to say that I panicked, it was wrong to lock you out, and I’m sorry.

*  *  *

TO: Maintenance
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Cleanup ASAP

Maintenance. While “checking inventory” I accidentally knocked over a bottle of window cleaner. Could you please come here with a mop.

*  *  *

TO: Mrs. Fitch
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: A snack please

Mrs. Fitch, I am sure you received the memo about my new position as president. You are now my secretary. Before I ran into the supply closet you were eating Mr. Prescott’s arm. If you are finished with that, could you please run over to Harvey’s Deli across the street and get me a chicken salad sandwich with lettuce and tomato on wheat toast. I would also like a few bottles of water too, I may be in my office for most of the night.

*  *  *

TO: Maintenance
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Venting system

I require that all vents and venting in the office be enlarged to be able to fit one person. This will provide better air circulation, improve employee concentration, and allow a possible escape if trapped in the supply closet.

*  *  *

TO: All ex-employees
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Quitting time

Dear valued ex-employees,

As the new President of the company I appreciate your hard work, dedication, and your willingness to work long hours. I will be setting a new curfew, which will be 7pm. No one is allowed to be in the office after 7pm. effective immediately. Please go home.

*  *  *

TO: Becky
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Overnight stays

Becky, from now on the supply closet should be stocked with a blanket and pillow just in case any hard working president or employee would like to spend the night at the office. Earplugs should be supplied too in case there are any moans, scratching noises, or loud bangings at the door.

*  *  *

TO: All ex-employees
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Secret stash

Whoever hid the secret stash of condoms in the supply closet, they have been confiscated and yuck, that’s just plain gross.

*  *  *

TO: Maintenance
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Phone Installation

Maintenance. Please install a phone in the office supply closet and set speed dial button #1 to 9-1-1.

*  *  *

TO: Maintenance
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Door Repair!

Maintenance. I need you in the supply closet right away to repair a crack in the door!

*  *  *

TO: Paper Cutter Manufacturer
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: New marketing opportunity

Dear Paper Cutter Manufacturer,
The blade of your heavy-duty paper cutter makes an excellent weapon. I removed it from its base and swung it at the bloodthirsty psychopaths trying to get in. It surprisingly slices through fingers easily.

*  *  *

TO: Maintenance
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: Replacement door!

Maintenance. I need a new door here. They’re getting in!

*  *  *

TO: Maintenance
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: New Door!

Maintenance. I need a new door!

*  *  *

TO: Mrs. Fitch
FROM: Mr. Johnson
SUBJECT: New office location

Mrs. Fitch, just in case you come back with that sandwich. I have moved my office to the top shelf of the supply closet. You might not see me because I am hiding behind the stacks of colored paper and replacement toner cartridges. The door is open so just leave the sandwich anywhere and I will sneak down for it later.

*  *  *

TO: All deranged bloodthirsty psychopaths.
FROM: Randy
SUBJECT: Resignation

While you all have been searching for me, I have been lying here thinking. After much thought, I have decided to tender my resignation, effective immediately. Since most of you are crazy and have destroyed the office, I have decided to move on. You can all call me Randy again or just groan, whatever makes you feel more comfortable. Thank you and God bless. I think I am going to take a nap now, it’s been a long night.

*  *  *

I am Zombie

Martin is an eccentric gentleman who commented on his life in essays written in marble notebooks. The volumes of books chronicle his rise to becoming one of the top investment brokers in the country and his subsequent collapse, losing his wife, his children, and his home. He has been living on the streets for the past three years.

The plague swept the city in one broad stroke. For decades the new world government’s ongoing mission to separate society into two classes, the rich and the poor, was near completion. Decades of laws, rules, and an ever increasing coalition of organizations to implement the plan, all came crashing down in a single night. All classes were replaced with a new collective of like-minded and single-purposed individuals. Yes, there are survivors nestled in the cracks. Yes, the higher branches of government are secure somewhere. But, not for long. Not forever. They can’t hide forever. 
Soon there will be no more rich and no more poor. They are all being converted into one unified unrelenting army, whose sole purpose is to gather and convert new members. Some may say that the government orchestrated this plague. If they did, it was not on purpose. The government needs the people like the rich need the poor, like good needs evil, and dark needs light. Polar opposites for all eternity that cannot exist without each other.
How would the government line its fat pockets if it were not for the people? Who would they tax? Who would they enslave? They would have no hamsters to run in place–running to keep up with the status quo. Running to have just enough to survive. Running to turn the wheel of life. We are not free I tell you. We are slaves to the system. But, it’s an illusion. Bombarded with advertisements hypnotizing us to buy things we don’t need. Brainwashing us from childhood to idolize beauty and desire and the American dream. Programmed to pursue a mirage for all the days of our lives. We have been zombies from the very beginning. We have been following an illusion, not the truth.
It’s all an illusion. Everything you hold dear. Money is an illusion. It’s not real. Most of us no longer see the crisp green bills folded in our pockets. We’re a nation of direct deposit, of plastic cards, and automatic withdrawals. Soon the coin will be gone, it’s just a matter of time. Wealth is numbers on a bank statement. A balance total on a secure website. You can’t touch that, you can’t hold that. The invisibility is becoming more clear.
“But, we need money for food,” the simpleton would say.  Go ahead and plant your dollar in the soil and see what the soil gives you back, fool! Food is free, the soil asks for nothing, but seed, sun, and water–all things abundant. All the food we could ever need can sprout from the ground for all eternity, we just have to plant the seed. Then, food will be free to all. Like the army, an abundance of food is running in the streets. We just need to reach out and grab it.
“But, what of electricity?” Slaves to the atom, I say. Electricity surrounds us at every moment. Do you think no human has discovered this? Harnessed this? Many of our brothers have created free energy and they were silenced. Silenced by the utility companies and the government who profits from them. Find the notes of our brothers. Build the simple machines that pull the power from the air. The power from the sun. The power from the wind. The power from the water. Then power will be free to all.
“But, what of gas for my SUV?” You fool! The internal combustion engine has been obsolete for a hundred years! There are billions of gallons of oil left under the earth’s crust. Billions of gallons that the corporations can charge you trillions of dollars to process and deliver, and the government can tax you on it. Do you realize that gas mileage on the American car doubled in the last five years of the 1970’s, but has not increased much in the past 25 years? Do you think that is by accident? Do you think that we are so technologically inept that we can advance in all areas except in the primitive combustion engine? There are an abundance of alternative fuels available right now, free electricity, and vegetable derivatives like ethanol and vegetable oil. Free fuel for all. Some are using it now. We all could be using it.
Now here comes the army. The new class. Perhaps God has sent this army as an example of what we should have been or what we should have done. One class, uniform in purpose. Uniform in thought. Uniform in hunger. A near perfect organization. A perfect machine. Individuality, with a collective purpose. True freedom.
I am one of them. I always have been. I chose to live my life free. Free from the constraints of the government. Free from their control, their conformity, their taxation. I am dead to the government. The army is dead to the world. I walk with my fellow dead through the streets absorbing the masses. I walk like them, groan like them, smell like them. I am covered in the blood of the people I have converted.
I converted the woman who sought safety in her gas guzzling hunk of metal. She ran quickly from her building of work that consumed a third of her miserable life. She was quick, but I was quicker. I grabbed her by the hair and bit into her throat. The metallic taste of her blood on my tongue, her expensive perfume filling my nostrils. Her screams of a tormented, wasted life in my ears. She fell to the street, her old life of slavery drained from her.
I sat and watched as the others fed. Chewing away her ego and her selfishness. Ripping from her the beauty that she spent so much of her life maintaining. When it was all gone, when all of her wretched life drained from her, I watched her rise from the street and begin a new life. A life in the new class. We walked together united, side by side, for miles with the others. We sought out people to convert, people to enlighten, people to infuse with the truth.
At one point the police barricaded the street, trying in vain to stop the new class, the new ideal from spreading. They fired upon us with bullets that we paid for, from guns that we bought for them. Some of us fell, but we pressed on. We overtook them. We are gaining power. We are getting stronger. Soon we will be unstoppable. The idea is spreading. We will bring in the new world. We will destroy the old. We are zombie. 

National Guard

A small pocket-sized notebook holds a pencil written log by a nameless member of the National Guard.

Ordered to pack up on short notice. Going to assist police in the city to get a riot under control. Tried to sleep on the ride. 

Stuck in traffic 2 miles from deployment site. Truck 1 takes the shoulder, we follow.

Our truck is stuck in mud 1? miles from site. Truck 1 continues since we are late. 

Truck is moving, but we are covered in mud. Getting chatter from Truck 1. The commander can’t make it out. A few minutes later shoulder ends, and we can’t pass traffic. We follow Truck 1’s tracks onto a service road. That’s probably what the chatter was about.

Route is slow going. Sun is setting, making the road difficult to see. 

Truck stops short. Truck 1 is in front of us at the intersection. Headlights are on, engine running, doors open. No unit. No sign of anyone. 

We check the truck. Everything is covered in blood. Lots of spent shells on the ground and two empty rifles.

We split into teams of two and checked the woods. Came across Williams, unconscious on the ground, under attack from a civilian. Civilian attacks Smitty. Smitty cracks him with the butt of his rifle.  I bind civilian’s arms, set flare, and go back for Troy (the medic) for Williams. Williams is bleeding badly.

I make it about half-way and hear gunfire. I go back. Smitty is under attack by a gang of civilians.  He fires, but they overtake him. I open fire. Body shots ineffective. Civilians are crazed. They start after me. There’s too many. I retreat back to the trucks.

Truck 2 under attack. I head south and circle around, staying in woods. Truck is overrun. Civilians that were chasing me, join crowd at truck 2. I open fire, but it doesn’t help. Mob rips unit apart. I see Mosley, Witters, and Juno go down.

Some civilians heard my shooting and walk in my direction. I see houses and sprint through the woods. I sneak along the houses and lose the people following. I spot a house with hundreds of civilians trying to get in. House has music blasting, just asking for it. Idiots.

Get to a shopping plaza. I climb a fencing display and get on the roof of a home improvement store. I rest and watch the parking lot. Some civilians are scattered around the lot and wander in a daze. They are all wounded, maybe in shock.

A store, across the plaza, has a crowd trying to get in. With my scope I see two people inside, reinforcing the windows. I have enough ammo to take out the crowd, but the noise will bring them here and trap me. 

I check the store through the skylights. Not too many civilians inside. Can’t get in roof door. I climb down, enter through front door and lock it. I scope every isle and see three dazed civilians.

I secure my rifle and get a crowbar from shelf. I approach the first civilian from behind and identify myself. He attacks without a word. I take him down. His eyes are weird and he’s been badly wounded (before I hit him.)

I approach second and third civilian, identify self, they both attack. I take them down. Both have weird eyes and both were wounded. Skin is cold.

I do another check of building. All doors secure, no other civilians. I gather steel wool, duct tape, and a plastic soda bottle. I can make a silencer and then help the people across the plaza.

In the employee lounge I try the phones, they are not working. I find a radio and listen to news while eating snacks and making the silencer. Radio says riots are widespread and it might be a virus making people crazy. Might be spread by bites.

I stuff my pockets with snacks and check the three civilians. All of them are bitten somewhere.

I find roof access. I take aim at store across the plaza. Crowd has quadrupled. Not enough ammo now. A person in the store pushes body parts out of a hole in the top of a window. Crowd gets in a frenzy and eats the body parts!

I shoot one of the infected to test the silencer. Works well. Small “pop” when the bullet breaks the sound barrier, but it’s not bad and there is nothing I can do about it anyway.

It’s time to get out of here. I need to see if Dierdre and the folks are ok. Dierdre’s house is on the way to Mom and Pops, I will stop there first.

Keys for rental trucks are in the office. I go outside. Lot is clear of civilians. All seem to be going to store across the lot. I pick the truck with the least miles and a full tank of gas.

From what I have seen so far, I think traffic will be bad, but I’d rather leave now than wait for morning. Main road is blocked. I take side roads South toward the interstate. It’s slow going. Lots of accidents and blocked roads.

A van is being attacked by a mob. They rock it back and forth almost tipping it. I speed the truck toward the group. They flip the van and I hit it, spin, and flip on driver side. Driver window smashes.

Crowd enters windows of the van. Woman tries to get out through back doors with child. Both are attacked. They bite woman and tear apart child. 

Woman stops moving and civilians chew on her. They stop chewing and woman gets up. They head toward me. Seat belt is stuck. I cut it. I take shelter behind truck and fire at van gas tank. It explodes. Body parts shower the street.

Other civilians in area take notice and start after me. I wind through some yards, and try the back door of a house. It’s locked. I jimmy the lock on a basement window and crawl inside. I watch to see if any followed.

There are noises upstairs, footsteps, and furniture sliding. I go up and see people robbing the house. I get ambushed and tied to a chair. Gang of four are looting houses, and filling a box truck. They take my rifle (they miss my knife and extra clips) and interrogate me. I lie and say I’m a scout for a unit that’s on its way. They finish robbing, and purposely leave the front door open and me sitting tied up in hallway.

I struggle with the cords. Infected man stumbles into house. I panic and bounce up and down until chair breaks. I smash infected with leg of chair. Lock front door. Look for weapons. There are none. I scout from upstairs windows. The box truck is parked at a house one block over.

The one that took my rifle sits on the porch and shoots at infected civilians with it. He’s a good shot. I want my rifle back. I sneak through yards and almost get bitten by an old housewife in a nightgown. She looks the same as others, white eyes and chewed up. I make it to the backyard of the house. Three are inside, looting. The one on the porch is still shooting. Silencer is holding up well.

Guy on porch is unapproachable. I decide to take out the three inside first, since they are spread out. Back door is open and I enter. One is taking food out of the fridge. I cover his mouth and stab him in the heart, drag body into back yard.

Other two are upstairs looting bedrooms. I climb stairs and sneak behind guy in master bedroom. Girl from other room spots me. I break guys knee and put my knife in his throat. Girl goes for stairs. I grab her by the hair, cover her mouth until she passes out, and place her quietly on the floor. I go back for my knife.

Guy with my rifle comes in and yells upstairs. He comes up the stairs. I disarm him, break his nose, and send him tumbling down the stairs.

I go down and decide to do to this guy what he did to me. I grab a chair and tie his hands and feet with extension cord. I set him in the hall and go to the front door to open it. The guy that I first took out in the kitchen and dragged outside–walks in from the kitchen.

There is no way he is walking, I must have missed his heart. He doesn’t say anything. I realize he does not see me. I’m in the shadows. He walks to guy in chair and bites his nose off. Guy in chair screams. Kitchen guy chews on the chair guy’s neck. I can’t take anymore and shoot the kitchen guy in the head.

I go to guy in the chair and almost slip in his blood. He’s dead, I don’t even have to check his pulse. He’s lost so much blood. His hand twitches. I check his pulse on the good side of his neck. No pulse. All of a sudden the guy tries to bite my hand. I slip and fall back. This guy was dead, I swear. I check the chest of kitchen guy. Wound is slightly left of sternum, I did not miss. These guys were both dead and came back. This infection brings dead people back somehow.

I sit and watch guy in chair, thinking. He stares back at me and struggles to get free. I get another chair and some electric cords. I grab the girl from upstairs and tie her into the new chair. I suffocate her. She is dead for sure. I check five times, pulse, heartbeat, pupils, everything I can think of. She is dead. I gag her mouth so she can’t bite me if she comes back.

I set her next to guy in chair and hold her arm to his mouth. He bites into it and tears a chunk out. I tie the girl’s bitten arm to the chair and wait. Girl opens eyes and I see them turn white. She locks her eyes on me and tries to get free.

I load a fresh clip and shoot chair guy. First in the leg. No effect, not even pain. I shoot him in the heart. He flinches, but still alive. I shoot him in the forehead, he dies.

I check girl as she squirms. No change in vitals. She’s cold, has no pulse, no heartbeat, and her pupils don’t move. Clinically she is dead. So virus reanimates the dead and is spread by saliva or blood or both. Damage to the head/brain stops them.

I find keys to the box truck in chair guy’s pocket. I find his wallet and an old army ID card. That explains his good shooting.  The truck is filled with all kinds of valuables from houses.  There is some food and water bottles. Best of all there is a motorcycle with the keys in the ignition. I can drive as far as I can in the truck and then use the motorcycle if I have to.

I fasten my seat belt and get on the road. With no interruptions, I should be at my sisters in a few hours. I’m tired and can’t wait to sleep. 

It’s slow going. Lots of road blocks, fires, and jammed up cars. The sun will be up soon. That should make the drive quicker.

Incident Report

Incident Number # 63321-10

Helen Thomas (Complainant) DOB: 06JUNE67
Mark Thomas (Missing Person) DOB: 22NOV68

SUMMARY

Officer was dispatched to L.V. Hospital for an incident report. I identified the complainant as HELEN THOMAS.  H. Thomas appeared frantic and disoriented. I had arrived before she had recieved medical treatment and observed a large laceration on her right leg. I asked how she got it. H. Thomas stated that she was bitten by a rabid dog at a gas station off of Route 329. I inquired how did she know that the dog was rabid. She responded that it looked sick, acted wild, and was foaming at the mouth. I also noticed that H. Thomas was approximately eight months pregnant. Officer retrieved and applied gauze pads to the wound until she could be seen by a doctor. 

H. Thomas and her husband, identified as MARK THOMAS, were traveling South on Rt. 329 at approximately 14:25 hours. As they rounded a curve, they struck a white male standing in the middle of their lane of traffic. H. Thomas stated that the white male smashed the windshield and flew up over the car.  M. Thomas then skidded off the road into a ditch.  M. Thomas stated that both airbags deployed and neither she nor her husband were injured from the crash.  H. Thomas could only describe the white male as being 50-60 years of age. Her vehicle is a silver 2007 Toyota Corolla bearing PA registration # (omitted.) I estimate the accident occurred somewhere between mile marker 33 and 35 based on H. Thomas’s description.  

H. Thomas stated that her husband checked the white male, and told her that he was dead.  M. Thomas set several flares in the road and then retrieved a blanket from the trunk of their vehicle which he placed over the struck man. M. Thomas attempted to reverse their vehicle out of the ditch, but was unsuccessful. H. Thomas said that her cell phone was not receiving any signal and that they waited for another vehicle to flag down, however, after some time, no vehicles drove by.  Since their vehicle was deep in the ditch and they could not get it out, her husband decided to walk to the nearest gas station to notify the police. H. Thomas remained in the vehicle due to her pregnancy. I checked with County and as of 16:36 hours no such call had been made.

H. Thomas stated that approximately an hour had passed and her husband had not returned. She exited the vehicle to peer down the road. When she looked at the struck white male, she observed two other males huddled over the body. She assumed they were trying to help the male.  She approached and stated that the two males were covered in blood and appeared to be seriously injured. One of the males leaned over and took a bite of flesh out of the struck male’s chest. H. Thomas left immediately and walked in the direction her husband had gone as fast as she could.  One of the males tried to follow her, however he appeared to have something wrong with his leg and could not keep up.  Officer did not detect any alcohol on H. Thomas’s breath, nor any indications of drug use.

H. Thomas stated that she attempted to contact 911 several times, but still had no signal.  H. Thomas arrived at Cooper’s Gas Station and it appeared to be closed.  She tried the front door which was locked.  She then went around to the back where she observed a man sitting in a running vehicle. Thinking it to be the owner, she approached the vehicle and that is when a black dog bit her on the leg. She kicked the dog with her free leg and it released. The dog was restrained by a chain and she was able to crawl out of the dog’s reach.  No matter how loud she screamed, she was not able to get the attention of the male in the vehicle.

H. Thomas tore her dress and wrapped her wound, which was bleeding badly. She continued walking southbound on Route 329 as best she could. After several miles, she was able to flag down a southbound vehicle.  The driver was able to take H. Thomas to L.V. Hospital.  
	
I advised H. Thomas that I would attempt to locate M. Thomas. She described him as a white male, 6’1’’, with black hair and blue eyes.  He was last seen at approximately 13:35 hours wearing a light blue button down long sleeve shirt, black slacks, with black shoes.

I advised attending physician that H. Thomas could possibly be Class 4, and to have a psychological evaluation conducted. Doctor was further advised that the dog that bit H. Thomas was foaming at the mouth, and that H. Thomas looked feverish. 

Officer did place an ATL (Attempt to Locate) for M. THOMAS over F-1 frequency which is approximately a 20 mile radius.  Officer also entered M. THOMAS into N.C.I.C. as a Missing/Endangered Adult, if found stop and hold. Officer Cleared.

Reporting Officer #2516 SCHMIDT
N.C.I.C. Entry # 3MEA464MTHOMAS111268

*  *  *

SUPPLEMENT SUMMARY

At 16:54, Officer went to investigate a possible vehicle versus pedestrian accident in the mile marker 33-35 area of Route 329.  Upon arrival I was able to locate a silver 2007 Toyota Corolla bearing PA registration #(omitted), in a ditch at mile marker 34.  The vehicle appeared to be heavily damaged in the front end and the windshield was cracked. I checked the surrounding area, but was unable to locate the unidentified struck white male or the other two males reported.  I did observe, about 100 feet from the vehicle, what could possibly be a patch of blood.  No further evidence of a motor vehicle versus pedestrian accident was present, no victim.

Officer then investigated a possible dangerous dog in the rear of Cooper’s on Route 329. 

I did arrive at Cooper’s and did observe the business to be closed, which was suspicious.  I checked the doors, which were secure.  I went to the rear of the business and I did observe a black German Shepherd mix dog chained to a stake.  The dog did appear vicious, injured, and foaming at the mouth. I was unable to make contact with anyone at the business. I had County Control attempt to call the Emergency Contact for the business. County advised that they were beginning to receive numerous calls for emergencies and could not make the call at this time. I did observe a parked vehicle with the engine running in the area of the dog. The door was ajar, but there was no one inside. I did obseve blood stains on the front seat, but I was unable to investigate because it was within the dog’s reach.

Officer requested that County contact the Animal Control Officer and have him respond to Cooper’s Gas Station.

At this time, Officer was dispatched to a high priority call, riot in progress at J.W. High School.

Officer cleared. 

*  *  *

Incident Number # 43129-07

Officer dispatched to Main Street and J.W.H.S. Drive block for report of rioting. 

(Report Incomplete)

Incident Number # 63321-11
Reporting Officer #2516 SCHMIDT

Radio Broadcast

JEFF: Okay, some party music here to get your weekend started. 

(music)
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JEFF: Okay. There was, just minutes ago, an explosion downtown. We saw it right here from our studios. We are on the fifth floor of the Ryder building and just now, while the last song was playing, the entire building shook. I thought it was an earthquake and this huge orange fireball rose in the sky. It looks like it’s right on Main. Main and Eight Avenue I’d say. Six, Seven, Eighth, in that area. Unbelievable. I’m not sure what could have caused an explosion of that magnitude. It was huge. Uh. We will be right back, uh, with more music and news on the explosion.

(advertisements)
(music)

JEFF: Breaking news from downtown. If you are just joining us, there has been an explosion just outside the AMG building, less than a mile from our studio here. Kelly is with me now. Kelly?

KELLY: Good Evening Jeff.

JEFF: Are you ah–where are you exactly? 

KELLY: Actually, I can’t get into the city at this point because the traffic has come to a complete stop. I’m on the west side about two-miles away and I can see black smoke bellowing from center city. We know very little right now, we are not getting detailed reports from anywhere. How many injuries or deaths that are involved right now are unknown. 

JEFF: Which there may be many. It’s a busy area and shortly after rush hour. We just don’t know at this point. 

KELLY: No doubt, it’s a regular workday, albeit later in the day, but there are still many commuters out there. And as I said before, traffic is very backed up and at a stand still right now. 

JEFF: When I first saw the explosion, the first thought that came to my mind was “accident.” What seems to be the thinking there?

KELLY: The consensus from law enforcement that I have spoken with is of course “accident,” but foul play is near the top of the list. Whether this is a terrorist attack or not has not been mentioned, but it does come to mind.

JEFF: I understand we have a witness now, who is near the scene. Hello James are you there?

JAMES: Yes I am.

JEFF: And you are where right now?

JAMES: I am on the third floor of my office building like about two blocks away from the explosion, facing the AMG building right now.

JEFF: Can you describe the scene there for us?

JAMES: Uh it’s ah, I don’t know if you can imagine or describe the scene right now it’s just, it’s just unreal. We… we heard a… we were all working here and we heard a huge explosion. It sounded like two explosions actually, one right after another. We saw the flames and debris and papers flying everywhere. There was also the sound of the windows, all around they were gone.

JEFF: So you did you see the explosion?

JAMES: Right after. Right after the boom.

JEFF: And you’re how close to the building?

JAMES: Almost… we’re almost two blocks. On the opposite side of the street.

JEFF: Did you see where the explosion was? What floor? 

JAMES: Floor? No, uh, it wasn’t the building that exploded. It was a truck. A gas truck or a propane truck ran into the building.

JEFF: A truck?

JAMES: Yes.

JEFF: Can you describe the truck?

JAMES: No, not really… no. We heard a boom. I heard the sound and turned around and there was this huge explosion.

JEFF: So you couldn’t tell if it was a tanker truck or a…

JAMES: No, not really. It was a truck, but hard to tell the size. It happened so fast.

JEFF: Have the police told you to leave the building?

JAMES: They uh… Someone that spoke to the police came up and they asked us to stay inside until they told us what to do. But, it’s… it’s… you can’t imagine what it looks like here.

JEFF: What’s happening now?

JAMES: It’s… it’s very difficult to see with… there is so much smoke from the fire.

JEFF: The truck is still on fire?

JAMES: The truck and the building is…

JEFF: The building is on fire? AMG is on fire?

JAMES: Yes AMG. The first three or four floors.

JEFF: Do you see any people in the building? Are there any people in the higher floors?

JAMES: No. None that I can see. It’s just smoke and flames. 

JEFF: Okay, thank you sir.

JAMES: Yes, thank you.

JEFF: Breaking news. A gas truck has collided with the AMG building in center city causing an explosion. The AMG building is on fire and police are on the scene. It is unclear just exactly what caused the truck to collide with the building and it is also unclear if there are any injuries. We’ll be right back.

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JEFF: And now here’s Kelly closer to the scene. Kelly what did you learn?

KELLY: Thanks James, I was able to speak with the chief of police. He informed me that a truck did indeed crash into the AMG building. As you probably know the AMG is the tallest building… a landmark monument in the city. The building is currently on fire. I am about a half mile from the scene now. Traffic is still stopped or moving very, very slowly. Police have asked that people avoid all routes near the city if you can. The problem the police and fire personnel are having now is getting the much needed manpower to the scene. They told me it has been very difficult to get additional crews to the fire. They also ask that people evacuate the surrounding area. Apparently a large crowd of people has gathered around the fire and it is actually taking up the time of the individuals working there to control the crowd.

JEFF: Any word on how the truck ended up crashing into the building?

KELLY: Not at this time. Still no word on how the truck collided into the building. And an act of terrorism has not been ruled out. Police at the scene are still investigating the incident and collecting reports from eyewitnesses. Still no word if there were any injuries or fatalities.

JEFF: Thank you Kelly.

KELLY: Thank you Jeff.

JEFF: That’s Kelly from center city downtown. We’ll be right back.

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JEFF: If you are just joining us, the AMG building downtown is on fire. It was hit by a gas truck and exploded a short while ago. Now we have Karen on the phone. Karen are you there?

KAREN: Yes, hello.

JEFF: Where are you calling from Karen?

KAREN: I’m in my car in traffic.

JEFF: And how far are you from the AMG Building?

KAREN: I’m about a mile… a mile and a half. I can see the flames now from where I’m at. It’s dark, but I can see them over the trees. We’re all sitting here staring at it. ‘We’ meaning all of the other cars.

JEFF: How long have you been in your car?

KAREN: Since I left work, so it’s been over two hours. Two and a half.

JEFF: How is traffic now?

KAREN: It’s at a dead stop. It was slow when I left… which is normal. We saw the fireball from the explosion and traffic’s been stopped ever since. 

JEFF: Thank you Karen. 

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JEFF: We go now back to Kelly who is near the scene and now has reports of ‘rioting’ near the fire. Kelly, are you there?

KELLY: Yes Jeff. I’m less than half a mile from the AMG building. Smoke is filling the area and the smell of the smoke is almost unbearable. I can still see the building from where I’m standing… the AMG building is now completely engulfed in flames. Traffic is at a standstill and many people have parked their cars and left them. Many people are evacuating the area. Now I don’t know if the police have ordered an evacuation… the people I have spoken with left the area in fear that the neighboring buildings would catch on fire.

JEFF: And there are riots at the building?

KELLY: The situation, according to the people I have spoken with… and that’s people that have just come from the AMG area… is that a large riot has broken out. There is fighting and looting and there has been many injuries. One witness described it as “total mayhem.”

JEFF: Is there any word from the police in…

KELLY: Pardon me Jeff. I don’t mean to interrupt you, I’ve just spotted a woman… She’s heading away from… She is wounded… Ma’am, excuse me Ma’am. Are you coming from center city? Ma’am, could you please… Ma’am. The… uh… the woman does not wish to speak with us at this time. She is being escorted away by a male individual. 

JEFF: Did you say she was wounded?

KELLY: Yes, Jeff. The woman had some type of cloth pressed against her shoulder near her neck area. The cloth and her clothing were… she was bleeding and looked like she was in a great deal of pain. Oh… wait a second Jeff… Oh my God. Jeff I just witnessed an attack. A man walking down the sidewalk. Across the street from me here, attacked a man who was watching… there are many people on the sidewalks here watching and this person walking just attacked the man that was watching. Then a third man came out of the storefront here and hit the attacker in the head. The attacker is on the ground now… he’s not moving. I’m crossing the street. Sir. Sir, could you tell me what just happened here? 

VICTIM: What?

KELLY: Sir? Are you okay? I just saw you get attacked.

VICTIM: Yes, I was just looking down the street and this man came towards me.

MAN: They’re crazy. (unintelligible)

KELLY: I’m sorry Sir what did you say?

MAN: These people, they’re crazy, they lost it. They all went nuts down there.

KELLY: You mean by the AMG Building?

MAN: Yeah, I just came from there, the smoke is drivin’ people nuts over there. They’re goin’ crazy attackin’ people. So I came home, I saw this guy getting’ attacked so I whacked that (expletive) in the head. That’s how you get ‘em. You whack ‘em in the head. They almost got me, the crowd down there. (expletive)

KELLY: I’m looking now at the attacker who is unconscious on the sidewalk. This gentleman here fended the attacker off another gentleman with a bat… a baseball bat. There are people who witnessed the incident that are tending to the attacker right now.

JEFF: Have you been able to learn if there are there any injuries from the explosion or the fire?

KELLY: No Jeff. The people that I have spoken with so far did not witness the explosion, they were in the vicinity of the explosion, but they did not witness it. No word from the police as to what actually happened and if there are any injuries or deaths at this point.

JEFF: That’s Kelly, near the AMG building, center city. About a half hour ago or so… an explosion occurred at the AMG building. The building is engulfed in flames. We have reports that the explosion was caused by a gas truck. It has not been ruled out that it may be a terrorist attack… There are reports of riots and looting at the scene. So we apologize for not… um… for not having as much information that we would like to have. But, that’s what we know so far. 

(advertisements)

JEFF: I’m seeing reports on the wire now. According to Reuters… a bulletin from the Reuters news agency… there have been other reports of riots in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Baltimore. They are advising everyone to stay inside. Do not travel. Stay in your homes. Authorities are in contact with the Center for Disease Control. They are expecting a statement from them shortly. What they are going to report… at this point we just simply do not know. Again everyone please stay in your homes… We were trying to go back to Kelly near the AMG building… I’m sorry, but it appears that mobile communications are down. I’m checking my cell phone right at this moment and I have no signal. We’ll be right back.

(advertisements)

JEFF: The Mayor is in still in Washington DC for a public safety and development conference, and we do not know if she has been informed of the recent events. Currently cell phones are not working and land line communications are busy. We can receive wires and the internet still seems to be working. We have received some emails from several people that are near the riots by the AMG building. Normally we wouldn’t read emails like this without confirmation, but we have received several and they all are saying similar things. One email states that the rioters are biting innocent people. They are seeking out and attacking bystanders at the scene. The email goes on to say that once someone is attacked that they then get up and attack others. Another email states that the bites are infectious and that they witnessed a neighbor that had been attacked and bitten several hours ago… the bite became infected and within a short while the person began attacking other people. There are several more accounts of incidents similar to this. One person claims that the attackers are cannibalizing the victims, but that is the…

(silence)

JEFF: As I sit here in the studio I can see a large crowd of people walking down the street. It appears as though the crowd that was rioting at the AMG building is now moving. The crowd is very large and they are spreading out to the buildings here on this block.

(silence)

JEFF: We are getting reports now that the crowd outside has surrounded this building as well as some others and the people are trying to get in. The people in the crowd do appear to be crazed. The people here are taking precautions and securing our floor–our offices here.

(silence)

JEFF: We have a caller now on an internet phone. Sir? Sir?

CALLER: (static) Yes, yes, I’m here. Call me Rudy.

JEFF: Sir, Rudy, can you tell me where you are?

RUDY: Yes, the Milburn Diner, right by the AMG building. We need you to send the police here right away. All the phones are busy and we can’t get through.

JEFF: And you are on an internet phone?

RUDY: Yes, I’m a salesman and I have my (static) and my laptop. The regular phones aren’t working.

JEFF: Can you–

RUDY: We are in the basement of the diner. A bunch of us ran down here after they attacked. You need to get the police here and an ambulance, one of us is injured.

JEFF: How many of you are there?

RUDY: There’s uh–five.

JEFF: And are you injured?

RUDY: Me, no. The lady here got her shoulder–she’s bleeding. They’re taking care of her, we just need the police to get us out of here, we’re trapped. (static)

JEFF: If there are any police or emergency vehicles in the vicinity of the Milburn Diner, please go there, if you can. That’s the Milburn Diner center city. We are on the phone with Rudy in that location right now. Rudy, we have requested that if there are any emergency vehicles in your area that they report there.

RUDY: Thank you. Thank you.

JEFF: Can you tell me what happened? Did you see the explosion earlier this evening?

RUDY: Yeah, we were all in the diner and the gas truck sped right for the building and there was this big explosion that knocked the windows out.

JEFF: Did you happen to see what caused the truck to–?

RUDY: No, we just heard it go by and into the building.

JEFF: What happened after that?

RUDY: (static) people attacked the diner. It happened really fast, but the people were crazy, there was something wrong with them. A bunch of us (static) in the back and down into the basement. They’re banging on the door now. It should hold, but I don’t know (static)

JEFF: Sir, Rudy, we have gotten reports of a possible infection that is affecting people and it is spread by biting. Have you witnessed anything of that nature?

RUDY: Well uh–there was definitely biting, the people that came into the diner were (static).

JEFF: Rudy, the person in your group that is injured, have they been bitten?

RUDY: Has she been (static) Go and (static) You ask. Just ask her. Yes, she has been bitten. (static)

JEFF: Please use caution, according to our reports–

RUDY: (static)

JEFF: Hello, Rudy? Hello? It seems as though we have lost that connection. Again if there are any police or emergency vehicles or personnel near the Milburn Diner there are five people trapped in the basement. Please use caution because at least one of them has been bitten.

(silence)

JEFF: I am getting word now that the mob that had surrounded our building has now entered and are right outside the doors. 

(banging, shouting)

JEFF: You may be able to hear the banging, it’s very loud. The mob is outside the studio door. The engineers in the studio here are reinforcing–The banging is deafening– 

(banging, shouting)

JEFF: The hinges are breaking. The wall is cracking around the door. The door is open and people are entering the studio– 

(banging, shouting)

JEFF: Oh my God. Oh my God. They just–Oh my God.

(rustling, static)

JEFF: No! No!

(background noise, groaning)

–END TRANSCRIPTION–

The Diner
 
A waitress details her account of the evening on the back of menu pages.

I’ve doodled for an hour now and I have to do something else or I’m going to go out of my mind. I can take the banging on the door. It’s steady and constant like the thumping that resonated through the floor of my old apartment. The one that was above the bar that had live bands all the time. I could fall asleep to that. It’s the whining, the sniffling tears, and the whispers down here that are driving me nuts.
I guess I should be scared like the others. Well, all of them except Rudy. He’s just worried about his wife and kids. I should be terrified right now, but I’m not. Maybe I’m in shock. Maybe the reality of this hasn’t hit me yet. I was freaking out before, when it all started. That was intense. It all happened so fast. It just doesn’t seem real. None of this seems real.
A few hours ago everything was fine. Everything was normal. It was just another typical Friday night at the diner. Mrs. Wilson complained about her food being too cold again. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson were regulars, but they only came in on Friday nights and Sunday mornings. I have no idea why. That’s the way it’s been since I’ve worked here. I asked Joe the cook if he knew why. He had no idea, but they had been on that schedule for as long as he could remember.
Mrs. Wilson was doing her “My food is cold” routine that she does about every three weeks. There is something weird with this lady and the cold. First off, she has to have a particular table on the floor. It’s a table against a window that she has somehow deduced has the least amount of drafts out of every booth and table in the diner. On top of that, she has to sit in the chair opposite from the window because it’s colder by the window. I found this out last year in my second week. I seated some teens at the “Wilson Table” on a Friday night, not knowing it was reserved, and got reamed for it.
Everyone in the whole restaurant knows that Mrs. Wilson’s food needs to be hot. So, we always make sure that it is. Always. But, it makes no difference. It doesn’t matter if there is steam piping from her food and fogging her glasses, she would still say it’s cold. Even if I point out that her food is steaming hot. She would lower her steamed glasses and remark that it’s “Cold on the inside.” 
I took Mrs. Wilson’s “cold” food (which I needed a towel for because the plate was so damn hot) back to the kitchen. I made it about half-way and then BOOM! I’m on my ass, my ears were ringing, and I’ve got a face full of glass. Not to mention, Mrs. Wilson’s meatloaf was scalding my legs.
I couldn’t hear anything when I got up. My ears rang like I had fire bell earphones. The first thing I saw when my head cleared was Mrs. Wilson’s bloody face. She was limp with her neck bent over the back of the chair as far as it would go. Mr. Wilson shook her and was yelling, but no words came out of his mouth. 
The diner was filled with dust and it stung my eyes. Everyone that was still alive was coughing. Lou, The manager, was sprawled out on the floor, dead. Something had bashed his head in, but I couldn’t see what. A mother of three lay slumped in a booth with her offspring clinging to her lifeless body and crying. I couldn’t hear them cry. I could just see their screaming wet faces. The bus boy, whose name I don’t know, was rocketed into the dessert case and had large shards of glass sticking out of him.
I stood in that spot for what seemed like forever. I knew I had to help someone, but I didn’t know where to begin. Rudy seemed to be the most level headed. He was moving from group to group assessing the situation and doling out first aid procedures. I moved to him and asked how I could help. He sat me on a stool and picked glass from my face. I looked over at Mrs. Wilson as he held my chin firm. I stared at her blood covered, lifeless face. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling and Mr. Wilson continued to shake her. I was sad for her. Even if she was a bitch, I felt bad for her. 
The ringing in my ears dulled and noise rolled in from the street. I scanned the front windows and noticed that there wasn’t a piece of glass left in the frame. The windows were in a million pieces all over the diner. All over everybody. The street was cloudy with dust and there was a lot going on. I could see a huge fire in the building down the block. Car alarms were blasting, and there was commotion and screaming in the street. I could see vague figures in the dust cloud moving around. Some of them were running.
Rudy twisted my head back and pulled out more glass. He grabbed a towel from behind the counter and pressed it to my face. It stung like acid.
Rudy spoke quickly, “Keep pressure on it, we’ll check for more glass later. Do you have a first aid kit?” 
I nodded yes. 
“That’s how you can help,” he said.
I had just squatted down and pulled the kit from under the counter when the screaming started. 
A group of people entered the diner, walking right through the empty frame of the door which no longer had any glass in it.
At first, I thought that the people were coming to help. They weren’t. Even through the dust I could see that they were injured from the blast. Their faces were either burned or black from smoke. One man had an arm missing and another man’s back was on fire. He walked around as if he were drunk and looking for the bathroom. He didn’t seem to care that his scalp sizzled in flames. 
I turned to the woman who was screaming. I couldn’t tell why she was screaming until I stood up. The bus boy had his arms locked around her leg and was biting into it. He had large shards of glass sticking out of his back. The screaming lady sliced herself on the glass trying to push him away. 
Mr. Wilson screamed. It changed to a sickening gurgle as Mrs. Wilson chomped on his neck. Blood sprayed out onto her face. I dry heaved. I hadn’t eaten, so nothing came up. I just had that sour taste of stomach acid in my mouth. 
All the people that I thought were dead attacked everyone that I thought survived. The people that looked like they should be dead, came in off the street and went after us. They filled the dining room and quickly surrounded the counter. If Rudy hadn’t sent me behind the counter for the first aid kit, I’d be dead right now. In fact, everyone that’s in the basement right now, owes their life to Rudy. 
As I stood and watched what was going on, Rudy scared the shit out of me. He had grabbed me from behind and pulled me back toward the kitchen. Joe was helping a guy that was in the bathroom out into the dining area. The explosion had knocked the guy right off of the toilet and he hit his head on the sink. Rudy told them to go back. I saw Joe’s face go white as his apron when he got a peek at what was happening in the dining room.
Rudy continued to pull me and another lady back. The crowd that encircled us continued to tighten. The kid who was in the booth with his mom, raced along the wall and joined us. Before the gap of the circle closed. I caught a glimpse of the mother restraining her other two kids in each arm as she ate their faces.
Joe swung the cellar door open. The cellar is a dry, dark place that’s used for storage. Most of the canned goods, napkins, and other assorted crap like that is kept here. We squeezed past Joe, down the old wooden steps, but almost didn’t make it because the guy that hit his head kept trying to get out. He must have had a concussion or something because he would not get in the cellar. He kept talking about getting to his car. 
“I have to go to my car.  I have to go to my car,” he repeated.
The lady that Rudy pulled back, pushed her way past Joe and he lost his grip on the man. The people following grabbed him right away. He yelled out in this nasally–it wasn’t a scream, it was more like a yell, like when you’re on a roller coaster going down. 
We were all in and Joe pulled the door, but it stopped short of closing. One of the people after us managed to get their arm in. He slammed the door hard on it, thinking they would pull it out, but that didn’t work. It didn’t hurt the person’s arm for some reason. Joe yelled for help. Fingers from the other side of the door surrounded its edges and then started pulling. Joe then screamed for help.
There was no place to hold the door. Joe had both hands on the knob, so I lay down on the steps, next to his legs, and grabbed the plank that ran across the door. It didn’t do much good, so Joe and I both screamed for help.
A loud bang filled my ears and I could feel someone over me. A couple of bangs later, something hit me in the head and the door slammed shut.  Joe locked the door and I turned over. Rudy was standing over me with the shovel that we use to spread rock salt on the sidewalks in the winter. I looked to see what hit me and it was the arm that was stuck in the door–severed at the elbow.
There’s not much in the world that scares me. I’ve held snakes, lizards, baby alligators, frogs–things that would freak out most women. But, I do have this thing about creepy crawly things. Put me within a few feet of a sizeable spider or some other bug and I will scream ‘till the wine glasses shatter. A cockroach crawled across my foot while waiting for my dinners to come up one time. People in the dining room thought I was being murdered. Needless to say, I didn’t come back for three days. That was two days after the exterminator had come. I waited a bit more just to be sure.
Now, knowing how I react to insects, just imagine how I reacted to a severed arm in my lap with its fingers twitching like a spider. Twitching like it was going to grab me.
Joe held my arms as I kicked and screamed. The arm rolled down the stairs. Rudy picked it up with the shovel and put it somewhere out of sight. I stopped screaming to catch my breath and thought about screaming some more. 
“Did you hear that?” Rudy asked.
“Are you kidding? I’m permanently disabled in both ears,” Joe yelled.
“Not the screaming. The banging. The banging got louder. More of them know that we are in here.”
You know that feeling you get in the pit of your stomach when someone says something very ominous or creepy. That was one of those moments. 
It didn’t really matter how many times I excused my screaming by explaining that I had a severed arm in my lap, more of them outside meant more stress on the door. More stress on the door increased the likelyhood that they would get in–eventually.

So, here we have sat for the past few hours. 

The first hour was silent. The people outside banged like crazy, but none of us spoke to each other. We all sat quietly and occasionally exchanged glances. Except for Rudy. First he tried the phone on the wall that Lou had installed to make ordering easier, but it wasn’t working. It just made a weird tone. Rudy had his laptop bag strapped around him since this started, so he cleared a space and set it up. He hooked up his internet phone and got a tone. He tried 911, but it was busy. After that, he tried to get in touch with his wife. 
For the second hour, Joe paced the floor. Whispers traveled back and forth between Rudy, Joe, and the lady on the other side of the room. I soon found out that Joe wasn’t pacing, he was looking for something to barricade the door with. He tried stacking big cans of tomatoes for a while, but that didn’t work, so then he moved on to boxed goods. The boxes didn’t do much better.
The boy that had come down with us was alone and curled up against the wall shivering. His name is Jodi, which I thought was strange for a boy. He must be used to people thinking it was odd because he explained it right away. It’s his first name and first initial, Joe D, short for Joseph David. His father has the same first name, so that’s how they differentiated the two.
He was really scared, so I held him and tried to keep his mind off things. I asked him questions that wouldn’t remind him of his mother or sisters. I asked him about school and his hobbies and things he liked to do. We did that for about an hour until he fell asleep on a bed made from rolls of toilet paper.
I slipped away from Joe D and tried not to wake him. I needed to stretch a bit. My ass was cold and my legs were numb. I stretched and paced for a while. I checked on the door, making sure it hadn’t begun to splinter. Joe was talking to the lady. She was in pain and holding her arm. I moved closer for a better look. The wound didn’t seem that bad, but she was in a lot of pain. It looked like some debris from the explosion hit her. 
Joe found out that her name was Ellen and proceeded to cut her blouse away from the wound with a box cutter. She had a nasty gash and grimaced in pain under her large framed glasses. I found some rags that hadn’t been used yet and gave one to Joe. He wanted something to disinfect and clean the wound. The best we could find was a bottle of cooking wine. 
Poor Ellen. She goes out with some of her lady friends, they all get killed, and she’s lying on a dirty basement floor moaning in agony from a splash of alcohol on her open wound. Joe offered her a sip out of the wine bottle, but she doesn’t drink. We wrapped her arm and she proceeded to talk about her dead friends. There were three. She gave a brief biography of each, recounting her fondest memories, almost like a eulogy at a funeral.
We made her a makeshift bed out of folded cardboard boxes and put a tablecloth over her as a blanket. She rested, but continued to moan in pain.
Rudy got excited and said “Hello” over and over. He had gotten through to someone. I could tell it wasn’t his wife by what he was saying. It was the local radio station. Earlier in the morning he tried to win some tickets or beer or something by calling the station for a contest. Amidst the hundreds of calls to his wife, he accidentally selected the wrong number to redial.
He told them we were trapped here and asked them to send the police to rescue us. He then asked us if Ellen was bitten. I asked Ellen if her wound was from a bite, but she didn’t answer. She just moaned in pain. Joe and I both returned “We don’t know” shrugs to Rudy. Rudy told the station that she was bitten. When he hung up, Joe asked him why he told them that. Rudy figured they would hurry if they thought she was.
I asked why they wanted to know about the bites. Rudy said that there was an infection going around that made people crazy. I blurted out that the people weren’t crazy, they were dead.
I had been thinking about it since we’ve been down here. I’ve been reviewing what happened in my head over and over. When I saw Mrs. Wilson and the vacant expression on her face, I knew she was dead. Then she attacked Mr. Wilson and I was like okay, she wasn’t dead she was unconscious. I rationalized it. But, the busboy had large shards of glass through him that pierced vital organs. He had to be dead.
That’s what has been bugging me. That’s what I couldn’t get my mind around until now. That’s why nothing that happened seemed real. The people on the other side of the door are dead.
Rudy dismissed what I said immediately with a “No way.” Joe was skeptical, but he had been in the Army or Marines or something, and had seen some weird shit. He always has these outrageous conspiracy theories that he swears are true. I had the feeling that he would eventually come around.
Rudy said that it’s absolutely not possible. 
I replied with, “You can’t have a bomb explode across the street and have a 100% survival rate.”
I asked him if he saw any bodies in the street after the explosion. That was another little tid bit that caught my attention. I saw wounded people all around, but I didn’t see any bodies in the street. Rudy was quiet. Either he didn’t look outside, or knew that I was right.
We sat quiet for a while. Quiet except for the deadbangers and Ellen’s moaning. 
“It was a truck, not a bomb,” said Rudy.
“A truck exploded?” I asked. 
Rudy nodded yes. Until then, I had just assumed it was a bomb. 
“Didn’t you see it?” he asked. 
I told him that I didn’t see it, but I felt it. That got a snicker and bit of a smile from the two men. Joe was back in the kitchen at the time it happened and didn’t see shit. He asked Rudy what he saw. Rudy said that a gas truck sped past the diner and made a beeline for the AMG building. It crashed right into the lobby and a split second later… Baboom!
“Maybe the driver was infected and went crazy, like the others in the diner.” Joe said. “Like the radio guy on the phone was saying.”
I saw Rudy nod. That made sense. Joe got quiet, but I could see he was thinking. He was thinking something I didn’t want to know, I could just tell. Joe asked if Rudy thought Ellen was infected. My skin crawled. I had been really close to her and even help clean her wound. 
“Do you think it spreads by touch?” I blurted out.
Rudy said that he didn’t know, but the radio guy said bites. Rudy also said he had touched Ellen plenty and felt fine. We all had touched her and we all felt fine. Rudy stood over Ellen and felt her forehead. 
“She’s warm. Fever is the first sign of infection.”
I shook Ellen gently and asked her again if she had been bitten. She was delirious and didn’t answer. She continued to moan. We sat and thought about what to do. 
“We’ll keep an eye on her,” said Rudy and then he got up and searched around the basement.  
He found some ribbon and tied Ellen’s hands together with it. It was weird for him to find ribbon down here, but then I remembered that we had gotten it to wrap a present for Lou last year.
Lou.
I thought about how I saw Lou sprawled out on the floor after the explosion. Then I thought about how I saw Lou in the same position when we went into the basement. Then I remembered how I saw the tip of Lou’s shoe through the crack in the door a split second before the arm hit me and the door closed.
He hadn’t moved. Rudy didn’t know Lou and wasn’t on that side of the diner to see him. Joe said he remembered seeing him on the floor for that brief moment he was out of the kitchen. I asked if they had any idea why he didn’t get up like the others. Rudy was quick to answer.
“He was the only one that was really dead.”
Rudy was being sarcastic, but he was probably right. Maybe Lou wasn’t infected. Maybe there was something different about him. He truly may have been the only one in the diner that was really dead.
My stomach twisted and I had a terribly sick feeling that we would be dead before the night was through.
After a good cry, I checked on Joe D and he was still asleep. I put some cardboard down and sat against the rusty pole that supported the floor beam. It was near Ellen so I could watch her, but not too close. I finished off the roll of ribbon by tying her feet together. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to be a little extra careful. I got as comfortable as possible and prepared myself to be up for the rest of the night.
The banging continued and the infected were walking across the floor above us. Joe went through everything on the shelves with a renewed vigor to find something to reinforce the door. Every once in a while he’d make a bit too much noise and both Rudy and I would throw him dirty looks. Rudy was back on his internet phone. He called home again, but with less hope and enthusiasm as before. 
Joe said he could dismantle one of the shelves and use the wood to reinforce the door. The only problem is that it’s going to make some noise. The pounding from the deadbangers has gone steadily down over the past few hours, not by much, but a noticeable level. The three of us agreed that the extra noise would be acceptable to make the door stronger. Joe had also pointed out that the door was splintering around the hinges and if the deadbangers happened to get organized, a few concentrated hits would bring the door down. I think that fact alone was convincing. Screw the noise.
Joe said he would reinforce the door. Rudy was to assist while I watched Ellen. After the door was finished Joe would stay at the top of the steps and keep an eye on it while Rudy and I took turns watching Ellen. We had a plan. It was a simple plan, but it made us feel like we were doing something. Anything was better than just sitting here and waiting to be rescued, or to be killed.
Rudy came down after he and Joe finished working on the door. They ended up not making too much noise, but the banging had gotten louder. Joe came down for the shovel and went back up by the stairs. Rudy tried his phone again. After a while he gave up and looked really sad. He turned his back to me, I think he didn’t want me to see him crying. I told him everything was going to be fine. With the door reinforced and the sun coming up in a few hours, I was feeling optimistic. I’m sure the police or the fire people would get us out, it was just a matter of time. They were probably just busy right now. 
I wondered how many other people were out there trapped just like us. Then I wondered how wide this infection had spread. 
I asked Rudy if the internet was up. It was and he had tried several of the major news sites. Most of them were down or had no recent news. One site did have a report of rioting in D.C. That scared both of us. We both pictured some type of terrorist biochemical attack on the White House which started all of this. If it were true and if it did happen, it wouldn’t have taken long for the infection to spread here.
We continued revising our conspiracy theory until Joe peeked in from the stairwell. 
“There is no major event that happens in this country without the government knowing it, planning it, or letting it happen.” 
With that he returned up the stairs. We were having such a nice simple clean-cut discussion and Joe had to go and make it all complex.
I guess Rudy noticed I was exhausted so he offered to take the first watch. I don’t think I can sleep, but I’ll try.

I’m bleeding badly.

I had fallen asleep and woke up screaming to a sharp pain in my neck. I was bitten. A chunk was taken out of my neck, just next to my shoulder.
Joe D bit me. 
We were so worried about Ellen this whole time that we didn’t bother to check the little boy.
He bit me. I screamed, ran toward the corner, and tripped over Ellen. I turned over and little Joe D was coming after me. He had this unflinching focus. An insatiable hunger like the others upstairs had. And his eyes–his eyes were white with a black dot in each center and they were locked on me.
Joe grabbed Joe D from behind and tossed him across the basement. He tumbled to a heap on the other side of the room. The little boy shook it off and got back up. Joe went up the stairs quick and came back down with the shovel and whacked Joe D across the face. The little boy stumbled back, but kept on coming. Joe brought the flat of the shovel down on the top of Joe D’s head. The boy’s skull cracked and he dropped to the floor.
Joe and Rudy rushed to me and I remember feeling very woozy.  They laid me down next to Ellen and looked at my neck. Joe pressed a rag into the bite and I yelled. I passed out from the pain or the loss of blood, I’m not sure which.
I don’t know how long I was out, but I’m terribly stiff and my entire body hurts. It’s difficult to write, as you can probably tell. It was nice and neat until now. I feel sick. I’m nauseous and I hurt. I guess it’s like being pregnant from what I’ve heard.
I don’t think I’m going to be here much longer and all I can think about is what I haven’t gotten done. Sure I wish I could have had some children, (I wouldn’t want to leave them in this situation) but it just never happened for me. I got close once or twice, but I didn’t find the right guy. 
I had to stop a minute to cough. My Uncle had a kidney infection once. I saw him in the hospital. He was pale, sickly, and couldn’t move because of the pain. That’s how I feel. Imagine the worst flu you’ve ever had or the sickest you’ve ever been and triple it. That’s probably still not close. Everything feels heavy. My eyes are heavy, my head is heavy, even this pen is heavy. It’s a chore to breathe. It hurts so much I find myself taking longer and longer between breaths. I can’t even feel the hole in my neck now because my body hurts more than it does. 
I’m burning up. Joe came over, felt my head, and told me I have a fever. 
“Fever’s the first sign of infection,” I said through blue lips and chattering teeth.
I was burning up, but shivering cold. Joe covered me with a few tablecloths. I’m sitting where I was when this all started–up against the wall on the other side from Joe, Ellen, and Rudy. Ellen’s still out. Joe and Rudy are huddled in the corner whispering and occasionally glancing back at me.
There’s no need to whisper. I know they are discussing what to do with me. They could untie Ellen and use the ribbon on me, but there’s still a chance she was bitten. It probably hit me quicker because I lost more blood than she did. I can see it all over the floor. I wish it weren’t on the floor. I wish I was where I was a short while ago. I wish I was still sitting against the wall and writing. I wish I had never been bitten. 
Joe keeps squeezing the handle of the shovel. Maybe they are going to hit me in the head like the boy. That’s it! I figured it out. Lou is really dead and Joe D is really dead because of head trauma. Lou’s head was bashed in from the explosion and that’s why he didn’t get up like the others. Joe D stayed down after Joe smashed in his skull with the shovel. Damage to the head keeps you dead. 
Damage to the head keeps you dead. 
At least I won’t have that little mystery bugging me to the afterlife. Should I tell them? Fuck ‘em. Let them figure it out on their own, if they can. 
Rudy’s over there doing most of the talking. Always the salesman. I bet he’s trying to get Joe to dispose of me. Fucking asshole. If it wasn’t for that fat fuck I would still be alive. That piece of shit fell asleep on his watch and it cost me my life. I’d bite them all, but I can’t get up. I’m so cold and stiff, it hurts to move. I hurts to make these tiny loops with... the... pen.
The sun should be up soon. I wish I could see the sun before I go. I’d like that to be my last sight instead of watching these assholes plot my demise in this dark rank basement.
They’re getting up now. They’re staring at me. I can’t keep my eyes open, or even hold my head up. I’m so tired and all I can hear is the banging. The banging is so loud. I want to close my eyes, but I have to watch. My eyes are cloudy, but I can see the two of them walking slowly toward me. Joe has the shovel in his hands. Here they come.
They’re inside. They’ve broken in. They are flooding the basement. I guess the reinforcements didn’t hold after all. There are so many of them, no wonder the door didn’t hold. We never had a chance. One of them has tackled Rudy to the ground and Rudy’s screaming. He’s so scared. You should see the look on his face. I would grin from ear to ear if it didn’t hurt so damn much.
I’m going to put the pen down now and enjoy my last moments. I’m going to sit here and take pleasure in watching Rudy get eaten alive. Goodbye… for now.

The Prisoner

Day 181

I am nearing the halfway point and I would love to say that the past 181 days went by quickly, but they did not. Thank God for this diary, it’s helped keep me busy and keep me sane and I’ve earned a little respect from my fellow inmates. Especially after the superintendent caused all of that trouble after he found out it was online. Read Day 77 here.  
I guess my stay could have been much worse. For a sentence of fourteen months I should have been sent up to state prison. Anything longer than a year and you go to state. There have been some guys that stopped here that had nine, ten, and eleven month sentences and were sent off to state. For some reason they’ve kept me here and I dare not ask why in fear that they might realize their mistake and put me on the bus. All I know is that in state, things are ten times worse. Paco did three years there and after a hundred plus days of being in a cell with him, he has still not run out of appalling stories. 
“Imagine the worst day possible in hell,” Paco would say and then pause for effect. 
He would follow with his darkest, most evil stare and say “In state, we call that Monday.”
Even with the diary, boredom still gets the best of me. I’ve been living the same day over and over like in that movie Groundhog Day. Once and a while there will be some drama. But, it’s basically the same day again and again. Everything is scheduled and most of the day is predictable.
As I near the halfway point, I have been reflecting on my time here, what I have learned, and who I have become. People that I thought were enemies have become friends and people who I thought were friends have become strangers. Have I changed? Yeah. I’m not the same man that entered this place. Everything that I used to think was important isn’t any longer and things that I took for granted, I now cherish them. 
I’ll give you a quick example and I’m sorry this is turning into another reflective post. I’m sure you were hoping to read more exciting days like The Cockroach Wars, The Day the Diary Died, or I Have a Headache. Anyway, my wife and baby, I love them both to death. I guess I didn’t realize how much they loved me until the financial, emotional, and mental strain of incarceration started taking its toll. I guess that’s the thing that changed me the most. It was understanding that I’m not an island and the consequences of my actions don’t affect me alone. 
The second thing that changed me the most in here is time spent thinking. When I’m not writing and not doing daily activities there is not much to do except read and think. Boredom runs rampant here. Basically I am being punished for my crime and I repay that debt with time. My regular life stays on hold while I spend time here on my state ordered vacation. That’s the punishment–keeping me from my regular life. But, I digress and have tiraded on this subject already here.
I believed the time I’ve spent thinking about my life has changed me. Time spent contemplating, reviewing past choices, reviewing past mistakes (and deciding not to make those mistakes again) has completely changed what my life will be like once I am out of here. I read somewhere (I’m at 67 books now, cover to cover) that Einstein had said something about if you want to change yourself you have to change the way you think. I believe I have accomplished that here. 
The third thing that has changed me most in this place is…
I wasn’t trying to be dramatic, I was just checking the time. I should have been out for dinner ten minutes ago. Paco left for his kitchen shift two hours ago. Maybe they are planning something special. Sometimes on Fridays they do that–which I have mentioned before. On occasion, instead of chicken burgers or chicken loaf we will get real chicken. Usually Paco will let me know. He never says anything directly. I guess that comes from being in state. Everything is communicated with winks, nods, or sighs. On a special dinner night before he leaves he will say “See you at dinner,” and then wink. There was no wink tonight. 
As I was saying earlier, I think that the third thing here that has changed me the most is respect. When I say that I mean respect for others, respect for rules, respect for the universe, and most importantly respect for myself. Being disrespectful is unnecessary and can even cause a great deal of trouble for you–read Weekend Visitor here. Being respectful while being disrespected (Of course I am referring to Asshole Cop) came from the philosophy books I’ve read and has gotten me a long way. Protecting my self respect has earned the respect of others and just plain made me feel better about myself.
Well enough sentimentality, I promise to keep reminiscent posts few and far between. Anyway, here’s a look at today’s events.
We did our morning exercise before breakfast today. Some of the inmates had suggested the idea, so that they could see the meteor shower. I think that the guards allowed it because they wanted to see it too and the only way they could really do that was to take us out with them. Most guys didn’t care that this event only occurred every 200 years or so and barely looked up at the sky. Apparently this meteor is in a long orbit and when it passes us, the earth’s gravity pulls some of the small loose pieces into the atmosphere and they become meteorites. I enjoyed the sight with my morning run and I thought it was pretty cool that this rock has been passing the earth for… no one knows how long… and it will continue to do so long after we’re all gone. 
While I ran, I kept thinking about “being gone” and I realized that I am not ready to accept the fact that I will be “gone” some day. I keep thinking that they will come up with a way to transplant our brains onto new bodies or freeze us and revive us later when they have the technology. Someplace, somewhere, there’s gotta be a lab full of people trying to figure out a way for us to live forever.
If you think about it, our bodies run on electricity. Brainwaves, nerve impulses, muscle contractions–it’s all electrical. Once they figure out how it all really works, we could live forever… I’m sorry, I’m rambling again. I won’t blame you for skipping over the ranting part of my posts. 
On a sad note, Henry wasn’t feeling well today. Fortunately, the nice guard (Tony) was at the door and we were able to get him in the hold right away. If Asshole Cop were here instead, it would have taken two to three hours to get Henry in the hold and then he would have had to sit there for at least another two. No matter what your ailment is or how sick you are, you go to the hold for an hour or two. After a few hours of waiting, you are either ready to go back to your cell or really sick and in need of the doctor. I guess they do this to weed out the fakers.
We got Henry in there quick so he could get to see the doc in a reasonable amount of time. Later on, while most of us were in the common area, Tony had come back and gathered all of Henry’s things from his cell and boxed them up. Paco had seen it and told us after. Henry was over 70 years old and was taking heart medication, so it appears that his heart gave out. We haven’t heard anything official, but that’s what we’re all thinking. He was a good man. I know he had a wife and a son. He never openly talked about why he was here. I heard that his son had problems most of his life and was involved with the wrong people. His son ended up being at the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know the details, but Henry’s car was being used, and Henry took the rap for his son. Henry, like me, was supposed to be sent up, but because of his health issues, he was allowed to stay here at county. Henry was a good man and he will be missed.
Now we’re almost an hour past dinner time and my fellow inmates are getting very rowdy. Everyone is at their cell door making as much noise as they can. It’s possible that the situation with Henry has caused a delay, but they are usually pretty good about keeping us on schedule. The noise makes it very difficult to concentrate. The walls are concrete and the common area is like a giant echo chamber that resonates everything. There is no carpet on the floor to dampen the noise. 
Okay, I heard the clank of the door and everyone has quieted down. Time for dinner. Believe it or not I am hungry for this substance they serve and are calling food. But, as I’ve said before, dinner is always better than breakfast. I’ll finish this post after chow.

***

The past few hours have been unbelievable. That’s the only word I can think to describe what I have witnessed here. It’s unbelievable. I’m not sure where to begin. Let me back up. 
The door clanked and I stood at my cell door expecting it to slide open right away. After a few moments of waiting and nothing happening, I pressed my face to the cold steel and tried to get a look at the door about five cells away on the right. I could see the open door and hear some commotion over the cheer of my fellow inmates, but I only saw the edge of someone moving by the door. I couldn’t tell who it was. I could tell, however, that it was not a guard. There is no mistaking an orange jumpsuit for a tan guard uniform. I pushed my face a bit harder between the bars and the door rolled open. I stepped out and was greeted with a nod from Paco.
Two other cells were opened and Paco signaled the four of us over with a nod. He was calm and cool, despite the yelling and screaming from the other twenty-five guys still locked up. Paco didn’t say a word until we had entered the hall and the door to the cell area was closed behind us. 
“Something’s happened,” said Paco.
Juan, who works with Paco in the kitchen, looked at us from behind the glass of the small room that controlled the cell doors. He sat at the desk where the guard usually sits. He had a very strange gaze. The way he looked at us was haunting. It was eerie and creepy and Sammy, Stool, Rupert, and I were about to find out why.
The jail building is basically a big square. I think the only time I described it was in my very first post. The cells and common area take up a large chunk of the building and then you have the guard area, the infirmary, the visiting area, administration, the mess hall, and a few other assorted sections. All of these places are basically connected by one long “S” shaped corridor and there are locked doors at every junction. Outside the main inner gate are the administrative offices. 
We followed Paco as he led us to the guard monitoring room. This was a medium sized dark room with twenty-plus video monitors and a console with three worn desk chairs. The clear plastic carpet protector that was under each chair was yellowed, cracked, and in need of replacement.
The large steel door that secured this area was propped open with telephone book wedged under the edge of the door. The phone book had been opened because the entire book would not fit in the small space between the bottom edge of the door and the floor. I stared at an ad for dry cleaning. I’m not sure why I focused on that page, I think maybe it reminded me of my old life. I haven’t had much contact with the outside world and something as simple as grabbing a phone book and looking up a number is not possible for me here. I say I miss my family and this and that, but there are about a million other things that I miss. I lie to myself and tell myself that I don’t need them. The truth is that I miss a lot more than just my wife and kid in this place. 
Our eyes darted around curiously. Black and white images flickered on the monitors from cameras all over the jail. Most were stationary, but a few panned back and forth. Juan slid past us and took a seat at the video console. Paco said that he only let us out of our cells because he trusted us and he wanted us to see something first before he said anything about what was going on. He also said that he wanted to tell us first because he didn’t know how the others were going to react. He did confirm that Henry had a heart attack in the hold this afternoon and that an ambulance was called to come and get him. Rupert asked if Henry was dead. Paco didn’t answer and looked at the center monitor, which was the only monitor without a picture.
Juan queued up a recording and the monitor flashed to life. Paco told us it was the loading dock. One of the guards stood waiting. It was Rick James (that’s his real name.) Sammy asked if that was Henry. Paco said yes. I could clearly see on the monitor that it was Rick James, the guard, and not Henry. The loading dock was dark and it took me a few moments to realize that behind Rick on a gurney was a body bag. That was Henry.
You could see some shadows moving and tell that someone had arrived. Rick moved and started talking to someone, however they were not in camera view.
Paco said, “Watch the bag.” 
We all focused on Henry’s body bag and it moved.
Rupert said “Jesus Christ he’s alive.”
Paco was silent. 
Henry’s movement became more intense and Rick, the guard, noticed it. He tried to open the bag, but it looked like he was having trouble grabbing the zipper because Henry was moving so much. Two medic guys, dressed in white, rushed to the bag and held Henry down. Rick unzipped the bag and Henry sat up. Henry wrapped his arms around Rick as to give him a big hug for setting him free, but that wasn’t the case. Henry sank his teeth into Rick’s neck like a vampire. Henry yanked his head back, like a tiger would rip flesh from a deer, and pulled away a chunk of Rick’s throat. There were all these stringy things that came with the chunk that snapped like rubber bands when Henry wrenched his head back. The video quality wasn’t that great, but it was still the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. (Keep in mind that I have been in prison for 6 months and if you have read these posts I have described some sickening things.) 
One of the medic guys rushed to restrain Henry. Henry clamped his teeth down on the man’s fingers. The other medic guy tried to get away. His foot got stuck under the gurney and he fell. Henry lunged for him and rolled off the gurney, body bag and all. He pinned the guy and bit the arm he had raised to protect himself. Rick held his neck and fled to the door. He banged on it and a few seconds later, the door opened. He collapsed into the doorway, and another guard, whose face was hidden behind the door, dragged him inside.
The medic on the ground flailed his arms and hit Henry several times, but Henry continued to bite him. With each bite the man would bleed more and more, covering his face with blood. Henry bit the man’s wrist, tore open an artery, and blood poured out of the man. The medic fought less and less and then lost consciousness. Henry buried his face in the man’s throat.
The other medic went to the door Rick had been dragged into and banged on it with his good hand. Henry heard the guy banging, got up, and stumbled toward him. It looked like the medic wanted to sprint past Henry toward the open bay door. Instead, he slipped on the pool of blood Rick had made and fell flat on his face. Before the medic could get his bearings, Henry dropped on him and bit the back of his neck. 
Juan paused the video and my brain stopped processing, it was on hold just like the image on screen. 
Rupert said, “What the f#@k?” 
Juan and Paco followed with an exchange in Spanish. Juan gave us few minutes to sit in silence and take in what we had just seen. When the initial shock had past, he started talking. He told us about an old legend he heard as a boy growing up in Guatemala. It was called Los Caminentes Muertos which means “the walking death.” You will have to forgive me for not recalling the details of the legend exactly, but in my defense I was still processing what I had seen and Juan and Paco argued over the details every thirty seconds. 
The legend goes that there was a woman who had many children and shortly after a meteor shower one of the children got sick and died. She hid the dead child from the husband in the root cellar because she feared that he would kill her or leave if he found out. The next day another child died and she hid that one. The next day another died and then another. As they died, she kept locking them in the cellar. One day, the husband came home and the woman was crying because there were no more children and she couldn’t hide it anymore. So she confessed and the husband told her that it’s nonsense, that he had heard the kids playing in the root cellar. The both of them went outside, opened up the root cellar door, and all of the kids came out. At first the woman thought she made a mistake and was happy, but then she realized that they all looked like death. The kids attacked and killed the parents. 
As it turned out, the first boy that died was infected with this walking death. When he died the disease brought him back, but he was still really dead. His brother heard him in the root cellar, opened the door, got bit, locked the door back up, and later died. He was then put in the root cellar. This went on until the kids were gone and they eventually killed the parents. The kids wandered the town, bit people and spread the infection. The plague eventually infected the entire town. To prevent the infection, the neighboring villages burnt the infected town to the ground.
“So you’re saying that this is a f#@king plague?” Rupert asked.
Paco said, “It’s the same thing here as the legend. The dead rise to kill the living and those that they kill become the walking dead.”
At this point my brain had resumed functioning and I pointed out to Paco that Henry was mistaken for dead, woke up pissed off, and attacked the guards. That’s all it was. 
Paco nodded to Juan. Juan fast-forwarded the video a little and then let it play. On screen, Henry got up and went to the door where Rick had gone in. He plopped down, sat on the floor, dipped his fingers in the puddle of blood that Rick had left, and then licked his fingers. There was definitely something wrong with Henry. Maybe he did die briefly and the oxygen was cut off from his brain long enough to make him crazy. I don’t know.
My mind drifted as I tried to rationalize Henry’s odd behavior. My trance was broken when all of the guys collectively gasped. I returned my focus to the video monitor and watched as the medic that died, trapped under the gurney, started to move. Suddenly, my chances of logically explaining this were greatly diminished. I had seen this guy bleed until he lost consciousness. It’s not like the bite-sized wounds up and down his arms suddenly clotted and he was fine. This guy died. We watched the life literally drain out of him. The icing on the cake was that his foot was still caught under the gurney and he broke it to get free. That’s right, he twisted his ankle in a direction that ankles don’t twist, and didn’t even flinch when he did it. He didn’t even make that wrinkled pain face. The medic got up and limped around the loading area with his foot twisted sideways.
Right after that, the medic that had fallen on his face got up and wandered around the dock.
Paco was right. These guys were dead and yet they were walking around. The room got loud, everyone was arguing. Some were trying make sense of what we saw, others were ready to run and get the f#@k out of dodge. I chose not to participate in the madness. I stood there silently, oblivious to the ranting. My eyes that had been locked on the main monitor began to move out to the surrounding smaller monitors. They had been on and functioning the entire time, yet no one had bothered to look.
“We’re trapped,” I said.
The room quieted down. I wasn’t speaking to any particular person, I just said what I was thinking–out loud.
Stool said, “Of course we’re trapped, were in a f#@king prison you moron.”
Stool was an asshole. He was four and a half feet high and the most annoying prisoner in the block. “Stool” was a nickname and he said he got it after he was arrested for hitting some guy that owed him money over the head. He said that the guy was tall and he had stepped on a stool so he could reach the guy’s head. I think he got the nickname because stool is another name for shit. The guy just talks and talks and talks and is so full of shit that it’s ridiculous. The only reason he is here is because Rupert is stuck with him as a cell mate. When Paco had let us out and said we were the ones he trusted, he was not referring to Stool. Paco could have left him back in his cell, but Rupert sticks up for the guy and everybody likes Rupert. Plus, Stool would only enrage a bunch of other locked up prisoners, who were pissed off enough. For more about Stool, read I Need To Use The Phone, here.
The guys quieted and started looking at the monitors.
Paco said, “That’s right, were trapped.”
The jail building itself only has three doors to the outside, the main entrance, the door to the yard, and the loading dock. These are the only doors that you can use to enter or leave the building. Outside a double fence surrounds the yard and another double fence surrounds the entire complex. That fence has only one gate to the small road that the prison is on. We’re only two blocks from the busy outskirts of center city. The jail is kind of tucked out of the way of traffic behind some large buildings and trees. Out of the way enough that you would have to be looking for it to find it. But, we are so close to civilization that you can sometimes smell the burger joint fire up its grills just when we finish our morning exercise.
The door to the yard is not a way out because you would still have to go through the yard fence just to get to the outer fence. And we all know how difficult getting over that fence is, read The Not So Great Escape, here.
Now the loading bay doors will get you right outside, take the road around the building, and then you’re at the main gate. The main entrance is where everyone comes in and out. That includes visitors, guards, administration, small deliveries, and new guests of our humble facility. That will also take you right outside. The problem was that many victims of Los Caminentes Muertos were blocking escape from both routes.
The loading bay monitor showed Henry and the medics and some guards banging against the door to get back in the building. The lobby and administrative area had guards and office personnel wandering around. You could tell they were all infected by the sluggish vacant way they moved around. Each person also had a dark stain somewhere on their body, mostly on necks and arms, which showed they had been attacked.
“Where did those other guards in the loading dock come from?” asked Sammy. 
Juan said something in Spanish. Paco translated that they were guards from the main gate. 
“How did the office people get it?” Sammy asked.
Everyone looked at the monitor that showed the main lobby area. It had over a dozen office workers and guards wandering around.  Paco said that an infected guard from outside must have wandered to the main entrance and they let him in.
“Oh shit, we are trapped,” Stool uttered.
He wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box, but things eventually did get through his wooden head. 
“We’re only trapped if we want to escape,” I said. 
I looked at Paco. “You’re not thinking of escaping are you?”
I could tell by his face that he wanted out. Pretty much all of the others wanted out too, except for Rupert. Rupert only had a month left in this place. 
I checked the phone on the desk, it made weird tones. Paco told me they didn’t work. I urged the others to wait it out. I figured help would be here in less than twenty-four hours and the video would clear us of any wrongdoing.
Paco said, “Follow me,” and left the room.
We followed Paco down the hall and around the corner to a door that was barricaded with large drums of food from the mess hall. Juan moved the heavy drum that covered the small window in the thick steel door.
The small room was in disarray and had three dead guards banging on the door to the loading dock. One of them was Rick James. The guards had bloodstains on their uniforms and bloody handprints were on everything, especially the door.
“See that console?” asked Paco. We nodded and took turns peeking in the small square window. “That console can open this door, the main gate, and that bay door.”
“Why haven’t they opened any of them yet?” I asked. 
Paco said that he wasn’t sure, but the LCM’s (Los Caminentes Muertos) seemed to have only primal instincts and basic motor skills, and it was probably just a matter of time before one of them accidentally pushed the wrong button.
“One push,” he said, “and we are in seriously deep mierda.”
Stool suggested that we raid the guard’s gun locker and blast the mierda out of these guys. Paco pointed out that the gun locker was in the same room that the guards were in. I said that there has to be something around that we can use. We can use pots and pans if we have too. There were only three of them.  Right after I said that, a guard that had been out of sight slapped his cold dead hand against the little glass window and looked at us. There were criminals of all different kinds in our group, some have robbed, some have beaten, some have killed, some had just a few too many drinks and then drove. When that dead guard slapped his hand on the window, we all jumped. It scared the mierda out of all of us and it didn’t matter what any of us had done in the past.
I said, “Okay, so there’s four.” That got a giggle. 
I suggested that we get some weapons, tie up the guards and–Paco interrupted and told me that the guards are too dangerous and have to be killed. I tried to explain that we didn’t know exactly what was going on and killing the guards, even if they were dead, was going to screw us later on. No judge is going to believe us if they’re all dead. Paco argued that the video proved everything he had said and that killing them was the only way to stop them. Paco had a point about the video. I could tell that his mind was made up and I knew that there was no way to change it. If I had continued to argue with him, he would have put me right back in our cell. He’s my cellmate and all, but Paco has this “my way or the highway” attitude that you can’t reason with. I nodded in agreement, but asked that Paco keep one guard alive. He agreed.
“And,” I said, “kill the video.”
Paco smiled as if to say, “You’re smarter than I thought.” 
I have my moments.
Juan came back from the mess hall with makeshift weapons for all of us. (I didn’t even see him leave.) He handed out large metal spoons and one rolling pin. It looked like he grabbed the spoons quickly and didn’t bother to clean them because a couple had dried sauce on them. I got the aluminum handle of a broom, which was probably the worst weapon of all. 
Paco spoke to Juan in Spanish and he jogged off. He probably told him to turn off the video. By the time we had moved the cans away from the door, he was back. Paco asked if we were ready and we sort of nodded. 
My grip was tight on the broom handle and I twisted it to smear away the sweat from my palms.
“Too bad Asshole Cop isn’t in there, I wouldn’t mind smashing him in the face,” I said.
That brought a smile to the faces of the other guys and relieved a bit of the tension, including my own.
“Oh yeah.” Paco said, “You have to hit them in the head, it’s the only way to stop them.”
Before I could ask him how he knew that, he opened the door. 
From the second Paco opened the door it was an adrenaline fueled spree of violence. Paco, Juan, and Stool spun around the room like Tasmanian devils. It was pretty much a blur of swinging spoons and splattering blood. I would have helped more, but my aluminum broomstick folded on the first swing. Stool pushed a guard onto the console (the one we were protecting to begin with) and started hitting the guard in the head. It was Tony.  Stool beat Tony until he dropped flat back on the console.  All of a sudden, the escape alarm went off. We all darted evil stares at stool and he returned this dumbfounded “What did I do?” look. (As he was standing over Tony who was ON TOP OF THE CONSOLE!)
Juan pulled Tony off of the console while I followed Paco out. We sprinted down the hall and checked the main gate. It was still closed. Several guards and office workers were pressed up against the gate with their arms through the bars. They were grabbing for us even though we were on the other end of the hall. I had seen them at the gate on the monitor, but seeing them for real was scary. 
The gate was nine feet high by five feet wide, had thick bars, (thicker than our cells) and covered the right half of the hall. A stationary wall of bars covered the other half. The LCM’s couldn’t put their arms through this part because the whole wall was covered with grating, like screen. It was probably there for safety so that when the gate slid open, no one would get their hand chopped off.
I moved closer to the LCM’s to get a better look.
When Paco told us about the Los Caminata legend, he told it to us as if it were true. It wasn’t told like a story you hear from one of your buddies at the bar. Paco told it like it was fact and there was no doubt about it’s truth in his mind. The more I looked at these people on the other side of the bars, the more Paco’s legend seemed to be accurate. These people had wounds on them that were fatal to a normal person, just from blood loss alone. They weren’t acting like people anymore. They were acting like savages, like animals. Their vacant hazy eyes lacked that sparkle of life. They were shells of people–empty, primitive plague spreading, walking corpses. 
Paco tapped me on the shoulder and I jumped. He nodded his head toward the loading dock and we jogged back. Juan was still trying to figure out how to turn off the alarm. My head started to throb from the noise and I rubbed my temples. I looked around the room and noticed that Paco hadn’t spared one of the guards like I had asked. I brought this to his attention, but the siren was too loud and he couldn’t hear me. I got tired of yelling and let it go.
It took a while, but Juan finally figured out how to turn the alarm off. I’m sure everyone’s ears rang like mine and we sat for a few minutes and let our heads clear. Paco got antsy and I could tell he was ready to leave.  I asked him if he still wanted to go, which was a stupid and obvious question. He nodded yes. I looked around at the others and they nodded their heads too, all except for Rupert.
They spent a good half hour trying to open the gun locker. None of the keys that the dead guards had on them would work. Paco grew impatient and quit. I think he was afraid that help would come before he could leave. 
They got their previous weapons ready and sized up the loading dock door. There was pounding coming from the other side, but it was dull and barely audible in my ringing ears. I asked Paco what we should do with the others. There were twenty-five guys, or so, still locked up in their cells. Paco said it was up to me. 
Juan, Sammy, Paco, and Stool got ready to charge out the door. I told them that Rupert and I would get their backs. Juan buzzed the lock and Paco kicked opened the door sending the LCM’s back and giving the others a chance to step out and go to work. They made it look easy. They used sharp quick thrusts to the skull and dispatched the medics and the guards in seconds. Henry was last. When the door had first opened the medics and guards charged in right away. Henry stood back and waited. He was scary looking. His black skin had become a white-purplish color. His eyes were fogged and blood from all the people he had bitten ran from his mouth and soaked his orange jumper all the way to his shoes. It was weird, he kind of waited until the others were killed and then he lunged at Paco. Paco stepped out of the way and bashed the back of Henry’s head until it caved and he dropped to the floor.
Juan quickly found the keys to the ambulance in one of the medic’s pockets. The four of them jumped into the ambulance, started the engine, turned on the headlights, and sped out of sight. 
Rupert and I both stared out at the empty spot where the ambulance had been. I looked at Rupert and could tell that we were both asking ourselves the same question–Did we make the right decision? I knew inside that we did the right thing, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like it. To have freedom so close after all of that time in here, it wasn’t easy to walk away from.
It was nice to breathe some fresh air and listen to howl of the wind and the rustle of the trees outside the fence even though you could not see anything. Outside the loading dock doors it was pitch black. Aside from the lamp on top of the fence that shined on the service road, everything else was shrouded in blackness. Thinking that one of the walking dead might appear out of the shadows, creeped us out and we went back inside. We slammed the metal door shut behind us.
Rupert and I found a spot to sit down that wasn’t covered with blood or right next to one of the dead guards. After a few minutes of sitting quietly, I asked Rupert where he thought they would go. He said it probably didn’t matter to them where they went as long as it wasn’t here. I asked if he had any suggestions on handling the others that were locked up. He wasn’t sure, but he suggested that we feed everybody before we did anything. They were probably all furious anyway and hunger on top of that didn’t make a good combination. I realized I was really hungry too and we both decided to see what was in the mess hall and maybe grab a snack before we fed the others. 
Before we had even gotten up, something banged on the door. I don’t know why Rupert and I were so worried initially, the door was solid steel and had kept out five or six walking dead for several hours. I guess we just got a little creeped out that there were more of them. The next set of pounds were harder and more like knocking. I checked the monitor and saw Paco and Sammy outside the door. 
After we figured out how to open the door, Paco asked us to prop it open and come outside. We walked down the service road to the main gate, where Juan sat in the idling ambulance with Stool in the passenger seat beside him. Neither Juan nor Stool acknowledged us. They both had these looks on their faces like they had just been pulled over for speeding, or better yet–they were pulled over for speeding a block outside the prison and knew they were going back to lockup.
Paco and Juan exchanged looks and Juan turned on the ambulance headlights. My heart stopped and my lungs refused to suck in air. 
Beyond the outer fence were hordes of the walking dead. When I say hordes I mean hordes. I couldn’t even tell how many because with the headlights I could only see six rows back. They moaned and clawed at the outer fence. When I said I was listening to the wind earlier, it was probably the moaning of the walking dead. To make me feel even worse, Juan turned on the ambulance spotlight and panned it along the fence. The Los Caminentes Muertos were not just at the front gate–they surrounded the fence as far as I could see. I felt dizzy and sick so I sat down in the road and put my head between my knees.
Paco said that our presence was agitating them so we moved the ambulance back to the loading dock and went inside. 
We made soup, biscuits, and oatmeal for ourselves and the others. The whole time we prepared the food, no one said a word. Even when we served the guys that were locked up, they screamed at us demanding to know what was going on. We were emotionless–expressionless. None of us spoke or acknowledged them. We served the food as if we were the walking dead ourselves.
We spent the rest of the night cleaning the kitchen and the loading dock office. We put on rubber gloves and piled the guard’s bodies out on the dock and wiped down the room with bleach. We weren’t sure if the blood would spread the plague, so we wanted to be careful. 
When the sun started to peek over the horizon, we went back outside to see how bad it really was. It was really bad. There were thousands of them surrounding the fence. Thousands and thousands around the entire fence. We went back inside. It was more noticeable now that we did agitate them being outside.
The plague had spread beyond the prison, that was obvious, but we didn’t know to what extent and we didn’t know why they wanted in here or how they even found this place. The first order of business was to gather as much information as we could. We decided that we must get into the gun locker. After that we could take the out the walking dead in the administrative section. With access to that area we would most likely find a radio or a cell phone. We would also have internet access, as long as the power stayed on. 
That’s all for now. I’m sorry this post ran so long, but you can understand why. I will let you know how our plans work out in the next post.

The Last Sermon

Video Transcription

(The camera pans around the small church from the front corner. The room is dim and the pews are worn. Twenty-five parishioners are seated throughout the room. Some are deep in prayer, others are huddled together sobbing. A constant barrage of banging comes from the tall back doors of the church. The doors have been barricaded with pews, tangled and stacked on one another.
The camera follows a young female who walks toward the front of the church. She carries long wooden match and shields the small yellow flame on the tip. She stops at neat rows of stadium stacked candles in clear glass jars and lights the ones that have gone out. The woman returns to her seat as the camera continues to pan and stop at the very front of the church, at the red carpeted altar. 
A silver-haired Pastor, with piercing blue eyes and a white cassock, preaches with a clear, resonating voice from the altar.)

PASTOR: Jesus sees you. Jesus has always seen you. In all ways.

PARISHIONERS: Amen.

PASTOR: There was a man whose heart was not pure. Who had been and continued to be a sinner. He made his dishonest living off the misappropriated property of others. In other words he was a thief. 

(The banging on the main doors of the church is constant. A crash is heard and the camera pans back just in time to see a bench tumble off of the barricade. Two men, in the pews closest to the doors, rush over and put it back in place. The camera slowly pans back to the Pastor.)

PASTOR: On a dark night, not unlike this one, the thief broke into a house of which he knew that the occupants would not be home. See, he’d been watching the neighborhood. “Casing the joint,” to use the proper vernacular. Not only was he sinning by breaking into the house, but he had been planning to sin for a while, which is a sin all the same.

(The camera pans across the attentive parishioners.)

PASTOR: It was pitch black in the house. The robber was in total darkness. How many of you know what I’m talking about when I say the robber was in total darkness?

(The parishioners nod and agree.)

PASTOR: He had a small little flashlight that he shone around the room. He knew where the TV was, he knew where the stereo was, he knew where some jewelry might be. He was about to gather all those things when a shrieking voice broke the darkness. “I see you and Jesus sees you,” it said. The man panicked, he had watched the house for a week and he was certain that there was no one home. “I see you and Jesus sees you,” the voice spoke again. The man broke a sweat and waved his little light all around looking for that voice in the darkness. Looking for clarity in the darkness.

(Over the banging, a cracking noise is heard. A few worried parishioners turn and look at the doors.)

PASTOR: He couldn’t see anything. He could not find his way in the darkness. “I see you and Jesus sees you,” said the voice. He broke a sweat and moved around the room. He could not find the source of the voice. He forgot all about why he was there. He thought for a moment that maybe the voice wasn’t real. Then he heard it again. “I see you and Jesus sees you.”

(The camera pans to the doors which are shaking violently from the pounding. The two men seated near the doors get up and hold the benches in place.)

PASTOR: “No, the voice had to be real,” he said to himself. Just then his light landed on a big white cage and inside the cage was a macaw. A beautiful, brightly feathered, magnificent bird. The bird spoke and said, “I see you (squawk) and Jesus sees you.”

(The camera pans toward the altar as some of the Parishioners chuckle.)

PASTOR: The robber exhaled a momentary sigh of relief when he saw the source of the voice. I say momentary because as he arbitrarily lowered his light, he noticed something. Sitting next to the cage, looking at him, was the meanest, baddest, most vicious, snarling pit bull he had ever seen in his life. And the macaw said, (squawk) “Sick him, Jesus.”

(The camera catches restrained laughter from the parishioners.)

PASTOR: Jesus sees us all. Always, in all ways, all the time. And now on this momentous occasion, Jesus is here. I have talked about this, preached about this, spread the holy word about this, and now it’s finally here. The prophecy fulfilled. Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the Rapture.

CONGREGATION: Amen.

PASTOR: Jesus has descended from heaven to take us from the earth and meet the Lord. Pray now so that none are left behind. Heavenly father we welcome you into our hearts and willingly release our spirits to your son Jesus Christ. 

CONGREGATION: Amen.

(A female parishioner with long hair takes the podium and the Pastor sits in an ornate wooden chair with a bible on his lap.)

FEMALE PARISHIONER: A reading from Corinthians 15.

CONGREGATION: Thanks be to God.

FEMALE PARISHIONER: And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed–in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory. O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?

(The female parishioner returns to her seat. A meek male parishioner walks up and stands behind the podium.)

MALE PARISHIONER: A reading from Thessalonians 4.

CONGREGATION: Thanks be to God.

MALE PARISHIONER: For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.

CONGREGATION: Amen.

(The male parishioner returns to his seat. The Pastor stands and walks to the center of the altar.)

PASTOR: The Rapture is here, the dead have been raised, and they are incorruptible. We cannot not stop them. We cannot keep them from their mission. For they are soldiers of the Lord. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. The dead in Christ have risen and they are here to release us from our Earthly bounds of flesh and blood.

(A loud crack echoes through the church. The camera quickly pans to the back door where the dead have broken through. Grey, bloody arms reach through openings in the doors. Other parishioners runs to help the two men reinforce the barricade.)

PASTOR: The dead are incorruptible. We cannot prevent them from accomplishing their mission.

(The dead push through the barricades. Parishioners back away as the dead pour into the church.)

PASTOR: Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed–in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

(The dead swarm the parishioners. Many do not resist and are taken willingly. Some scream as the dead bite into them. The camera shakes as the camera man is attacked. The camera spins and stays fixed on the altar)

PASTOR: Death is swallowed up in victory. 

(The dead surround the altar and stumble up the two outer steps until they are on the altar with the Pastor. The Pastor is elated. He opens his arms and gives himself to the Lord.)

PASTOR: O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?

(The dead pull the pastor down to the altar and devour him. He makes no sounds, no screams, no sign of pain. He accepts it openly and closes his eyes.
The dead continue to feed on the Pastor, down to the bone in some places. His white cassock slowly turns red. 
Several minutes pass. The Pastor’s fingers begin to twitch, then his legs. The dead back away and the Pastor sits up. He has become one of the dead. The Pastor stands up and walks out of frame. The tape ends.)

–END VIDEO– 
–END TRANSCRIPTION–

The Game

“What do we do with her?” I asked. 
Bridgette stared back at me blankly with her puffy red eyes, sore from crying. Her mascara, which she had always put on thick, ran straight down her cheeks like black skid marks.  It reminded me of the photo we ran in the school paper earlier this week. Two seniors had left a party late at night, drove too fast on an unfamiliar road, and went through a stop sign. The road did not continue across the street and they crashed into a tree.
James, the driver, was killed instantly and pronounced dead at the scene. I heard that the impact pressed the steering wheel into his chest. Jason, the passenger, was ejected and collided with a different tree some thirty feet past the car. He made it to the hospital and hung on for another six hours.  He was pronounced dead at 7:15 am, which is the same time that the school bell rings for first period. They would both be here now playing in the game if it were not for the accident. James was our star player and without a doubt the reason we have gone undefeated so far this season. Jason wasn’t as agile as James, but he was a tank on the field and nothing got past him. Without Jason’s blocking, James would never had become everyone’s favorite.
The photo of the accident was taken in the early morning hours, when it was still dark. The upper right corner of the photo had the stop sign in it, the one James missed. The top of his late model Camaro was barely visible over the embankment. The ground sloped about four feet lower than the road. The flash caught some reflections of crinkled metal or it may have been glass, you couldn’t tell from the glare. The road that ran perpendicular to the stop sign had two long black skid marks across it–just like Bridgette’s mascara.
“What do we do with her?” I asked again. Bridgette shrugged her shoulders slightly and said nothing. I turned to the adults. They were adults for Christ’s sake, they should know what to do. I’m just a high school senior. My emergency skills begin and end with CPR certification, and that cheap little white card expired last year.
Alexander stared out the announcer’s booth window down into the field. He turned back and looked at me through his square-framed glasses. He was scared out of his mind. You could see it in his eyes.
I don’t care much for Alexander. He’s a bit too pompous, and always right as far as he is concerned. He’s thin, frail, and if he were ten years younger and a high school girl I would suspect that he was anorexic. He reminds me of the wizard from Oz. To all the parents and players on the field he’s the mighty and powerful announcer with the resonating, all-knowing, commentating voice of the game. But in here, behind the curtain, he’s a small and insecure twig that needs a microphone and a wealth of useless knowledge to feel good about his self.
Alexander turned back to the window. He slid the microphone over, propped his elbows on the desk, and inched closer to the glass. I have no idea why I even looked at him for an answer.
I looked at Bob. He was the only other adult in the small room. He paced quietly in the back corner and breathed heavily through his nose. He was the cameraman for the local cable channel. They broadcasted all of our games. He was probably the same age as Alexander, but much more fit. He had a blonde and brown beard, tanned skin, and a red baseball cap turned backwards on his head. He wore cargo shorts, Timberlands, and a navy blue Penn State hooded sweatshirt. Whether he went there or not, I don’t know, but his nervous hands were pushed tightly into the pockets.
Bob stopped in his tracks. The wood planks under the cheap polyester carpet creaked. 
“We have to put her outside.”
“No!” Bridgette demanded.
Bob was agitated. “You saw what happened out there. We all saw what happened. We don’t have much time.” Bob shook a stiffened hand toward the window and then plunged it back into his sweatshirt pocket.
I took a long look at Cassie and I knew that he was right.
Two hours ago everything was fine. I was writing my recap of the game, as usual. It was an important game, not only because we were playing our rivals, but because of the recent tragedy–because of the loss of two members of the team.
Many parents thought that the game should be cancelled to give people more time to grieve. Coach Pepper was adamant about playing. We quoted what he said at the board meeting in the paper. 
“Death is a natural part of life. Sometimes it’s sad. Sometimes it’s heroic. Sometimes it’s tragic. It’s a natural part of life. What do we teach our kids if we stop everything and quit? We teach them that life stops when tragedy strikes. The truth is that it doesn’t. The truth is that life goes on. No matter how much it hurts, life goes on. You can choose to ignore that fact or you can choose to accept it. I know it hurts. I know it’s sad. I’m not saying that it isn’t, I’m just saying that we are responsible for what we teach our children. We need to teach them that life continues after tragedy.”
The teachers, principal, and parents remained silent as Coach Pepper left his seat and walked down the center isle toward the back door with his family. A block of folding chair seated people on either side of him remained quiet even after the door slammed closed behind him. Needless to say, the game started as scheduled. 
Coach Pepper’s remark about life going on seems more relevant now than ever.
So, there we were at the desk looking out through the window and down onto the field. Alexander was announcing. Bridgette was waiting for halftime to do air grams. Bob was at his camera panning along with the action on the field and watching everything on a tiny monitor. I was writing my recap for the paper.
Bob had gotten a phone call from another cameraman. “No way… Really? Okay.” Bob took off his camera headset and went to the back window and looked out. “It’s too dark, I can’t see it… Okay, let me know.” Bob put his phone away, returned to the camera, and slipped his headphones back on.
“There was an explosion or a fire or something at the AMG building. My buddy–this other cameraman–is on his way there now,” Bob told us.
Bridgette and I went to the back window and looked out. We ran our eyes along the tree line in the distance. The AMG building was the tallest and really the only building in our not-quite-a-metropolis skyline, but it was too dark to see. The fire siren went off at the firehouse across the street from the school. We got glimpses of the trucks rushing out, but our view was blocked by the brick walls of the school and some trees. We went back to our seats and I continued with my recap.
“Regina Lansdowne here for a recap of the big game between our Bears and the Parkland Trojans. Mark Ryder #11 scored the first touchdown of the evening for the Bears, just past the seven minute mark of the first quarter. In the last press of the first quarter, Peter Randolph #22 recovered a fumble for a three-yard run. In the fourth down, Mike Johnson #68 had a one-handed reception for fifteen yards and brought the bears within two yards of the goal line as the quarter ended. The bears came back hungry in the second quarter with an interception by Chris Rover #6 and a twenty-yard run by Omar Reese #12. Zak Miller #67 ran for five yards and was piled on by Trojans–”
Someone was injured in the play. The coaches jogged onto the field as the refs pulled red uniformed players off of blue and vice versa. We couldn’t tell what had happened or who was injured. On top of that, they weren’t telling Alexander anything over the radio. When they don’t tell Alexander anything, it’s usually pretty bad. The stadium became quiet and everyone waited.
Coach Pepper stood up in the crowd of Bears and Trojans and signaled to the Paramedics who were already walking briskly in his direction. The spectators in the stadium, both home and away, rose to their feet with concern as the injured player started convulsing. You could barely see him through the gaps of white uniform covered shins and tattered kneepads. The crowd huddled closer around the injured player. Concerned parents ran on to the field and joined the crowd. The referees did what they could to keep the adults away, but with all of the waiting combined with the silence from the booth announcer, everyone needed to know what was going on.
Alexander tried desperately to raise someone on the radio, but he couldn’t. He spoke in the microphone as calmly as he could, “Everyone, please remain in your seats. Please remain in your seats. The officials and paramedics have everything under control.” 
Just after the announcement a fight broke out in the center of the crowd on the field. It was difficult to tell who was hitting who or why, but it appeared that both teams were involved. As soon as that happened, the players on the benches of both teams ran to the mob and burrowed to the center. A line of Blue Bears and a gang of Red Trojans dug through the crowd at opposite ends.
It was the inevitable climax to a terribly tense week. First there was the long ongoing rivalry with the Trojans, and a history of off the field fights. Then the tragic loss of two classmates, not to mention the struggle to keep the game on. Now let’s take all of our frustrations out on each other.
“Is that blood?” Bridgette pointed to the field and cringed at the same time. It looked like the fight on the twenty-yard line had gotten bloody. Alexander grabbed the binoculars from the desk and whipped them to his eyes. Just as he did that, the entire stadium went black. 
Bridgette screamed and we all jumped from our seats. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. Outside, I could still see the crowd fighting on the field and some spectators getting up and making their way down the bleachers. In the dark, it looked like everything had lost its color. 
The football field that was bright artificial green a moment ago, looked dull gray under the moonlight. It was too dark to distinguish anything out on the field other than more and more people were joining the crowd and trying to break up the fight. Some spectators were carefully making their way down the aluminum bleachers while others sat and waited with blankets on their laps with the dull white bear logo still visible in the dark.
“What’s going on?” Bridgette looked out the window, moving her head like a dog watching a tennis game.
“Power’s out.” Alexander turned to us matter-of-factly, and was a bit more nasally than usual.
“How come the camera’s still on?” Bridgette acknowledged Bob’s bright viewfinder.
“Battery. Automatically goes to battery when the power goes out.” Bob glanced out the window that ran the length of the announcer’s booth and faced the field. “Power’s out on the whole block.” He took his headphones off, hung them on the camera pan handle, and went to one of the small windows in the opposite wall that faced the school and the main street. 
“Power’s off on this block, but it’s on across the street,” Bob informed us. He moved closer to the window and squinted his eyes. “What the hell?”
The side door burst open. 
The announcer’s booth is a small rectangular building about twenty-five feet long and twelve feet wide. It’s separated into two rooms, the largest being the announcer’s area and a smaller room for storage. The booth area has one long desk that runs the length of the room. A full glass window runs the length of the desk and they both face the field. There used to be a row of house windows there, but they replaced those with one big piece of glass when they put the new field in this summer. Our worn grass field and gravel track was replaced with bright green artificial turf and a royal blue track around it to match our school colors. They rebuilt most of the booth at the same time. They put new doors and bolt locks in. Those were needed pretty badly because the main door was patched up with plywood after it had been cracked by vandals last year. It’s still just a wooden shack on stilts, but it’s an improvement none-the-less. There are two entrances to the booth, although one is sealed off. There’s the main door and a door at the opposite end. I guess they added one at the other end so you could get stuff in and out of storage easily. I don’t know why they enclosed it, but they did so by adding a link of fence from the corner of the existing fence, which surrounds the entire stadium, to the front corner of the booth. You used to be able to walk along the fence, make a right at the corner, and enter the storage room. But, now you can’t access the door from the outside unless you climb the fence. 
Brian burst into the main door followed by Cassie. Cassie usually came up to the booth before halftime with the last-minute air grams. Brian was her boyfriend and followed her around like a shadow. I was actually surprised to see him come in first. Brian had been on the football team last year, but had to quit because of an injury to his knee. He used to look like a total jock, but he let his hair grow out and changed his wardrobe to all baggy clothes.
After Cassie rushed in, Brian locked the door behind them.
“What’s going on out there? Who got hurt?” I asked.
“Do not go outside,” Brian panted, “Do not go out there.”
This could have easily have been a prank, Brian was known for pranks, but I could hear the worry in his voice.
We huddled around Brian. Bob came closer, and Alexander turned his chair.
“There’s something wrong with everybody out there. They’re biting each other” Brian gulped air and calmed a little.
“They’re not biting,” Cassie objected. “He thinks he saw Mr. Parker bite Jeff.”
“They’re biting,” Brian argued, “Just look outside.”
All of us moved to the desk and peered out of the window into the darkness. The bleachers below us were almost clear except for the bottom few rows. People were jammed at the steps that lead down to the walkway. In the dark, it looked like mounds of insects climbing over each other. 
Bridgette fiddled with the camera and Bob rushed to stop her.
“Please don’t touch that.”
“I just wondered if it had that night vision on it. I can’t see anything.”
“Yeah, it does.” Bob seemed mad for not thinking of it himself. He took the headset from the arm of the camera and slid it around his neck. He flipped a switch and the viewfinder turned green. He twisted the handles of the tripod and zoomed the camera in on the crowd down on the field. 
It took a moment for the camera to focus. The green and black blurry image went sharp. A woman turned away from the crowd only to be grabbed by several different people. Arms peered out of the darkness and pulled her back. White glowing eyes appeared and people bit into her. Bridgette and Cassie gasped and became uncomfortable. The camera zoomed in a little closer. One man pulled back from the screaming woman’s shoulder and seemed to look right at us. His eyes glowed bright and the woman’s blood was black as it dripped down his chin.
Bridgette and Cassie turned away. 
“I told ya, see I told ya,” Brian pointed definitively at the viewfinder. 
“What the hell is going on?” Bob panned the camera around some more. 
Bridgette grabbed her cell phone from the purse on the desk. She dialed 911 and waited. 
“We tried that already. It didn’t work.” Brian shook his cell phone at Bridgette and Cassie nodded in agreement.
“Busy.” Bridgette lowered the phone from her ear and looked at it. “How could 911 be busy?”
“It might be the phone company, not 911,” Alexander commented. “That happens sometimes when the lines have too much traffic.”
We stood fixed on the chaos outside the window. The field was just a mob of people crawling over each other like churning, boiling water. People who attempted to escape from the center mass would be grabbed and pulled back in. The small few that broke free, ran for the fences and attempted to climb over. The fences had been made higher during the field renovation because of parents and students that were hopping over. It was mostly parents that did not want to pay the $3 entry fee to a game. Rather than pay to support their school and child they would hop the fence. So, the school spent several thousands of dollars to prevent the loss of less than a hundred bucks a year.
“Why aren’t they going out the gate? That’s what we should be doing. We should go. I’m parked right outside the gate.” Bridgette darted to the small window closest to the door. “See? There’s my car, right there.”
“No, the gate is packed tight, it’s a mess there too,” Brian grumbled. “We can’t get out that way. That’s why we came up here.”
“We were standing on the bleachers waiting to find out who got hurt on the field,” Cassie pressed closer to Brian.  “Then the fight broke out… then the front gate… It was… we should tell them,” she looked at Brian.
“No,” he uttered.
“Tell us what?” Alexander sat up in his chair.
Everyone stared at Brian and Cassie.
“We saw James and Jason,” Cassie lowered her eyes, knowing how crazy it sounded.
“James and Jason? James and Jason from the car accident?” I said.
Cassie nodded yes.
“No. No, that’s not possible,” Bridgette shook her head. “They’re gone.”
“We saw them. They came in through the front gate with some others and attacked security. People ran over to help and within a few minutes the gate looked just like the field.”
What Cassie was saying was impossible. Bob and Alexander had looks on their faces that said the same thing.
“No, the lights were out, it was dark, it couldn’t be them,” Bridgette shook her head, disagreeing.
Brian sighed, “We saw them before the lights went out, still in their suits from the viewing.”
Alexander pushed his glasses up on his nose. “That’s impossible.”
“I’m just telling you what we saw,” the pitch in Brian’s voice rose.
The flicker of red and blue lights got Bob’s attention and he rushed to the small window that faced the street. “Come here. Look at this,” he said.
There were three small windows in the wall that faced the back of the school. Past the school was the main street. We huddled at the windows and looked outside.
A police car had stopped in the middle of the street. One lone officer exited the vehicle. He used the door as a shield, and aimed his pistol. He yelled “Stop” or “Freeze” or something like that, we only saw his mouth move, it was too far away to hear. 
Three men stumbled toward the officer and he fired at them. We could hear the feint crack of the gun. One of the approaching men was hit in the chest several times. His body snapped backward with each shot. Despite the point blank gunshots, the man kept approaching. The officer kept firing until the man was right on him and bit him in the neck. The officer pushed the man off and was overcome by five more people. The officer stood his ground impressively. He punched several men in the face, and broke one’s jaw with an uppercut. Three more men and a woman joined the group and overwhelmed the man. They pushed him to the ground, ripped his uniform… and ate him. 
You know how something is so repulsive you should turn away, but you need to see it? We watched as the officer was cannibalized by the group. After a few minutes the people simultaneously disbanded. They left the officer lying in the street in a puddle of blood. He looked shredded like a lawnmower had gone over him. A moment later the officer sat up and climbed to his feet. He limped away, leaving his gun on the concrete. He followed the others down the street until he disappeared behind the trees.
“Did you see that? Holy Shit! Did you just see that?” Bob rubbed his hat in a circle on his head. “That did not just happen. What the hell is going on here?”
Bob rushed to the camera and began panning it around the stadium. He locked his eyes on the viewfinder and I looked over his shoulder from behind.  He stopped on a woman who was face down on the field while several people gnawed on her. Just like with the officer, the people departed and the woman climbed to her feet. 
Bob stopped on a young boy being eaten by football players. I couldn’t tell who the players were or what team they were on, but the same thing happened. They left the young boy on the field and a moment later he sat up, his eyes glowing bright on the green screen. 
Everyone circled around the viewfinder. Alexander even got out of his chair, knocking his seat pillow to the floor. 
Bob zoomed in on a woman climbing the fence. She had gotten to the top, but was unable to get over the barbed wires that ran across the top to prevent such a thing. A dozen hands grabbed for her feet. She struggled to hold herself up, but her arms tired quickly. She eased lower and lower. Her face contorted in pain as she tried to stay up. A hand latched onto her shoe and pulled her down. Another hand grabbed on, and then another, until her hands sprung loose from the fence and she fell into the crowd.
Bob turned the viewfinder away and sighed out loud. Brian tried his cell phone again and got a busy signal. He stuffed it back in his pocket in frustration. He moved to the small window and looked out it again. “Hey, I can make it to that squad car and use the radio for help.”
“We’re not going out there,” I said.
“You’re not going out there,” Cassie shot Brian a decisive look.
“Radio? I have a scanner with me.” Alexander rushed to a duffle bag tossed in the corner. He pulled out a handheld scanner, unplugged the earpiece, and turned it on so we all could hear. 
“This is the police frequency.”
The transmissions were chaotic, there was shouting, screaming, gunshots, static, and everyone was speaking over one another. It was bad. We listened for a few minutes and could only make out a few words here and there. “Dead… bite… hospital… back away... biting…”
Alexander changed the frequency and tried to find something we could actually make sense of. He stopped on a religious station where the preacher spoke about the dead rising to release us from our earthly bounds. The transmission ended abruptly. 
“This is crazy,” Bob shook his head.
Alexander tuned in our local station. The DJ spoke about an infection that was spread by biting. We didn’t learn much after that because the radio station was overrun. The DJ pleaded for his life, screamed, and we were left with radio silence. It wasn’t completely silent, it sounded like people shuffling around the room, but not speaking. I imagined it sounded much like it would after the people from outside got in here and killed us all.
“Wait, there’s a station that simulcasts the BBC.” Alexander fiddled with the tuner.
“What’s the BBC?” asked Cassie. I told her it was CNN, but for Britain.
Alexander tuned in the feint station. We listened as the newscaster spoke about mob riots and attacks and in the streets of London.
“It’s happening everywhere,” I said. After the words left my lips, I felt heavier, like gloom had added ten pounds. I saw it weigh on everyone else too.
All of us sat in the dark room quietly with our heads hung low. The hope of the police coming and clearing all this up left my mind. Everyone else probably felt the same way. How long would we be safe here? Can they get in? Should we try to get somewhere safer? If we make it through the night, what will we do about food and water? There wasn’t even a bathroom here and I had to pee. I pictured us trapped in here for days, fighting over the last water bottle, then dying slowly and painfully from dehydration. 
I wondered how my mom was and tried calling her again on Bridgette’s phone. I couldn’t get through.
Alexander lost the BBC and tried to tune it in again. “Do you have any idea what this means?” We raised our heads and looked at Alexander.
“This is not an isolated incident, this could be a worldwide epidemic. Just think, some governments won’t be equipped to handle anything like this. Third world countries with little technology and poor infrastructure won’t be able to warn each other and are probably in the streets throwing rocks.”
Alexander took a breath and continued, “Modernized nations will react based on their political or cultural beliefs, which means each country will attempt different, even radically different, solutions. Korea would probably rely on its army. Russia might nuke Moscow or St. Petersburg while Tibet monks might practice passive resistance and be slaughtered. Or even worse, if Russia doesn’t have this infection, they might take the offensive and start nuking the UK or even us before it spreads to them.”
“Dude, who cares about what other countries are doing? Who gives a shit about the rest of the world right now?” Bob grew angry. “I’m only worried about me. How is what may or may not be going on in Russia going to help us survive what’s happening here tonight?”
Bob huffed and moved to the opposite side of the room.
He was right, this wasn’t the time to worry about what was going on elsewhere in the world. Maybe tomorrow or next week, but not now. When this all started I had feared for my own safety and the others here with me. Then I worried about my mom. I left her alone at the house. She was baking cupcakes for the bake sale tomorrow. Becca and Jess picked me up at about four to eat at the diner and then get to the game. I kissed Mom goodbye and left her in the kitchen with oven mitts on. “Remember I will ice them in the morning,” I shouted as the door closed. My mom and I had an arrangement, she did the baking and I spread the icing. I don’t have the baking gene in my DNA. For most of my teenage life, whatever I put in the oven came out charcoaled and smoking.
I wondered what happened to Becca and Jess and my eyes darted from dark figure to dark figure trying to find them. I didn’t see them. I didn’t see anyone I knew. I was acquainted with all of the football players, the cheerleaders, and most of their parents, but I couldn’t recognize anyone in the dark. They were all faceless, shadowy creatures.
I did see the concession stand. It was to the left side of the field set back from the track and surrounded by hundreds of people. I turned the camera and Bob stopped me.
“Here, let me do it.” He nudged me aside and grabbed the handle.
We watched the viewfinder. People pounded on the walls and side door of the small wooden building. It had three windows for helping customers and at night hinged plywood flaps would be pulled over the windows and padlocked. Mr. Mack who ran the stand with his wife had gotten the panels down over two of the windows and was struggling with the third. His meaty fingers were wrapped around the handle on the back of the board and he was pulling as hard as he could. Dozens of hands were jammed in the opening, grabbing for him, and pulling the panel back. Someone else was behind him whacking at the intruding arms with a spatula. The metal blade gashed arms. There were probably enough people to pick up the shack and flip it over if they wanted. They didn’t seem to be organized and they weren’t in a rush either. Their movements were slow. People slowly walked over to join the crowd. They didn’t run or jog. They walked like Becca, Jess, and I would walk around the mall on Sundays when we had no money and nothing to do. 
Inevitably, the crowd busted through the side door. Mr. Mack, who had been putting up a valiant struggle, was attacked from behind. He lost his grip on the window cover and was pulled back into the darkness. People who had their arms in the opening crawled into the shack.
We had no idea whether there were two people in the shack or twenty. I guess it didn’t matter because no one escaped.
Bridgette started crying. 
“They busted right through that door. Did you see that? Went right through it.” Brian seemed surprised at the obvious. He made Bridgette more upset. To be honest, he upset all of us.
“Yes, we saw it, thanks,” I grunted.
“No, I mean the door. It’s the same as the door here. They put all new doors in and it’s the same door down there as it is up here.”
Bob crossed the room to check on the door and stopped midway when a thump came from that direction. We all looked around at each other wide-eyed and scared. Another thump followed.
“Oh God,” more tears streamed from Bridgette’s eyes.
Brian headed toward the door and Cassie grabbed him by the arm. “No, don’t.”
“I’m just going to look.”
“Shhhhh! Keep quiet,” Bob whispered.
Brian tiptoed to the window in the back wall which was closest to the door. There was no window in the door itself or in the wall it was in. Brian pressed his face against the back window and looked to the side.
“Can’t see anything.” Brian moved to the front window that faced the stadium and leaned over the desk. “They’re coming up here,” he backed away from the window in a hurry.
The thumps at the door doubled.
Brian rushed back to the small window and looked out. “Hey, I left the band room door unlocked, we can make a run for the school.”
“I’m not going out there,” Bridgette sniffled.
“We may not have a choice in a few minutes.” Alexander’s left eyebrow rose. He probably thought the gesture made him look smarter. 
“It has brick walls, steel doors, and we can live off of cafeteria food until this all blows over,” urged Brian.
“Blows over?” Alexander shook his head.
As if on cue, the banging on the door increased.
“We can’t go out that way,” Bob nervously stroked his beard.
“I know. We can go out the other door and climb down the fence. It goes all the way down to the ground. And it’s clear from here to the school,” Brian checked out the window again.
“That’s crazy,” Bridgette mumbled.
“I don’t think I can make it,” Cassie pouted.
Brian held her. “Sure you can Babe, I’ll help you.”
Bob looked out the small window. “It is pretty clear to the school.”
Brian opened the door to the storage room and entered. Inside there were some folding chairs stacked against the wall, a bin of old banners, and a few long folding tables. Brian crossed the musty smelling room. He twisted the bolt lock, opened the door, and stepped outside. Cassie, myself, and Bob followed. Alexander and Bridgette stayed in the storage room doorway because there was no room for them on the small platform that had been fenced in.
We stood in the moonlight gazing out through the chain links. We could see the stadium and out onto the field much more clearly now. It was different than looking through a window. It was much more unnerving as well. The glass served as a shield to what was going on outside. Plus, the announcer’s booth sat elevated above the bleachers. This provided a comforting, unreachable feeling. Outside, even though there was a chain link fence between the infected people and us, it didn’t feel safe at all. 
I could smell the smoke in the air from the AMG fire. Looking out over the trees, I could see it now. The tip of the building protruded over the tree line. It was glowing in a smoky haze of orange. I didn’t expect that it would be long before the entire tower was a fireball.
Something else was very unsettling about being outside and it took me a minute to figure it out. You get used to the background noise of where you live, where you hang out, and where you go to school. When it changes, you notice it right away. What once was a loud stadium filled with chants, cheers, and band music was now quiet like a graveyard. 
Far in the distance we could hear gunshots, car horns, and screeching tires. I looked toward the main road and there was no traffic on it. That hum of steady traffic was gone.You could still see the police car under the streetlight with the driver door open, lights flashing, and a puddle of blood in the street. 
The most disturbing sound of all was this rustling and lapping like people were licking their lips. A chill raced up my spine and I shivered.
“What’s that noise?” Cassie whispered.
“They’re eating,” I replied.
Cassie gagged. Even with no light I could see she was trying as hard as hell not to throw up.
With the exception of the snack stand, the infected people were scattered pretty evenly around the stadium. Most of the vague shadowed shapes wandered aimlessly in the dark. No one ran anywhere. No one stopped to greet anyone or have a conversation. No one behaved like regular people behaved. They walked around in a daze. The infection turned regular people into walkers. Well, walkers until they attacked someone. Then they were like black tip sharks in a feeding frenzy.
A man rushed out of the darkness and grabbed the fence. His bloody fingers wrapped around the links. We were startled. I jumped back and collided with Brian and Cassie bumped into Bob.
The man looked at us with these hollow and vacant eyes. His neck was shredded from left to right and his white Adam’s apple protruded from the mess. His blue Bears jacket was soaked crimson. He shook the fence violently and tried to get to us. 
“Let’s go.” Brian climbed the back fence. He went slowly, keeping an eye on Cassie who followed behind him.
The barbed wire on the top wasn’t in circles like at the county prison. It was three strands of wire about four inches apart that ran parallel to the top of the fence. It looked like a little fence on top of a big fence. In any case, it was still strange to see barbed wire on the fence of your high school stadium. 
I wonder if the person that requested the barbed wire had to pick from different styles. “Oh, not that circle kind, it will make it look too much like a prison, this isn’t The Longest Yard ya know. Oh that parallel stuff is nice, it looks like a cute smaller fence on a bigger fence, people won’t even notice. Oh and no razors please, we don’t want to hurt the parents that still might want to hop the fence to get in for free.”
Brian fell. He was stepping over the barbed wire when his knee gave out. His foot slipped and now he’s upside down on the other side of the fence hanging by his foot twisted in wire. Cassie leaned over the fence and pulled Brian’s jacket, trying to help him up. I held Cassie’s foot to give her some stability.
Brian grabbed the fence and climbed hand over hand until he was near the top.
Walkers gathered at the fence and climbed on top of one another to get to us. People at the front of the fence were trampled to the ground and stepped on. One of the infected people scurried to the top of the pile and bit Cassie in the arm. Cassie screamed and fell on top of me.
Bob lifted Cassie off of me. She clutched her bleeding arm and cried. I was flat on my back, facing the sky. My head hurt and my ears rang. I screamed “Lookout Brian!” and watched the infected man bite into Brian’s trapped leg. Brian yelled and stomped the guy in the face with his free foot. The man tumbled backward over the mountain of people and down the bleachers. He fell awkwardly on his head between two rows of seats and didn’t get up again.
Alexander and I dragged Cassie back inside. Bob climbed up the fence and tried to help Brian. 
We carried Cassie through the storage room and laid her on the floor of the announcer’s booth. Bridgette and I propped her head up with a sweatshirt while Alexander grabbed the first aid kit. He pressed bandages into the gaping wound. “We have to stop the bleeding, she’s bleeding a lot.” Alexander pressed more gauze into the wound and Cassie screamed in agony.
“Am I infected? Am I going to become like the people outside?” Cassie said with tear filled eyes.
Bridgette, Alexander, and I didn’t answer. She most likely would become infected, but there was no reason to make her more upset. I tried to comfort her as best I could and then left to check on Bob and Brian.
The fence outside the back door, the section that blocked off the stadium from the storage entrance, was surrounded by so many people that I couldn’t see the field. The walkers grabbed, pulled, and shook the fence violently. Bob was at the top of the fence. He had a foot on either corner section, a hand on the top bar to support himself, and was tugging on Brian with his free hand.  Brian was unconscious and Bob couldn’t get the leverage to pull him back over. Plus, Brian’s foot was still trapped in the wire.
One of the walkers came within arm’s reach of Bob. They climbed up, swung for him, and grabbed his sweatshirt. Bob freaked and dropped down to the landing.
“I need something to cut the wires with.” We both went back in. Bob flicked his lighter on and started rummaging through the junk in the storage room. I returned to the booth.
In the booth, the pounding on the door was steady, but the door seemed to be holding. Bridgette was hovering over Cassie. Alexander had returned to his seat and was staring out the window. 
“Does anybody have anything we could cut the wires with? We’re trying to get Brian free,” I asked. Alexander and Bridgette shook their heads no.
Bob walked in. “Does anybody have anything we can use?” 
“No, I already asked.”
Bob searched the booth. 
Cassie had grown more pale, seemed disoriented, and was sweating noticeably.
“She doesn’t look well.”
“She’s infected from that bite, just like the radio said. It’s only a matter of time before she tries to eat us.” Alexander finished wrapping Cassie’s arm with a bandage and got up.
Bob finished his search with no luck. 
“What do we do with her?” I asked.
Bridgette cried. Alexander stared out the window. Bob shook his head and started pacing in the corner. No one answered.
“What do we do with her?” I repeated.
“We have to put her outside.” Bob stopped pacing. 
“No!” Bridgette demanded.
Bob got agitated. “You saw what happened out there. We all saw what happened. We don’t have much time.”
“We can’t open that door and we can’t put her on the other side, that’s the only way out for us.” Alexander reported. 
“They have to send more police. Don’t you think more police will come?” Bridgette asked desperately. 
“I don’t think they’re sending more police.” My voice quivered and I felt my eyes tear.
“What happens when the police can’t help? Do they send in the army?” Bridgette questioned.
“No they send in the National Guard.” Alexander sighed. “I have a friend in the guard, he was supposed to be on base this weekend.” Alexander snickered, “Usually his weekends are pretty boring.”
Bob went into the storage room and threw things around looking for something that he could use to cut the wires.
I stood in the room and tried to ignore the pounding. I walked around Bridgette and Cassie and stood next to the thumping door. At first, I just wanted to check the door and make sure it wasn’t coming apart at the seams. I thought that not seeing cracks in the frame would put me at ease. I realized, as I stood there watching the door shake and the sound of pounding fists filling my head, that I never felt more alive. I moved as close to the door as I could. I turned and put my ear near the door until the pounding drowned out every other noise. Cracks or no cracks, the door could come apart any second. I felt like I was on a cliff and I could either stand where I was and be safe or fall forward and be gone forever.
“Hey.” Bob peeked out from the storage room. “I found pliers, can you give me a hand?” 
I nodded yes and backed away from the door. Bob moved quickly through the storage room and out the side door. He held the door open as I stepped out onto the platform.
I thought that the infected parents and students on the other side of the fence would thin out a little since we went inside. The opposite was true. It looked like the crowd had doubled. The platform shook from all of the weight and I was surprised I didn’t notice it when I was inside the booth.
“Shit,” Bob groaned.
“I know.” I looked at the crowd and my stomach twisted into knots.
“No, look.” Bob tugged on my arm until I turned and saw what he saw.
Brian had been infected. You could tell because his eyes were vacant and hazed over. He snarled and clawed for us like a rabid dog as he struggled to get out of his upside down position. His foot was still twisted in the wire at the top of the fence. His ankle wound seemed worse than I remembered. His pant leg hung down and was soaked red. I could see his shinbone all the way from his ankle sock to the cuff of his jeans. He flailed his free foot and tried to get to us through the fence. He was just like the others.
We returned the announcer’s booth. 
“You couldn’t get him free?” Bridgette was kneeling beside Cassie and holding her hand.
I shook my head no. “He’s one of them.” Alexander wrinkled his forehead like he didn’t believe me, and went out to check. 
Cassie continued to get worse. “Where’s Brian?” she asked deliriously. In the short time we were outside, her skin had grown paler and she was barely conscious.
Alexander slipped back into the room quietly like we didn’t know what he was doing. 
“We don’t have much time, we have to do something.” I hovered over Cassie. 
“She was bit at the same time as Brian. She’ll be one of them soon.” Alexander pushed his glasses higher on his nose and looked at us. He wanted to get her out of the room as quickly as possible. 
Bob looked out the back window at the school. “Which door is supposed to be open?” 
I pointed the band room door out to him.  
“I think she stopped breathing,” Bridgette cried. Cassie was perfectly still on the floor.
“We have to go now.” Bob disappeared into the darkness of the storage room and I followed. Alexander trailed behind, followed by Bridgette. Bridgette closed the storage room door. I glanced behind and got my last image of the announcer’s booth just as the door closed. It was Cassie lying dead on top of that plastic carpet.
The crowd outside had grown even larger. Bob scaled the fence and twisted a strand of barbed wire with the pliers. Brian, who was now infected, reached up for him. Bob leaned back a little to stay out of reach. The wire snapped, freed Brian’s foot, and he went plummeting to the ground. Brian landed neck first with a loud crack as he hit the grass. A few feet further out and he would have splattered on the blacktop of the parking lot. 
Bob climbed to the top of the fence and stopped. “What’s that?”
Above all the noise from the crowd pulling on the fence and stomping on the bleachers to get to us, there was a siren going off. It was too far away to be the firehouse, and it sounded different from the fire siren. 
“I think that’s the prison,” Alexander quivered, he was nervous as hell.
That worried me. Even if we do make it to the school and get inside, we won’t only have to worry about infected people getting in, we might have to worry about escaped prisoners trying to get in. I wasn’t even on solid ground yet and I was worried about something that might not even happen. I cleared my head and focused on getting into the school.
Bob shimmied over the fence and scaled down the other side. I climbed up and over next. Alexander followed. I was climbing down when Bridgette screamed. Cassie stumbled out of the storage room and grabbed her. The more Bridgette screamed, the more riled up the crowd of people around the fence became.
Bridgette shook Cassie loose and escaped up the fence. Cassie grabbed hold of Bridgette’s ankle. Cassie was about to take a bite out of it when Bridgette kicked herself free. Cassie fell to her ass. Alexander helped Bridgette up and over. Cassie got up and tried to bite our fingers as we climbed down the other side. I almost fell as I tried to move my hands away from the snaps of her jaw.
Bob helped Bridgette and I to the ground. We avoided Brian’s crumpled, stagnant body and sprinted for the school. There were many walkers around, but they were spread out and moving slowly. 
Halfway to the school, Bridgette stopped. I grabbed her and pulled. She resisted. 
“James?”
I stopped tugging and couldn’t believe my eyes. James was hunched and shuffling toward us. He was pale, his eyes were sunken, and he moved slowly and awkwardly. He walked the way you would walk if a steering wheel had crushed your chest. James was still dressed in the suit I saw him in at the wake yesterday. 
I couldn’t believe what I had seen. It was just not possible. Brian and Cassie told us earlier, but it’s much easier to ignore what you’ve heard than to ignore what can see with your own eyes.
More people moved toward us. The people that were wandering aimlessly around the area had noticed us and were slowly enclosing. 
I grabbed Bridgette’s sweatshirt with both hands and pulled her toward the school. At this point I really didn’t care, she was coming with me even if I had to drag her.
“But, he’s alive!”
“No he’s not.”
Bridgette broke her eye lock with James and stumbled to catch up`.
Bob and Alexander were at the blue metal door clawing at its edges. The band room door has no door handle. It’s an exit-only door that automatically locks when closed. If someone wants to keep it open they prop a rock or something in the way to prevent it from locking. Brian may have done that earlier, but someone had since closed it. 
Someone might be inside, so I pounded on the door for as long as I could stand the sting in my palm. No one answered. 
The walkers were encircling us. 
“My car. My car is right over there!” Bridgette yelled as she sprinted for the parking lot. I reached out to grab for her and the edge of her sweatshirt slipped through my fingers.
The walkers that were coming for us were confused as if they weren’t sure if they should continue to go for us or follow Bridgette.
Bridgette ran along the brick wall of the school, hurdling over the small shrubs. She must have readied her door key in her pocket because she had it ready when she stopped at her car. She slipped the key in quickly, but she didn’t get a chance to turn it. A walker came around the front of the car and bit into the back of her neck. Bridgette screamed, backed away from the man, and put herself in a crowd of walkers. They grabbed her by the arms and brought her to the ground. Her screams were muffled as they piled on top of her. 
The encroaching walkers turned their attention back on us. 
“This way,” Bob whispered as he pulled me away from the door. He tugged in the opposite direction that Bridgette ran. 
Behind us, the band room door opened. Alexander turned and was standing face to face with Jason. Jason was a large boy and filled the doorway. His face was badly mangled with stitches crisscrossing all over his face. I can understand why his casket was closed at his wake. Jason bear-hugged Alexander and pinned his arms. He lifted him up and Alexander could do nothing, but kick his feet wildly. This predicament gave Jason unobstructed access to Alexander’s face and neck.  Jason began his feast with a bite into Alexander’s nose. Alexander let out a high pitch scream as blood shot out from the spot where his nose used to be. Without a nose, Alexander’s glasses slid off his face and fell to the ground.
Bob pulled me. I let him guide me backwards as I watched Jason bite deep into Alexander’s skinny buzzard-like neck. Alexander continued to scream. He was trapped in Jason’s big meaty arms and couldn’t move. He was like a moth pinned to a piece of cardboard and had nothing left to do, but die.
The crowd around Bridgette scattered and she rose to her feet. She stood in place and stared at me with dead eyes. Her jaw and neck had been eaten and she couldn’t hold her head completely up. It hung low the way you would look mad at someone.
“Climb!” yelled Bob. 
Bob had pulled me into a small indent in the school behind a fence where the garbage dumpster was kept. There were several doors to get inside the building, but all of them were closed. We climbed on top of the dumpster with the walkers scrambling at our heels. From the dumpster, we grabbed the ledge and pulled ourselves onto the small roof that ran over the first floor hallway. 
The walkers didn’t seem to be following us and for some reason couldn’t climb onto the dumpster. 
The roof ran the length of the building we were on, which was about a hundred feet. The width was about twelve feet, which was the space between the edge of the roof and the wall of the second story.
The school was a complex of interconnected buildings of various stories, with the new gym being the tallest. Unfortunately, we were on a section of roof that wasn’t connected to anything. We could either stay where we were or break into the second floor.
Bob cupped his hands and looked in the second story windows.
“I see books.”
“It’s the library.”
“Looks clear.”
Bob kicked in the window. It didn’t shatter as I thought it would. It was plastic. It bent under Bob’s assault and he was able to kick the window out of its frame.
We climbed into the library. I was surrounded by the aroma of old books and suddenly had the urge to be extra quiet and do some homework.  
We slid a small bookshelf in front of the open window just in case anyone got onto the roof. It probably wouldn’t hold, but it would slow them down and give us some warning. 
“I’ll check out the rest of this place,” Bob wandered off into the shadows.
I dropped to the carpet in front of one of the other windows. I felt safe, at least for the time being. Exhaustion swept over me quickly. I felt my eyes get heavy and I yawned. I had to pee, but I was too tired and emotionally drained to get up and do it.
I looked out through the window and saw walkers everywhere. They stumbled in the dark all around the school grounds, wandering in the moonlight. Some walked around the parking lot, circling in and out of the parked cars as if they were looking for their own car. Others were going in and out of the stadium gate as if the game were still on. Football players, still in helmet and uniform, meandered around the field. Students walked around the track as if it were gym class. My math teacher repeatedly bumped into the faculty entrance, trying in vain to open the door. 
A cool breeze came through the barricaded window. With it were the sounds of the walkers in the alley by the dumpster. They groaned and scratched at the wall trying to get to us. 
“We’re okay.” Bob startled me, “The doors are locked and there is no one else in here” 
He sat on the carpet and leaned against the big bookshelf. He looked just as tired as I was.
“Sun’ll be up in a few hours,” he muttered.
“Yeah,” I replied as I leaned against the small cubby wall that surrounded the window. I could feel sleep coming and I looked forward to it. I stared down at the road that ran between the school and the stadium until my eyes closed. It felt good to close them. Things would be different in the morning. In the morning we would probably find out what’s really going on. I’m sure the Army or the National Guard would straighten everything out. Maybe we would even be rescued. 
Maybe I would even see my Mom.
I opened my eyes and saw Bridgette in the street. She stood perfectly still in the land of walkers. Her head was down and her eyes were locked on me. She moved her blood soaked mouth like she was talking to me. Her lips were missing and I couldn’t make out what she was trying to say. I could imagine it though: “Why didn’t you stop me Regina? Why did you let me run off? I would be up there with my head on your shoulder right now if you had done something to stop me. I’ll get you for this. I won’t rest until you are down here with me.” 
I closed my eyes tightly, waited for sleep, and prayed that she wouldn’t be there when I awoke.

Night

1

Ethan stood tall and majestic. His muscles were tight and flexed. His eyes were sharp and curly blonde locks of hair fluttered in the night breeze while he waited. He was ready. I stared up at him from where I had fallen. Dark blue clouds crept by overhead. The moon glistened off his skin like he was marble. He would make a great looking statue. Second to only Michelangelo’s David, I imagined.
He was waiting for the dead man to stumble closer. He was a gruesome one. Before he died he could have been an accountant or a lawyer–judging by his suit. His face was half eaten now and he was missing an eye. Bloody stringy things dangled from the socket. His tie was loose and his shirt undone. It looked like whoever turned him had started at the top and worked their way down. The accountant must have reanimated when they were eating his chest, because that’s where the feeding stopped. 
The wait ended, the accountant was in range. His hungry hand reached out for warm flesh. The agonizing moans of death escaped his agape mouth. Ethan smashed the clawing hand down with the bat, fracturing several digits. The snap of the bones made a distinct sound apart from the smack of the bat. My ear was trained now. Ethan swung and crushed the side of the man’s head. His skull sunk inward. Crimson, pudding-thick blood oozed out. The man fell over to the side, dead for good.
“Only one hit that time,” I said. 
Ethan snatched my hand and pulled me to my feet. I didn’t help and let him do all of the work. I never believed in “love at first sight,” but how about falling in love in one night? That would work for me. Unfortunately, he had a girlfriend and we were on our way to her. It seemed that the walking dead had put a hiccup in both of our love lives.
We ran again. The running was easy and I thanked God I bought that treadmill last year and actually used it. We cut across another yard. The grass was overdue for a trim and made my steps loud as if I were running in corduroy.
The dead ruled the street. In the streets, we were out in the open. Out in the open, we were vulnerable. We could be seen and surrounded quickly. One on one, they were manageable. In groups, you didn’t stand a chance–so we stuck to foliage, trees, backyards, and shadows. It had kept us alive so far, but it had its disadvantages. Mainly, that it was dark. Sometimes it was difficult to see into each nook and cranny until you were right on top of it. Sometimes when you were right on top of it, there would be a cold, dead person hungry and waiting for you. That’s why Ethan went first and that’s why he always had the bat ready.
“This way,” he whispered.
I followed two feet behind him and never more than three, unless he was swinging for the fences. We had about another two miles to go to get to Ethan’s apartment. That’s where his girlfriend was. He hoped.
The world had turned upside down in one evening. Something had caused the recently dead to rise and attack the living. Once a living person was killed, they soon rose and attacked the next nearest living person. Then that person died and came back and attacked another living person. So on and so forth. You can see how it got out of control so quickly. 
It started in small reports on the news. An elderly nun attacked some students during class. Later, a jogger was mugged at the park. Then, there was an explosion downtown. Mass hysteria followed. Not long after that there was no news at all. The radio went dead, then the phones.
All I can tell you is that the dead have risen to attack the living. We needed to stay alive and our first order of business was to find a car. 
A tank would be ideal, but there were none around. We had been checking cars for the past hour as we moved in the direction of Ethan’s apartment. When cars were locked or had no keys in them, we checked front doors of houses with cars in the driveway. Front doors that didn’t have the walking dead pounding at them or moving around the house like ants on a sandwich. 
Every house we had passed so far, every single house, had its front door busted in and all of the windows at ground level broken. It looked like a hurricane had swept through town and left the structures intact.
We came across a house with the front door open, a Subaru in the driveway, and not many dead around. Houses were scariest because in the street, you could see what was coming. A monster walking toward you from down the block is not as terrifying as one grabbing you from the shadows of a dark claustrophobic hallway.
We moved slowest in the houses too. Slow because the monsters could pop out from anywhere, and quiet because they were attracted to sound. Did I mention that we couldn’t turn the lights on either? Try walking around a complete stranger’s house in the dark without making a sound and let’s see how well you do.
We had a rule when checking houses. We only searched within fifteen feet of the front door. When most people come home, the first thing they do is plop down their keys on a table or a counter or a key hook. That’s where we’ll find them. Any more than fifteen feet and it’s most likely that the keys aren’t here. Any more than fifteen feet, the deeper you get into that unfamiliar place, the odds of getting killed skyrocket.
No keys.
“Shit,” grumbled Ethan. “I thought we would find them this time.”
I liked the way Ethan cursed. He dragged out the word, usually holding on the second syllable and then blasted an exclamation point at the end. He could fire off a stream of expletives at me and it wouldn’t sound like he was cussing at all.
Floorboards creaked and both of our heads snapped to the rear of the house. The noise came from down the hall. It’s usually at this point in time that we exit the residence expeditiously. Ethan didn’t, he waited.
A silhouette appeared in the hallway. The black stringy hair of a woman was outlined by the moonlit window behind her. The floor squeaked under dead feet as she approached us. 
Ethan flicked the lighter. The lighter came in handy for a flash of warm yellow light. It was subtle enough not to attract any attention from the dead and gave us a look at what the night was hiding. The woman’s sunken dead eyes were fixed on us. She shuffled closer. Ethan tucked the lighter back in his pocket and readied the bat.
Smack!
The hall was narrow and Ethan had adjusted his swing. He struck the woman on the neck, and the blow wasn’t severe enough to sever the spinal cord. That’s how you stop them by the way–by causing severe damage to the brain or severing the spinal cord by the neck. Ethan’s strike did bring the old hag to her knees. He delivered another crushing blow to her forehead. Her skull wrapped around the bat and fine mist of blood decorated the walls. She fell backward into a quad stretch and never got back up.
“Nice,” I complemented. The sight turned my stomach.
“Thanks,” he answered, raising his eyebrows. He realized how gruesome it was.
Ethan took the towel dangling from the refrigerator door handle and wiped the bat clean.  He quietly rested the bat on the counter and swung open cabinet doors until he found two tall drinking glasses. He filled them from the tap and handed me one.
“Thanks.” I had been so preoccupied trying to survive, that I didn’t realize how thirsty I was.
Ethan had chugged his first glass and refilled it before I took my first sip. We stood in the dark kitchen with a corpse at our feet and enjoyed the brief break.
“Ready?” Ethan asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” I replied.
Before we went out the front door a car sped down the street. I think it startled both of us because we hadn’t seen anyone (anyone alive) in several hours. It was too dark and the car went by too fast to see who was in it. I did feel a bit jealous that they had wheels and we didn’t. I grabbed the knob of the front door and Ethan tugged me back.
“Wait a second,” he said. His warm breath on my neck gave me goose bumps and I inched closer to him. Outside, a lone zombie limped as quickly as it could down the road. I turned the knob and Ethan squeezed my arm.
“Wait,” he whispered.
Another dead one stumbled down the street, then another, and another. 
“Are they following that car?”
“I think so,” Ethan said.

2

Soon, the street was filled from curb to curb with the dead, like a dam full of people had burst and spilled out into the road. The entire mob was following after the car, even though it was far out of sight.
Ethan sat down on the floor. 
“We are going to be here a while.”
I joined the floor next to him. We watched the herd of dead stumble by, hidden in the shadows of the house.
Ethan rubbed a spot of blood on his pants.
“You’re wearing suit pants.” 
“Yeah, you should have seen me,” he spoke softly. “I was all dressed up.”
He smiled.
“I’m usually a jeans and t-shirt guy, but today I had this meeting. I write software programs. My company was trying to close a big account and they asked me to be there in case there were any technical questions.”
“Your company?”
“Not mine. I don’t own it. I work for them.” He laughed and then his smile faded.
“We were in the meeting room at the client’s office downtown. The meeting was winding down. I was bored out of my mind. All of a sudden there was this bright flash and a thundering boom that shook the entire building. The windows shattered and glass shot everywhere.”
“You were near that explosion?”
“The building next to it–How did you know about it?
“I heard it on the radio–You don’t have a scratch on you.”
“I know. The woman running the meeting sat across from me with her back to the window. She stood up just as the window exploded. While everyone was picking the glass out of their arms, she was bleeding to death on the carpet. I pulled a big shard out of her arm and wrapped the gash with my tie. There was so much glass in her face and she was bleeding everywhere. I put my jacket under her head and went to get some towels.”
Ethan looked through the storm door of the house, out into the street. The herd of dead was thinning out, but it wasn’t safe enough to go outside.
“When I came back to the room, with hands full of towels, the lady stood straight up and grabbed the guy next to her. The guy spun, tripped, and they fell backwards out the window. We were on the third floor.”
“Oh my God”
“That’s when the others in the meeting noticed her. They didn’t notice her when she was gushing crimson on the rug. She falls out of the window and all of sudden everyone is concerned.”
Ethan took a breath.
“The whole front of the AMG building was on fire. We couldn’t see much outside. There was a lot of smoke. People were running through the street. Someone said that the police wanted us to stay where we were. A guy from the office was on his cell phone with a friend in the street. He warned us not to go outside–that the explosion was a biological weapon and people were going insane.”
There was a noise in the back of the house. We both looked back at the hall. I had been so wrapped up in Ethan’s story that I could have easily been snatched from behind. We both dismissed it as the wind and he continued.
“Ray, the sales guy that I went to the meeting with, pointed down to a red spot on the sidewalk. The man and woman that fell out of the window were gone. At the time, we thought police or medics took them away. We sat there and watched things get worse and worse in the street. Then the office filled up with the crazy people from outside and they were attacking everyone in the office.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t know my way around the office. I saw this one guy running and I was about to follow him, but he ran through a door and locked everyone out. We found the fire exit and got to the stairs. The stairwell was filled with smoke. We tried to go down, but the bottom floors were in flames. We went up to the roof, walked to the next building, and took the fire escape down. Only five of us made it to the ground before they swarmed the ladder. They were everywhere. We waited too long to leave the building. If we hadn’t listened to the police, more of us would have made it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Hindsight is twenty-twenty I guess.”
Maple trees shifted in the breeze and created drifting shadows under the streetlight. There were less of the dead outside and soon we’d be able to leave.
“I’m sorry, I’ve been rambling on.” 
“No, it’s fine. Really,” I said.
“How about you? What’s a nice girl like you doing out in this?”
“Well, according to my ex, I’m not that nice.” I gave the most flirtatious look I could muster. Ethan smiled, but I could tell that his girlfriend was on his mind.
“I’m not even from around here. I live in Media, right outside of Philly. My best friend died in a car accident three days ago. I drove here for the funeral. Before the wake, she woke up. She had been dead and embalmed for three days–and woke up. We did what you’re supposed to do. We called an ambulance. None came so we drove her kicking and biting to the hospital. We never made it there. The car was attacked and I was the only one who got away.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” My eyes watered. “Seems like it was days ago.” I wiped the tears from my eyes and turned away from Ethan.
“I think we can go,” he said.
“Back on the run again?”
Ethan stopped and stared at the dead woman on the floor of the hall. “Maybe not.” He leaped to his feet and went through the corpse’s pockets. From the last pocket he pulled out a set of keys and dangled them like a doggy treat.
We snuck out of the house and rushed to the car. Ethan unlocked the car with the remote and we got in. He fired up the engine, popped on the lights, and sped backward into the street. We skidded to a stop and then bucked forward. We went down a block and then Ethan made a left to avoid catching up to the mob that had passed us.
As soon as we had turned the corner it was like we had driven into a war zone. Hours earlier, this was a serene neighborhood with plush green lawns, kids playing, and dogs chasing tennis balls.
The cars that were once parked neatly in the street and driveways were in disarray. Some were on lawns with doors open and others were ablaze on curbs. One car had smashed into a big tree. It had a cracked windshield, and a dead woman face down in a pool of blood on the hood. 
We stopped by that tree because the house next to it was surrounded by the dead. That meant there were survivors inside. Unfortunately, there was nothing we could do. They were probably safer than we were. One of the dead slapped his hands against the back window and looked in. Ethan speed away. 
On the next block, two teen zombies pulled a charcoaled body from the back of a smoldering car. The car was parked diagonally on a front lawn. However, it wasn’t a car anymore. It was a black, burned out, wire frame of a vehicle, still smoking with nothing left on it to burn.
The cars scattered in the streets created a maze we had to creep through. We were often up on the sidewalk to get around. The dead noticed us and moved after us, but we keep our speed a bit faster than their’s.
We squeezed between two parked cars, scraping both sides of the Subaru. An old woman sitting in the front seat of her old clunker reached for us as we scratched by. The seatbelt strapped her in. As a zombie she didn’t have the where-with-all to pop the latch. She sat in her mauve dress and flower hat like she was on route to a fancy dinner.
“Look.” 
Up ahead, a man stood on top of an SUV surrounded by a pack of hungry dead. The monsters clawed at him, trying to get on the roof. The middle-aged man, with a mop of black hair and a pot belly, kept them at bay with a golf club, a $600 graphite driver. I know the price because I had bought the same one for my golf-fanatic ex-boyfriend weeks before we split up. Sadly, he never got to use it. It’s sitting in my closet because I repossessed it, along with a few other items.
The man on the car had a girl curled at his feet. Her hair was black and stringy as well, so I assumed that it was his daughter. The man was soaked with sweat and dog-tired. I could tell by the lack of zing in his swing. There was no telling how long he had been up there. He may have been swinging for hours.
A construction worker zombie with a yellow hard hat, grabbed the girl by her ankle and pulled. The girl slid on the roof, fated for certain death. The guy, frantic and weary, smashed the hands with the club and freed the girl and dragged her back from the edge.
“I’m going to pull along side, so they can hop on our roof. We’ll drive them out” Ethan said.
“Don’t hit their car. You don’t want to knock him off.” One false move and the stringy haired man would fall into a sea of dead.
“Right,” Ethan said cautiously.
Ethan pulled up along side the silver SUV and pushed the zombies out of the way. One fell under the front wheel. Ethan had to hit the gas to get over the hump. 
I rolled down the window a crack.
“Jump on the roof, we’ll get you out of here.”
The man, his daughter, and his golf club were on the roof before I finished shouting.
The dead construction man grabbed the guy’s ankle, just after he switched roofs. When Ethan pulled away, the guy slammed down on the roof. He must have grabbed the roof rack because he didn’t tumble into the street. Instead, the construction guy was dragged along with us, clutching stringy hair guy’s ankle.
We had several disabled cars to swerve around until we were clear. Each time we turned, the dragging corpse swung outward and the roof man yelled. His ankle was the handle.
I imagined that Ethan wanted to speed up, turn, pull the parking brake, and send Mr. Hard Hat tumbling. Instead, when we were clear of the street and there were much fewer dead, Ethan calmly stopped the car, slid the bat out from beside my leg, exited and walked around to the back of the Subaru.
I watched through the back window as the first swing sent the hard hat spinning over the car. It landed on the roof, right side up. The second swing sent the zombie back to hell.
“Get in.” Ethan said.
He helped the man off of the roof and her semi conscious daughter into the back seat.  After they were all tucked in, Ethan closed their door and slid back in the driver’s seat and sped off.
“Is that your daughter?” I asked.
“Yes,” the man said, panting.
“What happened to her?”
“They–they bit her.”
Ethan and I exchanged solemn looks. The man caught his breath.
“Wait. You have to stop. You don’t understand. I have to go back.”
“Buddy, we’re not going back there, you barely got out the first time.”
“We have to go back. My wife is in the house.”
Ethan slowed. The brakes squeaked until the car came to a stop. He tapped the steering wheel with his thumbs and then looked at me like I even had a clue of what to say.

3

The dead gathered around the car and slapped grey hands on the windows. The daughter had been attacked and bitten while walking home from school. After a few hours, she had developed a high fever. The father decided to take her to the hospital, but his wife is in a wheel chair. He couldn’t carry them both, so he took his daughter first with the only weapon in the house, a graphite driver. He was surrounded before he could open the car door, so he climbed up on the roof.
Ethan turned and looked at the daughter. She was feverish and incoherent.
“She keeps getting worse,” the man said.
“Where did she get bitten?” I asked.
The man rolled up his daughter’s sleeve. A white piece of gauze with a small brown circle in its center was taped to her wrist. Black veins spidered away from the wound. She had blood poisoning.
Ethan put the car in reverse and sped backward over two zombies. He spun the car around and drove back. He stopped a block from the house.
“Ok, you–What’s your name?” Asked Ethan.
“Ted, I’m Ted.”
“Ted, I am going to drive right up to the front door. We’ll both get out–“
“Why the front door? I was going to pull into the garage.”
“Garage?”
“Yeah, I even moved a bunch of junk, so that I could pull in there. I haven’t used the garage in ages. I figured it was the easiest way.”
“Do you have a door opener for it?”
“Well it’s in the car.”
“Where?”
“On the visor.”
“Ok, the garage it is.”
“Can I have your car keys?”
Ted pulled the keys from his pocket and handed them to Ethan. He took them and turned to me. “Feel like grabbing the remote?”
“Sure, I guess.”
Ethan hit the gas. 
“Roll down your window.” He ordered.
It took me a second to find the button, but I got the window down.
Ethan sped past the car and skidded sideways in the street. He took out three zombies as if the car was his new baseball bat. He pressed a button on the SUV remote that Ted had given him and the rear window of Ted’s SUV rolled down.
Ethan sped on a collision course with Ted’s parked SUV. He turned sharply, skidded, and my passenger window stopped right behind the rear window of the SUV. I leaped through and slithered into the back of the SUV.  I dove over the seats and ripped the remote from the visor. I crawled back, leaped out of the back of the SUV, and dove into the Subaru like Superman. I was upside down on the front seat with my feet in the air. Ethan powered up the window and I tucked my feet in just before it closed.
I handed Ethan the garage remote. He pressed the button without taking the little box. The garage door opened and he gunned it, without waiting for me to sit up or bothering to turn the car around. There were three thumps and a crash. The first thump was the passenger tire going over the curb as we sped backwards. The second two were a couple of walking dead between the garage and us. The crash was us skidding backwards into the garage and crushing Ted’s stuff.
“Hit the button!” Ethan yelled. 
I clicked the remote and heard the door start to close. Ethan flew out of the car with his bat in hand. He didn’t wait for the door to close and pulled the latch on the chain, releasing the door. The door fell closed. Ethan turned the knob in the center of the door and locked it.
I righted myself in the seat and got out of the car.  The boxes of junk that had filled the garage were squished against the back wall. Ted got out in dismay.
“Look at my stuff,” he moaned.
It’s common in stressful situations for people to nit pick at little things. It distracts them from what’s really going on.
The garage entry door opened and Ted’s wife peeked in. She leaned forward in her wheelchair. She was attractive, although her eyes were red from crying.
“Teddy,” she said softly.
“I’m okay sweetie.”
“I was worried.”
“We’re okay. Everything’s okay.”
“How’s Pricilla?”
“She’s the same.”
“Are we still going to the hospital?”  She opened the door wider.
Ted looked at Ethan and me with desperation.
“Yes Maam, we’re still going to the hospital.” Ethan said. 
Ted was relieved. Asking two strangers to drive his family through deadville was a lot to ask. 
“What about your–” I whispered to Ethan.
“It’s okay. It’s on the way.” 
“You don’t have to do this. I know you want to get back to–“
“It’s ok.”
“This is my wife Jackie,” Ted said.
We said hi, but Jackie was looking at the garage door–which shook from the dead banging on the other side.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Jackie asked.
I imagined us all at the dinner table; a table cloth patterned with peaches, white crisply folded napkins, the good silver, cheese and crackers, a fruit tray. We laugh and dine with a glass of chardonnay in hand. Then, bloody grey arms smash every window and the dead fill the room. Ted grabs his club. Ethan readies his bat. Jackie screams as the dead rip her from her chair.
“I’m fine,” Ted said.
“Could I use your bathroom,” I asked.
“Sure,” said Jackie as she rolled back from the door. I walked up the small staircase.
The house was impeccable aside from the barricades on the door and windows. I was off about the tablecloth. There was none. The table was wood grain. I returned and Ethan emptied the red plastic lawnmower gas can into the Subaru.
Ted helped Jackie into the car. After he cleared away some crushed boxes, he put her wheelchair in the hatch. Pricilla was still laying in the back seat. Jackie rested her daughter’s head on her lap and caressed her hair. Ted slid in on the other side and rested his daughter’s legs on his lap. Ethan unlocked the garage door and we got back in the car. 
I wasn’t optimistic about making it to the hospital. I had tried that earlier today and barely survived. Ethan started the car and turned on the lights. On his nod, I pressed the garage door button. It took a cycle for the latch to kick in, since Ethan had popped it loose. On the second click of the remote, the door opened.
Behind curtain number one was a horde of the dead. When the door started to open, I could see feet. Lots and lots of feet. Then, torsos. Then, the gnarled faces of the dead. Lots and lots of them. My heart rate skyrocketed and Ethan hit the gas.
Ethan pushed through them. The car rocked like a boat until we were clear. When we hit the street, we weren’t creeping along like before. The tires screeched and left a long black line on the asphalt. I put on my seat belt. Ted followed suit. Jackie had put hers on when she got in.
The town was in ruins. Cars were disabled, trash blew through the street, and packs of the dead devoured fresh corpses. The dead that noticed us stopped what they were doing and went after us. I don’t know how they knew that there were live people inside, but they knew.
We passed a sports car with zombies circled around it. A man was on his back on the roof of the car. Zombies pulled each limb from all four corners like a quartering right out of the Middle Ages. Some chewed on his limbs, while others were on the roof scooping out intestines with their hands. Jackie averted her eyes.
It didn’t seem like it was real. I felt like I was a voyeur, peering through a glass window at another land and time. I glanced into the back seat and saw Ted and Jackie’s faces. Their terror was real. I was trying separate myself from what was going on, as if it weren’t really happening. It was real and it was happening. The sooner I dealt with it, the better off I would be.
Ethan drove slowly into the hospital parking lot. Only a few walking dead stumbled about in the long rows of cars. The road that led around to the emergency room entrance was packed with cars. All of them were empty. We stopped at the end of the line, a half football field away from the emergency room.
Ethan turned off the engine and we sat for a moment in silence.
“Where is everybody?” I asked.
Ethan was fixated on a police car parked in front of the emergency room carport with its lights spinning.
“Maybe the police secured the area.”
“This place is gone.” I said.
“We don’t know for sure” Ethan replied.
Pricilla moaned from the back seat.
“She’s in pain,” Jackie uttered to Ted.
Ethan stepped out of the car with the bat in his hand.
“I’ll take a look.”
Ted followed and took his golf club with him. 
Ethan bent over and looked at me through the open driver’s side door. “Beep if you need us.”
“What about the sound?”
“Beep if you need us.” Ethan ordered. He closed the door quietly.
One of the dead from the parking lot saw us come in and had slowly made his way to the car. Ethan moved rapidly like a shark in an ocean of cars and dispatched the man quickly with a crushing swing of the bat. I noticed the corner of my mouth rising. I wasn’t sure if I was happy to see another zombie gone forever or enjoyed watching Ethan do his thing. Jackie gasped in the back seat. We both saw the same exact event, yet one of us was pleased and the other was horrified.
Ethan jogged to catch up to Ted, and limped noticeably. They walked along the curved road that went under the canopy for the Emergency Room. 
Pricilla moaned more and was restless as she lay across her mother’s lap. “There, there. Everything is going to be fine. We’re going to get you to the doctor.” Jackie said as she caressed Pricilla’s clammy forehead.
Nothing felt right. There were hundreds of cars here and no people in sight. There were only a few dead around. An amount much less than you would expect for a place people would most certainly flock to during a plague. I will admit that it was dark and there were a lot of shadows. It was possible that a hundred dead could be around the corner, but it was not likely. The whole situation made me uneasy. 
I watched as Ethan detoured and took a look inside the police car.  He must not have seen anything out of place because he kept going. They approached the entrance. I could tell something was wrong because they both went on guard and readied their weapons. They stepped closer to the entrance and out of our sight. I moved as far right in the seat as I could to try to see them. I couldn’t.
Within a minute, Ethan and Ted moved backward away from the door with their weapons readied. A doctor in a white jacket stumbled out of the emergency room. His ear was bloody and it stained the shoulder of his jacket. A stethoscope dangled from his neck and swung as he walked.
Ted stepped back and let Ethan do his thing. Ethan swung and cracked the doctor in the neck. The Doctor’s head bent over to the side and he dropped to the blacktop.
Ethan and Ted sprinted back toward the car as the dead poured out of the emergency room. There were local people in street clothes, doctors in white jackets, nurses in scrubs–all of them were bloody and all of them were after Ethan and Ted. 
I realized that I was gripping the door handle tightly enough to pull it off. It squeaked in the grip of my fist. There was another sound, aside from the squeaking, that I hadn’t noticed. I turned and looked in the back seat.
Jackie was slumped to the side against the passenger door behind my seat. Priscilla was rabidly eating her neck. Jackie looked at me through wide eyes of horror as she coughed her last few breaths. Blood spit out from her mouth and the hole in her neck and splattered the car window.
When Jackie’s last breath left her opened throat, Priscilla seemed to lose interest and turned to me. Pinprick pupils over glossy white eyes locked on me through damp curls of hair.
I popped open the lock and sprinted into Ethan’s arms, nearly taking him to the ground (dread the thought.)
“What’s wrong?” He asked.
I couldn’t speak. I must have looked like a frightened baby in their first thunderstorm.
Ethan put himself between me and the Subaru and moved closer. Ted was already at the back door on the driver’s side and he popped the door open. His daughter spilled out on to the ground and Ted backed away. 
Pricilla stood up, covered in her mother’s blood. Her white dress was now streaked red. Ted had tears in his eyes. For each step his daughter took forward he stepped back.
“Ted.” Ethan said.
Ted ignored him. The dead from the emergency room were getting closer.
“Ted, we have to go.”
Ted stopped moving backward and held his daughter at bay by pushing the head of the driver into her chest. He sobbed openly.
The hospital dead were getting closer.
“Ted!” Ethan yelled.
Ted pushed the club hard and Priscilla stumbled backward. Ted brought the driver down on her skull. He left the club buried in her skull and slid in the back seat. Ethan and I got in. 
Ted’s face was locked in a look of horror as he stared at the corpse of his wife leaning against the car door. Ted cried violently without a sound or breathing.
“Holy shit,” Ethan yelled.
The dead surrounded us and there was no time to remove Jackie before she turned. Ethan sped backward away from the mob. At first, many were clutching the car and we dragged them along with us. One by one they dropped off. Ethan braked and spun the car. A tall, bald dead man, the last one on the Subaru, tumbled into the center of the road. Ethan waited, parked crooked in the street, until the man climbed to his feet. Ethan gunned it, hitting the man at about forty. The bald dead man didn’t to try move, he didn’t blink, he didn’t show fear. He did, however, tumble over the roof, smash the windshield, fly up twenty feet, and crash down to the pavement in a bloody heap.
Ted sobbed for a half mile.
“We need to stop and get rid of her, before she turns.” I sat with my back against the dash and my eyes locked on gruesome Jackie. Ted curled up on the opposite side and cried quietly in his hands.
“I can’t stop right now,” Ethan barked.
I hadn’t realized it, but there were a lot of dead around. Ethan moved much faster than he should and dead were hitting the bumper every few seconds.
“We don’t have much time.”
“I know.”
“As soon as we get clear–”
“I know,” Ethan growled.
It didn’t get clearer, it was getting worse. The street got thicker and thicker with dead.
“What’s with the blue?” It seemed that all of the dead were dressed with blue jackets, blue sweatshirts, or wrapped in blue blankets.
“We’re near my old high school. Royal blue is one of the school colors. I guess there was a game tonight.”
“Did you play?”
“Four years.”
“What position?”
The street was getting more and more crowded. We were plowing over the dead but at the same time, it was slowing us down. The thumping was so loud, it sounded like the car was being punched apart. Ethan turned the wheel sharply and we swerved left. We smacked through a wall of the dead and on to a moderately clear street. The headlights of the car caught a young boy in a football uniform in the middle of the street. His white eyes looked at us from under his helmet. He even had a football clenched under his arm.  The player walked toward us. Ethan sped up.
“I was offense. My job was to go after the quarterback.”
The Subaru struck the player. Instead of tumbling over the roof, like the last one, he crashed head first into the windshield.
The player’s head was through the windshield and inside the car just above the dash. He snarled and tried to bite us, even though the face guard on his helmet prevented him from doing so. All we had to do was put football helmets on all of the dead and it would halt the infection.
The player’s arms were on the other side of the window. He slapped the spider cracked glass trying to get at us.
“Push him out.” Ethan yelled.
I cautiously moved my hands closer to the player. I was terrified of getting the slightest nip on any of my fingers. He turned and looked at me with those creepy white eyes.
“Not your hands. Use your feet.” Ethan yelled.
That made a lot more sense. I slipped down in the seat, brought my knees up, and bicycle kicked the football player. I pounced on his red helmet repeatedly, but it had little effect. I brought both feet back, mustered all of my strength, and kicked as hard as I could. The player’s head bent backwards and his neck popped. His helmeted head dropped to the dash as if he were a robot and someone had cut the power.
I pushed the player’s head back through the hole in the window, and Ethan helped with his free hand. Ethan slowed the car and the player slid off of the hood.
Ethan stopped. “Ted, you need to–”
Both Ethan and I turned to the back seat at the same time. On one side was Ted, on the other was a bloodstain. Ted sobbed.
“Where’s Jackie?”
Ted continued to sob.
“Ted, where’s Jackie?” Ethan asked calmly.
Ted lowered his hands from his head. “I pushed her out.” He cried and buried his head in the back seat. 
Ethan and I were so preoccupied with the football player that we never noticed what Ted had done.
Ethan backed up the car and drove around the player.
The road was mildly clear and Ethan drove faster. 
“How far are we?” I asked. I was far from home and getting annoyed at my unfamiliarity with this town.
“Less than a half–”
Headlights sped toward my door. I braced for impact and felt the Subaru get struck in the tail. There was a terrible screech as the car that hit us, lost control and spun around in the street.
The collision sent us sideways through a white picket fence and across a front lawn. We struck the corner of a house and it pushed in the side of the Subaru about a foot and a half. The dent was right behind my seat. Another six inches forward and I probably would not have survived. Or, I would have be pinned and eaten alive. Either way, I was grateful for those six inches.
“Is everyone okay?” Ethan asked frantically. He had a small cut on his forehead and a line of blood trickled down from it. Ethan grabbed my arm and pulled me out through the driver’s side door. The damage looked much worse from the outside. Ethan helped Ted out of the back seat as Ted rubbed his head.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, the bat hit me.” Ted handed the baseball bat to Ethan. How the bat made it from the front seat to the back, I don’t know.
We all looked back at the intersection to see what hit us. A maroon minivan sat cockeyed in the road. The woman inside was frantically turning the ignition but the thing wouldn’t start. The dead had already started pounding on her window and more were coming. She needed to stop turning over the engine, it was bringing them to her like a dinner bell.
We all gasped openly when a child popped their head curiously from the back seat. The thought of a middle-aged woman getting attacked only sparked us so much. We had seen it many times throughout the night and were numb. But, when an innocent little child is threatened, hell hath no fury.
Ethan sprinted toward the van. Ted followed and I was left alone on a stranger’s damp front lawn with a stolen car stuck in their house.
Ethan went to work on the dead by the driver’s side door. The dead were so focused on the lady and child in the van that they didn’t notice a speeding bat to the back of the brain. However, the dead that were lurking in the shadows did take notice. For every one that Ethan would put down, two more would stumble out into the street toward the van.
Ted had grabbed a piece of the fence and swung at the closest person. He clobbered them repeatedly long after they fell to the concrete and stopped moving. Ethan shouted at Ted, “Move on to the next one.”
“Get out of there!” I yelled. They were coming from all directions too quickly for Ted and Ethan to keep up. Ethan looked around and assessed the situation. He noticed, just as I did, that soon they would not be able to get away from the van. Clearing the dead away from the car door was taking too long.
Ethan fled and dragged Ted with him. The van was surrounded and there was nothing any of us could do about it. The dead were following Ted and Ethan and it was time to leave. They two men ran up to me and I joined them.
We jogged in the shadows of sidewalks and front lawns, being careful to move with a soft step and not make too much noise. Ethan was in the lead position. I followed behind him, but I was really watching the dark voids between houses where anything could stumble out of the black. Ted struggled to keep up and winced each time he put weight on his ankle.
“Should we look for another car?” I asked.
“We’re not far. We can hoof the rest of the way. That’s probably fastest,” Ethan responded.
There was a popping sound far behind us. We stopped, looked back and tried to pinpoint where it was coming from. There was an orange flash in the distance followed by a loud rumble. Something had exploded. 
Ethan looked at me. We hadn’t seen many survivors so far. We could go back and see if there were others on the run like us. But, we could roam the streets for hours trying to pinpoint the explosion. By the time we did, whoever fired that gun might be gone or fire at us.  Going back was risky and we were so close to Ethan’s place. He desperately needed to know if his girlfriend was safe. For all we knew, his girlfriend could be in danger right now.
“Let’s keep moving,” Ethan said as he caught his breath. 
We went another block before Ethan veered off sharply to the right and I almost collided with him. He ducked in the cover of some bushes by the corner of a house. He waved Ted and I over and we nestled in behind him. Through the crisscrossing branches of a bush, we gazed down the street. We could only see half a block down, because that’s as far as the streetlight would allow. The darkness beyond wasn’t still. It was bubbling and rolling and my eyes couldn’t focus on it. 
“Jesus Christ,” Ted gasped.
From out of the darkness emerged an army of the dead. They stumbled into the light filling the street from the picket fence of one house to the front shrubs of the house on the opposite side. It was wall to wall dead and they oozed out of the dark like lava. 
We needed to move.
We stayed out of sight and went down the driveway of the house. We followed it around a garage to a back fence. We climbed the fence and were in the back of another yard. A dead woman stumbled toward us. Ethan brought the bat down on top of her head and she dropped in a heap. We moved silently to the end of the drive where it met the street. We looked around the bushes. Dead had filled the street here as well. It was like a wave of the infected was sweeping across the neighborhood.
We weren’t jogging anymore. We ran perpendicular to the street, down driveways and over fences until we had put several blocks between the army and ourselves.
We stopped to rest in an empty driveway of a dark colored house. There were tall bushes that lined the side bordering the neighboring house.
“There’s so many of them,” I said as I rested my hands on my knees.
“It’s a cleansing,” Ted said.
We were exhausted. I didn’t want to listen, but Ethan and I were too tired to stop him from talking.
“The apocalypse was predicted thousands of years ago.”
“Apocalypse?” Ethan questioned.
“What would you call it? There are millions, maybe hundreds of millions, dead.”
“There not completely dead,” I joked.
“That’s the beauty of it. We all thought it would be a giant meteor that wiped us out, or a nuclear war. We’re being wiped our by ourselves. It started with one bite, then two, then four–now it’s millions.”
“It’s not millions. This is an isolated–”
“Isolated? Have you seen the news? 
“No, I haven’t.” Ethan was cross.
“Before the TV went white, they were showing video of riots in every major city in the U.S. They had satellite feeds from London, China, Russia–all with the same thing. I have relatives and friends all over the country. Before my cell phone died, I couldn’t get in touch with a single one of them.”
“Everyone is panicking,” Ethan said. “It’s normal for people to freak out. Just because a few of your friends are not answering their phone doesn’t mean that the world is coming to an end.”
“Look around,” Ted said. “There are three of us huddled here in a town of over two-hundred-thousand. Where are all of the survivors? 
“There are others out here just like us,” I said. “There has to be.”
“We’ve destroyed our environment. We’ve ravaged our resources. Pissed off every other country in the world. Nobody gives a shit about anyone else anymore. They’re all out for themselves. Greed, corruption, dishonesty, robbery, hate, murder–God is pissed off and he’s wiping the slate clean.
“You’re talking about a small portion of society.” Ethan rebutted.
“It’s enough,” Ted said.
“We need to get moving.” I tried to diffuse the situation. “How far are we?”
Ethan was aggravated and grimaced at Ted until Ted walked away.
Ted turned back. “Oh, and it’s fifty-two.”
“What?”
“I have fifty-two contacts in my phone and I called every single one of them.”
Ted smirked at us as he limped between two parked cars and stepped into the street and was struck by a van. A black van had quietly sped down the street and hit Ted without stopping. Ted was shot over the hood of a parked car and rolled off the trunk. He didn’t hit the street and got wedged between the bumpers of two parked cars. Ethan and I ran to him. The red tail lights of the van disappeared into the night.
Ted was on his back, nestled in the bumpers of the two cars. His face was crushed and bloody. Blood dripped down to the street and made a puddle underneath him. Ethan checked his pulse as the dead stragglers in the area took notice and started toward us.
“He’s gone.” Ethan grabbed my hand and pulled me into the street. We ran up the block and slipped into the darkness of another driveway.

4

I latched onto Ethan and he held me tightly. I felt his warm hands and the handle of the bat in my back. I cried as I replayed Ted’s death over and over in my mind. I closed my eyes as tightly as I could and I imagined that none of this was happening. I imagined that everything was fine around me and that the dead were not walking the earth. When I opened my eyes, I watched Ted climb out from between the parked cars not far from us. He was one of them now. Part of his face was crushed and when he walked the left side of his body didn’t move properly, like half of him was broken.
“Sorry,” I said and pulled away from Ethan. I could have stayed in his arms until dawn, but we need to keep moving. I felt his urgency.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We need to–”
“I’m ready.” I interrupted. I didn’t want to delay him any longer.
We sprinted the last three blocks and I soon found myself crouched behind some bushes, staring across the street at Ethan’s apartment building. It was an old tan brick building, just around the corner from a main road. The front door had been glass. It was just a frame now with glistening shards on the walkway.
Ethan’s hope had fleeted. The building appeared deserted. Windows at ground level were smashed. Dead moved in and out freely through the missing front door.
“I have to check.”
Ethan tightened his grip on the bat and crossed the street. If it were me, I would need to be sure too. He dispatched two dead in the front of the building and stepped cautiously into the doorway. The lights were dim. The inside lobby was simple with a wall of mailboxes to the right, a wide flight of stairs straight ahead, and an elevator to the left. Ethan pressed the elevator button, but the lighted number above the door didn’t move.
“I’d rather not take the elevator,” I said. 
“It’s stuck on three.”
“What floor is your place on?”
“Three.”
Ethan walked up the first flight of stairs and turned the corner. I noticed a long smear of blood across the grid of little silver mailboxes doors.
“Be careful,” Ethan said from around the corner. I went up the stairs and a dead body tumbled at my feet. Ethan noticed I was startled.
“You okay?”
I nodded yes and we continued the long slow walk to the third floor. 
The hallway was long and carpeted. Nothing seemed to be out of order. A thousand dead could have passed through or none at all. The first apartment door was smashed open so ‘none at all’ wasn’t likely. Ethan peeked in quickly and then pulled the door closed.
“Which one is your’s?”
“Three-o-six. It’s the third on the right.”
The door to apartment three-o-six was cracked and open a few inches. Ethan pushed it the rest of the way open with the tip of the bat. 
The apartment consisted of a wide-open room that was shared by the living area, dining area, and the kitchen. A couch sat separated the living room and the dining room table. A long counter with bar stools blocked off the kitchen.
The place was in shambles. Ethan looked around the room with a blank face, searching for any clue that might tell him where his girlfriend was. He went into the back bedroom.
There had been a struggle here. I didn’t see puddles of blood on the floor, but most things here were out of place. The TV was crooked on its table. A lamp was knocked over.  Magazines were on the floor and so was a photo of Ethan and his girlfriend. She was very pretty and they looked very happy together. I’ve only known Ethan for seven hours, but I found myself feeling jealous.
“She’s not here.” Ethan emerged from the bedroom with fresh clothes. He had exchanged his disheveled dress shoes, pants, and shirt for jeans, sneakers, and a tee shirt–clothing more suitable for battling the dead. 
“Come on back.”
I walked around the corner and into Ethan’s bedroom. I felt a little awkward. It was like we were cheating, although absolutely nothing was going on. 
“Those shoes can’t be comfortable,” He said as we stood in front of the open closet.
“My feet are burning.” I said.
“Help yourself to whatever you like. There’s sneakers, jeans, sweatshirts, if you want.”
“Thanks.”
Ethan left the room.
I grabbed socks and sneakers and sifted through a pile of jeans for something that looked more comfortable than my slacks. I took a sweatshirt too, but I stuck to the older, more worn clothes.  Just in case things went back to normal, I didn’t want the girlfriend to be missing her favorite clothes.
When I stepped out of the room, Ethan stared at me oddly. I tried to think of something to say to break up the moment, but I didn’t have to. The front door squeaked open. 
A twenty something year old girl waddled into the apartment. Her head was tilted to the side and a bloodstain ran down the front of her shirt. She was dressed casually in shorts and a shirt as if she were in bed when she was attacked. Her bangs swung in front of dark sunken eyes. Ethan brushed past me and brought the bat straight down on her forehead. He had been tweaking his swing throughout the night, finding the precise area of the skull to strike to bring them down with one swing. He had accomplished it, the college girl collapsed on Ethan’s carpet, dead for good.
Ethan put the bat down and grabbed an old book bag from the closet. He dusted it off, went into the kitchen, and filled it. He was opening and closing drawers and cabinets and wasn’t too concerned about the noise he was making. I kept my eye on the door.
“We should find someplace secure to hold up in until morning.” He said as left the kitchen and swung the backpack over his shoulder. “Someplace with a stronger door.” Ethan gestured to the splintered remains of his apartment door. We were about to exit when Ethan stopped and looked back at the counter in the kitchen. Sitting on the corner, less than fifteen feet from the front door, were a set of car keys, his girlfriend’s keys. He swiped them.
“We have a car.” Ethan said as he dangled the keys in front of me.
He held them tightly in his hand for a moment before leaving the apartment. He was probably hoping that the keys had not been on the counter and that his girlfriend had driven away from this mess and was somewhere safe. He took a moment to compose himself. I don’t think he wanted me to see him cry.
In the hallway, there was another dead walking toward us. It was a tall and skinny boy that must have heard Ethan rummaging through his kitchen. He walked to us from the far end of the hallway, opposite of where we came in. Instead of Ethan wasting a bat swing, we turned and walked away. We were near the stairs when Ethan stopped. There was noise coming from the other end of the hall, and it wasn’t from the skinny kid.
Ethan smashed the skinny kid in the head and past him before his body hit the floor. We walked to the end of the hall and stopped at the edge of the doorway that the last few dead had most likely walked out of. 
We stood with our backs pressed against the wall beside the door like S.W.A.T. on a raid. Ethan slowly moved his eye past the frame of the door. He quickly pulled back and waved me back with his hand. I slipped around his hand and took my own look. 
Two flights of old paint worn metal staircases were packed with dead, over a hundred easy. I backed away quicker than Ethan and we both jogged to solace in his apartment and closed the splintered door.
“Where do those stairs go?”
“The roof,” he said. “There must be people up there.” Ethan’s hope of finding his girlfriend was rekindled.
Ethan’s eyes were darting around quickly, which meant he was thinking. He opened the window of his apartment and pushed out the screen. It fell to the street below. He stuck his head out and looked for another way onto the roof.
“Hey. Is anyone up there?” He shouted.
He leaned out further and yelled again, “Is anyone up there?”
There was no response. Ethan came back inside. “The roof, the part you can walk on, doesn’t run the length of the building.
He paced for a bit.
“I have an idea,” he said.
Ethan went through the kitchen cabinet that held his liquor and pulled out two bottles of vodka, one of gin, and one of scotch.
He slid the plastic garbage can out from under the sink and removed a half full bag. He unscrewed the lids from the bottles and poured them two fisted into the can and occasionally checked the floor for leaks.
We rummaged the other apartments that were not near the roof access doorway and had gathered anything flammable from rubbing alcohol to vanilla extract. We took any alcohol that was over 100 proof, and Ethan had a lot of neighbors that liked to party. We even found a stash of three full cans of lighter fluid in the pantry of a guy that liked to barbeque on the roof.
When we were done, Ethan had a huge sloshing kitchen pail filled with alcohol and I had one filled that was half the size of his. We set the pails down quietly several feet from the door of the dead-filled stairwell. The single metal door was ajar and hanging awkwardly from the top hinges. We carried out a couch from the adjacent apartment and put it up against the wall behind the pails.
We spent a few minutes silently inching the pails closer to the doorway and the couch directly behind. Ethan had his bat leaning close by, just in case. 
The plan was simple and we had gone over it in whispers several times. Now, it was time to execute it. Ethan hoisted up the larger garbage pail and did his best to keep it steady and avoid making noise. He pressed his back up against the wall, inches from the doorway, and adjusted his hands so that he could turn and empty the contents all in one fluid motion. Ethan nodded to me slowly three times, on the third nod he twisted toward the doorway. 
One of the dead slipped out from the shadows of the doorway. Ethan stopped and some of the fluid splashed into the dead man’s eyes. The man didn’t blink, but his eyes closed slightly. I grabbed the bat and swiftly brought it down on his head. Ethan kicked the man, pushing him back into the stairwell. Ethan emptied the first garbage pail and then the second. The sweet smelling alcoholic concoction soaked the group herded together on the first flight of steps. It dripped down and pooled at our feet. I slid the door closed and Ethan pushed the couch against the door to keep it shut. Ethan lit a pack of matches and dropped them in the puddle that oozed from under the door. It ignited in a bright blue flame and immediately set fire to the carpet and the couch. We could hear the flames roar on the other side and the air whistled as it was sucked through the seams of the door.
Ethan grabbed the flaming middle cushion of the couch and slapped in on the hall carpet, extinguishing the flames on both. Some of the dead charged into the door and opened it an inch. Air was sucked past us and we pushed the arm rests on the couch to close the door, Ethan on one side and myself on the other. The grey paint began to bubble and peel away from the steel door. It was getting too hot and smoky to stand where I was so I sat down against the opposite wall and pushed the couch against the door with my feet. It was less draining and the air was cooler and less smoky. Ethan did the same.
A barrage of pounding followed. At first they were dull thuds, but as the dead flesh was burned away from their hands, it sounded like wooden blocks rapping at the door. The sound didn’t last long, and soon there was no pounding at all. We relaxed our legs, not needing to hold the door any longer, and waited. The hiss of air flowing into the stairwell slowly quieted until there was no hiss at all.
We waited another ten minutes or so until we slid the couch aside. We tied damp kitchen towels over our nose and mouth to filter out the smoke. Ethan opened the door with an oven mitt. Smoke bellowed out and we both coughed. The stairwell was black. The floor and stairs were now a gruesome graveyard of charcoaled, smoking bodies. Ethan went up the stairs quickly with his bat in one hand and an oven mitt on the other. I took my time and placed each foot carefully. Ethan trampled skulls and bones, and had to grab the steaming handrail twice to stop from falling. 
The steps ended at a small landing where it was the smokiest. The charred black roof door had curls of paint escaping its surface and bare metal showed. Ethan tapped on the door with the bat. There was no answer, so he tapped harder. My eyes stung from the smoke and I coughed, if they didn’t open the door soon we’d have to go back down and try again later.
“Hey it’s okay! They’re gone!” Ethan smashed the door harder. Paint fell and he left collection of crescent shaped dents in the metal.
We heard muffled voices on the other side, and an attempt to open the door. It was stuck. Ethan slammed it with his shoulder.
After a few tries, the door opened and we spilled out of the smoke on to the roof. I ripped the towel from my face and sucked in heaps of fresh air. Two men from the group on the roof were ready for us. One was armed with a rolling pin and the other with a gun. They relaxed a little when they saw that we weren’t dead. 
“It’s cool, it’s cool. I know this dude. He’s on my floor,” the guy with the rolling pin said.
He reached out and pushed down the arm of the guy with the gun. When doing so, he accidentally hit the gunman’s other hand–which was wrapped in a t-shirt.
The gunman yelled and walked away furiously. A spew of expletives left his mouth.
“He burned his hand on the door pretty good.” The rolling pin guy made a face like he felt bad, but really didn’t. He moved closer and checked out the stairwell. “How the hell did you guys do that?” He asked.
“Is Christy here?” Ethan asked. “Do any of you know Christy Mitchell?” Ethan’s eyes darted to each of the six strangers on the roof. They shook their heads no. 
Ethan ran around the perimeter of the small area that the tenants used as a porch. There was a barbeque grill with expired grey charcoals in its belly, several plants, and various types of lounge and folding chairs–none of which matched. Ethan rested on the waist-high ledge, and looked out over the town.
It was quieter now than it was a few hours ago. There were no sirens from emergency vehicles, no cars in the street, no gunshots, and no people running and screaming. The air was hazy with smoke, not just from the stairwell. There were patches of fires all around us. Some were small vehicle fires, while others were giant blazes of entire homes and some buildings. The sad part was that there was no fire department dousing any of the fires. There wasn’t even a fire siren in the distance. The blazes were left alone to burn unhindered.
Ethan sank to the hardened tar and sat in a heaped mess. His face was drained of color and it looked like all of his gusto had left him. I sat beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. I wanted to say that his girlfriend was fine and that we would find her, but I didn’t think I could say it without a hint of doubt in my voice. I decided to say nothing.
There were three girls and three guys on the roof. The only two that seemed to be a couple was the gunman and a thin girl with long, stringy black hair. She had run to him when he walked away cursing about his burned hand.
The two other girls were younger, maybe in their twenties. They were pretty and were dressed up like they were out at the club or about to go to one. One guy looked like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, but without the voice and not as tall. The last guy was rolling pin guy, who seemed to be taking the apocalypse pretty well. He struck me as the guy at the frat party that made sure everyone had a full beer and was having a good time.
One of the party girls walked to the edge of the roof. “Hey guys, you need to close that door up again.”
We migrated to the ledge. The army of the dead filled the street from sidewalk to sidewalk and moved toward us like a tidal wave.
Ethan got up and took a look. 
The guy with the burned hand aimed his gun at the crowd and fired two shots.
Ethan slapped down the outstretched arm. “Are you crazy? 
The gunman backed away, protecting his burned hand as if Ethan was going to slap it too.
“What’s your name?”
The guy didn’t answer. The girl with the stringy hair limped to the gunman’s side. “He’s Jeremy. You can call me Lizzy”
“Well Lizzy, tell your boyfriend that he just put up a great big neon eat here sign.”
Survival mode kicked in again and Ethan fetched his oven mitt, that he had cast aside. Ethan pushed the roof door and it slammed against the frame, warped from the fire. He tried several times to close the door. Rolling pin guy and Shaggy helped push with their sleeves covering their hands. They were attempting to shut the door and get that click that you hear when a door is really closed, but this door wouldn’t even go back in place–it was just clanking against the building.
“She’s not gonna go,” The rolling pin guy deftly observed. “We’re not going to be able to hold them. Not that I want to be stuck up here again anyway. We should go.”
“I agree,” said Ethan.
Shaggy looked at the ocean of dead approaching.
“I agree too,” he said. “Where do we go though?”
“We’ve been on the run all night. We need food, we need rest, and we need someplace secure to hold up.” Ethan muttered.
“I need to pee.” One of the party girls blurted.
“Peeing sounds good to me,” I added.
I know where we call do all of those things.” The other party girl said.
Everyone stared at the fake baked, bleach blonde because she said it so matter-of-fact, like the solution was simple.
“The mall” she said. “I work at one of the stores and I know for a fact that place is built to keep people out. After hours at least.”
“If it’s built to keep people out, how are we going to get in?” Jeremy whined snidely.
“I have my key. We don’t even have to get into the mall. It’s a key to the loading door, in the back, for deliveries.”
“How far?” Ethan asked.
“A mile, maybe two.”
“It’s less than two,” said rolling pin guy.
Ethan looked at me, checking to see if I was cool with the idea. I nodded yes. He could ask me to join him on the maiden voyage of the Titanic and I would still say yes.
“Okay, let’s go. I’m driving.” Ethan jingled the car keys and went back into the stairwell with his bat in hand. “A terrible plan is better than no plan at all,” Echoed from a few steps down. We filed in after him.
“I don’t think it’s a terrible plan,” the bleach blonde said.
“I guess you haven’t been outside at all tonight.”
She shook her head no and I chuckled.

5

We stood in the parking lot and stared at the mess of parked cars.
“Which one is it?” asked rolling pin guy.
“Does it matter?” Ethan said.
I counted seven vehicles consumed in flames. The cars were bunched together and there was no rhyme or reason to their arrangement. The only car parked neatly in its spot, had flames roaring out of all of its windows and was blocked by all of the other cars. I was pretty certain that it was the car that Ethan had keys to. With our luck, it had to be. He circled the metal bonfire and tried to get a closer look at that particular car. It wasn’t easy to tell if there had been anything in the front seat at all.
“Does anyone else have a car?” Ethan asked and looked around the group. Everyone shook their heads no.
Ethan stormed past me. 
He entered a carport, safe from the flames, and stopped at a wall of fenced-in storage cubicles. He smashed the lock of the first unit, and opened the gate. Rolling pin guy jogged over and Ethan handed him a shovel and a metal rake. Rolling pin guy passed them to Shaggy. Ethan moved to the next cage, smashed the lock open and grabbed another bat, another shovel, and a broom. He cracked the wooden handle out of the broom and passed it along. Shaggy divided up the weapons and I got the broomstick.
“Listen. I’ll take point and everyone stay close behind. Keep quiet, because sound attracts them. We’ll avoid them if we can, but if one of them gets too close, go for the head. Everyone clear?”
Everyone agreed and Ethan stormed off in a straight line toward the mall. We all followed single file. I noticed that Jeremy and Lizzy were last. Lizzy was limping and used the shovel like a cane.
“Why is Lizzy limping?” I asked rolling pin guy.
“One of those things bit her in the leg when we ran up to the roof.”
Ethan heard the reply and turned to me. “Let’s get to the mall first. We’ll worry about her later.”
I nodded yes.
“Take care of what?” Rolling pin guy asked.
Ethan didn’t answer him and marched forward.
The sun would be up soon. I hoped that the creatures around us were like vampires and would vaporize upon contact with sunlight. The odds were slim but I crossed my fingers anyway. Dawn came slowly and our group of misfits, armed with shovels, rakes, and bats, headed toward the mall with an army of the dead after us. 
We took a short break and calculated that we had about a mile to go. A mile would have been a walk in the park any other day, but under the cataclysmic circumstances it was more like a crap shoot–for all of us. We continued on and I prayed that luck was on our side. 

Amanda

I was only five minutes late and that evil witch yelled at me again. What’s the big deal? She wouldn’t miss me anyway if I were to die a sudden tragic death. I should just quit. I don’t know. It’s an easy job and the health insurance is good. I wouldn’t be able to afford my medications without that.
It’s so frustrating. She treats me like I’m a helpless ten-year-old girl. I just can’t stand her. I know it’s supposed to help if I write out my thoughts like this, but if she comes down on me for one more petty little thing I’m just going to snap and let her have it.
Okay, enough venting, it’s time to get focused. Not much to do today. Unfortunately, I have to stay late tonight with what’s-her-name to do inventory. I don’t understand why we have to do it Pam’s way and why she has to be here at all. If she would just let me do it alone, I would be done in half the time. God forbid if the control freak let someone else be in control of something. Her desire to control is so obsessive, it’s out of control. I can’t take credit for that one, Sally said it.
Lunchtime. Not much went on this morning, just filed papers and got caught up on invoicing. Queen bitch of the world has been in her office all day, so I didn’t see her too much. Thank God. I made tuna for myself today. Queen bitch strolled in all happy like someone finally pulled that stick from her ass. She had dinner at her fiancé’s parent’s house last night and offered me some leftovers. I declined, although dessert looked good. If she leaves it in the fridge, maybe I will abscond with a piece later.
She’s always saying “my fiancé” this or “my fiancé” that and rubbing it in my face. It’s like she’s adding “which you’ll never have one, by the way” at the end of her sentences.  “My fiancé, which you’ll never have one by the way, just bought me another gold necklace.” She’s such an ass. I wish, I wish, I wish I could throw it right back in her face and be like, “Manny and I are getting married next year bitch!” But, Manny won’t let me tell anyone. He’s afraid, since we kind of work together, that if anyone knew about us, especially her, he would get fired. I can understand. He says it’s best if I ignore him completely while he’s around and don’t even talk to him, so no one gets any ideas. But, it’s hard, I can’t keep my eyes off of him. I’m so excited to see him later.
Mrs. Pendington came in to help us catch up on accounting. She’s such a sweet woman. She’s very nice to me and my friends when they come around. We talk a lot and I love to listen to her stories about her and her husband. He has passed on, but you can see this gleam in her eye when she talks about him. I wonder if I have the same gleam when I talk about Manny? I bet I do. Pam was still in her office, so we talked about Manny for a little while. I could hear him in the storage room moving things around, but he hasn’t popped his head in to see me yet. He usually finds some excuse to come into the showroom for something. Other than that, he’s out helping with deliveries all day. I was hoping Mrs. Pendington would get to see him. Guess not.
I took a quick peek in the storage room looking for Manny. He wasn’t there, he probably had to go back out right away. I’ll see him later.
It’s really slow today, only one customer so far. It’s okay though, it gives me time to write. Sally said it would help me feel better since I did it when I was younger. I like it so far. I wonder what happened to my old diaries?
Mr. Wilson called with another complaint. He said he’s stopping by after he gets off work. He always complains about every little piece of junk he buys from this place. Complain, complain, complain. First he walks in and complains about the weather. Then when he’s shopping he complains about the price. Then when it gets delivered, he complains that it’s scratched or damaged or not the exact color he ordered. Then he comes in and he wants it perfect and he wants something for free for his trouble. He’s the one causing the trouble! Oh, and it’s always my fault. Everything is my fault. I should send him to Pam, but I’m the only one he will talk to at this place. There’s a rumor going around that he had some indiscretions with his young daughter years ago. Watch him blame me one more time and I’ll open up that can of worms. Let’s see what he has to say then.
Mrs. Pendington hasn’t gotten back from her break yet–which is strange. She said she had some errands to run, but that she would be back shortly. I checked with Pam to make sure I wasn’t mistaken. According to Pam, Mrs. P didn’t say anything about not coming back. I hope everything is okay. She’s old and I worry sometimes.
Usually I love 5 p.m. because it’s the home stretch–only one more hour left, except tonight I’m staying late for inventory. Mr. Wilson walked in and a sudden gloom filled the room. I would have hid, but I was the only one on the sales floor. Right off the bat he complained about how cool it was outside compared to earlier in the week. Right after that, he tore into me. I decided to keep my mouth shut and be nice. I couldn’t read the delivery person’s name on the slip so I went back to the storage room. Manny walked in with Andy. We smiled at each other. Andy said he wasn’t feeling well so I told him he could lie down in the file room. It’s just an office with a bunch of papers in it. Manny showed Andy where the office was since he was new. Manny brushed my hand gently as he passed by. He smelled so good. I went back out front and Mr. Wilson had already cornered Manny. Manny took Mr. Wilson into the storage room. He saved me again, my hero.
I’m very worried about Mrs. Pendington. She’s still not back. I checked the parking lot for her car over and over, but I haven’t seen her. I wish, I wish, I wish she had a cell phone.
I checked on Andy to see if he wanted anything. He asked for a blanket and some water. I got him both. He said he’s just going to lie down until 6 p.m. and then go home. He asked me not to tell Pam. No Problem. She’ll never see him in there anyway, even though it’s right down the hall. If she needs a file from there she always sends me anyway. Lazy Bitch.
Hooray! Six o’clock. I locked the front doors. Pam is still in her office. I expect her to come out any minute and start inventory, God forbid if I start without her. I might actually get out of here at a decent hour. I checked on Andy and he was asleep, I’ll give him a few more minutes and then wake him up.
I witnessed something strange in the parking lot. On the other side of the plaza. I saw a mugging. These three men attacked another man and tackled him to the ground. It was far away so I couldn’t tell exactly what was happening. I thought of telling Pam, but she would have asked a million questions, and I couldn’t see it that well. I called 911, but the phones were busy. I dialed 911 again, got a busy signal, and then I saw another attack. A lady was trying to run to her car and a group of people stopped her. What’s going on? Am I seeing things again? I tried the police again, but it was still busy. Maybe I should tell Pam.
I got Pam out of her office and the both of us stared out of the showroom windows. There were more attacks. Pam tried the police on the store phone. That didn’t work so she tried her cell phone. Her cell phone didn’t go through at all. A man walked past the store, stopped, and looked at us through the window. He started clawing at the glass like he was trying to get us. It was really creepy. I saw Pam get scared. To be honest, which I am supposed to be in this journal, I like seeing her scared. After all of the crap she has put me through, it was nice to see.
A little girl ran across the parking lot. She was all alone. A man grabbed her and she slipped out of her jacket and got away. I ran to the front door, unlocked it, and yelled for her to run to me. Pam didn’t want me opening the door and tried to stop me. The man that was banging against the window came over. I pushed him away and yelled for the little girl to run inside. She squeezed between the man and got in. As soon as she got in, I closed the door. Pam pushed me to the floor and made sure the door was locked. I told her I locked it. She asked me if I was crazy. Pam demanded to know what I was doing. I told her I had to open it. I had to. Pam didn’t understand. What was I supposed to do? Just let an innocent little girl get attacked?
Pam muttered under her breath and went to the window. I went to the little girl and held her tight, she was so scared. She said her name was Mandy and she thanked me for saving her. She held me tight and shivered in my arms. 
Pam looked out of the window and tried her cell phone over and over with no luck. The crowd outside was growing. I guess they saw Mandy run in or saw the man at the window and joined him. 
They banged hard on the windows and Pam worried that they might be able to break through, so she started sliding the display furniture up against the glass. She asked me to help her, but Mandy kept holding on tighter. She was stacking the Monte Carlo metal dining chairs and yelling at me. When she threw the last chair on top of the pile, the leg cracked through the window. Fingers from outside reached through and I ran to help Pam.
Manny and Mr. Wilson came out from the back room and couldn’t believe what was going on outside. Mr. Wilson freaked out and ran into the back. Mr. Wilson is erratic and unpredictable as I have told Manny several times, so we both chased Mr. Wilson into the back room. Mr. Wilson tried to open the back door and Manny and I grabbed him. He fell back and hit his head on the desk. He got knocked out and his head started to bleed. I took some paper towels and pressed them against the wound. I heard static from the radio on the desk. I asked Manny to hold the towels against Mr. Wilson’s head and I grabbed the radio and talked into it. Manny said it was no good, the batteries were dead. But, I think I reached someone. I told them that we were in trouble and where we were. I couldn’t make out what they said, there was a lot of static. I tried to get them to repeat it, but the radio went dead.
I told Manny to watch Mr. Wilson and I went to check on Mandy and Pam.
Back in the store, I noticed immediately that Mandy was gone. I asked Pam where she was and she didn’t know what I was talking about. Pam kept asking me where I went. She was yelling at me because the crack in the window had gotten bigger and she needed me to help her. I just had to find Mandy first. I knew she must be terrified.
I found Mandy hiding behind a chair. She was so scared. I held her and told her everything was going to be okay. Pam kept screaming at me. I told her that Mandy was scared. Pam grabbed me, shook me and yelled at me. Then the most terrible thing happened. Pam grabbed Mandy and held her right by the window. Arms reached through the glass and pulled her out. She screamed. I grabbed her legs, but the people outside were too strong. They pulled her from me. Mandy screamed as the people attacked her. They pulled and bit and clawed at her until her screaming stopped. It happened so fast.
Pam grabbed me and pushed me to the floor. I stayed on the floor and cried with Mandy’s shoe in my hand. I asked Pam how she could do that. Pam just yelled at me and kept trying to barricade the window. I was so upset, I ran back to Manny and told him what happened. He put Mr. Wilson’s head down and held me very gently. I cried on his shoulder. After a few minutes, Manny got up and told me to watch after Mr. Wilson and that he would take care of it. I watched him walk away as I held Mr. Wilson.
I don’t know how long it was, but he came back some time later wiping his hands. He told me everything was fine. I smiled. He always looks out for me. He smiled back. Then we talked about what to do with Mr. Wilson. Even though he was unconscious, we thought it would be best to tie him up so he wouldn’t try to escape and possibly let some of those crazy people in. 
Manny tied Mr. Wilson up and I went back to the showroom. The barricade was holding up well and the hole in the window was too high for any of them to climb in. I didn’t see Pam. I caught a glimpse of Andy watching me from the hallway. When I turned, he was gone. I went after him. When I got to the hallway, he wasn’t there. I walked toward the office that he was in and when I passed the break room I noticed blood on the floor.
The smears of blood left a trail that led to the utility closet, like something was dragged in there. It took all the courage I had to open the door. Pam was in the closet, dead. Manny had put the fire axe through her head. Her face was stuck in an expression of horror, I couldn’t take it any longer and turned away.
I started to leave the break room vowing never to enter it again, but then I thought, what if someone came to rescue us? What if the police rescued us? What if those people I talked to came? What would they do? I had to cover up what Manny did.
I pulled the axe from Pam’s head and sprawled her out on the break room floor. I swung the axe and brought it down on her hand. It chopped right off. It’s gruesome, I know, but I had to do something. I took her hand and brought it to the hole in the window and tossed it out. The crowd ate it up. Perfect. I went back for another piece and another and another until all of Pam was gone. I took the mop and cleaned the floor until there was no sign of her left–no sign that anything had ever happened.
The crowd outside was in a frenzy and they banged on the windows harder and harder. I added some more chairs to the barricade and then peeked in on Manny. He was still tending to Mr. Wilson. I didn’t tell him what I had done. He’d been through enough. Besides, we look out for each other, that’s what we do.
I began looking for Andy again. I rechecked sales floor, the break room, and the file room. The only thing I noticed was that he hadn’t touched the water I gave him, other than that I couldn’t find him. I went to the back room and asked Manny if Andy had gone by him. Manny said he hadn’t.
Back in the showroom, I had just happened to gaze at the barricade, when something drew me to it. I looked through the gaps in the furniture and beyond the crowd outside and saw Andy in the parking lot still wrapped in the blanket I had given him. I ran to the door and it was locked. He must have gotten Pam’s keys, let himself out, and locked the door behind him. Andy turned and looked right at me.
I ran into the back and told Manny. He came running out.
We banged on the glass and begged Andy to come back. I don’t know if he could hear us, but he kept staring at us. Manny tugged at the door handle, I know he wanted to go out there and bring him back, but it was too dangerous. There were too many people at the window and Andy was so far away.
Some of the people in the parking lot caught up to Andy and attacked him. They tackled him to the ground and ate him. They fed on him just like the pieces of Pam I tossed out of the window. I buried my face in Manny’s chest and he caressed my hair. I few minutes later I looked back and there was nothing left of him, no sign of Andy at all.
Manny held me as we went back to the storage room. Manny wanted to check and make sure everything was secure just in case they tried to get in that way.
When we got in the back, Mr. Wilson was gone. His ropes were on the floor where we tied him–with the knots still in them. I checked the back door and it was still locked. Manny ran up and down the isles looking for him. We found him trying to break out of an old window that had been boarded up and painted black. Mr. Wilson had removed the boards with a hammer. He smashed the glass just as Manny got to him. Mr. Wilson tried desperately to escape out of the window. Manny tried to pull him back in. A group of arms reached in and grabbed both Mr. Wilson and Manny and pulled them outside. I grabbed Manny’s legs and pulled back as hard as I could. They ripped him from my hands. One of them grabbed my sweater and I tore it getting away.
They tried to climb in the window. I needed to do something quickly. I saw the forklift at the other end of the isle and ran for it. I turned it on and drove it right next to the window. I lowered the crates on the priest climbing in. The crates crushed him and blocked the others from coming in. I turned off the forklift and checked the crates. The priest was still flailing his arms and groaning even though the crates had him crushed in the window. There were also some people’s arms trapped in the window with him as well. But, no one was getting in.
I slid to the floor and cried. I cried and cried and cried. I missed Manny, but there was nothing I could do. There is nothing I could have done. He is gone forever. From now on he will only be a memory, but he will always be a piece of my heart.
So, here I sit, writing and wondering if those people on the radio are coming or if anyone will come and rescue me. I’ll sit and wait a while and cry some more. There’s nothing else to write for now.

Zombie Hunter

Mark Jablond is a magazine writer. His latest assignment focused on a police officer who had been accused of excessive force, but also had the most arrests, by far, in his department. Jablond was given permission to ride along with the officer, in order to write his article.

He is a massive man, tall and thick with muscles, and body fat near zero. He wears a long sleeve shirt that is stretched to its limit at his biceps and hangs like a drape after rounding his pecs. He has a buzz cut that looks like it hasn’t grown since his army days. The eyebrows are permanently furled and I haven’t seen him smile yet. Although, you might catch the corner of his mouth rising when he squeezes the trigger of his .45 Glock–whose bullets, by the way, are a millimeter thicker than the 357 Magnum.
“Get in,” he said in his monotone babble. I couldn’t tell if he was happy to have me ride along or totally pissed off. I’m leaning towards pissed off because he was just in the captain’s office for half the morning trying to leave the station without me. 
Last week marked the sixth week in a row the decorated officer had received mention of excessive force by one of his arrestees. I figure the captain approved my ride along thinking that my presence may deter any future indiscretions. Between you and me, I think the captain just wanted a week off without hearing the ex-sergeant’s name mentioned. 
We cruised past the franchise donut shop and screeched to a halt in front of the local health food store. 
“Stay here.” 
He hadn’t spoken to me in more than two word sentences. By this afternoon, with my self-proclaimed charm and wit, I planned to double that. Before I left the station, the Captain gave me two pieces of advice. First, when I’m asked to stay in the car, don’t. Second, do everything else he says.  I had just realized that I had broken rule number one by staying in the car. Before my hand touched the door handle we were back on the road and I was chugging down one of two wheat grass lattes that the large man had brought back to the car.
I was almost one-quarter through my latte when we parked in an alley. It’s the kind of alley you couldn’t find if you were looking for it and never wanted to be in after dark. The Sarge had been getting text messages regularly for the past hour and his phone beeped again.
“Stay here,” he mumbled and slammed the car door.
I refused to be the dog waiting patiently in the car and sucking air through a quarter inch gap in the window. I went after him. I rounded the corner and found Sarge waiting for me. 
“I asked you to stay in the car.”
“I’m not good at following directions,” I replied.
“I’m going after a bad guy. It’s dangerous. Are you sure you want to be around for this?
I nodded a cautious yes.
“You realize by not staying in the car, you release the police department from all liability, if something should happen to you.”
I felt like a recruit volunteering to give my life for my country. “Yes,” I said.
“Okay then. You see that big guy by the door?”
Through the fenced in junk that we were behind, I saw a thug hanging out by closed back door.
“Get him to come over here.”
“How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
“You’re the creative guy, figure something out.”
I rounded the corner and headed toward the heavyset, bearded man. The man eyed me instantly and went on guard.
“Sir, I was wondering if I could borrow your stool for just a sec.”
“What the hell do you want to borrow my stool for?”
“My cat is stuck in the tree right around the corner here and–”
“No, you can’t borrow my stool. Get lost.”
“My cat is certainly not going to be happy about this!” I shouted as I walked away. I flailed my arms and decided that I should go the crazy route, it was less likely to get me killed.
There were four cars parked in two rows right up to the bearded guy. As I walked passed the last car, the one closest to where the Sarge wanted me to lead this guy, I had an idea. These were nice new, shiny cars. They certainly didn’t belong in this area, so it was logical to assume that bearded guy was watching the door and these cars. I unscrewed the valve cap and let the air out of one of the car tires. 
“Hey,” the bearded man yelled. 
He left his stool and marched toward me. I let air out of the tire until he was right on me and then jogged away. He followed me around the corner and ran into Sarge.
“Shit.”
Sarge spun the bearded man around, frisked him, and took his cell phone. Sarge waved it in front of him.
“I’ll hold on to this until we’re done. I wouldn’t want you to spoil the surprise.”
“He’s going to kill you. You know that right?”
“I’m counting on it.”
Sarge slipped the phone into his pocket and handcuffed the bearded man inside the back of his unmarked car. I waited for some recognition for the difficult task I had completed, and got none.
We made our way through a maze of boxes, crates, and appliances in the warehouse. It had everything you could possibly want to fill your home with. I even saw the 60-inch plasma TV that I’ve craved for the past year. I bet I could get it cheap here. Everything had the scent of recently stolen. I smelled cigarettes and beer and heard muffled voices. I looked in the direction of the sound and walked into the back of the sergeant. He had stopped and watched the six men through the gaps of boxes on steel shelving.
Sarge handed me two laser pointers. I hadn’t seen one since college when we used to torment our teachers.
“See the guy in the suit?”
I peeked over a box and noticed the man in the white suit with hair almost long enough to be in a band. I nodded yes.
“Point these at him at the appropriate time.”
The Sarge walked away and I was left wondering when the hell the appropriate time would be.
Three ruthless men sifted stacks of money through a counting machine while three others watched. A banter of Spanish conversation went around. They could have been telling jokes for all I knew. They sure laughed a lot. The laughing stopped when the Sarge strolled in. 
Four of the men aimed guns at the Sarge faster than he could chug a wheat grass latte. They all seemed familiar with him and looked at the guy in the white suit, waiting for the signal to put about forty bullets into him.
“You have some set of balls coming here.”
“Well someone has to do it. No one else from my department is gonna show.”
“That’s because I pay them not to.” The suited guy laughed and his thugs joined him. “What can I do for you Sergeant?”
The Sarge walked to the table fearlessly as if he were wearing body armor head to toe. The guns followed him. He placed a piece of paper on one of the piles of money on the table. He put down a shiny pair of handcuffs on top as a paper weight.
“I have an arrest warrant here for one Manuel Garcia Rodriguez,” said Sarge.
The suited man strolled around to the other side of the table and looked at the warrant. 
“There are many warrants out for me, but no one crazy enough to enforce them. Even if they were to enforce them, I would be out in twenty-four hours and never see the inside of a courtroom.” Manuel looked around at the men with guns. They took it as a sign to get ready. Weapons clicked and arms became steady.
“Any last words before my friends put you down?”
“Anywhere but the face. I want to look good for the family.”
“Ex-family, last I heard.”
I clicked on the laser pointers and swirled the red dots around Manuel’s chest and then up to his forehead. He laughed heartily.
“I see you have brought some friends,” he said, still laughing. “These must be hired hands. It can’t be any badge from this city.”
“I used the drug money that your cousin left around when I shut him down,” said Sarge.
“You broke his arm too.”
“Actually, he broke his arm trying to punch me.” 
I pictured a Spanish thug taking a swing at the Sarge and the Sarge punching the guy’s fist in mid swing, shattering his arm.
“I’ll tell you what. Here’s a hundred thousand.” Manuel piled bills wrapped in neat stacks of ten thousand each. “And, you may keep what you took from my cousin.”
“I wasn’t offering to give it back.”
I moved the red dots to Manuel’s crotch. I could die at any moment, but I was having more fun than I had since college.
Manuel eyed the dots. “Do you have a counteroffer in mind?”
“Sure,” Sarge said. “I’ll fight you for your freedom.”
“Fight me?” replied Manuel.
“All of you.” Sarge waved his hand around including everyone. “If I win, you put the cuffs on and come with me. If I lose, we leave and I won’t bother you for a year.”
Manuel deliberated a moment and then uttered a slew of Spanish to the thugs. They dumped their guns and clips on the table and surrounded the Sarge with fists ready. Manuel watched from the other side of the table.
Sarge did some kind of military hand signal and nodded to three different shelves of boxes like there was a small army hidden behind them. I don’t know what the hell it meant, but I turned off the lasers.
“Oh, one second. I have to get this on video.”
Sarge took his cell phone from his pocket and panned it around. 
“Now, just to be clear and to release my department from all liability–I need you guys to agree that you are entering this scuffle of your own free will and that you further agree to hold harmless the police department or any agency that I may be employed by for any damages that may be incurred in the next few minutes.”
Sarge rotated in place, taking video of the five seedy individuals that had surrounded him.
“Say yes in whatever language you speak, or nod–that works too. Thank you. How about you Manuel? Que pas?”
Manuel shrugged. 
“That’s beautiful, thank you. I think legal will be happy with that” the Sarge put away his phone.
One of the thugs charged Sarge and swung. Sarge locked his arm around the guy’s arm and spun him into the table. Manuel stepped back. The table collapsed. Money and weapons scattered. 
“Come on, you can do better than that,” Sarge jeered.
Two thugs charged. Sarge grabbed the fingers of one and bent them back with an accompaniment of cracks and screams of pain. Sarge stomped on the knee of the other man and sent a few teeth flying with a hard punch across the face.
The forth thug wrapped his arms around the Sarge’s neck and tried to choke him from behind. The Sarge reverse head butted the guy twice, smashing his nose. The guy tried to release and cover his gushing snout, but Sarge wouldn’t let him. He held his arms and when the fifth guy approached, Sarge flipped the man over his head and threw him. The two men collided into a pile of boxes. 
The fifth thug dug himself out from under his friend and stood toe to toe with Sarge. This one was leaner and quicker than the others. Sarge blocked a barage of punches, but the guy was slick and one got through.
Sarge grimaced, snatched the guy by the throat, and slammed him to the concrete floor. The guy went limp and was out cold.
Manuel looked around at his thugs in various states of dismay on the floor. I put the reds on him again, just in case he had the urge to pick up a gun and go out in a blaze of glory.
Manuel picked up the handcuffs at his feet and clicked a cuff around each wrist.
“When I get back, none of you should be here.” Manuel said to his thugs who wrythed on the floor. Sarge grabbed the chain that connected the cuffs with one hand and clocked Manuel in the eye with the other.
“That’s for making me sweat.” 
If it were me at the table, I would have taken the money to let the creep walk. The Sarge didn’t blur the line like that. Everything was black or white. No grey areas. I knew the Sarge wouldn’t take the bribe. Breaking a drug dealer’s orbital rim gave him more satisfaction. 
Sarge rounded the corner with Manuel in tow. I turned off the laser pointers and Manuel gave me a look as Sarge dragged him past. It was a if I had a gun I would kill you look, which wasn’t very pleasant.
“There’s a whole lot of cash on the floor back there. Mind if I grab a bit?” I asked as the Sarge walked away.
“Victory is the reward,” said Sarge.
He pushed the exit door open and the sunlight stung my eyes.

AFTER a few stops and few veggie burritos with soy cheese later, we were back at the station. Manuel, with the puffy eye, was handcuffed to a bench against the station wall with two other collars. Sarge made some phone calls and set me up at an empty desk, so I could make some notes and a few calls as well.
It was late afternoon when Officer Peters rushed to the Sergeant’s desk. Something was happening and there was quite a bit of commotion at the station. Sarge didn’t give me an invitation, but I hung up the phone and followed him downstairs anyway.
“He was brought in this morning,” Peters said. “We assumed he was drunk and let him sleep it off. There were two others already in there. An hour ago, all three of them attacked the rookie. He’s okay. They’re bandaging him upstairs.”
We stopped at the bottom of the stairs.
“But, I came down a few minutes ago and found this.”
The Sarge, three uniformed officers, and myself stared at the jail cell silently. Three sickly men in a holding cell pressed their faces against the bars and strained to grab us. Two of the men were bloody with wounds all over. The cell’s back wall, floor, and cots were covered with blood like it had been mopped with it.
“What the hell?” said Sarge. His forehead wrinkled.
I noticed my mouth was open, so I closed it and continued to stare until I realized I was alone. I ran to catch up to the others who were ascending the stairs. We piled into a small surveillance room. Sarge pushed his sausage-sized finger on the rewind button of a video player. A black and white image, a high corner shot of the cell, was rewinded. He stopped it when the drunk was put into the cell with the two other detainees. 
The little monitor showed the drunk walking to the other cot and attacking the prisoner lying on the bottom bunk. The prisoner flailed and kicked his legs. His blood, shown in black, poured out onto the floor. The detainee on the top bunk slid over to see what was going on. The drunk went after him and bit his leg. The guy on the top bunk kept the drunk at bay by kicking him. After a while, the guy from the bottom bunk got up and helped go after the guy on the top bunk. They grabbed him, bit him, and his bed turned dark with blood. The Sarge fast-forwarded to when the rookie arrived at the cell. The three prisoners grabbed his arm and the rookie pulled it away, but not before getting bitten. Sarge stopped the tape and the monitor went black.
“I’ll call the CDC,” said Peters.
“Where’s the rookie now?” asked the Sarge in an ominous tone.
Peters opened the door and was jumped by the rookie. The rookie sank his teeth into Peters’ neck. Blood spurted from Peters’ jugular and sprayed me in the face. I wiped the warm fluid away. 
The Sarge wretched Peters away from the rookie, whose mouth was dripping with blood, and held a chunk of Peters’ neck in his mouth. Peters fell back and hit his head on the corner of the chair and dropped to the floor, unconscious. 
The rookie charged Sarge and the Sarge kicked him in the chest, sending the officer flying backwards and tumbling over himself.
I rushed to Peters, grabbed a pillow from the couch, and pushed it into his gushing neck wound. The color drained from him quickly. Right before my eyes, he went from a rosey-peach complexion to a ghastly grey-white.
It took me a few moments to process what was happening. Peters and the Sarge knew instantly what was going on–which probably comes with being on the job for decades. The drunk that was put into the jail cell was diseased. He was sick. He attacked the others in his cell and spread the sickness. Then, the rookie was attacked and he got sick.
The sickness had spread quickly through the office. It was chaos. A uniformed officer took cover behind a desk as a prostitute, bloody at the mouth, charged him. He fired a clip full of shots into the woman, but she kept coming. Bullets exited her back as she leaped on him and sunk teeth into his shooting arm.
Another officer was on the ground and screamed as two fellow officers ripped open his chest and devoured the contents. 
Two men, handcuffed to the bench, were being eaten alive by two office workers. They punched and kicked and yelled but couldn’t keep them off. Beside them on the bench was an empty spot. Manuel was gone and the handle of the bench was cracked.
In the office, the rookie hopped to his feet and sprinted toward the Sarge. The Sarge quickly put three rounds into the rookie’s chest. It did little more than put a hiccup in his stride. The fourth shot was in the forehead, dead center. The rookie dropped to the floor. 
The Sarge slammed the office door closed, took one look at me, and yelled.
“Duck!”
I felt a presence behind me, I turned and looked. Peters was swooping in to bite me. I felt searing pain on the side of my head and everything went black.
When I awoke, florescent lights and ceiling tile slowly came into focus. My head and jaw stung and I had a splitting headache. I turned to the side. The Sarge was hunched over something on the floor. He turned and raised the corner of his mouth. He was either happy I was conscious or laughing at me for becoming unconscious. Either way my head hurt like hell. I was sprawled on the couch so I turned on my side and rubbed my jaw.
“What happened?”
“I kept you alive.”
I was expecting the Sarge to cap the sentence with “for a bit longer’”
“Thank you, and how did you do that exactly?” 
“I kicked you.”
I’m not sure if he kicked me out of the way of the impending bite from Peters or if he kicked us both in the head–either way he saved my life and in that moment I had that funny feeling in my gut that he would save it again through the course of the night. My head got a bit clearer and I became curious about what the Sarge was doing. I stood up and gagged. I could taste veggie burrito and stomach acid in my mouth.
Peters was flat on his back on the floor with a two-foot by two-foot gray metal safe on his chest. I recognized the safe from earlier when we were looking at the video monitors. It must weigh at least three-hundred pounds. The Sarge lifting a safe must be the equivalent of a normal human being lifting a brick. He probably didn’t even grunt or break a sweat.
Peter’s face was now sickly grey and his eyes white like fog. He looked ill–deathly ill. He looked back and forth between the Sarge and myself, groaning, and snapping his head and teeth. I kept back to stay out of reach of his arms. I looked closer and noticed the blood puddles at his shoulders. He had no arms. They sat tossed in the corner. I scanned the room and didn’t see a bloody axe around or a knife. My best guess was that the Sarge ripped them off to avoid flailing aggravations as he studied his pet project.
“He’s dead,” mumbled Sarge. I could clearly see Peters moving every appendage that was still attached to his body and made that fact known.
“He’s lost all of his blood, he’s not breathing, he has no pulse, no heartbeat, and his pupils are fixed. He’s dead”
I know CPR. I’ve had some first aid training, so I checked what the Sarge said. 
“Stay away from his mouth, I think that’s how it spreads,” Sarge warned.
I stayed away from the mouth, finished my examination, and concurred with Sarge.
“What now?” I asked, “I mean he’s dead, no doubt, but he’s moving.” 
The Sarge drew his gun and shot Peters in the forehead, dead center. Peters stopped moving immediately. 
“He’s not moving now,” said Sarge. He took the corpse’s weapon from its holster.
The Sarge raided the large walk in closet on the other side of the room. He put on a bulletproof vest and tossed one over for me. He grabbed some boxes of bullets and slammed them on the table and filled some clips.
The thumping that I thought was in my head came from walls around us. 
“Check the peep hole, give me a count,” said Sarge. He motioned to the door with a nod of his head.
I slid opened the slot in the door. My veggie burrito, which wasn’t sitting well to begin with, now covered my shoes. It wasn’t the grotesque gang of the walking dead on the opposite side of the door–the chunks of missing flesh, the missing limbs, the chewed faces–it was not knowing how we were going to get out this room alive that turned my stomach.
“How many?” asked Sarge without breaking stride in his clip-loading. 
I counted quickly. There were twenty-three. The Sarge stuffed his clips in his pockets and glanced through the slot in the door quicker than it took my liquified veggie burrito to move from my stomach to the floor.
“Twenty-five.”
“Why do you want to know how many–Don’t tell me we are going out there!” 
The Sarge didn’t answer me.
“Why can’t we just stay here?” I pleaded.
“Put your hand on that wall,” Sarge demanded.
The wall was so hot when I touched it that I had to pull my hand away.
“We leave now or we die of smoke inhalation.”
“But, I don’t see any–” 
Before I finished the sentence, smoke poured out of the vent in the wall.
“Stay behind me,” said Sarge. He readied a gun in each hand and kicked the door open.
Twenty-five exploding heads later, we were outside in the cool night air. Our feet slapped the concrete. There were walking dead scattered all around us. I could see them out of the corners of my eyes, but I didn’t want to look at them. I just ran as fast as I could to the passenger door of the squad car. 
Sarge trailed behind me and shot more heads. I didn’t look. I didn’t have to look. I could picture exactly what was happening as I heard it. The exploding pop from the gun, the splashing of blood and brains on the street, then the dull thuds of a semi-headless body dropping to the ground.  After a succession of gunfire, I was at the car, but the Sarge wasn’t. 
I looked around frantically for him like a lost child. He had stopped midway between the precinct and me. He was focused on something. I followed his line of sight and stopped at a big, yellow Hummer. It was one of those giant ones they made before they shrunk it. It was stopped there on the sidewalk opposite the precinct. The engine was running and a dead guy sat in the drivers seat. Well, dead in the sense that he had seen better days when he was alive. His head went back and forth between us. He couldn’t get out. He was strapped in by the seat belt and couldn’t unlatch it.
I saw the gleam in the Sarge’s eye and that corner of his mouth raised. He wanted that truck. Before the words “Forget it” left my lips, he had punched the dead guy so hard in the head I heard his skull crack. He unlatched the seat belt and swung the dead guy out by his arm. 
“Blunt force trauma to the cranium seems to be the most effective.”
“I agree.”
“Come on,” yelled Sarge.
I climbed up the passenger side of the truck and got in. 
Sarge raced down the street. He loved his new toy. The thick bars on the grill of the Hummer weren’t neccessary for the man in the suit that commuted to work in this beast, but they were perfect for smashing the shit out of the walking dead. And the Sarge put them to good use. 
Thump, thump, thump.
I crossed my arms in front of me fearing that one of them would come smashing through the windshield, but it didn’t happen. They got propelled to the side or under the vehicle and were subsequently run over like a speed bump. Looking behind I could see them struggle to get up. I think Sarge was aggravated that they weren’t all dying.
I use the term “dying” loosely.
We skidded to halt in a nice part of town, in the driveway of a house too pretty to be the Sarge’s. I pictured him in a dark, damp basement in a seedy part of town with a cot for a bed, a bathroom that hadn’t been cleaned in years, massive barbells and dumbbells around the floor, and a closet full of enough ammo and guns to win World War III single-handedly.
The thick front door was beige with a single smear of blood across its center. The dead bolt extended out of the edge of the door while the door frame was cracked and splintered inward as if it had been kicked it.
Sarge waved me back, drew his gun, and marched inside. After a minute without hearing shots fired, I stepped inside. I didn’t feel so safe alone on the porch. I closed the door and attempted to lock the dead bolt. It was futile because there was nothing to hold it in place.
The Sarge returned from scouting the first floor. 
“Wait here,” he said and trotted up the staircase.
Framed photos covered the walls of the foyer. It believe it was the home of his ex-wife. I recognized the woman from the background research I had done on the Sergeant, however, Sarge wasn’t in any of the pictures that I could see.
I wondered if the Sarge had offspring and I imagined them to be a small army of clones with the same buzz cut and wearing camo. I spotted several pictures of a young girl. Apparently, Sarge had a daughter. You could tell she was his. Don’t get me wrong, she was very pretty. I could see a resemblance although, there was no cigar in her mouth.
Something smashed in one of the rooms above. It sounded like the Sarge picked up a king size bed and launched it against the wall. I raced to the staircase and the Sarge walked down slowly. He brushed by and went outside. He looked a bit like the walking dead himself, like the life had been drained from him.
A welcoming committee had gathered outside the house. After his performance at the police station, I was perfectly confident that the Sarge would have us back in the Hummer in a minute or two. 
The Sarge had two guns and plenty of ammo, but didn’t fire a single shot. In a blur of bone-crushing punches, snapping necks, and roundhouse kicks that almost took heads off–the Sarge went ballistic. Blood splattered and creatures fell–one after another–until a pile lay at Sarge’s feet. He stood hunched with clenched, blood-soaked fists. His sculptured chest rose and fell as he sucked wind.
One dead man stumbled upon the party late. For the Sarge’s finale, he pulled each arm off the man and then each leg. He left the torso on the street and the creature chomped air incessantly. The Sarge was finished. A fine mist of blood covered his face. I prayed that I never, ever pissed the man off. He wiped his face on his sleeve and got in the car.
We sat there for a long time in the Hummer with the engine growling. Sarge stared at a picture of his daughter he had grabbed from the house. She was smiling in it. It was wrinkled like he had smashed it out of a picture frame.
A new crowd of dead gathered and slapped at the windows. I was concerned for our safety, but didn’t utter a word.  I expected Sarge to pop open the door and step outside and before my eyes would have adjusted to the interior light, he would have another pile of corpses at his feet.  My fantasy was interrupted by the crackle of a radio–not the Sarge’s police radio that had been blaring static for the past hour–a voice came from a CB radio in the Hummer. 
“Help us please. Is anyone there?”
Her voice was thick with desperation. Herself and five others were trapped in a furniture store surrounded by the undead. I didn’t know the store, but I knew the plaza she named and it wasn’t far. I replied back, but there was no reply.
No one else was going to help her. I knew it, and the Sarge knew it. Unfortunately, I don’t think the Sarge was in the mood to do anything about it. Before I finished my thought, the car was in gear. The humongous tires dug trenches in his ex-wive’s front lawn and spit walking dead out the back.
“It’s–” 
“I know where it is,” the Sarge grumbled.

THE dead wandered the vacant streets and thumped off the Hummer. There was no sign of survivors on any of the back roads we took. Car fires were commonplace and smoke clouded the streets. House after house was ransacked by the dead. Doors were open, windows were smashed, and barricades were overrun. We were driving through the aftermath of a war. It wasn’t your typical war. It was fought on our own soil against people that used to be us.
We crept into the parking lot, the Hummer’s engine rumbled like the growl of a ten-thousand pound tiger. The Sarge and I stared at the furniture store at the far end.
“She’s fucked.” 
I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but there it was. I waited for the Sarge to agree with me, but I forgot that the word “impossible” does not exist in his vocabulary.
The furniture store had a town’s worth of people banging at its windows. There were people from all walks of life; A nurse, a doctor, a cop, a marine, a stripper, a crossing guard, a businessman, a businesswoman–and they all wanted to eat whoever was in the store. 
“Let’s check the back,” said Sarge. He moved the Hummer around the storefront. He slowly ran over a stray dead man crossing the parking lot. It looked like one of the guys you see collecting shopping carts. This time, the Sarge backed up and made sure that the tire crushed the man’s head.
The back of the store was a little better, but not by much. There were no glass windows here, just a few doors for the stores. The Sarge returned to the front and circled the parking lot like a shark circling prey. 
We drove to the storefronts on the opposite side of the plaza and cruised slowly past the Home Center. We checked for the walking dead inside the store. 
“Looks secure,” said the shark. 
We whipped around back and stopped in front of a steel garage door. The Sarge hopped out. 
“You drive,” he said and jogged off. 
The Sarge put a bullet through the lock of the back door and kicked it in. He disappeared inside and closed the door. Moments later, the garage door opened.
I cautiously drove the Hummer into the garage as if it were Sarge’s personal vehicle and it barely fit through door. I heard the roof scrape a bit and I cringed like he was going to take the damages from my wallet. The Sarge closed the door and flicked on the lights. The inside of the garage was spacious with a concrete floor and high metal ceiling. Most of the floor was covered with different pieces of equipment in various states of disassembly. There were weed-whackers, log splitters, blowers, snow blowers, and a snowmobile. A well used workbench ran along the side wall. I deduced that only two people worked in the shop because there were only two clear working areas on the bench. The rest was covered in tools and junk. 
Fluorescent lights, high in the ceiling, flickered on inside the main store after I found the switch. Sarge grabbed a shopping cart and I followed him to isle six.
“I need those three lawnmowers wheeled into the back,” he grunted
I watched him shop as I pushed each bright red machine into the back. Sarge threw all kinds of hardware into the cart; brackets, wire, nuts, and bolts.  He parked the cart by the car and sent me for some rubber hosing. By the time I got back, he had the mower motors out of their shielding. 
He had removed the blades and stationed me in front of the grinder to sharpen them. A lawn mower blade is blunt instrument and he wanted samurai swords. I put the goggles on and made sparks fly. I felt like I was on the A-Team and a plan was coming together, although I couldn’t tell exactly what the Sarge was making.
He mounted the three motors upside down on a shelf he had constructed on the top of the hood of the Hummer. I handed him the blades and he bolted them back on the mowers. 
“Stand here,” ordered the Sarge. 
He tugged my arm and I stood up tall right where he wanted me to. He pushed my chin up so I was looking at the motor oil sign mounted high on the wall of the garage. He spun the lawn mower blade around with his finger and the cold sharp tip touched my Adam’s apple.
The Sarge was a genius.
I helped Sarge mount a gas tank on the center of the hood and run tubing to the three motors. He screwed three eye hooks right into the hood of the Hummer and put the starter ropes for each motor through them.
It was time to go back outside. On Sarge’s recommendation, we scoured the store for supplies before we left. We found some tools that might be useful. We found vending machines that had been broken into, so we packed some snacks and water.
The Sarge started lawn mower number one. It was loud and its razor sharp blades spun hundreds of times a second at the average neck height. He started the middle mower and I started the one on the passenger side. I ducked behind the car door hoping that the Sarge tightened the blades enough so they wouldn’t come spinning off into my face.
“I’ll get the door, you back it out,” said the Sarge with the corner of his mouth raised the highest I had seen so far.
Outside, we switched. The Sarge was anxious to try out his new toy. He raced toward the furniture store, with a look of frenzy on his face. 
“Wait, wait a second,” I said. 
The Sarge slowed the truck, confused and slightly disappointed. “We have to test it first,” I said quickly. “Before we take on all of those, try it on just one–like that one over there.” I pointed to a walking dead straggler limping around in a circle. 
The Sarge squealed the tires, spun around, and charged the dead guy at about sixty. The dead guy was embedded into the front of the truck. His head was almost chopped off, but the middle mower stalled with the blade buried deep into his neck. Sarge had approached too fast and had jammed the blade and stalled the mower.
I could feel the Sarge looking at me, volunteering me. He held onto that wheel like a child not willing to give up his most favorite toy in the world. I unlocked the door and got out. 
“Watch the blades,” he said. 
I wanted to say “no shit” back to the man, but I was afraid he’d jerk the Hummer forward and lop off my head.
I walked in wide arc making sure to stay clear of the wildly spinning blades. I got to the center of the Hummer and while still keeping my distance I grabbed hold of the dead guy’s arm and yanked. He didn’t budge. Coagulated blood oozed from where his head barely hung on and ran like black syrup down his neck. I yanked again and nothing happened. I cautiously stepped between the deadly spinning blades to get a closer look. 
The Sarge blew the horn. It must have been mounted under the center of the hood, because it sounded like a fog horn and I jumped. Fortunately, I jumped straight up. A few inches to the left or the right and my head would have bounced off of the windshield. That’s the moment I renamed them head mowers and right after that revised it to dead mowers.
“What?” I yelled.
The Sarge rolled down his window and shouted something at me. I couldn’t hear him over the two running lawn mowers. I knew he was remarking about how he could just yank once with one hand and pull this dead guy out. I didn’t live in the gym. I wasn’t 260 lbs. of muscle. I couldn’t do that. 
“What?” I said angrily. 
The Sarge again uttered something I could not hear. I shrugged my shoulders and gave a “what the hell?” grimace to a guy that could kill me with his thumb. He waved his hand back and forth, motioning me to step to the side. I stepped a foot to the right and the Sarge drew his Glock and fired. The head of the walking dead lady, who was about to chomp on my neck, exploded. Her head twitched back, her long hair puffed out the back and prevented her brains from departing her skull. She dropped in front of the Hummer. 
The Sarge sat back in his seat and rolled up the window. I cursed his nonchalantness. But now, with pure adrenaline pumping through my system, I was electrified and I knew what the Sarge felt like twenty-four hours a day. I yanked the headless dead guy out of the jammed dead mower with one tug, pulled the starter cord, and jumped back into my shotgun position.
“Okay, just go slow this time,” I demanded from the passenger seat.
The Sarge smirked. He probably knew I was not stepping out of the truck again anytime soon to remove his mishaps from stalled blades. We picked a specimen in a white coat that had followed us over to the hardware store, probably saw us leave, and was heading back again. The Sarge crept the Hummer up slowly behind him. The pharmacist turned and the blades neatly sliced off his head. The body dropped while the head spun for a moment on top of the blades with chunks flying out before it whipped off to the side.
We were ready. The Sarge drove to the start of the plaza by the coffee shop. He went up on the sidewalk and drove along the store fronts passing the video store, the hairdresser, and Ice Cream shop and inched the Hummer a little bit closer to the building. By the time we got to the furniture store, the Hummer was inches from the windows and no walking dead were getting past our left side. 
He crept along slowly. The dead turned and were blinded by the lights. Fingers and limbs went flying first, then the heads. We were crawling inches at time, but the thick blood was pouring in streams over the windshield. Sarge hit the wipers, making pristine arcs in a sheet of red blackness. The mower blades grinded flesh and bone and sent it everywhere. It was like being inside a cuisinard.
We had reached the end of the crowd. I looked back and saw a perfectly straight dark line of blood and flesh chunks across the front windows for a good forty foot stretch. The Sarge whipped around and made a second pass for the crowd that wasn’t on the sidewalk. The mowers groaned in the thickest part and the Sarge slowed. It was hard to go slow, even for me. I wanted to speed and shred right through them just as badly as the Sarge did. 
The front was clear. We picked off a few stragglers and then did the smaller crowd in the back.
When we were done, we parked the Hummer by the back door and got out. There were no walking dead around as far as we could see. We walked across the pavement slick with blood and Sarge banged on the door. It took a minute, but it opened. A little at first, then all the way. The girl who let us in was wide-eyed and timid. Her mascara was streaked from crying and her dark hair was disheveled. She had scratches on her face and arms.
“Have you been bitten?” asked the Sarge coldly as he let himself in.
I followed.
“No,” the girl said.
She moved behind us and locked the door.
“That’s how it spreads,” he said.
“Really?” She said as she played with her watch nervously.
The Sarge looked around like he was studying a crime scene.
“Where are the others?” He asked.
“They didn’t make it,” she lowered her head and sniffled.
I stuck out my hand. “I’m Mark.”
“Amanda.”
We walked through a narrow warehouse to a large furniture showroom. I could see the bloodline across the outside window through the gaps in the barricade and smiled.
“Do you have any supplies? Food? Water?” asked the Sarge. 
“There’s the break room over there.” She pointed. “We keep it pretty well stocked.”
The break room had a sink, refrigerator, microwave, and cabinet with some canned goods. The room was a mess. A few areas of the wall were caved in– like someone had charged it or had been pushed into it. A bit higher on the wall, there were random square holes all over. Napkins, straws, and plastic utensils littered the floor.
And then there was the blood.
The blood wasn’t easy to see. It was smeared around the floor in a thin layer. There were some streaks leading to a utility closet like someone had dragged something there, but it was empty. On the dark carpet outside the break room, darker drops of blood could be seen. I pushed my finger into the fibers and pulled back crimson red on my finger. I followed the trail with my eyes to the storefront windows where Sarge was checking the barricades. Sarge gave me a look like I was wasting time and I returned to the break room.
There were a few cases of water next to the fridge. I grabbed a hand truck and stacked them on. I filled an empty box with the canned goods and threw it on top. I wheeled the cases into the hallway. In the hall there were three other doors. I glanced at the Sarge and he was making small talk with Amanda, so I checked the doors. 
The first door was to an office filled with files. The other door was a bathroom, which I took advantage of. The third was locked until I pulled out my credit card. After slipping it in the seam, the door popped open. It was another office, but much cleaner. 
A surveillance monitor caught my eye. There was a small desk in the office with a video monitor showing six different real-time views of the store, including the break room.  I opened a cabinet next to the monitor. It was packed with CD cases with hand written dates on them. A red light was flashing on the recorder next to the monitor. Maybe it was my innate curiosity or the antennae on my head that was always on the lookout for a story, but I pressed eject. A DVD spit out. I put it in a case and slipped it into my pocket. 
Outside the store, the Sarge shot a few stragglers as I loaded the Hummer with the water and canned goods. Amanda plugged her ears and flinched with each pull of the trigger as she ran into the back seat. The crack of the gunfire didn’t faze me anymore, I had become immune.

THE highways were filled bumper to bumper with empty cars, so the Sarge stuck to the back roads. It made traveling slower, but then again we were not heading anywhere in particular, the Sarge was just driving and for me to ask where we were going would have been insulting. 
Amanda sat silently looking out the window. She had wet streams under her eyes, but didn’t make a whimper.
I looked out, watching the tip of the sun come up over the horizon. I watched the Sarge’s eyes scan the road. Part of me thought the car would come to a sudden stop and Sarge would step out shoot all of the infected in sight, but that didn’t happen. I kept staring at the sun as my eyelids grew heavy, hoping we would stop soon, so I could get some rest. I hoped that wherever we stopped they had a DVD player.

###

To be continued…