by Mark Clodi
Pushing herself away from the car she experienced another tingling pain in her neck, she immediately used one of her hands to steady her head and looked back the way she had come. No cars. She thought her house might be three miles away, a long walk, maybe she could call someone and ask them to pick her up. She opened her phone and called Marge.
Marge lived in the same gated community as Dora, but their houses were about as far apart from each other as they could be and still be in the same subdivision. The two of them shared many of the same past times; gossip, early morning bloody Mary's, club lunches and afternoon gin and tonics. They would also work out together and told each other all of their secrets, especially those that painted their husbands in an embarrassing light. Giggling like school children they would often be interrupted by Roger or Marge's husband, Jerry, in the middle of an off color story involving one or the other of them.
The woman had almost slept with Jerry once and Marge had almost been 'swapped' to Roger the same night. That had been one memorable ski trip in Crested Butte in Colorado. The swap had never managed to happen, but boy had Roger pounded her hard that night. She knew he had a thing for Marge since then and both women had tried to engineer a second trip, but their husband's schedules just never seemed to allow it. Not that the woman was all that impressed by Jerry, he was a spectacled man about six feet tall with a pronounced beer belly, nothing she didn't get with Roger, to be sure, but he was also completely bald. Not 'receding hairline' bald, but billiard head bald. He had lost all his hair in his twenties and something about his baldness disturbed Dora. Oh she would have slept with him, with Roger's knowledge, and she probably would have had an orgasm too, anything for a change of pace and something new. She just didn't think she would enjoy the baldness part of it.
The phone was ringing.
"Hello?" it was Sylvia, who Marge had over some days to help out with the cleaning and other odds and ends around the house.
"Oh, Sylvia, this is Dora. Is Marge there?"
"Yes, Dora. She is sleeping right now, want me to have her call you when she gets up? It is still a little early for her, she had a late night last night."
"Her too? I hate to ask this, but Sylvia, could you wake her? I have had a bit of an accident."
"An accident? You are hurt? I will get her right away!"
Nodding to herself and wincing in pain at the same time Dora waited for her friend to pick up the phone. Over the line she heard Sylvia knock on a door and then heard some muffled conversation, including a man's voice say, something like "I thought you told her not to bother us?" before Marge shushed him and yelled at Sylvia to go away. Sylvia tried explaining through the door that it was Dora on the line and she had been in an accident.
Grinning Dora knew the man was not Jerry. 'Ooh that tricky bitch! Getting some on the side and not even telling me! I am going to let her have it.' Then her brain caught up with her and she found herself pulling the phone away from her ear and staring at it in her hand while Marge said "Dora? Dora, darling? Are you there?"
Dora clicked the end button on her phone, breaking the connection. Her brain had caught up with her in time to tell her the man's voice on the other end of the line had been Rogers.
Chapter 3
Roger was fucking her best friend. That explained so many aspects of Marge's actions lately. Dora had never been a morning person, nor had Marge, it was one of the reasons they got on so well, only lately Marge had still been in bed when Dora called, even at two o'clock in the afternoon! Marge had laughed it off as staying up extra late, around the same time Sylvia had started acting weird too. Now Dora realized the part-time maid had been giving her looks of pity the last few months. Why hadn't the woman said anything to her?
Dora could make her life miserable, and would too! That wetback little bitch, letting Dora sit there in her friend's house chatting oblivious to the fact that her husband's cock had been in her friend's…Dora broke down and started to cry, she knew that it was not Sylvia's fault, still she was not ready to give Roger the full blame for his infidelity yet either.
No, Dora thought about all the long talks she had had with Marge lately, discussing his renewed sexual interest and hearing her respond with girlish laughter. That absolute bitch! Dora's crying turned into a snarl of anger, she tilted her head back to scream, however her howl of rage turned into a muted scream of pain as she moved her neck.
"Oh, that hurts!" she whimpered out loud. She slowly lowered her head to a more level position and turned her body to look around. No help had come while she had been standing there. She rotated her neck around, trying to find out where it hurt and how far she could safely move it.
Dora looked at the woman on the ground closer. There was a lot of blood, the woman's head and face were a disgusting mess of spaghetti sauce, with some wrinkly gray stuff and sharp white bits of bone here and there.
"Disgusting!" Dora said out loud. There was no way that the woman was alive. Where was everybody? Another car should have been by at least, everything was quiet and calm. Dora knew she should wait for the police, no matter what the dispatcher said.
Dora received a text message from Marge, it was short, "Call me beotch." Somehow using the pet name only infuriated her more as if that would be possible. The bitch was sleeping with her husband and wanted to maintain the masquerade? Fuck her! Dora almost threw her phone into the street in anger, but held herself back at the last second. She had the feeling she would not be able to get a new phone by simply walking into a store today.
Slowly putting her head and shoulders back into the car Dora opened the glove box and pulled out a small box filled with wet wipes. She then got down on her knees and proceeded to clean her face off using the wipes and the side mirror on her car. The bleeding from her nose had stopped and there wasn't any bruising so far as she could tell, just a lingering redness, one that showed in her eyes from crying too. Her shirt was ruined, the blood from her nose had made a mess of it and for a moment she didn't know what to do about that. Then she remembered her gym bag in the back seat, after a quick search she found it wedged under the front seat on the floor and pulled it out with a couple of tugs.
Unzipping the black bag revealed her gym clothing. They didn't smell too bad either, Dora thought she had only worked out in them once since she last washed them. Pulling out her workout t-shirt she held it up to her own bloodied shirt to compare them. The gym shirt was in far better shape. Dora slowly moved her head around to see if anyone was watching, when she saw no one she carefully pulled her shirt off and then put on the one from the gym bag. Checking herself in the side view mirror one last time she was happy with the results, she didn't look like an accident victim anymore, just a local yahoo out for a stroll.
There was nothing else Dora needed out of the wreck, so she picked up her purse and turned back to the road. She could still not see any cars or people, she was in a bit of a valley here and she expected to have a better view when she reached the top of the hillside at the end of the street. There were three very large houses along each side of the street on the way up, but they all looked empty.
'Another sign of the recovering economy' Dora thought, which brought her a snort of derision, 'sure we've recovered from the recession.' The house whose fence she had run over also appeared abandoned, Dora almost approached it, just to see if anyone was home. She took a step towards the house and she immediately changed her mind, the place was old and creepy, no one lived there, she was sure. Ignoring the freshly cut grass which contradicted her logic, Dora backed out of the yard and started walking for home.
Chapter 4
The first quarter mile walk went smoothly for Dora, she walked up the sidewalk until she was back at the cross street, which was fourteenth, in less than five minutes. She crossed the empty intersection with its flashing red lights and was about to continue down Uclid when she heard the noise. Fireworks? No it sounded like an action movie, those were gunshots!
'Close by too!' Dora looked for a place t
o hide. While Uclid was primarily a residential street, fourteenth ran through the main business district of this section of suburbia, so there was a gas station across from a fast food place diagonally and the opposite corners boasted a dry cleaning place across from a closed Chinese restaurant. The fast food place was right ahead of her so Dora crouched down and ran towards that, feeling a twinge in her neck with every step. She half expected the door to be locked when she pushed on it, but it slid open easily beneath her hands. The cool air that blew into her face was a welcome relief from the humid air of the street.
Standing in the entry way between two glass doors Dora peered into the place. Outside the gunfire intensified, seeing nothing unusual inside she pushed into the main lobby and approached the lone teenage boy behind the counter. He ducked visibly as the next round of muffled gunfire went off unseen outside, then nervously asked, "What is going on outside? That sounds like gunfire."
"Ya think" Dora responded sarcastically, "Maybe we oughta get in the back and hide somewhere?"
The boy nodded and Dora came around the counter quickly, almost running into a portly, younger woman with short, curly black hair wearing a fast food uniform and an assistant manager's badge with the name "Paige Hindale" on it. The woman's face held a worried expression on it and she quickly motioned to Dora and yelled, "C'mon Mike, we gotta get out of here!"
As she said this one of the front windows was shattered and all three of them dropped to the floor. Mike was wearing a head set to take orders from the drive through and it got caught up on a the cash register when he turned to run. He started swearing as the cord between the battery pack on his belt and the headphones he was wearing pulled tight around his neck, almost strangling him. Paige's expression was one mixed with fear and concern, Dora's was more of one that said 'what a clumsy dumbass'.
Mike pulled the corded headphones off, unplugged them from his belt and crawled towards the end of the counter where the two women were. Paige led the way as they crawled deeper into the building, eventually they ended up in front of a locked door. The industrial metal portal had a narrow rectangle of frosted safety glass from above the door knob that extended about two feet high. Opening it Paige revealed a messy office area that smelled strongly of old grease and stale bread.
The radio and small flat panel tv on the desk were barely visible beneath coffee stained papers and mantilla folders. Behind the desk, braced against the wall was a rickety looking bookshelf made of white medium density fiber board held up with braces and overloaded with training manuals, employee binders, old computer software and other paraphernalia. The users of this wonder of engineering must have realized the potential death trap they had sitting behind them when they used the desk, because the free floating corner of the shelves was braced up with a large post, screwed into the shelves with amateurish skill. The smells made Dora want to puke, reminding her briefly of her original reason for leaving the house this morning. Paige had immediately shut and locked the door behind them when they entered. Still on the ground, she eyed Dora speculatively before saying, "Welcome to our restaurant, can I take your order please?"
Mike started laughing at that and Dora gave them both a look of scorn, assuming, correctly, they were playing a bit of a joke on her. The moment quickly passed and she said, "I want a number 3 with a large black cup of Joe please, two creams and two splendas."
Paige scowled, "A large cup of 'Joe', that's our competitor you know."
Dora nodded, "Yeah, I know."
"A wise ass, eh? I outta toss you out on your ass."
Dora nodded, "Yeah, I know."
"I won't."
"Yeah. I didn't think you would."
Holding her hand out, Paige said, "I am Paige, that's Mike."
Shaking her hand Dora said, "Dora, I am very pleased to meet you."
"Is it bad out there? It has been dead in here all morning, no morning rush, no old people coming in to nurse their coffees for two hours. What is going on?"
Dora, who thought she was the last one who knew what was going on, said, "I was talking to the police they said to go home, lock my doors and not to talk to anyone."
"So what are you doing here?" Mike asked.
"I was trying to get home, I crashed into…well I hit a tree and they told me to walk home." Dora left the part out about the bag lady.
"Anyway, I don't really know much more than that, the cops told me to turn on the news, get an update that way." Dora shrugged her shoulders, then winced in pain at the effort.
Paige lifted one hand and brushed back a lock of her curly hair, "Yeah, watch TV, huh. You would know our cable went out in this place two days ago, we've missed most of the crazy stuff going on in the world the last couple of days. Then the manager is off in Vegas, so all the assistants are in charge, rotating the schedules, a major pain in the ass, I've been working 12 hour days the last three days, poor Mike has too. Only there was no business today, nothing."
"No cable, but does that thing work?" Dora asked while pointing at the half visible tv on the top of the desk.
It was Paige's turn to shrug, "Sure, I think so. But it doesn't have cable. The radio works too, let's try both and see what we can get." Paige grabbed the small television, while Mike unwound the plugs from both appliances from the jumble of cords under the desk. Dora made herself useful by tilting the radio off the desktop into her hand and then piling the loads of folders back into a stabilized pile that wouldn't fall on them. After a few confusing minutes of running the cords around and getting the television into a position where they could all see it on the floor they turned it on. It warmed up slowly, but the volume came on right away.
"…story by telling anyone who can hear this to look out for anyone acting strange. This could be your neighbor or spouse or even your children. Many of these people affected by the virus appear to have sustained fatal or near fatal wounds, the rule of thumb is if they look hurt and still come at you, you need to flee to a safer area."
A woman's voice came on, "Now, Jim is this the same thing that hit so hard on the east coast, with an outbreak in Denver?"
"Absolutely, Diane. The authorities are saying that we are going to have to form militias to deal with the problem, Kansas will not sit idle and let the contamination overwhelm us like what has happened elsewhere. As you heard the governor state just a few minutes ago, the National Guard has been called up and every available man and woman needs to help fight off the threat. Until all further notice you are not to go to your normal place of employment, unless it is in the following professions: Police, Fire department, Electrical Utility and Medical profession in any care giving or emergency medical capacity. Furthermore if you work for the phone company all technicians and operators are to report in. Only technicians and operators. Any and all civilians are to arm themselves with whatever weapons they have available, your local police for will not be able to protect you, if you do not have any weapons, go to a neighbor who does, or at the very least barricade your house up and stay indoors."
"So does anyone have any idea what started this…disease?" asked the newswoman from the studio.
"No one knows for sure. What we do know is that the 'normal' groups, the ones that usually would have claimed credit for something of this size, have been silent. Indicating it may not be a terrorist threat at all."
"So, no news from the authorities yet as to where this outbreak came from. Let's go now to our man on the street, Ned Stevens, to see how things are progressing. Ned? Are you there?"
The three of them in the manager's office waited while the news casters connected with the man about town, Ned Stevens, the screen on the television was still fuzzy until Mike fiddled around with the antenna. The picture then went from fuzzy washed out green images to a more tolerable resolution, just in time to show them a picture of Ned.
Normally Ned was dressed for clubbing and covered the local hot spots of social activity, so it came as a surprise to Dora to see him decked out in an Army helmet with a long sleeve c
amouflage jacket on.
'Somehow,' Dora thought, 'the look suits him.' In one hand he held a microphone, in the other he had a gun!
"…er me? Test one, test two." Ned said.
"Ned we are clear now, you are coming in loud and clear. What's going on? Where are you at?" asked Diane.
"Diane? Jim? Okay, okay.." Ned spoke to someone off camera, then turned back to face it head on face first, "Sorry, I am having some difficulty hearing you, Ray says you are coming through to him okay." In the background there was a group of soldiers standing looking down a business street with car lots on both sides of it. At the just visible intersection off in the distance there was a small crowd of people moving steadily towards the camera.
"Okay, I think we are okay now. I am down on west QM Avenue looking west towards Flora Drive, here is the situation."
The next twelve minutes were spent listening to Ned describe the nature of the contamination that they were dealing with, how once people were infected they became desensitized to pain and would attack and, yes, even cannibalize other humans. The only way to stop the spread of the disease was to destroy the carrier. The best, quickest way was with a sure shot to the head of the victim. If that could not be achieved then taking out the target's legs or doing massive damage to their torso was also effective at slowing them down.
As Ned reported the mob of diseased slowly approached his position, drawing concerned comments from Jim and Diane. Ned flashed them his trademarked grin and had the camera pan to the running, open vehicles that were waiting behind the camera crew, "We are not taking any chances Jim, if things get too bad we bug out fast and shift our position. A warning to viewers, we are going to fire on this group of infected; this is going to be graphic. We will not fall like Denver."