Scrambling, Kaige turned over and he was right there. Terror ceased her lungs as her heart began to beat faster. Ice surging through her veins, seeing the grayish-green rotting skin just hanging from the bone, puss and coagulated blood seeping from the bite and scratch marks around the neck and part of the jaw. Lunging at her, Kaige rolled, pulling the handle of her bat free from the inside of her backpack. Zombie Eye Joe stumbled, his head bouncing off the trunk of the car before Kaige swung with all her strength, cracking the bat across the back of the skull of the living dead man. Keeping him down, she kept wailing at its head until stinking black blood pooled out onto the ground. That was the first time she’d seen a rotter in a long time. If that thing had bitten her, she would have been done for.
Gasping for breath, the stench alone was enough to make her gag and she stumbled back a few steps trying to catch her breath, but the putrid stink followed her, wafting up from the corpse as its blood oozed like melted Jell-O from its broken skull. Cold sweat soaked through her clothes, it wasn’t moving and that was all she asked for. Shivering, even the thought that it had touched her made Kaige do the spastic heebie-jeebies dance.
Jumping back onto the bike Kaige pedaled as hard as she could.
3.
“Jesus! Slow down you moron!” Kaige shouted over the morning news filling the cabin of her battered 2003 Ford Focus. Good old Bessie was still running on a wish and a promise after sixteen years and Kaige did baby the car as much as she possibly could.
It was 7:45 AM and she had fifteen minutes to get to work and once again, Kaige was almost side swiped by some shit hook who was speeding down the road that wound through and around the Pinnacle Mountain Park.
Shaking her head, Kaige hated this road for two reasons, one other driver seemed to get lead foot and jammed through it like they were on the interstate and two because some of the potholes were literally big enough to swallow her car. Seriously, where were all her cigarette taxes going? Because they damn sure weren’t being used to fix the roads. But, Kaige also hated sitting in traffic on the interstate, so for the three to five minutes she had to be on this road, she tightened her grip on the steering wheel and just deal with it while her butt was sewing button holes in the seat the whole time.
Turning off the road, the next seventeen traffic lights between her and the parking garage of her office building laid straight ahead of her. Kaige stopped at the first red light, watching as the middle school kids hustled across the street, their random happy chatter lost in the overhead drone of aircraft carriers.
Tilting her head up to see the sky, Kaige noticed there were a lot of planes in the sky this morning while she didn’t actually see the planes themselves, they left evidence of their flight pattern behind in the form of those white exhaust trails in the clouds running parallel to each other, streaking the horizon for as far as her eyes could see.
“Wonder where they are all going?” Kaige asked herself, she’d never been on a plane before, Kaige never flew anywhere because she had never been on a vacation, thus she always made up stories in her head about the exotic locations that the people on the planes were headed to.
New and strange places like Florida, where the bugs were the size of cows, or so she’d heard. Or Salem, Massachusetts.
Kaige remembered saving once as a kid to go to Disney in Florida and her mom had saved around two thousand dollars by putting up twenty dollars every week into their piggy bank, but then the truck broke down and they had to use all the money they saved and then some. As a kid, Kaige didn’t understand, but now as an adult she got it.
Maybe she could start saving for a nice trip now? Barring that nothing happened, one of those Murphy’s law things.
Kaige had a decent job and she got two weeks of paid vacation time every year. Plus, ten sick days that didn’t cut into her vacation time, so she never used that two weeks. She came to work, and she went home, that was her normal. Kaige could go somewhere that she and her mom always talked about, but just never really had the money to do.
From behind, a car horn sounded signaling Kaige that the light had turned green and it was time to stop day dreaming.
Giving the driver behind her a little wave, Kaige drove on, still thinking about the planes as the traffic on a Tuesday morning flowed, taking people to their jobs.
Reaching the office, Kaige was ten minutes early, she always was. The mere suggestion of being late gave her anxiety, which to hear some of her co-workers tell it, that was normal. Not the fear of being late, but the anxiety was a natural part of the human experience. A normal amount of anxiety was a great motivator.
“Morning, Zach.” Kaige was hurrying up the steps right behind one of the therapists. He was an older, slightly eccentric man, but always friendly, if he though even for a second that you hesitated in your reply, he would make time in his day to check up on you. Something Kaige fought both endearing and embarrassing because there were some personal issues you didn’t always want to talk about.
“Good morning, Miss Banks.” Zach always reminded Kaige of Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting. Zach sort of looked like Robin too.
“Crazy plane action this morning.” Kaige commented quickly hopping onto the elevator.
“Come again?” Zach’s black and gray streaked bushy eyebrows crept up in acquisition.
“Oh,” she faltered, the insecurity Kaige usually felt when she was talking to someone with a college education started to bubble up in her brain. ‘Please don’t say something stupid, don’t be weird,’ “I just meant there are a lot of those smoky plane streaks in the sky this morning.” Kaige explained, her cheeks getting hot. ‘Yeah, you just sounded really intelligent. Stupid.’
“Oh, contrails.” Zach’s face lit with recognition as the elevator stopped on their floor and he allowed Kaige out of the elevator first and into the dark main lobby of Changes, the drug rehabilitation center they worked at. Of course, Zach would know the technical term. “It’s what happens when all the burning fuel from the jet hits the air, it makes those long streaks of white smoke.” He went on to explain.
“So, it’s like jet engine exhaust fumes?” Kaige was even crazier now because if those streaks were from burning jet fuel weren’t a lot of chemicals being pumped into the air? No wonder the ozone layer was so fucked.
“Basically.” Zach answered flipping the overhead lights on and taking his briefcase to his office before following Kaige into the kitchenette were most of the office gossip took place. The office pot was also there.
“That really makes me wonder if all the stuff we’re doing to save the environment is helping at all. Every day I see some commercial about reducing our carbon footprint. Seems counterproductive.” Kaige told him as she got the coffee grounds and filter from the cabinet. “People give smokers a bad rap, but what about those contrails? What are those doing, not only to us, but to the environment?” Kaige said, though whether she was talking to Zach or just to herself was debatable.
Zach was laughing under his breath as he got mugs from the dish drain and used a paper towel to wipe them off.
“What?” Kaige was confused about what he found so funny.
“You sound like one of those crazy conspiracy nuts, which I completely agree with by the way. It does beg one question exactly how much of what we’re doing to try to save the planet is actually being thwarted by our government.” Zach told her with another chuckle.
“Well, it’s true.” Kaige exclaimed. “I mean, what if all the health complications that people have, and all the doctors are telling us it’s because of cigarettes, are actually coming from those contrails? My best friend growing up, her grandpa was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and he never smoked a day in his life, no one in their family smoked either and then three months after he was diagnosed, he was dead. You can’t tell me that isn’t at all a little bit suspicious.” Kaige said, finished the coffee as Stephen, the front desk receptionist came into the kitchen looking like he had overslept and thrown himself togeth
er, granted, Stephen always looked like this.
“Morning guys.” Stephen muttered, stifling a yawn that made his big brown eyes water up like a basset hound.
“Morning.” Kaige smiled and took her coffee back to the smallest office, that was her workspace. Technically, it wasn’t even an office, it was slightly larger than a supply closet with a narrow two-by-ten window. The room itself was only big enough for a standard sized desk, a chair and two large filling cabinets along one of the walls. Until Kaige was hired no one wanted to be the person who was cramped into the lonely space at the back of the office. Kaige liked her little corner though, she could conduct her business quietly and no one ever bothered her.
Opening the blinds, Kaige sat down at her desk and turned her computer on, leaning back in her chair drinking her coffee listening to the office come to life around her. Kaige made twelve dollars an hour as a file clerk, which surprisingly was not difficult. Kaige still remembered how nervous she was when she took the position, mostly because she refused to go back into retail and the Changes Recovery Center was the first and only establishment to call her for an interview despite not having any previous experience. She decided to take a chance and sent in her resume. The vice president interviewed her and hired her on the spot. Kaige got the sense that with the number of patients they saw in a day they were eager to have someone who could just keep up with filing all the paperwork. There were medical records to be put in the correct order and apparently no one liked doing any of the tedious work which was why Kaige was so intimidated by the position. She was sure that she would mess something up and be fired after her first day on the job.
Fast forward to her first two weeks she was shocked by how much she locked it, but that also made her question if she was just really boring, but if that was the case, then Kaige decided that she was cool with that.
The morning passed by without incident, except for correcting lab dates because the sample was taken one day, but the actual urine analysis wasn’t done until the next day because the lab was behind. Insurance companies didn’t like that and would deny a claim when the request dates and the results didn’t match. Considering that Changes saw between one hundred and one hundred-fifty patients a day for drug testing alone this was a big deal and drug testing was one of the most expensive services that was rendered at the center. All in all, there were only sixteen records that she had to correct before scanning them all into the system and filing the hard copies into patient files. That took up the majority of the first four hours of her day.
Taking a quick scan of her e-mails there was a message from Mike, their VP letting them know that the server was shutting down for maintenance at noon and they estimated it would be down for about fifteen minutes, this happened regularly and would continue into the foreseeable future until the company was able to upgrade to a larger server.
Collecting her paperwork, Kaige had notes to return to a few therapists before she went on her smoke and lunch break.
Only three months into her employment with Changes her job duties slowly started to include things that weren’t in her original job description but fell under her title. Therapists notes were one of those responsibilities. What Kaige did was type them into their medical software, save them for billing, print them for patient charts and returned the originals to the therapists themselves. Why the therapists couldn’t put their own notes into the system Kaige didn’t know, but she remembered several therapists complaining that their record keeping software was not user friendly, Kaige agreed. It wasn’t, but to save time it was decided that Kaige could handle the task, allowing the therapists to spend more time focusing on their patients, which was their primary responsibility and less time putting in notes or having to go back into the system to make corrections for the billing department.
“Hey, Tom.” Kaige smiled, knocking on the door frame gently. Tom Greenly was a tall, slinky kind of man. When he walked, Tom usually inspired the image of a spring in Kaige’s mind because he had a kind of bounce when he walked, just like a slinky.
“Oh, hey Kaige.” Tom always forgot that he’d given her notes to transcribe into the system for him, but it wasn’t a case of absent mindedness. Tom had severe ADHD. It wasn’t that he truly forgot, but even on his medications his mind was racing ten miles ahead of everyone else.
“Got your notes. You are all set in the system.” Kaige told him as she took them out of the pile of papers in her arms.
“Awesome.” Tom clapped his hands together before taking the stack of papers and setting them on the desk. “Thank you.”
“No problem, see you later.” She turned, checking the notes in her arms to see who was next.
Several therapists’ doors were closed when she came to them, which was fine. It could mean they were either not in the office that day as some of them had practices of their own that they had to take care of and Changes was only a part time place for them, or they were in the middle of a session with a patient so Kaige never knocked on those doors, instead she slipped the folders with their notes into the mailboxes outside the doors for them to take in at their leisure and moved on.
Zach was in a session because Kaige could hear his voice outside the door, but the next office was open for her to look inside.
“Hey Meg. I have your notes.” Megan was married to Tom, she always reminded Kaige of the hippie ladies you saw in movies. Meg used to be a journalist, but after she went through the program she decided to go back to school and get her license in substance abuse counseling. Megan was also a great calming influence on Tom. Sometimes it was difficult to be around Megan because she made Kaige think about her mom, they’d gotten close after her mother passed away, in retrospect Kaige wasn’t sure how she would have made it without Megan there to lean on.
“Thank you.” Megan placed down the book she was making notes from and train her full attention on Kaige. “How is your day going?”
“Good, nothing super exciting to report.” Kaige replied with a self-conscious laugh. Kaige was sure that it was just her imagination, but she always felt like her life was a little sad because every time someone asked her how her day was or if she had plans for the weekend, Kaige never had anything to tell them. She came to work, she went home. Then the next day the cycle repeated itself.
“Nothing wrong with keeping things simple.” Megan replied as if she sensed Kaige’s thoughts. “Have you had lunch yet? I was just about to go grab Tom for a bite to eat if you would like to join us.” Megan was unfolding her legs from the velvet mustard yellow couch and slipping her feet back into her flip-flops.
“Not yet, I have a few more therapists' notes to return, then I need to make copies for the patient charts.” Kaige explained, sure that this information was of no interest to anyone.
“Okay,” Meg chirped. “Don’t forget to eat something though, it’s not healthy to starve yourself all day.” She reminded Kaige as she took her notes and sat them on her desk as she got her purse. Kaige was sure that no one saved their notes, but she wasn’t allowed to drop them into the Shred-it box when she was finished with them.
“Was Tom in his office?” Megan asked, drawing Kaige back out of her thoughts.
“Yeah, he’s there.” She replied, preparing herself to step inside of Mr. Jeremy Walker’s office. It always smelled like farts in there. Kaige didn’t know how his patients could stand to be in there with the door closed, plus Jeremy had the personality of a great big boiled egg fart himself. Thankfully, as she rounded the corner to his office the door was closed, and she was able to slip the papers into his mailbox and scurry away before he magically appeared and wanted to chat.
Returning to her own little corner of the Changes office building Kaige got her cigarettes from her bag and went outside to the courtyard. Just across the street there was a coffee shop, Kaige usually went there around lunch time every day. Even her lunch routine seemed a little bit boring.
Grabbing an iced coffee and a ham sandwich she sat down on one of the bench
es to refuel for the second half of her day. She was smoking and catching up on her social media feed when a shadow crossed her path.
Lifting her head, the sun blocked out the individual features completely.
“Got a spare cigarette?”
Kaige knew the voice and shielded her eyes from the sun.
“Sure, Logan.” Handing him the pack and her lighter he took a seat on the behind beside her. “Rough day?” Kaige asked. Logan was Changes admissions coordinator and worked on the second floor where all of their new patients came in for their initial intake evaluation before entering into the program.
“You could say that.” Logan exhaled smoke through his nostrils, putting her cigarettes and lighter down between them. “We’ve had sixteen new admits come in today, five of them are girls and Candice, the woman that runs the women’s side is not making my job any easier.” Logan sighed and gave his head a scratch, tussling the longer hair that grew from the top of his fade haircut or at least that was what Kaige called it when it was shaved short on the sides and grew longer through the midsection sort of like the millennial mohawk. In fifteen years, they would all look back wishing someone had told them, ‘Baby, no what are you doin?’ but that was far into the future.
Kaige didn’t know much about admissions other than the paperwork she filed and that was mostly contractual agreements and signatures.
“What’s she doing?” She asked curiously.
“When we have a new patient come in, it’s not like they are just walking in off the street, you know? We take all of their information, request records from any facilities they were at previously, get their admission paperwork read and explain how the program works, right? Every single patient who has come in, just today alone, Candice hasn’t had any of the general admissions paperwork ready and drawn up, she sent one girl upstairs to do a drug test and she isn’t even in the system yet so of course, no one knew who she was.” Logan let out a growl of frustration.
Project Airborne Page 2