by Gayle Katz
“OK. I’m fine, but it looks like Jayce’s losing a lot of blood, and he’s gonna get cold. That’s not good. Maybe we should move him to the lounge where he can lie flat, and we can cover him with blankets to keep him warm?”
“Good idea. If we all pitch in, we can lift him down the hall and onto the couch. First, we should sanitize his wound and wrap it up.”
Jack and I help the sales guy take off his shirt. I touch his skin. It’s cold—not just cold from being out in the snow for a while, but really cold. Once his shirt is off, we see the bite mark. It’s deep, jagged, and reddish brown with dried blood. It’s like an animal took a bite out of him. Very gruesome.
I stifle my gag reflex and move my focus to the periphery of the injury. The two other salespeople just stand there. They may be in shock from their experiences earlier and what happened to Jayce. It’s hard to believe a person did this to him.
Jack pours some of the alcohol on the wound as Jayce winces in pain. Then Bill wraps it tightly with one of the T-shirts. I just can’t. Blood is so not my thing.
“Ready to relax in the lounge?” I say to Jayce.
“Sure thing. Thank you, whoever you are.”
“Jane. My name is Jane.”
“Well, thank you, Jane. My name is Jayce. This is Abigail and Connor.”
“Nice to meet all of you. Everything is gonna be OK,” I say.
“I wish we could have met under better circumstances,” Jayce says.
We all do our best to help Jayce to his feet so we can get him to the couch. I’m helping to drag him into the lounge when his fingertips touch my skin. He’s getting colder. His fingers are like icicles and turning a sick purple-blue.
After laying him on the couch and trying to warm him with a blanket, I notice the air inside the radio station is getting colder. It’s so cold that I can see my breath when I speak.
“I’m gonna turn up the heat. Feel his face. He’s so pale. He’s freezing.”
I walk over to the wall thermostat to turn up the heat when the power goes out. I don’t move. The entire station goes dark except for the daylight shining through the windows in streaks from the outside. Everything goes silent.
“Is this normal?” I ask, trying not to lose it.
Wyatt barges into the lounge.
“We’re off the air.”
“We know,” Jack says.
“And we’re getting some weird phone calls. Most are saying they see people stumbling around their dorms and banging into things. And they look dead or bloody and out of their minds,” Wyatt says.
We all look at him, perplexed.
“What are you talking about?” Jack says.
“Yeah. It freaked me out too. One girl said that someone tried to bite her, like a zombie.”
We all look at Jayce. Someone bit him. I wonder if it’s the same person who tried to bite this other girl who called in.
“Like a zombie?” I say lightly. “Don’t be silly. That stuff only happens in movies. This is real life.”
“Someone tried to bite her? Where’s this girl? Who tried to bite her?” Jack asks.
“I don’t know,” Wyatt says. “The line got disconnected before I had a chance to ask.”
Just then the lights and electricity come back on with a mechanical thud.
“Wha-what is that?” I ask. I can feel a little heat on my head too.
“It’s the backup generator,” Bill says. “The power is still off, but the generator should keep us warm and functional for a while.”
“Wyatt, get back on the air and play some music,” Jack says. “Maybe between songs ask people to keep calling in and reporting anything that seems strange, OK?”
“Sounds good. Will do,” Wyatt replies as he hurries back into Studio One.
I ask Bill, “So how long will the generator last? You said for a while, but I don’t know what that means. A couple hours, days, weeks?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that winters here are pretty harsh, so generators are installed in virtually every building as a precaution.”
Jack stands up from the couch where he is looking over Jayce and walks over to me. Without saying a word, he puts one hand on my shoulder. Feeling his touch, I cover his hand with mine. It’s warm, and it’s a nice feeling to have him looking after me. I look up at him, and he smiles. He looks cool and collected, like none of this fazes him. Maybe everything will be OK after all?
As I am trying to remain positive, an abhorrent odor accosts me, “What’s that smell?” I ask.
Just then Jayce starts to freak out on the couch. He’s moaning. Crying. His body is flailing and contorting in a variety of odd positions worse than any seizure. It can’t be comfortable for him.
Frightened, we all look at him. We don’t know what to do, except stare.
“What’s wrong with him?” I ask. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone go this nuts from a bite unless they had rabies or something, but don’t ask me. My medical knowledge is limited to what they show you on TV.”
Despite the heat and the blanket, he isn’t getting any better. Abigail stoops down and tries to talk to him.
“Jayce, hon, try to relax, OK?”
He isn’t even looking in her direction or ours.
“Jayce, can you hear me?” she asks.
He doesn’t respond.
She looks down for a moment and then at us. “He still feels really cold. Aw, man. This can’t be good. Plus, look at his eyes. They’ve got a white haze over them. I think we need to get him to the hospital, like, right now.”
“I agree,” I say. “We need a doctor, but this doesn’t feel right. We need to do something, but if the people who did this are still out there waiting for us, we’d all be at risk if we go outside.” I think for a moment. “The police and ambulance should have been here by now. Are they even coming?” I ask, feeling my stress level rising and my anxiousness returning in full force.
With that, Jayce makes more strange noises, weird, high-pitched, shrieking ones I’ve never heard a human being make before. I can’t stay in here listening to him anymore. Just as I turn to leave the lounge and return to Studio One and Wyatt, Jayce jerks his head forward and bites Abigail’s forearm. She cries out in pain and screams. Stunned and in shock, she kneels there, dazed. It happened so fast. I turn around.
“Ow! What the hell is that? He bit me!” she says.
I look at Jack. He looks back at me, and we both look at Bill. We all had the same expression. Get out. Now.
Abigail and Connor quickly follow us out as we run to the door. We lock it behind us right before Jayce—or whoever he is now—runs right into the door with a hard thud. He almost knocks the door off its hinges.
Connor stays at the door to hold it secure while we search for something to block it. Abigail just stands there holding her arm, crying.
She is hysterical. “Why’d he bite me? I was only helping him! What's gonna happen? What am I gonna do?”
Jack, Bill, and I run to grab something, anything to block the door. We find a chair, run back, and barricade it.
Even with the chair blocking the way, the door and its hinges shudder every time the body on the other side bangs against it. That plus the horrific sounds he is making are frightening and freaking me out.
We all look at each other. He doesn’t seem to be getting tired or stopping his attack. What’s going to happen when he breaks through the flimsy wooden door?
Chapter 4
________________________________________
8:00 a.m.
Momentarily safe outside of the lounge, I feel my mind racing. He’s not listening to us. The police aren’t here. If we do nothing, he’ll eventually break down the door.
We hear him batter himself against the door again. The door to the lounge begins to crack.
“We can’t let him break down the door. We just can’t.” I put my hands on my knees. It was a long night, and it’s turning out to be the most stressful morning of my life. I am exha
usted.
“What do we do?” Connor asks.
Just then, the sports guy I saw earlier on the newscast, Logan, and the newswoman Jack pointed out earlier, Nora, appear in the corner of my eye. They rush over.
“What’s going on over here?” Logan looks at Jack. “You missed your 7:30 a.m. newscast. Nora had to fill in for you last minute. Should she do the same for your eight o’clock?”
“Yes,” Jack says. “Things aren’t going well. Didn’t Wyatt tell you? We’re having a problem with Jayce. He’s not himself today, it seems. Looks like Jayce might have whatever sickness I mentioned on the air.”
“What? Oh shit. Yeah, he told us Jayce is sick and the girl on the listener line mentioned zombies, but I didn’t think it’s this bad, and I actually thought she was joking,” Logan says.
“It doesn’t look like she was joking, and yeah, it’s bad,” Jack replies.
“And if we don’t do something, he’s gonna crash right through that door, and that won’t be good for any of us,” Bill adds.
Jayce thrashes against the door even more violently. The concussive impact makes the door slightly buckle and startles everyone, and we all jump at the sound. I pray that the door holds.
“He already bit Abigail,” Jack says as he looks at her. She is still holding her arm close. “Any thoughts on how to stop him?”
“We could tie him up,” Bill says. “We have rope in the back room.”
“Tie him up? We could try, but I’m not sure anything will hold him. Plus, I’m not sure I want to keep looking over my back every second scared that he’s going to wiggle out of the rope and jump us,” Jack says.
Logan, still shocked from the past few minutes, finally blurts out a radical alternative, “What about killing him? He won’t be able to hurt anyone else then.”
“We can’t kill him,” Jack says. “He didn’t do anything to warrant this. He’s got some sort of sickness. We have to help him if we can, but still keep us safe.”
Nora finally speaks up, quietly, “I don’t think we can help him. From the news reports that keep coming out, I don’t think anyone can help him.”
“But,” Abigail mutters.
“But nothing. I get that he didn’t deserve this, but neither do we. And if he gets out, the same thing is gonna happen to us,” Logan says.
“Are we really considering this? He’s a person, remember that? We can’t just kill another person. That’s murder, and it’s against the law. There has to be another way,” Jack says.
“We have to consider the fact that he might not be a person anymore. If this zombie talk is true, he’s not a person, and it’s not murder. It’s self-defense,” Logan says.
“We can’t place judgment on people based on rumors. Killing him is out of the question and just crazy. You’re talking crazy,” Jack says.
“Crazy? Crazy? No way. Crazy is letting him out to do to us what he did to Abigail!” Logan shouts.
For a minute, there is silence.
We all look at her. She looks at her arm and starts to cry again. It becomes clear to everyone what is at stake.
“OK, I get it,” Jack says. “If we don’t kill him, he may eventually break through the door and kill us all. If we kill him first, then at least we have a fighting chance. This affects us all so I can’t make the decision alone. Why don’t we vote on it? No judgment here. Just vote your conscience.”
Jack gathers the ballots. The six of us vote to kill him with only Abigail voting against, though any of us would have done the same in her position.
“What if we can help him? And what about me? Are you gonna kill me too?” Abigail asks us.
“If you stay normal and don’t go all zombie-crazy, you’ll be fine. The moment you start acting strange and dangerous, I don’t know...” Logan trails off.
Jack shoots him one of those cut it out looks.
Abigail stares ahead and starts crying again.
Jack says, “Bill, there must be something here that we can use as weapons. Big pieces of metal. Anything with a point. We’re gonna need some way of protecting ourselves when we try to subdue Jayce.”
Bill stands there watching Abigail. From the frown on his face, he seems genuinely upset. I am too. How are we going to do this?
“Bill. Snap out of it,” Jack says. “You gotta find something we can use. We don’t have much time.”
“Yeah, I’m on it,” Bill says as he runs off.
Jack turns to Abigail and gives her a hug.
“I thought you might need it,” he says.
“Thanks. I do,” she replies. “I’m gonna die, aren’t I?”
“Nothing is certain right now. Don’t think like that,” Jack says.
She doesn’t say anything back.
“What do you think we should do?” Jack asks as he holds her hands in his.
“I think you should let me in there so I can try to talk with him. Reason with him. Maybe I can get through to him one-on-one. We are... we’re friends. He’s got to remember that, right?”
“If we let you in there, he could kill you.”
“Yeah. He could, but it’s still Jayce in there. The least you could do is let me try. He’s my friend. Maybe I can get him to settle down until help arrives.”
A few minutes later, Bill comes back with all sorts of old radio station equipment, supplies, and junk we can use to protect ourselves: a few longish metal desk legs that were unscrewed years ago, a couple bulky long, pointy antennas, and a big cast-iron pan.
“This is all I can find that might be useful,” he says. “Pick one and make it work. If you’d like to use the antenna as a weapon though, we’ll have to cut it down. I also grabbed my bolt cutters so we can chop it up. That way they’re not so unwieldy. I haven’t used it in years, not since I locked my bike up and couldn’t remember the combo.”
Bill starts to cut the antennas apart with his bolt cutters. The metal-on-metal noise irritates my ears. When he is done cutting, those antennas almost resemble fencing swords, although the sides aren’t as sharp.
“So let me get this straight. You know how to keep a radio station running, but you forget the combination to your bike lock? You’re one strange guy, Bill,” I say.
While Bill is doing his thing, I pick up the cast-iron pan. It’s heavy. Very heavy. It reminds me of something my mother used to cook bacon in. No bacon today.
“Where did you get the pan?”
“It was in the storage room. Not sure how long it’s been there. There’s tons of old stuff laying around here if you’re looking for it.”
Abigail is staring at me waving around the pan. She asks, “What are you gonna do? Smack him on the head with that pan? You can barely lift it; it’s so heavy.”
I don’t have an answer. I don’t know what I am going to do.
She says, “This is a horrible, horrible plan. You’re forming your own mob. You’re no better than those things out there.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” Logan blurts out. “You—”
“Chill out, Logan,” Jacks says. “Abigail, see what you can do.”
Jack is about to move the chair blocking the door when I have a thought. “Wait! Don’t move. Bill, do we have any duct tape around here?”
“Duct tape? Sure. Well, I think so. It’d probably be in the supply closet,” Bill says.
Bill leads the way as we both run over to it. As we open the door, the old stale air hits me smack in the face.
Looking around, all I can see is radio equipment from the Stone Age.
“Where’s the duct tape?”
“Let’s look. Why do you want duct tape anyway?” he asks.
“To tape up our arms and legs. If these things come for us or if Jayce breaks down the door, taping up our arms and legs will give us a little additional protection. Duct tape is so difficult to tear, not even teeth can go through it,” I say.
He gives me an odd look.
“You know firsthand just how versatile duct tape is. It’s practically why t
his building is still standing.” I chuckle. “It’s everywhere.”
“But you’re gonna put it on your body?”
“My father does a lot of DIY projects at home. He always uses duct tape. Said it’s as strong as steel. I think it’ll be helpful in case they bite us. Every little bit helps, right?”
Sorting through the supply closet, we find a host of office supplies. Pens. Pencils. Notepads. Found it! Duct tape. A six-roll pack.
“Bingo!” I shout.
Bill and I return to the group, duct tape in hand. I break open the package and hand one roll to each person.
“What are these for?” Jack asks.
“Use it to tape up your arms and legs. If someone tries to bite you, it might help prevent what’s happening to Jayce in there.”
I take out my roll of duct tape and hook the first section to my wrist. From there, I just roll the tape around my arm until I get to right below my elbow.About an inch from my elbow, I stop so that I can still have full mobility.
Everyone else follows suit, except for Abigail. She gives me her roll.
“I don’t think I’m gonna need this.” She points to her arm. “I’ll be fine without it.”
“Good luck in there,” I say to her.
“Thanks. I have a feeling I’ll need it.”
Jack removes the chair blocking the door. Connor keeps his back to the door to ensure we don’t have any surprises.
Jack faces Abigail. “On the count of three, we’ll open the door. You have two minutes to talk him down. After that, we’ll come in and handle him ourselves. Get it?”
“Got it.”
“1... 2... 3!”
Connor moves aside. Jack opens the door. Phew! That smell again. It’s more a putrid stench now. Abigail hurries inside. He slams the door shut behind her. My cell phone buzzes again.
Chapter 5
________________________________________
10:00 a.m.
Jack quickly replaces the chair in front of the door.
I pull out my phone. “Jesus Christ! Not again!” I blurt out.
“What’s wrong?” Jack asks as he walks over to me.