by Oliver, Carl
“What?” Justin sat up and rubbed the side of his head while squeezing his eyes closed in pain. “I think her name is Tina? She has a teenage son that lives with her on the weekends, and I only know that because I got in late a few times and walked by his car and it was all steamed up.”
“Kid’s got game?” Tyler asked with an abnormal amount of interest in teenagers’ amorous activities.
“Apparently so, from the sounds that were coming from it.” Justin pushed himself so he was sitting on the side of his bed. The pounding continued, consistent thumps and bumps against Chris’s back. Justin realized that the pounding wasn’t just in his head.
“Did you guys lock Scott in the closet again?”
“No...we think it’s your neighbor….” Chris answered, pausing for what he thought might be an appropriate amount of time to deliver an impossible statement. “She might be a zombie.”
“Ohh..........kay.” Justin responded slowly, processing the information.
“We’re not sure that she is a zombie, but she looked like she might be one.” Justin stared, continuing to process the information that had come out of Chris’s mouth.
“She chased me upstairs and broke through the window.” Tyler offered. Justin blinked his eyes a few times, hard and slowly. The full force of the information sinking in.
“You’re telling me that my neighbor, cranky old Tina, chased Tyler up to the apartment. Then she broke the window, so you locked her in the closet?”
“She chased me down the hallway, too. That’s how we got her in the closet. Tyler used Beth’s chair as a battering ram. That’s what the screaming was.” Chris finished, and Justin let out a heavy sigh.
“And this isn’t a joke?” He asked hopefully. Both men in the hallway shook their their heads slowly. “Well...maybe it’s a group hallucination?” he added with the same hopeful note.
After a short silence that was only broken by the thumping against the closet door, Justin bellowed “Scott! Wake up!” Across the hall, in the bathroom, a gurgling moan was produced, not unlike some of the noises that the unfortunate Tina had been making.
Tyler and Chris exchanged tense looks, both worrying that Scott might have turned into a zombie as well. The gurgle died off, and was followed by a shout. “Who gave me Tequila?” I can smell the Mexican anger.” Tyler and Chris both relaxed at the shouted accusation.
“Shit....you really have my neighbor locked in the closet?” Justin had a resigned look on his face as he delivered the statement.
“Well not exactly. Because the door doesn’t lock. She’s more just ‘contained’ for the time being.” Chris replied, gesturing to the door’s handle to demonstrate the lack of locking mechanism. It was at this moment that Scott appeared in the hallway, staring down at a cell phone in his hand.
“Hey, could I borrow one of your phones? I was going to call in sick, on account of the Mexican vengence coursing through my veins.” Scott put the phone away and looked up, still speaking in the same even tone, “and we should probably call the cops if you really do have a woman trapped in the closet.”
“Call the cops and tell them what? Hello sir or madam, me and my three male friends have a forty year old woman locked in the closet because she scared us, and now we don’t know what to do about it.” Justin replied sarcastically, finally pushing up out of the bed and into a standing position. Chris saw him waver a little bit as the blood rushed away from his hungover brain.
“It’s not that big of a deal. She broke in, right?” Scott’s question was less a question and more a statement.
“Right through the window. She’s got the cuts to prove it.” Tyler responded, finally setting down the chair in the doorway of the laundry room.
“Then we’ve got that. Could someone borrow me their phone, or not?” Justin and Chris both pulled phones from their pockets and lightly tossed them to Scott. With the grace and athleticism of a two year old girl, Scott deftly reached out and dropped both phones on the hallway floor.
“Shit...sorry.” Scott reached down and picked up the phones. After pressing a few buttons on Chris’s phone, he shook his head in frustration and tossed it back to Chris. A few moments later he did the same thing with Justin’s phone. “Nope.”
“Well, this sucks.” Justin said with a sense of calm that can only exist in the face of terrible news received during an overwhelming hangover.
“You know if any of your neighbors have a phone?” Tyler asked, hopefully.
“Well, she was bleeding purple blood, so she really might be a zombie. How about we just run down the street yelling for help until someone calls the cops and we can just lead them here?” Chris’s suggested.
“Oh, she’s a zombie?” Scott asked, his voice thick with sarcasm. Before Chris could respond, Justin spoke up.
“If we’re leading police to my apartment with a woman locked in the closet, I’d like to talk to them beforehand, just to give us the teeniest, tiniest chance of not getting arrested on the spot.”
“Okay. But we need to resolve the whole issue of not being able to call my office, much less the police.”
“You said that she lives alone during the week? Maybe she’s got a landline phone we can use?” Chris suggested, the complete silence that followed his question was only broken by the inconsistent thumping in the closet.
“So. Not only have you locked my neighbor into my linen closet, you also would like to break into her home.” Justin stated as pulled a wrinkled t-shirt over his head.
“Pretty much. Unless you have a better idea. Do you really call it a ‘linen closet’?” Chris replied sarcastically.
“Fuck.” Justin rubbed his head in pain, at the hangover, and the frustration of everything that had happened in the last twelve hours.
****
Chris was able to solve the lack of a lock on the hall closet by wedging a table between the doorframe of Justin’s bedroom and the closet door. When the woman attempted to push the door open, the table wedged in tighter, she was trapped.
Justin felt badly for leaving his neighbor locked up in a closet, but after he saw the broken window and purple goo on the floor of the living room, he couldn’t completely dismiss the tale that Tyler and Chris were weaving, no matter how much he wanted to. As ‘Tina’ continued her steady pounding on the closet door, he followed his three friends out of the apartment and towards her house.
All four friends blinked painfully into the morning sunlight, feeling like while they slept, the sun had somehow moved closer to earth, causing the blinding pain that shot through their dehydrated brains.
Moving down the stairs and across the green lawn, the group came up to Tina’s single story, light blue house. The grey front door stood ajar and the group hesitated before walking in.
“There’s no traffic.” Chris noted thoughtfully.
“Well we don’t really get traffic out here, I mean, not until you get out of the ‘burbs.” Justin replied.
“No, he means there’s no cars. At all. You can’t hear any cars on the road. I noticed it earlier, before she started chasing me.” Tyler said, looking around. It really was unnerving, how quiet it was. Scott noticed that he could hear a few birds chirping, but even they seemed quieter, as if in the silence they were more aware of their voices and suddenly a little shy. Scott tried to listen carefully as they walked, hoping to hear the far off hum of traffic on the highway. They had reached the concrete front steps to Tina’s small house, and still, Scott could hear nothing.
Maybe I’m just congested from drinking, so my ears aren’t working right? Scott’s rationalization was interrupted by Justin’s voice.
“Well...let’s get this over with. I know we blocked the hall door with the kitchen table, but I figure the longer we keep her in there, the worse it will look to the cops.” Justin moved quickly up the steps and pushed the gray door wide open. “Hello? Anyone home?” Justin continued through the open door, followed by his three friends. Scott was the last through the door, and unconsci
ously pulled it closed behind him.
The front door opened into what appeared to be the living room. The house was messy, newspapers and dishes and laundry strewn about. Scott reflected that it seemed to be a normal American amount of mess, as opposed to a post-apocalypse amount of mess.
Scott’s nose was ambushed by the familiar aroma of fresh coffee wafting from the kitchen. The aroma caused a conflicting feeling in him, both craving and nausea.
The television in the living room was on, Scott could tell by the small green light next to the ‘power’ indicator. Despite the power, the picture was black, as though the TV was on a dead channel. There were a few blankets piled around the base of the couch that seemed to leave a trail that lead toward the door. There was a half full bowl of popcorn on a coffee table in the middle of the room. Somewhere down the hallway, an alarm clock was beeping loudly, presumably from a bedroom.
Chris comfortably sauntered into the room and sank into the couch. Immediately reaching for the bowl of popcorn.
“Dude! We’re not here to hang out.” Justin said, the stress evident in his voice. Chris was crunching the stale popcorn and reaching for the television remote when he responded.
“Mmmmphhhhfff. fa phone mud e itchin.” Chris was pointing toward the next room, which appeared to be the kitchen, based on the table that was visible through the doorway.
“I’ll go check for a phone.” Scott said as he walked through the door into the kitchen.
“Glad you could understand him.” Justin looked around the room nervously while Scott moved into the kitchen. Tyler was staring out of the living room window toward the street. Scott heard the rest of the conversation from the kitchen.
“You see something? Cops?” Justin’s voice still tittering with stress.
“No...still haven’t seen a single car drive by. It’s just weird.” Tyler mumbled, still facing the window.
In the kitchen, Scott quickly found a cordless phone sitting in it’s charging cradle. He picked it up and hit the ‘on’ button. Holding the phone to his ear, he heard the familiar hum of a dialtone. He quickly hit nine, one, one, and held the phone up to his ear.
A full sixty seconds of ringing passed.
Riing. Pause. Riing. Pause. Riing. Pause.
Scott felt the weight of the situation press on him with each pause. “Umm...guys...we might have a problem here.” Scott clicked the phone off, but carried it with him back into the living room.
“The line dead?” Justin asked, taking a couple steps toward him.
“No...it’s weirder than that,” Tyler and Chris both looked at him as well, “Nobody is answering.” Justin’s face twisted in frustration.
“Dude, forget about your stupid job for a minute. You are supposed to call 911, not your damn lab.” Justin squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and pointer finger, fighting off the headache of his hangover, along with exasperation with his current predicament. “I hope you enjoy the idea of having a boyfriend named ‘Tiny’, because I’m about 85% sure we’re all going to prison after this.”
“Justin. Calm down. I’m calling the cops, and nobody is answering.”
“How is that supposed to make me calm down? Not only is there a woman possibly in the middle of a stroke in my linen closet, but we can’t even call the proper authorities to arrest us for locking her in there.” Justin looked exasperated, his face flushed with anger
“It’s more of a storage closet.” Chris offered from the couch.
“What?” The statement caught Justin off guard, and his anger dissipated, unsure of where to focus.
“A linen closet is typically just shelves. There’s no open space to hold a vacuum cleaner or broom or female zombie. You know, because they’re too big.” Chris held up his hand, trying to show the average height of a female zombie.
Scott could see that the anger was back now, and he couldn’t blame Justin. Chris always seemed to do this in high stress situations. He just emotionally disconnected, as if he just wasn’t mature enough to handle what was going on, so he chose to participate at a distance. As a roommate, it made him impossible to argue with.
Justin whirled around. “Whatever, my hall closet then.” Justin pointed to the television. “You done trying to find CSpan or whatever you were doing? And stop eating the popcorn, if she is a zombie, we don’t know what turned her. It could have been something she ate or drank.”
“So now she is a zombie?” Tyler asked, spinning away from the window.
"I don't know! It's just the word you were using.” Justin was losing it, his anger making his right eyebrow twitch.
“Well I don’t disagree that she might be a zombie. But I don’t think it was the popcorn.” Chris sat up, tossing the TV remote control towards the coffee table as he rose. It collided with a box of kleenex and both fell to the floor. “Unless a very large number of people ate this popcorn last night.”
“I give up.” Justin sank into the now empty couch.
“Every TV station is coming up blank. Nobody is answering 911. We haven’t heard or seen anyone else outside. No cars on the road, nobody out walking their dog. This is definitely widespread, even if just locally.” Chris summarized his point as he walked toward the front door. “It’s possible that it’s just in our area, but there’s really no way to know for sure right now.”
Someone had to take charge, to come up with a plan. Chris might be great at coming up with creative solutions, but this needed some pragmatism. Scott heard himself speak up as he tossed the cordless phone onto the couch.
“Well, we can’t call the cops.” Scott tried to suggest the next logical step. “I guess we’ll just have to go to the station and tell them what happened. If this really is a widespread problem, the one woman in your closet is going the be the least of their problems.”
“We can take my car.” Tyler offered, “But I hope we don’t get pulled over…I might still be drunk.”
Four friends filed out of the front door of Tina’s small, one story ranch style home and back into the painful morning sunlight. The chirping of birds was more noticeable now. They walked in pairs, Justin and Tyler in front, Scott and Chris bringing up the rear. They moved slowly back toward Justin’s apartment, frequently looking nervously over their shoulders. Chris was the first to break the silence.
“Well...this is fuckin’ weird.” Scott chuckled a bit at this comment, but Justin and Tyler, in front, were distracted by the surroundings. Justin felt his heart pounding in his chest, his brain feeling woefully inadequate to deal with the situation that was presenting itself. He didn’t have time to break down at the idea of the end of the world right now.
“We’ve been spotted.” Tyler nervously nodded toward a small red brick house across the street. “The curtains left of the door just moved.” A moment later the front door of the house crept inwards, and a figure stumbled out of the door and into the morning. The figure rose to stand. His fogged over, dark eyes locking on the four, fast moving shapes in the morning sunlight. The figure appeared to be an African American man in his late fifties, gray hair coming in around his temples. He wore a navy colored bathrobe and gray pajama pants.
Having slept through the first zombie encounter, this was Justin’s first glimpse of the creatures. He felt an uneasy fear creep up his neck as he saw the man’s jerky, exaggerated movements. The man was back on his feet and moving toward them.
“Fuck. Run.” Tyler took off and a fast jog toward his Stratus, Justin and Scott following closely behind him, and Chris following a few steps further behind. Tyler slowed to pull out his key fob and quickly pressed the the unlock button with his thumb 3 times while running. Justin reached the car first, pulled open the front passenger door and climbed inside, slamming it shut behind him and promptly hitting the lock button for safety.
Tyler and Scott were running around to the driver’s side of the vehicle, which was further to reach, and closer to the man from the red house who was now stumbling into his side of the street.
<
br /> Scott pulled up on the door handle to find it locked. “Open the fucking door.” He screamed in frustration, daring a glance over his shoulder to see that the man was now twelve feet from him. The door clicked as Tyler hit the unlock button one more time with his keyfob, and both driver’s side doors opened and slammed shut simultaneously. Another moment later Chris piled into the rear passenger side and the engine of the Stratus roared to life.
“Gogogogogogogogogogogogo!” Justin called from the passenger seat as a pale hand pressed into the drivers side of the windshield. Tyler shifted into drive and peeled out of the parking space, leaving the zombie neighbor stumbling into the empty street behind them. Justin turned back and saw the zombie on it’s hands and knees, lifting its head to watch the car speed away.
The Stratus whipped around the corner and down three blocks before Tyler slowed. He was coming up on Claimont Road, which was typically a busy intersection, especially at this hour of a Friday morning. At the present moment, there wasn’t a single car moving on the road besides their own. A few cars were parked along the edges of the streets, and twice they saw what looked like the results of low speed traffic accidents. One red Ford truck had crashed through the glass pane of a storefront, and a small yellow VW beetle looked like it had sideswiped a couple of parked cars before crashing into the rear end of a third.
Justin felt his heart rate slowing back down, the immediate danger behind them. In the moment of fear, he had forgotten how badly his head hurt, the pain was starting to make itself known again.
Tyler slowed and stopped at the normally busy intersection, which was now silentl. The only thing Justin could see moving appeared to be a young woman across the street from them. However she moved with the same slow, uncoordinated movements they had seen from the man they had just ran away from.
Tyler paused, the car’s engine humming softly. All four friends stared at the woman as she turned toward the stratus and shambled in their direction. They stared for almost thirty seconds, the weight of what they had seen thus far crushing in on them.