by Oliver, Carl
Without looking around for a response, Tyler went on. “Now I know, Justin’s worried about if Beth is a zombie or just gobbling up Dr. Jeremy’s special dick sauce. And Scott wants to know if his family is okay, and Chris wants...” Tyler trailed off for a moment, Justin wasn’t sure if Tyler was waiting for him to finish the sentence, or if the copious amount of scotch he had just guzzled was being rejected by his stomach.
“I don’t actually know what Chris wants. Near as we all can tell, the world just ended and we were the only ones left behind. You listed off the things we’re supposed to do. Find a safe place to hide and find out what happened. Then to find other survivors and rebuild society...or some other such nonsense.” Tyler let out a quiet burp, before continuing.
“I’ve spent the last twenty some years of my life doing what I’m supposed to do, and it hasn’t really led me to being healthy, wealthy, or even happy for that matter.”
“Just because you’re not happy with your life, we shouldn’t try to find survivors?” Jessica’s question had a note of confusion to it.
“Am I the only one here who feels this way? The only one who had higher hopes for romance and adventure and stories worth telling to my grandkids? If I am the only one, I’ll sit down and shut up.” Tyler saw he wasn’t the only one. Chris and Amy were already onboard, Justin and Jessica weren’t, and Scott was on the fence.
“So you don’t think we should try to find out what happened, or try to find any other survivors?” Justin asked, the annoyance he felt peppering his words. “I’ll bite. If we don’t do these things, what do we do now? What do you think would be a better way for us to spend our time? Not like any of us are going into work tomorrow.” Justin felt a little bad for the poke at Tyler’s loss, but his hangover headache was coming back. He was surprised when it wasn’t Tyler who responded to him.
“Whatever we want.” Amy spoke softly. She had locked eyes with Tyler and wasn’t looking away. Justin could see that there was some kind of silent communication happening between them. “Clearly we’re not going to rebuild the world between the six of us. No offense to our fellow survivors, but I think we’re going to struggle to get by without electricity.” Amy reached out her hand for the bottle of scotch that Tyler still held. He slid it across the table. She took a slow drink from it and slid it back.
“Whatever we want?” Justin spoke the words from the other side of the boardroom table as if he were taste testing them. Despite the fact that the windows were all closed, he felt a shiver run up his spine. “What does that even mean?”
“Let me give you an example,” Tyler pulled a creased photograph out of his pocket and held it up as he spoke. Justin could vaguely tell that it was a teenage girl, but the heavy creasing distorted the image. “Tomorrow I’m going to find where this girl’s father lives, and I’m going to punch him in the face.”
“Who’s that?” Scott asked.
“Jamie. Or Kelsey. Or something. I don’t know, that’s not the important part. The important part is that it’s something I want to do, that’s definitely a bad idea. And tomorrow I’m going to do it.”
Scott seemed to connect the dots. “Is that the HR douche guy’s daughter?
Justin felt his anger rise again when he found out who Tyler was talking about. “So you want to beat up your HR rep? What if he’s a zombie. What’s the point even? Why is this worth the risk?”
Tyler sprung to his feet and threw the bottle of scotch against the floor. The glass bottle shattered around his shoes and alcohol exploded, covering the cheap carpet and splattering onto the walls. The smoky smell of scotch filled the room almost instantly. Five shocked faces looked up at him as he responded, still holding out the picture of Patrice as if it were a charm of some sort.
“Odds are, this stupid little girl is going to miss out on a lot of things she wanted to do in her life. There’s a very good chance she’s already dead. But I’m not, and I’ve already missed out on a lot of things I wanted to do. I’m almost twice her age, and I don’t feel like I have anywhere near twice the experience that this sheltered little girl has. I’m a twenty six year old man living in a ten year old boy’s body. Every risky and dangerous thing I’ve ever wanted to do had to be skipped or delayed because it wasn’t the right time, or I didn’t have enough money.”
Tyler had tears welling up in his eyes, and he continued. “I’ve hated ninety percent of the last six years of my life, years that were supposed to be my prime. The only high points were when I was doing something stupid or immature with you guys. I figure I’ve wasted most of the last six years of my life doing shit I hate, and who knows if I’m going to make it another six years. So I’m going spend the time I have left exactly how I want to. And wandering around trying to find other survivors sounds about as depressing as coming back to work here for another six years.”
Scott opened his mouth to speak, but Tyler continued, cutting him off. “Do any of you know what that’s like? Really? To hate your life? I don’t mean hate in the sense like we all hate the Nazis. I mean more like hate like hating going to the dentist. Almost every single day of my life has been like going to the dentist, for the last six years. A dull, aching hatred. The kind of hate that stings more than it hurts. Because you know at the end of the day you only have yourself to blame for what your life has become along with how you feel about it.” The tears were rolling slowly down his face now, rolling into the two day scruff on his chin, and dripping down onto the wood of the boardroom table.
“We have a responsibility. As survivors,” Justin started to say, but he was cut off again. This time it was Scott who spoke up, calmly but firmly.
“Who do we owe a responsibility to? We’ve seen what’s happened to everyone else. There have been maybe five other people we’ve seen that might have been alive, and they were being gobbled up like a Thanksgiving dinner.” Scott had tears welling up in his eyes as well. He reached into a box that was sitting next to him, pulling out a bottle of vodka. Justin only needed a glance at the label to know that it was the most expensive bottle of liquor that any of them had ever seen. “I know what it’s like to want to find your family. I looked into my uncle’s eyes and a little part of me died. I don’t want to go through that again, and I don’t wish it on any of you. Not knowing and hoping is a hell of a lot better than knowing.”
Justin couldn’t believe where the conversation was headed. He had expected them to debate about which direction to search first, or whether or not they needed to find a safer place to hide out. He was not expecting anything like this. His anger was fading behind the bigger issue of confusion.
“But, this is what we’re supposed to do. This is what they always do in the movies, the goal is always survival.” Justin’s voice felt far away to himself, he wasn’t sure what was happening anymore. Tyler continued.
“I’m not saying that survival isn’t important, but I think we need to appreciate that surviving these zombies doesn’t seem like it’s going to be rocket science. Thus far, they’re slow, they don’t seem to be much for problem solving, and thankfully we live in the suburbs, so we haven’t run into a situation where’s there’s been so many we’ve been surrounded.
“Yet.” Justin threw in. Through all of this, Justin silently looked from one friend to another, watching, listening to each word fall, letting this information weigh in on him from each side. Amy spoke up, for the first time since they had all sat down.
“What do you want, Justin?” Justin looked up, half in a daze, still unsure of how this conversation had gotten so far off track.
Justin looked down at the floor, a nervous look on his face. “Don’t you care about your families? I mean, I know we’re not sure what we’ll find, but don’t you think we should look for other survivors in general?”
“We tried calling our families.” Jessica said, the memory coming back to her. The feeling of dread growing at each unanswered call. She fell silent, and it was Amy who spoke up.
“Looking for people who mi
ght already be...them…” Amy locked eyes with Justin before continuing. “Let’s just say that it’s not how I’d like to spend the rest of my life. I’ve already had enough disappointment.”
The room fell silent again. Chris opened up the bottle of expensive vodka that he had pulled out from the box. He took a slow drag from the bottle and shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, it’s not like we can’t do both, right? I mean, it’s not like we’ve got much else to do. We’ll do a few fun things, and we’ll see who we can find along the way, right? We’ve got all of our lives left, clearly any single activity is going to get old fast.”
Scott nodded in satisfaction at the compromise, while Justin smiled in relief at not having to make the final decision. Chris passed the bottle of vodka around, each friend taking a sip until the bottle reached Tyler. Tyler looked suspiciously at the five other people around the table before speaking up.
“I’m okay with this, but the absolute first thing we do tomorrow is find Charlie Westin.” Justin saw a look of confusion on Jessica’s face as she spoke up.
“Do you think he’d still be alive? Why would we need to find him first?”
“Because I’m going to punch him in the mouth. I’m going to hit him with my bare fists, like a man.” Tyler answered, finally taking a sip from the bottle of vodka and offering it back to Chris.
“Well. Is that amicable to everyone?” Chris looked around as he asked the question. Scott and Amy nodded instantly in agreement, while Justin and Jessica had leery looks on their faces, as if they didn’t fully trust the resolution.
“Think about it this way. If we hole up in this office building with months worth of supplies, we survive without any big difficulty. But we’re probably not going to find a whole lot of survivors that way. Going out and doing a few stupid things would get us out into the world, so we’d be more likely to find any other survivors that are out there.” Chris slid the bottle across the table toward the corner where Justin and Jessica were both sitting. Jessica stopped it before it slid off the edge, the sudden stop causing the clear liquid to slosh back and forth inside.
Jessica stared down at the bottle for only a moment before picking it up. She took a long drag from the clear liquid, making the slightest face as she pulled the bottle away from her lips.
“I know that you’re just trying to get us to agree to this so we’ll go along with it. You don’t actually think we’re going to find anyone.”
“I absolutely believe that we have a better chance of finding people out in the world than we do if we stay in this office building.” Chris said emphatically.
Justin looked at Jessica, and she shrugged nonchalantly. He took the bottle of vodka from her and took a long pull himself. “Well. If that’s the way it’s going to be, then we’re going to need a list of stupid activities to get us out in the world and finding some survivors.”
The next five hours passed in a blur. The bottle of vodka was emptied quickly, along with another. The six friends told stories, shared ideas, and worked together to create a long list of activities they were hoping to complete before the world ended altogether, or they died in the process. The night sky was clear, and a full moon shone light into the conference room on the sixth floor of the Mayfair Road street name professional building. Eventually the six friends each passed out on a separate office sofa, covered in makeshift blankets made from tablecloths.
Fourteen hours earlier and over one hundred miles away, Father Tobias O’Connell opened his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed away the crusty eye boogers that had formed while he slept.
Father O’Connell sat up in the full sized bed he had used for the last twenty years he had served at the St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church in Brentwood, on the eastern outskirts of Chicago. He looked briefly around the small apartment, dimly lit from the early morning sun. He had always been an early riser, and today was no different. Closing his eyes and whispered a silent prayer of thanks for the day, and the service he would be able to provide.
Going through his usual morning routine, Father O’Connell made himself a simple breakfast with coffee, and briefly left his apartment to collect the morning paper down at the front door of the three story apartment building.
Sipping his morning coffee as he walked down the steps, he found that the paper had not yet been delivered. He let out a sigh of frustration as he began walking back up the steps. His right knee still gave him a little trouble on the stairs, a football injury from his junior year in high school. He had begun to notice it more and more since his fiftieth birthday, last summer.
Father O’Connell had reached the third floor and was walking down the creaky hallway when a sound made him pause.
He was walking by apartment 307, on the way to his own, 315, when he heard what he would have described as an unusual sound. It wasn’t exactly a groaning, but it wasn’t not a groaning either. The sound gave him pause. It was definitely coming from 307, and it was very different from the usual sound of ESPN sportscenter that he typically heard when he walked by this apartment at this time of the day.
Taking a step toward the door, Father O’Connell leaned in to listen. The groaning sound continued. It was faint, but consistent. Father O’Connell had been on cordial terms with the current tenants. He had lived in this building for fifteen years, and 307 had been occupied by a young professional couple for the last five.
It sounded enough like snoring to keep him from knocking, but the sound was strange enough that Father O’Connell found that he wasn’t able to walk away from it either. He listened for nearly a minute before he was able to convince himself that it must just be snoring.
Leaning back from the door, he took three steps down the creaking hallway before stopping again. The groaning noise had stopped. In it’s place, he could hear footsteps. Slow, dragging steps that were coming towards the door.
Did I wake them up?
The door to 307 shuddered as something slammed into it, hard. Father O’Connell felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He still held his coffee cup in his right hand, and the liquid in it rippled as his hand shook in fear. He could hear something scraping at the door. The animal side of his brain urged him to run. Get back to 315 and lock the door, but the human side of his brain was too curious.
What if someone is hurt? What if they’ve been injured and they’re having trouble with the lock?
Father O’Connell felt his voice quiver as he spoke for the first time that day “He...Hello?”
The scraping sound stopped, and the doorknob began to shake and slowly twist counter clockwise.
A moment later, the latch was disengaged, and the door cracked open. Father O’Connell, more uncomfortable than ever, heard himself speak again. “Hello? Is everything okay?”
The door crawled open slowly, and a tall man in blue boxer shorts stood awkwardly in the doorway.
Something’s wrong, why’s he standing like that?
“Are you okay?” Despite the question, Father O’Connell felt his feet moving him backwards, away from the man.
The man took slow steps towards the father. When he came into the light of the hallway, Father O’Connell got a full look at him for the first time.
His light brown hair was messy and unkempt, and his skin was an unnatural pale hue, somehow looking white and purple at the same time. He wore only boxer shorts, which looked flimsy and wrinkled. His face was slack, devoid of emotion. A thin line of drool fell from the corner of his mouth. But the worst part of all was his eyes.
His eyes were gray pools of fog. Father O’Connell couldn’t remember what color they had once been, but they were now the color of an overcast sky. Behind this fog, he saw emptiness, and this is what terrified Father O’Connell most of all. If the eyes were the windows to the soul, this man’s soul was gone.
Feet pounding down the hallway, Father O’Connell threw the cup of coffee behind him and ran for his door. He could hear slow steps dragging behind him, causing the floorboards to creak and groan in
his wake. He was jamming his key into the lock as he heard the steps get closer, and then closer. He heard the groaning noise begin again, right behind him when the lock clicked and he fell through the open door, crashing onto his hallway rug.
Turning, he saw that the man, no, the thing was through the threshold as well, the soft groaning filled the room as the creature opened it’s mouth, revealing a purple maw highlighted by bright, white teeth.
Whispering a silent prayer, Father O’Connell scrambled backwards, trying to get away from the creature. He backed into a hall table, knocking a lamp and small stack of books to the floor. While he was crawling, the creature had gained ground on him, reaching out to grab Father O’Connell by the ankle. The touch was cold and clammy, and sent a shiver up the Father’s already chilled spine.
Father O’Connell lashed out with his other foot, hitting the creature solidly in the chest and pushing it backwards. It landed hard, on it’s back, but instantly was rising again. Father O’Connell used this brief chance to climb back to his feet himself. He was turning to run toward the bathroom, the only room of the small apartment with a locking door, when he caught a glance out the window.
Outside, he could see several shapes, moving at the same slow, jerking pace as the creature in his apartment.
Oh dear God, what has happened?
The pause was a moment too long, and the creature was on him again, grabbing and clutching with those cold, clammy hands.
Father O’Connell pushed the creature hard in the chest, and it fell back once again. This time it didn’t land soundly against the floor. The back of it’s head crashed hard against the one vice Father O’Connell permitted himself. A soft crunching sound, like a watermelon being dropped on the floor, was all that the Father heard before the creature fell still.
Looking down at the floor, Father O’Connell saw that the creature had fallen in such a way that the back of it’s head had collided with the bag that contained his bowling ball.