by Nick Cole
All that money in bundles was everything she’d ever worked for. More than, really. Ritter imagined that the dream of a pile of money like that was what kept her going when the going got rough. Not because she really was greedy. Now that Ritter really thought about it, probably because she actually knew what a pile of money like that really meant. What you didn’t have to do or put up with anymore. What kind of space that much money would buy you from wherever it was you came from.
Except it wasn’t worth anything now. Ritter threw the briefcase on the couch. Like it meant nothing to him. Just like that.
Oh that thing? Just forget about that, Candy, he was telling her without saying a word.
“Nah, ain’t heavy enough. And I know jewelry. Nah,” he said again. “Probably just incriminating evidence he was holding onto.”
“You tried 007?” asked Candace.
“Yeah. Nothin’.”
“That’s odd.”
Silence.
They were very close.
Ritter moved ever so slightly, imperceptibly toward her.
“I didn’t mean any disrespect when I called you Candy,” he said in his best pillow talk voice. “I’m jes sayin’…” He stumbled. On purpose. Like it was awkward and like something might happen in the next moment if she allowed it to.
She watched him, but her eyes were still distant.
For a second, Ritter wasn’t sure if maybe it might go there. Which was fine by him. That hadn’t been his intention. But, if he needed to do it to get the package, then… it’s a tough job but someone’s got to do it, he joked to himself.
“Well, we’d better get these pop tarts back to the others. Breakfast.” She gathered up the boxes, turned and left.
“Mission accomplished,” whispered Ritter. Then, “Don’t forget the booze,” he said and laughed. He grabbed the bottle and then the briefcase, which he left under a chair as they crossed the large conference room. Candace raced ahead of him to the door that led back into the main office.
Chapter Twenty Six
They watched the day turn to oatmeal as the heat and the haze of distant burnings, uncontrolled fires un-responded to, turned the sky cream-sicle orange and apocalypse gray.
Ritter checked his cell.
“Gots me some service,” he mumbled to himself as he sat near a window alone.
He eyed the Olds Cutlass Sierra in the back of the parking lot again.
Why had that kid, Skully, parked all the way out there if he was just delivering pizzas when it all went down, Ritter wondered to himself. His own rented Lexus was parked in front of the building, surrounded by zekes.
“Boy jes’ wanted to get his’self high ‘fore makin’ the delivery.”
He’d seen Skully holding up a wall in one of the long Navajo-white hallways where motivational art was on display, gallery style.
“He looks all shell and no creamy center,” mumbled Ritter.
Dante was still stalking about from window to window, watching the zekes stack up at the front door. They writhed like a mass of gray sun-tired snakes in the afternoon heat. Sluggish, slow, nowhere else to go.
Last time he’d seen Candace, she’d been at her desk, trying to find some way around the disabled internet.
Everybody was doing their thing.
Ritter pulled out his smartphone from the side pocket of his thigh-length butterscotch leather coat. The phone was picking up some sort of WiFi from somewhere. He brought up a http://weirdmap.link from within his favorites and saw the one word message hidden within the clutter. Then he sent the text he’d already written.
It read, “Package in hand. Ready for pick-up.”
He watched the screen.
Maybe things had gone too far south… everywhere. If they had, there wouldn’t be a reply.
The reply bubble appeared.
“Pick up tomorrow.” GPS coordinates followed.
Ritter tapped the highlighted coordinates and his map app took over. A moment later, the little blue dot landed in a vacant area to the east. Uphill from Green Front. Between someplace called Viejo Verde and Forest Lake. Strip mall nearby. He scrolled in, looking at the almost real-time image of the parking lot. It was fairly clear. There weren’t any zekes, or at least there hadn’t been on the last satellite pass.
So, within the last hour or so, thought Ritter, no zekes to speak of in the A to the O.
He could pick out the obligatory fast food restaurant. The other stores. Probably a dry cleaner, a karate dojo, a nail salon if he were to guess. Places he knew all too well from his misspent youth. At the end of the strip mall, near the main road, he recognized a 7-11.
“Might have to get me a cherry Slurpee on the way.” He dropped the smartphone back into his coat pocket.
The rest of day passed.
“What’re we gonna do, man,” Skully had asked when Ritter walked past him later. Still in the hallway, near the framed poster with the word TEAM written in bold letters. A boat full of ripped young men pulled hard into the churning foam of a massive wave rising above them in heavy surf.
“Hang in there, little man,” said Ritter. “We’ll get out of here.”
That night they sat in the break room, eating pop tarts again, and drinking scotch from red plastic cups. No one said much.
Ritter took a bite off his pop tart and placed it back down on the table. He leaned back in his chair, his long legs like twin sticks stretching away under the table. Then he said, “I don’t think help’s coming to help ourselves outta this here mess. Know whatta I mean?”
After a moment, Dante swallowed the rest of his pop tart. He’d only chewed a few times, then swallowed thickly. He looked at Ritter, disgust and rage registering on his face. Almost a snarl, thought everyone at the table. Then, “Don’t look that way, does it?” replied the hulking black man. It wasn’t a question. He was making a statement.
Or an epitaph, thought Ritter.
He knew Candy… Candace would come through eventually. He’d been waiting all day for her to finally start leading. He knew her type. Knew she’d found a way out of wherever she’d come from and all the tough spots since. She was the type who’d figured out long ago that no one came to rescue you. You rescued yourself.
He’d simply watched her, showing her he had nothing valuable to contribute. If anything was going to happen, she’d need to be the one that started the ball rolling.
His look said, “It’s all you, girlfriend.”
The kid, Skully, watched everyone, his eyes darting from person to person.
Dark’s coming on, and he likes to be high ‘bout this time every night. So he gets a little nervous ‘bout now, thinks Ritter. Everything’s cool, Ritter tells himself. It’s gonna happen homeslice. Just wait. Be patient.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Candace plainly. No emotion. No fear. Maybe just plain old tired. But finally, thought Ritter, finally she was ready to help him get out of here. Now he had to play his part.
“You look out the front door, girl? Ain’t no one gettin’ outta here alive as Jim Morrison used to say. Not by a long shot.” Then he snorted and rolled his eyes for punctuation.
He saw a brief fire flare up in her eyes.
Yeah, that’s right, Ritter said to himself. I’m just like your daddy or that stepdaddy or any one of yer mom’s trailer park boyfriends who slapped you down when you told ‘em you wanted to go somewhere else and be somethin’ better than them.
“All we need is a plan,” she said after a moment. After the fire had disappeared. She smiled at Ritter. Not warmly. Not at all.
“We gotta do a jailbreak, thas all,” mumbled Dante to himself.
Silence.
“You ever break outta jail?” asked Ritter, leaning forward and down into Dante’s personal space. A no-fly zone the rest of the world had seen and avoided. Except Ritter had
to go there. Dante needed to be angry enough to prove something to someone. Ritter knew Dante. Knew the type. Knew guys just like him back on the block. It was the only way to get them to act. Guys like Dante had to be angry enough about something to actually get up and make a change.
Anger is a big old empty cheeseburger full of sauce and greasy goodness, Ritter told himself. Only it’s got no nutritional value.
Listen to yourself, boy. Who do you think you are, Yoda?
“Huh?” Ritter whispered to Dante, challenging him. “You evah, evah break outta da slam, savage?”
Dante looked up, his eyes bloodshot. A stare straight from the back of the icebox. Resolution cold. Cold enough to make everyone know he was heart attack serious. Dante whispered, “I mean football.”
Ritter leaned back, secretly glad to be out of Dante’s no-fly zone. Things were coming together. Finally.
“You wanna run some plays?” cackled Ritter in the silence of the break room. “You think that’s gonnna work, coach? Like what…?”
Dante looked at Ritter with hatred and murder.
“You gonna run a post and I’ll just throw this kid.” Ritter thumped Skully in his concave chest. Skully jerked. “Out to ya?” finished Ritter.
Ritter raised both hands up like twin goalposts, then whispered, “Touchdown.”
“Nah,” said Ritter, leaning back and folding his arms across his spindly torso. “Ain’t gonna happen, coach.”
The air was thick. Tension thick. Dante jumping out of his seat and laying a beat-down on Ritter thick.
“Ain’t nothin’ like that,” said Dante. “Jailbreak was a play we used to run. Bait and switch. Make those crazy people think we’re goin’ one way while we jes’ go the other.”
“And how we gonna do that?” fired Ritter.
“Don’t know,” said Dante. Pause. “Yet. But we figure a way to do it, and we might just get out of here. There’s some gaps out there. I could get through if I had to.”
“And where do we go after that?”
“I don’t know fool! But here ain’t workin’” screamed Dante in Ritter’s face, slamming his ham-sized fist on the flimsy break room table.
Silence.
Ritter and Dante watched each other. Waiting for the other to make his move. Watching for the moment to make theirs.
“Let’s all take a step back,” intervened Candace.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Skully added. “Take a break.”
Dante leaned back in his tiny plastic chair, causing it to issue a long and tired creak.
“That ain’t a plan,” said Ritter, knowing the next moment might be incredibly dangerous to his own self-appraised good looks.
Thankfully, Candace had taken over like Ritter knew she would.
Like a good mid-level manager was s’posed to, Ritter reminded himself. Stand in the middle between the grand ambition of the Daves of the world, and the foot soldiers who had to make his half-thought through ideas and schemes a reality. “I think Dante’s plan might work,” said Candace.
“Can’t,” mumbled Ritter.
Candace ignored Ritter. She turned to Dante. “Tell me more about how a jailbreak works.”
That night they worked until late, assembling a collection of desks near the twin double doors that led into the Green Front Technology lobby. They worked as quietly as possible. They didn’t want the “crazy people” as Dante kept calling them, or “zekes” Ritter thought to himself when he didn’t want to think about what they really were, or “zombies” as Skully had mentioned once to no one in particular, to come up the two flights of stairs and start banging on the lobby doors just yet.
“When they do come for us,” said Ritter as he stacked a desk on top of another desk near the door, “we won’t have long. Them doors ain’t made of oak or pine. That’s just wood-looking plastic or some kinda joke. They’re gonna come through that like…” Ritter trailed off. Even though he kept his mouth running, all part of the act, his eyes were always watching everyone else. That’s when he saw it in their eyes… even he realized he’d gone too far. Because they, the crazy people, the zekes, the zombies, call ‘em what you want, they were going to come through that door. That was the part of the plan that nobody really wanted to think about. And when the zekes did, when they came bursting through that flimsy faux-wood door, it was about to get as real as it ever gets.
So Ritter stopped and let it go with a dead pan, “nuff said.”
They took apart some of the other desks at the back of the main office. In time, they had a nice collection of clubs.
Dante walked them through the plan again. The plan they would try in the morning after a night’s rest. The word “good” conspicuously absent. In the morning, once it was light, and if they escaped, they’d have an entire day to try and find help or get somewhere safe before the next evening.
If they escaped.
In the dark down below, the zombies, a small college football game crowd size of them, ironic in regards to the “Jailbreak Play” as Dante liked to call it, milled in and out of the orange-colored parking lot lights. Beyond the light a mass of shadows milled and throbbed in the outer dark, illuminated by the cones of hellish orange, where every horror show detail was revealed in their slack-jawed, vacant-eyed blood and worse covered faces.
The plan. Dante’s rough sketch, Candace’s refinements, and a few well-crafted suggestions from Ritter, was walked through step by step again by Dante, who was as intent as one could possibly be. Focused. Sweating. A true believer preaching salvation to the damned.
“We three,” he indicated Skully and Candace and finally himself, thumping his chest. “We start here. Ritter, you’re back by the fire exit over there in accounting. That exit leads down two short flights of stairs, and then out into that end of the parking lot. He pointed toward the unseen south.
“There are…” he looked at Skully and sighed. “There are zombies in that stairwell, but it’s propped open, we can see that on camera.” He left out whose body was propping it open. A guy named Kevin they’d worked with. “But we’re gonna pull them outta the stairwell with the racket we’re making, so you’ve got to be real quiet back there as you make your way down and into the parking lot. Don’t agitate ‘em, or they won’t leave the stairwell to come check out what we’re doin’ up in the lobby.”
“You got it, big man,” said Ritter.
“We’re going out the lobby doors and onto the landing. We gonna try and draw them up and get ‘em real mad. Might even try to take out a few with this.” He shook the desk leg club he’d been using as a pointer. “That seems to make ‘em even angrier, right?”
“Yeah, they go into a frenzy or somethin’,” mumbled Skully, seeing something not seen. Some recent past horror show all his own. “A frenzy.” A memory for the rest of days.
“Yeah,” agreed Dante. “A frenzy. Then it’s go time. We get back behind the lobby doors with you,” he pointed toward Candace. “Which you are holding open.”
She nodded, hands folded in front of her pencil skirt.
“Then we got to push that barricade in place real fast, ‘cause they’re comin’ through like a runaway freight train, right up the stairs and onto the second floor. Meanwhile, Candace you’ve moved to your second position, right?”
“Right.” She nodded and moved to the receptionist’s desk, where she bent to the keyboard and entered the commands that would bring up the stairwell cameras. She didn’t want to, because she couldn’t stand looking at them much longer, mainly because she occasionally recognized a Green Front employee or some other seemingly familiar face. Probably from the Starbucks she always stopped at down the road before work. How many of them, she thought to herself as she scanned the camera feeds, making sure they were still operational, used to visit that Starbucks every morning?
Not anymore. It was a grim thought. A cold thought
. An honest thought. But she’d always been like that. Even though she didn’t like to. She’d had to.
“Once Candace tells you they’re outta the stairwell…” continued Dante. “Skully, you move to position three, right?”
“Check,” He says.
“So you’re off back through the offices,” he pointed toward Skully who looked pale and dry in the bright white office light. “Move fast, but not too fast. You don’t want to trip and break something, or even twist an ankle. ‘Cause we’ll need to run once we get outta here, and I don’t want to have to leave you behind.”
No one, thinks Ritter, would leave Skully or anyone else behind. But then again, would we? It’s not like we really know each other. We’ve just been forced together into this awful life and death situation. Who really knows anyone? Who knows who’s capable of what? Leaving someone behind seems a safer bet than counting on them to carry you out of the jaws of the ravening undead.
Each of them, in their own way, thought something to that effect in the moment after Dante had raised the “having to leave you behind” statement and all its unspoken philosophical implications.
“Got it,” said Skully.
“Ritter, once he shows up at the stairwell and tells you it’s clear, it’s show time. You up for it with them skinny legs? I mean, you got to move, boy. Fast. Real fast.”
“Ran the four-forty in track, coach. No worries here, Big Man.”
“Alright,” said Dante. “Countin’ on you.”
“I’m all good. No worries.”
“You get down that stairwell and out to that Cutlass. Don’t stop and get in a fight with any of them things. They’ll slow you down, so you jes’ keep movin’, got it?”
“Yeah. Got it already.”
“Good. ‘Cuz you got to, or you ain’t gonna make it, and if you don’t make it then we outta luck.”
“So once we hear him honking the horn on Skully’s Cutlass,” interrupts Candace, sensing another showdown between the two alpha males, “we retreat to position three, lock the stairwell door behind us, and make sure the door at the bottom of the stair is closed also.”