by D A Madigan
THE HUNGRY DEAD
Down on the street, a zombie screamed, and pointed towards the upstairs window Dan was standing just within.
Dan's blood literally ran cold. His stomach turned over, his heart started hammering in his chest like a temple gong, his testicles tried to draw up inside his body. And all he could think of was How do I save Vicki? How do I save Vicki? How do I save Vicki?
He could run downstairs. Close the door to the upstairs, run out on the front porch, pull the front door closed behind him, lock it. Run out into the yard, run as far down the street as he could, to distract them from the house...
Vicki was nine years old. How long could she survive in the upstairs bedroom on her own?
Didn't matter. He had to give her whatever chance he could.
He started to turn, to run to the stairs, to run down them...
All original contents copyright © 2014 D.A. Madigan. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction and all characters within it are fictional. Any resemblance between any characters and any real individuals, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This one is for my buddy NATHAN CLARK, who came up with the snowplow idea.
PART ONE
THE SWERVE
"Growing up I learned the first breath I take took me closer to my last breath. It's ok not to fear death my man, you have to fear the living because those are the ones who can hurt you."
- Jake Roberts
i.
Sheila nearly didn't go into the call center that day. Vicki was sick that morning, not just cranky -- she was always cranky when they woke her up at 6 am to get her ready for another day fighting the good fight in fourth grade -- but actually running a degree of fever, too. So Sheila had nearly called in sick to stay home with her -- but Dan had volunteered to do it instead. He didn't have a job where he got dinged with an occurrence every time he called in; his employers down at the garage were much more adult about such things.
Still, she'd gotten off to a late start getting everyone settled before she left (Vicki on the couch more or less contentedly watching something incomprehensibly awful on the Disney Channel, Dan with Sheila's quickly penned Post It notes stuck all over the various medicines he might have to dispense, distributed around his recliner on the coffee table and TV tray like an orbital array). So she didn't dare dawdle on the way in, as being late was nearly as bad as not coming in at all, and she wasn't in her team leader's good books this month by any means.
So instead of hitting the Wendy's drive thru on Bardstown Road as she usually would have for coffee and a panini, she'd driven straight in, praying there were no cops laying in wait anywhere along the way to hail her down as she blew by them on Old Shep fifteen miles over the speed limit.
As she crossed Fern Valley, luckily hitting the green light at a flat out sixty in a 45 mph speed zone, she'd caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of something strange happening in the parking lot of the bowling alley on the corner there. Some kind of fight, or brawl... for all the sense she could make of it as she flashed by, it looked like two or three homeless people struggling over a blanket, or something. A red blanket... full of sausages?
But then it was behind her and she was halfway to Outer Loop and had to watch the road closely, as this was a spot where school buses tended to pull onto Old Shep from neighborhood side streets without warning. Getting caught behind a school bus when you were already running ten minutes behind was just doom.
At Outer Loop itself she got stuck behind a long red light watching as four fire trucks and two police cars went screaming by in front of her towards Moore High School. As soon as the light went green again, though, she gunned on through and forgot about it.
On Preston Highway, turning off onto Commerce Crossing, she saw a bad wreck on the other side of the intersection -- someone had apparently gone off the road and into the ditch over there at enough speed to spring their hood up and cause the engine to pour out oily black smoke. The door was open on the driver's side but no one had gotten out of the car. Apparently it had just happened, as there were no emergency vehicles at the scene yet.
Sheila had to fight the urge to pull through the intersection, turn around, park behind the wreck on the shoulder, and see if there was anything she could do... but if she was late for work, she'd get written up. So she pulled out her cell phone and dialed 911 and reported the wreck as she was driving up Commerce Crossing. The operator sounded much more stressed than usual; it made Sheila realize, for the first time, that there had seemed to be a lot of emergency vehicles out this morning. In addition to the ones she'd actually seen on Outer Loop, she'd also heard several sirens over the sounds of Bruno Mars, Robin Thicke, Maroon 5, and countless yammering commercials as she'd driven in -- she'd just blocked them out.
Now, as she cruised the Galaxy parking lot at four minutes before 8 looking for an open space, she wondered if something weird was going on in Louisville today.
Then, in the rush to secure car keys, get her ID badge out, toss a blip back over her shoulder with the key-remote to lock the car behind her, run up the front walk to badge in to the building, near-sprint across the floor to her cubicle and frantically hammer her log in in to her phone -- she forgot it all again.
Her team leader Fred was glaring at her over the cubicle tops. Then he pointedly went back to putting the top three sales leaders from his team on the whiteboard outside his own cubicle -- pointedly because Sheila's name was nowhere to be found on that short list.
And hadn't been, for the last six weeks.
He finished, and hesitated, as if torn between coming over to give her a 'pep talk' about her own dismal sales figures, or going back into his cubicle (where, Sheila knew, he would sip coffee, idly move folders around on his desk, make personal calls on his desk phone, and play Facebook games most of the morning, always alert to minimize the browser window and display something work related at any moment, should HIS supervisor wander by).
Sheila wasn't sure she could take one more 'pep talk' -- actually, a passive-aggressive barrage of thinly veiled and futile threats about firing her (futile because the only good thing about their union, as far as Sheila could see, was that they kept people like Fred from actually firing anyone for poor sales stats, since this was supposed to be a customer service job, not a sales position).
But she could easily get fired for standing up and kicking Fred really hard in the balls -- which she was likely to do, if he walked her way and started bitching at her.
At that point her first call of the day beeped in her headset, and she forgot about Fred, and wrecks on Preston Highway, and homeless men fighting over blankets full of sausages, and emergency vehicles, and even Vicki and Dan, as she started trying to bring up the customer's account on her screen and went into her spiel. "Thank you for calling Galaxy Telecommunications, my name is Sheila, how can I help you today?" Remembering to smile into the little mirror that was affixed to the top of her monitor -- everyone had one -- because the customers can hear that smile in your voice, Sheila, yes they can!
Naturally, her first call of the day was a horror -- the phone number on her caller ID did not autopop up any account, meaning Sheila would have to search for it. But before she could even ask for a phone number, the caller was screaming in her ear -- "Our internet is out AGAIN!!!! And our phones!!! And the cable TV is just showing 'please wait one moment'! This is a BUSINESS HERE, you idiots! We can't operate like this!"
Sheila rolled her eyes and said "I'm very sorry, sir, did you say this was a business?"
"YES!!!!!" the caller - a man, whose tone and general unpleasantness made Sheila wonder if he and Fred had been separated at birth or something -- screamed. "THIS IS A BUSINESS! This is the Highland Walgreen's on Bardstown Road and ALL
OUR SERVICES ARE OUT!!! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU MORONS????"
Although Sheila was careful to keep such opinions to herself, she felt very strongly that customers had a great deal of control over and input into the kind of experience they had when they called customer service. Her managers would have been scandalized to hear any CSR voice such a heretical viewpoint, but Sheila was pretty sure every other CSR in the building, and anyone anywhere in the world who actually had to speak with customers for a living, would agree -- customers were primarily responsible for just how good an experience they had when they called in with a complaint.
The customers who somehow managed to remember that they were speaking with an actual human being on the other end of the phone, and who remained professional and respectful... well, they got a lot more help, and a much nicer attitude from the CSR they were speaking with, than the customers who called up screaming and swearing and calling names.
Managers did not like that particular theory, and customers certainly didn't -- both sorts preferred to believe that the way a particular call went was entirely the responsibility of the CSR. But Sheila knew better.
In this world, what goes around comes around, and you get what you get.
So it was that Sheila was extremely happy to say, in her very sweetest tone, "I'm sorry, sir, you have reached the residential customer service line by mistake. Please hold while I transfer you to business." She gleefully popped the 'hold' button, even as she could hear the asshole on her phone drawing a breath to scream something even more loudly (probably "DO NOT PUT ME ON HOLD!!!!" or "DO NOT TRANSFER ME!!!!") and, very deliberately, pulled up the Internal Phone Numbers list on her soft phone, scrolled down to "Biz Louisville" -- and then, 'accidentally' clicked on 'Biz Columbus', on the line above.
If the call got reviewed, all a supervisor would see was an honest mistake... mouses were finicky things, sometimes. Meantime, the asshole could experience another twenty minutes or so on hold and then yet another transfer when someone in Columbus picked up. Maybe he'd learn some manners, or at least, a little patience.
Doubtful, but you never knew.
She punched in *18 for After Call Work, found the Bardstown Walgreen's account, opened it, carefully typed 'xfer to biz' into the notes screen... and then, with a sigh, put her phone in 'ready' again.
Eight calls later it was nearly break time, and Sheila looked up as Dawn Robbins screamed "Fire me, then, goddamn you! I'm going to pick up my daughter!" and went storming across the call center towards the exit. Dawn sat three rows over from Sheila, and her team leader was Monica, who was generally pretty easy to get along with.
Sheila happened to be between calls at that moment -- it had been a slow morning, for whatever reason -- so she went into ACW again, and leaned over to her 'bucket buddy', a 20 year old guy named Jerry who had just gotten out of the Army, and who sat at the desk next to hers inside the same four station cubicle space. "Jerry, what's going on?"
Jerry took his eyes off what he was looking at -- the big flat screen TV mounted on the wall forty feet away from them -- and looked at Sheila. "No real clue," he said. "Fred apparently caught Dawn on her cell phone and started bitching her out for it."
Sheila nodded. One of the call center's Holiest Commandments was "Thou shalt not have a cell phone turned on while on the floor". Of course, that only applied to the peons with the headsets, team leaders and other supervisors could do as they pleased. And pretty much everyone ignored the rule, anyway... but woe betide any mere CSR (customer service rep) who got caught actually using a cellphone out on the floor, much less actually taking or making a call on it.
Any supervisor who caught you would note the offense. If they weren't YOUR team lead, then most of them would just go back to their desks and shoot a quick InstaPop message off to your actual team leader, who would then drop around and remind you of the rule.
But not Fred. If Fred saw any CSR on the floor violating any rule whatsoever, he engaged. He didn't care whose team they were on. It was one of Fred's greatest joys in life (even more than Facebook games) to catch some poor hapless phone-serf violating the R and P (Rules and Policies). Fred just loved to get right up in someone's face and chew the living shit out of them... as long as they weren't anyone who could fight back in any way. And Fred always made sure he stayed scrupulously on the side of professionalism when he did it, too; he had mastered the art of administering a verbal beatdown that was utterly humiliating in every way, without seeming to venture even tangentially into any kind of forbidden personal commentary.
Jerry was going on, "So Dawn tried to tell him she'd gotten an emergency call from her kid's school and had to go pick her up, and you know Fred. And then..." He just gestured at where the big metal door was still closing after Dawn's angry exit.
Sheila shook her head. "He will write her up for sure," she said.
"Yeah, he's a real bag of dicks," Jerry said. "Scuse me." He got up and wandered towards the flat screen. A small group of people were doing the same, joining another small group that had already gathered around it.
Sheila got up to go over there as well, and Fred materialized at her elbow. "Sheila, you've been on Aftercall for three minutes," he said in his usual irritatingly nasal whine. "Do you need help with something?"
Sheila looked at him... then smiled sweetly. "Sorry, Fred. I must have mispunched; I'm supposed to be on break." She turned and punched the break code, *33, into her phone.
Fred was stymied; there wasn't a supervisor in the building who was willing to fuck with a CSR on their break or their lunch, that was a violation of actual Federal labor law. "Well," he blustered, "just... be more careful."
"Sure thing," Sheila said, getting up to join the group at the flat screen.
She stood next to Jerry. They were about the same height, around 5'9. Sheila stared at the TV. Apparently, WAVE 3 news was doing some kind of live report from downtown, just outside one of the hospitals near U of L. "Jerry, what's going on?" she asked, then giggled, as she realized she'd just asked Jerry the same thing twice within five minutes.
Jerry didn't say anything about it, just continued staring at the TV screen. "I dunno," he said. "Some kind of problem at University Hospital... it's like a riot, I guess."
The camera was looking up some street... Broadway, Sheila guessed. It was positioned across the street from the Emergency Room entrance to University Hospital. Sheila recognized the bus stop she'd used to get off at every day for weeks, when her mom had been there for cervical cancer. Years ago, before she'd even met Dan, much less married him... but the same bus stop. Some things never changed...
A harried looking black woman in a short skirt and matching blouse stepped in front of the camera holding a microphone. "This is Genny Gerstedt reporting from outside University Hospital," she said. "In a day that has already been marked by a huge spike in apparently unrelated emergency service calls, we are now learning that there is some kind of mass disturbance inside the hospital. Neither the police nor hospital administration officials have confirmed anything, much less given details, but we have reports of panicked cell phone calls from patients and visitors in the hospital alluding to some kind of mass outbreak of fits and even violent episodes..."
Everyone could hear a boom, and then a crash, coming from the background. The reporter whirled around. "All right, let's see, if we can get up close maybe we can talk to one of the cops..."
There was a loud sound of breaking glass and then...
Figures started running, away from the hospital's Emergency Room entrance, some up or down the street in either direction, others straight at and then past the camera. The reporter tried to flag one of them down, with no result, except one woman screaming at her "Get out of here! They're crazy!"
And then it was quiet.
And then, in the background... figures came staggering out of the Emergency Room doors (which Sheila could now see had had most of the glass smashed out of them; one door was sagging open as if it had been partially tor
n off its hinges).
These figures... something was wrong with them. Most of them were wearing greenish hospital gowns, but a few were in blue emergency room scrubs... one of those, a woman with blond hair, had a stethoscope clearly visible around her neck.
And one was a cop, carrying what looked like a gun in one hand. He wasn't pointing it, he didn't even seem to be aware he was holding it.
All of them seemed to have blood on them... many if not most from some sort of oval, open wounds on their exposed flesh... hands, faces, arms, shoulders.
Wounds that looked like bite marks.
The whole weird group... maybe a dozen... seemed to notice the camera (or, maybe, the reporter in front of it and the cameraman behind it) at once. Other than the two of them, and the bizarrely staggering -- drunk? -- crowd itself, the street seemed utterly empty.
And then, the group from the hospital started sprinting -- screaming -- towards the camera.
"Oh fuck," Jerry whispered. Sheila looked at him, and was shocked to notice how pale he'd gone. Jerry was one of those rare, admirable people who never seemed to be bothered by much of anything.
"Oh fuck, it's started," he said.
"What?" Sheila asked, feeling a strange sensation -- was that fear? -- starting to writhe like a knot of snakes inside her stomach. "What's started?"
Jerry shook his head. "It's the motherfucking zombie apocalypse," he said.
ii.
Vicki was the first one who noticed something was going on. When the iCarly rerun she was listlessly watching was abruptly replaced by a screen showing BREAKING NEWS, she yelled for her dad. "DADDY! ICARLY'S BROKEN!!!"
Dan, who had been making something to nosh on in the kitchen and wondering idly why he kept hearing so many sirens today, put the two PB and J sandwiches on a plate, cut them both into triangles simultaneously with the big butcher knife from the wooden block next to the sink, and carried the plate along with a glass of milk back into the living room.