Bitten

by Tristan Vick

  “You ought to be more careful,” Hurley said, giving this Jesse kid a stern look. “You touch the wrong girl the wrong way even just once and you could have your own lawsuit to deal with.”

  Zanato laughed. His teeth were perfectly white. “No, it’s not like that,” he said.

  “Oh, she’s your girlfriend then?”

  He laughed again. “Not exactly. We sometimes fool around. That’s all.”

  Hurley raised an eyebrow. “So you mean you’re just sex buddies, then?”

  “Something like that,” Zanato said, his smile stretching across his face.

  Putting her tea down on the counter, Hurley stepped closer to Zanato, and brushed her hair back again. “So, no serious commitment then?”

  “No commitment,” Zanato proudly said.

  Hurley took another step closer to him. “Let me ask you something. How do two people become just sex buddies?”

  “Well,” Zanato began, “First you have to feel a certain attraction to them.”

  “Yeah?” Hurley said. This time she was standing barely a foot from him and had her eyes locked onto his amazingly bright smile. “Then what?”

  “Then you need to be willing to…”

  “Willing…?”

  “You know?” Feeling put on the spot Zanato tugged on his collar to loosen his necktie and gulped.

  Hurley looked up at him and waited for him to say something, but her doe-eyes obviously had their effect, for the very next minute his tongue was in her mouth and she was pressed up against the copy machine undoing his belt buckle as fast as her fingers would allow.

  Soon enough his pants were down around his ankles, her skirt was pulled up, and he was inside her pounding away. She wrapped her arms around his neck and let out a pleasure filled moan.

  Before they even had time to get into the moment however, the door flew open and the building’s security guard burst in. Scrambling to get their clothes on, it seemed the guard was more concerned with securing the door than anything they might have been doing.

  Sweat patches grew around his chest and armpits from his blue uniform. His bald, brown, head glistened with moisture under the florescent lights of the break room. He had a closely trimmed black goatee. In a panic, he yelled at them to “Get back.” Suddenly he tugged the copy machine away from the wall and wedged it up against the door he had just come through.

  “Totally not cool, dude,” Jesse said as he hastily fastened his belt. “Did it ever occur to you to, you know, maybe knock first?”

  “Why would I need to knock?” the guard asked, perplexed. Looking over he notice a beautiful blonde tucking her bosom back into her blouse and buttoning it up, her exposed cleavage still glistening with sweat.

  “All I’m saying is, you win the cock-block award of the year, bro.”

  “It’s the copy room,” replied the guard. “Not a Super Eight motel.”

  Before Zanato could come back with a smart-ass answer, something slammed into the door with such a horrific force that Jennifer thought the door would tear off from its hinges. The copier rattled as it absorbed the impact.

  “What the hell was that?” Jennifer asked.

  Out of breath, the guard huffed, “I’m being chased.” Before he could explain any further, there was another loud thud. The door buckled, but it held—just barely.

  “We gotta get the hell out of here,” the security guard implored, beads of nervous sweat popping out all across his bald head.

  Jennifer looked at him with a probing look. “What do you mean we? Leave us out of it.”

  Thud! Somebody wanted into the room badly. Whoever it was, they were certainly intent on breaking the damn door down.

  With the fourth impact the door latch gave out, and the door tore open. The copier rattled back as it absorbed the brunt of the impact. Throwing the whole of his body weight against the unhinged door, the security guard slammed it back shut.

  “You two have to get out of here!”

  “What are you talking about?” Zanato replied, not giving two figs about the oddity of the situation they found themselves in. “We were here first. Why don’t you just take your crazy-ass shit somewhere else?”

  Jennifer grabbed Jesse’s arm, and with an agitated look, stated, “Leave him be. I don’t want to get caught up in his mess. Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Fine by me,” Zanato affirmed. But before they could turn to leave, the door came crashing in and the security guard crashed to the floor.

  The guard drew his gun out and aimed it at the open entrance. His arms shook with equal parts adrenaline and fear, which made holding the gun steady a rather difficult task.

  Suddenly three colorless bodies pushed their way into the room. Their eyes were all a fogged over with a murky white glaze. Even the pupils had faded to gray. Patches of their skin had turned jaundice yellow and were peeling off in layers. They looked more like corpses than living.

  Jennifer gasped, “Their faces! They’re all torn to shreds, as if—”

  “Grahhhrrr!” growled a man in a cheap navy-blue suit and wearing a generic red necktie, obviously a salary man. Chunks of bloody meat dangled from his excoriated chin. It looked like some kind of wild animal mauled him.

  “Holy shit balls!” cried Jesse Zanato, as he backpedaled toward the rear door.

  Without any further hesitation, the guard took careful aim and fired off several shots into the salary man’s chest. But even having taken two bullets at point blank range, the white-eyed office worker kept scratching and clawing at the guard.

  Zanato and Jennifer watched in horror as the others joined him in the feeding frenzy. The salary man’s snapping teeth latched onto the guard’s ear and tore it off. The guard howled with pain. Covering his bloodied ear with his free hand, he put his gun to the head of the mad salary man.

  With a loud bang, bloody chunks of gray matter blew out to top of the salary man’s skull and splattered against the wall. The office worker instantly crumpled under the weight of the other rabid employees. Jennifer and Jesse watched in terror filled awe as the others bent down and ripped into the security guard’s torso.

  Tearing off his shirt, their cracked fingernails dug into his flesh. The guard yowled as his ribs cracked like dry branches, being bent and snapped. Then their hand pushed into his guts and began ripping organs out. The guard let out a blood curdling scream as they pried him open like a walnut and disemboweled him. Reaching into his abdomen, they tore out what looked like a chain of raw blood sausages, and gnawed on the guard’s intestines.

  “Jesus Christ!” Hurley exclaimed, barely able to breathe.

  Taking her arm, Zanato peeled her away from the scene. “Come on! We have to get out of here. Now!”

  Hand in hand they dashed down the hall to the elevator. Jamming the elevator button repeatedly, Jennifer chanted, “Come on! Come on! Come on!” But the elevator was indifferent to her button mashing. Just then the chime dinged and the door opened. Looking in, Zanato and Hurley saw the secretary trampled by two salary men and a woman. In an instant she fell to their collective weight and suddenly they were biting into her neck, arms and legs. But the truly frightful aspect was that she was still conscious, still awake, as the wild pack of “biters” devoured her. Her head turned toward Hurley and Zanato and with blood dripping out of the corner of her mouth, she reached out her hand and mouthed the words, “Help me.”

  “The stairs!” Zanato cried out, tugging on Hurley’s arm. “Follow me!” Jesse Zanato took Hurley’s hand and they ran into the stairwell.

  “We can’t just leave her there!” Hurley protested.

  “You want to go back and try to help her,” Zanato said, his voice filled with fear. “Be my guest.”

  Hurley looked back but changed her mind. It wasn’t worth the risk.

  Ducking into the stairwell, they skidded around the corner and hopped down several flights of stairs. As they made their way to the landing they heard screams echoing up from below. More people were being
torn apart. Downstairs was a death trap.

  “What the hell is going on?” Zanato growled in frustration.

  Turning back the way they came, the door flew open and the zombie employee with the red tie stood rigidly at the top of the stairs growling at them. Chunks of human meat dangled from his chin.

  Hurley screamed again and Zanato jumped back down to the bottom of the stairwell. Zanato threw open the door and motioned for Jennifer to go on through. Once they entered the offices Zanato slammed the door shut behind him and ordered Jennifer to hold it tight.

  Pointing his chin at the crash-bar of the door, Zanato said, “Hold this! And whatever you do, don’t let go.”

  “What? Are you kidding me?”

  “Just do it,” he insisted. Then he disappeared around the corner.

  “Don’t you fucking leave me!” Jennifer cried out. But there wasn’t any reply. Without realizing it, her eyes had started streaming silent tears.

  Suddenly the door handle began to rattle uncontrollably. She screamed as she fumbled to get a tighter grip on the juddering handle. An imminent terror overcame her as she realized she couldn’t hold it for very long. To her great relief Jesse abruptly returned with a mop and wedged it into the door handle. “That ought to hold him, for now.”

  “Thank god. For a moment there, I actually thought that you might have left me here.”

  Jesse looked at her, took her hand, and said, “We’d better find another way out of here. It won’t hold that son of a bitch for long.”

  Having retreated to a back office, they had managed to barricade the office doors with a jumble of file cabinets, office chairs, tables, and computers, and waited for something else to happen. Although the barricade was literally thrown together in slapdash fashion, it would keep the monsters at bay, at least for the time being.

  “Looks like we’re stuck here,” Zanato said.

  Jennifer sighed. Zanato was probably right, she thought. They certainly weren’t going anywhere. Not anytime soon. Not with those creatures out there waiting to chew their faces off. Walking over to the blinds, Jennifer poked her fingers in and spread them open so she could see out.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Zanato cried out in a loud, half panicked, whisper. Leaping over some chairs he immediately slapped her hands away from the blinds. Jennifer stepped back and just shot Jesse an irritated look.

  “I just wanted to see if they’re still out there.”

  “Of course they’re still out there. They’re always fucking out there!” he bemoaned. “They’ve been out there for fucking three and a half hours!”

  Jennifer walked over to the windows overlooking the city streets below. They were stuck on the forty-ninth floor of the Newcastle City Bank and the law firm offices of Callahan & Salinger. The building was an eighty story high-rise made of steel and pristine glass. It was a glistening monument at the heart of Newcastle city, but with one minor flaw, it had no way down. Every exit had been infiltrated by a horde of flesh eating zombies, and now the two of them were confined to the large meeting room at the corner of some random office.

  Hurley flicked on the television, but the only thing on were emergency channels and horrible high pitched tones which compelled her to promptly turn it back off. She didn’t want to arouse any more attention than Jesse and her had already brought to themselves.

  “What the hell happened to everyone?” Jennifer asked.

  “Fuck if I know,” replied Zanato.

  “Yesterday was all birds chirping and kids going to school and—”

  “People fucking,” Zanato interrupted with a snicker.

  Ignoring his sad attempt at some ribald humor, she went on. “Yeah, normal shit like that. And today it’s like … the end of the bloody world. People are killing each other. Worse. They are practically eating one another!”

  Zanato pretended to listen, but he had blocked out her hysterical jabbering minutes ago. Now his mind just hummed with random thoughts of what he’d like to do to her if given the chance.

  Noticing that the meeting room had a water cooler and coffee a maker, Jennifer felt comforted. At least they could stay alive long enough for help to arrive. As long as those things didn’t get in, they’d be safe.

  Jennifer pushed an extra table over to the windows overlooking the cityscape and took out her burgundy lipstick. Zanato watched her curiously as she climbed up onto the table and stuck out her beautifully formed ass. In giant block letters she scribbled “Help Us” on the large panoramic glass which overlooked Newcastle City.

  Zanato cleared his throat, as if to get Jennifer’s attention. She either didn’t hear him or was too focused on the task at hand. He cleared his throat again, this time making it louder. Pausing, Jennifer turned toward him and asked, “Well, what is it?”

  “You’re writing it backwards.”

  Jennifer just gazed at him in dismay.

  “It’s not for us, genius. It’s for the people out there, you know, on the other side of the glass.” Jennifer pointed out the window toward the urban backdrop behind her.

  “Still, it’s the wrong way around.”

  “It’s supposed to be backwards, genius.”

  A vacant look came across Zanato’s face. Then he frowned as he struggled to make sense of it all. Jennifer laughed at the fact that his pea-sized brain just couldn’t figure it out.

  “It’s like the writing on an ambulance, it’s supposed to be backwards,” informed Jennifer with a laugh. “On the other side of the glass the letters appear the right way around.”

  Using his hand as a 2-D representation of the glass, Zanato looked at the front and panned to the back of his hand. He did it again just to be sure what he was picturing in his head was correct. After thinking about it for a moment, his eyes lit up. “Ohhh, I get it now.”

  Jennifer Hurley laughed again, not because he was intentionally funny, but because he was so sad. She wondered to herself how on god’s green earth would this idiot ever survive the day?

  Feeling embarrassed by his display of ignorance, Zanato rubbed the back of his head and did his best to simulate a convincing laugh. Better to play the part of the charming fool than to be a dick and get all defensive, he thought. Besides, Zanato desperately wanted back into her panties. The elegant tattoo of a blue monarch butterfly which hovered above her perfectly formed ass enticed him even further. She probably didn’t even realize how unbelievably hot she was.

  Jennifer got up onto the table and stood on her toes to get the high areas of the tall panels of glass, and began filling in the letters with bright red lipstick. Zanato stared intensely at how her skirt hugged her perfectly formed figure. She was the kind of woman he couldn’t take his eyes off of. Everything about her seemed to generate sexual tension, everything from her butterfly tat to the way she swiveled her hips when she walked. Even the fact that she was smarter than him made him aroused.

  Attempting to take his mind off of her, Zanato went over to the water cooler to get himself a drink. As he turned to look out at the cityscape he suddenly saw a shiny glint. “Whoa! Did you see that?”

  “See what?” Jennifer asked as she climbed down off the table and peered out the window with him. Jesse raised a finger and pointed across to the building several blocks away. “Over there. Do you see it?”

  Jennifer strained her neck but she didn’t see anything. Without warning, a hot white flicker of light flashed.

  “There it is again,” said Zanato.

  “I see it!” Hurley replied with excitement.

  “It’s some kind of light.”

  “It’s more than that,” Jennifer replied. “It’s a message. Somebody must be using a hand mirror to signal for help.”

  “What should we do?” Zanato inquired.

  Jennifer looked at him and then back out at the flickering flashes of light.

  “We have to go to them.”

  “Are you crazy?!” Zanato threw his arms back in dismay. Pointing at his forehead he asked, “Are you out of y
our feakin’ mind?”

  “Think about it. We have no way of communicating with them. I doubt they can see the writing from all the way over there. Besides, we can’t stay here forever.”

  “I thought you said we would be better off just laying low until help arrived.”

  “That was then. This is now.”

  “So what’s changed exactly?” Zanato put his hands on his hips and waited for an answer. Jennifer looked back out across the cityscape and saw the flickering light repeat the same pattern.

  “The odds,” Jennifer replied in all seriousness.

  Zanato threw his hands up into the air. “The odds? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Look,” Jennifer said with authority, “I got my degree in accounting, so I’m pretty good with numbers. We can risk staying here, and hope someone comes for us, and wait around to either starve to death or be eaten by those things. Or we can take our chances and meet them halfway.”

  “Fine,” pouted Zanato. Thumbing over his shoulder at the closed shades which hid the hideous zombies on the other side, he asked, “So how the hell do you expect to make it past the monster squad?”

  Jennifer walked over to the corner window and ran her hands along the window sill.

  “I have an idea,” she said with a slight smile.

  “I don’t think I like where this is headed,” Zanato informed as Jennifer popped open the lock and pushed the window open. “Yeah, I definitely do not like where this is headed.”

  Turning back toward Zanato, Jennifer motioned with her hands as if to say, “After you.”

  “You’re out of your freaking mind if you expect me to go out there at this height. One misstep and we’re pancake batter, squashed into oblivion. Hello pavement. Goodbye world. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  Approaching the window with a macho swagger, Zanato made a valiant effort to look fearless. Jennifer struggled hard not to laugh. Peering out over the ledge he paused and then looked back at Jennifer. “You’ll be the death of me. You know that, right?”