Exit Zero

by Neil A. Cohen

  We arrive at the PNC center and there are only about fifty HHS left. We started with over 200, but everyone has bailed and took the rentals with them. The remaining supervisors are going nuts and calling everyone’s cell phone and home phones back in DC, but no luck.

  I saw Broke Brian, and he looks like hell. He tells me I looked worse and he is probably right. I used to be able to stay up most of the night and still rally in the morning, but today I was feeling like a truck hit me. This time we both head back to my hotel room and we don’t even bother filling out the maps. He got into one of the twin beds in my room and I got into the other and we both slept for most of the day. Still the damn police sirens or ambulances or whatever they are keep flying by. This hotel must be right next to a dispatch center or something.

  Anyway, that has been my great exciting mystery vacation. You are all caught up. I woke up about fifteen minutes ago. Will head to the PNC center again and see what Easter eggs they have us looking for today.

  Broke Brian has been in the bathroom since I awoke. I will give him a few more minutes and then I am going to bang on the door, he better not be using all the towels.

  Anyway, love you and hopefully, will be home soon.

  Penny

  Chapter 48

  Cube Mates

  When Patricia woke up, her head felt muddled. She had taken her Ambien too late, and mixed it with a Flexaril for her back pain. It should have put her out for a solid six hours, but she felt like she only slept two.

  Damn police and fire sirens seemed to never end last night.

  She stepped out of the shower, took a Paxil and Zoloft, along with a multivitamin and a sublingual B-12.

  Rosita had let herself in and was starting her weekly chores. Her name was not Rosita, but Patricia could never remember the real name, and she responded to Rosita anyway. She tried not to snap at the short, round house cleaner in the mornings, but always did.

  She loaded her purse, her laptop, her tablet, iPhone, her coffee, her bagel, her dry cleaning, and her Redbox DVD into the car. She would eat, drink, text, drop off, and “insert here” all on her way to work.

  She noticed her phone was buzzing. Was it from him?

  No, it was from her friend.

  ‘Did you watch on TV last night?’ her friend texted.

  She ignored the inquiry and navigated her vehicle forward. Traffic was light, but remnants of vehicle accidents from the night before remained where they occurred. She stopped at the store, inserted her movie. A man stood silently staring at the plastic window which enclosed a poster displaying photos of the movie choices. He did not move, he seemed focused on his own reflection that was reflected in the plastic window more than the images beyond.

  She inserted the disk and the machine acknowledged receiving. She lit a cigarette and returned to her car.

  The man turned and watched her leave. He then turned his body towards her car and took an unstable step forward.

  She backed her car out of the parking space and was again on the move when her phone buzzed again. The text had come in while she was inserting her disk and being ogled by the weirdo.

  Did you see it??? Her friend asked again, insisting on an answer.

  She ignored it; she had no time to watch the finale of Dancing with the Stars and did not care who won. She just hoped it was not that reality show tramp, or the washed up baseball player. Or the ex-congressman. They all were terrible dancers.

  She caught a glimpse of two people running in front of her car in tandem. She slammed on the brakes but when she tried to roll down her window to curse at them, they were gone. Idiot joggers, couldn’t they keep to the gym in the morning when people were trying to get to work? That reminded her that she needed to get her diet pills refilled at the pharmacy.

  She arrived at the dry cleaners across from the elementary school. There was an armed security guard at the carpool drop-off point. There had been a school shooting a couple of months ago in the news, but that was in a different state. The schools never ceased in their ability to overreact. Next thing you knew, some kid would sketch a gun on his iPad and they’d call in the National Guard.

  She took a Zantac; the coffee was giving her heartburn.

  The Korean lady opened the front door to the cleaners after she rang the bell twice. She hurried into the store and the door was locked behind her. The door was usually open, and this store was always inexplicably warm, even in winter.

  “I surprised to see you. Are you reaving?”

  “Yes, leaving and going to work. Why? Did you expect me to wait for the clothes?” she responded, befuddled by the question.

  The Korean lady scrunched her forehead. “No, reaving, reaving for another town? The liots. The liots rast night on TV.”

  “What did you say, lions on TV?”

  The Korean lady rang her up and handed her the ticket. “Prease come back and pick soon, okay? I not stay long.”

  She returned to her car, backed out of the parking space, and headed to the office. At the stop light, she downed a Buspar with a swig of coffee. The dry cleaner had stressed her out. What was she talking about lions? There was a story on the news three days ago about some woman jogger found in the woods murdered and apparently half eaten, and one theory was that a mountain lion had attacked her. But there was no way a mountain lion was going to be running around North Jersey with no one spotting it.

  The office was surprisingly empty.

  Yet, of course, Sarah had to be there. While Sarah’s work space cube was a good twelve paces from hers, Sarah may have been sitting on her lap. Every Monday was the same. Sarah would call her mom and recount the details of her date over the weekend. Then she would call her sister and repeat, then her girlfriend and repeat. She would then call the guy du jour and ask him if he wanted to have lunch. After some pathetic flirtation which screamed “I am 35 and desperate to be married to anyone with a pulse,” she would then call her mom, sister and friend a second time to recount the details of her five minute ago phone call with dream boy.

  She would then leave for a lunch date with the phone guy, and by 2pm, she would return in tears from another rejection. That would be followed by sobbing calls to her mom, sister and friend. She was ten pounds of pathetic desperation stuffed into a five pound Coach handbag.

  As Patricia took her seat at her desk, she could hear that Sarah was already at her desk sobbing loudly.

  Looks like she got dumped over breakfast, she thought. This week’s guy could not even wait until lunch to uncouple from this trailer car of baggage.

  She needed to block out the cloud of misery hovering in the next cube. She opened her laptop to check the web and see who won last night’s Dancing with the Stars.

  She closed the internet browser before it could fully open. No. No internet today. No time wasters or distractions. She had to get the spreadsheets done.

  She popped an Adderall to ensure she could focus, and she spent the next two hours working spreadsheets. She put in her ear buds so to block out Sarah’s convulsions of rejection. She could hear Sarah puking into the wastepaper basket. Disgusting. To let herself get so overwrought over a man she had known for less than two weeks.

  She opened up her desk drawer, pulled out a prescription bottle of Zanax, and tossed it over the cubicle wall onto her weeping neighbor’s desk. If this kept up, she was going to ask Sarah to cover her co-pay.

  What she did not notice was that beneath the four foot gray divider which separated Patricia and Sarah, a red liquid was beginning to pool around her filing cabinet.

  Sarah did have a date last night; date number five.

  One more meeting, one more night of small talk, one more night of “could this be the one?” One more evening of barely restrained desperation, one more moderately priced steak dinner.

  Would this be the man to serve as her chariot to the finish line of marriage? She would finally be a wife, the wife of a husband, a husband that would make her a normal 35 year old woman. She could meet with
the girls on Sunday to complain about their husbands. She could post cheesy vacation pictures on Facebook of her dorky husband, with his skinny legs and pale skin. She would secretly share his texts to her with her friends, she would post videos on YouTube of his anniversary toast expressing to her his love and commitment. Her friends would fill her social media pages with likes, comments, with expressions of how jealous they were of her. She would introduce him at the office Christmas party as her husband. She would tell her mother she could not visit this weekend as she and her HUSBAND had plans, and after all, he was her family now.

  With every man that came and went, Sarah tried to clear her cache, to delete her search history and clear out her memory, defrag her scattered emotions.

  Tonight was going to be different. It was their fifth date. She’d gotten worried after the third date when she got a little tipsy and leaned into him, gently grabbed his chin to direct his face towards hers and slurred, “I’m gonna warn you now…I want kids.” However, she was sure she’d ended the evening for him in a manner that would make him forget any slips of honesty.

  After all, he was back for date number five. The evening had followed the well-worn script of dinner, drinks, and deceptive smiles. Then the car ride back to her residence, The Cambridge, ten stories of renovated lofts that housed the single, the divorced, and the widowed. He’d parked in front of her high-rise of low expectations, said that he had enjoyed their time together, received all of her text messages, her Facebook postings, her email forwards, and her suggestion of a weekend beach trip with her parents. But he had to tell her that he was also dating other people whom he had met online as well, and that the night before, he and one of those other women had decided to be exclusive.

  Sarah had sat in the passenger seat frozen, yet her body had exploded in sweat. She had been waiting to have that very same exclusivity conversation with him, to have the exclusivity talk with any man that would actually agree to such an arrangement. She’d begged him not to do this, to give her more time, more chances to simulate whatever it was that a man wanted that she did not possess. The conversation grew uncomfortable, and the man realized she was not going to get the hint to exit his Prius. He’d unbuckled his seatbelt and opened his door, walking around the car to her side. When he tried to open her door, he found it locked and his date staring forward out the windshield blankly.

  He’d gently tapped on the glass, but she did not respond. He sighed and walked back to the driver’s side and again sat down, closing the door. He had broken up with girlfriends whom he had dated for years without it being this uncomfortable.

  She’d sat there frozen, her imagination running wild.

  This is it, this is my chance, he is going to give me a kiss goodbye and I will turn and give him such a passionate kiss that he will suddenly realize that I am the one he loves, not that other woman, not anyone else but me. This is exactly how it happens in the movies. We will kiss, he will pull back surprised for a moment, but then will come to the sudden realization that I was the one all along. He will carry me up to my apartment, we will make passionate love, and tomorrow we will set a wedding date. It’s happening, it is all happening!

  He’d leaned in close, stretched out his arm, reached around her, and she could feel the hairs on his arm brush against the back of her neck. The smell of his cologne permeated her senses, the sound of the pleather driver’s seat shifting as his body pivoted ever closer to her, his arm extending towards her right shoulder, where her spaghetti strapped dress hung precariously. His forearm tensed, his fingers extended. He unlocked the passenger side door...

  Sarah sat at her desk the next morning, struggling to remember the rest of the evening. Her memory was somewhat foggy, like watching a bad bootleg of a movie that was filmed through a keyhole. She remembered turning her head and biting his arm first. She remembered his screams. She remembered the taste of his flesh as she pulled his bicep from the bone with one upwards jerk of her neck. She remembered how his flesh in her mouth had calmed her, how it satiated all of her wants and desires. How bite after bite filled the deep and endless cavern of loneliness and desperation. How the flesh eased the painful yearning in her gut for marriage, for meaning. She was nothing and only with this man, with any man, could she become whole.

  His throat was next, which quickly stilled his screams and pathetic attempts to run away from her like every other man. She remembered dragging his body into her first floor apartment and eating until she felt a sense of fulfillment that had eluded her for so long. Finally, she and a man were one.

  She’d showered, dressed for work, but realizing she would miss her man during the day at the office, she had taken out the filet knives she’d purchased at Pottery Barn and sliced the meat from the bone and placed it in her well organized Tupperware bowls. She had not been at her desk long before she was missing her man so much she could not wait until lunch. She had finished him off at her desk for breakfast. Then she remembered crying, because she was again alone, and would be alone until she went home to her man. She could not wait to have her mother over for dinner. She had a man at home now, and he was not leaving, so she could let her figure go just a bit.

  Sarah was startled by the rattle of a pill bottle landing on her desk. She walked out of her workspace for a visit to her cube mate. It had been a while since the two of them had done lunch together.

  Chapter 49

  Get Back

  The submersible came to rest at Lowes Beach, Delaware. Dan had activated the tracking signal as soon as they were close to shore, and the welcoming party was on scene before he could wrangle the kids out of the craft.

  Waiting there was Gordon, one of Max Gold’s enforcers, and Samantha, his personal assistant. Samantha rushed over to Eric and Rita and wrapped a blanket around each of them.

  Dan walked over to Gordon. “Thanks for coming, this was a fuc—” Gordon’s fist slammed into Dan’s jaw, knocking him backwards. Dan sat up, stunned, rubbing his jaw. “What the hell?”

  Gordon stepped forward and hovered over Dan, pointing his meaty finger in his face. “Kids? You bring fucking kids? Where the fuck is Callahan?!”

  Dan rose to his feet. “What could I do? He told me to get the kids out of there. You have no idea what the fuck is going on over there. By the way, that little kid is V’s daughter.”

  “V is dead!” Gordon snapped.

  Rita began to cry, and Samantha cradled her, putting her hand on the back of her head.

  “Christ man, we don’t know that. And that kid, the boy, he is important to the old man.”

  Eric looked over at them in confusion. Was Dan talking about him? Who was “the old man”? Eric had never been important to anyone, not even to his parents.

  “You have any idea how much you have fucked things up?” Gordon roared. “You were sent there to do one goddamn thing. Get the goddamn congressman and bring him to the old man. That’s it. Not be a fucking baby sitter. Not a hero. You’re a killer, you should have killed anyone who got in your fucking way and got the congressman out of there. That was the plan.”

  “I thought—”

  “You don’t think, you’re too fucking stupid to think!” Gordon shouted, spittle flying. “You don’t think, you don’t feel, you act. You do what you’re told. We sent you in to fetch the fucking congressman and you fucked it up, and now you are going to fix it. That congressman was the most important part of the plan.”

  “Plan, what plan? Why do you keep saying plan?”

  “You don’t need to know shit. What you need to do is get back in that fucking sub, get back to fucking Jersey, get the fucking congressman, and bring him to the old man. And if he is dead, so the fuck are you.”

  Gordon removed a silver Glock 9mm pistol from his waistband and pulled back the chamber. Samantha grabbed the children and pulled their heads close to her body so that they would not see what she was sure was going to happen next.

  Gordon stepped forward and pointed the gun at Dan’s forehead. “Get back i
n that fucking sub thing, find Callahan, and bring him to the old man by tonight. That’s it. Got it!?”

  Dan didn’t need to be threatened. He had already planned to get back and pick up Patrick immediately, and hoped he had remained safe and on the beach, and had not strayed from his location.

  Chapter 50

  Inauguration

  Pat and Jimmy had been on the small boat for nearly two hours, making it all the way up to the Chesapeake Bay before they spotted the first craft that was actually piloted and not adrift with zombies.

  It was a US Coast Guard helicopter and it came up on them fast. Patrick waved his arms frantically to demonstrate he was uninfected. The copter passed by twice, then hovered, and lowered a rescue basket large enough for one man to enter. Pat looked at Jim, but his mate, ever the good captain, motioned for his passenger to abandon ship first. Pat climbed into the metal and mesh basket and began his assent up to the helicopter. As he got closer, he saw two men holding AR15s pointed directly at him. It was disturbing but he assumed it was a precaution, the men were protecting themselves should he show signs of infection.

  He was hoisted into the open doors of the helicopter and quickly pulled into the interior. A US Coast Guard uniformed man was waiting for him with a hypodermic needle at the ready. He was held down and the man with the needle grabbed his arm and before he could say a word, he felt the needle jab his shoulder.

  “What are you doing? I am fine!” Pat protested. “You need to go get the other guy in the boat!”

  The man giving him the injection replied, “Don’t worry; we will take care of you, Congressman.”