by Mariah Lynde
My chin tilted up, going for a slightly haughty air. I prepared myself for another barrage of insults or an outright dismissal. What I got was two men chuckling softly. Both Isaac and Mr. Mitty were looking down at me in amusement, which confused the hell out of me.
“I’m sure he did. Micheal isn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box. There is a reason his father made him VP of the Resources Department. He’s a figurehead. No more, no less. He just so happens to think it entitles him to walk around like he owns the place.” Watching as Mitty shifted to move towards me, for a moment I was too dumbfounded to move.
“Well…um…that seemed kind of obvious.” Gah! What was wrong with me? You would think I had only learned to speak that morning with the way I was pausing and stumbling over my words.
Get a grip on yourself, Angel.
This time as Mitty chuckled, he held out his hand towards me. I tilted my head, staring at the offered limb in a kind of surreal distrust before I slowly let my hand settle in his as he spoke, “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Miss Warren. I had just come from the twentieth floor when I heard your little verbal assault on our company’s…what was it you called him? Jackass?”
Well, it seemed chivalry was dead. If Mitty thought that his words would soothe me down to a manageable level, he couldn’t have been more wrong. I planned on owning up to every single syllable of it proudly.
“Among other things. Maybe next time I’ll bring a dry erase board so I can draw him diagrams.” I shrugged as my fingers moved to grip his hand tightly. Slowly, I delivered what I hoped to be a firm handshake before I pulled away.
“You don’t give an inch, do you?” Mitty peered at me, one black brow arching upwards in question, and all I could do was smile in response.
“Not if I can help it. If you give them an inch, they take a mile.” I shrugged then moved to shove both hands into the pockets of my khakis. Just then, it dawned on me what he had said. “Wait, Twentieth Floor?”
“Yes. I stopped there to apologize for my rather rude behavior to an IT tech a little while ago. It seems I just missed her.” My God! He was amused with me. The idea that I had become some kind of personal joke for this guy irked the hell out of me.
“I…”
What I’d been about to say ground to a halt as a sudden commotion kicked up behind us. Isaac and Mitty were both forgotten as I turned to see the woman had finally fallen back onto the floor.
Suit One and Suit Two seemed at a loss as both stared at the woman on the floor with an almost blank expression. To be fair, seeing death up close and personal can be a jarring experience, so I couldn’t really blame them. Looking down on her still form, I frowned a little. There was something about her appearance that just did not sit well with me.
Thinking perhaps I could be wrong and misjudged the severity of her injury, I moved forward to get a closer look. Looking back now, I realize that particular action had been one in a long line of mistakes. If I had just kept to myself, I probably would have stayed blissfully ignorant for at least the ride back to my ratty little apartment. Sure, there were advantages to having a head start on everyone else to survive, but that knowledge comes with a price.
Out of habit, I took note of her initial appearance; there was no rise and fall of her chest. Her eyes were frozen open with no small twitch or indication of movement. Their pale green color was already starting to take on a milky, cloud-like appearance. Moving on, I could see that the wound on the woman’s neck had to be one of the worst I’d ever seen. A huge chunk had been ripped free of the side of her throat. That mark was a perfect circle denoting the rip and tear of teeth on flesh that had been pinched together by a bite. The bite had gained purchase and ripped away some of the fine muscle and tendon needed for movement. It seemed one thick blood vessel had retracted to the very edges of the wound after being exposed. Even now, the frayed ends of the tube-like vessel oozed with dark, viscous fluid which didn’t quite seem to be blood. I couldn’t fathom how she had lasted as long as she had.
Blood did not ooze and slowly seep out of veins or arteries like this grotesque sludge. Even without a heartbeat, blood flowed in a constant reliable stream until the last of the fluid was expelled from the body. This was something altogether different. If I had to put a description to it, I would have compared it to a mucous spray from some virulent flu patient that had been subjected to a room full of every pollen known to man. Where blood or some semblance of it should have been, there was a pinkish green slime that slowly fell from the frayed edges of Mrs. Gush and Flow’s ripped blood vessel.
The tissues of her neck revealed around the wound only added to the mystery. Where there should have been healthy, pink tissue, there was a darkening crimson color. From what I could see, it was not dried blood, which begged the question just why that flesh seemed so inflamed and irritated. Even taking into account the attack, there had not been enough time for her body to elicit that kind of violent reaction, especially with the amount of blood she had lost. In order for white blood cells, antibodies, and platelets to reach injured tissue, there had to be blood flow. Anatomy 101 there; so how the hell had this woman’s body evoked what was essentially a violent allergic reaction and sudden surge of her immune system to the affected area?
Turning my head to peer at Isaac and Mitty, I frowned a little before I spoke the one question that seemed most important to me at that moment. “You called the cops, right?”
Just as Isaac started to nod, an ear shattering scream sounded from a couple of feet away. Without warning, I found myself yanked back, my eyes moving back towards the spot where I expected to see a lifeless corpse.
What I saw in that moment is something that will haunt me until the day I die. Moments before, this woman’s body had lain motionless on the floor. In that whole time she had not once moved, her gaze remaining steadily on the ceiling above as that haze of death had started to dull the color of her irises.
No breath. No pulse. No heartbeat. I had seen for myself there’d been no movement of her chest and the oozing mass of gross from the woman’s neck had indicated her heart had stopped beating at some point.
Dead. She had been dead. Of that I had little question, even if I’d never laid a hand on her.
Yet there she was with her mouth locked around Suit two’s forearm as blood gushed up around her lips and over his arm. Her gaze was truly vacant now, an empty black hole of dilated pupil that seemed like a gateway to horrific evil, while the whites of her eyes proclaimed small lines of red denoting busted blood vessels. As the woman pulled her head back, her head turned, ripping at the fibrous tissue between her teeth while I stood there in shock trying to remember how to move.
Chapter Six – And behold a Pale Horse…
In that moment, I knew that whatever else this was, we had all just witnessed the beginning of the end. In my short stint among the adrenaline junkies that worked in emergency services, I had seen my share of screwed up. In no uncertain terms, I had been deemed what most would call a shit magnet. Nine times out of ten, if there was a call that was too messed up to be believed or just panic inducing, it would be my crew that got assigned to it.
Nothing I had seen in my tenure, prepared me for what was happened now. Suit Two, the golden boy known as Micheal McGinley, was currently being bitten by a woman who, moments earlier, had been as dead as a doornail. With each passing moment his screams got louder, more high-pitched, as he let loose a string of insults and expletives that would have made Satan wince.
Shock had long since settled on my addled brain while I watched the scene in horrific fascination and disbelief. Sure, we had all played the ‘what if’ zombie apocalypse game, who hadn’t? But actually being front row center for the action, not as glamorous or entertaining as it seems.
There was a slight resonance of pity as my mind grasped onto my fleeting concept of the walking dead. The immediate thought at the forefront of my mind was that no matter the story, every single one of them revolved around the s
preading of a virus through a bite. While I couldn’t be sure if that meant there were other ways that could facilitate that particular plague, I sure as hell didn’t want to stick around to find out.
“Help me, imbeciles!” McGinley’s pleas fell on deaf ears. Most everyone in that lobby – myself included – were frozen in place as we witnessed the vicious assault taking place. What had once been a perfectly respectable upper management negotiator in a business suit was now a mindless, rampaging carnivore of the highest order.
Considering how society had conformed over time to become civilized, one has a tendency to forget that, at the end of the day, we’re all simply animals. Since the day that we emerged on this earth, through evolution, sheer luck, or God’s hand, man had been learning to adapt and survive. It is that very instinct to survive which made us dangerous.
If we were starving, we found ways to eat. If we found ourselves at risk in the open, then shelter became a priority. No matter what generation you were part of or what century you had been born in, that one instinct was hardwired into our brains at the most basic of levels.
Which is why seeing this woman-turned-monster was absolutely terrifying to behold. There could be no mistaking the almost single-minded focus that existed in her actions. Food. Eat. Live.
I could sense the people around me struggling to rationalize what it was they were seeing. Hell, if I had been just a little less on edge, I would have probably done the same. Unfortunately, this time there was no such luck. While others took solace in believing that they weren’t seeing a mindless zombie before them, I had that sinking feeling in my gut which told me all I needed to know.
I’m sure people would say that this woman had just gone crazy. That the suddenness and violence of the attack she had suffered made her react in a primal fear for her life. God, how I wanted that to be the truth. I prayed for it to be a viable explanation, even as I stared directly at proof to the contrary.
Madness, no matter how depraved it could be, had a limit. There was always a certain boundary for self-preservation that existed to stop the person from doing irreparable harm to themselves so they could survive the long term. That boundary did not exist in the creature before me.
A shiver traversed my spine as the need to vomit rose in the back of my throat. I can honestly say that staring into the black, vacant pools that the creature’s eyes had become only seemed to make it worse. Death, despair, hardship, hopelessness; those were the only emotions I seemed able to call up as I peered into those unseeing orbs. The sheer weight of those emotions locked me in place to watch every horrific detail of my first encounter with a zombie.
While my body was locked in place, my mind seemed to be working just fine. Who would have thought that of all the things I could have encountered in my life that came out of the world of fiction, it would be a damn zombie?
A part of me wished I had thought to ask about the woman’s name while she’d been alive. It seemed kind of rude now to refer to her with some snarky little name that birthed itself from my own bad attitude. Still, I suppose having any kind of moniker was better than saying ‘it’ all the time.
My internal monologue aside, I was watching as McGinley tried to shake off the rabid, hound-like zombie that had latched itself on to his arm. Each time he worked to pull his arm away, Mrs. Gush and Flow would shake her head like a dog with a bone, thus making me seriously wonder if the analogies to the canine species were truly appropriate. Teeth had sheared through layers of cloth to descend on the meaty flesh beneath.
“Damn you!” McGinley’s scream seemed to snap me out of my musings as I realized he was looking at me. What the hell? I realized I must have said something out loud as he yelled, “You’re moving…help me get her off!”
I had moved? Looking down dazedly, I realized he was correct. I had been systematically backing up towards my chair that resided near the elevator bays. Still, it seemed that McGinley’s rant towards me had set several things into motion at once. I noticed that others around the lobby had started moving around as if to try and help. Beside me, I heard Isaac whispering, and while I couldn’t make out the words, I assumed that it wasn’t meant for my ears.
Suit One moved to grab the zombie by her shoulders in an attempt to pull her off. Even then, I was harrumphing as if to say, ‘What are you, new?’ thinking it would be enough that he might get a hint that it wouldn’t work. I mean, come on, she still had her teeth ripping into McGinley despite his squirming, wriggling, and kicking. In the last few seconds, she had kept her mouth locked onto his arm even though he was twice her size and far more mobile. Merely grabbing her by the shoulders to try and lift her off her prey would work about as well as a spitball to send her into the afterlife.
To give credit where it was due, there was an almost uncanny single-mindedness to the zombie that I could appreciate. In a room full of people, her focus remained settled on one person. Later, I would reflect on that, but for the moment all I could do was observe in rapt fascination and panicked disgust.
I could not look away or move. The scene playing out before me demanded that I take action, but I couldn’t seem to move. Watching as Suit One tried to gain purchase in his hold on the zombies shoulder, all I could do was shake my head.
Robbie once described these situations as one of those, ‘no, not that one’ moments. He said it was much like having a sixth sense, a premonition of sorts, like those people who were about to board a train and suddenly stop right before getting on. The whole time, they’re shaking their head, telling people, ‘no, not that one’, just to be ignored. In the end, they are a harbinger, a person who saw disaster before them and tried to change the chain of events. The event could be small or large, but in recent history, the only big event that made this scenario known was September 11th. Stories still circulated about those rare few who were sidetracked, or had a sudden feeling not to go to work, or to stay a few minutes late at their home for some reason because they felt something was off. In the end, they survived, while so many others didn’t. The things they did that day not only saved their lives, but also the lives of others around them.
To me, this seemed like my turn at one of those moments. I felt like I was that person standing on the train platform, waving my arms and screaming at the top of my lungs, ‘No, Not that one…’ just as the crash happens. Surprisingly, what they say is true. Those moments right before you face a life-altering choice, the whole world around you appears to slow down. Everything around you begins to happen in long, dragging motions that you would swear had you were locked in some kind of stop animation feature.
Each movement, no matter how small, is seen and observed almost as if you were watching all of it take place at once. Suit One was ineffectually pulling on zombie chick’s shoulder while McGinley angrily slapped the flat of his hand down onto the back of the biter’s head. Nearby, Isaac seemed to be talking softly into some sort of radio, and Mitty…well, he seemed to be doing just the same as me – watching the whole scene play out in some kind of dazed stasis.
I’m not sure when I had tuned out the sound of Isaac’s voice. All I really knew seemed to be that now it was something akin to a distant rumble that barely registered to my conscious mind. Whomever or whatever he had been speaking to did not seem as important to me as what was unfolding right before my eyes. What actually caused the whole uncanny series of events is not something I could determine.
I can, however, describe it in the best way I can manage. Suit One, for whatever reason, lost his grip on the zombie that was making McGinley into an undead buffet. As of that moment, the creature’s attention had seemed to be fully fixated on the man serving as its meal. Once Suit One’s grip was broken, for a split second I had hope that this whole mess would end there. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Suit One’s frustration in being unable to remove the zombie from McGinley gave birth to an idea of such idiotic proportions that I can’t even begin to describe it. As I had said before, the lobby itself had maybe th
irty people present at the time the woman had shown up clutching her neck. There could have been more people than that now, but I had been glad that once she’d turned, she seemed to have a single-minded fixation on just one target instead of flailing about the room to try different ‘stock’. Again, this is that ‘no, not that one’ moment as I watched dumbfounded as Suit One pulled himself from where he’d fallen to a rather undignified position on the floor, and launched himself at the woman’s back to try and dislodge her grip on McGinley.
It had been a desperate move that both worked and didn’t, all at once. Suit One’s body slammed into the female zombie with enough force that her mouth ripped away from McGinley’s arm and sent blood arching upward into the air to splash across the left side of his face. When I say spray…I do mean spray. There was a bright red spurt of blood that I recognized as forceful enough to be arterial in nature, but in the long run would mean little.
I had expected a snarl, a groan, some form of sound from the creature that the female had become. Instead, there was absolute silence. When I could ponder my current situation later I might question this, but for the moment I observed the initial response of the creature that had been interrupted during its ‘meal’. Suit One, however, worked to balance himself in a precarious position on the zombie’s back as he tried sliding one arm down as if to put her in a choke hold.
“No!” The word had barely left my lips as I watched the zombie twist its torso so one arm flailed to try and knock the male off her back. Reveling in what he assumed would be his inevitable victory, Suit One smiled in triumph.
Right about that time there was a vicious snap of bone as the female adjusted her head and bit down on Suit One’s arm right at the elbow. His cries joined McGinley’s when the woman’s head began to rock back and forth, ripping the fabric of his precious suit causing him to lose his balance and slide off the woman’s back in panicked terror.