by Mariah Lynde
As far as opening lines went, I definitely chose a doozy. My statement was met with a chorus of sharply inhaled breaths and curses. Well…they had wanted to know.
“Damn it, I told you to be careful!” Robbie began to yell, a rare occurrence for him, but one that indicated just how serious the situation was.
“I know!” I shouted back. Normally, Robbie and I worked and operated in perfect sync with one another. More than that, when it came to our conversations, be it in game or in person, we were known for our quirky humor as well as our laid back attitudes. However, on those rare occasions where we weren’t in sync, God help anyone caught in the crossfire. For that reason alone, everyone else in the call fell deathly silent. Not that I blame them. They knew throwing themselves in the middle of any argument between the pair of us would be tantamount to suicide.
“Then what the hell were you thinking? Are you hurt? Did you get bit?” Rapid fire questions exploded my speakers with enough volume that the sound shot out like small, sonic bullets that made my temples throb. It didn’t help matters that each word Robbie spoke felt like a stinging accusation.
“Excuse me? You’re yelling at me for getting home after a ZOMBIE attacked a lobby full of people?” I snapped right back at him. As you may have already guessed, I have a short temper. As an Aries, that is to be expected. Fortunately, like most people that are quick to anger, I’m also pretty quick at calming back down. Most of the time.
“Holy shit, she said it out loud,” another person in the call whispered.
“Yeah, I heard it, too.” That had been Brandon throwing in his two cents, and sounding entirely too gleeful about it. Unfortunately for Brandon and whoever else had chosen to speak – Robbie and I both turned on them like pit vipers on a family of mice.
“SHUT UP!” We both screamed at the same time, and silence once again fell on the phone call. For a good five seconds, no one said a word. It ended up being Robbie who broke the silence.
“Tell me.” Straight and to the point – he wanted an answer. Angry as I was at the moment, I considered not giving it to him.
“I don’t know, are you gonna yell at me again?” I looked up at the gray ceiling above me and did my best to count to ten.
“I swear to God, I’m going to yell if you don’t tell me. That’s for damn sure.” If Robbie had been there with me at that moment, I probably would have spun around in a huff and found a door to slam on him. As it stood, I had already reverted to recalcitrant three year old, stamping my foot and crossing my arms like it would make a difference.
“Angel, don’t be a bitch.” This came from one of our occasional players, John. Having been a pick-up player from a mutual friend in League, Robbie had taken to calling him ‘Hobbit’. It didn’t matter that he was actually from Australia, it had been funny to us, so the name stuck. While John hated it, we found it hilarious.
This time, however, he’d committed the ultimate sin. There is a certain line you don’t cross in this group. It is an unspoken rule of sorts. By no means and under no circumstances do you call anyone a bitch. Sure, it’s fine in the middle of a game when you’re joking and everyone is name calling. But in a serious situation like this one, it’s a death knell.
Gasps sounded all around and echoed out of my speakers like someone yelling across the Grand Canyon. That phrase had been enough to have me shooting out of my chair to glare at the computer screen, getting ready for a rant to end all others when Robbie beat me to it.
“Listen here, asshole. You can take your hobbit ass back to the mother fuckin’ shire. As far as I’m concerned, you can get your ass out of this call and don’t let the door hit you on the way out. No one calls Angel a bitch. I can, her family can, but not anyone else.” The more Robbie spoke, the less angry I could be. Damn it, he was diffusing a nuclear bomb and didn’t even realize it. I opened my mouth to interject when he continued.
“For the rest of you fuckers in this call, if you have something to say about Angel, leave now. I don’t care how long I’ve known you, when it comes down to it, I will be on her side. No one else’s. So if you even think you’re going to sit here and browbeat her, yell at her, or try to push her out, you’ll find yourselves on the wrong end of my Puerto Rican credit card. You get me?” I wanted to cry. When it comes to someone standing up for you and championing your cause, that speech was right on up there with Bill Pullman’s lines in Independence Day.
Chapter Ten – All’s Well that Ends…Well
“I’m sorry, man. I was just trying to−” John began, only to be cut off by Robbie once more.
“Don’t be sorry. Be gone. I’m serious. Get the fuck out of this call.” I’m pretty sure I had not been the only one that heard the tone in my best friend’s voice. He meant it, he would not have another person speak a word until the Australian was gone.
“C’mon, don’t be like that.” For the first time I knew of, the Aussie sounded nervous. In some ways our little gaming group resembled the T.V. show, Survivor. All could be going well, but if someone got voted off the island, they were done. John knew at that moment, Robbie had his walking papers signed, sealed, and delivered.
“Gone.”
“I got it.” Dave spoke quietly, and soon enough we could all see the message about John being removed from the call. If anything, the moment was somber. In some ways, I might one day regret what happened here. For now, I was more focused on what exactly I believed we would be facing.
We all sat there, stunned. No one had been kicked from our little gaming group in years. Not officially, anyway. Sure, there were some people that we started to avoid or flat out just didn’t contact anymore, but no one had been ejected. Not in a very long while.
I have to admit, the silence was eerie. I knew now would be the time to say something, anything to jolt us out of our shock and break the tension that seemed to radiate on the air. Fortunately, it happened to be Dave that saved the day.
There we were, struggling to grasp on to some sort of conversation starter when suddenly we heard Dave mutter, “Stoopid Hobbitses…Deys ruin everythings!”
I stared at the screen in a combination of mirth and surprise. Let’s face it, there’s really nothing any of us could say that would have summed things up better. Unbidden, I started to laugh. For the first time in hours, I smiled, bending over to hold my belly as I snickered and guffawed so hard that I snorted.
That snort, did not go unnoticed, and began a whole round of jovial laughter with everyone. Once everything died back down, I found myself wiping my eyes again. This time at least, it had been over something enjoyable.
“Alright, alright…” I sighed a little and leaned back. “So, you really want to know what happened?”
“Yes.” Robbie was still perturbed, but nowhere near as much as he had been a few minutes before. I recognized this for what it was – a tentative ceasefire. If I could tread carefully in my choice of words, I knew the battle would be over.
“Fine. After I got the text from you, I decided to try and get out of the building as quickly as I could.” As much as I didn’t want to relive this, I figured I could handle the abridged version pretty easily. “When I left the office, everyone was already packed in around the elevator doors. So, I figured I would try my hand at using the stairs instead of waiting thirty minutes for a chance to get one of the cars to ride down.”
“Makes sense. So you got attacked in the stairwell?” Robbie asked softly.
“Only by my mother.” Shooting off the answer, I smirked and leaned forward just as Robbie hissed out a small breath.
“Your Mom is there? When the hell did this happen?” This time when his voice raised, it had nothing to do with anger. There was only pure, unadulterated shock.
“No.” Chuckling a little, I shook my head. I could understand his reaction, my Mom hated leaving home. “I had started running down the stairs and Mom called…you know, being Mom.”
“Ew.” Robbie sighed. He knew the way my family worked, and a call from my mot
her in the middle of the day normally spelled out irritation, trouble, or anger. “So, did she tell you what you did wrong this month, or ask for something?”
“Asked for something. Well, more like demanded it. She told me I needed to come home, now.” Snorting a bit, I settled back, closing my eyes as I let my legs stretch out in front of me to rest under the desk. “Anyway, it went about like our normal conversations do, and then I hung up and kept running down the stairs. When I got to the lobby, well…I got a charley horse and had to sit down.”
“Oh, what the hell!?” Robbie said in disbelief.
“Chill out. It’s just a muscle spasm, my knee has been a little touch and go lately. I’m pretty sure panic running down twenty floors didn’t help matters any, but my best friend sent me a vague text declaring a state of emergency and I wanted to get home.” Making a pointed reference to just what had started this whole mess, I think I actually heard Robbie huff a little bit.
“Well, what happened then?” he grumbled.
“Okay, so I had just sat down to try and get my leg to stop acting like it was going to put me on my ass, when Isaac came over and talked to me. He pretty much told me they were being ordered to lock down the building as soon as everyone left, and that we would be told not to come into work tomorrow because of some outbreak.” Everyone else got dead silent at this point. Even Robbie did not speak a word as I continued my story.
“We had just finished talking when this lady came into the lobby, screaming for help.” Even as I told the story, I couldn’t help but to shift uncomfortably in my chair. “I’ll be honest, I hadn’t really started to put things together yet. This morning when I had been walking in to work, I noticed that just about everything else on the street was shut down, but I figured there had been an accident or something on the interstate. The moment I looked at her, though, I knew exactly why things had been so strange all day.
“I mean, sure, she was aware. She came into the lobby screaming bloody murder and asking for help. I’m telling you, it was creepy. The whole left side of her suit had been covered in blood, and she had one hand held up against her throat to stop the bleeding. She should have been passed out or dead already. I knew the signs. Hell, I could see from where the wound seemed to be it had been dead above her jugular vein…” I trailed off. Thinking about it now, I wondered if maybe I should have acted sooner. If I had, then two men would have been saved the trouble of becoming zombie chow, but would it have really made a difference?
While those thoughts started to plague me, I completely forgot that I had been telling the others what had happened. Like I had been known to do in the past, my focus completely wavered, leaving me to dwell on my own thoughts.
“Angel, you there?” I shook myself out of my daze when I heard Jay speak up. Another one of my cohorts, he too could be considered an authority on all things zombie. While we didn’t game together often, when we did get to play together it was always relaxed and easy going. Unfortunately, he had the attention span of a goldfish when it came to video games. As soon as he got into one game, another would come along and strike his fancy. More than once, I had compared it to showing a fairy something shiny.
“Uh…Yeah, I’m here. Sorry.” Exhaling a little, I brought my hands up to scrub at my face again, giving a small groan, “Where was I?”
“You saw the chick bleeding from her throat.” Robbie offered. Ugh, I hated it when he got impatient.
“Oh, yeah…So anyway, everybody in the lobby is mostly suits from upstairs. You know, doing the manager-business person schmoozing thing, when this chick shows up. So of course, they all flock to save one of their own, and when they asked her what happened, she croaks out she got attacked by some dude in a red shirt.” Pausing to take a breath, I smirked a bit when I heard Robbie mutter.
“Oh, shit...”
“Pretty much. Guess who the only other person in a red shirt was?” My best friend knew me well. He also had heard me complain more than once about my work attire. “You know how the story goes. The two guys near her looked at me and then they wanted to know who’d done it. Instead of taking care of Mrs. Gush and Flow−”
“Who?” Robbie asked, confused.
“Oh, sorry. Instead of taking care of the chick who had come in injured, they decided to try and Salem Witch me to death. It took a good five minutes to point out to them I couldn’t have known what happened to her, because I’d been in the building the whole damn time. Once I had, I told them they should probably go take care of their friend.”
“Wait a minute…” Dave interjected, “They should take care of her…why not you? I mean, weren’t you like a nurse or something?”
“I was an EMT, but I’m not affiliated with anybody. My certifications are also lapsed, so if I laid one hand on her, I can be open for a lawsuit, because people suck.” It was still a touchy subject. Some states said Good Samaritan laws would stand, others didn’t even have them, but nine times out of ten, you still got nailed by something in civil court anyway.
“Oh, proceed.” Dave said dismissively, causing me to smirk.
“Thank you, oh wise old one.” Snorting a little, I flopped back in my chair and sighed, “Anyway, I sent them back over to her, and sure enough she kicked it. Not that it surprised me all that much, the wound looked pretty bad once she dropped her hand and I could see it.”
“So she died?” Robbie said in relief. I could tell he assumed that had to be the end of it, and his next words confirmed that. “Well, that’s not so bad, I guess.”
“Not really. She didn’t stay dead.” When I spoke this time, everyone went dead silent.
“Are you serious? You really saw somebody come back?” Brandon asked in a near whisper. Whether it came from excitement or fear, I couldn’t tell you.
“Yes, I did.” Shrugging my shoulders, I closed my eyes. Swallowing hard, I began to recite the rest of the story in a rush. “Anyway, I had been looking at her wound from the edge of the seating area, and she literally just popped up and grabbed one guy’s arm and clamped down on it, suit and all. Dude, I cannot tell you the level of freaky this reached. Cloth, skin, muscle…She didn’t give a damn, she shredded through it all to get to his arm like he had become a bacon cheeseburger.
“So he starts screaming for help. That somebody needs to get her off of him, and that idiot friend of his jumped on her back. They tussled for a couple of minutes, the first guy screaming like a girl, and his buddy trying to grab her like he was He-Man or something. All of a sudden, it seemed like she just got tired of it. She let the first guy go, and chomped down on his friend’s elbow before she backhanded him across the waiting area and into a window to knock him out. When he was down, the zombie chick turned right back around to munch on the first guy again.”
“Holy shit!” This came from Ray. She had been a welcome addition to our group. I had hated the ratio of testicles to ovaries, and having Ray around kind of balanced the scales.
“Seriously.”
“Well, what happened then? How did they handle her? Did she bite anyone else?” Rapid fire questions were coming in dizzying shots. I could barely keep up with who asked what or why. At that moment, I truly wished that we had all been sitting in the same room. It would have made things a lot easier on me.
“They didn’t handle her, I did. Well, kind of. Guy One started screaming again, begging for help. The rest of the suits looked like they were ready to jump the chick to try and overwhelm her with sheer numbers to pin her down. I suppose I could have let them, but something told me if I did, the situation would get exponentially worse. So…I walked over, grabbed the fire extinguisher from near the elevators, and played T-Ball with her skull.” There it was. I said it out loud. I had killed someone.
“Cool,” Brandon breathed softly.
“Not Cool,” Robbie countered before exhaling sharply. Still, when he spoke again, I could tell he knew that this was bothering me, because the sound of worry in his voice was prevalent. “You okay?”
�
��About as okay as I can be, given the circumstances. Between that incident and Isaac warning me about an outbreak, I kind of put two and two together. After the cops let me go, I decided to head home and stop along the way to stock up on supplies.” A weary sigh escaped my lips as I leaned forward, laying my arms on top of the desk to use as a pillow for my head.
This time I could hear the guffaws of everyone else in the call.
“Well damn, she would get one step ahead of us,” Dave said in a small, pinched tone.
“What?” I asked softly, arching a brow as I peered at the computer screen.
“That’s the whole reason we’re in this call together, so we can plan for this. Al least, as best as we know how,” Brandon explained.
“So, how did you guys know about this?” Seeing as how I’d just undergone the Inquisition, it was someone else’s turn.
“Because I saw one today, too.” This time, it seemed to be my turn to panic. Robbie’s words had my heart nearly stopping in my chest as I shot up in the chair to sit straight.
“Excuse me?” I knew my voice had a sharp edge to it. Fact is, I didn’t really care. My best friend had been in the vicinity of a zombie, and hadn’t told me immediately? I automatically began to take notes that we needed to have a serious talk about defining just what situations require immediate conversation.
“Come on, don’t be like that. There was a reason I told you to get home fast so we could discuss it. A phone call is probably not the best place to share news like this.” He sounded a little sheepish. Good. After yelling at me for getting stopped by a raving zombie in a lobby, he deserved a little discomfort. He hadn’t even warned me of the possibility of what I would be facing.
“Uh-huh. Remember this the next time you want to yell at me. I had no idea what I could be walking into, so it is just as much your fault as it is mine that I’m late.” Snorting a little, I flopped back in my chair. “Proceed.”
“I already heard this…” Blinking, I tilted my head when Alec spoke up. He’d been so quiet I hadn’t even realized he had been in the call.