“At least I’m here with a girl, not locked up in a bunker with a bunch of porn.”
“Ah, shit,” Roger said and turned back toward the door. “That’s what I forgot. I have to go back to my house and get my porn.”
I stifled a chuckle and invited Roger to join us. Mitch nodded at the plastic bottle of vodka on the coffee table, but Roger turned his nose up.
“I’m surprised you’re not packing a gun,” I said.
“It’s in the car. Got my 1911, and a couple of mags on a belt. I didn’t want to scare your neighbors, even though they need to wake up and be afraid of what’s going on out there.”
He was the spitting image of someone going to war, except he weighed a good two hundred and thirty pounds and it was all packed onto a five-foot-six frame.
“Went old school with the gun, huh?”
“Reliable. That’s what my decision came down to. Plus I have a bunch of .45 ammo and that stuff is heavier than 9,” Roger said.
“You do you, bro,” Mitch said and lit up the bong again.
“Oh, I always do, bro.” Roger said with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “Anyway, I can’t stay long. The whole area’ll be under quarantine in a couple of days, or possibly tomorrow. Word on the net is that something really bad has been unleashed, and it’s all thanks to the CDC bringing in a patient zero from another country. A reliable source said the man came from Zimbabwe. Now we’re facing something that’s never been seen before.”
“We’ve seen it.” I tried to get a word in. “It wasn’t exactly the CDC.”
“You don’t know what’s going on out there, Jake.” Roger hit me with a condescending look. “It’s going to be chaos out there. Word on 4Chan is that this might be a government-created virus that is going to wreak havoc. Then FEMA moves in and we’re all in camps. All the survivors, anyway.”
“Dude,” I tried again. “It’s not the CDC.”
“It’s all over 4chan and you know those guys are better than the liberals at CNN or fucking Faux News. They have people all over the place in all levels of government. They know what’s really happening.”
“Roger.” I tried again. “I was there. It started at the company I’m temping for, Abraxin. They do some work for the CDC and there was an accident. It was some test for a new treatment for Alzheimer’s. See, I met this doctor...”
“Oh man. I wish you were on the same sites I’m on. You could see the truth the government’s trying to hide, brother. They don’t want this stuff out there.”
That was Roger for ya. He knew it all, and he espoused it all, whether you liked it or not.
“Roger, man. I was there. I know what--” I couldn’t get a word in.
“I’m talking about people on the front line, but reporting in secret, bro. I know I’ll sound like a dick, but you don’t know what’s going on out there,” Roger said with so much conviction I wondered if I was, indeed, the confused one.
But that passed in a heartbeat.
“I. Was. There!” I yelled.
“I’m going into the bunker in the next day or two. I need to add a few essential items, but I wanted to make sure I touched base with my friends.” He had the balls to cut me off and state, “Let them know what’s up. Tell you all to spread the message, get out of town as soon as possible, but don’t expect to be able to hide for long. If these anonymous connections on the web are right, they’re projecting that the virus will spread to most of the Atlanta area by this time tomorrow.”
Roger turned toward the door as I again tried to explain what I knew, or that a smart doctor was already hard at work on the situation. But he would have none of it.
He shook my hand and offered some parting words. “It’s going to get bad out there. Real bad. You won’t be able to trust anyone. So stay out of sight, and remember to find a gun as soon as possible, and then find a place deep underground where you can survive.” Roger made a beeline for the door, his brand new black boots clacking across the floor. “Goes for all of you. Good luck out there.”
Roger turned and gave us a military salute complete with a stiff back, and I think he even clicked his heels.
“What a fucking nut,” Mitch said as Roger left the apartment.
I wanted to argue that Roger was trying to do what he thought was right, but the words simply wouldn’t come to me.
I went back to my bedroom and tried to call Elizabeth again, but like before, it went straight to voicemail, so I did what I thought was the smart thing. I got stoned, drank some vodka, and eventually stumbled to my bed and prayed I would get some sleep, because lord knows I didn’t get much last night.
Maybe I would wake up after a quick nap and everything would be peachy keen again. Yep, that was it. Sleep was amazing in that respect. You could feel like complete and utter shit, and then wake up later in the day and it would be all puppy dog farts, and unicorn rainbows once again.
Plus, Frank was out of the picture, and I could get away with not showing up at work tonight. But I wanted to make an appearance because there was every chance Elizabeth would be there.
So I dozed off, and woke up hours later to what was going to be a very long night.
9
The minute I woke up, I rolled over and checked my phone to see if Elizabeth had called. But I had, once again, forgotten to charge my phone, so the damn thing was dead. I also couldn’t see if Jessica had texted me. Apparently were sort of on a break, but who knows, she might have wanted a booty call. Stranger things have happened with her. I felt kind of bad that I hadn’t warned her yet that things in Atlanta might be going to hell, and to keep an eye out for people who had huge eye slug slime and a case of rage against everything. As soon as my phone had a charge, I would let her know.
My mouth tasted like cat fur. My head ached, and to add to my misery I had a sore throat. My eyes were blurry and that was what drove me out of bed like my ass was on fire.
I ripped my clothes off, crashed through the door into the bathroom, and then rubbed my eyes as I spun in front of the mirror looking over every inch of skin to make sure Frank Evans hadn’t infected me with his rage zombie stuff. This is what sixteen bat shit hours will do to you.
It was just the aftereffect of us finishing off the cheap vodka. After that had run out, Mindy, in a first for her, had volunteered to walk down to the corner shop and buy some beer. Mitch had sprung into action and escorted her, while I’d sat on the couch and played Grand Theft Auto V until my eyes had started to drift shut, so I’d gone to the bedroom to lie down for a few minutes. Those minutes had turned into about six or seven well-deserved hours.
I still couldn’t believe that neither of them had offered to make sure I wasn’t scratched or rage-bit. What if I had turned into one of those things while they sat on the couch watching one of those Japanese dramas that Mindy was addicted to? Of course, I hadn’t offered to look them over, but they had each other for that.
I felt along the back of my legs, arms, shoulders, neck, and even my scalp. Splashing water over my face did the trick. I wasn’t turning into a mucus-eyed monster; it was simple eye boogers that were to blame. So I had that going for me. I jumped in the shower, but by the time the water grew hot enough to stand, I had already scrubbed my skin raw. Then I doused myself with another large handful of body wash and repeated the process.
Once I got my phone plugged in I lay back on the bed and waited for the battery to come to life enough to at least check my messages.
I closed my eyes and drifted for a few minutes. Just the thing I needed, a little more sleep. Wait. Was I supposed to be at work tonight? My head spun, thanks to a little too much partying before crashing, not to mention the fact that my body hurt. I hadn’t had that much physical activity in a long time. Sweeping floors and throwing out the trash didn’t count. I was probably the slowest janitor in the history of janitorial services.
I couldn’t get the thought of Frank Evans and his mucus-covered eyes out of my head. It made me want to go and hide my head in the sand to
forget that any of this had taken place.
How was going in tonight even going to work? Was the place still on lockdown? Could I show up with a smile and a swagger in my step as I went to work cleaning shitters in a place that had produced the monstrosities I had seen recently? There was another reason a trip to work sounded like a good idea. If no one was around, it would allow me to do a little snooping. Roger would lose his ever loving mind if I got some real evidence of Abraxin’s activities. The ideal situation would be for me to call in sick, but Frank was out of action, it was the weekend, and I had no fucking clue who I was supposed to get a hold of.
My phone finally came back on as it got a little bit of juice. I waited patiently for it to reboot by digging under the bed until I found a plastic grocery bag that had a little weight. Score! I had a Red Bull and now all was going to be well.
Then my phone finally woke up, and I got a whiff of reality.
Elizabeth had not returned any of my calls, but that wasn’t what concerned me. My twitter app randomly sent me notifications throughout the day and for some reason it had decided to send me dozens. I scrolled through them and noticed a common thread. Some serious shit was going on in town. Not only that, but a report had just come out of DC that there was an incident at the airport. I moved over to trending topics and couldn’t decide if I should laugh or cry. #ZombieApocalypse.
I dialed Elizabeth again and it went straight to voicemail. Christ!
There were two things I could do. I could go back to bed and pretend like everything was fine, or that it would be fine in the morning. Or I could go to work, go to the lab, and see if Elizabeth was there since she wasn’t answering her damn phone. Neither one of those options sounded great to me, and if I was being honest with myself, hiding seemed like the perfect solution.
But what had Jessica said while yelling at me a week ago?
“Jake Turner. You have no ambition, no willingness to go back to school like me, and you seem to be happy sitting in this grungy room playing with yourself, or playing video games. I’m clearly not a priority.”
I had tried to tell her she wouldn’t be able to do much better than me, and that hadn’t gone over well. As I sat on the edge of the bed, I blew out a breath and stared at the ceiling while I drank room temperature Red Bull. The window air conditioning unit wafted cool air into the room with its soothing hum. I was too comfortable and that’s where I was in life. Stuck.
I got dressed, wandered into the kitchen to find something to eat, and spotted the note scrawled on a napkin on the table.
Jake. We went out.
Oh, we still need paper towels and toilet paper. Your move, slick.
-M and M
I appreciated the brevity, but didn’t appreciate that it didn’t tell me shit. I called Mitch.
“Hey,” I said when he answered.
“Hey.” Music pulsed in the background.
“Where are you guys?”
“We went to a club. It’s nuts here.”
“Like people turning into zombies nuts?”
“No. Not yet. We’re getting drunk.”
“I’m going to work to try and find the doctor lady.”
“Maybe she’s at the studio making a new film.” Mitch laughed.
“She’s not a freaking porn star!”
“Whatever, man. Are you doing a full shift?”
“Honestly, I have no idea,” I said, knowing full well that he and Mindy wanted the apartment to themselves.
“We’ll be home later so don’t go there and get bitten. I’d hate to have to smash in your head.”
“Maybe Mindy could do it,” I said half jokingly.
“She might like that too much. See ya.” Mitch hung up.
It was like he was going out of his way to be a dick.
* * *
I snagged my janitor overalls, a cup of noodles, and then headed out the door.
I half expected doomsday traffic, abandoned cars, people taking to the streets, riots, and checkpoints, or military in the streets with guns and tanks, but none of that happened.
Yet.
Maybe things were under control, after all, and we were all just a bunch of paranoid maniacs. We did watch a lot of zombie shows and movies. We played zombie games, both board and video, so we were a bunch ripe for talk about the end of the world. All I could see was a perfectly normal Saturday night in Atlanta, with a few minor exceptions.
I made okay time, but there were a few detours for road construction. Every time I came across one I wondered if that was the real reason. Construction on a Saturday night? Sure, let’s chalk that one up to coincidental. I tuned into a local radio station for some news, but they were playing music. Another station ran a bunch of sports scores. I kept on scrolling but all I found was some guy blathering into the radio about politics. Jesus Christ. I got enough of that crazy shit just scrolling through my social media feeds, when I bothered to open the phone app.
The construction zones were weird, however, because the night before there hadn’t been any. My trip should have taken fifteen minutes and instead it took over half an hour. Even so, I knew one place I could find some normalcy, so I made a pit stop.
Ed and Ernie looked as chipper as ever, and the ever-present smell of the smoker in the back made my mouth burst with saliva.
“Look what tha cat dragged in,” Ernie said, his rheumy eyes sweeping over my shirt.
“You guys hear about anything weird out there?” I asked after I requested a pack of smokes.
“Usual. Then the stuff over at the hospital. Guess that’s about under control because we stopped hearing sirens and seeing lights about an hour ago. Lord willing, all them nice folk ain’t dead. It’s a hospital. You got to feel safe someplace.”
“How’s the chicken tonight?” I asked.
“Same as every night.” Ernie shrugged, which was his say of saying it was the best damn chicken in town. “Got a batch coming up right now.”
“I’ll take half a bird with the sauce on the side.” I ordered impulsively.
“Ed, get off your ass and serve this man a half bird, sauce on the side!” Ernie shouted toward the back of the store.
Ed nodded, got off his aluminum and plastic green and white lawn chair, then hobbled into the back room.
“You working tonight young man?” Ernie asked. He pulled a pack of cigarettes off the rack and showed them to me. I nodded, and then grabbed a pair of ice-cold Red Bulls from the cooler.
“Sort of. I have to go in and check on some stuff,” I said as I walked back to the counter.
Ernie poked at buttons on the old-time register. I handed over a twenty and got a few coins back.
“Be careful out there. Last time I remember seeing folks running scared was around ’80.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “You’ve seen people acting weird before?”
“The murders,” Ernie said. “Over twenty kids taken from us. It has that flavor out in the city right now. Like something is about to burst. You can’t see it, but you can sense it. At least I can, but I’m older than dirt.”
I hadn’t even been born back then but it was the kind of thing that was still whispered about. I had once written a paper about the murders for a class. The entire city and the surrounding area, or so it had been reported, had lived in constant fear as the body count had grown. The killings had stopped in 1981, or so my paper had reported, and a man had been charged with two of the deaths later on, but I couldn’t remember his name to save my life
“Here you go, young man.” Ed returned from the back room with a brown paper bag laid on its side.
I loved their BBQ chicken. I knew exactly what I would find the second I opened the bag. A styrofoam plate with a half a chicken cut into four pieces, and a Dixie cup full of sauce. Next to that was a hunk of corn bread that steamed in a white paper towel.
“Night, gentlemen. Keep the doors locked,” I said. “I mean, after hours.”
“You know that’s right,” Ernie said. “You
stay safe out there too, young man.”
Ed nodded and then headed to the back room, presumably to tend the cooker.
Back in the car, I put the chicken on the seat next to me and then pulled out of the parking lot. I couldn’t help it and took out the chicken leg, and devoured it before I arrived at work.
* * *
This wasn’t my first Saturday night at work, and it wouldn’t be my last. What was different was the fact that I was over an hour early. I counted very few cars besides mine when I arrived. That could be chalked up to a couple of things. I wasn’t here for my normal shift, and it was late, so maybe the new shift hadn’t arrived yet.
Of course another option might be that a rage virus had been unleashed in the city and, despite the news’ best efforts to cover it up, with the help of government overseers to guide the public view (so a little Roger Dumbass influence seeped in there, sue me), the normal workers might be rage-zombies by now.
Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re a smart guy, Jake, you know what’s going on.
Let me stop you right there. I’m not that smart.
Also there’s a river in Egypt, if you get my drift.
I often times think I’m smarter than people around me, but I was just an average guy with a major lack of ambition. Everything had come to my parents so easily. Jobs, cars, a nice house. I don’t know how they did it, but I had never worried about where my next meal was coming from.
I finished off the entire half of a chicken with zero regrets, basically drank the homemade BBQ sauce, polished off the corn bread, and wondered why I had bothered to bring a cup-o-noodles along, then sat there waiting for something to happen. One thing I had hoped to see wasn’t there, and it apparently wouldn’t be arriving any time soon. Elizabeth Breeze’s Range Rover wasn’t out front.
Another five minutes and nothing had happened. I popped open a Red Bull, had a smoke, and kept my eyes on the building.
Dawn of the Rage Apocalypse Page 7