Among the Dead Book 2 (Among the Living)

by Long, Timothy W.

  Work was exciting the first week. His second week on the job, he had suggested a way to put all of the data into a database for easy sorting. His lead had practically laughed at him. “If it was that easy, Shayne, we would have done it ages ago. Learn the job first.” And that had been the end of that conversation.

  His lead, Peter, the man arguing so “logically,” as he put it, was a giant douche-waffle, in Shayne’s opinion. He was open to suggestions, provided he could take a suggestion to a manager and claim it as his own.

  Peter didn’t look much better than Kara. He wore a growth of black beard to match the black rug on his head. He liked to wear it wet, swept back, thick and wavy like some male fashion model even though everyone could see the bald patch back there. He liked to run his hand through both sides and let them fall down around his ears. Maybe he thought it made him look like a rock star or an artist.

  His clothing also showed signs of wear. On a normal day, he liked to wear his things pressed. A wrinkle was unacceptable. Shayne was certain he kept extra shirts in a drawer, because he always looked like he came out of a magazine. Or stopped at the dry cleaners every day.

  Shayne was happy to find something clean, and he often wore the same pants three days a week, alternating so it didn’t show. It was painful to do laundry, painful to move around at all, for that matter. Shayne, Shayne, the man of pain.

  “Can we smash a window? Make a sign? What about the accountants who went to the roof to signal? Did they get a message? Did they see anything?”

  Others stood around and listened. There was Martha, the receptionist, young and athletic. Small-chested with bony legs. Shayne liked her because she was into pain of a different sort. She had piercings all over her face, so many that it looked like she had fallen into a tackle box. She had tattoos too, big ones, and he had heard those were no picnic.

  Of course, she didn’t really know about pain, not the sort he dealt with. His was stuck in his bones, in his joints, and in his muscles. It hurt to move, to stand, to sleep. It hurt to think, and today it hurt more than it had ever hurt in his life.

  How could he have been so goddamn stupid, leaving his apartment without his drugs? He rationed them, sure, but he always used a few more at the beginning of the month than he should, and he paid the price at the end of his thirty-day wait. He had an alternative. He could wander around Pioneer Square and find a fix, find someone with some Oxy for sale. He hated talking to drug dealers, and he really hated sneaking around. The looks, getting sized up, being asked if he needed weed or X. Right about now, he’d have given his left nut to be in that situation.

  Stuck in the building, he had nothing, not even a dose of Vicodin. He had inquired, sure, asked around to see if anyone had some stuff, but most told him to take Tylenol or Ibuprofen. Kara had even offered him some of her Aleve, which he gratefully took, not that it did much to take the edge off. He took six, and it was like someone turned the pain volume down to ten, instead of the eleven at which it had been holding steady. One thing it had done was erase his headache. But that bitch had come back with a vengeance a few hours later. Hurt so bad he had to crawl under his desk and cover his face with an old newspaper and pray for relief.

  Shayne, Shayne, the man of pain. Holy shit, life was a drain.

  Three days. It could have been an eternity. He tried to sleep under his desk last night, but he couldn’t even drift off in the heat. Peter had slept in his office, just across the hall, feet up on his desk while he snored away. The building had been dark, quite, not a hint of a fan. The air did not circulate; it hung, still and oppressive, scented with sweat and body odor. They had all tried to wash themselves in the bathrooms, water running from the faucet in a stream while they splashed it around. They’d run out of paper towels after the second night, and no one knew where to get more.

  “We need to do something! Fuck!” Pete groaned.

  “Maybe I will,” Kara said, but Shayne was sure she wouldn’t. She was expecting the men to step up and take care of business, but that wasn’t going to happen. Not with these nitwits in charge. The only thing they seemed to be good at was making plans to make plans. The first day of the crisis, they’d brought in Greg from human resources and sat in the conference room for an hour, talking about what might be happening in the outside world.

  The next day, the things had started trying to get into the building.

  Gayle and Russ from marketing had stopped by to check on everyone. They had to bang like crazy to get anyone to let them in. Russ yelled that he would fire everyone if they didn’t open the goddamn door. They had entered after calling out their names, and then the chairs and tables had been stacked back up to block entry. After the pow-wow, their excuse for another meeting, but with a lot more yelling about who should do what and how they needed to get out of the building, no one stepped up to lead the charge. Miserable or not, it was better to be cooped up in the building than be torn to shreds outside.

  A wave of wracking pain swept over his body. It started in his extremities and lower back, and then it built. His kidneys felt like two lumps of boiling lead. His spine felt like it was cracking. His head threatened to simply explode. He wanted to scream.

  Shayne, Shayne, the man of pain.

  “Go for it.” Peter smiled like he knew a secret.

  Shayne was so sick of Peter’s smug face. He wished he could wipe off that smirk with a kick to the gut. He also wished he could live a day without pain, a day in peace, during which he could take a mallet and smash Jerk-Face over the head.

  Without her heels, Kara looked small in front of Pete. She stared up at him, and Shayne wondered if she was having the same thoughts of smashing him in the face. She frowned, crossed her slim arms under her breasts and looked like she was about to stomp her foot.

  “It won’t be that much longer. Think about it. Why would they leave us here to rot? I bet the Army has guys swarming the streets, cleaning up and gathering the deaders.” He spat the last word like venom.

  Shayne was sick of this. He should have found another floor to sleep on, even one his company didn’t own. Maybe the roof would have been cooler; maybe a nice cold breeze blew off of Puget Sound that would have cooled him like a pool. But the truth was that he’d have felt out of place anywhere but at his desk.

  The two continued to bicker. After a few more minutes, Shayne decided he’d had enough. He shuffled to his desk and gently lowered himself to the carpeted floor. There was a plastic mat to help his chair move around. It was supposed to cut down on static shocks as well. All the hard thing did was make him uncomfortable, so he moved it. Now he had the short, rough fabric to deal with. No pillow, but he put his backpack underneath the desk to prop up his head.

  Pain raced along his arms and legs. Some of it settled in his shoulders. It sat like hard rocks under the skin, and when it throbbed to the beat of his heart, he wanted to throw up. Bile rode his stomach, and each breath was a labor of agony. Several times, he had to sit bolt upright because the acid found its way up his throat and caused such a burning he couldn’t even breathe. But he gasped and sucked in air for a while before pounding his chest.

  No one came to ask if he was all right.

  Shayne took a water bottle from beside the desk and drank the warm liquid. It ran down his throat and soothed his gut for a few seconds before the acid worked its way to the surface. Then he burped up fire again.

  He pawed through his backpack one more time. He took everything out and felt along the bottom for an errant pain pill, but none magically appeared. He took three Aleve from his stash and washed them down.

  It was going to be a long day.

  Mike

  The morning had brought another painful waking experience. I never knew I could miss my lumpy bed so much. For years, I had left the old mattress at our place. That was after Rita, my ex-wife, took the expensive one with her. I dragged our old guest bed into the room, changed the sheets and called it home. It would seem blasphemous, somehow, to put a new bed in th
e room we had shared for so many years.

  Looking back now, I don’t know why I waited. I think Erin had a larger impact on my life than I ever thought possible. The day and night we spent together had changed me somehow. I felt her loss keenly, but I also felt alive. And with that feeling, I knew that I wanted to live. But the nights were different. The nights brought the terror. It was when darkness fell, when I felt most alone, that I was tempted to join the hundreds who had already died in the city.

  Erin was gone. Everything was gone.

  The phone worked again, but I had been unable to get ahold of Rita. It just rang and rang. Not even voicemail, just a ringing that went on forever. I powered it off and pocketed the device. Saving the battery seemed prudent. I might need it if we ever got out of this hellhole. It wasn’t even my phone. I had “borrowed” it from a victim who wouldn’t need it ever again.

  What was she doing? Rita in her tiny apartment. What if she was injured, lying on the ground with a broken bone or something even worse? I felt so helpless, shut in with everyone else at the stadium. I needed to find a way to get to her, but this place was locked up tighter than a drum.

  I stretched in the blanket I had procured from one of the Guardsmen. It was green and woolen, old and musty, but it was also warm at night. The stench of too many people all stuffed together hit me. So did the noise, which was like a swarm of bees. Voices rose and fell; some yelled, some cried. Others begged for help and asked each other about loved ones.

  I’d seen a football game here a few years ago, and the place had been resplendent. People crowded the bleachers and drank beer by the gallon. A massive TV screen took up one end. The sound was enormous, because it had to override the screaming fans.

  Now it was a refugee camp that grew by the day.

  A mother and her two small children huddled together. She had tucked an old afghan around them, and she looked cold. I smiled at one of the kids, a girl with a dirty face and messy hair. Blond locks were matted against the side of her head. She gave me nothing but a vacant stare.

  The woman shrank back in her seat. I put on what I hoped was a reassuring smile, but she avoided my eyes and looked at everything but me until I wandered on.

  A few days ago, I was a journalist, interested in getting to the bottom of a story. I had no idea I would end up in the middle of it. I was mad then, but also giddy over my blossoming relationship with Erin. Now I was at a loss for feelings of any sort. But seeing the mother and child in abject misery sparked something inside me. There were stories to be told. Tales to hear and someday write.

  I slipped out the old cell phone and studied it for a minute. I turned it back on and checked the menus. Sure enough, I found what I was looking for. A built-in recorder. Probably for taking notes at meetings. I could use this, but I would run the risk of burning up the battery. Still, it was worth it if I could capture even a few hours. Besides, this was the kind of phone that used to last for a few days on a charge. Not like today’s phones that needed to sit on a charger overnight every single day.

  Some had used their phones, in the first few days, to capture video or images and upload them to websites. It was like an uprising in the Middle East, shaky, grainy videos of people shooting or being shot by soldiers.

  It also reminded me of Hurricane Katrina. A few years ago, the country was galvanized by outrage over that fiasco. Now we were faced with something much worse. A virus that had the ability to wipe out not just our city, but the entire world.

  I stood and stretched. I’m sure there were grim lines etched into my face.

  A sea of misery stretched below me. I was on the first level of the seating area. It rose off the ground, and you had to jump a railing and concrete barrier in most areas. Not that anyone cared now.

  I found a man sitting alone, staring into space. I approached him with caution. When he caught my eye, he just nodded. I sat next to him and asked for his story.

  Mike’s Interview

  There was a lot of screaming that first night. I work down by the Millionaire’s Club, over by Jackson Street. It’s always rowdy in that section of the city, and you can always count on at least one or two ambulances showing up on any given day.

  I was alone at the front desk of the hotel when the first one appeared outside. We have a buzzer, to let folks in when they forget their cards or keys. They don’t really need us, but they do want to be swanky. Works for me. I sit on my ass all night and only have to put up with the occasional well-off asshole who wants to chat about finances or Oprah’s book club. Every once in a while, I’d see some hottie doing the walk of shame right out of the place. Went in with a winner, came out hoping they would get a call back. Morris up on three was the worst. He wasn’t the best-looking guy, but he was tall, had that Seattle hipster fuzz on his face, and had money to waste at the clubs. He was some record-label exec or something.

  I heard a rumor that he used to tell the girls he could see a record in their future, that with their good looks and advances in recording hardware, they could make anyone into a star these days. He used to tell them all that American Idol stuff was bullshit and that he was the one who picked the next stars.

  He was one of the first to get it together and go fight. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself.

  So this one guy kept walking up to the door and staring at me. It looked like he’d been in a fight or an accident. Part of his nose was missing, and he drooled blood. Weirdly, he was wearing a kilt and had dreads. I mean not one of those man kilts that would get your ass kicked in Glasgow. This was the real deal.

  He just kept walking into the door. I finally went over to shoo him away. That was when I saw his eyes. The outside lights lit them up like he was some kind of ghoul. Blood red. I figured it was the accident or he was just stoned out of his mind. Or both.

  He snarled at me, snarled at the door and struck it. Well, I said fuck that, if you know what I mean. I dialed 911. Would you believe they put me on hold? Since when does 911 put you on hold? I did this from the break room, you know? Not much of a break room, just a little room with a single-cup coffee maker. The manager put some cheap stuff in there, coffee that made Folgers seem gourmet by comparison. Me, I didn’t really care. I just drank it because this is Seattle, and it kind of goes with the territory, know what I mean?

  So the next time I peeked out, the weirdo in the kilt had been replaced by this girl with bright red hair. She wore a nightgown, the kind that ties in front—except it wasn’t tied. I thought it was going to be a good night, like I would be writing a letter to some porn mag in the morning.

  I got close, to check her out … I mean check out the situation, er, you know what I mean. So I walked up to the window, and she was in even worse shape than the dude. I’m not even joking. She was missing part of her neck. Sure, we see that shit all the time now, and we’re used to it. Some of these people are used to it. I never want to see deaders again as long as I live.

  So I was shocked, ‘cause, you know, there she was looking hot, but she was pale and covered in blood. Oh yeah, and part of her throat was gone, but I already said that, right? I said, “Hey, do you need an ambulance?” really loud, but she just kept clawing at the door.

  It was about then that Mrs. Floyd came down. She got out of the elevator and walked right up to the door like she was going to leave. Mrs. Floyd has lived here for a long time and goes out sometimes to get booze. She tries to cover it up, like I give a shit. She was dressed like she was going to the gym, but it was eleven o’clock at night. No one goes to the gym that late unless they’re on meth. And this ain’t Puyallup, know what I mean?

  “I don’t think that’s safe,” I said, but she just ignored me. She started to open the door, but I smacked her hand away. Didn’t mean to hit her that hard. I just got scared. What if the kilt dude and the girl missing her throat got in here? I didn’t want part of my throat gone.

  She turned on me—rounded on me is what you writers say, right? She started to yell at me, like I was the one bein
g a dick. “Fine,” I said. “Go out there and get yourself killed.”

  She looked at me like I was one of those homeless guys who shout at people for no reason.

  She smelled like she’d had a few drinks. She wasn’t swimming in alcohol, but she’d had a good start. She’d be a late riser tomorrow. Got that little fluffy dog; I think it’s a Maltese. Forgot the little ankle-biter’s name. Shivers or something.

  Anyway, I backed away and she just walked on out the door and past the girl with no throat. Guess what happened? The girl rounded on her, on Mrs. Floyd.

  Mrs. Floyd is a pretty big lady, but this tiny thing sort of jumped on her, and they both went down. Then the kilt guy came back. I locked the door and even threw the bolt up top and on the bottom. We aren’t supposed to do that, ever, but who cared when one of the tenants was screaming and being eaten?

  Maybe I should have done something, made an attempt to drag her in, but another one of those things showed up, and suddenly Mrs. Floyd wasn’t screaming anymore.

  I went to the break room again and decided to just wait it out. I took the phone, stretched the cable all the way back there. It was long enough. Then I just drank coffee. I didn’t even leave. I pissed in a tiny sink, had to get right up on the bastard, but it worked.

  I fell asleep later and woke to a terrible banging.

  I left the room, wiping my eyes as I went. I felt gross from falling asleep in my clothes. My neck hurt from sleeping in a corner.

  There was no one in the lobby, and the sun was just coming up. I checked the door, and it was still locked up tight, which told me no one else had followed Mrs. Floyd’s lead. Smart people.

  There was a lot of blood on the ground. Puddles of it, but the players were gone. I guess they rounded on a new victim or two.