Lockdown: A collection of ten terror-filled zombie stories

by mike Evans

The silence was short lived. The quiet stillness gave way to the sound of tearing meat. Lips smacked as mouths filled with warm flesh, the sick people moaning in pleasure as they chewed.

  “Oh God!” Jared vomited up his lunch when he realized what was happening just beyond the door. The people he left to die … the ones the others had begged him to lock outside. They were being eaten.

  “Jesus Christ!” a deep gravelly voice spat from somewhere in the darkness. “They’re eating those people!”

  The dark utility room suddenly filled with horrified gasps and deep gut wrenching sobs. Eventually silence overtook the survivors as the horror of it all overwhelmed them. The room filled with the noises of the crazed killers slurping up blood as they gorged themselves with the flesh from their kills.

  Jared shook his head, trying to clear away the memory as he slid down the wall and sat on the floor, his hands resting on his forehead. He drew his knees up, rocking himself in silence as his tears flowed uncontrollably.

  He had no idea how much time had passed since they had locked themselves inside and doomed those left behind. The thin film of blood dried into a flaky crust on his face. He felt it crackle on his skin with every twitch of his facial muscles. He could only imagine how he must look. Blood soaked. Terrified. Guilty.

  He closed his eyes and saw Sally’s accusing face staring back at him. Opening his eyes didn’t help, he could still see her glaring at him in the stifling darkness. He thought of her husband and kids she would talk about in their short conversations. Would he ever know what happened to his wife?

  Were they even alive?

  “What happened?” Jared exhaled as he tried again in vain to adjust his eyes to the dark. A bead of sweat slipped down his cheeks as the press of bodies warmed the inside of their small room.

  “What do you mean?” a man’s voice snapped. “Are you blind?!”

  “No,” a different man answered. “We hid in our office. We have no idea what happened.”

  “Ken?!” Jared sat straight up, elation spreading through him. “Jesus, is that you? I thought you … ”

  “Got locked out?” Ken interrupted. “No such luck, buddy. I made it in.”

  “Thank God,” Jared gasped. “I thought you were dead! I’m sorry! I lost you when we ran.”

  “Relax man,” Ken said warmly. “I’m alive.”

  “Those people. They worked here. They were out in the lobby with the rest of us. What happened to them?” Jared asked.

  “They were bitten!” someone snapped from the other side of the room.

  “Not all of them,” a woman said. “Some were scratched. We don’t even know if the scratches came from those … things. Jesus, Ben just cut himself shaving, and we locked him in there too.”

  “Damnit Kelly, you know what was happening outside! The last bit of news said the virus spreads through open wounds. How were we supposed to know who was infected?!”

  “We rounded them up like cattle and forced them into the lunchroom!” Kelly sobbed. “You heard them screaming! We all did!”

  “What would you have us do?!” the gravelly voice asked. “We’re locked up in this building with people who were clearly infected. We had to protect ourselves!”

  “Someone will come for us,” a woman suddenly sobbed. “They have to. They won’t leave us locked in this damn building!”

  “Wake up, Barb,” another woman snapped. “We’ve been locked in this building for hours! You saw the mobs of infected outside. The police have their hands full, no one is coming for us!”

  “We have to get out of here!” Barb frantically cried. “There has to be a way!”

  “No,” Jared said. “There isn’t. Our firm chose this building because of the security. We went over this place with a fine-tooth comb. There’s no way out.”

  “Who the hell are you?” someone asked angrily. “Why should we give a damn what you think?”

  “I’m no one important,” Jared sighed.

  “Well then, why don’t you just shut the fuck up!” the angry man replied.

  “Because he knows what he’s talking about,” Ken snapped. “We work for Conroy and Associates.”

  “The architectural firm?” the gravelly voice asked.

  “Yeah,” Jared sighed. “Trust me, I’ve been running possibilities through my head since the lockdown went into effect.”

  “But,” Barb sobbed. “My kids. I need to get to my babies!”

  “I’m sorry,” Jared mumbled. “There’s no way out.”

  “Hey,” the angry man started. “What’s your name Mr. Architect?”

  “Jared. Jared Wilson.”

  “Well, Jared Wilson, my name’s Robert. How about you keep your opinions to yourself. You’re not helping matters at all. Unless you have something helpful to say, why don’t you just keep your mouth shut.”

  “Can someone please tell us what the hell happened?” Ken asked. “We saw the cops shooting those maniacs. When the cops got killed in the street, we went back to our office to see if the network was still down. When we heard the chaos and then saw everyone running, we just followed. I guess we were hoping someone had a safer place to hide than where we were sitting.”

  “Then you missed the rest,” Kelly said. “Those dead cops … they got back up! They started acting just like the infected.”

  “There’s no way!” Jared gasped. “Those cops were dead!”

  “What part of this are you not getting, Mr. Architect?” Robert chuckled. “The cops got bit. They fell down and died. Then they got back up and started killing other people, too.”

  “Bullshit!” Jared snapped. “A virus turning people crazy, that maybe I can believe. But you expect me to buy the idea that dead people are getting up and attacking the living?”

  “I honestly don’t give a shit what you believe,” Robert said. “Those cops were walking the streets, and they were killing people along with the rest of those things.”

  “That’s when you started locking people up?” Ken asked.

  “That’s when we separated the sick from the rest of us, yeah,” Robert replied.

  “They weren’t all sick,” Kelly repeated. “You just started pointing out anyone who was hurt. I mean Raoul had been walking with a cane for years, and you pushed him in that room with everyone else.”

  “Don’t just put that shit on me!” Robert shouted.

  “Shut up!” Barb squeaked. “They’ll hear you!”

  “They already know we’re in here,” Robert snapped. “Anyway, you all went right along with me! None of you said anything when we locked those people into the lunchroom. We all agreed that we needed to protect ourselves!”

  “Shut up!” Ken snapped with a hushed voice. “Its been quiet outside. We don’t need to fucking advertise ourselves!”

  “Don’t tell me to be quiet! You’re trying to pin their deaths on me!” Robert said.

  “Please,” Barb pleaded. “Keep your voice down!”

  “Yeah man,” the gravelly voice said. “What’s done is done.”

  Robert grumbled something under his breath, but if he had anything else to say, he kept it to himself. Jared took a deep breath, thankful for the momentary lapse in the heated arguments. The muffled sobbing still floated through the darkness, but it sounded miles away to him. The blackness was so enveloping in the cramped room that he could easily imagine himself alone.

  He shifted his weight, his blood soaked khakis peeling away from the tile floor. His stomach churned again, threatening to empty itself for a second time. He suddenly started to wish someone would say something, anything to take his mind off the gore that was slowly caking to his body.

  And to distract him from Sally’s ever accusing eyes.

  “How many of us are in here?” the gravelly voiced man asked.

  “You sure are talking a lot,” Robert grumbled. “I don’t recognize your voice. I think I’d remember someone that gargled when they talked.”

  “The name’s Gary,” the man answered after cle
aring his throat. “I was just here for a root canal. I got caught when the elevators stopped working.”

  “You picked a bad day to get your teeth drilled, Gary,” Robert said. “Maybe you should stop stressing out your mouth and shut up for a while.”

  “You’re a piece of work, you know that?” Ken said, clearly frustrated. “Where the hell do you work? I don’t remember anyone on this floor with such a shitty attitude!”

  “It’s none of your fucking business where I work!” Robert raised his voice again. “I wouldn’t have any of you people in my office!”

  “Robert, please!” a woman with a thick accent spoke up for the first time. “You need to be quiet!”

  “Oh great,” Robert chuckled. “Not only am I trapped in here with a brainless architect, I’m trapped with an illegal too! What were you here for senorita? Looking for your green card?”

  “My name is Annika and I’m from Denmark you racist ass!” the woman harshly whispered.

  Jared drew his knees closer to his chest, wrapping his arms around his legs and rocking himself while the arguments continued around him. He tuned out the many faceless voices carrying into the darkness. As much as he wanted to hear human voices, he couldn’t deal with the bickering much longer.

  People were dying, and not just in his building. This was happening all over the world if the news was to be believed, and he had no reason not to believe it. Before he and Ken had escaped back to their office, they bore witness to countless fires burning across the vast city. They watched as hordes of the sick stumbled through the streets, killing and eating people at random. Age, race, gender, it didn’t matter. The infected would tear them to pieces, feeding on them as they lay dying in the streets.

  Since noon, random attacks had taken the world by storm. He’d worked through lunch, planning on leaving early for the day after he finished up his last project. He shuddered at the thought. If he’d left when he planned, he too would have been swallowed up in the chaos beyond the building’s secured doors.

  Would anyone even notice I was gone? he thought. Would anyone but my cat even care?

  His whole life had been a long string of anguish and tragedies. His parents were long term heroin addicts, spending their sober hours bouncing between beating him and finding their next fix. His last memory of them was the day of his middle school graduation. He came home to find their lifeless bodies sprawled across the living room floor, needles still in their arms.

  He was placed into foster care, and the beatings started almost immediately after the case worker had dropped him off. The couple fostering him were no better than his actual parents. Jim was an overweight drunk that worked nights as a department store security guard. During the day, he would finish off a half a case of beer before slapping Jared around the house until he tired of the boy. He would then turn his aggressions on his wife. The day wasn’t complete until Karen was left with bruises of her own.

  Once Jim left for work, Karen would take her own anger and frustrations out on Jared. She stripped him down to his underwear, burning him with her stale old Camel cigarettes before taking a belt to his bare back.

  Eventually Jared’s high school had caught on, and he was removed from the home the same day that his foster parents were arrested. He finally ended up in children’s home, sharing a bedroom with five other boys from various abusive households. Yet even amongst other kids like him who knew the kind of life he’d led, he found no mercy.

  Each night when the lights went out, the bullying would begin anew. Jared was skinny and frail, by far the smallest of the kids in his age group. The other kids took advantage, using him as a punching bag whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  Despite it all, Jared excelled in class, finding a particular fondness with geometry, physics, and drafting. He appreciated the intricacies and fine detail required in those subjects, finding a place for his mind to escape his normal life. He would stay late at school, assisting his teachers in various projects, often not making his way back to his group home until well after dark. He would eat dinner and disappear into the commons area where he was able to forget his intense loneliness and lose himself in his own projects.

  The ink on his high school diploma was still drying when he’d enrolled himself into architecture classes. He took out loans and worked in the mail room of a local firm to fund his dream until finally he held his architectural engineering degree in his hands.

  Yet, he could never fully escape the ghosts of his past. Despite his achievements, he never felt like he was good enough. He spent his nights withdrawn into his small studio, fearing even the smallest interaction with those around him. He never let anyone close to him. He fully believed that anyone who treated him with any kindness either wanted something from him or was setting him up for something. Even though he had survived his abusive childhood and achieved so much on his own, he still felt like the spineless coward that had allowed himself to be abused for so many years.

  Then he met Ken.

  Jared landed his dream job. Conroy and Associates were to architectural firms what IBM was to computers. When he got the phone call that he’d been chosen, he started to wonder if there was some actual worth to him. Maybe he did matter, and he could become someone. But he’d immediately dismissed those thoughts. He convinced himself that they’d more than likely hired him because he was cheap labor, and the company would dump him within a year for another poor slob.

  Ken came to him the first day, welcoming him to the company and helping him to acclimate to his new surroundings. Jared found his friendly nature and openness so disarming that he’d instantly bonded with the man. It was not long before a friendship grew in spite of Jared’s fear of people.

  Over time he’d come to realize that he belonged with this company. He even started to accept that he did indeed have value, he had worth. His company did not hire him as some kind of cruel joke in order to set him up and knock him down. He mattered to the people around him. They respected him and what he did.

  That did not change his distrust and fear of anyone other than his coworkers, but in his mind he had all that he wanted. A good job, a good friend, and a life that was his that no one could take away from him.

  Now, everyone that mattered to him was either dead or one of the sick on the other side of the door. The only one he knew that was still alive was trapped inside the room saturated in the stench of blood. Outside his building, no one knew or even cared that he existed.

  Sally’s eyes pierced into his mind again, pleading for her life, and accusing him of taking it. He squeezed his eyes shut to block her out, but it didn’t help. He felt another tear escape the corner of his eye, rolling off his face as it disappeared into the darkness.

  “Jared!” Ken’s stern voice snapped Jared back into the here and now.

  “Yea … yeah?” Jared stammered.

  “Do you have anything?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s the matter with you? You retarded or something?” Robert snapped.

  “Will you shut up you asshole!” Ken replied. “Jared, do you have a phone or anything with a light?”

  “No,” Jared whispered. “It was on my desk charging when the power went down.”

  “Oh, that’s just fucking awesome!” Robert laughed. “Mr. Architect left his phone on the charger. Way to go goober.”

  “You don’t have any room to talk, Robert,” Ken said. “Where is your phone again? In your car?”

  “Does anyone have anything?” Jared asked meekly.

  “We have a watch with a backlight, a dead phone, and a box of about four matches,” Ken answered.

  “That’s it?!” Jared gasped.

  “The idiot catches on quick!” Robert chuckled.

  “Seriously,” Gary piped in. “I just met you and you’re already on my shit list.”

  “What’re you gonna do, big man?” Robert snarled.

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Barb cried. “Can you guys stop your pissing contest and figure ou
t a way to get out of here?”

  “Fuck you, lady!” Robert snapped. “Mr. Architect says there is no way out.”

  “Stop calling me that,” Jared said under his breath.

  “I’m sorry,” Robert blustered. “Did you say something to me? It sounded like you asked me to come over there and kick your ass!”

  “Leave him alone,” Ken demanded.

  “I’ll come over there and fuck you up too!” Robert growled.

  “People!” a woman’s commanding voice suddenly rang out from across the room. It was deep and authoritative, coming from someone who sounded like she was used to giving orders, and used to people obeying them. “Cut the shit! It’s too cramped and too hot in here for the rest of us to have to deal with your bullshit!”

  “Linda?” Kelly gasped. “Is that you?”

  “Yes it is,” Linda replied. “You okay?”

  “I’m scared to death!” Kelly said, the tremble in her voice betraying the sobs she was trying to hold back.

  “We all are, hun.”

  “What are we going to do?” Kelly openly sobbed.

  “I don’t know,” Linda exhaled. “I really don’t know.”

  “Great!” Robert chimed in. “So what you’re saying is you’re useless too! Why don’t you two lesbos go muff diving in the corner and shut the fu…”

  A thud sounded off to Jared’s right, followed by a heavy grunt. The floor vibrated as a body crashed down somewhere in the darkness.

  “I can’t see you, but I can hear you,” Linda said. “I hope your balls enjoyed meeting my knee. If you want to come back for seconds, by all means, keep talking.”

  “Fucking cunt!” Robert gagged.

  Another thud, and Robert’s gags became full blown vomiting. The stench of bile mingled with the blood in the air, sending Jared’s own stomach roiling again.

  “Please,” Linda said. “Keep talking. You still have one nut left.”

  If Robert could speak through his retching, he didn’t. Jared smiled in spite of himself at the thought of the loud mouthed asshole rolling around in his own puke, cupping his groin.

  “Jared is it?” Linda asked.

  “Yeah.”