The two women; one a chubby Hispanic girl and the other an African American with an average build; take off together. They run half way down the hall stopping in front of the inventory room door. The two men lean further into the door. The crazed people surge forward and the door gives a little more with each wave of determined force put behind it. The terror in the young man’s face leaning against the burly man is evident. The freckled face redhead might as well be holding a sign that announces his next move. The kid releases the door and bolts down the hall. “No,” Franklin catches himself as he gasps aloud in dismay. The kid plows into both women with a running start. He sends the Hispanic young woman tumbling into the wall and black girl head first into the reinforced inventory room door. The frightened man continues moving like a locomotive, arms pumping and never stopping. He hit the exit door at the end of the hall and his purple sneakers were the last fleeting image of him. Beautiful golden rays of sunlight cascade into the end of the frame. The burly man holding the human tide at bay bravely gives it his all but the crowd swells through the door. Franklin watches helplessly. A flood of people explodes through the door enveloping the courageous soul. His final vision is that of the man’s hand protruding from the top of the pile. A small girl, no more than ten, takes a huge bite out of the exposed palm. Meanwhile the Hispanic girl has made it to her feet. She makes for the open door with much effort. The fear drives her serving as a sort of emotional rocket fuel. Mere inches from freedom several white-eyed shuffling figures meet her. They tackle her to the floor, putting teeth to her flesh as they do. Franklin raises his hand weakly, touching the image of the unmoving black girl on the screen. She was apparently “mercifully,” he thinks, knocked unconscious when her head hit the door. The girl does not move as the deranged people plod heavily towards her. They fall upon the girl, shredding her work attire to gain access to the flesh and muscle beneath. Enraged at the coward who fled leaving his team, Franklin scans the other quadrant cameras. There he sees a teaming mass of people. They are blotting out something on the ground in the parking lot. On the trash littered black asphalt lays a purple basketball shoe coated with thick globs of blood.
Franklin stumbles backwards heavily expecting to land in his plush leather chair. Instead, he hits the floor with all the grace of a drunken sorority girl at homecoming. His legs fly up as Franklin almost makes a complete flip. His ass and feet both briefly switch places on the tiled office floor. He flops over coming to his feet. Looking around the way one does when they slip on ice in the winter. His face has that “I hope nobody saw that” expression plastered on it. Locating his chair, he gingerly inches his way towards it. On his knees, he pulls it closer. Once he has found the coordination to sit again Franklin rolls back up to the monitor. In the lower right hand corner, he sees the Eastern Chicago University store. This store is his second furthest store from the city’s center. The scene that greets him is one of pure chaos. There is a full-blown melee going on in the store from the sales floor to the inventory room. He witnesses employees, students, police, business professional, professors, and everyday people fighting and dying. The tiny screen along with the smaller quadrants reflects the pandemonium of life and death struggles. He squints his eyes and raises his glasses off his face repositioning them atop his head. “Eastern Chicago University main screen,” Franklin rears back as the picture has now grown almost five times larger. There in the middle of the sales floor is a gigantic police officer. The man has a pistol in one hand and his baton that he swings savagely in the other. To the officer’s back is a brown haired woman in a black suit and high heels. She is kneeling on the floor cradling a young boy of about twelve. Besides her is an Asian American woman wearing a purple blood spattered GUC shirt. The woman has a pistol of her own and she stands with the classic two-handed grip on the gun. Her shots are controlled, deliberate, and methodical. Franklin thinks he met the woman at a company meeting a few years back. “Yen,” that was her name he recalls. The pair seems to be holding a large crowd of people at bay. The crowd has that same glassy white-eyed look that Franklin has come to dread. They come from a cross section of humanity. They are as unique as the bloodstains and wounds that cover each of them.
Franklin feels bile-ascending up his throat and manages to stave off causing a mess. He knows if this scene holds true to what he has seen these last few horrifying minutes, he is watching a valiant last stand play out. All the other quadrant cameras show nothing but death in the store located on the college campus on the city’s lakefront. Figures hunched over slabs of quivering meat fill each camera’s feed. The crazed people are fighting one another for raw chunks of what used to be humans. The cop appears to be shouting something back over his shoulder at the woman on the floor. He swings the baton conducting a lethal masterpiece of skull crushing. Franklin moves his attention to the woman between Yen and the cop. She is pressing a cloth of some sort to the boy’s neck. The once white garment is soaked with bright red blood. The boy has blood covering the front of his black Chicago White Sox shirt. The woman in the business suit moves the cloth and Franklin can see the source of the blood. He pans the camera down with the joystick. Then he zooms the high tech piece of surveillance equipment in on the boy’s neck. There he sees a ghastly wound comprised of a deep gouge ringed by tatters of torn flesh. She presses the cloth back onto the wound while screaming up at the officer. Yen meanwhile switches out the clip in her chrome pistol. At her feet, bodies litter the floor. Each corpse is lifeless and still. Franklin clearly sees tiny black dots adorning the foreheads of the lifeless corpses. “She’s shooting them in the head …,” Franklin says. His mind turns back the hands of time to the Downtown store. He sees the black guy smashing the man in the expensive suit with the demo display unit. The man did not even react to the blow. Not the way you expect a person pummeled with a twenty-pound blunt object would. He turns his attention back to the rampaging police officer. The man seems to be in constant motion. Franklin can see he has amassed a higher body count than Yen. However, some of those who have fallen at his feet are still moving. Although they sport a litany of injuries from broken jaws and smashed limbs, one woman’s head has been spun a hundred eighty degrees around on her shoulders. “She is shooting them in the head.” Franklin says. “And they are staying down,” Franklin exclaims with all the gusto of a holy man who has just heard the voice of God.
“Dial Police dispatch.” Franklin directs the monitor once again. The need to share his revelation about these marauding killers is what motivates him. Above him, a green phone icon flickers on the screen. His eyes drawn to it as if staring at it will force the call to connect. He is met with a recording “All circuits are busy please try your call later.” “To hell with this” he mutters defiantly reaching for the cell phone on his hip. As he does so, his eyes fall back on to the main monitor. Franklin is stunned to see the boy that the woman was holding now alert and moving. The child’s eyes are devoid of life as he bites into the muscular cop’s calf. The stricken officer unleashes a fierce over- handed strike with the baton. He literally caves the child’s head in causing the boy to loosen his piranha like hold. The cop looks up shocked before raising his pistol in the direction of where Yen had been. Franklin’s heart sinks as the woman in the black suit has her teeth embedded in Yen’s neck. Firing directly into the back of the business suited woman’s head, the officer blows Yen’s attackers’ brains out of a cavernous hole that erupts from her forehead. The slide on the heroic cop’s gun clicks open. Dropping his empty weapon to the floor the officer limps forward. He catches Yen as the crowd presses in on them. He takes the pistol from Yen’s slack grip while dragging her backwards. The petite woman looks like a broken doll in the man’s well-toned arms. They reach a corner in the back of the store that is clear for the moment. The people crowding the picture frame now numbering in the hundreds. The officer Franklin can see his face clearly now, appears to be weeping. He watches intently as the man drops down into a seated position. Just as the circle closes, t
he officer brushes Yen’s unblinking dead eyes closed. Franklin leans over trying to get a better angle through the tightly packed bodies. A final glimpse of the police officer shows the man placing the silver pistol in his mouth. A light in the display above where the man had come to rest shatters. A thick splatter of blood and pink tissue sprays upwards. Just like that, the fight at the store devolves into a feeding frenzy. Leaping to his feet “No …. Noooo!” Franklin rages. Detached from himself, he is unaware his fist is flying at the monitor until it makes contact. A thin crack forms in the screen spider webbing outward like breaking ice on a frozen pond.
“Oh God …” he begins but does not finish falling back into the plush leather chair. Franklin places his head in his hands. Leaning his elbows on the black console supporting the monitor he feels his chest heave. “Mr. Wells please repeat command.” The computer’s soft female voice prods. Franklin’s mind fractures for a split second. He believes the monitor wants him to watch and bear witness. It wants him to see the first ripples that will form the tidal wave that will wash away the days of man. He instead takes his trembling right hand and reaches for the black phone to his right. He does not look up. As he moves slowly, the way one does when confronted by a ravenous predator, a thought forms in his head “Mr. Wells please repeat command.” The monitor dings in breaking his train of thought. Franklin Wells realizes much to his amusement that he had broken most if not all of his protocols. He had not notified his superiors of the incidents. Although, he knew, they monitored all Digital Security Constables video feeds throughout the day. Global Universal Cellular Franklin knew had earned every syllable of the ugly nickname the press had given them. “Big Brother Wireless” was always watching he chuckled to himself. By the time Franklin realized there was wetness coating his palms he had wept for several minutes. “Mr. Wells please repeat command,” the monitor continues. “No command given,” he croaks. The hot salty tears run freely from beneath his palms down his forearms in rivulets as he ignores the prompt yet again.
“You have one notification.” A voice from the Bluetooth in his ear alerts him. His hand instinctively touches the device connected to his glasses and wirelessly to his cellphone. With the type of heavy wet sniffle reserved for first graders, Franklin wipes his eyes. Snapping his head forward quickly he drops the glasses back over his eyes. “Play notification.” Franklin blinks as the vison in his right eye adjusts to the streaming video feed. The first image he sees is Bob the security guard. “Yo, Frank my brother, check this shit out.” The guard yells as his voice carries on his image fades. “It’s from that news show you watch bro.” Bob’s voice goes quiet. It is the same blond newscaster from earlier looking decidedly more agitated. The playback from the digitally enhanced lens begins. “If you are indoors stay there. Lock your doors; stay out of sight and away from your windows.” He declares looking sternly at the camera. “Authorities are trying to contain an outbreak of violence that is now besieging the city. The Governor has called in the National Guard to assist local law enforcement.” Franklin feels as though the man is speaking directly to him. “For reasons as yet unknown. it appears what we assume is some sort of pathogens causing it’s victims to attack those who are not infected. Reports have come in and been verified that the attackers have been observed to eat the flesh of their victims.” The man trails off. He runs a well-manicured hand through his flawless mane of hair. “Guys this can’t be true,” he stammers in disbelief to someone off camera. His deep blue eyes dart back and forth pleading for some sort of reprieve from the story. “It is true. Keep rolling, you’re live.” A disembodied voice shouts from somewhere behind the camera. “The …” The commentator begins licking his lips nervously. “The … attackers cannot be reasoned with and appear to be oblivious to pain. Reports state that they are attracted to sound and seek out those not infected to prey upon.” Franklin leans back, the news hitting him like a charging rhino square in the chest. His mind screams the word “zombies” even as he tries to ignore it. “No way … is this possible,” the analytical part of his brain begs him to disregard the absurd word. The video fades out and his glasses return to their normal state. Yet his mind; the side of him that loves horror movies and chubby girls; demands satisfaction. His mind wanders and so does his eyes.
In the top left corner of the monitor, Franklin sees the feed for the Oak Park store. The air seizes in his lungs. He is astounded to see the store personnel and customers going about a regular business day. With his mouth hanging slack Franklin speaks. “Oak Park store main feed,” as before the retail location comes into full view. Franklin cannot believe what he is seeing. His initial reaction is that he is simply hallucinating. He recalled the manager of the Oak Park store had a very strict rule that no personal devices were allowed on the sales floor. The man was all GUC all the time. Franklin counted six employees and six customers, two of which were children. “Main entrance exterior quadrant Oak Park store.” He moved to the edge of his chair taking the thin black joystick in his aching right hand. The camera showed no signs of the pandemic enveloping the city directly outside the store. Looking back down Madison Avenue back east towards Chicago was a different story. Franklin could see cars burning in the street and dozens of forms. Some of these smoke cloaked forms moved quickly. While others had that familiar insidious slow gait he now knew were infected. Panning the camera up he could see part of Chicago’s iconic skyline in the distance. The Sears Tower was a raging pillar of fire that burned uncontrollably. He saw tiny black dots whizzing in and out of the smoke clogged skyline. “Helicopters,” the words tumbled off his lips. The camera pans back down at just the right time. What greets Franklin is a hellish sight, Chicago in its death throws. From the smoke and haze, they emerged like a pillaging army. Dozens of zombies seemed too materialize from nowhere. They were less than half a block from the unsuspecting occupants of the store. Franklin instinctively reached for the phone then pulled his hand back as if the device was an open flame. “Fuck that,” he blurted with conviction. He slides up to the console with a purpose and a mind set on action instead of reaction. “Keyboard,” he called aloud causing a white virtual keyboard to glow on his console. Instantly years of protocol, ingrained habits and rules become useless. Regulations fall aside like junk mail. Franklin Wells watched the ever-advancing crowd of zombies. Simultaneously his fingers float smoothly across the two dimensional keyboard. “Warning …” the monitor alarmed. “Mr. Wells you are not currently authorized to manually override location zero seven zero nine six five’s security system.” Franklin smirked at the indignant hardware. “I am now notifying Security Systems Chief Filipe Espinoza.” He hears the monitor prattle on like a spoiled child. “Blah … blah … blah,” He mocked the machinery. The last thing he cared about was his boss finding out. Franklin knew how to handle this, “Monitor mute please.” With the world going to shit,all of humankind’s technology wants to carry on as if it were just Monday. He worked vigorously, sweat popping up his bald head. The dead drew closer. Their pace slowed every time a living being crossed their path. Franklin Wells defiantly hits the “enter” key executing his command.
The steel security shutters began to descend slowly down across all the windows of GUC’s Oak Park store. They startle the couple heading for the exit door with their children. Franklin still perched on the edge of his seat urged the shutters down chanting “come on” repeatedly. The shutters locked into place outside the store just as the first zombie made it to the doorway. “Take that you flesh eating bastard!” Franklin shouted. On screen, he saw all the store security zones flash red indicating they were secure. From where he sat, Franklin Wells had locked every door, external door and covered all the windows. The confusion on the face of everyone in the store was evident. The manager walked to the door passing the couple and their terrified kids. The man grabbed the inside door handle giving it a few good tugs. The door didn’t budge but it did get the attention of the dead outside. The zombies closed in on the storefront pounding at the shu
tters with bloodied hands. The people inside the store were now in a full-blown panic. Several more finger taps on the keyboard and Franklin opens the store’s overhead intercom system. He heard panicked screams and the incessant banging on the shutter by the dead. “Um …” he stared at the monitor as he spoke. “Hello … my name is Franklin Wells and I am your store’s Global Universal Cellular Digital Security Constable.” He could see the people looking around confused and trying to locate the source of his voice. All but one person, that is the store’s manager appeared anxious. The man finds a camera and puffs up his chest “You’re the monitor from the Chicago office right?” The man continues, “You mind telling me why the hell you locked us in here.” The man started jabbing a thick finger at the camera as if scolding an unruly dog. “You’re interrupting my business.” Franklin could take no more. “Julian is it?” He broke in to the man’s rant. “Julian I need you to turn on one of the phones or tablets to the news.” Franklin references any of the many live cellular displays in the store. “The city has been overrun by some sort of plague.” Franklin watches as the trapped people’s panic becomes more evident. Screams echo up from those locked in the store. One young man darts from behind the counter. He runs over to the display of tablets. “Julian I just saved your life and the lives of everyone in your store.” Franklin beams. “The people have become well …” Franklin hesitated. Then he thought better of it. “Hell, not saying fart after a fart doesn’t mean it’s not a fart.” He contemplates to himself then blurts it out. “Zombies, Julian! People have been turned into zombies and …” “Listen here you crazy son of a ….” Julian lurches towards the camera. “He’s right,” the young man shouts from the tablet wall. “Come see everybody,” Franklin can hear the same newscaster and his distorted voice drifting through the speakers. He cannot however make out what the news anchor is saying.
All Things Zombie: Chronology of the Apocalypse Page 14