by Kathy
Without seeing anyone? Something was definitely wrong, a few phones were ringing, he did hear a muffled conversation, but he saw no one. In an office building, during business hours? On a Friday? Sure, sure it was only seven in the morning, but a few of the regulars should have been in by now. Max held his bat and waited, shifting his grip around, looking at the number ‘six’ on the end of the handle and the ‘Good luck, Steve Garvey’ in faded ink near the top of the bat. Bloodstains, were now pretty evident from Max’s grip, he looked around, thought for a moment, propped the front door open with a trash can and then ducked back into the hallway towards the men’s room. It had only been a couple minutes, no way the police could get here that quickly with the rush hour just starting but he didn’t want to take a chance of missing them.
Stepping into the men’s room the first thing Max saw was a pool of dried blood on the floor in front of the handicapped stall. That door was closed, but not completely. Max stopped, looked around and slowly lowered the tip of the bat down onto the floor then used this to lower his body down and get a look under the stall door. Two sets of legs, one, obviously on the pot, feet pointed towards the stall door, one set shuffling about slightly, pointed towards the toilet. Suddenly a slight sucking/chewing sound came from the stall, as if an animal had been feeding, was briefly interrupted and then decided to start eating again. Blood was running down the basin of the toilet bowl, towards the rear of the stall and the industrial sized drain located there.
Blood. Right. Max slowly stood up, looked over at the paper towel dispenser, at the door, at that handicap stall, then at the blood staining his precious bat. Tick. Tick. Tick. Between the sounds of eating Max could hear the sounds of his watch hand ticking in what seemed like thunderous noise to his ears. He took a step towards the paper towel rack, the eating sounds stopped, after a few seconds they resumed. Max took another step, the eating did not pause, two silent steps later Max was at the paper towel rack slowly easing towels out of the dispenser onto the counter next to the sink, steadily watching the stall door and listening to the sounds within. As he reached for more towels his hands found empty air, he swung around to see what the problem was and caught the bathroom view in the mirror above the sink.
A zombie! Right there! Max let out a scream and swung his bat up, the same time the zombie swung his arm up and around. Max whirled around swinging behind him in an instance, only no one, was there. He was still alone in the area in front of the sink. After a second Max realized he had not seen a zombie, he had seen his own reflection, bloody shirt, a thin line of blood vertical over his lips from when he ‘shhhh’ed Steve and wild eyes. He even had drying blood in his hair on one side, congealing and making the hair stand stiffly out from his head at a ninety degree angle. Max started laughing at his mistake, a kind of ‘whew glad that was nothing’ sort of laugh, that he could not stop himself from releasing. The noise from the handicap stall door swinging outward and hitting the wall startled Max from his revelry.
No one or better yet, no ‘thing’ immediately emerged from the stall. Seconds felt like minutes. Slowly Max again placed the end of his bat on the floor and used it to lower himself for a peek under the stall.
There were still two sets of legs but now both pairs of feet were pointing away from the toilet.
Fight or flight? Max had remembered hearing that statement but could not remember where. Had it been used to describe animal instincts on the Discovery Channel? He couldn’t recall. All he knew was that he had a decision to make and he had better make it quick.
Fight or flight?
The decision was made, flight sounded pretty damn good right about now especially since the close confines of the bathroom didn’t allow Max to swing his bat as freely as he would like. With three giant strides Max ran towards the handicap stall and with his right hand he slammed the door back towards the occupants inside. If Max could make it out into the hallway he was sure he could out run any pursuers.
Max didn’t know if it was his imagination but he sensed hands clawing at his back. This feeling caused the hair on the back of his neck to stand on end and gave him a queasy feeling in his stomach. He lowered his shoulder and blasted into the men’s room door swinging it wide open. The door clanged against the adjacent wall and slowly the pneumatic closer fastened at the top of the door started to move the door to the closed position. Too slowly.
The collision with the door spun Max around and he lost his balance and tumbled to the floor. He could hear the hollow sound of wood clanking on the hard floor tile as his bat bounced away from him. Max loved that sound, it reminded him of hot summer days spent watching overpaid baseball players and drinking cold beers.
Max rolled onto his stomach and then frantically crawled on all fours back to the men’s room door. From inside he heard a low moaning. When he reached the door he spun around and sat on his ass and braced the door shut with his back. Something tried to open the door. Max sensed himself once again starting to slide on the highly polished floor tiles. The door cracked open an inch.
“Steve!” he yelled as he tried to dig his heels in. Was he still on the telephone?
Max tried to hold his position but the thing on the other side of the door had better leverage. Slowly he started to slide a little more.
“Steve! Get your ass over here! Help! Steve!”
Would Steve ignore his calls for help? He couldn’t. Could he? Not at a time like this. They had their differences but this was life or death; not who gets the next promotion.
Max heard footsteps, quick footsteps, running footsteps. Steve was coming. If he could hold the door for just a little longer Steve would be there and they could trap the thing in the men’s room.
The door was now about a foot open. Above his head he could hear the slapping of flesh on the metal of the door.
“Hold it right there!” The yell came from the lobby and was that of a woman. Max lifted his head and looked right into the barrel of a pistol. It was a police officer, a blond female police officer. Her feet were spread apart for stability and she held the gun firmly clasped between both hands. Her left eye was pinched shut but Max could clearly see her right eye looking down the barrel at him.
“I said hold it right there!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Don't move!”
“There is a…” 'There’s a what?' Max thought. 'A zombie eating someone on the other side who wants to eat me you if you don’t blow his head off? Would a trained officer of the law believe this story?' Not likely.
“…I’ve got a murderer trapped and if you don’t do something about it we are both in big trouble.”
Max then heard two sounds. The first being the squeaking of his hands sliding across the floor. He was soon pinned between the door and the adjacent wall.
The second sound was a loud explosion that was amplified by the hard surfaces of the floor and walls. His ears were left ringing in the aftermath of the shot.
Max pushed his hands against the wall and fell back against the floor. The men’s room door did not completely close. There was a set of blood stained designer suit pants pinned between the door and the frame.
“Murderer, huh? Looked more like a zombie to me.” The officer said. Max turned his head towards her. She was standing above him with an outstretched hand. He grabbed it. It was warm but not sweaty. Must be the training. Regardless, it made him feel a little safer. She pulled Max to his feet.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, I think most of this blood is someone else’s. What took you so long?”
“Hey, count yourself lucky, we’ve been dealing with these problems all morning. Had I not been on my way back to the station when I got the call you would have been on your own.”
She grabbed the radio from her belt and spoke into it. “Officer Stewart to HQ.” They both waited for a response.
“Officer Stewart to HQ.”
As they listened to the silence on the radio Max took survey of Officer Stew
art. She looked to be in her mid twenties and stood a little over five and a half feet tall. She wore the standard Denver Police uniform, dark blue, with a black leather belt housing multiple items; handcuffs, pepper spray, a club, her side arm. Her left forearm was wrapped with a bandage. She wore no hat but her hair was pulled back into a tight pony tail. 'To Serve and Protect' read a small gold pin above her badge. Max thought that she was surprisingly cute for a cop.
“Are there others like him wandering around here?” Stewart asked as she pointed at the feet sticking out the doorway.
“Yeah, two, or possibly three now, that I know of.”
“What about normal people, any of those left in here?”
Normal? That sounded funny. Max guessed that Steve could pass as normal.
“Ah, yes, one more, Steve, back the other way. But that’s all I’ve seen this morning.”
“Actually, I’m right here.” Steve said as he crept from an office entrance.
Just how long had Steve been there? Had he witnessed the entire thing and made no attempt to help him? Max wouldn’t put it past Steve to do a thing like that. It seemed unimaginable but he guessed that some people would do anything to protect themselves. Max retrieved his bat and looked at Steve and Officer Stewart, “What do we do now?”
Chapter 4
“For starters lets see if we can block most of the doors, at least we need to push furniture up against them and make it hard for the lumbering undead to get into the building. Then we round up any survivors, then we finish off any trapped undead, clearing the building room by room.” Said Stewart.
“Whoa-whoa-whoa there little lady.” said Steve raising his hands in front of him as he spoke, “Undead? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Alright tough guy, listen and listen carefully. All morning we’ve been getting calls where people are being attacked, um, no, more like eaten by other people. There were a few calls as early as last night. Some pizza delivery guy chowed a family of four. I’ve personally taken out nine of the things so far, including that guy in the men’s room. Now, if I were you, I would call my friends and family and tell them to start boarding up their window and…”
“Oh shit, I gotta call my wife.” Max said as he fumbled for his cell phone. Once he got it out and started a call back to his home, he moved down the corridor a little to get away from Steve and Officer Stewarts' arguing, which was growing quite heated. “C’mon, c’mon, pick up honey, pick it up!”
“Hello?” a sleepy voice said on the other end of the line.
“Sarah! Sarah! Are you okay baby?”asked Max.
“Okay? Okay? Max what are you talking about, of course I am fine. What has happened? What is wrong?”
Standing there in blood coated clothing that was hardening around his body like an eggshell, Max really didn’t know where to begin.
“Sarah, things have gone wrong, there are some really bad people out running around the city and I want you and the kids to stay safe. In fact I want you to stay more than safe. Barricade the back door and the doors from the garage, move tables and chairs in front of them. Leave the front door locked and dead bolted, if I can get home I will come to the front door. Then I want you to..”
“Max, Max, stop it Max! What are you talking about? Bad people? What bad people? Terrorists? In Denver? Why would they come for me? Is it your job?”
”No, no honey, nothing like that okay, worse in a way, they won’t come for you….Hold on a sec honey… Hey Steve! Stewart! Keep it down you wanna just tell everything in hearing distance we are here? Go move the furniture in the lobby in front of the doors, okay, but stop yelling! Sorry hon, no I don’t have time to tell you everything, but I guess there are some really bad people running around and there could be a lot of them from what I just heard. You need to take the kids and hide up in the attic, bring water, food, blankets, everything. Get the porta-potty I use for camping out of the garage and move it up there if you can do it. You have to promise me you will stay there no matter what you hear in the house, if everything is quiet you can probably come down to use the bathroom when you need to. Oh, fill up the tub with water and the sinks and any containers we have laying around too.”
“Max, I am looking out the drapes, there are some people out there walking around really slow, like they are on drugs or something.”
A chill went up Max’s spine, “Honey, don’t let them see you, the uh, druggies are very, very violent! Slow but violent, like, um, zombies. And they will kill you and the kids if you let them see you!” Max was practically screaming into the phone now, “Take your cell phone up into the attic the zo..druggies have lower coordination when they are..high and cannot climb things really well.”
“Max you are scaring me, you're scared too, aren't you? I will do it, you just get someplace safe, come home if you can. I will get the kids up into the attic right now and wait for you, are you coming home right now?”
“As soon as I can baby, as soon as I can.”
“Max” said Sarah with near hysteria in her voice, “Max are you going to be okay?”
“Relax baby, relax, I have a police officer here with me, she’ll take care of me, I am more worried about you. I don’t know what’s happening in the rest of the city but from what I hear, it’s not good. That’s why I want you to get the kids, some food and some water up into the attic. Just do it okay? Honey, one more thing.”
“No.” Max could tell Sarah was still crying, but her voice was firm.
“Aw honey, c’mon you gotta do it, it will make me feel better just know you have it with you.”
Years before Max had inherited a German Lugar his grandfather brought home from his years of service in world war II, coming from a family that owned guns Max knew how to care for them and considered the Lugar more of an investment than a home protection device. Sarah, on the other hand, used to have a younger brother. When he was eleven he went over to a friend’s house to play and never came home. Playing that day involved the handgun collection of his friend’s father and in a day and age where safety locks were not yet mainstream his friend had shot and killed her brother. The trauma of losing her brother provoked in Sarah a hatred of guns that was beyond illogical. When Max inherited his grandfather’s gun, Sarah had taken the kids to a hotel for three nights, eventually she returned home when Max had installed a gun safe to hold the gun, a wall safe to hold the ammo and a child safety lock with two keys, one normally kept in a safety deposit box at the bank, and one on Max’s key chain. Sarah knew the combination to both safes and as they had recently decided to close their safety deposit box the second key to the gun lock was now in the same safe as the gun’s ammunition.
“I won’t Max. Look, you know I don’t even know how to fire it, it won’t do me any good anyway and I will feel like I am leaving a rattlesnake laying around no matter where I put it. I will grab a bat from Nick’s room and that will have to do. Any druggies managing to get up into the attic will have to contend with an aluminum bat to the head. And if you still need the gun you can get it when you get home.”
“Okay, okay, I would just feel better if you had it with you. Anyone coming in and not yelling your name, you brain em, okay?”
“Don’t worry Max, no one will get in anyway. I will call you when the kids and I are up in the attic, some of those druggies look kind of bloody and I don’t want to chance them breaking in on me before I am ready.”
“I gotta go too, it looks like the police officer and Steve are about to kill each other. I love you baby, take care of the kids and I will talk to you when you are safe.”
“Well I like the police officer already, she shows good judgment. I love you too. Max, be careful. Bye.”
“Bye baby.”
Chapter 5
The MAC Corporate building was built in the early nineteen eighties and from the outside looked like four stories of steel and reflective blue glass. The structure had very little to offer from an architectural view point. No fancy atrium, no grand entra
nces or spectacular artwork adorned either the outside nor inside of this relatively plain, rectangular building. When compared to the neighbors around it, the MAC Co building was average at best.
After the September eleventh terrorist attacks upper management decided to invest in added security and emergency equipment. Every entrance was modified and now required a card key to gain access. When the card was swiped past the reader a security system would record the identity of the card owner, check to make sure that the person was allowed in that section of the building, and if approved, the system would then release a magnetic lock at the top of the door. There were some who speculated that the security system was management’s way of tracking when the arrived, when they came back from lunch, if they took too many smoke breaks, and if they left early for home.
Another change that resulted from the increased security was the installation of a large generator on the south side of the building. Should MAC Co. lose power the generator would automatically turn on and supply emergency power to the building’s main systems, security, telephones, and designated lighting.
“How many entrances does this place have?” Stewart inquired.
Looking at Steve for confirmation Max responded, “One main entrance and three side ones. One on each side of the building.” Steve thought for a moment mentally counting to himself and then nodded his approval of Max’s answer.
“Is that the main security desk that I passed?” Officer Stewart did not wait for an answer, made her way to the desk and plopped down into the empty chair behind it. There was also a computer monitor showing shots of the cameras located by the building doors and, of course, a computer. The computer was mostly used by the security guard for solitaire but it also served the intended purpose of displaying the key card information when an employee entered or exited the building.
“It has been nice hanging out with you guys and Officer I appreciate what you did for me, but I have a family that needs me so I’ll be leaving now.” Max announced.