I glanced at my family photo to the left of the desk. It was of us in South Africa on the beach. The Lively family. Blake, Jess and Lily as a baby with me, and then Richard. But you wouldn't know its Richard as I’ve blackened his face out. Don't want that thing in my family photo.
“An incoming call on line two Sarah,” said my colleague Matty on the speaker.
“Yeah, hello this is Sarah from Yellow Sky Accountings how can I help you today?”
“Hi, it's Lee Everridge. I’m calling for Mr. Grant, he won't answer his phone or emails. I’m from the Rubarno Collective.”
The Rubarno Collective! They were on the news last month for unearthing some new raw material in the Antarctic. One of the largest oil companies in the world finding mineralized rock in the cold wastes, and they wanted Mr. Grant, the owner of the company.
“I can head up to his office now and see if he's there, or I can contact him myself and let him know.”
“If you could that would be lovely darling, just let him know I must speak to him dearly in the next 24 hours, if tomorrow comes and he hasn't contacted me tell him not to bother finding me.”
He cut off the phone abruptly, just like some movie villain.
“Kelly. I just had the strangest phone call,” I said aloud to her.
“You don't say? I get them all the time babes,” she replied while chewing some gum.
Another call rang.
“Hello this is James Baise from Webster, I’ve been looking over our accounts here and unfortunately, after a lot of discussion and thought, we’ve decided to pull out of the merger. I’ll have a conference call with Mr. Grant as soon as he's available but for now I’d like to keep this hush. Please inform Damien of our decision.”
“I’ll get right on that, thank you for letting us know,” I said, in a little bit of shock. “Ok, no problem, thank you, bye, bye.”
“Kelly, Webster have just pulled out,” I said nonchalantly.
“You're shitting me,” she reacted the same as I.
“No, I’m not, listen, I’m going to go up and tell Damien, I’ll be right back.” I grabbed the financial reports for last month and took them with me. He’ll want to see them as well.
I took the lift and tried to stay upright in my ridiculous heels, the lights flickered and the snack machine bolted. As soon as the lift reached the top floor I marched up to his office and knocked on the door. I wanted to run but I knew if I did, I’d fall and break my ankle. He opened the door as my eyes fell on his white buttoned shirt, a thin hairline of black hair and his sharp physique. The businessman in the red tie was standing beside his yoga mat in the middle of his lavish office. A bit further back was his desk, nearby a TV blared sports news on the wall. Damien’s eyeline came to my chest as it always did, not just because he's a little pervert, but also because he's what we call, a short little prick. 5ft 3 I believe.
“Sarah! Come in! What do you have for me?”
“Last month's reports. And also, some news,” I said slowly, before glancing around his pristine office. I’d only ever been in here twice before. Four stories up and overlooking the airport and train station. It was the size of my bedroom, my living room and kitchen all put together.
“What news?” He spoke.
“I’m not sure,” I spoke cautiously, hoping he’d take the hint. Whoever this businessman was, I’d feel uncomfortable revealing a deal fell through right in front of him. But Damien for some reason didn't care, he stared right at me, right into my soul with those beady black eyes.
“The merger with Webster has fallen through,” I told him. His face changed, as he glanced down and grimaced in frustration. He then turned back to the red tie businessman and smiled.
“Business, ever changing!” He near almost shouted at him. They exchanged nervous glances.
“Sarah, meet David Beckshaw, my new partner, he’s the head coach of the Villains Basketball Team. Sarah’s been working here for eight years,” he told him as I shook his hand. It was awkward after our little interaction downstairs at the reception desk, but I smiled and waved as always.
“Pleasure,” he said.
“David. You see this here?” Asked Damien as he picked up a purple rock from his drawer.
“Mr Grant gave it to me, it’s from his expedition to the oil rig in Antarctica.”
“Interesting, you must tell me more about this over dinner,” said David as he searched his pockets for some reason, probably for a way out.
“Oh, I will do,” Damien shook his hand with a firm grip before eyeing me with daggers.
“I’ll see you over the weekend. I’m very excited to start working with you, take care,” David gave me a telling glance as he left. His new client picked up his suitcase and left.
As soon as the frosted glass door closed, I turned around to find Damien stretching his hands above his head. It was odd, and awkward. He switched the television off, and leaned on his desk in a suggestive manner. I rose my chin high.
“Here are your financial reports,” I gave him the paperwork. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
What a stupid thing to say, I thought to myself. He didn't answer, he rather nodded his head with pursed lips. I stepped backwards towards the door, in fear.
“I think you should stay,” he said, before licking his lips.
“You almost fucked that up then, is that your way of getting at me you stupid little bitch,” he said, pouring a drink of whiskey out and stepping toward me.
“What?” I asked him, what the hell was wrong with him! My heart raced until it was beating out my chest. I hadn't realised how fast it was going until he said that. I stepped one foot towards the door, and grasped the handle. As soon as my hand touched the silver knob of the door handle he jumped forward. He was a monster, a devil even, with yellow eyes, enflamed by red smog. He was a creature, a predator.
He slammed my head against the glass of the door and breathed his alcohol ridden breath upon me as I shrieked in pain. Anyone outside in the corridor could see the figure of me crushed up against the door, but not one moved to help. He was going to hurt me, and all that ran through my head was disgust and pain.
“I said, I think you should stay,” he spoke again with threatening tones, running his hands through my hair.
“You think you can come in here and do that in front of a potential client. You stupid dumb cow!”
He threw me to the floor, right atop the yoga mat.
“Get your hands off me!” I shouted before slapping him across the face. It was a standoff, he just leaned forward, hands out. He’d gone mad!
“You're so delicious when you're scared,” he spoke, almost sounding delirious. A chill ran up my spine.
“Let’s have some fun!”
He ran at me, charging himself into my waist and rugby tackling me to the floor. He's a midget! How's he got that much strength! I cursed him.
“Fuckoff. You piece of shit!”
He tried to pin me down to the mat but before he could I unclasped my heel with my right hand and pushed him back with my left, clawing my long nails into his eye sockets. He continued unflustered and didn't care, to the point where instead of blood came a rotten goo from his ghastly wounds.
Finally, I took my shoe off and whacked him once before stabbing the stiletto right through his left eye. I knew somewhere in the back of my mind that I’d just blinded and severely hurt another human being, but I didn't care, not enough to stop, he was a monster, and this was what he deserved.
As he reeled back to his desk on his knees to pull the object out, I seized the opportunity and whacked him across the head with the landline office phone, subduing him finally. As he let out a final breath I scrambled back upon my feet and assessed my injuries. I had a dizzy head from where he’d knocked me down and my entire body felt weak. Pain flared in all my joints. I turned around and glared at the red pooling around his rancid head.
His office desk had stains all down it, streaking, showing the impacts and s
platter, what I had caused.
“Oh god,” escaped my mouth, before I held it shut with my hands. My breathing became ragged and irratic.
I’d killed a man. I looked up to the camera in the corner of the room, then remembered the cameras were out of order on the top floor.
I scrambled to his laptop for something, I didn't know what to do, where to go, how to escape. There was blood on my work dress, a whole lot of it, and that weird goo that now looked a murky purple. Whatever it was seemed to be changing colour.
Then something happened that broke me to tears. The door to the office opened. It was the businessman; David I think his name was.
“Damien I left my…phone.”
He stopped, surveyed the grizzly scene and saw the blood soaked into the bright green yoga mat, now crimson, and the office desk purged of items. I stood there, the dead man's blood all over me, the sharp end of my shoe firmly in his face, splitting his face. There was an awful irony at the fact he was killed with the same object that tortured me for so many years.
I smelt a foul odour coming off his body, as if he’d already been rotting for days, yet it had only been mere moments since he attacked me and died.
“What have you done?” He said with a gasp, followed quickly by a word that made me shudder with fear.
“Murderer.”
I started to cry, tears forming in my eyes.
“He was going to hurt me!”
But he didn’t care, I was guilty. All of a sudden, I heard a gargling like sound and a grunt behind me, followed by a loud hollow bang as my shoe fell to the floor. The same shoe I had planted into Damien’s face…
I couldn’t turn around, as David's face slowly turned green in disgust, and the sound of fish spewing to the floor of a fisherman’s deck assaulted my ears. But I wasn’t at the docks, I was forty storeys up.
I turned to find Damien standing upright, his head empty of flesh that had since slipped off and fallen to the mat along with his terrifying eyes, now a mix of his blue iris and red blood flowing upon the yoga mat. It looked like they still looked up to me, a menacing glint of malice in them. The eye sockets were sunken and red like black holes, his smile broad and long. Now the look on the fellow businessman's face had changed. He now saw the monster I had always seen, and it terrified us both.
With a screech like an owl, Damien, or what was left of him, ran like a new-born giraffe, stumbling and swaying all over the place, narrowly avoiding me and latching himself onto David. He teared his pale flesh from his neck. I moved my body away and jumped to the back of the office, opposite the door. David managed to pull him off and immediately collapsed to the ground holding his neck where he had been bitten. I scrambled to the desk and opened the drawer. In movies there was always a gun or a weapon here, a damn pocket knife or something at least!
“Argh!” Shouted David as my boss clawed at him and bit his hand, slowly pulling off his fingers one by one with a bloody pop each time.
Opening the draw I found a black pistol, I’d never held a gun before, turning off the safety I aimed at Damien and screamed while pulling the trigger. One shot it was, right through the leg, then another as he kept attacking David, like a savage animal he was. The gun almost blew out my hands on the third time and I felt deaf for a moment.
Damien collapsed back, and I turned the gun down as the alarm went off in the building. It was the fire alarm. As David relaxed, I noticed his wounds. I glanced to the body of Damien, not believing what had just happened, I went completely numb. Just when I thought it was over, of course, it wasn’t…
The lump of flesh that was Damien’s head turned around unnaturally so and looked at me, laughing a sinister laugh, a gurgling of black blood as the silhouettes of staff through the glass ran to the lift and stairs in the corridor. I cried in shock and fell back to the floor.
David watched holding his neck as it gushed with red, slowly becoming unconscious, for the last time he breathed and a bubble of blood spat out and popped on his exposed flesh, then he went still.
I collected my thoughts from a brief peaceful moment. As I lay motionless, all of us did. Except I was alive.
The desk phone rang where it lay in the pool of red. Then again, and again. I didn't answer, I just stared at the wall pretending I was somewhere else. As it rang for the fifth time, I picked it up and put the dirty phone to my ear.
“Hello,” a voice said, it was the same voice from before. The Rubarno Collective, Lee Everridge. I kept quiet.
“It's happened, hasn't it?” He spoke.
I waited in shock, speechless. He spoke again in a smooth old voice.
“Take great solace, in the knowledge that through pain comes immense strength. It's probably quite a mess. You better clean it up.”
He then abruptly hung up the call.
There was nothing left to do. I waited in shock, for hidden camera crews to come rushing in and surprise me with some elaborate TV prank. But there was no crew, it was real.
I wiped the gun clean and placed it in the left hand of David, then left my shoe on the ground, and looked to the flashing blue lights illuminating the glass outside the window.
The scene before me was something out of a horror movie. I had no idea what had just really happened, but I took the gun and put it in David’s hand.
I walked out the bloody room and into the corridor, then the lift, and when I reached the bottom floor there were scarce people. Outside the building I saw many. I felt the moonlight on my face, illuminating the blood on my dress, as the police moved in and surrounded me with caution.
They interviewed me, questioned me thoroughly while searching the building. With no active camera and two dead men I said what I had to say. I said Damien and I were having an affair, that David burst in and attacked us, ripped off Damien’s face and used my shoe and the phone to cave his head in while I helplessly watched. Then he picked up the pistol and shot him thrice over before dying from his wounds. All the while I escaped and hid in the luxury closet.
As they interviewed me further, Jessica and Rich arrived, looking shaken themselves, bits of glass lay stricken in Jess’s hair and face. Was she ok? My mind raced; my beautiful girl was hurt. A hand then grabbed me from the back of the ambulance and took me to a police car before I could talk to them. The cops were suspicious, perhaps they were taking me for further questioning? Whatever had happened had happened, I couldn't explain it, I couldn't rationalise it, so I made up another story. They had to believe me, whatever it was, they had to.
Drive - Day 3 - Jessica
“See you guys later!” I shouted to Susie and Gareth; they were my two closest friends. Susie had been my best friend since nursery. We both had brown hair, and were quite tall in comparison to other girls at college. Susie wore glasses and was more devoted to her advertisement coursework than me, I however enjoyed extracurricular activities like smoking and going clubbing almost every second night. Gareth on the other hand, he was my boyfriend, it's how I met him. He’s my everything actually. He’s smaller than me, which is the first thing Susie said when I told her we were dating. But he was loyal and ferociously attracted to me. We all did textiles and advertisement at sixth form. It’s what keeps us together really, without it we would
It was currently 4:45 in the afternoon. Night was descending fast and my lesson ended 15 minutes ago. Dad was, as usual, nowhere to be seen.
“Waiting again,” I texted him, and almost 10 minutes later, as the rain poured and the greying sky darkened, he finally arrived, red faced and up for a fight I couldn't care less for.
“Get in the car!” He shouted, as I slowly walked over. Before I did though, I made a point to stare at him in annoyance.
“What are you doing standing there?” He called in a grumpy aggressive manner as I entered the car.
“Nothing,” I muttered, while pulling out my phone and earphones.
“You're just standing there, I got traffic behind me,” he moaned. I put the phone aside and faced him from the
passenger seat.
“Just been waiting in the cold wind for half an hour waiting for you to turn up, again,” I told him.
“Sorry about that, my phone's dead,” he told me patronisingly. “Hospital was chock-a-block.”
“Yeah. Ok.”
He’d been to the hospital again for a check up on his kidney. Complications that he wouldn't tell us about, his own family. It was nothing serious though, at least that’s what he’d reassured us. I suppose I should be grateful for my dad picking me up from college. Not many dads would do it, that is, care about their kids enough to drive in rush hour.
“Been calling you,” I said, and I knew I was being petulant but I had a right to be upset, I was soaked.
“As I said, my phone's dead. No need for the attitude.”
I looked at him again, getting annoyed at his comments.
“What's the problem dad?”
“The problem is your giving me that face.”
“Yes, because I've been waiting 30 minutes in the dark for you.”
“You could have walked down.”
“I'm not walking down. Use your brain,” I hissed, as he should know by now I don't walk into town alone, ever.
“Text your mom. Tell her we’re coming to pick her up,” he said.
I huffed and chuntered under my breath as I texted mom. As I did, I also texted Gareth about my dad and how he was annoying me. A few moments later he called me up. Ever the knight in shining armour was Gareth.
“Hello,” I said.
“Jess, what's up.”
“Yeah so dad's phone is out of battery and he's just turned up half an hour late in the dark. He pulled up. I could hear him literally shouting and raving in his car so I stood there to prove a point just to show him how long I've waited here and when I got in he kept attacking me. Like he thinks going on the offensive in any way defending himself.”
“It's not dark, is that Gareth?” Dad asked as he drove through traffic.
“Just calm down. Keep driving. Tell your dad to concentrate on the roads,” said Gareth, just as his signal wavered while we passed under the oncoming bridge.
World Down: A Zombie Novel Page 5