They were supervised only by the camera which fed directly into the secretary’s office. They were given their assignments that had to be turned in at the end of the day, then left alone. It was a private school and they took discipline very seriously.
It had been a lunchroom fight over something stupid. This was the second time this year and it was only September. If it happened again, they would be looking for another school.
“Text your dad.” She had told him. “Try to explain it to him.” Johnny had been threatening him with military academy, but it was an idle threat because they couldn’t afford it. Jessie didn’t know that, though.
“He’s in California today, but he’s got a load back home, so you’ll be having words with him by the weekend.”
That really put a darker cloud over his mood. She hated the whole “wait till your father gets home” routine, but it was the one thing that would set him on the straight and narrow. For a little while anyway.
What annoyed her the most is that he still couldn’t admit he had been wrong. Too much of his dad in him. Punch first, punch second, then punch some more. That’s why they hadn’t been getting along very well this past year or so.
They were too much alike. She sighed heavily as she slammed her purse down on her desk. He wasn’t a bad kid, he usually made good grades, and he wasn’t on drugs or getting his girlfriend knocked up, but damn if he didn’t have his father’s temper. If he wasn't careful, he would wind up making some of the same stupid mistakes Johnny had.
She grabbed the coffee cup off of her desk and walked down the hall to the break area to start the pot brewing. Lacy was the first in this morning, she had dropped some friends off at the airport for an early flight and came on into work. She had to catch up on some of the environmental reports she had been saddled with.
It wasn’t her job, she was human resources, but with budget cuts, everyone was doing the work of two people. But that damn kid. If he didn’t get his temper under control, he would find himself in a situation like the one that had eventually landed them here in Atlanta. It wasn’t a bad life, but certainly not the one they had planned.
Johnny wouldn’t be out driving a truck, and gone for weeks at a time, they wouldn’t have spent all of their savings and a lot of her 401k, if his temper hadn’t gotten the best of him over in Afghanistan. Or at the tire store back in high school, for that matter. She sighed again. Water under the bridge. Ancient history. Can’t change the past.
She didn’t dwell on it, but life was strange like that. No matter what you planned, it never seemed to work out the way you wanted. They had hoped for a house full of kids and a place in the country near their hometown, but their only child came late in life after they had almost given up.
And they sure hadn’t planned on him being a little hell raiser. Well, she hadn’t, anyway. Johnny laughed it off as “just being a kid.” He was probably secretly proud of him. Men!
She busied herself firing up her computer and digging out the files she needed as the pot brewed, filling the little kitchenette and lunch room with the aroma of mountain grown. When it had finished its cycle, she poured herself a cup and walked over to the windows looking out over Atlanta. It was a beautiful view from twenty-eight stories up, the urban landscape of the early morning stretching out as far as she could see.
She watched the ribbons of headlights and taillights on the intersecting freeways in constant motion, and the ever changing lights of the digital billboards. She was probably lucky she didn’t have a window in her office, she’d never get any work done. With another sigh, she refilled her cup. Her mind was clear enough from this morning’s argument to get down to doing what she got paid to do and went back to her office, shutting the door behind her.
She looked up when she heard the scream. Had she actually heard it? It was faint, coming from far away. The music from her computer speakers was playing at a low volume, but she had definitely heard something. She glanced up at the clock. Nine fifteen. She did a double take. She should have heard the noise of all of the rest of the office crew coming in a half hour ago.
She stood, grabbing her cup, going after a refill, and to see why it was so quiet. It was usually barely subdued chaos around this time of the morning, with everyone coming in and getting ready to start the day. No phones were ringing, no printers running, no chatter about last night’s game or who was eliminated in the latest talent show.
Had she missed some mandatory meeting? She googled her brain as she walked to the break area. Was today the awards ceremony? No way. That was always held in December. She walked in to see one of the I.T. guys standing at the window, looking out over the city. It was Eric. Nice enough guy.
She walked up to stand beside him. “Where is everybody?” she asked, but trailed off when she saw what he was looking at out of the window. “What the hell?” was all she could say as she took in the cityscape.
The first thing she noticed were the fires. There were dozens of them, spread out everywhere she looked, the flames reaching into the sky and the black smoke billowing.
“What the hell is going on?” she asked dumbly, noticing more the longer she looked. Eric said nothing, just continued to stare as she took it all in. The freeways were at a complete standstill. Pileups and wrecks everywhere. The secondary streets were jammed, too. She thought she could see people running and attacking each other, but from this high up, it was hard to make out exactly what was going on.
“Are we at war?” she asked, but Eric just continued to stare out at the chaos, in some kind of shock. “Eric?!” she said, and shook him by the arm. He ignored her, just continued to stare. She looked back over the city, at the stalled and clogged roads, at the fires burning unchecked in the residential neighborhoods.
“Eric!” she yelled this time, but there was still no response. She needed information. She left him standing there and ran back to her office, the coffee refill forgotten. She logged on to the network, entered her password for outside access and started searching the web for anything on the local news channels.
There were no local channels. The live streams of the morning shows were down. All of them. And that was scarier than seeing all the fires. One search led to another, and all too quickly, she had a world view of what was happening. People coming back from the dead. Invincible to bullets.
Mad mobs of screaming, leaping, hordes killing everything in their path. She tried to call Johnny. All circuits busy. She tried to call Jessie. All circuits busy. She clasped her hands in front of her face as she watched live video feeds from different cameras around the state, then around the country and then around the globe. She tried to call Johnny again. She tried to call Jessie again. She needed to go get him. He was shut up in that room in detention. If the city was in chaos, the suburbs must be, too. Her mind raced. The roads were gridlocked, there was no way to even move along them. She needed a motorcycle.
Hell, she needed her gun that was in the glove box of her car down in the parking garage. She watched the live streaming cameras from different cities. She wanted to know what she was up against. She watched them tearing and biting, watched them leap inhuman distances and take people down with inhuman strength.
Her analytical mind went into overdrive, already discarding the simple explanations that didn’t ring true. She wasn’t being pranked. It wasn’t rioting mobs of college kids celebrating a basketball game. It wasn’t a political protest. It wasn’t Black Lives Matter or the Ku Klux Klan. It wasn’t aliens doing this. It was other people. People she saw with grievous injuries, people with arms completely ripped off, and still attacking.
She was watching a zombie uprising. She didn’t know if the books and movies were true, that the only thing that could kill a zombie was a shot to the head, but she would take that as a truth for now. And definitely avoid being bitten. Had the government known something like this could happen? Is that why there were so many zombie TV shows and movies and books?
Is that why even the CDC had a “ho
w to prepare for a zombie outbreak” booklet on their website? She was thinking too much like some of her Internet friends now. A conspiracy for everything, and everything a conspiracy. Wonder if there’s any tin foil in the kitchen so I can make a hat? She slapped herself mentally. “Get it together, girl. This is real. Don’t skiz out.”
They had a sign hanging on a tree in their driveway. It had a picture of a gun and said, “We don’t call 911” on it. She dialed anyway, not really expecting anything and got another “all circuits are busy.”
She needed a weapon. And protective clothing. She couldn’t get bit. Part of her mind was screaming at her, “Are you retarded? A zombie apocalypse?” but the other part was cold and analytical. Sorting the images and video she had seen, compiling it with what was outside the window. It was absolute civilization ending chaos.
No one was going to come rescue them. Maybe in a few days, when things settled down, but right now it was every man for himself. She was going into Mama Bear mode. Her baby needed her.
She was in her office, mind racing on what was the best course of action to get to the school to get her son. She had nixed the idea of stealing a motorcycle, too dangerous. She had seen the way those ghouls had leaped and run at anything that was still human on the traffic camera feeds around the city.
They would pull her off in a heartbeat. She needed something big. Something that could drive down sidewalks and knock the little cafe tables and chairs out of the way. Run over parking meters, if necessary. A Hummer. Maybe some urban cowboy’s pickup truck that had a bull bar up front. The parking garage attendants had keys to a lot of the vehicles, the ones that were on the lower levels in valet and long term parking areas. Maybe there was a truck down there. She knew you couldn’t hot wire one like they do on TV all the time.
Johnny was always quick to laugh at those situations every time one came up, talking to the television and asking, “What about the locked steering column? What about the chip in the key? How are you going to release the shifter?” until she would have to elbow him to get him to be quiet.
She was looking around, trying to see what could be used as a weapon before heading down to the garage when she heard a commotion in the lobby.
“Crap!” She should have locked the doors! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Her office was devoid of anything that could be used to hurt someone. No ball bats, no heavy art objects. Not even an umbrella. Her eyes fell on the shelves along one wall. The office came with its own bookcases when she had moved up a notch on the corporate ladder a few years ago.
However, one of the first things she had done was add a few shelves to hold some of her photos and plants. Holding those shelves up were large L-shaped brackets picked up from Home Depot and screwed into the wall. She ran over, swiping everything off and onto the ground, the clatter of crashing planters and breaking picture glass loud in her ears. Louder than what she heard down the hall, shouts and sounds of furniture being tipped and drug around.
She ripped the shelves off the brackets easily enough, but had to struggle to work the screws out of the walls. They finally broke free and she bent them hurriedly into U shapes and gripped one in each hand. She had something now that could be shoved into the face of any attacker. It wasn’t much, but it was better than the little key ring knuckle duster she had in her purse.
She went quickly to the door and inched it open, trying to see both ways down the hallway. The only noises she heard were still coming from the lobby, but she caught voices. It sounded like Mr. Sato, his English was good, but he still carried a distinct Japanese accent. She ran toward them to see if she could help, it sounded like they were blocking the doors. As she rounded the corner, somebody saw her and screamed, then she saw Phil turn and bring his gun up toward her.
“Whoa, Whoa, Whoa!” she yelled, holding her hands up, the brown shelf brackets wrapped around them looking like little spears. She could see where they had drug desks and filing cabinets over to the glass doors, blocking them. Outside in the corridor, she saw mangled people in business suits and dresses beating on the doors, trying to force their way through. There weren’t many, maybe eight or ten, but seeing them up close for the first time drained the color from her face. It was worse than anything she could have imagined. The fury as they fought each other to get to the living was unreal and unrelenting. They were tearing each other apart out there. As she watched, a man in a shredded suit pulled a huge hank of hair out of a woman who was pressed against the glass, trying to force her way through. She was jerked backward and the suited man took her place, his bloodied hands and face against the door, smearing it with gore from the handful of bloody scalp he still clung to. The pounding was relentless, but the doors shouldn’t break, they were tempered safety glass and they were in steel frames. They’ll hold, she told herself. There were a half dozen people in the lobby and they quickly went back to stacking and dragging things in front of the door. She joined in, tipping over a bookcase and struggling with it, until Phil came over and helped her put it in place. After a few minutes, they had a substantial barrier that went all the way from the doors to the solid wood at the base of the receptionist’s desk. There was no way for the doors to open now, but if the glass broke… well, that was a different story. Those things could probably force their way through the pile of office furniture if it did.
Lacy looked around at the frightened, sweaty faces. She recognized a few by sight, but the only ones she knew were her boss, Mr. Sato, Eric, and Phil. He was one of the security guards that manned the station on the ground floor. He was a burly black man, quick to laugh and smile, but also quick to run off anyone causing trouble or panhandling on the sidewalk out front. He had been the first person she had met years ago when she entered the building, slightly scared and slightly desperate, resume in hand. He had escorted her to the 28th story and on the way up in the long elevator ride that seemed to stop at every floor, they had struck up a friendship. It was him, more than her carefully prepared resume, that had gotten her the job. Plenty of qualified applicants had applied, but he had walked her right past reception and directly into the Human Resources office. Told the HR director this was the one, he had a feeling about her. Then he nodded and walked out, heading back to his post. She had really, really needed the job. Johnny had been kicked out of the Army over that incident in Afghanistan nearly two years before, and had been unable to find work. Their savings was gone, her 401k cashed in. She had gotten the job and she had thanked him profusely. Even bought him a new holster for his gun with her first paycheck, when she noticed his was looking a little threadbare.
“Everybody get away from the doors,” Phil said. “If they don’t see us, maybe they’ll wander off.”
“I’ve got coffee in the break room,” Lacy said, “Everybody, this way,” and led the unfamiliar people away from the receiving area and toward the lunch room. The coffee was still hot, but it was going on three hours old. No one seemed to care as they got their cups and either sat down looking exhausted, or wandered over to the window to stare out at the chaos. Anyone that had a phone was trying to dial numbers and then sharing with the ones that didn’t. No one was getting through.
“What happened downstairs, Phil?” Lacy asked as he was the last to pour, doctoring his cup up with plenty of sugar and milk.
He didn’t look over at her, just slowly stirred and poured, methodically making his coffee just the way he liked it.
“It happened fast, Mizz Lacy,” he said. “There was a disturbance outside and Jerry went over to see what was going on. We had both just come on duty and I was still running over the paperwork for shift change. One minute, the early birds was coming in like normal, the next…The next, everybody done gone crazy. I saw Jerry go down when he tried to break up a fight. I saw him fall, saw his head get ripped nearly clean off. Saw enough blood shoot out of him to kill any man. Before I could get to the door, I saw him get back up and start running after people. Biting them.”
Lacy didn’t say anything. Didn’t know i
f there was anything to say to that. She dumped the remainder of the coffee out in the sink and started making another pot.
“They was a few people running for the doors and I let them in and locked up behind them. We was all just standing around, not believing what we was seeing. Then some guy came running at us from across the lobby, crazy like the ones outside. I put two bullets in him and he didn’t even slow down. Jumped on old Mrs. Carlton from fourteenth floor. I ran up and put one in his head before he would stop chewing on her.”
Lacy poured the water into the Brewmaster and dug the coffee and filters out of the cabinet, listening with dread and a feeling of sickness in her stomach.
“We tried to help her, stop the bleeding and such. They’s a first aid kit at the security desk,” he went on, almost in a monotone, his language slipping back to the way he used to talk on the streets before he had landed this job in the corporate world. He was remembering, but trying not to see it again in his mind’s eye. “But she turned into one of them, too. By the time we had the bandages on, she was trying to bite me. Only took one bullet that time, though. I knew where to shoot.”
He hadn’t taken a sip of his coffee yet, still stirred the already thoroughly mixed contents.
Lacy hit the button on the machine to get the next pot started and laid a hand on his massive arm, stopping the stirring action. She squeezed, no words possible, no words needed. Phil seemed to shake himself internally, gave her a half smile and put the cup to his lips, blowing to cool it down a little.
“That’s when Mr. Sato from twenty-eighth said he had a satellite phone in his office,” he went on. “Everybody was trying to call and no one was getting anything other than busy signals, or not even that, just being disconnected before it would ring. So we started to head up here. But while we were waiting for the elevators, a bunch of those crazies came in through the mezzanine entrance. I didn’t have enough bullets to take them all down, so we ran for the stairs. There were a lot more of us in the lobby when this all started, Mizz Lacy. I don’t know if they split off and hid, or if they got taken down in the stairwell. I was first in, maybe I should have been last. I don’t know. I was just trying to make us a path up here. We went up to the third floor and ran to the elevators there. We made it in, but when we got out here, there were a bunch of them in the hallway. The rest of the story you know. That’s about when I almost shot you.” He grinned a little. “Glad I didn’t,” he added.
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