Wake Up Dead - an Undead Anthology (14 page)

There were three residential mortgage closings on Matt’s desk that day, and he was coming in early because in his quite correct opinion, he was the only
Bremmer Title Associates’
employee that could get anything done. Today was the day, Matt knew, that he would make Mr. Bremmer notice. Today was the day that Mr. Bremmer would finally see how talented Matt was, and how incompetent and worthless that suck-up Jon was. God, how Matt hated the two of them—Bremmer and Jon—always gushing over each other and following each other around while Matt got stuck with all the work. And to add insult to injury, Jon was Matt’s junior! But Jon’s father was a fancy so-and-so and la-di-da and—well, that wasn’t going to matter anymore, not after today.

Each of the three closings was to take place when Jon was out of the office on one of his usual three-hour workout and golf sessions—Matt had seen to that bit of timing. Jon would be dropping the ball—not the golf ball of course, the work ball—and Matt would rise up to save the day. And he would make damn sure that Bremmer noticed.

Matt took another sip of his lousy coffee, which was no longer even lukewarm, unlocked the title company’s door, and walked in. He locked the door behind him, flicked on the lights, and walked past the empty receptionist’s desk toward his own office.

He was beginning to replay one of his favorite fantasies in his head—the one where he beat Jon senseless with the lazy suckup’s own nine iron—when he saw a light coming from the back of the office hallway. He walked closer, and was startled to find that it was coming from Jon’s office.

Jon’s office was tucked away in the back of the floor, and Jon had had the privilege of picking it out because Mr. Bremmer loved him so much—so very, very, nauseatingly much. The position of Jon’s office let the lazy bum sneak in and out unnoticed, avoiding work and leaving Matt to run the business under Mr. Bremmer’s uninvolved and increasingly ungrateful glare.

God, how stupid they all are, Matt thought. That idiot Jon can’t even turn his damn light off.

Sighing in frustration, Matt put his coffee and documents down at his own office’s closed door, then crossed the length of the hall to Jon’s door.

Just as Matt reached his hand in to flick off the lights, he was overcome by a stench so overpowering that it felt like a punch to the gut. His head began to swim, and the shapes around him got fuzzy. He almost retched, but managed to keep his coffee—grinds and all—in his stomach.

So now Jon was keeping rotten food in his office?

That’s exactly something Jon would do, Matt thought.

It wasn’t even five in the morning yet and already Matt felt livid with anger. He clamped his fingers over his nose and resolved to dispose of whatever decaying matter he found within Jon’s office and get right to work. Even if no one else at
Bremmer Title Associates
did anything, Matt had a responsibility to the clients, and he was going to see it through. The work mattered.

Matt walked into Jon’s office, facing the divider that Jon had rigged up so that no one could see his desk from the hallway. When Matt came around the divider, he almost gasped. But the caffeine had started to do its trick and he remembered not to breathe in. Stifling his surprise-fueled want of a breath, Matt looked down, and had to revise his theory as to the source of the odor.

Jon was slumped face down on his desk. Looking at the pale-yellow, viscous fluid that was collecting at the left side of Jon’s head, Matt determined that the smell was vomit.

Great, he thought, now I have to waste my precious time cleaning up after this idiot.

Matt’s eyes darted to the corner of Jon’s office, where a letter opener stood, peeking out of a pencil stand. The letter opener seemed to wink at him, and he considered it for a moment. Wouldn’t that be nice? I could just stab him in the back of the head and end his misery.

Then Matt’s eyes shifted to the golf-bag propped up against the wall. Or, I could grab that nine iron sticking out of the bag, bring it up, and…

That was the better way to do it, he decided, flavorfully ironic.

Matt quickly walked out of the office, unclamped his nose, and took two deep breaths. Then he put his hand back over his nose and went back inside.

“Hey!” Matt yelled with his nose still clamped. “Wake up, it stinks in here.”

Jon moaned, but didn’t move.

“Come on, I have work to do and your stink is distracting. Jon! Jon, come on wake up you can’t do this in here.”

Jon moaned again, softer this time, and his head wobbled a little, then settled back into place. The puddle of pale-yellow fluid was spreading outward, making its way to the edge of the desk.

Then it’ll drip on the floor, Matt thought, and I am not going to be the one to clean it up. I am not.

Matt looked at the clock in Jon’s office and realized he needed to get started on his work. He couldn’t waste any more time trying to deal with Jon. Matt felt himself growing angrier, and the bit of stench that managed to seep past his fingers and into his nose was making him light-headed. He walked to the corner, picked the nine iron out of the bag, and not-so-gently prodded Jon’s shoulder with it.

Jon stirred, moaned, and in an apparent attempt to raise his head, fell off his chair, hit his head on the side of the desk, and landed in an awkward position on his back, with his arms folded together and in front of him, like he had fallen backward into a too-small coffin.

Matt had to stifle a laugh. Maybe Jon was now dead. Maybe his head impacting on the side of the desk had broken his neck. The vomit-laden fiasco may turn out to have a silver lining…no, a
golden
one.

After taking a shallow breath through his mouth, Matt poked Jon again, in the sternum this time, and hard.

That did the trick.

That did the trick in a way that Matt never expected, and in a way that he never intended.

Jon’s eyes shot open, and Matt stumbled backward, knocking something over and almost falling before coming to rest against the wall behind him. Jon’s eyes…they were...they were completely black, even where the whites should have been. It was a dull black, and it made Matt’s stomach drop to look into it, like he was looking into pure, unabashed evil.

Matt’s mind scrambled, trying to think of something to say or do, anything that might make those eyes look away from him, but no thoughts came. He began to feel a muddiness in his brain, and realized that the only thing he wanted to do was to get out of there, close the door behind him, and go back home. He could make some more bad coffee for himself and look for a whole new job—a different one. He decided that he didn’t like title work all that much anyway, the clients were arrogant and insatiable, and—

Before Matt could complete his thought, Jon’s mouth fell open, and a thick yellowish liquid poured out of it, splattering Jon’s button-down. It was a vile thing to see, and then Jon was trying to sit up, and Matt was trying not to breathe.

But he had been holding his breath for too long then, and he had to, he had to take a breath—a full one this time. The hand unclamped from his nose.

Matt inhaled. The smell had gotten so much worse, unspeakably worse.

The office began to spin around him, and a strange numbness began to nip at Matt’s skin, as if trying to find a way in. He continued to hold the golf club in front of him, pressing it against Jon, trying to keep Jon down.

“Don’t get up,” Matt said. “Please don’t get up, I’ll get someone, some help.”

Then Jon grabbed the end of the golf club and pulled, and then—everything was getting fuzzy and that smell—Jon gripped Matt’s elbow, and his grip was so strong, pulling Matt in.

It wasn’t just a numbness now, it was a debilitating, creeping paralysis. In spite of the relative lack of sensation, Matt felt something in his shoulder give way and pop, sending a terrible shooting pain across his collar bone and down the side of his body.

Damn you, Matt thought, damn you and your working out and—

Jon’s straining forearm stuck out of a rolled-up shirt sleeve. The skin of the forearm looked dry as paper, like it was crackling. Lines were forming lengthwise up the forearm, as if the skin was conforming to the muscle strands underneath. Then one of the lines of skin tore inward, and Matt could see muscle fibers ripping over paper-thin skin and—

Matt’s failing mind tried to think of something, something nasty, about how he hated Jon, but he couldn’t quite form the thought with the cotton ball fuzz that was now proliferating in his brain. And what about the forearm, hadn’t it just—

He blinked, and his eyes focused on Jon’s—Jon’s stale black eyes. That was when Matt knew, even through the fuzziness in his brain, that death was only another moment away.

Matt’s eyes were closing again as his dulled sense of touch felt the bite. They tried to reopen in shock, in pain, in anything…but they didn’t.

ANNIVERSARY

Mia Darien

New World Magazine

15 July 2021

Lynn Morris, Correspondent

Ten Years Later: Where Are We Now?

"When a mommy zombie and a daddy zombie love each other very much, the two go out and eat brains together. This, believe it or not, was the cause of 99% of the zombie outbreaks in the world.

First, the daddy puts his you-know-what, you-know-where. Then the mommy zombie puts her hands on the you-should-know-what. Then the pair twist, and the brains are ready for eating. The only detractor to this is that the you-know-what likes to scream and shout and try to knock your head off, or worse, has a shotgun. This makes their decapitation and consumption of their organs difficult.

What, you didn't think they had sex, did you?"

-
'Understanding our Reanimated Brethren
' by Andrew Walters, PhD (Anthropology)

Irreverent and often light-hearted, Andrew Walters, long time Zombie activist and current spokesman for ZAPT (Zombies Are People Too), takes an in depth look at the present state of zombie affairs in the United States. Having been considered obsessive and extreme in his research during the 1990s, those traits seem to serve him well in his new pro-zombie position, where extreme emotions and actions are commonplace. While he has many followers, there remains a large population in this country who are strictly against the ever-growing rights of zombies in the U.S.

I had the chance to meet and speak with people from both sides for this exclusive 'anniversary' retrospective. For two days, I met with Walters at his research camp outside containment zone forty-nine, which was the city of Seattle until six years ago, after the last human survivors were evacuated and it was declared a Zombie Zone by the then new zombie legislation. His camp currently consists of several trailers and a lot of equipment, not all of which is he willing to explain to me, citing that "results are more important than technique."

"As a country, we are blessed with many enlightened, compassionate people," Walters told me while we sat in his trailer. "People who are able to look past the present into what the future of science can be." He was reviewing the latest tracking from the Seattle zone, trying to see if there was any discernible pattern to zombie movements. As he reveals in his book, each containment area shows different patterns, leading to the idea that there is an environmental influence on the zombie population. Walters' current research seeks to prove that hypothesis and, if able to do so, try to find causes behind it.

"It is possible to contain the threat without killing, with a little effort and compassion," Walters says. "It is sad to see that so many people lose sight of the fact that these zombies are our friends, our co-workers, and our loved ones. We shouldn't be looking for ways to kill them, but for ways to help and understand them."

I immediately questioned him regarding the concerns of the anti-zombie groups, who say that zombies are too big a threat to safely contain.

Walters is fervent in his beliefs. When I asked the question, he banged his fist on his desk and laughed. "That is precisely what I'm saying, though!" he went on. "The threat can be controlled, so long as we contain the areas and act wisely. We've found ways to do that. There is no reason to execute the poor creatures when we can learn more about them."

I asked him if it was the belief of ZAPT that we could possibly bring them back; make them the way they were. He smiles sadly. "No, we don't believe that," he says. "But just because we cannot have them back as they were does not mean that they deserve to die a second time. They are simply a new species." His eyes light up with excitement. "Think about it. When those two pilots didn't alert the ground at LAX before landing about the situation in their plane, they were bringing in the next scientific advancement: a new species!"

I pointed out that it also caused years worth of mayhem and devastation. He waves a hand at this. "Mayhem and devastation have been happening for years, but it's never before brought a new species."

After our conversation, I was permitted the rare chance of going to the observation posts that Walters and his team have in place around the containment area. These structures are only ten feet off the ground, but the entrances into them are secure and thorough.

From the post, it's possible to see into the containment area. I was able to see several clumps of zombies as they dredged slowly through the zone, often colliding with one another and then moving on without having noticed.

To see into the center of the area, the watch posts that surround the perimeter connect to surveillance cameras deeper inside.

"Occasionally we do lose a camera," Walters answers my question. "But we have a trained team that works with a helicopter that ZAPT owns. We have to use it sparingly because of the fuel shortages following the 2016 outbreaks in the Middle East, but our team is highly trained and able to work with record time. Cameras have been positioned high enough to do this in relative safety, despite the appetite of the subjects on the ground. It's just like observing any sort of wild animal in its natural habitat."