Bitten (4 page)

Suddenly the door handle began to rattle uncontrollably. She screamed as she fumbled to get a tighter grip on the
juddering handle. An imminent terror overcame her as she realized she couldn’t hold it for very long. To her great relief Jesse abruptly returned with a mop and wedged it into the door handle. “That ought to hold him, for now.”

“Thank god.
For a moment there, I actually thought that you might have left me here.”

Jesse looked at her,
took her hand, and said, “We’d better find another way out of here. It won’t hold that son of a bitch for long.”

H
aving retreated to a back office, they had managed to barricade the office doors with a jumble of file cabinets, office chairs, tables, and computers, and waited for something else to happen. Although the barricade was literally thrown together in slapdash fashion, it would keep the monsters at bay, at least for the time being.

“Looks like we’re stuck here,” Zanato said.

Jennifer sighed. Zanato was probably right, she thought. They certainly weren’t going anywhere. Not anytime soon. Not with those creatures out there waiting to chew their faces off. Walking over to the blinds, Jennifer poked her fingers in and spread them open so she could see out.

“What the hell are you doing?”
Zanato cried out in a loud, half panicked, whisper. Leaping over some chairs he immediately slapped her hands away from the blinds. Jennifer stepped back and just shot Jesse an irritated look.

“I
just wanted to see if they’re still out there.”

“Of course they’re still out there. They’re always fucking out there!”
he bemoaned. “They’ve been out there for fucking three and a half hours!”

Jennifer walked over to the windows overlooking the
city streets below. They were stuck on the forty-ninth floor of the Newcastle City Bank and the law firm offices of Callahan & Salinger. The building was an eighty story high-rise made of steel and pristine glass. It was a glistening monument at the heart of Newcastle city, but with one minor flaw, it had no way down. Every exit had been infiltrated by a horde of flesh eating zombies, and now the two of them were confined to the large meeting room at the corner of some random office.

Hurley flicked on the television, but the only thing on
were emergency channels and horrible high pitched tones which compelled her to promptly turn it back off. She didn’t want to arouse any more attention than Jesse and her had already brought to themselves.

“What the hell happened to everyone?” Jennifer asked.

“Fuck if I know,” replied Zanato.

“Yesterday was all birds chirping and kids going to school and—”

“People fucking,” Zanato interrupted with a snicker.

Ignoring his sa
d attempt at some ribald humor, she went on. “Yeah, normal shit like that. And today it’s like … the end of the bloody world. People are killing each other. Worse. They are practically eating one another!”

Zanato pretended to listen, but he had blocked
out her hysterical jabbering minutes ago. Now his mind just hummed with random thoughts of what he’d like to do to her if given the chance.

Noticing that the meeting room had a water cooler and coffee a maker, Jennifer felt comforted. At least they could stay alive long enough for help to arrive. As long as those things didn’t get in, they’d be safe.

Jennifer pushed an extra table over to the windows overlooking the cityscape and took out her burgundy lipstick. Zanato watched her curiously as she climbed up onto the table and stuck out her beautifully formed ass. In giant block letters she scribbled “Help Us” on the large panoramic glass which overlooked Newcastle City.

Zanato cleared his throat, as if to get Jennifer’s attention. She either didn’t hear him or was too focused on the task at hand. He cleared his throat again, this time making it louder. Pausing, Jennifer turned toward him and asked, “Well, what is it?”

“You’re writing it backwards.”

Jennifer just gazed at him in dismay.

“It’s not for us, genius. It’s for the people out there, you know, on the other side of the glass.” Jennifer pointed out the window toward the urban backdrop behind her.

“Still, it’s the wrong way around.”

“It’s supposed to be backwards, genius.”

A vacant look came across Zanato’s face. Then he frowned as he struggled to make sense of it all. Jennifer laughed at the fact that his pea-sized brain just couldn’t figure it out.

“It’s like the writing on an ambulance, it’s supposed to be backwards,” informed Jennifer with a laugh. “On the other side of the glass the letters appear the right way around.”

Using his hand as a 2-D representation of the glass, Zanato looked at the front and panned to the back of his hand. He did it again just to be sure what he was picturing in his head was correct. After thinking about it
for a moment, his eyes lit up. “Ohhh, I get it now.”

Jennifer Hurley laughed again, not because he was intentionally funny, but because he was so sad. She wondered to herself how on god’s green earth would this idiot ever survive
the day?

Feeling embarrassed by his display of ignorance, Zanato rubbed the back of his head and did his best to simulate a convincing laugh. Better to play the part of the charming fool than to be a dick and get all defensive, he thought. Besides, Zanato desperately wanted back into her panties. The elegant tattoo of a
blue monarch butterfly which hovered above her perfectly formed ass enticed him even further. She probably didn’t even realize how unbelievably hot she was.

Jennifer got up onto the table and stood on her toes to get the high areas
of the tall panels of glass, and began filling in the letters with bright red lipstick. Zanato stared intensely at how her skirt hugged her perfectly formed figure. She was the kind of woman he couldn’t take his eyes off of. Everything about her seemed to generate sexual tension, everything from her butterfly tat to the way she swiveled her hips when she walked. Even the fact that she was smarter than him made him aroused.

Attempting to take his mind off of her, Zanato went over to the water cooler to get
himself a drink. As he turned to look out at the cityscape he suddenly saw a shiny glint. “Whoa! Did you see that?”

“See what?” Jennifer asked as she
climbed down off the table and peered out the window with him. Jesse raised a finger and pointed across to the building several blocks away. “Over there. Do you see it?”

Jennifer strained her neck
but she didn’t see anything. Without warning, a hot white flicker of light flashed.

“There it is again,” said Zanato.

“I see it!” Hurley replied with excitement.

“It’s some kind of light.”

“It’s more than that,” Jennifer replied. “It’s a message. Somebody must be using a hand mirror to signal for help.”

“What should we do?” Zanato inquired.

Jennifer looked at him and then back out at the flickering flashes of light.

“We have to go to them.”

“Are you crazy?!” Zanato threw his arms back in dismay. Pointing at his forehead he asked, “Are you out of your feakin’ mind?”

“Think about it. We have no way of communicating with them. I doubt they can see the writing from all the way over there. Besides, we can’t stay here forever.”

“I thought you said we would be better off just laying low until help arrived.”

“That was then. This is now.”

“So what’s changed exactly?” Zanato put his hands on his hips and waited for an answer. Jennifer looked back out across the cityscape and saw the flickering light repeat the same pattern.

“The odds,” Jennifer replied in all seriousness.

Zanato threw his hands up into the air. “The odds? What the hell are you talking about?”

“Look,” Jennifer said with authority, “I got my degree in accounting, so I’m pretty good with numbers. We can risk staying here, and hope someone comes for us, and wait around to either starve to death or be eaten by those things. Or we can take our chances and meet them halfway.”

“Fine,” pouted Zanato. Thumbing over his shoulder at the closed shades which hid the hideous zombies on the other side, he asked, “So how the hell do you expect to make it past the monster squad?”

Jennifer walked over to the corner window and ran her hands along the window sill.

“I have an idea,” she said with a slight smile.

“I don’t think I like where th
is is headed,” Zanato informed as Jennifer popped open the lock and pushed the window open. “Yeah, I definitely do not like where this is headed.”

Turning back toward Zanato, Jennifer motioned with her hands as if to say, “After you.”

“You’re out of your freaking mind if you expect me to go out there at this height. One misstep and we’re pancake batter, squashed into oblivion. Hello pavement. Goodbye world. Thanks, but no thanks.”

Approaching the window with a macho swagger, Zanato made a valiant effort to look fearless. Jennifer struggled hard not to
laugh. Peering out over the ledge he paused and then looked back at Jennifer. “You’ll be the death of me. You know that, right?”

“We’ll see,” Jennifer replied
in a playfully devious tone. Then she feigned to push Zanato out of the window. Overreacting he gripped the window sill with white knuckled terror and screamed.

“Not funny,” he mumbled as he gathered himself together and stepped back a few feet away from the ledge. Zanato motioned with his hands f
or Jennifer to go ahead of him. “Ladies first.”

“What a gentleman,” Jennifer said with a touch of sarcasm.

“Hey, what goes around comes around.”

“
I suppose so,” Jennifer replied as she peered down the edge of the skyscraper. Looking back at Zanato she winked. “Well, here goes nothing,” she said, and stepped out onto the ledge.

Breathing a sigh of relief
, Alyssa spotted her car and limped over to the lavender Toyota Prius. Edging up to the driver’s side door she tugged on the handle but it was locked.

Feeling her pockets, she realized too late that t
he keys were probably still inside one of the pockets of her lab coat. “You’ve gotta be friggin’ kidding me!” Alyssa grumbled in frustration. Nothing was going right today.

Looking
back, flames jetted out of the clinic’s windows and smoke wound its way into the blue sky, and Alyssa realized that she wouldn’t be retrieving her car keys anytime soon.

To make matters worse,
Alyssa knew that it would be too difficult to walk all the way back into town, given the condition she was in. By foot it was over an eight mile hike. She’d have to call a taxi to come pick her up. She pulled out her cell phone to call someone but it flashed the warning signal that only five percent battery life remained. Instead of risking the phone shutting itself off mid call, she turned it off and tucked it into her side pocket. She’d have to find another way to get ahold of a taxi.

Hobbling down the street she made her way
toward the Seven Eleven down by the junction. It was no more than a mile away, and she felt that she could tough it until she was able to use their payphone.

Entering the convenience store
she promptly headed toward the payphone on the back wall. Picking up the receiver she began to dial, but there was no response. All she heard was a dial tone. “What was going on with the phones today,” she wondered out loud.

Agitated,
Alyssa slammed the received back into its cradle. She looked back up at the front counter, but there wasn’t any cashier working. It took her a moment to realize there wasn’t anybody else at all. Scanning the room, she realized that she was alone. The store wasn’t just empty. Come to think of it, apart from Dr. Beckford, she hadn’t set eyes on anybody else at all today. “What the hell is going on here? Where is everybody?”

Alyssa had the strangest feeling that things weren’t right.
Something about the atmosphere and the strange silence that blanketed everything unnerved her. Whatever was going on, she was sure it wasn’t good.

Not wasting any more time,
Alyssa shifted into survival mode and picked up a blue shopping basket and started dumping in supplies from off the shelves. She made sure to get the bottled water first, then bent down to the bottom shelf and found some more hydrogen peroxide and some dental floss. Knowing that she was going to have to make the long trek back into town, she was going to need to redo her stitches and redress her wound.

Standing back up, there was a
suddenly dark figure filling the doorway. Alyssa let out a scream. Catching herself, she began to laugh nervously. “Sorry. You startled me.”

The man didn’t respond. He merely
remained fixed in the doorway, staring at her relentlessly. This unnerved her even more. Slowly, Alyssa started to back away from the entrance way. Making sure to keep her distance, Alyssa cautiously moved toward the end of the aisle, and asked the stranger, “Are you alright? Were you in an accident? Do you need some help?”

The man had on a red flannel shirt and
looked like a trucker come in to get a refill on his morning coffee. Then he stepped forward and came into the light. Alyssa froze in her footsteps as her legs became wooden. Suddenly she was trembling and her breathing became stilted. As the man turned to face her, she saw the blood dripping from the stump of what used to be his left arm. His dark beard was matted with dried blood. That’s when she noticed that his eyes were the same milky white as the doctor’s.

“Gnahhh!” he growled, lunging at her.

Alyssa screamed in fright and stumbled back to dodge his grasping fingers. Barely escaping, she ducked behind the shelf, knocking bags of chips and other items off the shelves as she frantically scurried away. Alyssa ran to the door at the back which read “employees only” and passed through. She immediately locked the door behind her and then made her way to the rear exit.

Stepping outside, Alyssa paused to catch he
r breath. As she looked back up she suddenly saw a group of people, but her relief quickly turned to dismay when she saw their milky-eyed gazes.

The four loiterers standing in the parking lot seemed to be
unaware of their surroundings. Most just stood around loitering, stuck in what appeared to be a drunken stupor. A few of them were drooling uncontrollably down their own chins, while others stared aimlessly up at the sky. Their gazes were unfixed as if they were all caught up in some sort of simple minded daydream.

Of the lethargic group a
corpulent woman with yellow frizzy hair, who wore a blue waitress uniform and a white apron with bloody handprints all over it, looked the worse for wear. One of her eyes was gouged out while the other eyeball was missing the flap of skin where her eyelid used to be. It gave her a crazed look.

“Oh my God,” Alyssa said in a whisper. She couldn’t believe these people were even walking with the sort of injuries they had. But they appeared to have caught the same disease that Dr. Beckford had.

The one-eyed frizzy haired zombie waitress heard Alyssa’s voice and cocked her head to the side. Then she looked right at Alyssa with her one wild eye.

The sight of fresh meat stirred an excited fit of moaning. The waitress’s moans caught the attention of the others, and soon enough all four
sluggish creatures moved clumsily toward her position.

Alyssa
slowly backed up and looked for a way to escape the closing circle but they were too evenly dispersed. Ten paces in every direction with no more than an arm’s length between them. She didn’t dare attempt to cut through them. Not on a bum leg. She wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to out run them.

Deciding that a strategic retreat would be better than getting torn to shreds by a mob of mindless flesh-eaters, Alyssa had no choice but to go back the way she had come. She made sure to lock the door
of the convenience store behind her. Hopefully, that would hold them long enough for her to get the heck out of Dodge.

Alyssa took a deep breath and, from behind,
a hand grabbed her by her shoulder and spun her around. Alyssa screamed. She began swinging her fists furiously at the man standing before her.

“Owe!
Owe! Stop hitting me!” the young black man yelped.

Alyssa pulled back and looked at him with relieved eyes.
“Boy, am I glad to see you!” Alyssa said, trying to catch her breath. He was the first normal person she had seen all day. By his outfit, a clerk’s uniform with the Seven Eleven insignia stitched into it, she guessed he was just late to work. He couldn’t be more than seventeen, she guessed.

“No kidding,” the young man replied. “I came to work
as usual and nobody was here. Not a dang soul. You’re the first normal person I’ve seen all day.”

“Same here.”

“What do you think is going on here?” the kid asked. “Some kind of flu bug? Swine flu? Bird flu maybe?”

Aly
ssa looked at him and shrugged. “I wish I knew.”

“What happened to your leg?” the kid asked, glancing down at Alyssa’s bandages.

“I was attacked.”

“That bites,” the kid answered.
Turning toward the rear exit, he motioned for Alyssa to follow him. “Come on. My car is out back. I’ll give you a lift to the nearest clinic.”

“Wait!” Alyssa cried out. “There are a bunch of
those things back there. I wouldn’t open that door if I were you.”

“Got
cha,” he said. “This way then.” Walking to the doors which led back into the store, he looked back at Alyssa as he turned the door handle and opened it. “We’ll go out the front and walk around.”

Alyssa’s face turned white as a sheet when she realized that the one armed man was
standing directly behind the kid. He didn’t even see it coming. One moment he was looking at Alyssa’s worried face and the next he had razor-sharp teeth biting into his trapezius muscle. With an uncanny strength, the one armed man jerked the clerk’s head back and pulled strands of muscle tissue out from the kid’s neck with his teeth.

Alyssa shrieked
but her screams were drowned out by the clerk’s. The tendons and red meat stretched out like threads of a weaving machine running through the shed of a loom. Alyssa knew she couldn’t go back, so she dashed forward and body-checked the gimp cannibal while the crazed beast continued to feed on the kid’s face.

The one armed man toppled over
the clerk’s still twitching body, and they both crashed to the floor. This afforded Alyssa the opportunity she needed to make her getaway. Stepping over them, she quickly limped to the front of the store and didn’t dare look back.

Stepping outside
her heart pounded in her chest like a jackhammer chipping at concrete as she frantically scanned the parking lot for a car she could break into. That’s when a hand grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back.

Alyssa screamed and ducked out of the way. She evaded
her attacker, who was too clumsy to keep up with her darting and dodging. But the added strain of playing cat and mouse caused her leg to experience sharp pains as the stitches threatened to tear out of her leg-wound.

C
lutching her leg, Alyssa hop-skipped her way over to a nearby pickup truck with the creature nipping at her heels. Thank God, she thought as the door handle clicked open. It was unlocked. Throwing herself into the vehicle, she promptly shut the door behind her and locked it.

The one armed man stood outside the driver’s side window
scratching at the glass, leaving red blood streaks where his recently moistened fingers clawed.

Alyssa
turned her head to see the bloody maw of the one-eyed woman gazing at her from behind the glass of the passenger side window. She couldn’t help shrieking, as if by reflex, but quickly caught herself with cupped hands firmly pressed over tight lips.

Her screams had attracted more of the things, and soon enough s
he found herself surrounded by a small mob of mindless flesh-eating zombies. Moaning impatiently, the monsters clawed at the glass and rocked the truck’s cab violently to and fro.

Hanging on
the back window of the pickup truck was a hunter’s rifle. In her moment of frenzied terror Alyssa hadn’t noticed it there. She smiled. Finally, a streak of good luck, she thought.

Gathering her nerves, she pulled down the rifle, which was heavier than she expected
it to be, and leaned over to check the glove compartment for ammunition. Another stroke of luck! Inside she found some .375 caliber shells for the rifle. What on earth could anyone need such a big gun for, Alyssa wondered. Hunting grizzly bears and moose, in Newcastle? Not likely. But people would rather give up there arm than give up their guns. Thank God for America, she thought, as a drooling armless Joe stared through the blood encrusted window at her.

Alyssa had barely any training with firearms. By barely, she meant practically none. When she was sixteen her uncle had taken her grouse hunting
once, so she remembered enough to get the gun to work. But that was the extent of it.

Hastily dumping the shells out onto the seat, she picked up a hand full and crammed them into her pants pocket. Then she took a couple
of bullets and loaded them into the firing chamber of the rifle, cocked it, and them aimed squarely between the eyes of the one armed man. “Back off, or I’ll shoot!” Alyssa warned, hoping he’d heed her words. But he didn’t listen.

Alyssa slid her finger around the trigger and began to squeeze
down. The thought of actually killing someone, even in self-defense, upset her deeply. She didn’t have a mean bone in her entire body. It’s probably what made her so good with animals. But over the past eight hours she’d killed Dr. Beckford, a whole kennel of infected animals, and now she was pinned down and being attacked by a blood thirsty mob.

Before the day was over, she knew, she’d have to do some more killing. She didn’t like it, but she had no other choice.
These people were clearly crazed. They were eating each other for god’s sake! Now they were trying to eat her too.

With a loud bang, and the shatter of glass,
Alyssa squeezed off a shot. Fracture veins in the safety glass cobwebbed out of the bullet-sized hole, passed through, and pierced Armless Joe’s head. He immediately dropped to the ground, a single bullet hole marking his forehead where the bullet drilled in.

T
he rifle’s kickback threw Alyssa off her balance and she fell backward and slammed into the passenger side door. Walloping her head against the window with a loud crack, she fought hard not to black out. Picking up some bullets, she began reloading the gun. Her trembling fingers made it difficult to slide the shells into the chamber smoothly. They rattled around something fierce as she shivered with fear and adrenaline.

“Shit!” Alyssa cursed as she dropped the bullet she was trying to jam into the chamber. The other zombies were coming for her. This time it was a frizzy haired Jane Doe
, with the crazy eyeball, who was pushing her arms through the broken glass and trying to get at Alyssa.