Eaters (2 page)

“Maybe you should call in sick today.”

“Call in sick? I can’t. Not after a four-day weekend. That wouldn’t look very good to my boss. I already took a vacation day last Thursday, so we could have this long weekend together.”

“Well…go to work then. Maybe your boss will close up early and send everyone home.”

“I doubt it. Schrumer’s got his feathers ruffled about some new regulations that might cost us some big bucks. He scheduled a meeting with all the agents today.”

Mark glanced over at her, long enough to make her uncomfortable as they approached a curve.

“Why are you looking at me like that? Watch the road!”

He faced his eyes forward again then he began tapping his fingers on the steering wheel like he was keeping up with the beat of some music in his head…or counting something.

“Look, I’ll go in. If there’s really something serious going on, I’m sure I’ll be leaving in short order.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice a thousand miles away. “You’re right.”

Suddenly, she had a horrible premonition that the reunion with Mark was really a farewell. Was he trying to spend as much time with her as possible before breaking off their engagement and revealing that he’d met some woman in the military that he was leaving her for? She tried to reassure herself that there was no evidence to indicate that. His letters and phone calls for the last year had been frequent, loving, and consistent. She should be more positive…think about their future together. But, a nagging little voice in her head reminded her,
worst case scenarios do happen.

When they reached her apartment in Golden, he remained stolid and told her to go ahead and get ready for work while he started unpacking.

After she got in the shower, the warm water coursing over her felt so good, it was like a rebirth to her weary and filthy body. She closed her eyes and let it stream over her face, taking longer than she knew she should.

When she opened them, she was startled by a dark figure right next to the shower door.

The door slid open, and a naked Mark stepped inside. He wasted no time nestling into her neck from behind. “You really could stay home today…”

She turned to face him and put her arms around his neck, feeling a surge of optimism. “Yeah? If I did, I wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow.”

He pulled her closer. “You’re probably right.”

“Do you know the kind of crap I’d get from some of the jerk-offs in the office if I came back with a limp?”

He laughed. Then, he slid his hands down her back, coating it with the slippery suds of coconut body wash.

Chapter Two

Cheryl’s drive to work was horrendous. Impatient drivers cut her off, horns honked, and she saw at least three people run red lights. She wondered if it was the full moon causing the erratic behavior.

She turned on the radio, but after finding two stations in the middle of commercials and another yakking about a political battle, she turned it off, figuring that she’d better keep her mind focused on the idiots on the road anyway.

When she got to her work parking lot, she was elated to find a spot in the front row. After parking, she quickly grabbed her purse and briefcase and locked the door with her key fob as she walked towards the agency.

Her gait slowed when she noticed a man hunched over, sitting on the curb. He wore a long black basketball jersey and jeans, spiffed up by an array of gold chains around his neck. He was mumbling something to himself and rocking back and forth.

Seeing the bling, she ruled out
homeless
. She worried that he might be a purse-snatcher with some dramatic ruse to approach her or an addict withdrawing from some sort of drug. She began a wide arc around him to get up to the sidewalk.

He kept rocking as she passed.

Relieved, she kept walking and—

He ran up and grabbed her sleeve from behind.

“Hey!” she shouted.

He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes, so red that she could hardly see any white around the hazel centers. His lower lids sagged down, revealing moist, sallow flesh underneath, and there were flakes of flesh peeling away from his pink skin underneath the black stubble on his cheeks. He didn’t say anything—he just looked at her with a cocked head in some sort of silent desperation. Then, his nose wrinkled, and he sniffed her like a dog checking out a stranger.

“Get away from me!” She yanked her arm away and ran the last few feet for the door.

Once inside, she whipped around and looked back through the glass door. He hadn’t followed. He was just standing there, now slightly bent over and crooked, staring at her with his mouth hung open, as if he was just as surprised as she was at the encounter.

As she turned around towards the lobby, she said, “Did you see…?”

No one was at any of the desks.

She had a second of elation.
Maybe, Schrumer let everyone have the day off—

Mr. Schrumer popped out of his office before her wishful thinking got any further.

“Oh, Cheryl. Good. I’m glad you’re here. Half the office called in sick today. I know there’s some bug going around, but I can’t believe they’ve all got it. They’re either all hypochondriacs or just paranoid.” He threw his hands up in the air, sloshing coffee out of his mug. “I’ve got a goddamn business to run here. We need to meet today to talk about those new regulations…”

She nodded as he followed her towards her office. “Yes, I know.” Before she turned the corner in the hall, she glanced back over his shoulder towards the front window. The man outside was gone.

“Bob’s here, but I’m waiting for Lanny and Paul to get their tails in here. They’re both running late, and neither of them has called.”

“Who else is here?”

“Just you, me, John, Mary, and Robert.”

Good
, she thought. The water cooler gossips were out. Maybe, she’d actually get some work done.

“Meeting starts at 10:00 sharp. I want to get a plan going today. That Lanny better get his butt in here and Paul…”

Cheryl laughed and shook her head as he walked off still talking to himself.

Before she had her things put away and her computer warmed up, the phone rang. She didn’t answer it. There was way too much prep to do for the meeting to risk getting into a new claim with a client. Looking at the flashing red light on the voicemail button, she already had a feeling that this was going to be one backed up, busy day. She knew there were a half dozen messages waiting to tell her about fender benders and roofs that caught on fire from stray bottle rockets.

Cheryl got down to work, and it seemed like only twenty minutes had passed when Schrumer buzzed her for the meeting, though it had been two hours, she realized. She sighed as she grabbed a stack of folders, a clean legal pad, and her pen, and made her way towards the conference room.

Lanny brushed past her on the way. “Crazy traffic! Took me forever to get up here from the south side.”

Considering her own commute and his rush to get to the bathroom, she believed him.

Mr. Schrumer and Bob were already seated as she walked into the small room that barely fit the long board table and chairs. Lanny joined them a couple minutes later with a mouthful of apologies and a ranting unabridged traffic report.

Schrumer’s impatience was evident by the reddening of his face. “Where’s—”

Before he could finish his sentence, a shadow fell across the table. They all looked up and saw Paul leaning against the doorframe.

“Well, I’m glad you could join us,” Schrumer said, holding his hand out in a mocking welcome gesture.

Paul didn’t seem prepared to deliver one of his famous comebacks. As he stumbled towards the table, it was obvious to Cheryl that he wasn’t feeling well, even if Schrumer didn’t seem to notice. His face was red, and there were shiny beads of sweat on his forehead. He looked like he might lurch over, head first, at any moment.

“I…I’m sorry,” he mumbled, falling into the nearest chair.

Schrumer stacked the papers in front of him and tapped them on the table to straighten them. “Alright, then. Let’s talk about these regulations. We’re going to lose a buttload of…”

Cheryl tried to focus on what he was saying, but Paul was sitting straight across from her, staring at her with glassy, vacant eyes. His mouth hung open, and he took raspy breaths through it as if he couldn’t breathe at all through his nose. She imagined a green cloud of germs emanating from his lungs and leaned back in her chair to increase the distance away from him. What was that she’d heard earlier on the radio about an epidemic? All she could remember was something about flu-like symptoms and—

“Cheryl!”

She snapped out of it and looked towards Schrumer on the right side of the table.

“What did you find out about the new flood plain zones? Weren’t you researching that?”

She looked down and fumbled through her folder.
Where was that report?

“Well, while you’re trying to get it together, maybe Paul can tell us—”

Paul turned toward Schrumer and looked above his head as if seeing something strange hovering above it then he slumped over onto the table with a thud.

“Paul?” they all said in unison.

When he didn’t respond, Bob went over and leaned down near him. “Hey man, you alright?”

He didn’t move.

Bob grabbed his shoulder and gave it a shake. “Paul?”

Schrumer didn’t look concerned. He looked pissed. Sitting back, he folded his arms over his chest. “So much for my important meeting.”

When Bob couldn’t rouse Paul, Cheryl said, “We’d better call 911.”

No one moved for a couple of seconds as if they were wondering if Paul was just playing some sort of practical joke. There was plenty of history for that. He’d once put a frog in Schrumer’s desk and tied all the toilet seats in the ladies restroom in the upright position. His pranks had all the aplomb of a pimple-faced Boy Scout who’d never matured any further past puberty. But this was obviously not any sort of joke.

Cheryl expected someone closer to the door to rush to a phone, but everyone was still frozen. “Bob? Call…now…please.”

He sprinted out the door.

Lanny cocked his head sideways and studied Paul’s still form. “What…what if he needs CPR?”

Schrumer huffed. “I’m not touching him.”

“Me neither,” Lanny said. Then, he turned and looked at Cheryl. “You took a class once, didn’t you?”

Shit.

Yeah. She did. It was a prerequisite for a part-time job she had helping out at a nearby preschool before she landed the insurance gig.

With lead-filled feet, she got up and inched around the table towards Paul.
What was wrong with him? What if he was contagious?
She stopped a foot away, not wanting to get any closer without donning a biohazard suit.

“What are you going to do?” Schrumer demanded.

“I don’t know. Just check him, I guess.”

She went closer and peered at him, able to see just the tip of his nose and purplish lips underneath a lock of black hair. She touched his hand, expecting it to be raging hot from a fever. But, it was cold…as cold as an ice cube. She put two fingers on the underside of his wrist and found no pulse.
Did that mean…?

Bob rushed back. “I can’t get through.”

Cheryl tensed. “What do you mean? The line is busy?”

“No. It just rings and rings. No one answers.”

Schrumer shook his head. “Government budget cuts. They oughta—”

Cheryl was about to tell him to keep trying, when she heard Paul moan.

Oh, thank God.

She reached for his hand again. “Paul…”

Still cold
. He moaned again, but his body remained still.

Mary, Schrumer’s secretary, popped in. “What’s going on in here?”

“It’s Paul. Call 911. Stay on the line until someone answers. He needs an ambulance.”

She rushed off, and Cheryl tried to rouse Paul again. “Hey…how are you—”

Paul slowly raised his head and made a sound like a grunt. From behind, she couldn’t see his face, but Schrumer and Lanny could. They stared at him with gaping mouths.

“Paul…” she said, reaching out to touch his shoulder, “are you okay?”

His head panned around towards her.

She gasped and took a step backwards.

His eyes had rolled up into his head, leaving behind nothing but an eerie solid milky white. He was frozen like that for a second, then the eyes slid back down. The blue irises and pupils were cloudy. They looked at her but seemed to see nothing. It was the gaze of a sleepwalker, viewing some dreamlike inner world instead of his surroundings.

Paul’s eyes were so disturbing. Cheryl took another step back, tripped, and twisted her ankle before regaining her balance.

His skin was extraordinarily pale, not the normal tanned hue of the weekend tennis player. Red blotches began to bloom on his face and hands. They quickly rose into welts that looked angry and ready to burst.