Medora: A Zombie Novel (4 page)

“Janice, Janice what are you doing! You have to stop
. You’re sick and you don't know what you're doing.” Keith began to move towards her but the bald man cut him off and approached her first, pulling her arm and body away from the wall. She quickly looked at him and brought her massive balled up fist right down on top of his head. He sank to the ground and at the same time, tripped Janice who fell on top. She started a barrage of pounding, raising one arm followed by sloppy blows to his face. She breathed heavily while stringy drops of mucous rained down on his suit from above. The violent thrusting of her body shook her high heels off, exposing her stalky feet. Keith saw her matted, blood soaked hair on the back of her head and crimson colored streaks staining the back of her dress. He leaped over a chair and yanked her from off the top of the man who now lay unconscious with his legs crumpled up to his side.

Janice rolled onto her back and looked vaguely in Keith's direction. It was only later, after reflecting on the episode that Keith realized a subtle yet profound change in her face. Her
eyelids were droopy and her eyes didn't run in parallel when she moved them. It was as if she had two lazy, rebellious eyes, which were no longer attached to the processes of the brain. Her slackened jaw made her mouth permanently ajar, which resulted in the complete absence of a chin. It appeared as if the skin on her entire face was clinging loosely to the skull, as if she had the face of a plastic doll melting away in the sun.

Janice started to kick upward, her legs running on an invisible bicycle. The futile assault was intended for Keith. Keith turned to the other two men who
had remained seated. “We need to get him out of here. He’s not conscious. Come grab him by the shoulders and slide him out now!” Once someone had actually given an order, they looked at each other and circled around the table to the bald man on the floor. They walked with their bodies slanted away from Janice to avoid the relentless kicking. Picking him up by either end, they made their way out of the conference room. The bald man’s gut had come unbound from the confines of his belt and shirt and was precariously swinging over the carpet.

“Janice
, just stay here, I'm going to close the door and keep you in here. I'm going to get you some help.” Keith walked backwards out of the room while rolling a chair in front of him as a temporary barrier from another violent lunge. She continued with her aimless kicking and grunting. Keith closed the door and looked back into the conference room through a glass panel. The blood on the projector screen was starting to darken into a black stain.

“Good morning, ladies and gentleman. We are now prepared to board flight 5328 to Holland. At this time, we ask all passengers that need extra assistance in seating children to board first, followed by rows 15-20. We will also begin boarding all our preferred platinum members at this time. We will be seating the other rows shortly, thanks.”

*****

A gray smeared sky covered the playground at Oak Brook Elementary School. Concerned teachers looked up at the low lying clouds, grimacing at the prospect of bringing the children in early from recess. The courtyard was full of screaming and laughing with feet stomping repeatedly in gravel. Thirty children twirled, chased, tripped and cried. One organic mass of skin, hair and teeth swirled like a stream eddy around the circumference of the playground.

M
s. Stutsen sat several yards from the playground on a shallow knoll and watched the children. She sat with her arms behind her back, propping up her torso. Every now and then, a boy named Andy would peek out from under a purple plastic tube and wave at her. After the fifth time, she had grown weary of waving back and pretended to read the book lying on her lap, but she really stared into the remote distance of suburban homes. She could see the very top part of the roof from her own home which was two blocks away and started to think about the pot roast that had been cooking in the kitchen for the past three hours. She methodically organized how she was going to prepare dinner when she got home. Then she started worrying about her class. She recounted in her head how many children were absent today: Danny Allen, Craig Ebert, Jen Lippitt, Jackson Bladen, Sarah Conrad, and Jared Freeman... there were at least two more, she thought.
She knew she had never had that many children at home sick in her four years teaching. In addition, she heard that three faculty members had called in substitutes as well.

M
s. Stutsen could feel misplacement about something throughout the day. There was something caught in the back of her mind that she could feel herself consciously picking at but never quite uncovering. The layered gray clouds clinging to the base of the mountains and the sighing wind mixing with the laughter of children stirred a maternal instinct within her to protect her young students. She quickly cast the notion out of her mind and subdued her paranoia but knew she could easily summon her hostile instincts at the first sign of more imaginary machinations.

Closing
her eyes, she became very aware of the wind as it bathed her arms with warm air. Relics conjured in her mind of a recent trip to the ocean making her feel like she was on the beach. She heard the sound of pebbles being crunched under someone's shoes coming closer to her. Jayne Sanders was quickly approaching her, holding her elbow. Her pigtails swung from the back of her head and she continuously brushed her bangs out of her eyes as she ran.

“
Jayne, what’s wrong? Did you hurt your arm?”

“No, I fell.”

“Well, did it hurt when you fell?”

“
Yes, it hurts.” Jayne put out her bottom lip, which puffed up her entire face into an exaggerated expression of sadness.

“
Okay, you just need to be more careful.”

“But it wasn't my fault, M
s. Stutsen, it was Jacob's.”

“Where you two fighting?”
Stutsen looked around the playground to find Jacob but she couldn't see him. “Where is he?”

“He pushed me over and I pushed him
back. Then he went and pushed Katie and then Katie started to cry. I didn't cry.”

Stutsen
got up from the grass and her afternoon daydreaming, and holding Jayne's hand, walked towards the playground. “Well, it sounds like we need to talk to Jacob about this. Just because he pushes you, Jayne, doesn't mean you have to push back. When you see a problem, you can just come tell me without being mean back.”

“I know I should play nice.” From her teachers and parents, Jayne had learned the proper word
s to use when being chastised to avoid punishment.

Stutsen
looked around the chaotic playground but still didn't see Jacob. She quickly began to walk down the length of the playground with her head bent low to see into the playground equipment. “Where did he go?” This question was no longer intended for Jayne but as an admission of concern to the open air. Once she circled the playground without seeing him, her heart began to beat violently and her mind began to swirl. Before a cascade of panic could erupt through her body, she heard the yelling of children behind her. She turned and saw two girls running towards her.

“M
s. Stutsen, Jacob is over on the grass and he hit me.” Stutsen looked up and saw him just ten yards from the playground. She realized how just a little panic made her irrationally circle around a fifty square foot playground without looking outside of its perimeters. Jacob was lying on the grass.

“Jacob! Get up and get over
here, right now!”

Jacob lay on the grass, cheerfully rolling from his stomach to his back repeatedly. As
Stutsen started to approach him, she realized that what she thought from a distance was the jolly demeanor of a six year old playing was really the writhing of a child in pain. She ran over to Jacob, which in her mind was a single flash that instantly transported her to him.

What she predicted was Jacob clutching hi
s abdomen from a stomachache, but what she saw was the boy's face gouged by fluid filled sacs of dark pus rupturing from his skin. Some of the membranous sacs were slowly dribbling blood and yellow secretions while others remained intact but ready to burst at the mere graze of contact. The swelling was prominent on his eyelids, which forced his eyes completely shut. The blistering had created craters in his cheeks, indenting inwards, making it appear as if his entire cheekbone structure had been altered. The skin on his entire face was slightly pulsating with his heartbeat, and with every beat, more fluid flowed from the open wounds. The abrasions on his face were so severe that the swelling was starting to alter the placement of his right ear. It had become loose with the skin to which it was attached and was drooping downwards. His entire head was rapidly losing the essential characteristics that made it identifiable as an actual human head.

Jayne screamed and began to cry.
Stutsen fell to her knees beside Jacob and shook his shoulders calling his name. She could see that he was trying to respond but his lips had swollen outwards making it impossible to articulate words. The only sound he could produce was a shallow gurgling. Stutsen scooped up Jacob in her arms and yelled to Jayne. “Jayne, sweetheart, I need you to run ahead of me and go tell another teacher inside that there is an emergency on the playground and that Jacob is hurt.”

Jayne stood up and began to run
in a manner that surprised Stutsen. Jayne turned around, “But you tell us not to run in the halls?”

“It's okay to run in an emergency.”

****
*

The employees of the northeast side of the 9
th
floor of the building had gathered into multiple groups around the conference room that had become the temporary confinement of temporary insanity. Two filing cabinets had blocked the door to the room. After someone saw the body of an unconscious, disheveled bald man being carried from the room, they thought the precaution was necessary. It proved not to be. Janice had made no attempts to open the door by the actual doorknob. Rather, she had devised the crude strategy of lunging 270 pounds of her own body at the glass windows. The attempt had only resulted in a few hairline cracks in the pane. The glass had become difficult to see through with the bloody and greasy strokes of her face and hands making an opaque film covering. In addition, the lights were off in the room which made it that much more difficult to see what she was doing. Currently, she was sitting silently in the recesses of a dark corner.

A gaunt looking man in accounting, Jared Hess, was protesting the confinement. “Why can't we just go in there? Do we really need to block her in there? This is insane. It's Janice.”

One of the three men from the cough syrup company interjected in the small congregation of people around the windows of the conference room. “She is acting incredibly violent. She just got up and started lunging at us. Bob over there is concussed. I mean, what in the hell is going on. Does anyone know this woman? Is she off her medications or something?”

Hess offered a response amongst the
employees, “Not that I know of. Her husband would know but he's not here. Hey,” he turned to the workers around him, “does anyone know where Frank is?” There were muttered responses but no actual coherent answer.

Keith was sitting in a swivel chair leaning forward with his chin resting in his hands. “Where the hell is the ambulance? You called, right Sharon?”

His secretary looked out from her cubicle. “Yes, I called right when you told me and I just called again. They said it’s en route.”

“What's it
been, twenty minutes? Is that normal? Seems like they should be here by now.”

Hess shouted over at them, “I also called like five minutes ago and they said
they were on their way.”

Keith shook
his head. He had known Janice for eight years. He never knew her well, but he knew she was bitchy, not psychotic. He also knew what he saw on the news that morning with Dave's girlfriend shooting at the police. Remembering the soaking face of the man on the sidewalk who broke his elbow and ran away started to make him worry.

“
Hey, man, what is going on?” Dave had walked up from behind him.

“Janice has gone crazy and I mean really crazy
. She attacked Bob Courtman and is locked up in the conference room. She is sick or mentally ill, I don't get it.”

“Janice?” Dave stared.

“Yes, Janice. She is bleeding all over the place, and I don't know what to do. We called the ambulance, but they're not here.” He looked towards the stairwell.

“
Well, why isn't someone in there with her? She can't just bleed by herself in the damn conference room. What is everybody doing?” Dave looked around at the crowd.

“You don't get
it; if you go in there she will attack you. She is not in her right mind.” Keith ran his hands through his hair and exhaled.

“How can she attack me if she's bleeding everywhere
? That doesn't make any sense.”

“Do not go in there.”

Dave briskly walked up to the windows of the conference room.

“
Do not open the door!” Keith shouted.

Dave darted his head
around, trying to find an opening of visibility through the grime on the inside of the glass. He cupped his hands around his eyes and brought his face to the glass.

“Janice?”
He knocked on the glass. He could faintly see her sitting in the corner of the room, her back propped up by the wall. She seemed to notice and started to roll her body to gain momentum enough to latch onto the end of the conference table to stand. She got hold of the table, but slipped and her face fell downward onto a leg of the table.

“Oh, jeez...” Dave cringed and turned around to see if anyone else saw her fall. He looked back and saw that she had managed to stand and was shuffling her feet towards him. That's when Dave saw her face. He
doubled at the waist and dry heaved, keeping his head down toward the carpet. Her face had become a conglomeration of boils, drooping crevasses and bulging fluid-filled sacs.

Keith came up from behind Dave and peered in. He couldn't understand it.
In the course of little under an hour, her face had undergone a drastic change. It no longer resembled anything close to the face of Janice Johnston. He couldn't think of anything that could cause such a radical change. No type of chicken pox, measles or fever could ever create the hanging skin and blistering boils on her face in such a short period of time. Not only could he not see her eyes, but also he couldn't tell where the eyes were supposed to be. She had become blind, deaf and mute.

Dave stood up and looked at Keith with his
mouth open, trying to convey the perplexity that he was feeling. “What is wrong with her? Her face! Holy shit, her face. Keith, what happened in the meeting?”

“She was looking sick before we started but something happened right in the middle and she completely changed. She was literally sitting on top of Bob
Courtman and pounding on his face.”

“
Well, how the hell can she walk around hitting everybody when I can't even see her eyes, Keith! How does she even know what she's doing?” Dave's confusion was translating into displaced anger.

Keith knew what was going through Dave's mind. He knew he was thinking about how his girlfriend had shot at three
policemen earlier that morning and that his brain was surreptitiously making quiet connections.

“What is going on with her
?” Dave started to look around at all his coworkers who were silently eavesdropping. They stood and stared, just as speechless as anyone else who had looked into that conference room. “Call the police and an ambulance!”