The Most Uncommon Cold I - Life in the Time of Zombies (2 page)

     “I
’m getting the idea that what happened was extremely unusual.  Could you describe it more specifically?  How many people were involved?” Turning to the right, I asked, “When you say ‘just to start going off and biting people like that’, can you tell me exactly what you mean?”         

    
I saw a look of relief from the left guard, Berry that I had asked a question of his brother rather than him.  Ben looked like someone who had smelled something extraordinarily unpleasant.  He took a long drink of his coffee before answering.

     “Well, I
dunno exactly how to say it.”  He looked over at his partner for some support but only got a blank stare.  “I guess there were about ten people all together. I don’t think I ever saw anything that crazy.” 

   “You got that right, Ben,” Berry commented while shaking his head.  “Half that woman
’s face was bit off!  Did you see that?”

     A nod from Ben showed that he had seen the
woman.  “How about the guy flopping around on the floor with blood spraying out of his throat?”  He shook his head and closed his eyes as if trying to get rid of the memory.

     “I
’m sorry to bring all of this back to you,” I apologized with such sincerity that I surprised myself.  “Is there a supervisor or someone like that with whom I can speak?”

     “The head of security is Mister Travers,”
Berry sounded eager to pass the buck.  “His office is on the third floor near the elevator.”

   I thanked the
pair and left as they silently drank their coffees.

   I followed the signs through the unusually quiet airport to a bank of elevators in the back corner of the terminal.  As I waited for the reflective silver doors to open, I was struck by the silence of the airport. The
quiet had anything but a calming effect.  It was more like a sense that things were terribly wrong.  The feeling of dread only grew as I stepped inside the elevator and rode up to the third floor. 

       As the elevator doors opened, I saw a
place that appeared absolutely deserted.  The silence was unsettling.  I hesitated for just a second before stepping off the elevator.  Truth be told, I considered staying where I was and just waiting for the doors to close once more. Who knows, maybe things would have turned out better if I had.

     A
large reception area with a counter holding a ledger to record the signatures of visitors was straight ahead.  Behind the counter were several vacant desks.  It was a place that certainly should have been filled with activity at ten thirty on a weekday morning. The fact that it was not made me curious. As I was contemplating possible reasons for the emptiness of the place, the silence was shattered by the roar of coughing.  Actually, this coughing was certainly not any louder than other coughing, but the silence surrounding it amplified the sound. 

     I headed slowly in that direction.  Before I had gone more than a few steps, I tentatively called, “Hello?” 
My voice was answered by another round of violent coughing.  I slowly continued on a few more steps before repeating, “Hello?” 

     Again coughing was the
reply.  Suddenly, a very tall, very thin man with very short brown hair stepped out into the hall just a few feet in front of me. He looked straight at me as he blew his nose into an orange paper napkin that looked as if it had already been used for the same purpose.  When he was finished, he asked, “What can I do for you?”

     I watched him
tuck the napkin into the pocket of his white shirt before saying, “I’m looking for a Mister Travers.”

     “That would be me, Steve Travers.”

   “Mister Travers, my name is Kevin Turner, and I’m a reporter for
The Marin Gazette
.”  It was obvious that my connection to a newspaper did not please Travers.  “I was hoping to ask you a few questions about an incident yesterday afternoon.”

    
Clearly, he knew what I meant but feigned ignorance for a few seconds before saying, “Oh, you must mean the problem we had with the drunken passengers at Gate Eleven.  I keep telling the lines that they need to stop serving alcohol on these long flights more than an hour before landing.  I damn sure don’t need a load of drunks being dropped on my airport. These passengers got off the flight highly intoxicated and didn’t feel like waiting in line.”  He stopped as if he had said enough on the matter.

     The idea that I would have further questions did not
make him happy.

     “Really, the whole
incident was just a few unruly drunks? From what I’ve heard, it was a whole lot more serious.”  I glanced at my notes.  “About ten people involved.  Some with extremely serious bite wounds.” 

     Travers also glanced at my notes and wanted to ask about them but probably realized the futility of asking about my sources.  Instead, he said, “Well, I can
only tell you that your information is incorrect.  It was a minor incident involving a group of inebriated and unruly passengers.”  It sounded as though he was reading from the soon-to-be-written official account of the incident.

     I saw no
point in questioning Steve Travers any further. Most likely, the only thing that would have gotten me was tossed out of the office and restricted from the airport. Instead, I thanked him for his time and said “bless you” when he sneezed as I was leaving the office.

    
I spent my time in the elevator reviewing what I had learned at the airport so far.  There was some sort of scuffle in the customs area while processing arriving passengers from somewhere in Europe.  According to the security guards, around ten people were involved.  People had serious bite wounds.  From the waitress, I learned that she saw “some really weird people running around”. Naturally, Travers, the head of airport security, downplayed the whole thing as “a minor incident involving a group of drunken and passengers”.  In my limited experience as a reporter, I had learned that the truth usually rested somewhere between the extremes of what people told you.  If that were the case here, the incident might be worth a little more of my time. 

    
Once I got off the elevator, I stood in the quiet hallway and called the newspaper to let my editor, Carole, know what I was doing.  I was surprised when after about six rings the recorded message came on. 

     “You have reached
The Marin Gazette
. Thank you for calling.  Your call is outside of normal business hours, or all of our operators are busy with other calls.  Please leave a message after the tone, and we will return your call as soon as possible.” 

     I checked my watch to
find it was just after eleven and wondered why no one was answering the phones at the office.  After the long tone, I said, “Carole, this is Kevin.  What’s with the recording?  Anyway, I am at SFO.  My nine thirty appointment didn’t show, but I spoke to some other folks here including the head of security.  Surprise, the accounts of the problem yesterday don’t match.  I’m going to see what else I can find out.  Be in later this afternoon.” I pushed 624 on the phone to learn that my voicemail contained “no new messages”.  This was another surprise since I had been following several stories and typically had at least ten new messages every time I checked the voicemail. 

     I decided to head back to the coffee shop and sit down to plan my next
move.  I also realized that I had failed to get the waitress’s name, which I would need if I used her statement. 

     Like every other part of the airport, the lack of people in the coffee shop was striking.  In fact, it was deserted. I waited at the counter expecting to see someone pop out of the backroom and apologize for making me wait. 

     After a minute, I tentatively called, “Hello?” There was no response.  I walked from one end of the counter to the other looking for anyone. I saw no one. Finally, I pushed through the little gate which separated the customer area from the area behind the counter.  Even given the unusual circumstances, I felt a twinge of guilt at trespassing into an area forbidden to me. I walked slowly passed the silent coffee makers and empty glass coffee pots. 

     At the other end of the counter, I found a
swinging metal door with a little square of glass.  The glass was yellowed and scratched, but it revealed more than enough of the room on the other side.

    
I saw someone sprawled out on the white tile floor. I could not be sure it was the waitress from earlier because someone in blue airport coveralls was leaning over the body blocking my view.  I thought that I was spying on some romantic tryst and started to turn away. Far be it for me to intrude upon young love.  However, just as my eyes were leaving the little window, I saw the blood.  It was spreading slowly out from underneath the body.

     I have never considered myself much of a hero, but I was a little ashamed at the brief
consideration given to slowly and quietly backing away from the door and just leaving the airport.  Instead, I reached out and pushed open the door.  Unfortunately, the door squeaked, and the person in the blue airport coveralls turned at the sound.

     In the blue airport coveralls, there was a pale young man with curly blond hair, glasses and a
bushy, untrimmed beard.  All of him was covered in blood.  When he saw me, he stood up and appeared to be shocked to the point that he was unable to speak.  His mouth moved, but no words came out.  After a few seconds of this, his ability to speak returned, and he bawled, “I found her like this!” He looked at me then at his clothes and seemed as if he just noticed that he was covered in blood.  As if to contradict what he saw, he yelled more loudly, “I found her like this!”

     In a
voice I had not used since I was a teacher, I assertively said, “Let’s just take it easy.”  I looked at the name etched in dark blue lettering above his right breast.  “I believe you, James, but you need to sit down and quietly wait for the police.”

     The young
man in bloody, blue coveralls looked at me as if he could not believe the words he was hearing.   Suddenly, he lunged toward me, and, for a brief moment, I thought that I was dead. Fortunately, James was more interested in getting out of the area than doing harm to me.  He threw me out of the way and ran out the door. 

    I watched
through the still-swinging door as he scurried like a frightened animal around the counter and out of the coffee shop.  Then I turned to look at all of the blood.  The place had obviously been the scene of a massacre.  I doubted James could have done all of this by himself and that all the blood was from one Asian waitress. The thought occurred to me the people who did this could be coming back.   It was a thought that did nothing to keep me from panic.  There was some sort of scratching and moaning sound from just outside the door.  I am certainly not proud of this, but I immediately lunged for a nearby cabinet and moved inside.  It was a tight fit, but I shut the door and could just see a little of the room through the small slots of a vent.

     It was certainly not the best
vantage point for observing whatever went on in the room, but it got considerably worse when something suddenly slammed against the door and blocked the vent.  I huddled there in the dark for what seemed like an hour although I couldn’t actually say since I was too afraid to move even to check my watch right then.  Besides, it didn’t even occur to me to wonder about time until much later.  There was lots of banging and grunting and sounds of things sliding. Standing out from the stream of sound was the surprisingly calm voice of a man saying, “I have to catch my flight.” 

     I huddled there in the dark
listening to the strange noises and expecting the door to be thrown open at any moment.  But the door was never opened.  Instead, whatever was blocking the door just seemed to move away and everything was quiet.  Even so, it was a while before I gathered enough courage to nudge the door open.  Given the surroundings, the creak it made sounded like a roar.  I stopped pushing and waited a while for some reaction to the sound.  When there was nothing, I again pushed gently on the door. 

     This time I managed to push the door
fully open.  Before moving out of the cabinet, I listened for the sound of the people responsible for this bloodbath.  There was only silence.  Eventually, I managed to unfold myself from the cabinet and step outside.  The first thing I stepped in was a wide pool of blood.  The entire cabinet door was covered in blood and, as I discovered to my horror, so was my hand.

     All of a sudden getting my hand cle
an of the blood was the only thing that mattered.  I scrambled to the back of the room and over to a large wash basin, which was obviously used for cleaning the coffee pots as some were still piled next to it.  I twisted the knob and was grateful for the scalding hot water that shot out.  I scrubbed my hand with a brush that was next to the sink. After my hand was raw from the brushing and the hot water, I felt some calm returning to me.  I grabbed a dish towel and was drying my hands as I turned to survey the scene.

     The young waitress was on her back with her hips twisted one
way and her head strangely twisted the other way.  As I moved closer, I could see that her eyes were open and staring unblinkingly at the ceiling. Nothing about her suggested any sign of life. In the next instant, my assumption was immediately wiped away as I caught a slight shiver from her foot inside her blood-stained white tennis shoe.  The movement did not fit in the scheme of things. Everything I saw signaled a corpse.  The still pool of blood beneath her, the sightless eyes, and the grotesque angle of her head all painted a picture of a violent death.