Brad froze, and when he did the sounds of eating stopped, too.
Bile rose in my throat. My body knew something already that my brain needed another minute to process.
Brad rose to his feet and took a lumbering step toward me. I couldn’t make out his face with the only real light source at his back. His silhouette rocked back and forth as he walked slowly in my direction, one arm dangling at his side.
“Brad, are you okay?”
Brad groaned, the sound more akin to air passing across a broken bottle than anything that should have come from a human throat.
With him in motion, I could see the janitor’s body. His one-piece uniform was torn open at the stomach and ropes of glistening intestines lay in bloody piles on the floor.
I shuffled back several steps, moving beyond the open door leading back into the studio. Behind me, the corridor continued another twenty feet and ended in a set of fire doors leading to the parking lot behind the station. Now that I was no longer blocking the doorway, light spilled into the corridor illuminating Brad.
His face was wrecked. His nose was torn and flopping against his right cheek, the bone exposed. His lips were pulled back…or gone—I couldn’t be sure—exposing rows of perfect teeth that clacked against each other as he approached.
I took another step back. Heather stepped from the doorway.
“Heather?”
Her head lolled from one shoulder to another as torn tendons and muscles tried to do their job and direct her eyes in my direction. Gurgling noises rose from her chest. This wasn’t possible. How could she be moving?
Her hands grabbed Orky’s left fin as I snatched my hands back into the sleeves of the suit and wrenched the fin from her. She stumbled forward and fell, sprawling to the floor.
Brad’s good hand arced high, connecting with Orky’s side just to the right of the suit’s window. The material flexed, absorbing the impact just as it had when I was wailing on it from inside. I swung Orky’s right fin at Brad’s head, my fist striking him hard on the jaw but insulated by an inch or more of foam. His head snapped to the side with enough force that the strands of flesh holding his nose to his face broke and the small piece of meat smacked against the wall. Brad staggered backwards several steps, but stayed on his feet.
In the light at the end of the hallway I caught a glimpse of the janitor clawing his way across the tile, trailing his guts in a chunky smear.
Then it hit me. Is this what the field reporter and his camera man had been running from? Were they being attacked by people who shouldn’t be moving, people who shouldn’t be alive?
What if they weren’t alive? But, that made no sense—none at all.
I had to get out of there. Heather clinched the Velcro edge of Orky’s tailfin pulling the fabric into her mouth.
I turned and ran, snatching the material from her teeth. The best I could manage was a loping sort of skip. All three let out a simultaneous moan and I knew the chase was on. I might be slow but, thankfully, they were slower.
Five steps, maybe six, from the fire door, the Velcro between my legs caught and my legs locked solid into Orky’s wide, black tailfin, sending me toppling forward.
The thin layer of cloth covering my window to the world did nothing to protect my face from the impact as my forehead struck the floor. The impact sent a white-hot stab of pain reverberating through my skull and down my spine.
I must have blacked out, because the next thing I remember was feeling like I was wrapped in a blanket, sweating like a damned pig. A horrible throbbing pounded in my head and sharp pains shot down my neck into my shoulders. I tried to roll my head to one side to see if the pain would go away, but my forehead was stuck to something abrasive.
I flailed, trying to right myself on the floor, flopping around like a fish pulled out of the water and thrown into the bottom of a boat waiting to be gutted.
The dried blood gluing my forehead to the cloth gave way, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out. Inside the suit, the only sounds I could make out clearly were my own breathing and racing pulse. I willed myself to calm, and forced in slow, even breaths.
Static from a dead newsfeed popped and cracked in the studio. I could hear birds chirping…so the exit door must be open to the parking lot. In the distance, a car horn blared, punctuated by sharp cracks like gunfire.
No other sounds.
I pushed myself onto my side and looked down the hallway. The light at the far end was still the only one except for the studio lights. The exit door was wedged open an inch, and morning sunlight painted a narrow swath across the floor nearby.
Heather, Brad, and the janitor were nowhere to be seen.
I followed the smear along the floor from where Brad had been eating the janitor to the exit door. A chunk of gristly flesh was the wedge holding the door ajar. I shuddered.
This was real. Not my imagination, not a movie. This was happening.
I pushed myself into a sitting position, leaning my left shoulder into the wall for stability.
They attacked each other, at least at first, but not me?
I pulled my hands into the suit and dabbed lightly at my forehead, wincing as my fingertips touched the damaged skin. The injury wasn’t bad, as near as I could tell without a mirror, but it hurt like hell. And I stank. Oh, God, did I stink! How long had I been in the stupid costume, anyway? And how long was I going to stay stuck in it?
I reached behind myself and worked at the Velcro again, but made no progress.
Long minutes had passed since I regained consciousness and I’d not seen or heard any sign of Heather or Brad or that janitor guy. I was back to needing help again. But first, I should keep the documentation going as best I could. This tape could be worth a fortune.
I spent long minutes locating the digicam and working my way back to my feet before angling the lens toward my face—Orky’s chest—and hoping, since the green LED winked on, the device was still working.
As crazy as all of this seems, ladies and gentlemen, I’m still trapped inside the Orky the Orca costume as the world—or, at least, my corner of it—has gone completely mad. I don’t know if this is just a localized event, or if the whole country—perhaps the entire world—might be experiencing the same thing. I’m going to try to make another call, and if that doesn’t work…well, I guess I’m heading outside. I’ve got to find help…and do what I can to help others.
That last comment was in case this recording ever went national. I didn’t want to sound selfish, after all.
The landline phone worked, but the 911 line just kept ringing like last night. I tried a few other numbers and no living person answered a single call. I did get a couple of voicemail greetings, but I didn’t leave a message on either.
I found a roll of duct tape in a storage cabinet. Stage hands used the tape to secure cabling to walls and floors and such. With a lot of straining and twisting, I managed to wrap the halves of Orky’s tailfin to my legs, keeping the Velcro on one side well clear of the other. I did not want another incident like the hallway. I might not be so lucky next time.
I waited by the exit door to the parking lot for a full minute with my head as close to the opening as possible, listening for any sound that might indicate that help was close by. Or the opposite.
In the distance, sirens blasted, accompanied by a couple of car alarms and the pop-pop-pop of handgun fire. Two things I didn’t hear that I wish I had were the sounds of people, any people, and traffic from the interstate not a hundred yards away.
That interstate was the reason for the extra sound proofing in the studio. Traffic was a constant, heaviest during the day around 8 a.m. and again at 6 p.m. But even in the wee hours of the morning, the sound of engines and tires on the concrete and asphalt was a constant. The noise was so steady in fact, that when there was a lull, even a brief one, you noticed.
I pushed the door open slightly and peered into the parking lot. Three cars. Mine, Heather’s, and Brad’s. The janitor’s bike leaned again
st the chain-link fence surrounding the studio’s heat pump. Both news vans were parked facing the road, antenna arrays folded down, ready to roll at a moment’s notice.
I’m about to move out into the parking lot. I’m not sure if I can squeeze into the driver’s seat of one of the news vans, but I’m going to try. There’s a small highway patrol station just down the frontage road. Beyond that’s the suburbs. If the station is empty, I’m not sure how I feel about going into the neighborhoods, especially since the gunfire and sirens seem to be coming from that direction. Bottom line, though…I’ve got to find help.
I pushed the door fully open and stepped out onto the small landing at the top of the half-dozen stairs leading to the parking lot. My right foot caught the object that had wedged the door open and sent it over the edge of the landing. As near as I could tell with my limited field of vision, the object was Brad’s nose. The landing was small, and Orky’s tailfin was huge, so I had to be careful as I descended. I held the digicam aimed forward as best I could. I was sure most of the shot was probably blocked by the flipper, but my thought was bad video was better than no video.
I waddled to the closest van and tried the driver’s door. It was locked. My heart skipped a beat, but I reassured myself that there was still the other van. Worse case, if both were locked, I could go back into the studio and find something heavy enough to bust in a window.
As I rounded the front of the van to move to the next one I saw Heather and Brad in the distance staggering toward the interstate. They’d not gotten very far from the building. If they were hunting for new people to eat—I swallowed hard at the thought—then why would they head for a silent interstate rather than the nearby housing development? Maybe their brains were broken, or being dead just made you stupid. I stifled a laugh.
Yeah, this was insane. Dead people were walking around trying to eat other people. And why had they left me alone in the hallway?
Of course, maybe they hadn’t. Maybe they’d tried to get at me and just couldn’t get into Orky any better than I could get out. Or maybe, since I didn’t look like a person, something only fired in their brains to attack me when I did something a person would do such as talk, run away, or fight back.
Just try the other van, Mason, I thought. I could imagine the spectacle of Orky the Orca driving down through a suburban catastrophe in a news van, stopping from time to time to interview the public. Excuse me, ma’am, but how has the dead feeding on the living affected you personally? Now, that might actually be worth some ratings and land me that national field journalist spot. To hell with that! I could negotiate for news anchor.
The vans were parked close enough together that I could barely squeeze Orky’s bulk between the extended mirrors. I finally had to push one hard to get it to collapse against the door.
I took a deep breath and tried the handle.
Locked.
Despite my earlier reassurances that both vans being locked was not the end of the world, I let fly a string of curses that would have made a mime blush. I’d have to edit those out of the digicam’s recording later. The network might want to air the footage during prime time, or even during the morning news shows, and those audiences didn’t appreciate language.
I turned to go back inside the station and felt a vise clamp onto my ankle where the duct tape held the tailfin in place. Sharp edges ground against the tape and I was sure they were going to slice right through. I stomped with my free leg, feeling the heel of my shoe connect again and again with my attacker. The grip on my ankle slackened and I pulled free, back-stepping toward the rear of the van.
As soon as my angle allowed, I could see the janitor dragging himself along the ground, coming straight for me. He let out a long, mournful groan.
I aimed the camera at him, continuing to walk backwards, keeping pace with his advance.
This is what—or who, maybe—I’m up against, ladies and gentlemen. This man crawling after me is the janitor here at KDUU—the station that responds to you and your needs. At some point last night, my coworkers were… killed, I think. But for reasons I have not yet learned, they did not stay dead. Now they seem to want to hurt, maybe kill me. Most peculiar is why they left me in the hallway in the station. I have a theory, and if I’m right, being in this suit may have saved my life and offer me the ability to move around and bring live, up-to-the-minute coverage to you, ladies and gentlemen. More as my situation develops.
More groans came from behind me and I turned to see Heather and Brad. Both had stopped their trek toward the interstate and were now returning. At their pace I had several minutes before they arrived, but there was no need waiting around. I needed to get inside, find something heavy to bust in the van window—and possibly the janitor’s skull if he tried to bite me again—and get the hell out of this place.
A few hundred sweaty steps later, I was at the bottom of the stairs leading back into the building. Climbing up was not going to be nearly as easy as coming down since lifting my knees was difficult.
Nothing to be done but try. I grabbed the railing and extended my leg to the side missing the step but planting it on the asphalt with a squish. I shook my foot to dislodge what-ever it was and watched as Brad’s nose tumbled across the pavement.
Hope you got your money’s worth out of that thing, Brad, I thought.
Tires chirped around a corner and I turned to see a green minivan plowing across the parking lot from the frontage road.
Where had that come from?
A woman, her face unreadable through the fabric of my costume, swerved the vehicle wildly back and forth.
Holy shit! She was going to hit me.
I grabbed the railing and jumped as high as I could up the steps just as she veered hard to her right and slammed the nose of the van into the station wall at the bottom of the stairs.
An overhead light fixture tore loose from the wall in a shower of sparks and struck her windshield, cracking it down the middle. Bricks from the edge of the roof rained down on the vehicle, each leaving a deep dent in the already crumpled hood.
Steam erupted from the tire wells and I fought to keep my balance, which I had managed to maintain during the whole event. There was just enough room for me to push between the railing and the side of her van.
Her window was open and her arms beat against the air bag that had deployed on impact. The gash on her forehead must not have been as serious as it looked, since there was no blood that I could see.
She looked at me and her brow furrowed as she probably tried to make sense of her little portion of the world. “Orky?” Her voice was a raspy whisper.
I started to answer, but a little girl’s scream erupted from inside the van where I couldn’t see, temporarily drowning out the hiss of the escaping steam and the groans of my nearby associates.
“Long story, ma’am,” I said. “Are you okay?”
“I—I don’t know…” She looked at Orky’s belly, probably unable to tell exactly where my voice was coming from or where my face was inside.
“What’s going on out there?” I asked.
Another scream came from inside the van. A child was strapped into a safety seat on the far side, the window lowered all the way.
“Dead people…got in the house and tried to bite…is my husband—is Brad here?” The woman squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. Even through the white filter covering my face, I could tell she was pale. “Help my…little girl.”
“Sure, but can you help me get out of this—”
“Help her!” she screamed, and as if she’d used the last of her energy to raise her voice, she slumped forward onto the steering wheel, the horn giving a short, pathetic wheeemp as punctuation.
I reached in to pull her back and noticed the slashes along her neck and forearms. Not as extensive as the injuries my coworkers had, but if I had seen them on someone yesterday, I’d have placed their chances of survival at zero. That was yesterday.
Another scream came from the back, and I could
see the little girl thrashing in the car seat, reaching desperately for her mother.
“It’s okay, honey,” I said, hoping my voice was soothing, and the fact that it came from an seven-foot killer whale wasn’t making matters worse. The girl probably watched the show. Hadn’t her mom identified me immediately as Orky?
I rushed around the van, checking the progress of the three dead people coming for me. I had to get the girl inside and quiet her down. If I was right about what was attracting the others, then we could lay low for a little while and they would probably wander away.
I paused at the girl’s door and looked skyward as best I could. Clouds hung heavy and gray above.
This could work. Maybe God didn’t hate me after all.
Shoving my arm through the flap in Orky’s fin, I pulled the handle and slid the door aside. The girl grabbed my wrist with both of her tiny hands and wrenched my thumb into her mouth.
I heard the crunch an instant before the pain slammed into my brain and I staggered back. I shook my head, slowly at first, then hard enough to make my temples throb. This was not happening.
Inside the van, the girl was still reaching for me, but her screams were muffled by my thumb half-hanging from her mouth. Another scream joined hers and I turned to see her mother in the front seat now fighting against her restraints, fingers clawing at the air between us.
I raised my arm up in front of my face. My hand was a mess. The little girl had snapped my thumb off at the joint. The wound had stopped bleeding already. Whatever was doing this to everyone acted damned fast. The side of my hand where my thumb had been was raw meat with a few strips of flesh dangling. A couple of yellowish strings hung out. I thought about moving my thumb back and forth and they both twitched, one of them pulling up inside the wound.
I was so screwed and I knew it. I mean, how ironic is it that a kid bit me and now I’m going to be one of those things, too? I could already feel my arms and legs getting cold. My vision was changing, too. All twisted and red, like looking through bloody glass.
Eye Witness: Zombie Page 6
