The Lone Zombie of New Jersey

by Archer, Sloan

  Yes, Adam, I know it’s hideously inappropriate of me to joke at a time like this. But I just don’t want your last memories of me to be sad ones, okay?

  After maybe the seventh or eighth person returned from downstairs, I heard moaning. It was muffled, so it was difficult to determine exactly where the sound was coming from. Then there was shouting: “She bit me! Oh my God! She bit me!”

  The voice belonged to Mike Stinson from Accounting. Naturally, I thought he was playing a prank, since he’s always joking around. Remember the time he brought that hokey severed limb to Monica’s Halloween party? He kept dropping it at people’s feet, telling everyone—yuck-yuck—he was “falling to pieces.” Just a couple weeks ago, he brought in a rubber mound of fake doggie doo and left it by the coffee pot in the break room. So you can hardly blame me for ignoring him. I wasn’t going to stop what I was doing and delay my lunch further only to discover Mike standing by the water cooler with a packet of ketchup-blood spilled down the front of his shirt.

  But then another person began shouting—something about a first aid kit. I could tell by their tone that they were genuinely freaked. You know how you can just hear it in a person’s voice when they’re on the verge of hysteria? It was like that.

  I left my cubicle and found a small gathering of slack-jawed individuals huddled by the elevator. Most of them still had their lunches, though more than a few had relaxed their grips on their plates, littering the carpet with corn chips and blobs of sour cream and salsa. Mike was in the center of the group, blanched twenty shades whiter than his normal pale ginger pallor. He was actually so white that he practically matched the walls. He was staring out at us but not really seeing us, if you know what I mean. He was clutching his left forearm and blood was leaching out from between his fingers.

  Keisha from HR came running out from the break room and elbowed us aside. She knotted a kitchen towel around Mike’s arm. The towel had a frilly white lace border, and within seconds the whole thing was damp with red. I’d never seen anyone bleed like that before. At least not until today.

  Keisha pulled a chair from the nearest desk and rolled it up behind Mike. Mike sort of wilted down into it—his shoulders, back, and knees all going slack in a single movement. By this point, the entire front of his shirt and the top half of his khakis were scarlet. But Mike didn’t seem aware that he was bleeding all over himself.

  I know this sounds strange, but it wasn’t all the blood or screaming that terrified me most. It was the disconnected way Mike slumped down into that chair.

  I’m so sorry, Adam. If I had only just gotten into my car and driven home at that very moment! But I didn’t know. How could I? How could anyone possibly foresee something like this happening?

  “It was the damnedest thing,” Mike began, and then he stopped to grind the sopping dishtowel against his wound. He’d managed to staunch the blood some, but his color was still diminishing. Dozens of opaque veins had surfaced across his cheeks and forehead like waxy green spider webs. “I was at the window of the taco truck, you see. I had just ordered my meal and was trying to pay . . . and then . . . Salvador’s kid just went crazy.”

  “What do you mean?” Keisha asked. “What did she do?”

  “It wasn’t what she did but more of what she said,” Mike answered. “At first I couldn’t really understand her. She was screaming like she was speaking in tongues or something. And then it was like she was fighting off an invisible attacker. Like she was being strangled.”

  “Are you taking about Alicia?” someone scoffed. It was Jeremy from IT. “The little girl with the pigtails?”

  Jeremy had only arrived, and he seemed to be under the impression that Mike was playing a prank, like I’d been. But his mouth fell open once he got a better look at the situation. He whispered a couple choice words under his breath that I didn’t quite catch, though I imagine it was something along the lines of holy shit.

  It appeared Jeremy no longer thought Mike was joking.

  “Yah.” Mike swallowed hard, his throat making a dry clicking sound. “The girl with the pigtails. I can hardly believe it myself.”

  “How . . .” Jeremy began and then wavered. He looked a little sickened. A lot of the group did.

  “Alicia’s usually such a sweet kid, you know, but today she was acting like she was possessed by Satan,” Mike continued. “She started getting all worked up. Hollering. Once she really got going, Salvador sort of swatted his hand in her direction, telling her to hush.”

  Mike swallowed and clickety-click-click went his throat. “That’s when I saw the gauze on his arms. It—” clickety-click-click “—began at his wrists and wrapped all the way up under the sleeves of his shirt. I asked Sal why he was all bandaged up and he claimed he’d been burned by hot oil. He had a really odd expression on his face when he told me this, like he didn’t want to talk about it. I could tell that he was lying because he wouldn’t meet my eyes.” Mike paused to catch his breath, which had become labored. “There were also all these weird marks under the gauze: half-moon shapes of rusty brown where the wounds had dried. Some of the marks were still red with fresh blood. I’m no medical expert, but I’ve never seen any burn leave marks like that.”

  “So, how did you get bit?” I asked. I wasn’t even sure if I actually wanted to hear the rest. But the suspense was killing me.

  “I was trying to pay for my lunch,” Mike answered. “My arm was inside that little square in the glass. Alicia lunged forward, snapping her teeth like a crazed Doberman. It took me by surprise completely, especially when I saw—” clickety-click-click “—what Salvador had done to her.”

  Keisha frowned, “Done to her?”

  Mike nodded. “Salvador had strapped Alicia to the steering wheel with—and I’m not even kidding—bungee cords. But she had gotten loose. Only one of Alicia’s hands was still bound, and the rest of her was free. She was thrashing around like a rabid animal. She had blood caked down the front of her frilly pink dress and all over her face, and she . . . There were bruises all over her little arms. I might have noticed sooner but they’re high up in that truck, you know?”

  “Jesus,” somebody whispered. I thought maybe it was Jeremy, but I couldn’t be sure. By now the group had grown to over a dozen.

  “Anyway, I froze with my arm still through the window. It’s not every day that you see a battered five-year-old girl bungeed to the wheel of a taco truck.” Mike rubbed at his face. His fingers left behind fat streaks of red on his chin, giving him the look of a suburban warrior. “I’ve got kids myself. They’re older and in college now, but even when they were young and being bad, I never . . . I just . . . Who could do such a thing? That’s what I first thought, you know?”

  After a moment, Mike continued, “I started yelling at Salvador. Telling him that I was going to call the police. But there was something about his expression . . . And then he told me the craziest thing. He told me that a customer had bitten Alicia.”

  “Who would bite a little girl?” Keisha said, horrified. “And why?”

  “I never had the chance to ask. Just like I also didn’t get to ask Sal why he was cruising around town serving lunch when he should have been taking Alicia to the hospital, though I bet I could guess the answer on that one. He knew something wasn’t quite right with his daughter,” Mike said. “But I will say this: Salvador didn’t look defensive or guilty like those scumbag child abusers do on that show COPS.” Mike shook his head. “Hmm, no. He looked frightened. It was in such a way that made me almost believe his story.”

  “Frightened of what?” asked a voice from within the crowd.

  “That’s the funny thing,” Mike said. “He seemed afraid of Alicia.”

  Another whisper from the group: “Alicia?”

  “By this time, Alicia had managed to free herself completely. She lurched towards Salvador, and he put up his hands defensively. Like this.” Mike cowered back against the chair and shielded his face with his good arm. “He was protecting himself, yo
u see. ‘Mija, por favor,’ he said.”

  “My daughter, please,” Jeremy translated. “He was begging her for mercy.”

  “That’s right,” Mike agreed. “Sal wasn’t going to hurt her. After I saw that, I knew he had never hurt her.”

  Mike swallowed. “Alicia stopped dead in her tracks when she heard Sal begging. She cocked her head to one side, so that her ear was resting impossibly flat against her shoulder. When Sal stumbled back, her head snapped up. It was like his sudden movement had enraged her. Alicia started stomping her feet and screaming. No dessert, you bad girl! Uno, dos, tres! Take the dog for a walk! None of it made any sense.” Mike shuddered. “Then, she pointed right at me and screeched, ‘YOU GO TO YOUR ROOM!’ Her face had the wildest look . . . It was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  For the longest time, nobody said a word. Finally Jeremy sputtered, “And?”

  Mike shrugged. “It all happened so fast. I couldn’t pull my arm out of the window in time. Alicia lunged forward and sunk her teeth into my forearm. I tried to shake her off but she had the lockjaw strength of a pit bull. Salvador was yelling at her to stop, trying to wrench her away by the shoulders. But she wouldn’t let go. I pulled my arm back again and again. Each time I did her little head hammered hard against the glass—bang-bang-bang—but she would just not let go! Not even after I started screaming . . .”

  Rubbing his bloody limb, Mike smiled uneasily. “Finally, a few people in line cottoned on to what was happening. They lifted me off the ground and pulled me back by the waist until Alicia couldn’t hang on anymore. It took the strength of two men and one woman to get me free.”

  “Impossible,” somebody murmured. Maybe even I had been the one to say it. I’m not sure.

  “Alicia lost one of her teeth in the process,” Mike said. “I’m sure of it. She grinned at me through the glass after I’d gotten free. Her front tooth was barely hanging from the gum by a thread of pinkish meat. That was the worst part about the whole thing, I think, her grinning at me like that. She was giggling away, like she was having the time of her life. Then—and I just couldn’t believe it when she did this—she stuck her tongue out at me! She was still grinning when she licked my blood off her lips.”

  Mike paused. “I ran away after that.”

  A few people broke away and jogged toward the windows. I stayed put, mainly because I was too stunned to move.

  Keisha, who’d left midway through Mike’s story, returned to our group. “I’ve been trying nine-one-one,” she gasped. “I can’t get through. I must have called fifty times.”

  We then all checked our cell phones. None of us were able to dial out.

  “The landlines aren’t working,” somebody yelled from a cubicle. “Not even a dial tone.”

  “Why can’t I get through to nine-one-one?” Keisha demanded, her voice warbling. “It’s an emergency. That’s what they’re there for. Emergencies!”

  “Doesn’t nine-one-one have an online message center?” I ventured. And then another question occurred to me. “Is the Internet still working?”

  Keisha shook her head. “The Internet connection keeps coming and going. It will come back on for all of two seconds, freeze up the computer, and then cut off completely.” She bit down hard on her knuckles. “This is so frustrating!”

  “I’m okay,” Mike said, probably just to placate Keisha. He wasn’t close to anything resembling okay, which I’m fairly sure even Mike knew. His skin had paled to a strange greenish-gray color and his eyes were glazed over with a murky kind of film, like cataracts. The corners of his mouth were crusted with dried spittle that looked like small gobs of rock salt. There were sweat stains under his armpits as big as Frisbees—most of his shirt was soggy, actually, with more patches of wet than dry.

  Yawning, Mike patted Keisha’s arm. “You know, I think I’ll rest for a minute. I just need to have a nap, that’s all. I’m fine. Honestly.” It broke my heart, hearing how hard Mike was trying to sound as if he actually believed what he was saying.

  Keisha was reluctant, but with no other real option she finally agreed. “I’ll set up an area for you in the conference room. But I’m going to stay with you until an ambulance arrives, so don’t even try to argue. I won’t compromise on that one, Mike.” She was chewing at her nails, gnawing them right down to the beds. She went to brush an errant braid off her forehead and her hand was shaking so badly that she nearly poked herself in the eye.

  Mike chuckled weakly. “Okay, okay.”

  Keisha wheeled Mike to the conference room. She called out to Marty, her assistant, asking him to keep calling for an ambulance. She flashed our group an anxious smile and softly shut the door.

  A minute or two later Jeremy waved us over to the windows. Most of the office was at the windows by this point, making little ooh and ah sounds. The only ones not there were Mike and Keisha, plus a few stragglers who’d retreated to their cubicles to work on getting a connection to the outside world.

  Jeremy had his hands cupped over his face and was looking down at the parking lot. “Check out Salvador,” he said, turning to give us a glance. His skin had left behind a sweaty imprint on the glass. He used a sleeve to wipe it away and then pressed his face back down.

  Salvador was speeding around the parking lot like a lunatic. Like he was drunk out of his gourd. We couldn’t see him once he was on the other side of the complex, but he seemed to be circling the building. Every time he passed us he’d lay on his horn, which played “La Cucaracha” at an increasingly sluggish tempo.

  God, Adam, I can still hear the sound of that horn: duh-duh-da-dah-duh . . . duh-duh-da-dahhhhh-duuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh . . .

  “What the hell is he doing?” Jeremy muttered against the glass. Salvador’s driving had become downright erratic, and now he was driving over curbs and plowing through bushes.

  “Hey! He just hit my car!” Lauren yelled. She occasionally temped as our receptionist. I bet she sure regretted coming in today.

  “Join the freakin’ club,” Jeremy said. “See that red Volkswagen he de-bumpered seven laps ago? That’s my car.”

  “Should we maybe . . . do something?” I suggested lamely.

  Jeremy snorted. “Do you want to go down there and talk to him?” I don’t think he was purposely being malicious. “Oh, I know, let’s send Mike back down. Maybe that little tooth fairy can take a bite out of his other arm.” I think he was just scared and lashing out.

  “Well, we can’t call the police,” Marty said as he sprinted towards us. “I’ve been trying to get through to nine-one-one this whole time. The phones are still down.”

  “There’s somebody down there!” Lauren yelled.

  A businessman carrying a leather briefcase came stumbling through the shrubs that had encircled our parking lot prior to Sal’s taco truck bushwhacking. He was wearing a dark navy suit and black dress socks with no shoes. His tie was wrapped around his thigh. He must have been using the tie as a tourniquet, because it was crusted with what I can only assume was blood. His pants were also stained dark red and he had blood all over his hands and face.

  An incredulous whisper: “What the fuck?”

  In a daze, the businessman gazed up at the sun and then sat down in the middle of the lot, directly in the path of Salvador’s destruction. He tucked his knees under his arms and began rocking. He still held the briefcase. When he wasn’t clutching it directly out in front of his chest he was placing it on top of his head like a hat.

  “He’s going to get himself killed,” Lauren cried. “Someone’s got to go down there! We’ve got to—”

  Salvador sped around the corner and plowed the businessman down. He didn’t even attempt to stop. He actually sped up and gunned right over the guy. He honked his horn in victory, subjecting us to another round of “La Cucaracha.” Then, he took off on another lap.

  “Did that . . . really just happen?” Jeremy croaked.

  Lauren began sobbing. So did a few others. Some were praying and hugging each o
ther for comfort. Jeremy wrapped his arm around Lauren and she buried her face against his chest.

  For about a minute, the man lay completely motionless on the ground. Human road kill.

  Then, he started convulsing. It was just a little at first, and then a whole lot, like he was having a seizure. He did this off and on for about a minute. Then, he stopped completely.

  Somebody sniffle-sobbed. “Is he d-dead?”

  “Uh . . .” said Jeremy. “I think s—”

  The man rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself off the ground. He was still clutching that briefcase of his. It had been nearly flattened and was coming apart at the hinges, with documents spilling out every which way. He eyed us dully through the windows and then gave us the finger. He yelled up at the sky as he began spinning around and around and around.

  No longer were people crying. Now the office was divided up into two groups: those who were screaming and those who’d been shocked into silence. I fell into the latter group.