Z Walkers: The Complete Collection

by Luke Shephard

  She bit the insides of her cheeks as she followed him toward the stairwell that led to the lower levels. The only way she was walking out of this building was if she was escorted by a pair of armed officers, and only after they’d dealt with the roving band of cannibals. Why would she need cash? Why would he?

  Shaking her head, she figured there was no point in arguing the issue. The cameras around the first floor would have caught him looting, so if there were any issues once this was over with, Gary would have to explain himself alone.

  All thoughts about petty theft and police officers fled her mind once they reached the bottom of the stairs. As always, the gym facilities were well-lit, but the pristine floors and walls she’d grown accustomed to ignoring were anything but that evening. Similar to the upper levels, blood coated everything. Some looked fresh: Gary slid his finger along a smear, careful to cover his hand with the sleeve of his coat before doing so. She shot him a horrified look when he glanced back at her, and she was sure she looked paler than the off-white coat of paint they’d just added to brighten up the place.

  Which was quite the accomplishment, considering her Haitian background.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t touch that. It’s a biohazard,” she muttered, barely speaking above a breathy whisper.

  “I’m using my sleeve.” He wiped his sleeve on his pants, shooting her a bit of a glare. “Christ, Sara, how stupid do you think I am?”

  Every sound pulled her already tight nerves taut, and they both straightened up when they heard a door down the hall creak. Wordlessly, they pressed on, bypassing the bloody yoga studio and the dark sauna at the entrance to the pool’s locker rooms.

  The lower levels had always been an intricate maze of hallways and rooms. Even clients complained about not being able to get to their classes on time because they were always getting lost, and in that moment, Sara would have done anything for a more simplistic building design. Renewed fear bubbled up in her every time they approached a corner, her palms so sweaty that it was a miracle she was still holding her bar.

  Thankfully Gary tackled all the new corners, always peering around and making sure the coast was clear for them to proceed. If it wasn’t, which had been the case three times since they descended to that level, they turned around and went back the other way, Gary always in the front, Sara following so closely behind that she kept stepping on his heels.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, shooting him an apologetic grin when he turned back to glare at her. The flash of annoyance over his features was brief, replaced quickly by a focused expression instead.

  “It’s fine.”

  “I don’t mean to do it—”

  “I said it’s fine.”

  She pressed her lips together and nodded, trying her best to ignore her howling stomach. They’d passed the staff room twice already, and her lasagna was begging her to make a pit stop. Screaming. Wailing. Desperate to be consumed.

  “We should eat something soon,” she told him as they crept along, pausing at the windows of a cycling classroom. “I’m getting lightheaded.”

  He fished into his pocket and pulled out a protein bar, much to her surprise, and then tossed it at her. “Here.”

  With her hands gripping her weapon so tightly, she missed it, and the thick bar landed a few feet away. Her clumsiness earned her another glare from her companion.

  “Thanks.” She held up the snack after she wiped it on her pants, smiling weakly. “This’ll do.”

  “I’m hungry too, but we should clear all the rooms before we sit down anywhere.”

  A groan echoed from down the hall, and Sara dropped the snack in her haste to scramble after Gary. Footsteps followed, heavy and hard, and she threw herself at the nearest doorway.

  “Get in,” she hissed, using her swipe card to open it and gesturing for Gary to move. He hesitated, but as the footsteps thundered toward them, it was clear they had no choice. Forgoing any rule about being quiet, Sara slammed the door behind them and locked it. Her chest heaved as she leaned back against it, and she stared at the ceiling of the dimly lit room. A tanning bed sat against the wall.

  “Wait, Sara…”

  She flinched off the door when something scratched across the other side, like nails on a chalkboard, and it was only then that she noticed the scattered clothes. Someone had been using the room when all this happened… Hesitantly, she lifted the tanning bed’s lid, then dropped it and pressed her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. Her bar hit the ground noisily.

  Mangled beyond repair, the woman inside the bed couldn’t have been much older than her.

  “We need to clear all these rooms,” Gary muttered, stalking toward curtained portion at the back of the room. “This… It’s not safe.”

  “Nothing about this is safe,” she fired back shakily, running a hand through her hair. This morning she’d spent longer than usual straightening it… What a waste of time.

  “Sara, if we—”

  Gary cried out as soon as he pushed the changing curtain back, and Sara nearly bolted for the door. Trapped behind it had been a cannibal—Keith, a member of the cleaning staff. Dressed in head to toe white, he was probably in the room to grab any discarded towels.

  Had he butchered that woman?

  There wasn’t time to think, not with Gary screaming and Keith groaning as the two grappled with one another.

  “Sara!”

  Fumbling over her feet, she went for the metal bar she’d dropped, then took a swing at Keith’s legs. Don’t hesitate. The guy was coated in blood, his white uniform stained red—her violence was justified and necessary.

  But that didn’t make her feel any better. Teeth gritted, she hit him again on the backs of his knees, sending the guy tumbling to the ground, jaws still snapping. There was no denying it: he’d been trying to tear a chunk out of Gary’s face.

  Unfortunately, before she could deliver the final blow, the one that would send Keith—who had apparently turned cannibalistic since she saw him that morning—into a nice, long sleep, he lunged at Gary and bit into his calf.

  “Fuck!” Gary roared, finally getting ahold of his dumbbells and slamming one into Keith’s head. She staggered back as he hit the guy over and over again, until finally his face was as bloody as his uniform. Keith fell to the floor, motionless.

  “A-Are… you…” She couldn’t get the question out—it was like her tongue had stopped working.

  “The fucker bit through my pants,” Gary growled, examining the wound. For the first time, Sara saw him shaking, his hands fumbling over the fabric of his pants. “We gotta go somewhere more secure.”

  “Locker room down the hall?” she suggested, not liking the way the bite mark took on a nasty brown hue almost immediately. “We can wash it in the sinks.”

  He nodded and held out an arm to her, which she slipped under to prop him up. Her mouth set in a hard line as she stepped over Keith, heart pounding. Two dead bodies in one room. Add them to the dozens scattered around the building, and it was a party!

  After getting the door unlocked, Sara poked her head out into the hall hesitantly, unnerved by the emptiness of it. Whoever had followed them had apparently moved on to bigger and better things.

  “Let’s move,” Gary hissed, and when she glanced back, she noticed the way his face had paled. He gritted his teeth, obviously in pain, and as she helped him out of the room, Sara tried her best to remember the First Aid training she’d once excelled in. Hopefully they could stop the bleed.

  “Why would Keith… be like them?” she whispered as they plodded along, stopping at every corner, crouching low. “He seemed like such a nice kid.”

  “I didn’t see a nice kid in those eyes. It was the Devil looking back at me.”

  Her eyebrows knitted together. Not Keith. She didn’t know him well, but he’d always been sweet to her and her clients. Something wasn’t right.

  The pair broke out into a run when they spotted a group of cannibals ripping at a fallen body. No screaming�
�hopefully whoever was on the ground was dead. She tried to keep her footfalls light, prancing and leaping more than running, but Gary was like a lead weight at her side. Just as they heard groaning behind them, they barreled through the doors of the women’s locker room. Shoving Gary off her, she barricaded the doors as best she could, locking them with her key card and pushing a garbage can in front of them.

  “Clear the area,” Gary muttered, sliding down the wall to the floor and wincing. She nodded, though she quickly realized she’d left her weapon behind in the tanning room. Fists up, she walked through every section of the changing area, checking lockers and under benches. The bathrooms were clear too, and she pushed a garbage can in front of the staff-only door that led to a private washroom, used only on busy days.

  She took a moment there, after searching the whole area, and doubled over, taking deep, heaving breaths. If she actually had something in her stomach, she’d probably puke.

  “Sara?”

  Gary’s call was weak and fading, and she got herself together just enough to go back to him. His leg was coated in blood, and his face had taken on a greenish complexion.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked, struggling to help him up. He nodded, his eyes closed, and she gulped. “Okay. Okay, let’s get you down somewhere… You look like you’re about to faint.”

  “I feel like it too.”

  “Do you not like blood?” she asked, leading him to one of the thickset benches between two rows of lockers. He gave a weak shrug.

  “Doesn’t really bother me normally.”

  “I always find it’s worse when it happens to me,” she insisted, hoping to make him feel just a little bit better. “My own blood freaks me out a little.”

  “Well, h-here’s to hoping no on takes a bite out of you.” He chuckled, shooting her what Sara assumed was his best attempt at a smile. A hand on his back, she helped him down on the bench, then pulled off her jacket and bunched it up under his head.

  “Hold this on the wound,” she instructed, placing his hand over the gash. “Hard. I’m going to get something to clean it with.”

  Unfortunately, as she stood in the bathroom area, staring hard at the soap, she couldn’t think straight. Would soap cleanse the injury? Should she dab it with paper towels? Wet? Dry? Nothing was sterile, and with the way Gary’s leg oozed brown, she had to wonder if it was already infected and all of her efforts would be for nothing.

  She couldn’t wait around to figure it out—Gary couldn’t either. So, she grabbed a handful of paper towels, added some soap to some and dampened the others, then hurried back to his side. Stopping the bleeding was important, but she wanted it clean too.

  “Here,” she said as she rounded the corner, careful not to drop her handful, “I have some…”

  Sara trailed off when she found herself talking to an empty bench. Frowning, she walked up and down the row. “Gary? You shouldn’t be moving around.”

  He hadn’t been in the bathroom area, and she hadn’t seen him on the quick walk back. She couldn’t have been gone for more than a few minutes…

  Sara found him, however, when she rounded the corner of the lockers. She yelped, stumbling in to his burly frame, and then took a few steps back.

  “Gary, you…” Again her voice failed her. He stood just fine, no longer favoring his good leg. His face had paled more, taking on more of the sickly green-yellow shade that she’d noticed before. She raised her eyebrows, gripping the paper towels tightly. “Gary?”

  His eyes flitted toward her, but she didn’t see Gary in them. No, they were hollow, expressionless, vacant. For a long moment, they were both still, and then Gary raised his hands to her sharply. Grabbing at her, he clacked his teeth together, as if biting the air, and lunged forward. Sara shrieked, calling his name, pleading with him, as she staggered back. Her heart jumped from her stomach to her throat when she almost tripped over the bench. Gary bore down on her all the same, reminding her of the way Keith went after him.

  Something was wrong. Keith had infected him, sure, but it wasn’t the usual sort of sickness that came from an infected wound…

  It was like he’d been given rabies.

  Although there was no foaming at the mouth, he still seemed rabid—rabid like those cannibals.

  And Sara wasn’t about to get eaten.

  Gathering what little courage her fractured psyche had left, she shoved against him with all her strength, pushing him back into the lockers. Then, in a moment of distraction, she pulled open one the full-length lockers and proceeded to shove him inside. It was no easy task, given his size and his attempts to bite her, but when she was able to slam the metal door shut, she jumped on the opportunity.

  Gary rattled against it from the inside.

  “Gary, stop!” she cried, her voice cracking. “Please!”

  The rattling lessened—like he was distracted by her voice—and she pulled her hair band out of her hair and tied it through the lock area. It probably wouldn’t hold forever, but the knot was strong enough to keep the door mostly shut.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, a fresh batch of tears rolling down her cheeks. She wiped them away, hoping he couldn’t see. “I’ll get you out of here… When help comes, you’ll be the first to go to a h-hospital.”

  He gave a low, long groan in response, and she listened to what sounded his fingernails scratching at the door. Covering her mouth with her hand, she stumbled back, shaking, and grabbed the heavy laundry basket loaded with discarded complimentary towels. It was like the hair band: it wouldn’t hold him for long, but she just needed a little while to collect herself and get out of there.

  And got out of there she did. After taking all of 30 seconds to get over what had happened to Gary, Sara made her way out of the locker room and headed for the upper floors. Downstairs was just too untrustworthy, with all its closed doors and corners, the people could be anywhere. At least the upstairs was open, though that didn’t really matter when she had to run as fast as she could from the cannibals who’d been eating someone by a treadmill.

  After barricading herself back in her office, she huddled under her desk and rooted through her purse. The gym paid a lot of money for good cell reception, and she almost cried she saw all five bars at the top of her phone screen. With trembling fingers, she punched in the emergency three digit number everyone has known since kindergarten.

  “Come on,” she whispered, passing the phone so hard against her ear that it hurt. With a hand fisted in her loose hair, she waited. She’d only ever called 911 once before, and it was when she thought someone had been trying to break into her old college apartment, the one before the penthouse. Back then, they answered on the first ring. Back then, it wasn’t even an emergency— it turned out it was just a family of raccoons squabbling outside the window. In fact, she remembered the officers laughing at her time. But now, when there was an actual emergency, the ringing just went on and on. After the two minutes had gone by, Sara hung up and tried again. This time she waited five minutes.

  Five minutes of ringing. Five minutes of her hope fading.

  When she hung up for the second time, she tried to rationalize whole thing. If those… people were out in the parking lot, there was a pretty good chance they had wandered somewhere else too. She couldn’t have been the only one trying to get a hold of the police. Hell, Gary had already tried twice today. In fact there was probably no answer because the lines were so swamped with callers wanting to report today’s madness. There was a pretty good chance that someone had already called in about the gym. After all, there were other personal trainers who had night shifts, and none of them had shown up so far. They probably took one look at the place and called the police.

  For now, all she could do was wait. Wait in a building full of rabid cannibals. Rabid cannibals who, apparently, spread their crazy by biting other people. Healthy people. People like her.

  They’d be here soon. She swallowed thickly and closed her eyes, willing away the tears. Her lower lip tremb
led as she leaned against the underside of her desk. They had to be here soon. It’d been hours since the chaos started—they probably already had some of the cannibals in custody, and they were working with the CDC to find a vaccine. She had to believe that. She had to believe it for Gary.

  Yet, at the back of her mind, somehow, she just couldn’t.

  ***

  Sara awoke when something heavy slammed against her office door. Squealing, unsure of whether the noise had been part of her dream or not, she pulled her legs up, hugging her knees to her chest, shaking.

  She waited, hoping no cannibal had seen her while she slept, and then hesitantly peered out around the bottom of her desk. Maybe the sound had been a rescue worker? Unfortunately, she saw no one hovering behind the glass window, and when she heard what sounded like banging on another door, she shuffled back under to wait out the noise.

  Her phone, whose battery was on the steady decline, told her that it was just shy of five in the morning. Everything hurt. Her head, her neck, her back, her stomach—everything. It was like she’d participated in a mammoth workout the day before, one that was too much for her abilities, and now she was paying for it the following morning. On top of the aches and pains, which probably stemmed from sleeping on the floor under her desk, she was almost deliriously hungry. In fact, at this point, she was beyond hungry. Her body had probably started eating its own muscle hours ago, and when she tried to crawl out from under the desk, she found the whole room spun.

  Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and tried her best to steady herself. Thankfully she always kept a supply of snacks in her purse—a habit instilled while growing up with a diabetic sister. Always keep something handy, just in case. Unfortunately, the nuts would only keep her satisfied for so long, and the trail mix in the little plastic bag disappeared all too fast.

  She needed food and fresh water—fast.

  Her hunger made her bold—it made her forget her fear. After shoving handfuls of trail mix and nuts into her mouth, she pushed herself to her feet and went to the window. Whoever had made all the racket was gone for now, giving her the opportunity to slip out and head for the stairs.