“Time to suck it up,” I muttered.
* * *
Believe it or not, I had a plan.
I still had Frank’s wallet, which I’d picked up during our altercation at the apartment complex. Now I opened it up and extracted the one thing I needed. I left his credit card and a few bucks in cash alone, because I wasn’t a total asshole.
I got out of the car, locked the door, and then made straight for the back entrance. As I approached the card reader I stuck Frank’s ID card in front and waited. The reader beeped and the door clicked open. Then I strolled in, planning to act like I was supposed to be there.
10
I opened the door to the break room and found it deserted. I thought it was Hector’s night to work, but again, he might be off fighting ragers, or more than likely, getting plastered because I had my schedule all mixed up, and he wasn’t supposed to be here tonight. In my rush to get here and stick my nose where it didn’t belong, I had forgotten to get online and check tonight’s work schedule.
My next stop was the manager’s office where Frank preferred to do most of his yelling. One corner held a shitty brown metal desk covered in papers. An old PC sat there, a relic from at least ten years ago. I couldn’t imagine how slow that POS must be.
Frank’s jacket hung from a peg on the wall, along with an extra jumpsuit and a fanny pack. For all intents this room appeared not to have been disturbed since I was last here.
I moved into the supply closet, not really a closet, more a room with a dozen carts all covered with cleaning supplies. Even more cleaning supplies lined the walls on metal shelves. You could probably set this room on fire and it would cause a mushroom cloud once the building went up. There was no one there so I kept on going.
My next stop was the elevator to the lower levels.
I stepped back into the hallway and looked up and down the expanse.
“Hello?”
I waited a few seconds and then tried again, but louder this time. “Yo, anyone around? Anyone? It’s Jake, the janitor.”
That was going to be the title of my autobiography. Jake the Janitor and the Rage Zombie Apocalypse.
I used Frank’s ID badge to get me onto the elevator. I was already here under false pretenses, so why go crazy and get my badge mixed up in the mess, assuming anyone checked the records.
The elevator whisked open and I was back on the floor from the night before. Advancing up the corridor, I was gratified when the overly-intense overhead lights came on. The first thing I did was check the floor and the walls for signs of the struggle with the guy who had been locked up, but there was none to be found.
I held Frank’s keycard over the lab door for a second until it clicked. The overhead lights came on as soon as I opened the door. I was surprised to see how thoroughly it had been cleaned. Inside the room, the small glass door was still in place, but it stood wide open, and there was no one in the tiny room. There was nothing in there with the exception of a chair bolted into the wall.
Now that I could actually see inside of the room, instead of trying to peer into murk, I made out what had secured Latimer to the wall. The chair looked like some kind of medieval torture device with its collar attached the chair, and the chair subsequently attached to the wall.
I suppose if I were a detective on a TV show I’d find some crucial bit of evidence. I spent the next few minutes with my phone’s LED light shining under the chair, desks, monitors, you name it, and I couldn’t find a hint of mucus, blood, piss, or any other bodily fluids for that matter. Even the glass, which had been covered in the crusty stuff, reeked of ammonia.
Going back into the hallway, I continued to investigate the floor and walls. I opened up an office at random and found it was a room full of big cassettes with some kind of a computer thing in the corner. I guessed the tapes were archives, but it seemed like a hell of a sloppy way to keep things organized. I flipped a few over and found numbers, almost at random, and none of them made sense. What the hell was 00900233400.104 supposed to mean?
But I was bored so I took a picture on my phone, just for giggles. Then I took a selfie in front of the big machine. I stuck out my tongue for added effect, and then sent it to Jessica with the message:
Hope you’re doing good. Give me a call later because I need to tell you something important.
Moving on, I tried another door and found the room beyond contained a desk and a chair, and that was it. No wall art; not even a trash bin. It was like no one had ever set foot in the place.
As I walked the corridor I came to a door with a single piece of brown tape. Bingo!
Sorry, it didn’t say bingo, it read Breeze/Latimer.
Sure enough. The keycard opened the lock.
* * *
Elizabeth Breeze’s office wasn’t as spartan as other offices, but it was relatively bare. There was a desk with a couple of LED buttons set in a panel on the corner of the desk. This was it, her secret stash of files was in a little box that lifted out of the desk, or the wall would pop open. I pushed the blue button and the desk rose into the air. I pushed the other button and the desk lowered.
“Huh,” I muttered because her adjustable desk was kinda cool.
She had a modern computer with a pair of large black rimmed DELL screens, neither of which was on but when I accidentally brushed her mouse, the computer came to life, unfortunately to a lock screen.
Just for giggles I tried the password: PORNSTAR
Beep, no dice.
So I tried the password: JAKEISASTUDMUFFIN
Beep, again.
Her drawers were locked, and with the exception of a few folders on her desk, there wasn’t much else here. Her papers were spectacularly boring and contained a bunch of writing that was Greek to me: equations, blood levels, and stuff like that. Like a professor had left his ungraded papers lying around. I was about to get up and leave when my foot hit something under her desk. I reached under and found her trash can, which was supposed to be placed in the corner so the staff could empty it after hours.
It was jammed with protein bar wrappers, empty drink bottles, and even a few of those Five Hour Energy cans, but they were empty. What I wouldn’t give for one of those right now.
One thing caught my eye and I drew out a crumpled envelope.
“Well, look who has a life after all,” I said and chuckled.
It was a piece of junk mail addressed to Elizabeth Breeze, and it contained a home address. I got out of the building as quickly as I could and dove back into my car. There wasn’t anyone at Abraxin tonight, and I didn’t think anyone was going to show up, so I decided to call it. If someone needed me, they would call.
“Mitch. I found her address,” I said as soon as I was back in my car and on my cell phone.
“The pornstar lady doc?” he asked.
“Yeah, man. I found it in her office. They wiped out all traces of the dude they had locked up downstairs, and I was about to go home, but would you believe she had a trash can under her desk?”
“No shit. Did she have the cure for zombies in her trash?”
“No, smartass. But I did find a piece of junk mail with her address.”
“Bahm,” Mitch dropped a bass line over the phone.
“I’m going to talk to her.”
“You should talk to the FBI, man. Get those guys to ask her some questions,” Mitch said.
“Are you still at the club?”
“Nah. We bailed because people were leaving and it got lame.”
“Wanna meet me at her place and we can see what’s up?” I asked.
“No, bro. We’re gonna crash. Worn out after today. When do you think you’ll be home?”
“Maybe an hour. Maybe more. Don’t go too crazy there, you naughty monkey.” I laughed into the phone.
“Son of a fucking…” I hung up.
* * *
I set up my navigation software and found I would be at her house in about half an hour. She lived a little outside of Atlanta in a place I
wasn’t familiar with. As I pulled out of the parking lot, I shook out a smoke and lit it up. Then I tried to call her again but it immediately went to voicemail.
“You’re ghosting me after one date? Sorry, lady. I’m about to go stalker on your ass,” I muttered in what I thought was a close approximation of Bruce Willis’s voice, but it came out sounding like I had a lisp, and needed to go take a crap.
For the most part traffic flowed out to the freeway at a decent clip. I was making good time when a pair of cop cars in the opposite lane raced back toward the center of town with their lights flashing and sirens blaring.
At least there was no sign of the Army or National Guard. From all of the movies I had watched, that was a sure sign that your city was about to get a whole lot more interesting, and not in a good way. I headed deeper into middle-American suburbia until I found the location, and ran into my first problem.
A guard booth sat next to a gate and a bored-looking man in a brown security outfit manned the location.
I pulled up and thought fast, while looking around my car.
“Can I help you?” The guard leaned out of the open window. A fan sat on a tiny desk next to him and blew air on his face. He looked old, overweight, and really tired.
“Yeah. Got a delivery from Ed and Ernie’s BBQ for Elizabeth Breeze.” I held my cell phone up as I stared at the screen. “2114 looks like the house number.”
He looked at a computer screen for a few seconds, moved the mouse around, and then typed something on a keyboard.
I almost backed up and went back home. What was I doing? I wasn’t about to bluff my way into some elite upper middle class housing development with a bag of chicken bones.
“Okay. Take the first left. Then go two blocks until you see a fork in the road. It’s the one on the left again.” The guard leaned back out of the little window.
What had he been verifying on the computer? This guy was a terrible security guard. Or maybe he was looking up Elizabeth’s name to see if a porn star lived here. The gate cracked open on nearly silent hinges, and only gave up the ghost of a squeak when they were nearly wide open.
I smiled, because I didn’t know what else to do, and then said the first stupid thing that came out of my mouth. “Thanks from both Ed and Ernie. They appreciate ya.”
The guard shot me a bored, but slightly bewildered look, and then waved me through.
11
I arrived at Elizabeth’s house easily enough after I followed the guard’s directions, but it was the gold Range Rover in the driveway that assured me I was in the right place. The house itself was unremarkable. Constructed with red brick, it was a single story, but it stretched back behind a waist-high lattice fence. The yard was immaculately landscaped, what I could see of it in the dark, with a small tree surrounded by a couple of manicured plants that looked like green balloons.
Right. Time to get up there and talk to the lady doc about what had happened with Frank, ask about who all had cleaned up the mess at the lab, and what in the hell was being done to contain these outbreaks if they really were outbreaks? Remember what I said about that river in Egypt? The human mind can come up with a whole lot of denial before it sees the truth. Or maybe none of those reasons were why I was here. I was a little bit offended that I had helped her out, and she’d ghosted me the second she’d roared away from our apartment.
I was out of the car, in front of her door, and ready to hit the doorbell when I heard several sirens howl past the housing development. I turned to regard them but they were already well up the road, along with all of my paranoia.
Doorbell or knock?
I did both just to be a jerk.
“Bloody hell,” Elizabeth said fifteen seconds later as she opened the door.
She wore a robe, her hair was wet, and she smelled like roses.
“Hi.”
“You.” Her eyes narrowed. “What in the hell are you doing here? Is this some sort of stalker act? I will call the security guard, speaking of which, how did you get past him, and how did you find my house?”
“Slow your roll, sheesh. I got your address from work, and your security guard is looking for porn videos of you right now.”
Elizabeth put her hand on the door, clearly intent on slamming it in my face.
“Sorry. Look, Doc. I’m still rattled from earlier and you’re not answering your phone. I was worried that Frank woke up in the back of your car and attacked you.”
Her shoulders dropped at that. She looked me up and down for a moment, and then with an exasperated sigh, gestured for me to come inside.
She closed the door and preceded me up the hallway. I tried to keep my eyes off her ass, but she wore a pretty thin bathrobe, and hey, my on again off again girlfriend, Jessica, hadn’t bothered to text me back tonight, and now she wanted to see other people. I guess you could say I was way ahead of her. The problem was, the person I had my eyes on had no interest in me.
Elizabeth Breeze was British, she had a cool job, a house, and was about my age, but somehow acted like an adult, and she smelled really good. I bet she didn’t have a tramp stamp, and if she did she would probably call me a sexist pig for calling it a tramp stamp in the first place. And if she did have a totally non-sexist tramp stamp, it was probably of the British flag or the queen. Maybe some sheep. What the fuck did I know about Britain?
I could do worse. Unfortunately for me, she could do immensely better.
So I settled on watching her for a few seconds before she detoured to an open door, but she pointed farther down the hallway.
“On the right is a kitchen. In the refrigerator are beer and assorted drinks. There is a bottle of gin on the counter and you’re welcome to mix a drink. But make me one as well,” she said and then closed the door. “I’ll be out in a moment.”
I wanted to argue that I needed answers now, but it was also hard to argue against free alcohol, plus it would be hard to argue through a door like the one that just closed in my face.
Her kitchen was clean, there were no dishes in the sink, and the shelves contained a few glasses, two plates, and a pair of bowls. There were also two coffee or tea cups, and a pair of platters. I peeked inside of a drawer and found that it was empty. Another drawer revealed itself to contain a few pieces of silverware.
She didn’t even have a stack of solo cups and paper plates on top of her refrigerator. It was like…
I walked into the main room, found a couch, a coffee table, and a small LCD television on an empty entertainment center. There was nothing else on the walls. No pictures, no frames, and certainly no cool movie posters.
It was like no one lived here.
“Did you make me a gin and tonic?” she shouted.
“Uh. I’m on it,” I said.
What the fuck was a gin and tonic? I had heard of them, but I was a beer and vodka kind of guy.
I quickly googled “gin and tonic” while I looked in her refrigerator and found a bottle of tonic water that fizzed when I opened it. I poured some ice into a pair of cups, a stiff measure of gin, which smelled like a fucking pine tree, and then added some tonic until the glasses were full. I wrinkled my nose, sucked it up, and downed a few swallows. It tasted the way it smelled. I looked around her place for something to add but there wasn’t any sign of vodka. She did have some cheap American beer, which was strange.
“Who drinks Miller Genuine Draft?” I wondered out loud.
There wasn’t much else in the fridge. A few boxes of take-out food, some lunch meat, sliced cheese, and a few boiled eggs in individual wrappers.
There wasn’t even a loaf of bread on the counter, or a container of milk, nor eggs. It was like she had just moved in yesterday and hadn’t had time to stock up.
Elizabeth appeared in the doorway dressed in a t-shirt with some floppy haired dude riding a unicorn on the front, and a pair of shorts. Her hair was still wet and trailed down her back.
“Who’s the old guy?” I pointed at her shirt.
“Hugh
Grant. What planet are you from?” She picked up the drink, sniffed it, and then took a tentative sip.
“Is he your dad or something? Respect the unicorn, though.”
“Oh dear,” she said and scrunched up her eyes.
“I’ve never made one before.” I shrugged.
“Let’s hope you don’t make another, although a few slices of lime might help.”
“I didn’t see any limes, in fact, I didn’t see much of anything in your cooler here.” I slapped the side of the refrigerator.
“I eat out a lot,” she said as she brushed past me toward the sink. She added a little bit of tap water and then took a drink. “A bit better. It cuts down on the carbonation. So tell me, Jake Turner. Why are you here?”
“I’m here because I’m confused.”
“Oh Jake.” She placed her hand on his upper arm. “You’re very brave. Gender reassignment is a serious matter, and I’m proud that you have decided to take the first step.”
It was my turn to appear shocked. Then I looked into her eyes. “That’s real funny. I’m here to talk about what happened today. I have a lot of questions.”
“Didn’t two hundred and fifty dollars answer your questions? It certainly cleared the air for me.”
“That was for labor. I want to know what happened to Frank and the man that I accidentally let out.”
“You’ll be happy to know that both Frank and Latimer are with some friends at the CDC. Both are undergoing treatment even as we speak,” Elizabeth said as she walked the length of the kitchen and drank her gin and tonic.
“They didn’t end up at Emory Hospital, I hope.”
“No, they did not,” she said. “But another did. One more went to an urgent care facility. And yet another went home.”
“What are you saying?”
She spun on her heel and looked me in the eye. “It’s not good, Jake. Not good at all. There were no safeguards even though I warned those idiots. I warned them over and over again but they simply refused to listen. It’s out there now, and it’s going to be very hard to contain. It only takes one of them to escape the net, and then it spreads as the attacks pick up. You saw Frank in a rage, but you didn’t see the worst of it.”
Dawn of the Rage Apocalypse Page 8
