Z1N1: The Zombie Pandemic: 2012 Was Just the Beginning

by Mitchell Layne Cook

  Karl had just returned to his office from a three hour meeting with the financial backers of his firm. He sat behind his desk and was soon interrupted by what sounded like multiple high-powered firecrackers going off outside. At first the sounds didn’t register with him. He sat behind his desk in his comfortable chair trying to figure out if he had actually really heard anything. He listened closely but heard no other sounds.

  Karl busied himself downloading the rest of the weekly status reports from both facilities. As the reports printed, he organized an agenda for next week’s meeting with the IPPC officials in the Stockholm office. He made corrections to the agenda but was interrupted as the outside noises began to fire off again in rapid succession. Karl heard yelling from outside his office and more “POP” “POP” “POP” sounds outside his window as Michael rushed into the office.

  “Holy shit, Karl…I mean Mr. Timmons – look out your window! We are under attack!” Michael rushed over to the window waving his boss over to him.

  “What the hell, Michael? What are you blabbering about?”

  Michael stared out the window at the horrifying scene below. At least two hundred “rioters” were cresting the small hill leading into the facility. The soldiers below were shouting warnings for the intruders to stay out of the restricted area but the interlopers paid no attention. Wave after wave of rioters were being struck down by light gunfire, mostly handguns and shotguns. The soldiers on scene lacked the initial firepower they once had at the beginning of their stint on the Idaho campus; Lt. Samson and his crew had taken the majority of the heavier caliber arms with them to combat the initial riot at the mall.

  Screams of terror from all floors of the building echoed about the complex. Many people were trying to leave work a bit early to start the weekend off the right way, but their plans forever changed today. People dialed nine-one-one to report the vicious attacks going on just outside the walls of their building. Karl’s office phone buzzed repeatedly, multiple channels lit up indicating that various heads of departments were trying to get his attention. Karl sat at his desk trying to figure out what was going on…he barely paid any attention as Michael continued to yell.

  “I’m going down there to see if I can help in any way.” Michael rushed out of the office before Karl could reply.

  Karl eventually snapped out of his fugue-like dream state as he saw Michael leaving the room. Karl didn’t try to stop the young man. As he began to focus more clearly he pushed himself away from the desk and walked to his favorite window; a warzone had erupted in the parking lot of Illumination Pharmaceuticals. Bodies of non-military personnel lay strewn out all over the street and inside the cordoned off area. Karl watched in horror as the attackers broke through the military line. At least half of the soldiers were dead or dying. The attackers continued to push through the small arms fire as if the bullets were mere bee stings to them. Karl watched as the soldiers began to retreat towards the building. He ran out of his office down the stairs to the first floor of the building.

  By the time Karl made it to the reception area, the remaining soldiers had moved inside the building. Karl looked at these young men and women, most of them were barely out of high school. He counted nine soldiers in total. Three of the soldiers had barricaded the front entrance by pushing furniture against the door. Three other soldiers had blocked off the back entrance by wrapping chains around the door handles binding them together. Both sets of doors were predominately glass outlined by thick metal support structures.

  Two soldiers lay on the marble floor. The center mosaic design with the dark blue IP logo was splattered with their thick crimson blood. Karl knew the soldiers had been dragged through the front door because two trails of blood led directly from that door to their current location. Karl stepped over the dead soldiers and slipped in their blood but he regained his balance and steadied himself as he moved towards a female soldier standing at the side of the room.

  She appeared to be the highest ranking officer left on scene since Lt. Samson had left earlier in the week. Karl saw a look of fear etched deep into her young face but her training had taken over; she robotically barked out orders to her soldiers. To their credit, the young men and women did as instructed. Karl heard her yelling instructions but the words made no sense to him; he was shell-shocked. The gunfire and the screams had overtaxed his nervous system’s capacity to cope with all of the extra stimuli; he began to feel dizzy as he sat down on one of the out-of-place sofas.

  A small crowd of five or six employees converged around the receptionist’s desk. Most had been trying to exit the facility and were forced back inside by the soldiers. As Karl steadied himself, he saw more employees - his accounting team, the accounts payable team and a few scientists were huddled into one of the back corners. What he hadn’t noticed earlier was that some of his employees, people he knew and saw every day, lay motionless on the floor around the perimeter of the room. Apparently some of them, Karl counted at least four, had made it outside and were mauled by the rioters. The soldiers had dragged all of the wounded back inside the building before barricading both entrances.

  Karl cupped his hands around his ears to drown out the screaming and crying. His world spun around and he felt the overwhelming urge to vomit or pass out – maybe both and not necessarily in that order. He took more deep breaths and heard the faintest sound of a voice calling out his name. It took a few seconds to register but he turned his head to look in the direction of the familiar voice. A fifth downed employee was within arm’s reach…it was Michael. Karl fell off the couch to his knees and kneeled next to the downed man.

  “Michael?”

  “Karl…they got me.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Karl’ – you know I hate that. It will look bad on your yearly review if I have to write you up for insubordination.”

  Michael could barely muster enough strength to smile at his boss’s attempt to downplay the gravity of the situation. “I’m not sure…if I’ll need that raise…”

  “What happened?” Karl asked as he inspected the man’s wounds. Michael had bite marks on his neck and bone-deep gashes in both forearms from what appeared to be vicious fingernail scratches. The young man’s lab coat was torn and bloody, the remaining white areas of the coat stood in stark contrast to the maroon stained arm and neck areas.

  “I was trying to see what was going on…” Michael coughed out syrupy thick blood that ran down his chin and neck. The young man struggled to speak. “Those things out there…not…human…”

  Michael’s eyes rolled backwards as his body began to spasm; Karl didn’t know what to do for the young man, but felt holding him was the right thing to do. Soon the spasms stopped and Michael breathed his last breath dying on the cool marble floor next to the company logo. Karl lay the man down gently and rushed in the direction of the female soldier in charge.

  A large panel of glass at the front entrance exploded inwards – confetti-like glass shrapnel hovered momentarily in the air before crashing to the ground. Karl glanced over to the door, not paying attention to the blood-slicked flooring, he slipped and fell. He rolled onto his shoulder to absorb some of the impact as he crashed awkwardly to the floor.

  As he stopped sliding, he looked over at the back door. A cabal of the attackers had clumped up shoulder-to-shoulder against the glass doors. He could hear them moaning and growling as the mob scratched and pounded on the glass. Karl knew that the thick security glass would only hold for so long. He sat up and faced the front doors. A similar scene played out there as well as the sick minions tried to crawl through the new opening. Karl scooted across the floor to the woman in charge. He used a nearby coffee table to push himself to his feet.

  “What the hell is going on? We need to get the hell out of here!”

  “Calm down, sir.” Sergeant Womack insisted as she continued to give orders to the soldiers. “I need you to get into that corner over there with the rest of the employees.”

  “This is my facility! I’m tired
of all of your people’s bullshit. I refuse to take orders from some low-ranking cunt!” Karl put his hands on her shoulders to force her to pay attention to him.

  Again, the young female soldier’s instincts and training took over. She quickly pressed her palms together, as if praying, and shot both of her hands in an upward motion, inside of Karl’s outstretched arms, breaking free from his forceful grip. A quick knee strike to his groin doubled him over in pain. As he turned his head up towards her, she pulled her sidearm from its holster and rammed the cold steel barrel of the weapon deep into the side of his cheek. “Sir, you will do as I say or I will shoot you in the fucking face.”

  Karl limped away holding his groin area; he moved slowly towards the clumped up group of his fellow coworkers. The group sat on the floor in silence in very close proximity to one another. None of them spoke – they barely even noticed Karl’s arrival. Karl sat down next to them. He had known, or more accurately – had supervised most of these people for at least five years, some of them more…yet he could never remember ever being this close to them unless he had been barking orders at them. Now he stared at their blank faces and couldn’t remember a single one of their names.

  Karl watched as Sergeant Womack gave more orders to her soldiers. She then turned her attention to the group of people that Karl sat with. She walked quickly towards them and knelt down on one knee next to a young woman on Karl’s right side. Sergeant Womack addressed the entire group in a calm, orderly fashion:

  “I need all of you to get up and go back to your offices. Find a place to hide upstairs. Stay off the elevators. Lock the doors. Do not come out for any reason. We will hold off those…things…as long as we can. Help should be here soon. Go hide and don’t come out until we come and get you. GO!”

  Karl took off up the stairs. He didn’t consider himself to be a selfish or bad man, but he wasn’t going to wait for everyone else to get up the stairs before he made his move. Even the painful groin strike from moments earlier didn’t slow him down. Karl made it to the top of the third floor staircase. His heart was pounding, sweat streamed down his forehead and neck and he could literally hear his heart pounding in his ears. He sat down on third floor landing breathing deeply – he feared he might have pushed himself too hard. Karl fumbled around in his shirt pocket for his nitroglycerin tablets. He placed one white pill under his tongue and closed his eyes. “Just breathe” he thought silently to himself as the brief bout of angina slowly began to subside.

  Gunfire erupted from the first floor. Karl knew that the rioters had breached the interior of the building. He gingerly pushed himself up to his feet and walked briskly past the cubicles to the end of the aisle to his office door. He grabbed the cool, metal handle and gently turned the knob. Karl peeked inside his well-lit office; nothing was out of place and more importantly, no one was inside. He slipped inside the room, closed the door behind him and locked the door.

  Karl walked over to his window. Looking down, he saw more faceless waves of the rioters or whatever they were, canvassing the entire parking lot. Karl knew there was something horribly wrong with those people below…Were they even people? It didn’t make any sense to him. Karl had seen some of those “people” up close and personal as he had looked out the back entry doors on the first floor. Many of them suffered from horrific injuries…life threatening injuries, but they still moved around. Their faces, etched in Karl’s mind, were distorted and somewhat vacant. While he didn’t have tons of time to analyze the attackers, it seemed to him that they were operating on instinct alone…as if some guttural, innate force guided them to move forward in spite of their damaged bodies.

  Karl walked from the window to the closest edge of the maroon leather couch on the south wall of his office. He pressed the mid-part of his thigh against the overstuffed arm of the couch and began to slide the heavy couch towards the door. He didn’t realize how heavy the couch actually was. When it was delivered six years ago, after he ordered it from an online retailer, two large men had maneuvered the lumbering piece of furniture to its current resting place. He hadn’t moved the sofa since then and had given no particular scrutiny towards its mass over the past half decade.

  Slowly but surely, Karl was able to reposition the large couch in front of the inward opening office door. It had taken him at least twenty minutes to slide the couch the fifteen feet from the south wall to the office door, but it was well worth the effort. There were no other entry points into the office. Karl surveyed the deep gouge marks in the expensive beige carpet but that was the least of his concerns now. He had to remain safe until additional help arrived.

  Karl sat down in his comfortable leather chair behind his desk and opened the mini-fridge positioned under the desktop on his left hand side. He moved some sodas and sports drinks around. He found a package of chocolate cookies, an unopened single-sized bag of chips and a half-eaten deli sandwich left over from his brief visit to the office the past weekend. He had enough food and drinks to last until help arrived…assuming they showed up soon.

  Karl picked up his office phone receiver – all the lights that were flashing earlier were dim now. He put the phone to his ear but there was no dial tone as he pressed the buttons. He slammed down the receiver and frantically patted himself down feeling for his Blackberry. He rummaged around in his desk drawer for the device but it was nowhere to be found. He came to the sad realization that his “almost always present” Blackberry must have fallen out of his pocket in his mad dash up the stairs.

  Karl glanced at his watch, the time was 4:48 PM - he had already been in the office for well over twelve hours now and had eaten nothing. He opened the mini-fridge again and took out a sports drink and the bag of chips. He ate and drank quickly. His body was exhausted from the long day and all of the surreal activity on the first floor. His recent angina attack at the top of the stairs had also sapped precious energy from his body. He was exhausted. Karl stood up from his desk and walked over to his newly positioned couch. The old man sat down and swung his legs up onto the cushions; he stretched out his tired body the full length of the couch.

  No one or nothing could get into the office except through the door. With the large couch now blocking the only entrance, Karl allowed himself to relax. If anything tried to get through the door, it would surely wake him. He would just lie here until help arrived. It would soon be night – surely help would arrive before the sun went down…

  “I’ll just rest my eyes,” Karl said softly, to no one in particular, as he soon drifted off to sleep.

  Karl awoke to the sounds of a woman’s desperate screams. Gunfire and loud echoing knocks accompanied the terror-stricken voice. He sat up glancing around the dimly lit room; darkness lovingly caressed the thick glass of his favorite window. Gunfire erupted just beyond the thick oak door; empty shell casings danced loudly on the cold marble floor. Karl rubbed his eyes and glanced down at his watch - the time was now 9:33 PM! How the hell had he slept for nearly five hours?!

  “Let me in,” a muffled female voice pleaded from the other side of the door. “They are coming up the stairs!”

  More gunfire echoed around Karl’s office; he could smell the gunpowder seeping under the door. Now that he was fully awake, he began to panic. Where was the additional help? Why hadn’t someone come to their rescue? A brief moment of silence passed then a few more rounds went off. Karl heard the female voice yell in pain. It was Sergeant Womack for sure.

  “Please help me,” Sergeant Womack pleaded. “For the love of God – I know you’re in there! I’m out of ammo…more of those things will be coming up the stairs soon. Please…”

  Karl hesitated, not because he hated that bitch for kicking him in the nuts, but because he truly feared for his life. If he moved the couch and those things got into his office, he would surely die. Karl sat on the couch and said nothing. He only listened. Soon, Sergeant Womack’s screams of pain stopped. He looked down on the floor as her blood began to spill into the office. Loud groans and growls repla
ced her screams; soon deep, penetrating scratches began to tear into the outside part of the door.

  Karl leapt off of the couch avoiding the slick pool of blood that began to form at the base of the couch. He ran towards his desk and crouched underneath. His legs began to cramp but he didn’t move. Maybe the creatures would just leave if they couldn’t get into his office?

  The sturdy wooden legs of the couch began to rip through the carpet as the large piece of furniture was pushed out of its place. Karl sat silently, tucked away out of sight. Within moments, the door swung open and the heavy couch tumbled over landing on its backside. Karl heard one set of awkward footsteps scuffle across the carpet as something entered the room. The heavy steps moved towards the desk and stopped. A terrible stench invaded his olfactory senses; a pungent odor so vile and thick that he could taste it. Karl remained stationary as he listened to the creature moan – seemingly lamenting the fact that room was empty...

  BRNNNG!! BRNNNG!! BRNNNG!!

  Karl knew the sound instantly. It was his Blackberry. He now remembered where he had placed his precious piece of technology. It was in his left-hand coat pocket of his sports jacket – draped over the back of his office chair! The creature erupted into a fit of anger and sped towards the source of the sound. The chair guarding the entrance to Karl’s secret lair was ripped away and tossed through the window to the ground three stories below. The desk became airborne and Karl was fully exposed.