Suddenly the locker door popped open.
“Good job.” I could hardly believe my eyes. She got it on the second try, her personal best.
Marge peered into the locker, and went straight for the gum. Even now, the old brute couldn’t stand bad breath.
“Just one stick.” I wrestled the gum from her. If I let her, she’d devour the whole pack.
The zombie jawed at me, flailing her arms wildly.
“One stick,” I reiterated, and did not hand it over until she had completely calmed down.
She tossed the stick of gum in her mouth without removing the wrapper. Although she was smart enough to operate a combination lock, she struggled with the concept of unwrapping her food before she ate it. One thing at a time, I guess.
“Keep it up, Marge. You’ll be back to your old self in no time.” I opened the door to the women’s restroom and pushed her inside. I locked the door behind us, grabbed a fresh towel, and prodded her to the showers.
Every day I counted our blessings that we still had running water. For some reason I wasn’t as worried about losing power. It was still in the Elite’s best interests to supply energy to a few points on the grid to see what crawled out of the darkness. It was the only way to locate subjects possessing a natural immunity to the virus and develop an effective vaccine.
I turned the knob and waited. The water struggled at first, and then shot through the showerhead in a steady stream. I sampled the water every few seconds, but it was ice cold. At least it was fresh and clean and didn’t smell like the sewer. Warm water was intermittent, and unfortunately, I wasn’t handy enough to fix the hotel’s various heat pumps.
“Let’s get you out of that uniform. You smell like death.” I gestured to her.
When you’re off the menu, zombies are relatively calm and even trainable. Sure they’re temperamental, have no sense of hygiene, and snap at anything that moves, but they’re also entertaining and excellent watchdogs. Tell them to eat shit and they’ll literally eat shit. The innocent air about them makes them irresistible as long as you can forgive their quirky behavior.
Zombies are breeding grounds for diseases when they decompose, but not all of them were dead. A few like Margaret still had a pulse. Her brain had absorbed the brunt of the virus, but it had not succeeded in killing her off.
Still, it was academic. No one beat the virus once it entered the bloodstream, making my immunity all that more curious.
I had to keep moving, keep my mind busy at all times. I dare not give my imagination too much space to wander, lest invite decay at the somber hands of loneliness and depression. Perhaps I should have done more to prevent the spread of the virus, but I hid inside my tower while the world crumbled.
In light of everything, why did fate spare me? Clearly I’m not the chosen one. Not even close. I’m just…confused…about so many things…and the day of reckoning was fast approaching.
Marge tore off her dress and panty hose before fumbling with her bra. She tugged at it, and when that failed, began chewing on the fabric. Like the lock, I showed her that unhooking her bra required a different skill set.
Putting it back on would be more challenging, though. She abhorred things touching or clinging to her body, and would keep removing her clothes until she got tired of me or forgot they were on her. Even though bathing Marge was a royal pain in the ass, she deserved the dignity of fresh bath and set of clothes. She was still a member of the human race, and until that day, I would continue fighting for her.
“Let’s try this again.” I help up a bar of soap. She nipped at me, causing me to retract my hand. “No clawing or biting this time!” I scolded her.
I guided her to the shower and got her body and hair thoroughly wet. She did not seem to mind the frigid water, and stood still while I lathered up her body. I hid the bar of soap before she snatched it from me again, and pointed to the soapsuds on her body.
Once she saw the bubbles she was completely mesmerized. Marge leaned against the wall, popping them with glee before demanding that I lather her up again. She could do this for hours without complaint, but there was only so much water and patience.
After rinsing the shampoo from her hair, I took a deep breath and turned off the water. Like a child that did not want to leave the pool, Marge went berserk. She slapped my hand aside and turned the knobs. A moment later the water came back on, prompting her to turn and grin.
“Come on, Marge. It’s time to go. Wait…was that a smile?” I studied her closely.
Abruptly she pried the bar of soap from my hand and began lathering her arm. The suds brought fresh bubbles, which brought another smirk.
“There’s hope for you yet.” I smiled back.
When I finally ripped her away from the shower, Marge went for my neck. She’d bitten me before on the arms and legs, but never this. Each time she got increasingly more violent, and if this continued, I was going to have to handcuff her to a pipe and hose her down, or slip a sedative in her Chunky Beef Soup just to bathe that wretched zombie booty. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
I dried her off, and then examined my neck. As I pulled my hand away, I came away with blood. “Fuck!” I blurted out, trying to locate the open wound.
“Funnckk…” Marge replied.
Oops. I had to be careful what I said around her; otherwise, she’d wind up with a potty mouth like me. “Yeah, funk. That’s what I meant to say.”
I looked in the mirror and gasped. “Where’s my earring?” I pressed closer. “Hell, where’s my earlobe?”
“Hhhelll…” Marge moaned, and then coughed up the diamond earring. It bounced off the floor and headed for the drain.
“No!” I shouted. Lightening quick, I sealed the drain with my foot and snagged the earring off the tile floor. “Bad!” I tried to keep the smile from my face. She didn’t understand, couldn’t understand. Not even if she pondered it for a thousand years.
I cursed under my breath, sprayed her with the house perfume, and wrapped towels around her head and body. As I led her to Laundry, I looked back, wondering why she was being so compliant. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of her stuffing the bar of soup in her mouth. Clever girl. Perhaps she was trying to tell me something.
Laundry and Kitchen were the first two departments that I cleared of zombies. It’s impossible to keep one’s sanity with someone puking on your clothes and fucking up your food all the time. I had to draw the line somewhere, and fresh panties and a bowl of Rice Krispies were worth killing for.
I’d seen zombie chefs before, and it’s not a pretty sight. Parts of them always wind up in the entrée. They also take after their human counterparts—they don’t last long. Oblivious to a wide range of pain, they don’t feel a damn thing when they’re scalded, seriously injured or set afire. They just continue cooking, because it’s the only thing that they know how to do. ‘Tis only a flesh wound, right chap?
But the worst thing in the world is watching a zombie cook french fries. They seem to have a handle on placing the frozen potatoes in the fryer and lowering them into the hot oil, but beyond that, all bets are off. They’re notoriously impatient, reaching in with their bare hands and scooping the fries out. Frequently they leave fingers behind. Gross!
Without a second thought, I shot all of the cooks in the head, regardless of whether or not they were zombies. They were all bastards anyways. (Right?) I did, however, keep a Room Service Server around to ferret things from one side of the hotel to the other. To my surprise, he was quite useful.
I punched in the five-digit pin, and opened the door. Rows of freshly pressed uniforms hung in racks to one side, while piles of dirty clothes cluttered the floor. I stepped away from Margaret briefly, grabbed a clean uniform, and rejoined her near the washers in the back of the room.
Laundry always made me cringe when I stepped through the doors. The smell of strangers that I did not know lingered on every shirt and pair of pants. I could tell their choice of perfume, the detergen
t they had used and other unique bodily odors. And when I surprised someone, I could usually tell within a nanosecond whether or not they had crapped their pants. Showers were not only born of necessity, they were essential to my survival.
Marge staggered over to an empty, yellow cart and stopped. She stared at a single drop of blood at the bottom, and then raised her head to the metal chute that fed it.
“What’s wrong, Marge?” I began putting on her uniform. Fresh pantyhose were becoming scarce, so she’d have to do without them for a week. The gift shop and vending machines were running dry, and it didn’t make sense for me to wash them by hand since she enjoyed tearing them off.
Margaret was unusually mellow that morning while I dressed her. Typically it was five-round MMA match where I had to fight her for every scrap of clothing. But every piece slipped on with ease that day. Once I had her fully clothed, I stood next to her and looked inside the cart. Shit. This could take awhile. I’ve seen zombies stare into the abyss for weeks.
Before I nudged her along, I spotted the blood. “Is that from you? Are you bleeding?” I looked at her nose. “Crap, is it me?” I rubbed the Band-Aid over my ear.
Suddenly a head popped out of the chute. “Aaargh!” the zombie moaned, but he was not one of ours.
“Funnckk?” Margaret pointed.
“Yeah, that’s a ‘What the fuck?’ moment if I ever saw one.” I pulled out my gun and fired.
The corpse fell into the laundry cart with a thud. I leaned over and put another in his skull just to be sure. I wasn’t worried about him biting me, but I couldn’t risk what he might do to Marge. She was still salvageable, I was sure of it. Me? Forget it.
“Thanks, Marge.” I turned and noticed the blood all over her uniform. “Well, at least we’re in Laundry.” I stripped her down and grabbed another uniform.
After changing Marge a second time, I grabbed the laundry cart and pushed it down the hallway, making my way to the loading dock at the other end. As we passed by the service elevators, one opened. Travis, an Irish-Mexican Room Service Server with a goatee, stared off into space, his next move escaping him. He leaned against a gray cart with an unlit hotbox underneath. A wooden tray sat atop with a small, white carnation, miniature salt and pepper shakers, a fork, knife and spoon tucked inside a folded napkin and an entrée covered by a stainless steel lid.
“Room 1313, Travis. Thirteen-thirteen,” I said before the steel doors shut.
We trekked to the other side of the building, each step more difficult than the next for my nervous zombie companion. Marge hated the loading dock, not for what it held, but for what it might eventually become.
I strolled through the rubber doors, leaving Marge behind. Bodies were stacked in the wells where trucks had parked to deliver their payloads. The garage had filled up fast, and already it was time to burn another mountain of corpses.
This time I’d be more careful about the alarms. During last summer’s barbeque, I triggered the emergency sprinklers and had trouble turning them off. Hell, I was a bellhop, not an engineer. I didn’t know jack shit about the inner workings of the hotel. It was all one giant pain in the ass, and I was still fuzzy about what I had done to bail myself out the last time.
Disease can spread quickly if one’s not careful. Isolating all of the dead bodies to one end of the hotel and reducing them to ash was the only way to ensure that I’d keep the cancer at bay. But the corpses kept piling up, and the bugs were getting bigger.
As long as my staff was reasonably clean, they were not a threat to me, and thrived upon the strange vermin that snuck into the guest rooms. Although both parties threatened to contaminate my dwindling supplies, the zombies enjoyed hunting down mutated rats and spiders and feasting upon their flesh. Hopefully their odd diet would not spark a change within them.
I dumped the body into the pit and sprayed the cart clean with a hose. I left it to dry and rejoined Marge by the security desk. My ear was throbbing like a bitch, but I knew that if I didn’t finish dressing Margaret soon, it would be impossible to goad her to the back of the house in the waning rays of the afternoon.
“Come here, Marge.” I rounded the corner and punched in the key code. I opened the door to the security office and pulled Margaret inside, forcing her to take a seat in the padded, leather chair. Immediately I opened the first aid kit, and grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol. I dripped a little on a cotton swab, removed my Flintstones band-aid, and pressed it against my ear.
“Ahh!” I winced in pain. I was lucky; Marge had torn out my earring and only bitten off a small chunk of my lobe. It was yet another nasty reminder not to wear jewelry around zombies. What can I say? These fuckers like to pimp themselves out.
But something about all this did not sit well with me.
The zombie in the laundry room was new, and there was no telling how he had slipped inside. Each floor had been swept from top to bottom before Ryan and I sealed it off. If there was a breach, even a broken window, I’d know about it.
With over seven hundred rooms, it would be difficult to narrow down the point of entry. The zombie had been stuck in the dumbwaiter, suggesting that he had entered at a higher level. A few stories up, the only way to get inside was to follow someone in. And it had to be recent; otherwise, I would have already noticed him.
I kept an eye on the security cameras while I applied Margaret’s makeup. Thankfully they’d been spared as well as a convoy of vehicles in the adjacent parking garage. I watched the four-by-three grid of cameras cycle through the main entrance, lobby, lounge, gift shop, front desk, guest elevators, restaurants, back hallways, kitchen, roof and parking garage all in one continuous loop. It was quiet as a crypt, just the way I liked it.
Still, I was suspicious.
I pressed the touch screen and skipped through the guest floors one-by-one. Suddenly a cadaver stumbled out of the service elevator and crashed into the wall. “Travis, you fool.” I shook my head. “Haven’t you figured out by now that there isn’t a room 1313?”
Anyone who’s ever worked in an American hotel knows that we don’t have a thirteenth floor. With such an advanced society, you would think that we could get past such superstitions, but apparently the feelings are strong enough to encourage hotels to mismark the floors. Unfortunately perception doesn’t always match reality, especially here, and a thirteenth floor existed in this hotel even though management refused to admit it.
In light of this, there was a common prank that the staff liked to play on new hires.
“Quick, go check out the fire alarm on the thirteenth floor,” the Engineering Supervisor would radio the rookie.
By the time the newbie got into the elevator, he realized that there wasn’t a button for the thirteenth floor. “Uh…I’m having trouble finding it.”
“Oh, that. I forgot to tell you: as you pass the twelfth floor, stop the elevator and open the doors manually.” The supervisor was careful not to burst into laughter.
“Are you serious?”
“Just do it, man. You’ll see what I mean.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Hey, do you want this job or not?”
It was amazing how many people fell for it aside from my mindless, unsuspecting zombies. Keep going, Travis. You’ll eventually get there!
Suddenly the camera on the roof cut out. Then the sixteenth floor landing. The silent alarm triggered, flashing an emergency warning on my screen.
“Oh, fuck.” I painted the side of Marge’s face with lipstick.
“Funnckk?” She mimicked me.
“You know what I mean.”
I slammed the first aid kit shut and grabbed my keys. Someone was infiltrating the hotel from above. It wouldn’t be long before they seized the lobby and commandeered all of our supplies.
“Stay here. I’m gonna knock the funk out of those pecker-headed bastards!” I locked Marge in the security office and ran down the hall.
Chapter 3: Incursion
I ripped open the
door to Engineering and ran inside. An M16, clips of ammunition and a little black box awaited me on the workbench just around the corner. Engineering was now my personal armory, and when supplies ran low, I still had nail guns, sledgehammers and chainsaws to fall back on. Good, bad…I’m the bitch with the bazooka, ready to blast off a man’s pecker from a mile away and power drill his testicles to the ceiling if he dare step inside my castle.
It was only a matter of time before they came, and they always seemed to catch me flat-footed. Promptly I turned off the elevators and ran for the stairs, shoving my earpiece into place. Hopefully that would buy me enough time to take up position on the balcony where I could easily pick them off.
Anyone who stepped foot in my domain learned to regret it, living or undead. Though I did not hear their helicopter, there was no doubt that they had touched down on the roof above. Certainly they didn’t have the balls to approach on foot, especially at night. The zombie legions were too thick, and these buffoons didn’t share my unique tactical advantage. Air travel was their only option.
My buddy Ryan warned me about stealth helicopters, which operated in Whisper Mode and made them difficult to hear. Apparently the European models were the best, especially the ones assembled in Croatia. But why were so many occupying our airspace? Was the United States relying on Europe to fight its wars now?
Like the others, I tried to save Ryan, but came up woefully short. He was buried in the courtyard out front, and once the plague passed, I planned to give him a proper burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Apparently there were plenty of vacancies these days.
I thundered up the stairwell, taking two steps at a time. The front of the house was quiet for now, but wouldn’t be in a few moments. I flung open the door and scampered to my little nook overlooking the lobby. I switched off the safety, peered through my scope, and waited for the fireworks.
Pop, pop, pop. That’s how it all began. Two soldiers in black jumpsuits repelled down the side of the building, picking off stray zombies in the driveway below. Through my scope, I watched their feet hit the ground and bayonets pierce the zombies’ skulls as they tried to get back up.
Netherstream - Episode 1: Jane Doe Page 2
