Eaters: The Beginning

by Michelle DePaepe

  As she got to work, it seemed like only twenty minutes had passed when Schrumer buzzed her for the meeting, though, two hours had actually passed.

  She sighed as she grabbed a stack of folders, a clean legal pad, and her pen and made her way towards the conference room.

  Lanny brushed past her on the way. “Stinkin’ traffic! Took me forever to get up here from the south side.”

  Considering her own commute and his rush to get to the bathroom, she believed him.

  Schrumer and Bob were already seated as she walked into the small room that barely fit the long board table and chairs. Lanny joined them a couple minutes later with a mouthful of apologies and a ranting unabridged traffic report.

  Schrumer’s impatience was evident by the reddening of his face. “Where’s—”

  Before he could finish, a shadow fell across the table. They all looked up and saw Paul leaning against the doorframe.

  “Well…I’m glad you could join us, ” Schrumer said, holding his hand out in a mocking welcome gesture.

  Paul didn’t seemed prepared to deliver one of his famous comebacks. As he stumbled towards the table, it was obvious to Cheryl that he wasn’t feeling well, even if Schrumer didn’t seem to notice. His face was red, and there were shiny beads of sweat on his forehead. He looked like he might lurch over, head first, at any moment.

  “I…I’m sorry,” he mumbled as he took the nearest chair.

  Schrumer stacked the papers in front of him and tapped them on the table to straighten them. “Alright, then. Let’s talk about the regulations. We’re going to lose a buttload of…”

  Cheryl tried to focus on what he was saying, but Paul was sitting straight across from her, staring at her with glassy vacant eyes. His mouth hung open, and he took raspy breaths through it as if he couldn’t breathe at all through his nose. She imagined a green cloud of germs emanating from his lungs and leaned back in her chair to increase the distance away from him. What was that she’d heard earlier on the radio about an epidemic? All she could remember was something about flu-like symptoms and—

  “Cheryl!”

  She snapped out of her ruminations and looked towards Schrumer on the right side of the table.

  “Cheryl, what did you find out about the new flood plain zones? Weren’t you researching that?”

  She looked down and fumbled through her folder. Where was that report?

  “Well, while you’re trying to get it together, maybe Paul can tell us—”

  Paul turned toward Schrumer and looked above his head as if seeing something strange hovering above it then he slumped over onto the table with a thud.

  “Paul?” They all said in unison.

  When he didn’t respond, Bob went over and leaned down near him. “Hey man, you alright?”

  He didn’t move.

  Bob grabbed his shoulder and gave it a shake. “Hey…”

  Schrumer didn’t look concerned. He looked pissed. Sitting back, he folded his arms over his chest. “So much for my important meeting.”

  When Bob couldn’t rouse Paul, Cheryl said, “We’d better call 911.”

  No one moved for a couple of seconds as if they were wondering if Paul was just playing some sort of practical joke. There was plenty of history for that. He’d once put a frog in Schrumer’s desk and tied all the toilet seats in the ladies restroom in the upright position. His pranks had all the aplomb of a pimple-faced Boy Scout who’d never matured any further past puberty. But, this was obviously not any sort of joke.

  She’d expected someone closer to the door to rush to a phone, but everyone was still frozen. “Bob? Call…now…please.”

  Bob sprinted out the door.

  Lanny cocked his head sideways and studied Paul’s still form. “What…if he needs CPR?”

  Schrumer huffed. “I’m not touching him.”

  “Me neither,” Lanny said. Then, he turned and looked at Cheryl. “You took a class once, didn’t you?”

  Shit.

  Yeah. She did. It was a prerequisite for a part-time job she had helping out at a nearby preschool before she landed the insurance gig.

  With lead-filled feet, she got up and inched around the table towards Paul. What was wrong with him? What if he was contagious? She stopped a foot away, not wanting to get any closer without donning a biohazard suit.

  “What are you going to do?” Schrumer demanded.

  “I don’t know. Just check him, I guess.”

  She went closer and peered at him, able to see just the tip of his nose and purplish lips underneath a lock of black hair. She touched his hand, expecting it to be raging hot from a fever. But, it was cold…as cold as an ice cube. She put two fingers on the underside of his wrist and found no pulse. Did that mean…

  Bob rushed back. “I can’t get through.”

  Cheryl tensed. “What do you mean? The line is busy?”

  “No. It just rings and rings. No one answers.”

  Schrumer shook his head. “Government budget cuts. They oughta—”

  Cheryl was about to tell him to keep trying, when she heard Paul moan.

  Oh, thank God.

  She reached for his hand again. “Paul…”

  Still cold. He moaned again, but his body remained still.

  Mary, Schrumer’s secretary, popped in. “What’s going on in here?”

  “It’s Paul. Call 911. Stay on the line until someone answers. He needs an ambulance.”

  She rushed off, and Cheryl tried to rouse Paul again. “Hey…how are you—”

  Paul slowly raised his head and made a sound like a grunt. From behind, she couldn’t see his face, but Schrumer and Lanny could. They stared at him with gaping mouths.

  “Paul…” she said, reaching out to touch his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

  His head panned around towards her.

  She gasped and took a step backwards.

  His eyes had rolled up into his head, leaving behind nothing but an eerie solid milky white. He was frozen like that for a second, then the eyes slid back down. The blue irises and pupils were cloudy. They looked at her but seemed to see nothing. It was the gaze of a sleepwalker, viewing some dreamlike inner world instead of their surroundings.

  Paul’s eyes were so disturbing—Cheryl took another step back, tripped, and twisted her ankle before regaining her balance.

  His skin was extraordinarily pale, not the normal tanned hue of a weekend tennis player. Red blotches began to bloom on his face and hands. They quickly rose into welts that looked angry and ready to burst.

  Bob whispered, “It’s an allergic reaction, isn’t it? He told me once that he was allergic to nuts.”

  Cheryl didn’t think so. Paul’s appearance was too strange for a common reaction to something like a peanut or a bee sting. She shook her head and said, “Check on Mary. See if she’s gotten through. If not, we may have to drive him to the hospital.”

  Paul reached up with one hand and grabbed at his tie, pulling it tight like a noose as he tried to yank it off. The futile effort roused sympathy from Lanny.

  “It’s alright buddy…we’re getting you some help. You want us to take that off for you?” Lanny rose from his chair and took a step towards Paul then stopped.

  They all looked on in horror as Paul’s face began to look asymmetrical with his right eye arching up higher than the left. His gums seemed to recede before their eyes, making his teeth look long and sharp. Then, he snarled and began raking the table with his fingers.

  Schrumer remained oddly calm. “Paul, if you aren’t feeling well, perhaps you should go to the hospital. Someone could take you—”

  Paul made a grunting sound then jumped up, knocking his chair over and lunged towards Schrumer.

  Schrumer yelped, holding his hands up in front of his face to protect himself. But, the assault never came. Instead of attacking, Paul ran past him to the trashcan in the corner of the office. He dumped it out and fell to his knees then began rummaging through the wadded up papers and pieces of cardboar
d until he found a dried half uneaten hamburger that looked several days old. Using both hands, he stuffed into his mouth, gorging on it like a starving animal.

  They were all too dumbstruck at this sudden Mr. Hyde-like transformation to react. Watching this monstrous behavior, Cheryl wondered how Paul Dominski had gone from a perfectly normal jerk-off type of human being to something that looked like it had just stepped off the screen at a half price movie theater on Halloween night. Was he just sick? Was he on drugs? Had he lost his mind?

  When Paul finished the petrified burger, he rose and came back towards Schrumer. He began sniffing him up and down. Schrumer cringed, folding down into his body as he tried to shoo him away with one hand and clutched his chest with the other. Panting, he looked up with a beet red face, and seemed unable to speak.

  It took the potential heart attack scenario (and probably the potential of losing their jobs) to light a fire under Bob and Lanny. They rushed over and tried to pull Paul off of him. Paul bared his teeth, growling like a rabid animal as he flailed his arms and tried to fend them off. The struggle ensued for a few more seconds, but eventually the men were able to secure his arms and manhandle him out the door like a couple of bouncers.

  As they fought to get him into the restroom and barricade the door, Cheryl approached Schrumer, now fully prepared to perform CPR if she needed. But, Schrumer clasped his hands them in front of him, bounced his chin off them, and began to take deep breaths.

  “What the hell was wrong with him, Cheryl?”

  “I don’t know,” she said as she shook her head. She’d seen some sick people in her day—her mother dying of pneumonia, her niece on death’s door from the flu—but she’d never seen anyone collapse, seemingly die, then go nuts like this. What was it she’d heard on the news? Something about an epidemic? Did Paul have it? Was he contagious? Were they all exposed now?

  She sat down next to Schrumer and patted his hands. “Are you alright? We thought you were—”

  “Having a heart attack?”

  She nodded.

  “No Just an anxiety attack, I’m afraid. Picked the wrong morning to forget my little blue pill.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  He shook his head as he patted down the pockets in his tan sports jacket. “Nothing you need to know about, my dear. We’ve all got something…” He found the bottle and dispensed a little blue oval. “I’m going to get some water. Why don’t we break for lunch until the ambulance or the police or whoever comes to take away that lunatic?”

  She agreed. Thanks to her busy morning, she hadn’t had anything more than a cup of coffee, and the butterflies in her stomach had calmed enough now to reveal the rumbling.

  She stopped by Mary’s office and saw her cradling the phone on her shoulder.

  “Nothing. It’s the weirdest thing. It just rings and rings. Nobody answers.”

  “We should go online. See what’s going on. I heard there was some flu-like epidemic—lots of people getting sick. Maybe they’re overwhelmed with calls.”

  Mary shrugged. “I’m thinking of leaving and getting my kid from school. If there’s something bad going around, he should be home.”

  Cheryl asked her to stay on the phone for just a few more minutes to try and get through. When she turned to leave, Paul stood in the hallway blocking her path. His hands stretched across to each wall, and he leaned forward, leering at her.

  Lanny rushed up behind him. “We couldn’t hold him. He forced his way out.”

  She glanced from them back to Paul.

  Paul? Was that really him?

  As he snarled at her, she saw that his face had changed even more dramatically. His skin had turned gray, and it looked like he’d been tearing at it with his fingers. The flesh was peeling away underneath his eyes, and underneath the flaps of skin and blood, she saw the white of bone.

  This wasn’t Paul anymore. It was something else.

  He rushed towards her, and she held her hands up in front of her face and screamed. But, instead of attacking, he ran past her…and out the front door.

  They watched as he continued across the street, nearly getting hit by a passing utility truck then disappeared in the dense stand of trees at the edge of the park.

  Bob walked over and put a hand on her shoulder. “Well…I guess we can tell Mary that the patient has left the building. You okay?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I think so. Just a little startled.”

  Lanny hiked up his slacks. “Let’s get some grub. All this drama has made me hungry.”

  And that’s that, she thought. No one’s too worried about Paul…about what just happened…what might be going on in the world. They just needed a Philly cheese steak sandwich and a beer and all would be well. Maybe they thought that Paul had always been just one notch short of going postal anyway, and his illness had just tipped the scale.

  She waved them off. “Yeah, me too.”

  She was relieved when they left and didn’t ask her to join them. There was too much adrenaline still coursing through her veins for her to concentrate on playing bullshit volleyball with them or joining in with the whining about sales figures and quotas.

  Normally, she brown-bagged it, but she hadn’t had time to pack anything for her lunch this morning, so she decided to run out for a sandwich. There was a place two blocks away that had hedonistic six-inch calorie bombs that would fill her stomach with enough carbs and fat to put her in a blissful semi-coma for the rest of the afternoon.

  She grabbed her purse and walked out the door.

  Chapter 3

  It had been a little overcast this morning, but it was sunny now. As she walked along the warm sidewalk, Paul’s sudden illness seemed a little less disturbing. He’d always been a bit of a pest, annoying her by stalling her client’s claims to get his processed faster, and he frequently talked to her cleavage instead of her face. She hoped that he had a long recovery period in a hospital before he came back—if he came back. She couldn’t think of anything that would cause that bizarre of behavior, unless it was a brain tumor or some rare tropical disease. But, that didn’t explain the rotting peeling flesh, and the fact that at least for a few minutes, he’d appeared to be completely dead.

  She paused in front of the building, looking for any signs of Paul or the strange man that had approached her earlier, but saw neither. Thinking that she’d call Mark and tell him about her interesting day, she flipped up the side flap on her purse and reached for her cell phone. The battery symbol on front was black. After being on for the entire camping trip, it had a nearly dead battery. She walked to her car and hooked it up to the charger, figuring that she’d call Mark from her desk when she got back.

  Before she shut the car door, she heard it ring. She leaned back in and looked at the incoming number. It was Mark.

  She sat in the driver’s seat and answered. “Hi...”

  “The Guard called. They want me to come in this afternoon.”

  “That sucks. So much for a little more R & R before—”

  “I’m not going.”

  “What? You have to—”

  “Come home.”

  “I can’t. I’m working. I—”

  “Come home, now.”

  “Mark. What’s—”

  “This is big, Cheryl. It’s not just some little flu going around. I think we need to get prepared for the worst.”

  “Fine. We’ll talk about it when I get home tonight. Right now, I’m starving, and I can’t even think straight. You would not believe what just happened here. Remember that guy, Paul I told you about the other day?”

  There was silence on the other end.

  “Mark?”

  Nothing.

  “Hey…if you can hear me…I’ve got to go. Schrumer just gave us a break before our meeting resumes.”

  She looked at the phone. It was dead. She’d lost him.

  She set it down and looked at her watch then got out of the car. She figured she had just about forty-five minutes, before
Schrumer returned to his normal ‘Type A’ personality and got back down to business, expecting everyone to return to the conference room and pretend like it was a normal day.

  As she walked back towards the sidewalk on her way to the row of shops that lined the street, she heard shouting in the park. Through the line of pine trees, she saw two police officers struggling to get cuffs on a man lying on the ground. A third one held a gun to the man’s head.

  The man was shirtless, wearing cutoff jean shorts and no shoes. His hair was a mass of wild dark curls that bounced around like springs as he resisted the arrest. Even from this distance she could tell that his eyes were bloodshot, and his skin had the same gray pallor like Paul. His mouth kept opening and closing like he was trying to say something, but just couldn’t get the words out. She wondered why they were treating a sick person like a criminal. Shouldn’t they be strapping him on a gurney to get him to the hospital, instead of trying to haul him off to jail?

  Sympathy was not forthcoming as the officer with the gun put his boot on the man’s head to try and keep him still. But, he continued to squirm and writhe, hindering the other officers from keeping his wrists together long enough to clamp on the second cuff.

  Despite having his head wedged onto the ground, the man’s mouth kept moving like he was trying to gulp mouthfuls of grass. He stretched his chin out towards a small brown lump nearby, snapping his teeth. Then she noticed a scattering of feathers a few inches away. He wasn’t trying to speak or eat grass—he was after the brown lump. It was the carcass of a bird—a headless sparrow.

  Tearing herself away from the odd scene and moving forward, she gave up on trying to understand anything today. She had been so transfixed on the commotion that she almost forgot her mission—procure a sandwich to feed her stomach that was now feeling a bit disturbed instead of hungry. Even if she was feeling a little queasy at the moment, she figured that she ought to pick up lunch anyway, because she was feeling light-headed from low blood sugar. She could always save it for later…