She liked Marco. He was always pleasant, always smiling. He never seemed to have a problem with his station in life, something she admired. She herself hadn't mastered that art quite yet. She still had dreams of being an artist, a painter who could spend her days standing at an easel and somehow make a living off of it. It was a pipedream, and day-by-day, it seems to recede further and further into the realm of impossibility, and every day she came to admire Marco more and more.
"Where is everyone?" she asked.
Marco shrugged his shoulders.
"Is Neil here?"
He pointed to the manager's office. The door was closed. She hated when Neil sat in the office. A good manager kept their door open; that way, you knew they were working as hard as you were. But Neil was a five-foot-six lump of shit. She moved to the door and readied to knock on it, but the door opened before she had the chance, startling her. It wasn't the sudden opening of the door that had startled her as much as it was the look on Neil's face. His flesh looked gray like there was something really wrong with him. His eyes were ringed by dark circles, and she could see the veins in his cheeks. He looked terrible.
"Oh, Mercy," Neil said as he brushed past her. "I'm glad to see that someone showed up." He coughed into his hand, and Mercy noticed a white bandage wound around his palm, blood seeping through it.
"What happened to your hand?"
"Some drunk, homeless bastard attacked me in the parking lot of my apartment complex."
"Did you call the cops?" she asked.
"No. I kicked his ass and left him lying in the parking lot. May have gone a little overboard, if you know what I mean. No reason to call the cops."
The thought of Little Neil actually kicking someone's ass made her laugh inside. The guy must have been drunk out of his mind if Neil could kick his ass.
Neil sighed and looked around the restaurant. "Where the fuck is everyone? Is it a fucking holiday that no one told me about?"
"Not that I know of."
"I'm gonna call some of these, fuckers, see where the hell they are." Neil grabbed a plastic cup off a rack and filled it with Dr. Pepper from the soda fountain. "Mercy, get those tables set-up, and then come see me when you're done."
She nodded, tying her hair into a quick bun. She loaded up a cart with plates, silverware, and condiments. She wheeled the cart through the swinging door and into the dining area. Bright daylight streamed through the windows into the darkness of the dining room, making it hard to see outside.
She was halfway through setting the dining room when she heard a clatter from the kitchen area. She didn't think anything of it. People spilled things all the time back there. She was setting a table next to a window when she was startled by a face thumping into the glass. The face belonged to a woman, stringy hair going every which way. She bashed her face against the thick glass of the window. It seemed like the woman wanted to get at her. Her flesh crawled just looking at the woman's blank stare.
"Neil!" she called, receiving no reply.
As she backed away from the window, the crazed woman's eyes followed her. Just then, her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she jumped. Jesus, if I get scared one more time today, I'm going to fucking lose it. She pulled the phone from her pocket, keeping an eye on the woman still bashing her face into the window. She looked at the name on the display, Duane, her husband. She rejected the call. She didn't have time for Duane right now. The woman at the window was giving her the creeps. Maybe Neil was in the mood for kicking another drunk person's ass.
She pushed open the swinging door to the kitchen to find a nightmare. Neil stood with his back to her, and Marco lay on the steel prep table, blood gushing out of a wound on his neck. His legs twitched, softly thumping against the metallic table. Neil turned to look at her, and he was… chewing something. She didn't stay to look any longer. She ran out of the kitchen and through the dining room. She fumbled in her pocket for her phone, pausing at the front door. She had to call 911.
Behind her, the swinging door slammed against the wall, and she turned to see Neil standing there, squinting his eyes against the bright light streaming in through the windows. He spotted her and moved in her direction, blood dripping from his chin.
She forgot about the phone in her hands. Right then, her only impulse was to escape. She pushed through the front door and stood on the sidewalk looking left and right for someone that might know what to do. She sure as fuck didn't know what to do at that moment. The lady from the window appeared from around the corner, and Mercy's jaw dropped. The woman's leg bled down to her bare feet. She caught a glimpse of ivory bone amongst all of the crimson, and her mind couldn't make sense of what her eyes were telling her. It didn't add up. Am I asleep? Is this some sort of nightmare?
Her phone rang in her hand again, and she moved away from the woman, her slow stumbling gait tickled something in the back of her head, something from a movie Duane had made her watch some time ago. It had been a stupid movie about the dead coming back to life and eating people. No. No, that was ridiculous. She ignored the buzz of her cell phone and ran back to her car. The parking lot was emptier than
