The Killing Floor

He finally got through to 911 after two hours, continuing to give CPR with his aching arms while shouting his address into the phone.

The ambulance never came.

Ever since that day, he had the nagging feeling her death was somehow all his fault.

¦

Three mornings later, Ray climbed into his battered pickup after a twelve-hour stint at his rent-a-cop job guarding a self-storage facility, and started his drive home. He was exhausted from the long night shift, his grief and battling with the mortuary people to take his mother’s body and put her into the ground with some dignity. It was a fight he’d lost; several guys in bright yellow hazmat suits had loaded her corpse onto a truck the day before, and had handed him a receipt. Leona Young would be buried in a collective grave outside of town. Later on, when resources freed up, he could arrange to have her dug up and buried right. Meanwhile, the government had plenty of other problems to worry about. One in five people had fallen down. It had just been Leona’s bad luck she’d caught SEEL Syndrome while taking a bath, which had led to her drowning. Most of the screamers were still alive, and needed around-the-clock care.

He was so preoccupied by these things he nearly missed the pajama-wearing lunatics running down the paper boy and ripping his body apart by the handful.

Ray slowed his truck, gaping, as they crammed his flesh into their mouths while the kid was still screaming.

“Hey,” he hollered. “Hey!”

They reared their heads, still chewing, their chins stained black.

“Mike, what the hell are you doing to that kid?”

A woman stood, snarling, and sprinted toward his truck.

“Oh shit,” Ray hissed, throwing the vehicle into drive and stomping on the gas pedal, pulling away on squealing tires.

He drove from the scene feeling shaken and unsure of what had happened. Did a group of people—one of them Mike Parsons, who got up early every morning to walk his dog—really run down the stupid redheaded kid who delivered the papers?

They were eating him, bro.

Naw, impossible.

All he knew was whatever they were doing to the kid, he didn’t want anyone doing to him. He never claimed to be hero material. He would drive into town and call the cops; they could handle it.

Ray turned the wheel, feeling the truck bang over something. People ran across the street in front of him, chasing a screaming woman wearing a jogging outfit. She ran toward the truck, waving her arms.

He stepped on the gas and sped past, knocking down a mailbox. His truck glanced against one of her pursuers and sent him spinning through the air onto a parked car. The others tackled the woman, bearing her down onto the road.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Ray sobbed, and then flinched as a man stormed onto a porch in a bathrobe, firing his shotgun.

Sirens wailed in the distance. A dog bolted across the road, its head down. A car fishtailed and crumpled around a light pole. The driver looked at Ray in a daze as he passed.

“Sorry,” Ray whispered, keeping his eyes on the road.

Something big was happening, something horrible, even worse than the Screaming. He turned on the radio, set to his favorite station. At this time of morning, Kaptain Kyle and Betty Boo did their morning zoo program. A muffled voice was shouting.

I swear to Jesus I saw this. The school bus was shaking. People were shoving at each other to get inside. Swarming. The bus was packed with people. They could barely move in there, there were so many. There was blood all over the windows. The windows were streaked with it. Those people were doing something awful to those kids—

Kaptain Kyle: And you’re done. Another caller bites the dust. Look guys, it’s a funny joke, but enough’s enough already. I’m not falling for it. From now on, I’m cutting you off immediately. Even think the word “zombie” and you’re gone, okay?

Betty Boo: It sounded real though, didn’t it? Jeez, it gave me the willies. A school bus.

Kaptain Kyle: Some kind of War of the Worlds thing going on today.

Betty Boo: Is today the anniversary?

Kaptain Kyle: You’d think after the Screaming, people would show a little class. Should we take another caller? Dare we risk it?

Betty Boo: What’s she doing?

Kaptain Kyle: Ladies and gentlemen, our producer, Sharon, is waving her arms at us. That is how cutting-edge modern producers tell their on-air talent to go to commercial, instead of using their microphone. They wave their hands in the air like they just don’t care.

Betty Boo: Must be important. She’s kind of freaking out. Is she crying?

Kaptain Kyle: Curioser and curioser. Ladies and gentlemen, we will return after the break.

Ray’s truck rocketed down the street until coming to a skidding halt on the sidewalk in front of his house. He killed the engine, cutting off an ad for a better mattress, and jumped out. The air felt warm here and he smelled smoke. He had a rough plan sketched in his head. He knew a place where he could hole up for a while, but he needed supplies.

Inside the house, food, beer, liquor, cigarettes and dip, jugs of water, flashlight, packets of Kool-Aid, burritos and TV dinners all went into a plastic cooler until it was full. He had no idea how long it would last him, but it was all he had.

He ran back outside, the cooler perched on his shoulder, and nearly dropped it as someone fired a gun in the house next door. Old Wexler lived in that house with his poodles. The guy was pushing eighty. Ray wondered if he should go help him out.

In the distance, a woman screamed as if being tortured. The sound froze the blood in his veins. Wexler fired his gun again, BANG BANG. Ray saw the flashes of light in the living room window.

“Oh, God,” he sobbed, heaving the cooler onto the back of the truck and jumping into the driver’s seat. “Holy shit.”

The radio was still playing commercials. He worked the dial until he found the local AM news station, which blasted the angry klaxon honk of the Emergency Alert System. He turned the radio off. He didn’t need it. He had plenty of information. Everything he needed to know was happening right outside his windshield.

Squinting against the orange glare of the morning sun, he threw the rig into drive and turned onto Oakland, swerving to dodge cars and crazies. He drove blind through a billowing hot cloud of pitch black smoke, screaming hail Mary, and emerged in time to narrowly miss ramming a wailing ambulance in the process of swerving off the road. Another car, its windows streaked red, crashed through a phone booth and into a wall. Galveston looked clear and he floored it, pushing aside the worry a cop was going to pull him over. Figures ran in the distance. Bodies lay on the sidewalk. As he passed, they sat up and stared at him.

Minutes later, his truck idled in front of the self-storage facility’s chain link fence while Ray panted as if he’d run, not driven, the entire trip. Sweat stung his eyes and he wiped it away with the back of the sleeve of his uniform. He had to talk himself into leaving the truck. Opening the door, he walked to the gate on trembling legs and unlocked it. He drove into the compound and parked in front of one of the storage cubicles.

As he jumped down from the vehicle, a deep thud reverberated through the ground, making him stumble. Car alarms shrieked across town. A massive fireball rose over distant houses. He paused, feeling curious. What’s over that way? Gas station?

The gate rattled. Someone was trying to get in.

Breathing hard, Ray cut the lock on one of the storage cubicles with a pair of bolt cutters. He opened the door and squinted into the darkness, wondering. A strong musty smell poured out of the room. It was half filled with dusty boxes, some old furniture, a few floor lamps, an area rug rolled up and bound with masking tape. Good