That’s it. You can do this. Think positive!
When she stepped into the building, the security guard flinched behind the desk. “Jesus, lady!”
She ignored him. Stepped into the elevator and pressed 8. The elevator rose. As the doors opened, the receptionist shrieked and ducked behind a cubicle. Jill snorted and walked past. If they don’t like me for who I am, then they have a worse problem than I do, she assured herself. She’d find the conference room herself if she had to.
She passed a deliveryman on his way out. He doubled over, retching.
That’s just plain rude, she thought.
She found the conference room, knocked once and entered. Barbara Manning, the human resources director, looked up and froze.
Jill reached up and tried to push the flaps of skin back onto her face. “Sorry I’m late,” she said. Her upper lip dropped with a splat onto the large oak conference table.
Ms. Manning opened her mouth, but nothing came out.
Jill quickly shoved a drooping eyeball back into its socket. She tried her best to smile, to maintain her confidence despite her lack of
She cleared her throat, dislodging her front teeth. She held out her hand, waiting for Ms. Manning to shake it. “Sanks for giving me a chance to meet wis you today,” she whistled around her missing teeth.
Her tongue flopped onto the table.
Two-Minute Warning
Beyond the goalposts at the south end of the field, the undead howled and marauded within a large cage of thick, metal bars. They climbed the walls, shook them, stepped on and over each other, clambered their way to the top of the cage that rose just beyond the tips of the goalposts, only to fall back upon each other. They reached through the cage with torn, reeking limbs, reached out to grab at the humans who passed by. The cage seethed with their hunger.
Burke Smith stood on the sideline scanning the crowd for his wife, Sherry. He knew what section of the stadium she sat in, but could not see her among the crowd standing on its feet. Burke turned his attention back to the field. The undead had the ball and somehow they were winning. Burke’s team had not lost a game the entire season, yet here they were down by two points with less than two minutes to go. Burke watched his defense line up on the field, their helmets hiding grim faces. The undead wore no helmets. No shoulder pads. Just old jerseys, mud-caked and torn.
Burke remembered playing football as a kid. The smell of grass, of turning leaves, the cool autumn wind, the thrill of catching a long bomb and running, running, the feel of pure joy and exhilaration…
Now fear was his motivation. When he threw the ball or ran with it down the field, it was with anxiety, with not knowing whether the next time he was back on the field he’d be playing for the other side.
The ref blew the whistle. The undead tramped the earth, rubbed their chaffed hands together like anxious children, formed a wavering wall at the line of scrimmage. Their center chewed on the football as if teething. Their quarterback trembled with anticipation; his tattered jersey exposing glimpses of intestines hardened from exposure, of splintered ribs, the protruding ends sharp and poking into putrid green lungs.
“Hungh!” it grunted. “Hungh!” The center grinned like an idiot and pushed the ball into the quarterback’s bony hands. The quarterback stumbled backwards. Raised his mangled lips to the air and let out a guttural howl. He cocked his arm back to pass in one quick jerky motion and let loose with the ball.
It wobbled through the air toward another pair of tattered hands. The receiver caught the ball and pressed it into his chest. He ran with his head held high, his jawbone exposed and riddled with squirming maggots.
Hank Jones, one of the living, caught up to him and shoved him hard. The zombie fell face forward with an ugly crunch. Hank jumped up and brought his cleated shoe down on the thing’s back, where it disappeared up to the laces. The receiver stopped moving. The ref blew his whistle. Hank pulled his foot out and shook off bits of shredded heart and lungs.
The referees lured the undead off the field and into the confines of an electric fence with hunks of fresh meat skewered on long, sharp poles. Two men in blue uniforms carried the latest corpse off the field in a canvas bag. Armed with cattle prods, the refs urged the swaggering, shuffling forms back onto the field.
Burke sighed and put his helmet on. As he jogged onto the field he froze.
Goddamn. Johanson. He knew he’d show up sooner or later, but how can you really be prepared to see your best friend on the opposing team?
He’d been the best running back Burke had ever played with. Now there he was, hunkered down across the line of scrimmage staring at Burke with lifeless eyes. Shit, they’d been roommates in college, and now…
There he was. Listless. Crazed. Hungry for flesh.
There was a flash of light up in the stadium. Burke looked up. A woman ran toward the cage of the undead with a Molotov cocktail. She lobbed it and it exploded on the outside of the cage walls, spewing a rain of fire both inside and outside the cage. A security guard grabbed the woman from behind and hauled her away as humans and non-humans alike shrieked and slapped at each others burning clothes. Smoke accompanied by the smell of burnt flesh poured out from the cage. Outside the cage, the fire was quickly subdued, but inside the burning creatures tried scrambling up the cage walls, only to fall screaming back onto the others. More security guards appeared, this time with a hose. They sprayed at the cage until the fire was out. Only a few of the undead lay twitching on the ground, smoldering, but they soon arose, pieces of charred bone protruding from their parchment-like flesh.
“
“But why? What kind of a god…”
…and they’d stay up late some nights talking about it over beer and pizza, their wives trying to hide their fear behind the normalcy of chit-chat and wine.
“Why do we do this, Burke?”
Burke shook his head. Couldn’t say it but remembered—
His son Julian, his daughter Calley. They’d become infected. They’d become craving slobbering things he’d been forced to destroy. He almost didn’t. Almost let them eat him.
“I don’t know,” Burke said, the words in his head, the thoughts too much to get out without jumping up from the table and smashing everything within sight.
How many of them would he have to destroy before becoming satiated?
All of them.
That was the unfortunate answer.
Every goddamn one of them.
And still he’d want to hurt something, someone, for what they made him do.
Concentrate, Burke told himself. It’s not Johanson. Not anymore. Johanson is gone.
Easier to say than to believe. There were rumors of cures just around the corner. Rumors of antidotes that could reverse the process, restore the tissue, the brain. But what about the soul?
“Hike!”
