Reanimates, p.2
Reanimates, page 2
part #1 of Reanimates Series
Chapter 2
It amazed to me how a typical workday could so swiftly morph into the day that the world as we all knew it ended. Less than an hour ago I was bored to death and counting down the hours before I could go home and crawl into bed for another night of take out, beer and binge watching a show. Now my very survival and that of those in front of me depended heavily on every choice we made.
I figured that the first order of business was to take stock of how much food we had at our disposal. Flight had two breakrooms, one in the offices and one on the production floor. I did not think that we would have access to the production floor any time soon, so that left us the small one for the office staff. The breakroom had a full-sized refrigerator and a small vending machine. The vending machine typically had chips and candy bars in it, so nothing that would sustain anyone for very long. I knew that some people would buy frozen meals and keep a week’s worth in the freezer, myself being one of them. This meant that as long as we had power, we should be ok for food for the rest of this week.
“I’m going to go see what we have for food if anyone wants to join me,” I said. I already knew that Becca would follow me, but I was surprised when all five of the office people did. In retrospect I can now understand that no one wanted to be alone, but in the moment, I felt like a cult leader, my minions blindly following me.
The breakroom was a two-minute walk to the far side of the office area from my cube. Turning right from my doorway led us past the six other cubes to where the higher ups had their real offices, with actual walls and doors. As we marched past the brown doors set into the green walls we came to Karen’s office.
“Just a sec,” she said and disappeared into it. She returned a moment later with a bag of trail mix and a bag of unpopped popcorn. We finished the short trek and entered the small room en masse. There was a brown plastic table in the center of the while tile floor. It was one of those tables that folded up for easy storage and could fit eight people around it, though there were only six chairs. To the left of the doorway was a counter, complete with a sink that held two microwaves and a toaster oven. To the right of the door were the refrigerator and the vending machine. The vending machine looked like it had been filled recently.
I looked at Frank. “Think you can break into that thing?’
Frank nodded and picked up the chair that was closest to him. The chairs were all made of molded plastic with metal legs. He gave a mighty swing, holding the chair by its back and slammed the legs into the plastic window on the machine. While he worked on getting into the machine, I went to take stock of what the fridge had to offer.
Opening the freezer revealed part of what I already knew. I saw my three remaining lunches, all pasta bowls, and there were also seven boxes of mac and cheese and two frozen cheeseburgers. That would feed the six of us two meals. Inside the refrigerator was only a few cartons of yogurt and one plastic container that looked like it held leftover spaghetti. As I closed the door to the fridge, I heard the plastic window on the vending machine give way. Frank began pulling the food out and handing it over to Julio who placed it on the table. Karen started to sort out the food into piles.
When the three of them were done we had before us a meager pile of snacks. There were six blueberry Nutrigrain bars, twenty bags of assorted potato chips, three bags of M&Ms, six Snickers bars, eight packs of Twizzlers and fours bags of small chocolate chip cookies.
I felt the little hope that I was holding on to slip away. Looking at my five companions I gave them my assessment of our situation. “It looks to me like we have two days’ worth of food here, and that is if we ration. After those two days are up, we are gonna be forced to make a run to one of the closest stores to try and get food. I think we would do well to stay here. There are no windows to break to get into the offices, and so long as we have power, we have an endless supply of water and the doors will remain locked.” I could see some doubt on the faces of three people, so I looked at Karen. “How long after the main power shuts off will the generator run?
“Four days, give or take.”
“I think that this is the ideal situation for now,” I said. “It will keep us safe in the immediate future and allow us time to come up with a better plan for where we should end up. If anyone has any other ideas, I am all ears.”
I was greeted with silence which I took to mean that no one had a better idea. I reopened the freezer and grabbed one of my pasta bowls, removed it from the box and tossed it in the microwave. I always thought clearer when I was eating and given that it was now after eleven. I figured that was close enough to lunch time. Everyone else seemed to follow suit and before long we were all in various stages of eating a lunch together in silence.
It occurred to me that we were all lucky to be alive, but also for another odd reason. There was not a single one of us here that had any immediate family to cause us worry or give us the need to try and save them. My dad was dead and my mom was too old and sick to travel. I also was unencumbered by a mate. From what the office gossip said about Becca, she had just moved to Vermont last month and was single. No one knew where she moved from, but I could only assume that her parents were still there. Keith was divorced and never had kids. Given his age and lack of desire to leave Flight, I assumed his parents were dead. Frank just buried his wife three weeks ago, a victim of COVID-19. His only child, a son named Anthony had followed in his father’s footsteps and enlisted. Anthony was killed in action two years ago in Afghanistan. Julio was also a transplant to the area and never spoke of a spouse or family. Karen had never settled down. She had once confided in me that she preferred to be successful at work rather than at home.
The combined sadness of our personal lives made me happy though. I did not want to be the guy that tried to talk someone out of going after their loved ones. I looked around the table at the faces of the people that I worked with and were now, for lack of a better term, my family. I knew without a doubt that we would not all survive this; in fact, the odds were staggeringly high that none of us would.
My last thought was punctuated by a scream that came from the other side of the wall that was shared by the production floor restroom. One of the guys must have hidden in there and just been discovered. I looked over at Becca and saw tears streaming down her face.
I was done eating so I tossed my garbage in the can and went back to my cube. No one followed me this time, which was what I wanted. I needed some time to gather my thoughts. There were two things that a person needed to take in every day to survive, food and water. For the time being the water was covered. Food was a different story and by Friday evening or Saturday morning we would all be very hungry. I decided to take this alone time and put it to use checking out the area. Sitting at my desk I opened Google maps and typed in the company’s address on Hercules Drive in Colchester. I already had a rudimentary knowledge of the various stores that surrounded us. Less than a mile behind us was a Costco, around half a mile down the road to the right was a convenience store with a pizza place and about the same distance down the road to the left was a Shaws and a Mobil. I wanted to be familiar with all of the closest stores though, because knowledge was power.
In less than a half an hour I was familiar with the location of every store within a three-mile radius of Flight. I figured that this might be excessive, but I have always believed that it is better to have something and not need it than to need that something and not have it. If we were able to stay secure at work for any length of time, I would be able to get us food. The latter of course depended on whether the undead were in a close proximity.
Frank had an affinity for all things military and would buy decommissioned Humvees for his vehicle. I was pretty certain that he would not object to me driving it on a food run. A Humvee had an amazing amount of clearance under the body, and they were built durable, so I could not imagine a better vehicle for plowing through zombies. All I needed was a clear path to his truck and then from the truck to whatever store I decided to try.
I looked up from my computer and almost jumped out of my skin when I saw Becca sitting in the guest chair on the opposite side of my desk. I had no idea how long she had been there.
“Sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to startle you. It’s just that you were so focused on whatever you were doing that I did not want to interrupt you.” She gave me a shy smile but held eye contact with me.
“It’s fine,” I said. “What’s up?”
“The others want to know what the plan is for sleeping. I figured we would all….occupy the same space, you know for safety. What do you think?”
I leaned back in my chair for two reasons. The first being that I always leaned back in the chair when I was thinking and the second reason was, I wanted to test the comfort and stability for sleeping. The chair would not do. It looked like the cement floor with the thin grey carpet over it would be our beds. Becca’s idea about all of us sleeping in the same area for safety made perfect sense to me, but I thought we could add a level of security on that.
“Is everyone still in the breakroom?” I asked. Becca nodded and followed me as I got up and headed in that direction. I stopped in the doorway and all heads turned towards me, their reluctant leader.
“I think we need to clear out Karen’s office and then we can all sleep in there.”
Karen looked confused for a moment but then she nodded in agreement. “My office is large enough that we could all probably fit in there even without removing any of the furniture, and the door locks. Brilliant!”
Even though we were safely behind locked windowless doors I would feel safer with yet another locked door between all of us and the main part of the building. Humans were most vulnerable when they slept and this would remove the need for anyone to stay awake all night as a sentry, not to mention if we did lose power all of the electronic locks would fail. The lock in her office door was mechanical and would function with or without power.
We all went to Karen’s office and began removing anything that we could. She had two large bookshelves on the wall opposite the doorway. Her large desk was in the middle of the floor with several three drawer file cabinets along the front of it. The wall that was to the right of the doorway had a long bookshelf on it. The bookshelf was five feet high and eight feet wide and overflowing with books, manuals and fliers.
It took the six of us almost two hours to get everything moved from Karen’s office to the other offices that surrounded it. When all was said and done, we were left with enough room for the five of us to sprawl out with enough space between us to sleep. My only concerns were the fact that the floor was not very soft, we had no blankets, and I dislike sleeping with anything more than my underwear on my body. This was going to be a long first night.
The rest of the afternoon and evening went by slowly but quietly. There was the occasional thump on the door by my cube from a zombie trying to gain access. We all tried our best to stay as quiet as possible, but even idle conversation seemed to draw their attention. I spent most of the afternoon and evening in my cube surfing the internet to see if I could find anything useful. As nine o’clock approached I decided to try and log into my Hulu account and watch something to take my mind off all of the horror that surrounded us.
As I scrolled through the various shows that I was in the middle of watching Becca came in, pushing a chair in front of her. She looked at me, asking if I minded with her eyes. I nodded that it was fine for her to join me, so she pushed the chair up next to mine and sat down. I decided that maybe a movie was the best way to go and was happy to see that Fifty First Dates was available to watch. Call me a sap, but I loved a good rom-com.
After thirty minutes of watching the movie, Becca slowly lowered her head on my shoulder. “You’re not very good at hints, are you?” she asked. “I have been keeping close to you this entire time, we are watching a romantic movie, and you still will not make a move.”
I was at a loss for words, so I decided to lean in for a kiss. As our lips were just about to meet the entire building went black, confirming my worst nightmare, we had five days at best to come up with a plan. A chorus of gasps sounded from everyone, Becca reached out and grabbed my hand. I knew we had a minute before the emergency generators kicked in. I slowly stood up, trying to be as quiet as possible. The last thing we needed was for a zombie to push on the door while the locks were not engaged.
Call it fate, call it bad luck, or just call it twenty-twenty, the year where nothing went right, but from somewhere in the office area I heard Karen sneeze. I knew it was Karen because she had this loud squeak that she made every time. I also knew that a sound like that was akin to ringing the dinner bell to any of the undead that were walking around the production floor. It appeared that a person that died from a reanimate attack would turn into one themselves, and if that person had enough muscle left behind then they would become ambulatory and an issue for those of us that still lived.
There were twenty employees that worked in various jobs on the production floor. I am a worst-case kind of guy, so with the two that I knew had made it in the building, I assumed Mike had gained entrance, plus the twenty employees, gave us just under two dozen potential threats that could storm through the door. What was worse was the fact that they did not need light to find us and bite us, but we were pretty defenseless in the dark.
In what seemed like an answer to my thoughts the emergency lights by the door to the production floor and the main entrance popped on. Given the fact that this took less than ten seconds I knew that it was not the generator. I felt a cold chill run down my spine and that drove me into action. I grabbed Becca’s hand and we exited my cube and headed for Karen’s office. We had not made it ten feet from my cube when the first zombie crashed through the door.
I realized that I had not sounded the alarm and called out to everyone to head for Karen’s. Becca and I were the first two to reach the door and were greeted by an inky darkness that was dispelled only by the remnants of light that was provided by the emergency light thirty feet away. I pulled my cell phone out and turned on the flashlight feature letting out a sigh of relief when I saw the room was empty. I gently pushed Becca inside and turned back toward the cubicle area of the office to watch for our fellow survivors.
I did not need to wait long as the four of them appeared around the corner at the same time. They were running but I was relieved to see that none of them was trying to shove someone out of their way. Unlike any scenario I have seen before in an emergency, these people actually seemed to care if the others survived. As the group closed to within ten feet from me three reanimates rounded the corner.
Like the reanimates that I had first encountered, these three did not run. I watched them move and though it was a swift walk I figured that they could easily be outrun by any able-bodied person. The downside however was the fact that they did not seem to tire while even the most physically fit athlete in the world could only run for so long.
The four of them reached Karen’s door and filed in, Frank bringing up the rear. I chalked this up to his former service to our country. A lot of ex-military people still put everyone else before themselves. Being thirty years younger than him I knew that I was faster in both running speed and reflexes, so I would have to talk to him about not always bringing up the rear.
I turned to follow Frank in the office and quickly closed the door behind me. I engaged the lock and hoped that it was strong enough to withstand the onslaught of the zombies trying to gain access.
We all waited in silence for the inevitable test of the door’s strength. As we stood there collectively holding our breath the lights came back on, signaling the commencement of our four-day countdown. As the minutes ticked by and there was no assault on the door, I began to wonder what had become of the reanimates. I slowly leaned forward and placed my ear against the door. The thick wooden door was cold to the touch and did an excellent job in stopping sound. The little bits of sound that did reach my ears informed me that the reanimates were basically just milling around in the hallway.
We were still in the first day of this and I felt like I had already learned so much. The reanimates seemed to be incapable of moving at anything faster than a brisk walk. They also seemed to be attracted to a human by sight or sound, but once both of those senses were removed, the reanimate did not give further chase, even if it saw where their prey went.
I turned from the door as quietly as I could and went to the furthest corner of the office, motioning everyone to join me. We gathered into what must have looked like a huddle, standing shoulder to shoulder. When I spoke, I only raised my voice to be slightly higher than a whisper.
“We are in a good news, bad news situation. This is what I think is factual about the reanimates, though it is only my thoughts. They cannot run, which gives all of us here an advantage. It also seems like as soon as they can no longer see or hear us, they lose interest in giving chase. That’s the good news. We lost power sooner than we had anticipated but the generator will buy us around four days and there are ranimates in the hall outside of this office. As bad as that news is, I am afraid I have worse still. The human body can survive a couple of weeks without food, depending on how much extra weight it carries, but we are only good for three to four days without water before organ damage and death set in. We have neither of those things in here, so the real issue we have to face is how do we get out of Karen’s office and get supplies?”
The group was speechless, though I could see the wheels turning in the eyes Frank and Julio. I slumped down to the floor and began my own deep thought session, hoping something would come to me before it was too late.
Chapter 3
The hours passed slowly by with none of us daring to engage in a conversation. We did not want to give away our location, so we sat in relative silence. Becca was the first one asleep. I was too deep in thought to notice, but somewhere along the course of the evening she sprawled out on the floor and decided to use my lap as a pillow. Everyone eventually gave in to sleep. At some point Frank had gotten up to shut off the light which plunged the room into darkness. It was this event that inspired my plan, and I knew that I would be up most of the night working on the details.
