Chapter Fourteen. 02:40pm
NELLY THE PREVALENT.
Flies. Everywhere. Horrid, insignificant bitches with wings.
The smaller ones incited the most scorn. The type that hovered in dense packs, so small they went unnoticed until a bunch swarmed my face. Bigger ones that buzz and thump against windows are irritating but manageable. They can be pushed out of a door with a newspaper or rag. The minuscule ones can't. They disappear for a split second and come back with a platoon of friends. Walking through a park on a summer's eve, for me, is nothing but an exercise in spluttering and waving, using my arms as both a shield and battering ram to break through the clouds of skittish insects that want to invade my eyeballs and crawl up my nose.
The shady, empty grounds of the building were the hotspot for all types of winged irritant. They infested my head's immediate atmosphere, clumped into groups that hung in the air like deployed mines, waiting for a victim to stroll through. I happened upon a handful of such traps within ten yards.
"They're probably attracted by the smell of you," Susan said, slapping two from her arm.
"Why can't flies all die and then jump from high windows? Take a leaf out of whatever book those zombies read," I said. I wanted rid of them in a way that didn't involve me doing anything. I stumbled sideways to avoid one cluster and disturbed another.
"Zombie flies, that's what you want? Really? One top of the actual zombies and the giant furry bugs? Plus, jumping from a window wouldn't kill them. They're flies."
I'd have replied but that would involve opening my mouth in the middle of a large and aggressive ball of them. I bolted forwards, followed until I came into contact with rays of the hazy, afternoon sun. They favoured the shade, meaning less of them as soon as we exited the building's shadow.
We reached the front of the building, following the path of the mouse to another lone zombie milling in the courtyard. Its left foot faced the opposite way from a regular foot, and it stood shirtless with open sores and puncture wounds across its back. Navy blue work pants covered its legs. As I wondered where the hell it came from, Susan and Stuart double-teamed to put it out of misery.
Dropping the bucket over its head was a nice touch and confused the hell out of it. It didn't belligerently shuffle around; it froze like a kitten sizing up a threat. Stuart knocked it down and landed a swinging kick to the side of the bucket before it squirmed back upright.
This one was an exploder. The bucket acted like an uncapped food blender. Mush spurted from its new neck hole and created a stripe on the floor.
"You're getting scarily good at this," I said to Stuart, slapping him on the back. His shoulders slumped, mildly insulted.
"I'm not enjoying it, if that's what you mean."
I tried to exude affability, walking on treacherous ground. Difficult to do considering my face was stained red with the blood of his ex-co-worker (and that of maybe a hundred others).
"No, no, that's not what I meant. Not at all. Sorry. I was praising your efficiency, and willingness to contribute. To muck in when it's all getting a bit hairy."
"Oh," he said. "Well. That's okay then."
-
The weed-lined 'welcome zone', thankfully devoid of menace, led to the tall glass front of the building. All doors were closed over and the first row of spotlights, usually bright enough to blind anyone who dared enter, were all off, creating a shadowy realm inside. Only the occasional 'thud' from somewhere inside broke the serenity of the outdoors.
I jogged up the long, low steps to the first door. A light push opened it up but I let it close back over. Another row of doors stood two yards in, bridged by lush black carpet that proudly displayed the name of the building, 'Tall Trees Plaza'. I made a red palm stain on the glass and scrawled a crude face for no other reason than because I could, and smiled back at it like an idiot.
"Should we write a warning on the doors?" Stuart asked. "'Do Not Enter – All Dead', something like that?"
I looked along the length of the main hall to Susan's reception desk, past the terrible art that lined the walls. To the right were the stairs leading to the hovering mezzanine where the coffee stand lived; to the left was a long wall topped with plate glass, behind which were conference rooms with long oak tables. A normal entrance way except for the dozens of dead-heads crammed in like sardines.
"I don't think that's necessary. The density of them should be off-putting enough. It's not like someone will look in, see the reanimated horde and mistake them for...I don't fucking know...a travelling band of friendly models."
The only zombie doing anything of note was walking repeatedly into the middle door two yards away, creating that dull, repetitive thud like a toy car stuck on 'Go' in the corner of the room. It had destroyed its own nose, leaving a long stain on the glass.
"The gate to the monorail is closed," Susan told me, keeping her distance from the doors. My eyes stayed on the monotonous zombie but I waved an impatient acknowledgement.
It mesmerised me.
The thuds grew apart, like it was having second thoughts about endlessly thumping its crumpled face into glass. The creature's knees abruptly bucked and it fell to the laminated floor of the foyer, dead.
"This one just killed itself..." I said in awe. Stuart took almost no interest. I felt like a kid at the zoo obsessed with monkeys, pointing out the animals swinging from ropes to an older brother who didn't give a shit.
A commotion at the rear of the foyer caught my eye, starting near Susan's desk.
"What's that?" Stuart asked, propped up on his toes for a better view.
"No idea. Can't see clearly."
"We should run? I feel like we should run," Susan said, pulling on my shirt in a futile effort to tear my gaze from the parting sea of death. An unseen force shoved zombies aside, displacing them. Some toppled to the ground, lunging clumsily at whatever passed them. It was too dense to make out; I just saw heads disappear and the occasional arm rocket upwards, ready to swing.
Whatever it was, it headed for the main doors.
"We should get moving, yes?" I said, inching away, as a disruptive ball of anxiety formed in my stomach. A sixth or seventh sense, signalling the imminent arrival of a Very Bad Thing. Early warning lights on my primitive Danger Avoidance System flashed like crazy, throwing me successive gut punches to ramp up the violent sense of unease.
We made it half way down the steps, Stuart's hand pushing my shoulder, when he stopped and turned, spotting something amid the crowd.
"Is that..."
"NELSON?!" Susan said.
He slammed into the first row of glass doors, which didn't open. Hands grasped at him, forcing him to scurry over the body of the thudding zombie. Still on his knees, he pushed another door and crawled across the fluffy welcome mat.
"Again?"
"Looks that way!" Stuart yelled, pointing at the man with his mop of red hair.
"What do we do?" asked Susan. She took off her shoes and gripped one like a hammer.
"How is that fucking possible?" I asked, ready to kick his head in if he showed a single sign of zombification. If he looked ghostly - or showed symptoms of any other spooky, supernatural condition that might have helped him survive the lengthy nosedive - I planned to run screaming. Zombie Nelson I could handle... Vampire, Werewolf, Spectre, Demon Nelson, not so much.
He stopped and stared intently at us through the second set of doors, down on all fours like a dog. The door behind him closed, too taxing for any zombie to handle. The majority had stirred from their daze and began to knock faces and arms against the glass, trying to follow him, creating a haphazard drumbeat.
"I don't think so..." Stuart replied.
Susan was aghast. Her occasional persona of screaming mad lady bubbled to the fore. "He's a zombie! We pushed him off the bastard roof!" she reminded us at a pitch that would irritate the deafest mutt.
He crept forward and pulled on the door's handle, glancing briefly between my blood red face and the one I'd painted
on the door.
"Hello guys," he said, followed with a meek wave. He hadn't yet thought to get up off the floor.
"Stand up, Nelson. Are you a zombie? How'd you get your arm back?"
"What? No, don't be ridiculous. I haven't lost an arm."
He held them both up as proof.
"Are you a mouse?" I said. "A mouse survived a big fall also."
Nelson's bushy eyebrows pushed down and he asked "...a mouse?"
"Never mind. Show us you don't have any bites."
Stuart took control, instructing Nelson to raise his arms and lean against the glass doors. A true professional, security guard extraordinaire. After a quick inspection, focussing on the neck we saw piss blood earlier, Stuart shrugged and declared him clean.
"What happened?" Susan shouted over my shoulder, trembling as if she'd seen a ghost.
"Er," he said, rubbing his hands together and avoiding our collective gaze. "Not sure I follow."
"How did you survive the fall?!" she shrieked, losing control.
"What fall?"
"Your fall! Off the fucking roof! The ten-storey plummet!"
She circled me with the express intent of shouting in his face. More zombies bumped their faces into oblivion on the inside of the doors.
"I have no idea what you're talking about," he simpered, deflecting her rage. She flung her hands into the air and walked off, leaving Stuart to take over. I was prone, ready to kick him to death if anything untoward occurred; my natural state around Nelson, to be fair.
"Nelson," Stuart said, "we were on the roof earlier and you turned up, covered in your own blood and probably a zombie. You had an arm off, and you attacked Susan. There was an incident and we knocked you off the roof. We saw you land in bushes on the other side of the building."
Nelson teetered on the verge of a breakdown, like his world was counting down to implosion.
"What roof?" he asked.
"What roof do you think, you dick. That one," I told him, pointing upwards.
"Oh. Well I assure you, that was categorically not me, I haven't been anywh...wait PROBABLY a zombie?! You thought I was PROBABLY a zombie, so you tossed me off a frigging building?! Nice! Bloody hellfire...don't think I don't know what you mean by 'incident'. I bet Wes here was itching to knock me off."
He displayed genuine hurt.
"I'll have you know it was Stu who knocked you off, and only because you attacked Suze. Like he said, you were missing a limb and had a big bite wound on your neck. Full-on zombie beast mode. But that's beside the point if you say it wasn't you. Begs the question, who the bastard hell was it? You haven't got an equally hideous twin have you? I couldn't deal with that."
"No that I know of, no...Honestly, I don't have a clue what's going on."
"Where have you been then? Where did you vanish to?" Stuart asked.
"And where's my other fucking axe you thieving, reincarnated shit?" I added.
"I got confused! When you were fighting that thing in the corridor, I was stuck behind it all. I went to look in another room and the door locked. Had to leave through another door to another office. Tried to find my way back but couldn't. And the axe, I lost it. Why were you on the roof?!"
I almost didn't want to answer, too angry at him for stealing my axe and losing it. I wanted to expose him as a liar, but there was no leap of logic that made sense of him surviving such a fall without significant damage. Especially as the version we chucked off the roof had significant damage already, before we touched them.
"How do you lose a fucking axe?!"
"Well, I was...and...umm, well..."
"Just...fuck off!" Susan said, returning to my side and conveying my thoughts perfectly. "You're a lying ballbag and there's something you're not telling us. Where's the gun?"
"What gun?!" he screeched.
"The gun from the filing room! You took it when you disappeared!"
"I bloody didn't. I took the axe but no gun. No way was I going in for that, with all the bits of Berol everywhere."
She grabbed him by the neck of his green jumper, gave him a stern shake, and stormed off down the steps. He bumbled along in tow, trying to maintain his balance and escape her vice grip.
"If he didn't get the gun, that means there are other survivors..." I called out, "Or a zombie with a gun knocking about the place."
They ignored me. I gave one last glance to the smiling red face on the door and followed.