Keith Walker was trying to decide on a color for the new library counter (lilac, pea green and tree bark were the leading contenders), when the sound of screams drifted in from outside.
He set down his furniture catalog and looked outside. A rush of people streamed past the building.
A crazed-looking man in a UPS uniform banged on the door and yelled to be let in.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t open until 9 a.m.,” Keith informed him. The man looked over his shoulder, yelled an expletive and rejoined the rush in a brownish blur.
Keith silently ruled out tree bark for the counter.
The smell of rot hit him. Even through the windows of the library it permeated the air, piercing Keith’s nostrils. It felt like he was punched in the nose. He was reminded of the time a dead skunk was jammed into the book drop on Halloween and became stuck for a week. The image of a black-and-white checkerboard counter briefly flittered through his head before being rejected as too loud for a place where silence was encouraged.
Jenny Davison pushed a cart of books by the desk and stopped suddenly, noticing the smell.
“Did the sewage system back up again?” she asked. She glanced out the window and gasped.
“What is that?”
Keith looked where Jenny was pointing. The crowd of people had thinned out, but another group took its place. They appeared to be the source of the smell.
The new group outside was a little off. They were very well-dressed but appeared to be unaware of their surroundings.
“They look like they’re moldy,” Jenny said with a gasp. “Are those people… dead?”
“I guess pea green won’t work, either,” Keith said inaudibly while absentmindedly stroking the counter.
The crowd appeared to be passing the building, when the sound of bony fingers clawing at the door handle startled the library workers. A collective gasp arose from Keith and Jenny. The double doors opened. The stench of rot was even worse without the windows as a barrier.
Their lives flashed before their eyes. Jenny saw images of her parents and fiancé. Keith imagined the library continuing on with white panel counters.
Jenny ducked behind the desk, and yanked the clearly-upset Keith off his feet. Realizing how unsubtle their hiding place was, they instinctively covered their faces.
Jenny slowly opened one of her tightly-shut eyes.
“Are we in heaven?” she asked.
Keith looked around.
“No, the counters aren’t solid gold,” he replied, and mentally added canary yellow to the contenders’ list.
As this came out of his mouth, a 30-ish woman in a knee-length dress with one empty eye socket stepped out from between the fiction shelves.
The woman stepped up to the desk, set a unmentionably-sticky copy of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple down and looked at Keith expectantly with her remaining eye.
Keith looked back at her.
The woman held his gaze and softly growled.
Keith arched his eyebrows.
The woman pounded on the desk once with her balled-up fist, causing Jenny to jump. Keith stared down at the now-filthy counter.
“Uh, Keith, I think she wants to check out that book,” Jenny said, nudging him with her elbow.
Keith glanced at Walker’s masterpiece and shook his head.
“Well there goes lilac,” he said, with a sigh.
He gingerly picked up the book and turned it over, grabbed the date stamp and put a three-week due date on it.
He slid it across the counter and the woman grunted, taking the book. She shambled away from the desk and left through the door.
Keith and Jenny stared after her.
“Why do you think she was here?” Jenny asked.
“It seems like the dead have come back to read,” Keith said. “At least she did.”
He paused, indicating the tacky black mess on the counter, “She also came in to give her two cents worth on the counter issue. Although, I don’t think ‘ichor’ will be high on my list of color choices.”
Jenny walked over to the windows facing the street and looked out.
“Do you think they’re gone?” she asked.
“I have no clue,” replied Keith, who had his nose back in his counter catalog, “but this cherry paneling is to die for.”
“I think the coast is clear,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
He waved her off. The door banged shut after her, leaving Keith alone with the counter. After flipping through several pages, he grinned from ear to ear, picked up his desk phone and dialed a series of numbers.
“Hello, Danners Furniture?” he asked. A shocked look came over his face.
“Do I sound like the national guard?… No, I can’t call back. I want to place an order.
“Hello?”
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©2010 Sean Hilliard
Sean Hilliard is an academic library supervisor in Pennsylvania who writes at work and, in this case, about work. While Sean’s never seen any undead at the library, he has encountered his share of zombies – mostly students during finals week and the occasional exhausted co-worker. In his spare time, Sean enjoys reading, exercise and catching up on his backlog of DVR’d TV shows.
