Dion ducked into a cubicle as the shouting crowd surged towards Jared. Lil Wayne pulsed in Dion’s headphones, lending a surreal soundtrack to the desperate struggle. Jared yelled something, but Dion couldn’t make out the words over the music.
Dion backed away as his former coworkers wrestled Jared to the ground. A surge of blind panic washed away all thought of helping, and he clenched his jaw to keep from screaming. They hadn’t noticed him yet. He had to get out.
A swarm of pale hands sent Jared’s iPod skittering across the tiled floor. Dion felt the cold metal handle of the emergency door bump against his hip.
A woman pulled Jared close. Dion thought it might have been Melissa from customer service. Her face looked like an overripe fruit, a swollen mass of yellow and purple bruises, syrupy blood oozing where the skin had split and torn. She cradled Jared’s head like an old lover. Her cracked lips parted in a whisper.
Jared’s face twisted in an expression of horror.
The crowd drew back, hushed, expectant. Jared rose among them, face streaked with tears, mouth bloody where he had bitten through his lip. He moaned as he fumbled a pair of scissors from a nearby pencil holder and drove them into his eye.
Dion eased the door shut behind him, hoping they hadn’t heard. The red emergency lights painted the descending stairwell in several shades of hell. Someone was screaming farther up in the building, but Dion knew better than to listen. That was how they got you.
Dion crept down the stairs, sweaty back flattened against the cold concrete wall, eyes wide, breath coming in short shuddering gasps. He needed to get home, he should have been home. It was Sunday for Christ’s sake, but double time-and-a-half was too good to pass up, especially with Lashawn starting private school in a few months. He and Kayla had fought about it, again.
“Some things are more important than money!” She’d screamed out the window, eyes red, her hair still wet from the shower.
“Yeah, like eating, having a house, giving Lashawn a chance.” Dion slammed the car door before she could reply. He regretted that now.
Daylight filled the landing as Dion opened the exit door. The outside air was humid and smelled of smoke. A few people stumbled down the street, mumbling, their faces fixed in expressions of deep concentration. Whatever they knew, whatever they’d been told, it drove them to kill themselves, then brought them back to spread the word.
Dion wished for a weapon, but realized that was stupid. He’d seen enough zombie movies to know that gunfire always brought them running. It was one thing to avoid being bitten, but how do you escape a disease that spread through word of mouth? How could you gun down an idea?
Seven miles was a long way to walk during the apocalypse. Dion kept to the alleys and backstreets, scrambling over dumpsters and chain-link fences, thumbing up the volume on his headphones whenever he caught sight of another person. Did these things even qualify as people? They could talk, but Dion didn’t believe they were still human.
The house looked exactly the same, which surprised him. Somehow Dion expected its condition to mirror the turmoil of the last several hours, but it stood unaffected, just one in a row of worn townhomes, lawn grown a little wild, porch still in need of painting. He crouched in the shadow of the single maple tree, and stretched out a hand to touch the shadowed depressions in the concrete walkway. Handprints, four large and two small. He grimaced.
The front door was unlocked.
“K? Lashawn?” Dion pulled his headphones down around his neck to listen for a response. Nothing.
Other than the silence, there was no sign anything was wrong. Maybe they were upstairs, taking a nap. Maybe they’d missed the whole thing. Hope grew in Dion’s chest, glimmering like sunlight refracted through deep water.
The stairs creaked under Dion’s weight. He ran one sweaty hand along the railing, the other held out as if to feel the air. A thin runner of light canted from under the bedroom door, a single slash of brightness in the stagnant hallway. Dion held his breath and turned the knob.
They were waiting for him.
Kayla lay on the bed, dark hair disheveled as if from troubled sleep, eyes red from crying. She frowned, probably still angry about this morning. Dion couldn’t keep from smiling, he would tell her that he was never going to work another double, never going in on Sunday, never going to leave them again.
“Kayla, I’m sor–”
The sound of bare feet scuffing over wood drew Dion’s attention to the other side of the room. Lashawn stepped from the bathroom. He was wearing Dion’s old Lakers jersey, his spindly arms and legs poking out of the massive shirt like the limbs on a yellow and purple beetle. Dion dropped to his knees, tears stinging his eyes, arms held out to his son. He wasn’t too late.
Lashawn ran into his father’s embrace. Dion breathed in the clean soapy scent of Lashawn’s hair, felt the boy’s arms clasp behind his neck, the whisper of breath on his cheek.
Dion’s hands felt wet, sticky. He held them up, confused by the dark sheen of congealed blood, the same blood that seeped through the back of Lashawn’s shirt. He tried to push away, but his son held him tight. Kayla stood, her hair falling back to reveal the handle of the steak knife embedded in her neck.
“Daddy.” Lashawn’s breathy singsong filled Dion’s ears. “I’ve got a secret to tell you.”
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©2011 A.B. Rinklin
Born in the type of small new England town Stephen King so privileges in his novels, A.B. Rinklin grew up surrounded by horror. After fleeing from a Business degree, he slept in a cubicle for over three decades.
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