First published in "A Sharp Stick in the Eye (and Other Funny Stories)" from Books & Boos Press back in 2017, this story is both a love letter to the zombie genre and hate-mail to office work. I hope you enjoy it!
The Zombie in my Office
By Jim Horlock
There is a zombie working in my office.
Pete planted the idea in my head when we were at lunch one day.
“Have you seen that guy?” he asked in a half-whisper, in case the 'that guy’ in question was hiding somewhere and eavesdropping.
“What guy?” I asked, through a mouthful of sandwich.
I’d been daydreaming of Gina from HR whilst checking my phone for any messages from her, and not really paying attention to Pete. In the dream my head I marched to her department,officeinto HR, swept her from her office chair and she put her arms around me. Time stood still as we finally embraced, with tapping of keyboards becoming distant and unimportant. Fade to black.
How many hours since I heard from her? She sent me a text last night but I’d already fallen asleep. I replied this morning but had nothing since.
“The zombie guy, man,” Pete replied, leaning across the table and lowing his voice into full whisper territory. “I don’t know his name.”
Could Gina be thinking I’d replied late on purpose in a ‘treat them mean, keep them keen’ kind of way? It really wasn’t my style but she didn’t necessarily know that. Maybe she was off sick. There was supposedly a nasty virus doing the rounds down on the third floor.
“Wait…zombie guy?” I said suddenly as Pete’s words sunk in. I looked up from my phone, giving up my wait for the elusive text for now. “What zombie guy?”
“I told you, I don’t know his name. He sits over in the far corner, under the busted light.”
I wrinkled my brow in an effort to picture that area of the office.
“Smell Corner?” I asked for clarification. The area had earned the name due the nasty stench that resided there, reputedly the result of some dodgy plumbing. Apparently, the plumber hadn’t been able to find the source and the matter had fallen into that ether of vagueness which was the fate of all tasks for which there was no clear person responsible. Which basically meant it wasn’t getting fixed anytime soon.
“Smell Corner,” Pete nodded. “I’m telling you, catch a look at that guy if you can. He’s gross.”
“Gross how?”
“His skin is all pale and kind of saggy and he’s got these sunken eyes and gnarly yellow teeth. I’m telling you, he’s a zombie.”
“So, bad personal hygiene and a skin condition makes you a zombie now?”
“His nails are nasty too. All chipped and yellow.”
“Why have you been looking at this guy so much?”
“I bumped into him at the fridge yesterday when I was grabbing my mid-morning snack.”
Pete was a big fan of snacks, a truth to which his steadily expanding waistline would testify. So far, his food schedule included: breakfast, mid-morning snack, late-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, dinner and supper. He was putting serious consideration into adding a post-lunch snack.
“Before that,” Pete continued. “I don’t think I’d ever seen him before. Maybe he’s patient zero.”
“You’ve been watching too much Walking Dead,” I said.
“Take a look for yourself. You’ll see. Anyway, any word from Gina?”
I wasn’t sure why but I couldn’t get the idea of Zombie Guy out of my head all that afternoon. I kept catching myself glancing over towards Smell Corner.
I could see the back of his chair but no more. I couldn’t even tell if he was in it. Maybe no-one sat there and Pete had invented the whole thing just to screw with me. It was definitely possible. But now the idea had taken hold I had to see this guy for myself. It was the same kind of morbid curiosity that drives you to take a deliberate lung-full right after someone says “Oh my God, that smells awful!” How gross could the guy really be?
First, I’d need to find an excuse to go over there. I didn’t even know what the guy’s job was so that was no help. There was nothing over in that corner of the office that I would conceivably need, either. In the end, I just decided to wing it. I’d make up an excuse when I got there.
I felt strangely nervous as I walked over, tension mounting in my shoulders no matter how many times I told them there was nothing to worry about. I found myself trying to tread carefully so as not to make any noise on the thin office carpet, like a prey animal entering the lair of a predator. By the time I got there I was holding my breath and it had nothing to do with the pervasive aroma of Smell Corner.
I leant around the wall of the cubby hole. The desk was empty, the chair tucked in.
Did anyone sit here at all? Had Pete been having me on?
Still the sense of relief I felt was palpable. I chuckled to myself and went back to my desk, confident that I’d been duped by one of Pete’s jokes but equally confident that there was no way I was going to tell him about it.
Most of the office had emptied at 5pm, as normal, leaving only me left to tap away at my keyboard and count down the minutes until half 5 (I was building up flexi-time so I could get a free day off further down the line). I decided to kill some time by going to the bathroom, like the productive and dedicated member of staff I was.
I checked my phone glumly while I was in the stall but there was still no word from Gina. It seemed unlikely I’d bump into her too, since she worked down on Third. Maybe I should text her again…
A strange gurgling sound from the stall next to mine stopped my thoughts dead and sent a cold shiver down my spine.
I was no stranger to the bizarre, and often disgusting, noises that were native to office bathrooms but this didn’t sound like any of the usual bowel-related rackets. This sounded like it came from someone’s throat, like some desperate last murmur, an attempt to cry for help.
I froze up, unable to do anything but keep listening.
Suddenly there was a loud bang as something impacted the wall between our stalls.
I jumped out of my skin and leant as far away from the wall as possible.
A brief scrabbling sound followed the bang. Then silence but for a steady dripping sound.
It took several minutes of silent agony for my heart rate to slow back down as my mind frantically ran through all the different logical explanations for the noises I’d just heard. Maybe they’d slipped or something and they were now sat in embarrassed silence. Maybe they’d just received an upsetting text message and they’d hit the wall in anger. Maybe they were having a heart attack. Oh God, maybe they were having a heart attack! And I was just sitting there in silence doing nothing while they were dying!
That was it. I couldn’t just walk away now.
“Hey, uh…” I started, fully aware that I was breaching the most fundamental rule of bathroom etiquette. “Is everything OK in there?”
There was a pause. Drip, drip, drip.
“….fine,” came the response in the creepiest voice I had ever heard. It was a dried up and crinkled voice, a quiet rasp from a throat made of sandpaper. Just hearing it made me shudder. Maybe that’s what people having heart attacks sounded like? I’d never heard one before.
“Uh…are you sure?” I said.
The pause again. Drip, drip, drip.
“…fine,” the speaker repeated.
That was good enough for me. I’d done my civic duty and I wasn’t staying one minute longer in the stall next to Creepy Voiced Toilet Thrasher. I got out of there as fast as I could.
I was late into work the next day. I’d had trouble sleeping. I kept hearing that creepy rasping voice whenever my apartment fell silent. In the end, I’d had to leave the TV on just to create some background noise.
Unfortunately, being late meant I had to work through lunch to catch up. Knowing this would be the case, I’d grabbed a sandwich on the way in and left it in the fridge amongst the various labelled Tupperware and a mysterious brown paper bag.
Tired, behind on work and still with no word from Gina, I grouched my way through the day. The only saving grace was that I was too mired in general grumpiness and reports to think much about what had happened in the bathroom.
By the time I finally got around to lunch, the fridge had been all but cleared of the Tupperware. The strange brown bag was still there though, slightly saggy and grease-stained. I don’t know why I felt the need, but I reached out and took the bag to look inside. I felt that strange tension again as I started to unfold the paper, that feeling that I was somehow in danger. I imagine it’s how an antelope feels when it knows a lion is out there watching in the long grass but it just doesn’t know where. Suddenly the crinkling paper seemed very loud as I opened it and looked inside.
“…mine,” said a voice behind me. That rasping, creaking, dried out voice - the same one from the bathroom.
My spine locked up in fear and I turned on a swivel.
His eyes were dead white and the skin of his face was so pale I could almost see the blood vessels beneath, except for just beneath the eyes where thick red-black bags hung. His teeth, behind thin lips, were yellow and crooked and the gums they sat in had receded, making them seem longer than normal. He took the bag from my hands and I winced away from him; his tattered chipped nails were encrusted with filth. His hair was so thin I could see his scalp, on which there were several scabs.
“S-sorry!” I stammered, grabbing my sandwich from the fridge and making my way from the kitchen area as fast as possible. I could feel those cold dead eyes watching me all the way back to my desk.
I didn’t get a good look at what was in the bag before he’d taken it off me, but whatever it was it was bright red, like raw meat.
“I think you were right,” I told Pete the next day.
“Of course, I’m right,” Pete replied, happily chomping on a chocolate bar. “It just makes sense that the prophecy is about Jon Snow. It’s all going to come together soon.”
“Not about that!” I hissed, angry at him for his lack of telepathy. “About the Zombie Guy!”
“Oh, you’ve seen him now? Gross, right? That guy needs to take a shower.”
“A shower?! A shower isn’t going to do it!”
“Some kind of decontamination spray like in a film? Where they have to go in and out of a quarantine zone?”
“I was thinking more like beheading.”
“Wow. Harsh. He’s just a smelly dude. How bad can it really be where you’re sitting?”
“What are you talking about?! He’s a zombie!”
Pete laughed. “You’re joking, right?”
“You’re the one that said it!”
“I was joking. Do I really need to have a conversation with you about how zombies aren’t real? Next you’ll be telling me you believe in the Murder Bathroom.”
“Murder bathroom?”
“Yeah, you know Jim Dawkins? Well he went to the bathroom last thing on Tuesday and no-one has seen him since. Apparently, a few people have disappeared the same way and someone heard the janitors talking about cleaning up blood in there. People are saying there’s, like, a serial killer stalking that bathroom. Lame. If I was a serial killer I’d pick somewhere way better than a bathroom to hang around in.”
My blood went cold as my mind raced back to the awful noises I’d heard in the bathroom that day.
“Oh my god,” I whispered to myself. “The zombie killed him. He killed Jim in the stall next to me!”
“What are you talking about? Listen, are you feeling OK? There’s supposed to be some nasty flu going around, maybe you’ve got a fever or something.”
“Flu? I haven’t got the flu, there’s a damn zombie in the office!”
“Seriously, man, just take a second and listen to yourself.”
I took a deep breath.
“Just because the guy is creepy doesn’t mean he’s a monster,” Pete continued.
“I heard him murder Jim!”
“Did you? What did you hear?”
I thought about it.
“Horrible gurgling, like someone getting their throat bitten out. And banging and scrabbling.”
“So, a bad stomach and someone banging against the wall accidentally? Jim’s not dead, man, he’s probably just off sick with that bug. There’s a bunch of people on Third and Fourth off with it.”
“…well what about the lunch! There was something red in that bag!”
“So, he packed some meat for lunch? Maybe he’s on a paleo diet or Atkins or something. Plenty of people eat weird stuff in the office, man, you know that. Michael only ever eats that weird cheese. Holoumi or whatever it’s called. And Julie will not quit it with the kale. God, I hate kale.”
“What about his eyes?! And his teeth? And those fingernails?”
“Eye condition brought about by the same god-awful hygiene that caused the other two things on your list. Honestly, man, he’s just a dirty, smelly guy. I think you should call in sick tomorrow and get some rest. You’ve been working too hard and not sleeping enough.”
I paused. Maybe Pete was right, maybe this was all brought on by stress, lack of sleep and an overactive imagination.
“OK maybe you have a point,” I conceded.
“Hell yes I do! I cannot wait to rib you about this in future. Hey, remember that time you thought zombies were real? Hey, man, I think my room-mate is a vampire, can you help me out with that?”
I rolled my eyes at his laughter but felt better about it all the same. It was better to feel a bit silly than to feel terrified.
Of course, by the time night rolled round it brought the fear creeping back in, like shadows chasing away the light at dusk. Alone in my apartment, I imagined all the ways the zombie could have crept in, all the places he might be waiting for me. I lost count of how many times I checked my door was locked. I started avoiding contact with the windows in case there was anything looking in at me.
I hadn’t been sleeping well anyway, not since this whole Zombie Guy thing started; I just couldn’t stop thinking about those awful teeth and what it would be like to have them bite you. I’d taken to lying on the sofa under the sterile glow of late night television until I passed out. It was not doing my back any good but on the plus side I’d learned all there was to know about the fantastic deals on the EasyBreeze Desk Fan (for limited time only).
That night, though, I just couldn’t drift off. The sofa seemed to have become more lumpy, as though someone had snuck in while I was at work and stuffed it with hexagons. After hours of tossing and turning I decided if I was going to lie awake all night I might as well do it in comfort. So I got up to go to bed. It was then I saw it, through the gap in the curtains.
There was a bus stop across the road from my apartment. A bus stop with someone standing in it.
My blood went cold immediately. Even though I was spying this mysterious figure from inside a darkened room through a narrow slit of curtain, I knew it could somehow see me.
I glanced at my watch. 2AM. No buses running at this time. Even the ludicrously late 409 would have returned to wherever buses live by now. So why would anyone be waiting at a bus station?
A passing car lit the street for a second or two on its way past and my awful suspicions were confirmed. Pallid skin, ragged office clothes, muddy shoes and those terrible, terrible eyes staring straight at my window.
It knew where I lived.
It knew that I knew its secret.
I don’t know how long I stood there staring for but my line of sight was broken by a sudden convoy of trucks and once they were passed, the zombie was gone. I stood frozen for a good long time after that, not daring to move in case the sound of my clothes rustling covered up the sound of some intruder. I strained my ears to breaking point but heard nothing.
I should have called in sick the next day; I was so tired, but the idea of being home alone had become terrifying. I was vulnerable there. At least at work there were other people around. I was pretty confident that the zombie wouldn’t murder me in public.
It quickly became apparent that the office wasn’t quite as ‘public’ as I’d hoped. Several people had called in sick, which was not unexpected. It was about time the infamous ‘nasty bug’ from Third had made its way up to us. Mutual contamination and the sharing of pathogens were part of the joys of office life.
Still, there were enough people around that I took a bit of comfort in their presence, a sheep safe within the herd. Not a flattering analogy maybe but at least I was alive to make it. I didn’t dare sneak a peek at Smell Corner. I wasn’t sure what would be worse; seeing him there or seeing the chair empty.
It was as during another paranoid glance around that I noticed movement in the corner office: the domain of Dale, our fairly recently appointed Section Head. Dale’s appointment had come as something of a surprise since he was a good deal younger than most of the other applicants who had applied for the job. The Higher Ups had used words like ‘ambitious’ and ‘go-getter’ when justifying their decision. The words whispered in the office were more like ‘inexperienced’ and ‘incompetent’.
Inspiration hit me like a frozen Mars bar thrown with considerable force.
“Hi, Dale!” I said, brightly a few moments later as I poked my head into his office.
He jumped and quickly lowered the nostril hair trimmer and compact mirror he’d been using.
“Oh, hi!” he said, with the obvious frozen panic-smile of someone who has forgotten the name of the person addressing them. This irked me but was hardly surprising. I bailed him out of the conversational awkwardness.
“Hey, what do you know about the guy over in Smell- I mean, over in the corner?” I asked, keeping my tone up-beat and happy. I’d learned it was best to put on the saccharine persona of a holiday rep dealing with children when wanting something from Dale.
Dale pursed his lips and furrowed his brow in an effort to achieve conscious thought.
“Oh!” he said, as something sparked. “The temp?”
“He’s a temp?”
“Oh yes, only been here a month or so. I tell you, normally these agencies just send us total idiots but this guy has been great. He’s never been late, never called in sick and his reports are just perfect. I would definitely recommend them, if all their workers are like this.”
“What were they called, the agency?”
“The Rising?” Dale went back to brow furrowing as my stomach dropped away. “Rise?” he continued guessing, grey matter furiously attempting to produce another spark. “Re-animated? No, that’s not right. I’ll send you their details, if you like.”
“Great, thanks,” I said, palely trying to shake off all the zombie imagery Dale’s bad memory had accidentally produced.
“Hang on, why do you need to know? Not thinking of jumping ship, are you?”
“No, no! Um…my cousin is looking for some office workers,” I improvised. “Like you said, that guy is great.”
Dale nodded, his mental status switching back from ‘mild concern’ to ‘happy idiot’.
I went to leave.
“Oh, and one more thing,” he called me back. “The guy has been here for a month. Try and make an effort to learn his name, OK?”
He gave me a look of ‘patient teacher admonishing slightly naughty pupil’ to which I was obviously supposed to using respond with ‘bashful and contrite pupil admits his error’ rather than ‘office worker punches hypocritical douchebag’. Instead I smiled and nodded and left his office, seething internally.
Even without the details from Dale – which would never materialise since he would have forgotten our conversation (and my entire existence) as soon as I left his office – it wasn’t hard to track down Rise Recruitment. The snazzy tag-line on their website implored me to ‘Get animated for your career!’ which explained Dale’s confusion and definitely sounded like someone coming up with things a company that was a front for zombies might put on their website. Their symbol was a hand, reaching toward the sky. Or, if you looked at it with a grim imagination, grasping from the grave. This could not be coincidence.
Aside from fantastic reviews from all of their customers, there wasn’t much information to be gleaned from their pages, so I only had my overactive imagination and paranoia to base my theories on. So far, my best guess went like this: Not only are zombies real but they are smart and, in order to spread their plague/find new victims they have started up a recruitment agency to secrete their agents into office environments around the country. Apparently, they’re also really good at admin.
I was pretty tempted to ring the contact number for Rise Recruitment but I chickened out. I just couldn’t bear the idea of the line being answered by that awful raspy voice. That would make it all real.
I was pondering my next move when a shuffling motion caught my eye. It was Jim! Jim Dawkins was back! He hadn’t been killed after all. My heart soared and I practically leapt from my seat.
“Jim!” I called as I half-jogged across the office towards him. If I was wrong about him being killed by the zombie then I was wrong about everything. It had all been my imagination after all. Pete was right.
Jim Dawkins turned around and shattered my hope with his face.
His skin was so pale I could see the blood vessels beneath. Purple-black bags hung beneath his eyes and, behind chapped lips, his yellow teeth gnashed. He wore a scarf to cover his neck but I could see a dark red-brown stain on the white skin there.
I almost fell over in my attempt to back-peddle in horror. Jim didn’t seem to notice. He turned away and resumed the shuffle towards his desk. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. All my worst fears had been realised in that moment. This was really happening.
Once again my imagination ran wild. I saw, in mental montage, the fall of civilisation as office after office was taken over by the undead. The council, the education system, the tax office, nowhere was safe. Soon the infrastructure of multinational corporations and even governments was full of them and they took more people every day. By the time people noticed, it was too late: they were everywhere, they controlled everything. After that it was just a matter of rounding up the surviving humans.
I shuddered. No horror movie had ever prepared me for this. The zombies they advertised were lumbering idiots or sprinting psychopaths, not insidious plotters with an excellent eye for detail, good communication skills both written and verbal and several certificates from Microsoft Excel courses. It was insidious.
I came back from my soul-crushing vision of the future slowly, with the embers of furious hope beginning to burn in my chest. I wasn’t going to go out like this. I needed to plan. Prioritise. First – get Pete and Gina safe. Second – warn someone in management, someone higher up than Dale and capable of actual cognitive function. Third – get the hell out of the building, find a safe place to hole up until all the zombies had been fired and then decapitated.
I was going to survive this. I was one step ahead of them. I was going to pull the rug out from their plan, save Gina (therefore becoming a hero in her eyes) and probably the rest of humanity.
With the embers stoked into a raging flame, I went to find Pete.
The flame faltered a little bit when he wasn't at his desk or in the kitchen, checking their watch and rubbing their shoes a little sheepishly on the carpet of my soul. Heroism on TV didn’t usually feature loitering around at a crumb-covered work-station for your side-kick to get back from the bathroom.
“Fine,” I grumbled to myself. “Gina first. Then Pete.”
Nodding once to affirm the change of plan, I set off for the third floor.
Third was the domain of HR.
I hadn’t had much cause to spend time there since those few fiddly bits of new job admin way back when I’d started at the company, but I knew roughly where Gina’s desk was. I envisaged myself striding to her, taking her gently but firmly by the hand and leading her away. I considered sweeping up her up into my arms but thought that, just maybe, that was a bit much. Plus I wasn’t sure I could carry her very far since my exercise regime consisted of occasionally taking a couple of reams of paper to the printer.
I wasn’t really sure how to explain all this to her without sounding like a lunatic but what mattered more was getting her to a safe space. Explanations could come later. Be bold, be confident and she’ll trust you.
I burst through the double doors onto Third with all the boldness and confidence I could muster.
There were no lights on save for the dying struggles of a few flickering bulbs. All typing stopped as soon as I entered. I’d never noticed before how much noise a room full of people just breathing makes. The absence of it was deafening.
Slowly the HR team turned, heads swivelling on stiff and crackling necks, all the way along their bank of desks. Their withered features, lit by the baleful glow of their monitors, faced me. Milky eyes, broken lips and yellowed teeth.
There’s a nasty bug going around on Third.
In unison, they stood up from their swivel chairs, all bloodstained cardigans, muddy shoes and tights torn at the knee. As one, they began to move towards me.
Gina was amongst them, her blonde hair matted with something dark, her painted nails were chipped, clawing the air in my direction.
All boldness and confidence fully depleted, I turned and fled.
I raced up the stairs in blind panic, thinking of nothing but getting as far away from them as possible. I didn’t stop running until I got back to my own floor but I didn’t dare go back in to the office, where the original Zombie Guy and Zombie Jim were waiting. I couldn’t face going into the bathroom either, since I knew the Zombie Guy killed people in there.
Desperate for somewhere to hide, I reached for the door to the cleaning cupboard and opened it.
Pete’s eyes met mine. I’d never noticed how blue they were before. Now they were stretched wide in a fear so potent it overrode all pain. Michael held Pete’s arms behind his back, keeping him from struggling. Julie, her back to me, had her face buried in Pete’s neck. Sensing movement, she turned, revealing the gory mess her teeth had made of my best friend’s throat. Her mouth was pasted with red. It dripped from her chin as she tilted her head to regard me.
Pete tried to speak but succeeded only in making a choking gargle and spraying a little blood from new orifice in his neck.
I slammed the door. I’d like to say I knew there was nothing I could do and that I shut the door well aware that getting away was the most sensible option. In reality, I slammed that door and fled because I was terrified.
I didn’t stop until several flights later and only then did it occur to me that running up had been a pretty stupid move. I collapsed against the wall of the stairwell, panting heavily and sweating profusely. My legs burned and shook and bile stained my throat with its sting.
Gina was gone. Pete was gone.
On the stairs below me somewhere, I could hear the horde approaching.
I tried to think. My plan, much like my chances of survival, was in ruins. I couldn’t save Gina. I couldn’t save Pete.
I could still warn people.
I looked at the nearest door. Without realising it, I’d reached the Eleventh floor. This was the home of the Management. If I could get one of them to listen to me, perhaps we could still stop Rise Recruitment. Perhaps Gina and Pete could be avenged.
After a few deep breaths, I pushed open the door and stepped through.
The Eleventh floor greeted me like the mahogany dream of middle management workers everywhere. There were four great corner offices, each with a glossy metal name-plate on the door. Between them were those floor-to-ceiling windows that inspire instant vertigo. There was no stack of confidential waste sacks awaiting shredding, no coffee stains on the thick carpet, no sad motivational posters to be seen. There was no kitchenette either, which meant no leaky kettle and no toaster from 1984 – whatever the management team ate, they ordered it in every day.
Behind a circular reception desk at the centre of the four offices, there was a woman. She was currently tapping at her keyboard with all the speed and precision of a mechanical spider designed exclusively to type on keyboards. The glare of her screen reflected off her glasses, masking her eyes from view and giving her the appearance of some robot streaming data. Given the kind of week I was having, I wasn’t willing to rule that out.
“Can I help you?” she asked without either ceasing the typing or looking my way.
“Um,” was my intelligent response.
I still couldn’t see her eyes but I practically heard them roll.
I glanced at the office doors. Only one was ajar.
“I need to speak to one of the managers,” I said.
There was a click behind the desk and I got the feeling some alarm button had been pressed, which was ridiculous as our building didn’t have security.
“Do you have an appointment?” the woman asked. She still hadn’t looked at me.
“This is an emergency,” I said.
Click.
“You must have an appointment. You can call the office between the hours of 10:30 and 3:00 in order to book one.”
“Look, there’s no time for that! Everyone is in danger!”
Click.
“You must have an appointment. You can call the office between the hours of 10:30 and 3:00 in order to book one.”
I ground my teeth and glanced at the office door again. Maybe I should just run inside and close the door, grab whoever was in there by the head and force them to listen. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that was likely to actually make them listen. Knowing my luck I’d probably end up in jail for assault while zombies took over the world.
Click.
“Can I help you?”
I lost my temper and stormed up to the desk, determined to put an end to this passive-aggressive faux-polite bullshit.
The woman finally looked at me, tilting her head to look over the top of her glasses. Her eye was cold and dead as a marble. The other one was missing, leaving an empty hole of red-blackness. She pushed a button on the tape recorder beside her keyboard. There was a hole in the back of her hand through which I could see the bones and tendons moving.
Click.
“Can I help you?”
I gave up on all forms of communication with her besides screaming, ran to the office and slammed the door.
“Ah, yes,” said a bushy-eyebrowed gentleman in an expansive chair, who had evidently just woken from a nap. “Jenkins, is it? You’re early.”
“What? I’m not Jenkins. My name is-”
“Nonsense,” the eyebrows furrowed, far too distracting for me to notice any other features of his face. “Jenkins is what is says here.”
He indicated a schedule printed in front of him.
“Sit down, man,” he harrumphed, clearly determined that the universe should proceed as he expected regardless of some small detail such as me not being the right person. “Let’s get this interview over with so that we can break for lunch.”
“Listen to me!” I practically screamed.
The eyebrows rose drastically, then fell into a thunderous frown.
“Right,” I said, before the mouth attached to them could start speaking again. “This is going to sound nuts but the living dead are here. Most of our staff have been turned into mindless zombies. They’ve got all of HR, a bunch of people from Fifth (so I’m pretty sure Fourth are gone too), even your receptionist out there! I’m not sure how long exactly it’s been going on for or how many people have been converted-”
“Forty-seven percent,” said the mouth beneath the eyebrows.
I flapped my mouth a few times wordlessly before settling on a response.
“What?”
Somewhere far beneath the eyebrows a hand flipped open a notepad and turned a few pages.
“Forty-seven percent as of this week’s report. Going rather well I think.” “…I don’t understand.”
“Well, we did pay for the full conversion package from that Rise Recruitment place but you can’t do these things overnight as I understand it. Still, the increase is exponential so we should hit around sixty-five percent by this time next week.”
“You…you know about this?”
Suddenly the building seemed to be swaying under my feet. My vision swam a little.
“Of course! Quite a deal we got as well. Seemed a little pricy at first but once you take into account the results: no more sick leave, no more holidays, no more bereavements or maternity or any of that irritating business. No birthdays or charity events or silly desk decorations. Just dedicated workers, producing excellent work. Individuality in the office environment will be a thing of the past! Efficiency is already through the roof and we’re not even halfway done!”
“But people are dying!”
“Can you prove that? They’re still turning up to work, aren’t they? Doesn’t seem anything wrong with them to me, so long as you crack open a window. Of course, if you have concerns, you’re welcome to contact HR.
Now, if that will be all, you should return to work. I look forward to seeing your performance review in a week or too. I expect there’ll be a marked improvement.”
I staggered from the office. My body felt like a faraway puppet I was only loosely in control of. I’d failed. I couldn’t save Pete or Gina or anyone else.
I looked up through the numbness and saw the HR team waiting for me. Michael and Julia were there too, coated in the fresh blood of my best friend. I couldn’t even save myself.
The breathless silence was there again, broken only by the continued tapped of the receptionist at her keyboard and the drumming of my own heart.
Perhaps sensing my weakness for her, Gina shouldered her way to the front of the horde. Whatever little fight might have been left in me leaked out and faded away on a whimpered breath as she approached.
She put her arms around me and time stood still as we finally embraced. The tapping of the keyboard in the background became distant and unimportant. Fade to black.
The End