Act 2
"Get out of the office. Why are you in here, what do you think this is night shift? Get out there and work." I yelled at one of my close friends. Such antics made me think of why I moved to Fort Wayne, what was I doing with my life? And then I remembered the night…
"I'm going, I'm going." He was really pissed off. Silly me, I know this guys name this time. Nate. Don't call him Nathaniel, he hates it.
Party, Avril Lavigne is playing in the background.
Stephanie Noud walked over to me. She had a look on her face, not very reassuring.
"Nate is pissed at you."
"Why? Because I yell at him when he isn't working? It's my job to be his boss."
"Yeah well he took it personal."
"Yeah well if you're talking to him tell him it wasn't personal it was just business."
And with those words threw me back to another age and time. My vision blurred as I couldn't hold back the flood gates of memories that played themselves like a death march in my head. I had my hand to my forehead without having realized it.
"Are you ok?" she asked.
"No, but I'll survive." I replied.
"Okay, I guess I'll go relay the message."
Another room down the hall where the party is playing music, there's a live band.
I walked into the door way and over to stand in the shadowy comfort of a corner. The room is darkly lit and smoky, a tenor sax starting to play a solo. Stephanie finds me over there and says Nate wanted to talk to me. I took one look around, savoring the big band playing a sad bluesy song, and then commenced the trek back to the first room. The party was still playing Avril Lavigne's "Runaway" song.
"Hey, we need to talk," Nate said as I approached him.
"I figured," I retorted.
"Can we go talk at my apartment? It's just across the plaza." He asked.
"Sure."
We were in a building that was part of an apartment community. There was a line of townhouses across the quad where I lived and there were what appeared to be a tent community in the center and a clubhouse on the opposite side of the town houses. This complex is part of the clubhouse and nates apartment is just beside the club house.
We walk the short distance to his apartment. There was someone walking ahead of us. He had turned to walk through the hedges in front of the apartment building and he disappeared like the hedges ate him. We went around the hedges and quickly into the building. We walked past his friend's apartment door, wills door and it was open, a dried blood splatter across the door on the wall. We turned around and left. As we exited the building we heard a moaning from the hedges.
We ran down the street, through and alley, moans and shuffling behind us. I glimpsed what looked like a hell cat in a corner here and there.
We get to the McDonalds' we work at and I had my keys. We ran up to the locked door being closely tailed by what appeared to be zombies. I unlocked the door as quickly as I could but they were practically on top of us. One grabbed Nate and bit a piece of flesh out of nates neck as he pushed the zombie away... We ran inside the building and I locked the door behind us. A few moments later Nate was already showing signs of infection.
I ran around the counter and heard him fall to the floor.
Zombies pounding on the glass, moaning as loud as they could.
Nate stands back up, looking at me with eyes of the undead. He stumbles towards me…
Over the speakers in the McDonalds plays Avril Lavigne's Runaway song chorus
I just wanna scream and lose control
Throw my hands up and let it go
Forget about everything and run away.
I just wanna fall and lose myself
Laughing so hard it hurts like hell
Forget about everything and runaway
Crying, I say the line that has cursed me, plagued me and has been flashing through my head all day.
"Nothing personal, it's just business."
And I slam the salad cooler door on his head, severing it while keeping it fresh and crisp and cool at the same time.
And then, finally safe, I blackout.
It was a long 12 hours at McDonalds.
I arrive back to my apartment at dusk, the darkness more natural than most, a storm on the brink.
My apartment is located in a compound, the clubhouse to the left on a hill, my apartment down across the grounds exactly across from the clubhouse.
For some reason or other, it's kind of a rural apartment setting, with modern apartments on one side, but a campground type in the center of the grounds. There, someone has set up a giant canopy tent with tables and smaller tents under its embrace.
I unlock the door to my apartment, took a glance through. My roommates had left for the weekend. I went up the staircase, dark and lined with odds and ends that haven't made it to their destination within our closets of rooms.
After I change, I head out to the club house across the compound. As I try to leave, the door stuck. I look for the cause, seems the door has started to rot from the bottom up from the humidity. The door refuses to latch, so I set an alarm on the door to alert me if it opens. I shut the door, and left. I wouldn't be gone long, or so I hope.
I cross the camp, picking my way in between tents and tables and chairs on my way to meet Alicia in the club house. She was a friend from work that lived in the apartment complex by the clubhouse. When I arrive there, she sat at a table in the mess hall section with her two children.
"Hey, how was work?" she asks me.
"You know hell and long as." I reply.
"Yeah I know." and with that she took her children off to get something to eat.
As I sat there, I start to dose off, feeling the fatigue finally from a hard day's work. I awoke a couple seconds later with a jolt. My alarm buzzer was vibrating in my pocket. I stood, jolting to my feet. Alicia was walking back over to the table.
"What's wrong?" she inquires.
"Well my door won't latch so I set an alarm to alert me if anyone entered and it's gone off. And my roommates are gone for the weekend. So I got to go see if maybe the wind blew it open. I can see the wind just blowing around the tents."
"Ok, just let me know what happens"
And with that I took off at a quick step off to the door of the clubhouse. As soon as I reached the outside world I was shocked to see that the light outside had taken on a grey brown hue in its last throws of sunset dusk.
I ran.
I ran straight through the tents, jumping a table and approach my door...its open.
I have various weapons in my apartment, one a very working sword in my umbrella stand by the door for this such occasion. I grasp the hilt and silently unsheathe the weapon and take an en garde stance, ready for anything. I keep walking, through the hall, the kitchen, to the living room. I see a figure standing there; he turns with a gun in his grip. I quickly lunge forward and impale him through the chest.
The burglar falls to the ground, assumedly dead. I continue on through the apartment and to the upstairs. I canvas the rooms up until my room where I hear someone. I slowly crept into the room and there was someone lying on my bed.
"Hello." he says.
"You!"
"Yes me."
"Aren't you dead? What are you doing here?" I ask him. Apparently I knew him.
"just saying hello, oh and to kill you" he tells me.
"Why?" I say, this is just tearing me up.
"Because" and with that he pulls out his gun.
"I'm sorry." and I run him through with my sword. I pull my sword free.
"I'm beyond being killed by you" he says, "and so is my associate who is behind you."
The burglar I had stabbed down stairs is standing right behind me.
I dodge past him and do a roll down the stairs and ran right out the front door and into the tents, safely under the canopy.
I ran and ran, trying to put the feeling I was fighting behind me as I had to evade them. He ran right behind me, almost catching up with me. The other man had run to get their vehicle and was driving it outside the tent area beside the giant canopy. There's a plank leaning up a tree; I ran up the plank and up onto the giant canopy and start to run down it. He got into the car with the other man and was driving under the giant canopy, over tents and chairs and knocking tables down.
As this continues, the destruction does not go unnoticed. A tenant alerts the police.
"Come back down here, we have unfinished business" he yells up to me.
"I'm not ready to die yet!" I reply and I continue to run across the canopy. I start to unbind some of the tethers to the stakes holding up the canopy. Lightning starts the flash across the sky, the wind is howling, rocking the tent.
"Just a few more left" and I reach the last one.
The canopy collapses, trapping the car underneath.
A loud bang, cracking of thunder after a lightning strike and a flash followed by darkness.
The police lifted the canopy.
There was no car.
No anything.
Nobody.
Again I wait.