Chapter Four: The Freaks Come Out at Night
GREG
Trapped in a cage, like an animal. With Sara. You know, I'd had sordid little fantasies about this very scenario, minus the zombies and clothing and Grissom of course. Much as I admire the big guy as a boss and criminalist, I'm not into mental threesomes that aren't composed of me and two females. Generally naked Sara and Catherine do just fine, with a salacious side helping of Wendy once in a while . . . maybe Sofia, and Mandy . . . once, even Judy—
"Greg get back!" whoah, yeah, out of daydreams and back to reality—
--Where the zombies were. I scooted back as the first pale, grasping arm reached between the bars of the security gate and nearly touched me. Grissom walked over and pushed on the door of the men's room; it opened. He looked back at Sara and cocked his head; she winced a little.
"I don't know if I can, um, you know, with a bunch of zombies moaning outside . . . " she protested. I didn't blame her; I was probably going to have some trouble taking a voluntary whiz myself.
"Concentrate—" Grissom told her, waving an arm into the bathroom. "Here, let me have the gun—"
Sara rolled her eyes but handed her Glock over to Grissom and took his flashlight in return. I could tell she really had to go because she scooted in there pretty fast. Then I heard Ms. Louise calling out to us, over the sound of the grim trio on the other side of the gate.
"Did you lock the gate?"
"We locked it—they're not getting in and they're not happy about it either," Grissom called to her through the door.
"I bet they aren't. Okay, I'm going to open the door, but I warn you, I'm armed, so don't give me trouble—"
I looked at the zombies who were clawing through the aluminum bars and then at Grissom, who gave me back the exact same 'Lady-we-have-bigger-issues-than-hassling-you' look. The ladies room door opened, and Ms. Miller peeked out.
She was a middle-aged round black lady with long braids and wearing a Manly Hammers vest. In one hand she had a cordless nail gun, and in the other, a step edger that I couldn't help noticing already had blood on it.
Grissom nodded at her. "I'm Gil Grissom. This is Greg Sanders."
"Where's the lady?" Ms. Miller asked after nodding at us. All three of us were just looking at the zombies beyond the gate, like they were specimens in a zoo. Talk about surrealistic.
"Men's room—" Grissom waved, and Ms Miller relaxed a bit. She looked at the zombies a second longer, then motioned us further back, into the little hallway.
"Okay, I'm glad you're here and in one piece, because I've been in that john one hellaciously long time. My shift started at six yesterday morning, and since then I have seen things that would make even George A. Romero wet his pants."
That was my cue, and I tried to walk discreetly to the men's room door, because things were getting a little uncomfortable for me in the bladder department. The zombies shifted, and Grissom being who he is, noticed.
"They're tracking him." By him, he meant me of course. Ms. Miller nodded.
"Oh yeah, I think it's a scent thing, or maybe vibrations, because they sure as hell aren't using their eyes."
I was about to knock on the door when it opened and Sara popped out, about giving me a heart attack.
My third for the night so far, if you were keeping count.
She murmured a little "sorry," and stared at the zombies; I noticed she was getting that Grissom look in her eyes—the 'this is fascinating' one that could be trouble, so I snapped my fingers in her face. "Flashlight?"
"Can you hold it and pee at the same time?"
"Peeing is a one-handed affair," I assured Sara. "Trust me."
She snickered. "No hands in my case."
"Yeah, well no aim either," I retorted, and stepped into the bathroom. Okay it was childish, but I really had to go by now, and I really needed a moment to sort of collect myself. I left Grissom and Sara talking to Ms. Miller and leaned my back against the inside of the door, just taking a deep breath.
Bad idea in a men's room, actually, but at least the facility was mostly clean. Went to the nearest urinal and managed to relieve myself without incident, then washed my hands, like a good little CSI. Checked my face out in the mirror. I tend to be pale most of the time, but I was looking particularly spooky tonight.
My stomach growled.
SARA
Ms. Miller was a survivor, oh yeah. She held that nail gun of hers like a pro, and both Grissom and I were happy to let her fill us in on the events prior to our arrival at Manly Hammers. We'd moved to the hallway and a little around the corner so we could all hear each other over the moaning of the zombies.
There were two more of them out there now, joining the shopping cart one and her buddies. Getting to be quite a crowd all pushing against the security gate. I wasn't worried about it holding, but I WAS worried about security in the rest of the building. Fortunately Ms. Miller seemed to know about that.
"When I got here for my shift at six AM yesterday, things were goin' all right. I punched in and headed for my stock section here in the back. I'm in charge of all the plumbing fixtures and sundries, you know—screws and washers and rivets and that kinda thing. My job is to keep the bins in stock and get the next order ready.
Anyway, about noon I hear the local come in—we get trains rolling past us all the time since we're butt up against the track out there—and there's a delivery. That's not unusual either, because Manly prefers to run the garden stuff out quick so the stock doesn't die before it gets here. Nobody buys dead plants, you know?"
Grissom nodded. God he was patient, and a part of me loved him even more for that. Greg came out of the bathroom and waved at the zombies, then joined us in the little hallway, leaning up against the Employee of the Month bulletin board. I felt guilty as hell when I spotted my dead plumbing guy up there for the month of March—He wasn't Herb, he was Len, with a bad toupee and a Polygrip smile.
"Stop it. The guy wasn't the same," Greg told me in a low voice. I looked over at him in surprise and he kept talking. "Come on, Sara—he'd been changed into athing that wanted nothing more than to crack your skull open like a coconut and chew on your cerebellum, so stop feeling guilty. Len would have been grateful that you put him down, okay?"
Ms. Miller was nodding, and I glanced at her. She shrugged. "He's got it right, hon—Len was a bonafide canasta-playing sweetie who would have been totally freaked out if he knew he was gonna end up a brain-muncher."
It was weird comfort, but I nodded, feeling a little better. Grissom was working with his cell phone again and trying to get a signal, but when he started shaking the thing I knew it wasn't happening. I looked up and down the hall. "So—is this area safe? Where are we?"
"Back offices are that way—" Ms. Miller pointed to our right, "And stockroom is that way." She pointed in the opposite direction. "I haven't heard anything from the stockroom, but I think there's at least one . . . thing upstairs—kinda hard for me to tell from down here in the bathroom."
"Locked in? Trapped?" I asked, feeling a little alarmed.
She shrugged. "I'd guess so if we haven't heard it come down—hard to say. If you all would feel safer in the stockroom . . . "
I looked at Grissom and Greg; they nodded and we all made our way to the right, down the hallway. It was really dark here and sort of—claustrophobic. I was rubbing shoulders with Grissom and starting to think maybe this was a bad idea, because getting caught in a tight little hallway like this would make a fight nearly impossible—
Then Ms Miller stepped up to another safety gate at the end, and pulled it open onto a much bigger room lined with shelves and crates. I could breathe again.
I watched as Grissom looked around and took a deep breath himself. He motioned to all of us to sit on the piled bags of cement over by one wall and began to speak in the slow thoughtful voice he uses when he's serious and trying to make a point. I settled back and kept the flashlight beam on the floor.
"All right, we need to come up with a plan; preferably an escape plan. Ms. Miller, give me a few moments to go use the facilities and then I'd like to hear what happened after you came on shift."
She shrugged. "Fair enough, Mr. Gil Grissom. And given the circumstances, I think we can grab what we want out of the lounge room fridge without anybody complaining. Don't know about you guys, but I missed both my lunch AND dinner break, so I am hun-gree!"
So that was how we ended up fifteen minutes later, eating peanut butter sandwiches and washing them down with bottled water while Louise Miller told us the rest of her story. All I can say is that Manly Hammers is a damned decent company for stocking their snack cupboards with both crunchy and smooth peanut butter.
GRISSOM
It's always amazing to me how fear can suppress and increase an appetite at the same time. Given what Sara, Greg and I had seen in the past hour anyone would assume that the last thing we'd want to do is eat; however, all of us, including the irrepressible Ms. Miller happily plowed through our sandwiches in a comradely little feast together.
I suspected we'd need the energy—stress has a way of tapping people out, and we were facing a lot of that at the moment.
Besides, I'd always enjoyed watching Sara eat. Even though she'd deny it, she has a dainty way of nibbling a sandwich; unlike Greg, who works with voracious bites reminiscent of a shark on a section of whale carcass.
At least the dinner break conversation sounded fairly normal:
"Are there any chips? I'd kill for some chips—"
"Here—Doritos or Fritos, Greg—"
"Those aren't chips! Those are corn things. I mean REAL chips—Lays, Pringles—you know, potato chips."
"Um, sorry—this was all I saw in the lunches, unless you want to run the gauntlet back to the cashier's stand at the front and grab a snack bag there."
"Let's see—face an unknown number of mindless gory drooling pestilent zombies for the fleeting joy of a tiny bag that's half filled with air anyway because the contents have settled—"
"You know, I don't have much of an appetite now, not with THAT mental picture—"
"Yeah, I hate stale chips too."
Whistling in the dark, literally. I could have interrupted them, told them to think about our situation, but I knew they were already doing that, and that both of them needed to let off a little anxiety, so I listened to them bicker as I kept an ear out for sounds beyond the stock room.
Ms. Miller polished off a bottle of Mug Root Beer and sighed happily next to me. "All right then, listen up, here's what I know. Like I said, about noon there was a delivery out back on our platform. Nothing unusual about that, and it was stock for the Garden department as usual. I took a look because I've been hoping to pick up a Sanseveria trifasciata for my porch—"
"Awhat?" Greg demanded, but before I could say a word, Sara spoke up, grinning in that way that makes me smile as well.
"A Mother-in-Law's Tongue—Snake plant."
Ms. Miller nodded. "That's the one. Anyway, the plants get unloaded first—nothing special there, just groundcover and a few fruit trees, and then they unload the bags of mulch and fertilizer. I was about to leave because lemme tell you, after sitting in a boiling hot freight car for a few hours, those sacks are RIPE, baby, and you do NOT want to be downwind of that crap, not at all. Anyway, I was about to go when one of the bags snags on the edge of the boxcar and rips open."
"Nasty," I commented, all too aware of what the stench must have been like. "So there was a spill?"
"Oh yeah, but more than that too—the stuff falls on Diego, one of the nurserymen; ends up covering him up to the shins. I was laughing, along with everyone else out on the loading bay, I mean you know how it is when someone gets majorly dumped on, right? So even Diego is cracking up, and then all of a sudden he starts yelling that something BIT him. He jumps up and wipes at his legs and that's when I saw the blood."
"Something bit him?" I asked carefully. Ms. Miller nodded, her expression serious now.
"Oh yeah, right on the calf on the back of his leg. Emilio and Len got over there and started brushing away the manure, trying to get Diego settled down and then Emilio shouts that there's a skull in the crap and that the damned jaws are moving. THAT was enough to freak people out."
"A skull? A human one?" Greg asked. Ms. Miller nodded solemnly.
"Oh yeah, looked kinda like a rotting bowling ball, with one eyeball hanging out and the jaws just snapping away. It was in the manure and when Emilio when to touch it, it tried to take a bite out of him. I was standing right there and saw the whole thing, and I know what it sounds like, but it's the Lord's own truth. That . . . that head was alive somehow."
"What happened to it?" I asked, wondering if it was still out along the railroad, rolling and snapping like some sort of deadly bone armadillo—the image was unintentionally funny and I coughed to cover the smirk that rose up to my mind. Next to me. Sara pounded my back with a little more force than necessary, so I could only guess that she too, had a similarly bizarre image.
"Emilio got a shovel and bashed it in," Ms Miller confided. "Flattened that sucker good, and it cracked like a baaaad egg, oozing this greeny purple goo right out the nose holes."
"Okaaay, I really am done eating now—" Sara announced, and set her half-eaten sandwich down.
GREG
"Soo--can I have the rest of that?" I asked her. Grissom was giving me this look like I'd asked to stick pickles up my nose or something, but Sara nodded and handed it over. I took it and Ms. Miller spoke up again, sighing.
"So we took Diego to the First Aid station, and the dayshift manager—Mr. Hackamore—he was all in a tizzy about whether to call the cops for the bashed up skull or not. And of course, we weren't supposed to let the commotion in the back upset any customers out front, so we ended up with a lot of people sort of running around and not getting much done. Later I found out that Diego bit the company nurse when she washed out the wound. I guess that was the start of it right there."
I finished off Sara's sandwich in a few bites and washed it down with bottled water while Grissom spoke, thinking out loud.
"So you had two people bitten around noon. Did anyone clean up the manure and the skull?"
Ms Miller thought about that a moment, and I watched her while she did.
"I know they cleaned up the fertilizer, because I saw Emilio come back for that, but I don't know about the skull. Mr. Hackamore told all us lookie Loos to get back to work, so I came back here to the stockroom and finished up the inventory on our cases of PVC pipe connectors."
"How long did that take?" Sara asked, and I nodded, because I knew what her line of thinking was—namely figuring out the contagion timeline. Grissom was listening intently too.
Ms. Miller shrugged. "About two hours I guess—it does faster when Lucina is here with me, but she called in sick so I was stuck by myself. I figured all the excitement was over, so I got busy in here and didn't pay much attention to much else going on outside the stockroom. I sorta regret that now."
"You didn't know there was a problem building," Grissom told her in this gentle voice, and for the first time I could see that Ms. Miller was struggling not to cry. I felt bad for her—she had her lips pressed together and she blinked a lot, so I spoke up.
"Sometimes it's hard being a survivor, I know. But we're going to get out of here, Ms. Miller, trust me."
She nodded at me and managed a little smile. Grissom pulled a Sharpie marker out of his vest pocket and was drawing on one of the cinderblock walls, sketching out a timeline, marking one end at noon and the other at two AM. "What happened next, and when did it happen, Ms Miller?"
"Well, I took my break around two, and was going to grab a cone over at the ice cream shop when I noticed that Genese was mopping up blood out near the screen door display. She said she didn't know what happened, but that Mr. Hackamore had told her to get it cleaned up fast and to wear latex gloves. I thought that was weird. When I left the store, I noticed that we only had one cashier—Jeanie I think it was—on duty. Usually we have three or more, and one on the contractor's desk too, but not at two when I stepped out."
"How many employees work at this store during the day?" Sara asked softly. I started to clean up our little lunch, still listening.
Hey, just because we're facing potentially gory death doesn't mean we have to leave a mess, right?
"Hard to say—usually we have about twenty people down on the floor, between the cashiers, restock people and custodial crew. Up in management there are always two or three in the office, so about twenty three?"
"So we'll assume that the infection—if that's what this is—is passed on by bite. Our ground zero patient is Diego, bitten at noon. You said he bit the nurse, and by best guess that would have been about fifteen minutes to half an hour after his initial infection . . . " Grissom muttered, "So did Diego go home?"
Louise nodded. "I'm pretty sure he did—Hackamore would have insisted, after they did some of the Workman's Comp paperwork."
"So he could have run into any number of people on his way out . . . " I added, "as could have the nurse."
"Then we're looking at an exponentially spreading infection, Grissom. Buuuuut, how long a time period does it take to go from bite victim to walking zombie?" Sara asked.
That really was the question none of us could answer. Ms Miller looked thoughtful.