The Day began like any other day, in fact exactly like every other day of my life. I woke up around six or seven, showered, put on the slacks, collared shirt, tie, and Verizon sales member pin, grabbed breakfast at McDonalds, and then went into work for a day of bludgeoning boredom. Brian was still sleeping in his room by the time I left since his workplace was only fifteen minutes away and he didn't have to be at work until nine AM, so he generally got to sleep later than I did. Lucky bastard.
It was around eight when I pulled my old Honda Civic into the parking lot at the Westmont Acres Shopping Center. The name made it sound pretty attractive and I guess it was an okay place, considering it was brand new and all, but no amount of sexy descriptive language could disguise the fact that it was basically another suburban crackerbox contraption. Faux Spanish tiling, faux adobe walls, and the usual types of businesses that you could expect in a middle-class soccer mom centre du shopping; Target, a frozen yogurt place, a drive-through Burger King, a Bank of America, a Safeway, and the obligatory Starbucks. Not to mention my personal place of employment.
My manager, a kind-faced middle-aged Indian guy, whom I referred to as Mr. Sikand was already inside, setting up a few of the displays for the day. Pulling open the front door, I nodded at him, walking to the computer with my morning coffee in hand to clock in for the day. Couple of clicks, couple of commands tapped into the keyboard, and I was ready to go. On the clock for the day and ready to sell America what it couldn't live without: cell phone coverage.
This job sucked when it was busy, but it sucked even more when it was slow. A couple other co-workers had showed up, but 9 AM we had no customers, so Mr. Sikand had us out cleaning the showroom windows and the electronics on the sales floor to make sure they were attractive. It was basically about as interesting as watching paint dry while listening to War and Peace being read to you by Barry Manilow. And about as sleep-inducing as well.
I don't know who noticed the smoke first, but Mr. Sikand was the first one to say something. "Hey. What do you make of that?" he said, pointing out through the spic-and-span showroom window at what looked like several columns of dirty black smoke billowing in the distance. They weren't clustered together like what you might expect if a large fire had broken out in a contained area, but they were spread out over what looked like several miles. Evidently there was more than one going on.
One of my co-workers opened the door and stepped outside and we followed him. Immediately we were swarmed by a cacophony of noise; helicopter rotors, emergency sirens, honking horns, and the sounds of people yelling at one another. And then far off in the distance, a series of dull pops that sounded like a string of firecrackers going off.
"What the fuck?" uttered one of my co-workers, his eyes fixated on the smoke in the distance. "Is it just me or did that shit just sound like…."
"Fucking gunshots," finished one of my other co-workers. She backed up into the store, already reaching for her phone. "I'm fucking calling the cops."
"I think it's best if we all go back inside," said Mr. Sikand, a sort of strange absent look on his face. "Come on Danny, let's go back inside. We will call the police and try to find out what is going on."
"Yeah…" I muttered as I started stepping backwards towards the store. My trance was suddenly broken by the sight of a red GMC pickup trick speeding down the shopping center's driveway. The driver, a young man wearing a torn red flannel shirt with a trucker hat on over his long blonde hair, leaned as far out of the passenger window as he could get. His left hand was on the truck's steering wheel, but his right hand clasped what looked like a handgun. There was what looked like a bloody bandage on the same hand, but at the speed he was driving it was hard to make out.
"What the hell's going on?" I managed to shout out towards the truck. The driver's eyes locked on me and I could see an emotion in them that froze my blood. The look in his wasn't the mania of a crazy man or harmful intent. It was something far more primal, far more animalistic. Pure ice-cold fear. His was the face of a man who had seen something so horrific that the only thing he could do was to get as far away from it as fast as possible.
"-get the hell outta here!" screamed the driver as the truck careened past. "You aren't safe here! Those bastards are right behind me! Get goin' while you still can! They're not gonna stop!" With that, the driver floored it and whatever else he said was lost in the flurry of noise from the truck and the cacophony of noise in the distance.
I staggered back into the store, slamming it shut behind me, and locking it. Who were they and why was this guy, who was armed in any case, so afraid of them? Just what the fuck was going on here?
I turned around to face my co-workers; three of them plus Mr. Sikand who was busy loading what looked like a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver. The sight was so bizarre that I nearly burst out laughing. Kindly-looking Mr. Sikand who was always so polite with the customers loading a gun in a Verizon store? It was almost something out of the Twilight Zone.
Mr. Sikand noticed the look that I was giving him and he shrugged. "I worked in a liquor store in Oakland when I first got to America," he said, slipping the last and final bullet into the revolver's cylinder and snapping it closed. "I used to keep this under my counter for self-defense. Old habits die hard, yes."
My female co-worker threw her phone to the carpet in frustration. "I've been trying to get through to 911 and I can't even reach an operator. All it keeps saying is 'All circuits are presently busy, please try again later.' Seriously what the fuck is going on?"
"Hold on!" shouted my other co-worker, his Blackberry in hand. "My news app is going haywire. Let me pull this up." His fingers deftly navigated over the Blackberry's keypad, pulling up a live Internet news feed from CNN. A rather rumpled-looking Wolf Blitzer came up on the small screen and I could feel my breath catch in my throat as I recognized the same emotion in his eyes that I had seen in the eyes of the truck driver.
Fear.
"-are getting unconfirmed reports that a viral infection has popped up throughout the continental United States, Mexico, and Canada. I repeat, we are getting unconfirmed reports that a viral infection has been detected in the continental United States, Canada, and Mexico."
The next news feed. The press room of the White House. The Chairman of CEDA, Thomas Stamkovich, standing behind that wooden podium, the familiar emblem of the White House emblazoned on those blue curtains behind him.
"At around 6 AM Eastern Standard Time, CEDA received initial reports of an outbreak of an infectious virus in locations across North America. We would like to be on record as saying that this virus does not appear to be airborne at this time, however it is transmissible through bodily contact. We are in the process of dispatching research units to the affected locations with the assistance of federal, state, and local authorities. At this time we would like to implore the American population to remain calm and not panic…"
Yet another news feed.
"-growing reports of civil unrest and violence in what CEDA has termed the 'infected zones.' Several states along the Eastern Seaboard are reporting that their law enforcement agencies are working overtime and there are unconfirmed reports that the Governor of Georgia has declared martial law…"
Images of National Guardsmen, wearing what look like chemical-biological warfare suits and armed with what look like M16 rifles climbing out of the back of a truck with a Georgia state flag flying from it. One Guardsman turns to the camera and places his khaki rubber-gloved hand over the lens. Image goes black.
One more.
"-authorities are asking people to stay inside, lock their doors, and cooperate fully with law enforcement. If you encounter anyone who is infected or you yourself are infected, please immediately inform the authorities and wait for assistance."
He turns the feed off and looks at all of us, looks at our faces so clouded with fear and confusion. And that's when the first one thumps against the glass, startling all of us out of our reverie.
There's a man pressed up against one of the store windows, his eyes fixated on us. But they aren't like any eyes I've ever seen. They're bright crimson, the color of hellfire and blood, and they're staring at us so strongly I can literally feel his gaze burning through the thin store glass. There's a look on his face that strikes me as odd for a human being to have towards another, something I've never seen in a person's face before.
Hunger. Pure. Ravenous. Hunger.
He's dressed like a businessman and from the looks of it, he was just on his way to the office in his BMW, Lexus, Mercedes, or other yuppie-mobile, no doubt. Expensive-looking black suit with a pale blue striped tie and a white shirt, patent leather shoes, Rolex watch, and a corporate ID badge fixed to his belt. I can see the holster for a Blackberry or some other PDA-esque device on his hip and would you believe it, the sonofabitch even has his Bluetooth headset in his right ear. And it's then that I notice that it's not just his eyes that are throwing me off….it's his skin. It's a strange-looking pale gray, the same color you get in rain clouds just before a light storm, and it's a dull color that seems to lack the vibrancy, the life, of the skin of the people who are watching him back from inside the windows.
Just as I begin to think that we might need to call the cops, he raises his fists and with seemingly inhuman strength, shatters the store window in one blow. With a howl that chills me to the bone, he rushes forward, grabbing my female co-worker and falling down on top of her. She's screaming, shrill screams of terror that echo in the store, as she frantically scrabbles backward, her arms thrust out in front of her to keep him away.
I can hear my other male co-worker shouting something unintelligible along with Mr. Sikand yelling something that sounds like "You get the hell away from her and put your hands where I can see them, you son of a bitch." But all I can focus on is my co-worker pinned to the ground with this crazy red-eyed bastard on top of her. I want to try to help her, I want to understand why this guy is doing this, but all I can think about is the hunger I saw in his eyes and it chills me to the bone, the terror preventing me from helping her.
And then he bites her.
His teeth sink deeply into her hand and she screams in pain, shrieking in pure terror, as he sinks his front teeth into her, ripping a piece of flesh from the back of her hand. My co-worker tries to curl up in a ball on the floor, trying desperately to shield her body, but this only exposes her back and neck to the crazy gray bastard. He's not just biting her now, he's hitting her, beating her with those strong hands and even raking her with long dirty fingernails. There are bloody scratches on her back from where her shirt's been torn through and she's screaming in pain, writhing on the floor, screaming for someone, anyone, to do something. Now there are deep bite wounds on the back of her neck and her shirt and bra have nearly been ripped cleanly from her body, leaving her upper torso bare and exposed as the man continues to pummel her.
It feels like hours though it's only been seconds.
A gunshot goes off, reverberating through the small space of the store, and in the next instant, the gray man's forehead explodes outward in a shower of flesh, bone, blood, and flecks of grayish-white brain matter. His body goes limp and then falls to the floor, where it makes a show of twitching as the muscles continue to fight the brain trauma that the .38 caliber round has inflicted on the motor center of his brain.
Behind me, Mr. Sikand is trembling, keeping his smoking revolver pointed at the man's body. Behind him I can hear my other co-worker panting something over and over. "Holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck, holy fuck." Next to the fallen psychotic, my female co-worker lies unconscious. Blood drips from her various wounds as she lies there, half-naked, the lack of clothing on the top half of her body revealing the cuts, bruises, and bites that that crazy sonofabitch inflicted on her. She looks pretty bad.
"Danny," says Mr. Sikand in a calm voice that belies his shaking arm and sweat-covered forehead. "Go. You go. Go and get the police and an ambulance."
I nod slowly and begin backing away from the scene of carnage in front of me. "What will you do in the meantime?"
"I will stay here and make sure that Angela is all right," he said, referring to my injured female coworker. "Hopefully if more of them come, there aren't more than five of them," he said, opening the cylinder of the revolver to check it.
"No Mr. Sikand, listen, we should all go. I can fit all of you into the car, we could all get out of here…"
"Goddammit Danny!" he shouted in an angry tone of voice I had never heard him us before, not even during the worst sales screw-up or on the most pigheaded customer. "You fucking listen and do what I fucking say. She needs medical help and I have to stay and help her. Now go!"
The next words he says to me are something I will never forget as long as I live. "Don't worry about us Danny. We will be all right, yes."
I tear out of the store at a sprinting clip. In the distance there are even more pillars of smoke, so many that the clouds of dirty blackness are beginning to collect and blot out some of the sunlight. And the noise….the noise is even louder now…..which means it's closer. I can hear a woman screaming somewhere in the distance, a high shrill scream that somehow manages to carry over everything else; the sirens, car horns, helicopter rotors, even the fusillade of gun shots that continually ring out somewhere in the distance.
I opened my car door, slamming it shut behind me, as I coaxed the old Honda to life with a couple turns of the key. I shifted the car into drive and floored it as I took off in the parking lot, my eyes wildly darting around behind the steering wheel as I headed for the main entrance to the shopping center. Just as the tires of the Honda hit the street outside, I see a flood of people swarm the front of the store, surging inside. A few bright flares of light, like a camera flash, go off inside the store…..and then no more.
I fight to clear the tears from my eyes as I drive off.
"We will be all right, yes."
So long Mr. Sikand.