The Coalition: Part 1 The State of Extinction (Zombie Series) (2 page)

When
he had
finally pulled into the lot and was parking his car,
he had
peered around to see if there was any sign of danger. Quickly
,
he had opened his door and sprinted for the brick façade of Briggs Stationers, his employer for most of his adult life
;
three floors of rooms attached to an enormous warehouse stacked to the ceilings with all manner of supplies important to the running of any office.
Someone inside unlocked and opened it for him as
soon as he got to the door. That was the way
they had
been admitting people for the better part of a week. Someone watched and opened up. The door was quickly latched behind anyone entering.
On that day,
Vickie Penland
was the one who had
been standing, waiting for him with the key in hand,
and peeking
out from behind one of the thick curtains that kept out the bright sunlight.

Cutter had actually leaned against the wall, feeling the cool air on him, keeping the heat and humidity of
the
outside at bay. Back then, he hadn’t known that one day soon air conditioning would just be a memory in the worst parts of summer. As with so many things from before, he missed that cool, dry air. When the weather was oppressive there was now no way to cut it.

“Are you okay?” she asked. Vickie was a pretty
girl with red
hair,
and a
kind of short, nice figure.
Thinking of her, he recalled that she
liked to wear tight dresses with bright primary colors. That day, though,
she had
been wearing some bland color—a pair of slacks and a long-sleeved shirt. At the
time,
he thought it was a bad choice for such a hot day, but maybe she already knew what a person needed to do. Cover that soft, vulnerable flesh. Of course
,
she probably didn’t make it, no more than anyone else at
Briggs
Stationers
had made it. He knew of no one there who had. At least
he had
never met one of them in the days since.

Maybe
,
I’m the only one out of there who did make it
, Cutter thought.

“I’m okay,” he told her. “Just saw some crazy shit on the way over here.
Now there
are more of them than ever. They need to lock things down,” he whispered. Cutter was afraid of what might happen to anyone who spoke out too much about the way things were being handled. Maybe the cops would come and haul your ass away for spreading panic, the way they had when the terrorist rumors had been making the rounds. Some panic might have done some good, but by then it was already much too late.

“Me, too,” she confided. Leaning in close, she whispered. “I saw a woman and her kids killed this morning,” she said. “Out front
, on
fucking
Tryon Street
, for God’s sake!”
She had
glanced around to see if anyone was watching them. “An ambulance came and took them away, and a little bit after that
,
a fire truck drove up and hosed down the street.” She peered down the hallway, toward
Linden
’s office, Cutter knew. “What the fuck are we doing here? We should all just leave,” she insisted. “I’ve got family up in Brevard. My parents, a brother, his wife and kids. I’m going up there and holing up with them. It’s out in the country. Safe,” she added. “I wouldn’t be here, except that asshole not only threatened my job, he hinted that he could have the authorities either bring me in or haul me to jail. But fuck it. I’m thinking run now, while we still can.”

“Who’ll unlock the door for us?” Cutter asked, trying to make light of things.

Instead
of answering him, the shapely Miss Penland had turned and walked away. He never saw her again, and he supposed that
she had
gone through with it and slipped out before all Hell broke loose.

In his office, Cutter had gone about the tasks left out for him. He had more than twenty accounts to cover that day and the list of each contact with whom he had to deal. As the company’s salesmen went, he wasn’t the best of the lot, but he was getting closer every month. A few times in the previous
year,
he had
topped the team in total sales, and he was learning the ropes as well as anyone at
Briggs
. In a year or
two,
he might actually be the top salesman. Even at that point
,
things like that mattered to him. Somehow, despite everything
he had
been seeing and hearing, he still had thought the authorities would figure out a way to make things right.

Surprisingly, the first half dozen calls
he had
made that morning had actually gotten through to people who knew who he was and why he was calling. Three of the men on the other side of the line had ended up buying a tremendous amount on their accounts.
He had
topped $10,000 before ten in the morning, not quite realizing that he was dealing with people on the edge of hysteria and agreeing to whatever he proposed. Desks, chairs, filing cabinets, reams of paper, crates of ink cartridges—all went down on his sales sheets as he typed the numbers onto the screens. Well, at least
Linden
would be happy.

The last call had been the only sane conversation he had with any of the accounts. Someone picked the
phone up on the
eighth ring. Cutter had been about to hang up.

“Hello? Is this the police?” Cutter recognized the voice. It was Dan Stallings at Charlotte Digital. They were a mid-list client, but generally reliable for a decent purchase if you hit them at the right time.

“This is Ron Cutter,” he told him. A few seconds of silence was his initial reply.

“What the fuck?” Stallings said. “What are you calling for? They’ve broken in here. They’re breaking in everywhere. What the fuck are you calling about? I can’t help you. I
need
help.” His voice had started as almost a roar, but had suddenly cranked down several notches to barely a hiss.

“What’s happening there?” Cutter asked. “Things…things are okay here at
Briggs
. We’re…we’re all at work today. We’re holding the line,” he said, repeating something the governor had mentioned in one of her recent speeches.

“Holding the f…” Stalling choked. “Let me tell you something, Cutter. I’m on the 15
th
floor of the
Union
Tower
. I can see the entire north half of town from up here. And if I’m not mistaken, I can see the
Briggs
Stationers
’
warehouse…wait…” Cutter could hear sounds as if Stallings were moving across a room. “Yeah. I can see you guys fine. Only ten blocks north. The streets all around you are packed with what looks like crowds. You guys ain’t having any parades, are you?

“No, I’ll bet there aren’t any parades due anywhere in town today. So what I think is that all of those people ain’t quite people. And also what I think is that you and yours over there at
Briggs
are about to be as fucked as we are here at Digital.”

“Dan? What can you see?” Cutter asked. But there was a crash from Stallings’ end. It sounded as if a door had been thrown open. Stallings obviously had dropped the phone, but Ron heard a voice, a series of curses, followed by screams.

Then
, of course, the phone lines went down.

Cutter’s office was windowless. He had one of the interior
rooms, which
had a little more space, but were in the center of the building. Hanging up the now useless
phone,
he opened his office door and stepped out into the hallway.
The silence of the place
stunned
him
. There wasn’t another voice. Nothing at all. Not even the muffled sounds of conversation coming from the break room where there were almost always a couple of people engaged in some kind of talk.

He went from office to office. Most of the doors were standing open and no one was in any of the rooms he checked. He called out.

“Ms. Penland?” No answer. “Anyone here?”
They had
all fled, he realized. While
he had
been sitting in his interior office making calls to people who were either clueless or insane, the entire population of his workplace had taken their leave.
They had
obviously gotten out while the getting was good
, and
not a one of them had bothered to warn him.

“Shit,” he said. But he’d whispered it. Because
he had realized that,
he could hear something new.
A noise
had arisen so slowly and so gradually that it had crept up on him, like a very nasty surprise.

Even through the windows and walls of the
building,
he could hear the tramping of feet from outside. As if thousands of people were, as Stallings had said, marching down the streets. But instead of looking out the nearest window, Ron went into one of the smaller cubicles near the break room. He knew that Stacy Drake
usually
had her computer linked to the Internet, chatting with her Facebook friends whenever she figured no supervisor was hovering around.
He would
check her computer screen and see what the news feeds were saying.
She had
been there that morning. Ron had specifically noticed her sitting at her desk when
he had
gone to his office.

As
he had
hoped, her computer indeed was logged onto the Internet.
She had
left it on, set at her Facebook page. Ron hadn’t meant to pry, but the last message from her mother was just…there. He couldn’t avoid it.

Stacy. Come home. Someone has killed your father.

Ron had peered down at his feet. His left foot kept hitting something. It was Stacy’s pocketbook.
She had
obviously just grabbed her car keys and fled. Sitting there, looking down at that pocketbook, containing everything that a woman of Drake’s station needed to move around—her ID, her charge cards, her license, her cash—he felt his stomach drop.

He had
been an idiot.
A total fool
.
He had
allowed
Linden
to manipulate him.
He had
allowed the governor to convince him that he was
holding the fucking line
. The government had said they were going to handle this.

They were all a bunch of goddamned liars and
he had
fallen for it.

He went back to the screen and hit the bookmarks, hoping Stacy-the-office-clerk
had
at least
one or two
news site set up. CNN was on her favorites and he clicked the tab.

Ron stared at the screen. It was a still shot at Times Square. Dozens…no it was hundreds; hundreds of people were lying in pools of blood and entrails as
an army of the dead were devouring them
. Men, women and children were killing and eating men, women and children. Beneath the photo were the words:
THE DEAD KILL

At that instant, the Internet crashed. The lights in the office flickered twice, three times, and
then
went dark.

Standing, Cutter had plucked his cell phone from his pocket.
It was
also
dead. “Goddamn.” He just muttered it to himself and wandered out of his office into the hallway.

As soon as he walked
out,
he saw Lacy Morgan coming toward him. She was the
best-looking
woman in the building, and it was always assumed that
Linden
was nailing her.
Of course, no
one knew for sure, but the signs seemed to point that way. Immediately
,
Cutter could tell that she was dazed.

“Lacy? Are you okay?” he asked. He could see no one else
,
and it was definite by this time that
,
they had
all fled. His fellow employees had left him alone with the main squeeze
of his boss
. Not even the laborers who loaded the trucks were making their usual noise from the warehouse.

“It’s Mr. Linden,” she said. “Vickie Penland told me that Mr. Linden was acting strange this morning. Out of sorts. I told her that I’d go speak to him. Mr. Linden always listens to me when he’s cranky, you know.” By this
time,
Lacy had come much closer,
splitting
the distance between them. She was wearing a short ocean-blue dress, showing off her great legs and a good bit of ample cleavage. Cutter
could also see
that her right hand was covering a wound on her left upper arm.