Our Undead (27 page)

Gary:
Margaret
,
watch your language!
It's too
late to worry about what may or may not have happened outside. We
have to keep moving.

Ben:
We
should probably get that graze patched up, don't ya
think?

Mariam:
Yes!

Gary:
…
(breathing heavily)
Okay… Yea...

Ben:
All
right. Well, lets take a look around. See what this place has to
offer.

Margaret pulls herself
roughly out of the strong mediating arms of the Australian man and
helps her mother help her father up to his feet. Then, the group
makes their way up to the next floor, where Benjamin pokes his head
in through the second floor emergency exit.

Ben:
It
looks clear.

He enters the second floor
and the rest follow. This building they have entered is some sort
of office building. The lights have already been turned off, and it
looks like the emergency backup lights are already losing power.
Most of them are off except those that flicker, sucking as much
juice from the system as possible. The only steady light Is the red
exit sign that tints the halls in an ominous glow. They all walk
down one of the badly lit hallways to find the floor's elevator
area. Ben tries to activate the lift, but no light comes on when he
presses the button.

Ben:
I
guess the stairs are our only way out.

Margaret makes a mental
note as the group follows Ben into the area of the office where the
employees would have been sitting in their cubicles. The cowardly
Roger follows very closely behind Ben. Lynn and her mother are
behind him and Margaret walks with her mother and father on the
tail end. Benjamin stops everyone at the entrance, and has to sort
of shrug Roger off of his back because of how closely pressed up
the man is to him.

Ben:
All
of you stay here. I'll check this area out really
quickly.

He sees that Gary, his
second in command, nods in acknowledgement, so he raises his
baseball bat and jogs into the office, cautiously peaking inside of
the cubicles and checking under desks for anything useful or
dangerous.

Back with the rest of the
group, Margaret and Mariam try there best to tend to the last man
in their lives. Gary has been using his shirt to stop the blood
flow, and it seems to be working. The front bottom half of his
shirt is soaked through with blood, but they finally get a clear
view of the scratch on Gary's arm when he wipes it partially clean.
It actually doesn't look as devastating as the initial blood flow
had led them to believe.

Mariam:
Oh, God.

Gary:
See,
it's not that bad. I'll be fine.

Margaret:
You were already fine. This never needed to
happen.

Margaret casts a scolding
glance toward Roger, who sees it but turns away quickly, half in
assholishness and half in shame. Lynn and her mother are still
holding hands, both saying nothing. Lynn can't seem to take her
eyes of off the tragedy that is inextinguishably unfolding before
her. She knows this scenario, for she had lived it not long before.
Her and Margaret catch eyes for a telling moment. It is at this
point that they hear a tapping.

Roger:
It's the guy. He's telling us to come over.

Gary:
Okay, move.

Inside the office space Ben
pokes his head out from about ten cubicles down, waving them in.
Travelling down the aisle to meet him, the group takes in their
surrounding environment. It looks like the office has been safely
evacuated for the most part. The place is a mess with scattered
documents and flipped chairs all about, but no lifeless bodies left
over. They meet Ben where he waits for them, in a messy looking
one-man workstation of some past employee. He has an office chair
set up and a roll of paper towel in his hand.

Ben:
Take
a seat. This might help, although, its not very
strong.

Margaret and Mariam walk
Gary into the seat, while Ben begins unrolling a long strand of
paper towel. Gary looks clearly annoyed.

Gary:
Look, this place seems safe enough for now, right?… Uh.. Ben,
is it?

Ben:
That's right, and yes, it seems okay for
now.

Gary:
Good. You girls go take a seat and rest yourselves while Gary
patches me up.

Mariam:
I'm not leaving your side.

Gary:
Mari, please… Ben and I have some things to discuss, like
what we should do next.

Roger:
I'll tell ya what we should do next. We should get the hell
out of here, that's what. Hurry it up would you!?

Margaret:
Shut up!

Gary:
Margaret!…
Mariam, please. Take
Margaret and go sit down with Lynn and Karen.

Mariam complies with what
her husband asks of her, and her and her daughter go sit down on
the floor in the office aisle beside Lynn and her mom, Karen. All
four of the women sit in a row, leaning their backs up against the
wall created by the aisle's cubicles. Both pairs sit clutching each
other, the mothers on the outside, placing Lynn and Margaret
sitting beside one another on the inside.

Margaret can hear her
father and Benjamin talking, but she can't make out what they are
saying. She can even hear that bastard, Roger, trying to put in his
two cents. The sound of his voice irks her in the worst way now
that she knows what a weakling he is, and she turns her head away
from their muffled conversation to meet Lynn's eyes staring into
hers. Their facial features have many similarities. Margaret almost
feels like she's looking into a mirror. The two of them stare at
each other in silence until Lynn finally chooses to break
it.

Lynn:
I'm…
sorry…

Margaret:
Sorry for what?

Lynn:
Your
father… His scratch.

Margaret:
It wasn't your fault. It was that plumper's
fault.

Lynn:
Yea,
but… I know what you're going through, and what you're going to
have to go through.

Margaret:
I'm… sorry about your dad, but it's the tiniest little graze.
My dad can handle it. He'll be fine.

Lynn:
The
tiniest scratch is all it takes.

Margaret:
He'll be fine.

A scraping sound from a
near-by cubicle frightens them out of their
conversation.

Mariam:
What was that?

Margaret:
Wait here a minute…

Margaret scoops up her bat
and crawls over to where the sound came from, a cubicle that is
crammed full of garbage from around the office. Chairs, papers,
filing cabinets and even a couple of desks are all stacked up in
this one cubicle, as if someone had attempted and succeeded in
making a sturdy fort. Margaret taps the fort looking pile of office
junk with her bat and waits for something, anything to happen, but
nothing does. Her mom crawls up behind her.

Mariam:
Margaret, don't do that. Just leave it
alone.

Margaret taps the pile
again and notices a small space in the debris, a hole to the
inside. She can't see through it to the inside, but she tries the
first thing that comes to her head.

Margaret:
Hello… is… someone in there?

At first nothing
answers.

Mariam:
It's nothing, Margaret. It's just a stack of garbage.
Something must have just shifted in the pile, and it made that
sound. Come back over here and sit down.

Margaret figures her mom is
probably right and begins backing away from the heap of
supplies.

HiddenVoice:
You.. have to leeavve… the building.

A soft voice whispers
weakly out of the space in the office supply fort. Margaret and
everyone else in the vicinity stop and listen hard to what they
thought they just heard. The three men are still off in the
neighboring cubicle discussing plans.

Margaret:
Hello?
Dad, come
'ere!
… Hi, are you okay in
there?

HiddenVoice:
There are… monstersss… in the building…

Gary:
What's happening?

The men enter the situation
cluelessly.

Margaret:
There's someone trapped in this rubble.

Gary:
Well, we have to get him out.

HiddenVoice:
NO! DON'T
doo
thaaat…

Silence.

HiddenVoice:
It's… aaargh…too late for me. Just…
aaaa-haaaaaaa…
just
…

Margaret:
Dad, he said that those monsters are in the
building.

Gary:
Then
we have to leave. We'll head back to the ground
level.

Mariam:
But what about this person?

Ben:
(approaching cubicle fort)
Excuse me sir… or ma’am… but we really think it would be best
if we helped you out of there. We have weapons. We can get you out
safely.

Mariam:
Ma’am! …Sir!

HiddenVoice:
…
dooon't use it… don't
use…

Margaret:
Don't use what?

HiddenVoice:
Don't call f…for….

A prolonged exhale escapes
the furniture fort in the cubicle. It sounds like whoever is inside
is letting the air out of a balloon.

Margaret:
Sir?… Ma’am? Sir?!
Don't call for
what?

Ben:
I'm
getting him out…

Ben rushes at the fort,
ready to begin disassembly.

Lynn:
NO!

Ben freezes and everybody
watches in shock, the girl who has been relatively quiet since they
all left the hostel.

Lynn:
Whoever is in there is dead now, and if they got bitten or
scratched by one of those things, it's too late for them! We should
leave before it.. before whoever that is turns!

Rogers:
"Turns"!? What d'you mean, "turns"?!

Lynn:
Turns into one of those things!… like… my father
did.

The statement places a
giant lump in Margaret's throat. She tries not to, but she can't
help looking in her father's direction. Gary tries not to and
succeeds at not making any eye contact with Margaret
or
his wife. He looks
down to his feet, possibly in shame, or maybe just to ignore the
inevitable. As a matter of fact, in that moment everyone ignores
the fact that Gary has been scratched.

Roger:
I
don't know if this girl is talking sense or if she's just
delirious, but I don't wanna hang around and find out. Let's get
the hell out of here.

Away from the group, in the
elevators' area, still no lights indicate whether or not the
elevators are working. How could they be when the building's power
had been out for God knows how long? The indicator lights aren't
working, no, but the lifts still seemed to be functioning just
fine, as the door of the elevator that Ben called earlier slides
open with a ding. Inside are at least twenty trapped zombies. If
they could, they would cry cheers of joy for escaping their hanging
steel prison, but they merely lumber out of their cage and begin
walking scattered over the second floor. Back in the office, the
group of survivors is ready to leave.

Gary:
Okay, come on. Back to the stairwell, then we'll head down
stairs.

They all start heading back
down the office aisle, back to where they came from.

Margaret:
…but what did that person mean by… Oh, no. Hey, Ben. The
elevator. Ben! You called the elevator!

Ben:
Yea?

Margaret:
He was telling us not to call something. I think he meant
the-

Margaret is interrupted by
a sharp scream from Karen. Ahead of the group, she is the first to
witness the group of walkers that have escaped from the elevator
Ben had called. The zombies become well aware of the group as soon
as they round the corner into the desk area, Karen's scream
certainly contributing to that, and now the walkers are jogging
gracelessly down the aisle after them.