Waking The Zed (8 page)

She passed Dr. Klein’s office. There was no sign of Karen, the doctor’s omnipresent assistant. Pam felt disappointed because Karen always seemed to know everything about the building before anybody else did. Of course Pam hoped that Karen had made it out of danger in time.

Then Pam paused as she approached the set of double doors that would lead her into the front reception area of the building. If more of these crazy people blocked her way to the outside of the building she would either have to fight her way through or retreat and trap herself in one of the inside rooms. She pushed the door open slowly and was relieved to see that the hallway looked clear all the way up to the lobby.

To Pam’s utter shock she saw Dr. Ada Klein emerge from behind the
receptionist’s desk. Even though the building was warm, Pam noticed that Dr. Klein had tied a silk scarf around her neck. She was sure that the doctor’s neck had been bare earlier in the morning.
No, that’s not right. She had the scarf on in the morning, but neglected to put it back on after her rendezvous with Enrico.

The younger woman thought that it was an odd time to be concerned with fashioned. As she looked closer, she thought she saw a red stain on the edge of the blue silk. The doctor must have been injured and used the scarf as a makeshift bandage.

Pam stopped through the open door. She lifted the umbrella and then lowered it again when Dr. Klein asked, “Are you expecting rain?”

“Are you kidding me? I
just had to use this thing to beat my way out of there. Do you have any idea what’s going on back there?”

“Well, close the door then,” Dr. Klein said. “You will just let the dead in.” Pamela glanced around the lobby as she tried to process her boss’s last comment.

The receptionist was slumped across her desk, certainly dead. The right side of her suit jacket was tattered and bloody. A thin stream of blood dripped to the floor from a head wound that looked like it came from a neat gunshot behind her left ear. The sharp smell of blood and other body fluids assaulted Pam’s nostrils. Pam had worked with plenty of corpses before, but she had never seen anybody who just been violently assaulted before death. She froze in the doorway.

Before Pam had time to process the sight and smell, she heard shuffling and groaning behind her. The sound startled her enough to get her to step through the doorway and firmly click it behind her. A moment later she heard a dull thumping as somebody, or something, pressed itself against the door. She had no idea that one of the mad things had been that close behind her.

“What did you mean when you said I’d let the dead in?” Pamela asked. She stepped forward, away from the thin barrier between her and th
ose mad things that the wounded people had become. The sight of the dead receptionist still appalled her, but at least the poor woman had stopped moving.

“It’s obvious,” Dr. Klein said
impatiently. “The virus re-animated my clients. But it did not restore their brain function. In fact it took over. Those bodies have become
one
with the virus. That’s the simplest way I can explain it to you.”

“What about the other people?” Pamela asked. “I saw George, Enrico, and a handful of others.
Enrico attacked me in the corridor, and I barely got away. George is bashing his head against the door but can’t seem to remember how to use the handle to open it.”

“The virus wants to spread,
” Dr. Klein said flatly. She spoke clearly, but dismissively, as if she were instructing a dull student. She was not even bothering to offer Pam her full attention but seemed engaged in a text conversation on her cell phone. “The infected attack the living. A bite spreads the virus. The wound must kill the host, and then the virus can reanimate the body.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Pamela said.
“Now you’re telling me that these people have turned into zombies? Is that right? The virus spreads with a bite. The bite kills the host and then reanimates it. You have become the mother of a race of monsters!”

“You want to call them zombies?” Dr. Klein asked.
She looked up from her cell phone and pursed her lips for a moment to consider the notion. “I don’t practice Voodoo, but simply science. If you like, we can call them the Zed. I believe I heard that in some old movie or another though I don’t typically watch that sort of thing.”

“You could’ve fooled me,” Pam muttered.
She had spent the day thinking that her employer seemed like the creepy mad scientist in an old horror flick. Now her mildly diverting fancy had been confirmed in the worst possible way. Dr. Klein did not even seem fazed when Pam had told her that Enrico had turned into one of the creatures
. Maybe she already knew.

The double doors did not have a window but now she was pretty sure that multiple bodies were heaving themselves against the barrier.
The thumps were not at all rhythmic but they were steady. She stepped around the desk to put something between herself and the doorway. The doors did not even seem to be locked but simply shut securely. At any moment one of these mad creatures could accidently hit the handle and open it. Pam considered trying to shove the receptionist’s desk against the doors, but she was reluctant to disturb the bloody dead woman resting there.

Now Dr. Klein ruminated over the crisis more.
“The virus must piggyback on some of the original host’s brain function. You observed them walking and trying to grab you. They can certainly walk and sense their victims somehow. But I’m quite sure that whatever made the people unique and sentient individuals is quite subsumed.”

“Is there a cure
for this?”

“How would I know?” Dr. Klein asked. She shook her head as if a
dull student had just asked her an obvious question. “I just discovered the disease.” Then she paused and tilted her head in thought. “In fact, I guess I invented it.”

“Don’t expect a
nother Nobel prize,” Pam said. Then the bodies thudded against the door again so roughly the heavy steel barrier shook in its frame. Yet none of the people on the other side seemed able to turn the simple handle. They had not been simply rendered insane but also somehow insensible.

“We need to find more
help,” Pamela said. “Can we call the police or something? There could still be other people holed up in there too. If I managed to get away then others might be fighting them off or hiding. Those things are determined, but they aren’t exactly smart.”

“
You will not do a thing,” Dr. Klein said coldly. “I am chatting right now with my personal contacts in the military. Can you imagine the potential of a thing like this? Our military could infect a compound of enemies and let them infect and eat each other. We need to have samples preserved so they can be studied.”

“What?” Pam
breathed. Her jaw fell in horrified surprise. This woman had unleashed this unimaginable horror, and now she wanted to contain it until she could find somebody who wanted to buy it.
I think I’d rather have live enemies than those things.

“No,” P
am said decisively. “I’m getting help.” She picked up the desk phone.

But just then
she noticed that Dr. Klein had a gun held just below the level of the desk. She had held it out of sight before. Now the older woman raised the pistol slowly, and pointed it deliberately at Pam’s chest for several anxious seconds. Then she slowly and dramatically moved her arm to wave the gun at the wall.

Pam was quite familiar with firearms, but she had never stood on the wrong side of one before.
The gun looked huge in the doctor’s slim hand. Pam’s breath hitched in her chest.
She must have shot the receptionist. Where’s the guy who answered the phone when I called the main number before?

“Put down the phone and sit
patiently by the wall while I work,” Dr. Klein said. “I may not be a farm girl from some cornfield in Iowa, but I know how to shoot a gun.”

Operation Zed

Pam
reluctantly obeyed Dr. Klein. As she sank down to sit with her back against the wall, her eyes swept the view through the glass doors which separated them from the outside. She could clearly see the nice landscaping and parkway through the glass double doors in the front of the building. A wide circular driveway wrapped around an elegant flower bed giving the building the appearance of a nice hotel or luxury home. Past the circular part, the long driveway straightened out and met the small road that eventually joined the highway. The driveway had flower beds on both sides and a neatly manicured lawn beyond. From Pam’s point of view, the entire outside area seemed deserted.

Pam visualized moving outside where she would be safe from the mad creatures and the crazy doctor.
Maybe she could find a way into the parking garage, get into her car, and drive to the closest police station. She pictured bursting into a police station and then trying to get some stern cop to listen to her insane story. Somehow she would have to get somebody to believe her so she could bring back help. This place should be crawling with police and emergency medical responders. All she had to do was get past Dr. Klein and her very large pistol.
Then I could try to get help. I’ll either succeed or end up in a mental ward.

The glass doors seem to separate two universes, and I’m on the wrong side.
Maybe Dr. Klein’s right to hesitate, but probably not for the right reasons. If I open the door I might let the madness out.
Suddenly the thought of the story of Pandora’s Box popped into Pam’s head. Of course, Pam’s world was already full of plenty of evil but this was something else.

Then she saw a large
and entirely naked man shuffle into her line of vision. He moved across the neatly manicured lawn and stepped directly on the flower bed that lined the road. It looked like he had emerged from the side of the building. 

Too late, the door’s already open.
What normal person would just step on the flowers without trying to pick their way through them or use the walking path? What am I thinking? This guy’s walking around without a stich of clothes on. Who does that? It would have to be somebody who’s in a great hurry, but this guy is not moving fast.

Pamela had never seen Mr. Barnes outside of the observation tank, but she was sure that the creature had his square jaw
, long nose, and rugged features. The thing wore no clothes, but blood dripped down his cheeks and covered his chest and groin. At first he just seemed to amble across the path in front of the entrance. His mouth opened and Pam saw his teeth were coated with a disgusting mess of blood and gore. She tried not to gag.

Mr. Barnes, or what was left of him, seemed to beco
me aware of her after a moment. He snarled and changed direction. “I guess they can still see,” Pam whispered to herself. Then she swallowed down her fear and revulsion as he threw himself against the transparent doors with enough force to rattle the glass in the frame. Dr. Klein glanced up, seemingly unconcerned, as she kept exchanging text messages with somebody on the outside.

Pamela did not think her umbrella would be sturdy enough to fend the monster off.
The frame had been bent when she struck Enrico, and she was pretty sure it would break if she used it again.

Though tentative
at first, the thing that had been Mr. Barnes seemed more coordinated than Enrico had.
Perhaps the hapless engineer had been injured in some way that affected his movements. Perhaps this creature simply had more time to adjust to his revived body.

She eyed Dr. Klein’s gun again. The only way out would be through
that thing that used to be poor Mr. Barnes. She needed a way to put him down before he could hurt her. As he was clearly already dead, she would not waste a second thought over shooting him, especially not if he seemed determined to damage her. Pam wondered if Dr. Klein was distracted enough so she could grab the gun. Pam was, after all, younger and stronger. But she knew the older woman was wary and sly
. She barely seemed to care about her lover Enrico. She might not hesitate over shooting somebody like me that she clearly doesn’t like.

Then a fast moving runner
rounded the corner, raised a large wrench, and hit Mr. Barnes’s head with enough force to send him crashing back off the curb. The body dropped to the ground and seemed to stay still. Pamela stared at the scene with wide eyes. The man with the wrench was Paul, the blonde worker who had been with George, and he was clearly still alive and unaffected by the virus.
None of the Zed had been interested in each other at all, and certainly none of them had the wit to use a tool to open a door or smash in a head.

Pamela assumed that Dr. Klein had locked the front door, but she
believed she could use the red unlock button from the inside. She rose quickly, said, “I’m letting him in,” and fixed Dr. Klein with a determined look.

The older woman
glanced up from her cell phone, shrugged, and said, “Be quick.” Then she went back to her texting.

As soon as Pa
ul stepped inside, Pamela pulled hard on the door to close it quickly. The inside doors still trembled, but held against the onslaught of the creatures who pushed against it. Dr. Klein motioned with her pistol hand and ordered both of them to sit against the wall while she communicated with the authorities.