Zombies! Read online

The Talkative Zombie would soon spill the beans about seeing George earlier. How much time did George have before they flanked his house? Ten minutes? Ten seconds? He had weapons, but how long could he hold them off with a cricket bat, a pistol (minus ammunition) and the metal leg of an ancient coffee table?

  Still watching them, George became aware that his stomach was growling. He headed back towards the kitchen once more, his memory of yesterday slowly coming back to him …

  Yesterday …

  … the third floor was in a defensive position. Apparently, the Zombie stories were not only (allegedly) true, they were (really) true! Gunshots rang out on the fifth floor. “The accountants are under attack!” screamed a young HR intern, “Somebody do something!”

  “Fuck them,” replied an engineer, who had come up to HR to beg for leave forms when the attack on the building had occurred. As engineering was on floors one and two, and had already succumbed to the invasion, this particular engineer was very happy that he had decided to apply for leave. He continued, “This’ll teach those stingy bastards to take away our tea and sugar budget!”

  “And they didn’t approve the replacement of our second coffee machine when it broke last year.” chimed in an HR staff member.

  “Wait, you guys get a coffee machine?” asked the engineer.

  “Well, we only have one, now, but that’s because of those mean-assed buggers on the fifth floor.” the HR staff member replied.

  “You had TWO coffee machines?” the engineer was now totally bewildered, “How come you guys get two coffee machines and we have to drink instant coffee, which we have to buy ourselves? That doesn’t sound fair.”

  “Hey, people” said a junior executive who had snuck down to flirt with the new HR intern and found himself surrounded by company peons when the attack had started, “We’re in the middle of a Zombie invasion. Remember whats important, dammit!”

  “Yeah,” replied another HR staff, “The HR people are important, that’s why the company tries to keep us happy, and that’s why we get decent beverages. Engineering can be outsourced after all!”

  “Oh, is that right, is it?” the engineer rolled up his sleeves and displayed an impressive set of biceps, “How about I make my own happiness, right now? You can help, actually.”

  “People, people, people, please. Everyone, please, calm down,” the junior executive tried to assert his authority over the holdouts on the third floor fortress, “Remember, we mustn’t fight amongst ourselves. We must band together against our common enemy. That’s the only way we’ll survive this.”

  The group considered this and the engineer rolled down his sleeves. “You are right, you know,” he told the junior executive, “I never did like those bastards in Marketing.”

  “Yeah,” said the HR staff member, “He’s right, I vote we throw them out the sixth floor windows while we still have a chance.”

  “I was TALKING about the Zombies being the enemies.” the junior executive said pointedly.

  “Still, the idea is not a total loss. Perhaps we could throw Marketing to the Zombies and hope the Zombies choke on them. At least this way they’ll finally be useful to the company!”

  “Hang on,” the engineer interrupted, “You are Human Resources, right? And you think THEY are useless?”

  The sounds of screaming from the sixth floor ended the discussion on the relative utility of the various departments.

  “I think Marketing fell,” said the HR staff member, “Haven’t heard screams from the fifth floor yet. I think the accountants have managed to hold out.”

  “No surprises there,” chimed in another HR staff member, “Those buggers are probably more heartless than the Zombies anyway. They’d hold out against Lucifer himself, if it came to it.”

  “Yeah, remember last year they held out against the revenue service? Even SARS [South African Tax Service] failed to make them blink.” another HR droid added.

  George finally joined the conversation, “It wasn’t so much the accountants responsible for that win, was it? I mean, after all, it was Legal who actually went to court, didn’t they?”

  “Speaking of which,” the engineer said, “The seventh floor is awfully quite, innit? Lawyers also scream like humans do, don’t they? Why’re ours so damn quite all of a sudden.”

  “Good point,” the junior executive responded, “Usually we can’t get them to shut up for two minutes, but now they’re as quiet as the dead.”

  “That’s probably a great deal more accurate than you intended,” George said, “After all, how much resistance can Legal put up anyway? I can’t see a Zombie horde backing down in the face of an ex parte judgement. Can you?”

  Silence descended on the group - everyone wondered why the only quiet floor was the seventh floor, the company’s formidable Legal department.

  Today …

  … George spat out the ham sandwich. He’d forgotten that the power was out. The food tasted like all rotten food does. Hunger forgotten in the face of his slowly surfacing memory of yesterday, George began to plan his escape. He checked through the window; the creatures were still huddled in the middle of the road, with one of them occasionally gesturing to George’s house. Blast! Harry The Zombie Nightingale had told them about George. Now George really had to leave.

  What made things even more unbearable was his hangover. Instead of slowly receding into the background to torture him slowly for the entire day and savour the kill, it had grown in intensity as if it meant to kill him. The pain and stiffness in his joints had doubled since he had woken up. His mouth felt even furrier and his stomach, although cramping in pain, was demanding to be fed.

  Grabbing the metal bar as his weapon of choice and a loaf of bread from the kitchen, he carefully opened the back door a crack and checked the backyard for signs of ambush. There were none. Of course, George reasoned, this didn’t actually mean anything; an ambush by definition was unexpected; it wouldn’t actually be an ambush if they were just standing there, waiting for him. It would be a mob. If they were hiding, then it would be an ambush. He quietly made his way across the back garden and over the fence.

  Dropping clumsily over the fence, George ran almost headlong into a tall figure. His first thought was that he’d run into one of those creatures. Recovering himself a little from that initial shock he saw that he was wrong; while this figure also looked human like the patrolling neighbours out front, George felt none of that wrongness that he had felt when looking at Harry and the other neighbours out front. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he felt rather than saw the sameness of this person and himself. In much the same way that George had looked out the window and felt revulsion at the figures patrolling the street, he looked at this new person and felt kinship. “Obviously,” his instincts were telling him, “this guy is one of YOUR type, not like THEM in the street who want to kill you.”

  George felt a tiny sliver of pity; the poor guy, tall though he was, looked scared to death. “Are they still in the street?” he asked George.

  “If you mean those brain-dead but still armed criminals,” replied George, “then, yeah, they’re out in the next street. Hey, you okay buddy?” In spite of his own hangover, George had to admit that this guy looked a great deal worse than George felt. He could barely stand, and swayed slightly simply by trying to face the wind. His clothing appeared torn in places and there were visible wounds on his hands.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m all good, but they almost got me,” he said swaying slightly again, almost as if there were invisible hands he was dodging, “I’m so hungry, but they almost got me so I had to run off.”

  “Well, I’m off, you can come if you want to, but I’m not hanging around till I get hungry,” George said, “I’ve got a place near Brits. Lovely small place on a large plot. These things will never find me there. Only thing is …” George considered his options, “... it’s about 80 kilometres from here. You got a car, Mister?”

  Yesterday …

  … the Legal department
had, in a fit of questionable brilliance, given in almost immediately to the Zombie Horde. They had sent down Hanna Johnson to the third floor to reach a settlement. Negotiations were in full swing …

  “... Hey, watch where you’re swinging that thing,” growled Hanna at the cricket-bat-wielding-HR-person, “You almost kill... hurt...” She paused for a moment before continuing, “You almost had my head off! What are you doing with a cricket bat at work anyway? I’m sure it’s against company policy. Back to the point, the terms we offered the attacking Horde were …”

  The engineer cut in again, “I don’t understand it, why would you WILLINGLY become a Zombie? I always knew lawyers were stupid, but this takes the cake.”

  The rest of the third floor were watching this debate since Hanna had waved a white flag at the doors of the third floor and entered unmolested. The terms of Zombification were not even discussed yet, but already there was serious opposition to it.

  Hanna smiled a not quite humorous smile, “You call lawyers stupid? We studied a quarter of the material that you did, work half the hours that you do and receive more than twice the pay. You call that stupid?”

  “Well, well, good point, but let’s move on shall we?” said George. As a senior HR officer he knew full well that he studied not at all to qualify, worked for a few minutes each week and STILL made more than some of