John Ringo - Under a Graveyard Sky

“Actually, I’m nearly done,” Faith said. “With this load, anyway.”

Faith dropped off her last few packages, then headed for the elevator. Just getting to the mailroom was a pain. BotA didn’t occupy the entire building but they had the top fifteen floors. The mailroom, on the other hand, was in the basement. Faith really didn’t like heights and every time she got on the elevator she was reminded of that.

There were three other people waiting for the elevator when she got there. They waited for the group onboard to get out, then Faith apologetically pushed her cart into the corner.

“Where’s the regular guy?” one of the men asked. He was wearing a BotA golf shirt and slacks, which Faith had learned was uniform for middle manager. She’d guess he was in IT from the look.

“Didn’t show for work” Faith said. “No answer on his phone.”

“There’s a rash of that going around,” the guy said, shrugging.

“You act like it’s some sort of joke!” the lady snapped. She was probably an EA or typist from the clothes and age. Mid twenties and dressed to show off her talents. She grabbed the manager by his shirt collar. “Bad things are happening!”

“Hey!” the guy said. “Calm down.”

“YOU calm down!” the woman screamed. Then she screamed again and started scratching at her arms. “WHAT’S ON ME? WHAT’S ON ME?” She started stripping with practiced speed.

“Oh, no, no, no, no, NO,” Faith said. “Calm down! Just don’t do this NOW!”

The woman shrieked and continued tearing at her clothes as the two men backed away from her.

“ZOMBIE!” Faith yelled. She didn’t even have her baton so she snap-kicked the woman in the stomach, causing her to double over. Faith picked up the cart and slammed it onto the woman’s head, smashing her to the ground. Unfortunately, the cart was rather light, didn’t knock the secretary out and came flying back up in a welter of undeliverable packages and internal memos.

The woman screamed again and leapt at Faith who had exactly no room for maneuver. Faith blocked the woman’s chomping mouth up and away with a forearm under her chin, then secured her wrist in a come-along. From there she was able to twist under and get a chokehold on the woman’s throat. The zombie was still wearing high-heels, if not a shirt or bra, and as the door to the elevator opened they both tumbled into the corridor. The group that was waiting for the elevator initially scattered, then several of them stepped around the two wrestling women and into the elevator while others apparently decided there were other places they’d rather be. The IT type darted out of the elevator and sprinted in a more or less random direction.

Faith suddenly found herself wrestling a zombie completely alone in the corridor.

“THANKS FOR ALL THE HELP AND SUPPORT!” she screamed. The zombie was incredibly strong for her size and Faith could already feel herself wearing out trying to maintain the holds. “COULD SOMEBODY KINDLY CALL SECURITY?”

“I thought you were security?” The woman was peeking up from over her cubicle and Faith now realized she had gone from alone to attracting a crowd.

“I’MTHENEWMAILGIRL!” Faith snapped out in one continuous scream as the thrashing zombie started rolling her down the hallway. “CALL SECURITY !”

* * *

“Got a report of somebody wrestling a zombie on the thirty-second floor,” Durante said, looking at the alert code. Doing both the BERT thing and his regular job was starting to wear on him. And this was the ninth “zombie” alert today. On the other hand, six of those had been false alarms.

“Which means two zombies,” Kaplan said, standing up. “I’ll take my team.”

* * *

“Faaaith,” Kaplan said, standing in the hallway with his hands on his hips. “I’m sure your uncle told you: no more zombie hunting ?”

“She went zomb on the God damned elevator!” Faith swore. She’d finally gotten the woman into a hold where she couldn’t roll down between the cubicles with her legs scissored and one arm up behind her back. Not to mention the apparently entirely useless chokehold. She still wouldn’t quit squirming and Faith was just sooo impressed with all the help she’d been getting meaning NONE. “JUST TRANQ ’ER!”

Kaplan obligingly bent over and jammed a tranquilizer injector into the woman’s thigh.

“See, that’s how these things work,” Kaplan said. “The red end is the end the needle comes out.” He took a spandex bag from one of the other guards, who were looking equally amused, and slipped it over the woman’s head. “And now she’s not bitey.”

As the woman went flaccid, Faith pushed her away and rolled up and to her feet.

“ Please don’t let me have any cuts,” she said. “Other than, you know, the hole in my thumb. I bashed her over the head with my mail cart but it didn’t stop her. And then she was bleeding all over me from the cut on her head.”

“We’ll get you down to decontamination, then,” Kaplan said, seriously. “I hadn’t realized it was that bad.” Faith’s front was covered in blood.

* * *

“I just thought about a problem,” Faith said.

The decontamination shower was, to her surprise, just a shower. Tile lined the whole bit. With funny tasting and smelling water. She’d been instructed to wash thoroughly with soap and that was about it. Kaplan had squirted betadine onto her thumb, again, for all the good it would do.

“And that is…?” the female security guard who’d been left with her asked.

“I don’t have any clothes with me except what I was wearing,” Faith pointed out.

“For future reference in your later years, I’ve always found it’s best to know what clothes I’m putting on before I take clothes off. Just a tip.” The guard’s voice was amused

“Very funny,” Faith said. “My clothes were covered in zombie blood. I couldn’t get them off fast enough.”

“I noticed,” the guard said. “I’ll go see if we’ve got a set of tacticals in your size.”

“Guy’s medium usually works,” Faith said with a sigh. It wasn’t her fault she was cursed with gigantism. “Hey! And clean please!”

“I’ll see what I can do…”

“Assuming I don’t have zombieitis and have later years,” Faith said, quietly.

* * *

Steve picked up his phone at Tom’s ringtone. It was about time for a daily check-in. So far there had been no major incidents reported.

“Hey, Tom, how’s it going…? Uh, huh…” he said, neutrally. “Right… Okay… How’s she doing?”

Stacey’s head came up from reading her iPad at “how’s she doing?”

“Okay… And this happened how?” There was a long pause. “Hang on, Stacey’s looking bug-eyed.” He looked up and shrugged unhappily. “Faith ran into a zombie. Turns out it wasn’t the first time. Which everybody had carefully not mentioned. She’s…possibly infected.”

“Oh, my God,” Stacey said, standing up. “I need to go onshore!”

“Tom, you’re my brother. And God knows there have been things I’ve done in my time that…” Pause. “Agreed. And my only real response is what you said. How the hell did that fall under ‘I’ll make sure she’s safe…?’” He paused and listened and then nodded. “Okay. Agreed. Yes, it is Faith after all. Yeah, I know. Yep… That’s Faith in a nutshell. Stacey wants to go onshore. Is there a way…? Okay. Got it. Yeah. Bye.”

“He’s sending a boat over,” Steve said. “With security for you. They’re at the apartment. I guess you can stay there tonight. There’s still no curfew but you don’t want to move around at night.”

“What happened?” Stacey asked.