Insurance (2nd installment)

Linden noticed the broken door and scurried back to the door that said Private. “There’s more outside. They’ll get in here now.” He was pointing to the twisted metal and broken glass that had been the office entrance. “They are all zombies and they’ll get in here now. Nothing is going to stop them.”
“Calm down, Bert. There was just Mohandas. There’s nobody else and he’s dead now.” That thought suddenly made him ill. He had killed him. Mohandas may have stopped Richard from having that heart attack that the elder Dougherty dreamt of, but he had stopped Mohandas. There was blood on his hands now, too.
Someone had once said that all the world was a stage, and as if given his cue, Mohandas’ brother Sanjeet now entered stage left. There was no milkiness in his eyes, they were just two black marbles. He was snapping and snarling worse than his big brother. His clothes were covered in blood that Neal knew was someone else’s. “For fuck’s sake,” he sighed. “Sanjeet, fuck off. Get the fuck out of here or I swear to God I will fuck your shit up.”
Sanjeet snarled and rushed towards him, arms outstretched and hands twisted into claws. Neal swung the bloody bat. He swung the bat the way Coach Griffith had taught him back in little league. He swung level, snapping his wrists. He swung from the hips, turning, following through. It would have been a home run if it had not been a head. Sanjeet flew sideways across the room and into the wall. He crumpled into a heap, the left side of his face caved in.
Neal sat down on the edge of Maggie’s desk. She had pressed herself against the wall and he was sure she was trying to suck her belly in to make the smallest target possible. Englebert, propped up against Donal Dougherty’s private office door, was crying softly and wiping the snot from his nose with a sleeve of his piss soaked suit. Neal was going to be sick. He was sick. He vomited a little in his mouth and spit into the wastebasket at his feet. His head was spinning and a major headache was coming. He massaged his temples with one hand while the other kept a firm grip on the bat. His hands were shaking but Neal never noticed as he sat and stared at the dead man in front of him.
“I don’t know what the Hell is going on around here but I think we got to get out of here.” Neal’s voice was thin but steady. He took a breath to try and regain some composure. “I think we should go down to the police station and make a report. Let them figure this shit out.”
“A report,” Linden giggled to himself. It did sound ludicrous Neal admitted to himself. What the Hell else was there to do?
“There’s no answer,” Maggie squeaked. “I’ve tried calling Al, but there’s no answer.” She was beyond worried. Al had never not returned a phone call. They were soul mates for Heaven’s sake. Whatever would she do without him?
“Is it a recording or what?” Neal asked. He was trying to focus but the craziness had made it difficult.
“No. There’s nothing. No service.” Maggie was on the verge of hysterics. Neal could sense it. “Al’s not answering. I can’t get hold of Al.” Maggie sobbed a little. “Oh, Al.”
“They’re all dead. Zombies got them.” Englebert Linden shrugged and laughed. “Zombies got them all. We’re all gonna die.” His face brightened momentarily. “We’ll all be zombies.” Then it darkened again. “Fucking zombies.”
“Shut the fuck up, Bert,” Neal warned. “There’s no such thing as zombies. They’re just…sick.” Sick didn’t quite seem to cover what he had seen but zombies?
“Yep,” Linden nodded wildly, “Just ate some bad kuzhambu. Mohandas just ate some bad potato curry.” He giggled to himself. “Got the zombie trots.” He laughed loudly at that. Neal knew he was in shock. Lord knows what he had seen before he came screaming into the office. Maggie was worried about her husband Al, and frankly, so was he. This just could not be happening. Not on a Wednesday. Not in Kermit. He was just an insurance agent for Christ sakes. Not some kind of zombie killer. They aren’t any zombies he told himself. They were sick. Poisoned maybe.
“Well, come on now guys,” Neal said standing up. “We can’t stay here. We need to go and find help. Try next door or…” he remembered the blood already soaked into Sanjeet’s clothes when he burst into the room. Probably no one left alive in The Flying Carpet Café. “At least we can make it down to the police station. It’s only five blocks or so.”
“A walk in the park.” It was Englebert Linden. He was standing now, adjusting his tie and smoothing down his piss soaked pants. “I’m ready,” he said with a sigh and buttoned up his sports jacket that had Mohandas’ blood dotting its left sleeve. He licked his thumb and made a faint attempt to rub out a blood speck. “Out, damned spot,” he said in his best Shakespearian voice. Then looking down at Mohandas, “Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?”
Who knew Bert to be such a theater aficionado? Poor fucker’s gone off the deep end. His cheese has definitely slid off the old cracker. “Damn, I wish I had a gun,” Neal said more to himself than his officemates. I might shoot Olivier there, he thought.
“Oh dear,” Maggie cried in a little voice. “I completely forgot. I have one. Al insisted.”
“You have one what?” Neal asked, his voice suddenly rising. “A gun? Goddammit, Maggie.”
“I know. I know. I’m so sorry,” she lamented. “I never touch the thing. It just lays here in the bottom of my purse.” She began fumbling around in the behemoth of a bag, muttering to herself. “Oh for Heaven’s sake, where did I put that gun?”
“Voila,” she cried holding up something.
Neal stepped closer to her to get a look. In her hand was the smallest gun he had ever seen. And it was pink. Fucking vagina pink. “What’s that?” Neal asked incredulously. “It’s fucking pink.”
“It’s a girl’s gun,” Maggie protested. “I think it’s cute.”
Neal took the pistol from her and checked the magazine. It was a .380 and held six shots. “Do you have any more bullets?” he asked hopefully but she shook her head no.
“You have to shoot them in the head,” reminded Linden.
“I fucking hope not,” said Neal. He was doubtful of that. They weren’t zombies. Zombies weren’t real. Then he remembered the gun that was probably in his dad’s safe, locked behind the door marked private. He glanced at Richard’s lifeless body and shivered. He would have to fish in his pockets for the keys.
The whole front of the office was glass, so peeking out of the door seemed senseless. He peeked out anyway. There was nothing on this side but across the street, there were several people hanging out in front of Gerhardsson’s Hardware. He hoped it wasn’t the big Swede Alvar Gerhardsson. He would need more than a pink pocket pistol for that huge fucker. One of them actually looked like his sixth-grade science teacher and little league coach, Vaughn Griffith, and he fought the urge to tell him about Sanjeet or ask him if he knew what was going on. Sixth-grade science probably didn’t cover today’s events. He didn’t know if those people were sick like the brothers, dead on the office floor, but his instincts told them they were.
He crawled out to Richard’s body, fighting the urge to vomit again. Before he died he managed to evacuate his bowels rather effectively. The keys were in his front pocket, next to a wet spot that was not blood. He fished them out with two fingers. Before he could back up into the office, his meager breakfast finally shot up and onto Richard’s already reeking body. He darted back inside, not stopping until he reached his dad’s office door.
It took several tries and some minor swearing but he finally unlocked the door. Neal knew his father kept a gun in the safe behind his desk. What else was in there, he didn’t know for sure, and it felt almost wrong to be opening it without his father’s permission. The combination was his mother’s birthday. He opened it and stood there staring at the contents. The gun lay on top of a small box. It certainly wasn’t what he thought it would be.
Staring at it in disbelief, he shuffled through the contents of the safe again. That was the only gun to be found. If you could call it a gun. Technically, of course, it was a gun. This was the smallest gun he had ever seen. It was a .45 two shot derringer called the Rustic Ranger. It said so on the little box it had obviously came in. And two shots was all there was, no other ammo in the box or the safe. “Kiss my ass,” he said, drawing each word out. He shoved the small piece of armament into his front left pants pocket with a sigh. Facing the Zombie Apocalypse with the Rustic Ranger or How I Saved the World Two Bullets at a Time.
Sudden shouting from Englebert and Magdalena, their names together sounded like an expensive perfume, brought him running to the front. Strange, the thoughts that run through your head when facing your own mortality. They were visibly upset and with good reason. Apparently, the town had woken up and there was fast becoming some nightmarish Mardi Gras parade on Kermit’s main drag.
“C’mon, we have to get out of here.” It was too late to make it to the trusty Tercel. An obese man with watery white eyes was standing next to the driver’s door, sniffing the air like some stray dog. Neal couldn’t remember his name but he knew he had had an appointment with him this morning. “My car is out so where are you guys parked?” He felt a little sad at the commission he had lost now that the fat man wasn’t in need of any insurance. This kind of shit is what kills the insurance business.
Englebert had walked and Maggie was parked in back. Going to the right and down Walnut to the parking lot was out of the question. They were going to have to try the narrow alley between the insurance agency and the Flying Carpet. One crazy person there would severely hinder their escape. The alley may have been wide enough for a sub-compact car, but the Vemulakonda brothers always had garbage cans tossed around haphazardly halfway down the alley. The street in front of the office was rapidly filling up with people. Some were snarling and fighting among themselves. None seemed to be running away.
They understood that there was no turning back. When they made the break for the alley, nothing could stop them. If they encountered anything in the narrow passage, they would have to run over it or through it. Maggie said a prayer and wished desperately that Al would miraculously appear. Englebert tried one more time to call out on his cell. Then it was time to run. Time to run like Hell. And run they did, tiny feet, pissy pants, and all.
Out the door and into the alley, they ran single file. Neal was in the front holding the little pink .380 out in front of him, hoping to not have to pull its trigger. The alley was clear, even the garbage cans were stacked neatly out of the way. They didn’t stop until they reached the end, and that was only long enough to get their bearings. “Where’s your car?” asked Neal and she pointed out a yellow Fiat 500. Neal knew her five foot three height wasn’t a problem, but her one hundred and seventy pounds had to be a tight squeeze. He was not sure that the three of them could get into the car quickly enough to escape notice by any wandering crazies.
Luckily, the lot and adjacent street were empty of people and only a handful of cars were sitting in the parking area. They ran towards the car the same way they had run down the alley. When Neal reached the driver’s door he tried to open it but it was locked. Maggie was desperately pressing her key fob to unlock the door but out of sync, she only pressed when Neal was pulling on the handle. He snatched the keys from her hand as soon as she was close enough. She was out of breath and clutching her chest. He had just opened the door when a woman, hidden behind a minivan parked next to the Fiat, tackled Englebert like a pro lineman. They struggled momentarily, but he broke free and in a panic, ran the wrong way. Despite Neal’s cries for him to come back, he ran into the street where she caught up with him. There wasn’t any chance of Neal shooting her from that distance with that gun. Englebert managed to shove her away only seconds before a speeding pickup slammed into both of them. The frightened man never even saw the polished grill gleaming in the morning sun. He was struck with enough force to knock him thirty feet and into a white picket fence. He was knocked out of the cheap dress shoes he wore and the life was knocked out of him. The flimsy white boards of a DIY picket fence had splintered under him and pierced his body in a dozen places His attacker, wearing a very short red dress, torn stockings, and barefoot, was shoved brutally into the asphalt. The big oversized tires crushed her bones and then tore the flesh from them in tiny patches. She lay there, a bloody heap of raw meat with the short red dress that was getting redder.
Maggie screamed and covered her eyes and Neal just stood there gaping. The truck sped down the street a few more blocks before veering sharply and running into the corner of a small frame house. It smoked for a minute, then a small engine fire broke out. No explosion like in the movies. No one got out of the truck. No one ran from the house. Neal shoved Maggie into the car still staring at the gruesome scene, still not believing what he had just seen.
Crammed into the tiny car, Maggie cried softly into the passenger window. Her breath fogged up the glass, and long strands of snot dripped onto the arm rest. She was mumbling something about death and God. Neal’s hands were shaking so bad he was barely able to start the car. He kept grinding the gears and cursing to himself. Maggie hardly noticed the sound of metal on metal or the violent jerking as the clutch was released. Neal once again found himself fighting the urge to cry. His chest was tight and his eyes had begun to well up a little. He wiped his eyes and forced the little yellow Fiat onto the sidewalk to avoid hitting Marta Houtman, the librarian. She had apparently jumped or fallen out of the second-story window of the library and now stood shakily on two skinny white old lady legs. He noticed one was bleeding profusely from a compound fracture. Her long old maid dress, the only type she ever wore, had unceremoniously blown over her head in the fall. Her granny panties had hearts on them. He wondered if they had been a gift, and if, from whom? She snapped at him like a mad dog as he flew by, missing her by inches. For a second, he considered backing over her before she could do whatever damage a ninety-pound septuagenarian zombie librarian with a broken leg could do.
Neal headed to the police station because that is what he thought he should do. He wanted to drive out of town, straight to his parents rambling brick ranch a few miles out. They had a house in the exclusive Oak Crest subdivision. They would be fine out there. Nothing like this could be happening out there. Those houses went for upwards of three-quarters of a million dollars. Nothing like this insanity could possibly go on out there. Never, he told himself. Not in a million years.
The yellow Fiat slid to a stop in the middle of the police station’s front parking lot. Neal didn’t bother to find a parking space. The lot was empty. No sign of either of the town’s two cruisers or their chief of police. They could be in the rear parking lot, but Neal doubted it. He felt completely alone. “Where’s Al,” Maggie sounded scared. “Al’s not here yet? Oh, thank God. He’s still at home. He’s not here yet.” They both knew that Al wasn’t the kind of guy to stay home regardless of the situation.
The police station was empty on the inside as well. Kermit had two full-time officers as well as the chief plus two volunteers that helped out on holidays and weekends. Petra Houtman was the volunteer dispatcher and the sister of the recently crippled librarian. A shawl was hanging on the dispatcher’s chair and a still steaming cup of coffee was beside the microphone. The speaker squawked static and Maggie insisted it was Al. The coffee cup had a picture of a cat on it. Neal was inexplicably drawn to that still hot cup of Joe when an icy chill ran up his spine.
He turned to face that maliciousness he knew was standing behind him. His heart sank. It couldn’t have been a sane Al or even an insane Aram Barsamian, the seventy-year-old weekend patrolman. No, it was Dorian Sartre, all six foot five of him. Zombification had barely dulled his Hollywood good looks. Dorian was tall and athletic, with raven black hair and dark brooding eyes. He gave local women orgasms along with speeding tickets. His bleached and capped teeth seemed extra menacing as he snarled at Neal. His dark deep-set eyes were rimmed with red and wide with rage. He was twice the man that Neal was in almost every aspect. Now that he had gone all Walking Dead, Neal figured he would just rip him apart. “This sucks,” he said out loud to himself.
He started to yell for Maggie to run but he caught a glimpse of her ample bulk flying down the hall on those tiny feet. Dorian came at him, not like a slow moving television zombie, but more like a pissed off Grizzly bear. Neal reached behind him for the pink .380 he could feel in his waistband. It was not there. Impossible. His hand searched feverishly as he kept his eyes on the quickly approaching officer. The gun was not there. But he felt it. Then he had the sickening realization that it had slipped down. He stumbled away from the attacking policeman as he felt the cold steel of the gun sliding down his pant leg.
The gun fell out and skittered across the floor just as Dorian closed in on him. What used to be a policeman snatched Neal by the throat and drove him backward. He slammed hard into the wall. Neal tried to hold him off but it was impossible. He crushed up against Neal. The larger, more powerful man was choking the life out of him. Neal clawed at the hands around his neck but the fingers just dug in deeper. His mouth hung open but no air could be drawn into his lungs. His vision was fading and his head pounding. The blood, as well as the oxygen, was cut off. His windpipe would collapse any minute he thought. His neck would snap like a dry twig in this monster’s hands. Dorian’s face was so close, almost nose to nose with Neal. He couldn’t look into that face twisted with rage, those eyes filled with hate. He had to turn his head. He could feel the heat of Dorian’s breath on his neck, hear it in his ear. His rabid dog like slobber splattered Neal’s face with each of his snarls. God, he could smell him, sweat and Axe body spray and something else horrible, something almost evil. Neal closed his eyes and waited for him to sink those incredibly white teeth into his cheek. He had been fumbling in his left pocket, desperately trying to free the little gun. His right hand still feebly trying to peel Dorian’s fingers away from his soft flesh. It wouldn’t be long now. His legs were too weak to support him but he still stayed pinned to the wall by the other man’s incredible strength. He wished he could scream. Suddenly, one deafening shot and a spray of hot blood.
Neal collapsed. He hadn’t enough strength to lift his head. He sucked air in short painful gasps. He wasn’t dead, he was in way too much pain to be dead. After an eternity laying on the cool police station floor, he opened his eyes. Dorian was looking back at him from cold dead orbs no longer burning with hate. His head lay in an expanding pool of dark blood that threatened to engulf Neal’s own. The smell of gunpowder was strong. The ringing in his ears blocking out all other sound. The top of Dorian’s head was gone. It had been evenly dispersed about the room. The Rustic Ranger was still clenched tightly in Neal’s hand.
“Hello?” somebody asked in a thick accent. “Are you alright?”
Neal did not answer. Neal did not know the answer. His neck was sore and his head throbbed in time to his racing heart. He was not dead, but was he alright? He was being dragged away from the dead man and the creeping maroon puddle. Neal tried to speak but it hurt too much. I might never speak again, he thought. I just want to lay on this nice cool police station floor. Please quit dragging me.
As if commanded, the thick accent promptly dropped Neal’s leg that he had been dragging him by. Ouch, Neal thought. He was now spread eagle on the floor, some little distance from the one-time policeman. “Are you OK?” asked the thick accent. It was a French accent. But not like his high school French teacher’s. This one was thicker.
“Pardon? Es-tu bien? Are you OK? Maybe some water?” It was the thick accent again.
Neal’s head began to clear and he sat up. “Water? Yes, thank you.”
There were now three other people in the room, four if you included the former Officer Sartre. “Wasn’t Sartre a French name too?” Neal thought to himself. Neal took the glass offered him from a heavyset man in some sort of uniform. He was the owner of the French accent. Next to him was an attractive woman in a lab coat. Her hair was mussed and she wore no makeup. Expensive looking eyeglasses were her only adornment. She looked confused. Behind her was Maggie, crying tears of joy and relief and clutching tightly to her husband Al.
“I am Gautier,” said the man helping Neal to his feet. Then with a slight bow and a sweep of his arm he added, “May I introduce Dr. Sybille Deforest?” It was a very European gesture Neal thought, but somehow seemed appropriate for the elegant although disheveled lady.
Neal simply nodded, fighting the urge to bow like the man had done. “Howdy,” Neal said and inwardly cringed. He had never said howdy in his life. Now, in front of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in Kermit, he had said howdy. She would never sleep with him now, he thought.
“Bonjour,” she replied and held out her hand. Neal reciprocated, then noticing the blood on his right palm, quickly offered her his left. The little derringer was still firmly gripped in his extended hand and the lady jumped a bit at the sight of it. “Sorry,” he said and shoved it back into his pocket. She smiled and nodded, but took a step back from him anyway, just to be safe. Fuck a duck, he thought to himself. She’ll never ever sleep with me now. He was surprised at his juvenile thoughts. It seems the mind wanders a bit after you’ve been on a killing spree. How many was that now, three or four?
“Where did you guys come from? Does anyone know what the Hell is happening around here? Where the fuck are the cops, Al?” Neal’s questions came out in such a flurry that both Gautier and Al held up their hands to quiet him.
“Well, you shot the only one on duty this morning,” he nodded toward the dead policeman. He put his hand up again at Neal’s attempt to explain. “I’d have liked to have shot that prick myself.” He glanced over to Maggie and added, “I had to shoot the neighbors this morning.”
“Oh dear, the neighbors? Oh, poor Edith and Ed.” Maggie sounded as if she were about to cry.
“Oh Hell no. The Wexlers are OK. I told them to lock themselves in. I meant the De Campos, Tony and Yvonne. They just kept chasing me around the Buick. Both of them and their damn schnauzer.” Al shook his head then held out his enormous revolver to demonstrate. “I told them to go back inside or I was gonna have to shoot ‘em. Well dammit Maggie, they just wouldn’t listen. Growling and snapping at me, just like that damn dog.”
“Frisbee,” Maggie said weakly. “Little Frisbee.”
“Yeah, well they wouldn’t listen. So, I, well you know.” Al pretended to fire two shots with his gun.
“Did you kill them?” Maggie asked.
“Nah. I didn’t know no better then. I just shot Tony in the foot and Yvonne right in her fat ass. When they fell down I jumped in the Buick and flew down here to the station.” He holstered his gun then added, “I killed the dog, though.”
“Was it affected, too?” asked Neal.
“No, not really. Fucker just keeps shitting on my lawn.”
“We came here to the police this morning for help. There was an accident…” Gautier started an explanation that Dr. Deforest obviously disagreed with. “Ha,” she said derisively. Neal imagined that only French women could say ‘Ha’ like that. She rolled her big brown eyes and mumbled in French. He spoke rather sharply to her in French. She became quite animated and looked directly at Neal and said, “Enfant de brouillard. That is what has happened here. Can’t you see? Don’t you understand?” Her voice was quivering as she spoke. She threw her hands up in the air as an act of desperation.
“Doctor, please.” Gautier was obviously distressed about what was happening but also seemed curiously angry towards the doctor. He turned back toward Neal and continued. “We are both with the laboratory just outside of town. The Orlov-LeClair research facility.”
“Laboratory?” Neal asked. He was aware of the purchase of the old storage facility by what he thought was a French cosmetics company.
“Yes, it’s a laboratory. We were working on a chemical spray for the control of animal populations.” At this, he looked sternly at Dr. Deforest then added, “You know, for the deer and the lapin and the ecureuil.”
“The what?” asked Maggie, suddenly interested in the conversation. Neal had taken a year of high school French and understood that lapin meant rabbit.
Gautier fumbled for an English translation, but when he glanced at Dr. DeForest for help she again became very excited, talking too fast for Neal to make out anything but ‘enfant de brouillard’. Again Gautier shushed her, this time turning back to Neal and making the universal sign for crazy by twirling his finger around his temple. She saw and became indignant, ranting furiously in French with the addition of the English words “asshole” and “bastard”. They argued among themselves in French for a moment then she pushed Gautier away and rushed to Neal, grabbing his shirt and pleading, “Enfant de brouillard. You must stop it. It will kill everyone.”
Neal tried to pull her away but her grip was too tight. His shirt popped open, buttons shooting everywhere. He understood her broken English easy enough, but the stuff about scrambled babies was a bit hard to grasp. It may have been confused babies, he wasn’t sure. He now wished he hadn’t smoked so much weed before Mrs. What-the-fucks class in tenth grade. The beautiful French scientist was not easily dissuaded and again rushed at Neal, pleading in her heavy French accent. “It is the fog. Some it kill some it make like crazy in the head. It chooses. It make se enfant de…” a crackling of electricity finished her sentence for her and she toppled limp into Neal’s arms. He wished he would have caught her but it was so sudden that he stood like a statue while she fell heavily to the floor. Chief of Police Al Bukowski was standing over her holding a Taser.
“I am so sorry about that,” Al said. “I thought she was attacking you.”
Then Gautier piped up, “Poor thing. She has become quite unhinged these past few hours. This is all so traumatic.” He didn’t look sorry. “If you will help me put her in an office, then we can wait here for help to arrive.”
“Help? So someone is coming?” Neal asked enthusiastically.
“Of course. It is protocol.” Al looked like someone who had said too much. Al never used words like protocol.
“Protocol?” Neal asked just to be sure he had heard him correctly.
“Oh yes. Whenever there is an emergency the sheriff department is notified and maybe even the National Guard unit over in Grimsby.” It was Maggie. She was just making the assumption that her husband had all well in hand. Both Gautier and Al looked relieved at this explanation. Like they were off the hook.