Outside Looking In |
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An entry into the January 2008 Twilight Creations contest by Paul C. Willhouse
"...hey look, a shotgun..."
"...any bullets?..."
"...lots of ammo...and a first aid kit..."
Mike Todd heard the voices, distant and disjointed and somehow artificial, the sounds coming to him with no context as he drifted toward consciousness.
"...let's take the car, the keys are still in it..."
"...maybe the cop is still around..."
"...I doubt it, there's a lot of blood over here..."
'Blood?' Mike opened his eyes, blinking against the bright fluorescent lights that greeted him. His head was swimming, and hurt like hell.
"Jarvis, you there?" asked a new voice, one that Mike recognized - and with the voice came a cascade of memories - the voice belonged to Danny Sheppard, a football jock in Mike's high school days, now a Mears PD patrolman, and incidentally the one that had clocked him and arrested him the night before.
"Thanks for the headache, Danny," he called out, looking around and taking full stock of his surroundings for the first time. He was in one of the two holding cells at the Mears police station. The other was empty. There was a short hall connecting the two cells and ending in a door that opened to the main station room. The door was closed, but the view slot was open; however, from his angle Mike could see nothing.
"Jarvis?" asked Danny. Mike suddenly recognized that the voice was coming over a radio. "Kim? Is anybody there?" No one responded. 'Where did everybody go?' Mike wondered.
Then a new voice came crackling over the radio. "That you Danny? Jack Hensley here, Lanz PD."
"It's good to hear your voice, Hensley," Danny responded.
"Ditto that, Danny," Hensley replied. "Look, there's eight of us here at the county college. We're in the...uh...student loan building...um, financial aid, that's it. Try to connect with us here."
'What the hell is going on?' thought Mike.
"Can you reach your station? Danny asked. "Mine's gone quiet."
"Yours, mine, campus security, everybody," Hensley told him. "The state police in Brighton aren't responding to calls anymore and the National Guard station in Parish has stopped transmitting."
"Hey, can you guys hear me?" Mike yelled at the voices.
"So...we're screwed..." Danny said softly. Apparently he had not heard Mike.
"Hey, can you hear me?" Mike called again, louder.
"I don't know," Hensley said, a hint of doubt in his voice. "The damned things are everywhere..."
"What the hell?" Mike yelled.
"I don't think they're dead," Danny interjected, "some of them just look sick."
"Look, I shot one, three times center mass," Hensley said. "He kept coming. Trust me, they're dead. Just get here, alright? And be careful. Hensley out."
Mike sat in stunned silence for several long moments after the radio went silent. Something was going down, something big, something that shut down police stations and National Guard armories...and he was locked up alone in a jail cell. The radio was obviously set to receive but wouldn't transmit his voice.
"Hey, is anybody out there," he yelled, hoping to raise someone, anyone. "I'm in the back here. Anybody?" There was no reply. Though he had never had claustrophobia, the cell seemed suddenly small and for the first time in a long time he felt fear. He looked around the cell. There was nothing he could use break out or even bang on the bars to attract attention. Big surprise there.
"Heyyyyyy," he yelled. Again and again. He yelled and shook the cell gate. Nothing. He suddenly found himself regretting getting into the fight at Leary's, the stupid bar fight that had landed him here. He continued yelling and shaking the gate until he ran himself hoarse and to the point of exhaustion. He then dropped down to the floor.
He did not know how long he sat there. He had no way of knowing - there was no clock in the holding area and they had apparently taken away his watch. Or maybe he had lost it in the fight. His eyes drifted down to his feet. He still had his sneakers, but no laces. 'Your shoe's untied,' he thought miserably. His stomach growled, and he wondered how long it had been since he had eaten. He wondered when he would eat again. He wondered if he would eat again - and at that thought fear gave way to panic.
He could feel it happening - a kind of hysterical paralysis coming over him - but he didn't know how to stop it. Instead, he closed his eyes, curled up there on the floor and he cried, cried until sheer exhaustion took him.
His sleep was fitful - voices and static occasionally crackled over the radio to disturb him...
"...I'm at 17 Locust Street and I have weapons - a chainsaw, a fire axe, two guns, even a grenade my dad brought back from the Gulf War..."
"...most of Spaulding is on fire, don't go there..."
"...is anyone there? Anyone?..."
It was finally the sound of shattering glass that pulled Mike completely from his much needed rest. He was exhausted and had a brutal brain cramp, no doubt brought on by stress and dehydration, but he was on his feet in seconds. "Hello?" he called out, surprised at how weak and wretched his own voice sounded. He cleared his throat and called again...and this time there was a response - a strange, low voice whose words he could not make out and the sound of movement in the station room. "I'm in the back," Mike called. "I locked myself in," he lied, not wanted to scare off potential rescue. "Please help me."
There was no reply, but after several seconds a figure blocked the view slot and Mike could hear someone fumbling with the doorknob. 'Thank God,' he thought.
But when the door opened he knew God had nothing to do with this particular experience. Danny shuffled into full view, torn and bloodied - torn in ways that humans shouldn't be - his eyes glazed over.
Mike backed away from the cell gate and to the rear wall. He suddenly understood what was going on, who "they" were. And he hoped sincerely that Danny no longer had the key to his cell.
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