The Most Uncommon Cold I - Life in the Time of Zombies (6 page)

     I reached
down to turn the old brass knob.  It turned freely.  I gave the door a shove, but it would not budge. I could hear a bolt rattling. 

     “Mister Clark, let me in so I can help you!”  I kept shaking the door in the hope that the bolt might
shake free, but it did not.  “Mister Clark...Jerry!”

     I leaned close to the door and listened for any sound.  There was nothing.  I waited.  For what, I don
’t know.  To tell the truth, I had no idea as to what to do next.  Finally, I grabbed the knob again shook it. After a minute, I stopped and leaned against the door again.  This time I heard a scratching sound from within the bathroom.

     “Jerry, open the door!” 

     No response. 

     I stood there in that dark hallway waiting.  Finally, a
weak, shaky voice called, “You need to get out of here.”

   
After a moment, I responded, “What are you talking about?  Open the door so I can help you!”

     “Get out of here.  Take that disc and
get out of here.” 

     “Just open the door, Mister Clark.”  I waited for a response.  Nothing. 
I called several more times with the same result.  After some time, I headed back to the room with the television and grabbed the DVD out of the player.  I put it in the little envelope. I noticed that 1535 had been handwritten at the bottom of the envelope and quickly scanned the room for anything else that might lend credibility to the story.  Nothing jumped out at me, so I tucked the disc into my pocket.

     I headed back to the bathroom door and gave it a last try.  “Jerry, I
’m taking the DVD.  I still wish you’d open the door to help you.”  After a minute of waiting for any sound, I gave up and headed out of the house to the car. 

     The
sunlight was beginning to dim in the late afternoon sky.  

    
Getting into the Jeep, I noticed several people popping out of their houses to gather up the mail. I wondered if all of them were suffering from the cold. The strange thing was that even after grabbing the contents from their mailboxes the people continued to shuffle around the yard as if not quite sure what to do next. One man dressed in a ragged blue bathrobe stood near his mailbox turning slowly in a complete circle.  A woman with a long blonde ponytail wearing a green and blue jogging suit was opening her mailbox, staring down the street, and then closing the box. I sat there quite caught up in the bizarre choreography around me.

     I was so enthralled in the
scene that I was caught entirely off guard by the sudden jolt of the car.  I looked to the passenger window for the source of the movement to see Jerry Clark.  The weird part was it wasn’t exactly the same guy I had seen earlier. This Clark had eyes that seemed unfocussed. He seemed to be  looking at something but not directly at me.  Both of his hands were still on the window in the same place he had slapped the car. His face was without expression as if he didn’t recognize me.  Without taking my eyes from him, I reached for the button to slide open the window.  Before I could open the window, Clark pushed back from the window, ran in front of the Jeep and across the street.

     I had the door open and was standing next to the car yelling “Jerry” before thinking about it.  Every person in the area turned to look at me.  The man in the bathrobe was no longer spinning but was now staring intently in my direction.  Likewise, the blonde was no longer concerned with the mailbox door but focused upon me instead.  I jumped quickly back
into the car and had it started before anyone had moved in my direction.

    I pulled away from the curb and looked for Jerry Clark but saw no sign of him.

Chapter 4

     “Curiouser and curiouser.” The words from Alice in Wonderland echoed through my head as I drove too fast down the street. Usually, the words brought a smile to my face.  But under the circumstances in which I found myself, smiling was out of the question. 

     As I thought about the events of the day so far and the
absolutely extraordinary things I had seen, I had a little trouble keeping the Jeep on the road and deciding on what to do next. I touched or rather caressed the DVD in my pocket as if it were the key to all of this, some sort of talisman that would protect me from the insanity infecting the world.  For the first time, I realized that I didn’t even know what was captured on the disc beyond what I had seen.

     The only
thought that made even the slightest bit of sense to me was to head home.   Having a destination gave my mind something to focus upon rather than spinning off into other thoughts. Among these thoughts were images of a half torso crawling across the floor, a man in a bathrobe wandering aimlessly, and another man facing an airport security camera to reveal blood and flesh covering his teeth. I hardly noticed the nearly deserted bridge and freeway as I drove home.  The lack of traffic was fortunate for me since I arrived on my street with little conscience thought and no memory of the details. 

     The neighborhood was unusually
silent for an early Friday evening although I did not take full notice. In fact, I parked the car in the garage at the ground level of the apartment building and hurried to the elevator and up to the fifth-floor apartment without noticing much of anything. 

     Everything came into sharp
focus and was impossible to ignore when I started to insert the key to unlock the deadbolt on the door.  Rather than feeling the strength of a locked door, the slight touch of the key moved it open. A gasp might be a bit dramatic, but I know that my breath was knocked from me as I realized the door was open. 

     “Bonnie!” I yelled as I stepped inside.  “Bonnie!  Are you here?”  I heard nothing. 

     I dropped my briefcase on the couch and walked into the bedroom.

     “Bonnie?”  I asked
quietly with fear that something truly terrible had happened here.  

    My mind flashed back on the memory of another time when I had returned home unexpectedly to find Bonnie was not alone.  That memory was brushed aside as I looked around the room.

     The bedroom was empty and the bed unmade.  I wondered how long she had been gone.  I touched the sheets where she had lain earlier and found that they were cool. The bed had obviously been empty for some time.

     I left the bedroom and trotted to the kitchen, bathroom, balcony, spare bedroom turned office
, and back to the living
room.  All were empty. 

     I wondered if Bonnie had felt better and had decided to go to school today after all.   I
truly wanted to believe that was what happened even as the fact that the front door was unlocked pushed itself into my head.  I stuck my head out of the front door and looked both ways down the empty hallway.  As far as I knew, Bonnie had never socialized with anyone in the apartment building. I considered knocking on some doors but was embarrassed when I thought of myself asking, “Have you seen my wife?” 

    
It occurred to me to check whether Bonnie’s car was in the garage.  As I stepped into the hallway, I felt entirely alone.  The feeling was not simply caused by the fact that the long corridor was empty.  It was somehow more than that.  As strange as it might sound, the air itself seemed to be heavy and pushing down separating me from everyone and everything in the world.  It was a strange feeling to have.  Maybe it was just a product of an extraordinarily strange situation.  In any case, the thought froze me as I looked both directions for any sign of life but saw none.  There was only the long series of doors.  Each was a different pastel color.  Blue, green, red, yellow, orange. I looked at them now, and it seemed like the first time I had seen them.  I passed them every day but never truly looked at them. 

     I found myself wondering about the people who lived behind those doors.   Ther
e was an older husky, black man I passed and said hello to most days.  I wondered which of these doors was his.  I thought about the pretty Asian woman who always seemed to be in a hurry as she headed for the elevator.  Which of these doors was hers?  There was also a young couple who were holding hands whenever I saw them in the hallway.  I had seen these people and a variety of others nearly every day for several years.  Yet I wasn’t sure where they lived, and this made me a little sad.  I wondered how many of them were sick and were hiding behind those doors, and this made me a lot sad.

     I finally shook myself from the mentally-induced paralysis and strained my ears to
catch any sounds of life.  There was humming from the fluorescent lights and the whirr
ing
of air conditioner, but that was all.  I suddenly recalled my purpose and headed for the garage.  I walked quickly down the hall.  Admittedly, the unusual silence of the building had me rattled.  I pushed the button on the wall next to the elevator and stared at the glowing circle with the downward arrow.  The hum and squeak of the elevator as it rose to the fifth floor was the only sound and gave me an unexplainable sense of foreboding which raised the hair on the back of my neck.

     The elevator arrived, and the doors slid back with a ding.  The light overhead made the
small, carpeted and wood-paneled   compartment almost glow.  It appeared no different than any other time that I had ridden it.  However on this day, the thought of being trapped within that small space sent chills through my body.  I glanced at the door in the corner of the hall marked “Stairs” and debated the choice for a few seconds. As much as I wanted to do the rational thing and just step inside that elevator and ride it to the ground floor, my mind would not allow it.  I spun away from the elevator and headed toward the stairs.

     The door slammed behind me and sent a deafening echo around the stairwell.  That was the only
sound I heard until the slap of my footsteps began down the stairs.  The five-floor descent took longer than it should have.  This was due in large part to my childish need to stop every few step and listen for any sound.   I never heard as much as a scratch, but that didn’t deter me from trying. Whether I was so intent on listening in order to discover anyone in the building or  if I just did not want to be surprised by anyone or anything does not matter.

    
In any case, I did not need to worry about it because I reached the ground floor without surprise.  There were two light wood doors at the bottom of the stairs.  One was labeled “Lobby” and led to the rows of mailboxes.  The other was labeled “Garage”.  Both had a square foot of glass in the middle to allow a peek of what lay on the other side. I looked through the “Lobby” door to see the mailboxes.  The place always reminded me of a locker room with several large cabinets forming parallel rows of lockers.  Of course in this case, the cabinets housed the numerous mailboxes.  This was the only time I had seen the mailbox area empty.  It seemed that no matter day or night there had always been someone here checking his or her mailbox.  Just as I was about to turn away, some movement caught my eye.  From the glass, I could not see the last row on the right, but I could see the shadows on the white brick wall behind it.  I kept watching for more movement but saw none.  I was beginning to think that the light had played tricks on my eyes when the shadow moved again.

     The question of whether or not to enter the room never consciously entered my mind. I opened the door as slowly as possible while holding my breath and listening for any sound. The door made a slight click as I closed it, but that was the only sound in the room. Still holding my breath, I crept toward the wall on the right. I froze as my shoes squeaked on the linoleum. The shadow on the wall seemed to
freeze right along with me. Everything stayed absolutely still like that for several seconds.  Then the shape on the wall began to move once more, and there was a soft scratching sound like a mailbox being opened.  I slowly and breathlessly moved up to the corner of the last large cabinet and stuck my head around the corner.  What I saw caused me to snort.
     Near the end of the row of mailboxes, a chubby older woman with curly black hair I had passed a few times in the hallway stood hunched over in front of an open box staring inside. However, that is not what startled me. The chubby older woman with curly black hair was totally naked.   At the sound of my snort, the woman turned toward me.  She appeared to have trouble focusing on me and was instead staring at the wall behind me.

     “I
’m waiting for a letter from my grandbabies.  It should have been here by now,” she muttered to herself. 

     Before I could
make any comment, the woman turned back to the mailbox, opened it, and peered inside once more.

     “Is there someone I can call for you?”  I asked as I stepped closer. 

     She made no response, and I figured that the woman might be hard of hearing.  I slowly reached forward to touch her lightly on the shoulder in order to get her attention.  Any amusement I might have felt moments earlier was instantly gone as I felt her cold skin.  It was not like the coolness you might feel on the flesh of someone who has been outside on a cold winter day.  The coldness of the woman’s flesh was like that of something lacking the heat of life, like something that had no chance of ever being warm again.  

   As soon as I touched her shoulder, her head whipped around to stare at me with
pale, blank eyes.