Animals We Made

Dead Set | Part 2

None of the staff in the green room could stop fidgeting, murmuring, and pointing while counting each other repeatedly to make sure everyone—fourteen people in total—was accounted for and that nobody had been bitten, scratched, or otherwise infected.

The madness seemed viral, a thing to be caught.

Lola had given it to Dick, him then joining her in spreading a disease that somehow permitted its victims to function despite critical injuries that should have killed them in minutes.

Pat now slid down the wall to his bottom and hugged his knees.

"I think they're dead," he reasoned aloud.

Buck scoffed. "Yeah, and how come they're walking?"

No one had an answer for this.

Pat forced the question from his mind as he listened to the racket outside—the screeches, the growls, the pops of firearms—and he wondered if he'd at least make it to a payphone to call his mother and tell her he loved her, just in case the start of this madness was in fact the end of all things.

The interns in his group piled furniture in front of the door to keep it shut if the lock wasn't enough.

Roxy Hotz trembled in a corner of the room, naked except for her thong, which glittered outrageously under the dim and flickering vanity lights as she crossed her arms over her breasts and wept, her cheeks striped dark with mascara.

Jim collapsed against the wall beside Pat and retched and coughed, panted and wheezed, mouthing, "What the fuck?" after every breath.

At once, the room felt too small.

"Let me in!" pleaded a man outside, banging at the door.

Then he was a shrieking animal under the growls and gurgles of at least four other people—until he went eerily quiet, and where he'd been, only a dozen or so tapping, shuffling footsteps remained.

Jim buried his face in his hands.

"God's pissed at us!" he cried.

Buck emerged from the shadows of the dimly lit room, yanked off his coat, and draped it over Roxy's shoulders.

Nodding at the floor, she gulped, then returned to her misery, black tears gliding across her milk-white face as though she were a fresh snow on which tar had spilled.

Pat nudged Jim. "Francine? Virgil?"

The other man shook his head. "Lost them in the crowd."

Buck patted Roxy's back as she whimpered and swayed.

"I have to know," said Jim, "that I am not crazy."

A few interns gawked at him.

Leaning back against the wall, he spoke through clenched teeth. "Did you guys also see . . . people . . ." His Adam's apple bobbed. ". . . eating people? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I saw people eating people. Now, I've heard it all, seen it all, but . . . but that . . . that I ain't heard or seen in all my years."

"Why is this happening to me?" Roxy's face contorted, snot trailing from her nose. "This job is awful, and so are all of you." Her black tears leopard-dotted the floor. "Aren't I a star? Didn't I earn my keep? I hate you all so, so much."

Two interns passed a bundle of lavender back and forth.

Buck approached them with narrowed eyes. "Max? Casey? What are you doing?"

"Shut up!" Roxy yelped, palming her ears. "It's too loud! Be quiet! Take me to my hotel! I wanna leave!"

On the other side of the door, everything had gone quiet.