But not tonight. Tonight, it was quiet.
Why is it so quiet outside?
More oddities in Kate’s life. Things that just didn’t add up.
Ugh.
She desperately longed for home. Order always came more easily to her while soaking in a hot tub filled with Deep Steep Honey bubbles. Maybe Rosemary Mint tonight…
The garage was relatively new, and smelled and looked the part. The only sound was the steady, rhythmic click-clack of her heels as she walked across the floor. Most of the parking spaces were empty, leaving a big gray field with only the occasional car to break the monotony. Kate found the emptiness suffocating and searched her purse for her key fob. The laptop bag was draped over her right shoulder from a strap, and Kate fancied that if she was ever attacked, she could swing the bag as a weapon. That was the idea, anyway.
Kate fumbled inside the purse, realized she was being absurd and slowed down, and finally found the fob buried underneath make-up and paperwork. She pressed it and listened to the familiar breep-breep! from across the garage. She couldn’t see the Mazda yet, but she knew exactly where it was.
She made a beeline for it and found herself thinking of Donald again. He would be home by now. Or at a club with a pretty girl. Younger girls than her.
She sighed. When did thirty-one become old?
Should have stopped him before he got into the elevator. “Hey, Donald, you wanna grab a drink?” Purely as friends, of course.
She smiled to herself, feeling silly.
“Kate,” a voice said behind her.
Kate jumped, but then she recognized the voice.
She turned around, excited, smiling.
He waited for me. Somehow, I knew he’d be waiting for me.
He staggered toward her, his face pale, mouth slightly open, as if he was about to say something but couldn’t remember what. The handsome young man she had recruited out of the University of Houston looked deathly ill and twenty years older, glaring wrinkles readily apparent underneath harsh and bright garage lights. And he was bleeding, blood spurting out between the fingers of his right hand pressed against his neck, leaving a jagged trail of blood in his wake.
Donald reached out toward her with his free hand, and in a garbled voice that sounded pained, croaked, “Kate, go back, go back…”
Kate dropped her purse and the laptop bag without thinking, and rushed forward and grabbed him just as he stumbled and fell. Kate grimaced as the concrete scraped her right knee, tearing skin and drawing a trickle of blood.
She struggled to hold on to Donald, his body pressed up against hers like a big lump of unyielding flesh. He was too heavy. He always looked so trim and thin: where was all the weight coming from? It was all Kate could do to push him into a sitting position against one of the garage’s support columns.
She sat back on the floor to gather her breath. “My God, Donald, what happened?”
Kate flinched at the sound of blood squirting through his fingers.
“Kate, be careful, don’t go outside,” he whispered. For a moment she thought he was going to start laughing. He grimaced and groaned instead. “Don’t go outside, Kate. It’s everywhere. They’re everywhere.”
She couldn’t process what he was saying. Her eyes, her focus, were on the blood squirting through his fingers.
He’s bleeding so much…
“Who did this to you, Donald?”
“Jack. Jack bit me.” His eyes sought hers and held on. “Don’t go outside, Kate. I came back to warn you. I came back to warn you…”
She shook her head. He wasn’t making any sense.
Warn her? About what? About going outside?
“I’m calling for an ambulance,” she said. “Sit still and try not to move, okay?”
“No, Kate, no, you can’t stay here. Jack’s coming. Jack bit me…”
Kate stood up and grabbed her purse from the floor. She took out her phone and dialed 9-1-1. “Why did Jack bite you?”
He shook his head. “You’re not listening to me, Kate. You have to run, hide. I came back to warn you. It’s…don’t go out there…they’re everywhere…”
“I don’t understand, Donald. What’s out there? What’s happening?”
“Can’t explain it.” He leaned back against the support column as two streams of blood squirted free between his fingers. “They’re everywhere…”
Where is all that blood coming from?
Kate heard the call connecting and turned back to it. She was surprised to hear a recorded message on the other end: “You have reached 9-1-1. We are currently experiencing a high volume of calls. If this is an emergency, please remain on the line.”
The message repeated itself, but Kate wasn’t listening anymore.
What the hell was happening out there?
Kate looked around her, at thick concrete walls separating her from the eerily quiet Downtown beyond.
Get away! something inside her screamed. Get away before it’s too late!
She fought against the urge and turned back to Donald. He seemed to have gotten paler since the last time she looked at him just seconds ago. “Donald, I’m getting a recorded message. The police aren’t answering.”
He made a noise that might have been a chuckle. “I know,” he whispered, exhaling deeply. “I tried to call. That’s why I came back to get you. Kate, you have to go back to the office. Lock yourself in and don’t come out for anything.”
“Donald, stop talking. You’re bleeding so much.”
My God, how deep is that wound?
“So much bad luck,” he groaned, breathless, and his eyes seemed to fade a bit. “So much bad luck in my life, but it was turning around when you hired me.” She thought he was going to lean back, to rest, but instead he lunged forward and grabbed her arm with his free left hand. “Get out of here, Kate.” His voice was low, guttural, and she had to strain to hear every little word. “He’s coming.”
“Who? Who is coming?”
“Jack. Jack’s coming. Go, Kate.” His voice grew stronger suddenly. “They’re everywhere, Kate. In the buildings. In the streets. Go back to your office and hide.”
Kate shook her head. This was wrong. None of this made any sense. Kate was always good at making sense of nonsense, but this… None of this was making any sense. There was no order here. It was chaos. Pure chaos.
This must be some kind of a joke. Donald is playing a joke on me. He has someone hiding in the garage recording all of this. We’ll probably end up on America’s Funniest Home Video. Or YouTube. Maybe we’ll go viral.
But she stared at him and knew it wasn’t a joke. This was Donald, looking impossibly older. Bleeding. Dying. In front of her.
He’s aged twenty years…
“Kate,” he said, barely getting her name out, “you have to go. He’s coming.”
He was talking about Jack. There was only one Jack that they both knew. The parking garage security guard. Jack was the easygoing father of two who gave her a friendly smile every morning, always quick with the small talk and a wave. And unlike the other guards that staffed the front gate when he was out, Jack never tried to look down her blouse when she drove through the gate. Not once. He was too much of a gentleman for that.
She liked Jack. The Jack she knew couldn’t have done this.
And what had Donald said? Jack bit him? That made even less sense.